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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61,
+No. 378, April, 1847, 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 61, No. 378, April, 1847
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: December 3, 2007 [EBook #23690]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brendan OConnor, Jonathan Ingram, Josephine
+Paolucci 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.)
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+
+BLACKWOOD'S
+
+EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+No. CCCLXXVIII. APRIL, 1847. VOL. LXI
+
+
+
+
+CROMWELL.
+
+
+Mr Carlyle's services to history in collecting and editing these
+letters[1] and speeches of Cromwell, all men will readily and gratefully
+acknowledge. A work more valuable as a guide to the study of the
+singular and complex character of our pious revolutionist, our religious
+demagogue, our preaching and praying warrior and usurper, has not been
+produced. There is another portion of Mr Carlyle's labours which will
+not meet so unanimous an approbation. As _editor_, Mr Carlyle has given
+us a valuable work; as _commentator_, the view which he would teach us
+to take of English Puritanism is, to our thinking, simply the most
+paradoxical, absurd, unintelligible, mad business we ever encountered in
+our lives.
+
+Our Hero-worshipper, it must be allowed, has been more fortunate this
+time in the selection of his object of devotion than when he shouted to
+the skies his Mirabeaus and Dantons. But he makes an unfortunate species
+of compensation. In proportion as his hero is more within the bounds of
+humanity has his worship become more extravagant and outrageous. He
+out-puritans the Puritans; he is more fanatic than his idol; he has
+chosen to express himself with such a righteous truculence, such a
+sanguinary zeal, such a pious contempt for human virtue and human
+sympathies, as would have startled Old Noll himself. It is a bad
+religion this hero-worship--at least as practised by Mr Carlyle. Here is
+our amiable countryman rendered by it, in turn, a terrorist and a
+fanatic. All his own intellectual culture he throws down and abandons.
+Such dire transformation ensues as reminds us of a certain hero-worship
+which Milton has celebrated:
+
+                    "Horror on him falls,
+    _And horrid sympathy_; for what he sees
+    He feels himself, now changing; down his arms,
+    Down falls the spear and shield; down he as fast;
+    And the dire hiss renews, and the dire form,
+    Catched by contagion."
+
+But to our task--which is no light one; for in our survey of this book
+we have to keep in view both hero and hero-worshipper, Cromwell and
+Carlyle, both somewhat slippery personages, abnormal, enigmatical.
+
+The speeches of Oliver Cromwell have a formidable reputation for
+prolixity, confusion, and excessive tediousness; yet we have not, for
+our own part, found these volumes to be of the dry and scarce readable
+description which their title foreboded; and we would caution others not
+to be deterred by any fears of this nature from their perusal. They will
+find an interest grow upon them as they proceed, and the last volume to
+be more attractive than the first. As the work advances, the letters and
+speeches of Cromwell become more intimately connected with the great
+transactions of the period, and the editor himself more frequently
+favours us with some specimen of his happier manner, where concentration
+of style, a spirit of humour and reflection, and a power of vivid
+portraiture, have _not_ degenerated into mere quaintness, into a species
+of slang, into _Carlylisms_, into vague generalities about infinitudes
+and eternities. At all times the interspersed commentary--written in
+that peculiar, fantastic, jingling manner which, illegitimate as it is,
+disorderly and scandalous to all lovers of propriety in style and
+diction, is at all events the very opposite to dulness--forms perhaps
+the most fortunate contrast that could have been devised with the
+Cromwellian period, so arid and colourless, so lengthy and so tortuous,
+tinged often with such a dismal obscurity, and valuable in fact only as
+showing _the man_, utterly valueless as an exposition of thought.
+Perhaps, as models of style, a critic would be as little disposed to
+applaud the writing of Mr Carlyle as the compositions of Cromwell, but
+they form here all admirable relief the one to the other; taken
+together, one can consume a considerable quantity of both. Your dry
+bread is weary mastication, and your potted anchovies have a somewhat
+too stinging flavour; but taken together, sandwich-fashion, as they are
+here, the consumption may go on rapidly enough.
+
+But, whether dry or not, the letters and speeches of Cromwell should be
+read by every one desirous of obtaining an insight into the character of
+not the least extraordinary, nor the least misrepresented personage in
+history. If there is any one who still believes that Cromwell was a
+thorough hypocrite, that his religion was a systematic feint to cover
+his ambitious designs, the perusal of these volumes will entirely
+undeceive him. We look upon this hypothesis, this Machiavelian
+explanation of Cromwell's character, as henceforth entirely dismissed
+from all candid and intelligent minds. It was quite natural that such a
+view should be taken of their terrible enemy by the royalists of the
+Restoration, hating his memory with a most cordial hatred, and
+accustomed, in their blinding licentiousness, to look upon _all_
+religion as little better than cant and hypocrisy. It was quite natural
+that such a portrait of him should be drawn by the men who unearthed his
+bones, and vented their rage upon a senseless corpse. We see it was
+quite inevitable that some such coarse caricature should be thus limned
+and transmitted to us. But it has lasted long enough. We believe,
+indeed, that by most persons it has already been dismissed and disowned.
+It may now be torn into shreds, and cast aside as utterly faithless.
+
+Cromwell was a _genuine Puritan_. There is no doubt of that. He was no
+youth when the war broke out, nor a man who had yet to seek his
+religious party or principles. As the farmer of St Ives, we see him, as
+distinctly as if he still lived upon the earth, the man of fierce
+sectarian piety, in natural temper not unamiable, somewhat gloomy and
+hypochondriacal, but, above all, distinguished by whatsoever of good or
+ill the sort of Calvinistic divinity prevalent at the time could infuse
+into its professors. Such the war found him, and such he continued to
+be; throughout his whole career we never for a moment lose sight of "the
+saint," the title which, then as now, the profane world gave to this
+class of men.
+
+Was Cromwell, then, always sincere in his utterances? was there no cant,
+_no_ hypocrisy? Did he never conceal the ambition and domineering spirit
+of the soldier under the humility of the saint? Another matter quite.
+Because a man is religious in the main, it follows not that he is
+incapable of occasionally practising hypocrisy: he may lapse as well
+into this, as into any crime of the decalogue. Although we might find it
+difficult to put our finger exactly upon the spot, and say, Here speaks
+the hypocrite, we are not without suspicion that Cromwell was at times
+practising dissimulation. But if he dissembled, if he used with artifice
+the language of religion, it was no new and foreign disguise that he
+put on. He had but to draw the folds a little higher over his face of a
+robe that he had long worn in all times and seasons, and which was
+verily his own.
+
+In common with almost all men who in times of civil broil have risen
+from a lowly station to great power, Cromwell had occasion, no doubt, at
+times for dissimulation. His religion, genuine as it was, would no more
+prevent him from the practice of this necessary craft than from the
+sanguinary deeds not more necessary to the triumph of his cause. Nay, it
+was precisely of that enthusiastic order which, in the most liberal
+manner, justifies the means for the end. Now, at a period when the
+saints were in the ascendant, dissimulation would unavoidably take a
+religious form, and when most deceiving men, or most faithfully
+addressing them, he would still colour all his language with the same
+hue of piety. As, in an age of chivalry, the dissembler would have the
+boast of honour and the parade of knightly courtesy for ever on his
+lips, so in these times of saintship he would lull the suspicions of men
+by a gross emblazonry of religion. It might well happen, therefore, that
+such a man as Cromwell, working his way upward to the highest post of
+authority, would deal in much insincerity of phrase, and yet have "the
+root of the matter" in him. Indeed, nothing is more common in the world
+than this combination of genuine feelings of piety with a great
+abundance of cant, habitual or designed. It would betray a very slender
+knowledge of mankind, and none at all of what is called the religious
+world, to conclude that a man is destitute of sincere piety because he
+sometimes makes use of the language of religion for ulterior purposes
+not peculiarly pious.
+
+It is to be observed, moreover, that to readers unfamiliar with the
+peculiarities of _professing_ Christians, whether Puritans or of other
+denomination, the expressions of humility and self-abasement which
+Cromwell frequently makes use of have appeared to be plain symptoms of
+hypocrisy. They are nothing but the habits of the sect. Such expressions
+are supposed to have been employed to blind men to his ambitious
+projects, to shelter him from the jealous scrutiny of rivals and
+superiors. Such a purpose they may have sometimes answered, and been
+intended to answer; but in the main they are nothing more nor less than
+the dialect of the tribe. Because is a Christian virtue, certain
+religious people have thought fit to indulge in a false vituperation of
+themselves. Striving avariciously after _all_ virtues, however
+incompatible the one with the other, they counterfeit vice and meanness,
+that, good men as they are, they may have abundance of contrition. How
+far there can be Christianity or piety in an abuse and degradation of
+ourselves, when that abuse and degradation must be felt all along to be
+untrue--if any reflection whatever accompanies such language--we leave
+such people to settle amongst themselves. Certain it is that the
+Puritans excelled in this as in every other kindred extravagance. The
+elect of the Lord were fond of describing themselves as the most
+contemptible of sinners; the salt of the earth as being rottenness and
+corruption. It is to this habit of unmeaning self-disparagement that we
+are to attribute many of those phrases which have been thought in
+Cromwell to be studied artifices to cloak ambitious designs.
+
+They are rife on all occasions, and their frequency and energy bear no
+relation to the supposed exigencies of his political career. Take the
+following instance. No man surely knew better than he, that at the
+conclusion of the civil war the army had become paramount. He could
+sometimes speak of this army with the natural pride of a soldier, with
+the full consciousness of the power it possessed, and had conferred on
+him; and yet, at other times, he would talk of this terrible force in
+the puling strain, in more than the drawl and drivel of the conventicle.
+As Lord High Protector, addressing his first parliament, he says:--"I
+had the approbation of the officers of the army, in the three nations of
+England, Scotland, and Ireland. I say of the officers: I had that by
+their express remonstrances, and under signature. But there went along
+with that express consent of theirs, an implied consent also of a body
+of persons who had had somewhat to do in the world; who had been
+instrumental, by God, to fight down the enemies of God, and his people,
+in the three nations. And truly, until my hands were bound, and I was
+limited, (to my own great satisfaction, as many can bear me witness,)
+while I had in my hands so great a power and arbitrariness--the soldiery
+were a very considerable part of these nations, especially all
+government being dissolved. I say, when all government was thus
+dissolved, and nothing to keep things in order but the sword!" There can
+be no doubt of it--the soldiery were a very considerable part of the
+nation. But the Lord High Protector, in a speech he makes to his second
+parliament, referring to the very same period, narrating the very same
+events, can talk of this army as "a company of poor men," "your poor
+army," "those poor contemptible men." To attempt to detect any political
+motive for this absurd phraseology, would be a very idle speculation,
+mere waste of ingenuity: he was simply more in the puritanic vein in the
+one case than the other.
+
+In his letters to the parliament, giving an account of his successes in
+the war, he generally concludes with some expression of this strained
+evangelical modesty, and seems very much afraid lest Speaker Lenthall
+and other honourable members should attribute the victories he
+announces, in any measure to the army and the general who won them. He
+might be very sure, however, that, notwithstanding these
+self-renunciations, the parliament knew very well who was fighting their
+battles. Such a mode of speech would not endanger his reputation, nor
+diminish from his claims; might perhaps--though we will not say this was
+present to his thoughts--induce the parliament to presume that _he_
+would not insist on any very egregious reward for services he was so
+anxious to disclaim. We will quote one instance of this self-denying
+style; and perhaps the following passage contains altogether as much of
+a certain fanatical mode of reasoning as could be well found in so short
+a compass. Prince Rupert, then at Worcester, had sent two thousand men
+across the country, to his majesty at Oxford, to convoy his majesty's
+person and the artillery over to him at Worcester. Cromwell attacked and
+routed this convoy; he also took Bletchington House. After giving an
+account of the transaction, he continues:--"This was the mercy of God;
+and nothing is more due than a real acknowledgment. And though I have
+had greater mercies, yet none clearer: because, in the first place, God
+brought them to our hands when we looked not for them; and delivered
+them out of our hands, when we laid a reasonable design to surprise
+them, and which we carefully endeavoured. His mercy appears in this
+also, that I did much doubt the storming of the house, it being strong
+and well manned, and I having few dragoons, and this being not my
+business; and yet we got it. I hope you will pardon me if I say, God is
+not enough owned. _We look too much to men and visible helps_: this hath
+much hindered our success." This from Oliver, who so well knew how "to
+keep his powder dry!" from Oliver, who, enthusiast himself, could yet
+shrewdly calculate on the military efficacy of enthusiasm, and set it
+down amongst the ways and means! Cant or not, it is sad stuff.
+
+But, Puritan as he was, we can admire Cromwell. Every great man, in
+whatever times, or in whatever part of the world he has made his
+appearance, has earned his title to fame and distinction, not by
+qualities peculiar to the sect or religion to which he may have
+belonged, but qualities which, though connected with his own especial
+faith or tenets, are recognised as the common property of mankind; he
+has been great not as Catholic, as Puritan, as Pagan, as Mahometan, but
+as _man_; he has been great, because he was pious, brave, patriotic,
+sagacious, resolute, and has achieved great enterprises on the theatre
+of life. The greatness of Cromwell was indeed allied to Puritanism,
+inasmuch as his mind grew up under this peculiar form of religion; but
+what we, and all posterity must admire in Cromwell, is by no means the
+puritan. His steadiness of purpose, his unshaken resolution, his
+military prowess, his eminent talent to govern and command, and his
+religious sense of duty to the Supreme, might all have existed under
+other modes of religion. In our admiration we entirely separate these
+qualities from that least gainly and least wholesome of the forms of
+Christian piety with which they are here found connected. History gives
+us examples of every kind of virtue, and every kind of talent, united
+with every species of fanaticism that has afflicted civilised life. It
+follows not that we applaud the fanaticism. The early caliphs were
+several of them distinguished by exalted virtues, temperance,
+self-denial, justice, patriotism: we praise these virtues, we
+acknowledge, too, that they are here linked with the profession of the
+faith of Islam; but for all this we do not admire the religion of
+Mahomet, nor that fanaticism which writ its texts upon the sword.
+
+We insist upon this obvious distinction, because, whilst agreeing--_to a
+certain extent_--in Mr Carlyle's view of the character of Cromwell, we
+beg not to be implicated in that esteem and reverence which he professes
+to entertain for Puritanism, or the Puritans as a body. And this brings
+us to the extraordinary part of Mr Carlyle's performance--his ardent
+sympathy, nay his acquiescence with, and adherence to the Puritans, to
+that point that he adopts their convictions, their feelings, and even
+some of their most grotesque reasonings. Their violence and ferocity, we
+were prepared to see Mr Carlyle, in his own sardonic fashion, abet and
+encourage; his sympathy is always with the party _who strikes_; but that
+he should identify himself with their mumming thoughts, their "plentiful
+reasons," their gloomiest superstitions, was what no one could have
+anticipated. On this subject we must quote his own words; our own would
+not be credited; they would seem to any one who had not read his work to
+be scandalous misrepresentations. The extravagance runs through the
+whole book, but we have it perhaps more concentrated in the
+Introduction.
+
+This Introduction, which we sat down to with keen expectations,
+disappointed us extremely, at least in those parts where any general
+views are taken. We feel, and have elsewhere ungrudgingly expressed, a
+certain admiration for the talents of Mr Carlyle. We shall never forget
+the surprise and pleasure with which we read the "Sartor Resartus," as
+it one day burst suddenly and accidentally upon us; and no one who has
+once read his graphic and passionate history of the French Revolution,
+can ever forget the vivid pictures that were there presented to him. We
+opened this book, therefore, with a sort of anticipatory relish. But we
+found very little of his genius, and very much of his extravagance; less
+of the one and more of the other, than we thought could possibly have
+been brought together. Metaphors and allusions, already worn
+thread-bare, are introduced as stock phrases, as if he had inserted them
+in his dictionary of the English language. All his vices of manner are
+exaggerated, while the freshness of thought, which half excused them, is
+departed. These strange metaphors, these glaring colours, which are
+ready spread out upon his palette, he transfers with hasty profusion to
+his canvass, till--(as it has been said of Mr Turner's, pictures)--the
+canvass and the palette-plate very nearly resemble. But were it
+otherwise, were there all and more than the wit, and humour, and
+sarcasm, and pungent phrase, and graphic power, which may be found
+scattered through Mr Carlyle's best performances, there is here a
+substratum of sheer and violent absurdity, which all these together
+would fail to disguise or compensate. Certainly there are pages of
+writing in this Introduction which contain such an amount of extravagant
+assertion, uttered in such fantastic jargon, as we think could nowhere
+be paralleled. Dulness could never have attained to any thing so
+extraordinary; and surely genius never before condescended to such
+workmanship.
+
+"What and how great," thus commences the book, "are the interests which
+connect themselves with the hope that England may yet attain to some,
+practical belief and understanding of its history during the seventeenth
+century, need not be insisted on at present, such hope being still very
+distant, very uncertain. We have wandered far away from the ideas which
+guided us in that century, _and indeed which had guided us in all
+preceding centuries, but of which that century was the ultimate
+manifestation_. We have wandered very far, and must endeavour to return
+and connect ourselves therewith again! It is with other feelings than
+those of poor peddling dilettantism, other aims than the writing of
+successful or unsuccessful publications, that an earnest man occupies
+himself in those dreary provinces of the dead and buried. The _last
+glimpse of the godlike_ vanishing from this England; conviction and
+veracity giving place to hollow cant and formalism--antique 'Reign of
+God,' which all true men in their several dialects and modes have always
+striven for, giving place to the modern reign of the No-God, whom men
+name devil; this, in its multitudinous meanings and results, is a sight
+to create reflections in the earnest man! One wishes there were a
+history of English Puritanism, _the last of all our heroisms_, but sees
+small prospect of such a thing at present."
+
+Then, beginning to quote himself, as his manner is, changing his voice
+and adopting another key, as if by this thin disguise to obtain somewhat
+more license for the wildness and vehemence of his speech--an artifice
+surely not necessary here--he thus continues:--
+
+"'Few nobler heroisms,' says a well-known writer, long occupied on this
+subject, 'at bottom, perhaps, _no nobler heroism_, ever transacted
+itself on this earth; and it lies as good as lost to us, overwhelmed
+under such an avalanche of human stupidities as no heroism before ever
+did. Intrinsically and extrinsically it may be considered inaccessible
+to these generations. Intrinsically, the spiritual purport of it has
+become inconceivable, incredible to the modern mind. Extrinsically, the
+documents and records of it, scattered waste as a shoreless chaos, are
+not legible. They lie there printed, written, to the extent of tons of
+square miles, as shot-rubbish; unedited, unsorted, not so much as
+indexed; full of every conceivable confusion; yielding light to very
+few; yielding darkness, in several sorts, to very many.' ...
+
+"'This, then,' continues our impatient friend, 'is the Elysium we
+English have provided for our heroes! The Rushworthian Elysium.
+Dreariest continent of shot-rubbish the eye ever saw. Confusion piled on
+confusion to your utmost horizon's edge; obscure in lurid twilight as of
+the shadow of death; trackless, without index, without finger-post, or
+mark of any human foregoer; where your human footstep, if you are still
+human, echoes bodeful through the gaunt solitude, peopled only by
+somnambulant pedants, dilettants, and doleful creatures, by phantasms,
+errors, inconceivabilities, by nightmares, pasteboard norroys, griffins,
+wiverns, and chimeras dire! There, all vanquished, overwhelmed under
+such waste lumber mountains, the wreck and dead ashes of some six
+unbelieving generations, does the age of Cromwell and his Puritans lie
+hidden from us. This is what we, for our share, have been able to
+accomplish towards keeping _our heroic ones_ in memory.'"
+
+After some further diatribe against all preceding historians,
+collectors, and editors, he drops his ventriloquism, and, resuming a
+somewhat more natural voice, he proceeds:--
+
+"Nay, in addition to the sad state of our historical books, and what
+indeed is fundamentally the cause and origin of that, our common
+spiritual notions, if any notion of ours may still deserve to be called
+spiritual, are fatal to a right understanding of that seventeenth
+century. _The Christian doctrines, which then dwelt alive in every
+heart, have now in a manner died out of all hearts_--very mournful to
+behold--and are not the guidance of this world any more. Nay, worse
+still, the cant of them does yet dwell alive with us, little doubting
+that it is cant, in which fatal intermediate state the eternal
+sacredness of this universe itself, of this human life itself, has
+fallen dark to the most of us, and we think that, too, a cant and a
+creed."
+
+So!--as our honest German friend would exclaim, puffing from his mouth
+at the same time a huge volume of symbolic smoke. We have withdrawn it
+seems, from the path of light ever since the reign of the army and its
+godly officers established A.D. 1649. We must return and connect
+ourselves therewith; it is our only salvation; though, indeed, if
+Puritanism was the manifestation of the ideas of all preceding
+centuries--if the same current of thought can be traced from William the
+Conqueror to Oliver the conqueror--a very little ingenuity would suffice
+to trace the same ideas, the same current of thought, somewhat farther
+still. But this reign of the puritanical army was really "the last
+glimpse of the godlike!"--it was "the reign of God!" and we live under
+the reign of ----, psha! Why, he does not even give us a substantial
+devil, but coins a strange personification of a negative. Such was not
+the devil, by the way, at the time of "the noblest heroism ever
+transacted on the earth." Such a definition of the "roaring lion,"
+would, in those days of light and happiness, have procured its author,
+at the very least, a trip to Barbadoes. Even Cromwell himself would have
+_Barbadoesed_ him.
+
+"This last of our heroisms!" God grant it is the last! It is only out of
+another religious war that another such heroism can arise. If church and
+dissent should take up arms, and, instead of controversies carried on in
+pamphlets, upon tradition and white surplices, should blow out each
+other's brains with gunpowder, then Mr Carlyle would see his "heroic
+ones" revive upon the earth.
+
+"The Christian doctrines which then dwelt alive in every heart, have now
+in a manner died out of all hearts." Only the cant of them dwells alive
+with us. The same clear-sighted author, who sees the Christian doctrines
+so beautifully and pre-eminently developed in the Ironsides of Cromwell,
+in the troopers of Lambert and Harrison, sacking, pillaging,
+slaughtering, and in all that tribe of men who ever shed blood the
+readier after prayer-time--men who had dropped from their memory
+Christ's own preaching, to fill their mouths with the curses which the
+Hebrew prophets had been permitted, under a past dispensation, to
+denounce against the enemies of Judea, who had constructed their
+theology out of the darkest parts of the New, and the most fearful
+portion of the Old Testament;--this same author, opening his eyes and
+ears upon his own day and generation, finds that Christianity has died
+out of all hearts, and its phraseology, as he expresses himself
+elsewhere, "become mournful to him when spouted as frothy cant from
+Exeter Hall." If Mr Carlyle would visit Exeter Hall, and carry there one
+tithe of the determination to approve, that he exhibits in favour of the
+Puritan, he would find a Christian piety as sincere, as genuine, and far
+more humane, than his heroes of Naseby, or Dunbar, or Drogheda were
+acquainted with. He would see the descendants of his Puritans, relieved,
+at least we may say, from the necessity of raising their psalm on the
+battle-field, indulging in none of the ferocities of our nature,
+assembling in numerous but peaceful meetings, raising annually, by a
+quiet but no contemptible sacrifice, their millions for the
+dissemination of Gospel truth. But Mr Carlyle would call this cant; he
+sees nothing good, or generous, or high-minded in any portion of the
+world in which he lives; he reserves his sympathies for the past--for
+the men of buckram and broad-sword, who, on a question of church
+government, were always ready "to hew Agag to pieces," let Agag stand
+for who, or what number it might.
+
+If there is one spectacle more odious than another of all which history
+presents to us, whether it take place amongst Mahometan or Christian,
+Catholic or Protestant, it is this:--to see men practising all the
+terrible brutalities of war, treading down their enemies, doing all that
+rage and the worst passions prompt, and doing all amidst exclamations of
+piety, devout acknowledgments of submission to Divine will, and
+professions of gratitude to God. Other religious factions have committed
+far greater atrocities than the Puritans, but nowhere in history is this
+same spectacle exhibited with more distasteful and sickening
+accompaniments. The Moslem thanked God upon his sword in at least a
+somewhat soldierly manner; and the Catholic, by the very pomp with which
+he chants his _Te Deum_, somewhat conceals the meaning of his act, and,
+keeping God a little out of sight, makes his mass express the natural
+feeling of a human triumph. But the sleek Puritan, at once grovelling
+and presumptuous, mingles with his sanguinary mood all the morbid
+sickly conceit, all the crawling affected humility of the conventicle.
+All his bloodsheds are "mercies," and they are granted in answer to his
+long and miserable prayers--prayers which, to a man of rational piety,
+sound very much like blasphemies. He carries with him to the
+battle-field, to the siege, to the massacre, not one even of those
+generous feelings which war itself permits towards a foe. He chooses to
+call his enemy the enemy of God, and kneels before he fights, that the
+inexpressible _mercy_ may be granted of cutting his throat!
+
+"That the sense of difference between right and wrong," says Mr Carlyle,
+"had filled all time and all space for man, and bodied itself forth into
+a heaven and hell for him,--this constitutes the grand feature of those
+Puritan, old-Christian ages; this is the element which stamps them as
+heroic, and has rendered their works great, manlike, fruitful to all
+generations." Quite on the contrary. The sense of right and wrong was
+obscured, confused, lost sight of, in the promptings of a presumptuous
+enthusiasm; and it is exactly _this_ which constitutes the perilous
+characteristic of such men as the Puritans and Cameronians, and similar
+sectaries. How can the sense of right and wrong keep its footing in an
+enthusiasm which has brought itself to believe that all its successes
+are a direct answer to its prayers? Success becomes the very measure of
+right and wrong. The two extremes of Atheism and Fanaticism have met;
+they may both dispense with conscience, and make the event the criterion
+of the deed. Hear how the pious heroes of Mr Carlyle reason on one of
+the most solemn occasions of the civil war. The army is remonstrating
+with the Parliament because it appeared slow to shed the blood of their
+conquered and captured King, and it actually speaks of the death of
+Charles "as appeasing the wrath of God" against that sovereign! and bids
+the Parliament "sadly to consider, as men accountable to the Highest,"
+how far an accommodation with the King, "when God hath given him so
+clearly into your power to do justice, can be just before God or good
+men." The _power_ to do the act is full authority, is absolute command
+to do it. What other doctrine could a C�sar Borgia, or an Eccelino, the
+tyrant of Padua, desire to be governed, or rather to be manumitted by
+from all government?
+
+The argument drawn from the success given to their cause, is perpetually
+in the mouth of Cromwell and of his Puritans. It establishes, without a
+doubt, that they have used the sword justly, and are still further to
+use it. Every "mercy" of this kind is in answer to prayer. Basing-House,
+a private residence, cannot be sacked and plundered, and the inhabitants
+put to the sword, but the pious historian of the feat, Mr Peters, adds,
+that it, and the like triumphs, were "answers to the prayers and
+trophies of the faith of some of God's servants." When Greek meets
+Greek, when the Scottish Covenanter encounters the English Puritan, and
+the former, being worsted, finds out "that he had not so learned Christ
+as to hang the equity of a cause upon events," Cromwell answers, "Did
+not you solemnly appeal and pray? Did not we do so too? And ought not
+you and we to think, with fear and trembling, of the hand of the Great
+God, in this mighty and strange appearance of His, instead of slightly
+calling it an 'event'? Were not both your and our expectations renewed
+from time to time, whilst we waited upon God, to see which way He would
+manifest himself upon our appeals? And shall we, after all these our
+prayers, fastings, tears, expectations, and solemn appeals, call these
+bare 'events'? The Lord pity you."
+
+Men prayed in those days! says Mr Carlyle, "actually prayed! It was a
+capability old London and its preachers and populations had; to us the
+incredibilest." Beyond a doubt the Puritans and the Covenanters prayed,
+and in such a manner and at such a length, that the strange doctrine on
+which Southey has founded his "Curse of Kehama," of the essential and
+irresistible force of prayer, seems to have got mixed up with their
+Christianity.[2] But we do not think that the voice of prayer has quite
+died out amongst us. It is curious to observe what a vivid perception
+this author has for the historical past, and what a voluntary blindness
+and deafness for the actually present. It is a fact! he frequently
+exclaims, with all the energy of a discoverer,--a fact! that men in
+these ages prayed, and had a religious faith. Our churches and chapels
+are not facts. The control--none the worse for being exercised without
+pike or musket--which the religious public, meeting in that very Exeter
+Hall, have over the measures of government, and all political
+transactions,--is not a fact. Were he writing, some centuries hence, the
+history of this our age, he would detect these facts. What facts,
+indeed, might he not detect, and what exaggerated significance might he
+not give to them! Why, in those days, he might exclaim, in his
+enthusiasm, the very beggars in the street, in asking charity, poured
+God's blessing on you! It was a credible thing, in those days, God's
+blessing!--and men gave their money for it!
+
+A passage in one of Cromwell's letters instances, in rather a touching
+manner, what school of piety this army of saints must have proved. At
+the battle of Marston Moor a Colonel Walton had lost his son. "He was a
+gallant young man, exceedingly gracious," and Cromwell, giving an
+account of his death, in his consolatory letter to the father, writes
+thus,--"A little after, he said, one thing lay upon his spirit. I asked
+him what that was. He told me it was that God had not suffered him to be
+any more _the executioner of his enemies!_"
+
+But nothing disturbs the equanimity of our editor, or interrupts his
+flow of rapture over the fanaticism of these times, especially when
+expressed in the letters of Cromwell. Over the theological effusions
+which the general of the Puritan army addresses, from his camp, to the
+Edinburgh clergy, Mr Carlyle thus expatiates:--"Dryasdust, carrying his
+learned eye over these, and the like letters, finds them, of course,
+full of 'hypocrisy,' &c. Unfortunate Dryasdust! they are corruscations
+terrible as lightning, and beautiful as lightning, from the innermost
+temple of the human soul; intimations, still credible, of what a human
+soul does mean when it _believes_ in the Highest--a thing poor Dryasdust
+never did, nor will do. The hapless generation that now reads these
+words ought to hold its peace when it has read them, and sink into
+unutterable reflections, not unmixed with tears, and some substitute for
+'sackcloth and ashes,' if it liked. In its poor canting, sniffling,
+flimsy vocabulary, there is no word that can make any response to them.
+This man has a living God-inspired soul in him, not an enchanted
+artificial 'substitute for salt,' as our fashion is. They that have
+human eyes can look at him; they that have only owl-eyes need not."
+
+And then follows something upon _light_ and _lightning_. "As lightning
+is to light, so is a Cromwell to a Shakspere. The light is beautifuller.
+Ah, yes; but, until by lightning and other fierce labour your foul chaos
+has become a world, you cannot have any light, or the smallest chance
+for any!... The melodious speaker is great, but the melodious worker is
+greater than he. Our Time cannot speak at all, but only cant and sneer,
+and argumentatively jargon and recite the multiplication-table:
+neither, as yet, can it work, except at mere railroads and
+cotton-spinning. It will, apparently, return to chaos soon, and then
+more lightnings will be needed, lightning enough,--to which Cromwell's
+was but a mild matter,--to be followed by light, we may hope!"--by
+another Shakspeare, as the tenor of the passage would imply.
+
+Strange jumble this of Cromwell and Shakspeare, of light and lightning!
+There is one species of light which we are often reminded of here; a
+certain fitful, flickering beam, which partakes indeed of a luminous
+nature, but which chooses its path for ever over bottomless bog.
+
+The sincerity of Oliver Cromwell, in these his letters and speeches, has
+been questioned and discussed; the sincerity of their present editor may
+become a question at least as difficult and perplexing. Is there any
+genuine conviction at the bottom of all this rant and raving? Our
+extravagant worshipper of the "old heathen" Go�the, stands forth the
+champion and admirer of certain harsh, narrow-thoughted, impetuous
+sectaries, proclaims _them_ the only "Reformers" of the world; descends
+to their lowest prejudices, to their saddest bigotries, to their gloomy
+puerilities; arguing with them solemnly against the sinfulness of
+drinking healths, and quite fraternising with them in all their
+animosity against Popery and Prelacy. What does he mean? Is it a case of
+conversion? Is it an outpouring merely, by a strange vent, of certain
+acrid humours? Is he honest, and in earnest? or is he making sport of
+those hapless Englishmen whom he pronounces "in human stupidity to have
+no fellow?"
+
+Observers of a curious and speculative turn might, perhaps, explain it
+thus:--Mr Carlyle is evidently a writer of strong religious feelings.
+Marry, when he would exhibit them to the world, he is under the
+necessity of borrowing a creed from some one else. His own philosophy
+has nothing palpable enough for ordinary vision; nothing, as we
+remember, but vague infinities and eternities, with an "everlasting
+_yes_," and an "everlasting _no_." As the choice lay quite open to him,
+there was no reason why he should not select the very hottest creed he
+could any where find lying about in our history. From contemporaries it
+was not likely that he should borrow: he loves nothing, praises nothing,
+esteems nothing of this poor visible present; but it was an additional
+recommendation to the Puritanic piety, that it had left a detestable
+memory behind it, and was in declared hostility with all contemporaneous
+ways of thinking. What could he better do, therefore, than borrow this
+old volcanic crater of Puritanism, and pour out from it his religion and
+his anger upon a graceless world?
+
+Others, not given to such refinements, would explain the phenomenon upon
+more ordinary principles, and reduce the enigma to a case merely of
+literary monomania. Mr Carlyle, they would say, has been striving to
+understand these Puritans till he has grown, for the time, to resemble
+them. In the effort to project his mind into their mind, he has overshot
+the mark; he has not been able yet to get his own mind back again. It is
+a case, they would say, of mere imagination. Could you bring Mr Carlyle
+into contact with a live Puritan, the charm would be instantly
+dispelled. If one of Harrison's troopers would but ask him to step aside
+with him, under a hedge, to wrestle for a blessing, or would kindly
+undertake to catechise him on some point of divinity,--on that notion of
+his, for instance, of "Right and Wrong bodying themselves into Hell and
+Heaven,"--the alliance would be dissolved, not, perhaps, without violent
+rupture.
+
+For ourselves, we sometimes think that Mr Carlyle is in earnest. Men
+should be honest. One who talks so loudly about _faith_, ought to be
+sincere in his utterances to the public. At other times, the mummery
+becomes too violent, grows too "fast and furious," to permit us to
+believe that what we witness is the sane carriage of a sane man. At all
+events, we can but look on with calm surprise. If our philosopher will
+tuck his robe high up about his loins, and play the merry-andrew, if he
+will grimace, and paint thick, and hold dialogue with himself, who shall
+hinder him?--only we would rather not wear, on such an occasion, the
+docile aspect of admiring pupils; we prefer to stand aside, and look on
+with Mr Dryasdust.
+
+It is worthy of note, that however Mr Carlyle extols his "Heroic Ones"
+in a body, Cromwell is the only individual that finds a good word
+throughout the work. Every one else, Hampden not excepted, is spoken of
+with slight and disparagement. Amongst all the "godlike," there is but
+one who finds favour in his sight,--him, however, he never deserts,--and
+the very parties who have before been applauded, in general terms,
+become the subjects of ridicule or castigation the moment they are seen
+in opposition to Cromwell.
+
+To Cromwell, then, let us turn our attention. Him we also can admire. We
+admire his great practical sagacity, his eminent talents for war and for
+government, the moderation and the conscientiousness which, though a
+usurper and a zealot, he displayed in the use of power. He was, as we
+have said, a genuine Puritan. This must be understood, or no
+intelligible view of his character can be taken. It is not only
+hostility to his memory which has attributed to him a studied hypocrisy;
+the love of the marvellous has lent its aid. Such a supposition was
+thought to magnify his talents and his genius. It was more dramatic to
+make him the "honest Iago" of the piece. A French writer, M. Villemain,
+in his History of Cromwell, expresses this feeling very na�vely, and
+speaks of an hypocrisy "que l'histoire atteste, et qu'on ne saurait
+mettre en doute sans �ter quelque chose � l'id�e de son g�nie; car les
+hommes verront toujours moins de grandeur dans un fanatique de bonne
+foi, que dans une ambition qui fait des enthusiastes. Cromwell mena les
+hommes par la prise qu'ils lui donnaient sur eux. _L'ambition seule lui
+inspira des crimes, qu'il fit executer par le fanatisme des autres._"
+That he thus employed the spirit of the age without sharing it, is a
+theory which will not stand the light for a moment. Besides, it is not
+in this manner that history is transacted: we may all be puppets, if you
+will, upon the scene, but it is not in this fashion that any one man
+gets hold of the wires. The supposition, whatever honour it may do the
+genius of Cromwell, will do very little honour to the speculative genius
+of any writer who adopts it. But this is evident, that to whatever
+extent Cromwell shared the distempered feelings of a sectarian party,
+nothing ever clouded his penetration upon any affair of conduct, any
+question of means to an end. The hour never came that found him wanting.
+At every phase of the revolution he is there to lead, or control, or
+predominate over it.
+
+Starting from this point of view--understanding him, in the first place,
+as the conscientious zealous Puritan, and endeavouring to estimate, as
+the history proceeds, the modifications which the soldier and the
+general, and finally the Protector, would induce upon this original
+substratum--the character of Cromwell becomes intelligible, and his
+conduct, in a measure, consistent. Whilst yet a private man, he had
+warmly espoused the extreme opinions of that religious party who looked
+on Popery as antichrist, and the Church of England as little better than
+Popery in disguise, as the same scarlet lady in a somewhat more modest
+attire. He was one of a class occasionally met with in the most quiet
+walks of life, men who torment their spirit on some public question till
+it becomes a personal grievance, or rather a corroding passion. What
+were bishops personally to him? He might have prayed, and expounded, and
+walked meditative in his fields, and left a public question to be
+decided by the movements, necessarily slow, of public opinion. But no;
+he was constituted quite otherwise. From a spiritual jurisdiction,
+claimed though not exercised over him, his soul revolted. And this
+hatred to prelacy, to any spiritual authority over him or his--this
+determination to be his own priest--is, if not the strongest, certainly
+the steadiest and most constant feeling that he manifests. We trace it
+throughout his whole career. The first thing we hear of him in the House
+of Commons is a protest, a sort of ominous growl, against the promotion
+of some Arminian or semi-Popish divine. "If these are the steps to
+church preferment, what are we to expect!" Almost the first glimpse we
+catch of him when he has taken arms, is as the captain of a troop
+entering some cathedral church, and bidding the surpliced priest, who
+was reading the liturgy, "to cease his fooling, and come down!" And
+throughout the letters which he addresses to the Speaker from the seat
+of war, he rarely omits the opportunity of hinting, that the soldiers
+are worthy of that religious liberty for which they have fought so well.
+"We pray you, own His people more and more; for they are the chariots
+and horsemen of Israel." And in one of his latest speeches, he describes
+it as the great "extremity" of past times, that men were not permitted
+to preach in public unless they were ordained.
+
+A rooted animosity to prelatical or other spiritual domination, is the
+key-note of this "melodious worker," as Mr Carlyle calls him. Cromwell
+entered the civil war provided with no theory or plan of civil
+government, animated with no republican zeal; it was not patriotism in
+any ordinary sense of the word, it was his controversy with the church
+of England that brought him on the field of battle. After fighting
+against episcopacy, he fought with equal zeal against presbyterianism;
+but against monarchy, or for the republic, he can hardly be said to have
+drawn the sword. We all applaud the sagacity which saw at once that the
+strongest antagonist to the honour and fidelity of the royalist, was to
+be found in the passion of the zealot. He enlisted his praying regiment.
+From that time the battle was won. But the cause was lost. What hope
+could there be for the cause of civil freedom, of constitutional rights,
+when the champion who won its victories was fanatical zeal, and the rage
+of theological controversy?
+
+It is the glaring defect in Cromwell--a defect which he had in common
+with many others of his time--that he threw himself into a revolution
+having for its first object to remodel the civil government, animated
+only with the passions of the collateral controversy upon ecclesiastical
+government. He fought the battle which was to destroy the monarchy,
+without any fixed idea or desire for the republican government which
+must be its substitute. This was not the subject that had engaged his
+thoughts or inflamed his ardour. When, therefore, the royalists had been
+conquered, it is not at all surprising that he should have seen nothing
+but the difficulties in the way of forming a republic. At this point of
+his history some excuse for him may be drawn from the very defect we are
+noticing. His mind had dwelt on no theory of civil government--to the
+cause of the commonwealth his heart had never been pledged--and we can
+hardly call him, with justice, as Godwin does, a traitor to the
+republic. But, on the other hand, what a gap, what a void, does this
+disclose in the mind of our hero? What should we say of one who had
+plunged heart and soul into the French Revolution, conducted only by his
+rage against the Roman Catholic hierarchy? Such a one, had he risen to
+take a leading part in that drama, might have acted with greater wisdom
+and moderation than ardent and patriotic men; the very absence of any
+political opinion or passion might have enabled him to see more clearly
+than others the position which they all occupied; but this would not
+justify or palliate the original error, the rash, exclusive,
+self-blinding zeal which had brought him into that position.
+
+To the ecclesiastical controversy, Cromwell clings throughout with an
+utter recklessness of the fate of civil government. When episcopacy had
+been vanquished, and presbyterianism threatened to take its place, he
+was quite as willing to plunge the whole kingdom into confusion and
+anarchy in his opposition to this new enemy, as to the old. Those who
+would defend him from the charge of personal ambition--all who excuse
+his conduct at this period of the history, put this plea upon
+record,--and without a doubt his hostility to presbyterianism was a very
+great and leading motive with him in his opposition to the Parliament,
+and his determination to prevent a reconciliation between the House and
+the King. When Charles was a prisoner at the Isle of Wight, it is well
+known that the Parliament were anxious to come to some terms of
+reconcilement, and the concessions which he then made were voted to be
+"a sufficient ground for the future settlement of the kingdom." Why did
+Cromwell interfere at this juncture between the two parties, in such a
+way as entirely to destroy both? His best public ground is his hostility
+to presbyterianism. And what was the presbytery, that to him it should
+be so distasteful, and an object of so great animosity? Its forms of
+worship, the doctrines preached by its divines, were exactly those he
+himself practised and approved. There were no altars here, no surplices,
+no traditions, no sympathies with Rome, no stealthy approximations to
+her detested idolatries. But there was a claim put forward to
+ecclesiastical supremacy, to ordain, and authorise, and control public
+preachers, which he could not tolerate; and if no other motive had
+existed, he was ready to oppose every settlement, at every risk, having
+for its object to establish a claim of this description.
+
+We will open the Letters and Speeches of Cromwell at this period of the
+history, and present our readers with a specimen of his epistolary
+style, and one which will go far to show how little his mind was
+influenced, even at this great crisis, by any thing which we should
+describe as political reasoning. Cromwell was a great _administrator_,
+but he had no vocation for speculative politics, and little attachment
+to forms of government. Framers of constitutions are not in repute at
+present; they have not covered themselves with applause, rather with
+confusion; and this defect in Cromwell's mind will probably be looked
+upon with great indulgence. Nevertheless, people who go to war to
+demolish an existing government, ought to have taken thought for a
+substitute; on _them_ it is incumbent to have a political creed, and a
+constitution to set up. At this very moment when the question is no
+less, than whether the king should be put to death, and monarchy rooted
+out of the land--ay, and the Parliament coerced, in order to effect
+these objects--our Puritan general reasons--like a Puritan and nothing
+better.
+
+The following letter was addressed to Colonel Hammond, then governor of
+the Isle of Wight. The colonel had been distressed by his scruples at
+the extreme course the army was disposed to take, and had solicited this
+appointment to the Isle of Wight as a retreat from the scene of faction
+and violence. But it was precisely in this quiet little island that the
+king took refuge; his perplexities, therefore, were increased and not
+diminished. Cromwell writes to him to remove his scruples, and makes a
+characteristic allusion to this circumstance--_improves_ it, as we
+should say.
+
+We must apprise the reader, however, that it would be dangerous to form
+any opinion upon the religious sincerity or insincerity of Cromwell,
+upon extracts from his letters and speeches, or even upon any single
+letter or speech. From the incongruity we feel between the solemnity of
+the subject of religion, and the manner and occasion in which it is
+introduced, and from the use of certain expressions long since
+consecrated to ridicule, it is impossible for a modern reader, on
+falling upon some isolated passages, not to exclaim, that this is cant
+and hypocrisy! But when the whole series, or the greater part of it, is
+read--when the same strain of thought and feeling, in season and out of
+season, is constantly observed--it is equally impossible not to feel
+persuaded that these letters and speeches body forth the genuine
+character of the man, and that the writer was verily a solemn and most
+serious person, in whom religious zeal was the last quality which needed
+reinforcement.
+
+     "DEAR ROBIN,--No man rejoiceth more to see a line from thee
+     than myself. I know thou hast long been under trial. Thou shalt
+     be no loser by it. All things must work for the best.
+
+     "Thou desirest to hear of my experiences. I can tell thee, I am
+     such a one as thou did formerly know, having a body of sin and
+     death; but I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, there is
+     no condemnation though much infirmity; and I wait for the
+     redemption. And in this poor condition I obtain mercy, and
+     sweet consolation through the Spirit. And find abundant cause
+     every day to exalt the Lord and abase flesh--and herein I have
+     some exercise.
+
+     "As to outward dispensations, if we may so call them, we have
+     not been without our share of beholding some remarkable
+     providences and appearances of the Lord. His presence hath been
+     amongst us, and by the light of his countenance we have
+     prevailed (_alludes to the battle of Preston_.) We are sure the
+     goodness of Him who dwelt in the bush has shined upon us; and
+     we can humbly say, we know in whom we have believed; who can
+     and will perfect what remaineth, and us also in doing what is
+     well-pleasing in His eye-sight.
+
+     "I find some trouble in your spirit, occasioned first not only
+     by your sad and heavy burden, as you call it, but also by the
+     dissatisfaction you take at the ways of some good men whom you
+     love with your heart, who through the principle, that it is
+     lawful for a lesser part, if in the right, to force a numerical
+     majority, &c. &c.
+
+     "To the first: call not your burden sad or heavy. If your
+     Father laid it on you, He intended neither. He is the Father of
+     light, from whom comes every good and perfect gift; who of His
+     own will begot us.... Dear Robin, our fleshly reasonings
+     ensnare us. These make us say 'heavy,' 'sad,' 'pleasant,'
+     'easy.' Was there not a little of this when Robert Hammond,
+     through dissatisfaction too, desired retirement from the army,
+     and thought of quiet in the Isle of Wight? Did not God find him
+     out there? I believe he will never forget this. And now I
+     perceive he is to seek again; partly through his sad and heavy
+     burden, and partly through his dissatisfaction with friends'
+     actings.
+
+     "Dear Robin, thou and I were never worthy to be door-keepers in
+     this service. If thou wilt seek, seek to know the mind of God
+     in all that chain of providence, whereby God brought thee
+     thither, and that person (_the king_) to thee; how, before and
+     since, God hath ordered him, and affairs concerning him; and
+     then tell me, whether there be not some glorious and high
+     meaning in all this, above what thou hast yet attained? And,
+     laying aside thy fleshly reason, seek of the Lord to teach thee
+     what that is; and He will do it. I dare be positive to say, It
+     is not that the wicked should be exalted that God should so
+     appear as indeed He hath done. For there is no peace to _them_.
+     No; it is set upon the hearts of such as fear the Lord, and we
+     have witness upon witness, that it shall go ill with them and
+     their partakers.
+
+     "As to thy dissatisfaction with friends' actings upon that
+     supposed principle--I wonder not at that. If a man take not his
+     own burden well, he shall hardly others'; especially if
+     involved by so near a relation of love and Christian
+     brotherhood as thou art, I shall not take upon me to satisfy;
+     but I hold myself bound to lay my thoughts before so dear a
+     friend. The Lord do His own will.
+
+     "You say, 'God hath appointed authorities among the nations, to
+     which active or passive obedience is to be yielded. This
+     resides, in England, in the Parliament. Therefore, active or
+     passive resistance,' &c. &c.
+
+     "Authorities and powers are the ordinance of God. This or that
+     species is of human institution, and limited some with larger,
+     others with stricter bands, each one according to its
+     constitution. But I do not therefore think that the authorities
+     may do _any thing_, and yet such obedience be due. All agree
+     that there are cases in which it is lawful to resist. If so,
+     your ground fails, and so likewise the inference. Indeed, dear
+     Robin, not to multiply words, the query is,--Whether ours be
+     such case? This, ingenuously, is the true question.
+
+     "To this I shall say nothing, though I could say very much; but
+     only desire thee to see what thou findest in thy own heart to
+     two or three plain considerations. _First_, Whether _Salus
+     populi_ be a sound position? _Secondly_, Whether, in the way in
+     hand (_the parliamentary treaty with the king_,) really and
+     before the Lord, before whom conscience has to stand, this be
+     provided for--or if the whole fruit of the war is not likely to
+     be frustrated, and all most like to turn to what it was, and
+     worse? And this contrary to engagements, explicit covenants
+     with those who ventured their lives upon those covenants and
+     engagements, without whom, perhaps in equity, relaxation ought
+     not to be? _Thirdly_, Whether this army be not a lawful power,
+     called by God to oppose and fight against the king upon some
+     stated grounds; and being in power to such ends, may not oppose
+     one name of authority, for those ends, as well as another
+     name--since it was not the outward authority summoning them
+     that by its power made the quarrel lawful, but the quarrel was
+     lawful in itself? If so, it may be, acting will be justified
+     _in foro humano_. _But truly this kind of reasoning may be but
+     fleshly, either with or against: only it is good to try what
+     truth may be in them. And the Lord teach us._
+
+     "My dear friend, let us look into providences; surely they mean
+     somewhat. They hang so together; have been so constant, so
+     clear, unclouded. Malice, swoln malice against God's people,
+     now called 'saints,' to root out their name;--and yet they
+     these poor saints getting arms and therein blessed with defence
+     and more! I desire he that is for a principle of suffering
+     (_passive obedience_) would not too much slight this. I slight
+     not him who is so minded; but let us beware lest fleshly
+     reasoning see more safety in making use of this principle than
+     in acting! Who acts, if he resolve not through God to be
+     willing to part with all? Our hearts are very deceitful, on the
+     right and on the left.
+
+     "What think you of providence disposing the hearts of so many
+     of God's people this way--especially in this poor army, wherein
+     the great God has vouchsafed to appear! I know not one officer
+     but is on the increasing side (_come over to this opinion_.) ...
+
+     "Thou mentionest somewhat as if by acting against such
+     opposition as is like to be, there will be a tempting of God.
+     Dear Robin, tempting of God ordinarily is either by acting
+     presumptuously in carnal confidence, or in unbelief through
+     diffidence: both these ways Israel tempted God in the
+     wilderness, and He was grieved by them. Not the encountering of
+     difficulties, therefore, makes us to tempt God; but the acting
+     before and without faith. If the Lord have in any measure
+     persuaded His people, as generally He hath, of the lawfulness,
+     nay of the _duty_,--this persuasion prevailing upon the heart
+     is faith; and acting thereupon is acting in faith; and the more
+     the difficulties are the more the faith. And it is most sweet
+     that he who is not persuaded have patience towards them that
+     are, and judge not; and this will free thee from the trouble of
+     others' actings, which thou sayest adds to thy grief....
+
+     "Robin, I have done. Ask we our hearts whether we think that
+     after all these dispensations, the like to which many
+     generations cannot afford, should end in so corrupt reasonings
+     of good men, and should so hit the designings of bad? Thinkest
+     thou in thy heart that the glorious dispensations of God point
+     out to this? Or to teach his people to trust in Him and wait
+     for better things--when, it may be, better are sealed to many
+     of their spirits (_indubitably sure to many of them_.)
+
+     "This trouble I have been at because my soul loves thee, and I
+     would not have thee swerve or lose any glorious opportunity the
+     Lord puts into thy hand. The Lord be thy counsellor. Dear
+     Robin, I rest thine,
+
+     "OLIVER CROMWELL."
+
+For ourselves, we cannot read this, and other letters breathing the same
+spirit, without being convinced that Cromwell fully shared in those
+fanatical sentiments which prompted the army to insist upon the king's
+death. A contemporary account, from which Mr Carlyle, some pages before
+this letter occurs, has quoted largely, represents this chief of the
+Puritans in exactly the same point of view. The officers of the army had
+made certain overtures to the king, certain efforts at a reconciliation,
+which had been fruitless; and which had been, moreover, attended with
+much division and contention amongst themselves. They had turned aside,
+it seems, from "that path of _simplicity_ they had been blessed in, to
+walk in a _politic_ path," and were, accordingly, afflicted, "as the
+wages of their backsliding hearts," with tumults, and jealousies, and
+divisions. But the godly officers, says the pious record of Adjutant
+Allen, met at _Windsor Castle_! "and there we spent one day together in
+prayer; inquiring into the causes of that sad dispensation. And, on the
+morrow, we met again in the morning; where many spake from the Word and
+prayed; and the then Lieutenant-General Cromwell did press very
+earnestly on all there present, to a thorough consideration of our
+actions as an army, and of our ways particularly as private Christians;
+to see if any iniquity could be found in them; and what it was; that, if
+possible, he might find it out, and so remove the cause of such sad
+rebukes as were upon us, (by reason of our iniquities, as we judged,) at
+that time. And the way, more particularly, the Lord led us to herein was
+this: to look back and consider what time it was when, with joint
+satisfaction, we could last say, to the best of our judgments, The
+presence of the Lord was amongst us, and rebukes and judgments were not,
+as then, upon us.... By which means we were, by a gracious hand of the
+Lord, led to find out the very steps, (as were all there jointly
+convinced,) by which we had departed from the Lord, and provoked Him to
+depart from us, which we found to be those cursed carnal conferences,
+our own conceited wisdom, our fears, and want of faith, had prompted us,
+the year before, to entertain with the king and his party. And at this
+time, and on this occasion, did the then Major Goffe, (as I remember was
+his title,) make use of that good word, Proverbs 1st and 23d, _Turn you
+at my reproof; behold I will pour out my Spirit unto you, I will make
+known my words unto you._" In fine, their "iniquities," their want of
+faith, their carnal conferences--that is to say, all desire for peace,
+all humanity, all moderation, all care for their country--were cast
+aside, and they came to the solitary gloomy resolution, "That it is our
+duty to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for that
+blood he had shed, and mischief he had done to his utmost, against the
+Lord's cause and people in these poor nations."
+
+Let no one suppose that, because Cromwell, and other officers of the
+army, had been negotiating with the king, bidding for him, in fact,
+against the Parliament, and offering terms such as it was mere
+infatuation upon his part not to accept, that they were, therefore, not
+sincere in this their fanaticism, which now so clearly told them they
+should be doing the express will of God in putting him to death. Those
+who have paid attention to this disease of the mind, know well, that
+while nothing is more violent at one moment, nothing is more flexible at
+another. Against the assaults of reason it is rock,--it is adamant; but
+to self-interest, or a covert passion, it is often surprisingly ductile.
+The genuine fanatic is gifted with a power which will equally uphold
+him, whether he walks to the right or to the left, and lets him change
+his course as often as he will. He has a logic that is always
+triumphant--which proves him always in the right--whether he would
+advance or recede. Success--it is God's own sanction; failure--it is
+what you please,--God's disapproval if you would retreat--a trial only
+of your faith, if you have the heart to advance. In the present case,
+our pious army, having found it impossible to treat with the king, has
+but to spend "its day in prayer," and its fierce zeal resumes its former
+channel with greater violence than ever. It has been led astray, it
+finds, by carnal reasonings and sinful weakness; and, rushing back to
+its old "path of simplicity," it raises the cry of death!
+
+This account, which Adjutent Allan gives of diseased piety and perilous
+fanaticism, Mr Carlyle accompanies with interjections of applause, and
+cheers of encouragement. To him, also, it seems quite fit that the army
+should return to its path of "simplicity." The King must die.
+
+How little, up to the very last, did that unfortunate monarch know of
+the terrible spirit of those enemies into whose hands he had fallen! He
+saw himself necessary to the tranquillisation and stable government of a
+nation still imbued with the love of monarchy, he therefore thought
+himself and the monarchy were safe; he knew not that he was contending
+with men who, when they rose to their high "heroic" mood, had a supreme
+contempt for all considerations touching mere human polity,--the mere
+peace and government of mankind. He trusted much to the sacredness of
+royalty, the majesty of the purple, the divinity of a King; he was
+delivered over to the power of enemies, whose glory it was to tread down
+the glories of the world; who, so far from finding any sacredness in his
+royalty, had classed him amongst all the wicked kings of the Old
+Testament, sentenced to be exterminated with the idolatry they fostered,
+and with whom the very audacity and fearful temerity of the deed, (if
+this at all affected them,) would add only to its merit. Unfortunate
+monarch! The tide of sympathy runs now against him, but we confess still
+to retain our compassion for the fallen prince,--our compassion, very
+little, it may be, of admiration. We see him contending against fearful
+odds, keeping up a high and kingly spirit to the last. So far he braved
+it nobly, and played a desperate game, if not wisely, yet with unshaken
+nerves. His character, without a doubt, bears, as Lingard writes, "the
+taint of duplicity." But it was a duplicity which, in his father's
+court, would have been chuckled over as good practice of state-craft. We
+are strangely fashioned--kings, and all of us--made up of fragments of
+virtue, ill-assorted parcels of morality. Charles, when he had given his
+parole of honour, would not escape from his imprisonment in the Isle of
+Wight, though the means of escape were offered to him. But the wily and
+diplomatic monarch thought he was entitling himself to the praise of all
+men of spirit and intelligence, when, by fallacious promises and
+protestations, he strove to play off one party of his enemies against
+the other. He was practising, to the best of his ability, all the
+traditionary maxims and manoeuvres of a subtle policy. Nor was it
+ability that he wanted. On an Italian soil, these Italian arts might
+have availed him. But what were the sleights and contrivances of a
+traditionary state-craft against the rude storm of tumultuous passions
+which had been conjured up around him! He was fencing with the
+whirlwind. Perhaps no prince, trained in a court, can be a match for the
+rude adversaries which revolutionary times raise up against him. What
+chance is there that he should ever learn the nature of his new and
+terrible enemy? You have taught him, according to all the laws of
+woodcraft, to chase the stag and the fox, and now you let loose upon him
+the wild beast of the forest! How was Charles to learn what manner of
+being was a Puritan, and how it struck its prey? His courtiers would
+have taught him to despise and ridicule--his bishops to look askance
+with solemn aversion,--but who was there to teach him to fear this
+Puritan?--to teach him that he must forthwith conciliate, if he could
+not crush?
+
+It is worth while to continue the narrative a little further. We adopt
+Mr Carlyle's words. "At London, matters are coming rapidly to a crisis.
+The resumed debate, 'shall the army remonstrance be taken into
+consideration?' does not come out affirmative; on the contrary, on
+Thursday the 31st, it comes out negative, by a majority of ninety. 'No,
+we will not take it into consideration.' 'No?' The army at Windsor
+thereupon spends again 'a day in prayer.' The army at Windsor has
+decided on the morrow, that it will march to London; marches, arrives
+accordingly, on Saturday, December 2d; quarters itself in Whitehall, in
+St James's, 'and other great vacant houses in the skirts of the city and
+villages about, no offence being given any where.' In the drama of
+modern history, one knows not any graver, more note-worthy scene;
+earnest as very death and judgment. They have decided to have justice,
+these men; to see God's justice done, and his judgments executed on this
+earth."
+
+Adjutant Allen and Mr Carlyle are both of the same mind,--take the same
+views of public matters, political and religious. But the Adjutant
+himself would open great eyes at the sentence which next follows:--
+
+"The abysses where the thunders and splendours are bred--the reader sees
+them again laid bare and black. Madness lying close to the wisdom which
+is brightest and highest;--and owls and godless men who hate the
+lightning and the light, and love the mephitic dusk and darkness, are no
+judges of the actions of heroes! Shedders of blood? Yes, blood is
+occasionally shed. The healing surgeon, the sacrificial priest, the
+august judge, pronouncer of God's oracles to man, these and the
+atrocious murderer are alike shedders of blood; and it is an owl's eye,
+that, except for the _dresses_ they wear, discerns no difference in
+these! Let us leave the owl to his hootings; let us get on with our
+chronology and swift course of events."
+
+By forcibly expelling more than one hundred of the members of
+Parliament, and thus converting a minority into a majority, these
+"sacrificial priests" contrived to accomplish their very righteous act.
+In the face of raving such as this, it would be absurd to enter
+seriously upon any consideration, moral or political, touching the
+King's death. We would rather that Mr Carlyle occupied the field alone.
+We saw him just now dealing with his "abysses," and his "lightning;" we
+quote his concluding comment on this event, which will present a
+specimen of his more facetious style of eloquence, and the singular
+_taste_ he is capable of displaying:--
+
+"This action of the English regicides did in effect strike a damp like
+death through the heart of _flunkeyism_ universally in this world.
+Whereof flunkeyism, cant, cloth-worship, or whatever ugly name it have,
+has gone about incurably sick ever since; and is now at length, in these
+generations, very rapidly dying. The like of which action will not be
+needed for a thousand years again. Needed, alas! not till a new genuine
+hero-worship has arisen, has perfected itself; and had time to
+degenerate into a flunkeyism and cloth-worship again! which I take to be
+a very long date indeed.
+
+"Thus ends the second civil war: in regicide, in a Commonwealth, and
+keepers of the liberties of England: In punishment of delinquents, in
+abolition of cobwebs;--if it be possible, in a government of Heroism
+and veracity; at lowest of anti-flunkeyism, anti-cant, and the
+_endeavour_ after heroism and veracity."
+
+Flunkeyism! Such is the title which our _many-sided_ man thinks fit to
+bestow on the loyalty of England! But serious indignation would be out
+of place. A buffoon expression has this advantage, it is unanswerable.
+Yet will we venture to say, that it is a losing game this which you are
+playing, Mr Carlyle, this defiance of all common sense and all good
+taste. There is a respectability other than that which, in the
+unwearying love of one poor jest, you delight to call "gig
+respectability," a respectability based on intelligence and not on
+"Long-Acre springs," whose disesteem it cannot be wise to provoke, nor
+very pleasant to endure.
+
+The Commonwealth is proclaimed by sound of trumpet. The king and the
+lords are cashiered and dismissed. A house of representatives and a
+council of state form the constitution of England. Cromwell is one of
+the council. But for the present the war in Ireland carries him away
+from the scene of politics.
+
+On this Irish campaign, Mr Carlyle breaks out, as may be supposed, in a
+strain of exultation. He always warms at blood and battle. His piety, or
+his poetry--not admirable whichever it may be--glows here to a red heat.
+We are as little disposed perhaps as himself, to stand "shrieking out"
+over the military severities of this campaign, but if we could bring
+ourselves to believe that Mr Carlyle is really serious in what he
+writes, we should say that the most impracticable maudlin of peace
+societies, or "Rousseau-sentimentalism," were wisdom itself compared to
+his own outrageous and fanatical strain. If the apologist of Cromwell
+will be content to rest his case on the plain ground open to all
+generals and captains on whom has devolved the task of subjecting a
+rebellious and insurrectionary country--on the plain ground that the
+object is to be more speedily effected, and with less bloodshed and
+misery to the inhabitants, by carrying on the war at the commencement
+with the utmost severity, (thus breaking down at once the spirit of
+insurrection,) than by prolonging the contest through an exercise of
+leniency and forbearance--we are not aware that any decisive answer can
+be given to him. It is an awful piece of surgery to contemplate--one may
+be excused, if one shudders both at it and the operator--but,
+nevertheless, it may have been the wisest course to pursue. As a general
+rule, every one will admit that--if war there must be--it is better that
+it should be short and violent, than long and indecisive; for there is
+nothing so mischievous, so destructive of the industry and moral
+character of a people, as a war which, so to speak, _domesticates_
+itself amongst them. Put aside "the saint" entirely,--let us see only
+the soldier,--and Cromwell's campaign in Ireland may present nothing
+more terrible than what elsewhere, and in the campaigns of other
+generals, we are accustomed to regard as the necessary evils of war;
+nothing more than what a Turenne, a Cond�, or a Frederic of Prussia,
+might have applauded or practised. But this is precisely the last thing
+our editor would be disposed to do; any so common-place, and commonsense
+view of the matter, would have been utterly distasteful: he _does_ bring
+the saint very prominently upon the field, and we are to recognise in
+Cromwell--"an armed soldier, terrible as Death, relentless as Doom;
+_doing God's judgments on the enemies of God!_"
+
+"It is a phenomenon," he continues, "not of joyful nature; no, but of
+awful, to be looked at with pious terror and awe. Not a phenomenon which
+you are taught to recognise with bright smiles, and fall in love with at
+sight:--thou, art thou worthy to love such a thing; worthy to do other
+than hate it, and shriek over it? Darest thou wed the Heaven's
+lightning, then; and say to it, Godlike One? Is thy own life beautiful
+and terrible to thee; steeped in the eternal depths, in the eternal
+plendours?"--(Vol. ii. p. 53.)
+
+In the despatch which Cromwell addresses to the Speaker, Lenthall, after
+the storm of Tredah, otherwise Drogheda, we observe that the Puritan is
+as strong as ever, but that the Soldier and the great Captain speak out
+with increased boldness. Our sectarian farmer of St Ives, who brooded,
+by the dark waters of the Ouse, over the wickedness of surpliced
+prelacy, whose unemployed spirit sank at times into hypochondria, and
+was afflicted with "strange fancies about the town-cross," has been
+moving for some time in the very busiest scene the world could furnish
+him, and has become the great general of his age. The spirit of the "big
+wars" has entered, and grown up side by side with his Puritanism. The
+ardour of the battle fully possesses him; he is the conqueror always in
+the tremendous charge he makes at the head of his Ironsides; and he lets
+appear, notwithstanding his self-denying style, a consciousness and a
+triumph in his own skill as a tactician. He is still the genuine
+Puritan; but the arduous life, the administrative duties of a soldier
+and a general, have also been busy in modifying his character, and
+calling forth and exercising that self-confidence, which he will by and
+by recognise as "faith" and the leading of Providence, when he assumes
+the place of dictator of his country.
+
+From one passage in this despatch it would appear that his severity at
+the storm of Drogheda was not wholly the result of predetermined policy,
+but rose, in part, from the natural passion which the sword, and the
+desperate struggle for life, call forth.
+
+"Divers of the enemy retreated into the Mill-Mount, a place very strong
+and of difficult access. The Governor, Sir Arthur Ashton, and divers
+considerable officers being there, our men getting up to them, were
+ordered by me to put them all to the sword. _And, indeed, being in the
+heat of action_, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the
+town; and, I think, that night they put to the sword about 2000 men:
+divers of the officers and soldiers being fled over the bridge into the
+other part of the town, where about 100 of them possessed St Peter's
+church steeple, some the west gate, and others a strong round tower next
+the gate called St Sunday's. These being summoned to yield to mercy,
+refused; whereupon I ordered the steeple of St Peter's church to be
+fired, when one of them was heard to say in the midst of the flames,
+'God damn me, God confound me! I burn, I burn.'"
+
+In the same despatch there is rather a noticeable passage, which
+illustrates the manner in which the Puritan general was accustomed to
+regard the Roman Catholics and their worship. There may be some who have
+been so far deceived by the frequent use of the terms "religious
+toleration" in conjunction with the name of Cromwell, as to attribute to
+him a portion of that liberal spirit which is the greatest boast of
+cultivated minds in the present century. His religious toleration
+extended only to the small circle of sects whose Christian doctrine,
+whose preaching, and whose forms of worship were almost identical; it
+was just the same toleration that a Baptist dissenter of our day may be
+supposed to extend towards an Independent dissenter, or a member of the
+Countess of Huntingdon's connexion. The Independents differed from the
+Presbyterians in no one definite article of creed, with this
+exception--that they set no value upon _ordination_, and violently
+objected to the restraining any good man from public preaching, or any
+of the ministrations of a pastor, because he wanted this authorisation
+of a visible church. For this point of "religious freedom" (an
+expression which in their mouths has little other than this narrow
+signification) they had to contend with the Presbyterians. The sect
+which has to resist oppression, or the restraints of power, uses, of
+course, the language of toleration. The Independents used it in their
+controversy with the Presbyterians, just as the latter had employed it
+in their controversy with Episcopacy. But Independents and Presbyterians
+were alike intolerant of the Episcopalian or the Roman Catholic. All
+sects of that age preached toleration when a powerful adversary was to
+be deprecated--preached it then, and then only. The Independents coming
+last upon the field, preached it last; but they have no title beyond
+others to the spirit of toleration. Cromwell put down the mass as he
+would put down a rebellion--as openly, as decidedly, as rigorously.
+
+"It is remarkable," continued the despatch, "that these people, at the
+first, set up the mass in some places of the town that had been
+monasteries; but afterwards grew so insolent, that, the last Lord's day
+before the storm, the Protestants were thrust out of the great church
+called St Peter's, and they had public mass there; and in this very
+place near 1000 of them (_the Catholics--a clear judgment_) were put to
+the sword, fleeing thither for safety. I believe all their friars were
+knocked on the head promiscuously but two; the one of which was Father
+Peter Taaff, brother to the Lord Taaff, whom the soldiers took the next
+day and made an end of. The other was taken in the Round Tower, under
+the repute, (_the disguise_) of a lieutenant, and when he understood
+that the officers in that tower had no quarter, he confessed he was a
+friar; but that did not save him."
+
+Ireland was no sooner subjected by this unflinching and terrific
+severity, than the presence of the great general of the Commonwealth was
+needed in Scotland. The Scots had no predilection for a republic, no
+desire whatever for it; they were bent solely on their covenant, their
+covenant and a Stuart king. It was a combination very difficult to
+achieve. Nevertheless they took their oath to both, and marched into
+England to establish them both over the United Kingdom. Here was
+sufficient enthusiasm at all events; sufficient, and of the proper kind,
+one would think, to earn the sympathies of our editor. And he does look
+upon the Scots at this time as an "heroic nation." But, unfortunately,
+it is precisely the heroic nation that his own great hero is about to
+combat and subdue. He is compelled, therefore, upon his part, as the
+faithful bard and minstrel of his chosen champion, to give them
+up--them, and their covenant, and Stuart king--to merciless sarcasm.
+Indeed, he tells us, that the great, the sole fault of the Scots, was
+precisely this--that they did not produce a Cromwell. "With Oliver born
+Scotch," he says or sings, "one sees not but the whole world might have
+become Puritan!"
+
+However, he launches his Puritan hero against the godly and heroic
+nation with full sound of trumpet, not unmixed with a certain vague and
+solemn voice of prophecy.
+
+"In such spirit goes Oliver to the wars--a god-intoxicated man, as
+Novalis elsewhere phrases it. I have asked myself, if any where in
+modern European history, or even in ancient Asiatic, there was found a
+man practising this mean world's affairs with a heart more filled by the
+idea of the Highest? Bathed in the eternal splendours--it is so he walks
+our dim earth: this man is one of few. He is projected with a terrible
+force out of the Eternities, and in the Times and their arenas there is
+nothing that can withstand him. It is great; to us it is tragic; a thing
+that should strike us dumb! My brave one, thy noble prophecy _is_
+divine; older than Hebrew David; old as the origin of man; and shall,
+though in wider ways than those supposed, be fulfilled."--(P. 172.)
+
+We feel no disposition to follow Cromwell to the Scottish wars, though
+"bathed in the eternal splendours." We hardly know of any thing in
+history to our taste more odious than this war between the Scottish
+Covenanter and the English Puritan; the one praying clamorously for
+victory against "a blaspheming general and a sectarian army;" the other
+animating his battle with a psalm, and charging with a "Lord, arise! and
+let thy enemies be scattered," or some such exclamation. Both generals,
+in the intervals of actual war, sermonise each other, and with much the
+same spirit that they fight. Their diplomacy is a tangled preachment,
+and texts are their war-cries. Meanwhile, both are fighting for the
+gospel of Christ! only one will have it _with_, the other _without_ the
+covenant! Such "eternal splendours" are not inviting to us. We will step
+on at once to the battle of Worcester, which concluded both the Scottish
+war, and all hopes for the present of the royalist party.
+
+This last of his battles and his victories dismisses the great Puritan
+from the wars. It is a striking despatch he writes from the field of
+Worcester. He is still the unmitigated Puritan; he still preaches to
+Speaker Lenthall, but he preaches somewhat more dogmatically. There is
+an air of authority in the sermon. We all know that godly exhortation
+may be made to express almost every shade of human passion; as what son
+and what wife has not felt who has lived under the dominion and
+discourse of one of these "rulers in Israel." The Parliament felt, no
+doubt, the difference between the sermons of their general and those of
+their chaplain.
+
+Cromwell and the army return to London. It is now that the Commonwealth
+is to be really put upon its trial. Hitherto the army, that had made and
+could unmake it, had been occupied first in Ireland, then in Scotland;
+and the minds of people at home had been equally occupied in watching
+its achievements. The Commonwealth has lived upon the expectations of
+men. It has been itself an expectation. It is now to be perfected, its
+organisation to be completed, its authority established.
+
+But Cromwell was not a Washington. Not only did he want that serene and
+steady virtue which counselled the champion of American independence to
+retire into the ranks of the constitution--commander in the field,
+private soldier in the city--not only did he fail in this civic virtue,
+and found it hard to resign the sway and authority he had so long
+exercised; but the inestimable advantages of a constitutional government
+his mind had not been cultivated to appreciate. His thoughts had
+hitherto taken another direction. His speculative habits theology had
+moulded; his active habits had been formed in the camp. He felt that he
+could administer the government better than any of the men around him:
+we will give him credit, too, for the full intention to administer it
+conscientiously, and for the good of the nation; but for those enlarged
+views of the more enlightened patriot, who is solicitous to provide not
+alone for the present necessities, but for the future long life of a
+people--he had them not. He grew afterwards into the statesman, as he
+had grown into the soldier; but at this time the Puritan general had
+very little respect for human institutions.
+
+We are far from asserting, that even with the assistance of Cromwell a
+republic could have been established in England. But he lent no helping
+hand; his great abilities, his fervent zeal, were never employed in this
+service. He kept aloof--aloof with the army. He gathered himself to his
+full height, standing amidst the ruins of the civil war: all men might
+see that he alone kept his footing there. When the unhappy Parliament,
+struggling with its cruel embarrassments, not knowing how to dissolve
+itself with safety, had brought down on it the impatience, the distrust,
+the contempt of men--when he had allowed its members to reap the full
+harvest of a people's jealousies and suspicions--when at length they
+were on the point of extricating themselves by a bill determining the
+mode of electing a successor--_then_ he interfered, and dissolved them!
+
+A question may be raised, how far Cromwell had the power, if such had
+been his wish, to take over the army to the side of the Parliament, to
+lead it into due allegiance to the Commonwealth. The officers of the
+army and the members of the Parliament formed the two rival powers in
+the kingdom. Cromwell, it may be said, _could_ not have united them,
+could only make his choice between them. It would have been only a
+fraction of the army that he could have carried over with him. The
+division between the council of officers and the Parliament was too
+wide, the alienation too confirmed and inveterate, to have been healed
+by one man, though it was the Lord General himself. Thus, it may be said
+that Cromwell, in the part he acted against the Long Parliament, was
+thrust forward by a revolutionary movement, which, according to the law
+of such movements, must either have carried him forward in the van, or
+left him deserted or down-trodden in the rear.
+
+This would be no flattering excuse. But whatever truth there may be in
+this view of the case, Cromwell never manifested any intention or any
+desire to quit the cause of the army for that of the Parliament. He was
+heart and soul with the army; it was there his power lay; it was there
+he found the spirits he most sympathised with. He walked at the head of
+the army here as in the war. It was alone that he entered the House of
+Parliament--alone "in his gray stockings and black coat," with no staff
+of officers about him, no military parade, only a few of his Ironsides
+in the lobby. Though aware he should have the support of his officers,
+there is no proof that he had consulted them. The daring deed was _his_.
+And it is one of the most daring deeds on record. The execution of the
+King--in that day when kings were something more in the imagination of
+men than they are now--was indeed an audacious act. But it was shared
+with others. This dissolution of the Parliament, and assumption of the
+dictatorship--this facing alone all his old compeers, met in due
+legislative dignity, and bidding them one and all depart--strikes us as
+the bolder deed.
+
+The scene has been often described, but nowhere so well, or so fully, as
+by Mr Carlyle. We cannot resist the pleasure of quoting his spirited
+account of this notable transaction.
+
+     "The Parliament sitting as usual, and being in debate upon the
+     bill, which it was thought would have been passed that day,
+     'the Lord General Cromwell came into the House, clad in plain
+     black clothes and gray worsted stockings, and sat down, as he
+     used to do, in an ordinary place.' For some time he listens to
+     this interesting debate on the bill, beckoning once to
+     Harrison, who came over to him, and answered dubitatingly.
+     Whereupon the Lord General sat still for about a quarter of an
+     hour longer. But now the question being to be put, That this
+     bill do now pass, he beckons again to Harrison, says, 'This is
+     the time; I must do it!' and so 'rose up, put off his hat, and
+     spake. At the first, and for a good while, he spake to the
+     commendation of the Parliament, for their pains and care of the
+     public good; but afterwards he changed his style, told them of
+     their injustice, delays of justice, self-interest, and other
+     faults,' rising higher and higher into a very aggravated style
+     indeed. An honourable member, Sir Peter Wentworth by name, not
+     known to my readers, and by me better known than trusted, rises
+     to order, as we phrase it; says, 'It is a strange language
+     this; unusual within the walls of Parliament this! And from a
+     trusted servant, too; and one whom we have so highly honoured;
+     and one--' Come, come,' exclaims my Lord General, in a very
+     high key, 'we have had enough of this'--and in fact my Lord
+     General, now blazing all up into clear conflagration, exclaims,
+     'I will put an end to your prating,' and steps forth into the
+     floor of the House, and 'clapping on his hat,' and occasionally
+     'stamping the floor with his feet,' begins a discourse which no
+     man can report! He says--Heavens! he is heard saying: 'It is
+     not fit that you should sit here any longer!' You have sat too
+     long here for any good you have been doing lately, 'You shall
+     now give place to better men! Call them in!' adds he, briefly,
+     to Harrison, in way of command; and some 'twenty or thirty'
+     grim musketeers enter, with bullets in their snaphances; grimly
+     prompt for orders; and stand in some attitude of carry arms
+     there. Veteran men: men of might and men of war, their faces
+     are as the faces of lions, and their feet are swift as the roes
+     upon the mountains; not beautiful to honourable gentlemen at
+     this moment!
+
+     "'You call yourselves a Parliament,' continues my Lord General,
+     in clear blaze of conflagration. 'You are no Parliament! Some
+     of you are drunkards,' and his eye flashes on poor Mr Chalmer,
+     an official man of some value, addicted to the bottle; 'some of
+     you are'--and he glares into Henry Martin and the poor Sir
+     Peter, who rose to order, lewd livers both--'living in open
+     contempt of God's, commandments. Following your own greedy
+     appetites, and the devil's commandments. Corrupt, unjust
+     persons,' and here I think he glanced 'at Sir Bulstrode
+     Whitlocke, one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal, giving
+     him and others very sharp language, though he named them not.'
+     'Corrupt, unjust persons, scandalous to the profession of the
+     Gospel:' how can you be a Parliament for God's people? Depart,
+     I say, and let us have done with you. In the name, of God--go!
+
+     "The House is of course all on its feet--uncertain, almost,
+     whether not on its head: such a scene as was never seen before
+     in any House of Commons. History reports with a shudder that my
+     Lord General, lifting the sacred mace itself, said, 'What shall
+     we do with this bauble? Take it away!'--and gave it to a
+     musketeer. And now--'Fetch him down!' says he to Harrison,
+     flashing on the Speaker. Speaker Lenthall, more an ancient
+     Roman than any thing else, declares, He will not come till
+     forced. 'Sir,' said Harrison, 'I will lend you a hand;' on
+     which Speaker Lenthall came down, and gloomily vanished. They
+     all vanished; flooding gloomily, clamorously out, to their
+     ulterior businesses, and respective places of abode: the Long
+     Parliament is dissolved! 'It's you that have forced me to
+     this,' exclaims my Lord General, 'I have sought the Lord night
+     and day, that He would rather slay me than put me upon the
+     doing of this work.' 'At their going out, some say the Lord
+     General said to young Sir Harry Vane, calling him by his name,
+     That _he_ might have prevented this; but that he was a juggler,
+     and had not common honesty.' 'O Sir Harry Vane,' thou, with thy
+     subtle casuistries and abstruse hair-splittings, thou art other
+     than a good one, I think! 'The Lord deliver me from thee, Sir
+     Harry Vane!' 'All being gone out, the door of the House was
+     locked, and the key, with the mace, as I heard, was carried
+     away by Colonel Otley,' and it is all over, and the unspeakable
+     catastrophe has come, and remains."--(Vol. ii. p. 361.)
+
+The usurpation of Cromwell is, we believe, generally considered as the
+most fortunate event which, under the peculiar circumstances of the
+country, could have occurred. The people, it is said; were not prepared
+for a republic. The attempt, therefore, to establish one, would have
+been attended by incessant tumults; its short and precarious existence
+would have been supported by the scaffold and the prison. It would have
+terminated indeed, as did the Protectorate, in a Restoration, but the
+interval between the death of Charles I. and the accession of his son,
+would have been passed in a very different manner. Under the
+Protectorate the country rallied its strength, put forth its naval
+power, obtained peace at home, and respect abroad. Under a republic, it
+would have probably spent its force, and demoralised itself, in
+intestine strife and by a succession of revolutionary movements.
+
+But if this view be quite correct, it will not justify Cromwell. It is
+one thing to be satisfied with the course of events, quite another with
+the conduct of the several agents in them. Cromwell, in the position in
+which he stood, as an honest man and a patriot, should have done his
+best for the establishment of the Commonwealth; and this he did not. We
+are far, as we have said, from venturing to give a decisive opinion on
+the probability (with the united efforts of the victorious general and
+the Parliament) of forming a republic. But we are not disposed to think
+that the cause was hopeless. Had the Parliament been allowed to recruit
+its numbers without dissolving itself--the measure which it constantly
+desired, and which Cromwell would not hear of, though, without a doubt,
+it was the very line of conduct which his own practical sagacity would
+have led him to, if his heart had been in the business--the minds of men
+would have had time to settle and reflect, and a mode of government,
+which had already existed for some years, might have been adopted by the
+general consent.
+
+_We_ look upon the Restoration very calmly, very satisfactorily, for
+whom a second revolution has placed another dynasty upon the throne,
+governing upon principles quite different from those which were rooted
+in the Stuarts. We see the Restoration, with the Revolution of 1688 at
+its back, and almost consider them as one event. But a most loyal and
+contented subject of Queen Victoria, would have been a Commonwealthsman
+in those days. How could it then have been foreseen that all the power,
+and privilege, and splendour of royalty, should exist only to _protect_
+the law, to secure the equal rights of all--that monarchy, retaining a
+traditionary awe and majesty derived from remote times, should remain
+amongst us to supply to a representative government that powerful,
+constant, and impartial executive which, from the mere elements of a
+republic, it is so difficult to extract? Who could have imagined that a
+popular legislature, and the supremacy of the law, could have been so
+fortunately combined and secured under the shadow of the monarchy?
+Enlightened minds at that time could not have looked calmly towards a
+Restoration; they probably thought, or would have been led to think,
+that, in the position they then were, it was better to take the
+constitution of Holland, than the government of France, for their model.
+
+But the multitude--with what enthusiasm they welcomed the restoration of
+the Stuarts! Very true. But the Protectorate was no antagonist to
+monarchy. Republican pride was never called forth to contend in the
+public mind against the feeling of loyalty, and an attachment to kings.
+The Protectorate was itself a monarchy without its splendour, or the
+prestige of hereditary greatness. It was a monarchy under the Geneva
+gown. Was it likely that the populace would accept of this in lieu of
+the crowned and jewelled royalty which was wont to fill its imagination?
+
+However, the experiment--fortunately for us, as the result has turned
+out--was never destined to be made. Cromwell dissolved the Long
+Parliament. He now stood alone, he and the army, the sole power in the
+state. His first measure, that of sending a summons in his own name, to
+persons of his own choice, and thus, without any popular election
+whatever, assembling what is called the Little Parliament, or Barebones
+Parliament, shows a singular audacity, and proves how little trammelled
+he was himself by traditionary or constitutional maxims. He who would
+not allow the Long Parliament to recruit its numbers, and thus escape
+the perils of a free election of an altogether new assembly, extricates
+himself from the same embarrassment by electing the whole Parliament
+himself. Some historians have represented this measure as having for its
+very object to create additional confusion, and render himself, and his
+own dictatorial power, more necessary to the state. It has not appeared
+to us in this light. We see in it a bold but rude assay at government.
+In this off-hand manner of constituting a Parliament, we detect the
+mingled daring of the Puritan and the Soldier. In neither of these
+characters was he likely to have much respect for legal maxims, or rules
+of merely human contrivance. Cromwell was educating himself for the
+Statesman: at this juncture it is the Puritan General that we have
+before us.
+
+The Little Parliament having blundered on till it had got itself
+entangled in the Mosaic dispensation, resigned its power into the hands
+of him who had bestowed it. Thereupon a new _Instrument of Government_
+is framed, with the advice of the council of officers, appointing
+Cromwell Protector, and providing for the election of a Parliament.
+
+This Parliament being elected, falls, of course, on the discussion of
+this very Instrument of government. Henceforth Cromwell's great
+difficulty is the management of his Parliaments. The speeches he
+delivered to them at various times, and which occupy the third volume of
+the work before us, are of high historical interest. They are in every
+respect superior to his letters. Neither will their perusal be found to
+be of that arduous and painful nature which, from the reputation they
+have had, most persons will be disposed to expect. The _sermon_ may
+weary, but the _speech_ is always fraught with meaning; and the mixture
+of sermon and speech together, portray the man with singular
+distinctness. We see the Puritan divine, the Puritan soldier, becoming
+the Puritan statesman. His originally powerful mind is excited to fresh
+exertion by his onerous and exalted position. But he is still constant
+to himself. Very interesting is the exhibition presented to us of this
+powerful intellect, breaking out in flashes of strong sense, and
+relapsing again into the puerilities of the sect. But as it falls upon
+the strong sense to _act_, and on the puerilities only to _preach_, the
+man comes out, upon the whole, as a great and able governor.
+
+The reputation which Oliver's speeches have borne, as being involved,
+spiritless, tortuous, and even purposely confused, has resulted, we
+think, from this--that an opinion of the whole has been formed from an
+examination of a few, and chiefly of those which were delivered on the
+occasion of his refusing the offered title of king. His conduct on this
+occasion, it would be necessary for an historian particularly to
+investigate, and in the discharge of this duty he would have to peruse a
+series of discourses undoubtedly of a very bewildering character. They
+are the only speeches of Cromwell of which it can be said that their
+meaning is not clearly, and even forcibly expressed. And in this case it
+is quite evident, that he had no distinct meaning to express; he had no
+definite answer to give the Parliament who were petitioning him to take
+the title of king. He was anxious to gain time--he was talking _against
+time_--an art which we moderns only have thoroughly mastered. How could
+Cromwell, who was no great rhetorician, be otherwise than palpably
+confused, and dubious and intricate? Nothing can be clearer than that he
+himself leant towards the opinion of the Parliament, that it would be
+good policy to adopt the royal title. It was so connected with the old
+attachments and associations of Englishmen, it had so long given force
+to the language of the law, its claims were so much better known, its
+prerogatives so much better understood than those of the new title of
+Protector, that the resumption of it must have appeared very advisable.
+But the army had been all along fighting against _the King_. Whilst to
+the lawyer and the citizen the title was still the most honourable and
+ever to be venerated, to the soldier of the Commonwealth it had become a
+term of reproach, of execration, of unsparing hostility. Oliver Cromwell
+might well hesitate before assuming a title which might forfeit for him
+the allegiance of a great portion of the army. He deferred his answer,
+to have an opportunity for estimating the nature and amount of the
+resistance he might expect from that quarter; and he came to the
+conclusion, that the risk of unsettling the affections of the army was
+not to be incurred for either any personal gratification to himself
+(which we take to have not weighed much with him) in assuming the title
+of king, or for the advantages which might accrue from it in the
+ultimate settlement of the nation. His addresses, therefore, to the
+Parliament on this occasion not being definite answers to the
+Parliament, nor intended to be such, but mere postponements of his
+answer, were necessarily distinguished by indecision, uncertainty, and
+all sorts of obscurities. But, these excepted, his speeches, however
+deficient in what pertains to the _art of composition_, in terseness, or
+method, or elegance of phrase, are never wanting in the great
+essentials--the expression of his meaning in a very earnest and forcible
+manner. The mixture of sermon and speech, we allow, is not inviting; but
+the sermon is just as clear, perhaps, as any which the chaplain of the
+House would have preached to them, and it must be remembered, that to
+explain _his_ meaning, _his_ political sentiments, the sermon was as
+necessary as the speech.
+
+By the new instrument of government, the Protector, with his council,
+was authorised, in the interval before the meeting of Parliament, to
+issue such ordinances as might be deemed necessary. This interval our
+Puritan governor very consistently employed, first of all, in
+establishing a gospel ministry throughout the nation. Thirty-eight
+chosen men, "the acknowledged flower of English Puritanism," were
+nominated a Supreme Commission, for the trial of public preachers. Any
+person holding a church-living, or pretending to the tithes or
+clergy-dues, was to be tried and approved of by these men. "A very
+republican arrangement," says Mr Carlyle, "such as could be made on the
+sudden, but was found in practice to work well."
+
+This and other ordinances having been issued, his first Parliament
+meets. It cannot be said that our Puritan Protector does not rise to the
+full level of his position. One might describe him as something of a
+propagandist, disposed to teach his doctrine of _the rights of
+Christian men_ to the world at large. It is thus he opens his
+address:--"GENTLEMEN, You are met here on the greatest occasion that, I
+believe, England ever saw; having upon your shoulders the interests of
+three great nations, with the territories belonging to them: and truly I
+believe I may say it without any hyperbole, you have upon your shoulders
+_the interest of all the Christian people in the world_. And the
+expectation is, that I should let you know, as far as I have cognisance
+of it, the occasion of your assembling together at this time."
+
+But this Parliament fell upon the discussion, as we have said, of the
+very instrument of government under which they had been called together.
+Mr Carlyle is as impatient as was Oliver himself at this proceeding of
+the "Talking apparatus." But how could it be otherwise? Every thing
+that had taken place since the dissolution of the Long Parliament was
+done by mere arbitrary authority. The present Parliament, however called
+together, must consider itself the only legitimate, the only
+constitutional power: it _must_ look into this instrument of government.
+But if it was impossible not to commence the discussion, it was equally
+impossible ever to conclude it. We all know to what length a debate will
+run upon a constitutional question; and here there was not one such
+question, but a whole constitution to be discussed. In vain they debated
+"from eight in the morning to eight at night, with an hour for
+refreshment about noon:" there was no probability of their ever coming
+to a conclusion.
+
+This would never do. Oliver shuts up the Parliament-house, stations his
+musketeers at the door, calls the members to him, presents them with a
+parchment, "a little thing," to sign, acknowledging his authority, and
+tells them he will open the door of the House to such only as shall put
+their names to it. We will quote some parts of the speech he made to
+them on this occasion, and our readers shall judge whether such a
+speech, delivered by the living man Cromwell, was likely to fail in
+effect, whether it was deficient in meaning or in energy. We shall omit
+the parenthetical comments of the editor, because, however these may
+amuse and relieve the reader who is making his way through the whole
+work, and who becomes familiarised with their style, they would only
+confuse and distract the attention in a brief extract. The single words
+or phrases which he has introduced, merely to make the sense clear, are
+retained whenever they are really necessary for this purpose, and
+without the inverted commas by which they are properly distinguished in
+the text. We will premise, that the protestations which Cromwell here
+makes, that he did not seek the government, but was earnestly petitioned
+to undertake it, may well, in part, be true. When he had once dissolved
+the Long Parliament, it was no longer a matter of choice for himself or
+others whether he would take the reins of government. To whom could he
+commit them? From that time, the government rested upon his shoulders.
+If he had manifested a wish to withdraw from the burden he had thus
+brought down upon himself, there is no doubt but that he would have been
+earnestly petitioned to remain at his post. The greatest enemy of
+Cromwell, if he had been a lover of his country, would have joined in
+such a petition; would have besought him to remain at the helm, now he
+had thrown all other steersmen overboard. No; he must not quit it now.
+He is there for the rest of his life, to do battle with the waves, and
+navigate amongst rocks and quicksands as best he may.
+
+Let us hear his own statement and defence of the manner in which he
+became advanced and "captive" to his high and perilous place.
+
+     "GENTLEMEN,--It is not long since I met you in this place, upon
+     an occasion which gave me much more content and comfort than
+     this doth. That which I have now to say to you will need no
+     preamble to let me into my discourse; for the occasion of this
+     meeting is plain enough. I could have wished, with all my
+     heart, there had been no cause for it.
+
+     "At our former meeting I did acquaint you what was the first
+     rise of this government which hath called you hither, and by
+     the authority of which you have come hither. Among other things
+     which I then told you of, I said you were a Free Parliament;
+     and so you are, whilst you own the government and authority
+     which called you hither. But certainly that word (Free
+     Parliament) implied a reciprocity, or it implied nothing at
+     all. Indeed, there was a reciprocity implied and expressed; and
+     I think your actions and carriages ought to be suitable. But I
+     see it will be necessary for me now a little to magnify my
+     office, which I have not been apt to do. I have been of this
+     mind, I have been always of this mind, since I first entered
+     upon my office. If God will not bear it up, let it sink!--but
+     if a duty be incumbent upon me, to bear my testimony to it,
+     (which in modesty I have hitherto forborne,) I am, in some
+     measure, necessitated thereunto: and therefore that will be the
+     prologue to my discourse.
+
+     "I called not myself to this place. I say again, I called not
+     myself to this place! Of that God is witness: and I have many
+     witnesses who, I do believe, could lay down their lives bearing
+     witness to the truth of that, namely, that I called not myself
+     to this place! And, being in it, I bear not witness to myself
+     or my office; but God and the people of these nations have also
+     borne testimony to it. If my calling be from God, and my
+     testimony from the people, _God and the people shall take it
+     from me, else I will not part with it!_ I should be false to
+     the trust that God hath placed in me, and to the interest of
+     the people of these nations if I did.
+
+     "I was by birth a gentleman; living neither in any considerable
+     height, nor yet in obscurity. I have been called to several
+     employments in the nation--to serve in Parliament and others;
+     and, not to be over-tedious, I did endeavour to discharge the
+     duty of an honest man, in those services, to God and his
+     people's interest, and to the Commonwealth; having, when time
+     was, a competent acceptation in the hearts of men, and some
+     evidences thereof. I resolve not to recite the times, and
+     occasions, and opportunities, which have been appointed me by
+     God to serve him in; nor the presence and blessing of God,
+     therein bearing testimony to me.
+
+     "Having had some occasion to see, together with my brethren and
+     countrymen, a happy period put to our sharp wars and contests
+     with the then common enemy, I hoped, in a private capacity, to
+     have reaped the fruit and benefit, together with my brethren,
+     of our hard labours and hazards: the enjoyment, to wit, of
+     peace and liberty, and the privileges of a Christian and a man,
+     in some equality with others, according as it should please the
+     Lord to dispense unto me. And when I say God had put an end to
+     our wars, or at least brought them to a very hopeful issue,
+     very near an end,--after Worcester fight,--I came up to London
+     to pay my service and duty to the Parliament which then sat,
+     hoping that all minds would have been disposed to answer what
+     seemed to be the mind of God, namely, to give peace and rest to
+     his people, and especially to those who had bled more than
+     others in the carrying on of the military affairs,--I was much
+     disappointed of my expectation. For the issue did not prove so.
+     _Whatever may be boasted or misrepresented, it was not so, not
+     so!_
+
+     "I can say in the simplicity of my soul, I love not, I love
+     not,--I declined it in my former speech,--I say, I love not to
+     rake into sores, or to discover nakednesses! The thing I drive
+     at is this: I say to you, I hoped to have had leave to retire
+     to a private life. I begged to be dismissed of my charge; I
+     begged it again and again; and God be judge between me and all
+     men if I lie in this matter! That I lie not in matter of fact,
+     is known to very many; but whether I tell a lie in my heart, as
+     labouring to represent to you what was not upon my heart, I say
+     the Lord be judge. Let uncharitable men, who measure others by
+     themselves, judge as they please. As to the matter of fact, I
+     say it is true. As to the ingenuity and integrity of my heart
+     in that desire--I do appeal, as before, upon the truth of that
+     also. But I could not obtain what my soul longed for. And the
+     plain truth is, I did afterwards apprehend some more of
+     opinion, (such the differences of their judgment from mine,)
+     that it could not well be.
+
+     "I confess I am in some strait to say what I could say, and
+     what is true, of what then followed. I pressed the Parliament,
+     as a member, to period themselves; once and again, and again,
+     and ten, nay twenty times over. I told them, for I knew it
+     better than any one man in the parliament could know it,
+     because of my manner of life, which had led me every where up
+     and down the nation, thereby giving me to see and know the
+     temper and spirits of all men, and of the best of men--that the
+     nation loathed their sitting. I knew it. And so far as I could
+     discern, when they _were_ dissolved, _there was not so much as
+     the barking of a dog_, or any general or visible repining at
+     it.
+
+     "And that there was high cause for their dissolution, is most
+     evident: not only in regard there was a just fear of that
+     parliament's perpetuating themselves, but because it actually
+     was their design. Had not their heels been trod upon by
+     importunities from abroad, even to threats, I believe there
+     never would have been any thoughts of rising, or of going out
+     of that room, to the world's end. I myself was sounded, and by
+     no mean persons tempted; and proposals were made me to that
+     very end: that the parliament might be thus perpetuated; that
+     the vacant places might be supplied by new elections, and so
+     continue from generation to generation."
+
+He proceeds to object to the measure which the Parliament was really
+about to pass, that it would have established an uninterrupted
+succession of Parliaments, that there would have been "a legislative
+power always sitting," which would thereby have encroached upon the
+executive power. The speech then enlarges on the general assent of the
+people, of the army, of the judges, of the civic powers, to the
+instrument of government, to the Protectorate, and on the implied
+assent which they themselves had given by accepting their commissions
+under it.
+
+     "And this being so, though I told you in my last speech that
+     you were a free Parliament, yet I thought it was understood
+     withal that I was the Protector, and the authority that called
+     you! That I was in possession of the government by a good right
+     from God and man. And I believe, that if the learnedest men in
+     this nation were called to show a precedent equally clear of a
+     government so many ways approved of, they would not in all
+     their search find it. And if the fact be so, why should we
+     sport with it? With a business so serious!... For you to disown
+     or not to own it; for you to act with parliamentary authority
+     especially, in the disowning of it, contrary to the very
+     fundamental things, yea against the very root itself of this
+     establishment, to sit and not own the authority by which you
+     sit--is that which I believe astonisheth more men than myself;
+     and doth as dangerously disappoint and discompose the nation,
+     as any thing that could have been invented by the greatest
+     enemy to our peace and welfare."
+
+After drawing the distinction between fundamentals, which may not be
+shaken, and circumstantials, which it is in the power of Parliament to
+alter and modify, he continues:--
+
+     "I would it had not been needful for me to call you hither to
+     expostulate these things with you, and in such a manner as
+     this! But necessity hath no law. Feigned necessities, imaginary
+     necessities, are the greatest cozenage which man can put upon
+     the providence of God, and make pretences to break known rules
+     by. But it is as legal, as carnal, and as stupid to think that
+     there are _no_ necessities which are manifest and real, because
+     necessities may be abused or feigned. I have to say, the wilful
+     throwing away of this government, such as it is, so owned by
+     God, so approved by men, so witnessed to, as was mentioned
+     above, were a thing which--and in reference to the good of
+     these nations and of posterity--_I can sooner be willing to be
+     rolled into my grave and buried with infamy, than I can give my
+     consent unto!_
+
+     "You have been called hither to save a nation--nations. You had
+     the best people, indeed, of the Christian world put into your
+     trust, when you came hither. You had the affairs of these
+     nations delivered over to you in peace and quiet; you were, and
+     we all are, put into an undisturbed possession, nobody making
+     title to us: Through the blessing of God, our enemies were
+     hopeless and scattered. We had peace at home; peace with almost
+     all our neighbours round about. To have our peace and interest,
+     whereof those were our hopes the other day, thus shaken, and
+     put under such a confusion; and ourselves rendered hereby
+     almost the scorn and contempt of those strangers who are
+     amongst us to negotiate their masters' affairs!... Who shall
+     answer for these things to God or to men? To men, to the people
+     who sent you hither? who looked for refreshment from you; who
+     looked for nothing but peace and quietness, and rest and
+     settlement? When we come to give an account to them, we shall
+     have it to say, 'Oh, we quarrelled for the _Liberty of
+     England_; we contested, and went to confusion for
+     that!--_Wherein, I pray you, for the Liberty of England?_ I
+     appeal to the Lord, that the desires and endeavours we have
+     had--nay, the things will speak for themselves,--the liberty of
+     England, the liberty of the people, the avoiding of tyrannous
+     impositions either upon men as men, or Christians as
+     Christians,--is made so safe by this act of settlement, that it
+     will speak for itself."
+
+The Protector then tells them that, "seeing the authority which
+called them is so little valued and so much slighted, he had
+caused a stop to be put to their entrance into the Parliament-house,"
+until a certain "somewhat," which would be found "in the lobby
+without the Parliament-door"--an adhesion to the government in its
+fundamentals--should be signed.
+
+This extract, as will be readily supposed, would lead to a far too
+favourable opinion of Cromwell's oratory, if understood as a specimen of
+his usual manner of speaking; but our readers will probably confess,
+that they did not expect that the speeches of Cromwell would have
+yielded such an extract.
+
+Oliver has, it will be observed, a singularly modest way of speaking of
+his political remedies and projects. In referring, on a later occasion,
+to his major-generals, he says, "Truly when that insurrection was, we
+did find out a _little poor invention_, which I hear has been much
+regretted. I say there was _a little thing_ invented, which was the
+erecting of your major-generals, to have a little inspection upon the
+people thus divided, thus discontented, thus dissatisfied." On the
+present occasion, the "somewhat which was to be found at the lobby of
+the Parliament-door," was, after a little demur, accepted and signed by
+all but a certain number of declared republicans. The parliament
+afterwards fell from the discussion of a whole constitution, to debates
+apparently as warm, and as endless, upon poor Biddle the Quaker, and
+other kindred subjects. Thus their allotted session of five months
+passed; at the end of which time Cromwell dissolved them.
+
+"I do not know what you have been doing," he tells them in his speech on
+this occasion. "I do not know whether you have been alive or dead. I
+have not once heard from you all this time--I have not--and that you all
+know."
+
+Cromwell's second parliament manifested a wiser industry, and a more
+harmonious temper--thanks to one of the Protector's "little inventions."
+Each member was to be provided with a certificate before entering the
+house; "but near one hundred honourable gentlemen can get no
+certificate--none provided for _them_--and without certificate there is
+no admittance. Soldiers stand ranked at the door; no man enters without
+his certificate!" The stiff republicans, and known turbalent persons,
+are excluded. From this Parliament Cromwell accepts again the title of
+Protector, and is installed with great state; things take a more legal
+aspect; the major-generals are suppressed; a House of Lords is
+instituted; and a settlement of the nation seems at last effected.
+
+But the second session of this Parliament relapsed again into a restive
+and republican humour. The excluded members had been admitted, and
+debates arose about this "other house," as they were disposed to
+nominate the Lords. So much confusion resulted in the country from this
+unsettled state of the representative assembly, and so many
+insurrectionary designs were fostered by it, that the Protector was
+compelled abruptly to dissolve the Parliament. He tells them:--
+
+     "That which brought me into the capacity I now stand in, was
+     the petition and advice given me by you, who, in reference to
+     the ancient constitution, did draw me to accept the place of
+     Protector. _There is not a man living can say I sought it; no,
+     not a man nor a woman treading upon English ground._ But,
+     contemplating the sad condition of these nations, relieved from
+     an intestine war into a six or seven years' peace, I did think
+     the nation happy therein. But to be petitioned thereunto, and
+     to be advised by you to undertake such a government, a burden
+     too heavy for any creature--and this to be done by the House
+     which then had the legislative capacity--certainly I did look
+     that the same men who made the frame, should make it good unto
+     me. _I can say, in the presence of God, in comparison with whom
+     we are but like poor creeping ants upon the earth, I would have
+     been glad to have lived under any woodside, to have kept a
+     flock of sheep, rather then have undertaken such a government
+     as this._ But, undertaking it by the advice and petition of
+     you, I did look that you who had offered it unto me, should
+     make it good."
+
+He concludes thus:--
+
+     "It hath been not only your endeavour to pervert the army while
+     you have been sitting, and to draw them to state the question
+     about a 'Commonwealth;' but some of you have been listing of
+     persons, by commission of Charles Stuart, to join with any
+     insurrection that may be made. And what is like to come upon
+     this, the enemy being ready to invade us, but even present
+     blood and confusion? And if this be so, I do assign it to this
+     cause--your not assenting to what you did invite me to by your
+     petition and advice, as that which might prove the settlement
+     of the nation. And if this be the end of your sitting, and this
+     be your carriage, I think it high time that an end be put to
+     your sitting. And I do dissolve this Parliament! And let God be
+     judge between you and me!"
+
+It is at this latter period of his career that the character of
+Cromwell, to our apprehension, stands out to greatest advantage, becomes
+more grave, and solemn, and estimable. Other dictators, other men of
+ambitious aims and fortunes, show themselves, for the most part, less
+amiable, more tyrannous than ever, more violent and selfish, when they
+have obtained the last reward of all their striving, and possessed
+themselves of the seat of power. It was otherwise with Cromwell. He
+became more moderate, his views more expanded, his temper milder and
+more pensive. The stormy passions of the civil war were overblown, the
+intricate and ambiguous passages of his political course had been left
+behind; and _now_, whatever may have been the errors of the past, and
+however his own ambition or rashness may have led him to it, he occupied
+a position which he might say with truth he held for his country's good.
+Forsake it he could not. Repose in it he could not. A man of religious
+breeding, of strong conscientiousness, though tainted with superstition,
+he could not but feel the great responsibility of that position. A
+vulgar usurper is found at this era of his career to sink into the
+voluptuary, or else to vent his dissatisfied humour in acts of cruelty
+and oppression. Cromwell must govern, and govern to his best. The
+restless and ardent spirit that had ever prompted him onwards and
+upwards, and which had carried him to that high place, was now upon the
+wane. It had borne him to that giddy pinnacle, and threatened to leave
+him there. Men were now aiming at his life; the assassin was abroad;
+one-half the world was execrating him; we doubt not that he spoke with
+sincerity when he said, that "he would gladly live under any woodside,
+and keep a flock of sheep." He would gladly lay down his burden, but he
+cannot; can lay it down only in the grave. The sere and yellow leaf is
+falling on the shelterless head of the royal Puritan. The asperity of
+his earlier character is gone, the acrimony of many of his prejudices
+has, in his long and wide intercourse with mankind, abated; his great
+duties have taught him moderation of many kinds; there remains of the
+fiery sectarian, who so hastily "turned the buckle of his girdle behind
+him," little more than his firmness and conscientiousness: his firmness
+that, as he truly said, "could be bold with men;" his conscientiousness,
+which made the power he attained by that boldness, a burden and a heavy
+responsibility.
+
+"We have not been now four years and upwards in this government," says
+the Protector, in one of his speeches, "to be totally ignorant of what
+things may be of the greatest concernment to us." No; this man has not
+been an idle scholar. Since the Lord General took the reins of civil
+government, and became Lord Protector, he has thought and learned much
+of statemanship. But as a statesman, he is still first of all the
+Puritan. It is worth while to observe how his foreign policy, which has
+been justly admired, took its turn and direction from his religious
+feelings. He made alliances with the Protestant powers of the north, and
+assumed a firm attitude of hostility towards Spain--and reasons of state
+may have had some sway in determining him to these measures; but his
+great motive for hostility with Spain was, that she stood "at the head
+of the antichristian interest"--"was described in the Scriptures to be
+papal and antichristian."
+
+"Why, truly your great enemy is the Spaniard. He is a natural enemy. He
+is naturally so throughout, by reason of that enmity that is in him
+against whatever is of God.... Your enemy, as I tell you, naturally, by
+that antipathy which is in him,--and also providentially, (that is, by
+special ordering of Providence.) An enmity is put in him by God. 'I will
+put an enmity between thy seed and her seed,' which goes but for little
+among statesmen, but is more considerable than all things. And he that
+considers not such natural enmity, the _providential_ enmity as well as
+the _accidental_, I think he is not well acquainted with the Scripture,
+and the things of God,"--(_Speech_ 5.)
+
+In fine, we see in Cromwell, every where and throughout, the genuine,
+fervid Puritan--the Puritan general, the Puritan statesman. He was a
+man, and, therefore, doubtless ambitious; he rose through a scene of
+civil as well as military contest, and, doubtless, was not unacquainted
+with dissimulation; but if we would describe him briefly, it is as the
+GREAT PURITAN that he must, ever be remembered in history.
+
+In parting company with the editor of these letters and speeches, we
+feel that we have not done justice to the editorial industry and
+research which these volumes display. Our space would not permit it. For
+the same reason we have been unable to quote several instances of vivid
+narrative, which we had hoped to transfer to our own pages. And as to
+our main quarrel with him--this outrageous adoption of Puritanical bile
+and superstition,--we have been haunted all along by a suspicion we have
+occasionally expressed, that the man _cannot_ be in earnest. He could
+not have been so abandoned by his common sense. He has been so
+accustomed to mingle sport, and buffoonery, and all sorts of wilful
+extravagance, with his most serious mood, that he perhaps does not know
+himself when, and how far, he is in earnest. In turning over the leaves
+of his work, we light, towards the end of the second volume, upon the
+following passage, which may, _perhaps_, explain the temper of the
+writer, when he is abetting and encouraging his fanatical heroes. He is
+uttering some sarcasms upon the poor "art of speech."
+
+"Is there no sacredness, then, any longer in the miraculous tongue of
+man? Is his head become a wretched cracked pitcher, on which you jingle
+to frighten crows, and makes bees hive? He fills me with terror, this
+two-legged rhetorical phantasm! I could long for an Oliver without
+rhetoric at all. I could long for a Mahomet, whose persuasive eloquence,
+with wild-flashing heart and scimiter, is, 'Wretched moral, give up
+that; or by the Eternal, thy maker and mine, I will kill thee! Thou
+blasphemous scandalous misbirth of Nature, is not even _that_ the
+kindest thing I can do for thee, if thou repent not, and alter in the
+name of Allah?'"
+
+To this sort of satirical humour--to "the truth of a song,"--not
+Dryasdust himself would call upon him to swear. And may not all his
+rhapsodies upon his "sword-in-hand" Puritans be little more than an
+amplification of this one passage? And, if we insist upon it, that a
+reform by the pen, or even by speech-making, is better than one by pike
+and musket--if we should suggest that matters of civil government are
+better decided by civil and political reasoning than by metaphorical
+texts of Scripture, interpreted by prejudice and passion--if we contend
+for such truisms as these, shall we not be in danger of occupying some
+such position as the worthy prelate whose sagacity led him to discover
+that _some facts_ in Gulliver's Travels had surely been overcharged?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations by Thomas
+Carlyle._
+
+[2] Take the following instance from the early and more moderate times
+of the Revolution, and wherein the most staid and sober of this class of
+people is concerned. When Essex left London to march against the king,
+then at Oxford, he requested the assembly of divines to keep a fast for
+his success. Baillie informs us how it was celebrated. "We spent from
+nine to five graciously. After Dr Twisse had begun with a brief prayer,
+Mr Marshall prayed large two hours, most divinely confessing the sins of
+the members of the assembly in a wonderful, pathetic, and prudent way.
+After Mr Arrowsmith preached an hour, then a psalm; thereafter Mr Vines
+prayed near two hours, and Mr Palmer preached an hour, and Mr. Seaman
+prayed near two hours, then a psalm; after Mr Henderson brought them to
+a sweet conference of the heat confessed in the assembly, and other seen
+faults to be remedied, and the conveniency to preach against all sects,
+especially anabaptists and antinomians. Dr Twisse closed with a short
+prayer and blessing. God was so evidently in all this exercise that we
+expect certainly a blessing."--_Baillie_, quoted from _Lingard_.
+
+
+
+
+LAYS AND LEGENDS OF THE THAMES.
+
+PART III.
+
+
+----On passing the little village of Erith, once one of the prettiest
+rustic spots in Kent, where the parson and the surgeon formed the heads
+of the community, and its only intelligence of the living world depended
+on the casual arrival of a boat from the Margate Hoy in search of fresh
+eggs for the voyage, a small house was pointed out to me, embosomed in a
+dell, which would have completely suited the solitary tastes of a poet
+weary of the world:
+
+    "Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
+    Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
+    Of unsuccessful, or successful war,
+    Might never reach me more!"
+
+Fifty years ago, a weekly newspaper was the only remembrancer to either
+parson or doctor, of the world which they had left, and that one only
+sent by the member for the county, when he thought it desirable to awake
+the general gratitude on the approach of a general election. The Thames
+certainly might remind the village population that there were merchants
+and mariners among mankind; but what were those passing phantoms to
+them? John the son of Thomas lived and died as Thomas the father of John
+had lived and died from generation to generation. The first news of the
+American war reached it in the firing of the Woolwich guns for peace;
+and the original tidings of the French Revolution, in similar rejoicings
+for the Battle of Waterloo.
+
+    "O happy ye, the happiest of your kind,
+    Who leave alike life's woes and joys behind!"
+
+says the philosophic Cowley; and with Cowley I perfectly agree.
+
+But Erith is this scene of philosophy no more. It has now shared the
+march of mind: it has become almost a watering-place; it has a library,
+a promenade, lodgings for gouty gentlemen, a conventicle, several
+vigorous politicians, three doctors, and, most fatal of all, four
+steam-boat arrivals every day. Solitude has fled, and meditation is no
+more.
+
+But, to my story. In that lonely house, lived for several years, in the
+beginning of the century, a singular character, of whom nothing more was
+known, than that he had come from some distant place of abode; that he
+never received a letter; and that he never hunted, shot, or fished with
+the squiredom of the country. He was of large form, loud voice, had a
+sullen look, and no trust in her Majesty's ministers for the time being.
+At length, on some occasion of peculiar public excitement, the recluse
+had gone to Gravesend, where, tempted by the impulse of the moment, he
+had broken through his reserve, dashed out into a diatribe of singular
+fierceness, but of remarkable power, accused England of all kinds of
+oppression to all kinds of countries, and finished his speech by a
+recapitulation of all the wishes, wants, woes, and wrongs, as he called
+them, of Ireland,
+
+    "First flower of the west, and first gem of the ocean."
+
+Within the next twelve hours, a pair of Bow Street officers were seen
+galloping into the village in a post-chaise and four. They brought a
+warrant from the Secretary of State to arrest the Irish orator, as a
+leader of the late Rebellion returned from transportation, on his own
+authority. He was captured, and conveyed to the Tower. And this was the
+last intelligence of the patriot; except that he appealed to the
+government against all repetition of his Australian voyage, and swore
+that he preferred the speedier performance of the law to the operations
+on the Coal-mine river. A remarkable tempest, which broke all the
+windows, and threw down half the chimneys of the city, a few weeks
+after; was supposed by the imaginative to be connected with his
+disappearance. At all events, he was heard of no more.
+
+
+THE VISION.
+
+    Thunder pealed and lightning quivered,
+    Gusts a prison's casements shivered.
+    From its dungeon rose a scream,
+    Where, awakened by the gleam,
+    From his pallet rose and ran,
+    Wild with fear, a stalwart man.
+    Saw he in his tortured sleep,
+    Things that make the heart-veins creep?
+    Swept he through the world of flame,
+    Chased by shapes that none may name?
+    Still, as bars and windows clanged,
+    Still he roared--"I _will_ be hanged."
+
+    Sleep had swept him o'er the seas,
+    To the drear antipodes;
+    There he saw a felon band,
+    Chains on neck, and spade in hand,
+    Orators, all sworn to die
+    In "Old Ireland's" cause--or fly!
+    Now, divorced from pike and pen,
+    Digging ditch, and draining fen,
+    Sky their ceiling, sand their bed,
+    Fed and flogged, and flogged and fed.
+    "Operatives!" he harangued;
+    "Ere I'm banished--I'll be hanged."
+
+    Now, he strove to strike a light,
+    But, a form of giant height
+    Through the crashing casement sprang;
+    Shattered stanchions round him rang,
+    From his eyes a light within
+    Showed the blackness of his skin;
+    In his lips a huge cigar
+    Smouldered, like a dying star;
+    Holding to the culprit's eyes,
+    Writ in flame, a scroll of lies,
+    Champing jaws with iron fanged,
+    "Friend," cried he, "you _shall_ be hanged."
+
+    'Twixt the tempter and the rogue,
+    Then began the dialogue:
+    --"Master--shall I rob the state?"
+    "Not, unless you'd dine off plate."
+    --"Shall I try my hand at law?"
+    "You'll be sure to make a flaw."
+    --"Shall I job in Parliament?"
+    "You'll be richer, cent per cent."
+    --"Shall I truckle, or talk big?"
+    "You'll but get a judge's wig,
+    Blockheads may be conscience-panged,
+    Knaves are pensioned, but, _not_ hanged!"
+
+    --"Master, _must_ I then escape?"
+    "No," exclaimed the knowing shape,
+    "You shall perish by Lynch-Law."
+    Through his skull he struck a claw,
+    On the tempest burst a wail,
+    Through the bars a serpent-tail,
+    Flashing like a lightning spire,
+    Seemed to set the cell on fire;
+    Far and wide was heard the clang,
+    Through the whirlwind as they sprang.
+    Many a year the sulphurous fume
+    Stung the nostril in that room.
+
+The river widens, and we sweep along by the rich slopes and deep wooded
+vales of the Kentish shore. From time to time little pastoral villages
+emerge, from plantations of willows and poplars, and all water-loving
+trees. Before coming to Purfleet, we had passed a noble hill, looking
+over a vast expanse of country, on which stands a princely
+mansion,--Belvedere, with its battlements glittering above groves as
+thick as the depths of the Black Forest. This was once the mansion of
+Lord Eardley, one of the greatest humorists of the age,--the companion
+of George the Fourth, before he ceased to be a wit and became a king.
+
+How many delightful things are lost to the world, by the world's own
+laziness. Why have we not a Boswell in every city? Her majesty pays a
+laureate, who writes nothing but the annual receipt for his pension. Why
+not transfer the office to a Boswell? why not establish a Cabinet-dinner
+Boswell? a Buckingham-palace Boswell? a Windsor Boswell? with orders to
+make their weekly returns of gaiety and gossipry to the Home Department;
+to be thence issued by instalments of anecdote, in volumes, like "Lord
+Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors," or in columns, like the protocols
+of the Montpensier marriage, for the laughter of mankind?
+
+But the report of a heavy gun, and all eyes turned to a huge shell,
+making its curve a mile above our heads, reminded us that the artillery
+had a field-day as we passed Woolwich, and that there was every
+possibility that this vagrant messenger of destruction, might plump into
+our midships. The consternation on board grew, as it descended, looking
+bigger and blacker every instant. If it had come on board, it must have
+torn us up like paper. The catastrophe would have been invaluable to the
+journals of the empire, at this moment of a dearth of news, enough to
+make bankrupts of all the coffee-houses in London, and close every club
+from Charing Cross to Hyde Park Corner. _We_ should all have been
+immortal in paragraphs without number. Coroners, surgeons, poets, and
+special juries, would have made their reputation out of _us_; and for a
+month of hot weather, we should have been a refreshing topic in the
+mouths of mankind. But it was otherwise decreed: the shell dropped
+within a foot of the steamer, and we were _quittes pour la peur_.
+
+I fired a poetic shot at Woolwich in return.
+
+    THE ROYAL ARSENAL.
+
+    Woolwich--Woolwich,
+    The Thames is thy ditch,
+      And stout hearts are thy fortification.
+    Let come who come may,
+    All is open as day,
+      Thy gates are as free as thy nation.
+
+    Let the King of the French
+    Build wall, or dig trench,
+      Though he has no more princes to marry,
+    _Our_ trench is the sea,
+    And _our_ walls are the free,
+      And we laugh at thy "_grande enceinte, Paris._"
+
+    Deep and dark on their quay,
+    Like lions at bay,
+      Stand the guns that set earth at defiance;
+    With mountains of ball,
+    Which, wherever they fall,
+      With their message make speedy compliance.
+
+    Along the Parade
+    Lies the brisk carronade,
+      With Wellington's joy, the twelve-pounder.
+    And the long sixty-eight,
+    Made for matters of weight,
+      The world has no arguments sounder.
+
+    There stands the long rocket,
+    That shot, from its socket,
+      Puts armies, pell-mell, to the rout, sir;
+    At Leipsic, its tail
+    Made Napoleon turn pale,
+      And sent all his _braves_ right about, sir.
+
+    And there gapes the mortar,
+    That seldom gives quarter,
+      When speaking to ship or to city;
+    For, although deaf and dumb,
+    Its tongue is a bomb--
+      And so, there's an end of my ditty.
+
+The sun had now overcome the mists of the morning, and was throwing a
+rich lustre over the long sheets of foliage which screened, but without
+concealing, a large and classic villa on the Essex side. The park
+reached to the water's edge, in broad vistas, green as the emerald; deer
+were moving in groups over the lawn, or on standing still to gaze on the
+wonder of our flying ship. A few boats were slowly passing near the
+shore, along with the tide; the water was without a ripple,--the air was
+soft and fragrant, as it flowed from grove and garden; and the whole was
+a scene of sylvan and summer beauty. The thought suddenly shot across my
+mind, what a capital prize this would be, in a revolution! How
+handsomely it would repay a patriot for his trouble in uprooting lords
+and commons! What a philosophic consummation of a life of husting
+harangues, and league itinerancy, it would be, to lie on the
+drawing-room sofa of a mansion so perfectly Greek, railing at the
+tyranny of thrones, the bigotry of bishops, and the avarice of
+aristocracies; lamenting the privations of the poor, over a table of
+three courses, and drinking confusion to all monopolies in _Vin de
+Comete!_
+
+But, who was the present possessor? I asked the name and heard it. But,
+from the captain to the cabin-boy, not a soul could give me another
+syllable of information. Like the gravedigger in Hamlet, they might
+"cudgel their brains," but all came to the gravedigger's confession at
+last,--"Mass, I cannot tell."
+
+Such, thought I, are the chances of the world. The owner of this marine
+palace,--of these gardens, groves, deer, and dovecotes,--cannot have
+less than �10,000 a-year; yet his name has never reached the auricular
+sensibilities of man, beyond the fence of his own park. Was he
+philosopher, statesman, lawyer, orator, historian? inventor of
+steam-engine, of spinning jenny, of gunpowder, or of gun-cotton? No, I
+searched every cell of memory for some "trivial fond record" which might
+justify his title to a mansion and grounds fit for Sophocles, Schiller,
+or Shakspeare, the master of them all. I could not find, in all the
+rolls of the court of reminiscences, a single scrape of the pen to
+inform me; not so much as the commemorative smoke of a candle on the
+ceiling of the alcove of Mnemosyne; not a vestige of the "light
+fantastic toe," of those sylphs who treasure the flippancies of noble
+pens, and live in the fragrance of albums, otto-perfumed. Still I was
+driven to the confession, "Mass, I cannot tell."
+
+I had brought a volume of poor Tom Campbell in my pocket, and had been
+glancing over his _chef-d'oeuvre_, "Ye Mariners of England," when this
+stately edifice first checked my inspiration. In the wrath of my spirit
+I tossed the volume overboard. "Psha!" I involuntarily exclaimed, "what
+is the use of being a genius? What is the gratitude of a country, where
+a cotton-spinner can purchase the fee-simple of a province, while the
+man who spreads its fame over the world is left to gather his
+contemplations over a stove in an attic, watch the visage of his
+landlady, and shudder at the rise of coals!
+
+     'England, with all thy faults I love thee still.'
+
+But it must be confessed, that thou art the most pitiful, paltry,
+beggarly, blind--" I shall say no more. Thy whole munificence, thy whole
+magnanimity, thy whole generosity, to the living lights of thy sullen
+region of toil, trimming, and tribulation, of the dulness of dukes and
+the mountainous fortunes of pinmakers--is exactly �1200 a-year! and this
+to be divided among the whole generation of the witty and the wise, of
+the sons and daughters of the muse,--the whole "school of the prophets,"
+the lustres of the poetry and the science of England! �1200 a-year for
+the only men of their generation who will be remembered for five minutes
+by the generation to come. �1200 a-year, the salary of an Excise
+commissioner, of a manipulator of the penny post, of a charity
+inspector, of a police magistrate, of a register of cabs, of any thing
+and every body: and this, reduced to decimals, is to be the national
+prize, the luxurious provision, the brilliant prospect, the illustrious
+tribute of a treasury of fifty millions sterling a-year, to the whole
+literature of a land which boasts of its being the intellectual leader
+of the world!
+
+I have found the poems of our living bards on the shores of Hudson's
+Bay, and heard men talking of them round a stove, while the thermometer
+outside the window was 30� below zero. I have found them in a
+plantain-thatched hovel on the banks of the Niger, and forgotten while I
+read them that the thermometer was 110� in the shade. I have found them
+in the hands of a learned pundit on the banks of the Ganges, whom they
+were seducing into dreams of dewy pastures and crystal rills. And one of
+the pleasantest evenings I ever remember to have spent, was, by the help
+of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," as I sat at a supper of rice milk,
+after a day of fire on the eastern branch of the Nile, a thousand miles
+above Tourists, sheltered under the wagon of a Moorish ambassador from
+Sultaun Abderahman to the monarch of Gondar. "England!" exclaimed this
+ebony-visaged worshipper of the Beaux Arts, as he displayed the volume
+before me. It was the only civilised word in his vocabulary. But I felt
+the compliment with patriotic fervency, and in spirit thanked the bard
+for the barbarian's acknowledgment of my poetic and penurious country.
+
+I have not done with the theme yet. On returning from the equator, I saw
+Campbell's funeral. Westminster Abbey was a mob of dukes, statesmen,
+privy-councillors, and men of countless acres. Poor Tom's whole life had
+been thankless toil; wasting in meagre industry the powers which ought
+to have been cherished by his country for purposes of national honour.
+Such is always the course of things. The very stones of Burns' pillars
+would have made the great poet happy for life, if their price had been
+given to him to cheer his melancholy fireside. Why has the poetic spirit
+of England folded its wings, and been content to abandon its brilliant
+region to the butterflies of albums, but that the spirit of England has
+suffered itself to be fettered by the red tape of a peddling parsimony?
+Should we have had a Shakspeare without the smiles of an Elizabeth, and
+the generosity of a Southampton? No. He would have split his pen after
+his first tragedy; have thrown his ink-stand into the Thames; have taken
+the carrier's cart to Stratford, and there finished his days in writing
+epitaphs in the churchyard, laughing at Sir Thomas Lucy, and bequeathing
+deathless scoffs, to the beggary of mankind.
+
+I was growing into what the dramatists call a "towering passion," and
+meditating general reforms of Civil Lists, Chancellors of the Exchequer,
+and Lord Chamberlains, when my attention was turned to a very animated
+scene going on between a pair who seemed perfectly unconscious of all
+the external creation. One of the parties was a showy-looking fellow,
+with the mingled expression of _rou�ism_ and half-pay, which is so
+frequent and so unmistakeable in the neighbourhood of St James's. The
+lady was a calm and composed personage, whom, on a second glance, I
+remembered to have seen wherever the world could bow down to the fair
+possessor of countless "consols." But the passion for a handsome
+mansion, a handsome stud, and a handsome rental, is indefatigable, and
+the ex-staff man poured his adorations into her ear with all the glow of
+a suitor ten thousand pounds worse than nothing.
+
+Poesy! sweetest of all the maids of Parnassus! it is thou that givest
+thy votary power to read the soul: it is thou that canst translate the
+glance into a speech, and give eloquence to the clasp of a hand. It is
+thou alone to whom the world is indebted for this _true_ version of the
+pleadings of the Guardsman.
+
+
+
+
+TRUE LOVE.
+
+
+    Exquisite Miss Millionaire!
+    Hear a lover's genuine prayer:
+    Let the world adore your charms,
+    Swan-like neck, or snowy arms,
+    Rosy smile, or dazzling glance,
+    Making all our bosoms dance;
+    For your purse alone I care,
+    Exquisite Miss Millionaire!
+    Ringlets blackest of the black,
+    Ivory shoulders, Grecian back,
+    Tresses so divinely twined,
+    That we long to be the wind,
+    Waiting till the lady's face
+    Turns, to give the _coup de grace_.
+    All those spells to _me_ are air.
+    Truth is truth, Miss Millionaire.
+
+    Let them talk of finger-tips,
+    Pearly teeth, or coral lips,
+    Cheeks the morning rose that mock,
+    _Still_ there _is_ a charm in Stock!
+    Solid mortgage, five per cent,
+    Freehold with "improving" rent,
+    Russia bond, and railroad share,
+    Steal _my_ soul, Miss Millionaire.
+
+    Let your rhymers (all are crackt)
+    Rave of cloud or cataract;
+    On the Rhine, or Rhone, or Arve,
+    Let romancers stroll and starve.
+    Cupid loves a gilded cage,
+    (Let _me_ choose your equipage,)
+    Passion pants for Portman Square,
+    (Be but mine,) Miss Millionaire.
+
+    There you'll lead a London life,
+    More a goddess than a wife;
+    Fifty thousand pounds a-year
+    Making our expenses clear;
+    Giving, once a-week, a _f�te_,
+    Simply to display our plate.
+    Never earth saw such a pair,
+    Exquisite Miss Millionaire!
+
+But a steeple starts up from its green thickets; not one of the hideous
+objects which the architects of our district churches perpetrate, to
+puzzle the passer-by as to the purpose of its being,--whether a brewer's
+chimney, or a shot-tower,--a perch for city pigeons, or a standing
+burlesque on the builders of the nineteenth age of the fine arts in
+England. This steeple is an old grey turret, ivy-mantled, modest, and
+with that look of venerable age which instinctively makes us feel, that
+it has witnessed memorable things in its time.
+
+And it _has_ witnessed them. On the slope of the hill above this church
+once waved the banners of a king, and the opposing banners of his
+nobles: the one receiving the lesson, that kings have duties as well as
+their subjects; and the others enforcing the lesson by the sight of
+lines and columns of the stout bowmen and billmen of the Norman
+chivalry.--On this spot, just this day six hundred and thirty years ago,
+was held the grand conference between John and the Barons.
+
+Further inland, but rising on the view, is Swainscomb, the hill on which
+the Danish armies encamped, in their pirate rovings of the British seas,
+and their invasions of the Thames.
+
+What a contrast between the green landscape of this moment, and the camp
+of Sweno. All before me was the luxury of cultivation, the yellowing
+crop, the grazing cattle, the cottage smoke curling slowly upward on the
+back-ground of noble beech, ash, and sycamore. On the summit, the sun
+gleamed on a rectory house, half buried in roses, where the most learned
+of our Orientalists perused the Koran in the peace of a Mahometan
+paradise, and doubtless saw, on the dancing waters of the mighty river
+at his feet, perpetual visions of houris.
+
+Yet those pastures once echoed with the barbarian cries of the Cimbric
+warriors; tents of seal-skin and white bear fur covered the hill; the
+smokes of savage feasting and Scandinavian sacrifice clouded the skies;
+and on the summit, surrounded by iron guards and spectral-looking
+priests, stood the magic standard of the north, the image of the Raven,
+which flapped its wings on the coming of battle, and gave the oracular
+cry of victory.
+
+But, what sounds of harmony sweep along the water! I see a range of
+showy figures on the shore; it is a whole brass band, seducing us, in
+the style of the syrens of old, to bring our ship to an anchor, and
+hazard the enchantments of the most delicious of tea-gardens.--We are
+within a hundred yards of the pier of Rosherville.
+
+Within five minutes, we might be roaming through this paradise of the
+Thames, climbing rustic slopes carpeted with flowers, or gazing at a
+menagerie, where the monkeys bound, chatter, and take apples out of your
+hand; or sipping coffee of the most fragrant growth, or dancing the
+polka under alcoves of painted canvass, large enough to manoeuvre a
+brigade of the Horse-guards. By day the scene is romantic, but by night
+it is magical. By day the stranger roams through labyrinths of exotic
+vegetation, but by night he is enchanted with invisible music, dazzled
+with fireworks, and goes to his pillow to dream of the Arabian Nights.
+Honour to the name of Jeremiah Rosher, the discoverer of the
+"capabilities" of this Garden of the Hesperides. He found it a lime
+quarry, and made it a bower of Armida. If, as the great moralist said,
+"the man who makes two blades of grass grow where but one grew before,
+is a benefactor to mankind," what honours should be paid to the genius,
+which substituted human beings for lime-burners, and made the �lite of
+the east end of the mighty metropolis dance by thousands, where nothing
+but the top of a thistle ever danced before. There have been more "first
+affections" awakened in the rambles through the shades of Rosherville
+than in fifty Almacks, and five hundred times more matches in
+consequence, than ever took refuge in Gretna; and all this--for a
+shilling!
+
+As we neared the pier, I observed a small but elegant yacht, lying to;
+with several groups of dark-featured and cloak-covered men listening,
+with all the eagerness of foreign gesture, to the brazen harmony. My
+Italian _compagnon de voyage_, instantly bounded from his seat, ran to
+the ship's side, and held a rapid dialogue with the crew of the little
+vessel. They were just from Rome, and were bringing over the newly
+appointed Archbishop from the Vatican! The novelty of the voyage did not
+seem to agree with the pleasurable faculties of those sons of "Bella
+Italia," for nothing could be conceived more deplorable than their
+physiognomies.
+
+The scene reminded me of one which I had witnessed at Naples, on the
+arrival of the first steam-boat from Rome, conveying the Cardinal Legate
+to the Court of his Majesty of the Two Sicilies.
+
+I disdain all the formalities of poetry. Let others prepare their
+parchment-bound portfolios, throw their visages into the _penseroso_,
+fling their curls back from their brows, unbutton their shirt-collars,
+and, thus Byronised, begin. To _me_ all times and places are the
+same.--The inspiration rushes on me, and I pour out my "unpremeditated
+song" in the original rapture of Bardism!
+
+
+
+
+THE CARDINAL'S VOYAGE.
+
+
+    I have seen some queer things,
+    Both in people and kings,
+        Since first I began as a dreamer;
+    But I ne'er thought to hear
+    Any thing half so queer
+        As a Cardinal's trip in a steamer.
+
+    I once saw a Rabbi,
+    The prince of the shabby,
+        In a gale of wind playing the screamer,
+    Till we plumped him o'erboard,
+    Towed along by a cord,
+        For a bath at the tail of the steamer.
+
+    'Tis true, the Chinese
+    Looked as black as their teas,
+        When battered by brave Sir John Bremer:
+    But John Chinaman's slaughter
+    Was all milk and water,
+        To the havoc on board of the steamer.
+
+    On a coil of the cable,
+    Right under the table,
+        With the glass at 500 of Reaumur,
+    Busy "making his soul,"
+    As he felt every roll,
+        Lay his Highness, on board of the steamer.
+
+    Around him ten chaplains,
+    And none of them saplings,
+        Lay pale as a quarantine streamer.
+    With six dozen of monks,
+    All as helpless as trunks,
+        All rolling about in the steamer.
+
+    As she steered down the Tiber,
+    It shook every fibre
+        Of the conclave from forehead to _femur_;
+    But, 'twas when in her glee,
+    She got sight of the sea,
+        That she showed them the tricks of the steamer.
+
+    At Civita Vecchia,
+    Oh, mie orecchie!
+        What howls called the Saints to redeem her.
+    But she darted along
+    Like a stone from a thong,
+        In the style of a true British steamer.
+
+    She now ruled the roast,
+    As she sprang from the coast,
+        Through such surges no buckets could teem her:
+    The Lipari Isles
+    Got but very few smiles
+        From the brethren on board of the steamer.
+
+    "As sure as we're born,
+    We'll ne'er see Leghorn."
+        "Peccavi!" cried out every schemer:
+    The whole of the friars.
+    In that court were "criers,"
+        While thundered the wheels of the steamer.
+
+    I'd not stand in their shoes,
+    As they passed Syracuse,
+        Where thy frigate lay moored, Captain Seymour:
+    At the top of their throats
+    Yelling out for thy boats,
+        While teeth to the wind went the steamer.
+
+    As they swept by Messina--
+    Thy birth-place, Christina!--
+        Old Etna was scarce such a beamer:
+    In vain they cried--"Stop!"
+    With a blaze at her top,
+        Like a pillar of flame rushed the steamer.
+
+    She bounced by Charybdis,
+    With limestone which ribb'd is;
+        A touch from a pebble might seam her;
+    Made a curtsey to Scylla,
+    As the Turks say, "Bismillah,"
+        'Twas a very close shave for the steamer.
+
+    But the surges grew brown,
+    And the night hurried down,
+        And they saw in each flash a death-gleamer;
+    While the peals from the clouds,
+    And the wind in the shrouds,
+        Made them all very sick of the steamer.
+
+    When they made Capri's lights
+    It redoubled their frights,
+        And the friars all bellowed--"Tenemur!"
+    One and all made confessions,
+    (E'en popes have transgressions,)
+        There was some heavy work in the steamer.
+
+    But they soon smelt the apples
+    And fish-shops of Naples,
+        And the cargo began to esteem her--
+    "No witch in a sieve,
+    They could ever believe,
+        Had sailed half so fast as the steamer."
+
+    Could my pen give a sketch
+    Of each wo-begone wretch,
+        Like Gilray, H. B., or old Damer,
+    You should have the whole troop
+    That lay stretched on the poop,
+        As up by the mole dashed the steamer.
+
+    Were I Guizot, or Florian,
+    Or "Oxford Historian,"
+        Or "Orator" like Dr Cremer,
+    In my grand paragraphs,
+    You should have all the laughs
+        Of the mob as they rushed from the steamer!
+
+
+
+
+LETTERS ON THE TRUTHS CONTAINED IN POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.
+
+
+II.--VAMPYRISM.
+
+Dear Archy,--In acknowledging my former letter, you express an eager
+desire to learn, as you phrase it, "all about vampyrs, if there ever
+were such things." I will not delay satisfying your curiosity, wondering
+only how my friend, your late tutor, Mr H., should have left you in a
+state of uncertainty upon a point on which, in my time, schoolboys many
+years your juniors had fully made up their minds.
+
+"Were there ever such things as vampyrs?" _tantamne rem tam
+negligenter?_ I turn to the learned pages of Horst for a luminous and
+precise definition of the destructive and mysterious beings, whose
+existence you have ventured to consider problematical.
+
+"A vampyr is a dead body, which continues to live in the grave, which it
+leaves, however, by night, for the purpose of sucking the blood of the
+living, whereby it is nourished, and preserved in good condition,
+instead of becoming decomposed like other dead bodies."
+
+Upon my word, you really deserve--Since Mr George Combe has clearly
+shown in his admirable work "On the Constitution of Man, and its
+adaptation to the world around him," that ignorance is a statutable
+crime before Nature, and punishable, and punished by the laws of
+Providence,--you deserve, I say, unless you contrive to make Mr H. your
+substitute, which I think would be just, yourself to be the subject of
+the nocturnal visit of a vampyr. Your scepticism will abate pretty
+considerably, when you see him stealthily entering your room, yet are
+powerless under the fascination of his fixed and leaden eye--when you
+are conscious, as you lie motionless with terror, of his nearer and
+nearer approach,--when you feel his face, fresh with the smell of the
+grave, bent over your throat, while his keen teeth make a fine incision
+in your jugular, preparatively to his commencing his plain, but
+nutritive repast.
+
+You would look a little paler the next morning, but that would be all
+for the moment; for Fischer informs us, that the bite of a vampyr leaves
+in general no mark upon the person. But he fearfully adds, "it (the
+bite) is nevertheless speedily fatal, unless the bitten person protect
+himself by eating some of the earth from the grave of the vampyr, and
+smearing himself with his blood." Unfortunately, indeed, these measures
+are only of temporary use. Fischer adds, "if through these precautions
+the life of the victim be prolonged for a period, sooner or later he
+ends with becoming a vampyr himself; that is to say, he dies, and is
+buried, but continues to lead a vampyr life in the grave, nourishing
+himself by infecting others, and promiscuously propagating vampyrism."
+
+Now this is no romancer's dream. It is a succinct account of a
+superstition, which to this day survives in the east of Europe, where
+little more than a century ago it was frightfully prevalent. At that
+epoch, vampyrism spread like, an epidemic pestilence through Servia and
+Wallachia, causing innumerable deaths, and disturbing all the land with
+apprehension of the mysterious visitation, against which no one felt his
+life secure.
+
+This is something like a good solid practical popular delusion. Do I
+believe it?--to be sure I do; the facts are matter of history. The
+people died like sheep, and the cause and method of their dying was, in
+their belief, what has just been stated. You suppose, then, they died,
+frightened out of their lives; as men have died, whose pardon has been
+proclaimed when their necks were already on the block, of the belief
+that they were going to die? Well, if that were all, the subject would
+be worth examining; but there is more in it than that, as the following
+o'er true tale will convince you, the essential parts of which are
+attested by perfect documentary evidence.
+
+It was in the spring of 1727 that there returned from the Levant to the
+village of Meduegna, near Belgrade, one Arnod Paole, who, in a few years
+of military service and varied adventure, had amassed enough to purchase
+him a cottage, and an acre or two of land in his native place, where he
+gave out he meant to pass the remainder of his days. He kept his word.
+Arnod had yet scarcely reached the prime of manhood; and though he must
+have encountered the rough, as well as the smooth of life, and have
+mingled with many a wild and reckless companion, yet his natural good
+disposition, and honest principle, had preserved him unscathed amid the
+scenes he had passed through. At all events, such were the thoughts
+expressed by his neighbours, as they discussed his return and settlement
+among them in the stube of the village Hof. Nor did the frank and open
+countenance of Arnod, his obliging habits, and steady conduct, argue
+their judgment incorrect. Nevertheless, there was something
+occasionally, noticeable in his ways, a look and tone that betrayed
+inward inquietude. Often would he refuse to join his friends, or on some
+sudden plea abruptly quit their society. And he still more
+unaccountably, and as it seemed systematically, avoided meeting his
+pretty neighbour, Nina, whose father occupied the next tenement to his
+own. At the age of seventeen, Nina was as charming a picture as you
+could have seen, of youth, cheerfulness, innocence, and confidence in
+all the world. You could not look into her limpid eyes, which steadily
+returned your gaze, without seeing to the bottom of the pure and
+transparent spring of her thoughts. Then why did Arnod shrink from
+meeting her? He was young, had a little property, had health and
+industry, and he had told his friends he had formed no ties in other
+lands. Why, then, did he avoid the fascination of the pretty Nina, who
+seemed a being made to chase from any brow the clouds of gathering care?
+But he did so. Yet less and less resolutely; for he felt the charm of
+her presence; who could have done otherwise? and how could he at last
+resist--he didn't--the impulse of his fondness for the innocent girl who
+often sought to cheer his fits of depression?
+
+And they were to be united; were betrothed; yet still an anxious gloom
+would fitfully overcast his countenance even in the sunshine of those
+hours.
+
+"What is it, dear Arnod, that makes you sad? it cannot be on my account,
+I know; for you were sad before you ever noticed me; and that I think,"
+and you should have seen the deepening rose upon her cheek, as she
+added, "surely first made me notice you."
+
+"Nina," he answered, "I have done, I fear, a great wrong in trying to
+gain your affections. Nina, I have a fixed impression that I shall not
+live; yet, knowing this, I have selfishly made my existence necessary to
+your happiness."
+
+"How strangely you talk, dear Arnod! Who in the village is stronger and
+healthier than you? You feared no danger when you were a soldier; what
+danger do you fear as a villager of Meduegna?"
+
+"It haunts me, Nina."
+
+"But, Arnod, you were sad before you thought of loving me. Did you then
+fear to die?"
+
+"Ah, Nina, it is something worse than death:" and his vigorous frame
+shook with agony.
+
+"Arnod, I conjure you, tell me."
+
+"It was in Cossova this fate befel me. Here we have hitherto escaped the
+terrible scourge. But there they died, and the dead visited the living.
+I experienced a first frightful visitation, and I fled, but not till I
+had sought his grave, and exacted the dread expiation from the vampyr."
+
+Nina uttered a piercing cry, and fell senseless. Afterwards, they found
+a consolation in the length of time, now months, that had elapsed, since
+Arnod had left Cossova, during which no fearful visitant had again
+approached him; and they fondly began to hope _that_ gave them security.
+For the poor girl well knew from many a village tale the danger to which
+Arnod had been exposed.
+
+It is a strange world. The ills we fear often never befall us: the blows
+that reach us are for the most part unforeseen ones. One day, about a
+week after this conversation, Arnod missed his footing and fell from the
+top of his loaded hay-wagon. He was picked up stunned and insensible.
+They carried him home; where, after lingering some hours, he died; was
+buried; but _not_ forgotten.
+
+Twenty or thirty days after his decease, says the perfectly
+authenticated report of these transactions, several in the neighbourhood
+made complaints that they had been haunted by the deceased Arnod; and
+four of the number (among whom, there being nothing in the report to the
+contrary, I am afraid we may include poor Nina) died. To put a term to
+this fearful evil, the villagers were advised by their Heyduke, who had
+had before some experience in such matters, to disinter the body of
+Arnod Paole. This step was accordingly taken _forty days after his
+burial_.
+
+"The body," says the report, "was found in a perfectly fresh state, with
+no sign of decomposition. Fresh blood had recently escaped from its
+mouth, with which its shirt was wet. The skin (the epidermis, no doubt)
+had separated together with the nails, and there were new skin and nails
+underneath. As it was perfectly clear from these signs that he was a
+vampyr, conformably to the use established in such cases, they drove a
+stake through his heart.
+
+"Whereupon he gave an audible groan, and a quantity of blood flowed from
+him. The same day his body was burned to ashes, which were returned to
+the grave."
+
+The authorities further staked and burned the bodies of the four others,
+who were supposed to have been infected by Arnod: but no mention is
+made of the condition in which they were found.
+
+The adoption of this decisive, measure did not, however, entirely
+extinguish the evil, which continued still to hang about the village.
+About five years afterwards it had again become rife and very prevalent,
+and many again died of it. Whereupon the authorities determined to make
+a general clearance of the vampyrs in the churchyard of Meduegna, and
+for that purpose they had all the graves to which suspicion was
+directed, opened, and their contents dealt with conformably to the state
+in which they were found, of which the following is the medical report,
+here and there _abridged_ only:--
+
+1. A woman of the name of Stana, 20 years of age, who had died 3 months
+before of a 3 days' illness following her confinement. She had before
+her death avowed that she had anointed herself with the blood of a
+vampyr, to liberate herself from his persecution. Nevertheless she, as
+well as her infant, whose body through careless interment had been
+half-eaten by dogs, both had died. Her body was entirely free from
+decomposition. On opening it, the chest was found full of recently
+effused blood. The heart and blood-vessels contained no coagulated
+blood, and the bowels had exactly the appearances of sound health. The
+skin and nails of the hands and feet were loose and came off, but
+underneath lay new skin and nails.
+
+2. A woman of the name of Miliza, who had died at the end of a 3 months'
+illness. The body had been buried 90 and odd days. In the chest was
+liquid blood. The viscera were as in the former instance. The body was
+declared by the Heydukes who recognised it, to be in better condition
+and fatter than it had been in the woman's legitimate lifetime.
+
+3. The body of a child of 8 years old, that had likewise been buried 90
+days; it was in the vampyr condition.
+
+4. The son of a Heyduke, named Milloc 16 years old. The body had lain in
+the grave 9 weeks. He had died after 3 days' indisposition, and was in
+the condition of a vampyr.
+
+5. Joachim, likewise a Heyduke's son, 17 years old. He had died after a
+3 days' illness; had been buried 8 weeks and 4 days; was found in the
+vampyr state.
+
+6. A woman of the name of Rusha, who had died of an illness of 10 days'
+duration, and had been buried 6 weeks, in whom likewise fresh blood was
+found in the chest.
+
+[The reader will understand, that to see blood in the chest it is first
+necessary to _cut_ the chest open.]
+
+7. The body of a girl of 10 years of age, who had died 2 months before.
+It was likewise in the vampyr state, perfectly undecomposed, with blood
+in the chest.
+
+8. The body of the wife of one Hadnuck, buried 7 weeks before; and that
+of her infant, 8 weeks old, buried only 21 days. They were both in a
+state of decomposition, though buried in the same ground, and closely
+adjoining the others.
+
+9. A servant of the Heyduke of the place, by name Rhade, 23 years old;
+he had died after an illness of 3 months' duration, and the body had
+been buried 5 weeks. It was in a state of decomposition.
+
+10. The body of the Heyduke Stanco, 60 years of age, who had died six
+weeks before: there was much blood and other fluid in the chest and
+abdomen, and the body was in the vampyr condition.
+
+11. Milloc, a Heyduke, 25 years old. The body had been in the earth 6
+weeks. It was in the perfect vampyr condition.
+
+12. Stanjoika, the wife of a Heyduke, 20 years old; had died after an
+illness of three days, and had been buried 18 days. The countenance was
+florid, and of a high colour. There was blood in the chest and in the
+heart. The viscera were perfectly sound. The skin remarkably fresh.
+
+The document which gives these particulars is signed by three regimental
+surgeons, and formally countersigned by the lieutenant-colonel and a
+sub-lieutenant, it bears the date of June 7, 1732, Meduegna near
+Belgrade. No doubt can be entertained of its authenticity, nor of its
+_general_ fidelity; the less so, that it does not stand alone, but is
+supported by heaps of parallel evidence, only less rigorously
+verifiable. It appears to me to establish beyond a question, that,
+where the fear and belief of vampyrism is prevailing, and there occur
+several deaths after short illnesses, the bodies, when disinterred,
+weeks after burial, present the appearance of corpses, from which life
+has only recently departed.
+
+What inference shall we draw from this fact?--that vampyrism is true in
+the popular sense, and that these fresh-looking and well-conditioned
+corpses had some mysterious way of preternaturally nourishing
+themselves? That would be to adopt, not to solve the superstition. Let
+us content ourselves for the present with a notion less monstrous, but
+still startling enough: That the bodies, which were found in the
+so-called vampyr state, instead of being in a new and mystical
+condition, were simply alive in the common way; that, in short, they
+were the bodies of persons who had been buried alive; and whose life was
+only extinguished by the ignorance and barbarity of those who
+disinterred them. In the following sketch of a similar scene to that
+above described, the truth of this inference comes out with terrific
+force and vividness.
+
+Erasmus Francisi, in his remarks upon the description of the Archdukedom
+of Krain, by Valvasor, speaks of a man of the name of Grando, in the
+district of Kring, who died, was buried, and became a vampyr, and as
+such was exhumed for the purpose of having a stake thrust through him.
+
+"When they opened his grave, after he had been long buried, his face was
+found with a colour, and his features made natural sorts of movements,
+as if the dead man smiled. He even opened his mouth, as if he would
+inhale fresh air. They held the crucifix before him, and called in a
+loud voice, 'See, this is Jesus Christ who redeemed your soul from hell,
+and died for you.' After the sound had acted on his organs of hearing,
+and he had connected, perhaps, some ideas with it, tears began to flow
+from the dead man's eyes. Finally, when, after a short prayer for his
+poor soul, they proceeded to hack off his head, the corpse uttered a
+screech, and turned and rolled just as if it had been alive, and the
+grave was full of blood."
+
+Alive, then, the bodies surely were. And it is from this position, as a
+starting point, that we must follow and unravel the whole mystery, _if
+we dare_.
+
+Not that there is any particular virulence in this superstition, but
+that all superstitions are awkward things to deal with. They have their
+own laws, and run through definite stages, but always menace those who
+meddle with them. A superstition waxes and flourishes--that is its first
+stage; it then wanes in public opinion, is discredited, and is declared
+obsolete; that is stage the second. Eventually comes more enlightenment;
+its wonders are again admitted, but explained; the false in it separated
+from the true; this is its third and last period. And it may be
+remarked, that society is never safe against the reproduction of a
+superstition, till it has gone through this third stage (analogous to
+the disinterment and dissection of a vampyr); till then, it is always
+capable of "walking" again. But, which is singular, to the end the
+operation of explaining a superstition is unsafe, that is to say, if you
+step a quarter of an inch before the sagacious nose of the public. Of
+course, if any one should attempt to explain away a flourishing
+superstition, he would encounter, not martyrdom, perhaps, any more, but
+the persecution of opinion certainly, and the ban of society. But if he
+ventures upon the same process, even with one that is already put down,
+he is liable to be viewed and attacked as a credulous person, disposed
+to revive forgotten rubbish; for he has unwittingly affronted public
+opinion by asserting that to be worth examining, which society had
+proclaimed an error. Doubly wo to him if his explanation contain some
+startling novelty! But, courage! again,--
+
+The bodies disinterred and found in the so-called vampyr state, were
+then alive.
+
+But how could they, you ask, be alive after an interment of days or
+weeks? How is it possible they could lie without air, boxed up in a
+manner which would certainly kill a strong and healthy person in a few
+minutes or hours, and yet retain their vitality? I will not bring
+forward as favourable cases in point, the instances of frogs and toads
+that have been discovered in rocks, where they must have been encased
+for years or centuries, alive: first, because, although they are true,
+you might equally question these; secondly, because a human being cannot
+compete in vitality with a cold-blooded reptile. I shall content myself
+with falling back upon the evidence already adduced. The disinterred
+bodies _proved_, by their appearance, some even by their behaviour, that
+they were alive; and I shall retort upon you the question, how came you
+not to know that bodies could live under such circumstances a
+considerable length of time, and that many cases have transpired in
+which, totally _apart from vampyrism_, bodies have been found turned
+over in the coffin, through efforts made by them, when, after their
+burial, they had unhappily recovered consciousness?
+
+But what, then, was the pathological condition in which these persons
+continued to exist, after they had ceased to appear alive?
+
+It is just one of the profitable results of examining the superstition
+before us, that the above question becomes explicitly propounded, and
+its solution demanded of physiologists. Its solution cannot fail of
+being full of interest, but it is yet, unluckily, a desideratum, or,
+like the principle which gives motion to the divining rod, as yet only
+indicated and partially outlined.
+
+What is wanted is direct scientific examination, and verification by
+competent persons, of all the phenomena the body presents in these
+strange circumstances. In the absence, however, of recorded observation,
+let us imagine how the thing might come about.
+
+The series of effects surmised would not begin in the heart; analogy
+leads us to suppose that primary interruption of the heart's action for
+a very brief period is fatal. Somewhere in the Indian seas, death is
+inflicted by a backward blow with the elbow on the region of the heart;
+a sudden angina is produced, which is promptly fatal. Neither, upon
+similar showing, can it commence in obstructed breathing. Then the
+commencement of the changes must be sought in the brain. Now it is
+analogically by no means very improbable, that the functions of the
+nervous system admit of being brought to a complete stand-still, the
+wheels of the machinery locking, as it were, of a sudden, through some
+influence directly exerted upon _it_, and that this state of interrupted
+function should continue for a very considerable period, without loss of
+power of recovery. Nor would it be contrary to analogy that such an
+arrest of activity in the nervous system should stop, more or less
+completely, the act of breathing and the action of the heart, without at
+the same time the consequences following which result from either of
+these changes, _when they are primary_. The heart, when _not acting by
+order_, need not be supposed to lose its contractile force and tendency.
+The blood, though not moving, being in contact with living vessels, need
+not coagulate. There is no physiological absurdity in supposing such a
+general arrest of function, originating in the nervous system, and
+continuing an indefinite period without life being extinguished. If a
+swimmer be taken with cramp and sink, he is irretrievably dead in five
+minutes. But if he sink from a fit of epilepsy, he may remain a longer
+time under water, yet recover. But epilepsy is a form of loss of
+consciousness beginning in the nervous system--a kind of fit which may,
+under certain circumstances, be thus preservative of life. So may we
+presume, that in the singular cases we are considering, the body is but
+in another and deeper fit, which suspends the vital phenomena, and
+reduces its vitality to that of the unincubated egg, to simple life,
+without change, without waste or renewal. The body does not putrefy,
+because it is alive; it does not waste or require nourishment, because
+every action is stilled within it.
+
+But this must be a dull subject of speculation for you, and your mind is
+perhaps wandering thence to more practical views. It has struck you
+possibly, not without an uncomfortable misgiving, that this obscure, but
+unpleasant event may happen to yourself, and what on earth is there to
+prevent _your_ being buried alive?
+
+If you wish individually to be as safe as possible, leave by will to
+some eminent surgeon, not your habitual attendant, �50, and his railway
+expenses, &c., to be paid him for opening your body, when you are
+certainly dead; �25 if he opens you, finds you alive, and succeeds in
+sewing you up, and keeping you so; �200, on the contrary, to be expended
+in indicting him for manslaughter if you die under his hands. I do not
+venture to affirm that with all these precautions you would be perfectly
+safe. The eminent Vesalius, surgeon, and a favourite of the Emperor
+Charles V., with all his experience and knowledge, was unlucky enough to
+open a Spanish nobleman by mistake, while he was yet alive. The
+consequences, no doubt, were more serious than they would be now.
+Vesalius hardly escaped the claws of the Inquisition, and died during
+his expiatory pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
+
+If, more comprehensively, you should wish to save others, as well as
+yourself, from this awful risk, and have a friend in the legislature,
+urge him, or otherwise Mr Wakley, to move for the insertion in any
+convenient bill a clause to appoint in every district a qualified
+officer to license burials; he had better not be a practising doctor,
+but his office might embrace necroscopic inquiries for the coroner, and
+the registrarship of births and deaths.
+
+In either case, I would recommend you to offer publicly a premium of
+�500, to be paid at the expiration of three years, for the best treatise
+upon the signs of death; the same being calculated to form a useful body
+of instruction, as yet wanting, either for your private surgeon, or the
+new officials.
+
+In England, indeed, our decent respect for the dead, which leads us to
+postpone interment as long as possible, is a tolerable security against
+being buried alive. The coffin is seldom closed upon the remains, before
+decomposition has already commenced. _That_ is death's certain seal;
+nor, in the present state of our knowledge, special cases of course
+excepted, is it right to consider life surely extinct, till the impress
+of that seal is perceptible to the senses.
+
+On the Continent, generally, the interval observed before burial is far
+too short for safety. They calculate that in France from twenty to
+thirty are annually interred alive, computing from the number of those
+who, after supposed death, come to life before the funeral is completed.
+I cannot help imagining that this seeming death must be much less
+frequent in England than in some other countries; (is that owing to the
+more vigorous practice for which English medical men are celebrated,
+they either cure or kill?) In Germany, interment is forbidden by law for
+three days after death. And there is a curious and humane provision in
+the grave-houses attached to the cemeteries of some of the principal
+towns: Bodies which are brought too soon, not having performed the three
+days' quarantine, are received and lodged, being disposed upon tressles,
+with rings on their toes and fingers which are attached to bell-pulls.
+The corpse thus, on coming to itself, may have immediate attendance
+merely by ringing for it; some one is always there on the watch. But the
+humanity of this arrangement, though perfect as long as it lasts, is
+finite in duration. As soon as the seventy-two hours prescribed by law
+are expired, it is another thing. The body is then legally dead, and
+must comport itself accordingly. At any rate, it is at its own risk if
+it behaves otherwise than as a corpse, and gives itself any airs of
+vitality. This is appalling enough, and would certainly justify any
+body, if it could, in getting out at nights and turning vampyr.
+
+And now, to return again to our inquiry. We have got thus far. The
+bodies found in the so-called vampyr state are alive. They are in a sort
+of fit, the possible duration of which is undetermined. The same fit may
+occur, and does occur continually, with no reference to the superstition
+of vampyrism. But where the belief in vampyrism is rife, these fits are
+more prevalent, and spread sometimes like an epidemic.
+
+The question naturally follows, how is this malady, viewing it as one in
+these cases, propagated?
+
+At such seasons, it is far from improbable that there is some physical
+cause in operation, some meteorological influence perhaps, electrical or
+otherwise, disposing the system to be a readier prey to the seizure. As
+certain constitutions of the year alter the blood and lead to fever or
+cholera, why should not others render the nervous system irritable and
+proner to derangement?
+
+Then it is well known that fright will bring on certain kinds of
+fits--in women hysteric fits, in the youth of either sex epileptic fits;
+and certainly no ghastlier terror can there be than the accredited
+apprehension of vampyrism. And it deserves remark, that impressions upon
+the mind are known to be capable of shaping particular kinds of fits,
+and especially of exciting and determining the features of sensorial
+illusions, that seem adjuvants in vampyrism.
+
+We are able to creep yet a step nearer to the mark. There is great
+reason to believe that some human beings have had the power of throwing
+themselves into the state of seeming death, _voluntarily_. In Gooch's
+surgical works, there is an account of a Colonel Townsend, who asserted
+this of himself, and challenged Gooch to witness the performance. And
+you may read in the narrative of Gooch, how he and two or three other
+competent witnesses saw Colonel Townsend dispose himself to favour the
+invasion of this fit, and how he gradually fell into a state apparently
+devoid of animation. A very few years ago there was a story in the
+papers of a native in India, who undertook for a reward to do the same
+feat, and to allow himself to be buried for a stipulated period. A
+gentleman, certainly not of a credulous turn in general, told me he was
+in India at the time with his regiment; and, though not on the spot,
+that he knew the parties who brought the conjuror to work; and that he
+believed they positively buried him, and, at the end of the time agreed
+upon, disinterred him, and found him alive. But be _this_ story true or
+false, the case of Colonel Townsend remains to show the thing asserted
+to have been possible--and this remark may be safely added: Whatever
+change of the kind the will can bring about, can be twice as readily
+wrought by fear or a disturbed imagination.
+
+You are, I hope, or fear rather, by this time satiated with the
+marvellous and with the subject. What!--yet another question? Ay. How
+came this superstition to arise?
+
+The answer is ready. In those days the belief in ghosts was absolute,
+and a vampyr was a sort of ghost. When an ignorant person, that is, when
+any one in those days became the subject of a sensorial illusion
+representing a human being, to a certainty he identified the creation of
+his fancy as somebody he had seen or heard of; then he would tell his
+acquaintances that the ghost of such a person haunted him. If the fright
+brought on a fit, or seemed to cause his death, the neighbours would
+remember how he had before been haunted. Then, in any case, what more
+natural than to disinter the body of a supposed visitant, to know why he
+is unquiet in the grave? Then, if once a body so disinterred were found
+in the fresh and undecomposed state, the whole delusion would start into
+existence. The violence used would force blood from the corpse; and that
+would be construed into the blood of a victim. The absence of a scar on
+the throat of the victim, would throw no difficulty in the way to the
+vampyr theory, because vampyrs enjoyed the ghostly character, and all
+its privileges. Supposing, again, that at any time chance had brought to
+light a body interred alive, and lying still in this fit, the whole yarn
+of superstition might again have been spun from that clue.
+
+Do you want more than this? I shall begin to think you at heart
+superstitious. I tell you it is contrary to the rules of inductive
+logic, to look for, or to use more principles than are sufficient for
+the reasonable explanation of phenomena. Yet you urge, do you, that it
+is no less unphilosophical, in an obscure and unsettled inquiry, wholly
+to exclude the consideration of unlikely possibilities?--Well! it is
+nothing to me. Have it your own way: suppose, if you like, that the man
+in the grave _had_ something to do with spreading the disease, and that
+his nervous system, in its abnormal state, could put itself in relation
+with that of another person at a distance. If you like it, have it so.
+In one sense, it simplifies the matter. But though I cannot deny your
+supposition to be possible, you will excuse me if I profess to hold the
+solution, which I have myself given, to be sufficient.
+
+Well! _there_ is an end of the subject, at all events; and I accept your
+thanks for having told you all I know about vampyrism. I deserve them
+more than you are aware. At the churchyard in Meduegna, my dear Archy, I
+had you thoroughly in my power. I saw how your curiosity was raised, and
+that an picture I had drawn would have been accepted by you with
+avidity; and I must confess it did at one moment occur to me, to
+describe to you the exact dress and deportment of the three regimental
+surgeons, or Feldscherers, (a handsome word signifying field-barbers),
+John Flickinger, Isaac Stegel, and John Fredrick Baumgartner, as well as
+the behaviour and remarks of a drummer boy, who held the instrument case
+during the _intermortem_ examination, an event he witnessed for the
+first time. But I would not abuse my advantage; so I let you off cheaply
+with the sole fabrication of Nina, and the personal characteristics of
+Arnod Paole, of whom unfortunately nothing has come down to posterity,
+but that he was haunted by a vampyr at Cossova, fell from a hay-cart at
+Meduegna, and died, and lived a vampyr himself.
+
+    I remain, dear Archy,
+            Yours, &c.
+                  MAC DAVUS.
+
+
+LETTER III.
+
+
+SPIRITS, GOBLINS, GHOSTS.
+
+Dear Archy.--On what subject shall I next address you? Elves, goblins,
+ghosts, real and unreal; dreams, witchcraft, second-sight? Bless me! the
+field of marvels seems more thronged, as I approach it closer. The
+spirits I have evoked begin to scare me with their numbers. How on earth
+shall I ever get them fairly laid? But some, I see, can now only limp
+along--they are scotched already; I will begin with finishing these. Yet
+they deserve gentle treatment. They sprang from our nature, which seems
+expressly made to procreate and rear them. Thick, within and around us,
+lie the rich veins of illusive suggestion from which they spring.
+
+The thing nearest us is our mental constitution, the world of
+consciousness. It is of it we first learn, though it be the last we
+understand. It is that through which we perceive and apprehend all other
+things; and nothing becomes part of our knowledge but as it has been
+shaped and coloured by its magic reflexion. Nay, more, it is not only
+our mirror but our archetype for every thing. So we spiritualise the
+material universe, and afterwards, by an incongruous consistency,
+anthropomorphise spirit.
+
+Reason in vain reclaims against this misuse of analogy. Feeling,
+imagination, instinct are too many for her; and any mood, from fun to
+earnest, from nonsense to sublimity, may hear a responsive note when
+this chord is touched.
+
+Address to that ingenuous young American a remark upon the slightness of
+the legs of her work-table,--she blushes--her lively fancy has given
+them personality. Were she a wealthier miss, she would give them,
+besides, neat cambric trowsers with lace borders. With less refinement,
+and with inexcusable warmth, I take shame to myself for having bestowed
+a kick upon a similar mahogany limb, which had, however, begun the
+contest by breaking my shin.
+
+To the poet's eye, nature is instinct with life. Greece may be "living
+Greece no more"--in the soul of her people; but her immortal plains, and
+streams, and hills have their own vitality.
+
+    "The mountains _look_ on Marathon,
+    And Marathon _looks_ on the sea."
+
+You go to visit them; they meet you half-way: "spectatum veniunt."
+
+Amid the Alps--with glacier, torrent, forest around--you still evoke
+the fancied spirit of the scene, though it be but
+
+    "To gaze upon her beauty--nothing more."
+
+And where, in sublimer grandeur, snowclad, upreared against the nearer
+sun, are seen the towering Andes; to the poet's eye, the Cordillera lies
+no huge backbone of earth; but lives, a Rhoetus or Enceladus of the
+West, and
+
+            "over earth, air, wave,
+    Glares with his Titan eye."
+
+This is but the calm, the dignified, the measured march of poetical
+conception. No wonder, when superstition steps in to prick on
+imagination, that all should vividly team with spirit life. Or that on
+Walpurgis' night, bush and streamlet and hill bustle and hurry, with
+unequal pace, towards the haunted Brocken: the heavy ones lag, indeed, a
+little, and are out of breath--
+
+    "The giant-snouted crags, ho! ho!
+    How they snort and how they blow!"
+
+No wonder that to the dreamer's eye, in tranquil scenes of sylvan
+solitude the fawn of yore skipped in the forest dell, the dryad peeped
+from behind the shadowy oak, the fay tripped lightly over the moonlit
+sward.
+
+But enough, and too much, of "your philosophy." Yet there are those
+still who may be the wiser for it. Let me sketch you a believer in the
+creed it would dispel.
+
+He was a Spanish West-Indian--in his active years had been an extensive
+planter and slave-owner in Porto Rico. His manners were grave and
+dignified, as due to himself; courteous, as not denying equal or
+superior worth in others. He had seen the world, and spoke of it
+habitually with a fine irony. We had many a walk together. He was
+nervous about his health. One day, as our path lay along the banks of
+the Rhine, his conversation took this turn:--
+
+"Do you believe in spirits?" he asked me; and upon my intimating the
+polite but qualified assent which suited the tone in which the question
+was put--"It may be superstition," he continued, "but I am often
+inclined to think that the pucks and goblins, which, as they say, once
+haunted these scenes, are not entirely visionary beings. You may
+smile--but this has happened, nay, often, happens, to me in my walks. I
+see a big clod before me in the path, and form the intention of avoiding
+it; when close to it, I step to one side, when pr-r-rt, my toe strikes
+against it."
+
+I edged slightly away from my companion with the disagreeable impression
+that he was gone mad.
+
+He went on;--"When I lived in the West Indies, the children of the
+slaves, about my house, were treated with great kindness and indulgence.
+They would come about my table at dessert, and often had little presents
+given them. So they grew into objects of affection. But, out of several,
+some, of course, took ill and died. I cannot tell you what grief it
+caused me. Then this has happened several times, after the death of one
+or other of my little favourites:--a bird has flown into the hall, and
+into my sitting-room, and has hovered near me, and, after a while, has
+flown away. For a few days it has regularly returned, and then finally
+disappeared. I thought it was tenanted by the spirit of my lost
+favourite, which had come to bid me farewell."
+
+I drew nearer again to my companion. I felt I was in all events safe
+from violence from him. And I contrasted, with humiliation, his
+beautiful superstition with the commonplace remembrance of a school-boy
+conviction of my own, one dark night, upon Blackheath, that a
+direction-post was a ghost.
+
+My friend had not, indeed, always been a dreamer: and although this is
+no place to narrate his course of daring and hazardous adventure, on
+which I am therefore silent, yet I wish to be allowed to re-establish
+his credit for intelligence, by reporting the answer which he made, on
+another occasion, to a question, as to what he thought of the
+emancipation of the Negroes in our colonies. "The principle," answered
+my friend, "was good, but you were in too great a hurry. Before giving
+them freedom, you should have made them fit for it. They were not
+impatient. Slavery is an African institution. Some outlay of public
+money, and extreme care and prudence in your measures, would have
+enabled you to secure their humane treatment in the interval. As fast
+as they became innoculated with the wants and habits of civilised life,
+you might have made _freedmen_ of the most advanced, and given them
+official occupation, or allotted them land under proper conditions. One
+sheep would have followed another. The fag-end you might have
+emancipated together. Thirty or forty years, and a million of money,
+would have done the thing. The results would have been, from first to
+last, beneficial to the colonists. It would have set an example which
+other nations _could_ have followed. It would have been a noble return
+for having, temporarily, used the race as unmitigated slaves. It would
+have been an act of enlightened philanthropy. It would have become
+statesmen. What you did reads and works like the puerile suggestion of a
+school-boy's theme. What you are further doing, to suppress, by force,
+the trade in slaves, would have been worthy my distinguished countryman
+whose biography has immortalised Cervantes. Humanity would smile at it,
+but that she shudders and sickens."
+
+But, to leave the region of dreams, which are no longer realisable, let
+us shift the scene.
+
+The churchyard has its nightly terrors. One heard of corpse-lights seen
+dancing over graves--but over some alone. A few only had witnessed this;
+but _they_ had no doubt on the matter. Things looked "uncanny;" but time
+did not pause, and the story was forgotten. Even when the tale was
+fresh, what was it but superstition? Who of those who hugged its
+sympathetic terrors by the Christmas fireside, thought they could be
+true on the bright frosty morning of the morrow? It was mere fancy.
+There was nothing in it. Yet there _was_ something. And now and then a
+striking and mysterious event would occur to bring back the old idea.
+There was a cottage, (this I heard of a certainty,) in a hamlet I could
+name, to which a bad report attached. A room in it was haunted. More
+than one who had slept there had seen, at midnight, the luminous
+apparition of a little child standing upon the hearth-stone. At length
+suspicion became active. The hearth-stone was raised, and there were
+found, buried beneath it, the remains of an infant. A story was now
+divulged, how the former tenant and a female of the neighbourhood had, a
+very few years before, abruptly left the village. The apparition here
+was real and significant enough.
+
+    "It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood.
+    Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak:
+    Augurs and understood relations have,
+    By magot-pyes, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth
+    The secret'st man of blood."
+
+But tales like these, though true, gradually lose the sharpness of their
+evidence for want of an accredited contemporary narrator, and so become
+valueless. But time brings round every thing.
+
+And at length a marvellous narrative, to the same effect with the above,
+made its appearance in a trustworthy German work, _P. Kieffer's
+Archives_, the complete authentication of which caused it to make a deep
+impression. The narrative was communicated by Herr Ehrman of Strasburg,
+the son-in-law of the well-known German writer Pfeffel, from whom he
+received it.
+
+The ghost-seer was a young candidate for orders, eighteen years of age,
+of the name of Billing. He was known to have very excitable nerves,--had
+already experienced sensorial illusions, and was particularly sensitive
+to the presence of human remains, which made him tremble and shudder in
+all his limbs. Pfeffel, being blind, was accustomed to take the arm of
+this young man, and they walked thus together in Pfeffel's garden, near
+Colmar. At one spot in the garden Pfeffel remarked, that his companion's
+arm gave a sudden start, as if he had received an electric shock. Being
+asked what was the matter, Billing replied, "nothing." But, on their
+going over the same spot again, the same effect recurred. The young man
+being pressed to explain the cause of his disturbance, avowed that it
+arose from a peculiar sensation which he always experienced when in the
+vicinity of human remains; that it was his impression a human body must
+be interred there; but that if Pfeffel would return with him at night,
+he should be able to speak with more confidence. Accordingly, they went
+to the garden together when it was dark, and as they approached the
+spot, Billing observed a faint light over it. At two paces from it, he
+stopped and would go no further; for he saw hovering over it, or
+self-supported in the air, its feet only a few inches from the ground, a
+luminous female figure, nearly five feet high, with the right arm folded
+on her breast, the left hanging by her side. When Pfeffel himself
+stepped forward and placed himself about where the figure was, Billing
+said it was now on his right hand, now on his left, now behind, now
+before him. When Pfeffel cut the air with his stick, it seemed as if it
+went through and divided a light flame, which then united again. The
+visit, repeated the next night, in company with some of Pfeffel's
+relatives, gave the same result. _They_ did not see any thing. Pfeffel,
+then, unknown to the ghost-seer, had the ground dug up, when there was
+found at some depth, beneath a layer of quicklime, a decomposing human
+body. The remains were removed, and the earth carefully replaced. Three
+days afterwards, Billing, from whom this whole proceeding had been kept
+concealed, was again led to the spot by Pfeffel. He walked over it now
+without experiencing any unusual impression whatever.
+
+This extraordinary phenomenon, it is now generally known, has been
+completely elucidated through the discoveries of Von Reichenbach, to
+which, in a former letter, I had occasion to make allusion.
+
+You are probably aware, that the individuals whose nerves Von
+Reichenbach found to be so sensitive to the proximity of crystals,
+magnets, &c., would, in the dark, see flames issuing from the same
+substances. Then, in the progress of his inquiries, Von Reichenbach
+found that chemical decomposition was a rich source of the new power he
+had discovered, by its action on the nerves. And being acquainted with
+the story of the ghost in Pfeffel's garden at Colmar, it occurred to him
+as not unlikely, that Billing had just been in the same condition with
+his own sensitive patients, and that graves very likely would present to
+all of them a luminous _aura_; and that thus the mystery might find a
+very simple explanation.
+
+Accordingly, Miss Reichel, one of his most sensitive subjects, was taken
+at night to an extensive burying-ground, near Vienna, where many
+interments take place daily, and there were some thousand graves. The
+result did not disappoint Von Reichenbach's expectations. Whithersoever
+Miss Reichel turned her eyes, she saw masses of flame. This appearance
+manifested itself most about recent graves. About very old ones it was
+not visible. She described the appearance as resembling less bright
+flame than fiery vapour, something between fog and flame. In several
+instances, the light extended four feet in height above the ground. When
+Miss Reichel placed her hand in it, it seemed to her involved in a cloud
+of fire. When she stood in it, it came up to her throat. She expressed
+no alarm, being accustomed to the appearance.
+
+The mystery has thus been entirely solved. For it is evident that the
+spectral character of the luminous apparition in the two instances I
+have narrated had been supplied by the imagination of the seers. So the
+superstition has vanished, leaving, as is usual, a very respectable
+truth behind it.
+
+It is indeed a little unlucky for this new truth, which reveals either a
+new power in nature or an unexpected operation of familiar ones, that
+the phenomena which attest it are verifiable by a few only who are
+possessed of highly sensitive temperaments. And it is the use of the
+world to look upon these few as very suspicious subjects. This is
+unjust. Their evidence, the parties having otherwise a character for
+honesty, should be accepted with the same faith and the same distrust
+with which all evidence is to be viewed; with neither more nor less than
+in other cases. Nothing should be received in scientific inquiry which
+it is not compulsory on our understanding to believe. It is not a whit
+more difficult in these than in other cases to obtain inductive
+certainty. Nature is not here peculiarly coy or averse from being
+interrogated.
+
+Philosophers occasionally regret the limited number of their senses, and
+think a world of knowledge would flow from their possessing but one
+more. Now, persons of highly-wrought nervous systems have what is
+equivalent to a new sense, in their augmentation of natural sensibility.
+But philosophers will not accept this equivalent. They must have the
+boon from nature their own way, or not at all.
+
+To turn elsewhere.--We may now look into a broader seam of illusive
+power--one which lies entirely within ourselves, and needs no objective
+influence to bring its ghost-producing fertility into play. Let me
+exemplify it in operation.
+
+A young gentleman, who has recently left Oxford, told me, that he was
+one evening at a supper-party in college, when they were joined by a
+common friend on his return from hunting. They expected him, but were
+struck with his appearance. He was pale and agitated. On questioning
+him, they learned the cause. During the latter part of his ride home, he
+had been accompanied by a horseman, who kept exact pace with him, the
+rider and horse being facsimiles of himself and the steed he rode, even
+to the copy of a newfangled bit he sported that day for the first time.
+The apparition vanished on his entering the town. He had, in fact, seen
+his double or fetch, and it had shaken his nerves pretty considerably.
+His friends advised him to consult the college tutor, who failed not to
+give him some good advice, and hoped the warning would not be thrown
+away. My informant, who thought the whole matter very serious, and was
+disposed to believe the unearthly visit to have been no idle one, added,
+that it _had_ made the ghost-seer, for the time at all events, a wiser
+and better man.
+
+In more ignorant times, the appearance of one's fetch was held to be of
+very alarming import, and to menace either death or serious personal
+harm. Now, it is known to be one of the commonest forms in which
+_sensorial illusions_ shape themselves. And these are matters of
+every-day occurrence.
+
+It would seem, that when the blood is heated or the nervous system
+over-strained, we are liable to attach reality to the mere productions
+of the imagination. There must be few who have not had personal
+experience of this affection. In the first night of a febrile attack,
+and often in the progress of fever, the bed-hangings appear to the
+patient swarming with human faces, generally of a disagreeable and
+menacing expression. With some, opium will produce a host of similar
+visitants. In much illness, I have often myself taken this drug, and
+always hoped it would provide me a crop of apparitions that I might
+analyse. But I was disappointed; opium I found to give me only a great
+tranquillity and clearness of thought. Once or twice only have I had a
+vision, and that but a transitory landscape. I used in vain to look upon
+that _black mixture_ which lies before one in the dark, and try to make
+its fragmentary lights arrange themselves into definite shapes. And I
+have imaged to my mind familiar scenes or faces, (as in the daytime a
+strong conception will half realise such,) but they were not more
+distinct then than formerly,--ideas only and perfectly transient. But,
+as I have said, once or twice I have had the satisfaction of seeing a
+bright and coloured landscape spread before my view; yet unlike reality,
+and more resembling a diorama, occupying a rectangle on the black
+mixture before my eyes. It was not a known and familiar scene, but a
+brilliant sketch, made out of materials I remembered, but could not by a
+deliberate effort _have combined_ so effectively. It was a spontaneous
+throe of the imagination, which had force to overpersuade the organs of
+perception.
+
+How well did Shakspeare understand this creative power of the
+fancy!--the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth, and his test--"come, let me
+clutch thee!" are physiologically perfect. Nor less perfect or true to
+nature, is the conception of the ghost of Banquo haunting the kingly
+murderer. The ghost, it is obvious, however, should not in the play
+appear bodily. The audience are in the position of the guests at the
+royal supper-table, who saw it not. I wonder how in Shakspeare's time
+the stage-directions ran upon this point. Probably as now. Though
+Shakspeare wrote for all times, he was probably wise enough to act for
+the present. Or perhaps, with no disrespect to his unequalled genius, he
+understood not the principles of which he exactly portrayed the
+workings, and was, like Shelley's poet,
+
+    "Hidden in the light of thought."
+
+So, some say the sun may be dark as another planet; and that the spots
+on it are its common earth seen through the gaps in its luminous
+atmosphere.
+
+To the world, the alpha and omega of this piece of philosophy were
+furnished by the publication of the case of Nicolai, the bookseller of
+Berlin. Its details were read before the Academy of Sciences at Berlin,
+in 1799. The _substance_ ran thus. Nicolai had had some family troubles
+which much annoyed him. Then, on the 21st of February 1791, there stood
+before him, at the distance of ten paces, the ghost of his eldest son.
+He pointed at it, directing his wife to look. She saw it not, and tried
+to convince him that it was an illusion. In a quarter of an hour it
+vanished. In the afternoon, at four o'clock, it came again. Nicolai was
+alone. He went to his wife's room--the ghost followed him. About six
+other apparitions joined the first, and they walked about, among, and
+through each other. After some days the apparition of his son stayed
+away; but its place was filled with the figures of a number of persons,
+some known, some unknown to Nicolai--some of dead, others of living
+persons. The known ones were distant acquaintances only. The figures of
+none of Nicolai's habitual friends were there. The appearances were
+almost always human: exceptionally, a man on horseback, with dogs and
+birds would present themselves. The apparitions came mostly after
+dinner, at the commencement of digestion. They were just like real
+persons; the colouring a thought fainter. The apparitions were equally
+distinct whether Nicolai was alone or in society, by day as in the dark,
+in his own house or those of others; but in the latter case they were
+less frequent, and they very seldom presented themselves in the streets.
+During the first eight days they seemed to take very little notice of
+each other, but walked about like people at a fair, only here and there
+communing with each other. They took no notice of Nicolai, or of his
+remarks about them to his wife and physician. No effort of his would
+dismiss them, or bring an absent one back. When he shut his eyes, they
+sometimes disappeared, sometimes remained; when he opened his eyes, they
+were there as before. After a week they became more numerous, and began
+to converse. They conversed with each other, and then addressed him.
+Their remarks were short and unconnected, but sensible and civil. His
+acquaintances inquired after his health, and expressed sympathy for him,
+and spoke in terms comforting him. The apparitions were most conversible
+when he was alone; nevertheless they mingled in the conversation when
+others were by, and their voices had the same sound as those of real
+persons. This illusion went on thus from the 24th of February to the
+20th of April; so that Nicolai, who was in good bodily health, had time
+to become tranquillised about them, and to observe them at his ease. At
+last they rather amused him. Then the doctors thought of an efficient
+plan of treatment. They prescribed leeches: and then followed the
+_denouement_ to this interesting representation. The apparitions became
+pale and vanished. On the 20th of April, at the time of applying the
+leeches, Nicolai's room was full of figures moving about among each
+other. They first began to have a less lively motion; shortly afterwards
+their colours became paler--in another half hour fainter still, though
+the forms still remained. About seven o'clock in the evening, the
+figures had became colourless, and they moved scarcely at all, but their
+outline was still tolerably perfect. Gradually that became less and less
+defined. At last they disappeared, breaking into air, fragments only
+remaining, which at last all vanished. By eight o'clock all were gone,
+and Nicolai subsequently saw no more of them.
+
+Other cases are on record in which there was still greater facility of
+ghost-production than Nicolai evinced. One patient could, for instance,
+by thinking of a person, summon his apparition to join the others. He
+could not, however, having done this, subsequently banish him. The sight
+is the sense most easily and frequently tricked; next, the hearing. In
+some extraordinary cases the touch, also, has participated in the
+delusion.
+
+Herr von Baczko, already subject to visual hallucinations, of a diseased
+nervous system, his right side weak with palsy, his right eye blind, and
+the vision of the left imperfect, was engaged one evening, shortly after
+the battle of Jena, as he tells us in his autobiography, in translating
+a brochure into Polish, when he felt a poke in his loins. He looked
+round, and found that it proceeded from a Negro or Egyptian boy,
+seemingly about twelve years of age. Although he was persuaded the whole
+was an illusion, he thought it best to knock the apparition down, when
+he felt that it offered a sensible resistance. The Negro then attacked
+him on the other side, and gave his left arm a particularly disagreeable
+twist, when Baczko pushed him off again. The Negro continued to visit
+him constantly during four months, preserving the same appearance, and
+remaining tangible; then he came seldomer; and, after finally appearing
+as a brown-coloured apparition with an owl's head, he took his leave.
+
+The illusion and its principle having been thus elucidated, it is hardly
+worth while to look into its operation in tales of vulgar terror. But it
+is highly interesting to trace its effects on minds of a high order,
+when its suggestions have been received and interpreted as the visits
+and communications of superior beings. You have heard, I dare say, my
+dear Archy, of the mysticism of Schwedenborg. Now that they are
+explained, the details of his hallucinations are highly gratifying to
+one's curiosity.
+
+Schwedenborg, the son of a Swedish clergyman of the name of Schwedberg,
+ennobled as Schwedenborg, was, up to the year 1743, which was the
+fifty-fourth of his age, an ordinary man of the world, distinguished
+only in literature, having written many volumes of philosophy and
+science, and being Professor in the Mineralogical school, where he was
+much respected. On a sudden, in the year 1743, he believed himself to
+have got into a commerce with the world of spirits, which so fully took
+possession of his thoughts, that he not only published their
+revelations, but was in the habit of detailing, with the greatest
+equanimity, his daily chat with them. Thus he says, "I had a
+conversation the other day on that very point with the Apostle Paul," or
+with Luther, or some other dead person. Schwedenborg continued in what
+he believed to be daily communion with spirits till his death, in 1772.
+He was, without doubt, in the fullest degree convinced of the reality of
+his spiritual commerce. So in a letter to the Wirtemburg prelate,
+Oetinger, dated November 11, 1766, he uses the following words:--"If I
+have spoken with the Apostles? To this I answer, I conversed with St
+Paul during a whole year, particularly on the text, Romans iii. 28. I
+have three times conversed with St John, once with Moses, and a hundred
+times with Luther, who allowed that it was against the warning of an
+angel that he professed '_fidem solam_,' and that he stood alone upon
+the separation from the Pope. With angels, finally, have I these
+twenty-two years conversed, and converse daily.
+
+"Of the angels," he says, "they have human forms, the appearance of men
+that I have a thousand times seen; for I have spoken with them as a man
+with other men, often with several together; and have seen nothing in
+the least to distinguish them from ordinary men." [They had evidently
+just the appearance of Nicolai's visitors.] "Lest any one should call
+this an illusion, or imaginary perception, it is to be understood that I
+am accustomed to see them, when perfectly myself wide awake, and in full
+exercise of my observation. The speech of an angel or of a spirit sounds
+like, and as loud as, that of a man, but it is not heard by the
+bystanders; the reason is, that the speech of an angel or a spirit finds
+entrance first into a man's thoughts, and reaches his organs of hearing
+from within outwards." This is indeed _cum ratione insanire_! how just
+an analysis of the illusion, when he is most deceived by it!
+
+"The angels who converse with men, speak not in their own language, but
+in the language of men, and likewise in other languages which are
+inwardly known to man, not in languages which he does not understand."
+Schwedenborg here took up the angels, and to explain their own ideas to
+them observed, that they most likely appeared to speak his mother
+tongue, _because, in fact_, it was not they who spoke, but himself by
+their suggestion. The angels held out, however, and went away
+unconvinced.
+
+"When approaching, the angels often appear like a ball of light; and
+they travel in companies so grouped together--they are allowed so to
+unite by the Lord--that they may act as one being, and share each
+others' ideas and knowledge; and in this form they bound through the
+universe, from planet to planet."
+
+I will, in conclusion, add another different, but equally interesting
+sketch.
+
+"It is now seven years ago," so spoke, before her judges, the simple,
+but high-minded Joan of Arc--"the beginning of the year 1431; it was a
+summer day, towards the middle hour, I was about thirteen years old, and
+was in my father's garden, that I heard for the first time, on my right
+hand towards the church, a voice, and there stood a figure in a bright
+radiance before my eyes. It had the appearance and look of a right good
+and virtuous man, bore wings, was surrounded with light on all sides,
+and by the angels of Heaven. It was the Archangel Michael. The voice
+seemed to me to command respect; but I was yet a child, and was
+frightened at the figure, and doubted very much whether it was the
+archangel! I saw him and the angels as distinctly before my eyes as I
+now see you, my judges." With words of encouragement the archangel
+answered to her, that God had taken pity upon France, and that she must
+hasten to the assistance of the king. At the same time he promised her
+that St Catherine and St Margaret would shortly visit her; he told her
+that she should do what they commanded her, because they were sent by
+God to guide and conduct her. "Upon this," continued Joan, "St Catherine
+and St Margaret appeared to me, as the angel had foretold. They ordered
+me to get ready to go to Robert de Beaudricourt, the king's captain. He
+would several times refuse me, but at last would consent, and give me
+people, who would conduct me to the king. Then should I raise the siege
+of Orleans. I replied to them that I was a poor child, who understood
+nothing about riding on horseback and making war. They said I should
+carry my banner with courage; God would help me, and win back for my
+king his entire kingdom. As soon as I knew," continued Joan, "that I was
+to proceed on this errand, I avoided, as much as I could, afterwards
+taking part in the sports and amusements of my young companions."----"So
+have the Saints conducted me during seven years, and have given me
+support and assistance in all my need and labours; and now at present,"
+said she to her judges, "no day goes by, but they come to me."----"I
+seldom see the Saints that they are not surrounded with a halo of light;
+they wear rich and precious crowns, as it is reasonable they should. I
+see them always under the same forms, and have never found in their
+discourse any discrepancies. I know how to distinguish one from the
+other, and distinguish them as well by the sound of their voices as by
+their salutation. They come often without my calling upon them. But when
+they do not come, I pray to the Lord that he will send them to me; and
+never have I needed them but they have visited me."
+
+Such is part of the defence of the high-spirited Joan of Arc, who was
+taken prisoner by the Duke of Burgundy on the 23d of May 1430--sold by
+him for a large sum to the English, and by them put on her trial as a
+heretic, idolatress, and magician--condemned, and finally burned alive,
+the 30th of May 1431. Ill-fated heroine! I seem to be thinking of
+writing her epitaph, but I am considering only that there is more to
+come out of her evidence. For although her heavenly visitants were
+simply sensorial illusions, there yet remains something unexplained. How
+came she to foresee the path she was destined to follow? The inquiry
+would launch us on a broad and wild sea of conjecture, for the
+navigation of which we have not yet the requisite charts on board, and
+it grows late--so good-night, dear Archy.
+
+    "Suadentque cadentia sidera somnum."
+        "Cras ingens iterabimus �quor."
+
+    Yours, &c.,
+            MAC DAVUS.
+
+
+
+
+A NEW SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.
+
+THE BATHS OF MONT DOR.
+
+
+There is a tremendous valley opening all the way down, from the central
+summits of the ridge of the Monts Dor, quite into the undulating, and
+thence into the flat country, lying westward of this mountain chain.
+Where the valley commences, it is nothing more than a combination of
+mountain gullies, and is like a wild and precipitous ravine; but by
+degrees it widens out into spacious amphitheatres, and at times
+contracts itself again so as barely to allow of a struggling river to
+make its way betwixt the rocky sides. In some places, the valley makes a
+straight reach four or five miles in extent, but in others, winds and
+turns about in abrupt and varied curves; its descent is now gradual, and
+now rapid, where the stream dashes over ledges of rock or cuts its way
+through some rough and stubborn pass. Nearly all the ravines and smaller
+valleys that open into it bring down their contributions of mountain
+torrents; and the whole collection of waters, thus wending their way to
+the ocean, form what is called the Dor. This river meets with the Dogne
+lower down in its course; and, under the joint name of the two waters,
+the flood rushes broad and strong through Guienne into the Gironde. The
+high and bare mountain whence the Dor derives its principal source is
+the Pic de Sancy, the loftiest hill in the middle of France; it is the
+king of all the volcanoes of this vast igneous chain, and has its sides
+deeply furrowed and excavated into immense craters or volcanic vents.
+From it proceed numerous branches or arms, composed of basaltic currents
+congealed into columnar masses in the early days of the world. These
+stretch out league after league, away from their parent head, and
+present on their tops vast plateaux of green and moory pasture-land;
+while their sides are either abrupt precipices of basaltic columns, or
+else are clothed with primeval forests, which have sprung up and still
+flourish on the rich materials of their decomposing slopes. The valley
+of the Dor is therefore shut in either by precipitous volcanic walls, or
+is guarded by sombre woods. Once on the tops of the plateaux, and you
+may ride a whole day on unbroken turf; or, if you penetrate within the
+forest lands, you may wander for any time you please, days or weeks,
+without seeing either their beginning or their end. On the summits of
+the mountains around, snow is to be found in patches, even in the
+hottest days of summer; and as the Pic de Sancy is more than six
+thousand feet above the level of the sea, almost every gradation of
+climate is to be found amongst these lonely hills. In the dog-days, the
+valleys are so hot that you gladly escape to the upper lands for air and
+coolness; but the winter sets in, in October, and the valley of the Dor
+is then covered deep with snow for many a long month. The Dor itself is
+a pleasant lively stream: it can boast of some picturesque falls here
+and there, but it is commonly a "brawling brook," winding about at its
+pleasure; allowing itself to be forded every now and then; and producing
+plenty of small trout for those who like to waste their time in fishing.
+
+The urchins of the peasant tribe know how to get these finny creatures
+more cannily than the professed angler; you may see them on a summer's
+morning wading up the stream, and hunting under every stone, and in each
+little pool, for the objects of their search. As soon as they see a
+trout, they drive it into little convenient nooks that they know of, and
+there--how they manage it nobody knows, but the result is certain--they
+catch them with their hands or knock them on the head with their sticks;
+and will always produce you a respectable dish at a few hours' notice.
+
+About a couple of leagues below the Pic de Sancy, towards the west, one
+of the plateaux on the northern side of the valley assumes an
+exceedingly bold and regular appearance; it is called the Plateau de
+l'Angle--perhaps from its making, by an abrupt termination, the corner
+of two valleys; and it towers out like a promontory at sea, soaring
+some four or five hundred feet above the bed of the river. Not very far
+from where this plateau is cut off--a mile or so--there is a bold
+cascade dashing over its side, and carrying off the superfluous waters
+of a pool and morass higher up in the bosom of the mountains. Here the
+basaltic precipice is hollowed out into a circling chasm, and over its
+black face rushes the impetuous stream upon a huge chaos of rocks and
+debris below, foaming and roaring until it finds its way into the Dor
+far down in the valley at its foot. A few hundred feet to the westward
+of this cascade, and at the lowest part of the precipitous columnar
+cliff, burst forth several copious fountains of hot mineral waters,
+half-way to boiling heat when they leave their rocky cells, and ever
+keeping up the same degree both of heat and quantity. These are the
+springs which give celebrity to the place, and constitute the baths of
+Mont Dor.
+
+The Romans--those true "rerum domini"--knew of the spot, as they did of
+most other good things within their wide empire; and they frequented
+these springs so much that they erected over them a magnificent bathing
+establishment, and adorned the spot with a beautiful temple. In the
+midst of the present village stand the remains of one and the other of
+their buildings; and thus the hydropathic system of the ancients is
+allied with the practice of the modern Acad�mie de M�decine. No records
+of the destruction, nor indeed of the existence, of this Roman
+watering-place have been preserved; probably, the buildings fell into
+natural decay, and during the middle ages were allowed to remain
+unrepaired and unheeded. Only foundations, broken shafts of columns,
+cornices, capitals, and altars are now discernible; but they are enough
+to add greatly to the interest of the locality.
+
+At Saint Nectaire, two leagues further down the valley, and indeed at
+other spots in it, thermal sources not much inferior to those of Mont
+Dor are to be met with; the whole district bears intimate evidence of
+its volcanic nature, and the rheumatic or dyspeptic invalid may here get
+stewed or washed out to his full satisfaction and lasting benefit.
+
+The village of Mont Dor-les-Bains is, however, that which has been
+selected by the _beau monde_ of France as one of their choicest places
+of resort; and here public money has been added to the efforts of
+private speculation in order to render the baths at once ample and
+commodious. Over the best sources is erected a large edifice, the lower
+story of which is occupied by halls, and bathing-rooms for every variety
+of medical purpose; while above are assembly-rooms, and the apartments
+of the Government physician.
+
+The distribution below is most convenient. The water, after issuing from
+the rock, is conveyed by distinct channels into numerous baths contained
+in small chambers on either side of a large central hall: while other
+conduits take it to plunging and swimming baths, to douches, and to
+other medical contrivances. In the small single baths you receive the
+water piping hot from the rock, at about one hundred degrees of
+Fahrenheit; and you may lie there, bolling away--for a constant supply
+of the same natural water keeps running into and through your bath--for
+hours together, upon payment of _a franc_. The water costs nothing; the
+building has been erected at the public expense, and the visitor
+therefore enjoys this luxury at a moderate rate. For the poorer class of
+patients gratuitous baths are provided; and in fact the gifts of nature
+are here grudged to no one, but every man's wants may be gratified in a
+liberal manner.
+
+By four o'clock in the morning of a summer day, you may see a train of
+ghost-like beings winding along the village street, clad in the simple
+attire of a chemise, a blanket, and the eternal nightcap--lean,
+sallow-faced, or crippled mortals, who have had the wise precaution to
+undress at home, and not being afraid of shocking the wood-nymphs from
+their propriety, sally forth to court the Goddess of Health. They
+congregate in a dark cellar-like chamber, round an ample and steaming
+pool, and then sink into it, to forget for a while all their pains and
+maladies, and to enjoy that indescribably delightful sensation of having
+the joints gently unscrewed and fresh oiled. Others, whose shoulders
+and backs have known the pangs of lumbago and acute rheumatism, are put
+under one of the douches; and down comes on them a discharge of the hot
+fluid as if from the hose of a fire-engine, or as though shot out from
+some bursting steam-boiler. Away fly the pains and troubles of humanity;
+the rickety machine is put in order for that day at least, and
+twenty-four hours of peaceful enjoyment is the almost invariable
+consequence.
+
+Later on in the morning, the fashionable visitors crawl forth to the
+baths; but not so late that nine o'clock does not see them all safely
+housed again after their ablutions, shaving or curling away with might
+and main to get ready for a grand _d�jeuner_. For here, as at Bath, not
+only is it well to remember the inscription,--
+
+    "[Greek: ariston men ud�r]"
+
+but it would be advisable to add,
+
+    "[Greek: Br�ma de megist�n]:"
+
+seeing that the appetite which is got up by all this early rising, and
+steaming, and washing, is doomed to be satisfied in a way fully worthy
+of the most refined French _cuisine_.
+
+In the village there are numerous hotels and boarding-houses, capable of
+suiting the pockets and the wishes of all the middling, and even of the
+lower classes of society:--but there are three or four principal
+houses,--and especially two, reserved for the aristocracy; and here all
+the _�lite_ of the visitors congregate. We wealthy English may laugh at
+the moderate expense for which this kind of thing can be done in France,
+but we are not apt to grumble at it when we find it suit our pockets;
+and, therefore, take with you at once the description of the kind of
+fare you are likely to meet with here, and the amount of damage it will
+do to your fortune. In these large hotels, then, which are commodious
+houses, a vast number of bedrooms are provided for the guests, and two
+good reception-rooms; besides an immense _salle-�-manger_. Some sixty or
+a hundred guests can be accommodated in each house, and can sit down at
+table together. Breakfast is served between nine and ten,--and a
+glorious breakfast it is! All kinds of good things, which an old
+_artiste_ from Paris comes down for the season to cook: ending with
+fruits of many kinds and _caf�-au-lait_--that Continental beverage which
+John Bull can no more imitate than he can the wines of the Rhone or the
+Rhine:--in short, 'tis as good a breakfast as they could put on the
+table at Verey's. Dinner is ready at six, and maintains its proper
+superiority over the breakfast, both in the number of dishes and in the
+length of its service. The wines are good, and the fruits delicious, for
+they all come from Clermont--whence many a wagon-load of comestibles is
+tugged weekly over the mountains to satisfy the exigencies of the
+fastidious invalids!
+
+Well: they give you these two glorious spreads, your room, your light,
+your linen, and your attendance, for _five francs a-day_.
+
+And how is this day passed? Why, 'tis a true castle of indolence, is
+Mont Dor-les-Bains; "a pleasing land of sleepy-head," where every one
+follows the bent of his own fancy, and where the only serious occupation
+is, to forget all care and to do nothing. After rising from the
+breakfast table, parties are immediately formed for the promenade or the
+distant excursion; and, for the latter, some two or three score of boys
+and girls are stationed on the Grande Place, each in charge of an animal
+disguised with the name of a horse, which you hire for the whole day, to
+go where, and how far you please, for the enormous sum of _two francs_.
+It is true that the animal has neither symmetry nor blood, but it is the
+indigenous pony of these mountains; it is a slow, sure-footed beast, and
+it will carry you up and down the steepest hill-side with exemplary
+patience and sagacity. Do not lose your own patience, however, if you
+mount one of them. They have no trotting, nor galloping, nor any other
+pace whatever in them, out of the half-amble half-walk at which they
+commonly proceed. But then, they know no better food than
+mountain-grass, or the occasional luxury of some chopped straw, and they
+will follow you all round the village for a slice of bread held before
+their noses. Nevertheless they suit the country; they accommodate the
+visitors; and there is not a spare horse to be got in the village by
+half-past ten, for love or money.
+
+The day's ramble ended, and dinner duly dismissed, every body--that is
+to say, every body who is any body at all--adjourns to the _salle de
+r�union_, the large assembly-room built over the baths. This is really a
+handsome well-arranged ball-room, full of mirrors, ottomans, and
+benches; at one end is a billiard and card room, and behind are rooms
+for robing. Here, upon the payment of a napoleon, you have the _entr�e_
+for the season; and here the guests meet, more upon the terms of a large
+family than as though they were strangers. Etiquette is relaxed; every
+body knows every body. The elder men take to billiards and
+_�cart�_,--the graver ladies form into little _c�teries_; a younger one
+goes to the piano, a circle is made, a romance is sung; and then, as the
+strain becomes lighter, the feet beat in sympathy, and the gay quadrille
+is formed. At eight or nine o'clock the room is at its fullest; the
+village minstrels are called in--some half-dozen violins, a clarionet,
+and a cornet; the music becomes louder, the mazy waltz is danced, and
+the enjoyment of the day is at its crowning point.
+
+Happy, happy days! still happier, still more delightful nights! No
+trouble, no excess--health and cheerfulness going hand-in-hand. The most
+refined society in France, and yet the most simple and most unaffected;
+good-humour and politeness ruling all things: all calculated for
+enjoyment, nought for disquietude and regret!
+
+At eleven o'clock it is understood that every body vacates the room;
+and, within half an hour after, not a sound is to be heard in the
+village, save the dash of the cascade, and the murmuring of the silvery
+Dor.
+
+
+THE COMPANY.
+
+Well: 'tis a motley assemblage this! The world is checkered here not
+less than in the noisy and elegant capital; and man's peculiarities,
+man's excellencies, and man's defects, follow him even into the heart of
+these wild mountains, showing themselves in these smaller groups, not
+less strongly than amid the crowded streets of Paris! How should it be
+otherwise? Does not every one come hither to unbend, to throw off the
+stiff mask of metropolitan society for the moment, and to become
+themselves natural while they invoke the aid of nature's healthy
+influence? The strict etiquette of the Faubourg St Germain may here be
+safely laid aside awhile; and the inspirations of country life, the
+happy the delightful inspirations of youth, may be once more resumed.
+What a comfort to be able to get out of the buckram and taffetas of the
+court, to put on one's _n�glig�_, or one's shooting-jacket, and to keep
+company awhile with no less cheerful companions than the songsters and
+the rangers of the forest! Why it does one's inmost soul good to fly
+away from the din and turmoil, even of the pleasure-seeking Parisians,
+and to revert to the simple, yet grand and expansive ideas which scenery
+such as this of Mont Dor brings into the mind in an instant.
+
+True: the mountains increase in magnitude and grandeur as you approach
+them; once within their lofty and austere recesses, and their sublimity
+makes itself felt. You are brought into immediate contact with some of
+the mightiest works of the Creator, and the mind expands of itself,
+unconsciously and irresistibly, till it becomes capable of imbibing, of
+comprehending, and of enjoying the full magnificence of nature!
+
+But does the courtier, does the citizen lay aside his pack of habits, as
+well as his pack of cares, when he becomes a temporary denizen of the
+country? Would that it were so! He is cast in a mould--his mind has been
+warped: his body requires moistening with the freshest and the earliest
+dews of many an "incense-breathing morn," ere it can resume the full
+elasticity and joyous lightness of rustic activity; and his soul wants a
+long oblivion of all conventional preoccupation, all trouble and all
+intrigue, ere it can recover the tone and temper of younger days.
+
+Now, I had been saying all this to myself, and should have gone on
+moralising till the weary hour of noon, perhaps; but while I was
+leaning over the balustrade of my window, looking down into the Grande
+Place----Oh yes, to be sure! there is a Grande Place at Mont
+Dor-les-Bains, as well as at any other town, village, or city. Did you
+ever in your life hear or see any thing French to which the epithet of
+_Grand_ had not been, by some means or other, tacked on? From the _Grand
+Monarque_ at the head of the _Grande Arm�e_ of the _Grande Nation_, down
+to the _Grand limonadier_ of the _Grand Caf�_ of the _Grande Place_, it
+is all _Grand_. Oh, this villanous spirit of exaggeration! this attempt
+at the sublime so inevitably linked to the ridiculous!----Just so! I was
+leaning over the balustrade of my window, which, from the third story of
+the hotel, "gave," as they term it, into the Grande Place. Now it is one
+of the most delightful things imaginable, after you have indulged in
+your morning's ablutions, and have produced that indefinable lilac tint
+on your chin, which tells of easy shaving soap and a Rogers's true old
+English razor, to don your shawl dressing-gown, and, having adjusted
+your _bonnet grec_ towards the right side of your head, so as to allow
+the glossy curl to escape and hang pendant on the left; when all this is
+done, to "light the brown cigar," to put yourself in an elegant
+reclining posture between your opening _jalousies_, and, with both
+elbows resting on the red velvet cushion that crowns the hard edge of
+the balustrade, to puff forth light wreaths of blue vapour into the
+balmy air, and to see the bathers come back from the baths. There you
+may "think down hours to moments:" and so was it with myself; for I took
+my post at my window by half-past six, and at nine I was still there.
+Every now and then went forth my curling column; then my eye would catch
+the glorious "mountain-tops bathed in the golden light of morn;" then I
+would give a glance at sublunary things awhile, and speculate on the
+moving animals below; then puff, and gaze, and speculate again; and all
+that while be the happiest of men, in the absolute absence of any thing
+but perfect idleness.
+
+You may say what you please, but it does the mind good to think of
+nothing at times; to let the impressions of passing events glide through
+the soul, and titillate the imagination, but to "leave no trace behind."
+Oh yes! this fairy dancing on the sands of life's dull shore, is very
+pleasant occupation for a summer morn, and eke a summer eve. It is
+poetical, to say the least of it; and day-dreams may sometimes prove not
+less agreeable than those mysterious scenes of night, when the soul
+quits her corporeal shackles, and roams in pure fancy through the world
+of thought, seeing sights of beauty, and scenes of paradisaical
+splendour, which the dull organs of bodily vision can never attain unto.
+Why! the happiest portion of my life is that which I have passed in the
+land of dreams: one third of my existence has been spent there--and I
+have friends, and well-known faces, and peaceful valleys, and bright
+streams, and strains of ethereal music, which are still and ever vivid
+in my waking mind, but at night call me to themselves, and wrap me in a
+state of enjoyment which certainly this poor weak body of mind never
+could be capable of experiencing. I have positively new, altogether new
+and unheard-of ideas--I do not mean irrational ones, nor those
+phantasmagoric combinations that haunt the diseased brains of some
+wretched mortals--but reasonable, possible, natural ideas of form and
+substance, which I am persuaded have their types in some corner or other
+of the universe, and which it may perhaps be hereafter my too happy
+destiny to witness, and to dwell amongst for ever and for aye. I would
+not exchange my dreams for all the realities of----
+
+"_Monsieur! veut-il d�jeuner au salon?_" said the slip-shod _gar�on_ of
+the hotel, tapping me on the shoulder. "The company have all taken their
+seats, and I have kept a chair for Monsieur. Does Monsieur prefer
+Burgundy or claret? The _vin ordinaire_ is not sufferable: _au reste_,
+here is the _carte_, and Monsieur has only to choose."
+
+"'Tis a reality, my friend, that I was not then exactly thinking of--but
+breakfast I must, and will. But just tell me, for a minute, where these
+people come from, that I see down in the Place there, at that
+corner--the old gentleman in nankeen, with the green shade over his
+eyes, and the fat little dame by his side; and those young ladies at the
+door of the large hotel opposite, and the spruce _militaire_ there at
+the window, and that knot of men in long brown surtouts, one of whom is
+gesticulating so vehemently."
+
+"_Excusez_, Monsieur, those _gentlemen_ are great politicians," (_grand_
+again, thought I!) "and one of them is deputy for the Department--M. de
+Beauparler: he has just been voting against the Ministry, sir; he is a
+great friend of M. Lafitte, sir; oh, sir! _c'est le plus grand orateur
+de notre pays!_ You ought to hear him, sir. As for the young ladies,
+sir, they are _les Demoiselles Leroy_: it was their father that you were
+remarking just now--the old gentleman--very short-sighted, sir--he is
+immensely rich; _Pardi! que sais-je?_" (here he shrugged up his
+shoulders to his ears,) "they say he has 50,000 francs a-year!--_c'est
+assommant!_" (here he shut his eyes and raised his nose at an angle of
+forty-five degrees.) "_Quant aux demoiselles, elles sont_"----(he was
+evidently at a loss for an expression; so he extended his first two
+fingers to his lips, closing tightly the others and his thumb, and then
+blew a kiss with them to the winds.)
+
+Tap! tap! at the door. "Pierre! are you coming down, then? they are
+asking for you every where!" And the tightly girded, and somewhat
+_altius accincta, fille-de-chambre_--a spruce little black-eyed
+_Auvergnate_,--tripped into the room. "_Excusez, milor!_ but Pierre is
+such a gossip!" "My good girl, I will detain neither Pierre nor
+yourself: give me my coat, dust my room well, and now show me to the
+_salle-�-manger_."
+
+As good luck would have it, Pierre had placed a chair for me next to
+Madame de Mirepoix, her husband was on the other side of his
+lady,--'twas impossible to be in better company. Opposite to me was a
+venerable white-haired mustached gentleman, evidently a military man,
+and next to me was a lady, some five-and-forty, or thereabouts, with a
+strong Spanish cast of countenance and complexion, and her husband, a
+short thick-necked apoplectic-looking man, by her side. The rest of the
+company, though various enough in their physiognomical aspect, were
+evidently persons of the upper ranks of society, and among them were
+several choice specimens of the best and oldest nobility of France. They
+seemed all to make one joyous family party, as if they had been
+relations rather than strangers; every body was laughing and chatting
+with his neighbour; they were plying their forks most vigorously, and
+the noise and bustle was excessive.
+
+"What do you think of our baths?" said my lovely neighbour; "for of
+course you have already been immersed in, and have tasted the waters." I
+humbly alleged the negative. "Well! I declare this _phlegme Britannique_
+is insupportable. Why, sir, we were at the bath-house before six this
+morning."
+
+"Had I but known it, Madame"----
+
+"Ah, just so!" said the little apoplectic gentleman leaning across his
+wife to me: "_Monsieur est Anglais! c'est tr�s bien, c'est tr�s bien!_
+Monsieur, you do us great honour to come to visit this savage
+wilderness. But _voyez-vous_, you would have done much better to have
+stopped at Paris; there's nothing here, sir--absolutely nothing! What
+are these mountains? Bare rocks! forests, indeed, there are; but there
+are forests every where. Give me, sir, the For�t de Montmorency, even
+the Bois de Boulogne; and for rocks, I wish for nothing better than the
+Rocher de Cancale." (Here he rubbed his hands excessively, and looked
+round the table for a smile at the _bon-mot_.)
+
+"M. Bouton will pardon me," observed the old officer, "but if he had
+travelled all over Europe as I have done, he would not wonder at the
+desire to change an every-day scene for something new. When our _corps
+d'arm�e_ was traversing the Mont St Bernard, I assure you I never felt
+the slightest regret at having quitted Paris:--we could have gone on to
+the end of the world with the spirits we then were in. It was the same
+in the Pyrenees:--for more reasons than one I was extremely sorry when
+we had to quit Pampeluna for Bayonne"--and the old gentleman sighed, and
+looked wistfully up at the ceiling, as though many a painful
+recollection came across his mind at that moment.
+
+"Which are the finer mountains sir," was my inquiry--"the Pyrenees or
+these of Auvergne?"
+
+"You can hardly draw a comparison between them," he replied. "There is
+vast extent, width, and height in the Pyrenees, and a certain degree of
+savage horror about them, which you do not feel even amidst the
+Alps:--they partake of the nature both of France and Spain:--they are
+unlike any mountains I know of. But for all this, sir, do not allow
+yourself to hold a poor opinion of these heights of Mont Dor: you will
+find here scope and exercise for all your enthusiasm, all your love of
+the picturesque. Are you fond of shooting and hunting?--well, then, if
+you were to remain here during September and October, braving the early
+snows which come upon these mountains even in autumn, you would have
+your choice of all animals from the wolf to the _chevreuil_ and the
+hare, and of all birds from the eagle to the partridge. There are plenty
+of snipes on these hills."
+
+"M. le Baron de Bretonville," said Madame Bouton, "do not go to tempt
+the English gentleman to any of your hare-brained expeditions: he is
+come here to enjoy the baths:--he is a victim to the spleen; he must be
+danced and talked and bathed into good health, and a little vivacity
+first of all. When we all leave the baths, we will give him permission
+to stop behind with you, and you may kill all the game you can find. At
+present we want a cavalier for our expedition: there is Madame
+d'Arlincourt, and Madame de Tourzel, and the Duchesse de Vauvilliers,
+and Madame de Mirepoix there, on your right--why these ladies are all
+here by themselves; they want a cavalier this very morning.
+_Figurez-vous_, Monsieur!" and the lady turned towards me--"we want
+somebody to come and find our ponies for us, and to take care of our
+shawls, and to carry our books, and our stools, and positively, with the
+exception of two officers who are at the other hotel, I do not know whom
+to ask. We engage you, sir, for the whole of this very day: our
+husbands"----
+
+"I thought, Madame, that these ladies were all alone here."
+
+"Ah!--our husbands, _�a va sans dire_!--but gentlemen of that kind do
+nothing else than play billiards all the morning."
+
+"It is only the young and the gallant," here interposed Madame de
+Mirepoix "that dare to face our forests.--You shall teach us all some
+English as we ride along: I could give any thing to master your
+barbarous language:--you have only one musical word in it--_moonlight_."
+
+Now, I know not what there was in the pronunciation of Madame de
+Mirepoix, but though the word had never before entered into my
+imagination as any thing but one of the most commonplace of our
+vocabulary, there was a witchery in the sound as it flowed forth from
+her swelling lips that riveted my attention, and set my imagination on
+fire. 'Tis the same with French:--how refined and how mellow soever may
+be the utterance of the most polished courtier of France, of the most
+learned academician of the Institute, there is sometimes a rich pouting
+sound, a sort of velvety and oily intonation, that distinguishes the
+speech of the women of high birth such as I never heard in any other
+country. It is not to be defined: but whoso has drunk in the golden
+tones of such a syren, will know what I mean. Moonlight! yes, 'tis a
+pleasing word, by its signification and its associated ideas, if not by
+its own innate harmony: yes; I have learned the full influence and
+sweetness of moonlight, whether in the summer woodland or in the wintry
+cloister; true, there is both music and poetry, ay and something else,
+in moonlight.
+
+"I agree to the thing, Madame la Marquise, if not to the sound; nothing
+could be more beautiful than the latter as you have pronounced it,
+except the reality, amidst these mountains and these retired deep-green
+glades."
+
+"Nous le verrons, peut-�tre."
+
+
+THE FOREST.
+
+All the great valleys that branch out from the sides of the volcanic
+chain of Auvergne were once, no doubt, filled with impenetrable forests:
+gloomy wildernesses, thick as those of American wilds, where scarcely
+the light of the sun could penetrate, and tenanted only by the wolf,
+the bear, the boar, and the stag. Now these forests have disappeared
+from the eastern and western skirts of the chain, and are to be found in
+primitive luxuriance only in the centre, where civilisation and the
+destroying step of man have not made their way. Here the original forest
+is still to be seen in all its pride; untouched, untrimmed, unheeded by
+man: full of all its sublime grandeur--solemn, vast, and mysterious as
+forests have ever been; sobering, soothing, and beautiful as forests
+will ever be. In some of the valleys the trees are principally of the
+deciduous kind; enormous oaks, and chestnuts, and beeches, filling up
+the vacant space left by the granitic walls on either side: but in the
+higher regions of the mountainous district, in the more hidden recesses
+of the hills, they are all of the silver-fir species, and they attain a
+luxuriance of growth not to be imagined but by those who have studied
+this, the noblest of the whole tribe of pines. Here forests occur,
+leagues upon leagues in extent, filling up wide and winding valleys;
+running out upon the elevated plateaux of the mountains; and wrapping
+the whole country in gloomy majesty. You may ride day after day through
+these intricate sylvan scenes, and never cross the track of a human
+being: or you may emerge from the depth of the wood, at some unexpected
+turn of a valley, upon a delightful little farm or village in a green
+glade of welcome verdure; and you may there witness the extreme
+simplicity of the hardy mountaineers. Still higher up on the hills, and
+on the vast pasture grounds that reach up to their summits, along the
+gently descending plateaux, occurs the birch, luxuriating in the cold
+exposure of its habitation as though it were in Siberia instead of
+France: and ever and anon, whether high up or low down the sides of the
+hills, you will find the box and the juniper bushes flourishing in
+perennial perfection.
+
+It is curious to see the enormous size to which the silver-fir will here
+attain. Sometimes this tree rises with the utmost regularity--sending
+out its branches at equal intervals, tier above tier--itself tapering
+upwards, and each circle of branches decreasing in diameter until a
+hundred and fifty feet are gained. The stems of some of these giants of
+the forest are eighteen feet in circumference at the height of a man
+from the ground, and their lower branches would of themselves form trees
+such as many a trim and well-kept park could never boast of. At other
+times the original tree will have met with an accidental fracture when
+young, and after going up twenty or thirty feet from the ground, as an
+immense wooden column, will throw out three or four other trees from its
+summit, which will all shoot up parallel to each other into the air and
+form a little forest of themselves. Very frequently, however, it happens
+that the tree has been contorted in its early growth, and then broken
+afterwards: in such cases it seems to have forgotten its nature
+completely, and to have gone mad in its spirit of increase; for it turns
+and forces itself into the strangest convolutions and intricacies of
+form. It becomes like a short stunted oak, or a thickly knotted thorn:
+or it might sometimes be mistaken for a willow, at others for a
+cedar--for any thing but one of the same species as the stately spire of
+wood that soars up into the heaven close by its side.
+
+When the tree becomes quite dead, blasted by lightning, or injured by
+the attacks of animals at its base, it does not therefore lose all its
+beauty; for it becomes immediately covered with a peculiar gray lichen
+of great length and luxuriance; occupying every branch and twig of the
+dead tree, and clothing it, as it were, with a second but a new kind of
+foliage. This lichen will sometimes hang down from the branches in
+strings of weeping vegetation to the length of five feet and more. You
+may sometimes ride under the living tree where this parasitical foliage
+is mixed with the real covering of the boughs, forming the most
+anomalous, and yet the most picturesque of contrasts.
+
+In forests of this kind, the undergrowth of brushwood of every variety
+is exceedingly abundant and beautiful: every woodland shrub is to be
+found there--the hazel especially--and the thickets thereby formed are
+quite impenetrable. As the older and larger trees decay, they lose
+their footing in the soil, and fall in every variety of strange
+position--presenting a picture of desolation, the effect of which is at
+first strange to the mind, and at last becomes even painful. But
+wherever a tree falls, there a luxuriant growth of moss succeeds: a
+little peat-bed forms itself underneath: generations after generations
+of mosses and watery plants succeed one another; and in time the
+prostrate trunk is entirely buried under a bright-green bed, soft as
+down, but treacherous to the foot as a quicksand. Often may the wanderer
+amid these wild glades think to throw himself on one of these inviting
+couches; and, bounding on to it, he sinks five or six feet through moss
+and weed and dirty peat, till his descent is stopped by the skeleton of
+the vast tree that lies beneath. Wild flowers grow all around: and every
+spot of ground that will produce them is covered in the summer season
+with the tempting little red strawberry, or the wild raspberry, or the
+blushing rose. Above all, still keep peering, in solemn and interminable
+array, the vast monarchs of the wood, the stately and elegant
+silver-firs.
+
+When you attempt to leave the forests and advance towards the upper
+grounds, you commonly find yourself stopped by a precipitous wall of
+basaltic columns, ranging from sixty to seventy feet in height in one
+unbroken shaft, and forming a vast barrier for miles and miles in
+length. In some places, these gray basaltic walls come circling round,
+and constitute an immense natural theatre, sombre and grand as the
+forest itself. No sound is there heard save the dashing of a distant
+cascade, or the wind in deep symphony rushing through the slow-waving
+tops of the trees. Below is a carpet of the most lively green,
+variegated with turfs of wild flowers and fruits--one of nature's
+secret, yet choicest gardens. Through the midst trickles a silvery
+stream, coming you know not whence, but musical in its course, and soon
+losing itself in the thick underwood that borders the spot all around.
+Such is the Salle de Mirabeau--one of the loveliest of the many lovely
+hiding-places of these sublime forests.
+
+The feathered tenants of these woods are mostly birds of prey, or at all
+events such as the raven, the jay, the pie, and others which can either
+defend themselves against, or escape from, the falcons that consider
+these solitudes as their own especial domains. The voices of few
+singing-birds are to be heard; they have taken refuge nearer the
+habitations of man: but the hooting of the owl, the beating of the
+woodpecker, and the screaming of kites and hawks, are all the living
+sounds that proceed here from the air. Red-deer, wolves, wild-boars,
+roebucks, and foxes, are the denizens of these forests and these
+mountains: there is room here for them all to live at their ease; and
+they abound. No one with a good barrel and a sure aim, ever entered
+these forests in vain: his burden is commonly more than he can carry
+home. It is in fact a glorious country for the sportsman; for the lower
+ranges of the hills abound in hares, the cultivated grounds have plenty
+of partridges and quails, and the forests are tenanted as has been seen.
+He who can content himself with his gun or his rod--for the streams are
+full of trout--may here pass a golden age, without a thought for the
+morrow, without a desire unfulfilled.
+
+Certainly, if I wished to retire from the world and lead a life of
+philosophic indifference, not altogether out of the reach of society
+when I wanted it, these hills and these forests of Auvergne, and the
+Mont Dor, would be the spots I should select. The mind here would become
+attuned to the grand harmonies of nature's own making; here, philosophy
+might be cultivated in good earnest; here, books might be studied and
+theories digested, without interruption and with inward profit. Here, a
+man might cultivate both science and art, and he might become again the
+free and happy being which, until he betook himself to congregating in
+towns, he was destined to be. Yes! when I do withdraw from this world's
+vanities and troubles, give me forests and mountains like those of Mont
+Dor.
+
+
+
+
+THE FIGHTING EIGHTY-EIGHTH.[3]
+
+
+The pugnacity of Irishmen has grown into a proverb, until, in the belief
+of many, a genuine Milesian is never at peace but when fighting. With
+certain nations, certain habits are inseparably associated as peculiarly
+characterising them. Thus, in vulgar apprehension, the Frenchman dances,
+the German smokes, the Spaniard serenades; and on all hands it is agreed
+that the Irishman fights. Naturally bellicose, his practice is
+pugnacious: antagonism is his salient and distinctive quality. Born in a
+squabble, he dies in a shindy: in his cradle he squeals a challenge; his
+latest groan is a sound of defiance. Pike and pistol are manifest in his
+well-developed bump of combativeness; his name is FIGHT, there can be no
+mistake about it. From highest to lowest--in the peer and the
+bog-trotter, the inherent propensity breaks forth, more or less modified
+by station and education.
+
+Be its expression parliamentary or popular, in Donnybrook or St
+Stephen's, out it will. "Show me the man who'll tread on my coat!"
+shouts ragged Pat, flourishing his shillelagh as he hurls his
+dilapidated garment on the shebeen-house floor. From his seat in the
+senate, a joint of the "Tail" intimates, in more polished but equally
+intelligible phrase, his inclination for a turn upon the turf. Wherever
+blows are rife, Hibernia's sons appear; in big fights or little wars the
+shamrock gleams in the van. No matter the cloth, so long as the quarrel
+be there. In Austrian white, or Spanish yellow, or Prussian blue,--even
+in the blood-coloured breeks of Gallia's legions, but especially, and
+preferred above all, in the "old red rag" of the British grenadier, have
+Irishmen displayed their valour. And on the list of heroes whom the
+Green Isle has produced, a proud and prominent place is justly held by
+that gallant corps, the Rangers of Connaught.
+
+Those of our civilian readers to whom the word "Ranger" is more
+suggestive of bushes and kangaroos, or of London parks and princes of
+the blood, than of parades and battle-fields, are referred to page 49 of
+the Army List. They will there find something to the following effect:--
+
+    88th, CONNAUGHT RANGERS.
+
+    The Harp and Crown.
+
+    _"Quis Separabit?"_
+
+    The Sphinx, "Egypt."
+    "Talavera." "Busaco."
+    "Fuentes d'Onore."
+    "Cindad Rodrigo."
+    "Badajoz." "Salamanca."
+    "Vittoria."
+    "Nivelle." "Orthes."
+    "Toulouse."
+    "Peninsula."
+
+There is a forest of well-won laurels in this dozen of names. They form
+a proud blazon for any corps, and one that might satisfy the most
+covetous of honour. But of all men in the world, old soldiers are the
+hardest to content. They are patented grumblers. Napoleon knew it, and
+christened his _vieille garde_ his _grognards_: tough and true as steel,
+they yet would have their growl. Now the lads of the Eighty-Eighth,
+having proved themselves better men even than the veteran guards of the
+Corsican corporal, also claim the grumbler's privilege, setting forth
+sundry griefs and grave causes of complaint. They are not allowed the
+word "Pyrenees" upon their colours, although, at the fight of that name,
+they not only were present, but rendered good service:--whilst for
+Waterloo many a man got a medal who, during the whole battle, was scarce
+within boom of cannon. During more than four years of long marches,
+short commons, severe hardships, and frequent fighting, the general
+commanding the third division--the fighting division, as it was
+called--viewed the Connaughters with dislike, even stigmatised them as
+confirmed marauders, and recommended none of their officers for
+promotion, although many greatly distinguished themselves, and
+some,--the brave Mackie, at Ciudad Rodrigo, for instance--successfully
+led forlorn-hopes. Finally, passing over the old sore of non-decoration
+for Peninsular services, since that, common to many regiments, is at
+last about to be healed,--Mr Robinson, the biographer of Sir Thomas
+Picton, has dared, in order to vindicate the harsh and partial conduct
+of his hero, to cast dust upon the facings of the brave boys of
+Connaught. It need hardly be said that they have found defenders. Of
+these, the most recent is Lieutenant Grattan, formerly an officer of the
+Eighty-eighth, and who, after making a vigorous stand, in the pages of a
+military periodical, against the calumniators of his old corps, has
+brought up his reserves and come to its support in a book of his own.
+His volumes, however, are not devoted to mere controversy. He has
+understood that he should best state the case, establish the merits, and
+confound the enemies of his regiment, by a faithful narrative of his and
+its adventures, triumphs, and sufferings. Thus, whilst he has seized the
+opportunity to deal out some hard knocks to those who have blamed the
+conduct (none have ever impugned the courage) of the Connaught Rangers,
+he has produced an entertaining book, thoroughly Irish in character,
+where the ludicrous and the horrible, the rollicking and the
+slaughtering, mingle and alternate. Even when most indignant, good
+humour and a love of fun peep through his pages. His prologue or
+preamble, entitled "An Answer to some attacks in Robinson's Life of
+Picton," although redolent of "slugs in a sawpit," is full of the
+national humour. "Frequently," Mr Robinson has asserted, "just before
+going into battle, it would be found, upon inspection, that one-half of
+the Eighty-eighth regiment were without ammunition, having acquired a
+pernicious habit of exchanging the cartridge for _aguardiente_, and
+substituting in their places pieces of wood, cut and coloured to
+resemble them." Such things have been heard of, even in very
+well-regulated regiments, as the exchange of powder and ball for brandy
+and other creature comforts; but it is very unlikely that the practice
+should have prevailed to any thing like the extent here set down, in a
+British army in active service and under Wellington's command, and the
+artfully prepared quaker-cartridges increase the improbability of the
+statement. Lieutenant Grattan scouts the tale as a base fabrication,
+lashes out in fine style at its propagator, and claims great merit for
+the officers who taught their men to beat the best troops in the world
+with timber ammunition. He puts forward a more serious refutation by a
+string of certificates from men and officers of all ranks who served
+with him in the Peninsula, and who strenuously repel the charge as a
+malignant calumny.
+
+It was at the close of the campaign of 1809, that the historian of the
+Connaught Rangers, then a newly commissioned youngster, joined, within a
+march of Badajoz, the first battalion of his regiment. The palmy and
+triumphant days of the British army in the Peninsula could then hardly
+be said to have begun. True, they had had victories; the hard-earned one
+of Talavera had been gained only three months previously, but the
+general aspect of things was gloomy and disheartening. The campaign had
+been one of much privation and fatigue; rations were insufficient,
+quarters unhealthy, and Wellington's little army, borne on the
+muster-rolls as thirty thousand men, was diminished one-third by
+disease. The Portuguese, who numbered nearly as many, were raw and
+untried troops, scarce a man of whom had seen fire, and little reliance
+could be placed upon them. In spite of Lord Wellington's judicious and
+reiterated warnings, the incompetent and conceited Spanish generals
+risked repeated engagements, in which their armies--numerous enough, but
+ill disciplined, ill armed, and half-starved--were crushed and
+exterminated. The French side of the medal presented a very different
+picture. Elated by their German victories, their swords yet red with
+Austrian blood, Napoleon's best troops and ablest marshals hurried
+southwards, sanguinely anticipating, upon the fields of the Peninsula,
+an easy continuation of their recent triumphs. Three hundred and sixty
+thousand men-at-arms--French, Germans, Italians, Poles, even
+Mamelukes--spread themselves over Spain, occupied her towns, and
+invested her fortresses. Ninety thousand soldiers, under Massena,
+"_l'enfant ch�ri de la Victoire_," composed the so-called "army of
+Portugal," intended to expel from that country, if not to annihilate,
+the English leader and his small but resolute band, who, undismayed,
+awaited the coming storm. In the ever-memorable lines of Torres Vedras,
+the legions of Buonaparte met a stern and effectual dike to their
+torrent of headlong aggression. Upon the happy selection and able
+defence of those celebrated positions, were based the salvation of the
+Peninsula and the subsequent glorious progress of the British arms.
+Whilst referring to them, Mr Grattan seizes the opportunity to enumerate
+the services rendered by the army in Spain. "The invincible men," he
+says, "who defended those lines, aided no doubt by Portuguese and
+Spanish soldiers, afterwards fought for a period of four years, during
+which time they never suffered one defeat; and from the first
+commencement of this gigantic war to its final and victorious
+termination, the Peninsular army fought and won nineteen pitched
+battles, and innumerable combats; they made or sustained ten sieges,
+took four great fortresses, twice expelled the French from Portugal,
+preserved Alicant, Carthagena, Cadiz, and Lisbon; they killed, wounded,
+and took about _two hundred thousand enemies_, and the bones of forty
+thousand British soldiers lie scattered on the plains and mountains of
+the Peninsula." And thereupon our friend, the Connaughter, bursts out
+into indignation that warriors who did such deeds, and, on _fifteen_
+different occasions received the thanks of parliament, should have been
+denied a medal for their services. Certainly, when men who went through
+the whole, or the greater part, of those terrible campaigns, which they
+began as commissioned officers, are now seen holding no higher than a
+lieutenant's rank, one cannot but recognise their title to some
+additional recompense, and marvel that the modest and well-merited badge
+they claim should so long have been refused them. Mr Grattan puts much
+of the blame of such refusal at the door of the Duke of Wellington. Not
+that he is usually a depreciator of his former leader, of whose military
+genius and great achievements he ever speaks with respect amounting to
+veneration. But he does not hesitate to accuse him of having sacrificed
+his old followers and friends to his own vanity, which petty feeling, he
+maintains, made the Duke desire that the only medal granted for the war
+against Napoleon, should be given for the only victory in which he beat
+the Emperor in person. We believe that many Peninsular officers, puzzled
+to account for the constant and seemingly causeless refusal of the
+coveted decoration, hold the same opinion with Mr Grattan. We esteem it
+rather plausible than sound. The names Of WELLINGTON and WATERLOO would
+not the less be immortally associated because a cross bearing those of
+PENINSULA and PYRENEES, or any other appropriate legend, shone upon the
+breasts of that "old Spanish infantry," of whom the Duke always spoke
+with affection and esteem, and to whom he unquestionably is mainly
+indebted for the wealth, honours, and fame which, for more than thirty
+years, he has tranquilly enjoyed. Moreover, we cannot credit such
+selfishness on the part of such a man, or believe that he, to whom a
+grateful sovereign and country decerned every recompense in their power
+to bestow, would be so thankless to the men to whose sweat and blood he
+mainly owed his success--to men who bore him, it may truly be said, upon
+their shoulders, to the highest pinnacle of greatness a British subject
+can possibly attain. Waterloo concluded the war: its results were
+immense, the conduct of the troops engaged heroic; but when we compare
+the amount of glory there gained with the renown accumulated during six
+years' warfare--a renown undimmed by a single reverse;--still more, when
+we contrast the dangers and hardships of one short campaign, however
+brilliant, with those of half-a-dozen long ones crowded with battles and
+sieges, we must admit that if the victors of La Belle Alliance nobly
+earned their medal, the veterans of Salamanca and Badajoz, Vittoria and
+Toulouse, have a threefold claim to a similar reward. They have long
+been unjustly deprived of it, and now comparatively few remain to
+receive the tardily-accorded distinction.
+
+The first action to which Mr Grattan refers, as having himself taken
+share in, is that of Busaco. The name is familiar to every body, but
+yet, of all the Peninsular battles, it is perhaps the one of which least
+is generally known. It was not a very bloody fight--the loss in killed
+and wounded having been barely seven per cent of the numbers engaged;
+still it was a highly important one, as testing the quality of the
+Portuguese levies, upon which much depended. Upon the whole, they
+behaved pretty well, although they committed one or two awkward
+blunders, and one of their militia regiments took to flight at the first
+volley fired by their own friends. Mr Grattan does not usually set
+himself up as a historical authority with respect to battles, except in
+matters pertaining to his own regiment or brigade, and which came under
+his own observation. Nevertheless, concerning Busaco, he speaks boldly
+out, and asserts his belief that no correct report of the action exists
+in print. Napier derives his account of it from Colonel Waller, whose
+statement is totally incorrect, and has been expressly contradicted by
+various officers (amongst others, by General King) who fought that day
+with Picton's division. Colonel Napier's strong partiality to the light
+division sometimes prevents his doing full justice to other portions of
+the army. In this instance, however, any error he has fallen into,
+arises from his being misinformed. He himself was far away to the left,
+fighting with his own corps, and could know nothing, from personal
+observation, of the proceedings of Picton's men. Opposed to a very
+superior force, including some of the best regiments of the whole French
+army, they had their hands full; and the Eighty-eighth, especially,
+covered themselves with glory. At one time, the Rangers had not only the
+French fire to endure, but also that of the Eighth Portuguese, whose
+ill-directed volleys crossed their line of march. An officer sent to
+warn the Senhores of the mischief they did, received, before he could
+fulfil his mission, a French and a Portuguese bullet, and the Eighth
+continued their reckless discharge. But no cross-fire could daunt the
+men of Connaught. "Push home to the muzzle!" was the word of their
+gallant lieutenant-colonel, Wallace; and push home they did, totally
+routing their opponents, and nearly destroying the French Thirty-sixth,
+a pet battalion of the Emperor's. Stimulus was not wanting; Wellington
+stood by, and, with his staff and several generals, watched the charge.
+The Eighty-eighth were greatly outnumbered, and Marshal Beresford, their
+colonel, "expressed some uneasiness when he saw his regiment about to
+plunge into this unequal contest. But when they were mixed with
+Regnier's division, and putting them to flight down the hill, Lord
+Wellington, tapping Beresford on the shoulder, said to him, 'Well
+Beresford, look at them now!'" And when the work was done, and the fight
+over, Wellington rode up to Colonel Wallace, and seizing him warmly by
+the hand, said, "Wallace, I never witnessed a more gallant charge than
+that made by your regiment!" Beresford spoke to several of the men by
+name, and shook the officers' hands; and even Picton forgot his
+prejudice against the regiment, whom he had once designated as the
+"Connaught foot-pads," and expressed himself satisfied with their
+conduct. Many of the men shed tears of joy. So susceptible are soldiers
+to praise and kindness, and so easy is it by a few well-timed words to
+repay their toils and perils, and renew their store of confidence and
+hope. And numerous were the occasions during the Peninsular contest when
+they needed all the encouragement that could be given them. After
+Busaco, when blockaded in the lines of Torres Vedras, their situation
+was far from agreeable. The wet season set in, and their huts, roofed
+with heather--a pleasant shelter when the sun shone, but very
+ineffectual to resist autumnal rains--became untenable. Every device was
+resorted to for the exclusion of the deluge, but in vain. Fortunately,
+the French were in a still worse plight. In miserable cantonments, short
+of provisions and attacked by disease, the horses died, and the men
+deserted; until, on the 14th November, Massena broke up his camp, and
+retired upon Santarem. The Anglo-Portuguese army made a corresponding
+movement into more comfortable quarters, and rumours were abroad of an
+approaching engagement; but it did not take place, and a period of
+comparative relaxation succeeded one of severe hardship and arduous
+duty. Men and officers made the most of the holiday. There was never any
+thing of the martinet about the Duke. He was not the man to harass with
+unnecessary and vexations drills, or rigidly to enforce unimportant
+rules. Those persons, whether military or otherwise, who consider a
+strictly regulation uniform as essential to the composition of a British
+soldier, as a stout heart and a strong arm, and who stickle for a
+closely buttoned jacket, a stiff stock, and the due allowance of
+pipe-clay, would have been somewhat scandalised, could they have beheld
+the equipment of Wellington's army in the Peninsula. Mr Grattan gives a
+comical account of the various fantastical fashions and conceits
+prevalent amongst the officers. "Provided," he says, "we brought our men
+into the field well-appointed, and with sixty rounds of good ammunition
+each, he (the Duke) never looked to see whether their trousers were
+black, blue, or grey; and as to ourselves, we might be rigged out in all
+the colours of the rainbow, if we fancied it." The officers, especially
+the young subs, availed themselves largely of this judicious laxity, and
+the result was a medley of costume, rather picturesque than military.
+Braided coats, long hair, plumed hats, and large mustaches, were amongst
+the least of the eccentricities displayed. In a curious spirit of
+contradiction, the infantry adopted brass spurs, anticipatory, perhaps,
+of their promotion to field-officers' rank; and, bearing in mind, that
+"there is nothing like leather," exhibited themselves in ponderous
+over-alls, _� la Hongroise_, topped and strapped, and loaded down the
+side with buttons and chains. One man, in his rage for singularity, took
+the tonsure, shaving the hair off the crown of his head; and another,
+having covered his frock-coat with gold tags and lace, was furiously
+assaulted by a party of Portuguese sharpshooters, who, seeing him, in
+the midst of the enemy's riflemen, whither his headlong courage had led
+him, mistook him for a French general, and insisted upon making him
+prisoner. And three years later, when Mr Grattan and a party of his
+comrades landed in England, in all the glories of velvet waistcoats,
+dangling Spanish buttons of gold and silver, and forage caps of fabulous
+magnificence, they could hardly fancy that they belonged to the same
+service as the red-coated, white-breeched, black-gaitered gentlemen of
+Portsmouth garrison.
+
+The embarkation of the British army, which in the summer of 1810 was
+deemed imminent both in England and the Peninsula and considered
+probable by Lord Liverpool himself, was no longer thought of after
+Busaco, save by a few of those croaking gentlemen, who, in camps as in
+council-houses, view every thing through smoked spectacles.
+Reinforcements, both English and Spanish, reached the lines of Torres
+Vedras, which Wellington continued to strengthen, and Massena dared not
+attack. The accession of General Drouet's corps increased the army of
+the Prince of Essling to upwards of 70,000 men. His cavalry, too, was
+twice as strong as that of the British; but, notwithstanding this
+superiority, and the desire which he must have felt to retrieve his
+fame, tarnished by the repulse at Busaco, and by his fruitless movement
+on the lines of Lisbon, Massena remained inert, in front of the man whom
+Napoleon's _Moniteur_ contemptuously designated as the "Sepoy General."
+Spring approached without either army assuming the offensive, until, on
+the 5th of March 1811, the French began their retreat from Portugal,
+closely followed up by Wellington. There was little difficulty in
+tracing them: they left a broad trail of blood, and desolation. With
+bare blade, and blazing brand, they swept across the land; church and
+convent, town and village, the farm and the cottage, were given to the
+flames; on the most frivolous pretexts, often without one, women,
+children, and unarmed men were barbarously murdered; and many a
+Portuguese lost his life for refusing to point out treasures which
+existed only in the imagination of the fierce and greedy Frenchman.
+Enraged at the dearth of provisions, of which they stood in great need,
+and which had been every-where removed or destroyed, the retreating army
+abandoned themselves to frightful cruelties and excesses. All along the
+line of march, the pursuers found piles of bodies, groups of murdered
+peasantry, and, mingled with them, the corpses of Frenchmen, often
+hideously mutilated, according to the barbarous usage which has been
+continued in more recent wars by the vindictive population of the
+Peninsula. The retaliation was terrible, but the provocation had been
+extreme. Mr Grattan's details of some of the scenes he himself
+witnessed, are painfully minute and vivid; and whilst reading them, we
+cease to wonder that, after the lapse of a third of a century, hatred of
+the French exists almost undiminished in the countries they so cruelly
+and wantonly ravaged.
+
+However orderly and well-conducted, there is always something
+discouraging in a retreat, as there is a cheerful and exhilarating
+feeling attendant on an advance. Nevertheless, during their progress
+across Portugal, the French maintained their high reputation. Their
+rear-guard, commanded by Marshal Ney, made good fight when pressed by
+the British, but their losses were heavy before they reached the Spanish
+frontier. This they crossed early in April, and a month later they had
+to recross it, to convey supplies to the fortress of Almeida, the only
+place in Portugal over which the tricolor still floated. The result of
+this movement was the bloody combat of Fuentes d'Onore, a complete but
+dearly-bought triumph for our arms. Here the Eighty-eighth nobly
+distinguished themselves. At first they were in reserve, whilst for
+eight hours two Highland regiments, the Eighty-third and some light
+companies, fought desperately in the town, opposed to the fresh troops
+which Massena continually sent up. Their loss was very heavy, the
+streets were heaped with dead, the heat was excessive, and ammunition
+grew scarce. The Highlanders and the French grenadiers fought in the
+cemetery, across the graves and tombstones. "Wallace, with his regiment,
+the Eighty-eighth, was in reserve on the high ground which overlooked
+the churchyard, and was attentively viewing the combat which raged
+below, when Sir Edward Pakenham galloped up to him, and said, 'Do you
+see that, Wallace?'--'I do,' replied the colonel; 'and I would rather
+drive the French out of the town than cover a retreat across the
+Coa.'--'Perhaps,' said Sir Edward, 'his lordship don't think it
+tenable.' Wallace answering, said, 'I shall take it with my regiment,
+and keep it too.'--'Will you?' was the reply; 'I'll go and tell Lord
+Wellington so.' In a moment or two, Pakenham returned at a gallop, and
+waving his hat, called out, 'He says you may go.--Come along, Wallace!'"
+
+Poor Pakenham! ever foremost to lead a charge or brave a peril. He
+deserved a better fate, after his glorious exploits in the Peninsula,
+than to be picked off by a sneaking Yankee rifle, in the swampy plains
+of New Orleans. But the same "boiling spirit and hasty temper" that won
+him laurels in Europe, led him to his death in another hemisphere.
+Over-confidence may be pardoned in a man who had so often driven before
+him the redoubtable cohorts of the modern Alexander. And one mistake
+cannot obliterate the memory of fifty gallant feats.--Full of fight, and
+led on by Pakenham, Mackinnon, and Wallace, the Eighty-eighth advanced
+at a smart trot into the town, where the French Ninth regiment and a few
+hundreds of the Imperial Guard awaited them. Their charge was
+irresistible; they cleared the place and drove the enemy into the river.
+They even pursued them through it, and several Rangers fell on the
+French side of the stream. About a hundred and fifty of the Old Guard
+ran into a street, of which the further end was barricaded. Mr Grattan,
+whose account of the affair is a graphic and interesting piece of
+military narrative, is amusingly cool and _na�f_ in referring to this
+incident. "Mistakes of this kind," he says, "will sometimes occur, and
+when they do, the result is easily imagined.... In the present instance,
+every man was put to death; but our soldiers, _as soon as they had
+leisure_, paid the enemy that respect which is due to brave men." We
+apprehend that, with the Connaughters, _leisure_, in this sense, was
+scanty, at least at Fuentes d'Onore; but, in so close and desperate a
+fight, hot blood is apt to drown mercy. The dashing charge of the
+Eighty-eighth nearly closed the day's performances, although the French
+batteries, admirably served, still peppered the town. Men and officers
+sheltered themselves as well as they could, but many were killed; whilst
+Pakenham, with reckless bravery, rode about the streets, a mark for the
+enemy's shot, which tore up the ground around him whenever he stood
+still. "He was in a violent perspiration and covered with dust, his left
+hand bound round with a handkerchief, as if he had been wounded; he was
+ever in the hottest of the fire: and, if the whole fate of the battle
+had depended on his exertions, he could not have fought with more
+devotion."
+
+Amongst the many daring acts witnessed on the bloody day of Fuentes
+d'Onore, that of the Spanish guerilla chief, Julian Sanchez, deserves
+notice. At the head of his ragged and ill-disciplined band, he had the
+temerity to charge a crack French regiment, and, as might be expected,
+was sent back with a sore head. Whilst on the subject of guerillas, Mr
+Grattan combats an opinion which he believes many persons in this
+country entertain, "that the Spaniards and Portuguese did as much, if
+not more, during the Peninsular contest, than the British." Here he is
+certainly mistaken. Very few persons, out of the Peninsula, have any
+such notion. The French know well enough by whom they were beaten. Loth
+as they are to acknowledge a thrashing at the hands of their old
+antagonists, they do not dream of attributing their defeats to the
+"_brigands_," of whom they declare they would have had a very cheap
+bargain, but for the intervention of the troublesome English. And
+certainly, if the Spaniards and Portuguese had been left to themselves,
+although, favoured by the mountainous configuration of the country, they
+might long have kept up a desultory contest, they would never have
+succeeded in expelling the invaders; for the simple reason that they
+were wholly unable to meet them in the plain. Most true it is that,
+during the war of independence, the people of the Peninsula gave
+numerous examples of bravery and devotion, and still more of long
+suffering and patient endurance for their country's sake. The irregular
+mode of warfare adopted by the peasantry, the great activity and
+constant skirmishings, stratagems, and ambuscades of Mina, the
+Empecinado, Sanchez, and many other patriotic and valiant men, greatly
+harassed and annoyed the French; and, by compelling them to employ large
+bodies of troops in garrison and escort duty, prevented their opposing
+an overwhelming force to the comparatively small army under Wellington.
+But all that sort of thing, however useful and efficacious as a general
+system, and as weakening the enemy, was very petty work when examined in
+detail. The great victories, the mighty feats of war that figure in
+history's page, were due to British discipline, pluck, and generalship.
+And whatever merit remains with the Spaniards, is to be attributed to
+their guerillas and irregular partisans. As to their regular troops,
+after they had overthrown Dupont at Baylen, they seemed to think they
+might doze upon their laurels, which were very soon wrenched from them.
+Baylen was their grand triumph, and subsequently to it they did little
+in the field. Behind stone walls they still fought well: Spaniards are
+brave and tenacious in a fortress, and Saragossa is a proud name in
+their annals. Nothing could be better than old General Herrasti's
+valiant defence of Cuidad Rodrigo against Ney and his thirty thousand
+Frenchmen. The garrison, six thousand strong, lost seven hundred men by
+the first day's fire. Only when their guns were silenced, when the town
+was on fire in various places, and when several yards of wall were
+thrown down by a mine, did the brave governor hoist the white flag.
+Other instances of the kind might be cited, when Spanish soldiers fought
+as well as mortal men could do. But with respect to pitched battles,
+another tale must be told. At Oca�a, Almonacid, and on a dozen other
+disastrous fields, Baylen was amply revenged. The loss at Oca�a alone is
+rated by Spanish accounts at thirty thousand men, chiefly prisoners. Mr
+Grattan estimates it at twenty-five thousand men, and _thirteen thousand
+eight hundred and seventy-seven guitars_. Of these latter, he tells us
+twelve thousand seven hundred and fifty-two were in cases, and the
+remainder without; Indeed he is so exceedingly circumstantial that we
+presume he counted them himself. Otherwise, although well aware of the
+Spaniard's predilection for the fascinating tinkle of his national
+instrument, we could hardly credit the accuracy of the figures. Even a
+_Spanish_ general, we should think, would hardly allow his men thus to
+encumber themselves with harmony. The march of such an army of
+Orpheuses, in which every third soldier shouldered a fiddle-case as a
+pendant to his musket, must have been curious to behold; suggesting the
+idea that the melodious warriors designed subduing their foes by the
+soothing strains of _jotas_ and _cachuchas_, rather than by the more
+cogent arguments of sharp steel and ball-cartridge. Great must have been
+the tinkling at eventide, exceeding that of the most extensive flock of
+merinos that ever cropped Castilian herbage. Was it because they were
+certain of a dance that these barrack-yard minstrels came provided with
+music, sure, in any case, to have the piper to pay? If the instruments
+were provided to celebrate a triumph, they might as well have been left
+at home. In Spain, however, time has effaced, or greatly weakened, the
+remembrance of many reverses, whilst slight and dubious successes,
+carefully treasured up, have swollen by the keeping into mighty
+victories; and at the present day, foreigners who should be so
+uncourteous and impolitic as to express, in the hearing of Spaniards, a
+doubt that Spanish valour was the main agent in driving the French from
+the Peninsula, might reckon, not on a stab--knifeing being less in vogue
+beyond the Bay of Biscay than is often imagined--but certainly on a
+scowl, and probably on an angry contradiction. And in every province,
+almost in every town, in Spain the traveller may, if he so pleaseth, be
+regaled with marvellous narratives of signal victories, gained over the
+_gavachos_, in that immediate neighbourhood, by valiant generals whose
+names, so partial is fame, have never transpired beyond the scenes of
+their problematical exploits. Under the constitutional system, and owing
+to the long civil war, Spanish troops have improved in discipline and in
+various other respects; and with good generals, there is no manifest
+reason why they should not successfully cope with Frenchmen, although we
+doubt whether they could. But in Napoleon's day matters were very
+different, and in the open field their chance was desperate. The
+Portuguese were doubtless of a better quality; and in the pages of
+Napier and other historians, we find them spoken of in terms of praise.
+They had British officers to head them, and there is much in good
+leading; they had British troops to emulate, and national pride spurred
+them on. At the same period, Italians--certainly very poor soldiers when
+left to themselves--fought gallantly under French generals, and with
+French example before them. Of the general bearing of the Portuguese,
+however, we have heard few Peninsular men speak very highly. They appear
+to have been extremely inconsistent; brave one day, dastards the next.
+
+At, Ciudad Rodrigo, Mr Grattan greatly lauds their gallantry, which
+struck him the more as being unexpected. At Salamanca, on the other
+hand, he records their weakness, and the easy repulse of Pack's brigade,
+two thousand strong, by four hundred Frenchmen. "Notwithstanding all
+that has been said and written of the Portuguese troops, I still hold
+the opinion that they are utterly incompetent to stand unsupported and
+_countenanced_ by British troops, with any chance of success, against
+even half their own numbers of Frenchmen." Again, after Salamanca, when
+Wellington and his victorious army advanced on Madrid, the Portuguese
+dragoons fled, without striking a blow, before the French lancers,
+exposing the reserve of German cavalry to severe loss, abandoning the
+artillery to its fate, and tarnishing the triumphal entry of the British
+into the capital--within a march of which this disgraceful affair
+occurred. Still, to encourage these wavering heroes, it was necessary to
+speak civilly of them in despatches; to pat them on the back, and tell
+them they were fine fellows. And this has sometimes been misunderstood
+by simple persons, who believe all they see in print, and look upon
+despatches and bulletins as essentially veracious documents. "I remember
+once," says Mr Grattan, "upon my return home in 1813, getting myself
+closely cross-examined by an old lawyer, because I said I thought the
+Portuguese troops inferior to the French, still more to the British.
+'Inferior to the British, sir! I have read Lord Wellington's last
+despatch, and he says the Portuguese fought as well as the British; and
+I suppose you won't contradict him?' I saw it was vain to convince this
+pugnacious old man of the necessity of saying these civil things, and we
+parted mutually dissatisfied with each other; he taking me, no doubt,
+for a forward young puppy, and I looking upon him as a monstrous old
+bore."
+
+The Eighty-eighth, we gather from Mr Grattan's narrative, whilst
+respected by all as a first-rate battle regiment, was, when the stirring
+and serious events of that busy time left a moment for trifling, a
+fertile source of amusement to the whole third division. This is not
+wonderful. Many of the officers, and all the men, with the exception of
+three or four, were Irish, not Anglicised Irishmen, tamed by long
+residence amongst the Saxon, but raw, roaring Patlanders, who had grown
+and thriven on praties and potheen, and had carried with them to Spain
+their rich brogue, their bulls, and an exhaustless stock of gaiety. The
+amount of fun and blunders furnished by such a corps was naturally
+immense. But if in quarters they were made the subject of much
+good-humoured quizzing, in the field their steady valour was justly
+appreciated. No regiment in the service contained a larger proportion of
+"lads that weren't aisy," which metaphorical phrase, current among the
+Rangers, is translated by Mr Grattan as signifying fellows who would
+walk into a cannon's month, and think the operation rather a pleasant
+one. Whenever a desperate service was to be done, "the boys," as they,
+_more Hibernico_, familiarly termed themselves, were foremost in the
+ranks of volunteers. The contempt of danger, or non-comprehension of it,
+manifested by some of these gentlemen, was perfect. "My fine fellow,"
+said an engineer officer, during the unsuccessful siege of Badajoz in
+May 1811, to a man under Lieutenant Grattan's orders, who sat outside a
+battery, hammering at a fascine; "my fine fellow, you are too much
+exposed; get inside the embrasure, and you will do your work nearly as
+well." "I'm almost finished, colonel," was the reply, "and it isn't
+worth while to move now. Those fellows can't hit me, for they've been
+trying it these fifteen minutes." Just then, a round-shot gave the lie
+to his prediction by cutting him in two; and, according to their custom,
+the French gunners set up a shout of triumph at their successful
+practice. Some of the Connaughters, who had never lost sight of their
+native bogs till exported to the Peninsula, understood little or no
+English beyond the words of command. On an inspection parade, one of
+this class was asked by General Mackinnon, to whose squad he belonged.
+Bewildered and puzzled, Darby Rooney applied to his sergeant for a
+translation of the general's question--thus conveying to the latter an
+idea that this was the first time he had heard such a thing as a squad
+spoken of. The story got abroad--was, of course, much embellished--and
+an hour afterwards the third division was enjoying a prodigious chuckle
+at the notion that not one of the Connaughters knew what a squad meant.
+The young men laughed, the old officers shook their heads and deplored
+the benighted state of the Irishmen; whilst all the time, Mr Grattan
+assures us, "the Eighty-eighth was a more really _efficient_ regiment
+than almost any _two_ corps in the third division." As efficient as any
+they undoubtedly were, when fighting was to be done; but in some other
+respects their conduct was less irreproachable. According to their
+historian and advocate's own showing, their knapsacks were often too
+light and their havresacks too heavy. "A watchcoat, a piece of
+pipe-clay, and a button-brush," compose rather a scanty kit: yet those
+three articles formed--with the exception of the clothes he stood
+in--the entire wardrobe and means of personal adornment of the Rooney
+above-named; and many of his comrades were scarce better provided. But
+if the back was neglected and left bare, the belly, on the contrary,
+was cared for with vigilant affection. On occasion, the Eighty-eighth
+could do their work on meagre diet as well, or better than any other
+corps. They would march two days on a pipe of tobacco; or for a week,
+with the addition of a biscuit and a dram. But when they did such
+things, it was no sign of any abstract love of temperance, or wish to
+mortify the flesh; it was simply a token of the extreme poverty of the
+district in which they found themselves. For the article provend they
+always kept a bright look-out. A greasy havresack, especially on the
+line of march, is the soldier's first desideratum; and it was rare that
+a very respectable workhouse soup could not have been produced by
+infusing that of a Connaughter in a proper quantity of water. When
+rations were scanty, or commissaries lagged in the rear, none understood
+better than the Eighty-eighth how to forage for themselves. "Every man
+his own quartermaster" was then their motto. Nothing came amiss to them;
+sweet or savoury, from a pig to a bee-hive, they sacked every thing; and
+their "taking ways" were often cast in their teeth. The natives were
+compelled to mount guard over their sheepfolds; but the utmost force
+they could muster was of small avail against the resolute onslaught of
+the half-famished Irishmen. Even the exertions of the Provost-marshal,
+and the liberal application of the cat, proved ineffectual to check
+these depredations; whilst the whimsical arguments used by the fellows
+in their defence sometimes disarmed the severity of Picton himself.
+
+It would have been quite out of character for an Irish regiment to march
+without ladies in their train, and accordingly the female following of
+the Rangers was organised on the most liberal scale. Motley as it was
+numerous, it included, besides English and Irish women, a fair
+sprinkling of tender-hearted Spaniards and Portuguese, who had been
+unable to resist the fascinations of the insinuating Connaughters. The
+sufferings of these poor creatures, on long marches, over bad roads and
+in wet and cold seasons, were of course terrible, and only to be
+equalled by their fidelity to those to whom they had attached
+themselves. Their endurance of fatigue was wonderful; their services
+were often great; and many a soldier, stretched disabled on the field of
+some bloody battle, and suffering from the terrible thirst attendant on
+wounds, owed his life to their gentle ministry. In circumstances of
+danger, they showed remarkable courage. At the assault of Ciudad
+Rodrigo, the baggage-guard, eager to share in the fight, deserted
+their post and rushed to the trenches. Immediately a host of
+miscreants--fellows who hung on the skirts of the army, watching
+opportunities to plunder--made a dash at the camp, but the women
+defended it valiantly, and fairly beat them off. Of course feminine
+sensibility got a little blunted by a life of this kind, and it was
+rarely with very violent emotion that the ladies saw their husbands go
+into action. Persuaded of their invincibility, they looked upon success
+as certain, and if, unfortunately, the victory left them widows, they
+deemed a very short mourning necessary before contracting a new
+alliance. Now and then a damsel of birth and breeding would desert the
+paternal mansion to follow the drum; and Mr Grattan tells a romantic
+history of a certain Jacinta Cherito, the beautiful daughter of a
+wealthy judge, who blacked her face and tramped off as a cymbal boy
+under the protection of the drum-major of the Eighty-eighth--a
+magnificent fellow, whose gorgeous uniform and imposing cocked hat
+caused him to be taken by the Portuguese for nothing less than a general
+of division. The young lady had not forgotten to take her jewels with
+her, and the old judge made a great fuss, and appealed to the colonel,
+who requested him to inspect the regiment as it left the town. But the
+sooty visage and uniform jacket baffled his penetration, and at the
+first halt, the drummer and the lady were made one flesh. Thorp, the
+lucky bridegroom, was a fine dashing fellow, bent upon distinguishing
+himself. He was often wounded, but never missed an engagement, even when
+his hurts were unhealed. He fell gloriously at Toulouse, and the next
+day came the gazette with his promotion to an ensigncy, which, if it was
+then of little value to him, was at any rate "a great consolation to his
+poor afflicted widow, and the means of reconciling her father to the
+choice she had made; and her return once more to her home was a scene of
+great rejoicing." When the British troops embarked at Bordeaux, for
+America and England, a crowd of poor Spanish and Portuguese women, who
+had long followed their fortunes and were now forbidden to accompany
+their husbands and lovers, watched their departure with tearful eyes.
+"They were fond and attached creatures, and had been useful in many
+ways, and under many circumstances, not only to their husbands, but to
+the corps they belonged to generally. Many of them, the Portuguese in
+particular, had lived with our men for years, and had borne them
+children." But the stern rules of the service prevailed. The battalions
+bound for America were allowed but a limited number of soldiers' wives,
+and the surplus were of necessity left to their fate. Some had money;
+more were penniless, and nearly naked. Men and officers were then
+greatly in arrear, but nevertheless a subscription was got up, and its
+amount divided amongst the unfortunates, thus abandoned upon a foreign
+shore, and at many hundreds of miles from their homes.
+
+General Picton was a man of action, not of words. There was no palaver
+about him, nothing superfluous in the way of orations, but he spoke
+strongly and to the point. Long harangues, as Mr Grattan justly
+observes, are not necessary to British soldiers. Metaphor and flowers of
+rhetoric are thrown away upon them. Something plain, pithy, and
+appropriate is what they like; the shorter the better. "Rangers of
+Connaught!" said Picton, as he passed the Eighty-eighth, drawn up for
+the assault of Ciudad Rodrigo, "it is not my intention to expend any
+powder this evening. We'll do this business with the cold iron." This
+was a very unpretending speech; nothing of the clap-trap or melodramatic
+about it; a mere declaration in the fewest possible words, of the
+speaker's intentions, implying what he expected from those he addressed.
+That it was just what was wanted, was proved by the hearty respondent
+cheer of the brave Irishmen. The result of the attack is well known; the
+Rangers took a gallant share in it. The next morning the troops were
+ordered out of the captured town, which they had ransacked to some
+purpose, and the Eighty-eighth, drawn up on their bivouac ground, were
+about to march away to the village of Atalaya, when Picton again rode
+past. "Some of the soldiers, who were more than usually elevated in
+spirits," (they had passed the night in bursting open doors and drinking
+brandy,) "called out, 'Well, General, we gave you a cheer last night:
+it's your turn now!' The general smiled, took off his hat, and said,
+'Here, then, you drunken set of brave rascals--hurrah! we'll soon be at
+Badajoz.'" A prophecy which was not long unaccomplished. With all
+deference to Mr Grattan, we cannot but think that the Eighty-eighth were
+very appropriately placed under Picton's orders. Excellent fighting men
+though they were, they certainly, according to their champion's own
+showing, needed a strict hand over them. We should like to know how they
+would have got on under such an officer as Mr Grattan tells us of, who,
+when in command of a regiment, came to mess one day in very low spirits,
+because, having sent his adjutant to inquire of an ensign why he did not
+attend parade, the ensign returned no answer, and, on subsequently
+meeting his commanding officer, cut him dead. The colonel told the story
+at the mess-table, and concluded by saying, "I thought nothing of his
+not answering my message, but I cannot express how much I am hurt at the
+idea of his cutting me as he did when I wished to speak to him!"
+Field-officers of such susceptible feelings, and such very loose ideas
+on the subject of discipline, were not plentiful in the Peninsula, and
+this one, we are given to understand, did not long retain his regiment.
+He would hardly have done at the head of the high-spirited Connaughters.
+But if Picton's severity to the men of the Eighty-eighth may be
+justified, his neglect of the officers is far more difficult to excuse.
+"_Not one of them was ever promoted through his recommendation._" The
+conduct of Lieutenant Mackie at Ciudad Rodrigo was chivalrous in the
+extreme. General Mackinnon--who commanded the brigade and was blown to
+pieces at its head by the explosion of a mine--wished to confer a mark
+of distinction on the gallant Eighty-eighth, and ordered that one of its
+subalterns should lead the forlorn-hope. The moment this was announced
+to the assembled officers, "Mackie stepped forward, and lowering his
+sword, said, 'Major Thompson, I am ready for that service.'" Mackinnon
+had promised a company to the forlorn-hope leader, if he survived. But
+it must be observed that Mackie was senior lieutenant, and consequently
+sure of early promotion. The Eighty-eighth was to be in the van at the
+assault, and the probabilities were that at least one captain would be
+knocked off. Or, if not that day, it would happen the next. So that
+Mackie, in volunteering on the most desperate of all services, could
+have little to actuate him beyond an honourable desire for glory. How
+was he repaid? Gurwood, who led the forlorn-hope at the lesser breach,
+got his company; Mackie remained a lieutenant--no captain of the
+Eighty-eighth having been killed, and General Mackinnon not being alive
+to fulfil his promise. And whilst all the other officers who had been
+forward in the attack, had their names recorded in Picton's
+division-order, poor Mackie was denied even the word of barren praise so
+gratifying to a soldier's heart.
+
+The loss of Ciudad Rodrigo was a stunning blow to the French. They could
+not understand it at all. Herrasti and his Spaniards had held out the
+place a month against Ney and Massena, with thirty or forty thousand
+veterans, and that in fine weather, a great advantage to the
+besiegers--in eleven days, and in the depth of winter, Wellington
+reduced it, with twenty thousand men and opposed by a French garrison.
+The contrast was great, and quite inexplicable to the French. "On the
+16th," wrote Marmont to Berthier, "the English batteries opened their
+fire at a great distance. On the 19th the place was taken by storm, and
+fell into the power of the enemy. There is something so incomprehensible
+in this event, that I allow myself no observation. I am not provided
+with the requisite information." No testimony could be more
+complimentary to the brave captors of Rodrigo. That great success,
+however, was only a forerunner of greater ones. Badajoz was the next
+place to be taken, preparatory to marching into the interior of Spain.
+To conceal his intentions from the enemy, Wellington had recourse to an
+elaborate stratagem. A powerful battering train, supplied by the men of
+war in the Tagus, was shipped at Lisbon, on board vessels of large size,
+which put out to sea, and, when out of sight of land, transhipped their
+cargo into smaller craft. These carried them up the Tagus into the heart
+of the country. At the same time the necessary magazines were formed;
+and at Elvas, only three leagues from Badajoz, a large quantity of
+fascines and gabions were prepared. All this, however, was done so
+quietly, Wellington appeared so supine, and Badajoz was so well
+provided, that Soult was lulled into security; and when at last he took
+the alarm, and marched from Seville at the head of twenty-five thousand
+men, it was too late. Philippon, and his brave garrison, did all that
+skill and courage could; but in vain. When Soult reached Villafranca,
+two days' march from Badajoz, the fortress had already been two days in
+the power of the English. This, to the French, was another unaccountable
+business; they, even yet, had not learned fully to appreciate the
+sovereign virtues of British bayonets. "I think the capture of Badajoz a
+very extraordinary event," Lery, Soult's chief engineer, wrote to
+General Kellerman, "and I am much at a loss to account for it in a clear
+and distinct manner." This comes at the end of a mysterious sort of
+epistle, in which the engineer general talks of fatality, and seems to
+think that the British had no right to take Badajoz, defended as it was.
+But Wellington and his army were great despisers of that sort of
+_right_, and, in spite of the really glorious defence, in spite of the
+strategy of the governor and the valour of the garrison, of _chevaux de
+frise_ of sword-blades, and of the deadly accuracy of the French
+artillery and musketeers, Badajoz was taken. The triumph was fearfully
+costly. Nearly four thousand five hundred men fell on the side of the
+besiegers;--Picton's division was reduced to a skeleton, and the
+Connaught Rangers lost more than half their numbers.
+
+Shot through the body at Badajoz, Mr Grattan was left there when his
+division marched away. He gives a terrible account of the sacking of the
+town; but on such details, even had they not been many times
+recapitulated, it is not pleasant to dwell. The frightful crimes
+perpetrated during those two days of unbridled excess and violence, rest
+at the door of the man whose boundless ambition occasioned that most
+desolating war. From an ignorant and sensual soldiery, excited to
+madness by a prolonged resistance, and by one of the most sanguinary
+conflicts recorded in the history of sieges, forbearance could hardly be
+expected. The horrible saturnalia, in which murder and rape, pillage and
+intoxication, are pushed to their utmost limits, are the necessary
+condition of a successful assault on a desperately defended fortress;
+and supposing them prohibited, and that such prohibition could be
+enforced, we agree with Mr Grattan in believing that many a town that
+has been victoriously carried, might have been found impregnable. But
+one must ever deplore the disgraceful scenes enacted in the streets and
+houses of Badajoz, Ciudad Rodrigo, and St Sebastian. Unsurpassed in
+atrocity, they remain everlasting blots upon the bright laurels gathered
+by the British in the Peninsula. And it is small palliation, that under
+similar circumstances, the armies of all nations have acted in like
+manner. Here the sufferers were not enemies. To the garrison, when their
+resistance ceased, quarter was given; they were marched away scatheless,
+and treated with that humanity which England, notwithstanding the lying
+assertions of foreign historians, has ever used towards her prisoners.
+No, the victims were friends and allies. The very nation in whose behalf
+our soldiers had fought, saw their houses ransacked, their property
+wasted, their wives and daughters brutally outraged, by those whose
+mission was to protect and defend. Let us hope they have forgotten, or
+at least forgiven, such gloomy episodes in the struggle for their
+liberation.
+
+The advocates of universal peace might adduce many potent and practical
+arguments in favour of their doctrine from the pages of Mr Grattan's
+book. He is unsparing in his details of the inevitable horrors of war;
+and some of his descriptions, persons of tender hearts and sensitive
+nerves will do well to pass over. They may be read with profit by those
+who, accustomed to behold but the sunny side of military life, think too
+lightly of the miseries war entails. Let such accompany Mr Grattan
+though the streets of Badajoz, on the morning of the 7th April, 1812,
+and into the temporary hospital of Villa Formosa, after the fierce
+conflict of Fuentes d'Onore, where two hundred soldiers still awaited,
+twenty-four hours after the action, the surgeons' leisure, for the
+amputation of their limbs. Let them view with him the piles of
+unsuccoured wounded on the breach of Badajoz, and hear the shrieks and
+groans of men dying in helpless agony, without a friendly hand to prop
+their head, or a drop of water to cool their fevered lips. From such
+harrowing scenes it is pleasant to turn to the more humane and redeeming
+features of civilised warfare, and to note the courteous and amicable
+relations that existed between the contending armies when, as sometimes
+happened, they lay near together without coming to blows. This occurred
+previously to the battle of Salamanca. From the 3d to the 12th of July,
+the French and British were in presence of each other, encamped on
+either side the Douro, at that season little more than a rivulet. Of
+course all were on the alert; there was no laxity or negligence that
+could tempt to surprise; but neither was there any useless skirmishing
+or picket firing; every thing was conducted in the most gentlemanly and
+correct manner. The soldiers bathed together and exchanged their
+rations, and the officers were on equally good terms. "The part of the
+river of which I speak was occupied, on our side, by the Third division;
+on the French side by the Seventh division. The French officers said to
+us at parting, 'We have met, and have been for some time friends. We are
+about to separate, and may meet as enemies. As friends we received each
+other warmly; as enemies we shall do the same.' Ten days afterwards the
+British Third and the French Seventh division were opposed to each other
+at Salamanca, and the Seventh French was destroyed by the British
+Third." Mr Grattan's wound was healed in ample time for him to assist at
+the battle of Salamanca; a glorious victory, which would have been even
+more complete had the British been properly seconded by their Portuguese
+allies. The behaviour of these was any thing but creditable to their
+nation. One detachment of ca�adores actually threw themselves on their
+faces to avoid the enemy's fire, and not all the blows showered on them
+by their commander, Major Haddock, could induce them to exchange their
+recumbent attitude for one more dignified. Notwithstanding this, and the
+more fatal feebleness of Pack's brigade, the French were totally beaten,
+and their loss was nearly four times that of the British. Lord
+Wellington's opinion of the battle--a particularly honourable one to our
+troops, inasmuch as they not only _fought_ better, but (which was not
+always the case) moved and manoeuvred better, than the picked veterans
+of the French army--is sufficiently shown by the fact that "he selected
+it in preference to all his other victories, as the most fitting to be
+fought over in sham-fight on the plains of St Denis, in the presence of
+the three crowned heads who occupied Paris after the second abdication
+of the Emperor Napoleon, in 1815."
+
+At Salamanca, the right brigade of the Third division, including the
+Connaught Rangers, charged the entire division of the French General
+Thomi�re. So awful was the volley that welcomed them, that more than
+half the officers, and nearly the whole front rank, were swept away.
+Doubtless the French thought this would prove a sickener, for great was
+their consternation when, before the smoke had well cleared away, they
+saw the shattered but dauntless brigade advancing fiercely and steadily
+upon them. Panic-stricken, they wavered; "the three regiments ran
+onward, and the mighty phalanx, which a moment before was so formidable,
+loosened and fell in pieces before fifteen hundred invincible British
+soldiers fighting in a line of only two deep." In this memorable charge,
+the standard-pole of the Eighty-eighth was struck by a bullet, the same
+that killed Major Murphy, who commanded the battalion. New colours have
+since been presented to the regiment, but the wounded pole is still
+preserved, and on it is engraved, on a plate of silver, the day and the
+manner of its mutilation.
+
+An advance on Madrid was consequent on the triumph at Salamanca, and on
+the 12th of August, Wellington and his army reached the Spanish capital.
+Their entrance has often been described, but in default of novelty, Mr
+Grattan's account of it possesses spirit and interest. It was one of
+those scenes that repay soldiers for months of fatigue and danger. The
+troops were almost carried into the city in the arms of the delighted
+populace. The steady, soldier-like bearing of the men, the appearance of
+the officers, nearly all mounted, inspired respect and increased the
+general enthusiasm. For miles from Madrid, the road was thronged; when
+the army got into the streets, it was no longer possible to preserve the
+order of march. The ranks were broken by the pressure of the crowd, and
+the officers (lucky dogs!) were half-smothered in the embraces of the
+charming Madrile�as. Young and old, ugly and handsome, all came in for
+their share of hugs and kisses. Still, although patriotism impelled the
+Spanish fair to look with favour upon the scarlet-coated Britons, the
+painful confession must be made that as individuals they gave the
+preference to the lively, light-hearted Frenchmen. Napoleon was the
+fiend himself, incarnate in the form of an under-sized Corsican, and the
+_gavachos_ were his imps, whom it was praise-worthy to shoot at from
+behind every hedge, and to poniard whenever the opportunity offered.
+Such was the creed inculcated by the priests, and devoutly entertained
+by their petticoated penitents--that is to say, by every Christian woman
+in the Peninsula. But somehow or other, when French regiments were
+quartered in Spanish towns, the female part of the population forgot the
+anathemas of their spiritual consolers, and looked complacently upon
+those they were enjoined to abhor. It was a case of "_nos amis les
+ennemis_," and the French, beaten every where in the field, obtained
+facile and frequent triumphs in the boudoir. "It is a singular fact, and
+I look upon it as a degrading one," says Mr Grattan with diverting
+seriousness, "that the French officers, whilst at Madrid, made in the
+ratio of five to one more conquests than we did." The dignity of the
+admission might be questioned; the degree of degradation is matter of
+opinion; the singularity is explained away by Mr Grattan himself. He
+blames his comrades for their stiff, unbending manners, and for their
+non-conformance to the customs of the country. They were nearly three
+months at Madrid, and yet he declares that, at the end of that time,
+they knew little more of the inhabitants than of the citizens of Pekin.
+And he opines that the impression left in Spain by the Peninsular army
+was rather one of respect for their courage, than of admiration of their
+social graces and general affability. If Mr Grattan, whilst reposing at
+ease upon his well-earned bays, would devise and promulgate an antidote
+to the mixture of shyness, reserve, and hauteur, which renders
+Englishmen, wherever they travel, the least popular of the European
+family, he would have a claim on his country's gratitude stronger even
+than the one he established whilst defending her with his sword in the
+well-contested fields of the Peninsula. Notwithstanding, however, the
+unamiability with which he reproaches his companions in arms, there was
+much fun and feasting, and sauntering in the Prado, and bull-fighting
+and theatre-going, whilst the British were at Madrid. But it was too
+pleasant to last long. The best a soldier can expect in war-time, is an
+alternation of good quarters and severe hardship. The "_quart-d'heure de
+Rabelais_" was at hand, when all the dancing, drinking, masking, and
+other pleasant things should be paid for, and the brief enjoyment
+forgotten, amidst the sufferings of the most painful retreat--excepting,
+of course, that of Corunna--effected by a British army during the whole
+war. We refer to the retrograde movement that followed the unsuccessful
+siege of Burgos.
+
+The high reputation of the British soldier rests far more upon his arms
+than upon his legs; in other words, he is a fighting rather than a
+marching man. Slowness of movement, in the field as on the route, is the
+fault that has most frequently been imputed to him. One thing is pretty
+generally admitted; that, to work well, he must be well fed. And even
+then he will hardly get over the ground as rapidly, or endure fatigue as
+long, as the lean lathy Frenchman, who has never known the liberal
+rations and fat diet the other is accustomed to. When a certain period
+of active service and long marches has given the English soldier his
+campaigning legs, he must still have his regular grog, or he soon flags,
+if he does not grumble and become insubordinate. Rations were bad, and
+hard to be got, on the retreat from Burgos. Then, Mr Grattan tells us,
+the superior marching qualities of the Irish were manifest. There had
+been very little beef-steak and bacon expended in _their_ bringing up;
+scanty fare was nothing new to them, and by no means affected their
+gaiety and good-humour. And when shoes were scarce, what cared they? The
+stones in Connaught are not a bit softer than those in Spain; and
+nine-tenths of the boys had trotted about, from infancy upwards, with
+"divel a brogue, save the one on their tongues." Some of the English
+regiments--the Forty-fifth for instance, chiefly composed of Nottingham
+weavers--would, under ordinary circumstances, march as well as any
+Irishman of them all: "But if it came to a hard tug, and that we had
+neither rations nor shoes, then, indeed, the Connaught Rangers would be
+in their element, and out-march almost any battalion in the service." On
+the retreat from Burgos to Portugal, they gave proof of their toughness
+and endurance; for whilst other regiments were decimated by fatigue and
+sickness, the Eighty-eighth scarcely lost a man, except by the enemy's
+fire. It was a time when the good qualities of all were severely tested.
+The movement began in a most unfavourable season. The roads were nearly
+impassable from heavy rains, and for days together there was not a dry
+jacket in the army. At night they lay in the open country, often in a
+swamp, without a tent to shelter them; the baggage was detached, and
+they never saw it till they reached Ciudad Rodrigo. It was share and
+share alike amongst men and officers, and many of the latter were mere
+striplings, who had but lately left the comforts of their English homes.
+When they halted from their weary day's march, the ill-conditioned
+beasts collected for rations had to be slaughtered; sometimes they came
+too late to be of any use, or the camp-kettles did not arrive in time to
+cook them; and the famished soldiers had to set out again, with a few
+pieces of dry biscuit rattling in their neglected stomachs, and driven
+to satisfy the cravings of hunger with the acorns that strewed the
+forests. There was little money afloat, for pay was four months in
+arrear, but millions would have been useless where there was nothing to
+buy. The country was deserted; every where the inhabitants fled on the
+approach of the two armies. Disease was the natural consequence of so
+many privations; ague and dysentery undermined the men's strength, and
+many poor fellows, unable to proceed, were left upon the road. Horses
+died by hundreds, and those which held out were for the most part
+sore-backed, one of the greatest calamities that can happen to cavalry
+and artillery on the march. Fortunately Soult, who, with ninety thousand
+men, followed the harassed army, had some experience of British troops.
+And what he had seen of them, especially at Albuera and on the Corunna
+retreat, had inspired him with a salutary respect for their prowess.
+They might retreat, but he knew what they could and would do when driven
+to stand at bay. And therefore, although Wellington was by no means
+averse to fight, and actually offered his antagonist battle on the very
+ground where, four months previously, that of Salamanca had occurred,
+the wary Duke of Dalmatia declined the contest. He played a safe game:
+without risking a defeat by a general action, or attempting to drive the
+British before him with the bayonet, he hovered about their rear,
+disquieted them by a flank movement of part of his force, and had the
+satisfaction of knowing that their loss by the casualties and fatigues
+of the march and inclemency of the weather, was as great as it would
+probably have been had he engaged them. For, besides those who perished
+on the road, when the army got into winter quarters, a vast number of
+men and officers went into hospital, and months elapsed before the
+troops were fully reorganised and fit for the field. At a day's march
+from Ciudad Rodrigo, Wellington's rear-guard had a smart skirmish, and
+then Soult desisted from his pursuit, and the Anglo-Portuguese were
+allowed to proceed without further molestation. Although disastrous, and
+in some respects ill managed, the retreat was in no way disgraceful. The
+French, very superior in numbers, had, whenever they pressed forward,
+been bravely met, and invariably repulsed.
+
+With this retreat, Mr Grattan's Peninsular campaigns closed. He returned
+to Ireland, and in the summer of 1814, embarked for Canada. He rather
+refers to, than records the service he saw there; taking occasion,
+however, for a strong censure on Sir George Prevost, who, after forcing
+our ill-appointed fleet on Lake Champlain into action, refused to allow
+Brisbane and his brigade of "Peninsulars" to take the fort of
+Platsburgh, an enterprise easy of achievement, and which would have
+placed the captured ships, and the victorious but disabled American
+flotilla, at the mercy of the British. But we have not space to follow
+the Ranger across the Atlantic, nor is it essential so to do; for,
+although he gives some amusing sketches of Canada and the Canadians, the
+earlier portion of his book is by far the most interesting, and
+certainly the most carefully written. We could almost quarrel with him
+for defacing his second volume with perpetual and not very successful
+attempts at wit. We have rarely met with more outrageous specimens of
+punning run mad, than are to be found in its pages. Barring that fault,
+we have nothing but what is favourable to say of the book. Its tone is
+manly, and soldier-like, and it is creditable both to the writer and to
+the service, by which, during the last thirty years, our stores of
+military and historical literature have been so largely and agreeably
+increased.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] _Adventures of the Connaught Rangers, from 1808 to 1814._ By W.
+GRATTAN, Esq. London. 1847.
+
+
+
+
+LORD SIDMOUTH'S LIFE AND TIME.[4]
+
+
+To read a memoir of the late Lord Sidmouth, is like taking a walk
+through Westminster Abbey. All the literature, is inscriptions; all the
+figures are monumental; and all the names are those of men whose
+characters and distinctions have been echoing in our ears since we had
+the power to understand national renown. The period between 1798, when
+the subject of this memoir made his first step in parliamentary life as
+Speaker, and 1815, when the close of the war so triumphantly finished
+the long struggle between liberty and jacobinism, was beyond all
+comparison the most memorable portion of British history.
+
+In this estimate, we fully acknowledge the imperishable fame of
+Marlborough in the field, and the high ability of Bolingbroke in the
+senate. The gallantry of Wolfe still throws its lustre over the
+concluding years of the second George; and the brilliant declamation of
+Chatham will exact the tribute due to daring thought, and classic
+language, so long as oratory is honoured among men. But the age which
+followed was an age of realities, stern, stirring, and fearful. There
+was scarcely a trial of national fortitude, or national Vigour, through
+which the sinews of England were not then forced to give proof of their
+highest power of endurance. All was a struggle of the elements; in which
+every shroud and tackle of the royal ship of England was strained; and
+the tempest lasted through nearly a quarter of a century. England, the
+defender of all, was the sufferer for all. Every principle of her
+financial prosperity, every material of her military prowess, every
+branch of her constitutional system, every capacity of her political
+existence, her Church, her State, and her Legislature, were successively
+compelled into the most perilous yet most powerful display; and the
+close of the most furious hostility which Europe had ever seen, only
+exhibited in a loftier point of view the victorious strength which
+principle confers upon a people.
+
+Compared with this tremendous scene, the political conflicts of the
+preceding age were a battle on the stage, compared with the terrors of
+the field. The spectators came to enjoy a Spectacle, and sit tranquilly
+admiring the brilliancy of the caparisons and the dexterity of the
+charge; but perfectly convinced that all would end without harm to the
+champions, and that the fall of the curtain would extinguish the war.
+But, in the trials of the later time, there were moments when we seemed
+to be throwing our last stake; when the trumpets of Europe, leagued
+against us, seemed to be less challenging us to the field, than
+preceding us to the tomb; and when the last hope of the wise and good
+might be, to give the last manifestation of a life of patriotic virtue.
+
+In language like this, we are not abasing the national courage. We are
+paying the fullest homage to the substantial claims of the English
+heart. It is only by the severest national struggles that the
+superiority of national powers can be developed; and without doubting
+the qualities of the Marlboroughs and Chathams--or even without
+doubting, that if thrown into the battle of the last fifty years, they
+would have exhibited the same intellectual stature and powerful
+adroitness which distinguished their actual displays--yet they wanted
+the strong necessities of a time like ours, to place them on a similar
+height of renown. Still their time continues in admirable study. But it
+is like the story of the Volscian and Samnite combats, read in the day
+when the consul, flying through the streets of Rome, brought the news of
+Cann�.
+
+The wars and politics of the eighteenth century were the manoeuvres of
+a _garde du corps_, and the intrigues of a boudoir. Our fathers saw no
+nation of thirty millions rushing to the field; frantic with the
+passion for overthrow, no Napoleon thundering at the head of vassal
+Europe against England; no conspiracy of peoples against thrones; no
+train of crouching sovereignties, half in terror and half in servility,
+ready to do the wildest will of the wildest despot of the world; no army
+of five hundred thousand men ready to spring upon our shores, and
+turning off only to the overthrow of empires. All was on a smaller
+scale; the passions feebler, the means narrower, the objects more
+trivial, the triumphs more temporary, the catastrophe more powerless,
+and the glory more vanishing.
+
+All has since subsided; and the mind of man is turned to efforts in
+directions totally new. All now is the rigid struggle with the physical
+difficulties of society. The grand problems are, how to level the
+mountain, and to drain the sea: or, if we must leave the Alps to be
+still the throne of the thunder, and suffer even the Zuyder-zee to roll
+its sullen waves over its incorrigible shallows; yet to tunnel the
+mountain and pass the sea with a rapidity, which makes us regardless of
+the interposition of obstacles that once stopped the march of armies,
+and made the impregnable fortresses of kingdoms. But the still severer
+trials of human intelligence are, how to clothe, feed, educate, and
+discipline the millions which every passing year pours into the world.
+The mind may well be bewildered with a prospect so vast, so vivid, and
+yet so perplexing. Every man sees that old things are done away, that
+physical force is resuming its primitive power over the world, and that
+we are approaching a time when Mechanism will have the control of
+nature, and Multitude the command of society.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are many families in England which, without any change of
+circumstances, without any increase of fortune, or any discoverable
+vicissitudes, have existed for centuries, in possession of the same
+property, generally a small one, and handed down from father to son as
+if by a law of nature. The family of Lord Sidmouth is found to have held
+the proprietorship of the small estate of Fringford, in Oxfordshire,
+from the year 1600, and to have had a residence in Bannebury about a
+century and a half before;--the first descendant of this quiet race who
+became known beyond the churchyard where "his village fathers sleep,"
+being Dr Addington, who died in 1799. Genealogies like those give a
+striking view of the general security of landed possession, which the
+habits of national integrity, and the influence of law, must alone have
+effected, during the turbulent times which so often changed the
+succession to the throne of England.
+
+Dr Addington, who had been educated at Winchester school, and Trinity
+College, Oxford, having adopted medicine as his profession, commenced
+his practice at Reading, where he married the daughter of the Rev. Dr
+Niley, head-master of the grammar-school. The well-known trial of the
+wretched parricide, Miss Blandy, for poisoning, in which he was a
+principal witness, brought him into considerable notice; and probably on
+the strength of this notice, he removed to London, and took a house in
+Bedford Row, where the late Lord Sidmouth, his fourth child, but eldest
+son, was born. He next removed to Clifford Street, a more fashionable
+quarter, which brought him into intercourse with many persons of
+distinction. Among these were Louth, Bishop of London, the Duke of
+Montagu, Earl Rivers, and, first of the first, the great Earl of
+Chatham. With this distinguished man, Dr Addington seems to have been on
+terms of familiar friendship, as the following extracts show:--Chatham
+writes from Burton Pynsent, in 1771.
+
+"All your friends here, the flock of your care, are truly sensible of
+the kind attentions of the good shepherd. My last fit of the gout left
+me as it had visited me, very kindly. I am many hours every day in the
+field, and, as I live like a farmer abroad, I return home and eat like
+one. * *
+
+"Ale goes on admirably, and agrees perfectly. My reverence for it, too,
+is increased, having just read in the manners of our remotest Celtic
+ancestors much of its antiquity and invigorating qualities. The boys all
+long for ale, seeing papa drink it, but we do not try such an
+experiment. Such is the force of example, that I find I must watch
+myself in all I do, for fear of misleading. If your friend William saw
+me smoke, he would certainly call for a pipe."
+
+Lord Chatham died May 11th, 1788, which event was thus notified by Dr
+Addington to his son Henry.
+
+"You will be grieved to hear that Lord Chatham is no more. It pleased
+Providence to take him away this morning, as if it were in mercy that he
+might not be a spectator of the total ruin of a country which he was not
+permitted to save."
+
+The doctor was a croaker, as was the fashion of the time, with all who
+pretended to peculiar political sagacity. Of course the family physician
+of the ex-minister was in duty bound to echo the ex-minister's
+discontent. It is clear that, whatever professional gifts the doctor
+inherited from Apollo, he did not share the gift of prophecy. The
+doctor, after realising enough by his profession to purchase an estate
+in Devonshire, retired to Reading, where, in 1790, he died, having had,
+in the year before, the enviable gratification of seeing his son elected
+to the Speakership of the House of Commons.
+
+Henry Viscount Sidmouth was born in 1757, on the 30th of May. At the age
+of five years, he was placed under the care of the Rev. William Gilpin,
+author of the Essays on the Picturesque, who for many years kept a
+school at Cheam, in Surrey.
+
+Lord Sidmouth had but one brother, Hiley, who subsequently figured so
+often in the caustic rhymes of Canning, and who, under his brother's
+auspices, was successively secretary of the treasury, paymaster of the
+forces, and under-secretary of state. In his twelfth year, Henry,
+followed by Hiley, was sent to Winchester, then under the government of
+the well-known Dr Joseph Wharton, with George Isaac Huntingford as one
+of the assistants.
+
+The author of the biography gives Huntingford credit for the singular
+degree of attachment exhibited in his occasional letters to his pupil.
+It certainly seems singular; when we know the slenderness, if not
+sternness of the connexion generally subsisting between the teachers at
+a great English seminary, and the pupils. In one of those epistles
+Huntingford says to this boy of fifteen.
+
+"For my own part, to you I lay open _my whole heart without reserve_. I
+divest myself of the little superiority which age may have given me.
+With you I can enter into conversation with all the familiarity of an
+intimate companion. The few hours of intercourse which we thus enjoy
+with each other give more relief to my wearied body and mind than _any
+other amusement on earth_. What I am to do when you leave school, _a
+melancholy thought, I cannot foresee_. May the _evil hour be postponed_
+as late as possible. Yet let me add, whenever it shall be most for your
+advantage to leave me, I will not doubt to sacrifice _my own peace_ and
+comfort for your interest. _I love myself, but you better_."
+
+We hope that this style is not much in fashion in our public schools.
+Dean Pellew tells us that numerous letters of this kind were written by
+this tutor to his pupil in after life, and adds with a ludicrous
+solemnity, "It will readily be imagined how _efficacious_ they must have
+proved, in forming the character of the future statesman, and erecting
+Spartan and Roman virtues on the noble foundation of Christianity."
+
+For our part, we know not what to make of such communications: they seem
+to us intolerably silly, and we think ought _not_ to have been
+published. In later life, their writer was made Bishop of Hereford and
+Warden of Winchester. He seems to have been a fellow of foresight!
+
+In 1773, Henry and Hiley were both removed from Winchester, and put
+under the tuition of Dr Goodenough, who took private pupils at Ealing,
+and who was afterwards Bishop of Carlisle. In the next year, Henry
+entered as commoner in Brazen-Nose College under the tuition of
+Radcliffe, then a tutor of some celebrity. In this college he became
+acquainted with Abbot, afterwards Lord Colchester, and William Scott,
+afterwards Lord Stowell. He took his degree in 1778, and in this year
+had the misfortune to lose his mother, who seems to have been an amiable
+and sensible person. In the next year, he obtained the Chancellor's
+prize for an English essay on "the affinity between painting and writing
+in point of composition;" and at the recital of this essay in the
+theatre he first became acquainted with Lord Mornington, afterwards
+Marquis Wellesley, an intimacy which lasted for sixty-two years. He now
+adopted law as his profession, took chambers in Paper Buildings, and
+kept his terms regularly at Lincoln's Inn. In 1781, he married Ursula
+Mary, eldest daughter and co-heiress of Leonard Hammond, Esq. of Cheam,
+in Surrey, and took a house in Southampton Street, Bloomsbury, where he
+determined to follow the profession of the law. But this determination
+was speedily over-ruled by the success of the celebrated son of Chatham.
+On the 26th of February, 1781, William Pitt, then only in his
+twenty-second year, made his first speech in the House of Commons, in
+support of Burke's bill for the regulation of the civil list. This epoch
+in parliamentary annals is noticed in a brief letter from Dr Goodenough
+to Pitt's early tutor, Wilson, who sent it to Mr Addington, among whose
+papers it was found:--
+
+"Dear Sir,--I cannot resist the natural impulse of giving pleasure, by
+telling you that the famous William Pitt, who made so capital a figure
+in the last reign, is happily restored to his country. He made his first
+public re-appearance in the senate last night. All the old members
+recognised him instantly, and most of the young ones said he appeared
+the very man they had so often heard described: the language, the
+manner, the gesture, the action were the same; and there wanted only a
+few wrinkles in the face, and some marks of age, to identify the
+absolute person of the late Earl of Chatham."
+
+Addington, at this period, had a good deal of intercourse with Pitt, who
+became Chancellor of the Exchequer at the age of twenty-three, and whose
+brilliant success in parliament evidently stimulated his friend to
+political pursuits. But the infamous coalition broke in, and Pitt was
+dismissed from the ministry. Its existence, however, was brief: it not
+merely fell, but was crushed amidst a universal uproar of national
+scorn; and Pitt, not yet twenty-five, was appointed prime minister. In
+the course of the month, an interview took place between Pitt and
+Addington, which gave his friends strong hopes of seeing him in
+immediate office. His friend Bragge thus writes to him:
+
+"I give you joy of the effects of the interview of last Sunday, of which
+I am impatient to hear the particulars. Secretary, either official or
+confidential, I should wish you, and indeed all the boards are already
+filled."
+
+Still, he remained unappointed, though his intimacy with the minister
+grew more confidential from day to day. Pitt was at this time engaged in
+a desperate struggle with the Opposition, who, ruined as they were in
+character, yet retained an overwhelming majority in parliament. On this
+occasion, the young statesman gave perhaps the most triumphant evidence
+of his remarkable sagacity. Every one was astonished, that he had not at
+once dissolved a parliament which it seemed impossible for him either to
+convince or conquer. But, with the House of Lords strongly disposed
+towards him, and the King for his firm friend, Pitt fought the House
+night after night, until he found the national feeling wholly on his
+side. Then, on the 25th of March, 1784, he dissolved the parliament, and
+by that act extinguished the whole power of Whiggism for twenty years.
+There never was a defeat more ruinous; more than a hundred and sixty
+members, who had generally been of the Foxite party, were driven
+ignominiously from their seats, and the party was thenceforth condemned
+to linger in an opposition equally bitter, fruitless, and unpopular. In
+the new parliament, Addington was returned for the borough of Devizes in
+place of Sutton, his brother-in-law, who, being advanced in life, made
+over his interest to his young relative. On this occasion, he received a
+letter from his old master, Joseph Wharton:--
+
+"I cannot possibly forbear expressing to you the sincere pleasure I
+feel, in giving you joy of being elected into a parliament that I hope
+and trust will save this country from destruction, by crushing the most
+shameful and the most pernicious coalition that I think ever disgraced
+the annals of any kingdom, ancient or modern. I am, dear sir, with true
+regard, yours, &c.--JOSEPH WHARTON."
+
+There are few more remarkable instances of contrasted character and
+circumstance than Addington's ultimate rise to power. The anecdote is
+mentioned, that on one occasion, when they were riding together to Holl
+Wood, then Mr Pitt's seat near Bromley in Kent, that on Pitt's urging
+him to follow up politics with vigour, and the latter alleging in excuse
+the distaste and disqualification for public life created by early
+habits and natural disposition, Pitt burst forth in the following
+quotation from Waller:--
+
+    "The lark that shuns on lofty boughs to build
+    Her humble nest, lies silent in the field:
+    But should the promise of a brighter day,
+    Aurora smiling, bid her rise and play;
+    Quickly she'll show 'twas not for want of voice,
+    Or power to climb, she made so low a choice:
+    Singing she mounts, her airy notes are stretch'd
+    Towards heav'n, as if from heav'n alone her notes she fetch'd."
+
+With these words, he set spurs to his horse, and left his companion to
+ponder on the moral of the poetry.
+
+But neither poetry nor prose could inspire Addington's mind with the
+ardour of his glowing friend. Parliament was indeed open to him, but the
+true gate to parliamentary distinction would never have been opened by
+his own hand. There are two kinds of speaking, and but two, which ever
+make distinguished way in the House. The first is, that superior order
+which alone deserves the name of eloquence, and which must carry
+distinction with it wherever men are gathered together. The next is,
+that adroit and practical style of speaking by which the details of
+public business are carried forward; a style which requires briskness of
+capacity, united to extent of information, and in which the briskness
+must not be suffered to become flippant, and the detail to become dull.
+We are perfectly confident, that, beyond those two classes, no speaker
+can ever expect to retain the ear of the House. Our theory, however, is
+not the favourite one with that crowd, whose diatribes nightly fill the
+columns of the newspapers; where bitterness is perpetually mistaken for
+pungency, and petulance for power, dryness for business and commonplace
+for conviction. But failure is the inevitable consequence; the archer
+showers his shafts in vain; they are pointed with lead, and they always
+fall blunt on the ground. Some of the noisiest haranguers of our time
+utterly "waste their sweetness on the desert air," their hearers drop
+away with fatal rapidity, and the orator is reminded of his triumph only
+by the general flight of his auditory. Then comes some favourite of the
+House: the coffee-room is thinned in its turn; the benches are crowded
+once more; and some statesmanlike display consoles the House for its
+lost time. Addington's habits were those of a student, and he brought
+them with him into parliament. In the House of Commons, there are nearly
+as many classes of character, as there are in life outside the walls.
+There are the men made for the operations of public life, bold, active,
+and with an original sense of superiority. Another class is made for
+under-secretaries and subordinates, sharp, and ingenious men, the real
+business-men of the House. Another class, perfectly distinct, is that of
+the matter-of-fact men, largely recruited from among opulent merchants,
+bankers sent from country constituencies, and others of that calibre,
+who are formidable on every question of figures, are terrible on
+tariffs, and evidently think, that there is no book of wisdom on earth
+but a ledger. Then come the country gentlemen, generally an excellent
+and honest race, but to whom a life in London, in the majority of
+instances, has a strong resemblance to a life in the Millbank
+Penitentiary; driven into parliament, by what is called a "sense of
+their position in the country," which generally means the commands of
+their wives, &c., &c., their sojourn within the circuit of the
+metropolis is a purgatory. They sicken of the life of lounging through
+London, where they are nothing, and long to get back to the country
+where they are "magistrates;" generally too old to dance, the
+fashionable season has no charms for them: even the clubs seem to them
+a sort of condemned cell, where the crowd, guilty of unpardonable
+idleness, cluster together with no earthly resource but gazing into the
+street, or poring over a newspaper. If this service is severe enough to
+shake their philosophy during the sleety showers of February, and the
+withering blasts of March; the first break of sunshine, and the first
+streak of blue sky, makes their impatience amount to agony. The rest of
+the season only renders their suffering more inveterate; until at last
+the discharge of cannon from the Park, and the sound of trumpets at the
+doors of the House of Lords, a gracious speech from the throne, and a
+still more gracious smile from the sitter on it, let them loose from
+their task, and they are free, facetious, and foxhunters once more.
+There are still half-a-dozen other classes, "fine by degrees, and
+beautifully less," which may be left to the imagination of the reader,
+and the experience of the well-bred world.
+
+Addington soon made himself useful on committees. The strong necessities
+of the case, much more than the Reform Bill, have remarkably shortened
+the longevity of election committees. The committee, in general, was
+fortunate, which could accomplish its business within three months. Some
+took twice the number, some even crossed over from session to session.
+The first committee on which Addington was engaged had this unfortunate
+duration, and he was re-appointed to it in the second session of the
+parliament of 1785.
+
+At this period, whether from a sense of disappointment, or from the
+silent dulness of this drudgery, his health appears to have been in a
+feeble state. In a letter to his father, he apologises for listlessness
+and stupidity by illness, and says, "that he does not come up to the
+definition of man as a risible animal." Yet the man who could live to
+eighty-seven, and retain his health in a retirement of nearly a quarter
+of a century, could not complain of his constitution.
+
+In 1786 Pitt availed himself of the opening of the session to induce his
+friend to break ground. He proposed that he should second the address;
+and almost condescended to coax him into further exertion of his
+abilities.--"I will not disguise," says his letter, "that, in asking
+this favour of you, (the speech,) I look beyond the immediate object of
+the first day's debate; from a persuasion that whatever induces you to
+take a part in public, will equally contribute to your personal credit,
+and that of the system to which I have the pleasure of thinking you are
+so warmly attached. Believe me to be, with great truth and regard, my
+dear sir, faithfully and sincerely yours,--W. PITT." Addington complied
+with a part of the proposal, seconded the Address, and was considered to
+have performed his task with effect. But the effort went no farther. His
+ability lay in another direction; and though a clear, well-informed, and
+influential debater in his more public days, and when the urgency of
+office compelled the exertion, he left for four years the honours of
+debate to the multitude of his competitors.
+
+In the course of the memoir, there is a letter of Addington's, speaking
+of Sheridan's famous speech on the Begum question. Addington voted in
+the majority against Hastings; but, though he does not exactly say that
+Sheridan's famous speech was the cause of his vote, he yet joins in the
+general acclamation.
+
+It has been the habit of late critics to decry the merits of this famous
+oration, and even to charge it with being frivolous, outrageous, and
+bombastic, an immense accumulation of calumny and clap-trap, which the
+craft of Sheridan would not submit to the public ordeal, and which he
+has therefore left to its chance of a fantastic and visionary fame. But
+this we find it impossible to believe. That in a speech of five hours
+and a half, there may have been--nay, there must have been, passages of
+extravagance, and even errors of taste, is perfectly probable; but they
+must have been overcome by countless passages of lustre and beauty,--by
+powerful conceptions and brilliant examples of language; at once
+resistless and refined,--by living descriptions, and thoughts of daring
+and dazzling energy, sufficient to have made it one of the most
+memorable triumphs of senatorial eloquence in the world. How, on any
+other supposition, is it possible to account for the effects which we
+know it to have produced?
+
+Addington's letter, alluding to this subject, says "The papers will
+convey but a faint idea of a speech, which I heard Fox declare to be the
+most wonderful effort of the human mind that perhaps had ever been made.
+Mr Pitt, and indeed the whole House, spoke of it in terms of admiration
+and astonishment, scarcely inferior to those of Mr Fox."
+
+The papers, indeed, convey a worse than inadequate idea of this
+wonderful oration, for they give merely a few fragments, in which they
+have contrived either to select their examples with the most curious
+infelicity, or to blunder them into bombast. But nothing can be more
+childish than to suppose, that Pitt would have given his praise to
+tawdry metaphor, that Burke would have done honour to feeble truisms,
+that Fox should have been unable to distinguish between logic and
+looseness of reasoning, or that the whole assembly, who had been in the
+habit of hearing those pre-eminent orators, should have been tricked by
+theatric dexterity or charlatan rhetoric into homage. The oration must
+have been a most magnificent performance, and we have only to deplore
+the loss of a great work of genius.
+
+Another young phenomenon shot across the parliamentary horizon within
+the same month. It was the late Earl Grey. A letter of Addington to his
+father thus describes the debut of this young Liberal.
+
+"Feb. 22, 1787.--We had a glorious debate last night, upon the motion
+for an address of thanks to the King, for having negotiated the
+commercial treaty. A new speaker presented himself to the House, and
+went through his first performance with an �clat that has not been
+equalled within my recollection. His name is Grey; he is not more than
+twenty-two years of age, and he took his seat, which is for
+Northumberland, only in the present session. I do not go too far in
+declaring, that in the advantages of figure, elocution, voice, and
+manner, he is not surpassed by any one member of the House; and I grieve
+to say, that he was last night in the ranks of Opposition, from which
+there is no prospect of his being detached."
+
+It is curious to see, how easily the exigencies of party mould men, and
+how readily under that pressure they unsay their maxims, and retract
+their principles. The object of the commercial treaty was, to put our
+commerce in some degree on a fair footing with that of France. The
+object of Mr Grey's rhetoric was, to show that the commercial treaty was
+altogether a blunder, which, as being a Tory and ministerial
+performance, it must be in the eyes of a Whig and an oppositionist. But
+the maxim on which he chiefly relied, was the wisdom of that established
+system of our policy, in which France had always been regarded with the
+most suspicious jealousy at least--if not as our natural foe. Of course
+this Whig maxim lasted just so long as the Whigs were out of office, and
+could use it as a weapon against the Minister. But, from the moment when
+France became actually dangerous, when her councils became demoniac, and
+her factions frenzied, Whiggism, despairing of turning out the Minister
+by argument, resolved to make the attempt by menace. Hopeless in the
+House, it appealed to the rabble, and France was extolled to the skies.
+We then heard nothing of the "natural enmity," but a vast deal of the
+instinctive friendship. England and France were no longer to be two
+hostile powers sitting on their respective shores, with flashing eyes
+and levelled spears, but like a pair of citizen's wives loaded with
+presents and provisions for each other, and performing their awkward
+courtesies across the Channel.
+
+It must be acknowledged, however, that the Whig maxim, though a
+watchword of faction, was no blunder of fact. A commercial treaty with
+the French in that day, or in any other day before or since, was a
+dream. To bring the Frenchman to any rational agreement on the subject
+of trade, or to keep him steady to any agreement whatever, has been a
+problem, which no British statesman has been able to solve. No
+commercial treaty, even with all the genius of Pitt, has ever produced
+to England the value of the paper on which it is written. Whether, if
+they were two Englands in the world, they might not establish commercial
+treaties with each other, may be a question. But we regard it as an
+absolute waste of time, to think of trading on fair terms with any of
+the slippery tariffs of foreign countries. In fact, this is now so
+perfectly understood, that England has nearly given up the notion of
+commercial treaties. She trades now, where the necessities of the
+foreigner demand her trade. The foreigner hates John Bull, Just as the
+Athenian peasant hated Aristides, and for the same reason. He hates him
+for being honest, manly, and sincere; he hates him for the integrity of
+his principles, for the purity of his faith, and for the _reality_ of
+his freedom; he hates him for his prosperity, for his progress, and for
+his power. And while the Frenchman capers in his fetters, and takes his
+promenade under the shadow of the fortifications of Paris; while the
+German talks of constitutions in the moon; and while the Holy Alliance
+amuses itself with remodelling kingdoms, John Bull may be well content
+to remain as he is, and leave them to such enjoyment as they can find in
+sulkiness and sneering.
+
+Grey's brilliant debut appears not to have been sustained: he spoke
+little during the session, but talked much--a fatal distinction to a
+parliamentary aspirant. Ambitious of figuring, he attempted to figure on
+all occasions; and, once or twice, unluckily daring the great champion
+of the treasury bench to the field, he was driven from it with wounds
+which, if they did not teach him a sense of his weakness, at least
+taught him a sense of his danger. Mr Grey's credit, says Addington in a
+letter, "as a man of discretion and temper, remains to be established.
+His reputation for abilities has not increased within the last two
+months, while he has in all respects enhanced that of the person (Pitt)
+to whom he ventured to oppose himself."
+
+In alluding to the intercourse of Addington with Wilberforce, the
+biographer, we think very justly, complains of the sillinesses which
+have transpired in the latter's diary. Addington took higher views on
+ecclesiastical subjects; and was less _rapid_ in his movements for the
+abolition of the slave-trade; being of opinion that precipitate measures
+would only increase the traffic to an enormous extent, deprive England
+of all power of restraining the frightful atrocities of the middle
+passage; and, by throwing the whole trade into the hands of foreigners,
+leave it open to all the reckless abominations of mankind.
+
+The result was, unfortunately, all that rational men anticipated. The
+trade carried on by the foreigner has been tripled, or even quadrupled;
+the horrors of the middle passage are without restraint; and the
+sufferings of the victims, on their march to the coast, by fatigue, want
+of food, and the cruelty of their treatment, are estimated to destroy
+nearly twice the number of those who ever cross the Atlantic. The very
+powers with whom we have already made treaties for the purpose of
+extinguishing this infernal traffic, are deepest in its commerce; and
+its extinction now seems hopeless, except through some of those
+tremendous visitations, by which Providence scourges crimes which have
+grown too large for the jurisdiction of man.
+
+Lord Sidmouth, then far advanced in life, when he saw those remarks in
+the diary, naturally felt offended, but he bore the offence with
+dignity, merely saying, as he closed the volume, "Well, Wilberforce does
+not speak of me as he spoke to me, I am sorry to say." Of Wilberforce,
+no one can desire to doubt the general honesty; but that he was
+singularly trifling and inconstant, was evidently the opinion of his
+contemporaries in the House. The following anecdote is given from the
+author's notes on this point. "Lord Sidmouth told us, that one morning,
+at a cabinet meeting, after an important debate in the House of Commons,
+some one said, 'I wonder how Wilberforce voted last night:' on which
+Lord Liverpool observed, 'I do not know how he voted, but of this I am
+pretty sure, that in whatever way he voted, he repents of his vote this
+morning.' Lord Sidmouth added, 'It was odd enough, that I had no sooner
+returned to my office, than Wilberforce was announced, who said,--Lord
+Sidmouth, you will be surprised at the vote I gave last night, and,
+indeed, I am not myself altogether satisfied with it;'--to which I
+replied, My dear Wilberforce, I shall never be _surprised_ at any vote
+you give.'"
+
+During this session the abolition of Negro slavery first seriously
+attracted the notice of parliament. The conduct of it, in the House of
+Commons, was intrusted to Wilberforce; but, in his absence, in
+consequence of indisposition, Pitt, on the 9th of May 1798, moved the
+resolution, "that the House would, early in the next session, proceed to
+take into consideration the circumstances of the slave trade." In a
+cause like this, the humane and magnanimous mind of Burke naturally
+enlisted at once. But he was by no means of that school of humanity
+which gains the race, only by riding over every thing in its way.
+Red-hot humanity had no charms for the great philosopher; and,
+philanthropist as he was, he could discover no wisdom in measures which
+changed only one violence for another, pauperised the whites without
+liberating the blacks; and, while it cost twenty millions sterling to
+repair about third of the injury, left the unhappy African at the mercy
+of avarice round the circumference of the globe.
+
+A letter from Huntingford says:--"Dr Lawrence, our Winchester
+acquaintance, called on me lately. He talked much on Mr Burke's ideas
+respecting the slave-trade. I found by him that Mr Burke foresaw the
+total ruin of the West-India colonies, if the trade were _at once_
+prohibited. He is for a better regulation of the ships which carry on
+that infamous commerce: he would lay the captains under restrictions,
+and punish them with rigour for wanton severity or brutal inhumanity to
+the slaves; and, when the poor creatures are purchased at the West-India
+islands, he would have them instructed in religion; and be permitted to
+purchase their own freedom, when by industry they should acquire a
+sufficient sum for that purpose. For their religious instruction he
+would erect more churches; and, to enable them in time to accumulate the
+price of their ransom, he would enact that the property of a slave
+should be as sacred as that of a freeman." Burke went further than
+opinions, for he embodied his sentiments in a paper entitled, "Sketch of
+a Negro Code," all outline of a bill in parliament, which is to be found
+in the collection of his works.
+
+In August of this year, Addington mentioned that Lord Grenville passed a
+month with him at Lyme, and that one day visiting Lord Rolle, a party
+were speculating on the probable successor to the Speaker
+(Cornwall)--Grenville and Addington giving it as their opinion, that
+neither of them had any chance. He adds, "within twelve months, we were
+both Speakers ourselves."
+
+An important and melancholy event, however, threw the cabinet and the
+country alike into confusion. Early in November, it was ascertained that
+the King was taken dangerously ill. Three successive notes from
+Grenville represented the illness as most alarming, and giving room for
+apprehening of incurable disorder. As Dr Addington was known to have
+paid particular attention to cases of insanity, Pitt proposed his being
+summoned to visit the royal patient. In consequence, he visited his
+Majesty for several days, and on examination with the other physicians
+before the Privy Council, expressed a strong expectation of the royal
+recovery, founded on the circumstance that this illness had not, for its
+forerunner, any of the symptoms which usually precede a serious attack
+of this nature. The debates on the Regency Bill now brought out all the
+vigour of the House. The Whigs thundered at the gate of the cabinet; but
+there was a strong hand within, and it was still kept shut. The Prince
+of Wales, then under all the captivations of Whig balls and banquets,
+and worshiping at the feet of Fox, was no sooner to be master of the
+state by an unlimited Regency Bill, than Fox was to be master of every
+thing. Pitt still fought the battle with all the cool determination of
+one determined never to capitulate. Fox became in succession fierce,
+factious, and half frantic; still his great adversary stood on the
+vantage ground of law, and was imperturbable. But the contest now began
+to spread beyond the walls of parliament. The spirit of the nation,
+always siding with the brave defence, daily felt an increasing interest
+in the gallantry with which Pitt almost alone fought the ablest
+Opposition that had ever been ranged within the walls of Westminster,
+and inflamed by the sight of power almost within their grasp.
+
+But the announcement of a sudden change in his Majesty's indisposition
+abated the contest at once. From the 8th to the 20th of February, the
+progress to health was palpable. On the 19th, the discussions on the
+Regency Bill were suspended in the House of Lords; and on the 6th of
+March, the Speaker and several members of the administration were
+admitted to present their congratulations to the King, at Kew, on his
+recovery.
+
+We cannot resist the temptation of exhibiting Lord Sidmouth in the
+unsuspected character of a poet. As several millions of verses were
+poured out as the offerings of the Muse on the joyful occasion, as
+Parnassus was rifled by the Universities, and as every village school in
+the kingdom hung a pen-and-ink garland on the altar of �sculapius or
+Hygeia; it was felt to be the bounden duty of every candidate for
+cabinet honours, to put his desk "in order," and rhyme, to the best of
+his power. Addington, in consequence, produced the following--
+
+    ON THE KINGS RECOVERY.
+
+    "When sinks the orb of day, a borrow'd light
+    The moon displays, pale _Regent_ of the night.
+    Vain are her beams to bid the golden grain
+    Spread plenty's blessings o'er the smiling plain;
+    No power has she, except from shore to shore
+    To bid the ocean's troubled billows roar.
+    With hungry cries the wolf her coming greets;
+    Then Rapine stalks triumphant through the streets;
+    Avarice and Fraud in secret ambush lurk,
+    And Treason's sons their desperate purpose work.
+    But, lo! the Sun with orient splendour shines,"----
+    &c. &c. &c.
+
+We cannot indulge ourselves with any more of this loyal lucubration--we
+think that the slur at the _Regency_ was not quite fair; we were by no
+means aware that the moon was so mischievous; and, as our general
+conclusion, we must admit that, if his lordship did not gain the
+Laureateship, he amply deserved it. However, better times were at hand.
+Pitt, like all other eminent men, had a keen insight into character, and
+he had long known the especial qualities of Addington. This solves the
+difficulty of accounting at once for his continued personal intercourse,
+and yet his apparent official neglect. He knew him to be well-informed,
+intelligent, and honest; although his retiring habits had already given
+full evidence of his indisposition to face the storms of party.
+
+On Mr Grenville's promotion to the Home department, in 1789, Addington
+was proposed for the Speaker's chair, and was elected by two hundred and
+fifteen to one hundred and forty-two, who voted for the Opposition
+candidate, Sir Gilbert Elliot. In the private correspondence which was
+so frequent between him and the minister, various suggestions had been
+thrown out by Pitt of the Irish secretaryship, a seat at the treasury,
+&c. But the man and the place were now found together, incomparably
+adapted to each other. The place implies an honourable neutrality, and
+Addington was true to the trust. It requires the favourable opinion of
+the House to the man as well as the officer; and Sheridan's first
+address to him, as the spokesman of the Opposition, was, "we were all
+very sorry to have voted against you." It required considerable
+knowledge of general and parliamentary law, and the new Speaker had
+devoted years to their acquisition. Even the minor merits of a grave and
+commanding presence were there; for Addington, in his early years, was
+of as striking a countenance and figure as in old age he was gentle and
+amiable.
+
+Characteristic anecdotes are scattered through the volumes: these we
+think their most attractive portion; and of such Addington's memory was
+full in his later years. One night, on his crying out, in the usual
+form, to hush some chattering in the House, "Order, order, or I shall
+name names!" Charles Fox, then standing beside the chair, told him that
+Wilkes once asked the Speaker, Onslow, what would be the consequence of
+his naming names? "Heaven above only knows," was the solemn reply.
+
+One night Fox himself put the same question to Sir Fletcher Norton (the
+Speaker,) who nonchalantly answered, "Happen! hang me, if I know or
+care!"
+
+A substantial proof of the general approval was given to the new
+official, in the addition of �1000 a-year to his salary; thus giving him
+�6000 a-year--which, besides a house, with some other emoluments on
+public and private bills, and the sale of certain clerkships connected
+with the business of the Commons, is generally calculated as equivalent
+to about �10,000 yearly. For this, however, the Speaker is expected to
+keep up considerable state, to give occasional banquets during the
+session to successive parties of the members; to have evening receptions
+and lev�es; and, in general, to lead a rather laborious life; the least
+part of whose labour is in the Speaker's chair. He has also the
+appointment of a chaplain to the House, which is equivalent to the
+disposal of valuable church patronage, the chaplain being always
+provided for, after a few years' attendance, by a request of the House
+to the crown. To complete this accumulation of good things, the Speaker
+who exhibits intelligence, is frequently promoted to the higher offices
+of the cabinet, and generally receives a peerage.
+
+But those were the "piping times of peace;" times of trouble and terror
+were at hand. The French democracy had already burst on Europe; and
+every throne was heaving on the surge which it had raised. Pitt alone,
+of all the great ministers of Europe, seemed to disregard its hazards.
+Customary as it is for the pamphleteers of later times to assail his
+memory, as the promoter of hostilities, the chief outcry against Pitt in
+the year 1790, was his tardiness in thinking that those hostilities
+could ever force England to take a share in the struggles of the
+Continent. The whole aristocracy, the whole property, the whole
+mercantile interest, and even the whole moral feeling of the empire, had
+become from hour to hour more convinced that a war was inevitable. Even
+the Opposition, whose office it was to screen the atrocities of every
+national enemy, and who, for a time, had looked to Jacobinism as an
+auxiliary in the march to power, had at last shrunk from this horrible
+alliance--had felt the natural disgust of Englishmen for an association
+with the undisguised vice and vileness of the Republic, and had at last
+sunk into silence, if not into shame. Burke had published his immortal
+"Reflections," and their sound had gone forth like the tolling of a vast
+funeral bell for the obsequies of European monarchy. Still, nothing
+could move Pitt. By nature, a financier, and by genius the most
+magnificent of all financiers, he calculated the force of nations by the
+depths of their treasuries; and seeing France bankrupt, conceived that
+she was on the verge of conviction, and waited only to see her sending
+her humbled Assembly to beg for a general loan, and for a general peace
+at the same moment.
+
+But those were days made to show the shortsightedness of human sagacity.
+The lesson was rapidly given; it was proved in European havoc, that
+utter powerlessness for good was not merely compatible with tremendous
+power for evil, but was actually the means of accumulating that power;
+that the more wretched, famishing, and haggard a nation might become at
+home, the more irresistible it might prove abroad: that, like the
+madman, it might be fevered and tortured by mental disease, into
+preternatural strength of frame, and might spring out of the bed where
+it had lain down to die, with a force which drove before it all the
+ordinary resistance of man. Pitt had still to learn, that this was a
+war of Opinion; and had to learn also, that Opinion was a new material
+of explosion, against whose agency all former calculation was wholly
+unprovided, and whose force was made to fling all the old buttresses and
+battlements of European institutions like dust and embers into the air.
+
+It is not worth the trouble now to inquire, whether Pitt's sagacity
+equally failed him in estimating the probable effect of the French
+Revolution on England. His expression at a dinner party, where
+Addington, Grenville, and Burke formed the guests, "Never mind, Mr
+Burke, we shall go on as we are until the day of judgment;" shows his
+feeling of the stability of the constitution. As we have no love for
+discovering the
+
+     "Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise,"
+
+we are gratified by thinking that both were partly in the right: Burke,
+in regarding the Revolution as destined to sweep the Continent with long
+and tremendous violence, and Pitt as believing it likely to make but
+little _permanent_ impression on the habits, the power, or the heart of
+England. Burke argued from the weakness of the Continental governments;
+Pitt from the strength of the British constitution: the former having no
+connexion with the national interests, the latter being formed from
+those interests, for those interests, and being as much supported by
+them as a tree by its roots. There was not a portion of that stately
+tree, from its solid trunk to the highest ornament of its foliage, which
+was not fed from the ground. The truth was, that the Jacobinisim of
+England was confined to adventurers, and never obtained any hold on the
+great body of the proprietors and the people. Its spirit evaporated in
+tavern harangues, to which the multitude went to listen, as to the
+chattering and grimaces of a mountebank.
+
+No man of distinction, no man of birth, and no man of property was ever
+engaged in those coffee-house conspiracies; their Jaffiers and Pierres
+were cobblers and tinkers, with a sprinkling of petty pamphleteers, and
+ruined declaimers. When Hardy and Horne Took, were the priests, what
+must be the worshippers at the Jacobin shrine? But in France, the temple
+of that idol of confusion was crowded with the chiefs of the Noblesse,
+the Church, the Law; headed by the Prince of the blood next to the
+throne; all stimulated by a ferocity of folly unexampled in the history
+of infatuation, and all unconsciously urged to their ruin by a race of
+beings inferior in rank, and almost objects of their scorn, yet, rather
+embodied malignities, and essential mischiefs, than men. France in that
+fearful time reminded the spectator of Michael Angelo's great picture of
+the "Last Judgment"--general convulsion above, universal torment below;
+the mighty of the earth falling, kings, nobles, hierarchs, warriors,
+plunging down, and met by fiends, at once their tempters, their
+taunters, and their torturers; a scene of desolation and destiny.
+
+Pitt's sentiment on the safety of England from revolutionary movements
+was so decided, that if France had not invaded Holland, and thus
+actually compelled a war, we should probably have had none at this
+period.
+
+A distinction between the state of France and England not less
+memorable, if not still more effective, than in property, was religion.
+In France infidelity was not merely frequent, but was the _fashion_. No
+man of any literary name condescended even to the pretence of religion;
+but in England, infidelity was a stigma; when it began to take a public
+form, it was only in the vilest quarter; and when it assailed religion,
+it was instantly put down at once by the pen, by the law, and by the
+more decisive tribunal of national opinion. Paine, the chief writer of
+the Satanic faction, was a bankrupt staymaker, and a notorious
+profligate: his pamphlet had only the effect of making the public
+protest against its abominations; he was prosecuted, was forced to leave
+the country, and finally died in beggary in America.
+
+It is remarkable to find so cautious a man as Addington at this period
+speaking of the Church as "an honest _drone_, who, if she did not stir
+herself very soon, would be stung by the wasps of the conventicle." The
+metaphor is not good for much, for the drone can sting too, and does
+nothing but sting. But what is it that, at any time, makes the church
+ineffective? The abuse of the ministerial patronage. The clergy
+altogether depend on the guidance, the character, and the activity of
+their bishops. If ministers regard the mitre as merely a sort of
+donative for their own private tutors, or the chaplains of their noble
+friends, or as provision for a relative, dependent, or the brother of a
+Treasury clerk, they not merely degrade the office, but they paralyse
+the church. Of the living prelacy we do not speak: but it is impossible
+to look upon the list of archbishops and bishops (a few excepted) during
+the last century, without surprise that the inferior clergy have done so
+much, rather than that they have done so little. Where there was no
+encouragement for literary exertion, ability naturally relaxed its
+efforts; where preferment was lavished on heads "that could not teach,
+and would not learn," disgust extinguished diligence; and where
+character for intelligence, practical capacity, and public effect, were
+evidently overlooked in the calculation of professional claims, it is
+only in the natural course of things that their exercise should be
+abandoned, in fastidiousness or in contempt, in disgust or in despair.
+The church was never in a more ineffective condition than at the close
+of the last century; and if the sin was to be laid at the right
+threshold, it must have been laid at the door of Whitehall.
+
+Addington certainly deserves the credit of having formed a just estimate
+of the French Revolution from the beginning. In a letter to his brother
+he inserts this stanza,--
+
+    "France shall perish, write that word
+    In the blood that she has spilt;
+    Perish hopeless and abhorr'd,
+    Deep in ruin as in guilt."
+
+He, however, fell into the common error of the time, and looked upon her
+overthrow as certain in the first campaign.
+
+It was on the second reading of the Alien Bill that the dagger scene, of
+which so much was said at the time, occurred in the House of
+Commons--thus described by the Speaker: "Burke, after a few preliminary
+remarks, the house being totally unprepared, fumbled in his bosom, and
+suddenly drew out the dagger, and threw it on the floor. His extravagant
+gesture excited a general disposition to smile, by which most men would
+have been disconcerted; but he suddenly collected himself, and by a few
+brilliant sentences recalled the seriousness of the house. 'Let us,'
+said he, 'keep French principles from our heads and French daggers from
+our hearts; let us preserve all our blandishments in life, and all our
+consolations in death; all the blessings of time, and all the hopes of
+eternity.'"
+
+As all partisanship hated Burke, who had trampled it in the mire, this
+dagger scene was sneered at as a stage trick; but Burke was above all
+pantomime. The dagger was one which had been sent from France to a
+Birmingham manufacturer, with an order for a large number of the same
+pattern: and Burke had received it only on that day--and received it
+from Sir James Bland Burgess only on his way down to the house--so that
+there could have been no preparation for public exhibition. It was a
+natural impulse of the moment, in a time when all was emotion.
+
+The murder of the unfortunate King of France, on the 21st of January
+1793, perhaps the most wanton murder in all royal history, instantly
+brought out a full display of the _real_ feelings of England. The
+universal sentiment was horror, mingled with indignation; and when the
+royal message came down to the house on the 28th, stating that, in
+consequence of the regicide, the king had ordered M. Chauvelin, minister
+from the late king, to leave the country, as being no longer accredited
+by the sovereign, the message seemed rather the echo of the national
+voice than the dictate of the government.
+
+From this period the Whig party diminished day by day. They were chiefly
+the great landholders of the kingdom, and they saw in this atrocious act
+a declaration against all property; but they had also the higher motive
+of its being a declaration against all government. The chief persons of
+the Opposition at once crossed the house; but as Horne Tooke, in his apt
+and short style, described the party on his trial, "We all," said he,
+"entered the revolutionary coach at Reading; but one got out at
+Maidenhead, another at Slough, a third at Hounslow, and a fourth at
+Brentford. It was _my_ misfortune, my lord, as it was also Mr Fox's, to
+go on to London."
+
+The French now threw off all political form, and all diplomatic decorum,
+and exhibited the whole savagism of republicanism. On the motion of a
+ruffian of the name of Garnier, the Convention publicly resolved that
+"Pitt was an enemy to the human race." The same ruffian then proceeded
+to move, "that every body had a right to assassinate him." This,
+however, was _not_ carried; but an order was sent, on the proposal of
+Robespierre, to the armies, that "no quarter should be given to the
+English troops;" an order which was not repealed until his death by the
+guillotine.
+
+Those were stirring times, and in every instance of success in the
+campaign, Pitt sent an immediate courier to Addington when out of town,
+of which the Speaker gave the signal to the surrounding country by
+lighting up his house. On one occasion of this kind, a friend of his,
+travelling on the coach from Bath, heard the coachman say, "I'm sure
+there's good news come, for there's the Speaker's house all in a blaze."
+
+In this year Addington was offered the high promotion of Secretary of
+State, in the room of Dundas. He consulted Huntingford, who strongly
+advised him against giving up his pleasant, safe, and lucrative office,
+for the toilsome, hazardous, and unpopular office of the secretary. A
+letter from the Solicitor-general Mitford, (afterwards Lord Redesdale,)
+confirmed the opinion. It is justly observed by the biographer, that
+Mitford, who could be so wise for his friend, was not equally so for
+himself; for, after having obtained the speakership in his own person,
+he gave it up to assume the office of Irish Chancellor, a situation of
+great responsibility, and great labour, in which he was assailed on all
+sides, and from which, on the first change of the cabinet, he was
+insultingly recalled.
+
+The war had now become almost wholly naval, and it was a war of
+successive triumphs. The dominion of Europe seemed about to be divided
+between England and France: England mistress of the sea--France sweeping
+every thing before her on the land. The famous battle of the 1st of June
+extinguished the first revolutionary fleet, seven sail of the line being
+captured, and the remainder of the fleet escaping with difficulty into
+the French ports.
+
+The minister was also triumphant at home, and the chief persons of the
+Whig party were gazetted as taking office under his administration. Earl
+Fitzwilliam as President of the Council, the Duke of Portland as
+Secretary of State, Earl Spencer, Privy Seal, the Duke of Gordon, Privy
+Seal of Scotland, and Windham, Secretary at War.
+
+It had been frequently remarked, that Pitt never sought for coadjutors
+of any remarkable ability, from confidence in his own extraordinary
+attainments. As Fox candidly and bitterly concluded one of his speeches
+in Parliament, saying, "There is one point, and only one on which I
+entirely agree with the right honourable gentleman, and that is, in the
+high opinion he entertains of his own talents."
+
+It is certain that those accessions to his cabinet were not likely to
+excite any jealousy on his part, yet there was one whose absence from
+the cabinet may have been justly regretted as detracting at once from
+the strength of the administration, and the glory of the minister. The
+name of Burke was _not_ found there, though no man had operated so
+powerfully in producing the change; no man had so amply deserved the
+distinction; and no man would have thrown so permanent a lustre round
+the councils in which he shared. There can be no doubt that Burke felt
+this neglect, and that he was justified in feeling himself defrauded of
+an honour conferred before his face on men who were not fit to be named
+in the same breath.
+
+But he has had his noble revenge. Posterity, of all tribunals the most
+formidable, yet the most faithful, has done him Justice. While the
+favourites of fortune have passed away into the forgetfulness for which
+they were made, his services assume a higher rank in the records of
+national preservation, and his genius continually fills a prouder place
+among the intellectual triumphs of mankind.
+
+In 1794 Burke closed his parliamentary career, by retiring from the
+borough of Malton, for which his son became member. In this year, also,
+closed the memorable trial of Warren Hastings, which had extended over
+ten sessions of parliament, (from February 1788 to 5th April 1795)--the
+actual trial lasting for seven years, two months, and ten days. The
+legal expenses of the defence amounted to seventy-one thousand and
+eighty pounds, which the proprietors of East India stock, by a majority
+of three hundred, on a ballot, paid. What the expenses of the
+prosecution were, is not told; probably twice the sum.
+
+The whole holds forth an important lesson for the punishment of public
+delinquency. If, instead of the masquerade of an impeachment before the
+peers and king, Hastings had been called on to answer before the common
+law courts, for any one of the hundred acts of personal injury alleged
+against him, the decision would have been secured as soon as the
+witnesses could have been brought from Calcutta. Of course the world
+would have lost a great deal of parliamentary parade and some capital
+speeches; all the _poetic_ pomp would have been wanting; and the
+court-dresses would have been left at the tailors. But justice would
+have been done, which no one now believes to have been done.
+
+The obvious fact is, that the country had grown tired of a trial which
+seemed likely to last for life. After the first sounding of trumpets,
+the flourish excited curiosity no more. The topic had been a toy in the
+great parliamentary nursery, and the children were grown weary of their
+tinselled and painted doll. Even the horrors--and some of the details
+had all the terrible atrocity of barbarism with its passions inflamed by
+impunity--had ceased to startle; the eloquence of the managers had
+become commonplace by the repetition which had deprived the horrors of
+their sting. The prosecution was yawned to death.
+
+Perhaps there was not a peer in the seats of Westminster Hall, nor a
+member of the committee, nor a man in the kingdom, except Burke and
+Pitt, who would not have forgiven Hastings twice the amount of his
+offences, to have silenced the subject at once and for ever.
+
+With Burke, the impeachment was a vision, half Roman, half Oriental--the
+august severity of a Roman senate, combining with the mysterious
+splendour of the throne of Aurungzebe. He was the Cicero impeaching
+Verres in the presence of the eighteenth century, or a high-priest of
+some Indian oracle promulgating the decrees of eternal justice to the
+eastern world.
+
+With Pitt, the whole event was a fortunate diversion of the enemy, a
+relief from the restless assaults of a Whig opposition, a perpetual
+drain on Whig strength, and by a result more effective still, a fruitful
+source of popular ridicule on the lingering impotence of Whig labours.
+
+On the acquittal of Hastings, Burke wrote several letters to Addington
+as Speaker, which have a tone of the deepest despondency. He writes in
+the impassioned anguish of a man to whom the earth exhibited but one
+aspect of despair. They were letters such as Priam might have indited on
+the night when his Troy was in a blaze. It was evident that the powerful
+genius of Burke was partially bewildered by the bent of his feelings. He
+raised an imaginary sepulchre for England on the spot where he had
+contemplated the erection of a dungeon for Indian crime through all ages
+to come.
+
+The Indian directors voted Hastings, an annuity of five thousand pounds,
+which he enjoyed to a very advanced age: yet his acquittal has not
+received the seal of posterity. A calmer view has regarded him as the
+daring agent of acts fitter for the meridian of Hindoo morality than
+European. To serve the struggling interests of the Company seems to
+have been his highest motive, and there can be no doubt that he served
+them with equal sagacity and success. That he was a vigorous
+administrator, an enterprising statesman, and a popular governor, is
+beyond denial; that he was personally unstained by avarice or extortion,
+is admitted. But history demands higher proofs of principle; and no
+governor since his time has ever attempted to imitate his example, or
+ever ventured to excuse his own errors, by alleging the conduct or the
+acquittal of Hastings.
+
+There are some men, whom no position can render ridiculous, and there
+are some quite the reverse: of the latter class was Ferguson of Pitfour.
+Ferguson's notion of the essential quality of a Lord Advocate was
+tallness. "We Scotch members," said he, "always vote with the Lord
+Advocate, and we therefore require to see him in a division. Now I can
+see Mr Pitt, and I can see Mr Addington, but I cannot see the Lord
+Advocate." His lordship evidently not rising to Ferguson's regulation
+size of a statesman.
+
+One evening as Ferguson was taking his dinner in the coffee-room, some
+one ran in, to say, that "Pitt was on his legs." Every one rose to leave
+the room, except Ferguson. "What!" said they, "won't you go to hear Mr
+Pitt?" "No," he replied, "Why should I? do you think Mr Pitt would go to
+hear me?"
+
+At a dinner given by Dundas, at Wimbledon, where Addington, Sheridan,
+and Erskine were present, the latter was rallied on his not taking so
+prominent a part in the debates as his fame required. Sheridan said
+(with a roughness unusual with him,) "I tell you how it happens:
+Erskine, you are afraid of Pitt, and that's the flabby part of your
+character."
+
+This piece of candour, however, was probably owing to the claret. But
+Erskine's comparative taciturnity in the House may be accounted for on
+more honourable terms. Erskine was no poltroon: he was the boldest
+speaker at the bar. But the bar was his place, and no man has ever
+attained perfection in the two styles of oratory. It is true, that
+distinguished barristers have sometimes been distinguished in the House
+of Commons, but they have not been of the race of orators; they have
+been sharp, shrewd, bitter men, ready on vexatious topics, quick in
+peevish speech, and willing to plunge themselves into subjects whose
+labour or license is disdained by higher minds. But Erskine was an
+_orator_, vivid, high-toned, and sensitive; shrinking from the
+common-place subjects which common-place men take up as their natural
+portion; rather indolent, as is common with men of genius; and rather
+careless of fame in the senate, from his consciousness of the
+unquestioned fame which he had already won at the bar.
+
+Of Fox some pretty anecdotes are told, substantiating that eminent man's
+character for courtesy. One day, as Addington was riding by the grounds
+of St Ann's Hill, he was seen over the palings by Fox, who called out to
+him to stop, invited him in, and displayed the beauties of his garden,
+to which he had always devoted a great deal of care. As Addington
+particularly admired some weeping ash trees, Fox promised him some
+cuttings. Some months elapsed, when one evening, Fox, after going
+through a stormy meeting, in Palace-yard, went up to the Speaker in the
+chair, and said--"I have not forgotten your cuttings, but have brought
+them up to town with me," giving him directions at the same time for
+their treatment. In a few minutes after, he was warmly engaged in debate
+with Pitt and Burke.
+
+Fox's enjoyment of St Ann's Hill was proverbial. On some one's asking
+General Fitzpatrick, in the midst of one of the hottest periods of the
+debates on the French war--Where is Fox? the answer was, "I daresay he
+is at home, sitting on a hay-cock, reading novels, and watching the jays
+stealing his cherries."
+
+The year 1796 was a formidable year for England. Prussia and Spain had
+given up her alliance. Belgium and Holland had been taken possession of
+by the French. Austria was still firm, but her armies were dispirited,
+her generals had lost their reputation, her statesmen had been baffled,
+her finances were supported only by English loans, and France was
+already by anticipation marking out a campaign under the walls of
+Vienna. The English Opposition, at once embittered by defeat, and
+stimulated by a new hope of storming the cabinet, carried on a perpetual
+assault in the shape of motions for peace. The remnants of Jacobinism in
+England united their strength with the populace once more; and, taking
+advantage of the continental defeats, of the general timidity of our
+allies, and of the apparent hopelessness of all success against an enemy
+who grew stronger every day, made desperate efforts to reduce the
+government to the humiliation of a forced treaty of peace.
+
+The necessity for raising eighteen millions, followed by seven millions
+and a half more, increased the public discontent; and, although the
+solid strength of England was still untouched, and the _real_ opinion of
+the country was totally opposed to their rash demands for peace, there
+can be no question, that the louder voice of the multitude seemed to
+carry the day. A bad harvest also had increased the public difficulties;
+and, as if every thing was to be unfortunate at this moment, Admiral
+Christian's expedition--one of the largest which had ever left an
+English port, and which was prepared to sweep the French out of the West
+Indies--sailing in December, encountered such a succession of gales in
+the chops of the Channel that a great part of this noble armament was
+lost, and the admiral reached the West Indies with the survivors, only
+to see them perish by the dreadful maladies of the climate.
+
+But, to complete the general disastrous aspect of affairs, a new
+phenomenon suddenly blazed over Europe. The year 1796 first saw Napoleon
+Buonaparte at the head of an army. Passing the Alps on the 9th of April,
+he fell with such skill and vigour on the Austrian and Italian troops,
+that in his first campaign he destroyed five successive Austrian armies;
+broke up the alliances of that cluster of feeble and contemptible
+sovereignties which had so long disgraced Italy in the eyes of Europe;
+trampled on their effeminate and debauched population, with the
+sternness of an executioner rather than the force of a conqueror; and
+after sending the plunder of their palaces to Paris, in the spirit and
+with the pomp of the old Roman triumphs, dragged their princes after him
+to swell his own triumphal progress through Italy.
+
+The war now engrossed every feeling of the nation; and England showed
+her national spirit in her gallant defiance of the threat of invasion.
+The whole kingdom was ready to rise in arms on the firing of the first
+beacon;--men of the highest rank headed their tenantry; men even of
+those grave and important avocations and offices, which might seem to
+imply a complete exemption from arms, put themselves at the head of
+corps in every part of the empire; and England showed her prime minister
+as Colonel Pitt of the Walmer volunteers, and the speaker of her House
+of Commons, as Captain Addington of the Woodley cavalry.
+
+But a brilliant change was at hand. In September, Addington received the
+following note from Pitt, enclosing the bulletin of the battle of the
+Nile:--
+
+     "I have just time to send you the enclosed Bulletin (_vive la
+     Marine Anglaise_,) and to tell you, that we mean, (out of
+     precaution) the meeting of Parliament for the 6th of November.
+
+     "Sir, ever yours, W. P."
+
+The bulletin which gave value to this note, belongs to history, and
+gives to history one of the noblest events of our naval annals. It
+exhibits a singular contrast to the present rapidity of communication,
+that even the "rumour" of Nelson's immortal victory did not reach until
+fifty-seven days after the event. The Gazette could not be published
+until the 2d of October.
+
+But the star of Pitt, which had hitherto shone with increasing
+brightness from year to year, and which had passed through all the
+clouds of time uneclipsed, was now to wane. The Irish attempt to
+establish a separate Regency, the Irish Rebellion, and the growing
+influence of the Popish party, combined with Liberalism in the Irish
+legislature, had determined Pitt to unite the parliaments of the two
+kingdoms. For this purpose, he made overtures to the Popish party,
+whose influence he most dreaded in the Irish House; and, in a species of
+"understanding" rather than a distinct compact, he proposed to the
+Popish body the measure which has been subsequently called
+"Emancipation," with some general intimation of pensioning their
+priesthood.
+
+The Union was carried; and Lord Castlereagh, who had conducted it in
+Ireland, was appointed to bring the Popish proposition forward. It had
+been a subject of deliberation in the cabinet for nearly six months
+before they mentioned it to the king. His Majesty virtually pronounced
+it irreconcilable to his conscience; and, after having received the
+opinion of Lord Kenyon, the chief-justice, in complete confirmation of
+his own, he sent for the speaker. Pitt had written, in the meantime, to
+the king, that he must carry the measure or resign. The king then
+proposed that Addington should take the conduct of the government. On
+his entreating to decline the proposal, the king said emphatically "Put
+your hand upon your heart, and ask yourself where I am to turn for
+support, if _you_ do not stand by me?" Addington then honourably
+attempted once more to induce Pitt to be reconciled to the king's
+desire, who replied, as to Addington's taking the cabinet, "I see
+nothing but _ruin_ if you hesitate." A letter from the king to Pitt
+still left an opening for his return, but his answer was still
+inflexible; and, on the 5th of January, 1801, the correspondence was
+concluded by the royal announcement that "a new arrangement would be
+made without delay."
+
+The determination of George III. was personal and purely conscientious.
+An anecdote is given by General Garth strikingly in accordance with this
+opinion. The General, who was one of the royal equerries, was riding out
+with the king one day at this time, when his Majesty said to him, "I
+have not had any sleep this night, and am very bilious and unwell;" he
+added, "that it was in consequence of Mr Pitt's applying to him on the
+subject of Catholic Emancipation."
+
+On his arrival at Kew, he desired Garth to read the Coronation Oath, and
+then followed the exclamation,--"Where is that power on earth to absolve
+me from the due observance of every sentence of that oath, particularly
+the one requiring me to maintain the Protestant religion? Was not my
+family seated on the throne for that express purpose? And shall I be the
+first to suffer it to be undermined, perhaps overturned? No. I had
+rather beg my bread from door to door throughout Europe, than consent to
+any such measure."
+
+This was the language of an honest man, and it was also the language of
+a wise one. What has the introduction of Papists into parliament
+occasioned to England, but political confusion? What benefit has it
+produced to Ireland? No country in the wildest portion of the earth has
+exhibited a more lamentable picture of insubordination, dissension, and
+public misery. The peasantry gradually sinking into the most abject
+poverty; the gentry living on loans; the laws set at defiance; the
+demand for rents answered by assassination; a fierce faction existing in
+the bowels of the land, as if for the express purpose of inflaming every
+passion of an ignorant people into frenzy, and deepening every
+visitation of nature into national ruin. At this moment, England is
+paying for the daily food of two millions of people; employing seven
+hundred thousand labourers, simply to keep them alive; and burthening
+the most heavily-taxed industry in the world with millions of pounds
+more, for the sole object of rescuing Ireland from the last extremities
+of famine.
+
+We take our leave of this most distressing subject, by the obvious
+remark, that Pitt and the politicians, in treating popery as a political
+object, have all alike overlooked the true nature of the question.
+Popery is a _religion_, and if that religion be _false_, no crime can be
+greater in the sight of Heaven, nor more sure to bring evil on man, than
+to give it any assistance in its temptations, progress, or power, by any
+means whatever. To propagate a false religion is to declare war against
+the Divine will, and in that warfare suffering must follow. But what
+Protestant can have a doubt upon the subject? England may regard
+herself as signally fortunate, if the just penalty of her weakness is
+already paid.
+
+Mr Addington's Ministry began auspiciously, with the peace of Amiens.
+The world was weary of war. France had just learned the power of the
+British army, by the capture of her army in Egypt; she was without a
+ship on the seas; Napoleon was desirous of consolidating his power, and
+ascending a throne; and thus, all interests coinciding, peace was
+proclaimed.
+
+Lord Sidmouth's life from this period was connected with the highest
+transactions of the state, until 1822, when he retired from office,
+followed by the universal respect of the country, and bearing with him
+into his retirement a conscience as void of offence, as perhaps ever
+belonged to any Minister of England.
+
+Then followed a period, which might have been regarded as, even here,
+the fitting reward of such a life. Prom 1822 to 1844, he lived in the
+enjoyment of health, and that honour, and those troops of friends, which
+are the noblest human evidence of a well-spent existence.
+
+Old age came on him at last, but with singular gentleness. Some of his
+maxims exhibit the mild philosophy of his temperament. "In youth," said
+he, "the absence of pleasure is pain, in age the absence of pain is
+pleasure." He characteristically observed, "At my age, it strikes me
+very much, what little proportion there is between man's ambition, and
+the shortness of his life." Of the wars during his time he said, "I used
+to think all the sufferings of war lost in its glory; I now consider all
+its glory lost in its sufferings." In allusion to the desponding tone of
+some public men, he said, "I have always fought under the standard of
+hope, and I never shall desert it." At another time, he expressed the
+truth, which only the wise man feels--"It is a very important part of
+wisdom, to know what to overlook." He repeated a fine expression of
+George III, of which he acknowledged the full value,--"Give me the man
+who judges _one_ human being with severity, and every other with
+indulgence."
+
+His religious feelings were such as might be expected from his
+well-spent life,--pure, benevolent, and high-toned. Speaking to his
+family, in his last illness, he said, "Kind, dutiful, affectionate
+children, all have been to me; and if I am permitted to attain to that
+happy state to which I aspire, and am permitted to look down, how often
+shall I be with you, my children!"
+
+On the 3d of February, 1844, he was seized with an attack of influenza,
+which on the 10th became hopeless; and on the 15th he calmly died, in
+his 87th year.
+
+We have preferred giving an abstract of the leading portions of this
+able and amiable man's ministerial career, to following it minutely
+through his later public years, as the earlier were those which decided
+the character of the whole: and we have also preferred the tracing the
+course of the individual, to criticisms on the volumes of his
+biographer. But the work deserves much approval, for its general
+intelligence, the clearness of its arrangement, and the fulness of its
+information. It exercises judgment in the spirit of independence, and,
+expressing its opinions without severity, exhibits the grave sagacity of
+a man of sense, the style of a scholar, and the temper of a divine.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] _The Life and Correspondence of the Right Honourable Henry
+Addington, First Viscount Sidmouth._ By the Honourable GEORGE PELLEW,
+D.D., Dean of Norwich. 3 vols. J. Murray.
+
+
+
+
+HOW THEY MANAGE MATTERS IN THE MODEL REPUBLIC.
+
+
+In our last April number--on the appropriate Day of Fools--we laid
+before our readers a few stray flowers of speech, culled with little
+labour in that rich garden of oratorical delight--the Congress of the
+United States. Sweets to the sweet!--We confess that we designed that
+salutary exposure less for the benefit of our readers and subscribers in
+the Old World, than of those who are our readers, but not our
+subscribers, in the New. For, in the absence of an international
+copyright law, Maga is extensively pirated in the United States,
+extensively read, and we fear very imperfectly digested. This
+arrangement appears to us to work badly for all the parties concerned.
+It robs the British publisher, and impoverishes the native author. As to
+the American public, if our precepts had exercised any influence upon
+their practice, they would have learned long ago that ill-gotten goods
+never prosper, and that they who make booty of other men's wits, are not
+excepted from the general condemnation of wrong-doers. Some day,
+perhaps, they will consent to profit by what they prig, and thus, like
+the fat knight, turn their diseases to commodity--the national disease
+of _appropriation_ to the commodity of self-knowledge and self-rebuke.
+
+An American journalist, however, has put the matter in quite a new
+light, so far as we are concerned. Lord Demus, it appears, like other
+despots, is a hard master, and exacts from his most oppressed slaves a
+tribute of constant adulation. We, too, are invited to applaud his
+felonious favours, and assured that the honour and glory of being read
+by him on his own free and easy terms, is enough for the like of us.
+
+"So long," says the editor of the _New York Gazette_ and _Times_ "as our
+National Legislature refuses to give the Republic an International
+Copyright Law, so that American periodicals of a higher class may be
+supported among us, the English reviews will do the thinking of our
+people upon a great variety of subjects. They make no money, indeed,
+directly, by their circulation here; but their conductors cannot but
+feel the importance, and value the influence of having the whole
+American literary area to themselves. _Blackwood_, whose circulation on
+this side of the Atlantic is, on account of its cheapness, double
+perhaps that which it can claim in the British islands, is more and more
+turning its attention to American subjects, which it handles generally
+with its wonted humorous point, and witty spitefulness."
+
+This is very fine; but we can assure our friendly critic, that we feel
+no call whatever to undertake the gratuitous direction of the American
+conscience. Our ambition to "do the thinking" of our Yankee cousins is
+materially damped by the unpleasant necessity which it involves, of
+being "done" ourselves. They seem, however, to claim a prescriptive
+right to the works of the British press, as well as to the funds of the
+British public. They read our books, on the same principle as they
+borrow our money, and abuse their benefactors into the bargain with more
+than Hibernian asperity. After all, however, we believe that the candour
+of Maga has as much to do with their larcenous admiration of her pages,
+as the "cheapness" to which our New York editor alludes. To use their
+own phrase, "they go in for excitement considerable;" and, to be told of
+their faults, is an excitement which they seldom enjoy at the hands of
+their own authors. Now, we are accustomed to treat our own public as a
+rational, but extremely fallible personage, and to think that we best
+deserve his support, by administering to his failings the language of
+unpalatable truth. And we greatly mistake the character of Demus, and
+even of that conceited monster the American Demus,--
+
+    [Greek: agroikos org�n, kuamotr�x, akracholos upok�phos--]
+
+if this be not the direction in which the interest, as well as the duty,
+of the public writer lies. Certain it is, that even in the United States
+those books circulate most freely, which lash most vigorously the vices
+of the Republic. Honest Von Raumer's dull encomium fell almost
+still-born from the press, while the far more superficial pages of
+Dickens and Trollope were eagerly devoured by a people who are daily
+given to understand, by their own authors, that they are the greatest,
+the wisest, the most virtuous nation under the sun. Let a European
+author be never so well disposed towards them, his partial applause
+contributes but little to their full-blown complacency. But, when they
+hear that the Republic has been traduced by a foreign, and especially a
+British pen, their vanity is piqued, their curiosity excited, and their
+conscience smitten. Every one denounces the libel in public, and every
+one admits its truth to himself--"What!" say they, "does the Old World
+in truth judge us thus harshly? Is it really scandalised by such trifles
+as the repudiation of our debts, and the enslavement of our fellow
+creatures? Must we give up our playful duels, and our convenient
+spittoons, before we can hope to pass muster as Christians and gentlemen
+beyond our own borders? O free Demus! O wise Demus! O virtuous Demus!
+Will you betake yourself to cleanly, and well-ordered ways at the
+bidding of this scribbler?" Thus "they eat, and eke they swear;" vowing
+all the time that they "will horribly revenge." No doubt, however, the
+bitter pill of foreign animadversion, though distasteful to the palate,
+relieves the inflation of their stomachs, and leaves them better and
+lighter than before. But when will a native Aristophanes arise to purge
+the effeminacy of the American press, and show up the sausage-venders
+and Cleons of the Republic in their true light? How long will the
+richest field of national folly in the world remain unreaped, save by
+the crotchety sickles of dull moralists and didactic pamphleteers?
+
+Not that moral courage is entirely wanting in the United States; but it
+is a kind of courage altogether too moral, and sadly deficient in animal
+spirits. The New Englanders especially, set up, in their solemn way, to
+admonish the vices of the Republic, and to inoculate them with the
+virulent virtues of the Puritanical school. The good city of Boston
+alone teems with transcendental schemes for the total and immediate
+regeneration of mankind. There we find Peace Societies, and New Moral
+World Societies, and Teetotal Societies, and Anti-Slavery Societies, all
+"in full blast," each opposing to its respective bane the most sweeping
+and exaggerated remedies. The Americans never do things by halves; their
+vices and their virtues are alike in extremes, and the principles of the
+second book of the Ethics of Aristotle[5] are altogether unknown to
+their philosophy. At one moment they are all for "brandy and bitters,"
+at the next, tea and turn-out is the order of the day, Here, you must
+"liquor or fight"--there, a little wine for the stomach's sake is
+sternly denied to a fit of colic, or an emergency of gripes. The moral
+soul of Boston thrills with imaginings of perpetual peace, while St
+Louis and New Orleans are volcanoes of war. Listen to the voice of New
+England, and you would think that negro slavery was the only crime of
+which a nation ever was, or could by possibility be guilty; go to South
+Carolina, and you are instructed that "the Domestic Institution" is the
+basis of democratic virtue, the cornerstone of the Republican edifice.
+Cant, indeed, in one form or other, is the innate vice of the "earnest"
+Anglo-Saxon mind, on both sides of the Atlantic, and ridicule is the
+weapon which the gods have appointed for its mitigation. You must lay on
+the rod with a will, and throw "moral suasion" to the dogs. Above all,
+your demagogue dreads satire as vermin the avenging thumb--'Any thing
+but that,' squeaks he, 'an you love me. Liken me to Lucifer, or Caius
+Gracchus; charge me with ambition, and glorious vices; let me be the
+evil genius of the commonwealth, the tinsel villain of the political
+melodrama; but don't threaten me with the fool's cap, or write me down
+with Dogberry; above all, don't quote me in cold blood, that the foolish
+people may see, after the fever heat has subsided, what trash I have
+palmed upon them in the name of liberty!' Yet this is the way, Jonathan,
+to deal with demagogues. You make too much of yours, man. You are not
+the blockhead we take you for after all; but you delight to see your
+public men in motley, and the rogues will fool you to the top of your
+bent, till it is your pleasure to put down the show. So now that the
+piper has to be paid, and a lucid interval appears to be dawning upon
+you, to the pillory at once with these "stump" orators, and pot-house
+politicians, who have led you into such silly scrapes; turn them about,
+and look at them well in the rough, that you may know them again when
+you see them, and learn to avoid for the future their foolish and
+mischievous counsels.
+
+It is remarkable that while a perception of the ridiculous, perhaps to
+excess, is characteristic of the British mind, and is at the bottom of
+many defects in the national manners, commonly attributed to less venial
+feelings, our Transatlantic descendants err in just the opposite
+direction. The Americans seldom laugh at any body, or any thing--never
+at themselves; and this, next to an unfortunate trick of insolvency, and
+a preternatural abhorrence of niggers, is perhaps the besetting sin of
+an otherwise "smart" people. As individuals, their peculiarities are not
+very marked; in truth there is a marvellous uniformity of bad habits
+amongst them; but when viewed in their collective capacity, whenever two
+or three of them are gathered together, shades of Democritus! commend us
+to a seven-fold pocket-handkerchief. The humours of most nations expend
+themselves on carnivals and feast-days, at the theatre, the ball-room,
+or the public garden; but the fun of the United States is to be looked
+for at public meetings, and philanthropical gatherings, in the halls of
+lyceums, female academies, and legislative bodies. There they spout,
+there they swell, and cover themselves with adulation as with a garment.
+From the inauguration of a President, to the anniversary of the fair
+graduates of the Slickville female Institute, no event is allowed to
+pass without a grand palaver, in which things in general are extensively
+discussed, and their own things in particular extensively praised. They
+got the trick no doubt from us, whose performances in this line are
+quite unrivalled in the Old World, but they have added to our platform
+common-places a variety and "damnable iteration" entirely their own.
+Besides, when Bull is called upon to make an ass of himself on such
+occasions, he seems for the most part to have a due appreciation of the
+fact, while Jonathan's imperturbability and apparent good faith are
+quite sublime. The things that we have been compelled to hear of that
+"star-spangled banner!"--and all as if they were spoken in real earnest,
+and meant to be so understood. We look back upon those side-rending
+moments with a kind of Lucretian pleasure, and indemnify ourselves for
+past constraint by a hearty guffaw. All this magniloquence and bad
+taste, however, is intelligible enough. It springs partly from a want of
+discipline in their society, and partly from the absence of those
+studies which purify the taste, enlighten the judgment, and make, even
+dulness respectable. American audiences are not critical--not merely
+because they are not learned, but because they all take it in turns to
+be orators, as they do to be colonels of militia and justices of the
+peace. Thus they learn to bear each other's burdens, and Dulness is
+fully justified of her children. In a country where all men, at least in
+theory, are equal, and where every man does in fact exercise a certain
+influence on public affairs, it is not surprising that a large number of
+persons should possess a certain facility of public speaking, which even
+in England is far from universal, and is elsewhere possessed by very
+few. No man in the United States is deterred from offering his views
+upon matters of state, by the feeling that neither his education nor his
+position justify his interference. It is difficult in England to realise
+the practical equality which obtains as a fundamental principle in the
+Republic. There every man feels himself to be, and in fact is, or at
+least may be, a potential unit in the community. As a man, he is a
+citizen--as a citizen, a sovereign, whose caprices are to be humoured,
+and whose displeasure is to be deprecated. Judge Peddle, for instance,
+from the backwoods, is not perhaps as eloquent as Webster, nor as
+subtile as Calhoun, but he has just as good a right to be heard when he
+goes up to Congress for all that. Is he not accounted an exemplary
+citizen "and a pretty tall talker" in his own neighbourhood, and where
+on "the univarsal airth" would you find a more enlightened public
+opinion? It would never do to put Peddle down; that would be
+_leze-majest�_ against his constituents, the sovereign people who dwell
+in Babylon, which is in the county of Lafayette, on the banks of the
+Chattawichee. Thus endorsed, Peddle soon lays aside his native
+bashfulness, and makes the walls of Congress vocal to that bewitching
+eloquence which heretofore captivated the Babylonish mind. He was
+"raised a leettle too far to the west of sun-down" to be snubbed by
+Down-easters, any how; he's a cock of the woods, he is; an "etarnal
+screamer," "and that's a fact"--with a bowie knife under his waistcoat,
+and a patent revolver in his coat pocket, both very much at the service
+of any gentleman who may dispute his claims to popular or personal
+consideration.
+
+To meet the case of these volcanic statesmen,
+
+    "Aw'd by no shame, by no respect controll'd,"
+
+and in order that the noble army of dunces (a potent majority, of
+course) may have no reason to complain that the principles of equality
+are violated in their persons, the House of Representatives has adopted
+a regulation, commonly called "the one-hour rule." Upon this principle,
+whenever a question of great interest comes up, each member is allotted
+one hour by the Speaker's watch--as much less as he pleases, but no more
+on any consideration. Of course it occasionally happens that a man who
+has something to say, is not able to say it effectively within the hour;
+but then, for one such, there are at least a dozen who would otherwise
+talk for a week without saying any thing at all. Upon the whole,
+therefore, this same one-hour rule is deserving of all praise--the time
+of the country is saved by it, the sufferings of the more sensible
+members are abbreviated, while the dunces, to do them justice, make the
+most of their limited opportunities. Who knows, but that the peace of
+the world may be owing to it? For as there are about 230
+representatives, we should have had, but for it, just as many masterly
+demonstrations of the title of the Republic to the whole of Oregon--and
+something more. In such a cause, they would make nothing of beginning
+with the creation of the world, and ending with the last protocol of Mr
+Buchanan! Decidedly, but for "the one-hour rule" we Britishers should
+have been "everlastingly used up--and no two ways about it." Poor old
+Adams actually did begin his Oregon speech with the first chapter of
+Genesis. The title-deeds of the Republic, he said, were to be found in
+the words, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth!" Happily,
+the fatal hammer of the Speaker put down the venerable antediluvian,
+before he got to the end of the chapter.
+
+In the Senate, on the other hand, which is a less numerous, and somewhat
+more select body, things still go on in the old-fashioned way. There,
+when a member has once caught the Speaker's eye, his fortune is made for
+the day--perhaps for the week. Accordingly, he takes things easy from
+the very first--kicks his spittoon to a convenient angle, offers a
+libation of cold water to his parched entrails, and begins. When he
+leaves off, is another matter altogether--but not generally till he has
+gone through the round of human knowledge, explored the past, touched
+lightly upon the present, and cast a piercing glance into the darkness
+of the future. Soon after three, the Senate adjourns for dinner, and the
+orator of the day goes to his pudding with the rest, happy in the
+reflection that he has done his duty by his country, and will do it
+again on the morrow. We have somewhere read of a paradise of fools.
+Undoubtedly, Congress is that place. There they enjoy a perfect
+impunity, and revel in the full gratification of their instincts. Nobody
+thinks of coughing them down, or swamping them with ironical cheers.
+There--
+
+    "Dulness, with transport, eyes each lively dunce,
+    Remembering she herself was Pertness once,
+    And tinsel'd o'er in robes of varying hues,
+    With self-applause her wild creation views.
+    Sees momentary monsters rise and fall,
+    And with her own fool's colours gilds them all."
+
+Indeed, all the arrangements of Congress favour the influence of the
+sable goddess. In the first place, the members are paid by the
+day--eight dollars each. Permit us to observe, Jonathan, that you
+scarcely display your usual "smartness" here. It would be much better to
+contract with them by the _scrape_. As for instance--To involving the
+country in a war with Mexico, so much--To ditto with Great Britain, so
+much more. One year you might lay down a lumping sum for a protective
+tariff, with an understanding, that it was to be repealed the next at a
+moderate advance. You would thus insure the greatest possible variety of
+political catastrophes, with the least possible friction and expense.
+Again, the furniture of the Capitol is altogether too luxurious. Each
+member is provided with a private desk, stationery _ad lib._, a stuffed
+arm-chair, and a particular spittoon. No wonder, then, that your Simmses
+and Chipmans are listened to with complacency. It's all in the day's
+work--it's considered in the wages. While these worthies hold forth for
+the benefit of distant Missouri and Michigan, their colleagues write
+their letters, read the newspapers, chew tobacco, as little boys do
+toffy in England, and expectorate at leisure. No one cheers, no one
+groans, no one cries Oh! Oh!--all the noise that is made is on private
+account, and not at all personal to the gentleman on his legs. Yet, such
+is the deceitfulness of the human heart, that the Americans are much
+given to boast of the dignity and decorum of their Legislature, and to
+thank God that it is not a bear-garden like another place of the kind
+that they wot of. We must have been asked at least six times a-day
+during our visit at Washington, "How Congress compared with the British
+Parliament?" To which we used to reply, "That they did not compare at
+all," an answer which fully met the truth of the case, without in the
+least wounding the self-love of the querist.
+
+When these malignant pages arrive in New York, every inhabitant of that
+good city will abuse us heartily, except our publisher. But great will
+be the joy of that furacious individual, as he speculates in secret on
+the increased demand of his agonised public. Immediately he will put
+forth an advertisement, notifying the men of "Gotham," that he has on
+hand a fresh sample of BRITISH INSOLENCE, and hinting that, although he
+knows they care nothing about such things, the forthcoming piracy of
+Maga will be on the most extensive scale. Then, all the little
+newspapers will take us in hand, and bully us in their little way. It is
+perhaps a shame to forestall the acerbities of these ingenious
+gentlemen, but we know they will call us "anonymous scribbler," and
+"bagman," amongst the rest. They called us "bagman" for our last
+article, and we were sure they would. The fact is, that since Lord
+Morpeth's visit to the United States, the Americans have taken a very
+high tone indeed. Their gratitude to that amiable nobleman for not
+writing a book about them, is unbounded, and they put him down (why, it
+is difficult to say) as the aristocratic, and therefore impartial
+champion of Demus. Whenever we fell into the bilious moods to which our
+plebeian nature is addicted, we were gravely admonished of his bright
+example, and assured that to speak evil of the Republic was the
+infirmity of vulgar minds. There is, it would appear, a sympathy betwixt
+"great ones;" a kind of free-masonry betwixt the sovereign people and
+the British peerage, which neither party suspected previously, but which
+is confessed on the slightest acquaintance.
+
+As generally happens in such cases, the conceit of the Americans takes
+the most perverse direction. It is certain that they do many things
+better than any people under the sun. Their merchant navy is the finest
+in the world--their river steamers are miracles of ingenuity,--at
+felling timber and packing pork they are unrivalled; and their smartness
+in the way of trade is acknowledged by those who know them best. All
+this, and much more to the same effect, may be admitted without demur,
+but all these admissions will avail the traveller nothing. He will be
+expected to congratulate them on the elegance of their manners, the
+copiousness of their literature, and the refinement of their tastes. He
+will be confidentially informed that "Lord Morpeth's manners were much
+improved by mixing with our first circles, sir;" and what is worse, he
+will be expected to believe it, and to carry himself accordingly. "Ripe
+scholars" who make awful false quantities, second-rate demagogues
+passing for "distinguished statesmen," literary empirics, under the name
+of "men of power," will claim his suffrages at every turn; and in vain
+will he draw upon his politeness to the utmost, in vain assent,
+ejaculate, and admire--no amount of positive praise will suffice, till
+America Felix is admitted to be the chosen home of every grace and every
+muse. "Did Mr Bull meet with any of _our_ literary characters at
+Boston?" Mr Bull had that happiness. "Well, he was very much pleased of
+course?" Bull hastens to lay his hand upon his heart, and to reply with
+truth that he _was_ pleased. "Yes, sir, we do expect that our Boston
+literature is about first-rate. We are a young people, sir, but we are a
+great people, and we are bound to be greater still. There is a moral
+power, sir, an elevation about the New England mind, which
+Europeans can scarcely realise. Did you hear Snooks lecture, sir?
+the Rev. Amos Snooks of Pisgah? Well, sir, you ought to have heard
+Snooks. All Europeans calculate to hear Snooks--he's a fine man,
+sir, a man of power--one of the greatest men, sir, in this, or perhaps
+any other country."
+
+    "Semper ego auditor tantum, nunquam ne reponam,
+    Vexatus toties."----
+
+You leave Boston somewhat snubbed and subdued, and betake yourself to
+the more cosmopolitan regions of New York. Here, too, "men of power" are
+to be found in great numbers--but "our first circles" divide the
+attention and abuse the patience of the traveller. Boston writes the
+books, but New York sets the fashions of the Republic, and is the
+Elysium of mantua-makers and upholders. We doubt whether any city in the
+world of its size can boast so many smart drawing rooms and so many
+pretty young women. Indeed, from the age of fifteen to that of
+five-and-twenty, female beauty is the rule rather than the exception in
+the United States, and neither cost nor pains are spared to set it forth
+to the best advantage. The American women dress well, dance well, and in
+all that relates to what may be called the mechanical part of social
+intercourse, they appear to great advantage. Nothing can exceed the
+self-possession of these pretty creatures, whose confidence is never
+checked by the discipline of society, or the restraints of an education
+which is terminated almost as soon as it is begun. There is no childhood
+in America--no youth--no freshness. We look in vain for the
+
+    "Ingenui vultus puer, ingenuique pudoris."
+
+or
+
+    "The modest maid deck'd with a blush of honour,
+    Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love."
+
+    DANIEL.
+
+There is scarcely a step from the school to the forum--from the nursery
+to the world. Young girls, who in England would be all blushes and bread
+and butter, boldly precede their mammas into the ball-room; and the code
+of a mistaken gallantry supplies no corrective to their caprice, for
+youth and beauty are here invested with regal prerogatives, and can do
+no wrong. In short, the Americans carry their complaisance to the sex
+beyond due bounds--at least in little things--for we by no means think
+that the real influence of their women is great, notwithstanding the
+tame and submissive gallantry with which the latter are treated in
+public. We doubt whether the most limited gynocracy would tolerate the
+use of tobacco as an article of daily diet, or permit ferocious murders
+to go unwhipped of justice under the name of duels. But the absorbing
+character of the pursuits of the men forbids any strong sympathy betwixt
+the sexes; and perhaps the despotism which the women exercise in the
+drawing-room arises from the fact that all that relates to the graces
+and embellishments of life is left entirely to them. We do not know
+that this can be avoided under the circumstances of the country, but it
+has a most injurious effect upon social intercourse. The Americans of
+both sexes want tact and graciousness of manner, and that prompt and
+spontaneous courtesy which is the child of discipline and
+self-restraint. They are seldom absolutely awkward, because they are
+never bashful; they have no _mauvaise honte_, because they are all on an
+equality; hence they never fail to display a certain dry composure of
+bearing, which, though not agreeable, is less ludicrous than the
+_gaucherie_ so commonly observed in all classes of English society,
+except the very highest.
+
+It is curious to observe how the manners of two nations of the same
+origin, and, in a great degree, of similar instincts, are modified by
+their political institutions. Neither the British nor the Americans are
+distinguished for that natural politeness and _savoir vivre_, which is
+to be found more or less in all other civilised countries. They are both
+too grave, too busy, and too ambitious to lay themselves out for
+trifles, which, after all, go far to make up the sum of human happiness.
+As for the Americans, the general aspect of their society is dreary and
+monotonous in the extreme. Whatever "our first circles" may say to the
+contrary, there is a great equality of manners, as of other things,
+amongst them; but if the standard is nowhere very high, it never falls
+so low as with us; if there is less refinement and cultivation amongst
+the higher classes, (we beg Demus' pardon for the expression,) there is
+on the other hand less grossness, certainly less clownishness, among the
+mass. Of course there are many individuals in this, as in other
+countries, remarkable for natural grace and genteel bearing; but the
+class which is pre-eminent in these respects, is very small and
+ill-defined. The great national defect is a want of sprightliness and
+vivacity, and an impartial _insouciance_ in their intercourse with all
+classes and conditions of men. For if inequality has its evils, it has
+also its charms; as the prospect of swelling mountains and lowly vales
+is more pleasing to the eye than that of the monotonous, though more
+fertile champaign. Now, as the relation of patrician and plebeian, of
+patron and client, of master and servant, of superior and inferior, can
+scarcely be said to exist in the United States, so all the nice
+gradations of manner which are elicited by those relations, are wanting
+also. The social machine rubs on with as little oil as possible--there
+is but small room for the exercise of the amenities and charities of
+life. The favours of the great are seldom rewarded by the obsequiousness
+of the small. No leisure and privileged class exists to set an example
+of refined and courtly bearing; but there are none, however humble, who
+may not affect the manners of their betters without impertinence, and
+aspire to the average standard of the Republic. Hence, almost every
+native American citizen is capable of conducting himself with propriety,
+if not with ease, in general society. What are fine ladies and gentlemen
+to him, that he should stand in awe of them? Simply persons who have
+been smarter or earlier in the field of fortune than himself, who will
+"burst up" some fine morning, and leave the road open to others. The
+principle of rotation[6] is not confined to the political world of the
+United States, but obtains in every department of life. It is throughout
+the same song--
+
+    "Here we go up, up, up,
+    And here we go down, down, down."
+
+Law and opinion, and the circumstances of the country, are alike
+opposed to the accumulation of property, so that it is rare for two
+successive generations of the same family to occupy the same social
+position. The ease with which fortunes are made, or repaired, is only
+equalled by the recklessness with which they are lost. Prosperity, at
+some time or other, appears to be the birth-right of every citizen; and,
+where all are _parvenus_ alike, there are none to assume the airs of
+exclusiveness, or to crush the last comer beneath the weight of
+traditional and time-honoured grandeur.
+
+It is not easy to dismiss the peculiarities of our British society in a
+paragraph. Bull, however, to be appreciated, must be seen in the midst
+of his own household gods, with his family and bosom friends about him.
+This is what may be called the normal state of that fine fellow--and
+here Jonathan can't hold a candle to him. American interiors want relief
+and variety of colouring. Their children are not like the children of
+the Old World: they don't romp, or prattle, or get into mischief, or
+believe in Bogie. They seem to take brevet rank, from the first, as men
+and women, and are quite inaccessible to nursery humbug of any kind.
+They are never whipped, and eat as much pastry as they think proper;
+whereby they grow up dyspeptic and rational beyond their years. Parents
+don't appear to exercise any particular functions, masters (we again beg
+Demus's pardon for the poverty of the vernacular) have nothing
+magisterial about them, and servants won't stomach even the name, at
+least if they wear white skins, and know it. After the first burst of
+admiration at the philosophy of the thing, it grows tiresome to live
+amongst people who are all so much alike. Now in England the
+distinctions of age, and rank, and sex, are much more strongly marked;
+while in those countries of Europe which are still less under the
+influence of the equalising spirit of the age, the social landscape is
+still more variegated and picturesque. With us, two adverse principles
+are at work; and this is the reason why our British society is so
+anomalous to ourselves, and so entirely beyond the comprehension of
+foreigners. Whenever our brave Bull is thrown into a mixed company
+abroad, or even at home, where the social position of those with whom he
+is brought into contact is unknown to him, there is no end to the
+blundering and nonsense of the worthy fellow. Go where he will, he is
+haunted by the traditions of his eccentric island, and desperately
+afraid of placing himself in what he calls a false position. At home, he
+has one manner for his nobleman, another for his tradesman, another for
+his valet; and he would rather die than fail in the orthodox intonation
+appropriate to each. Who has not observed the strange mixture of
+petulance and _mauvaise honte_ which distinguishes so many of our
+English travellers on the Continent? Decidedly, we appear to less
+advantage in public than any people in the world. Place a Briton and an
+American, of average parts and breeding, on board a Rhine steam-boat,
+and it is almost certain that the Yankee will mix up, so to speak, the
+better of the two. The gregarious habits of our continental neighbours
+are more familiar to him than to his insular kinsman, and he is not
+tormented like the latter by the perpetual fear of failing, either in
+what is due to himself or to others. His manners will probably want
+polish and dignity; he will be easy rather than graceful, communicative
+rather than affable; but he will at least preserve his Republican
+composure, alike in his intercourse with common humanity, or in the
+atmosphere of more courtly and exclusive circles.
+
+The art of pleasing is nowhere well understood in the United States: but
+the beauty of the women, though transient, is unrivalled while it lasts,
+and perhaps in no country is the standard of female virtue so high. The
+formal and exaggerated attention which the sex receives from all classes
+in public, is at least a proof of the high estimation in which it is
+held, and must, we think, be put down as an amiable trait in the
+American character.
+
+We are quite sure, for instance, that females may travel unattended in
+the United States with far more ease and security than in any country of
+the Old World: and the deference paid to them is quite irrespective of
+the rank of the fair objects--it is a tribute paid to the _woman_ and
+not to the _lady_. Some travellers we believe have denied this. We can
+only say, that during a pretty extensive tour we do not recollect a
+single instance in which even the unreasonable wishes of women were not
+complied with as of course. We _did_ remark with less satisfaction the
+ungracious manner in which civilities were received by these spoilt
+children of the Republic--the absence of apologetic phrases, and those
+courtesies of voice and expression, with which women usually acknowledge
+the deference paid to their weakness and their charms. But this is a
+national failing. The Americans are too independent to confess a sense
+of obligation, even in the little conventional matters of daily
+intercourse. They have almost banished from the language such phrases
+as, "Thank you," "If you please," "I beg your pardon," and the like. The
+French, who are not half so attentive to women as the Americans, pass
+for the politest nation in Europe, because they know how to veil their
+selfishness beneath a profusion of bows and pretty speeches. Now, when
+your Yankee is invited to surrender his snug seat in a stage or a
+railroad carriage in favour of a fair voyager, he does not hesitate for
+a moment. He expectorates, and retires at once. But no civilities are
+interchanged; no smiles or bows pass betwixt the parties. The gentleman
+expresses no satisfaction--the lady murmurs no apologies.
+
+Even now we see in our mind's eye the pert, pretty little faces, and the
+loves of bonnets which flirt and flutter along Broadway in the bright
+sunshine--_Longum Vale_! In the flesh we shall see them no more. No more
+oysters at Downing's, no more terrapins at Florence's, no more fugacious
+banquets at the Astor House. We have traduced the State, and for us
+there is no return. The commercial house which we represent, has offered
+to renew its confidence, but it has failed to restore ours. No amount of
+commission whatever, will tempt us to affront the awful majesty of
+Lynch, or to expose ourselves to the tar-and-feathery tortures which he
+prepares for those who blaspheme the Republic. We have ordered our buggy
+for the Home Circuit, and propose, by a course of deliberate
+mastication, and unlimited freedom of speech, to repair the damage which
+our digestion, and we fear our temper, has sustained during our travels
+in "the area of freedom."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[5] [Greek: Estig ara � aret� exisproaixetikt, en mesot�tizusa t� pros
+�mas �rismen� dog�]
+
+[6] The principle of rotation in office is a favourite crochet of the
+Democratic party, and is founded upon the Republican jealousy of power.
+General Jackson went so far as to recommend that all official
+appointments whatever should be limited by law to the Presidential term
+of four years. As it is, whenever a change of parties occurs, a clean
+sweep is made of all the officers of government, from the highest to the
+lowest. Custom-house officers, jailers, &c., all share the fate of their
+betters. It is only surprising that the business of the country is
+carried on as well as it is, under the influence of this corrupting
+system.
+
+
+
+
+HOR� CATULLIAN�.
+
+
+LETTER TO EUSEBIUS.
+
+You are far more anxious, my dear Eusebius, to know somewhat of the
+progress or the result of the Curate's misfortune, than to read his or
+my translations from Catullus. I have a great mind to punish that love
+of mischief in you, by burying the whole affair in profound secresy. It
+is fortunate for him that you are not here, or you would surely indulge
+your propensity, and with malicious invention put the whole parish, with
+the Curate, into inextricable confusion. It is bad enough as it is.
+There!--it cannot be helped--I must tell you at once the condition we
+are in, if I would have you read the rest of my letter with any
+patience.
+
+A committee has been sitting these two days, to sift, as they pronounce
+them, "the late disgraceful proceedings;" so that you see, they are of
+the school of Rhadamanthus,--condemn first, and hear afterwards. We
+have, in this little township, two "general shopkeepers," dealers in
+groceries, mops, calicoes, candles, and the usual "_omnium-gatherum_" of
+household requirements.
+
+These are great rivals--envious rivals--back-biting rivals; both, in the
+way of tale-bearing, what Autolicus calls himself, "pickers-up of
+unconsidered trifles." And truly, in the trade of this commodity, if in
+no other, this may be called a "manufacturing district." Now the Curate,
+unhappily, can buy his tea and sugar, and trifling matters, but of
+one--for to patronise both, would be to make enemies of both; the poor
+Curate, then, in preferring the adulterated goods of Nicolas Sandwell,
+to the adulterated goods of Matthew Miffins, has made an implacable
+enemy. Really, Eusebius, here is machinery enough for a heroic poem: for
+Virgil's old Lady Fame on the top of the roof we have three, active and
+lusty--and you may make them the Fates or the Furies, or what you
+please, except the Graces. Prateapace, Gadabout, and Brazenstare--there
+are characters enough for episodes; and a hero--but what, you will say,
+are we to do for a heroine? Here is one, beat out of the brain of Mathew
+Miffins, a ready-armed Minerva. You will smile, but it is so. The three
+above-named ladies first made their way to the shop of Mr Miffins,
+narrated what had passed and what had not. Having probably just
+completed "sanding the sugar and watering the tobacco," he raised both
+his hands and his eyes, and, to lose no time in business, dropped them
+as soon as he decently could, and, pressing both palms strongly on the
+counter, he asked, if they entertained any suspicion of a particular
+person as being the object of the Curate's most unbecoming passion?
+Lydia Prateapace remembered, certainly, a name being mentioned--it was
+Lesby or Lisby, or something like that. "Indeed!" said Miffins, arching
+his brows, and significantly touching the tip of his nose with his
+forefinger--"ah! indeed! a foreigner, depend upon it--a Lisbon lady;
+that, Miss, is the capital of Portugal, where them figs comes from. Only
+think, a foreign lady--a lady from Lisbon--that is too bad!" to which
+the three readily assented. "I doubt not, ladies," he continued, "it's
+one of them foreigners as lives near Ashford, about five miles
+off--where I knows the Curate goes two or three times in a week."
+
+Thus, Eusebius, is Catullus's Lesbia, who herself stood for another,
+converted into a Portuguese lady, whom the Curate visits some five miles
+off--or, as the three ladies say, _protects_.
+
+If you ask how I came by this accurate information, learn that our
+Gratian's _Jahn_ was at the further counter, making a purchase of
+mole-traps, and saw and heard, and reported. The first meeting was held
+in Miffins' back-parlour; but fame had beat up for recruits, and that
+was found far too small; so they have adjourned to the Blue Boar, where,
+the tap being good, and the landlord a busybody, they are likely to
+remain a little longer than Muzzle-brains can see to draw up a report.
+The Curate's door is chalked, and adjacent walls--"No Kissing," "The
+Clerical Judas," "Who Kissed the School-mistress?" and many such-like
+morsels. But if fame has thus been playing with the kaleidoscope of
+lies, multiplying and giving every one its match, she has likewise shown
+them about through her magnifying glass, and brought the most distantly
+circulated home to the poor Curate. In a little town a few miles off, it
+has been reported that Miss Lydia Prateapace has been obliged to "swear
+the peace against him," which "swearing the _peace_" is, in most cases,
+a declaration of _war_.
+
+Meanwhile the Curate has taken his cue, to do nothing and say nothing
+upon the subject; and, as in all his misadventures, that was the part
+taken by Yorick, if his friends do not rescue him, he may have Yorick's
+penalty. Thus much at present, my dear Eusebius; I will occasionally
+report progress, but it is now time that we resume our translations,
+hoping you will find amusement in our
+
+
+HOR� CATULLIAN�.
+
+I told you Gratian, worthy veracious Gratian, had hastened away to an
+Agricultural meeting, to vindicate the character of his Belgian carrots.
+This vindication inundated us for some days with agricultural visitors.
+And Gratian was proud, and, like Virgil, "tossed about the dung with
+dignity." We saw little of him, and when he did appear, "his talk was of
+bullocks;" so how could he "have understanding," at least for Catullus?
+Had not a neighbouring fair taken off the agriculturists after a few
+days, his ideas, like his stick, would have become porcine. He rode his
+hobby, and at a brisk pace; and, when a little tired of him, stabled him
+and littered him, and seemed glad of a little quiet and leg-tapping in
+his easy-chair. He had worked off the lessened excitement by an
+evening's nap, and awoke recruited; and, with a pleasant smile, asked
+the Curate if he had had recently any communication with his friend
+Catullus.
+
+CURATE.--We left him, I believe, in the very glory of kissing--his
+insatiable glory. He now comes to a check--Lesbia is weary, if he is
+not.
+
+AQUILIUS.--It is a mere lovers' quarrel, and is only the prelude to more
+folly, like the blank green baize curtain, between the play and the
+farce. He affects anger--a thin disguise: he would give worlds to "kiss
+and be friends again." His vexation is evident.
+
+GRATIAN.--Ah! it is an old story--and not the worse for that--come, Mr
+Curate, show up Catullus in his true motley. He was privileged at his
+age to play the fool--so are we all at one time or another, if we do it
+not too wisely. A wise fool is the only Asinine.--Now for Catullus's
+folly.
+
+CURATE.--Thus, then, to himself:--
+
+    AD CATULLUM.
+
+    Sad Catullus, cease your moan,
+      Or your folly you'll deplore;
+    What you see no more your own,
+      Think of as your own no more.
+
+    Once the suns shone on you clearly,
+      When it was your wont to go
+    Seeking her you loved so dearly,--
+      Will you e'er love woman so?
+
+    Then those coquetries amusing
+      Were consented to by both--
+    Done at least of your free choosing,
+      Nor was she so very loth.
+
+    Then, indeed, the suns shone clearly,
+      Now their light is half gone out;
+    She is loth--and you can merely
+      Learn the way to do without.
+
+    Cease, then, your untimely wooing,
+      Steel your purpose, and be strong;
+    If she flies you, why, pursuing,
+      Make your sorrow vain and long?
+
+    Farewell, Fair!--Catullus hardens;
+      Where he is, will he remain;
+    He is not a man who pardons
+      One that must be asked again.
+
+    She'll be sad in turn, the charmer,
+      When the shades of eventide
+    Bring no gallants to alarm her,
+      No Catullus to her side.
+
+    Lost to every sense of duty,
+      Say, what can you, will you do?
+    Who'll find out that you have beauty?
+      Who'll be loved in turn by you?
+
+    Whose will you be called of right?
+      Whom will you in future kiss?
+    Whose lips will you have to bite?--
+      O Catullus, keep to this!
+
+GRATIAN.--Well, now, I think your choice of metre a little too much of
+the measured elegiac, for the bursts of alternate passion, love, and
+anger--those sudden breaks of vexation, which I see, or fancy I see, in
+the original Latin. Now, Aquilius, let us hear you personate the "vexed
+lover."
+
+AQUILIUS.
+
+    AD SEIPSUM.
+
+    Foolish Catullus--trifling ever--
+    Dismiss so fruitless an endeavour;
+    Let by-gone days be days by-gone,
+    Though fine enough some days have shone,--
+    When if _she_ but held up her finger
+    Whom you so loved--and still you linger,
+    Nor dare to part with--you observant,
+    Were at her beck her humble servant;
+    Follow'd her here and there: and did
+    Such things! which she would not forbid--
+    Love's follies, without stint or doubt:
+    Oh! then your days shone finely out.
+    But now 'tis quite another thing,--
+    She likes not your philandering:
+    And you yourself! But be it over--
+    Act not again the silly lover--
+    But let her go--be hard as stone;
+    So let her go--and go alone.
+    Adieu, sweet lady! 'Tis in vain!
+    Catullus is himself again--
+    Will neither love, want, nor require,
+    But gives you up as you desire.
+    Wretch! you will grieve for this full sore,
+    When lovers come to you no more.
+    For think you, false one, to what pass,
+    Your wretched days will come? Alas!
+    No beauty yours--not one to say
+    How beautiful she looks to-day!
+    Whom will you have to love--to hear
+    Yourself called by _his_ name, _his_ dear?
+    Whom will you have to kiss,--be kiss'd
+    And bind your names, in true-love twist?
+    Whose lips to bite so?--yes--to bite.}
+    --Catullus, spare thy love or spite:}
+    Be firm as rock--or conquered quite.}
+
+CURATE.--I protest against this as a translation. He has indeed, as he
+professed, brought his puppet Catullus upon the stage, and, like
+Shakspeare's bad actor, has put more words in his mouth than the author
+bargained for. The very last words are quite contradicted by the text.
+Catullus does not hint at the possibility of being conquered, of giving
+in.
+
+GRATIAN.--Oh! that, is always implied in these cases. Besides Catullus
+evidently doubts, or he would not have so enforced the caution; "At tu,
+Catulle"--the translation may be a little free, but still admissible.
+
+AQUILIUS.--My friend the Curate has committed the fault himself, if it
+be one: his "O Catullus, keep to this!" so evidently means, If you do
+not, it is all over with you.
+
+GRATIAN.--Give me the book.--Oh!--I see we have next that very elegant
+and very affectionate welcome home to his friend Verannius, on his
+return from Spain, whither he had gone with Caius Piso. There is much
+heart in it, and true joy and gratulation. This is the sort of welcome
+that throws a sunshine upon the path of the days of human life. There is
+no trouble when friend greets friend. Have you translated this?
+
+AQUILIUS.--I fear your commendation will resemble too rich a frame to a
+poor picture, and make all more dingy by the glow of the genuine gold.
+
+But here I venture to offer, my translation:--the warmth of the
+original--the tenderness, is not perhaps in it:
+
+    AD VERANNIUM.
+
+    Sweet friend, Verannius, welcome home at last!
+    Had I a thousand friends, all were surpass'd
+    By my Verannius! Art thou _home_ return'd,
+    To thine own household gods, and hearts that yearn'd
+    To greet thee--brothers happy in one mind,
+    And thy dear mother, too,--all fond, all kind?
+    O happy, happy news! and now again
+    To see thee safe! and hear thee talk of Spain--
+    Its history, places, people, and array,
+    Telling of all in thy old pleasant way!
+    And shall I hold thee in a friend's embrace,
+    Gaze on thy mouth, and in thine eyes, and trace
+    The features of the well-remember'd face!
+    Oh, if one happiest man on earth there be,
+    Amongst the happy, I, dear friend, am he!
+
+CURATE.--This Verannius, and his friend Fabullus, seem to have been upon
+the most intimate and familiar terms with our poet. Little presents,
+pledges of their mutual friendship, had doubtless been given and
+received. Catullus elsewhere complains against Marrucinus Asinius, that
+he had stolen a handkerchief, sent him out of Spain by Verannius and
+Fabullus.
+
+AQUILIUS.--Have you not translated it?
+
+CURATE.--No.
+
+AQUILIUS.--I have, and will read it, after yours to Verannius: and it is
+curious as showing that the Romans had the practice of using
+handkerchiefs, or napkins, of value,--perhaps such a fashion as is now
+revived by the other sex,--and embroidered with lace.
+
+GRATIAN.--Now, Mr Curate.--If you let our friend digress thus, we shall
+never have your version.
+
+CURATE.--
+
+    AD VERANNIUM.
+
+    My friend, the dearest and the best,
+    E'en though ten thousand I possess'd!--
+    My own Verannius! art thou come
+    To greet again thy gods of home,
+    And brethren that so well agree
+    Together, and in loving thee--
+    And come to thy sweet mother, too?
+    O blessed news! and it is true,
+    That I shall see thee safe at last;
+    And hear thee tell thy travel pass'd--
+    Of Spanish places, things, and tribes,
+    (While every word my heart imbibes,)
+    In thine old way: shall I embrace
+    Thy neck--and kiss thy pleasant face?
+    Find me the happy where you can,
+    I still shall be the happiest man.
+
+GRATIAN.--What are we to have next?
+
+AQUILIUS.--An invitation to dinner, or, as the Romans made it,
+supper--and a curious invitation it is. Fabullus, to whom it was
+addressed, was companion to his friend Verannius--and both were with the
+pestilent Piso, in Spain.
+
+CURATE.--And brought little out of it; but returned poorer than they
+went--as did, it should seem, Catullus himself from Bithynia. So that I
+should imagine the invitation to Fabullus was a mere jest upon their
+mutual poverty. For it does not appear that Fabullus was in a condition
+to indulge in luxuries.
+
+AQUILIUS.--Perhaps, when the invitation was sent, Catullus was not aware
+that his friend had been as unsuccessful, under Piso, as he had himself
+been, under Memmius. Thus stands the invitation:--
+
+    AD FABULLUM.
+
+    A few days hence, my dear Fabullus,
+      If the gods grant you that high favour,
+    You shall sup well with your Catullus;
+      For, to ensure the dishes' savour,
+    Yourself shall cater, and shall cull us
+      Best fruits--and wines of choicest flavour.
+    And with you bring your lass--fun--laughter--
+      All plenty: nor confine your wishes
+      To supernumerary dishes;--
+    Bring all--and pay the piper after.
+    Rich be your fare--and all fruition,
+      Taste, elegance, and sweet discourses
+    Familiar, on that one condition.
+      For, truth to tell, my wretched purse is
+    In its last stage of inanition,
+      And not a single coin disburses:
+    A cobweb's over it, and in it--
+    That Spider Want there loves to spin it.
+
+    Setting aside this lack of coffer,
+      Which you can supply, Fabullus,
+    Accept good welcome--and I offer,
+      For company, your friend Catullus.
+    Yet, though so hard my purse's case is,
+      With such rare unguents I'll present you,
+    Compounded by the Loves and Graces
+      For my dear girl, that you shall scent you
+    With perfume more divine than roses;
+      And after, pray the gods, within you,
+      To change sense, nerve, bone, muscle, sinew,
+    And make you all compact of noses.
+
+CURATE.--There you are again bolting out of the course. Sending poor
+Fabullus to market, without money in his purse,--not a word in the
+original of fruit-culling and "paying the piper."
+
+AQUILIUS.--If Gratian had not the book in his hand, I would boldly
+assert that it is all there. He will admit it is the entire meaning.
+
+CURATE.--With the elegant diction, "paying the piper," indeed! "H�c si,
+inquam, attuleris, venuste noster."
+
+GRATIAN.--Well, I almost think "venuste noster," "my good fellow," or
+"my pleasant fellow," will allow the freedom of the translation, for it
+is a free and easy appellative. Come, then, Curate, let us have your
+accurate version.
+
+CURATE.--Perhaps you may think, when you hear it, that I am in the same
+predicament of blame with Aquilius, and that my criticism was a ruse, to
+divide the censure pretty equally.
+
+    AD FABULLUM.
+
+    Fabullus, if the gods will let you,
+    Before a table I will set you,
+    A few days hence, with welcome hearty,
+    To my domestic dinner-party.
+    That is to say--you bring the food,
+    (Which must be plentiful and good,)
+    With wine--remembering, I presume,
+    For one fair girl I've always room.
+    On these conditions you shall dine
+    Luxurious, boon-companion mine.
+    Seeing that your Catullus' purse
+    Has nought but cobwebs left to nurse,
+    I can but give you in return
+    The loves that undiluted burn;
+    And, something sweeter, neater still--
+      A scented unguent I'll impart,
+    Which Venus and her Loves distil
+      To please the girl that owns my heart:
+    Which when you smell, this boon--this solely
+      You'll ask the gods to recompose;
+    And metamorphose you, and wholly,
+      To one extensive Roman nose.
+
+AQUILIUS.--What nose would a Roman wish to have? I object to Roman,
+though it is not a bad one for the purpose. The metamorphosed would
+certainly have a ballad written on him and sung about the streets. Write
+it, and call him "The Man-mountain, or real and undoubted Promontory of
+Noses."
+
+GRATIAN.--It should seem they were like enough to feast--like their gods
+they so irreverently prayed to--on the smell and the smoke only; so they
+needed good noses and bad appetites. There is something a little abrupt
+in the latter part, which I doubt if I like: the Loves and Graces should
+not be made parties to the making of such a monster; and as _monster_ is
+now-a-days all adopted adjective, follow the fashion of speech, and call
+it "One extensive Monster-Nose."--Well, what next?
+
+AQUILIUS.--A little piece of extravagant badinage. It seems Calvus
+Licinius had sent Catullus a collection of miserable poems, and that,
+too, on commencement of the Saturnalia, dedicated to joy, and freedom
+from care and annoyance. Our author writes to complain of the malicious
+present. There is some force, and a fair fling of contempt at the bad
+poets of the day in it.
+
+    AD CALVUM LICINIUM, ORATOREM.
+
+    Now if I loved you less, my friend,
+    Facetious Calvus, than these eyes,
+    You merit hatred in such wise
+    As men Vatinius hate. To send
+    Such stuff to me! Have I been rash
+    In word or deed? The gods forfend!
+    That you should kill me with such trash,
+    Of vile and deleterious verse--
+    Volumes on volumes without end,
+    Of ignominious poets, worse
+    Than their own works. May gods be pliant,
+    And grant me this: that poison--pest
+    Light on 'em all, and on that client
+    Who sent 'em you; and you in jest
+    Transfer them, odious, and mephitic,
+    And execrable. I suspect 'em
+    Sent you by that grammarian critic,
+    Sulla. If so, and you have lost
+    No precious labour to collect 'em,
+    'Tis well indeed; and little cost
+    To you, with malice aforethought,
+    To send (and with intent to kill him,
+    And on this blessed day, when nought
+    But Saturnalian joys should fill him)
+    Your friend Catullus such a set
+    Of murderous authors; but the debt
+    I'll pay, be even with you yet--
+    For no perfidious friend I spare.
+    At early dawn, ere the sun shine, I
+    Will rise, and ransack shop and stall,
+    Collect your C�sii and Aquini,
+    And that Suffenus: and with care
+    And diligence, will have all sent
+    To you, for a like punishment.
+    Hence, poets! with your jingling chimes:
+    Hence, miserables! halt and lame;
+    Be off, ye troublers of our times!
+    I send you packing whence ye came.
+
+GRATIAN.--Kicking about the volumes, doubtless, as the "Friend of
+Humanity" did the "Needy Knife-grinder."
+
+CURATE.--I did not translate that--for I thought the authors might
+easily have been burned for writing bad verses (no hint to you,
+Aquilius; nothing personal); and that Calvus Licinius, having that
+remedy, need not have written about them. And I confess I don't see much
+in what he has written. This Suffenus, however, was no fool, but a man
+of wit and sense.
+
+AQUILIUS.--Yes,--and Catullus writes to Varrus specially about him. I
+have translated that too. Here it is:--
+
+    AD VARRUM.
+
+    This man Suffenus, whom you know,
+    Varrus, is not without some show
+    Of parts, and gift of speech befitting
+    A man of sense. Yet he mistakes
+    His talents wondrously, and makes
+    His thousand verses at a sitting.
+    And troth, he makes them _look_ their best:
+    For, not content with palimpsest,
+    He has them writ on royal vellum,
+    Emboss'd and gilded, rubb'd and polish'd:
+    But read 'em, and you wish abolish'd
+    The privilege to make or sell 'em.
+    You read them, and the man is quite
+    Another man: no more polite--
+    No more "the man about the town,"
+    But metamorphosed to a clown--
+    Milker of goats, a hedger, digger,
+    So thoroughly is changed his figure,
+    So quite unlike himself. 'Tis odd,
+    Most strange, the man for wit so noted,
+    Whose repartees so much were quoted,
+    Is changed into a very clod!
+    And stranger still--he never seems
+    Quite to himself to be himself,
+    As when of poetry he dreams,
+    And writes and writes, and fills his reams
+    With poems destined for the shelf.
+    We are deceived--in this twin-brothers
+    All. There's one vanity between us,
+    And our self-knowledge stands to screen us
+    From our true portraits. Knowing others,
+    We ticket each man with his vice;
+    And find, most accurately nice,
+    In all a something of Suffenus.
+    Thus every man one knowledge lacks;
+    Our error is--we read the score
+    Of each man as he walks before,
+    And bear our tickets at our backs.
+
+GRATIAN.--True, indeed--as old fables mostly are. There is in them the
+depth of wisdom acquired by experience.
+
+CURATE.--I fear experience alone won't do much. It seems thrown away
+upon most people. They continue follies to the end. I suppose Cicero
+thought himself a poet; though it may be doubted if he wrote the line as
+Juvenal gives it,
+
+    "O fortunatam natam me consule Romam."
+
+Perhaps most men's natural common sense has a less wide range than they
+think. For there are some things obvious to all besides, that the wisest
+cannot see.
+
+AQUILIUS.--Cicero was less likely to see any defect in himself than most
+men. He had consummate vanity--which must have led him into many a
+ridiculous position. But there were no Boswells in those days. I never
+could understand how it is that so great an admiration of Cicero has
+come over mankind. Even in language he has had an evil influence; and
+our literature for a long period was tainted with it. Sensible himself,
+he taught the art of writing fluently without sense. The flow and
+period--the _esse videatur_--a style too common with us less than half a
+century ago--you might read page after page, and pause to wonder what
+you had been reading about. The upper current of the book did not
+disturb the under current of your own thoughts, perhaps aided by the
+lulling music.
+
+CURATE.--The vanity of Cicero was too manifest. It is a pity, for the
+sake of his reputation, that the letter to his friend, in which he
+requested him to write his life, is extant. To tell him plainly that it
+is the duty of a friend to exaggerate his virtues, is a mean
+vanity--unworthy such a man.
+
+GRATIAN.--Come, come! let him rest; our business is with Catullus.
+Curate, let us have your translation.
+
+CURATE.--I pass by the account of Suffenus, as well as some other
+pieces, and come to that very short one in which he complains of the
+mortgage which is on his villa. It is a wretched pun on the word
+"opponere," and was scarcely worth translating;--take it, however:
+
+    AD FURIUM.
+
+    You, Furius, ask against what wind
+      My little villa stands--
+    If Auster, or Favonius kind
+      Who comes o'er western lands,
+    Or cruel Boreas, or that one
+    That rises with the morning sun?
+
+    Alas--it stands against a breeze
+      Which beats against the door,
+    Of fifteen thousand sesterces,
+      And twice a hundred more.
+    I challenge you on earth to find
+    So foul and pestilent a wind.
+
+AQUILIUS.--What! do you look for a wind _on_ earth,--it blows over it;
+and catch it who can.
+
+GRATIAN.--It blows every where. The worst I know is that which blows
+down the chimney. And that reminds me to tell you what a town-bred
+chimney-sweeper said, the other day, to a friend of mine, in the valley
+yonder, who wanted to have a smoky chimney cured. My friend inquired if
+he could teach it not to smoke. "How can I tell?" said he, "I must take
+out a brick first and look into his _intellects_."
+
+CURATE.--Not the march--but the sweep of intellect spoke there.
+
+AQUILIUS.--And spoke not amiss; it was merely to see if he _had a mind_
+to be cured.
+
+GRATIAN.--Perhaps you have translated that sweep's language better than
+your passages from Catullus.
+
+AQUILIUS.--I did not attempt to translate that little piece,--but ran
+quite out of course, as the Curate would tell me, in a long paraphrase.
+The idea is, however, furnished by Catullus,--so I dedicate it
+
+    AD FURIUM.
+
+    You ask me if my villa lies
+      Exposed to north, east, west, or south:
+    I answer,--every wind that flies,
+      Flies at it, and with open mouth.
+
+    From every quarter winds assail,
+      But that which comes from _quarter_-day,
+    Though it four times a-year prevail,
+      It does but whistle, and not pay.
+
+    Some blow from far, and some hard by;
+      One, mortgage-wind, takes shortest journey,
+    Only across the way from Sly,
+      And blasts with "power of attorney."
+
+    But what is worse than windy racks is,
+      My windows leak at every pane,
+    And are not tight 'gainst rates and taxes.
+      My roof and doors _let_ in the rain--
+
+    The only _let_ my villa knows.
+      So that with taxes, wind, and wet,
+    From whatsoever point it blows,
+      My house is blown upon _unlet_.
+
+Now, I hope my friend the Curate will admit so far to be rather a
+lengthy translation. I say nothing of addenda--thus:--
+
+    "Winds blow, and crack your cheeks,"--alack,
+      Who said it, wanted house and halls,
+    Nor knew winds have no cheeks to crack,
+      In short crack nothing but my walls.
+
+    My friends console--"the winds will drop:"
+      'Tis equal trouble to my mind;
+    For if it tumbles on the top,
+      You know I cannot _raise the wind_.
+
+    To sum up all--for its location;--
+      The question's of importance vital;--
+    In Chancery--wretched situation;
+      A rascal there disputes my title.
+
+CURATE.--You are coming it pretty strong, and quite blowing up Catullus
+with your hurricane of winds. After all the household miseries in your
+lines, a cheering glass may set things to rights a little. Here, then,
+is what he says to his wine-server:--
+
+    AD PUERUM.
+
+    Boy, that at my drinking-bout
+    Servest old Falernian out,
+    Fill me faster cups, and quicker,
+    With the spirit-stirring liquor.
+    So Posthumia's law doth say,--
+    Mistress of the feast to-day;
+    She more vinous than the grape.
+    Springs of water--bane of wine--
+    Where ye please for me and mine,
+    Avaunt, begone, escape!
+    Emigrate to men demure.
+    My bumper is Thyonian pure.
+
+GRATIAN.--I am afraid, Curate, that if you were to take what you please
+to call "the cheering glass," such as the jade Posthumia would
+recommend, we should have to put you to bed pretty early. It was the
+custom, it should seem, of the ancients to make a throw of the dice to
+determine the arbiter of the feast--to appoint the drinking. Who threw
+_Venus_ (three sixes) was the _magister_; but the _magistra_ is a
+novelty; a "Venus Ebria," whose drinking law would throw all; for "wine
+is a wrestler, and a shrewd one too." Doesn't Shakspeare say so? Now for
+your version, Aquilius.
+
+AQUILIUS.--Curate will say, I am not so close to the original. But, on
+such a subject, we may be allowed to walk not quite straight;--a little
+zig-zaggy. Spite the coming criticism I venture:--
+
+    AD PUERUM SUUM,
+
+    (To his Wine-server.)
+
+    Pour me out, boy, the generous juice.
+      The racy, true, the old Falernus;
+    Such wines as, to Posthumia's thinking,
+      Are only fit for mortals' use;
+    When in her glory, drunk, and winking,
+    The dame would quaff, and wisely learn us
+      The good old simple law of drinking.
+
+    But water shun;--Hence, waters! go,
+      E'en as ye will, to chill Avernus,
+    Or whereso'er ye please to flow;--
+    Be drink for all the dull, the slow,
+    The sad, the serious, the phlegmatic;
+    But leave this juice, this pure stomachic,
+      Its own, its unadulterate glow;--
+    This--this alone is genuine Bacchic!
+
+GRATIAN.--Well, then, that must be our parting cup for the night, and a
+pretty good "_night-cap_" it is. I was afraid, Aquilius, when you came
+to the "phlegmatic" you would rhyme it to "rheumatic," and so on to the
+"water-cure." You know that is recommended in rheumatic cases; but
+perhaps you don't know that I tried it. I had the water-drinking, the
+wet sheets, and all the rest of it.
+
+AQUILIUS.--And are here to tell of it!
+
+GRATIAN.--Yes, and return to the old _tap_, (tapping his thigh and leg
+pretty smartly;) and I suppose I must _stick_ to it.
+
+CURATE.--A medical friend told me the other day of a discussion upon
+this subject, which I thought very amusing, as he narrated it remarkably
+well, imitating the tones and dialect (Somersetshire) of at least one of
+the speakers. He had some years before attended an old man in the
+country--a farmer well to do in the world--a man of very strong natural
+understanding, but entirely uneducated. He had lost sight of him for
+some years, when, not long since, he was sent for to the old farm-house.
+Instead of the old stone floor, there was a carpet laid down, and an air
+of smartness over every thing, which he had never seen before. It turned
+out, that the old man's daughter had married: a smartish man, the
+husband, was in the room, and to show his general knowledge of things,
+and acquaintance with the world, he advocated the water-cure, and
+questioned my medical friend as to his opinion. A voice from the
+chimney-corner (the settle in it) cried out, "It ain't na'tral." My
+friend had not before seen the old man, he was so retired into the
+recess. After having given his opinion to the bridegroom, he turned to
+his old acquaintance, and said "You remarked that it is not natural.
+What do you mean by _natural?_" "Why," replied the old man, "I do think,
+most dumb critturs knows what's good for 'em; and when a dog's sick
+doesn't he eat grass? If a sheep's ill, don't he lick chalk or salt if
+he can get it? And if a beast's ill," (I forget what he said was the
+cure for a beast);--"but did you ever see any of them go and lie down in
+the water, or fill themselves wi' it? There's plenty of it in ditches,
+and every where else, too, hereabouts. No, you never did." Then, looking
+up in the face of his orator son-in-law, he added, "And you don't know
+why you never see'd it, nor why they don't do it. No, I know you don't.
+Vy, I do--because they ha' got more zense." This was said with a kind of
+contempt which was quite a floorer to the new wiseacre.
+
+GRATIAN.--Thanks for the story! now that is just the sense that I have
+acquired at some cost, and no cure; but I didn't get at it naturally as
+your old friend did. So now for sleep, and good-night.
+
+The Curate and I did not part so soon. Time flew, and we seemed to
+shorten the night--"noctem vario sermone," as sayeth Virgil of poor
+Dido, who must have found the conversation considerably flag with the
+stupid �neas.
+
+"Noctem vario sermone _trahebat_--it was a sad _drag_. It must have
+become very tiresome, a little while before that, when ill-mannered
+Bitias drank up all the wine, and buried his face in the cup, "pleno se
+proluit auro." And they had been obliged to resort to singing, always
+the refuge from the visible awkwardness of _nothing to say_. And here I
+cannot but remark, Eusebius, what dull things their songs must have been
+on natural philosophy, sun, moon, and stars--songs, Virgil tells you,
+edited by the old Astronomer-general Atlas. But as this was before the
+foundation of Rome, they had not that variety for their selection,
+which was as much in fashion afterwards in Rome as Moore's Melodies in
+England, as we learn from Mr Macaulay, and his version and edition of
+the "Lays." They had no piccolo pianofortes in those days, or they would
+have had something lighter than the Lays, as the better after-supper
+Poet calls it--a
+
+    "Something more exquisite still."
+
+But I am apparently, Eusebius, leaving the Curate to sleep or to
+meditate upon his own unhappy condition while I thus turn the current of
+my talk upon you. Unhappy condition, did I say? He seems to bear it
+wonderfully lightly; and once or twice, when the subject has been
+mentioned, indulged in an irreverend laugh. Now, I know you will ask how
+a laugh can be irreverend. Don't you know the world well enough,
+Eusebius, to know, that before a very great number of men, women, and
+children, a curate must not laugh, dare not laugh--blessed indeed, and
+divested of the wretched rags of humanity, if he _cannot_ laugh. None
+but a Bishop, or a Dean, who, in the eyes of the many, is a kind of
+extra-parochial nonentity, can really, in these times of severe
+reprobation for trifling peccadillos, afford to laugh; and they had
+better do it in private, and with aprons off--never before the Chapter,
+who all, themselves, laugh in private. Man, you know, is the only
+risible creature; but a Curate must begin to know, from the moment he
+has put on his surplice, that he is to discard at once, and for ever,
+this human and irreverend instinct. Had you lived in the triumphal days
+of the Puritans, what penalties would you not have had to undergo, what
+buffetings and duckings, ere you could finally have overcome your strong
+natural wicked propensity, and have sobered down, and riveted in iron
+gravity and moroseness those flexible, those mockingly flexible features
+of yours. As it is, in these days of "revival," you only meet with
+considerable contempt, and evil opinion, which, as it comes rather late
+upon you, comes as an amusing novelty and additional provocative. But
+you may be sure what you can afford to do, the Curate cannot. For the
+present, therefore, let his few indulgences that way be a secret. He
+will mend in time. For so it happens, that though the longer we live the
+more we have to laugh at, we lose considerably our power of laughing.
+And that--between ourselves be it said, Eusebius--is, I think, a strong
+proof of our deterioration. A man, to laugh well, must be an honest
+man--mind, I say _laugh_: when Shakspeare says
+
+                "A man may smile and smile,
+    And be a villain,"
+
+he purposely says _smile_, in contradistinction to laugh. He cannot
+laugh and be a villain. A man cannot plot and laugh. A man may be much
+less innocent even when he thinks himself devout, than in his hour of
+merriment, when he assuredly has no guile; but a man may even pray with
+a selfish and a narrow mind, and his very prayers partake of his
+iniquity: no bad argument for a prescribed form. A man that laughs well
+is your half-made friend, Eusebius, from the moment you hear him. It is
+better to trust the ear than the eye in this matter--such a man is a man
+after your own heart. _After your own heart_, did I say, Eusebius? Words
+are the _ignes fatui_ to thoughts, and lead to strange vagaries--of
+which you have here a specimen; but these few words remind me to tell
+you an anecdote, in this lull of the _Hor� Catullian�_, which I would on
+no account keep from you. And you will see at once in it a large history
+in the epitome and the very pith of a fable--such as �sop's. But I
+assure you it is no fable, but the simple plain truth; and I will vouch
+for it, for I had it from the month of our friend S., the truest,
+honestest of men, who saw with his own eyes, and heard with his own
+ears, the persons and the sayings. S. was travelling some time ago,
+beyond the directions of railroads, in a coach. There were two
+companions--preachers as he found, self-dubb'd Reverends of some
+denomination or other, besides that reverend one of their own. Their
+conversation, as is usual with them, was professional, and they spoke of
+their brethren. In speaking of different preachers, one was mentioned,
+of whom one of the speakers said emphatically--"Now that's what I call
+a really good man--that's _a man after my own heart_--a man quite after
+my own heart!" The other said with rather doubtful and hesitating
+confirmation, "Ye-s." "You don't seem to think so highly of him as I
+do," said the first speaker. "Why," replied the doubter, "I can't say I
+do; you remember some time ago he _failed_, and certainly upon that
+occasion he behaved _very ill_ to, not to say _cheated_, his creditors."
+"Ah!" said the first commendator again, "that is very likely--I should
+have expected _that_ of him."--Henceforth, Eusebius, whenever I hear
+such a commendation, I shall look out for a map of the gentleman's heart
+who ventures upon this mode of expressing his admiration. Oh! what a
+world we live in! This is a fact which would have been immortal, because
+true and from nature, in the hands of Le Sage; and is worthy of a place
+in a page of a modern "Gil Blas."
+
+And so all this digression has arisen from a laugh of the Curate's, to
+whom it is time to turn; or you will think we have been but bad company
+to each other. I will, however, end this passage with the remark, that a
+man may do a worse thing than laugh, and happy is he that can do a
+better.
+
+The Curate and I, then, for the rest of the night conversed upon the
+affair of his, which so unaccountably was making no little stir in the
+place. The Curate told me, he was quite sure that his movements had been
+watched; for that only yesterday, as he was entering the gate of his
+friends, the family at Ashford, he saw Miffins's boy not far behind him
+on a poney; and he thinks he came out for the purpose of watching him,
+for he had scarcely reached the door, when he saw the lad ride hastily
+back. The Curate likewise confessed to me, that he did entertain some
+tender sentiments towards one of the inmates, Miss Lydia ----, that the
+family had lived much abroad, and that they had a French lady's-maid,
+whom on one or two occasions he had certainly seen in this township. You
+see the thread, Eusebius, which will draw out innumerable proofs for
+such a mind as Miffins's. Taking a paper out of his pocket, he said it
+was put into his hands as he was coming away, and he had not opened it.
+"Perhaps," said he, "it may throw some light on the affair, as it was
+given me by one who is, I know, on the all-important committee." He
+broke the seal, read, laughed immoderately for five minutes, and put it
+into my hands:--
+
+"REV. SIR,--Wishing to do the handsome to you, and straightforward and
+downright honest part, the committee inform you that they have reported
+your misconduct to the Lord Bishop, and I am desired accordingly to send
+you a copy of their letter. By order of committee.--I am, sir,
+
+    "JAMES JONES."
+
+Enclosed was the following, which these wiseacres had concocted--and I
+have no doubt it was their pride in the composition, and in the
+penmanship, which induced them to send the copy to the Curate.
+
+"TO MY LORD, YOUR LORDSHIP THE BISHOP.
+
+"We the undersigned, the respectable inhabitants parishioners, approach
+most dutifully our Bishop's worshipful Lordship. Hoping humbly that you
+will be pleased to dismiss our curate, who, we are credibly informed,
+and particularly by three exemplary and virtuous ladies, they having
+been cautioned against him by one who knows him well, and is a friend
+likewise to said ladies, and doing all the good kindness he can. We
+learn with sorrow, that our curate has confessed to unbecomingly
+behaviour, and that he has been seen even kissing. My Lord, our wives
+and daughters are not safe--we implore your Honour's Lordship to dismiss
+the curate, and take them under your protection and keeping: We are
+informed the curate has a foreign lady, not far from this, whom he
+almost daily visits--and a Papist, which is an offence to your Lordship,
+and the glorious Protestant cause, to which we are uniformly and
+respectfully attached, and to your worshipful Lordship very devoted--"
+here follow the names, headed by Matthew Miffins.
+
+"And what steps do you intend to take?" said I.
+
+"None whatever," said he.
+
+"Let it wear itself out. I won't lengthen the existence of this scandal
+by the smallest patronage. I will not take it up, so it will die."
+
+"But the Bishop?" said I.
+
+"Is a man of sense," he replied, "and good feeling; so all is safe, in
+his hands."
+
+We parted for the night.
+
+The Curate called rather early the following morning, and we thought to
+have an hour over Catullus, and went to seek our host Gratian. We found
+him in his library in consultation with his factotum Jahn. He was
+eloquent on the salting, and not burning his weeds, on Dutch
+clover--"and mind, Jahn," said he, "every orchard should have a
+pig-stye: where pigs are kept, there apple-trees will thrive well, and
+bear well, if there be any fruit going:" and he moved his stick on the
+floor from habit, as if he were rubbing his pigs' backs; and then
+turning to us he said,--"Why, Jahn has been telling me strange things:
+Prateapace and Gadabout have gone over to the chapel--left the church;
+not there last Sunday. But I saw that Brazenstare there, trying, as she
+sat just before you, to put you, Mr Curate, out of countenance. Well,
+Jahn tells me that the Reverend the Cow-doctor preached last evening a
+stirring sermon on the occasion, and was very hot upon the impurities
+and idolatries of the 'Establishment.' And Jahn tells me they don't
+speak quite so well of me as they should; for when he plainly told
+Miffins in his own shop, that he was sure his master would not
+countenance any thing wrong, the impudent fellow only said, 'May be not;
+but he and his master might not be of the same opinion as to what _is_
+wrong.' The rogue! I should like to have put all his weights in the
+inspector's scales."
+
+"Yes," quoth Jahn, "but I am 'most ashamed to tell your honour what Tom
+Potts, the exciseman, said, who happened to be present."
+
+"Out with it, by all means, Jahn," said our friend.
+
+"Well then, sir, as true as you are there, he said that your honour was
+a very kind gentleman, and your word was worth any other ten men's in
+most things; but where it might be to get a friend out of trouble, and,
+for aught he knew, foe either, why then, he thought your honour might
+fib a bit."
+
+"Surely," said Gratian, "he didn't say quite that?"
+
+"Yes," quoth Jahn, "quite that, and more; something remarkable."
+
+"Remarkable!" said I,--"what could that be?"
+
+"Why, something I shan't forget; and I don't think it was religious and
+proper," said Jahn; and lowering his voice, and addressing me and the
+Curate rather than his master, he added,--"He thought his honour had a
+kind heart, too kind; for that if Belzebub should come of a wet and dark
+night, and knock at his honour's door, and just say in a humble voice
+that he was weary and foot-sore, that his honour would be sure to take
+him in, give him a bed, and a stiff tumbler of brandy and water, and
+send for the farrier in the morning to fresh shoe him unknowingly; for
+he would make him stoop, put his claws on the ground, and throw a
+blanket over him, and make the farrier believe that, out of a whim, he
+was only a shoeing a great big goat."
+
+Gratian laughed at the whimsical idea of the exciseman, called him a
+true and good spirit-gauger; then giving some sharp taps to his hip, his
+knee, and his legs with his stick, rose from his seat, and said, "Come,
+Curate, you and I must take a walk amongst these people, and see what we
+can do: it is most time to put a stop to this mischievous absurdity,
+and, I fear me, of our own making."
+
+Away they went, and I put up my remaining translations from Catullus,
+took down a book, read awhile, and then meditated this letter to you.
+And now, my dear Eusebius, when you publish it in Maga, as you did my
+last, folk will say--"Why, what is all this about? _Hor� Catullian�!_ It
+is no such thing." Be it, then, I say, what you will. Do you think I am
+writing an essay?--no, a letter; and I may, if I please, entitle it, as
+Montaigne did--"On coach horses," and still make it what I please. It
+shall be a novel, if they please, for that is what they look for now: so
+let the Curate be the hero,--and the heroine--but must it be a love
+story? Then I won't forestall the interest, so wait to the end; and in
+my next, Eusebius, we will repeat Catullus for the play, and say with
+the announcing actor, "to conclude with an after-piece which will be
+expressed in the bills."
+
+    My dear Eusebius, ever yours,
+
+    AQUILIUS.
+
+
+
+
+LESSONS FROM THE FAMINE.
+
+
+The two great parties into which the country was divided on the subject
+of our commercial relations with foreign states, maintained principles
+diametrically opposite on the effects to be anticipated from the
+adoption of their respective systems. The Free-Traders constantly
+alleged, that the great thing was to increase our _importations_; and
+that, provided this was done, government need not disquiet themselves
+about our _exportations_. Individuals, it was said, equally with
+nations, do not give their goods for nothing: if foreign produce of some
+sort comes in, British produce of some sort must go out. Both parties
+will gain by the exchange. The inhabitants of this country will devote
+their attention to those branches of industry in which we can undersell
+foreign nations, and they will devote their attention to those branches
+of industry in which they can undersell us. Neither party will waste
+their time, or their labour, upon vain attempts to raise produce for
+which nature has not given them the requisite facilities. Both will buy
+cheaper than they could have done if an artificial system of protection
+had forced the national industry into a channel which nature did not
+intend, and experience does not sanction. We may be fed by the world,
+but we will clothe the world. The abstraction of the precious metals is
+not to be dreaded under such a system, for how are the precious metals
+got but in exchange for manufactures? Their existence in this country
+presupposes the exit of a proportionate amount of the produce of British
+industry. Nobody gives dollars, any more than corn, for nothing. Our
+farmers must take to dairy and pasture cultivation to a greater extent
+than heretofore. A certain number of agricultural labourers, may, it is
+true, be thrown out of employment by the displacing of rural industry in
+making the transition from the one species of country labour to the
+other; but the evil will only be temporary, and they will speedily be
+absorbed in the vast extension of our manufacturing industry. High
+prices need never be feared under such a system: a bad season is never
+universal over the world at the same time; and free-trade will
+permanently let in the superfluity of those countries where food is
+abundant, to supply the deficiencies of those in which, from native
+sources, it is scanty.
+
+The Protectionists reasoned after an entirely different manner. The
+doctrines of free-trade, they observed, perfectly just in their
+application to different provinces of the same empire, are entirely
+misplaced if extended to different _countries_ of the world, the more
+especially if placed in similar, or nearly similar, circumstances. The
+state of smothered or open hostility in which they are in general placed
+to each other, if their interests are at all at variance; the necessity
+of sheltering infant manufacturing industry from the dangerous
+competition of more advanced civilisation, or protecting old-established
+agricultural industry from the ruinous inroad of rude produce from
+poorer states, in which it is raised cheaper because money is less
+plentiful, render it indispensable that protection should exist on both
+sides. If it does not, the inevitable result will be, that the
+cultivators of the young state will destroy the agriculture of the old
+one, and the manufacturers of the old one extinguish the fabrics of the
+young. This effect is necessary, and, to all appearance, will ever
+continue; for the experience of every age has demonstrated that, so
+great is the effect of capital and civilisation applied to manufactures,
+and so inconsiderable, comparatively speaking, their influence upon
+agriculture, that the old state can always undersell the new one in the
+industry of towns, and the new one undersell the old one in the industry
+of the country. The proof of this is decisive. England, by the aid of
+the steam-engine, can undersell the inhabitants of Hindostan in the
+manufacture of muslins from cotton growing on the banks of the Ganges;
+but with all the advantages of chemical manure and tile draining, it is
+undersold in the supply of food by the cultivators on the Mississippi.
+
+This being a fixed law of nature, evidently intended to check the growth
+of old states, and promote the extension of mankind in the uncultivated
+parts of the earth, it is in vain to contend against it. So violently
+does free-trade displace industry on both sides, where it is fully
+established, that it is scarcely possible to conceive that two nations
+should at the same time run into the same glaring mistake; and thence
+the common complaint that no benefit is gained, but an infinite loss
+sustained, by its establishment in any one country, and that reciprocity
+is on one side only. As no adequate exchange of manufactures for
+subsistence is thus to be looked for, there must arise, in the old
+state, a constant exportation of the precious metals, attended by
+frequent commercial crises, and a constant increase in the weight of
+direct taxation. Should it prove otherwise, and two nations both go into
+the same system, it could lead to no other result but the stoppage of
+the growth of civilisation in the young one, and the destruction of
+national independence in the old. The former would never succeed in
+establishing commerce or manufactures, from the competition of the
+steam-engine in its aged neighbour; the latter would become dependent
+for subsistence on the plough of the young one. The rising agricultural
+state would be chained for ever to the condition of the serfs in Poland,
+or the boors in America; the stationary commercial state would fall into
+the degrading dependence of ancient Rome on the harvests of Egypt and
+Lybia.
+
+Had it not been for the calamitous issue of the last harvest, in a part
+of the empire, it might have been difficult to say, to which side the
+weight of reason preponderated in these opposite arguments; and probably
+the people of the country would have continued permanently divided on
+them, according as their private interests or wishes were wound up with
+the buying and selling, or raising and producing classes in society. But
+an external calamity has intervened;--Providence has denied for a
+season, to one of the fruits of the earth, its wonted increase. The
+potato-rot has appeared; and nearly the whole subsistence of the people
+in the south and west of Ireland, and in the western Highlands of
+Scotland, has been destroyed. Between the failure in the potato crop,
+and the deficiency in that of oats, at least �15,000,000 worth of the
+wonted agricultural produce has disappeared in the British Islands. And
+the appearances which we now see around us are solely and entirely to be
+ascribed to that deficiency. No one need be told what these appearances
+are, or how deeply they have trenched upon the usual sources of
+prosperity in the empire: they have been told again and again, in
+parliament, at public meetings, and in the press, _usque ad nauseam_.
+Government has acted, if not judiciously, at least in the right spirit;
+its errors have been those of information, not of intention. The monster
+meetings, the flagrant ingratitude, the broken promises of the Irish
+Catholics, have been forgotten. England, as a nation, has acted nobly;
+she has overlooked her wrongs: she saw only her fellow-subjects in
+distress. �10,000,000 sterling have been voted by parliament in a single
+year for the relief of Irish suffering. Magnificent subscriptions, from
+the throne downwards, have attested the sympathy of the British heart
+with the tale of Irish and Highland suffering. But, notwithstanding all
+these astonishing exertions, and notwithstanding the existence of an
+unprecedented demand for labour in most parts of the country, in
+consequence of vast railway undertakings being on foot, on which at
+least �30,000,000 a-year must be expended for three or four years to
+come, distress is in many places most acute, in all severely felt. And
+what is very remarkable, and may be considered, as a distinctive sign of
+the times, specially worthy of universal attention, the suffering has
+now spread to those classes which are _furthest removed_ from the blight
+of nature, and fastened upon those interests which, according to the
+generally received opinion, should have been _benefited rather than
+injured_ by the calamity which has occurred.
+
+That some millions of cultivators in the southwest of Ireland, and some
+hundred thousand in the west Highlands of Scotland, should be involved,
+literally speaking, in the horrors of famine, in consequence of the
+universal failure of the crop which constituted at once their sole
+object of labour and only means of subsistence, may easily be
+understood. That this alarming failure should raise prices of every sort
+of food to the scarcity-level in every part of the empire, is equally
+intelligible; and that government, in conformity with the _universal_
+sense of the nation, should, in such an extremity, throw open the ports
+to all kinds of food, and thereby let in an unexampled amount of foreign
+produce to supply the failure of that usually raised at home, is an
+equally intelligible consequence. It may not be considered surprising,
+that starving multitudes should issue in all directions from the scene
+of wo in the Emerald Isle, to seek relief in the industry or charity of
+Great Britain; and that all the great towns in the west of the island
+should be overwhelmed with pauperism and typhus fever, in consequence of
+their being the first to be reached by the destructive flood; although
+it was hardly to be expected that a hundred and thirty-two thousand
+applications for relief were to be made to the parochial authorities of
+Liverpool in a _single week_; and that they returned thanks to Heaven
+when the influx of Irish paupers was reduced to _two thousand a-week_!
+But the remarkable thing, and the thing which the commercial classes
+certainly did not expect, is this:--_The calamity has now reached
+themselves_, although the hand of Providence has only stricken the
+producing agricultural classes. Trade never was lower, monied distress
+never more severe, markets of all sorts never were more rapidly
+DECLINING, than during a period when IMPORTATIONS of all sorts have been
+MOST RAPIDLY INCREASING. Nearly all the manufactories in Lancashire and
+Lanarkshire are put on short time; the public funds and stocks of all
+sorts are falling; the rate of bankers' advances in Scotland is raised
+to _six per cent_;[7] seven per cent is charged in Liverpool and Glasgow
+on railway advances, and permanent loans are taken on railway debentures
+by the most experienced persons for three years at five per cent; the
+Bank of England has raised its discounts; our exports are rapidly
+declining; and all at a time, when the importation of all sorts of rude
+produce is on an unprecedented scale of magnitude, and the warehouses of
+Liverpool and Glasgow are literally _bursting_ with the prodigious mass
+of grain stored in them from all parts of the world!
+
+Fortunately, statistical documents exist, derived from official sources,
+which demonstrate beyond the possibility of doubt the coexistence of
+this _vast increase_ in the amount of subsistence imported, and _vast
+diminution_ in the amount of manufactures raised or exported in all
+parts of the British empire. A paper has lately been presented to
+parliament, showing the amount of imports, exports, and shipping during
+the year 1846, compared with 1845; from which this important and
+luminous fact is decisively established, how hard soever it may be to
+comprehend on the part of a large and influential portion of our
+politicians. From it it appears that the amount of subsistence imported
+in 1846 was six times greater than in 1845, although free-trade only
+commenced in the middle of the former year. It had reached the
+unparalleled amount in the latter year, of grain or flour, equal to
+_five millions and a half quarters of grain_. The tonnage _inwards_ had
+turned five millions of tons; the custom-house duties, notwithstanding
+the numerous reductions of duties on imported articles, had risen
+�700,000 above the preceding year, and still kept above �22.000,000
+sterling. Here, then, were all the sources and marks of prosperity, so
+far as they depended on importations, in a state of unexampled vigour
+and efficiency. Was this attended, as we were constantly told it would
+be, by a corresponding impulse given to our fabrics? Has the increased
+activity of our manufacturing cities compensated for the sterility of so
+large a part of our fields? The fact is just the reverse. Though
+free-trade has only been in operation for the last six months of 1846,
+they were signalised by a universal _decline_ in all the principal
+articles of our exportation; and, by the unanimous voice of all
+practical men, trade, so far as exports or production is concerned,
+never was in a more depressed state than when, so far as imports are
+concerned, it had attained an unprecedented _extension_.
+
+Never was a truer observation than is made by the Free-Traders, when
+they assert that goods will not be sent into a nation for nothing; and
+that, if our imports increase, something that goes out must have
+received a proportional augmentation. They forget only one circumstance,
+which, however, is of some little consequence, namely, that two things
+may go out, goods or SPECIE. We have melancholy proof, in the present
+state of the money market, that the latter occurrence has taken place to
+an inconvenient and distressing extent, and that that is the direct
+cause of the extravagant rate of interest charged on bankers' advances,
+and the general scarcity of money felt throughout the country. That the
+_capital_ of the country is not only sufficient, but abundant, is
+decisively proved by the fact that, notwithstanding the vast extent of
+the railway and other undertakings of a public character going on both
+in Great Britain and Ireland, government has borrowed the loan of
+�8,000,000 for the relief of Ireland at �3, 7s. 6d. per cent. The three
+per cents are about 90, yielding about the same return for money. But is
+_currency_ equally abundant? So far from it, the bankers are charging
+six, and the persons making advances on railway concerns seven per cent.
+The holder of capital is glad if he can get three and a half per cent;
+but the holder of currency will not let his notes or sovereigns out of
+his hand for less than six or seven per cent. Can there be a more
+convincing proof that the currency of the country has been unduly
+drained away, and that the present monetary system, which forbids any
+extension of it in paper when the specie is abstracted, is based on a
+wrong foundation? Nor is it surprising that the currency should be
+straitened when it is notorious that every packet which goes out to
+America takes out vast sums to that continent to pay for the immense
+quantities of grain which are brought in. That drain only began to be
+felt in a serious manner within the last two months, because the great
+shipments from America took place in November and December last, when
+the failure of the potato crop in this country was fully ascertained;
+and consequently, the payments made in bills at three months, required
+to be made in February and March. And when it is recollected that the
+quantity of grain imported in seven months only--viz. from 5th July
+1846, to 5th February 1847--exceeded _six millions_ of quarters, at the
+very time that all our exports were diminishing; it may be imagined how
+prodigious must have been the drain upon the metallic resources of the
+country to make up the balance.[8]
+
+Sorely perplexed with results so diametrically opposite to all their
+doctrines as to an increase of importation being necessarily attended
+with a proportionate increase of exportation, and of all apprehension of
+an undue pressure thence arising on the money market being chimerical,
+the Free-Traders lay it all upon the famine at home or abroad. The
+potato-rot, it is said, has _concealed_ the effects of free-trade:
+distress in foreign nations has disabled them to purchase our
+manufactures in return for their rude produce; the increase of British
+importation has come too soon to operate as yet on their purchase of our
+manufactures. Here again the facts come decisively to disprove the
+theoretical anticipations. So far has the increase of our importations
+been from being sudden, and come last year for the first time on foreign
+nations, it has been _remarkably gradual_, and has gone on for years,
+having received only a great impulse in the articles on which the duty
+was lessened or removed last summer. Our general imports have steadily
+advanced for the last three years; and in particular articles the same
+progress has been conspicuous.[9] How, then, has it happened that this
+general, continued, and steady _increase_ of imports has issued only in
+a _diminution_ to an alarming extent of exports? And observe, the
+countries from which we have imported so largely last year of grain and
+articles of subsistence, have not only not suffered by the scarcity
+general on the Continent, but have profited immensely by it. America has
+been blessed with a splendid crop of every species of grain; and, in
+consequence of the famine in Ireland and severe scarcity in France,
+prices of grain have risen to triple their former amount in the United
+States. It has risen so much in the southern states of Russia, that the
+Emperor of Russia has prohibited the farther exportation of it from the
+Black Sea. But all these floods of wealth flowing into the great grain
+states from the failure of the crops in France and Ireland, have been
+unavailing to produce any increased activity in our manufactures. On the
+contrary, they are all declining; and our immense importations of food
+are almost all paid for in direct exportations of the precious metals.
+
+In truth, the general depression of manufactures in all the chief seats
+of our fabrics is so serious, that it is evidently owing to a much more
+general and stringent cause than the decline, considerable as it is, in
+our exports. It is not a decrease of two millions out of fifty-three
+millions--in other words, of less than a _five-and-twentieth_
+part--which will explain the general putting of mills in Lancashire and
+Lanarkshire on short time, the fall in the value of all kinds of stock
+and general decline in the vent for all kinds of manufactured produce.
+It is in the _home markets_ that the real and blighting deficiency is
+experienced. And what is the cause of this decline in the home market?
+The Free-Traders are the first to tell us what has done it. It is the
+famine in Ireland. The total manufactured produce of the island is
+certainly not under �200,000,000[10] annually, of which somewhat above
+�51,000,000 is for the foreign markets of the world. What is a
+deficiency of �2,000,000 in such a mass? If that had been the _only_
+decline that had taken place, it would have been scarcely perceptible,
+and would have left no visible effects on our commercial activity or
+general prosperity. It is clear that the great falling off must have
+been in the home market. Nor is it difficult to see how this has
+happened. Fifteen millions' worth of agricultural produce has
+disappeared; prices of wheat have risen in consequence to 80s.
+a-quarter, and oats in a still higher proportion; and an alarming drain
+upon the metallic resources of the country taken place. It is this which
+has paralysed the manufactures and depressed the commerce of the
+country. And when it is recollected that the home market now consumes
+little short of �150,000,000 a-year, it may easily be conceived what a
+serious check to industry a diminution to the amount of even an eighth
+or a tenth of the usual domestic purchases must occasion.
+
+The Free-Traders say, that the famine in Ireland has _concealed_ the
+effects of the adoption of their system of policy; and that all the
+distress and suffering which has ensued is to be ascribed to that cause.
+From the observations now made, however, it is apparent that the effect
+of the famine has been, not to conceal the effects of free-trade, but to
+_accelerate_ them. For what has the famine done? It has simply caused
+fifteen millions' worth of domestic agricultural produce to be exchanged
+for fifteen millions' worth of foreign agricultural produce. The potato
+crop, which has perished in Ireland, is estimated at fifteen millions'
+worth; and, supposing that statement is a little exaggerated, it is
+probable that, taking into account the simultaneous failure in the crop
+of oats, both there and in Great Britain, the total amount of home
+agricultural produce that is deficient may amount to that value. _But
+foreign agricultural produce, to an equal or greater amount, has been
+imported._ Six millions of quarters, between grain of all sorts and
+flour, have been entered for home consumption in seven months preceding
+5th February 1847. Taking these quarters, on an average, as worth fifty
+shillings to the consumer--which is certainly no extravagant estimate,
+seeing wheat is up at seventy-nine shillings--we shall have, then, six
+millions of quarters, worth fifteen millions sterling. The home
+agricultural produce that has failed is just equal in value to the
+foreign agricultural produce that has been imported. The distress that
+prevails, therefore, is not owing to any deficiency of food for man or
+animals in the United Kingdom, for as much has come in, of foreign
+produce, as has disappeared of domestic. It is entirely to be ascribed
+to the supplanting, _in the national subsistence, of a large part of
+home produce by an equally large part of foreign produce_. And in the
+social, commercial, and national effects which we see around us, we may
+discern, as in a mirror, not merely the probable but certain effects of
+such a substitution if perpetuated to future times.
+
+This view of the subject is of such vast importance that we deem it
+impossible to impress it too strongly on our readers. We have been
+always told that the great thing is to secure a great importation; that
+such a thing must necessarily lead to a corresponding increase of
+exportation;--that all apprehension about the imports being paid in
+gold, and not in manufactures, are chimerical;--that the sooner the
+inferior lands in the British islands go out of cultivation the
+better;--that ample food for the inhabitants will be obtained from
+foreign states; and that the agriculturists thrown out of employment by
+the change will be rapidly absorbed, and more profitably employed in
+sustaining our extended manufactures. Well, the thing has been done,
+and the desired consummation has taken place, from an extraneous cause,
+even more rapidly than was anticipated. The Free-Traders contemplated
+the substitution of foreign for British agricultural produce to the
+extent of fifteen or twenty millions as a most desirable result; but
+they only lamented it could not be looked for for three or four years.
+It would take that time to beat down the British farmer; to convince the
+cultivators of inferior lands of the folly of attempting a competition
+with the great grain districts of the Continent. Providence has done the
+thing at once. We have got on at railway speed to the blessings of the
+new system. Free-trade was to lead to the much-desired substitution of
+six million quarters of home for six million quarters of foreign grain
+in three years. But the potato-rot has done it in one. The free-trade
+rot could not have done it nearly so expeditiously, but it would have
+done it as effectually. It is a total mistake, therefore, to represent
+the famine in Ireland and the West of Scotland, as an external calamity
+which has concealed the natural effects of free-trade. It has only
+brought them to light at once.
+
+Had British agriculture, instead of being stricken with sterility by the
+hand of Providence, in the poorest and worst cultivated part of the two
+islands, been suffered gradually to waste away, under the effects of a
+great and increasing foreign importation in all parts of the empire, the
+destruction of home produce would have been equally extensive, but it
+would have been more general. It would have risen to as great an amount,
+but it would not have been so painfully concentrated in particular
+districts. Hundreds would not have been dying of famine in Skibbereen;
+seed-corn would not have been awanting in Skye and Mull; cultivation
+would not have been abandoned in Tipperary; but the cessation of
+agricultural produce over the whole empire would have been quite as
+great. Low prices would have done the business as effectually, though
+not quite so speedily, as the pestilence which has smitten the
+potato-field. Whoever casts his eye on the table of prices given
+below[11] for twenty years in London and Dantzic, must at once see
+that, under a free-trade system, as large an importation of foreign
+produce, and as extensive a contraction of home, as has taken place this
+year is to be permanently looked for. The exportation and return of the
+precious metals, and contraction of credit now felt as so distressing,
+may be expected to be permanent. Providence has given us a warning of
+the effects of our policy, before they have become irreparable. We have
+only to suppose the present state of commerce and manufactures lasting,
+and we have a clear vision of the blessings of free-trade.
+
+Nor is there any difficulty in understanding how it happens that the
+substitution of a large portion of foreign, for an equal amount of
+home-grown produce, occasions such disastrous effects, and in particular
+proves so injurious to the commercial classes, who in the first instance
+generally suppose they are to be benefited by the change. If two or
+three millions of rural labourers in the poorest and worst cultivated
+districts of the island, are thrown out of employment, either by a
+failure in the vegetable on which alone, in their rude state, they can
+employ their labour, or by the gradual substitution of foreign for home
+produce in the supply of food for the people, it is a poor compensation
+to them to say that an equal amount of foreign grain has been brought
+into the commercial emporiums of the empire--that if they will leave
+Skibbereen or Skye, and come to Liverpool or Glasgow, they will find
+warehouses amply stored with grain, which at the highest current prices
+they will obtain to any extent they desire. The plain answer is, that
+they are starving; that their employment as well as subsistence is gone;
+that they have neither the means of transport, nor any money to buy
+grain when they reach the neighbourhood of the bursting warehouses. But
+then they will be absorbed in the great manufacturing districts, where
+their labour will be more profitable to themselves and others, than in
+their native wilds! Yes, there is a process of absorption goes on, on
+the occurrence of such a crisis; but it is not the absorption of labour
+by capital, but of capital by pauperism. Floods of starving destitutes
+inundate every steam-boat, harbour, and road, on the route to the scene
+of wo; and while the interior of the warehouses in the great commercial
+cities are groaning beneath the weight of foreign grain, the streets in
+their vicinity are thronged by starving multitudes, who spread typhus
+fever wherever they go, and fall as a permanent burden on the poor-rates
+of the yet solvent portions of the community.
+
+And the effect of this importation of foreign grain, from whatever cause
+it arises, necessarily is to _prevent_ this absorption of rural
+pauperism by manufacturing capital, to which the Free-traders so
+confidently look for the adjustment of society after the change has been
+made. The nations who supply us with grain _do not want our
+manufactures_. They will not buy them. What they want, is our money.
+They have not, and will not have, the artificial wants requisite for the
+general purchase of manufactures for a century to come. Generations must
+go to their graves during the transition from rustic content to
+civilised wants. America has sent us some millions of quarters of grain
+this year, but there _is no increase in her orders for our
+manufactures_. On the contrary, they are diminishing. Even the Free
+Trade Journals now admit this; constrained by the evidence of their
+senses to admit the entire failure of all their predictions.[12] The
+reason is evident. They want our money, and our money they will have;
+and if they find our manufactures are beginning to flow in, in enlarged
+quantities, in consequence of our purchase of their grain, they will
+soon stop the influx by a tariff. This is what we did, when situated as
+they are--it is what all mankind will, and must do, in similar
+circumstances. It was distinctly perceived and foretold by the
+Protectionists that this effect would follow from free-trade, and that,
+unless something was done to enlarge the currency to meet it, a
+commercial crisis would ensue. These words published a year ago might
+pass for the history of the time in which we now live:--"Under the
+proposed reduced duties during the next three years, and trifling duty
+after that period on all sorts of grain, there can be no doubt that a
+very great impulse will be given to the corn-trade. It being now
+ascertained, by a comparison of the prices during the last twenty years,
+that there is annually a difference of from twenty to thirty shillings
+a-quarter between the price that wheat bears in the British islands and
+at the shores of the Baltic, while the cost of importation is only five
+or six shillings a-quarter, there can be no question that the opening of
+the ports will occasion a very large importation of foreign grain. It
+may reasonably be expected that, in the space of a few years, the
+quantity imported will amount to _four or five millions of quarters
+annually_, for which the price paid by the importers cannot be supposed
+to be less, on the most moderate calculation, than seven or eight
+millions sterling. The experience of the year 1839 sufficiently tells us
+what will be the effect of such an importation of grain, paid for, as it
+must be, for the most part in specie, upon _the general monetary
+concerns and commercial prosperity of the empire_. It is well known that
+it was this condition of things which produced the commercial crisis in
+this country, led to three years of unprecedented suffering in the
+manufacturing districts, and, as is affirmed, destroyed property in the
+manufacturing districts of Lancashire, to the amount of
+�40,000,000."[13]
+
+Lastly, the famine has taught the empire an important lesson as to Irish
+Repeal. For many years past, that country has been convulsed, and the
+empire harassed by the loud and threatening demand for the Repeal of the
+Union, and the incessant outcry that the Irish people are perfectly
+equal to the duties of self-government, and that all their distresses
+have been owing to the oppression of the Saxon. The wind of adversity
+has blown, and where are these menaces now? Had Providence punished them
+by granting their prayer--had England cut the rope, as Mr Roebuck said,
+and let them go, where would Ireland have been at this moment? Drifting
+away on the ocean of starvation. Let this teach them their dependence
+upon their neighbours, and let another fact open their eyes to what
+those neighbours are. England has replied to the senseless clamour, the
+disgraceful ingratitude, by voting ten millions sterling in a single
+year to relieve the distresses which the heedlessness and indolence of
+the Irish had brought upon themselves. We say advisedly, _brought upon
+themselves_. For, mark-worthy circumstance! the destruction of the
+potato crop has been just as complete, and the food of the people has
+been just as entirely swept away in the West Highlands of Scotland, as
+in Ireland, but _there has been no grant of public money to Scotland_.
+The cruel Anglo-Saxons have given IT ALL to the discontented, untaxed
+Gael in the Emerald isle.
+
+
+_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] Viz. 5-1/2 per cent on all advances on cash or current accounts, and
+1/2 per cent commission on all sums overdrawn.
+
+[8] Table showing the quantity of grain, including flour and meal,
+entered for home consumption, from 5th July 1846, to 5th February 1847,
+from the _London Gazette_ official returns:--
+
+Quarters of grain (including flour and meal) entered for         qrs.
+  home consumption, in the months from 5th July to 5th
+  January as reported, 1st February,                        5,148,449
+Quantity duty paid in month ending 5th Feb.        539,418
+  Do. do. flour and meal, 427,036 cwts.            142,345
+                                                   _______    681,763
+                                                            _________
+Quantity duty paid up to 5th January,                       5,830,212
+
+   In bond, 5th February,                           68,939
+     Do. do. flour and meal, 318,240 cwts.         106,080
+                                                   _______    175,019
+                                                              _______
+   Quantity in qrs. of duty paid and presently in bond,}    6,005,231
+                 from month ending 5th July to 5th Feb.}    _________
+
+
+[9]
+                                       1844.          1845.           1846.
+Imports,    total official value,    �75,441,555   �85,281,958
+Sugar, cwts.       "                   4,139,983     4,880,780    5,231,818
+Tea, lbs.          "                  41,369,351    44,195,321   46,728,208
+Coffee, lbs.       "                  31,391,297    34,318,121   36,781,391
+Butter, cwts.      "                     180,965       240,118      255,130
+Cheese, cwts.      "                     212,286       258,246      327,490
+Live animals, No.  "                       8,007        34,426      140,752
+Brandy,            "                   1,033,650     1,058,777    1,515,954
+Geneva,            "                      14,937        15,536       40,266
+Rum,               "                   2,198,870     2,469,485    2,683,515
+
+[10] In 1840, the total amount was estimated at �180,000,000, of which
+�47,000,000, at that period, was for exportation, and �133,000,000 for
+the home market. As this �47,000,000 had swelled, in 1846, to
+�53,000,000, it is reasonable to suppose that those for the home market
+had undergone a similar increase, and are now about �200,000
+annually.--See _Speckman's Stat. Tables for_ 1842, p. 45.
+
+[11]
+
+_Table of Average Prices of Wheat in Prussia and in England, from 1816
+to 1837._
+
+    |Average prices  |Average prices|Average   |Difference     |Foreign Wheat |
+    |in Prussia      |in Brandenburg|prices per|between English|and Flour     |
+    |Proper including|and Pomerania |London    |Prices and Mean|consumed in   |
+    |Dantzig and     |              |Gazette.  |of Prussian    |Great Britain.|
+    |Konigsburg.     |              |          |Prices.        |              |
+----+----------------+--------------+----------+---------------+--------------+
+    |     s. d.      |     s. d.    |   s. d.  |    s. d.      | Qrs.         |
+1816|     36 9       |     44 6     |   76 2   |    35 6       |   225,263    |
+1817|     52 7       |     60 9     |   94 0   |    37 8       | 1,020,949    |
+1818|     49 6       |     53 5     |   83 8   |    32 2       | 1,593,518    |
+1819|     34 3       |     37 6     |   72 3   |    36 4       |   122,133    |
+1820|     27 3       |     30 0     |   65 10  |    37 2       |    34,274    |
+1821|     25 6       |     28 9     |   54 5   |    27 3       |         2    |
+1822|     26 0       |     26 8     |   43 3   |    16 11      |    ----      |
+1823|     24 2       |     26 9     |   51 9   |    26 5       |    12,137    |
+1824|     18 6       |     20 0     |   62 0   |    43 3       |    15,777    |
+1825|     17 3       |     17 9     |   66 6   |    49 0       |   525,231    |
+1826|     18 6       |     21 0     |   56 11  |    37 2       |   315,892    |
+1827|     22 3       |     25 9     |   56 9   |    32 9       |   572,733    |
+1828|     27 2       |     28 9     |   60 5   |    32 5       |   842,050    |
+1829|     32 3       |     35 0     |   66 3   |    32 7       | 1,364,220    |
+1830|     29 6       |     34 0     |   64 3   |    32 6       | 1,701,885    |
+1831|     39 6       |     39 0     |   66 4   |    27 1       | 1,491,631    |
+1832|     34 0       |     33 6     |   58 8   |    24 11      |   325,435    |
+1833|     25 0       |     23 6     |   52 11  |    28 8       |    82,346    |
+1834|     23 9       |     23 0     |   46 2   |    21 10      |    64,653    |
+1835|     23 0       |     24 0     |   39 4   |    15 10      |    28,483    |
+1836|     21 0       |     23 0     |   48 6   |    26 6       |    30,046    |
+1837|     22 6       |     26 0     |   56 10  |    32 7       |   244,085    |
+
+[12] "The excessive consumption of these and other articles has,
+however, only led to a drain of bullion to the extent of three millions
+and a half, while, upon a moderate computation, they would appear to
+call for three times that amount. This is to be accounted for by two
+facts--The first being that we have not imported, and paid for as much
+as we have consumed, since, conjointly with our importations, we have
+been steadily eating up former reserves, so that our stock of all
+kinds--coffee, sugar, rice, &c., are low; and, next, because we have
+diminished our importations of raw material in a remarkable degree, and
+hence, while paying for provisions, have lessened our usual payments on
+this score. Here, too, in like manner, _we have been drawing upon our
+reserves_. Our manufactures have been carried on with hemp, flax, and
+cotton, which had been paid for in former years, and we have left
+ourselves at the present moment short of all these articles, the stock
+of the latter alone, on the 1st of January last, as compared with the
+preceding year, being 545,790 against 1,060,560 bales. We are not only
+poorer, therefore, by all the bullion we have lost, but by all the stock
+we have thus consumed.
+
+"This _process cannot go on any longer_. We have now no accumulations to
+eat into, and must, consequently, _pay for what we use_. Concurrently,
+therefore, with our importations of corn and other provisions, (which
+are now going on at a much greater rate, and at much higher prices than
+in 1846,) and just in proportion as they beget a demand for our
+manufactures, we must have importations of raw material. Large purchases
+of hemp and flax are alleged to have been made in the north of Europe,
+for spring shipment, and cotton from the United States is only delayed
+by the want of ships. Wool from Spain, and the Mediterranean, saltpetre,
+oil-seeds, &c., from India, and a host of minor articles, have also been
+kept back by the same cause, and will pour in upon us to make up our
+deficiencies directly any relaxation shall take place (if such could be
+foreseen) of the universal influx of grain. In this way, just as one
+cause of demand diminishes the other will increase, and the balance will
+be kept up against us for a period to which at present it is impossible
+to fix a limit.
+
+"_We thus see that no call that can possibly arise for our manufactures
+can have the effect of preventing a continuous drain of bullion_. That a
+large trade will occur no one can doubt, but at present it is scarcely
+even in prospect. From India and China each account comes less
+favourable than before; from Russia we are told that 'no great demand
+can be expected for British goods under the present high duties' in that
+country; while even from the United States, the point from whence relief
+will most rapidly come, we hear of a shrewd conviction that we are
+approaching _a period of low prices_, and that, consequently, for the
+present 'the less they order from us the better.'"--_Times_, March 10,
+1847.
+
+[13] _England in 1815 and 1845_, pp. v-vii. Preface to third edition,
+published in _June_ 1846.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume
+61, No. 378, April, 1847, by Various
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61,
+No. 378, April, 1847, 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
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+Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847
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+
+<h1>BLACKWOOD'S</h1>
+
+<h1>EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.</h1>
+
+<h3>No. CCCLXXVIII. APRIL, 1847. <span class="smcap">Vol</span>. LXI</h3>
+
+<p class="notes">Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
+to the end of the article. Table of contents has been created for the HTML version.</p>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#CROMWELL"><b>CROMWELL.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#LAYS_AND_LEGENDS_OF_THE_THAMES"><b>LAYS AND LEGENDS OF THE THAMES.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#TRUE_LOVE"><b>TRUE LOVE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_CARDINALS_VOYAGE"><b>THE CARDINAL'S VOYAGE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#LETTERS_ON_THE_TRUTHS_CONTAINED_IN_POPULAR_SUPERSTITIONS"><b>LETTERS ON THE TRUTHS CONTAINED IN POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#A_NEW_SENTIMENTAL_JOURNEY"><b>A NEW SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_FIGHTING_EIGHTY-EIGHTH3"><b>THE FIGHTING EIGHTY-EIGHTH.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#LORD_SIDMOUTHS_LIFE_AND_TIME4"><b>LORD SIDMOUTH'S LIFE AND TIME.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#HOW_THEY_MANAGE_MATTERS_IN_THE_MODEL_REPUBLIC"><b>HOW THEY MANAGE MATTERS IN THE MODEL REPUBLIC.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#HORAE_CATULLIANAE"><b>HOR&AElig; CATULLIAN&AElig;.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#LESSONS_FROM_THE_FAMINE"><b>LESSONS FROM THE FAMINE.</b></a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CROMWELL" id="CROMWELL"></a>CROMWELL.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mr Carlyle's services to history in collecting and editing these
+letters<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> and speeches of Cromwell, all men will readily and gratefully
+acknowledge. A work more valuable as a guide to the study of the
+singular and complex character of our pious revolutionist, our religious
+demagogue, our preaching and praying warrior and usurper, has not been
+produced. There is another portion of Mr Carlyle's labours which will
+not meet so unanimous an approbation. As <i>editor</i>, Mr Carlyle has given
+us a valuable work; as <i>commentator</i>, the view which he would teach us
+to take of English Puritanism is, to our thinking, simply the most
+paradoxical, absurd, unintelligible, mad business we ever encountered in
+our lives.</p>
+
+<p>Our Hero-worshipper, it must be allowed, has been more fortunate this
+time in the selection of his object of devotion than when he shouted to
+the skies his Mirabeaus and Dantons. But he makes an unfortunate species
+of compensation. In proportion as his hero is more within the bounds of
+humanity has his worship become more extravagant and outrageous. He
+out-puritans the Puritans; he is more fanatic than his idol; he has
+chosen to express himself with such a righteous truculence, such a
+sanguinary zeal, such a pious contempt for human virtue and human
+sympathies, as would have startled Old Noll himself. It is a bad
+religion this hero-worship&mdash;at least as practised by Mr Carlyle. Here is
+our amiable countryman rendered by it, in turn, a terrorist and a
+fanatic. All his own intellectual culture he throws down and abandons.
+Such dire transformation ensues as reminds us of a certain hero-worship
+which Milton has celebrated:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16">"Horror on him falls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And horrid sympathy</i>; for what he sees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He feels himself, now changing; down his arms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Down falls the spear and shield; down he as fast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the dire hiss renews, and the dire form,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Catched by contagion."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But to our task&mdash;which is no light one; for in our survey of this book
+we have to keep in view both hero and hero-worshipper, Cromwell and
+Carlyle, both somewhat slippery personages, abnormal, enigmatical.</p>
+
+<p>The speeches of Oliver Cromwell have a formidable reputation for
+prolixity, confusion, and excessive tediousness; yet we have not, for
+our own part, found these volumes to be of the dry and scarce readable
+description which their title foreboded; and we would caution others not
+to be deterred by any fears of this nature from their perusal. They will
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span>find an interest grow upon them as they proceed, and the last volume to
+be more attractive than the first. As the work advances, the letters and
+speeches of Cromwell become more intimately connected with the great
+transactions of the period, and the editor himself more frequently
+favours us with some specimen of his happier manner, where concentration
+of style, a spirit of humour and reflection, and a power of vivid
+portraiture, have <i>not</i> degenerated into mere quaintness, into a species
+of slang, into <i>Carlylisms</i>, into vague generalities about infinitudes
+and eternities. At all times the interspersed commentary&mdash;written in
+that peculiar, fantastic, jingling manner which, illegitimate as it is,
+disorderly and scandalous to all lovers of propriety in style and
+diction, is at all events the very opposite to dulness&mdash;forms perhaps
+the most fortunate contrast that could have been devised with the
+Cromwellian period, so arid and colourless, so lengthy and so tortuous,
+tinged often with such a dismal obscurity, and valuable in fact only as
+showing <i>the man</i>, utterly valueless as an exposition of thought.
+Perhaps, as models of style, a critic would be as little disposed to
+applaud the writing of Mr Carlyle as the compositions of Cromwell, but
+they form here all admirable relief the one to the other; taken
+together, one can consume a considerable quantity of both. Your dry
+bread is weary mastication, and your potted anchovies have a somewhat
+too stinging flavour; but taken together, sandwich-fashion, as they are
+here, the consumption may go on rapidly enough.</p>
+
+<p>But, whether dry or not, the letters and speeches of Cromwell should be
+read by every one desirous of obtaining an insight into the character of
+not the least extraordinary, nor the least misrepresented personage in
+history. If there is any one who still believes that Cromwell was a
+thorough hypocrite, that his religion was a systematic feint to cover
+his ambitious designs, the perusal of these volumes will entirely
+undeceive him. We look upon this hypothesis, this Machiavelian
+explanation of Cromwell's character, as henceforth entirely dismissed
+from all candid and intelligent minds. It was quite natural that such a
+view should be taken of their terrible enemy by the royalists of the
+Restoration, hating his memory with a most cordial hatred, and
+accustomed, in their blinding licentiousness, to look upon <i>all</i>
+religion as little better than cant and hypocrisy. It was quite natural
+that such a portrait of him should be drawn by the men who unearthed his
+bones, and vented their rage upon a senseless corpse. We see it was
+quite inevitable that some such coarse caricature should be thus limned
+and transmitted to us. But it has lasted long enough. We believe,
+indeed, that by most persons it has already been dismissed and disowned.
+It may now be torn into shreds, and cast aside as utterly faithless.</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell was a <i>genuine Puritan</i>. There is no doubt of that. He was no
+youth when the war broke out, nor a man who had yet to seek his
+religious party or principles. As the farmer of St Ives, we see him, as
+distinctly as if he still lived upon the earth, the man of fierce
+sectarian piety, in natural temper not unamiable, somewhat gloomy and
+hypochondriacal, but, above all, distinguished by whatsoever of good or
+ill the sort of Calvinistic divinity prevalent at the time could infuse
+into its professors. Such the war found him, and such he continued to
+be; throughout his whole career we never for a moment lose sight of "the
+saint," the title which, then as now, the profane world gave to this
+class of men.</p>
+
+<p>Was Cromwell, then, always sincere in his utterances? was there no cant,
+<i>no</i> hypocrisy? Did he never conceal the ambition and domineering spirit
+of the soldier under the humility of the saint? Another matter quite.
+Because a man is religious in the main, it follows not that he is
+incapable of occasionally practising hypocrisy: he may lapse as well
+into this, as into any crime of the decalogue. Although we might find it
+difficult to put our finger exactly upon the spot, and say, Here speaks
+the hypocrite, we are not without suspicion that Cromwell was at times
+practising dissimulation. But if he dissembled, if he used with artifice
+the language of religion, it was no new and foreign<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> disguise that he
+put on. He had but to draw the folds a little higher over his face of a
+robe that he had long worn in all times and seasons, and which was
+verily his own.</p>
+
+<p>In common with almost all men who in times of civil broil have risen
+from a lowly station to great power, Cromwell had occasion, no doubt, at
+times for dissimulation. His religion, genuine as it was, would no more
+prevent him from the practice of this necessary craft than from the
+sanguinary deeds not more necessary to the triumph of his cause. Nay, it
+was precisely of that enthusiastic order which, in the most liberal
+manner, justifies the means for the end. Now, at a period when the
+saints were in the ascendant, dissimulation would unavoidably take a
+religious form, and when most deceiving men, or most faithfully
+addressing them, he would still colour all his language with the same
+hue of piety. As, in an age of chivalry, the dissembler would have the
+boast of honour and the parade of knightly courtesy for ever on his
+lips, so in these times of saintship he would lull the suspicions of men
+by a gross emblazonry of religion. It might well happen, therefore, that
+such a man as Cromwell, working his way upward to the highest post of
+authority, would deal in much insincerity of phrase, and yet have "the
+root of the matter" in him. Indeed, nothing is more common in the world
+than this combination of genuine feelings of piety with a great
+abundance of cant, habitual or designed. It would betray a very slender
+knowledge of mankind, and none at all of what is called the religious
+world, to conclude that a man is destitute of sincere piety because he
+sometimes makes use of the language of religion for ulterior purposes
+not peculiarly pious.</p>
+
+<p>It is to be observed, moreover, that to readers unfamiliar with the
+peculiarities of <i>professing</i> Christians, whether Puritans or of other
+denomination, the expressions of humility and self-abasement which
+Cromwell frequently makes use of have appeared to be plain symptoms of
+hypocrisy. They are nothing but the habits of the sect. Such expressions
+are supposed to have been employed to blind men to his ambitious
+projects, to shelter him from the jealous scrutiny of rivals and
+superiors. Such a purpose they may have sometimes answered, and been
+intended to answer; but in the main they are nothing more nor less than
+the dialect of the tribe. Because is a Christian virtue, certain
+religious people have thought fit to indulge in a false vituperation of
+themselves. Striving avariciously after <i>all</i> virtues, however
+incompatible the one with the other, they counterfeit vice and meanness,
+that, good men as they are, they may have abundance of contrition. How
+far there can be Christianity or piety in an abuse and degradation of
+ourselves, when that abuse and degradation must be felt all along to be
+untrue&mdash;if any reflection whatever accompanies such language&mdash;we leave
+such people to settle amongst themselves. Certain it is that the
+Puritans excelled in this as in every other kindred extravagance. The
+elect of the Lord were fond of describing themselves as the most
+contemptible of sinners; the salt of the earth as being rottenness and
+corruption. It is to this habit of unmeaning self-disparagement that we
+are to attribute many of those phrases which have been thought in
+Cromwell to be studied artifices to cloak ambitious designs.</p>
+
+<p>They are rife on all occasions, and their frequency and energy bear no
+relation to the supposed exigencies of his political career. Take the
+following instance. No man surely knew better than he, that at the
+conclusion of the civil war the army had become paramount. He could
+sometimes speak of this army with the natural pride of a soldier, with
+the full consciousness of the power it possessed, and had conferred on
+him; and yet, at other times, he would talk of this terrible force in
+the puling strain, in more than the drawl and drivel of the conventicle.
+As Lord High Protector, addressing his first parliament, he says:&mdash;"I
+had the approbation of the officers of the army, in the three nations of
+England, Scotland, and Ireland. I say of the officers: I had that by
+their express remonstrances, and under signature. But there went along
+with that express consent of theirs, an implied consent also of a body
+of persons who had had somewhat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span> to do in the world; who had been
+instrumental, by God, to fight down the enemies of God, and his people,
+in the three nations. And truly, until my hands were bound, and I was
+limited, (to my own great satisfaction, as many can bear me witness,)
+while I had in my hands so great a power and arbitrariness&mdash;the soldiery
+were a very considerable part of these nations, especially all
+government being dissolved. I say, when all government was thus
+dissolved, and nothing to keep things in order but the sword!" There can
+be no doubt of it&mdash;the soldiery were a very considerable part of the
+nation. But the Lord High Protector, in a speech he makes to his second
+parliament, referring to the very same period, narrating the very same
+events, can talk of this army as "a company of poor men," "your poor
+army," "those poor contemptible men." To attempt to detect any political
+motive for this absurd phraseology, would be a very idle speculation,
+mere waste of ingenuity: he was simply more in the puritanic vein in the
+one case than the other.</p>
+
+<p>In his letters to the parliament, giving an account of his successes in
+the war, he generally concludes with some expression of this strained
+evangelical modesty, and seems very much afraid lest Speaker Lenthall
+and other honourable members should attribute the victories he
+announces, in any measure to the army and the general who won them. He
+might be very sure, however, that, notwithstanding these
+self-renunciations, the parliament knew very well who was fighting their
+battles. Such a mode of speech would not endanger his reputation, nor
+diminish from his claims; might perhaps&mdash;though we will not say this was
+present to his thoughts&mdash;induce the parliament to presume that <i>he</i>
+would not insist on any very egregious reward for services he was so
+anxious to disclaim. We will quote one instance of this self-denying
+style; and perhaps the following passage contains altogether as much of
+a certain fanatical mode of reasoning as could be well found in so short
+a compass. Prince Rupert, then at Worcester, had sent two thousand men
+across the country, to his majesty at Oxford, to convoy his majesty's
+person and the artillery over to him at Worcester. Cromwell attacked and
+routed this convoy; he also took Bletchington House. After giving an
+account of the transaction, he continues:&mdash;"This was the mercy of God;
+and nothing is more due than a real acknowledgment. And though I have
+had greater mercies, yet none clearer: because, in the first place, God
+brought them to our hands when we looked not for them; and delivered
+them out of our hands, when we laid a reasonable design to surprise
+them, and which we carefully endeavoured. His mercy appears in this
+also, that I did much doubt the storming of the house, it being strong
+and well manned, and I having few dragoons, and this being not my
+business; and yet we got it. I hope you will pardon me if I say, God is
+not enough owned. <i>We look too much to men and visible helps</i>: this hath
+much hindered our success." This from Oliver, who so well knew how "to
+keep his powder dry!" from Oliver, who, enthusiast himself, could yet
+shrewdly calculate on the military efficacy of enthusiasm, and set it
+down amongst the ways and means! Cant or not, it is sad stuff.</p>
+
+<p>But, Puritan as he was, we can admire Cromwell. Every great man, in
+whatever times, or in whatever part of the world he has made his
+appearance, has earned his title to fame and distinction, not by
+qualities peculiar to the sect or religion to which he may have
+belonged, but qualities which, though connected with his own especial
+faith or tenets, are recognised as the common property of mankind; he
+has been great not as Catholic, as Puritan, as Pagan, as Mahometan, but
+as <i>man</i>; he has been great, because he was pious, brave, patriotic,
+sagacious, resolute, and has achieved great enterprises on the theatre
+of life. The greatness of Cromwell was indeed allied to Puritanism,
+inasmuch as his mind grew up under this peculiar form of religion; but
+what we, and all posterity must admire in Cromwell, is by no means the
+puritan. His steadiness of purpose, his unshaken resolution, his
+military prowess, his eminent talent to govern and command, and his
+religious sense of duty to the Supreme,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> might all have existed under
+other modes of religion. In our admiration we entirely separate these
+qualities from that least gainly and least wholesome of the forms of
+Christian piety with which they are here found connected. History gives
+us examples of every kind of virtue, and every kind of talent, united
+with every species of fanaticism that has afflicted civilised life. It
+follows not that we applaud the fanaticism. The early caliphs were
+several of them distinguished by exalted virtues, temperance,
+self-denial, justice, patriotism: we praise these virtues, we
+acknowledge, too, that they are here linked with the profession of the
+faith of Islam; but for all this we do not admire the religion of
+Mahomet, nor that fanaticism which writ its texts upon the sword.</p>
+
+<p>We insist upon this obvious distinction, because, whilst agreeing&mdash;<i>to a
+certain extent</i>&mdash;in Mr Carlyle's view of the character of Cromwell, we
+beg not to be implicated in that esteem and reverence which he professes
+to entertain for Puritanism, or the Puritans as a body. And this brings
+us to the extraordinary part of Mr Carlyle's performance&mdash;his ardent
+sympathy, nay his acquiescence with, and adherence to the Puritans, to
+that point that he adopts their convictions, their feelings, and even
+some of their most grotesque reasonings. Their violence and ferocity, we
+were prepared to see Mr Carlyle, in his own sardonic fashion, abet and
+encourage; his sympathy is always with the party <i>who strikes</i>; but that
+he should identify himself with their mumming thoughts, their "plentiful
+reasons," their gloomiest superstitions, was what no one could have
+anticipated. On this subject we must quote his own words; our own would
+not be credited; they would seem to any one who had not read his work to
+be scandalous misrepresentations. The extravagance runs through the
+whole book, but we have it perhaps more concentrated in the
+Introduction.</p>
+
+<p>This Introduction, which we sat down to with keen expectations,
+disappointed us extremely, at least in those parts where any general
+views are taken. We feel, and have elsewhere ungrudgingly expressed, a
+certain admiration for the talents of Mr Carlyle. We shall never forget
+the surprise and pleasure with which we read the "Sartor Resartus," as
+it one day burst suddenly and accidentally upon us; and no one who has
+once read his graphic and passionate history of the French Revolution,
+can ever forget the vivid pictures that were there presented to him. We
+opened this book, therefore, with a sort of anticipatory relish. But we
+found very little of his genius, and very much of his extravagance; less
+of the one and more of the other, than we thought could possibly have
+been brought together. Metaphors and allusions, already worn
+thread-bare, are introduced as stock phrases, as if he had inserted them
+in his dictionary of the English language. All his vices of manner are
+exaggerated, while the freshness of thought, which half excused them, is
+departed. These strange metaphors, these glaring colours, which are
+ready spread out upon his palette, he transfers with hasty profusion to
+his canvass, till&mdash;(as it has been said of Mr Turner's, pictures)&mdash;the
+canvass and the palette-plate very nearly resemble. But were it
+otherwise, were there all and more than the wit, and humour, and
+sarcasm, and pungent phrase, and graphic power, which may be found
+scattered through Mr Carlyle's best performances, there is here a
+substratum of sheer and violent absurdity, which all these together
+would fail to disguise or compensate. Certainly there are pages of
+writing in this Introduction which contain such an amount of extravagant
+assertion, uttered in such fantastic jargon, as we think could nowhere
+be paralleled. Dulness could never have attained to any thing so
+extraordinary; and surely genius never before condescended to such
+workmanship.</p>
+
+<p>"What and how great," thus commences the book, "are the interests which
+connect themselves with the hope that England may yet attain to some,
+practical belief and understanding of its history during the seventeenth
+century, need not be insisted on at present, such hope being still very
+distant, very uncertain. We have wandered far away from the ideas which
+guided us in that century,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span> <i>and indeed which had guided us in all
+preceding centuries, but of which that century was the ultimate
+manifestation</i>. We have wandered very far, and must endeavour to return
+and connect ourselves therewith again! It is with other feelings than
+those of poor peddling dilettantism, other aims than the writing of
+successful or unsuccessful publications, that an earnest man occupies
+himself in those dreary provinces of the dead and buried. The <i>last
+glimpse of the godlike</i> vanishing from this England; conviction and
+veracity giving place to hollow cant and formalism&mdash;antique 'Reign of
+God,' which all true men in their several dialects and modes have always
+striven for, giving place to the modern reign of the No-God, whom men
+name devil; this, in its multitudinous meanings and results, is a sight
+to create reflections in the earnest man! One wishes there were a
+history of English Puritanism, <i>the last of all our heroisms</i>, but sees
+small prospect of such a thing at present."</p>
+
+<p>Then, beginning to quote himself, as his manner is, changing his voice
+and adopting another key, as if by this thin disguise to obtain somewhat
+more license for the wildness and vehemence of his speech&mdash;an artifice
+surely not necessary here&mdash;he thus continues:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Few nobler heroisms,' says a well-known writer, long occupied on this
+subject, 'at bottom, perhaps, <i>no nobler heroism</i>, ever transacted
+itself on this earth; and it lies as good as lost to us, overwhelmed
+under such an avalanche of human stupidities as no heroism before ever
+did. Intrinsically and extrinsically it may be considered inaccessible
+to these generations. Intrinsically, the spiritual purport of it has
+become inconceivable, incredible to the modern mind. Extrinsically, the
+documents and records of it, scattered waste as a shoreless chaos, are
+not legible. They lie there printed, written, to the extent of tons of
+square miles, as shot-rubbish; unedited, unsorted, not so much as
+indexed; full of every conceivable confusion; yielding light to very
+few; yielding darkness, in several sorts, to very many.' ...</p>
+
+<p>"'This, then,' continues our impatient friend, 'is the Elysium we
+English have provided for our heroes! The Rushworthian Elysium.
+Dreariest continent of shot-rubbish the eye ever saw. Confusion piled on
+confusion to your utmost horizon's edge; obscure in lurid twilight as of
+the shadow of death; trackless, without index, without finger-post, or
+mark of any human foregoer; where your human footstep, if you are still
+human, echoes bodeful through the gaunt solitude, peopled only by
+somnambulant pedants, dilettants, and doleful creatures, by phantasms,
+errors, inconceivabilities, by nightmares, pasteboard norroys, griffins,
+wiverns, and chimeras dire! There, all vanquished, overwhelmed under
+such waste lumber mountains, the wreck and dead ashes of some six
+unbelieving generations, does the age of Cromwell and his Puritans lie
+hidden from us. This is what we, for our share, have been able to
+accomplish towards keeping <i>our heroic ones</i> in memory.'"</p>
+
+<p>After some further diatribe against all preceding historians,
+collectors, and editors, he drops his ventriloquism, and, resuming a
+somewhat more natural voice, he proceeds:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Nay, in addition to the sad state of our historical books, and what
+indeed is fundamentally the cause and origin of that, our common
+spiritual notions, if any notion of ours may still deserve to be called
+spiritual, are fatal to a right understanding of that seventeenth
+century. <i>The Christian doctrines, which then dwelt alive in every
+heart, have now in a manner died out of all hearts</i>&mdash;very mournful to
+behold&mdash;and are not the guidance of this world any more. Nay, worse
+still, the cant of them does yet dwell alive with us, little doubting
+that it is cant, in which fatal intermediate state the eternal
+sacredness of this universe itself, of this human life itself, has
+fallen dark to the most of us, and we think that, too, a cant and a
+creed."</p>
+
+<p>So!&mdash;as our honest German friend would exclaim, puffing from his mouth
+at the same time a huge volume of symbolic smoke. We have withdrawn it
+seems, from the path of light ever since the reign of the army and its
+godly officers established <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> 1649. We must return and connect
+ourselves therewith; it is our only salvation;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span> though, indeed, if
+Puritanism was the manifestation of the ideas of all preceding
+centuries&mdash;if the same current of thought can be traced from William the
+Conqueror to Oliver the conqueror&mdash;a very little ingenuity would suffice
+to trace the same ideas, the same current of thought, somewhat farther
+still. But this reign of the puritanical army was really "the last
+glimpse of the godlike!"&mdash;it was "the reign of God!" and we live under
+the reign of &mdash;&mdash;, psha! Why, he does not even give us a substantial
+devil, but coins a strange personification of a negative. Such was not
+the devil, by the way, at the time of "the noblest heroism ever
+transacted on the earth." Such a definition of the "roaring lion,"
+would, in those days of light and happiness, have procured its author,
+at the very least, a trip to Barbadoes. Even Cromwell himself would have
+<i>Barbadoesed</i> him.</p>
+
+<p>"This last of our heroisms!" God grant it is the last! It is only out of
+another religious war that another such heroism can arise. If church and
+dissent should take up arms, and, instead of controversies carried on in
+pamphlets, upon tradition and white surplices, should blow out each
+other's brains with gunpowder, then Mr Carlyle would see his "heroic
+ones" revive upon the earth.</p>
+
+<p>"The Christian doctrines which then dwelt alive in every heart, have now
+in a manner died out of all hearts." Only the cant of them dwells alive
+with us. The same clear-sighted author, who sees the Christian doctrines
+so beautifully and pre-eminently developed in the Ironsides of Cromwell,
+in the troopers of Lambert and Harrison, sacking, pillaging,
+slaughtering, and in all that tribe of men who ever shed blood the
+readier after prayer-time&mdash;men who had dropped from their memory
+Christ's own preaching, to fill their mouths with the curses which the
+Hebrew prophets had been permitted, under a past dispensation, to
+denounce against the enemies of Judea, who had constructed their
+theology out of the darkest parts of the New, and the most fearful
+portion of the Old Testament;&mdash;this same author, opening his eyes and
+ears upon his own day and generation, finds that Christianity has died
+out of all hearts, and its phraseology, as he expresses himself
+elsewhere, "become mournful to him when spouted as frothy cant from
+Exeter Hall." If Mr Carlyle would visit Exeter Hall, and carry there one
+tithe of the determination to approve, that he exhibits in favour of the
+Puritan, he would find a Christian piety as sincere, as genuine, and far
+more humane, than his heroes of Naseby, or Dunbar, or Drogheda were
+acquainted with. He would see the descendants of his Puritans, relieved,
+at least we may say, from the necessity of raising their psalm on the
+battle-field, indulging in none of the ferocities of our nature,
+assembling in numerous but peaceful meetings, raising annually, by a
+quiet but no contemptible sacrifice, their millions for the
+dissemination of Gospel truth. But Mr Carlyle would call this cant; he
+sees nothing good, or generous, or high-minded in any portion of the
+world in which he lives; he reserves his sympathies for the past&mdash;for
+the men of buckram and broad-sword, who, on a question of church
+government, were always ready "to hew Agag to pieces," let Agag stand
+for who, or what number it might.</p>
+
+<p>If there is one spectacle more odious than another of all which history
+presents to us, whether it take place amongst Mahometan or Christian,
+Catholic or Protestant, it is this:&mdash;to see men practising all the
+terrible brutalities of war, treading down their enemies, doing all that
+rage and the worst passions prompt, and doing all amidst exclamations of
+piety, devout acknowledgments of submission to Divine will, and
+professions of gratitude to God. Other religious factions have committed
+far greater atrocities than the Puritans, but nowhere in history is this
+same spectacle exhibited with more distasteful and sickening
+accompaniments. The Moslem thanked God upon his sword in at least a
+somewhat soldierly manner; and the Catholic, by the very pomp with which
+he chants his <i>Te Deum</i>, somewhat conceals the meaning of his act, and,
+keeping God a little out of sight, makes his mass express the natural
+feeling of a human triumph. But the sleek Puritan, at once grovelling
+and presumptuous, mingles with his sanguinary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> mood all the morbid
+sickly conceit, all the crawling affected humility of the conventicle.
+All his bloodsheds are "mercies," and they are granted in answer to his
+long and miserable prayers&mdash;prayers which, to a man of rational piety,
+sound very much like blasphemies. He carries with him to the
+battle-field, to the siege, to the massacre, not one even of those
+generous feelings which war itself permits towards a foe. He chooses to
+call his enemy the enemy of God, and kneels before he fights, that the
+inexpressible <i>mercy</i> may be granted of cutting his throat!</p>
+
+<p>"That the sense of difference between right and wrong," says Mr Carlyle,
+"had filled all time and all space for man, and bodied itself forth into
+a heaven and hell for him,&mdash;this constitutes the grand feature of those
+Puritan, old-Christian ages; this is the element which stamps them as
+heroic, and has rendered their works great, manlike, fruitful to all
+generations." Quite on the contrary. The sense of right and wrong was
+obscured, confused, lost sight of, in the promptings of a presumptuous
+enthusiasm; and it is exactly <i>this</i> which constitutes the perilous
+characteristic of such men as the Puritans and Cameronians, and similar
+sectaries. How can the sense of right and wrong keep its footing in an
+enthusiasm which has brought itself to believe that all its successes
+are a direct answer to its prayers? Success becomes the very measure of
+right and wrong. The two extremes of Atheism and Fanaticism have met;
+they may both dispense with conscience, and make the event the criterion
+of the deed. Hear how the pious heroes of Mr Carlyle reason on one of
+the most solemn occasions of the civil war. The army is remonstrating
+with the Parliament because it appeared slow to shed the blood of their
+conquered and captured King, and it actually speaks of the death of
+Charles "as appeasing the wrath of God" against that sovereign! and bids
+the Parliament "sadly to consider, as men accountable to the Highest,"
+how far an accommodation with the King, "when God hath given him so
+clearly into your power to do justice, can be just before God or good
+men." The <i>power</i> to do the act is full authority, is absolute command
+to do it. What other doctrine could a C&aelig;sar Borgia, or an Eccelino, the
+tyrant of Padua, desire to be governed, or rather to be manumitted by
+from all government?</p>
+
+<p>The argument drawn from the success given to their cause, is perpetually
+in the mouth of Cromwell and of his Puritans. It establishes, without a
+doubt, that they have used the sword justly, and are still further to
+use it. Every "mercy" of this kind is in answer to prayer. Basing-House,
+a private residence, cannot be sacked and plundered, and the inhabitants
+put to the sword, but the pious historian of the feat, Mr Peters, adds,
+that it, and the like triumphs, were "answers to the prayers and
+trophies of the faith of some of God's servants." When Greek meets
+Greek, when the Scottish Covenanter encounters the English Puritan, and
+the former, being worsted, finds out "that he had not so learned Christ
+as to hang the equity of a cause upon events," Cromwell answers, "Did
+not you solemnly appeal and pray? Did not we do so too? And ought not
+you and we to think, with fear and trembling, of the hand of the Great
+God, in this mighty and strange appearance of His, instead of slightly
+calling it an 'event'? Were not both your and our expectations renewed
+from time to time, whilst we waited upon God, to see which way He would
+manifest himself upon our appeals? And shall we, after all these our
+prayers, fastings, tears, expectations, and solemn appeals, call these
+bare 'events'? The Lord pity you."</p>
+
+<p>Men prayed in those days! says Mr Carlyle, "actually prayed! It was a
+capability old London and its preachers and populations had; to us the
+incredibilest." Beyond a doubt the Puritans and the Covenanters prayed,
+and in such a manner and at such a length, that the strange doctrine on
+which Southey has founded his "Curse of Kehama," of the essential and
+irresistible force of prayer, seems to have got mixed up with their
+Christianity.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> But we do not think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> that the voice of prayer has quite
+died out amongst us. It is curious to observe what a vivid perception
+this author has for the historical past, and what a voluntary blindness
+and deafness for the actually present. It is a fact! he frequently
+exclaims, with all the energy of a discoverer,&mdash;a fact! that men in
+these ages prayed, and had a religious faith. Our churches and chapels
+are not facts. The control&mdash;none the worse for being exercised without
+pike or musket&mdash;which the religious public, meeting in that very Exeter
+Hall, have over the measures of government, and all political
+transactions,&mdash;is not a fact. Were he writing, some centuries hence, the
+history of this our age, he would detect these facts. What facts,
+indeed, might he not detect, and what exaggerated significance might he
+not give to them! Why, in those days, he might exclaim, in his
+enthusiasm, the very beggars in the street, in asking charity, poured
+God's blessing on you! It was a credible thing, in those days, God's
+blessing!&mdash;and men gave their money for it!</p>
+
+<p>A passage in one of Cromwell's letters instances, in rather a touching
+manner, what school of piety this army of saints must have proved. At
+the battle of Marston Moor a Colonel Walton had lost his son. "He was a
+gallant young man, exceedingly gracious," and Cromwell, giving an
+account of his death, in his consolatory letter to the father, writes
+thus,&mdash;"A little after, he said, one thing lay upon his spirit. I asked
+him what that was. He told me it was that God had not suffered him to be
+any more <i>the executioner of his enemies!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>But nothing disturbs the equanimity of our editor, or interrupts his
+flow of rapture over the fanaticism of these times, especially when
+expressed in the letters of Cromwell. Over the theological effusions
+which the general of the Puritan army addresses, from his camp, to the
+Edinburgh clergy, Mr Carlyle thus expatiates:&mdash;"Dryasdust, carrying his
+learned eye over these, and the like letters, finds them, of course,
+full of 'hypocrisy,' &amp;c. Unfortunate Dryasdust! they are corruscations
+terrible as lightning, and beautiful as lightning, from the innermost
+temple of the human soul; intimations, still credible, of what a human
+soul does mean when it <i>believes</i> in the Highest&mdash;a thing poor Dryasdust
+never did, nor will do. The hapless generation that now reads these
+words ought to hold its peace when it has read them, and sink into
+unutterable reflections, not unmixed with tears, and some substitute for
+'sackcloth and ashes,' if it liked. In its poor canting, sniffling,
+flimsy vocabulary, there is no word that can make any response to them.
+This man has a living God-inspired soul in him, not an enchanted
+artificial 'substitute for salt,' as our fashion is. They that have
+human eyes can look at him; they that have only owl-eyes need not."</p>
+
+<p>And then follows something upon <i>light</i> and <i>lightning</i>. "As lightning
+is to light, so is a Cromwell to a Shakspere. The light is beautifuller.
+Ah, yes; but, until by lightning and other fierce labour your foul chaos
+has become a world, you cannot have any light, or the smallest chance
+for any!... The melodious speaker is great, but the melodious worker is
+greater than he. Our Time cannot speak at all, but only cant and sneer,
+and argumentatively jargon and recite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span> the multiplication-table:
+neither, as yet, can it work, except at mere railroads and
+cotton-spinning. It will, apparently, return to chaos soon, and then
+more lightnings will be needed, lightning enough,&mdash;to which Cromwell's
+was but a mild matter,&mdash;to be followed by light, we may hope!"&mdash;by
+another Shakspeare, as the tenor of the passage would imply.</p>
+
+<p>Strange jumble this of Cromwell and Shakspeare, of light and lightning!
+There is one species of light which we are often reminded of here; a
+certain fitful, flickering beam, which partakes indeed of a luminous
+nature, but which chooses its path for ever over bottomless bog.</p>
+
+<p>The sincerity of Oliver Cromwell, in these his letters and speeches, has
+been questioned and discussed; the sincerity of their present editor may
+become a question at least as difficult and perplexing. Is there any
+genuine conviction at the bottom of all this rant and raving? Our
+extravagant worshipper of the "old heathen" Go&euml;the, stands forth the
+champion and admirer of certain harsh, narrow-thoughted, impetuous
+sectaries, proclaims <i>them</i> the only "Reformers" of the world; descends
+to their lowest prejudices, to their saddest bigotries, to their gloomy
+puerilities; arguing with them solemnly against the sinfulness of
+drinking healths, and quite fraternising with them in all their
+animosity against Popery and Prelacy. What does he mean? Is it a case of
+conversion? Is it an outpouring merely, by a strange vent, of certain
+acrid humours? Is he honest, and in earnest? or is he making sport of
+those hapless Englishmen whom he pronounces "in human stupidity to have
+no fellow?"</p>
+
+<p>Observers of a curious and speculative turn might, perhaps, explain it
+thus:&mdash;Mr Carlyle is evidently a writer of strong religious feelings.
+Marry, when he would exhibit them to the world, he is under the
+necessity of borrowing a creed from some one else. His own philosophy
+has nothing palpable enough for ordinary vision; nothing, as we
+remember, but vague infinities and eternities, with an "everlasting
+<i>yes</i>," and an "everlasting <i>no</i>." As the choice lay quite open to him,
+there was no reason why he should not select the very hottest creed he
+could any where find lying about in our history. From contemporaries it
+was not likely that he should borrow: he loves nothing, praises nothing,
+esteems nothing of this poor visible present; but it was an additional
+recommendation to the Puritanic piety, that it had left a detestable
+memory behind it, and was in declared hostility with all contemporaneous
+ways of thinking. What could he better do, therefore, than borrow this
+old volcanic crater of Puritanism, and pour out from it his religion and
+his anger upon a graceless world?</p>
+
+<p>Others, not given to such refinements, would explain the phenomenon upon
+more ordinary principles, and reduce the enigma to a case merely of
+literary monomania. Mr Carlyle, they would say, has been striving to
+understand these Puritans till he has grown, for the time, to resemble
+them. In the effort to project his mind into their mind, he has overshot
+the mark; he has not been able yet to get his own mind back again. It is
+a case, they would say, of mere imagination. Could you bring Mr Carlyle
+into contact with a live Puritan, the charm would be instantly
+dispelled. If one of Harrison's troopers would but ask him to step aside
+with him, under a hedge, to wrestle for a blessing, or would kindly
+undertake to catechise him on some point of divinity,&mdash;on that notion of
+his, for instance, of "Right and Wrong bodying themselves into Hell and
+Heaven,"&mdash;the alliance would be dissolved, not, perhaps, without violent
+rupture.</p>
+
+<p>For ourselves, we sometimes think that Mr Carlyle is in earnest. Men
+should be honest. One who talks so loudly about <i>faith</i>, ought to be
+sincere in his utterances to the public. At other times, the mummery
+becomes too violent, grows too "fast and furious," to permit us to
+believe that what we witness is the sane carriage of a sane man. At all
+events, we can but look on with calm surprise. If our philosopher will
+tuck his robe high up about his loins, and play the merry-andrew, if he
+will grimace, and paint thick, and hold dialogue with himself, who shall
+hinder him?&mdash;only we would rather not wear, on such an occasion, the
+docile<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span> aspect of admiring pupils; we prefer to stand aside, and look on
+with Mr Dryasdust.</p>
+
+<p>It is worthy of note, that however Mr Carlyle extols his "Heroic Ones"
+in a body, Cromwell is the only individual that finds a good word
+throughout the work. Every one else, Hampden not excepted, is spoken of
+with slight and disparagement. Amongst all the "godlike," there is but
+one who finds favour in his sight,&mdash;him, however, he never deserts,&mdash;and
+the very parties who have before been applauded, in general terms,
+become the subjects of ridicule or castigation the moment they are seen
+in opposition to Cromwell.</p>
+
+<p>To Cromwell, then, let us turn our attention. Him we also can admire. We
+admire his great practical sagacity, his eminent talents for war and for
+government, the moderation and the conscientiousness which, though a
+usurper and a zealot, he displayed in the use of power. He was, as we
+have said, a genuine Puritan. This must be understood, or no
+intelligible view of his character can be taken. It is not only
+hostility to his memory which has attributed to him a studied hypocrisy;
+the love of the marvellous has lent its aid. Such a supposition was
+thought to magnify his talents and his genius. It was more dramatic to
+make him the "honest Iago" of the piece. A French writer, M. Villemain,
+in his History of Cromwell, expresses this feeling very na&iuml;vely, and
+speaks of an hypocrisy "que l'histoire atteste, et qu'on ne saurait
+mettre en doute sans &ocirc;ter quelque chose &agrave; l'id&eacute;e de son g&eacute;nie; car les
+hommes verront toujours moins de grandeur dans un fanatique de bonne
+foi, que dans une ambition qui fait des enthusiastes. Cromwell mena les
+hommes par la prise qu'ils lui donnaient sur eux. <i>L'ambition seule lui
+inspira des crimes, qu'il fit executer par le fanatisme des autres.</i>"
+That he thus employed the spirit of the age without sharing it, is a
+theory which will not stand the light for a moment. Besides, it is not
+in this manner that history is transacted: we may all be puppets, if you
+will, upon the scene, but it is not in this fashion that any one man
+gets hold of the wires. The supposition, whatever honour it may do the
+genius of Cromwell, will do very little honour to the speculative genius
+of any writer who adopts it. But this is evident, that to whatever
+extent Cromwell shared the distempered feelings of a sectarian party,
+nothing ever clouded his penetration upon any affair of conduct, any
+question of means to an end. The hour never came that found him wanting.
+At every phase of the revolution he is there to lead, or control, or
+predominate over it.</p>
+
+<p>Starting from this point of view&mdash;understanding him, in the first place,
+as the conscientious zealous Puritan, and endeavouring to estimate, as
+the history proceeds, the modifications which the soldier and the
+general, and finally the Protector, would induce upon this original
+substratum&mdash;the character of Cromwell becomes intelligible, and his
+conduct, in a measure, consistent. Whilst yet a private man, he had
+warmly espoused the extreme opinions of that religious party who looked
+on Popery as antichrist, and the Church of England as little better than
+Popery in disguise, as the same scarlet lady in a somewhat more modest
+attire. He was one of a class occasionally met with in the most quiet
+walks of life, men who torment their spirit on some public question till
+it becomes a personal grievance, or rather a corroding passion. What
+were bishops personally to him? He might have prayed, and expounded, and
+walked meditative in his fields, and left a public question to be
+decided by the movements, necessarily slow, of public opinion. But no;
+he was constituted quite otherwise. From a spiritual jurisdiction,
+claimed though not exercised over him, his soul revolted. And this
+hatred to prelacy, to any spiritual authority over him or his&mdash;this
+determination to be his own priest&mdash;is, if not the strongest, certainly
+the steadiest and most constant feeling that he manifests. We trace it
+throughout his whole career. The first thing we hear of him in the House
+of Commons is a protest, a sort of ominous growl, against the promotion
+of some Arminian or semi-Popish divine. "If these are the steps to
+church preferment, what are we to expect!" Almost the first glimpse we
+catch of him when he has taken arms,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> is as the captain of a troop
+entering some cathedral church, and bidding the surpliced priest, who
+was reading the liturgy, "to cease his fooling, and come down!" And
+throughout the letters which he addresses to the Speaker from the seat
+of war, he rarely omits the opportunity of hinting, that the soldiers
+are worthy of that religious liberty for which they have fought so well.
+"We pray you, own His people more and more; for they are the chariots
+and horsemen of Israel." And in one of his latest speeches, he describes
+it as the great "extremity" of past times, that men were not permitted
+to preach in public unless they were ordained.</p>
+
+<p>A rooted animosity to prelatical or other spiritual domination, is the
+key-note of this "melodious worker," as Mr Carlyle calls him. Cromwell
+entered the civil war provided with no theory or plan of civil
+government, animated with no republican zeal; it was not patriotism in
+any ordinary sense of the word, it was his controversy with the church
+of England that brought him on the field of battle. After fighting
+against episcopacy, he fought with equal zeal against presbyterianism;
+but against monarchy, or for the republic, he can hardly be said to have
+drawn the sword. We all applaud the sagacity which saw at once that the
+strongest antagonist to the honour and fidelity of the royalist, was to
+be found in the passion of the zealot. He enlisted his praying regiment.
+From that time the battle was won. But the cause was lost. What hope
+could there be for the cause of civil freedom, of constitutional rights,
+when the champion who won its victories was fanatical zeal, and the rage
+of theological controversy?</p>
+
+<p>It is the glaring defect in Cromwell&mdash;a defect which he had in common
+with many others of his time&mdash;that he threw himself into a revolution
+having for its first object to remodel the civil government, animated
+only with the passions of the collateral controversy upon ecclesiastical
+government. He fought the battle which was to destroy the monarchy,
+without any fixed idea or desire for the republican government which
+must be its substitute. This was not the subject that had engaged his
+thoughts or inflamed his ardour. When, therefore, the royalists had been
+conquered, it is not at all surprising that he should have seen nothing
+but the difficulties in the way of forming a republic. At this point of
+his history some excuse for him may be drawn from the very defect we are
+noticing. His mind had dwelt on no theory of civil government&mdash;to the
+cause of the commonwealth his heart had never been pledged&mdash;and we can
+hardly call him, with justice, as Godwin does, a traitor to the
+republic. But, on the other hand, what a gap, what a void, does this
+disclose in the mind of our hero? What should we say of one who had
+plunged heart and soul into the French Revolution, conducted only by his
+rage against the Roman Catholic hierarchy? Such a one, had he risen to
+take a leading part in that drama, might have acted with greater wisdom
+and moderation than ardent and patriotic men; the very absence of any
+political opinion or passion might have enabled him to see more clearly
+than others the position which they all occupied; but this would not
+justify or palliate the original error, the rash, exclusive,
+self-blinding zeal which had brought him into that position.</p>
+
+<p>To the ecclesiastical controversy, Cromwell clings throughout with an
+utter recklessness of the fate of civil government. When episcopacy had
+been vanquished, and presbyterianism threatened to take its place, he
+was quite as willing to plunge the whole kingdom into confusion and
+anarchy in his opposition to this new enemy, as to the old. Those who
+would defend him from the charge of personal ambition&mdash;all who excuse
+his conduct at this period of the history, put this plea upon
+record,&mdash;and without a doubt his hostility to presbyterianism was a very
+great and leading motive with him in his opposition to the Parliament,
+and his determination to prevent a reconciliation between the House and
+the King. When Charles was a prisoner at the Isle of Wight, it is well
+known that the Parliament were anxious to come to some terms of
+reconcilement, and the concessions which he then made were voted to be
+"a sufficient ground for the future settlement of the kingdom." Why<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> did
+Cromwell interfere at this juncture between the two parties, in such a
+way as entirely to destroy both? His best public ground is his hostility
+to presbyterianism. And what was the presbytery, that to him it should
+be so distasteful, and an object of so great animosity? Its forms of
+worship, the doctrines preached by its divines, were exactly those he
+himself practised and approved. There were no altars here, no surplices,
+no traditions, no sympathies with Rome, no stealthy approximations to
+her detested idolatries. But there was a claim put forward to
+ecclesiastical supremacy, to ordain, and authorise, and control public
+preachers, which he could not tolerate; and if no other motive had
+existed, he was ready to oppose every settlement, at every risk, having
+for its object to establish a claim of this description.</p>
+
+<p>We will open the Letters and Speeches of Cromwell at this period of the
+history, and present our readers with a specimen of his epistolary
+style, and one which will go far to show how little his mind was
+influenced, even at this great crisis, by any thing which we should
+describe as political reasoning. Cromwell was a great <i>administrator</i>,
+but he had no vocation for speculative politics, and little attachment
+to forms of government. Framers of constitutions are not in repute at
+present; they have not covered themselves with applause, rather with
+confusion; and this defect in Cromwell's mind will probably be looked
+upon with great indulgence. Nevertheless, people who go to war to
+demolish an existing government, ought to have taken thought for a
+substitute; on <i>them</i> it is incumbent to have a political creed, and a
+constitution to set up. At this very moment when the question is no
+less, than whether the king should be put to death, and monarchy rooted
+out of the land&mdash;ay, and the Parliament coerced, in order to effect
+these objects&mdash;our Puritan general reasons&mdash;like a Puritan and nothing
+better.</p>
+
+<p>The following letter was addressed to Colonel Hammond, then governor of
+the Isle of Wight. The colonel had been distressed by his scruples at
+the extreme course the army was disposed to take, and had solicited this
+appointment to the Isle of Wight as a retreat from the scene of faction
+and violence. But it was precisely in this quiet little island that the
+king took refuge; his perplexities, therefore, were increased and not
+diminished. Cromwell writes to him to remove his scruples, and makes a
+characteristic allusion to this circumstance&mdash;<i>improves</i> it, as we
+should say.</p>
+
+<p>We must apprise the reader, however, that it would be dangerous to form
+any opinion upon the religious sincerity or insincerity of Cromwell,
+upon extracts from his letters and speeches, or even upon any single
+letter or speech. From the incongruity we feel between the solemnity of
+the subject of religion, and the manner and occasion in which it is
+introduced, and from the use of certain expressions long since
+consecrated to ridicule, it is impossible for a modern reader, on
+falling upon some isolated passages, not to exclaim, that this is cant
+and hypocrisy! But when the whole series, or the greater part of it, is
+read&mdash;when the same strain of thought and feeling, in season and out of
+season, is constantly observed&mdash;it is equally impossible not to feel
+persuaded that these letters and speeches body forth the genuine
+character of the man, and that the writer was verily a solemn and most
+serious person, in whom religious zeal was the last quality which needed
+reinforcement.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Robin</span>,&mdash;No man rejoiceth more to see a line from thee
+than myself. I know thou hast long been under trial. Thou shalt
+be no loser by it. All things must work for the best.</p>
+
+<p>"Thou desirest to hear of my experiences. I can tell thee, I am
+such a one as thou did formerly know, having a body of sin and
+death; but I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, there is
+no condemnation though much infirmity; and I wait for the
+redemption. And in this poor condition I obtain mercy, and
+sweet consolation through the Spirit. And find abundant cause
+every day to exalt the Lord and abase flesh&mdash;and herein I have
+some exercise.</p>
+
+<p>"As to outward dispensations, if we may so call them, we have
+not been without our share of beholding some remarkable
+providences and appearances of the Lord. His presence hath been
+amongst us, and by the light of his countenance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> we have
+prevailed (<i>alludes to the battle of Preston</i>.) We are sure the
+goodness of Him who dwelt in the bush has shined upon us; and
+we can humbly say, we know in whom we have believed; who can
+and will perfect what remaineth, and us also in doing what is
+well-pleasing in His eye-sight.</p>
+
+<p>"I find some trouble in your spirit, occasioned first not only
+by your sad and heavy burden, as you call it, but also by the
+dissatisfaction you take at the ways of some good men whom you
+love with your heart, who through the principle, that it is
+lawful for a lesser part, if in the right, to force a numerical
+majority, &amp;c. &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"To the first: call not your burden sad or heavy. If your
+Father laid it on you, He intended neither. He is the Father of
+light, from whom comes every good and perfect gift; who of His
+own will begot us.... Dear Robin, our fleshly reasonings
+ensnare us. These make us say 'heavy,' 'sad,' 'pleasant,'
+'easy.' Was there not a little of this when Robert Hammond,
+through dissatisfaction too, desired retirement from the army,
+and thought of quiet in the Isle of Wight? Did not God find him
+out there? I believe he will never forget this. And now I
+perceive he is to seek again; partly through his sad and heavy
+burden, and partly through his dissatisfaction with friends'
+actings.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Robin, thou and I were never worthy to be door-keepers in
+this service. If thou wilt seek, seek to know the mind of God
+in all that chain of providence, whereby God brought thee
+thither, and that person (<i>the king</i>) to thee; how, before and
+since, God hath ordered him, and affairs concerning him; and
+then tell me, whether there be not some glorious and high
+meaning in all this, above what thou hast yet attained? And,
+laying aside thy fleshly reason, seek of the Lord to teach thee
+what that is; and He will do it. I dare be positive to say, It
+is not that the wicked should be exalted that God should so
+appear as indeed He hath done. For there is no peace to <i>them</i>.
+No; it is set upon the hearts of such as fear the Lord, and we
+have witness upon witness, that it shall go ill with them and
+their partakers.</p>
+
+<p>"As to thy dissatisfaction with friends' actings upon that
+supposed principle&mdash;I wonder not at that. If a man take not his
+own burden well, he shall hardly others'; especially if
+involved by so near a relation of love and Christian
+brotherhood as thou art, I shall not take upon me to satisfy;
+but I hold myself bound to lay my thoughts before so dear a
+friend. The Lord do His own will.</p>
+
+<p>"You say, 'God hath appointed authorities among the nations, to
+which active or passive obedience is to be yielded. This
+resides, in England, in the Parliament. Therefore, active or
+passive resistance,' &amp;c. &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>"Authorities and powers are the ordinance of God. This or that
+species is of human institution, and limited some with larger,
+others with stricter bands, each one according to its
+constitution. But I do not therefore think that the authorities
+may do <i>any thing</i>, and yet such obedience be due. All agree
+that there are cases in which it is lawful to resist. If so,
+your ground fails, and so likewise the inference. Indeed, dear
+Robin, not to multiply words, the query is,&mdash;Whether ours be
+such case? This, ingenuously, is the true question.</p>
+
+<p>"To this I shall say nothing, though I could say very much; but
+only desire thee to see what thou findest in thy own heart to
+two or three plain considerations. <i>First</i>, Whether <i>Salus
+populi</i> be a sound position? <i>Secondly</i>, Whether, in the way in
+hand (<i>the parliamentary treaty with the king</i>,) really and
+before the Lord, before whom conscience has to stand, this be
+provided for&mdash;or if the whole fruit of the war is not likely to
+be frustrated, and all most like to turn to what it was, and
+worse? And this contrary to engagements, explicit covenants
+with those who ventured their lives upon those covenants and
+engagements, without whom, perhaps in equity, relaxation ought
+not to be? <i>Thirdly</i>, Whether this army be not a lawful power,
+called by God to oppose and fight against the king upon some
+stated grounds; and being in power to such ends, may not oppose
+one name of authority, for those ends, as well as another
+name&mdash;since it was not the outward authority summoning them
+that by its power made the quarrel lawful, but the quarrel was
+lawful in itself? If so, it may be, acting will be justified
+<i>in foro humano</i>. <i>But truly this kind of reasoning may be but
+fleshly, either with or against: only it is good to try what
+truth may be in them. And the Lord teach us.</i></p>
+
+<p>"My dear friend, let us look into providences; surely they mean
+somewhat. They hang so together; have been so constant, so
+clear, unclouded. Malice, swoln malice against God's people,
+now called 'saints,' to root out their name;&mdash;and yet they
+these poor saints getting arms and therein blessed with defence
+and more! I desire he that is for a principle of suffering
+(<i>passive obedience</i>) would not too much slight this. I slight
+not him who is so minded; but let us beware lest fleshly
+reasoning see more safety in making use of this principle than
+in acting!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span> Who acts, if he resolve not through God to be
+willing to part with all? Our hearts are very deceitful, on the
+right and on the left.</p>
+
+<p>"What think you of providence disposing the hearts of so many
+of God's people this way&mdash;especially in this poor army, wherein
+the great God has vouchsafed to appear! I know not one officer
+but is on the increasing side (<i>come over to this opinion</i>.)
+...</p>
+
+<p>"Thou mentionest somewhat as if by acting against such
+opposition as is like to be, there will be a tempting of God.
+Dear Robin, tempting of God ordinarily is either by acting
+presumptuously in carnal confidence, or in unbelief through
+diffidence: both these ways Israel tempted God in the
+wilderness, and He was grieved by them. Not the encountering of
+difficulties, therefore, makes us to tempt God; but the acting
+before and without faith. If the Lord have in any measure
+persuaded His people, as generally He hath, of the lawfulness,
+nay of the <i>duty</i>,&mdash;this persuasion prevailing upon the heart
+is faith; and acting thereupon is acting in faith; and the more
+the difficulties are the more the faith. And it is most sweet
+that he who is not persuaded have patience towards them that
+are, and judge not; and this will free thee from the trouble of
+others' actings, which thou sayest adds to thy grief....</p>
+
+<p>"Robin, I have done. Ask we our hearts whether we think that
+after all these dispensations, the like to which many
+generations cannot afford, should end in so corrupt reasonings
+of good men, and should so hit the designings of bad? Thinkest
+thou in thy heart that the glorious dispensations of God point
+out to this? Or to teach his people to trust in Him and wait
+for better things&mdash;when, it may be, better are sealed to many
+of their spirits (<i>indubitably sure to many of them</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>"This trouble I have been at because my soul loves thee, and I
+would not have thee swerve or lose any glorious opportunity the
+Lord puts into thy hand. The Lord be thy counsellor. Dear
+Robin, I rest thine,</p>
+
+<p class="right">"<span class="smcap">Oliver Cromwell</span>."</p></div>
+
+<p>For ourselves, we cannot read this, and other letters breathing the same
+spirit, without being convinced that Cromwell fully shared in those
+fanatical sentiments which prompted the army to insist upon the king's
+death. A contemporary account, from which Mr Carlyle, some pages before
+this letter occurs, has quoted largely, represents this chief of the
+Puritans in exactly the same point of view. The officers of the army had
+made certain overtures to the king, certain efforts at a reconciliation,
+which had been fruitless; and which had been, moreover, attended with
+much division and contention amongst themselves. They had turned aside,
+it seems, from "that path of <i>simplicity</i> they had been blessed in, to
+walk in a <i>politic</i> path," and were, accordingly, afflicted, "as the
+wages of their backsliding hearts," with tumults, and jealousies, and
+divisions. But the godly officers, says the pious record of Adjutant
+Allen, met at <i>Windsor Castle</i>! "and there we spent one day together in
+prayer; inquiring into the causes of that sad dispensation. And, on the
+morrow, we met again in the morning; where many spake from the Word and
+prayed; and the then Lieutenant-General Cromwell did press very
+earnestly on all there present, to a thorough consideration of our
+actions as an army, and of our ways particularly as private Christians;
+to see if any iniquity could be found in them; and what it was; that, if
+possible, he might find it out, and so remove the cause of such sad
+rebukes as were upon us, (by reason of our iniquities, as we judged,) at
+that time. And the way, more particularly, the Lord led us to herein was
+this: to look back and consider what time it was when, with joint
+satisfaction, we could last say, to the best of our judgments, The
+presence of the Lord was amongst us, and rebukes and judgments were not,
+as then, upon us.... By which means we were, by a gracious hand of the
+Lord, led to find out the very steps, (as were all there jointly
+convinced,) by which we had departed from the Lord, and provoked Him to
+depart from us, which we found to be those cursed carnal conferences,
+our own conceited wisdom, our fears, and want of faith, had prompted us,
+the year before, to entertain with the king and his party. And at this
+time, and on this occasion, did the then Major Goffe, (as I remember was
+his title,) make use of that good word, Proverbs 1st and 23d, <i>Turn you
+at my reproof; behold I will pour out my Spirit unto you, I will make
+known my words unto you.</i>" In fine, their "iniquities," their want of
+faith, their carnal conferences&mdash;that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> is to say, all desire for peace,
+all humanity, all moderation, all care for their country&mdash;were cast
+aside, and they came to the solitary gloomy resolution, "That it is our
+duty to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for that
+blood he had shed, and mischief he had done to his utmost, against the
+Lord's cause and people in these poor nations."</p>
+
+<p>Let no one suppose that, because Cromwell, and other officers of the
+army, had been negotiating with the king, bidding for him, in fact,
+against the Parliament, and offering terms such as it was mere
+infatuation upon his part not to accept, that they were, therefore, not
+sincere in this their fanaticism, which now so clearly told them they
+should be doing the express will of God in putting him to death. Those
+who have paid attention to this disease of the mind, know well, that
+while nothing is more violent at one moment, nothing is more flexible at
+another. Against the assaults of reason it is rock,&mdash;it is adamant; but
+to self-interest, or a covert passion, it is often surprisingly ductile.
+The genuine fanatic is gifted with a power which will equally uphold
+him, whether he walks to the right or to the left, and lets him change
+his course as often as he will. He has a logic that is always
+triumphant&mdash;which proves him always in the right&mdash;whether he would
+advance or recede. Success&mdash;it is God's own sanction; failure&mdash;it is
+what you please,&mdash;God's disapproval if you would retreat&mdash;a trial only
+of your faith, if you have the heart to advance. In the present case,
+our pious army, having found it impossible to treat with the king, has
+but to spend "its day in prayer," and its fierce zeal resumes its former
+channel with greater violence than ever. It has been led astray, it
+finds, by carnal reasonings and sinful weakness; and, rushing back to
+its old "path of simplicity," it raises the cry of death!</p>
+
+<p>This account, which Adjutent Allan gives of diseased piety and perilous
+fanaticism, Mr Carlyle accompanies with interjections of applause, and
+cheers of encouragement. To him, also, it seems quite fit that the army
+should return to its path of "simplicity." The King must die.</p>
+
+<p>How little, up to the very last, did that unfortunate monarch know of
+the terrible spirit of those enemies into whose hands he had fallen! He
+saw himself necessary to the tranquillisation and stable government of a
+nation still imbued with the love of monarchy, he therefore thought
+himself and the monarchy were safe; he knew not that he was contending
+with men who, when they rose to their high "heroic" mood, had a supreme
+contempt for all considerations touching mere human polity,&mdash;the mere
+peace and government of mankind. He trusted much to the sacredness of
+royalty, the majesty of the purple, the divinity of a King; he was
+delivered over to the power of enemies, whose glory it was to tread down
+the glories of the world; who, so far from finding any sacredness in his
+royalty, had classed him amongst all the wicked kings of the Old
+Testament, sentenced to be exterminated with the idolatry they fostered,
+and with whom the very audacity and fearful temerity of the deed, (if
+this at all affected them,) would add only to its merit. Unfortunate
+monarch! The tide of sympathy runs now against him, but we confess still
+to retain our compassion for the fallen prince,&mdash;our compassion, very
+little, it may be, of admiration. We see him contending against fearful
+odds, keeping up a high and kingly spirit to the last. So far he braved
+it nobly, and played a desperate game, if not wisely, yet with unshaken
+nerves. His character, without a doubt, bears, as Lingard writes, "the
+taint of duplicity." But it was a duplicity which, in his father's
+court, would have been chuckled over as good practice of state-craft. We
+are strangely fashioned&mdash;kings, and all of us&mdash;made up of fragments of
+virtue, ill-assorted parcels of morality. Charles, when he had given his
+parole of honour, would not escape from his imprisonment in the Isle of
+Wight, though the means of escape were offered to him. But the wily and
+diplomatic monarch thought he was entitling himself to the praise of all
+men of spirit and intelligence, when, by fallacious promises and
+protestations, he strove to play off one party of his enemies against
+the other. He was practising, to the best of his ability, all the
+traditionary maxims and man&oelig;uvres of a subtle policy. Nor was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span> it
+ability that he wanted. On an Italian soil, these Italian arts might
+have availed him. But what were the sleights and contrivances of a
+traditionary state-craft against the rude storm of tumultuous passions
+which had been conjured up around him! He was fencing with the
+whirlwind. Perhaps no prince, trained in a court, can be a match for the
+rude adversaries which revolutionary times raise up against him. What
+chance is there that he should ever learn the nature of his new and
+terrible enemy? You have taught him, according to all the laws of
+woodcraft, to chase the stag and the fox, and now you let loose upon him
+the wild beast of the forest! How was Charles to learn what manner of
+being was a Puritan, and how it struck its prey? His courtiers would
+have taught him to despise and ridicule&mdash;his bishops to look askance
+with solemn aversion,&mdash;but who was there to teach him to fear this
+Puritan?&mdash;to teach him that he must forthwith conciliate, if he could
+not crush?</p>
+
+<p>It is worth while to continue the narrative a little further. We adopt
+Mr Carlyle's words. "At London, matters are coming rapidly to a crisis.
+The resumed debate, 'shall the army remonstrance be taken into
+consideration?' does not come out affirmative; on the contrary, on
+Thursday the 31st, it comes out negative, by a majority of ninety. 'No,
+we will not take it into consideration.' 'No?' The army at Windsor
+thereupon spends again 'a day in prayer.' The army at Windsor has
+decided on the morrow, that it will march to London; marches, arrives
+accordingly, on Saturday, December 2d; quarters itself in Whitehall, in
+St James's, 'and other great vacant houses in the skirts of the city and
+villages about, no offence being given any where.' In the drama of
+modern history, one knows not any graver, more note-worthy scene;
+earnest as very death and judgment. They have decided to have justice,
+these men; to see God's justice done, and his judgments executed on this
+earth."</p>
+
+<p>Adjutant Allen and Mr Carlyle are both of the same mind,&mdash;take the same
+views of public matters, political and religious. But the Adjutant
+himself would open great eyes at the sentence which next follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The abysses where the thunders and splendours are bred&mdash;the reader sees
+them again laid bare and black. Madness lying close to the wisdom which
+is brightest and highest;&mdash;and owls and godless men who hate the
+lightning and the light, and love the mephitic dusk and darkness, are no
+judges of the actions of heroes! Shedders of blood? Yes, blood is
+occasionally shed. The healing surgeon, the sacrificial priest, the
+august judge, pronouncer of God's oracles to man, these and the
+atrocious murderer are alike shedders of blood; and it is an owl's eye,
+that, except for the <i>dresses</i> they wear, discerns no difference in
+these! Let us leave the owl to his hootings; let us get on with our
+chronology and swift course of events."</p>
+
+<p>By forcibly expelling more than one hundred of the members of
+Parliament, and thus converting a minority into a majority, these
+"sacrificial priests" contrived to accomplish their very righteous act.
+In the face of raving such as this, it would be absurd to enter
+seriously upon any consideration, moral or political, touching the
+King's death. We would rather that Mr Carlyle occupied the field alone.
+We saw him just now dealing with his "abysses," and his "lightning;" we
+quote his concluding comment on this event, which will present a
+specimen of his more facetious style of eloquence, and the singular
+<i>taste</i> he is capable of displaying:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"This action of the English regicides did in effect strike a damp like
+death through the heart of <i>flunkeyism</i> universally in this world.
+Whereof flunkeyism, cant, cloth-worship, or whatever ugly name it have,
+has gone about incurably sick ever since; and is now at length, in these
+generations, very rapidly dying. The like of which action will not be
+needed for a thousand years again. Needed, alas! not till a new genuine
+hero-worship has arisen, has perfected itself; and had time to
+degenerate into a flunkeyism and cloth-worship again! which I take to be
+a very long date indeed.</p>
+
+<p>"Thus ends the second civil war: in regicide, in a Commonwealth, and
+keepers of the liberties of England: In punishment of delinquents, in
+abolition of cobwebs;&mdash;if it be possible, in a government of Heroism
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span> veracity; at lowest of anti-flunkeyism, anti-cant, and the
+<i>endeavour</i> after heroism and veracity."</p>
+
+<p>Flunkeyism! Such is the title which our <i>many-sided</i> man thinks fit to
+bestow on the loyalty of England! But serious indignation would be out
+of place. A buffoon expression has this advantage, it is unanswerable.
+Yet will we venture to say, that it is a losing game this which you are
+playing, Mr Carlyle, this defiance of all common sense and all good
+taste. There is a respectability other than that which, in the
+unwearying love of one poor jest, you delight to call "gig
+respectability," a respectability based on intelligence and not on
+"Long-Acre springs," whose disesteem it cannot be wise to provoke, nor
+very pleasant to endure.</p>
+
+<p>The Commonwealth is proclaimed by sound of trumpet. The king and the
+lords are cashiered and dismissed. A house of representatives and a
+council of state form the constitution of England. Cromwell is one of
+the council. But for the present the war in Ireland carries him away
+from the scene of politics.</p>
+
+<p>On this Irish campaign, Mr Carlyle breaks out, as may be supposed, in a
+strain of exultation. He always warms at blood and battle. His piety, or
+his poetry&mdash;not admirable whichever it may be&mdash;glows here to a red heat.
+We are as little disposed perhaps as himself, to stand "shrieking out"
+over the military severities of this campaign, but if we could bring
+ourselves to believe that Mr Carlyle is really serious in what he
+writes, we should say that the most impracticable maudlin of peace
+societies, or "Rousseau-sentimentalism," were wisdom itself compared to
+his own outrageous and fanatical strain. If the apologist of Cromwell
+will be content to rest his case on the plain ground open to all
+generals and captains on whom has devolved the task of subjecting a
+rebellious and insurrectionary country&mdash;on the plain ground that the
+object is to be more speedily effected, and with less bloodshed and
+misery to the inhabitants, by carrying on the war at the commencement
+with the utmost severity, (thus breaking down at once the spirit of
+insurrection,) than by prolonging the contest through an exercise of
+leniency and forbearance&mdash;we are not aware that any decisive answer can
+be given to him. It is an awful piece of surgery to contemplate&mdash;one may
+be excused, if one shudders both at it and the operator&mdash;but,
+nevertheless, it may have been the wisest course to pursue. As a general
+rule, every one will admit that&mdash;if war there must be&mdash;it is better that
+it should be short and violent, than long and indecisive; for there is
+nothing so mischievous, so destructive of the industry and moral
+character of a people, as a war which, so to speak, <i>domesticates</i>
+itself amongst them. Put aside "the saint" entirely,&mdash;let us see only
+the soldier,&mdash;and Cromwell's campaign in Ireland may present nothing
+more terrible than what elsewhere, and in the campaigns of other
+generals, we are accustomed to regard as the necessary evils of war;
+nothing more than what a Turenne, a Cond&eacute;, or a Frederic of Prussia,
+might have applauded or practised. But this is precisely the last thing
+our editor would be disposed to do; any so common-place, and commonsense
+view of the matter, would have been utterly distasteful: he <i>does</i> bring
+the saint very prominently upon the field, and we are to recognise in
+Cromwell&mdash;"an armed soldier, terrible as Death, relentless as Doom;
+<i>doing God's judgments on the enemies of God!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"It is a phenomenon," he continues, "not of joyful nature; no, but of
+awful, to be looked at with pious terror and awe. Not a phenomenon which
+you are taught to recognise with bright smiles, and fall in love with at
+sight:&mdash;thou, art thou worthy to love such a thing; worthy to do other
+than hate it, and shriek over it? Darest thou wed the Heaven's
+lightning, then; and say to it, Godlike One? Is thy own life beautiful
+and terrible to thee; steeped in the eternal depths, in the eternal
+plendours?"&mdash;(Vol. ii. p. 53.)</p>
+
+<p>In the despatch which Cromwell addresses to the Speaker, Lenthall, after
+the storm of Tredah, otherwise Drogheda, we observe that the Puritan is
+as strong as ever, but that the Soldier and the great Captain speak out
+with increased boldness. Our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> sectarian farmer of St Ives, who brooded,
+by the dark waters of the Ouse, over the wickedness of surpliced
+prelacy, whose unemployed spirit sank at times into hypochondria, and
+was afflicted with "strange fancies about the town-cross," has been
+moving for some time in the very busiest scene the world could furnish
+him, and has become the great general of his age. The spirit of the "big
+wars" has entered, and grown up side by side with his Puritanism. The
+ardour of the battle fully possesses him; he is the conqueror always in
+the tremendous charge he makes at the head of his Ironsides; and he lets
+appear, notwithstanding his self-denying style, a consciousness and a
+triumph in his own skill as a tactician. He is still the genuine
+Puritan; but the arduous life, the administrative duties of a soldier
+and a general, have also been busy in modifying his character, and
+calling forth and exercising that self-confidence, which he will by and
+by recognise as "faith" and the leading of Providence, when he assumes
+the place of dictator of his country.</p>
+
+<p>From one passage in this despatch it would appear that his severity at
+the storm of Drogheda was not wholly the result of predetermined policy,
+but rose, in part, from the natural passion which the sword, and the
+desperate struggle for life, call forth.</p>
+
+<p>"Divers of the enemy retreated into the Mill-Mount, a place very strong
+and of difficult access. The Governor, Sir Arthur Ashton, and divers
+considerable officers being there, our men getting up to them, were
+ordered by me to put them all to the sword. <i>And, indeed, being in the
+heat of action</i>, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the
+town; and, I think, that night they put to the sword about 2000 men:
+divers of the officers and soldiers being fled over the bridge into the
+other part of the town, where about 100 of them possessed St Peter's
+church steeple, some the west gate, and others a strong round tower next
+the gate called St Sunday's. These being summoned to yield to mercy,
+refused; whereupon I ordered the steeple of St Peter's church to be
+fired, when one of them was heard to say in the midst of the flames,
+'God damn me, God confound me! I burn, I burn.'"</p>
+
+<p>In the same despatch there is rather a noticeable passage, which
+illustrates the manner in which the Puritan general was accustomed to
+regard the Roman Catholics and their worship. There may be some who have
+been so far deceived by the frequent use of the terms "religious
+toleration" in conjunction with the name of Cromwell, as to attribute to
+him a portion of that liberal spirit which is the greatest boast of
+cultivated minds in the present century. His religious toleration
+extended only to the small circle of sects whose Christian doctrine,
+whose preaching, and whose forms of worship were almost identical; it
+was just the same toleration that a Baptist dissenter of our day may be
+supposed to extend towards an Independent dissenter, or a member of the
+Countess of Huntingdon's connexion. The Independents differed from the
+Presbyterians in no one definite article of creed, with this
+exception&mdash;that they set no value upon <i>ordination</i>, and violently
+objected to the restraining any good man from public preaching, or any
+of the ministrations of a pastor, because he wanted this authorisation
+of a visible church. For this point of "religious freedom" (an
+expression which in their mouths has little other than this narrow
+signification) they had to contend with the Presbyterians. The sect
+which has to resist oppression, or the restraints of power, uses, of
+course, the language of toleration. The Independents used it in their
+controversy with the Presbyterians, just as the latter had employed it
+in their controversy with Episcopacy. But Independents and Presbyterians
+were alike intolerant of the Episcopalian or the Roman Catholic. All
+sects of that age preached toleration when a powerful adversary was to
+be deprecated&mdash;preached it then, and then only. The Independents coming
+last upon the field, preached it last; but they have no title beyond
+others to the spirit of toleration. Cromwell put down the mass as he
+would put down a rebellion&mdash;as openly, as decidedly, as rigorously.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is remarkable," continued the despatch, "that these people, at the
+first, set up the mass in some places of the town that had been
+monasteries; but afterwards grew so insolent, that, the last Lord's day
+before the storm, the Protestants were thrust out of the great church
+called St Peter's, and they had public mass there; and in this very
+place near 1000 of them (<i>the Catholics&mdash;a clear judgment</i>) were put to
+the sword, fleeing thither for safety. I believe all their friars were
+knocked on the head promiscuously but two; the one of which was Father
+Peter Taaff, brother to the Lord Taaff, whom the soldiers took the next
+day and made an end of. The other was taken in the Round Tower, under
+the repute, (<i>the disguise</i>) of a lieutenant, and when he understood
+that the officers in that tower had no quarter, he confessed he was a
+friar; but that did not save him."</p>
+
+<p>Ireland was no sooner subjected by this unflinching and terrific
+severity, than the presence of the great general of the Commonwealth was
+needed in Scotland. The Scots had no predilection for a republic, no
+desire whatever for it; they were bent solely on their covenant, their
+covenant and a Stuart king. It was a combination very difficult to
+achieve. Nevertheless they took their oath to both, and marched into
+England to establish them both over the United Kingdom. Here was
+sufficient enthusiasm at all events; sufficient, and of the proper kind,
+one would think, to earn the sympathies of our editor. And he does look
+upon the Scots at this time as an "heroic nation." But, unfortunately,
+it is precisely the heroic nation that his own great hero is about to
+combat and subdue. He is compelled, therefore, upon his part, as the
+faithful bard and minstrel of his chosen champion, to give them
+up&mdash;them, and their covenant, and Stuart king&mdash;to merciless sarcasm.
+Indeed, he tells us, that the great, the sole fault of the Scots, was
+precisely this&mdash;that they did not produce a Cromwell. "With Oliver born
+Scotch," he says or sings, "one sees not but the whole world might have
+become Puritan!"</p>
+
+<p>However, he launches his Puritan hero against the godly and heroic
+nation with full sound of trumpet, not unmixed with a certain vague and
+solemn voice of prophecy.</p>
+
+<p>"In such spirit goes Oliver to the wars&mdash;a god-intoxicated man, as
+Novalis elsewhere phrases it. I have asked myself, if any where in
+modern European history, or even in ancient Asiatic, there was found a
+man practising this mean world's affairs with a heart more filled by the
+idea of the Highest? Bathed in the eternal splendours&mdash;it is so he walks
+our dim earth: this man is one of few. He is projected with a terrible
+force out of the Eternities, and in the Times and their arenas there is
+nothing that can withstand him. It is great; to us it is tragic; a thing
+that should strike us dumb! My brave one, thy noble prophecy <i>is</i>
+divine; older than Hebrew David; old as the origin of man; and shall,
+though in wider ways than those supposed, be fulfilled."&mdash;(P. 172.)</p>
+
+<p>We feel no disposition to follow Cromwell to the Scottish wars, though
+"bathed in the eternal splendours." We hardly know of any thing in
+history to our taste more odious than this war between the Scottish
+Covenanter and the English Puritan; the one praying clamorously for
+victory against "a blaspheming general and a sectarian army;" the other
+animating his battle with a psalm, and charging with a "Lord, arise! and
+let thy enemies be scattered," or some such exclamation. Both generals,
+in the intervals of actual war, sermonise each other, and with much the
+same spirit that they fight. Their diplomacy is a tangled preachment,
+and texts are their war-cries. Meanwhile, both are fighting for the
+gospel of Christ! only one will have it <i>with</i>, the other <i>without</i> the
+covenant! Such "eternal splendours" are not inviting to us. We will step
+on at once to the battle of Worcester, which concluded both the Scottish
+war, and all hopes for the present of the royalist party.</p>
+
+<p>This last of his battles and his victories dismisses the great Puritan
+from the wars. It is a striking despatch he writes from the field of
+Worcester. He is still the unmitigated Puritan; he still preaches<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span> to
+Speaker Lenthall, but he preaches somewhat more dogmatically. There is
+an air of authority in the sermon. We all know that godly exhortation
+may be made to express almost every shade of human passion; as what son
+and what wife has not felt who has lived under the dominion and
+discourse of one of these "rulers in Israel." The Parliament felt, no
+doubt, the difference between the sermons of their general and those of
+their chaplain.</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell and the army return to London. It is now that the Commonwealth
+is to be really put upon its trial. Hitherto the army, that had made and
+could unmake it, had been occupied first in Ireland, then in Scotland;
+and the minds of people at home had been equally occupied in watching
+its achievements. The Commonwealth has lived upon the expectations of
+men. It has been itself an expectation. It is now to be perfected, its
+organisation to be completed, its authority established.</p>
+
+<p>But Cromwell was not a Washington. Not only did he want that serene and
+steady virtue which counselled the champion of American independence to
+retire into the ranks of the constitution&mdash;commander in the field,
+private soldier in the city&mdash;not only did he fail in this civic virtue,
+and found it hard to resign the sway and authority he had so long
+exercised; but the inestimable advantages of a constitutional government
+his mind had not been cultivated to appreciate. His thoughts had
+hitherto taken another direction. His speculative habits theology had
+moulded; his active habits had been formed in the camp. He felt that he
+could administer the government better than any of the men around him:
+we will give him credit, too, for the full intention to administer it
+conscientiously, and for the good of the nation; but for those enlarged
+views of the more enlightened patriot, who is solicitous to provide not
+alone for the present necessities, but for the future long life of a
+people&mdash;he had them not. He grew afterwards into the statesman, as he
+had grown into the soldier; but at this time the Puritan general had
+very little respect for human institutions.</p>
+
+<p>We are far from asserting, that even with the assistance of Cromwell a
+republic could have been established in England. But he lent no helping
+hand; his great abilities, his fervent zeal, were never employed in this
+service. He kept aloof&mdash;aloof with the army. He gathered himself to his
+full height, standing amidst the ruins of the civil war: all men might
+see that he alone kept his footing there. When the unhappy Parliament,
+struggling with its cruel embarrassments, not knowing how to dissolve
+itself with safety, had brought down on it the impatience, the distrust,
+the contempt of men&mdash;when he had allowed its members to reap the full
+harvest of a people's jealousies and suspicions&mdash;when at length they
+were on the point of extricating themselves by a bill determining the
+mode of electing a successor&mdash;<i>then</i> he interfered, and dissolved them!</p>
+
+<p>A question may be raised, how far Cromwell had the power, if such had
+been his wish, to take over the army to the side of the Parliament, to
+lead it into due allegiance to the Commonwealth. The officers of the
+army and the members of the Parliament formed the two rival powers in
+the kingdom. Cromwell, it may be said, <i>could</i> not have united them,
+could only make his choice between them. It would have been only a
+fraction of the army that he could have carried over with him. The
+division between the council of officers and the Parliament was too
+wide, the alienation too confirmed and inveterate, to have been healed
+by one man, though it was the Lord General himself. Thus, it may be said
+that Cromwell, in the part he acted against the Long Parliament, was
+thrust forward by a revolutionary movement, which, according to the law
+of such movements, must either have carried him forward in the van, or
+left him deserted or down-trodden in the rear.</p>
+
+<p>This would be no flattering excuse. But whatever truth there may be in
+this view of the case, Cromwell never manifested any intention or any
+desire to quit the cause of the army for that of the Parliament. He was
+heart and soul with the army; it was there his power lay; it was there
+he found the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span> spirits he most sympathised with. He walked at the head of
+the army here as in the war. It was alone that he entered the House of
+Parliament&mdash;alone "in his gray stockings and black coat," with no staff
+of officers about him, no military parade, only a few of his Ironsides
+in the lobby. Though aware he should have the support of his officers,
+there is no proof that he had consulted them. The daring deed was <i>his</i>.
+And it is one of the most daring deeds on record. The execution of the
+King&mdash;in that day when kings were something more in the imagination of
+men than they are now&mdash;was indeed an audacious act. But it was shared
+with others. This dissolution of the Parliament, and assumption of the
+dictatorship&mdash;this facing alone all his old compeers, met in due
+legislative dignity, and bidding them one and all depart&mdash;strikes us as
+the bolder deed.</p>
+
+<p>The scene has been often described, but nowhere so well, or so fully, as
+by Mr Carlyle. We cannot resist the pleasure of quoting his spirited
+account of this notable transaction.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The Parliament sitting as usual, and being in debate upon the
+bill, which it was thought would have been passed that day,
+'the Lord General Cromwell came into the House, clad in plain
+black clothes and gray worsted stockings, and sat down, as he
+used to do, in an ordinary place.' For some time he listens to
+this interesting debate on the bill, beckoning once to
+Harrison, who came over to him, and answered dubitatingly.
+Whereupon the Lord General sat still for about a quarter of an
+hour longer. But now the question being to be put, That this
+bill do now pass, he beckons again to Harrison, says, 'This is
+the time; I must do it!' and so 'rose up, put off his hat, and
+spake. At the first, and for a good while, he spake to the
+commendation of the Parliament, for their pains and care of the
+public good; but afterwards he changed his style, told them of
+their injustice, delays of justice, self-interest, and other
+faults,' rising higher and higher into a very aggravated style
+indeed. An honourable member, Sir Peter Wentworth by name, not
+known to my readers, and by me better known than trusted, rises
+to order, as we phrase it; says, 'It is a strange language
+this; unusual within the walls of Parliament this! And from a
+trusted servant, too; and one whom we have so highly honoured;
+and one&mdash;' Come, come,' exclaims my Lord General, in a very
+high key, 'we have had enough of this'&mdash;and in fact my Lord
+General, now blazing all up into clear conflagration, exclaims,
+'I will put an end to your prating,' and steps forth into the
+floor of the House, and 'clapping on his hat,' and occasionally
+'stamping the floor with his feet,' begins a discourse which no
+man can report! He says&mdash;Heavens! he is heard saying: 'It is
+not fit that you should sit here any longer!' You have sat too
+long here for any good you have been doing lately, 'You shall
+now give place to better men! Call them in!' adds he, briefly,
+to Harrison, in way of command; and some 'twenty or thirty'
+grim musketeers enter, with bullets in their snaphances; grimly
+prompt for orders; and stand in some attitude of carry arms
+there. Veteran men: men of might and men of war, their faces
+are as the faces of lions, and their feet are swift as the roes
+upon the mountains; not beautiful to honourable gentlemen at
+this moment!</p>
+
+<p>"'You call yourselves a Parliament,' continues my Lord General,
+in clear blaze of conflagration. 'You are no Parliament! Some
+of you are drunkards,' and his eye flashes on poor Mr Chalmer,
+an official man of some value, addicted to the bottle; 'some of
+you are'&mdash;and he glares into Henry Martin and the poor Sir
+Peter, who rose to order, lewd livers both&mdash;'living in open
+contempt of God's, commandments. Following your own greedy
+appetites, and the devil's commandments. Corrupt, unjust
+persons,' and here I think he glanced 'at Sir Bulstrode
+Whitlocke, one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal, giving
+him and others very sharp language, though he named them not.'
+'Corrupt, unjust persons, scandalous to the profession of the
+Gospel:' how can you be a Parliament for God's people? Depart,
+I say, and let us have done with you. In the name, of God&mdash;go!</p>
+
+<p>"The House is of course all on its feet&mdash;uncertain, almost,
+whether not on its head: such a scene as was never seen before
+in any House of Commons. History reports with a shudder that my
+Lord General, lifting the sacred mace itself, said, 'What shall
+we do with this bauble? Take it away!'&mdash;and gave it to a
+musketeer. And now&mdash;'Fetch him down!' says he to Harrison,
+flashing on the Speaker. Speaker Lenthall, more an ancient
+Roman than any thing else, declares, He will not come till
+forced. 'Sir,' said Harrison, 'I will lend you a hand;' on
+which Speaker Lenthall came down, and gloomily vanished. They
+all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span> vanished; flooding gloomily, clamorously out, to their
+ulterior businesses, and respective places of abode: the Long
+Parliament is dissolved! 'It's you that have forced me to
+this,' exclaims my Lord General, 'I have sought the Lord night
+and day, that He would rather slay me than put me upon the
+doing of this work.' 'At their going out, some say the Lord
+General said to young Sir Harry Vane, calling him by his name,
+That <i>he</i> might have prevented this; but that he was a juggler,
+and had not common honesty.' 'O Sir Harry Vane,' thou, with thy
+subtle casuistries and abstruse hair-splittings, thou art other
+than a good one, I think! 'The Lord deliver me from thee, Sir
+Harry Vane!' 'All being gone out, the door of the House was
+locked, and the key, with the mace, as I heard, was carried
+away by Colonel Otley,' and it is all over, and the unspeakable
+catastrophe has come, and remains."&mdash;(Vol. ii. p. 361.)</p></div>
+
+<p>The usurpation of Cromwell is, we believe, generally considered as the
+most fortunate event which, under the peculiar circumstances of the
+country, could have occurred. The people, it is said; were not prepared
+for a republic. The attempt, therefore, to establish one, would have
+been attended by incessant tumults; its short and precarious existence
+would have been supported by the scaffold and the prison. It would have
+terminated indeed, as did the Protectorate, in a Restoration, but the
+interval between the death of Charles I. and the accession of his son,
+would have been passed in a very different manner. Under the
+Protectorate the country rallied its strength, put forth its naval
+power, obtained peace at home, and respect abroad. Under a republic, it
+would have probably spent its force, and demoralised itself, in
+intestine strife and by a succession of revolutionary movements.</p>
+
+<p>But if this view be quite correct, it will not justify Cromwell. It is
+one thing to be satisfied with the course of events, quite another with
+the conduct of the several agents in them. Cromwell, in the position in
+which he stood, as an honest man and a patriot, should have done his
+best for the establishment of the Commonwealth; and this he did not. We
+are far, as we have said, from venturing to give a decisive opinion on
+the probability (with the united efforts of the victorious general and
+the Parliament) of forming a republic. But we are not disposed to think
+that the cause was hopeless. Had the Parliament been allowed to recruit
+its numbers without dissolving itself&mdash;the measure which it constantly
+desired, and which Cromwell would not hear of, though, without a doubt,
+it was the very line of conduct which his own practical sagacity would
+have led him to, if his heart had been in the business&mdash;the minds of men
+would have had time to settle and reflect, and a mode of government,
+which had already existed for some years, might have been adopted by the
+general consent.</p>
+
+<p><i>We</i> look upon the Restoration very calmly, very satisfactorily, for
+whom a second revolution has placed another dynasty upon the throne,
+governing upon principles quite different from those which were rooted
+in the Stuarts. We see the Restoration, with the Revolution of 1688 at
+its back, and almost consider them as one event. But a most loyal and
+contented subject of Queen Victoria, would have been a Commonwealthsman
+in those days. How could it then have been foreseen that all the power,
+and privilege, and splendour of royalty, should exist only to <i>protect</i>
+the law, to secure the equal rights of all&mdash;that monarchy, retaining a
+traditionary awe and majesty derived from remote times, should remain
+amongst us to supply to a representative government that powerful,
+constant, and impartial executive which, from the mere elements of a
+republic, it is so difficult to extract? Who could have imagined that a
+popular legislature, and the supremacy of the law, could have been so
+fortunately combined and secured under the shadow of the monarchy?
+Enlightened minds at that time could not have looked calmly towards a
+Restoration; they probably thought, or would have been led to think,
+that, in the position they then were, it was better to take the
+constitution of Holland, than the government of France, for their model.</p>
+
+<p>But the multitude&mdash;with what enthusiasm they welcomed the restoration of
+the Stuarts! Very true. But the Protectorate was no antagonist to
+monarchy. Republican pride was never called forth to contend in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span>
+public mind against the feeling of loyalty, and an attachment to kings.
+The Protectorate was itself a monarchy without its splendour, or the
+prestige of hereditary greatness. It was a monarchy under the Geneva
+gown. Was it likely that the populace would accept of this in lieu of
+the crowned and jewelled royalty which was wont to fill its imagination?</p>
+
+<p>However, the experiment&mdash;fortunately for us, as the result has turned
+out&mdash;was never destined to be made. Cromwell dissolved the Long
+Parliament. He now stood alone, he and the army, the sole power in the
+state. His first measure, that of sending a summons in his own name, to
+persons of his own choice, and thus, without any popular election
+whatever, assembling what is called the Little Parliament, or Barebones
+Parliament, shows a singular audacity, and proves how little trammelled
+he was himself by traditionary or constitutional maxims. He who would
+not allow the Long Parliament to recruit its numbers, and thus escape
+the perils of a free election of an altogether new assembly, extricates
+himself from the same embarrassment by electing the whole Parliament
+himself. Some historians have represented this measure as having for its
+very object to create additional confusion, and render himself, and his
+own dictatorial power, more necessary to the state. It has not appeared
+to us in this light. We see in it a bold but rude assay at government.
+In this off-hand manner of constituting a Parliament, we detect the
+mingled daring of the Puritan and the Soldier. In neither of these
+characters was he likely to have much respect for legal maxims, or rules
+of merely human contrivance. Cromwell was educating himself for the
+Statesman: at this juncture it is the Puritan General that we have
+before us.</p>
+
+<p>The Little Parliament having blundered on till it had got itself
+entangled in the Mosaic dispensation, resigned its power into the hands
+of him who had bestowed it. Thereupon a new <i>Instrument of Government</i>
+is framed, with the advice of the council of officers, appointing
+Cromwell Protector, and providing for the election of a Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>This Parliament being elected, falls, of course, on the discussion of
+this very Instrument of government. Henceforth Cromwell's great
+difficulty is the management of his Parliaments. The speeches he
+delivered to them at various times, and which occupy the third volume of
+the work before us, are of high historical interest. They are in every
+respect superior to his letters. Neither will their perusal be found to
+be of that arduous and painful nature which, from the reputation they
+have had, most persons will be disposed to expect. The <i>sermon</i> may
+weary, but the <i>speech</i> is always fraught with meaning; and the mixture
+of sermon and speech together, portray the man with singular
+distinctness. We see the Puritan divine, the Puritan soldier, becoming
+the Puritan statesman. His originally powerful mind is excited to fresh
+exertion by his onerous and exalted position. But he is still constant
+to himself. Very interesting is the exhibition presented to us of this
+powerful intellect, breaking out in flashes of strong sense, and
+relapsing again into the puerilities of the sect. But as it falls upon
+the strong sense to <i>act</i>, and on the puerilities only to <i>preach</i>, the
+man comes out, upon the whole, as a great and able governor.</p>
+
+<p>The reputation which Oliver's speeches have borne, as being involved,
+spiritless, tortuous, and even purposely confused, has resulted, we
+think, from this&mdash;that an opinion of the whole has been formed from an
+examination of a few, and chiefly of those which were delivered on the
+occasion of his refusing the offered title of king. His conduct on this
+occasion, it would be necessary for an historian particularly to
+investigate, and in the discharge of this duty he would have to peruse a
+series of discourses undoubtedly of a very bewildering character. They
+are the only speeches of Cromwell of which it can be said that their
+meaning is not clearly, and even forcibly expressed. And in this case it
+is quite evident, that he had no distinct meaning to express; he had no
+definite answer to give the Parliament<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span> who were petitioning him to take
+the title of king. He was anxious to gain time&mdash;he was talking <i>against
+time</i>&mdash;an art which we moderns only have thoroughly mastered. How could
+Cromwell, who was no great rhetorician, be otherwise than palpably
+confused, and dubious and intricate? Nothing can be clearer than that he
+himself leant towards the opinion of the Parliament, that it would be
+good policy to adopt the royal title. It was so connected with the old
+attachments and associations of Englishmen, it had so long given force
+to the language of the law, its claims were so much better known, its
+prerogatives so much better understood than those of the new title of
+Protector, that the resumption of it must have appeared very advisable.
+But the army had been all along fighting against <i>the King</i>. Whilst to
+the lawyer and the citizen the title was still the most honourable and
+ever to be venerated, to the soldier of the Commonwealth it had become a
+term of reproach, of execration, of unsparing hostility. Oliver Cromwell
+might well hesitate before assuming a title which might forfeit for him
+the allegiance of a great portion of the army. He deferred his answer,
+to have an opportunity for estimating the nature and amount of the
+resistance he might expect from that quarter; and he came to the
+conclusion, that the risk of unsettling the affections of the army was
+not to be incurred for either any personal gratification to himself
+(which we take to have not weighed much with him) in assuming the title
+of king, or for the advantages which might accrue from it in the
+ultimate settlement of the nation. His addresses, therefore, to the
+Parliament on this occasion not being definite answers to the
+Parliament, nor intended to be such, but mere postponements of his
+answer, were necessarily distinguished by indecision, uncertainty, and
+all sorts of obscurities. But, these excepted, his speeches, however
+deficient in what pertains to the <i>art of composition</i>, in terseness, or
+method, or elegance of phrase, are never wanting in the great
+essentials&mdash;the expression of his meaning in a very earnest and forcible
+manner. The mixture of sermon and speech, we allow, is not inviting; but
+the sermon is just as clear, perhaps, as any which the chaplain of the
+House would have preached to them, and it must be remembered, that to
+explain <i>his</i> meaning, <i>his</i> political sentiments, the sermon was as
+necessary as the speech.</p>
+
+<p>By the new instrument of government, the Protector, with his council,
+was authorised, in the interval before the meeting of Parliament, to
+issue such ordinances as might be deemed necessary. This interval our
+Puritan governor very consistently employed, first of all, in
+establishing a gospel ministry throughout the nation. Thirty-eight
+chosen men, "the acknowledged flower of English Puritanism," were
+nominated a Supreme Commission, for the trial of public preachers. Any
+person holding a church-living, or pretending to the tithes or
+clergy-dues, was to be tried and approved of by these men. "A very
+republican arrangement," says Mr Carlyle, "such as could be made on the
+sudden, but was found in practice to work well."</p>
+
+<p>This and other ordinances having been issued, his first Parliament
+meets. It cannot be said that our Puritan Protector does not rise to the
+full level of his position. One might describe him as something of a
+propagandist, disposed to teach his doctrine of <i>the rights of Christian
+men</i> to the world at large. It is thus he opens his
+address:&mdash;"<span class="smcap">Gentlemen</span>, You are met here on the greatest occasion that, I
+believe, England ever saw; having upon your shoulders the interests of
+three great nations, with the territories belonging to them: and truly I
+believe I may say it without any hyperbole, you have upon your shoulders
+<i>the interest of all the Christian people in the world</i>. And the
+expectation is, that I should let you know, as far as I have cognisance
+of it, the occasion of your assembling together at this time."</p>
+
+<p>But this Parliament fell upon the discussion, as we have said, of the
+very instrument of government under which they had been called together.
+Mr Carlyle is as impatient as was Oliver himself at this proceeding of
+the "Talking apparatus." But how could it be otherwise? Every thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span>
+that had taken place since the dissolution of the Long Parliament was
+done by mere arbitrary authority. The present Parliament, however called
+together, must consider itself the only legitimate, the only
+constitutional power: it <i>must</i> look into this instrument of government.
+But if it was impossible not to commence the discussion, it was equally
+impossible ever to conclude it. We all know to what length a debate will
+run upon a constitutional question; and here there was not one such
+question, but a whole constitution to be discussed. In vain they debated
+"from eight in the morning to eight at night, with an hour for
+refreshment about noon:" there was no probability of their ever coming
+to a conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>This would never do. Oliver shuts up the Parliament-house, stations his
+musketeers at the door, calls the members to him, presents them with a
+parchment, "a little thing," to sign, acknowledging his authority, and
+tells them he will open the door of the House to such only as shall put
+their names to it. We will quote some parts of the speech he made to
+them on this occasion, and our readers shall judge whether such a
+speech, delivered by the living man Cromwell, was likely to fail in
+effect, whether it was deficient in meaning or in energy. We shall omit
+the parenthetical comments of the editor, because, however these may
+amuse and relieve the reader who is making his way through the whole
+work, and who becomes familiarised with their style, they would only
+confuse and distract the attention in a brief extract. The single words
+or phrases which he has introduced, merely to make the sense clear, are
+retained whenever they are really necessary for this purpose, and
+without the inverted commas by which they are properly distinguished in
+the text. We will premise, that the protestations which Cromwell here
+makes, that he did not seek the government, but was earnestly petitioned
+to undertake it, may well, in part, be true. When he had once dissolved
+the Long Parliament, it was no longer a matter of choice for himself or
+others whether he would take the reins of government. To whom could he
+commit them? From that time, the government rested upon his shoulders.
+If he had manifested a wish to withdraw from the burden he had thus
+brought down upon himself, there is no doubt but that he would have been
+earnestly petitioned to remain at his post. The greatest enemy of
+Cromwell, if he had been a lover of his country, would have joined in
+such a petition; would have besought him to remain at the helm, now he
+had thrown all other steersmen overboard. No; he must not quit it now.
+He is there for the rest of his life, to do battle with the waves, and
+navigate amongst rocks and quicksands as best he may.</p>
+
+<p>Let us hear his own statement and defence of the manner in which he
+became advanced and "captive" to his high and perilous place.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Gentlemen</span>,&mdash;It is not long since I met you in this place, upon
+an occasion which gave me much more content and comfort than
+this doth. That which I have now to say to you will need no
+preamble to let me into my discourse; for the occasion of this
+meeting is plain enough. I could have wished, with all my
+heart, there had been no cause for it.</p>
+
+<p>"At our former meeting I did acquaint you what was the first
+rise of this government which hath called you hither, and by
+the authority of which you have come hither. Among other things
+which I then told you of, I said you were a Free Parliament;
+and so you are, whilst you own the government and authority
+which called you hither. But certainly that word (Free
+Parliament) implied a reciprocity, or it implied nothing at
+all. Indeed, there was a reciprocity implied and expressed; and
+I think your actions and carriages ought to be suitable. But I
+see it will be necessary for me now a little to magnify my
+office, which I have not been apt to do. I have been of this
+mind, I have been always of this mind, since I first entered
+upon my office. If God will not bear it up, let it sink!&mdash;but
+if a duty be incumbent upon me, to bear my testimony to it,
+(which in modesty I have hitherto forborne,) I am, in some
+measure, necessitated thereunto: and therefore that will be the
+prologue to my discourse.</p>
+
+<p>"I called not myself to this place. I say again, I called not
+myself to this place! Of that God is witness: and I have many
+witnesses who, I do believe, could lay down their lives bearing
+witness to the truth of that, namely, that I called not myself
+to this place! And,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span> being in it, I bear not witness to myself
+or my office; but God and the people of these nations have also
+borne testimony to it. If my calling be from God, and my
+testimony from the people, <i>God and the people shall take it
+from me, else I will not part with it!</i> I should be false to
+the trust that God hath placed in me, and to the interest of
+the people of these nations if I did.</p>
+
+<p>"I was by birth a gentleman; living neither in any considerable
+height, nor yet in obscurity. I have been called to several
+employments in the nation&mdash;to serve in Parliament and others;
+and, not to be over-tedious, I did endeavour to discharge the
+duty of an honest man, in those services, to God and his
+people's interest, and to the Commonwealth; having, when time
+was, a competent acceptation in the hearts of men, and some
+evidences thereof. I resolve not to recite the times, and
+occasions, and opportunities, which have been appointed me by
+God to serve him in; nor the presence and blessing of God,
+therein bearing testimony to me.</p>
+
+<p>"Having had some occasion to see, together with my brethren and
+countrymen, a happy period put to our sharp wars and contests
+with the then common enemy, I hoped, in a private capacity, to
+have reaped the fruit and benefit, together with my brethren,
+of our hard labours and hazards: the enjoyment, to wit, of
+peace and liberty, and the privileges of a Christian and a man,
+in some equality with others, according as it should please the
+Lord to dispense unto me. And when I say God had put an end to
+our wars, or at least brought them to a very hopeful issue,
+very near an end,&mdash;after Worcester fight,&mdash;I came up to London
+to pay my service and duty to the Parliament which then sat,
+hoping that all minds would have been disposed to answer what
+seemed to be the mind of God, namely, to give peace and rest to
+his people, and especially to those who had bled more than
+others in the carrying on of the military affairs,&mdash;I was much
+disappointed of my expectation. For the issue did not prove so.
+<i>Whatever may be boasted or misrepresented, it was not so, not
+so!</i></p>
+
+<p>"I can say in the simplicity of my soul, I love not, I love
+not,&mdash;I declined it in my former speech,&mdash;I say, I love not to
+rake into sores, or to discover nakednesses! The thing I drive
+at is this: I say to you, I hoped to have had leave to retire
+to a private life. I begged to be dismissed of my charge; I
+begged it again and again; and God be judge between me and all
+men if I lie in this matter! That I lie not in matter of fact,
+is known to very many; but whether I tell a lie in my heart, as
+labouring to represent to you what was not upon my heart, I say
+the Lord be judge. Let uncharitable men, who measure others by
+themselves, judge as they please. As to the matter of fact, I
+say it is true. As to the ingenuity and integrity of my heart
+in that desire&mdash;I do appeal, as before, upon the truth of that
+also. But I could not obtain what my soul longed for. And the
+plain truth is, I did afterwards apprehend some more of
+opinion, (such the differences of their judgment from mine,)
+that it could not well be.</p>
+
+<p>"I confess I am in some strait to say what I could say, and
+what is true, of what then followed. I pressed the Parliament,
+as a member, to period themselves; once and again, and again,
+and ten, nay twenty times over. I told them, for I knew it
+better than any one man in the parliament could know it,
+because of my manner of life, which had led me every where up
+and down the nation, thereby giving me to see and know the
+temper and spirits of all men, and of the best of men&mdash;that the
+nation loathed their sitting. I knew it. And so far as I could
+discern, when they <i>were</i> dissolved, <i>there was not so much as
+the barking of a dog</i>, or any general or visible repining at
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"And that there was high cause for their dissolution, is most
+evident: not only in regard there was a just fear of that
+parliament's perpetuating themselves, but because it actually
+was their design. Had not their heels been trod upon by
+importunities from abroad, even to threats, I believe there
+never would have been any thoughts of rising, or of going out
+of that room, to the world's end. I myself was sounded, and by
+no mean persons tempted; and proposals were made me to that
+very end: that the parliament might be thus perpetuated; that
+the vacant places might be supplied by new elections, and so
+continue from generation to generation."</p></div>
+
+<p>He proceeds to object to the measure which the Parliament was really
+about to pass, that it would have established an uninterrupted
+succession of Parliaments, that there would have been "a legislative
+power always sitting," which would thereby have encroached upon the
+executive power. The speech then enlarges on the general assent of the
+people, of the army, of the judges, of the civic powers, to the
+instrument of government, to the Protectorate, and on the implied
+assent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span> which they themselves had given by accepting their commissions
+under it.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"And this being so, though I told you in my last speech that
+you were a free Parliament, yet I thought it was understood
+withal that I was the Protector, and the authority that called
+you! That I was in possession of the government by a good right
+from God and man. And I believe, that if the learnedest men in
+this nation were called to show a precedent equally clear of a
+government so many ways approved of, they would not in all
+their search find it. And if the fact be so, why should we
+sport with it? With a business so serious!... For you to disown
+or not to own it; for you to act with parliamentary authority
+especially, in the disowning of it, contrary to the very
+fundamental things, yea against the very root itself of this
+establishment, to sit and not own the authority by which you
+sit&mdash;is that which I believe astonisheth more men than myself;
+and doth as dangerously disappoint and discompose the nation,
+as any thing that could have been invented by the greatest
+enemy to our peace and welfare."</p></div>
+
+<p>After drawing the distinction between fundamentals, which may not be
+shaken, and circumstantials, which it is in the power of Parliament to
+alter and modify, he continues:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I would it had not been needful for me to call you hither to
+expostulate these things with you, and in such a manner as
+this! But necessity hath no law. Feigned necessities, imaginary
+necessities, are the greatest cozenage which man can put upon
+the providence of God, and make pretences to break known rules
+by. But it is as legal, as carnal, and as stupid to think that
+there are <i>no</i> necessities which are manifest and real, because
+necessities may be abused or feigned. I have to say, the wilful
+throwing away of this government, such as it is, so owned by
+God, so approved by men, so witnessed to, as was mentioned
+above, were a thing which&mdash;and in reference to the good of
+these nations and of posterity&mdash;<i>I can sooner be willing to be
+rolled into my grave and buried with infamy, than I can give my
+consent unto!</i></p>
+
+<p>"You have been called hither to save a nation&mdash;nations. You had
+the best people, indeed, of the Christian world put into your
+trust, when you came hither. You had the affairs of these
+nations delivered over to you in peace and quiet; you were, and
+we all are, put into an undisturbed possession, nobody making
+title to us: Through the blessing of God, our enemies were
+hopeless and scattered. We had peace at home; peace with almost
+all our neighbours round about. To have our peace and interest,
+whereof those were our hopes the other day, thus shaken, and
+put under such a confusion; and ourselves rendered hereby
+almost the scorn and contempt of those strangers who are
+amongst us to negotiate their masters' affairs!... Who shall
+answer for these things to God or to men? To men, to the people
+who sent you hither? who looked for refreshment from you; who
+looked for nothing but peace and quietness, and rest and
+settlement? When we come to give an account to them, we shall
+have it to say, 'Oh, we quarrelled for the <i>Liberty of
+England</i>; we contested, and went to confusion for
+that!&mdash;<i>Wherein, I pray you, for the Liberty of England?</i> I
+appeal to the Lord, that the desires and endeavours we have
+had&mdash;nay, the things will speak for themselves,&mdash;the liberty of
+England, the liberty of the people, the avoiding of tyrannous
+impositions either upon men as men, or Christians as
+Christians,&mdash;is made so safe by this act of settlement, that it
+will speak for itself."</p></div>
+
+<p>The Protector then tells them that, "seeing the authority which called
+them is so little valued and so much slighted, he had caused a stop to
+be put to their entrance into the Parliament-house," until a certain
+"somewhat," which would be found "in the lobby without the
+Parliament-door"&mdash;an adhesion to the government in its
+fundamentals&mdash;should be signed.</p>
+
+<p>This extract, as will be readily supposed, would lead to a far too
+favourable opinion of Cromwell's oratory, if understood as a specimen of
+his usual manner of speaking; but our readers will probably confess,
+that they did not expect that the speeches of Cromwell would have
+yielded such an extract.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver has, it will be observed, a singularly modest way of speaking of
+his political remedies and projects. In referring, on a later occasion,
+to his major-generals, he says, "Truly when that insurrection was, we
+did find out a <i>little poor invention</i>, which I hear has been much
+regretted. I say there was <i>a little thing</i> invented, which was the
+erecting of your major-generals, to have a little inspection upon the
+people thus divided, thus discontented, thus dissatisfied." On the
+present<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> occasion, the "somewhat which was to be found at the lobby of
+the Parliament-door," was, after a little demur, accepted and signed by
+all but a certain number of declared republicans. The parliament
+afterwards fell from the discussion of a whole constitution, to debates
+apparently as warm, and as endless, upon poor Biddle the Quaker, and
+other kindred subjects. Thus their allotted session of five months
+passed; at the end of which time Cromwell dissolved them.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know what you have been doing," he tells them in his speech on
+this occasion. "I do not know whether you have been alive or dead. I
+have not once heard from you all this time&mdash;I have not&mdash;and that you all
+know."</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell's second parliament manifested a wiser industry, and a more
+harmonious temper&mdash;thanks to one of the Protector's "little inventions."
+Each member was to be provided with a certificate before entering the
+house; "but near one hundred honourable gentlemen can get no
+certificate&mdash;none provided for <i>them</i>&mdash;and without certificate there is
+no admittance. Soldiers stand ranked at the door; no man enters without
+his certificate!" The stiff republicans, and known turbalent persons,
+are excluded. From this Parliament Cromwell accepts again the title of
+Protector, and is installed with great state; things take a more legal
+aspect; the major-generals are suppressed; a House of Lords is
+instituted; and a settlement of the nation seems at last effected.</p>
+
+<p>But the second session of this Parliament relapsed again into a restive
+and republican humour. The excluded members had been admitted, and
+debates arose about this "other house," as they were disposed to
+nominate the Lords. So much confusion resulted in the country from this
+unsettled state of the representative assembly, and so many
+insurrectionary designs were fostered by it, that the Protector was
+compelled abruptly to dissolve the Parliament. He tells them:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"That which brought me into the capacity I now stand in, was
+the petition and advice given me by you, who, in reference to
+the ancient constitution, did draw me to accept the place of
+Protector. <i>There is not a man living can say I sought it; no,
+not a man nor a woman treading upon English ground.</i> But,
+contemplating the sad condition of these nations, relieved from
+an intestine war into a six or seven years' peace, I did think
+the nation happy therein. But to be petitioned thereunto, and
+to be advised by you to undertake such a government, a burden
+too heavy for any creature&mdash;and this to be done by the House
+which then had the legislative capacity&mdash;certainly I did look
+that the same men who made the frame, should make it good unto
+me. <i>I can say, in the presence of God, in comparison with whom
+we are but like poor creeping ants upon the earth, I would have
+been glad to have lived under any woodside, to have kept a
+flock of sheep, rather then have undertaken such a government
+as this.</i> But, undertaking it by the advice and petition of
+you, I did look that you who had offered it unto me, should
+make it good."</p></div>
+
+<p>He concludes thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It hath been not only your endeavour to pervert the army while
+you have been sitting, and to draw them to state the question
+about a 'Commonwealth;' but some of you have been listing of
+persons, by commission of Charles Stuart, to join with any
+insurrection that may be made. And what is like to come upon
+this, the enemy being ready to invade us, but even present
+blood and confusion? And if this be so, I do assign it to this
+cause&mdash;your not assenting to what you did invite me to by your
+petition and advice, as that which might prove the settlement
+of the nation. And if this be the end of your sitting, and this
+be your carriage, I think it high time that an end be put to
+your sitting. And I do dissolve this Parliament! And let God be
+judge between you and me!"</p></div>
+
+<p>It is at this latter period of his career that the character of
+Cromwell, to our apprehension, stands out to greatest advantage, becomes
+more grave, and solemn, and estimable. Other dictators, other men of
+ambitious aims and fortunes, show themselves, for the most part, less
+amiable, more tyrannous than ever, more violent and selfish, when they
+have obtained the last reward of all their striving, and possessed
+themselves of the seat of power. It was otherwise with Cromwell. He
+became more moderate, his views more expanded, his temper milder and
+more pensive. The stormy passions of the civil war<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span> were overblown, the
+intricate and ambiguous passages of his political course had been left
+behind; and <i>now</i>, whatever may have been the errors of the past, and
+however his own ambition or rashness may have led him to it, he occupied
+a position which he might say with truth he held for his country's good.
+Forsake it he could not. Repose in it he could not. A man of religious
+breeding, of strong conscientiousness, though tainted with superstition,
+he could not but feel the great responsibility of that position. A
+vulgar usurper is found at this era of his career to sink into the
+voluptuary, or else to vent his dissatisfied humour in acts of cruelty
+and oppression. Cromwell must govern, and govern to his best. The
+restless and ardent spirit that had ever prompted him onwards and
+upwards, and which had carried him to that high place, was now upon the
+wane. It had borne him to that giddy pinnacle, and threatened to leave
+him there. Men were now aiming at his life; the assassin was abroad;
+one-half the world was execrating him; we doubt not that he spoke with
+sincerity when he said, that "he would gladly live under any woodside,
+and keep a flock of sheep." He would gladly lay down his burden, but he
+cannot; can lay it down only in the grave. The sere and yellow leaf is
+falling on the shelterless head of the royal Puritan. The asperity of
+his earlier character is gone, the acrimony of many of his prejudices
+has, in his long and wide intercourse with mankind, abated; his great
+duties have taught him moderation of many kinds; there remains of the
+fiery sectarian, who so hastily "turned the buckle of his girdle behind
+him," little more than his firmness and conscientiousness: his firmness
+that, as he truly said, "could be bold with men;" his conscientiousness,
+which made the power he attained by that boldness, a burden and a heavy
+responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>"We have not been now four years and upwards in this government," says
+the Protector, in one of his speeches, "to be totally ignorant of what
+things may be of the greatest concernment to us." No; this man has not
+been an idle scholar. Since the Lord General took the reins of civil
+government, and became Lord Protector, he has thought and learned much
+of statemanship. But as a statesman, he is still first of all the
+Puritan. It is worth while to observe how his foreign policy, which has
+been justly admired, took its turn and direction from his religious
+feelings. He made alliances with the Protestant powers of the north, and
+assumed a firm attitude of hostility towards Spain&mdash;and reasons of state
+may have had some sway in determining him to these measures; but his
+great motive for hostility with Spain was, that she stood "at the head
+of the antichristian interest"&mdash;"was described in the Scriptures to be
+papal and antichristian."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, truly your great enemy is the Spaniard. He is a natural enemy. He
+is naturally so throughout, by reason of that enmity that is in him
+against whatever is of God.... Your enemy, as I tell you, naturally, by
+that antipathy which is in him,&mdash;and also providentially, (that is, by
+special ordering of Providence.) An enmity is put in him by God. 'I will
+put an enmity between thy seed and her seed,' which goes but for little
+among statesmen, but is more considerable than all things. And he that
+considers not such natural enmity, the <i>providential</i> enmity as well as
+the <i>accidental</i>, I think he is not well acquainted with the Scripture,
+and the things of God,"&mdash;(<i>Speech</i> 5.)</p>
+
+<p>In fine, we see in Cromwell, every where and throughout, the genuine,
+fervid Puritan&mdash;the Puritan general, the Puritan statesman. He was a
+man, and, therefore, doubtless ambitious; he rose through a scene of
+civil as well as military contest, and, doubtless, was not unacquainted
+with dissimulation; but if we would describe him briefly, it is as the
+<span class="smcap">Great Puritan</span> that he must, ever be remembered in history.</p>
+
+<p>In parting company with the editor of these letters and speeches, we
+feel that we have not done justice to the editorial industry and
+research which these volumes display. Our space would not permit it. For
+the same reason we have been unable to quote several instances of vivid
+narrative, which we had hoped to transfer to our own pages. And as to
+our main quarrel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span> with him&mdash;this outrageous adoption of Puritanical bile
+and superstition,&mdash;we have been haunted all along by a suspicion we have
+occasionally expressed, that the man <i>cannot</i> be in earnest. He could
+not have been so abandoned by his common sense. He has been so
+accustomed to mingle sport, and buffoonery, and all sorts of wilful
+extravagance, with his most serious mood, that he perhaps does not know
+himself when, and how far, he is in earnest. In turning over the leaves
+of his work, we light, towards the end of the second volume, upon the
+following passage, which may, <i>perhaps</i>, explain the temper of the
+writer, when he is abetting and encouraging his fanatical heroes. He is
+uttering some sarcasms upon the poor "art of speech."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there no sacredness, then, any longer in the miraculous tongue of
+man? Is his head become a wretched cracked pitcher, on which you jingle
+to frighten crows, and makes bees hive? He fills me with terror, this
+two-legged rhetorical phantasm! I could long for an Oliver without
+rhetoric at all. I could long for a Mahomet, whose persuasive eloquence,
+with wild-flashing heart and scimiter, is, 'Wretched moral, give up
+that; or by the Eternal, thy maker and mine, I will kill thee! Thou
+blasphemous scandalous misbirth of Nature, is not even <i>that</i> the
+kindest thing I can do for thee, if thou repent not, and alter in the
+name of Allah?'"</p>
+
+<p>To this sort of satirical humour&mdash;to "the truth of a song,"&mdash;not
+Dryasdust himself would call upon him to swear. And may not all his
+rhapsodies upon his "sword-in-hand" Puritans be little more than an
+amplification of this one passage? And, if we insist upon it, that a
+reform by the pen, or even by speech-making, is better than one by pike
+and musket&mdash;if we should suggest that matters of civil government are
+better decided by civil and political reasoning than by metaphorical
+texts of Scripture, interpreted by prejudice and passion&mdash;if we contend
+for such truisms as these, shall we not be in danger of occupying some
+such position as the worthy prelate whose sagacity led him to discover
+that <i>some facts</i> in Gulliver's Travels had surely been overcharged?</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations
+by Thomas Carlyle.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Take the following instance from the early and more
+moderate times of the Revolution, and wherein the most staid and sober
+of this class of people is concerned. When Essex left London to march
+against the king, then at Oxford, he requested the assembly of divines
+to keep a fast for his success. Baillie informs us how it was
+celebrated. "We spent from nine to five graciously. After Dr Twisse had
+begun with a brief prayer, Mr Marshall prayed large two hours, most
+divinely confessing the sins of the members of the assembly in a
+wonderful, pathetic, and prudent way. After Mr Arrowsmith preached an
+hour, then a psalm; thereafter Mr Vines prayed near two hours, and Mr
+Palmer preached an hour, and Mr. Seaman prayed near two hours, then a
+psalm; after Mr Henderson brought them to a sweet conference of the heat
+confessed in the assembly, and other seen faults to be remedied, and the
+conveniency to preach against all sects, especially anabaptists and
+antinomians. Dr Twisse closed with a short prayer and blessing. God was
+so evidently in all this exercise that we expect certainly a
+blessing."&mdash;<i>Baillie</i>, quoted from <i>Lingard</i>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LAYS_AND_LEGENDS_OF_THE_THAMES" id="LAYS_AND_LEGENDS_OF_THE_THAMES"></a>LAYS AND LEGENDS OF THE THAMES.</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Part</span> III.</h3>
+
+
+<p>----On passing the little village of Erith, once one of the prettiest
+rustic spots in Kent, where the parson and the surgeon formed the heads
+of the community, and its only intelligence of the living world depended
+on the casual arrival of a boat from the Margate Hoy in search of fresh
+eggs for the voyage, a small house was pointed out to me, embosomed in a
+dell, which would have completely suited the solitary tastes of a poet
+weary of the world:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where rumour of oppression and deceit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of unsuccessful, or successful war,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might never reach me more!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Fifty years ago, a weekly newspaper was the only remembrancer to either
+parson or doctor, of the world which they had left, and that one only
+sent by the member for the county, when he thought it desirable to awake
+the general gratitude on the approach of a general election. The Thames
+certainly might remind the village population that there were merchants
+and mariners among mankind; but what were those passing phantoms to
+them? John the son of Thomas lived and died as Thomas the father of John
+had lived and died from generation to generation. The first news of the
+American war reached it in the firing of the Woolwich guns for peace;
+and the original tidings of the French Revolution, in similar rejoicings
+for the Battle of Waterloo.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O happy ye, the happiest of your kind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who leave alike life's woes and joys behind!"<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>says the philosophic Cowley; and with Cowley I perfectly agree.</p>
+
+<p>But Erith is this scene of philosophy no more. It has now shared the
+march of mind: it has become almost a watering-place; it has a library,
+a promenade, lodgings for gouty gentlemen, a conventicle, several
+vigorous politicians, three doctors, and, most fatal of all, four
+steam-boat arrivals every day. Solitude has fled, and meditation is no
+more.</p>
+
+<p>But, to my story. In that lonely house, lived for several years, in the
+beginning of the century, a singular character, of whom nothing more was
+known, than that he had come from some distant place of abode; that he
+never received a letter; and that he never hunted, shot, or fished with
+the squiredom of the country. He was of large form, loud voice, had a
+sullen look, and no trust in her Majesty's ministers for the time being.
+At length, on some occasion of peculiar public excitement, the recluse
+had gone to Gravesend, where, tempted by the impulse of the moment, he
+had broken through his reserve, dashed out into a diatribe of singular
+fierceness, but of remarkable power, accused England of all kinds of
+oppression to all kinds of countries, and finished his speech by a
+recapitulation of all the wishes, wants, woes, and wrongs, as he called
+them, of Ireland,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"First flower of the west, and first gem of the ocean."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Within the next twelve hours, a pair of Bow Street officers were seen
+galloping into the village in a post-chaise and four. They brought a
+warrant from the Secretary of State to arrest the Irish orator, as a
+leader of the late Rebellion returned from transportation, on his own
+authority. He was captured, and conveyed to the Tower. And this was the
+last intelligence of the patriot; except that he appealed to the
+government against all repetition of his Australian voyage, and swore
+that he preferred the speedier performance of the law to the operations
+on the Coal-mine river. A remarkable tempest, which broke all the
+windows, and threw down half the chimneys of the city, a few weeks
+after; was supposed by the imaginative to be connected with his
+disappearance. At all events, he was heard of no more.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE VISION.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thunder pealed and lightning quivered,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gusts a prison's casements shivered.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From its dungeon rose a scream,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where, awakened by the gleam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From his pallet rose and ran,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wild with fear, a stalwart man.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saw he in his tortured sleep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Things that make the heart-veins creep?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swept he through the world of flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Chased by shapes that none may name?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still, as bars and windows clanged,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still he roared&mdash;"I <i>will</i> be hanged."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sleep had swept him o'er the seas,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the drear antipodes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There he saw a felon band,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Chains on neck, and spade in hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Orators, all sworn to die<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In "Old Ireland's" cause&mdash;or fly!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now, divorced from pike and pen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Digging ditch, and draining fen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sky their ceiling, sand their bed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fed and flogged, and flogged and fed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Operatives!" he harangued;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Ere I'm banished&mdash;I'll be hanged."<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now, he strove to strike a light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, a form of giant height<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the crashing casement sprang;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shattered stanchions round him rang,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From his eyes a light within<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Showed the blackness of his skin;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In his lips a huge cigar<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smouldered, like a dying star;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Holding to the culprit's eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Writ in flame, a scroll of lies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Champing jaws with iron fanged,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Friend," cried he, "you <i>shall</i> be hanged."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Twixt the tempter and the rogue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then began the dialogue:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;"Master&mdash;shall I rob the state?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Not, unless you'd dine off plate."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;"Shall I try my hand at law?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"You'll be sure to make a flaw."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;"Shall I job in Parliament?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"You'll be richer, cent per cent."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;"Shall I truckle, or talk big?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"You'll but get a judge's wig,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blockheads may be conscience-panged,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knaves are pensioned, but, <i>not</i> hanged!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;"Master, <i>must</i> I then escape?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"No," exclaimed the knowing shape,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"You shall perish by Lynch-Law."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through his skull he struck a claw,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the tempest burst a wail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the bars a serpent-tail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flashing like a lightning spire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seemed to set the cell on fire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far and wide was heard the clang,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the whirlwind as they sprang.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Many a year the sulphurous fume<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stung the nostril in that room.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The river widens, and we sweep along by the rich slopes and deep wooded
+vales of the Kentish shore. From time to time little pastoral villages
+emerge, from plantations of willows and poplars, and all water-loving
+trees. Before coming to Purfleet, we had passed a noble hill, looking
+over a vast expanse of country, on which stands a princely
+mansion,&mdash;Belvedere, with its battlements glittering above groves as
+thick as the depths of the Black Forest. This was once the mansion of
+Lord Eardley, one of the greatest humorists of the age,&mdash;the companion
+of George the Fourth, before he ceased to be a wit and became a king.</p>
+
+<p>How many delightful things are lost to the world, by the world's own
+laziness. Why have we not a Boswell in every city? Her majesty pays a
+laureate, who writes nothing but the annual receipt for his pension. Why
+not transfer the office to a Boswell? why not establish a Cabinet-dinner
+Boswell? a Buckingham-palace Boswell? a Windsor Boswell? with orders to
+make their weekly returns of gaiety and gossipry to the Home Department;
+to be thence issued by instalments of anecdote, in volumes, like "Lord
+Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors," or in columns, like the protocols
+of the Montpensier marriage, for the laughter of mankind?</p>
+
+<p>But the report of a heavy gun, and all eyes turned to a huge shell,
+making its curve a mile above our heads, reminded us that the artillery
+had a field-day as we passed Woolwich, and that there was every
+possibility that this vagrant messenger of destruction, might plump into
+our midships.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span> The consternation on board grew, as it descended, looking
+bigger and blacker every instant. If it had come on board, it must have
+torn us up like paper. The catastrophe would have been invaluable to the
+journals of the empire, at this moment of a dearth of news, enough to
+make bankrupts of all the coffee-houses in London, and close every club
+from Charing Cross to Hyde Park Corner. <i>We</i> should all have been
+immortal in paragraphs without number. Coroners, surgeons, poets, and
+special juries, would have made their reputation out of <i>us</i>; and for a
+month of hot weather, we should have been a refreshing topic in the
+mouths of mankind. But it was otherwise decreed: the shell dropped
+within a foot of the steamer, and we were <i>quittes pour la peur</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I fired a poetic shot at Woolwich in return.</p>
+
+<h4>THE ROYAL ARSENAL.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Woolwich&mdash;Woolwich,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Thames is thy ditch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And stout hearts are thy fortification.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let come who come may,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All is open as day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy gates are as free as thy nation.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let the King of the French<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Build wall, or dig trench,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Though he has no more princes to marry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Our</i> trench is the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And <i>our</i> walls are the free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And we laugh at thy "<i>grande enceinte, Paris.</i>"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Deep and dark on their quay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like lions at bay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Stand the guns that set earth at defiance;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With mountains of ball,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, wherever they fall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With their message make speedy compliance.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Along the Parade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lies the brisk carronade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With Wellington's joy, the twelve-pounder.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the long sixty-eight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made for matters of weight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The world has no arguments sounder.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There stands the long rocket,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That shot, from its socket,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Puts armies, pell-mell, to the rout, sir;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At Leipsic, its tail<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made Napoleon turn pale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And sent all his <i>braves</i> right about, sir.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And there gapes the mortar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That seldom gives quarter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When speaking to ship or to city;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For, although deaf and dumb,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its tongue is a bomb&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And so, there's an end of my ditty.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The sun had now overcome the mists of the morning, and was throwing a
+rich lustre over the long sheets of foliage which screened, but without
+concealing, a large and classic villa on the Essex side. The park
+reached to the water's edge, in broad vistas, green as the emerald; deer
+were moving in groups over the lawn, or on standing still to gaze on the
+wonder<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span> of our flying ship. A few boats were slowly passing near the
+shore, along with the tide; the water was without a ripple,&mdash;the air was
+soft and fragrant, as it flowed from grove and garden; and the whole was
+a scene of sylvan and summer beauty. The thought suddenly shot across my
+mind, what a capital prize this would be, in a revolution! How
+handsomely it would repay a patriot for his trouble in uprooting lords
+and commons! What a philosophic consummation of a life of husting
+harangues, and league itinerancy, it would be, to lie on the
+drawing-room sofa of a mansion so perfectly Greek, railing at the
+tyranny of thrones, the bigotry of bishops, and the avarice of
+aristocracies; lamenting the privations of the poor, over a table of
+three courses, and drinking confusion to all monopolies in <i>Vin de
+Comete!</i></p>
+
+<p>But, who was the present possessor? I asked the name and heard it. But,
+from the captain to the cabin-boy, not a soul could give me another
+syllable of information. Like the gravedigger in Hamlet, they might
+"cudgel their brains," but all came to the gravedigger's confession at
+last,&mdash;"Mass, I cannot tell."</p>
+
+<p>Such, thought I, are the chances of the world. The owner of this marine
+palace,&mdash;of these gardens, groves, deer, and dovecotes,&mdash;cannot have
+less than &pound;10,000 a-year; yet his name has never reached the auricular
+sensibilities of man, beyond the fence of his own park. Was he
+philosopher, statesman, lawyer, orator, historian? inventor of
+steam-engine, of spinning jenny, of gunpowder, or of gun-cotton? No, I
+searched every cell of memory for some "trivial fond record" which might
+justify his title to a mansion and grounds fit for Sophocles, Schiller,
+or Shakspeare, the master of them all. I could not find, in all the
+rolls of the court of reminiscences, a single scrape of the pen to
+inform me; not so much as the commemorative smoke of a candle on the
+ceiling of the alcove of Mnemosyne; not a vestige of the "light
+fantastic toe," of those sylphs who treasure the flippancies of noble
+pens, and live in the fragrance of albums, otto-perfumed. Still I was
+driven to the confession, "Mass, I cannot tell."</p>
+
+<p>I had brought a volume of poor Tom Campbell in my pocket, and had been
+glancing over his <i>chef-d'&oelig;uvre</i>, "Ye Mariners of England," when this
+stately edifice first checked my inspiration. In the wrath of my spirit
+I tossed the volume overboard. "Psha!" I involuntarily exclaimed, "what
+is the use of being a genius? What is the gratitude of a country, where
+a cotton-spinner can purchase the fee-simple of a province, while the
+man who spreads its fame over the world is left to gather his
+contemplations over a stove in an attic, watch the visage of his
+landlady, and shudder at the rise of coals!</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'England, with all thy faults I love thee still.'</p></div>
+
+<p>But it must be confessed, that thou art the most pitiful, paltry,
+beggarly, blind&mdash;" I shall say no more. Thy whole munificence, thy whole
+magnanimity, thy whole generosity, to the living lights of thy sullen
+region of toil, trimming, and tribulation, of the dulness of dukes and
+the mountainous fortunes of pinmakers&mdash;is exactly &pound;1200 a-year! and this
+to be divided among the whole generation of the witty and the wise, of
+the sons and daughters of the muse,&mdash;the whole "school of the prophets,"
+the lustres of the poetry and the science of England! &pound;1200 a-year for
+the only men of their generation who will be remembered for five minutes
+by the generation to come. &pound;1200 a-year, the salary of an Excise
+commissioner, of a manipulator of the penny post, of a charity
+inspector, of a police magistrate, of a register of cabs, of any thing
+and every body: and this, reduced to decimals, is to be the national
+prize, the luxurious provision, the brilliant prospect, the illustrious
+tribute of a treasury of fifty millions sterling a-year, to the whole
+literature of a land which boasts of its being the intellectual leader
+of the world!</p>
+
+<p>I have found the poems of our living bards on the shores of Hudson's
+Bay, and heard men talking of them round a stove, while the thermometer
+outside the window was 30&deg; below zero. I have found them in a
+plantain-thatched hovel on the banks of the Niger, and forgotten while I
+read them that the thermometer was 110&deg;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span> in the shade. I have found them
+in the hands of a learned pundit on the banks of the Ganges, whom they
+were seducing into dreams of dewy pastures and crystal rills. And one of
+the pleasantest evenings I ever remember to have spent, was, by the help
+of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," as I sat at a supper of rice milk,
+after a day of fire on the eastern branch of the Nile, a thousand miles
+above Tourists, sheltered under the wagon of a Moorish ambassador from
+Sultaun Abderahman to the monarch of Gondar. "England!" exclaimed this
+ebony-visaged worshipper of the Beaux Arts, as he displayed the volume
+before me. It was the only civilised word in his vocabulary. But I felt
+the compliment with patriotic fervency, and in spirit thanked the bard
+for the barbarian's acknowledgment of my poetic and penurious country.</p>
+
+<p>I have not done with the theme yet. On returning from the equator, I saw
+Campbell's funeral. Westminster Abbey was a mob of dukes, statesmen,
+privy-councillors, and men of countless acres. Poor Tom's whole life had
+been thankless toil; wasting in meagre industry the powers which ought
+to have been cherished by his country for purposes of national honour.
+Such is always the course of things. The very stones of Burns' pillars
+would have made the great poet happy for life, if their price had been
+given to him to cheer his melancholy fireside. Why has the poetic spirit
+of England folded its wings, and been content to abandon its brilliant
+region to the butterflies of albums, but that the spirit of England has
+suffered itself to be fettered by the red tape of a peddling parsimony?
+Should we have had a Shakspeare without the smiles of an Elizabeth, and
+the generosity of a Southampton? No. He would have split his pen after
+his first tragedy; have thrown his ink-stand into the Thames; have taken
+the carrier's cart to Stratford, and there finished his days in writing
+epitaphs in the churchyard, laughing at Sir Thomas Lucy, and bequeathing
+deathless scoffs, to the beggary of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>I was growing into what the dramatists call a "towering passion," and
+meditating general reforms of Civil Lists, Chancellors of the Exchequer,
+and Lord Chamberlains, when my attention was turned to a very animated
+scene going on between a pair who seemed perfectly unconscious of all
+the external creation. One of the parties was a showy-looking fellow,
+with the mingled expression of <i>rou&eacute;ism</i> and half-pay, which is so
+frequent and so unmistakeable in the neighbourhood of St James's. The
+lady was a calm and composed personage, whom, on a second glance, I
+remembered to have seen wherever the world could bow down to the fair
+possessor of countless "consols." But the passion for a handsome
+mansion, a handsome stud, and a handsome rental, is indefatigable, and
+the ex-staff man poured his adorations into her ear with all the glow of
+a suitor ten thousand pounds worse than nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Poesy! sweetest of all the maids of Parnassus! it is thou that givest
+thy votary power to read the soul: it is thou that canst translate the
+glance into a speech, and give eloquence to the clasp of a hand. It is
+thou alone to whom the world is indebted for this <i>true</i> version of the
+pleadings of the Guardsman.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TRUE_LOVE" id="TRUE_LOVE"></a>TRUE LOVE.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Exquisite Miss Millionaire!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hear a lover's genuine prayer:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let the world adore your charms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swan-like neck, or snowy arms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rosy smile, or dazzling glance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Making all our bosoms dance;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For your purse alone I care,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Exquisite Miss Millionaire!<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Ringlets blackest of the black,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ivory shoulders, Grecian back,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tresses so divinely twined,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That we long to be the wind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Waiting till the lady's face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turns, to give the <i>coup de grace</i>.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All those spells to <i>me</i> are air.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Truth is truth, Miss Millionaire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let them talk of finger-tips,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pearly teeth, or coral lips,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cheeks the morning rose that mock,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Still</i> there <i>is</i> a charm in Stock!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Solid mortgage, five per cent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Freehold with "improving" rent,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Russia bond, and railroad share,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Steal <i>my</i> soul, Miss Millionaire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let your rhymers (all are crackt)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rave of cloud or cataract;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the Rhine, or Rhone, or Arve,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let romancers stroll and starve.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cupid loves a gilded cage,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Let <i>me</i> choose your equipage,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Passion pants for Portman Square,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Be but mine,) Miss Millionaire.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There you'll lead a London life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More a goddess than a wife;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fifty thousand pounds a-year<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Making our expenses clear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Giving, once a-week, a <i>f&ecirc;te</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Simply to display our plate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Never earth saw such a pair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Exquisite Miss Millionaire!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But a steeple starts up from its green thickets; not one of the hideous
+objects which the architects of our district churches perpetrate, to
+puzzle the passer-by as to the purpose of its being,&mdash;whether a brewer's
+chimney, or a shot-tower,&mdash;a perch for city pigeons, or a standing
+burlesque on the builders of the nineteenth age of the fine arts in
+England. This steeple is an old grey turret, ivy-mantled, modest, and
+with that look of venerable age which instinctively makes us feel, that
+it has witnessed memorable things in its time.</p>
+
+<p>And it <i>has</i> witnessed them. On the slope of the hill above this church
+once waved the banners of a king, and the opposing banners of his
+nobles: the one receiving the lesson, that kings have duties as well as
+their subjects; and the others enforcing the lesson by the sight of
+lines and columns of the stout bowmen and billmen of the Norman
+chivalry.&mdash;On this spot, just this day six hundred and thirty years ago,
+was held the grand conference between John and the Barons.</p>
+
+<p>Further inland, but rising on the view, is Swainscomb, the hill on which
+the Danish armies encamped, in their pirate rovings of the British seas,
+and their invasions of the Thames.</p>
+
+<p>What a contrast between the green landscape of this moment, and the camp
+of Sweno. All before me was the luxury of cultivation, the yellowing
+crop, the grazing cattle, the cottage smoke curling slowly upward on the
+back-ground of noble beech, ash, and sycamore. On the summit, the sun
+gleamed on a rectory house, half buried in roses, where the most learned
+of our Orientalists perused the Koran in the peace of a Mahometan
+paradise, and doubtless saw, on the dancing waters of the mighty river
+at his feet, perpetual visions of houris.</p>
+
+<p>Yet those pastures once echoed with the barbarian cries of the Cimbric
+warriors; tents of seal-skin and white bear fur covered the hill; the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span>
+smokes of savage feasting and Scandinavian sacrifice clouded the skies;
+and on the summit, surrounded by iron guards and spectral-looking
+priests, stood the magic standard of the north, the image of the Raven,
+which flapped its wings on the coming of battle, and gave the oracular
+cry of victory.</p>
+
+<p>But, what sounds of harmony sweep along the water! I see a range of
+showy figures on the shore; it is a whole brass band, seducing us, in
+the style of the syrens of old, to bring our ship to an anchor, and
+hazard the enchantments of the most delicious of tea-gardens.&mdash;We are
+within a hundred yards of the pier of Rosherville.</p>
+
+<p>Within five minutes, we might be roaming through this paradise of the
+Thames, climbing rustic slopes carpeted with flowers, or gazing at a
+menagerie, where the monkeys bound, chatter, and take apples out of your
+hand; or sipping coffee of the most fragrant growth, or dancing the
+polka under alcoves of painted canvass, large enough to man&oelig;uvre a
+brigade of the Horse-guards. By day the scene is romantic, but by night
+it is magical. By day the stranger roams through labyrinths of exotic
+vegetation, but by night he is enchanted with invisible music, dazzled
+with fireworks, and goes to his pillow to dream of the Arabian Nights.
+Honour to the name of Jeremiah Rosher, the discoverer of the
+"capabilities" of this Garden of the Hesperides. He found it a lime
+quarry, and made it a bower of Armida. If, as the great moralist said,
+"the man who makes two blades of grass grow where but one grew before,
+is a benefactor to mankind," what honours should be paid to the genius,
+which substituted human beings for lime-burners, and made the &eacute;lite of
+the east end of the mighty metropolis dance by thousands, where nothing
+but the top of a thistle ever danced before. There have been more "first
+affections" awakened in the rambles through the shades of Rosherville
+than in fifty Almacks, and five hundred times more matches in
+consequence, than ever took refuge in Gretna; and all this&mdash;for a
+shilling!</p>
+
+<p>As we neared the pier, I observed a small but elegant yacht, lying to;
+with several groups of dark-featured and cloak-covered men listening,
+with all the eagerness of foreign gesture, to the brazen harmony. My
+Italian <i>compagnon de voyage</i>, instantly bounded from his seat, ran to
+the ship's side, and held a rapid dialogue with the crew of the little
+vessel. They were just from Rome, and were bringing over the newly
+appointed Archbishop from the Vatican! The novelty of the voyage did not
+seem to agree with the pleasurable faculties of those sons of "Bella
+Italia," for nothing could be conceived more deplorable than their
+physiognomies.</p>
+
+<p>The scene reminded me of one which I had witnessed at Naples, on the
+arrival of the first steam-boat from Rome, conveying the Cardinal Legate
+to the Court of his Majesty of the Two Sicilies.</p>
+
+<p>I disdain all the formalities of poetry. Let others prepare their
+parchment-bound portfolios, throw their visages into the <i>penseroso</i>,
+fling their curls back from their brows, unbutton their shirt-collars,
+and, thus Byronised, begin. To <i>me</i> all times and places are the
+same.&mdash;The inspiration rushes on me, and I pour out my "unpremeditated
+song" in the original rapture of Bardism!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_CARDINALS_VOYAGE" id="THE_CARDINALS_VOYAGE"></a>THE CARDINAL'S VOYAGE.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I have seen some queer things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both in people and kings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Since first I began as a dreamer;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I ne'er thought to hear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Any thing half so queer<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">As a Cardinal's trip in a steamer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I once saw a Rabbi,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The prince of the shabby,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">In a gale of wind playing the screamer,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Till we plumped him o'erboard,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Towed along by a cord,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">For a bath at the tail of the steamer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Tis true, the Chinese<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Looked as black as their teas,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">When battered by brave Sir John Bremer:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But John Chinaman's slaughter<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was all milk and water,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To the havoc on board of the steamer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On a coil of the cable,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Right under the table,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">With the glass at 500 of Reaumur,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Busy "making his soul,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As he felt every roll,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Lay his Highness, on board of the steamer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Around him ten chaplains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And none of them saplings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Lay pale as a quarantine streamer.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With six dozen of monks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All as helpless as trunks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">All rolling about in the steamer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As she steered down the Tiber,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It shook every fibre<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Of the conclave from forehead to <i>femur</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, 'twas when in her glee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She got sight of the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">That she showed them the tricks of the steamer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">At Civita Vecchia,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, mie orecchie!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">What howls called the Saints to redeem her.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But she darted along<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a stone from a thong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">In the style of a true British steamer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She now ruled the roast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As she sprang from the coast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Through such surges no buckets could teem her:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Lipari Isles<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Got but very few smiles<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">From the brethren on board of the steamer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"As sure as we're born,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We'll ne'er see Leghorn."<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">"Peccavi!" cried out every schemer:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The whole of the friars.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In that court were "criers,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">While thundered the wheels of the steamer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I'd not stand in their shoes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As they passed Syracuse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Where thy frigate lay moored, Captain Seymour:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the top of their throats<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yelling out for thy boats,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">While teeth to the wind went the steamer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As they swept by Messina&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy birth-place, Christina!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Old Etna was scarce such a beamer:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In vain they cried&mdash;"Stop!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a blaze at her top,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Like a pillar of flame rushed the steamer.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She bounced by Charybdis,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With limestone which ribb'd is;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">A touch from a pebble might seam her;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made a curtsey to Scylla,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the Turks say, "Bismillah,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">'Twas a very close shave for the steamer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But the surges grew brown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the night hurried down,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And they saw in each flash a death-gleamer;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the peals from the clouds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the wind in the shrouds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Made them all very sick of the steamer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When they made Capri's lights<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It redoubled their frights,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And the friars all bellowed&mdash;"Tenemur!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One and all made confessions,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(E'en popes have transgressions,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">There was some heavy work in the steamer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But they soon smelt the apples<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fish-shops of Naples,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And the cargo began to esteem her&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"No witch in a sieve,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They could ever believe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Had sailed half so fast as the steamer."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Could my pen give a sketch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of each wo-begone wretch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Like Gilray, H. B., or old Damer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You should have the whole troop<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That lay stretched on the poop,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">As up by the mole dashed the steamer.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Were I Guizot, or Florian,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or "Oxford Historian,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Or "Orator" like Dr Cremer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In my grand paragraphs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You should have all the laughs<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Of the mob as they rushed from the steamer!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LETTERS_ON_THE_TRUTHS_CONTAINED_IN_POPULAR_SUPERSTITIONS" id="LETTERS_ON_THE_TRUTHS_CONTAINED_IN_POPULAR_SUPERSTITIONS"></a>LETTERS ON THE TRUTHS CONTAINED IN POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>II.&mdash;VAMPYRISM.</h3>
+
+<p>Dear Archy,&mdash;In acknowledging my former letter, you express an eager
+desire to learn, as you phrase it, "all about vampyrs, if there ever
+were such things." I will not delay satisfying your curiosity, wondering
+only how my friend, your late tutor, Mr H., should have left you in a
+state of uncertainty upon a point on which, in my time, schoolboys many
+years your juniors had fully made up their minds.</p>
+
+<p>"Were there ever such things as vampyrs?" <i>tantamne rem tam
+negligenter?</i> I turn to the learned pages of Horst for a luminous and
+precise definition of the destructive and mysterious beings, whose
+existence you have ventured to consider problematical.</p>
+
+<p>"A vampyr is a dead body, which continues to live in the grave, which it
+leaves, however, by night, for the purpose of sucking the blood of the
+living, whereby it is nourished, and preserved in good condition,
+instead of becoming decomposed like other dead bodies."</p>
+
+<p>Upon my word, you really deserve&mdash;Since<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span> Mr George Combe has clearly
+shown in his admirable work "On the Constitution of Man, and its
+adaptation to the world around him," that ignorance is a statutable
+crime before Nature, and punishable, and punished by the laws of
+Providence,&mdash;you deserve, I say, unless you contrive to make Mr H. your
+substitute, which I think would be just, yourself to be the subject of
+the nocturnal visit of a vampyr. Your scepticism will abate pretty
+considerably, when you see him stealthily entering your room, yet are
+powerless under the fascination of his fixed and leaden eye&mdash;when you
+are conscious, as you lie motionless with terror, of his nearer and
+nearer approach,&mdash;when you feel his face, fresh with the smell of the
+grave, bent over your throat, while his keen teeth make a fine incision
+in your jugular, preparatively to his commencing his plain, but
+nutritive repast.</p>
+
+<p>You would look a little paler the next morning, but that would be all
+for the moment; for Fischer informs us, that the bite of a vampyr leaves
+in general no mark upon the person. But he fearfully adds, "it (the
+bite) is nevertheless speedily fatal, unless the bitten person protect
+himself by eating some of the earth from the grave of the vampyr, and
+smearing himself with his blood." Unfortunately, indeed, these measures
+are only of temporary use. Fischer adds, "if through these precautions
+the life of the victim be prolonged for a period, sooner or later he
+ends with becoming a vampyr himself; that is to say, he dies, and is
+buried, but continues to lead a vampyr life in the grave, nourishing
+himself by infecting others, and promiscuously propagating vampyrism."</p>
+
+<p>Now this is no romancer's dream. It is a succinct account of a
+superstition, which to this day survives in the east of Europe, where
+little more than a century ago it was frightfully prevalent. At that
+epoch, vampyrism spread like, an epidemic pestilence through Servia and
+Wallachia, causing innumerable deaths, and disturbing all the land with
+apprehension of the mysterious visitation, against which no one felt his
+life secure.</p>
+
+<p>This is something like a good solid practical popular delusion. Do I
+believe it?&mdash;to be sure I do; the facts are matter of history. The
+people died like sheep, and the cause and method of their dying was, in
+their belief, what has just been stated. You suppose, then, they died,
+frightened out of their lives; as men have died, whose pardon has been
+proclaimed when their necks were already on the block, of the belief
+that they were going to die? Well, if that were all, the subject would
+be worth examining; but there is more in it than that, as the following
+o'er true tale will convince you, the essential parts of which are
+attested by perfect documentary evidence.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the spring of 1727 that there returned from the Levant to the
+village of Meduegna, near Belgrade, one Arnod Paole, who, in a few years
+of military service and varied adventure, had amassed enough to purchase
+him a cottage, and an acre or two of land in his native place, where he
+gave out he meant to pass the remainder of his days. He kept his word.
+Arnod had yet scarcely reached the prime of manhood; and though he must
+have encountered the rough, as well as the smooth of life, and have
+mingled with many a wild and reckless companion, yet his natural good
+disposition, and honest principle, had preserved him unscathed amid the
+scenes he had passed through. At all events, such were the thoughts
+expressed by his neighbours, as they discussed his return and settlement
+among them in the stube of the village Hof. Nor did the frank and open
+countenance of Arnod, his obliging habits, and steady conduct, argue
+their judgment incorrect. Nevertheless, there was something
+occasionally, noticeable in his ways, a look and tone that betrayed
+inward inquietude. Often would he refuse to join his friends, or on some
+sudden plea abruptly quit their society. And he still more
+unaccountably, and as it seemed systematically, avoided meeting his
+pretty neighbour, Nina, whose father occupied the next tenement to his
+own. At the age of seventeen, Nina was as charming a picture as you
+could have seen, of youth, cheerfulness, innocence, and confidence in
+all the world. You could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span> not look into her limpid eyes, which steadily
+returned your gaze, without seeing to the bottom of the pure and
+transparent spring of her thoughts. Then why did Arnod shrink from
+meeting her? He was young, had a little property, had health and
+industry, and he had told his friends he had formed no ties in other
+lands. Why, then, did he avoid the fascination of the pretty Nina, who
+seemed a being made to chase from any brow the clouds of gathering care?
+But he did so. Yet less and less resolutely; for he felt the charm of
+her presence; who could have done otherwise? and how could he at last
+resist&mdash;he didn't&mdash;the impulse of his fondness for the innocent girl who
+often sought to cheer his fits of depression?</p>
+
+<p>And they were to be united; were betrothed; yet still an anxious gloom
+would fitfully overcast his countenance even in the sunshine of those
+hours.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, dear Arnod, that makes you sad? it cannot be on my account,
+I know; for you were sad before you ever noticed me; and that I think,"
+and you should have seen the deepening rose upon her cheek, as she
+added, "surely first made me notice you."</p>
+
+<p>"Nina," he answered, "I have done, I fear, a great wrong in trying to
+gain your affections. Nina, I have a fixed impression that I shall not
+live; yet, knowing this, I have selfishly made my existence necessary to
+your happiness."</p>
+
+<p>"How strangely you talk, dear Arnod! Who in the village is stronger and
+healthier than you? You feared no danger when you were a soldier; what
+danger do you fear as a villager of Meduegna?"</p>
+
+<p>"It haunts me, Nina."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Arnod, you were sad before you thought of loving me. Did you then
+fear to die?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Nina, it is something worse than death:" and his vigorous frame
+shook with agony.</p>
+
+<p>"Arnod, I conjure you, tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"It was in Cossova this fate befel me. Here we have hitherto escaped the
+terrible scourge. But there they died, and the dead visited the living.
+I experienced a first frightful visitation, and I fled, but not till I
+had sought his grave, and exacted the dread expiation from the vampyr."</p>
+
+<p>Nina uttered a piercing cry, and fell senseless. Afterwards, they found
+a consolation in the length of time, now months, that had elapsed, since
+Arnod had left Cossova, during which no fearful visitant had again
+approached him; and they fondly began to hope <i>that</i> gave them security.
+For the poor girl well knew from many a village tale the danger to which
+Arnod had been exposed.</p>
+
+<p>It is a strange world. The ills we fear often never befall us: the blows
+that reach us are for the most part unforeseen ones. One day, about a
+week after this conversation, Arnod missed his footing and fell from the
+top of his loaded hay-wagon. He was picked up stunned and insensible.
+They carried him home; where, after lingering some hours, he died; was
+buried; but <i>not</i> forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty or thirty days after his decease, says the perfectly
+authenticated report of these transactions, several in the neighbourhood
+made complaints that they had been haunted by the deceased Arnod; and
+four of the number (among whom, there being nothing in the report to the
+contrary, I am afraid we may include poor Nina) died. To put a term to
+this fearful evil, the villagers were advised by their Heyduke, who had
+had before some experience in such matters, to disinter the body of
+Arnod Paole. This step was accordingly taken <i>forty days after his
+burial</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"The body," says the report, "was found in a perfectly fresh state, with
+no sign of decomposition. Fresh blood had recently escaped from its
+mouth, with which its shirt was wet. The skin (the epidermis, no doubt)
+had separated together with the nails, and there were new skin and nails
+underneath. As it was perfectly clear from these signs that he was a
+vampyr, conformably to the use established in such cases, they drove a
+stake through his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Whereupon he gave an audible groan, and a quantity of blood flowed from
+him. The same day his body was burned to ashes, which were returned to
+the grave."</p>
+
+<p>The authorities further staked and burned the bodies of the four others,
+who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span> were supposed to have been infected by Arnod: but no mention is
+made of the condition in which they were found.</p>
+
+<p>The adoption of this decisive, measure did not, however, entirely
+extinguish the evil, which continued still to hang about the village.
+About five years afterwards it had again become rife and very prevalent,
+and many again died of it. Whereupon the authorities determined to make
+a general clearance of the vampyrs in the churchyard of Meduegna, and
+for that purpose they had all the graves to which suspicion was
+directed, opened, and their contents dealt with conformably to the state
+in which they were found, of which the following is the medical report,
+here and there <i>abridged</i> only:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>1. A woman of the name of Stana, 20 years of age, who had died 3 months
+before of a 3 days' illness following her confinement. She had before
+her death avowed that she had anointed herself with the blood of a
+vampyr, to liberate herself from his persecution. Nevertheless she, as
+well as her infant, whose body through careless interment had been
+half-eaten by dogs, both had died. Her body was entirely free from
+decomposition. On opening it, the chest was found full of recently
+effused blood. The heart and blood-vessels contained no coagulated
+blood, and the bowels had exactly the appearances of sound health. The
+skin and nails of the hands and feet were loose and came off, but
+underneath lay new skin and nails.</p>
+
+<p>2. A woman of the name of Miliza, who had died at the end of a 3 months'
+illness. The body had been buried 90 and odd days. In the chest was
+liquid blood. The viscera were as in the former instance. The body was
+declared by the Heydukes who recognised it, to be in better condition
+and fatter than it had been in the woman's legitimate lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>3. The body of a child of 8 years old, that had likewise been buried 90
+days; it was in the vampyr condition.</p>
+
+<p>4. The son of a Heyduke, named Milloc 16 years old. The body had lain in
+the grave 9 weeks. He had died after 3 days' indisposition, and was in
+the condition of a vampyr.</p>
+
+<p>5. Joachim, likewise a Heyduke's son, 17 years old. He had died after a
+3 days' illness; had been buried 8 weeks and 4 days; was found in the
+vampyr state.</p>
+
+<p>6. A woman of the name of Rusha, who had died of an illness of 10 days'
+duration, and had been buried 6 weeks, in whom likewise fresh blood was
+found in the chest.</p>
+
+<p>[The reader will understand, that to see blood in the chest it is first
+necessary to <i>cut</i> the chest open.]</p>
+
+<p>7. The body of a girl of 10 years of age, who had died 2 months before.
+It was likewise in the vampyr state, perfectly undecomposed, with blood
+in the chest.</p>
+
+<p>8. The body of the wife of one Hadnuck, buried 7 weeks before; and that
+of her infant, 8 weeks old, buried only 21 days. They were both in a
+state of decomposition, though buried in the same ground, and closely
+adjoining the others.</p>
+
+<p>9. A servant of the Heyduke of the place, by name Rhade, 23 years old;
+he had died after an illness of 3 months' duration, and the body had
+been buried 5 weeks. It was in a state of decomposition.</p>
+
+<p>10. The body of the Heyduke Stanco, 60 years of age, who had died six
+weeks before: there was much blood and other fluid in the chest and
+abdomen, and the body was in the vampyr condition.</p>
+
+<p>11. Milloc, a Heyduke, 25 years old. The body had been in the earth 6
+weeks. It was in the perfect vampyr condition.</p>
+
+<p>12. Stanjoika, the wife of a Heyduke, 20 years old; had died after an
+illness of three days, and had been buried 18 days. The countenance was
+florid, and of a high colour. There was blood in the chest and in the
+heart. The viscera were perfectly sound. The skin remarkably fresh.</p>
+
+<p>The document which gives these particulars is signed by three regimental
+surgeons, and formally countersigned by the lieutenant-colonel and a
+sub-lieutenant, it bears the date of June 7, 1732, Meduegna near
+Belgrade. No doubt can be entertained of its authenticity, nor of its
+<i>general</i> fidelity; the less so, that it does not stand alone, but is
+supported by heaps of parallel evidence, only less rigorously
+verifiable. It appears to me to establish beyond a question, that,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span>
+where the fear and belief of vampyrism is prevailing, and there occur
+several deaths after short illnesses, the bodies, when disinterred,
+weeks after burial, present the appearance of corpses, from which life
+has only recently departed.</p>
+
+<p>What inference shall we draw from this fact?&mdash;that vampyrism is true in
+the popular sense, and that these fresh-looking and well-conditioned
+corpses had some mysterious way of preternaturally nourishing
+themselves? That would be to adopt, not to solve the superstition. Let
+us content ourselves for the present with a notion less monstrous, but
+still startling enough: That the bodies, which were found in the
+so-called vampyr state, instead of being in a new and mystical
+condition, were simply alive in the common way; that, in short, they
+were the bodies of persons who had been buried alive; and whose life was
+only extinguished by the ignorance and barbarity of those who
+disinterred them. In the following sketch of a similar scene to that
+above described, the truth of this inference comes out with terrific
+force and vividness.</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus Francisi, in his remarks upon the description of the Archdukedom
+of Krain, by Valvasor, speaks of a man of the name of Grando, in the
+district of Kring, who died, was buried, and became a vampyr, and as
+such was exhumed for the purpose of having a stake thrust through him.</p>
+
+<p>"When they opened his grave, after he had been long buried, his face was
+found with a colour, and his features made natural sorts of movements,
+as if the dead man smiled. He even opened his mouth, as if he would
+inhale fresh air. They held the crucifix before him, and called in a
+loud voice, 'See, this is Jesus Christ who redeemed your soul from hell,
+and died for you.' After the sound had acted on his organs of hearing,
+and he had connected, perhaps, some ideas with it, tears began to flow
+from the dead man's eyes. Finally, when, after a short prayer for his
+poor soul, they proceeded to hack off his head, the corpse uttered a
+screech, and turned and rolled just as if it had been alive, and the
+grave was full of blood."</p>
+
+<p>Alive, then, the bodies surely were. And it is from this position, as a
+starting point, that we must follow and unravel the whole mystery, <i>if
+we dare</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Not that there is any particular virulence in this superstition, but
+that all superstitions are awkward things to deal with. They have their
+own laws, and run through definite stages, but always menace those who
+meddle with them. A superstition waxes and flourishes&mdash;that is its first
+stage; it then wanes in public opinion, is discredited, and is declared
+obsolete; that is stage the second. Eventually comes more enlightenment;
+its wonders are again admitted, but explained; the false in it separated
+from the true; this is its third and last period. And it may be
+remarked, that society is never safe against the reproduction of a
+superstition, till it has gone through this third stage (analogous to
+the disinterment and dissection of a vampyr); till then, it is always
+capable of "walking" again. But, which is singular, to the end the
+operation of explaining a superstition is unsafe, that is to say, if you
+step a quarter of an inch before the sagacious nose of the public. Of
+course, if any one should attempt to explain away a flourishing
+superstition, he would encounter, not martyrdom, perhaps, any more, but
+the persecution of opinion certainly, and the ban of society. But if he
+ventures upon the same process, even with one that is already put down,
+he is liable to be viewed and attacked as a credulous person, disposed
+to revive forgotten rubbish; for he has unwittingly affronted public
+opinion by asserting that to be worth examining, which society had
+proclaimed an error. Doubly wo to him if his explanation contain some
+startling novelty! But, courage! again,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The bodies disinterred and found in the so-called vampyr state, were
+then alive.</p>
+
+<p>But how could they, you ask, be alive after an interment of days or
+weeks? How is it possible they could lie without air, boxed up in a
+manner which would certainly kill a strong and healthy person in a few
+minutes or hours, and yet retain their vitality? I will not bring
+forward as favourable cases in point, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span> instances of frogs and toads
+that have been discovered in rocks, where they must have been encased
+for years or centuries, alive: first, because, although they are true,
+you might equally question these; secondly, because a human being cannot
+compete in vitality with a cold-blooded reptile. I shall content myself
+with falling back upon the evidence already adduced. The disinterred
+bodies <i>proved</i>, by their appearance, some even by their behaviour, that
+they were alive; and I shall retort upon you the question, how came you
+not to know that bodies could live under such circumstances a
+considerable length of time, and that many cases have transpired in
+which, totally <i>apart from vampyrism</i>, bodies have been found turned
+over in the coffin, through efforts made by them, when, after their
+burial, they had unhappily recovered consciousness?</p>
+
+<p>But what, then, was the pathological condition in which these persons
+continued to exist, after they had ceased to appear alive?</p>
+
+<p>It is just one of the profitable results of examining the superstition
+before us, that the above question becomes explicitly propounded, and
+its solution demanded of physiologists. Its solution cannot fail of
+being full of interest, but it is yet, unluckily, a desideratum, or,
+like the principle which gives motion to the divining rod, as yet only
+indicated and partially outlined.</p>
+
+<p>What is wanted is direct scientific examination, and verification by
+competent persons, of all the phenomena the body presents in these
+strange circumstances. In the absence, however, of recorded observation,
+let us imagine how the thing might come about.</p>
+
+<p>The series of effects surmised would not begin in the heart; analogy
+leads us to suppose that primary interruption of the heart's action for
+a very brief period is fatal. Somewhere in the Indian seas, death is
+inflicted by a backward blow with the elbow on the region of the heart;
+a sudden angina is produced, which is promptly fatal. Neither, upon
+similar showing, can it commence in obstructed breathing. Then the
+commencement of the changes must be sought in the brain. Now it is
+analogically by no means very improbable, that the functions of the
+nervous system admit of being brought to a complete stand-still, the
+wheels of the machinery locking, as it were, of a sudden, through some
+influence directly exerted upon <i>it</i>, and that this state of interrupted
+function should continue for a very considerable period, without loss of
+power of recovery. Nor would it be contrary to analogy that such an
+arrest of activity in the nervous system should stop, more or less
+completely, the act of breathing and the action of the heart, without at
+the same time the consequences following which result from either of
+these changes, <i>when they are primary</i>. The heart, when <i>not acting by
+order</i>, need not be supposed to lose its contractile force and tendency.
+The blood, though not moving, being in contact with living vessels, need
+not coagulate. There is no physiological absurdity in supposing such a
+general arrest of function, originating in the nervous system, and
+continuing an indefinite period without life being extinguished. If a
+swimmer be taken with cramp and sink, he is irretrievably dead in five
+minutes. But if he sink from a fit of epilepsy, he may remain a longer
+time under water, yet recover. But epilepsy is a form of loss of
+consciousness beginning in the nervous system&mdash;a kind of fit which may,
+under certain circumstances, be thus preservative of life. So may we
+presume, that in the singular cases we are considering, the body is but
+in another and deeper fit, which suspends the vital phenomena, and
+reduces its vitality to that of the unincubated egg, to simple life,
+without change, without waste or renewal. The body does not putrefy,
+because it is alive; it does not waste or require nourishment, because
+every action is stilled within it.</p>
+
+<p>But this must be a dull subject of speculation for you, and your mind is
+perhaps wandering thence to more practical views. It has struck you
+possibly, not without an uncomfortable misgiving, that this obscure, but
+unpleasant event may happen to yourself, and what on earth is there to
+prevent <i>your</i> being buried alive?</p>
+
+<p>If you wish individually to be as safe as possible, leave by will to
+some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span> eminent surgeon, not your habitual attendant, &pound;50, and his railway
+expenses, &amp;c., to be paid him for opening your body, when you are
+certainly dead; &pound;25 if he opens you, finds you alive, and succeeds in
+sewing you up, and keeping you so; &pound;200, on the contrary, to be expended
+in indicting him for manslaughter if you die under his hands. I do not
+venture to affirm that with all these precautions you would be perfectly
+safe. The eminent Vesalius, surgeon, and a favourite of the Emperor
+Charles V., with all his experience and knowledge, was unlucky enough to
+open a Spanish nobleman by mistake, while he was yet alive. The
+consequences, no doubt, were more serious than they would be now.
+Vesalius hardly escaped the claws of the Inquisition, and died during
+his expiatory pilgrimage to the Holy Land.</p>
+
+<p>If, more comprehensively, you should wish to save others, as well as
+yourself, from this awful risk, and have a friend in the legislature,
+urge him, or otherwise Mr Wakley, to move for the insertion in any
+convenient bill a clause to appoint in every district a qualified
+officer to license burials; he had better not be a practising doctor,
+but his office might embrace necroscopic inquiries for the coroner, and
+the registrarship of births and deaths.</p>
+
+<p>In either case, I would recommend you to offer publicly a premium of
+&pound;500, to be paid at the expiration of three years, for the best treatise
+upon the signs of death; the same being calculated to form a useful body
+of instruction, as yet wanting, either for your private surgeon, or the
+new officials.</p>
+
+<p>In England, indeed, our decent respect for the dead, which leads us to
+postpone interment as long as possible, is a tolerable security against
+being buried alive. The coffin is seldom closed upon the remains, before
+decomposition has already commenced. <i>That</i> is death's certain seal;
+nor, in the present state of our knowledge, special cases of course
+excepted, is it right to consider life surely extinct, till the impress
+of that seal is perceptible to the senses.</p>
+
+<p>On the Continent, generally, the interval observed before burial is far
+too short for safety. They calculate that in France from twenty to
+thirty are annually interred alive, computing from the number of those
+who, after supposed death, come to life before the funeral is completed.
+I cannot help imagining that this seeming death must be much less
+frequent in England than in some other countries; (is that owing to the
+more vigorous practice for which English medical men are celebrated,
+they either cure or kill?) In Germany, interment is forbidden by law for
+three days after death. And there is a curious and humane provision in
+the grave-houses attached to the cemeteries of some of the principal
+towns: Bodies which are brought too soon, not having performed the three
+days' quarantine, are received and lodged, being disposed upon tressles,
+with rings on their toes and fingers which are attached to bell-pulls.
+The corpse thus, on coming to itself, may have immediate attendance
+merely by ringing for it; some one is always there on the watch. But the
+humanity of this arrangement, though perfect as long as it lasts, is
+finite in duration. As soon as the seventy-two hours prescribed by law
+are expired, it is another thing. The body is then legally dead, and
+must comport itself accordingly. At any rate, it is at its own risk if
+it behaves otherwise than as a corpse, and gives itself any airs of
+vitality. This is appalling enough, and would certainly justify any
+body, if it could, in getting out at nights and turning vampyr.</p>
+
+<p>And now, to return again to our inquiry. We have got thus far. The
+bodies found in the so-called vampyr state are alive. They are in a sort
+of fit, the possible duration of which is undetermined. The same fit may
+occur, and does occur continually, with no reference to the superstition
+of vampyrism. But where the belief in vampyrism is rife, these fits are
+more prevalent, and spread sometimes like an epidemic.</p>
+
+<p>The question naturally follows, how is this malady, viewing it as one in
+these cases, propagated?</p>
+
+<p>At such seasons, it is far from improbable that there is some physical
+cause in operation, some meteorological influence perhaps, electrical or
+otherwise, disposing the system to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span> a readier prey to the seizure. As
+certain constitutions of the year alter the blood and lead to fever or
+cholera, why should not others render the nervous system irritable and
+proner to derangement?</p>
+
+<p>Then it is well known that fright will bring on certain kinds of
+fits&mdash;in women hysteric fits, in the youth of either sex epileptic fits;
+and certainly no ghastlier terror can there be than the accredited
+apprehension of vampyrism. And it deserves remark, that impressions upon
+the mind are known to be capable of shaping particular kinds of fits,
+and especially of exciting and determining the features of sensorial
+illusions, that seem adjuvants in vampyrism.</p>
+
+<p>We are able to creep yet a step nearer to the mark. There is great
+reason to believe that some human beings have had the power of throwing
+themselves into the state of seeming death, <i>voluntarily</i>. In Gooch's
+surgical works, there is an account of a Colonel Townsend, who asserted
+this of himself, and challenged Gooch to witness the performance. And
+you may read in the narrative of Gooch, how he and two or three other
+competent witnesses saw Colonel Townsend dispose himself to favour the
+invasion of this fit, and how he gradually fell into a state apparently
+devoid of animation. A very few years ago there was a story in the
+papers of a native in India, who undertook for a reward to do the same
+feat, and to allow himself to be buried for a stipulated period. A
+gentleman, certainly not of a credulous turn in general, told me he was
+in India at the time with his regiment; and, though not on the spot,
+that he knew the parties who brought the conjuror to work; and that he
+believed they positively buried him, and, at the end of the time agreed
+upon, disinterred him, and found him alive. But be <i>this</i> story true or
+false, the case of Colonel Townsend remains to show the thing asserted
+to have been possible&mdash;and this remark may be safely added: Whatever
+change of the kind the will can bring about, can be twice as readily
+wrought by fear or a disturbed imagination.</p>
+
+<p>You are, I hope, or fear rather, by this time satiated with the
+marvellous and with the subject. What!&mdash;yet another question? Ay. How
+came this superstition to arise?</p>
+
+<p>The answer is ready. In those days the belief in ghosts was absolute,
+and a vampyr was a sort of ghost. When an ignorant person, that is, when
+any one in those days became the subject of a sensorial illusion
+representing a human being, to a certainty he identified the creation of
+his fancy as somebody he had seen or heard of; then he would tell his
+acquaintances that the ghost of such a person haunted him. If the fright
+brought on a fit, or seemed to cause his death, the neighbours would
+remember how he had before been haunted. Then, in any case, what more
+natural than to disinter the body of a supposed visitant, to know why he
+is unquiet in the grave? Then, if once a body so disinterred were found
+in the fresh and undecomposed state, the whole delusion would start into
+existence. The violence used would force blood from the corpse; and that
+would be construed into the blood of a victim. The absence of a scar on
+the throat of the victim, would throw no difficulty in the way to the
+vampyr theory, because vampyrs enjoyed the ghostly character, and all
+its privileges. Supposing, again, that at any time chance had brought to
+light a body interred alive, and lying still in this fit, the whole yarn
+of superstition might again have been spun from that clue.</p>
+
+<p>Do you want more than this? I shall begin to think you at heart
+superstitious. I tell you it is contrary to the rules of inductive
+logic, to look for, or to use more principles than are sufficient for
+the reasonable explanation of phenomena. Yet you urge, do you, that it
+is no less unphilosophical, in an obscure and unsettled inquiry, wholly
+to exclude the consideration of unlikely possibilities?&mdash;Well! it is
+nothing to me. Have it your own way: suppose, if you like, that the man
+in the grave <i>had</i> something to do with spreading the disease, and that
+his nervous system, in its abnormal state, could put itself in relation
+with that of another person at a distance. If you like it, have it so.
+In one sense, it simplifies the matter. But though I cannot deny your
+supposition to be possible, you will excuse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span> me if I profess to hold the
+solution, which I have myself given, to be sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>Well! <i>there</i> is an end of the subject, at all events; and I accept your
+thanks for having told you all I know about vampyrism. I deserve them
+more than you are aware. At the churchyard in Meduegna, my dear Archy, I
+had you thoroughly in my power. I saw how your curiosity was raised, and
+that an picture I had drawn would have been accepted by you with
+avidity; and I must confess it did at one moment occur to me, to
+describe to you the exact dress and deportment of the three regimental
+surgeons, or Feldscherers, (a handsome word signifying field-barbers),
+John Flickinger, Isaac Stegel, and John Fredrick Baumgartner, as well as
+the behaviour and remarks of a drummer boy, who held the instrument case
+during the <i>intermortem</i> examination, an event he witnessed for the
+first time. But I would not abuse my advantage; so I let you off cheaply
+with the sole fabrication of Nina, and the personal characteristics of
+Arnod Paole, of whom unfortunately nothing has come down to posterity,
+but that he was haunted by a vampyr at Cossova, fell from a hay-cart at
+Meduegna, and died, and lived a vampyr himself.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I remain, dear Archy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">Yours, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+<span class="i14"><span class="smcap">Mac Davus</span>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h3>LETTER III.</h3>
+
+
+<h4>SPIRITS, GOBLINS, GHOSTS.</h4>
+
+<p>Dear Archy.&mdash;On what subject shall I next address you? Elves, goblins,
+ghosts, real and unreal; dreams, witchcraft, second-sight? Bless me! the
+field of marvels seems more thronged, as I approach it closer. The
+spirits I have evoked begin to scare me with their numbers. How on earth
+shall I ever get them fairly laid? But some, I see, can now only limp
+along&mdash;they are scotched already; I will begin with finishing these. Yet
+they deserve gentle treatment. They sprang from our nature, which seems
+expressly made to procreate and rear them. Thick, within and around us,
+lie the rich veins of illusive suggestion from which they spring.</p>
+
+<p>The thing nearest us is our mental constitution, the world of
+consciousness. It is of it we first learn, though it be the last we
+understand. It is that through which we perceive and apprehend all other
+things; and nothing becomes part of our knowledge but as it has been
+shaped and coloured by its magic reflexion. Nay, more, it is not only
+our mirror but our archetype for every thing. So we spiritualise the
+material universe, and afterwards, by an incongruous consistency,
+anthropomorphise spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Reason in vain reclaims against this misuse of analogy. Feeling,
+imagination, instinct are too many for her; and any mood, from fun to
+earnest, from nonsense to sublimity, may hear a responsive note when
+this chord is touched.</p>
+
+<p>Address to that ingenuous young American a remark upon the slightness of
+the legs of her work-table,&mdash;she blushes&mdash;her lively fancy has given
+them personality. Were she a wealthier miss, she would give them,
+besides, neat cambric trowsers with lace borders. With less refinement,
+and with inexcusable warmth, I take shame to myself for having bestowed
+a kick upon a similar mahogany limb, which had, however, begun the
+contest by breaking my shin.</p>
+
+<p>To the poet's eye, nature is instinct with life. Greece may be "living
+Greece no more"&mdash;in the soul of her people; but her immortal plains, and
+streams, and hills have their own vitality.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The mountains <i>look</i> on Marathon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Marathon <i>looks</i> on the sea."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>You go to visit them; they meet you half-way: "spectatum veniunt."</p>
+
+<p>Amid the Alps&mdash;with glacier, torrent, forest around&mdash;you still evoke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span>
+the fancied spirit of the scene, though it be but</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"To gaze upon her beauty&mdash;nothing more."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And where, in sublimer grandeur, snowclad, upreared against the nearer
+sun, are seen the towering Andes; to the poet's eye, the Cordillera lies
+no huge backbone of earth; but lives, a Rh&oelig;tus or Enceladus of the
+West, and</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"over earth, air, wave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Glares with his Titan eye."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is but the calm, the dignified, the measured march of poetical
+conception. No wonder, when superstition steps in to prick on
+imagination, that all should vividly team with spirit life. Or that on
+Walpurgis' night, bush and streamlet and hill bustle and hurry, with
+unequal pace, towards the haunted Brocken: the heavy ones lag, indeed, a
+little, and are out of breath&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The giant-snouted crags, ho! ho!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How they snort and how they blow!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>No wonder that to the dreamer's eye, in tranquil scenes of sylvan
+solitude the fawn of yore skipped in the forest dell, the dryad peeped
+from behind the shadowy oak, the fay tripped lightly over the moonlit
+sward.</p>
+
+<p>But enough, and too much, of "your philosophy." Yet there are those
+still who may be the wiser for it. Let me sketch you a believer in the
+creed it would dispel.</p>
+
+<p>He was a Spanish West-Indian&mdash;in his active years had been an extensive
+planter and slave-owner in Porto Rico. His manners were grave and
+dignified, as due to himself; courteous, as not denying equal or
+superior worth in others. He had seen the world, and spoke of it
+habitually with a fine irony. We had many a walk together. He was
+nervous about his health. One day, as our path lay along the banks of
+the Rhine, his conversation took this turn:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Do you believe in spirits?" he asked me; and upon my intimating the
+polite but qualified assent which suited the tone in which the question
+was put&mdash;"It may be superstition," he continued, "but I am often
+inclined to think that the pucks and goblins, which, as they say, once
+haunted these scenes, are not entirely visionary beings. You may
+smile&mdash;but this has happened, nay, often, happens, to me in my walks. I
+see a big clod before me in the path, and form the intention of avoiding
+it; when close to it, I step to one side, when pr-r-rt, my toe strikes
+against it."</p>
+
+<p>I edged slightly away from my companion with the disagreeable impression
+that he was gone mad.</p>
+
+<p>He went on;&mdash;"When I lived in the West Indies, the children of the
+slaves, about my house, were treated with great kindness and indulgence.
+They would come about my table at dessert, and often had little presents
+given them. So they grew into objects of affection. But, out of several,
+some, of course, took ill and died. I cannot tell you what grief it
+caused me. Then this has happened several times, after the death of one
+or other of my little favourites:&mdash;a bird has flown into the hall, and
+into my sitting-room, and has hovered near me, and, after a while, has
+flown away. For a few days it has regularly returned, and then finally
+disappeared. I thought it was tenanted by the spirit of my lost
+favourite, which had come to bid me farewell."</p>
+
+<p>I drew nearer again to my companion. I felt I was in all events safe
+from violence from him. And I contrasted, with humiliation, his
+beautiful superstition with the commonplace remembrance of a school-boy
+conviction of my own, one dark night, upon Blackheath, that a
+direction-post was a ghost.</p>
+
+<p>My friend had not, indeed, always been a dreamer: and although this is
+no place to narrate his course of daring and hazardous adventure, on
+which I am therefore silent, yet I wish to be allowed to re-establish
+his credit for intelligence, by reporting the answer which he made, on
+another occasion, to a question, as to what he thought of the
+emancipation of the Negroes in our colonies. "The principle," answered
+my friend, "was good, but you were in too great a hurry. Before giving
+them freedom, you should have made them fit for it. They were not
+impatient. Slavery is an African institution. Some outlay of public
+money, and extreme care and prudence in your measures, would have
+enabled you to secure their humane treatment in the interval. As<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span> fast
+as they became innoculated with the wants and habits of civilised life,
+you might have made <i>freedmen</i> of the most advanced, and given them
+official occupation, or allotted them land under proper conditions. One
+sheep would have followed another. The fag-end you might have
+emancipated together. Thirty or forty years, and a million of money,
+would have done the thing. The results would have been, from first to
+last, beneficial to the colonists. It would have set an example which
+other nations <i>could</i> have followed. It would have been a noble return
+for having, temporarily, used the race as unmitigated slaves. It would
+have been an act of enlightened philanthropy. It would have become
+statesmen. What you did reads and works like the puerile suggestion of a
+school-boy's theme. What you are further doing, to suppress, by force,
+the trade in slaves, would have been worthy my distinguished countryman
+whose biography has immortalised Cervantes. Humanity would smile at it,
+but that she shudders and sickens."</p>
+
+<p>But, to leave the region of dreams, which are no longer realisable, let
+us shift the scene.</p>
+
+<p>The churchyard has its nightly terrors. One heard of corpse-lights seen
+dancing over graves&mdash;but over some alone. A few only had witnessed this;
+but <i>they</i> had no doubt on the matter. Things looked "uncanny;" but time
+did not pause, and the story was forgotten. Even when the tale was
+fresh, what was it but superstition? Who of those who hugged its
+sympathetic terrors by the Christmas fireside, thought they could be
+true on the bright frosty morning of the morrow? It was mere fancy.
+There was nothing in it. Yet there <i>was</i> something. And now and then a
+striking and mysterious event would occur to bring back the old idea.
+There was a cottage, (this I heard of a certainty,) in a hamlet I could
+name, to which a bad report attached. A room in it was haunted. More
+than one who had slept there had seen, at midnight, the luminous
+apparition of a little child standing upon the hearth-stone. At length
+suspicion became active. The hearth-stone was raised, and there were
+found, buried beneath it, the remains of an infant. A story was now
+divulged, how the former tenant and a female of the neighbourhood had, a
+very few years before, abruptly left the village. The apparition here
+was real and significant enough.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Augurs and understood relations have,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By magot-pyes, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The secret'st man of blood."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But tales like these, though true, gradually lose the sharpness of their
+evidence for want of an accredited contemporary narrator, and so become
+valueless. But time brings round every thing.</p>
+
+<p>And at length a marvellous narrative, to the same effect with the above,
+made its appearance in a trustworthy German work, <i>P. Kieffer's
+Archives</i>, the complete authentication of which caused it to make a deep
+impression. The narrative was communicated by Herr Ehrman of Strasburg,
+the son-in-law of the well-known German writer Pfeffel, from whom he
+received it.</p>
+
+<p>The ghost-seer was a young candidate for orders, eighteen years of age,
+of the name of Billing. He was known to have very excitable nerves,&mdash;had
+already experienced sensorial illusions, and was particularly sensitive
+to the presence of human remains, which made him tremble and shudder in
+all his limbs. Pfeffel, being blind, was accustomed to take the arm of
+this young man, and they walked thus together in Pfeffel's garden, near
+Colmar. At one spot in the garden Pfeffel remarked, that his companion's
+arm gave a sudden start, as if he had received an electric shock. Being
+asked what was the matter, Billing replied, "nothing." But, on their
+going over the same spot again, the same effect recurred. The young man
+being pressed to explain the cause of his disturbance, avowed that it
+arose from a peculiar sensation which he always experienced when in the
+vicinity of human remains; that it was his impression a human body must
+be interred there; but that if Pfeffel would return with him at night,
+he should be able to speak with more confidence. Accordingly, they went
+to the garden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span> together when it was dark, and as they approached the
+spot, Billing observed a faint light over it. At two paces from it, he
+stopped and would go no further; for he saw hovering over it, or
+self-supported in the air, its feet only a few inches from the ground, a
+luminous female figure, nearly five feet high, with the right arm folded
+on her breast, the left hanging by her side. When Pfeffel himself
+stepped forward and placed himself about where the figure was, Billing
+said it was now on his right hand, now on his left, now behind, now
+before him. When Pfeffel cut the air with his stick, it seemed as if it
+went through and divided a light flame, which then united again. The
+visit, repeated the next night, in company with some of Pfeffel's
+relatives, gave the same result. <i>They</i> did not see any thing. Pfeffel,
+then, unknown to the ghost-seer, had the ground dug up, when there was
+found at some depth, beneath a layer of quicklime, a decomposing human
+body. The remains were removed, and the earth carefully replaced. Three
+days afterwards, Billing, from whom this whole proceeding had been kept
+concealed, was again led to the spot by Pfeffel. He walked over it now
+without experiencing any unusual impression whatever.</p>
+
+<p>This extraordinary phenomenon, it is now generally known, has been
+completely elucidated through the discoveries of Von Reichenbach, to
+which, in a former letter, I had occasion to make allusion.</p>
+
+<p>You are probably aware, that the individuals whose nerves Von
+Reichenbach found to be so sensitive to the proximity of crystals,
+magnets, &amp;c., would, in the dark, see flames issuing from the same
+substances. Then, in the progress of his inquiries, Von Reichenbach
+found that chemical decomposition was a rich source of the new power he
+had discovered, by its action on the nerves. And being acquainted with
+the story of the ghost in Pfeffel's garden at Colmar, it occurred to him
+as not unlikely, that Billing had just been in the same condition with
+his own sensitive patients, and that graves very likely would present to
+all of them a luminous <i>aura</i>; and that thus the mystery might find a
+very simple explanation.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, Miss Reichel, one of his most sensitive subjects, was taken
+at night to an extensive burying-ground, near Vienna, where many
+interments take place daily, and there were some thousand graves. The
+result did not disappoint Von Reichenbach's expectations. Whithersoever
+Miss Reichel turned her eyes, she saw masses of flame. This appearance
+manifested itself most about recent graves. About very old ones it was
+not visible. She described the appearance as resembling less bright
+flame than fiery vapour, something between fog and flame. In several
+instances, the light extended four feet in height above the ground. When
+Miss Reichel placed her hand in it, it seemed to her involved in a cloud
+of fire. When she stood in it, it came up to her throat. She expressed
+no alarm, being accustomed to the appearance.</p>
+
+<p>The mystery has thus been entirely solved. For it is evident that the
+spectral character of the luminous apparition in the two instances I
+have narrated had been supplied by the imagination of the seers. So the
+superstition has vanished, leaving, as is usual, a very respectable
+truth behind it.</p>
+
+<p>It is indeed a little unlucky for this new truth, which reveals either a
+new power in nature or an unexpected operation of familiar ones, that
+the phenomena which attest it are verifiable by a few only who are
+possessed of highly sensitive temperaments. And it is the use of the
+world to look upon these few as very suspicious subjects. This is
+unjust. Their evidence, the parties having otherwise a character for
+honesty, should be accepted with the same faith and the same distrust
+with which all evidence is to be viewed; with neither more nor less than
+in other cases. Nothing should be received in scientific inquiry which
+it is not compulsory on our understanding to believe. It is not a whit
+more difficult in these than in other cases to obtain inductive
+certainty. Nature is not here peculiarly coy or averse from being
+interrogated.</p>
+
+<p>Philosophers occasionally regret the limited number of their senses, and
+think a world of knowledge would flow from their possessing but one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span>
+more. Now, persons of highly-wrought nervous systems have what is
+equivalent to a new sense, in their augmentation of natural sensibility.
+But philosophers will not accept this equivalent. They must have the
+boon from nature their own way, or not at all.</p>
+
+<p>To turn elsewhere.&mdash;We may now look into a broader seam of illusive
+power&mdash;one which lies entirely within ourselves, and needs no objective
+influence to bring its ghost-producing fertility into play. Let me
+exemplify it in operation.</p>
+
+<p>A young gentleman, who has recently left Oxford, told me, that he was
+one evening at a supper-party in college, when they were joined by a
+common friend on his return from hunting. They expected him, but were
+struck with his appearance. He was pale and agitated. On questioning
+him, they learned the cause. During the latter part of his ride home, he
+had been accompanied by a horseman, who kept exact pace with him, the
+rider and horse being facsimiles of himself and the steed he rode, even
+to the copy of a newfangled bit he sported that day for the first time.
+The apparition vanished on his entering the town. He had, in fact, seen
+his double or fetch, and it had shaken his nerves pretty considerably.
+His friends advised him to consult the college tutor, who failed not to
+give him some good advice, and hoped the warning would not be thrown
+away. My informant, who thought the whole matter very serious, and was
+disposed to believe the unearthly visit to have been no idle one, added,
+that it <i>had</i> made the ghost-seer, for the time at all events, a wiser
+and better man.</p>
+
+<p>In more ignorant times, the appearance of one's fetch was held to be of
+very alarming import, and to menace either death or serious personal
+harm. Now, it is known to be one of the commonest forms in which
+<i>sensorial illusions</i> shape themselves. And these are matters of
+every-day occurrence.</p>
+
+<p>It would seem, that when the blood is heated or the nervous system
+over-strained, we are liable to attach reality to the mere productions
+of the imagination. There must be few who have not had personal
+experience of this affection. In the first night of a febrile attack,
+and often in the progress of fever, the bed-hangings appear to the
+patient swarming with human faces, generally of a disagreeable and
+menacing expression. With some, opium will produce a host of similar
+visitants. In much illness, I have often myself taken this drug, and
+always hoped it would provide me a crop of apparitions that I might
+analyse. But I was disappointed; opium I found to give me only a great
+tranquillity and clearness of thought. Once or twice only have I had a
+vision, and that but a transitory landscape. I used in vain to look upon
+that <i>black mixture</i> which lies before one in the dark, and try to make
+its fragmentary lights arrange themselves into definite shapes. And I
+have imaged to my mind familiar scenes or faces, (as in the daytime a
+strong conception will half realise such,) but they were not more
+distinct then than formerly,&mdash;ideas only and perfectly transient. But,
+as I have said, once or twice I have had the satisfaction of seeing a
+bright and coloured landscape spread before my view; yet unlike reality,
+and more resembling a diorama, occupying a rectangle on the black
+mixture before my eyes. It was not a known and familiar scene, but a
+brilliant sketch, made out of materials I remembered, but could not by a
+deliberate effort <i>have combined</i> so effectively. It was a spontaneous
+throe of the imagination, which had force to overpersuade the organs of
+perception.</p>
+
+<p>How well did Shakspeare understand this creative power of the
+fancy!&mdash;the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth, and his test&mdash;"come, let me
+clutch thee!" are physiologically perfect. Nor less perfect or true to
+nature, is the conception of the ghost of Banquo haunting the kingly
+murderer. The ghost, it is obvious, however, should not in the play
+appear bodily. The audience are in the position of the guests at the
+royal supper-table, who saw it not. I wonder how in Shakspeare's time
+the stage-directions ran upon this point. Probably as now. Though
+Shakspeare wrote for all times, he was probably wise enough to act for
+the present. Or perhaps, with no disrespect to his unequalled genius, he
+understood not the principles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span> of which he exactly portrayed the
+workings, and was, like Shelley's poet,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Hidden in the light of thought."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So, some say the sun may be dark as another planet; and that the spots
+on it are its common earth seen through the gaps in its luminous
+atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>To the world, the alpha and omega of this piece of philosophy were
+furnished by the publication of the case of Nicolai, the bookseller of
+Berlin. Its details were read before the Academy of Sciences at Berlin,
+in 1799. The <i>substance</i> ran thus. Nicolai had had some family troubles
+which much annoyed him. Then, on the 21st of February 1791, there stood
+before him, at the distance of ten paces, the ghost of his eldest son.
+He pointed at it, directing his wife to look. She saw it not, and tried
+to convince him that it was an illusion. In a quarter of an hour it
+vanished. In the afternoon, at four o'clock, it came again. Nicolai was
+alone. He went to his wife's room&mdash;the ghost followed him. About six
+other apparitions joined the first, and they walked about, among, and
+through each other. After some days the apparition of his son stayed
+away; but its place was filled with the figures of a number of persons,
+some known, some unknown to Nicolai&mdash;some of dead, others of living
+persons. The known ones were distant acquaintances only. The figures of
+none of Nicolai's habitual friends were there. The appearances were
+almost always human: exceptionally, a man on horseback, with dogs and
+birds would present themselves. The apparitions came mostly after
+dinner, at the commencement of digestion. They were just like real
+persons; the colouring a thought fainter. The apparitions were equally
+distinct whether Nicolai was alone or in society, by day as in the dark,
+in his own house or those of others; but in the latter case they were
+less frequent, and they very seldom presented themselves in the streets.
+During the first eight days they seemed to take very little notice of
+each other, but walked about like people at a fair, only here and there
+communing with each other. They took no notice of Nicolai, or of his
+remarks about them to his wife and physician. No effort of his would
+dismiss them, or bring an absent one back. When he shut his eyes, they
+sometimes disappeared, sometimes remained; when he opened his eyes, they
+were there as before. After a week they became more numerous, and began
+to converse. They conversed with each other, and then addressed him.
+Their remarks were short and unconnected, but sensible and civil. His
+acquaintances inquired after his health, and expressed sympathy for him,
+and spoke in terms comforting him. The apparitions were most conversible
+when he was alone; nevertheless they mingled in the conversation when
+others were by, and their voices had the same sound as those of real
+persons. This illusion went on thus from the 24th of February to the
+20th of April; so that Nicolai, who was in good bodily health, had time
+to become tranquillised about them, and to observe them at his ease. At
+last they rather amused him. Then the doctors thought of an efficient
+plan of treatment. They prescribed leeches: and then followed the
+<i>denouement</i> to this interesting representation. The apparitions became
+pale and vanished. On the 20th of April, at the time of applying the
+leeches, Nicolai's room was full of figures moving about among each
+other. They first began to have a less lively motion; shortly afterwards
+their colours became paler&mdash;in another half hour fainter still, though
+the forms still remained. About seven o'clock in the evening, the
+figures had became colourless, and they moved scarcely at all, but their
+outline was still tolerably perfect. Gradually that became less and less
+defined. At last they disappeared, breaking into air, fragments only
+remaining, which at last all vanished. By eight o'clock all were gone,
+and Nicolai subsequently saw no more of them.</p>
+
+<p>Other cases are on record in which there was still greater facility of
+ghost-production than Nicolai evinced. One patient could, for instance,
+by thinking of a person, summon his apparition to join the others. He
+could not, however, having done this, subsequently banish him. The sight
+is the sense most easily and frequently tricked; next, the hearing. In
+some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span> extraordinary cases the touch, also, has participated in the
+delusion.</p>
+
+<p>Herr von Baczko, already subject to visual hallucinations, of a diseased
+nervous system, his right side weak with palsy, his right eye blind, and
+the vision of the left imperfect, was engaged one evening, shortly after
+the battle of Jena, as he tells us in his autobiography, in translating
+a brochure into Polish, when he felt a poke in his loins. He looked
+round, and found that it proceeded from a Negro or Egyptian boy,
+seemingly about twelve years of age. Although he was persuaded the whole
+was an illusion, he thought it best to knock the apparition down, when
+he felt that it offered a sensible resistance. The Negro then attacked
+him on the other side, and gave his left arm a particularly disagreeable
+twist, when Baczko pushed him off again. The Negro continued to visit
+him constantly during four months, preserving the same appearance, and
+remaining tangible; then he came seldomer; and, after finally appearing
+as a brown-coloured apparition with an owl's head, he took his leave.</p>
+
+<p>The illusion and its principle having been thus elucidated, it is hardly
+worth while to look into its operation in tales of vulgar terror. But it
+is highly interesting to trace its effects on minds of a high order,
+when its suggestions have been received and interpreted as the visits
+and communications of superior beings. You have heard, I dare say, my
+dear Archy, of the mysticism of Schwedenborg. Now that they are
+explained, the details of his hallucinations are highly gratifying to
+one's curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Schwedenborg, the son of a Swedish clergyman of the name of Schwedberg,
+ennobled as Schwedenborg, was, up to the year 1743, which was the
+fifty-fourth of his age, an ordinary man of the world, distinguished
+only in literature, having written many volumes of philosophy and
+science, and being Professor in the Mineralogical school, where he was
+much respected. On a sudden, in the year 1743, he believed himself to
+have got into a commerce with the world of spirits, which so fully took
+possession of his thoughts, that he not only published their
+revelations, but was in the habit of detailing, with the greatest
+equanimity, his daily chat with them. Thus he says, "I had a
+conversation the other day on that very point with the Apostle Paul," or
+with Luther, or some other dead person. Schwedenborg continued in what
+he believed to be daily communion with spirits till his death, in 1772.
+He was, without doubt, in the fullest degree convinced of the reality of
+his spiritual commerce. So in a letter to the Wirtemburg prelate,
+Oetinger, dated November 11, 1766, he uses the following words:&mdash;"If I
+have spoken with the Apostles? To this I answer, I conversed with St
+Paul during a whole year, particularly on the text, Romans iii. 28. I
+have three times conversed with St John, once with Moses, and a hundred
+times with Luther, who allowed that it was against the warning of an
+angel that he professed '<i>fidem solam</i>,' and that he stood alone upon
+the separation from the Pope. With angels, finally, have I these
+twenty-two years conversed, and converse daily.</p>
+
+<p>"Of the angels," he says, "they have human forms, the appearance of men
+that I have a thousand times seen; for I have spoken with them as a man
+with other men, often with several together; and have seen nothing in
+the least to distinguish them from ordinary men." [They had evidently
+just the appearance of Nicolai's visitors.] "Lest any one should call
+this an illusion, or imaginary perception, it is to be understood that I
+am accustomed to see them, when perfectly myself wide awake, and in full
+exercise of my observation. The speech of an angel or of a spirit sounds
+like, and as loud as, that of a man, but it is not heard by the
+bystanders; the reason is, that the speech of an angel or a spirit finds
+entrance first into a man's thoughts, and reaches his organs of hearing
+from within outwards." This is indeed <i>cum ratione insanire</i>! how just
+an analysis of the illusion, when he is most deceived by it!</p>
+
+<p>"The angels who converse with men, speak not in their own language, but
+in the language of men, and likewise in other languages which are
+inwardly known to man, not in languages which he does not understand."
+Schwedenborg here took up the angels, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span> to explain their own ideas to
+them observed, that they most likely appeared to speak his mother
+tongue, <i>because, in fact</i>, it was not they who spoke, but himself by
+their suggestion. The angels held out, however, and went away
+unconvinced.</p>
+
+<p>"When approaching, the angels often appear like a ball of light; and
+they travel in companies so grouped together&mdash;they are allowed so to
+unite by the Lord&mdash;that they may act as one being, and share each
+others' ideas and knowledge; and in this form they bound through the
+universe, from planet to planet."</p>
+
+<p>I will, in conclusion, add another different, but equally interesting
+sketch.</p>
+
+<p>"It is now seven years ago," so spoke, before her judges, the simple,
+but high-minded Joan of Arc&mdash;"the beginning of the year 1431; it was a
+summer day, towards the middle hour, I was about thirteen years old, and
+was in my father's garden, that I heard for the first time, on my right
+hand towards the church, a voice, and there stood a figure in a bright
+radiance before my eyes. It had the appearance and look of a right good
+and virtuous man, bore wings, was surrounded with light on all sides,
+and by the angels of Heaven. It was the Archangel Michael. The voice
+seemed to me to command respect; but I was yet a child, and was
+frightened at the figure, and doubted very much whether it was the
+archangel! I saw him and the angels as distinctly before my eyes as I
+now see you, my judges." With words of encouragement the archangel
+answered to her, that God had taken pity upon France, and that she must
+hasten to the assistance of the king. At the same time he promised her
+that St Catherine and St Margaret would shortly visit her; he told her
+that she should do what they commanded her, because they were sent by
+God to guide and conduct her. "Upon this," continued Joan, "St Catherine
+and St Margaret appeared to me, as the angel had foretold. They ordered
+me to get ready to go to Robert de Beaudricourt, the king's captain. He
+would several times refuse me, but at last would consent, and give me
+people, who would conduct me to the king. Then should I raise the siege
+of Orleans. I replied to them that I was a poor child, who understood
+nothing about riding on horseback and making war. They said I should
+carry my banner with courage; God would help me, and win back for my
+king his entire kingdom. As soon as I knew," continued Joan, "that I was
+to proceed on this errand, I avoided, as much as I could, afterwards
+taking part in the sports and amusements of my young companions."&mdash;&mdash;"So
+have the Saints conducted me during seven years, and have given me
+support and assistance in all my need and labours; and now at present,"
+said she to her judges, "no day goes by, but they come to me."&mdash;&mdash;"I
+seldom see the Saints that they are not surrounded with a halo of light;
+they wear rich and precious crowns, as it is reasonable they should. I
+see them always under the same forms, and have never found in their
+discourse any discrepancies. I know how to distinguish one from the
+other, and distinguish them as well by the sound of their voices as by
+their salutation. They come often without my calling upon them. But when
+they do not come, I pray to the Lord that he will send them to me; and
+never have I needed them but they have visited me."</p>
+
+<p>Such is part of the defence of the high-spirited Joan of Arc, who was
+taken prisoner by the Duke of Burgundy on the 23d of May 1430&mdash;sold by
+him for a large sum to the English, and by them put on her trial as a
+heretic, idolatress, and magician&mdash;condemned, and finally burned alive,
+the 30th of May 1431. Ill-fated heroine! I seem to be thinking of
+writing her epitaph, but I am considering only that there is more to
+come out of her evidence. For although her heavenly visitants were
+simply sensorial illusions, there yet remains something unexplained. How
+came she to foresee the path she was destined to follow? The inquiry
+would launch us on a broad and wild sea of conjecture, for the
+navigation of which we have not yet the requisite charts on board, and
+it grows late&mdash;so good-night, dear Archy.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Suadentque cadentia sidera somnum."<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">"Cras ingens iterabimus &aelig;quor."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yours, &amp;c.,<br /></span>
+<span class="i8"><span class="smcap">Mac Davus</span>.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span></div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_NEW_SENTIMENTAL_JOURNEY" id="A_NEW_SENTIMENTAL_JOURNEY"></a>A NEW SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE BATHS OF MONT DOR.</h3>
+
+
+<p>There is a tremendous valley opening all the way down, from the central
+summits of the ridge of the Monts Dor, quite into the undulating, and
+thence into the flat country, lying westward of this mountain chain.
+Where the valley commences, it is nothing more than a combination of
+mountain gullies, and is like a wild and precipitous ravine; but by
+degrees it widens out into spacious amphitheatres, and at times
+contracts itself again so as barely to allow of a struggling river to
+make its way betwixt the rocky sides. In some places, the valley makes a
+straight reach four or five miles in extent, but in others, winds and
+turns about in abrupt and varied curves; its descent is now gradual, and
+now rapid, where the stream dashes over ledges of rock or cuts its way
+through some rough and stubborn pass. Nearly all the ravines and smaller
+valleys that open into it bring down their contributions of mountain
+torrents; and the whole collection of waters, thus wending their way to
+the ocean, form what is called the Dor. This river meets with the Dogne
+lower down in its course; and, under the joint name of the two waters,
+the flood rushes broad and strong through Guienne into the Gironde. The
+high and bare mountain whence the Dor derives its principal source is
+the Pic de Sancy, the loftiest hill in the middle of France; it is the
+king of all the volcanoes of this vast igneous chain, and has its sides
+deeply furrowed and excavated into immense craters or volcanic vents.
+From it proceed numerous branches or arms, composed of basaltic currents
+congealed into columnar masses in the early days of the world. These
+stretch out league after league, away from their parent head, and
+present on their tops vast plateaux of green and moory pasture-land;
+while their sides are either abrupt precipices of basaltic columns, or
+else are clothed with primeval forests, which have sprung up and still
+flourish on the rich materials of their decomposing slopes. The valley
+of the Dor is therefore shut in either by precipitous volcanic walls, or
+is guarded by sombre woods. Once on the tops of the plateaux, and you
+may ride a whole day on unbroken turf; or, if you penetrate within the
+forest lands, you may wander for any time you please, days or weeks,
+without seeing either their beginning or their end. On the summits of
+the mountains around, snow is to be found in patches, even in the
+hottest days of summer; and as the Pic de Sancy is more than six
+thousand feet above the level of the sea, almost every gradation of
+climate is to be found amongst these lonely hills. In the dog-days, the
+valleys are so hot that you gladly escape to the upper lands for air and
+coolness; but the winter sets in, in October, and the valley of the Dor
+is then covered deep with snow for many a long month. The Dor itself is
+a pleasant lively stream: it can boast of some picturesque falls here
+and there, but it is commonly a "brawling brook," winding about at its
+pleasure; allowing itself to be forded every now and then; and producing
+plenty of small trout for those who like to waste their time in fishing.</p>
+
+<p>The urchins of the peasant tribe know how to get these finny creatures
+more cannily than the professed angler; you may see them on a summer's
+morning wading up the stream, and hunting under every stone, and in each
+little pool, for the objects of their search. As soon as they see a
+trout, they drive it into little convenient nooks that they know of, and
+there&mdash;how they manage it nobody knows, but the result is certain&mdash;they
+catch them with their hands or knock them on the head with their sticks;
+and will always produce you a respectable dish at a few hours' notice.</p>
+
+<p>About a couple of leagues below the Pic de Sancy, towards the west, one
+of the plateaux on the northern side of the valley assumes an
+exceedingly bold and regular appearance; it is called the Plateau de
+l'Angle&mdash;perhaps from its making, by an abrupt termination, the corner
+of two valleys; and it towers out like a promontory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span> at sea, soaring
+some four or five hundred feet above the bed of the river. Not very far
+from where this plateau is cut off&mdash;a mile or so&mdash;there is a bold
+cascade dashing over its side, and carrying off the superfluous waters
+of a pool and morass higher up in the bosom of the mountains. Here the
+basaltic precipice is hollowed out into a circling chasm, and over its
+black face rushes the impetuous stream upon a huge chaos of rocks and
+debris below, foaming and roaring until it finds its way into the Dor
+far down in the valley at its foot. A few hundred feet to the westward
+of this cascade, and at the lowest part of the precipitous columnar
+cliff, burst forth several copious fountains of hot mineral waters,
+half-way to boiling heat when they leave their rocky cells, and ever
+keeping up the same degree both of heat and quantity. These are the
+springs which give celebrity to the place, and constitute the baths of
+Mont Dor.</p>
+
+<p>The Romans&mdash;those true "rerum domini"&mdash;knew of the spot, as they did of
+most other good things within their wide empire; and they frequented
+these springs so much that they erected over them a magnificent bathing
+establishment, and adorned the spot with a beautiful temple. In the
+midst of the present village stand the remains of one and the other of
+their buildings; and thus the hydropathic system of the ancients is
+allied with the practice of the modern Acad&eacute;mie de M&eacute;decine. No records
+of the destruction, nor indeed of the existence, of this Roman
+watering-place have been preserved; probably, the buildings fell into
+natural decay, and during the middle ages were allowed to remain
+unrepaired and unheeded. Only foundations, broken shafts of columns,
+cornices, capitals, and altars are now discernible; but they are enough
+to add greatly to the interest of the locality.</p>
+
+<p>At Saint Nectaire, two leagues further down the valley, and indeed at
+other spots in it, thermal sources not much inferior to those of Mont
+Dor are to be met with; the whole district bears intimate evidence of
+its volcanic nature, and the rheumatic or dyspeptic invalid may here get
+stewed or washed out to his full satisfaction and lasting benefit.</p>
+
+<p>The village of Mont Dor-les-Bains is, however, that which has been
+selected by the <i>beau monde</i> of France as one of their choicest places
+of resort; and here public money has been added to the efforts of
+private speculation in order to render the baths at once ample and
+commodious. Over the best sources is erected a large edifice, the lower
+story of which is occupied by halls, and bathing-rooms for every variety
+of medical purpose; while above are assembly-rooms, and the apartments
+of the Government physician.</p>
+
+<p>The distribution below is most convenient. The water, after issuing from
+the rock, is conveyed by distinct channels into numerous baths contained
+in small chambers on either side of a large central hall: while other
+conduits take it to plunging and swimming baths, to douches, and to
+other medical contrivances. In the small single baths you receive the
+water piping hot from the rock, at about one hundred degrees of
+Fahrenheit; and you may lie there, bolling away&mdash;for a constant supply
+of the same natural water keeps running into and through your bath&mdash;for
+hours together, upon payment of <i>a franc</i>. The water costs nothing; the
+building has been erected at the public expense, and the visitor
+therefore enjoys this luxury at a moderate rate. For the poorer class of
+patients gratuitous baths are provided; and in fact the gifts of nature
+are here grudged to no one, but every man's wants may be gratified in a
+liberal manner.</p>
+
+<p>By four o'clock in the morning of a summer day, you may see a train of
+ghost-like beings winding along the village street, clad in the simple
+attire of a chemise, a blanket, and the eternal nightcap&mdash;lean,
+sallow-faced, or crippled mortals, who have had the wise precaution to
+undress at home, and not being afraid of shocking the wood-nymphs from
+their propriety, sally forth to court the Goddess of Health. They
+congregate in a dark cellar-like chamber, round an ample and steaming
+pool, and then sink into it, to forget for a while all their pains and
+maladies, and to enjoy that indescribably delightful sensation of having
+the joints gently unscrewed and fresh oiled. Others, whose shoulders
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span> backs have known the pangs of lumbago and acute rheumatism, are put
+under one of the douches; and down comes on them a discharge of the hot
+fluid as if from the hose of a fire-engine, or as though shot out from
+some bursting steam-boiler. Away fly the pains and troubles of humanity;
+the rickety machine is put in order for that day at least, and
+twenty-four hours of peaceful enjoyment is the almost invariable
+consequence.</p>
+
+<p>Later on in the morning, the fashionable visitors crawl forth to the
+baths; but not so late that nine o'clock does not see them all safely
+housed again after their ablutions, shaving or curling away with might
+and main to get ready for a grand <i>d&eacute;jeuner</i>. For here, as at Bath, not
+only is it well to remember the inscription,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"&#945;&#961;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#959;&#957; &#956;&#949;&#957; &#965;&#948;&#969;&#961;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but it would be advisable to add,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"&#946;&#961;&#969;&#956;&#945; &#948;&#949; &#956;&#949;&#947;&#953;&#963;&#964;&#959;&#957;:"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>seeing that the appetite which is got up by all this early rising, and
+steaming, and washing, is doomed to be satisfied in a way fully worthy
+of the most refined French <i>cuisine</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In the village there are numerous hotels and boarding-houses, capable of
+suiting the pockets and the wishes of all the middling, and even of the
+lower classes of society:&mdash;but there are three or four principal
+houses,&mdash;and especially two, reserved for the aristocracy; and here all
+the <i>&eacute;lite</i> of the visitors congregate. We wealthy English may laugh at
+the moderate expense for which this kind of thing can be done in France,
+but we are not apt to grumble at it when we find it suit our pockets;
+and, therefore, take with you at once the description of the kind of
+fare you are likely to meet with here, and the amount of damage it will
+do to your fortune. In these large hotels, then, which are commodious
+houses, a vast number of bedrooms are provided for the guests, and two
+good reception-rooms; besides an immense <i>salle-&agrave;-manger</i>. Some sixty or
+a hundred guests can be accommodated in each house, and can sit down at
+table together. Breakfast is served between nine and ten,&mdash;and a
+glorious breakfast it is! All kinds of good things, which an old
+<i>artiste</i> from Paris comes down for the season to cook: ending with
+fruits of many kinds and <i>caf&eacute;-au-lait</i>&mdash;that Continental beverage which
+John Bull can no more imitate than he can the wines of the Rhone or the
+Rhine:&mdash;in short, 'tis as good a breakfast as they could put on the
+table at Verey's. Dinner is ready at six, and maintains its proper
+superiority over the breakfast, both in the number of dishes and in the
+length of its service. The wines are good, and the fruits delicious, for
+they all come from Clermont&mdash;whence many a wagon-load of comestibles is
+tugged weekly over the mountains to satisfy the exigencies of the
+fastidious invalids!</p>
+
+<p>Well: they give you these two glorious spreads, your room, your light,
+your linen, and your attendance, for <i>five francs a-day</i>.</p>
+
+<p>And how is this day passed? Why, 'tis a true castle of indolence, is
+Mont Dor-les-Bains; "a pleasing land of sleepy-head," where every one
+follows the bent of his own fancy, and where the only serious occupation
+is, to forget all care and to do nothing. After rising from the
+breakfast table, parties are immediately formed for the promenade or the
+distant excursion; and, for the latter, some two or three score of boys
+and girls are stationed on the Grande Place, each in charge of an animal
+disguised with the name of a horse, which you hire for the whole day, to
+go where, and how far you please, for the enormous sum of <i>two francs</i>.
+It is true that the animal has neither symmetry nor blood, but it is the
+indigenous pony of these mountains; it is a slow, sure-footed beast, and
+it will carry you up and down the steepest hill-side with exemplary
+patience and sagacity. Do not lose your own patience, however, if you
+mount one of them. They have no trotting, nor galloping, nor any other
+pace whatever in them, out of the half-amble half-walk at which they
+commonly proceed. But then, they know no better food than
+mountain-grass, or the occasional luxury of some chopped straw, and they
+will follow you all round the village for a slice of bread held before
+their noses. Nevertheless they suit the country; they accommodate the
+visitors; and there is not a spare horse to be got<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span> in the village by
+half-past ten, for love or money.</p>
+
+<p>The day's ramble ended, and dinner duly dismissed, every body&mdash;that is
+to say, every body who is any body at all&mdash;adjourns to the <i>salle de
+r&eacute;union</i>, the large assembly-room built over the baths. This is really a
+handsome well-arranged ball-room, full of mirrors, ottomans, and
+benches; at one end is a billiard and card room, and behind are rooms
+for robing. Here, upon the payment of a napoleon, you have the <i>entr&eacute;e</i>
+for the season; and here the guests meet, more upon the terms of a large
+family than as though they were strangers. Etiquette is relaxed; every
+body knows every body. The elder men take to billiards and
+<i>&eacute;cart&eacute;</i>,&mdash;the graver ladies form into little <i>c&ocirc;teries</i>; a younger one
+goes to the piano, a circle is made, a romance is sung; and then, as the
+strain becomes lighter, the feet beat in sympathy, and the gay quadrille
+is formed. At eight or nine o'clock the room is at its fullest; the
+village minstrels are called in&mdash;some half-dozen violins, a clarionet,
+and a cornet; the music becomes louder, the mazy waltz is danced, and
+the enjoyment of the day is at its crowning point.</p>
+
+<p>Happy, happy days! still happier, still more delightful nights! No
+trouble, no excess&mdash;health and cheerfulness going hand-in-hand. The most
+refined society in France, and yet the most simple and most unaffected;
+good-humour and politeness ruling all things: all calculated for
+enjoyment, nought for disquietude and regret!</p>
+
+<p>At eleven o'clock it is understood that every body vacates the room;
+and, within half an hour after, not a sound is to be heard in the
+village, save the dash of the cascade, and the murmuring of the silvery
+Dor.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE COMPANY.</h3>
+
+<p>Well: 'tis a motley assemblage this! The world is checkered here not
+less than in the noisy and elegant capital; and man's peculiarities,
+man's excellencies, and man's defects, follow him even into the heart of
+these wild mountains, showing themselves in these smaller groups, not
+less strongly than amid the crowded streets of Paris! How should it be
+otherwise? Does not every one come hither to unbend, to throw off the
+stiff mask of metropolitan society for the moment, and to become
+themselves natural while they invoke the aid of nature's healthy
+influence? The strict etiquette of the Faubourg St Germain may here be
+safely laid aside awhile; and the inspirations of country life, the
+happy the delightful inspirations of youth, may be once more resumed.
+What a comfort to be able to get out of the buckram and taffetas of the
+court, to put on one's <i>n&eacute;glig&eacute;</i>, or one's shooting-jacket, and to keep
+company awhile with no less cheerful companions than the songsters and
+the rangers of the forest! Why it does one's inmost soul good to fly
+away from the din and turmoil, even of the pleasure-seeking Parisians,
+and to revert to the simple, yet grand and expansive ideas which scenery
+such as this of Mont Dor brings into the mind in an instant.</p>
+
+<p>True: the mountains increase in magnitude and grandeur as you approach
+them; once within their lofty and austere recesses, and their sublimity
+makes itself felt. You are brought into immediate contact with some of
+the mightiest works of the Creator, and the mind expands of itself,
+unconsciously and irresistibly, till it becomes capable of imbibing, of
+comprehending, and of enjoying the full magnificence of nature!</p>
+
+<p>But does the courtier, does the citizen lay aside his pack of habits, as
+well as his pack of cares, when he becomes a temporary denizen of the
+country? Would that it were so! He is cast in a mould&mdash;his mind has been
+warped: his body requires moistening with the freshest and the earliest
+dews of many an "incense-breathing morn," ere it can resume the full
+elasticity and joyous lightness of rustic activity; and his soul wants a
+long oblivion of all conventional preoccupation, all trouble and all
+intrigue, ere it can recover the tone and temper of younger days.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I had been saying all this to myself, and should have gone on
+moralising till the weary hour of noon,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span> perhaps; but while I was
+leaning over the balustrade of my window, looking down into the Grande
+Place&mdash;&mdash;Oh yes, to be sure! there is a Grande Place at Mont
+Dor-les-Bains, as well as at any other town, village, or city. Did you
+ever in your life hear or see any thing French to which the epithet of
+<i>Grand</i> had not been, by some means or other, tacked on? From the <i>Grand
+Monarque</i> at the head of the <i>Grande Arm&eacute;e</i> of the <i>Grande Nation</i>, down
+to the <i>Grand limonadier</i> of the <i>Grand Caf&eacute;</i> of the <i>Grande Place</i>, it
+is all <i>Grand</i>. Oh, this villanous spirit of exaggeration! this attempt
+at the sublime so inevitably linked to the ridiculous!&mdash;--Just so! I was
+leaning over the balustrade of my window, which, from the third story of
+the hotel, "gave," as they term it, into the Grande Place. Now it is one
+of the most delightful things imaginable, after you have indulged in
+your morning's ablutions, and have produced that indefinable lilac tint
+on your chin, which tells of easy shaving soap and a Rogers's true old
+English razor, to don your shawl dressing-gown, and, having adjusted
+your <i>bonnet grec</i> towards the right side of your head, so as to allow
+the glossy curl to escape and hang pendant on the left; when all this is
+done, to "light the brown cigar," to put yourself in an elegant
+reclining posture between your opening <i>jalousies</i>, and, with both
+elbows resting on the red velvet cushion that crowns the hard edge of
+the balustrade, to puff forth light wreaths of blue vapour into the
+balmy air, and to see the bathers come back from the baths. There you
+may "think down hours to moments:" and so was it with myself; for I took
+my post at my window by half-past six, and at nine I was still there.
+Every now and then went forth my curling column; then my eye would catch
+the glorious "mountain-tops bathed in the golden light of morn;" then I
+would give a glance at sublunary things awhile, and speculate on the
+moving animals below; then puff, and gaze, and speculate again; and all
+that while be the happiest of men, in the absolute absence of any thing
+but perfect idleness.</p>
+
+<p>You may say what you please, but it does the mind good to think of
+nothing at times; to let the impressions of passing events glide through
+the soul, and titillate the imagination, but to "leave no trace behind."
+Oh yes! this fairy dancing on the sands of life's dull shore, is very
+pleasant occupation for a summer morn, and eke a summer eve. It is
+poetical, to say the least of it; and day-dreams may sometimes prove not
+less agreeable than those mysterious scenes of night, when the soul
+quits her corporeal shackles, and roams in pure fancy through the world
+of thought, seeing sights of beauty, and scenes of paradisaical
+splendour, which the dull organs of bodily vision can never attain unto.
+Why! the happiest portion of my life is that which I have passed in the
+land of dreams: one third of my existence has been spent there&mdash;and I
+have friends, and well-known faces, and peaceful valleys, and bright
+streams, and strains of ethereal music, which are still and ever vivid
+in my waking mind, but at night call me to themselves, and wrap me in a
+state of enjoyment which certainly this poor weak body of mind never
+could be capable of experiencing. I have positively new, altogether new
+and unheard-of ideas&mdash;I do not mean irrational ones, nor those
+phantasmagoric combinations that haunt the diseased brains of some
+wretched mortals&mdash;but reasonable, possible, natural ideas of form and
+substance, which I am persuaded have their types in some corner or other
+of the universe, and which it may perhaps be hereafter my too happy
+destiny to witness, and to dwell amongst for ever and for aye. I would
+not exchange my dreams for all the realities of&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Monsieur! veut-il d&eacute;jeuner au salon?</i>" said the slip-shod <i>gar&ccedil;on</i> of
+the hotel, tapping me on the shoulder. "The company have all taken their
+seats, and I have kept a chair for Monsieur. Does Monsieur prefer
+Burgundy or claret? The <i>vin ordinaire</i> is not sufferable: <i>au reste</i>,
+here is the <i>carte</i>, and Monsieur has only to choose."</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis a reality, my friend, that I was not then exactly thinking of&mdash;but
+breakfast I must, and will. But just tell me, for a minute, where these
+people come from, that I see down in the Place there, at that
+corner&mdash;the old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span> gentleman in nankeen, with the green shade over his
+eyes, and the fat little dame by his side; and those young ladies at the
+door of the large hotel opposite, and the spruce <i>militaire</i> there at
+the window, and that knot of men in long brown surtouts, one of whom is
+gesticulating so vehemently."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Excusez</i>, Monsieur, those <i>gentlemen</i> are great politicians," (<i>grand</i>
+again, thought I!) "and one of them is deputy for the Department&mdash;M. de
+Beauparler: he has just been voting against the Ministry, sir; he is a
+great friend of M. Lafitte, sir; oh, sir! <i>c'est le plus grand orateur
+de notre pays!</i> You ought to hear him, sir. As for the young ladies,
+sir, they are <i>les Demoiselles Leroy</i>: it was their father that you were
+remarking just now&mdash;the old gentleman&mdash;very short-sighted, sir&mdash;he is
+immensely rich; <i>Pardi! que sais-je?</i>" (here he shrugged up his
+shoulders to his ears,) "they say he has 50,000 francs a-year!&mdash;<i>c'est
+assommant!</i>" (here he shut his eyes and raised his nose at an angle of
+forty-five degrees.) "<i>Quant aux demoiselles, elles sont</i>"&mdash;&mdash;(he was
+evidently at a loss for an expression; so he extended his first two
+fingers to his lips, closing tightly the others and his thumb, and then
+blew a kiss with them to the winds.)</p>
+
+<p>Tap! tap! at the door. "Pierre! are you coming down, then? they are
+asking for you every where!" And the tightly girded, and somewhat
+<i>altius accincta, fille-de-chambre</i>&mdash;a spruce little black-eyed
+<i>Auvergnate</i>,&mdash;tripped into the room. "<i>Excusez, milor!</i> but Pierre is
+such a gossip!" "My good girl, I will detain neither Pierre nor
+yourself: give me my coat, dust my room well, and now show me to the
+<i>salle-&agrave;-manger</i>."</p>
+
+<p>As good luck would have it, Pierre had placed a chair for me next to
+Madame de Mirepoix, her husband was on the other side of his
+lady,&mdash;'twas impossible to be in better company. Opposite to me was a
+venerable white-haired mustached gentleman, evidently a military man,
+and next to me was a lady, some five-and-forty, or thereabouts, with a
+strong Spanish cast of countenance and complexion, and her husband, a
+short thick-necked apoplectic-looking man, by her side. The rest of the
+company, though various enough in their physiognomical aspect, were
+evidently persons of the upper ranks of society, and among them were
+several choice specimens of the best and oldest nobility of France. They
+seemed all to make one joyous family party, as if they had been
+relations rather than strangers; every body was laughing and chatting
+with his neighbour; they were plying their forks most vigorously, and
+the noise and bustle was excessive.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of our baths?" said my lovely neighbour; "for of
+course you have already been immersed in, and have tasted the waters." I
+humbly alleged the negative. "Well! I declare this <i>phlegme Britannique</i>
+is insupportable. Why, sir, we were at the bath-house before six this
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Had I but known it, Madame"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, just so!" said the little apoplectic gentleman leaning across his
+wife to me: "<i>Monsieur est Anglais! c'est tr&egrave;s bien, c'est tr&egrave;s bien!</i>
+Monsieur, you do us great honour to come to visit this savage
+wilderness. But <i>voyez-vous</i>, you would have done much better to have
+stopped at Paris; there's nothing here, sir&mdash;absolutely nothing! What
+are these mountains? Bare rocks! forests, indeed, there are; but there
+are forests every where. Give me, sir, the For&ecirc;t de Montmorency, even
+the Bois de Boulogne; and for rocks, I wish for nothing better than the
+Rocher de Cancale." (Here he rubbed his hands excessively, and looked
+round the table for a smile at the <i>bon-mot</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>"M. Bouton will pardon me," observed the old officer, "but if he had
+travelled all over Europe as I have done, he would not wonder at the
+desire to change an every-day scene for something new. When our <i>corps
+d'arm&eacute;e</i> was traversing the Mont St Bernard, I assure you I never felt
+the slightest regret at having quitted Paris:&mdash;we could have gone on to
+the end of the world with the spirits we then were in. It was the same
+in the Pyrenees:&mdash;for more reasons than one I was extremely sorry when
+we had to quit Pampeluna for Bayonne"&mdash;and the old gentleman sighed, and
+looked wistfully up at the ceiling, as though many a painful
+recollection came across his mind at that moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Which are the finer mountains<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span> sir," was my inquiry&mdash;"the Pyrenees or
+these of Auvergne?"</p>
+
+<p>"You can hardly draw a comparison between them," he replied. "There is
+vast extent, width, and height in the Pyrenees, and a certain degree of
+savage horror about them, which you do not feel even amidst the
+Alps:&mdash;they partake of the nature both of France and Spain:&mdash;they are
+unlike any mountains I know of. But for all this, sir, do not allow
+yourself to hold a poor opinion of these heights of Mont Dor: you will
+find here scope and exercise for all your enthusiasm, all your love of
+the picturesque. Are you fond of shooting and hunting?&mdash;well, then, if
+you were to remain here during September and October, braving the early
+snows which come upon these mountains even in autumn, you would have
+your choice of all animals from the wolf to the <i>chevreuil</i> and the
+hare, and of all birds from the eagle to the partridge. There are plenty
+of snipes on these hills."</p>
+
+<p>"M. le Baron de Bretonville," said Madame Bouton, "do not go to tempt
+the English gentleman to any of your hare-brained expeditions: he is
+come here to enjoy the baths:&mdash;he is a victim to the spleen; he must be
+danced and talked and bathed into good health, and a little vivacity
+first of all. When we all leave the baths, we will give him permission
+to stop behind with you, and you may kill all the game you can find. At
+present we want a cavalier for our expedition: there is Madame
+d'Arlincourt, and Madame de Tourzel, and the Duchesse de Vauvilliers,
+and Madame de Mirepoix there, on your right&mdash;why these ladies are all
+here by themselves; they want a cavalier this very morning.
+<i>Figurez-vous</i>, Monsieur!" and the lady turned towards me&mdash;"we want
+somebody to come and find our ponies for us, and to take care of our
+shawls, and to carry our books, and our stools, and positively, with the
+exception of two officers who are at the other hotel, I do not know whom
+to ask. We engage you, sir, for the whole of this very day: our
+husbands"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I thought, Madame, that these ladies were all alone here."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!&mdash;our husbands, <i>&ccedil;a va sans dire</i>!&mdash;but gentlemen of that kind do
+nothing else than play billiards all the morning."</p>
+
+<p>"It is only the young and the gallant," here interposed Madame de
+Mirepoix "that dare to face our forests.&mdash;You shall teach us all some
+English as we ride along: I could give any thing to master your
+barbarous language:&mdash;you have only one musical word in it&mdash;<i>moonlight</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Now, I know not what there was in the pronunciation of Madame de
+Mirepoix, but though the word had never before entered into my
+imagination as any thing but one of the most commonplace of our
+vocabulary, there was a witchery in the sound as it flowed forth from
+her swelling lips that riveted my attention, and set my imagination on
+fire. 'Tis the same with French:&mdash;how refined and how mellow soever may
+be the utterance of the most polished courtier of France, of the most
+learned academician of the Institute, there is sometimes a rich pouting
+sound, a sort of velvety and oily intonation, that distinguishes the
+speech of the women of high birth such as I never heard in any other
+country. It is not to be defined: but whoso has drunk in the golden
+tones of such a syren, will know what I mean. Moonlight! yes, 'tis a
+pleasing word, by its signification and its associated ideas, if not by
+its own innate harmony: yes; I have learned the full influence and
+sweetness of moonlight, whether in the summer woodland or in the wintry
+cloister; true, there is both music and poetry, ay and something else,
+in moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>"I agree to the thing, Madame la Marquise, if not to the sound; nothing
+could be more beautiful than the latter as you have pronounced it,
+except the reality, amidst these mountains and these retired deep-green
+glades."</p>
+
+<p>"Nous le verrons, peut-&ecirc;tre."</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE FOREST.</h3>
+
+<p>All the great valleys that branch out from the sides of the volcanic
+chain of Auvergne were once, no doubt, filled with impenetrable forests:
+gloomy wildernesses, thick as those of American wilds, where scarcely
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span> light of the sun could penetrate, and tenanted only by the wolf,
+the bear, the boar, and the stag. Now these forests have disappeared
+from the eastern and western skirts of the chain, and are to be found in
+primitive luxuriance only in the centre, where civilisation and the
+destroying step of man have not made their way. Here the original forest
+is still to be seen in all its pride; untouched, untrimmed, unheeded by
+man: full of all its sublime grandeur&mdash;solemn, vast, and mysterious as
+forests have ever been; sobering, soothing, and beautiful as forests
+will ever be. In some of the valleys the trees are principally of the
+deciduous kind; enormous oaks, and chestnuts, and beeches, filling up
+the vacant space left by the granitic walls on either side: but in the
+higher regions of the mountainous district, in the more hidden recesses
+of the hills, they are all of the silver-fir species, and they attain a
+luxuriance of growth not to be imagined but by those who have studied
+this, the noblest of the whole tribe of pines. Here forests occur,
+leagues upon leagues in extent, filling up wide and winding valleys;
+running out upon the elevated plateaux of the mountains; and wrapping
+the whole country in gloomy majesty. You may ride day after day through
+these intricate sylvan scenes, and never cross the track of a human
+being: or you may emerge from the depth of the wood, at some unexpected
+turn of a valley, upon a delightful little farm or village in a green
+glade of welcome verdure; and you may there witness the extreme
+simplicity of the hardy mountaineers. Still higher up on the hills, and
+on the vast pasture grounds that reach up to their summits, along the
+gently descending plateaux, occurs the birch, luxuriating in the cold
+exposure of its habitation as though it were in Siberia instead of
+France: and ever and anon, whether high up or low down the sides of the
+hills, you will find the box and the juniper bushes flourishing in
+perennial perfection.</p>
+
+<p>It is curious to see the enormous size to which the silver-fir will here
+attain. Sometimes this tree rises with the utmost regularity&mdash;sending
+out its branches at equal intervals, tier above tier&mdash;itself tapering
+upwards, and each circle of branches decreasing in diameter until a
+hundred and fifty feet are gained. The stems of some of these giants of
+the forest are eighteen feet in circumference at the height of a man
+from the ground, and their lower branches would of themselves form trees
+such as many a trim and well-kept park could never boast of. At other
+times the original tree will have met with an accidental fracture when
+young, and after going up twenty or thirty feet from the ground, as an
+immense wooden column, will throw out three or four other trees from its
+summit, which will all shoot up parallel to each other into the air and
+form a little forest of themselves. Very frequently, however, it happens
+that the tree has been contorted in its early growth, and then broken
+afterwards: in such cases it seems to have forgotten its nature
+completely, and to have gone mad in its spirit of increase; for it turns
+and forces itself into the strangest convolutions and intricacies of
+form. It becomes like a short stunted oak, or a thickly knotted thorn:
+or it might sometimes be mistaken for a willow, at others for a
+cedar&mdash;for any thing but one of the same species as the stately spire of
+wood that soars up into the heaven close by its side.</p>
+
+<p>When the tree becomes quite dead, blasted by lightning, or injured by
+the attacks of animals at its base, it does not therefore lose all its
+beauty; for it becomes immediately covered with a peculiar gray lichen
+of great length and luxuriance; occupying every branch and twig of the
+dead tree, and clothing it, as it were, with a second but a new kind of
+foliage. This lichen will sometimes hang down from the branches in
+strings of weeping vegetation to the length of five feet and more. You
+may sometimes ride under the living tree where this parasitical foliage
+is mixed with the real covering of the boughs, forming the most
+anomalous, and yet the most picturesque of contrasts.</p>
+
+<p>In forests of this kind, the undergrowth of brushwood of every variety
+is exceedingly abundant and beautiful: every woodland shrub is to be
+found there&mdash;the hazel especially&mdash;and the thickets thereby formed are
+quite impenetrable. As the older and larger<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span> trees decay, they lose
+their footing in the soil, and fall in every variety of strange
+position&mdash;presenting a picture of desolation, the effect of which is at
+first strange to the mind, and at last becomes even painful. But
+wherever a tree falls, there a luxuriant growth of moss succeeds: a
+little peat-bed forms itself underneath: generations after generations
+of mosses and watery plants succeed one another; and in time the
+prostrate trunk is entirely buried under a bright-green bed, soft as
+down, but treacherous to the foot as a quicksand. Often may the wanderer
+amid these wild glades think to throw himself on one of these inviting
+couches; and, bounding on to it, he sinks five or six feet through moss
+and weed and dirty peat, till his descent is stopped by the skeleton of
+the vast tree that lies beneath. Wild flowers grow all around: and every
+spot of ground that will produce them is covered in the summer season
+with the tempting little red strawberry, or the wild raspberry, or the
+blushing rose. Above all, still keep peering, in solemn and interminable
+array, the vast monarchs of the wood, the stately and elegant
+silver-firs.</p>
+
+<p>When you attempt to leave the forests and advance towards the upper
+grounds, you commonly find yourself stopped by a precipitous wall of
+basaltic columns, ranging from sixty to seventy feet in height in one
+unbroken shaft, and forming a vast barrier for miles and miles in
+length. In some places, these gray basaltic walls come circling round,
+and constitute an immense natural theatre, sombre and grand as the
+forest itself. No sound is there heard save the dashing of a distant
+cascade, or the wind in deep symphony rushing through the slow-waving
+tops of the trees. Below is a carpet of the most lively green,
+variegated with turfs of wild flowers and fruits&mdash;one of nature's
+secret, yet choicest gardens. Through the midst trickles a silvery
+stream, coming you know not whence, but musical in its course, and soon
+losing itself in the thick underwood that borders the spot all around.
+Such is the Salle de Mirabeau&mdash;one of the loveliest of the many lovely
+hiding-places of these sublime forests.</p>
+
+<p>The feathered tenants of these woods are mostly birds of prey, or at all
+events such as the raven, the jay, the pie, and others which can either
+defend themselves against, or escape from, the falcons that consider
+these solitudes as their own especial domains. The voices of few
+singing-birds are to be heard; they have taken refuge nearer the
+habitations of man: but the hooting of the owl, the beating of the
+woodpecker, and the screaming of kites and hawks, are all the living
+sounds that proceed here from the air. Red-deer, wolves, wild-boars,
+roebucks, and foxes, are the denizens of these forests and these
+mountains: there is room here for them all to live at their ease; and
+they abound. No one with a good barrel and a sure aim, ever entered
+these forests in vain: his burden is commonly more than he can carry
+home. It is in fact a glorious country for the sportsman; for the lower
+ranges of the hills abound in hares, the cultivated grounds have plenty
+of partridges and quails, and the forests are tenanted as has been seen.
+He who can content himself with his gun or his rod&mdash;for the streams are
+full of trout&mdash;may here pass a golden age, without a thought for the
+morrow, without a desire unfulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly, if I wished to retire from the world and lead a life of
+philosophic indifference, not altogether out of the reach of society
+when I wanted it, these hills and these forests of Auvergne, and the
+Mont Dor, would be the spots I should select. The mind here would become
+attuned to the grand harmonies of nature's own making; here, philosophy
+might be cultivated in good earnest; here, books might be studied and
+theories digested, without interruption and with inward profit. Here, a
+man might cultivate both science and art, and he might become again the
+free and happy being which, until he betook himself to congregating in
+towns, he was destined to be. Yes! when I do withdraw from this world's
+vanities and troubles, give me forests and mountains like those of Mont
+Dor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_FIGHTING_EIGHTY-EIGHTH3" id="THE_FIGHTING_EIGHTY-EIGHTH3"></a>THE FIGHTING EIGHTY-EIGHTH.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>The pugnacity of Irishmen has grown into a proverb, until, in the belief
+of many, a genuine Milesian is never at peace but when fighting. With
+certain nations, certain habits are inseparably associated as peculiarly
+characterising them. Thus, in vulgar apprehension, the Frenchman dances,
+the German smokes, the Spaniard serenades; and on all hands it is agreed
+that the Irishman fights. Naturally bellicose, his practice is
+pugnacious: antagonism is his salient and distinctive quality. Born in a
+squabble, he dies in a shindy: in his cradle he squeals a challenge; his
+latest groan is a sound of defiance. Pike and pistol are manifest in his
+well-developed bump of combativeness; his name is <span class="smcap">fight</span>, there can be no
+mistake about it. From highest to lowest&mdash;in the peer and the
+bog-trotter, the inherent propensity breaks forth, more or less modified
+by station and education.</p>
+
+<p>Be its expression parliamentary or popular, in Donnybrook or St
+Stephen's, out it will. "Show me the man who'll tread on my coat!"
+shouts ragged Pat, flourishing his shillelagh as he hurls his
+dilapidated garment on the shebeen-house floor. From his seat in the
+senate, a joint of the "Tail" intimates, in more polished but equally
+intelligible phrase, his inclination for a turn upon the turf. Wherever
+blows are rife, Hibernia's sons appear; in big fights or little wars the
+shamrock gleams in the van. No matter the cloth, so long as the quarrel
+be there. In Austrian white, or Spanish yellow, or Prussian blue,&mdash;even
+in the blood-coloured breeks of Gallia's legions, but especially, and
+preferred above all, in the "old red rag" of the British grenadier, have
+Irishmen displayed their valour. And on the list of heroes whom the
+Green Isle has produced, a proud and prominent place is justly held by
+that gallant corps, the Rangers of Connaught.</p>
+
+<p>Those of our civilian readers to whom the word "Ranger" is more
+suggestive of bushes and kangaroos, or of London parks and princes of
+the blood, than of parades and battle-fields, are referred to page 49 of
+the Army List. They will there find something to the following effect:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td colspan="2">88th, <span class="smcap">Connaught Rangers</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">The Harp and Crown.</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2"><i>"Quis Separabit?"</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>The Sphinx,</td> <td align='center'>"Egypt."</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"Talavera."</td> <td align='center'>"Busaco."</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">"Fuentes d'Onore."</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">"Cindad Rodrigo."</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"Badajoz."</td> <td align='center'>"Salamanca."</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">"Vittoria."</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center'>"Nivelle."</td> <td align='center'>"Orthes."</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">"Toulouse."</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">"Peninsula."</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>There is a forest of well-won laurels in this dozen of names. They form
+a proud blazon for any corps, and one that might satisfy the most
+covetous of honour. But of all men in the world, old soldiers are the
+hardest to content. They are patented grumblers. Napoleon knew it, and
+christened his <i>vieille garde</i> his <i>grognards</i>: tough and true as steel,
+they yet would have their growl. Now the lads of the Eighty-Eighth,
+having proved themselves better men even than the veteran guards of the
+Corsican corporal, also claim the grumbler's privilege, setting forth
+sundry griefs and grave causes of complaint. They are not allowed the
+word "Pyrenees" upon their colours, although, at the fight of that name,
+they not only were present, but rendered good service:&mdash;whilst for
+Waterloo many a man got a medal who, during the whole battle, was scarce
+within boom of cannon. During more than four years of long marches,
+short commons, severe hardships, and frequent fighting, the general
+commanding the third division&mdash;the fighting division, as it was
+called&mdash;viewed the Connaughters with dislike, even stigmatised them as
+confirmed marauders, and recommended none of their officers for
+promotion, although many greatly distinguished themselves, and
+some,&mdash;the brave Mackie, at Ciudad Rodrigo, for instance&mdash;successfully<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span>
+led forlorn-hopes. Finally, passing over the old sore of non-decoration
+for Peninsular services, since that, common to many regiments, is at
+last about to be healed,&mdash;Mr Robinson, the biographer of Sir Thomas
+Picton, has dared, in order to vindicate the harsh and partial conduct
+of his hero, to cast dust upon the facings of the brave boys of
+Connaught. It need hardly be said that they have found defenders. Of
+these, the most recent is Lieutenant Grattan, formerly an officer of the
+Eighty-eighth, and who, after making a vigorous stand, in the pages of a
+military periodical, against the calumniators of his old corps, has
+brought up his reserves and come to its support in a book of his own.
+His volumes, however, are not devoted to mere controversy. He has
+understood that he should best state the case, establish the merits, and
+confound the enemies of his regiment, by a faithful narrative of his and
+its adventures, triumphs, and sufferings. Thus, whilst he has seized the
+opportunity to deal out some hard knocks to those who have blamed the
+conduct (none have ever impugned the courage) of the Connaught Rangers,
+he has produced an entertaining book, thoroughly Irish in character,
+where the ludicrous and the horrible, the rollicking and the
+slaughtering, mingle and alternate. Even when most indignant, good
+humour and a love of fun peep through his pages. His prologue or
+preamble, entitled "An Answer to some attacks in Robinson's Life of
+Picton," although redolent of "slugs in a sawpit," is full of the
+national humour. "Frequently," Mr Robinson has asserted, "just before
+going into battle, it would be found, upon inspection, that one-half of
+the Eighty-eighth regiment were without ammunition, having acquired a
+pernicious habit of exchanging the cartridge for <i>aguardiente</i>, and
+substituting in their places pieces of wood, cut and coloured to
+resemble them." Such things have been heard of, even in very
+well-regulated regiments, as the exchange of powder and ball for brandy
+and other creature comforts; but it is very unlikely that the practice
+should have prevailed to any thing like the extent here set down, in a
+British army in active service and under Wellington's command, and the
+artfully prepared quaker-cartridges increase the improbability of the
+statement. Lieutenant Grattan scouts the tale as a base fabrication,
+lashes out in fine style at its propagator, and claims great merit for
+the officers who taught their men to beat the best troops in the world
+with timber ammunition. He puts forward a more serious refutation by a
+string of certificates from men and officers of all ranks who served
+with him in the Peninsula, and who strenuously repel the charge as a
+malignant calumny.</p>
+
+<p>It was at the close of the campaign of 1809, that the historian of the
+Connaught Rangers, then a newly commissioned youngster, joined, within a
+march of Badajoz, the first battalion of his regiment. The palmy and
+triumphant days of the British army in the Peninsula could then hardly
+be said to have begun. True, they had had victories; the hard-earned one
+of Talavera had been gained only three months previously, but the
+general aspect of things was gloomy and disheartening. The campaign had
+been one of much privation and fatigue; rations were insufficient,
+quarters unhealthy, and Wellington's little army, borne on the
+muster-rolls as thirty thousand men, was diminished one-third by
+disease. The Portuguese, who numbered nearly as many, were raw and
+untried troops, scarce a man of whom had seen fire, and little reliance
+could be placed upon them. In spite of Lord Wellington's judicious and
+reiterated warnings, the incompetent and conceited Spanish generals
+risked repeated engagements, in which their armies&mdash;numerous enough, but
+ill disciplined, ill armed, and half-starved&mdash;were crushed and
+exterminated. The French side of the medal presented a very different
+picture. Elated by their German victories, their swords yet red with
+Austrian blood, Napoleon's best troops and ablest marshals hurried
+southwards, sanguinely anticipating, upon the fields of the Peninsula,
+an easy continuation of their recent triumphs. Three hundred and sixty
+thousand men-at-arms&mdash;French, Germans, Italians, Poles, even
+Mamelukes&mdash;spread themselves over Spain, occupied her towns, and
+invested her fortresses. Ninety thousand soldiers, under Massena,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span>
+"<i>l'enfant ch&eacute;ri de la Victoire</i>," composed the so-called "army of
+Portugal," intended to expel from that country, if not to annihilate,
+the English leader and his small but resolute band, who, undismayed,
+awaited the coming storm. In the ever-memorable lines of Torres Vedras,
+the legions of Buonaparte met a stern and effectual dike to their
+torrent of headlong aggression. Upon the happy selection and able
+defence of those celebrated positions, were based the salvation of the
+Peninsula and the subsequent glorious progress of the British arms.
+Whilst referring to them, Mr Grattan seizes the opportunity to enumerate
+the services rendered by the army in Spain. "The invincible men," he
+says, "who defended those lines, aided no doubt by Portuguese and
+Spanish soldiers, afterwards fought for a period of four years, during
+which time they never suffered one defeat; and from the first
+commencement of this gigantic war to its final and victorious
+termination, the Peninsular army fought and won nineteen pitched
+battles, and innumerable combats; they made or sustained ten sieges,
+took four great fortresses, twice expelled the French from Portugal,
+preserved Alicant, Carthagena, Cadiz, and Lisbon; they killed, wounded,
+and took about <i>two hundred thousand enemies</i>, and the bones of forty
+thousand British soldiers lie scattered on the plains and mountains of
+the Peninsula." And thereupon our friend, the Connaughter, bursts out
+into indignation that warriors who did such deeds, and, on <i>fifteen</i>
+different occasions received the thanks of parliament, should have been
+denied a medal for their services. Certainly, when men who went through
+the whole, or the greater part, of those terrible campaigns, which they
+began as commissioned officers, are now seen holding no higher than a
+lieutenant's rank, one cannot but recognise their title to some
+additional recompense, and marvel that the modest and well-merited badge
+they claim should so long have been refused them. Mr Grattan puts much
+of the blame of such refusal at the door of the Duke of Wellington. Not
+that he is usually a depreciator of his former leader, of whose military
+genius and great achievements he ever speaks with respect amounting to
+veneration. But he does not hesitate to accuse him of having sacrificed
+his old followers and friends to his own vanity, which petty feeling, he
+maintains, made the Duke desire that the only medal granted for the war
+against Napoleon, should be given for the only victory in which he beat
+the Emperor in person. We believe that many Peninsular officers, puzzled
+to account for the constant and seemingly causeless refusal of the
+coveted decoration, hold the same opinion with Mr Grattan. We esteem it
+rather plausible than sound. The names Of <span class="smcap">Wellington</span> and <span class="smcap">Waterloo</span> would
+not the less be immortally associated because a cross bearing those of
+<span class="smcap">Peninsula</span> and <span class="smcap">Pyrenees</span>, or any other appropriate legend, shone upon the
+breasts of that "old Spanish infantry," of whom the Duke always spoke
+with affection and esteem, and to whom he unquestionably is mainly
+indebted for the wealth, honours, and fame which, for more than thirty
+years, he has tranquilly enjoyed. Moreover, we cannot credit such
+selfishness on the part of such a man, or believe that he, to whom a
+grateful sovereign and country decerned every recompense in their power
+to bestow, would be so thankless to the men to whose sweat and blood he
+mainly owed his success&mdash;to men who bore him, it may truly be said, upon
+their shoulders, to the highest pinnacle of greatness a British subject
+can possibly attain. Waterloo concluded the war: its results were
+immense, the conduct of the troops engaged heroic; but when we compare
+the amount of glory there gained with the renown accumulated during six
+years' warfare&mdash;a renown undimmed by a single reverse;&mdash;still more, when
+we contrast the dangers and hardships of one short campaign, however
+brilliant, with those of half-a-dozen long ones crowded with battles and
+sieges, we must admit that if the victors of La Belle Alliance nobly
+earned their medal, the veterans of Salamanca and Badajoz, Vittoria and
+Toulouse, have a threefold claim to a similar reward. They have long
+been unjustly deprived of it, and now comparatively few remain to
+receive the tardily-accorded distinction.</p>
+
+<p>The first action to which Mr Grattan refers, as having himself taken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span>
+share in, is that of Busaco. The name is familiar to every body, but
+yet, of all the Peninsular battles, it is perhaps the one of which least
+is generally known. It was not a very bloody fight&mdash;the loss in killed
+and wounded having been barely seven per cent of the numbers engaged;
+still it was a highly important one, as testing the quality of the
+Portuguese levies, upon which much depended. Upon the whole, they
+behaved pretty well, although they committed one or two awkward
+blunders, and one of their militia regiments took to flight at the first
+volley fired by their own friends. Mr Grattan does not usually set
+himself up as a historical authority with respect to battles, except in
+matters pertaining to his own regiment or brigade, and which came under
+his own observation. Nevertheless, concerning Busaco, he speaks boldly
+out, and asserts his belief that no correct report of the action exists
+in print. Napier derives his account of it from Colonel Waller, whose
+statement is totally incorrect, and has been expressly contradicted by
+various officers (amongst others, by General King) who fought that day
+with Picton's division. Colonel Napier's strong partiality to the light
+division sometimes prevents his doing full justice to other portions of
+the army. In this instance, however, any error he has fallen into,
+arises from his being misinformed. He himself was far away to the left,
+fighting with his own corps, and could know nothing, from personal
+observation, of the proceedings of Picton's men. Opposed to a very
+superior force, including some of the best regiments of the whole French
+army, they had their hands full; and the Eighty-eighth, especially,
+covered themselves with glory. At one time, the Rangers had not only the
+French fire to endure, but also that of the Eighth Portuguese, whose
+ill-directed volleys crossed their line of march. An officer sent to
+warn the Senhores of the mischief they did, received, before he could
+fulfil his mission, a French and a Portuguese bullet, and the Eighth
+continued their reckless discharge. But no cross-fire could daunt the
+men of Connaught. "Push home to the muzzle!" was the word of their
+gallant lieutenant-colonel, Wallace; and push home they did, totally
+routing their opponents, and nearly destroying the French Thirty-sixth,
+a pet battalion of the Emperor's. Stimulus was not wanting; Wellington
+stood by, and, with his staff and several generals, watched the charge.
+The Eighty-eighth were greatly outnumbered, and Marshal Beresford, their
+colonel, "expressed some uneasiness when he saw his regiment about to
+plunge into this unequal contest. But when they were mixed with
+Regnier's division, and putting them to flight down the hill, Lord
+Wellington, tapping Beresford on the shoulder, said to him, 'Well
+Beresford, look at them now!'" And when the work was done, and the fight
+over, Wellington rode up to Colonel Wallace, and seizing him warmly by
+the hand, said, "Wallace, I never witnessed a more gallant charge than
+that made by your regiment!" Beresford spoke to several of the men by
+name, and shook the officers' hands; and even Picton forgot his
+prejudice against the regiment, whom he had once designated as the
+"Connaught foot-pads," and expressed himself satisfied with their
+conduct. Many of the men shed tears of joy. So susceptible are soldiers
+to praise and kindness, and so easy is it by a few well-timed words to
+repay their toils and perils, and renew their store of confidence and
+hope. And numerous were the occasions during the Peninsular contest when
+they needed all the encouragement that could be given them. After
+Busaco, when blockaded in the lines of Torres Vedras, their situation
+was far from agreeable. The wet season set in, and their huts, roofed
+with heather&mdash;a pleasant shelter when the sun shone, but very
+ineffectual to resist autumnal rains&mdash;became untenable. Every device was
+resorted to for the exclusion of the deluge, but in vain. Fortunately,
+the French were in a still worse plight. In miserable cantonments, short
+of provisions and attacked by disease, the horses died, and the men
+deserted; until, on the 14th November, Massena broke up his camp, and
+retired upon Santarem. The Anglo-Portuguese army made a corresponding
+movement into more comfortable quarters, and rumours were abroad of an
+approaching engagement;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span> but it did not take place, and a period of
+comparative relaxation succeeded one of severe hardship and arduous
+duty. Men and officers made the most of the holiday. There was never any
+thing of the martinet about the Duke. He was not the man to harass with
+unnecessary and vexations drills, or rigidly to enforce unimportant
+rules. Those persons, whether military or otherwise, who consider a
+strictly regulation uniform as essential to the composition of a British
+soldier, as a stout heart and a strong arm, and who stickle for a
+closely buttoned jacket, a stiff stock, and the due allowance of
+pipe-clay, would have been somewhat scandalised, could they have beheld
+the equipment of Wellington's army in the Peninsula. Mr Grattan gives a
+comical account of the various fantastical fashions and conceits
+prevalent amongst the officers. "Provided," he says, "we brought our men
+into the field well-appointed, and with sixty rounds of good ammunition
+each, he (the Duke) never looked to see whether their trousers were
+black, blue, or grey; and as to ourselves, we might be rigged out in all
+the colours of the rainbow, if we fancied it." The officers, especially
+the young subs, availed themselves largely of this judicious laxity, and
+the result was a medley of costume, rather picturesque than military.
+Braided coats, long hair, plumed hats, and large mustaches, were amongst
+the least of the eccentricities displayed. In a curious spirit of
+contradiction, the infantry adopted brass spurs, anticipatory, perhaps,
+of their promotion to field-officers' rank; and, bearing in mind, that
+"there is nothing like leather," exhibited themselves in ponderous
+over-alls, <i>&agrave; la Hongroise</i>, topped and strapped, and loaded down the
+side with buttons and chains. One man, in his rage for singularity, took
+the tonsure, shaving the hair off the crown of his head; and another,
+having covered his frock-coat with gold tags and lace, was furiously
+assaulted by a party of Portuguese sharpshooters, who, seeing him, in
+the midst of the enemy's riflemen, whither his headlong courage had led
+him, mistook him for a French general, and insisted upon making him
+prisoner. And three years later, when Mr Grattan and a party of his
+comrades landed in England, in all the glories of velvet waistcoats,
+dangling Spanish buttons of gold and silver, and forage caps of fabulous
+magnificence, they could hardly fancy that they belonged to the same
+service as the red-coated, white-breeched, black-gaitered gentlemen of
+Portsmouth garrison.</p>
+
+<p>The embarkation of the British army, which in the summer of 1810 was
+deemed imminent both in England and the Peninsula and considered
+probable by Lord Liverpool himself, was no longer thought of after
+Busaco, save by a few of those croaking gentlemen, who, in camps as in
+council-houses, view every thing through smoked spectacles.
+Reinforcements, both English and Spanish, reached the lines of Torres
+Vedras, which Wellington continued to strengthen, and Massena dared not
+attack. The accession of General Drouet's corps increased the army of
+the Prince of Essling to upwards of 70,000 men. His cavalry, too, was
+twice as strong as that of the British; but, notwithstanding this
+superiority, and the desire which he must have felt to retrieve his
+fame, tarnished by the repulse at Busaco, and by his fruitless movement
+on the lines of Lisbon, Massena remained inert, in front of the man whom
+Napoleon's <i>Moniteur</i> contemptuously designated as the "Sepoy General."
+Spring approached without either army assuming the offensive, until, on
+the 5th of March 1811, the French began their retreat from Portugal,
+closely followed up by Wellington. There was little difficulty in
+tracing them: they left a broad trail of blood, and desolation. With
+bare blade, and blazing brand, they swept across the land; church and
+convent, town and village, the farm and the cottage, were given to the
+flames; on the most frivolous pretexts, often without one, women,
+children, and unarmed men were barbarously murdered; and many a
+Portuguese lost his life for refusing to point out treasures which
+existed only in the imagination of the fierce and greedy Frenchman.
+Enraged at the dearth of provisions, of which they stood in great need,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span>
+and which had been every-where removed or destroyed, the retreating army
+abandoned themselves to frightful cruelties and excesses. All along the
+line of march, the pursuers found piles of bodies, groups of murdered
+peasantry, and, mingled with them, the corpses of Frenchmen, often
+hideously mutilated, according to the barbarous usage which has been
+continued in more recent wars by the vindictive population of the
+Peninsula. The retaliation was terrible, but the provocation had been
+extreme. Mr Grattan's details of some of the scenes he himself
+witnessed, are painfully minute and vivid; and whilst reading them, we
+cease to wonder that, after the lapse of a third of a century, hatred of
+the French exists almost undiminished in the countries they so cruelly
+and wantonly ravaged.</p>
+
+<p>However orderly and well-conducted, there is always something
+discouraging in a retreat, as there is a cheerful and exhilarating
+feeling attendant on an advance. Nevertheless, during their progress
+across Portugal, the French maintained their high reputation. Their
+rear-guard, commanded by Marshal Ney, made good fight when pressed by
+the British, but their losses were heavy before they reached the Spanish
+frontier. This they crossed early in April, and a month later they had
+to recross it, to convey supplies to the fortress of Almeida, the only
+place in Portugal over which the tricolor still floated. The result of
+this movement was the bloody combat of Fuentes d'Onore, a complete but
+dearly-bought triumph for our arms. Here the Eighty-eighth nobly
+distinguished themselves. At first they were in reserve, whilst for
+eight hours two Highland regiments, the Eighty-third and some light
+companies, fought desperately in the town, opposed to the fresh troops
+which Massena continually sent up. Their loss was very heavy, the
+streets were heaped with dead, the heat was excessive, and ammunition
+grew scarce. The Highlanders and the French grenadiers fought in the
+cemetery, across the graves and tombstones. "Wallace, with his regiment,
+the Eighty-eighth, was in reserve on the high ground which overlooked
+the churchyard, and was attentively viewing the combat which raged
+below, when Sir Edward Pakenham galloped up to him, and said, 'Do you
+see that, Wallace?'&mdash;'I do,' replied the colonel; 'and I would rather
+drive the French out of the town than cover a retreat across the
+Coa.'&mdash;'Perhaps,' said Sir Edward, 'his lordship don't think it
+tenable.' Wallace answering, said, 'I shall take it with my regiment,
+and keep it too.'&mdash;'Will you?' was the reply; 'I'll go and tell Lord
+Wellington so.' In a moment or two, Pakenham returned at a gallop, and
+waving his hat, called out, 'He says you may go.&mdash;Come along, Wallace!'"</p>
+
+<p>Poor Pakenham! ever foremost to lead a charge or brave a peril. He
+deserved a better fate, after his glorious exploits in the Peninsula,
+than to be picked off by a sneaking Yankee rifle, in the swampy plains
+of New Orleans. But the same "boiling spirit and hasty temper" that won
+him laurels in Europe, led him to his death in another hemisphere.
+Over-confidence may be pardoned in a man who had so often driven before
+him the redoubtable cohorts of the modern Alexander. And one mistake
+cannot obliterate the memory of fifty gallant feats.&mdash;Full of fight, and
+led on by Pakenham, Mackinnon, and Wallace, the Eighty-eighth advanced
+at a smart trot into the town, where the French Ninth regiment and a few
+hundreds of the Imperial Guard awaited them. Their charge was
+irresistible; they cleared the place and drove the enemy into the river.
+They even pursued them through it, and several Rangers fell on the
+French side of the stream. About a hundred and fifty of the Old Guard
+ran into a street, of which the further end was barricaded. Mr Grattan,
+whose account of the affair is a graphic and interesting piece of
+military narrative, is amusingly cool and <i>na&iuml;f</i> in referring to this
+incident. "Mistakes of this kind," he says, "will sometimes occur, and
+when they do, the result is easily imagined.... In the present instance,
+every man was put to death; but our soldiers, <i>as soon as they had
+leisure</i>, paid the enemy that respect which is due to brave men." We
+apprehend that, with the Connaughters, <i>leisure</i>, in this sense, was
+scanty, at least at Fuentes d'Onore; but, in so close and desperate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span> a
+fight, hot blood is apt to drown mercy. The dashing charge of the
+Eighty-eighth nearly closed the day's performances, although the French
+batteries, admirably served, still peppered the town. Men and officers
+sheltered themselves as well as they could, but many were killed; whilst
+Pakenham, with reckless bravery, rode about the streets, a mark for the
+enemy's shot, which tore up the ground around him whenever he stood
+still. "He was in a violent perspiration and covered with dust, his left
+hand bound round with a handkerchief, as if he had been wounded; he was
+ever in the hottest of the fire: and, if the whole fate of the battle
+had depended on his exertions, he could not have fought with more
+devotion."</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the many daring acts witnessed on the bloody day of Fuentes
+d'Onore, that of the Spanish guerilla chief, Julian Sanchez, deserves
+notice. At the head of his ragged and ill-disciplined band, he had the
+temerity to charge a crack French regiment, and, as might be expected,
+was sent back with a sore head. Whilst on the subject of guerillas, Mr
+Grattan combats an opinion which he believes many persons in this
+country entertain, "that the Spaniards and Portuguese did as much, if
+not more, during the Peninsular contest, than the British." Here he is
+certainly mistaken. Very few persons, out of the Peninsula, have any
+such notion. The French know well enough by whom they were beaten. Loth
+as they are to acknowledge a thrashing at the hands of their old
+antagonists, they do not dream of attributing their defeats to the
+"<i>brigands</i>," of whom they declare they would have had a very cheap
+bargain, but for the intervention of the troublesome English. And
+certainly, if the Spaniards and Portuguese had been left to themselves,
+although, favoured by the mountainous configuration of the country, they
+might long have kept up a desultory contest, they would never have
+succeeded in expelling the invaders; for the simple reason that they
+were wholly unable to meet them in the plain. Most true it is that,
+during the war of independence, the people of the Peninsula gave
+numerous examples of bravery and devotion, and still more of long
+suffering and patient endurance for their country's sake. The irregular
+mode of warfare adopted by the peasantry, the great activity and
+constant skirmishings, stratagems, and ambuscades of Mina, the
+Empecinado, Sanchez, and many other patriotic and valiant men, greatly
+harassed and annoyed the French; and, by compelling them to employ large
+bodies of troops in garrison and escort duty, prevented their opposing
+an overwhelming force to the comparatively small army under Wellington.
+But all that sort of thing, however useful and efficacious as a general
+system, and as weakening the enemy, was very petty work when examined in
+detail. The great victories, the mighty feats of war that figure in
+history's page, were due to British discipline, pluck, and generalship.
+And whatever merit remains with the Spaniards, is to be attributed to
+their guerillas and irregular partisans. As to their regular troops,
+after they had overthrown Dupont at Baylen, they seemed to think they
+might doze upon their laurels, which were very soon wrenched from them.
+Baylen was their grand triumph, and subsequently to it they did little
+in the field. Behind stone walls they still fought well: Spaniards are
+brave and tenacious in a fortress, and Saragossa is a proud name in
+their annals. Nothing could be better than old General Herrasti's
+valiant defence of Cuidad Rodrigo against Ney and his thirty thousand
+Frenchmen. The garrison, six thousand strong, lost seven hundred men by
+the first day's fire. Only when their guns were silenced, when the town
+was on fire in various places, and when several yards of wall were
+thrown down by a mine, did the brave governor hoist the white flag.
+Other instances of the kind might be cited, when Spanish soldiers fought
+as well as mortal men could do. But with respect to pitched battles,
+another tale must be told. At Oca&ntilde;a, Almonacid, and on a dozen other
+disastrous fields, Baylen was amply revenged. The loss at Oca&ntilde;a alone is
+rated by Spanish accounts at thirty thousand men, chiefly prisoners. Mr
+Grattan estimates it at twenty-five thousand men, and <i>thirteen thousand
+eight hundred and seventy-seven guitars</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span> Of these latter, he tells us
+twelve thousand seven hundred and fifty-two were in cases, and the
+remainder without; Indeed he is so exceedingly circumstantial that we
+presume he counted them himself. Otherwise, although well aware of the
+Spaniard's predilection for the fascinating tinkle of his national
+instrument, we could hardly credit the accuracy of the figures. Even a
+<i>Spanish</i> general, we should think, would hardly allow his men thus to
+encumber themselves with harmony. The march of such an army of
+Orpheuses, in which every third soldier shouldered a fiddle-case as a
+pendant to his musket, must have been curious to behold; suggesting the
+idea that the melodious warriors designed subduing their foes by the
+soothing strains of <i>jotas</i> and <i>cachuchas</i>, rather than by the more
+cogent arguments of sharp steel and ball-cartridge. Great must have been
+the tinkling at eventide, exceeding that of the most extensive flock of
+merinos that ever cropped Castilian herbage. Was it because they were
+certain of a dance that these barrack-yard minstrels came provided with
+music, sure, in any case, to have the piper to pay? If the instruments
+were provided to celebrate a triumph, they might as well have been left
+at home. In Spain, however, time has effaced, or greatly weakened, the
+remembrance of many reverses, whilst slight and dubious successes,
+carefully treasured up, have swollen by the keeping into mighty
+victories; and at the present day, foreigners who should be so
+uncourteous and impolitic as to express, in the hearing of Spaniards, a
+doubt that Spanish valour was the main agent in driving the French from
+the Peninsula, might reckon, not on a stab&mdash;knifeing being less in vogue
+beyond the Bay of Biscay than is often imagined&mdash;but certainly on a
+scowl, and probably on an angry contradiction. And in every province,
+almost in every town, in Spain the traveller may, if he so pleaseth, be
+regaled with marvellous narratives of signal victories, gained over the
+<i>gavachos</i>, in that immediate neighbourhood, by valiant generals whose
+names, so partial is fame, have never transpired beyond the scenes of
+their problematical exploits. Under the constitutional system, and owing
+to the long civil war, Spanish troops have improved in discipline and in
+various other respects; and with good generals, there is no manifest
+reason why they should not successfully cope with Frenchmen, although we
+doubt whether they could. But in Napoleon's day matters were very
+different, and in the open field their chance was desperate. The
+Portuguese were doubtless of a better quality; and in the pages of
+Napier and other historians, we find them spoken of in terms of praise.
+They had British officers to head them, and there is much in good
+leading; they had British troops to emulate, and national pride spurred
+them on. At the same period, Italians&mdash;certainly very poor soldiers when
+left to themselves&mdash;fought gallantly under French generals, and with
+French example before them. Of the general bearing of the Portuguese,
+however, we have heard few Peninsular men speak very highly. They appear
+to have been extremely inconsistent; brave one day, dastards the next.</p>
+
+<p>At, Ciudad Rodrigo, Mr Grattan greatly lauds their gallantry, which
+struck him the more as being unexpected. At Salamanca, on the other
+hand, he records their weakness, and the easy repulse of Pack's brigade,
+two thousand strong, by four hundred Frenchmen. "Notwithstanding all
+that has been said and written of the Portuguese troops, I still hold
+the opinion that they are utterly incompetent to stand unsupported and
+<i>countenanced</i> by British troops, with any chance of success, against
+even half their own numbers of Frenchmen." Again, after Salamanca, when
+Wellington and his victorious army advanced on Madrid, the Portuguese
+dragoons fled, without striking a blow, before the French lancers,
+exposing the reserve of German cavalry to severe loss, abandoning the
+artillery to its fate, and tarnishing the triumphal entry of the British
+into the capital&mdash;within a march of which this disgraceful affair
+occurred. Still, to encourage these wavering heroes, it was necessary to
+speak civilly of them in despatches; to pat them on the back, and tell
+them they were fine fellows. And this has sometimes been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span> misunderstood
+by simple persons, who believe all they see in print, and look upon
+despatches and bulletins as essentially veracious documents. "I remember
+once," says Mr Grattan, "upon my return home in 1813, getting myself
+closely cross-examined by an old lawyer, because I said I thought the
+Portuguese troops inferior to the French, still more to the British.
+'Inferior to the British, sir! I have read Lord Wellington's last
+despatch, and he says the Portuguese fought as well as the British; and
+I suppose you won't contradict him?' I saw it was vain to convince this
+pugnacious old man of the necessity of saying these civil things, and we
+parted mutually dissatisfied with each other; he taking me, no doubt,
+for a forward young puppy, and I looking upon him as a monstrous old
+bore."</p>
+
+<p>The Eighty-eighth, we gather from Mr Grattan's narrative, whilst
+respected by all as a first-rate battle regiment, was, when the stirring
+and serious events of that busy time left a moment for trifling, a
+fertile source of amusement to the whole third division. This is not
+wonderful. Many of the officers, and all the men, with the exception of
+three or four, were Irish, not Anglicised Irishmen, tamed by long
+residence amongst the Saxon, but raw, roaring Patlanders, who had grown
+and thriven on praties and potheen, and had carried with them to Spain
+their rich brogue, their bulls, and an exhaustless stock of gaiety. The
+amount of fun and blunders furnished by such a corps was naturally
+immense. But if in quarters they were made the subject of much
+good-humoured quizzing, in the field their steady valour was justly
+appreciated. No regiment in the service contained a larger proportion of
+"lads that weren't aisy," which metaphorical phrase, current among the
+Rangers, is translated by Mr Grattan as signifying fellows who would
+walk into a cannon's month, and think the operation rather a pleasant
+one. Whenever a desperate service was to be done, "the boys," as they,
+<i>more Hibernico</i>, familiarly termed themselves, were foremost in the
+ranks of volunteers. The contempt of danger, or non-comprehension of it,
+manifested by some of these gentlemen, was perfect. "My fine fellow,"
+said an engineer officer, during the unsuccessful siege of Badajoz in
+May 1811, to a man under Lieutenant Grattan's orders, who sat outside a
+battery, hammering at a fascine; "my fine fellow, you are too much
+exposed; get inside the embrasure, and you will do your work nearly as
+well." "I'm almost finished, colonel," was the reply, "and it isn't
+worth while to move now. Those fellows can't hit me, for they've been
+trying it these fifteen minutes." Just then, a round-shot gave the lie
+to his prediction by cutting him in two; and, according to their custom,
+the French gunners set up a shout of triumph at their successful
+practice. Some of the Connaughters, who had never lost sight of their
+native bogs till exported to the Peninsula, understood little or no
+English beyond the words of command. On an inspection parade, one of
+this class was asked by General Mackinnon, to whose squad he belonged.
+Bewildered and puzzled, Darby Rooney applied to his sergeant for a
+translation of the general's question&mdash;thus conveying to the latter an
+idea that this was the first time he had heard such a thing as a squad
+spoken of. The story got abroad&mdash;was, of course, much embellished&mdash;and
+an hour afterwards the third division was enjoying a prodigious chuckle
+at the notion that not one of the Connaughters knew what a squad meant.
+The young men laughed, the old officers shook their heads and deplored
+the benighted state of the Irishmen; whilst all the time, Mr Grattan
+assures us, "the Eighty-eighth was a more really <i>efficient</i> regiment
+than almost any <i>two</i> corps in the third division." As efficient as any
+they undoubtedly were, when fighting was to be done; but in some other
+respects their conduct was less irreproachable. According to their
+historian and advocate's own showing, their knapsacks were often too
+light and their havresacks too heavy. "A watchcoat, a piece of
+pipe-clay, and a button-brush," compose rather a scanty kit: yet those
+three articles formed&mdash;with the exception of the clothes he stood
+in&mdash;the entire wardrobe and means of personal adornment of the Rooney
+above-named; and many of his comrades were scarce better provided. But
+if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span> the back was neglected and left bare, the belly, on the contrary,
+was cared for with vigilant affection. On occasion, the Eighty-eighth
+could do their work on meagre diet as well, or better than any other
+corps. They would march two days on a pipe of tobacco; or for a week,
+with the addition of a biscuit and a dram. But when they did such
+things, it was no sign of any abstract love of temperance, or wish to
+mortify the flesh; it was simply a token of the extreme poverty of the
+district in which they found themselves. For the article provend they
+always kept a bright look-out. A greasy havresack, especially on the
+line of march, is the soldier's first desideratum; and it was rare that
+a very respectable workhouse soup could not have been produced by
+infusing that of a Connaughter in a proper quantity of water. When
+rations were scanty, or commissaries lagged in the rear, none understood
+better than the Eighty-eighth how to forage for themselves. "Every man
+his own quartermaster" was then their motto. Nothing came amiss to them;
+sweet or savoury, from a pig to a bee-hive, they sacked every thing; and
+their "taking ways" were often cast in their teeth. The natives were
+compelled to mount guard over their sheepfolds; but the utmost force
+they could muster was of small avail against the resolute onslaught of
+the half-famished Irishmen. Even the exertions of the Provost-marshal,
+and the liberal application of the cat, proved ineffectual to check
+these depredations; whilst the whimsical arguments used by the fellows
+in their defence sometimes disarmed the severity of Picton himself.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been quite out of character for an Irish regiment to march
+without ladies in their train, and accordingly the female following of
+the Rangers was organised on the most liberal scale. Motley as it was
+numerous, it included, besides English and Irish women, a fair
+sprinkling of tender-hearted Spaniards and Portuguese, who had been
+unable to resist the fascinations of the insinuating Connaughters. The
+sufferings of these poor creatures, on long marches, over bad roads and
+in wet and cold seasons, were of course terrible, and only to be
+equalled by their fidelity to those to whom they had attached
+themselves. Their endurance of fatigue was wonderful; their services
+were often great; and many a soldier, stretched disabled on the field of
+some bloody battle, and suffering from the terrible thirst attendant on
+wounds, owed his life to their gentle ministry. In circumstances of
+danger, they showed remarkable courage. At the assault of Ciudad
+Rodrigo, the baggage-guard, eager to share in the fight, deserted their
+post and rushed to the trenches. Immediately a host of
+miscreants&mdash;fellows who hung on the skirts of the army, watching
+opportunities to plunder&mdash;made a dash at the camp, but the women
+defended it valiantly, and fairly beat them off. Of course feminine
+sensibility got a little blunted by a life of this kind, and it was
+rarely with very violent emotion that the ladies saw their husbands go
+into action. Persuaded of their invincibility, they looked upon success
+as certain, and if, unfortunately, the victory left them widows, they
+deemed a very short mourning necessary before contracting a new
+alliance. Now and then a damsel of birth and breeding would desert the
+paternal mansion to follow the drum; and Mr Grattan tells a romantic
+history of a certain Jacinta Cherito, the beautiful daughter of a
+wealthy judge, who blacked her face and tramped off as a cymbal boy
+under the protection of the drum-major of the Eighty-eighth&mdash;a
+magnificent fellow, whose gorgeous uniform and imposing cocked hat
+caused him to be taken by the Portuguese for nothing less than a general
+of division. The young lady had not forgotten to take her jewels with
+her, and the old judge made a great fuss, and appealed to the colonel,
+who requested him to inspect the regiment as it left the town. But the
+sooty visage and uniform jacket baffled his penetration, and at the
+first halt, the drummer and the lady were made one flesh. Thorp, the
+lucky bridegroom, was a fine dashing fellow, bent upon distinguishing
+himself. He was often wounded, but never missed an engagement, even when
+his hurts were unhealed. He fell gloriously at Toulouse, and the next
+day came the gazette with his promotion to an ensigncy, which, if it was
+then of little value to him, was at any rate "a great consolation to his
+poor afflicted widow, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span> the means of reconciling her father to the
+choice she had made; and her return once more to her home was a scene of
+great rejoicing." When the British troops embarked at Bordeaux, for
+America and England, a crowd of poor Spanish and Portuguese women, who
+had long followed their fortunes and were now forbidden to accompany
+their husbands and lovers, watched their departure with tearful eyes.
+"They were fond and attached creatures, and had been useful in many
+ways, and under many circumstances, not only to their husbands, but to
+the corps they belonged to generally. Many of them, the Portuguese in
+particular, had lived with our men for years, and had borne them
+children." But the stern rules of the service prevailed. The battalions
+bound for America were allowed but a limited number of soldiers' wives,
+and the surplus were of necessity left to their fate. Some had money;
+more were penniless, and nearly naked. Men and officers were then
+greatly in arrear, but nevertheless a subscription was got up, and its
+amount divided amongst the unfortunates, thus abandoned upon a foreign
+shore, and at many hundreds of miles from their homes.</p>
+
+<p>General Picton was a man of action, not of words. There was no palaver
+about him, nothing superfluous in the way of orations, but he spoke
+strongly and to the point. Long harangues, as Mr Grattan justly
+observes, are not necessary to British soldiers. Metaphor and flowers of
+rhetoric are thrown away upon them. Something plain, pithy, and
+appropriate is what they like; the shorter the better. "Rangers of
+Connaught!" said Picton, as he passed the Eighty-eighth, drawn up for
+the assault of Ciudad Rodrigo, "it is not my intention to expend any
+powder this evening. We'll do this business with the cold iron." This
+was a very unpretending speech; nothing of the clap-trap or melodramatic
+about it; a mere declaration in the fewest possible words, of the
+speaker's intentions, implying what he expected from those he addressed.
+That it was just what was wanted, was proved by the hearty respondent
+cheer of the brave Irishmen. The result of the attack is well known; the
+Rangers took a gallant share in it. The next morning the troops were
+ordered out of the captured town, which they had ransacked to some
+purpose, and the Eighty-eighth, drawn up on their bivouac ground, were
+about to march away to the village of Atalaya, when Picton again rode
+past. "Some of the soldiers, who were more than usually elevated in
+spirits," (they had passed the night in bursting open doors and drinking
+brandy,) "called out, 'Well, General, we gave you a cheer last night:
+it's your turn now!' The general smiled, took off his hat, and said,
+'Here, then, you drunken set of brave rascals&mdash;hurrah! we'll soon be at
+Badajoz.'" A prophecy which was not long unaccomplished. With all
+deference to Mr Grattan, we cannot but think that the Eighty-eighth were
+very appropriately placed under Picton's orders. Excellent fighting men
+though they were, they certainly, according to their champion's own
+showing, needed a strict hand over them. We should like to know how they
+would have got on under such an officer as Mr Grattan tells us of, who,
+when in command of a regiment, came to mess one day in very low spirits,
+because, having sent his adjutant to inquire of an ensign why he did not
+attend parade, the ensign returned no answer, and, on subsequently
+meeting his commanding officer, cut him dead. The colonel told the story
+at the mess-table, and concluded by saying, "I thought nothing of his
+not answering my message, but I cannot express how much I am hurt at the
+idea of his cutting me as he did when I wished to speak to him!"
+Field-officers of such susceptible feelings, and such very loose ideas
+on the subject of discipline, were not plentiful in the Peninsula, and
+this one, we are given to understand, did not long retain his regiment.
+He would hardly have done at the head of the high-spirited Connaughters.
+But if Picton's severity to the men of the Eighty-eighth may be
+justified, his neglect of the officers is far more difficult to excuse.
+"<i>Not one of them was ever promoted through his recommendation.</i>" The
+conduct of Lieutenant Mackie at Ciudad Rodrigo was chivalrous in the
+extreme. General Mackinnon&mdash;who commanded the brigade<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span> and was blown to
+pieces at its head by the explosion of a mine&mdash;wished to confer a mark
+of distinction on the gallant Eighty-eighth, and ordered that one of its
+subalterns should lead the forlorn-hope. The moment this was announced
+to the assembled officers, "Mackie stepped forward, and lowering his
+sword, said, 'Major Thompson, I am ready for that service.'" Mackinnon
+had promised a company to the forlorn-hope leader, if he survived. But
+it must be observed that Mackie was senior lieutenant, and consequently
+sure of early promotion. The Eighty-eighth was to be in the van at the
+assault, and the probabilities were that at least one captain would be
+knocked off. Or, if not that day, it would happen the next. So that
+Mackie, in volunteering on the most desperate of all services, could
+have little to actuate him beyond an honourable desire for glory. How
+was he repaid? Gurwood, who led the forlorn-hope at the lesser breach,
+got his company; Mackie remained a lieutenant&mdash;no captain of the
+Eighty-eighth having been killed, and General Mackinnon not being alive
+to fulfil his promise. And whilst all the other officers who had been
+forward in the attack, had their names recorded in Picton's
+division-order, poor Mackie was denied even the word of barren praise so
+gratifying to a soldier's heart.</p>
+
+<p>The loss of Ciudad Rodrigo was a stunning blow to the French. They could
+not understand it at all. Herrasti and his Spaniards had held out the
+place a month against Ney and Massena, with thirty or forty thousand
+veterans, and that in fine weather, a great advantage to the
+besiegers&mdash;in eleven days, and in the depth of winter, Wellington
+reduced it, with twenty thousand men and opposed by a French garrison.
+The contrast was great, and quite inexplicable to the French. "On the
+16th," wrote Marmont to Berthier, "the English batteries opened their
+fire at a great distance. On the 19th the place was taken by storm, and
+fell into the power of the enemy. There is something so incomprehensible
+in this event, that I allow myself no observation. I am not provided
+with the requisite information." No testimony could be more
+complimentary to the brave captors of Rodrigo. That great success,
+however, was only a forerunner of greater ones. Badajoz was the next
+place to be taken, preparatory to marching into the interior of Spain.
+To conceal his intentions from the enemy, Wellington had recourse to an
+elaborate stratagem. A powerful battering train, supplied by the men of
+war in the Tagus, was shipped at Lisbon, on board vessels of large size,
+which put out to sea, and, when out of sight of land, transhipped their
+cargo into smaller craft. These carried them up the Tagus into the heart
+of the country. At the same time the necessary magazines were formed;
+and at Elvas, only three leagues from Badajoz, a large quantity of
+fascines and gabions were prepared. All this, however, was done so
+quietly, Wellington appeared so supine, and Badajoz was so well
+provided, that Soult was lulled into security; and when at last he took
+the alarm, and marched from Seville at the head of twenty-five thousand
+men, it was too late. Philippon, and his brave garrison, did all that
+skill and courage could; but in vain. When Soult reached Villafranca,
+two days' march from Badajoz, the fortress had already been two days in
+the power of the English. This, to the French, was another unaccountable
+business; they, even yet, had not learned fully to appreciate the
+sovereign virtues of British bayonets. "I think the capture of Badajoz a
+very extraordinary event," Lery, Soult's chief engineer, wrote to
+General Kellerman, "and I am much at a loss to account for it in a clear
+and distinct manner." This comes at the end of a mysterious sort of
+epistle, in which the engineer general talks of fatality, and seems to
+think that the British had no right to take Badajoz, defended as it was.
+But Wellington and his army were great despisers of that sort of
+<i>right</i>, and, in spite of the really glorious defence, in spite of the
+strategy of the governor and the valour of the garrison, of <i>chevaux de
+frise</i> of sword-blades, and of the deadly accuracy of the French
+artillery and musketeers, Badajoz was taken. The triumph was fearfully
+costly. Nearly four thousand five hundred men fell on the side of the
+besiegers;&mdash;Picton's division was reduced to a skeleton,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span> and the
+Connaught Rangers lost more than half their numbers.</p>
+
+<p>Shot through the body at Badajoz, Mr Grattan was left there when his
+division marched away. He gives a terrible account of the sacking of the
+town; but on such details, even had they not been many times
+recapitulated, it is not pleasant to dwell. The frightful crimes
+perpetrated during those two days of unbridled excess and violence, rest
+at the door of the man whose boundless ambition occasioned that most
+desolating war. From an ignorant and sensual soldiery, excited to
+madness by a prolonged resistance, and by one of the most sanguinary
+conflicts recorded in the history of sieges, forbearance could hardly be
+expected. The horrible saturnalia, in which murder and rape, pillage and
+intoxication, are pushed to their utmost limits, are the necessary
+condition of a successful assault on a desperately defended fortress;
+and supposing them prohibited, and that such prohibition could be
+enforced, we agree with Mr Grattan in believing that many a town that
+has been victoriously carried, might have been found impregnable. But
+one must ever deplore the disgraceful scenes enacted in the streets and
+houses of Badajoz, Ciudad Rodrigo, and St Sebastian. Unsurpassed in
+atrocity, they remain everlasting blots upon the bright laurels gathered
+by the British in the Peninsula. And it is small palliation, that under
+similar circumstances, the armies of all nations have acted in like
+manner. Here the sufferers were not enemies. To the garrison, when their
+resistance ceased, quarter was given; they were marched away scatheless,
+and treated with that humanity which England, notwithstanding the lying
+assertions of foreign historians, has ever used towards her prisoners.
+No, the victims were friends and allies. The very nation in whose behalf
+our soldiers had fought, saw their houses ransacked, their property
+wasted, their wives and daughters brutally outraged, by those whose
+mission was to protect and defend. Let us hope they have forgotten, or
+at least forgiven, such gloomy episodes in the struggle for their
+liberation.</p>
+
+<p>The advocates of universal peace might adduce many potent and practical
+arguments in favour of their doctrine from the pages of Mr Grattan's
+book. He is unsparing in his details of the inevitable horrors of war;
+and some of his descriptions, persons of tender hearts and sensitive
+nerves will do well to pass over. They may be read with profit by those
+who, accustomed to behold but the sunny side of military life, think too
+lightly of the miseries war entails. Let such accompany Mr Grattan
+though the streets of Badajoz, on the morning of the 7th April, 1812,
+and into the temporary hospital of Villa Formosa, after the fierce
+conflict of Fuentes d'Onore, where two hundred soldiers still awaited,
+twenty-four hours after the action, the surgeons' leisure, for the
+amputation of their limbs. Let them view with him the piles of
+unsuccoured wounded on the breach of Badajoz, and hear the shrieks and
+groans of men dying in helpless agony, without a friendly hand to prop
+their head, or a drop of water to cool their fevered lips. From such
+harrowing scenes it is pleasant to turn to the more humane and redeeming
+features of civilised warfare, and to note the courteous and amicable
+relations that existed between the contending armies when, as sometimes
+happened, they lay near together without coming to blows. This occurred
+previously to the battle of Salamanca. From the 3d to the 12th of July,
+the French and British were in presence of each other, encamped on
+either side the Douro, at that season little more than a rivulet. Of
+course all were on the alert; there was no laxity or negligence that
+could tempt to surprise; but neither was there any useless skirmishing
+or picket firing; every thing was conducted in the most gentlemanly and
+correct manner. The soldiers bathed together and exchanged their
+rations, and the officers were on equally good terms. "The part of the
+river of which I speak was occupied, on our side, by the Third division;
+on the French side by the Seventh division. The French officers said to
+us at parting, 'We have met, and have been for some time friends. We are
+about to separate, and may meet as enemies. As friends we received<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span> each
+other warmly; as enemies we shall do the same.' Ten days afterwards the
+British Third and the French Seventh division were opposed to each other
+at Salamanca, and the Seventh French was destroyed by the British
+Third." Mr Grattan's wound was healed in ample time for him to assist at
+the battle of Salamanca; a glorious victory, which would have been even
+more complete had the British been properly seconded by their Portuguese
+allies. The behaviour of these was any thing but creditable to their
+nation. One detachment of ca&ccedil;adores actually threw themselves on their
+faces to avoid the enemy's fire, and not all the blows showered on them
+by their commander, Major Haddock, could induce them to exchange their
+recumbent attitude for one more dignified. Notwithstanding this, and the
+more fatal feebleness of Pack's brigade, the French were totally beaten,
+and their loss was nearly four times that of the British. Lord
+Wellington's opinion of the battle&mdash;a particularly honourable one to our
+troops, inasmuch as they not only <i>fought</i> better, but (which was not
+always the case) moved and man&oelig;uvred better, than the picked veterans
+of the French army&mdash;is sufficiently shown by the fact that "he selected
+it in preference to all his other victories, as the most fitting to be
+fought over in sham-fight on the plains of St Denis, in the presence of
+the three crowned heads who occupied Paris after the second abdication
+of the Emperor Napoleon, in 1815."</p>
+
+<p>At Salamanca, the right brigade of the Third division, including the
+Connaught Rangers, charged the entire division of the French General
+Thomi&egrave;re. So awful was the volley that welcomed them, that more than
+half the officers, and nearly the whole front rank, were swept away.
+Doubtless the French thought this would prove a sickener, for great was
+their consternation when, before the smoke had well cleared away, they
+saw the shattered but dauntless brigade advancing fiercely and steadily
+upon them. Panic-stricken, they wavered; "the three regiments ran
+onward, and the mighty phalanx, which a moment before was so formidable,
+loosened and fell in pieces before fifteen hundred invincible British
+soldiers fighting in a line of only two deep." In this memorable charge,
+the standard-pole of the Eighty-eighth was struck by a bullet, the same
+that killed Major Murphy, who commanded the battalion. New colours have
+since been presented to the regiment, but the wounded pole is still
+preserved, and on it is engraved, on a plate of silver, the day and the
+manner of its mutilation.</p>
+
+<p>An advance on Madrid was consequent on the triumph at Salamanca, and on
+the 12th of August, Wellington and his army reached the Spanish capital.
+Their entrance has often been described, but in default of novelty, Mr
+Grattan's account of it possesses spirit and interest. It was one of
+those scenes that repay soldiers for months of fatigue and danger. The
+troops were almost carried into the city in the arms of the delighted
+populace. The steady, soldier-like bearing of the men, the appearance of
+the officers, nearly all mounted, inspired respect and increased the
+general enthusiasm. For miles from Madrid, the road was thronged; when
+the army got into the streets, it was no longer possible to preserve the
+order of march. The ranks were broken by the pressure of the crowd, and
+the officers (lucky dogs!) were half-smothered in the embraces of the
+charming Madrile&ntilde;as. Young and old, ugly and handsome, all came in for
+their share of hugs and kisses. Still, although patriotism impelled the
+Spanish fair to look with favour upon the scarlet-coated Britons, the
+painful confession must be made that as individuals they gave the
+preference to the lively, light-hearted Frenchmen. Napoleon was the
+fiend himself, incarnate in the form of an under-sized Corsican, and the
+<i>gavachos</i> were his imps, whom it was praise-worthy to shoot at from
+behind every hedge, and to poniard whenever the opportunity offered.
+Such was the creed inculcated by the priests, and devoutly entertained
+by their petticoated penitents&mdash;that is to say, by every Christian woman
+in the Peninsula. But somehow or other, when French regiments were
+quartered in Spanish towns, the female part of the population forgot the
+anathemas of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span> their spiritual consolers, and looked complacently upon
+those they were enjoined to abhor. It was a case of "<i>nos amis les
+ennemis</i>," and the French, beaten every where in the field, obtained
+facile and frequent triumphs in the boudoir. "It is a singular fact, and
+I look upon it as a degrading one," says Mr Grattan with diverting
+seriousness, "that the French officers, whilst at Madrid, made in the
+ratio of five to one more conquests than we did." The dignity of the
+admission might be questioned; the degree of degradation is matter of
+opinion; the singularity is explained away by Mr Grattan himself. He
+blames his comrades for their stiff, unbending manners, and for their
+non-conformance to the customs of the country. They were nearly three
+months at Madrid, and yet he declares that, at the end of that time,
+they knew little more of the inhabitants than of the citizens of Pekin.
+And he opines that the impression left in Spain by the Peninsular army
+was rather one of respect for their courage, than of admiration of their
+social graces and general affability. If Mr Grattan, whilst reposing at
+ease upon his well-earned bays, would devise and promulgate an antidote
+to the mixture of shyness, reserve, and hauteur, which renders
+Englishmen, wherever they travel, the least popular of the European
+family, he would have a claim on his country's gratitude stronger even
+than the one he established whilst defending her with his sword in the
+well-contested fields of the Peninsula. Notwithstanding, however, the
+unamiability with which he reproaches his companions in arms, there was
+much fun and feasting, and sauntering in the Prado, and bull-fighting
+and theatre-going, whilst the British were at Madrid. But it was too
+pleasant to last long. The best a soldier can expect in war-time, is an
+alternation of good quarters and severe hardship. The "<i>quart-d'heure de
+Rabelais</i>" was at hand, when all the dancing, drinking, masking, and
+other pleasant things should be paid for, and the brief enjoyment
+forgotten, amidst the sufferings of the most painful retreat&mdash;excepting,
+of course, that of Corunna&mdash;effected by a British army during the whole
+war. We refer to the retrograde movement that followed the unsuccessful
+siege of Burgos.</p>
+
+<p>The high reputation of the British soldier rests far more upon his arms
+than upon his legs; in other words, he is a fighting rather than a
+marching man. Slowness of movement, in the field as on the route, is the
+fault that has most frequently been imputed to him. One thing is pretty
+generally admitted; that, to work well, he must be well fed. And even
+then he will hardly get over the ground as rapidly, or endure fatigue as
+long, as the lean lathy Frenchman, who has never known the liberal
+rations and fat diet the other is accustomed to. When a certain period
+of active service and long marches has given the English soldier his
+campaigning legs, he must still have his regular grog, or he soon flags,
+if he does not grumble and become insubordinate. Rations were bad, and
+hard to be got, on the retreat from Burgos. Then, Mr Grattan tells us,
+the superior marching qualities of the Irish were manifest. There had
+been very little beef-steak and bacon expended in <i>their</i> bringing up;
+scanty fare was nothing new to them, and by no means affected their
+gaiety and good-humour. And when shoes were scarce, what cared they? The
+stones in Connaught are not a bit softer than those in Spain; and
+nine-tenths of the boys had trotted about, from infancy upwards, with
+"divel a brogue, save the one on their tongues." Some of the English
+regiments&mdash;the Forty-fifth for instance, chiefly composed of Nottingham
+weavers&mdash;would, under ordinary circumstances, march as well as any
+Irishman of them all: "But if it came to a hard tug, and that we had
+neither rations nor shoes, then, indeed, the Connaught Rangers would be
+in their element, and out-march almost any battalion in the service." On
+the retreat from Burgos to Portugal, they gave proof of their toughness
+and endurance; for whilst other regiments were decimated by fatigue and
+sickness, the Eighty-eighth scarcely lost a man, except by the enemy's
+fire. It was a time when the good qualities of all were severely tested.
+The movement began in a most unfavourable season. The roads were nearly
+impassable from heavy rains, and for days together there was not a dry
+jacket in the army. At night<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span> they lay in the open country, often in a
+swamp, without a tent to shelter them; the baggage was detached, and
+they never saw it till they reached Ciudad Rodrigo. It was share and
+share alike amongst men and officers, and many of the latter were mere
+striplings, who had but lately left the comforts of their English homes.
+When they halted from their weary day's march, the ill-conditioned
+beasts collected for rations had to be slaughtered; sometimes they came
+too late to be of any use, or the camp-kettles did not arrive in time to
+cook them; and the famished soldiers had to set out again, with a few
+pieces of dry biscuit rattling in their neglected stomachs, and driven
+to satisfy the cravings of hunger with the acorns that strewed the
+forests. There was little money afloat, for pay was four months in
+arrear, but millions would have been useless where there was nothing to
+buy. The country was deserted; every where the inhabitants fled on the
+approach of the two armies. Disease was the natural consequence of so
+many privations; ague and dysentery undermined the men's strength, and
+many poor fellows, unable to proceed, were left upon the road. Horses
+died by hundreds, and those which held out were for the most part
+sore-backed, one of the greatest calamities that can happen to cavalry
+and artillery on the march. Fortunately Soult, who, with ninety thousand
+men, followed the harassed army, had some experience of British troops.
+And what he had seen of them, especially at Albuera and on the Corunna
+retreat, had inspired him with a salutary respect for their prowess.
+They might retreat, but he knew what they could and would do when driven
+to stand at bay. And therefore, although Wellington was by no means
+averse to fight, and actually offered his antagonist battle on the very
+ground where, four months previously, that of Salamanca had occurred,
+the wary Duke of Dalmatia declined the contest. He played a safe game:
+without risking a defeat by a general action, or attempting to drive the
+British before him with the bayonet, he hovered about their rear,
+disquieted them by a flank movement of part of his force, and had the
+satisfaction of knowing that their loss by the casualties and fatigues
+of the march and inclemency of the weather, was as great as it would
+probably have been had he engaged them. For, besides those who perished
+on the road, when the army got into winter quarters, a vast number of
+men and officers went into hospital, and months elapsed before the
+troops were fully reorganised and fit for the field. At a day's march
+from Ciudad Rodrigo, Wellington's rear-guard had a smart skirmish, and
+then Soult desisted from his pursuit, and the Anglo-Portuguese were
+allowed to proceed without further molestation. Although disastrous, and
+in some respects ill managed, the retreat was in no way disgraceful. The
+French, very superior in numbers, had, whenever they pressed forward,
+been bravely met, and invariably repulsed.</p>
+
+<p>With this retreat, Mr Grattan's Peninsular campaigns closed. He returned
+to Ireland, and in the summer of 1814, embarked for Canada. He rather
+refers to, than records the service he saw there; taking occasion,
+however, for a strong censure on Sir George Prevost, who, after forcing
+our ill-appointed fleet on Lake Champlain into action, refused to allow
+Brisbane and his brigade of "Peninsulars" to take the fort of
+Platsburgh, an enterprise easy of achievement, and which would have
+placed the captured ships, and the victorious but disabled American
+flotilla, at the mercy of the British. But we have not space to follow
+the Ranger across the Atlantic, nor is it essential so to do; for,
+although he gives some amusing sketches of Canada and the Canadians, the
+earlier portion of his book is by far the most interesting, and
+certainly the most carefully written. We could almost quarrel with him
+for defacing his second volume with perpetual and not very successful
+attempts at wit. We have rarely met with more outrageous specimens of
+punning run mad, than are to be found in its pages. Barring that fault,
+we have nothing but what is favourable to say of the book. Its tone is
+manly, and soldier-like, and it is creditable both to the writer and to
+the service, by which, during the last thirty years, our stores of
+military and historical literature have been so largely and agreeably
+increased.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Adventures of the Connaught Rangers, from 1808 to 1814.</i>
+By W. <span class="smcap">Grattan</span>, Esq. London. 1847.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LORD_SIDMOUTHS_LIFE_AND_TIME4" id="LORD_SIDMOUTHS_LIFE_AND_TIME4"></a>LORD SIDMOUTH'S LIFE AND TIME.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>To read a memoir of the late Lord Sidmouth, is like taking a walk
+through Westminster Abbey. All the literature, is inscriptions; all the
+figures are monumental; and all the names are those of men whose
+characters and distinctions have been echoing in our ears since we had
+the power to understand national renown. The period between 1798, when
+the subject of this memoir made his first step in parliamentary life as
+Speaker, and 1815, when the close of the war so triumphantly finished
+the long struggle between liberty and jacobinism, was beyond all
+comparison the most memorable portion of British history.</p>
+
+<p>In this estimate, we fully acknowledge the imperishable fame of
+Marlborough in the field, and the high ability of Bolingbroke in the
+senate. The gallantry of Wolfe still throws its lustre over the
+concluding years of the second George; and the brilliant declamation of
+Chatham will exact the tribute due to daring thought, and classic
+language, so long as oratory is honoured among men. But the age which
+followed was an age of realities, stern, stirring, and fearful. There
+was scarcely a trial of national fortitude, or national Vigour, through
+which the sinews of England were not then forced to give proof of their
+highest power of endurance. All was a struggle of the elements; in which
+every shroud and tackle of the royal ship of England was strained; and
+the tempest lasted through nearly a quarter of a century. England, the
+defender of all, was the sufferer for all. Every principle of her
+financial prosperity, every material of her military prowess, every
+branch of her constitutional system, every capacity of her political
+existence, her Church, her State, and her Legislature, were successively
+compelled into the most perilous yet most powerful display; and the
+close of the most furious hostility which Europe had ever seen, only
+exhibited in a loftier point of view the victorious strength which
+principle confers upon a people.</p>
+
+<p>Compared with this tremendous scene, the political conflicts of the
+preceding age were a battle on the stage, compared with the terrors of
+the field. The spectators came to enjoy a Spectacle, and sit tranquilly
+admiring the brilliancy of the caparisons and the dexterity of the
+charge; but perfectly convinced that all would end without harm to the
+champions, and that the fall of the curtain would extinguish the war.
+But, in the trials of the later time, there were moments when we seemed
+to be throwing our last stake; when the trumpets of Europe, leagued
+against us, seemed to be less challenging us to the field, than
+preceding us to the tomb; and when the last hope of the wise and good
+might be, to give the last manifestation of a life of patriotic virtue.</p>
+
+<p>In language like this, we are not abasing the national courage. We are
+paying the fullest homage to the substantial claims of the English
+heart. It is only by the severest national struggles that the
+superiority of national powers can be developed; and without doubting
+the qualities of the Marlboroughs and Chathams&mdash;or even without
+doubting, that if thrown into the battle of the last fifty years, they
+would have exhibited the same intellectual stature and powerful
+adroitness which distinguished their actual displays&mdash;yet they wanted
+the strong necessities of a time like ours, to place them on a similar
+height of renown. Still their time continues in admirable study. But it
+is like the story of the Volscian and Samnite combats, read in the day
+when the consul, flying through the streets of Rome, brought the news of
+Cann&aelig;.</p>
+
+<p>The wars and politics of the eighteenth century were the man&oelig;uvres of
+a <i>garde du corps</i>, and the intrigues of a boudoir. Our fathers saw no
+nation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[Pg 474]</a></span> of thirty millions rushing to the field; frantic with the
+passion for overthrow, no Napoleon thundering at the head of vassal
+Europe against England; no conspiracy of peoples against thrones; no
+train of crouching sovereignties, half in terror and half in servility,
+ready to do the wildest will of the wildest despot of the world; no army
+of five hundred thousand men ready to spring upon our shores, and
+turning off only to the overthrow of empires. All was on a smaller
+scale; the passions feebler, the means narrower, the objects more
+trivial, the triumphs more temporary, the catastrophe more powerless,
+and the glory more vanishing.</p>
+
+<p>All has since subsided; and the mind of man is turned to efforts in
+directions totally new. All now is the rigid struggle with the physical
+difficulties of society. The grand problems are, how to level the
+mountain, and to drain the sea: or, if we must leave the Alps to be
+still the throne of the thunder, and suffer even the Zuyder-zee to roll
+its sullen waves over its incorrigible shallows; yet to tunnel the
+mountain and pass the sea with a rapidity, which makes us regardless of
+the interposition of obstacles that once stopped the march of armies,
+and made the impregnable fortresses of kingdoms. But the still severer
+trials of human intelligence are, how to clothe, feed, educate, and
+discipline the millions which every passing year pours into the world.
+The mind may well be bewildered with a prospect so vast, so vivid, and
+yet so perplexing. Every man sees that old things are done away, that
+physical force is resuming its primitive power over the world, and that
+we are approaching a time when Mechanism will have the control of
+nature, and Multitude the command of society.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>There are many families in England which, without any change of
+circumstances, without any increase of fortune, or any discoverable
+vicissitudes, have existed for centuries, in possession of the same
+property, generally a small one, and handed down from father to son as
+if by a law of nature. The family of Lord Sidmouth is found to have held
+the proprietorship of the small estate of Fringford, in Oxfordshire,
+from the year 1600, and to have had a residence in Bannebury about a
+century and a half before;&mdash;the first descendant of this quiet race who
+became known beyond the churchyard where "his village fathers sleep,"
+being Dr Addington, who died in 1799. Genealogies like those give a
+striking view of the general security of landed possession, which the
+habits of national integrity, and the influence of law, must alone have
+effected, during the turbulent times which so often changed the
+succession to the throne of England.</p>
+
+<p>Dr Addington, who had been educated at Winchester school, and Trinity
+College, Oxford, having adopted medicine as his profession, commenced
+his practice at Reading, where he married the daughter of the Rev. Dr
+Niley, head-master of the grammar-school. The well-known trial of the
+wretched parricide, Miss Blandy, for poisoning, in which he was a
+principal witness, brought him into considerable notice; and probably on
+the strength of this notice, he removed to London, and took a house in
+Bedford Row, where the late Lord Sidmouth, his fourth child, but eldest
+son, was born. He next removed to Clifford Street, a more fashionable
+quarter, which brought him into intercourse with many persons of
+distinction. Among these were Louth, Bishop of London, the Duke of
+Montagu, Earl Rivers, and, first of the first, the great Earl of
+Chatham. With this distinguished man, Dr Addington seems to have been on
+terms of familiar friendship, as the following extracts show:&mdash;Chatham
+writes from Burton Pynsent, in 1771.</p>
+
+<p>"All your friends here, the flock of your care, are truly sensible of
+the kind attentions of the good shepherd. My last fit of the gout left
+me as it had visited me, very kindly. I am many hours every day in the
+field, and, as I live like a farmer abroad, I return home and eat like
+one. * *</p>
+
+<p>"Ale goes on admirably, and agrees perfectly. My reverence for it, too,
+is increased, having just read in the manners of our remotest Celtic
+ancestors much of its antiquity and invigorating qualities. The boys all
+long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</a></span> for ale, seeing papa drink it, but we do not try such an
+experiment. Such is the force of example, that I find I must watch
+myself in all I do, for fear of misleading. If your friend William saw
+me smoke, he would certainly call for a pipe."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Chatham died May 11th, 1788, which event was thus notified by Dr
+Addington to his son Henry.</p>
+
+<p>"You will be grieved to hear that Lord Chatham is no more. It pleased
+Providence to take him away this morning, as if it were in mercy that he
+might not be a spectator of the total ruin of a country which he was not
+permitted to save."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor was a croaker, as was the fashion of the time, with all who
+pretended to peculiar political sagacity. Of course the family physician
+of the ex-minister was in duty bound to echo the ex-minister's
+discontent. It is clear that, whatever professional gifts the doctor
+inherited from Apollo, he did not share the gift of prophecy. The
+doctor, after realising enough by his profession to purchase an estate
+in Devonshire, retired to Reading, where, in 1790, he died, having had,
+in the year before, the enviable gratification of seeing his son elected
+to the Speakership of the House of Commons.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Viscount Sidmouth was born in 1757, on the 30th of May. At the age
+of five years, he was placed under the care of the Rev. William Gilpin,
+author of the Essays on the Picturesque, who for many years kept a
+school at Cheam, in Surrey.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Sidmouth had but one brother, Hiley, who subsequently figured so
+often in the caustic rhymes of Canning, and who, under his brother's
+auspices, was successively secretary of the treasury, paymaster of the
+forces, and under-secretary of state. In his twelfth year, Henry,
+followed by Hiley, was sent to Winchester, then under the government of
+the well-known Dr Joseph Wharton, with George Isaac Huntingford as one
+of the assistants.</p>
+
+<p>The author of the biography gives Huntingford credit for the singular
+degree of attachment exhibited in his occasional letters to his pupil.
+It certainly seems singular; when we know the slenderness, if not
+sternness of the connexion generally subsisting between the teachers at
+a great English seminary, and the pupils. In one of those epistles
+Huntingford says to this boy of fifteen.</p>
+
+<p>"For my own part, to you I lay open <i>my whole heart without reserve</i>. I
+divest myself of the little superiority which age may have given me.
+With you I can enter into conversation with all the familiarity of an
+intimate companion. The few hours of intercourse which we thus enjoy
+with each other give more relief to my wearied body and mind than <i>any
+other amusement on earth</i>. What I am to do when you leave school, <i>a
+melancholy thought, I cannot foresee</i>. May the <i>evil hour be postponed</i>
+as late as possible. Yet let me add, whenever it shall be most for your
+advantage to leave me, I will not doubt to sacrifice <i>my own peace</i> and
+comfort for your interest. <i>I love myself, but you better</i>."</p>
+
+<p>We hope that this style is not much in fashion in our public schools.
+Dean Pellew tells us that numerous letters of this kind were written by
+this tutor to his pupil in after life, and adds with a ludicrous
+solemnity, "It will readily be imagined how <i>efficacious</i> they must have
+proved, in forming the character of the future statesman, and erecting
+Spartan and Roman virtues on the noble foundation of Christianity."</p>
+
+<p>For our part, we know not what to make of such communications: they seem
+to us intolerably silly, and we think ought <i>not</i> to have been
+published. In later life, their writer was made Bishop of Hereford and
+Warden of Winchester. He seems to have been a fellow of foresight!</p>
+
+<p>In 1773, Henry and Hiley were both removed from Winchester, and put
+under the tuition of Dr Goodenough, who took private pupils at Ealing,
+and who was afterwards Bishop of Carlisle. In the next year, Henry
+entered as commoner in Brazen-Nose College under the tuition of
+Radcliffe, then a tutor of some celebrity. In this college he became
+acquainted with Abbot, afterwards Lord Colchester, and William Scott,
+afterwards Lord Stowell. He took his degree in 1778, and in this year
+had the misfortune to lose his mother, who seems to have been an amiable
+and sensible person. In the next year, he obtained the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</a></span> Chancellor's
+prize for an English essay on "the affinity between painting and writing
+in point of composition;" and at the recital of this essay in the
+theatre he first became acquainted with Lord Mornington, afterwards
+Marquis Wellesley, an intimacy which lasted for sixty-two years. He now
+adopted law as his profession, took chambers in Paper Buildings, and
+kept his terms regularly at Lincoln's Inn. In 1781, he married Ursula
+Mary, eldest daughter and co-heiress of Leonard Hammond, Esq. of Cheam,
+in Surrey, and took a house in Southampton Street, Bloomsbury, where he
+determined to follow the profession of the law. But this determination
+was speedily over-ruled by the success of the celebrated son of Chatham.
+On the 26th of February, 1781, William Pitt, then only in his
+twenty-second year, made his first speech in the House of Commons, in
+support of Burke's bill for the regulation of the civil list. This epoch
+in parliamentary annals is noticed in a brief letter from Dr Goodenough
+to Pitt's early tutor, Wilson, who sent it to Mr Addington, among whose
+papers it was found:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Sir,&mdash;I cannot resist the natural impulse of giving pleasure, by
+telling you that the famous William Pitt, who made so capital a figure
+in the last reign, is happily restored to his country. He made his first
+public re-appearance in the senate last night. All the old members
+recognised him instantly, and most of the young ones said he appeared
+the very man they had so often heard described: the language, the
+manner, the gesture, the action were the same; and there wanted only a
+few wrinkles in the face, and some marks of age, to identify the
+absolute person of the late Earl of Chatham."</p>
+
+<p>Addington, at this period, had a good deal of intercourse with Pitt, who
+became Chancellor of the Exchequer at the age of twenty-three, and whose
+brilliant success in parliament evidently stimulated his friend to
+political pursuits. But the infamous coalition broke in, and Pitt was
+dismissed from the ministry. Its existence, however, was brief: it not
+merely fell, but was crushed amidst a universal uproar of national
+scorn; and Pitt, not yet twenty-five, was appointed prime minister. In
+the course of the month, an interview took place between Pitt and
+Addington, which gave his friends strong hopes of seeing him in
+immediate office. His friend Bragge thus writes to him:</p>
+
+<p>"I give you joy of the effects of the interview of last Sunday, of which
+I am impatient to hear the particulars. Secretary, either official or
+confidential, I should wish you, and indeed all the boards are already
+filled."</p>
+
+<p>Still, he remained unappointed, though his intimacy with the minister
+grew more confidential from day to day. Pitt was at this time engaged in
+a desperate struggle with the Opposition, who, ruined as they were in
+character, yet retained an overwhelming majority in parliament. On this
+occasion, the young statesman gave perhaps the most triumphant evidence
+of his remarkable sagacity. Every one was astonished, that he had not at
+once dissolved a parliament which it seemed impossible for him either to
+convince or conquer. But, with the House of Lords strongly disposed
+towards him, and the King for his firm friend, Pitt fought the House
+night after night, until he found the national feeling wholly on his
+side. Then, on the 25th of March, 1784, he dissolved the parliament, and
+by that act extinguished the whole power of Whiggism for twenty years.
+There never was a defeat more ruinous; more than a hundred and sixty
+members, who had generally been of the Foxite party, were driven
+ignominiously from their seats, and the party was thenceforth condemned
+to linger in an opposition equally bitter, fruitless, and unpopular. In
+the new parliament, Addington was returned for the borough of Devizes in
+place of Sutton, his brother-in-law, who, being advanced in life, made
+over his interest to his young relative. On this occasion, he received a
+letter from his old master, Joseph Wharton:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot possibly forbear expressing to you the sincere pleasure I
+feel, in giving you joy of being elected into a parliament that I hope
+and trust will save this country from destruction, by crushing the most
+shameful and the most pernicious coalition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</a></span> that I think ever disgraced
+the annals of any kingdom, ancient or modern. I am, dear sir, with true
+regard, yours, &amp;c.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Joseph Wharton</span>."</p>
+
+<p>There are few more remarkable instances of contrasted character and
+circumstance than Addington's ultimate rise to power. The anecdote is
+mentioned, that on one occasion, when they were riding together to Holl
+Wood, then Mr Pitt's seat near Bromley in Kent, that on Pitt's urging
+him to follow up politics with vigour, and the latter alleging in excuse
+the distaste and disqualification for public life created by early
+habits and natural disposition, Pitt burst forth in the following
+quotation from Waller:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The lark that shuns on lofty boughs to build<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her humble nest, lies silent in the field:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But should the promise of a brighter day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Aurora smiling, bid her rise and play;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quickly she'll show 'twas not for want of voice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or power to climb, she made so low a choice:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Singing she mounts, her airy notes are stretch'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Towards heav'n, as if from heav'n alone her notes she fetch'd."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>With these words, he set spurs to his horse, and left his companion to
+ponder on the moral of the poetry.</p>
+
+<p>But neither poetry nor prose could inspire Addington's mind with the
+ardour of his glowing friend. Parliament was indeed open to him, but the
+true gate to parliamentary distinction would never have been opened by
+his own hand. There are two kinds of speaking, and but two, which ever
+make distinguished way in the House. The first is, that superior order
+which alone deserves the name of eloquence, and which must carry
+distinction with it wherever men are gathered together. The next is,
+that adroit and practical style of speaking by which the details of
+public business are carried forward; a style which requires briskness of
+capacity, united to extent of information, and in which the briskness
+must not be suffered to become flippant, and the detail to become dull.
+We are perfectly confident, that, beyond those two classes, no speaker
+can ever expect to retain the ear of the House. Our theory, however, is
+not the favourite one with that crowd, whose diatribes nightly fill the
+columns of the newspapers; where bitterness is perpetually mistaken for
+pungency, and petulance for power, dryness for business and commonplace
+for conviction. But failure is the inevitable consequence; the archer
+showers his shafts in vain; they are pointed with lead, and they always
+fall blunt on the ground. Some of the noisiest haranguers of our time
+utterly "waste their sweetness on the desert air," their hearers drop
+away with fatal rapidity, and the orator is reminded of his triumph only
+by the general flight of his auditory. Then comes some favourite of the
+House: the coffee-room is thinned in its turn; the benches are crowded
+once more; and some statesmanlike display consoles the House for its
+lost time. Addington's habits were those of a student, and he brought
+them with him into parliament. In the House of Commons, there are nearly
+as many classes of character, as there are in life outside the walls.
+There are the men made for the operations of public life, bold, active,
+and with an original sense of superiority. Another class is made for
+under-secretaries and subordinates, sharp, and ingenious men, the real
+business-men of the House. Another class, perfectly distinct, is that of
+the matter-of-fact men, largely recruited from among opulent merchants,
+bankers sent from country constituencies, and others of that calibre,
+who are formidable on every question of figures, are terrible on
+tariffs, and evidently think, that there is no book of wisdom on earth
+but a ledger. Then come the country gentlemen, generally an excellent
+and honest race, but to whom a life in London, in the majority of
+instances, has a strong resemblance to a life in the Millbank
+Penitentiary; driven into parliament, by what is called a "sense of
+their position in the country," which generally means the commands of
+their wives, &amp;c., &amp;c., their sojourn within the circuit of the
+metropolis is a purgatory. They sicken of the life of lounging through
+London, where they are nothing, and long to get back to the country
+where they are "magistrates;" generally too old to dance, the
+fashionable season has no charms for them: even the clubs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[Pg 478]</a></span> seem to them
+a sort of condemned cell, where the crowd, guilty of unpardonable
+idleness, cluster together with no earthly resource but gazing into the
+street, or poring over a newspaper. If this service is severe enough to
+shake their philosophy during the sleety showers of February, and the
+withering blasts of March; the first break of sunshine, and the first
+streak of blue sky, makes their impatience amount to agony. The rest of
+the season only renders their suffering more inveterate; until at last
+the discharge of cannon from the Park, and the sound of trumpets at the
+doors of the House of Lords, a gracious speech from the throne, and a
+still more gracious smile from the sitter on it, let them loose from
+their task, and they are free, facetious, and foxhunters once more.
+There are still half-a-dozen other classes, "fine by degrees, and
+beautifully less," which may be left to the imagination of the reader,
+and the experience of the well-bred world.</p>
+
+<p>Addington soon made himself useful on committees. The strong necessities
+of the case, much more than the Reform Bill, have remarkably shortened
+the longevity of election committees. The committee, in general, was
+fortunate, which could accomplish its business within three months. Some
+took twice the number, some even crossed over from session to session.
+The first committee on which Addington was engaged had this unfortunate
+duration, and he was re-appointed to it in the second session of the
+parliament of 1785.</p>
+
+<p>At this period, whether from a sense of disappointment, or from the
+silent dulness of this drudgery, his health appears to have been in a
+feeble state. In a letter to his father, he apologises for listlessness
+and stupidity by illness, and says, "that he does not come up to the
+definition of man as a risible animal." Yet the man who could live to
+eighty-seven, and retain his health in a retirement of nearly a quarter
+of a century, could not complain of his constitution.</p>
+
+<p>In 1786 Pitt availed himself of the opening of the session to induce his
+friend to break ground. He proposed that he should second the address;
+and almost condescended to coax him into further exertion of his
+abilities.&mdash;"I will not disguise," says his letter, "that, in asking
+this favour of you, (the speech,) I look beyond the immediate object of
+the first day's debate; from a persuasion that whatever induces you to
+take a part in public, will equally contribute to your personal credit,
+and that of the system to which I have the pleasure of thinking you are
+so warmly attached. Believe me to be, with great truth and regard, my
+dear sir, faithfully and sincerely yours,&mdash;<span class="smcap">W. Pitt</span>." Addington complied
+with a part of the proposal, seconded the Address, and was considered to
+have performed his task with effect. But the effort went no farther. His
+ability lay in another direction; and though a clear, well-informed, and
+influential debater in his more public days, and when the urgency of
+office compelled the exertion, he left for four years the honours of
+debate to the multitude of his competitors.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the memoir, there is a letter of Addington's, speaking
+of Sheridan's famous speech on the Begum question. Addington voted in
+the majority against Hastings; but, though he does not exactly say that
+Sheridan's famous speech was the cause of his vote, he yet joins in the
+general acclamation.</p>
+
+<p>It has been the habit of late critics to decry the merits of this famous
+oration, and even to charge it with being frivolous, outrageous, and
+bombastic, an immense accumulation of calumny and clap-trap, which the
+craft of Sheridan would not submit to the public ordeal, and which he
+has therefore left to its chance of a fantastic and visionary fame. But
+this we find it impossible to believe. That in a speech of five hours
+and a half, there may have been&mdash;nay, there must have been, passages of
+extravagance, and even errors of taste, is perfectly probable; but they
+must have been overcome by countless passages of lustre and beauty,&mdash;by
+powerful conceptions and brilliant examples of language; at once
+resistless and refined,&mdash;by living descriptions, and thoughts of daring
+and dazzling energy, sufficient to have made it one of the most
+memorable triumphs of senatorial eloquence in the world. How, on any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[Pg 479]</a></span>
+other supposition, is it possible to account for the effects which we
+know it to have produced?</p>
+
+<p>Addington's letter, alluding to this subject, says "The papers will
+convey but a faint idea of a speech, which I heard Fox declare to be the
+most wonderful effort of the human mind that perhaps had ever been made.
+Mr Pitt, and indeed the whole House, spoke of it in terms of admiration
+and astonishment, scarcely inferior to those of Mr Fox."</p>
+
+<p>The papers, indeed, convey a worse than inadequate idea of this
+wonderful oration, for they give merely a few fragments, in which they
+have contrived either to select their examples with the most curious
+infelicity, or to blunder them into bombast. But nothing can be more
+childish than to suppose, that Pitt would have given his praise to
+tawdry metaphor, that Burke would have done honour to feeble truisms,
+that Fox should have been unable to distinguish between logic and
+looseness of reasoning, or that the whole assembly, who had been in the
+habit of hearing those pre-eminent orators, should have been tricked by
+theatric dexterity or charlatan rhetoric into homage. The oration must
+have been a most magnificent performance, and we have only to deplore
+the loss of a great work of genius.</p>
+
+<p>Another young phenomenon shot across the parliamentary horizon within
+the same month. It was the late Earl Grey. A letter of Addington to his
+father thus describes the debut of this young Liberal.</p>
+
+<p>"Feb. 22, 1787.&mdash;We had a glorious debate last night, upon the motion
+for an address of thanks to the King, for having negotiated the
+commercial treaty. A new speaker presented himself to the House, and
+went through his first performance with an &eacute;clat that has not been
+equalled within my recollection. His name is Grey; he is not more than
+twenty-two years of age, and he took his seat, which is for
+Northumberland, only in the present session. I do not go too far in
+declaring, that in the advantages of figure, elocution, voice, and
+manner, he is not surpassed by any one member of the House; and I grieve
+to say, that he was last night in the ranks of Opposition, from which
+there is no prospect of his being detached."</p>
+
+<p>It is curious to see, how easily the exigencies of party mould men, and
+how readily under that pressure they unsay their maxims, and retract
+their principles. The object of the commercial treaty was, to put our
+commerce in some degree on a fair footing with that of France. The
+object of Mr Grey's rhetoric was, to show that the commercial treaty was
+altogether a blunder, which, as being a Tory and ministerial
+performance, it must be in the eyes of a Whig and an oppositionist. But
+the maxim on which he chiefly relied, was the wisdom of that established
+system of our policy, in which France had always been regarded with the
+most suspicious jealousy at least&mdash;if not as our natural foe. Of course
+this Whig maxim lasted just so long as the Whigs were out of office, and
+could use it as a weapon against the Minister. But, from the moment when
+France became actually dangerous, when her councils became demoniac, and
+her factions frenzied, Whiggism, despairing of turning out the Minister
+by argument, resolved to make the attempt by menace. Hopeless in the
+House, it appealed to the rabble, and France was extolled to the skies.
+We then heard nothing of the "natural enmity," but a vast deal of the
+instinctive friendship. England and France were no longer to be two
+hostile powers sitting on their respective shores, with flashing eyes
+and levelled spears, but like a pair of citizen's wives loaded with
+presents and provisions for each other, and performing their awkward
+courtesies across the Channel.</p>
+
+<p>It must be acknowledged, however, that the Whig maxim, though a
+watchword of faction, was no blunder of fact. A commercial treaty with
+the French in that day, or in any other day before or since, was a
+dream. To bring the Frenchman to any rational agreement on the subject
+of trade, or to keep him steady to any agreement whatever, has been a
+problem, which no British statesman has been able to solve. No
+commercial treaty, even with all the genius of Pitt, has ever produced
+to England the value of the paper on which it is written. Whether,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[Pg 480]</a></span> if
+they were two Englands in the world, they might not establish commercial
+treaties with each other, may be a question. But we regard it as an
+absolute waste of time, to think of trading on fair terms with any of
+the slippery tariffs of foreign countries. In fact, this is now so
+perfectly understood, that England has nearly given up the notion of
+commercial treaties. She trades now, where the necessities of the
+foreigner demand her trade. The foreigner hates John Bull, Just as the
+Athenian peasant hated Aristides, and for the same reason. He hates him
+for being honest, manly, and sincere; he hates him for the integrity of
+his principles, for the purity of his faith, and for the <i>reality</i> of
+his freedom; he hates him for his prosperity, for his progress, and for
+his power. And while the Frenchman capers in his fetters, and takes his
+promenade under the shadow of the fortifications of Paris; while the
+German talks of constitutions in the moon; and while the Holy Alliance
+amuses itself with remodelling kingdoms, John Bull may be well content
+to remain as he is, and leave them to such enjoyment as they can find in
+sulkiness and sneering.</p>
+
+<p>Grey's brilliant debut appears not to have been sustained: he spoke
+little during the session, but talked much&mdash;a fatal distinction to a
+parliamentary aspirant. Ambitious of figuring, he attempted to figure on
+all occasions; and, once or twice, unluckily daring the great champion
+of the treasury bench to the field, he was driven from it with wounds
+which, if they did not teach him a sense of his weakness, at least
+taught him a sense of his danger. Mr Grey's credit, says Addington in a
+letter, "as a man of discretion and temper, remains to be established.
+His reputation for abilities has not increased within the last two
+months, while he has in all respects enhanced that of the person (Pitt)
+to whom he ventured to oppose himself."</p>
+
+<p>In alluding to the intercourse of Addington with Wilberforce, the
+biographer, we think very justly, complains of the sillinesses which
+have transpired in the latter's diary. Addington took higher views on
+ecclesiastical subjects; and was less <i>rapid</i> in his movements for the
+abolition of the slave-trade; being of opinion that precipitate measures
+would only increase the traffic to an enormous extent, deprive England
+of all power of restraining the frightful atrocities of the middle
+passage; and, by throwing the whole trade into the hands of foreigners,
+leave it open to all the reckless abominations of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>The result was, unfortunately, all that rational men anticipated. The
+trade carried on by the foreigner has been tripled, or even quadrupled;
+the horrors of the middle passage are without restraint; and the
+sufferings of the victims, on their march to the coast, by fatigue, want
+of food, and the cruelty of their treatment, are estimated to destroy
+nearly twice the number of those who ever cross the Atlantic. The very
+powers with whom we have already made treaties for the purpose of
+extinguishing this infernal traffic, are deepest in its commerce; and
+its extinction now seems hopeless, except through some of those
+tremendous visitations, by which Providence scourges crimes which have
+grown too large for the jurisdiction of man.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Sidmouth, then far advanced in life, when he saw those remarks in
+the diary, naturally felt offended, but he bore the offence with
+dignity, merely saying, as he closed the volume, "Well, Wilberforce does
+not speak of me as he spoke to me, I am sorry to say." Of Wilberforce,
+no one can desire to doubt the general honesty; but that he was
+singularly trifling and inconstant, was evidently the opinion of his
+contemporaries in the House. The following anecdote is given from the
+author's notes on this point. "Lord Sidmouth told us, that one morning,
+at a cabinet meeting, after an important debate in the House of Commons,
+some one said, 'I wonder how Wilberforce voted last night:' on which
+Lord Liverpool observed, 'I do not know how he voted, but of this I am
+pretty sure, that in whatever way he voted, he repents of his vote this
+morning.' Lord Sidmouth added, 'It was odd enough, that I had no sooner
+returned to my office, than Wilberforce was announced, who said,&mdash;Lord
+Sidmouth, you will be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[Pg 481]</a></span> surprised at the vote I gave last night, and,
+indeed, I am not myself altogether satisfied with it;'&mdash;to which I
+replied, My dear Wilberforce, I shall never be <i>surprised</i> at any vote
+you give.'"</p>
+
+<p>During this session the abolition of Negro slavery first seriously
+attracted the notice of parliament. The conduct of it, in the House of
+Commons, was intrusted to Wilberforce; but, in his absence, in
+consequence of indisposition, Pitt, on the 9th of May 1798, moved the
+resolution, "that the House would, early in the next session, proceed to
+take into consideration the circumstances of the slave trade." In a
+cause like this, the humane and magnanimous mind of Burke naturally
+enlisted at once. But he was by no means of that school of humanity
+which gains the race, only by riding over every thing in its way.
+Red-hot humanity had no charms for the great philosopher; and,
+philanthropist as he was, he could discover no wisdom in measures which
+changed only one violence for another, pauperised the whites without
+liberating the blacks; and, while it cost twenty millions sterling to
+repair about third of the injury, left the unhappy African at the mercy
+of avarice round the circumference of the globe.</p>
+
+<p>A letter from Huntingford says:&mdash;"Dr Lawrence, our Winchester
+acquaintance, called on me lately. He talked much on Mr Burke's ideas
+respecting the slave-trade. I found by him that Mr Burke foresaw the
+total ruin of the West-India colonies, if the trade were <i>at once</i>
+prohibited. He is for a better regulation of the ships which carry on
+that infamous commerce: he would lay the captains under restrictions,
+and punish them with rigour for wanton severity or brutal inhumanity to
+the slaves; and, when the poor creatures are purchased at the West-India
+islands, he would have them instructed in religion; and be permitted to
+purchase their own freedom, when by industry they should acquire a
+sufficient sum for that purpose. For their religious instruction he
+would erect more churches; and, to enable them in time to accumulate the
+price of their ransom, he would enact that the property of a slave
+should be as sacred as that of a freeman." Burke went further than
+opinions, for he embodied his sentiments in a paper entitled, "Sketch of
+a Negro Code," all outline of a bill in parliament, which is to be found
+in the collection of his works.</p>
+
+<p>In August of this year, Addington mentioned that Lord Grenville passed a
+month with him at Lyme, and that one day visiting Lord Rolle, a party
+were speculating on the probable successor to the Speaker
+(Cornwall)&mdash;Grenville and Addington giving it as their opinion, that
+neither of them had any chance. He adds, "within twelve months, we were
+both Speakers ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>An important and melancholy event, however, threw the cabinet and the
+country alike into confusion. Early in November, it was ascertained that
+the King was taken dangerously ill. Three successive notes from
+Grenville represented the illness as most alarming, and giving room for
+apprehening of incurable disorder. As Dr Addington was known to have
+paid particular attention to cases of insanity, Pitt proposed his being
+summoned to visit the royal patient. In consequence, he visited his
+Majesty for several days, and on examination with the other physicians
+before the Privy Council, expressed a strong expectation of the royal
+recovery, founded on the circumstance that this illness had not, for its
+forerunner, any of the symptoms which usually precede a serious attack
+of this nature. The debates on the Regency Bill now brought out all the
+vigour of the House. The Whigs thundered at the gate of the cabinet; but
+there was a strong hand within, and it was still kept shut. The Prince
+of Wales, then under all the captivations of Whig balls and banquets,
+and worshiping at the feet of Fox, was no sooner to be master of the
+state by an unlimited Regency Bill, than Fox was to be master of every
+thing. Pitt still fought the battle with all the cool determination of
+one determined never to capitulate. Fox became in succession fierce,
+factious, and half frantic; still his great adversary stood on the
+vantage ground of law, and was imperturbable. But the contest now began
+to spread beyond the walls of parliament. The spirit of the nation,
+always siding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[Pg 482]</a></span> with the brave defence, daily felt an increasing interest
+in the gallantry with which Pitt almost alone fought the ablest
+Opposition that had ever been ranged within the walls of Westminster,
+and inflamed by the sight of power almost within their grasp.</p>
+
+<p>But the announcement of a sudden change in his Majesty's indisposition
+abated the contest at once. From the 8th to the 20th of February, the
+progress to health was palpable. On the 19th, the discussions on the
+Regency Bill were suspended in the House of Lords; and on the 6th of
+March, the Speaker and several members of the administration were
+admitted to present their congratulations to the King, at Kew, on his
+recovery.</p>
+
+<p>We cannot resist the temptation of exhibiting Lord Sidmouth in the
+unsuspected character of a poet. As several millions of verses were
+poured out as the offerings of the Muse on the joyful occasion, as
+Parnassus was rifled by the Universities, and as every village school in
+the kingdom hung a pen-and-ink garland on the altar of &AElig;sculapius or
+Hygeia; it was felt to be the bounden duty of every candidate for
+cabinet honours, to put his desk "in order," and rhyme, to the best of
+his power. Addington, in consequence, produced the following&mdash;</p>
+
+<h4>ON THE KINGS RECOVERY.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When sinks the orb of day, a borrow'd light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The moon displays, pale <i>Regent</i> of the night.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vain are her beams to bid the golden grain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spread plenty's blessings o'er the smiling plain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No power has she, except from shore to shore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To bid the ocean's troubled billows roar.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With hungry cries the wolf her coming greets;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then Rapine stalks triumphant through the streets;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Avarice and Fraud in secret ambush lurk,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Treason's sons their desperate purpose work.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But, lo! the Sun with orient splendour shines,"&mdash;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We cannot indulge ourselves with any more of this loyal lucubration&mdash;we
+think that the slur at the <i>Regency</i> was not quite fair; we were by no
+means aware that the moon was so mischievous; and, as our general
+conclusion, we must admit that, if his lordship did not gain the
+Laureateship, he amply deserved it. However, better times were at hand.
+Pitt, like all other eminent men, had a keen insight into character, and
+he had long known the especial qualities of Addington. This solves the
+difficulty of accounting at once for his continued personal intercourse,
+and yet his apparent official neglect. He knew him to be well-informed,
+intelligent, and honest; although his retiring habits had already given
+full evidence of his indisposition to face the storms of party.</p>
+
+<p>On Mr Grenville's promotion to the Home department, in 1789, Addington
+was proposed for the Speaker's chair, and was elected by two hundred and
+fifteen to one hundred and forty-two, who voted for the Opposition
+candidate, Sir Gilbert Elliot. In the private correspondence which was
+so frequent between him and the minister, various suggestions had been
+thrown out by Pitt of the Irish secretaryship, a seat at the treasury,
+&amp;c. But the man and the place were now found together, incomparably
+adapted to each other. The place implies an honourable neutrality, and
+Addington was true to the trust. It requires the favourable opinion of
+the House to the man as well as the officer; and Sheridan's first
+address to him, as the spokesman of the Opposition, was, "we were all
+very sorry to have voted against you." It required considerable
+knowledge of general and parliamentary law, and the new Speaker had
+devoted years to their acquisition. Even the minor merits of a grave and
+commanding presence were there; for Addington, in his early years, was
+of as striking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[Pg 483]</a></span> a countenance and figure as in old age he was gentle and
+amiable.</p>
+
+<p>Characteristic anecdotes are scattered through the volumes: these we
+think their most attractive portion; and of such Addington's memory was
+full in his later years. One night, on his crying out, in the usual
+form, to hush some chattering in the House, "Order, order, or I shall
+name names!" Charles Fox, then standing beside the chair, told him that
+Wilkes once asked the Speaker, Onslow, what would be the consequence of
+his naming names? "Heaven above only knows," was the solemn reply.</p>
+
+<p>One night Fox himself put the same question to Sir Fletcher Norton (the
+Speaker,) who nonchalantly answered, "Happen! hang me, if I know or
+care!"</p>
+
+<p>A substantial proof of the general approval was given to the new
+official, in the addition of &pound;1000 a-year to his salary; thus giving him
+&pound;6000 a-year&mdash;which, besides a house, with some other emoluments on
+public and private bills, and the sale of certain clerkships connected
+with the business of the Commons, is generally calculated as equivalent
+to about &pound;10,000 yearly. For this, however, the Speaker is expected to
+keep up considerable state, to give occasional banquets during the
+session to successive parties of the members; to have evening receptions
+and lev&eacute;es; and, in general, to lead a rather laborious life; the least
+part of whose labour is in the Speaker's chair. He has also the
+appointment of a chaplain to the House, which is equivalent to the
+disposal of valuable church patronage, the chaplain being always
+provided for, after a few years' attendance, by a request of the House
+to the crown. To complete this accumulation of good things, the Speaker
+who exhibits intelligence, is frequently promoted to the higher offices
+of the cabinet, and generally receives a peerage.</p>
+
+<p>But those were the "piping times of peace;" times of trouble and terror
+were at hand. The French democracy had already burst on Europe; and
+every throne was heaving on the surge which it had raised. Pitt alone,
+of all the great ministers of Europe, seemed to disregard its hazards.
+Customary as it is for the pamphleteers of later times to assail his
+memory, as the promoter of hostilities, the chief outcry against Pitt in
+the year 1790, was his tardiness in thinking that those hostilities
+could ever force England to take a share in the struggles of the
+Continent. The whole aristocracy, the whole property, the whole
+mercantile interest, and even the whole moral feeling of the empire, had
+become from hour to hour more convinced that a war was inevitable. Even
+the Opposition, whose office it was to screen the atrocities of every
+national enemy, and who, for a time, had looked to Jacobinism as an
+auxiliary in the march to power, had at last shrunk from this horrible
+alliance&mdash;had felt the natural disgust of Englishmen for an association
+with the undisguised vice and vileness of the Republic, and had at last
+sunk into silence, if not into shame. Burke had published his immortal
+"Reflections," and their sound had gone forth like the tolling of a vast
+funeral bell for the obsequies of European monarchy. Still, nothing
+could move Pitt. By nature, a financier, and by genius the most
+magnificent of all financiers, he calculated the force of nations by the
+depths of their treasuries; and seeing France bankrupt, conceived that
+she was on the verge of conviction, and waited only to see her sending
+her humbled Assembly to beg for a general loan, and for a general peace
+at the same moment.</p>
+
+<p>But those were days made to show the shortsightedness of human sagacity.
+The lesson was rapidly given; it was proved in European havoc, that
+utter powerlessness for good was not merely compatible with tremendous
+power for evil, but was actually the means of accumulating that power;
+that the more wretched, famishing, and haggard a nation might become at
+home, the more irresistible it might prove abroad: that, like the
+madman, it might be fevered and tortured by mental disease, into
+preternatural strength of frame, and might spring out of the bed where
+it had lain down to die, with a force which drove before it all the
+ordinary resistance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[Pg 484]</a></span> of man. Pitt had still to learn, that this was a
+war of Opinion; and had to learn also, that Opinion was a new material
+of explosion, against whose agency all former calculation was wholly
+unprovided, and whose force was made to fling all the old buttresses and
+battlements of European institutions like dust and embers into the air.</p>
+
+<p>It is not worth the trouble now to inquire, whether Pitt's sagacity
+equally failed him in estimating the probable effect of the French
+Revolution on England. His expression at a dinner party, where
+Addington, Grenville, and Burke formed the guests, "Never mind, Mr
+Burke, we shall go on as we are until the day of judgment;" shows his
+feeling of the stability of the constitution. As we have no love for
+discovering the</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise,"</p></div>
+
+<p>we are gratified by thinking that both were partly in the right: Burke,
+in regarding the Revolution as destined to sweep the Continent with long
+and tremendous violence, and Pitt as believing it likely to make but
+little <i>permanent</i> impression on the habits, the power, or the heart of
+England. Burke argued from the weakness of the Continental governments;
+Pitt from the strength of the British constitution: the former having no
+connexion with the national interests, the latter being formed from
+those interests, for those interests, and being as much supported by
+them as a tree by its roots. There was not a portion of that stately
+tree, from its solid trunk to the highest ornament of its foliage, which
+was not fed from the ground. The truth was, that the Jacobinisim of
+England was confined to adventurers, and never obtained any hold on the
+great body of the proprietors and the people. Its spirit evaporated in
+tavern harangues, to which the multitude went to listen, as to the
+chattering and grimaces of a mountebank.</p>
+
+<p>No man of distinction, no man of birth, and no man of property was ever
+engaged in those coffee-house conspiracies; their Jaffiers and Pierres
+were cobblers and tinkers, with a sprinkling of petty pamphleteers, and
+ruined declaimers. When Hardy and Horne Took, were the priests, what
+must be the worshippers at the Jacobin shrine? But in France, the temple
+of that idol of confusion was crowded with the chiefs of the Noblesse,
+the Church, the Law; headed by the Prince of the blood next to the
+throne; all stimulated by a ferocity of folly unexampled in the history
+of infatuation, and all unconsciously urged to their ruin by a race of
+beings inferior in rank, and almost objects of their scorn, yet, rather
+embodied malignities, and essential mischiefs, than men. France in that
+fearful time reminded the spectator of Michael Angelo's great picture of
+the "Last Judgment"&mdash;general convulsion above, universal torment below;
+the mighty of the earth falling, kings, nobles, hierarchs, warriors,
+plunging down, and met by fiends, at once their tempters, their
+taunters, and their torturers; a scene of desolation and destiny.</p>
+
+<p>Pitt's sentiment on the safety of England from revolutionary movements
+was so decided, that if France had not invaded Holland, and thus
+actually compelled a war, we should probably have had none at this
+period.</p>
+
+<p>A distinction between the state of France and England not less
+memorable, if not still more effective, than in property, was religion.
+In France infidelity was not merely frequent, but was the <i>fashion</i>. No
+man of any literary name condescended even to the pretence of religion;
+but in England, infidelity was a stigma; when it began to take a public
+form, it was only in the vilest quarter; and when it assailed religion,
+it was instantly put down at once by the pen, by the law, and by the
+more decisive tribunal of national opinion. Paine, the chief writer of
+the Satanic faction, was a bankrupt staymaker, and a notorious
+profligate: his pamphlet had only the effect of making the public
+protest against its abominations; he was prosecuted, was forced to leave
+the country, and finally died in beggary in America.</p>
+
+<p>It is remarkable to find so cautious a man as Addington at this period
+speaking of the Church as "an honest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[Pg 485]</a></span> <i>drone</i>, who, if she did not stir
+herself very soon, would be stung by the wasps of the conventicle." The
+metaphor is not good for much, for the drone can sting too, and does
+nothing but sting. But what is it that, at any time, makes the church
+ineffective? The abuse of the ministerial patronage. The clergy
+altogether depend on the guidance, the character, and the activity of
+their bishops. If ministers regard the mitre as merely a sort of
+donative for their own private tutors, or the chaplains of their noble
+friends, or as provision for a relative, dependent, or the brother of a
+Treasury clerk, they not merely degrade the office, but they paralyse
+the church. Of the living prelacy we do not speak: but it is impossible
+to look upon the list of archbishops and bishops (a few excepted) during
+the last century, without surprise that the inferior clergy have done so
+much, rather than that they have done so little. Where there was no
+encouragement for literary exertion, ability naturally relaxed its
+efforts; where preferment was lavished on heads "that could not teach,
+and would not learn," disgust extinguished diligence; and where
+character for intelligence, practical capacity, and public effect, were
+evidently overlooked in the calculation of professional claims, it is
+only in the natural course of things that their exercise should be
+abandoned, in fastidiousness or in contempt, in disgust or in despair.
+The church was never in a more ineffective condition than at the close
+of the last century; and if the sin was to be laid at the right
+threshold, it must have been laid at the door of Whitehall.</p>
+
+<p>Addington certainly deserves the credit of having formed a just estimate
+of the French Revolution from the beginning. In a letter to his brother
+he inserts this stanza,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"France shall perish, write that word<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the blood that she has spilt;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perish hopeless and abhorr'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep in ruin as in guilt."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He, however, fell into the common error of the time, and looked upon her
+overthrow as certain in the first campaign.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the second reading of the Alien Bill that the dagger scene, of
+which so much was said at the time, occurred in the House of
+Commons&mdash;thus described by the Speaker: "Burke, after a few preliminary
+remarks, the house being totally unprepared, fumbled in his bosom, and
+suddenly drew out the dagger, and threw it on the floor. His extravagant
+gesture excited a general disposition to smile, by which most men would
+have been disconcerted; but he suddenly collected himself, and by a few
+brilliant sentences recalled the seriousness of the house. 'Let us,'
+said he, 'keep French principles from our heads and French daggers from
+our hearts; let us preserve all our blandishments in life, and all our
+consolations in death; all the blessings of time, and all the hopes of
+eternity.'"</p>
+
+<p>As all partisanship hated Burke, who had trampled it in the mire, this
+dagger scene was sneered at as a stage trick; but Burke was above all
+pantomime. The dagger was one which had been sent from France to a
+Birmingham manufacturer, with an order for a large number of the same
+pattern: and Burke had received it only on that day&mdash;and received it
+from Sir James Bland Burgess only on his way down to the house&mdash;so that
+there could have been no preparation for public exhibition. It was a
+natural impulse of the moment, in a time when all was emotion.</p>
+
+<p>The murder of the unfortunate King of France, on the 21st of January
+1793, perhaps the most wanton murder in all royal history, instantly
+brought out a full display of the <i>real</i> feelings of England. The
+universal sentiment was horror, mingled with indignation; and when the
+royal message came down to the house on the 28th, stating that, in
+consequence of the regicide, the king had ordered M. Chauvelin, minister
+from the late king, to leave the country, as being no longer accredited
+by the sovereign, the message seemed rather the echo of the national
+voice than the dictate of the government.</p>
+
+<p>From this period the Whig party diminished day by day. They were chiefly
+the great landholders of the kingdom, and they saw in this atrocious act
+a declaration against all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">[Pg 486]</a></span> property; but they had also the higher motive
+of its being a declaration against all government. The chief persons of
+the Opposition at once crossed the house; but as Horne Tooke, in his apt
+and short style, described the party on his trial, "We all," said he,
+"entered the revolutionary coach at Reading; but one got out at
+Maidenhead, another at Slough, a third at Hounslow, and a fourth at
+Brentford. It was <i>my</i> misfortune, my lord, as it was also Mr Fox's, to
+go on to London."</p>
+
+<p>The French now threw off all political form, and all diplomatic decorum,
+and exhibited the whole savagism of republicanism. On the motion of a
+ruffian of the name of Garnier, the Convention publicly resolved that
+"Pitt was an enemy to the human race." The same ruffian then proceeded
+to move, "that every body had a right to assassinate him." This,
+however, was <i>not</i> carried; but an order was sent, on the proposal of
+Robespierre, to the armies, that "no quarter should be given to the
+English troops;" an order which was not repealed until his death by the
+guillotine.</p>
+
+<p>Those were stirring times, and in every instance of success in the
+campaign, Pitt sent an immediate courier to Addington when out of town,
+of which the Speaker gave the signal to the surrounding country by
+lighting up his house. On one occasion of this kind, a friend of his,
+travelling on the coach from Bath, heard the coachman say, "I'm sure
+there's good news come, for there's the Speaker's house all in a blaze."</p>
+
+<p>In this year Addington was offered the high promotion of Secretary of
+State, in the room of Dundas. He consulted Huntingford, who strongly
+advised him against giving up his pleasant, safe, and lucrative office,
+for the toilsome, hazardous, and unpopular office of the secretary. A
+letter from the Solicitor-general Mitford, (afterwards Lord Redesdale,)
+confirmed the opinion. It is justly observed by the biographer, that
+Mitford, who could be so wise for his friend, was not equally so for
+himself; for, after having obtained the speakership in his own person,
+he gave it up to assume the office of Irish Chancellor, a situation of
+great responsibility, and great labour, in which he was assailed on all
+sides, and from which, on the first change of the cabinet, he was
+insultingly recalled.</p>
+
+<p>The war had now become almost wholly naval, and it was a war of
+successive triumphs. The dominion of Europe seemed about to be divided
+between England and France: England mistress of the sea&mdash;France sweeping
+every thing before her on the land. The famous battle of the 1st of June
+extinguished the first revolutionary fleet, seven sail of the line being
+captured, and the remainder of the fleet escaping with difficulty into
+the French ports.</p>
+
+<p>The minister was also triumphant at home, and the chief persons of the
+Whig party were gazetted as taking office under his administration. Earl
+Fitzwilliam as President of the Council, the Duke of Portland as
+Secretary of State, Earl Spencer, Privy Seal, the Duke of Gordon, Privy
+Seal of Scotland, and Windham, Secretary at War.</p>
+
+<p>It had been frequently remarked, that Pitt never sought for coadjutors
+of any remarkable ability, from confidence in his own extraordinary
+attainments. As Fox candidly and bitterly concluded one of his speeches
+in Parliament, saying, "There is one point, and only one on which I
+entirely agree with the right honourable gentleman, and that is, in the
+high opinion he entertains of his own talents."</p>
+
+<p>It is certain that those accessions to his cabinet were not likely to
+excite any jealousy on his part, yet there was one whose absence from
+the cabinet may have been justly regretted as detracting at once from
+the strength of the administration, and the glory of the minister. The
+name of Burke was <i>not</i> found there, though no man had operated so
+powerfully in producing the change; no man had so amply deserved the
+distinction; and no man would have thrown so permanent a lustre round
+the councils in which he shared. There can be no doubt that Burke felt
+this neglect, and that he was justified in feeling himself defrauded of
+an honour conferred before his face on men who were not fit to be named
+in the same breath.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">[Pg 487]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But he has had his noble revenge. Posterity, of all tribunals the most
+formidable, yet the most faithful, has done him Justice. While the
+favourites of fortune have passed away into the forgetfulness for which
+they were made, his services assume a higher rank in the records of
+national preservation, and his genius continually fills a prouder place
+among the intellectual triumphs of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>In 1794 Burke closed his parliamentary career, by retiring from the
+borough of Malton, for which his son became member. In this year, also,
+closed the memorable trial of Warren Hastings, which had extended over
+ten sessions of parliament, (from February 1788 to 5th April 1795)&mdash;the
+actual trial lasting for seven years, two months, and ten days. The
+legal expenses of the defence amounted to seventy-one thousand and
+eighty pounds, which the proprietors of East India stock, by a majority
+of three hundred, on a ballot, paid. What the expenses of the
+prosecution were, is not told; probably twice the sum.</p>
+
+<p>The whole holds forth an important lesson for the punishment of public
+delinquency. If, instead of the masquerade of an impeachment before the
+peers and king, Hastings had been called on to answer before the common
+law courts, for any one of the hundred acts of personal injury alleged
+against him, the decision would have been secured as soon as the
+witnesses could have been brought from Calcutta. Of course the world
+would have lost a great deal of parliamentary parade and some capital
+speeches; all the <i>poetic</i> pomp would have been wanting; and the
+court-dresses would have been left at the tailors. But justice would
+have been done, which no one now believes to have been done.</p>
+
+<p>The obvious fact is, that the country had grown tired of a trial which
+seemed likely to last for life. After the first sounding of trumpets,
+the flourish excited curiosity no more. The topic had been a toy in the
+great parliamentary nursery, and the children were grown weary of their
+tinselled and painted doll. Even the horrors&mdash;and some of the details
+had all the terrible atrocity of barbarism with its passions inflamed by
+impunity&mdash;had ceased to startle; the eloquence of the managers had
+become commonplace by the repetition which had deprived the horrors of
+their sting. The prosecution was yawned to death.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps there was not a peer in the seats of Westminster Hall, nor a
+member of the committee, nor a man in the kingdom, except Burke and
+Pitt, who would not have forgiven Hastings twice the amount of his
+offences, to have silenced the subject at once and for ever.</p>
+
+<p>With Burke, the impeachment was a vision, half Roman, half Oriental&mdash;the
+august severity of a Roman senate, combining with the mysterious
+splendour of the throne of Aurungzebe. He was the Cicero impeaching
+Verres in the presence of the eighteenth century, or a high-priest of
+some Indian oracle promulgating the decrees of eternal justice to the
+eastern world.</p>
+
+<p>With Pitt, the whole event was a fortunate diversion of the enemy, a
+relief from the restless assaults of a Whig opposition, a perpetual
+drain on Whig strength, and by a result more effective still, a fruitful
+source of popular ridicule on the lingering impotence of Whig labours.</p>
+
+<p>On the acquittal of Hastings, Burke wrote several letters to Addington
+as Speaker, which have a tone of the deepest despondency. He writes in
+the impassioned anguish of a man to whom the earth exhibited but one
+aspect of despair. They were letters such as Priam might have indited on
+the night when his Troy was in a blaze. It was evident that the powerful
+genius of Burke was partially bewildered by the bent of his feelings. He
+raised an imaginary sepulchre for England on the spot where he had
+contemplated the erection of a dungeon for Indian crime through all ages
+to come.</p>
+
+<p>The Indian directors voted Hastings, an annuity of five thousand pounds,
+which he enjoyed to a very advanced age: yet his acquittal has not
+received the seal of posterity. A calmer view has regarded him as the
+daring agent of acts fitter for the meridian of Hindoo morality than
+European. To serve the struggling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">[Pg 488]</a></span> interests of the Company seems to
+have been his highest motive, and there can be no doubt that he served
+them with equal sagacity and success. That he was a vigorous
+administrator, an enterprising statesman, and a popular governor, is
+beyond denial; that he was personally unstained by avarice or extortion,
+is admitted. But history demands higher proofs of principle; and no
+governor since his time has ever attempted to imitate his example, or
+ever ventured to excuse his own errors, by alleging the conduct or the
+acquittal of Hastings.</p>
+
+<p>There are some men, whom no position can render ridiculous, and there
+are some quite the reverse: of the latter class was Ferguson of Pitfour.
+Ferguson's notion of the essential quality of a Lord Advocate was
+tallness. "We Scotch members," said he, "always vote with the Lord
+Advocate, and we therefore require to see him in a division. Now I can
+see Mr Pitt, and I can see Mr Addington, but I cannot see the Lord
+Advocate." His lordship evidently not rising to Ferguson's regulation
+size of a statesman.</p>
+
+<p>One evening as Ferguson was taking his dinner in the coffee-room, some
+one ran in, to say, that "Pitt was on his legs." Every one rose to leave
+the room, except Ferguson. "What!" said they, "won't you go to hear Mr
+Pitt?" "No," he replied, "Why should I? do you think Mr Pitt would go to
+hear me?"</p>
+
+<p>At a dinner given by Dundas, at Wimbledon, where Addington, Sheridan,
+and Erskine were present, the latter was rallied on his not taking so
+prominent a part in the debates as his fame required. Sheridan said
+(with a roughness unusual with him,) "I tell you how it happens:
+Erskine, you are afraid of Pitt, and that's the flabby part of your
+character."</p>
+
+<p>This piece of candour, however, was probably owing to the claret. But
+Erskine's comparative taciturnity in the House may be accounted for on
+more honourable terms. Erskine was no poltroon: he was the boldest
+speaker at the bar. But the bar was his place, and no man has ever
+attained perfection in the two styles of oratory. It is true, that
+distinguished barristers have sometimes been distinguished in the House
+of Commons, but they have not been of the race of orators; they have
+been sharp, shrewd, bitter men, ready on vexatious topics, quick in
+peevish speech, and willing to plunge themselves into subjects whose
+labour or license is disdained by higher minds. But Erskine was an
+<i>orator</i>, vivid, high-toned, and sensitive; shrinking from the
+common-place subjects which common-place men take up as their natural
+portion; rather indolent, as is common with men of genius; and rather
+careless of fame in the senate, from his consciousness of the
+unquestioned fame which he had already won at the bar.</p>
+
+<p>Of Fox some pretty anecdotes are told, substantiating that eminent man's
+character for courtesy. One day, as Addington was riding by the grounds
+of St Ann's Hill, he was seen over the palings by Fox, who called out to
+him to stop, invited him in, and displayed the beauties of his garden,
+to which he had always devoted a great deal of care. As Addington
+particularly admired some weeping ash trees, Fox promised him some
+cuttings. Some months elapsed, when one evening, Fox, after going
+through a stormy meeting, in Palace-yard, went up to the Speaker in the
+chair, and said&mdash;"I have not forgotten your cuttings, but have brought
+them up to town with me," giving him directions at the same time for
+their treatment. In a few minutes after, he was warmly engaged in debate
+with Pitt and Burke.</p>
+
+<p>Fox's enjoyment of St Ann's Hill was proverbial. On some one's asking
+General Fitzpatrick, in the midst of one of the hottest periods of the
+debates on the French war&mdash;Where is Fox? the answer was, "I daresay he
+is at home, sitting on a hay-cock, reading novels, and watching the jays
+stealing his cherries."</p>
+
+<p>The year 1796 was a formidable year for England. Prussia and Spain had
+given up her alliance. Belgium and Holland had been taken possession of
+by the French. Austria was still firm, but her armies were dispirited,
+her generals had lost their reputation, her statesmen had been baffled,
+her finances were supported<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">[Pg 489]</a></span> only by English loans, and France was
+already by anticipation marking out a campaign under the walls of
+Vienna. The English Opposition, at once embittered by defeat, and
+stimulated by a new hope of storming the cabinet, carried on a perpetual
+assault in the shape of motions for peace. The remnants of Jacobinism in
+England united their strength with the populace once more; and, taking
+advantage of the continental defeats, of the general timidity of our
+allies, and of the apparent hopelessness of all success against an enemy
+who grew stronger every day, made desperate efforts to reduce the
+government to the humiliation of a forced treaty of peace.</p>
+
+<p>The necessity for raising eighteen millions, followed by seven millions
+and a half more, increased the public discontent; and, although the
+solid strength of England was still untouched, and the <i>real</i> opinion of
+the country was totally opposed to their rash demands for peace, there
+can be no question, that the louder voice of the multitude seemed to
+carry the day. A bad harvest also had increased the public difficulties;
+and, as if every thing was to be unfortunate at this moment, Admiral
+Christian's expedition&mdash;one of the largest which had ever left an
+English port, and which was prepared to sweep the French out of the West
+Indies&mdash;sailing in December, encountered such a succession of gales in
+the chops of the Channel that a great part of this noble armament was
+lost, and the admiral reached the West Indies with the survivors, only
+to see them perish by the dreadful maladies of the climate.</p>
+
+<p>But, to complete the general disastrous aspect of affairs, a new
+phenomenon suddenly blazed over Europe. The year 1796 first saw Napoleon
+Buonaparte at the head of an army. Passing the Alps on the 9th of April,
+he fell with such skill and vigour on the Austrian and Italian troops,
+that in his first campaign he destroyed five successive Austrian armies;
+broke up the alliances of that cluster of feeble and contemptible
+sovereignties which had so long disgraced Italy in the eyes of Europe;
+trampled on their effeminate and debauched population, with the
+sternness of an executioner rather than the force of a conqueror; and
+after sending the plunder of their palaces to Paris, in the spirit and
+with the pomp of the old Roman triumphs, dragged their princes after him
+to swell his own triumphal progress through Italy.</p>
+
+<p>The war now engrossed every feeling of the nation; and England showed
+her national spirit in her gallant defiance of the threat of invasion.
+The whole kingdom was ready to rise in arms on the firing of the first
+beacon;&mdash;men of the highest rank headed their tenantry; men even of
+those grave and important avocations and offices, which might seem to
+imply a complete exemption from arms, put themselves at the head of
+corps in every part of the empire; and England showed her prime minister
+as Colonel Pitt of the Walmer volunteers, and the speaker of her House
+of Commons, as Captain Addington of the Woodley cavalry.</p>
+
+<p>But a brilliant change was at hand. In September, Addington received the
+following note from Pitt, enclosing the bulletin of the battle of the
+Nile:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have just time to send you the enclosed Bulletin (<i>vive la
+Marine Anglaise</i>,) and to tell you, that we mean, (out of
+precaution) the meeting of Parliament for the 6th of November.</p>
+
+<p class="right">"Sir, ever yours, W. P."</p></div>
+
+<p>The bulletin which gave value to this note, belongs to history, and
+gives to history one of the noblest events of our naval annals. It
+exhibits a singular contrast to the present rapidity of communication,
+that even the "rumour" of Nelson's immortal victory did not reach until
+fifty-seven days after the event. The Gazette could not be published
+until the 2d of October.</p>
+
+<p>But the star of Pitt, which had hitherto shone with increasing
+brightness from year to year, and which had passed through all the
+clouds of time uneclipsed, was now to wane. The Irish attempt to
+establish a separate Regency, the Irish Rebellion, and the growing
+influence of the Popish party, combined with Liberalism in the Irish
+legislature, had determined Pitt to unite the parliaments of the two
+kingdoms. For this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">[Pg 490]</a></span> purpose, he made overtures to the Popish party,
+whose influence he most dreaded in the Irish House; and, in a species of
+"understanding" rather than a distinct compact, he proposed to the
+Popish body the measure which has been subsequently called
+"Emancipation," with some general intimation of pensioning their
+priesthood.</p>
+
+<p>The Union was carried; and Lord Castlereagh, who had conducted it in
+Ireland, was appointed to bring the Popish proposition forward. It had
+been a subject of deliberation in the cabinet for nearly six months
+before they mentioned it to the king. His Majesty virtually pronounced
+it irreconcilable to his conscience; and, after having received the
+opinion of Lord Kenyon, the chief-justice, in complete confirmation of
+his own, he sent for the speaker. Pitt had written, in the meantime, to
+the king, that he must carry the measure or resign. The king then
+proposed that Addington should take the conduct of the government. On
+his entreating to decline the proposal, the king said emphatically "Put
+your hand upon your heart, and ask yourself where I am to turn for
+support, if <i>you</i> do not stand by me?" Addington then honourably
+attempted once more to induce Pitt to be reconciled to the king's
+desire, who replied, as to Addington's taking the cabinet, "I see
+nothing but <i>ruin</i> if you hesitate." A letter from the king to Pitt
+still left an opening for his return, but his answer was still
+inflexible; and, on the 5th of January, 1801, the correspondence was
+concluded by the royal announcement that "a new arrangement would be
+made without delay."</p>
+
+<p>The determination of George III. was personal and purely conscientious.
+An anecdote is given by General Garth strikingly in accordance with this
+opinion. The General, who was one of the royal equerries, was riding out
+with the king one day at this time, when his Majesty said to him, "I
+have not had any sleep this night, and am very bilious and unwell;" he
+added, "that it was in consequence of Mr Pitt's applying to him on the
+subject of Catholic Emancipation."</p>
+
+<p>On his arrival at Kew, he desired Garth to read the Coronation Oath, and
+then followed the exclamation,&mdash;"Where is that power on earth to absolve
+me from the due observance of every sentence of that oath, particularly
+the one requiring me to maintain the Protestant religion? Was not my
+family seated on the throne for that express purpose? And shall I be the
+first to suffer it to be undermined, perhaps overturned? No. I had
+rather beg my bread from door to door throughout Europe, than consent to
+any such measure."</p>
+
+<p>This was the language of an honest man, and it was also the language of
+a wise one. What has the introduction of Papists into parliament
+occasioned to England, but political confusion? What benefit has it
+produced to Ireland? No country in the wildest portion of the earth has
+exhibited a more lamentable picture of insubordination, dissension, and
+public misery. The peasantry gradually sinking into the most abject
+poverty; the gentry living on loans; the laws set at defiance; the
+demand for rents answered by assassination; a fierce faction existing in
+the bowels of the land, as if for the express purpose of inflaming every
+passion of an ignorant people into frenzy, and deepening every
+visitation of nature into national ruin. At this moment, England is
+paying for the daily food of two millions of people; employing seven
+hundred thousand labourers, simply to keep them alive; and burthening
+the most heavily-taxed industry in the world with millions of pounds
+more, for the sole object of rescuing Ireland from the last extremities
+of famine.</p>
+
+<p>We take our leave of this most distressing subject, by the obvious
+remark, that Pitt and the politicians, in treating popery as a political
+object, have all alike overlooked the true nature of the question.
+Popery is a <i>religion</i>, and if that religion be <i>false</i>, no crime can be
+greater in the sight of Heaven, nor more sure to bring evil on man, than
+to give it any assistance in its temptations, progress, or power, by any
+means whatever. To propagate a false religion is to declare war against
+the Divine will, and in that warfare suffering must follow. But what
+Protestant can have a doubt upon the subject? England may regard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">[Pg 491]</a></span>
+herself as signally fortunate, if the just penalty of her weakness is
+already paid.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Addington's Ministry began auspiciously, with the peace of Amiens.
+The world was weary of war. France had just learned the power of the
+British army, by the capture of her army in Egypt; she was without a
+ship on the seas; Napoleon was desirous of consolidating his power, and
+ascending a throne; and thus, all interests coinciding, peace was
+proclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Sidmouth's life from this period was connected with the highest
+transactions of the state, until 1822, when he retired from office,
+followed by the universal respect of the country, and bearing with him
+into his retirement a conscience as void of offence, as perhaps ever
+belonged to any Minister of England.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed a period, which might have been regarded as, even here,
+the fitting reward of such a life. Prom 1822 to 1844, he lived in the
+enjoyment of health, and that honour, and those troops of friends, which
+are the noblest human evidence of a well-spent existence.</p>
+
+<p>Old age came on him at last, but with singular gentleness. Some of his
+maxims exhibit the mild philosophy of his temperament. "In youth," said
+he, "the absence of pleasure is pain, in age the absence of pain is
+pleasure." He characteristically observed, "At my age, it strikes me
+very much, what little proportion there is between man's ambition, and
+the shortness of his life." Of the wars during his time he said, "I used
+to think all the sufferings of war lost in its glory; I now consider all
+its glory lost in its sufferings." In allusion to the desponding tone of
+some public men, he said, "I have always fought under the standard of
+hope, and I never shall desert it." At another time, he expressed the
+truth, which only the wise man feels&mdash;"It is a very important part of
+wisdom, to know what to overlook." He repeated a fine expression of
+George III, of which he acknowledged the full value,&mdash;"Give me the man
+who judges <i>one</i> human being with severity, and every other with
+indulgence."</p>
+
+<p>His religious feelings were such as might be expected from his
+well-spent life,&mdash;pure, benevolent, and high-toned. Speaking to his
+family, in his last illness, he said, "Kind, dutiful, affectionate
+children, all have been to me; and if I am permitted to attain to that
+happy state to which I aspire, and am permitted to look down, how often
+shall I be with you, my children!"</p>
+
+<p>On the 3d of February, 1844, he was seized with an attack of influenza,
+which on the 10th became hopeless; and on the 15th he calmly died, in
+his 87th year.</p>
+
+<p>We have preferred giving an abstract of the leading portions of this
+able and amiable man's ministerial career, to following it minutely
+through his later public years, as the earlier were those which decided
+the character of the whole: and we have also preferred the tracing the
+course of the individual, to criticisms on the volumes of his
+biographer. But the work deserves much approval, for its general
+intelligence, the clearness of its arrangement, and the fulness of its
+information. It exercises judgment in the spirit of independence, and,
+expressing its opinions without severity, exhibits the grave sagacity of
+a man of sense, the style of a scholar, and the temper of a divine.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>The Life and Correspondence of the Right Honourable Henry
+Addington, First Viscount Sidmouth.</i> By the Honourable <span class="smcap">George Pellew</span>,
+D.D., Dean of Norwich. 3 vols. J. Murray.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">[Pg 492]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="HOW_THEY_MANAGE_MATTERS_IN_THE_MODEL_REPUBLIC" id="HOW_THEY_MANAGE_MATTERS_IN_THE_MODEL_REPUBLIC"></a>HOW THEY MANAGE MATTERS IN THE MODEL REPUBLIC.</h2>
+
+
+<p>In our last April number&mdash;on the appropriate Day of Fools&mdash;we laid
+before our readers a few stray flowers of speech, culled with little
+labour in that rich garden of oratorical delight&mdash;the Congress of the
+United States. Sweets to the sweet!&mdash;We confess that we designed that
+salutary exposure less for the benefit of our readers and subscribers in
+the Old World, than of those who are our readers, but not our
+subscribers, in the New. For, in the absence of an international
+copyright law, Maga is extensively pirated in the United States,
+extensively read, and we fear very imperfectly digested. This
+arrangement appears to us to work badly for all the parties concerned.
+It robs the British publisher, and impoverishes the native author. As to
+the American public, if our precepts had exercised any influence upon
+their practice, they would have learned long ago that ill-gotten goods
+never prosper, and that they who make booty of other men's wits, are not
+excepted from the general condemnation of wrong-doers. Some day,
+perhaps, they will consent to profit by what they prig, and thus, like
+the fat knight, turn their diseases to commodity&mdash;the national disease
+of <i>appropriation</i> to the commodity of self-knowledge and self-rebuke.</p>
+
+<p>An American journalist, however, has put the matter in quite a new
+light, so far as we are concerned. Lord Demus, it appears, like other
+despots, is a hard master, and exacts from his most oppressed slaves a
+tribute of constant adulation. We, too, are invited to applaud his
+felonious favours, and assured that the honour and glory of being read
+by him on his own free and easy terms, is enough for the like of us.</p>
+
+<p>"So long," says the editor of the <i>New York Gazette</i> and <i>Times</i> "as our
+National Legislature refuses to give the Republic an International
+Copyright Law, so that American periodicals of a higher class may be
+supported among us, the English reviews will do the thinking of our
+people upon a great variety of subjects. They make no money, indeed,
+directly, by their circulation here; but their conductors cannot but
+feel the importance, and value the influence of having the whole
+American literary area to themselves. <i>Blackwood</i>, whose circulation on
+this side of the Atlantic is, on account of its cheapness, double
+perhaps that which it can claim in the British islands, is more and more
+turning its attention to American subjects, which it handles generally
+with its wonted humorous point, and witty spitefulness."</p>
+
+<p>This is very fine; but we can assure our friendly critic, that we feel
+no call whatever to undertake the gratuitous direction of the American
+conscience. Our ambition to "do the thinking" of our Yankee cousins is
+materially damped by the unpleasant necessity which it involves, of
+being "done" ourselves. They seem, however, to claim a prescriptive
+right to the works of the British press, as well as to the funds of the
+British public. They read our books, on the same principle as they
+borrow our money, and abuse their benefactors into the bargain with more
+than Hibernian asperity. After all, however, we believe that the candour
+of Maga has as much to do with their larcenous admiration of her pages,
+as the "cheapness" to which our New York editor alludes. To use their
+own phrase, "they go in for excitement considerable;" and, to be told of
+their faults, is an excitement which they seldom enjoy at the hands of
+their own authors. Now, we are accustomed to treat our own public as a
+rational, but extremely fallible personage, and to think that we best
+deserve his support, by administering to his failings the language of
+unpalatable truth. And we greatly mistake the character of Demus, and
+even of that conceited monster the American Demus,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&#945;&#947;&#961;&#959;&#953;&#954;&#959;&#987; &#959;&#961;&#947;&#951;&#957;, &#954;&#965;&#945;&#956;&#959;&#964;&#961;&#969;&#958;, &#945;&#954;&#961;&#945;&#967;&#959;&#955;&#959;&#987; &#965;&#960;&#959;&#954;&#969;&#966;&#959;&#987;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493">[Pg 493]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>if this be not the direction in which the interest, as well as the duty,
+of the public writer lies. Certain it is, that even in the United States
+those books circulate most freely, which lash most vigorously the vices
+of the Republic. Honest Von Raumer's dull encomium fell almost
+still-born from the press, while the far more superficial pages of
+Dickens and Trollope were eagerly devoured by a people who are daily
+given to understand, by their own authors, that they are the greatest,
+the wisest, the most virtuous nation under the sun. Let a European
+author be never so well disposed towards them, his partial applause
+contributes but little to their full-blown complacency. But, when they
+hear that the Republic has been traduced by a foreign, and especially a
+British pen, their vanity is piqued, their curiosity excited, and their
+conscience smitten. Every one denounces the libel in public, and every
+one admits its truth to himself&mdash;"What!" say they, "does the Old World
+in truth judge us thus harshly? Is it really scandalised by such trifles
+as the repudiation of our debts, and the enslavement of our fellow
+creatures? Must we give up our playful duels, and our convenient
+spittoons, before we can hope to pass muster as Christians and gentlemen
+beyond our own borders? O free Demus! O wise Demus! O virtuous Demus!
+Will you betake yourself to cleanly, and well-ordered ways at the
+bidding of this scribbler?" Thus "they eat, and eke they swear;" vowing
+all the time that they "will horribly revenge." No doubt, however, the
+bitter pill of foreign animadversion, though distasteful to the palate,
+relieves the inflation of their stomachs, and leaves them better and
+lighter than before. But when will a native Aristophanes arise to purge
+the effeminacy of the American press, and show up the sausage-venders
+and Cleons of the Republic in their true light? How long will the
+richest field of national folly in the world remain unreaped, save by
+the crotchety sickles of dull moralists and didactic pamphleteers?</p>
+
+<p>Not that moral courage is entirely wanting in the United States; but it
+is a kind of courage altogether too moral, and sadly deficient in animal
+spirits. The New Englanders especially, set up, in their solemn way, to
+admonish the vices of the Republic, and to inoculate them with the
+virulent virtues of the Puritanical school. The good city of Boston
+alone teems with transcendental schemes for the total and immediate
+regeneration of mankind. There we find Peace Societies, and New Moral
+World Societies, and Teetotal Societies, and Anti-Slavery Societies, all
+"in full blast," each opposing to its respective bane the most sweeping
+and exaggerated remedies. The Americans never do things by halves; their
+vices and their virtues are alike in extremes, and the principles of the
+second book of the Ethics of Aristotle<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> are altogether unknown to
+their philosophy. At one moment they are all for "brandy and bitters,"
+at the next, tea and turn-out is the order of the day, Here, you must
+"liquor or fight"&mdash;there, a little wine for the stomach's sake is
+sternly denied to a fit of colic, or an emergency of gripes. The moral
+soul of Boston thrills with imaginings of perpetual peace, while St
+Louis and New Orleans are volcanoes of war. Listen to the voice of New
+England, and you would think that negro slavery was the only crime of
+which a nation ever was, or could by possibility be guilty; go to South
+Carolina, and you are instructed that "the Domestic Institution" is the
+basis of democratic virtue, the cornerstone of the Republican edifice.
+Cant, indeed, in one form or other, is the innate vice of the "earnest"
+Anglo-Saxon mind, on both sides of the Atlantic, and ridicule is the
+weapon which the gods have appointed for its mitigation. You must lay on
+the rod with a will, and throw "moral suasion" to the dogs. Above all,
+your demagogue dreads satire as vermin the avenging thumb&mdash;'Any thing
+but that,' squeaks he, 'an you love me. Liken me to Lucifer, or Caius
+Gracchus; charge me with ambition, and glorious vices; let me be the
+evil genius of the commonwealth, the tinsel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">[Pg 494]</a></span> villain of the political
+melodrama; but don't threaten me with the fool's cap, or write me down
+with Dogberry; above all, don't quote me in cold blood, that the foolish
+people may see, after the fever heat has subsided, what trash I have
+palmed upon them in the name of liberty!' Yet this is the way, Jonathan,
+to deal with demagogues. You make too much of yours, man. You are not
+the blockhead we take you for after all; but you delight to see your
+public men in motley, and the rogues will fool you to the top of your
+bent, till it is your pleasure to put down the show. So now that the
+piper has to be paid, and a lucid interval appears to be dawning upon
+you, to the pillory at once with these "stump" orators, and pot-house
+politicians, who have led you into such silly scrapes; turn them about,
+and look at them well in the rough, that you may know them again when
+you see them, and learn to avoid for the future their foolish and
+mischievous counsels.</p>
+
+<p>It is remarkable that while a perception of the ridiculous, perhaps to
+excess, is characteristic of the British mind, and is at the bottom of
+many defects in the national manners, commonly attributed to less venial
+feelings, our Transatlantic descendants err in just the opposite
+direction. The Americans seldom laugh at any body, or any thing&mdash;never
+at themselves; and this, next to an unfortunate trick of insolvency, and
+a preternatural abhorrence of niggers, is perhaps the besetting sin of
+an otherwise "smart" people. As individuals, their peculiarities are not
+very marked; in truth there is a marvellous uniformity of bad habits
+amongst them; but when viewed in their collective capacity, whenever two
+or three of them are gathered together, shades of Democritus! commend us
+to a seven-fold pocket-handkerchief. The humours of most nations expend
+themselves on carnivals and feast-days, at the theatre, the ball-room,
+or the public garden; but the fun of the United States is to be looked
+for at public meetings, and philanthropical gatherings, in the halls of
+lyceums, female academies, and legislative bodies. There they spout,
+there they swell, and cover themselves with adulation as with a garment.
+From the inauguration of a President, to the anniversary of the fair
+graduates of the Slickville female Institute, no event is allowed to
+pass without a grand palaver, in which things in general are extensively
+discussed, and their own things in particular extensively praised. They
+got the trick no doubt from us, whose performances in this line are
+quite unrivalled in the Old World, but they have added to our platform
+common-places a variety and "damnable iteration" entirely their own.
+Besides, when Bull is called upon to make an ass of himself on such
+occasions, he seems for the most part to have a due appreciation of the
+fact, while Jonathan's imperturbability and apparent good faith are
+quite sublime. The things that we have been compelled to hear of that
+"star-spangled banner!"&mdash;and all as if they were spoken in real earnest,
+and meant to be so understood. We look back upon those side-rending
+moments with a kind of Lucretian pleasure, and indemnify ourselves for
+past constraint by a hearty guffaw. All this magniloquence and bad
+taste, however, is intelligible enough. It springs partly from a want of
+discipline in their society, and partly from the absence of those
+studies which purify the taste, enlighten the judgment, and make, even
+dulness respectable. American audiences are not critical&mdash;not merely
+because they are not learned, but because they all take it in turns to
+be orators, as they do to be colonels of militia and justices of the
+peace. Thus they learn to bear each other's burdens, and Dulness is
+fully justified of her children. In a country where all men, at least in
+theory, are equal, and where every man does in fact exercise a certain
+influence on public affairs, it is not surprising that a large number of
+persons should possess a certain facility of public speaking, which even
+in England is far from universal, and is elsewhere possessed by very
+few. No man in the United States is deterred from offering his views
+upon matters of state, by the feeling that neither his education nor his
+position justify his interference. It is difficult in England to realise
+the practical equality which obtains as a fundamental principle in the
+Republic.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">[Pg 495]</a></span> There every man feels himself to be, and in fact is, or at
+least may be, a potential unit in the community. As a man, he is a
+citizen&mdash;as a citizen, a sovereign, whose caprices are to be humoured,
+and whose displeasure is to be deprecated. Judge Peddle, for instance,
+from the backwoods, is not perhaps as eloquent as Webster, nor as
+subtile as Calhoun, but he has just as good a right to be heard when he
+goes up to Congress for all that. Is he not accounted an exemplary
+citizen "and a pretty tall talker" in his own neighbourhood, and where
+on "the univarsal airth" would you find a more enlightened public
+opinion? It would never do to put Peddle down; that would be
+<i>leze-majest&eacute;</i> against his constituents, the sovereign people who dwell
+in Babylon, which is in the county of Lafayette, on the banks of the
+Chattawichee. Thus endorsed, Peddle soon lays aside his native
+bashfulness, and makes the walls of Congress vocal to that bewitching
+eloquence which heretofore captivated the Babylonish mind. He was
+"raised a leettle too far to the west of sun-down" to be snubbed by
+Down-easters, any how; he's a cock of the woods, he is; an "etarnal
+screamer," "and that's a fact"&mdash;with a bowie knife under his waistcoat,
+and a patent revolver in his coat pocket, both very much at the service
+of any gentleman who may dispute his claims to popular or personal
+consideration.</p>
+
+<p>To meet the case of these volcanic statesmen,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Aw'd by no shame, by no respect controll'd,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and in order that the noble army of dunces (a potent majority, of
+course) may have no reason to complain that the principles of equality
+are violated in their persons, the House of Representatives has adopted
+a regulation, commonly called "the one-hour rule." Upon this principle,
+whenever a question of great interest comes up, each member is allotted
+one hour by the Speaker's watch&mdash;as much less as he pleases, but no more
+on any consideration. Of course it occasionally happens that a man who
+has something to say, is not able to say it effectively within the hour;
+but then, for one such, there are at least a dozen who would otherwise
+talk for a week without saying any thing at all. Upon the whole,
+therefore, this same one-hour rule is deserving of all praise&mdash;the time
+of the country is saved by it, the sufferings of the more sensible
+members are abbreviated, while the dunces, to do them justice, make the
+most of their limited opportunities. Who knows, but that the peace of
+the world may be owing to it? For as there are about 230
+representatives, we should have had, but for it, just as many masterly
+demonstrations of the title of the Republic to the whole of Oregon&mdash;and
+something more. In such a cause, they would make nothing of beginning
+with the creation of the world, and ending with the last protocol of Mr
+Buchanan! Decidedly, but for "the one-hour rule" we Britishers should
+have been "everlastingly used up&mdash;and no two ways about it." Poor old
+Adams actually did begin his Oregon speech with the first chapter of
+Genesis. The title-deeds of the Republic, he said, were to be found in
+the words, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth!" Happily,
+the fatal hammer of the Speaker put down the venerable antediluvian,
+before he got to the end of the chapter.</p>
+
+<p>In the Senate, on the other hand, which is a less numerous, and somewhat
+more select body, things still go on in the old-fashioned way. There,
+when a member has once caught the Speaker's eye, his fortune is made for
+the day&mdash;perhaps for the week. Accordingly, he takes things easy from
+the very first&mdash;kicks his spittoon to a convenient angle, offers a
+libation of cold water to his parched entrails, and begins. When he
+leaves off, is another matter altogether&mdash;but not generally till he has
+gone through the round of human knowledge, explored the past, touched
+lightly upon the present, and cast a piercing glance into the darkness
+of the future. Soon after three, the Senate adjourns for dinner, and the
+orator of the day goes to his pudding with the rest, happy in the
+reflection that he has done his duty by his country, and will do it
+again on the morrow. We have somewhere read of a paradise of fools.
+Undoubtedly, Congress is that place. There they enjoy a perfect
+impunity, and revel in the full gratification of their instincts. Nobody
+thinks of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">[Pg 496]</a></span> coughing them down, or swamping them with ironical cheers.
+There&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Dulness, with transport, eyes each lively dunce,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Remembering she herself was Pertness once,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And tinsel'd o'er in robes of varying hues,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With self-applause her wild creation views.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sees momentary monsters rise and fall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with her own fool's colours gilds them all."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Indeed, all the arrangements of Congress favour the influence of the
+sable goddess. In the first place, the members are paid by the
+day&mdash;eight dollars each. Permit us to observe, Jonathan, that you
+scarcely display your usual "smartness" here. It would be much better to
+contract with them by the <i>scrape</i>. As for instance&mdash;To involving the
+country in a war with Mexico, so much&mdash;To ditto with Great Britain, so
+much more. One year you might lay down a lumping sum for a protective
+tariff, with an understanding, that it was to be repealed the next at a
+moderate advance. You would thus insure the greatest possible variety of
+political catastrophes, with the least possible friction and expense.
+Again, the furniture of the Capitol is altogether too luxurious. Each
+member is provided with a private desk, stationery <i>ad lib.</i>, a stuffed
+arm-chair, and a particular spittoon. No wonder, then, that your Simmses
+and Chipmans are listened to with complacency. It's all in the day's
+work&mdash;it's considered in the wages. While these worthies hold forth for
+the benefit of distant Missouri and Michigan, their colleagues write
+their letters, read the newspapers, chew tobacco, as little boys do
+toffy in England, and expectorate at leisure. No one cheers, no one
+groans, no one cries Oh! Oh!&mdash;all the noise that is made is on private
+account, and not at all personal to the gentleman on his legs. Yet, such
+is the deceitfulness of the human heart, that the Americans are much
+given to boast of the dignity and decorum of their Legislature, and to
+thank God that it is not a bear-garden like another place of the kind
+that they wot of. We must have been asked at least six times a-day
+during our visit at Washington, "How Congress compared with the British
+Parliament?" To which we used to reply, "That they did not compare at
+all," an answer which fully met the truth of the case, without in the
+least wounding the self-love of the querist.</p>
+
+<p>When these malignant pages arrive in New York, every inhabitant of that
+good city will abuse us heartily, except our publisher. But great will
+be the joy of that furacious individual, as he speculates in secret on
+the increased demand of his agonised public. Immediately he will put
+forth an advertisement, notifying the men of "Gotham," that he has on
+hand a fresh sample of <span class="smcap">British insolence</span>, and hinting that, although he
+knows they care nothing about such things, the forthcoming piracy of
+Maga will be on the most extensive scale. Then, all the little
+newspapers will take us in hand, and bully us in their little way. It is
+perhaps a shame to forestall the acerbities of these ingenious
+gentlemen, but we know they will call us "anonymous scribbler," and
+"bagman," amongst the rest. They called us "bagman" for our last
+article, and we were sure they would. The fact is, that since Lord
+Morpeth's visit to the United States, the Americans have taken a very
+high tone indeed. Their gratitude to that amiable nobleman for not
+writing a book about them, is unbounded, and they put him down (why, it
+is difficult to say) as the aristocratic, and therefore impartial
+champion of Demus. Whenever we fell into the bilious moods to which our
+plebeian nature is addicted, we were gravely admonished of his bright
+example, and assured that to speak evil of the Republic was the
+infirmity of vulgar minds. There is, it would appear, a sympathy betwixt
+"great ones;" a kind of free-masonry betwixt the sovereign people and
+the British peerage, which neither party suspected previously, but which
+is confessed on the slightest acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>As generally happens in such cases, the conceit of the Americans takes
+the most perverse direction. It is certain that they do many things
+better than any people under the sun. Their merchant navy is the finest
+in the world&mdash;their river steamers are miracles of ingenuity,&mdash;at
+felling timber and packing pork they are unrivalled; and their smartness
+in the way of trade is acknowledged by those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497">[Pg 497]</a></span> who know them best. All
+this, and much more to the same effect, may be admitted without demur,
+but all these admissions will avail the traveller nothing. He will be
+expected to congratulate them on the elegance of their manners, the
+copiousness of their literature, and the refinement of their tastes. He
+will be confidentially informed that "Lord Morpeth's manners were much
+improved by mixing with our first circles, sir;" and what is worse, he
+will be expected to believe it, and to carry himself accordingly. "Ripe
+scholars" who make awful false quantities, second-rate demagogues
+passing for "distinguished statesmen," literary empirics, under the name
+of "men of power," will claim his suffrages at every turn; and in vain
+will he draw upon his politeness to the utmost, in vain assent,
+ejaculate, and admire&mdash;no amount of positive praise will suffice, till
+America Felix is admitted to be the chosen home of every grace and every
+muse. "Did Mr Bull meet with any of <i>our</i> literary characters at
+Boston?" Mr Bull had that happiness. "Well, he was very much pleased of
+course?" Bull hastens to lay his hand upon his heart, and to reply with
+truth that he <i>was</i> pleased. "Yes, sir, we do expect that our Boston
+literature is about first-rate. We are a young people, sir, but we are a
+great people, and we are bound to be greater still. There is a moral
+power, sir, an elevation about the New England mind, which
+Eur[=o]p[)e]ans can scarcely realise. Did you hear Snooks lecture, sir?
+the Rev. Amos Snooks of Pisgah? Well, sir, you ought to have heard
+Snooks. All Eur[=o]p[)e]ans calculate to hear Snooks&mdash;he's a fine man,
+sir, a man of power&mdash;one of the greatest men, sir, in this, or perhaps
+any other country."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Semper ego auditor tantum, nunquam ne reponam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vexatus toties."&mdash;&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>You leave Boston somewhat snubbed and subdued, and betake yourself to
+the more cosmopolitan regions of New York. Here, too, "men of power" are
+to be found in great numbers&mdash;but "our first circles" divide the
+attention and abuse the patience of the traveller. Boston writes the
+books, but New York sets the fashions of the Republic, and is the
+Elysium of mantua-makers and upholders. We doubt whether any city in the
+world of its size can boast so many smart drawing rooms and so many
+pretty young women. Indeed, from the age of fifteen to that of
+five-and-twenty, female beauty is the rule rather than the exception in
+the United States, and neither cost nor pains are spared to set it forth
+to the best advantage. The American women dress well, dance well, and in
+all that relates to what may be called the mechanical part of social
+intercourse, they appear to great advantage. Nothing can exceed the
+self-possession of these pretty creatures, whose confidence is never
+checked by the discipline of society, or the restraints of an education
+which is terminated almost as soon as it is begun. There is no childhood
+in America&mdash;no youth&mdash;no freshness. We look in vain for the</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Ingenui vultus puer, ingenuique pudoris."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>or</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The modest maid deck'd with a blush of honour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i16"><span class="smcap">Daniel</span>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is scarcely a step from the school to the forum&mdash;from the nursery
+to the world. Young girls, who in England would be all blushes and bread
+and butter, boldly precede their mammas into the ball-room; and the code
+of a mistaken gallantry supplies no corrective to their caprice, for
+youth and beauty are here invested with regal prerogatives, and can do
+no wrong. In short, the Americans carry their complaisance to the sex
+beyond due bounds&mdash;at least in little things&mdash;for we by no means think
+that the real influence of their women is great, notwithstanding the
+tame and submissive gallantry with which the latter are treated in
+public. We doubt whether the most limited gynocracy would tolerate the
+use of tobacco as an article of daily diet, or permit ferocious murders
+to go unwhipped of justice under the name of duels. But the absorbing
+character of the pursuits of the men forbids any strong sympathy betwixt
+the sexes; and perhaps the despotism which the women exercise in the
+drawing-room arises from the fact that all that relates to the graces
+and embellishments<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">[Pg 498]</a></span> of life is left entirely to them. We do not know
+that this can be avoided under the circumstances of the country, but it
+has a most injurious effect upon social intercourse. The Americans of
+both sexes want tact and graciousness of manner, and that prompt and
+spontaneous courtesy which is the child of discipline and
+self-restraint. They are seldom absolutely awkward, because they are
+never bashful; they have no <i>mauvaise honte</i>, because they are all on an
+equality; hence they never fail to display a certain dry composure of
+bearing, which, though not agreeable, is less ludicrous than the
+<i>gaucherie</i> so commonly observed in all classes of English society,
+except the very highest.</p>
+
+<p>It is curious to observe how the manners of two nations of the same
+origin, and, in a great degree, of similar instincts, are modified by
+their political institutions. Neither the British nor the Americans are
+distinguished for that natural politeness and <i>savoir vivre</i>, which is
+to be found more or less in all other civilised countries. They are both
+too grave, too busy, and too ambitious to lay themselves out for
+trifles, which, after all, go far to make up the sum of human happiness.
+As for the Americans, the general aspect of their society is dreary and
+monotonous in the extreme. Whatever "our first circles" may say to the
+contrary, there is a great equality of manners, as of other things,
+amongst them; but if the standard is nowhere very high, it never falls
+so low as with us; if there is less refinement and cultivation amongst
+the higher classes, (we beg Demus' pardon for the expression,) there is
+on the other hand less grossness, certainly less clownishness, among the
+mass. Of course there are many individuals in this, as in other
+countries, remarkable for natural grace and genteel bearing; but the
+class which is pre-eminent in these respects, is very small and
+ill-defined. The great national defect is a want of sprightliness and
+vivacity, and an impartial <i>insouciance</i> in their intercourse with all
+classes and conditions of men. For if inequality has its evils, it has
+also its charms; as the prospect of swelling mountains and lowly vales
+is more pleasing to the eye than that of the monotonous, though more
+fertile champaign. Now, as the relation of patrician and plebeian, of
+patron and client, of master and servant, of superior and inferior, can
+scarcely be said to exist in the United States, so all the nice
+gradations of manner which are elicited by those relations, are wanting
+also. The social machine rubs on with as little oil as possible&mdash;there
+is but small room for the exercise of the amenities and charities of
+life. The favours of the great are seldom rewarded by the obsequiousness
+of the small. No leisure and privileged class exists to set an example
+of refined and courtly bearing; but there are none, however humble, who
+may not affect the manners of their betters without impertinence, and
+aspire to the average standard of the Republic. Hence, almost every
+native American citizen is capable of conducting himself with propriety,
+if not with ease, in general society. What are fine ladies and gentlemen
+to him, that he should stand in awe of them? Simply persons who have
+been smarter or earlier in the field of fortune than himself, who will
+"burst up" some fine morning, and leave the road open to others. The
+principle of rotation<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> is not confined to the political world of the
+United States, but obtains in every department of life. It is throughout
+the same song&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Here we go up, up, up,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And here we go down, down, down."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Law and opinion, and the circumstances of the country, are alike<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">[Pg 499]</a></span>
+opposed to the accumulation of property, so that it is rare for two
+successive generations of the same family to occupy the same social
+position. The ease with which fortunes are made, or repaired, is only
+equalled by the recklessness with which they are lost. Prosperity, at
+some time or other, appears to be the birth-right of every citizen; and,
+where all are <i>parvenus</i> alike, there are none to assume the airs of
+exclusiveness, or to crush the last comer beneath the weight of
+traditional and time-honoured grandeur.</p>
+
+<p>It is not easy to dismiss the peculiarities of our British society in a
+paragraph. Bull, however, to be appreciated, must be seen in the midst
+of his own household gods, with his family and bosom friends about him.
+This is what may be called the normal state of that fine fellow&mdash;and
+here Jonathan can't hold a candle to him. American interiors want relief
+and variety of colouring. Their children are not like the children of
+the Old World: they don't romp, or prattle, or get into mischief, or
+believe in Bogie. They seem to take brevet rank, from the first, as men
+and women, and are quite inaccessible to nursery humbug of any kind.
+They are never whipped, and eat as much pastry as they think proper;
+whereby they grow up dyspeptic and rational beyond their years. Parents
+don't appear to exercise any particular functions, masters (we again beg
+Demus's pardon for the poverty of the vernacular) have nothing
+magisterial about them, and servants won't stomach even the name, at
+least if they wear white skins, and know it. After the first burst of
+admiration at the philosophy of the thing, it grows tiresome to live
+amongst people who are all so much alike. Now in England the
+distinctions of age, and rank, and sex, are much more strongly marked;
+while in those countries of Europe which are still less under the
+influence of the equalising spirit of the age, the social landscape is
+still more variegated and picturesque. With us, two adverse principles
+are at work; and this is the reason why our British society is so
+anomalous to ourselves, and so entirely beyond the comprehension of
+foreigners. Whenever our brave Bull is thrown into a mixed company
+abroad, or even at home, where the social position of those with whom he
+is brought into contact is unknown to him, there is no end to the
+blundering and nonsense of the worthy fellow. Go where he will, he is
+haunted by the traditions of his eccentric island, and desperately
+afraid of placing himself in what he calls a false position. At home, he
+has one manner for his nobleman, another for his tradesman, another for
+his valet; and he would rather die than fail in the orthodox intonation
+appropriate to each. Who has not observed the strange mixture of
+petulance and <i>mauvaise honte</i> which distinguishes so many of our
+English travellers on the Continent? Decidedly, we appear to less
+advantage in public than any people in the world. Place a Briton and an
+American, of average parts and breeding, on board a Rhine steam-boat,
+and it is almost certain that the Yankee will mix up, so to speak, the
+better of the two. The gregarious habits of our continental neighbours
+are more familiar to him than to his insular kinsman, and he is not
+tormented like the latter by the perpetual fear of failing, either in
+what is due to himself or to others. His manners will probably want
+polish and dignity; he will be easy rather than graceful, communicative
+rather than affable; but he will at least preserve his Republican
+composure, alike in his intercourse with common humanity, or in the
+atmosphere of more courtly and exclusive circles.</p>
+
+<p>The art of pleasing is nowhere well understood in the United States: but
+the beauty of the women, though transient, is unrivalled while it lasts,
+and perhaps in no country is the standard of female virtue so high. The
+formal and exaggerated attention which the sex receives from all classes
+in public, is at least a proof of the high estimation in which it is
+held, and must, we think, be put down as an amiable trait in the
+American character.</p>
+
+<p>We are quite sure, for instance, that females may travel unattended in
+the United States with far more ease and security than in any country of
+the Old World: and the deference paid to them is quite irrespective of
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">[Pg 500]</a></span> rank of the fair objects&mdash;it is a tribute paid to the <i>woman</i> and
+not to the <i>lady</i>. Some travellers we believe have denied this. We can
+only say, that during a pretty extensive tour we do not recollect a
+single instance in which even the unreasonable wishes of women were not
+complied with as of course. We <i>did</i> remark with less satisfaction the
+ungracious manner in which civilities were received by these spoilt
+children of the Republic&mdash;the absence of apologetic phrases, and those
+courtesies of voice and expression, with which women usually acknowledge
+the deference paid to their weakness and their charms. But this is a
+national failing. The Americans are too independent to confess a sense
+of obligation, even in the little conventional matters of daily
+intercourse. They have almost banished from the language such phrases
+as, "Thank you," "If you please," "I beg your pardon," and the like. The
+French, who are not half so attentive to women as the Americans, pass
+for the politest nation in Europe, because they know how to veil their
+selfishness beneath a profusion of bows and pretty speeches. Now, when
+your Yankee is invited to surrender his snug seat in a stage or a
+railroad carriage in favour of a fair voyager, he does not hesitate for
+a moment. He expectorates, and retires at once. But no civilities are
+interchanged; no smiles or bows pass betwixt the parties. The gentleman
+expresses no satisfaction&mdash;the lady murmurs no apologies.</p>
+
+<p>Even now we see in our mind's eye the pert, pretty little faces, and the
+loves of bonnets which flirt and flutter along Broadway in the bright
+sunshine&mdash;<i>Longum Vale</i>! In the flesh we shall see them no more. No more
+oysters at Downing's, no more terrapins at Florence's, no more fugacious
+banquets at the Astor House. We have traduced the State, and for us
+there is no return. The commercial house which we represent, has offered
+to renew its confidence, but it has failed to restore ours. No amount of
+commission whatever, will tempt us to affront the awful majesty of
+Lynch, or to expose ourselves to the tar-and-feathery tortures which he
+prepares for those who blaspheme the Republic. We have ordered our buggy
+for the Home Circuit, and propose, by a course of deliberate
+mastication, and unlimited freedom of speech, to repair the damage which
+our digestion, and we fear our temper, has sustained during our travels
+in "the area of freedom."</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> &#917;&#963;&#964;&#953;&#957; &#945;&#961;&#945; &#951; &#945;&#961;&#949;&#964;&#951; &#949;&#958;&#953;&#987;&#960;&#961;&#959;&#945;&#953;&#958;&#949;&#964;&#953;&#954;&#951;, &#949;&#957; &#956;&#949;&#963;&#959;&#964;&#951;&#964;&#953;&#958;&#965;&#987;&#945; &#964;&#951; &#960;&#961;&#959;&#987; &#951;&#956;&#945;&#987; &#969;&#961;&#953;&#987;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#951; &#955;&#959;&#947;&#969;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> The principle of rotation in office is a favourite crochet
+of the Democratic party, and is founded upon the Republican jealousy of
+power. General Jackson went so far as to recommend that all official
+appointments whatever should be limited by law to the Presidential term
+of four years. As it is, whenever a change of parties occurs, a clean
+sweep is made of all the officers of government, from the highest to the
+lowest. Custom-house officers, jailers, &amp;c., all share the fate of their
+betters. It is only surprising that the business of the country is
+carried on as well as it is, under the influence of this corrupting
+system.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">[Pg 501]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="HORAE_CATULLIANAE" id="HORAE_CATULLIANAE"></a>HOR&AElig; CATULLIAN&AElig;.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>LETTER TO EUSEBIUS.</h3>
+
+<p>You are far more anxious, my dear Eusebius, to know somewhat of the
+progress or the result of the Curate's misfortune, than to read his or
+my translations from Catullus. I have a great mind to punish that love
+of mischief in you, by burying the whole affair in profound secresy. It
+is fortunate for him that you are not here, or you would surely indulge
+your propensity, and with malicious invention put the whole parish, with
+the Curate, into inextricable confusion. It is bad enough as it is.
+There!&mdash;it cannot be helped&mdash;I must tell you at once the condition we
+are in, if I would have you read the rest of my letter with any
+patience.</p>
+
+<p>A committee has been sitting these two days, to sift, as they pronounce
+them, "the late disgraceful proceedings;" so that you see, they are of
+the school of Rhadamanthus,&mdash;condemn first, and hear afterwards. We
+have, in this little township, two "general shopkeepers," dealers in
+groceries, mops, calicoes, candles, and the usual "<i>omnium-gatherum</i>" of
+household requirements.</p>
+
+<p>These are great rivals&mdash;envious rivals&mdash;back-biting rivals; both, in the
+way of tale-bearing, what Autolicus calls himself, "pickers-up of
+unconsidered trifles." And truly, in the trade of this commodity, if in
+no other, this may be called a "manufacturing district." Now the Curate,
+unhappily, can buy his tea and sugar, and trifling matters, but of
+one&mdash;for to patronise both, would be to make enemies of both; the poor
+Curate, then, in preferring the adulterated goods of Nicolas Sandwell,
+to the adulterated goods of Matthew Miffins, has made an implacable
+enemy. Really, Eusebius, here is machinery enough for a heroic poem: for
+Virgil's old Lady Fame on the top of the roof we have three, active and
+lusty&mdash;and you may make them the Fates or the Furies, or what you
+please, except the Graces. Prateapace, Gadabout, and Brazenstare&mdash;there
+are characters enough for episodes; and a hero&mdash;but what, you will say,
+are we to do for a heroine? Here is one, beat out of the brain of Mathew
+Miffins, a ready-armed Minerva. You will smile, but it is so. The three
+above-named ladies first made their way to the shop of Mr Miffins,
+narrated what had passed and what had not. Having probably just
+completed "sanding the sugar and watering the tobacco," he raised both
+his hands and his eyes, and, to lose no time in business, dropped them
+as soon as he decently could, and, pressing both palms strongly on the
+counter, he asked, if they entertained any suspicion of a particular
+person as being the object of the Curate's most unbecoming passion?
+Lydia Prateapace remembered, certainly, a name being mentioned&mdash;it was
+Lesby or Lisby, or something like that. "Indeed!" said Miffins, arching
+his brows, and significantly touching the tip of his nose with his
+forefinger&mdash;"ah! indeed! a foreigner, depend upon it&mdash;a Lisbon lady;
+that, Miss, is the capital of Portugal, where them figs comes from. Only
+think, a foreign lady&mdash;a lady from Lisbon&mdash;that is too bad!" to which
+the three readily assented. "I doubt not, ladies," he continued, "it's
+one of them foreigners as lives near Ashford, about five miles
+off&mdash;where I knows the Curate goes two or three times in a week."</p>
+
+<p>Thus, Eusebius, is Catullus's Lesbia, who herself stood for another,
+converted into a Portuguese lady, whom the Curate visits some five miles
+off&mdash;or, as the three ladies say, <i>protects</i>.</p>
+
+<p>If you ask how I came by this accurate information, learn that our
+Gratian's <i>Jahn</i> was at the further counter, making a purchase of
+mole-traps, and saw and heard, and reported. The first meeting was held
+in Miffins' back-parlour; but fame had beat up for recruits, and that
+was found far too small; so they have adjourned to the Blue Boar, where,
+the tap being good, and the landlord a busybody, they are likely to
+remain a little longer than Muzzle-brains can see to draw<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">[Pg 502]</a></span> up a report.
+The Curate's door is chalked, and adjacent walls&mdash;"No Kissing," "The
+Clerical Judas," "Who Kissed the School-mistress?" and many such-like
+morsels. But if fame has thus been playing with the kaleidoscope of
+lies, multiplying and giving every one its match, she has likewise shown
+them about through her magnifying glass, and brought the most distantly
+circulated home to the poor Curate. In a little town a few miles off, it
+has been reported that Miss Lydia Prateapace has been obliged to "swear
+the peace against him," which "swearing the <i>peace</i>" is, in most cases,
+a declaration of <i>war</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the Curate has taken his cue, to do nothing and say nothing
+upon the subject; and, as in all his misadventures, that was the part
+taken by Yorick, if his friends do not rescue him, he may have Yorick's
+penalty. Thus much at present, my dear Eusebius; I will occasionally
+report progress, but it is now time that we resume our translations,
+hoping you will find amusement in our</p>
+
+
+<h3>HOR&AElig; CATULLIAN&AElig;.</h3>
+
+<p>I told you Gratian, worthy veracious Gratian, had hastened away to an
+Agricultural meeting, to vindicate the character of his Belgian carrots.
+This vindication inundated us for some days with agricultural visitors.
+And Gratian was proud, and, like Virgil, "tossed about the dung with
+dignity." We saw little of him, and when he did appear, "his talk was of
+bullocks;" so how could he "have understanding," at least for Catullus?
+Had not a neighbouring fair taken off the agriculturists after a few
+days, his ideas, like his stick, would have become porcine. He rode his
+hobby, and at a brisk pace; and, when a little tired of him, stabled him
+and littered him, and seemed glad of a little quiet and leg-tapping in
+his easy-chair. He had worked off the lessened excitement by an
+evening's nap, and awoke recruited; and, with a pleasant smile, asked
+the Curate if he had had recently any communication with his friend
+Catullus.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate.</span>&mdash;We left him, I believe, in the very glory of kissing&mdash;his
+insatiable glory. He now comes to a check&mdash;Lesbia is weary, if he is
+not.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius.</span>&mdash;It is a mere lovers' quarrel, and is only the prelude to more
+folly, like the blank green baize curtain, between the play and the
+farce. He affects anger&mdash;a thin disguise: he would give worlds to "kiss
+and be friends again." His vexation is evident.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian.</span>&mdash;Ah! it is an old story&mdash;and not the worse for that&mdash;come, Mr
+Curate, show up Catullus in his true motley. He was privileged at his
+age to play the fool&mdash;so are we all at one time or another, if we do it
+not too wisely. A wise fool is the only Asinine.&mdash;Now for Catullus's
+folly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate.</span>&mdash;Thus, then, to himself:&mdash;</p>
+
+<h4>AD CATULLUM.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sad Catullus, cease your moan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or your folly you'll deplore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What you see no more your own,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Think of as your own no more.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Once the suns shone on you clearly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When it was your wont to go<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seeking her you loved so dearly,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Will you e'er love woman so?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then those coquetries amusing<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Were consented to by both&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Done at least of your free choosing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor was she so very loth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then, indeed, the suns shone clearly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Now their light is half gone out;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She is loth&mdash;and you can merely<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Learn the way to do without.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503">[Pg 503]</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Cease, then, your untimely wooing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Steel your purpose, and be strong;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If she flies you, why, pursuing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Make your sorrow vain and long?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Farewell, Fair!&mdash;Catullus hardens;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where he is, will he remain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He is not a man who pardons<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">One that must be asked again.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">She'll be sad in turn, the charmer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When the shades of eventide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bring no gallants to alarm her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No Catullus to her side.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lost to every sense of duty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Say, what can you, will you do?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who'll find out that you have beauty?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who'll be loved in turn by you?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Whose will you be called of right?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whom will you in future kiss?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose lips will you have to bite?&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O Catullus, keep to this!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian</span>.&mdash;Well, now, I think your choice of metre a little too much of
+the measured elegiac, for the bursts of alternate passion, love, and
+anger&mdash;those sudden breaks of vexation, which I see, or fancy I see, in
+the original Latin. Now, Aquilius, let us hear you personate the "vexed
+lover."</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius</span>.</p>
+
+<h4>AD SEIPSUM.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Foolish Catullus&mdash;trifling ever&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dismiss so fruitless an endeavour;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let by-gone days be days by-gone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though fine enough some days have shone,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When if <i>she</i> but held up her finger<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whom you so loved&mdash;and still you linger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor dare to part with&mdash;you observant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were at her beck her humble servant;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Follow'd her here and there: and did<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such things! which she would not forbid&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love's follies, without stint or doubt:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh! then your days shone finely out.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But now 'tis quite another thing,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She likes not your philandering:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And you yourself! But be it over&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Act not again the silly lover&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But let her go&mdash;be hard as stone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So let her go&mdash;and go alone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Adieu, sweet lady! 'Tis in vain!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Catullus is himself again&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will neither love, want, nor require,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But gives you up as you desire.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wretch! you will grieve for this full sore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When lovers come to you no more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For think you, false one, to what pass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your wretched days will come? Alas!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No beauty yours&mdash;not one to say<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How beautiful she looks to-day!<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504">[Pg 504]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Whom will you have to love&mdash;to hear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yourself called by <i>his</i> name, <i>his</i> dear?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whom will you have to kiss,&mdash;be kiss'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bind your names, in true-love twist?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose lips to bite so?&mdash;yes&mdash;to bite.}<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;Catullus, spare thy love or spite:}<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be firm as rock&mdash;or conquered quite.}<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate.</span>&mdash;I protest against this as a translation. He has indeed, as he
+professed, brought his puppet Catullus upon the stage, and, like
+Shakspeare's bad actor, has put more words in his mouth than the author
+bargained for. The very last words are quite contradicted by the text.
+Catullus does not hint at the possibility of being conquered, of giving
+in.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian.</span>&mdash;Oh! that, is always implied in these cases. Besides Catullus
+evidently doubts, or he would not have so enforced the caution; "At tu,
+Catulle"&mdash;the translation may be a little free, but still admissible.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius.</span>&mdash;My friend the Curate has committed the fault himself, if it
+be one: his "O Catullus, keep to this!" so evidently means, If you do
+not, it is all over with you.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian</span>.&mdash;Give me the book.&mdash;Oh!&mdash;I see we have next that very elegant
+and very affectionate welcome home to his friend Verannius, on his
+return from Spain, whither he had gone with Caius Piso. There is much
+heart in it, and true joy and gratulation. This is the sort of welcome
+that throws a sunshine upon the path of the days of human life. There is
+no trouble when friend greets friend. Have you translated this?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius.</span>&mdash;I fear your commendation will resemble too rich a frame to a
+poor picture, and make all more dingy by the glow of the genuine gold.</p>
+
+<p>But here I venture to offer, my translation:&mdash;the warmth of the
+original&mdash;the tenderness, is not perhaps in it:</p>
+
+<h4>AD VERANNIUM.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sweet friend, Verannius, welcome home at last!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had I a thousand friends, all were surpass'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By my Verannius! Art thou <i>home</i> return'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To thine own household gods, and hearts that yearn'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To greet thee&mdash;brothers happy in one mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thy dear mother, too,&mdash;all fond, all kind?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O happy, happy news! and now again<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To see thee safe! and hear thee talk of Spain&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its history, places, people, and array,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Telling of all in thy old pleasant way!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shall I hold thee in a friend's embrace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gaze on thy mouth, and in thine eyes, and trace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The features of the well-remember'd face!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh, if one happiest man on earth there be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amongst the happy, I, dear friend, am he!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate</span>.&mdash;This Verannius, and his friend Fabullus, seem to have been upon
+the most intimate and familiar terms with our poet. Little presents,
+pledges of their mutual friendship, had doubtless been given and
+received. Catullus elsewhere complains against Marrucinus Asinius, that
+he had stolen a handkerchief, sent him out of Spain by Verannius and
+Fabullus.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius</span>.&mdash;Have you not translated it?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate</span>.&mdash;No.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius.</span>&mdash;I have, and will read it, after yours to Verannius: and it is
+curious as showing that the Romans had the practice of using
+handkerchiefs, or napkins, of value,&mdash;perhaps such a fashion as is now
+revived by the other sex,&mdash;and embroidered with lace.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian.</span>&mdash;Now, Mr Curate.&mdash;If you let our friend digress thus, we shall
+never have your version.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505">[Pg 505]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate</span>.&mdash;</p>
+
+<h4>AD VERANNIUM.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My friend, the dearest and the best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E'en though ten thousand I possess'd!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My own Verannius! art thou come<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To greet again thy gods of home,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And brethren that so well agree<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Together, and in loving thee&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And come to thy sweet mother, too?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O blessed news! and it is true,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I shall see thee safe at last;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hear thee tell thy travel pass'd&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Spanish places, things, and tribes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(While every word my heart imbibes,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In thine old way: shall I embrace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy neck&mdash;and kiss thy pleasant face?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Find me the happy where you can,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I still shall be the happiest man.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian</span>.&mdash;What are we to have next?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius</span>.&mdash;An invitation to dinner, or, as the Romans made it,
+supper&mdash;and a curious invitation it is. Fabullus, to whom it was
+addressed, was companion to his friend Verannius&mdash;and both were with the
+pestilent Piso, in Spain.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate</span>.&mdash;And brought little out of it; but returned poorer than they
+went&mdash;as did, it should seem, Catullus himself from Bithynia. So that I
+should imagine the invitation to Fabullus was a mere jest upon their
+mutual poverty. For it does not appear that Fabullus was in a condition
+to indulge in luxuries.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius</span>.&mdash;Perhaps, when the invitation was sent, Catullus was not aware
+that his friend had been as unsuccessful, under Piso, as he had himself
+been, under Memmius. Thus stands the invitation:&mdash;</p>
+
+<h4>
+AD FABULLUM.
+</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A few days hence, my dear Fabullus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">If the gods grant you that high favour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You shall sup well with your Catullus;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For, to ensure the dishes' savour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yourself shall cater, and shall cull us<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Best fruits&mdash;and wines of choicest flavour.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with you bring your lass&mdash;fun&mdash;laughter&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All plenty: nor confine your wishes<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To supernumerary dishes;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bring all&mdash;and pay the piper after.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rich be your fare&mdash;and all fruition,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Taste, elegance, and sweet discourses<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Familiar, on that one condition.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For, truth to tell, my wretched purse is<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In its last stage of inanition,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And not a single coin disburses:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A cobweb's over it, and in it&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Spider Want there loves to spin it.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Setting aside this lack of coffer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which you can supply, Fabullus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Accept good welcome&mdash;and I offer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For company, your friend Catullus.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet, though so hard my purse's case is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With such rare unguents I'll present you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Compounded by the Loves and Graces<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For my dear girl, that you shall scent you<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506">[Pg 506]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">With perfume more divine than roses;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And after, pray the gods, within you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To change sense, nerve, bone, muscle, sinew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And make you all compact of noses.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate</span>.&mdash;There you are again bolting out of the course. Sending poor
+Fabullus to market, without money in his purse,&mdash;not a word in the
+original of fruit-culling and "paying the piper."</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius</span>.&mdash;If Gratian had not the book in his hand, I would boldly
+assert that it is all there. He will admit it is the entire meaning.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate</span>.&mdash;With the elegant diction, "paying the piper," indeed! "H&aelig;c si,
+inquam, attuleris, venuste noster."</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian</span>.&mdash;Well, I almost think "venuste noster," "my good fellow," or
+"my pleasant fellow," will allow the freedom of the translation, for it
+is a free and easy appellative. Come, then, Curate, let us have your
+accurate version.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate</span>.&mdash;Perhaps you may think, when you hear it, that I am in the same
+predicament of blame with Aquilius, and that my criticism was a ruse, to
+divide the censure pretty equally.</p>
+
+<h4>AD FABULLUM.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fabullus, if the gods will let you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before a table I will set you,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A few days hence, with welcome hearty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To my domestic dinner-party.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That is to say&mdash;you bring the food,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Which must be plentiful and good,)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With wine&mdash;remembering, I presume,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For one fair girl I've always room.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On these conditions you shall dine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Luxurious, boon-companion mine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seeing that your Catullus' purse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has nought but cobwebs left to nurse,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I can but give you in return<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The loves that undiluted burn;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, something sweeter, neater still&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A scented unguent I'll impart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which Venus and her Loves distil<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To please the girl that owns my heart:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which when you smell, this boon&mdash;this solely<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You'll ask the gods to recompose;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And metamorphose you, and wholly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To one extensive Roman nose.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius</span>.&mdash;What nose would a Roman wish to have? I object to Roman,
+though it is not a bad one for the purpose. The metamorphosed would
+certainly have a ballad written on him and sung about the streets. Write
+it, and call him "The Man-mountain, or real and undoubted Promontory of
+Noses."</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian</span>.&mdash;It should seem they were like enough to feast&mdash;like their gods
+they so irreverently prayed to&mdash;on the smell and the smoke only; so they
+needed good noses and bad appetites. There is something a little abrupt
+in the latter part, which I doubt if I like: the Loves and Graces should
+not be made parties to the making of such a monster; and as <i>monster</i> is
+now-a-days all adopted adjective, follow the fashion of speech, and call
+it "One extensive Monster-Nose."&mdash;Well, what next?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius</span>.&mdash;A little piece of extravagant badinage. It seems Calvus
+Licinius had sent Catullus a collection of miserable poems, and that,
+too, on commencement of the Saturnalia, dedicated to joy, and freedom
+from care and annoyance. Our author writes to complain of the malicious
+present. There is some force, and a fair fling of contempt at the bad
+poets of the day in it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507">[Pg 507]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>AD CALVUM LICINIUM, ORATOREM.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now if I loved you less, my friend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Facetious Calvus, than these eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You merit hatred in such wise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As men Vatinius hate. To send<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such stuff to me! Have I been rash<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In word or deed? The gods forfend!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That you should kill me with such trash,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of vile and deleterious verse&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Volumes on volumes without end,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of ignominious poets, worse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than their own works. May gods be pliant,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And grant me this: that poison&mdash;pest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Light on 'em all, and on that client<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who sent 'em you; and you in jest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Transfer them, odious, and mephitic,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And execrable. I suspect 'em<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sent you by that grammarian critic,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sulla. If so, and you have lost<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No precious labour to collect 'em,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis well indeed; and little cost<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To you, with malice aforethought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To send (and with intent to kill him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And on this blessed day, when nought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But Saturnalian joys should fill him)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your friend Catullus such a set<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of murderous authors; but the debt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll pay, be even with you yet&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For no perfidious friend I spare.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At early dawn, ere the sun shine, I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will rise, and ransack shop and stall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Collect your C&aelig;sii and Aquini,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that Suffenus: and with care<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And diligence, will have all sent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To you, for a like punishment.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hence, poets! with your jingling chimes:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hence, miserables! halt and lame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be off, ye troublers of our times!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I send you packing whence ye came.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian</span>.&mdash;Kicking about the volumes, doubtless, as the "Friend of
+Humanity" did the "Needy Knife-grinder."</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate</span>.&mdash;I did not translate that&mdash;for I thought the authors might
+easily have been burned for writing bad verses (no hint to you,
+Aquilius; nothing personal); and that Calvus Licinius, having that
+remedy, need not have written about them. And I confess I don't see much
+in what he has written. This Suffenus, however, was no fool, but a man
+of wit and sense.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius</span>.&mdash;Yes,&mdash;and Catullus writes to Varrus specially about him. I
+have translated that too. Here it is:&mdash;</p>
+
+<h4>AD VARRUM.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">This man Suffenus, whom you know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Varrus, is not without some show<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of parts, and gift of speech befitting<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A man of sense. Yet he mistakes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His talents wondrously, and makes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His thousand verses at a sitting.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And troth, he makes them <i>look</i> their best:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For, not content with palimpsest,<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508">[Pg 508]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">He has them writ on royal vellum,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Emboss'd and gilded, rubb'd and polish'd:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But read 'em, and you wish abolish'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The privilege to make or sell 'em.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You read them, and the man is quite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Another man: no more polite&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No more "the man about the town,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But metamorphosed to a clown&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Milker of goats, a hedger, digger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So thoroughly is changed his figure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So quite unlike himself. 'Tis odd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Most strange, the man for wit so noted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose repartees so much were quoted,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is changed into a very clod!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stranger still&mdash;he never seems<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quite to himself to be himself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As when of poetry he dreams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And writes and writes, and fills his reams<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With poems destined for the shelf.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We are deceived&mdash;in this twin-brothers<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All. There's one vanity between us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And our self-knowledge stands to screen us<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From our true portraits. Knowing others,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We ticket each man with his vice;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And find, most accurately nice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In all a something of Suffenus.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus every man one knowledge lacks;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our error is&mdash;we read the score<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of each man as he walks before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bear our tickets at our backs.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian</span>.&mdash;True, indeed&mdash;as old fables mostly are. There is in them the
+depth of wisdom acquired by experience.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate</span>.&mdash;I fear experience alone won't do much. It seems thrown away
+upon most people. They continue follies to the end. I suppose Cicero
+thought himself a poet; though it may be doubted if he wrote the line as
+Juvenal gives it,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O fortunatam natam me consule Romam."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Perhaps most men's natural common sense has a less wide range than they
+think. For there are some things obvious to all besides, that the wisest
+cannot see.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius</span>.&mdash;Cicero was less likely to see any defect in himself than most
+men. He had consummate vanity&mdash;which must have led him into many a
+ridiculous position. But there were no Boswells in those days. I never
+could understand how it is that so great an admiration of Cicero has
+come over mankind. Even in language he has had an evil influence; and
+our literature for a long period was tainted with it. Sensible himself,
+he taught the art of writing fluently without sense. The flow and
+period&mdash;the <i>esse videatur</i>&mdash;a style too common with us less than half a
+century ago&mdash;you might read page after page, and pause to wonder what
+you had been reading about. The upper current of the book did not
+disturb the under current of your own thoughts, perhaps aided by the
+lulling music.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate</span>.&mdash;The vanity of Cicero was too manifest. It is a pity, for the
+sake of his reputation, that the letter to his friend, in which he
+requested him to write his life, is extant. To tell him plainly that it
+is the duty of a friend to exaggerate his virtues, is a mean
+vanity&mdash;unworthy such a man.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian</span>.&mdash;Come, come! let him rest; our business is with Catullus.
+Curate, let us have your translation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate</span>.&mdash;I pass by the account of Suffenus, as well as some other
+pieces, and come to that very short one in which he complains of the
+mortgage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509">[Pg 509]</a></span> which is on his villa. It is a wretched pun on the word
+"opponere," and was scarcely worth translating;&mdash;take it, however:</p>
+
+<h4>AD FURIUM.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You, Furius, ask against what wind<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My little villa stands&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If Auster, or Favonius kind<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who comes o'er western lands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or cruel Boreas, or that one<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That rises with the morning sun?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Alas&mdash;it stands against a breeze<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which beats against the door,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of fifteen thousand sesterces,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And twice a hundred more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I challenge you on earth to find<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So foul and pestilent a wind.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius</span>.&mdash;What! do you look for a wind <i>on</i> earth,&mdash;it blows over it;
+and catch it who can.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian</span>.&mdash;It blows every where. The worst I know is that which blows
+down the chimney. And that reminds me to tell you what a town-bred
+chimney-sweeper said, the other day, to a friend of mine, in the valley
+yonder, who wanted to have a smoky chimney cured. My friend inquired if
+he could teach it not to smoke. "How can I tell?" said he, "I must take
+out a brick first and look into his <i>intellects</i>."</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate</span>.&mdash;Not the march&mdash;but the sweep of intellect spoke there.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius</span>.&mdash;And spoke not amiss; it was merely to see if he <i>had a mind</i>
+to be cured.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian</span>.&mdash;Perhaps you have translated that sweep's language better than
+your passages from Catullus.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius</span>.&mdash;I did not attempt to translate that little piece,&mdash;but ran
+quite out of course, as the Curate would tell me, in a long paraphrase.
+The idea is, however, furnished by Catullus,&mdash;so I dedicate it</p>
+
+<h4>AD FURIUM.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">You ask me if my villa lies<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Exposed to north, east, west, or south:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I answer,&mdash;every wind that flies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Flies at it, and with open mouth.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">From every quarter winds assail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But that which comes from <i>quarter</i>-day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though it four times a-year prevail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It does but whistle, and not pay.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Some blow from far, and some hard by;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">One, mortgage-wind, takes shortest journey,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only across the way from Sly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And blasts with "power of attorney."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But what is worse than windy racks is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My windows leak at every pane,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And are not tight 'gainst rates and taxes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My roof and doors <i>let</i> in the rain&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The only <i>let</i> my villa knows.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So that with taxes, wind, and wet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From whatsoever point it blows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My house is blown upon <i>unlet</i>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510">[Pg 510]</a></span>Now, I hope my friend the Curate will admit so far to be rather a
+lengthy translation. I say nothing of addenda&mdash;thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Winds blow, and crack your cheeks,"&mdash;alack,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who said it, wanted house and halls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor knew winds have no cheeks to crack,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In short crack nothing but my walls.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My friends console&mdash;"the winds will drop:"<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Tis equal trouble to my mind;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For if it tumbles on the top,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You know I cannot <i>raise the wind</i>.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">To sum up all&mdash;for its location;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The question's of importance vital;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Chancery&mdash;wretched situation;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A rascal there disputes my title.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate</span>.&mdash;You are coming it pretty strong, and quite blowing up Catullus
+with your hurricane of winds. After all the household miseries in your
+lines, a cheering glass may set things to rights a little. Here, then,
+is what he says to his wine-server:&mdash;</p>
+
+<h4>AD PUERUM.</h4>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Boy, that at my drinking-bout<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Servest old Falernian out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fill me faster cups, and quicker,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the spirit-stirring liquor.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So Posthumia's law doth say,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mistress of the feast to-day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She more vinous than the grape.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Springs of water&mdash;bane of wine&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where ye please for me and mine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Avaunt, begone, escape!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Emigrate to men demure.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My bumper is Thyonian pure.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian</span>.&mdash;I am afraid, Curate, that if you were to take what you please
+to call "the cheering glass," such as the jade Posthumia would
+recommend, we should have to put you to bed pretty early. It was the
+custom, it should seem, of the ancients to make a throw of the dice to
+determine the arbiter of the feast&mdash;to appoint the drinking. Who threw
+<i>Venus</i> (three sixes) was the <i>magister</i>; but the <i>magistra</i> is a
+novelty; a "Venus Ebria," whose drinking law would throw all; for "wine
+is a wrestler, and a shrewd one too." Doesn't Shakspeare say so? Now for
+your version, Aquilius.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius</span>.&mdash;Curate will say, I am not so close to the original. But, on
+such a subject, we may be allowed to walk not quite straight;&mdash;a little
+zig-zaggy. Spite the coming criticism I venture:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<h4>AD PUERUM SUUM,</h4>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">(To his Wine-server.)<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pour me out, boy, the generous juice.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The racy, true, the old Falernus;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such wines as, to Posthumia's thinking,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Are only fit for mortals' use;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When in her glory, drunk, and winking,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The dame would quaff, and wisely learn us<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The good old simple law of drinking.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511">[Pg 511]</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But water shun;&mdash;Hence, waters! go,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">E'en as ye will, to chill Avernus,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or whereso'er ye please to flow;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be drink for all the dull, the slow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sad, the serious, the phlegmatic;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But leave this juice, this pure stomachic,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Its own, its unadulterate glow;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This&mdash;this alone is genuine Bacchic!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian</span>.&mdash;Well, then, that must be our parting cup for the night, and a
+pretty good "<i>night-cap</i>" it is. I was afraid, Aquilius, when you came
+to the "phlegmatic" you would rhyme it to "rheumatic," and so on to the
+"water-cure." You know that is recommended in rheumatic cases; but
+perhaps you don't know that I tried it. I had the water-drinking, the
+wet sheets, and all the rest of it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aquilius</span>.&mdash;And are here to tell of it!</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian</span>.&mdash;Yes, and return to the old <i>tap</i>, (tapping his thigh and leg
+pretty smartly;) and I suppose I must <i>stick</i> to it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Curate</span>.&mdash;A medical friend told me the other day of a discussion upon
+this subject, which I thought very amusing, as he narrated it remarkably
+well, imitating the tones and dialect (Somersetshire) of at least one of
+the speakers. He had some years before attended an old man in the
+country&mdash;a farmer well to do in the world&mdash;a man of very strong natural
+understanding, but entirely uneducated. He had lost sight of him for
+some years, when, not long since, he was sent for to the old farm-house.
+Instead of the old stone floor, there was a carpet laid down, and an air
+of smartness over every thing, which he had never seen before. It turned
+out, that the old man's daughter had married: a smartish man, the
+husband, was in the room, and to show his general knowledge of things,
+and acquaintance with the world, he advocated the water-cure, and
+questioned my medical friend as to his opinion. A voice from the
+chimney-corner (the settle in it) cried out, "It ain't na'tral." My
+friend had not before seen the old man, he was so retired into the
+recess. After having given his opinion to the bridegroom, he turned to
+his old acquaintance, and said "You remarked that it is not natural.
+What do you mean by <i>natural?</i>" "Why," replied the old man, "I do think,
+most dumb critturs knows what's good for 'em; and when a dog's sick
+doesn't he eat grass? If a sheep's ill, don't he lick chalk or salt if
+he can get it? And if a beast's ill," (I forget what he said was the
+cure for a beast);&mdash;"but did you ever see any of them go and lie down in
+the water, or fill themselves wi' it? There's plenty of it in ditches,
+and every where else, too, hereabouts. No, you never did." Then, looking
+up in the face of his orator son-in-law, he added, "And you don't know
+why you never see'd it, nor why they don't do it. No, I know you don't.
+Vy, I do&mdash;because they ha' got more zense." This was said with a kind of
+contempt which was quite a floorer to the new wiseacre.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Gratian</span>.&mdash;Thanks for the story! now that is just the sense that I have
+acquired at some cost, and no cure; but I didn't get at it naturally as
+your old friend did. So now for sleep, and good-night.</p>
+
+<p>The Curate and I did not part so soon. Time flew, and we seemed to
+shorten the night&mdash;"noctem vario sermone," as sayeth Virgil of poor
+Dido, who must have found the conversation considerably flag with the
+stupid &AElig;neas.</p>
+
+<p>"Noctem vario sermone <i>trahebat</i>&mdash;it was a sad <i>drag</i>. It must have
+become very tiresome, a little while before that, when ill-mannered
+Bitias drank up all the wine, and buried his face in the cup, "pleno se
+proluit auro." And they had been obliged to resort to singing, always
+the refuge from the visible awkwardness of <i>nothing to say</i>. And here I
+cannot but remark, Eusebius, what dull things their songs must have been
+on natural philosophy, sun, moon, and stars&mdash;songs, Virgil tells you,
+edited by the old Astronomer-general Atlas. But as this was before the
+foundation of Rome, they had not that variety for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512">[Pg 512]</a></span> their selection,
+which was as much in fashion afterwards in Rome as Moore's Melodies in
+England, as we learn from Mr Macaulay, and his version and edition of
+the "Lays." They had no piccolo pianofortes in those days, or they would
+have had something lighter than the Lays, as the better after-supper
+Poet calls it&mdash;a</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Something more exquisite still."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But I am apparently, Eusebius, leaving the Curate to sleep or to
+meditate upon his own unhappy condition while I thus turn the current of
+my talk upon you. Unhappy condition, did I say? He seems to bear it
+wonderfully lightly; and once or twice, when the subject has been
+mentioned, indulged in an irreverend laugh. Now, I know you will ask how
+a laugh can be irreverend. Don't you know the world well enough,
+Eusebius, to know, that before a very great number of men, women, and
+children, a curate must not laugh, dare not laugh&mdash;blessed indeed, and
+divested of the wretched rags of humanity, if he <i>cannot</i> laugh. None
+but a Bishop, or a Dean, who, in the eyes of the many, is a kind of
+extra-parochial nonentity, can really, in these times of severe
+reprobation for trifling peccadillos, afford to laugh; and they had
+better do it in private, and with aprons off&mdash;never before the Chapter,
+who all, themselves, laugh in private. Man, you know, is the only
+risible creature; but a Curate must begin to know, from the moment he
+has put on his surplice, that he is to discard at once, and for ever,
+this human and irreverend instinct. Had you lived in the triumphal days
+of the Puritans, what penalties would you not have had to undergo, what
+buffetings and duckings, ere you could finally have overcome your strong
+natural wicked propensity, and have sobered down, and riveted in iron
+gravity and moroseness those flexible, those mockingly flexible features
+of yours. As it is, in these days of "revival," you only meet with
+considerable contempt, and evil opinion, which, as it comes rather late
+upon you, comes as an amusing novelty and additional provocative. But
+you may be sure what you can afford to do, the Curate cannot. For the
+present, therefore, let his few indulgences that way be a secret. He
+will mend in time. For so it happens, that though the longer we live the
+more we have to laugh at, we lose considerably our power of laughing.
+And that&mdash;between ourselves be it said, Eusebius&mdash;is, I think, a strong
+proof of our deterioration. A man, to laugh well, must be an honest
+man&mdash;mind, I say <i>laugh</i>: when Shakspeare says</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"A man may smile and smile,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And be a villain,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>he purposely says <i>smile</i>, in contradistinction to laugh. He cannot
+laugh and be a villain. A man cannot plot and laugh. A man may be much
+less innocent even when he thinks himself devout, than in his hour of
+merriment, when he assuredly has no guile; but a man may even pray with
+a selfish and a narrow mind, and his very prayers partake of his
+iniquity: no bad argument for a prescribed form. A man that laughs well
+is your half-made friend, Eusebius, from the moment you hear him. It is
+better to trust the ear than the eye in this matter&mdash;such a man is a man
+after your own heart. <i>After your own heart</i>, did I say, Eusebius? Words
+are the <i>ignes fatui</i> to thoughts, and lead to strange vagaries&mdash;of
+which you have here a specimen; but these few words remind me to tell
+you an anecdote, in this lull of the <i>Hor&aelig; Catullian&aelig;</i>, which I would on
+no account keep from you. And you will see at once in it a large history
+in the epitome and the very pith of a fable&mdash;such as &AElig;sop's. But I
+assure you it is no fable, but the simple plain truth; and I will vouch
+for it, for I had it from the month of our friend S., the truest,
+honestest of men, who saw with his own eyes, and heard with his own
+ears, the persons and the sayings. S. was travelling some time ago,
+beyond the directions of railroads, in a coach. There were two
+companions&mdash;preachers as he found, self-dubb'd Reverends of some
+denomination or other, besides that reverend one of their own. Their
+conversation, as is usual with them, was professional, and they spoke of
+their brethren. In speaking of different preachers, one was mentioned,
+of whom one of the speakers said emphatically&mdash;"Now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513">[Pg 513]</a></span> that's what I call
+a really good man&mdash;that's <i>a man after my own heart</i>&mdash;a man quite after
+my own heart!" The other said with rather doubtful and hesitating
+confirmation, "Ye-s." "You don't seem to think so highly of him as I
+do," said the first speaker. "Why," replied the doubter, "I can't say I
+do; you remember some time ago he <i>failed</i>, and certainly upon that
+occasion he behaved <i>very ill</i> to, not to say <i>cheated</i>, his creditors."
+"Ah!" said the first commendator again, "that is very likely&mdash;I should
+have expected <i>that</i> of him."&mdash;Henceforth, Eusebius, whenever I hear
+such a commendation, I shall look out for a map of the gentleman's heart
+who ventures upon this mode of expressing his admiration. Oh! what a
+world we live in! This is a fact which would have been immortal, because
+true and from nature, in the hands of Le Sage; and is worthy of a place
+in a page of a modern "Gil Blas."</p>
+
+<p>And so all this digression has arisen from a laugh of the Curate's, to
+whom it is time to turn; or you will think we have been but bad company
+to each other. I will, however, end this passage with the remark, that a
+man may do a worse thing than laugh, and happy is he that can do a
+better.</p>
+
+<p>The Curate and I, then, for the rest of the night conversed upon the
+affair of his, which so unaccountably was making no little stir in the
+place. The Curate told me, he was quite sure that his movements had been
+watched; for that only yesterday, as he was entering the gate of his
+friends, the family at Ashford, he saw Miffins's boy not far behind him
+on a poney; and he thinks he came out for the purpose of watching him,
+for he had scarcely reached the door, when he saw the lad ride hastily
+back. The Curate likewise confessed to me, that he did entertain some
+tender sentiments towards one of the inmates, Miss Lydia &mdash;&mdash;, that the
+family had lived much abroad, and that they had a French lady's-maid,
+whom on one or two occasions he had certainly seen in this township. You
+see the thread, Eusebius, which will draw out innumerable proofs for
+such a mind as Miffins's. Taking a paper out of his pocket, he said it
+was put into his hands as he was coming away, and he had not opened it.
+"Perhaps," said he, "it may throw some light on the affair, as it was
+given me by one who is, I know, on the all-important committee." He
+broke the seal, read, laughed immoderately for five minutes, and put it
+into my hands:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Rev. Sir,</span>&mdash;Wishing to do the handsome to you, and straightforward and
+downright honest part, the committee inform you that they have reported
+your misconduct to the Lord Bishop, and I am desired accordingly to send
+you a copy of their letter. By order of committee.&mdash;I am, sir,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i12">"<span class="smcap">James Jones</span>."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Enclosed was the following, which these wiseacres had concocted&mdash;and I
+have no doubt it was their pride in the composition, and in the
+penmanship, which induced them to send the copy to the Curate.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">To my Lord, your Lordship the Bishop.</span></p>
+
+<p>"We the undersigned, the respectable inhabitants parishioners, approach
+most dutifully our Bishop's worshipful Lordship. Hoping humbly that you
+will be pleased to dismiss our curate, who, we are credibly informed,
+and particularly by three exemplary and virtuous ladies, they having
+been cautioned against him by one who knows him well, and is a friend
+likewise to said ladies, and doing all the good kindness he can. We
+learn with sorrow, that our curate has confessed to unbecomingly
+behaviour, and that he has been seen even kissing. My Lord, our wives
+and daughters are not safe&mdash;we implore your Honour's Lordship to dismiss
+the curate, and take them under your protection and keeping: We are
+informed the curate has a foreign lady, not far from this, whom he
+almost daily visits&mdash;and a Papist, which is an offence to your Lordship,
+and the glorious Protestant cause, to which we are uniformly and
+respectfully attached, and to your worshipful Lordship very devoted&mdash;"
+here follow the names, headed by Matthew Miffins.</p>
+
+<p>"And what steps do you intend to take?" said I.</p>
+
+<p>"None whatever," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Let it wear itself out. I won't lengthen the existence of this scandal
+by the smallest patronage. I will not take it up, so it will die."</p>
+
+<p>"But the Bishop?" said I.</p>
+
+<p>"Is a man of sense," he replied,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514">[Pg 514]</a></span> "and good feeling; so all is safe, in
+his hands."</p>
+
+<p>We parted for the night.</p>
+
+<p>The Curate called rather early the following morning, and we thought to
+have an hour over Catullus, and went to seek our host Gratian. We found
+him in his library in consultation with his factotum Jahn. He was
+eloquent on the salting, and not burning his weeds, on Dutch
+clover&mdash;"and mind, Jahn," said he, "every orchard should have a
+pig-stye: where pigs are kept, there apple-trees will thrive well, and
+bear well, if there be any fruit going:" and he moved his stick on the
+floor from habit, as if he were rubbing his pigs' backs; and then
+turning to us he said,&mdash;"Why, Jahn has been telling me strange things:
+Prateapace and Gadabout have gone over to the chapel&mdash;left the church;
+not there last Sunday. But I saw that Brazenstare there, trying, as she
+sat just before you, to put you, Mr Curate, out of countenance. Well,
+Jahn tells me that the Reverend the Cow-doctor preached last evening a
+stirring sermon on the occasion, and was very hot upon the impurities
+and idolatries of the 'Establishment.' And Jahn tells me they don't
+speak quite so well of me as they should; for when he plainly told
+Miffins in his own shop, that he was sure his master would not
+countenance any thing wrong, the impudent fellow only said, 'May be not;
+but he and his master might not be of the same opinion as to what <i>is</i>
+wrong.' The rogue! I should like to have put all his weights in the
+inspector's scales."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," quoth Jahn, "but I am 'most ashamed to tell your honour what Tom
+Potts, the exciseman, said, who happened to be present."</p>
+
+<p>"Out with it, by all means, Jahn," said our friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Well then, sir, as true as you are there, he said that your honour was
+a very kind gentleman, and your word was worth any other ten men's in
+most things; but where it might be to get a friend out of trouble, and,
+for aught he knew, foe either, why then, he thought your honour might
+fib a bit."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely," said Gratian, "he didn't say quite that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," quoth Jahn, "quite that, and more; something remarkable."</p>
+
+<p>"Remarkable!" said I,&mdash;"what could that be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, something I shan't forget; and I don't think it was religious and
+proper," said Jahn; and lowering his voice, and addressing me and the
+Curate rather than his master, he added,&mdash;"He thought his honour had a
+kind heart, too kind; for that if Belzebub should come of a wet and dark
+night, and knock at his honour's door, and just say in a humble voice
+that he was weary and foot-sore, that his honour would be sure to take
+him in, give him a bed, and a stiff tumbler of brandy and water, and
+send for the farrier in the morning to fresh shoe him unknowingly; for
+he would make him stoop, put his claws on the ground, and throw a
+blanket over him, and make the farrier believe that, out of a whim, he
+was only a shoeing a great big goat."</p>
+
+<p>Gratian laughed at the whimsical idea of the exciseman, called him a
+true and good spirit-gauger; then giving some sharp taps to his hip, his
+knee, and his legs with his stick, rose from his seat, and said, "Come,
+Curate, you and I must take a walk amongst these people, and see what we
+can do: it is most time to put a stop to this mischievous absurdity,
+and, I fear me, of our own making."</p>
+
+<p>Away they went, and I put up my remaining translations from Catullus,
+took down a book, read awhile, and then meditated this letter to you.
+And now, my dear Eusebius, when you publish it in Maga, as you did my
+last, folk will say&mdash;"Why, what is all this about? <i>Hor&aelig; Catullian&aelig;!</i> It
+is no such thing." Be it, then, I say, what you will. Do you think I am
+writing an essay?&mdash;no, a letter; and I may, if I please, entitle it, as
+Montaigne did&mdash;"On coach horses," and still make it what I please. It
+shall be a novel, if they please, for that is what they look for now: so
+let the Curate be the hero,&mdash;and the heroine&mdash;but must it be a love
+story? Then I won't forestall the interest, so wait to the end; and in
+my next, Eusebius, we will repeat Catullus for the play, and say with
+the announcing actor, "to conclude with an after-piece which will be
+expressed in the bills."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My dear Eusebius, ever yours,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Aquilius</span>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515">[Pg 515]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LESSONS_FROM_THE_FAMINE" id="LESSONS_FROM_THE_FAMINE"></a>LESSONS FROM THE FAMINE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The two great parties into which the country was divided on the subject
+of our commercial relations with foreign states, maintained principles
+diametrically opposite on the effects to be anticipated from the
+adoption of their respective systems. The Free-Traders constantly
+alleged, that the great thing was to increase our <i>importations</i>; and
+that, provided this was done, government need not disquiet themselves
+about our <i>exportations</i>. Individuals, it was said, equally with
+nations, do not give their goods for nothing: if foreign produce of some
+sort comes in, British produce of some sort must go out. Both parties
+will gain by the exchange. The inhabitants of this country will devote
+their attention to those branches of industry in which we can undersell
+foreign nations, and they will devote their attention to those branches
+of industry in which they can undersell us. Neither party will waste
+their time, or their labour, upon vain attempts to raise produce for
+which nature has not given them the requisite facilities. Both will buy
+cheaper than they could have done if an artificial system of protection
+had forced the national industry into a channel which nature did not
+intend, and experience does not sanction. We may be fed by the world,
+but we will clothe the world. The abstraction of the precious metals is
+not to be dreaded under such a system, for how are the precious metals
+got but in exchange for manufactures? Their existence in this country
+presupposes the exit of a proportionate amount of the produce of British
+industry. Nobody gives dollars, any more than corn, for nothing. Our
+farmers must take to dairy and pasture cultivation to a greater extent
+than heretofore. A certain number of agricultural labourers, may, it is
+true, be thrown out of employment by the displacing of rural industry in
+making the transition from the one species of country labour to the
+other; but the evil will only be temporary, and they will speedily be
+absorbed in the vast extension of our manufacturing industry. High
+prices need never be feared under such a system: a bad season is never
+universal over the world at the same time; and free-trade will
+permanently let in the superfluity of those countries where food is
+abundant, to supply the deficiencies of those in which, from native
+sources, it is scanty.</p>
+
+<p>The Protectionists reasoned after an entirely different manner. The
+doctrines of free-trade, they observed, perfectly just in their
+application to different provinces of the same empire, are entirely
+misplaced if extended to different <i>countries</i> of the world, the more
+especially if placed in similar, or nearly similar, circumstances. The
+state of smothered or open hostility in which they are in general placed
+to each other, if their interests are at all at variance; the necessity
+of sheltering infant manufacturing industry from the dangerous
+competition of more advanced civilisation, or protecting old-established
+agricultural industry from the ruinous inroad of rude produce from
+poorer states, in which it is raised cheaper because money is less
+plentiful, render it indispensable that protection should exist on both
+sides. If it does not, the inevitable result will be, that the
+cultivators of the young state will destroy the agriculture of the old
+one, and the manufacturers of the old one extinguish the fabrics of the
+young. This effect is necessary, and, to all appearance, will ever
+continue; for the experience of every age has demonstrated that, so
+great is the effect of capital and civilisation applied to manufactures,
+and so inconsiderable, comparatively speaking, their influence upon
+agriculture, that the old state can always undersell the new one in the
+industry of towns, and the new one undersell the old one in the industry
+of the country. The proof of this is decisive. England, by the aid of
+the steam-engine, can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_516" id="Page_516">[Pg 516]</a></span> undersell the inhabitants of Hindostan in the
+manufacture of muslins from cotton growing on the banks of the Ganges;
+but with all the advantages of chemical manure and tile draining, it is
+undersold in the supply of food by the cultivators on the Mississippi.</p>
+
+<p>This being a fixed law of nature, evidently intended to check the growth
+of old states, and promote the extension of mankind in the uncultivated
+parts of the earth, it is in vain to contend against it. So violently
+does free-trade displace industry on both sides, where it is fully
+established, that it is scarcely possible to conceive that two nations
+should at the same time run into the same glaring mistake; and thence
+the common complaint that no benefit is gained, but an infinite loss
+sustained, by its establishment in any one country, and that reciprocity
+is on one side only. As no adequate exchange of manufactures for
+subsistence is thus to be looked for, there must arise, in the old
+state, a constant exportation of the precious metals, attended by
+frequent commercial crises, and a constant increase in the weight of
+direct taxation. Should it prove otherwise, and two nations both go into
+the same system, it could lead to no other result but the stoppage of
+the growth of civilisation in the young one, and the destruction of
+national independence in the old. The former would never succeed in
+establishing commerce or manufactures, from the competition of the
+steam-engine in its aged neighbour; the latter would become dependent
+for subsistence on the plough of the young one. The rising agricultural
+state would be chained for ever to the condition of the serfs in Poland,
+or the boors in America; the stationary commercial state would fall into
+the degrading dependence of ancient Rome on the harvests of Egypt and
+Lybia.</p>
+
+<p>Had it not been for the calamitous issue of the last harvest, in a part
+of the empire, it might have been difficult to say, to which side the
+weight of reason preponderated in these opposite arguments; and probably
+the people of the country would have continued permanently divided on
+them, according as their private interests or wishes were wound up with
+the buying and selling, or raising and producing classes in society. But
+an external calamity has intervened;&mdash;Providence has denied for a
+season, to one of the fruits of the earth, its wonted increase. The
+potato-rot has appeared; and nearly the whole subsistence of the people
+in the south and west of Ireland, and in the western Highlands of
+Scotland, has been destroyed. Between the failure in the potato crop,
+and the deficiency in that of oats, at least &pound;15,000,000 worth of the
+wonted agricultural produce has disappeared in the British Islands. And
+the appearances which we now see around us are solely and entirely to be
+ascribed to that deficiency. No one need be told what these appearances
+are, or how deeply they have trenched upon the usual sources of
+prosperity in the empire: they have been told again and again, in
+parliament, at public meetings, and in the press, <i>usque ad nauseam</i>.
+Government has acted, if not judiciously, at least in the right spirit;
+its errors have been those of information, not of intention. The monster
+meetings, the flagrant ingratitude, the broken promises of the Irish
+Catholics, have been forgotten. England, as a nation, has acted nobly;
+she has overlooked her wrongs: she saw only her fellow-subjects in
+distress. &pound;10,000,000 sterling have been voted by parliament in a single
+year for the relief of Irish suffering. Magnificent subscriptions, from
+the throne downwards, have attested the sympathy of the British heart
+with the tale of Irish and Highland suffering. But, notwithstanding all
+these astonishing exertions, and notwithstanding the existence of an
+unprecedented demand for labour in most parts of the country, in
+consequence of vast railway undertakings being on foot, on which at
+least &pound;30,000,000 a-year must be expended for three or four years to
+come, distress is in many places most acute, in all severely felt. And
+what is very remarkable, and may be considered, as a distinctive sign of
+the times, specially worthy of universal attention, the suffering has
+now spread to those classes which are <i>furthest removed</i> from the blight
+of nature, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517">[Pg 517]</a></span> fastened upon those interests which, according to the
+generally received opinion, should have been <i>benefited rather than
+injured</i> by the calamity which has occurred.</p>
+
+<p>That some millions of cultivators in the southwest of Ireland, and some
+hundred thousand in the west Highlands of Scotland, should be involved,
+literally speaking, in the horrors of famine, in consequence of the
+universal failure of the crop which constituted at once their sole
+object of labour and only means of subsistence, may easily be
+understood. That this alarming failure should raise prices of every sort
+of food to the scarcity-level in every part of the empire, is equally
+intelligible; and that government, in conformity with the <i>universal</i>
+sense of the nation, should, in such an extremity, throw open the ports
+to all kinds of food, and thereby let in an unexampled amount of foreign
+produce to supply the failure of that usually raised at home, is an
+equally intelligible consequence. It may not be considered surprising,
+that starving multitudes should issue in all directions from the scene
+of wo in the Emerald Isle, to seek relief in the industry or charity of
+Great Britain; and that all the great towns in the west of the island
+should be overwhelmed with pauperism and typhus fever, in consequence of
+their being the first to be reached by the destructive flood; although
+it was hardly to be expected that a hundred and thirty-two thousand
+applications for relief were to be made to the parochial authorities of
+Liverpool in a <i>single week</i>; and that they returned thanks to Heaven
+when the influx of Irish paupers was reduced to <i>two thousand a-week</i>!
+But the remarkable thing, and the thing which the commercial classes
+certainly did not expect, is this:&mdash;<i>The calamity has now reached
+themselves</i>, although the hand of Providence has only stricken the
+producing agricultural classes. Trade never was lower, monied distress
+never more severe, markets of all sorts never were more rapidly
+<span class="smcap">declining</span>, than during a period when <span class="smcap">importations</span> of all sorts have been
+<span class="smcap">most rapidly increasing</span>. Nearly all the manufactories in Lancashire and
+Lanarkshire are put on short time; the public funds and stocks of all
+sorts are falling; the rate of bankers' advances in Scotland is raised
+to <i>six per cent</i>;<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> seven per cent is charged in Liverpool and Glasgow
+on railway advances, and permanent loans are taken on railway debentures
+by the most experienced persons for three years at five per cent; the
+Bank of England has raised its discounts; our exports are rapidly
+declining; and all at a time, when the importation of all sorts of rude
+produce is on an unprecedented scale of magnitude, and the warehouses of
+Liverpool and Glasgow are literally <i>bursting</i> with the prodigious mass
+of grain stored in them from all parts of the world!</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, statistical documents exist, derived from official sources,
+which demonstrate beyond the possibility of doubt the coexistence of
+this <i>vast increase</i> in the amount of subsistence imported, and <i>vast
+diminution</i> in the amount of manufactures raised or exported in all
+parts of the British empire. A paper has lately been presented to
+parliament, showing the amount of imports, exports, and shipping during
+the year 1846, compared with 1845; from which this important and
+luminous fact is decisively established, how hard soever it may be to
+comprehend on the part of a large and influential portion of our
+politicians. From it it appears that the amount of subsistence imported
+in 1846 was six times greater than in 1845, although free-trade only
+commenced in the middle of the former year. It had reached the
+unparalleled amount in the latter year, of grain or flour, equal to
+<i>five millions and a half quarters of grain</i>. The tonnage <i>inwards</i> had
+turned five millions of tons; the custom-house duties, notwithstanding
+the numerous reductions of duties on imported articles, had risen
+&pound;700,000 above the preceding year, and still kept above &pound;22.000,000
+sterling. Here, then, were all the sources and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518">[Pg 518]</a></span> marks of prosperity, so
+far as they depended on importations, in a state of unexampled vigour
+and efficiency. Was this attended, as we were constantly told it would
+be, by a corresponding impulse given to our fabrics? Has the increased
+activity of our manufacturing cities compensated for the sterility of so
+large a part of our fields? The fact is just the reverse. Though
+free-trade has only been in operation for the last six months of 1846,
+they were signalised by a universal <i>decline</i> in all the principal
+articles of our exportation; and, by the unanimous voice of all
+practical men, trade, so far as exports or production is concerned,
+never was in a more depressed state than when, so far as imports are
+concerned, it had attained an unprecedented <i>extension</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Never was a truer observation than is made by the Free-Traders, when
+they assert that goods will not be sent into a nation for nothing; and
+that, if our imports increase, something that goes out must have
+received a proportional augmentation. They forget only one circumstance,
+which, however, is of some little consequence, namely, that two things
+may go out, goods or <span class="smcap">specie</span>. We have melancholy proof, in the present
+state of the money market, that the latter occurrence has taken place to
+an inconvenient and distressing extent, and that that is the direct
+cause of the extravagant rate of interest charged on bankers' advances,
+and the general scarcity of money felt throughout the country. That the
+<i>capital</i> of the country is not only sufficient, but abundant, is
+decisively proved by the fact that, notwithstanding the vast extent of
+the railway and other undertakings of a public character going on both
+in Great Britain and Ireland, government has borrowed the loan of
+&pound;8,000,000 for the relief of Ireland at &pound;3, 7s. 6d. per cent. The three
+per cents are about 90, yielding about the same return for money. But is
+<i>currency</i> equally abundant? So far from it, the bankers are charging
+six, and the persons making advances on railway concerns seven per cent.
+The holder of capital is glad if he can get three and a half per cent;
+but the holder of currency will not let his notes or sovereigns out of
+his hand for less than six or seven per cent. Can there be a more
+convincing proof that the currency of the country has been unduly
+drained away, and that the present monetary system, which forbids any
+extension of it in paper when the specie is abstracted, is based on a
+wrong foundation? Nor is it surprising that the currency should be
+straitened when it is notorious that every packet which goes out to
+America takes out vast sums to that continent to pay for the immense
+quantities of grain which are brought in. That drain only began to be
+felt in a serious manner within the last two months, because the great
+shipments from America took place in November and December last, when
+the failure of the potato crop in this country was fully ascertained;
+and consequently, the payments made in bills at three months, required
+to be made in February and March. And when it is recollected that the
+quantity of grain imported in seven months only&mdash;viz. from 5th July
+1846, to 5th February 1847&mdash;exceeded <i>six millions</i> of quarters, at the
+very time that all our exports were diminishing; it may be imagined how
+prodigious must have been the drain upon the metallic resources of the
+country to make up the balance.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_519" id="Page_519">[Pg 519]</a></span></p>
+<p>Sorely perplexed with results so diametrically opposite to all their
+doctrines as to an increase of importation being necessarily attended
+with a proportionate increase of exportation, and of all apprehension of
+an undue pressure thence arising on the money market being chimerical,
+the Free-Traders lay it all upon the famine at home or abroad. The
+potato-rot, it is said, has <i>concealed</i> the effects of free-trade:
+distress in foreign nations has disabled them to purchase our
+manufactures in return for their rude produce; the increase of British
+importation has come too soon to operate as yet on their purchase of our
+manufactures. Here again the facts come decisively to disprove the
+theoretical anticipations. So far has the increase of our importations
+been from being sudden, and come last year for the first time on foreign
+nations, it has been <i>remarkably gradual</i>, and has gone on for years,
+having received only a great impulse in the articles on which the duty
+was lessened or removed last summer. Our general imports have steadily
+advanced for the last three years; and in particular articles the same
+progress has been conspicuous.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> How, then, has it happened that this
+general, continued, and steady <i>increase</i> of imports has issued only in
+a <i>diminution</i> to an alarming extent of exports? And observe, the
+countries from which we have imported so largely last year of grain and
+articles of subsistence, have not only not suffered by the scarcity
+general on the Continent, but have profited immensely by it. America has
+been blessed with a splendid crop of every species of grain; and, in
+consequence of the famine in Ireland and severe scarcity in France,
+prices of grain have risen to triple their former amount in the United
+States. It has risen so much in the southern states of Russia, that the
+Emperor of Russia has prohibited the farther exportation of it from the
+Black Sea. But all these floods of wealth flowing into the great grain
+states from the failure of the crops in France and Ireland, have been
+unavailing to produce any increased activity in our manufactures. On the
+contrary, they are all declining; and our immense importations of food
+are almost all paid for in direct exportations of the precious metals.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, the general depression of manufactures in all the chief seats
+of our fabrics is so serious, that it is evidently owing to a much more
+general and stringent cause than the decline, considerable as it is, in
+our exports. It is not a decrease of two millions out of fifty-three
+millions&mdash;in other words, of less than a <i>five-and-twentieth</i>
+part&mdash;which will explain the general putting of mills in Lancashire and
+Lanarkshire on short time, the fall in the value of all kinds of stock
+and general decline in the vent for all kinds of manufactured produce.
+It is in the <i>home markets</i> that the real and blighting deficiency is
+experienced. And what is the cause of this decline in the home market?
+The Free-Traders are the first to tell us what has done it. It is the
+famine in Ireland. The total manufactured produce of the island is
+certainly not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_520" id="Page_520">[Pg 520]</a></span> under &pound;200,000,000<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> annually, of which somewhat above
+&pound;51,000,000 is for the foreign markets of the world. What is a
+deficiency of &pound;2,000,000 in such a mass? If that had been the <i>only</i>
+decline that had taken place, it would have been scarcely perceptible,
+and would have left no visible effects on our commercial activity or
+general prosperity. It is clear that the great falling off must have
+been in the home market. Nor is it difficult to see how this has
+happened. Fifteen millions' worth of agricultural produce has
+disappeared; prices of wheat have risen in consequence to 80s.
+a-quarter, and oats in a still higher proportion; and an alarming drain
+upon the metallic resources of the country taken place. It is this which
+has paralysed the manufactures and depressed the commerce of the
+country. And when it is recollected that the home market now consumes
+little short of &pound;150,000,000 a-year, it may easily be conceived what a
+serious check to industry a diminution to the amount of even an eighth
+or a tenth of the usual domestic purchases must occasion.</p>
+
+<p>The Free-Traders say, that the famine in Ireland has <i>concealed</i> the
+effects of the adoption of their system of policy; and that all the
+distress and suffering which has ensued is to be ascribed to that cause.
+From the observations now made, however, it is apparent that the effect
+of the famine has been, not to conceal the effects of free-trade, but to
+<i>accelerate</i> them. For what has the famine done? It has simply caused
+fifteen millions' worth of domestic agricultural produce to be exchanged
+for fifteen millions' worth of foreign agricultural produce. The potato
+crop, which has perished in Ireland, is estimated at fifteen millions'
+worth; and, supposing that statement is a little exaggerated, it is
+probable that, taking into account the simultaneous failure in the crop
+of oats, both there and in Great Britain, the total amount of home
+agricultural produce that is deficient may amount to that value. <i>But
+foreign agricultural produce, to an equal or greater amount, has been
+imported.</i> Six millions of quarters, between grain of all sorts and
+flour, have been entered for home consumption in seven months preceding
+5th February 1847. Taking these quarters, on an average, as worth fifty
+shillings to the consumer&mdash;which is certainly no extravagant estimate,
+seeing wheat is up at seventy-nine shillings&mdash;we shall have, then, six
+millions of quarters, worth fifteen millions sterling. The home
+agricultural produce that has failed is just equal in value to the
+foreign agricultural produce that has been imported. The distress that
+prevails, therefore, is not owing to any deficiency of food for man or
+animals in the United Kingdom, for as much has come in, of foreign
+produce, as has disappeared of domestic. It is entirely to be ascribed
+to the supplanting, <i>in the national subsistence, of a large part of
+home produce by an equally large part of foreign produce</i>. And in the
+social, commercial, and national effects which we see around us, we may
+discern, as in a mirror, not merely the probable but certain effects of
+such a substitution if perpetuated to future times.</p>
+
+<p>This view of the subject is of such vast importance that we deem it
+impossible to impress it too strongly on our readers. We have been
+always told that the great thing is to secure a great importation; that
+such a thing must necessarily lead to a corresponding increase of
+exportation;&mdash;that all apprehension about the imports being paid in
+gold, and not in manufactures, are chimerical;&mdash;that the sooner the
+inferior lands in the British islands go out of cultivation the
+better;&mdash;that ample food for the inhabitants will be obtained from
+foreign states; and that the agriculturists thrown out of employment by
+the change will be rapidly absorbed, and more profitably employed in
+sustaining our extended manufactures. Well, the thing has been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_521" id="Page_521">[Pg 521]</a></span> done,
+and the desired consummation has taken place, from an extraneous cause,
+even more rapidly than was anticipated. The Free-Traders contemplated
+the substitution of foreign for British agricultural produce to the
+extent of fifteen or twenty millions as a most desirable result; but
+they only lamented it could not be looked for for three or four years.
+It would take that time to beat down the British farmer; to convince the
+cultivators of inferior lands of the folly of attempting a competition
+with the great grain districts of the Continent. Providence has done the
+thing at once. We have got on at railway speed to the blessings of the
+new system. Free-trade was to lead to the much-desired substitution of
+six million quarters of home for six million quarters of foreign grain
+in three years. But the potato-rot has done it in one. The free-trade
+rot could not have done it nearly so expeditiously, but it would have
+done it as effectually. It is a total mistake, therefore, to represent
+the famine in Ireland and the West of Scotland, as an external calamity
+which has concealed the natural effects of free-trade. It has only
+brought them to light at once.</p>
+
+<p>Had British agriculture, instead of being stricken with sterility by the
+hand of Providence, in the poorest and worst cultivated part of the two
+islands, been suffered gradually to waste away, under the effects of a
+great and increasing foreign importation in all parts of the empire, the
+destruction of home produce would have been equally extensive, but it
+would have been more general. It would have risen to as great an amount,
+but it would not have been so painfully concentrated in particular
+districts. Hundreds would not have been dying of famine in Skibbereen;
+seed-corn would not have been awanting in Skye and Mull; cultivation
+would not have been abandoned in Tipperary; but the cessation of
+agricultural produce over the whole empire would have been quite as
+great. Low prices would have done the business as effectually, though
+not quite so speedily, as the pestilence which has smitten the
+potato-field. Whoever casts his eye on the table of prices given
+below<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> for twenty years in London<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_522" id="Page_522">[Pg 522]</a></span> and Dantzic, must at once see
+that, under a free-trade system, as large an importation of foreign
+produce, and as extensive a contraction of home, as has taken place this
+year is to be permanently looked for. The exportation and return of the
+precious metals, and contraction of credit now felt as so distressing,
+may be expected to be permanent. Providence has given us a warning of
+the effects of our policy, before they have become irreparable. We have
+only to suppose the present state of commerce and manufactures lasting,
+and we have a clear vision of the blessings of free-trade.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is there any difficulty in understanding how it happens that the
+substitution of a large portion of foreign, for an equal amount of
+home-grown produce, occasions such disastrous effects, and in particular
+proves so injurious to the commercial classes, who in the first instance
+generally suppose they are to be benefited by the change. If two or
+three millions of rural labourers in the poorest and worst cultivated
+districts of the island, are thrown out of employment, either by a
+failure in the vegetable on which alone, in their rude state, they can
+employ their labour, or by the gradual substitution of foreign for home
+produce in the supply of food for the people, it is a poor compensation
+to them to say that an equal amount of foreign grain has been brought
+into the commercial emporiums of the empire&mdash;that if they will leave
+Skibbereen or Skye, and come to Liverpool or Glasgow, they will find
+warehouses amply stored with grain, which at the highest current prices
+they will obtain to any extent they desire. The plain answer is, that
+they are starving; that their employment as well as subsistence is gone;
+that they have neither the means of transport, nor any money to buy
+grain when they reach the neighbourhood of the bursting warehouses. But
+then they will be absorbed in the great manufacturing districts, where
+their labour will be more profitable to themselves and others, than in
+their native wilds! Yes, there is a process of absorption goes on, on
+the occurrence of such a crisis; but it is not the absorption of labour
+by capital, but of capital by pauperism. Floods of starving destitutes
+inundate every steam-boat, harbour, and road, on the route to the scene
+of wo; and while the interior of the warehouses in the great commercial
+cities are groaning beneath the weight of foreign grain, the streets in
+their vicinity are thronged by starving multitudes, who spread typhus
+fever wherever they go, and fall as a permanent burden on the poor-rates
+of the yet solvent portions of the community.</p>
+
+<p>And the effect of this importation of foreign grain, from whatever cause
+it arises, necessarily is to <i>prevent</i> this absorption of rural
+pauperism by manufacturing capital, to which the Free-traders so
+confidently look for the adjustment of society after the change has been
+made. The nations who supply us with grain <i>do not want our
+manufactures</i>. They will not buy them. What they want, is our money.
+They have not, and will not have, the artificial wants requisite for the
+general purchase of manufactures for a century to come. Generations must
+go to their graves during the transition from rustic content to
+civilised wants. America has sent us some millions of quarters of grain
+this year, but there <i>is no increase in her orders for our
+manufactures</i>. On the contrary, they are diminishing. Even the Free
+Trade Journals now admit this; constrained by the evidence of their
+senses to admit the entire failure of all their predictions.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> The
+reason is evident. They want our money, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_523" id="Page_523">[Pg 523]</a></span> our money they will have;
+and if they find our manufactures are beginning to flow in, in enlarged
+quantities, in consequence of our purchase of their grain, they will
+soon stop the influx by a tariff. This is what we did, when situated as
+they are&mdash;it is what all mankind will, and must do, in similar
+circumstances. It was distinctly perceived and foretold by the
+Protectionists that this effect would follow from free-trade, and that,
+unless something was done to enlarge the currency to meet it, a
+commercial crisis would ensue. These words published a year ago might
+pass for the history of the time in which we now live:&mdash;"Under the
+proposed reduced duties during the next three years, and trifling duty
+after that period on all sorts of grain, there can be no doubt that a
+very great impulse will be given to the corn-trade. It being now
+ascertained, by a comparison of the prices during the last twenty years,
+that there is annually a difference of from twenty to thirty shillings
+a-quarter between the price that wheat bears in the British islands and
+at the shores of the Baltic, while the cost of importation is only five
+or six shillings a-quarter, there can be no question that the opening of
+the ports will occasion a very large importation of foreign grain. It
+may reasonably be expected that, in the space of a few years, the
+quantity imported will amount to <i>four or five millions of quarters
+annually</i>, for which the price paid by the importers cannot be supposed
+to be less, on the most moderate calculation, than seven or eight
+millions sterling. The experience of the year 1839 sufficiently tells us
+what will be the effect of such an importation of grain, paid for, as it
+must be, for the most part in specie, upon <i>the general monetary
+concerns and commercial prosperity of the empire</i>. It is well known that
+it was this condition of things which produced the commercial crisis in
+this country, led to three years of unprecedented suffering in the
+manufacturing districts, and, as is affirmed, destroyed property in the
+manufacturing districts of Lancashire, to the amount of
+&pound;40,000,000."<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the famine has taught the empire an important lesson as to Irish
+Repeal. For many years past, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_524" id="Page_524">[Pg 524]</a></span> country has been convulsed, and the
+empire harassed by the loud and threatening demand for the Repeal of the
+Union, and the incessant outcry that the Irish people are perfectly
+equal to the duties of self-government, and that all their distresses
+have been owing to the oppression of the Saxon. The wind of adversity
+has blown, and where are these menaces now? Had Providence punished them
+by granting their prayer&mdash;had England cut the rope, as Mr Roebuck said,
+and let them go, where would Ireland have been at this moment? Drifting
+away on the ocean of starvation. Let this teach them their dependence
+upon their neighbours, and let another fact open their eyes to what
+those neighbours are. England has replied to the senseless clamour, the
+disgraceful ingratitude, by voting ten millions sterling in a single
+year to relieve the distresses which the heedlessness and indolence of
+the Irish had brought upon themselves. We say advisedly, <i>brought upon
+themselves</i>. For, mark-worthy circumstance! the destruction of the
+potato crop has been just as complete, and the food of the people has
+been just as entirely swept away in the West Highlands of Scotland, as
+in Ireland, but <i>there has been no grant of public money to Scotland</i>.
+The cruel Anglo-Saxons have given <span class="smcap">it all</span> to the discontented, untaxed
+Gael in the Emerald isle.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Viz. 5-1/2 per cent on all advances on cash or current
+accounts, and 1/2 per cent commission on all sums overdrawn.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Table showing the quantity of grain, including flour and
+meal, entered for home consumption, from 5th July 1846, to 5th February
+1847, from the <i>London Gazette</i> official returns:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td><td align='center'>qrs.</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">Quarters of grain (including flour and meal) entered for home consumption, in the months from 5th July to 5th January as reported, 1st February,</td><td align='right'>5,148,449</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Quantity duty paid in month ending 5th Feb.</td><td align='right'>539,418</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Do. do. flour and meal, 427,036 cwts.</td><td align='right'>142,345</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>_______</td><td align='right'>681,763</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>_________</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Quantity duty paid up to 5th January,</td><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>5,830,212</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>In bond, 5th February,</td><td align='right'>68,939</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Do. do. flour and meal, 318,240 cwts.</td><td align='right'>106,080</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>_______</td><td align='right'>175,019</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>_______</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">Quantity in qrs. of duty paid and presently in bond, from month ending 5th July to 5th Feb.</td><td align='right'>6,005,231</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>_________</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>1844.</td><td align='left'>1845.</td><td align='left'>1846.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Imports,</td><td align='left'>total official value,</td><td align='left'>&pound;75,441,555</td><td align='left'>&pound;85,281,958</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Sugar, cwts.</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>4,139,983</td><td align='left'>4,880,780</td><td align='left'>5,231,818</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Tea, lbs.</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>41,369,351</td><td align='left'>44,195,321</td><td align='left'>46,728,208</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Coffee, lbs.</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>31,391,297</td><td align='left'>34,318,121</td><td align='left'>36,781,391</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Butter, cwts.</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>180,965</td><td align='left'>240,118</td><td align='left'>255,130</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Cheese, cwts.</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>212,286</td><td align='left'>258,246</td><td align='left'>327,490</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Live animals, No.</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>8,007</td><td align='left'>34,426</td><td align='left'>140,752</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Brandy,</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>1,033,650</td><td align='left'>1,058,777</td><td align='left'>1,515,954</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Geneva,</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>14,937</td><td align='left'>15,536</td><td align='left'>40,266</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Rum,</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>2,198,870</td><td align='left'>2,469,485</td><td align='left'>2,683,515</td></tr>
+</table></div></div>
+
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> In 1840, the total amount was estimated at &pound;180,000,000,
+of which &pound;47,000,000, at that period, was for exportation, and
+&pound;133,000,000 for the home market. As this &pound;47,000,000 had swelled, in
+1846, to &pound;53,000,000, it is reasonable to suppose that those for the
+home market had undergone a similar increase, and are now about &pound;200,000
+annually.&mdash;See <i>Speckman's Stat. Tables for</i> 1842, p. 45.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a>
+<h4><i>Table of Average Prices of Wheat in Prussia and in England, from 1816
+to 1837.</i></h4>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'>Average prices in Prussia Proper including Dantzig and Konigsburg.</td><td align='left'>Average prices in Brandenburg and Pomerania.</td><td align='left'>Average prices per London Gazette.</td><td align='left'>Difference between English Prices and Mean of Prussian Prices.</td><td align='left'>Foreign Wheat and Flour consumed in Great Britain.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='center'> s. d.</td><td align='center'> s. d.</td><td align='center'> s. d.</td><td align='center'> s. d.</td><td align='center'> Qrs.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1816</td><td align='center'> 36 9</td><td align='center'> 44 6</td><td align='center'> 76 2</td><td align='center'> 35 6</td><td align='right'> 225,263</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1817</td><td align='center'> 52 7</td><td align='center'> 60 9</td><td align='center'> 94 0</td><td align='center'> 37 8</td><td align='right'> 1,020,949</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1818</td><td align='center'> 49 6</td><td align='center'> 53 5</td><td align='center'> 83 8</td><td align='center'> 32 2</td><td align='right'> 1,593,518</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1819</td><td align='center'> 34 3</td><td align='center'> 37 6</td><td align='center'> 72 3</td><td align='center'> 36 4</td><td align='right'> 122,133</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1820</td><td align='center'> 27 3</td><td align='center'> 30 0</td><td align='center'> 65 10</td><td align='center'> 37 2</td><td align='right'> 34,274</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1821</td><td align='center'> 25 6</td><td align='center'> 28 9</td><td align='center'> 54 5</td><td align='center'> 27 3</td><td align='right'> 2</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1822</td><td align='center'> 26 0</td><td align='center'> 26 8</td><td align='center'> 43 3</td><td align='center'> 16 11</td><td align='right'> &mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1823</td><td align='center'> 24 2</td><td align='center'> 26 9</td><td align='center'> 51 9</td><td align='center'> 26 5</td><td align='right'> 12,137</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1824</td><td align='center'> 18 6</td><td align='center'> 20 0</td><td align='center'> 62 0</td><td align='center'> 43 3</td><td align='right'> 15,777</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1825</td><td align='center'> 17 3</td><td align='center'> 17 9</td><td align='center'> 66 6</td><td align='center'> 49 0</td><td align='right'> 525,231</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1826</td><td align='center'> 18 6</td><td align='center'> 21 0</td><td align='center'> 56 11</td><td align='center'> 37 2</td><td align='right'> 315,892</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1827</td><td align='center'> 22 3</td><td align='center'> 25 9</td><td align='center'> 56 9</td><td align='center'> 32 9</td><td align='right'> 572,733</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1828</td><td align='center'> 27 2</td><td align='center'> 28 9</td><td align='center'> 60 5</td><td align='center'> 32 5</td><td align='right'> 842,050</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1829</td><td align='center'> 32 3</td><td align='center'> 35 0</td><td align='center'> 66 3</td><td align='center'> 32 7</td><td align='right'> 1,364,220</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1830</td><td align='center'> 29 6</td><td align='center'> 34 0</td><td align='center'> 64 3</td><td align='center'> 32 6</td><td align='right'> 1,701,885</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1831</td><td align='center'> 39 6</td><td align='center'> 39 0</td><td align='center'> 66 4</td><td align='center'> 27 1</td><td align='right'> 1,491,631</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1832</td><td align='center'> 34 0</td><td align='center'> 33 6</td><td align='center'> 58 8</td><td align='center'> 24 11</td><td align='right'> 325,435</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1833</td><td align='center'> 25 0</td><td align='center'> 23 6</td><td align='center'> 52 11</td><td align='center'> 28 8</td><td align='right'> 82,346</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1834</td><td align='center'> 23 9</td><td align='center'> 23 0</td><td align='center'> 46 2</td><td align='center'> 21 10</td><td align='right'> 64,653</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1835</td><td align='center'> 23 0</td><td align='center'> 24 0</td><td align='center'> 39 4</td><td align='center'> 15 10</td><td align='right'> 28,483</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1836</td><td align='center'> 21 0</td><td align='center'> 23 0</td><td align='center'> 48 6</td><td align='center'> 26 6</td><td align='right'> 30,046</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>1837</td><td align='center'> 22 6</td><td align='center'> 26 0</td><td align='center'> 56 10</td><td align='center'> 32 7</td><td align='right'> 244,085</td></tr>
+</table></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> "The excessive consumption of these and other articles
+has, however, only led to a drain of bullion to the extent of three
+millions and a half, while, upon a moderate computation, they would
+appear to call for three times that amount. This is to be accounted for
+by two facts&mdash;The first being that we have not imported, and paid for as
+much as we have consumed, since, conjointly with our importations, we
+have been steadily eating up former reserves, so that our stock of all
+kinds&mdash;coffee, sugar, rice, &amp;c., are low; and, next, because we have
+diminished our importations of raw material in a remarkable degree, and
+hence, while paying for provisions, have lessened our usual payments on
+this score. Here, too, in like manner, <i>we have been drawing upon our
+reserves</i>. Our manufactures have been carried on with hemp, flax, and
+cotton, which had been paid for in former years, and we have left
+ourselves at the present moment short of all these articles, the stock
+of the latter alone, on the 1st of January last, as compared with the
+preceding year, being 545,790 against 1,060,560 bales. We are not only
+poorer, therefore, by all the bullion we have lost, but by all the stock
+we have thus consumed.
+</p><p>
+"This <i>process cannot go on any longer</i>. We have now no accumulations to
+eat into, and must, consequently, <i>pay for what we use</i>. Concurrently,
+therefore, with our importations of corn and other provisions, (which
+are now going on at a much greater rate, and at much higher prices than
+in 1846,) and just in proportion as they beget a demand for our
+manufactures, we must have importations of raw material. Large purchases
+of hemp and flax are alleged to have been made in the north of Europe,
+for spring shipment, and cotton from the United States is only delayed
+by the want of ships. Wool from Spain, and the Mediterranean, saltpetre,
+oil-seeds, &amp;c., from India, and a host of minor articles, have also been
+kept back by the same cause, and will pour in upon us to make up our
+deficiencies directly any relaxation shall take place (if such could be
+foreseen) of the universal influx of grain. In this way, just as one
+cause of demand diminishes the other will increase, and the balance will
+be kept up against us for a period to which at present it is impossible
+to fix a limit.
+</p><p>
+"<i>We thus see that no call that can possibly arise for our manufactures
+can have the effect of preventing a continuous drain of bullion</i>. That a
+large trade will occur no one can doubt, but at present it is scarcely
+even in prospect. From India and China each account comes less
+favourable than before; from Russia we are told that 'no great demand
+can be expected for British goods under the present high duties' in that
+country; while even from the United States, the point from whence relief
+will most rapidly come, we hear of a shrewd conviction that we are
+approaching <i>a period of low prices</i>, and that, consequently, for the
+present 'the less they order from us the better.'"&mdash;<i>Times</i>, March 10,
+1847.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>England in 1815 and 1845</i>, pp. v-vii. Preface to third
+edition, published in <i>June</i> 1846.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Printed by William Blackwood &amp; Sons, Edinburgh.</i></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume
+61, No. 378, April, 1847, by Various
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@@ -0,0 +1,9419 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61,
+No. 378, April, 1847, 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 61, No. 378, April, 1847
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: December 3, 2007 [EBook #23690]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brendan OConnor, Jonathan Ingram, Josephine
+Paolucci 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.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BLACKWOOD'S
+
+EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+No. CCCLXXVIII. APRIL, 1847. VOL. LXI
+
+
+
+
+CROMWELL.
+
+
+Mr Carlyle's services to history in collecting and editing these
+letters[1] and speeches of Cromwell, all men will readily and gratefully
+acknowledge. A work more valuable as a guide to the study of the
+singular and complex character of our pious revolutionist, our religious
+demagogue, our preaching and praying warrior and usurper, has not been
+produced. There is another portion of Mr Carlyle's labours which will
+not meet so unanimous an approbation. As _editor_, Mr Carlyle has given
+us a valuable work; as _commentator_, the view which he would teach us
+to take of English Puritanism is, to our thinking, simply the most
+paradoxical, absurd, unintelligible, mad business we ever encountered in
+our lives.
+
+Our Hero-worshipper, it must be allowed, has been more fortunate this
+time in the selection of his object of devotion than when he shouted to
+the skies his Mirabeaus and Dantons. But he makes an unfortunate species
+of compensation. In proportion as his hero is more within the bounds of
+humanity has his worship become more extravagant and outrageous. He
+out-puritans the Puritans; he is more fanatic than his idol; he has
+chosen to express himself with such a righteous truculence, such a
+sanguinary zeal, such a pious contempt for human virtue and human
+sympathies, as would have startled Old Noll himself. It is a bad
+religion this hero-worship--at least as practised by Mr Carlyle. Here is
+our amiable countryman rendered by it, in turn, a terrorist and a
+fanatic. All his own intellectual culture he throws down and abandons.
+Such dire transformation ensues as reminds us of a certain hero-worship
+which Milton has celebrated:
+
+                    "Horror on him falls,
+    _And horrid sympathy_; for what he sees
+    He feels himself, now changing; down his arms,
+    Down falls the spear and shield; down he as fast;
+    And the dire hiss renews, and the dire form,
+    Catched by contagion."
+
+But to our task--which is no light one; for in our survey of this book
+we have to keep in view both hero and hero-worshipper, Cromwell and
+Carlyle, both somewhat slippery personages, abnormal, enigmatical.
+
+The speeches of Oliver Cromwell have a formidable reputation for
+prolixity, confusion, and excessive tediousness; yet we have not, for
+our own part, found these volumes to be of the dry and scarce readable
+description which their title foreboded; and we would caution others not
+to be deterred by any fears of this nature from their perusal. They will
+find an interest grow upon them as they proceed, and the last volume to
+be more attractive than the first. As the work advances, the letters and
+speeches of Cromwell become more intimately connected with the great
+transactions of the period, and the editor himself more frequently
+favours us with some specimen of his happier manner, where concentration
+of style, a spirit of humour and reflection, and a power of vivid
+portraiture, have _not_ degenerated into mere quaintness, into a species
+of slang, into _Carlylisms_, into vague generalities about infinitudes
+and eternities. At all times the interspersed commentary--written in
+that peculiar, fantastic, jingling manner which, illegitimate as it is,
+disorderly and scandalous to all lovers of propriety in style and
+diction, is at all events the very opposite to dulness--forms perhaps
+the most fortunate contrast that could have been devised with the
+Cromwellian period, so arid and colourless, so lengthy and so tortuous,
+tinged often with such a dismal obscurity, and valuable in fact only as
+showing _the man_, utterly valueless as an exposition of thought.
+Perhaps, as models of style, a critic would be as little disposed to
+applaud the writing of Mr Carlyle as the compositions of Cromwell, but
+they form here all admirable relief the one to the other; taken
+together, one can consume a considerable quantity of both. Your dry
+bread is weary mastication, and your potted anchovies have a somewhat
+too stinging flavour; but taken together, sandwich-fashion, as they are
+here, the consumption may go on rapidly enough.
+
+But, whether dry or not, the letters and speeches of Cromwell should be
+read by every one desirous of obtaining an insight into the character of
+not the least extraordinary, nor the least misrepresented personage in
+history. If there is any one who still believes that Cromwell was a
+thorough hypocrite, that his religion was a systematic feint to cover
+his ambitious designs, the perusal of these volumes will entirely
+undeceive him. We look upon this hypothesis, this Machiavelian
+explanation of Cromwell's character, as henceforth entirely dismissed
+from all candid and intelligent minds. It was quite natural that such a
+view should be taken of their terrible enemy by the royalists of the
+Restoration, hating his memory with a most cordial hatred, and
+accustomed, in their blinding licentiousness, to look upon _all_
+religion as little better than cant and hypocrisy. It was quite natural
+that such a portrait of him should be drawn by the men who unearthed his
+bones, and vented their rage upon a senseless corpse. We see it was
+quite inevitable that some such coarse caricature should be thus limned
+and transmitted to us. But it has lasted long enough. We believe,
+indeed, that by most persons it has already been dismissed and disowned.
+It may now be torn into shreds, and cast aside as utterly faithless.
+
+Cromwell was a _genuine Puritan_. There is no doubt of that. He was no
+youth when the war broke out, nor a man who had yet to seek his
+religious party or principles. As the farmer of St Ives, we see him, as
+distinctly as if he still lived upon the earth, the man of fierce
+sectarian piety, in natural temper not unamiable, somewhat gloomy and
+hypochondriacal, but, above all, distinguished by whatsoever of good or
+ill the sort of Calvinistic divinity prevalent at the time could infuse
+into its professors. Such the war found him, and such he continued to
+be; throughout his whole career we never for a moment lose sight of "the
+saint," the title which, then as now, the profane world gave to this
+class of men.
+
+Was Cromwell, then, always sincere in his utterances? was there no cant,
+_no_ hypocrisy? Did he never conceal the ambition and domineering spirit
+of the soldier under the humility of the saint? Another matter quite.
+Because a man is religious in the main, it follows not that he is
+incapable of occasionally practising hypocrisy: he may lapse as well
+into this, as into any crime of the decalogue. Although we might find it
+difficult to put our finger exactly upon the spot, and say, Here speaks
+the hypocrite, we are not without suspicion that Cromwell was at times
+practising dissimulation. But if he dissembled, if he used with artifice
+the language of religion, it was no new and foreign disguise that he
+put on. He had but to draw the folds a little higher over his face of a
+robe that he had long worn in all times and seasons, and which was
+verily his own.
+
+In common with almost all men who in times of civil broil have risen
+from a lowly station to great power, Cromwell had occasion, no doubt, at
+times for dissimulation. His religion, genuine as it was, would no more
+prevent him from the practice of this necessary craft than from the
+sanguinary deeds not more necessary to the triumph of his cause. Nay, it
+was precisely of that enthusiastic order which, in the most liberal
+manner, justifies the means for the end. Now, at a period when the
+saints were in the ascendant, dissimulation would unavoidably take a
+religious form, and when most deceiving men, or most faithfully
+addressing them, he would still colour all his language with the same
+hue of piety. As, in an age of chivalry, the dissembler would have the
+boast of honour and the parade of knightly courtesy for ever on his
+lips, so in these times of saintship he would lull the suspicions of men
+by a gross emblazonry of religion. It might well happen, therefore, that
+such a man as Cromwell, working his way upward to the highest post of
+authority, would deal in much insincerity of phrase, and yet have "the
+root of the matter" in him. Indeed, nothing is more common in the world
+than this combination of genuine feelings of piety with a great
+abundance of cant, habitual or designed. It would betray a very slender
+knowledge of mankind, and none at all of what is called the religious
+world, to conclude that a man is destitute of sincere piety because he
+sometimes makes use of the language of religion for ulterior purposes
+not peculiarly pious.
+
+It is to be observed, moreover, that to readers unfamiliar with the
+peculiarities of _professing_ Christians, whether Puritans or of other
+denomination, the expressions of humility and self-abasement which
+Cromwell frequently makes use of have appeared to be plain symptoms of
+hypocrisy. They are nothing but the habits of the sect. Such expressions
+are supposed to have been employed to blind men to his ambitious
+projects, to shelter him from the jealous scrutiny of rivals and
+superiors. Such a purpose they may have sometimes answered, and been
+intended to answer; but in the main they are nothing more nor less than
+the dialect of the tribe. Because is a Christian virtue, certain
+religious people have thought fit to indulge in a false vituperation of
+themselves. Striving avariciously after _all_ virtues, however
+incompatible the one with the other, they counterfeit vice and meanness,
+that, good men as they are, they may have abundance of contrition. How
+far there can be Christianity or piety in an abuse and degradation of
+ourselves, when that abuse and degradation must be felt all along to be
+untrue--if any reflection whatever accompanies such language--we leave
+such people to settle amongst themselves. Certain it is that the
+Puritans excelled in this as in every other kindred extravagance. The
+elect of the Lord were fond of describing themselves as the most
+contemptible of sinners; the salt of the earth as being rottenness and
+corruption. It is to this habit of unmeaning self-disparagement that we
+are to attribute many of those phrases which have been thought in
+Cromwell to be studied artifices to cloak ambitious designs.
+
+They are rife on all occasions, and their frequency and energy bear no
+relation to the supposed exigencies of his political career. Take the
+following instance. No man surely knew better than he, that at the
+conclusion of the civil war the army had become paramount. He could
+sometimes speak of this army with the natural pride of a soldier, with
+the full consciousness of the power it possessed, and had conferred on
+him; and yet, at other times, he would talk of this terrible force in
+the puling strain, in more than the drawl and drivel of the conventicle.
+As Lord High Protector, addressing his first parliament, he says:--"I
+had the approbation of the officers of the army, in the three nations of
+England, Scotland, and Ireland. I say of the officers: I had that by
+their express remonstrances, and under signature. But there went along
+with that express consent of theirs, an implied consent also of a body
+of persons who had had somewhat to do in the world; who had been
+instrumental, by God, to fight down the enemies of God, and his people,
+in the three nations. And truly, until my hands were bound, and I was
+limited, (to my own great satisfaction, as many can bear me witness,)
+while I had in my hands so great a power and arbitrariness--the soldiery
+were a very considerable part of these nations, especially all
+government being dissolved. I say, when all government was thus
+dissolved, and nothing to keep things in order but the sword!" There can
+be no doubt of it--the soldiery were a very considerable part of the
+nation. But the Lord High Protector, in a speech he makes to his second
+parliament, referring to the very same period, narrating the very same
+events, can talk of this army as "a company of poor men," "your poor
+army," "those poor contemptible men." To attempt to detect any political
+motive for this absurd phraseology, would be a very idle speculation,
+mere waste of ingenuity: he was simply more in the puritanic vein in the
+one case than the other.
+
+In his letters to the parliament, giving an account of his successes in
+the war, he generally concludes with some expression of this strained
+evangelical modesty, and seems very much afraid lest Speaker Lenthall
+and other honourable members should attribute the victories he
+announces, in any measure to the army and the general who won them. He
+might be very sure, however, that, notwithstanding these
+self-renunciations, the parliament knew very well who was fighting their
+battles. Such a mode of speech would not endanger his reputation, nor
+diminish from his claims; might perhaps--though we will not say this was
+present to his thoughts--induce the parliament to presume that _he_
+would not insist on any very egregious reward for services he was so
+anxious to disclaim. We will quote one instance of this self-denying
+style; and perhaps the following passage contains altogether as much of
+a certain fanatical mode of reasoning as could be well found in so short
+a compass. Prince Rupert, then at Worcester, had sent two thousand men
+across the country, to his majesty at Oxford, to convoy his majesty's
+person and the artillery over to him at Worcester. Cromwell attacked and
+routed this convoy; he also took Bletchington House. After giving an
+account of the transaction, he continues:--"This was the mercy of God;
+and nothing is more due than a real acknowledgment. And though I have
+had greater mercies, yet none clearer: because, in the first place, God
+brought them to our hands when we looked not for them; and delivered
+them out of our hands, when we laid a reasonable design to surprise
+them, and which we carefully endeavoured. His mercy appears in this
+also, that I did much doubt the storming of the house, it being strong
+and well manned, and I having few dragoons, and this being not my
+business; and yet we got it. I hope you will pardon me if I say, God is
+not enough owned. _We look too much to men and visible helps_: this hath
+much hindered our success." This from Oliver, who so well knew how "to
+keep his powder dry!" from Oliver, who, enthusiast himself, could yet
+shrewdly calculate on the military efficacy of enthusiasm, and set it
+down amongst the ways and means! Cant or not, it is sad stuff.
+
+But, Puritan as he was, we can admire Cromwell. Every great man, in
+whatever times, or in whatever part of the world he has made his
+appearance, has earned his title to fame and distinction, not by
+qualities peculiar to the sect or religion to which he may have
+belonged, but qualities which, though connected with his own especial
+faith or tenets, are recognised as the common property of mankind; he
+has been great not as Catholic, as Puritan, as Pagan, as Mahometan, but
+as _man_; he has been great, because he was pious, brave, patriotic,
+sagacious, resolute, and has achieved great enterprises on the theatre
+of life. The greatness of Cromwell was indeed allied to Puritanism,
+inasmuch as his mind grew up under this peculiar form of religion; but
+what we, and all posterity must admire in Cromwell, is by no means the
+puritan. His steadiness of purpose, his unshaken resolution, his
+military prowess, his eminent talent to govern and command, and his
+religious sense of duty to the Supreme, might all have existed under
+other modes of religion. In our admiration we entirely separate these
+qualities from that least gainly and least wholesome of the forms of
+Christian piety with which they are here found connected. History gives
+us examples of every kind of virtue, and every kind of talent, united
+with every species of fanaticism that has afflicted civilised life. It
+follows not that we applaud the fanaticism. The early caliphs were
+several of them distinguished by exalted virtues, temperance,
+self-denial, justice, patriotism: we praise these virtues, we
+acknowledge, too, that they are here linked with the profession of the
+faith of Islam; but for all this we do not admire the religion of
+Mahomet, nor that fanaticism which writ its texts upon the sword.
+
+We insist upon this obvious distinction, because, whilst agreeing--_to a
+certain extent_--in Mr Carlyle's view of the character of Cromwell, we
+beg not to be implicated in that esteem and reverence which he professes
+to entertain for Puritanism, or the Puritans as a body. And this brings
+us to the extraordinary part of Mr Carlyle's performance--his ardent
+sympathy, nay his acquiescence with, and adherence to the Puritans, to
+that point that he adopts their convictions, their feelings, and even
+some of their most grotesque reasonings. Their violence and ferocity, we
+were prepared to see Mr Carlyle, in his own sardonic fashion, abet and
+encourage; his sympathy is always with the party _who strikes_; but that
+he should identify himself with their mumming thoughts, their "plentiful
+reasons," their gloomiest superstitions, was what no one could have
+anticipated. On this subject we must quote his own words; our own would
+not be credited; they would seem to any one who had not read his work to
+be scandalous misrepresentations. The extravagance runs through the
+whole book, but we have it perhaps more concentrated in the
+Introduction.
+
+This Introduction, which we sat down to with keen expectations,
+disappointed us extremely, at least in those parts where any general
+views are taken. We feel, and have elsewhere ungrudgingly expressed, a
+certain admiration for the talents of Mr Carlyle. We shall never forget
+the surprise and pleasure with which we read the "Sartor Resartus," as
+it one day burst suddenly and accidentally upon us; and no one who has
+once read his graphic and passionate history of the French Revolution,
+can ever forget the vivid pictures that were there presented to him. We
+opened this book, therefore, with a sort of anticipatory relish. But we
+found very little of his genius, and very much of his extravagance; less
+of the one and more of the other, than we thought could possibly have
+been brought together. Metaphors and allusions, already worn
+thread-bare, are introduced as stock phrases, as if he had inserted them
+in his dictionary of the English language. All his vices of manner are
+exaggerated, while the freshness of thought, which half excused them, is
+departed. These strange metaphors, these glaring colours, which are
+ready spread out upon his palette, he transfers with hasty profusion to
+his canvass, till--(as it has been said of Mr Turner's, pictures)--the
+canvass and the palette-plate very nearly resemble. But were it
+otherwise, were there all and more than the wit, and humour, and
+sarcasm, and pungent phrase, and graphic power, which may be found
+scattered through Mr Carlyle's best performances, there is here a
+substratum of sheer and violent absurdity, which all these together
+would fail to disguise or compensate. Certainly there are pages of
+writing in this Introduction which contain such an amount of extravagant
+assertion, uttered in such fantastic jargon, as we think could nowhere
+be paralleled. Dulness could never have attained to any thing so
+extraordinary; and surely genius never before condescended to such
+workmanship.
+
+"What and how great," thus commences the book, "are the interests which
+connect themselves with the hope that England may yet attain to some,
+practical belief and understanding of its history during the seventeenth
+century, need not be insisted on at present, such hope being still very
+distant, very uncertain. We have wandered far away from the ideas which
+guided us in that century, _and indeed which had guided us in all
+preceding centuries, but of which that century was the ultimate
+manifestation_. We have wandered very far, and must endeavour to return
+and connect ourselves therewith again! It is with other feelings than
+those of poor peddling dilettantism, other aims than the writing of
+successful or unsuccessful publications, that an earnest man occupies
+himself in those dreary provinces of the dead and buried. The _last
+glimpse of the godlike_ vanishing from this England; conviction and
+veracity giving place to hollow cant and formalism--antique 'Reign of
+God,' which all true men in their several dialects and modes have always
+striven for, giving place to the modern reign of the No-God, whom men
+name devil; this, in its multitudinous meanings and results, is a sight
+to create reflections in the earnest man! One wishes there were a
+history of English Puritanism, _the last of all our heroisms_, but sees
+small prospect of such a thing at present."
+
+Then, beginning to quote himself, as his manner is, changing his voice
+and adopting another key, as if by this thin disguise to obtain somewhat
+more license for the wildness and vehemence of his speech--an artifice
+surely not necessary here--he thus continues:--
+
+"'Few nobler heroisms,' says a well-known writer, long occupied on this
+subject, 'at bottom, perhaps, _no nobler heroism_, ever transacted
+itself on this earth; and it lies as good as lost to us, overwhelmed
+under such an avalanche of human stupidities as no heroism before ever
+did. Intrinsically and extrinsically it may be considered inaccessible
+to these generations. Intrinsically, the spiritual purport of it has
+become inconceivable, incredible to the modern mind. Extrinsically, the
+documents and records of it, scattered waste as a shoreless chaos, are
+not legible. They lie there printed, written, to the extent of tons of
+square miles, as shot-rubbish; unedited, unsorted, not so much as
+indexed; full of every conceivable confusion; yielding light to very
+few; yielding darkness, in several sorts, to very many.' ...
+
+"'This, then,' continues our impatient friend, 'is the Elysium we
+English have provided for our heroes! The Rushworthian Elysium.
+Dreariest continent of shot-rubbish the eye ever saw. Confusion piled on
+confusion to your utmost horizon's edge; obscure in lurid twilight as of
+the shadow of death; trackless, without index, without finger-post, or
+mark of any human foregoer; where your human footstep, if you are still
+human, echoes bodeful through the gaunt solitude, peopled only by
+somnambulant pedants, dilettants, and doleful creatures, by phantasms,
+errors, inconceivabilities, by nightmares, pasteboard norroys, griffins,
+wiverns, and chimeras dire! There, all vanquished, overwhelmed under
+such waste lumber mountains, the wreck and dead ashes of some six
+unbelieving generations, does the age of Cromwell and his Puritans lie
+hidden from us. This is what we, for our share, have been able to
+accomplish towards keeping _our heroic ones_ in memory.'"
+
+After some further diatribe against all preceding historians,
+collectors, and editors, he drops his ventriloquism, and, resuming a
+somewhat more natural voice, he proceeds:--
+
+"Nay, in addition to the sad state of our historical books, and what
+indeed is fundamentally the cause and origin of that, our common
+spiritual notions, if any notion of ours may still deserve to be called
+spiritual, are fatal to a right understanding of that seventeenth
+century. _The Christian doctrines, which then dwelt alive in every
+heart, have now in a manner died out of all hearts_--very mournful to
+behold--and are not the guidance of this world any more. Nay, worse
+still, the cant of them does yet dwell alive with us, little doubting
+that it is cant, in which fatal intermediate state the eternal
+sacredness of this universe itself, of this human life itself, has
+fallen dark to the most of us, and we think that, too, a cant and a
+creed."
+
+So!--as our honest German friend would exclaim, puffing from his mouth
+at the same time a huge volume of symbolic smoke. We have withdrawn it
+seems, from the path of light ever since the reign of the army and its
+godly officers established A.D. 1649. We must return and connect
+ourselves therewith; it is our only salvation; though, indeed, if
+Puritanism was the manifestation of the ideas of all preceding
+centuries--if the same current of thought can be traced from William the
+Conqueror to Oliver the conqueror--a very little ingenuity would suffice
+to trace the same ideas, the same current of thought, somewhat farther
+still. But this reign of the puritanical army was really "the last
+glimpse of the godlike!"--it was "the reign of God!" and we live under
+the reign of ----, psha! Why, he does not even give us a substantial
+devil, but coins a strange personification of a negative. Such was not
+the devil, by the way, at the time of "the noblest heroism ever
+transacted on the earth." Such a definition of the "roaring lion,"
+would, in those days of light and happiness, have procured its author,
+at the very least, a trip to Barbadoes. Even Cromwell himself would have
+_Barbadoesed_ him.
+
+"This last of our heroisms!" God grant it is the last! It is only out of
+another religious war that another such heroism can arise. If church and
+dissent should take up arms, and, instead of controversies carried on in
+pamphlets, upon tradition and white surplices, should blow out each
+other's brains with gunpowder, then Mr Carlyle would see his "heroic
+ones" revive upon the earth.
+
+"The Christian doctrines which then dwelt alive in every heart, have now
+in a manner died out of all hearts." Only the cant of them dwells alive
+with us. The same clear-sighted author, who sees the Christian doctrines
+so beautifully and pre-eminently developed in the Ironsides of Cromwell,
+in the troopers of Lambert and Harrison, sacking, pillaging,
+slaughtering, and in all that tribe of men who ever shed blood the
+readier after prayer-time--men who had dropped from their memory
+Christ's own preaching, to fill their mouths with the curses which the
+Hebrew prophets had been permitted, under a past dispensation, to
+denounce against the enemies of Judea, who had constructed their
+theology out of the darkest parts of the New, and the most fearful
+portion of the Old Testament;--this same author, opening his eyes and
+ears upon his own day and generation, finds that Christianity has died
+out of all hearts, and its phraseology, as he expresses himself
+elsewhere, "become mournful to him when spouted as frothy cant from
+Exeter Hall." If Mr Carlyle would visit Exeter Hall, and carry there one
+tithe of the determination to approve, that he exhibits in favour of the
+Puritan, he would find a Christian piety as sincere, as genuine, and far
+more humane, than his heroes of Naseby, or Dunbar, or Drogheda were
+acquainted with. He would see the descendants of his Puritans, relieved,
+at least we may say, from the necessity of raising their psalm on the
+battle-field, indulging in none of the ferocities of our nature,
+assembling in numerous but peaceful meetings, raising annually, by a
+quiet but no contemptible sacrifice, their millions for the
+dissemination of Gospel truth. But Mr Carlyle would call this cant; he
+sees nothing good, or generous, or high-minded in any portion of the
+world in which he lives; he reserves his sympathies for the past--for
+the men of buckram and broad-sword, who, on a question of church
+government, were always ready "to hew Agag to pieces," let Agag stand
+for who, or what number it might.
+
+If there is one spectacle more odious than another of all which history
+presents to us, whether it take place amongst Mahometan or Christian,
+Catholic or Protestant, it is this:--to see men practising all the
+terrible brutalities of war, treading down their enemies, doing all that
+rage and the worst passions prompt, and doing all amidst exclamations of
+piety, devout acknowledgments of submission to Divine will, and
+professions of gratitude to God. Other religious factions have committed
+far greater atrocities than the Puritans, but nowhere in history is this
+same spectacle exhibited with more distasteful and sickening
+accompaniments. The Moslem thanked God upon his sword in at least a
+somewhat soldierly manner; and the Catholic, by the very pomp with which
+he chants his _Te Deum_, somewhat conceals the meaning of his act, and,
+keeping God a little out of sight, makes his mass express the natural
+feeling of a human triumph. But the sleek Puritan, at once grovelling
+and presumptuous, mingles with his sanguinary mood all the morbid
+sickly conceit, all the crawling affected humility of the conventicle.
+All his bloodsheds are "mercies," and they are granted in answer to his
+long and miserable prayers--prayers which, to a man of rational piety,
+sound very much like blasphemies. He carries with him to the
+battle-field, to the siege, to the massacre, not one even of those
+generous feelings which war itself permits towards a foe. He chooses to
+call his enemy the enemy of God, and kneels before he fights, that the
+inexpressible _mercy_ may be granted of cutting his throat!
+
+"That the sense of difference between right and wrong," says Mr Carlyle,
+"had filled all time and all space for man, and bodied itself forth into
+a heaven and hell for him,--this constitutes the grand feature of those
+Puritan, old-Christian ages; this is the element which stamps them as
+heroic, and has rendered their works great, manlike, fruitful to all
+generations." Quite on the contrary. The sense of right and wrong was
+obscured, confused, lost sight of, in the promptings of a presumptuous
+enthusiasm; and it is exactly _this_ which constitutes the perilous
+characteristic of such men as the Puritans and Cameronians, and similar
+sectaries. How can the sense of right and wrong keep its footing in an
+enthusiasm which has brought itself to believe that all its successes
+are a direct answer to its prayers? Success becomes the very measure of
+right and wrong. The two extremes of Atheism and Fanaticism have met;
+they may both dispense with conscience, and make the event the criterion
+of the deed. Hear how the pious heroes of Mr Carlyle reason on one of
+the most solemn occasions of the civil war. The army is remonstrating
+with the Parliament because it appeared slow to shed the blood of their
+conquered and captured King, and it actually speaks of the death of
+Charles "as appeasing the wrath of God" against that sovereign! and bids
+the Parliament "sadly to consider, as men accountable to the Highest,"
+how far an accommodation with the King, "when God hath given him so
+clearly into your power to do justice, can be just before God or good
+men." The _power_ to do the act is full authority, is absolute command
+to do it. What other doctrine could a Caesar Borgia, or an Eccelino, the
+tyrant of Padua, desire to be governed, or rather to be manumitted by
+from all government?
+
+The argument drawn from the success given to their cause, is perpetually
+in the mouth of Cromwell and of his Puritans. It establishes, without a
+doubt, that they have used the sword justly, and are still further to
+use it. Every "mercy" of this kind is in answer to prayer. Basing-House,
+a private residence, cannot be sacked and plundered, and the inhabitants
+put to the sword, but the pious historian of the feat, Mr Peters, adds,
+that it, and the like triumphs, were "answers to the prayers and
+trophies of the faith of some of God's servants." When Greek meets
+Greek, when the Scottish Covenanter encounters the English Puritan, and
+the former, being worsted, finds out "that he had not so learned Christ
+as to hang the equity of a cause upon events," Cromwell answers, "Did
+not you solemnly appeal and pray? Did not we do so too? And ought not
+you and we to think, with fear and trembling, of the hand of the Great
+God, in this mighty and strange appearance of His, instead of slightly
+calling it an 'event'? Were not both your and our expectations renewed
+from time to time, whilst we waited upon God, to see which way He would
+manifest himself upon our appeals? And shall we, after all these our
+prayers, fastings, tears, expectations, and solemn appeals, call these
+bare 'events'? The Lord pity you."
+
+Men prayed in those days! says Mr Carlyle, "actually prayed! It was a
+capability old London and its preachers and populations had; to us the
+incredibilest." Beyond a doubt the Puritans and the Covenanters prayed,
+and in such a manner and at such a length, that the strange doctrine on
+which Southey has founded his "Curse of Kehama," of the essential and
+irresistible force of prayer, seems to have got mixed up with their
+Christianity.[2] But we do not think that the voice of prayer has quite
+died out amongst us. It is curious to observe what a vivid perception
+this author has for the historical past, and what a voluntary blindness
+and deafness for the actually present. It is a fact! he frequently
+exclaims, with all the energy of a discoverer,--a fact! that men in
+these ages prayed, and had a religious faith. Our churches and chapels
+are not facts. The control--none the worse for being exercised without
+pike or musket--which the religious public, meeting in that very Exeter
+Hall, have over the measures of government, and all political
+transactions,--is not a fact. Were he writing, some centuries hence, the
+history of this our age, he would detect these facts. What facts,
+indeed, might he not detect, and what exaggerated significance might he
+not give to them! Why, in those days, he might exclaim, in his
+enthusiasm, the very beggars in the street, in asking charity, poured
+God's blessing on you! It was a credible thing, in those days, God's
+blessing!--and men gave their money for it!
+
+A passage in one of Cromwell's letters instances, in rather a touching
+manner, what school of piety this army of saints must have proved. At
+the battle of Marston Moor a Colonel Walton had lost his son. "He was a
+gallant young man, exceedingly gracious," and Cromwell, giving an
+account of his death, in his consolatory letter to the father, writes
+thus,--"A little after, he said, one thing lay upon his spirit. I asked
+him what that was. He told me it was that God had not suffered him to be
+any more _the executioner of his enemies!_"
+
+But nothing disturbs the equanimity of our editor, or interrupts his
+flow of rapture over the fanaticism of these times, especially when
+expressed in the letters of Cromwell. Over the theological effusions
+which the general of the Puritan army addresses, from his camp, to the
+Edinburgh clergy, Mr Carlyle thus expatiates:--"Dryasdust, carrying his
+learned eye over these, and the like letters, finds them, of course,
+full of 'hypocrisy,' &c. Unfortunate Dryasdust! they are corruscations
+terrible as lightning, and beautiful as lightning, from the innermost
+temple of the human soul; intimations, still credible, of what a human
+soul does mean when it _believes_ in the Highest--a thing poor Dryasdust
+never did, nor will do. The hapless generation that now reads these
+words ought to hold its peace when it has read them, and sink into
+unutterable reflections, not unmixed with tears, and some substitute for
+'sackcloth and ashes,' if it liked. In its poor canting, sniffling,
+flimsy vocabulary, there is no word that can make any response to them.
+This man has a living God-inspired soul in him, not an enchanted
+artificial 'substitute for salt,' as our fashion is. They that have
+human eyes can look at him; they that have only owl-eyes need not."
+
+And then follows something upon _light_ and _lightning_. "As lightning
+is to light, so is a Cromwell to a Shakspere. The light is beautifuller.
+Ah, yes; but, until by lightning and other fierce labour your foul chaos
+has become a world, you cannot have any light, or the smallest chance
+for any!... The melodious speaker is great, but the melodious worker is
+greater than he. Our Time cannot speak at all, but only cant and sneer,
+and argumentatively jargon and recite the multiplication-table:
+neither, as yet, can it work, except at mere railroads and
+cotton-spinning. It will, apparently, return to chaos soon, and then
+more lightnings will be needed, lightning enough,--to which Cromwell's
+was but a mild matter,--to be followed by light, we may hope!"--by
+another Shakspeare, as the tenor of the passage would imply.
+
+Strange jumble this of Cromwell and Shakspeare, of light and lightning!
+There is one species of light which we are often reminded of here; a
+certain fitful, flickering beam, which partakes indeed of a luminous
+nature, but which chooses its path for ever over bottomless bog.
+
+The sincerity of Oliver Cromwell, in these his letters and speeches, has
+been questioned and discussed; the sincerity of their present editor may
+become a question at least as difficult and perplexing. Is there any
+genuine conviction at the bottom of all this rant and raving? Our
+extravagant worshipper of the "old heathen" Goethe, stands forth the
+champion and admirer of certain harsh, narrow-thoughted, impetuous
+sectaries, proclaims _them_ the only "Reformers" of the world; descends
+to their lowest prejudices, to their saddest bigotries, to their gloomy
+puerilities; arguing with them solemnly against the sinfulness of
+drinking healths, and quite fraternising with them in all their
+animosity against Popery and Prelacy. What does he mean? Is it a case of
+conversion? Is it an outpouring merely, by a strange vent, of certain
+acrid humours? Is he honest, and in earnest? or is he making sport of
+those hapless Englishmen whom he pronounces "in human stupidity to have
+no fellow?"
+
+Observers of a curious and speculative turn might, perhaps, explain it
+thus:--Mr Carlyle is evidently a writer of strong religious feelings.
+Marry, when he would exhibit them to the world, he is under the
+necessity of borrowing a creed from some one else. His own philosophy
+has nothing palpable enough for ordinary vision; nothing, as we
+remember, but vague infinities and eternities, with an "everlasting
+_yes_," and an "everlasting _no_." As the choice lay quite open to him,
+there was no reason why he should not select the very hottest creed he
+could any where find lying about in our history. From contemporaries it
+was not likely that he should borrow: he loves nothing, praises nothing,
+esteems nothing of this poor visible present; but it was an additional
+recommendation to the Puritanic piety, that it had left a detestable
+memory behind it, and was in declared hostility with all contemporaneous
+ways of thinking. What could he better do, therefore, than borrow this
+old volcanic crater of Puritanism, and pour out from it his religion and
+his anger upon a graceless world?
+
+Others, not given to such refinements, would explain the phenomenon upon
+more ordinary principles, and reduce the enigma to a case merely of
+literary monomania. Mr Carlyle, they would say, has been striving to
+understand these Puritans till he has grown, for the time, to resemble
+them. In the effort to project his mind into their mind, he has overshot
+the mark; he has not been able yet to get his own mind back again. It is
+a case, they would say, of mere imagination. Could you bring Mr Carlyle
+into contact with a live Puritan, the charm would be instantly
+dispelled. If one of Harrison's troopers would but ask him to step aside
+with him, under a hedge, to wrestle for a blessing, or would kindly
+undertake to catechise him on some point of divinity,--on that notion of
+his, for instance, of "Right and Wrong bodying themselves into Hell and
+Heaven,"--the alliance would be dissolved, not, perhaps, without violent
+rupture.
+
+For ourselves, we sometimes think that Mr Carlyle is in earnest. Men
+should be honest. One who talks so loudly about _faith_, ought to be
+sincere in his utterances to the public. At other times, the mummery
+becomes too violent, grows too "fast and furious," to permit us to
+believe that what we witness is the sane carriage of a sane man. At all
+events, we can but look on with calm surprise. If our philosopher will
+tuck his robe high up about his loins, and play the merry-andrew, if he
+will grimace, and paint thick, and hold dialogue with himself, who shall
+hinder him?--only we would rather not wear, on such an occasion, the
+docile aspect of admiring pupils; we prefer to stand aside, and look on
+with Mr Dryasdust.
+
+It is worthy of note, that however Mr Carlyle extols his "Heroic Ones"
+in a body, Cromwell is the only individual that finds a good word
+throughout the work. Every one else, Hampden not excepted, is spoken of
+with slight and disparagement. Amongst all the "godlike," there is but
+one who finds favour in his sight,--him, however, he never deserts,--and
+the very parties who have before been applauded, in general terms,
+become the subjects of ridicule or castigation the moment they are seen
+in opposition to Cromwell.
+
+To Cromwell, then, let us turn our attention. Him we also can admire. We
+admire his great practical sagacity, his eminent talents for war and for
+government, the moderation and the conscientiousness which, though a
+usurper and a zealot, he displayed in the use of power. He was, as we
+have said, a genuine Puritan. This must be understood, or no
+intelligible view of his character can be taken. It is not only
+hostility to his memory which has attributed to him a studied hypocrisy;
+the love of the marvellous has lent its aid. Such a supposition was
+thought to magnify his talents and his genius. It was more dramatic to
+make him the "honest Iago" of the piece. A French writer, M. Villemain,
+in his History of Cromwell, expresses this feeling very naively, and
+speaks of an hypocrisy "que l'histoire atteste, et qu'on ne saurait
+mettre en doute sans oter quelque chose a l'idee de son genie; car les
+hommes verront toujours moins de grandeur dans un fanatique de bonne
+foi, que dans une ambition qui fait des enthusiastes. Cromwell mena les
+hommes par la prise qu'ils lui donnaient sur eux. _L'ambition seule lui
+inspira des crimes, qu'il fit executer par le fanatisme des autres._"
+That he thus employed the spirit of the age without sharing it, is a
+theory which will not stand the light for a moment. Besides, it is not
+in this manner that history is transacted: we may all be puppets, if you
+will, upon the scene, but it is not in this fashion that any one man
+gets hold of the wires. The supposition, whatever honour it may do the
+genius of Cromwell, will do very little honour to the speculative genius
+of any writer who adopts it. But this is evident, that to whatever
+extent Cromwell shared the distempered feelings of a sectarian party,
+nothing ever clouded his penetration upon any affair of conduct, any
+question of means to an end. The hour never came that found him wanting.
+At every phase of the revolution he is there to lead, or control, or
+predominate over it.
+
+Starting from this point of view--understanding him, in the first place,
+as the conscientious zealous Puritan, and endeavouring to estimate, as
+the history proceeds, the modifications which the soldier and the
+general, and finally the Protector, would induce upon this original
+substratum--the character of Cromwell becomes intelligible, and his
+conduct, in a measure, consistent. Whilst yet a private man, he had
+warmly espoused the extreme opinions of that religious party who looked
+on Popery as antichrist, and the Church of England as little better than
+Popery in disguise, as the same scarlet lady in a somewhat more modest
+attire. He was one of a class occasionally met with in the most quiet
+walks of life, men who torment their spirit on some public question till
+it becomes a personal grievance, or rather a corroding passion. What
+were bishops personally to him? He might have prayed, and expounded, and
+walked meditative in his fields, and left a public question to be
+decided by the movements, necessarily slow, of public opinion. But no;
+he was constituted quite otherwise. From a spiritual jurisdiction,
+claimed though not exercised over him, his soul revolted. And this
+hatred to prelacy, to any spiritual authority over him or his--this
+determination to be his own priest--is, if not the strongest, certainly
+the steadiest and most constant feeling that he manifests. We trace it
+throughout his whole career. The first thing we hear of him in the House
+of Commons is a protest, a sort of ominous growl, against the promotion
+of some Arminian or semi-Popish divine. "If these are the steps to
+church preferment, what are we to expect!" Almost the first glimpse we
+catch of him when he has taken arms, is as the captain of a troop
+entering some cathedral church, and bidding the surpliced priest, who
+was reading the liturgy, "to cease his fooling, and come down!" And
+throughout the letters which he addresses to the Speaker from the seat
+of war, he rarely omits the opportunity of hinting, that the soldiers
+are worthy of that religious liberty for which they have fought so well.
+"We pray you, own His people more and more; for they are the chariots
+and horsemen of Israel." And in one of his latest speeches, he describes
+it as the great "extremity" of past times, that men were not permitted
+to preach in public unless they were ordained.
+
+A rooted animosity to prelatical or other spiritual domination, is the
+key-note of this "melodious worker," as Mr Carlyle calls him. Cromwell
+entered the civil war provided with no theory or plan of civil
+government, animated with no republican zeal; it was not patriotism in
+any ordinary sense of the word, it was his controversy with the church
+of England that brought him on the field of battle. After fighting
+against episcopacy, he fought with equal zeal against presbyterianism;
+but against monarchy, or for the republic, he can hardly be said to have
+drawn the sword. We all applaud the sagacity which saw at once that the
+strongest antagonist to the honour and fidelity of the royalist, was to
+be found in the passion of the zealot. He enlisted his praying regiment.
+From that time the battle was won. But the cause was lost. What hope
+could there be for the cause of civil freedom, of constitutional rights,
+when the champion who won its victories was fanatical zeal, and the rage
+of theological controversy?
+
+It is the glaring defect in Cromwell--a defect which he had in common
+with many others of his time--that he threw himself into a revolution
+having for its first object to remodel the civil government, animated
+only with the passions of the collateral controversy upon ecclesiastical
+government. He fought the battle which was to destroy the monarchy,
+without any fixed idea or desire for the republican government which
+must be its substitute. This was not the subject that had engaged his
+thoughts or inflamed his ardour. When, therefore, the royalists had been
+conquered, it is not at all surprising that he should have seen nothing
+but the difficulties in the way of forming a republic. At this point of
+his history some excuse for him may be drawn from the very defect we are
+noticing. His mind had dwelt on no theory of civil government--to the
+cause of the commonwealth his heart had never been pledged--and we can
+hardly call him, with justice, as Godwin does, a traitor to the
+republic. But, on the other hand, what a gap, what a void, does this
+disclose in the mind of our hero? What should we say of one who had
+plunged heart and soul into the French Revolution, conducted only by his
+rage against the Roman Catholic hierarchy? Such a one, had he risen to
+take a leading part in that drama, might have acted with greater wisdom
+and moderation than ardent and patriotic men; the very absence of any
+political opinion or passion might have enabled him to see more clearly
+than others the position which they all occupied; but this would not
+justify or palliate the original error, the rash, exclusive,
+self-blinding zeal which had brought him into that position.
+
+To the ecclesiastical controversy, Cromwell clings throughout with an
+utter recklessness of the fate of civil government. When episcopacy had
+been vanquished, and presbyterianism threatened to take its place, he
+was quite as willing to plunge the whole kingdom into confusion and
+anarchy in his opposition to this new enemy, as to the old. Those who
+would defend him from the charge of personal ambition--all who excuse
+his conduct at this period of the history, put this plea upon
+record,--and without a doubt his hostility to presbyterianism was a very
+great and leading motive with him in his opposition to the Parliament,
+and his determination to prevent a reconciliation between the House and
+the King. When Charles was a prisoner at the Isle of Wight, it is well
+known that the Parliament were anxious to come to some terms of
+reconcilement, and the concessions which he then made were voted to be
+"a sufficient ground for the future settlement of the kingdom." Why did
+Cromwell interfere at this juncture between the two parties, in such a
+way as entirely to destroy both? His best public ground is his hostility
+to presbyterianism. And what was the presbytery, that to him it should
+be so distasteful, and an object of so great animosity? Its forms of
+worship, the doctrines preached by its divines, were exactly those he
+himself practised and approved. There were no altars here, no surplices,
+no traditions, no sympathies with Rome, no stealthy approximations to
+her detested idolatries. But there was a claim put forward to
+ecclesiastical supremacy, to ordain, and authorise, and control public
+preachers, which he could not tolerate; and if no other motive had
+existed, he was ready to oppose every settlement, at every risk, having
+for its object to establish a claim of this description.
+
+We will open the Letters and Speeches of Cromwell at this period of the
+history, and present our readers with a specimen of his epistolary
+style, and one which will go far to show how little his mind was
+influenced, even at this great crisis, by any thing which we should
+describe as political reasoning. Cromwell was a great _administrator_,
+but he had no vocation for speculative politics, and little attachment
+to forms of government. Framers of constitutions are not in repute at
+present; they have not covered themselves with applause, rather with
+confusion; and this defect in Cromwell's mind will probably be looked
+upon with great indulgence. Nevertheless, people who go to war to
+demolish an existing government, ought to have taken thought for a
+substitute; on _them_ it is incumbent to have a political creed, and a
+constitution to set up. At this very moment when the question is no
+less, than whether the king should be put to death, and monarchy rooted
+out of the land--ay, and the Parliament coerced, in order to effect
+these objects--our Puritan general reasons--like a Puritan and nothing
+better.
+
+The following letter was addressed to Colonel Hammond, then governor of
+the Isle of Wight. The colonel had been distressed by his scruples at
+the extreme course the army was disposed to take, and had solicited this
+appointment to the Isle of Wight as a retreat from the scene of faction
+and violence. But it was precisely in this quiet little island that the
+king took refuge; his perplexities, therefore, were increased and not
+diminished. Cromwell writes to him to remove his scruples, and makes a
+characteristic allusion to this circumstance--_improves_ it, as we
+should say.
+
+We must apprise the reader, however, that it would be dangerous to form
+any opinion upon the religious sincerity or insincerity of Cromwell,
+upon extracts from his letters and speeches, or even upon any single
+letter or speech. From the incongruity we feel between the solemnity of
+the subject of religion, and the manner and occasion in which it is
+introduced, and from the use of certain expressions long since
+consecrated to ridicule, it is impossible for a modern reader, on
+falling upon some isolated passages, not to exclaim, that this is cant
+and hypocrisy! But when the whole series, or the greater part of it, is
+read--when the same strain of thought and feeling, in season and out of
+season, is constantly observed--it is equally impossible not to feel
+persuaded that these letters and speeches body forth the genuine
+character of the man, and that the writer was verily a solemn and most
+serious person, in whom religious zeal was the last quality which needed
+reinforcement.
+
+     "DEAR ROBIN,--No man rejoiceth more to see a line from thee
+     than myself. I know thou hast long been under trial. Thou shalt
+     be no loser by it. All things must work for the best.
+
+     "Thou desirest to hear of my experiences. I can tell thee, I am
+     such a one as thou did formerly know, having a body of sin and
+     death; but I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, there is
+     no condemnation though much infirmity; and I wait for the
+     redemption. And in this poor condition I obtain mercy, and
+     sweet consolation through the Spirit. And find abundant cause
+     every day to exalt the Lord and abase flesh--and herein I have
+     some exercise.
+
+     "As to outward dispensations, if we may so call them, we have
+     not been without our share of beholding some remarkable
+     providences and appearances of the Lord. His presence hath been
+     amongst us, and by the light of his countenance we have
+     prevailed (_alludes to the battle of Preston_.) We are sure the
+     goodness of Him who dwelt in the bush has shined upon us; and
+     we can humbly say, we know in whom we have believed; who can
+     and will perfect what remaineth, and us also in doing what is
+     well-pleasing in His eye-sight.
+
+     "I find some trouble in your spirit, occasioned first not only
+     by your sad and heavy burden, as you call it, but also by the
+     dissatisfaction you take at the ways of some good men whom you
+     love with your heart, who through the principle, that it is
+     lawful for a lesser part, if in the right, to force a numerical
+     majority, &c. &c.
+
+     "To the first: call not your burden sad or heavy. If your
+     Father laid it on you, He intended neither. He is the Father of
+     light, from whom comes every good and perfect gift; who of His
+     own will begot us.... Dear Robin, our fleshly reasonings
+     ensnare us. These make us say 'heavy,' 'sad,' 'pleasant,'
+     'easy.' Was there not a little of this when Robert Hammond,
+     through dissatisfaction too, desired retirement from the army,
+     and thought of quiet in the Isle of Wight? Did not God find him
+     out there? I believe he will never forget this. And now I
+     perceive he is to seek again; partly through his sad and heavy
+     burden, and partly through his dissatisfaction with friends'
+     actings.
+
+     "Dear Robin, thou and I were never worthy to be door-keepers in
+     this service. If thou wilt seek, seek to know the mind of God
+     in all that chain of providence, whereby God brought thee
+     thither, and that person (_the king_) to thee; how, before and
+     since, God hath ordered him, and affairs concerning him; and
+     then tell me, whether there be not some glorious and high
+     meaning in all this, above what thou hast yet attained? And,
+     laying aside thy fleshly reason, seek of the Lord to teach thee
+     what that is; and He will do it. I dare be positive to say, It
+     is not that the wicked should be exalted that God should so
+     appear as indeed He hath done. For there is no peace to _them_.
+     No; it is set upon the hearts of such as fear the Lord, and we
+     have witness upon witness, that it shall go ill with them and
+     their partakers.
+
+     "As to thy dissatisfaction with friends' actings upon that
+     supposed principle--I wonder not at that. If a man take not his
+     own burden well, he shall hardly others'; especially if
+     involved by so near a relation of love and Christian
+     brotherhood as thou art, I shall not take upon me to satisfy;
+     but I hold myself bound to lay my thoughts before so dear a
+     friend. The Lord do His own will.
+
+     "You say, 'God hath appointed authorities among the nations, to
+     which active or passive obedience is to be yielded. This
+     resides, in England, in the Parliament. Therefore, active or
+     passive resistance,' &c. &c.
+
+     "Authorities and powers are the ordinance of God. This or that
+     species is of human institution, and limited some with larger,
+     others with stricter bands, each one according to its
+     constitution. But I do not therefore think that the authorities
+     may do _any thing_, and yet such obedience be due. All agree
+     that there are cases in which it is lawful to resist. If so,
+     your ground fails, and so likewise the inference. Indeed, dear
+     Robin, not to multiply words, the query is,--Whether ours be
+     such case? This, ingenuously, is the true question.
+
+     "To this I shall say nothing, though I could say very much; but
+     only desire thee to see what thou findest in thy own heart to
+     two or three plain considerations. _First_, Whether _Salus
+     populi_ be a sound position? _Secondly_, Whether, in the way in
+     hand (_the parliamentary treaty with the king_,) really and
+     before the Lord, before whom conscience has to stand, this be
+     provided for--or if the whole fruit of the war is not likely to
+     be frustrated, and all most like to turn to what it was, and
+     worse? And this contrary to engagements, explicit covenants
+     with those who ventured their lives upon those covenants and
+     engagements, without whom, perhaps in equity, relaxation ought
+     not to be? _Thirdly_, Whether this army be not a lawful power,
+     called by God to oppose and fight against the king upon some
+     stated grounds; and being in power to such ends, may not oppose
+     one name of authority, for those ends, as well as another
+     name--since it was not the outward authority summoning them
+     that by its power made the quarrel lawful, but the quarrel was
+     lawful in itself? If so, it may be, acting will be justified
+     _in foro humano_. _But truly this kind of reasoning may be but
+     fleshly, either with or against: only it is good to try what
+     truth may be in them. And the Lord teach us._
+
+     "My dear friend, let us look into providences; surely they mean
+     somewhat. They hang so together; have been so constant, so
+     clear, unclouded. Malice, swoln malice against God's people,
+     now called 'saints,' to root out their name;--and yet they
+     these poor saints getting arms and therein blessed with defence
+     and more! I desire he that is for a principle of suffering
+     (_passive obedience_) would not too much slight this. I slight
+     not him who is so minded; but let us beware lest fleshly
+     reasoning see more safety in making use of this principle than
+     in acting! Who acts, if he resolve not through God to be
+     willing to part with all? Our hearts are very deceitful, on the
+     right and on the left.
+
+     "What think you of providence disposing the hearts of so many
+     of God's people this way--especially in this poor army, wherein
+     the great God has vouchsafed to appear! I know not one officer
+     but is on the increasing side (_come over to this opinion_.) ...
+
+     "Thou mentionest somewhat as if by acting against such
+     opposition as is like to be, there will be a tempting of God.
+     Dear Robin, tempting of God ordinarily is either by acting
+     presumptuously in carnal confidence, or in unbelief through
+     diffidence: both these ways Israel tempted God in the
+     wilderness, and He was grieved by them. Not the encountering of
+     difficulties, therefore, makes us to tempt God; but the acting
+     before and without faith. If the Lord have in any measure
+     persuaded His people, as generally He hath, of the lawfulness,
+     nay of the _duty_,--this persuasion prevailing upon the heart
+     is faith; and acting thereupon is acting in faith; and the more
+     the difficulties are the more the faith. And it is most sweet
+     that he who is not persuaded have patience towards them that
+     are, and judge not; and this will free thee from the trouble of
+     others' actings, which thou sayest adds to thy grief....
+
+     "Robin, I have done. Ask we our hearts whether we think that
+     after all these dispensations, the like to which many
+     generations cannot afford, should end in so corrupt reasonings
+     of good men, and should so hit the designings of bad? Thinkest
+     thou in thy heart that the glorious dispensations of God point
+     out to this? Or to teach his people to trust in Him and wait
+     for better things--when, it may be, better are sealed to many
+     of their spirits (_indubitably sure to many of them_.)
+
+     "This trouble I have been at because my soul loves thee, and I
+     would not have thee swerve or lose any glorious opportunity the
+     Lord puts into thy hand. The Lord be thy counsellor. Dear
+     Robin, I rest thine,
+
+     "OLIVER CROMWELL."
+
+For ourselves, we cannot read this, and other letters breathing the same
+spirit, without being convinced that Cromwell fully shared in those
+fanatical sentiments which prompted the army to insist upon the king's
+death. A contemporary account, from which Mr Carlyle, some pages before
+this letter occurs, has quoted largely, represents this chief of the
+Puritans in exactly the same point of view. The officers of the army had
+made certain overtures to the king, certain efforts at a reconciliation,
+which had been fruitless; and which had been, moreover, attended with
+much division and contention amongst themselves. They had turned aside,
+it seems, from "that path of _simplicity_ they had been blessed in, to
+walk in a _politic_ path," and were, accordingly, afflicted, "as the
+wages of their backsliding hearts," with tumults, and jealousies, and
+divisions. But the godly officers, says the pious record of Adjutant
+Allen, met at _Windsor Castle_! "and there we spent one day together in
+prayer; inquiring into the causes of that sad dispensation. And, on the
+morrow, we met again in the morning; where many spake from the Word and
+prayed; and the then Lieutenant-General Cromwell did press very
+earnestly on all there present, to a thorough consideration of our
+actions as an army, and of our ways particularly as private Christians;
+to see if any iniquity could be found in them; and what it was; that, if
+possible, he might find it out, and so remove the cause of such sad
+rebukes as were upon us, (by reason of our iniquities, as we judged,) at
+that time. And the way, more particularly, the Lord led us to herein was
+this: to look back and consider what time it was when, with joint
+satisfaction, we could last say, to the best of our judgments, The
+presence of the Lord was amongst us, and rebukes and judgments were not,
+as then, upon us.... By which means we were, by a gracious hand of the
+Lord, led to find out the very steps, (as were all there jointly
+convinced,) by which we had departed from the Lord, and provoked Him to
+depart from us, which we found to be those cursed carnal conferences,
+our own conceited wisdom, our fears, and want of faith, had prompted us,
+the year before, to entertain with the king and his party. And at this
+time, and on this occasion, did the then Major Goffe, (as I remember was
+his title,) make use of that good word, Proverbs 1st and 23d, _Turn you
+at my reproof; behold I will pour out my Spirit unto you, I will make
+known my words unto you._" In fine, their "iniquities," their want of
+faith, their carnal conferences--that is to say, all desire for peace,
+all humanity, all moderation, all care for their country--were cast
+aside, and they came to the solitary gloomy resolution, "That it is our
+duty to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for that
+blood he had shed, and mischief he had done to his utmost, against the
+Lord's cause and people in these poor nations."
+
+Let no one suppose that, because Cromwell, and other officers of the
+army, had been negotiating with the king, bidding for him, in fact,
+against the Parliament, and offering terms such as it was mere
+infatuation upon his part not to accept, that they were, therefore, not
+sincere in this their fanaticism, which now so clearly told them they
+should be doing the express will of God in putting him to death. Those
+who have paid attention to this disease of the mind, know well, that
+while nothing is more violent at one moment, nothing is more flexible at
+another. Against the assaults of reason it is rock,--it is adamant; but
+to self-interest, or a covert passion, it is often surprisingly ductile.
+The genuine fanatic is gifted with a power which will equally uphold
+him, whether he walks to the right or to the left, and lets him change
+his course as often as he will. He has a logic that is always
+triumphant--which proves him always in the right--whether he would
+advance or recede. Success--it is God's own sanction; failure--it is
+what you please,--God's disapproval if you would retreat--a trial only
+of your faith, if you have the heart to advance. In the present case,
+our pious army, having found it impossible to treat with the king, has
+but to spend "its day in prayer," and its fierce zeal resumes its former
+channel with greater violence than ever. It has been led astray, it
+finds, by carnal reasonings and sinful weakness; and, rushing back to
+its old "path of simplicity," it raises the cry of death!
+
+This account, which Adjutent Allan gives of diseased piety and perilous
+fanaticism, Mr Carlyle accompanies with interjections of applause, and
+cheers of encouragement. To him, also, it seems quite fit that the army
+should return to its path of "simplicity." The King must die.
+
+How little, up to the very last, did that unfortunate monarch know of
+the terrible spirit of those enemies into whose hands he had fallen! He
+saw himself necessary to the tranquillisation and stable government of a
+nation still imbued with the love of monarchy, he therefore thought
+himself and the monarchy were safe; he knew not that he was contending
+with men who, when they rose to their high "heroic" mood, had a supreme
+contempt for all considerations touching mere human polity,--the mere
+peace and government of mankind. He trusted much to the sacredness of
+royalty, the majesty of the purple, the divinity of a King; he was
+delivered over to the power of enemies, whose glory it was to tread down
+the glories of the world; who, so far from finding any sacredness in his
+royalty, had classed him amongst all the wicked kings of the Old
+Testament, sentenced to be exterminated with the idolatry they fostered,
+and with whom the very audacity and fearful temerity of the deed, (if
+this at all affected them,) would add only to its merit. Unfortunate
+monarch! The tide of sympathy runs now against him, but we confess still
+to retain our compassion for the fallen prince,--our compassion, very
+little, it may be, of admiration. We see him contending against fearful
+odds, keeping up a high and kingly spirit to the last. So far he braved
+it nobly, and played a desperate game, if not wisely, yet with unshaken
+nerves. His character, without a doubt, bears, as Lingard writes, "the
+taint of duplicity." But it was a duplicity which, in his father's
+court, would have been chuckled over as good practice of state-craft. We
+are strangely fashioned--kings, and all of us--made up of fragments of
+virtue, ill-assorted parcels of morality. Charles, when he had given his
+parole of honour, would not escape from his imprisonment in the Isle of
+Wight, though the means of escape were offered to him. But the wily and
+diplomatic monarch thought he was entitling himself to the praise of all
+men of spirit and intelligence, when, by fallacious promises and
+protestations, he strove to play off one party of his enemies against
+the other. He was practising, to the best of his ability, all the
+traditionary maxims and manoeuvres of a subtle policy. Nor was it
+ability that he wanted. On an Italian soil, these Italian arts might
+have availed him. But what were the sleights and contrivances of a
+traditionary state-craft against the rude storm of tumultuous passions
+which had been conjured up around him! He was fencing with the
+whirlwind. Perhaps no prince, trained in a court, can be a match for the
+rude adversaries which revolutionary times raise up against him. What
+chance is there that he should ever learn the nature of his new and
+terrible enemy? You have taught him, according to all the laws of
+woodcraft, to chase the stag and the fox, and now you let loose upon him
+the wild beast of the forest! How was Charles to learn what manner of
+being was a Puritan, and how it struck its prey? His courtiers would
+have taught him to despise and ridicule--his bishops to look askance
+with solemn aversion,--but who was there to teach him to fear this
+Puritan?--to teach him that he must forthwith conciliate, if he could
+not crush?
+
+It is worth while to continue the narrative a little further. We adopt
+Mr Carlyle's words. "At London, matters are coming rapidly to a crisis.
+The resumed debate, 'shall the army remonstrance be taken into
+consideration?' does not come out affirmative; on the contrary, on
+Thursday the 31st, it comes out negative, by a majority of ninety. 'No,
+we will not take it into consideration.' 'No?' The army at Windsor
+thereupon spends again 'a day in prayer.' The army at Windsor has
+decided on the morrow, that it will march to London; marches, arrives
+accordingly, on Saturday, December 2d; quarters itself in Whitehall, in
+St James's, 'and other great vacant houses in the skirts of the city and
+villages about, no offence being given any where.' In the drama of
+modern history, one knows not any graver, more note-worthy scene;
+earnest as very death and judgment. They have decided to have justice,
+these men; to see God's justice done, and his judgments executed on this
+earth."
+
+Adjutant Allen and Mr Carlyle are both of the same mind,--take the same
+views of public matters, political and religious. But the Adjutant
+himself would open great eyes at the sentence which next follows:--
+
+"The abysses where the thunders and splendours are bred--the reader sees
+them again laid bare and black. Madness lying close to the wisdom which
+is brightest and highest;--and owls and godless men who hate the
+lightning and the light, and love the mephitic dusk and darkness, are no
+judges of the actions of heroes! Shedders of blood? Yes, blood is
+occasionally shed. The healing surgeon, the sacrificial priest, the
+august judge, pronouncer of God's oracles to man, these and the
+atrocious murderer are alike shedders of blood; and it is an owl's eye,
+that, except for the _dresses_ they wear, discerns no difference in
+these! Let us leave the owl to his hootings; let us get on with our
+chronology and swift course of events."
+
+By forcibly expelling more than one hundred of the members of
+Parliament, and thus converting a minority into a majority, these
+"sacrificial priests" contrived to accomplish their very righteous act.
+In the face of raving such as this, it would be absurd to enter
+seriously upon any consideration, moral or political, touching the
+King's death. We would rather that Mr Carlyle occupied the field alone.
+We saw him just now dealing with his "abysses," and his "lightning;" we
+quote his concluding comment on this event, which will present a
+specimen of his more facetious style of eloquence, and the singular
+_taste_ he is capable of displaying:--
+
+"This action of the English regicides did in effect strike a damp like
+death through the heart of _flunkeyism_ universally in this world.
+Whereof flunkeyism, cant, cloth-worship, or whatever ugly name it have,
+has gone about incurably sick ever since; and is now at length, in these
+generations, very rapidly dying. The like of which action will not be
+needed for a thousand years again. Needed, alas! not till a new genuine
+hero-worship has arisen, has perfected itself; and had time to
+degenerate into a flunkeyism and cloth-worship again! which I take to be
+a very long date indeed.
+
+"Thus ends the second civil war: in regicide, in a Commonwealth, and
+keepers of the liberties of England: In punishment of delinquents, in
+abolition of cobwebs;--if it be possible, in a government of Heroism
+and veracity; at lowest of anti-flunkeyism, anti-cant, and the
+_endeavour_ after heroism and veracity."
+
+Flunkeyism! Such is the title which our _many-sided_ man thinks fit to
+bestow on the loyalty of England! But serious indignation would be out
+of place. A buffoon expression has this advantage, it is unanswerable.
+Yet will we venture to say, that it is a losing game this which you are
+playing, Mr Carlyle, this defiance of all common sense and all good
+taste. There is a respectability other than that which, in the
+unwearying love of one poor jest, you delight to call "gig
+respectability," a respectability based on intelligence and not on
+"Long-Acre springs," whose disesteem it cannot be wise to provoke, nor
+very pleasant to endure.
+
+The Commonwealth is proclaimed by sound of trumpet. The king and the
+lords are cashiered and dismissed. A house of representatives and a
+council of state form the constitution of England. Cromwell is one of
+the council. But for the present the war in Ireland carries him away
+from the scene of politics.
+
+On this Irish campaign, Mr Carlyle breaks out, as may be supposed, in a
+strain of exultation. He always warms at blood and battle. His piety, or
+his poetry--not admirable whichever it may be--glows here to a red heat.
+We are as little disposed perhaps as himself, to stand "shrieking out"
+over the military severities of this campaign, but if we could bring
+ourselves to believe that Mr Carlyle is really serious in what he
+writes, we should say that the most impracticable maudlin of peace
+societies, or "Rousseau-sentimentalism," were wisdom itself compared to
+his own outrageous and fanatical strain. If the apologist of Cromwell
+will be content to rest his case on the plain ground open to all
+generals and captains on whom has devolved the task of subjecting a
+rebellious and insurrectionary country--on the plain ground that the
+object is to be more speedily effected, and with less bloodshed and
+misery to the inhabitants, by carrying on the war at the commencement
+with the utmost severity, (thus breaking down at once the spirit of
+insurrection,) than by prolonging the contest through an exercise of
+leniency and forbearance--we are not aware that any decisive answer can
+be given to him. It is an awful piece of surgery to contemplate--one may
+be excused, if one shudders both at it and the operator--but,
+nevertheless, it may have been the wisest course to pursue. As a general
+rule, every one will admit that--if war there must be--it is better that
+it should be short and violent, than long and indecisive; for there is
+nothing so mischievous, so destructive of the industry and moral
+character of a people, as a war which, so to speak, _domesticates_
+itself amongst them. Put aside "the saint" entirely,--let us see only
+the soldier,--and Cromwell's campaign in Ireland may present nothing
+more terrible than what elsewhere, and in the campaigns of other
+generals, we are accustomed to regard as the necessary evils of war;
+nothing more than what a Turenne, a Conde, or a Frederic of Prussia,
+might have applauded or practised. But this is precisely the last thing
+our editor would be disposed to do; any so common-place, and commonsense
+view of the matter, would have been utterly distasteful: he _does_ bring
+the saint very prominently upon the field, and we are to recognise in
+Cromwell--"an armed soldier, terrible as Death, relentless as Doom;
+_doing God's judgments on the enemies of God!_"
+
+"It is a phenomenon," he continues, "not of joyful nature; no, but of
+awful, to be looked at with pious terror and awe. Not a phenomenon which
+you are taught to recognise with bright smiles, and fall in love with at
+sight:--thou, art thou worthy to love such a thing; worthy to do other
+than hate it, and shriek over it? Darest thou wed the Heaven's
+lightning, then; and say to it, Godlike One? Is thy own life beautiful
+and terrible to thee; steeped in the eternal depths, in the eternal
+plendours?"--(Vol. ii. p. 53.)
+
+In the despatch which Cromwell addresses to the Speaker, Lenthall, after
+the storm of Tredah, otherwise Drogheda, we observe that the Puritan is
+as strong as ever, but that the Soldier and the great Captain speak out
+with increased boldness. Our sectarian farmer of St Ives, who brooded,
+by the dark waters of the Ouse, over the wickedness of surpliced
+prelacy, whose unemployed spirit sank at times into hypochondria, and
+was afflicted with "strange fancies about the town-cross," has been
+moving for some time in the very busiest scene the world could furnish
+him, and has become the great general of his age. The spirit of the "big
+wars" has entered, and grown up side by side with his Puritanism. The
+ardour of the battle fully possesses him; he is the conqueror always in
+the tremendous charge he makes at the head of his Ironsides; and he lets
+appear, notwithstanding his self-denying style, a consciousness and a
+triumph in his own skill as a tactician. He is still the genuine
+Puritan; but the arduous life, the administrative duties of a soldier
+and a general, have also been busy in modifying his character, and
+calling forth and exercising that self-confidence, which he will by and
+by recognise as "faith" and the leading of Providence, when he assumes
+the place of dictator of his country.
+
+From one passage in this despatch it would appear that his severity at
+the storm of Drogheda was not wholly the result of predetermined policy,
+but rose, in part, from the natural passion which the sword, and the
+desperate struggle for life, call forth.
+
+"Divers of the enemy retreated into the Mill-Mount, a place very strong
+and of difficult access. The Governor, Sir Arthur Ashton, and divers
+considerable officers being there, our men getting up to them, were
+ordered by me to put them all to the sword. _And, indeed, being in the
+heat of action_, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the
+town; and, I think, that night they put to the sword about 2000 men:
+divers of the officers and soldiers being fled over the bridge into the
+other part of the town, where about 100 of them possessed St Peter's
+church steeple, some the west gate, and others a strong round tower next
+the gate called St Sunday's. These being summoned to yield to mercy,
+refused; whereupon I ordered the steeple of St Peter's church to be
+fired, when one of them was heard to say in the midst of the flames,
+'God damn me, God confound me! I burn, I burn.'"
+
+In the same despatch there is rather a noticeable passage, which
+illustrates the manner in which the Puritan general was accustomed to
+regard the Roman Catholics and their worship. There may be some who have
+been so far deceived by the frequent use of the terms "religious
+toleration" in conjunction with the name of Cromwell, as to attribute to
+him a portion of that liberal spirit which is the greatest boast of
+cultivated minds in the present century. His religious toleration
+extended only to the small circle of sects whose Christian doctrine,
+whose preaching, and whose forms of worship were almost identical; it
+was just the same toleration that a Baptist dissenter of our day may be
+supposed to extend towards an Independent dissenter, or a member of the
+Countess of Huntingdon's connexion. The Independents differed from the
+Presbyterians in no one definite article of creed, with this
+exception--that they set no value upon _ordination_, and violently
+objected to the restraining any good man from public preaching, or any
+of the ministrations of a pastor, because he wanted this authorisation
+of a visible church. For this point of "religious freedom" (an
+expression which in their mouths has little other than this narrow
+signification) they had to contend with the Presbyterians. The sect
+which has to resist oppression, or the restraints of power, uses, of
+course, the language of toleration. The Independents used it in their
+controversy with the Presbyterians, just as the latter had employed it
+in their controversy with Episcopacy. But Independents and Presbyterians
+were alike intolerant of the Episcopalian or the Roman Catholic. All
+sects of that age preached toleration when a powerful adversary was to
+be deprecated--preached it then, and then only. The Independents coming
+last upon the field, preached it last; but they have no title beyond
+others to the spirit of toleration. Cromwell put down the mass as he
+would put down a rebellion--as openly, as decidedly, as rigorously.
+
+"It is remarkable," continued the despatch, "that these people, at the
+first, set up the mass in some places of the town that had been
+monasteries; but afterwards grew so insolent, that, the last Lord's day
+before the storm, the Protestants were thrust out of the great church
+called St Peter's, and they had public mass there; and in this very
+place near 1000 of them (_the Catholics--a clear judgment_) were put to
+the sword, fleeing thither for safety. I believe all their friars were
+knocked on the head promiscuously but two; the one of which was Father
+Peter Taaff, brother to the Lord Taaff, whom the soldiers took the next
+day and made an end of. The other was taken in the Round Tower, under
+the repute, (_the disguise_) of a lieutenant, and when he understood
+that the officers in that tower had no quarter, he confessed he was a
+friar; but that did not save him."
+
+Ireland was no sooner subjected by this unflinching and terrific
+severity, than the presence of the great general of the Commonwealth was
+needed in Scotland. The Scots had no predilection for a republic, no
+desire whatever for it; they were bent solely on their covenant, their
+covenant and a Stuart king. It was a combination very difficult to
+achieve. Nevertheless they took their oath to both, and marched into
+England to establish them both over the United Kingdom. Here was
+sufficient enthusiasm at all events; sufficient, and of the proper kind,
+one would think, to earn the sympathies of our editor. And he does look
+upon the Scots at this time as an "heroic nation." But, unfortunately,
+it is precisely the heroic nation that his own great hero is about to
+combat and subdue. He is compelled, therefore, upon his part, as the
+faithful bard and minstrel of his chosen champion, to give them
+up--them, and their covenant, and Stuart king--to merciless sarcasm.
+Indeed, he tells us, that the great, the sole fault of the Scots, was
+precisely this--that they did not produce a Cromwell. "With Oliver born
+Scotch," he says or sings, "one sees not but the whole world might have
+become Puritan!"
+
+However, he launches his Puritan hero against the godly and heroic
+nation with full sound of trumpet, not unmixed with a certain vague and
+solemn voice of prophecy.
+
+"In such spirit goes Oliver to the wars--a god-intoxicated man, as
+Novalis elsewhere phrases it. I have asked myself, if any where in
+modern European history, or even in ancient Asiatic, there was found a
+man practising this mean world's affairs with a heart more filled by the
+idea of the Highest? Bathed in the eternal splendours--it is so he walks
+our dim earth: this man is one of few. He is projected with a terrible
+force out of the Eternities, and in the Times and their arenas there is
+nothing that can withstand him. It is great; to us it is tragic; a thing
+that should strike us dumb! My brave one, thy noble prophecy _is_
+divine; older than Hebrew David; old as the origin of man; and shall,
+though in wider ways than those supposed, be fulfilled."--(P. 172.)
+
+We feel no disposition to follow Cromwell to the Scottish wars, though
+"bathed in the eternal splendours." We hardly know of any thing in
+history to our taste more odious than this war between the Scottish
+Covenanter and the English Puritan; the one praying clamorously for
+victory against "a blaspheming general and a sectarian army;" the other
+animating his battle with a psalm, and charging with a "Lord, arise! and
+let thy enemies be scattered," or some such exclamation. Both generals,
+in the intervals of actual war, sermonise each other, and with much the
+same spirit that they fight. Their diplomacy is a tangled preachment,
+and texts are their war-cries. Meanwhile, both are fighting for the
+gospel of Christ! only one will have it _with_, the other _without_ the
+covenant! Such "eternal splendours" are not inviting to us. We will step
+on at once to the battle of Worcester, which concluded both the Scottish
+war, and all hopes for the present of the royalist party.
+
+This last of his battles and his victories dismisses the great Puritan
+from the wars. It is a striking despatch he writes from the field of
+Worcester. He is still the unmitigated Puritan; he still preaches to
+Speaker Lenthall, but he preaches somewhat more dogmatically. There is
+an air of authority in the sermon. We all know that godly exhortation
+may be made to express almost every shade of human passion; as what son
+and what wife has not felt who has lived under the dominion and
+discourse of one of these "rulers in Israel." The Parliament felt, no
+doubt, the difference between the sermons of their general and those of
+their chaplain.
+
+Cromwell and the army return to London. It is now that the Commonwealth
+is to be really put upon its trial. Hitherto the army, that had made and
+could unmake it, had been occupied first in Ireland, then in Scotland;
+and the minds of people at home had been equally occupied in watching
+its achievements. The Commonwealth has lived upon the expectations of
+men. It has been itself an expectation. It is now to be perfected, its
+organisation to be completed, its authority established.
+
+But Cromwell was not a Washington. Not only did he want that serene and
+steady virtue which counselled the champion of American independence to
+retire into the ranks of the constitution--commander in the field,
+private soldier in the city--not only did he fail in this civic virtue,
+and found it hard to resign the sway and authority he had so long
+exercised; but the inestimable advantages of a constitutional government
+his mind had not been cultivated to appreciate. His thoughts had
+hitherto taken another direction. His speculative habits theology had
+moulded; his active habits had been formed in the camp. He felt that he
+could administer the government better than any of the men around him:
+we will give him credit, too, for the full intention to administer it
+conscientiously, and for the good of the nation; but for those enlarged
+views of the more enlightened patriot, who is solicitous to provide not
+alone for the present necessities, but for the future long life of a
+people--he had them not. He grew afterwards into the statesman, as he
+had grown into the soldier; but at this time the Puritan general had
+very little respect for human institutions.
+
+We are far from asserting, that even with the assistance of Cromwell a
+republic could have been established in England. But he lent no helping
+hand; his great abilities, his fervent zeal, were never employed in this
+service. He kept aloof--aloof with the army. He gathered himself to his
+full height, standing amidst the ruins of the civil war: all men might
+see that he alone kept his footing there. When the unhappy Parliament,
+struggling with its cruel embarrassments, not knowing how to dissolve
+itself with safety, had brought down on it the impatience, the distrust,
+the contempt of men--when he had allowed its members to reap the full
+harvest of a people's jealousies and suspicions--when at length they
+were on the point of extricating themselves by a bill determining the
+mode of electing a successor--_then_ he interfered, and dissolved them!
+
+A question may be raised, how far Cromwell had the power, if such had
+been his wish, to take over the army to the side of the Parliament, to
+lead it into due allegiance to the Commonwealth. The officers of the
+army and the members of the Parliament formed the two rival powers in
+the kingdom. Cromwell, it may be said, _could_ not have united them,
+could only make his choice between them. It would have been only a
+fraction of the army that he could have carried over with him. The
+division between the council of officers and the Parliament was too
+wide, the alienation too confirmed and inveterate, to have been healed
+by one man, though it was the Lord General himself. Thus, it may be said
+that Cromwell, in the part he acted against the Long Parliament, was
+thrust forward by a revolutionary movement, which, according to the law
+of such movements, must either have carried him forward in the van, or
+left him deserted or down-trodden in the rear.
+
+This would be no flattering excuse. But whatever truth there may be in
+this view of the case, Cromwell never manifested any intention or any
+desire to quit the cause of the army for that of the Parliament. He was
+heart and soul with the army; it was there his power lay; it was there
+he found the spirits he most sympathised with. He walked at the head of
+the army here as in the war. It was alone that he entered the House of
+Parliament--alone "in his gray stockings and black coat," with no staff
+of officers about him, no military parade, only a few of his Ironsides
+in the lobby. Though aware he should have the support of his officers,
+there is no proof that he had consulted them. The daring deed was _his_.
+And it is one of the most daring deeds on record. The execution of the
+King--in that day when kings were something more in the imagination of
+men than they are now--was indeed an audacious act. But it was shared
+with others. This dissolution of the Parliament, and assumption of the
+dictatorship--this facing alone all his old compeers, met in due
+legislative dignity, and bidding them one and all depart--strikes us as
+the bolder deed.
+
+The scene has been often described, but nowhere so well, or so fully, as
+by Mr Carlyle. We cannot resist the pleasure of quoting his spirited
+account of this notable transaction.
+
+     "The Parliament sitting as usual, and being in debate upon the
+     bill, which it was thought would have been passed that day,
+     'the Lord General Cromwell came into the House, clad in plain
+     black clothes and gray worsted stockings, and sat down, as he
+     used to do, in an ordinary place.' For some time he listens to
+     this interesting debate on the bill, beckoning once to
+     Harrison, who came over to him, and answered dubitatingly.
+     Whereupon the Lord General sat still for about a quarter of an
+     hour longer. But now the question being to be put, That this
+     bill do now pass, he beckons again to Harrison, says, 'This is
+     the time; I must do it!' and so 'rose up, put off his hat, and
+     spake. At the first, and for a good while, he spake to the
+     commendation of the Parliament, for their pains and care of the
+     public good; but afterwards he changed his style, told them of
+     their injustice, delays of justice, self-interest, and other
+     faults,' rising higher and higher into a very aggravated style
+     indeed. An honourable member, Sir Peter Wentworth by name, not
+     known to my readers, and by me better known than trusted, rises
+     to order, as we phrase it; says, 'It is a strange language
+     this; unusual within the walls of Parliament this! And from a
+     trusted servant, too; and one whom we have so highly honoured;
+     and one--' Come, come,' exclaims my Lord General, in a very
+     high key, 'we have had enough of this'--and in fact my Lord
+     General, now blazing all up into clear conflagration, exclaims,
+     'I will put an end to your prating,' and steps forth into the
+     floor of the House, and 'clapping on his hat,' and occasionally
+     'stamping the floor with his feet,' begins a discourse which no
+     man can report! He says--Heavens! he is heard saying: 'It is
+     not fit that you should sit here any longer!' You have sat too
+     long here for any good you have been doing lately, 'You shall
+     now give place to better men! Call them in!' adds he, briefly,
+     to Harrison, in way of command; and some 'twenty or thirty'
+     grim musketeers enter, with bullets in their snaphances; grimly
+     prompt for orders; and stand in some attitude of carry arms
+     there. Veteran men: men of might and men of war, their faces
+     are as the faces of lions, and their feet are swift as the roes
+     upon the mountains; not beautiful to honourable gentlemen at
+     this moment!
+
+     "'You call yourselves a Parliament,' continues my Lord General,
+     in clear blaze of conflagration. 'You are no Parliament! Some
+     of you are drunkards,' and his eye flashes on poor Mr Chalmer,
+     an official man of some value, addicted to the bottle; 'some of
+     you are'--and he glares into Henry Martin and the poor Sir
+     Peter, who rose to order, lewd livers both--'living in open
+     contempt of God's, commandments. Following your own greedy
+     appetites, and the devil's commandments. Corrupt, unjust
+     persons,' and here I think he glanced 'at Sir Bulstrode
+     Whitlocke, one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal, giving
+     him and others very sharp language, though he named them not.'
+     'Corrupt, unjust persons, scandalous to the profession of the
+     Gospel:' how can you be a Parliament for God's people? Depart,
+     I say, and let us have done with you. In the name, of God--go!
+
+     "The House is of course all on its feet--uncertain, almost,
+     whether not on its head: such a scene as was never seen before
+     in any House of Commons. History reports with a shudder that my
+     Lord General, lifting the sacred mace itself, said, 'What shall
+     we do with this bauble? Take it away!'--and gave it to a
+     musketeer. And now--'Fetch him down!' says he to Harrison,
+     flashing on the Speaker. Speaker Lenthall, more an ancient
+     Roman than any thing else, declares, He will not come till
+     forced. 'Sir,' said Harrison, 'I will lend you a hand;' on
+     which Speaker Lenthall came down, and gloomily vanished. They
+     all vanished; flooding gloomily, clamorously out, to their
+     ulterior businesses, and respective places of abode: the Long
+     Parliament is dissolved! 'It's you that have forced me to
+     this,' exclaims my Lord General, 'I have sought the Lord night
+     and day, that He would rather slay me than put me upon the
+     doing of this work.' 'At their going out, some say the Lord
+     General said to young Sir Harry Vane, calling him by his name,
+     That _he_ might have prevented this; but that he was a juggler,
+     and had not common honesty.' 'O Sir Harry Vane,' thou, with thy
+     subtle casuistries and abstruse hair-splittings, thou art other
+     than a good one, I think! 'The Lord deliver me from thee, Sir
+     Harry Vane!' 'All being gone out, the door of the House was
+     locked, and the key, with the mace, as I heard, was carried
+     away by Colonel Otley,' and it is all over, and the unspeakable
+     catastrophe has come, and remains."--(Vol. ii. p. 361.)
+
+The usurpation of Cromwell is, we believe, generally considered as the
+most fortunate event which, under the peculiar circumstances of the
+country, could have occurred. The people, it is said; were not prepared
+for a republic. The attempt, therefore, to establish one, would have
+been attended by incessant tumults; its short and precarious existence
+would have been supported by the scaffold and the prison. It would have
+terminated indeed, as did the Protectorate, in a Restoration, but the
+interval between the death of Charles I. and the accession of his son,
+would have been passed in a very different manner. Under the
+Protectorate the country rallied its strength, put forth its naval
+power, obtained peace at home, and respect abroad. Under a republic, it
+would have probably spent its force, and demoralised itself, in
+intestine strife and by a succession of revolutionary movements.
+
+But if this view be quite correct, it will not justify Cromwell. It is
+one thing to be satisfied with the course of events, quite another with
+the conduct of the several agents in them. Cromwell, in the position in
+which he stood, as an honest man and a patriot, should have done his
+best for the establishment of the Commonwealth; and this he did not. We
+are far, as we have said, from venturing to give a decisive opinion on
+the probability (with the united efforts of the victorious general and
+the Parliament) of forming a republic. But we are not disposed to think
+that the cause was hopeless. Had the Parliament been allowed to recruit
+its numbers without dissolving itself--the measure which it constantly
+desired, and which Cromwell would not hear of, though, without a doubt,
+it was the very line of conduct which his own practical sagacity would
+have led him to, if his heart had been in the business--the minds of men
+would have had time to settle and reflect, and a mode of government,
+which had already existed for some years, might have been adopted by the
+general consent.
+
+_We_ look upon the Restoration very calmly, very satisfactorily, for
+whom a second revolution has placed another dynasty upon the throne,
+governing upon principles quite different from those which were rooted
+in the Stuarts. We see the Restoration, with the Revolution of 1688 at
+its back, and almost consider them as one event. But a most loyal and
+contented subject of Queen Victoria, would have been a Commonwealthsman
+in those days. How could it then have been foreseen that all the power,
+and privilege, and splendour of royalty, should exist only to _protect_
+the law, to secure the equal rights of all--that monarchy, retaining a
+traditionary awe and majesty derived from remote times, should remain
+amongst us to supply to a representative government that powerful,
+constant, and impartial executive which, from the mere elements of a
+republic, it is so difficult to extract? Who could have imagined that a
+popular legislature, and the supremacy of the law, could have been so
+fortunately combined and secured under the shadow of the monarchy?
+Enlightened minds at that time could not have looked calmly towards a
+Restoration; they probably thought, or would have been led to think,
+that, in the position they then were, it was better to take the
+constitution of Holland, than the government of France, for their model.
+
+But the multitude--with what enthusiasm they welcomed the restoration of
+the Stuarts! Very true. But the Protectorate was no antagonist to
+monarchy. Republican pride was never called forth to contend in the
+public mind against the feeling of loyalty, and an attachment to kings.
+The Protectorate was itself a monarchy without its splendour, or the
+prestige of hereditary greatness. It was a monarchy under the Geneva
+gown. Was it likely that the populace would accept of this in lieu of
+the crowned and jewelled royalty which was wont to fill its imagination?
+
+However, the experiment--fortunately for us, as the result has turned
+out--was never destined to be made. Cromwell dissolved the Long
+Parliament. He now stood alone, he and the army, the sole power in the
+state. His first measure, that of sending a summons in his own name, to
+persons of his own choice, and thus, without any popular election
+whatever, assembling what is called the Little Parliament, or Barebones
+Parliament, shows a singular audacity, and proves how little trammelled
+he was himself by traditionary or constitutional maxims. He who would
+not allow the Long Parliament to recruit its numbers, and thus escape
+the perils of a free election of an altogether new assembly, extricates
+himself from the same embarrassment by electing the whole Parliament
+himself. Some historians have represented this measure as having for its
+very object to create additional confusion, and render himself, and his
+own dictatorial power, more necessary to the state. It has not appeared
+to us in this light. We see in it a bold but rude assay at government.
+In this off-hand manner of constituting a Parliament, we detect the
+mingled daring of the Puritan and the Soldier. In neither of these
+characters was he likely to have much respect for legal maxims, or rules
+of merely human contrivance. Cromwell was educating himself for the
+Statesman: at this juncture it is the Puritan General that we have
+before us.
+
+The Little Parliament having blundered on till it had got itself
+entangled in the Mosaic dispensation, resigned its power into the hands
+of him who had bestowed it. Thereupon a new _Instrument of Government_
+is framed, with the advice of the council of officers, appointing
+Cromwell Protector, and providing for the election of a Parliament.
+
+This Parliament being elected, falls, of course, on the discussion of
+this very Instrument of government. Henceforth Cromwell's great
+difficulty is the management of his Parliaments. The speeches he
+delivered to them at various times, and which occupy the third volume of
+the work before us, are of high historical interest. They are in every
+respect superior to his letters. Neither will their perusal be found to
+be of that arduous and painful nature which, from the reputation they
+have had, most persons will be disposed to expect. The _sermon_ may
+weary, but the _speech_ is always fraught with meaning; and the mixture
+of sermon and speech together, portray the man with singular
+distinctness. We see the Puritan divine, the Puritan soldier, becoming
+the Puritan statesman. His originally powerful mind is excited to fresh
+exertion by his onerous and exalted position. But he is still constant
+to himself. Very interesting is the exhibition presented to us of this
+powerful intellect, breaking out in flashes of strong sense, and
+relapsing again into the puerilities of the sect. But as it falls upon
+the strong sense to _act_, and on the puerilities only to _preach_, the
+man comes out, upon the whole, as a great and able governor.
+
+The reputation which Oliver's speeches have borne, as being involved,
+spiritless, tortuous, and even purposely confused, has resulted, we
+think, from this--that an opinion of the whole has been formed from an
+examination of a few, and chiefly of those which were delivered on the
+occasion of his refusing the offered title of king. His conduct on this
+occasion, it would be necessary for an historian particularly to
+investigate, and in the discharge of this duty he would have to peruse a
+series of discourses undoubtedly of a very bewildering character. They
+are the only speeches of Cromwell of which it can be said that their
+meaning is not clearly, and even forcibly expressed. And in this case it
+is quite evident, that he had no distinct meaning to express; he had no
+definite answer to give the Parliament who were petitioning him to take
+the title of king. He was anxious to gain time--he was talking _against
+time_--an art which we moderns only have thoroughly mastered. How could
+Cromwell, who was no great rhetorician, be otherwise than palpably
+confused, and dubious and intricate? Nothing can be clearer than that he
+himself leant towards the opinion of the Parliament, that it would be
+good policy to adopt the royal title. It was so connected with the old
+attachments and associations of Englishmen, it had so long given force
+to the language of the law, its claims were so much better known, its
+prerogatives so much better understood than those of the new title of
+Protector, that the resumption of it must have appeared very advisable.
+But the army had been all along fighting against _the King_. Whilst to
+the lawyer and the citizen the title was still the most honourable and
+ever to be venerated, to the soldier of the Commonwealth it had become a
+term of reproach, of execration, of unsparing hostility. Oliver Cromwell
+might well hesitate before assuming a title which might forfeit for him
+the allegiance of a great portion of the army. He deferred his answer,
+to have an opportunity for estimating the nature and amount of the
+resistance he might expect from that quarter; and he came to the
+conclusion, that the risk of unsettling the affections of the army was
+not to be incurred for either any personal gratification to himself
+(which we take to have not weighed much with him) in assuming the title
+of king, or for the advantages which might accrue from it in the
+ultimate settlement of the nation. His addresses, therefore, to the
+Parliament on this occasion not being definite answers to the
+Parliament, nor intended to be such, but mere postponements of his
+answer, were necessarily distinguished by indecision, uncertainty, and
+all sorts of obscurities. But, these excepted, his speeches, however
+deficient in what pertains to the _art of composition_, in terseness, or
+method, or elegance of phrase, are never wanting in the great
+essentials--the expression of his meaning in a very earnest and forcible
+manner. The mixture of sermon and speech, we allow, is not inviting; but
+the sermon is just as clear, perhaps, as any which the chaplain of the
+House would have preached to them, and it must be remembered, that to
+explain _his_ meaning, _his_ political sentiments, the sermon was as
+necessary as the speech.
+
+By the new instrument of government, the Protector, with his council,
+was authorised, in the interval before the meeting of Parliament, to
+issue such ordinances as might be deemed necessary. This interval our
+Puritan governor very consistently employed, first of all, in
+establishing a gospel ministry throughout the nation. Thirty-eight
+chosen men, "the acknowledged flower of English Puritanism," were
+nominated a Supreme Commission, for the trial of public preachers. Any
+person holding a church-living, or pretending to the tithes or
+clergy-dues, was to be tried and approved of by these men. "A very
+republican arrangement," says Mr Carlyle, "such as could be made on the
+sudden, but was found in practice to work well."
+
+This and other ordinances having been issued, his first Parliament
+meets. It cannot be said that our Puritan Protector does not rise to the
+full level of his position. One might describe him as something of a
+propagandist, disposed to teach his doctrine of _the rights of
+Christian men_ to the world at large. It is thus he opens his
+address:--"GENTLEMEN, You are met here on the greatest occasion that, I
+believe, England ever saw; having upon your shoulders the interests of
+three great nations, with the territories belonging to them: and truly I
+believe I may say it without any hyperbole, you have upon your shoulders
+_the interest of all the Christian people in the world_. And the
+expectation is, that I should let you know, as far as I have cognisance
+of it, the occasion of your assembling together at this time."
+
+But this Parliament fell upon the discussion, as we have said, of the
+very instrument of government under which they had been called together.
+Mr Carlyle is as impatient as was Oliver himself at this proceeding of
+the "Talking apparatus." But how could it be otherwise? Every thing
+that had taken place since the dissolution of the Long Parliament was
+done by mere arbitrary authority. The present Parliament, however called
+together, must consider itself the only legitimate, the only
+constitutional power: it _must_ look into this instrument of government.
+But if it was impossible not to commence the discussion, it was equally
+impossible ever to conclude it. We all know to what length a debate will
+run upon a constitutional question; and here there was not one such
+question, but a whole constitution to be discussed. In vain they debated
+"from eight in the morning to eight at night, with an hour for
+refreshment about noon:" there was no probability of their ever coming
+to a conclusion.
+
+This would never do. Oliver shuts up the Parliament-house, stations his
+musketeers at the door, calls the members to him, presents them with a
+parchment, "a little thing," to sign, acknowledging his authority, and
+tells them he will open the door of the House to such only as shall put
+their names to it. We will quote some parts of the speech he made to
+them on this occasion, and our readers shall judge whether such a
+speech, delivered by the living man Cromwell, was likely to fail in
+effect, whether it was deficient in meaning or in energy. We shall omit
+the parenthetical comments of the editor, because, however these may
+amuse and relieve the reader who is making his way through the whole
+work, and who becomes familiarised with their style, they would only
+confuse and distract the attention in a brief extract. The single words
+or phrases which he has introduced, merely to make the sense clear, are
+retained whenever they are really necessary for this purpose, and
+without the inverted commas by which they are properly distinguished in
+the text. We will premise, that the protestations which Cromwell here
+makes, that he did not seek the government, but was earnestly petitioned
+to undertake it, may well, in part, be true. When he had once dissolved
+the Long Parliament, it was no longer a matter of choice for himself or
+others whether he would take the reins of government. To whom could he
+commit them? From that time, the government rested upon his shoulders.
+If he had manifested a wish to withdraw from the burden he had thus
+brought down upon himself, there is no doubt but that he would have been
+earnestly petitioned to remain at his post. The greatest enemy of
+Cromwell, if he had been a lover of his country, would have joined in
+such a petition; would have besought him to remain at the helm, now he
+had thrown all other steersmen overboard. No; he must not quit it now.
+He is there for the rest of his life, to do battle with the waves, and
+navigate amongst rocks and quicksands as best he may.
+
+Let us hear his own statement and defence of the manner in which he
+became advanced and "captive" to his high and perilous place.
+
+     "GENTLEMEN,--It is not long since I met you in this place, upon
+     an occasion which gave me much more content and comfort than
+     this doth. That which I have now to say to you will need no
+     preamble to let me into my discourse; for the occasion of this
+     meeting is plain enough. I could have wished, with all my
+     heart, there had been no cause for it.
+
+     "At our former meeting I did acquaint you what was the first
+     rise of this government which hath called you hither, and by
+     the authority of which you have come hither. Among other things
+     which I then told you of, I said you were a Free Parliament;
+     and so you are, whilst you own the government and authority
+     which called you hither. But certainly that word (Free
+     Parliament) implied a reciprocity, or it implied nothing at
+     all. Indeed, there was a reciprocity implied and expressed; and
+     I think your actions and carriages ought to be suitable. But I
+     see it will be necessary for me now a little to magnify my
+     office, which I have not been apt to do. I have been of this
+     mind, I have been always of this mind, since I first entered
+     upon my office. If God will not bear it up, let it sink!--but
+     if a duty be incumbent upon me, to bear my testimony to it,
+     (which in modesty I have hitherto forborne,) I am, in some
+     measure, necessitated thereunto: and therefore that will be the
+     prologue to my discourse.
+
+     "I called not myself to this place. I say again, I called not
+     myself to this place! Of that God is witness: and I have many
+     witnesses who, I do believe, could lay down their lives bearing
+     witness to the truth of that, namely, that I called not myself
+     to this place! And, being in it, I bear not witness to myself
+     or my office; but God and the people of these nations have also
+     borne testimony to it. If my calling be from God, and my
+     testimony from the people, _God and the people shall take it
+     from me, else I will not part with it!_ I should be false to
+     the trust that God hath placed in me, and to the interest of
+     the people of these nations if I did.
+
+     "I was by birth a gentleman; living neither in any considerable
+     height, nor yet in obscurity. I have been called to several
+     employments in the nation--to serve in Parliament and others;
+     and, not to be over-tedious, I did endeavour to discharge the
+     duty of an honest man, in those services, to God and his
+     people's interest, and to the Commonwealth; having, when time
+     was, a competent acceptation in the hearts of men, and some
+     evidences thereof. I resolve not to recite the times, and
+     occasions, and opportunities, which have been appointed me by
+     God to serve him in; nor the presence and blessing of God,
+     therein bearing testimony to me.
+
+     "Having had some occasion to see, together with my brethren and
+     countrymen, a happy period put to our sharp wars and contests
+     with the then common enemy, I hoped, in a private capacity, to
+     have reaped the fruit and benefit, together with my brethren,
+     of our hard labours and hazards: the enjoyment, to wit, of
+     peace and liberty, and the privileges of a Christian and a man,
+     in some equality with others, according as it should please the
+     Lord to dispense unto me. And when I say God had put an end to
+     our wars, or at least brought them to a very hopeful issue,
+     very near an end,--after Worcester fight,--I came up to London
+     to pay my service and duty to the Parliament which then sat,
+     hoping that all minds would have been disposed to answer what
+     seemed to be the mind of God, namely, to give peace and rest to
+     his people, and especially to those who had bled more than
+     others in the carrying on of the military affairs,--I was much
+     disappointed of my expectation. For the issue did not prove so.
+     _Whatever may be boasted or misrepresented, it was not so, not
+     so!_
+
+     "I can say in the simplicity of my soul, I love not, I love
+     not,--I declined it in my former speech,--I say, I love not to
+     rake into sores, or to discover nakednesses! The thing I drive
+     at is this: I say to you, I hoped to have had leave to retire
+     to a private life. I begged to be dismissed of my charge; I
+     begged it again and again; and God be judge between me and all
+     men if I lie in this matter! That I lie not in matter of fact,
+     is known to very many; but whether I tell a lie in my heart, as
+     labouring to represent to you what was not upon my heart, I say
+     the Lord be judge. Let uncharitable men, who measure others by
+     themselves, judge as they please. As to the matter of fact, I
+     say it is true. As to the ingenuity and integrity of my heart
+     in that desire--I do appeal, as before, upon the truth of that
+     also. But I could not obtain what my soul longed for. And the
+     plain truth is, I did afterwards apprehend some more of
+     opinion, (such the differences of their judgment from mine,)
+     that it could not well be.
+
+     "I confess I am in some strait to say what I could say, and
+     what is true, of what then followed. I pressed the Parliament,
+     as a member, to period themselves; once and again, and again,
+     and ten, nay twenty times over. I told them, for I knew it
+     better than any one man in the parliament could know it,
+     because of my manner of life, which had led me every where up
+     and down the nation, thereby giving me to see and know the
+     temper and spirits of all men, and of the best of men--that the
+     nation loathed their sitting. I knew it. And so far as I could
+     discern, when they _were_ dissolved, _there was not so much as
+     the barking of a dog_, or any general or visible repining at
+     it.
+
+     "And that there was high cause for their dissolution, is most
+     evident: not only in regard there was a just fear of that
+     parliament's perpetuating themselves, but because it actually
+     was their design. Had not their heels been trod upon by
+     importunities from abroad, even to threats, I believe there
+     never would have been any thoughts of rising, or of going out
+     of that room, to the world's end. I myself was sounded, and by
+     no mean persons tempted; and proposals were made me to that
+     very end: that the parliament might be thus perpetuated; that
+     the vacant places might be supplied by new elections, and so
+     continue from generation to generation."
+
+He proceeds to object to the measure which the Parliament was really
+about to pass, that it would have established an uninterrupted
+succession of Parliaments, that there would have been "a legislative
+power always sitting," which would thereby have encroached upon the
+executive power. The speech then enlarges on the general assent of the
+people, of the army, of the judges, of the civic powers, to the
+instrument of government, to the Protectorate, and on the implied
+assent which they themselves had given by accepting their commissions
+under it.
+
+     "And this being so, though I told you in my last speech that
+     you were a free Parliament, yet I thought it was understood
+     withal that I was the Protector, and the authority that called
+     you! That I was in possession of the government by a good right
+     from God and man. And I believe, that if the learnedest men in
+     this nation were called to show a precedent equally clear of a
+     government so many ways approved of, they would not in all
+     their search find it. And if the fact be so, why should we
+     sport with it? With a business so serious!... For you to disown
+     or not to own it; for you to act with parliamentary authority
+     especially, in the disowning of it, contrary to the very
+     fundamental things, yea against the very root itself of this
+     establishment, to sit and not own the authority by which you
+     sit--is that which I believe astonisheth more men than myself;
+     and doth as dangerously disappoint and discompose the nation,
+     as any thing that could have been invented by the greatest
+     enemy to our peace and welfare."
+
+After drawing the distinction between fundamentals, which may not be
+shaken, and circumstantials, which it is in the power of Parliament to
+alter and modify, he continues:--
+
+     "I would it had not been needful for me to call you hither to
+     expostulate these things with you, and in such a manner as
+     this! But necessity hath no law. Feigned necessities, imaginary
+     necessities, are the greatest cozenage which man can put upon
+     the providence of God, and make pretences to break known rules
+     by. But it is as legal, as carnal, and as stupid to think that
+     there are _no_ necessities which are manifest and real, because
+     necessities may be abused or feigned. I have to say, the wilful
+     throwing away of this government, such as it is, so owned by
+     God, so approved by men, so witnessed to, as was mentioned
+     above, were a thing which--and in reference to the good of
+     these nations and of posterity--_I can sooner be willing to be
+     rolled into my grave and buried with infamy, than I can give my
+     consent unto!_
+
+     "You have been called hither to save a nation--nations. You had
+     the best people, indeed, of the Christian world put into your
+     trust, when you came hither. You had the affairs of these
+     nations delivered over to you in peace and quiet; you were, and
+     we all are, put into an undisturbed possession, nobody making
+     title to us: Through the blessing of God, our enemies were
+     hopeless and scattered. We had peace at home; peace with almost
+     all our neighbours round about. To have our peace and interest,
+     whereof those were our hopes the other day, thus shaken, and
+     put under such a confusion; and ourselves rendered hereby
+     almost the scorn and contempt of those strangers who are
+     amongst us to negotiate their masters' affairs!... Who shall
+     answer for these things to God or to men? To men, to the people
+     who sent you hither? who looked for refreshment from you; who
+     looked for nothing but peace and quietness, and rest and
+     settlement? When we come to give an account to them, we shall
+     have it to say, 'Oh, we quarrelled for the _Liberty of
+     England_; we contested, and went to confusion for
+     that!--_Wherein, I pray you, for the Liberty of England?_ I
+     appeal to the Lord, that the desires and endeavours we have
+     had--nay, the things will speak for themselves,--the liberty of
+     England, the liberty of the people, the avoiding of tyrannous
+     impositions either upon men as men, or Christians as
+     Christians,--is made so safe by this act of settlement, that it
+     will speak for itself."
+
+The Protector then tells them that, "seeing the authority which
+called them is so little valued and so much slighted, he had
+caused a stop to be put to their entrance into the Parliament-house,"
+until a certain "somewhat," which would be found "in the lobby
+without the Parliament-door"--an adhesion to the government in its
+fundamentals--should be signed.
+
+This extract, as will be readily supposed, would lead to a far too
+favourable opinion of Cromwell's oratory, if understood as a specimen of
+his usual manner of speaking; but our readers will probably confess,
+that they did not expect that the speeches of Cromwell would have
+yielded such an extract.
+
+Oliver has, it will be observed, a singularly modest way of speaking of
+his political remedies and projects. In referring, on a later occasion,
+to his major-generals, he says, "Truly when that insurrection was, we
+did find out a _little poor invention_, which I hear has been much
+regretted. I say there was _a little thing_ invented, which was the
+erecting of your major-generals, to have a little inspection upon the
+people thus divided, thus discontented, thus dissatisfied." On the
+present occasion, the "somewhat which was to be found at the lobby of
+the Parliament-door," was, after a little demur, accepted and signed by
+all but a certain number of declared republicans. The parliament
+afterwards fell from the discussion of a whole constitution, to debates
+apparently as warm, and as endless, upon poor Biddle the Quaker, and
+other kindred subjects. Thus their allotted session of five months
+passed; at the end of which time Cromwell dissolved them.
+
+"I do not know what you have been doing," he tells them in his speech on
+this occasion. "I do not know whether you have been alive or dead. I
+have not once heard from you all this time--I have not--and that you all
+know."
+
+Cromwell's second parliament manifested a wiser industry, and a more
+harmonious temper--thanks to one of the Protector's "little inventions."
+Each member was to be provided with a certificate before entering the
+house; "but near one hundred honourable gentlemen can get no
+certificate--none provided for _them_--and without certificate there is
+no admittance. Soldiers stand ranked at the door; no man enters without
+his certificate!" The stiff republicans, and known turbalent persons,
+are excluded. From this Parliament Cromwell accepts again the title of
+Protector, and is installed with great state; things take a more legal
+aspect; the major-generals are suppressed; a House of Lords is
+instituted; and a settlement of the nation seems at last effected.
+
+But the second session of this Parliament relapsed again into a restive
+and republican humour. The excluded members had been admitted, and
+debates arose about this "other house," as they were disposed to
+nominate the Lords. So much confusion resulted in the country from this
+unsettled state of the representative assembly, and so many
+insurrectionary designs were fostered by it, that the Protector was
+compelled abruptly to dissolve the Parliament. He tells them:--
+
+     "That which brought me into the capacity I now stand in, was
+     the petition and advice given me by you, who, in reference to
+     the ancient constitution, did draw me to accept the place of
+     Protector. _There is not a man living can say I sought it; no,
+     not a man nor a woman treading upon English ground._ But,
+     contemplating the sad condition of these nations, relieved from
+     an intestine war into a six or seven years' peace, I did think
+     the nation happy therein. But to be petitioned thereunto, and
+     to be advised by you to undertake such a government, a burden
+     too heavy for any creature--and this to be done by the House
+     which then had the legislative capacity--certainly I did look
+     that the same men who made the frame, should make it good unto
+     me. _I can say, in the presence of God, in comparison with whom
+     we are but like poor creeping ants upon the earth, I would have
+     been glad to have lived under any woodside, to have kept a
+     flock of sheep, rather then have undertaken such a government
+     as this._ But, undertaking it by the advice and petition of
+     you, I did look that you who had offered it unto me, should
+     make it good."
+
+He concludes thus:--
+
+     "It hath been not only your endeavour to pervert the army while
+     you have been sitting, and to draw them to state the question
+     about a 'Commonwealth;' but some of you have been listing of
+     persons, by commission of Charles Stuart, to join with any
+     insurrection that may be made. And what is like to come upon
+     this, the enemy being ready to invade us, but even present
+     blood and confusion? And if this be so, I do assign it to this
+     cause--your not assenting to what you did invite me to by your
+     petition and advice, as that which might prove the settlement
+     of the nation. And if this be the end of your sitting, and this
+     be your carriage, I think it high time that an end be put to
+     your sitting. And I do dissolve this Parliament! And let God be
+     judge between you and me!"
+
+It is at this latter period of his career that the character of
+Cromwell, to our apprehension, stands out to greatest advantage, becomes
+more grave, and solemn, and estimable. Other dictators, other men of
+ambitious aims and fortunes, show themselves, for the most part, less
+amiable, more tyrannous than ever, more violent and selfish, when they
+have obtained the last reward of all their striving, and possessed
+themselves of the seat of power. It was otherwise with Cromwell. He
+became more moderate, his views more expanded, his temper milder and
+more pensive. The stormy passions of the civil war were overblown, the
+intricate and ambiguous passages of his political course had been left
+behind; and _now_, whatever may have been the errors of the past, and
+however his own ambition or rashness may have led him to it, he occupied
+a position which he might say with truth he held for his country's good.
+Forsake it he could not. Repose in it he could not. A man of religious
+breeding, of strong conscientiousness, though tainted with superstition,
+he could not but feel the great responsibility of that position. A
+vulgar usurper is found at this era of his career to sink into the
+voluptuary, or else to vent his dissatisfied humour in acts of cruelty
+and oppression. Cromwell must govern, and govern to his best. The
+restless and ardent spirit that had ever prompted him onwards and
+upwards, and which had carried him to that high place, was now upon the
+wane. It had borne him to that giddy pinnacle, and threatened to leave
+him there. Men were now aiming at his life; the assassin was abroad;
+one-half the world was execrating him; we doubt not that he spoke with
+sincerity when he said, that "he would gladly live under any woodside,
+and keep a flock of sheep." He would gladly lay down his burden, but he
+cannot; can lay it down only in the grave. The sere and yellow leaf is
+falling on the shelterless head of the royal Puritan. The asperity of
+his earlier character is gone, the acrimony of many of his prejudices
+has, in his long and wide intercourse with mankind, abated; his great
+duties have taught him moderation of many kinds; there remains of the
+fiery sectarian, who so hastily "turned the buckle of his girdle behind
+him," little more than his firmness and conscientiousness: his firmness
+that, as he truly said, "could be bold with men;" his conscientiousness,
+which made the power he attained by that boldness, a burden and a heavy
+responsibility.
+
+"We have not been now four years and upwards in this government," says
+the Protector, in one of his speeches, "to be totally ignorant of what
+things may be of the greatest concernment to us." No; this man has not
+been an idle scholar. Since the Lord General took the reins of civil
+government, and became Lord Protector, he has thought and learned much
+of statemanship. But as a statesman, he is still first of all the
+Puritan. It is worth while to observe how his foreign policy, which has
+been justly admired, took its turn and direction from his religious
+feelings. He made alliances with the Protestant powers of the north, and
+assumed a firm attitude of hostility towards Spain--and reasons of state
+may have had some sway in determining him to these measures; but his
+great motive for hostility with Spain was, that she stood "at the head
+of the antichristian interest"--"was described in the Scriptures to be
+papal and antichristian."
+
+"Why, truly your great enemy is the Spaniard. He is a natural enemy. He
+is naturally so throughout, by reason of that enmity that is in him
+against whatever is of God.... Your enemy, as I tell you, naturally, by
+that antipathy which is in him,--and also providentially, (that is, by
+special ordering of Providence.) An enmity is put in him by God. 'I will
+put an enmity between thy seed and her seed,' which goes but for little
+among statesmen, but is more considerable than all things. And he that
+considers not such natural enmity, the _providential_ enmity as well as
+the _accidental_, I think he is not well acquainted with the Scripture,
+and the things of God,"--(_Speech_ 5.)
+
+In fine, we see in Cromwell, every where and throughout, the genuine,
+fervid Puritan--the Puritan general, the Puritan statesman. He was a
+man, and, therefore, doubtless ambitious; he rose through a scene of
+civil as well as military contest, and, doubtless, was not unacquainted
+with dissimulation; but if we would describe him briefly, it is as the
+GREAT PURITAN that he must, ever be remembered in history.
+
+In parting company with the editor of these letters and speeches, we
+feel that we have not done justice to the editorial industry and
+research which these volumes display. Our space would not permit it. For
+the same reason we have been unable to quote several instances of vivid
+narrative, which we had hoped to transfer to our own pages. And as to
+our main quarrel with him--this outrageous adoption of Puritanical bile
+and superstition,--we have been haunted all along by a suspicion we have
+occasionally expressed, that the man _cannot_ be in earnest. He could
+not have been so abandoned by his common sense. He has been so
+accustomed to mingle sport, and buffoonery, and all sorts of wilful
+extravagance, with his most serious mood, that he perhaps does not know
+himself when, and how far, he is in earnest. In turning over the leaves
+of his work, we light, towards the end of the second volume, upon the
+following passage, which may, _perhaps_, explain the temper of the
+writer, when he is abetting and encouraging his fanatical heroes. He is
+uttering some sarcasms upon the poor "art of speech."
+
+"Is there no sacredness, then, any longer in the miraculous tongue of
+man? Is his head become a wretched cracked pitcher, on which you jingle
+to frighten crows, and makes bees hive? He fills me with terror, this
+two-legged rhetorical phantasm! I could long for an Oliver without
+rhetoric at all. I could long for a Mahomet, whose persuasive eloquence,
+with wild-flashing heart and scimiter, is, 'Wretched moral, give up
+that; or by the Eternal, thy maker and mine, I will kill thee! Thou
+blasphemous scandalous misbirth of Nature, is not even _that_ the
+kindest thing I can do for thee, if thou repent not, and alter in the
+name of Allah?'"
+
+To this sort of satirical humour--to "the truth of a song,"--not
+Dryasdust himself would call upon him to swear. And may not all his
+rhapsodies upon his "sword-in-hand" Puritans be little more than an
+amplification of this one passage? And, if we insist upon it, that a
+reform by the pen, or even by speech-making, is better than one by pike
+and musket--if we should suggest that matters of civil government are
+better decided by civil and political reasoning than by metaphorical
+texts of Scripture, interpreted by prejudice and passion--if we contend
+for such truisms as these, shall we not be in danger of occupying some
+such position as the worthy prelate whose sagacity led him to discover
+that _some facts_ in Gulliver's Travels had surely been overcharged?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations by Thomas
+Carlyle._
+
+[2] Take the following instance from the early and more moderate times
+of the Revolution, and wherein the most staid and sober of this class of
+people is concerned. When Essex left London to march against the king,
+then at Oxford, he requested the assembly of divines to keep a fast for
+his success. Baillie informs us how it was celebrated. "We spent from
+nine to five graciously. After Dr Twisse had begun with a brief prayer,
+Mr Marshall prayed large two hours, most divinely confessing the sins of
+the members of the assembly in a wonderful, pathetic, and prudent way.
+After Mr Arrowsmith preached an hour, then a psalm; thereafter Mr Vines
+prayed near two hours, and Mr Palmer preached an hour, and Mr. Seaman
+prayed near two hours, then a psalm; after Mr Henderson brought them to
+a sweet conference of the heat confessed in the assembly, and other seen
+faults to be remedied, and the conveniency to preach against all sects,
+especially anabaptists and antinomians. Dr Twisse closed with a short
+prayer and blessing. God was so evidently in all this exercise that we
+expect certainly a blessing."--_Baillie_, quoted from _Lingard_.
+
+
+
+
+LAYS AND LEGENDS OF THE THAMES.
+
+PART III.
+
+
+----On passing the little village of Erith, once one of the prettiest
+rustic spots in Kent, where the parson and the surgeon formed the heads
+of the community, and its only intelligence of the living world depended
+on the casual arrival of a boat from the Margate Hoy in search of fresh
+eggs for the voyage, a small house was pointed out to me, embosomed in a
+dell, which would have completely suited the solitary tastes of a poet
+weary of the world:
+
+    "Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
+    Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
+    Of unsuccessful, or successful war,
+    Might never reach me more!"
+
+Fifty years ago, a weekly newspaper was the only remembrancer to either
+parson or doctor, of the world which they had left, and that one only
+sent by the member for the county, when he thought it desirable to awake
+the general gratitude on the approach of a general election. The Thames
+certainly might remind the village population that there were merchants
+and mariners among mankind; but what were those passing phantoms to
+them? John the son of Thomas lived and died as Thomas the father of John
+had lived and died from generation to generation. The first news of the
+American war reached it in the firing of the Woolwich guns for peace;
+and the original tidings of the French Revolution, in similar rejoicings
+for the Battle of Waterloo.
+
+    "O happy ye, the happiest of your kind,
+    Who leave alike life's woes and joys behind!"
+
+says the philosophic Cowley; and with Cowley I perfectly agree.
+
+But Erith is this scene of philosophy no more. It has now shared the
+march of mind: it has become almost a watering-place; it has a library,
+a promenade, lodgings for gouty gentlemen, a conventicle, several
+vigorous politicians, three doctors, and, most fatal of all, four
+steam-boat arrivals every day. Solitude has fled, and meditation is no
+more.
+
+But, to my story. In that lonely house, lived for several years, in the
+beginning of the century, a singular character, of whom nothing more was
+known, than that he had come from some distant place of abode; that he
+never received a letter; and that he never hunted, shot, or fished with
+the squiredom of the country. He was of large form, loud voice, had a
+sullen look, and no trust in her Majesty's ministers for the time being.
+At length, on some occasion of peculiar public excitement, the recluse
+had gone to Gravesend, where, tempted by the impulse of the moment, he
+had broken through his reserve, dashed out into a diatribe of singular
+fierceness, but of remarkable power, accused England of all kinds of
+oppression to all kinds of countries, and finished his speech by a
+recapitulation of all the wishes, wants, woes, and wrongs, as he called
+them, of Ireland,
+
+    "First flower of the west, and first gem of the ocean."
+
+Within the next twelve hours, a pair of Bow Street officers were seen
+galloping into the village in a post-chaise and four. They brought a
+warrant from the Secretary of State to arrest the Irish orator, as a
+leader of the late Rebellion returned from transportation, on his own
+authority. He was captured, and conveyed to the Tower. And this was the
+last intelligence of the patriot; except that he appealed to the
+government against all repetition of his Australian voyage, and swore
+that he preferred the speedier performance of the law to the operations
+on the Coal-mine river. A remarkable tempest, which broke all the
+windows, and threw down half the chimneys of the city, a few weeks
+after; was supposed by the imaginative to be connected with his
+disappearance. At all events, he was heard of no more.
+
+
+THE VISION.
+
+    Thunder pealed and lightning quivered,
+    Gusts a prison's casements shivered.
+    From its dungeon rose a scream,
+    Where, awakened by the gleam,
+    From his pallet rose and ran,
+    Wild with fear, a stalwart man.
+    Saw he in his tortured sleep,
+    Things that make the heart-veins creep?
+    Swept he through the world of flame,
+    Chased by shapes that none may name?
+    Still, as bars and windows clanged,
+    Still he roared--"I _will_ be hanged."
+
+    Sleep had swept him o'er the seas,
+    To the drear antipodes;
+    There he saw a felon band,
+    Chains on neck, and spade in hand,
+    Orators, all sworn to die
+    In "Old Ireland's" cause--or fly!
+    Now, divorced from pike and pen,
+    Digging ditch, and draining fen,
+    Sky their ceiling, sand their bed,
+    Fed and flogged, and flogged and fed.
+    "Operatives!" he harangued;
+    "Ere I'm banished--I'll be hanged."
+
+    Now, he strove to strike a light,
+    But, a form of giant height
+    Through the crashing casement sprang;
+    Shattered stanchions round him rang,
+    From his eyes a light within
+    Showed the blackness of his skin;
+    In his lips a huge cigar
+    Smouldered, like a dying star;
+    Holding to the culprit's eyes,
+    Writ in flame, a scroll of lies,
+    Champing jaws with iron fanged,
+    "Friend," cried he, "you _shall_ be hanged."
+
+    'Twixt the tempter and the rogue,
+    Then began the dialogue:
+    --"Master--shall I rob the state?"
+    "Not, unless you'd dine off plate."
+    --"Shall I try my hand at law?"
+    "You'll be sure to make a flaw."
+    --"Shall I job in Parliament?"
+    "You'll be richer, cent per cent."
+    --"Shall I truckle, or talk big?"
+    "You'll but get a judge's wig,
+    Blockheads may be conscience-panged,
+    Knaves are pensioned, but, _not_ hanged!"
+
+    --"Master, _must_ I then escape?"
+    "No," exclaimed the knowing shape,
+    "You shall perish by Lynch-Law."
+    Through his skull he struck a claw,
+    On the tempest burst a wail,
+    Through the bars a serpent-tail,
+    Flashing like a lightning spire,
+    Seemed to set the cell on fire;
+    Far and wide was heard the clang,
+    Through the whirlwind as they sprang.
+    Many a year the sulphurous fume
+    Stung the nostril in that room.
+
+The river widens, and we sweep along by the rich slopes and deep wooded
+vales of the Kentish shore. From time to time little pastoral villages
+emerge, from plantations of willows and poplars, and all water-loving
+trees. Before coming to Purfleet, we had passed a noble hill, looking
+over a vast expanse of country, on which stands a princely
+mansion,--Belvedere, with its battlements glittering above groves as
+thick as the depths of the Black Forest. This was once the mansion of
+Lord Eardley, one of the greatest humorists of the age,--the companion
+of George the Fourth, before he ceased to be a wit and became a king.
+
+How many delightful things are lost to the world, by the world's own
+laziness. Why have we not a Boswell in every city? Her majesty pays a
+laureate, who writes nothing but the annual receipt for his pension. Why
+not transfer the office to a Boswell? why not establish a Cabinet-dinner
+Boswell? a Buckingham-palace Boswell? a Windsor Boswell? with orders to
+make their weekly returns of gaiety and gossipry to the Home Department;
+to be thence issued by instalments of anecdote, in volumes, like "Lord
+Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors," or in columns, like the protocols
+of the Montpensier marriage, for the laughter of mankind?
+
+But the report of a heavy gun, and all eyes turned to a huge shell,
+making its curve a mile above our heads, reminded us that the artillery
+had a field-day as we passed Woolwich, and that there was every
+possibility that this vagrant messenger of destruction, might plump into
+our midships. The consternation on board grew, as it descended, looking
+bigger and blacker every instant. If it had come on board, it must have
+torn us up like paper. The catastrophe would have been invaluable to the
+journals of the empire, at this moment of a dearth of news, enough to
+make bankrupts of all the coffee-houses in London, and close every club
+from Charing Cross to Hyde Park Corner. _We_ should all have been
+immortal in paragraphs without number. Coroners, surgeons, poets, and
+special juries, would have made their reputation out of _us_; and for a
+month of hot weather, we should have been a refreshing topic in the
+mouths of mankind. But it was otherwise decreed: the shell dropped
+within a foot of the steamer, and we were _quittes pour la peur_.
+
+I fired a poetic shot at Woolwich in return.
+
+    THE ROYAL ARSENAL.
+
+    Woolwich--Woolwich,
+    The Thames is thy ditch,
+      And stout hearts are thy fortification.
+    Let come who come may,
+    All is open as day,
+      Thy gates are as free as thy nation.
+
+    Let the King of the French
+    Build wall, or dig trench,
+      Though he has no more princes to marry,
+    _Our_ trench is the sea,
+    And _our_ walls are the free,
+      And we laugh at thy "_grande enceinte, Paris._"
+
+    Deep and dark on their quay,
+    Like lions at bay,
+      Stand the guns that set earth at defiance;
+    With mountains of ball,
+    Which, wherever they fall,
+      With their message make speedy compliance.
+
+    Along the Parade
+    Lies the brisk carronade,
+      With Wellington's joy, the twelve-pounder.
+    And the long sixty-eight,
+    Made for matters of weight,
+      The world has no arguments sounder.
+
+    There stands the long rocket,
+    That shot, from its socket,
+      Puts armies, pell-mell, to the rout, sir;
+    At Leipsic, its tail
+    Made Napoleon turn pale,
+      And sent all his _braves_ right about, sir.
+
+    And there gapes the mortar,
+    That seldom gives quarter,
+      When speaking to ship or to city;
+    For, although deaf and dumb,
+    Its tongue is a bomb--
+      And so, there's an end of my ditty.
+
+The sun had now overcome the mists of the morning, and was throwing a
+rich lustre over the long sheets of foliage which screened, but without
+concealing, a large and classic villa on the Essex side. The park
+reached to the water's edge, in broad vistas, green as the emerald; deer
+were moving in groups over the lawn, or on standing still to gaze on the
+wonder of our flying ship. A few boats were slowly passing near the
+shore, along with the tide; the water was without a ripple,--the air was
+soft and fragrant, as it flowed from grove and garden; and the whole was
+a scene of sylvan and summer beauty. The thought suddenly shot across my
+mind, what a capital prize this would be, in a revolution! How
+handsomely it would repay a patriot for his trouble in uprooting lords
+and commons! What a philosophic consummation of a life of husting
+harangues, and league itinerancy, it would be, to lie on the
+drawing-room sofa of a mansion so perfectly Greek, railing at the
+tyranny of thrones, the bigotry of bishops, and the avarice of
+aristocracies; lamenting the privations of the poor, over a table of
+three courses, and drinking confusion to all monopolies in _Vin de
+Comete!_
+
+But, who was the present possessor? I asked the name and heard it. But,
+from the captain to the cabin-boy, not a soul could give me another
+syllable of information. Like the gravedigger in Hamlet, they might
+"cudgel their brains," but all came to the gravedigger's confession at
+last,--"Mass, I cannot tell."
+
+Such, thought I, are the chances of the world. The owner of this marine
+palace,--of these gardens, groves, deer, and dovecotes,--cannot have
+less than L10,000 a-year; yet his name has never reached the auricular
+sensibilities of man, beyond the fence of his own park. Was he
+philosopher, statesman, lawyer, orator, historian? inventor of
+steam-engine, of spinning jenny, of gunpowder, or of gun-cotton? No, I
+searched every cell of memory for some "trivial fond record" which might
+justify his title to a mansion and grounds fit for Sophocles, Schiller,
+or Shakspeare, the master of them all. I could not find, in all the
+rolls of the court of reminiscences, a single scrape of the pen to
+inform me; not so much as the commemorative smoke of a candle on the
+ceiling of the alcove of Mnemosyne; not a vestige of the "light
+fantastic toe," of those sylphs who treasure the flippancies of noble
+pens, and live in the fragrance of albums, otto-perfumed. Still I was
+driven to the confession, "Mass, I cannot tell."
+
+I had brought a volume of poor Tom Campbell in my pocket, and had been
+glancing over his _chef-d'oeuvre_, "Ye Mariners of England," when this
+stately edifice first checked my inspiration. In the wrath of my spirit
+I tossed the volume overboard. "Psha!" I involuntarily exclaimed, "what
+is the use of being a genius? What is the gratitude of a country, where
+a cotton-spinner can purchase the fee-simple of a province, while the
+man who spreads its fame over the world is left to gather his
+contemplations over a stove in an attic, watch the visage of his
+landlady, and shudder at the rise of coals!
+
+     'England, with all thy faults I love thee still.'
+
+But it must be confessed, that thou art the most pitiful, paltry,
+beggarly, blind--" I shall say no more. Thy whole munificence, thy whole
+magnanimity, thy whole generosity, to the living lights of thy sullen
+region of toil, trimming, and tribulation, of the dulness of dukes and
+the mountainous fortunes of pinmakers--is exactly L1200 a-year! and this
+to be divided among the whole generation of the witty and the wise, of
+the sons and daughters of the muse,--the whole "school of the prophets,"
+the lustres of the poetry and the science of England! L1200 a-year for
+the only men of their generation who will be remembered for five minutes
+by the generation to come. L1200 a-year, the salary of an Excise
+commissioner, of a manipulator of the penny post, of a charity
+inspector, of a police magistrate, of a register of cabs, of any thing
+and every body: and this, reduced to decimals, is to be the national
+prize, the luxurious provision, the brilliant prospect, the illustrious
+tribute of a treasury of fifty millions sterling a-year, to the whole
+literature of a land which boasts of its being the intellectual leader
+of the world!
+
+I have found the poems of our living bards on the shores of Hudson's
+Bay, and heard men talking of them round a stove, while the thermometer
+outside the window was 30 deg. below zero. I have found them in a
+plantain-thatched hovel on the banks of the Niger, and forgotten while I
+read them that the thermometer was 110 deg. in the shade. I have found them
+in the hands of a learned pundit on the banks of the Ganges, whom they
+were seducing into dreams of dewy pastures and crystal rills. And one of
+the pleasantest evenings I ever remember to have spent, was, by the help
+of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," as I sat at a supper of rice milk,
+after a day of fire on the eastern branch of the Nile, a thousand miles
+above Tourists, sheltered under the wagon of a Moorish ambassador from
+Sultaun Abderahman to the monarch of Gondar. "England!" exclaimed this
+ebony-visaged worshipper of the Beaux Arts, as he displayed the volume
+before me. It was the only civilised word in his vocabulary. But I felt
+the compliment with patriotic fervency, and in spirit thanked the bard
+for the barbarian's acknowledgment of my poetic and penurious country.
+
+I have not done with the theme yet. On returning from the equator, I saw
+Campbell's funeral. Westminster Abbey was a mob of dukes, statesmen,
+privy-councillors, and men of countless acres. Poor Tom's whole life had
+been thankless toil; wasting in meagre industry the powers which ought
+to have been cherished by his country for purposes of national honour.
+Such is always the course of things. The very stones of Burns' pillars
+would have made the great poet happy for life, if their price had been
+given to him to cheer his melancholy fireside. Why has the poetic spirit
+of England folded its wings, and been content to abandon its brilliant
+region to the butterflies of albums, but that the spirit of England has
+suffered itself to be fettered by the red tape of a peddling parsimony?
+Should we have had a Shakspeare without the smiles of an Elizabeth, and
+the generosity of a Southampton? No. He would have split his pen after
+his first tragedy; have thrown his ink-stand into the Thames; have taken
+the carrier's cart to Stratford, and there finished his days in writing
+epitaphs in the churchyard, laughing at Sir Thomas Lucy, and bequeathing
+deathless scoffs, to the beggary of mankind.
+
+I was growing into what the dramatists call a "towering passion," and
+meditating general reforms of Civil Lists, Chancellors of the Exchequer,
+and Lord Chamberlains, when my attention was turned to a very animated
+scene going on between a pair who seemed perfectly unconscious of all
+the external creation. One of the parties was a showy-looking fellow,
+with the mingled expression of _roueism_ and half-pay, which is so
+frequent and so unmistakeable in the neighbourhood of St James's. The
+lady was a calm and composed personage, whom, on a second glance, I
+remembered to have seen wherever the world could bow down to the fair
+possessor of countless "consols." But the passion for a handsome
+mansion, a handsome stud, and a handsome rental, is indefatigable, and
+the ex-staff man poured his adorations into her ear with all the glow of
+a suitor ten thousand pounds worse than nothing.
+
+Poesy! sweetest of all the maids of Parnassus! it is thou that givest
+thy votary power to read the soul: it is thou that canst translate the
+glance into a speech, and give eloquence to the clasp of a hand. It is
+thou alone to whom the world is indebted for this _true_ version of the
+pleadings of the Guardsman.
+
+
+
+
+TRUE LOVE.
+
+
+    Exquisite Miss Millionaire!
+    Hear a lover's genuine prayer:
+    Let the world adore your charms,
+    Swan-like neck, or snowy arms,
+    Rosy smile, or dazzling glance,
+    Making all our bosoms dance;
+    For your purse alone I care,
+    Exquisite Miss Millionaire!
+    Ringlets blackest of the black,
+    Ivory shoulders, Grecian back,
+    Tresses so divinely twined,
+    That we long to be the wind,
+    Waiting till the lady's face
+    Turns, to give the _coup de grace_.
+    All those spells to _me_ are air.
+    Truth is truth, Miss Millionaire.
+
+    Let them talk of finger-tips,
+    Pearly teeth, or coral lips,
+    Cheeks the morning rose that mock,
+    _Still_ there _is_ a charm in Stock!
+    Solid mortgage, five per cent,
+    Freehold with "improving" rent,
+    Russia bond, and railroad share,
+    Steal _my_ soul, Miss Millionaire.
+
+    Let your rhymers (all are crackt)
+    Rave of cloud or cataract;
+    On the Rhine, or Rhone, or Arve,
+    Let romancers stroll and starve.
+    Cupid loves a gilded cage,
+    (Let _me_ choose your equipage,)
+    Passion pants for Portman Square,
+    (Be but mine,) Miss Millionaire.
+
+    There you'll lead a London life,
+    More a goddess than a wife;
+    Fifty thousand pounds a-year
+    Making our expenses clear;
+    Giving, once a-week, a _fete_,
+    Simply to display our plate.
+    Never earth saw such a pair,
+    Exquisite Miss Millionaire!
+
+But a steeple starts up from its green thickets; not one of the hideous
+objects which the architects of our district churches perpetrate, to
+puzzle the passer-by as to the purpose of its being,--whether a brewer's
+chimney, or a shot-tower,--a perch for city pigeons, or a standing
+burlesque on the builders of the nineteenth age of the fine arts in
+England. This steeple is an old grey turret, ivy-mantled, modest, and
+with that look of venerable age which instinctively makes us feel, that
+it has witnessed memorable things in its time.
+
+And it _has_ witnessed them. On the slope of the hill above this church
+once waved the banners of a king, and the opposing banners of his
+nobles: the one receiving the lesson, that kings have duties as well as
+their subjects; and the others enforcing the lesson by the sight of
+lines and columns of the stout bowmen and billmen of the Norman
+chivalry.--On this spot, just this day six hundred and thirty years ago,
+was held the grand conference between John and the Barons.
+
+Further inland, but rising on the view, is Swainscomb, the hill on which
+the Danish armies encamped, in their pirate rovings of the British seas,
+and their invasions of the Thames.
+
+What a contrast between the green landscape of this moment, and the camp
+of Sweno. All before me was the luxury of cultivation, the yellowing
+crop, the grazing cattle, the cottage smoke curling slowly upward on the
+back-ground of noble beech, ash, and sycamore. On the summit, the sun
+gleamed on a rectory house, half buried in roses, where the most learned
+of our Orientalists perused the Koran in the peace of a Mahometan
+paradise, and doubtless saw, on the dancing waters of the mighty river
+at his feet, perpetual visions of houris.
+
+Yet those pastures once echoed with the barbarian cries of the Cimbric
+warriors; tents of seal-skin and white bear fur covered the hill; the
+smokes of savage feasting and Scandinavian sacrifice clouded the skies;
+and on the summit, surrounded by iron guards and spectral-looking
+priests, stood the magic standard of the north, the image of the Raven,
+which flapped its wings on the coming of battle, and gave the oracular
+cry of victory.
+
+But, what sounds of harmony sweep along the water! I see a range of
+showy figures on the shore; it is a whole brass band, seducing us, in
+the style of the syrens of old, to bring our ship to an anchor, and
+hazard the enchantments of the most delicious of tea-gardens.--We are
+within a hundred yards of the pier of Rosherville.
+
+Within five minutes, we might be roaming through this paradise of the
+Thames, climbing rustic slopes carpeted with flowers, or gazing at a
+menagerie, where the monkeys bound, chatter, and take apples out of your
+hand; or sipping coffee of the most fragrant growth, or dancing the
+polka under alcoves of painted canvass, large enough to manoeuvre a
+brigade of the Horse-guards. By day the scene is romantic, but by night
+it is magical. By day the stranger roams through labyrinths of exotic
+vegetation, but by night he is enchanted with invisible music, dazzled
+with fireworks, and goes to his pillow to dream of the Arabian Nights.
+Honour to the name of Jeremiah Rosher, the discoverer of the
+"capabilities" of this Garden of the Hesperides. He found it a lime
+quarry, and made it a bower of Armida. If, as the great moralist said,
+"the man who makes two blades of grass grow where but one grew before,
+is a benefactor to mankind," what honours should be paid to the genius,
+which substituted human beings for lime-burners, and made the elite of
+the east end of the mighty metropolis dance by thousands, where nothing
+but the top of a thistle ever danced before. There have been more "first
+affections" awakened in the rambles through the shades of Rosherville
+than in fifty Almacks, and five hundred times more matches in
+consequence, than ever took refuge in Gretna; and all this--for a
+shilling!
+
+As we neared the pier, I observed a small but elegant yacht, lying to;
+with several groups of dark-featured and cloak-covered men listening,
+with all the eagerness of foreign gesture, to the brazen harmony. My
+Italian _compagnon de voyage_, instantly bounded from his seat, ran to
+the ship's side, and held a rapid dialogue with the crew of the little
+vessel. They were just from Rome, and were bringing over the newly
+appointed Archbishop from the Vatican! The novelty of the voyage did not
+seem to agree with the pleasurable faculties of those sons of "Bella
+Italia," for nothing could be conceived more deplorable than their
+physiognomies.
+
+The scene reminded me of one which I had witnessed at Naples, on the
+arrival of the first steam-boat from Rome, conveying the Cardinal Legate
+to the Court of his Majesty of the Two Sicilies.
+
+I disdain all the formalities of poetry. Let others prepare their
+parchment-bound portfolios, throw their visages into the _penseroso_,
+fling their curls back from their brows, unbutton their shirt-collars,
+and, thus Byronised, begin. To _me_ all times and places are the
+same.--The inspiration rushes on me, and I pour out my "unpremeditated
+song" in the original rapture of Bardism!
+
+
+
+
+THE CARDINAL'S VOYAGE.
+
+
+    I have seen some queer things,
+    Both in people and kings,
+        Since first I began as a dreamer;
+    But I ne'er thought to hear
+    Any thing half so queer
+        As a Cardinal's trip in a steamer.
+
+    I once saw a Rabbi,
+    The prince of the shabby,
+        In a gale of wind playing the screamer,
+    Till we plumped him o'erboard,
+    Towed along by a cord,
+        For a bath at the tail of the steamer.
+
+    'Tis true, the Chinese
+    Looked as black as their teas,
+        When battered by brave Sir John Bremer:
+    But John Chinaman's slaughter
+    Was all milk and water,
+        To the havoc on board of the steamer.
+
+    On a coil of the cable,
+    Right under the table,
+        With the glass at 500 of Reaumur,
+    Busy "making his soul,"
+    As he felt every roll,
+        Lay his Highness, on board of the steamer.
+
+    Around him ten chaplains,
+    And none of them saplings,
+        Lay pale as a quarantine streamer.
+    With six dozen of monks,
+    All as helpless as trunks,
+        All rolling about in the steamer.
+
+    As she steered down the Tiber,
+    It shook every fibre
+        Of the conclave from forehead to _femur_;
+    But, 'twas when in her glee,
+    She got sight of the sea,
+        That she showed them the tricks of the steamer.
+
+    At Civita Vecchia,
+    Oh, mie orecchie!
+        What howls called the Saints to redeem her.
+    But she darted along
+    Like a stone from a thong,
+        In the style of a true British steamer.
+
+    She now ruled the roast,
+    As she sprang from the coast,
+        Through such surges no buckets could teem her:
+    The Lipari Isles
+    Got but very few smiles
+        From the brethren on board of the steamer.
+
+    "As sure as we're born,
+    We'll ne'er see Leghorn."
+        "Peccavi!" cried out every schemer:
+    The whole of the friars.
+    In that court were "criers,"
+        While thundered the wheels of the steamer.
+
+    I'd not stand in their shoes,
+    As they passed Syracuse,
+        Where thy frigate lay moored, Captain Seymour:
+    At the top of their throats
+    Yelling out for thy boats,
+        While teeth to the wind went the steamer.
+
+    As they swept by Messina--
+    Thy birth-place, Christina!--
+        Old Etna was scarce such a beamer:
+    In vain they cried--"Stop!"
+    With a blaze at her top,
+        Like a pillar of flame rushed the steamer.
+
+    She bounced by Charybdis,
+    With limestone which ribb'd is;
+        A touch from a pebble might seam her;
+    Made a curtsey to Scylla,
+    As the Turks say, "Bismillah,"
+        'Twas a very close shave for the steamer.
+
+    But the surges grew brown,
+    And the night hurried down,
+        And they saw in each flash a death-gleamer;
+    While the peals from the clouds,
+    And the wind in the shrouds,
+        Made them all very sick of the steamer.
+
+    When they made Capri's lights
+    It redoubled their frights,
+        And the friars all bellowed--"Tenemur!"
+    One and all made confessions,
+    (E'en popes have transgressions,)
+        There was some heavy work in the steamer.
+
+    But they soon smelt the apples
+    And fish-shops of Naples,
+        And the cargo began to esteem her--
+    "No witch in a sieve,
+    They could ever believe,
+        Had sailed half so fast as the steamer."
+
+    Could my pen give a sketch
+    Of each wo-begone wretch,
+        Like Gilray, H. B., or old Damer,
+    You should have the whole troop
+    That lay stretched on the poop,
+        As up by the mole dashed the steamer.
+
+    Were I Guizot, or Florian,
+    Or "Oxford Historian,"
+        Or "Orator" like Dr Cremer,
+    In my grand paragraphs,
+    You should have all the laughs
+        Of the mob as they rushed from the steamer!
+
+
+
+
+LETTERS ON THE TRUTHS CONTAINED IN POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.
+
+
+II.--VAMPYRISM.
+
+Dear Archy,--In acknowledging my former letter, you express an eager
+desire to learn, as you phrase it, "all about vampyrs, if there ever
+were such things." I will not delay satisfying your curiosity, wondering
+only how my friend, your late tutor, Mr H., should have left you in a
+state of uncertainty upon a point on which, in my time, schoolboys many
+years your juniors had fully made up their minds.
+
+"Were there ever such things as vampyrs?" _tantamne rem tam
+negligenter?_ I turn to the learned pages of Horst for a luminous and
+precise definition of the destructive and mysterious beings, whose
+existence you have ventured to consider problematical.
+
+"A vampyr is a dead body, which continues to live in the grave, which it
+leaves, however, by night, for the purpose of sucking the blood of the
+living, whereby it is nourished, and preserved in good condition,
+instead of becoming decomposed like other dead bodies."
+
+Upon my word, you really deserve--Since Mr George Combe has clearly
+shown in his admirable work "On the Constitution of Man, and its
+adaptation to the world around him," that ignorance is a statutable
+crime before Nature, and punishable, and punished by the laws of
+Providence,--you deserve, I say, unless you contrive to make Mr H. your
+substitute, which I think would be just, yourself to be the subject of
+the nocturnal visit of a vampyr. Your scepticism will abate pretty
+considerably, when you see him stealthily entering your room, yet are
+powerless under the fascination of his fixed and leaden eye--when you
+are conscious, as you lie motionless with terror, of his nearer and
+nearer approach,--when you feel his face, fresh with the smell of the
+grave, bent over your throat, while his keen teeth make a fine incision
+in your jugular, preparatively to his commencing his plain, but
+nutritive repast.
+
+You would look a little paler the next morning, but that would be all
+for the moment; for Fischer informs us, that the bite of a vampyr leaves
+in general no mark upon the person. But he fearfully adds, "it (the
+bite) is nevertheless speedily fatal, unless the bitten person protect
+himself by eating some of the earth from the grave of the vampyr, and
+smearing himself with his blood." Unfortunately, indeed, these measures
+are only of temporary use. Fischer adds, "if through these precautions
+the life of the victim be prolonged for a period, sooner or later he
+ends with becoming a vampyr himself; that is to say, he dies, and is
+buried, but continues to lead a vampyr life in the grave, nourishing
+himself by infecting others, and promiscuously propagating vampyrism."
+
+Now this is no romancer's dream. It is a succinct account of a
+superstition, which to this day survives in the east of Europe, where
+little more than a century ago it was frightfully prevalent. At that
+epoch, vampyrism spread like, an epidemic pestilence through Servia and
+Wallachia, causing innumerable deaths, and disturbing all the land with
+apprehension of the mysterious visitation, against which no one felt his
+life secure.
+
+This is something like a good solid practical popular delusion. Do I
+believe it?--to be sure I do; the facts are matter of history. The
+people died like sheep, and the cause and method of their dying was, in
+their belief, what has just been stated. You suppose, then, they died,
+frightened out of their lives; as men have died, whose pardon has been
+proclaimed when their necks were already on the block, of the belief
+that they were going to die? Well, if that were all, the subject would
+be worth examining; but there is more in it than that, as the following
+o'er true tale will convince you, the essential parts of which are
+attested by perfect documentary evidence.
+
+It was in the spring of 1727 that there returned from the Levant to the
+village of Meduegna, near Belgrade, one Arnod Paole, who, in a few years
+of military service and varied adventure, had amassed enough to purchase
+him a cottage, and an acre or two of land in his native place, where he
+gave out he meant to pass the remainder of his days. He kept his word.
+Arnod had yet scarcely reached the prime of manhood; and though he must
+have encountered the rough, as well as the smooth of life, and have
+mingled with many a wild and reckless companion, yet his natural good
+disposition, and honest principle, had preserved him unscathed amid the
+scenes he had passed through. At all events, such were the thoughts
+expressed by his neighbours, as they discussed his return and settlement
+among them in the stube of the village Hof. Nor did the frank and open
+countenance of Arnod, his obliging habits, and steady conduct, argue
+their judgment incorrect. Nevertheless, there was something
+occasionally, noticeable in his ways, a look and tone that betrayed
+inward inquietude. Often would he refuse to join his friends, or on some
+sudden plea abruptly quit their society. And he still more
+unaccountably, and as it seemed systematically, avoided meeting his
+pretty neighbour, Nina, whose father occupied the next tenement to his
+own. At the age of seventeen, Nina was as charming a picture as you
+could have seen, of youth, cheerfulness, innocence, and confidence in
+all the world. You could not look into her limpid eyes, which steadily
+returned your gaze, without seeing to the bottom of the pure and
+transparent spring of her thoughts. Then why did Arnod shrink from
+meeting her? He was young, had a little property, had health and
+industry, and he had told his friends he had formed no ties in other
+lands. Why, then, did he avoid the fascination of the pretty Nina, who
+seemed a being made to chase from any brow the clouds of gathering care?
+But he did so. Yet less and less resolutely; for he felt the charm of
+her presence; who could have done otherwise? and how could he at last
+resist--he didn't--the impulse of his fondness for the innocent girl who
+often sought to cheer his fits of depression?
+
+And they were to be united; were betrothed; yet still an anxious gloom
+would fitfully overcast his countenance even in the sunshine of those
+hours.
+
+"What is it, dear Arnod, that makes you sad? it cannot be on my account,
+I know; for you were sad before you ever noticed me; and that I think,"
+and you should have seen the deepening rose upon her cheek, as she
+added, "surely first made me notice you."
+
+"Nina," he answered, "I have done, I fear, a great wrong in trying to
+gain your affections. Nina, I have a fixed impression that I shall not
+live; yet, knowing this, I have selfishly made my existence necessary to
+your happiness."
+
+"How strangely you talk, dear Arnod! Who in the village is stronger and
+healthier than you? You feared no danger when you were a soldier; what
+danger do you fear as a villager of Meduegna?"
+
+"It haunts me, Nina."
+
+"But, Arnod, you were sad before you thought of loving me. Did you then
+fear to die?"
+
+"Ah, Nina, it is something worse than death:" and his vigorous frame
+shook with agony.
+
+"Arnod, I conjure you, tell me."
+
+"It was in Cossova this fate befel me. Here we have hitherto escaped the
+terrible scourge. But there they died, and the dead visited the living.
+I experienced a first frightful visitation, and I fled, but not till I
+had sought his grave, and exacted the dread expiation from the vampyr."
+
+Nina uttered a piercing cry, and fell senseless. Afterwards, they found
+a consolation in the length of time, now months, that had elapsed, since
+Arnod had left Cossova, during which no fearful visitant had again
+approached him; and they fondly began to hope _that_ gave them security.
+For the poor girl well knew from many a village tale the danger to which
+Arnod had been exposed.
+
+It is a strange world. The ills we fear often never befall us: the blows
+that reach us are for the most part unforeseen ones. One day, about a
+week after this conversation, Arnod missed his footing and fell from the
+top of his loaded hay-wagon. He was picked up stunned and insensible.
+They carried him home; where, after lingering some hours, he died; was
+buried; but _not_ forgotten.
+
+Twenty or thirty days after his decease, says the perfectly
+authenticated report of these transactions, several in the neighbourhood
+made complaints that they had been haunted by the deceased Arnod; and
+four of the number (among whom, there being nothing in the report to the
+contrary, I am afraid we may include poor Nina) died. To put a term to
+this fearful evil, the villagers were advised by their Heyduke, who had
+had before some experience in such matters, to disinter the body of
+Arnod Paole. This step was accordingly taken _forty days after his
+burial_.
+
+"The body," says the report, "was found in a perfectly fresh state, with
+no sign of decomposition. Fresh blood had recently escaped from its
+mouth, with which its shirt was wet. The skin (the epidermis, no doubt)
+had separated together with the nails, and there were new skin and nails
+underneath. As it was perfectly clear from these signs that he was a
+vampyr, conformably to the use established in such cases, they drove a
+stake through his heart.
+
+"Whereupon he gave an audible groan, and a quantity of blood flowed from
+him. The same day his body was burned to ashes, which were returned to
+the grave."
+
+The authorities further staked and burned the bodies of the four others,
+who were supposed to have been infected by Arnod: but no mention is
+made of the condition in which they were found.
+
+The adoption of this decisive, measure did not, however, entirely
+extinguish the evil, which continued still to hang about the village.
+About five years afterwards it had again become rife and very prevalent,
+and many again died of it. Whereupon the authorities determined to make
+a general clearance of the vampyrs in the churchyard of Meduegna, and
+for that purpose they had all the graves to which suspicion was
+directed, opened, and their contents dealt with conformably to the state
+in which they were found, of which the following is the medical report,
+here and there _abridged_ only:--
+
+1. A woman of the name of Stana, 20 years of age, who had died 3 months
+before of a 3 days' illness following her confinement. She had before
+her death avowed that she had anointed herself with the blood of a
+vampyr, to liberate herself from his persecution. Nevertheless she, as
+well as her infant, whose body through careless interment had been
+half-eaten by dogs, both had died. Her body was entirely free from
+decomposition. On opening it, the chest was found full of recently
+effused blood. The heart and blood-vessels contained no coagulated
+blood, and the bowels had exactly the appearances of sound health. The
+skin and nails of the hands and feet were loose and came off, but
+underneath lay new skin and nails.
+
+2. A woman of the name of Miliza, who had died at the end of a 3 months'
+illness. The body had been buried 90 and odd days. In the chest was
+liquid blood. The viscera were as in the former instance. The body was
+declared by the Heydukes who recognised it, to be in better condition
+and fatter than it had been in the woman's legitimate lifetime.
+
+3. The body of a child of 8 years old, that had likewise been buried 90
+days; it was in the vampyr condition.
+
+4. The son of a Heyduke, named Milloc 16 years old. The body had lain in
+the grave 9 weeks. He had died after 3 days' indisposition, and was in
+the condition of a vampyr.
+
+5. Joachim, likewise a Heyduke's son, 17 years old. He had died after a
+3 days' illness; had been buried 8 weeks and 4 days; was found in the
+vampyr state.
+
+6. A woman of the name of Rusha, who had died of an illness of 10 days'
+duration, and had been buried 6 weeks, in whom likewise fresh blood was
+found in the chest.
+
+[The reader will understand, that to see blood in the chest it is first
+necessary to _cut_ the chest open.]
+
+7. The body of a girl of 10 years of age, who had died 2 months before.
+It was likewise in the vampyr state, perfectly undecomposed, with blood
+in the chest.
+
+8. The body of the wife of one Hadnuck, buried 7 weeks before; and that
+of her infant, 8 weeks old, buried only 21 days. They were both in a
+state of decomposition, though buried in the same ground, and closely
+adjoining the others.
+
+9. A servant of the Heyduke of the place, by name Rhade, 23 years old;
+he had died after an illness of 3 months' duration, and the body had
+been buried 5 weeks. It was in a state of decomposition.
+
+10. The body of the Heyduke Stanco, 60 years of age, who had died six
+weeks before: there was much blood and other fluid in the chest and
+abdomen, and the body was in the vampyr condition.
+
+11. Milloc, a Heyduke, 25 years old. The body had been in the earth 6
+weeks. It was in the perfect vampyr condition.
+
+12. Stanjoika, the wife of a Heyduke, 20 years old; had died after an
+illness of three days, and had been buried 18 days. The countenance was
+florid, and of a high colour. There was blood in the chest and in the
+heart. The viscera were perfectly sound. The skin remarkably fresh.
+
+The document which gives these particulars is signed by three regimental
+surgeons, and formally countersigned by the lieutenant-colonel and a
+sub-lieutenant, it bears the date of June 7, 1732, Meduegna near
+Belgrade. No doubt can be entertained of its authenticity, nor of its
+_general_ fidelity; the less so, that it does not stand alone, but is
+supported by heaps of parallel evidence, only less rigorously
+verifiable. It appears to me to establish beyond a question, that,
+where the fear and belief of vampyrism is prevailing, and there occur
+several deaths after short illnesses, the bodies, when disinterred,
+weeks after burial, present the appearance of corpses, from which life
+has only recently departed.
+
+What inference shall we draw from this fact?--that vampyrism is true in
+the popular sense, and that these fresh-looking and well-conditioned
+corpses had some mysterious way of preternaturally nourishing
+themselves? That would be to adopt, not to solve the superstition. Let
+us content ourselves for the present with a notion less monstrous, but
+still startling enough: That the bodies, which were found in the
+so-called vampyr state, instead of being in a new and mystical
+condition, were simply alive in the common way; that, in short, they
+were the bodies of persons who had been buried alive; and whose life was
+only extinguished by the ignorance and barbarity of those who
+disinterred them. In the following sketch of a similar scene to that
+above described, the truth of this inference comes out with terrific
+force and vividness.
+
+Erasmus Francisi, in his remarks upon the description of the Archdukedom
+of Krain, by Valvasor, speaks of a man of the name of Grando, in the
+district of Kring, who died, was buried, and became a vampyr, and as
+such was exhumed for the purpose of having a stake thrust through him.
+
+"When they opened his grave, after he had been long buried, his face was
+found with a colour, and his features made natural sorts of movements,
+as if the dead man smiled. He even opened his mouth, as if he would
+inhale fresh air. They held the crucifix before him, and called in a
+loud voice, 'See, this is Jesus Christ who redeemed your soul from hell,
+and died for you.' After the sound had acted on his organs of hearing,
+and he had connected, perhaps, some ideas with it, tears began to flow
+from the dead man's eyes. Finally, when, after a short prayer for his
+poor soul, they proceeded to hack off his head, the corpse uttered a
+screech, and turned and rolled just as if it had been alive, and the
+grave was full of blood."
+
+Alive, then, the bodies surely were. And it is from this position, as a
+starting point, that we must follow and unravel the whole mystery, _if
+we dare_.
+
+Not that there is any particular virulence in this superstition, but
+that all superstitions are awkward things to deal with. They have their
+own laws, and run through definite stages, but always menace those who
+meddle with them. A superstition waxes and flourishes--that is its first
+stage; it then wanes in public opinion, is discredited, and is declared
+obsolete; that is stage the second. Eventually comes more enlightenment;
+its wonders are again admitted, but explained; the false in it separated
+from the true; this is its third and last period. And it may be
+remarked, that society is never safe against the reproduction of a
+superstition, till it has gone through this third stage (analogous to
+the disinterment and dissection of a vampyr); till then, it is always
+capable of "walking" again. But, which is singular, to the end the
+operation of explaining a superstition is unsafe, that is to say, if you
+step a quarter of an inch before the sagacious nose of the public. Of
+course, if any one should attempt to explain away a flourishing
+superstition, he would encounter, not martyrdom, perhaps, any more, but
+the persecution of opinion certainly, and the ban of society. But if he
+ventures upon the same process, even with one that is already put down,
+he is liable to be viewed and attacked as a credulous person, disposed
+to revive forgotten rubbish; for he has unwittingly affronted public
+opinion by asserting that to be worth examining, which society had
+proclaimed an error. Doubly wo to him if his explanation contain some
+startling novelty! But, courage! again,--
+
+The bodies disinterred and found in the so-called vampyr state, were
+then alive.
+
+But how could they, you ask, be alive after an interment of days or
+weeks? How is it possible they could lie without air, boxed up in a
+manner which would certainly kill a strong and healthy person in a few
+minutes or hours, and yet retain their vitality? I will not bring
+forward as favourable cases in point, the instances of frogs and toads
+that have been discovered in rocks, where they must have been encased
+for years or centuries, alive: first, because, although they are true,
+you might equally question these; secondly, because a human being cannot
+compete in vitality with a cold-blooded reptile. I shall content myself
+with falling back upon the evidence already adduced. The disinterred
+bodies _proved_, by their appearance, some even by their behaviour, that
+they were alive; and I shall retort upon you the question, how came you
+not to know that bodies could live under such circumstances a
+considerable length of time, and that many cases have transpired in
+which, totally _apart from vampyrism_, bodies have been found turned
+over in the coffin, through efforts made by them, when, after their
+burial, they had unhappily recovered consciousness?
+
+But what, then, was the pathological condition in which these persons
+continued to exist, after they had ceased to appear alive?
+
+It is just one of the profitable results of examining the superstition
+before us, that the above question becomes explicitly propounded, and
+its solution demanded of physiologists. Its solution cannot fail of
+being full of interest, but it is yet, unluckily, a desideratum, or,
+like the principle which gives motion to the divining rod, as yet only
+indicated and partially outlined.
+
+What is wanted is direct scientific examination, and verification by
+competent persons, of all the phenomena the body presents in these
+strange circumstances. In the absence, however, of recorded observation,
+let us imagine how the thing might come about.
+
+The series of effects surmised would not begin in the heart; analogy
+leads us to suppose that primary interruption of the heart's action for
+a very brief period is fatal. Somewhere in the Indian seas, death is
+inflicted by a backward blow with the elbow on the region of the heart;
+a sudden angina is produced, which is promptly fatal. Neither, upon
+similar showing, can it commence in obstructed breathing. Then the
+commencement of the changes must be sought in the brain. Now it is
+analogically by no means very improbable, that the functions of the
+nervous system admit of being brought to a complete stand-still, the
+wheels of the machinery locking, as it were, of a sudden, through some
+influence directly exerted upon _it_, and that this state of interrupted
+function should continue for a very considerable period, without loss of
+power of recovery. Nor would it be contrary to analogy that such an
+arrest of activity in the nervous system should stop, more or less
+completely, the act of breathing and the action of the heart, without at
+the same time the consequences following which result from either of
+these changes, _when they are primary_. The heart, when _not acting by
+order_, need not be supposed to lose its contractile force and tendency.
+The blood, though not moving, being in contact with living vessels, need
+not coagulate. There is no physiological absurdity in supposing such a
+general arrest of function, originating in the nervous system, and
+continuing an indefinite period without life being extinguished. If a
+swimmer be taken with cramp and sink, he is irretrievably dead in five
+minutes. But if he sink from a fit of epilepsy, he may remain a longer
+time under water, yet recover. But epilepsy is a form of loss of
+consciousness beginning in the nervous system--a kind of fit which may,
+under certain circumstances, be thus preservative of life. So may we
+presume, that in the singular cases we are considering, the body is but
+in another and deeper fit, which suspends the vital phenomena, and
+reduces its vitality to that of the unincubated egg, to simple life,
+without change, without waste or renewal. The body does not putrefy,
+because it is alive; it does not waste or require nourishment, because
+every action is stilled within it.
+
+But this must be a dull subject of speculation for you, and your mind is
+perhaps wandering thence to more practical views. It has struck you
+possibly, not without an uncomfortable misgiving, that this obscure, but
+unpleasant event may happen to yourself, and what on earth is there to
+prevent _your_ being buried alive?
+
+If you wish individually to be as safe as possible, leave by will to
+some eminent surgeon, not your habitual attendant, L50, and his railway
+expenses, &c., to be paid him for opening your body, when you are
+certainly dead; L25 if he opens you, finds you alive, and succeeds in
+sewing you up, and keeping you so; L200, on the contrary, to be expended
+in indicting him for manslaughter if you die under his hands. I do not
+venture to affirm that with all these precautions you would be perfectly
+safe. The eminent Vesalius, surgeon, and a favourite of the Emperor
+Charles V., with all his experience and knowledge, was unlucky enough to
+open a Spanish nobleman by mistake, while he was yet alive. The
+consequences, no doubt, were more serious than they would be now.
+Vesalius hardly escaped the claws of the Inquisition, and died during
+his expiatory pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
+
+If, more comprehensively, you should wish to save others, as well as
+yourself, from this awful risk, and have a friend in the legislature,
+urge him, or otherwise Mr Wakley, to move for the insertion in any
+convenient bill a clause to appoint in every district a qualified
+officer to license burials; he had better not be a practising doctor,
+but his office might embrace necroscopic inquiries for the coroner, and
+the registrarship of births and deaths.
+
+In either case, I would recommend you to offer publicly a premium of
+L500, to be paid at the expiration of three years, for the best treatise
+upon the signs of death; the same being calculated to form a useful body
+of instruction, as yet wanting, either for your private surgeon, or the
+new officials.
+
+In England, indeed, our decent respect for the dead, which leads us to
+postpone interment as long as possible, is a tolerable security against
+being buried alive. The coffin is seldom closed upon the remains, before
+decomposition has already commenced. _That_ is death's certain seal;
+nor, in the present state of our knowledge, special cases of course
+excepted, is it right to consider life surely extinct, till the impress
+of that seal is perceptible to the senses.
+
+On the Continent, generally, the interval observed before burial is far
+too short for safety. They calculate that in France from twenty to
+thirty are annually interred alive, computing from the number of those
+who, after supposed death, come to life before the funeral is completed.
+I cannot help imagining that this seeming death must be much less
+frequent in England than in some other countries; (is that owing to the
+more vigorous practice for which English medical men are celebrated,
+they either cure or kill?) In Germany, interment is forbidden by law for
+three days after death. And there is a curious and humane provision in
+the grave-houses attached to the cemeteries of some of the principal
+towns: Bodies which are brought too soon, not having performed the three
+days' quarantine, are received and lodged, being disposed upon tressles,
+with rings on their toes and fingers which are attached to bell-pulls.
+The corpse thus, on coming to itself, may have immediate attendance
+merely by ringing for it; some one is always there on the watch. But the
+humanity of this arrangement, though perfect as long as it lasts, is
+finite in duration. As soon as the seventy-two hours prescribed by law
+are expired, it is another thing. The body is then legally dead, and
+must comport itself accordingly. At any rate, it is at its own risk if
+it behaves otherwise than as a corpse, and gives itself any airs of
+vitality. This is appalling enough, and would certainly justify any
+body, if it could, in getting out at nights and turning vampyr.
+
+And now, to return again to our inquiry. We have got thus far. The
+bodies found in the so-called vampyr state are alive. They are in a sort
+of fit, the possible duration of which is undetermined. The same fit may
+occur, and does occur continually, with no reference to the superstition
+of vampyrism. But where the belief in vampyrism is rife, these fits are
+more prevalent, and spread sometimes like an epidemic.
+
+The question naturally follows, how is this malady, viewing it as one in
+these cases, propagated?
+
+At such seasons, it is far from improbable that there is some physical
+cause in operation, some meteorological influence perhaps, electrical or
+otherwise, disposing the system to be a readier prey to the seizure. As
+certain constitutions of the year alter the blood and lead to fever or
+cholera, why should not others render the nervous system irritable and
+proner to derangement?
+
+Then it is well known that fright will bring on certain kinds of
+fits--in women hysteric fits, in the youth of either sex epileptic fits;
+and certainly no ghastlier terror can there be than the accredited
+apprehension of vampyrism. And it deserves remark, that impressions upon
+the mind are known to be capable of shaping particular kinds of fits,
+and especially of exciting and determining the features of sensorial
+illusions, that seem adjuvants in vampyrism.
+
+We are able to creep yet a step nearer to the mark. There is great
+reason to believe that some human beings have had the power of throwing
+themselves into the state of seeming death, _voluntarily_. In Gooch's
+surgical works, there is an account of a Colonel Townsend, who asserted
+this of himself, and challenged Gooch to witness the performance. And
+you may read in the narrative of Gooch, how he and two or three other
+competent witnesses saw Colonel Townsend dispose himself to favour the
+invasion of this fit, and how he gradually fell into a state apparently
+devoid of animation. A very few years ago there was a story in the
+papers of a native in India, who undertook for a reward to do the same
+feat, and to allow himself to be buried for a stipulated period. A
+gentleman, certainly not of a credulous turn in general, told me he was
+in India at the time with his regiment; and, though not on the spot,
+that he knew the parties who brought the conjuror to work; and that he
+believed they positively buried him, and, at the end of the time agreed
+upon, disinterred him, and found him alive. But be _this_ story true or
+false, the case of Colonel Townsend remains to show the thing asserted
+to have been possible--and this remark may be safely added: Whatever
+change of the kind the will can bring about, can be twice as readily
+wrought by fear or a disturbed imagination.
+
+You are, I hope, or fear rather, by this time satiated with the
+marvellous and with the subject. What!--yet another question? Ay. How
+came this superstition to arise?
+
+The answer is ready. In those days the belief in ghosts was absolute,
+and a vampyr was a sort of ghost. When an ignorant person, that is, when
+any one in those days became the subject of a sensorial illusion
+representing a human being, to a certainty he identified the creation of
+his fancy as somebody he had seen or heard of; then he would tell his
+acquaintances that the ghost of such a person haunted him. If the fright
+brought on a fit, or seemed to cause his death, the neighbours would
+remember how he had before been haunted. Then, in any case, what more
+natural than to disinter the body of a supposed visitant, to know why he
+is unquiet in the grave? Then, if once a body so disinterred were found
+in the fresh and undecomposed state, the whole delusion would start into
+existence. The violence used would force blood from the corpse; and that
+would be construed into the blood of a victim. The absence of a scar on
+the throat of the victim, would throw no difficulty in the way to the
+vampyr theory, because vampyrs enjoyed the ghostly character, and all
+its privileges. Supposing, again, that at any time chance had brought to
+light a body interred alive, and lying still in this fit, the whole yarn
+of superstition might again have been spun from that clue.
+
+Do you want more than this? I shall begin to think you at heart
+superstitious. I tell you it is contrary to the rules of inductive
+logic, to look for, or to use more principles than are sufficient for
+the reasonable explanation of phenomena. Yet you urge, do you, that it
+is no less unphilosophical, in an obscure and unsettled inquiry, wholly
+to exclude the consideration of unlikely possibilities?--Well! it is
+nothing to me. Have it your own way: suppose, if you like, that the man
+in the grave _had_ something to do with spreading the disease, and that
+his nervous system, in its abnormal state, could put itself in relation
+with that of another person at a distance. If you like it, have it so.
+In one sense, it simplifies the matter. But though I cannot deny your
+supposition to be possible, you will excuse me if I profess to hold the
+solution, which I have myself given, to be sufficient.
+
+Well! _there_ is an end of the subject, at all events; and I accept your
+thanks for having told you all I know about vampyrism. I deserve them
+more than you are aware. At the churchyard in Meduegna, my dear Archy, I
+had you thoroughly in my power. I saw how your curiosity was raised, and
+that an picture I had drawn would have been accepted by you with
+avidity; and I must confess it did at one moment occur to me, to
+describe to you the exact dress and deportment of the three regimental
+surgeons, or Feldscherers, (a handsome word signifying field-barbers),
+John Flickinger, Isaac Stegel, and John Fredrick Baumgartner, as well as
+the behaviour and remarks of a drummer boy, who held the instrument case
+during the _intermortem_ examination, an event he witnessed for the
+first time. But I would not abuse my advantage; so I let you off cheaply
+with the sole fabrication of Nina, and the personal characteristics of
+Arnod Paole, of whom unfortunately nothing has come down to posterity,
+but that he was haunted by a vampyr at Cossova, fell from a hay-cart at
+Meduegna, and died, and lived a vampyr himself.
+
+    I remain, dear Archy,
+            Yours, &c.
+                  MAC DAVUS.
+
+
+LETTER III.
+
+
+SPIRITS, GOBLINS, GHOSTS.
+
+Dear Archy.--On what subject shall I next address you? Elves, goblins,
+ghosts, real and unreal; dreams, witchcraft, second-sight? Bless me! the
+field of marvels seems more thronged, as I approach it closer. The
+spirits I have evoked begin to scare me with their numbers. How on earth
+shall I ever get them fairly laid? But some, I see, can now only limp
+along--they are scotched already; I will begin with finishing these. Yet
+they deserve gentle treatment. They sprang from our nature, which seems
+expressly made to procreate and rear them. Thick, within and around us,
+lie the rich veins of illusive suggestion from which they spring.
+
+The thing nearest us is our mental constitution, the world of
+consciousness. It is of it we first learn, though it be the last we
+understand. It is that through which we perceive and apprehend all other
+things; and nothing becomes part of our knowledge but as it has been
+shaped and coloured by its magic reflexion. Nay, more, it is not only
+our mirror but our archetype for every thing. So we spiritualise the
+material universe, and afterwards, by an incongruous consistency,
+anthropomorphise spirit.
+
+Reason in vain reclaims against this misuse of analogy. Feeling,
+imagination, instinct are too many for her; and any mood, from fun to
+earnest, from nonsense to sublimity, may hear a responsive note when
+this chord is touched.
+
+Address to that ingenuous young American a remark upon the slightness of
+the legs of her work-table,--she blushes--her lively fancy has given
+them personality. Were she a wealthier miss, she would give them,
+besides, neat cambric trowsers with lace borders. With less refinement,
+and with inexcusable warmth, I take shame to myself for having bestowed
+a kick upon a similar mahogany limb, which had, however, begun the
+contest by breaking my shin.
+
+To the poet's eye, nature is instinct with life. Greece may be "living
+Greece no more"--in the soul of her people; but her immortal plains, and
+streams, and hills have their own vitality.
+
+    "The mountains _look_ on Marathon,
+    And Marathon _looks_ on the sea."
+
+You go to visit them; they meet you half-way: "spectatum veniunt."
+
+Amid the Alps--with glacier, torrent, forest around--you still evoke
+the fancied spirit of the scene, though it be but
+
+    "To gaze upon her beauty--nothing more."
+
+And where, in sublimer grandeur, snowclad, upreared against the nearer
+sun, are seen the towering Andes; to the poet's eye, the Cordillera lies
+no huge backbone of earth; but lives, a Rhoetus or Enceladus of the
+West, and
+
+            "over earth, air, wave,
+    Glares with his Titan eye."
+
+This is but the calm, the dignified, the measured march of poetical
+conception. No wonder, when superstition steps in to prick on
+imagination, that all should vividly team with spirit life. Or that on
+Walpurgis' night, bush and streamlet and hill bustle and hurry, with
+unequal pace, towards the haunted Brocken: the heavy ones lag, indeed, a
+little, and are out of breath--
+
+    "The giant-snouted crags, ho! ho!
+    How they snort and how they blow!"
+
+No wonder that to the dreamer's eye, in tranquil scenes of sylvan
+solitude the fawn of yore skipped in the forest dell, the dryad peeped
+from behind the shadowy oak, the fay tripped lightly over the moonlit
+sward.
+
+But enough, and too much, of "your philosophy." Yet there are those
+still who may be the wiser for it. Let me sketch you a believer in the
+creed it would dispel.
+
+He was a Spanish West-Indian--in his active years had been an extensive
+planter and slave-owner in Porto Rico. His manners were grave and
+dignified, as due to himself; courteous, as not denying equal or
+superior worth in others. He had seen the world, and spoke of it
+habitually with a fine irony. We had many a walk together. He was
+nervous about his health. One day, as our path lay along the banks of
+the Rhine, his conversation took this turn:--
+
+"Do you believe in spirits?" he asked me; and upon my intimating the
+polite but qualified assent which suited the tone in which the question
+was put--"It may be superstition," he continued, "but I am often
+inclined to think that the pucks and goblins, which, as they say, once
+haunted these scenes, are not entirely visionary beings. You may
+smile--but this has happened, nay, often, happens, to me in my walks. I
+see a big clod before me in the path, and form the intention of avoiding
+it; when close to it, I step to one side, when pr-r-rt, my toe strikes
+against it."
+
+I edged slightly away from my companion with the disagreeable impression
+that he was gone mad.
+
+He went on;--"When I lived in the West Indies, the children of the
+slaves, about my house, were treated with great kindness and indulgence.
+They would come about my table at dessert, and often had little presents
+given them. So they grew into objects of affection. But, out of several,
+some, of course, took ill and died. I cannot tell you what grief it
+caused me. Then this has happened several times, after the death of one
+or other of my little favourites:--a bird has flown into the hall, and
+into my sitting-room, and has hovered near me, and, after a while, has
+flown away. For a few days it has regularly returned, and then finally
+disappeared. I thought it was tenanted by the spirit of my lost
+favourite, which had come to bid me farewell."
+
+I drew nearer again to my companion. I felt I was in all events safe
+from violence from him. And I contrasted, with humiliation, his
+beautiful superstition with the commonplace remembrance of a school-boy
+conviction of my own, one dark night, upon Blackheath, that a
+direction-post was a ghost.
+
+My friend had not, indeed, always been a dreamer: and although this is
+no place to narrate his course of daring and hazardous adventure, on
+which I am therefore silent, yet I wish to be allowed to re-establish
+his credit for intelligence, by reporting the answer which he made, on
+another occasion, to a question, as to what he thought of the
+emancipation of the Negroes in our colonies. "The principle," answered
+my friend, "was good, but you were in too great a hurry. Before giving
+them freedom, you should have made them fit for it. They were not
+impatient. Slavery is an African institution. Some outlay of public
+money, and extreme care and prudence in your measures, would have
+enabled you to secure their humane treatment in the interval. As fast
+as they became innoculated with the wants and habits of civilised life,
+you might have made _freedmen_ of the most advanced, and given them
+official occupation, or allotted them land under proper conditions. One
+sheep would have followed another. The fag-end you might have
+emancipated together. Thirty or forty years, and a million of money,
+would have done the thing. The results would have been, from first to
+last, beneficial to the colonists. It would have set an example which
+other nations _could_ have followed. It would have been a noble return
+for having, temporarily, used the race as unmitigated slaves. It would
+have been an act of enlightened philanthropy. It would have become
+statesmen. What you did reads and works like the puerile suggestion of a
+school-boy's theme. What you are further doing, to suppress, by force,
+the trade in slaves, would have been worthy my distinguished countryman
+whose biography has immortalised Cervantes. Humanity would smile at it,
+but that she shudders and sickens."
+
+But, to leave the region of dreams, which are no longer realisable, let
+us shift the scene.
+
+The churchyard has its nightly terrors. One heard of corpse-lights seen
+dancing over graves--but over some alone. A few only had witnessed this;
+but _they_ had no doubt on the matter. Things looked "uncanny;" but time
+did not pause, and the story was forgotten. Even when the tale was
+fresh, what was it but superstition? Who of those who hugged its
+sympathetic terrors by the Christmas fireside, thought they could be
+true on the bright frosty morning of the morrow? It was mere fancy.
+There was nothing in it. Yet there _was_ something. And now and then a
+striking and mysterious event would occur to bring back the old idea.
+There was a cottage, (this I heard of a certainty,) in a hamlet I could
+name, to which a bad report attached. A room in it was haunted. More
+than one who had slept there had seen, at midnight, the luminous
+apparition of a little child standing upon the hearth-stone. At length
+suspicion became active. The hearth-stone was raised, and there were
+found, buried beneath it, the remains of an infant. A story was now
+divulged, how the former tenant and a female of the neighbourhood had, a
+very few years before, abruptly left the village. The apparition here
+was real and significant enough.
+
+    "It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood.
+    Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak:
+    Augurs and understood relations have,
+    By magot-pyes, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth
+    The secret'st man of blood."
+
+But tales like these, though true, gradually lose the sharpness of their
+evidence for want of an accredited contemporary narrator, and so become
+valueless. But time brings round every thing.
+
+And at length a marvellous narrative, to the same effect with the above,
+made its appearance in a trustworthy German work, _P. Kieffer's
+Archives_, the complete authentication of which caused it to make a deep
+impression. The narrative was communicated by Herr Ehrman of Strasburg,
+the son-in-law of the well-known German writer Pfeffel, from whom he
+received it.
+
+The ghost-seer was a young candidate for orders, eighteen years of age,
+of the name of Billing. He was known to have very excitable nerves,--had
+already experienced sensorial illusions, and was particularly sensitive
+to the presence of human remains, which made him tremble and shudder in
+all his limbs. Pfeffel, being blind, was accustomed to take the arm of
+this young man, and they walked thus together in Pfeffel's garden, near
+Colmar. At one spot in the garden Pfeffel remarked, that his companion's
+arm gave a sudden start, as if he had received an electric shock. Being
+asked what was the matter, Billing replied, "nothing." But, on their
+going over the same spot again, the same effect recurred. The young man
+being pressed to explain the cause of his disturbance, avowed that it
+arose from a peculiar sensation which he always experienced when in the
+vicinity of human remains; that it was his impression a human body must
+be interred there; but that if Pfeffel would return with him at night,
+he should be able to speak with more confidence. Accordingly, they went
+to the garden together when it was dark, and as they approached the
+spot, Billing observed a faint light over it. At two paces from it, he
+stopped and would go no further; for he saw hovering over it, or
+self-supported in the air, its feet only a few inches from the ground, a
+luminous female figure, nearly five feet high, with the right arm folded
+on her breast, the left hanging by her side. When Pfeffel himself
+stepped forward and placed himself about where the figure was, Billing
+said it was now on his right hand, now on his left, now behind, now
+before him. When Pfeffel cut the air with his stick, it seemed as if it
+went through and divided a light flame, which then united again. The
+visit, repeated the next night, in company with some of Pfeffel's
+relatives, gave the same result. _They_ did not see any thing. Pfeffel,
+then, unknown to the ghost-seer, had the ground dug up, when there was
+found at some depth, beneath a layer of quicklime, a decomposing human
+body. The remains were removed, and the earth carefully replaced. Three
+days afterwards, Billing, from whom this whole proceeding had been kept
+concealed, was again led to the spot by Pfeffel. He walked over it now
+without experiencing any unusual impression whatever.
+
+This extraordinary phenomenon, it is now generally known, has been
+completely elucidated through the discoveries of Von Reichenbach, to
+which, in a former letter, I had occasion to make allusion.
+
+You are probably aware, that the individuals whose nerves Von
+Reichenbach found to be so sensitive to the proximity of crystals,
+magnets, &c., would, in the dark, see flames issuing from the same
+substances. Then, in the progress of his inquiries, Von Reichenbach
+found that chemical decomposition was a rich source of the new power he
+had discovered, by its action on the nerves. And being acquainted with
+the story of the ghost in Pfeffel's garden at Colmar, it occurred to him
+as not unlikely, that Billing had just been in the same condition with
+his own sensitive patients, and that graves very likely would present to
+all of them a luminous _aura_; and that thus the mystery might find a
+very simple explanation.
+
+Accordingly, Miss Reichel, one of his most sensitive subjects, was taken
+at night to an extensive burying-ground, near Vienna, where many
+interments take place daily, and there were some thousand graves. The
+result did not disappoint Von Reichenbach's expectations. Whithersoever
+Miss Reichel turned her eyes, she saw masses of flame. This appearance
+manifested itself most about recent graves. About very old ones it was
+not visible. She described the appearance as resembling less bright
+flame than fiery vapour, something between fog and flame. In several
+instances, the light extended four feet in height above the ground. When
+Miss Reichel placed her hand in it, it seemed to her involved in a cloud
+of fire. When she stood in it, it came up to her throat. She expressed
+no alarm, being accustomed to the appearance.
+
+The mystery has thus been entirely solved. For it is evident that the
+spectral character of the luminous apparition in the two instances I
+have narrated had been supplied by the imagination of the seers. So the
+superstition has vanished, leaving, as is usual, a very respectable
+truth behind it.
+
+It is indeed a little unlucky for this new truth, which reveals either a
+new power in nature or an unexpected operation of familiar ones, that
+the phenomena which attest it are verifiable by a few only who are
+possessed of highly sensitive temperaments. And it is the use of the
+world to look upon these few as very suspicious subjects. This is
+unjust. Their evidence, the parties having otherwise a character for
+honesty, should be accepted with the same faith and the same distrust
+with which all evidence is to be viewed; with neither more nor less than
+in other cases. Nothing should be received in scientific inquiry which
+it is not compulsory on our understanding to believe. It is not a whit
+more difficult in these than in other cases to obtain inductive
+certainty. Nature is not here peculiarly coy or averse from being
+interrogated.
+
+Philosophers occasionally regret the limited number of their senses, and
+think a world of knowledge would flow from their possessing but one
+more. Now, persons of highly-wrought nervous systems have what is
+equivalent to a new sense, in their augmentation of natural sensibility.
+But philosophers will not accept this equivalent. They must have the
+boon from nature their own way, or not at all.
+
+To turn elsewhere.--We may now look into a broader seam of illusive
+power--one which lies entirely within ourselves, and needs no objective
+influence to bring its ghost-producing fertility into play. Let me
+exemplify it in operation.
+
+A young gentleman, who has recently left Oxford, told me, that he was
+one evening at a supper-party in college, when they were joined by a
+common friend on his return from hunting. They expected him, but were
+struck with his appearance. He was pale and agitated. On questioning
+him, they learned the cause. During the latter part of his ride home, he
+had been accompanied by a horseman, who kept exact pace with him, the
+rider and horse being facsimiles of himself and the steed he rode, even
+to the copy of a newfangled bit he sported that day for the first time.
+The apparition vanished on his entering the town. He had, in fact, seen
+his double or fetch, and it had shaken his nerves pretty considerably.
+His friends advised him to consult the college tutor, who failed not to
+give him some good advice, and hoped the warning would not be thrown
+away. My informant, who thought the whole matter very serious, and was
+disposed to believe the unearthly visit to have been no idle one, added,
+that it _had_ made the ghost-seer, for the time at all events, a wiser
+and better man.
+
+In more ignorant times, the appearance of one's fetch was held to be of
+very alarming import, and to menace either death or serious personal
+harm. Now, it is known to be one of the commonest forms in which
+_sensorial illusions_ shape themselves. And these are matters of
+every-day occurrence.
+
+It would seem, that when the blood is heated or the nervous system
+over-strained, we are liable to attach reality to the mere productions
+of the imagination. There must be few who have not had personal
+experience of this affection. In the first night of a febrile attack,
+and often in the progress of fever, the bed-hangings appear to the
+patient swarming with human faces, generally of a disagreeable and
+menacing expression. With some, opium will produce a host of similar
+visitants. In much illness, I have often myself taken this drug, and
+always hoped it would provide me a crop of apparitions that I might
+analyse. But I was disappointed; opium I found to give me only a great
+tranquillity and clearness of thought. Once or twice only have I had a
+vision, and that but a transitory landscape. I used in vain to look upon
+that _black mixture_ which lies before one in the dark, and try to make
+its fragmentary lights arrange themselves into definite shapes. And I
+have imaged to my mind familiar scenes or faces, (as in the daytime a
+strong conception will half realise such,) but they were not more
+distinct then than formerly,--ideas only and perfectly transient. But,
+as I have said, once or twice I have had the satisfaction of seeing a
+bright and coloured landscape spread before my view; yet unlike reality,
+and more resembling a diorama, occupying a rectangle on the black
+mixture before my eyes. It was not a known and familiar scene, but a
+brilliant sketch, made out of materials I remembered, but could not by a
+deliberate effort _have combined_ so effectively. It was a spontaneous
+throe of the imagination, which had force to overpersuade the organs of
+perception.
+
+How well did Shakspeare understand this creative power of the
+fancy!--the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth, and his test--"come, let me
+clutch thee!" are physiologically perfect. Nor less perfect or true to
+nature, is the conception of the ghost of Banquo haunting the kingly
+murderer. The ghost, it is obvious, however, should not in the play
+appear bodily. The audience are in the position of the guests at the
+royal supper-table, who saw it not. I wonder how in Shakspeare's time
+the stage-directions ran upon this point. Probably as now. Though
+Shakspeare wrote for all times, he was probably wise enough to act for
+the present. Or perhaps, with no disrespect to his unequalled genius, he
+understood not the principles of which he exactly portrayed the
+workings, and was, like Shelley's poet,
+
+    "Hidden in the light of thought."
+
+So, some say the sun may be dark as another planet; and that the spots
+on it are its common earth seen through the gaps in its luminous
+atmosphere.
+
+To the world, the alpha and omega of this piece of philosophy were
+furnished by the publication of the case of Nicolai, the bookseller of
+Berlin. Its details were read before the Academy of Sciences at Berlin,
+in 1799. The _substance_ ran thus. Nicolai had had some family troubles
+which much annoyed him. Then, on the 21st of February 1791, there stood
+before him, at the distance of ten paces, the ghost of his eldest son.
+He pointed at it, directing his wife to look. She saw it not, and tried
+to convince him that it was an illusion. In a quarter of an hour it
+vanished. In the afternoon, at four o'clock, it came again. Nicolai was
+alone. He went to his wife's room--the ghost followed him. About six
+other apparitions joined the first, and they walked about, among, and
+through each other. After some days the apparition of his son stayed
+away; but its place was filled with the figures of a number of persons,
+some known, some unknown to Nicolai--some of dead, others of living
+persons. The known ones were distant acquaintances only. The figures of
+none of Nicolai's habitual friends were there. The appearances were
+almost always human: exceptionally, a man on horseback, with dogs and
+birds would present themselves. The apparitions came mostly after
+dinner, at the commencement of digestion. They were just like real
+persons; the colouring a thought fainter. The apparitions were equally
+distinct whether Nicolai was alone or in society, by day as in the dark,
+in his own house or those of others; but in the latter case they were
+less frequent, and they very seldom presented themselves in the streets.
+During the first eight days they seemed to take very little notice of
+each other, but walked about like people at a fair, only here and there
+communing with each other. They took no notice of Nicolai, or of his
+remarks about them to his wife and physician. No effort of his would
+dismiss them, or bring an absent one back. When he shut his eyes, they
+sometimes disappeared, sometimes remained; when he opened his eyes, they
+were there as before. After a week they became more numerous, and began
+to converse. They conversed with each other, and then addressed him.
+Their remarks were short and unconnected, but sensible and civil. His
+acquaintances inquired after his health, and expressed sympathy for him,
+and spoke in terms comforting him. The apparitions were most conversible
+when he was alone; nevertheless they mingled in the conversation when
+others were by, and their voices had the same sound as those of real
+persons. This illusion went on thus from the 24th of February to the
+20th of April; so that Nicolai, who was in good bodily health, had time
+to become tranquillised about them, and to observe them at his ease. At
+last they rather amused him. Then the doctors thought of an efficient
+plan of treatment. They prescribed leeches: and then followed the
+_denouement_ to this interesting representation. The apparitions became
+pale and vanished. On the 20th of April, at the time of applying the
+leeches, Nicolai's room was full of figures moving about among each
+other. They first began to have a less lively motion; shortly afterwards
+their colours became paler--in another half hour fainter still, though
+the forms still remained. About seven o'clock in the evening, the
+figures had became colourless, and they moved scarcely at all, but their
+outline was still tolerably perfect. Gradually that became less and less
+defined. At last they disappeared, breaking into air, fragments only
+remaining, which at last all vanished. By eight o'clock all were gone,
+and Nicolai subsequently saw no more of them.
+
+Other cases are on record in which there was still greater facility of
+ghost-production than Nicolai evinced. One patient could, for instance,
+by thinking of a person, summon his apparition to join the others. He
+could not, however, having done this, subsequently banish him. The sight
+is the sense most easily and frequently tricked; next, the hearing. In
+some extraordinary cases the touch, also, has participated in the
+delusion.
+
+Herr von Baczko, already subject to visual hallucinations, of a diseased
+nervous system, his right side weak with palsy, his right eye blind, and
+the vision of the left imperfect, was engaged one evening, shortly after
+the battle of Jena, as he tells us in his autobiography, in translating
+a brochure into Polish, when he felt a poke in his loins. He looked
+round, and found that it proceeded from a Negro or Egyptian boy,
+seemingly about twelve years of age. Although he was persuaded the whole
+was an illusion, he thought it best to knock the apparition down, when
+he felt that it offered a sensible resistance. The Negro then attacked
+him on the other side, and gave his left arm a particularly disagreeable
+twist, when Baczko pushed him off again. The Negro continued to visit
+him constantly during four months, preserving the same appearance, and
+remaining tangible; then he came seldomer; and, after finally appearing
+as a brown-coloured apparition with an owl's head, he took his leave.
+
+The illusion and its principle having been thus elucidated, it is hardly
+worth while to look into its operation in tales of vulgar terror. But it
+is highly interesting to trace its effects on minds of a high order,
+when its suggestions have been received and interpreted as the visits
+and communications of superior beings. You have heard, I dare say, my
+dear Archy, of the mysticism of Schwedenborg. Now that they are
+explained, the details of his hallucinations are highly gratifying to
+one's curiosity.
+
+Schwedenborg, the son of a Swedish clergyman of the name of Schwedberg,
+ennobled as Schwedenborg, was, up to the year 1743, which was the
+fifty-fourth of his age, an ordinary man of the world, distinguished
+only in literature, having written many volumes of philosophy and
+science, and being Professor in the Mineralogical school, where he was
+much respected. On a sudden, in the year 1743, he believed himself to
+have got into a commerce with the world of spirits, which so fully took
+possession of his thoughts, that he not only published their
+revelations, but was in the habit of detailing, with the greatest
+equanimity, his daily chat with them. Thus he says, "I had a
+conversation the other day on that very point with the Apostle Paul," or
+with Luther, or some other dead person. Schwedenborg continued in what
+he believed to be daily communion with spirits till his death, in 1772.
+He was, without doubt, in the fullest degree convinced of the reality of
+his spiritual commerce. So in a letter to the Wirtemburg prelate,
+Oetinger, dated November 11, 1766, he uses the following words:--"If I
+have spoken with the Apostles? To this I answer, I conversed with St
+Paul during a whole year, particularly on the text, Romans iii. 28. I
+have three times conversed with St John, once with Moses, and a hundred
+times with Luther, who allowed that it was against the warning of an
+angel that he professed '_fidem solam_,' and that he stood alone upon
+the separation from the Pope. With angels, finally, have I these
+twenty-two years conversed, and converse daily.
+
+"Of the angels," he says, "they have human forms, the appearance of men
+that I have a thousand times seen; for I have spoken with them as a man
+with other men, often with several together; and have seen nothing in
+the least to distinguish them from ordinary men." [They had evidently
+just the appearance of Nicolai's visitors.] "Lest any one should call
+this an illusion, or imaginary perception, it is to be understood that I
+am accustomed to see them, when perfectly myself wide awake, and in full
+exercise of my observation. The speech of an angel or of a spirit sounds
+like, and as loud as, that of a man, but it is not heard by the
+bystanders; the reason is, that the speech of an angel or a spirit finds
+entrance first into a man's thoughts, and reaches his organs of hearing
+from within outwards." This is indeed _cum ratione insanire_! how just
+an analysis of the illusion, when he is most deceived by it!
+
+"The angels who converse with men, speak not in their own language, but
+in the language of men, and likewise in other languages which are
+inwardly known to man, not in languages which he does not understand."
+Schwedenborg here took up the angels, and to explain their own ideas to
+them observed, that they most likely appeared to speak his mother
+tongue, _because, in fact_, it was not they who spoke, but himself by
+their suggestion. The angels held out, however, and went away
+unconvinced.
+
+"When approaching, the angels often appear like a ball of light; and
+they travel in companies so grouped together--they are allowed so to
+unite by the Lord--that they may act as one being, and share each
+others' ideas and knowledge; and in this form they bound through the
+universe, from planet to planet."
+
+I will, in conclusion, add another different, but equally interesting
+sketch.
+
+"It is now seven years ago," so spoke, before her judges, the simple,
+but high-minded Joan of Arc--"the beginning of the year 1431; it was a
+summer day, towards the middle hour, I was about thirteen years old, and
+was in my father's garden, that I heard for the first time, on my right
+hand towards the church, a voice, and there stood a figure in a bright
+radiance before my eyes. It had the appearance and look of a right good
+and virtuous man, bore wings, was surrounded with light on all sides,
+and by the angels of Heaven. It was the Archangel Michael. The voice
+seemed to me to command respect; but I was yet a child, and was
+frightened at the figure, and doubted very much whether it was the
+archangel! I saw him and the angels as distinctly before my eyes as I
+now see you, my judges." With words of encouragement the archangel
+answered to her, that God had taken pity upon France, and that she must
+hasten to the assistance of the king. At the same time he promised her
+that St Catherine and St Margaret would shortly visit her; he told her
+that she should do what they commanded her, because they were sent by
+God to guide and conduct her. "Upon this," continued Joan, "St Catherine
+and St Margaret appeared to me, as the angel had foretold. They ordered
+me to get ready to go to Robert de Beaudricourt, the king's captain. He
+would several times refuse me, but at last would consent, and give me
+people, who would conduct me to the king. Then should I raise the siege
+of Orleans. I replied to them that I was a poor child, who understood
+nothing about riding on horseback and making war. They said I should
+carry my banner with courage; God would help me, and win back for my
+king his entire kingdom. As soon as I knew," continued Joan, "that I was
+to proceed on this errand, I avoided, as much as I could, afterwards
+taking part in the sports and amusements of my young companions."----"So
+have the Saints conducted me during seven years, and have given me
+support and assistance in all my need and labours; and now at present,"
+said she to her judges, "no day goes by, but they come to me."----"I
+seldom see the Saints that they are not surrounded with a halo of light;
+they wear rich and precious crowns, as it is reasonable they should. I
+see them always under the same forms, and have never found in their
+discourse any discrepancies. I know how to distinguish one from the
+other, and distinguish them as well by the sound of their voices as by
+their salutation. They come often without my calling upon them. But when
+they do not come, I pray to the Lord that he will send them to me; and
+never have I needed them but they have visited me."
+
+Such is part of the defence of the high-spirited Joan of Arc, who was
+taken prisoner by the Duke of Burgundy on the 23d of May 1430--sold by
+him for a large sum to the English, and by them put on her trial as a
+heretic, idolatress, and magician--condemned, and finally burned alive,
+the 30th of May 1431. Ill-fated heroine! I seem to be thinking of
+writing her epitaph, but I am considering only that there is more to
+come out of her evidence. For although her heavenly visitants were
+simply sensorial illusions, there yet remains something unexplained. How
+came she to foresee the path she was destined to follow? The inquiry
+would launch us on a broad and wild sea of conjecture, for the
+navigation of which we have not yet the requisite charts on board, and
+it grows late--so good-night, dear Archy.
+
+    "Suadentque cadentia sidera somnum."
+        "Cras ingens iterabimus aequor."
+
+    Yours, &c.,
+            MAC DAVUS.
+
+
+
+
+A NEW SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.
+
+THE BATHS OF MONT DOR.
+
+
+There is a tremendous valley opening all the way down, from the central
+summits of the ridge of the Monts Dor, quite into the undulating, and
+thence into the flat country, lying westward of this mountain chain.
+Where the valley commences, it is nothing more than a combination of
+mountain gullies, and is like a wild and precipitous ravine; but by
+degrees it widens out into spacious amphitheatres, and at times
+contracts itself again so as barely to allow of a struggling river to
+make its way betwixt the rocky sides. In some places, the valley makes a
+straight reach four or five miles in extent, but in others, winds and
+turns about in abrupt and varied curves; its descent is now gradual, and
+now rapid, where the stream dashes over ledges of rock or cuts its way
+through some rough and stubborn pass. Nearly all the ravines and smaller
+valleys that open into it bring down their contributions of mountain
+torrents; and the whole collection of waters, thus wending their way to
+the ocean, form what is called the Dor. This river meets with the Dogne
+lower down in its course; and, under the joint name of the two waters,
+the flood rushes broad and strong through Guienne into the Gironde. The
+high and bare mountain whence the Dor derives its principal source is
+the Pic de Sancy, the loftiest hill in the middle of France; it is the
+king of all the volcanoes of this vast igneous chain, and has its sides
+deeply furrowed and excavated into immense craters or volcanic vents.
+From it proceed numerous branches or arms, composed of basaltic currents
+congealed into columnar masses in the early days of the world. These
+stretch out league after league, away from their parent head, and
+present on their tops vast plateaux of green and moory pasture-land;
+while their sides are either abrupt precipices of basaltic columns, or
+else are clothed with primeval forests, which have sprung up and still
+flourish on the rich materials of their decomposing slopes. The valley
+of the Dor is therefore shut in either by precipitous volcanic walls, or
+is guarded by sombre woods. Once on the tops of the plateaux, and you
+may ride a whole day on unbroken turf; or, if you penetrate within the
+forest lands, you may wander for any time you please, days or weeks,
+without seeing either their beginning or their end. On the summits of
+the mountains around, snow is to be found in patches, even in the
+hottest days of summer; and as the Pic de Sancy is more than six
+thousand feet above the level of the sea, almost every gradation of
+climate is to be found amongst these lonely hills. In the dog-days, the
+valleys are so hot that you gladly escape to the upper lands for air and
+coolness; but the winter sets in, in October, and the valley of the Dor
+is then covered deep with snow for many a long month. The Dor itself is
+a pleasant lively stream: it can boast of some picturesque falls here
+and there, but it is commonly a "brawling brook," winding about at its
+pleasure; allowing itself to be forded every now and then; and producing
+plenty of small trout for those who like to waste their time in fishing.
+
+The urchins of the peasant tribe know how to get these finny creatures
+more cannily than the professed angler; you may see them on a summer's
+morning wading up the stream, and hunting under every stone, and in each
+little pool, for the objects of their search. As soon as they see a
+trout, they drive it into little convenient nooks that they know of, and
+there--how they manage it nobody knows, but the result is certain--they
+catch them with their hands or knock them on the head with their sticks;
+and will always produce you a respectable dish at a few hours' notice.
+
+About a couple of leagues below the Pic de Sancy, towards the west, one
+of the plateaux on the northern side of the valley assumes an
+exceedingly bold and regular appearance; it is called the Plateau de
+l'Angle--perhaps from its making, by an abrupt termination, the corner
+of two valleys; and it towers out like a promontory at sea, soaring
+some four or five hundred feet above the bed of the river. Not very far
+from where this plateau is cut off--a mile or so--there is a bold
+cascade dashing over its side, and carrying off the superfluous waters
+of a pool and morass higher up in the bosom of the mountains. Here the
+basaltic precipice is hollowed out into a circling chasm, and over its
+black face rushes the impetuous stream upon a huge chaos of rocks and
+debris below, foaming and roaring until it finds its way into the Dor
+far down in the valley at its foot. A few hundred feet to the westward
+of this cascade, and at the lowest part of the precipitous columnar
+cliff, burst forth several copious fountains of hot mineral waters,
+half-way to boiling heat when they leave their rocky cells, and ever
+keeping up the same degree both of heat and quantity. These are the
+springs which give celebrity to the place, and constitute the baths of
+Mont Dor.
+
+The Romans--those true "rerum domini"--knew of the spot, as they did of
+most other good things within their wide empire; and they frequented
+these springs so much that they erected over them a magnificent bathing
+establishment, and adorned the spot with a beautiful temple. In the
+midst of the present village stand the remains of one and the other of
+their buildings; and thus the hydropathic system of the ancients is
+allied with the practice of the modern Academie de Medecine. No records
+of the destruction, nor indeed of the existence, of this Roman
+watering-place have been preserved; probably, the buildings fell into
+natural decay, and during the middle ages were allowed to remain
+unrepaired and unheeded. Only foundations, broken shafts of columns,
+cornices, capitals, and altars are now discernible; but they are enough
+to add greatly to the interest of the locality.
+
+At Saint Nectaire, two leagues further down the valley, and indeed at
+other spots in it, thermal sources not much inferior to those of Mont
+Dor are to be met with; the whole district bears intimate evidence of
+its volcanic nature, and the rheumatic or dyspeptic invalid may here get
+stewed or washed out to his full satisfaction and lasting benefit.
+
+The village of Mont Dor-les-Bains is, however, that which has been
+selected by the _beau monde_ of France as one of their choicest places
+of resort; and here public money has been added to the efforts of
+private speculation in order to render the baths at once ample and
+commodious. Over the best sources is erected a large edifice, the lower
+story of which is occupied by halls, and bathing-rooms for every variety
+of medical purpose; while above are assembly-rooms, and the apartments
+of the Government physician.
+
+The distribution below is most convenient. The water, after issuing from
+the rock, is conveyed by distinct channels into numerous baths contained
+in small chambers on either side of a large central hall: while other
+conduits take it to plunging and swimming baths, to douches, and to
+other medical contrivances. In the small single baths you receive the
+water piping hot from the rock, at about one hundred degrees of
+Fahrenheit; and you may lie there, bolling away--for a constant supply
+of the same natural water keeps running into and through your bath--for
+hours together, upon payment of _a franc_. The water costs nothing; the
+building has been erected at the public expense, and the visitor
+therefore enjoys this luxury at a moderate rate. For the poorer class of
+patients gratuitous baths are provided; and in fact the gifts of nature
+are here grudged to no one, but every man's wants may be gratified in a
+liberal manner.
+
+By four o'clock in the morning of a summer day, you may see a train of
+ghost-like beings winding along the village street, clad in the simple
+attire of a chemise, a blanket, and the eternal nightcap--lean,
+sallow-faced, or crippled mortals, who have had the wise precaution to
+undress at home, and not being afraid of shocking the wood-nymphs from
+their propriety, sally forth to court the Goddess of Health. They
+congregate in a dark cellar-like chamber, round an ample and steaming
+pool, and then sink into it, to forget for a while all their pains and
+maladies, and to enjoy that indescribably delightful sensation of having
+the joints gently unscrewed and fresh oiled. Others, whose shoulders
+and backs have known the pangs of lumbago and acute rheumatism, are put
+under one of the douches; and down comes on them a discharge of the hot
+fluid as if from the hose of a fire-engine, or as though shot out from
+some bursting steam-boiler. Away fly the pains and troubles of humanity;
+the rickety machine is put in order for that day at least, and
+twenty-four hours of peaceful enjoyment is the almost invariable
+consequence.
+
+Later on in the morning, the fashionable visitors crawl forth to the
+baths; but not so late that nine o'clock does not see them all safely
+housed again after their ablutions, shaving or curling away with might
+and main to get ready for a grand _dejeuner_. For here, as at Bath, not
+only is it well to remember the inscription,--
+
+    "[Greek: ariston men udor]"
+
+but it would be advisable to add,
+
+    "[Greek: Broma de megiston]:"
+
+seeing that the appetite which is got up by all this early rising, and
+steaming, and washing, is doomed to be satisfied in a way fully worthy
+of the most refined French _cuisine_.
+
+In the village there are numerous hotels and boarding-houses, capable of
+suiting the pockets and the wishes of all the middling, and even of the
+lower classes of society:--but there are three or four principal
+houses,--and especially two, reserved for the aristocracy; and here all
+the _elite_ of the visitors congregate. We wealthy English may laugh at
+the moderate expense for which this kind of thing can be done in France,
+but we are not apt to grumble at it when we find it suit our pockets;
+and, therefore, take with you at once the description of the kind of
+fare you are likely to meet with here, and the amount of damage it will
+do to your fortune. In these large hotels, then, which are commodious
+houses, a vast number of bedrooms are provided for the guests, and two
+good reception-rooms; besides an immense _salle-a-manger_. Some sixty or
+a hundred guests can be accommodated in each house, and can sit down at
+table together. Breakfast is served between nine and ten,--and a
+glorious breakfast it is! All kinds of good things, which an old
+_artiste_ from Paris comes down for the season to cook: ending with
+fruits of many kinds and _cafe-au-lait_--that Continental beverage which
+John Bull can no more imitate than he can the wines of the Rhone or the
+Rhine:--in short, 'tis as good a breakfast as they could put on the
+table at Verey's. Dinner is ready at six, and maintains its proper
+superiority over the breakfast, both in the number of dishes and in the
+length of its service. The wines are good, and the fruits delicious, for
+they all come from Clermont--whence many a wagon-load of comestibles is
+tugged weekly over the mountains to satisfy the exigencies of the
+fastidious invalids!
+
+Well: they give you these two glorious spreads, your room, your light,
+your linen, and your attendance, for _five francs a-day_.
+
+And how is this day passed? Why, 'tis a true castle of indolence, is
+Mont Dor-les-Bains; "a pleasing land of sleepy-head," where every one
+follows the bent of his own fancy, and where the only serious occupation
+is, to forget all care and to do nothing. After rising from the
+breakfast table, parties are immediately formed for the promenade or the
+distant excursion; and, for the latter, some two or three score of boys
+and girls are stationed on the Grande Place, each in charge of an animal
+disguised with the name of a horse, which you hire for the whole day, to
+go where, and how far you please, for the enormous sum of _two francs_.
+It is true that the animal has neither symmetry nor blood, but it is the
+indigenous pony of these mountains; it is a slow, sure-footed beast, and
+it will carry you up and down the steepest hill-side with exemplary
+patience and sagacity. Do not lose your own patience, however, if you
+mount one of them. They have no trotting, nor galloping, nor any other
+pace whatever in them, out of the half-amble half-walk at which they
+commonly proceed. But then, they know no better food than
+mountain-grass, or the occasional luxury of some chopped straw, and they
+will follow you all round the village for a slice of bread held before
+their noses. Nevertheless they suit the country; they accommodate the
+visitors; and there is not a spare horse to be got in the village by
+half-past ten, for love or money.
+
+The day's ramble ended, and dinner duly dismissed, every body--that is
+to say, every body who is any body at all--adjourns to the _salle de
+reunion_, the large assembly-room built over the baths. This is really a
+handsome well-arranged ball-room, full of mirrors, ottomans, and
+benches; at one end is a billiard and card room, and behind are rooms
+for robing. Here, upon the payment of a napoleon, you have the _entree_
+for the season; and here the guests meet, more upon the terms of a large
+family than as though they were strangers. Etiquette is relaxed; every
+body knows every body. The elder men take to billiards and
+_ecarte_,--the graver ladies form into little _coteries_; a younger one
+goes to the piano, a circle is made, a romance is sung; and then, as the
+strain becomes lighter, the feet beat in sympathy, and the gay quadrille
+is formed. At eight or nine o'clock the room is at its fullest; the
+village minstrels are called in--some half-dozen violins, a clarionet,
+and a cornet; the music becomes louder, the mazy waltz is danced, and
+the enjoyment of the day is at its crowning point.
+
+Happy, happy days! still happier, still more delightful nights! No
+trouble, no excess--health and cheerfulness going hand-in-hand. The most
+refined society in France, and yet the most simple and most unaffected;
+good-humour and politeness ruling all things: all calculated for
+enjoyment, nought for disquietude and regret!
+
+At eleven o'clock it is understood that every body vacates the room;
+and, within half an hour after, not a sound is to be heard in the
+village, save the dash of the cascade, and the murmuring of the silvery
+Dor.
+
+
+THE COMPANY.
+
+Well: 'tis a motley assemblage this! The world is checkered here not
+less than in the noisy and elegant capital; and man's peculiarities,
+man's excellencies, and man's defects, follow him even into the heart of
+these wild mountains, showing themselves in these smaller groups, not
+less strongly than amid the crowded streets of Paris! How should it be
+otherwise? Does not every one come hither to unbend, to throw off the
+stiff mask of metropolitan society for the moment, and to become
+themselves natural while they invoke the aid of nature's healthy
+influence? The strict etiquette of the Faubourg St Germain may here be
+safely laid aside awhile; and the inspirations of country life, the
+happy the delightful inspirations of youth, may be once more resumed.
+What a comfort to be able to get out of the buckram and taffetas of the
+court, to put on one's _neglige_, or one's shooting-jacket, and to keep
+company awhile with no less cheerful companions than the songsters and
+the rangers of the forest! Why it does one's inmost soul good to fly
+away from the din and turmoil, even of the pleasure-seeking Parisians,
+and to revert to the simple, yet grand and expansive ideas which scenery
+such as this of Mont Dor brings into the mind in an instant.
+
+True: the mountains increase in magnitude and grandeur as you approach
+them; once within their lofty and austere recesses, and their sublimity
+makes itself felt. You are brought into immediate contact with some of
+the mightiest works of the Creator, and the mind expands of itself,
+unconsciously and irresistibly, till it becomes capable of imbibing, of
+comprehending, and of enjoying the full magnificence of nature!
+
+But does the courtier, does the citizen lay aside his pack of habits, as
+well as his pack of cares, when he becomes a temporary denizen of the
+country? Would that it were so! He is cast in a mould--his mind has been
+warped: his body requires moistening with the freshest and the earliest
+dews of many an "incense-breathing morn," ere it can resume the full
+elasticity and joyous lightness of rustic activity; and his soul wants a
+long oblivion of all conventional preoccupation, all trouble and all
+intrigue, ere it can recover the tone and temper of younger days.
+
+Now, I had been saying all this to myself, and should have gone on
+moralising till the weary hour of noon, perhaps; but while I was
+leaning over the balustrade of my window, looking down into the Grande
+Place----Oh yes, to be sure! there is a Grande Place at Mont
+Dor-les-Bains, as well as at any other town, village, or city. Did you
+ever in your life hear or see any thing French to which the epithet of
+_Grand_ had not been, by some means or other, tacked on? From the _Grand
+Monarque_ at the head of the _Grande Armee_ of the _Grande Nation_, down
+to the _Grand limonadier_ of the _Grand Cafe_ of the _Grande Place_, it
+is all _Grand_. Oh, this villanous spirit of exaggeration! this attempt
+at the sublime so inevitably linked to the ridiculous!----Just so! I was
+leaning over the balustrade of my window, which, from the third story of
+the hotel, "gave," as they term it, into the Grande Place. Now it is one
+of the most delightful things imaginable, after you have indulged in
+your morning's ablutions, and have produced that indefinable lilac tint
+on your chin, which tells of easy shaving soap and a Rogers's true old
+English razor, to don your shawl dressing-gown, and, having adjusted
+your _bonnet grec_ towards the right side of your head, so as to allow
+the glossy curl to escape and hang pendant on the left; when all this is
+done, to "light the brown cigar," to put yourself in an elegant
+reclining posture between your opening _jalousies_, and, with both
+elbows resting on the red velvet cushion that crowns the hard edge of
+the balustrade, to puff forth light wreaths of blue vapour into the
+balmy air, and to see the bathers come back from the baths. There you
+may "think down hours to moments:" and so was it with myself; for I took
+my post at my window by half-past six, and at nine I was still there.
+Every now and then went forth my curling column; then my eye would catch
+the glorious "mountain-tops bathed in the golden light of morn;" then I
+would give a glance at sublunary things awhile, and speculate on the
+moving animals below; then puff, and gaze, and speculate again; and all
+that while be the happiest of men, in the absolute absence of any thing
+but perfect idleness.
+
+You may say what you please, but it does the mind good to think of
+nothing at times; to let the impressions of passing events glide through
+the soul, and titillate the imagination, but to "leave no trace behind."
+Oh yes! this fairy dancing on the sands of life's dull shore, is very
+pleasant occupation for a summer morn, and eke a summer eve. It is
+poetical, to say the least of it; and day-dreams may sometimes prove not
+less agreeable than those mysterious scenes of night, when the soul
+quits her corporeal shackles, and roams in pure fancy through the world
+of thought, seeing sights of beauty, and scenes of paradisaical
+splendour, which the dull organs of bodily vision can never attain unto.
+Why! the happiest portion of my life is that which I have passed in the
+land of dreams: one third of my existence has been spent there--and I
+have friends, and well-known faces, and peaceful valleys, and bright
+streams, and strains of ethereal music, which are still and ever vivid
+in my waking mind, but at night call me to themselves, and wrap me in a
+state of enjoyment which certainly this poor weak body of mind never
+could be capable of experiencing. I have positively new, altogether new
+and unheard-of ideas--I do not mean irrational ones, nor those
+phantasmagoric combinations that haunt the diseased brains of some
+wretched mortals--but reasonable, possible, natural ideas of form and
+substance, which I am persuaded have their types in some corner or other
+of the universe, and which it may perhaps be hereafter my too happy
+destiny to witness, and to dwell amongst for ever and for aye. I would
+not exchange my dreams for all the realities of----
+
+"_Monsieur! veut-il dejeuner au salon?_" said the slip-shod _garcon_ of
+the hotel, tapping me on the shoulder. "The company have all taken their
+seats, and I have kept a chair for Monsieur. Does Monsieur prefer
+Burgundy or claret? The _vin ordinaire_ is not sufferable: _au reste_,
+here is the _carte_, and Monsieur has only to choose."
+
+"'Tis a reality, my friend, that I was not then exactly thinking of--but
+breakfast I must, and will. But just tell me, for a minute, where these
+people come from, that I see down in the Place there, at that
+corner--the old gentleman in nankeen, with the green shade over his
+eyes, and the fat little dame by his side; and those young ladies at the
+door of the large hotel opposite, and the spruce _militaire_ there at
+the window, and that knot of men in long brown surtouts, one of whom is
+gesticulating so vehemently."
+
+"_Excusez_, Monsieur, those _gentlemen_ are great politicians," (_grand_
+again, thought I!) "and one of them is deputy for the Department--M. de
+Beauparler: he has just been voting against the Ministry, sir; he is a
+great friend of M. Lafitte, sir; oh, sir! _c'est le plus grand orateur
+de notre pays!_ You ought to hear him, sir. As for the young ladies,
+sir, they are _les Demoiselles Leroy_: it was their father that you were
+remarking just now--the old gentleman--very short-sighted, sir--he is
+immensely rich; _Pardi! que sais-je?_" (here he shrugged up his
+shoulders to his ears,) "they say he has 50,000 francs a-year!--_c'est
+assommant!_" (here he shut his eyes and raised his nose at an angle of
+forty-five degrees.) "_Quant aux demoiselles, elles sont_"----(he was
+evidently at a loss for an expression; so he extended his first two
+fingers to his lips, closing tightly the others and his thumb, and then
+blew a kiss with them to the winds.)
+
+Tap! tap! at the door. "Pierre! are you coming down, then? they are
+asking for you every where!" And the tightly girded, and somewhat
+_altius accincta, fille-de-chambre_--a spruce little black-eyed
+_Auvergnate_,--tripped into the room. "_Excusez, milor!_ but Pierre is
+such a gossip!" "My good girl, I will detain neither Pierre nor
+yourself: give me my coat, dust my room well, and now show me to the
+_salle-a-manger_."
+
+As good luck would have it, Pierre had placed a chair for me next to
+Madame de Mirepoix, her husband was on the other side of his
+lady,--'twas impossible to be in better company. Opposite to me was a
+venerable white-haired mustached gentleman, evidently a military man,
+and next to me was a lady, some five-and-forty, or thereabouts, with a
+strong Spanish cast of countenance and complexion, and her husband, a
+short thick-necked apoplectic-looking man, by her side. The rest of the
+company, though various enough in their physiognomical aspect, were
+evidently persons of the upper ranks of society, and among them were
+several choice specimens of the best and oldest nobility of France. They
+seemed all to make one joyous family party, as if they had been
+relations rather than strangers; every body was laughing and chatting
+with his neighbour; they were plying their forks most vigorously, and
+the noise and bustle was excessive.
+
+"What do you think of our baths?" said my lovely neighbour; "for of
+course you have already been immersed in, and have tasted the waters." I
+humbly alleged the negative. "Well! I declare this _phlegme Britannique_
+is insupportable. Why, sir, we were at the bath-house before six this
+morning."
+
+"Had I but known it, Madame"----
+
+"Ah, just so!" said the little apoplectic gentleman leaning across his
+wife to me: "_Monsieur est Anglais! c'est tres bien, c'est tres bien!_
+Monsieur, you do us great honour to come to visit this savage
+wilderness. But _voyez-vous_, you would have done much better to have
+stopped at Paris; there's nothing here, sir--absolutely nothing! What
+are these mountains? Bare rocks! forests, indeed, there are; but there
+are forests every where. Give me, sir, the Foret de Montmorency, even
+the Bois de Boulogne; and for rocks, I wish for nothing better than the
+Rocher de Cancale." (Here he rubbed his hands excessively, and looked
+round the table for a smile at the _bon-mot_.)
+
+"M. Bouton will pardon me," observed the old officer, "but if he had
+travelled all over Europe as I have done, he would not wonder at the
+desire to change an every-day scene for something new. When our _corps
+d'armee_ was traversing the Mont St Bernard, I assure you I never felt
+the slightest regret at having quitted Paris:--we could have gone on to
+the end of the world with the spirits we then were in. It was the same
+in the Pyrenees:--for more reasons than one I was extremely sorry when
+we had to quit Pampeluna for Bayonne"--and the old gentleman sighed, and
+looked wistfully up at the ceiling, as though many a painful
+recollection came across his mind at that moment.
+
+"Which are the finer mountains sir," was my inquiry--"the Pyrenees or
+these of Auvergne?"
+
+"You can hardly draw a comparison between them," he replied. "There is
+vast extent, width, and height in the Pyrenees, and a certain degree of
+savage horror about them, which you do not feel even amidst the
+Alps:--they partake of the nature both of France and Spain:--they are
+unlike any mountains I know of. But for all this, sir, do not allow
+yourself to hold a poor opinion of these heights of Mont Dor: you will
+find here scope and exercise for all your enthusiasm, all your love of
+the picturesque. Are you fond of shooting and hunting?--well, then, if
+you were to remain here during September and October, braving the early
+snows which come upon these mountains even in autumn, you would have
+your choice of all animals from the wolf to the _chevreuil_ and the
+hare, and of all birds from the eagle to the partridge. There are plenty
+of snipes on these hills."
+
+"M. le Baron de Bretonville," said Madame Bouton, "do not go to tempt
+the English gentleman to any of your hare-brained expeditions: he is
+come here to enjoy the baths:--he is a victim to the spleen; he must be
+danced and talked and bathed into good health, and a little vivacity
+first of all. When we all leave the baths, we will give him permission
+to stop behind with you, and you may kill all the game you can find. At
+present we want a cavalier for our expedition: there is Madame
+d'Arlincourt, and Madame de Tourzel, and the Duchesse de Vauvilliers,
+and Madame de Mirepoix there, on your right--why these ladies are all
+here by themselves; they want a cavalier this very morning.
+_Figurez-vous_, Monsieur!" and the lady turned towards me--"we want
+somebody to come and find our ponies for us, and to take care of our
+shawls, and to carry our books, and our stools, and positively, with the
+exception of two officers who are at the other hotel, I do not know whom
+to ask. We engage you, sir, for the whole of this very day: our
+husbands"----
+
+"I thought, Madame, that these ladies were all alone here."
+
+"Ah!--our husbands, _ca va sans dire_!--but gentlemen of that kind do
+nothing else than play billiards all the morning."
+
+"It is only the young and the gallant," here interposed Madame de
+Mirepoix "that dare to face our forests.--You shall teach us all some
+English as we ride along: I could give any thing to master your
+barbarous language:--you have only one musical word in it--_moonlight_."
+
+Now, I know not what there was in the pronunciation of Madame de
+Mirepoix, but though the word had never before entered into my
+imagination as any thing but one of the most commonplace of our
+vocabulary, there was a witchery in the sound as it flowed forth from
+her swelling lips that riveted my attention, and set my imagination on
+fire. 'Tis the same with French:--how refined and how mellow soever may
+be the utterance of the most polished courtier of France, of the most
+learned academician of the Institute, there is sometimes a rich pouting
+sound, a sort of velvety and oily intonation, that distinguishes the
+speech of the women of high birth such as I never heard in any other
+country. It is not to be defined: but whoso has drunk in the golden
+tones of such a syren, will know what I mean. Moonlight! yes, 'tis a
+pleasing word, by its signification and its associated ideas, if not by
+its own innate harmony: yes; I have learned the full influence and
+sweetness of moonlight, whether in the summer woodland or in the wintry
+cloister; true, there is both music and poetry, ay and something else,
+in moonlight.
+
+"I agree to the thing, Madame la Marquise, if not to the sound; nothing
+could be more beautiful than the latter as you have pronounced it,
+except the reality, amidst these mountains and these retired deep-green
+glades."
+
+"Nous le verrons, peut-etre."
+
+
+THE FOREST.
+
+All the great valleys that branch out from the sides of the volcanic
+chain of Auvergne were once, no doubt, filled with impenetrable forests:
+gloomy wildernesses, thick as those of American wilds, where scarcely
+the light of the sun could penetrate, and tenanted only by the wolf,
+the bear, the boar, and the stag. Now these forests have disappeared
+from the eastern and western skirts of the chain, and are to be found in
+primitive luxuriance only in the centre, where civilisation and the
+destroying step of man have not made their way. Here the original forest
+is still to be seen in all its pride; untouched, untrimmed, unheeded by
+man: full of all its sublime grandeur--solemn, vast, and mysterious as
+forests have ever been; sobering, soothing, and beautiful as forests
+will ever be. In some of the valleys the trees are principally of the
+deciduous kind; enormous oaks, and chestnuts, and beeches, filling up
+the vacant space left by the granitic walls on either side: but in the
+higher regions of the mountainous district, in the more hidden recesses
+of the hills, they are all of the silver-fir species, and they attain a
+luxuriance of growth not to be imagined but by those who have studied
+this, the noblest of the whole tribe of pines. Here forests occur,
+leagues upon leagues in extent, filling up wide and winding valleys;
+running out upon the elevated plateaux of the mountains; and wrapping
+the whole country in gloomy majesty. You may ride day after day through
+these intricate sylvan scenes, and never cross the track of a human
+being: or you may emerge from the depth of the wood, at some unexpected
+turn of a valley, upon a delightful little farm or village in a green
+glade of welcome verdure; and you may there witness the extreme
+simplicity of the hardy mountaineers. Still higher up on the hills, and
+on the vast pasture grounds that reach up to their summits, along the
+gently descending plateaux, occurs the birch, luxuriating in the cold
+exposure of its habitation as though it were in Siberia instead of
+France: and ever and anon, whether high up or low down the sides of the
+hills, you will find the box and the juniper bushes flourishing in
+perennial perfection.
+
+It is curious to see the enormous size to which the silver-fir will here
+attain. Sometimes this tree rises with the utmost regularity--sending
+out its branches at equal intervals, tier above tier--itself tapering
+upwards, and each circle of branches decreasing in diameter until a
+hundred and fifty feet are gained. The stems of some of these giants of
+the forest are eighteen feet in circumference at the height of a man
+from the ground, and their lower branches would of themselves form trees
+such as many a trim and well-kept park could never boast of. At other
+times the original tree will have met with an accidental fracture when
+young, and after going up twenty or thirty feet from the ground, as an
+immense wooden column, will throw out three or four other trees from its
+summit, which will all shoot up parallel to each other into the air and
+form a little forest of themselves. Very frequently, however, it happens
+that the tree has been contorted in its early growth, and then broken
+afterwards: in such cases it seems to have forgotten its nature
+completely, and to have gone mad in its spirit of increase; for it turns
+and forces itself into the strangest convolutions and intricacies of
+form. It becomes like a short stunted oak, or a thickly knotted thorn:
+or it might sometimes be mistaken for a willow, at others for a
+cedar--for any thing but one of the same species as the stately spire of
+wood that soars up into the heaven close by its side.
+
+When the tree becomes quite dead, blasted by lightning, or injured by
+the attacks of animals at its base, it does not therefore lose all its
+beauty; for it becomes immediately covered with a peculiar gray lichen
+of great length and luxuriance; occupying every branch and twig of the
+dead tree, and clothing it, as it were, with a second but a new kind of
+foliage. This lichen will sometimes hang down from the branches in
+strings of weeping vegetation to the length of five feet and more. You
+may sometimes ride under the living tree where this parasitical foliage
+is mixed with the real covering of the boughs, forming the most
+anomalous, and yet the most picturesque of contrasts.
+
+In forests of this kind, the undergrowth of brushwood of every variety
+is exceedingly abundant and beautiful: every woodland shrub is to be
+found there--the hazel especially--and the thickets thereby formed are
+quite impenetrable. As the older and larger trees decay, they lose
+their footing in the soil, and fall in every variety of strange
+position--presenting a picture of desolation, the effect of which is at
+first strange to the mind, and at last becomes even painful. But
+wherever a tree falls, there a luxuriant growth of moss succeeds: a
+little peat-bed forms itself underneath: generations after generations
+of mosses and watery plants succeed one another; and in time the
+prostrate trunk is entirely buried under a bright-green bed, soft as
+down, but treacherous to the foot as a quicksand. Often may the wanderer
+amid these wild glades think to throw himself on one of these inviting
+couches; and, bounding on to it, he sinks five or six feet through moss
+and weed and dirty peat, till his descent is stopped by the skeleton of
+the vast tree that lies beneath. Wild flowers grow all around: and every
+spot of ground that will produce them is covered in the summer season
+with the tempting little red strawberry, or the wild raspberry, or the
+blushing rose. Above all, still keep peering, in solemn and interminable
+array, the vast monarchs of the wood, the stately and elegant
+silver-firs.
+
+When you attempt to leave the forests and advance towards the upper
+grounds, you commonly find yourself stopped by a precipitous wall of
+basaltic columns, ranging from sixty to seventy feet in height in one
+unbroken shaft, and forming a vast barrier for miles and miles in
+length. In some places, these gray basaltic walls come circling round,
+and constitute an immense natural theatre, sombre and grand as the
+forest itself. No sound is there heard save the dashing of a distant
+cascade, or the wind in deep symphony rushing through the slow-waving
+tops of the trees. Below is a carpet of the most lively green,
+variegated with turfs of wild flowers and fruits--one of nature's
+secret, yet choicest gardens. Through the midst trickles a silvery
+stream, coming you know not whence, but musical in its course, and soon
+losing itself in the thick underwood that borders the spot all around.
+Such is the Salle de Mirabeau--one of the loveliest of the many lovely
+hiding-places of these sublime forests.
+
+The feathered tenants of these woods are mostly birds of prey, or at all
+events such as the raven, the jay, the pie, and others which can either
+defend themselves against, or escape from, the falcons that consider
+these solitudes as their own especial domains. The voices of few
+singing-birds are to be heard; they have taken refuge nearer the
+habitations of man: but the hooting of the owl, the beating of the
+woodpecker, and the screaming of kites and hawks, are all the living
+sounds that proceed here from the air. Red-deer, wolves, wild-boars,
+roebucks, and foxes, are the denizens of these forests and these
+mountains: there is room here for them all to live at their ease; and
+they abound. No one with a good barrel and a sure aim, ever entered
+these forests in vain: his burden is commonly more than he can carry
+home. It is in fact a glorious country for the sportsman; for the lower
+ranges of the hills abound in hares, the cultivated grounds have plenty
+of partridges and quails, and the forests are tenanted as has been seen.
+He who can content himself with his gun or his rod--for the streams are
+full of trout--may here pass a golden age, without a thought for the
+morrow, without a desire unfulfilled.
+
+Certainly, if I wished to retire from the world and lead a life of
+philosophic indifference, not altogether out of the reach of society
+when I wanted it, these hills and these forests of Auvergne, and the
+Mont Dor, would be the spots I should select. The mind here would become
+attuned to the grand harmonies of nature's own making; here, philosophy
+might be cultivated in good earnest; here, books might be studied and
+theories digested, without interruption and with inward profit. Here, a
+man might cultivate both science and art, and he might become again the
+free and happy being which, until he betook himself to congregating in
+towns, he was destined to be. Yes! when I do withdraw from this world's
+vanities and troubles, give me forests and mountains like those of Mont
+Dor.
+
+
+
+
+THE FIGHTING EIGHTY-EIGHTH.[3]
+
+
+The pugnacity of Irishmen has grown into a proverb, until, in the belief
+of many, a genuine Milesian is never at peace but when fighting. With
+certain nations, certain habits are inseparably associated as peculiarly
+characterising them. Thus, in vulgar apprehension, the Frenchman dances,
+the German smokes, the Spaniard serenades; and on all hands it is agreed
+that the Irishman fights. Naturally bellicose, his practice is
+pugnacious: antagonism is his salient and distinctive quality. Born in a
+squabble, he dies in a shindy: in his cradle he squeals a challenge; his
+latest groan is a sound of defiance. Pike and pistol are manifest in his
+well-developed bump of combativeness; his name is FIGHT, there can be no
+mistake about it. From highest to lowest--in the peer and the
+bog-trotter, the inherent propensity breaks forth, more or less modified
+by station and education.
+
+Be its expression parliamentary or popular, in Donnybrook or St
+Stephen's, out it will. "Show me the man who'll tread on my coat!"
+shouts ragged Pat, flourishing his shillelagh as he hurls his
+dilapidated garment on the shebeen-house floor. From his seat in the
+senate, a joint of the "Tail" intimates, in more polished but equally
+intelligible phrase, his inclination for a turn upon the turf. Wherever
+blows are rife, Hibernia's sons appear; in big fights or little wars the
+shamrock gleams in the van. No matter the cloth, so long as the quarrel
+be there. In Austrian white, or Spanish yellow, or Prussian blue,--even
+in the blood-coloured breeks of Gallia's legions, but especially, and
+preferred above all, in the "old red rag" of the British grenadier, have
+Irishmen displayed their valour. And on the list of heroes whom the
+Green Isle has produced, a proud and prominent place is justly held by
+that gallant corps, the Rangers of Connaught.
+
+Those of our civilian readers to whom the word "Ranger" is more
+suggestive of bushes and kangaroos, or of London parks and princes of
+the blood, than of parades and battle-fields, are referred to page 49 of
+the Army List. They will there find something to the following effect:--
+
+    88th, CONNAUGHT RANGERS.
+
+    The Harp and Crown.
+
+    _"Quis Separabit?"_
+
+    The Sphinx, "Egypt."
+    "Talavera." "Busaco."
+    "Fuentes d'Onore."
+    "Cindad Rodrigo."
+    "Badajoz." "Salamanca."
+    "Vittoria."
+    "Nivelle." "Orthes."
+    "Toulouse."
+    "Peninsula."
+
+There is a forest of well-won laurels in this dozen of names. They form
+a proud blazon for any corps, and one that might satisfy the most
+covetous of honour. But of all men in the world, old soldiers are the
+hardest to content. They are patented grumblers. Napoleon knew it, and
+christened his _vieille garde_ his _grognards_: tough and true as steel,
+they yet would have their growl. Now the lads of the Eighty-Eighth,
+having proved themselves better men even than the veteran guards of the
+Corsican corporal, also claim the grumbler's privilege, setting forth
+sundry griefs and grave causes of complaint. They are not allowed the
+word "Pyrenees" upon their colours, although, at the fight of that name,
+they not only were present, but rendered good service:--whilst for
+Waterloo many a man got a medal who, during the whole battle, was scarce
+within boom of cannon. During more than four years of long marches,
+short commons, severe hardships, and frequent fighting, the general
+commanding the third division--the fighting division, as it was
+called--viewed the Connaughters with dislike, even stigmatised them as
+confirmed marauders, and recommended none of their officers for
+promotion, although many greatly distinguished themselves, and
+some,--the brave Mackie, at Ciudad Rodrigo, for instance--successfully
+led forlorn-hopes. Finally, passing over the old sore of non-decoration
+for Peninsular services, since that, common to many regiments, is at
+last about to be healed,--Mr Robinson, the biographer of Sir Thomas
+Picton, has dared, in order to vindicate the harsh and partial conduct
+of his hero, to cast dust upon the facings of the brave boys of
+Connaught. It need hardly be said that they have found defenders. Of
+these, the most recent is Lieutenant Grattan, formerly an officer of the
+Eighty-eighth, and who, after making a vigorous stand, in the pages of a
+military periodical, against the calumniators of his old corps, has
+brought up his reserves and come to its support in a book of his own.
+His volumes, however, are not devoted to mere controversy. He has
+understood that he should best state the case, establish the merits, and
+confound the enemies of his regiment, by a faithful narrative of his and
+its adventures, triumphs, and sufferings. Thus, whilst he has seized the
+opportunity to deal out some hard knocks to those who have blamed the
+conduct (none have ever impugned the courage) of the Connaught Rangers,
+he has produced an entertaining book, thoroughly Irish in character,
+where the ludicrous and the horrible, the rollicking and the
+slaughtering, mingle and alternate. Even when most indignant, good
+humour and a love of fun peep through his pages. His prologue or
+preamble, entitled "An Answer to some attacks in Robinson's Life of
+Picton," although redolent of "slugs in a sawpit," is full of the
+national humour. "Frequently," Mr Robinson has asserted, "just before
+going into battle, it would be found, upon inspection, that one-half of
+the Eighty-eighth regiment were without ammunition, having acquired a
+pernicious habit of exchanging the cartridge for _aguardiente_, and
+substituting in their places pieces of wood, cut and coloured to
+resemble them." Such things have been heard of, even in very
+well-regulated regiments, as the exchange of powder and ball for brandy
+and other creature comforts; but it is very unlikely that the practice
+should have prevailed to any thing like the extent here set down, in a
+British army in active service and under Wellington's command, and the
+artfully prepared quaker-cartridges increase the improbability of the
+statement. Lieutenant Grattan scouts the tale as a base fabrication,
+lashes out in fine style at its propagator, and claims great merit for
+the officers who taught their men to beat the best troops in the world
+with timber ammunition. He puts forward a more serious refutation by a
+string of certificates from men and officers of all ranks who served
+with him in the Peninsula, and who strenuously repel the charge as a
+malignant calumny.
+
+It was at the close of the campaign of 1809, that the historian of the
+Connaught Rangers, then a newly commissioned youngster, joined, within a
+march of Badajoz, the first battalion of his regiment. The palmy and
+triumphant days of the British army in the Peninsula could then hardly
+be said to have begun. True, they had had victories; the hard-earned one
+of Talavera had been gained only three months previously, but the
+general aspect of things was gloomy and disheartening. The campaign had
+been one of much privation and fatigue; rations were insufficient,
+quarters unhealthy, and Wellington's little army, borne on the
+muster-rolls as thirty thousand men, was diminished one-third by
+disease. The Portuguese, who numbered nearly as many, were raw and
+untried troops, scarce a man of whom had seen fire, and little reliance
+could be placed upon them. In spite of Lord Wellington's judicious and
+reiterated warnings, the incompetent and conceited Spanish generals
+risked repeated engagements, in which their armies--numerous enough, but
+ill disciplined, ill armed, and half-starved--were crushed and
+exterminated. The French side of the medal presented a very different
+picture. Elated by their German victories, their swords yet red with
+Austrian blood, Napoleon's best troops and ablest marshals hurried
+southwards, sanguinely anticipating, upon the fields of the Peninsula,
+an easy continuation of their recent triumphs. Three hundred and sixty
+thousand men-at-arms--French, Germans, Italians, Poles, even
+Mamelukes--spread themselves over Spain, occupied her towns, and
+invested her fortresses. Ninety thousand soldiers, under Massena,
+"_l'enfant cheri de la Victoire_," composed the so-called "army of
+Portugal," intended to expel from that country, if not to annihilate,
+the English leader and his small but resolute band, who, undismayed,
+awaited the coming storm. In the ever-memorable lines of Torres Vedras,
+the legions of Buonaparte met a stern and effectual dike to their
+torrent of headlong aggression. Upon the happy selection and able
+defence of those celebrated positions, were based the salvation of the
+Peninsula and the subsequent glorious progress of the British arms.
+Whilst referring to them, Mr Grattan seizes the opportunity to enumerate
+the services rendered by the army in Spain. "The invincible men," he
+says, "who defended those lines, aided no doubt by Portuguese and
+Spanish soldiers, afterwards fought for a period of four years, during
+which time they never suffered one defeat; and from the first
+commencement of this gigantic war to its final and victorious
+termination, the Peninsular army fought and won nineteen pitched
+battles, and innumerable combats; they made or sustained ten sieges,
+took four great fortresses, twice expelled the French from Portugal,
+preserved Alicant, Carthagena, Cadiz, and Lisbon; they killed, wounded,
+and took about _two hundred thousand enemies_, and the bones of forty
+thousand British soldiers lie scattered on the plains and mountains of
+the Peninsula." And thereupon our friend, the Connaughter, bursts out
+into indignation that warriors who did such deeds, and, on _fifteen_
+different occasions received the thanks of parliament, should have been
+denied a medal for their services. Certainly, when men who went through
+the whole, or the greater part, of those terrible campaigns, which they
+began as commissioned officers, are now seen holding no higher than a
+lieutenant's rank, one cannot but recognise their title to some
+additional recompense, and marvel that the modest and well-merited badge
+they claim should so long have been refused them. Mr Grattan puts much
+of the blame of such refusal at the door of the Duke of Wellington. Not
+that he is usually a depreciator of his former leader, of whose military
+genius and great achievements he ever speaks with respect amounting to
+veneration. But he does not hesitate to accuse him of having sacrificed
+his old followers and friends to his own vanity, which petty feeling, he
+maintains, made the Duke desire that the only medal granted for the war
+against Napoleon, should be given for the only victory in which he beat
+the Emperor in person. We believe that many Peninsular officers, puzzled
+to account for the constant and seemingly causeless refusal of the
+coveted decoration, hold the same opinion with Mr Grattan. We esteem it
+rather plausible than sound. The names Of WELLINGTON and WATERLOO would
+not the less be immortally associated because a cross bearing those of
+PENINSULA and PYRENEES, or any other appropriate legend, shone upon the
+breasts of that "old Spanish infantry," of whom the Duke always spoke
+with affection and esteem, and to whom he unquestionably is mainly
+indebted for the wealth, honours, and fame which, for more than thirty
+years, he has tranquilly enjoyed. Moreover, we cannot credit such
+selfishness on the part of such a man, or believe that he, to whom a
+grateful sovereign and country decerned every recompense in their power
+to bestow, would be so thankless to the men to whose sweat and blood he
+mainly owed his success--to men who bore him, it may truly be said, upon
+their shoulders, to the highest pinnacle of greatness a British subject
+can possibly attain. Waterloo concluded the war: its results were
+immense, the conduct of the troops engaged heroic; but when we compare
+the amount of glory there gained with the renown accumulated during six
+years' warfare--a renown undimmed by a single reverse;--still more, when
+we contrast the dangers and hardships of one short campaign, however
+brilliant, with those of half-a-dozen long ones crowded with battles and
+sieges, we must admit that if the victors of La Belle Alliance nobly
+earned their medal, the veterans of Salamanca and Badajoz, Vittoria and
+Toulouse, have a threefold claim to a similar reward. They have long
+been unjustly deprived of it, and now comparatively few remain to
+receive the tardily-accorded distinction.
+
+The first action to which Mr Grattan refers, as having himself taken
+share in, is that of Busaco. The name is familiar to every body, but
+yet, of all the Peninsular battles, it is perhaps the one of which least
+is generally known. It was not a very bloody fight--the loss in killed
+and wounded having been barely seven per cent of the numbers engaged;
+still it was a highly important one, as testing the quality of the
+Portuguese levies, upon which much depended. Upon the whole, they
+behaved pretty well, although they committed one or two awkward
+blunders, and one of their militia regiments took to flight at the first
+volley fired by their own friends. Mr Grattan does not usually set
+himself up as a historical authority with respect to battles, except in
+matters pertaining to his own regiment or brigade, and which came under
+his own observation. Nevertheless, concerning Busaco, he speaks boldly
+out, and asserts his belief that no correct report of the action exists
+in print. Napier derives his account of it from Colonel Waller, whose
+statement is totally incorrect, and has been expressly contradicted by
+various officers (amongst others, by General King) who fought that day
+with Picton's division. Colonel Napier's strong partiality to the light
+division sometimes prevents his doing full justice to other portions of
+the army. In this instance, however, any error he has fallen into,
+arises from his being misinformed. He himself was far away to the left,
+fighting with his own corps, and could know nothing, from personal
+observation, of the proceedings of Picton's men. Opposed to a very
+superior force, including some of the best regiments of the whole French
+army, they had their hands full; and the Eighty-eighth, especially,
+covered themselves with glory. At one time, the Rangers had not only the
+French fire to endure, but also that of the Eighth Portuguese, whose
+ill-directed volleys crossed their line of march. An officer sent to
+warn the Senhores of the mischief they did, received, before he could
+fulfil his mission, a French and a Portuguese bullet, and the Eighth
+continued their reckless discharge. But no cross-fire could daunt the
+men of Connaught. "Push home to the muzzle!" was the word of their
+gallant lieutenant-colonel, Wallace; and push home they did, totally
+routing their opponents, and nearly destroying the French Thirty-sixth,
+a pet battalion of the Emperor's. Stimulus was not wanting; Wellington
+stood by, and, with his staff and several generals, watched the charge.
+The Eighty-eighth were greatly outnumbered, and Marshal Beresford, their
+colonel, "expressed some uneasiness when he saw his regiment about to
+plunge into this unequal contest. But when they were mixed with
+Regnier's division, and putting them to flight down the hill, Lord
+Wellington, tapping Beresford on the shoulder, said to him, 'Well
+Beresford, look at them now!'" And when the work was done, and the fight
+over, Wellington rode up to Colonel Wallace, and seizing him warmly by
+the hand, said, "Wallace, I never witnessed a more gallant charge than
+that made by your regiment!" Beresford spoke to several of the men by
+name, and shook the officers' hands; and even Picton forgot his
+prejudice against the regiment, whom he had once designated as the
+"Connaught foot-pads," and expressed himself satisfied with their
+conduct. Many of the men shed tears of joy. So susceptible are soldiers
+to praise and kindness, and so easy is it by a few well-timed words to
+repay their toils and perils, and renew their store of confidence and
+hope. And numerous were the occasions during the Peninsular contest when
+they needed all the encouragement that could be given them. After
+Busaco, when blockaded in the lines of Torres Vedras, their situation
+was far from agreeable. The wet season set in, and their huts, roofed
+with heather--a pleasant shelter when the sun shone, but very
+ineffectual to resist autumnal rains--became untenable. Every device was
+resorted to for the exclusion of the deluge, but in vain. Fortunately,
+the French were in a still worse plight. In miserable cantonments, short
+of provisions and attacked by disease, the horses died, and the men
+deserted; until, on the 14th November, Massena broke up his camp, and
+retired upon Santarem. The Anglo-Portuguese army made a corresponding
+movement into more comfortable quarters, and rumours were abroad of an
+approaching engagement; but it did not take place, and a period of
+comparative relaxation succeeded one of severe hardship and arduous
+duty. Men and officers made the most of the holiday. There was never any
+thing of the martinet about the Duke. He was not the man to harass with
+unnecessary and vexations drills, or rigidly to enforce unimportant
+rules. Those persons, whether military or otherwise, who consider a
+strictly regulation uniform as essential to the composition of a British
+soldier, as a stout heart and a strong arm, and who stickle for a
+closely buttoned jacket, a stiff stock, and the due allowance of
+pipe-clay, would have been somewhat scandalised, could they have beheld
+the equipment of Wellington's army in the Peninsula. Mr Grattan gives a
+comical account of the various fantastical fashions and conceits
+prevalent amongst the officers. "Provided," he says, "we brought our men
+into the field well-appointed, and with sixty rounds of good ammunition
+each, he (the Duke) never looked to see whether their trousers were
+black, blue, or grey; and as to ourselves, we might be rigged out in all
+the colours of the rainbow, if we fancied it." The officers, especially
+the young subs, availed themselves largely of this judicious laxity, and
+the result was a medley of costume, rather picturesque than military.
+Braided coats, long hair, plumed hats, and large mustaches, were amongst
+the least of the eccentricities displayed. In a curious spirit of
+contradiction, the infantry adopted brass spurs, anticipatory, perhaps,
+of their promotion to field-officers' rank; and, bearing in mind, that
+"there is nothing like leather," exhibited themselves in ponderous
+over-alls, _a la Hongroise_, topped and strapped, and loaded down the
+side with buttons and chains. One man, in his rage for singularity, took
+the tonsure, shaving the hair off the crown of his head; and another,
+having covered his frock-coat with gold tags and lace, was furiously
+assaulted by a party of Portuguese sharpshooters, who, seeing him, in
+the midst of the enemy's riflemen, whither his headlong courage had led
+him, mistook him for a French general, and insisted upon making him
+prisoner. And three years later, when Mr Grattan and a party of his
+comrades landed in England, in all the glories of velvet waistcoats,
+dangling Spanish buttons of gold and silver, and forage caps of fabulous
+magnificence, they could hardly fancy that they belonged to the same
+service as the red-coated, white-breeched, black-gaitered gentlemen of
+Portsmouth garrison.
+
+The embarkation of the British army, which in the summer of 1810 was
+deemed imminent both in England and the Peninsula and considered
+probable by Lord Liverpool himself, was no longer thought of after
+Busaco, save by a few of those croaking gentlemen, who, in camps as in
+council-houses, view every thing through smoked spectacles.
+Reinforcements, both English and Spanish, reached the lines of Torres
+Vedras, which Wellington continued to strengthen, and Massena dared not
+attack. The accession of General Drouet's corps increased the army of
+the Prince of Essling to upwards of 70,000 men. His cavalry, too, was
+twice as strong as that of the British; but, notwithstanding this
+superiority, and the desire which he must have felt to retrieve his
+fame, tarnished by the repulse at Busaco, and by his fruitless movement
+on the lines of Lisbon, Massena remained inert, in front of the man whom
+Napoleon's _Moniteur_ contemptuously designated as the "Sepoy General."
+Spring approached without either army assuming the offensive, until, on
+the 5th of March 1811, the French began their retreat from Portugal,
+closely followed up by Wellington. There was little difficulty in
+tracing them: they left a broad trail of blood, and desolation. With
+bare blade, and blazing brand, they swept across the land; church and
+convent, town and village, the farm and the cottage, were given to the
+flames; on the most frivolous pretexts, often without one, women,
+children, and unarmed men were barbarously murdered; and many a
+Portuguese lost his life for refusing to point out treasures which
+existed only in the imagination of the fierce and greedy Frenchman.
+Enraged at the dearth of provisions, of which they stood in great need,
+and which had been every-where removed or destroyed, the retreating army
+abandoned themselves to frightful cruelties and excesses. All along the
+line of march, the pursuers found piles of bodies, groups of murdered
+peasantry, and, mingled with them, the corpses of Frenchmen, often
+hideously mutilated, according to the barbarous usage which has been
+continued in more recent wars by the vindictive population of the
+Peninsula. The retaliation was terrible, but the provocation had been
+extreme. Mr Grattan's details of some of the scenes he himself
+witnessed, are painfully minute and vivid; and whilst reading them, we
+cease to wonder that, after the lapse of a third of a century, hatred of
+the French exists almost undiminished in the countries they so cruelly
+and wantonly ravaged.
+
+However orderly and well-conducted, there is always something
+discouraging in a retreat, as there is a cheerful and exhilarating
+feeling attendant on an advance. Nevertheless, during their progress
+across Portugal, the French maintained their high reputation. Their
+rear-guard, commanded by Marshal Ney, made good fight when pressed by
+the British, but their losses were heavy before they reached the Spanish
+frontier. This they crossed early in April, and a month later they had
+to recross it, to convey supplies to the fortress of Almeida, the only
+place in Portugal over which the tricolor still floated. The result of
+this movement was the bloody combat of Fuentes d'Onore, a complete but
+dearly-bought triumph for our arms. Here the Eighty-eighth nobly
+distinguished themselves. At first they were in reserve, whilst for
+eight hours two Highland regiments, the Eighty-third and some light
+companies, fought desperately in the town, opposed to the fresh troops
+which Massena continually sent up. Their loss was very heavy, the
+streets were heaped with dead, the heat was excessive, and ammunition
+grew scarce. The Highlanders and the French grenadiers fought in the
+cemetery, across the graves and tombstones. "Wallace, with his regiment,
+the Eighty-eighth, was in reserve on the high ground which overlooked
+the churchyard, and was attentively viewing the combat which raged
+below, when Sir Edward Pakenham galloped up to him, and said, 'Do you
+see that, Wallace?'--'I do,' replied the colonel; 'and I would rather
+drive the French out of the town than cover a retreat across the
+Coa.'--'Perhaps,' said Sir Edward, 'his lordship don't think it
+tenable.' Wallace answering, said, 'I shall take it with my regiment,
+and keep it too.'--'Will you?' was the reply; 'I'll go and tell Lord
+Wellington so.' In a moment or two, Pakenham returned at a gallop, and
+waving his hat, called out, 'He says you may go.--Come along, Wallace!'"
+
+Poor Pakenham! ever foremost to lead a charge or brave a peril. He
+deserved a better fate, after his glorious exploits in the Peninsula,
+than to be picked off by a sneaking Yankee rifle, in the swampy plains
+of New Orleans. But the same "boiling spirit and hasty temper" that won
+him laurels in Europe, led him to his death in another hemisphere.
+Over-confidence may be pardoned in a man who had so often driven before
+him the redoubtable cohorts of the modern Alexander. And one mistake
+cannot obliterate the memory of fifty gallant feats.--Full of fight, and
+led on by Pakenham, Mackinnon, and Wallace, the Eighty-eighth advanced
+at a smart trot into the town, where the French Ninth regiment and a few
+hundreds of the Imperial Guard awaited them. Their charge was
+irresistible; they cleared the place and drove the enemy into the river.
+They even pursued them through it, and several Rangers fell on the
+French side of the stream. About a hundred and fifty of the Old Guard
+ran into a street, of which the further end was barricaded. Mr Grattan,
+whose account of the affair is a graphic and interesting piece of
+military narrative, is amusingly cool and _naif_ in referring to this
+incident. "Mistakes of this kind," he says, "will sometimes occur, and
+when they do, the result is easily imagined.... In the present instance,
+every man was put to death; but our soldiers, _as soon as they had
+leisure_, paid the enemy that respect which is due to brave men." We
+apprehend that, with the Connaughters, _leisure_, in this sense, was
+scanty, at least at Fuentes d'Onore; but, in so close and desperate a
+fight, hot blood is apt to drown mercy. The dashing charge of the
+Eighty-eighth nearly closed the day's performances, although the French
+batteries, admirably served, still peppered the town. Men and officers
+sheltered themselves as well as they could, but many were killed; whilst
+Pakenham, with reckless bravery, rode about the streets, a mark for the
+enemy's shot, which tore up the ground around him whenever he stood
+still. "He was in a violent perspiration and covered with dust, his left
+hand bound round with a handkerchief, as if he had been wounded; he was
+ever in the hottest of the fire: and, if the whole fate of the battle
+had depended on his exertions, he could not have fought with more
+devotion."
+
+Amongst the many daring acts witnessed on the bloody day of Fuentes
+d'Onore, that of the Spanish guerilla chief, Julian Sanchez, deserves
+notice. At the head of his ragged and ill-disciplined band, he had the
+temerity to charge a crack French regiment, and, as might be expected,
+was sent back with a sore head. Whilst on the subject of guerillas, Mr
+Grattan combats an opinion which he believes many persons in this
+country entertain, "that the Spaniards and Portuguese did as much, if
+not more, during the Peninsular contest, than the British." Here he is
+certainly mistaken. Very few persons, out of the Peninsula, have any
+such notion. The French know well enough by whom they were beaten. Loth
+as they are to acknowledge a thrashing at the hands of their old
+antagonists, they do not dream of attributing their defeats to the
+"_brigands_," of whom they declare they would have had a very cheap
+bargain, but for the intervention of the troublesome English. And
+certainly, if the Spaniards and Portuguese had been left to themselves,
+although, favoured by the mountainous configuration of the country, they
+might long have kept up a desultory contest, they would never have
+succeeded in expelling the invaders; for the simple reason that they
+were wholly unable to meet them in the plain. Most true it is that,
+during the war of independence, the people of the Peninsula gave
+numerous examples of bravery and devotion, and still more of long
+suffering and patient endurance for their country's sake. The irregular
+mode of warfare adopted by the peasantry, the great activity and
+constant skirmishings, stratagems, and ambuscades of Mina, the
+Empecinado, Sanchez, and many other patriotic and valiant men, greatly
+harassed and annoyed the French; and, by compelling them to employ large
+bodies of troops in garrison and escort duty, prevented their opposing
+an overwhelming force to the comparatively small army under Wellington.
+But all that sort of thing, however useful and efficacious as a general
+system, and as weakening the enemy, was very petty work when examined in
+detail. The great victories, the mighty feats of war that figure in
+history's page, were due to British discipline, pluck, and generalship.
+And whatever merit remains with the Spaniards, is to be attributed to
+their guerillas and irregular partisans. As to their regular troops,
+after they had overthrown Dupont at Baylen, they seemed to think they
+might doze upon their laurels, which were very soon wrenched from them.
+Baylen was their grand triumph, and subsequently to it they did little
+in the field. Behind stone walls they still fought well: Spaniards are
+brave and tenacious in a fortress, and Saragossa is a proud name in
+their annals. Nothing could be better than old General Herrasti's
+valiant defence of Cuidad Rodrigo against Ney and his thirty thousand
+Frenchmen. The garrison, six thousand strong, lost seven hundred men by
+the first day's fire. Only when their guns were silenced, when the town
+was on fire in various places, and when several yards of wall were
+thrown down by a mine, did the brave governor hoist the white flag.
+Other instances of the kind might be cited, when Spanish soldiers fought
+as well as mortal men could do. But with respect to pitched battles,
+another tale must be told. At Ocana, Almonacid, and on a dozen other
+disastrous fields, Baylen was amply revenged. The loss at Ocana alone is
+rated by Spanish accounts at thirty thousand men, chiefly prisoners. Mr
+Grattan estimates it at twenty-five thousand men, and _thirteen thousand
+eight hundred and seventy-seven guitars_. Of these latter, he tells us
+twelve thousand seven hundred and fifty-two were in cases, and the
+remainder without; Indeed he is so exceedingly circumstantial that we
+presume he counted them himself. Otherwise, although well aware of the
+Spaniard's predilection for the fascinating tinkle of his national
+instrument, we could hardly credit the accuracy of the figures. Even a
+_Spanish_ general, we should think, would hardly allow his men thus to
+encumber themselves with harmony. The march of such an army of
+Orpheuses, in which every third soldier shouldered a fiddle-case as a
+pendant to his musket, must have been curious to behold; suggesting the
+idea that the melodious warriors designed subduing their foes by the
+soothing strains of _jotas_ and _cachuchas_, rather than by the more
+cogent arguments of sharp steel and ball-cartridge. Great must have been
+the tinkling at eventide, exceeding that of the most extensive flock of
+merinos that ever cropped Castilian herbage. Was it because they were
+certain of a dance that these barrack-yard minstrels came provided with
+music, sure, in any case, to have the piper to pay? If the instruments
+were provided to celebrate a triumph, they might as well have been left
+at home. In Spain, however, time has effaced, or greatly weakened, the
+remembrance of many reverses, whilst slight and dubious successes,
+carefully treasured up, have swollen by the keeping into mighty
+victories; and at the present day, foreigners who should be so
+uncourteous and impolitic as to express, in the hearing of Spaniards, a
+doubt that Spanish valour was the main agent in driving the French from
+the Peninsula, might reckon, not on a stab--knifeing being less in vogue
+beyond the Bay of Biscay than is often imagined--but certainly on a
+scowl, and probably on an angry contradiction. And in every province,
+almost in every town, in Spain the traveller may, if he so pleaseth, be
+regaled with marvellous narratives of signal victories, gained over the
+_gavachos_, in that immediate neighbourhood, by valiant generals whose
+names, so partial is fame, have never transpired beyond the scenes of
+their problematical exploits. Under the constitutional system, and owing
+to the long civil war, Spanish troops have improved in discipline and in
+various other respects; and with good generals, there is no manifest
+reason why they should not successfully cope with Frenchmen, although we
+doubt whether they could. But in Napoleon's day matters were very
+different, and in the open field their chance was desperate. The
+Portuguese were doubtless of a better quality; and in the pages of
+Napier and other historians, we find them spoken of in terms of praise.
+They had British officers to head them, and there is much in good
+leading; they had British troops to emulate, and national pride spurred
+them on. At the same period, Italians--certainly very poor soldiers when
+left to themselves--fought gallantly under French generals, and with
+French example before them. Of the general bearing of the Portuguese,
+however, we have heard few Peninsular men speak very highly. They appear
+to have been extremely inconsistent; brave one day, dastards the next.
+
+At, Ciudad Rodrigo, Mr Grattan greatly lauds their gallantry, which
+struck him the more as being unexpected. At Salamanca, on the other
+hand, he records their weakness, and the easy repulse of Pack's brigade,
+two thousand strong, by four hundred Frenchmen. "Notwithstanding all
+that has been said and written of the Portuguese troops, I still hold
+the opinion that they are utterly incompetent to stand unsupported and
+_countenanced_ by British troops, with any chance of success, against
+even half their own numbers of Frenchmen." Again, after Salamanca, when
+Wellington and his victorious army advanced on Madrid, the Portuguese
+dragoons fled, without striking a blow, before the French lancers,
+exposing the reserve of German cavalry to severe loss, abandoning the
+artillery to its fate, and tarnishing the triumphal entry of the British
+into the capital--within a march of which this disgraceful affair
+occurred. Still, to encourage these wavering heroes, it was necessary to
+speak civilly of them in despatches; to pat them on the back, and tell
+them they were fine fellows. And this has sometimes been misunderstood
+by simple persons, who believe all they see in print, and look upon
+despatches and bulletins as essentially veracious documents. "I remember
+once," says Mr Grattan, "upon my return home in 1813, getting myself
+closely cross-examined by an old lawyer, because I said I thought the
+Portuguese troops inferior to the French, still more to the British.
+'Inferior to the British, sir! I have read Lord Wellington's last
+despatch, and he says the Portuguese fought as well as the British; and
+I suppose you won't contradict him?' I saw it was vain to convince this
+pugnacious old man of the necessity of saying these civil things, and we
+parted mutually dissatisfied with each other; he taking me, no doubt,
+for a forward young puppy, and I looking upon him as a monstrous old
+bore."
+
+The Eighty-eighth, we gather from Mr Grattan's narrative, whilst
+respected by all as a first-rate battle regiment, was, when the stirring
+and serious events of that busy time left a moment for trifling, a
+fertile source of amusement to the whole third division. This is not
+wonderful. Many of the officers, and all the men, with the exception of
+three or four, were Irish, not Anglicised Irishmen, tamed by long
+residence amongst the Saxon, but raw, roaring Patlanders, who had grown
+and thriven on praties and potheen, and had carried with them to Spain
+their rich brogue, their bulls, and an exhaustless stock of gaiety. The
+amount of fun and blunders furnished by such a corps was naturally
+immense. But if in quarters they were made the subject of much
+good-humoured quizzing, in the field their steady valour was justly
+appreciated. No regiment in the service contained a larger proportion of
+"lads that weren't aisy," which metaphorical phrase, current among the
+Rangers, is translated by Mr Grattan as signifying fellows who would
+walk into a cannon's month, and think the operation rather a pleasant
+one. Whenever a desperate service was to be done, "the boys," as they,
+_more Hibernico_, familiarly termed themselves, were foremost in the
+ranks of volunteers. The contempt of danger, or non-comprehension of it,
+manifested by some of these gentlemen, was perfect. "My fine fellow,"
+said an engineer officer, during the unsuccessful siege of Badajoz in
+May 1811, to a man under Lieutenant Grattan's orders, who sat outside a
+battery, hammering at a fascine; "my fine fellow, you are too much
+exposed; get inside the embrasure, and you will do your work nearly as
+well." "I'm almost finished, colonel," was the reply, "and it isn't
+worth while to move now. Those fellows can't hit me, for they've been
+trying it these fifteen minutes." Just then, a round-shot gave the lie
+to his prediction by cutting him in two; and, according to their custom,
+the French gunners set up a shout of triumph at their successful
+practice. Some of the Connaughters, who had never lost sight of their
+native bogs till exported to the Peninsula, understood little or no
+English beyond the words of command. On an inspection parade, one of
+this class was asked by General Mackinnon, to whose squad he belonged.
+Bewildered and puzzled, Darby Rooney applied to his sergeant for a
+translation of the general's question--thus conveying to the latter an
+idea that this was the first time he had heard such a thing as a squad
+spoken of. The story got abroad--was, of course, much embellished--and
+an hour afterwards the third division was enjoying a prodigious chuckle
+at the notion that not one of the Connaughters knew what a squad meant.
+The young men laughed, the old officers shook their heads and deplored
+the benighted state of the Irishmen; whilst all the time, Mr Grattan
+assures us, "the Eighty-eighth was a more really _efficient_ regiment
+than almost any _two_ corps in the third division." As efficient as any
+they undoubtedly were, when fighting was to be done; but in some other
+respects their conduct was less irreproachable. According to their
+historian and advocate's own showing, their knapsacks were often too
+light and their havresacks too heavy. "A watchcoat, a piece of
+pipe-clay, and a button-brush," compose rather a scanty kit: yet those
+three articles formed--with the exception of the clothes he stood
+in--the entire wardrobe and means of personal adornment of the Rooney
+above-named; and many of his comrades were scarce better provided. But
+if the back was neglected and left bare, the belly, on the contrary,
+was cared for with vigilant affection. On occasion, the Eighty-eighth
+could do their work on meagre diet as well, or better than any other
+corps. They would march two days on a pipe of tobacco; or for a week,
+with the addition of a biscuit and a dram. But when they did such
+things, it was no sign of any abstract love of temperance, or wish to
+mortify the flesh; it was simply a token of the extreme poverty of the
+district in which they found themselves. For the article provend they
+always kept a bright look-out. A greasy havresack, especially on the
+line of march, is the soldier's first desideratum; and it was rare that
+a very respectable workhouse soup could not have been produced by
+infusing that of a Connaughter in a proper quantity of water. When
+rations were scanty, or commissaries lagged in the rear, none understood
+better than the Eighty-eighth how to forage for themselves. "Every man
+his own quartermaster" was then their motto. Nothing came amiss to them;
+sweet or savoury, from a pig to a bee-hive, they sacked every thing; and
+their "taking ways" were often cast in their teeth. The natives were
+compelled to mount guard over their sheepfolds; but the utmost force
+they could muster was of small avail against the resolute onslaught of
+the half-famished Irishmen. Even the exertions of the Provost-marshal,
+and the liberal application of the cat, proved ineffectual to check
+these depredations; whilst the whimsical arguments used by the fellows
+in their defence sometimes disarmed the severity of Picton himself.
+
+It would have been quite out of character for an Irish regiment to march
+without ladies in their train, and accordingly the female following of
+the Rangers was organised on the most liberal scale. Motley as it was
+numerous, it included, besides English and Irish women, a fair
+sprinkling of tender-hearted Spaniards and Portuguese, who had been
+unable to resist the fascinations of the insinuating Connaughters. The
+sufferings of these poor creatures, on long marches, over bad roads and
+in wet and cold seasons, were of course terrible, and only to be
+equalled by their fidelity to those to whom they had attached
+themselves. Their endurance of fatigue was wonderful; their services
+were often great; and many a soldier, stretched disabled on the field of
+some bloody battle, and suffering from the terrible thirst attendant on
+wounds, owed his life to their gentle ministry. In circumstances of
+danger, they showed remarkable courage. At the assault of Ciudad
+Rodrigo, the baggage-guard, eager to share in the fight, deserted
+their post and rushed to the trenches. Immediately a host of
+miscreants--fellows who hung on the skirts of the army, watching
+opportunities to plunder--made a dash at the camp, but the women
+defended it valiantly, and fairly beat them off. Of course feminine
+sensibility got a little blunted by a life of this kind, and it was
+rarely with very violent emotion that the ladies saw their husbands go
+into action. Persuaded of their invincibility, they looked upon success
+as certain, and if, unfortunately, the victory left them widows, they
+deemed a very short mourning necessary before contracting a new
+alliance. Now and then a damsel of birth and breeding would desert the
+paternal mansion to follow the drum; and Mr Grattan tells a romantic
+history of a certain Jacinta Cherito, the beautiful daughter of a
+wealthy judge, who blacked her face and tramped off as a cymbal boy
+under the protection of the drum-major of the Eighty-eighth--a
+magnificent fellow, whose gorgeous uniform and imposing cocked hat
+caused him to be taken by the Portuguese for nothing less than a general
+of division. The young lady had not forgotten to take her jewels with
+her, and the old judge made a great fuss, and appealed to the colonel,
+who requested him to inspect the regiment as it left the town. But the
+sooty visage and uniform jacket baffled his penetration, and at the
+first halt, the drummer and the lady were made one flesh. Thorp, the
+lucky bridegroom, was a fine dashing fellow, bent upon distinguishing
+himself. He was often wounded, but never missed an engagement, even when
+his hurts were unhealed. He fell gloriously at Toulouse, and the next
+day came the gazette with his promotion to an ensigncy, which, if it was
+then of little value to him, was at any rate "a great consolation to his
+poor afflicted widow, and the means of reconciling her father to the
+choice she had made; and her return once more to her home was a scene of
+great rejoicing." When the British troops embarked at Bordeaux, for
+America and England, a crowd of poor Spanish and Portuguese women, who
+had long followed their fortunes and were now forbidden to accompany
+their husbands and lovers, watched their departure with tearful eyes.
+"They were fond and attached creatures, and had been useful in many
+ways, and under many circumstances, not only to their husbands, but to
+the corps they belonged to generally. Many of them, the Portuguese in
+particular, had lived with our men for years, and had borne them
+children." But the stern rules of the service prevailed. The battalions
+bound for America were allowed but a limited number of soldiers' wives,
+and the surplus were of necessity left to their fate. Some had money;
+more were penniless, and nearly naked. Men and officers were then
+greatly in arrear, but nevertheless a subscription was got up, and its
+amount divided amongst the unfortunates, thus abandoned upon a foreign
+shore, and at many hundreds of miles from their homes.
+
+General Picton was a man of action, not of words. There was no palaver
+about him, nothing superfluous in the way of orations, but he spoke
+strongly and to the point. Long harangues, as Mr Grattan justly
+observes, are not necessary to British soldiers. Metaphor and flowers of
+rhetoric are thrown away upon them. Something plain, pithy, and
+appropriate is what they like; the shorter the better. "Rangers of
+Connaught!" said Picton, as he passed the Eighty-eighth, drawn up for
+the assault of Ciudad Rodrigo, "it is not my intention to expend any
+powder this evening. We'll do this business with the cold iron." This
+was a very unpretending speech; nothing of the clap-trap or melodramatic
+about it; a mere declaration in the fewest possible words, of the
+speaker's intentions, implying what he expected from those he addressed.
+That it was just what was wanted, was proved by the hearty respondent
+cheer of the brave Irishmen. The result of the attack is well known; the
+Rangers took a gallant share in it. The next morning the troops were
+ordered out of the captured town, which they had ransacked to some
+purpose, and the Eighty-eighth, drawn up on their bivouac ground, were
+about to march away to the village of Atalaya, when Picton again rode
+past. "Some of the soldiers, who were more than usually elevated in
+spirits," (they had passed the night in bursting open doors and drinking
+brandy,) "called out, 'Well, General, we gave you a cheer last night:
+it's your turn now!' The general smiled, took off his hat, and said,
+'Here, then, you drunken set of brave rascals--hurrah! we'll soon be at
+Badajoz.'" A prophecy which was not long unaccomplished. With all
+deference to Mr Grattan, we cannot but think that the Eighty-eighth were
+very appropriately placed under Picton's orders. Excellent fighting men
+though they were, they certainly, according to their champion's own
+showing, needed a strict hand over them. We should like to know how they
+would have got on under such an officer as Mr Grattan tells us of, who,
+when in command of a regiment, came to mess one day in very low spirits,
+because, having sent his adjutant to inquire of an ensign why he did not
+attend parade, the ensign returned no answer, and, on subsequently
+meeting his commanding officer, cut him dead. The colonel told the story
+at the mess-table, and concluded by saying, "I thought nothing of his
+not answering my message, but I cannot express how much I am hurt at the
+idea of his cutting me as he did when I wished to speak to him!"
+Field-officers of such susceptible feelings, and such very loose ideas
+on the subject of discipline, were not plentiful in the Peninsula, and
+this one, we are given to understand, did not long retain his regiment.
+He would hardly have done at the head of the high-spirited Connaughters.
+But if Picton's severity to the men of the Eighty-eighth may be
+justified, his neglect of the officers is far more difficult to excuse.
+"_Not one of them was ever promoted through his recommendation._" The
+conduct of Lieutenant Mackie at Ciudad Rodrigo was chivalrous in the
+extreme. General Mackinnon--who commanded the brigade and was blown to
+pieces at its head by the explosion of a mine--wished to confer a mark
+of distinction on the gallant Eighty-eighth, and ordered that one of its
+subalterns should lead the forlorn-hope. The moment this was announced
+to the assembled officers, "Mackie stepped forward, and lowering his
+sword, said, 'Major Thompson, I am ready for that service.'" Mackinnon
+had promised a company to the forlorn-hope leader, if he survived. But
+it must be observed that Mackie was senior lieutenant, and consequently
+sure of early promotion. The Eighty-eighth was to be in the van at the
+assault, and the probabilities were that at least one captain would be
+knocked off. Or, if not that day, it would happen the next. So that
+Mackie, in volunteering on the most desperate of all services, could
+have little to actuate him beyond an honourable desire for glory. How
+was he repaid? Gurwood, who led the forlorn-hope at the lesser breach,
+got his company; Mackie remained a lieutenant--no captain of the
+Eighty-eighth having been killed, and General Mackinnon not being alive
+to fulfil his promise. And whilst all the other officers who had been
+forward in the attack, had their names recorded in Picton's
+division-order, poor Mackie was denied even the word of barren praise so
+gratifying to a soldier's heart.
+
+The loss of Ciudad Rodrigo was a stunning blow to the French. They could
+not understand it at all. Herrasti and his Spaniards had held out the
+place a month against Ney and Massena, with thirty or forty thousand
+veterans, and that in fine weather, a great advantage to the
+besiegers--in eleven days, and in the depth of winter, Wellington
+reduced it, with twenty thousand men and opposed by a French garrison.
+The contrast was great, and quite inexplicable to the French. "On the
+16th," wrote Marmont to Berthier, "the English batteries opened their
+fire at a great distance. On the 19th the place was taken by storm, and
+fell into the power of the enemy. There is something so incomprehensible
+in this event, that I allow myself no observation. I am not provided
+with the requisite information." No testimony could be more
+complimentary to the brave captors of Rodrigo. That great success,
+however, was only a forerunner of greater ones. Badajoz was the next
+place to be taken, preparatory to marching into the interior of Spain.
+To conceal his intentions from the enemy, Wellington had recourse to an
+elaborate stratagem. A powerful battering train, supplied by the men of
+war in the Tagus, was shipped at Lisbon, on board vessels of large size,
+which put out to sea, and, when out of sight of land, transhipped their
+cargo into smaller craft. These carried them up the Tagus into the heart
+of the country. At the same time the necessary magazines were formed;
+and at Elvas, only three leagues from Badajoz, a large quantity of
+fascines and gabions were prepared. All this, however, was done so
+quietly, Wellington appeared so supine, and Badajoz was so well
+provided, that Soult was lulled into security; and when at last he took
+the alarm, and marched from Seville at the head of twenty-five thousand
+men, it was too late. Philippon, and his brave garrison, did all that
+skill and courage could; but in vain. When Soult reached Villafranca,
+two days' march from Badajoz, the fortress had already been two days in
+the power of the English. This, to the French, was another unaccountable
+business; they, even yet, had not learned fully to appreciate the
+sovereign virtues of British bayonets. "I think the capture of Badajoz a
+very extraordinary event," Lery, Soult's chief engineer, wrote to
+General Kellerman, "and I am much at a loss to account for it in a clear
+and distinct manner." This comes at the end of a mysterious sort of
+epistle, in which the engineer general talks of fatality, and seems to
+think that the British had no right to take Badajoz, defended as it was.
+But Wellington and his army were great despisers of that sort of
+_right_, and, in spite of the really glorious defence, in spite of the
+strategy of the governor and the valour of the garrison, of _chevaux de
+frise_ of sword-blades, and of the deadly accuracy of the French
+artillery and musketeers, Badajoz was taken. The triumph was fearfully
+costly. Nearly four thousand five hundred men fell on the side of the
+besiegers;--Picton's division was reduced to a skeleton, and the
+Connaught Rangers lost more than half their numbers.
+
+Shot through the body at Badajoz, Mr Grattan was left there when his
+division marched away. He gives a terrible account of the sacking of the
+town; but on such details, even had they not been many times
+recapitulated, it is not pleasant to dwell. The frightful crimes
+perpetrated during those two days of unbridled excess and violence, rest
+at the door of the man whose boundless ambition occasioned that most
+desolating war. From an ignorant and sensual soldiery, excited to
+madness by a prolonged resistance, and by one of the most sanguinary
+conflicts recorded in the history of sieges, forbearance could hardly be
+expected. The horrible saturnalia, in which murder and rape, pillage and
+intoxication, are pushed to their utmost limits, are the necessary
+condition of a successful assault on a desperately defended fortress;
+and supposing them prohibited, and that such prohibition could be
+enforced, we agree with Mr Grattan in believing that many a town that
+has been victoriously carried, might have been found impregnable. But
+one must ever deplore the disgraceful scenes enacted in the streets and
+houses of Badajoz, Ciudad Rodrigo, and St Sebastian. Unsurpassed in
+atrocity, they remain everlasting blots upon the bright laurels gathered
+by the British in the Peninsula. And it is small palliation, that under
+similar circumstances, the armies of all nations have acted in like
+manner. Here the sufferers were not enemies. To the garrison, when their
+resistance ceased, quarter was given; they were marched away scatheless,
+and treated with that humanity which England, notwithstanding the lying
+assertions of foreign historians, has ever used towards her prisoners.
+No, the victims were friends and allies. The very nation in whose behalf
+our soldiers had fought, saw their houses ransacked, their property
+wasted, their wives and daughters brutally outraged, by those whose
+mission was to protect and defend. Let us hope they have forgotten, or
+at least forgiven, such gloomy episodes in the struggle for their
+liberation.
+
+The advocates of universal peace might adduce many potent and practical
+arguments in favour of their doctrine from the pages of Mr Grattan's
+book. He is unsparing in his details of the inevitable horrors of war;
+and some of his descriptions, persons of tender hearts and sensitive
+nerves will do well to pass over. They may be read with profit by those
+who, accustomed to behold but the sunny side of military life, think too
+lightly of the miseries war entails. Let such accompany Mr Grattan
+though the streets of Badajoz, on the morning of the 7th April, 1812,
+and into the temporary hospital of Villa Formosa, after the fierce
+conflict of Fuentes d'Onore, where two hundred soldiers still awaited,
+twenty-four hours after the action, the surgeons' leisure, for the
+amputation of their limbs. Let them view with him the piles of
+unsuccoured wounded on the breach of Badajoz, and hear the shrieks and
+groans of men dying in helpless agony, without a friendly hand to prop
+their head, or a drop of water to cool their fevered lips. From such
+harrowing scenes it is pleasant to turn to the more humane and redeeming
+features of civilised warfare, and to note the courteous and amicable
+relations that existed between the contending armies when, as sometimes
+happened, they lay near together without coming to blows. This occurred
+previously to the battle of Salamanca. From the 3d to the 12th of July,
+the French and British were in presence of each other, encamped on
+either side the Douro, at that season little more than a rivulet. Of
+course all were on the alert; there was no laxity or negligence that
+could tempt to surprise; but neither was there any useless skirmishing
+or picket firing; every thing was conducted in the most gentlemanly and
+correct manner. The soldiers bathed together and exchanged their
+rations, and the officers were on equally good terms. "The part of the
+river of which I speak was occupied, on our side, by the Third division;
+on the French side by the Seventh division. The French officers said to
+us at parting, 'We have met, and have been for some time friends. We are
+about to separate, and may meet as enemies. As friends we received each
+other warmly; as enemies we shall do the same.' Ten days afterwards the
+British Third and the French Seventh division were opposed to each other
+at Salamanca, and the Seventh French was destroyed by the British
+Third." Mr Grattan's wound was healed in ample time for him to assist at
+the battle of Salamanca; a glorious victory, which would have been even
+more complete had the British been properly seconded by their Portuguese
+allies. The behaviour of these was any thing but creditable to their
+nation. One detachment of cacadores actually threw themselves on their
+faces to avoid the enemy's fire, and not all the blows showered on them
+by their commander, Major Haddock, could induce them to exchange their
+recumbent attitude for one more dignified. Notwithstanding this, and the
+more fatal feebleness of Pack's brigade, the French were totally beaten,
+and their loss was nearly four times that of the British. Lord
+Wellington's opinion of the battle--a particularly honourable one to our
+troops, inasmuch as they not only _fought_ better, but (which was not
+always the case) moved and manoeuvred better, than the picked veterans
+of the French army--is sufficiently shown by the fact that "he selected
+it in preference to all his other victories, as the most fitting to be
+fought over in sham-fight on the plains of St Denis, in the presence of
+the three crowned heads who occupied Paris after the second abdication
+of the Emperor Napoleon, in 1815."
+
+At Salamanca, the right brigade of the Third division, including the
+Connaught Rangers, charged the entire division of the French General
+Thomiere. So awful was the volley that welcomed them, that more than
+half the officers, and nearly the whole front rank, were swept away.
+Doubtless the French thought this would prove a sickener, for great was
+their consternation when, before the smoke had well cleared away, they
+saw the shattered but dauntless brigade advancing fiercely and steadily
+upon them. Panic-stricken, they wavered; "the three regiments ran
+onward, and the mighty phalanx, which a moment before was so formidable,
+loosened and fell in pieces before fifteen hundred invincible British
+soldiers fighting in a line of only two deep." In this memorable charge,
+the standard-pole of the Eighty-eighth was struck by a bullet, the same
+that killed Major Murphy, who commanded the battalion. New colours have
+since been presented to the regiment, but the wounded pole is still
+preserved, and on it is engraved, on a plate of silver, the day and the
+manner of its mutilation.
+
+An advance on Madrid was consequent on the triumph at Salamanca, and on
+the 12th of August, Wellington and his army reached the Spanish capital.
+Their entrance has often been described, but in default of novelty, Mr
+Grattan's account of it possesses spirit and interest. It was one of
+those scenes that repay soldiers for months of fatigue and danger. The
+troops were almost carried into the city in the arms of the delighted
+populace. The steady, soldier-like bearing of the men, the appearance of
+the officers, nearly all mounted, inspired respect and increased the
+general enthusiasm. For miles from Madrid, the road was thronged; when
+the army got into the streets, it was no longer possible to preserve the
+order of march. The ranks were broken by the pressure of the crowd, and
+the officers (lucky dogs!) were half-smothered in the embraces of the
+charming Madrilenas. Young and old, ugly and handsome, all came in for
+their share of hugs and kisses. Still, although patriotism impelled the
+Spanish fair to look with favour upon the scarlet-coated Britons, the
+painful confession must be made that as individuals they gave the
+preference to the lively, light-hearted Frenchmen. Napoleon was the
+fiend himself, incarnate in the form of an under-sized Corsican, and the
+_gavachos_ were his imps, whom it was praise-worthy to shoot at from
+behind every hedge, and to poniard whenever the opportunity offered.
+Such was the creed inculcated by the priests, and devoutly entertained
+by their petticoated penitents--that is to say, by every Christian woman
+in the Peninsula. But somehow or other, when French regiments were
+quartered in Spanish towns, the female part of the population forgot the
+anathemas of their spiritual consolers, and looked complacently upon
+those they were enjoined to abhor. It was a case of "_nos amis les
+ennemis_," and the French, beaten every where in the field, obtained
+facile and frequent triumphs in the boudoir. "It is a singular fact, and
+I look upon it as a degrading one," says Mr Grattan with diverting
+seriousness, "that the French officers, whilst at Madrid, made in the
+ratio of five to one more conquests than we did." The dignity of the
+admission might be questioned; the degree of degradation is matter of
+opinion; the singularity is explained away by Mr Grattan himself. He
+blames his comrades for their stiff, unbending manners, and for their
+non-conformance to the customs of the country. They were nearly three
+months at Madrid, and yet he declares that, at the end of that time,
+they knew little more of the inhabitants than of the citizens of Pekin.
+And he opines that the impression left in Spain by the Peninsular army
+was rather one of respect for their courage, than of admiration of their
+social graces and general affability. If Mr Grattan, whilst reposing at
+ease upon his well-earned bays, would devise and promulgate an antidote
+to the mixture of shyness, reserve, and hauteur, which renders
+Englishmen, wherever they travel, the least popular of the European
+family, he would have a claim on his country's gratitude stronger even
+than the one he established whilst defending her with his sword in the
+well-contested fields of the Peninsula. Notwithstanding, however, the
+unamiability with which he reproaches his companions in arms, there was
+much fun and feasting, and sauntering in the Prado, and bull-fighting
+and theatre-going, whilst the British were at Madrid. But it was too
+pleasant to last long. The best a soldier can expect in war-time, is an
+alternation of good quarters and severe hardship. The "_quart-d'heure de
+Rabelais_" was at hand, when all the dancing, drinking, masking, and
+other pleasant things should be paid for, and the brief enjoyment
+forgotten, amidst the sufferings of the most painful retreat--excepting,
+of course, that of Corunna--effected by a British army during the whole
+war. We refer to the retrograde movement that followed the unsuccessful
+siege of Burgos.
+
+The high reputation of the British soldier rests far more upon his arms
+than upon his legs; in other words, he is a fighting rather than a
+marching man. Slowness of movement, in the field as on the route, is the
+fault that has most frequently been imputed to him. One thing is pretty
+generally admitted; that, to work well, he must be well fed. And even
+then he will hardly get over the ground as rapidly, or endure fatigue as
+long, as the lean lathy Frenchman, who has never known the liberal
+rations and fat diet the other is accustomed to. When a certain period
+of active service and long marches has given the English soldier his
+campaigning legs, he must still have his regular grog, or he soon flags,
+if he does not grumble and become insubordinate. Rations were bad, and
+hard to be got, on the retreat from Burgos. Then, Mr Grattan tells us,
+the superior marching qualities of the Irish were manifest. There had
+been very little beef-steak and bacon expended in _their_ bringing up;
+scanty fare was nothing new to them, and by no means affected their
+gaiety and good-humour. And when shoes were scarce, what cared they? The
+stones in Connaught are not a bit softer than those in Spain; and
+nine-tenths of the boys had trotted about, from infancy upwards, with
+"divel a brogue, save the one on their tongues." Some of the English
+regiments--the Forty-fifth for instance, chiefly composed of Nottingham
+weavers--would, under ordinary circumstances, march as well as any
+Irishman of them all: "But if it came to a hard tug, and that we had
+neither rations nor shoes, then, indeed, the Connaught Rangers would be
+in their element, and out-march almost any battalion in the service." On
+the retreat from Burgos to Portugal, they gave proof of their toughness
+and endurance; for whilst other regiments were decimated by fatigue and
+sickness, the Eighty-eighth scarcely lost a man, except by the enemy's
+fire. It was a time when the good qualities of all were severely tested.
+The movement began in a most unfavourable season. The roads were nearly
+impassable from heavy rains, and for days together there was not a dry
+jacket in the army. At night they lay in the open country, often in a
+swamp, without a tent to shelter them; the baggage was detached, and
+they never saw it till they reached Ciudad Rodrigo. It was share and
+share alike amongst men and officers, and many of the latter were mere
+striplings, who had but lately left the comforts of their English homes.
+When they halted from their weary day's march, the ill-conditioned
+beasts collected for rations had to be slaughtered; sometimes they came
+too late to be of any use, or the camp-kettles did not arrive in time to
+cook them; and the famished soldiers had to set out again, with a few
+pieces of dry biscuit rattling in their neglected stomachs, and driven
+to satisfy the cravings of hunger with the acorns that strewed the
+forests. There was little money afloat, for pay was four months in
+arrear, but millions would have been useless where there was nothing to
+buy. The country was deserted; every where the inhabitants fled on the
+approach of the two armies. Disease was the natural consequence of so
+many privations; ague and dysentery undermined the men's strength, and
+many poor fellows, unable to proceed, were left upon the road. Horses
+died by hundreds, and those which held out were for the most part
+sore-backed, one of the greatest calamities that can happen to cavalry
+and artillery on the march. Fortunately Soult, who, with ninety thousand
+men, followed the harassed army, had some experience of British troops.
+And what he had seen of them, especially at Albuera and on the Corunna
+retreat, had inspired him with a salutary respect for their prowess.
+They might retreat, but he knew what they could and would do when driven
+to stand at bay. And therefore, although Wellington was by no means
+averse to fight, and actually offered his antagonist battle on the very
+ground where, four months previously, that of Salamanca had occurred,
+the wary Duke of Dalmatia declined the contest. He played a safe game:
+without risking a defeat by a general action, or attempting to drive the
+British before him with the bayonet, he hovered about their rear,
+disquieted them by a flank movement of part of his force, and had the
+satisfaction of knowing that their loss by the casualties and fatigues
+of the march and inclemency of the weather, was as great as it would
+probably have been had he engaged them. For, besides those who perished
+on the road, when the army got into winter quarters, a vast number of
+men and officers went into hospital, and months elapsed before the
+troops were fully reorganised and fit for the field. At a day's march
+from Ciudad Rodrigo, Wellington's rear-guard had a smart skirmish, and
+then Soult desisted from his pursuit, and the Anglo-Portuguese were
+allowed to proceed without further molestation. Although disastrous, and
+in some respects ill managed, the retreat was in no way disgraceful. The
+French, very superior in numbers, had, whenever they pressed forward,
+been bravely met, and invariably repulsed.
+
+With this retreat, Mr Grattan's Peninsular campaigns closed. He returned
+to Ireland, and in the summer of 1814, embarked for Canada. He rather
+refers to, than records the service he saw there; taking occasion,
+however, for a strong censure on Sir George Prevost, who, after forcing
+our ill-appointed fleet on Lake Champlain into action, refused to allow
+Brisbane and his brigade of "Peninsulars" to take the fort of
+Platsburgh, an enterprise easy of achievement, and which would have
+placed the captured ships, and the victorious but disabled American
+flotilla, at the mercy of the British. But we have not space to follow
+the Ranger across the Atlantic, nor is it essential so to do; for,
+although he gives some amusing sketches of Canada and the Canadians, the
+earlier portion of his book is by far the most interesting, and
+certainly the most carefully written. We could almost quarrel with him
+for defacing his second volume with perpetual and not very successful
+attempts at wit. We have rarely met with more outrageous specimens of
+punning run mad, than are to be found in its pages. Barring that fault,
+we have nothing but what is favourable to say of the book. Its tone is
+manly, and soldier-like, and it is creditable both to the writer and to
+the service, by which, during the last thirty years, our stores of
+military and historical literature have been so largely and agreeably
+increased.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] _Adventures of the Connaught Rangers, from 1808 to 1814._ By W.
+GRATTAN, Esq. London. 1847.
+
+
+
+
+LORD SIDMOUTH'S LIFE AND TIME.[4]
+
+
+To read a memoir of the late Lord Sidmouth, is like taking a walk
+through Westminster Abbey. All the literature, is inscriptions; all the
+figures are monumental; and all the names are those of men whose
+characters and distinctions have been echoing in our ears since we had
+the power to understand national renown. The period between 1798, when
+the subject of this memoir made his first step in parliamentary life as
+Speaker, and 1815, when the close of the war so triumphantly finished
+the long struggle between liberty and jacobinism, was beyond all
+comparison the most memorable portion of British history.
+
+In this estimate, we fully acknowledge the imperishable fame of
+Marlborough in the field, and the high ability of Bolingbroke in the
+senate. The gallantry of Wolfe still throws its lustre over the
+concluding years of the second George; and the brilliant declamation of
+Chatham will exact the tribute due to daring thought, and classic
+language, so long as oratory is honoured among men. But the age which
+followed was an age of realities, stern, stirring, and fearful. There
+was scarcely a trial of national fortitude, or national Vigour, through
+which the sinews of England were not then forced to give proof of their
+highest power of endurance. All was a struggle of the elements; in which
+every shroud and tackle of the royal ship of England was strained; and
+the tempest lasted through nearly a quarter of a century. England, the
+defender of all, was the sufferer for all. Every principle of her
+financial prosperity, every material of her military prowess, every
+branch of her constitutional system, every capacity of her political
+existence, her Church, her State, and her Legislature, were successively
+compelled into the most perilous yet most powerful display; and the
+close of the most furious hostility which Europe had ever seen, only
+exhibited in a loftier point of view the victorious strength which
+principle confers upon a people.
+
+Compared with this tremendous scene, the political conflicts of the
+preceding age were a battle on the stage, compared with the terrors of
+the field. The spectators came to enjoy a Spectacle, and sit tranquilly
+admiring the brilliancy of the caparisons and the dexterity of the
+charge; but perfectly convinced that all would end without harm to the
+champions, and that the fall of the curtain would extinguish the war.
+But, in the trials of the later time, there were moments when we seemed
+to be throwing our last stake; when the trumpets of Europe, leagued
+against us, seemed to be less challenging us to the field, than
+preceding us to the tomb; and when the last hope of the wise and good
+might be, to give the last manifestation of a life of patriotic virtue.
+
+In language like this, we are not abasing the national courage. We are
+paying the fullest homage to the substantial claims of the English
+heart. It is only by the severest national struggles that the
+superiority of national powers can be developed; and without doubting
+the qualities of the Marlboroughs and Chathams--or even without
+doubting, that if thrown into the battle of the last fifty years, they
+would have exhibited the same intellectual stature and powerful
+adroitness which distinguished their actual displays--yet they wanted
+the strong necessities of a time like ours, to place them on a similar
+height of renown. Still their time continues in admirable study. But it
+is like the story of the Volscian and Samnite combats, read in the day
+when the consul, flying through the streets of Rome, brought the news of
+Cannae.
+
+The wars and politics of the eighteenth century were the manoeuvres of
+a _garde du corps_, and the intrigues of a boudoir. Our fathers saw no
+nation of thirty millions rushing to the field; frantic with the
+passion for overthrow, no Napoleon thundering at the head of vassal
+Europe against England; no conspiracy of peoples against thrones; no
+train of crouching sovereignties, half in terror and half in servility,
+ready to do the wildest will of the wildest despot of the world; no army
+of five hundred thousand men ready to spring upon our shores, and
+turning off only to the overthrow of empires. All was on a smaller
+scale; the passions feebler, the means narrower, the objects more
+trivial, the triumphs more temporary, the catastrophe more powerless,
+and the glory more vanishing.
+
+All has since subsided; and the mind of man is turned to efforts in
+directions totally new. All now is the rigid struggle with the physical
+difficulties of society. The grand problems are, how to level the
+mountain, and to drain the sea: or, if we must leave the Alps to be
+still the throne of the thunder, and suffer even the Zuyder-zee to roll
+its sullen waves over its incorrigible shallows; yet to tunnel the
+mountain and pass the sea with a rapidity, which makes us regardless of
+the interposition of obstacles that once stopped the march of armies,
+and made the impregnable fortresses of kingdoms. But the still severer
+trials of human intelligence are, how to clothe, feed, educate, and
+discipline the millions which every passing year pours into the world.
+The mind may well be bewildered with a prospect so vast, so vivid, and
+yet so perplexing. Every man sees that old things are done away, that
+physical force is resuming its primitive power over the world, and that
+we are approaching a time when Mechanism will have the control of
+nature, and Multitude the command of society.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are many families in England which, without any change of
+circumstances, without any increase of fortune, or any discoverable
+vicissitudes, have existed for centuries, in possession of the same
+property, generally a small one, and handed down from father to son as
+if by a law of nature. The family of Lord Sidmouth is found to have held
+the proprietorship of the small estate of Fringford, in Oxfordshire,
+from the year 1600, and to have had a residence in Bannebury about a
+century and a half before;--the first descendant of this quiet race who
+became known beyond the churchyard where "his village fathers sleep,"
+being Dr Addington, who died in 1799. Genealogies like those give a
+striking view of the general security of landed possession, which the
+habits of national integrity, and the influence of law, must alone have
+effected, during the turbulent times which so often changed the
+succession to the throne of England.
+
+Dr Addington, who had been educated at Winchester school, and Trinity
+College, Oxford, having adopted medicine as his profession, commenced
+his practice at Reading, where he married the daughter of the Rev. Dr
+Niley, head-master of the grammar-school. The well-known trial of the
+wretched parricide, Miss Blandy, for poisoning, in which he was a
+principal witness, brought him into considerable notice; and probably on
+the strength of this notice, he removed to London, and took a house in
+Bedford Row, where the late Lord Sidmouth, his fourth child, but eldest
+son, was born. He next removed to Clifford Street, a more fashionable
+quarter, which brought him into intercourse with many persons of
+distinction. Among these were Louth, Bishop of London, the Duke of
+Montagu, Earl Rivers, and, first of the first, the great Earl of
+Chatham. With this distinguished man, Dr Addington seems to have been on
+terms of familiar friendship, as the following extracts show:--Chatham
+writes from Burton Pynsent, in 1771.
+
+"All your friends here, the flock of your care, are truly sensible of
+the kind attentions of the good shepherd. My last fit of the gout left
+me as it had visited me, very kindly. I am many hours every day in the
+field, and, as I live like a farmer abroad, I return home and eat like
+one. * *
+
+"Ale goes on admirably, and agrees perfectly. My reverence for it, too,
+is increased, having just read in the manners of our remotest Celtic
+ancestors much of its antiquity and invigorating qualities. The boys all
+long for ale, seeing papa drink it, but we do not try such an
+experiment. Such is the force of example, that I find I must watch
+myself in all I do, for fear of misleading. If your friend William saw
+me smoke, he would certainly call for a pipe."
+
+Lord Chatham died May 11th, 1788, which event was thus notified by Dr
+Addington to his son Henry.
+
+"You will be grieved to hear that Lord Chatham is no more. It pleased
+Providence to take him away this morning, as if it were in mercy that he
+might not be a spectator of the total ruin of a country which he was not
+permitted to save."
+
+The doctor was a croaker, as was the fashion of the time, with all who
+pretended to peculiar political sagacity. Of course the family physician
+of the ex-minister was in duty bound to echo the ex-minister's
+discontent. It is clear that, whatever professional gifts the doctor
+inherited from Apollo, he did not share the gift of prophecy. The
+doctor, after realising enough by his profession to purchase an estate
+in Devonshire, retired to Reading, where, in 1790, he died, having had,
+in the year before, the enviable gratification of seeing his son elected
+to the Speakership of the House of Commons.
+
+Henry Viscount Sidmouth was born in 1757, on the 30th of May. At the age
+of five years, he was placed under the care of the Rev. William Gilpin,
+author of the Essays on the Picturesque, who for many years kept a
+school at Cheam, in Surrey.
+
+Lord Sidmouth had but one brother, Hiley, who subsequently figured so
+often in the caustic rhymes of Canning, and who, under his brother's
+auspices, was successively secretary of the treasury, paymaster of the
+forces, and under-secretary of state. In his twelfth year, Henry,
+followed by Hiley, was sent to Winchester, then under the government of
+the well-known Dr Joseph Wharton, with George Isaac Huntingford as one
+of the assistants.
+
+The author of the biography gives Huntingford credit for the singular
+degree of attachment exhibited in his occasional letters to his pupil.
+It certainly seems singular; when we know the slenderness, if not
+sternness of the connexion generally subsisting between the teachers at
+a great English seminary, and the pupils. In one of those epistles
+Huntingford says to this boy of fifteen.
+
+"For my own part, to you I lay open _my whole heart without reserve_. I
+divest myself of the little superiority which age may have given me.
+With you I can enter into conversation with all the familiarity of an
+intimate companion. The few hours of intercourse which we thus enjoy
+with each other give more relief to my wearied body and mind than _any
+other amusement on earth_. What I am to do when you leave school, _a
+melancholy thought, I cannot foresee_. May the _evil hour be postponed_
+as late as possible. Yet let me add, whenever it shall be most for your
+advantage to leave me, I will not doubt to sacrifice _my own peace_ and
+comfort for your interest. _I love myself, but you better_."
+
+We hope that this style is not much in fashion in our public schools.
+Dean Pellew tells us that numerous letters of this kind were written by
+this tutor to his pupil in after life, and adds with a ludicrous
+solemnity, "It will readily be imagined how _efficacious_ they must have
+proved, in forming the character of the future statesman, and erecting
+Spartan and Roman virtues on the noble foundation of Christianity."
+
+For our part, we know not what to make of such communications: they seem
+to us intolerably silly, and we think ought _not_ to have been
+published. In later life, their writer was made Bishop of Hereford and
+Warden of Winchester. He seems to have been a fellow of foresight!
+
+In 1773, Henry and Hiley were both removed from Winchester, and put
+under the tuition of Dr Goodenough, who took private pupils at Ealing,
+and who was afterwards Bishop of Carlisle. In the next year, Henry
+entered as commoner in Brazen-Nose College under the tuition of
+Radcliffe, then a tutor of some celebrity. In this college he became
+acquainted with Abbot, afterwards Lord Colchester, and William Scott,
+afterwards Lord Stowell. He took his degree in 1778, and in this year
+had the misfortune to lose his mother, who seems to have been an amiable
+and sensible person. In the next year, he obtained the Chancellor's
+prize for an English essay on "the affinity between painting and writing
+in point of composition;" and at the recital of this essay in the
+theatre he first became acquainted with Lord Mornington, afterwards
+Marquis Wellesley, an intimacy which lasted for sixty-two years. He now
+adopted law as his profession, took chambers in Paper Buildings, and
+kept his terms regularly at Lincoln's Inn. In 1781, he married Ursula
+Mary, eldest daughter and co-heiress of Leonard Hammond, Esq. of Cheam,
+in Surrey, and took a house in Southampton Street, Bloomsbury, where he
+determined to follow the profession of the law. But this determination
+was speedily over-ruled by the success of the celebrated son of Chatham.
+On the 26th of February, 1781, William Pitt, then only in his
+twenty-second year, made his first speech in the House of Commons, in
+support of Burke's bill for the regulation of the civil list. This epoch
+in parliamentary annals is noticed in a brief letter from Dr Goodenough
+to Pitt's early tutor, Wilson, who sent it to Mr Addington, among whose
+papers it was found:--
+
+"Dear Sir,--I cannot resist the natural impulse of giving pleasure, by
+telling you that the famous William Pitt, who made so capital a figure
+in the last reign, is happily restored to his country. He made his first
+public re-appearance in the senate last night. All the old members
+recognised him instantly, and most of the young ones said he appeared
+the very man they had so often heard described: the language, the
+manner, the gesture, the action were the same; and there wanted only a
+few wrinkles in the face, and some marks of age, to identify the
+absolute person of the late Earl of Chatham."
+
+Addington, at this period, had a good deal of intercourse with Pitt, who
+became Chancellor of the Exchequer at the age of twenty-three, and whose
+brilliant success in parliament evidently stimulated his friend to
+political pursuits. But the infamous coalition broke in, and Pitt was
+dismissed from the ministry. Its existence, however, was brief: it not
+merely fell, but was crushed amidst a universal uproar of national
+scorn; and Pitt, not yet twenty-five, was appointed prime minister. In
+the course of the month, an interview took place between Pitt and
+Addington, which gave his friends strong hopes of seeing him in
+immediate office. His friend Bragge thus writes to him:
+
+"I give you joy of the effects of the interview of last Sunday, of which
+I am impatient to hear the particulars. Secretary, either official or
+confidential, I should wish you, and indeed all the boards are already
+filled."
+
+Still, he remained unappointed, though his intimacy with the minister
+grew more confidential from day to day. Pitt was at this time engaged in
+a desperate struggle with the Opposition, who, ruined as they were in
+character, yet retained an overwhelming majority in parliament. On this
+occasion, the young statesman gave perhaps the most triumphant evidence
+of his remarkable sagacity. Every one was astonished, that he had not at
+once dissolved a parliament which it seemed impossible for him either to
+convince or conquer. But, with the House of Lords strongly disposed
+towards him, and the King for his firm friend, Pitt fought the House
+night after night, until he found the national feeling wholly on his
+side. Then, on the 25th of March, 1784, he dissolved the parliament, and
+by that act extinguished the whole power of Whiggism for twenty years.
+There never was a defeat more ruinous; more than a hundred and sixty
+members, who had generally been of the Foxite party, were driven
+ignominiously from their seats, and the party was thenceforth condemned
+to linger in an opposition equally bitter, fruitless, and unpopular. In
+the new parliament, Addington was returned for the borough of Devizes in
+place of Sutton, his brother-in-law, who, being advanced in life, made
+over his interest to his young relative. On this occasion, he received a
+letter from his old master, Joseph Wharton:--
+
+"I cannot possibly forbear expressing to you the sincere pleasure I
+feel, in giving you joy of being elected into a parliament that I hope
+and trust will save this country from destruction, by crushing the most
+shameful and the most pernicious coalition that I think ever disgraced
+the annals of any kingdom, ancient or modern. I am, dear sir, with true
+regard, yours, &c.--JOSEPH WHARTON."
+
+There are few more remarkable instances of contrasted character and
+circumstance than Addington's ultimate rise to power. The anecdote is
+mentioned, that on one occasion, when they were riding together to Holl
+Wood, then Mr Pitt's seat near Bromley in Kent, that on Pitt's urging
+him to follow up politics with vigour, and the latter alleging in excuse
+the distaste and disqualification for public life created by early
+habits and natural disposition, Pitt burst forth in the following
+quotation from Waller:--
+
+    "The lark that shuns on lofty boughs to build
+    Her humble nest, lies silent in the field:
+    But should the promise of a brighter day,
+    Aurora smiling, bid her rise and play;
+    Quickly she'll show 'twas not for want of voice,
+    Or power to climb, she made so low a choice:
+    Singing she mounts, her airy notes are stretch'd
+    Towards heav'n, as if from heav'n alone her notes she fetch'd."
+
+With these words, he set spurs to his horse, and left his companion to
+ponder on the moral of the poetry.
+
+But neither poetry nor prose could inspire Addington's mind with the
+ardour of his glowing friend. Parliament was indeed open to him, but the
+true gate to parliamentary distinction would never have been opened by
+his own hand. There are two kinds of speaking, and but two, which ever
+make distinguished way in the House. The first is, that superior order
+which alone deserves the name of eloquence, and which must carry
+distinction with it wherever men are gathered together. The next is,
+that adroit and practical style of speaking by which the details of
+public business are carried forward; a style which requires briskness of
+capacity, united to extent of information, and in which the briskness
+must not be suffered to become flippant, and the detail to become dull.
+We are perfectly confident, that, beyond those two classes, no speaker
+can ever expect to retain the ear of the House. Our theory, however, is
+not the favourite one with that crowd, whose diatribes nightly fill the
+columns of the newspapers; where bitterness is perpetually mistaken for
+pungency, and petulance for power, dryness for business and commonplace
+for conviction. But failure is the inevitable consequence; the archer
+showers his shafts in vain; they are pointed with lead, and they always
+fall blunt on the ground. Some of the noisiest haranguers of our time
+utterly "waste their sweetness on the desert air," their hearers drop
+away with fatal rapidity, and the orator is reminded of his triumph only
+by the general flight of his auditory. Then comes some favourite of the
+House: the coffee-room is thinned in its turn; the benches are crowded
+once more; and some statesmanlike display consoles the House for its
+lost time. Addington's habits were those of a student, and he brought
+them with him into parliament. In the House of Commons, there are nearly
+as many classes of character, as there are in life outside the walls.
+There are the men made for the operations of public life, bold, active,
+and with an original sense of superiority. Another class is made for
+under-secretaries and subordinates, sharp, and ingenious men, the real
+business-men of the House. Another class, perfectly distinct, is that of
+the matter-of-fact men, largely recruited from among opulent merchants,
+bankers sent from country constituencies, and others of that calibre,
+who are formidable on every question of figures, are terrible on
+tariffs, and evidently think, that there is no book of wisdom on earth
+but a ledger. Then come the country gentlemen, generally an excellent
+and honest race, but to whom a life in London, in the majority of
+instances, has a strong resemblance to a life in the Millbank
+Penitentiary; driven into parliament, by what is called a "sense of
+their position in the country," which generally means the commands of
+their wives, &c., &c., their sojourn within the circuit of the
+metropolis is a purgatory. They sicken of the life of lounging through
+London, where they are nothing, and long to get back to the country
+where they are "magistrates;" generally too old to dance, the
+fashionable season has no charms for them: even the clubs seem to them
+a sort of condemned cell, where the crowd, guilty of unpardonable
+idleness, cluster together with no earthly resource but gazing into the
+street, or poring over a newspaper. If this service is severe enough to
+shake their philosophy during the sleety showers of February, and the
+withering blasts of March; the first break of sunshine, and the first
+streak of blue sky, makes their impatience amount to agony. The rest of
+the season only renders their suffering more inveterate; until at last
+the discharge of cannon from the Park, and the sound of trumpets at the
+doors of the House of Lords, a gracious speech from the throne, and a
+still more gracious smile from the sitter on it, let them loose from
+their task, and they are free, facetious, and foxhunters once more.
+There are still half-a-dozen other classes, "fine by degrees, and
+beautifully less," which may be left to the imagination of the reader,
+and the experience of the well-bred world.
+
+Addington soon made himself useful on committees. The strong necessities
+of the case, much more than the Reform Bill, have remarkably shortened
+the longevity of election committees. The committee, in general, was
+fortunate, which could accomplish its business within three months. Some
+took twice the number, some even crossed over from session to session.
+The first committee on which Addington was engaged had this unfortunate
+duration, and he was re-appointed to it in the second session of the
+parliament of 1785.
+
+At this period, whether from a sense of disappointment, or from the
+silent dulness of this drudgery, his health appears to have been in a
+feeble state. In a letter to his father, he apologises for listlessness
+and stupidity by illness, and says, "that he does not come up to the
+definition of man as a risible animal." Yet the man who could live to
+eighty-seven, and retain his health in a retirement of nearly a quarter
+of a century, could not complain of his constitution.
+
+In 1786 Pitt availed himself of the opening of the session to induce his
+friend to break ground. He proposed that he should second the address;
+and almost condescended to coax him into further exertion of his
+abilities.--"I will not disguise," says his letter, "that, in asking
+this favour of you, (the speech,) I look beyond the immediate object of
+the first day's debate; from a persuasion that whatever induces you to
+take a part in public, will equally contribute to your personal credit,
+and that of the system to which I have the pleasure of thinking you are
+so warmly attached. Believe me to be, with great truth and regard, my
+dear sir, faithfully and sincerely yours,--W. PITT." Addington complied
+with a part of the proposal, seconded the Address, and was considered to
+have performed his task with effect. But the effort went no farther. His
+ability lay in another direction; and though a clear, well-informed, and
+influential debater in his more public days, and when the urgency of
+office compelled the exertion, he left for four years the honours of
+debate to the multitude of his competitors.
+
+In the course of the memoir, there is a letter of Addington's, speaking
+of Sheridan's famous speech on the Begum question. Addington voted in
+the majority against Hastings; but, though he does not exactly say that
+Sheridan's famous speech was the cause of his vote, he yet joins in the
+general acclamation.
+
+It has been the habit of late critics to decry the merits of this famous
+oration, and even to charge it with being frivolous, outrageous, and
+bombastic, an immense accumulation of calumny and clap-trap, which the
+craft of Sheridan would not submit to the public ordeal, and which he
+has therefore left to its chance of a fantastic and visionary fame. But
+this we find it impossible to believe. That in a speech of five hours
+and a half, there may have been--nay, there must have been, passages of
+extravagance, and even errors of taste, is perfectly probable; but they
+must have been overcome by countless passages of lustre and beauty,--by
+powerful conceptions and brilliant examples of language; at once
+resistless and refined,--by living descriptions, and thoughts of daring
+and dazzling energy, sufficient to have made it one of the most
+memorable triumphs of senatorial eloquence in the world. How, on any
+other supposition, is it possible to account for the effects which we
+know it to have produced?
+
+Addington's letter, alluding to this subject, says "The papers will
+convey but a faint idea of a speech, which I heard Fox declare to be the
+most wonderful effort of the human mind that perhaps had ever been made.
+Mr Pitt, and indeed the whole House, spoke of it in terms of admiration
+and astonishment, scarcely inferior to those of Mr Fox."
+
+The papers, indeed, convey a worse than inadequate idea of this
+wonderful oration, for they give merely a few fragments, in which they
+have contrived either to select their examples with the most curious
+infelicity, or to blunder them into bombast. But nothing can be more
+childish than to suppose, that Pitt would have given his praise to
+tawdry metaphor, that Burke would have done honour to feeble truisms,
+that Fox should have been unable to distinguish between logic and
+looseness of reasoning, or that the whole assembly, who had been in the
+habit of hearing those pre-eminent orators, should have been tricked by
+theatric dexterity or charlatan rhetoric into homage. The oration must
+have been a most magnificent performance, and we have only to deplore
+the loss of a great work of genius.
+
+Another young phenomenon shot across the parliamentary horizon within
+the same month. It was the late Earl Grey. A letter of Addington to his
+father thus describes the debut of this young Liberal.
+
+"Feb. 22, 1787.--We had a glorious debate last night, upon the motion
+for an address of thanks to the King, for having negotiated the
+commercial treaty. A new speaker presented himself to the House, and
+went through his first performance with an eclat that has not been
+equalled within my recollection. His name is Grey; he is not more than
+twenty-two years of age, and he took his seat, which is for
+Northumberland, only in the present session. I do not go too far in
+declaring, that in the advantages of figure, elocution, voice, and
+manner, he is not surpassed by any one member of the House; and I grieve
+to say, that he was last night in the ranks of Opposition, from which
+there is no prospect of his being detached."
+
+It is curious to see, how easily the exigencies of party mould men, and
+how readily under that pressure they unsay their maxims, and retract
+their principles. The object of the commercial treaty was, to put our
+commerce in some degree on a fair footing with that of France. The
+object of Mr Grey's rhetoric was, to show that the commercial treaty was
+altogether a blunder, which, as being a Tory and ministerial
+performance, it must be in the eyes of a Whig and an oppositionist. But
+the maxim on which he chiefly relied, was the wisdom of that established
+system of our policy, in which France had always been regarded with the
+most suspicious jealousy at least--if not as our natural foe. Of course
+this Whig maxim lasted just so long as the Whigs were out of office, and
+could use it as a weapon against the Minister. But, from the moment when
+France became actually dangerous, when her councils became demoniac, and
+her factions frenzied, Whiggism, despairing of turning out the Minister
+by argument, resolved to make the attempt by menace. Hopeless in the
+House, it appealed to the rabble, and France was extolled to the skies.
+We then heard nothing of the "natural enmity," but a vast deal of the
+instinctive friendship. England and France were no longer to be two
+hostile powers sitting on their respective shores, with flashing eyes
+and levelled spears, but like a pair of citizen's wives loaded with
+presents and provisions for each other, and performing their awkward
+courtesies across the Channel.
+
+It must be acknowledged, however, that the Whig maxim, though a
+watchword of faction, was no blunder of fact. A commercial treaty with
+the French in that day, or in any other day before or since, was a
+dream. To bring the Frenchman to any rational agreement on the subject
+of trade, or to keep him steady to any agreement whatever, has been a
+problem, which no British statesman has been able to solve. No
+commercial treaty, even with all the genius of Pitt, has ever produced
+to England the value of the paper on which it is written. Whether, if
+they were two Englands in the world, they might not establish commercial
+treaties with each other, may be a question. But we regard it as an
+absolute waste of time, to think of trading on fair terms with any of
+the slippery tariffs of foreign countries. In fact, this is now so
+perfectly understood, that England has nearly given up the notion of
+commercial treaties. She trades now, where the necessities of the
+foreigner demand her trade. The foreigner hates John Bull, Just as the
+Athenian peasant hated Aristides, and for the same reason. He hates him
+for being honest, manly, and sincere; he hates him for the integrity of
+his principles, for the purity of his faith, and for the _reality_ of
+his freedom; he hates him for his prosperity, for his progress, and for
+his power. And while the Frenchman capers in his fetters, and takes his
+promenade under the shadow of the fortifications of Paris; while the
+German talks of constitutions in the moon; and while the Holy Alliance
+amuses itself with remodelling kingdoms, John Bull may be well content
+to remain as he is, and leave them to such enjoyment as they can find in
+sulkiness and sneering.
+
+Grey's brilliant debut appears not to have been sustained: he spoke
+little during the session, but talked much--a fatal distinction to a
+parliamentary aspirant. Ambitious of figuring, he attempted to figure on
+all occasions; and, once or twice, unluckily daring the great champion
+of the treasury bench to the field, he was driven from it with wounds
+which, if they did not teach him a sense of his weakness, at least
+taught him a sense of his danger. Mr Grey's credit, says Addington in a
+letter, "as a man of discretion and temper, remains to be established.
+His reputation for abilities has not increased within the last two
+months, while he has in all respects enhanced that of the person (Pitt)
+to whom he ventured to oppose himself."
+
+In alluding to the intercourse of Addington with Wilberforce, the
+biographer, we think very justly, complains of the sillinesses which
+have transpired in the latter's diary. Addington took higher views on
+ecclesiastical subjects; and was less _rapid_ in his movements for the
+abolition of the slave-trade; being of opinion that precipitate measures
+would only increase the traffic to an enormous extent, deprive England
+of all power of restraining the frightful atrocities of the middle
+passage; and, by throwing the whole trade into the hands of foreigners,
+leave it open to all the reckless abominations of mankind.
+
+The result was, unfortunately, all that rational men anticipated. The
+trade carried on by the foreigner has been tripled, or even quadrupled;
+the horrors of the middle passage are without restraint; and the
+sufferings of the victims, on their march to the coast, by fatigue, want
+of food, and the cruelty of their treatment, are estimated to destroy
+nearly twice the number of those who ever cross the Atlantic. The very
+powers with whom we have already made treaties for the purpose of
+extinguishing this infernal traffic, are deepest in its commerce; and
+its extinction now seems hopeless, except through some of those
+tremendous visitations, by which Providence scourges crimes which have
+grown too large for the jurisdiction of man.
+
+Lord Sidmouth, then far advanced in life, when he saw those remarks in
+the diary, naturally felt offended, but he bore the offence with
+dignity, merely saying, as he closed the volume, "Well, Wilberforce does
+not speak of me as he spoke to me, I am sorry to say." Of Wilberforce,
+no one can desire to doubt the general honesty; but that he was
+singularly trifling and inconstant, was evidently the opinion of his
+contemporaries in the House. The following anecdote is given from the
+author's notes on this point. "Lord Sidmouth told us, that one morning,
+at a cabinet meeting, after an important debate in the House of Commons,
+some one said, 'I wonder how Wilberforce voted last night:' on which
+Lord Liverpool observed, 'I do not know how he voted, but of this I am
+pretty sure, that in whatever way he voted, he repents of his vote this
+morning.' Lord Sidmouth added, 'It was odd enough, that I had no sooner
+returned to my office, than Wilberforce was announced, who said,--Lord
+Sidmouth, you will be surprised at the vote I gave last night, and,
+indeed, I am not myself altogether satisfied with it;'--to which I
+replied, My dear Wilberforce, I shall never be _surprised_ at any vote
+you give.'"
+
+During this session the abolition of Negro slavery first seriously
+attracted the notice of parliament. The conduct of it, in the House of
+Commons, was intrusted to Wilberforce; but, in his absence, in
+consequence of indisposition, Pitt, on the 9th of May 1798, moved the
+resolution, "that the House would, early in the next session, proceed to
+take into consideration the circumstances of the slave trade." In a
+cause like this, the humane and magnanimous mind of Burke naturally
+enlisted at once. But he was by no means of that school of humanity
+which gains the race, only by riding over every thing in its way.
+Red-hot humanity had no charms for the great philosopher; and,
+philanthropist as he was, he could discover no wisdom in measures which
+changed only one violence for another, pauperised the whites without
+liberating the blacks; and, while it cost twenty millions sterling to
+repair about third of the injury, left the unhappy African at the mercy
+of avarice round the circumference of the globe.
+
+A letter from Huntingford says:--"Dr Lawrence, our Winchester
+acquaintance, called on me lately. He talked much on Mr Burke's ideas
+respecting the slave-trade. I found by him that Mr Burke foresaw the
+total ruin of the West-India colonies, if the trade were _at once_
+prohibited. He is for a better regulation of the ships which carry on
+that infamous commerce: he would lay the captains under restrictions,
+and punish them with rigour for wanton severity or brutal inhumanity to
+the slaves; and, when the poor creatures are purchased at the West-India
+islands, he would have them instructed in religion; and be permitted to
+purchase their own freedom, when by industry they should acquire a
+sufficient sum for that purpose. For their religious instruction he
+would erect more churches; and, to enable them in time to accumulate the
+price of their ransom, he would enact that the property of a slave
+should be as sacred as that of a freeman." Burke went further than
+opinions, for he embodied his sentiments in a paper entitled, "Sketch of
+a Negro Code," all outline of a bill in parliament, which is to be found
+in the collection of his works.
+
+In August of this year, Addington mentioned that Lord Grenville passed a
+month with him at Lyme, and that one day visiting Lord Rolle, a party
+were speculating on the probable successor to the Speaker
+(Cornwall)--Grenville and Addington giving it as their opinion, that
+neither of them had any chance. He adds, "within twelve months, we were
+both Speakers ourselves."
+
+An important and melancholy event, however, threw the cabinet and the
+country alike into confusion. Early in November, it was ascertained that
+the King was taken dangerously ill. Three successive notes from
+Grenville represented the illness as most alarming, and giving room for
+apprehening of incurable disorder. As Dr Addington was known to have
+paid particular attention to cases of insanity, Pitt proposed his being
+summoned to visit the royal patient. In consequence, he visited his
+Majesty for several days, and on examination with the other physicians
+before the Privy Council, expressed a strong expectation of the royal
+recovery, founded on the circumstance that this illness had not, for its
+forerunner, any of the symptoms which usually precede a serious attack
+of this nature. The debates on the Regency Bill now brought out all the
+vigour of the House. The Whigs thundered at the gate of the cabinet; but
+there was a strong hand within, and it was still kept shut. The Prince
+of Wales, then under all the captivations of Whig balls and banquets,
+and worshiping at the feet of Fox, was no sooner to be master of the
+state by an unlimited Regency Bill, than Fox was to be master of every
+thing. Pitt still fought the battle with all the cool determination of
+one determined never to capitulate. Fox became in succession fierce,
+factious, and half frantic; still his great adversary stood on the
+vantage ground of law, and was imperturbable. But the contest now began
+to spread beyond the walls of parliament. The spirit of the nation,
+always siding with the brave defence, daily felt an increasing interest
+in the gallantry with which Pitt almost alone fought the ablest
+Opposition that had ever been ranged within the walls of Westminster,
+and inflamed by the sight of power almost within their grasp.
+
+But the announcement of a sudden change in his Majesty's indisposition
+abated the contest at once. From the 8th to the 20th of February, the
+progress to health was palpable. On the 19th, the discussions on the
+Regency Bill were suspended in the House of Lords; and on the 6th of
+March, the Speaker and several members of the administration were
+admitted to present their congratulations to the King, at Kew, on his
+recovery.
+
+We cannot resist the temptation of exhibiting Lord Sidmouth in the
+unsuspected character of a poet. As several millions of verses were
+poured out as the offerings of the Muse on the joyful occasion, as
+Parnassus was rifled by the Universities, and as every village school in
+the kingdom hung a pen-and-ink garland on the altar of AEsculapius or
+Hygeia; it was felt to be the bounden duty of every candidate for
+cabinet honours, to put his desk "in order," and rhyme, to the best of
+his power. Addington, in consequence, produced the following--
+
+    ON THE KINGS RECOVERY.
+
+    "When sinks the orb of day, a borrow'd light
+    The moon displays, pale _Regent_ of the night.
+    Vain are her beams to bid the golden grain
+    Spread plenty's blessings o'er the smiling plain;
+    No power has she, except from shore to shore
+    To bid the ocean's troubled billows roar.
+    With hungry cries the wolf her coming greets;
+    Then Rapine stalks triumphant through the streets;
+    Avarice and Fraud in secret ambush lurk,
+    And Treason's sons their desperate purpose work.
+    But, lo! the Sun with orient splendour shines,"----
+    &c. &c. &c.
+
+We cannot indulge ourselves with any more of this loyal lucubration--we
+think that the slur at the _Regency_ was not quite fair; we were by no
+means aware that the moon was so mischievous; and, as our general
+conclusion, we must admit that, if his lordship did not gain the
+Laureateship, he amply deserved it. However, better times were at hand.
+Pitt, like all other eminent men, had a keen insight into character, and
+he had long known the especial qualities of Addington. This solves the
+difficulty of accounting at once for his continued personal intercourse,
+and yet his apparent official neglect. He knew him to be well-informed,
+intelligent, and honest; although his retiring habits had already given
+full evidence of his indisposition to face the storms of party.
+
+On Mr Grenville's promotion to the Home department, in 1789, Addington
+was proposed for the Speaker's chair, and was elected by two hundred and
+fifteen to one hundred and forty-two, who voted for the Opposition
+candidate, Sir Gilbert Elliot. In the private correspondence which was
+so frequent between him and the minister, various suggestions had been
+thrown out by Pitt of the Irish secretaryship, a seat at the treasury,
+&c. But the man and the place were now found together, incomparably
+adapted to each other. The place implies an honourable neutrality, and
+Addington was true to the trust. It requires the favourable opinion of
+the House to the man as well as the officer; and Sheridan's first
+address to him, as the spokesman of the Opposition, was, "we were all
+very sorry to have voted against you." It required considerable
+knowledge of general and parliamentary law, and the new Speaker had
+devoted years to their acquisition. Even the minor merits of a grave and
+commanding presence were there; for Addington, in his early years, was
+of as striking a countenance and figure as in old age he was gentle and
+amiable.
+
+Characteristic anecdotes are scattered through the volumes: these we
+think their most attractive portion; and of such Addington's memory was
+full in his later years. One night, on his crying out, in the usual
+form, to hush some chattering in the House, "Order, order, or I shall
+name names!" Charles Fox, then standing beside the chair, told him that
+Wilkes once asked the Speaker, Onslow, what would be the consequence of
+his naming names? "Heaven above only knows," was the solemn reply.
+
+One night Fox himself put the same question to Sir Fletcher Norton (the
+Speaker,) who nonchalantly answered, "Happen! hang me, if I know or
+care!"
+
+A substantial proof of the general approval was given to the new
+official, in the addition of L1000 a-year to his salary; thus giving him
+L6000 a-year--which, besides a house, with some other emoluments on
+public and private bills, and the sale of certain clerkships connected
+with the business of the Commons, is generally calculated as equivalent
+to about L10,000 yearly. For this, however, the Speaker is expected to
+keep up considerable state, to give occasional banquets during the
+session to successive parties of the members; to have evening receptions
+and levees; and, in general, to lead a rather laborious life; the least
+part of whose labour is in the Speaker's chair. He has also the
+appointment of a chaplain to the House, which is equivalent to the
+disposal of valuable church patronage, the chaplain being always
+provided for, after a few years' attendance, by a request of the House
+to the crown. To complete this accumulation of good things, the Speaker
+who exhibits intelligence, is frequently promoted to the higher offices
+of the cabinet, and generally receives a peerage.
+
+But those were the "piping times of peace;" times of trouble and terror
+were at hand. The French democracy had already burst on Europe; and
+every throne was heaving on the surge which it had raised. Pitt alone,
+of all the great ministers of Europe, seemed to disregard its hazards.
+Customary as it is for the pamphleteers of later times to assail his
+memory, as the promoter of hostilities, the chief outcry against Pitt in
+the year 1790, was his tardiness in thinking that those hostilities
+could ever force England to take a share in the struggles of the
+Continent. The whole aristocracy, the whole property, the whole
+mercantile interest, and even the whole moral feeling of the empire, had
+become from hour to hour more convinced that a war was inevitable. Even
+the Opposition, whose office it was to screen the atrocities of every
+national enemy, and who, for a time, had looked to Jacobinism as an
+auxiliary in the march to power, had at last shrunk from this horrible
+alliance--had felt the natural disgust of Englishmen for an association
+with the undisguised vice and vileness of the Republic, and had at last
+sunk into silence, if not into shame. Burke had published his immortal
+"Reflections," and their sound had gone forth like the tolling of a vast
+funeral bell for the obsequies of European monarchy. Still, nothing
+could move Pitt. By nature, a financier, and by genius the most
+magnificent of all financiers, he calculated the force of nations by the
+depths of their treasuries; and seeing France bankrupt, conceived that
+she was on the verge of conviction, and waited only to see her sending
+her humbled Assembly to beg for a general loan, and for a general peace
+at the same moment.
+
+But those were days made to show the shortsightedness of human sagacity.
+The lesson was rapidly given; it was proved in European havoc, that
+utter powerlessness for good was not merely compatible with tremendous
+power for evil, but was actually the means of accumulating that power;
+that the more wretched, famishing, and haggard a nation might become at
+home, the more irresistible it might prove abroad: that, like the
+madman, it might be fevered and tortured by mental disease, into
+preternatural strength of frame, and might spring out of the bed where
+it had lain down to die, with a force which drove before it all the
+ordinary resistance of man. Pitt had still to learn, that this was a
+war of Opinion; and had to learn also, that Opinion was a new material
+of explosion, against whose agency all former calculation was wholly
+unprovided, and whose force was made to fling all the old buttresses and
+battlements of European institutions like dust and embers into the air.
+
+It is not worth the trouble now to inquire, whether Pitt's sagacity
+equally failed him in estimating the probable effect of the French
+Revolution on England. His expression at a dinner party, where
+Addington, Grenville, and Burke formed the guests, "Never mind, Mr
+Burke, we shall go on as we are until the day of judgment;" shows his
+feeling of the stability of the constitution. As we have no love for
+discovering the
+
+     "Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise,"
+
+we are gratified by thinking that both were partly in the right: Burke,
+in regarding the Revolution as destined to sweep the Continent with long
+and tremendous violence, and Pitt as believing it likely to make but
+little _permanent_ impression on the habits, the power, or the heart of
+England. Burke argued from the weakness of the Continental governments;
+Pitt from the strength of the British constitution: the former having no
+connexion with the national interests, the latter being formed from
+those interests, for those interests, and being as much supported by
+them as a tree by its roots. There was not a portion of that stately
+tree, from its solid trunk to the highest ornament of its foliage, which
+was not fed from the ground. The truth was, that the Jacobinisim of
+England was confined to adventurers, and never obtained any hold on the
+great body of the proprietors and the people. Its spirit evaporated in
+tavern harangues, to which the multitude went to listen, as to the
+chattering and grimaces of a mountebank.
+
+No man of distinction, no man of birth, and no man of property was ever
+engaged in those coffee-house conspiracies; their Jaffiers and Pierres
+were cobblers and tinkers, with a sprinkling of petty pamphleteers, and
+ruined declaimers. When Hardy and Horne Took, were the priests, what
+must be the worshippers at the Jacobin shrine? But in France, the temple
+of that idol of confusion was crowded with the chiefs of the Noblesse,
+the Church, the Law; headed by the Prince of the blood next to the
+throne; all stimulated by a ferocity of folly unexampled in the history
+of infatuation, and all unconsciously urged to their ruin by a race of
+beings inferior in rank, and almost objects of their scorn, yet, rather
+embodied malignities, and essential mischiefs, than men. France in that
+fearful time reminded the spectator of Michael Angelo's great picture of
+the "Last Judgment"--general convulsion above, universal torment below;
+the mighty of the earth falling, kings, nobles, hierarchs, warriors,
+plunging down, and met by fiends, at once their tempters, their
+taunters, and their torturers; a scene of desolation and destiny.
+
+Pitt's sentiment on the safety of England from revolutionary movements
+was so decided, that if France had not invaded Holland, and thus
+actually compelled a war, we should probably have had none at this
+period.
+
+A distinction between the state of France and England not less
+memorable, if not still more effective, than in property, was religion.
+In France infidelity was not merely frequent, but was the _fashion_. No
+man of any literary name condescended even to the pretence of religion;
+but in England, infidelity was a stigma; when it began to take a public
+form, it was only in the vilest quarter; and when it assailed religion,
+it was instantly put down at once by the pen, by the law, and by the
+more decisive tribunal of national opinion. Paine, the chief writer of
+the Satanic faction, was a bankrupt staymaker, and a notorious
+profligate: his pamphlet had only the effect of making the public
+protest against its abominations; he was prosecuted, was forced to leave
+the country, and finally died in beggary in America.
+
+It is remarkable to find so cautious a man as Addington at this period
+speaking of the Church as "an honest _drone_, who, if she did not stir
+herself very soon, would be stung by the wasps of the conventicle." The
+metaphor is not good for much, for the drone can sting too, and does
+nothing but sting. But what is it that, at any time, makes the church
+ineffective? The abuse of the ministerial patronage. The clergy
+altogether depend on the guidance, the character, and the activity of
+their bishops. If ministers regard the mitre as merely a sort of
+donative for their own private tutors, or the chaplains of their noble
+friends, or as provision for a relative, dependent, or the brother of a
+Treasury clerk, they not merely degrade the office, but they paralyse
+the church. Of the living prelacy we do not speak: but it is impossible
+to look upon the list of archbishops and bishops (a few excepted) during
+the last century, without surprise that the inferior clergy have done so
+much, rather than that they have done so little. Where there was no
+encouragement for literary exertion, ability naturally relaxed its
+efforts; where preferment was lavished on heads "that could not teach,
+and would not learn," disgust extinguished diligence; and where
+character for intelligence, practical capacity, and public effect, were
+evidently overlooked in the calculation of professional claims, it is
+only in the natural course of things that their exercise should be
+abandoned, in fastidiousness or in contempt, in disgust or in despair.
+The church was never in a more ineffective condition than at the close
+of the last century; and if the sin was to be laid at the right
+threshold, it must have been laid at the door of Whitehall.
+
+Addington certainly deserves the credit of having formed a just estimate
+of the French Revolution from the beginning. In a letter to his brother
+he inserts this stanza,--
+
+    "France shall perish, write that word
+    In the blood that she has spilt;
+    Perish hopeless and abhorr'd,
+    Deep in ruin as in guilt."
+
+He, however, fell into the common error of the time, and looked upon her
+overthrow as certain in the first campaign.
+
+It was on the second reading of the Alien Bill that the dagger scene, of
+which so much was said at the time, occurred in the House of
+Commons--thus described by the Speaker: "Burke, after a few preliminary
+remarks, the house being totally unprepared, fumbled in his bosom, and
+suddenly drew out the dagger, and threw it on the floor. His extravagant
+gesture excited a general disposition to smile, by which most men would
+have been disconcerted; but he suddenly collected himself, and by a few
+brilliant sentences recalled the seriousness of the house. 'Let us,'
+said he, 'keep French principles from our heads and French daggers from
+our hearts; let us preserve all our blandishments in life, and all our
+consolations in death; all the blessings of time, and all the hopes of
+eternity.'"
+
+As all partisanship hated Burke, who had trampled it in the mire, this
+dagger scene was sneered at as a stage trick; but Burke was above all
+pantomime. The dagger was one which had been sent from France to a
+Birmingham manufacturer, with an order for a large number of the same
+pattern: and Burke had received it only on that day--and received it
+from Sir James Bland Burgess only on his way down to the house--so that
+there could have been no preparation for public exhibition. It was a
+natural impulse of the moment, in a time when all was emotion.
+
+The murder of the unfortunate King of France, on the 21st of January
+1793, perhaps the most wanton murder in all royal history, instantly
+brought out a full display of the _real_ feelings of England. The
+universal sentiment was horror, mingled with indignation; and when the
+royal message came down to the house on the 28th, stating that, in
+consequence of the regicide, the king had ordered M. Chauvelin, minister
+from the late king, to leave the country, as being no longer accredited
+by the sovereign, the message seemed rather the echo of the national
+voice than the dictate of the government.
+
+From this period the Whig party diminished day by day. They were chiefly
+the great landholders of the kingdom, and they saw in this atrocious act
+a declaration against all property; but they had also the higher motive
+of its being a declaration against all government. The chief persons of
+the Opposition at once crossed the house; but as Horne Tooke, in his apt
+and short style, described the party on his trial, "We all," said he,
+"entered the revolutionary coach at Reading; but one got out at
+Maidenhead, another at Slough, a third at Hounslow, and a fourth at
+Brentford. It was _my_ misfortune, my lord, as it was also Mr Fox's, to
+go on to London."
+
+The French now threw off all political form, and all diplomatic decorum,
+and exhibited the whole savagism of republicanism. On the motion of a
+ruffian of the name of Garnier, the Convention publicly resolved that
+"Pitt was an enemy to the human race." The same ruffian then proceeded
+to move, "that every body had a right to assassinate him." This,
+however, was _not_ carried; but an order was sent, on the proposal of
+Robespierre, to the armies, that "no quarter should be given to the
+English troops;" an order which was not repealed until his death by the
+guillotine.
+
+Those were stirring times, and in every instance of success in the
+campaign, Pitt sent an immediate courier to Addington when out of town,
+of which the Speaker gave the signal to the surrounding country by
+lighting up his house. On one occasion of this kind, a friend of his,
+travelling on the coach from Bath, heard the coachman say, "I'm sure
+there's good news come, for there's the Speaker's house all in a blaze."
+
+In this year Addington was offered the high promotion of Secretary of
+State, in the room of Dundas. He consulted Huntingford, who strongly
+advised him against giving up his pleasant, safe, and lucrative office,
+for the toilsome, hazardous, and unpopular office of the secretary. A
+letter from the Solicitor-general Mitford, (afterwards Lord Redesdale,)
+confirmed the opinion. It is justly observed by the biographer, that
+Mitford, who could be so wise for his friend, was not equally so for
+himself; for, after having obtained the speakership in his own person,
+he gave it up to assume the office of Irish Chancellor, a situation of
+great responsibility, and great labour, in which he was assailed on all
+sides, and from which, on the first change of the cabinet, he was
+insultingly recalled.
+
+The war had now become almost wholly naval, and it was a war of
+successive triumphs. The dominion of Europe seemed about to be divided
+between England and France: England mistress of the sea--France sweeping
+every thing before her on the land. The famous battle of the 1st of June
+extinguished the first revolutionary fleet, seven sail of the line being
+captured, and the remainder of the fleet escaping with difficulty into
+the French ports.
+
+The minister was also triumphant at home, and the chief persons of the
+Whig party were gazetted as taking office under his administration. Earl
+Fitzwilliam as President of the Council, the Duke of Portland as
+Secretary of State, Earl Spencer, Privy Seal, the Duke of Gordon, Privy
+Seal of Scotland, and Windham, Secretary at War.
+
+It had been frequently remarked, that Pitt never sought for coadjutors
+of any remarkable ability, from confidence in his own extraordinary
+attainments. As Fox candidly and bitterly concluded one of his speeches
+in Parliament, saying, "There is one point, and only one on which I
+entirely agree with the right honourable gentleman, and that is, in the
+high opinion he entertains of his own talents."
+
+It is certain that those accessions to his cabinet were not likely to
+excite any jealousy on his part, yet there was one whose absence from
+the cabinet may have been justly regretted as detracting at once from
+the strength of the administration, and the glory of the minister. The
+name of Burke was _not_ found there, though no man had operated so
+powerfully in producing the change; no man had so amply deserved the
+distinction; and no man would have thrown so permanent a lustre round
+the councils in which he shared. There can be no doubt that Burke felt
+this neglect, and that he was justified in feeling himself defrauded of
+an honour conferred before his face on men who were not fit to be named
+in the same breath.
+
+But he has had his noble revenge. Posterity, of all tribunals the most
+formidable, yet the most faithful, has done him Justice. While the
+favourites of fortune have passed away into the forgetfulness for which
+they were made, his services assume a higher rank in the records of
+national preservation, and his genius continually fills a prouder place
+among the intellectual triumphs of mankind.
+
+In 1794 Burke closed his parliamentary career, by retiring from the
+borough of Malton, for which his son became member. In this year, also,
+closed the memorable trial of Warren Hastings, which had extended over
+ten sessions of parliament, (from February 1788 to 5th April 1795)--the
+actual trial lasting for seven years, two months, and ten days. The
+legal expenses of the defence amounted to seventy-one thousand and
+eighty pounds, which the proprietors of East India stock, by a majority
+of three hundred, on a ballot, paid. What the expenses of the
+prosecution were, is not told; probably twice the sum.
+
+The whole holds forth an important lesson for the punishment of public
+delinquency. If, instead of the masquerade of an impeachment before the
+peers and king, Hastings had been called on to answer before the common
+law courts, for any one of the hundred acts of personal injury alleged
+against him, the decision would have been secured as soon as the
+witnesses could have been brought from Calcutta. Of course the world
+would have lost a great deal of parliamentary parade and some capital
+speeches; all the _poetic_ pomp would have been wanting; and the
+court-dresses would have been left at the tailors. But justice would
+have been done, which no one now believes to have been done.
+
+The obvious fact is, that the country had grown tired of a trial which
+seemed likely to last for life. After the first sounding of trumpets,
+the flourish excited curiosity no more. The topic had been a toy in the
+great parliamentary nursery, and the children were grown weary of their
+tinselled and painted doll. Even the horrors--and some of the details
+had all the terrible atrocity of barbarism with its passions inflamed by
+impunity--had ceased to startle; the eloquence of the managers had
+become commonplace by the repetition which had deprived the horrors of
+their sting. The prosecution was yawned to death.
+
+Perhaps there was not a peer in the seats of Westminster Hall, nor a
+member of the committee, nor a man in the kingdom, except Burke and
+Pitt, who would not have forgiven Hastings twice the amount of his
+offences, to have silenced the subject at once and for ever.
+
+With Burke, the impeachment was a vision, half Roman, half Oriental--the
+august severity of a Roman senate, combining with the mysterious
+splendour of the throne of Aurungzebe. He was the Cicero impeaching
+Verres in the presence of the eighteenth century, or a high-priest of
+some Indian oracle promulgating the decrees of eternal justice to the
+eastern world.
+
+With Pitt, the whole event was a fortunate diversion of the enemy, a
+relief from the restless assaults of a Whig opposition, a perpetual
+drain on Whig strength, and by a result more effective still, a fruitful
+source of popular ridicule on the lingering impotence of Whig labours.
+
+On the acquittal of Hastings, Burke wrote several letters to Addington
+as Speaker, which have a tone of the deepest despondency. He writes in
+the impassioned anguish of a man to whom the earth exhibited but one
+aspect of despair. They were letters such as Priam might have indited on
+the night when his Troy was in a blaze. It was evident that the powerful
+genius of Burke was partially bewildered by the bent of his feelings. He
+raised an imaginary sepulchre for England on the spot where he had
+contemplated the erection of a dungeon for Indian crime through all ages
+to come.
+
+The Indian directors voted Hastings, an annuity of five thousand pounds,
+which he enjoyed to a very advanced age: yet his acquittal has not
+received the seal of posterity. A calmer view has regarded him as the
+daring agent of acts fitter for the meridian of Hindoo morality than
+European. To serve the struggling interests of the Company seems to
+have been his highest motive, and there can be no doubt that he served
+them with equal sagacity and success. That he was a vigorous
+administrator, an enterprising statesman, and a popular governor, is
+beyond denial; that he was personally unstained by avarice or extortion,
+is admitted. But history demands higher proofs of principle; and no
+governor since his time has ever attempted to imitate his example, or
+ever ventured to excuse his own errors, by alleging the conduct or the
+acquittal of Hastings.
+
+There are some men, whom no position can render ridiculous, and there
+are some quite the reverse: of the latter class was Ferguson of Pitfour.
+Ferguson's notion of the essential quality of a Lord Advocate was
+tallness. "We Scotch members," said he, "always vote with the Lord
+Advocate, and we therefore require to see him in a division. Now I can
+see Mr Pitt, and I can see Mr Addington, but I cannot see the Lord
+Advocate." His lordship evidently not rising to Ferguson's regulation
+size of a statesman.
+
+One evening as Ferguson was taking his dinner in the coffee-room, some
+one ran in, to say, that "Pitt was on his legs." Every one rose to leave
+the room, except Ferguson. "What!" said they, "won't you go to hear Mr
+Pitt?" "No," he replied, "Why should I? do you think Mr Pitt would go to
+hear me?"
+
+At a dinner given by Dundas, at Wimbledon, where Addington, Sheridan,
+and Erskine were present, the latter was rallied on his not taking so
+prominent a part in the debates as his fame required. Sheridan said
+(with a roughness unusual with him,) "I tell you how it happens:
+Erskine, you are afraid of Pitt, and that's the flabby part of your
+character."
+
+This piece of candour, however, was probably owing to the claret. But
+Erskine's comparative taciturnity in the House may be accounted for on
+more honourable terms. Erskine was no poltroon: he was the boldest
+speaker at the bar. But the bar was his place, and no man has ever
+attained perfection in the two styles of oratory. It is true, that
+distinguished barristers have sometimes been distinguished in the House
+of Commons, but they have not been of the race of orators; they have
+been sharp, shrewd, bitter men, ready on vexatious topics, quick in
+peevish speech, and willing to plunge themselves into subjects whose
+labour or license is disdained by higher minds. But Erskine was an
+_orator_, vivid, high-toned, and sensitive; shrinking from the
+common-place subjects which common-place men take up as their natural
+portion; rather indolent, as is common with men of genius; and rather
+careless of fame in the senate, from his consciousness of the
+unquestioned fame which he had already won at the bar.
+
+Of Fox some pretty anecdotes are told, substantiating that eminent man's
+character for courtesy. One day, as Addington was riding by the grounds
+of St Ann's Hill, he was seen over the palings by Fox, who called out to
+him to stop, invited him in, and displayed the beauties of his garden,
+to which he had always devoted a great deal of care. As Addington
+particularly admired some weeping ash trees, Fox promised him some
+cuttings. Some months elapsed, when one evening, Fox, after going
+through a stormy meeting, in Palace-yard, went up to the Speaker in the
+chair, and said--"I have not forgotten your cuttings, but have brought
+them up to town with me," giving him directions at the same time for
+their treatment. In a few minutes after, he was warmly engaged in debate
+with Pitt and Burke.
+
+Fox's enjoyment of St Ann's Hill was proverbial. On some one's asking
+General Fitzpatrick, in the midst of one of the hottest periods of the
+debates on the French war--Where is Fox? the answer was, "I daresay he
+is at home, sitting on a hay-cock, reading novels, and watching the jays
+stealing his cherries."
+
+The year 1796 was a formidable year for England. Prussia and Spain had
+given up her alliance. Belgium and Holland had been taken possession of
+by the French. Austria was still firm, but her armies were dispirited,
+her generals had lost their reputation, her statesmen had been baffled,
+her finances were supported only by English loans, and France was
+already by anticipation marking out a campaign under the walls of
+Vienna. The English Opposition, at once embittered by defeat, and
+stimulated by a new hope of storming the cabinet, carried on a perpetual
+assault in the shape of motions for peace. The remnants of Jacobinism in
+England united their strength with the populace once more; and, taking
+advantage of the continental defeats, of the general timidity of our
+allies, and of the apparent hopelessness of all success against an enemy
+who grew stronger every day, made desperate efforts to reduce the
+government to the humiliation of a forced treaty of peace.
+
+The necessity for raising eighteen millions, followed by seven millions
+and a half more, increased the public discontent; and, although the
+solid strength of England was still untouched, and the _real_ opinion of
+the country was totally opposed to their rash demands for peace, there
+can be no question, that the louder voice of the multitude seemed to
+carry the day. A bad harvest also had increased the public difficulties;
+and, as if every thing was to be unfortunate at this moment, Admiral
+Christian's expedition--one of the largest which had ever left an
+English port, and which was prepared to sweep the French out of the West
+Indies--sailing in December, encountered such a succession of gales in
+the chops of the Channel that a great part of this noble armament was
+lost, and the admiral reached the West Indies with the survivors, only
+to see them perish by the dreadful maladies of the climate.
+
+But, to complete the general disastrous aspect of affairs, a new
+phenomenon suddenly blazed over Europe. The year 1796 first saw Napoleon
+Buonaparte at the head of an army. Passing the Alps on the 9th of April,
+he fell with such skill and vigour on the Austrian and Italian troops,
+that in his first campaign he destroyed five successive Austrian armies;
+broke up the alliances of that cluster of feeble and contemptible
+sovereignties which had so long disgraced Italy in the eyes of Europe;
+trampled on their effeminate and debauched population, with the
+sternness of an executioner rather than the force of a conqueror; and
+after sending the plunder of their palaces to Paris, in the spirit and
+with the pomp of the old Roman triumphs, dragged their princes after him
+to swell his own triumphal progress through Italy.
+
+The war now engrossed every feeling of the nation; and England showed
+her national spirit in her gallant defiance of the threat of invasion.
+The whole kingdom was ready to rise in arms on the firing of the first
+beacon;--men of the highest rank headed their tenantry; men even of
+those grave and important avocations and offices, which might seem to
+imply a complete exemption from arms, put themselves at the head of
+corps in every part of the empire; and England showed her prime minister
+as Colonel Pitt of the Walmer volunteers, and the speaker of her House
+of Commons, as Captain Addington of the Woodley cavalry.
+
+But a brilliant change was at hand. In September, Addington received the
+following note from Pitt, enclosing the bulletin of the battle of the
+Nile:--
+
+     "I have just time to send you the enclosed Bulletin (_vive la
+     Marine Anglaise_,) and to tell you, that we mean, (out of
+     precaution) the meeting of Parliament for the 6th of November.
+
+     "Sir, ever yours, W. P."
+
+The bulletin which gave value to this note, belongs to history, and
+gives to history one of the noblest events of our naval annals. It
+exhibits a singular contrast to the present rapidity of communication,
+that even the "rumour" of Nelson's immortal victory did not reach until
+fifty-seven days after the event. The Gazette could not be published
+until the 2d of October.
+
+But the star of Pitt, which had hitherto shone with increasing
+brightness from year to year, and which had passed through all the
+clouds of time uneclipsed, was now to wane. The Irish attempt to
+establish a separate Regency, the Irish Rebellion, and the growing
+influence of the Popish party, combined with Liberalism in the Irish
+legislature, had determined Pitt to unite the parliaments of the two
+kingdoms. For this purpose, he made overtures to the Popish party,
+whose influence he most dreaded in the Irish House; and, in a species of
+"understanding" rather than a distinct compact, he proposed to the
+Popish body the measure which has been subsequently called
+"Emancipation," with some general intimation of pensioning their
+priesthood.
+
+The Union was carried; and Lord Castlereagh, who had conducted it in
+Ireland, was appointed to bring the Popish proposition forward. It had
+been a subject of deliberation in the cabinet for nearly six months
+before they mentioned it to the king. His Majesty virtually pronounced
+it irreconcilable to his conscience; and, after having received the
+opinion of Lord Kenyon, the chief-justice, in complete confirmation of
+his own, he sent for the speaker. Pitt had written, in the meantime, to
+the king, that he must carry the measure or resign. The king then
+proposed that Addington should take the conduct of the government. On
+his entreating to decline the proposal, the king said emphatically "Put
+your hand upon your heart, and ask yourself where I am to turn for
+support, if _you_ do not stand by me?" Addington then honourably
+attempted once more to induce Pitt to be reconciled to the king's
+desire, who replied, as to Addington's taking the cabinet, "I see
+nothing but _ruin_ if you hesitate." A letter from the king to Pitt
+still left an opening for his return, but his answer was still
+inflexible; and, on the 5th of January, 1801, the correspondence was
+concluded by the royal announcement that "a new arrangement would be
+made without delay."
+
+The determination of George III. was personal and purely conscientious.
+An anecdote is given by General Garth strikingly in accordance with this
+opinion. The General, who was one of the royal equerries, was riding out
+with the king one day at this time, when his Majesty said to him, "I
+have not had any sleep this night, and am very bilious and unwell;" he
+added, "that it was in consequence of Mr Pitt's applying to him on the
+subject of Catholic Emancipation."
+
+On his arrival at Kew, he desired Garth to read the Coronation Oath, and
+then followed the exclamation,--"Where is that power on earth to absolve
+me from the due observance of every sentence of that oath, particularly
+the one requiring me to maintain the Protestant religion? Was not my
+family seated on the throne for that express purpose? And shall I be the
+first to suffer it to be undermined, perhaps overturned? No. I had
+rather beg my bread from door to door throughout Europe, than consent to
+any such measure."
+
+This was the language of an honest man, and it was also the language of
+a wise one. What has the introduction of Papists into parliament
+occasioned to England, but political confusion? What benefit has it
+produced to Ireland? No country in the wildest portion of the earth has
+exhibited a more lamentable picture of insubordination, dissension, and
+public misery. The peasantry gradually sinking into the most abject
+poverty; the gentry living on loans; the laws set at defiance; the
+demand for rents answered by assassination; a fierce faction existing in
+the bowels of the land, as if for the express purpose of inflaming every
+passion of an ignorant people into frenzy, and deepening every
+visitation of nature into national ruin. At this moment, England is
+paying for the daily food of two millions of people; employing seven
+hundred thousand labourers, simply to keep them alive; and burthening
+the most heavily-taxed industry in the world with millions of pounds
+more, for the sole object of rescuing Ireland from the last extremities
+of famine.
+
+We take our leave of this most distressing subject, by the obvious
+remark, that Pitt and the politicians, in treating popery as a political
+object, have all alike overlooked the true nature of the question.
+Popery is a _religion_, and if that religion be _false_, no crime can be
+greater in the sight of Heaven, nor more sure to bring evil on man, than
+to give it any assistance in its temptations, progress, or power, by any
+means whatever. To propagate a false religion is to declare war against
+the Divine will, and in that warfare suffering must follow. But what
+Protestant can have a doubt upon the subject? England may regard
+herself as signally fortunate, if the just penalty of her weakness is
+already paid.
+
+Mr Addington's Ministry began auspiciously, with the peace of Amiens.
+The world was weary of war. France had just learned the power of the
+British army, by the capture of her army in Egypt; she was without a
+ship on the seas; Napoleon was desirous of consolidating his power, and
+ascending a throne; and thus, all interests coinciding, peace was
+proclaimed.
+
+Lord Sidmouth's life from this period was connected with the highest
+transactions of the state, until 1822, when he retired from office,
+followed by the universal respect of the country, and bearing with him
+into his retirement a conscience as void of offence, as perhaps ever
+belonged to any Minister of England.
+
+Then followed a period, which might have been regarded as, even here,
+the fitting reward of such a life. Prom 1822 to 1844, he lived in the
+enjoyment of health, and that honour, and those troops of friends, which
+are the noblest human evidence of a well-spent existence.
+
+Old age came on him at last, but with singular gentleness. Some of his
+maxims exhibit the mild philosophy of his temperament. "In youth," said
+he, "the absence of pleasure is pain, in age the absence of pain is
+pleasure." He characteristically observed, "At my age, it strikes me
+very much, what little proportion there is between man's ambition, and
+the shortness of his life." Of the wars during his time he said, "I used
+to think all the sufferings of war lost in its glory; I now consider all
+its glory lost in its sufferings." In allusion to the desponding tone of
+some public men, he said, "I have always fought under the standard of
+hope, and I never shall desert it." At another time, he expressed the
+truth, which only the wise man feels--"It is a very important part of
+wisdom, to know what to overlook." He repeated a fine expression of
+George III, of which he acknowledged the full value,--"Give me the man
+who judges _one_ human being with severity, and every other with
+indulgence."
+
+His religious feelings were such as might be expected from his
+well-spent life,--pure, benevolent, and high-toned. Speaking to his
+family, in his last illness, he said, "Kind, dutiful, affectionate
+children, all have been to me; and if I am permitted to attain to that
+happy state to which I aspire, and am permitted to look down, how often
+shall I be with you, my children!"
+
+On the 3d of February, 1844, he was seized with an attack of influenza,
+which on the 10th became hopeless; and on the 15th he calmly died, in
+his 87th year.
+
+We have preferred giving an abstract of the leading portions of this
+able and amiable man's ministerial career, to following it minutely
+through his later public years, as the earlier were those which decided
+the character of the whole: and we have also preferred the tracing the
+course of the individual, to criticisms on the volumes of his
+biographer. But the work deserves much approval, for its general
+intelligence, the clearness of its arrangement, and the fulness of its
+information. It exercises judgment in the spirit of independence, and,
+expressing its opinions without severity, exhibits the grave sagacity of
+a man of sense, the style of a scholar, and the temper of a divine.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] _The Life and Correspondence of the Right Honourable Henry
+Addington, First Viscount Sidmouth._ By the Honourable GEORGE PELLEW,
+D.D., Dean of Norwich. 3 vols. J. Murray.
+
+
+
+
+HOW THEY MANAGE MATTERS IN THE MODEL REPUBLIC.
+
+
+In our last April number--on the appropriate Day of Fools--we laid
+before our readers a few stray flowers of speech, culled with little
+labour in that rich garden of oratorical delight--the Congress of the
+United States. Sweets to the sweet!--We confess that we designed that
+salutary exposure less for the benefit of our readers and subscribers in
+the Old World, than of those who are our readers, but not our
+subscribers, in the New. For, in the absence of an international
+copyright law, Maga is extensively pirated in the United States,
+extensively read, and we fear very imperfectly digested. This
+arrangement appears to us to work badly for all the parties concerned.
+It robs the British publisher, and impoverishes the native author. As to
+the American public, if our precepts had exercised any influence upon
+their practice, they would have learned long ago that ill-gotten goods
+never prosper, and that they who make booty of other men's wits, are not
+excepted from the general condemnation of wrong-doers. Some day,
+perhaps, they will consent to profit by what they prig, and thus, like
+the fat knight, turn their diseases to commodity--the national disease
+of _appropriation_ to the commodity of self-knowledge and self-rebuke.
+
+An American journalist, however, has put the matter in quite a new
+light, so far as we are concerned. Lord Demus, it appears, like other
+despots, is a hard master, and exacts from his most oppressed slaves a
+tribute of constant adulation. We, too, are invited to applaud his
+felonious favours, and assured that the honour and glory of being read
+by him on his own free and easy terms, is enough for the like of us.
+
+"So long," says the editor of the _New York Gazette_ and _Times_ "as our
+National Legislature refuses to give the Republic an International
+Copyright Law, so that American periodicals of a higher class may be
+supported among us, the English reviews will do the thinking of our
+people upon a great variety of subjects. They make no money, indeed,
+directly, by their circulation here; but their conductors cannot but
+feel the importance, and value the influence of having the whole
+American literary area to themselves. _Blackwood_, whose circulation on
+this side of the Atlantic is, on account of its cheapness, double
+perhaps that which it can claim in the British islands, is more and more
+turning its attention to American subjects, which it handles generally
+with its wonted humorous point, and witty spitefulness."
+
+This is very fine; but we can assure our friendly critic, that we feel
+no call whatever to undertake the gratuitous direction of the American
+conscience. Our ambition to "do the thinking" of our Yankee cousins is
+materially damped by the unpleasant necessity which it involves, of
+being "done" ourselves. They seem, however, to claim a prescriptive
+right to the works of the British press, as well as to the funds of the
+British public. They read our books, on the same principle as they
+borrow our money, and abuse their benefactors into the bargain with more
+than Hibernian asperity. After all, however, we believe that the candour
+of Maga has as much to do with their larcenous admiration of her pages,
+as the "cheapness" to which our New York editor alludes. To use their
+own phrase, "they go in for excitement considerable;" and, to be told of
+their faults, is an excitement which they seldom enjoy at the hands of
+their own authors. Now, we are accustomed to treat our own public as a
+rational, but extremely fallible personage, and to think that we best
+deserve his support, by administering to his failings the language of
+unpalatable truth. And we greatly mistake the character of Demus, and
+even of that conceited monster the American Demus,--
+
+    [Greek: agroikos orgen, kuamotrox, akracholos upokophos--]
+
+if this be not the direction in which the interest, as well as the duty,
+of the public writer lies. Certain it is, that even in the United States
+those books circulate most freely, which lash most vigorously the vices
+of the Republic. Honest Von Raumer's dull encomium fell almost
+still-born from the press, while the far more superficial pages of
+Dickens and Trollope were eagerly devoured by a people who are daily
+given to understand, by their own authors, that they are the greatest,
+the wisest, the most virtuous nation under the sun. Let a European
+author be never so well disposed towards them, his partial applause
+contributes but little to their full-blown complacency. But, when they
+hear that the Republic has been traduced by a foreign, and especially a
+British pen, their vanity is piqued, their curiosity excited, and their
+conscience smitten. Every one denounces the libel in public, and every
+one admits its truth to himself--"What!" say they, "does the Old World
+in truth judge us thus harshly? Is it really scandalised by such trifles
+as the repudiation of our debts, and the enslavement of our fellow
+creatures? Must we give up our playful duels, and our convenient
+spittoons, before we can hope to pass muster as Christians and gentlemen
+beyond our own borders? O free Demus! O wise Demus! O virtuous Demus!
+Will you betake yourself to cleanly, and well-ordered ways at the
+bidding of this scribbler?" Thus "they eat, and eke they swear;" vowing
+all the time that they "will horribly revenge." No doubt, however, the
+bitter pill of foreign animadversion, though distasteful to the palate,
+relieves the inflation of their stomachs, and leaves them better and
+lighter than before. But when will a native Aristophanes arise to purge
+the effeminacy of the American press, and show up the sausage-venders
+and Cleons of the Republic in their true light? How long will the
+richest field of national folly in the world remain unreaped, save by
+the crotchety sickles of dull moralists and didactic pamphleteers?
+
+Not that moral courage is entirely wanting in the United States; but it
+is a kind of courage altogether too moral, and sadly deficient in animal
+spirits. The New Englanders especially, set up, in their solemn way, to
+admonish the vices of the Republic, and to inoculate them with the
+virulent virtues of the Puritanical school. The good city of Boston
+alone teems with transcendental schemes for the total and immediate
+regeneration of mankind. There we find Peace Societies, and New Moral
+World Societies, and Teetotal Societies, and Anti-Slavery Societies, all
+"in full blast," each opposing to its respective bane the most sweeping
+and exaggerated remedies. The Americans never do things by halves; their
+vices and their virtues are alike in extremes, and the principles of the
+second book of the Ethics of Aristotle[5] are altogether unknown to
+their philosophy. At one moment they are all for "brandy and bitters,"
+at the next, tea and turn-out is the order of the day, Here, you must
+"liquor or fight"--there, a little wine for the stomach's sake is
+sternly denied to a fit of colic, or an emergency of gripes. The moral
+soul of Boston thrills with imaginings of perpetual peace, while St
+Louis and New Orleans are volcanoes of war. Listen to the voice of New
+England, and you would think that negro slavery was the only crime of
+which a nation ever was, or could by possibility be guilty; go to South
+Carolina, and you are instructed that "the Domestic Institution" is the
+basis of democratic virtue, the cornerstone of the Republican edifice.
+Cant, indeed, in one form or other, is the innate vice of the "earnest"
+Anglo-Saxon mind, on both sides of the Atlantic, and ridicule is the
+weapon which the gods have appointed for its mitigation. You must lay on
+the rod with a will, and throw "moral suasion" to the dogs. Above all,
+your demagogue dreads satire as vermin the avenging thumb--'Any thing
+but that,' squeaks he, 'an you love me. Liken me to Lucifer, or Caius
+Gracchus; charge me with ambition, and glorious vices; let me be the
+evil genius of the commonwealth, the tinsel villain of the political
+melodrama; but don't threaten me with the fool's cap, or write me down
+with Dogberry; above all, don't quote me in cold blood, that the foolish
+people may see, after the fever heat has subsided, what trash I have
+palmed upon them in the name of liberty!' Yet this is the way, Jonathan,
+to deal with demagogues. You make too much of yours, man. You are not
+the blockhead we take you for after all; but you delight to see your
+public men in motley, and the rogues will fool you to the top of your
+bent, till it is your pleasure to put down the show. So now that the
+piper has to be paid, and a lucid interval appears to be dawning upon
+you, to the pillory at once with these "stump" orators, and pot-house
+politicians, who have led you into such silly scrapes; turn them about,
+and look at them well in the rough, that you may know them again when
+you see them, and learn to avoid for the future their foolish and
+mischievous counsels.
+
+It is remarkable that while a perception of the ridiculous, perhaps to
+excess, is characteristic of the British mind, and is at the bottom of
+many defects in the national manners, commonly attributed to less venial
+feelings, our Transatlantic descendants err in just the opposite
+direction. The Americans seldom laugh at any body, or any thing--never
+at themselves; and this, next to an unfortunate trick of insolvency, and
+a preternatural abhorrence of niggers, is perhaps the besetting sin of
+an otherwise "smart" people. As individuals, their peculiarities are not
+very marked; in truth there is a marvellous uniformity of bad habits
+amongst them; but when viewed in their collective capacity, whenever two
+or three of them are gathered together, shades of Democritus! commend us
+to a seven-fold pocket-handkerchief. The humours of most nations expend
+themselves on carnivals and feast-days, at the theatre, the ball-room,
+or the public garden; but the fun of the United States is to be looked
+for at public meetings, and philanthropical gatherings, in the halls of
+lyceums, female academies, and legislative bodies. There they spout,
+there they swell, and cover themselves with adulation as with a garment.
+From the inauguration of a President, to the anniversary of the fair
+graduates of the Slickville female Institute, no event is allowed to
+pass without a grand palaver, in which things in general are extensively
+discussed, and their own things in particular extensively praised. They
+got the trick no doubt from us, whose performances in this line are
+quite unrivalled in the Old World, but they have added to our platform
+common-places a variety and "damnable iteration" entirely their own.
+Besides, when Bull is called upon to make an ass of himself on such
+occasions, he seems for the most part to have a due appreciation of the
+fact, while Jonathan's imperturbability and apparent good faith are
+quite sublime. The things that we have been compelled to hear of that
+"star-spangled banner!"--and all as if they were spoken in real earnest,
+and meant to be so understood. We look back upon those side-rending
+moments with a kind of Lucretian pleasure, and indemnify ourselves for
+past constraint by a hearty guffaw. All this magniloquence and bad
+taste, however, is intelligible enough. It springs partly from a want of
+discipline in their society, and partly from the absence of those
+studies which purify the taste, enlighten the judgment, and make, even
+dulness respectable. American audiences are not critical--not merely
+because they are not learned, but because they all take it in turns to
+be orators, as they do to be colonels of militia and justices of the
+peace. Thus they learn to bear each other's burdens, and Dulness is
+fully justified of her children. In a country where all men, at least in
+theory, are equal, and where every man does in fact exercise a certain
+influence on public affairs, it is not surprising that a large number of
+persons should possess a certain facility of public speaking, which even
+in England is far from universal, and is elsewhere possessed by very
+few. No man in the United States is deterred from offering his views
+upon matters of state, by the feeling that neither his education nor his
+position justify his interference. It is difficult in England to realise
+the practical equality which obtains as a fundamental principle in the
+Republic. There every man feels himself to be, and in fact is, or at
+least may be, a potential unit in the community. As a man, he is a
+citizen--as a citizen, a sovereign, whose caprices are to be humoured,
+and whose displeasure is to be deprecated. Judge Peddle, for instance,
+from the backwoods, is not perhaps as eloquent as Webster, nor as
+subtile as Calhoun, but he has just as good a right to be heard when he
+goes up to Congress for all that. Is he not accounted an exemplary
+citizen "and a pretty tall talker" in his own neighbourhood, and where
+on "the univarsal airth" would you find a more enlightened public
+opinion? It would never do to put Peddle down; that would be
+_leze-majeste_ against his constituents, the sovereign people who dwell
+in Babylon, which is in the county of Lafayette, on the banks of the
+Chattawichee. Thus endorsed, Peddle soon lays aside his native
+bashfulness, and makes the walls of Congress vocal to that bewitching
+eloquence which heretofore captivated the Babylonish mind. He was
+"raised a leettle too far to the west of sun-down" to be snubbed by
+Down-easters, any how; he's a cock of the woods, he is; an "etarnal
+screamer," "and that's a fact"--with a bowie knife under his waistcoat,
+and a patent revolver in his coat pocket, both very much at the service
+of any gentleman who may dispute his claims to popular or personal
+consideration.
+
+To meet the case of these volcanic statesmen,
+
+    "Aw'd by no shame, by no respect controll'd,"
+
+and in order that the noble army of dunces (a potent majority, of
+course) may have no reason to complain that the principles of equality
+are violated in their persons, the House of Representatives has adopted
+a regulation, commonly called "the one-hour rule." Upon this principle,
+whenever a question of great interest comes up, each member is allotted
+one hour by the Speaker's watch--as much less as he pleases, but no more
+on any consideration. Of course it occasionally happens that a man who
+has something to say, is not able to say it effectively within the hour;
+but then, for one such, there are at least a dozen who would otherwise
+talk for a week without saying any thing at all. Upon the whole,
+therefore, this same one-hour rule is deserving of all praise--the time
+of the country is saved by it, the sufferings of the more sensible
+members are abbreviated, while the dunces, to do them justice, make the
+most of their limited opportunities. Who knows, but that the peace of
+the world may be owing to it? For as there are about 230
+representatives, we should have had, but for it, just as many masterly
+demonstrations of the title of the Republic to the whole of Oregon--and
+something more. In such a cause, they would make nothing of beginning
+with the creation of the world, and ending with the last protocol of Mr
+Buchanan! Decidedly, but for "the one-hour rule" we Britishers should
+have been "everlastingly used up--and no two ways about it." Poor old
+Adams actually did begin his Oregon speech with the first chapter of
+Genesis. The title-deeds of the Republic, he said, were to be found in
+the words, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth!" Happily,
+the fatal hammer of the Speaker put down the venerable antediluvian,
+before he got to the end of the chapter.
+
+In the Senate, on the other hand, which is a less numerous, and somewhat
+more select body, things still go on in the old-fashioned way. There,
+when a member has once caught the Speaker's eye, his fortune is made for
+the day--perhaps for the week. Accordingly, he takes things easy from
+the very first--kicks his spittoon to a convenient angle, offers a
+libation of cold water to his parched entrails, and begins. When he
+leaves off, is another matter altogether--but not generally till he has
+gone through the round of human knowledge, explored the past, touched
+lightly upon the present, and cast a piercing glance into the darkness
+of the future. Soon after three, the Senate adjourns for dinner, and the
+orator of the day goes to his pudding with the rest, happy in the
+reflection that he has done his duty by his country, and will do it
+again on the morrow. We have somewhere read of a paradise of fools.
+Undoubtedly, Congress is that place. There they enjoy a perfect
+impunity, and revel in the full gratification of their instincts. Nobody
+thinks of coughing them down, or swamping them with ironical cheers.
+There--
+
+    "Dulness, with transport, eyes each lively dunce,
+    Remembering she herself was Pertness once,
+    And tinsel'd o'er in robes of varying hues,
+    With self-applause her wild creation views.
+    Sees momentary monsters rise and fall,
+    And with her own fool's colours gilds them all."
+
+Indeed, all the arrangements of Congress favour the influence of the
+sable goddess. In the first place, the members are paid by the
+day--eight dollars each. Permit us to observe, Jonathan, that you
+scarcely display your usual "smartness" here. It would be much better to
+contract with them by the _scrape_. As for instance--To involving the
+country in a war with Mexico, so much--To ditto with Great Britain, so
+much more. One year you might lay down a lumping sum for a protective
+tariff, with an understanding, that it was to be repealed the next at a
+moderate advance. You would thus insure the greatest possible variety of
+political catastrophes, with the least possible friction and expense.
+Again, the furniture of the Capitol is altogether too luxurious. Each
+member is provided with a private desk, stationery _ad lib._, a stuffed
+arm-chair, and a particular spittoon. No wonder, then, that your Simmses
+and Chipmans are listened to with complacency. It's all in the day's
+work--it's considered in the wages. While these worthies hold forth for
+the benefit of distant Missouri and Michigan, their colleagues write
+their letters, read the newspapers, chew tobacco, as little boys do
+toffy in England, and expectorate at leisure. No one cheers, no one
+groans, no one cries Oh! Oh!--all the noise that is made is on private
+account, and not at all personal to the gentleman on his legs. Yet, such
+is the deceitfulness of the human heart, that the Americans are much
+given to boast of the dignity and decorum of their Legislature, and to
+thank God that it is not a bear-garden like another place of the kind
+that they wot of. We must have been asked at least six times a-day
+during our visit at Washington, "How Congress compared with the British
+Parliament?" To which we used to reply, "That they did not compare at
+all," an answer which fully met the truth of the case, without in the
+least wounding the self-love of the querist.
+
+When these malignant pages arrive in New York, every inhabitant of that
+good city will abuse us heartily, except our publisher. But great will
+be the joy of that furacious individual, as he speculates in secret on
+the increased demand of his agonised public. Immediately he will put
+forth an advertisement, notifying the men of "Gotham," that he has on
+hand a fresh sample of BRITISH INSOLENCE, and hinting that, although he
+knows they care nothing about such things, the forthcoming piracy of
+Maga will be on the most extensive scale. Then, all the little
+newspapers will take us in hand, and bully us in their little way. It is
+perhaps a shame to forestall the acerbities of these ingenious
+gentlemen, but we know they will call us "anonymous scribbler," and
+"bagman," amongst the rest. They called us "bagman" for our last
+article, and we were sure they would. The fact is, that since Lord
+Morpeth's visit to the United States, the Americans have taken a very
+high tone indeed. Their gratitude to that amiable nobleman for not
+writing a book about them, is unbounded, and they put him down (why, it
+is difficult to say) as the aristocratic, and therefore impartial
+champion of Demus. Whenever we fell into the bilious moods to which our
+plebeian nature is addicted, we were gravely admonished of his bright
+example, and assured that to speak evil of the Republic was the
+infirmity of vulgar minds. There is, it would appear, a sympathy betwixt
+"great ones;" a kind of free-masonry betwixt the sovereign people and
+the British peerage, which neither party suspected previously, but which
+is confessed on the slightest acquaintance.
+
+As generally happens in such cases, the conceit of the Americans takes
+the most perverse direction. It is certain that they do many things
+better than any people under the sun. Their merchant navy is the finest
+in the world--their river steamers are miracles of ingenuity,--at
+felling timber and packing pork they are unrivalled; and their smartness
+in the way of trade is acknowledged by those who know them best. All
+this, and much more to the same effect, may be admitted without demur,
+but all these admissions will avail the traveller nothing. He will be
+expected to congratulate them on the elegance of their manners, the
+copiousness of their literature, and the refinement of their tastes. He
+will be confidentially informed that "Lord Morpeth's manners were much
+improved by mixing with our first circles, sir;" and what is worse, he
+will be expected to believe it, and to carry himself accordingly. "Ripe
+scholars" who make awful false quantities, second-rate demagogues
+passing for "distinguished statesmen," literary empirics, under the name
+of "men of power," will claim his suffrages at every turn; and in vain
+will he draw upon his politeness to the utmost, in vain assent,
+ejaculate, and admire--no amount of positive praise will suffice, till
+America Felix is admitted to be the chosen home of every grace and every
+muse. "Did Mr Bull meet with any of _our_ literary characters at
+Boston?" Mr Bull had that happiness. "Well, he was very much pleased of
+course?" Bull hastens to lay his hand upon his heart, and to reply with
+truth that he _was_ pleased. "Yes, sir, we do expect that our Boston
+literature is about first-rate. We are a young people, sir, but we are a
+great people, and we are bound to be greater still. There is a moral
+power, sir, an elevation about the New England mind, which
+Europeans can scarcely realise. Did you hear Snooks lecture, sir?
+the Rev. Amos Snooks of Pisgah? Well, sir, you ought to have heard
+Snooks. All Europeans calculate to hear Snooks--he's a fine man,
+sir, a man of power--one of the greatest men, sir, in this, or perhaps
+any other country."
+
+    "Semper ego auditor tantum, nunquam ne reponam,
+    Vexatus toties."----
+
+You leave Boston somewhat snubbed and subdued, and betake yourself to
+the more cosmopolitan regions of New York. Here, too, "men of power" are
+to be found in great numbers--but "our first circles" divide the
+attention and abuse the patience of the traveller. Boston writes the
+books, but New York sets the fashions of the Republic, and is the
+Elysium of mantua-makers and upholders. We doubt whether any city in the
+world of its size can boast so many smart drawing rooms and so many
+pretty young women. Indeed, from the age of fifteen to that of
+five-and-twenty, female beauty is the rule rather than the exception in
+the United States, and neither cost nor pains are spared to set it forth
+to the best advantage. The American women dress well, dance well, and in
+all that relates to what may be called the mechanical part of social
+intercourse, they appear to great advantage. Nothing can exceed the
+self-possession of these pretty creatures, whose confidence is never
+checked by the discipline of society, or the restraints of an education
+which is terminated almost as soon as it is begun. There is no childhood
+in America--no youth--no freshness. We look in vain for the
+
+    "Ingenui vultus puer, ingenuique pudoris."
+
+or
+
+    "The modest maid deck'd with a blush of honour,
+    Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love."
+
+    DANIEL.
+
+There is scarcely a step from the school to the forum--from the nursery
+to the world. Young girls, who in England would be all blushes and bread
+and butter, boldly precede their mammas into the ball-room; and the code
+of a mistaken gallantry supplies no corrective to their caprice, for
+youth and beauty are here invested with regal prerogatives, and can do
+no wrong. In short, the Americans carry their complaisance to the sex
+beyond due bounds--at least in little things--for we by no means think
+that the real influence of their women is great, notwithstanding the
+tame and submissive gallantry with which the latter are treated in
+public. We doubt whether the most limited gynocracy would tolerate the
+use of tobacco as an article of daily diet, or permit ferocious murders
+to go unwhipped of justice under the name of duels. But the absorbing
+character of the pursuits of the men forbids any strong sympathy betwixt
+the sexes; and perhaps the despotism which the women exercise in the
+drawing-room arises from the fact that all that relates to the graces
+and embellishments of life is left entirely to them. We do not know
+that this can be avoided under the circumstances of the country, but it
+has a most injurious effect upon social intercourse. The Americans of
+both sexes want tact and graciousness of manner, and that prompt and
+spontaneous courtesy which is the child of discipline and
+self-restraint. They are seldom absolutely awkward, because they are
+never bashful; they have no _mauvaise honte_, because they are all on an
+equality; hence they never fail to display a certain dry composure of
+bearing, which, though not agreeable, is less ludicrous than the
+_gaucherie_ so commonly observed in all classes of English society,
+except the very highest.
+
+It is curious to observe how the manners of two nations of the same
+origin, and, in a great degree, of similar instincts, are modified by
+their political institutions. Neither the British nor the Americans are
+distinguished for that natural politeness and _savoir vivre_, which is
+to be found more or less in all other civilised countries. They are both
+too grave, too busy, and too ambitious to lay themselves out for
+trifles, which, after all, go far to make up the sum of human happiness.
+As for the Americans, the general aspect of their society is dreary and
+monotonous in the extreme. Whatever "our first circles" may say to the
+contrary, there is a great equality of manners, as of other things,
+amongst them; but if the standard is nowhere very high, it never falls
+so low as with us; if there is less refinement and cultivation amongst
+the higher classes, (we beg Demus' pardon for the expression,) there is
+on the other hand less grossness, certainly less clownishness, among the
+mass. Of course there are many individuals in this, as in other
+countries, remarkable for natural grace and genteel bearing; but the
+class which is pre-eminent in these respects, is very small and
+ill-defined. The great national defect is a want of sprightliness and
+vivacity, and an impartial _insouciance_ in their intercourse with all
+classes and conditions of men. For if inequality has its evils, it has
+also its charms; as the prospect of swelling mountains and lowly vales
+is more pleasing to the eye than that of the monotonous, though more
+fertile champaign. Now, as the relation of patrician and plebeian, of
+patron and client, of master and servant, of superior and inferior, can
+scarcely be said to exist in the United States, so all the nice
+gradations of manner which are elicited by those relations, are wanting
+also. The social machine rubs on with as little oil as possible--there
+is but small room for the exercise of the amenities and charities of
+life. The favours of the great are seldom rewarded by the obsequiousness
+of the small. No leisure and privileged class exists to set an example
+of refined and courtly bearing; but there are none, however humble, who
+may not affect the manners of their betters without impertinence, and
+aspire to the average standard of the Republic. Hence, almost every
+native American citizen is capable of conducting himself with propriety,
+if not with ease, in general society. What are fine ladies and gentlemen
+to him, that he should stand in awe of them? Simply persons who have
+been smarter or earlier in the field of fortune than himself, who will
+"burst up" some fine morning, and leave the road open to others. The
+principle of rotation[6] is not confined to the political world of the
+United States, but obtains in every department of life. It is throughout
+the same song--
+
+    "Here we go up, up, up,
+    And here we go down, down, down."
+
+Law and opinion, and the circumstances of the country, are alike
+opposed to the accumulation of property, so that it is rare for two
+successive generations of the same family to occupy the same social
+position. The ease with which fortunes are made, or repaired, is only
+equalled by the recklessness with which they are lost. Prosperity, at
+some time or other, appears to be the birth-right of every citizen; and,
+where all are _parvenus_ alike, there are none to assume the airs of
+exclusiveness, or to crush the last comer beneath the weight of
+traditional and time-honoured grandeur.
+
+It is not easy to dismiss the peculiarities of our British society in a
+paragraph. Bull, however, to be appreciated, must be seen in the midst
+of his own household gods, with his family and bosom friends about him.
+This is what may be called the normal state of that fine fellow--and
+here Jonathan can't hold a candle to him. American interiors want relief
+and variety of colouring. Their children are not like the children of
+the Old World: they don't romp, or prattle, or get into mischief, or
+believe in Bogie. They seem to take brevet rank, from the first, as men
+and women, and are quite inaccessible to nursery humbug of any kind.
+They are never whipped, and eat as much pastry as they think proper;
+whereby they grow up dyspeptic and rational beyond their years. Parents
+don't appear to exercise any particular functions, masters (we again beg
+Demus's pardon for the poverty of the vernacular) have nothing
+magisterial about them, and servants won't stomach even the name, at
+least if they wear white skins, and know it. After the first burst of
+admiration at the philosophy of the thing, it grows tiresome to live
+amongst people who are all so much alike. Now in England the
+distinctions of age, and rank, and sex, are much more strongly marked;
+while in those countries of Europe which are still less under the
+influence of the equalising spirit of the age, the social landscape is
+still more variegated and picturesque. With us, two adverse principles
+are at work; and this is the reason why our British society is so
+anomalous to ourselves, and so entirely beyond the comprehension of
+foreigners. Whenever our brave Bull is thrown into a mixed company
+abroad, or even at home, where the social position of those with whom he
+is brought into contact is unknown to him, there is no end to the
+blundering and nonsense of the worthy fellow. Go where he will, he is
+haunted by the traditions of his eccentric island, and desperately
+afraid of placing himself in what he calls a false position. At home, he
+has one manner for his nobleman, another for his tradesman, another for
+his valet; and he would rather die than fail in the orthodox intonation
+appropriate to each. Who has not observed the strange mixture of
+petulance and _mauvaise honte_ which distinguishes so many of our
+English travellers on the Continent? Decidedly, we appear to less
+advantage in public than any people in the world. Place a Briton and an
+American, of average parts and breeding, on board a Rhine steam-boat,
+and it is almost certain that the Yankee will mix up, so to speak, the
+better of the two. The gregarious habits of our continental neighbours
+are more familiar to him than to his insular kinsman, and he is not
+tormented like the latter by the perpetual fear of failing, either in
+what is due to himself or to others. His manners will probably want
+polish and dignity; he will be easy rather than graceful, communicative
+rather than affable; but he will at least preserve his Republican
+composure, alike in his intercourse with common humanity, or in the
+atmosphere of more courtly and exclusive circles.
+
+The art of pleasing is nowhere well understood in the United States: but
+the beauty of the women, though transient, is unrivalled while it lasts,
+and perhaps in no country is the standard of female virtue so high. The
+formal and exaggerated attention which the sex receives from all classes
+in public, is at least a proof of the high estimation in which it is
+held, and must, we think, be put down as an amiable trait in the
+American character.
+
+We are quite sure, for instance, that females may travel unattended in
+the United States with far more ease and security than in any country of
+the Old World: and the deference paid to them is quite irrespective of
+the rank of the fair objects--it is a tribute paid to the _woman_ and
+not to the _lady_. Some travellers we believe have denied this. We can
+only say, that during a pretty extensive tour we do not recollect a
+single instance in which even the unreasonable wishes of women were not
+complied with as of course. We _did_ remark with less satisfaction the
+ungracious manner in which civilities were received by these spoilt
+children of the Republic--the absence of apologetic phrases, and those
+courtesies of voice and expression, with which women usually acknowledge
+the deference paid to their weakness and their charms. But this is a
+national failing. The Americans are too independent to confess a sense
+of obligation, even in the little conventional matters of daily
+intercourse. They have almost banished from the language such phrases
+as, "Thank you," "If you please," "I beg your pardon," and the like. The
+French, who are not half so attentive to women as the Americans, pass
+for the politest nation in Europe, because they know how to veil their
+selfishness beneath a profusion of bows and pretty speeches. Now, when
+your Yankee is invited to surrender his snug seat in a stage or a
+railroad carriage in favour of a fair voyager, he does not hesitate for
+a moment. He expectorates, and retires at once. But no civilities are
+interchanged; no smiles or bows pass betwixt the parties. The gentleman
+expresses no satisfaction--the lady murmurs no apologies.
+
+Even now we see in our mind's eye the pert, pretty little faces, and the
+loves of bonnets which flirt and flutter along Broadway in the bright
+sunshine--_Longum Vale_! In the flesh we shall see them no more. No more
+oysters at Downing's, no more terrapins at Florence's, no more fugacious
+banquets at the Astor House. We have traduced the State, and for us
+there is no return. The commercial house which we represent, has offered
+to renew its confidence, but it has failed to restore ours. No amount of
+commission whatever, will tempt us to affront the awful majesty of
+Lynch, or to expose ourselves to the tar-and-feathery tortures which he
+prepares for those who blaspheme the Republic. We have ordered our buggy
+for the Home Circuit, and propose, by a course of deliberate
+mastication, and unlimited freedom of speech, to repair the damage which
+our digestion, and we fear our temper, has sustained during our travels
+in "the area of freedom."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[5] [Greek: Estig ara e arete exisproaixetikt, en mesotetizusa te pros
+emas orismene dogo]
+
+[6] The principle of rotation in office is a favourite crochet of the
+Democratic party, and is founded upon the Republican jealousy of power.
+General Jackson went so far as to recommend that all official
+appointments whatever should be limited by law to the Presidential term
+of four years. As it is, whenever a change of parties occurs, a clean
+sweep is made of all the officers of government, from the highest to the
+lowest. Custom-house officers, jailers, &c., all share the fate of their
+betters. It is only surprising that the business of the country is
+carried on as well as it is, under the influence of this corrupting
+system.
+
+
+
+
+HORAE CATULLIANAE.
+
+
+LETTER TO EUSEBIUS.
+
+You are far more anxious, my dear Eusebius, to know somewhat of the
+progress or the result of the Curate's misfortune, than to read his or
+my translations from Catullus. I have a great mind to punish that love
+of mischief in you, by burying the whole affair in profound secresy. It
+is fortunate for him that you are not here, or you would surely indulge
+your propensity, and with malicious invention put the whole parish, with
+the Curate, into inextricable confusion. It is bad enough as it is.
+There!--it cannot be helped--I must tell you at once the condition we
+are in, if I would have you read the rest of my letter with any
+patience.
+
+A committee has been sitting these two days, to sift, as they pronounce
+them, "the late disgraceful proceedings;" so that you see, they are of
+the school of Rhadamanthus,--condemn first, and hear afterwards. We
+have, in this little township, two "general shopkeepers," dealers in
+groceries, mops, calicoes, candles, and the usual "_omnium-gatherum_" of
+household requirements.
+
+These are great rivals--envious rivals--back-biting rivals; both, in the
+way of tale-bearing, what Autolicus calls himself, "pickers-up of
+unconsidered trifles." And truly, in the trade of this commodity, if in
+no other, this may be called a "manufacturing district." Now the Curate,
+unhappily, can buy his tea and sugar, and trifling matters, but of
+one--for to patronise both, would be to make enemies of both; the poor
+Curate, then, in preferring the adulterated goods of Nicolas Sandwell,
+to the adulterated goods of Matthew Miffins, has made an implacable
+enemy. Really, Eusebius, here is machinery enough for a heroic poem: for
+Virgil's old Lady Fame on the top of the roof we have three, active and
+lusty--and you may make them the Fates or the Furies, or what you
+please, except the Graces. Prateapace, Gadabout, and Brazenstare--there
+are characters enough for episodes; and a hero--but what, you will say,
+are we to do for a heroine? Here is one, beat out of the brain of Mathew
+Miffins, a ready-armed Minerva. You will smile, but it is so. The three
+above-named ladies first made their way to the shop of Mr Miffins,
+narrated what had passed and what had not. Having probably just
+completed "sanding the sugar and watering the tobacco," he raised both
+his hands and his eyes, and, to lose no time in business, dropped them
+as soon as he decently could, and, pressing both palms strongly on the
+counter, he asked, if they entertained any suspicion of a particular
+person as being the object of the Curate's most unbecoming passion?
+Lydia Prateapace remembered, certainly, a name being mentioned--it was
+Lesby or Lisby, or something like that. "Indeed!" said Miffins, arching
+his brows, and significantly touching the tip of his nose with his
+forefinger--"ah! indeed! a foreigner, depend upon it--a Lisbon lady;
+that, Miss, is the capital of Portugal, where them figs comes from. Only
+think, a foreign lady--a lady from Lisbon--that is too bad!" to which
+the three readily assented. "I doubt not, ladies," he continued, "it's
+one of them foreigners as lives near Ashford, about five miles
+off--where I knows the Curate goes two or three times in a week."
+
+Thus, Eusebius, is Catullus's Lesbia, who herself stood for another,
+converted into a Portuguese lady, whom the Curate visits some five miles
+off--or, as the three ladies say, _protects_.
+
+If you ask how I came by this accurate information, learn that our
+Gratian's _Jahn_ was at the further counter, making a purchase of
+mole-traps, and saw and heard, and reported. The first meeting was held
+in Miffins' back-parlour; but fame had beat up for recruits, and that
+was found far too small; so they have adjourned to the Blue Boar, where,
+the tap being good, and the landlord a busybody, they are likely to
+remain a little longer than Muzzle-brains can see to draw up a report.
+The Curate's door is chalked, and adjacent walls--"No Kissing," "The
+Clerical Judas," "Who Kissed the School-mistress?" and many such-like
+morsels. But if fame has thus been playing with the kaleidoscope of
+lies, multiplying and giving every one its match, she has likewise shown
+them about through her magnifying glass, and brought the most distantly
+circulated home to the poor Curate. In a little town a few miles off, it
+has been reported that Miss Lydia Prateapace has been obliged to "swear
+the peace against him," which "swearing the _peace_" is, in most cases,
+a declaration of _war_.
+
+Meanwhile the Curate has taken his cue, to do nothing and say nothing
+upon the subject; and, as in all his misadventures, that was the part
+taken by Yorick, if his friends do not rescue him, he may have Yorick's
+penalty. Thus much at present, my dear Eusebius; I will occasionally
+report progress, but it is now time that we resume our translations,
+hoping you will find amusement in our
+
+
+HORAE CATULLIANAE.
+
+I told you Gratian, worthy veracious Gratian, had hastened away to an
+Agricultural meeting, to vindicate the character of his Belgian carrots.
+This vindication inundated us for some days with agricultural visitors.
+And Gratian was proud, and, like Virgil, "tossed about the dung with
+dignity." We saw little of him, and when he did appear, "his talk was of
+bullocks;" so how could he "have understanding," at least for Catullus?
+Had not a neighbouring fair taken off the agriculturists after a few
+days, his ideas, like his stick, would have become porcine. He rode his
+hobby, and at a brisk pace; and, when a little tired of him, stabled him
+and littered him, and seemed glad of a little quiet and leg-tapping in
+his easy-chair. He had worked off the lessened excitement by an
+evening's nap, and awoke recruited; and, with a pleasant smile, asked
+the Curate if he had had recently any communication with his friend
+Catullus.
+
+CURATE.--We left him, I believe, in the very glory of kissing--his
+insatiable glory. He now comes to a check--Lesbia is weary, if he is
+not.
+
+AQUILIUS.--It is a mere lovers' quarrel, and is only the prelude to more
+folly, like the blank green baize curtain, between the play and the
+farce. He affects anger--a thin disguise: he would give worlds to "kiss
+and be friends again." His vexation is evident.
+
+GRATIAN.--Ah! it is an old story--and not the worse for that--come, Mr
+Curate, show up Catullus in his true motley. He was privileged at his
+age to play the fool--so are we all at one time or another, if we do it
+not too wisely. A wise fool is the only Asinine.--Now for Catullus's
+folly.
+
+CURATE.--Thus, then, to himself:--
+
+    AD CATULLUM.
+
+    Sad Catullus, cease your moan,
+      Or your folly you'll deplore;
+    What you see no more your own,
+      Think of as your own no more.
+
+    Once the suns shone on you clearly,
+      When it was your wont to go
+    Seeking her you loved so dearly,--
+      Will you e'er love woman so?
+
+    Then those coquetries amusing
+      Were consented to by both--
+    Done at least of your free choosing,
+      Nor was she so very loth.
+
+    Then, indeed, the suns shone clearly,
+      Now their light is half gone out;
+    She is loth--and you can merely
+      Learn the way to do without.
+
+    Cease, then, your untimely wooing,
+      Steel your purpose, and be strong;
+    If she flies you, why, pursuing,
+      Make your sorrow vain and long?
+
+    Farewell, Fair!--Catullus hardens;
+      Where he is, will he remain;
+    He is not a man who pardons
+      One that must be asked again.
+
+    She'll be sad in turn, the charmer,
+      When the shades of eventide
+    Bring no gallants to alarm her,
+      No Catullus to her side.
+
+    Lost to every sense of duty,
+      Say, what can you, will you do?
+    Who'll find out that you have beauty?
+      Who'll be loved in turn by you?
+
+    Whose will you be called of right?
+      Whom will you in future kiss?
+    Whose lips will you have to bite?--
+      O Catullus, keep to this!
+
+GRATIAN.--Well, now, I think your choice of metre a little too much of
+the measured elegiac, for the bursts of alternate passion, love, and
+anger--those sudden breaks of vexation, which I see, or fancy I see, in
+the original Latin. Now, Aquilius, let us hear you personate the "vexed
+lover."
+
+AQUILIUS.
+
+    AD SEIPSUM.
+
+    Foolish Catullus--trifling ever--
+    Dismiss so fruitless an endeavour;
+    Let by-gone days be days by-gone,
+    Though fine enough some days have shone,--
+    When if _she_ but held up her finger
+    Whom you so loved--and still you linger,
+    Nor dare to part with--you observant,
+    Were at her beck her humble servant;
+    Follow'd her here and there: and did
+    Such things! which she would not forbid--
+    Love's follies, without stint or doubt:
+    Oh! then your days shone finely out.
+    But now 'tis quite another thing,--
+    She likes not your philandering:
+    And you yourself! But be it over--
+    Act not again the silly lover--
+    But let her go--be hard as stone;
+    So let her go--and go alone.
+    Adieu, sweet lady! 'Tis in vain!
+    Catullus is himself again--
+    Will neither love, want, nor require,
+    But gives you up as you desire.
+    Wretch! you will grieve for this full sore,
+    When lovers come to you no more.
+    For think you, false one, to what pass,
+    Your wretched days will come? Alas!
+    No beauty yours--not one to say
+    How beautiful she looks to-day!
+    Whom will you have to love--to hear
+    Yourself called by _his_ name, _his_ dear?
+    Whom will you have to kiss,--be kiss'd
+    And bind your names, in true-love twist?
+    Whose lips to bite so?--yes--to bite.}
+    --Catullus, spare thy love or spite:}
+    Be firm as rock--or conquered quite.}
+
+CURATE.--I protest against this as a translation. He has indeed, as he
+professed, brought his puppet Catullus upon the stage, and, like
+Shakspeare's bad actor, has put more words in his mouth than the author
+bargained for. The very last words are quite contradicted by the text.
+Catullus does not hint at the possibility of being conquered, of giving
+in.
+
+GRATIAN.--Oh! that, is always implied in these cases. Besides Catullus
+evidently doubts, or he would not have so enforced the caution; "At tu,
+Catulle"--the translation may be a little free, but still admissible.
+
+AQUILIUS.--My friend the Curate has committed the fault himself, if it
+be one: his "O Catullus, keep to this!" so evidently means, If you do
+not, it is all over with you.
+
+GRATIAN.--Give me the book.--Oh!--I see we have next that very elegant
+and very affectionate welcome home to his friend Verannius, on his
+return from Spain, whither he had gone with Caius Piso. There is much
+heart in it, and true joy and gratulation. This is the sort of welcome
+that throws a sunshine upon the path of the days of human life. There is
+no trouble when friend greets friend. Have you translated this?
+
+AQUILIUS.--I fear your commendation will resemble too rich a frame to a
+poor picture, and make all more dingy by the glow of the genuine gold.
+
+But here I venture to offer, my translation:--the warmth of the
+original--the tenderness, is not perhaps in it:
+
+    AD VERANNIUM.
+
+    Sweet friend, Verannius, welcome home at last!
+    Had I a thousand friends, all were surpass'd
+    By my Verannius! Art thou _home_ return'd,
+    To thine own household gods, and hearts that yearn'd
+    To greet thee--brothers happy in one mind,
+    And thy dear mother, too,--all fond, all kind?
+    O happy, happy news! and now again
+    To see thee safe! and hear thee talk of Spain--
+    Its history, places, people, and array,
+    Telling of all in thy old pleasant way!
+    And shall I hold thee in a friend's embrace,
+    Gaze on thy mouth, and in thine eyes, and trace
+    The features of the well-remember'd face!
+    Oh, if one happiest man on earth there be,
+    Amongst the happy, I, dear friend, am he!
+
+CURATE.--This Verannius, and his friend Fabullus, seem to have been upon
+the most intimate and familiar terms with our poet. Little presents,
+pledges of their mutual friendship, had doubtless been given and
+received. Catullus elsewhere complains against Marrucinus Asinius, that
+he had stolen a handkerchief, sent him out of Spain by Verannius and
+Fabullus.
+
+AQUILIUS.--Have you not translated it?
+
+CURATE.--No.
+
+AQUILIUS.--I have, and will read it, after yours to Verannius: and it is
+curious as showing that the Romans had the practice of using
+handkerchiefs, or napkins, of value,--perhaps such a fashion as is now
+revived by the other sex,--and embroidered with lace.
+
+GRATIAN.--Now, Mr Curate.--If you let our friend digress thus, we shall
+never have your version.
+
+CURATE.--
+
+    AD VERANNIUM.
+
+    My friend, the dearest and the best,
+    E'en though ten thousand I possess'd!--
+    My own Verannius! art thou come
+    To greet again thy gods of home,
+    And brethren that so well agree
+    Together, and in loving thee--
+    And come to thy sweet mother, too?
+    O blessed news! and it is true,
+    That I shall see thee safe at last;
+    And hear thee tell thy travel pass'd--
+    Of Spanish places, things, and tribes,
+    (While every word my heart imbibes,)
+    In thine old way: shall I embrace
+    Thy neck--and kiss thy pleasant face?
+    Find me the happy where you can,
+    I still shall be the happiest man.
+
+GRATIAN.--What are we to have next?
+
+AQUILIUS.--An invitation to dinner, or, as the Romans made it,
+supper--and a curious invitation it is. Fabullus, to whom it was
+addressed, was companion to his friend Verannius--and both were with the
+pestilent Piso, in Spain.
+
+CURATE.--And brought little out of it; but returned poorer than they
+went--as did, it should seem, Catullus himself from Bithynia. So that I
+should imagine the invitation to Fabullus was a mere jest upon their
+mutual poverty. For it does not appear that Fabullus was in a condition
+to indulge in luxuries.
+
+AQUILIUS.--Perhaps, when the invitation was sent, Catullus was not aware
+that his friend had been as unsuccessful, under Piso, as he had himself
+been, under Memmius. Thus stands the invitation:--
+
+    AD FABULLUM.
+
+    A few days hence, my dear Fabullus,
+      If the gods grant you that high favour,
+    You shall sup well with your Catullus;
+      For, to ensure the dishes' savour,
+    Yourself shall cater, and shall cull us
+      Best fruits--and wines of choicest flavour.
+    And with you bring your lass--fun--laughter--
+      All plenty: nor confine your wishes
+      To supernumerary dishes;--
+    Bring all--and pay the piper after.
+    Rich be your fare--and all fruition,
+      Taste, elegance, and sweet discourses
+    Familiar, on that one condition.
+      For, truth to tell, my wretched purse is
+    In its last stage of inanition,
+      And not a single coin disburses:
+    A cobweb's over it, and in it--
+    That Spider Want there loves to spin it.
+
+    Setting aside this lack of coffer,
+      Which you can supply, Fabullus,
+    Accept good welcome--and I offer,
+      For company, your friend Catullus.
+    Yet, though so hard my purse's case is,
+      With such rare unguents I'll present you,
+    Compounded by the Loves and Graces
+      For my dear girl, that you shall scent you
+    With perfume more divine than roses;
+      And after, pray the gods, within you,
+      To change sense, nerve, bone, muscle, sinew,
+    And make you all compact of noses.
+
+CURATE.--There you are again bolting out of the course. Sending poor
+Fabullus to market, without money in his purse,--not a word in the
+original of fruit-culling and "paying the piper."
+
+AQUILIUS.--If Gratian had not the book in his hand, I would boldly
+assert that it is all there. He will admit it is the entire meaning.
+
+CURATE.--With the elegant diction, "paying the piper," indeed! "Haec si,
+inquam, attuleris, venuste noster."
+
+GRATIAN.--Well, I almost think "venuste noster," "my good fellow," or
+"my pleasant fellow," will allow the freedom of the translation, for it
+is a free and easy appellative. Come, then, Curate, let us have your
+accurate version.
+
+CURATE.--Perhaps you may think, when you hear it, that I am in the same
+predicament of blame with Aquilius, and that my criticism was a ruse, to
+divide the censure pretty equally.
+
+    AD FABULLUM.
+
+    Fabullus, if the gods will let you,
+    Before a table I will set you,
+    A few days hence, with welcome hearty,
+    To my domestic dinner-party.
+    That is to say--you bring the food,
+    (Which must be plentiful and good,)
+    With wine--remembering, I presume,
+    For one fair girl I've always room.
+    On these conditions you shall dine
+    Luxurious, boon-companion mine.
+    Seeing that your Catullus' purse
+    Has nought but cobwebs left to nurse,
+    I can but give you in return
+    The loves that undiluted burn;
+    And, something sweeter, neater still--
+      A scented unguent I'll impart,
+    Which Venus and her Loves distil
+      To please the girl that owns my heart:
+    Which when you smell, this boon--this solely
+      You'll ask the gods to recompose;
+    And metamorphose you, and wholly,
+      To one extensive Roman nose.
+
+AQUILIUS.--What nose would a Roman wish to have? I object to Roman,
+though it is not a bad one for the purpose. The metamorphosed would
+certainly have a ballad written on him and sung about the streets. Write
+it, and call him "The Man-mountain, or real and undoubted Promontory of
+Noses."
+
+GRATIAN.--It should seem they were like enough to feast--like their gods
+they so irreverently prayed to--on the smell and the smoke only; so they
+needed good noses and bad appetites. There is something a little abrupt
+in the latter part, which I doubt if I like: the Loves and Graces should
+not be made parties to the making of such a monster; and as _monster_ is
+now-a-days all adopted adjective, follow the fashion of speech, and call
+it "One extensive Monster-Nose."--Well, what next?
+
+AQUILIUS.--A little piece of extravagant badinage. It seems Calvus
+Licinius had sent Catullus a collection of miserable poems, and that,
+too, on commencement of the Saturnalia, dedicated to joy, and freedom
+from care and annoyance. Our author writes to complain of the malicious
+present. There is some force, and a fair fling of contempt at the bad
+poets of the day in it.
+
+    AD CALVUM LICINIUM, ORATOREM.
+
+    Now if I loved you less, my friend,
+    Facetious Calvus, than these eyes,
+    You merit hatred in such wise
+    As men Vatinius hate. To send
+    Such stuff to me! Have I been rash
+    In word or deed? The gods forfend!
+    That you should kill me with such trash,
+    Of vile and deleterious verse--
+    Volumes on volumes without end,
+    Of ignominious poets, worse
+    Than their own works. May gods be pliant,
+    And grant me this: that poison--pest
+    Light on 'em all, and on that client
+    Who sent 'em you; and you in jest
+    Transfer them, odious, and mephitic,
+    And execrable. I suspect 'em
+    Sent you by that grammarian critic,
+    Sulla. If so, and you have lost
+    No precious labour to collect 'em,
+    'Tis well indeed; and little cost
+    To you, with malice aforethought,
+    To send (and with intent to kill him,
+    And on this blessed day, when nought
+    But Saturnalian joys should fill him)
+    Your friend Catullus such a set
+    Of murderous authors; but the debt
+    I'll pay, be even with you yet--
+    For no perfidious friend I spare.
+    At early dawn, ere the sun shine, I
+    Will rise, and ransack shop and stall,
+    Collect your Caesii and Aquini,
+    And that Suffenus: and with care
+    And diligence, will have all sent
+    To you, for a like punishment.
+    Hence, poets! with your jingling chimes:
+    Hence, miserables! halt and lame;
+    Be off, ye troublers of our times!
+    I send you packing whence ye came.
+
+GRATIAN.--Kicking about the volumes, doubtless, as the "Friend of
+Humanity" did the "Needy Knife-grinder."
+
+CURATE.--I did not translate that--for I thought the authors might
+easily have been burned for writing bad verses (no hint to you,
+Aquilius; nothing personal); and that Calvus Licinius, having that
+remedy, need not have written about them. And I confess I don't see much
+in what he has written. This Suffenus, however, was no fool, but a man
+of wit and sense.
+
+AQUILIUS.--Yes,--and Catullus writes to Varrus specially about him. I
+have translated that too. Here it is:--
+
+    AD VARRUM.
+
+    This man Suffenus, whom you know,
+    Varrus, is not without some show
+    Of parts, and gift of speech befitting
+    A man of sense. Yet he mistakes
+    His talents wondrously, and makes
+    His thousand verses at a sitting.
+    And troth, he makes them _look_ their best:
+    For, not content with palimpsest,
+    He has them writ on royal vellum,
+    Emboss'd and gilded, rubb'd and polish'd:
+    But read 'em, and you wish abolish'd
+    The privilege to make or sell 'em.
+    You read them, and the man is quite
+    Another man: no more polite--
+    No more "the man about the town,"
+    But metamorphosed to a clown--
+    Milker of goats, a hedger, digger,
+    So thoroughly is changed his figure,
+    So quite unlike himself. 'Tis odd,
+    Most strange, the man for wit so noted,
+    Whose repartees so much were quoted,
+    Is changed into a very clod!
+    And stranger still--he never seems
+    Quite to himself to be himself,
+    As when of poetry he dreams,
+    And writes and writes, and fills his reams
+    With poems destined for the shelf.
+    We are deceived--in this twin-brothers
+    All. There's one vanity between us,
+    And our self-knowledge stands to screen us
+    From our true portraits. Knowing others,
+    We ticket each man with his vice;
+    And find, most accurately nice,
+    In all a something of Suffenus.
+    Thus every man one knowledge lacks;
+    Our error is--we read the score
+    Of each man as he walks before,
+    And bear our tickets at our backs.
+
+GRATIAN.--True, indeed--as old fables mostly are. There is in them the
+depth of wisdom acquired by experience.
+
+CURATE.--I fear experience alone won't do much. It seems thrown away
+upon most people. They continue follies to the end. I suppose Cicero
+thought himself a poet; though it may be doubted if he wrote the line as
+Juvenal gives it,
+
+    "O fortunatam natam me consule Romam."
+
+Perhaps most men's natural common sense has a less wide range than they
+think. For there are some things obvious to all besides, that the wisest
+cannot see.
+
+AQUILIUS.--Cicero was less likely to see any defect in himself than most
+men. He had consummate vanity--which must have led him into many a
+ridiculous position. But there were no Boswells in those days. I never
+could understand how it is that so great an admiration of Cicero has
+come over mankind. Even in language he has had an evil influence; and
+our literature for a long period was tainted with it. Sensible himself,
+he taught the art of writing fluently without sense. The flow and
+period--the _esse videatur_--a style too common with us less than half a
+century ago--you might read page after page, and pause to wonder what
+you had been reading about. The upper current of the book did not
+disturb the under current of your own thoughts, perhaps aided by the
+lulling music.
+
+CURATE.--The vanity of Cicero was too manifest. It is a pity, for the
+sake of his reputation, that the letter to his friend, in which he
+requested him to write his life, is extant. To tell him plainly that it
+is the duty of a friend to exaggerate his virtues, is a mean
+vanity--unworthy such a man.
+
+GRATIAN.--Come, come! let him rest; our business is with Catullus.
+Curate, let us have your translation.
+
+CURATE.--I pass by the account of Suffenus, as well as some other
+pieces, and come to that very short one in which he complains of the
+mortgage which is on his villa. It is a wretched pun on the word
+"opponere," and was scarcely worth translating;--take it, however:
+
+    AD FURIUM.
+
+    You, Furius, ask against what wind
+      My little villa stands--
+    If Auster, or Favonius kind
+      Who comes o'er western lands,
+    Or cruel Boreas, or that one
+    That rises with the morning sun?
+
+    Alas--it stands against a breeze
+      Which beats against the door,
+    Of fifteen thousand sesterces,
+      And twice a hundred more.
+    I challenge you on earth to find
+    So foul and pestilent a wind.
+
+AQUILIUS.--What! do you look for a wind _on_ earth,--it blows over it;
+and catch it who can.
+
+GRATIAN.--It blows every where. The worst I know is that which blows
+down the chimney. And that reminds me to tell you what a town-bred
+chimney-sweeper said, the other day, to a friend of mine, in the valley
+yonder, who wanted to have a smoky chimney cured. My friend inquired if
+he could teach it not to smoke. "How can I tell?" said he, "I must take
+out a brick first and look into his _intellects_."
+
+CURATE.--Not the march--but the sweep of intellect spoke there.
+
+AQUILIUS.--And spoke not amiss; it was merely to see if he _had a mind_
+to be cured.
+
+GRATIAN.--Perhaps you have translated that sweep's language better than
+your passages from Catullus.
+
+AQUILIUS.--I did not attempt to translate that little piece,--but ran
+quite out of course, as the Curate would tell me, in a long paraphrase.
+The idea is, however, furnished by Catullus,--so I dedicate it
+
+    AD FURIUM.
+
+    You ask me if my villa lies
+      Exposed to north, east, west, or south:
+    I answer,--every wind that flies,
+      Flies at it, and with open mouth.
+
+    From every quarter winds assail,
+      But that which comes from _quarter_-day,
+    Though it four times a-year prevail,
+      It does but whistle, and not pay.
+
+    Some blow from far, and some hard by;
+      One, mortgage-wind, takes shortest journey,
+    Only across the way from Sly,
+      And blasts with "power of attorney."
+
+    But what is worse than windy racks is,
+      My windows leak at every pane,
+    And are not tight 'gainst rates and taxes.
+      My roof and doors _let_ in the rain--
+
+    The only _let_ my villa knows.
+      So that with taxes, wind, and wet,
+    From whatsoever point it blows,
+      My house is blown upon _unlet_.
+
+Now, I hope my friend the Curate will admit so far to be rather a
+lengthy translation. I say nothing of addenda--thus:--
+
+    "Winds blow, and crack your cheeks,"--alack,
+      Who said it, wanted house and halls,
+    Nor knew winds have no cheeks to crack,
+      In short crack nothing but my walls.
+
+    My friends console--"the winds will drop:"
+      'Tis equal trouble to my mind;
+    For if it tumbles on the top,
+      You know I cannot _raise the wind_.
+
+    To sum up all--for its location;--
+      The question's of importance vital;--
+    In Chancery--wretched situation;
+      A rascal there disputes my title.
+
+CURATE.--You are coming it pretty strong, and quite blowing up Catullus
+with your hurricane of winds. After all the household miseries in your
+lines, a cheering glass may set things to rights a little. Here, then,
+is what he says to his wine-server:--
+
+    AD PUERUM.
+
+    Boy, that at my drinking-bout
+    Servest old Falernian out,
+    Fill me faster cups, and quicker,
+    With the spirit-stirring liquor.
+    So Posthumia's law doth say,--
+    Mistress of the feast to-day;
+    She more vinous than the grape.
+    Springs of water--bane of wine--
+    Where ye please for me and mine,
+    Avaunt, begone, escape!
+    Emigrate to men demure.
+    My bumper is Thyonian pure.
+
+GRATIAN.--I am afraid, Curate, that if you were to take what you please
+to call "the cheering glass," such as the jade Posthumia would
+recommend, we should have to put you to bed pretty early. It was the
+custom, it should seem, of the ancients to make a throw of the dice to
+determine the arbiter of the feast--to appoint the drinking. Who threw
+_Venus_ (three sixes) was the _magister_; but the _magistra_ is a
+novelty; a "Venus Ebria," whose drinking law would throw all; for "wine
+is a wrestler, and a shrewd one too." Doesn't Shakspeare say so? Now for
+your version, Aquilius.
+
+AQUILIUS.--Curate will say, I am not so close to the original. But, on
+such a subject, we may be allowed to walk not quite straight;--a little
+zig-zaggy. Spite the coming criticism I venture:--
+
+    AD PUERUM SUUM,
+
+    (To his Wine-server.)
+
+    Pour me out, boy, the generous juice.
+      The racy, true, the old Falernus;
+    Such wines as, to Posthumia's thinking,
+      Are only fit for mortals' use;
+    When in her glory, drunk, and winking,
+    The dame would quaff, and wisely learn us
+      The good old simple law of drinking.
+
+    But water shun;--Hence, waters! go,
+      E'en as ye will, to chill Avernus,
+    Or whereso'er ye please to flow;--
+    Be drink for all the dull, the slow,
+    The sad, the serious, the phlegmatic;
+    But leave this juice, this pure stomachic,
+      Its own, its unadulterate glow;--
+    This--this alone is genuine Bacchic!
+
+GRATIAN.--Well, then, that must be our parting cup for the night, and a
+pretty good "_night-cap_" it is. I was afraid, Aquilius, when you came
+to the "phlegmatic" you would rhyme it to "rheumatic," and so on to the
+"water-cure." You know that is recommended in rheumatic cases; but
+perhaps you don't know that I tried it. I had the water-drinking, the
+wet sheets, and all the rest of it.
+
+AQUILIUS.--And are here to tell of it!
+
+GRATIAN.--Yes, and return to the old _tap_, (tapping his thigh and leg
+pretty smartly;) and I suppose I must _stick_ to it.
+
+CURATE.--A medical friend told me the other day of a discussion upon
+this subject, which I thought very amusing, as he narrated it remarkably
+well, imitating the tones and dialect (Somersetshire) of at least one of
+the speakers. He had some years before attended an old man in the
+country--a farmer well to do in the world--a man of very strong natural
+understanding, but entirely uneducated. He had lost sight of him for
+some years, when, not long since, he was sent for to the old farm-house.
+Instead of the old stone floor, there was a carpet laid down, and an air
+of smartness over every thing, which he had never seen before. It turned
+out, that the old man's daughter had married: a smartish man, the
+husband, was in the room, and to show his general knowledge of things,
+and acquaintance with the world, he advocated the water-cure, and
+questioned my medical friend as to his opinion. A voice from the
+chimney-corner (the settle in it) cried out, "It ain't na'tral." My
+friend had not before seen the old man, he was so retired into the
+recess. After having given his opinion to the bridegroom, he turned to
+his old acquaintance, and said "You remarked that it is not natural.
+What do you mean by _natural?_" "Why," replied the old man, "I do think,
+most dumb critturs knows what's good for 'em; and when a dog's sick
+doesn't he eat grass? If a sheep's ill, don't he lick chalk or salt if
+he can get it? And if a beast's ill," (I forget what he said was the
+cure for a beast);--"but did you ever see any of them go and lie down in
+the water, or fill themselves wi' it? There's plenty of it in ditches,
+and every where else, too, hereabouts. No, you never did." Then, looking
+up in the face of his orator son-in-law, he added, "And you don't know
+why you never see'd it, nor why they don't do it. No, I know you don't.
+Vy, I do--because they ha' got more zense." This was said with a kind of
+contempt which was quite a floorer to the new wiseacre.
+
+GRATIAN.--Thanks for the story! now that is just the sense that I have
+acquired at some cost, and no cure; but I didn't get at it naturally as
+your old friend did. So now for sleep, and good-night.
+
+The Curate and I did not part so soon. Time flew, and we seemed to
+shorten the night--"noctem vario sermone," as sayeth Virgil of poor
+Dido, who must have found the conversation considerably flag with the
+stupid AEneas.
+
+"Noctem vario sermone _trahebat_--it was a sad _drag_. It must have
+become very tiresome, a little while before that, when ill-mannered
+Bitias drank up all the wine, and buried his face in the cup, "pleno se
+proluit auro." And they had been obliged to resort to singing, always
+the refuge from the visible awkwardness of _nothing to say_. And here I
+cannot but remark, Eusebius, what dull things their songs must have been
+on natural philosophy, sun, moon, and stars--songs, Virgil tells you,
+edited by the old Astronomer-general Atlas. But as this was before the
+foundation of Rome, they had not that variety for their selection,
+which was as much in fashion afterwards in Rome as Moore's Melodies in
+England, as we learn from Mr Macaulay, and his version and edition of
+the "Lays." They had no piccolo pianofortes in those days, or they would
+have had something lighter than the Lays, as the better after-supper
+Poet calls it--a
+
+    "Something more exquisite still."
+
+But I am apparently, Eusebius, leaving the Curate to sleep or to
+meditate upon his own unhappy condition while I thus turn the current of
+my talk upon you. Unhappy condition, did I say? He seems to bear it
+wonderfully lightly; and once or twice, when the subject has been
+mentioned, indulged in an irreverend laugh. Now, I know you will ask how
+a laugh can be irreverend. Don't you know the world well enough,
+Eusebius, to know, that before a very great number of men, women, and
+children, a curate must not laugh, dare not laugh--blessed indeed, and
+divested of the wretched rags of humanity, if he _cannot_ laugh. None
+but a Bishop, or a Dean, who, in the eyes of the many, is a kind of
+extra-parochial nonentity, can really, in these times of severe
+reprobation for trifling peccadillos, afford to laugh; and they had
+better do it in private, and with aprons off--never before the Chapter,
+who all, themselves, laugh in private. Man, you know, is the only
+risible creature; but a Curate must begin to know, from the moment he
+has put on his surplice, that he is to discard at once, and for ever,
+this human and irreverend instinct. Had you lived in the triumphal days
+of the Puritans, what penalties would you not have had to undergo, what
+buffetings and duckings, ere you could finally have overcome your strong
+natural wicked propensity, and have sobered down, and riveted in iron
+gravity and moroseness those flexible, those mockingly flexible features
+of yours. As it is, in these days of "revival," you only meet with
+considerable contempt, and evil opinion, which, as it comes rather late
+upon you, comes as an amusing novelty and additional provocative. But
+you may be sure what you can afford to do, the Curate cannot. For the
+present, therefore, let his few indulgences that way be a secret. He
+will mend in time. For so it happens, that though the longer we live the
+more we have to laugh at, we lose considerably our power of laughing.
+And that--between ourselves be it said, Eusebius--is, I think, a strong
+proof of our deterioration. A man, to laugh well, must be an honest
+man--mind, I say _laugh_: when Shakspeare says
+
+                "A man may smile and smile,
+    And be a villain,"
+
+he purposely says _smile_, in contradistinction to laugh. He cannot
+laugh and be a villain. A man cannot plot and laugh. A man may be much
+less innocent even when he thinks himself devout, than in his hour of
+merriment, when he assuredly has no guile; but a man may even pray with
+a selfish and a narrow mind, and his very prayers partake of his
+iniquity: no bad argument for a prescribed form. A man that laughs well
+is your half-made friend, Eusebius, from the moment you hear him. It is
+better to trust the ear than the eye in this matter--such a man is a man
+after your own heart. _After your own heart_, did I say, Eusebius? Words
+are the _ignes fatui_ to thoughts, and lead to strange vagaries--of
+which you have here a specimen; but these few words remind me to tell
+you an anecdote, in this lull of the _Horae Catullianae_, which I would on
+no account keep from you. And you will see at once in it a large history
+in the epitome and the very pith of a fable--such as AEsop's. But I
+assure you it is no fable, but the simple plain truth; and I will vouch
+for it, for I had it from the month of our friend S., the truest,
+honestest of men, who saw with his own eyes, and heard with his own
+ears, the persons and the sayings. S. was travelling some time ago,
+beyond the directions of railroads, in a coach. There were two
+companions--preachers as he found, self-dubb'd Reverends of some
+denomination or other, besides that reverend one of their own. Their
+conversation, as is usual with them, was professional, and they spoke of
+their brethren. In speaking of different preachers, one was mentioned,
+of whom one of the speakers said emphatically--"Now that's what I call
+a really good man--that's _a man after my own heart_--a man quite after
+my own heart!" The other said with rather doubtful and hesitating
+confirmation, "Ye-s." "You don't seem to think so highly of him as I
+do," said the first speaker. "Why," replied the doubter, "I can't say I
+do; you remember some time ago he _failed_, and certainly upon that
+occasion he behaved _very ill_ to, not to say _cheated_, his creditors."
+"Ah!" said the first commendator again, "that is very likely--I should
+have expected _that_ of him."--Henceforth, Eusebius, whenever I hear
+such a commendation, I shall look out for a map of the gentleman's heart
+who ventures upon this mode of expressing his admiration. Oh! what a
+world we live in! This is a fact which would have been immortal, because
+true and from nature, in the hands of Le Sage; and is worthy of a place
+in a page of a modern "Gil Blas."
+
+And so all this digression has arisen from a laugh of the Curate's, to
+whom it is time to turn; or you will think we have been but bad company
+to each other. I will, however, end this passage with the remark, that a
+man may do a worse thing than laugh, and happy is he that can do a
+better.
+
+The Curate and I, then, for the rest of the night conversed upon the
+affair of his, which so unaccountably was making no little stir in the
+place. The Curate told me, he was quite sure that his movements had been
+watched; for that only yesterday, as he was entering the gate of his
+friends, the family at Ashford, he saw Miffins's boy not far behind him
+on a poney; and he thinks he came out for the purpose of watching him,
+for he had scarcely reached the door, when he saw the lad ride hastily
+back. The Curate likewise confessed to me, that he did entertain some
+tender sentiments towards one of the inmates, Miss Lydia ----, that the
+family had lived much abroad, and that they had a French lady's-maid,
+whom on one or two occasions he had certainly seen in this township. You
+see the thread, Eusebius, which will draw out innumerable proofs for
+such a mind as Miffins's. Taking a paper out of his pocket, he said it
+was put into his hands as he was coming away, and he had not opened it.
+"Perhaps," said he, "it may throw some light on the affair, as it was
+given me by one who is, I know, on the all-important committee." He
+broke the seal, read, laughed immoderately for five minutes, and put it
+into my hands:--
+
+"REV. SIR,--Wishing to do the handsome to you, and straightforward and
+downright honest part, the committee inform you that they have reported
+your misconduct to the Lord Bishop, and I am desired accordingly to send
+you a copy of their letter. By order of committee.--I am, sir,
+
+    "JAMES JONES."
+
+Enclosed was the following, which these wiseacres had concocted--and I
+have no doubt it was their pride in the composition, and in the
+penmanship, which induced them to send the copy to the Curate.
+
+"TO MY LORD, YOUR LORDSHIP THE BISHOP.
+
+"We the undersigned, the respectable inhabitants parishioners, approach
+most dutifully our Bishop's worshipful Lordship. Hoping humbly that you
+will be pleased to dismiss our curate, who, we are credibly informed,
+and particularly by three exemplary and virtuous ladies, they having
+been cautioned against him by one who knows him well, and is a friend
+likewise to said ladies, and doing all the good kindness he can. We
+learn with sorrow, that our curate has confessed to unbecomingly
+behaviour, and that he has been seen even kissing. My Lord, our wives
+and daughters are not safe--we implore your Honour's Lordship to dismiss
+the curate, and take them under your protection and keeping: We are
+informed the curate has a foreign lady, not far from this, whom he
+almost daily visits--and a Papist, which is an offence to your Lordship,
+and the glorious Protestant cause, to which we are uniformly and
+respectfully attached, and to your worshipful Lordship very devoted--"
+here follow the names, headed by Matthew Miffins.
+
+"And what steps do you intend to take?" said I.
+
+"None whatever," said he.
+
+"Let it wear itself out. I won't lengthen the existence of this scandal
+by the smallest patronage. I will not take it up, so it will die."
+
+"But the Bishop?" said I.
+
+"Is a man of sense," he replied, "and good feeling; so all is safe, in
+his hands."
+
+We parted for the night.
+
+The Curate called rather early the following morning, and we thought to
+have an hour over Catullus, and went to seek our host Gratian. We found
+him in his library in consultation with his factotum Jahn. He was
+eloquent on the salting, and not burning his weeds, on Dutch
+clover--"and mind, Jahn," said he, "every orchard should have a
+pig-stye: where pigs are kept, there apple-trees will thrive well, and
+bear well, if there be any fruit going:" and he moved his stick on the
+floor from habit, as if he were rubbing his pigs' backs; and then
+turning to us he said,--"Why, Jahn has been telling me strange things:
+Prateapace and Gadabout have gone over to the chapel--left the church;
+not there last Sunday. But I saw that Brazenstare there, trying, as she
+sat just before you, to put you, Mr Curate, out of countenance. Well,
+Jahn tells me that the Reverend the Cow-doctor preached last evening a
+stirring sermon on the occasion, and was very hot upon the impurities
+and idolatries of the 'Establishment.' And Jahn tells me they don't
+speak quite so well of me as they should; for when he plainly told
+Miffins in his own shop, that he was sure his master would not
+countenance any thing wrong, the impudent fellow only said, 'May be not;
+but he and his master might not be of the same opinion as to what _is_
+wrong.' The rogue! I should like to have put all his weights in the
+inspector's scales."
+
+"Yes," quoth Jahn, "but I am 'most ashamed to tell your honour what Tom
+Potts, the exciseman, said, who happened to be present."
+
+"Out with it, by all means, Jahn," said our friend.
+
+"Well then, sir, as true as you are there, he said that your honour was
+a very kind gentleman, and your word was worth any other ten men's in
+most things; but where it might be to get a friend out of trouble, and,
+for aught he knew, foe either, why then, he thought your honour might
+fib a bit."
+
+"Surely," said Gratian, "he didn't say quite that?"
+
+"Yes," quoth Jahn, "quite that, and more; something remarkable."
+
+"Remarkable!" said I,--"what could that be?"
+
+"Why, something I shan't forget; and I don't think it was religious and
+proper," said Jahn; and lowering his voice, and addressing me and the
+Curate rather than his master, he added,--"He thought his honour had a
+kind heart, too kind; for that if Belzebub should come of a wet and dark
+night, and knock at his honour's door, and just say in a humble voice
+that he was weary and foot-sore, that his honour would be sure to take
+him in, give him a bed, and a stiff tumbler of brandy and water, and
+send for the farrier in the morning to fresh shoe him unknowingly; for
+he would make him stoop, put his claws on the ground, and throw a
+blanket over him, and make the farrier believe that, out of a whim, he
+was only a shoeing a great big goat."
+
+Gratian laughed at the whimsical idea of the exciseman, called him a
+true and good spirit-gauger; then giving some sharp taps to his hip, his
+knee, and his legs with his stick, rose from his seat, and said, "Come,
+Curate, you and I must take a walk amongst these people, and see what we
+can do: it is most time to put a stop to this mischievous absurdity,
+and, I fear me, of our own making."
+
+Away they went, and I put up my remaining translations from Catullus,
+took down a book, read awhile, and then meditated this letter to you.
+And now, my dear Eusebius, when you publish it in Maga, as you did my
+last, folk will say--"Why, what is all this about? _Horae Catullianae!_ It
+is no such thing." Be it, then, I say, what you will. Do you think I am
+writing an essay?--no, a letter; and I may, if I please, entitle it, as
+Montaigne did--"On coach horses," and still make it what I please. It
+shall be a novel, if they please, for that is what they look for now: so
+let the Curate be the hero,--and the heroine--but must it be a love
+story? Then I won't forestall the interest, so wait to the end; and in
+my next, Eusebius, we will repeat Catullus for the play, and say with
+the announcing actor, "to conclude with an after-piece which will be
+expressed in the bills."
+
+    My dear Eusebius, ever yours,
+
+    AQUILIUS.
+
+
+
+
+LESSONS FROM THE FAMINE.
+
+
+The two great parties into which the country was divided on the subject
+of our commercial relations with foreign states, maintained principles
+diametrically opposite on the effects to be anticipated from the
+adoption of their respective systems. The Free-Traders constantly
+alleged, that the great thing was to increase our _importations_; and
+that, provided this was done, government need not disquiet themselves
+about our _exportations_. Individuals, it was said, equally with
+nations, do not give their goods for nothing: if foreign produce of some
+sort comes in, British produce of some sort must go out. Both parties
+will gain by the exchange. The inhabitants of this country will devote
+their attention to those branches of industry in which we can undersell
+foreign nations, and they will devote their attention to those branches
+of industry in which they can undersell us. Neither party will waste
+their time, or their labour, upon vain attempts to raise produce for
+which nature has not given them the requisite facilities. Both will buy
+cheaper than they could have done if an artificial system of protection
+had forced the national industry into a channel which nature did not
+intend, and experience does not sanction. We may be fed by the world,
+but we will clothe the world. The abstraction of the precious metals is
+not to be dreaded under such a system, for how are the precious metals
+got but in exchange for manufactures? Their existence in this country
+presupposes the exit of a proportionate amount of the produce of British
+industry. Nobody gives dollars, any more than corn, for nothing. Our
+farmers must take to dairy and pasture cultivation to a greater extent
+than heretofore. A certain number of agricultural labourers, may, it is
+true, be thrown out of employment by the displacing of rural industry in
+making the transition from the one species of country labour to the
+other; but the evil will only be temporary, and they will speedily be
+absorbed in the vast extension of our manufacturing industry. High
+prices need never be feared under such a system: a bad season is never
+universal over the world at the same time; and free-trade will
+permanently let in the superfluity of those countries where food is
+abundant, to supply the deficiencies of those in which, from native
+sources, it is scanty.
+
+The Protectionists reasoned after an entirely different manner. The
+doctrines of free-trade, they observed, perfectly just in their
+application to different provinces of the same empire, are entirely
+misplaced if extended to different _countries_ of the world, the more
+especially if placed in similar, or nearly similar, circumstances. The
+state of smothered or open hostility in which they are in general placed
+to each other, if their interests are at all at variance; the necessity
+of sheltering infant manufacturing industry from the dangerous
+competition of more advanced civilisation, or protecting old-established
+agricultural industry from the ruinous inroad of rude produce from
+poorer states, in which it is raised cheaper because money is less
+plentiful, render it indispensable that protection should exist on both
+sides. If it does not, the inevitable result will be, that the
+cultivators of the young state will destroy the agriculture of the old
+one, and the manufacturers of the old one extinguish the fabrics of the
+young. This effect is necessary, and, to all appearance, will ever
+continue; for the experience of every age has demonstrated that, so
+great is the effect of capital and civilisation applied to manufactures,
+and so inconsiderable, comparatively speaking, their influence upon
+agriculture, that the old state can always undersell the new one in the
+industry of towns, and the new one undersell the old one in the industry
+of the country. The proof of this is decisive. England, by the aid of
+the steam-engine, can undersell the inhabitants of Hindostan in the
+manufacture of muslins from cotton growing on the banks of the Ganges;
+but with all the advantages of chemical manure and tile draining, it is
+undersold in the supply of food by the cultivators on the Mississippi.
+
+This being a fixed law of nature, evidently intended to check the growth
+of old states, and promote the extension of mankind in the uncultivated
+parts of the earth, it is in vain to contend against it. So violently
+does free-trade displace industry on both sides, where it is fully
+established, that it is scarcely possible to conceive that two nations
+should at the same time run into the same glaring mistake; and thence
+the common complaint that no benefit is gained, but an infinite loss
+sustained, by its establishment in any one country, and that reciprocity
+is on one side only. As no adequate exchange of manufactures for
+subsistence is thus to be looked for, there must arise, in the old
+state, a constant exportation of the precious metals, attended by
+frequent commercial crises, and a constant increase in the weight of
+direct taxation. Should it prove otherwise, and two nations both go into
+the same system, it could lead to no other result but the stoppage of
+the growth of civilisation in the young one, and the destruction of
+national independence in the old. The former would never succeed in
+establishing commerce or manufactures, from the competition of the
+steam-engine in its aged neighbour; the latter would become dependent
+for subsistence on the plough of the young one. The rising agricultural
+state would be chained for ever to the condition of the serfs in Poland,
+or the boors in America; the stationary commercial state would fall into
+the degrading dependence of ancient Rome on the harvests of Egypt and
+Lybia.
+
+Had it not been for the calamitous issue of the last harvest, in a part
+of the empire, it might have been difficult to say, to which side the
+weight of reason preponderated in these opposite arguments; and probably
+the people of the country would have continued permanently divided on
+them, according as their private interests or wishes were wound up with
+the buying and selling, or raising and producing classes in society. But
+an external calamity has intervened;--Providence has denied for a
+season, to one of the fruits of the earth, its wonted increase. The
+potato-rot has appeared; and nearly the whole subsistence of the people
+in the south and west of Ireland, and in the western Highlands of
+Scotland, has been destroyed. Between the failure in the potato crop,
+and the deficiency in that of oats, at least L15,000,000 worth of the
+wonted agricultural produce has disappeared in the British Islands. And
+the appearances which we now see around us are solely and entirely to be
+ascribed to that deficiency. No one need be told what these appearances
+are, or how deeply they have trenched upon the usual sources of
+prosperity in the empire: they have been told again and again, in
+parliament, at public meetings, and in the press, _usque ad nauseam_.
+Government has acted, if not judiciously, at least in the right spirit;
+its errors have been those of information, not of intention. The monster
+meetings, the flagrant ingratitude, the broken promises of the Irish
+Catholics, have been forgotten. England, as a nation, has acted nobly;
+she has overlooked her wrongs: she saw only her fellow-subjects in
+distress. L10,000,000 sterling have been voted by parliament in a single
+year for the relief of Irish suffering. Magnificent subscriptions, from
+the throne downwards, have attested the sympathy of the British heart
+with the tale of Irish and Highland suffering. But, notwithstanding all
+these astonishing exertions, and notwithstanding the existence of an
+unprecedented demand for labour in most parts of the country, in
+consequence of vast railway undertakings being on foot, on which at
+least L30,000,000 a-year must be expended for three or four years to
+come, distress is in many places most acute, in all severely felt. And
+what is very remarkable, and may be considered, as a distinctive sign of
+the times, specially worthy of universal attention, the suffering has
+now spread to those classes which are _furthest removed_ from the blight
+of nature, and fastened upon those interests which, according to the
+generally received opinion, should have been _benefited rather than
+injured_ by the calamity which has occurred.
+
+That some millions of cultivators in the southwest of Ireland, and some
+hundred thousand in the west Highlands of Scotland, should be involved,
+literally speaking, in the horrors of famine, in consequence of the
+universal failure of the crop which constituted at once their sole
+object of labour and only means of subsistence, may easily be
+understood. That this alarming failure should raise prices of every sort
+of food to the scarcity-level in every part of the empire, is equally
+intelligible; and that government, in conformity with the _universal_
+sense of the nation, should, in such an extremity, throw open the ports
+to all kinds of food, and thereby let in an unexampled amount of foreign
+produce to supply the failure of that usually raised at home, is an
+equally intelligible consequence. It may not be considered surprising,
+that starving multitudes should issue in all directions from the scene
+of wo in the Emerald Isle, to seek relief in the industry or charity of
+Great Britain; and that all the great towns in the west of the island
+should be overwhelmed with pauperism and typhus fever, in consequence of
+their being the first to be reached by the destructive flood; although
+it was hardly to be expected that a hundred and thirty-two thousand
+applications for relief were to be made to the parochial authorities of
+Liverpool in a _single week_; and that they returned thanks to Heaven
+when the influx of Irish paupers was reduced to _two thousand a-week_!
+But the remarkable thing, and the thing which the commercial classes
+certainly did not expect, is this:--_The calamity has now reached
+themselves_, although the hand of Providence has only stricken the
+producing agricultural classes. Trade never was lower, monied distress
+never more severe, markets of all sorts never were more rapidly
+DECLINING, than during a period when IMPORTATIONS of all sorts have been
+MOST RAPIDLY INCREASING. Nearly all the manufactories in Lancashire and
+Lanarkshire are put on short time; the public funds and stocks of all
+sorts are falling; the rate of bankers' advances in Scotland is raised
+to _six per cent_;[7] seven per cent is charged in Liverpool and Glasgow
+on railway advances, and permanent loans are taken on railway debentures
+by the most experienced persons for three years at five per cent; the
+Bank of England has raised its discounts; our exports are rapidly
+declining; and all at a time, when the importation of all sorts of rude
+produce is on an unprecedented scale of magnitude, and the warehouses of
+Liverpool and Glasgow are literally _bursting_ with the prodigious mass
+of grain stored in them from all parts of the world!
+
+Fortunately, statistical documents exist, derived from official sources,
+which demonstrate beyond the possibility of doubt the coexistence of
+this _vast increase_ in the amount of subsistence imported, and _vast
+diminution_ in the amount of manufactures raised or exported in all
+parts of the British empire. A paper has lately been presented to
+parliament, showing the amount of imports, exports, and shipping during
+the year 1846, compared with 1845; from which this important and
+luminous fact is decisively established, how hard soever it may be to
+comprehend on the part of a large and influential portion of our
+politicians. From it it appears that the amount of subsistence imported
+in 1846 was six times greater than in 1845, although free-trade only
+commenced in the middle of the former year. It had reached the
+unparalleled amount in the latter year, of grain or flour, equal to
+_five millions and a half quarters of grain_. The tonnage _inwards_ had
+turned five millions of tons; the custom-house duties, notwithstanding
+the numerous reductions of duties on imported articles, had risen
+L700,000 above the preceding year, and still kept above L22.000,000
+sterling. Here, then, were all the sources and marks of prosperity, so
+far as they depended on importations, in a state of unexampled vigour
+and efficiency. Was this attended, as we were constantly told it would
+be, by a corresponding impulse given to our fabrics? Has the increased
+activity of our manufacturing cities compensated for the sterility of so
+large a part of our fields? The fact is just the reverse. Though
+free-trade has only been in operation for the last six months of 1846,
+they were signalised by a universal _decline_ in all the principal
+articles of our exportation; and, by the unanimous voice of all
+practical men, trade, so far as exports or production is concerned,
+never was in a more depressed state than when, so far as imports are
+concerned, it had attained an unprecedented _extension_.
+
+Never was a truer observation than is made by the Free-Traders, when
+they assert that goods will not be sent into a nation for nothing; and
+that, if our imports increase, something that goes out must have
+received a proportional augmentation. They forget only one circumstance,
+which, however, is of some little consequence, namely, that two things
+may go out, goods or SPECIE. We have melancholy proof, in the present
+state of the money market, that the latter occurrence has taken place to
+an inconvenient and distressing extent, and that that is the direct
+cause of the extravagant rate of interest charged on bankers' advances,
+and the general scarcity of money felt throughout the country. That the
+_capital_ of the country is not only sufficient, but abundant, is
+decisively proved by the fact that, notwithstanding the vast extent of
+the railway and other undertakings of a public character going on both
+in Great Britain and Ireland, government has borrowed the loan of
+L8,000,000 for the relief of Ireland at L3, 7s. 6d. per cent. The three
+per cents are about 90, yielding about the same return for money. But is
+_currency_ equally abundant? So far from it, the bankers are charging
+six, and the persons making advances on railway concerns seven per cent.
+The holder of capital is glad if he can get three and a half per cent;
+but the holder of currency will not let his notes or sovereigns out of
+his hand for less than six or seven per cent. Can there be a more
+convincing proof that the currency of the country has been unduly
+drained away, and that the present monetary system, which forbids any
+extension of it in paper when the specie is abstracted, is based on a
+wrong foundation? Nor is it surprising that the currency should be
+straitened when it is notorious that every packet which goes out to
+America takes out vast sums to that continent to pay for the immense
+quantities of grain which are brought in. That drain only began to be
+felt in a serious manner within the last two months, because the great
+shipments from America took place in November and December last, when
+the failure of the potato crop in this country was fully ascertained;
+and consequently, the payments made in bills at three months, required
+to be made in February and March. And when it is recollected that the
+quantity of grain imported in seven months only--viz. from 5th July
+1846, to 5th February 1847--exceeded _six millions_ of quarters, at the
+very time that all our exports were diminishing; it may be imagined how
+prodigious must have been the drain upon the metallic resources of the
+country to make up the balance.[8]
+
+Sorely perplexed with results so diametrically opposite to all their
+doctrines as to an increase of importation being necessarily attended
+with a proportionate increase of exportation, and of all apprehension of
+an undue pressure thence arising on the money market being chimerical,
+the Free-Traders lay it all upon the famine at home or abroad. The
+potato-rot, it is said, has _concealed_ the effects of free-trade:
+distress in foreign nations has disabled them to purchase our
+manufactures in return for their rude produce; the increase of British
+importation has come too soon to operate as yet on their purchase of our
+manufactures. Here again the facts come decisively to disprove the
+theoretical anticipations. So far has the increase of our importations
+been from being sudden, and come last year for the first time on foreign
+nations, it has been _remarkably gradual_, and has gone on for years,
+having received only a great impulse in the articles on which the duty
+was lessened or removed last summer. Our general imports have steadily
+advanced for the last three years; and in particular articles the same
+progress has been conspicuous.[9] How, then, has it happened that this
+general, continued, and steady _increase_ of imports has issued only in
+a _diminution_ to an alarming extent of exports? And observe, the
+countries from which we have imported so largely last year of grain and
+articles of subsistence, have not only not suffered by the scarcity
+general on the Continent, but have profited immensely by it. America has
+been blessed with a splendid crop of every species of grain; and, in
+consequence of the famine in Ireland and severe scarcity in France,
+prices of grain have risen to triple their former amount in the United
+States. It has risen so much in the southern states of Russia, that the
+Emperor of Russia has prohibited the farther exportation of it from the
+Black Sea. But all these floods of wealth flowing into the great grain
+states from the failure of the crops in France and Ireland, have been
+unavailing to produce any increased activity in our manufactures. On the
+contrary, they are all declining; and our immense importations of food
+are almost all paid for in direct exportations of the precious metals.
+
+In truth, the general depression of manufactures in all the chief seats
+of our fabrics is so serious, that it is evidently owing to a much more
+general and stringent cause than the decline, considerable as it is, in
+our exports. It is not a decrease of two millions out of fifty-three
+millions--in other words, of less than a _five-and-twentieth_
+part--which will explain the general putting of mills in Lancashire and
+Lanarkshire on short time, the fall in the value of all kinds of stock
+and general decline in the vent for all kinds of manufactured produce.
+It is in the _home markets_ that the real and blighting deficiency is
+experienced. And what is the cause of this decline in the home market?
+The Free-Traders are the first to tell us what has done it. It is the
+famine in Ireland. The total manufactured produce of the island is
+certainly not under L200,000,000[10] annually, of which somewhat above
+L51,000,000 is for the foreign markets of the world. What is a
+deficiency of L2,000,000 in such a mass? If that had been the _only_
+decline that had taken place, it would have been scarcely perceptible,
+and would have left no visible effects on our commercial activity or
+general prosperity. It is clear that the great falling off must have
+been in the home market. Nor is it difficult to see how this has
+happened. Fifteen millions' worth of agricultural produce has
+disappeared; prices of wheat have risen in consequence to 80s.
+a-quarter, and oats in a still higher proportion; and an alarming drain
+upon the metallic resources of the country taken place. It is this which
+has paralysed the manufactures and depressed the commerce of the
+country. And when it is recollected that the home market now consumes
+little short of L150,000,000 a-year, it may easily be conceived what a
+serious check to industry a diminution to the amount of even an eighth
+or a tenth of the usual domestic purchases must occasion.
+
+The Free-Traders say, that the famine in Ireland has _concealed_ the
+effects of the adoption of their system of policy; and that all the
+distress and suffering which has ensued is to be ascribed to that cause.
+From the observations now made, however, it is apparent that the effect
+of the famine has been, not to conceal the effects of free-trade, but to
+_accelerate_ them. For what has the famine done? It has simply caused
+fifteen millions' worth of domestic agricultural produce to be exchanged
+for fifteen millions' worth of foreign agricultural produce. The potato
+crop, which has perished in Ireland, is estimated at fifteen millions'
+worth; and, supposing that statement is a little exaggerated, it is
+probable that, taking into account the simultaneous failure in the crop
+of oats, both there and in Great Britain, the total amount of home
+agricultural produce that is deficient may amount to that value. _But
+foreign agricultural produce, to an equal or greater amount, has been
+imported._ Six millions of quarters, between grain of all sorts and
+flour, have been entered for home consumption in seven months preceding
+5th February 1847. Taking these quarters, on an average, as worth fifty
+shillings to the consumer--which is certainly no extravagant estimate,
+seeing wheat is up at seventy-nine shillings--we shall have, then, six
+millions of quarters, worth fifteen millions sterling. The home
+agricultural produce that has failed is just equal in value to the
+foreign agricultural produce that has been imported. The distress that
+prevails, therefore, is not owing to any deficiency of food for man or
+animals in the United Kingdom, for as much has come in, of foreign
+produce, as has disappeared of domestic. It is entirely to be ascribed
+to the supplanting, _in the national subsistence, of a large part of
+home produce by an equally large part of foreign produce_. And in the
+social, commercial, and national effects which we see around us, we may
+discern, as in a mirror, not merely the probable but certain effects of
+such a substitution if perpetuated to future times.
+
+This view of the subject is of such vast importance that we deem it
+impossible to impress it too strongly on our readers. We have been
+always told that the great thing is to secure a great importation; that
+such a thing must necessarily lead to a corresponding increase of
+exportation;--that all apprehension about the imports being paid in
+gold, and not in manufactures, are chimerical;--that the sooner the
+inferior lands in the British islands go out of cultivation the
+better;--that ample food for the inhabitants will be obtained from
+foreign states; and that the agriculturists thrown out of employment by
+the change will be rapidly absorbed, and more profitably employed in
+sustaining our extended manufactures. Well, the thing has been done,
+and the desired consummation has taken place, from an extraneous cause,
+even more rapidly than was anticipated. The Free-Traders contemplated
+the substitution of foreign for British agricultural produce to the
+extent of fifteen or twenty millions as a most desirable result; but
+they only lamented it could not be looked for for three or four years.
+It would take that time to beat down the British farmer; to convince the
+cultivators of inferior lands of the folly of attempting a competition
+with the great grain districts of the Continent. Providence has done the
+thing at once. We have got on at railway speed to the blessings of the
+new system. Free-trade was to lead to the much-desired substitution of
+six million quarters of home for six million quarters of foreign grain
+in three years. But the potato-rot has done it in one. The free-trade
+rot could not have done it nearly so expeditiously, but it would have
+done it as effectually. It is a total mistake, therefore, to represent
+the famine in Ireland and the West of Scotland, as an external calamity
+which has concealed the natural effects of free-trade. It has only
+brought them to light at once.
+
+Had British agriculture, instead of being stricken with sterility by the
+hand of Providence, in the poorest and worst cultivated part of the two
+islands, been suffered gradually to waste away, under the effects of a
+great and increasing foreign importation in all parts of the empire, the
+destruction of home produce would have been equally extensive, but it
+would have been more general. It would have risen to as great an amount,
+but it would not have been so painfully concentrated in particular
+districts. Hundreds would not have been dying of famine in Skibbereen;
+seed-corn would not have been awanting in Skye and Mull; cultivation
+would not have been abandoned in Tipperary; but the cessation of
+agricultural produce over the whole empire would have been quite as
+great. Low prices would have done the business as effectually, though
+not quite so speedily, as the pestilence which has smitten the
+potato-field. Whoever casts his eye on the table of prices given
+below[11] for twenty years in London and Dantzic, must at once see
+that, under a free-trade system, as large an importation of foreign
+produce, and as extensive a contraction of home, as has taken place this
+year is to be permanently looked for. The exportation and return of the
+precious metals, and contraction of credit now felt as so distressing,
+may be expected to be permanent. Providence has given us a warning of
+the effects of our policy, before they have become irreparable. We have
+only to suppose the present state of commerce and manufactures lasting,
+and we have a clear vision of the blessings of free-trade.
+
+Nor is there any difficulty in understanding how it happens that the
+substitution of a large portion of foreign, for an equal amount of
+home-grown produce, occasions such disastrous effects, and in particular
+proves so injurious to the commercial classes, who in the first instance
+generally suppose they are to be benefited by the change. If two or
+three millions of rural labourers in the poorest and worst cultivated
+districts of the island, are thrown out of employment, either by a
+failure in the vegetable on which alone, in their rude state, they can
+employ their labour, or by the gradual substitution of foreign for home
+produce in the supply of food for the people, it is a poor compensation
+to them to say that an equal amount of foreign grain has been brought
+into the commercial emporiums of the empire--that if they will leave
+Skibbereen or Skye, and come to Liverpool or Glasgow, they will find
+warehouses amply stored with grain, which at the highest current prices
+they will obtain to any extent they desire. The plain answer is, that
+they are starving; that their employment as well as subsistence is gone;
+that they have neither the means of transport, nor any money to buy
+grain when they reach the neighbourhood of the bursting warehouses. But
+then they will be absorbed in the great manufacturing districts, where
+their labour will be more profitable to themselves and others, than in
+their native wilds! Yes, there is a process of absorption goes on, on
+the occurrence of such a crisis; but it is not the absorption of labour
+by capital, but of capital by pauperism. Floods of starving destitutes
+inundate every steam-boat, harbour, and road, on the route to the scene
+of wo; and while the interior of the warehouses in the great commercial
+cities are groaning beneath the weight of foreign grain, the streets in
+their vicinity are thronged by starving multitudes, who spread typhus
+fever wherever they go, and fall as a permanent burden on the poor-rates
+of the yet solvent portions of the community.
+
+And the effect of this importation of foreign grain, from whatever cause
+it arises, necessarily is to _prevent_ this absorption of rural
+pauperism by manufacturing capital, to which the Free-traders so
+confidently look for the adjustment of society after the change has been
+made. The nations who supply us with grain _do not want our
+manufactures_. They will not buy them. What they want, is our money.
+They have not, and will not have, the artificial wants requisite for the
+general purchase of manufactures for a century to come. Generations must
+go to their graves during the transition from rustic content to
+civilised wants. America has sent us some millions of quarters of grain
+this year, but there _is no increase in her orders for our
+manufactures_. On the contrary, they are diminishing. Even the Free
+Trade Journals now admit this; constrained by the evidence of their
+senses to admit the entire failure of all their predictions.[12] The
+reason is evident. They want our money, and our money they will have;
+and if they find our manufactures are beginning to flow in, in enlarged
+quantities, in consequence of our purchase of their grain, they will
+soon stop the influx by a tariff. This is what we did, when situated as
+they are--it is what all mankind will, and must do, in similar
+circumstances. It was distinctly perceived and foretold by the
+Protectionists that this effect would follow from free-trade, and that,
+unless something was done to enlarge the currency to meet it, a
+commercial crisis would ensue. These words published a year ago might
+pass for the history of the time in which we now live:--"Under the
+proposed reduced duties during the next three years, and trifling duty
+after that period on all sorts of grain, there can be no doubt that a
+very great impulse will be given to the corn-trade. It being now
+ascertained, by a comparison of the prices during the last twenty years,
+that there is annually a difference of from twenty to thirty shillings
+a-quarter between the price that wheat bears in the British islands and
+at the shores of the Baltic, while the cost of importation is only five
+or six shillings a-quarter, there can be no question that the opening of
+the ports will occasion a very large importation of foreign grain. It
+may reasonably be expected that, in the space of a few years, the
+quantity imported will amount to _four or five millions of quarters
+annually_, for which the price paid by the importers cannot be supposed
+to be less, on the most moderate calculation, than seven or eight
+millions sterling. The experience of the year 1839 sufficiently tells us
+what will be the effect of such an importation of grain, paid for, as it
+must be, for the most part in specie, upon _the general monetary
+concerns and commercial prosperity of the empire_. It is well known that
+it was this condition of things which produced the commercial crisis in
+this country, led to three years of unprecedented suffering in the
+manufacturing districts, and, as is affirmed, destroyed property in the
+manufacturing districts of Lancashire, to the amount of
+L40,000,000."[13]
+
+Lastly, the famine has taught the empire an important lesson as to Irish
+Repeal. For many years past, that country has been convulsed, and the
+empire harassed by the loud and threatening demand for the Repeal of the
+Union, and the incessant outcry that the Irish people are perfectly
+equal to the duties of self-government, and that all their distresses
+have been owing to the oppression of the Saxon. The wind of adversity
+has blown, and where are these menaces now? Had Providence punished them
+by granting their prayer--had England cut the rope, as Mr Roebuck said,
+and let them go, where would Ireland have been at this moment? Drifting
+away on the ocean of starvation. Let this teach them their dependence
+upon their neighbours, and let another fact open their eyes to what
+those neighbours are. England has replied to the senseless clamour, the
+disgraceful ingratitude, by voting ten millions sterling in a single
+year to relieve the distresses which the heedlessness and indolence of
+the Irish had brought upon themselves. We say advisedly, _brought upon
+themselves_. For, mark-worthy circumstance! the destruction of the
+potato crop has been just as complete, and the food of the people has
+been just as entirely swept away in the West Highlands of Scotland, as
+in Ireland, but _there has been no grant of public money to Scotland_.
+The cruel Anglo-Saxons have given IT ALL to the discontented, untaxed
+Gael in the Emerald isle.
+
+
+_Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh._
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] Viz. 5-1/2 per cent on all advances on cash or current accounts, and
+1/2 per cent commission on all sums overdrawn.
+
+[8] Table showing the quantity of grain, including flour and meal,
+entered for home consumption, from 5th July 1846, to 5th February 1847,
+from the _London Gazette_ official returns:--
+
+Quarters of grain (including flour and meal) entered for         qrs.
+  home consumption, in the months from 5th July to 5th
+  January as reported, 1st February,                        5,148,449
+Quantity duty paid in month ending 5th Feb.        539,418
+  Do. do. flour and meal, 427,036 cwts.            142,345
+                                                   _______    681,763
+                                                            _________
+Quantity duty paid up to 5th January,                       5,830,212
+
+   In bond, 5th February,                           68,939
+     Do. do. flour and meal, 318,240 cwts.         106,080
+                                                   _______    175,019
+                                                              _______
+   Quantity in qrs. of duty paid and presently in bond,}    6,005,231
+                 from month ending 5th July to 5th Feb.}    _________
+
+
+[9]
+                                       1844.          1845.           1846.
+Imports,    total official value,    L75,441,555   L85,281,958
+Sugar, cwts.       "                   4,139,983     4,880,780    5,231,818
+Tea, lbs.          "                  41,369,351    44,195,321   46,728,208
+Coffee, lbs.       "                  31,391,297    34,318,121   36,781,391
+Butter, cwts.      "                     180,965       240,118      255,130
+Cheese, cwts.      "                     212,286       258,246      327,490
+Live animals, No.  "                       8,007        34,426      140,752
+Brandy,            "                   1,033,650     1,058,777    1,515,954
+Geneva,            "                      14,937        15,536       40,266
+Rum,               "                   2,198,870     2,469,485    2,683,515
+
+[10] In 1840, the total amount was estimated at L180,000,000, of which
+L47,000,000, at that period, was for exportation, and L133,000,000 for
+the home market. As this L47,000,000 had swelled, in 1846, to
+L53,000,000, it is reasonable to suppose that those for the home market
+had undergone a similar increase, and are now about L200,000
+annually.--See _Speckman's Stat. Tables for_ 1842, p. 45.
+
+[11]
+
+_Table of Average Prices of Wheat in Prussia and in England, from 1816
+to 1837._
+
+    |Average prices  |Average prices|Average   |Difference     |Foreign Wheat |
+    |in Prussia      |in Brandenburg|prices per|between English|and Flour     |
+    |Proper including|and Pomerania |London    |Prices and Mean|consumed in   |
+    |Dantzig and     |              |Gazette.  |of Prussian    |Great Britain.|
+    |Konigsburg.     |              |          |Prices.        |              |
+----+----------------+--------------+----------+---------------+--------------+
+    |     s. d.      |     s. d.    |   s. d.  |    s. d.      | Qrs.         |
+1816|     36 9       |     44 6     |   76 2   |    35 6       |   225,263    |
+1817|     52 7       |     60 9     |   94 0   |    37 8       | 1,020,949    |
+1818|     49 6       |     53 5     |   83 8   |    32 2       | 1,593,518    |
+1819|     34 3       |     37 6     |   72 3   |    36 4       |   122,133    |
+1820|     27 3       |     30 0     |   65 10  |    37 2       |    34,274    |
+1821|     25 6       |     28 9     |   54 5   |    27 3       |         2    |
+1822|     26 0       |     26 8     |   43 3   |    16 11      |    ----      |
+1823|     24 2       |     26 9     |   51 9   |    26 5       |    12,137    |
+1824|     18 6       |     20 0     |   62 0   |    43 3       |    15,777    |
+1825|     17 3       |     17 9     |   66 6   |    49 0       |   525,231    |
+1826|     18 6       |     21 0     |   56 11  |    37 2       |   315,892    |
+1827|     22 3       |     25 9     |   56 9   |    32 9       |   572,733    |
+1828|     27 2       |     28 9     |   60 5   |    32 5       |   842,050    |
+1829|     32 3       |     35 0     |   66 3   |    32 7       | 1,364,220    |
+1830|     29 6       |     34 0     |   64 3   |    32 6       | 1,701,885    |
+1831|     39 6       |     39 0     |   66 4   |    27 1       | 1,491,631    |
+1832|     34 0       |     33 6     |   58 8   |    24 11      |   325,435    |
+1833|     25 0       |     23 6     |   52 11  |    28 8       |    82,346    |
+1834|     23 9       |     23 0     |   46 2   |    21 10      |    64,653    |
+1835|     23 0       |     24 0     |   39 4   |    15 10      |    28,483    |
+1836|     21 0       |     23 0     |   48 6   |    26 6       |    30,046    |
+1837|     22 6       |     26 0     |   56 10  |    32 7       |   244,085    |
+
+[12] "The excessive consumption of these and other articles has,
+however, only led to a drain of bullion to the extent of three millions
+and a half, while, upon a moderate computation, they would appear to
+call for three times that amount. This is to be accounted for by two
+facts--The first being that we have not imported, and paid for as much
+as we have consumed, since, conjointly with our importations, we have
+been steadily eating up former reserves, so that our stock of all
+kinds--coffee, sugar, rice, &c., are low; and, next, because we have
+diminished our importations of raw material in a remarkable degree, and
+hence, while paying for provisions, have lessened our usual payments on
+this score. Here, too, in like manner, _we have been drawing upon our
+reserves_. Our manufactures have been carried on with hemp, flax, and
+cotton, which had been paid for in former years, and we have left
+ourselves at the present moment short of all these articles, the stock
+of the latter alone, on the 1st of January last, as compared with the
+preceding year, being 545,790 against 1,060,560 bales. We are not only
+poorer, therefore, by all the bullion we have lost, but by all the stock
+we have thus consumed.
+
+"This _process cannot go on any longer_. We have now no accumulations to
+eat into, and must, consequently, _pay for what we use_. Concurrently,
+therefore, with our importations of corn and other provisions, (which
+are now going on at a much greater rate, and at much higher prices than
+in 1846,) and just in proportion as they beget a demand for our
+manufactures, we must have importations of raw material. Large purchases
+of hemp and flax are alleged to have been made in the north of Europe,
+for spring shipment, and cotton from the United States is only delayed
+by the want of ships. Wool from Spain, and the Mediterranean, saltpetre,
+oil-seeds, &c., from India, and a host of minor articles, have also been
+kept back by the same cause, and will pour in upon us to make up our
+deficiencies directly any relaxation shall take place (if such could be
+foreseen) of the universal influx of grain. In this way, just as one
+cause of demand diminishes the other will increase, and the balance will
+be kept up against us for a period to which at present it is impossible
+to fix a limit.
+
+"_We thus see that no call that can possibly arise for our manufactures
+can have the effect of preventing a continuous drain of bullion_. That a
+large trade will occur no one can doubt, but at present it is scarcely
+even in prospect. From India and China each account comes less
+favourable than before; from Russia we are told that 'no great demand
+can be expected for British goods under the present high duties' in that
+country; while even from the United States, the point from whence relief
+will most rapidly come, we hear of a shrewd conviction that we are
+approaching _a period of low prices_, and that, consequently, for the
+present 'the less they order from us the better.'"--_Times_, March 10,
+1847.
+
+[13] _England in 1815 and 1845_, pp. v-vii. Preface to third edition,
+published in _June_ 1846.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume
+61, No. 378, April, 1847, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH ***
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