initial commit of ebook 44183HEADmain

1 files changed, 9476 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/44183-0.txt b/44183-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb4ddd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/44183-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9476 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44183 ***
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
+
+Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+  BLACKWOOD'S
+
+  EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+
+
+
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
+
+
+
+
+  BLACKWOOD'S
+
+  Edinburgh
+
+  MAGAZINE.
+
+  VOL. LXV.
+
+  JANUARY--JUNE, 1849.
+
+  [Illustration: Buchanan]
+
+  WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH;
+
+  AND
+
+  37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
+
+  1849.
+
+
+
+
+  BLACKWOOD'S
+
+  EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+  NO. CCCXCIX.      JANUARY, 1849.      VOL. LXV.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS,                    1
+
+  FRENCH CONQUERORS AND COLONISTS,           20
+
+  THE CAXTONS. PART IX.,                     33
+
+  THE WHITE NILE,                            47
+
+  ART AND ARTISTS IN SPAIN,                  63
+
+  THE DODO AND ITS KINDRED,                  81
+
+  THE SWORD OF HONOUR: A TALE OF 1787,       98
+
+  MEMOIRS OF KIRKALDY OF GRANGE,            112
+
+
+  EDINBURGH:
+
+  WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
+  AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
+
+  _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._
+
+  SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
+
+  PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
+
+
+
+
+BLACKWOOD'S
+
+EDINBURGH MAGAZINE
+
+  NO. CCCXCIX.        JANUARY, 1849.           VOL. LXV.
+
+
+
+
+THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS.
+
+
+"No great state," says Hannibal, "can long remain quiet: if it
+ceases to have enemies abroad, it will find them at home--as
+powerful bodies resist all external attacks, but are wasted away
+by their own internal strength."[1] What a commentary on the
+words of the Carthaginian hero does the last year--THE YEAR OF
+REVOLUTIONS,--afford! What enthusiasm has it witnessed, what
+efforts engendered, what illusions dispelled, what misery produced!
+How bitterly have nations, as well as individuals, within its
+short bounds, learned wisdom by suffering--how many lessons has
+experience taught--how much agony has wickedness brought in its
+train. Among the foremost in all the periods of history, this
+memorable year will ever stand forth, a subject of undying interest
+to succeeding generations, a lasting beacon to mankind amidst the
+folly or insanity of future times. To it the young and the ardent
+will for ever turn, for the most singular scenes of social strife,
+the most thrilling incidents of private suffering: to it the aged
+will point as the most striking warning of the desperate effects of
+general delusion, the most unanswerable demonstration of the moral
+government of the world.
+
+  [1] "Nulla magna civitas diu quiescere potest si foris hostem non
+  habet, _domi invenit_--ut prævalida corpora ab extremis causis tuta
+  videntur, sed suis ipsa viribas onerantur. Tantum, nimirum, ex
+  publicis malis sentimus, quantum ad res privatas pertmet; nec in eis
+  quicquam aerius, quam pecuniæ damnun, stimulat."--LIVY, xxx. 44.
+
+That God will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children was
+proclaimed to the Israelites amidst the thunders of Mount Sinai,
+and has been felt by every succeeding generation of men. But
+it is not now upon the third or the fourth generation that the
+punishment of transgression falls--it is felt in its full bitterness
+by the transgressors themselves. The extension of knowledge, the
+diffusion of education, the art of printing, the increased rapidity
+of travelling, the long duration of peace in consequence of the
+exhaustion of former wars, have so accelerated the march of events,
+that what was slowly effected in former times, daring several
+successive generations, by the gradual development of national
+passions, is now at once brought to maturity by the fervent spirit
+which is generally awakened, and the vehement passions which are
+everywhere brought into action.
+
+Everything now goes on at the gallop. There is a railway speed in
+the stirring of the mind, not less than in the movement of the
+bodies of men. The social and political passions have acquired
+such intensity, and been so widely diffused, that their inevitable
+results are almost immediately produced. The period of seed-time and
+harvest has become as short in political as it is in agricultural
+labour. A single year brings its appropriate fruits to maturity in
+the moral as in the physical world. Eighty years elapsed in Rome
+from the time when the political passions were first stirred by
+Tiberius Gracchus, before its unruly citizens were finally subdued
+by the art, or decimated by the cruelty of Octavius. England
+underwent six years of civil war and suffering, before the ambition
+and madness of the Long Parliament were expelled by the purge of
+Pride, or crushed by the sword of Cromwell: twelve years elapsed
+between the convocation of the States-general in 1789, and the
+extinction of the license of the French Revolution by the arm of
+Napoleon. But, on this occasion, in one year, all, in the meantime
+at least, has been accomplished. Ere the leaves, which unfolded
+in spring amidst the overthrow of thrones, and the transports of
+revolutionists over the world, had fallen in autumn, the passions
+which had convulsed mankind were crushed for the time, and the
+triumphs of democracy were arrested. A terrible reaction had set in;
+experience of suffering had done its work; and swift as the shades
+of night before the rays of the ascending sun, had disappeared
+the ferment of revolution before the aroused indignation of the
+uncorrupted part of mankind. The same passions may again arise; the
+same delusions again spread, as sin springs up afresh in successive
+generations of men; but we know the result. They will, like the ways
+of the unrighteous, be again crushed.
+
+So rapid was the succession of revolutions, when the tempest
+assailed the world last spring, that no human power seemed capable
+of arresting it; and the thoughtful looked on in mournful and
+impotent silence, as they would have done on the decay of nature
+or the ruin of the world. The Pope began the career of innovation:
+decrees of change issued from the Vatican; and men beheld with
+amazement the prodigy of the Supreme Pontiff--the head of the
+unchangeable Church--standing forth as the leader of political
+reform. Naples quickly caught the flame: a Sicilian revolution
+threatened to sever one-half of their dominions from the Neapolitan
+Bourbon; and internal revolt seemed to render his authority merely
+nominal in his own metropolis. Paris, the cradle in every age of
+new ideas, and the centre of revolutionary action, next felt the
+shock: a reform banquet was prepared as the signal for assembling
+the democratic forces; the national guard, as usual, failed at the
+decisive moment: the King of the Barricades quailed before the
+power which had created him; the Orleans dynasty was overthrown,
+and France delivered over to the dreams of the Socialists and the
+ferocity of the Red Republicans. Prussia soon shared the madness:
+the population of Berlin, all trained to arms, according to the
+custom of that country, rose against the government; the king had
+not energy enough to permit his faithful troops to act with the
+vigour requisite to uphold the throne against such assailants, and
+the monarchy of Frederick the Great was overthrown. Austria, even,
+could not withstand the contagion: neither its proud nobility, nor
+its light-hearted sensual people, nor its colossal army, nor its
+centuries of glory, could maintain the throne in its moment of
+peril. The Emperor was weak, the citizens of Vienna were infatuated;
+and an insurrection, headed by the boys at the university and the
+haberdashers' apprentices in the streets, overturned the imperial
+government, and drove the Emperor to seek refuge in the Tyrol. All
+Germany caught the flame: the dreams of a few hot-headed enthusiasts
+and professors seemed to prevail alike over the dictates of wisdom
+and the lessons of experience; and, amidst the transports of
+millions the chimera or German unity seemed about to be realised by
+the sacrifice of all its means of independence. The balance of power
+in Europe appeared irrevocably destroyed by the breaking up of its
+central and most important powers,--and England, in the midst of the
+general ruin, seemed rocking to its foundation. The Chartists were
+in raptures, the Irish rebels in ecstasy: threatening meetings were
+held in every town in Great Britain; armed clubs were organised in
+the whole south and west of Ireland; revolution was openly talked of
+in both islands, and the close of harvest announced as the time when
+the British empire was to be broken up, and Anglian and Hibernian
+republics established, in close alliance with the great parent
+democracy in France. Amidst such extraordinary and unprecedented
+convulsions, it was with difficulty that a few courageous or
+far-seeing minds preserved their equilibrium; and even those who
+were least disposed to despair of the fortunes of the species, could
+see no end to the succession of disasters with which the world
+was menaced but in a great exertion of the renovating powers of
+nature, similar to that predicted, in a similar catastrophe, for the
+material world, by the imagination of the poet.
+
+    "Roll on, ye stars! exult in youthful prime,
+     Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time!
+     Near and more near your beaming cars approach,
+     And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach.
+     Flowers of the sky! ye, too, to Fate must yield,
+     Frail as your silken sisters of the field;
+     Star after star, from heaven's high arch shall rush,
+     Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush;
+     Headlong, extinct, to one dark centre fall,
+     And Dark, and Night, and Chaos, mingle all;
+     Till, o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
+     Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form,
+     Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
+     And soars and shines, another and the same."[2]
+
+  [2] DARWIN, _Botanic Garden_.
+
+But the destiny of man, not less than that of the material world,
+is balanced action and reaction, not restoration from ruin. Order
+is preserved in a way which the imagination of the poet could
+not have conceived. Even in the brief space which has elapsed
+since the convulsions began in Italy in January last, the reality
+and ceaseless action of the preserving laws of nature have been
+demonstrated. The balance is preserved in social life by contending
+passions and interests, as in the physical world by opposite
+forces, under circumstances when, to all human appearance, remedy
+is impossible and hope extinguished. The orbit of nations is traced
+out by the Wisdom of Providence not less clearly than that of the
+planets; there are centripetal and centrifugal forces in the moral
+as well as in the material world. As much as the vehement passions,
+the selfish desires, the inexperienced zeal, the expanding energy,
+the rapacious indigence, the mingled virtues and vices of man, lead
+at stated periods to the explosions of revolution,--do the desire
+of tranquillity, the interests of property, the horror at cruelty,
+the lessons of experience, the force of religion, the bitterness of
+suffering, reinduce the desire of order, and restore the influence
+of its organ, government. If we contemplate the awful force of the
+expansive powers which, issuing from the great mass of central heat,
+find vent in the fiery channels of the volcano, and have so often
+rent asunder the solid crust of the earth, we may well tremble to
+think that we stand suspended, as it were, over such an abyss,
+and that at no great distance beneath our feet the elements of
+universal conflagration are to be found.[3] But, strong as are the
+expansive powers of nature, the coercive are still stronger. The
+ocean exists to bridle with its weight the fiery gulf; the arch of
+the earth has been solidly constructed by its Divine architect; and
+the only traces we now discover, in most parts of this globe, of
+the yet raging war of the elements, are the twisted strata, which
+mark, as it were, the former writhings of matter in the terrible
+grasp of its tormentors, or the splintered pinnacles of mountains,
+which add beauty to the landscape, or the smiling plains, which
+bring happiness to the abodes of man. It is the same in the moral
+world. Action and reaction are the law of mind as well as matter,
+and the equilibrium of social life is preserved by the opposite
+tendency of the interests which are brought into collision, and
+the counter-acting force of the passions which are successively
+awakened by the very convulsions which seem to menace society with
+dissolution.
+
+  [3] "Thirty-five miles below the surface of the earth, the central
+  heat is everywhere so great, that granite itself is held in
+  fusion."--HUMBOLDT, _Cosmos_, i. 273.
+
+A year has not elapsed since the revolutionary earthquake began to
+heave in Italy, since the volcano burst forth in Paris; and how
+marvellous is the change which already has taken place in the state
+of Europe! The star of Austria, at first defeated, and apparently
+about to be extinguished in Italy, is again in the ascendant.
+Refluent from the Mincio to the Ticino, her armies have again
+entered Milan,--the revolutionary usurpation of Charles Emanuel has
+been checked almost as soon as it commenced; and the revolutionary
+rabble of Lombardy and Tuscany has fled, as it was wont, before
+the bayonets of Germany. Radetzky has extinguished revolution in
+northern Italy. If it still lingers in the south of the peninsula,
+it is only because the strange and tortuous policy of France and
+England has interfered to arrest the victorious arms of Naples
+on the Sicilian shores. Paris has been the theatre of a dreadful
+struggle, blood has flowed in torrents in its streets, slaughter
+unheard-of stained its pavements, but order has in the end prevailed
+over anarchy. A dynasty has been subverted, but the Red Republicans
+have been defeated, more generals have perished in a conflict of
+three days than at Waterloo; but the Faubourg St Antoine has been
+subdued, the socialists have been overthrown, the state of siege
+has been proclaimed; and, amidst universal suffering, anguish, and
+woe, with three hundred thousand persons out of employment in Paris,
+and a deficit of £20,000,000 in the income of the year, the dreams
+of equality have disappeared in the reality of military despotism.
+It is immaterial whether the head of the government is called a
+president, a dictator, or an emperor--whether the civic crown is
+worn by a Napoleon or a Cavaignac--in either case the ascendant of
+the army is established, and France, after a brief struggle for a
+constitutional monarchy, has terminated, like ancient Rome, in an
+elective military despotism.
+
+Frankfort has been disgraced by frightful atrocities. The chief seat
+of German unity and freedom has been stained by cruelties which
+find a parallel only in the inhuman usages of the American savages;
+but the terrible lesson has not been read in vain. It produced a
+reaction over the world; it opened the eyes of men to the real
+tendency and abominable iniquity of the votaries of revolution in
+Germany; and to the sufferings of the martyrs of revolutionary
+tortures on the banks of the Maine, the subsequent overthrow of
+anarchy in Vienna and Berlin is in a great degree to be ascribed.
+They roused the vacillating cabinets of Austria and Prussia--they
+sharpened the swords of Windischgratz and Jellachich--they nerved
+the souls and strengthened the arms of Brandenberg and Wrangel--they
+awakened anew the chord of honour and loyalty in the Fatherland.
+The national airs have been again heard in Berlin; Vienna has been
+regained after a desperate conflict; the state of siege has been
+proclaimed in both capitals; and order re-established in both
+monarchies, amidst an amount of private suffering and general
+misery--the necessary result of revolutions--which absolutely
+sickens the heart to contemplate. England has emerged comparatively
+unscathed from the strife; her time-honoured institutions have
+been preserved, her monarchy saved amidst the crash of nations.
+Queen Victoria is still upon the throne; our mixed constitution
+is intact; the dreams of the Chartists have been dispelled; the
+rebellion of the Irish rendered ridiculous; the loyalty of the
+great body of the people in Great Britain made manifest. The period
+of immediate danger is over; for the attack of the populace is
+like the spring of a wild beast--if the first onset fails, the
+savage animal slinks away into its den. General suffering indeed
+prevails, industry languishes, credit is all but destroyed, a woful
+deficiency of exports has taken place--but that is the inevitable
+result of popular commotions; and we are suffering, in part at
+least, under the effects of the insanity of nations less free and
+more inexperienced than ourselves. Though last, not least in the
+political lessons of this marvellous year, the papal government
+has been subverted--a second Rienzi has appeared in Rome; and the
+Supreme Pontiff, _who began the movement_, now a fugitive from his
+dominions, has exhibited a memorable warning to future ages, of the
+peril of commencing reforms in high places, and the impossibility
+of reconciling the Roman Catholic religion with political
+innovation.
+
+But let it not be imagined that, because the immediate danger is
+over, and because military power has, after a fierce struggle,
+prevailed in the principal capitals of Europe, that therefore the
+ultimate peril is past, and that men have only to sit down, under
+the shadow of their fig-tree, to cultivate the arts and enjoy the
+blessings of peace. Such is not the destiny of man in any, least of
+all in a revolutionary age. We are rather on the verge of an era
+similar to that deplored by the poet:--
+
+    "Bella per Emathios plusquam civilia campos,
+     Jusque datum sceleri canimus, populumque potentem
+     In sua victrici conversum viscera dextrâ;
+     Cognatasque acies; et rupto f[oe]dera regni
+     Certatum totis concussi viribus orbis,
+     In commune nefas."[4]
+
+  [4] LUCAN, i. 1-6.
+
+Who can tell the immeasurable extent of misery and wretchedness,
+of destruction of property among the rich, and ruin of industry
+among the poor, that must take place before the fierce passions,
+now so generally awakened, are allayed--before the visions of a
+virtuous republic by Lamartine, or the dreams of communism by
+Louis Blanc and Ledru-Rollin, or the insane ideas of the Frankfort
+enthusiasts have ceased to move mankind? The fire they have let
+loose will burn fiercely for centuries; it will alter the destiny
+of nations for ages; it will neither be quenched, like ordinary
+flames, by water, nor subdued, like the Greek fire, by vinegar:
+blood alone will extinguish its fury. The coming convulsions may
+well be prefigured from the past, as they have been recently drawn
+by the hand of a master:--"All around us, the world is convulsed
+by the agonies of great nations; governments which lately seemed
+likely to stand during ages, have been on a sudden shaken and
+overthrown. The proudest capitals of western Europe have streamed
+with civil blood. All evil passions--the thirst of gain and the
+thirst of vengeance--the antipathy of class to class, of race to
+race--have broken loose from the control of divine and human laws.
+Fear and anxiety have clouded the faces, and depressed the hearts
+of millions; trade has been suspended, and industry paralysed;
+the rich have become poor, and the poor poorer. Doctrines hostile
+to all sciences, to all arts, to all industry, to all domestic
+charity--doctrines which, if carried into effect, would in thirty
+years undo all that thirty centuries have done for mankind, and
+would make the fairest provinces of France or Germany as savage
+as Guiana or Patagonia--have been avowed from the tribune, and
+defended by the sword. Europe has been threatened with subjugation
+by barbarians, compared with whom the barbarians who marched under
+Attila or Alboin were enlightened and humane. The truest friends of
+the people have with deep sorrow owned, that interests more precious
+than any political privileges were in jeopardy, and that it might be
+necessary to sacrifice even liberty to save civilisation."[5]
+
+  [5] MACAULAY's _History of England_, vol. ii. p. 669.
+
+It is now just a year since Mr Cobden announced, to an admiring
+and believing audience at Manchester, that the age of warfare
+had ceased; that the contests of nations had passed, like the
+age of the mastodon and the mammoth; that the steam-engine had
+caused the arms to drop from her hands, and the interests of free
+trade extinguished the rivalries of nations; and that nothing now
+remained but to sell our ships of war, disband our troops, cut
+twenty millions off our taxation, and set ourselves unanimously to
+the great work of cheapening everything, and underselling foreign
+competitors in the market of the world. Scarcely were the words
+spoken, when conflicts more dire, battles more bloody, dissensions
+more inextinguishable than had ever arisen from the rivalry of
+kings, or the ambition of ministers, broke out in almost every
+country of Europe. The social supplanted the national passions.
+Within the bosom of society itself, the volcano had burst forth. It
+was no longer general that was matched against general, as in the
+wars of Marlborough, nor nation that rose up against nation, as in
+those of Napoleon. The desire of robbery, the love of dominion, the
+lust of conquest, the passion for plunder, were directed to domestic
+acquisitions. Human iniquity reappeared in worse, because less
+suspected and more delusive colours. Robbery assumed the guise of
+philanthropy; spoliation was attempted, under colour of law; plunder
+was systematically set about, by means of legislative enactments.
+Revolution resumed its old policy--that of rousing the passions by
+the language of virtue, and directing them to the purposes of vice.
+The original devil was expelled; but straightway he returned with
+seven other devils, and the last state of the man was worse than the
+first. Society was armed against itself; the devastating passions
+burned in its own bosom; class rose against class, race against
+race, interest against interest. Capital fancied its interest was
+to be promoted by grinding down labour; labour, that its rights
+extended to the spoliation of capital. A more attractive object
+than the reduction of a city, or the conquest of a province, was
+presented to indigent cupidity. Easier conquests than over rival
+industry were anticipated by moneyed selfishness. The spoliation of
+the rich at their own door--the division of the property of which
+they were jealous, became the dream of popular ambition; the beating
+down of their own labourers by free-trade, the forcible reduction
+of prices by a contraction of the currency--the great object of the
+commercial aristocracy. War reassumed its pristine ferocity. In the
+nineteenth century, the ruthless maxim--_Væ victis!_ became the
+war-cry on both sides in the terrible civil war which burst forth in
+an age of general philanthropy. It may be conceived what passions
+must have been awakened, what terrors inspired, what indignation
+aroused by such projects. But though we have seen the commencement
+of the _era of social conflicts_, is there any man now alive who is
+likely to see its end?
+
+Experience has now completely demonstrated the wisdom of the Allied
+powers, who placed the lawful monarchs of France on the throne in
+1815, and the enormous error of the liberal party in France, which
+conspired with the republicans to overthrow the Bourbon dynasty in
+1830. That fatal step has bequeathed a host of evils to Europe: it
+has loosened the authority of government in all countries; it has
+put the very existence of freedom in peril by the enormity of the
+calamities which it has brought in its train. All parties in France
+are now agreed that the period of the Restoration was the happiest,
+and the least corrupted, that has been known since the first
+Revolution. The republicans of the present day tell us, with a sigh,
+that the average budgets of the three last years of Charles X. were
+900,000,000 francs, (£36,000,000;) that the expenditure was raised
+by Louis Philippe at once to 1500,000,000 francs, (£60,000,000;)
+and that under the Republic it will exceed 1800,000,000 francs,
+(£72,000,000.) There can be no doubt of the fact; and there can
+be as little, that if the Red Republicans had succeeded in the
+insurrection of June last, the annual expenditure would have
+increased to £100,000,000--or rather, a universal spoliation of
+property would have ensued. Louis Blanc has given the world, in
+his powerful historical work, a graphic picture of the universal
+corruption, selfishness, and immorality, in public and private
+life, which pervaded France during the reign of Louis Philippe.[6]
+Though drawn by the hand of a partisan, there can be no doubt that
+the picture is too faithful in most of its details, and exhibits
+an awful proof of the effects of a successful revolution. But the
+misery which Louis Blanc has so ably depicted, the corruptions he
+has brought to light, under the revolutionary monarchy, have been
+multiplied fourfold by those which have prevailed during the last
+year in the republic established by Louis Blanc, himself!
+
+  [6] LOUIS BLANC, _Histoire de Dix Ans de Louis Philippe_, iii. 321,
+  _et seq._
+
+Paris, ever since the suppression of the great insurrection in
+June last, has been in such a state, that it is the most utter
+mockery to call it freedom. In truth, it is nothing but the most
+unmitigated military despotism. A huge statue of liberty is placed
+in the National Assembly; but at every six paces bayonets are to be
+seen, to remind the bystanders of the rule of the sword. "Liberté,
+Egalité, Fraternité," meet the eye at every turn in the streets; but
+the Champs Elysées, the Place de Grève, the Carrousel, and Place
+Vendôme, are crowded with soldiers; and the Champ de Mars is white
+with tents, to cover part of the 40,000 regular troops which form
+the ordinary garrison of Paris. Universal freedom of discussion has
+been proclaimed by the constitution; but dozens of journals have
+been suppressed by the authority of the dictator; and imprisonment
+notoriously hangs over the head of every one who indulges in the
+freedom of discussion, which in England and America is universal.
+The state of siege has been raised, after having continued four
+months; but the military preparations for _another siege_ continue
+with unabated vigour on both sides. The constitution has been
+adopted by a great majority in the Assembly; but the forts are all
+armed, and prepared to rain down the tempest of death on the devoted
+city. Universal suffrage is established; but menacing crowds are in
+the streets, threatening any one who votes against their favourite
+candidates. The Faubourg St Antoine, during the late election, was
+in a frightful state of agitation; infantry, cavalry, and artillery,
+were traversing the streets in all directions; and conflicts not
+less bloody than those of June last were anticipated in the struggle
+for the presidency, and prevented only by the presence of _ninety
+thousand soldiers_ in the capital: a force greater than that
+which fought on either side at Austerlitz or Jena. It is evident
+that republican institutions, in such a state of society, are a
+mere name; and that supreme despotic power is really invested in
+France, as in ancient Rome under the emperors, in the nominee of a
+victorious body of soldiery. The Prætorian guards will dispose of
+the French as they did of the Roman diadem; and ere long, gratuities
+to the troops will perhaps be the passport to power in Paris, as
+they were in the Eternal City.
+
+Nor have the social evils, which in France have followed in the
+wake of successful revolution, been less deplorable than the entire
+destruction of the rights of freemen and security of property which
+has ensued. To show that this statement is not overcharged, we
+extract from a noted liberal journal of Paris, _La Reforme_, of
+November 17, 1848, the following statement:--
+
+     "Property, manufactures, and commerce are utterly destroyed in
+     Paris. Of the population of that great city, the capital of
+     France, there are 300,000 individuals wanting the necessaries
+     of life. One half at least of those earned from 3f. to 5f. a
+     day previous to the revolution, and occupied a number of houses
+     in the faubourgs. The proprietors of those houses receiving no
+     rent, and having taxes and other charges to pay, are reduced
+     to nearly as deep distress as their tenants. In the centre of
+     Paris, the same distress exists under another form. The large
+     and sumptuous apartments of the fashionable quarters were
+     occupied before the revolution by wealthy proprietors, or by
+     persons holding lucrative employments in the public offices,
+     or by extensive manufacturers, but nearly all those have
+     disappeared, and the few who remain have insisted upon such a
+     reduction of rent that the proprietor does not receive one-half
+     of the amount to which he is entitled. Should a proprietor of
+     house property endeavour to raise a sum of money by a first
+     mortgage, to defray his most urgent expenses, he finds it
+     impossible to do so, even at a most exorbitant rate of interest.
+     Those who possess ready money refuse to part with it, either
+     through fear, or because they expect to purchase house property
+     when it must be sold at 50 per cent less than the value."--_La
+     Reforme_, November 17, 1848.
+
+It is certainly a most remarkable thing, in the history of the
+aberrations of the human mind, that a system of policy which has
+produced, and is producing, such disastrous results--and, above
+all, which is inflicting such deadly and irreparable wounds on
+the interests of the poor, and the cause of freedom throughout
+the world--should have been, during the last eighteen years, the
+object of unceasing eulogy by the liberal party on both sides of the
+Channel; and that the present disastrous state of affairs, both in
+this country and on the Continent, is nothing more than the natural
+and inevitable result of the principles that party has everywhere
+laboured to establish. The revolution of 1830 was hailed with
+enthusiasm in this country by the whole liberal party: the Irish are
+not more enamoured now of the revolution of 1848, than the Whigs
+were, eighteen years ago, of that of 1830. The liberal government
+of England did all in their power to spread far and wide the
+glorious example. Flanders was attacked--an English fleet and French
+army besieged Antwerp; and, by a coalition of the two powers, a
+revolutionary throne was established in Belgium, and the king of the
+Netherlands prevented from re-establishing the kingdom guaranteed
+to him by all the powers of Europe. The Quadruple Alliance was
+formed to revolutionise Spain and Portugal; a sanguinary civil
+war was nourished for long in both kingdoms; and at length, after
+years of frightful warfare, the legitimate monarch, and legal order
+of succession, were set aside in both countries; queens were put
+on the thrones of both instead of kings, and England enjoyed the
+satisfaction, for the diffusion of her revolutionary propagandism,
+of destroying the securities provided for the liberties of Europe by
+the treaty of Utrecht, and preparing a Spanish princess for the hand
+of a Bourbon prince.
+
+Not content with this memorable and politic step, and even after
+the recent disasters of France were actually before their eyes, our
+rulers were so enamoured of revolutions, that they could not refrain
+from encouraging it in every _small_ state within their reach.
+Lord Palmerston counseled the Pope, in a too celebrated letter, to
+plunge into the career which has terminated so fatally for himself
+and for Italy. Admiral Parker long prevented the Neapolitan force
+from embarking for Sicily, to do there what Lord Hardinge was nearly
+at the same time sent to do in Ireland. We beheld the Imperial
+standards with complacency driven behind the Mincio; but no sooner
+did Radetzky disperse the revolutionary army, and advance to Milan,
+than British and French diplomacy interfered to arrest his march,
+and save their revolutionary protégé, the King of Piedmont, from the
+chastisement which his perfidious attack on Austria in the moment of
+her distress merited. The Ministerial journals are never weary of
+referring to the revolutions on the Continent as the cause of all
+the distress which has prevailed in England, since they broke out
+in last spring: they forget that it was England herself which first
+unfurled the standard of revolution, and that, if we are suffering
+under its effects, it is under the effects of our own measures and
+policy.
+
+Strange and unaccountable as this perverted and diseased state
+of opinion, in a large part of the people of this country,
+undoubtedly is, it is easily explained when the state of society,
+and the channel into which political contests have run, are taken
+into consideration. In truth, our present errors are the direct
+consequence of our former wisdom; our present weakness, of our
+former strength; our present misery, of our former prosperity.
+
+In the feudal ages, and over the whole Asiatic world at the present
+time, the contests of parties are carried on for _individuals_. No
+change of national policy, or of the system of internal government,
+is contemplated on either side. It is for one prince or another
+prince, for one sultaun or another sultaun, that men draw their
+swords. "Under which King, Bezonian?--speak or die!" is there
+the watch-word of all civil conflict. It was the same in this
+country during the feudal ages, and down to a very recent period.
+No man in the civil wars between Stephen and Henry II., or of the
+Plantagenet princes, or in the wars of the Roses, contemplated or
+desired any change of government or policy in the conflict in which
+they were engaged. The one party struck for the Red, the other for
+the White Rose. Great civil and social interests were at issue in
+the conflict; but the people cared little or nothing for these.
+The contest between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians was a great
+feud between two clans which divided the state; and the attachment
+to their chiefs was the blind devotion of the Highlanders to the
+Pretender.
+
+The Reformation, which first brought the dearest objects of thought
+and interest home to all classes, made a great change in this
+respect, and substituted in large proportion general questions for
+the adherence to particular men, or fidelity to particular families.
+Still, however, the old and natural instinct of the human race to
+attach themselves to men, not things, continued, in a great degree,
+to influence the minds of the people, and as many buckled on their
+armour for the man as the cause. The old Cavaliers, who periled
+life and lands in defence of Charles I., were as much influenced
+by attachment to the dignified monarch, who is immortalised in the
+canvass of Vandyke, as by the feelings of hereditary loyalty; and
+the iron bands which overthrew their ranks at Marston Moor, were as
+devoted to Cromwell as the tenth legion to Cæsar, or the Old Guard
+to Napoleon. In truth, such individual influences are so strongly
+founded in human nature, that they will continue to the end of the
+world, from whatever cause a contest may have arisen, as soon as
+it has continued for a certain time, and will always stand forth
+in prominent importance when a social has turned into a military
+conflict, and the perils and animosities of war have endeared their
+leaders to the soldiers on either side. The Vendeans soon became
+devoted to Henri Larochjaquelein, the Republicans to Napoleon;
+and in our own times, the great social conflict of the nineteenth
+century has been determined by the fidelity of the Austrian
+soldiers to Radetzky, of the French to Cavaignac, of the German to
+Windischgratz.
+
+But in the British empire, for a century past, it has been
+thoroughly understood, by men of sense of all parties, that a change
+of dynasty is out of the question, and that there is no reform worth
+contending for in the state, which is not to be effected by the
+means which the constitution itself has provided. This conviction,
+long impressed upon the nation, and interwoven as it were with the
+very framework of the British mind, having come to coincide with the
+passions incident to party divisions in a free state, has in process
+of time produced the strange and tortuous policy which, for above a
+quarter of a century, has now been followed in this country by the
+government, and lauded to the skies by the whole liberal party on
+the Continent. Deprived of the watchwords of men, the parties have
+come to assume those of things. Organic or social change have become
+the war-cry of faction, instead of change of dynasty. The nation is
+no longer drenched with blood by armies fighting for the Red or the
+White Rose, by parties striving for the mastery between the Stuart
+and Hanover families, but it was not less thoroughly divided by
+the cry of "The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill,"
+at one time, and that of "Free-trade and cheap corn" at another.
+Social change, alterations of policy, have thus come to be the great
+objects which divide the nation; and, as it is ever the policy of
+Opposition to represent the conduct of Government as erroneous,
+it follows, as a necessary consequence, that the main efforts of
+the party opposed to administration always have been, since the
+suppression of the Rebellion in 1745, to effect, when in opposition,
+a change in general opinion, and, when in power, to carry that
+change into effect by a change of policy. The old law of nature
+is still in operation. Action and reaction rule mankind; and in
+the efforts of parties mutually to supplant each other in power, a
+foundation is laid for an entire change of policy at stated periods,
+and an alteration, as great as from night to day, in the opinions
+and policy of the ruling party in the same state at different times.
+
+The old policy of England--that policy under which, in the words
+of Macaulay, "The authority of law and the security of property
+were found to be compatible with a liberty of discussion and
+of individual action never known before; under which form, the
+auspicious union of order and freedom, sprang a prosperity of which
+the annals of human affairs had furnished no example; under which
+our country, from a state of ignominious vassalage, rapidly rose to
+the place of umpire among European powers; under which her opulence
+and martial glory grew together; under which, by wise and resolute
+good faith, was gradually established a public credit, fruitful
+of marvels which, to the statesmen of any former age, would have
+appeared incredible; under which a gigantic commerce gave birth to
+a maritime power, compared with which every other maritime power,
+ancient or modern, sinks into insignificance; under which Scotland,
+after ages of enmity, was at length united to England, not mere by
+legal bonds, but by indissoluble ties of interest and affection;
+under which, in America, the British colonies rapidly became far
+mightier and wealthier than the realms which Cortes and Pizarro
+added to the dominions of Charles V.; under which, in Asia, British
+adventurers founded an empire not less splendid, and more durable,
+than that of Alexander,"[7]--was not the policy of any particular
+party or section of the community, and thence its long duration and
+unexampled success.
+
+  [7] MACAULAY's _History_, i. 1-2.
+
+It was not introduced--it grew. Like the old constitution, of which
+it was the emanation, it arose from the wants and necessities of
+all classes of men during a long series of ages. It was first
+proclaimed in energetic terms by the vigour of Cromwell; the cry of
+the national representatives for markets to native industry, of the
+merchants, for protection to their ships, produced the Navigation
+Laws, and laid the foundation of the colonial empire of England.
+Amidst all his _insouciance_ and folly in the drawing-room of the
+Duchess of Portsmouth, and the boudoirs of the Duchess of Cleveland,
+it was steadily pursued by Charles II. James II. did not lose sight
+of this same system, amidst all his infatuation and cruelty; when
+directing the campaign of Jeffreys in the west, he was as steadily
+bent on upholding and extending the navy as when, amidst the
+thunders of war, he combated de Ruyter and van Tromp on the coast
+of Holland. William III., Anne, and the Georges, pursued the same
+system. It directed the policy of Somers and Godolphin; it ruled the
+diplomacy of Walpole and Chatham; it guided the measures of Bute
+and North; it directed the genius of Pitt and Fox. It was for it
+that Marlborough conquered, and Wolfe fell; that Blake combated, and
+Hawke destroyed; that Nelson launched the thunderbolt of war, and
+Wellington carried the British standard to Madrid and Paris.
+
+It was the peculiar structure of the English constitution, during
+this century and a half of prosperity and glory, that produced so
+remarkable a uniformity in the objects of the national policy. These
+objects were pursued alike by the Republicans and the Royalists; by
+the Roundheads and the Cavaliers; by the Whigs, during the seventy
+years of their rule that followed the Revolution, and the Tories,
+during the sixty years that succeeded the accession of George III.
+The policy was that of _protection to all the national interests,
+whether landed, commercial, colonial, or manufacturing_. Under this
+system they all grew and prospered, _alike and abreast_, in the
+marvellous manner which the pencil of Macaulay has sketched in the
+opening of his History. It was hard to say whether agriculture,
+manufactures, colonies, or shipping throve and prospered most
+during that unique period. The world had never seen anything like
+it before: it is doubtful if it will ever see anything like it
+again. Under its shelter, the various interests of the empire were
+knit together in so close a manner, that they not only all grew
+and prospered together, but it was universally felt that their
+interests were entirely dependent on each other. The toast "The
+plough, the loom, and the sail," was drunk with as much enthusiasm
+in the farmers' club as in the merchant's saloon. As varied as the
+interests with which they were charged, the policy of government was
+yet perfectly steady in following out one principle--the protection
+of the _productive classes_, whether by land or water, whether at
+home or abroad.
+
+The legislature represented and embodied all these interests, and
+carried out this policy. It gave them a stability and consistency
+which had never been seen in the world before. Nominally the
+representatives of certain towns and counties in the British
+islands, the House of Commons gradually became really the
+representatives of the varied interests of the whole British empire.
+The nomination boroughs afforded an inlet alike to native talent
+and foreign interests. Gatton and Old Sarum, or similar close
+boroughs, afforded an entrance to the legislature, not only to the
+genius of Pitt and Fox, of Burke and Sheridan, but to the wealth
+of Jamaica, the rising energy of Canada, the aged civilisation of
+Hindostan. Experienced protection reconciled all interests to a
+government under which all prospered; mutual dependence made all
+sensible of the necessity of common unanimity. The statute-book
+and national treaties, from the Revolution in 1688 to the close
+of the war with Napoleon in 1815, exhibit the most decisive proof
+of the working of these varied, but not conflicting interests, in
+the national councils. If you contemplate the general protection
+afforded to agriculture and the landed interest, you would imagine
+the House of Commons had been entirely composed of squires. If you
+examine the innumerable enactments, fiscal and prohibitory, for the
+protection of manufactures, you would suppose it had been entirely
+under the government of manufacturers. If you contemplate the steady
+protection invariably given to the mercantile navy, you would
+suppose it had been chiefly directed by shipowners. If you cast your
+eyes on the protection constantly given by discriminating fiscal
+duties to colonial industry, and the vast efforts made, both by sea
+and land, in the field and in the cabinet, to encourage and extend
+our colonial dependencies, you would conclude, not only that they
+were represented, but that their representatives had a majority in
+the legislature.
+
+The reason of this prodigy was, that all interests had, in the
+course of ages, and the silent effects of time, worked their
+way into the legislature, and all enjoyed in fair proportion a
+reasonable influence on government. Human wisdom could no more _ab
+ante_ have framed such a system, than it could have framed the
+British constitution. By accident, or rather the good providence
+of God, it grew up from the wants of men during a series of
+generations; and its effects appeared in this, that--except in the
+cases of the American war, where unfortunate circumstances produced
+a departure from the system; of the Irish Celts, whom it seems
+impracticable to amalgamate with Saxon institutions; and of the
+Scottish Highlanders, whom chivalrous honour for a short period
+alienated from the established government--unanimity unprecedented
+during the whole period pervaded the British empire. All foreign
+colonies were desirous to be admitted into the great protecting
+confederacy; the French and Dutch planters in secret prayed for
+the defeat of their defenders when the standard of St George
+approached their shores. The Hindoos, with heroic constancy, alike
+in prosperous and adverse fortune, maintained their fidelity: Canada
+stood firm during the most dangerous crisis of our history; and the
+flame of loyalty burned as steadily on the banks of the St Lawrence,
+on the mountains of Jamaica, and on the shores of the Ganges, as in
+the crowded emporiums of London, or the smiling fields of Yorkshire.
+
+But there is a limit imposed by nature to all earthly things.
+The growth of empires is restrained, after they have reached a
+certain stature, by laws as certain as those which arrest that of
+individuals. If a state does not find the causes of its ruin in
+foreign disaster, it will inevitably find it in internal opinion.
+This arises so naturally and evidently from the constitution of the
+human mind, that it may be regarded as a fixed law of nature in all
+countries where intellectual activity has been called forth, and
+as one of the most powerful agents in the government, by supreme
+Wisdom, of human affairs. This principle is to be found in the
+tendency of _original_ thought to differ from the current opinion
+with which it is surrounded, and of party ambition to decry the
+system of those by whom it is excluded from power.
+
+Universally it will be found that the greatest exertions of human
+intellect have been made in _direct opposition_ to the current of
+general opinion; and that public thought in one age is in general
+but the echo of solitary meditation in that which has preceded
+it. Illustrations of this crowd on the reflecting mind from every
+period of history. The instances of Luther standing forth alone to
+shake down, Samson-like, the pillar of the corrupted Romish faith;
+of Bacon's opening, amid all the despotism of the Aristotelian
+philosophy, his inductive philosophy; of Galileo maintaining the
+motion of the earth even when surrounded by the terrors of the
+Italian Inquisition; of Copernicus asserting the true system of
+the heavens in opposition to the belief of two thousand years;
+of Malthus bringing forward the paradox of the danger of human
+increase in opposition to the previous general opinion of mankind;
+of Voltaire combating alone the giant power of the Roman Catholic
+hierarchy; of Rousseau running a course against the whole ideas
+of his age--will immediately occur to every reader. Many of these
+great men adopted erroneous opinions, and, in consequence, did as
+much evil to their own or the next age as others did good; but they
+were all characterised by one mark. Their opinions were _original_,
+and directly adverse to public opinion around them. The close of
+the nineteenth century was no exception to the general principle.
+Following out those doctrines of freedom from restraint of every
+kind, which in France had arisen from the natural resistance of
+men to the numerous fetters of the monarchy, and which had been
+brought forward by Turgot and the Economists, in the boudoirs of
+Madame Pompadour and the coteries of Paris,--Adam Smith broached the
+principle of Free Trade, with the exceptions of grain and shipping.
+The first he excepted, because it was essential to national
+subsistence; the second, because it was the pillar of national
+defence. The new philosophy was ardently embraced by the liberal
+party, who, chagrined by long exclusion from office, were rejoiced
+to find a tangible and plausible ground whereon to attack the whole
+existing system of government. From them it gradually extended to
+nearly all the ardent part of the community, ever eager to embrace
+doctrines at variance with previous and vulgar belief, and not yet
+enlightened by experience as to the effect of the new system. It was
+soon discovered that for a century and a half we had been proceeding
+on false principles. The whole policy of government since the days
+of Cromwell had been erroneous; in politics, in social government,
+in diplomacy, in the colonies, in war, in peace, at home and abroad,
+we had been running blindfold to destruction. True, we had become
+great, and glorious, and free under this abominable system; true, it
+had been accompanied by a growth of national strength, and an amount
+of national happiness, unparalleled in any former age or country;
+but that was all by accident. Philosophy had marked it with the
+sign of reprobation--prosperity had poured upon us by chance in the
+midst of universal misgovernment. By all the rules of calculation
+we should have been destroyed, though, strange to say, no symptoms
+of destruction had yet appeared amongst us. According to every
+principle of philosophy, the patient should long ago have been dead
+of the mortal disease under which he laboured: the only provoking
+thing was, that he was still walking about in robust and florid
+health.
+
+Circumstances occurred at the same time, early in this century,
+which had the most powerful effect in exasperating the Opposition
+party throughout the country, and inducing them to embrace,
+universally and ardently, the new philosophy, which condemned in
+such unmeasured terms the whole system of government pursued by
+their antagonists. For half a century, since the long dominion of
+the Whigs was terminated in 1761 by George III., the Tories had
+been, with the exception of a few months, constantly in office.
+Though their system of government in religion, in social affairs,
+in foreign relations, was nothing but a continuation of that which
+the Whigs had introduced, and according to which the government had
+been conducted from 1688 to 1760, yet, in the ardour of their zeal
+for the overthrow of their adversaries, the liberal party embraced
+on every point the opposite side. The descendants of Lord Russel
+became the advocates of Roman Catholic emancipation; the followers
+of Marlborough and Godolphin, the partisans of submission to France;
+the successors of Walpole and Chatham, the advocates of free trade
+and colonial neglect. These feelings, embraced from the influence of
+a determination to find fault with government in every particular,
+were worked up to the highest pitch by the glorious result of the
+war with France, and the apparently interminable lease of power
+acquired by their adversaries from the overthrow of Napoleon. That
+memorable event, so opposite to that which they had all so long
+in public predicted, so entirely the reverse of that which many
+had in secret wished, produced a profound impression on the Whig
+party. Their feelings were only the more acute, that, amidst the
+tumult of national exultation, they were forced to suppress them,
+and to wear the countenance of satisfaction, when the bitterness of
+disappointment was in their hearts. To the extreme asperity of these
+feelings, and the universal twist which they gave to the minds of
+the whole liberal party in Great Britain, the subsequent general
+change in their political principles is to be ascribed; and, in the
+practical application of these principles, the real cause of our
+present distressed condition is to be found.
+
+While one set of causes thus prepared, in the triumph of
+Conservative and protective principles, the strongest possible
+reaction against them, and prognosticated, at no distant period,
+their general banishment from popular thought, another, and a
+not less powerful set, flowing from the same cause, gave these
+principles the means of acquiring a political supremacy, and ruling
+the government of the state. The old policy of England, it has
+been already observed, for a hundred and fifty years, had been to
+take care of the producers, and let the consumers take care of
+themselves. Such had been the effects of this protective policy,
+that, before the close of the Revolutionary war, during which it
+received its full development, the producing classes, both in town
+and country, had become so rich and powerful, that it was easy
+to see they would ere long give a preponderance to urban over
+rural industry. The vast flood of agricultural riches poured for
+expenditure into towns; that of the manufacturers and merchants
+seldom left it. The great manufacturing and mercantile places,
+during a century, had advanced in population tenfold, in wealth
+thirty-fold. The result of this change was very curious, and in
+the highest degree important. Under the _shadow of protection_ to
+industry in all its branches, riches, both in town and country, had
+increased so prodigiously, that the holders of it had _acquired
+a preponderance over the classes in the state yet engaged in the
+toilsome and hazardous work of production_. The owners of realised
+capital had become so numerous and weighty, from the beneficial
+effects of the protective system under which the country had so long
+flourished, that they formed an important _class apart, which began
+to look to its separate interests_. The consumers had become so
+numerous and affluent, that they were enabled to bid defiance to the
+producers. The maxim became prevalent, "Take care of the consumer,
+and let the producer take care of himself." Thence the clamour for
+free trade. Having passed the labour of production, during which
+they, or their fathers, had strenuously supported the protective
+principles, by which they were making their money, the next thing
+was to support the opposite principles, by which the value of the
+_made money might be augmented_. This was to be done by free trade
+and a contracted currency. Having made millions by protection, the
+object now was to add a half to every million by raising its value.
+The way to do this seemed to be by cheapening the price of every
+other article, and raising the price of money: in other words, the
+system of cheapening everything without reference to its effect on
+the interests of production.
+
+Parliamentary reform, for which the Whigs, disappointed by long
+exclusion from office, laboured strenuously, in conjunction with
+the commercial and moneyed classes, enriched by protection, gave
+them the means of carrying both objects into execution, because
+it made two-thirds of the House of Commons the representatives of
+burghs. The cry of cheap bread was seductive to all classes in
+towns:--to the employer, because it opened the prospect of reducing
+the price of labour, and to the operative, because it presents that
+of lowering that of provisions. To these two objects, accordingly,
+of raising the value of money and lowering the remuneration of
+industry, the Reform parliament, the organ of the moneyed interest
+and consuming classes, has, through all the changes of party, been
+perfectly steady. It is no wonder it has been so, for it was the
+first-born of those interests. Twenty years before the cry for
+reform convulsed the nation--in 1810--the Bullion Committee brought
+forward the principle of a metallic, and, consequently, a contracted
+currency; and they recommended its adoption in the very crisis of
+the war, when Wellington lay at Torres Vedras, and when the monetary
+crisis to which it must have led would have made us a province of
+France. Reform was the consequence of the change in the currency,
+not its cause. The whole time from 1819 to 1831, with the exception
+of 1824 and 1825, was one uninterrupted period of suffering. Such
+was the misery it produced that the minds of men were prepared
+for any change. A chaos of unanimity was produced by a chaos of
+suffering.
+
+Thus, by a singular and most interesting chain of causes and
+effects, it was the triumph of Conservative and protective
+principles in the latter years of the war, and the entire
+demonstration thus afforded of their justice and expedience,
+which was the immediate cause of their subsequent abandonment,
+and all the misery which has thence arisen, and with which we
+are still everywhere surrounded. For it at once turned all the
+intellectual energies of the great liberal party to oppose, in
+every particular, the system by which their opponents had been
+glorified, and concentrated all the energies of the now powerful
+moneyed classes to swell, by a change of policy, the fortunes on
+which their consequence depended, and which had arisen from the
+long prevalence of the opposite system. For such is the tendency to
+action and reaction, in all vigorous and intellectual communities,
+that truth itself is for long no security against their occurrence.
+On the contrary, so vehement are the passions excited by a great
+and lasting triumph of one party, even though in the right, that
+the victory of truth, whether in politics or religion, is often
+the immediate cause of the subsequent triumph of error. The great
+Roman Catholic reaction against the Reformation, which Ranke has so
+clearly elucidated, and Macaulay has so powerfully illustrated, has
+its exact counterpart in the great political reaction of the Whig
+party, of which Macaulay is himself the brightest ornament.
+
+That this is the true explanation of the strange and tortuous
+policy, both in domestic and foreign affairs, under which the
+nation has so long suffered, is apparent on the slightest survey of
+political affairs in the last and present century.
+
+The old principle of the English constitution, which had worked
+itself into existence, or grown up from the necessities of men,
+during a long course of years, was, that the whole _interests_ of
+the state should be represented, and that the House of Commons
+was the assembly in which the representatives of all those varied
+interests were to be found. For the admission of these varied
+interests, a varied system of electoral qualifications, admitting
+all interests, noble, mercantile, industrial, popular, landed, and
+colonial, was indispensable. In the old House of Commons, all these
+classes found a place for their representatives, and thence the
+commercial protection it afforded to industry. According to the new
+system, a vast majority of seats was to be allotted to _one class
+only_, the householders and shopkeepers of towns. That class was the
+moneyed and consuming class; and thence the whole subsequent course
+of British policy, which has been to sacrifice everything to their
+interests.
+
+The old maxim of government, alike with Whigs and Tories, was, that
+native industry of all sorts, and especially agricultural industry,
+was to be protected, and that foreign competition was to be admitted
+only in so far as was not inconsistent with this primary object.
+The new philosophy taught, and the modern liberals carried into
+execution, a different principle. They went on the maxim that the
+interests of the consumers alone were to be considered: that to
+cheapen everything was the great object; and that it mattered not
+how severely the producers of articles suffered, provided those
+who purchased them were enabled to do so at a reduced rate. This
+policy, long lauded in abstract writings and reviews, was at length
+carried into execution by Sir R. Peel, by the tariff of 1842 and
+the free-trade measures of 1846.
+
+To protect and extend our colonial dependencies was the great object
+of British policy, alike with Whigs and Tories, from the time of
+Cromwell to the fall of Napoleon. In them, it was thought our
+manufacturers would find a lasting and rapidly increasing market for
+their produce, which would, in the end, enable us equally to defy
+the hostility, and withstand the rivalry of foreign states. The new
+school held that this was an antiquated prejudice: that colonies
+were a burden rather than a blessing to the mother country: that the
+independence of America was the greatest blessing that ever befell
+Great Britain; and that, provided we could buy colonial produce a
+little cheaper, it signified nothing though our colonies perished by
+the want of remuneration for their industry, or were led to revolt
+from exasperation at the cruel and unnatural conduct of the mother
+country.
+
+The navy was regarded by all our statesmen, without exception, from
+Cromwell to Pitt, as the main security of the British empire; its
+bulwark in war; the bridge which united its far-distant provinces
+during peace. To feed it with skilled seamen, the Navigation
+Laws were upheld even by Adam Smith and the first free-traders,
+as the wisest enactments which were to be found in the British
+statute-book. But here, too, it was discovered that our ancestors
+had been in error: the system under which had flourished for two
+centuries the greatest naval power that ever existed, was found to
+have been an entire mistake; and provided freights could be had ten
+per cent cheaper, it was of no consequence though the fleets of
+France and Russia blockaded the Thames and Mersey, and two-thirds of
+our trade was carried on in foreign bottoms.
+
+To provide a CURRENCY equal to the wants of the nation, and
+capable of growth in proportion to the amount of their numbers
+and transactions, was one main object of the old policy of Great
+Britain. Thence the establishment of banks in such numbers in
+every part of the empire during the eighteenth century, and the
+introduction of the suspension of the obligation to pay in gold in
+1797, when the necessities of war had drained nearly all that part
+of the currency out of the country, and it was evident that, unless
+a substitute for it in sufficient quantities was provided, the
+nation itself, and all the individuals in it, would speedily become
+bankrupt. The marvels of British finance from that time till 1815,
+which excited the deserved astonishment of the whole world, had no
+effect in convincing the impassioned opponents of Mr Pitt, that
+this was the true system adapted for that or any similar crisis. On
+the contrary, it left no doubt in their minds that it was entirely
+wrong. The whole philosophers and liberal school of politicians
+discovered that the very opposite was the right principle; that
+gold, the most variable in price and evanescent, because the
+most desired and portable of earthly things, was the only safe
+foundation for a currency; that paper was worthless and perilous,
+unless in so far as it could be instantly converted into that
+incomparable metal; and that, consequently, the more the precious
+metals were withdrawn from the country, by the necessities of war
+or the effects of adverse exchanges, the more the paper circulation
+should be contracted. If the last sovereign went out, they held
+it clear the last note should be drawn in. The new system was
+brought into practice by Sir R. Peel, by the acts of 1844 and 1845,
+simultaneously with a vast importation of grain under the free-trade
+system--and we know the consequence. We were speedily near our last
+sovereign and last note also.
+
+To establish a sinking fund, which should secure to the nation
+during peace the means of discharging the debt contracted amidst
+the necessities of war, was one of the greatest objects of the old
+English policy, which was supported with equal earnestness by Mr
+Pitt and Mr Fox, by Mr Addington and Lord Henry Petty. So steadily
+was this admirable system adhered to through all the dangers
+and necessities of the war, that we had a clear sinking fund of
+£15,000,000 a-year, when the contest terminated in 1815, which, if
+kept up at that amount, from the indirect taxes from which it was
+levied during peace, would, beyond all question, as the loans had
+ceased, have discharged the whole debt by the year 1845. But the
+liberals soon discovered that this was the greatest of all errors:
+it was all a delusion; the mathematical demonstration, on which it
+was founded, was a fallacy; and the only wisdom was to repeal the
+indirect taxes, from which the sinking fund was maintained, and
+leave posterity to dispose of the debt as they best could, without
+any fund for its discharge. This system was gradually carried into
+effect by the successive repeal of the indirect taxes by different
+administrations; until at length, after thirty-three years of peace,
+we have, instead of the surplus of fifteen millions bequeathed to us
+by the war, an average _deficit_ of fifteen hundred thousand pounds;
+and the debt, after the longest peace recorded in British history,
+has undergone scarcely any diminution.
+
+Indirect taxation was the main basis of the British finance in
+old times--equally when directed by the Whigs as the Tories.
+Direct taxes were a last and painful resource, to be reserved for
+a period during war, when it had become absolutely unavoidable.
+So efficacious was this system proved to be by the event, when
+acting on a nation enjoying protected industry, and an adequate and
+irremovable currency, that, before the end of the war, £72,000,000
+was, amidst universal prosperity, with ease raised from eighteen
+millions of people in Great Britain and Ireland. This astonishing
+result, unparalleled in the previous history of the world, had no
+influence in convincing the modern liberals that the system which
+produced it was right. On the contrary, it left no doubt in their
+minds that it was entirely wrong. They introduced the opposite
+system: in twenty-five years, they repealed £40,000,000 of indirect
+taxes; and they reintroduced the income tax as a permanent burden
+during peace. We see the result. The sinking fund has disappeared;
+the income tax is fixed about our necks; a deficit of from a million
+and a half to two millions annually incurred; and it is now more
+difficult to extract fifty-two millions annually from twenty-nine
+millions of souls, than, at the close of the war, it was to raise
+seventy-two millions from eighteen millions of inhabitants.
+
+To discourage revolution, both abroad and at home, and enable
+industry, in peace and tranquillity, to reap the fruits of its
+toil, was the grand object of the great contest which Pitt's wisdom
+bequeathed to his successors, and Wellington's arm brought to a
+glorious termination. This, however, was ere long discovered to be
+the greatest error of all. England, it was found out, had a decided
+interest in promoting the cause of revolution all over the world.
+So enamoured did we soon become of the propagandist mania, that we
+pursued it in direct opposition to our planned national interests,
+and with the entire abrogation of our whole previous policy, for
+which we had engaged in the greatest and most costly wars, alike
+under Whig and Tory administrations. We supported revolutions in
+the South American states, though thereby we reduced to a half of
+its former amount the supply of the precious metals throughout the
+globe; and, in consequence, increased immensely the embarrassment
+which a contracted paper currency had brought upon the nation:
+we supported revolution in Belgium, though thereby we brought
+the tricolor standard down to Antwerp, and surrendered to French
+influence the barrier fortresses won by the victories of Marlborough
+and Wellington: we supported it during four years of carnage and
+atrocity in Spain, though thereby we undid the work of our own
+hands, in the treaty of Utrecht, surrendered the whole objects
+gained by the War of the Succession, and placed the female line upon
+the throne, as if to invite the French princes to come and carry off
+the glittering prize: we supported revolutions in Sicily and Italy,
+though thereby we gave such a blow to our export trade, that it sank
+£1,400,000 in the single month of last May, and above £5,000,000 in
+the course of the year 1848.
+
+To abolish the slave trade was one of the objects which Whigs and
+Tories had most at heart in the latter years of the old system;
+and in that great and glorious contest Mr Pitt, Mr Fox, and Mr
+Wilberforce stood side by side. But this object, so important
+in its results, so interesting to humanity from its tendency to
+alleviate human suffering, ere long yielded to the enlightened
+views of modern liberals. It was discovered that it was much more
+important to cheapen sugar _for a time_[8] than to rescue the
+African race from perdition. Free trade in sugar was introduced,
+although it was demonstrated, and, indeed, confessed, that the
+effect of it would be to ruin all the free-labour colonies,
+and throw the supply of the world into the hands of the slave
+states. Provided, for a few years, you succeeded in reducing the
+average retail price of sugar a penny a pound, it was deemed of
+no consequence though we extinguished the growth of free-labour
+sugar--destroyed colonies in which a hundred millions of British
+capital were invested, and doubled the slave trade in extent, and
+quadrupled it in horror, throughout the globe.
+
+  [8] Observe, _for a time_! We shall see anon what the price of
+  sugar will be when the English colonies are destroyed and the slave
+  plantations have the monopoly of the market in their hands.
+
+It had been the constant policy of the British government, under all
+administrations, for above a century and a half, to endeavour to
+reclaim the Irish population by introducing among them colonies of
+English who might teach them industry, and Protestant missionaries
+who might reclaim them from barbarism. The Irish landlords and
+boroughs were the outposts of civilisation among a race of savages;
+the Irish Church the station of Christianity amidst the darkness
+of Romish slavery. So effectual was this system, and so perfectly
+adapted to the character of the Celtic race--capable of great
+things when led by others, but utterly unfit for self-government,
+and incapable of improvement when left to itself,--that even in
+the ruthless hands of Cromwell, yet reeking with the slaughter of
+stormed cities, it soon spread a degree of prosperity through the
+country then unknown, and rarely if ever since equalled in that
+ill-starred land.[9] But the experience of the utter futility of
+all attempts, during a century and a half, to leave the native
+Irish Celts to themselves or their own direction, had no effect
+whatever in convincing our modern liberals that they were incapable
+of self-direction, and would only be ruined by Saxon institutions.
+On the contrary, it left no doubt in their minds that the absence
+of self-government was the sole cause of the wretchedness of the
+country, and that nothing was wanting but an entire participation in
+the privileges of British subjects, to render them as industrious,
+prosperous, and loyal as the yeomen of Kent or Surrey. In pursuance
+of those principles, Catholic Emancipation was granted: the Whigs
+had effected one revolution in 1688, by coalescing with the whole
+Tories to exclude the Catholics from the government; they brought
+about another revolution, in 1829, by coalescing with a section
+of the Tories to bring them in. In furtherance of the new system,
+so plausible in theory, so dangerous in practice, of extending to
+all men, of all races, and in all stages of political advancement,
+the same privileges, the liberals successively gave the Irish
+the command of their boroughs, the abridgment of the Protestant
+Church, and the abolition of tithes as a burden on the tenant.
+They encouraged agitation, allowed treason to be openly spoken in
+every part of the country, and winked at monster meetings, till
+the community was wellnigh thrown into convulsions. Meanwhile,
+agriculture was neglected--industry disappeared--capital was
+scared away. The land was run out, and became unfit for anything
+but lazy-beds of potatoes. The people became agitators, not
+cultivators: they were always running about to meetings--not
+frequenting fairs. The potato-blight fell on a country thus prepared
+for ruin, and the unparalleled misery of 1847, and the rebellion of
+1848, were the consequence.
+
+  [9] "Cromwell supplied the void made by his conquering sword,
+  by pouring in numerous colonies of the Anglo-Saxon blood and of
+  the Calvinistic faith. Strange to say, under that iron rule the
+  conquered country began to wear an outward face of prosperity.
+  Districts, which had recently been as wild as those where the
+  first white settlers of Connecticut were contending with the
+  Red Men, _were in a few years transformed into the likeness of
+  Kent and Norfolk_. New buildings, roads, and plantations were
+  everywhere begun. The rent of estates rose fast: and some of the
+  English landowners began to complain that they were met in every
+  market by the products of Ireland, and to clamour for protecting
+  laws."--MACAULAY'S _History_, i., 130.
+
+It would be easy to carry these illustrations farther, and to trace
+the working of the principles we have mentioned through the whole
+modern system of government in Great Britain. Enough has been
+said to show that the system is neither founded on the principles
+contended for by the old Whigs, nor on any appreciation of, or
+attention to, the national interests, or the dictates of experience
+in any respect. It has arisen entirely from a blind desire of
+change, and an opposition to the old system of government, whether
+of Whig or Tory origin, and a selfish thirst for aggrandisement on
+the part of the moneyed and commercial classes, whom that system
+had elevated to riches and power. Experience was not disregarded
+by this school of politicians; on the contrary, it was sedulously
+attended to, its lessons carefully marked. But it was considered
+as a beacon to be avoided, not a light to be followed. Against its
+conclusions the whole weight of declamation and shafts of irony
+were directed. It had been the _cri de guerre_ of their enemies,
+the standard of Mr Pitt's policy; therefore the opposite system
+was to be inscribed on their banners. It was the ruling principle
+of their political opponents; and, worst of all, it was the system
+which, though it had raised the country to power and greatness, had
+for twenty years excluded themselves from power. Thence the modern
+system, under which the nation has suffered, and is suffering, such
+incalculable misfortunes. It has been said, by an enlightened Whig
+of the old school, that "this age appears to be one in which _every
+conceivable folly_ must be believed and _reduced to practice_ before
+it is abandoned." It is really so; and the reason is, it is an age
+in which the former system of government, founded on experience and
+brought about by necessity, has been supplanted by one based on a
+systematic and invariable determination to change the old system in
+every particular. The liberals, whether factious or moneyed, of the
+new school, flattered themselves they were making great advances in
+political science, when they were merely yielding to the same spirit
+which made the Calvinists stand up when they prayed, because all
+the world before them had knelt down, and sit still during psalms,
+because the Roman Catholics had stood up.
+
+But truth is great, and will prevail; experience is its test,
+and is perpetually contradicting the theories of man. The year
+1848 has been no exception to the maxims of Tacitus and Burke.
+Dreadful indeed in suffering, appalling in form, are the lessons
+which it has read to mankind! Ten months have not elapsed, since,
+by a well-concerted urban tumult, seconded by the treachery of
+the national guard, the throne of the Barricades was overturned
+in France--and what do we already see on the continent of Europe?
+Vienna petitioning for a _continuation_ of the state of siege, as
+the only security against the tyranny of democracy: Berlin hailing
+with rapture the dissolution of the Assembly, and reappearance
+of the king in the capital: Milan restored to the sway of the
+Austrians: France seeking, in the _quasi_ imperial crown of Prince
+Louis Napoleon, with 90,000 soldiers in its capital, a refuge from
+the insupportable evils of a democratic republic. The year 1848 has
+added another to the numerous proofs which history affords, that
+popular convulsions, from whatever cause arising, can terminate
+only in the rule of the sword; but it has taught two other lessons
+of incalculable importance to the present and future tranquillity
+of mankind. These are, that soldiers who in civil convulsions
+fraternise with the insurgents, and violate their oaths, are the
+_worst enemies_ of the people, for they inevitably induce a military
+despotism, which extinguishes all hopes of freedom. The other is,
+that the institution of a national guard is in troubled times of all
+others the most absurd; and that, to put arms into the hands of the
+people, when warmed by revolutionary passions, is only to light the
+torch of civil discord with your own hand, and hand over the country
+to anarchy, ruin, and slavery.
+
+Nor has the year been less fruitful of civil premonitions or lessons
+of the last importance to the future tranquillity and prosperity of
+Great Britain. Numerous popular delusions have been dispelled during
+that period. The dreams of Irish independence have been broken;
+English Chartism has been crushed. The revolutionists see that the
+people of Great Britain are not disposed to yield their property
+to the spoiler, their throats to the murderer, their homes to the
+incendiary. Free trade and a fettered currency have brought forth
+their natural fruits--national embarrassment, general suffering,
+popular misery. One half of the wealth of our manufacturing towns
+has been destroyed since the new system began. Two years of free
+trade and a contracted currency have undone nearly all that twenty
+years of protection and a sufficient currency had done. The great
+mercantile class have suffered so dreadfully under the effect of
+their own measures, that their power for good or for evil has
+been essentially abridged. The colossus which, for a quarter of a
+century, has bestrode the nation, has been shaken by the earthquake
+which itself had prepared. Abroad and at home, in peace and in
+war, delusion has brought forth suffering. The year of revolutions
+has been the NINTH OF THERMIDOR, OF LIBERAL PRINCIPLES, for it has
+brought them to the test of experience.
+
+
+
+
+FRENCH CONQUERORS AND COLONISTS.
+
+
+The extraordinary deficiency recently exhibited by a great
+Continental nation in two qualities eminently prized by
+Englishmen--in common consistency, namely, and in common sense--has
+cast into the shade all previous shortcomings of the kind, making
+them appear remote and trivial. A people of serfs, ruled for
+centuries with an iron rod, pillaged for their masters' profit,
+and lashed at the slightest murmur, were excusable if, on sudden
+emancipation from such galling thraldom, their joyful gambols
+exceeded the limits prescribed by public decorum, and by a due
+regard to their own future prosperity. They might be forgiven
+for dancing round maypoles, and dreaming of social perfection.
+It would not be wonderful if they had difficulty in immediately
+replacing their expelled tyrants by a capable and stable government,
+and if their brief exhilaration were succeeded by a period of
+disorganisation and weakness. Such allowances cannot be made for the
+mad capers of republican France. The deliverance is inadequate to
+account for the ensuing delirium. The grievances swept away by the
+February revolution, and which patience, prudence, and moderation,
+could not have failed ultimately to remove--as thoroughly, if less
+rapidly--were not so terrible as to justify lunacy upon redress.
+Nevertheless, since then, the absurdities committed by France, or
+at least by Paris, are scarcely explicable save on the supposition
+of temporary aberration of intellect. Unimaginative persons have
+difficulty in realising the panorama of events, alternately
+sanguinary and grotesque, lamentable and ludicrous, spread over the
+last ten months. Europe--the portion of it, that is to say, which
+has not been bitten by the same rabid and mischievous demon--has
+looked on, in utter astonishment, at the painful spectacle of a
+leader of its civilisation galloping, with Folly on its crupper,
+after mad theories and empty names, and riding down, in the furious
+chase, its own prosperity and respectability.
+
+We repeat, then, that these great follies of to-day eclipse the
+minor ones of yesterday. When we see France destroying, in a few
+weeks, her commerce and her credit, and doing herself more harm
+than as many years will repair, we overlook the fact, that for
+upwards of fifteen years she has annually squandered from three
+to five millions sterling upon an unproductive colony in North
+Africa. France used not to be petty in her wars, or paltry in her
+enterprises. If she was sometimes quarrelsome and aggressive,
+she was wont at least to fasten on foes worthy of her power and
+resources. Since 1830 she has derogated in this particular. A
+complication of causes--the most prominent being the vanity
+characteristic of the nation, the crooked policy of the sovereign,
+and the morbid love of fighting bequeathed by the warlike period of
+the Empire--has kept France engaged in a costly and discreditable
+contest, whose most triumphant results could be but inglorious,
+and in which she has decimated her best troops, and deteriorated
+her ancient fame, whilst pursuing, with unworthy ferocity and
+ruthlessness, a feeble and inoffensive foe. This is no partial or
+malicious view of the character of the Algerine war. Deliberately,
+and after due reflection, we repeat, that France has gravely
+compromised in Africa her reputation as a chivalrous and clement
+nation, and that she no longer can claim--as once she was wont to
+do--to be as humane in victory as she is valiant in the fight. For
+proof of this we need seek no further than in the speeches and
+despatches of French generals, of men who themselves have served
+and commanded in Africa. We will judge France by the voices of her
+own sons, of those she has selected as worthiest to govern her
+half-conquered colony, and to marshal her legions against a handful
+of Arabs. More than one of these officers testify, voluntarily or
+unwittingly, to the barbarity of the system pursued in Africa. What
+said General Castellane, in his well-known speech in the Chamber
+of Peers, on the 4th July 1845? "We have reduced the country by an
+arsenal of axes and phosphorus matches. The trees were cut down,
+the crops were burned, and soon the mastery was obtained of a
+population reduced to famine and despair." And elsewhere in the same
+speech: "Few soldiers perish by the hand of the enemy in this war--a
+sort of _man-hunt_ on a large scale, in which the Arabs, ignorant
+of European tactics, having no cannon-balls to exchange against
+ours, do not fight with equal arms." Monsieur A. Desjobert, long a
+deputy for the department of the Lower Seine, is the author of a
+volume, and of several pamphlets, upon the Algerine question. In the
+most recent of these we find the following remarkable note:--"In
+February 1837, General Bugeaud said to the Arabs, 'You shall not
+plough, you shall not sow, nor lead your cattle to the pasture,
+without our permission.' Later, he gives the following definition
+of a razzia: 'A sudden irruption, having for its object to surprise
+the tribes, in order to kill the men, and to carry off the women,
+children, and cattle.' In 1844, he completes this theory, by saying
+to the Kabyles, 'I will penetrate into your mountains, I will burn
+your villages and your crops, I will cut down your fruit-trees.'
+(Proclamation of the 30th March.) In 1846, rendering an account of
+his operations against Abd-el-Kader, he says to the authorities of
+Algiers, 'The power of Abd-el-Kader consists in the resources of
+the tribes; hence, to ruin his power, we must first ruin the Arabs;
+therefore have we burned much, destroyed much.' (From the _Akhbar_
+newspaper of February 1846.)" These are significant passages in the
+mouth of a general-in-chief. Presently, when we come to details,
+we shall show they were not thrown away upon his subordinates.
+The extermination of the Arabs was always the real aim of Marshal
+Bugeaud; he took little pains to cloak his system, and is too
+great a blunderer to have succeeded, had he taken more. A man of
+greater presumption than capacity, his audacity, obstinacy, and
+unscrupulousness knew no bounds. Before this African _man-hunt_, as
+M. Castellane calls it, he was unknown, except as the Duchess de
+Berry's jailer, as the slayer of poor Dulong, and as a turbulent
+debater, whose noisy declamation, and occasional offences against
+the French language, were a standing joke with the newspapers. A
+few years elapse, and we find him opposing his stubborn will to
+that of Soult, then minister at war, and successfully thwarting
+Napoleon's old lieutenant. This he was enabled to do mainly by the
+position he had made himself in Africa. He had ridden into power and
+importance on the shoulders of the persecuted Arabs, by a system of
+razzias and village-burning, of wholesale slaughter and relentless
+oppression. Brighter far were the laurels gathered by the lieutenant
+of the Empire, than those plucked by Louis Philippe's marshal
+amidst the ashes of Bedouin douars and the corpses of miserable
+Mussulmans, slain in defence of their scanty birthright, of their
+tents, their flocks, and the free range of the desert. Poor was
+the defence they could make against their skilful and disciplined
+invaders; slight the loss they could inflict in requital of the
+heavy one they suffered. Again we are obliged to M. Desjobert for
+statistics, gathered from reports to the Commission of Credits, and
+from Marshal Bugeaud's own bulletins. From these we learn that the
+loss in battle of the French armies, during the first ten years
+of the occupation of Algeria, was an average of one hundred and
+forty men per annum. In the four following years, eight hundred
+and eighty-five men perished. The capture of Constantine cost one
+hundred men, the much-vaunted affair of the Smala _nine_, the battle
+of Isly TWENTY-SEVEN! We well remember, for we chanced to be in
+Paris at the time, the stir produced in that excitable capital by
+the battle of Isly. No one, unacquainted with the facts, would have
+doubted that the victory was over a most valiant and formidable
+foe. People's mouths were filled with this revival of the military
+glories of Gaul. Newspapers and picture-shops, poets and painters,
+combined to celebrate the exploit and sound the victors' praise.
+One engraving _de circonstance_, we remember, represented a sturdy
+French foot-soldier, trampling, like Gulliver, a host of Lilliputian
+Moors, and carrying a score of them over his shoulder, spitted
+on his bayonet. "Out of my way!" was the inscription beneath the
+print--"_Les Français seront toujours les Français._" Horace
+Vernet, colourist, by special appointment, to the African campaign,
+pictorial chronicler of the heroic feats of the house militant of
+Orleans, prepared his best brushes, and stretched his broadest
+canvass, to immortalise the marshal and his men. After a few days,
+two dingy tents and an enormous umbrella were exhibited in the
+gardens of the Tuileries; these were trophies of the fight--the
+private property of Mohammed-Abderrhaman, the vanquished prince of
+Morocco, the real merit of whose conquerors was about as great as
+that of an active tiger who gloriously scatters a numerous flock
+of sheep. From one of several books relating to Algeria, now upon
+our table, we will take a French officer's account of the affair of
+Isly. The story of Escoffier, a trumpeter who generously resigned
+his horse to his dismounted captain, himself falling into the hands
+of the Arabs, whose prisoner he remained for about eighteen months,
+is told by M. Alby, an officer of the African army. Although a
+little vivid in the colouring, and comprising two or three very
+tough "yarns,"--due, we apprehend, to the imagination of trumpeter
+or author--its historical portion professes to be, and probably is,
+correct; and, at any rate, there can be no reason for suspecting
+the writer of depreciating his countrymen's achievements, and
+understating their merits. The account of the battle, or rather of
+the chase, for fighting there was none, is given by a deserter from
+the Spahis, who, after the defeat of the Moors, joined Abd-el-Kader.
+The Emir and his Arabs took no part in the affair.[10]
+
+  [10] _A Campaign in the Kabylie._ By DAWSON BORRER, F.R.G.S., &c.
+  London, 1848.
+
+  _La Kabylie._ Par un Colon. Paris, 1846.
+
+  _La Captivité du Trompette Escoffier._ Par ERNEST ALBY. 2 vols.
+  Brussels, 1848.
+
+"I deserted, with several of my comrades, during the night-march
+stolen by the French upon the Moors. We sought the emperor's son
+in his camp, and informed him of the movement making by the French
+column. The emperor's son had our horses taken away, and gave orders
+not to lose sight of us. Then he said to us:--
+
+"'Let them come, those dogs of Christians; they are but thirteen
+thousand strong, and we a hundred and sixty thousand: we will
+receive them well.'
+
+"The day was well advanced before the Moors perceived the French.
+Then the emperor's son ordered his horsemen to mount and advance.
+The French marched in a square. They unmasked their artillery, and
+the guns sent their deadly charge of grape into the ranks of the
+Moors, who immediately took to flight, and the French had nothing to
+do but to sabre them."
+
+"The Moors," says M. Alby, "had fine horses and good sabres; but
+their muskets were bad; and the men, softened by centuries of peace
+and prosperity, smoking keef[11] and eating copiously, might be
+expected to run, as they did, at the first cannon-shot."
+
+  [11] The Moors smoke the leaves of hemp instead of tobacco. This
+  _keef_, as it is called, easily intoxicates, and renders the
+  head giddy. Abd-el-Kader forbade the use of it, and if one of
+  his soldiers was caught smoking keef, he received the bastinado.
+  _Captivité d'Escoffier_, vol. i. p. 221.
+
+It is hard to understand how the loss of the French should have
+amounted to even the twenty-seven men at which it is stated in their
+general's bulletin. Did M. Bugeaud, unwilling to admit the facility
+of his triumph, slay the score and seven with his goosequill? But
+if the victory was easily won, on the other hand, it was largely
+rewarded. For having driven before him, by the very first volley
+from his guns, a horde of overfed barbarians, enervated by sloth
+and narcotics, and total strangers to the tactics of civilised
+warfare, the marshal was created a duke! Shade of Napoleon! whether
+proudly lingering within the trophy-clad walls of the Invalides,
+or passing in spectral review the dead of Austerlitz and Borodino,
+suspend your lonely walk, curb your shadowy charger, and contemplate
+this pitiable spectacle! You, too, gave dukedoms, and lavished even
+crowns, but you gave them for services worth the naming. Ney and the
+Moskwa, Massena and Essling, Lannes and Montebello, are words that
+bear the coupling, and grace a coronet. The names of the places,
+although all three recall brilliant victories, are far less glorious
+in their associations than the names of the men. But Bugeaud and
+Isly! What can we say of them? Truly, thus much--they, too, are
+worthy of each other.
+
+When reviewing, about two years ago, Captain Kennedy's narrative of
+travel and adventure in Algeria, we regretted he did not speak out
+about the mode of carrying on the war, and about the prospects of
+Algerine colonisation; and we hinted a suspicion that the amenities
+of French military hospitality, largely extended to a British
+fellow-soldier, had induced him, if not exactly to cloak, at least
+to shun laying bare, the errors and mishaps of his entertainers.
+We cannot make the same complaint of the very pretty book, rich in
+vignettes and cream-colour, entitled, _A Campaign in the Kabylie_.
+Mr Borrer, whom the Cockneys, contemptuous of terminations, will
+assuredly confound with his great gipsy cotemporary, George Borrow
+of the Bible, has, like Captain Kennedy, dipped his spoon in French
+messes. He has ridden with their regiments, and sat at their board,
+and been quartered with their officers, and received kindness and
+good treatment on all hands; and therefore any thing that could
+be construed into malicious comment would come with an ill grace
+from his pen. But it were exaggerated delicacy to abstain from
+stating facts, and these he gives in all their nakedness; generally,
+however, allowing them to speak for themselves, and adding little
+in the way of remark or opinion. In pursuance of this system, he
+relates the most horrible instances of outrage and cruelty with a
+matter-of-fact coolness, and an absence alike of blame and sympathy,
+that may give an unfavourable notion of his heart, to those who do
+not accept our lenient interpretation of his cold-blooded style. The
+traits he sets down, and which are no more than will be found in
+many French narratives, despatches, and bulletins, show how well the
+Franco-African army carry out the merciful maxims of Bugeaud.
+
+Mr Borrer, a geographer and antiquary, passed seventeen months in
+Algeria; and during his residence there, in May 1846, a column of
+eight thousand French troops, commanded by the Duke of Isly in
+person, marched against the Kabyles, "that mysterious, bare-headed,
+leathern-aproned race, whose chief accomplishment was said to
+be that of being 'crack-shots,' their chief art that of neatly
+roasting their prisoners alive, and their chief virtue that of
+loving their homes." It may interest the reader to hear a rather
+more explicit account of this singular people, who dwell in the
+mountains that traverse Algeria from Tunis to Morocco--an irregular
+domain, whose limits it is difficult exactly to define in words.
+The Kabyles are, in fact, the highlanders of North Africa, and they
+hold themselves aloof from the Arabs and Europeans that surround
+them. Concerning them, we find some diversity in the statements
+of Mr Borrer, and of an anonymous Colonist, twelve years resident
+at Bougie, whose pamphlet is before us. Of the two, the Frenchman
+gives them the best character, but both agree as to their industry
+and intelligence, their frugality and skill in agriculture. They
+are not nomadic like the Arabs, but live in villages, till the
+land, and tend flocks. Dwelling in the mountains, they have few
+horses, and fight chiefly on foot. Divided into many tribes, they
+are constantly quarreling and fighting amongst themselves, but
+they forget their feuds and quickly unite to repel a foreign foe.
+"Predisposed by his character," says the Colonist, "to draw near
+to civilisation, the Kabyle attaches himself sincerely to the
+civilised man when circumstances establish a friendly connexion
+between them. He is still inclined to certain vices inherent in
+the savage: but of all the Africans, he is the best disposed to
+live in friendship and harmony with us, which he will do when
+he shall find himself in permanent contact with the European
+population." This is not the general opinion, and it differs widely
+from that expressed by Mr Borrer. But the Colonist had his own
+views, perhaps his own interests, to further. He wrote some months
+previous to the expedition which Mr Borrer accompanied, and which
+was then not likely to take place, and he strongly advocated its
+propriety--admitting, however, that public opinion in France was
+greatly opposed to a military incursion into Kabylia. Himself
+established at Bougie, of course in some description of commerce,
+the necessity of roads connecting the coast and the interior was to
+him quite evident. A good many of his countrymen, whose personal
+benefit was not so likely to be promoted by causeway-cutting in
+Algeria, strongly deprecated any sort of road-making that was likely
+to bring on war with the Kabyles. France began to think she was
+paying too dear for her whistle. She looked back to the early days
+of the Orleans dynasty, when Marshal Clausel promised to found a
+rich and powerful colony with only 10,000 men. She glanced at the
+pages of the _Moniteur_ of 1837, and there she found words uttered
+by the great Bugeaud in the Chamber of Deputies. "Forty-five
+thousand men and one good campaign," said the white-headed
+warrior, as the Arabs call him, "and in six months the country
+is pacified, and you may reduce the army to twenty thousand men,
+to be paid by imposts levied on the colony, consequently costing
+France nothing." Words, and nothing more--mere wind; the greatest
+_bosh_ that ever was uttered, even by Bugeaud, who is proverbial
+for dealing largely in that flatulent commodity. Nine years passed
+away, and the Commission of the Budget "deplored a situation which
+compelled France to maintain an army of more than 100,000 men upon
+that African territory." (Report of M. Bignon of the 15th April
+1846, p. 237.) Bugeaud himself had mightily changed his tone, and
+declared that, to keep Algiers, as large an army would be essential
+as had been required to conquer it. Lamoricière, a great authority
+in such matters, confirmed the opinion of his senior. Monsieur
+Desjobert, and a variety of pamphleteers and newspaper writers,
+attacked, with argument, ridicule, and statistics, the party known
+as the _Algérophiles_, who made light of difficulties, scoffed
+at expense, and predicted the prosperity and splendour of French
+Africa. Algeria, according to them, was to become the brightest
+gem in the citizen-crown of France. These sanguine gentlemen were
+met with facts and figures. During 1846, said the anti-Algerines,
+your precious colony will have cost France 125,000,000 of francs.
+And they proved it in black and white. There was little chance
+of the expense being less in following years. Then came the loss
+of men. In 1840, said M. Desjobert, giving chapter and verse for
+his statements, 9567 men perished in the African hospitals, out
+of an effective army of 63,000. Add those invalids who died in
+French hospitals, or in their homes, from the results of African
+campaigning, and the total loss is moderately stated at 11,000 men,
+or more than one-sixth of the whole force employed. Out of these,
+only 227 died in action. The thing seemed hopeless and endless.
+What do we get for our money? was the cry. What is our compensation
+for the decimation of our young men? France can better employ her
+sons, than in sending them to perish by African fevers. What do we
+gain by all this expenditure of gold and blood?--The unreasonable
+mortals! Had they not gained a Duke of Isly and a Moorish pavilion?
+M. Desjobert surely forgets these inestimable acquisitions when he
+asks and answers the question--"What remains of all our victories? A
+thousand bulletins, and Horace Vernet's big pictures."
+
+"How many times," says the same writer, "has not the subjection of
+the Arabs been proclaimed! In 1844, General Bugeaud gains the battle
+of Isly. Are the Arabs subdued?
+
+"When the Arabs appear before the judges who dispose of life and
+death, they confess their faith, and proclaim their hatred of us;
+and when we are simple enough to tell them that some of their race
+are devoted to us, they reply, 'Those lie to you, through fear, or
+for their own interest; and as often as a scheriff shall come whom
+they believe able to conquer you, they will follow him, even into
+the streets of Algiers.' (Examination of Bou Maza's brother, 12th
+November 1845.) Thus spoke the chief. The common Arab had already
+said to the Christian, "If my head and thine were boiled in the same
+vessel, my broth would separate itself from thy broth."
+
+This was discouraging to those who had dreamed of the taming of the
+Arab; and the more sanguinary mooted ideas of extermination. Such a
+project, clearly written down, and printed, and placed on Parisian
+breakfast tables, might be startling; in Algeria it had long been
+put in practice. What said General Duvivier in his _Solution de
+la Question d'Algérie_, p. 285? "For eleven years they have razed
+buildings, burned crops, destroyed trees, massacred men, women,
+and children, with a still-increasing fury." We have already shown
+that this work of extermination was not carried on with perfect
+impunity. Here is further confirmation of the fact. "Every Arab
+killed," says M. Leblanc de Prébois, another officer, who wrote on
+the Algerian war, and wrote from personal experience, "costs us the
+death of thirty-three men, and 150,000 francs." Supposing a vast
+deal of exaggeration in this statement, the balance still remains
+ugly against the French, for whom there is evidently very little
+difference between catching an Arab and catching a Tartar. Whilst
+upon the subject of extermination, Mr Borrer gives an opinion more
+decidedly unfavourable to his French friends than is expressed in
+any other part of his book. His estimate of Kabyle virtues differs
+considerably, it will be observed, from that of the Colonist, and of
+the two is much nearest the truth.
+
+"The abominable vices and debaucheries of the Kabyle race, the
+inhuman barbarities they are continually guilty of towards such
+as may be cast by tempest, or other misfortune, upon their rugged
+shores; the atrocious cruelties and refined tortures they, in common
+with the Arab, delight in exercising upon any such enemies as may
+be so unhappy as to fall alive into their hands, must render the
+hearts of those acquainted with this people perfectly callous as
+to what misfortunes may befall them or their country; and many
+may think that, as far as the advancement of civilisation is
+concerned, the wiping off of the Kabyle and Arab races of Northern
+Africa from the face of the earth, would be the greatest boon to
+humanity. Though, however, they may be fraught with all the vices
+of the Canaanitish tribes of old, yet the command, 'Go ye after
+him through the city and smite; let not your eye spare, neither
+have ye pity; slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little
+children, and women,' is not justifiably issued at the pleasure of
+man; and we can but lament to see a great and gallant nation engaged
+in a warfare exasperating both parties to indulge in sanguinary
+atrocities,--atrocities to be attributed on one side to the
+barbarous and savage state of those having recourse to them; but on
+the other, proceeding only from a thirst for retaliation and bloody
+revenge, unworthy of those enjoying a high position as a civilised
+people. War is, as we all know, ever productive of horrors: but such
+horrors may be greatly restrained and diminished by the exertions
+and example of those in command."
+
+The hoary-headed hero of Isly is not the man to make the exertion,
+or set the example. At the beginning of 1847, rumours of a projected
+inroad amongst the Kabyles caused uneasiness and dissatisfaction
+in Algeria, when such a movement was highly unpopular, as likely
+to lead to a long and expensive war. The "Commission of Credits,"
+a board appointed by the French Chamber for the particular
+investigation and regulation of Algerine affairs, applied to the
+minister of war to know if the rumours were well founded. The
+minister confessed they were; adding, however, that the expedition
+would be quite peaceable; but at the same time laying before the
+commission letters from Bugeaud, "expressing regret that force of
+arms was not to be resorted to more than was absolutely necessary,
+the submission of the aborigines being never certain _until powder
+had spoken_." The marshal evidently "felt like fighting." The
+Commission protested; the minister rebuked them, bidding them mind
+their credits, and not meddle with the royal prerogative. Thus
+unjustly snubbed--for they certainly were minding their credits,
+by opposing increase of expenditure--the Commission were mute, one
+of the members merely observing, by way of a last shot, that it
+was easier to refuse to listen than to reply satisfactorily. In
+France, public opinion, the Chamber of Deputies, and Marshal Soult,
+had, on various occasions, declared against attacking the Kabyles.
+"Nevertheless, a proclamation was issued by Marshal Bugeaud to
+the inhabitants of the Kabylie, to warn them that the French army
+was upon the point of entering their territory, 'to cleanse it of
+those adventurers who there preached the war against France.' The
+proclamation then went on to state, that the marshal had no desire
+to fight with them, or to devastate their property; but that, if
+there were amongst them any who wished for war, they would find
+him ready to accept it." If a hard-favoured stranger, armed with a
+horsewhip, walked uninvited into M. Bugeaud's private residence,
+loudly proclaiming he would thrash nobody unless provoked, the
+marshal would be likely to resist the intrusion. The Kabyles,
+doubtless, thought his advance into their territory an equally
+unjustifiable proceeding. As to the pretext of "the adventurers who
+preached war," it was unfounded and ridiculous. Such propagandists
+have never been listened to in Kabylia. "The voice of the Emir
+Abd-el-Kader himself," says the Colonist, "would not obtain a
+hearing. Did he not go in person, in 1839, when preparing to break
+his treaty of peace with us, and preach the holy war? Did he not
+traverse the valley of the Souman, from one end to the other,
+to recruit combatants? And what did he obtain from the Kabyles?
+Hospitality for a few days, coupled with the formal invitation to
+evacuate the country as soon as possible. Did he succeed better
+when he lately again tried to raise Kabylia against us?" Mr Borrer
+confirms this. Marshal Bugeaud himself had said in the Chamber of
+Deputies, "The Kabyles are neither aggressive nor hostile; they
+defend themselves vigorously when intruded upon, but they do not
+attack." The marshal, whose whole public life has been full of
+contradictions, was the first to intrude upon them, although but
+a very few years had elapsed since he said in a pamphlet, "The
+Kabyles are numerous and very warlike; they have villages, and their
+agriculture is sedentary; already there is too little land to supply
+their wants; there is no room, therefore, for Europeans in the
+mountains of Kabylia, and they would cut a very poor figure there."
+This last prophetic sentence was realised by M. Bugeaud himself, who
+certainly made no very brilliant appearance when, forgetting his
+former theory, he hazarded himself in May 1847, at the head of eight
+thousand men, and with Mr Borrer in his train, amongst the hardy
+mountaineers of Kabylia.
+
+Hereabouts Mr Borrer quotes, in French, the statement of a member of
+the Commission already referred to. It is worth extracting, as fully
+confirming our conviction that the conduct of France in Algeria
+has been throughout characterised by an utter want of judgment and
+justice. "The native towns have been invaded, ruined, sacked, by
+our administration, more even than by our arms. In time of peace,
+a great number of private estates have been ravaged and destroyed.
+A multitude of title-deeds delivered to us for verification have
+never been restored. Even in the environs of Algiers, fertile
+lands have been taken from the Arabs and given to Europeans, who,
+unable or unwilling to cultivate their new possessions, have
+farmed them out to their former owners, who have thus become the
+mere stewards of the inheritance of their fathers. Elsewhere,
+tribes, or fractions of tribes, not hostile to us, but who, on the
+contrary, had fought for us, have been driven from their territory.
+Conditions have been accepted from them, and not kept--indemnities
+promised, and never paid--until we have compromised our honour even
+more than their interests." Such a statement, proceeding from a
+Frenchman--from one, too, delegated by his government, to examine
+the state of the colony--is quite conclusive as to administrative
+proceedings in Algeria. It would be superfluous and impertinent to
+add another line of evidence. A comment may be appropriate. "Is it
+not Montesquieu," says Mr Borrer, "in his _Esprit des Lois_, who
+observes--'The right of conquest, though a necessary and legitimate
+right, is an unhappy one, bequeathing to the conqueror a heavy debt
+to humanity, only to be acquitted by repairing, as far as possible,
+those evils of which he has been the cause'?--and Montesquieu was a
+wise man, and a Frenchman!"
+
+Dismissing this branch of the subject, let us see how the Duke
+of Isly made "the powder speak" in Kabylia, and try our hand
+at a rough sketch, taking the loan of Mr Borrer's colours. A
+strong body of French troops--the 8000 have been increased, since
+departure, by several battalions and some spahis--are encamped in
+a rich valley, cutting down the unripe wheat for the use of their
+horses, whilst, from the surrounding heights, the Kabyles gloomily
+watch the unscrupulous foragers. "Now 'soft-winged evening,'" as
+Mr Dawson Borrer poetically expresses himself, "hovers o'er the
+scene, chasing from woodlands and sand-rock heights the gilded
+tints of the setting sun." In other words, it gets dark--and shots
+are heard. The natives, vexed at the liberties taken with their
+crops, harass the outposts. Their bad powder and overloaded guns
+have no chance against French muskets. "In the name of the Prophet,
+HEADS!" Bugeaud the Merciful pays for them ten francs a-piece. Four
+are presented to him before breakfast. The premium is to make the
+soldiers alert against horse-stealers. Ten francs being a little
+fortune to a French soldier, whose pay in hard cash is two or three
+farthings a-day, Mr Borrer suspects the heads are sometimes taken
+from shoulders where they have a right to remain. An Arab is always
+an Arab, whether a horse-stealer or a mere idler. But no matter--a
+few more or less. Day returns; the column marches; the Kabyles
+show little of the intrepidity, in defence of their hearths and
+altars, attributed to them by M. Bugeaud and others. Their horsemen
+fly before a platoon of French cavalry; the infantry limit their
+offensive operations to cowardly long shots at the rear-guard. Four
+venerable elders bring two yoked oxen in token of submission. In
+general, the inhabitants have disappeared. Their deserted towns
+appear, in the distance, by no means inferior to many French and
+Italian villages. The marshal will not permit exploring parties
+for fear of ambuscade. Night arrives, and passes without incident
+of note. At three in the morning, the camp is aroused by hideous
+yells. A sentinel has fired at a horse-thief and broken his leg,
+and now, mindful of the ten francs, tries to cut off the head of
+the wounded man, who objects and screams. A bayonet-thrust stops
+his mouth, and the _bill on Bugeaud_ is duly severed. The next day
+is passed in skirmishing with the Beni-Abbez, the most numerous
+tribe of the valley of the Souman, but not a very warlike one--so
+says the Colonist; and, indeed, they offer but slight resistance,
+although they, or some other tribes, make a firm and determined
+attack upon the French outposts in the course of that night. There
+is more smoke than bloodshed; but the Kabyles show considerable
+pluck, burn a prodigious number of cartridges, and make no doubt
+they have nearly "rubbed out" the Christians; in which particular
+they are rather mistaken--the French, not choosing to leave their
+camp, having quietly lain down, and allowed the Berber lead to fly
+over them. At last the assailants' ammunition runs low, and they
+retire, leaving a sprinkling of dead. Mr Borrer quotes the Koran.
+"'Those of our brothers who fall in defence of the true faith,
+are not dead, but live invisible, receiving their nourriture from
+the hand of the Most High,' says the Prophet." _Nourriture_ is
+not quite English, at least with that orthography; but no matter
+for Mr Borrer's Gallicisms, which are many. We rush with him into
+the Kabyle fire. Here he sits, halted amongst the olive-trees,
+philosophically lighting his pipe, the bullets whistling about his
+ears, whilst he admires the _sang froid_ of a pretty _vivandière_,
+seated astride upon her horse, and jesting at the danger. The column
+advances--the Kabyles retreat, fighting, pursued by the French
+shells, which they hold in particular horror, and call the howitzer
+the _twice-firing cannon_. The object of the advance is to destroy
+the towns and villages of the Beni-Abbez, the night-attack upon his
+bivouac affording the marshal a pretext. The villages are surrounded
+with stiff walls of stones and mud, crowned with strong thorny
+fences, and having hedges of prickly pear growing at their base; and
+the gaunt burnoosed warriors make good fight through loop-holes and
+from the terraces of their houses. But resistance is soon overcome,
+and the narrow streets are crowded with Frenchmen, ravishing,
+massacring, plundering; no regard to sex or age; outrage for every
+woman--the edge of the sword for all.
+
+"Upon the floor of one of the chambers lay a little girl of twelve
+or fourteen years of age, weltering in gore, and in the agonies of
+death: an accursed ruffian thrust his bayonet into her. God will
+requite him.... When the soldiers had ransacked the dwellings, and
+smashed to atoms all they could not carry off, or did not think
+worth seizing as spoil, they heaped the remnants and the mattings
+together and fired them. As I was hastily traversing the streets
+to regain the outside of the village, disgusted with the horrors I
+witnessed, flames burst forth on all sides, and torrents of fire
+came swiftly gliding down the thoroughfares, for the flames had
+gained the oil. An instant I turned--the fearful doom of the poor
+concealed child and the decrepid mother flashing on my mind. It was
+too late.... The unfortunate Kabyle child was doubtless consumed
+with her aged parent. How many others may have shared her fate!"
+
+At noon, the atmosphere is laden with smoke arising from the
+numerous burning villages. From one spot nine may be counted,
+wrapped in flames. There is merry-making in the French camp.
+Innumerable goatskins, full of milk, butter, figs, and flour, are
+produced and opened. Some are consumed; more are squandered and
+strewn upon the ground. Let the Kabyle dogs starve! Have they not
+audaciously levelled their long guns at the white-headed warrior
+and his followers, who asked nothing but submission, free passage
+through the country, corn-fields for their horses, and the fat
+of the land for themselves? But stay--there is still a town to
+take, the last, the strongest, the refuge of the women and of the
+aged. Its defence is resolute, but at last it falls. "Ravished,
+murdered, burnt, hardly a child escaped to tell the tale. A few of
+the women fled to the ravines around the village; but troops swept
+the brushwood; and the stripped and mangled bodies of females might
+there be seen.... One vast sheet of flame crowned the height, which
+an hour or two before was ornamented with an extensive and opulent
+village, crowded with inhabitants. It seemed to have been the very
+emporium of commerce of the Beni-Abbez; fabrics of gunpowder, of
+arms, of haïks, burnooses, and different stuffs, were there. The
+streets boasted of numerous shops of workers in silver, workers in
+cord, venders of silk, &c." All this the soldiers pillaged, or the
+fire devoured; then the insatiable flames gained the corn and olive
+trees, and converted a smiling and prosperous district into a black
+and barren waste. Bugeaud looked on and pronounced it good, and
+his men declared the country "well cleaned out," and vaunted their
+deeds of rapine and violence. "I heard two ruffians relating, with
+great gusto, how many young girls had been burned in one house,
+after being abused by their brutal comrades and themselves." Out
+of consideration for his readers, Mr Borrer says, he writes down
+but the least shocking of the crimes and atrocities he that day
+witnessed. We have no inclination to transcribe a tithe of the
+horrors he records, and at sight of which, he assures us, the blood
+of many a gallant French officer boiled in his veins. He mentions
+no attempt on the part of these compassionate officers to curb the
+ferocity of their men, who had not the excuse of previous severe
+sufferings, of a long and obstinate resistance, and of the loss of
+many of their comrades, to allege in extenuation of their savage
+violence. History teaches us that, in certain circumstances, as,
+for instance, after protracted sieges, great exposure, and a long
+and bloody fight, soldiers of all nations are liable to forget
+discipline, and, maddened by fury, by suffering and excitement, to
+despise the admonitions and reprimands of the chiefs--nay, even
+to turn their weapons against those whom for years they have been
+accustomed to respect and implicitly obey. But there is no such
+excuse in the instance before us. A pleasant military promenade
+through a rich country, fine weather, abundant rations, and just
+enough skirmishing to give zest to the whole affair, whose fighting
+part was exceeding brief, as might be expected, when French bayonets
+and artillery were opposed to the clumsy guns and irregular tactics
+of the Beni-Abbez--we find nothing in this picture to extenuate
+the horrible cruelties enacted by the conquerors after their
+easily achieved victory. Their whole loss, according to their
+marshal's bulletin, amounted to fifty-seven killed and wounded.
+This included the loss in the night-attack on the camp. In fact,
+it was mere child's play for the disciplined French soldiery; and
+Mr Borrer virtually admits this, by applying to the affair General
+Castellane's expression of a _man-hunt_. He then, with no good
+grace, endeavours to find an excuse for his campaigning comrades.
+"The ranks of the French army in Africa are composed, in great
+measure, of the very scum of France." They have condemned regiments
+in Africa, certainly; the Foreign Legion are reckless and reprobate
+enough; we dare say the Zouaves, a mixed corps of wild Frenchmen and
+tamed Arabs, are neither tender nor scrupulous; but these form a
+very small portion of the hundred thousand French troops in Africa,
+and there is little picking and choosing amongst the line regiments,
+who take their turn of service pretty regularly, neither is there
+reason for considering the men who go to Algeria to be greater
+scamps than those who remain in France. So this will not do, Mr
+Borrer: try another tack. "The only sort of excuse for the horrors
+committed by the soldiery in Algeria, is their untamed passions,
+and the fire added to their natural ferocity by the atrocious
+cruelties so often committed by the Arabs upon their comrades in
+arms, who have been so unhappy as to fall into their power." This
+is more plausible, although it is a query who began the system of
+murderous reprisals. Arab treatment of prisoners is not mild. On the
+evening of the 1st June, some men straggled from the French bivouac,
+and were captured. "It was said that from one of the outposts the
+Kabyles were seen busily engaged, in roasting their victims before
+a large fire upon a neighbouring slope; but whether this was a fact
+or not, I never learned." It was possibly true. Escoffier tells
+us how one of his fellow-prisoners, a Jew named Wolf, who fell
+into the hands of Moorish shepherds, was thrown upon a blazing
+pile of faggots; and although we suspect the brave trumpeter, or
+his historian, of occasional exaggeration, there are grounds for
+crediting the authenticity of this statement. As to Mr Borrer, he
+guarantees nothing but what he sees with his own eyes, the camp
+being, he says, full of _blagueurs_, or tellers of white lies. The
+inventions of these mendacious gentry are not always as innocent
+as he appears to think them. Imaginary cruelties, attributed to
+an enemy, are very apt to impose upon credulous soldiers, and to
+stimulate them to unnecessary bloodshed, and to acts of lawless
+revenge. Many a village has been burned, and many an inoffensive
+peasant sabred, on the strength of such lying fabrications. In
+Africa especially, where the _lex talionis_ seems fully recognised,
+and its enforcement confided to the first straggler who chooses to
+fire a house or stick an Arab, the _blagueurs_ should be handed
+over, in our opinion, to summary punishment. On the advance of the
+French column, a soldier or two, straying from the bivouac to bathe
+or fish, had here and there been shot by the lurking Kabyles. On its
+return, "I was somewhat surprised," Mr Borrer remarks, "to observe,
+in the wake of the column, flames bursting forth from the gourbies
+(villages) left in our rear. It was well known that the tribe upon
+whose territory we were riding had submitted, and that their sheikh
+was even riding at the head of the column." None could explain the
+firing of the villages. The sheikh, indignant at the treachery of
+the French, set spurs to his mare, and was off like the wind. The
+conflagration was traced to soldiers of the rear-guard, desirous
+to revenge their comrades, picked off on the previous march. We
+are not told that the crime was brought home to the perpetrators,
+or visited upon them. If it was, Mr Borrer makes no mention of the
+fact, but passes on, as if the burning of a few villages were a
+trifle scarce worth notice. How were the Kabyles to distinguish
+between the acts of the private soldier and of the epauleted
+chief? Their submission had just been accepted, and friendly words
+spoken to them: their sheikh rode beside the gray-haired leader
+of the Christians, and marked the apparent subordination of the
+white-faced soldiery. Suddenly a gross violation occurred of the
+amicable understanding so recently come to. How persuade them that
+the submissive and disciplined soldiers they saw around them would
+venture such breach of faith without the sanction or connivance of
+their commander? The offence is that of an insignificant sentinel,
+but the dirt falls upon the beard of Bugeaud; and confidence in the
+promises of the lying European is thoroughly and for ever destroyed.
+
+A colony, whose mode of acquisition and of government, up to the
+present time, reflects so little credit upon French arms and
+administrators, ought certainly to yield pecuniary results or
+advantages of some kind, which, in a mercenary point of view, might
+balance the account. France surely did not place her reputation
+for humanity and justice in the hands of Marshal Bugeaud and of
+others of his stamp, without anticipating some sort of compensation
+for its probable deterioration. Such expectations have hitherto
+been wholly unfulfilled; and we really see little chance of their
+probable or speedy realisation. The colony is as unpromising, as
+the colonists are inapt to improve it. The fact is, the work of
+colonisation has not begun. The French are utterly at a loss how to
+set about it. All kinds of systems have been proposed. Bugeaud has
+had his--that of military colonisation, which he maintained, with
+characteristic stubbornness, in the teeth of public opinion, of the
+French government, of common sense, and even of possibility. He
+proposed to take, during ten years, one hundred and twenty thousand
+recruits from the conscription, and to settle them in Africa, with
+their wives. He estimated the expense of this scheme at twelve
+millions sterling. His opponents stated its probable cost at four
+times that sum. Whichever estimate was correct, it is not worth
+while examining the plan, which for a moment was entertained by a
+government commission, but has since been completely abandoned.
+It presupposes an extraordinary and arbitrary stretch of power
+on the part of the government that should adopt such a system
+of compulsory colonisation. We are surprised to find Mr Borrer
+inclined to favour the exploded plan. General Lamoricière (the
+terrible _Bour-à-boi_ of the Arabs,[12]) proposed to give premiums
+to agriculturists settling in Algeria, at the rate of twenty-five
+per cent of their expenses of clearing, irrigation, construction,
+and plantation. But M. Lamoricière--a very practical man indeed,
+with his sabre in his fist, and at the head of his Zouaves--is a
+shallow theorist in matters of colonisation. The staff of surveyors,
+valuers, and referees essential to carry out his project, would
+alone have been a heavy additional charge on the unprofitable
+colony. "M. Lamoricière," says M. Desjobert, "was one of the warmest
+advocates of the occupation of Bougie," (a seaport of Kabylie,)
+"and partly directed, in 1833, that fatal expedition." (Fatal, M.
+Desjobert means, by reason of its subsequent cost in men and money.
+The town was taken by a small force on the 29th September 1833.)
+"The soldiers were then told that their mission was agricultural
+rather than military, that they would have to handle the pick and
+the spade more frequently than the musket. The unfortunates have
+certainly handled pick and spade; but it was to dig in that immense
+cemetery which, each day, swallows up their comrades. Already,
+in 1836, General d'Erlon, ex-governor of Algiers, demanded the
+evacuation of Bougie, which had devoured, in three years, three
+thousand men and seven millions of francs." The demand was not
+complied with, and Bougie has continued to consume more than its
+quota of the six thousand men at which M. Desjobert estimates the
+average annual loss, by disease alone, of the African army. Bougie
+has not flourished under the tricolor. In former times a city of
+great riches and importance, it still contained several thousand
+inhabitants when taken by the French. At the period of Mr Borrer's
+visit, it reckoned a population of five hundred, exclusive of the
+garrison of twelve hundred men. To return, however, to the systems
+of colonisation. When the generals had had their say, it was the
+turn of the commissions; the commission of Africa, that of the
+Chamber of Deputies, &c. There was no lack of projects; but none of
+them answered. The colonial policy of the Orleans government was
+eminently short-sighted. This is strikingly shown in Mr Borrer's
+14th chapter, "A Word upon the Colony." Of the fertile plain
+of the Metidja, containing about a million and a half acres of
+arable and pasture land, a very small portion is cultivated. The
+French found a garden; they have made a desert. "Before the French
+occupation, vast tracts which now lie waste, sacrificed to palmetta
+and squills, were cultivated by the Arabs, who grew far more corn
+than was required for their own consumption; whereas now, they grow
+barely sufficient: the consequence of which is, that the price of
+corn is enormous in Algeria at present." Land is cheap enough, but
+labour is dear, because the necessaries of life are so. Instead of
+making Algiers a free port, protection to French manufactures is
+the order of the day, and this has driven Arab commerce to Tunis
+and Morocco. Rivalry with England--the feverish desire for colonies
+and for the supremacy of the seas--must unquestionably be ranked
+amongst the motives of the tenacious retention of such an expensive
+possession as Algeria. And now the odious English cottons are
+an obstacle to the prosperity of the colony. To sell a few more
+bales of French calicoes and crates of French hardware, the wise
+men at Paris put an effectual check upon the progress of African
+agriculture. Here, if anywhere, free-trade might be introduced
+with advantage; in common necessaries, at any rate, and for a few
+years, till the country became peopled, and the colonists had
+overcome the first difficulties of their position. It would make
+very little difference to Rouen and Lyons, whilst to the settlers
+it would practically work more good than would have been done them
+by M. Lamoricière's _subvention_, supposing this to have been
+adopted, and that the heavily-taxed agriculturist of France--in
+many parts of which country land pays but two and a half or three
+per cent--had consented to pay additional imposts for the benefit
+of the agriculturist of Algeria. In the beginning, the notion of
+the French government was, that its new conquest would colonise
+itself unassisted; that there would be a natural and steady flow
+of emigrants from the mother country. In any case this expectation
+would probably have proved fallacious--at least it would never have
+been realised to the extent anticipated; but the small encouragement
+given to such emigration, rendered it utterly abortive. The
+"stream" of settlers proved a mere dribble. Security and justice,
+Mr Thiers said, were all that France owed her colony. Even these
+two things were not obtained, in the full sense of the words. The
+centralisation system weighed upon Algeria. Everything was referred
+to Paris. Hence interminable correspondence, and delays innumerable.
+In the year 1846, Mr Borrer says, twenty-four thousand despatches
+were received by the civil administration from the chief _bureau_
+in the French capital, in exchange for twenty-eight thousand sent.
+Instead of imparting all possible celerity to the administrative
+forms requisite to the establishment of emigrants, these must
+often wait a year or more before they are put in possession of
+the land granted. Meanwhile they expend their resources, and are
+enervated by idleness and disease. The climate of North Africa
+is ill-adapted to French constitutions. M. Desjobert has already
+told us the average loss of the army, and General Duvivier, in
+his _Solution de la Question d'Algérie_, fully corroborated his
+statements. "A man," said the general, "whose constitution is not
+in harmony with the climate of Africa, never adapts himself to it;
+he suffers, wastes away, and dies. The expression, that a mass of
+men who have been for some time in Africa have become inured to
+the climate, is inexact. They have not become inured to it; they
+have been _decimated by death_. _The climate is a great sieve,
+which allows a rapid passage to everything that is not of a certain
+force._" Supposing 100,000 men sent from France to Algeria for six
+years' service. At the end of that time, their loss by disease
+alone, at the rate of six per cent--proved by M. Desjobert to be
+the annual average--would amount to upwards of 30,000, or to more
+than three-tenths of the whole. The emigrants fare no better.
+"They look for milk and honey," says Borrer: "they find palmetta
+and disease. The villages scattered about the Sahel or Massif of
+Algiers (a high ground at the back of the city, forming a rampart
+between the Metidja and the Mediterranean) are, with one or two
+exceptions, a type of desolation. Perched upon the most arid spots,
+distant from water, the poor tenants lie sweltering between sun
+and sirocco." A Mississippi swamp must be as eligible "squatting"
+ground as this--Arabs instead of alligators, and the Algerine fever
+in place of Yellow Jack. "At the gates of Algiers, in the villages
+of the Sahel," said the "_Algérie_" newspaper of the 22d December
+1845, "the colonists desert, driven away by hunger. If any remain,
+it is because they have no strength to move. In the plain of the
+Metidja, the misery and desolation are greater still. At Fondouck,
+in the last five months, 120 persons have died, out of a population
+of 280." The reporter to the Commission of the French budget of 1837
+(Monsieur Bignon) admitted that "the results of the colonisation are
+almost negative." He could not obtain, he said, an estimate of the
+agricultural population. At the same period, an Algiers newspaper
+(_La France Algérienne_) estimated the European agriculturists at
+7000, two-thirds of whom were mere market-gardeners.
+
+  [12] "General Lamoricière habitually carries a stick. This has
+  procured him, from the Arabs, the name of the _Père-au-bâton_, (the
+  father with the stick:) _Bour-à-boi_. One of his orderly officers,
+  my friend and comrade Captain Bentzman, gives _Araouah_ as the
+  proper orthography of _Bour-à-boi_. We have followed Escoffier's
+  pronunciation."--_Captivité d'Escoffier_, vol. i. p. 30.
+
+It is unnecessary to multiply proofs; and we will here conclude this
+imperfect sketch of Franco-African colonisation, of its crimes, its
+errors, and its cost, by extracting a rather remarkable passage
+from a writer we have more than once referred to, and who, although
+perhaps disposed to view things in Algeria upon the black side, is
+yet deserving of credit, as well by his position as by reason of his
+painstaking research and, so far as we have verified them, accurate
+statistics.
+
+"The colonists cannot deny," says Monsieur Desjobert in his _Algérie
+en_ 1846, "and they admit:
+
+"1º. That Europe alone maintains the 200,000 Europeans in Algeria.
+In 1846 we are compelled to repeat what General Bernard, minister
+of war, said in 1838: 'Algeria resembles a naked rock, which it is
+necessary to supply with everything, except air and water.'
+
+"2º. That so long as we remain in this precarious situation, a naval
+war, by interrupting the communications, would compromise the safety
+of our army. In 1846 we repeat M. Thiers' words, uttered in 1837:
+'If war surprises you in the state of indecision in which you are, I
+say that the disgraceful evacuation of Africa will be inevitable.'
+
+"M. Thiers did not speak the whole truth when he talked of
+evacuation. In such an extremity, evacuation would be impossible.
+Our army would perish of misery, and its remnant would fall into the
+hands of the enemy."
+
+Another enemy than the Arabs is here evidently pointed at; that
+possible foe is now a friend to France, and we trust will long
+remain so. But on many accounts the sentences we have just quoted
+are significant, as proceeding from the pen of a French deputy. They
+need no comment, and we shall offer none. We wait with interest to
+see if France's African colony prospers better under the Republic of
+1848 than it did under the Monarchy of 1830.
+
+
+
+
+THE CAXTONS.
+
+
+PART IX.--CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+And my father pushed aside his books.
+
+O young reader, whoever thou art,--or reader, at least, who hast
+been young,--canst thou not remember some time when, with thy wild
+troubles and sorrows as yet borne in secret, thou hast come back
+from that hard, stern world which opens on thee when thou puttest
+thy foot out of the threshold of home--come back to the four quiet
+walls, wherein thine elders sit in peace--and seen, with a sort of
+sad amaze, how calm and undisturbed all is there? That generation
+which has gone before thee in the path of the passions--the
+generation of thy parents--(not so many years, perchance, remote
+from thine own)--how immovably far off, in its still repose, it
+seems from thy turbulent youth! It has in it a stillness as of a
+classic age, antique as the statues of the Greeks. That tranquil
+monotony of routine into which those lives that preceded thee have
+merged--the occupations that they have found sufficing for their
+happiness, by the fireside--in the armchair and corner appropriated
+to each--how strangely they contrast thine own feverish excitement!
+And they make room for thee, and bid thee welcome, and then resettle
+to their hushed pursuits, as if nothing had happened! Nothing had
+happened! while in thy heart, perhaps, the whole world seems to have
+shot from its axis, all the elements to be at war! And you sit down,
+crushed by that quiet happiness which you can share no more, and
+smile mechanically, and look into the fire; and, ten to one, you say
+nothing till the time comes for bed, and you take up your candle,
+and creep miserably to your lonely room.
+
+Now, if in a stage coach in the depth of winter, when three
+passengers are warm and snug, a fourth, all besnowed and frozen,
+descends from the outside and takes place amongst them, straightway
+all the three passengers shift their places, uneasily pull up their
+cloak collars, re-arrange their "comforters," feel indignantly
+a sensible loss of caloric--the intruder has at least made a
+sensation. But if you had all the snows of the Grampians in your
+heart, you might enter unnoticed: take care not to tread on the
+toes of your opposite neighbour, and not a soul is disturbed, not a
+"comforter" stirs an inch! I had not slept a wink, I had not even
+laid down all that night--the night in which I had said farewell
+to Fanny Trevanion--and the next morning, when the sun rose, I
+wandered out--where I know not. I have a dim recollection of long,
+gray, solitary streets--of the river, that seemed flowing in dull
+silence, away, far away, into some invisible eternity--trees and
+turf, and the gay voices of children. I must have gone from one end
+of the great Babel to the other: but my memory only became clear
+and distinct when I knocked, somewhere before noon, at the door of
+my father's house, and, passing heavily up the stairs, came into
+the drawing-room, which was the rendezvous of the little family;
+for, since we had been in London, my father had ceased to have his
+study apart, and contented himself with what he called "a corner"--a
+corner wide enough to contain two tables and a dumb waiter, with
+chairs _à discretion_ all littered with books. On the opposite side
+of this capacious corner sat my uncle, now nearly convalescent, and
+he was jotting down, in his stiff military hand, certain figures in
+a little red account-book--for you know already that my uncle Roland
+was, in his expenses, the most methodical of men.
+
+My father's face was more benign than usual, for, before him lay a
+proof--the first proof of his first work--his one work--the Great
+Book! Yes! it had positively found a press. And the first proof of
+your first work--ask any author what _that_ is! My mother was out,
+with the faithful Mrs Primmins, shopping or marketing no doubt;
+so, while the brothers were thus engaged, it was natural that my
+entrance should not make as much noise as if it had been a bomb,
+or a singer, or a clap of thunder, or the last "great novel of
+the season," or anything else that made a noise in those days. For
+what makes a noise now? Now, when the most astonishing thing of all
+is in our easy familiarity with things astounding--when we say,
+listlessly, "Another revolution at Paris," or, "By the bye, there
+is the deuce to do at Vienna!"--when De Joinville is catching fish
+in the ponds at Claremont, and you hardly turn back to look at
+Metternich on the pier at Brighton!
+
+My uncle nodded, and growled indistinctly; my father--
+
+"Put aside his books; you have told us that already."
+
+Sir, you are very much mistaken, he did not put aside his books, for
+he was not engaged in them--he was reading his proof. And he smiled,
+and pointed to it (the proof I mean) pathetically, and with a kind
+of humour, as much as to say--"What can you expect, Pisistratus?--my
+new baby! in short clothes--or long primer, which is all the same
+thing!"
+
+I took a chair between the two, and looked first at one, then at
+the other, and--heaven forgive me!--I felt a rebellious, ungrateful
+spite against both. The bitterness of my soul must have been deep
+indeed to have overflowed in that direction, but it did. The grief
+of youth is an abominable egotist, and that is the truth. I got up
+from the chair, and walked towards the window; it was open, and
+outside the window was Mrs Primmins' canary, in its cage. London
+air had agreed with it, and it was singing lustily. Now, when the
+canary saw me standing opposite to its cage, and regarding it
+seriously, and, I have no doubt, with a very sombre aspect, the
+creature stopped short, and hung its head on one side, looking at
+me obliquely and suspiciously. Finding that I did it no harm, it
+began to hazard a few broken notes, timidly and interrogatively, as
+it were, pausing between each; and at length, as I made no reply,
+it evidently thought it had solved the doubt, and ascertained that
+I was more to be pitied than feared--for it stole gradually into
+so soft and silvery a strain that, I verily believe, it did it on
+purpose to comfort me!--me, its old friend, whom it had unjustly
+suspected. Never did any music touch me so home as did that long,
+plaintive cadence. And when the bird ceased, it perched itself close
+to the bars of the cage, and looked at me steadily with its bright
+intelligent eyes. I felt mine water, and I turned back and stood
+in the centre of the room, irresolute what to do, where to go. My
+father had done with the proof, and was deep in his folios. Roland
+had clasped his red account book, restored it to his pocket, wiped
+his pen carefully, and now watched me from under his great beetle
+brows. Suddenly he rose, and, stamping on the hearth with his cork
+leg, exclaimed, "Look up from those cursed books, brother Austin!
+What is there in that lad's face? Construe _that_, if you can!"
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+And my father pushed aside his books, and rose hastily. He took off
+his spectacles, and rubbed them mechanically, but he said nothing;
+and my uncle, staring at him for a moment, in surprise at his
+silence, burst out,--
+
+"Oh! I see--he has been getting into some scrape, and you are angry!
+Fie! young blood will have its way, Austin--it will. I don't blame
+that--it is only when--come here, Sisty! Zounds! man, come here."
+
+My father gently brushed off the captain's hand, and, advancing
+towards me, opened his arms. The next moment I was sobbing on his
+breast.
+
+"But what is the matter?" cried Captain Roland, "will nobody
+say what is the matter? Money, I suppose--money, you confounded
+extravagant young dog. Luckily you have got an uncle who has more
+than he knows what to do with. How much?--fifty?--a hundred? two
+hundred? How can I write the cheque, if you'll not speak?"
+
+"Hush, brother! it is no money you can give that will set this
+right. My poor boy! have I guessed truly? Did I guess truly the
+other evening, when--"
+
+"Yes, sir, yes! I have been so wretched. But I am better now--I can
+tell you all."
+
+My uncle moved slowly towards the door: his fine sense of delicacy
+made him think that even he was out of place in the confidence
+between son and father.
+
+"No, uncle," I said, holding out my hand to him, "stay; you too can
+advise me--strengthen me. I have kept my honour yet--help me to keep
+it still."
+
+At the sound of the word honour Captain Roland stood mute, and
+raised his head quickly.
+
+So I told all--incoherently enough at first, but clearly and
+manfully as I went on. Now I know that it is not the custom of
+lovers to confide in fathers and uncles. Judging by those mirrors
+of life, plays and novels, they choose better;--valets and
+chambermaids, and friends whom they have picked up in the street,
+as I had picked up poor Francis Vivian--to these they make clean
+breasts of their troubles. But fathers and uncles--to them they are
+close, impregnable, "buttoned to the chin." The Caxtons were an
+eccentric family, and never did anything like other people. When I
+had ended, I lifted my eyes, and said pleadingly, "Now, tell me, is
+there no hope--none?"
+
+"Why should there be none?" cried Captain Roland hastily--"the De
+Caxtons are as good a family as the Trevanions; and as for yourself,
+all I will say is, that the young lady might choose worse for her
+own happiness."
+
+I wrung my uncles hand, and turned to my father in anxious fear--for
+I knew that, in spite of his secluded habits, few men ever formed
+a sounder judgment on worldly matters, when he was fairly drawn to
+look at them. A thing wonderful is that plain wisdom which scholars
+and poets often have for others, though they rarely deign to use it
+for themselves. And how on earth do they get at it? I looked at my
+father, and the vague hope Roland had excited fell as I looked.
+
+"Brother," said he slowly, and shaking his head, "the world, which
+gives codes and laws to those who live in it, does not care much for
+a pedigree, unless it goes with a title-deed to estates."
+
+"Trevanion was not richer than Pisistratus when he married Lady
+Ellinor," said my uncle.
+
+"True; but Lady Ellinor was not then an heiress, and her father
+viewed these matters as no other peer in England perhaps would.
+As for Trevanion himself, I dare say he has no prejudices about
+station, but he is strong in common sense. He values himself on
+being a practical man. It would be folly to talk to him of love, and
+the affections of youth. He would see in the son of Austin Caxton,
+living on the interest of some fifteen or sixteen thousand pounds,
+such a match for his daughter as no prudent man in his position
+could approve. And as for Lady Ellinor"--
+
+"She owes us much, Austin!" exclaimed Roland, his face darkening.
+
+"Lady Ellinor is now what, if we had known her better, she promised
+always to be--the ambitious, brilliant, scheming woman of the world.
+Is it not so, Pisistratus?"
+
+I said nothing. I felt too much.
+
+"And does the girl like you?--but I think it is clear she does!"
+exclaimed Roland. "Fate--fate; it has been a fatal family to us!
+Zounds, Austin, it was your fault. Why did you let him go there?"
+
+"My son is now a man--at least in heart, if not in years--can man
+be shut from danger and trial? They found me in the old parsonage,
+brother!" said my father mildly.
+
+My uncle walked, or rather stumped, three times up and down the
+room; and he then stopped short, folded his arms, and came to a
+decision--
+
+"If the girl likes you, your duty is doubly clear--you can't take
+advantage of it. You have done right to leave the house, for the
+temptation might be too strong."
+
+"But what excuse shall I make to Mr Trevanion?" said I feebly--"what
+story can I invent? So careless as he is while he trusts, so
+penetrating if he once suspects, he will see through all my
+subterfuges, and--and--"
+
+"It is as plain as a pike-staff," said my uncle abruptly--"and
+there need be no subterfuge in the matter. 'I must leave you, Mr
+Trevanion.' 'Why?' says he. 'Don't ask me.' He insists. 'Well then,
+sir, if you must know, I love your daughter. I have nothing--she
+is a great heiress. You will not approve of that love, and
+therefore I leave you!' That is the course that becomes an English
+gentleman--eh, Austin?"
+
+"You are never wrong when your instincts speak, Roland," said my
+father. "Can you say this, Pisistratus, or shall I say it for you?"
+
+"Let him say it himself," said Roland; "and let him judge himself of
+the answer. He is young, he is clever, he may make a figure in the
+world. Trevanion _may_ answer, 'Win the lady after you have won the
+laurel, like the knights of old.' At all events, you will hear the
+worst."
+
+"I will go," said I, firmly; and I took my hat, and left the room.
+As I was passing the landing-place, a light step stole down the
+upper flight of stairs, and a little hand seized my own. I turned
+quickly, and met the full, dark, seriously sweet eyes of my cousin
+Blanche.
+
+"Don't go away yet, Sisty," said she coaxingly. "I have been waiting
+for you, for I heard your voice, and did not like to come in and
+disturb you."
+
+"And why did you wait for me, my little Blanche?"
+
+"Why! only to see you. But your eyes are red. Oh, cousin!"--and,
+before I was aware of her childish impulse, she had sprung to my
+neck and kissed me. Now Blanche was not like most children, and
+was very sparing of her caresses. So it was out of the deeps of
+a kind heart that that kiss came. I returned it without a word;
+and, putting her down gently, ran down the stairs, and was in the
+streets. But I had not got far before I heard my father's voice; and
+he came up, and, hooking his arm into mine, said, "Are there not
+two of us that suffer?--let us be together!" I pressed his arm, and
+we walked on in silence. But when we were near Trevanion's house,
+I said hesitatingly, "Would it not be better, sir, that I went in
+alone. If there is to be an explanation between Mr Trevanion and
+myself, would it not seem as if your presence implied either a
+request to him that would lower us both, or a doubt of me that--"
+
+"You will go in alone, of course: I will wait for you--"
+
+"Not in the streets--oh no, father," cried I, touched inexpressibly.
+For all this was so unlike my father's habits, that I felt remorse
+to have so communicated my young griefs to the calm dignity of his
+serene life.
+
+"My son, you do not know how I love you. I have only known it myself
+lately. Look you, I am living in you now, my first-born; not in my
+other son--the great book: I must have my way. Go in; that is the
+door, is it not?"
+
+I pressed my father's hand, and I felt then, that, while that hand
+could reply to mine, even the loss of Fanny Trevanion could not
+leave the world a blank. How much we have before us in life, while
+we retain our parents! How much to strive and to hope for! What a
+motive in the conquest of our sorrow--that they may not sorrow with
+us!
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+I entered Trevanion's study. It was an hour in which he was rarely
+at home, but I had not thought of that; and I saw without surprise
+that, contrary to his custom, he was in his armchair, reading one of
+his favourite classic authors, instead of being in some committee
+room of the House of Commons.
+
+"A pretty fellow you are," said he, looking up, "to leave me
+all the morning, without rhyme or reason. And my committee is
+postponed--chairman ill--people who get ill should not go into the
+House of Commons. So here I am, looking into Propertius: Parr is
+right; not so elegant a writer as Tibullus. But what the deuce are
+you about?--why don't you sit down? Humph! you look grave--you have
+something to say,--say it!"
+
+And, putting down Propertius, the acute, sharp face of Trevanion
+instantly became earnest and attentive.
+
+"My dear Mr Trevanion," said I, with as much steadiness as I could
+assume, "you have been most kind to me; and, out of my own family,
+there is no man I love and respect more."
+
+TREVANION.--Humph! What's all this! (_In an under tone_)--Am I going
+to be taken in?
+
+PISISTRATUS.--Do not think me ungrateful, then, when I say I come to
+resign my office--to leave the house where I have been so happy.
+
+TREVANION.--Leave the house!--Pooh!--I have overtasked you. I
+will be more merciful in future. You must forgive a political
+economist--it is the fault of my sect to look upon men as machines.
+
+PISISTRATUS--(_smiling faintly_.)--No, indeed--that is not it! I
+have nothing to complain of--nothing I could wish altered--could I
+stay.
+
+TREVANION (_examining me thoughtfully_.)--And does your father
+approve of your leaving me thus?
+
+PISISTRATUS--Yes, fully.
+
+TREVANION (_musing a moment_.)--I see, he would send you to the
+University, make you a book-worm like himself: pooh! that will not
+do--you will never become wholly a man of books,--it is not in you.
+Young man, though I may seem careless, I read characters, when I
+please it, pretty quickly. You do wrong to leave me; you are made
+for the great world--I can open to you a high career. I wish to do
+so! Lady Ellinor wishes it--nay, insists on it--for your father's
+sake as well as yours. I never ask a favour from ministers, and I
+never will. But (here Trevanion rose suddenly, and, with an erect
+mien and a quick gesture of his arm, he added)--but a minister
+himself can dispose as he pleases of his patronage. Look you, it
+is a secret yet, and I trust to your honour. But, before the year
+is out, I must be in the cabinet. Stay with me, I guarantee your
+fortunes--three months ago I would not have said that. By-and-by
+I will open parliament for you--you are not of age yet--work till
+then. And now sit down and write my letters--a sad arrear!"
+
+"My dear, dear Mr Trevanion!" said I, so affected that I could
+scarcely speak, and seizing his hand, which I pressed between
+both mine--"I dare not thank you--I cannot! But you don't know my
+heart--it is not ambition. No! if I could but stay here on the same
+terms for ever--_here_--(looking ruefully on that spot where Fanny
+had stood the night before,) but it is impossible! If you knew all,
+you would be the first to bid me go!"
+
+"You are in debt," said the man of the world, coldly. "Bad, very
+bad--still--"
+
+"No, sir; no! worse--"
+
+"Hardly possible to be worse, young man--hardly! But, just as you
+will; you leave me, and will not say why. Good-by. Why do you
+linger? shake hands, and go!"
+
+"I cannot leave you thus: I--I--sir, the truth shall out. I am rash
+and mad enough not to see Miss Trevanion without forgetting that I
+am poor, and--"
+
+"Ha!" interrupted Trevanion softly, and growing pale, "this is a
+misfortune indeed! And I, who talked of reading characters! Truly,
+truly, we would-be practical men are fools--fools! And you have made
+love to my daughter!"
+
+"Sir! Mr Trevanion! I--no--never, never so base! In your house,
+trusted by you,--how could you think it? I dared, it may be, to
+love--at all events, to feel that I could not be insensible to a
+temptation too strong for me. But to say it to your daughter--to ask
+love in return--I would as soon have broken open your desk! Frankly
+I tell you my folly: it is a folly, not a disgrace."
+
+Trevanion came up to me abruptly, as I leant against the book-case,
+and, grasping my hand with a cordial kindness, said,--"Pardon me!
+You have behaved as your father's son should--I envy him such a son!
+Now, listen to me--I cannot give you my daughter--"
+
+"Believe me, sir, I never--"
+
+"Tut, listen! I cannot give you my daughter. I say nothing of
+inequality--all gentlemen are equal; and if not, all impertinent
+affectation of superiority, in such a case, would come ill from
+one who owes his own fortune to his wife! But, as it is, I have a
+stake in the world, won not by fortune only, but the labour of a
+life, the suppression of half my nature--the drudging, squaring,
+taming down--all that made the glory and joy of my youth--to be
+that hard matter-of-fact thing which the English world expect in
+a--_statesman_! This station has gradually opened into its natural
+result--power! I tell you I shall soon have high office in the
+administration: I hope to render great services to England--for we
+English politicians, whatever the mob and the press say of us, are
+not selfish placehunters. I refused office, as high as I look for
+now, ten years ago. We believe in our opinions, and we hail the
+power that may carry them into effect. In this cabinet I shall have
+enemies. Oh, don't think we leave jealousy behind us, at the doors
+of Downing Street! I shall be one of a minority. I know well what
+must happen: like all men in power, I must strengthen myself by
+other heads and hands than my own. My daughter should bring to me
+the alliance of that house in England which is most necessary to me.
+My life falls to the ground, like a house of cards, if I waste--I
+do not say on you, but on men of ten times your fortune (whatever
+that be,)--the means of strength which are at my disposal in the
+hand of Fanny Trevanion. To this end I have looked; but to this end
+her mother has schemed--for these household matters are within a
+man's hopes, but belong to a woman's policy. So much for us. But
+for you, my dear, and frank, and high-souled young friend--for you,
+if I were not Fanny's father--if I were your nearest relation, and
+Fanny could be had for the asking, with all her princely dower, (for
+it is princely,)--for you I should say, fly from a load upon the
+heart, on the genius, the energy, the pride, and the spirit, which
+not one man in ten thousand can bear; fly from the curse of owing
+every thing to a wife!--it is a reversal of all natural position, it
+is a blow to all the manhood within us. You know not what it is: I
+do! My wife's fortune came not till after marriage--so far, so well;
+it saved my reputation from the charge of fortune-hunting. But, I
+tell you fairly, that if it had never come at all, I should be a
+prouder, and a greater, and a happier man than I have ever been,
+or ever can be, with all its advantages; it has been a millstone
+round my neck. And yet Ellinor has never breathed a word that could
+wound my pride. Would her daughter be as forbearing? Much as I love
+Fanny, I doubt if she has the great heart of her mother. You look
+incredulous;--naturally. Oh, you think I shall sacrifice my child's
+happiness to a politician's ambition! Folly of youth! Fanny would be
+wretched with you. She might not think so now; she would five years
+hence! Fanny will make an admirable duchess, countess, great lady;
+but wife to a man who owes all to her!--no, no, don't dream it! I
+shall not sacrifice her happiness, depend on it. I speak plainly, as
+man to man--man of the world to a man just entering it--but still
+man to man! What say you?"
+
+"I will think over all you tell me. I know that you are speaking to
+me most generously--as a father would. Now let me go, and may God
+keep you and yours!"
+
+"Go--I return your blessing--go! I don't insult you now with offers
+of service; but, remember, you have a right to command them--in all
+ways, in all times. Stop!--take this comfort away with you--a sorry
+comfort now, a great one hereafter. In a position that might have
+moved anger, scorn, pity, you have made a barren-hearted man honour
+and admire you. You, a boy, have made me, with my gray hairs, think
+better of the whole world: tell your father that."
+
+I closed the door, and stole out softly--softly. But when I got into
+the hall, Fanny suddenly opened the door of the breakfast parlour,
+and seemed, by her look, her gesture, to invite me in. Her face was
+very pale, and there were traces of tears on the heavy lids.
+
+I stood still a moment, and my heart beat violently. I then muttered
+something inarticulately, and, bowing low, hastened to the door.
+
+I thought, but my ears might deceive me, that I heard my name
+pronounced; but fortunately the tall porter started from his
+newspaper and his leather chair, and the entrance stood open. I
+joined my father.
+
+"It is all over," said I, with a resolute smile. "And now, my
+dear father, I feel how grateful I should be for all that your
+lessons--your life--have, taught me;--for, believe me, I am not
+unhappy."
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+We came back to my father's house, and on the stairs we met my
+mother, whom Roland's grave looks, and her Austin's strange absence,
+had alarmed. My father quietly led the way to a little room, which
+my mother had appropriated to Blanche and herself; and then, placing
+my hand in that which had helped his own steps from the stony path,
+down the quiet vales of life, he said to me,--"Nature gives you here
+the soother;"--and, so saying, he left the room.
+
+And it was true, O my mother! that in thy simple loving breast
+nature did place the deep wells of comfort! We come to men for
+philosophy--to women for consolation. And the thousand weaknesses
+and regrets--the sharp sands of the minutiæ that make up
+_sorrow_--all these, which I could have betrayed to no _man_--not
+even to him, the dearest and tenderest of all men--I showed without
+shame to thee! And thy tears, that fell on my cheek, had the balm
+of Araby; and my heart, at length, lay lulled and soothed under thy
+moist gentle eyes.
+
+I made an effort, and joined the little circle at dinner; and
+I felt grateful that no violent attempt was made to raise my
+spirits--nothing but affection, more subdued, and soft, and
+tranquil. Even little Blanche, as if by the intuition of sympathy,
+ceased her babble, and seemed to hush her footstep as she crept
+to my side. But after dinner, when we had reassembled in the
+drawing-room, and the lights shone bright, and the curtains were
+let down--and only the quick roll of some passing wheels reminded
+us that there was a world without--my father began to talk. He had
+laid aside all his work; the younger, but less perishable child was
+forgotten,--and my father began to talk.
+
+"It is," said he musingly, "a well-known thing, that particular
+drugs or herbs suit the body according to its particular diseases.
+When we are ill, we don't open our medicinechest at random, and take
+out any powder or phial that comes to hand. The skilful doctor is he
+who adjusts the dose to the malady."
+
+"Of that there can be no doubt," quoth Captain Roland. "I remember
+a notable instance of the justice of what you say. When I was in
+Spain, both my horse and I fell ill at the same time; a dose was
+sent for each; and, by some infernal mistake, I swallowed the
+horse's physic, and the horse, poor thing, swallowed mine!"
+
+"And what was the result?" asked my father.
+
+"The horse died!", answered Roland mournfully--"a valuable
+beast--bright bay, with a star!"
+
+"And you?"
+
+"Why, the doctor said it ought to have killed me; but it took a
+great deal more than a paltry bottle of physic to kill a man in my
+regiment."
+
+"Nevertheless, we arrive at the same conclusion," pursued my
+father,--"I with my theory, you with your experience,--that the
+physic we take must not be chosen hap-hazard; and that a mistake
+in the bottle may kill a horse. But when we come to the medicine
+for the mind, how little do we think of the golden rule which
+common-sense applies to the body."
+
+"Anon," said the Captain, "what medicine is there for the mind?
+Shakspeare has said something on that subject, which, if I recollect
+right, implies that there is no ministering to a mind diseased."
+
+"I think not, brother; he only said physic (meaning boluses and
+black draughts) would not do it. And Shakspeare was the last man
+to find fault with his own art; for, verily, he has been a great
+physician to the mind."
+
+"Ah! I take you now, brother,--books again! So you think that,
+when a man breaks his heart, or loses his fortune, or his
+daughter--(Blanche, child, come here)--that you have only to clap
+a plaster of print on the sore place, and all is well. I wish you
+would find me such a cure."
+
+"Will you try it?"
+
+"If it is not Greek," said my uncle.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+MY FATHER'S CROTCHET ON THE HYGEIENIC CHEMISTRY OF BOOKS.
+
+"If," said my father--and here his hand was deep in his
+waistcoat--"if we accept the authority of Diodorus, as to the
+inscription on the great Egyptian library--and I don't see why
+Diodorus should not be as near the mark as any one else?" added my
+father interrogatively, turning round.
+
+My mother thought herself the person addressed, and nodded her
+gracious assent to the authority of Diodorus. His opinion thus
+fortified, my father continued,--"If, I say, we accept the authority
+of Diodorus, the inscription on the Egyptian library was--'The
+Medicine of the Mind.' Now, that phrase has become notoriously trite
+and hackneyed, and people repeat vaguely that books are the medicine
+of the mind. Yes; but to apply the medicine is the thing!"
+
+"So you have told us at least twice before, brother," quoth the
+Captain, bluffly. "And what Diodorus has to do with it, I know no
+more than the man of the moon."
+
+"I shall never get on at this rate," said my father, in a tone
+between reproach and entreaty.
+
+"Be good children, Roland and Blanche both," said my mother,
+stopping from her work, and holding up her needle threateningly--and
+indeed inflicting a slight puncture upon the Captain's shoulder.
+
+"Rem _acu_ tetigisti, my dear," said my father, borrowing Cicero's
+pun on the occasion.[13] "And now we shall go upon velvet. I say,
+then, that books, taken indiscriminately, are no cure to the
+diseases and afflictions of the mind. There is a world of science
+necessary in the taking them. I have known some people in great
+sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One
+might as well take a rose-draught for the plague! Light reading
+does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe,
+when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to
+him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about. In a
+great grief like that, you cannot tickle and divert the mind; you
+must wrench it away, abstract, absorb--bury it in an abyss, hurry
+it into a labyrinth. Therefore, for the irremediable sorrows of
+middle life and old age, I recommend a strict chronic, course of
+science and hard reasoning--Counter-irritation. Bring the brain to
+act upon the heart! If science is too much against the grain, (for
+we have not all got mathematical heads,) something in the reach
+of the humblest understanding, but sufficiently searching to the
+highest--a new language--Greek, Arabic, Scandinavian, Chinese, or
+Welch! For the loss of fortune, the dose should be applied less
+directly to the understanding.--I would administer something elegant
+and cordial. For as the heart is crushed and lacerated by a loss in
+the affections, so it is rather the head that aches and suffers by
+the loss of money. Here we find the higher class of poets a very
+valuable remedy. For observe, that poets of the grander and more
+comprehensive kind of genius have in them two separate men, quite
+distinct from each other--the imaginative man, and the practical,
+circumstantial man; and it is the happy mixture of these that suits
+diseases of the mind, half imaginative and half practical. There
+is Homer, now lost with the gods, now at home with the homeliest,
+the very 'poet of circumstance,' as Gray has finely called him; and
+yet with imagination enough to seduce and coax the dullest into
+forgetting, for a while, that little spot on his desk which his
+banker's book can cover. There is Virgil, far below him, indeed.
+
+  [13] Cicero's joke on a senator who was the son of a tailor--"Thou
+  hast touched the thing sharply;" (or with a needle--_acu_.)
+
+                    --'Virgil the wise,
+    Whose verse walks highest, but not flies.'
+
+as Cowley expresses it. But Virgil still has genius enough to
+be two men--to lead you into the fields, not only to listen to
+the pastoral reed, and to hear the bees hum, but to note how you
+can make the most of the glebe and the vineyard. There is Horace,
+charming man of the world, who will condole with you feelingly
+on the loss of your fortune, and by no means undervalue the good
+things of this life; but who will yet show you that a man may be
+happy with a _vile modicum_, or _parva rura_. There is Shakspeare,
+who, above all poets, is the mysterious dual of hard sense and
+empyreal fancy--and a great many more, whom I need not name; but
+who, if you take to them gently and quietly, will not, like your
+mere philosopher, your unreasonable stoic, tell you that you have
+lost nothing; but who will insensibly steal you out of this world,
+with its losses and crosses, and slip you into another world, before
+you know where you are!--a world where you are just as welcome,
+though you carry no more earth of your lost acres with you than
+covers the sole of your shoe. Then, for hypochondria and satiety,
+what is better than a brisk alterative course of travels--especially
+early, out of the way, marvellous, legendary travels! How they
+freshen up the spirits! How they take you out of the humdrum yawning
+state you are in. See, with Herodotus, young Greece spring up into
+life; or note with him how already the wondrous old Orient world
+is crumbling into giant decay; or go with Carpini and Rubruquis to
+Tartary, meet 'the carts of Zagathai laden with houses, and think
+that a great city is travelling towards you.'[14] Gaze on that
+vast wild empire of the Tartar, where the descendants of Jenghis
+'multiply and disperse over the immense waste desert, which is as
+boundless as the ocean.' Sail with the early northern discoverers,
+and penetrate to the heart of winter, among sea-serpents and bears,
+and tusked morses, with the faces of men. Then, what think you of
+Columbus, and the stern soul of Cortes, and the kingdom of Mexico,
+and the strange gold city of the Peruvians, with that audacious
+brute Pizarro? and the Polynesians, just for all the world like
+the ancient Britons? and the American Indians, and the South-Sea
+Islanders? how petulant, and young, and adventurous, and frisky your
+hypochondriac must get upon a regimen like that! Then, for that
+vice of the mind which I call sectarianism--not in the religious
+sense of the word, but little, narrow prejudices, that make you
+hate your next-door neighbour, because he has his eggs roasted
+when you have yours boiled; and gossiping and prying into people's
+affairs, and back-biting, and thinking heaven and earth are coming
+together, if some broom touch a cobweb that you have let grow over
+the window-sill of your brains--what like a large and generous,
+mildly aperient (I beg your pardon, my dear) course of history! How
+it clears away all the fumes of the head!--better than the hellebore
+with which the old leeches of the middle ages purged the cerebellum.
+There, amidst all that great whirl and _sturmbad_ (storm-bath), as
+the Germans say, of kingdoms and empires, and races and ages, how
+your mind enlarges beyond that little, feverish animosity to John
+Styles; or that unfortunate prepossession of yours, that all the
+world is interested in your grievances against Tom Stokes and his
+wife!
+
+  [14] RUBRUQUIS, sect. xii.
+
+"I can only touch, you see, on a few ingredients in this magnificent
+pharmacy--its resources are boundless, but require the nicest
+discretion. I remember to have cured a disconsolate widower, who
+obstinately refused every other medicament, by a strict course of
+geology. I dipped him deep into gneiss and mica schist. Amidst the
+first strata, I suffered the watery action to expend itself upon
+cooling crystallised masses; and, by the time I had got him into
+the tertiary period, amongst the transition chalks of Maestricht,
+and the conchiferous marls of Gosau, he was ready for a new wife.
+Kitty, my dear! it is no laughing matter. I made no less notable
+a cure of a young scholar at Cambridge, who was meant for the
+church, when he suddenly caught a cold fit of freethinking, with
+great shiverings, from wading over his depth in Spinosa. None of
+the divines, whom I first tried, did him the least good in that
+state; so I turned over a new leaf, and doctored him gently upon the
+chapters of faith in Abraham Tucker's book, (you should read, it,
+Sisty;) then I threw in strong doses of Fichté; after that I put him
+on the Scotch metaphysicians, with plunge baths into certain German
+transcendentalists; and having convinced him that faith is not an
+unphilosophical state of mind, and that he might believe without
+compromising his understanding--for he was mightily conceited on
+that score--I threw in my divines, which he was now fit to digest;
+and his theological constitution, since then, has become so robust,
+that he has eaten up two livings and a deanery! In fact, I have
+a plan for a library that, instead of heading its compartments,
+'Philology, Natural Science, Poetry,' &c., one shall head them
+according to the diseases for which they are severally good, bodily
+and mental--up from a dire calamity, or the pangs of the gout, down
+to a fit of the spleen, or a slight catarrh; for which last your
+light reading comes in with a whey posset and barley-water. But,"
+continued my father more gravely, "when some one sorrow, that is
+yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania--when you
+think, because heaven has denied you this or that, on which you had
+set your heart, that all your life must be a blank--oh, then diet
+yourself well on biography--the biography of good and great men.
+See how little a space one sorrow really makes in life. See scarce
+a page, perhaps, given to some grief similar to your own; and how
+triumphantly the life sails on, beyond it! You thought the wing was
+broken!--Tut-tut--it was but a bruised feather! See what life leaves
+behind it, when all is, done!--a summary of positive facts far out
+of the region of sorrow and suffering, linking themselves with the
+being of the world. Yes, biography is the medicine here! Roland, you
+said you would try my prescription--here it is,"--and my father took
+up a book, and reached it to the Captain.
+
+My uncle looked over it--_Life of the Reverend Robert Hall_.
+"Brother, he was a Dissenter, and, thank heaven, I am a
+church-and-state man, back and bone!"
+
+"Robert Hall was a brave man, and a true soldier under the great
+commander," said my father artfully.
+
+The Captain mechanically carried his forefinger to his forehead in
+military fashion, and saluted the book respectfully.
+
+"I have another copy for you, Pisistratus--that is mine which I have
+lent Roland. This, which I bought for you to-day, you will keep."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said I listlessly, not seeing what great good the
+_Life of Robert Hall_ could do me, or why the same medicine should
+suit the old weatherbeaten uncle, and the nephew yet in his teens.
+
+"I have said nothing," resumed my father, slightly bowing his broad
+temples, "of the Book of Books, for that is the _lignum vitæ_, the
+cardinal medicine for all. These are but the subsidiaries: for,
+as you may remember, my dear Kitty, that I have said before--we
+can never keep the system quite right unless we place just in the
+centre of the great ganglionic system, whence the nerves carry its
+influence gently and smoothly through the whole frame--THE SAFFRON
+BAG!"
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+After breakfast the next morning, I took my hat to go out, when my
+father, looking at me, and seeing by my countenance that I had not
+slept, said gently--
+
+"My dear Pisistratus, you have not tried my medicine yet."
+
+"What medicine, sir?"
+
+"Robert Hall."
+
+"No, indeed, not yet," said I, smiling.
+
+"Do so, my son, before you go out; depend on it, you will enjoy your
+walk more."
+
+I confess that it was, with some reluctance I obeyed. I went back to
+my own room, and sate resolutely down to my task. Are there any of
+you, my readers, who have not read the _Life of Robert Hall_? If so,
+in the words of the great Captain Cuttle, "When found, make a note
+of it." Never mind what your theological opinion is--Episcopalian,
+Presbyterian, Baptist, Pædobaptist, Independent, Quaker, Unitarian,
+Philosopher, Freethinker--send for Robert Hall! Yea, if there exist
+yet on earth descendants of the arch-heresies, which made such a
+noise in their day--men who believe with Saturnians that the world
+was made by seven angels; or with Basilides, that there are as many
+heavens as there are days in the year; or with the Nicolaitanes,
+that men ought to have their wives in common, (plenty of that sect
+still, especially in the Red Republic;) or with their successors,
+the Gnostics, who believed in Jaldaboath; or with the Carpacratians,
+that the world was made by the devil; or with the Cerinthians, and
+Ebionites, and Nazarites, (which last discovered that the name of
+Noah's wife was Ouria, and that she set the ark on fire;) or with
+the Valentinians, who taught that there were thirty Æones, ages, or
+worlds, born out of Profundity, (Bathos,) male, and Silence, female;
+or with the Marcites, Colarbasii, and Heracleonites, (who still
+kept up that bother about Æones, Mr Profundity, and Mrs Silence;)
+or with the Ophites, who are said to have worshipped the serpent;
+or the Cainites, who ingeniously found out a reason for honouring
+Judas, because he foresaw what good would come to men by betraying
+our Saviour; or with the Sethites, who made Seth a part of the
+Divine substance; or with the Archonticks, Ascothyptæ, Cerdonians,
+Marcionites, the disciples of Apelles, and Severus, (the last was
+a teetotaller, and said wine was begot by Satan!) or of Tatian,
+who thought all the descendants of Adam were irretrievably damned
+except themselves, (some of those Tatiani are certainly extant!) or
+the Cataphrygians, who were also called Tascodragitæ, because they
+thrust their forefingers up their nostrils to show their devotion;
+or the Pepuzians, Quintilians, and Artotyrites; or--but no matter.
+If I go through all the follies of men in search of the truth, I
+shall never get to the end of my chapter, or back to Robert Hall:
+whatever, then, thou art, orthodox or heterodox, send for the _Life
+of Robert Hall_. It is the life of a man that it does good to
+manhood itself to contemplate.
+
+I had finished the biography, which is not long, and was musing over
+it, when I heard the Captain's cork-leg upon the stairs. I opened
+the door for him, and he entered, book in hand, as I, also book in
+hand, stood ready to receive him.
+
+"Well, sir," said Roland, seating himself, "has the prescription
+done you any good?"
+
+"Yes, uncle--great."
+
+"And me too. By Jupiter, Sisty, that same Hall was a fine fellow! I
+wonder if the medicine has gone through the same channels in both?
+Tell me, first, how it has affected you."
+
+"_Imprimis_, then, my dear uncle, I fancy that a book like this must
+do good to all who live in the world in the ordinary manner, by
+admitting us into a circle of life of which I suspect we think but
+little. Here is a man connecting himself directly with a heavenly
+purpose, and cultivating considerable faculties to that one end;
+seeking to accomplish his soul as far as he can, that he may do
+most good on earth, and take a higher existence up to heaven; a man
+intent upon a sublime and spiritual duty: in short, living as it
+were in it, and so filled with the consciousness of immortality,
+and so strong in the link between God and man, that, without any
+affected stoicism, without being insensible to pain--rather,
+perhaps, from a nervous temperament, acutely feeling it--he yet
+has a happiness wholly independent of it. It is impossible not to
+be thrilled with an admiration that elevates while it awes you, in
+reading that solemn 'Dedication of himself to God.' This offering of
+'soul and body, time, health, reputation, talents,' to the divine
+and invisible Principle of Good, calls us suddenly to contemplate
+the selfishness of our own views and hopes, and awakens us from the
+egotism that exacts all and resigns nothing.
+
+"But this book has mostly struck upon the chord in my own heart,
+in that characteristic which my father indicated as belonging to
+all biography. Here is a life of remarkable _fulness_, great study,
+great thought, and great action; and yet," said I, colouring,
+"how small a place those feelings, which have tyrannised over me,
+and made all else seem blank and void, hold in that life. It is
+not as if the man were a cold and hard ascetic; it is easy to see
+in him not only remarkable tenderness and warm affections, but
+strong self-will, and the passion of all vigorous natures. Yes, I
+understand better now what existence in a true man should be."
+
+"All that is very well said," quoth the Captain, "but it did not
+strike me. What I have seen in this book is courage. Here is a
+poor creature rolling on the carpet with agony; from childhood to
+death tortured by a mysterious incurable malady--a malady that is
+described as 'an internal apparatus of torture;' and who does, by
+his heroism, more than _bear_ it--he puts it out of power to affect
+him; and though (here is the passage) 'his appointment by day and by
+night was incessant pain, yet high enjoyment was, notwithstanding,
+the law of his existence.' Robert Hall reads me a lesson--me, an old
+soldier, who thought myself above taking lessons--in courage, at
+least. And, as I came to that passage when, in the sharp paroxysms
+before death, he says, 'I have not complained, have I, sir?--and
+I won't complain,'--when I came to that passage I started up, and
+cried, 'Roland de Caxton, thou hast been a coward! and, an thou
+hadst had thy deserts, thou hadst been cashiered, broken, and
+drummed out of the regiment long ago!"
+
+"After all, then, my father was not so wrong--he placed his guns
+right, and fired a good shot."
+
+"He must have been from 6° to 9° above the crest of the parapet,"
+said my uncle, thoughtfully--"which, I take it, is the best
+elevation, both for shot and shells, in enfilading a work."
+
+"What say you, then, Captain? up with our knapsacks, and on with the
+march!"
+
+"Right about--face!" cried my uncle, as erect as a column.
+
+"No looking back, if we can help it."
+
+"Full in the front of the enemy--'Up, guards, and at 'em!'"
+
+"'England expects every man to do his duty!"'
+
+"Cypress or laurel!" cried my uncle, waving the book over his head.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+I went out--and to see Francis Vivian; for, on leaving Mr Trevanion,
+I was not without anxiety for my new friend's future provision.
+But Vivian was from home, and I strolled from his lodgings, into
+the suburbs on the other side of the river, and began to meditate
+seriously on the best course now to pursue. In quitting my present
+occupations, I resigned prospects far more brilliant, and fortunes
+far more rapid than I could ever hope to realise in any other
+entrance into life. But I felt the necessity, if I desired to keep
+steadfast to that more healthful frame of mind I had obtained,
+of some manly and continuous labour--some earnest employment.
+My thoughts flew back to the university; and the quiet of its
+cloisters--which, until I had been blinded by the glare of the
+London world, and grief had somewhat dulled the edge of my quick
+desires and hopes, had seemed to me cheerless and unaltering--took
+an inviting aspect. They presented what I needed most--a new scene,
+a new arena, a partial return into boyhood; repose for passions
+prematurely raised; activity for the reasoning powers in fresh
+directions. I had not lost my time in London: I had kept up, if not
+studies purely classical, at least the habits of application; I had
+sharpened my general comprehension, and augmented my resources.
+Accordingly, when I returned home, I resolved to speak to my father.
+But I found he had forestalled me; and, on entering, my mother drew
+me up stairs into her room, with a smile kindled by my smile, and
+told me that she and her Austin had been thinking that it was best
+that I should leave London as soon as possible; that my father
+found he could now dispense with the library of the Museum for some
+months; that the time for which they had taken their lodgings would
+be up in a few days; that the summer was far advanced, town odious,
+the country beautiful--in a word, we were to go home. There I could
+prepare myself for Cambridge, till the long vacation was over; and,
+my mother added hesitatingly, and with a prefatory caution to
+spare my health, that my father, whose income could ill afford the
+requisite allowance to me, counted on my soon lightening his burden,
+by getting a scholarship. I felt how much provident kindness there
+was in all this--even in that hint of a scholarship, which was meant
+to rouse my faculties, and spur me, by affectionate incentives, to a
+new ambition. I was not less delighted than grateful.
+
+"But poor Roland," said I, "and little Blanche--will they come with
+us?"
+
+"I fear not," said my mother, "for Roland is anxious to get back to
+his tower; and, in a day or two, he will be well enough to move."
+
+"Do you not think, my dear mother, that, somehow or other, this lost
+son of his had something to do with his illness,--that the illness
+was as much mental as physical?"
+
+"I have no doubt of it, Sisty. What a sad, bad heart that young man
+must have!"
+
+"My uncle seems to have abandoned all hope of finding him in London;
+otherwise, ill as he has been, I am sure we could not have kept him
+at home. So he goes back to the old tower. Poor man, he must be dull
+enough there!--we must contrive to pay him a visit. Does Blanche
+ever speak of her brother?"
+
+"No, for it seems they were not brought up much together--at all
+events, she does not remember him. How lovely she is! Her mother
+must surely have been very handsome."
+
+"She is a pretty child, certainly, though in a strange style of
+beauty--such immense eyes!--and affectionate, and loves Roland as
+she ought."
+
+And here the conversation dropped.
+
+Our plans being thus decided, it was necessary that I should lose no
+time in seeing Vivian, and making some arrangement for the future.
+His manner had lost so much of its abruptness, that I thought I
+could venture to recommend him personally to Trevanion; and I knew,
+after what had passed, that Trevanion would make a point to oblige
+me. I resolved to consult my father about it. As yet I had either
+never forced, or never made the opportunity to talk to my father
+on the subject, he had been so occupied; and, if he had proposed
+to see my new friend, what answer could I have made, in the teeth
+of Vivian's cynic objections? However, as we were now going away,
+that last consideration ceased to be of importance; and, for the
+first, the student had not yet entirely settled back to his books. I
+therefore watched the time when my father walked down to the Museum,
+and, slipping my arm in his, I told him, briefly and rapidly, as
+we went along, how I had formed this strange acquaintance, and how
+I was now situated. The story did not interest my father quite as
+much as I expected, and he did not understand all the complexities
+of Vivian's character--how could he?--for he answered briefly, "I
+should think that, for a young man, apparently without a sixpence,
+and whose education seems so imperfect, any resource in Trevanion
+must be most temporary and uncertain. Speak to your uncle Jack--he
+can find him some place, I have no doubt--perhaps a readership in
+a printer's office, or a reporter's place on some journal, if he
+is fit for it. But if you want to steady him, let it be something
+regular."
+
+Therewith my father dismissed the matter, and vanished through the
+gates of the Museum.--Readership to a printer, reportership on a
+journal, for a young gentleman with the high notions and arrogant
+vanity of Francis Vivian--his ambition already soaring far beyond
+kid gloves and a cabriolet! The idea was hopeless; and, perplexed
+and doubtful, I took my way to Vivian's lodgings. I found him at
+home, and unemployed, standing by his window, with folded arms, and
+in a state of such reverie that he was not aware of my entrance till
+I had touched him on the shoulder.
+
+"Ha!" said he then, with one of his short, quick, impatient sighs,
+"I thought you had given me up, and forgotten me--but you look pale
+and harassed. I could almost think you had grown thinner within the
+last few days."
+
+"Oh! never mind me, Vivian: I have come to speak of yourself.
+I have left Trevanion; it is settled that I should go to the
+university--and we all quit town in a few days."
+
+"In a few days!--all!--who are all?"
+
+"My family--father, mother, uncle cousin, and myself. But, my dear
+fellow, now let us think seriously what is best to be done for you?
+I can present you to Trevanion."
+
+"Ha!"
+
+"But Trevanion is a hard, though an excellent man; and, moreover, as
+he is always changing the subjects that engross him, in a month or
+so, he may have nothing to give you. You said you would work--will
+you consent not to complain if the work cannot be done in kid
+gloves? Young men who have risen high in the world have begun, it
+is well known, as reporters to the press. It is a situation of
+respectability, and in request, and not easy to obtain, I fancy; but
+still--"
+
+Vivian interrupted me hastily--
+
+"Thank you a thousand times! but what you say confirms a resolution
+I had taken before you came. I shall make it up with my family, and
+return home."
+
+"Oh! I am so really glad. How wise in you!"
+
+Vivian turned away his head abruptly--
+
+"Your pictures of family life and domestic peace, you see," he said,
+"seduced me more than you thought. When do you leave town?"
+
+"Why, I believe, early next week."
+
+"So soon!" said Vivian, thoughtfully. "Well, perhaps I may ask you
+yet to introduce me to Mr Trevanion; for--who knows?--my family and
+I may fall out again. But I will consider. I think I have heard you
+say that this Trevanion is a very old friend of your father's, or
+uncle's?"
+
+"He, or rather Lady Ellinor, is an old friend of both."
+
+"And therefore would listen to your recommendations of me. But
+perhaps I may not need them. So you have left--left of your own
+accord--a situation that seemed more enjoyable, I should think, than
+rooms in a college;--left--why did you leave?"
+
+And Vivian fixed his bright eyes, full and piercingly, on mine.
+
+"It was only for a time, for a trial, that I was there," said I,
+evasively: "out at nurse, as it were, till the Alma Mater opened her
+arms--_alma_ indeed she ought to be to my father's son."
+
+Vivian looked unsatisfied with my explanation, but did not question
+me farther. He himself was the first to turn the conversation, and
+he did this with more affectionate cordiality than was common to
+him. He inquired into our general plans, into the probabilities of
+our return to town, and drew from me a description of our rural
+Tusculum. He was quiet and subdued; and once or twice I thought
+there was a moisture in those luminous eyes. We parted with more
+of the unreserve and fondness of youthful friendship--at least on
+my part, and seemingly on his--than had yet endeared our singular
+intimacy; for the cement of cordial attachment had been wanting to
+an intercourse in which one party refused all confidence, and the
+other mingled distrust and fear with keen interest and compassionate
+admiration.
+
+That evening, before lights were brought in, my father, turning to
+me, abruptly asked if I had seen my friend, and what he was about to
+do?
+
+"He thinks of returning to his family," said I.
+
+Roland, who had seemed dozing, winced uneasily.
+
+"Who returns to his family?" asked the Captain.
+
+"Why, you must know," said my father, "that Sisty has fished up
+a friend of whom he can give no account that would satisfy a
+policeman, and whose fortunes he thinks himself under the necessity
+of protecting. You are very lucky that he has not picked your
+pockets, Sisty; but I daresay he has? What's his name?"
+
+"Vivian," said I--"Francis Vivian."
+
+"A good name, and a Cornish," said my father. "Some derive it from
+the Romans--Vivianus; others from a Celtic word, which means"--
+
+"Vivian!" interrupted Roland--"Vivian!--I wonder if it be the son of
+Colonel Vivian?"
+
+"He is certainly a gentleman's son," said I; "but he never told me
+what his family and connexions were."
+
+"Vivian," repeated my uncle--"poor Colonel Vivian. So the young man
+is going to his father. I have no doubt it is the same. Ah!"--
+
+"What do you know of Colonel Vivian, or his son?" said I. "Pray,
+tell me, I am so interested in this young man."
+
+"I know nothing of either, except by gossip," said my uncle,
+moodily. "I did hear that Colonel Vivian, an excellent officer,
+and honourable man, had been in--in--(Roland's voice faltered)--in
+great grief about his son, whom, a mere boy, he had prevented from
+some improper marriage, and who had run away and left him--it was
+supposed for America. The story affected me at the time," added my
+uncle, trying to speak calmly.
+
+We were all silent, for we felt why Roland was so disturbed, and why
+Colonel Vivian's grief should have touched him home. Similarity in
+affliction makes us brothers even to the unknown.
+
+"You say he is going home to his family--I am heartily glad of it!"
+said the envying old soldier, gallantly.
+
+The lights came in then, and, two minutes after, uncle Roland and I
+were nestled close to each other, side by side; and I was reading
+over his shoulder, and his finger was silently resting on that
+passage that had so struck him--"I have not complained--have I,
+sir?--and I won't complain!"
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE NILE.[15]
+
+  [15] _Expedition zur Entdeckung der Quellen des Weissen Nil_,
+  (1840-1841,) von FERDINAND WERNE. Mit einem Vorwort von CARL RITTER.
+  Berlin, 1848.
+
+
+Fifty years since, the book before us would have earned for its
+author the sneers of critics and the reputation of a Munchausen:
+at the present more tolerant and more enlightened day, it not only
+obtains credit, but excites well-merited admiration of the writer's
+enterprise, energy, and perseverance. "The rich contents and great
+originality of the following work," says Professor Carl Ritter,
+in his preface to Mr Werne's narrative, "will escape no one who
+bestows a glance, however hasty, upon its pages. It gives vivid and
+life-like pictures of tribes and territories previously unvisited,
+and is welcome as a most acceptable addition to our literature of
+travel, often so monotonous." We quite coincide with the learned
+professor, whose laudatory and long-winded sentences we have thus
+freely rendered. His friend, Mr Ferdinand Werne, has made good
+use of his opportunities, and has produced a very interesting and
+praiseworthy book.
+
+It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to remind the reader, that the
+river Nile is formed of two confluent streams, the Blue and the
+White, whose junction is in South Nubia, between 15° and 16° of
+North Latitude. The source of the Blue Nile was ascertained by
+Bruce, and by subsequent travellers, to be in the mountains of
+Abyssinia; but the course of the other branch, which is by far the
+longest, had been followed, until very lately, only as far south
+as 10° or 11° N. L. Even now the river has not been traced to its
+origin, although Mr Werne and his companions penetrated to 4° N.
+L. Further they could not go, owing to the rapid subsidence of the
+waters. The expedition had been delayed six weeks by the culpable
+dilatoriness of one of its members; and this was fatal to the
+realisation of its object.
+
+We can conceive few things more exciting than such a voyage as Mr
+Werne has accomplished and recorded. Starting from the outposts of
+civilisation, he sailed into the very heart of Africa, up a stream
+whose upper waters were then for the first time furrowed by vessels
+larger than a savage's canoe--a stream of such gigantic proportions,
+that its width, at a thousand miles from the sea, gave it the
+aspect of a lake rather than of a river. The brute creation were in
+proportion with the magnitude of the water-course. The hippopotamus
+reared his huge snout above the surface, and wallowed in the gullies
+that on either hand run down to the stream; enormous crocodiles
+gaped along the shore; elephants played in herds upon the pastures;
+the tall giraffe amongst the lofty palms; snakes thick as trees lay
+coiled in the slimy swamps; and ant-hills, ten feet high, towered
+above the rushes. Along the thickly-peopled banks hordes of savages
+showed themselves, gazing in wonder at the strange ships, and making
+ambiguous gestures, variously construed by the adventurers as
+signs of friendship or hostility. Alternately sailing and towing,
+as the wind served or not; constantly in sight of natives, but
+rarely communicating with them; often cut off for days from land by
+interminable fields of tangled weeds,--the expedition pursued its
+course through innumerable perils, guaranteed from most of them by
+the liquid rampart on which it floated. Lions looked hungry, and
+savages shook their spears, but neither showed a disposition to swim
+off and board the flotilla.
+
+The cause of science has countless obligations to the cupidity of
+potentates and adventurers. May it not be part of the scheme of
+Providence, that gold is placed in the most remote and barbarous
+regions, as a magnet to draw thither the children of civilisation?
+The expedition shared in by Mr Werne is an argument in favour
+of the hypothesis. It originated in appetite for lucre, not in
+thirst for knowledge. Mehemet Ali, viceroy of Egypt, finding the
+lands within his control unable to meet his lavish expenditure and
+constant cry for gold, projected working mines supposed to exist
+in the districts of Kordovan and Fazogl. At heavy cost he procured
+Austrian miners from Trieste, a portion of whom proceeded in 1836
+to the land of promise, to open those veins of gold whence it was
+reported the old Venetian ducats had been extracted. Already, in
+imagination, the viceroy beheld an ingot-laden fleet sailing merrily
+down the Nile. He was disappointed in his glowing expectations.
+Russegger, the German chief of the expedition, pocketed the pay of
+a Bey, ate and drank in conformity with his rank, rambled about the
+country, and wrote a book for the amusement and Information of his
+countrymen. Then he demanded thirty thousand dollars to begin the
+works. An Italian, who had accompanied him, offered to do it for
+less; mistrust and disputes arose, and at last their employer would
+rely on neither of them, but resolved to go and see for himself.
+This was in the autumn of 1838; and it might well be that the old
+fox was not sorry to get out of the way of certain diplomatic
+personages at Alexandria, and thus to postpone for a while his reply
+to troublesome inquiries and demands.
+
+"It was on the 15th October 1838," Mr Werne says, "that I--for some
+time past an anchorite in the wilderness by Tura, and just returned
+from a hunt in the ruins of Memphis--saw, from the left shore of
+the Nile, the Abu Dagn, (Father of the Beard,) as Mohammed Ali was
+designated to me by a Fellah standing by, steam past in his yacht,
+in the direction of those regions to which I would then so gladly
+have proceeded. Already in Alexandria I had gathered, over a glass
+of wine, from frigate-captain Achmet, (a Swiss, named Baumgartner,)
+the secret plan of the expedition to the White Stream, (Bach'r el
+Abiat,) and I had made every effort to obtain leave to join it,
+but in vain, because, as a Christian, my discretion was not to be
+depended upon."
+
+The Swiss, whom some odd caprice of fate, here unexplained, had
+converted into an Egyptian naval captain, and to whom the scientific
+duties of the expedition were confided, died in the following
+spring, and his place was taken by Captain Selim. Mr Werne and his
+brother, who had long ardently desired to accompany one of these
+expeditions up the Nile, were greatly discouraged at this change,
+which they looked upon as destructive to their hopes. At the town
+of Chartum, at the confluence of the White and Blue streams, they
+witnessed, in the month of November 1839, the departure of the first
+flotilla; and, although sick and weak, from the effects of the
+climate, their hearts were wrung with regret at being left behind.
+This expedition got no further than 6° 35' N. L.; although, either
+from mistakes in their astronomical reckoning or wishing to give
+themselves more importance, and not anticipating that others would
+soon follow to check their statements, they pretended to have gone
+three degrees further south. But Mehemet Ali, not satisfied with the
+result of their voyage, immediately ordered a second expedition to
+be fitted out. Mr Werne, who is a most adventurous person, had been
+for several months in the Taka country, in a district previously
+untrodden by Europeans, with an army commanded by Achmet Bascha,
+governor-general of Sudan, who was operating against some rebellious
+tribes. Here news reached him of the projected expedition; and, to
+his great joy, he obtained from Achmet permission to accompany it in
+the quality of passenger. His brother, then body-physician to the
+Bascha, could not be spared, by reason of the great mortality in the
+camp.
+
+At Chartum the waters were high, the wind was favourable, and all
+was ready for a start early in October, but for the non-appearance
+of two French engineers, who lingered six weeks in Korusko, under
+one pretext or other, but in reality, M. Werne affirms, because
+one of them, Arnaud by name, who has since written an account of
+the expedition, was desirous to prolong the receipt of his pay
+as _bimbaschi_, or major, which rank he temporarily held in the
+Egyptian service. At last he and his companion, Sabatier, arrived:
+on the 23rd November 1840 a start was made; and, on that day Mr
+Werne began a journal, regularly kept, and most minute in its
+details, which he continued till the 22d April 1841, the date of
+his return to Chartum. He commences by stating the composition
+of the expedition. "It consists of four dahabies from Kahira,
+(vessels with two masts and with cabins, about a hundred feet
+long, and twelve to fifteen broad,) each with two cannon; three
+dahabies from Chartum, one of which has also two guns; then two
+kaias, one-masted vessels, to carry goods, and a sàndal, or skiff,
+for intercommunication; the crews are composed of two hundred and
+fifty soldiers, (Negroes, Egyptians, and Surians,) and a hundred
+and twenty sailors and boatmen from Alexandria, Nubia, and the
+land of Sudàn." Soliman Kaschef (a Circassian of considerable
+energy and courage, who, like Mr Werne himself, was protected by
+Achmet Bascha) commanded the troops. Captain Selim had charge of
+the ships, and a sort of general direction of the expedition, of
+which, however, Soliman was the virtual chief; the second captain
+was Feizulla Effendi of Constantinople; the other officers were
+two Kurds, a Russian, an Albanian, and a Persian. Of Europeans,
+there were the two Frenchmen, already mentioned, as engineers; a
+third, named Thibaut, as collector; and Mr Werne, as an independent
+passenger at his own charges. The ships were to follow each other
+in two lines, one led by Soliman, the other by Selim; but this
+order of sailing was abandoned the very first day; and so, indeed,
+was nearly all order of every kind. Each man sailed his bark as he
+pleased, without nautical skill or unity of movement; and, as to
+one general and energetic supervision of the whole flotilla and
+its progress, no one dreamed of such a thing. Mr Werne indulged in
+gloomy reflections as to the probable results of an enterprise, at
+whose very outset such want of zeal and discipline was displayed.
+It does not appear to have struck him that not the least of his
+dangers upon the strange voyage he had so eagerly undertaken, was
+from his shipmates, many of them bigoted Mahometans and reckless,
+ferocious fellows, ready with the knife, and who would have thought
+little of burthening their conscience with so small a matter as a
+Christian's blood. He is evidently a cool, courageous man, prompt
+in action; and his knowledge of the slavish, treacherous character
+of the people he had to deal with, doubtless taught him the best
+line of conduct to pursue with them. This, as appears from various
+passages of his journal, was the rough and ready style--a blow
+for the slightest impertinence, and his arms, which he well knew
+how to use, always at hand. He did not scruple to interfere when
+he saw cruelty or oppression practised, and soon he made himself
+respected, if not feared, by all on board; so much so, that
+Feizulla, the captain of the vessel in which he sailed, a drunken
+old Turk, who passed his time in drinking spirits and mending his
+own clothes, appointed him his _locum tenens_ during his occasional
+absences on shore. During his five months' voyage, Mr Werne had
+a fine opportunity of studying the peculiarities of the different
+nations with individuals of which he sailed; and, although his long
+residence in Africa and the East had made him regard such matters
+with comparative indifference, the occasional glimpses he gives
+of Turkish and Egyptian habits are amongst the most interesting
+passages in his book. Already, on the third day of the voyage, the
+expiration of the Rhamadan, or fasting month, and the setting in
+of the little feast of Bairam, gave rise to a singular scene. The
+flotilla was passing through the country governed by Achmet Bascha,
+in which Soliman was a man of great importance. By his desire, a
+herd of oxen and a large flock of sheep were driven down to the
+shore, for the use of the expedition. The preference was for the
+mutton, the beef in those regions being usually tough and coarse,
+and consequently despised by the Turks. "This quality of the meat
+is owing to the nature of the fodder, the tender grass and herbs of
+our marsh-lands and pastures being here unknown--and to the climate,
+which hardens the animal texture, a fact perceived by the surgeon
+when operating upon the human body. Our Arabs, who, like the Greeks
+and Jews, born butchers and flayers, know no mercy with beasts or
+men, fell upon the unfortunate animals, hamstrung them in all haste,
+to obviate any chance of resumption of the gift, and the hecatomb
+sank upon the ground, pitiful to behold. During the flaying and
+quartering, every man tried to secrete a sippet of meat, cutting it
+off by stealth, or stealing it from the back of the bearers. These
+coveted morsels were stuck upon skewers, broiled at the nearest
+watch-fire, and ravenously devoured, to prepare the stomach for
+the approaching banquet. Although they know how to cook the liver
+excellently well, upon this occasion they preferred eating it raw,
+cut up in a wooden dish, and with the gall of the slaughtered beast
+poured over it. Thus prepared, and eaten with salt and pepper, it
+has much the flavour of a good raw beefsteak." The celebration of
+the Bairam was a scene of gluttony and gross revelry. Arrack was
+served out instead of the customary ration of coffee; and many a
+Mussulman drank more than did him good, or than the Prophet's law
+allows. In the night, Captain Feizulla tumbled out of bed; and,
+having spoiled his subordinates by over-indulgence, not one of
+them stirred to his assistance. Mr Werne picked him up, found him
+in an epileptic fit, and learned, with no great pleasure, Feizulla
+being his cabin-mate, that the thirsty skipper was subject to such
+attacks. He foresaw a comfortless voyage on board the narrow bark,
+and with such queer companions; but the daily increasing interest of
+the scenery and surrounding objects again distracted his thoughts
+from considerations of personal ease. He had greater difficulty
+in reconciling himself to the negligence and indolence of his
+associates. So long as food was abundant and work scanty, all went
+well enough; but when liquor ran low, and the flesh-pots of Egypt
+were empty, grumbling began, and the thoughts of the majority were
+fixed upon a speedy return. Their chiefs set them a poor example.
+Soliman Kaschef lay in bed till an hour after sunrise, and the
+signal to sail could not be given till he awoke; and Feizulla, when
+his and Mr Werne's stock of brandy was out, passed one half his
+time in distilling spirits from stale dates, and the other moiety
+in getting intoxicated on the turbid extract thus obtained. Then
+the officers had female slaves on board; and there was a licensed
+jester, Abu Haschis, who supplied the expedition with buffoonery
+and ribaldry; and the most odious practices prevailed amongst the
+crews; for further details concerning all which matters we refer the
+curious to Mr Werne himself. A more singularly composed expedition
+was perhaps never fitted out, nor one less adapted effectually to
+perform the services required of it. Cleanliness and sobriety, so
+incumbent upon men cooped up in small craft, in a climate teeming
+with pestilence and vermin, were little regarded; and subordination
+and vigilance, essential to safety amidst the perils of an unknown
+navigation, and in the close vicinity of hostile savages, were
+utterly neglected,--at first to the great uneasiness of Mr Werne.
+But after a while, seeing no chance of amendment, and having no
+power to rebuke or correct deficiencies, he repeated the eternal
+_Allah Kerim!_ (God is merciful) of his fatalist shipmates, and
+slept soundly, when the musquitos permitted, under the good guard of
+Providence.
+
+On the 29th November, the expedition passed the limit of
+Turco-Egyptian domination. The land it had now reached paid no
+tribute. "All slaves," was the reply of Turks and Arabs to Mr
+Werne's inquiry who the inhabitants were. "I could not help
+laughing, and proving to them, to their great vexation, that these
+men were free, and much less slaves than themselves; that before
+making slaves of them, they must first make them prisoners, a
+process for which they had no particular fancy,--admitting, with
+much _naiveté_, that the 'slaves' hereabout were both numerous
+and brave. This contemptuously spoken _Kulo Abit_, (All slaves,)
+is about equivalent to the 'barbarian' of the ancients--the same
+classical word the modern Greeks have learned out of foreign
+school-books."
+
+"The trees and branches preventing our vessels from lying alongside
+the bank, I had myself carried through the water, to examine the
+country and get some shooting. But I could not make up my mind to
+use my gun, the only animals to aim at being large, long-tailed,
+silver-gray apes. I had shot one on a former occasion, and the brute
+had greatly excited my compassion by his resemblance to a human
+being, and by his piteous gestures. M. Arnaud, on the contrary, took
+particular pleasure in making the repeated observation that, on the
+approach of death, the gums of these beasts turn white, like those
+of a dying man. They live in families of several hundreds together,
+and their territory is very circumscribed, even in the forest, as
+I myself subsequently ascertained. Although fearful of water, and
+swimming unwillingly, they always fled to the branches overhanging
+the river, and not unfrequently fell in. When this occurred, their
+first care on emerging was to wipe the water from their faces and
+ears. However imminent their danger, only when this operation was
+completed did they again climb the trees. Such a monkey republic
+is really a droll enough sight; its members alternately fighting
+and caressing each other, combing and vermin-hunting, stealing and
+boxing each other's ears, and, in the midst of all these important
+occupations, running down every moment to drink, but contenting
+themselves with a single draught, for fear of becoming a mouthful
+for the watchful crocodile. The tame monkeys on board our vessels
+turned restless at sight of the joyous vagabond life of their
+brethren in the bush. First-lieutenant Hussein Aga, of Kurdistan,
+lay alongside us, and was in raptures with his monkey, shouting over
+to me: '_Schuf! el naùti taïb!_' (See! the clever sailor!)--meaning
+his pet ape, which ran about the rigging like mad, hanging on by
+the ropes, and looking over the bulwarks into the water; until at
+last he jumped on the back of a sailor who was wading on shore with
+dirty linen to wash, and thence made a spring upon land to visit
+his relations, compared to whom, however, he was a mere dwarf.
+Overboard went the long Kurd, with his gun, to shoot the deserter;
+but doubtless the little seaman, in his capacity of Turkish slave,
+and on account of his diminutive figure, met a bad reception, for
+Hussein was no sooner under the trees than his monkey dropped upon
+his head. He came to visit me afterwards, brought his 'naùti taïb'
+with him, and told me, what I had often heard before, how apes were
+formerly men, whom God had cursed. It really is written in the Koran
+that God and the prophet David had turned into monkeys the Jews who
+did not keep the Sabbath holy. Therefore a good Moslem will seldom
+kill or injure a monkey. Emin Bey of Fazogl was an exception to this
+rule. Sitting at table with an Italian, and about to thrust into
+his mouth a fragment of roast meat, his monkey snatched it from
+between his thumb and fingers. Whereupon the Bey quietly ordered
+the robber's hand to be cut off, which was instantly done. The poor
+monkey came to his cruel master and showed him, with his peculiarly
+doleful whine, the stump of his fore-paw. The Bey gave orders to
+kill him, but the Italian begged him as a gift. Soon afterwards
+the foolish brute came into my possession, and, on my journey back
+to Egypt, contributed almost as much to cheer me, as did the filial
+attentions of my freed man Hagar, whom my brother had received as a
+present, and had bequeathed to me. My servants would not believe but
+that the monkey was a transformed _gabir_, or caravan guide, since
+even in the desert he was always in front and upon the right road,
+availing himself of every rock and hillock to look about him, until
+the birds of prey again drove him under the camels, to complain
+to me with his 'Oehm-oehm;' which was also his custom when he had
+been beaten in my absence by the servants, whose merissa (a sort of
+spirit) he would steal and drink till he could neither go nor stand."
+
+During this halt, and whilst rambling along the bank, picking up
+river-oysters and tracing the monstrous footsteps of hippopotami,
+Mr Werne nearly walked into the jaws of the largest crocodile he
+had ever seen. His Turkish servant, Sale, who attended him on such
+occasions and carried his rifle, was not at hand, and he was glad
+to beat a retreat, discharging one of his barrels, both of which
+were laden with shot only, in the monster's face. On being scolded
+for his absence, Sale very coolly replied, that it was not safe so
+near shore; for that several times it had occurred to him, whilst
+gazing up in the trees at the birds and monkeys, to find himself,
+on a sudden, face to face with a crocodile, which stared at him
+like a ghost, (Scheitan, Satan,) and which he dared not shoot, lest
+he should slay his own father. Amongst the numerous Mahommedan
+superstitions, there is a common belief in the transformation,
+by witches and sorcerers, of men into beasts, especially into
+crocodiles and hippopotami.
+
+"Towards evening, cartridges were served out and muskets loaded,
+for we were now in a hostile country. The powder-magazine stood
+open, and lighted pipes passed to and fro over the hatchway. _Allah
+Kerim!_ I do my best to rouse my captain from his indolence, by
+drawing constant comparisons with the English sea-service; then I
+fall asleep myself whilst the powder is being distributed, and,
+waking early in the morning, find the magazine still open, and the
+sentry, whose duty it is to give an alarm should the water in the
+hold increase overmuch, fast asleep, with his tobacco-pipe in his
+hand and his musket in his lap. Feizulla Capitan begged me not to
+report the poor devil." This being a fair specimen of the prudence
+and discipline observed during the whole voyage, it is really
+surprising that Mr Werne ever returned to write its history, and
+that his corpse--drowned, blown up, or with a knife between the
+ribs--has not long since been resolved into the elements through
+the medium of a Nile crocodile. The next day the merciful Feizulla,
+whose kindness must have sprung from a fellow-feeling, got mad-drunk
+at a merry-making on an island, and had to be brought by force on
+board his ship. He seemed disposed to "run amuck;" grasped at sabre
+and pistols, and put his people in fear of their lives, until Mr
+Werne seized him neck and heels, threw him on his bed, and held
+him there whilst he struggled himself weary and fell asleep. The
+ship's company were loud in praise and admiration of Mr Werne, who,
+however, was not quite easy as to the possible results of his bold
+interference. "Only yesterday, I incurred the hatred of the roughest
+of our Egyptian sailors, as he sat with another at the hand-mill,
+and repeatedly applied to his companion the word _Nasrani_,
+(Christian,) using it as a term of insult, until the whole crew
+came and looked down into the cabin where I sat, and laughed--the
+captain not being on board at the time. At last I lost my patience,
+jumped up, and dealt the fellow a severe blow with my fist. In his
+fanatical horror at being struck by a Christian, he tried to throw
+himself overboard, and vowed revenge, which my servants told me.
+Now, whilst Feizulla Capitan lies senseless, I see from my bed this
+tall sailor leave the fore-part of the ship and approach our cabin,
+his comrades following him with their eyes. From a fanatic, who
+might put his own construction upon my recent friendly constraint
+of Captain Feizulla, and might convert it into a pretext, I had
+everything to apprehend. But he paused at the door, apologised, and
+thanked me for not having reported him to his commander. He then
+kissed my right hand, whilst in my left I held a pistol concealed
+under the blanket."
+
+Dangers, annoyances, and squabbles did not prevent Mr Werne
+from writing up his log, and making minute observations of
+the surrounding scenery. This was of ever-varying character.
+Thickly-wooded banks were succeeded by a sea of grass, its
+monotony unvaried by a single bush. Then came a crowd of islands,
+composed of water-plants, knit together by creepers and parasites,
+and alternately anchored to the shore, or floating slowly down
+the stream, whose sluggish current was often imperceptible. The
+extraordinary freshness and luxuriance of the vegetable creation
+in that region of combined heat and moisture, excited Mr Werne's
+enthusiastic admiration. At times he saw himself surrounded by a
+vast tapestry of flowers, waving for miles in every direction, and
+of countless varieties of tint and form. Upon land were bowers
+and hills of blossom, groves of dark mimosa and gold-gleaming
+tamarind; upon the water and swamps, interminable carpets of lilac
+convolvulus, water-lilies, flowering-reeds, and red, blue, and white
+lotus. The ambak tree, with its large yellow flowers and acacia-like
+leaf, rose fifteen feet and more above the surface of the water out
+of which it grew. This singular plant, a sort of link between the
+forest-tree and the reed of the marshes, has its root in the bed of
+the Nile, with which it each year rises, surpassing it in swiftness
+of growth. Its stem is of a soft spungy nature, more like the pith
+of a tree than like wood, but having, nevertheless, a pith of its
+own. The lotus was one of the most striking features in these scenes
+of floral magnificence; its brilliant white flower, which opens as
+the sun rises, and closes when it sets, beaming, like a double lily,
+in the shade it prefers. Mr Werne made the interesting observation,
+that this beautiful flower, where it had not some kind of shelter,
+closed when the sun approached the zenith, as though unable to
+endure the too ardent rays of the luminary that called it into life.
+Details of this kind, and fragments of eloquent description of the
+gorgeous scenery of the Nile banks, occur frequently in the earlier
+part of the "Expedition," during which there was little intercourse
+with the natives, who were either hostile, uninteresting, or
+concealed. Amongst other reasons for not remaining long near shore,
+and especially for not anchoring there at night, was the torture the
+voyagers experienced from gnats, camel-flies, and small wasps, which
+not only forbade sleep, but rendered it almost impossible to eat and
+drink. To escape this worse than Egyptian plague, the vessels lay in
+the middle of the river, which, for some time after their departure,
+was often three or four miles across. When the breeze was fresh,
+there was some relief from insect persecution, but a lull made the
+attacks insupportable. Doubtless a European complexion encouraged
+these. Our German lifts up his voice in agony and malediction.
+
+"The 10th December.--A dead calm all night. Gnats!!! No use creeping
+under the bed-clothes, at risk of stifling with heat, compelled as
+one is by their penetrating sting to go to bed dressed. Leave only a
+little hole to breathe at, and in they pour, attacking lips, nose,
+and ears, and forcing themselves into the throat--thus provoking a
+cough which is torture, since, at each inspiration, a fresh swarm
+finds its way into the gullet. They penetrate to the most sensitive
+part of the body, creeping in, like ants, at the smallest aperture.
+In the morning my bed contained thousands of the small demons which
+I had crushed and smothered by the perpetual rolling about of my
+martyred body. As I had forgotten to bring a musquito net from
+Chartum, there was nothing for it but submission. Neither had I
+thought of providing myself with leather gloves, unbearable in that
+hot climate, but which here, upon the Nile, would have been by far
+the lesser evil, since I was compelled to have a servant opposite to
+me at supper-time, waving a huge fan so close under my nose, that it
+was necessary to watch my opportunity to get the food to my mouth.
+One could not smoke one's pipe in peace, even though keeping one's
+hands wrapped in a woollen burnous, for the vermin stung through
+this, and crept up under it from the ground. The black and coloured
+men on board were equally ill-treated; and all night long the word
+'_Baùda_' resounded through the ship, with an accompaniment of
+curses and flapping of cloths. The _baùda_ resemble our long-legged
+gnats, but have a longer proboscis, with which they bore through a
+triple fold of strong linen. Their head is blue, their back tawny,
+and their legs are covered with white specks like small pearls,
+Another sort has short, strong legs, a thick brown body, a red
+head, and posteriors of varying hues." These parti-coloured and
+persevering bloodsuckers caused boils by the severity of their
+sting, and so exhausted the sailors by depriving them of sleep,
+that the ships could hardly be worked. Bitterly and frequently does
+Mr Werne recur to his sufferings from their ruthless attacks. At
+last a strange auxiliary came to his relief. On Christmas-day he
+writes:--"For the last two nights we have been greatly disturbed by
+the gnats, but a small cat, which I have not yet seen by daylight,
+seems to find particular pleasure in licking my face, pulling my
+beard, and purring continually, thus keeping off the insects.
+Generally the cats in Bellet-Sudan are of a very wild and fierce
+nature, which seems the result of their indifferent treatment by the
+inhabitants. They walk into the poultry-houses and carry off the
+strongest fowls, but care little for rats and mice. The Barabras,
+especially those of Dongola, often eat them; not so the Arabs,
+who spare them persecution--the cat having been one of Mahomet's
+favourite animals--but who, at the same time, hold them unclean."
+
+There is assuredly no river in the world whose banks, for so great
+a distance, are so thickly peopled as those of the Nile. Day after
+day the expedition passed an unbroken succession of populous
+villages, until Mr Werne wondered whence the inhabitants drew
+their nourishment, and a sapient officer from Kurdistan opined the
+Schilluks to be a greater nation than the French. But what people,
+and what habitations! The former scarce a degree above the brute,
+the latter resembling dog-kennels, or more frequently thatched
+bee-hives, with a round hole in the side, through which the inmates
+creep. Stark-naked, these savages lay in the high grass, whose
+seed forms part of their food, and gibbered and beckoned to the
+passing Turks, who, for the most part, disregarded their gestures
+of amity and invitation, shrewdly suspecting that their intentions
+were treacherous and their lances hidden in the herbage. Wild rice,
+fruits, and seeds, are eaten by these tribes, (the Schilluks,
+Dinkas, and others,) who have also herds of cattle--oxen, sheep, and
+goats, and who do not despise a hippopotamus chop or a crocodile
+cutlet. Where the land is unproductive, fish is the chief article
+of food. They have no horses or camels, and when they steal one of
+these animals from the Turks, they do not kill it, probably not
+liking its flesh, but they put out its eyes as a punishment for
+having brought the enemy into their country. In one hour Mr Werne
+counted seventeen villages, large or small; and Soliman Kaschef
+assured him the Schilluks numbered two millions of souls, although
+it is hard to say how he obtained the census. The _Bando_ or king,
+although dwelling only two or three leagues from the river, did
+not show himself. He mistrusted the Turks, and all night the great
+war-drum was heard to beat. His savage majesty was quite right to be
+on his guard. "I am well persuaded," says Mr Werne, "that if Soliman
+Kaschef had once got the dreaded Bando of the Schilluks on board,
+he would have sailed away with him. I read that in his face when
+he was told the Bando would not appear. And gladly as I would have
+seen this negro sovereign, I rejoiced that his caution frustrated
+the projected shameful treachery. He had no particular grounds for
+welcoming the Musselmans, those sworn foes of his people. Shortly
+before our departure, he had sent three ambassadors to Chartum, to
+put him on a friendly footing with the Turks, and so to check the
+marauding expeditions of his Arab neighbours, of Soliman Kaschef
+amongst the rest. The three Schilluks, who could not speak Arabic,
+were treated in the Divan with customary contempt as _Abit_,
+(slaves) and were handed over like common men to the care of Sheikh
+el Bellet of Chartum. The Sheikh, who receives no pay, and performs
+the duties of his office out of fear rather than for the sake of the
+honour, showed them such excellent hospitality, that they came to
+us Franks and begged a few piastres to buy bread and spirits." On
+Mr Werne's representations to the Effendi, or chief man at Chartum,
+dresses of honour (the customary presents) were prepared for them,
+but they departed stealthily by night; and their master, the Bando,
+was very indignant on learning the treatment they had received.
+
+A vast green meadow, a sort of elephant pasture, separates the
+Schilluks from their neighbours the Jengähs, concerning whom Mr
+Werne obtained some particulars from a Tschauss or sergeant,
+named Marian of Mount Habila, the son of the Mak or King of the
+mountains of Nuba. His father had been vanquished and murdered by
+the Turks, and he had been made a slave. This sergeant-prince was
+of middle height, with a black tatooed countenance, and with ten
+holes in each ear, out of which his captors had taken the gold
+rings. He was a sensible, well-behaved man, and had been thirteen
+years in the service, but was hopeless of promotion, having none to
+recommend him. Besides this man, there were two Dinkas and a Jengäh
+on board; but from them it was impossible to extract information
+with respect to the manners and usages of their countrymen.
+They held it treachery to divulge such particulars. Many of the
+soldiers and sailors composing the expedition being natives of the
+countries through which it sailed, apprehensions of desertion were
+entertained, and partially realised. On the 30th December, whilst
+passing through the friendly land of the Keks, everybody slept on
+shore, and in the night sixteen men on guard deserted. They were
+from the distant country of Nuba, (a district of Nubia,) which it
+seemed scarcely possible they should ever reach, with their scanty
+store of ammunition, and exposed to the assaults of hunger, thirst,
+and hostile tribes. Hussein Aga went after them with fifty ferocious
+Egyptians, likely to show little mercy to the runaways, with whom,
+however, they could not come up. And suddenly the drums beat to call
+all hands on board, for there was a report that all the negroes
+were planning escape. During this halt Mr Werne made ornithological
+observations, ascertaining, amongst other things, the species of
+certain white birds, which he had observed sitting impudently upon
+the backs of the elephants, picking the vermin from their thick
+hides, as crows do in Europe from the backs of pigs. The elephants
+evidently disapproved the operation, and lashed with their trunks
+at their tormentors, who then flew away, but instantly returned to
+recommence what Mr Werne calls their "dry fishing." These birds
+proved to be small herons. Shortly before this, a large pelican
+had been shot, and its crop was found to contain twenty-four fresh
+fish, the size of herrings. Its gluttony had caused its death, the
+weight it carried impeding its flight. Prodigious swarms of birds
+and water-fowl find their nourishment in the White Stream, and upon
+its swampy banks. In some places the trees were white with their
+excrements, whose accumulation destroyed vegetable life. There is no
+lack of nourishment for the feathered tribes--water and earth are
+prolific of vermin. Millions of glow-worms glimmer in the rushes,
+the air resounds with the shrill cry of myriads of grasshoppers,
+and with the croaking of countless frogs. But for the birds, which
+act as scavengers and vermin-destroyers, those shores would be
+uninhabitable. The scorching sun fecundates the sluggish waters
+and rank fat marsh, causing a never-ceasing birth of reptiles and
+insects. Monstrous fish and snakes of all sizes abound. Concerning
+the latter, the Arabs have strange superstitions. They consider them
+in some sort supernatural beings, having a king, Shach Maran by
+name, who is supposed to dwell in Turkish Kurdistan, not far from
+Adana, where two villages are exempted from tribute on condition of
+supplying the snakes with milk. Abdul-Elliab, a Kurd officer of the
+expedition, had himself offered the milk-sacrifice to the snakes;
+and he swore that he had seen their king, or at any rate one of his
+_Wokils_, or vicegerents, of whom his serpentine majesty has many.
+He had no sooner poured his milky offering into one of the marble
+basins nature has there hollowed out, than a great snake, with long
+hair upon its head, stepped out of a hole in the rocks and drank.
+It then retired, without, as in some other instances, speaking to
+the sacrificer, a taciturnity contritely attributed by the latter
+to his not having yet entirely abjured strong drinks. Two other
+Kurds vouched for the truth of this statement, adding, that the
+_Maran_ had a human face, for that otherwise he could not speak,
+and that he never showed himself except to a sultan or to a very
+holy man. To the latter character the said Abdul-Elliab had great
+pretensions, and his bigotry, hypocrisy, and constant quotations
+from the Koran procured him from his irreverent shipmates, from Mr
+Werne amongst the number, the nickname of the _Paradise-Stormer_,
+it being manifest that he reckoned on taking by assault the blessed
+abode promised by Mahomet to the faithful. Pending his admission to
+the society of the houris, he solaced himself with that of a young
+female slave, who often experienced cruel treatment at the hands of
+her saintly master. Having one day committed the heinous offence of
+preparing _merissa_, a strong drink made from corn, for part of the
+crew, the Kurd, formerly, according to his own admission, a stanch
+toper, beat her with a thong as she knelt half-naked upon the deck.
+"As he did not attend to my calls from the cabin," says Mr Werne,
+"but continued striking her so furiously as to cut the skin and
+draw streams of blood, I jumped out, and pulled him backwards, so
+that his legs flew up in the air. He sprang to his feet, retreated
+to the bulwark of the ship, drew his sabre, and shouted, with a
+menacing countenance, 'Effendi!' instead of calling me Kawagi,
+which signifies a merchant, and is the usual title for a Frank. I
+had no sooner returned to the cabin than he seized his slave to
+throw her overboard, whereupon I caught up my double-barrel and
+levelled at him, calling out, '_Ana oedrup!_' (I fire.) Thereupon
+he let the girl go, and with a pallid countenance protested she was
+his property, and he could do as he liked with her. Subsequently
+he complained of me to the commandant, who, knowing his malicious
+and hypocritical character, sent him on board the skiff, to the
+great delight of the whole flotilla. On our return to Chartum,
+he was cringing enough to ask my pardon, and to want to kiss my
+hand, (although he was then a captain) because he saw that the
+Bascha distinguished me. A few days previously to this squabble,
+I had gained the affection and confidence of our black soldiers,
+one of whom, a Tokruri or pilgrim from Darfur, had quarrelled with
+an Arab, and wounded him with his knife. He jumped overboard to
+drown himself, and, being unable to swim, had nearly accomplished
+his object, when he drifted to our ship and was lifted on board.
+They wanted to make him stand on his head, but I had him laid
+horizontally upon his side, and began to rub him with a woollen
+cloth, but at first could get no one to help me because he was an
+_Abit_, a slave, until I threatened the captain he should be made
+to pay the Bascha for the loss of his soldier. After long-continued
+rubbing, the Tokruri gave signs of life, and they raised him into
+a sitting posture, whilst his head still hung down. One of the
+soldiers, who, as a Faki, pretended to be a sort of awaker of the
+dead, seized him from behind under the arms, lifted him, and let him
+fall thrice violently upon his hinder end, shouting in his ear at
+the same time passages from the Koran, to which the Tokruri at last
+replied by similar quotations. The superstition of these people is
+so gross, that they believe such a pilgrim may be completely and
+thoroughly drowned, and yet retain power to float to any part of the
+shore he pleases, and, once on dry land, to resume his vitality."
+
+A credulous traveller would have been misled by some of the strange
+fables put forward, with great plausibility, by these Arabs and
+other semi-savages, who have, moreover, a strong tendency to
+exaggerate, and who, perceiving the avidity with which Mr Werne
+investigated the animal and vegetable world around him, and his
+desire for rare and curious specimens, occasionally got up a lie
+for his benefit. Although kept awake many nights by the merciless
+midges, his zeal for science would not suffer him to sleep in the
+day, because he had no one he could trust to note the windings of
+the river. One sultry noon, however, when the Arab rowers were
+lazily impelling the craft against unfavourable breezes, and the
+stream was straight for a long distance ahead, he indulged in a
+siesta, during which visions of a happy German home hovered above
+his pillow. On awaking, bathed in perspiration, to the dismal
+realities of the pestilential Bach'r el Abiat, of incessant gnats
+and barbarian society, his Arab companions had a yarn cut and dried
+for him. During my sleep they had seen a swimming-bird as large as
+a young camel, with a straight beak like a pelican, but without a
+crop; they had not shot it for fear of awaking me, and because they
+had no doubt of meeting with some more of these unknown birds. No
+others appeared, and Mr Werne noted the camel-bird as an Egyptian
+lie, not as a natural curiosity.
+
+A month's sail carried the expedition into the land of the Keks,
+a numerous, but not a very prosperous tribe. Their _tokuls_ or
+huts were entirely of straw, walls as well as roof. The men were
+quite naked, and of a bluish-gray colour, from the slime of the
+Nile, with which they smear themselves as a protection against the
+gnats. "There was something melancholy in the way in which those
+poor creatures raised their hands above their heads, and let them
+slowly fall, by manner of greeting. They had ivory rings upon their
+arms, and one of them turned towards his hut, as if inviting us
+in. Another stood apart, lifted his arms, and danced round in a
+circle. A Dinka on board, who is acquainted with their language,
+said they wanted us to give them durra, (a sort of corn,) and
+that their cows were far away and would not return till evening.
+This Dinka positively asserted, as did also Marian, that the Keks
+kill no animal, but live entirely on grain and milk. I could not
+ascertain, with certainty, whether this respect for brute life
+extended itself to game and fish, but it is universally affirmed
+that they eat cattle that die a natural death. This is done to some
+extent in the land of Sudan, although not by the genuine Arabs:
+it is against the Koran to eat a beast even that has been slain
+by a bullet, unless its throat has been cut whilst it yet lived,
+to let the prohibited blood escape. At Chartum I saw, one morning
+early, two dead camels lying on a public square; men cut off great
+pieces to roast, and the dogs looked on longingly. I myself, with
+Dr Fischer and Pruner, helped to consume, in Kahira, a roasted
+fragment of Clot Bey's beautiful giraffe, which had eaten too much
+white clover. The meat was very tender, and of tolerably fine grain.
+The tongue was quite a delicacy. On the other hand, I never could
+stomach the coarse-grained flesh of camels, even of the young ones."
+Africa is the land of strong stomachs. The Arabs, when on short
+rations, eat locusts; and some of the negro tribes devour the fruit
+of the elephant-tree, an abominable species of pumpkin, coveted by
+elephants, but rejected even by Arabs, and which Mr Werne found
+wholly impracticable, although his general rule was to try all the
+productions of the country. His gastronomical experiments are often
+connected with curious details of the animals upon which he tried
+his teeth. On the 12th January, whilst suffering from an attack of
+Nile-fever, which left him scarcely strength enough to post up his
+journal, he heard a shot, and was informed that Soliman Kaschef had
+killed with a single bullet a large crocodile, as it lay basking on
+a sandy promontory of the bank. The Circassian made a present of the
+skin to M. Arnaud, an excellent excuse for an hour's pause, that
+the Frenchman might get possession of the scaly trophy. Upon such
+trifling pretexts was the valuable time of the expedition frittered
+away. "Having enough of other meat at that moment, the people
+neglected cutting off the tail for food. My servants, however, who
+knew that I had already tasted that sort of meat at Chartum, and
+that at Taka I had eaten part of a snake, prepared for me by a
+dervish, brought me a slice of the crocodile. Even had I been in
+health, I could not have touched it, on account of the strong smell
+of musk it exhaled; but, ill as I was, they were obliged to throw
+it overboard immediately. When first I was in crocodile countries,
+it was incomprehensible to me how the boatmen scented from afar
+the presence of these creatures; but on my journey from Kahira to
+Sennaar, when they offered me in Korusko a young one for sale, I
+found my own olfactories had become very sensitive to the peculiar
+odour. When we entered the Blue Stream, I could smell the crocodiles
+six hundred paces off, before I had seen them. The glands,
+containing a secretion resembling musk, are situated in the hinder
+part of the animal, as in the civet cats of Bellet Sudan, which are
+kept in cages for the collection of the perfume."
+
+As the travellers ascended the river, their intercourse with the
+natives became much more frequent, inasmuch as these, more remote
+from Egyptian aggression, had less ground for mistrustful and
+hostile feelings. Captain Selim had a stock of coloured shirts,
+and an immense bale of beads, with which he might have purchased
+the cattle, villages, goods and chattels, and even the bodies, of
+an entire tribe, had he been so disposed. The value attached by
+the savages of the White Stream to the most worthless objects of
+European manufacture, enabled Mr Werne to obtain, in exchange for
+a few glass beads, a large collection of their arms, ornaments,
+household utensils, &c., now to be seen in the Royal Museum at
+Berlin. The stolid simplicity of the natives of those regions
+exceeds belief. One can hardly make up one's mind to consider them
+as men. Even as the _ambak_ seems the link between useful timber
+and worthless rushes, so does the Kek appear to partake as much
+of brute as of human nature. He has at least as much affinity
+with the big gray ape, whose dying agonies excited Mr Werne's
+compassion at the commencement of his voyage, as with the civilised
+and intellectual man who describes their strange appearance and
+manners. A Kek, who had been sleeping in the ashes of a fire, a
+common practice with that tribe, was found standing upon the shore
+by some of the crew, who brought him on board Selim's vessel.
+"Bending his body forward in an awkward ape-like manner, intended
+perhaps to express submission, he approached the cabin, and, on
+finding himself near it, dropped upon his knees and crept forward
+upon them, uttering, in his gibberish, repeated exclamations of
+greeting and wonderment. He had numerous holes through the rims
+of his ears, which contained, however, no other ornament than one
+little bar. They threw strings of beads over his neck, and there
+was no end to his joy; he jumped and rolled upon the deck, kissed
+the planks, doubled himself up, extended his hands over all our
+heads, as if blessing us, and then began to sing. He was an angular,
+high-shouldered figure, about thirty years of age. His attitude
+and gestures were very constrained, which arose, perhaps, from the
+novelty of his situation; his back was bent, big head hung forward,
+his long legs, almost calf-less, were as if broken at the knees; in
+his whole person, in short, he resembled an orang-outang. He was
+perfectly naked, and his sole ornaments consisted of leathern rings
+upon the right arm. How low a grade of humanity is this! The poor
+natural touches one with his childish joy, in which he is assuredly
+happier than any of us. By the help of the Dinka interpreter, he is
+instructed to tell his countrymen they have no reason to retreat
+before such _honest_ people as those who man the flotilla. Kneeling,
+jumping, creeping, kissing the ground, he is then led away by the
+hand like a child, and would assuredly take all he has seen for a
+dream, but for the beads he bears with him." Many of these tribes
+are composed of men of gigantic stature. On the 7th January, Mr
+Werne, being on shore, would have measured some of the taller
+savages, but they objected. He then gave his servants long reeds
+and bade them stand beside the natives, thus ascertaining their
+average height to be from six to seven Rhenish feet. The Egyptians
+and Europeans looked like pigmies beside them. The women were in
+proportion with the men. Mr Werne tells of one lady who looked clear
+away over his head, although he describes himself as above the
+middle height.
+
+At this date, (7th January) the flotilla reached a large lake, or
+inlet of the river, near to which a host of elephants grazed, and
+a multitude of light-brown antelopes stood still and stared at the
+intruders. The sight of the antelopes, which were of a species
+called _ariel_, whose flesh is particularly well-flavoured, was
+too much for Soliman Kaschef to resist. There was no wind; he gave
+orders to cease towing, and went on shore to shoot his supper. The
+antelopes retreated when the ships grated against the bank; and as
+the rush-jungle was by no means safe, beasts of prey being wont to
+hide there to catch the antelopes as they go to water at sunset,
+a few soldiers were sent forward to clear the way. Nevertheless,
+"on our return from the chase, during which not a single shot
+was fired, we lost two _báltaschi_, (carpenters or sappers,) and
+all our signals were insufficient to bring them back. They were
+Egyptians, steady fellows, and most unlikely to desert; but their
+comrades did not trouble themselves to look for them, shrugged their
+shoulders, and supposed they had been devoured by the _assad_ or
+the _nimr_--the lion or tiger. The word _nimr_ is here improperly
+applied, there being no tigers in Africa, but it is the general term
+for panthers and leopards." Here, at four-and-twenty degrees of
+latitude south of Alexandria, this extraordinary river was nearly
+four hundred paces wide. Mr Werne speculates on the origin of this
+astonishing water-course, and doubts the possibility that the
+springs of the White Stream supply the innumerable lakes and creeks,
+and the immense tracts of marsh contiguous to it; that, too, under
+an African sun, which acts as a powerful and constant pump upon the
+immense liquid surface. When he started on his voyage, the annual
+rains had long terminated. What tremendous springs those must be,
+that could keep this vast watery territory full and overflowing!
+Then the sluggishness of the current is another puzzle. Were the
+Nile _one_ stream, Mr Werne observes--referring, of course, to the
+White Nile--it must flow faster than it does. And he concludes
+it to have tributaries, which, owing to the level nature of the
+ground, and to the resistance of the main stream, stagnate to a
+certain extent, rising and falling with the river, and contributing
+powerfully to its nourishment. But the notion of exploring all
+these watery intricacies with a flotilla of heavy-sailing barges,
+manned by lazy Turks and Arabs, and commanded by men who care more
+for getting drunk on arrack and going a-birding, than for the great
+results activity and intelligence might obtain, is essentially
+absurd. The proper squadron to explore the Bach'r el Abiat, through
+the continued windings, and up the numerous inlets depicted in
+Mr Mahlmann's map, is one consisting of three small steamers,
+drawing very little water, with steady well-disciplined English
+crews, accustomed to hot climates, and commanded by experienced and
+scientific officers. With the strongest interest should we watch
+the departure and anticipate the return of such an expedition as
+this. "Much might be done by a steam-boat," says Mr Werne; who then
+enumerates the obstacles to its employment. To bring it over the
+cataracts of the Nile, (below the junction of the Blue and White
+Streams,) it would be necessary to take the paddles entirely out,
+that it might be dragged up with ropes, like a sailing vessel.
+Or else it might be built at Chartum, but for the want of proper
+wood; the sunt-tree timber, although very strong, being exceedingly
+brittle and ill-adapted for ship-building. The greatest difficulty
+would be the fuel--the establishment and guard of coal stores; and
+as to burning charcoal, although the lower portion of the White
+Stream has forests enough, they are wanting on its middle and
+upper banks; to say nothing of the loss of time in felling and
+preparing the wood, of the danger of attacks from natives, &c., &c.
+If some of these difficulties are really formidable, others, on
+the contrary, might easily be overcome, and none are insuperable.
+Mr Werne hardly makes sufficient allowance for the difference
+between Soliman Kaschef and a European naval officer, who would
+turn to profit the hours and days the gallant Circassian spent in
+antelope-shooting, in laughing at Abu Haschis the jester, and in a
+sort of travelling seraglio he had arranged in his inner cabin, a
+dark nook with closely-shut jalousies, that served as prison to an
+unfortunate slave-girl, who lay all day upon a carpet, with scarcely
+space to turn herself, guarded by a eunuch. Not a glimpse of the
+country did the poor thing obtain during the whole of the voyage;
+and, even veiled, she was forbidden to go on deck. Besides these
+oriental relaxations, an occasional practical joke beguiled for the
+commodore the tedium of the voyage. Feizulla, the tailor-captain,
+whose strange passion for thimble and thread made him frequently
+neglect his nautical duties, chanced one day to bring to before his
+superior gave the signal. "Soliman Kaschef had no sooner observed
+this than he fired a couple of shots at Feizulla Capitan, so
+that I myself, standing before the cabin door, heard the bullets
+whistle. Feizulla, did not stir, although both he and the sailors
+in the rigging afterwards affirmed that the balls went within a
+hand's-breadth of his head: he merely said, '_Malesch--hue billab_,'
+(It is nothing--he jests;) and he shot twice in return, pointing
+the gun in the opposite direction, that Soliman might understand
+he took the friendly greeting as a Turkish joke, and that he, as a
+bad shot, dared not level at him." Soliman, on the other hand, was
+far too good a shot for such a sharp jest to be pleasant. The Turks
+account themselves the best marksmen and horsemen in the world, and
+are never weary of vaunting their prowess. Mr Werne says he saw an
+Arnaut of Soliman's shoot a running hare with a single ball, which
+entered in the animal's rear, and came out in front. And it was a
+common practice, during the voyage, to bring down the fruit from
+lofty trees by cutting the twigs with bullets. All these pastimes,
+however retarded the progress of the expedition. The wind was
+frequently light or unfavourable, and the lazy Africans made little
+way with the towing rope. Then a convenient place would often tempt
+to a premature halt; and, notwithstanding Soliman's sharp practice
+with poor Feizulla, if a leading member of the party felt lazily
+disposed, inclined for a hunting-party, or for a visit to a negro
+village, he seldom had much difficulty in bringing the flotilla to
+an anchor. In a straight line from north to south, the expedition
+traversed, between its departure from Chartum and its return
+thither, about sixteen hundred miles. It is difficult to calculate
+the distance gone over; and probably Mr Werne himself would be
+puzzled exactly to estimate it; but adding 20 per cent for windings,
+obliquities, and digressions, (a very liberal allowance,) we get a
+total of nearly two thousand miles, accomplished in five months,
+including stoppages, being at the very moderate rate of about 13
+miles a day. And this, we must remember, was on no rapid stream, but
+up a river, whose current, rarely faster than one mile in an hour,
+was more frequently only half a mile, and sometimes was so feeble
+that it could not be ascertained. The result is not surprising,
+bearing in mind the quality of ships, crews, and commanders: but
+write "British" for "Egyptians," and the tale would be rather
+different.
+
+The upshot of this ill-conducted expedition was its arrival in the
+kingdom of Bari, whose capital city, Pelenja, is situated in 4° N.
+L., and which is inhabited by an exceedingly numerous nation of tall
+and powerful build; the men six and a-half to seven French feet in
+height--equal to seven and seven and a-half English feet--athletic,
+well-proportioned, and, although black, with nothing of the usual
+negro character in their features. The men go naked, with the
+exception of sandals and ornaments; the woman wear leathern aprons.
+They cultivate tobacco and different kinds of grain: from the
+iron found in their mountains they manufacture weapons and other
+implements, and barter them with other tribes. They breed cattle
+and poultry, and are addicted to the chase. About fifteen hundred
+of these blacks came down to the shore, armed to the teeth--a sight
+that inspired the Turks with some uneasiness, although they had
+several of their chiefs on board the flotilla, besides which, the
+frank cordiality and good-humoured intelligent countenances of the
+men of Bari forbade the idea of hostile aggression. "It had been
+a fine opportunity for a painter or sculptor to delineate these
+colossal figures, admirably proportioned, no fat, all muscle, and
+magnificently limbed. None of them have beards, and it would seem
+they use a cosmetic to extirpate them. Captain Selim, whose chin
+was smooth-shaven, pleased them far better than the long-bearded
+Soliman Kaschef; and when the latter showed them his breast,
+covered with a fell of hair, they exhibited a sort of disgust,
+as at something more appropriate to a beast than to a man." Like
+most of the tribes on the banks of the White Nile, they extract
+the four lower incisors, a custom for which Mr Werne is greatly
+puzzled to account, and concerning which he hazards many ingenious
+conjectures. Amongst the ape-like Keks and Dinkas, he fancied it to
+originate in a desire to distinguish themselves from the beasts of
+the field--to which they in so many respects assimilate; but he was
+shaken in this opinion, on finding the practice to prevail amongst
+the intelligent Bari, who need no such mark to establish their
+difference from the brute creation. The Dinkas on board confirmed
+his first hypothesis, saying that the teeth are taken out that they
+may not resemble the jackass--which in many other respects they
+certainly do. The Turks take it to be a rite equivalent to Mahomedan
+circumcision, or to Christian baptism. The Arabs have a much more
+extravagant supposition, which we refrain from stating, the more so
+as Mr Werne discredits it. He suggests the possibility of its being
+an act of incorporation in a great Ethiopian nation, divided into
+many tribes. The operation is performed at the age of puberty; it is
+unaccompanied by any particular ceremonies; and women as well as men
+undergo it. Its motive still remains a matter of doubt to Mr Werne.
+
+Before Lakono, sultan of the Bari, and his favourite sultana Ischok,
+an ordinary-looking lady with two leathern aprons and a shaven head,
+came on board Selim's vessel, the Turks made repeated attempts to
+obtain information from some of the Sheiks concerning the gold
+mines, whose discovery was the main object of the expedition. A
+sensible sort of negro, one Lombé, replied to their questions, and
+extinguished their hopes. There was not even copper, he said, in the
+land of the Bari, although it was brought thither from a remoter
+country, and Lakono had several specimens of it in his treasury. On
+a gold bar being shown to him, he took it for copper, whence it was
+inferred that the two metals were blended in the specimens possessed
+by the sultan, and that the mountains of the copper country also
+yielded the more precious ore. This country, however, lay many days'
+journey distant from the Nile, and, had it even bordered on the
+river, there would have been no possibility of reaching it. At a
+very short distance above Palenja, the expedition encountered a bar
+of rocks thrown across the stream. And although Mr Werne hints the
+possibility of having tried the passage, the Turks were sick of the
+voyage and were heartily glad to turn back. At the period of the
+floods the river rises eighteen feet; and there then could be no
+difficulty in surmounting the barrier. Now the waters were falling
+fast. The six weeks lost by Arnaud's fault were again bitterly
+deplored by the adventurous German--the only one of the party
+who really desired to proceed. Twenty days sooner, and the rocks
+could neither have hindered an advance nor afforded pretext for a
+retreat. To Mr Werne's proposal, that they should wait two months
+where they were, when the setting in of the rains would obviate
+the difficulty, a deaf ear was turned--an insufficient stock of
+provisions was objected; and although the flotilla had been stored
+for a ten months' voyage, and had then been little more than two
+months absent from Chartum, the wastefulness that had prevailed gave
+some validity to the objection. One-and-twenty guns were fired, as
+a farewell salute to the beautiful country Mr Werne would so gladly
+have explored, and which, he is fully convinced, contains so much of
+interest; and the sluggish Egyptian barks retraced their course down
+stream.
+
+It is proper here to note a shrewd conjecture of Mr Werne's,
+that above the point reached by himself and his companions, the
+difficulties of ascending the river would greatly and rapidly
+increase. The bed becomes rocky, and the Bach'r el Abiat, assuming
+in some measure the character of a mountain stream, augments the
+rapidity of its current: so much so, that Mr Werne insists on the
+necessity of a strong north wind, believing that towing, however
+willingly and vigorously attempted, would be found unavailing. This
+is another strong argument in favour of employing steamboats.
+
+Although the narrative of the homeward voyage is by no means
+uninteresting, and contains details of the river's course valuable
+to the geographer and to the future explorer, it has not the
+attraction of the up-stream narrative. The freshness is worn off;
+the waters sink, and the writer's spirits seem disposed to follow
+their example; there is all the difference between attack and
+retreat--between a cheerful and hopeful advance, and a retrograde
+movement before the work is half done. But, vexed as an enthusiastic
+and intrepid man might naturally feel at seeing his hopes frustrated
+by the indolent indifference of his companions, Mr Werne could
+hardly deem his five months thrown away. We are quite sure those
+who read his book will be of opinion that the time was most
+industriously and profitably employed.
+
+A sorrowful welcome awaited our traveller, after his painful and
+fatiguing voyage. There dwelt at Chartum a renegade physician, a
+Palermitan named Pasquali, whose Turkish name was Soliman Effendi,
+and who was notorious as a poisoner, and for the unscrupulous
+promptness with which he removed persons in the slightest degree
+unpleasing to himself or to his patron Achmet Bascha. In Arabia, it
+was currently believed, he had once poisoned thirty-three soldiers,
+with the sole view of bringing odium upon the physician and
+apothecary, two Frenchmen, who attended them. In Chartum he was well
+known to have committed various murders.
+
+"Although this man," says Mr Werne, "was most friendly and sociable
+with me, I had everything to fear from him on account of my brother,
+by whom the Bascha had declared his intention of replacing him in
+the post of medical inspector of Bellet-Sudàn. It was therefore in
+the most solemn earnest that I threatened him with death, if upon
+my return I found my brother dead, and learned that they had come
+at all in contact. '_Dio guarde, che affronto!_' was his reply;
+and he quietly drank off his glass of rum, the same affront having
+already been offered him in the Bascha's divan; the reference being
+naturally to the poisonings laid to his charge in Arabia and here."
+
+At Chartum Mr Werne found his brother alive, but on the eleventh
+day after his return he died in his arms. The renegade had had no
+occasion to employ his venomous drugs; the work had been done as
+surely by the fatal influence of the noxious climate.
+
+
+
+
+ART AND ARTISTS IN SPAIN.
+
+
+The accomplishments brought back by our grandfathers from the
+Continent to grace the drawing-rooms of May Fair, or enliven the
+solitudes of Yorkshire, were a favourite subject for satirists, some
+"sixty years since." Admitting the descriptions to be correct, it
+must be remembered that the grand tour had become at once monotonous
+and deleterious,--from Calais to Paris, from Paris to Geneva,
+from Geneva to Milan, from Milan to Florence, thence to Rome, and
+thence to Naples, the English "my lord," with his bear-leader,
+was conducted with regularity, if not with speed; and the same
+course of sights and society was prescribed for, and taken by,
+generation after generation of Oxonians and Cantabs. Then, again,
+the Middle Ages, with their countless graceful vestiges, their
+magnificent architecture, which even archaic Evelyn thought and
+called "barbarous," their chivalrous customs, religious observances,
+rude yet picturesque arts, and fanciful literature, were literally
+blotted out from the note-book of the English tourist. Whatever
+was classical or modern, that was worthy of regard; but whatever
+belonged to "Europe's middle night," _that_ the descendants of
+Saxon thanes or Norman knights disdained even to look at. Even had
+there been no Pyrenees to cross, or no Bay of Biscay to encounter,
+so Gothic a country as Spain was not likely to attract to its
+dusky sierras, frequent monasteries, and mediæval towns, the fine
+gentlemen and Mohawks of those enlightened days; nor need we be
+surprised that the natural beauties of that romantic land--its
+weird mountains, primæval forests, and fertile plains, fragrant
+with orange groves, and bright with flowers of every hue, unknown
+to English gardens--remained unexplored by the countrymen of Gray
+and Goldsmith, who have put on record their marked disapprobation
+of Nature in her wildest and most sublime mood. Thus, then, it was
+that, with rare exceptions, the pleasant land of Spain was a sealed
+book to Englishmen, until the Great Captain rivalled and eclipsed
+the feats and triumphs of the Black Prince in every province of the
+Peninsula, and enabled guardsmen and hussars to admire the treasures
+of Spanish art in many a church and convent unspoiled by French
+rapacity. Nor may we deny our obligations to Gallic plunderers.
+Many a noble picture that now delights the eyes of thousands,
+exalts and purifies the taste of youthful painters, and sends,
+on the purple wings of European fame, the name of its Castilian,
+or Valencian, or Andalusian creator down the stream of time, but
+for Soult or Sebastiani, might still have continued to waste its
+sweetness on desert air. Thenceforward, in spite of brigands and
+captain-generals, rival constitutions and contending princes, have
+adventurous Englishmen been found to delight in rambling, like
+Inglis, in the footsteps of Don Quixote,--emulating the deeds of
+Peterborough, like Ranelagh and Henningsen, or throwing themselves
+into the actual life, and studying the historic manners of Spain,
+like Carnarvon and Ford. Still, though soldier and statesman,
+philosopher and littérateur, had put forth their best powers in
+writing of the country that so worthily interested them, a void was
+ever left for some new comer to fill; and right well, in his three
+handsome, elaborate, and most agreeable volumes, has Mr Stirling
+filled that void. Not one of the goodly band of Spanish painters now
+lacks a "sacred poet" to inscribe his name in the temple of fame.
+With indefatigable research, most discriminating taste, and happiest
+success, has Mr Stirling pursued and completed his pleasant labour
+of love, and presented to the world "Annals of the Artists of Spain"
+worthy--can we say more?--of recording the triumphs of El Mudo and
+El Greco, Murillo and Velasquez.[16]
+
+  [16] _Annals of the Artists of Spain._ By WILLIAM STIRLING, M. A. 3
+  vols. London: Ollivier.
+
+At least a century and a half before Holbein was limning the burly
+frame and gorgeous dress of bluff King Hal, and creating at once
+a school and an appreciation of art in England, were the early
+painters of Spain enriching their magnificent cathedrals, and
+religious houses, with pictures displaying as correct a knowledge
+of art, and as rich a tone of colour, as the works of that great
+master. There is something singular and mysterious in the contrast
+afforded by the early history of painting in the two countries.
+While in poetry, in painting on glass, in science, in manufactures,
+in architecture, England appears to have kept pace with other
+countries, in painting and in sculpture she appears always to
+have lagged far behind. Gower, Chaucer, Friar Bacon, William of
+Wyckham, Waynfleete, the unknown builders of ten thousand churches
+and convents, the manufacturers of the glass that still charms our
+eyes, and baffles the rivalry of our Willements and Wailes, at York
+and elsewhere--the illuminators of the missals and religious books,
+whose delicate fancy and lustrous tints are even now teaching our
+highborn ladies that long-forgotten art--yielded the palm to none of
+their brethren in Europe; but where and who were our contemporaneous
+painters and sculptors? In the luxurious and graceful court of
+Edward IV., who represented that art which Dello and Juan de Castro,
+under royal and ecclesiastical patronage, had carried to such
+perfection in Spain? That no English painters of any note flourished
+at that time, is evident from the silence of all historical
+documents; nor does it appear that foreign artists were induced, by
+the hope of gain or fame, to instruct our countrymen in the art to
+which the discoveries of the Van Eycks had imparted such a lustre.
+It is true that the desolating Wars of the Roses left scant time and
+means to the sovereigns and nobility of England for fostering the
+arts of peace; but still great progress was being made in nearly
+all those arts, save those of which we speak; and, if we remember
+rightly, Mr Pugin assigns the triumph of English architecture to
+this troublous epoch. Nor, although Juan I., Pedro the Cruel, and
+Juan II., were admirers and patrons of painting, was it to royal or
+noble favour that Spanish art owed its chiefest obligations. The
+church--which, after the great iconoclastic struggle of the eighth
+century, had steadily acted on the Horatian maxim,
+
+    "Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures,
+     Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus"--
+
+in Spain embraced the young and diffident art with an ardour
+and a munificence which, in its palmiest and most prosperous days,
+that art never forgot, and was never wearied of requiting. Was it so
+in England? and do we owe our lack of ancient English pictures to
+the reforming zeal of our iconoclastic reformers? Did the religious
+pictures of our Rincons, our Nuñez, and our Borgoñas, share the
+fate of the libraries that were ruthlessly destroyed by the
+ignorant myrmidons of royal rapacity? If so, it is almost certain
+that the records which bewail and denounce the fate of books and
+manuscripts, would not pass over the destruction of pictures; while
+it is still more certain that the monarch and his courtiers would
+have appropriated to themselves the pictured saints, no less than
+the holy vessels, of monastery and convent. It cannot, therefore,
+be said that the English Reformation deprived our national school
+of painting of its most munificent patrons, and most ennobling and
+purest subjects, in the destruction of the monasteries, and the
+spoliation of churches. That the Church of England, had she remained
+unreformed, might, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have
+emulated her Spanish or Italian sister in her patronage of, and
+beneficial influence upon, the arts of painting and sculpture, it
+is needless either to deny or assert; we fear there is no room for
+contending that, since the Reformation, she has in any way fostered,
+guided, or exalted either of those religious arts.
+
+In Spain, on the contrary, as Mr Stirling well points out, it was
+under the august shadow of the church that painting first raised her
+head, gained her first triumphs, executed her most glorious works,
+and is even now prolonging her miserable existence.
+
+The venerable cathedral of Toledo was, in effect, the cradle of
+Spanish painting. Founded in 1226 by St Ferdinand, it remained,
+to quote Mr Stirling's words, "for four hundred years a nucleus
+and gathering-place for genius, where artists swarmed and
+laboured like bees, and where splendid prelates--the popes of
+the Peninsula--lavished their princely revenues to make fair and
+glorious the temple of God intrusted to their care." Here Dolfin
+introduced, in 1418, painting on glass; here the brothers Rodrigues
+displayed their forceful skill as sculptors, in figures which
+still surmount the great portal of that magnificent cathedral;
+and here Rincon, the first Spanish painter who quitted the stiff
+mediæval style, loved best to execute his graceful works. Nor
+when, with the house of Austria, the genius of Spanish art quitted
+the Bourbon-governed land, did the custodians of this august
+temple forget to stimulate and reward the detestable conceits, and
+burlesque sublimities, of such artists as the depraved taste of the
+eighteenth century delighted to honour. Thus, in 1721, Narciso Tome
+erected at the back of the choir an immense marble altar-piece,
+called the Trasparente, by order of Archbishop Diego de Astorgo,
+for which he received two hundred thousand ducats; and thus, fifty
+years later, Bayeu and Maella were employed to paint in fresco
+the cloisters that had once gloried in the venerable paintings of
+Juan de Borgoña. At Toledo, then, under the auspices of the great
+Castilian queen, Isabella, may be said to have risen the Castilian
+school of art. The other great schools of Spanish painting were
+those of Andalusia, of Valencia, and that of Arragon and Catalonia;
+but, for the mass of English readers, the main interest lies in the
+two first, the schools that produced or acquired El Mudo and El
+Greco, Velasquez and Murillo. The works of the two last-mentioned
+artists are now so well known, and so highly appreciated in England,
+that we are tempted to postpone for the present any notice of that
+most delightful part of Sir Stirling's book which treats of them,
+and invite our readers to trace the course of art in that stern old
+city to which we have already referred, Toledo.
+
+Before the grave had closed upon the cold remains of Rincon, Juan de
+Borgoña had proved himself worthy of wielding the Castilian pencil,
+and, under the patronage of the great Toledan archbishop, Ximenes de
+Cisneros, produced works which still adorn the winter chapter-room
+of that cathedral. These are interesting not only as specimens of
+art, but as manifestations of the religious ἠθος of Spain at the
+commencement of the sixteenth century: let Mr Stirling describe one
+of the most remarkable of these early paintings:--"The lower end of
+the finely-proportioned, but badly-lighted room, is occupied by the
+'Last Judgment,' a large and remarkable composition. Immediately
+beneath the figure of our Lord, a hideous fiend, in the shape of a
+boar, roots a fair and reluctant woman out of her grave with his
+snout, as if she were a trufle, twining his tusks in her long amber
+locks. To the left are drawn up in a line a party of the wicked,
+each figure being the incarnation of a sin, of which the name is
+written on a label above in Gothic, letters, as 'Soberbia,' and the
+like. On their shoulders sit little malicious imps, in the likeness
+of monkeys, and round their lower limbs, flames climb and curl.
+The forms of the good and faithful, on the right, display far less
+vigour of fancy." So the good characters in modern works of fiction
+are more feebly drawn, and excite less interest, than the Rob Roys
+and Dirk Hattericks, the Conrads and the Manfreds. Nor was Toledo at
+this time wanting in the sister art of sculpture: while the Rincons,
+and Berruguete, and Borgoña, were enriching the cathedral with their
+pictures and their frescoes, Vigarny was elaborating the famous high
+altar of marble, and the stalls on the epistle side. In concluding
+his notice of Vigarny, "the first great Castilian sculptor," Mr
+Stirling gives a sketch of the style of sculpture popular in Spain.
+Like nearly all the "Cosas d'Espana," it is peculiar, and owes
+its peculiarity to the same cause that has impressed so marked a
+character on Spanish painting and Spanish pharmacopeia--religion.
+
+Let not the English lover of the fine arts, invited to view the
+masterpieces of Spanish sculpture, imagine that his eyes are to be
+feasted on the nude, though hardly indecent forms of Venuses and
+Apollos, Ganymedes and Andromedas.
+
+Beautiful, and breathing, and full of imagination, indeed, those
+Spanish statues are--"idols," as our author generally terms
+them; but the idolatry they represent or evoke is heavenly, not
+earthly--spiritual, not sensuous. Chiselled out of a block of cedar
+or lime-wood, with the most reverential care, the image of the
+Queen of Heaven enjoyed the most exquisite and delicate services of
+the rival sister arts, and, "copied from the loveliest models, was
+presented to her adorers sweetly smiling, and gloriously apparelled
+in clothing of wrought gold." But we doubt whether any Englishman
+who has not seen can understand the marvellous beauty of these
+painted wooden images. Thus Berruguete, who combined both arts in
+perfection, executed in 1539 the archbishop's throne at Toledo,
+"over which hovers an airy and graceful figure, carved in dark
+walnut, representing our Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration, and
+remarkable for its fine and floating drapery."
+
+Continuing our list of Toledan artists, "whose whole lives and
+labours lay within the shadow of that great Toledan church, whose
+genius was spent in its service, and whose names were hardly known
+beyond its walls," (vol. i. p. 150,) we come to T. Comontes, who,
+among other works for that munificent Alma Mater, executed from
+the designs of Vigarny the retablo (reredos) for the chapel "de
+los Reyes Nuevos," in 1533. It was at Toledo that El Mudo, the
+Spanish Titian, died, and at Toledo that Blas del Prado was born.
+When in 1593 the Emperor of Morocco asked that the best painter
+of Spain might be sent to his court, Philip II. appointed Blas
+del Prado to fulfil the Mussulman's artistic desires: previous to
+this, the chapter of Toledo had named him their second painter, and
+he had painted a large altar-piece, and other pictures, for their
+cathedral. But perhaps the Toledan annals of art contain no loftier
+name than that of El Greco. Domemis Theotocopuli, who, born, it is
+surmised, at Venice in 1548, is found in 1577 painting at Toledo,
+for the cathedral, his famous picture of The Parting of our Lord's
+Garment, on which he bestowed the labour of a decade, and of which
+we give Mr Stirling's picturesque description.
+
+"The august figure of the Saviour, arrayed in a red robe, occupies
+the centre of the canvass; the head, with its long dark locks, is
+superb; and the noble and beautiful countenance seems to mourn for
+the madness of them who 'knew not what they did;' his right arm
+is folded on his bosom, seemingly unconscious of the rope which
+encircles his wrist, and is violently dragged downwards by two
+executioners in front. Around and behind him appears a throng of
+priests and warriors, amongst whom the Greek himself figures as the
+centurion, in black armour. In drawing and composition, this picture
+is truly admirable, and the colouring is, on the whole, rich and
+effective--although it is here and there laid on in that spotted
+streaky manner, which afterwards became the great and prominent
+defect of El Greco's style."
+
+Summoned from the cathedral to the court, El Greco painted, by
+royal command, a large altar-piece, for the church at the Escurial,
+on the martyrdom of St Maurice; "little less extravagant and
+atrocious," says our lively author, "than the massacre it recorded."
+Neither king nor court painters could praise this performance, and
+the effect of his failure at the Escurial appears to have been
+his return to Toledo. Here, in 1584, he painted, by order of the
+Archbishop Quiroga, "The Burial of the Count of Orgaz," a picture
+then and now esteemed as his master-piece, and still to be seen
+in the church of Santo Tomé. Warm is the encomium, and eloquently
+expressed, which Mr Stirling bestows upon this gem of Toledan art.
+"The artist, or lover of art, who has once beheld it, will never,
+as he rambles among the winding streets of the ancient city, pass
+the pretty brick belfry of that church--full of horse-shoe niches
+and Moorish reticulations,--without turning aside to gaze upon
+its superb picture once more. It hangs to your left, on the wall
+opposite to the high altar. Gonzalo Ruiz, Count of Orgaz, head of
+a house famous in romance, rebuilt the fabric of the church, and
+was in all respects so religious and gracious a grandee, that,
+when he was buried in 1323, within these very walls, St Stephen and
+St Augustine came down from heaven, and laid his body in the tomb
+with their own holy hands--an incident which forms the subject of
+the picture. St Stephen, a dark-haired youth of noble countenance,
+and St Augustine, a hoary old man wearing a mitre, both of them
+arrayed in rich pontifical vestments of golden tissue, support the
+dead Count in their arms, and gently lower him into the grave,
+shrouded like a baron of Roslin 'in his iron panoply.' Nothing can
+be finer than the execution and the contrast of these three heads;
+never was the image of the peaceful death of 'the just man' more
+happily conveyed, than in the placid face and powerless form of
+the warrior: nor did Giorgione or Titian ever excel the splendid
+colouring of his black armour, rich with gold damascening. To the
+right of the picture, behind St Stephen, kneels a fair boy in a
+dark dress, perhaps the son of the Count; beyond rises the stately
+form of a gray friar; to the left, near St Augustine, stand two
+priests in gorgeous vestments, holding, the one a book, and the
+other a taper. Behind this principal group appear the noble company
+of mourners, hidalgos and old Christians all, with olive faces and
+beards of formal cut, looking on with true Castilian gravity and
+phlegm, as if the transaction were an every-day occurrence. As they
+were mostly portraits, perhaps some of the originals did actually
+stand, a few years later, with the like awe in their hearts and
+calm on their cheeks, in the royal presence-chamber, when the news
+came to court that the proud Armada of Spain had been vanquished by
+the galleys of Howard, and cast away on the rocks of the Hebrides."
+We make no apology for thus freely quoting from Mr Stirling's
+pages his description of this picture; the extract brings vividly
+before our readers at once the merits of the old Toledan painter,
+and his accomplished biographer and critic. After embellishing his
+adopted city, not only with pictures such as this, but with works of
+sculpture and architecture, and vindicating his graceful profession
+from the unsparing exactions of the tax-gatherers--a class who
+appear to have waged an unrelenting though intermittent war against
+the fine arts in Spain--he died there at a green old age in 1625,
+and was buried in the church of St Bartolemé. Even the painters
+most employed at the munificent and art-loving court of the second
+and third Philips, found time to paint for the venerable cathedral.
+Thus, in 1615, Vincencio Carducho, the Florentine, painted, with
+Eugenio Caxes, a series of frescoes in the chapel of the Sagrario;
+and thus Eugenio Caxes, leaving the works at the Pardo and Madrid,
+painted for the cathedral of Toledo the Adoration of the Magi, and
+other independent pictures.
+
+Meanwhile the school of El Greco was producing worthy fruit; from
+it, in the infancy of the seventeenth century, came forth Luis
+Tristan, an artist even now almost unknown in London and Edinburgh,
+but whose style Velasquez did not disdain to imitate, and whose
+praises he was never tired of sounding. "Born, bred, and sped"
+in Toledo, or its neighbourhood, as Morales was emphatically the
+painter of Badajoz, so may Tristan be termed the painter of Toledo.
+No foreign graces, no classical models, adorned or vitiated his
+stern Spanish style; yet, in his portrait of Archbishop Sandoval,
+he is said by Mr Stirling to have united the elaborate execution
+of Sanchez Coello with much of the spirit of Titian. And of him is
+the pleasant story recorded, that having, while yet a stripling,
+painted for the Jeronymite convent at Toledo a Last Supper, for
+which he asked two hundred ducats, and being denied payment by the
+frugal friars, he appealed with them to the arbitration of his old
+master, El Greco, who, having viewed the picture, called the young
+painter a rogue and a novice, for asking only two for a painting
+worth five hundred ducats. In the same Toledan church that contains
+the ashes of his great master, lies the Murcian Pedro Orrente,
+called by our author "the Bassano, or the Roos--the great sheep and
+cattle master of Spain:" he too was employed by the art-encouraging
+chapter, and the cathedral possessed several of his finest pictures.
+But with Tristan and Orrente the glories of Toledan art paled and
+waned; and, trusting that our readers have not been uninterested
+in following our brief sketch of the remarkable men who for four
+hundred years rendered this quaint old Gothic city famous for its
+artistic splendours, we retrace our steps, halting and perplexed
+among so many pleasant ways, blooming flowers, and brilliant bowers,
+to the magnificent, albeit gloomy Escurial, where Philip II lavished
+the wealth of his mighty empire in calling forth the most vigorous
+energies of Spanish and of foreign art.
+
+For more than thirty years did the astonished shepherds of the
+Guadaramas watch the mysterious pile growing under scaffolding alive
+with armies of workmen; and often, while the cares of the Old World
+and the New--to say nothing of that other World, which was seldom
+out of Philip's thoughts, and to which his cruel fanaticism hurried
+so many wretches before their time--might be supposed to demand
+his attention at Madrid, were they privileged to see their mighty
+monarch perched on a lofty ledge of rock, for hours, intently gazing
+upon the rising walls and towers which were to redeem his vow to St
+Laurence at the battle of Saint Quentin, and to hand down, through
+all Spanish time, the name and fame of the royal and religious
+founder. On the 23d of April 1563, the first stone of this Cyclopean
+palace was laid, under the direction of Bautiste di Toledo, at
+whose death, in 1567, the work was continued by Juan de Herrera,
+and finally perfected by Leoni (as to the interior decorations) in
+1597. Built in the quaint unshapely form of St Laurence's gridiron,
+the Escurial is doubtless open to much severe criticism; but the
+marvellous grandeur, the stern beauty, and the characteristic
+effect of the gigantic pile, must for ever enchant the eyes of all
+beholders, who are not doomed by perverse fate to look through the
+green spectacles of gentle dulness. But it is not our purpose to
+describe the Escurial; we only wish to bring before our readers the
+names and merits of a few of the Spanish artists, who found among
+its gloomy corridors or sumptuous halls niches in the temple of
+fame, and in its saturnine founder the most gracious and munificent
+of patrons. Suffice it, then, to say of the palace-convent, in Mr
+Stirling's graceful words, that "Italy was ransacked for pictures
+and statues, models and designs; the mountains of Sicily and
+Sardinia for jaspers and agates; and every sierra of Spain furnished
+its contribution of marble. Madrid, Florence, and Milan supplied
+the sculptures of the altars; Guadalajara and Cuenca, gratings
+and balconies; Saragossa the gates of brass; Toledo and the Low
+Countries, lamps, candelabra, and bells; the New World, the finer
+woods; and the Indies, both East and West, the gold and gems of the
+custodia, and the five hundred reliquaries. The tapestries were
+wrought in Flemish looms; and, for the sacerdotal vestments, there
+was scarce a nunnery in the empire, from the rich and noble orders
+of Brabant and Lombardy to the poor sisterhoods of the Apulian
+highlands, but sent an offering of needlework to the honoured
+fathers of the Escurial."
+
+We could wish to exclude from our paper all notice of the foreign
+artists, whose genius assisted in decorating the new wonder of the
+world; but how omit from any Escurialian or Philippian catalogue
+the names of Titian and Cellini, Cambiaso and Tibaldi? For seven
+long years did the great Venetian labour at his famous Last Supper,
+painted for, and placed in the refectory; and countless portraits
+by his fame-dealing pencil graced the halls and galleries of the
+Palatian convents. In addition to these, the Pardo boasted eleven of
+his portraits; among them, one of the hero Duke Emmanuel Philibert
+of Savoy, who has received a second grant of renown--let us hope
+a more lasting one[17]--from the poetic chisel of Marochetti, and
+stands now in the great square of Turin, the very impersonation of
+chivalry, horse and hero alike--κυδεί γαιῶν.
+
+  [17] All these portraits were destroyed by fire in the reign of
+  Philip III.
+
+The magnificent Florentine contributed "the matchless marble
+crucifix behind the prior's seat in the choir," of which Mr Stirling
+says--"Never was marble shaped into a sublimer image of the great
+sacrifice for man's atonement." Luca Cambiaso, the Genoese, painted
+the Martyrdom of St Laurence for the high altar of the church--a
+picture that must have been regarded, from its subject and position,
+as the first of all the Escurial's religious pictures,--besides the
+vault of the choir, and two great frescoes for the grand staircase.
+
+Pellegrino Tibaldi, a native of the Milanese, came at Philip's
+request to the Escurial in 1586. He, too, painted a Martyrdom of
+Saint Laurence for the high altar, but apparently with no better
+success than his immediate predecessor, Zuccaro, whose work his
+was to replace. But the ceiling of the library was Tibaldi's field
+of fame; on it he painted a fresco 194 feet long by 30 wide,
+which still speaks to his skill in composition and brilliancy in
+colouring. Philip rewarded him with a Milanese marquisate and one
+hundred thousand crowns.
+
+Morales, the first great devotional painter of Castile, on whom his
+admiring countrymen bestowed the soubriquet of "divine"--with more
+propriety, it must be confessed, than their descendants have shown
+in conferring it upon Arguelles--contributed but one picture to
+the court, and none to the Escurial; but in Alonzo Sanchez Coello,
+born at Benifayrô, in Valencia, we find a famous native artist
+decorating the superb walls of the new palace. While at Madrid he
+was lodged in the Treasury, a building which communicated with the
+palace by a door, of which the King kept a key; and often would the
+royal Mæcenas slip thus, unobserved by the artist, into his studio.
+Emperors and popes, kings and queens, princes and princesses, were
+alike his friends and subjects; but we are now only concerned
+to relate that, in 1582, he painted "five altar-pieces for the
+Escurial, each containing a pair of saints." Far more of interest,
+however, attaches itself to the name and memory of Juan Fernandez
+Navarete, "whose genius was no less remarkable than his infirmities,
+and whose name--El Mudo, the dumb painter--is as familiar to Europe
+as his works are unknown," (vol. i. p. 250.) Born at Logroño in
+1526, he went in his youth to Italy. Here he attracted the notice
+of Don Luis Manrique, grand-almoner to Philip, who procured him
+an invitation to Madrid. He was immediately set to work for the
+Escurial; and in 1571 four pictures, the Assumption of the Virgin,
+the Martyrdom of St James the Great, St Philip, and a Repenting St
+Jerome, were hung in the sacristy of the convent, and brought him
+five hundred ducats. In 1576 he painted, for the reception-hall of
+the convent, a large picture representing Abraham receiving the
+three Angels. "This picture," says Father Andres Ximenes, quoted
+by Mr Stirling, (vol. i. p. 255) "so appropriate to the place it
+fills, though the first of the master's works that usually meets
+the eye, might, for its excellence, be viewed the last, and is well
+worth coming many a league to see." An agreement, bearing date the
+same year, between the painter and the prior, by which the former
+covenanted to paint thirty-two large pictures for the side altars,
+is preserved by Cean Bermudez; but El Mudo unfortunately died when
+only eight of the series had been painted. On the 28th of March 1579
+this excellent and remarkable painter died in the 53d year of his
+age. A few years later, Juan Gomez painted from a design of Tibaldi
+a large picture of St Ursula, which replaced one of Cambiaso's least
+satisfactory Escurialian performances.
+
+While acres of wall and ceiling were being thus painted in fresco,
+or covered by large and fine pictures, the Escurial gave a ready
+home to the most minute of the fine arts: illuminators of missals,
+and painters of miniatures, embroiderers of vestments, and designers
+of altar-cloths, found their labours appreciated, and their
+genius called forth, no less than their more aspiring compeers.
+Fray Andrez de Leon, and Fray Martin de Palencia, enriched the
+Escurial with exquisite specimens of their skill in the arts of
+miniature-painting and illuminating; and under the direction of Fray
+Lorenzo di Monserrate, and Diego Rutiner, the conventual school of
+embroidery produced frontals and dalmatics, copes, chasubles, and
+altar-cloths, of rarest beauty and happiest designs. The goldsmiths
+and silversmiths, too, lacked not encouragement in this greatest
+of temples. Curious was the skill, and cunning the hand, which
+fashioned the tower of gold and jasper to contain the Escurial's
+holiest relique,--a muscle, singed and charred, of St Laurence--and
+no doubt that skill was nobly rewarded.
+
+In 1598, clasping to his breast the veil of Our Lady of Monserrat,
+in a little alcove hard by the church of the Escurial, died its
+grim, magnificent founder. He had witnessed the completion of his
+gigantic designs: palace and convent, there it stood--a monument
+alike of his piety and his pride, and a proof of the grandeur and
+resources of the mighty empire over which he ruled. But he appears
+to have thought with the poet--
+
+    "Weighed in the balance, hero-dust
+      Is vile as mortal clay;"
+
+for he built no stately mausoleum, merely a common vault, to
+receive the imperial dead. This omission, in 1617, Philip III.
+undertook to supply; and Giovanni Battista Crescenzi, an Italian,
+was selected as the architect. For thirty-four years did he and his
+successors labour at this royal necropolis, which when finished
+"became, under the name of the Pantheon, the most splendid chamber
+of the Escurial."--(Vol. i. p. 412.)
+
+Mr Stirling's second volume opens with a graphic account of the
+decay of Spanish power under Philip IV., and an equally graphic
+description of this, the chief architectural triumph of his long
+inglorious reign. The Pantheon was "an octagonal chamber 113 feet
+in circumference, and 38 feet in height, from the pavement to the
+centre of the domed vault. Each of its eight sides, excepting the
+two which are occupied by its entrance, and the altar, contain
+four niches and four marble urns; the walls, Corinthian pilasters,
+cornices and dome, are formed of the finest marbles of Toledo and
+Biscay, Tortosa and Genoa; and the bases, capitals, scrolls, and
+other ornaments, are of gilt bronze. Placed beneath the presbytery
+of the church, and approached by the long descent of a stately
+marble staircase, this hall of royal tombs, gleaming with gold and
+polished jasper, seems a creation of Eastern romance.... Hither
+Philip IV. would come, when melancholy--the fatal taint of his blood
+was strong upon him--to hear mass, and meditate on death, sitting in
+the niche which was shortly to receive his bones." Yet this was the
+monarch whose quick eye detected the early genius of Velasquez, and
+who bore the palm as a patron from all the princes of his house, and
+all the sovereigns of Europe. Well did the great painter repay the
+discriminating friendship of the king, and so long as Spanish art
+endures, will the features of Philip IV. be known in every European
+country; and his fair hair, melancholy mien, impassive countenance
+and cold eyes, reveal to all time the hereditary characteristics of
+the phlegmatic house of Austria.
+
+Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velasquez was born at Seville in 1599.
+Here he entered the school of Herrera the Elder, a dashing painter,
+and a violent man, who was for ever losing alike his temper and
+his scholars. Velasquez soon left his turbulent rule for the
+gentler instruction of Francisco Pacheco. In his studio the young
+artist worked diligently, while he took lessons at the same time
+of a yet more finished artist--nature; the nature of bright,
+sunny, graceful Andalusia. Thus, while Velasquez cannot be called
+a self-taught painter, he retained to the last that freedom from
+mannerism, and that gay fidelity to nature, which so often--not in
+his case--compensate for a departure from the highest rules and
+requirements of art.
+
+While he was thus studying and painting the flowers and the fruits,
+the damsels and the beggars, of sunny Seville, there arrived in that
+beautiful city a collection of Italian and Spanish pictures. These
+exercised no small influence on the taste and style of the young
+artist; but, true to his country, and with the happy inspiration
+of genius, it was to Luis Tristan of Toledo, rather than to any
+foreign master, that he directed his chief attention; and hence the
+future chief of the Castilian school was enabled to combine with its
+merits the excellencies of both the other great divisions of Spanish
+art. At the end of five years spent in this manner, he married
+Pacheco's daughter, who witnessed all his forty years' labours and
+successes, and closed his dying eyes. At the age of twenty-three,
+Velasquez, anxious to enlarge his acquaintance with the masterpieces
+of other schools, went to Madrid; but after spending a few months
+there, and at the Escurial, he returned to Seville--soon, however,
+to be recalled at the bidding of the great minister and Mæcenas,
+Olivarez. Now, in 1623, set in the tide of favour and of fame, which
+henceforward was not to flag or ebb till the great painter lay
+stretched, out of its reach, on the cold bank of death. During this
+summer he painted the noble portrait of the king on horseback, which
+was exhibited by royal order in front of the church of San Felipe,
+and which caused the all-powerful Count-duke to exclaim, that until
+now his majesty had never been painted. Charmed and delighted with
+the picture and the painter, Philip declared no other artist should
+in future paint his royal face; and Mr Stirling maliciously adds
+that "this resolution he kept far more religiously than his marriage
+vows, for he appears to have departed from it during the life-time
+of his chosen artist, in favour only of Rubens and Crayer." (Vol.
+ii. p. 592.) On the 31st of October 1623, Velasquez was formally
+appointed painter in ordinary to the king, and in 1626 was provided
+with apartments in the Treasury. To this period Mr Stirling assigns
+his best likeness of the equestrian monarch, of which he says--"Far
+more pleasing than any other representation of the man, it is also
+one of the finest portraits in the world. The king is in the glow
+of youth and health, and in the full enjoyment of his fine horse,
+and the breeze blowing freshly from the distant hills; he wears dark
+armour, over which flutters a crimson scarf; a hat with black plumes
+covers his head, and his right hand grasps a truncheon."--(P. 595.)
+
+In 1628, Velasquez had the pleasure of showing Rubens, who had come
+to Madrid as envoy from the Low Countries, the galleries of that
+city, and the wonders of the Escurial; and, following the advice
+of that mighty master, he visited Italy the next year. On that
+painter-producing soil, his steps were first turned to the city of
+Titian; but the sun of art was going down over the quays and palaces
+of once glorious Venice, and, hurrying through Ferrara and Bologna,
+the eager pilgrim soon reached Rome. In this metropolis of religion,
+learning, and art, the young Spaniard spent many a pleasant and
+profitable month: nor, while feasting his eyes and storing his
+memory with "its thousand forms of beauty and delight," did he allow
+his pencil a perfect holiday. The Forge of Vulcan and Joseph's Coat
+were painted in the Eternal City. After a few weeks at Naples, he
+returned to Madrid in the spring of 1631. Portrait-painting for his
+royal patron, who would visit his studio every day, and sit there
+long hours, seems to have been now his main occupation; and now
+was he able to requite the friendly aid he had received from the
+Count-duke of Olivarez, whose image remains reflected on the stream
+of time, not after the hideous caricature of Le Sage, but as limned
+by the truthful--albeit grace-conferring--pencil of Velasquez.
+
+In 1639, leaving king and courtiers, lords and ladies, and soaring
+above the earth on which he had made his step so sure, Velasquez
+aspired to the grandest theme of poet, moralist, or painter, and
+nobly did his genius justify the flight. His Crucifixion is one
+of the sublimest representations conceived by the intellect, and
+portrayed by the hand of man, of that stupendous event. "Unrelieved
+by the usual dim landscape, or lowering clouds, the cross in this
+picture has no footing upon earth, but is placed on a plain dark
+ground, like an ivory carving on its velvet pall. Never was that
+great agony more powerfully depicted. The head of our Lord drops
+on his right shoulder, over which falls a mass of dark hair, while
+drops of blood trickle from his thorn-pierced brows. The anatomy of
+the naked body and limbs is executed with as much precision as in
+Cellini's marble, which may have served Velasquez as a model; and
+the linen cloth wrapped about the loins, and even the fir-wood of
+the cross, display his accurate attention to the smallest details of
+a great subject."--(Vol. ii. p. 619.) This masterpiece now hangs in
+the Royal Gallery of Spain at Madrid.
+
+The all-powerful Olivarez underwent, in 1643, the fate of most
+favourites, and experienced the doom denounced by the great English
+satirist on "power too great to keep, or to resign." He had declared
+his intention of making one Julianillo, an illegitimate child of no
+one exactly knew who, his heir; had married him to the daughter of
+the Constable of Castile, decked him with titles and honours, and
+proposed to make him governor of the heir-apparent. The pencil of
+Velasquez was employed to hand down to posterity the features of
+this low-born cause of his great patron's downfall, and the portrait
+of the ex-ballad singer in the streets of Madrid now graces the
+collection of Bridgewater House. The disgrace of Olivarez served to
+test the fine character of Velasquez, who not only sorrowed over his
+patron's misfortunes, but had the courage to visit the disgraced
+statesman in his retirement.
+
+The triumphal entrance of Philip IV. into Lerida, the surrender of
+Breda, and portraits of the royal family, exercised the invention
+and pencil of Velasquez till the year 1648, when he was sent by
+the king on a roving mission into Italy--not to teach the puzzled
+sovereigns the mysterious privileges of self-government, but to
+collect such works of art as his fine taste might think worthy of
+transportation to Madrid. Landing at Genoa, he found himself in
+presence of a troop of Vandyck's gallant nobles: hence he went to
+Milan, Padua, and Venice. At the latter city he purchased for his
+royal master two or three pictures of Tintoret's, and the Venus and
+Adonis of Paul Veronese. But Rome, as in his previous visit, was the
+chief object of his pilgrimage. Innocent X. welcomed him gladly,
+and commanded him to paint, not only his own coarse features, but
+the more delicate ones of Donna Olympia, his "sister-in-law and
+mistress." So, at least, says our author; for the sake of religion
+and human nature, we hope he is mistaken. For more than a year did
+Velasquez sojourn in Rome, purchasing works of art, and enjoying
+the society of Bernini and Nicolas Poussin, Pietro da Cortona and
+Algardi. "It would be pleasing, were it possible, to draw aside
+the dark curtain of centuries, and follow him into the palaces and
+studios--to see him standing by while Claude painted, or Algardi
+modelled, (enjoying the hospitalities of Bentivoglio, perhaps in
+that fair hall glorious with Guido's recent fresco of Aurora)--or
+mingling in the group that accompanied Poussin in his evening walks
+on the terrace of Trinità de Monte."--(Vol. ii. p. 643.) Meanwhile
+the king was impatiently waiting his return, and at last insisted
+upon its being no further delayed; so in 1651 the soil of Spain was
+once more trod by her greatest painter. Five years later, Velasquez
+produced his extraordinary picture, Las Meniñas--the Maids of
+Honour, extraordinary alike in the composition, and in the skill
+displayed by the painter in overcoming its many difficulties. Dwarfs
+and maids of honour, hounds and children, lords and ladies, pictures
+and furniture, are all introduced into this remarkable picture, with
+such success as to make many judges pronounce it to be Velasquez's
+masterpiece, and Luca Giordano to christen it "the theology of
+painting."
+
+The Escurial, from whose galleries and cloisters we have been thus
+lured by the greater glory of Velasquez, in 1656 demanded his
+presence to arrange a large collection of pictures, forty-one of
+which came from the dispersed and abused collection of the only
+real lover of the fine arts who has sat on England's throne--that
+martyr-monarch whom the pencil of Vandyck, and the pens of Lovelace,
+Montrose, and Clarendon, have immortalised, though their swords
+and counsels failed to preserve his life and crown. In 1659 the
+cross of Santiago was formally conferred on this "king of painters,
+and painter of kings;" and on St Prosper's day, in the Church of
+the Carbonera, he was installed knight of that illustrious order,
+the noblest grandees of Spain assisting at the solemn ceremonial.
+The famous meeting on the Isle of Pheasants, so full of historic
+interest, between the crowns and courts of Spain and France,
+to celebrate the nuptials of Louis XIV. and Maria Theresa, was
+destined to acquire an additional though melancholy fame, as the
+last appearance of the great painter in public, and the possible
+proximate cause of his death. To him, as aposentador-mayor, were
+confided all the decorations and arrangements of this costly and
+fatiguing pageant: he was also to find lodging on the road for
+the king and the court; and some idea of the magnitude of his
+official cares may be derived from the fact, that three thousand
+five hundred mules, eighty-two horses, seventy coaches, and seventy
+baggage-waggons, formed the train that followed the monarch out of
+Madrid. On the 28th of June the court returned to Madrid, and on the
+6th of August its inimitable painter expired.
+
+The merits of Velasquez are now generally appreciated in England;
+and the popular voice would, we think, ratify the enthusiastic yet
+sober dictum of Wilkie, "In painting an intelligent portrait he
+is nearly unrivalled." Yet we have seen how he could rise to the
+highest subject of mortal imagination in the Crucifixion; and the
+one solitary naked Venus, which Spanish art in four hundred years
+produced, is his. Mr Stirling, though he mentions this picture
+in the body of his book, assigns it no place in his valuable and
+laboriously compiled catalogue, probably because he was unable to
+trace its later adventures. Brought to England in 1814, and sold
+for £500 to Mr Morritt, it still remains the gem of the library
+at Rokeby. Long may the Spanish queen of love preside over the
+beautiful bowers of that now classic retreat! We sum up our notice
+of Velasquez in Mr Stirling's words:--"No artist ever followed
+nature with more catholic fidelity; his cavaliers are as natural
+as his boors; he neither refined the vulgar, nor vulgarised
+the refined.... We know the persons of Philip IV. and Olivarez
+as familiarly as if we had paced the avenues of the Pardo with
+Digby and Howell, and perhaps we think more favourably of their
+characters. In the portraits of the monarch and the minister,
+
+    'The bounding steeds they pompously bestride,
+    Share with their lords the pleasure and the pride,'
+
+and enable us to judge of the Cordovese horse of that day, as
+accurately as if we had lived with the horse-breeding Carthusians of
+the Betis. And this painter of kings and horses has been compared,
+as a painter of landscapes, to Claude; as a painter of low life,
+to Teniers: his fruit-pieces equal those of Sanchez Cotan or Van
+Kessel; his poultry might contest the prize with the fowls of
+Hondekooter on their own dunghill; and his dogs might do battle with
+the dogs of Sneyders."--(Vol. ii. p. 686.)
+
+While Velasquez, at the height of his glory, was painting his
+magnificent Crucifixion, a young lad was displaying hasty sketches
+and immature daubs to the venders of old clothes, pots, and
+vegetables, the gipsies and mendicant friars that frequented the
+Feria, or weekly fair held in the market-place of All Saints, in
+the beautiful and religious city of Seville. This was Bartolemè
+Estevan Murillo, who, having studied for some time under Juan
+del Castillo, on that master's removal to Cadiz in 1640, betook
+himself to this popular resource of all needy Sevillian painters.
+Struck, however, by the great improvement which travel had wrought
+in the style of Pedro de Moya, who revisited Seville in 1642, the
+young painter scraped up money sufficient to carry him to Madrid,
+and, as he hoped, to Rome. But the kindness of Velasquez provided
+him a lodging in his own house, and opened the galleries of the
+Alcazar and the Escurial to his view. Here he pursued his studies
+unremittingly, and, as he thought, with a success that excused the
+trouble and expense of an Italian pilgrimage. Returning, therefore,
+in 1645 to Seville, he commenced that career which led him, among
+the painters of Spain, to European renown, second only to that of
+Velasquez. The Franciscans of his native city have the credit of
+first employing his young genius, and the eleven large pictures
+with which he adorned their convent-walls at once established his
+reputation and success. These were painted in what is technically
+called his first or cold style; this was changed before 1650 into
+his second, or warm style, which in its turn yielded to his last,
+or vapoury style. So warm, indeed, had his colouring become, that
+a Spanish critic, in the nervous phraseology of Spain, declared
+his flesh-tints were now painted with blood and milk. In this style
+did he paint for the chapter The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, in
+which the ladies of Seville admired and envied the roundness of a
+ministering maiden's naked arm; and a large picture of St Anthony
+of Padua, which still adorns the walls of the cathedral baptistery.
+Of this famous gem some curious stories are told: Don Fernando
+Farfan, for instance, relates that birds had been seen attempting
+to perch upon some lilies in a vase by the side of the kneeling
+saint; and Monsieur Viardot (_Musées d'Espagne_, p. 146) informs us
+that a reverend canon, who showed him the picture, recounted how
+that, in 1813, the Duke of Wellington offered to purchase it for as
+many gold onzas as would cover its surface; while, in 1843, Captain
+Widdrington was assured that a lord had expressed his readiness
+to give £40,000 for the bird-deluding picture. The belief in the
+gullibility of travellers is truly remarkable and wide-spread; thus,
+at Genoa, in 1839, our excellent cicerone gratified us with the
+information, that, sixteen years before, the English Duke Balfour
+had in vain offered £1600 for Canova's beautiful basso-relievo of
+the Virgin Clasping the Corpse of our Saviour, which graces the
+ugly church of the poor-house in that superb city. In 1658, Murillo
+laboured to establish a public academy of art; and, in spite of the
+jealousies and contentions of rival artists, on the 1st of January
+1660, he witnessed its inauguration. The rules were few and simple;
+but the declaration to be signed by each member on admission would
+rather astonish the directors of the Royal Academy in London. We
+would recommend it to the consideration of those Protestant divines
+who are so anxious to devise a new test of heresy in the Church
+of England: thus it ran--"Praised be the most holy sacrament, and
+the pure conception of Our Lady." Nothing, perhaps, can show more
+strongly the immense influence religion exercised on art in Spain
+than the second clause of this declaration. It was the favourite
+dogma of Seville: for hundreds of years sermons were preached, books
+were written, pictures painted, legends recorded in honour of Our
+Lady's spotless conception; and round many a picture by Cano, or
+Vargas, or Joanes, is yet to be read the magic words that had power
+to electrify a populace,--"Sin Pecado Concebida." The institution
+thus commenced flourished for many years, and answered the generous
+expectations of its illustrious founder.
+
+The attention of the pious Don Miguel Mañara de Leca, the
+"benevolent Howard" of Seville, was attracted about 1661 to the
+pitiable state of the brotherhood of the holy charity, and its
+hospital of San Jorge: he resolved to restore it to its pristine
+glory and usefulness; and, persevering against all discouragements
+and difficulties, in less than twenty years, at an expense of
+half-a-million of ducats, he accomplished his pious design. For the
+restored church Murillo painted eleven pictures, of which eight,
+according to Mr Stirling, are the finest works of the master.
+Five of these were carried off by plundering Soult, but "the two
+colossal compositions of Moses, and the Loaves and Fishes, still
+hang beneath the cornices whence springs the dome of the church,
+"like ripe oranges on the bough where they originally budded." Long
+may they cover their native "walls, and enrich, as well as adorn,
+the institution of Mañara! In the picture of the great miracle of
+the Jewish dispensation, the Hebrew prophet stands beside the rock
+in Horeb, with hands pressed together, and uplifted eyes, thanking
+the Almighty for the stream which has just gushed forth at the
+stroke of his mysterious rod.... As a composition, this wonderful
+picture can hardly be surpassed. The rock, a huge, isolated, brown
+crag, much resembles in form, size, and colour, that which is still
+pointed out as the rock of Moses, by the Greek monks of the convent
+of St Catherine, in the real wilderness of Horeb. It forms the
+central object, rising to the top of the canvass, and dividing it
+into two unequal portions. In front of the rock, the eye at once
+singles out the erect figure of the prophet standing forward from
+the throng; and the lofty emotion of that great leader, looking with
+gratitude to heaven, is finely contrasted with the downward regards
+of the multitude, forgetful of the Giver in the anticipation or
+the enjoyment of the gift. Each head and figure is an elaborate
+study; each countenance has a distinctive character, and even of
+the sixteen vessels brought to the spring, no two are alike in
+form."--(Vol. ii. p. 859.) But Cean Bermudez, who enjoyed the
+privilege of seeing all these eight masterpieces hanging together
+in their own sacred home, preferred The Prodigal's Return, and St
+Elizabeth of Hungary--with whose touching history the eloquent
+pens of the Count Montalembert and Mr A. Phillipps have made us
+familiar--to all the rest.
+
+The Franciscan convent, without the city walls, was yet more
+fortunate than the hospital of Mañara, for it possessed upwards
+of twenty of this religious painter's works. Now, not one remains
+to dignify the ruined halls and deserted cloisters of that once
+magnificent convent: but seventeen of these pictures are preserved
+in the Seville Museum; among them Murillo's own favourite--that
+which he used to call "his own picture"--the charity of St Thomas
+of Villanueva. In 1678, Murillo painted three pictures for the
+Hospital de los Venerables, two of which, the Mystery of the
+Immaculate Conception, and St Peter Weeping, were placed in the
+chapel. "The third adorned the refectory, and presented to the
+gaze of the Venerables, during their repasts, the blessed Virgin
+enthroned on clouds, with her divine Babe, who, from a basket borne
+by angels, bestowed bread on three aged priests." These were nearly
+his last works; for the art he so loved was now about to destroy her
+favourite son: he was mounting a scaffolding to paint the higher
+parts of a great altar-piece for the Capuchin church at Cadiz,
+representing the espousals of St Catherine, when he stumbled, and
+ruptured himself so severely, as to die of the injury. On the 3d of
+April 1682, he expired in the arms of his old and faithful friend,
+Don Justino Neve, and was buried in the parish church of St. Cruz, a
+stone slab with his name, a skeleton and "Vive moriturus," marking
+the spot--until the "Vandal" French destroyed the last resting-place
+of that great painter, whose works they so unscrupulously
+appropriated. Was the last Lord of Petworth aware of this short
+epitaph, when he caused to be inscribed on the beautiful memorial to
+his ancestors which adorns St Thomas's Chapel in Petworth Church,
+the prophetic,[18] solemn words--"Mortuis moriturus?"
+
+  [18] He died the year following.
+
+We have ranked Murillo next to Velasquez: doubtless there are many
+in England who would demur to this classification; and we own there
+are charms in the style of the great religious painter, which it
+would be vain to look for in any other master. In tenderness of
+devotion, and a certain soft sublimity, his religious pictures are
+unmatched; while in colouring, Cean Bermudez most justly says--"All
+the peculiar beauties of the school of Andalusia--its happy use of
+red and brown tints, the local colours of the region, its skill in
+the management of drapery, its distant prospects of bare sierras
+and smiling vales, its clouds, light and diaphanous as in nature,
+its flowers and transparent waters, and its harmonious depth and
+richness of tone--are to be found in full perfection in the works of
+Murillo."--(Vol. ii. p. 903.) Mr Stirling draws a distinction, and
+we think with reason, between the favourite Virgin of the Immaculate
+Conception and the other Virgins of Murillo: the ἠθὸς of the former
+is far more elevated and spiritualised than that of any of the
+latter class; but, even in his most ordinary and mundane delineation
+of the sinless Mary, how sweet, and pure, and holy, as well as
+beautiful, does our Lord's mother appear! But perhaps it is as a
+painter of children that Murillo is most appreciated in England; nor
+can we wonder that such should be the case, when we remember what
+the pictures are which have thus impressed Murillo on the English
+mind. The St John Baptist with the Lamb, in the National Gallery;
+Lord Westminster's picture of the same subject; the Baroness de
+Rothschild's gem at Gunnersbury, Our Lord, the Good Shepherd, as a
+Child: Lord Wemyss's hardly inferior repetition of it; the picture
+of our Lord as a child, holding in his hands the crown of thorns,
+in the College at Glasgow; with the other pictures, in private
+collections, of our Lord and St John as children, have naturally
+made Murillo to be regarded in England as emphatically the painter
+of children: and how exquisite is his conception of the Divine Babe
+and His saintly precursor! what a sublime consciousness of power,
+what an expression of boundless love, are seen in the face of Him
+who was yet
+
+                    "a little child,
+      Taught by degrees to pray
+    By father dear, and mother mild,
+      Instructed day by day."
+
+The religious school of Spanish painting reached its acmé in
+Murillo; and, at the risk of being accounted heterodox, we must,
+in summing up his merits, express our difference from Mr Stirling
+in one respect, and decline to rank the great Sevillian after any
+of the Italian masters. Few of Murillo's drawings are known to be
+in existence. Mr Stirling gives a list of such as he has been able
+to discover, nearly all of which are at the Louvre. We believe,
+in addition to those possessed by the British Museum and Mr Ford,
+there are two in the collection at Belvoir Castle: one, a Virgin
+and Child; the other, an old man--possibly St Francis--receiving a
+flower from a naked child.
+
+After Velasquez and Murillo, it may seem almost impertinent to talk
+of the merits of other Spanish painters; yet Zurbaran and Cano,
+Ribera and Coello, demand at least a passing notice. Francisco
+de Zurbaran, often called the Caravaggio of Spain, was born in
+Estremadura in 1598. His father, observing his turn for painting,
+sent him to the school of Roelas, at Seville. Here, for nearly a
+quarter of a century, he continued painting for the magnificent
+cathedral, and the churches and religious houses of that fair city.
+About 1625, he painted, for the college of St Thomas Aquinas,
+an altar-piece, regarded by all judges as the finest of all his
+works. It represents the angelic doctor ascending into the heavens,
+where, on clouds of glory, the blessed Trinity and the Virgin wait
+to receive him; below, in mid air, sit the four doctors of the
+Church; and on the ground are kneeling the Emperor Charles V.,
+with the founder of the college, Archbishop Diego de Deza, and a
+train of ecclesiastics. Mr Stirling says of this singular picture,
+"The colouring throughout is rich and effective, and worthy the
+school of Roelas; the heads are all of them admirable studies;
+the draperies of the doctors and ecclesiastics are magnificent
+in breadth and amplitude of fold; the imperial mantle is painted
+with Venetian splendour; and the street view, receding in the
+centre of the canvass, is admirable for its atmospheric depth and
+distance."--(Vol. ii. p. 770.) In 1650, Philip IV. invited him to
+Madrid, and commanded him to paint ten pictures, representing the
+labours of Hercules, for a room at Buen-retiro. Almost numberless
+were the productions of his facile pencil, which, however, chiefly
+delighted to represent, the legends of the Carthusian cloister,
+and portray the gloomy features and sombre vestments of monks and
+friars; yet those who have seen his picture of the Virgin with the
+Infant Saviour and St John, at Stafford House, will agree with Mr
+Stirling that, "unrivalled in such subjects of dark fanaticism,
+Zurbaran could also do ample justice to the purest and most lovely
+of sacred themes."--(Vol. 11. p. 775)
+
+Alonzo Cano, born at Grenada in 1601, was, like Mrs Malaprop's
+Cerberus, "three gentlemen in one;" that is, he was a great painter,
+a great sculptor, and a great architect. As a painter, his powers
+are shown in his full-length picture of the Blessed Virgin, with
+the infant Saviour asleep on her knees, now in the Queen of Spain's
+gallery; in six large works, representing passages in the life
+of Mary Magdalene, which still adorn the great brick church of
+Getafe, a small village near Madrid; and in his famous picture of
+Our Lady of Belem, in the cathedral of Seville. Mr Stirling gives a
+beautifully-executed print of this last Madonna, which, "in serene,
+celestial beauty, is excelled by no image of the Blessed Virgin ever
+devised in Spain."--(P. 803.)
+
+Cano was, perhaps, even greater in sculpture than in painting;
+and so fond of the former art, that, when wearied of pencil and
+brush, he would call for his chisel, and work at a statue by way
+of rest to his hands. On one of these occasions, a pupil venturing
+to remark, that to substitute a mallet for a pencil was an odd sort
+of repose, was silenced by Cano's philosophical reply,--"Blockhead,
+don't you perceive that to create form and relief on a flat surface
+is a greater labour than to fashion one shape into another?" An
+image of the Blessed Virgin in the parish church at Lebrija, and
+another in the sacristy of the Grenada cathedral, are said to
+be triumphs of Spanish painted statuary.--(Vol. iii., p. 805)
+After a life of strange vicissitudes, in the course of which, on
+suspicion of having murdered his wife, he underwent the examination
+by torture, he died, honoured and beloved for his magnificent
+charities, and religious hatred of the Jews, in his native city, on
+the 3d of October 1667.
+
+The old Valencian town of Xativa claims the honour of producing
+Josè de Ribera, el Spagnoletto; but though Spain gave him birth,
+Italy gave him instruction, wealth, fame; and although in style he
+is thoroughly Spanish, we feel some difficulty in writing of him as
+belonging wholly to the Spanish school of art, so completely Italian
+was he by nurture, long residence, and in his death.
+
+Bred up in squalid penury, he appears to have looked upon the world
+as not his friend, and in his subsequent good fortunes to have
+revelled in describing with ghastly minuteness, and repulsive force,
+all "the worst ills that flesh is heir to." We well recollect the
+horror with which we gazed spell-bound on a series of his horrors
+in the Louvre--faugh! At Gosford House are a series of Franciscan
+monks, such as only a Spanish cloister could contain, painted with
+an evident fidelity to nature, and the minutest details of dress
+that is almost offensive--even the black dirt under the unwashed
+thumb nail is carefully represented by his odiously-accurate and
+powerful pencil.
+
+    "Non ragioniam di lor
+     Ma guada e passa."
+
+Had the bold buccaneers of the seventeenth century required the
+services of a painter to perpetuate the memory of their inventive
+brutality, and inconceivable atrocities, they would have found in El
+Spagnoletto an artist capable of delineating the agonies of their
+victims, and by taste and disposition not indisposed to their way of
+life. Yet in his own peculiar line he was unequalled, and his merits
+as a painter will always be recognised by every judge of art. He
+died at Naples, the scene of his triumphs, in 1656.
+
+The name of Claudio Coello is associated with the Escurial, and
+should have been introduced into the sketch we were giving of its
+artists, when the mighty reputation of Velasquez and Murillo broke
+in upon our order. He was born at Madrid about the middle of the
+seventeenth century, and studied in the school of the younger Rigi.
+In 1686 he succeeded Herrera as painter in ordinary to Charles
+II. This monarch had erected an altar in the great sacristy of
+the Escurial, to the miraculous bleeding wafer known as the Santa
+Forma; and on the death of its designer, Rigi, Coello was called
+upon to paint a picture that should serve as a veil for the host. On
+a canvass six yards high, by three wide, he executed an excellent
+work, representing the king and his court adoring the miraculous
+wafer, which is held aloft by the prior. This picture established
+his reputation, and in 1691 the chapter of Toledo, still the great
+patrons of art, appointed him painter to their cathedral. Coello was
+a most careful and painstaking painter, and his pictures, says our
+author, (vol. iii., p. 1018) "with much of Cano's grace of drawing,
+have also somewhat of the rich tones of Murillo, and the magical
+effect of Velasquez." He died, it is said, of disappointment at the
+success of his foreign rival, Luca Giordano, in 1693.
+
+With Charles II. passed away the Spanish sceptre from the house of
+Austria, nor, according to Mr Stirling, would the Genius of Painting
+remain to welcome the intrusive Bourbons:--
+
+    Old times were changed, old manners gone,
+    A stranger filled the Philips' throne;
+    And art, neglected and oppressed,
+    Wished to be with them, and at rest.
+
+But we must say that Mr Stirling, in his honest indignation against
+France and Frenchmen, has exaggerated the demerits of the Bourbon
+kings. Spanish art had been steadily declining for years before
+they, with ill-omened feet, crossed the Pyrenees. It was no Bourbon
+prince that brought Luca da Presto from Naples to teach the painters
+of Spain "how to be content with their faults, and get rid of their
+scruples;" and if the schools of Castile and Andalusia had ceased
+to produce such artists as those whose praises Mr Stirling has so
+worthily recorded, it appears scant justice to lay the blame on the
+new royal family. _Pictor nascitur, non fit_--no, not even by the
+wielders of the Spanish sceptre. In a desire to patronise art, and
+in munificence towards its possessors, Philip V., Ferdinand VI.,
+and Charles III., fell little short of their Hapsburg predecessors,
+but they had no longer the same material to work upon. The post
+which Titian had filled could find no worthier holder under Charles
+III., than Rafael Mengs, whom not only ignorant Bourbons, but the
+_conoscenti_ of Europe regarded as the mighty Venetian's equal;
+and Philip V. not only invited Hovasse, Vanloo, Procaccini, and
+other foreign artists to his court, but added the famous collection
+of marbles belonging to Christina of Sweden to those acquired by
+Velasquez, at an expense of twelve thousand doubloons. To him, also,
+is due the completion of the palace of Aranjuez, and the design
+of La Granja; nor, when fire destroyed the Alcazar, did Philip V.
+spare his diminished treasures, in raising up on its time-hallowed
+site a palace which, in Mr Stirling's own words, "in spite of its
+narrowed proportions, is still one of the largest and most imposing
+in Europe."--(Vol. iii., p. 1163.)
+
+Ferdinand VI. built, at the enormous expense of nineteen millions
+of reals the convent of nuns of the order of St Vincent de Sales,
+and employed in its decoration all the artistic talent that Spain
+then could boast of. Nor can he be blamed if that was but little;
+for if royal patronage can produce painters of merit, this monarch,
+by endowing the Academy of St Ferdinand with large revenues, and
+housing it in a palace, would have revived the glories of Spanish
+art.
+
+His successor, Charles III., an artist of some repute himself,
+sincerely loved and generously fostered the arts. While King of the
+Two Sicilies, he had dragged into the light of day the long-lost
+wonders of Herculaneum and Pompeii; and when called to the throne
+of Spain and the Indies, he manifested his sense of the obligations
+due from royalty to art, by conferring fresh privileges on the
+Academy of St Ferdinand, and founding two new academies, one in
+Valencia, the other in Mexico. If Mengs and Tiepolo, and other
+mediocrities, were the best living painters his patronage could
+discover, it is evident from his ultra-protectionist decree against
+the exportation of Murillo's, pictures, that he fully appreciated
+the works of the mighty dead; and, had his spirit animated Spanish
+officials, many a masterpiece that now mournfully, and without
+meaning, graces the Hermitage at St Petersburg, or the Louvre at
+Paris, would still be hanging over the altar, or adorning the
+refectory for which it was painted, at Seville or Toledo. Even
+Charles IV., "the drivelling tool of Godoy," was a collector of
+pictures, and founder of an academy. In his disastrous reign
+flourished Francisco Goya y Lucientes, the last Spanish painter who
+has obtained a niche in the Temple of Fame. Though portraits and
+caricatures were his forte, in that venerable museum of all that is
+beautiful in Spanish Art--the cathedral at Toledo--is to be seen a
+fine religious production of his pencil, representing the Betrayal
+of our Lord. But he loved painting at, better than for the church;
+and those who have examined and wondered at the grotesque satirical
+carvings of the stalls in the cathedral at Manchester, will be
+able to form some idea of Goya's anti-monkish caricatures. Not
+Lord Mark Kerr, when giving the rein to his exuberant fancy, ever
+devised more ludicrous or repulsive "monsters" than this strange
+successor to the religious painters of orthodox Spain. But when
+the vice, and intrigues, and imbecility of the royal knives and
+fools, whom his ready graver had exposed to popular ridicule, had
+yielded to the unsupportable tyranny of French invaders, the same
+indignant spirit that hurried the water-carriers of Madrid into
+unavailing conflict with the troops of Murat, guided his caustic
+hand against the fierce oppressors of his country; and, while
+Gilray was exciting the angry contempt of all true John Bulls at
+the impudence of the little Corsican upstart, Goya was appealing
+to his countrymen's bitter experience of the tender mercies of the
+French invaders. He died at Bordeaux in 1828. Mr Stirling closes his
+labours with a graceful tribute to those of Cean Bermudez, "the able
+and indefatigable historian of Spanish art, to whose rich harvest of
+valuable materials I have ventured to add the fruit of my own humble
+gleanings--" a deserved tribute, and most handsomely rendered. But,
+before we dismiss this pleasant theme of Spanish art, we would add
+one artist more to the catalogue of Spanish painters--albeit, that
+artist is a Bourbon!
+
+Near the little town of Azpeitia, in Biscay, stands the magnificent
+college of the Jesuits, built on the birth-place of Ignatius Loyola.
+Here, in a low room at the top of the building, are shown a piece
+of the bed in which he died, and his autograph; and here among its
+cool corridors and ever-playing fountains, in 1839, was living the
+royal painter--the Infante Don Sebastian. A strange spectacle,
+truly, did that religious house present in the summer of 1839:
+wild Biscayan soldiers and dejected Jesuits, red boynas and black
+cowls, muskets and crucifixes, oaths and benedictions, crossed and
+mingled with each other in picturesque, though profane disorder;
+and here, released from the cares of his military command, and free
+to follow the bent of his disposition, the ex-commander-in-chief
+of the Carlist forces was quietly painting altar-pieces, and
+dashing off caricatures. In the circular church which, of exquisite
+proportions, forms the centre of the vast pile, and is beautiful
+with fawn-coloured marble and gold, hung a large and well-painted
+picture of his production; and those who are curious in such matters
+may see a worse specimen of his royal highness's skill in Pietro
+di Cortona's church of St Luke at Rome. On one side of the altar
+is Canova's beautiful statue of Religion preaching; on the other
+the Spanish prince's large picture of the Crucifixion; but, alas!
+it must be owned that the inspiration which guided Velasquez to
+his conception of that sublime subject was denied to the royal
+amateur. In the academy of St Luke, adjoining the church, is a
+well-executed bust of Canova, by the Spanish sculptor Alvarez. We
+suspect that, like Goya, the Infante would do better to stick to
+caricature, in which branch of art many a pleasant story is told of
+his proficiency. Seated on a rocky plateau, which, if commanding
+a view of Bilbao and its defenders, was also exposed to their
+fire, 'tis said the royal artist would amuse himself and his staff
+with drawing the uneasy movements, and disturbed countenances, of
+some unfortunate London reporters, who, attached to the Carlist
+headquarters, were invited by the commander-in-chief to attend his
+person, and enjoy the perilous honour of his company. Be this,
+however, as it may, we think we have vindicated the claim of one
+living Bourbon prince to be admitted into the roll of Spanish
+painters in the next edition of the _Annals_.
+
+In these tumultuous days, when
+
+  "Royal heads are haunted like a maukin,"
+
+over half the Continent, and even in steady England grave
+merchants and wealthy tradesmen are counselling together on how
+little their sovereign can be clothed and fed, and all things are
+being brought to the vulgar test of _L. s. d._, it is pleasant to
+turn to the artistic annals of a once mighty empire like Spain, and
+see how uniformly, for more than five hundred years, its monarchs
+have been the patrons, always munificent, generally discriminating,
+of the fine arts--how, from the days of Isabella the Catholic, to
+those of Isabella the Innocent, the Spanish sceptre has courted,
+not disdained, the companionship of the pencil and the chisel.
+Mr Stirling has enriched his pages with many an amusing anecdote
+illustrative of this royal love of art, and suggestive, alas! of
+the painful reflection, that the future annalist of the artists of
+England will find great difficulty in scraping together half-a-dozen
+stories of a similar kind. With the one striking exception of
+Charles I., we know not who among our sovereigns can be compared,
+as a patron of art, to any of the Spanish sovereigns, from Charles
+V. of the Austrian to Charles III. of the Bourbon race. Lord Hervey
+has made notorious George II's ignorance and dislike of art. Among
+the many noble and kingly qualities of his grandson, we fear a
+love and appreciation of art may not be reckoned; and although, in
+his intercourse with men of genius, George IV. was gracious and
+generous, what can be said in favour of his taste and discernment?
+The previous life of William IV., the mature age at which he
+ascended the throne, and the troublous character of his reign,
+explain why art received but slight countenance from the court of
+the frank and noble-hearted Sailor Prince; but we turn with hope to
+the future. The recent proceedings in the Court of Chancery have
+made public a fact, already known to many, that her Majesty wields
+with skilful hand a graceful graver, and the Christmas plays acted
+at Windsor are a satisfactory proof that English art and genius are
+not exiled from England's palaces. The professors, then, of that art
+which Velasquez and Rubens, Murillo and Vandyck practised, shall yet
+see that the Crown of England is not only in ancient legal phrase,
+"the Fountain of Honour," but that it loves to direct its grateful
+streams in their honoured direction. Free was the intercourse,
+unfettered the conversation, independent the relations, between
+Titian and Charles V., Velasquez and Philip IV.; let us hope that
+Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, will yet witness a revival
+of those palmy days of English art, when Inigo Jones, and Vandyck,
+and Cowley, Waller, and Ben Jonson, shed a lustre on the art-loving
+court of England!
+
+The extracts we have given from Mr Stirling's work will have
+sufficiently shown the scope of the _Annals_, and the spirit and
+style in which they are written. There is no tedious, inflexible,
+though often unmanageable leading idea, or theory of art, running
+through these lively volumes. In the introduction, whatever is to
+be said on the philosophy of Spanish art is carefully collected,
+and the reader is thenceforward left at liberty to carry on the
+conclusions of the introduction with him in his perusal of the
+_Annals_, or to drop them at the threshold. We would, however,
+strongly recommend all who desire to appreciate Spanish art, never
+to forget that she owes all her beauty and inspiration to Spanish
+nature and Spanish religion. Remember this, O holyday tourist along
+the Andalusian coast, or more adventurous explorer of Castile and
+Estremadura, and you will not be disappointed with her productions.
+Mr Stirling has not contented himself with doing ample justice to
+the great painters, and slurring over the comparatively unknown
+artists, whose merits are in advance of their fame, but has embraced
+in his careful view the long line of Spanish artists who have
+flourished or faded in the course of nearly eight hundred years; and
+he has accomplished this difficult task, not in the plodding spirit
+of a Dryasdust, or with the curt dulness of a catalogue-monger,
+but with the discriminating good taste of an accomplished English
+gentleman, and in a style at once racy and rhetorical. There are
+whole pages in the _Annals_ as full of picturesque beauty as the
+scenes or events they describe, and of melody, as an Andalusian
+summer's eve; indeed, the vigorous fancy and genial humour of
+the author have, on some few occasions, led him to stray from
+those strict rules of ἀιδὼς, which we are old-fashioned enough
+to wish always observed. But where the charms and merits are so
+great, and so many, and the defects so few and so small, we may
+safely leave the discovery of the latter to the critical reader, and
+satisfy our conscience by expressing a hope that, when Mr Stirling
+next appears in the character of author--a period not remote, we
+sincerely trust--he will have discarded those few scentless flowers
+from his literary garden, and present us with a bouquet--
+
+    "Full of sweet buds and roses,
+     A box where sweets compacted lie."
+
+But if he never again put pen to paper, in these annals of the
+artists of Spain he has given to the reading public a work which,
+for utility of design, patience of research, and grace of language,
+merits and has won the highest honours of authorship.
+
+
+
+
+THE DODO AND ITS KINDRED.[19]
+
+  [19] _The Dodo and its Kindred; or, the History, Affinities, and
+  Osteology of the Dodo, Solitaire, and other Extinct Birds of the
+  Islands Mauritius, Rodriguez, and Bourbon._ By H. E. STRICKLAND,
+  M.A. F.G.S., F.R.G.S., President of the Ashmolean Society, &c., and
+  A. G. MELVILLE, M.D., Edinburgh, M.R.C. One vol., royal quarto:
+  London, 1848.
+
+
+What was the Dodo? When was the Dodo? Where is the Dodo? are all
+questions, the first more especially, which it is fully more easy
+to ask than answer. Whoever has looked through books on natural
+history--for example, that noted but now scarce instructor of our
+early youth, the _Three Hundred Animals_--must have observed a
+somewhat ungainly creature, with a huge curved bill, a shortish
+neck, scarcely any wings, a plumy tuft upon the back--considerably
+on the off-side, though pretending to be a tail,--and a very
+shapeless body, extraordinarily large and round about the hinder
+end. This anomalous animal being covered with feathers, and having,
+in addition to the other attributes above referred to, only two
+legs, has been, we think justly, regarded as a bird, and has
+accordingly been named the Dodo. But why it should be so named
+is another of the many mysterious questions, which require to be
+considered in the history of this unaccountable creature. No one
+alleges, nor can we conceive it possible, that it claims kindred
+with either of the only two human beings we ever heard of who
+bore the name: "And after him (Adino the Eznite) was Eleazar the
+son of Dodo, the Ahohite, one of the three mighty men with David,
+when they defied the Philistines that were there gathered together
+to battle, and the men of Israel were gone away." Our only other
+human Dodo belonged to the fair sex, and was the mother of the
+famous Zoroaster, who flourished in the days of Darius Hystaspes,
+and brought back the Persians to their ancient fire-worship, from
+the adoration of the twinkling stars. The name appears to have
+been dropped by both families, as if they were somewhat ashamed of
+it; and we feel assured that of such of our readers as admit that
+Zoroaster must have had a mother of some sort, very few really
+remember now-a-days that her name was Dodo. There were no baptismal
+registers in those times; or, if such existed, they were doubtless
+consumed in the "great fire"--a sort of periodical, it may be
+providential, mode of shortening the record, which seems to occur
+from time to time in all civilised countries.
+
+But while the creature in question,--we mean the feathered
+biped--has been continuously presented to view in those "vain
+repetitions" which unfortunately form the mass of our information in
+all would-be popular works on natural history, we had actually long
+been at a stand-still in relation to its essential attributes--the
+few competent authorities who had given out their opinion upon this,
+as many thought, stereotyped absurdity, being so disagreed among
+themselves as to make confusion worse confounded. The case, indeed,
+seemed desperate; and had it not been that we always entertained a
+particular regard for old Clusius, (of whom by-and-by,) and could
+not get over the fact that a Dodo's head existed in the Ashmolean
+Museum, Oxford, and a Dodo's foot in the British Museum, London,
+we would willingly have indulged the thought that the entire Dodo
+was itself a dream. But, shaking off the cowardly indolence which
+would seek to shirk the investigation of so great a question, let us
+now inquire into a piece of ornithological biography, which seemed
+so singularly to combine the familiar with the fabulous. Thanks
+to an accomplished and persevering naturalist of our own day--one
+of the most successful and assiduous inquirers of the younger
+generation--we have now all the facts, and most of the fancies,
+laid before us in a splendid royal quarto volume, just published,
+with numerous plates, devoted to the history and illustration of
+the "Dodo and its Kindred." It was, in truth, the latter term that
+cheered our heart, and led us again towards a subject which had
+previously produced the greatest despondency; for we had always,
+though most erroneously, fancied that the great misformed lout of
+our _Three Hundred Animals_ was all alone in the wide world, unable
+to provide for himself, (and so, fortunately, without a family,)
+and had never, in truth, had either predecessors or posterity. Mr
+Strickland, however, has brought together the _disjecta membra_ of
+a family group, showing not only fathers and mothers, sisters and
+brothers, but cousins, and kindred of all degrees. Their sedate and
+somewhat sedentary mode of life is probably to be accounted for,
+not so much by their early habits as their latter end. Their legs
+are short, their wings scarcely existant, but they are prodigiously
+large and heavy in the hinder-quarters; and organs of flight would
+have been but a vain thing for safety, as they could not, in such
+wooded countries as these creatures inhabited, have been made
+commensurate with the uplifting of such solid bulk, placed so far
+behind that centre of gravity where other wings are worked. We can
+now sit down in Mr Strickland's company, to discuss the subject, not
+only tranquilly, but with a degree of cheerfulness which we have not
+felt for many a day: thanks to his kindly consideration of the Dodo
+and "its kindred."
+
+The geographical reader will remember that to the eastward of the
+great, and to ourselves nearly unknown, island of Madagascar, there
+lies a small group of islands of volcanic origin, which, though not
+exactly contiguous among themselves, are yet nearer to each other
+than to the greater island just named, and which is interposed
+between them and the coast of Southern Africa. They are named
+Rodriguez, Bourbon, and Mauritius, or the Isle of France. There is
+proof that not fewer than four distinct species of large-bodied,
+short-winged birds, of the Dodo type, were their inhabitants in
+comparatively recent times, and have now become utterly extinct. We
+say utterly, because neither proof nor vestige of their existence
+elsewhere has been at any time afforded; and the comparatively
+small extent, and now peopled state of the islands in question,
+(where they are no longer known,) make the continuous and unobserved
+existence of these birds, so conspicuous in size and slow of foot,
+impossible.
+
+Now, it is this recent and total extinction which renders the
+subject one of more than ordinary interest. Death is an admitted
+law of nature, in respect to the _individuals_ of all species.
+Geology, "dragging at each remove a lengthened chain" has shown how,
+at different and distant eras, innumerable tribes have perished
+and been supplanted, or at least replaced, by other groups of
+species, entire races, better fitted for the great climatic and
+other physical changes, which our earth's surface has undergone
+from time to time. How these changes were brought about, many,
+with more or less success, (generally less,) have tried to say.
+Organic remains--that is, the fossilised remnants of ancient
+species--sometimes indicate a long continuance of existence,
+generation after generation living in tranquillity, and finally
+sinking in a quiet grave; while other examples show a sudden and
+violent death, in tortuous and excited action, as if they had been
+almost instantaneously overwhelmed and destroyed by some great
+catastrophe.
+
+Several local extinctions of elsewhere existing species are known
+to naturalists--such as those of the beaver, the bear, and the
+wolf, which no longer occur in Great Britain, though historically
+known, as well as organically proved by recent remains, to have
+lived and died among us. Their extinction was slow and gradual,
+and resulted entirely from the inroads which the human race--that
+is, the increase of population, and the progress of agriculture
+and commerce--necessarily made upon their numbers, which thus
+became "_few_ by degrees, and beautifully less." The beaver might
+have carried on business well enough, in his own quiet way,
+although frequently incommoded by the love of peltry on the part
+of a hat-wearing people; but it is clear that no man with a small
+family, and a few respectable farm-servants, could either permit
+a large and hungry wolf to be continually peeping at midnight
+through the key-hole of the nursery, or allow a brawny bruin to
+snuff too frequently under the kitchen door, (after having hugged
+the watch-dog to death,) when the serving-maids were at supper. The
+extirpation, then, of at least two of those quondam British species
+became a work of necessity and mercy, and might have been tolerated
+even on a Sunday between sermons--especially as naturalists have it
+still in their power to study the habits of similar wild beasts, by
+no means yet extinct, in the neighbouring countries of France and
+Germany.
+
+But the death of the Dodo and its kindred is a more affecting fact,
+as involving the extinction of an entire race, root and branch, and
+proving that death is a law of the _species_, as well as of the
+individuals which compose it,--although the life of the one is so
+much more prolonged than that of the other that we can seldom obtain
+any positive proof of its extinction, except by the observance of
+geological eras. Certain other still existing species, well known
+to naturalists, may be said to be, as it were, just hovering on
+the brink of destruction. One of the largest and most remarkable
+of herbivorous animals--a species of wild cattle, the aurochs
+or European bison (_B. priscus_)--exists now only in the forest
+of Bialowicksa, from whence the Emperor of Russia has recently
+transmitted a living pair to the Zoological Society of London.
+Several kinds of birds are also evidently on their last legs. For
+example, a singular species of parrot, (_Nestor productus_,) with
+the termination of the upper mandible much attenuated, peculiar to
+Phipps's Island, near Norfolk Island, has recently ceased to exist
+there in the wild state, and is now known as a living species only
+from a few surviving specimens kept in cages, and which refuse to
+breed. The burrowing parrot from New Zealand is already on the road
+to ruin; and more than one species of that singular and wingless
+bird, called _Apteryx_, also from the last-named island, may be
+placed in the same category. Even in our own country, if the landed
+proprietors were to yield to the clamour of the Anti-Game-Law
+League, the red grouse or moor-game might cease to be, as they occur
+nowhere else on the known earth save in Britain and the Emerald Isle.
+
+The geographical distribution of animals, in general, has been
+made conformable to laws which we cannot fathom. A mysterious
+relationship exists between certain organic structures and those
+districts of the earth's surface which they inhabit. Certain
+extensive groups, in both the animal and vegetable kingdom,
+are found to be restricted to particular continents, and their
+neighbouring islands. Of some the distribution is very extensive,
+while others are totally unknown except within a limited space, such
+as some solitary isle,
+
+  "Placed far amid the melancholy main."
+
+     "In the present state of science," says Mr Strickland, "we must
+     be content to admit the existence of this law, without being
+     able to enunciate its preamble. It does _not_ imply that organic
+     distribution depends on soil and climate; for we often find a
+     perfect identity of these conditions in opposite hemispheres,
+     and in remote continents, whose faunæ and floræ are almost
+     wholly diverse. It does not imply that allied but distinct
+     organisms have been adduced, by generation or spontaneous
+     development, from the same original stock; for (to pass over
+     other objections) we find detached volcanic islets, which have
+     been ejected from beneath the ocean, (such as the Galapagos,
+     for instance,) inhabited by terrestrial forms allied to those
+     of the nearest continent, though hundreds of miles distant, and
+     evidently never connected with them. But this fact may indicate
+     that the Creator, in forming new organisms to discharge the
+     functions required from time to time by the ever vacillating
+     balance of nature, has thought fit to preserve the regularity
+     of the system by modifying the types of structure already
+     established in the adjacent localities, rather than to proceed
+     _per saltum_ by introducing forms of more foreign aspect."
+
+In conformity with this relation between geographical distribution
+and organic structure, it has been ascertained that a small portion
+of the indigenous animals and plants of the islands of Rodriguez,
+Bourbon, and the Isle of France, are either allied to or identical
+with the productions of continental Africa, a larger portion with
+those of Madagascar, while certain species are altogether peculiar
+to the insular group above named.
+
+     "And as these three islands form a detached cluster, as compared
+     to other lands, so do we find in them a peculiar group of birds,
+     specifically different in each island, yet allied together in
+     their general characters, and remarkably isolated from any
+     known forms in other parts of the world. These birds were of
+     large size and grotesque proportions, the wings too short and
+     feeble for flight, the plumage loose and decomposed, and the
+     general aspect suggestive of gigantic immaturity. Their history
+     is as remarkable as their origin. About two centuries ago,
+     their native isles were first colonised by man, by whom these
+     strange creatures were speedily exterminated. So rapid and so
+     complete was their extinction, that the vague descriptions given
+     of them by early navigators were long regarded as fabulous or
+     exaggerated; and these birds, almost contemporaries of our
+     great-grandfathers, became associated in the minds of many
+     persons with the griffin and the phœnix of mythological
+     antiquity."
+
+The aim and object of Mr Strickland's work is to vindicate the
+honesty of the rude voyagers of the seventeenth century; to collect
+together the scattered evidence regarding the Dodo and its kindred;
+to describe and depict the few anatomical fragments which are still
+extant of those lost species; to invite scientific travellers to
+further and more minute research; and to infer, from the authentic
+data, now in hand, the probable rank and position of these creatures
+in the scale of nature. We think he has achieved his object very
+admirably, and has produced one of the best and most interesting
+monographs with which it is our fortune to be acquainted.
+
+So far as we can see, the extension of man's more immediate
+influence and agency is the sole cause of the disappearance of
+species in modern times--at least we have no proof that any of these
+species have perished by what can be called a catastrophe: this is
+well exemplified by what we now know of the Dodo and its kindred.
+
+The islands of Mauritius and Bourbon were discovered in the
+sixteenth century, (authorities differ as to the precise period,
+which they vary from 1502 to 1545,) by Pedro Mascaregnas, a
+Portuguese, who named the latter after himself; while he called
+the former Cerne, a term applied by Pliny to an island in another
+quarter. Of this Cerne nothing definite was ascertained till the
+year 1598, when the Dutch, under Jacob Cornelius Neck, finding it
+uninhabited, took possession, and changed its name to Mauritius. In
+the narrative of the voyage, of which there are several accounts in
+different tongues, we find the following notice:--
+
+     "This island, besides being very fertile in terrestrial
+     products, feeds vast numbers of birds, such as turtle-doves,
+     which occur in such plenty that three of our men sometimes
+     captured one hundred and fifty in half a day, and might easily
+     have taken more by hand, or killed them with sticks, if we
+     had not been overloaded with the burden of them. Grey parrots
+     are also common there, and other birds, besides a large kind
+     bigger than our swans, with large heads, half of which is
+     covered with skin like a hood. These birds want wings, in
+     place of which are three or four thickish feathers. The tail
+     consists of a few slender curved feathers of a gray colour. We
+     called them _Walckvogel_, for this reason, that, the longer
+     they were boiled, the tougher and more uneatable they became.
+     Their stomachs, however, and breasts, were easy to masticate.
+     Another reason for the name was that we had an abundance of
+     turtle-doves, of a much sweeter and more agreeable flavour."--De
+     Bry's _India Orientalis_, (1601,) pars v. p. 7.
+
+These walckvogel were the birds soon afterwards called Dodos. The
+description given by Clusius, in his _Exotica_, (1605,) is chiefly
+taken from one of the published accounts of Van Neck's voyage, but
+he adds the following notice, as from personal observation:--
+
+     "After I had written down the history of this bird as well
+     as I could, I happened to see in the house of Peter Pauwius,
+     Professor of Medicine in the University of Leyden, a leg cut off
+     at the knee, and recently brought from the Mauritius. It was
+     not very long, but rather exceeded four inches from the knee
+     to the bend of the foot. Its thickness, however, was great,
+     being nearly four inches in circumference; and it was covered
+     with numerous scales, which in front were wider and yellow, but
+     smaller and dusky behind. The upper part of the toes was also
+     furnished with single broad scales, while the lower part was
+     wholly callous. The toes were rather short for so thick a leg:
+     the claws were all thick, hard, black, less than an inch long;
+     but the claw of the hind toe was longer than the rest, and
+     exceeded an inch."
+
+A Dutch navigator, Heemskerk, remained nearly three months in the
+Mauritius, on his homeward voyage in 1602; and in a published
+journal kept by Reyer Cornelisz, we read of _Wallichvogels_, and
+a variety of other game. One of Heemskerk's captains, Willem van
+West-Zanen by name, also left a journal--apparently not published
+until 1648--at which time it was edited in an enlarged form by H.
+Soeteboom. We there find repeated mention of _Dod-aarsen_ or Dodos;
+and the sailors seem to have actually revelled in these birds,
+without suffering from surfeit or nausea like Van Neck's crew. As
+this tract is very rare, and has never appeared in an English form,
+we shall avail ourselves of Mr Strickland's translation of a few
+passages bearing on the subject in question:--
+
+     "The sailors went out every day to hunt for birds and other
+     game, such as they could find on land, while they became less
+     active with their nets, hooks, and other fishing-tackle. No
+     quadrupeds occur there except cats, though our countrymen have
+     subsequently introduced goats and swine. The herons were less
+     tame than the other birds, and were difficult to procure,
+     owing to their flying amongst the thick branches of the trees.
+     They also caught birds which some name _Dod-aarsen_, others
+     _Dronten_. When Jacob Van Neck was here, these birds were called
+     _Wallich-vogels_, because even a long boiling would scarcely
+     make them tender, but they remained tough and hard, with the
+     exception of the breast and belly, which were very good; and
+     also because, from the abundance of turtle-doves which the men
+     procured, they became disgusted with dodos. The figure of these
+     birds is given in the accompanying plate: they have great heads,
+     with hoods thereon; they are without wings or tail, and have
+     only little winglets on their sides, and four or five feathers
+     behind, more elevated than the rest; they have beaks and feet,
+     and commonly, in the stomach, a stone the size of a fist....
+
+     "The dodos, with their round sterns, (for they were well
+     fattened,) were also obliged to turn tail; everything that could
+     move was in a bustle; and the fish, which had lived in peace for
+     many a year, were pursued into the deepest water-pools....
+
+     "On the 25th July, William and his sailors brought some dodos,
+     which were very fat; the whole crew made an ample meal from
+     three or four of them, and a portion remained over.... They
+     sent on board smoked fish, salted dodos, land-tortoises, and
+     other game, which supply was very acceptable. They were busy
+     for some days bringing provisions to the ship. On the 4th of
+     August, William's men brought fifty large birds on board the
+     _Bruyn-Vis_; among them were twenty-four or twenty-five dodos,
+     so large and heavy, that they could not eat any two of them for
+     dinner, and all that remained over was salted.
+
+     "Another day, Hoogeven (William's supercargo) set out from the
+     tent with four seamen, provided with sticks, nets, muskets, and
+     other necessaries for hunting. They climbed up mountain and
+     hill, roamed through forest and valley, and, during the three
+     days that they were out, they captured another half-hundred
+     of birds, including a matter of twenty dodos, all which they
+     brought on board and salted. Thus were they, and the other crews
+     in the fleet, occupied in fowling and fishing."
+
+In regard to the appellations of these birds, it is not altogether
+easy to determine the precise date at which the synonymous term
+_Dodars_, from which our name of Dodo is by some derived, was
+introduced. It seems first to occur in the journal of Willem van
+West-Zanen; but that journal, though written in 1603, appears to
+have remained unpublished till 1648, and the name may have been
+an interpolation by his editor, Soeteboom. Matelief's Journal,
+also, which makes mention of _Dodaersen_, otherwise _Dronten_, was
+written in 1606, and Van der Hagen's in 1607; but Mr Strickland has
+been unable to find an edition of either work of earlier date than
+1646, and so the occurrence of these words may be likewise due to
+the officiousness of editors. Perhaps the earliest use of the word
+Dodars may date from the publication of Verhuffen's voyage, (1613,)
+where, however, it occurs under the corrupt form of _Totersten_.
+There seems little doubt that the name of Dodo is derived from
+the Dutch root, _Dodoor_, which signifies _sluggard_, and is
+appropriate to the leisurely gait and heavy aspect of the creatures
+in question. Dodars is probably a homely or familiar phrase among
+Dutch sailors, and may be regarded as more expressive than elegant.
+Our own Sir Thomas Herbert was the first to use the name of Dodo
+in its modern form, and he tells us that it is a Portuguese word.
+_Doudo_, in that language, certainly signifies "foolish," or
+"simple," and might have been well applied to the unwary habits
+and defenceless condition of these almost wingless and totally
+inexperienced species; but, as none of the Portuguese voyagers seem
+to have mentioned the Dodo by any name whatever, nor even to have
+visited the Mauritius, after their first discovery of the island by
+Pedro Mascaregnas already named, it appears far more probable that
+Dodars is a genuine Dutch term, altered, and it may be amended, by
+Sir Thomas Herbert, to suit his own philological fancies.
+
+The Dutch, indeed, seem to have been inspired with a genuine love
+of Dodos, and never allowed even the cooing of the delicately
+tender turtle-doves to prevent their laying in an ample store of
+the more solid, if less sentimental species. Thus, Van der Hagen,
+who commanded two ships which remained for some weeks at the
+Mauritius in 1607, not only feasted his crews on great abundance of
+"tortoises, _dodars_, gray parroquets, and other game," but salted
+large quantities, for consumption during the voyage. Verhuffen
+touched at the same island in 1611, and it is in his narrative
+(published at Frankfort in 1613) that Dodos are called _Totersten_.
+He describes them as having--
+
+     "A skin like a monk's cowl on the head, and no wings; but, in
+     place of them, about five or six yellow feathers: likewise, in
+     place of a tail, are four or five crested feathers. In colour
+     they are gray; men call them _Totersten_ or _Walckvögel_;
+     they occur there in great plenty, insomuch that the Dutch
+     daily caught and ate many of them. For not only these, but in
+     general all the birds there, are so tame that they killed the
+     turtle-doves, as well as the other wild pigeons and parrots,
+     with sticks, and caught them by the hand. They also captured the
+     totersten or walckvögel with their hands; but were obliged to
+     take good care that these birds did not bite them on the arms or
+     legs with their beaks, which are very strong, thick, and hooked;
+     for they are wont to bite desperately hard."
+
+We are glad to be informed, by the above, of this attempt at
+independence, or something at least approaching to the defensive
+system. It forms an additional title, on the part of the Dodo, to be
+regarded, at all events by the Dutch _cuisiniers_, as "_une pièce de
+resistance_."
+
+Sir Thomas Herbert, already named, visited the Mauritius in 1627,
+and found it still uninhabited by man. In his _Relation of some
+yeares' Travaile_, which, for the amusement of his later years, he
+seems to have repeatedly rewritten for various editions, extending
+from 1634 to 1677, he both figures and describes our fat friend. His
+narration is as follows:--
+
+     "The dodo, a bird the Dutch call walckvögel or dod-eersen:
+     her body is round and fat, which occasions the slow pace, or
+     that her corpulencie; and so great as few of them weigh less
+     than fifty pound; meat it is with some, but better to the eye
+     than stomach, such as only a strong appetite can vanquish; but
+     otherwise, through its oyliness, it cannot chuse but quickly
+     cloy and nauseate the stomach, being indeed more pleasurable to
+     look than feed upon. It is of a melancholy visage, as sensible
+     of nature's injury in framing so massie a body to be directed
+     by complimental wings, such indeed as are unable to hoise her
+     from the ground, serving only to rank her amongst birds. Her
+     head is variously drest; for one half is hooded with down of a
+     dark colour, the other half naked, and of a white hue, as if
+     lawn were drawn over it; her bill hooks and bends downwards; the
+     thrill or breathing-place is in the midst, from which part to
+     the end the colour is of a light green, mixt with pale yellow;
+     her eyes are round and bright, and instead of feathers has a
+     most fine down; her train (like to a China beard) is no more
+     than three or four short feathers; her leggs are thick and
+     black; her talons great; her stomach fiery, so that as she can
+     easily digest stones; in that and shape not a little resembling
+     the ostrich."--(P. 383.)
+
+François Cauche, an account of whose voyage, made in 1638, is
+published in the _Relations Véritables et Curieuses de l'Isle de
+Madagascar_, (Paris, 1651) states that he saw in the Mauritius birds
+called Oiseaux de Nazaret, larger than a swan, covered with black
+down, with crested feathers on the rump, "as many in number as the
+bird is years old." In place of wings there are some black curved
+feathers, without webs. The cry is like that of a gosling.
+
+     "They only lay one egg, which is white, the _size of a halfpenny
+     roll_; by the side of which they place a white stone, of the
+     dimensions of a hen's egg. They lay on grass, which they
+     collect, and make their nests in the forests; if one kills the
+     young one, a gray stone is found in the gizzard. We call them
+     Oiseaux de Nazaret. The fat is excellent to give ease to the
+     muscles and nerves."
+
+Here let us pause a moment, to consider what was the probable size
+of a halfpenny roll in the year 1638. How many vast and various
+elements must be taken to account in calculating the dimensions
+of that "_pain d'un sol!_" Macculloch, Cobden, Joseph Hume, come
+over and help us in this our hour of _knead_! Was corn high or
+low? were wages up or down? were bakers honest or dishonest? was
+there a fixed measure of quantity for these our matutinal baps? Did
+town-councils regulate their weight and quality, or was conscience
+left controller, from the quartern loaf downwards to the smallest
+form assumed by yeast and flour?
+
+  "Tell me where was fancy bread?"
+
+Does no one know precisely what was the size of a halfpenny roll in
+the year 1638? In that case, we shall not mention the dimensions of
+the Dodo's egg.
+
+There is no doubt that the bird recorded by Cauche was the true
+Dodo, although it is probable that he either described it from
+memory, or confused it with the descriptions then current of the
+cassowary. Thus he adds that the legs were of considerable length,
+that it had only three toes, and no tongue--characters (with the
+exception of the last, inapplicable, of course, to either kind)
+which truly indicate the latter species. This name of "bird of
+Nazareth" has, moreover, given rise to a false or phantom species,
+called _Didus Nazarenus_ in systematic works, and is supposed to
+have been derived from the small island or sandbank of Nazareth, to
+the north-east of Madagascar. Now Dr Hamel has recently rendered it
+probable that no such island or sandbank is in existence, and so we
+need not seek for its inhabitants: at all events, there is no such
+bird as the Nazarene Dodo--_Didus Nazarenus_.
+
+The next piece of evidence regarding the Dodo is highly interesting
+and important, as it shows that, at least in one instance, this
+extraordinary bird was transported alive to Europe, and exhibited in
+our own country. In a manuscript preserved in the British Museum,
+Sir Hamon Lestrange, the father of the more celebrated Sir Roger,
+in a commentary on Brown's _Vulgar Errors_, and _apropos_ of the
+ostrich, records as follows:--
+
+     "About 1638, as I walked London streets, I saw the picture of a
+     strange fowle hong out upon a cloth, and myselfe, with one or
+     two more then in company, went in to see it. It was kept in a
+     chamber, and was a great fowle somewhat bigger than the largest
+     turkey-cock, and so legged and footed, but stouter and thicker,
+     and of a more erect shape; coloured before like the breast of a
+     young cock fesan, and, on the back, of dunn or deare coulour.
+     The keeper called it a Dodo; and in the end of a chimney in
+     the chamber there lay a heape of large pebble stones, whereof
+     hee gave it many in our sight, some as bigg as nutmegs, and
+     the keeper told us she eats them, (conducing to digestion);
+     and though I remember not how farr the keeper was questioned
+     therein, yet I am confident that afterwards shee cast them all
+     againe."
+
+It is curious that no confirmation can be obtained of this
+exhibition from contemporary authorities. The period was prolific
+in pamphlets and broadsides, but political excitement probably
+engrossed the minds of the majority, and rendered them careless
+of the wonders of nature. Yet the individual in question may in
+all likelihood be traced down to the present day, and portions of
+it seen and handled by the existing generation. In Tradescant's
+catalogue of his "_Collection of Rarities preserved at South
+Lambeth, near London_," 1656, we find an entry--"Dodar from the
+island Mauritius; it is not able to flie, being so big." It is
+enumerated under the head of "Whole birds;" and Willughby, whose
+_Ornithologia_ appeared in 1676, says of the Dodo, "Exuvias hujusce
+avis vidimus in museo Tradescantiano." The same specimen is
+alluded to by Llhwyd in 1684, and by Hyde in 1700,--having passed,
+meanwhile, into the Ashmolean Museum, at Oxford, with the rest of
+the Tradescantian collection. As Tradescant was the most noted
+collector of things natural in his day, and there were few, if
+any, to enter into competition with him, it may be well supposed
+that such a _rara avis_ as a living Dodo would attract his close
+attention, and that it would, in all probability, find its way into
+his cabinet on its decease. It may, therefore, be inferred that the
+same individual which was exhibited in London, and described by
+Lestrange in 1638, is that recorded as a stuffed specimen in the
+catalogue of Tradescant's Museum, (1656,) and bequeathed by him,
+with his other curiosities, to Elias Ashmole, the munificent founder
+of the still existing museum at Oxford.
+
+The considerate reader will not unnaturally ask, Where is now that
+last of Dodos? and echo answers, Where? Alas! it was destroyed, "by
+order of the Visitors," in 1755. The following is the evidence of
+that destruction, as given by Mr J. S. Duncan in the 3d volume of
+the _Zoological Journal_, p. 559:--
+
+     "In the Ashmolean Catalogue, made by Ed. Llhwyd, musei
+     procustos, 1684, (Plott being then keeper,) the entry of the
+     bird is 'No. 29, Gallus gallinaceus peregrinus Clusii,' &c. In a
+     catalogue made subsequently to 1755, it is stated, 'The numbers
+     from 5 to 46, being decayed, were ordered to be removed at a
+     meeting of the majority of the Visitors, Jan. 8, 1755.' Among
+     these, of course, was included the Dodo, its number being 29.
+     This is further shown by a new catalogue, completed in 1756, in
+     which the order of the Visitors is recorded as follows:--'Illa
+     quibus nullus in margine assignatur numerus, a Musæo subducta
+     sunt cimelia, annuentibus Vice-Cancellario aliisque Curatoribus
+     ad ea lustranda convocatis, die Januarii 8vo, A.D. 1755.' The
+     Dodo is one of those which are here without the number."
+
+By some lucky accident, however, a small portion of "this last
+descendant of an ancient race," as Mr Strickland terms it, escaped
+the clutches of the destroyers. "The head and one of the feet were
+saved from the flames, and are still preserved in the Ashmolean
+Museum."[20]
+
+  [20] The scientific value of these remnants, Mr Strickland informs
+  us, has been lately much increased by skilful dissection. Dr Acland,
+  the lecturer in anatomy, has divided the skin of the cranium down
+  the mesial line, and, by removing it from the left side, the entire
+  osteological structure of this extraordinary skull is exposed
+  to view, while on the other side the external covering remains
+  undisturbed. The solitary foot was formerly covered by decomposed
+  integuments, and presented few external characters. These have
+  been removed by Dr Kidd, the professor of medicine, who has made
+  an interesting preparation of both the osseous and tendinous
+  structures.--See _The Dodo and its Kindred_, p. 33.
+
+Let us now retrace our steps, for the sake of taking up, very
+briefly, the history of the other known remnants of this now
+extinct species. Among the printed books of the Ashmolean Museum,
+there is a small tract, of which the second edition (the first is
+without date) is entitled, "A Catalogue of many natural rarities,
+with great industry, cost, and thirty years' travel in foreign
+countries, collected by Robert Hubert, _alias_ Forges, gent. and
+sworn servant to his majesty; and daily to be seen at the place
+formerly called the Music House, near the west end of St Paul's
+Church," 12mo, London, 1665. At page 11 is the following entry:--"A
+legge of a Dodo, a great heavy bird that cannot fly: it is a bird
+of the Maurcius island." This specimen is supposed to be that which
+afterwards passed into the possession of the Royal Society, is
+recorded in their catalogue of _Natural and Artificial Curiosities_,
+published by Grew in 1681, and is now in the British Museum. It is
+somewhat larger than the Ashmolean foot, and, from its excellent
+state of preservation, finely exhibits the external characters of
+the toes and tarsus.
+
+In Olearus's catalogue of the museum at Gottorf, (the seat of the
+Dukes of Schleswig, and recently a less easy one than we have known
+it,) of which the first edition was published in 1666, there is the
+following notice of a Dodo's head:--
+
+     "No. 5 is the head of a foreign bird, which Clusius names
+     _Gallus peregrinus_, Mirenberg _Cygnus cucullatus_, and the
+     Dutch walghvögel, from the disgust which they are said to have
+     taken to its hard flesh. The Dutch seem to have first discovered
+     this bird in the island of Mauritius; and it is stated to have
+     no wings, but in place of them two winglets, like the emeu and
+     the penguins."--(P. 25.)
+
+This specimen, after having been disregarded, if not forgotten,
+for nearly two centuries, was lately re-discovered, by Professor
+C. Reinhardt, amongst a mass of ancient rubbish, and is now in the
+public museum of Copenhagen, where it was examined by Mr Strickland
+two years ago.[21] The integumentary portions have been all removed,
+but it exhibits the same osteological characters as the Oxford head,
+though less perfect, the base of the occiput being absent. It is of
+somewhat smaller size.
+
+  [21] The collection of the Dukes of Schleswig was removed about the
+  year 1720, by Frederic IV., from Gottorf to Copenhagen, where it
+  is now incorporated with the Royal "Kunstkammer" of that northern
+  capital.
+
+The remnants now noticed--three heads and two feet--are the only
+ascertained existing portions of the famous Dodo; a bird which,
+as we have seen in the preceding extracts, might have been well
+enough known to such of our great great-grandfathers as were in the
+sea-faring line.
+
+But when did the last Dodo die? We cannot answer that question
+articulately, as to the very year, still less as to the season, or
+time of day--and we believe that no intimations of the event were
+sent to the kindred; but we do not hesitate to state our belief
+that that affecting occurrence or bereavement took place some time
+subsequent to the summer of 1681, and prior to 1693. The latest
+evidence of the existence of Dodos in the Mauritius is contained
+in a manuscript of the British Museum, entitled "A coppey of Mr
+Benj. Harry's Journall when he was chief mate of the Shippe Berkley
+Castle, Captn. Wm. Talbot commander, on voyage to the Coste and Bay,
+1679, which voyage they wintered at the Maurrisshes." On the return
+from India, being unable to weather the Cape of Good Hope, they
+determined to make for "the Marushes," the 4th June 1681. They saw
+the land on the 3d July, and on the 11th they began to build huts,
+and with much labour spread out their cargo to dry:--
+
+     "Now, having a little respitt, I will make a little description
+     of the island, first of its producks, then of its parts; ffirst,
+     of winged and feathered ffowle, the less passant are _Dodos,
+     whose fflesh is very hard_, a small sort of Gees, reasonably
+     good Teele, Cuckoes, Pasca fflemingos, Turtle Doves, large
+     Batts, many small birds which are good.... Heer are many wild
+     hoggs and land-turtle which are very good, other small creators
+     on the Land, as Scorpions and Musketoes, these in small numbers,
+     Batts and ffleys a multitude, Munkeys of various sorts."
+
+After this all historical evidence of the existence of the Dodo
+ceases, although we cannot doubt that they continued for yet a
+few years. The Dutch first colonised the Mauritius in 1644. The
+island is not above forty miles in length; and although, when first
+discovered, it was found clothed with dense forests of palms, and
+various other trees--among whose columnar stems and leafy umbrage
+the native creatures might find a safe abode, with food and
+shelter--how speedily would not the improvident rapacity of hungry
+colonists, or of reckless fresh-flesh-bereaved mariners, diminish
+the numbers of a large and heavy-bodied bird, of powerless wing
+and slow of foot, and useful, moreover, in the way of culinary
+consumption. Mr Strickland is of opinion that their destruction
+would be further hastened, or might be mainly caused, by the dogs,
+cats, and swine which accompany man in his migrations, and become
+themselves emancipated in the forests. All these creatures are more
+or less carnivorous, and are fond of eggs and young birds; and as
+the Dodo is said to have hatched only one egg at a time, a single
+savage mouthful might suffice to destroy the hope of a family for
+many a day.
+
+That the destruction of Dodos was completed by 1693, Mr Strickland
+thinks may be inferred from the narrative of Leguat, who, in
+that year, remained several months in the Mauritius, and, while
+enumerating its animal productions at considerable length, makes no
+mention whatever of the bird in question. He adds,--"L'isle était
+autrefois toute remplie d'oyes et de canards sauvages; de poules
+d'eau, de gelinottes, de tortues de mer et de terre, _mais tout cela
+est devenue fort rare_." And, while referring to the "hogs of the
+China kind," he states that these beasts do a great deal of damage,
+by devouring all the young animals they can catch. It is thus
+sufficiently evident that civilisation was making aggressive inroads
+on the natural state of the Mauritius even in 1693.
+
+The Dutch evacuated the island in 1712, and were succeeded by the
+French, who colonised it under the name of Isle de France; and this
+change in the population no doubt accounts for the almost entire
+absence of any traditionary knowledge of this remarkable bird among
+the later inhabitants. Baron Grant lived in the Mauritius for twenty
+years from 1740; and his son, who compiled his papers into a history
+of the island, states that no trace of such a bird was to be found
+at that time. In the _Observations sur la Physique_ for the year
+1778, there is a negative notice, by M. Morel, of the Dodo and its
+kindred. "Ces oiseaux, si bien décrits dans le tome 2 de l'Histoire
+des Oiseaux de M. le Comte de Buffon, n'ont jamais été vus aux Isles
+de France, &c., depuis plus de 60 ans que ces parages sont habités
+et visités par des colonies Françoises. Les plus anciens habitans
+assurent tous que ces oiseaux monstrueux leur ont toujours été
+inconnus." M. Bory St Vincent, who visited the Mauritius and Bourbon
+in 1801, and has given us an account of the physical features of
+those islands in his "Voyage," assures us (vol. ii. p. 306) that he
+instituted all possible inquiries regarding the Dodo (or Dronte) and
+its kindred, without being able to pick up the slightest information
+on the subject; and although he advertised "une grande recompense a
+qui pourrait lui donner la moindre indice de l'ancienne existence
+de cet oiseau, un silence universel a prouvé que le souvenir même
+du Dronte était perdu parmi les créoles." De Blainville informs us,
+(_Nouv. Ann. Mus._ iv. 31,) that the subject was discussed at a
+public dinner at the Mauritius in 1816, where were present several
+persons from seventy to ninety years of age, none of whom had any
+knowledge of any Dodo, either from recollection or tradition.
+Finally, Mr J. V. Thompson, who resided for some years in Mauritius
+prior to 1816, states, (_Mag. of Nat. Hist._, ii. 443,) that no more
+traces could then be found of the Dodo than of the truth of the tale
+of Paul and Virginia.
+
+But the historical evidence already adduced, as to the former
+existence of this bird, is confirmed in a very interesting manner
+by what may be called the pictorial proof. Besides the rude
+delineations given by the earlier voyagers, there are several old
+oil-paintings of the Dodo still extant, by skilful artists, who had
+no other object in view than to represent with accuracy the forms
+before them. These paintings are five in number, whereof one is
+anonymous; three bear the name of Roland Savery, an eminent Dutch
+animal-painter of the early portion of the seventeenth century, and
+one is by John Savery, Roland's nephew.
+
+The first of these is the best known, and is that from which the
+figure of the Dodo, in all modern compilations of ornithology,
+has been copied. It once belonged to George Edwards, who, in his
+work on birds, (vi. 294,) tells us, that "the original picture was
+drawn in Holland _from the living bird_, brought from St Maurice's
+island in the East Indies, in the early times of the discovery of
+the Indies by the way of the Cape of Good Hope. It was the property
+of the late Sir H. Sloane to the time of his death, and afterwards
+becoming my property. I deposited it in the British Museum as a
+great curiosity. The above history of the picture I had from Sir H.
+Sloane, and the late Dr Mortimer, secretary to the Royal Society."
+It is still preserved in the place to which Edwards had consigned
+it, and may be seen in the bird gallery, along with the actual foot
+already mentioned. Although without name or date, the similarity
+both of design and execution, leads to the conclusion that it was by
+one or other of the Saverys. It may be seen engraved in the _Penny
+Cyclopædia_, in illustration of Mr Broderip's article _Dodo_ in that
+work.
+
+The second painting, one of Roland Savery's, is in the royal
+collection at the Hague, and may be regarded as a _chef-d'œuvre_.
+It represents Orpheus charming the creation, and we there behold the
+Dodo spell-bound with his other mute companions. All the ordinary
+creatures there shown are depicted with the greatest truthfulness;
+and why should the artist, delighting, as he seems to have done, in
+tracing the most delicate features of familiar nature, have marred
+the beautiful consistency of his design by introducing a feigned,
+or even an exaggerated representation? We may here adduce the
+invaluable evidence of Professor Owen.
+
+     "While at the Hague, in the summer of 1838, I was much struck
+     with the minuteness and accuracy with which the exotic species
+     of animals had been painted by Savery and Breughel, in such
+     subjects as Orpheus charming the Beasts, &c., in which scope
+     was allowed for grouping together a great variety of animals.
+     Understanding that the celebrated menagerie of Prince Maurice
+     had afforded the living models to these artists, I sat down
+     one day before Savery's Orpheus and the Beasts, to make a list
+     of the species, which the picture sufficiently evinced that
+     the artist had had the opportunity to study alive. Judge of my
+     surprise and pleasure in detecting, in a dark corner of the
+     picture, (which is badly hung between two windows,) the _Dodo_,
+     beautifully finished, showing for example, though but three
+     inches long, the auricular circle of feathers, the scutation
+     of the tarsi, and the loose structure of the caudal plumes. In
+     the number and proportions of the toes, and in general form, it
+     accords with Edwards' oil-painting in the British Museum; and I
+     conclude that the miniature must have been copied from the study
+     of a living bird, which, it is most probable, formed part of
+     the Mauritian menagerie. The bird is standing in profile with a
+     lizard at its feet."--_Penny Cyclopædia_, xxiii. p. 143.
+
+Mr Strickland, in 1845, made a search through the Royal Gallery of
+Berlin, which was known to contain several of Savery's pictures.
+Among them, we are happy to say that he found one representing
+the Dodo, with numerous other animals, "in Paradise!" It was very
+conformable with the figure last mentioned; but what renders this,
+our third portrait, of peculiar interest, is, that it affords
+a date--the words "Roelandt Savery fe. 1626," being inscribed
+on one corner. As the artist was born in 1576, he must have
+been twenty-three years old when Van Neck's expedition returned
+to Holland; and as we are told by De Bry, in reference to the
+Mauritius, that "aliæ ibidem aves visæ sunt, quas walkvogel Batavi
+nominarunt, et _unam secum in Hollandiam importarunt_," it is quite
+possible that the portrait of this individual may have been taken at
+the time, and afterwards recopied, both by himself and his nephew,
+in their later pictures. Professor Owen leans to the belief that
+Prince Maurice's collection afforded the living prototype,--an
+opinion so far strengthened by Edwards's tradition, that the
+painting in the British Museum was drawn in Holland from a "living
+bird." Either view is preferable to Dr Hamel's suggestion, that
+Savery's representation was taken from the Dodo exhibited in London,
+as that individual was seen alive by Sir Hamon Lestrange in 1638,
+and must therefore (by no means a likely occurrence) have lived, in
+the event supposed, at least twelve years in captivity.
+
+Very recently Dr J. J. de Tchudi, the well-known Peruvian traveller,
+transmitted to Mr Strickland an exact copy of another figure of
+the Dodo, which forms part of a picture in the imperial collection
+of the Belvedere at Vienna--by no means a safe location, in these
+tempestuous times, for the treasures of either art or nature. But we
+trust that Prince Windischgratz and the hanging committee will now
+see that all is right, and that General Bem has not been allowed to
+carry off this drawing of the Dodo in his carpet-bag. It is dated
+1628.
+
+     "There are two circumstances," says Mr Strickland, "which give
+     an especial interest to this painting. First, the novelty of
+     attitude in the Dodo, exhibiting an activity of character which
+     corroborates the supposition that the artist had living model
+     before him, and contrasting strongly with the aspect of passive
+     stolidity in the other pictures. And, secondly, the Dodo is
+     represented as watching, apparently with hungry looks, the
+     merry wriggling of an eel in the water! Are we hence to infer
+     that the Dodo fed upon eels? The advocates of the Raptorial
+     affinities of the Dodo, of whom we shall soon speak, will
+     doubtless reply in the affirmative; but, as I hope shortly
+     to demonstrate that it belongs to a family of birds all the
+     other members of which are frugivorous, I can only regard the
+     introduction of the eel as a pictorial license. In this, as
+     in all his other paintings, Savery brought into juxtaposition
+     animals from all countries, without regarding geographical
+     distribution. His delineations of birds and beasts were
+     wonderfully exact, but his knowledge of natural history probably
+     went no further; and although the Dodo is certainly _looking at_
+     the eel, yet we have no proof that he is going to _eat_ it. The
+     mere collocation of animals in an artistic composition, cannot
+     be accepted as evidence against the positive truths revealed by
+     comparative anatomy."--(P. 30.)
+
+The fifth and last old painting of the Dodo, is that now in the
+Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and presented to it by Mr Darby in 1813.
+Nothing is known of its previous history. It is the work of John
+Savery, the nephew of Roland, and is dated 1651. Its most peculiar
+character is the colossal scale on which it has been designed,--the
+Dodo of this canvass standing about three feet and a half in height.
+
+     "It is difficult," observes our author, "to assign a motive to
+     the artist for thus magnifying an object already sufficiently
+     uncouth in appearance. Were it not for the discrepancy of
+     dates, I should have conjectured that this was the identical
+     "picture of a strange fowle hong out upon a cloth," which
+     attracted the notice of Sir Hamon Lestrange and his friends, as
+     they "walked London streets" in 1638; the delineations used by
+     showmen being in general more remarkable for attractiveness than
+     veracity."--(P. 31.)
+
+We have now exhibited the leading facts which establish both the
+existence and extinction of this extraordinary bird: the existence,
+proved by the recorded testimony of the earlier navigators, the few
+but peculiar portions of structure which still remain among us, and
+the _vera effigies_ handed down by artists coeval with the period in
+which the Dodo lived: the non-existence, deduced from the general
+progress of events, and the absence of all knowledge of the species
+since the close of the seventeenth century, although the natural
+productions of the Mauritius are, in other respects, much better
+known to us now than then. Why any particular creature should have
+been so formed as to be unable to resist the progress of _humanity_,
+and should in consequence have died, it is not for us to say. "There
+are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our
+philosophy;" and of this we may feel assured, that if, as we doubt
+not, the Dodo is extinct, then it has served its end, whatever that
+might be.
+
+There is nothing imperfect in the productions of nature, although
+there are many organisms in which certain forms and faculties are
+less developed than in others. There are certainly, in particular
+groups, such things as rudimentary organs, which belong, as it were,
+not so much to the individual species, as to the general system
+which prevails in the larger and more comprehensive class to which
+such species belong; and in the majority of which these organs
+fulfil a frequent and obvious function, and so are very properly
+regarded as indispensable to the wellbeing of such as use them.
+But there are many examples in animal life which indicate that
+particular parts of structure remain, in certain species, for ever
+in an undeveloped state. In respect to teeth, for instance, the
+Greenland whale may be regarded as a _permanent suckling_; for that
+huge creature having no occasion for these organs, they never pierce
+the gums, although in early life they are distinctly traceable in
+the dental groove of the jaws. So the Dodo was a kind of _permanent
+nestling_, covered with down instead of feathers, and with wings
+and tail (the oars and rudder of all aërial voyagers) so short and
+feeble as to be altogether inefficient for the purposes of flight.
+Why should such things be? We cannot say. Can any one say why they
+should not be? The question is both wide and deep, and they are
+most likely to plunge into it who can neither dive nor swim. We
+agree with Mr Strickland, that these apparently anomalous facts
+are, in reality, indications of laws which the great Creator has
+been pleased to form and follow in the construction of organised
+beings,--inscriptions in an unknown hieroglyphic, which we may rest
+assured must have a meaning, but of which we have as yet scarcely
+learned the alphabet. "There appear, however, reasonable grounds for
+believing that the Creator has assigned to each class of animals a
+definite type or structure, from which He has never departed, even
+in the most exceptional or eccentric modifications of form."
+
+As to the true position of the Dodo in systematic ornithology,
+various opinions have been emitted by various men. The majority seem
+to have placed it in the great Rasorial or Gallinaceous order, as a
+component part of the family _Struthionidæ_, or ostrich tribe.
+
+     "The bird in question," says Mr Vigors, "from every account
+     which we have of its economy, and from the appearance of
+     its head and foot, is decidedly gallinaceous; and, from the
+     insufficiency of its wings for the purposes of flight, it may
+     with equal certainty be pronounced to be of the _Struthious_
+     structure. But the foot has a strong hind-toe, and, with the
+     exception of its being more robust, in which character it still
+     adheres to the Struthionidæ, it corresponds to the Linnæan genus
+     _Crax_, that commences the succeeding family. The bird thus
+     becomes osculant, and forms a strong point of junction between
+     those two contiguous groups."--_Linn. Trans._ xiv. 484.
+
+M. de Blainville (in _Nouv. Ann. du Mus._ iv. 24,) contests this
+opinion by various arguments, which we cannot here report, and
+concludes that the Dodo is a raptorial bird, allied to the vultures.
+Mr Broderip, in his article before referred to, sums up the
+discussion as follows:--
+
+     "If the picture in the British Museum, and the cut in Bontius,
+     be faithful representations of a creature then living, to make
+     such a bird of prey--a vulture, in the ordinary acceptation
+     of the term--would be to set all the usual laws of adaptation
+     at defiance. A vulture without wings! How was it to be fed?
+     And not only without wings, but necessarily slow and heavy in
+     progression on its clumsy feet. The _Vulturidæ_ are, as we
+     know, among the most active agents for removing the decomposing
+     animal remains in tropical and inter-tropical climates, and they
+     are provided with a prodigal development of wing, to waft them
+     speedily to the spot tainted by the corrupt incumbrance. But no
+     such powers of wing would be required by a bird appointed to
+     clear away the decaying and decomposing masses of a luxuriant
+     tropical vegetation--a kind of vulture for vegetable impurities,
+     so to speak--and such an office would not be by any means
+     inconsistent with comparative slowness of pedestrian motion."
+
+Professor Owen, doubtless one of our greatest authorities, inclines
+towards an affinity with the vultures, and considers the Dodo as an
+extremely modified form of the raptorial order.
+
+     "Devoid of the power of flight, it could have had small chance
+     of obtaining food by preying upon the members of its own class;
+     and, if it did not exclusively subsist on dead and decaying
+     organised matter, it most probably restricted its attacks to
+     the class of reptiles, and to the littoral fishes, _Crustacea_,
+     &c., which its well-developed back-toe and claw would enable it
+     to seize, and hold with a firm gripe."--_Transactions of the
+     Zoological Society_, iii. p. 331.
+
+We confess that, setting aside various other unconformable features
+in the structure of the Dodo, the fact, testified by various
+authorities, of its swallowing stones, and having stones in its
+gizzard, for the mechanical triturition of its food, (a peculiarity
+unknown among the raptorial order,) is sufficient to bar the
+above view, supported though it be by the opinion of our most
+distinguished living anatomist.
+
+In a recent memoir by Professor J. F. Brandt (of which an abstract
+is given in the _Bulletin de la Class. Phys. de l'Acad. Imp. de St
+Petersburg_, vol. viii. No. 3) we have the following statement:--
+
+     "The Dodo, a bird provided with divided toes and cursorial feet,
+     is best classed in the order of the Waders, among which it
+     appears, from its many peculiarities, (most of which, however,
+     are quite referable to forms in this order,) to be an anomalous
+     link connecting several groups,--a link which, for the reasons
+     above given, inclines towards the ostriches, and especially also
+     towards the pigeons."
+
+We doubt the direct affinity to any species of the grallatorial
+order, an order which contains the cursorial or swift-running birds,
+very dissimilar in their prevailing habits to anything we know of
+the sluggish and sedentary Dodo. Professor Brandt may be regarded
+as having mistaken analogy for affinity; and, in Mr Strickland's
+opinion, he has in this instance wandered from the true method
+of investigation, in his anxiety to discover a link connecting
+dissevered groups.
+
+What then is, or rather was, the Dodo? The majority of inquirers
+have no doubt been influenced, though unconsciously, by its colossal
+size, and have consequently sought its actual analogies only among
+such huge species as the ostrich, the vulture, and the albatross.
+But the range in each order is often enormous, as, for example,
+between the _Falco cærulescens_, or finch falcon of Bengal, an
+accipitrine bird not bigger than a sparrow, and an eagle of the
+largest size; or between the swallow-like stormy petrel and the
+gigantic pelican of the wilderness. It appears that Professor J.
+T. Rheinhardt of Copenhagen, who rediscovered the cranium of the
+Gottorf Museum, was the first to indicate the direct relationship of
+the Dodo to the _pigeons_. He has recently been engaged in a voyage
+round the world, but it is known that, before he left Copenhagen in
+1845, he had called the attention of his correspondents, both in
+Sweden and Denmark, to "the striking affinity which exists between
+this extinct bird and the pigeons, especially the Trerons." The
+Columbine view is that taken up, and so admirably illustrated, by
+Mr Strickland, the most recent as well as the best biographer of
+the Dodo. He refers to the great strength and curvature of bill
+exhibited by several groups of the tropical fruit-eating pigeons,
+and adds:
+
+     "If we now regard the Dodo as an extreme modification, not of
+     the vultures, but of those vulture-like frugivorous pigeons,
+     we shall, I think, class it in a group whose characters are
+     far more consistent with what we know of its structure and
+     habits. There is no _a priori_ reason why a pigeon should not
+     be so modified, in conformity with external circumstances,
+     as to be incapable of flight, just as we see a grallatorial
+     bird modified into an ostrich, and a diver into a penguin. Now
+     we are told that Mauritius, an island forty miles in length,
+     and about one hundred miles from the nearest land, was, when
+     discovered, clothed with dense forests of palms and various
+     other trees. A bird adapted to feed on the fruits produced by
+     these forests would, in that equable climate, have no occasion
+     to migrate to distant lands; it would revel in the perpetual
+     luxuries of tropical vegetation, and would have but little need
+     of locomotion. Why then should it have the means of flying? Such
+     a bird might wander from tree to tree, tearing with its powerful
+     beak the fruits which strewed the ground, and digesting their
+     stony kernels with its powerful gizzard, enjoying tranquillity
+     and abundance, until the arrival of man destroyed the balance
+     of animal life, and put a term to its existence. Such, in my
+     opinion, was the Dodo,--a colossal, brevipennate, frugivorous
+     pigeon."--(P. 40.)
+
+For the various osteological and other details by which the
+Columbine character of the Dodo is maintained, and as we think
+established, we must refer our readers to Mr Strickland's
+volume,[22] where those parts of the subject are very skilfully
+worked out by his able coadjutor, Dr Melville.
+
+  [22] In regard to the figures by which it is illustrated, we beg
+  to call attention very specially to Plates VIII. and IX., as the
+  most beautiful examples of the lithographic art, applied to natural
+  history, which we have yet seen executed in this country.
+
+We shall now proceed to notice certain other extinct species
+which form the dead relations of the Dodo, just as the pigeons
+continue to represent the tribe from which they have departed. The
+island Rodriguez, placed about three hundred miles eastward of the
+Mauritius, though not more than fifteen miles long by six broad,
+possessed in modern times a peculiar bird, also without effective
+wings, and in several other respects resembling the Dodo. It was
+named _Solitaire_ by the early voyagers, and forms the species
+_Didus solitarius_ of systematic writers. The small island in
+question seems to have remained in a desert and unpeopled state
+until 1691, when a party of French Protestant refugees settled
+upon it, and remained for a couple of years. The Solitaire is thus
+described by their commander, Francois Leguat, who (in his _Voyage
+et Avantures_, 1708) has given us an interesting account both of
+his own doings in general, and of this species in particular.
+
+     "Of all the birds in the island, the most remarkable is that
+     which goes by the name of the _Solitary_, because it is very
+     seldom seen in company, though there are abundance of them. The
+     feathers of the male are of a brown-gray colour, the feet and
+     beak are like a turkey's, but a little more crooked. They have
+     scarce any tail, but their hind part, covered with feathers,
+     is roundish like the crupper of a horse: they are taller
+     than turkeys; their neck is straight, and a little longer in
+     proportion than a turkey's, when it lifts up its head. Its eye
+     is black and lively, and its head without comb or cap. They
+     never fly; their wings are too little to support the weight of
+     their bodies; they serve only to beat themselves, and to flutter
+     when they call one another. They will whirl about for twenty or
+     thirty times together on the same side, during the space of four
+     or five minutes. The motion of their wings makes then a noise
+     very much like that of a rattle, and one may hear it two hundred
+     paces off. The bone of their wing grows greater towards the
+     extremity, and forms a little round mass under the feathers, as
+     big as a musket-ball. That and its beak are the chief defence of
+     this bird. 'Tis very hard to catch it in the woods, but easier
+     in open places, because we run faster than they, and sometimes
+     we approach them without much trouble. From March to September
+     they are extremely fat, and taste admirably well, especially
+     while they are young; some of the males weigh forty-five pounds.
+
+     "The females" continues our enamoured author, "are wonderfully
+     beautiful, some fair, some brown,--I call them fair, because
+     they are of the colour of fair hair. They have a sort of peak
+     like a widow's upon their beak, which is of a dun colour. No
+     one feather is straggling from the other all over their bodies,
+     they being very careful to adjust themselves, and make them all
+     even with their beaks. The feathers on their thighs are round
+     like shells at the end, and, being there very thick, have an
+     agreeable effect. They have two risings on their crops, and the
+     feathers are whiter there than the rest, which lively represents
+     the fair neck of a beautiful woman. They walk with so much
+     stateliness and good grace, that one cannot help admiring and
+     loving them; by which means their fine mien often saves their
+     lives. Though these birds will sometimes very familiarly come
+     up near enough to one, when we do not run after them, yet they
+     will never grow tame. As soon as they are caught they shed
+     tears without crying, and refuse all manner of meat till they
+     die."--(P. 71.)
+
+Their natural food is the fruit of a species of plantain. When these
+birds are about to build, they select a clean place, and then gather
+together a quantity of palm-leaves, which they heap up about a foot
+and a half high, and there they sit. They never lay but one egg,
+which greatly exceeds that of a goose. Some days after the young
+one has left the nest, a company of thirty or forty grown-up birds
+brings another young one to it; and the new-fledged bird, with its
+father and mother, joining with the band, they all march away to
+some by-place.
+
+     "We frequently followed them," says Leguat, "and found that
+     afterwards the old ones went each their way alone, or in
+     couples, and left the two young ones together, and this we
+     called a _marriage_. This particularity has something in it
+     which looks a little fabulous; nevertheless what I say is
+     sincere truth, and what I have more than once observed with care
+     and pleasure."
+
+Leguat gives a figure of this singular bird, which in his plate has
+somewhat of the air and aspect of a Christmas goose, although, of
+course, it wants the web-feet. Its neck and legs are proportionally
+longer than those parts of the Dodo, and give it more of a
+_struthious_ appearance: but the existing osteological evidence is
+sufficient to show that it was closely allied to that bird, and
+shared with it in some peculiar affinities to the pigeon tribe. It
+is curious that, although Rodriguez is a British settlement, we
+have scarcely any information regarding it beyond what is to be
+found in the work last quoted, and all that we have since learned
+of the Solitary is that it has become extinct. Of late years Mr
+Telfair made inquiries of one of the colonists, who assured him
+that no such bird now existed on the island; and the same negative
+result was obtained by Mr Higgins, a Liverpool gentleman, who, after
+suffering shipwreck on Rodriguez, resided there for a couple of
+months. As far back as 1789, some bones incrusted by a stalagmite,
+and erroneously supposed to belong to the Dodo, were found in a cave
+in Rodriguez by a M. Labistour. They afterwards found their way to
+Paris, where they may still be seen. We are informed (_Proceedings
+of the Zoological Society_, Part I. p. 31) that Col. Dawkins
+recently visited these caverns, and dug without finding any thing
+but a small bone. But M. Eudes succeeded in disinterring various
+bones, among others those of a large species of bird no longer found
+alive upon the island. He adds that the Dutch, who first landed at
+Rodriguez, left cats there to destroy the rats, which annoyed them.
+These cats are now so numerous as to prove very destructive to the
+poultry, and he thinks it probable that these feline wanderers
+may have extirpated the bird in question, by devouring the young
+ones as soon as they were hatched,--a destruction which may have
+been effected even before the island became inhabited by the human
+race. Be that as it may, Mr Telfair sent collections of the bones
+to this country, one of which may be seen in the museum of the
+Andersonian Institution, Glasgow. Mr Strickland mourns over the loss
+or disappearance of those transmitted to the Zoological Society
+of London. We have been informed within these few days that, like
+the head of the Danish Dodo, they have been rediscovered, lying
+in a stable or other outhouse, in the vicinity of the museum of
+that Society. Both the Glasgow specimens, and those in Paris, have
+been carefully examined and compared by Mr Strickland, and their
+Columbine characters are minutely described by his skilful and
+accurate coadjutor, Dr Melville, in the second portion of his work.
+Mr S. very properly regards certain peculiarities, alluded to by
+Leguat, such as the feeding on dates or plantains, as confirmatory
+of his view of the natural affinities already mentioned.
+
+So much for the Solitaire of Rodriguez and its affinities.[23]
+A singular fact, however, remains to be yet attended to in this
+insular group. The volcanic island of Bourbon seems also to have
+contained _brevi-pennate_ birds, whose inability to fly has likewise
+led to their extinction. This island, which lies about a hundred
+miles south-west of Mauritius, was discovered contemporaneously by
+Pedro de Mascaregnas, in the sixteenth century. The earliest notice
+which concerns our present inquiry, is by Captain Castleton, who
+visited Bourbon in 1613. In the narrative, as given by Purchas, we
+read as follows:--
+
+     "There is store of land-fowl, both small and great, plentie of
+     doves, great parrats, and suchlike, and a great fowl of the
+     bignesse of a turkie, very fat, and so short-winged that they
+     cannot flie, beeing white, and in a manner tame; and so are all
+     other fowles, as having not been troubled nor feared with shot.
+     Our men did beat them down with sticks and stones."--(Ed. 1625,
+     vol. i. p. 331.)
+
+  [23] The companions of Vasco de Gama had, at an earlier period,
+  applied the name of _Solitaires_ to certain birds found in an
+  island near the Cape of Good Hope; but these must not be confounded
+  with those of the Didine group above referred to. They were, in
+  fact, penguins, and their wings were somewhat vaguely compared
+  to those of bats, by reason of the peculiar scaly or undeveloped
+  state of the feathers in these birds. Dr Hamel has shown that the
+  term _Solitaires_, as employed by the Portuguese sailors, was a
+  corruption of _sotilicairos_, an alleged Hottentot word, of which
+  we do not profess to know the meaning, being rather rusted in that
+  tongue. We know, however, that penguins are particularly gregarious,
+  and, therefore, by no means solitary, although they may be extremely
+  _sotilicairious_ for anything we can say to the contrary.
+
+Bontekoe van Hoorn, a Dutch voyager, spent twenty-one days in
+Bourbon in 1618, and found the island to abound in pigeons, parrots,
+and other species, among which "there were also _Dod-eersen_, which
+have small wings; and so far from being able to fly, they were so
+fat that they could scarcely walk, and when they tried to run, they
+dragged their under side along the ground." There is no reason to
+suppose that these birds were actual Dodos, of the existence of
+which in Bourbon there is not the slightest proof. That Bontekoe's
+account was compiled from recollection rather than from any journal
+written at the time, is almost certain from this tragical fact,
+that his ship was afterwards blown up, and he himself was the sole
+survivor. There is no likelihood that he preserved his papers any
+more than his portmanteau, and he no doubt wrote from remembrance of
+a large _brevipennate_ bird, whose indolent and unfearing tameness
+rendered it an easy prey. Knowing that a bird of a somewhat similar
+nature inhabited the neighbouring island, he took it for the same,
+and called it Dodo, by a corresponding term.
+
+A Frenchman of the name of Carré visited Bourbon in 1668, and in his
+_Voyages des Indes Orientales_, he states as follows:--
+
+     "I have seen a kind of bird which I have not found elsewhere; it
+     is that which the inhabitants call the _oiseau solitaire_, for
+     in fact it loves solitude, and only frequents the most secluded
+     places. One never sees two or more of them together, they are
+     always alone. It is not unlike a turkey, were it not that its
+     legs are longer. The beauty of its plumage is delightful to
+     behold. The flesh is exquisite; it forms one of the best dishes
+     in this country, and might form a dainty at our tables. We
+     wished to keep two of these birds to send to France and present
+     them to his Majesty, but, as soon as they were on board ship,
+     they died of melancholy, having refused to eat or drink."--(Vol.
+     i. p. 12.)
+
+Almost immediately after M. Carré's visit, a French colony was sent
+from Madagascar to Bourbon, under the superintendence of M. de la
+Haye. A certain Sieur D. B. (for this is all that is known of his
+name or designation) was one of the party, and has left a narrative
+of the expedition in an unpublished journal, acquired by Mr Telfair,
+and presented by him to the Zoological Society of London. Besides
+confirming the accounts given by preceding writers, this unknown
+author affords a conclusive proof that a second species of the
+same group inhabited the Island of Bourbon. We are indebted to Mr
+Strickland for the original passages and the following translation:--
+
+     1. "_Solitaires._--These birds are so called because they always
+     go alone. They are the size of a large goose, and are white,
+     with the tips of the wings and the tail black. The tail-feathers
+     resemble those of an ostrich; the neck is long, and the beak
+     is like that of a woodcock, but larger; the legs and feet like
+     those of turkeys."
+
+     2. "_Oiseaux bleus_, the size of _Solitaires_, have the plumage
+     wholly blue, the beak and feet red, resembling the feet of a
+     hen. They do not fly, but they run extremely fast, so that a dog
+     can hardly overtake them; they are very good eating."
+
+There is proof that one or other of these singular and now unknown
+birds existed in Bourbon, at least till toward the middle of the
+last century. M. Billiard, who resided there between 1817 and 1820,
+states (in his _Voyages aux Colonies Orientales_) that, at the time
+of the first colonisation of the island, "the woods were filled with
+birds which were not alarmed at the approach of man. Among them was
+the _Dodo_ or _Solitaire_, which was pursued on foot: they were
+still to be seen in the time of M. de la Bourdonnaye, who sent a
+specimen, as a curiosity, to one of the directors of the company."
+As the gentleman last named was governor of the Isles of France and
+Bourbon from 1735 to 1746, these birds, Mr Strickland observes,
+_must_ have survived to the former, and _may_ have continued to the
+latter date at least. But when M. Bory St Vincent made a careful
+survey of the island in 1801, no such species were to be found. The
+description of the bill and plumage shows that they were not genuine
+Dodos, but merely entitled to be classed among their kindred. Not a
+vestige of their remains is in the hands of naturalists, either in
+this or any other country.
+
+We have now finished, under Mr Strickland's guidance, our exposition
+of this curious group. The restriction, at any time, of such large
+birds to islands of so small a size, is certainly singular. We
+cannot, however, say what peculiar and unknown geological changes
+these islands may have undergone, by which their extent has been
+diminished, or their inter-connexion destroyed. Volcanic groups,
+such as those in question, are no doubt generally of less ancient
+origin than most others; but it is by no means unlikely that these
+islands of Rodriguez, Bourbon, and Mauritius, may once have formed
+a united group, or much more expanded mass of terra firma than they
+now exhibit; and that, by their partial submergence and separation,
+the dominions of the Dodo and its kindred have, like those of many
+other heavy chieftains of high degree, been greatly diminished and
+laid low. But into this question of ancient boundaries we cannot now
+enter.
+
+How pleasant, on some resplendent summer evening, in such a
+delicious clime as that of the Mauritius, the sun slowly sinking
+amid a gorgeous blaze of light, and gilding in green and gold the
+spreading summits of the towering palms,--the murmuring sea sending
+its refreshing vesper-breathings through all the "pillared shades"
+which stretch along that glittering shore,--how pleasant, we say,
+for wearied man to sit in leafy umbrage, and sup on Dodos and their
+kindred! Alas! we shall never see such days again.
+
+Dr Hamel, as native of a northern country, is fond of animal food,
+and has his senses, naturally sharp enough, so whetted thereby, that
+he becomes "sagacious of his _quarry_ from afar." He judiciously
+observes, in his recent memoir, (_Der Dodo_, &c.,) that in Leguat's
+map the place is accurately indicated where the common kitchen of
+the settlers stood, and where the great tree grew under which they
+used to sit, on a bench, to take their meals. Both tree and bench
+are marked upon the map. "At these two spots," says Dr Hamel, "it is
+probable that the bones of a complete skeleton of Leguat's solitaire
+might be collected; those of the head and feet on the site of the
+kitchen, and the sternum and other bones on that of the tree."
+
+     "I feel confident," says Mr Strickland, "that if active
+     naturalists would make a series of excavations in the alluvial
+     deposits, in the beds of streams, and amid the ruins of old
+     institutions in Mauritius, Bourbon, and Rodriguez, he would
+     speedily discover the remains of the dodo, the two 'solitaires,'
+     or the 'oiseau bleu.' But I would especially direct attention
+     to the caves with which these volcanic islands abound. The
+     chief agents in the destruction of the brevipennate birds were
+     probably the runaway negroes, who for many years infested
+     the primeval forests of these islands, and inhabited the
+     caverns, where they would doubtless leave the scattered bones
+     of the animals on which they fed. Here, then, may we more
+     especially hope to find the osseous remains of these remarkable
+     animals."--(P. 61.)
+
+
+
+
+THE SWORD OF HONOUR.
+
+A TALE OF 1787.
+
+
+Any old directory of the latter half of the last century will still
+show, to the curious in such matters, the address of Messrs. Hope
+and Bullion, merchants and general dealers at No. 4, in a certain
+high and narrow street in the city of London. Not that this, in
+itself, is a very valuable part of history; but to those who look
+up at the dirty windows of the house as it now stands, and compare
+the narrow pavement and cit-like appearance of the whole locality
+with the splendours of Oxford Square or Stanhope Place, where the
+business occupant of the premises has now his residence, it will be
+a subject of doubt, if not of unbelief, that Mr Bullion--who dwelt
+in the upper portions of the building--was as happy, and nearly as
+proud, as his successor at the present time. Yet so it is; and,
+without making invidious comparisons with the distinguished-looking
+lady who does the honours of the mansion in Oxford Square--her
+father was a sugar baker, and lived in a magnificent country house
+at Mussel hill. I will venture to state, that Mr Bullion had great
+reason to be satisfied with the manners and appearance of the young
+person who presided at his festive board. Such a rich laugh, and
+such a sweet voice, were heard in no other house in the town. And
+as to her face and figure, the only dispute among painters and
+sculptors was, whether the ever-varying expression of her features
+did not constitute her the true property of the Reynoldses and
+Romneys,--or the ever-exquisite moulding of her shape did not bring
+her within the province of the severer art. At the same time it must
+be confessed, that the subject of these disputes took no interest
+either in brush or chisel. A bright, happy, clever creature--but no
+judge of sciences and arts--was Louise Bullion. Books she had read
+a few, and music she had studied a little; yet, with her slender
+knowledge of the circulating library, she talked more pleasantly
+than Madame de Staël, and sang so sweetly, so naturally, and so
+truly, that Mrs Billington was a fool to her. She was a parlour
+Jenny Lind. But Mrs Billington was not the only person who was a
+fool to her. Oh no!--that sort of insanity was epidemic, and seized
+on all that came near her. Even Mr Cocker the book-keeper--a little
+man of upwards of fifty, who was so simple, and knew so little of
+anything but arithmetic, that he always considered himself, and was
+considered by the people, a boy just getting on in his teens--even
+Mr Cocker was a fool to her too. For when he was invited to tea,
+and had his cups sweetened by her hand, and his whole heart turned,
+by some of her pathetic ballads, into something so soft and oily
+that it must have been just like one of the muffins she laid on his
+plate, he used to go away with a very confused idea of cube roots,
+and get into the most extraordinary puzzles in the rule of three.
+Miss Louise, he said, would never go out of his head; whereas she
+had never once got into it, having established her quarters very
+comfortably in another place a little lower down, just inside of
+the brass buttons on his left breast; and yet the poor old fellow
+went down to his grave without the remotest suspicion that he had
+ever been in love. The people used to say that his perplexities, on
+those occasions, were principally remarkable after supper--for an
+invitation to tea, in those hospitable times, included an afterpiece
+in the shape of some roaring hot dishes, and various bowls of a
+stout and jovial beverage, whose place, I beg to say, is poorly
+supplied by any conceivable quantity of negus and jellies! Yes,
+the people used to say that Cocker's difficulties in calculation
+arose from other causes than his admiration of Miss Louise and her
+songs; but this was a calumny--and, in fact, any few extra glasses
+he took were for the express purpose of clearing his head, after it
+had got bewildered by her smiles and music; and therefore how could
+they possibly be the cause of his bewilderment? I repeat that Mr
+Cocker was afflicted by the universal disease, and would have died
+with the greatest happiness to give her a moment's satisfaction.
+And so would all the clerks, except one, who was very short-sighted
+and remarkably deaf, and who was afterwards tried on suspicion of
+having poisoned his wife; and so would her aunt, Miss Lucretia
+Smith, though her kindness was so wonderfully disguised that the
+whole world would have been justified in considering it harshness
+and ill-nature. It was only her way of bestowing it--as if you were
+to pour out sugar from a vinegar cruet; and a good old, fussy,
+scolding, grumbling, advising, tormenting, and very loving lady was
+Miss Lucretia Smith--very loving, I say, not only of her niece, and
+her brother-in-law, but of anybody that would agree to be loved.
+Traditions existed that, in her youth, she had been a tremendous
+creature for enthusiasms and romances; that she had flirted with all
+the officers of the city militia, from the colonel downwards, and
+with all the Lord Mayors' chaplains for an infinite series of years;
+and that, though nothing came of all her praiseworthy efforts, time
+had had a strengthening instead of a weakening effect on all these
+passages--till now, in her fifty-third year, she actually believed
+she had been in love with them all, and on the point of marriage
+with more than half.
+
+And this constituted the whole of Mr Bullion's establishment--at
+least all his establishment which was regularly on the books;
+but there was a young man so constantly in the house--so much at
+home there--so welcome when he came, so wondered at when he staid
+away--in short, so much one of the family, that I will only say, if
+he was not considered a member of it, he ought to have been. For
+what, I pray you, constitutes membership, if intimacy, kindness,
+perpetual presence, and filial and fraternal affection--filial to
+the old man, fraternal to the young lady--do not constitute it?
+You might have sworn till doomsday, but Mr Cecil Hope would never
+have believed that his home was anywhere but at No. 4. Nay, when,
+by some accident, he found himself for a day in a very pretty, very
+tasteful, and very spacious house he had in Hertfordshire, with
+a ring-fence of fourteen hundred acres round it, he felt quite
+disconsolate, and as if he were in a strange place. The estate
+had been bought, the house had been built--as the money had been
+acquired, by his father, who was no less a person than the senior
+partner in the firm of Hope and Bullion, but had withdrawn his
+capital from the trade, laid it out in land, superintended the
+erection of his mansion, pined for his mercantile activities, and
+died in three years of having nothing to do. So Cecil was rich
+and unencumbered; he was also as handsome as the Apollo, who,
+they say, would be a very vulgar-looking fellow if he dressed
+like a Christian; and he (not the Apollo, but Cecil Hope) was
+four-and-twenty years of age, five feet eleven in height, and
+as pleasant a fellow as it is possible to conceive. So you may
+guess whether or not he was in love with Louise. Of course he
+was,--haven't I said he was a young man of some sense, and for whom
+I have a regard? He adored her. And now you will, perhaps, be asking
+if the admiration was returned--and that is one of the occasions on
+which an impertinent reader has a great advantage over the best and
+cunningest of authors. They can ask such impudent questions,--which
+they would not dare to do unless under the protection and in the
+sanctuary, as it were, of print, and look so amazingly knowing while
+pausing for a reply, that I have no patience with the fellows at
+all; and, in answer to their demand whether Louise returned the
+love of Cecil Hope, I will only say this--I will see them hanged
+first, before I gratify their curiosity. Indeed, how could I hold
+up my head in any decent society again, if I were to commit such
+a breach of confidence as that? Imagine me confessing that she
+looked always fifty times happier in his presence than when he was
+away--imagine me confessing that her heart beat many thumps quicker
+when anybody mentioned his name--imagine me, I say, confessing
+all this, and fifty things more, and then calling myself a man of
+honour and discretion! No: I say again I will see the reader hanged
+first, before I will answer his insolent question; so let that be
+an understood thing between us, that I will never reveal any secret
+with which a young lady is kind enough to intrust me.
+
+And this, I think, is a catalogue of all the household above the
+good old warehouse. Ah! no,--there is the excellent Mr Bullion
+himself. He is now sixty; he has white hair, a noble, even a
+_distingué_ figure: look into any page of any fashionable novel of
+any year, for an explanation of what that means. On the present
+occasion, you would perhaps conclude that the long-backed,
+wide-tailed blue coat, the low-flapped waistcoat, tight-fitting
+knee-br--ch--s, white cotton stockings in-doors, long gaiters out,
+with bright-buckled square-toed shoes, may be a little inconsistent
+with the epithet _distingué_. But this is a vulgar error, and
+would argue that nobody could look _distingué_ without lace and
+brocade. Now, only imagine Mr Bullion in a court-dress, with a
+silk bag floating over his shoulder, to tie up long tresses which
+have disappeared from his head for many years; a diamond-hilted
+rapier that probably has no blade, and all the other portions of
+that graceful and easy style of habiliment,--dress him in this way,
+and look at him bowing gracefully by means of his three-cornered
+hat, and you will surely grant he would be a _distingué_ figure
+then,--and why not in his blue coat and smalls?
+
+But _distingué_-looking men, even in court-dresses, may be great
+rascals, and even considerable fools. Then was Mr Bullion a
+rascal?--no. A fool?--no. In short, he was one of the best of men,
+and could have been recognised during his life, if any one had
+described him in the words of his epitaph.
+
+Well,--we must get on. Day after day, for several months before
+the date we have got to, a sort of mystery seemed to grow deeper
+and deeper on the benevolent features of the father of Louise.
+Something--nobody could tell what--had lifted him out of his
+ordinary self. He dropt dark hints of some great change that was
+shortly to take place in the position of the family: he even
+took many opportunities of lecturing Cecil Hope on the miseries
+of ill-assorted marriages, particularly where the lady was of a
+family immeasurably superior to the man's. Miss Smith thought he was
+going to be made Lord Mayor; Cecil Hope supposed he was about to be
+appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Louise thought he was
+growing silly, and took no notice of all the airs he put on, and the
+depreciatory observations he made on the rank of a country squire.
+As to Mr Cocker, he was already fully persuaded that his master was
+the greatest man in the world, and, if he had started for king,
+would have voted him to the throne without a moment's hesitation.
+At last the origin of all these proceedings on the part of Mr
+Bullion began to be suspected. A little dark man, with the brightest
+possible eyes, shrouded in a great cloak, with a broad-brimmed hat
+carefully drawn over his brows, and just showing to the affrighted
+maid who opened the door the aforesaid eyes, fixed on her with such
+an expression of inquiry that they fully supplied the difficulty
+he experienced in asking for Mr Bullion in words,--for he was a
+foreigner, not much gifted with the graces of English pronunciation.
+This little dark and inquisitive man came to the house two or
+three times a-week, and spent several hours in close consultation
+with Mr Bullion. On emerging from these councils, it was easy to
+see, by that gentleman's countenance, whether the affair, whatever
+it was, was in a prosperous condition or not. Sometimes he came
+into the supper-room gloomy and silent, sometimes tripping in
+like a sexagenarian Taglioni, and humming a French song,--for his
+knowledge of that language was extraordinary,--and his whole idea
+of a daughter's education seemed to be, to make her acquire the
+true Parisian accent, and to read Molière and Corneille. So Louise,
+to gratify the whim of her father, had made herself perfect in
+the language, and could have entered into a correspondence with
+Madame de Sevigné without a single false concord, or a mistake in
+spelling. Who could this little man be, who had such influence
+on her father's spirits? They watched him, but could see nothing
+but the dark cloak and slouched hat, which disappeared down some
+side street, and would have puzzled one of the detective police to
+keep them in view. Her thoughts rested almost constantly on this
+subject. Even at church--for they were regular church-goers, and
+very decided Protestants, as far as their religious feelings could
+be shown in hating the devil and the Pope--she used to watch her
+father's face, but could read nothing there but a quiet devotion
+during the prayers, and an amiable condescension while listening to
+the sermon. Rustlings of papers as the little visitor slipt along
+the passage, revealed the fact that there were various documents
+required in their consultations; and on one particular occasion,
+after an interview of unusual duration, Mr Bullion accompanied his
+mysterious guest to the door, and was overheard, by the conclave
+who were assembled in the little parlour for supper, very warm in
+his protestations of obligation for the trouble he had taken, and
+concluding with these remarkable words--"Assure his Excellency of
+my highest consideration, and that I shall not lose a moment in
+throwing myself at the feet of the King." Louise looked at Cecil on
+hearing these words; and as Cecil would probably have been looking
+at Louise, whether he had heard these words or not, their eyes
+met with an expression of great bewilderment and surprise,--the
+said bewilderment being by no means diminished when his visitor
+replied--"His Excellency kisses your hands, and I leave your
+Lordship in the holy keeping of the saints."
+
+"Papa is rather flighty--don't you think so, Cecil?" said Louise.
+
+"Both mad," answered that gentleman with a shake of the head.
+
+"Mr Bullion is going to be Lord Mayor," said Miss Lucretia, with
+a vivid remembrance of the flirtations and grandeurs of the
+Mansion-house.
+
+Mr Cocker said nothing aloud, and was sorely puzzled for a long
+time, but ended with a confused notion, derived principally from the
+protection of the saints, that his patron was likely to be Pope.
+All, however, sank into a gaping silence of anticipation, when
+Mr Bullion, after shutting the door, as soon as his visitor had
+departed, began to whistle Malbrook, and came into the supper-room.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+"Enjoy yourselves, _mes enfants_," said the old gentleman; "I have
+not kept you waiting, I hope. Miss Smith, I kiss your hand--_ma
+fille, embrassemoi_."
+
+"What's the matter with you, papa?" replied the young lady, and not
+complying with the request; "you speak as if you were a foreigner.
+Have you forgotten your mother-tongue?"
+
+And certainly it was not difficult to perceive that there was an
+unusual tone assumed by Mr Bullion, with the slightest possible
+broken English admitted into his language.
+
+"My mother-tongue?" said the senior. "Bah! 'tis not the time yet--I
+have not forgot it--not quite--but kiss me, Louise."
+
+"Well, since you speak like a Christian, I won't refuse; but do be a
+good, kind, communicative old man, and tell us what has kept you so
+long. Do tell us who that hideous man is."
+
+"Hideous, my dear!--'tis plain you never saw him."
+
+"He's like the bravo of Venice," said Louise; "isn't he, Cecil?"
+
+"He's more like Guy Faux," said the gentleman appealed to.
+
+"He's like a gipsy fortune-teller," continued Miss Smith.
+
+"Uncommon like a 'ousebreaker," chimed in Mr Cocker: "I never see
+such a rascally-looking countenance."
+
+"Are you aware, all this time, that you are giving these
+descriptions of a friend of mine,--a most learned, lofty,
+reverend--but, pshaw! what nonsense it is, getting angry with folks
+like you. Eagles should fight with eagles."
+
+But the lofty assumptions of Mr Bullion made no impression on his
+audience. One word, however, had stuck in the tympanum of Miss
+Smith's ear, and was beating a tremendous tattoo in her heart--
+
+"Reverend, did you say, brother-in-law. If that little man is
+reverend, mark my words. I know very well what he's after. If we're
+not all spirited off to the Disquisition in Spain, I wish I may
+never be marr--I mean--saved."
+
+"Nonsense, aunt," said Louise. "You're not going to turn Dissenter,
+father?"
+
+"Better that than be a Papist, anyhow," sulked out Lucretia.
+
+"Miss Smith," said Mr Bullion, "have the kindness, madam, to make
+no observation on what I do, or what friends I visit or receive in
+this house. If the gentleman who has now left me were a Mahommedan,
+he should be sacred from your impertinent remarks. Give me another
+potato, and hold your tongue."
+
+"To you, Mr Hope," continued the senior, "and to you, Mr Cocker,
+and to you, Miss Lucretia, who are unmixed plebeians from your
+remotest known ancestry, it may appear surprising that a man so
+willingly undertakes the onerous duties entailed on him by his lofty
+extraction, as to surrender the peace and contentment which he feels
+to be the fitter accompaniments of your humble yet comfortable
+position. For my daughter and me far other things are in store--we
+sit on the mountain-top exposed to the tempest, though glorified by
+the sunshine, and look without regret to the contemptible safety
+and inglorious ease of the inhabitants of the vale. Take a glass of
+wine, Mr Cocker. I shall always look on you with favour."
+
+Mr Cocker took the glass as ordered, and supposed his patron was
+repeating a passage out of Enfield's _Speaker_. "Fine language,
+sir, very fine language, indeed! particular that about sunshine on
+the mountains. A remarkable clever man, Mr Enfield; and I can say
+Ossian's Address to the Sun myself."
+
+But in the mean time Louisa walked round the table, and laid hold of
+her father's hand, and putting her finger on his pulse, looked with
+a face full of wisdom, while she counted the beats; and giving a
+satisfied shake of the head, resumed her seat.
+
+"A day or two's quiet will do, without a strait waistcoat," she
+said; "but I will certainly tell the porter never to admit that
+slouch-faced muffled-up impostor, who puts such nonsense into his
+head."
+
+But at this moment a violent pull at the bell startled them all.
+When the door was opened a voice was heard in the hall which said,
+"Pour un instant, Monseigneur;" whereupon Mr Bullion started up,
+and replying, "Oui, mon père," hurried out of the room, and left his
+party in more blank amazement than before.
+
+The surmises, the exclamations, the whispers and suspicions that
+passed from one to the other, it is needless to record; it will
+suffice to say that, after an animated conversation with the
+mysterious visitor, Mr Bullion once more joined the circle and said,
+"You will be ready, all of you, to start for France to-morrow. I
+have business of importance that calls for my presence in Tours. Say
+not a word, but obey."
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+So, in a week, they were all comfortably settled in a hotel at Tours.
+
+Mr Bullion was sitting in the parlour, apparently in deep and
+pleasant contemplation; for the corners of his mouth were
+involuntarily turned up, and he inspected the calf of his leg with
+self-satisfied admiration. Mr Cocker was on a chair in the corner,
+probably multiplying the squares in the table-cover by the flowers
+in the paper.
+
+"How do you like France, Mr Cocker?" said Mr Bullion.
+
+"Not at all, sir; the folks has no sense; and no wonder we always
+wallop them by sea or land."
+
+"Hem! Must I remind you, sir, that this is _my_ country; that the
+French are my countrymen; and that you by no means wallop them
+either by sea or land."
+
+"_You_ French! _you_ Frenchman!" replied Mr Cocker; "that _is_
+a joke! Bullion ain't altogether a French name, I think? No,
+no; it smells of the bank; _it_ does. You ain't one of the
+_parlevous_--_you_ ain't, that's certain."
+
+"How often have I to order you, sir, not to doubt my word?" said Mr
+Bullion; and emphacised his speech with a form of expression that is
+generally considered a clencher.
+
+"There! there!" cried Cocker, triumphant; "I told you so. Is there
+ever a Frenchman could swear like that? They ain't Christians enough
+to give such a jolly hearty curse as yourn; so you see, sir, it's no
+go to pass yourself off for a _Mounseer_."
+
+"Leave the room, sir, and send Mr Hope to me at once!"
+
+Cocker obeyed, puzzled more and more at the fancy his master was
+possessed with to deny his country.
+
+"It would, perhaps, have been wiser," thought Mr Bullion, "to
+have left the plebeian fools at home till everything was formally
+completed; but still, nothing, I suppose, would have satisfied them
+but the evidence of their own eyes."
+
+"Mr Hope," he said, as that young gentleman entered the room, "sit
+down beside me; nay, no ceremony, I shall always treat you with
+condescension and regard."
+
+"You are very good, sir."
+
+"I am, sir; and I trust your conduct will continue such as to
+justify me in remaining so. You may have observed, Mr Hope, a change
+in my manner for some time past. You can't have been fool enough,
+like Miss Smith and Mr Cocker, to doubt the reality of the fact I
+stated, namely, that I am French by birth,--did you doubt it, sir?"
+
+"Why, sir,--in fact--since you insist on an answer--"
+
+"I see you did. Well, sir, I pity and pardon you. I will tell you
+the whole tale, and then you will see that some alteration must take
+place in our respective positions. In the neighbourhood of this
+good city of Tours I was born. My father was chief of the younger
+branch of one of the noblest houses in France,--the De Bouillons
+of Chateau d'Or. He was wild, gay, thoughtless, and fell into
+disgrace at court. He was imprisoned in the Bastille; his estates
+confiscated; his name expunged from the book of nobility; and he
+died poor, forgotten, and blackened in name and fame. I was fifteen
+at the time. I took my father's sword into the Town Hall; I gave
+it in solemn charge to the authorities, and vowed that when I had
+succeeded in wiping off the blot from my father's name, and getting
+it restored to its former rank, I would reclaim it at their hands,
+and assume the state and dignity to which my birth entitled me. I
+went to England; your father, my good Cecil, took me by the hand:
+porter, clerk, partner, friend,--I rose through all the gradations
+of the office; and when he died, he left me the highest trust he
+could repose in anyone,--the guardianship of his son."
+
+"I know sir,--and if I have never sufficiently thanked you for your
+care--"
+
+"Not that--no, no--I'm satisfied, my dear boy--and Louise--the
+Lady Louise I must now call her--change of rank--duties of lofty
+sphere--former friends--ill arranged engagements--" continued the
+new-formed magnate in confusion, blurting out unconnected words,
+that showed the train of his thoughts without expressing them
+distinctly; while Mr Hope sat in amazement at what he had heard, but
+no longer doubting the reality of what was said.
+
+"Well, sir?" he inquired.
+
+"I changed my name with my country, though retaining as much of the
+sound of it as I could; and Louis Bullion was a complete disguise
+for the expatriated Marquis de Bouillon de Chateau d'Or. I married
+Miss Smith, and lost her shortly after Louise's birth. For years
+I have been in treaty with the French ambassador through his
+almoner, the Abbé, whose visits you thought so mysterious. At last
+I succeeded, and to-morrow I claim my father's sword, resume the
+hereditary titles of my house, and take my honoured place among the
+peers and paladins of France."
+
+"And have you informed Louise?"--inquired Cecil.
+
+"Lady Louise," interrupted Mr Bullion.
+
+"Of this change in her position?"
+
+"Why, my dear Cecil, to tell you truth--it's not an easy matter to
+get her to understand my meaning. Yesterday I attempted to explain
+the thing, exactly as I have done to you; but instead of taking it
+seriously, she began with one of her provoking chuckles, and chucked
+me under the chin, and called me Marquy-darky. In fact, I wish the
+explanation to come from you."
+
+"I feel myself very unfit for the task," said the young man, who
+foresaw that this altered situation might interfere with certain
+plans of his own. "I hope you will excuse me; you can tell her the
+whole affair yourself, for here she comes."
+
+And the young lady accordingly made her appearance. After looking at
+them for some time--
+
+"What are you all so doleful about?" she began. "Has papa bitten
+you too, Cecil? Pray don't be a duke--it makes people so very
+ridiculous."
+
+"Miss Louise--mademoiselle, I ought to say," said Mr Bullion, "I
+have communicated certain facts to Cecil Hope."
+
+"Which he doesn't believe--do you, Cecil?" interposed the daughter.
+
+"He does believe them, and I beg you will believe them too. They are
+simply, that I am a nobleman of the highest rank, and you are my
+right honourable daughter."
+
+"Oh, indeed! and how was our cousin Spain when you heard from
+Madrid?--our uncle Austria, was he quite well?--was George of
+England recovered of the gout?--and above all, how was uncle Smith,
+the shipowner of Wapping?"
+
+"Girl! you will drive me mad," replied the Marquis, "with your
+Smiths and Wappings. I tell you, what I have said is really the
+case, and to-morrow you will see the inauguration with your own
+eyes. Meantime, I must dress, to receive a deputation of the
+nobility of the province, who come to congratulate me on my arrival."
+
+"Oh, what's this I hear," exclaimed Miss Smith, rushing into the
+room, "are you a real marquis, Mr Bullion?"
+
+"Yes, madam, I have that honour."
+
+"And does the marriage with my sister stand good?"
+
+"To be sure, madam."
+
+"Then, I'm very glad of it. Oh how delightful!--to be my Lord this,
+my Lady that. I am always devoted to the aristockicy; and now, only
+to think I am one of them myself."
+
+"How can you be so foolish, aunt?--I'm ashamed of you," said Louise;
+"what terrible things you were telling me, an hour ago, of the
+wickedness of the nobility?"
+
+"Miss Smith, though she does not express herself in very correct
+language, has more sensible ideas on this subject than you," said
+the marquis, looking severely at his daughter, who was looking, from
+time to time, with a malicious smile at the woe-begone countenance
+of Cecil Hope. "Remember, madam, who it is you are," continued the
+senior.
+
+"La, papa! don't talk such nonsense," replied the irreverent
+daughter. "Do you think I am eighteen years of age, and don't know
+perfectly well who and what I am?"
+
+"Three of your ancestors, madam, were Constables of France."
+
+"That's nothing to boast of," returned Louise; "no, not if they had
+been inspectors of police."
+
+"You are incorrigible, girl, and have not sense enough to have a
+proper feeling of family pride."
+
+"Haven't I? Am I not proud of all the stories uncle David tells
+us of his courage, when he was mate of an Indiaman? and aunt
+Jenkison--don't you remember, sir, how she dined with us at
+Christmas, and had to walk in pattens through the snow, and tumbled
+in Cheapside?"
+
+A laugh began to form itself round the eyes of the French magnate,
+which made his countenance uncommonly like what it used to be when
+it was that of an English merchant. Louise saw her success, and
+proceeded.
+
+"And how you said, when the poor old lady was brought home in a
+chair, that it was the punch that did it?"
+
+"He, he! and so it was. Didn't I caution her, all the time, that it
+was old Jamaica rum?" broke out the father; but checked himself, as
+if he were guilty of some indecorum.
+
+"And don't you remember how we all attended the launch of uncle
+Peter's ship, the Hope's Return? Ah, they were happy days, father!
+weren't they?"
+
+"No, madam; no--vulgar, miserable days: forget them as quick as you
+can. I tell you, when you resume your proper sphere, every eye will
+be turned to your beauty: nobles will be dying at your feet."
+
+"I trust not, sir," hurriedly burst in Mr Hope. "I don't see what
+right any nobles will have to be dying at Louise's feet."
+
+"Don't you, sir?" said Louise. "Indeed! I beg to tell you, that as
+many as choose shall die at my feet. I'll trouble you, Mr Hope,
+not to interfere with the taste of any nobleman who has a fancy to
+so queer a place for his death-bed." But while she said this, she
+tapped him so playfully with her little white hand, and looked at
+him so kindly with her beautiful blue eyes, that the young gentleman
+seemed greatly reassured; and in a few minutes, as if tired of the
+conversation, betook himself to the other room.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Suddenly a great noise was heard in the street, and interrupted the
+lectures of father and aunt on the dignity of position and the pride
+of birth. Miss Lucretia and Louise ran to the window, and saw a
+cavalcade of carriages, with outriders, and footmen on the rumble,
+and all the stately accompaniments of the old-fashioned family
+coach, which, after a slow progress along the causeway, stopped at
+the hotel door.
+
+"My friends! my noble friends!" exclaimed the marquis; "and I in
+this miserable dress!"
+
+"The noble men! the salts of the earth!" equally exclaimed Miss
+Smith; "and I in my morning gownd!"
+
+Saying this, she hastily fled into her bed-room, which, according to
+the fashion of French houses, opened on the sitting-room, and left
+the father and Louise alone.
+
+The father certainly was in no fitting costume for the dignity
+of his new character. He was dressed according to the fashion of
+the respectable London trader of his time--a very fitting figure
+for 'Change, but not appropriate to the Marquis de Bouillon de
+Chateau d'Or. Nor, in fact, was his disposition much more fitted
+for his exalted position than his clothes. To all intents and
+purposes, he was a true John Bull: proud of his efforts to attain
+wealth--proud of his success--proud of the freedom of his adopted
+land--and, in his secret heart, thinking an English merchant
+several hundred degrees superior in usefulness and worth to all the
+marquises that ever lived on the smiles of the Grand Monarque. The
+struggle, therefore, that went on within him was the most ludicrous
+possible. To his family and friends he presented that phase of his
+individuality that set his nobility in front; to the French nobles,
+on the other hand, he was inclined to show only so much of himself
+as presented the man of bills and invoices; and in both conditions,
+by a wonderful process of reasoning, in which we are all adepts,
+considered himself raised above the individuals he addressed.
+
+"Did they see you at the window?" he said, in some trepidation,
+while the visitors were descending from their coaches.
+
+"To be sure," replied Louise; "and impudent-looking men they were."
+
+"Ah! that's a pity. Do, for heaven's sake, my dear, just slip in
+beside your aunt. They are a very gay polite people, the nobles of
+France--"
+
+"Well; and what then?"
+
+"And they might take ways of showing it, we are not used to in
+England. Do hide yourself, my dear--there, that's a good girl."
+And just as he had succeeded in pushing her into the bedroom, and
+begged her to lock herself in, the landlord of the hotel ushered
+four or five noblemen into the apartment, as visitors to the
+Marquis de Bouillon. The eldest of the strangers--about forty years
+old--bespangled with jewels, and ornamented with two or three stars
+and ribbons, looked with some surprise on the plainly drest and
+citizen-mannered man, who came forward to welcome them.
+
+"We came to pay our compliments to my lord the Marquis de Bouillon
+de Chateau d'Or."
+
+"And very glad he is to see you, gentlemen," said their host.
+
+"You?--impossible! He speaks with an English accent."
+
+"An impostor!" replied another of the nobles, to whom the last
+sentence had been addressed in a whisper."
+
+"I am, indeed,--and truly glad to make your acquaintance, I assure
+you."
+
+"Well," resumed the Frenchman, "let me present to you the Viscount
+de Lanoy--the Baron Beauvilliers--the Marquis de Croissy--for
+myself, I'm Duc de Vieuxchateau."
+
+"Sit down, gentlemen--I beg," said De Bouillon, after bowing to the
+personages named. "A charming place this Tours, and I'm very glad to
+see you--fine weather, gentlemen."
+
+"I trust you have come with the intention of residing among us. Your
+estates, I conclude, are restored along with your titles."
+
+"No, gentlemen, they're not. But we may manage to buy some of them
+back again. How's land here?"
+
+"Land?" inquired the duke, rather bewildered with the question.
+
+"Yes--how is it, as to rent? How much an acre?"
+
+"'Pon my word, I don't know. When I want money I tell the steward,
+and the people--the--serfs, I suppose, they are--who hold the plough
+and manage the land--give him some, and he brings it to me."
+
+"Oh! but you don't know how many years' purchase it's worth?"
+
+To this there was no answer--statistics, at that time, not being a
+favourite study in France.
+
+"But, marquis," inquired another, "hasn't the King restored you your
+manorial rights--your _droits de seigneur_?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Then what's the use of land without them?" was the very pertinent
+rejoinder.
+
+"What are they, sir?" inquired the marquis.
+
+"Why, if a tenant of yours has a pretty daughter," said one.
+
+"Or a wife," said another.
+
+"Or even a niece," said a third.
+
+"Well, sir, what then? I don't take."
+
+"Oh, you're a wag, marquis!" replied the duke. "Didn't I see, as we
+stopt before your window, a countenance radiant with beauty?"
+
+"Eyes like stars," chimed in another.
+
+"Cheeks like roses. Aha! Monsieur le Marquis--who was it?--come!"
+
+"Why, that,--oh, that,--that's a young lady under my protection,
+gentlemen; and I must beg you to change the conversation."
+
+"Indeed! you're a lucky fellow! The old fool mustn't be allowed to
+keep such beauty to himself."
+
+"Certainly not," returned the vicomte, also in a whisper.
+
+"Lucky!" said De Bouillon--"yes, gentlemen, I am lucky. If you knew
+all, you would think so, I'm sure."
+
+"She loves you, then, old simpleton?"
+
+"I think she does--I know she does--"
+
+"May we not ask the honour of being presented?"
+
+"Some other time, gentlemen--not now--she's not here--she's gone out
+for a walk."
+
+"Impossible, my dear lord; we must have met her as we came up
+stairs."
+
+"She has a headache--she's gone to lie down for a few minutes," said
+the marquis, getting more and more anxious to keep Louise from the
+intrusion of his visitors.
+
+"I have an excellent cure for headaches of all kinds," exclaimed
+the baron, and proceeded towards the bed-room door. The Marquis de
+Bouillon, however, put himself between; but the duke and vicomte
+pulled him aside, and the baron began to rat-tat on the door.
+
+"Come forth, madam!" he began, "we are dying for a sight of your
+angelic charms. De Bouillon begs you to honour us with your
+presence. Hark, she's coming!" he added, and drew back as he heard
+the bolt withdrawn on the other side.
+
+"Stay where you are! don't come out!" shouted De Bouillon, still in
+the hands of his friends. "I charge you, don't move a step!" But his
+injunctions were vain; the door opened, and, sailing majestically
+into the room, drest out in hoop and furbelow, and waving her fan
+affectedly before her face, appeared Miss Lucretia Smith--
+
+"Did you visit to see me, gentlemen? I'm always delighted to see any
+one as is civil enough to give us a forenoon call."
+
+The French nobles, however, felt their ardour damped to an
+extraordinary degree, and replied by a series of the most respectful
+salaams.
+
+"Profound veneration," "deepest reverence," and other expressions
+of the same kind, were muttered by each of the visiters; and in a
+short time they succeeded, in spite of Miss Lucretia's reiterated
+invitations, in bowing themselves out of the room. They were
+accompanied by the marquis to their carriages, while Miss Smith was
+gazing after them, astonished, more than pleased, at the wonderful
+politeness of their manner. Louise slipt out of the bed-room, and
+slapt her astonished aunt upon the shoulder--
+
+"You've done it, aunt!--you've done it now! A word from you recalls
+these foreigners to their senses."
+
+"It gives me a high opinion," replied Miss Smith, "of them French.
+They stand in perfect awe of dignity and virtue."
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Great were the discussions, all that day, among the English party in
+the hotel--the father concealing his disappointment at the behaviour
+of his fellow nobles, under an exaggerated admiration of rank, and
+all its attributes; Louise professing to chime in with her father's
+ideas, for the pleasant purpose of vexing Cecil Hope; Mr Cocker
+still persuading himself the Frenchmanship of his old master was a
+little bit of acting that would end as soon as the curtain fell; and
+Miss Lucretia devising means of making up for her failures with so
+many curates, by catching a veritable duke. With the next morning
+new occupations began. The marquis, dressed in the fantastic apparel
+of a French courtier, exchanged compliments with his daughter,
+who was also magnificently attired, to do honour to the occasion.
+Mr Hope tried in vain to get her to sink from the lofty style she
+assumed, and had strong thoughts of setting off for Hertfordshire,
+and marrying a farmer's daughter out of revenge. The father was so
+carried away by family pride, and the daughter enjoyed the change
+in her rank so heartily, that there seemed no room in the heart
+of either for so prosaic a being as a plain English squire. And
+yet, every now and then, there gleamed from the corner of Louise's
+eye, or stole out in a merry tone of her voice, the old familiar
+feeling, so that he could not altogether give way to despair, but
+waited in patience what the chapter of accidents might bring. At
+one o'clock the marquis set off for the town-hall, where he was to
+go through the ceremony of reclaiming his father's sword, and have
+the blot on the scutcheon formally removed; after which he was to
+entertain the town authorities, and the neighbouring nobility, at
+dinner; the evening to conclude with a ball, in the preparation for
+which the ladies were to be left at home. Mr Hope accompanied him
+to the door of the town-hall,--but there he professed to find his
+feelings overpowered, and declined to witness the ceremony that,
+he said, broke the connexion which had existed so long between the
+names of Hope and Bullion; but, ere he could return to the hotel,
+several things had occurred that had a material influence on his
+prospects, and these we must now proceed to relate. Miss Lucretia
+Smith continued her oratory in the ears of her devoted niece after
+the gentlemen had gone, the burden thereof consisting, principally,
+in a comparison between the nobles of France and the shopocracy
+of London,--till that young lady betook herself to the bedroom
+window already mentioned, to watch for Cecil's return. She had
+not been long at her watch-post, when a carriage, with the blinds
+drawn up, and escorted by seven or eight armed men, with masks on
+their faces, pulled up at the door. Of this she took no particular
+notice, but kept looking attentively down the street. But, a minute
+or two after the closed carriage drove under the _porte cochère_,
+a young gentleman was ushered into the presence of Miss Smith, and
+was, by that young lady, received with the highest _empressement_
+possible. She had only had time to improve her toilette by putting
+on Louise's shawl and bonnet, which happened to be lying on a chair;
+and, in spite of the shortness of the view she had had of him the
+day before, she immediately recognised him as one of her brother's
+visiters, the Baron Beauvilliers.
+
+"Permit me, madam," he said, in very good English, "to apologise for
+my intrusion, but I have the authority of my friend De Bouillon to
+consider myself here at home."
+
+"Oh, sir, you are certainly the politest nation on the face of the
+earth, you French--that I must say; but I may trust, I hope, to
+the honour of a gent like you? You won't be rude to an unoffended
+female? for there ain't a soul in the 'ouse that could give me the
+least assistance."
+
+The baron bowed in a very assuring manner, and, taking a seat beside
+her, "May I make bold, madam, to ask who the tawdry silly-looking
+young person is who resides under De Bouillon's protection?"
+
+"Sir--under Mr Bull--I mean, under the marquee's protection? I don't
+understand you."
+
+"Exactly as I suspected. I guessed, from the dignity of your
+appearance, that such an infamous proceeding was entirely unknown
+to you. Command my services, madam, in any way you can make them
+available. Let me deliver you from the scandal of being in the same
+house with a person of that description."
+
+"Oh, sir!" replied Miss Smith, "you are certainly most obliging.
+When we are a little better acquainted perhaps--in a few days,
+or even in one--I shall be happy to accept your offer; but, la!
+what will my brother-in-law say if I accept a gentleman's offer at
+minute's notice?"
+
+Miss Smith accompanied this speech with various blushes and pauses,
+betokening the extent of her modest reluctance; but the baron either
+did not perceive the mistake she had made, or did not think it worth
+while to notice it.
+
+"I will convey the destroyer of your peace away from your sight.
+Show me only the room she is in. And consider, madam, that you will
+make me the proudest of men by allowing me to be your knight and
+champion on this occasion."
+
+"Really, sir, I can't say at present where the gipsy can be.
+Brother-in-law has been very sly; but if I can possibly ferret her
+out, won't I send her on her travels? Wait but a minute, sir: I'll
+come to you the moment she can be found."
+
+But the baron determined to accompany her in her search, and
+together they left the room, two active members of the Society for
+the Suppression of Vice. Louise had heard the noise of voices,
+without distinguishing or attending to what was said, but a low and
+hurried tap at the door now attracted her notice.
+
+"Miss Louise--ma'am--for heaven's sake, come out!" said the voice of
+Mr Cocker through the key-hole; "for here's a whole regiment of them
+French, and they wants to run away with YOU."
+
+"With me, Cocker!" exclaimed Louise, coming into the parlour. "What
+is it you mean?"
+
+"What I say, miss--and your aunt is as bad as any on 'em. She's
+searching the house, at this moment, to give you tip into their
+hands. She can't refuse nothing to them noblesse, as she calls 'em.
+The gentleman has gone down to the court-yard to see that nobody
+escapes, and here we are, like mice in a trap."
+
+"Go for Cecil, Cocker; leave me to myself," said Louise--her
+features dilating into tiger-like beauty, with rage and
+self-confidence. "Go, I tell you--you'll find him returning from the
+town-hall--and bid him lose not a moment in coming to my help." She
+waved Mr Cocker impatiently from her, and returned for a moment into
+the bed-room.
+
+"Madam, hist! I beg you will be quick!" exclaimed the baron,
+entering the parlour; "I can't wait much longer. What a detestable
+old fool it is!" he went on, in a lower voice; "she might have
+found the girl long ere this. "Well, well, have you found her?" he
+continued, addressing Louise, who issued from the bed-room in some
+of the apparel of her aunt, and assuming as nearly as she could the
+airs and graces of that individual. "Tell me, madam, where she is."
+
+"La! sir, how is one to find out these things in a moment--besides,
+they ain't quite proper subjects for a young lady to be concerned
+with," replied Louise, keeping her bashful cheek from the sight of
+the baron with her enormous fan.
+
+"Then, madam, point with that lovely finger of yours, and I shall
+make the discovery myself."
+
+Louise pointed, as required, to the gallery, along which, at that
+moment, her quick eye caught the step of Miss Lucretia; and the
+baron, going to the door, gave directions to his attendants to seize
+the lady, and carry her without loss of time to the Parc d'Amour,
+a hotel on the outskirts of Tours. He then closed the door, and
+listened--no less than did Louise--to the execution of his commands.
+
+"There, madam," he said, as the scuffle of seizure and a very faint
+scream were heard, "they've got her! Your pure presence shall never
+more be polluted by her society. A naughty man old De Bouillon, and
+unaccustomed to the strict morality of France. Adieu!"
+
+"Adieu, sir!" said Louise; but there was a tone in her voice, or
+something in her manner, that called the attention of her visitor.
+He went up to her, laid his hand upon the fan, and revealed before
+him, beautiful from alarm and indignation, was the face of Louise de
+Bouillon! "So, madam! this was an excellent device, but I have more
+assistance at hand. Ho! Pierre! François!" he began to call. "I have
+another carriage in the yard--you sha'nt escape me so."
+
+"Stop, sir!" exclaimed Louise, and placed herself between him and
+the door. "These are not the arts of wooing we are used to in
+England. I expected more softness and persuasion."
+
+"Alas, madam, 'tis only the shortness of the opportunity that
+prevents me from making a thousand protestations. But, after all,
+what is the use of them? Ho! François!"
+
+As he said this, he approached nearer to Louise, and even laid his
+hand upon her arm. But with the quickness of lightning, she made
+a dart at the diamond-covered hilt of her assailant's sword, and
+pulling it from the sheath, stood with the glittering point within
+an inch of the Frenchman's eyes.
+
+"Back, back!" she cried, "or you are a dead man--or frog--or
+monkey--or whatever you are!"
+
+Each of these names was accompanied with a step in advance; and
+there was too savage a lustre in her look to allow the unfortunate
+baron to doubt for a moment that his life was in the highest peril.
+
+"Madam," he expostulated, "do be careful--'tis sharp as a needle."
+
+"Back, back!" she continued, advancing with each word upon his
+retreating steps--"you thread-paper--you doll-at-a-fair--you stuffed
+cockatoo--back, back!" And on arriving at the bed-room door, she
+gave a prodigiously powerful lunge in advance, and drove her victim
+fairly into the room, and, with an exclamation of pride and triumph,
+locked him in. But, exhausted with the excitement, she had only time
+to lay the sword on the table, wave the key three times round her
+head in sign of victory, and fall fainting into the arms of Cecil
+Hope, who at that moment rushed into the room.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The ceremony in the town-hall passed off with the greatest _éclât_;
+and the dinner was probably thought the finest part of the day's
+entertainment by all but the newly re-established noble himself.
+Flushed with the glories of the proceeding, and also with the wine
+he had swallowed to his own health and happiness, he sallied forth
+with his friends of the preceding day--except, of course, the
+Baron Beauvilliers--and, as he himself expressed it, was awake for
+anything, up to any lark.
+
+"A lark, says my lord?" inquired the Duke de Vieuxchateau.
+
+"Ay," replied the marquis, "if it's as big as a turkey, all the
+better. That champaign is excellent tipple, and would be cheap at
+eighty-four shillings per dozen."
+
+The French nobles did not quite understand their companion's
+phraseology, but were quite willing to join him in any extravagance.
+
+"What shall we do?" cried one; "shall we break open the jail?"
+
+"No," said De Bouillon: "hang it! that's a serious matter. But I'll
+tell you what, I've no objection to knock down a charley."
+
+"No, no! let's go to _Rouge et Noir_."
+
+"Boys, boys!" at last exclaimed the Vicomte de Lanoy, "I'll tell
+you what we shall do,--Beauvilliers told me that, while we were all
+engaged at the dinner, he was going to seize a beautiful creature,
+and carry her off to the Parc d'Amour."
+
+"Wrong, decidedly wrong!" said De Bouillon at this proposition. "Who
+is she?"
+
+"Why, the companion, you understand, of an old twaddling fool, who
+has no right to so much beauty. Beauvilliers did not tell me his
+name, but 'tis only one of the _bourgeoisie_, and we surely have a
+right to do as we like with _them_."
+
+"Ah yes! of course," replied De Bouillon, "I did not think of that.
+What then?"
+
+"Why, sir, we shall play as good a trick on Beauvilliers as he
+designed for the ancient gentleman. Let's get there before him, and
+carry her from him!"
+
+"Agreed, agreed!"
+
+"No, no, I must declare off," said the marquis. "'Tis a bad business
+altogether, and this would make it worse."
+
+"But who is to carry the lady?" inquired the duke, without attending
+to the scruples of his friend.
+
+"Toss for it," suggested the vicomte. A louis was thrown into the
+air. "Heads! heads!" cried the nobleman. "Tails!" said De Bouillon.
+
+"'Tis tails!" exclaimed the vicomte. "Marquis, the chance is
+yours--you've won."
+
+"Oh! have I?" replied the unwilling favourite of fortune; "I've won,
+have I?"
+
+"You don't seem overpleased with your good luck," said the duke;
+"give me your chance, and I shall know how to make better use of it."
+
+"No, gentlemen, I'll manage this affair myself."
+
+"Come on, then!--_vive la joie!_"--and with great joviality they
+pursued their way to the Parc d'Amour.
+
+But they had been preceded in their journey to that hostelry by
+Louise, attended by Cecil Hope and Mr Cocker. By the administration
+of a douceur to the waiter, they obtained an _entrée_ to the
+apartment designed for the baron and his prey, and had scarcely time
+to ensconce themselves behind the window-curtain, when Miss Lucretia
+was escorted into the room. There were no symptoms of any violent
+resistance to her captors having been offered, and she took her seat
+on the sofa without any perceptible alarm.
+
+"Well, them's curious people, them French!" she soliloquised when
+the men had left her. "If that 'ere baron fell in love with a body,
+couldn't he say so without all that rigmarole about Mr Bullion's
+behaviour, and pulling a body nearly to pieces? I'm sure if he had
+axed me in a civil way, I wouldn't have said no. But, lawkins! here
+he comes."
+
+So saying, she enveloped herself in Louise's shawl, and pulled
+Louise's bonnet farther on her face, and prepared to enact the part
+of an offended, yet not altogether unforgiving beauty. But the
+door, on being slowly opened, presented, not the countenance of the
+baron, but the anxious face of Mr Bullion himself. The three French
+nobles pushed him forward. "Go on," they said; "make the best use
+of your eloquence. We will watch here, and guard the door against
+Beauvilliers himself."
+
+The marquis, now thoroughly sobered, slowly advanced: "If I can save
+this poor creature from the insolence of those _roués_, it will be
+well worth the suffering it has cost. Trust to me, madam," he said,
+in a very gentle voice, to the lady: "I will not suffer you to be
+insulted while I live. Come with me, madam, and you shall not be
+interrupted by ever a French profligate alive." On looking closely
+at the still silent lady on the sofa, he was startled at recognising
+a dress with which he was well acquainted.
+
+"In the name of heaven!" he said, "I adjure you to tell me who you
+are. Are you--is it possible--can you be my Louise!"
+
+"No, Mr Bullion," replied Miss Lucretia, lifting up the veil,
+and turning round to the trembling old man. "And I must say I'm
+considerably surprised to find you in a situation like this."
+
+"And you, madam--yourself--how came you here?"
+
+"A young gentleman--nobleman, I should say--ran off with me here,
+and I expected him every minute when you came in."
+
+"And Louise?" inquired the father, in an agitated voice--"when did
+you leave her? Oh! my folly to let her a moment out of my sight!--to
+reject Cecil Hope!--to bedizen myself in this ridiculous fashion!
+Where, oh where is Louise?"
+
+"Here, sir," exclaimed that lady, coming forward from behind the
+window-curtain.
+
+"And safe? Ah! but I need not ask. I see two honest Englishmen by
+your side."
+
+"And one of them, sir, says he'll never leave it," said Louise.
+
+"Stop a moment," replied the marquis. "Ho! gentlemen, come in."
+
+At his request his companions entered the room.
+
+"Gentlemen," said the marquis, "when I determined to reclaim my
+father's sword, I expected to find it bright as Bayard's, and
+unstained with infamy or dishonour. When I wished to resume my
+title, I hoped to find it a sign of the heroic virtues of my
+ancestors, but not a cloak for falsehood and vice. I warn you,
+sirs, your proceedings will be fatal to your order, and to your
+country. For myself, I care not for this sword,"--he threw it on
+the ground--"this filagree I despise,"--he took off his star and
+ribbon--"and I advise you to leave this chamber as fast as you can
+find it convenient."
+
+The French nobles obeyed.
+
+"Here, Cocker! off with all this silk and satin; get me my gaiters
+and flaxen wig; and, please Heaven, one week will see us in the
+little room above the warehouse."
+
+"Preparing, sir, to move into Hertfordshire?" inquired Louise,
+leaning on Cecil's arm.
+
+"Ay, my child; and, in remembrance of this adventure, we shall hang
+up among the pictures in the hall,
+
+  THE SWORD OF HONOUR."
+
+
+
+
+MEMOIRS OF KIRKALDY OF GRANGE.[24]
+
+  [24] _Memoirs and Adventures of Sir Wm. Kirkaldy of Grange, Knight_,
+  &c. &c. WM. BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London.
+
+
+It must be allowed that a perusal of Scottish history betrays more
+anomalies than are to be found in the character of almost any other
+people. It is not without reason that our southern neighbours
+complain of the difficulty of thoroughly understanding our national
+idiosyncrasy. At one time we appear to be the most peaceable race
+upon the surface of the earth--quiet, patient, and enduring;
+stubborn, perhaps, if interfered with, but, if let alone, in no way
+anxious to pick a quarrel. Take us in another mood, and gunpowder is
+not more inflammable. We are ready to go to the death, for a cause
+about which an Englishman would not trouble himself; and amongst
+ourselves, we divide into factions, debate, squabble, and fight with
+an inveteracy far more than commensurate with the importance of the
+quarrel. Sometimes we seem to have no romance; at other times we are
+perfect Quixotes. The amalgamated blood of the Saxon and the Celt
+seems, even in its union, to display the characteristics of either
+race. We rush into extremes: one day we appear over-cautious, and on
+the next, the _perfervidum ingenium Scotorum_ prevails.
+
+If these remarks be true as applied to the present times, they
+become still more conspicuous when we regard the troublous days of
+our ancestors. At one era, as in the reign of David I., we find
+the Scottish nation engaged, heart and soul, in one peculiar phase
+of religious excitement. Cathedrals and abbeys are starting up in
+every town. All that infant art can do--and yet, why call it infant,
+since, in architecture at least, it has never reached a higher
+maturity?--is lavished upon the structure of our fanes. Melrose, and
+Jedburgh, and Holyrood, and a hundred more magnificent edifices,
+rise up like exhalations throughout a poor and barren country; the
+people are proud in their faith, and perhaps even prouder in the
+actual splendour of their altars. A few centuries roll by, and we
+find the same nation deliberately undoing and demolishing the works
+of their forefathers. Hewn stone and carved cornices, tracery,
+mullions, and buttresses, have now become abominations in their
+sight. Not only must the relics of the saints be scattered to the
+winds of heaven, and their images ground into dust, but every church
+in which these were deposited or displayed, must be dismantled as
+the receptacle of pollution. The hammer swings again, but not with
+the same pious purpose as of yore. Once it was used to build; now
+it is heaved to destroy. Aisle and archway echo to the thunder of
+its strokes, and, amidst a roar of iconoclastic wrath, the venerable
+edifice goes down. Another short lapse of time, and we are lamenting
+the violence of the past, and striving to prop, patch up, and
+rebuild what little remnant has been spared of the older works of
+devotion.
+
+The same anomalies will be found if we turn from the ecclesiastical
+to the political picture. Sometimes there is a spirit of loyalty
+manifested, for which it would be difficult to find a parallel. The
+whole nation gathers round the person of James IV.; and earl and
+yeoman, lord and peasant, chief and vassal, lay down their lives
+at Flodden for their king. His successor James V., in no respect
+unworthy of his crown, dies of a broken heart, deserted by his peers
+and their retainers. The unfortunate Mary, welcomed to her country
+with acclamation, is made the victim of the basest intrigues, and
+forced to seek shelter, and find death in the dominions of her
+treacherous enemy. The divine right, in its widest meaning and
+acceptation, is formally recognised by the Scottish estates as the
+attribute of James VII.; three years afterwards, a new convention
+is prompt to recognise an alien. Half a century further on, we are
+found offering the gage of battle to England in support of the
+exiled family.
+
+This singular variety of mood, of which the foregoing are a
+few instances, is no doubt partly attributable to the peculiar
+relationship which existed between the crown and the principal
+nobility. The latter were not cousins by courtesy only--they were
+intimately connected with the royal family, and some of them were
+near the succession. Hence arose jealousy amongst themselves, a
+system of feud and intrigue, which was perpetuated for centuries,
+and a constant effort, on the part of one or other of the
+conflicting magnates, to gain possession and keep custody of the
+royal person, whenever minority or weakness appeared to favour the
+attempt. But we cannot help thinking, that the disposition of the
+people ought also to be taken into account. Fierce when thwarted,
+and with a memory keenly retentive of injury, the Scotsman is in
+reality a much more impulsive being than his southern neighbour. His
+sense of justice and order is not so strongly developed, but his
+passion glows with a fire all the more intense because to outward
+appearance it is smothered. His ideas of social duty are different
+from those of the Englishman. Kindred is a closer tie--identity of
+name and family is a bond of singular union. Clanship, in the broad
+acceptation of the word, has died out for all practical purposes;
+chieftainship is still a recognised and a living principle. The
+feudal times, though gone, have left their traces on the national
+character. Little as baronial sway, too often tantamount to sheer
+oppression, can have contributed towards the happiness of the
+people, we still recur to the history of these troublous days with a
+relish and fondness which can hardly be explained, save through some
+undefined and subtle sympathy of inheritance. Though the objects for
+which they contended are now mere phantoms of speculation we yet
+continue to feel and to speak as if we were partisans of the cause
+of our ancestors, and to contest old points with as much ardour as
+though they were new ones of living interest to ourselves.
+
+We have been led into this strain of thought by the perusal of a
+work, strictly authentic as a history, and yet as absorbing in
+interest as the most coloured and glowing romance. Sir William
+Kirkaldy of Grange, the subject of these Memoirs, played a most
+conspicuous part in the long and intricate struggles which convulsed
+Scotland, from the death of James V. until the latter part of the
+reign of Queen Mary. Foremost in battle and in council, we find his
+name prominently connected with every leading event of the period,
+and his influence and example held in higher estimation than those
+of noblemen who were greatly his superiors in rank, following,
+and fortune. In fact, Kirkaldy achieved, by his own talent and
+indomitable valour, a higher reputation, and exercised, for a time,
+a greater influence over the destinies of the nation, than was ever
+before possessed by a private Scottish gentleman, with the glorious
+exception of Wallace. In an age when the sword was the sole arbiter
+of public contest and of private quarrel, it was a proud distinction
+to be reputed, not only at home but abroad--not only by the voice of
+Scotland, but by that of England and France--the best and bravest
+soldier, and the most accomplished cavalier of his time. Mixed up in
+the pages of general history, too often turbidly and incoherently
+written, the Knight of Grange may not be estimated, in the scale of
+importance, at the level of such personages as the subtle Moray, or
+the vindictive and treacherous Morton: viewed as all individual,
+through the medium of these truthful and most fascinating memoirs,
+he will be found at least their equal as a leader and a politician,
+and far their superior as a generous and heroic man.
+
+His father, Sir James Kirkaldy, was a person of no mean family or
+reputation. He occupied, for a considerable time, the office of Lord
+High Treasurer of Scotland, and, according to our author--
+
+     "Enjoyed, in a very high degree, the favour and confidence of
+     King James V.; and though innumerable efforts were made by his
+     mortal foe Cardinal Beatoun, and others, to bring him into
+     disgrace as a promoter of the Reformation, they all proved
+     ineffectual, and the wary old baron maintained his influence to
+     the last."
+
+Old Sir James seems to have been one of those individuals with whom
+it is neither safe nor pleasant to differ in opinion. According
+to his brother-in-law, Sir James Melville of Halhill, he was "a
+stoute man, who always offered, by single combate, and at point of
+the sword, to maintain whatever he said;" a testimonial which, we
+observe, has been most fitly selected as the motto of this book, the
+son having been quite as much addicted to the wager of battle as the
+father; nor, though a strenuous supporter of the Reformation, does
+he appear to have imbibed much of that meekness which is inculcated
+by holy writ. He was not the sort of man whom John Bright would have
+selected to second a motion at a Peace Congress; indeed, the mere
+sight of him would have caused the voice of Elihu Burritt to subside
+into a quaver of dismay. Cardinal Beatoun, that proud and licentious
+prelate, to whose tragical end we shall presently have occasion to
+advert, was the personal and bitter enemy of the Treasurer, as he
+was of every other independent Scotsman who would not truckle to his
+power. But James V., though at times too facile, would not allow
+himself to be persuaded into so dangerous an act as countenancing
+prosecutions for heresy against any of his martial subjects; and,
+so long as he lived, the over-weening bigotry and arrogance of
+the priesthood were held in check. But other troubles brought the
+good king to an untimely end. James had mortally offended some of
+his turbulent nobles, by causing the authority of the law to be
+vindicated without respect to rank or person. He had deservedly won
+for himself the title of King of the Commons; and was, in fact, even
+in that early age, bent upon a thorough reform of the abuses of
+the feudal system. But he had proud, jealous, and stubborn men to
+deal with. They saw, not without apprehension for their own fate,
+that title and birth were no longer accepted as palliatives of
+sedition and crime; that the inroads, disturbances, and harryings
+which they and their fathers had practised, were now regarded with
+detestation by the crown, and threatened with merited punishment.
+Some strong but necessary examples made them quail for their future
+supremacy, and discontent soon ripened into something like absolute
+treason. Add to this, that for a long time the nobility of Scotland
+had fixed a covetous eye upon the great possessions of the church.
+In no country of Europe, considering its extent and comparative
+wealth, was the church better endowed than in Scotland; and the
+endeavours of the monks, who, with all their faults, were not blind
+to the advantages derivable from the arts of peace, had greatly
+raised their property in point of value. The confiscations which
+had taken place in Protestantised England, whereof Woburn Abbey may
+be cited as a notable example, had aroused to the fullest extent
+the cupidity of the rapacious nobles. They longed to see the day
+when, unsupported by the regal power, the church lands in Scotland
+could be annexed by each iron-handed baron to his own domain; when,
+at the head of their armed and dissolute jackmen, they could oust
+the feeble possessors of the soil from the heritages they had so
+long enjoyed as a corporation, and enrich themselves by plundering
+the consecrated stores of the abbeys. These were the feelings
+and desires which led most of them to lend a willing ear to the
+preaching of the fathers of the Reformation. They were desirous, not
+only of lessening the royal authority, but of transferring the whole
+property of the clergy to themselves; and this double object led to
+a combination which resulted in the passive defeat of the Scottish
+army at Solway Moss.
+
+Poor King James could not bear up against the shock of this shameful
+desertion. Mr Tytler thus describes his latter moments:--
+
+     "When in this state, intelligence was brought him that his queen
+     had given birth to a daughter. At another time it would have
+     been happy news; but now, it seemed to the poor monarch the
+     last drop of bitterness which was reserved for him. Both his
+     sons were dead. Had this child been a boy, a ray of hope, he
+     seemed to feel, might yet have visited his heart; he received
+     the messenger and was informed of that event without welcome
+     or almost recognition; but wandering back in his thoughts to
+     the time when the daughter of Bruce brought to his ancestor
+     the dowry of the kingdom, observed with melancholy emphasis,
+     'It came with a lass, and it will pass with a lass.' A few of
+     his most favoured friends and counsellers stood around his
+     couch; the monarch stretched out his hand for them to kiss; and
+     regarding them for some moments with a look of great sweetness
+     and placidity, turned himself upon the pillow and expired. He
+     died 13th December 1542, in the thirty-first year of his age,
+     and the twenty-ninth of his reign; leaving an only daughter,
+     Mary, an infant of six days old, who succeeded to the crown."
+
+Amongst those who stood around that memorable deathbed were the
+Lord High Treasurer, young William Kirkaldy his son, and Cardinal
+Beatoun. There was peace for a moment over the body of the anointed
+dead!
+
+But even the death of a king makes a light impression on this busy
+and intriguing world. The struggle for mastery now commenced in
+right earnest--for the only wall which had hitherto separated the
+contending factions of the nobility and the clergy had given way.
+Beatoun and Arran were both candidates for the regency, which the
+latter succeeded in gaining; and, after a temporary alienation,
+these two combined against an influence which began to show itself
+in a threatening form. Henry VIII. of England considered this an
+excellent opportunity for carrying out those designs against the
+independence of the northern country, which had been entertained
+by several of his predecessors; and for that purpose he proposed
+to negotiate a marriage between his son Edward and the Princess
+Mary. Such an alliance was of course decidedly opposed to the views
+of the Catholic party in Scotland, and, moreover, was calculated
+to excite the utmost jealousy of the Scottish people, who well
+understood the true but recondite motive of the proposal. So long as
+Beatoun, whose interest was identified with that of France, existed,
+Henry was fully aware that his scheme never could be carried into
+execution; and accordingly, with that entire want of principle which
+he exhibited on every occasion, he took advantage of their position
+to tamper with the Scottish barons who had been made prisoners at
+Solway Moss. In this he so far succeeded, that a regular conspiracy
+was entered into for the destruction of the cardinal, and only
+defeated by his extreme sagacity and caution. It will be seen
+hereafter that the cardinal did not fall a victim to this dastardly
+English plot, but to private revenge, no doubt augmented and
+inflamed by the consideration of his arrogance and cruelty.
+
+Beatoun, one of the most able and also dissolute men of his day,
+was a younger son of the Laird of Balfour--yet had, notwithstanding
+every disadvantage, contrived very early to attain his high
+position. He was hated, not only by the nobility, but by the
+lesser barons, from whose own ranks he had risen, on account of
+his intolerable pride, his rapacity, and the unscrupulous manner
+in which he chose to exercise his power. Among the barons of Fife,
+always a disunited and wrangling county, he had few adherents: and
+with the Kirkaldys, and their relatives, the Melvilles, he had an
+especial quarrel. Shortly after the death of James, the Treasurer
+was dismissed from his office, an affront which the "stoute man"
+was not likely to forget; and his son, then a mere youth, seems to
+have participated in his feelings. But the cruelty of Beatoun was
+at least the nominal cause which led to his destruction. Wishart,
+the famous Reforming preacher, had fallen into the hands of the
+cardinal, and was confined in his castle of St Andrews, of which our
+author gives us the following faithful sketch:--
+
+     "On the rocky shore, to the northward of the venerable city of
+     St Andrews, stand the ruins of the ancient Episcopal palace, in
+     other years the residence of the primates of Scotland. Those
+     weatherbeaten remains, now pointed out to visitors by the
+     ciceroni of the place, present only the fragments of an edifice
+     erected by Archbishop Hamilton, the successor of Cardinal
+     Beatoun, and are somewhat in the style of an antique Scottish
+     manor-house; but very different was the aspect of that vast
+     bastille which had the proud cardinal for lord, and contained
+     within its massive walls all the appurtenances requisite for
+     ecclesiastical tyranny, epicurean luxury, lordly grandeur,
+     and military defence--at once a fortress, a monastery, an
+     inquisition, and a palace.
+
+     "The sea-mews and cormorants screaming among the wave-beaten
+     rocks and bare walls now crumbling on that bleak promontory,
+     and echoing only to drenching surf, as it rolls up the rough
+     shelving shore, impart a peculiarly desolate effect to the
+     grassy ruins, worn with the blasts of the German Ocean, gray
+     with the storms of winter, and the damp mists of March and
+     April--an effect that is greatly increased by the venerable
+     aspect of the dark and old ecclesiastical city to the southward,
+     decaying, deserted, isolated, and forgotten, with its
+     magnificent cathedral, once one of the finest gothic structures
+     in the world, but now, shattered by the hands of man and time,
+     passing rapidly away. Of the grand spire which arose from the
+     cross, and of its five lofty towers, little more than the
+     foundations can now be traced, while a wilderness of ruins on
+     every hand attest the departed splendours of St Andrews."
+
+George Wishart, the unhappy preacher, was burned before the Castle
+on the 28th March 1545, under circumstances of peculiar barbarity.
+We refer to the book for a proper description of the death-scene of
+the Martyr, whose sufferings were calmly witnessed by the ruthless
+and implacable Cardinal. But the avenger of blood was at hand, in
+the person of Norman Leslie, Master of Rothes. This young man,
+who was of a most fiery and intractable spirit, had some personal
+dispute with the cardinal, whom he accused of having attempted to
+defraud him of an estate. High words followed, and Norman rode off
+in wrath to the house of his uncle, John Leslie of Parkhill, a moody
+and determined Reformer, who had already vowed bloody vengeance for
+the execution of the unfortunate Wishart. Finding him apt for any
+enterprise, Norman instantly despatched messengers to the Kirkaldys
+of Grange, the Melvilles of Raith and Carnbee, and to Carmichael of
+Kilmadie, desiring them to meet for an enterprise of great weight
+and importance; and the summons having been responded to, these few
+men determined to rid the country of one whom they considered a
+murderer and an oppressor.
+
+The manner in which this act of terrible retribution was executed
+is too well known to the student of history to require repetition.
+Suffice it to say that, by a _coup-de-main_, sixteen armed men made
+themselves masters of the castle of St Andrews, overpowered and
+dispersed the retainers of the cardinal, and quenched the existence
+of that haughty prelate in his blood. William Kirkaldy was not the
+slayer, but, as an accomplice, he must bear whatever load of odium
+is cast upon the perpetrators of the deed. We cannot help thinking
+that our author exhibits an unnecessary degree of horror in this
+instance. Far be it from us to palliate bloodshed, in any age or
+under any provocation: neither do we agree with John Knox, that the
+extermination of Beatoun was a "godly fact." But we doubt whether it
+can be called a murder. In the first place, old Kirkaldy knew, on
+the authority of James V., that a list of three hundred and sixty
+names, including his own and those of his most immediate friends,
+had been made out by the cardinal, as a catalogue of victims who
+were to be burned for heresy. This contemplated atrocity, far worse
+than the massacre of St Bartholomew, might not, indeed, have been
+carried into effect, even on account of its magnitude; but the
+mere knowledge that it had been planned, was enough to justify the
+Kirkaldys, and those marked out for impeachment, in considering
+Beatoun as their mortal foe. That the cardinal never departed from
+his bloody design, is apparent from the fact, that, after his death,
+a paper was found in his repositories, ordaining that "Norman
+Leslie, sheriff of Fife, John Leslie, father's brother to Norman,
+the Lairds of Grange, _elder and younger_, Sir James Learmonth of
+Dairsie, and the Laird of Raith, should either have been slain or
+else taken." The law at that period could afford no security against
+such a design, so that Beatoun's assassination may have been an act
+of necessary self-defence, which it would be extremely difficult to
+blame. As to the sacrilege, we cannot regard that as an aggravation.
+If a prelate of the Roman Church, like Beatoun, chose to make
+himself notorious to the world by the number and scandal of his
+profligacies; if, with a carnality and disregard of appearances not
+often exhibited by laymen, he turned his palace into a seraglio; and
+if his mistress was actually surprised, at the time of the attack,
+in the act of escaping from his bedchamber,--great allowance must
+be made for the obtuseness of the men who could not understand the
+relevancy of the plea of priesthood which he offered, in order that
+his holy calling might shield him from secular consequences. But
+further, is the fate of Wishart to go for nothing? Setting the
+natural influences of bigotry aside, and with every consideration
+for the zeal which could hurry even so good a man as Sir Thomas More
+to express, in words at least, a desire to see the faggot and the
+stake in full operation--what shall we say to the individual who
+could calmly issue his infernal orders, and, in the full pomp of
+ecclesiastical vanity, become a pleased spectator of the sufferings
+of a human being, undergoing the most hideous of all imaginable
+deaths? Truly this, that the brute deserved to die in return; and
+that we, at all events, shall not stigmatise those who killed him as
+guilty of murder. Poor old Sharpe was murdered, if ever man was, in
+a hideous and atrocious manner; but as for Beatoun, he deserved to
+die, and his death was invested with a sort of judicial sanction,
+having been perpetrated in presence of the sheriff of the bounds.
+
+The tidings of this act of vengeance spread, not only through
+Scotland, but through Europe, like wildfire. According as men
+differed in religious faith, they spoke of it either with horror or
+exultation. Even the most moderate of the reforming party were slow
+to blame the deed which freed them from a bloody persecutor; and Sir
+David Lindesay of the Mount, the witty and satirical scholar, did
+not characterise it more severely than as expressed in the following
+verses:--
+
+    "As for the cardinal, I grant
+     He was the man we well might want;
+         God will forgive it soon.
+     But of a truth, the sooth to say,
+     Although the loon be well away,
+         The deed was _foully done_."
+
+Meanwhile the conspirators had conceived the daring scheme of
+holding the castle of St Andrews against all comers, and of setting
+the authority of the regent at defiance. They calculated upon
+receiving support from England, in case France thought fit to
+interfere; and perhaps they imagined that a steady resistance on
+their part might excite general insurrection in Scotland. Besides
+this, they had retained in custody the son and heir of the Regent
+Arran, whom they had found in the castle, and who was a valuable
+hostage in their hands. The force they could command was not great.
+Amongst others, John Knox joined them with his three pupils; several
+Fife barons espoused their cause; and altogether they mustered
+about one hundred and fifty armed men. This was a small body, but
+the defences of the place were more than usually complete, and they
+were well munimented with artillery. Accordingly, though formally
+summoned, they peremptorily refused to surrender.
+
+John Knox, when he entered the castle, was probably under the
+impression that he was joining a company of men, serious in their
+deportment, rigid in their conversation, and self-denying in their
+habits. If so, he must very soon have discovered his mistake. The
+young Reforming gentry were not one whit more scrupulous than
+their Catholic coevals: Norman Leslie, though brave as steel, was
+a thorough-paced desperado; and, from the account given by our
+author of the doings at St Andrews, it may easily be understood how
+uncongenial such quarters must have been to the stern and ascetic
+Reformer.
+
+Arran had probably no intention of pushing matters to extremity,
+though compelled, for appearance' sake, to invest the fortress.
+After a siege of three weeks it remained unreduced; and a pestilence
+which broke out in the town of St Andrews, afforded the regent a
+pretext for agreeing to an armistice. Hitherto the conspirators had
+received the countenance and support of Henry VIII., who remitted
+them large sums from time to time, and promised even more active
+assistance. But this never arrived. Death at last put a stop to
+the bereavements of this unconscionable widower; and thereupon the
+French court despatched a fleet of one-and-twenty vessels of war,
+under the command of Leon Strozzio--a famous Florentine noble,
+who had risen in the Order of the Hospital to the rank of Prior
+of Capua--for the purpose of reducing the stubborn stronghold of
+heresy. Strozzio's name was so well known as that of a most skilful
+commander and tactician, and the weight of the ordnance he brought
+with him was so great, that the besieged had no hope of escaping
+this time; yet, on being summoned, they replied, with the most
+undaunted bravery, that they would defend the castle against the
+united powers of Scotland, England, and France. With such resolute
+characters as these, it was no use to parley further; and the Prior
+accordingly set about his task with a dexterity which put to shame
+the feeble tactics of Arran.
+
+     "By sea and land the siege was pressed with great fury. From the
+     ramparts of the Abbey Church, from the college, and other places
+     in the adjoining streets, the French and Scottish cannoneers
+     maintained a perpetual cannonade upon the castle. Those soldiers
+     who manned the steeples and St Salvador's tower occupied such
+     an elevation, that, by depressing their cannon, they shot down
+     into the inner quadrangle of the castle, the pavement of which
+     could be seen dabbled with the blood of the garrison; and, to
+     aggravate the increasing distress of the latter, the pestilence
+     found its way among them--many died, and all were dismayed.
+     Walter Melville, one of their bravest leaders, fell deadly sick;
+     while watching, warding, and scanty fare, were rapidly wearing
+     out the rest; and John Knox dinned continually in their ears,
+     that their present perils were the just reward of their former
+     corrupt lives and licentiousness, and reliance on England rather
+     than Heaven.
+
+     "'For the first twenty days of this siege,' said he, 'ye
+     prospered bravely: but when ye triumphed at your victory, I
+     lamented, and ever said that ye saw not what I saw. When ye
+     boasted of the thickness of your walls, I said they would be
+     but as egg-shells: when ye vaunted, England will rescue us--I
+     said, ye shall not see it; but ye shall be delivered into your
+     enemies' hands, and carried afar off into a strange country.'
+
+     "This gloomy prophesying was but cold comfort for those whom his
+     precepts and exhortations had urged to rebellion, to outlawry,
+     and to bloodshed; but their affairs were fast approaching a
+     crisis."
+
+If John Knox showed little judgment in adopting this tone of
+vaticination, he is, at all events, entitled to some credit for his
+courage--since Norman Leslie possessed a temper which it was rather
+dangerous to aggravate, and must sometimes have been sorely tempted
+to toss the querulous Reformer into the sea.
+
+The garrison finally surrendered to Leon Strozzio, but not until
+battlement and wall had been breached, and an escalade rendered
+practicable.
+
+The prisoners, including William Kirkaldy, were conveyed to France,
+and there subjected to treatment which varied according to their
+station. Those of knightly rank were incarcerated in separate
+fortresses; the remainder were chained to oars in the galleys on
+the Loire. John Knox was one of those who were forced to undergo
+this ignominious punishment; and we quite agree with our author in
+holding that, "it is not probable, that the lash of the tax-master
+increased his goodwill towards popery."
+
+William Kirkaldy was shut up in the great castle of Mont Saint
+Michel, along with Norman Leslie, his uncle of Parkhill, and Peter
+Carmichael of Kilmadie. But, however strong the fortress, it
+was imprudent in their gaolers to lodge four such fiery spirits
+together. They resolved to break prison; and did so, having, by an
+ingenious ruse, succeeded in overpowering the garrison, and, after
+some vicissitudes and wanderings, made good their escape to England.
+
+After this event there is a blank of some years, during which we
+hear little of Kirkaldy. It is, however, an important period in
+northern history, for it includes the battle of Pinkie, the removal
+of the child, Queen Mary, to France, and her betrothment to the
+Dauphin. Kirkaldy seems not to have arrived in England until the
+death of Edward VI., when the Romanist party attained a temporary
+ascendency. We next find him in the service of Henry II. of France,
+engaged in the wars between that monarch and the Emperor Charles V.
+In these campaigns, says our author, by his bravery and conduct, he
+soon attained that eminent distinction and reputation, as a skilful
+and gallant soldier, which ceased only with his life.
+
+Kirkaldy was not the only member of the stout garrison of St Andrews
+who found employment in the French service. Singularly enough,
+Norman Leslie, the head of the conspirators, had also a command, and
+was in high favour with the famous Constable Anne de Montmorencie.
+His death, which occurred the day before the battle of Renti, is
+thus graphically recounted in the Memoirs, and is a picture worth
+preserving:--
+
+     "The day before the battle, the constable, perceiving by the
+     manœuvres of the Spanish troops that Charles meant to take
+     possession of certain heights, which sloped abruptly down to
+     the camp or bivouac of the French, sent up Leslie's Scottish
+     lances and other horsemen to skirmish with these Imperialists,
+     and drive them back. Melville, his fellow-soldier, thus
+     describes him:--In view of the whole French army, the Master
+     of Rothes, 'with thirty Scotsmen, rode up the hill upon a fair
+     gray gelding. He had, above his coat of black velvet, his coat
+     of armour, with two broad white crosses, one before and the
+     other behind, with sleeves of mail, and a red bonnet upon his
+     head, whereby he was seen and known afar off by the constable,
+     the Duke d'Enghien, and the Prince of Condé.' His party was
+     diminished to seven by the time he came within lance-length of
+     the Imperialists, who were sixty in number; but he burst upon
+     them with the force of a thunderbolt, escaping the fire of their
+     hand-culverins, which they discharged incessantly against him.
+     He struck five from their saddles with his long lance, before it
+     broke into splinters; then, drawing his sword, he rushed again
+     and again among them, with the heedless bravery for which he had
+     ever been distinguished. At the critical moment of this unequal
+     contest, of seven Scottish knights against sixty Spaniards, a
+     troop of Imperial spearmen were hastily riding along the hill to
+     join in the encounter. By this time Leslie had received several
+     bullets in his person; and, finding himself unable to continue
+     the conflict longer, he dashed spurs into his horse, galloped
+     back to the constable, and fell, faint and exhausted, from his
+     saddle, with the blood pouring through his burnished armour on
+     the turf.
+
+     "By the king's desire he was immediately borne to the royal
+     tent, where the Duke d'Enghien and Prince Louis of Condé
+     remarked to Henry, that 'Hector of Troy had not behaved more
+     valiantly than Norman Leslie.'
+
+     "So highly did that brave prince value Norman Leslie, and so
+     greatly did he deplore his death, that all the survivors of his
+     Scottish troop of lances were, under Crichton of Brunstane,
+     sent back to their own country, laden with rewards and honours;
+     and, by his influence, such as were exiles were restored by the
+     regent to their estates and possessions, as a recompense for
+     their valour on the frontiers of Flanders."
+
+Kirkaldy seems to have remained in France until the unfortunate
+death of Henry II., who was accidentally killed in a tournament.
+The estimation in which he was held, after his achievements in the
+wars of Picardy, may be learned from the following contemporary
+testimony:--
+
+"I heard Henry II.," Melville states, "point unto him and
+say--'Yonder is one of the most valiant men of our age.'" And the
+same writer mentions "that the proud old Montmorencie, the great
+constable of France, treated the exiled Kirkaldy with such deference
+that he never addressed him with his head covered." This was high
+tribute, when paid to a soldier then under thirty years of age.
+
+Ten years after he had been conveyed a prisoner from St Andrews on
+board the French galley, Kirkaldy returned to Scotland, but not to
+repose under the laurels he had already won. Soon after this we find
+him married, in possession, through the death of his father, of his
+ancestral estates, the intimate friend of Maitland of Lethington and
+of Lord James, afterwards the Regent Moray, and a stanch supporter
+of the Lords of the Congregation. This period furnishes to us one
+of the most melancholy chapters of Scottish history. Mary of Guise,
+the queen-regent, on the one hand, was resolute to put down the
+growing heresy; on the other, the landed nobility were determined to
+overthrow the Catholic church. Knox, who had by this time returned
+from France, and other Reformed preachers, did their utmost to fan
+the flame; and the result was that melancholy work of incendiarism
+and ruin, which men of all parties must bitterly deplore. Then came
+the French auxiliaries under D'Oisel, wasting the land, ravaging the
+estates of the Protestants, and burning their houses and villages;
+a savage mode of warfare, from which Kirkaldy suffered much--Fife
+having been pillaged from one end to the other--but for which he
+exacted an ample vengeance. The details of this partisan warfare are
+given with much minuteness, but great spirit, by the chronicler; and
+it did not cease until the death of Mary of Guise.
+
+A new victim was now to be offered to the distempered spirit of the
+age: on the 19th August 1561, the young Queen Mary arrived at Leith.
+She was then in the nineteenth year of her age, and endowed with
+all that surpassing loveliness which was at once her dower and her
+misfortune. Her arrival was dreaded by the preachers, who detested
+the school in which she had been educated, and the influence she
+might be enabled to exercise; but the great mass of the people
+hailed her coming with acclamations of unfeigned delight:--
+
+     "Despite the efforts of these dark-browed Reformers, agitated
+     by the memory of her good and gallant father,--the king of
+     the poor--by that of her thirteen years' absence from them,
+     and stirred by that inborn spirit of loyalty which the Scots
+     possessed in so intense a degree, the people received their
+     beautiful queen with the utmost enthusiasm, and outvied each
+     other in her praise.
+
+     "Her mother's dying advice to secure the support of the
+     Protestants, and to cultivate the friendship of their leaders,
+     particularly Maitland of Lethington and 'Kirkaldy of Grange,
+     whom the Constable de Montmorencie had named the first soldier
+     in Europe,' had been faithfully conveyed to Mary in France by
+     the handsome young Count de Martigues, the Sieur de la Brosse,
+     the Bishop of Amiens, and others, who had witnessed the last
+     moments of that dearly-loved mother in the castle of Edinburgh;
+     and Mary treasured that advice in her heart--but it availed her
+     not."
+
+Hurried on by her evil destiny, and persecuted by intrigues which
+had their origin in the fertile brain of Elizabeth, Mary determined
+to bestow her hand upon Darnley, a weak, dissolute, and foolish
+boy, whose only recommendations were his birth and his personal
+beauty. Such a marriage never could, under any circumstances, have
+proved a happy one. At that juncture it was peculiarly unfortunate,
+as it roused the jealousy of the house of Hamilton against that
+of Lennox; and was further bitterly opposed by Moray, a cold,
+calculating, selfish man, who concealed, under an appearance of
+zeal for the Protestant faith, the most restless, unnatural, and
+insatiable ambition. Talents he did possess, and of no ordinary
+kind: above all, he was gifted with the faculty of imposing upon men
+more open and honourable than himself. Knox was a mere tool in his
+hands: Kirkaldy of Grange regarded him as a pattern of wisdom. For
+years, this straightforward soldier surrendered his judgment to the
+hypocrite, and, unfortunately, did not detect his mistake until the
+Queen was involved in a mesh from which extrication was impossible.
+Moray's first attempt at rebellion proved an arrant failure: the
+people refused to join his standard, and he, with the other leading
+insurgents, was compelled to seek refuge in England.
+
+All might have gone well but for the folly of the idiot Darnley.
+No long period of domestic intercourse was requisite to convince
+the unfortunate Queen that she had thrown away her affections,
+and bestowed her hand upon an individual totally incapable of
+appreciating the one, and utterly unworthy of the other. Darnley
+was a low-minded, fickle, and imperious fool--vicious as a colt,
+capricious as a monkey, and stubborn as an Andalusian mule. Instead
+of showing the slightest gratitude to his wife and mistress, for
+the preference which had raised him from obscurity to a position
+for which kings were suitors, he repaid the vast boon by a series
+of petty and unmanly persecutions. He aimed to be not only
+prince-consort, but master; and because this was denied him, he
+threw himself precipitately into the counsels of the enemies of
+Mary. It was not difficult to sow the seeds of jealousy in a mind so
+well prepared to receive them; and Riccio, the Italian secretary,
+was marked out by Ruthven and Morton, the secret adherents of
+Moray, as the victim. Even this scheme, though backed by Darnley,
+might have miscarried, had not Mary been driven into an act which
+roused, while it almost justified, the worst fears of the Protestant
+party in Scotland. This was her adhesion to the celebrated Roman
+Catholic League, arising from a coalition which had been concluded
+between France, Spain, and the Emperor, for the destruction of
+the Protestant cause in Europe. "It was," says Tytler, "a design
+worthy of the dark and unscrupulous politicians by whom it had been
+planned--Catherine of Medicis and the Duke of Alva. In the summer
+of the preceding year, the queen-dowager of France and Alva had met
+at Bayonne, during a progress in which she conducted her youthful
+son and sovereign, Charles IX., through the southern provinces of
+his kingdom; and there, whilst the court was dissolved in pleasure,
+those secret conferences were held which issued in the resolution
+that toleration must be at an end, and that the only safety for
+the Roman Catholic faith was the extermination of its enemies." To
+this document, Mary, at the instigation of Riccio, who was in the
+interest of Rome, and who really possessed considerable influence
+with his mistress, affixed her signature. The bond was abortive for
+its ostensible purposes, but it was the death-warrant of the Italian
+secretary, and ultimately of the Queen.
+
+It is not our province to usurp the functions of the historian, and
+therefore we pass willingly over that intricate portion of history
+which ends with the murder of Darnley. It was notoriously the
+work of Bothwell, but not his alone, for Lethington, Huntly, and
+Argyle, were also deeply implicated. Bothwell now stands forward
+as a prominent character of the age. He was a bold, reckless,
+desperate adventurer, with little to recommend him save personal
+daring, and a fidelity to his mistress which hitherto had remained
+unshaken. Lethington, in all probability, merely regarded him as an
+instrument, but Bothwell had a higher aim. With daring ambition, he
+aimed at the possession of the person of Mary, and actually achieved
+his purpose.
+
+This unhappy and most unequal union roused the ire of the Scottish
+nobles. Even such of them as, intimidated by the reckless character
+of Bothwell, had sworn to defend him if impeached for the slaughter,
+and had recommended him as a fitting match for Mary, now took
+up arms, under the pretext that he had violently abducted their
+sovereign. We fear it cannot be asserted with truth that much
+violence was used. Poor Queen Mary had found, by bitter experience,
+that she could hardly depend upon one of her principal subjects.
+Darnley, Moray, Morton, Lethington, and Arran, each had betrayed
+her in turn; everywhere her steps were surrounded by a net of the
+blackest treachery: not one true heart seemed left to beat with
+loyalty for its Queen. Elizabeth, with fiendish malice, was goading
+on her subjects to rebellion. The Queen of England had determined to
+ruin the power of her sister monarch; the elderly withered spinster
+detested the young and blooming mother. Why, then, should it be
+matter of great marvel to those who know the acuteness of female
+sensibility, if, in the hour of desertion and desolation, Mary
+should have allowed the weakness of the woman to overcome the pride
+of the sovereign, and should have opposed but feeble resistance to
+the advances of the only man who hitherto had remained stanch to her
+cause, and whose arm seemed strong enough to insure her personal
+protection? It is not the first time that a daring villain has been
+taken for a hero by a distressed and persecuted woman.
+
+But Bothwell had no friends. The whole of the nobles were against
+him; and the Commons, studiously taught to believe that Mary was a
+consenting party to Darnley's death, were hostile to their Queen.
+Kirkaldy, at the instance of Moray, came over from his patrimonial
+estates to join the confederates, and his first feat in arms was
+an attack on Borthwick Castle, from which Bothwell and the Queen
+escaped with the utmost difficulty. Then came the action, if such
+it can be called, of Carberry Hill, when Bothwell challenged his
+accusers to single combat--a defiance which was accepted by Lord
+Lindesay of the Byres, but prevented from being brought to the test
+of combat by the voluntary submission of the Queen. Seeing that her
+forces were utterly inadequate to oppose those of the assembled
+nobles, she sent for Sir William Kirkaldy of Grange, as a knight
+in whose honour she could thoroughly confide, and, after a long
+interview, agreed to pass over to the troops of the confederates,
+provided they would again acknowledge and obey her as their
+sovereign. This being promised, she took her last leave of Bothwell,
+and her first step on the road which ultimately brought her to
+Lochleven.
+
+We must refer our readers to the volume for the spirited account
+of these events, and of the expedition undertaken by Kirkaldy in
+pursuit of Bothwell, his narrow escapes, and sea-fights among the
+shores of Shetland, and the capture of the fugitive's vessel on the
+coast of Norway. Neither will our space permit us to dwell upon the
+particulars of the battle of Langside, that last action hazarded
+and lost by the adherents of Queen Mary, just after her escape from
+Lochleven, and before she quitted the Scottish soil for ever. But
+for the tactics of Kirkaldy, the issue of that fight might have been
+different; and deeply is it to be regretted that, before that time,
+the eyes of the Knight of Grange had not been opened to the perfidy
+of Moray, whom he loved too trustingly, and served far too well. It
+was only after Mary was in the power of Elizabeth that he knew how
+much she had been betrayed.
+
+Under the regency of Moray, Kirkaldy held the post of governor of
+the castle of Edinburgh, and retained it until the fortress went
+down before the battery of the English cannon.
+
+He was also elected Lord Provost of Edinburgh--a dignity which,
+before that time, had been held by the highest nobles of the
+land, but which has since deteriorated under the influence of the
+Union, and bungled acts of corporation. He was in this position
+when he seems first to have perceived that the queen had been made
+the victim of a deep-laid plot of treachery--that Moray was the
+arch-conspirator--and that he, along with other men, who wished
+well both to their country and their sovereign, had been used as
+instruments for his own advancement by the false and unscrupulous
+statesman. The arrest of Chatelherault and of Lord Herries, both of
+them declared partisans of Mary, and their committal to the castle
+of Edinburgh, a measure against which Kirkaldy remonstrated, was the
+earliest act which aroused his suspicions:--
+
+     "Upon this, Mr John Wood, a pious friend of the regent's,
+     observed to Kirkaldy, in the true spirit of his party,--
+
+     "'I marvel, sir, that you are offended at these two being
+     committed to ward; for how shall _we_, who are the defenders of
+     my lord regent, get rewards but by the ruin of such men?'
+
+     "'Ha!' rejoined Kirkaldy sternly, 'is that your holiness? I see
+     naught among ye but envy, greed, and ambition, whereby ye will
+     wreck a good regent and ruin the realm!'--a retort which made
+     him many enemies among the train of Moray."
+
+But another event, which occurred soon afterwards, left no doubt in
+the mind of Kirkaldy as to the nature of Moray's policy. Maitland of
+Lethington, unquestionably the ablest Scottish diplomatist of his
+time, but unstable and shifting, as diplomatists often are, had seen
+cause to adopt very different views from those which he formerly
+professed. Whilst Mary was in power, he had too often thrown the
+weight of his influence and council against her: no sooner was
+she a fugitive and prisoner, than his loyalty appeared to revive.
+It is impossible now to say whether he was touched with remorse;
+whether, on reflection, he became convinced that he had not acted
+the part of a patriotic Scotsman; or whether he was merely led,
+through excitement, to launch himself into a new sea of political
+intrigue. This, at least, is certain, that he applied himself, heart
+and soul, to baffle the machinations of Elizabeth, and to deliver
+the unhappy Mary from the toils in which she was involved. It was
+Lethington who conceived the project of restoring Mary to liberty,
+by bringing about a marriage between her and the Duke of Norfolk;
+and the knowledge of his zeal on that occasion incensed Elizabeth
+to the utmost. That vindictive queen, who had always found Moray
+most ready to obey her wishes, opened a negotiation with him for
+the destruction of his former friend; and the regent, not daring to
+thwart her, took measures to have Maitland charged, through a third
+party, of direct participation in the death of Darnley, whereupon
+his arrest followed.
+
+Kirkaldy, who loved Maitland, would not allow this manœuvre to
+pass unnoticed. He remonstrated with the regent for taking such a
+step; but Moray coldly informed him, that it was out of his power to
+save Lethington from prison. The blunt soldier, on receiving this
+reply, sent back a message, demanding that the same charge should
+be preferred against the Earl of Morton and Archibald Douglas; and
+he did more--for, Maitland having been detained a prisoner in the
+town of Edinburgh, under custody of Lord Home, Kirkaldy despatched
+at night a party of the garrison, and, by means of a counterfeited
+order, got possession of the statesman's person, and brought him to
+the castle, where Chatelherault and Herries were already residing
+as guests. Next morning, to the consternation of Moray, a trumpeter
+appeared at the cross, demanding, in name of Kirkaldy, that process
+for regicide should instantly be commenced against Morton and
+Douglas; and, says our author,--
+
+     "Remembering the precepts of the stout old knight his father,
+     who always offered 'the single combate' in maintenance of his
+     assertions, he offered himself, body for body, to fight Douglas
+     on foot or horseback; while his prisoner, the Lord Herries,
+     sent, as a peer of the realm, a similar cartel to the Earl of
+     Morton. The challenges bore, 'that they were in the council, and
+     consequently art and part in the king's murder.'
+
+In vain did Moray try to wheedle Kirkaldy from his stronghold--in
+vain did the revengeful Morton lay plots and bribe assassins. The
+castle of Edinburgh had become the rallying point for those who
+loved their queen. An attempt was made to oust Kirkaldy from the
+provostship; but the stout burghers, proud of their martial head,
+turned a deaf ear to the insidious suggestions of the regent. Yet
+still the banner of King James floated upon the walls of the castle,
+nor was the authority of Mary again proclaimed by sound of trumpet
+until after the shot of the injured Bothwellhaugh struck down the
+false and dangerous Moray in the street of Linlithgow. Then the
+whole faction of Chatelherault, the whole race of Hamilton, rose in
+arms, and prepared to place themselves under the guidance of Sir
+William Kirkaldy. The following is, we think, a noble trait in the
+character of the man:--
+
+     "The latter mourned deeply the untimely fate of Moray: they
+     had been old comrades in the field, stanch friends in many a
+     rough political broil; and though they had quarrelled of late,
+     he had too much of the frankness of his profession to maintain
+     hostility to the dead, and so came to see him laid in his last
+     resting-place. Eight lords bore the body up St Anthony's lofty
+     aisle, in the great cathedral of St Giles; Kirkaldy preceded it,
+     bearing the paternal banner of Moray with the royal arms; the
+     Laird of Cleish, who bore the coat of armour, walked beside him.
+     Knox prayed solemnly and earnestly as the body was lowered into
+     the dust; a splendid tomb was erected over his remains, and long
+     marked the spot where they lay."
+
+Lennox succeeded Moray as regent of Scotland, but no salute
+from the guns of the grim old fortress of Edinburgh greeted his
+inauguration. Henceforward Kirkaldy had no common cause with
+the confederates. Maitland had revealed to him the whole hidden
+machinery of treason, the scandalous complexity of intrigues, by
+which he had been made a dupe. He now saw that neither religion nor
+patriotism, but simply selfishness and ambition, had actuated the
+nobles in rebelling against their lawful sovereign, and that those
+very acts which they fixed upon as apologies for their treason,
+were in fact the direct consequences of their own deliberate guilt.
+If any further corroboration of their baseness had been required
+in order to satisfy the mind of Kirkaldy, it was afforded by
+Morton, who, notwithstanding the defiance so lately hurled at him
+from the castle, solicited, with a meanness and audacity almost
+incredible, the assistance of the governor to drive Lennox out of
+the kingdom, and procure his own acknowledgement as regent instead.
+It is needless to say that his application was refused with scorn.
+Kirkaldy now began to doubt the sincerity of Knox, who, although
+with no selfish motive, had been deeply implicated in the cruel
+plots of the time; some sharp correspondence took place, and the
+veteran Reformer was pleased to denounce his former pupil from the
+pulpit.
+
+Edinburgh now was made to suffer the inconveniences to which every
+city threatened with a siege is exposed. The burghers began to
+grumble against their provost, who, on one occasion, sent a party to
+rescue a prisoner from the Tolbooth, and who always preferred the
+character of military governor to that of civic magistrate. Knox
+thundered at him every Sabbath, and doubtless contributed largely
+to increase the differences between him and the uneasy citizens.
+The later might well be pardoned for their apprehensions. Not only
+were they commanded by the castle guns, but Kirkaldy, as if to show
+them what they might expect in ease of difference of political
+sentiment,--
+
+     "Hoisted cannon to the summit of St Giles's lofty spire, which
+     rises in the middle of the central hill on which the city
+     stands, and commands a view of it in every direction. He placed
+     the artillery on the stone bartizan beneath the flying arches
+     of the imperial crown that surmounts the tower, and thus turned
+     the cathedral into a garrison, to the great annoyance of Knox
+     and the citizens. The latter were also compelled, at their own
+     expense, to maintain the hundred harquebussiers of Captain
+     Melville, who were billeted in the Castlehill Street, for the
+     queen's service; and thus, amid preparations for war, closed the
+     year 1570."
+
+We may fairly suppose, that the cannon of the governor were more
+obnoxious than a modern annuity-tax can possibly be; yet no citizen
+seemed desirous of coming forward as a candidate for the crown of
+martyrdom. The bailies very quietly and very properly succumbed to
+the provost.
+
+It must be acknowledged that Edinburgh was, in those days, no
+pleasant place of residence.
+
+Next, to the alarm of the citizens, came a mock fight and the roar
+of cannon, intended to accustom the garrison to siege and war,
+which latter calamity speedily commenced in earnest. No possible
+precaution was omitted by Kirkaldy, whose situation was eminently
+critical; and he had received a terrible warning. On the last day
+of truce, the strong castle of Dumbarton was taken by surprise by
+a party under Captain Crawford of Jordanhill. Lord Fleming was
+fortunate enough to effect his escape, but Hamilton, archbishop of
+St Andrews, was made prisoner, and immediately hanged by Lennox over
+Stirling bridge. An archbishopric never was a comfortable tenure in
+Scotland.
+
+Lennox and Morton now drew together. The former from Linlithgow, and
+the latter from Dalkeith, advanced against the city, then occupied
+by the Hamiltons: skirmishes went on under the walls and on the
+Boroughmuir, and the unfortunate citizens were nearly driven to
+distraction. The following dispositions of Provost Kirkaldy were by
+no means calculated to restore a feeling of confidence, or to better
+the prospects of trade:--
+
+     "He loop-holed the spacious vaults of the great cathedral, for
+     the purpose of sweeping with musketry its steep church-yard to
+     the south, the broad Lawnmarket to the west, and High Street to
+     the eastward; while his cannon from the spire commanded the long
+     line of street called the Canongate--even to the battlements of
+     the palace porch. He seized the ports of the city, placed guards
+     of his soldiers upon them, and retained the keys in his own
+     hands. He ordered a rampart and ditch to be formed at the Butter
+     Tron, for the additional defence of the castle; and another
+     for the same purpose at the head of the West Bow, a steep and
+     winding street of most picturesque aspect. His soldiers pillaged
+     the house of the regent, whose movables and valuables they
+     carried off; he broke into the Tolbooth and council-chamber,
+     drove forth the scribes and councillors, and finally deposed
+     the whole bench of magistrates, installing in the civic chair
+     the daring chief of Fermhirst, (who had now become the husband
+     of his daughter Janet, a young girl barely sixteen;) while a
+     council composed of his mosstrooping vassals, clad in their iron
+     jacks, steel caps, calivers, and two-handed whingers, officiated
+     as bailies, in lieu of the douce, paunchy, and well-fed
+     burgesses of the Craims and Luckenbooths."
+
+The Blue Blanket of Edinburgh--that banner which, according to
+tradition, waved victoriously on the ramparts of Acre--had fallen
+into singular custody! John Knox again fled, for in truth his life
+was in danger. Kirkaldy, notwithstanding their differences, exerted
+his authority to the utmost to protect him, but the Hamiltons
+detested his very name; and one night a bullet fired through his
+window, was taken as a significant hint that his absence from the
+metropolis would be convenient. Scandal, even in those times, was
+rife in Edinburgh; for we are told that--
+
+     "John Low, a carrier of letters to St Andrews, being in the
+     'Castell of Edinburgh, the Ladie Home would neids threip in his
+     face, that Johne Knox was banist the toune, because in his yard
+     he had raisit some _sanctis_, amangis whome their came up the
+     devill with hornes, which when his servant Richart saw he ran
+     wud, and so deid.'"
+
+It is hardly credible, but it is a fact, that a meeting of the
+Estates of Scotland, called by Lennox, was held in Edinburgh at
+this very juncture. Kirkaldy occupied the upper part of the town,
+whilst the lower was in the hands of the regent, protected, or
+rather covered, by a battery which Morton had erected upon the
+"Doo Craig," that bluff black precipice to the south of the Calton
+Hill. The meeting, however, was a short one. "Mons Meg" and her
+marrows belched forth fire and shot upon the town, and the scared
+representatives fled, in terror of the falling ruins. A sortie from
+the castle was made, and the place of assembly burned.
+
+Kirkaldy now summoned and actually held a parliament, in name of
+Queen Mary, in Edinburgh. The possession of the Regalia gave this
+assembly a show of legality at least equivalent to that pertaining
+to its rival, the _Black Parliament_, which was then sitting at
+Stirling.
+
+We must refer to the work itself for the details of the martial
+exploits which followed. So very vividly and picturesquely are the
+scenes described, that, in reading of them, the images arise to
+our mind with that distinctness which constitutes the principal
+charm of the splendid romances of Scott. We accompany, with the
+deepest personal interest, the gallant Captain Melville and his
+harquebussiers, on his expedition to dislodge grim Morton from
+his Lion's Den at Dalkeith--we follow fiery Claud Hamilton in his
+attack upon the Black Parliament at Stirling, when Lennox met his
+death, and Morton, driven by the flames from his burning mansion,
+surrendered his sword to Buccleugh--and, amidst the din and uproar
+of the Douglas wars, we hear the cannon on the bastion of Edinburgh
+castle battering to ruin the gray towers of Merchiston.
+
+The career of Kirkaldy was rapidly drawing towards its close.
+During the life of Mar, who succeeded Lennox in the regency, the
+brave governor succeeded in maintaining possession not only of the
+castle, but of the city of Edinburgh, in spite of all opposition.
+But Morton, the next regent, was a still more formidable foe. The
+hatred between this man and Kirkaldy was mutual, and it was of the
+most deadly kind. And no wonder. Morton, as profligate as cruel, had
+seduced the fair and false Helen Leslie, wife of Sir James Kirkaldy,
+the gallant brother of the governor, and thereby inflicted the
+worst wound on the honour of an ancient family. A more awful story
+than the betrayal of her husband, and the seizure of his castle of
+Blackness, through the treachery of this wretched woman, is not to
+be found in modern history. Tarpeia alone is her rival in infamy,
+and the end of both was the same. The virulence of hereditary feud
+is a marked feature in our Scottish annals; but no sentiment of the
+kind could have kindled such a flame of enmity as burned between
+Morton and Kirkaldy. From the hour when the former obtained the
+regency, the war became one of extermination.
+
+Morton, it must be owned, showed much diplomatic skill in his
+arrangements. His first step was to negotiate separately with the
+country party of the loyalists, so as to detach them from Kirkaldy;
+and in this he perfectly succeeded. The leading nobles, Huntley
+and Argyle, were wearied with the war; Chatelherault, whom we have
+already known as Arran, was broken down by age and infirmities; and
+even those who had been the keenest partisans of the queen, Herries
+and Seton, were not disinclined to transfer their allegiance to
+her son. The treaty of Perth left Kirkaldy with no other adherents
+save Lord Home, the Melvilles, Maitland, and his garrison. The city
+had revolted, and was now under the provostship of fierce old Lord
+Lindesay of the Byres, who was determined to humble his predecessor.
+Save the castle rock of Edinburgh, and the hardy band that held it,
+all Scotland had submitted to Morton.
+
+Killigrew, the English ambassador, advised him to yield. "No!"
+replied Kirkaldy. "Though my friends have forsaken me, and the city
+of Edinburgh hath done so too, yet I will defend this castle to the
+last!" The man whom Moray thought a tool, had expanded to the bulk
+of a hero.
+
+Meantime, English engineers were occupied in estimating the
+capabilities of the castle as a place of defence. They reported
+that, with sufficient artillery, it might be reduced in twenty days;
+and, accordingly, Morton determined to besiege it so soon as the
+period of truce agreed on by the treaty of Perth should expire.
+Kirkaldy was not less resolute to maintain it.
+
+At six o'clock, on the morning of 1st January 1573, a warning gun
+from the castle announced that the treaty had expired, and the
+standard of the Queen was unfurled on the highest tower, amidst the
+acclamations of the garrison. Four-and-twenty hours previously,
+Kirkaldy had issued a proclamation, warning all loyal subjects of
+the Queen to depart forthwith from the city; and terrible indeed was
+the situation of those who neglected that seasonable warning. Morton
+began the attack; and it was answered by an incessant discharge from
+the batteries upon the town.
+
+Civil war had assumed its worst form. By day the cannon thundered;
+at night the garrison made sorties, and fired the city: all was
+wrack and ruin. Morton, bursting with fury, found that, unassisted,
+he could not conquer Grange.
+
+English aid was asked from, and given by, the unscrupulous
+Elizabeth. Drury, who had helped Morton in his dishonourable treason
+at Restalrig, marched into Scotland with the English standard
+displayed, bringing with him fifteen hundred harquebussiers, one
+hundred and fifty pikemen, and a numerous troop of gentlemen
+volunteers; while the train of cannon and baggage came round by sea
+to Leith, where a fleet of English ships cruised, to cut off all
+succour from the Continent.
+
+The English summons to surrender was treated by Kirkaldy with scorn.
+Up went a scarlet banner, significant of death and defiance, on
+the great tower of King David. Indomitable, as in the days of his
+early youth, when the confederates of St Andrews defied the universe
+in arms, the Scottish champion looked calmly from his rock on the
+preparations for the terrible assault.
+
+Five batteries were erected around the castle, but not with
+impunity. The cannon of Kirkaldy mowed down the pioneers when
+engaged in their trenching operations; and it was not until Trinity
+Sunday, the 17th of May, that the besiegers opened their fire.
+
+     "At two o'clock in the afternoon, the five batteries opened a
+     simultaneous discharge upon the walls of the castle. Bravely
+     and briskly its cannoneers replied to them, and deep-mouthed
+     Mons Meg, with her vast bullets of black whin, the thundering
+     carthouns, basilisks, serpents, and culverins, amid fire
+     and smoke, belched their missiles from the old gray towers,
+     showering balls of iron, lead, and stone at the batteries;
+     while the incessant ringing of several thousand harquebusses,
+     calivers, and wheel-lock petronels, added to the din of the
+     double cannonade. From the calibre of the great Mons Meg, which
+     yet frowns _en barbe_ over the ramparts, one may easily imagine
+     the dismay her enormous bullets must have caused in the trenches
+     so far below her.
+
+     "For ten days the furious cannonade continued, on both sides,
+     without a moment's cessation. On the 19th, three towers were
+     demolished, and enormous gaps appeared in the curtain walls;
+     many of the castle guns were dismounted, and destroyed by the
+     falling of the ancient masonry: a shot struck one of the largest
+     culverins fairly on the muzzle, shattering it to pieces, and
+     scattering the splinters around those who stood near. A very
+     heavy battery was discharged against King David's Tower, a great
+     square bastel-house, the walls of which were dark with the lapse
+     of four centuries. On the 23d, a great gap had been beaten in
+     its northern side, revealing the arched hall within; and as the
+     vast old tower, with its cannon, its steel-clad defenders, and
+     the red flag of defiance still waving above its machicolated
+     bartizan, sank with a mighty crash to shapeless ruin, the wild
+     shriek raised by the females in the castle, and the roar of the
+     masonry rolling like thunder down the perpendicular rocks, were
+     distinctly heard at the distant English camp."
+
+One hundred and fifty men constituted the whole force which Kirkaldy
+could muster when he commenced his desperate defence. Ten times
+that number would scarcely have sufficed to maintain an adequate
+resistance; but high heroic valour in the face of death is
+insensible to any odds. After a vigorous resistance, the besiegers
+succeeded in gaining possession of the Spur or blockhouse--an outer
+work which was constructed between the fortress and the town; but an
+attempt to scale the rock on the west side utterly failed.
+
+The blockade had for some time been so strict, that the garrison
+began to suffer from want of provisions; but their sorest privation
+was the loss of water. Although there are large and deep wells in
+the Castle of Edinburgh, a remarkable peculiarity renders them
+useless in the time of siege. To this day, whenever the cannon are
+fired, the water deserts the wells, oozing out of some fissures at
+the bottom of the rock. There is, however, a lower spring on the
+north side, called St Margaret's Well, and from this the garrison
+for a time obtained a scanty supply. Under cloud of night a soldier
+was let down by a rope from the fortifications, and in this manner
+the wholesome element was drawn. This circumstance became known to
+the besiegers; and they, with diabolical cruelty, had recourse to
+the expedient of poisoning the well, and permitted the nocturnal
+visitor to draw the deadly liquid without molestation. The
+consequences, of course, were fearful. Many expired in great agony;
+and those whose strength enabled them to throw off the more active
+effects of the poison, were so enfeebled that they could hardly work
+the heavy cannon, or support the fatigue of watching day and night
+upon the battlements.
+
+     "Maddened by the miseries they underwent, and rendered desperate
+     by all hopes of escape from torture and death being utterly cut
+     off, a frenzy seized the soldiers; they broke into a dangerous
+     mutiny, and threatened to hang Lethington over the walls, as
+     being the primary cause of all these dangers, from the great
+     influence he exercised over Kirkaldy, their governor. But
+     even now, when amid the sick, the dying, and the dead, and
+     the mutinous--surrounded by crumbling ramparts and dismounted
+     cannon, among which the shot of the besiegers were rebounding
+     every instant--with the lives, honour, and safety of his wife,
+     his brother, and numerous brave and faithful friends depending
+     on his efforts and example, the heart of the brave governor
+     appears never to have quailed even for an instant!"
+
+At length, as further resistance was useless, and as certain
+movements on the part of the enemy indicated their intention of
+proceeding to storm the castle by the breach which had been effected
+on the eastern side, Kirkaldy requested an interview with his old
+fellow-soldier Drury, the Marshal of Berwick. This being acceded to,
+the governor and his uncle, "Sir Robert Melville of Murdocairnie,
+were lowered over the ruins by cords, as there was no other mode
+of egress, the flight of forty steps being completely buried in
+the same ruin which had choked up the archways, and hidden both
+gates and portcullis. The Castlehill, at that time, says Melville
+of Kilrenny, in his Diary, was covered with stones, 'rinning like a
+sandie bray;' but behind the breaches were the men-at-arms drawn up
+in firm array, with their pikes and helmets gleaming in the setting
+sun."
+
+Kirkaldy's requests were not unreasonable. He asked to have security
+for the lives and property of those in the garrison, to have leave
+for Lord Home and Maitland of Lethington to retire to England, and,
+for himself, permission to live unmolested at the estate in Fife.
+Drury might have consented, but Morton was obdurate. The thought of
+having his enemy unconditionally in his hands, and the prospect of
+a revenge delicious to his savage and unrelenting nature, made him
+deaf to all applications; and the only terms he would grant were
+these,--
+
+     "That if the soldiers marched forth without their armour, and
+     submitted to his clemency, he would grant them their lives; but
+     there were ten persons who must yield _unconditionally_ to him,
+     and whose fate he would leave to the decision of their umpire,
+     Elizabeth. The unfortunate exceptions were--the governor, Sir
+     James Kirkaldy, Lethington, Alexander Lord Home, the Bishop
+     of Dunkeld, Sir Robert Melville of Murdocairnie, Logan of
+     Restalrig, Alexander Crichton of Drylaw, Pitarrow the constable,
+     and Patrick Wishart.
+
+Kirkaldy returned to the castle, resolved to die in the breach, but
+by this time the mutiny had begun. The soldiers insisted upon a
+surrender even more clamorously than before, and several of them
+took the opportunity of clambering over the ruins and deserting. It
+would have been madness under such circumstances to hold out; yet
+still Kirkaldy, jealous of his country's honour, could not brook the
+idea of handing over the citadel of Scotland's metropolis to the
+English.
+
+     "Therefore, when compelled to adopt the expedient (which is
+     supposed to have originated in Lethington's fertile brain) of
+     admitting a party of the besiegers within the outworks, or
+     at least close to the walls, he sent privately in the night
+     a message to Hume and Jordanhill, to march their Scottish
+     companies between the English batteries and the fortress, lest
+     the old bands of Drury should have the honour of entering first."
+
+Next morning he came forth, and surrendered his sword to Drury, who
+gave him the most solemn assurances that he should be restored to
+his estates and liberty at the intercession of the Queen of England,
+and that all his adherents should be pardoned.
+
+Drury, probably, was in earnest, but he had either overstepped his
+commission, or misinterpreted the mind of his mistress. Morton had
+most basely handed over to Elizabeth the person of the fugitive Earl
+of Northumberland, whom she hurried to the block, nor could she well
+refuse to the Scottish regent a similar favour in return. Morton
+asked for the disposal of the prisoners, and the gift was readily
+granted.
+
+Three of them were to die: for these there was no mercy. One,
+William, Maitland of Lethington, disappointed the executioner by
+swallowing poison, a draught more potent than that drawn from the
+well of St. Margaret. The vengeance of Morton long kept his body
+from the decencies of the grave. Of the two Kirkaldys, one was
+the rival of the regent, who had foully wronged the other, and,
+therefore, their doom was sealed.
+
+One hundred barons and gentlemen of rank and fortune, kinsmen to
+the gallant Kirkaldy, offered, in exchange for his life, to bind
+themselves by bond of manrent, as vassals to the house of Morton
+for ever: money, jewels, lands, were tendered to the regent; but
+all in vain. Nothing could induce him to depart from his revenge.
+Nor were others wanting to urge on the execution. The Reformed
+preachers, remembering the dying message of Knox, were clamorous for
+the realisation of the prophecy through his death; the burghers, who
+had suffered so much from his obstinate defence, shouted for his
+execution; only stout old Lord Lindesay, fierce as he was, had the
+magnanimity to plead on behalf of the unfortunate soldier.
+
+Then came the scaffold and the doom. Those who are conversant
+with Scottish history cannot but be impressed with the remarkable
+resemblance between the last closing scene of Kirkaldy, as related
+in this work, and that of Montrose, which was exhibited on the same
+spot, in another and a later age.
+
+So died this remarkable man, the last of Queen Mary's adherents. If,
+in the course of his career, we can trace out some inconsistencies,
+it is but fair to his memory to reflect how early he was thrown upon
+the troubled ocean of politics, and how difficult it must have been,
+in such an age of conflicting opinions and desperate intrigue, to
+maintain a tangible principle. Kirkaldy seems to have selected Moray
+as his guide--not penetrating certainly, at the time, the selfish
+disposition of the man. But the instant he perceived that his own
+aggrandisement, and not the welfare of Scotland, was the object of
+the designing Earl, Grange drew off from his side, and valorously
+upheld the cause of his injured and exiled sovereign.
+
+We now take leave of a work which, we are convinced, will prove of
+deep and thrilling interest to every Scotsman. It is seldom indeed
+that we find history so written--in a style at once vigorous,
+perspicuous, and picturesque. The author's heart is thoroughly with
+his subject; and he exhibits, ever and anon, flashes of the old
+Scottish spirit, which we are glad to believe has not decayed from
+the land.
+
+
+_Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as
+printed.
+
+Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where
+the missing quote should be placed.
+
+The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the
+transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
+
+The transcriber has supplied footnote anchors for the following
+footnotes:
+
+Page 20: Footnote 10 _A Campaign in the Kabylie._ By DAWSON BORRER,
+F.R.G.S., &c. London, 1848.
+
+Page 47: Footnote 15 _Expedition zur Entdeckung der Quellen des
+Weissen Nil_, (1840-1841,) von FERDINAND WERNE. Mit einem Vorwort
+von CARL RITTER. Berlin, 1848. _La Kabylie._ Par un Colon. Paris,
+1846.
+
+_La Captivité du Trompette Escoffier._ Par ERNEST ALBY. 2 vols.
+Brussels, 1848."
+
+Page 63: Footnote 16 _Annals of the Artists of Spain._ By WILLIAM
+STIRLING, M. A. 3 vols. London: Ollivier.
+
+Page 81: Footnote 19 _The Dodo and its Kindred; or, the History,
+Affinities, and Osteology of the Dodo, Solitaire, and other Extinct
+Birds of the Islands Mauritius, Rodriguez, and Bourbon._ By H.
+E. STRICKLAND, M.A. F.G.S., F.R.G.S., President of the Ashmolean
+Society, &c., and A. G. MELVILLE, M.D., Edinburgh, M.R.C. . One
+vol., royal quarto: London, 1848.
+
+Page 112: Footnote 24 _Memoirs and Adventures of Sir Wm. Kirkaldy of
+Grange, Knight, &c. &c._ WM. BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume
+65, No. 399, January 1849, by Various
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44183 ***