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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64,
+No. 393, July 1848, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: December 28, 2013 [EBook #44533]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, JULY 1848 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brendan OConnor, Jonathan Ingram, Julia Neufeld
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Library of Early
+Journals.)
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
+
+Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+  BLACKWOOD'S
+
+  Edinburgh
+
+  MAGAZINE.
+
+  VOL. LXIV.
+
+  JULY-DECEMBER, 1848.
+
+  [Illustration: Buchanan]
+
+  WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH;
+
+  AND
+
+  37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
+
+  1848.
+
+  BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
+
+
+
+
+  BLACKWOOD'S
+
+  EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+  No. CCCXCIII.      JULY, 1848.       VOL. LXIV.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  THE LAWS OF LAND.                                1
+
+  LIFE IN THE "FAR WEST." PART II.                17
+
+  AMERICAN THOUGHTS ON EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS.      31
+
+  THE CAXTONS. Part IV.                           40
+
+  REPUBLICAN FRANCE.--JUNE 1848.                  51
+
+  COLONISATION.                                   66
+
+  SIBERIA.                                        76
+
+  THE SCOTTISH DEER FORESTS.                      92
+
+  THE BURIED FLOWER.                             108
+
+  HUZZA FOR THE RULE OF THE WHIGS.               112
+
+  THE NAVIGATION LAWS.                           114
+
+  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. CCCXCIII.      JULY, 1848.      VOL. LXIV.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAWS OF LAND.
+
+_A Treatise on the Succession to Property vacant by Death._ By J. R.
+M'CULLOCH, Esq. London: Longmans, 1848.
+
+
+Mr M'Culloch's book introduces us to a question much debated in this
+age of class jealousy. As soon as we open it, we are straightway
+environed with "a barbarous noise of owls and cuckoos, asses,
+apes, and dogs," amid whose jargon of phrases rises loudest and
+most frequent the cry of "commercial principles." It is a great
+grievance, it seems, that land should not be disposed of according
+to "commercial principles;" that hill and holt, and moor and dale,
+should not pass from seller to buyer with the same readiness as
+candles and calicoes. Truly we have enough, and more than enough, of
+these same commercial principles in all walks of thought. Even the
+pulpit is not free from them. Politics are positively smothered with
+them. Ethical science, with the shallowisms of Paley and Bentham
+round her neck, struggles feebly with them. The book-keeper is
+abroad every where, with an indestructible faith in double entry.
+The Spirit of the Age wears a pen behind his ear, and sits on a high
+stool with three legs. That the prevailing commercial principles
+should have been so long excluded from the absolute possession of
+our laws of land, and that those laws should have preserved to a
+time like this so much of their feudal character, is a notable proof
+of the adaptation of the laws to the general requirements of the
+community, and of the steadiness of that social system which is so
+essentially linked to the maintenance of these laws.
+
+The cry of complaint to which we have above alluded, is inspired by
+many diverse motives. As Mr Cochrane's ragged followers flocked to
+Trafalgar Square to denounce the income-tax, so many a man takes up
+the shout against the law of primogeniture and entail, as tying up
+lands and restricting their sale, who never had the wherewithal to
+purchase a single acre if all broad England was in the market. On
+the other hand, the purse-proud citizen, sore that ready money is
+not yet quite at the top of the tree, and that he does not receive
+the same consideration at St James's as in Change Alley, delights to
+have some grievance whereon he can vent his spleen; and really, in
+some stolid instances, persuades himself that he is kept out of the
+land which his gold could buy, through the agency of aristocratical
+laws, as if George Robins had been a mythical personage, or the
+advertisements of Farebrother, Clark, and Lye were a mockery and
+delusion.
+
+But the largest class of assailants are those who come to the
+debate fortified with certain specious economical arguments,
+generally derived from a one-sided view of some particular effect
+of these restrictive laws. To the demolition of these objectors
+Mr M'Culloch's work is more immediately addressed; and very
+effectually, in our opinion, does it accomplish its end. He has
+not, perhaps, treated the subject so widely as it might have been
+treated: he has not entered into the indirect social influences that
+might be traced to our system of the laws relating to land; but the
+economical part of the question he has grasped most completely, and
+supported by most able and practical reasoning.
+
+We must, we suppose, look for the text of the work, not where the
+text is usually found, but at the end. The following sentence,
+which is almost the concluding one, may be taken as the leading
+proposition of the work:--
+
+     "A powerful and widely-ramified aristocracy like that of
+     England, not resting for support on any oppressive laws, and
+     enjoying no privileges but which are for the public advantage,
+     is necessary to give stability and security to the government,
+     and freedom to the people. And our laws in regard to succession
+     being well fitted to maintain such an aristocracy, and, at the
+     same time, to inspire every other class with the full spirit of
+     industry and enterprise, to change them would not be foolish
+     merely, but criminal,--a _lèse majesté_ against the public
+     interests."--P. 172.
+
+It must not, however, be supposed from this remark, that any portion
+of the work is appropriated to a set defence of government by
+means of an aristocracy. By an aristocracy we mean the deposition
+of political power in the hands of men of leisure and education,
+as opposed to the tendency of the Reform Bill, to transfer
+the governing functions to the "practical" men of the trading
+and moneyed interests, and the analogous claims of Chartism,
+founded on Jack Cade's complaint, that the "king's council are
+no good workmen." In England, we are pretty sure to have an
+aristocracy--that is, the influences which affect government and
+legislation will emanate principally from that class which is
+socially at the head of the nation; and the question is, whether
+we are to have a mere moneyed aristocracy, or one qualified by
+those mixed and undefinable conditions which, more than any thing
+else, act to keep down the growing and eager ascendency of wealth
+_per se_. Among the safeguards of such an aristocracy as we have
+described, not the least powerful is to be found in the laws
+discussed in the work before us. Mr M'Culloch, as we have said,
+assumes the importance to the country of preserving the present
+characteristics of British aristocracy; and he therefore proceeds
+at once to show how the laws on which he treats operate for this
+preservation, and to rebut the objections advanced against them on
+the score of their relations to other classes of the community.
+
+One of the most frequent of these objections is, that the laws
+in question tend to diminish the productiveness of the land, and
+thereby inflict a serious injury on the community at large; that
+they prevent, in many instances, the landlord from granting leases
+to his tenant beyond the term of his own life; that the tenant, in
+consequence, is not willing to incur the outlay of drainage and
+other expensive improvements, because he is not secured by a lease;
+while the landlord, on the other hand, will not enter into these
+expenses, because he does not feel the same interest in his limited
+estate which he would in the unconditional fee-simple.
+
+Note first of all the logic of this argument. The tenant, it seems,
+will not spend his money in draining without a lease. As, however,
+a lease would suffice to induce him so to do, we might naturally
+suppose that the landlord's estate for life, or in tail, would be at
+least an equal inducement. These reasoners, however, aver, that the
+landlord is only to be tempted by the unrestricted fee. According to
+this progressive scale, it might be fairly, argued, that the tenant,
+on becoming lessee for years, would still require the landlord's
+life-interest; and the latter, when seised of the fee, would decline
+the requisite expense, except on a guarantee of immortality, and
+justify himself by Horace's authority,--
+
+                        "Tanquam
+    Sit proprium quidquam puncto quod mobilis horæ
+    Permutet dominos, et cedat in altera jura."
+
+But the general scope of an argument may be just, though clumsily
+stated and fallaciously supported. We are, however, at no loss for
+experiments on the largest scale whereby to test the theory here
+noticed. We have English agriculture, subjected to a limited law of
+entail, contrasted on the one hand with Scottish agriculture, under
+a law of perpetual entail, and on the other with that of France and
+its compulsory gavelkind. Mr M'Culloch has taken an elaborate view
+of the question in its relation to the tillage of the soil in these
+three countries respectively, more especially in France. We find,
+from the result of his investigation, that,--
+
+     "The average produce per acre of the crops of wheat in England
+     and Wales in good years, has been carefully estimated at
+     thirty-two bushels an acre, and it is certainly not under thirty
+     bushels. But in France the produce of wheat, even in the richest
+     and best cultivated departments, is little more, according to
+     the official returns and the best private authorities, than
+     twenty bushels an acre; and at an average of the entire kingdom,
+     it hardly amounts in a good year to fourteen bushels. This
+     result is completely decisive. It shows that one acre of land
+     in England yields, from its being better farmed, considerably
+     more wheat than two acres in France: and if we took barley or
+     oats, turnips, beef, or wool for a standard, the difference in
+     our favour would be seen to be still greater.... If labour were
+     taken for a standard instead of land, the result would be still
+     more in our favour. One man and one horse in England produce
+     more corn and other agricultural produce than three men and
+     three horses in France. Labour in the latter is misapplied and
+     wasted."--P. 117.
+
+Again:--
+
+     "While two husbandmen in France furnish a surplus of food above
+     their own consumption adequate for _one_ individual, the same
+     number of English husbandmen furnish a surplus for no fewer than
+     _four_ individuals; showing, that, as measured by its capacity
+     of providing for the other classes of the population, English is
+     to French agriculture as four to one."--P. 121.
+
+So much for the comparison of French and English agriculture. Let us
+now turn to Scotland:--
+
+     "In an Appendix to the 'Sketches of the History of Man,'
+     published in 1774, Lord Kames says, 'The quantity of land that
+     is locked up in Scotland by entails has damped the growing
+     spirit of agriculture. There is not produced sufficiency of
+     corn at home for our consumption; and our condition will become
+     worse and worse by new entails, till agriculture and industry be
+     annihilated.' Now the extent of land under entail in Scotland
+     has been certainly more than doubled, perhaps more than trebled,
+     since this paragraph was written, and yet agriculture and
+     manufactures have made a more rapid progress in Scotland in the
+     interval, and especially during the last thirty years, when
+     entails were most prevalent, than in England or in any other
+     country whatever."--P. 71.
+
+Lord Kames, in this respect, seems to have had the same subtle
+ingenuity in prophesying counter to the event, as distinguishes Mr
+Cobden.
+
+The first part of Mr M'Culloch's volume contains a cursory
+historical view of the earliest regulations of succession and
+inheritance. Thus, at p. 16, he traces the right of primogeniture,
+or preference of the eldest son, to the Mosaic law. We are far from
+maintaining that the specific details of the code promulgated on
+Sinai are a model of law for all nations; on the contrary, they
+were no doubt intended to be such as a wise human law-giver would
+frame, and consequently more or less applicable according to the
+changes and differences of social organisation. But we do hold that
+these laws indicate to mankind principles which are to be observed
+in all times and by all nations. Thus, the septennial release of
+debts, the return of every man to his possession in the year of
+jubilee, the prohibition of interest upon loans except to an alien,
+even the poor man's portion in the field and vineyard, may or
+may not be regulations adapted to a particular existing state of
+society. But they enunciate a principle of mercy and forbearance
+towards the poor and unfortunate, of which, we fear, our political
+economists and commercial legislators are too apt to lose sight. In
+conformity with this view, when we hear the right of primogeniture
+assailed as contrary to the law of nature, (by the way, where is
+this much-talked-of law of nature to be found?) we may safely appeal
+to the express recognition by the Jewish law of "the right of the
+first-born as the beginning of his father's strength," to show
+that the custom of primogeniture is at all events not repugnant to
+instinctive justice or the common-sense of mankind. The old Saxon
+law of gavelkind might be better adapted to a superabundance of
+land and a thin population; the preference of the youngest son, by
+the custom of Borough-English, might well prevail among the far
+progenitors of the Saxon race on the steppes of Scythia,[1] when
+the elder brothers would be sent forth to roam over the boundless
+plain with their flocks and herds, the youngest remaining at home to
+be the prop of his father's old age. But in a settled and cultivated
+country, and among an advanced people, we maintain succession by
+primogeniture to be the most consonant, as a matter of theory, to
+the social feelings and requirements of man; and we think our author
+has fully established his position as to the beneficial character of
+its practical results.
+
+  [1] We suspect this custom may be traced in the Scythian legends of
+  Herodotus. See his 4th book, chapters v., vi., and x.
+
+In the course of his historical survey, Mr M'Culloch has of course
+touched on the principle of succession under the Roman law, but
+more lightly than we should have expected in reference to a system
+which has entered so largely into our Scottish law, and which is
+still accepted as a model framework of legal principles in most of
+the universities of Christendom. And the slight notice taken traces
+an analogy between the feudal and civil principles of succession,
+which we think is altogether incorrect. Our author, in speaking of
+the Roman law of succession, appears to confound in some measure
+the Roman term _hæres_ with the English word _heir_. The civilian
+definition of _hæres_ is _qui ex testamento succedit in universum
+jus testatoris_. In Scotland the word _heir_ has much the same
+import:--"The law deems it reasonable," says Erskine, (_Inst._ book
+iii. tit. 8, §. 2) "that every fiar shall have the power by deed,
+during his life, to declare who shall have the lands after his
+death: and the person so favoured is called the _heir_." Whereas the
+feudal notion of the word _heir_ preserved in the English law, is of
+one upon whom the estate is cast, after the death of his ancestor,
+by act of law and right of blood. In other words, _hæres_ is he who
+is appointed by the will of the deceased to succeed to his civil
+rights, and, in default of such appointment, the person indicated
+by a certain general law. But the _heir_ (in English law) is the
+next and worthiest of blood, appointed by the common-law to succeed
+to his ancestor; although this rule of succession may be set aside
+by the appointment or will of the ancestor, if possessed of the
+fee-simple. Bearing in mind this distinction, we shall perceive the
+cause of Mr M'Culloch's error when he says--
+
+     "The Furian, the Voconian, and the Falcidian laws were passed,
+     the first two under the republic, and the latter under Augustus,
+     to secure the interests of children by limiting the power of
+     fathers to make settlements to their prejudice." P. 6.
+
+Now, the Voconian law, so far from protecting the interests of
+children, frequently operated in the case of daughters to prejudice
+them;--of this we have a remarkable instance in the case of Annius
+Asellus, dwelt upon by Cicero, in the second action against
+Verres, _Orat._ i., c. 41--44. The law prevented all registered or
+assessed (_censi_) citizens of Rome from appointing a female as
+their _hæres_. Again, the Furian and Falcidian laws were passed to
+secure the person nominated as _hæres_ from being prejudiced by
+the excessive amount of legacies under the will. Hence, if a man
+died leaving only daughters, he was prohibited by the Voconian law
+from appointing any of them as his _hæres_; and the other two laws
+restrained him from appointing a nominal _hæres_, and leaving his
+property to his daughters by way of legacies (_legata_.)
+
+In truth, the English notion of heirship, as succession by right
+of blood, seems to be entirely due to the northern nations and the
+feudal system. Under both systems, however, it is observable how
+the progress of legislation and society has been to increase the
+privileges and diminish the duties of the constituted successor. For
+as, in tenure by chivalry, the heir was rather the person to whom,
+in consequence of proximity of blood, the lord might look for the
+performance of the military services, than the fortunate acquirer of
+the property, so the Roman _hæres_ was regarded more in the light
+of one on whom devolved the religious, civil, and private duties
+of the deceased; frequently so burdensome that the inheritance was
+altogether refused, until the heir was guarded by such laws as the
+Furian and Falcidian.
+
+While we are in the humour of finding fault, we may notice a
+passage in which we think Mr M'Culloch has not dealt fairly with the
+English law. It is as follows:--
+
+     "In one respect the law of intestacy appears to stand much in
+     need of revision. It is interpreted so as to give, in many
+     cases, more to the eldest son than the real estate and his
+     share of the personalty. Suppose, for example, that a person
+     dies intestate, leaving an estate worth (say) L.100,000, with
+     a mortgage made by him upon it for half its value, or £50,000,
+     and leaving also £50,000 of personal property, in this case the
+     real estate is obviously worth only £50,000; and consistently
+     with the principles previously laid down, the eldest son
+     should succeed to the estate burdened with its debt, and the
+     personal property be divided among the children generally. But
+     a different rule has been permitted to grow up. The personal
+     property of persons dying intestate is the first fund for their
+     debts, though secured upon their estates; and it is the surplus
+     only, if there be any, after these debts are paid, that is
+     divisible among the children, who, in the above case, would be
+     entitled to nothing. This appears to be in all respects a most
+     objectionable arrangement."--P. 41.
+
+We cannot see any anomaly here. "It is a rule in equity," says
+Cruise, (_Digest_, tit. xv. c. 4,) "that where a person dies,
+leaving a variety of funds, one of which must be charged with a
+debt, that the fund which received the benefit by the contracting
+the debt shall make satisfaction." This seems to us perfectly just
+and reasonable, according to the principles of the English law. In
+the case put by Mr M'Culloch, the personalty of £50,000 obviously
+owes its existence to the mortgage debt; and it is, therefore,
+fairly applied to the discharge of that debt. But, _cessante
+ratione, cessat etiam lex_; this only applies where the deceased was
+himself the mortgager. Where the lands came to him mortgaged, his
+personal estate will not be liable, even though he may have made a
+covenant to pay it. We may refer the legal reader to the judgment
+of Lord King, delivered, with the assistance of Lord Chief-Justice
+Raymond and the Master of the Rolls, in Evelyn _v._ Evelyn, 2 P.
+Wms. 659. Compare Cope _v._ Cope, 1 Salk. 449. Shafto _v._ Shafto, 2
+P. Wms. 664.
+
+Although the custom of primogeniture and the law of entail exercise
+a similar influence on our social state, yet, as they may be said
+in some measure to go by a different path towards the same end, Mr
+M'Culloch has treated them separately. With respect to the first, he
+begins by rebutting Adam Smith's sweeping denunciation:--"Nothing
+can be more contrary to the real interest of a numerous family, than
+a right which, in order to enrich one, beggars all the rest of the
+children." _Wealth of Nations_, p. 171.
+
+     "On the contrary," says Mr M'Culloch, "we are well convinced
+     that much of the industry and of the superior wealth and
+     civilisation of modern Europe, may be ascribed to the influence
+     of the custom of primogeniture in determining the succession
+     to estates; and that, were it abolished, or superseded by the
+     opposite custom of equally dividing landed property among all
+     the children, or even among all the sons, they would suffer
+     universally by the change, the youngest as well as the oldest;
+     while it would most seriously compromise the interests of every
+     other class."--P. 28.
+
+The truth is, that the right of primogeniture is rather to be
+regarded as having for its object the benefit of the community,
+than the interest of the particular family. If a man has £50,000
+a-year and five sons, it may appear, at first sight, decidedly
+more conducive to "the greatest possible happiness of the greatest
+possible number," that each of these five sons should have £10,000
+a-year, than that one should possess the whole, or bulk, of the
+paternal property, and the other four be left to buffet their way
+through the world. But it is for the interest of the nation that
+its aristocracy should be founded in old families, fortified and
+graced by historical associations; and these are only to be kept up
+by a devolution of their lands according to the feudal rule. But,
+as regards the interest of the particular family, it will appear
+on consideration that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, this
+also is most effectually promoted by the law of primogeniture. By
+means of this law, the main stock of the family is left in its full
+strength as a nucleus round which the younger branches are united,
+and from which their members derive alike a great portion of their
+status in society, and inducement to advance themselves in their
+respective pursuits; and, on the other hand, the professions of
+the country are exalted and dignified by the infusion into their
+ranks of men of birth and education, who are, at the same time,
+dependent on those professions for their advancement. Sir Matthew
+Hale, as quoted by Mr M'Culloch, forcibly describes the results
+of the opposite system. "This equal division of inheritance," he
+says, speaking of the old times of Saxon gavelkind, "did by degrees
+bring the inhabitants to a low kind of country living; and families
+were broken; and the younger sons which, had they not had these
+little parcels of land to apply themselves to, would have betaken
+themselves to trades, or to military, or civil, or ecclesiastical
+employments, neglecting those opportunities, wholly applied
+themselves to those small divisions of land; whereby they neglected
+the opportunities of greater advantage of enriching themselves
+and the kingdom." And if it should be urged that Sir Matthew Hale
+could do little more than form an _à priori_ judgment of the social
+condition of England in the days of the Confessor, it should be
+remembered that the picture here drawn is precisely applicable to
+the state of France at the present day, and may easily be traced to
+its similar system of partition. An important public result of the
+same system, as regards the landholders in the exercise of their
+functions as citizens, may also be observed in that country. The
+large body of landed proprietors, amounting to between four and five
+millions, so far from being the leaders of the people, are, perhaps,
+the most inert and uninfluential class of the whole community. They
+pay the bulk of the taxes, and grumble accordingly; but beyond a
+vague dread of aristocracy--not unnaturally founded, perhaps, on the
+traditions of the vexatious privileges swept away in 1791--they seem
+disposed calmly to acquiesce in all the proclamations, charters,
+and chimeras that maybe thrust upon them by busier handlers of the
+tools of government, and behold revolutions concocted in Paris,
+and bursting over their heads, apparently without the remotest
+conception that it any wise rests with them to control or guide the
+convulsion.
+
+     "It has sometimes been contended that the custom of
+     primogeniture is injurious, from its interesting the leading
+     families of the country in the support of expensive public
+     establishments, in which their younger branches are most
+     commonly placed."--P. 38.
+
+This objection also Mr M'Culloch brings to the test of experiment,
+and shows that this bias, if it really exist, is little perceptible,
+and that the aristocracy have shown much more zeal to discharge
+the functions of the ill-paid offices of the army and navy, than
+to get into their hands the lucrative situations connected with
+the administration of justice. It was certainly not the immediate
+interest of the aristocracy, for instance, to maintain the offices
+of the six clerks in Chancery, the profits on which were estimated
+for compensation at sums varying, we believe, from £2500 to £1000
+per annum.
+
+The law of entail is traceable to the same human instincts as the
+law of primogeniture. The clannish feelings of the northern nations,
+their notion of representation by blood, and the territorial
+character of their citizenship, all combined to produce an anxiety
+to perpetuate the old stocks in the homes of their fathers. Nor is
+this desire of posthumous control over the transmission of lands
+the product, as is sometimes alleged, of an artificial state of
+society. Man's possessory instinct essentially connects itself with
+the future--_Serit arbores quæ alteri prosint sæculo._ The justice
+of gratifying this wish by general laws of the community is not
+more impeachable than that of guarding the indefeasible possession
+of the owner during his lifetime. It remains to be seen how far the
+sanction of entails is consistent with the good of the nation in
+general.
+
+Every lawyer knows that the progress of legal decisions in England
+has been adverse to entails, and that although the statute De Donis
+continues on the statute-book, yet it was long ago rendered almost
+nugatory by the introduction of fines and recoveries. Hence the term
+entail is now popularly applied to denote the strict settlement of
+lands, under provisions which prevent them from passing from the
+heirs to whom they are limited; this having been, of old, the result
+of an entail properly so called, though it now requires a more
+complicated mode of settling, and can only endure (so as to render
+the lands inalienable) for a life or any number of lives in being,
+and twenty-one years afterwards. This more popular meaning of the
+word entail is that which Mr M'Culloch follows--his object being to
+treat of the influence of tying up lands from alienation.
+
+Measuring the practice of entails by the rule of utility, Mr
+M'Culloch selects two points as the principal topics of discussion.
+
+     "In the first place, it is alleged in favour of entails that
+     they stimulate exertion and economy; that they hold out to
+     industry and ambition the strongest and safest excitement in the
+     prospect of founding an imperishable name and a powerful family,
+     and of being remembered and venerated by endless generations
+     as their chief and benefactor. And, in the second place, it is
+     said that entails form the only solid bulwark of a respectable
+     aristocracy, and prevent generations from being ruined by the
+     folly or misfortunes of an individual."--P. 78.
+
+The first of these propositions is, no doubt, partially true; but
+the motive put forward has not, we think, as a matter of experience,
+the force that might, at first sight, be attributed to it. Perhaps
+the keenest accumulators of wealth have not been those who have
+fixed their capital in a landed estate. The man of business habits
+and judicious speculation is drawn to make his fortune in obedience
+to a passion which is partly developed, and at all events fostered,
+by the pursuit of his life. It cannot be said to arise altogether
+from a notion of benefiting posterity, of being the founder of a
+house--the man of whom future Fitztomkynses shall be ashamed--that
+John Tomkins, merchant, sets at nought all the expostulations of
+self-indulgence:
+
+    "Tun' mare transilias? tibi tortâ cannabe fulto
+     Cœna sit in transtro? Veientanumque rubellum
+     Exhalet vapidâ læsum pice fissilis obba?"
+
+Enormous fortunes were accumulated during the declining days
+of the Roman republic. But entails being then unknown, and the
+Roman nobility having no territorial position, these fortunes,
+usually acquired by oppression and extortion in the provinces, were
+squandered in largesses and corruption at home. There was no other
+way in which a Roman citizen of great wealth could establish the
+influence of his family. He could not, like, all English gentleman,
+connect his name with a landed estate, and extend his influence by
+those good offices and local duties which lie so immediately open
+to a man in that capacity. As an almost necessary consequence, he
+sought for power through the demoralisation and corruption of the
+holders of the suffrage--causes which contributed more than any
+other to the downfall of the republic. By lavishing his gold in this
+manner, he obtained, not only political eminence for himself, but
+also that power which led to proconsulates and proprætorships among
+his heirs, and thus gave them the opportunity of repairing, by fresh
+exactions, his diminished revenues.
+
+Hence we should rather view the law of entail as an inducement to a
+man to perpetuate his thousands in broad acres than to acquire his
+fortune in the first instance. And, in conformity with this view,
+it may be observed, that it is more generally the son or other
+successor than the architect of the fortune himself who converts the
+accumulated wealth into this permanent form.
+
+Mr M'Culloch's second point--the preservation of families by means
+of entails--is one of wider interest and more general importance. In
+a bustling mercantile community like ours, we cannot too jealously
+guard any institution which, directly or indirectly, tends to
+preserve distinctions due to something more than mere wealth. And
+there can be no doubt that the system of entails has saved many
+an ancient line from being thrust from its home of centuries to
+a strange spot, and this not only among the titled and wealthy,
+but among the yeomanry and "statesmen." In England, of course, a
+family may frequently perish through the possession of an estate in
+fee-simple passing into the hands of an unthrifty representative
+of the line, as the settlements require constant renewal. But in
+Scotland the system of perpetual entail exercises a much more potent
+influence in their behalf. Mr M'Culloch, though he rebuts many of
+the objections urged against the Scottish law, is nevertheless
+anxious to see it assimilated in a great measure to that of
+England. There is, however, an exception which he would make to
+the rule against perpetuity of entails. It is with regard to the
+peerage, in which matter we cordially agree with him. There were,
+in ancient times, instances of barons who were degraded from their
+dignity on account of their lack of sufficient revenue to support
+their hereditary title. The independence and the dignity of the
+House of Lords would be alike maintained by an enactment enabling,
+or even obliging, all peers to tie up by perpetual entail a certain
+portion of their estates to accompany the title. Such anomalies
+as that of an Earl of Buchan (Lord Erskine's father, see Lord
+Campbell's _Lives of the Chancellors_) living in the uppermost flat
+of a sixteen-story house, would thereby be avoided with considerable
+advantage to the national interests.
+
+Mr M'Culloch, therefore, who quotes Sir William Temple and Dr
+Johnson on the same side, would preserve the law of perpetual entail
+for the Scottish peerage, and extend it also to that of England.
+In other respects he is, as we have above stated, in favour of a
+considerable modification of the Scottish law of entail. He admits,
+however, the difficulty of dealing with existing entails.
+
+     "These have established a right of property not only in the
+     actual possessors and their families, but, speaking generally,
+     in a wide circle of collateral heirs; nor could the rights of
+     the unborn heirs be affected without annulling the clauses in a
+     great number of settlements, and also in marriage-contracts and
+     other deeds _inter vivos_. It is, therefore, hardly possible
+     materially to relax the fetters of entails with strict justice
+     to all parties, though it might perhaps be slowly and gradually
+     effected without inflicting any very serious hardship on
+     any individual. We incline to think that this might be most
+     easily brought about by saving the rights of living heirs
+     of entail, and of such heirs as may be born under existing
+     marriage-contracts. The interests of the possible heirs that
+     might be prejudiced by the adoption of some such rule as this,
+     are of so very unsubstantial a description that they might
+     safely be neglected." P. 78.
+
+At the time we write, a measure is pending before Parliament,
+entitled "A Bill for the amendment of the Law of Entail in
+Scotland," and endorsed with the names of the Lord-Advocate, Sir
+George Grey, and Mr Solicitor-General for Scotland. Whatever
+difficulties Mr M'Culloch feels with regard to relaxing the fetters
+of entail, it is obvious that the contrivers of this bill are in
+nowise hampered by them. They go to work in the most off-hand manner
+possible. A short and unobtrusive-looking bill is to drive clean
+through all the existing settlements and deeds of tailzie, with
+their complicated train of clauses irritant and resolutive, as if no
+mortal was concerned in the matter, and estates were the proper toys
+of law-makers.
+
+The fact of the quantity of alienable land diminishing in a
+commercial country, while trade and population are increasing, is no
+doubt a state of things which calls for a remedy, since there must
+at some period or another, be a failure of land adequate to meet the
+requirements of realised fortunes. If, in the judgment of reasonable
+and practical observers, the difficulty could be met by making all
+future entails subject to be barred by a process analogous to that
+existing in England, we should think there could be no hesitation
+in affirming it to be the most just and most expedient course to
+introduce such a change, and leave the existing settlements in their
+contemplated perpetuity. If, however, it can be clearly established
+that already too much land is locked up in the northern kingdom,
+and that the soil now free from entail is insufficient to satisfy
+the requirements of future buyers, then we should say that the
+utmost care and skill were required in framing enactments which
+should adapt themselves to the justice of particular cases, and
+should, as far as might be, save existing and vested interests in
+their delicate multiplicity and connexion. If ever such care and
+skill were required, it would be in a measure which interferes
+more extensively with vested rights--usually with good reason a
+sacred thing in the eye of the law--than any which appears in the
+statute-books of the three kingdoms. A statute to convert the Irish
+tenants into owners of the fee-simple of their several holdings,
+(a project which has been talked of,) would scarcely be a more
+startling invasion of the rights of property as they are usually
+recognised. We do not, however, intend to impeach the general
+provisions of the bill. If, as we before observed, so important a
+change was found to be necessary, it is right to make it; and it is
+no more than was effected in England by a more gradual process--the
+subtle fictions of the law-courts, which virtually got rid of the
+statute De Donis. But we can anticipate nothing but uncertainty
+and multiplied litigation, from the apparently crude and careless
+project now before us.
+
+An instance of the loose wording of this bill strikes the reader
+in the very first section. It proposes to enact "that where any
+estate in Scotland shall be entailed by a deed of tailzie, dated
+on or after the first day of March one thousand eight hundred and
+forty-eight, it shall be lawful for any heir of entail, born after
+the date of such tailzie, being of full age, and in possession of
+such entailed estate in virtue of such tailzie, _to acquire such
+estate in fee-simple_, by applying to the Court of Session, &c."
+Now, what is this estate which the heir of entail is to acquire in
+fee-simple? The estate-tail, for so it is by hypothesis. But to
+talk of acquiring an estate-tail in fee-simple is nothing better
+than downright nonsense. An estate-tail is, by the origin of the
+word, cut or carved (taillé) out of the fee-simple. You may talk of
+converting or enlarging the part into the whole, but you cannot talk
+of acquiring the part in the entirety of the whole. This is not all;
+the bill plunges at once _in medias res_, without favouring us with
+any sort of definition of the important phrase, "heir of entail," in
+this and other clauses. The same expression in the statute 1 Jac.
+VII. c. 32, has already (see _Sandford's Entails_, p. 231) given
+rise to no small questioning and litigation, which promise to be
+renewed in abundance should this measure pass into a law. Again,
+perpetual inalienability is not an incident to all estates-tail.
+Lands merely bound by what are called the prohibitive clauses, may
+be alienated for a valuable consideration, though not by a voluntary
+or (as the Scotch say) gratuitous conveyance. Tailzies, however, to
+which no clauses are annexed, do not prevent the heir from conveying
+the lands in any manner he pleases. Now, as, the object of this bill
+is to relax the bonds of perpetual inalienability, we presume that
+only those tailzies which are guarded by the irritant and resolutive
+clauses are within its purview. If so, the general expression "deed
+of tailzie" should have been distinctly limited. If that expression
+should be held to comprehend all deeds of tailzie, which it must of
+course do when taken by itself, then the proposed act will exercise
+a very extensive disabling power, by restricting the unlimited right
+of alienation under tailzies of simple destination,[2] and the right
+of alienation for value under tailzies with prohibitive clauses
+only introduced, to the peculiar form and instrument pointed out by
+this bill, and which we suppose was devised in analogy to the forms
+substituted for fines and recoveries by the statute 3 & 4 Will. IV.
+c. 74.
+
+  [2] See Erskine's _Institutes_, B. iii. tit. 8, §§ 21-25.
+
+We have already seen how Mr M'Culloch would deal with the difficulty
+of disturbing the devolution of lands already limited in perpetual
+entail--namely, by "saving the rights of living heirs of entail,
+and of heirs born under existing marriage-contracts." We think our
+author has not, in this passage, expressed himself with due legal
+perspicuity and precision. The phrase "living heirs of entail" is
+somewhat vague and uncertain; we presume Mr M'Culloch intended the
+living issue of the heir of entail in possession, and all living
+heirs-substitute and their living issue. Again, what are existing
+marriage-contracts? Probably those marriage-contracts are intended,
+which are annexed to marriages solemnised before the introduction of
+a new system. Both these suggestions, as we have interpreted them,
+might with justice, and advantage have formed part of the new law.
+It is true that this would, at all events for a considerable period
+of time, stop short of that assimilation of the Scottish law to the
+English which seems to have been a great object with the framers of
+this bill. But the two systems would gradually correspond; and we
+hold that there is a principle of justice involved in the upholding
+of contracts the objects of which are as yet unfulfilled. Where
+an English settler has limited lands to a man for life, remainder
+to his first and other sons successively in tail, he knew, at the
+time of making the settlement, that it was liable to be barred with
+consent of the eldest son on his coming of age. But it was not so
+with a Scotch settler who executed a deed of tailzie to several
+brothers as successive heirs-substitute; and the legislature has no
+right, without the gravest public cause, to step in and defeat his
+intention.
+
+But the bill, though intending to give far greater liberty to the
+owner of an entailed estate than Mr M'Culloch does, or, as we think,
+is consistent with justice, sets about affording him aid in the
+most ambiguous and misty manner conceivable. The 2d clause enacts
+that the heir of entail in possession, born after the date of the
+act, may disentail in the manner provided by the act; and an heir
+of entail born before the date of the act may similarly disentail,
+"with the consent (and not otherwise) of the heir-substitute next
+in succession, and heir-apparent under the entail of the heir in
+possession," he being born after the date of the act, and capable of
+contracting.
+
+We should recommend the tenant in tail to be very cautious how he
+attempts to "acquire his estate in fee-simple" under the provisions
+of this clause. He is to obtain the consent of the heir-substitute
+next in succession. So far his course is clear. But the same person
+is also designated by the term "heir-apparent under the entail of
+the heir in possession." Now, is this a qualification of the general
+term "heir-substitute next in succession," and must such person,
+under the act, be also heir-apparent? If so, what is the particular
+qualification required of him under the expression "heir-apparent?"
+Adhering to the use of the phrase in popular language, we must take,
+as the only circumstances under which the next heir-substitute and
+the heir-apparent are one and the same person, the case in which
+the first estate under the entail is limited to a man and the heirs
+of his body, and the second to his second son and the heirs of his
+body; then, supposing the eldest son to die in the lifetime of his
+father, the second son would be both the next heir-substitute and
+also the heir-apparent. Is this, therefore, the only case within
+the act? Scarcely, we should think, was it so intended. Are we,
+then, to interpret the word heir-apparent in the sense in which the
+phrase heir-presumptive is generally used; and must we suppose that
+the cases indicated are those in which there is no issue under the
+first entail, and therefore the next heir-substitute is what we
+should call heir-presumptive to the person in possession? If so,
+what is to become of the numerous cases where there is issue to
+take under the existing estate-tail? Or can it be that the issue
+in tail is altogether forgotten by this act, and that the person
+whose consent is required is merely the next heir-substitute in any
+case? We are inclined to think this the most probable explanation of
+this unfortunate clause, but can scarcely imagine that it will be
+suffered to pass into a law. A further ambiguity, however, arises
+with respect to this term heir-apparent, from its having a peculiar
+technical meaning in the Scottish law. "He who is entitled," says
+Erskine, "to enter heir to a deceased ancestor is, before his actual
+entry, styled, both in our statutes and by our writers, _apparent
+heir_." If the bill intends any reference to this legal acceptation
+of the phrase, we can only understand the person whose consent is
+required, to be such person as, being next heir-substitute, would,
+on the immediate decease of the possessor, be his apparent heir,
+or entitled to enter on the lands. This, again, shuts out all
+those estates where the possessor has issue in tail, and would,
+consequently, limit the operation of the bill to exceptional
+cases. We think we have said enough to convince our readers that
+this clause is not likely to set free many entailed estates in
+Scotland--at all events, not without a chaos of litigation, in which
+the elements of profit will have a tendency to range themselves on
+the side of the lawyers.
+
+The person whose consent is to be obtained (whoever that mysterious
+person may be) is, as we have seen, to be born after the date of
+the act. In conformity with this principle, one would have supposed
+that where the next heir-substitute shall have been born before
+that date, then it should be necessary to obtain the consent of the
+first person entitled to take _per formam doni_, who shall be born
+after this date, together with the consent of all those who are to
+take before him. The third clause, however, introduces a new form of
+protection to the settlement, and merely enacts that, in such cases,
+the consent of a certain number of the heirs-substitute is to be
+obtained, (the blank left for the number was filled up with the word
+"three" in committee of the House of Commons. Nothing said about the
+issue in tail, as before.
+
+Where the main enactments of the bill are so incomprehensible, it
+is useless to dwell on its details. We can only say, that whatever
+evils may be shown to exist under the present law, they will not
+only fail to be cured, but must be aggravated tenfold, by such a
+product of off-hand legislation--
+
+                        "Sent before its time
+    Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
+    And that so lamely and unfashionable,"
+
+that it must necessarily die of its own deformity, unless the
+law-courts will lick it into shape by their decisions,--a shape (as
+it must be) in which its own parents would not know it again.
+
+The law of real property in France exhibits a system so distinctly
+antagonistic to our English and Scottish law of entail, that we
+cannot be surprised at the attention with which Mr M'Culloch has
+investigated its influences.
+
+     "According to the law of France, a person with one child may
+     dispose at pleasure of a moiety of his property, the child
+     inheriting the other moiety as legitim, or matter of right; a
+     person having two children can only dispose of a third part
+     of his property; and those having more than two must divide
+     three-fourths of their property equally amongst them, one-fourth
+     part being all that is then left at their disposal. When a
+     father dies intestate, his property is equally divided among his
+     children, without respect to sex or seniority. Nothing can be
+     more distinctly opposed to the principles we have endeavoured
+     to establish, and to the system followed in this country, than
+     this law. It is therefore lucky that it is now no novelty. It
+     has been established for more than half a century, so that we
+     may trace and exhibit its practical influence over the condition
+     of the extensive population subject to its operation. Such an
+     experiment is of rare occurrence, but when made is invaluable.
+     And if its results should confirm the conclusions already
+     come to, it will go far to establish them on an unassailable
+     basis."--P. 80-81.
+
+We have already seen how these results may be traced in the state
+of French agriculture. They may also, we think, be discerned in the
+relative position which the landholders of France bear to other
+classes in the social scale. These, numbering between four and
+five millions, ought, as a class, to constitute the leaders of the
+nation. So far from this being the case, they are perhaps the most
+inert and uninfluential portion of the community, having apparently
+had little or no voice in the two revolutions which have swept over
+their heads within the last eighteen years, and as little in the
+erection, maintenance, or downfall of the Throne of the Barricades.
+It yet remains to be seen whether they will continue to accept every
+thing which the clubs of Paris are willing to force upon them. As
+tax-payers and cultivators of the soil, it can hardly suit them to
+be propagandists; as men who have something to lose, they will not
+readily give in to the dictatorial vagaries of Ledru Rollin. If,
+however, they would hold their own, it is time for them to be up and
+doing. France has been governed by a minority before now.
+
+We have always regarded it as one of the main advantages of a
+landed aristocracy, that it raises up a principle of social rank
+antagonistic to that of mere wealth. In France, the constant
+subdivision and transfer of land breaks down this influence,
+and causes land to be regarded as a mere marketable article and
+equivalent for money.
+
+     "In countries where the custom of primogeniture exercises a
+     powerful influence, families become identified with estates--the
+     family representing the estate, and the estate the family. The
+     wealth and consideration enjoyed by the latter depend upon, and
+     are intimately connected with, the possession of the lands
+     which have descended to them from their ancestors. They estimate
+     their value by another than a mere pecuniary standard. They are
+     attached to them by the oldest and most endearing associations;
+     and they are seldom parted with except under the most painful
+     circumstances. Hence the perpetuity of property in England in
+     the same families, notwithstanding the limited duration of
+     entails; great numbers of estates being at this moment enjoyed
+     by those whose ancestors acquired them at or soon after the
+     Conquest. But in France such feelings are proscribed. Estates
+     and families have there no abiding connexion; and at the demise
+     of an individual who has a number of children, his estate can
+     hardly escape being subdivided. And this effect of the law tends
+     to imbue the proprietors with corresponding sentiments and
+     feelings. 'Non seulement,' says M. De Tocqueville, 'la loi des
+     successions rend difficile aux familles de conserver intacts les
+     mêmes domaines, mais elle leur òte le désir de le tenter, et
+     elle les entraîne, en quelque sorte, à coopérer avec elle à leur
+     propre ruine.'"--P. 85-86.
+
+But Mr M'Culloch dwells more particularly on the injurious effects
+to agriculture from the parcelling out of the land into small
+properties. He shows that a small proprietor is not so efficient a
+cultivator of the soil as a tenant, in which doctrine Arthur Young
+had preceded him. He shows, also, that the subdivision of properties
+leads to the subdivision of farms, and urges that it is impossible
+to have good farming on small patches of land. Of the miseries of an
+agricultural system carried on by small farmers on petty holdings,
+we have already a sufficient example in Ireland. We cannot but
+think, however, that the progress of things in England has too much
+swallowed up those little farms of from thirty to fifty acres, which
+at one time were common over the country. Not but what capital is
+employed at a great disadvantage on these little holdings--but where
+there is a general system of good-sized farms, an intermixture, of
+smaller farms is not attended with injurious effects proportional
+to those which arise where the whole of the land is split up into
+minute parcels. And then small farmers furnish a link between the
+yeomanry and peasantry, which it is useful to maintain, cheering
+the poor man's lot by pointing out to him a path by which lie may
+advance from the position of a day-labourer to that of an occupier
+of land. On the same principle, we are rejoiced to observe the
+gradual extension of the allotment system; although it would have
+a still more beneficial effect, we think, if the land was granted
+in the shape of a croft about the cottage, thus giving the tenant a
+greater interest, and more individual sense of proprietorship, than
+when his piece of land is packed, along with a number of others,
+into a mass of unsightly patches.
+
+In connexion with the small holdings in Ireland, it should not be
+forgotten that this subdivision of the land results mainly from the
+practice of sub-letting; and this again has arisen in a great degree
+from the practice of granting long leases, the want of which in
+England has served, among many other things, for an outcry against
+the landlords. Mr M'Culloch has pointed out the evils of too long
+leases on the farming tenant, that they superinduce a sense of
+security which easily degenerates into indolence. But the influence
+on Ireland is even worse, by breaking up the land into small
+patches, on which the occupier can but just maintain himself, paying
+an exorbitant rent to the middleman. For it is not the eager demand
+for land amongst the Irish peasantry, as we sometimes hear, that has
+produced this subdivision of the land, but the subdivision that has
+produced the demand, by putting the cultivation of the land into the
+hands of a class who are unable, through want of skill and capital,
+to carry it on; who cannot, therefore, furnish employment for the
+labourers, and thus drive them to grasp at little parcels of land
+as their only means of securing a wretched subsistence; and this
+security, as we know, has more than once proved but a fancied one,
+as in the disastrous failure of the potato crop.
+
+While we are on this subject, we may draw the reader's attention
+to a very able pamphlet by an Irish gentleman, on Irish matters,
+which, though we believe it has never been published, has had
+an extensive private circulation. We allude to "An Address to
+the Members of the House, of Commons on the Landlord and Tenant
+Question, by Warren H. R. Jackson, Esq." The work, though somewhat
+tinged with the hard politico-economical school, is written with
+great shrewdness of thought and freedom from prejudice, and is well
+worthy the careful attention of the honourable House. The writer, in
+discussing the vexed question he has taken in hand, fully coincides
+with the general principles laid down by Mr M'Culloch. "This," he
+says, (speaking of the subdivision of land) "is one of the monster
+grievances of Ireland, and you will do little good unless you abate
+it." This abatement he would bring about mainly by prospective
+laws, as by placing all contracts for subletting _hors la loi_, and
+so taking away from the first lessee all power of recovering his
+rent from the actual tenant. We cannot but think that this would be
+found a most salutary enactment. It should be remembered, that the
+occupier is responsible to the owner of the freehold by the power
+of distress vested in the latter, and it is but just that he should
+be relieved from the liability to pay two rents--a liability which
+it is manifest no good farmer would incur, but which the squalid
+ravager of the soil in Ireland is always eager for.
+
+It has been said that no further legislative enactment is required
+in Ireland, and that administrative wisdom must do what yet
+remains to be done. Mr Jackson, however, shows that there are such
+deep-seated evils in Ireland as cannot be cured except by the direct
+interference of the legislature. But we think he expects too much
+from the Sale of Encumbered Estates Bill. An extensive change of
+proprietorship would, we are persuaded, be a great evil in Ireland.
+There is an attachment in general to the "ould stock" among their
+poorer neighbours, which would naturally be followed by a jealousy
+and prejudice against the new comers who displaced them. And this
+prejudice would of itself neutralise any efforts for improvement
+which the landlord might otherwise be disposed to make--although,
+in most cases, we should not expect much effort in this direction
+from a stranger mortgagee, often an unwilling purchaser, who would
+naturally be anxious to contract with those parties from whom he
+could obtain his rents with least trouble, leaving them to deal with
+the land as they liked, and thereby continuing and increasing the
+odious middleman system.
+
+Mr M'Culloch does not confine his examination of the compulsory
+partition in France to its influence on agriculture. He has
+discerned certain political effects of that and the concomitant
+system of which it is a part, with a precision which subsequent
+events have elevated into a sort of prophecy. The preface to his
+work is dated December 1847, and the work was published, we believe,
+early in January. There can, therefore, be no grounds for classing
+the following passage with those anticipations which are made after
+the event:--
+
+     "The aristocratical element is no longer to be found in French
+     society; and the compulsory division of the soil, while it
+     prevents the growth of an aristocracy, impresses the same
+     character of mobility upon landed possessions that is impressed
+     on the families of their occupiers. Hence the prevalent want of
+     confidence in the continuance of the present order of things in
+     France. What is there in that country to oppose an effectual
+     resistance to a revolutionary movement? Monarchy in France has
+     been stripped of those old associations and powerful bulwarks
+     whence it derives almost all its lustre and support in this
+     and other countries. The throne stands in solitary, though not
+     unenvied dignity, without the shelter of a single eminence,
+     exposed to the full force of the furious blasts that sweep
+     from every point of the surrounding level. There is nothing
+     intermediate, nothing to hinder a hostile majority in the
+     Chamber of Deputies from at once subverting the regal branch of
+     the constitution, or changing the reigning dynasty."--P. 132-133.
+
+Scarcely was the printer's ink dry on this passage when the Throne
+of the Barricades was gone. We have given our author full credit
+for his sagacity in penetrating into the future, but we think it
+would puzzle him to foretell what is to come next. We are disposed
+to doubt, however, whether an aristocracy could have preserved the
+throne of Louis Philippe. It is true that in our own country William
+of Nassau and George of Brunswick maintained their crowns by the
+aid of powerful sections of the nobility. But the revolutions which
+gave them those crowns were not the volcanic outbursts of popular
+force. Under such outbursts, no successful usurper, no "Hero-king,"
+no sovereign by the will of the people, has been able to devise a
+principle which shall establish his throne in security, and serve
+in the stead of that prestige of old hereditary succession, that
+grand feudal idea of kingly right, which is the essential fountain
+of the reverence that guards royalty. Louis Philippe would have
+confirmed his sovereignty by means of the influence exerted upon
+interested officials. No sooner was his power shaken in its unstable
+equilibrium than the men whom his gold had bought rushed to worship
+the rising sun of the young Republic. Napoleon, before him, would
+have built up a similar power on military glory: his doom was
+sealed when his eagles turned from the field of Leipsic. Cromwell
+employed religious fanaticism to the same end: the fanaticism
+lasted his time; but we will venture to say that, had he lived, his
+protectorate would not have reached the seventeen years allotted to
+the democratic King of the French.
+
+Our author is of opinion that, after all, the system of compulsory
+partition will fail to guard what has since become the French
+Republic:--
+
+     "But, though it were possible, which it is not, to obviate
+     the mischievous influence of the French and other plans for
+     preventing the increase and continuance of property in the same
+     families, it may be confidently predicted that they will, in
+     time to come as hitherto, wholly fail in their grand object of
+     perpetuating the ascendancy of the democracy. In old settled and
+     fully peopled countries, where the bulk of the population is
+     necessarily poor and dependent, an aristocracy is indispensable
+     for the support of a free system of government--'Il importe à
+     tous les peuples qui ont la prétention de devenir ou de rester
+     puissants, d'avoir une aristocratie, c'est-à-dire un corps
+     héréditaire ou non, qui conserve et perpetue les traditions,
+     donne de l'esprit de suite à la politique, et se voue à l'art le
+     plus difficile de tous, qu' aujourd'hui cependant tout le monde
+     croit savoir sans l'avoir appris, celui de gouverner. Un peuple
+     sans aristocratic pourra briller dans les lettres et les arts,
+     mais sa gloire politique me semble devoir être passagère comme
+     un méteore.' CHEVALIER, _Lettres sur l'Amerique_, ii. 379," pp.
+     171, 172.
+
+We have already said that we think England certain to have an
+aristocracy of some description. The ambition of the people to
+advance themselves individually in the social scale will necessarily
+lead to a high value being set upon those advanced positions,
+and will tend to make them the fulcrum from which the country is
+governed. And we can conceive nothing more fatal to our national
+organisation than the result which would follow indirectly from the
+repeal of these laws. It may be supposed at first sight that no very
+vital question is involved here. Let those who suppose so, take a
+view of the probable condition of society which would ensue. These,
+and other so-called feudalities, being swept away, land becomes
+a commercial article, according to the desire of the plutocratic
+reformers. Estates are trucked about in the market like bills of
+exchange; constantly changing hands, their owners have little
+connexion with them or the people that live on them, regarding them
+merely in the light of so much realised capital. The old families
+gradually become dispossessed; mere wealth is recognised as the
+sole qualification for rank and influence; and the leading class
+in the state is composed of men who are an aristocracy by virtue
+of ready money. Far be it from us to undervalue the enterprise,
+integrity, and industry of our merchant manufacturers and tradesmen.
+But we will say that when we meet with a man, as we often do among
+those classes, endowed with a broad range of thought and high and
+noble aims, we regard him as possessing these qualities not as a
+consequence, but in spite of a commercial training. The immediate
+effects of such training are to narrow the mind and cramp the
+soul, not in respect of domestic and social life--for in these,
+perhaps, the middle classes are unsurpassed by any other--but in the
+provinces of the statesman and the politician.
+
+In these times, it seems to be commonly supposed that a
+legislator--like a poet--_nascitur, non fit_. There is a certain
+kind of training, the acquisition of a certain cast of thought,
+which are requisites for statesmen as a class, as much as his legal
+reading for a lawyer, or his apprenticeship for a handicraftsman.
+Statesmen, however, have to deal with practical matters; and
+therefore we think, as we have before said, that while the
+predominance of these requisites in the legislature is essential
+to good government, there may with advantage at the same time be
+a certain admixture of the men practically versed in commerce
+and manufactures. But this should be always a subordinate, not a
+leading, element in the principles which regulate the administration
+of government.--We repeat, that the counting-house, the loom, and
+the anvil, are not the best schools for legislators. For that
+office, a man requires leisure and education. We shall be told that
+a "Squire" is not necessarily an educated man. We do not maintain
+that he is. But, in the first place, as we cannot well have an
+education-test, we must go to the class in which, as a class, we
+find the highest and most enlarged form of education; and we believe
+that this qualification can, without question, be claimed for the
+leisure-class, or gentlemen of England. In the second place, it
+should be remembered, that if the squire is not always individually
+what we should call an educated man, he yet imbibes his thoughts
+and notions from those who are such, who give tone to the society
+in which he moves. In investigating the characteristics of classes,
+it can scarcely be but that a number of exceptions to our general
+rules will force themselves upon our attention. Yet, in good truth,
+we believe that almost all the individual examples which can be
+cited will bear out our estimate. The highest contributions to the
+legislature, on the part of the middle or commercial classes, have
+been the shrewd practical men of business, men of the stamp of Mr
+Hawes. As for the Cobdens and Brights, _et hoc genus omne_, their
+only motive principle appears to be the interests of _My Shop_.
+Their notion of loyalty, patriotism, and British prosperity, is
+nothing but low wages, high profits, and a brisk trade in calicoes.
+
+Many of our readers will recollect a passage in Cicero, (_Off._
+i. 42,) in which he reprobates, more or less, all commercial
+pursuits, in respect of their operations on the moral insight of
+man, and finishes with the praise of the culture of the soil, in
+these words: "Omnium rerum ex quibus aliquid acquiritur, nihil est
+agriculturâ meliùs, nihil uberiùs, nihil dulciùs, nihil homine
+libero digniùs." In this country we should find it difficult to go
+along with the feelings of the old Roman republican on these points.
+But though we have already expressed our high sense of the social
+and domestic virtues of the middle or trading classes, yet we are
+most confident in the truth of our position, that the shop is the
+worst possible preparation for the senate. We know that there is
+a talk abroad about earnest workers, drones of the hive, and so
+forth. By all means, let every man work who is fit to work. But it
+is not necessary, nor is it desirable, that every man should work
+for gain. On the contrary, we hold that a class endowed with leisure
+is indispensable, not only for the grace and civilisation, but even
+for the moral well-being of a community. That money should become
+the one grand loadstar of thought and action is the bane of those
+societies where the pursuit of money is the general employment; but
+where there is such a leisure-class as we have spoken of, forming
+the topmost rank of a nation otherwise chiefly mercantile, there are
+numberless influences derived from it which percolate through the
+underlying masses, and check or modify the exclusive reverence for
+wealth to which they would otherwise be prone. Even a mere blind
+respect for rank or title exalts the mind immeasurably as compared
+with mammon-worship.
+
+While on the subject of our leisure-class, which is pretty nearly
+synonymous with the landed gentry, we must not pass over in silence
+a subject in connexion with which the outcry against "the drones
+of the hive" is frequently introduced. We refer to the Game-Laws.
+The whole question of these laws has been so fully discussed in a
+recent Number of this magazine, that we will not attempt in any
+way to open that controversy. But they are so commonly coupled
+with the Laws of Entail as "feudalities," and as interfering with
+the transmission of land according to "commercial principles,"
+that we could not altogether omit the mention of them. We will at
+this time only observe, that the denunciation of the Game-Laws is
+a part of the crusade which Hard-Cash, that arrogant monopolist
+who bears no brother near his throne, is waging against all other
+objects of interest or devotion. Let it not be supposed that laws
+are of minor importance because they relate to the amusements of any
+portion of the community. They may derive their importance from that
+circumstance as tending to raise up something which shall cope with
+the lust of gold. The game-preserving interest is worth maintenance
+if only as clashing with mammonism.
+
+While the brawlers about "improvement" and "progress," are heaping
+their meaningless abuse upon feudalities, we should be glad to
+know what they purpose to do with that greatest feudality of all,
+the Crown? Already there are symptoms of an intention to take that
+matter in hand. Mr Cobden and some of his Calibans have talked in
+the House of Commons about curtailing the "barbarous splendour" of
+the throne. They know nothing and care nothing about the historical
+association and constitutional truths embodied in the ancient
+appendages of royalty. How should they? They want somebody to look
+after the police, and take care that no one robs their till; that
+is their idea of government. They want a man (some of them being
+willing to allow him a small salary, though others think that it
+does not pay) to preach to the masses, and tell them not to steal,
+and to be content with their wages; that is their idea of the
+church. We do not think, however, that the tone of thought prevalent
+among the Manchester school is destined yet to lead the mind of
+England. And we are the less inclined to look forward to such a
+national debasement when we find so enlightened an advocate of
+free-trade policy as Mr M'Culloch--the advocate of a theory which we
+hold to be erroneous, but not the selfish and greedy clamourer for
+the gain of himself and his class--thus coming forward to vindicate
+the laws which preserve the hereditary character of our aristocracy,
+which lend so efficient an aid in shielding us from the crushing
+tread of mammonism, and in preventing "commercial principles" from
+introducing the ledger and day-book into our manor houses, and the
+counter into our farmers' parlours. In this view we most heartily
+thank our author for his noble and energetic contribution to our
+National Defences at the present time; and as there is a wide field
+open in connexion with the subject he has so powerfully handled,
+we cannot take leave of him without expressing a hope that we may
+before long listen to him again "on the same side."
+
+
+
+
+LIFE IN THE "FAR WEST."
+
+PART II.
+
+     The reader is informed that "Life in the Far West" is _no
+     fiction_. The scenes and incidents described are strictly true.
+     The characters are real, (the names being changed in two or
+     three instances only,) and all have been, and are, well known in
+     the Western country.
+
+
+"And Mary Brand herself,--what is she like?"
+
+"She's 'some' now; that _is_ a fact, and the biggest kind of punkin
+at that," would have been the answer from any man, woman, or child,
+in Memphis County, and truly spoken too; always understanding that
+the pumpkin is _the_ fruit to which the _ne-plus-ultra_ of female
+perfection is compared by the figuratively speaking westerns.
+
+Being an American woman, of course she was tall, and straight and
+slim as a hickory sapling, well formed withal, with rounded bust,
+and neck white and slender as the swan's. Her features were small,
+but finely chiselled; and in this, it may be remarked, the lower
+orders of the American women differ from, and far surpass the same
+class in England, or elsewhere, where the features, although far
+prettier, are more vulgar and commonplace. She had the bright blue
+eye, thin nose, and small but sweetly-formed mouth, the too fair
+complexion and dark brown hair, which characterise the beauty of the
+Anglo-American, the heavy masses (hardly curls) which fell over her
+face and neck contrasting with their polished whiteness. Such was
+Mary Brand: and to her good looks being added a sweet disposition,
+and all the good qualities of a thrifty housewife, it must be
+allowed that she fully justified the eulogiums of the good people of
+Memphis.
+
+Well, to cut a love-story short, in the which not a little moral
+courage is shown, young La Bonté fell desperately in love with
+the pretty Mary, and she with him; and small blame to her, for he
+was a proper lad of twenty--six feet in his moccassins--the best
+hunter and rifle-shot in the country, with many other advantages too
+numerous to mention. But when did the course, &c. e'er run smooth?
+When the affair had become a recognised "courting," (and Americans
+alone know the horrors of such prolonged purgatory,) they became,
+to use La Bonté's words, "awful fond," and consequently about once
+a-week had their tiffs and makes-up.
+
+However, on one occasion, at a "husking," and during one of these
+tiffs, Mary, every inch a woman, to gratify some indescribable
+feeling, brought to her aid jealousy--that old serpent who has
+caused such mischief in this world; and by a flirtation over the
+corn-cobs with Big Pete, La Bonté's former and only rival, struck
+so hard a blow at the latter's heart, that on the moment his brain
+caught fire, blood danced before his eyes, and he became like one
+possessed. Pete observed and enjoyed his struggling emotion--better
+for him had he minded his corn-shelling alone; and the more to annoy
+his rival, paid the most sedulous attention to the pretty Mary.
+
+Young La Bonté stood it as long as human nature, at boiling heat,
+could endure; but when Pete, in the exultation of his apparent
+triumph, crowned his success by encircling the slender waist of the
+girl with his arm, and snatched a sudden kiss, he jumped upright
+from his seat, and seizing a small whisky-keg which stood in the
+centre of the corn-shellers, he hurled it at his rival, and crying
+to him, hoarse with passion, "to follow if he was a man," he left
+the house.
+
+At that time, and even now, in the remoter states of the western
+country, rifles settled even the most trivial differences between
+the hot-blooded youths; and of such frequent occurrence and
+invariably bloody termination did they become, that they scarcely
+produced sufficient excitement to draw together half a dozen
+spectators of the duel.
+
+In the present case, however, so public was the quarrel, and so
+well known the parties concerned, that not only the people who had
+witnessed the affair, but all the neighbourhood thronged to the
+scene of action, where, in a large field in front of the house,
+the preliminaries of a duel between Pete and La Bonté were being
+arranged by their respective friends.
+
+Mary, when she discovered the mischief her thoughtlessness was
+likely to occasion, was almost beside herself with grief, but she
+knew how vain it would be to attempt to interfere. The poor girl,
+who was most ardently attached to La Bonté, was carried, swooning,
+into the house, where all the women congregated, and were locked in
+by old Brand, who, himself an old pioneer, thought but little of
+bloodshed, but refused to let the "women folk" witness the affray.
+
+Preliminaries arranged, the combatants took up their respective
+positions at either end of a space marked for the purpose, at forty
+paces from each other. They were both armed with heavy rifles, and
+had the usual hunting-pouches, containing ammunition, hanging over
+the shoulder. Standing with the butts of their rifles on the ground,
+they confronted each other, and the crowd drawing away a few paces
+only on each side, left one man to give the word. This was the
+single word "fire;" and after this signal was given, the combatants
+were at liberty to fire away until one or the other dropped.
+
+At the word both the men quickly raised their rifles to the
+shoulder, and as the sharp cracks rung instantaneously, they were
+seen to flinch, as either felt the pinging sensation of a bullet
+entering his flesh. Regarding each other steadily for a few moments,
+the blood running down La Bonté's neck from a wound under the
+left jaw, whilst his opponent was seen to place his hand once to
+his right breast, as if to feel the position of his wound, they
+commenced reloading their rifles. As, however, Pete was in the
+act of forcing down the ball with his long hickory wiping-stick,
+he suddenly dropped his right arm,--the rifle slipped from his
+grasp,--and, reeling for a moment like a drunken man,--he fell dead
+to the ground.
+
+Even here, however, there was law of some kind or another, and the
+consequences of the duel were, that the constables were soon on the
+trail of La Bonté to arrest him. He, however, easily avoided them,
+and taking to the woods, lived for several days in as wild a state
+as the beasts he hunted and killed for his support.
+
+Tired of this, however, he resolved to quit the country, and betake
+himself to the mountains, for which life he had ever felt an
+inclination.
+
+When, therefore, he thought the officers of justice had tired of
+seeking him, and the coast was comparatively clear, he determined to
+start on his distant expedition to the Far West.
+
+Once more, before he carried his project into execution, he sought
+and had a last interview with Mary Brand.
+
+"Mary," said he, "I'm about to break. They're hunting me like a fall
+buck, and I'm bound to quit. Don't think any more about me, for I
+shall never come back." Poor Mary burst into tears, and bent her
+head on the table near which she was sitting. When again she raised
+it, she saw La Bonté, with his long rifle on his shoulder, striding
+with rapid steps from the house; and year after year rolled on, and
+he never returned.
+
+A few days after this he found himself at St Louis, the emporium
+of the fur trade, and the fast rising metropolis of the precocious
+settlements of the west. Here, a prey to the agony of mind which
+jealousy, remorse, and blighted love mix into a very puchero of
+misery, La Bonté got into the company of certain "rowdies," a class
+which every western city particularly abounds in; and anxious to
+drown his sorrows in any way, and quite unscrupulous as to the
+means, he plunged into all the vicious excitements of drinking,
+gambling, and fighting, which form the every-day amusements of the
+rising generation of St Louis.
+
+Perhaps in no other part of the United States, where indeed humanity
+is frequently to be seen in many curious and unusual phases, is
+there a population so marked in its general character, and at the
+same time divided into such distinct classes, as in the above-named
+city. Dating, as it does, its foundation from yesterday,--for what
+are thirty years in the growth of a metropolis?--its founders
+are now scarcely passed middle life, regarding with astonishment
+the growing works of their hands; and whilst gazing upon its busy
+quays, piled with grain and other produce of the west, its fleets
+of huge steamboats lying tier upon tier alongside the wharves, its
+well-stored warehouses and all the bustling concomitants of a great
+commercial depot, they can scarcely realise the memory of a few
+short years, when on the same spot nothing was to be seen but the
+few miserable hovels of a French village--the only sign of commerce
+the unwieldy bateaux of the Indian traders, laden with peltries
+from the distant regions of the Platte and Upper Missouri. Where
+now intelligent and wealthy merchants walk erect, in conscious
+substantiality of purse and credit, and direct the commerce of a
+vast and numerously-populated region, but the other day stalked,
+in dress of buckskin, the Indian trader of the west; and all the
+evidences of life, mayhap, consisted of the eccentric vagaries
+of the different bands of trappers and hardy mountaineers, who
+accompanied, some for pleasure and some as escort, the periodically
+arriving bateaux, laden with the beaver skins and buffalo robes
+collected during the season at the different trading posts in the
+Far West.
+
+These, nevertheless, were the men whose hardy enterprise opened to
+commerce and the plough the vast and fertile regions of the West.
+Rough and savage though they were, they alone were the pioneers
+of that extraordinary tide of civilisation which has poured its
+resistless current through tracts large enough for kings to govern;
+over a country now teeming with cultivation, where, a few short
+years ago, countless herds of buffalo roamed unmolested, the bear
+and deer abounded, and where the savage Indian skulked through the
+woods and prairies, lord of the unappreciated soil which now yields
+its prolific treasures to the spade and plough of civilised man. To
+the wild and half-savage trapper, who may be said to exhibit the
+energy, enterprise, and hardihood characteristic of the American
+people, divested of all the false and vicious glare with which a
+high state of civilisation, too rapidly attained, has obscured
+their real and genuine character, in which the above traits are
+eminently prominent--to these men alone is due the empire of the
+West--destined in a few short years to become the most important of
+those confederate states which compose the mighty union of North
+America.
+
+Sprung, then, out of the wild and adventurous fur trade, St Louis,
+still the emporium of that species of commerce, preserves even now,
+in the character of its population, many of the marked peculiarities
+which distinguished its early founders, who were identified with
+the primitive Indian in hardiness and instinctive wisdom. Whilst
+the French portion of the population retain the thoughtless levity
+and frivolous disposition of their original source, the Americans
+of St Louis, who may lay claim to be native, as it were, are as
+particularly distinguished for determination and energy of character
+as they are for physical strength and animal courage; and are
+remarkable, at the same time, for a singular aptitude in carrying
+out commercial enterprises to successful terminations, which would
+appear to be incompatible with the love of adventure and excitement
+which forms so prominent a feature in their character. In St Louis,
+nevertheless, and from her merchants, have emanated many commercial
+enterprises of gigantic speculation, not confined to its own
+locality or the distant Indian fur trade, but embracing all parts of
+the continent, and even a portion of the Old World. And here it must
+be remembered that St Louis is situated inland, at a distance of
+upwards of one thousand miles from the sea, and three thousand from
+the capital of the United States.
+
+Besides her merchants and upper class, who form a little
+aristocracy even here, she has a large portion of her population
+still connected with the Indian and fur trade, who preserve all
+their characteristics unacted upon by the influence of advancing
+civilisation, and between whom and other classes there is a marked
+distinction. There is, moreover, a large floating population of
+foreigners of all nations, who must possess no little amount of
+enterprise to be tempted to this spot, from whence they spread
+over the remote western tracts, still invested by the savage;
+and, therefore, if any of their blood is infused into the native
+population, the characteristic energy and enterprise is increased,
+and not tempered down, by the foreign cross.
+
+But perhaps the most singular of her casual population are the
+mountaineers, who, after several seasons spent in trapping, and with
+good store of dollars, arrive from the scene of their adventures,
+wild as savages, determined to enjoy themselves, for a time, in all
+the gaiety and dissipation of the western city. In one of the back
+streets of the town is a tavern well known as the "Rocky Mountain
+House," and here the trappers resort, drinking and fighting as long
+as their money lasts, which, as they are generous and lavish as
+Jack Tars, is for a few days only. Such scenes as are enacted in
+the Rocky Mountain House, both tragical and comical, are beyond the
+powers of pen to describe; and when a fandango is in progress, to
+which congregate the coquettish belles from "Vide Poche," as the
+French portion of a suburb is nicknamed,--the grotesque endeavours
+of the bear-like mountaineers to sport a figure on the light
+fantastic toe, and their insertions into the dance of the mystic
+jumps of Terpsichorean Indians when engaged in the "medicine"
+dances in honour of bear, of buffalo, or ravished scalp,--are such
+startling innovations on the choreographic art as would cause the
+shade of Gallini to quake and gibber in his pumps.
+
+Passing the open doors and windows of the Mountain House, the
+stranger stops short as the sounds of violin and banjo twang upon
+his ears, accompanied by extraordinary noises--which sound unearthly
+to the greenhorn listener, but which the initiated recognise as an
+Indian song roared out of the stentorian lungs, of a mountaineer,
+who, patting his stomach with open hands, to improve the necessary
+shake, choruses the well-known Indian chant:--
+
+    Hi--Hi--Hi--Hi,
+      Hi-i--Hi-i--Hi-i--Hi-i
+    Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya
+      Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya
+    Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi--hi,
+         &c. &c. &c.
+
+and polishing off the high notes with a whoop which makes the old
+wooden houses shake again, as it rattles and echoes down the street.
+
+Here, over fiery "monaghahela," Jean Batiste, the sallow half-breed
+voyageur from the north--and who, deserting the service of the
+"North-West," (the Hudson's Bay Company,) has come down the
+Mississippi, from the "Falls," to try the sweets and liberty of
+"free" trapping--hobnobs with a stalwart leather-clad "boy," just
+returned from trapping on the waters of Grand River, on the western
+side the mountains, who interlards his mountain jargon with Spanish
+words picked up in Taos and California. In one corner a trapper,
+lean and gaunt from the starving regions of the Yellow Stone, has
+just recognised an old companyero, with whom he hunted years before
+in the perilous country of the Blackfeet.
+
+"Why, John, old hos, how do you come on?"
+
+"What! Meek, old 'coon! I thought you were under?"
+
+One from Arkansa stalks into the centre of the room, with a pack of
+cards in his hand, and a handful of dollars in his hat. Squatting
+cross-legged on a buffalo robe, he smacks down the money, and cries
+out--"Ho, boys, hyar's a deck, and hyar's the beaver, (rattling the
+coin,) who dar set his hos? Wagh!"
+
+Tough are the yarns of wondrous hunts and Indian perils, of
+hairbreadth 'scapes and curious "fixes." Transcendant are the
+qualities of sundry rifles, which call these hunters masters; "plum"
+is the "centre" each vaunted barrel shoots; sufficing for a hundred
+wigs is the "hair" each hunter has "lifted" from Indians' scalps;
+multitudinous the "coups" he has "struck." As they drink so do they
+brag, first of their guns, their horses, and their squaws, and
+lastly of themselves:--and when it comes to that, "ware steel."
+
+La Bonté, on his arrival at St. Louis, found himself one day in no
+less a place than this; and here he made acquaintance with an old
+trapper about to start for the mountains in a few days, to hunt
+on the head waters of Platte and Green River. With this man he
+resolved to start, and, having still some hundred dollars in cash,
+he immediately set about equipping himself for the expedition. To
+effect this, he first of all visited the gun-store of Hawken, whose
+rifles are renowned in the mountains, and exchanged his own piece,
+which was of very small bore, for a regular mountain rifle. This was
+of very heavy metal, carrying about thirty-two balls to the pound,
+stocked to the muzzle and mounted with brass, its only ornament
+being a buffalo bull, looking exceedingly ferocious, which was not
+very artistically engraved upon the trap in the stock. Here, too, he
+laid in a few pounds of powder and lead, and all the necessaries for
+a long hunt.
+
+His next visit was to a smith's store, which smith was black by
+trade and black by nature, for he was a nigger, and, moreover,
+celebrated as being the best maker of beaver-traps in St Louis,
+and of whom he purchased six new traps, paying for the same twenty
+dollars--procuring, at the same time, an old trap-sack, made of
+stout buffalo skin, in which to carry them.
+
+We next find La Bonté and his companion--one Luke, better known
+as Grey-Eye, one of his eyes having been "gouged" in a mountain
+fray--at Independence, a little town situated on the Missouri,
+several hundred miles above St Louis, and within a short distance of
+the Indian frontier.
+
+Independence may be termed the "prairie port" of the western
+country. Here the caravans destined for Santa Fé and the interior
+of Mexico, assemble to complete their necessary equipment. Mules
+and oxen are purchased, teamsters hired, and all stores and outfit
+laid in here for the long journey over the wide expanse of prairie
+ocean. Here, too, the Indian traders and the Rocky Mountain trappers
+rendezvous, collecting in sufficient force to ensure their safe
+passage through the Indian country. At the seasons of departure and
+arrival of these bands, the little town presents a lively scene
+of bustle and confusion. The wild and dissipated mountaineers get
+rid of their last dollars in furious orgies, treating all comers
+to galore of drink, and pledging each other, in horns of potent
+whisky, to successful hunts and "heaps of beaver." When every cent
+has disappeared from their pouches, the free trapper often makes
+away with rifle, traps, and animals, to gratify his "dry," (for your
+mountaineer is never "thirsty;") and then, "hos and beaver" gone, is
+necessitated to hire himself to one of the leaders of big bands, and
+hypothecate his services for an equipment of traps and animals. Thus
+La Bonté picked up three excellent mules for a mere song, with their
+accompanying pack saddles, _apishamores_,[3] and lariats, and the
+next day, with Luke, "put out" for Platte.
+
+  [3] Saddle-blanket made of buffalo-calf skin.
+
+As they passed through the rendezvous, which was encamped on a
+little stream beyond the town, even our young Mississippian was
+struck with the novelty of the scene. Upwards of forty huge waggons,
+of Connestoga and Pittsburg build, and covered with snow-white
+tilts, were ranged in a semicircle, or rather a horse-shoe form,
+on the flat open prairie, their long "tongues" (poles) pointing
+outwards; with the necessary harness for four pairs of mules, or
+eight yoke of oxen, lying on the ground beside them, spread in ready
+order for "hitching up." Round the waggons groups of teamsters, tall
+stalwart young Missourians, were engaged in busy preparation for the
+start, greasing the wheels, fitting or repairing harness, smoothing
+ox-bows, or overhauling their own moderate kits or "possibles."
+They were all dressed in the same fashion: a pair of "homespun"
+pantaloons, tucked into thick boots reaching nearly to the knee, and
+confined round the waist by a broad leathern belt, which supported a
+strong butcher knife in a sheath. A coarse checked shirt was their
+only other covering, with a fur cap on the head.
+
+Numerous camp-fires surrounded the waggons, and by them lounged
+wild-looking mountaineers, easily distinguished from the "greenhorn"
+teamsters by their dresses of buckskin, and their weather-beaten
+faces. Without an exception, these were under the influence of the
+rosy god; and one, who sat, the picture of misery, at a fire by
+himself--staring into the blaze with vacant countenance, his long
+matted hair hanging in unkempt masses over his face, begrimed with
+the dirt of a week, and pallid with the effects of ardent drink--was
+suffering from the usual consequences of having "kept it up"
+beyond the usual point, and now was paying the penalty in a fit of
+"horrors"--as _delirium tremens_ is most aptly termed by sailors and
+the unprofessional.
+
+In another part, the merchants of the caravan and Indian traders
+were superintending the lading of the waggons, or mule packs. These
+were dressed in civilised attire, and some bedizened in St Louis
+or Eastern City dandyism, to the infinite disgust of the mountain
+men, who look upon a bourge-way (bourgeois) with most undisguised
+contempt, despising the very simplest forms of civilisation. The
+picturesque appearance of the encampment was not a little heightened
+by the addition of several Indians from the neighbouring Shawnee
+settlement, who, mounted on their small active horses, on which they
+reclined, rather than sat, in negligent attitudes, quietly looked on
+at the novel scene, indifferent to the "chaff" which the thoughtless
+teamsters indulged in at their expense. Numbers of mules and horses
+were picketed at hand, while a large herd of noble oxen were being
+driven towards the camp--the wo-ha of the teamsters sounding far and
+near, as they collected the scattered beasts in order to yoke up.
+
+As most of the mountain men were utterly unable to move from camp,
+Luke and La Bonté, with three or four of the most sober, started
+in company, intending to wait on "Blue," a stream which runs into
+the Caw or Kanzas River, until the "balance" of the band came up.
+Mounting their mules, and leading the loose animals, they struck
+at once into the park-like prairie, and were out of sight of
+civilisation in an instant.
+
+It was the latter end of May, towards the close of the season of
+heavy rains, which in early spring render the climate of this
+country almost intolerable, at the same time that they serve to
+fertilise and thaw the soil, so long bound up by the winter's
+frosts. The grass was every where luxuriously green, and gaudy
+flowers dotted the surface of the prairie. This term, however,
+should hardly be applied to the beautiful undulating scenery of this
+park-like country. Unlike the flat monotony of the Grand Plains,
+here well wooded uplands clothed with forest trees of every species,
+and picturesque dells through which run clear and bubbling streams
+belted with gay-blossomed shrubs, every where present themselves;
+whilst on the level meadowland, topes of trees with spreading
+foliage afforded a shelter to the game and cattle, and well-timbered
+knolls rise at intervals from the plain.
+
+Many clear streams dashing over their pebbly beds intersect the
+country, from which, in the noonday's heat, the red-deer jump,
+shaking their wet sides, as the noise of approaching man disturbs
+them; and booming grouse rise from the tall luxuriant herbage at
+every step. Where the deep escarpments of the river banks exhibit
+the section of the earth, a rich alluvial soil of surprising depth
+appears to court the cultivation of civilised man; and in every
+feature it is evident that here nature has worked with kindliest and
+most bountiful hand.
+
+For hundreds of miles along the western or right bank of the
+Missouri does such a country as this extend, to which, for fertility
+and natural resources, no part of Europe can offer even feeble
+comparison. Sufficiently large to contain an enormous population,
+it has, besides, every advantage of position, and all the natural
+capabilities which should make it the happy abode of civilised man.
+Through this unpeopled country the United States pours her greedy
+thousands, to seize upon the barren territories of her feeble
+neighbour.
+
+Camping the first night on "Black Jack," our mountaineers here
+cut each man a spare hickory wiping-stick for his rifle, and La
+Bonté, who was the only greenhorn of the party, witnessed a savage
+ebullition of rage on the part of one of his companions, exhibiting
+the perfect unrestraint which these men impose upon their passions,
+and the barbarous anger which the slightest opposition to the will
+excites. One of the trappers, on arriving at the camping-place,
+dismounted from his horse, and, after divesting it of the saddle,
+endeavoured to lead his mule by the rope up to the spot where
+he wished to deposit his pack. Mule-like, however, the more he
+pulled the more stubbornly she remained in her tracks, planting
+her fore-legs firmly, and stretching out her neck with provoking
+obstinacy. If truth be told, it does require the temper of a
+thousand Jobs to manage a mule; and in no case does the wilful
+mulishness of the animal stir up one's choler more than in the very
+trick which this one was playing, and which is a daily occurrence.
+After tugging ineffectually for several minutes, winding the rope
+round his body, and throwing himself forward and suddenly with all
+his strength, the trapper actually foamed with passion; and although
+he might have subdued the animal at once by fastening the rope with
+a half-hitch round its nose, with an obstinacy equal to that of
+the mule itself he refused to attempt it, preferring to vanquish
+her by main strength. However, this failed, and with a volley of
+blasphemous imprecations the mountaineer suddenly seized his rifle,
+and, levelling it at the mule's head, shot her dead.
+
+Passing the Wa-ka-rasha, a well-timbered stream, they met a band
+of Osages going "to buffalo." These Indians, in common with some
+tribes of the Pawnees, shave the head, with the exception of a ridge
+from the forehead to the centre of the scalp, which is "roached" or
+hogged like the mane of a mule, and stands erect, plastered with
+unguents, and ornamented by feathers of the hawk and turkey. The
+naked scalp is often painted in mosaic with black and red, the face
+with shining vermilion. They were all naked to the breech-clout,
+the warmth of the sun having caused them to throw their dirty
+blankets from their shoulders. These Indians not unfrequently levy
+contributions on strangers whom they may accidentally meet; but they
+easily distinguish the determined mountaineer from the incautious
+greenhorn, and think it better to let the former alone.
+
+Crossing Vermilion, they arrived on the fifth day at "Blue," where
+they encamped in the broad timber which belts the creek, and there
+awaited the arrival of the remainder of the party.
+
+It was two days before they came up; but the day after, fourteen
+in number, they started for the mountains, striking a trail which
+follows the "Big Blue" in its course through the prairies, which, as
+they advance to the westward, are gradually smoothing away into a
+vast unbroken expanse of rolling plain. Herds of antelope began to
+show themselves, and some of the hunters, leaving the trail, soon
+returned with plenty of their tender meat. The luxuriant but coarse
+grass they had hitherto seen now changed into the nutritious and
+curly buffalo grass, and their animals soon improved in appearance
+on the excellent pasture. In a few days, without any adventure, they
+struck the Platte River, its shallow waters (from which it derives
+its name) spreading over a wide and sandy bed, numerous sand bars
+obstructing the sluggish current, and with nowhere sufficient water
+to wet the forder's knee.
+
+By this time, but few antelope having been seen, the party became
+entirely out of meat; and, one whole day and part of another having
+passed without so much as a sage rabbit having presented itself,
+not a few objurgations on the buffalo grumbled from the lips of the
+hunters, who expected ere this to have reached the land of plenty.
+La Bonté killed a fine deer, however, in the river bottom, after
+they had encamped, not one particle of which remained after supper
+that night, but which hardly took the rough edge off their keen
+appetites. Although already in the buffalo range, no traces of these
+animals had yet been seen; and as the country afforded but little
+game, and the party did not care to halt and lose time in hunting
+for it, they moved along hungry and sulky, the theme of conversation
+being the well remembered merits of good buffalo meat,--of "fat
+fleece," "hump rib," and "tender loin;" of delicious "boudins,"
+and marrow bones too good to think of. La Bonté had never seen the
+lordly animal, and consequently but half believed the accounts of
+the mountaineers, who described their countless bands as covering
+the prairie far as the eye could reach, and requiring days of travel
+to pass through; but the visions of such dainty and abundant feeding
+as they descanted on set his mouth watering, and danced before his
+eyes as he slept supperless, night after night, on the banks of the
+hungry Platte.
+
+One morning he had packed his animals before the rest, and was
+riding a mile in advance of the party, when he saw on one side the
+trail, looming in the refracted glare which mirages the plains,
+three large dark objects without shape or form, which rose and
+fell in the exaggerated light like ships at sea. Doubting what it
+could be, he approached the strange objects; and as the refraction
+disappeared before him, the dark masses assumed a more distinct
+form, and clearly moved with life. A little nearer, and he made
+them out--they were buffalo. Thinking to distinguish himself,
+the greenhorn dismounted from his mule, and quickly hobbled her,
+throwing his lasso on the ground to trail behind when he wished to
+catch her. Then, rifle in hand, he approached the huge animals, and,
+being a good hunter, knew well to take advantage of the inequalities
+of the ground and face the wind; by which means he crawled at length
+to within forty yards of the buffalo, who were quietly cropping the
+grass, unconscious of danger. Now, for the first time, he gazed upon
+the noble beast of which he had so often heard, and longed to see.
+With coal-black beard sweeping the ground as he fed, an enormous
+bull was in advance of the others, his wild brilliant eyes peering
+from an immense mass of shaggy hair, which covered his neck and
+shoulder. From this point his skin was bare as one's hand, a sleek
+and shining dun, and his ribs well covered with shaking flesh. As
+he leisurely cropped the short curly grass he occasionally lifted
+his tail into the air, and stamped his foot as a fly or musquito
+annoyed him--flapping the intruder with his tail, or snatching at
+the itching part with his ponderous head.
+
+When La Bonté had sufficiently admired the animal, he lifted his
+rifle, and, taking steady aim, and certain of his mark, pulled the
+trigger, expecting to see the huge beast fall over at the report.
+What was his surprise and consternation, however, to see the
+animal flinch as the ball struck him, but gallop off, followed by
+the others, and apparently unhurt. As is generally the case with
+greenhorns, he had fired too high, not understanding that the only
+certain spot to strike a buffalo is but a few inches above the
+brisket, and that above this a shot is rarely fatal. When he rose
+from the ground, he saw all the party halting in full view of his
+discomfiture; and when he joined them, loud were the laughs, and
+deep the regrets of the hungry at his first attempt.
+
+However, they now knew that they were in the country of meat; and a
+few miles farther, another band of stragglers presenting themselves,
+three of the hunters went in pursuit, La Bonté taking a mule to pack
+in the meat. He soon saw them crawling towards the band, and shortly
+two puffs of smoke, and the sharp cracks of their rifles showed
+that they had got within shot; and when he had ridden up, two fine
+buffaloes were stretched upon the ground. Now, for the first time,
+he was initiated into the mysteries of "butchering," and watched
+the hunters as they turned the carcass on the belly, stretching
+out the legs to support it on each side. A transverse cut was then
+made at the nape of the neck, and, gathering the long hair of the
+boss in one hand, the skin was separated from the shoulder. It was
+then laid open from this point to the tail, along the spine, and
+the skin was freed from the sides and pulled down to the brisket,
+but, still attached to it, was stretched upon the ground to receive
+the dissected portions. Then the shoulder was severed, the fleece
+removed from along the backbone, and the hump-ribs cut off with a
+tomahawk. All this was placed upon the skin; and after the "boudins"
+had been withdrawn from the stomach, and the tongue--a great
+dainty--taken from the head, the meat was packed upon the mule, and
+the whole party hurried to camp rejoicing.
+
+There was merry-making in the camp that night, and the way they
+indulged their appetites--or, in their own language, "throw'd" the
+meat "cold"--would have made the heart of a dyspeptic leap for joy
+or burst with envy. Far into the "still watches of the tranquil
+night" the fat-clad "depouille" saw its fleshy mass grow small
+by degrees and beautifully less, before the trenchant blades of
+the hungry mountaineers; appetising yards of well-browned "boudin"
+slipped glibly down their throats; rib after rib of tender hump
+was picked and flung to the wolves; and when human nature, with
+helpless gratitude, and confident that nothing of superexcellent
+comestibility remained, was lazily wiping the greasy knife that had
+done such good service,--a skilful hunter was seen to chuckle to
+himself as he raked the deep ashes of the fire, and drew therefrom
+a pair of tongues so admirably baked, so soft, so sweet, and of
+such exquisite flavour, that a veil is considerately drawn over
+the effects their discussion produced in the mind of our greenhorn
+La Bonté, and the raptures they excited in the bosom of that, as
+yet, most ignorant mountaineer. Still, as he ate he wondered,
+and wondering admired, that nature, in giving him such profound
+gastronomic powers, and such transcendent capabilities of digestion,
+had yet bountifully provided an edible so peculiarly adapted to his
+ostrich-like appetite, that after consuming nearly his own weight in
+rich and fat buffalo meat, he felt as easy and as incommoded as if
+he had been lightly supping on strawberries and cream.
+
+Sweet was the digestive pipe after such a feast, and soft the
+sleep and deep, which sealed the eyes of the contented trappers
+that night. It felt like the old thing, they said, to be once more
+amongst the "meat;" and, as they were drawing near the dangerous
+portion of the trail, they felt at home; although not a night now
+passed but, when they lay down on their buffalo robes to sleep, they
+could not be confident that that sleep was not their last--knowing
+full well that savage men were hovering near, thirsting for their
+lives.
+
+However, no enemies showed themselves as yet, and they proceeded
+quietly up the river, vast herds of buffaloes darkening the plains
+around them, affording them more than abundance of the choicest
+meat; but, to their credit be it spoken, no more was killed than
+absolutely required,--unlike the cruel slaughter made by most of the
+white travellers across the plains, who wantonly destroy these noble
+animals, not even for the excitement of sport, but in cold-blooded
+and insane butchery. La Bonté had practice enough to perfect him in
+the art, and, before the buffalo range was passed, he was ranked as
+a first-rate hunter. One evening he had left the camp for meat, and
+was approaching a band of cows for that purpose, crawling towards
+them along the bed of a dry hollow in the prairie, when he observed
+them suddenly jump away towards him, and immediately after a score
+of mounted Indians appeared in sight, whom, by their dress, he
+at once knew to be Pawnees and enemies. Thinking they might not
+discover him, he crouched down in the ravine; but a noise behind
+causing him to turn his head, he saw some five or six advancing up
+the bed of the dry creek, whilst several more were riding on the
+bluffs. The cunning savages had cut off his retreat to his mule,
+which he saw in the possession of one of the Indians. His presence
+of mind, however, did not desert him; and seeing at once that to
+remain where he was would be like being caught in a trap, (as the
+Indians could advance to the edge of the bluff and shoot him from
+above,) he made for the open prairie, determined at least to sell
+his scalp dearly, and make "a good fight." With a yell the Indians
+charged, but halted when they saw the sturdy trapper deliberately
+kneel, and, resting his rifle on the wiping-stick, take a steady
+aim as they advanced. Full well the Pawnees know, to their cost,
+that a mountaineer seldom pulls his trigger without sending a
+bullet to the mark; and, certain that one at least must fall, they
+hesitated to make the onslaught. Steadily the white retreated with
+his face to the foe, bringing the rifle to his shoulder the instant
+that one advanced within shot, the Indians galloping round, firing
+the few guns they had amongst them at long distances, but without
+effect. One young "brave," more daring than the rest, rode out
+of the crowd, and dashed at the hunter, throwing himself, as he
+passed within a few yards, from the saddle, and hanging over the
+opposite side of his horse,--presenting no other mark than his left
+foot,--discharged his bow from under the animal's neck, and with
+such good aim, that the arrow, whizzing through the air, struck the
+stock of La Bonté's rifle, which was at his shoulder, and, glancing
+off, pierced his arm, inflicting, luckily, but a slight wound.
+Again the Indian turned in his course, the others encouraging him
+with loud war-whoops, and once more passing at still less distance,
+drew his arrow to the head. This time, however, the eagle eye of
+the white caught sight of the action, and suddenly rising from his
+knee as the Indian was approaching, hanging by his foot alone over
+the opposite side of the horse, he jumped towards the animal with
+outstretched arms and a loud yell, causing it to start so suddenly,
+and swerve from its course, that the Indian lost his foot-hold, and,
+after in vain struggling to regain his position, fell to the ground,
+but instantly rose upon his feet and gallantly confronted the
+mountaineer, striking his hand upon his brawny chest and shouting
+a loud whoop of defiance. In another instant the rifle of La Bonté
+had poured forth its contents; and the brave Indian, springing into
+the air, fell dead to the ground, just as the other trappers, who
+had heard the firing, galloped up to the spot, at sight of whom the
+Pawnees, with yells of disappointed vengeance, hastily retreated.
+
+That night La Bonté first lifted hair!
+
+A few days after they reached the point where the Platte divides
+into two great forks:--the northern one, stretching to the
+north-west, skirts the eastern base of the Black Hills, and sweeping
+round to the south rises in the vicinity of the mountain valley
+called the New Park, receiving the Laramie, Medicine Bow, and
+Sweet-Water creeks. The other, or "South Fork," strikes towards
+the mountains in a south-westerly direction, hugging the base of
+the main chain of the Rocky Mountains, and, fed by several small
+creeks, rises in the uplands of the Bayou Salado, near which is
+also the source of the Arkansa. To the forks of the Platte the
+valley of that river extends from three to five miles on each side,
+being enclosed by steep sandy bluffs, from the summits of which
+the prairies stretch away in broad undulating expanse to the north
+and south. The "bottom," as it is termed, is but thinly covered
+with timber, the cotton-woods being scattered only here and there;
+but some of the islands in the broad bed of the stream are well
+wooded, which leads to the inference that the trees on the banks
+have been felled by Indians who formerly frequented this river as
+a chosen hunting-ground. As during the long winters the pasture in
+the vicinity is scarce and withered, the Indians feed their horses
+on the bark of the sweet cotton-wood, upon which they subsist, and
+even fatten. Thus, wherever a village has been encamped, the trunks
+of these trees strew the ground, with their upper limbs and smaller
+branches peeled of their bark, and looking as white and smooth as if
+scraped with a knife.
+
+On the forks, however, the timber is heavier and of greater variety,
+some of the creeks being well wooded with ash and cherry, which
+break the monotony of the everlasting cotton-wood.
+
+Dense masses of buffalo still continued to darken the plains, and
+numerous bands of wolves hovered round the outskirts of the vast
+herds, singling out the sick and wounded animals, and preying upon
+the calves whom the rifles and arrows of the hunters had bereaved of
+their mothers. The white wolf is the invariable attendant upon the
+buffalo; and when one of these persevering animals is seen, it is
+certain sign that buffalo are not far distant. Besides the buffalo
+wolf, there are four distinct varieties common to the plains, and
+all more or less attendant upon the buffalo. These are the black,
+the gray, the brown, and last and least the _coyote_, or _cayeute_
+of the mountaineers, the "wach-unkamănet," or "medicine wolf" of
+the Indians, who hold the latter animal in reverential awe. This
+little wolf, whose fur is of great thickness and beauty, although of
+diminutive size, is wonderfully sagacious, and makes up by cunning
+what it wants in physical strength. In bands of from three to thirty
+they will not unfrequently station themselves along the "runs" of
+the deer and the antelope, extending their line for many miles,--and
+the quarry being started, each wolf will follow in pursuit until
+tired, when it relinquishes the chase to another relay, following
+slowly after until the animal is fairly run down, when all hurry to
+the spot and speedily consume the carcass. The cayeute, however, is
+often made a tool of by his larger brethren, unless, indeed, he acts
+from motives of spontaneous charity. When a hunter has slaughtered
+game, and is in the act of butchering it, these little wolves sit
+patiently at a short distance from the scene of operations, while
+at a more respectful one the larger wolves (the white or gray) lope
+hungrily around, licking their chops in hungry expectation. Not
+unfrequently the hunter throws a piece of meat towards the smaller
+one, who seizes it immediately, and runs off with the morsel in his
+mouth. Before he gets many yards with his prize, the large wolf
+pounces with a growl upon him, and the cayeute, dropping the meat,
+returns to his former position, and will continue his act as long as
+the hunter pleases to supply him.
+
+Wolves are so common on the plains and in the mountains, that the
+hunter never cares to throw away a charge of ammunition upon them,
+although the ravenous animals are a constant source of annoyance to
+him, creeping to the camp-fire at night, and gnawing his saddles
+and _apishamores_, eating the skin ropes which secure the horses
+and mules to their pickets, and even their very hobbles, and not
+unfrequently killing or entirely disabling the animals themselves.
+
+Round the camp, during the night, the cayeute keeps unremitting
+watch, and the traveller not unfrequently starts from his bed with
+affright, as the mournful and unearthly chiding of the wolf breaks
+suddenly upon his ear: the long-drawn howl being taken up by others
+of the band, until it dies away in the distance, as some straggler
+passing within hearing answers to the note, and howls as he lopes
+away.
+
+Our party crossed the south fork about ten miles from its juncture
+with the main stream, and then, passing the prairie, struck the
+north fork a day's travel from the other. At the mouth of an
+ash-timbered creek they came upon Indian "sign," and, as now they
+were in the vicinity of the treacherous Sioux, they moved along
+with additional caution, Frapp and Gonneville, two experienced
+mountaineers, always heading the advance.
+
+About noon they had crossed over to the left bank of the fork,
+intending to camp on a large creek where some fresh beaver "sign"
+had attracted the attention of some of the trappers; and as, on
+further examination, it appeared that two or three lodges of that
+animal were not far distant, it was determined to remain here a day
+or two, and set their traps.
+
+Gonneville, old Luke, and La Bonté, had started up the creek, and
+were carefully examining the banks for "sign," when the former, who
+was in front, suddenly paused, and looking intently up the stream,
+held up his hand to his companions to signal them to stop.
+
+Luke and La Bonté both followed the direction of the trapper's
+intent and fixed gaze. The former uttered in a suppressed tone
+the expressive exclamation, Wagh!--the latter saw nothing but a
+wood-duck swimming swiftly down the stream, followed by her downy
+progeny.
+
+Gonneville turned his head, and extending his arm twice with a
+forward motion up the creek, whispered--"Les sauvages."
+
+"Injuns, sure, and Sioux at that," answered Luke.
+
+Still La Bonté looked, but nothing met his view but the duck with
+her brood, now rapidly approaching; and as he gazed, the bird
+suddenly took wing, and, flapping on the water, flew a short
+distance down the stream and once more settled on it.
+
+"Injuns?" he asked; "where are they?"
+
+"Whar?" repeated old Luke, striking the flint of his rifle, and
+opening the pan to examine the priming. "What brings a duck
+a-streakin it down stream, if humans aint behint her? and who's thar
+in these diggins but Injuns, and the worst kind; and we'd better
+push to camp, I'm thinking, if we mean to save our hair."
+
+"Sign" sufficient, indeed, it was to all the trappers, who, on being
+apprised of it, instantly drove in their animals, and picketed
+them; and hardly had they done so when a band of Indians made their
+appearance on the banks of the creek, from whence they galloped to
+the bluff which overlooked the camp at the distance of about six
+hundred yards; and crowning this, in number some forty or more,
+commenced brandishing their spears and guns, and whooping loud
+yells of defiance. The trappers had formed a little breast-work of
+their packs, forming a semicircle, the chord of which was made by
+the animals standing in a line, side by side, closely picketed and
+hobbled. Behind this defence stood the mountaineers, rifle in hand,
+and silent and determined. The Indians presently descended the bluff
+on foot, leaving their animals in charge of a few of the party, and,
+scattering, advanced under cover of the sage bushes which dotted
+the bottom, to about two hundred yards of the whites. Then a chief
+advanced before the rest, and made the sign for a talk with the
+Long-knives, which led to a consultation amongst the latter, as to
+the policy of acceding to it. They were in doubts as to the nation
+these Indians belonged to, some bands of the Sioux being friendly,
+and others bitterly hostile to the whites.
+
+Gonneville, who spoke the Sioux language, and was well acquainted
+with the nation, affirmed they belonged to a band called the
+Yanka-taus, well known to be the most evil-disposed of that
+treacherous nation; another of the party maintaining that they were
+Brulés, and that the chief advancing towards them was the well-known
+Tah-sha-tunga or Bull Tail, a most friendly chief of that tribe.
+The majority, however, trusted to Gonneville, and he volunteered to
+go out to meet the Indian, and hear what he had to say. Divesting
+himself of all arms save his butcher-knife, he advanced towards
+the savage, who awaited his approach, enveloped in the folds of
+his blanket. At a glance he knew him to be a Yanka-tau, from the
+peculiar make of his moccassins, and the way in which his face was
+daubed with paint.
+
+"Howgh!" exclaimed both as they met; and, after a silence of a few
+moments, the Indian spoke, asking--"Why the Long-knives hid behind
+their packs, when his band approached? Were they afraid, or were
+they preparing a dog-feast to entertain their friends? That the
+whites were passing through his country, burning his wood, drinking
+his water, and killing his game; but he knew that they had now come
+to pay for the mischief they had done, and that the mules and horses
+they had brought with them were intended as a present to their red
+friends.
+
+"He was Mah-to-ga-shane," he said, "the Brave Bear: his tongue was
+short, but his arm long; and he loved rather to speak with his bow
+and his lance, than with the weapon of a squaw. He had said it: the
+Long-knives had horses with them and mules; and these were for him,
+he knew, and for his 'braves.' Let the White-face go back to his
+people and return with the animals, or he, the 'Brave Bear,' would
+have to come and take them; and his young men would get mad and
+would feel blood in their eyes; and then he would have no power over
+them; and the whites would have to 'go under.'"
+
+The trapper answered shortly.--"The Long-knives," he said, "had
+brought the horses for themselves--their hearts were big, but not
+towards the Yanka-taus: and if they had to give up their animals, it
+would be to _men_ and not _squaws_. They were not 'wah-keitcha,'[4]
+(French engagés) but Long-knives; and, however short were the
+tongues of the Yanka-taus, theirs were still shorter, and their
+rifles longer. The Yanka-taus were dogs and squaws, and the
+Long-knives spat upon them."
+
+  [4] The French Canadians are called _wah-keitcha_--"bad
+  medicine"--by the Indians, who account them treacherous and
+  vindictive, and at the same time less daring than the American
+  hunters.
+
+Saying this, the trapper turned his back and rejoined his
+companions; whilst the Indian slowly proceeded to his people,
+who, on learning the contemptuous way in which their threats had
+been treated, testified their anger with loud yells; and, seeking
+whatever cover was afforded, commenced a scattering volley upon the
+camp of the mountaineers. The latter reserved their fire, treating
+with cool indifference the balls which began to rattle about them;
+but as the Indians, emboldened by this apparent inaction, rushed for
+a closer position, and exposed their bodies within a long range,
+half-a-dozen rifles rang from the assailed, and two Indians fell
+dead, one or two more being wounded. As yet, not one of the whites
+had been touched, but several of the animals had received wounds
+from the enemy's fire of balls and arrows. Indeed, the Indians
+remained at too great a distance to render the volleys from their
+crazy fusees any thing like effectual, and had to raise their pieces
+considerably to make their bullets reach as far as the camp. After
+having lost three of their band killed outright, and many more being
+wounded, their fire began to slacken, and they drew off to a greater
+distance, evidently resolved to beat a retreat; and retiring to
+the bluff, discharged their pieces in a last volley, mounted their
+horses and galloped off, carrying their wounded with them. This last
+volley, however, although intended as a mere bravado, unfortunately
+proved fatal to one of the whites. Gonneville, at the moment, was
+standing on one of the packs, in order to get an uninterrupted
+sight for a last shot, when one of the random bullets struck him
+in the breast. La Bonté caught him in his arms as he was about to
+fall, and, laying the wounded trapper gently on the ground,--they
+proceeded to strip him of his buckskin hunting-frock, to examine
+the wound. A glance was sufficient to convince his companions that
+the blow was mortal. The ball had passed through the lungs; and in
+a few moments the throat of the wounded man began to swell, as the
+choking blood ascended, and turned a livid blue colour. But a few
+drops of purple blood trickled from the wound,--a fatal sign,--and
+the eyes of the mountaineer were already glazing with death's icy
+touch. His hand still grasped the barrel of his rifle, which had
+done good service in the fray. Anon he essayed to speak, but, choked
+with blood, only a few inarticulate words reached the ears of his
+companions, who were bending over him.
+
+"Rubbed--out--at--last," they heard him say, the words gurgling in
+his blood-filled throat; and opening his eyes once more, and looking
+upwards to take a last look at the bright sun, the trapper turned
+gently on his side and breathed his last sigh.
+
+With no other tools than their scalp-knives, the hunters dug a
+grave on the banks of the creek; and whilst some were engaged in
+this work, others sought the bodies of the Indians they had slain
+in the attack, and presently returned with three reeking scalps,
+the trophies of the fight. The body of the mountaineer was then
+wrapped in a buffalo robe, the scalps being placed on the dead man's
+breast, laid in the shallow grave, and quickly covered--without a
+word of prayer, or sigh of grief; for, however much his companions
+may have felt, not a word escaped them; although the bitten lip and
+frowning brow told tale of anger more than sorrow, and vowed--what
+they thought would better please the spirit of the dead man than
+sorrow--lasting revenge.
+
+Trampling down the earth which filled the grave, they placed upon
+it a pile of heavy stones; and packing their mules once more, and
+taking a last look of their comrade's lonely resting-place, they
+turned their backs upon the stream, which has ever since been known
+as "Gonneville's Creek."
+
+If the reader casts his eye over any of the recent maps of the
+western country, which detail the features of the regions embracing
+the Rocky Mountains, and the vast prairies at their bases, he will
+not fail to observe that many of the creeks or smaller streams which
+feed the larger rivers,--as the Missouri, Platte, and Arkansa--are
+called by familiar proper names, both English and French. These
+are invariably christened after some unfortunate trapper, killed
+there in Indian fight; or treacherously slaughtered by the lurking
+savages, while engaged in trapping beaver on the stream. Thus
+alone is the memory of these hardy men perpetuated, at least of
+those whose fate is ascertained: for many, in every season, never
+return from their hunting expeditions, having met a sudden death
+from Indians, or a more lingering fate from accident or disease
+in some of the lonely gorges of the mountains, where no footfall
+save their own, or the heavy tread of grizzly bear, disturbs the
+unbroken silence of these awful solitudes. Then, as many winters
+pass without some old familiar faces making their appearance at the
+merry rendezvous, their long protracted absence may perhaps occasion
+such remarks, as to where such and such a mountain worthy can have
+betaken himself, to which the casual rejoinder of "Gone under,
+maybe," too often gives a short but certain answer.
+
+In all the philosophy of hardened hearts, our hunters turned from
+the spot where the unmourned trapper met his death. La Bonté,
+however, not yet entirely steeled by mountain life to a perfect
+indifference to human feeling, drew his hard hand across his eye,
+as the unbidden tear rose from his rough but kindly heart. He could
+not forget so soon the comrade they had lost, the companionship in
+the hunt or over the cheerful camp-fire, the narrator of many a
+tale of dangers past, of sufferings from hunger, cold, and thirst,
+and from untended wounds, of Indian perils, and of a life spent in
+such vicissitudes. One tear dropped from the young hunter's eye, and
+rolled down his cheek--the last for many a long year.
+
+In the forks of the northern branch of the Platte, formed by the
+junction of the Laramie, they found a big village of the Sioux
+encamped near the station of one of the fur companies. Here the
+party broke up; many, finding the alcohol of the traders an
+impediment to their further progress, remained some time in the
+vicinity, while La Bonté, Luke, and a trapper named Marcelline,
+started in a few days to the mountains, to trap on Sweet Water
+and Medicine Bow. They had leisure, however, to observe all the
+rascalities connected with the Indian trade, although at this season
+(August) hardly commenced. However, a band of Indians having come in
+with several packs of last year's robes, and being anxious to start
+speedily on their return, a trader from one of the forts had erected
+his lodge in the village.
+
+Here, he set to work immediately to induce the Indians to trade.
+First, a chief appointed three "soldiers" to guard the trader's
+lodge from intrusion; and who, amongst the thieving fraternity,
+can be invariably trusted. Then the Indians were invited to have a
+drink--a taste of the fire-water being given to all to incite them
+to trade. As the crowd presses upon the entrance to the lodge, and
+those in rear become impatient, some large-mouthed possessor of many
+friends, who has received a portion of the spirit, makes his way,
+with his mouth full of the liquor and cheeks distended, through
+the throng, and is instantly surrounded by his particular friends.
+Drawing the face of each, by turns, near his own, he squirts a small
+quantity into his open mouth, until the supply is exhausted, when he
+returns for more, and repeats the generous distribution.
+
+When paying for the robes, the traders, in measuring out the liquor
+in a tin half-pint cup, thrust their thumbs or the four fingers
+of the hand into the measure, in order that it may contain the
+less, or not unfrequently fill the bottom with melted buffalo fat,
+with the same object. So greedy are the Indians, that they never
+discover the cheat, and once under the influence of the liquor,
+cannot distinguish between the first cup of comparatively strong
+spirit, and the following ones diluted five hundred per cent, and
+poisonously drugged to boot.
+
+Scenes of drunkenness, riot, and bloodshed last until the trade
+is over, which in the winter occupies several weeks, during which
+period the Indians present the appearance, under the demoralising
+influence of the liquor, of demons rather than men.
+
+
+
+
+AMERICAN THOUGHTS ON EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS.
+
+
+  _Boston, May 1848._
+
+A thousand leagues of ocean, my Basil, are indeed between us, but it
+is no longer right to reckon distances by leagues. Time is your only
+measure. I know of a gentleman who had a home in Paris, while Paris
+was capable of homes, and he came every year across the Atlantic,
+only to fish for trout. Why do you stare? You know very well that
+you have often waited a fortnight for a good day to go a-fishing.
+Come, then, pack up your slender reed, and spend such a fortnight
+in a steamer. By God's favour you shall be the better for sea air;
+and in two weeks from Liverpool, you shall find yourself on the
+shores of a lake in the interior of the State of New York, where,
+since the fifth day of the creation, the trout have apparently been
+multiplying in a manner that would astonish a Malthus. Such is now
+that dissociable ocean, which was once thought too great a waste of
+waters to be passed by colonial members of parliament representing
+the provinces of America. "_Opposuit Natura_;" said Burke, "I cannot
+remove the eternal barriers of the creation." But Burke forgot his
+Greek:--
+
+"Πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ, κοὐδεν ανθρώπου δεινότερον πελει·τοῦτο καὶ πολιοῦ
+πέραν πόντου χειμερίῳ νοτῳ χωρεί, περιβρυχίοισι περῶν ἐρ' oἴδμασι·"
+
+I know it is an old saw, but it is so freshened by the modern
+instance of steamers every week, that it has become quotable once
+more; and I have almost a mind to go on with the chorus, and show
+that Sophocles may be fairly rendered in favour of railways and
+iron-steeds. But the telegraph, Basil! I must even quote a bit of
+English for that. As gentle Cowper saith:--
+
+    "The tempest itself lags behind,
+     And the swift-wing'd arrows of light!"
+
+The wires are already stretched from Massachusetts, and almost
+from Halifax to the Gulf of Mexico. A spark here, and the lettered
+bulletin is reeling off in Louisiana! The fresh news will,
+hereafter, be hawked in the streets of Boston and along the wharves
+of New Orleans in the same hour. It will soon be sent farther
+still; and a British fleet in the Pacific may be served with orders
+from the Admiralty Board, not two weeks old. We are fairly in
+hand-shaking neighbourhood. I remember when European intelligence
+came to us rather as history than as news. It is not so now. While
+emotion is yet warm with you, it sets our own hearts throbbing. We,
+too, are, in the present tense, with Europe; for the revolutions
+of peace have been more wonderful than those of warfare. They have
+reunited what strife had sundered, and rendered England and America
+again one family.
+
+Talking of revolutions,--how hot the noon of the century is growing!
+You will allow, dear Basil, that we in America, are well situated
+to be lookers on. With all the security of distance, we have the
+advantages of nearness. You are on the stage--we are in the boxes.
+You go behind the scenes, and see the wire-working and machinery,
+but we get the effect of the spectacle. The great revolutionary
+drama is before us, and we can behold it calmly; interested, but not
+involved. For a devout or philosophical spectator, America is the
+true observatory. Here we can watch "the great Babel, and not feel
+the crowd." It is our own fault if, with such advantages, we do not
+anticipate the judgment of future ages, and arrive instinctively at
+conclusions which those who share the tumult itself must ordinarily
+learn in the soberness of after-thoughts, or, perhaps, by a dear
+experience.
+
+Did you ask how the doings in France appear in republican eyes?
+And pray what do you expect me to answer? You appear to think
+republicanism a specific instead of a generic term, and to expect
+us to hail the French as our kindred. As well might I suppose that
+your monarchical sympathies deeply interest you in the autocracy of
+Dahomey and Dârfur. A boy may play with a monkey, without admiring
+him; and although the monkey is a biped without feathers, the boy
+would not like to have him taken for a younger brother. Believe
+me, we are not yet ready to claim fraternity with the Provisional
+Government. _How we apples swim_, seems to be their salutation to
+America; but, for one, I reject the odorous impeachment. No one is
+very cordial, as yet, in returning it. There is a general gaping and
+staring; but the prevailing disposition towards France is to wait
+and see if she will be decent. You will agree with me, that this
+caution is creditable to the _Model Republic_.
+
+In the spectacle before us, believe me, then, we know how to
+distinguish the harlequin from the hero, and are not in danger
+of clapping hands at the buffoonery of Paris, when we have just
+been charmed by the solemn buskin in which London came upon the
+stage--reluctant to play her part, but prepared to go through it
+nobly. A French melodrama, of men in smocks chanting _Mourir pour la
+Patrie_, or priests, in defiled surplices, asperging and incensing
+May-poles, must of course suit the tastes of the groundlings; but
+such inexplicable dumb-shows are generally understood to be only
+the prelude to something tragic that is coming. For one, I look
+for solemn monologues from Pio Nono and Lamartine; and, by-and-by,
+expect a scene between the Soldan and the Czar. I do not look
+without feelings of awe, for I am sure it is the shadow of GOD'S own
+hand that is now passing over the nations. It is He that says, as of
+old, "remove the diadem and take off the crown; exalt him that is
+low, and abase him that is high." I am glad that others recognise
+his footsteps in the earth, and therefore was pleased with that
+motto lately quoted in Maga, from St Augustine--"GOD is patient,
+because He is eternal."
+
+For seventeen years we have been watching the great political
+Humpty-Dumpty, in his efforts to come to an equilibrium, and to
+stand firm in his place; and the end is, that Humpty-Dumpty is
+fallen, according to the oracular rhyme of Mother Goose. What
+shall we say of him, except that he was barricaded in, and has
+been barricaded out? Laugh as we may at the undefinableness
+of legitimacy, one feels that the lack of it makes a great
+difference in our disposition towards a discrowned king. Still,
+Louis-Philippe is treated with much forbearance, and men think of
+his hoar hairs and his eventful life. In one of our newspapers,
+a generous word has been spoken for his government, as about the
+best that France deserved, and his best measures have been reviewed
+with praise. Still, he is much disliked in America. One of his
+earliest Claremonts was with us; and when Lafayette made him a
+king, Americans felt as if they had a right to be pleased with his
+accession. But his quarrel with his benefactor turned the feeling
+strongly against him, for Lafayette was revered among us to the
+hour of his death. I think there is a general satisfaction with
+the fall of the Orleans dynasty; but it certainly has not been
+malicious or spiteful. An eminent American, who has lived long in
+Paris, has written two letters in the leading democratic newspaper
+of New York, in which the fallen monarch is more severely handled
+than he has been elsewhere. He is there said to be a much overrated
+man--possessed of no great talents, except those which enable him
+to dissimulate with the utmost cunning, and to manage with the
+basest perfidy. The writer, nevertheless, has no confidence in
+the revolution as having destroyed the monarchy; and quotes with
+approbation a sentiment which he says was advanced in conversation
+with himself, so long ago as 1830, by Odillon Barrot,--"_Enfin,
+monsieur, la France a besoin de se sentir gouvernée_." He thinks two
+things will work against the Duc de Bordeaux--that he has married an
+Austrian, and grown fat; yet he confidently predicts that Henry V.
+will one day ascend the throne of his ancestors. "As for a republic
+that is to go on harmoniously, and with any thing like tolerable
+quiet, law, and order," he concludes, "I hold it to be just as
+impracticable as it would be to set up a Doge of Venice and a
+Council of Ten in the State of New York. _We hear only the voices of
+the revolutionists_, the rest of the nation being temporarily mute.
+The day will come, however, when the last will speak."
+
+These sentiments are not singular among us. I am agreeably surprised
+by the great moderation of our people and of our press. When the
+tidings of the outbreak reached us, it produced excitement, of
+course; but there was no echo of the French howl, and remarkably
+little enthusiasm, all things considered. You have seen reprinted in
+England some of the most foolish things that were said in our most
+worthless prints. The press in general behaved with great reserve
+and caution. Successive steamers brought continual abatements to
+the degree of confidence, or hope, that had been inspired in the
+minds of the more ardent; and so general was the candour of the
+newspapers, that when those of the Clay party were pettishly accused
+of a sympathy with tyranny, the charge was easily met by quotations
+from democratic newspapers, equally liable to the imputation, if a
+manly reprobation of revolutionary misrule and excess be sufficient
+to prove it. The truth is, our country was caught in the trap in
+1792. Then, the pulpit and the press strove together in glorifying
+France; and the remorse and burning shame that were the consequence,
+have left a very salutary impression.
+
+In fact, the violent democracy of Paris is exerting a beneficial
+effect upon our people. We see the degrading spectacle, and learn to
+value ourselves for a love of law and order. There is a reluctance
+to reduce ourselves to the level of such a republic as has sprung up
+like a mushroom in a night, and is likely to perish in the same way.
+Our own revolution was not one of drunken riot, and street-singing
+blouse-men: our constitution is not a mere poetical theory of
+liberty and equality, nor a socialist's dream of brotherhood. We
+now learn the secret of our strength, and of that comparative
+durability which has almost surprised ourselves. We are, after
+all, a transplanted slip of old England; nor are we so essentially
+changed, my Basil, as even you imagine. The spirit of our people
+is indeed democratic; but the spirit of our constitution is imbued
+with a stronger element. The facts concerning it will enable you
+to see one secret of our comparative success, and to judge whether
+France can possibly come to any thing as good. The founders of this
+republic were not Frenchmen, but Englishmen; I mean they were of
+English stock, and had learned all their notions of liberty from the
+history of England. Each province of America had taken shape under
+the British constitution; and when the provinces became independent,
+the general government was organised in such wise as to supply the
+place of that constitution. Its founders did not frame a new and
+untried constitution, a _priori_, according to their own schemes;
+they simply modified the great principles of British constitutional
+law to suit a new state of things, and a peculiar people. A
+monarchy was out of the question; but they did not intend to make a
+democracy. They only made a republic. The democratic spirit came in
+with Jefferson and French politics at the beginning of the present
+century. It has become dominant, but by no means triumphant; and
+its great obstacle has been the constitution. In the several states
+it has changed the constitutions one after the other, introducing
+universal suffrage, and other democratic features. But the national
+constitution has not been so easily reached; and it is the strength
+of the great party with which Clay and Webster are identified, and
+which is a constant check on the popular party. It is republican,
+but not simply democratic. The executive magistracy is elective;
+but the electors are not the people, directly, but electoral
+colleges, appointed by the several states; and the office itself is
+endowed with prerogatives, some of which are more unlimited than
+the corresponding rights of the British crown. Our senate is a mere
+modification of the House of Lords: it is a body more select than
+the lower house, and not so immediately responsible to constituents;
+and its practical working shows the great importance of such a
+balance-wheel in any government. There is no working without it, in
+spite of what your Roebucks may say. The House of Commons reappears
+in our House of Representatives, which, like its great original, is
+the safety-valve of popular feeling, and gives sonorous vent to a
+mighty pressure of steam and vapour, which would otherwise blow us
+to atoms, with a much less endurable noise. The whole fabric of our
+law is a precious patrimony derived, with our blood, from England.
+Our new states are filling up with emigrants from the continent
+of Europe, but they all adopt the law of their older sisters; and
+thus the institutions of the immortal Alfred may be found among the
+Swedes and Danes of Wisconsin. These, then, are the elements of
+our strength; and you observe they partake of the strength of the
+British empire, which has been legitimately and naturally imparted
+to us, like the mother's life-blood to the daughter of her womb. We
+have indeed characteristic peculiarities. We have tried some new
+experiments; but let not France suppose she can imitate them. We are
+a new country, a sparse population, and our people have their heads
+full of subduing the soil, and setting water-wheels in streams, and
+making roads and canals. We have no natural taste for insurrection
+and confusion, for we have nobody that is idle enough to want such
+work. Our new wine, then, has been put into new bottles; and the
+fool that attempts to decant it into the old vessels of Europe, will
+ruin it and them together.
+
+Our newspapers have pointed out another secret of our strength,
+which France cannot possibly enjoy. In spite of that wild prophecy
+of Lady Hester Stanhope to Lamartine--so much of which has come
+true--Paris is France, and will be France while France holds
+together. The city of Washington is not America; and its great acres
+of unoccupied building lots are the best thing about it. The State
+governments, which could not have been planned beforehand, but are a
+natural product of old events--which dispose of all local matters,
+and prevent sectional jealousies, which divide and balance power,
+and _satisfy small ambition_,--these are the helps, without which
+our national existence could not have been prolonged beyond the
+lifetime of Washington himself. The threatened disturbance of the
+admirable equilibrium which has heretofore been maintained between
+North and South, and East and West, by the introduction of Mexican
+and Texan states, and the power which it will throw into the hands
+of a few persons at the seat of government, is even now our most
+alarming danger. We know, from what we see among ourselves, that
+governments must take form, not from human devices, but from GOD'S
+providences. We ourselves are the results of circumstances: no
+scheming patriot could have made us what we are; and no imitative
+Frenchman can give to his country a government like ours; nor, if
+he could, would it survive beyond the lifetime of some individual,
+whose popularity would supply a temporary strength to its essential
+weakness. An imported constitution must be a sickly one, in any
+country on earth.
+
+For us, then, there is a legitimacy in our institutions which makes
+them durable, and dear to all classes of our people. But to be loyal
+to our own republic is by no means to be committed to universal
+republicanism, far less to be delighted with universal anarchy.
+You must pardon our tastes. We are young, and we think a jacket
+and shako becoming. We wear our appropriate costume as gracefully
+as we can. We are yet the growing, perhaps the awkward, but still
+the active boy. But when Europe befools itself, in its dotage, with
+republican attire, we lads have a right to laugh. It will do for us
+to play leap-frog, or cut any other caper that we choose; but who
+can restrain derision when corpulent imbecility assumes an unskirted
+coat, and submits its uncovered proportions to hootings and to
+kicks, or throws a ponderous summersault that less demonstrates
+agility than exposes nakedness!
+
+I speak for myself, and for many, very many of my countrymen. Our
+mere populace are of course possessed with the idea that a universal
+Yankee-doodle is the panacea for all the miseries of the world. It
+has been told them so often by demagogues, that they are pardonable.
+But even they would probably allow that the _Chinese_, for instance,
+are not yet quite ready for liberty-poles and ballet-boxes, and by
+degrees might be brought to confess as much for any country less
+remarkable and astonishing than our own. But there is a solid mass
+of good sense among us that is not so deceived. It consists of those
+who would rejoice to see a rational republic in France, or in any
+other country; but who know that, with the exception perhaps of
+Holland, such a thing is impossible, and that, in France, reason
+is more likely to reappear as the divinified harlot of Notre Dame
+than in any more respectable form. As to Great Britain, even our
+schoolboys have learned that, with all the stability of empire,
+it unites the freedom of a republic; and in spite of some feeling
+against John Bull, I scarcely know the man who would not be sorry
+to see it suddenly or violently revolutionised. On Irish affairs
+opinion is not so sane among us. Few of us know any thing about
+them; and for the sake of the starving peasantry of Ireland, there
+is some sympathy with its turbulent Gracchi. Believe it, the general
+tone of sentiment on this side the Atlantic, among reflecting men,
+is far more conservative than you imagine. Indeed, all classes
+stand amazed at the democracy of Europe. Our wildest enthusiasts
+are outdone, even by some who sit in the House of Commons; and the
+rampant socialism of Paris is as unlike the worst excesses of our
+elections, as the ferocity of a tiger is unlike the playfulness of
+a kitten. Young as we are, we are better mannered; and I must say,
+dear Basil, that when the older nations of the world are allowing
+themselves such license, we have a right to regard ourselves as
+taking new rank, and deserving more credit than has heretofore been
+given us, as, after all, a law-loving and law-maintaining people.
+
+You will say, as was said to the trumpeter in Æsop--"No, no,--you
+make all the mischief; others cut throats, but you have set them
+on." But is the democratic spirit really of American origin?
+Our Plymouth orators--the men who annually glorify our earliest
+colonists--usually trace it to the Puritans, and through them to
+Geneva. At all events, it now infects the world, and those are
+the happy and the permanent governments which are prepared for
+its violence, by constitutional vents and floodgates. It is not
+to be stifled, or dammed up. We believe, therefore, that our own
+government is the best for ourselves, and few of us have any fear
+for that of England. On British matters we do not feel bound to
+judge by our own experiences. We are free to theorise on broader
+principles; and many of us form our own opinions, not as cool
+and critical foreigners, but as having a deep interest in the
+preservation of the institutions of our ancestors. Why should we
+not? The study of history carries us, at once, beyond the narrow
+limits of threescore years and ten, which is the age of our
+national existence, and as soon as we pass that boundary we too
+are Britons. The blood of our forefathers ran in English veins, or
+flowed for British freedom and sovereignty. This fact is enough to
+make our educated and reflecting men speculatively conservative
+as to British politics. We know the past, and do not feel the
+party-heats of the present in England. Hence I am far from being
+alone among my countrymen, in looking at English matters with an
+English heart. Even our commercial class have a reason for wishing
+internal peace and prosperity to England; and I believe there
+is generally something better than selfishness in the prevalent
+good-will toward her. I wish you could have watched, as I did, the
+feelings of our whole people, while lately, between the arrivals
+of two steamers, there was a solemn feeling of surprise as to what
+would be the results of the Chartist demonstration! Till the news
+came, the stoutest of us held our breath. I assure you, Basil, the
+peril of England was observed with a deep anxiety. During all that
+time I met not a respectable man who wished to see a revolutionary
+result. It was the talk of all circles. Our merchants trembled for
+England; our scholars hoped for her; a clerical gentleman assured
+me that he daily prayed for her. The press very generally predicted
+a triumph of order, but there were some specimens of newspaper
+literature that ventured an opposite augury. I wish you could have
+seen this city when the result was known. The news was received with
+a thrill. There was some laughing at the parturient mountain and
+the still-born mouse, but a graver cheerfulness was the reigning
+emotion. We deeply felt that, by the mercy of God, the world had
+been spared from a conflagration which the match of a madman could
+light, but which only another deluge could extinguish. For one, I
+was as a watcher by the sea-side, who, after a night of tempest,
+waits for the fog to rise, and then thanks God to see the good old
+ship coming home, in season, her masts all standing, and her flag
+untorn.
+
+I had felt fears, my Basil. What was not imaginable, when Europe
+presented the appearance of a table on which empires had fallen
+in a day, like card-houses blown down by the breath of children!
+I knew that neither France, nor Prussia, nor Austria, nor Italy,
+were any thing like England, which is founded on a rock, and knit
+together by joints and bands: but I felt that England is no longer
+what she was. With a Whig government she is never herself.[5] The
+Whigs are more than half Frenchmen. I tell you you seem to me not
+half enough afraid of your Whigs; they are worse than your Radicals.
+You show some uneasiness under the Jewish Disabilities Bill, but
+I wish you could see it as it strikes a looker-on. If time has on
+you the effect which distance has on me, you will yet look back on
+that measure as you now look back on the great mistake of 1829.
+It will haunt you like a nightmare, and you will regard it with
+less of anger than of shame and remorse; with the deep conviction
+that, if the friends of the constitution had done their duty, it
+never would have disgraced a Christian state. True, the Whigs are
+responsible for inflicting the blow; but what has been done to avert
+it? So far as I know, nothing commensurate with the greatness of
+the evil. You seem to give way to it as only one of many inroads
+upon old proprieties, which are inevitable, and cannot be withstood.
+But is the unchristianising of the state to be spoken of side by
+side with even the destruction of colonies, and the discouragement
+of agriculture? As it strikes me, it is not a thing of a class, it
+stands out a portent, a harbinger, a phenomenon of its own kind. Not
+that it surprises me. From Lord John Russell nothing that argues
+fatuity and lack of political principle should surprise any one.
+To carry out the plans to which he has committed himself, he must
+consistently pander to infidels, foster heretics, and subsidise
+Jews. To the reforms of the last score of years, there could be no
+more fitting sequel than this coalition with a people loaded with
+the hereditary burthen of the saving blood of the Crucified. I only
+marvel that the bill goes on so slowly. The Baron should have been
+long since in his place, and the Easter holidays should have been
+disregarded, out of respect to his feelings. It is astonishing
+that he is not already an ecclesiastical commissioner. The times
+are not now as during a former French revolution, when a British
+statesman could say[6]--"the Jews in Change Alley have not yet
+dared to hint their hopes of a mortgage on the revenues belonging
+to the see of Canterbury." You are always praising your church,
+Basil, but allow me to ask, Why you may not live to see a Jewish
+rabbi nominated to a bishopric. As I understand it, the obsequious
+chapter would be obliged to perform the election, and close all by
+anthems to Almighty GOD, ascribing to Him the glory of a gift so
+felicitous and so auspicious to the church! It would not be the
+first time, I believe, that Lord John has set the _Te Deum_ of
+cathedrals going, like the whistles of a juggler's barrel-organ.
+Forgive me, Basil; I am not mocking the agonies of your church, but
+I am scorning a British minister that can use for her destruction
+the powers confided to him for her nourishment and defence. I
+have learned my notions of your politics from Edmund Burke, and I
+remember what he said in his _Reflections on the French Revolution
+of 1792_--for, by the way, revolutions in France must be always
+referred to by dates, and will soon be known, like policemen, by
+letters and numbers. "The men of England," said that great and
+honest man, "the men I mean of light and leading in England, would
+be ashamed, as of a silly deceitful trick, to profess any religion
+in name which, by their proceedings, they appear to contemn." Does
+not Lord John profess to be a Christian? I must caution you, too,
+against supposing that I dislike the Israelites. Far from it. In my
+own country I am glad that they labour under no disabilities, and I
+can testify to their good order, decency, and propriety of behaviour
+as citizens. But we have "no past at our back," and nothing in our
+system which demands a prior consideration. No, Basil--I honour a
+Jew, however much I may pity him. Crying old clothes, or lolling in
+a banker's chariot, the Jew is to me a man of sacred associations.
+And then--a Jewish gentleman--he makes me think at once of the sons
+of Maccabæus and all the Asmoneans; those Hebrews of the Hebrews,
+those Tories of Israel! What natural sympathy has a Jewish gentleman
+with a Whig? Were I merely covetous of votes I would say--let the
+Jews in! I could trust _their_ conscience; I could appeal to their
+own feelings; I would put it to them whether their liberalism
+would consent to eat pork with the Gentiles, or to call in the
+uncircumcised to make laws for the synagogue. We pity the blindness
+of the Jews that offered their thirty pieces of silver--but we do
+not despise them. Our contempt settles on the head of the Christian
+who consented to take them at the bargain.
+
+  [5] We fully agree with our correspondent as to the danger of
+  Whiggery in our councils, but are so far reconciled to the Whigs
+  being in office at the present crisis, by the knowledge that, had
+  they been in opposition, they would, to a certain extent, have
+  fraternised with French Republicans and English Chartists. Who could
+  doubt that such would have been the conduct of the men who headed
+  physical force processions, and hounded on window-breaking vagabonds
+  in the Reform riots of 1830? What amount of profligate partisanship
+  might not be expected from the men who, when thirsting for office,
+  solemnly denounced as unconstitutional and unjust the course pursued
+  by a conservative government towards O'Connell, which identical
+  course they now, when in power, adopt towards Mitchell, a much less
+  dangerous criminal?
+
+  [6] Burke's _Reflections on the French Revolution_.
+
+You speak of this Jew bill as the first step! Why, yes, the first
+step in tragedy; there was a former one in farce. There is Sir Moses
+Montefiore! Who made him a knight? "A Jewish knight," said I, at
+the time--"hear it, ye dry bones,--ye cross-legged effigies--ye
+Paladins--ye Templars! Hear it, Du-Bois-Gilbert,--hear it, Richard
+Cœur-de-Lion! Yes, and thou, too, old Roger de Coverley! Hear it,
+thou true old English knight; for they that bought thine old clothes
+now come for thine old spurs!" So said I--wondering that no one
+seemed to wonder. The nineteenth century had not time to stare.
+There was not even a London _Punch_ to laugh at such a _Judy_, and
+so Moses was belted and spurred, no man gainsaying; and knighthood,
+that was Sidney's once, is just the thing for Sir Peter Laurie now.
+
+And if a Jewish knight, why not a Jewish senator! True, there is
+something grand in the idea of a nation that never, since the
+Wittenagemote, has seen a lawgiver unbaptised; and then there is
+still a red cross in the flag of England; and there has been a
+pleasing notion that the Christian faith was part and parcel with
+the British constitution; and even we in America, averse to church
+and state, have long allowed ourselves to admire one exception
+to the rule, and to confess the majestic figure made among the
+nations by a Christian empire, shining forth in splendid contrast
+to surrounding kingdoms, some of them infidel and some of them
+superstitious, but she alone the witness to reasonable faith, and
+faithful reason. But who regards it in this light? Who among you
+stands up to warn his country of the glory that is departing?
+Who has said any thing in parliament at all adequate to the
+turning-point of a nation's religion? I have looked for some one to
+speak as Burke would have spoken, of "uncovering your nakedness,
+by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been
+your boast and comfort." I have longed to see his promise made
+good,--"_we shall never be such fools_ as to call in an enemy to
+the substance of any system, to remove its corruptions, to supply
+its defects, or to perfect its construction." I read _The Times_,
+but as yet I have looked in vain. A few honest remonstrances have
+indeed been ventured amid cries of _oh, oh!_ and vociferations of
+buck-toothed laughter from the benches that support the honourable
+members from Cottonburgh and Calicopolis. But who has stood up as
+for altars and fires? I hope, ere this reaches you, the question
+will be creditably answered. I hope the Christianity of England will
+not die without a struggle. I suspect it will be of no use, but I
+look yet for some John of Gaunt in the House of Lords. Imagine him,
+my Basil:--
+
+                      "This sceptred isle,
+    This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
+    Renownèd for her deeds as far from home
+    (For _Christian service_ and _true chivalry_)
+    As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
+    Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son;
+    This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
+    _Dear for her reputation through the world,
+    Is now--paun'd out to Jews!_"
+
+This is what ought to be said; and I look for it, if not from lords
+spiritual, then even from lords temporal. But surely it would well
+become the primate's mouth! Of course, it would do little good; but
+then the religion of England would fall at least dramatically. It
+would make a picture quite as good as the death of Chatham. Do you
+remember the lawn-sleeves in that picture? The bishops are "in at
+the death,"--but nothing more.
+
+But another steamer has come in with news; and France is all the
+talk. The elections are over; the _Modérés_ have triumphed; the
+National Assembly has convened, and the Provisional Government is
+at an end. _Vive Lamartine!_ Of course the stock of the republic
+takes a rise, but holders are not firm. The bloodshed at Rouen,
+the _émeutes_ at Elbœuf and Limoges, and the threats of the
+_Communistes_, do not precisely inspire confidence. Still, we are
+so far surprised, and those who have predicted favourably for
+France grow a little more sanguine in their hopes. I am glad to
+say that Louis Blanc has no sympathisers here. All are convinced
+that Lamartine will make the best of it, and that, if he fails,
+the republic will be suffocated and expire in a stench. For one,
+it seems to me that Lamartine is not bad enough to encounter
+successfully the frantic malice of his opponents, and that their
+eventual success is certain. Already, things have very likely taken
+a decisive turn, and by the time this letter reaches you, the doings
+of the Assembly will have enabled you to conjecture whether the
+nation is going by the long way, or the short cut, to Henry Fifth.
+As all will be stale before you can read what I now write, I will
+not presume to predict the immediate results; but I am sure that the
+assembling of such a set as have been returned to the legislature,
+would be enough to blow up the strongest government on earth.
+Jew, Dominican, pastor and bishop, poet and butcher, all in their
+tricoloured sashes--was there ever such a full-blown tulip-bed of
+liberty, equality, and fraternity!
+
+The announcement of several clergymen as members of the Assembly
+reminds me that there has been some sickly sentiment among us,
+about the _piety_ that has been displayed in this revolution.
+In Boston we are favoured with some strange types of religions
+enthusiasm; in fact, the type of Christianity that prevails among
+us is peculiarly our own; and like our improvements in machinery,
+deserves the proverbial name of a "Boston notion." Emerson, who is
+now illuminating England, may give you some idea of what I mean;
+and a queer story that is told of one of his disciples, may furnish
+you with an explanation of the fact, that some men see religion
+in the sacking of the Tuileries. The youth was at the Opera to
+see a celebrated _danseuse_, and excited general attention by his
+somewhat extraordinary applause. His enthusiasm so transported
+him, that the emotions of his heart became unconsciously audible.
+As the dancer began to whirl, he cried, "_Ah, that is poetry!_" As
+she stretched her toe to the horizontal, he exclaimed, "_That's
+divinity!_" but when she proceeded to an evolution that forced
+the ladies to pay attention to their fans, he burst into the
+climax--"_That's religion!_" If this be caricature, the Emersonians
+richly deserve it. They are laughed at even in Boston. But they
+are not alone in thinking well of the piety of Paris, and arguing
+from it that there will be no reign of terror; as if there was not
+vastly more show of religion in the first revolution! If there is
+an archbishop of Paris now, there was formerly a Talleyrand for
+high-priest and master of ceremonies. Oh, but they rejoin with a
+story! When the blouses were gutting the palace of its pictures
+and marbles, they found, among other works of art, an image of the
+Crucified. As a blouseman was about to dash it to atoms, there was a
+cry, "Save it--save the great teacher of fraternity!" The crucifix
+was accordingly saved, and borne about the streets amid songs and
+curses, and, very appropriately, "with lanterns and torches."
+"_Ah, that's religion!_" says your Emersonian. So, when recreant
+priests baptise a liberty-pole, or join a procession of blouses,
+with crosses and censers, _that's divinity_, at least. Was ever
+hypocrisy so revolting! The nauseous mockery has its only parallel
+in the writings of George Sand, who makes a favourite hero and
+heroine betake themselves to an adulterous bed, after duly reciting
+their prayers, in which the absent husband is very affectionately
+remembered. If a revolution thus begun is not destined to go
+speedily through all the ripening and rotting of a godless anarchy,
+it is to be accounted for only on the principle that "He who is
+Eternal can wait." The old scene at Notre Dame may not be actually
+revived, and the Bible may not be literally dragged through Paris
+again tied to an ass's tail; but the undisguised atrocities of the
+first revolution may, after all, be exceeded by the smooth-faced
+blasphemies of that which has already degraded the world's Redeemer
+into the patron saint of insurrection, and the father of infidel
+fraternity.
+
+Poor Lamartine! Is this the man, my Basil, whom you once likened to
+Chateaubriand? _Quantum mutatus!_ I knew him, till lately, only as a
+poet and a traveller. He certainly went to Palestine with the spirit
+of a palmer. He bathed in Siloa with enthusiasm, and almost expired
+of feeling under the venerable olive-trees of Gethsemane.
+
+How Frenchy--how intensely French! mass in the morning, and weeping
+and sighing,--a revel before nightfall, and desperate gaming. And
+this man to be the Cromwell of the commonwealth? He could hardly
+have been the Milton, though it would have been more becoming. And
+what will be his career? It is a pity Lady Hester Stanhope was not
+permitted to consult his stars in full when he met her on Mount
+Lebanon, when she praised his handsome foot and arched instep,
+and told him he should be very important in the history of the
+world. Ah, how certainly he will yet lament, if he does not lament
+already, the fulfilment of the oracle! Such weird sisters as Lady
+Hester generally tell _only half_, leaving the rest to imagination
+and to time. But whether this Phaeton, who has grasped the reins,
+is to set the world on fire; whether he, in turn, is only to try
+the game of Humpty-Dumpty and to fall; or whether, even as I write
+this, he be not already under the foot of Louis Blanc and his
+_Communistes_,--what probabilities or improbabilities shall aid my
+conjecture? This thing only will I venture as my surmise, though not
+my hope, that kings shall reign again in France, as if Lamartine
+never lived: that tricoloured cockades shall be made no more, and
+lilies be cultivated again: that there will soon be longings for a
+sight of the _drapeau blanc_, and a prince of the sons of St Louis:
+and that, fat as he is, and Bourbon as he is, and half Austrian as
+he has made himself, Henry Duke of Bordeaux will soon be known as
+HENRI LE DÉSIRÉ.
+
+  Yours ever, my dear Basil,
+
+  ERNEST.
+
+
+
+
+THE CAXTONS--PART IV.
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning,
+day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom, and purity,
+and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness
+of a happy child. I doubt if any man can be called 'old' so long as
+he is an early riser, and an early _walker_. And oh, youth!--take
+my word of it,--youth in dressing-gown and slippers, dawdling over
+breakfast at noon, is a very decrepid ghastly image of that youth
+which sees the sun blush over the mountains, and the dews sparkle
+upon blossoming hedgerows.
+
+Passing by my father's study, I was surprised to see the windows
+unclosed--surprised more, on looking in, to see him bending over
+his books--for I had never before known him study till after the
+morning meal. Students are not usually early risers, for students,
+alas! whatever their age, are rarely young. Yes; the great work must
+be getting on in serious earnest. It was no longer dalliance with
+learning: this was work.
+
+I passed through the gates into the road. A few of the cottages were
+giving signs of returning life; but it was not yet the hour for
+labour, and no "Good morning, sir," greeted me on the road. Suddenly
+at a turn, which an overhanging beech-tree had before concealed, I
+came full upon my Uncle Roland.
+
+"What! you, sir? So early? Hark, the clock is striking five!"
+
+"Not later! I have walked well for a lame man. It must be more than
+four miles to ---- and back."
+
+"You have been to ----: not on business? No soul would be up."
+
+"Yes, at inns there is always some one up. Ostlers never sleep! I
+have been to order my humble chaise and pair. I leave you to day,
+nephew."
+
+"Ah, uncle, we have offended you. It was my folly--that cursed
+print--"
+
+"Pooh!" said my uncle, quickly. "Offended me, boy! I defy you!" and
+he pressed my hand roughly.
+
+"Yet this sudden determination! It was but yesterday, at the Roman
+Camp, that you planned an excursion with my father to C---- Castle."
+
+"Never depend upon a whimsical man. I must be in London to-night."
+
+"And return to morrow?"
+
+"I know not when," said my uncle, gloomily; and he was silent
+for some moments. At length, leaning less lightly on my arm, he
+continued--"Young man, you have pleased me. I love that open saucy
+brow of yours, on which nature has written 'Trust me.' I love those
+clear eyes that look man manfully in the face. I must know more of
+you--much of you. You must come and see me some day or other in your
+ancestor's ruined keep."
+
+"Come! that I will. And you shall show me the old tower--"
+
+"And the traces of the out-works;" cried my uncle, flourishing his
+stick.
+
+"And the pedigree--"
+
+"Ay, and your great-great-grandfather's armour, which he wore at
+Marston Moor--"
+
+"Yes, and the brass plate in the church, uncle."
+
+"The deuce is in the boy! Come here--come here; I've three minds to
+break your head, sir!"
+
+"It is a pity somebody had not broken the rascally printer's, before
+he had the impudence to disgrace us by having a family, uncle."
+
+Captain Roland tried hard to frown, but he could not. "Pshaw!" said
+he, stopping, and taking snuff. "The world of the dead is wide; why
+should the ghosts jostle us?"
+
+"We can never escape the ghosts, uncle. They haunt us always. We
+cannot think or act, but the soul of some man, who has lived before,
+points the way. The dead never die, especially since--"
+
+"Since what, boy? you speak well."
+
+"Since our great ancestor introduced printing," said I, majestically.
+
+My uncle whistled "_Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre_."
+
+I had not the heart to plague him further.
+
+"Peace!" said I, creeping cautiously within the circle of the stick.
+
+"No! I forewarn you--"
+
+"Peace! and describe to me my little cousin, your pretty
+daughter--for pretty I am sure she is."
+
+"Peace," said my uncle, smiling. "But you must come and judge for
+yourself."
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Uncle Roland was gone. Before he went, he was closeted for an hour
+with my father, who then accompanied him to the gate; and we all
+crowded round him as he stepped into his chaise. When the Captain
+was gone, I tried to sound my father as to the cause of so sudden a
+departure. But my father was impenetrable in all that related to his
+brother's secrets. Whether or not the Captain had ever confided to
+him the cause of his displeasure with his son,--a mystery which much
+haunted me,--my father was mute on that score, both to my mother
+and myself. For two or three days, however, Mr Caxton was evidently
+unsettled. He did not even take to his great work; but walked much
+alone, or accompanied only by the duck, and without even a book in
+his hand. But by degrees the scholarly habits returned to him; my
+mother mended his pens, and the work went on.
+
+For my part, left much to myself, especially in the mornings, I
+began to muse restlessly over the future. Ungrateful that I was, the
+happiness of home ceased to content me. I heard afar the roar of the
+great world, and roved impatient by the shore.
+
+At length, one evening, my father, with some modest hums and ha's,
+and an-unaffected blush on his fair forehead, gratified a prayer
+frequently urged on him, and read me some portions of "the great
+Work." I cannot express the feelings this lecture created--they
+were something akin to awe. For the design of this book was so
+immense--and towards its execution, a learning so vast and various
+had administered--that it seemed to me as if a spirit had opened to
+me a new world, which had always been before my feet, but which my
+own human blindness had hitherto concealed from me. The unspeakable
+patience with which all these materials had been collected year
+after year--the ease with which now, by the calm power of genius,
+they seemed of themselves to fall into harmony and system--the
+unconscious humility with which the scholar exposed the stores of
+a laborious life;--all combined to rebuke my own restlessness and
+ambition, while they filled me with a pride in my father, which
+saved my wounded egotism from a pang. Here, indeed, was one of those
+books which embrace an existence; like the Dictionary of Bayle, or
+the History of Gibbon, or the _Fasti Hellenici_ of Clinton,--it
+was a book to which thousands of books had contributed, only to
+make the originality of the single mind more bold and clear. Into
+the furnace all vessels of gold, of all ages, had been cast, but
+from the mould came the new coin, with its single stamp. And
+happily, the subject of the work did not forbid to the writer the
+indulgence of his _naïve_, peculiar irony of humour--so quiet, yet
+so profound. My father's book was the "History of Human Error."
+It was, therefore, the moral history of mankind, told with truth
+and earnestness, yet with an arch unmalignant smile. Sometimes,
+indeed, the smile drew tears. But in all true humour lies its germ,
+pathos. Oh! by the goddess Moria or Folly, but he was at home in
+his theme! He viewed man first in the savage state, preferring in
+this the positive accounts of voyagers and travellers, to the vague
+myths of antiquity, and the dreams of speculators on our pristine
+state. From Australia and Abyssinia, he drew pictures of mortality
+unadorned, as lively as if he had lived amongst Bushmen and savages
+all his life. Then he crossed over the Atlantic, and brought before
+you the American Indian, with his noble nature, struggling into
+the dawn of civilisation, when friend Penn cheated him out of his
+birthright, and the Anglo-Saxon drove him back into darkness. He
+showed both analogy and contrast between this specimen of our kind,
+and others equally apart from the extremes of the savage state and
+the cultured. The Arab in his tent, the Teuton in his forests, the
+Greenlander in his boat, the Fin in his rein-deer car. Up sprang
+the rude gods of the north, and the resuscitated Druidism, passing
+from its earliest templeless belief into the later corruptions of
+crommell and idol. Up sprang, by their side, the Saturn of the
+Phœnicians, the mystic Budh of India, the elementary deities of the
+Pelasgian, the Naith and Serapis of Egypt, the Ormuzd of Persia, the
+Bel of Babylon, the winged genii of the graceful Etruria. How nature
+and life shaped the religion; how the religion shaped the manners;
+how, and by what influences, some tribes were formed for progress;
+how others were destined to remain stationary, or be swallowed up
+in war and slavery by their brethren, was told with a precision
+clear and strong as the voice of Fate. Not only an antiquarian and
+philologist, but an anatomist and philosopher--my father brought to
+bear on all these grave points, the various speculations involved
+in the distinctions of race. He showed how race in perfection
+is produced, up to a certain point, by admixture: how all mixed
+races have been the most intelligent--how, in proportion as local
+circumstance and religious faith permitted the early fusion of
+differing tribes, races improved and quickened into the refinements
+of civilisation. He tracked the progress and dispersion of the
+Hellenes, from their mythical cradle in Thessaly; and showed
+how those who settled near the sea-shores, and were compelled
+into commerce and intercourse with strangers, gave to Greece her
+marvellous accomplishments in arts and letters--the flowers of the
+ancient world. How others, like the Spartans, dwelling evermore in
+a camp, on guard against their neighbours, and rigidly preserving
+their Dorian purity of extraction, contributed neither artists, nor
+poets, nor philosophers to the golden treasure-house of mind. He
+took the old race of the Celts, Cimry, or Cimmerians. He compared
+the Celt who, as in Wales, the Scotch Highlands, in Bretagne, and
+in uncomprehended Ireland, retains his old characteristics and
+purity of breed, with the Celt whose blood, mixed by a thousand
+channels, dictates from Paris the manners and revolutions of the
+world. He compared the Norman in his ancient Scandinavian home,
+with that wonder of intelligence and chivalry which he became,
+fused imperceptibly with the Frank, the Goth, and the Anglo-Saxon.
+He compared the Saxon, stationary in the land of Horsa, with the
+colonist and civiliser of the globe, as he becomes, when he knows
+not through what channels--French, Flemish, Danish, Welch, Scotch,
+and Irish--he draws his sanguine blood. And out from all these
+speculations, to which I do such hurried and scanty justice, he drew
+the blessed truth, that carries hope to the land of the Caffre, the
+hut of the Bushman--that there is nothing in the flattened skull
+and the ebon aspect that rejects God's law, improvement; that by
+the same principle which raises the dog, the lowest of the animals
+in its savage state, to the highest after man,--viz. admixture of
+race--you can elevate into nations of majesty and power the outcasts
+of humanity, now your compassion or your scorn. But when my father
+got into the marrow of his theme--when, quitting these preliminary
+discussions, he fell pounce amongst the would-be wisdom of the wise;
+when he dealt with civilisation itself, its schools, and porticos,
+and academies; when he bared the absurdities couched beneath the
+colleges of the Egyptians, and the Symposia of the Greeks;--when he
+showed that, even in their own favourite pursuit of metaphysics,
+the Greeks were children; and in their own more practical region
+of politics, the Romans were visionaries and bunglers;--when,
+following the stream of error through the middle ages, he quoted the
+puerilities of Agrippa, the crudities of Cardan; and passed, with
+his calm smile, into the _salons_ of the chattering wits of Paris
+in the eighteenth century, oh, then his irony was that of Lucian,
+sweetened by the gentle spirit of Erasmus. For not even here was
+my father's satire of the cheerless and Mephistophelian school.
+From this record of error he drew forth the grand eras of truth. He
+showed how earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts
+may be errors. He proved how, in vast cycles, age after age, the
+human mind marches on--like the ocean, receding here, but there
+advancing. How from the speculations of the Greek sprang all true
+philosophy; how from the institutions of the Roman rose all durable
+systems of government; how from the robust follies of the North
+came the glory of chivalry, and the modern delicacies of honour,
+and the sweet harmonising influences of woman. He tracked the
+ancestry of our Sidneys and Bayards from the Hengists, Genserics,
+and Attilas. Full of all curious and quaint anecdote--of original
+illustration--of those niceties of learning which spring from a
+taste cultivated to the last exquisite polish--the book amused, and
+allured, and charmed; and erudition lost its pedantry now in the
+simplicity of Montaigne, now in the penetration of La Bruyère. He
+lived in each time of which he wrote, and the time lived again in
+him. Ah, what a writer of romances he would have been, if--if what?
+If he had had as sad an experience of men's passions, as he had the
+happy intuition into their humours. But he who would see the mirror
+of the shore, must look where it is cast on the river, not the
+ocean. The narrow stream reflects the gnarled tree, and the pausing
+herd, and the village spire, and the romance of the landscape. But
+the sea reflects only the vast outline of the headland, and the
+lights of the eternal heaven.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+"It is Lombard Street to a China orange," quoth Uncle Jack.
+
+"Are the odds in favour of fame against failure so great? You do not
+speak, I fear, from experience, brother Jack," answered my father,
+as he stooped down to tickle the duck under the left ear.
+
+"But Jack Tibbets is not Augustine Caxton. Jack Tibbets is not a
+scholar, a genius, a wond--"
+
+"Stop," cried my father.
+
+"After all," said Mr Squills, "though I am no flatterer, Mr Tibbets
+is not so far out.... That part of your book which compares the
+crania or skulls of the different races is superb. Lawrence or Dr
+Pritchard could not have done the thing more neatly. Such a book
+must not be lost to the world; and I agree with Mr Tibbets that you
+should publish as soon as possible."
+
+"It is one thing to write and another to publish," said my father
+irresolutely. "When one considers all the great men who have
+published; when one thinks one is going to intrude one's-self
+audaciously into the company of Aristotle and Bacon, of Locke, of
+Herder--of all the grave philosophers who bend over nature with
+brows weighty with thought--one may well pause, and--"
+
+"Pooh!" interrupted Uncle Jack; "science is not a club, it is an
+ocean. It is open to the cockboat as the frigate. One man carries
+across it a freightage of ingots, another may fish there for
+herrings. Who can exhaust the sea? who say to intellect, the deeps
+of philosophy are preoccupied?"
+
+"Admirable!" cried Squills.
+
+"So it is really your advice, my friends," said my father, who
+seemed struck by Uncle Jack's eloquent illustration, "that I should
+desert my household gods; remove to London, since my own library
+ceases to supply my wants; take lodgings near the British Museum,
+and finish off one volume, at least, incontinently."
+
+"It is a duty you owe to your country," said Uncle Jack, solemnly.
+
+"And to yourself," urged Squills. "One must attend to the natural
+evacuations of the brain. Ah! you may smile, sir; but I have
+observed that if a man has much in his head, he must give it vent
+or it oppresses him; the whole system goes wrong. From being
+abstracted, he grows stupefied. The weight of the pressure affects
+the nerves. I would not even guarantee you from a stroke of
+paralysis."
+
+"Oh, Austin!" cried my mother tenderly, and throwing her arms round
+my father's neck.
+
+"Come, sir, you are conquered," said I.
+
+"And what is to become of you, Sisty?" asked my father. "Do you go
+with us, and unsettle your mind for the university?"
+
+"My uncle has invited me to his castle; and in the meanwhile I will
+stay here, fag hard, and take care of the duck."
+
+"All alone?" said my mother.
+
+"No. All alone! Why Uncle Jack will come here as often as ever, I
+hope."
+
+Uncle Jack shook his head.
+
+"No, my boy--I must go to town with your father. You don't
+understand these things. I shall see the booksellers for him. I
+know how these gentlemen are to be dealt with. I shall prepare the
+literary circles for the appearance of the book. In short, it is a
+sacrifice of interest I know. My Journal will suffer. But friendship
+and my country's good before all things!"
+
+"Dear Jack!" said my mother affectionately.
+
+"I cannot suffer it," cried my father. "You are making a good
+income. You are doing well where you are; and as to seeing the
+booksellers--why, when the work is ready, you can come to town for a
+week, and settle that affair."
+
+"Poor dear Austin," said Uncle Jack, with an air of superiority and
+compassion. "A week! Sir, the advent of a book that is to succeed
+requires the preparation of months. Pshaw! I am no genius, bu I am a
+practical man. I know what's what. Leave me alone."
+
+But my father continued obstinate and Uncle Jack at last ceased to
+urge the matter. The journey to fame and London was now settled; but
+my father would not hear of my staying behind.
+
+No; Pisistratus must needs go also to town and see the world; the
+duck would take care of itself.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+We had taken the precaution to send, the day before, to secure
+our due complement of places--four in all (including one for Mrs
+Primmins)--in, or upon, the fast family coach called the Sun,
+which had lately been set up for the special convenience of the
+neighbourhood.
+
+This luminary, rising in a town about seven miles distant
+from us, described at first a very erratic orbit amidst the
+contiguous villages before it finally struck into the high-road of
+enlightenment, and thence performed its journey, in the full eyes
+of man, at the majestic pace of six miles and a half an hour. My
+father, with his pockets full of books, and a quarto of "Gebelin on
+the Primitive World" for light reading under his arm; my mother,
+with a little basket, containing sandwiches and biscuits of her
+own baking; Mrs Primmins, with a new umbrella, purchased for the
+occasion, and a bird-cage containing a canary, endeared to her
+not more by song than age, and a severe pip through which she had
+successfully nursed it--and I myself, waited at the gates to welcome
+the celestial visitor. The gardener, with a wheel-barrow full of
+boxes and portmanteaus, stood a little in the van; and the footman,
+who was to follow when lodgings had been found, had gone to a rising
+eminence to watch the dawning of the expected planet, and apprise us
+of its approach by the concerted signal of a handkerchief fixed to a
+stick.
+
+The quaint old house looked at us mournfully from all its deserted
+windows. The litter before its threshold, and in its open hall;
+wisps of straw or hay that had been used for packing; baskets and
+boxes that had been examined and rejected; others, corded and
+piled, reserved to follow with the footman: and the two heated
+and hurried serving-women left behind standing half-way between
+house and garden-gate, whispering to each other, and looking as
+if they had not slept for weeks--gave to a scene, usually so trim
+and orderly, an aspect of pathetic abandonment and desolation. The
+genius of the place seemed to reproach us. I felt the omens were
+against us, and turned my earnest gaze from the haunts behind with
+a sigh, as the coach now drew up in all its grandeur. An important
+personage, who, despite the heat of the day, was enveloped in a vast
+superfluity of belcher, in the midst of which galloped a gilt fox,
+and who rejoiced in the name of "guard," descended to inform us
+politely that only three places, two inside and one out, were at our
+disposal, the rest having been pre-engaged a fortnight before our
+orders were received.
+
+Now, as I knew that Mrs Primmins was indispensable to the comforts
+of my honoured parents, (the more so, as she had once lived in
+London, and knew all its ways,) I suggested that she should take
+the outside seat, and that I should perform the journey on foot--a
+primitive mode of transport which has its charms to a young man with
+stout limbs and gay spirits. The guard's outstretched arm left my
+mother little time to oppose this proposition, to which my father
+assented with a silent squeeze of the hand. And, having promised to
+join them at a family hotel near the Strand, to which Mr Squills lad
+recommended them as peculiarly genteel and quiet, and waved my last
+farewell to my poor mother, who continued to stretch her meek face
+out of the window till the coach was whirled off in a cloud like one
+of the Homeric heroes, I turned within, to put up a few necessary
+articles in a small knapsack, which I remembered to have seen in the
+lumber-room, and which had appertained to my maternal grandfather;
+and with that on my shoulder, and a strong staff in my hand, I set
+off towards the great city at as brisk a pace as if I were only
+bound to the next village. Accordingly, about noon, I was both tired
+and hungry; and seeing by the wayside one of those pretty inns yet
+peculiar to England, but which, thanks to the railways, will soon be
+amongst the things before the Flood, I sate down at a table under
+some clipped limes, unbuckled my knapsack, and ordered my simple
+fare, with the dignity of one who, for the first time in his life,
+bespeaks his own dinner, and pays for it out of his own pocket.
+
+While engaged on a rasher of bacon and a tankard of what the
+landlord called "No mistake," two pedestrians, passing the same
+road which I had traversed, paused, cast a simultaneous look at
+my occupation, and, induced no doubt by its allurements, seated
+themselves under the same lime-trees, though at the farther end of
+the table. I surveyed the new-comers with the curiosity natural to
+my years.
+
+The elder of the two might have attained the age of thirty, though
+sundry deep lines, and hues formerly florid and now faded, speaking
+of fatigue, care, or dissipation, might have made him look somewhat
+older than he was. There was nothing very prepossessing in his
+appearance. He was dressed with a pretension ill suited to the
+costume appropriate to a foot-traveller. His coat was pinched and
+padded; two enormous pins, connected by a chain, decorated a very
+stiff stock of blue satin, dotted with yellow stars; his hands were
+cased in very dingy gloves which had once been straw-coloured,
+and the said hands played with a whalebone cane surmounted by a
+formidable knob, which gave it the appearance of a "life-preserver."
+As he took off a white napless hat, which he wiped with great care
+and affection with the sleeve of his right arm, a profusion of
+stiff curls instantly betrayed the art of man. Like my landlord's
+ale, in that wig there was "no mistake:" it was brought--(in the
+fashion of the wigs we see in the popular effigies of George IV. in
+his youth)--low over his forehead and raised at the top. The wig
+had been oiled, and the oil had imbibed no small quantity of dust;
+oil and dust had alike left their impression on the forehead and
+cheeks of the wig's proprietor. For the rest, the expression of his
+face was somewhat impudent and reckless, but not without a certain
+drollery in the corners of his eyes.
+
+The younger man was apparently about my own age, a year or two
+older perhaps--judging rather from his set and sinewy frame than
+his boyish countenance. And this last, boyish as it was, could not
+fail to demand the attention even of the most careless observer. It
+had not only the darkness but the character of the gipsy face, with
+large brilliant eyes, raven hair, long and wavy, but not curling;
+the features were aquiline but delicate, and when he spoke he showed
+teeth dazzling as pearls. It was impossible not to admire the
+singular beauty of the countenance; and yet, it had that expression
+at once stealthy and fierce, which war with society has stamped
+upon the lineaments of the race of which it reminded me. But,
+withal, there was somewhat of the air of a gentleman in this young
+wayfarer. His dress consisted of a black velveteen shooting-jacket,
+or rather short frock, with a broad leathern strap at the waist,
+loose white trousers, and a foraging cap, which he threw carelessly
+on the table as he wiped his brow. Turning round impatiently and
+with some haughtiness from his companion, he surveyed me with a
+quick observant flash of his piercing eyes, and then stretched
+himself at length on the bench, and appeared either to doze or muse,
+till, in obedience to his companion's orders, the board was spread
+with all the cold meats the larder could supply.
+
+"Beef!" said his companion, screwing a pinchbeck glass
+into his right eye. "Beef;--mottled, cowey--humph.
+Lamb;--oldish--rawish--muttony, humph. Pie;--stalish, veal?--no,
+pork. Ah! what will you have?"
+
+"Help yourself," replied the young man peevishly, as he sat up,
+looked disdainfully at the viands, and after a long pause, tasted
+first one, then the other, with many shrugs of the shoulders and
+muttered exclamations of discontent. Suddenly he looked up and
+called for brandy; and to my surprise, and I fear admiration, he
+drank nearly half a tumblerful of that poison undiluted, with a
+composure that spoke of habitual use.
+
+"Wrong!" said his companion, drawing the bottle to himself, and
+mixing the alcohol in careful proportions with water. "Wrong! coats
+of stomach soon wear out, with that kind of clothes' brush. Better
+stick to 'the yeasty foam' as sweet Will says. That young gentleman
+sets you a good example," and therewith the speaker nodded at me
+familiarly. Inexperienced as I was, I surmised at once that it was
+his intention to make acquaintance with the neighbour thus saluted.
+I was not deceived. "Any thing to tempt _you_, sir?" asked this
+social personage after a short pause, and describing a semicircle
+with the point of his knife.
+
+"I thank you, sir, but I have dined."
+
+"What then? 'Break out into a second course of mischief,' as the
+swan recommends--swan of Avon, sir! No? 'Well then, I charge you
+with this cup of sack.' Are you going far, if I may take the liberty
+to ask?"
+
+"To London, when I can get there!"
+
+"Oh!" said the traveller--while his young companion lifted his
+eyes; and I was again struck with their remarkable penetration and
+brilliancy.
+
+"London is the best place in the world for a lad of spirit. See life
+there; 'glass of fashion and mould of form.' Fond of the play, sir?"
+
+"I never saw one!"
+
+"Possible!" cried the gentleman, dropping the handle of his knife,
+and bringing up the point horizontally: "then, young man," he added
+solemnly, "you have, but I won't say what you have to see. I won't
+say--no, not if you could cover this table with golden guineas, and
+exclaim with the generous ardour so engaging in youth 'Mr Peacock,
+these are yours, if you will only say what I have to see!'"
+
+I laughed outright--may I be forgiven for the boast, but I had the
+reputation at school of a pleasant laugh. The young man's face grew
+dark at the sound: he pushed back his plate and sighed.
+
+"Why," continued his friend, "my companion here, who I suppose is
+about your own age, _he_ could tell you what a play is! he could
+tell you what life is. He has viewed the manners of the town:
+'perused the traders,' as the swan poetically remarks. Have you not,
+my lad, eh?"
+
+Thus directly appealed to, the boy looked up with a smile of scorn
+on his lips. "Yes, I know what life is, and I say that life, like
+poverty, has strange bedfellows. Ask me what life is now, and I say
+a melodrama; ask me what it is twenty years hence, and I shall say--"
+
+"A farce?" put in his comrade.
+
+"No, a tragedy--or comedy as Congreve wrote it."
+
+"And how is that?" I asked, interested and somewhat surprised at the
+tone of my contemporary.
+
+"Where the play ends in the triumph of the wittiest rogue. My friend
+hee has no chance!"
+
+"'Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley,' hem--yes--Hal Peacock maybe
+witty, but he is no rogue."
+
+"That was not exactly my meaning," said the boy dryly.
+
+"'A fico for your meaning,'" as the swan says. "Hallo,
+you, sir! Bully Host, clear the table, fresh tumblers--hot
+water--sugar--lemon, and the bottle's out! Smoke, sir?" and Mr
+Peacock offered me a cigar.
+
+Upon my refusal, he carefully twirled round a very uninviting
+specimen of some fabulous havannah--moistened it all over, as a
+boa-constrictor may do the ox he prepares for deglutition; bit
+off one end, and lighting the other from a little machine for
+that purpose which he drew from his pocket, he was soon absorbed
+in a vigorous effort (which the damp inherent in the weed long
+resisted) to poison the surrounding atmosphere. Therewith, the young
+gentleman, either from emulation or in self-defence, extracted from
+his own pouch a cigar-case of notable elegance, being of velvet,
+embroidered apparently by some fair hand, for "From Juliet" was very
+legibly worked thereon--selected a cigar of better appearance than
+that in favour with his comrade, and seemed quite as familiar with
+the tobacco as he had been with the brandy.
+
+"Fast, sir--fast lad that!" quoth Mr Peacock, in the short gasps
+which his resolute struggle with his uninviting victim alone
+permitted--"nothing but--(puff, puff)--your true--(suck--suck,)
+syl--syl--sylva--does for him. Out, by the Lord! 'the jaws of
+darkness have devoured it up;'" and again Mr Peacock applied to his
+phosphoric machine. This time patience and perseverance succeeded,
+and the heart of the cigar responded by a dull red spark (leaving
+the sides wholly untouched) to the indefatigable ardour of its wooer.
+
+This feat accomplished, Mr Peacock exclaimed triumphantly, "And now
+what say you, my lads, to a game at cards?--three of us--whist and
+a dummy?--nothing better--eh?" As he spoke, he produced from his
+coat-pocket a red silk handkerchief, a bunch of keys, a nightcap,
+a toothbrush, a piece of shaving-soap, four lumps of sugar, the
+remains of a bun, a razor, and a pack of cards. Selecting the last,
+and returning its motley accompaniments to the abyss whence they
+had emerged, he turned up, with a jerk of his thumb and finger, the
+knave of clubs, and, placing it on the top of the rest, slapped the
+cards emphatically on the table.
+
+"You are very good, but I don't know whist," said I.
+
+"Not know whist--not been to a play! not smoke! Then pray tell me,
+young man," (said he majestically, and with a frown,) "what on earth
+you _do_ know!"
+
+Much consternated by this direct appeal, and greatly ashamed of
+my ignorance of the cardinal points of erudition in Mr Peacock's
+estimation, I hung my head, and looked down.
+
+"That is right," renewed Mr Peacock, more benignly; "you have the
+ingenuous shame of youth. It is promising, sir--'lowliness is young
+ambition's ladder,' as the swan says. Mount the first step, and
+learn whist--sixpenny points to begin with."
+
+Notwithstanding my newness in actual life, I had had the good
+fortune to learn a little of the way before me, by those
+much-slandered guides called novels--works which are often to the
+inner world what maps are to the outer; and sundry recollections of
+"Gil Blas" and the "Vicar of Wakefield" came athwart me. I had no
+wish to emulate the worthy Moses, and felt that I might not have
+even the shagreen spectacles to boast of, in my negotiations with
+this new Mr Jenkinson. Accordingly, shaking my head, I called for my
+bill. As I took out my purse--knit by my mother--with one gold piece
+in one corner, and sundry silver ones in the other, I saw that the
+eyes of Mr Peacock twinkled.
+
+"Poor spirit, sir! poor spirit, young man! 'This avarice sticks
+deep,' as the swan beautifully observes. 'Nothing venture, nothing
+have.'"
+
+"Nothing have, nothing venture," I returned, plucking up spirit.
+
+"Nothing have!--Young sir, do you doubt my solidity--my capital--my
+'golden joys?'"
+
+"Sir, I spoke of myself. I am not rich enough to gamble."
+
+"Gamble!" exclaimed Mr Peacock, in virtuous indignation--"Gamble!
+what do you mean, sir? You insult me!" and he rose threateningly,
+and slapped his white hat on his wig.
+
+"Pshaw! let him alone, Hal," said the boy contemptuously. "Sir, if
+he is impertinent, thrash him." (This was to me.)
+
+"Impertinent!--thrash!" exclaimed Mr Peacock, waxing very red; but
+catching the sneer on his companion's lip, he sat down, and subsided
+into sullen silence.
+
+Meanwhile I paid my bill. This duty, rarely a cheerful one,
+performed, I looked round for my knapsack, and perceived that it was
+in the boy's hands. He was very coolly reading the address which, in
+case of accidents, I had prudently placed on it--Pisistratus Caxton,
+Esq., ---- Hotel, ---- Street, --, Strand.
+
+I took my knapsack from him, more surprised at such a breach of
+good manners in a young gentleman who knew life so well, than I
+should have been at a similar error on the part of Mr Peacock. He
+made no apology, but nodded farewell, and stretched himself at full
+length on the bench. Mr Peacock, now absorbed in a game of patience,
+vouchsafed no return to my parting salutation, and in another moment
+I was alone on the high-road. My thoughts turned long upon the young
+man I had left: mixed with a sort of instinctive compassionate
+foreboding of an ill future for one with such habits, and in such
+companionship, I felt an involuntary admiration, less even for his
+good looks than his ease, audacity, and the careless superiority he
+assumed over a comrade so much older than himself.
+
+The day was far gone when I saw the spires of a town at which I
+intended to rest for the night. The horn of a coach behind made me
+turn my head, and, as the vehicle passed me, I saw on the outside
+Mr Peacock, still struggling with a cigar--it could scarcely be
+the same--and his young friend stretched on the roof amongst the
+luggage, leaning his handsome head on his hand, and apparently
+unobservant both of me and every one else.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+I am apt--judging egotistically, perhaps, from my own experience--to
+measure a young man's chances of what is termed practical success in
+life, by what may seem at first two very vulgar qualities; viz., his
+inquisitiveness and his animal vivacity. A curiosity which springs
+forward to examine every thing new to his information--a nervous
+activity, approaching to restlessness, which rarely allows bodily
+fatigue to interfere with some object in view--constitute, in my
+mind, very profitable stock in hand to begin the world with.
+
+Tired as I was, after I had performed my ablutions, and refreshed
+myself in the little coffee-room of the inn at which I put up, with
+the pedestrian's best beverage, familiar and oft-calumniated tea,
+I could not resist the temptation of the broad bustling street,
+which, lighted with gas, shone on me through the dim windows of the
+coffee-room. I had never before seen a large town, and the contrast
+of lamp-lit, busy night in the streets, with sober, deserted night
+in the lanes and fields, struck me forcibly.
+
+I sauntered out, therefore, jostling and jostled, now gazing at
+the windows, now hurried along the tide of life, till I found
+myself before a cook' shop, round which clustered a small knot
+of housewives, citizens, and hungry-looking children. While
+contemplating this group, and marvelling how it comes to pass that
+the staple business of earth's majority is how, when, and where to
+eat, my ear was struck with "'In Troy there lies the scene,' as the
+illustrious Will remarks."
+
+Looking round, I perceived Mr Peacock pointing his stick towards
+an open doorway next to the cook's shop, the hall beyond which was
+lighted with gas, while, painted in black letters on a pane of glass
+over the door, was the word "Billiards."
+
+Suiting the action to the word, the speaker plunged at once into the
+aperture and vanished. The boy-copanion was following more slowly,
+when his eye caught mine. A slight blush came over his dark cheek;
+he stopped, and leaning against the door-jambs, gazed on me hard and
+long before he said--"Well met again, sir! You find it hard to amuse
+yourself in this dull place; the nights are long out of London."
+
+"Oh," said I, ingenuously, "every thing here amuses me; the lights,
+the shops, the crowd; but, then, to me every thing is new."
+
+The youth came from his lounging-place and moved on, as if inviting
+me to walk; while he answered, rather with bitter sullenness, than
+the melancholy his words expressed--
+
+"One thing, at least, cannot be new to you; it is an old truth with
+us before we leave the nursery--'Whatever is worth having must be
+bought; _ergo_, he who cannot buy, has nothing worth having.'"
+
+"I don't think," said I, wisely, "that the things best worth having
+can be bought at all. You see that poor dropsical jeweller standing
+before his shop-door,--his shop is the finest in the street,--and I
+dare say he would be very glad to give it to you or me in return for
+our good health and strong legs. Oh no! I think with my father--'All
+that are worth having are given to all;--that is, nature and
+labour.'"
+
+"Your father says that; and you go by what your father says!
+Of course, all fathers have preached that, and many other good
+doctrines, since Adam preached to Cain; but I don't see that the
+fathers have found their sons very credulous listeners."
+
+"So much the worse for the sons," said I bluntly.
+
+"Nature," continued my new acquaintance, without attending to my
+ejaculation--"nature indeed does give us much, and nature also
+orders each of us how to use her gifts. If nature gave you the
+propensity to drudge, you will drudge; if she gives me the ambition
+to rise, and the contempt for work, I may rise--but I certainly
+shall not work."
+
+"Oh," said I, "you agree with Squills, I suppose, and fancy we are
+all guided by the bumps on our foreheads?"
+
+"And the blood in our veins, and our mother's milk. We inherit other
+things besides gout and consumption. So you always do as your father
+tells you! Good boy!"
+
+I was piqued. Why we should be ashamed of being taunted for
+goodness, I never could understand; but certainly I felt humbled.
+However I answered sturdily--"If you had as good a father as I have,
+you would not think it so very extraordinary to do as he tells you."
+
+"Ah! so he is a very good father, is he! He must have a great trust
+in your sobriety and steadiness to let you wander about the world as
+he does."
+
+"I am going to join him in London."
+
+"In London! Oh, does he live there?"
+
+"He is going to live there for some time."
+
+"Then, perhaps, we may meet. I, too, am going to town."
+
+"Oh, we shall be sure to meet there!" said I, with frank gladness;
+for my interest in the young man was not diminished by his
+conversation, however much I disliked the sentiments it expressed.
+
+The lad laughed, and his laugh was peculiar. It was low, musical,
+but hollow and artificial.
+
+"Sure to meet! London is a large place: where shall you be found?"
+
+I gave him, without scruple, the address of the hotel at which I
+expected to find my father; although his deliberate inspection
+of my knapsack must already have apprised him of that address.
+He listened attentively, and repeated it twice over, as if to
+impress it on his memory; and we both walked on in silence, till,
+turning up a small passage, we suddenly found ourselves in a large
+churchyard,--a flagged path stretched diagonally across it towards
+the market-place, on which it bordered. In this churchyard, upon a
+grave-stone, sat a young Savoyard; his hurdy-gurdy, or whatever else
+his instrument might be called, was on his lap; and he was gnawing
+his crust, and feeding some poor little white mice (standing on
+their hind-legs on the hurdy-gurdy) as merrily as if he had chosen
+the gayest resting-place in the world.
+
+We both stopped. The Savoyard, seeing us, put his arch head on one
+side, showed all his white teeth in that happy smile so peculiar to
+his race, and in which poverty seems to beg so blithely, and gave
+the handle of his instrument a turn.
+
+"Poor child!" said I.
+
+"Aha, you pity him! but why? According to your rule, Mr Caxton, he
+is not so much to be pitied; the dropsical jeweller would give him
+as much for his limbs and health as for ours! How is it--answer me,
+son of so wise a father--that no one pities the dropsical jeweller,
+and all pity the healthy Savoyard? It is, sir, because there is a
+stern truth which is stronger than all Spartan lessons--Poverty _is_
+the master-ill of the world. Look round. Does poverty leave its
+signs over the graves? Look at that large tomb fenced round; read
+that long inscription:--'virtues'--'best of husbands'--'affectionate
+father'--'inconsolable grief'--'sleeps in the joyful hope,' &c., &c.
+Do you suppose these stoneless mounds hide no dust of what were men
+just as good? But no epitaph tells their virtues; bespeaks their
+wives' grief; or promises joyful hope to them!"
+
+"Does it matter? Does God care for the epitaph and tombstone?"
+
+"_Date qualche cosa!_" said the Savoyard, in his touching patois,
+still smiling, and holding out his little hand.
+
+Therein I dropped a small coin. The boy evinced his gratitude by a
+new turn of the hurdy-gurdy.
+
+"That is not labour," said my companion; "and had you found him at
+work, you had given him nothing. I too have my instrument to play
+upon and my mice to see after. Adieu!"
+
+He waved his hand, and strode irreverently over the graves back in
+the direction we had come.
+
+I stood before the fine tomb with its fine epitaph; the Savoyard
+looked at me wistfully.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+The Savoyard looked at me wistfully. I wished to enter into
+conversation with him. That was not easy. However, I began:--
+
+PISISTRATUS.--"You must be often hungry enough, my poor boy. Do the
+mice feed you?"
+
+SAVOYARD puts his head on one side, shakes it, and stroked his mice.
+
+PISISTRATUS.--"You are very fond of the mice; they are your only
+friends, I fear."
+
+SAVOYARD, evidently understanding Pisistratus, rubs his face gently
+against the mice, then puts them softly down on a grave, and gives a
+turn to the hurdy-gurdy. The mice play unconcernedly over the grave.
+
+PISISTRATUS, pointing first to the beasts, then to the
+instrument.--"Which do you like best, the mice or the hurdy-gurdy?"
+
+SAVOYARD shows his teeth--considers--stretches himself on the
+grass--plays with the mice--and answers volubly.
+
+PISISTRATUS, by the help of Latin comprehending that the Savoyard
+says, that the mice are alive and the hurdy-gurdy is not--"Yes, a
+live friend is better than a dead one. Mortua est hurda-gurda!"
+
+SAVOYARD shakes his head vehemently.--"Nô--nô! Eccellenza, non ê
+mortu!" and strikes up a lively air on the slandered instrument. The
+Savoyard's face brightens--he looks happy: the mice run from the
+grave into his bosom.
+
+PISISTRATUS, affected.--"Have you a father--An vivat pater?"
+
+SAVOYARD, with his face overcast.--"Nô--eccellenza!" then pausing
+a little, he says briskly, "Si-Si!" and plays a solemn air on the
+hurdy-gurdy--stops--rests one hand on the instrument, and raises the
+other to heaven.
+
+PISISTRATUS understands.--"The father is like the hurdy-gurdy, at
+once dead and living. The mere form is a dead thing, but the music
+lives." Pisistratus drops another small piece of silver on the
+ground, and turns away.
+
+"God help and God bless thee, Savoyard. Thou hast done Pisistratus
+all the good in the world. Thou hast corrected the hard wisdom of
+the young gentleman in the velveteen jacket; Pisistratus is a better
+lad for having stopped to listen to thee."
+
+I regained the entrance to the churchyard--I looked back--there sate
+the Savoyard, still amidst men's graves, but under God's sky. He was
+still looking at me wistfully, and when he caught my eye, he pressed
+his hand to his heart, and smiled. "God help and God bless thee,
+young Savoyard."
+
+
+
+
+REPUBLICAN FRANCE.
+
+JUNE 1848.
+
+
+How far is the application to France, of the epithet employed in the
+title that heads these pages, a misnomer? This is a question that
+would be answered very differently by those who study its state of
+feeling, and those who judge its position by mere established fact.
+That the fact and the feeling are completely at issue throughout
+the country, is undoubted, indisputable. A republican government
+has been established by the _coup de main_ of a small minority in
+France--has been accepted by the hesitation of surprise--has been
+maintained by the desire of peace and order:--so far goes fact.
+Republican principles were hateful to the immense majority of
+the country at large in the past, uncongenial to its habits and
+sentiments, impossible according to its views; they are productive,
+as yet, of nothing but confusion, distress, ruin, riot, and
+mistrust, in the present; they are looked upon with alarm as regards
+their results in the future:--so much for feeling. Fact and feeling,
+then, are at variance and in collision. The result of the conflict
+lies hidden in the mysteries of that future, the issue of which, at
+no epoch of history, perhaps, clearseeing eyes and wise foreseeing
+heads could less pretend to predict, than in the present chaotic
+hurly-burly of European society. The politicians who declared that
+the general spirit of the country in France was, in their vague and
+fantastic language of the Chamber, _centre-gauche_, or the advocate
+of liberal progress, may have been very right,--but republican it
+never was, republican it is not. Republican--without pretension
+to the audacity of a prediction but just stated as impossible--it
+certainly does not as yet appear ever likely to become.
+
+In its present state of feeling, then, France--that is to say,
+the country, the provinces, the departments, or whatever France,
+out of Paris, may be called--is about as much genuine republican,
+as a white man who suddenly finds his face smeared over with the
+contents of a blacking-bottle is a genuine negro. But, for the sake
+of avoiding that confusion of terms and ideas in which the French
+themselves are so fond of indulging, to an extent that proves the
+deification of "the vague" to take far higher flights among them,
+especially in their republican tenets, than any flown by confused
+German head,--let it be taken as a rule, that fact is to have the
+precedence of feeling, as in most matters in the world,--and let it
+be supposed that the misnomer is no misnomer, that there has been no
+mistake, in truth, in the title of "Republican France."
+
+Between France out of Paris and France in Paris, a great
+distinction, in speaking of the country, must always be drawn;
+although, in the matter of republicanism in the feelings of the
+mass, the same blacking-bottle remark might be applied to the
+majority of the citizens of the capital, as to the country at large.
+No family of grown-up daughters, who have been tyrannically kept
+in the nursery like children when they no longer felt themselves
+such, and made to wear mamma's worn-out dresses scantily cut down
+to their shapes, could be more sundered in feeling from their
+lady-mother, and jealous of her overgrown charms, her gaiety, her
+splendour, and her power, than the departments,--kept in the nursery
+upon centralisation system, and fed upon the bread-and-milk of
+insignificance,--are of the tyrannical supremacy, the overweening
+superiority, and the disdainful airs, affected to her despised
+progeny by Mother Paris. The pursuance of the concentrating system
+has thus produced an estrangement in the family,--a jealousy and
+spite on the one hand, a greater and increasing assumption of airs
+of supremacy on the other. The family ties between Paris and France
+are as wholly disunited as family ties can be, in the necessities
+of a more or less intimate connexion: the mother has isolated, in
+her despotism, herself from her children, the children have imbibed
+distrust and envy of the mother. The consequence is, that there
+are two distinct families in feeling,--there are two Frances; there
+is the France of Paris, of Paris that asserts its right to be all
+France, and the France of the departments, that, in spite of the
+assertions of Paris, desire to put in their little claim for a
+small share in the name, and would like to have their own little
+fingers in the pies of revolutions, and changes of government in
+the family, that mamma cooks up. True, they are supposed to eat at
+the same table, but mamma has all the tit-bits. They have a voice
+in the family council, but it is when mamma has already issued
+her _dictum_, and declared that such and such things shall be as
+she has decided it. They help to support the family establishment
+with the moneys which mamma declares they must contribute out of
+their heritage; but then mamma, they declare, spends a most undue
+proportion upon herself, in dressing herself out with finery,
+keeping up an unnecessary state, and throwing away the sums confided
+to her to overpay a throng of unruly onhangers, with all the
+prodigality of fear; while they, the poor daughters, are made to put
+up with cast-off finery, and to be thwarted and twitted by harsh
+governesses, and to fight, as best they may, with an obstreperous
+herd of unpaid pensioners, which mamma's mismanagement has excited
+to uproar; and then, after all, to kiss hands and thank mamma for
+whatever they can get,--scanty sugar-plums and many cuffs. Is this
+to be endured? The children grumble much, and particularly since
+mamma has chosen to make changes in the direction of the household
+establishment of which they by no means approve, and has only
+produced confusion and disorder in it. But at present they can do no
+more than grumble; mamma has the rod, and they know that she will
+use it; mamma has the supreme influence, and habit makes them think
+they must abide by it. There is no doubt, at the same time, that the
+children and parent would unite in a common bond of union were the
+family honour to be asserted against an attack from any adversary
+to the family out of the house. Their intestine jealousies would be
+forgotten for the time, for the maintenance of the common good--a
+fancied good; for, after all, mother and daughters have the same
+blood, the same temperr and character, the same vain-glory, conceit,
+and irritability, the same strong prejudices of ignorance; and
+they would join hands and clamour together in the same opposition
+to the stranger. But this common-cause making, upon occasions of
+extraordinary pressure from without, detracts nothing, at other
+times, from the mistrust, jealousy, and angry susceptibility of the
+children in internal affairs. In moments of family crisis, will
+matters always go on as heretofore?
+
+Nurseries will be obstreperous sometimes, and children will revolt,
+and mammas may pass very uncomfortable moments in the face of angry
+daughters in rebellion. Will the children take upon themselves,
+at last, to protest against mamma's disdainful commands, and
+assert a will of their own, and a right to think for themselves?
+This question is one upon the solution of which depends the fate
+of France, as well as upon the many thousand chances which the
+capricious and ever-shifting gales of a revolutionary atmosphere
+may, at any moment, suddenly blow, like a spark into a powder
+barrel, shattering the face of the past, and changing the direction
+of the future. Twice already, since the revolution of February,
+has the question been nearly answered in the affirmative. The last
+instance, of which more anon, may be taken as a striking proof that
+the children may possibly not always submit to the dictates of the
+mother,--that family mistrust may break out into family quarrel,
+and family quarrel in nations is civil war. Who again, however,
+may venture to predict what shall be the destinies of Republican
+France,--what web of darkness or of light, of blood-streaked stuff
+or of gold-threaded tissue, it may be weaving with its agitated and
+troubled hands, or what force it may interpose to tear the work to
+shreds before it be even yet completed? Most may fear, none may say.
+But prediction, upon whatever cunning foresight it may be based,
+must always call a sort of feeling of inspiration, nearly allied to
+superstition, to its aid: and thus the fanciful mind may, without
+taking upon itself the airs of a Pythoness, give way to a little
+superstition, and yet, perhaps, be not too strongly condemned of
+folly. There exists an old prophecy in France, emanating from a monk
+of the middle ages, the authenticity of which cannot be doubted, or,
+at all events, cannot be disputed, in as far as it was in well-known
+existence at the commencement of this century. It predicts, in
+mystic language,--dark, it is true, but wonderfully clear after
+its verification,--all the many revolutionary changes that have
+taken place in France, and now once more proclaims the reign of the
+"sons of Brutus." "Armed men," it distinctly says, "will march upon
+the doomed city," "sword and fire will prevail against it," "the
+wolves will devour each other." May the seeming superstition of a
+fantastical question be pardoned! May not these words refer to the
+future outbreak of the provinces of France against the capital? If
+they do, in what sense, with what tendencies, to forward the views
+of what party, may it be? Be that as it may, however, it is not the
+obscure future that is dealt with here, but the present confused and
+uncertain state of Republican France.
+
+As it may be inferred from what has been said, Paris, then, has put
+on its crown, as capital, to some purpose. Never did despot assert
+his right to dictate his autocratic will to serfs and slaves more
+authoritatively than does revolutionary and republican Paris to
+the provinces of France. No three-tailed Bashaw of old melodrams
+could be more imperative in his ordinances, more arrogant in the
+conviction of the indisputability of his will. The bare supposition
+that the provinces could have a will of their own would strike
+Paris dumb with astonishment. Paris has been accustomed to consider
+itself not only as the heart, but the head, and the arms and legs
+to boot, of the whole country. The inert body has no more, in its
+consideration, to do, than allow itself to be fed with what scanty
+morsels of bounty and importance Paris may choose to afford, and
+then not to dare to grumble afterwards if the food prove unsavoury
+to its tastes, or indigestible to its susceptibilities. Paris is
+"Sir Oracle," and, when it speaks, no provincial "dog dare bark."
+Paris, thus, is the great type of the mainspring of the national
+character,--which works sometimes, we allow, for good as well
+as for evil:--namely, of that mixture of vanity and overweening
+conceit, which may be found at the bottom of almost every action
+of the French. It calls itself "the great capital of the civilised
+world;" and thus considers that, although the departments may be
+admitted to the reflected rays of lustre that emanate from its
+superior glory, they must look upon themselves as mere satellites,
+created to revolve at its liking and its high will, and perform
+their revolutions in whatever direction it deems fit to make its
+own revolution. Let it not be supposed that this representation
+is exaggerated, or that it proceeds from the distorted views of a
+foreigner. Hear the Parisian himself speak; list to his expressions
+of contempt for those unknown and barbarous regions called
+departments; mark how he asserts the unutterable superiority of
+his Parisian essence; see how he tosses his head and curls his lip
+with an infinitely aristocratic air, when he condescends to notice
+them with a word; and never was Paris more eager in the maintenance
+of its tyrannical supremacy; never was it more despotically and
+autocratically disposed; never more aristocratic, to use the pet
+phrase of the day, than under the rule of _soi-disant_ liberty, and
+of liberty of opinion, above all other liberties proclaimed by the
+French republic.
+
+What were the expressions of the first republican minister of the
+interior, that type of republican exclusiveness and despotism, in
+his famous and rather too famous _bulletins de la republique_,
+issued to all France as the language and opinions of the government
+of the day? Paris, they informed the world, was the heart of France,
+from which all life and living principle emanated, through which
+every drop of the country's blood must flow, in order that it might
+beat in unison, and be refreshed with true republican vitality.
+Paris, they said again, was the hand that had created and fashioned
+the republic, and that was to direct its steps, lead it vigorously
+forward in its way--as it was the head that conceived, it was the
+hand that executed: it was more than all this, it was the _soul_
+of France--the pure and true essence emanating from the new deity,
+the republic. Paris, they asserted in as many direct words, was
+the mistress whose will was to be obeyed. It is unnecessary to
+point out how little such declarations were in accordance with
+republican principles, what little affinity they had with the three
+great watchwords of the day, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."
+Republicanism in France, according to those old traditions, to which
+those who call themselves the only true and pure republicans seem
+always to be looking back as the only true and pure models for their
+admiration and imitation, was always based upon despotism, supported
+by constraint, compulsion, violence, and even terrorism; and the
+first efforts of modern republicanism were evidently exerted to
+place their old, newfangled, statue of bastard liberty upon the same
+heterogeneous pedestal. The instructions of the same Bashaw-minister
+to the emissaries whom he despatched as Bashaws of lesser and fewer
+tails into the provinces, to see that they were duly disposed to
+fall down and worship the Goddess Republic, that had been set up,
+were modelled after the same and still rougher fashion.
+
+The missionaries were invested with autocratic powers to make
+and unmake according to their own autocratic will; to send away
+functionaries who might appear lukewarm in the cause; to put
+in their places such acolytes as might better serve the altars
+of the goddess, and to offer up sacrifices to her, civil and
+military, judicial and political, as they might think pleasing
+to the divinity, or convenient and agreeable to their own hates
+and prejudices. They were particularly requested to _travailler_
+the country, to torture it, as the French phrase goes; and were
+taught, if they could not hammer the hard and unbending metal of
+departmental feeling to the shape they fancied, just gently to
+make the iron red-hot with the fire of terrorism, and then twist
+it to the suitable form. How well the workmen, in many instances,
+performed the task--how well they employed the fiery passions of the
+mob to produce the desired red-hot effect, and then strike--is a
+matter of historical fact.
+
+In the elections for the National Assembly, the same dogmas of
+republican religion were strenuously enforced. No emissaries of
+the Inquisition ever used more moral violence to propagate a faith
+among suspected schismatics, than did these ministers of republican
+despotism to enforce the full, entire, and uttermost doctrines
+of their creed, even to the minutest articles. Where the moral
+influence appeared unlikely to penetrate as deeply into men's
+hearts as was desired, other and more direct methods were adopted
+to make entire converts; and, when these methods were found too
+mild to work the intended effect, and purge the land of moderatism
+and anti-whole-hog-ism, another stronger and more racking dose
+was administered: the mob was excited to overawe with threat and
+terrorism, and, where it could not prevent, to destroy. How should
+the departments dare to have a will of their own? The rebellious
+children were to be whipped like schoolboys into learning their
+lessons of pure and undefiled republicanism, and reciting them
+as Master Commissioner taught them; there was no better rod in
+pickle for such naughty urchins than the scourge of the fury of a
+mob, carefully taught another lesson, and one it was not slow of
+learning--namely, that it was master, and must constrain obedience
+to its will; while, in fact, itself obeyed the influence, and
+was the instrument of the master-spirit that ruled up above, and
+made the best, or rather the worst use of its rule. That all
+these measures failed in a great measure--those of violence as
+well as those of moral constraint--is attributable to a variety
+of complicated reasons, connected with the present state of the
+departments; and the how and why they failed, will be the subject of
+a few considerations presently.
+
+What, again, were the expressions of the more violent and so-called
+only true republican party in the capital, proceeding from its
+organs, the clubs, upon the same occasion of the elections? To all
+the candidates who presented themselves before them, the same
+question was propounded. If, when the votes of all France were
+taken, it should be found that the departments declared themselves
+averse to the establishment of a republic, what would be the duty
+they would have to perform,--what steps would they take? Those who
+did not declare that they would turn against that National Assembly,
+of which they themselves might then be members, and take up arms
+to march upon it, were denounced as traitors to their country,
+unworthy of the votes of true men, and hooted from the tribune, in
+which they had dared to stand forward as future representatives of
+the people. It would have been in vain to insinuate to these good
+gentlemen, that, in the application of the principle of universal
+suffrage, in which every man was not only an elector, but eligible
+as representative, the voice of the majority would be the voice of
+all France; and that it was for all France, by the voice of its
+majority, to decide upon the form of government best suited to all
+France. In vain, indeed. The ready answer would invariably have
+been--that Paris was the mistress of France, and had a right to
+dictate its will; that Paris had made the revolution, and that,
+consequently, Paris was privileged to support the principles of
+that revolution, and to arrogate to itself all its advantages: that
+the country at large, in fact, had nothing to do but to give in its
+approval, and be happy that its concurrence was so far demanded, and
+that, should it dare to have an opinion of its own, woe betide it!
+All this insolent bombast of the ultra party in Paris might have
+been spared, however; the cause of "Paris _v._ the Departments" was
+never called into the court of the country. The departments had
+accepted the establishment of the republic as a _fait accompli_:
+they never desired to subvert the new order of things by another
+convulsion, that would have plunged the country, already so
+miserable, into an increase of misery; but they protested in favour
+of a republic of peace and order, upon moderate principles; and,
+lo and behold, Paris itself combined with them in this desire. The
+disappointed party of the directing master-spirits of Paris have
+been none the less furious in their expressions of contempt for
+the openly declared will of all France. They had long kicked down
+their idol of universal suffrage with disdain, as soon as they had
+found that, in spite of all the hidden machinery they had set to
+work in it, the idol had not obeyed their will, or declared their
+oracles. Universal suffrage they pronounced a hoax: constraint,
+tyranny, anarchy, conspiracy, civil war, were proclaimed by them
+the only true elements of the only true republic. Frantic with
+disappointment at the result of their own manœuvres, by which they
+had been caught in their own toils, they seized upon the pretext
+of sympathy in the sorrows of another country; and, aided by the
+treachery of certain of their own party in authority, invaded the
+obnoxious Assembly, overthrew the government for an hour, and
+proclaimed a terrorist government of their own. Foiled again in
+this audacious attempt, _foiled at least for the time being_, they
+now endeavoured to patch up the shaking soil that has given way
+beneath their feet, and plunged their leaders into a quagmire, and
+to build new foundations for fresh aggressions upon the discontent
+of a part of the working-classes. For this purpose they have taken
+two newfangled tools into their hands, the one of impulsion, the
+other of repulsion--the one of enthusiasm, the other of alarm; and
+both are so vaguely fashioned, and of so unintelligible a nature,
+that the real fact of their existence can never be proved, although
+their use, their purpose, and their design, in the hands of these
+men, are very clear. The one of these tools is a bugbear, a phantom,
+a bogie, to which they endeavour to give as terrific an aspect
+as possible, in order to fright ignorant men over into their own
+ranks. This evil spirit, they declare, has an existence, although
+no one ever saw it, no one ever felt it, no one ever knew where it
+dwells. No superstitious people was ever endeavoured to be worked
+up into a more irrefragable belief of some mysterious demon that
+haunts them in dark woods and obscure places to devour them--nor,
+generally, with more complete success over the credulous; for fear
+is the most powerful agent over the minds of the masses, and more
+especially when the fear is of the unknown and mysterious: and
+certainly no demon was ever described with a more hideous or blacker
+face. This bogie, phantom, bugbear, is a supposed influence called
+"Reaction." No precise form is given to it, for that would be to
+deprive it of more than half its terrors. No! _onme ignotum pro
+terribili_ is the policy. Nothing can be more vague or indefinite
+than this same monster, Reaction; it remains an Ossianic cloudlike
+spectre, floating no one knows whence, but bringing death and
+pestilence in its train. If the working-classes suffer, it is the
+Reaction, they are told, that is the cause of all their sufferings.
+If all their exactions, however exorbitant and impossible, _are not
+conceded at once_, it is because that horrible Reaction labours
+that their just demands should be withheld. If the most violent of
+their own body are not elected as the true representatives of the
+people, it is because that pestilential Reaction has cast a spell
+over the minds of all the electors. The Reaction has also, potent
+demon although it be, all the freaks and caprices of a lesser imp;
+it performs the strangest and most incomprehensible feats,--for
+if a discontented mass of workmen revolt unsuccessfully, and gain
+not their ends, it was the Reaction again that was the cause of
+all. The Reaction, for its own vile reactionary purposes, it was,
+that treacherously induced them to revolt, when they themselves
+were naturally inclined to be the most peaceable, contented, and
+the least exorbitant people on the earth. See how perfidious,
+Machiavelic, and Jesuitical, is this horrible monster Reaction! Pity
+it is that, in order to establish the fact of its real existence,
+it should not as yet have made itself visible to mortal eyes in any
+incarnate form! The Reaction is, however, no less, men are told,
+the enemy of the republic, the adversary of all true republican
+principles, labouring ever to overthrow it; above all, the enemy
+of the people and the people's interests, their undermining
+serpent, their secret assassin. It is already sapping, unseen,
+the foundations of the republic, and it intends to pull down the
+ruins of that august structure upon the heads of the people, and
+crush it for ever beneath them. In spite of the infinite harm
+worked upon the spirit of the lower classes by the establishment
+of the belief in this phantom, there would, perhaps, be no real
+danger in the effect produced by the clamours of insensate ultra
+journals, the preachings of agitating demagogues, and the insidious
+insinuations of anarchist _meneurs_ among the crowd, did not certain
+members of the government itself, and some of those in authority,
+render themselves parties concerned to the propagation of the
+belief, either genuinely, from having been themselves carefully
+inoculated with the _virus_ of false fear, until they have really
+taken the disease, or designedly, for the advancement of their
+own purposes--did they not, in fact, throw a sop continually to
+mob-lecturers, by insinuating their own conviction in the existence
+of "bogie" by their decrees, edicts, and proclamations, and, when
+they are called to put down anarchy, never obey without crying
+"Reaction" at the same time, and vainly giving the phantom a
+slap on the face. As it is--and herein lies the evil--the people
+are taught that the National Assembly, as it is now constituted,
+is the concentrated essence of the spirit of Reaction--that the
+representatives of the people, with but few exceptions, are the
+ministering imps in a visible form of the invisible demon. If a
+word of reason is spoken in the Assembly against the clamours of
+unreasonable demand--"Look ye there! reaction!" is the cry; if it
+prepares safe measures of repression against the open efforts of
+anarchy--"reaction;" if it defends its own existence against the
+subversive attempts of conspirators--"reaction;" if it attempts
+to establish the republic upon a firm and solid, but moderate
+basis--"reaction;" if it does any thing--"reaction;" if it does
+nothing--"reaction;" if it cannot perform impossible wonders for the
+amelioration and prosperity of the lower working-classes,--at which,
+however, it labours most hard,--"reaction--reaction--reaction; the
+reaction of aristocratic feeling--the reaction of ill will--the
+reaction of indifference and indolence;" thereby always meaning
+reaction against the true republic, and its true representatives,
+the lower classes. The phantom Reaction is thus used as a tool
+by a wild and violent party against the present order of things;
+against the moderate majority of the Assembly more particularly;
+against all things and all men not suiting its views, its schemes,
+its dreams, and its ambitions; and the bugbear is not ill got up to
+scare the credulous of the lower classes more completely into the
+toils of the malcontents, with the fear that reaction really may
+destroy that idol from which they have been taught to expect all
+the good gifts of "roasted larks," for which they have only to open
+their mouths, and "showers of gold," for which they have only to
+stretch forth their hands--that idol that has been lacquered over
+with the false gilding of delusive promises by imprudent rulers, and
+which the many still fancy to be all of solid gold--in a word, the
+Republic. The reaction, in truth, exists not, or exists not in the
+manner that people would be led to believe. If it exists, it is in
+the disgust of the more laborious and less tumultuous of the lower
+classes themselves, who, in their increasing misery, would be happy
+to accept the Lama of Thibet, or any other abstraction, with an
+absolute government, in the place of the false idol of their hopes,
+that has as yet only deluded them into greater misery-- it is in the
+reactionary cry of the wretched, who call for "King Log," or any
+other senseless ruler that would bring with it peace, and order, and
+a hope of well-being.
+
+The other tool employed by the designing malcontents--that of
+impulsion--is the banner upon which is inscribed "_Republique
+Democratique_." We have a republic, it is true, they say, but not
+the republic of our wishes. This is only a mere republic like any
+other: we want a democratic republic, and the democratic republic is
+taken from us; but the democratic republic we must and will have.
+Ask them what they mean by their "_republique democratique_," they
+will not be able to inform you. They launch into phrases which are
+but phrases: they lose themselves in a cloudy confusion of terms and
+ideas: they pretend to give you vague and chaotic explanations, that
+are no explanations at all: they know not themselves what they mean.
+Universal suffrage upon its broadest basis, with all the rights
+and privileges thereto attached, in their most democratic sense,
+is no democratic republic according to their view. What is? Who
+can tell?--certainly not they. "They have clamoured for the moon,"
+says a wit of the day, "and the moon has been given them; and now
+they cry, 'we are betrayed; we wanted the sun, and the sun we will
+have.' But have a care! the sun will blind your eyes, my friends,
+and you will stagger in still greater darkness; the sun will burn
+your fingers, and you will smart beneath the blisters. But they heed
+not; they still clamour for the sun." At all events, the banner on
+which flaunts aloft the words--"_Republique démocratique_" is a good
+rallying banner for all malcontents, a good banner under which to
+enlist the unwary among their ranks. It is a cry, a clamour, and all
+the more enticing because it is vague, unexplained, mysterious in
+its fresh promises of some fancied good that has not yet arrived,
+full of the great and alluring unknown. Thus it serves a purpose.
+
+But to return from this long digression upon the efforts of
+subversive parties, to the state of feeling that subsists in
+Republican France between its now well-sorted and divided
+elements--Paris and the provinces.
+
+What are, again, the expressions used by the lower classes with
+regard to the departments? what the feelings they express? Ever
+the same. Paris, they declare, makes, has made, and will make all
+the revolutions of the country. Paris, consequently, is all in
+all in France: Paris is the mistress, and the queen, the supreme
+arbitress of the destinies of France: Paris must be obeyed in all
+its wishes and its high will. What were the words of the workmen of
+the national workshops, in a late revolt, to the Minister of Public
+Works? They were told that there was no longer any work for them in
+the capital, that their pretended labour was an irony of labour,
+that the country paid them for doing nothing, and that they were
+eating the bread of idleness under the name of work: they were told
+that they were to be dispersed in the provinces, to be employed
+upon great works of public utility--upon railroads and canals, that
+stood still for want of hands: while money was lavishly promised
+them for this work, which the treasury could no longer afford upon
+unproductive labour. What was their answer? That they, the people,
+had made the revolution in Paris, that they were the masters of
+Paris, that Paris was theirs, to work in it their work; that, as
+masters of Paris, they were not to be bid leave it; that leave it
+they would not; that if labour failed, money must be found them at
+all events, or they would find means of taking it; in short, that
+they would not be _degraded_ by being sent into the provinces. The
+workmen of Paris claim, then, to be the masters of the capital, and
+still more, in their esteem, the masters of all France. The people
+of Paris, then, is _the_ people; it owns no other. Now the people,
+in modern republican phrase, and alas! in government decrees also,
+is by no means the nation; it means the lower classes alone. The
+people, it has been previously declared, is the sovereign people,
+whose voice is the voice of God; then, they reply, by the simplest
+reasoning, the sovereign people, whose voice is the voice of
+God--it is alone we: it is the lower classes. But there is still
+another deduction to be drawn. Among the lower classes it is only
+the active, the stirring, the discontented, the disorderly and
+tumultuous, who come forward in evidence as the representatives of
+this people. And thus it is very clear that the sovereign people,
+whose voice is the voice of God, the sovereign of France, is a small
+body of uneducated, misled, and wrong-headed men in the capital.
+So stands the account in theory. And who can deny that, in theory,
+they are in truth the masters? Who shall say when the chances of
+revolutionary struggles may not make them so in fact?
+
+So stands the state of feeling on the side of Paris--how stands it
+on the other side?
+
+When the revolution of February broke out, the departments scarcely
+knew themselves, their wishes, or their feelings. They had no
+mutual understanding. They were taken by surprise. They had not
+the time to consult their sentiments. Notoriously anti-republican
+as has been shown to have been the spirit of all France in the
+departments, they accepted, however, from old habit, the _dictum_
+of Paris: they accepted, as has been before remarked, from that
+species of resignation shown in France to a _fait accompli_: they
+accepted from a wish to avoid all further convulsion, from a love
+of established order in whatever shape it might come--from a hope
+that, whatever the form of government proclaimed and imposed upon
+the country, all would "go well." And besides, the republic, they
+were told, was only a provisional form of government at a moment
+of crisis, when no other could be adopted: upon its future form of
+government, the country, it was said, was to be freely consulted:
+the provinces were not prepared for the ulterior _dictum_ of Paris,
+that, without consulting the nation at all, the republic was to be
+considered as definitive; and that those who desired a change would
+be regarded as traitors to their country. But France is not what it
+was; it is enlightened by the experience of successive revolutions.
+The jealousy of the departments, towards despotic Paris had long
+been boiling in men's hearts: it did not at first boil over; but
+when, instead of order and peace, the provinces found that the
+new government produced only results of disorder, animosity, and
+ruin, the departments began to grumble and murmur openly--for the
+first time they seemed determined to show that they ought to have,
+and would have, a will of their own. In the commencement all was
+tranquil. In some parts of France the republic was accepted, if
+not with that enthusiasm which lying Parisian papers would have
+induced the world to believe, at all events with a species of
+contentment, arising from the trust that a more equitable popular
+government would relieve the mass from some of those charges
+which weighed so heavily upon them under the former government,
+and remove constraints that were painful to them. In other parts,
+there prevailed a sort of sullen resignation to the establishment
+of a _régime_ which was dreaded from an experience of a hateful
+past, and was repulsive to its tastes--but it was a resignation to
+the _fait accompli_. Some thus hoped, and others feared; but all
+combined in assuming an attitude of quiet expectation.
+
+In this state was France, when an imprudent Minister of the
+Interior, pushed on by ambitious, designing, misguided, and reckless
+men, sent down as a scourge upon the country those commissaries
+of obnoxious memory, who were publicly charged to work their will
+upon the departments as they pleased, by the means they pleased, by
+whatever oppressive or repressive measures they pleased, provided
+they worked the suspected and mistrusted departments into a proper
+feeling of true republican principle, according to the most ultra
+traditional doctrines of old republicanism. Down upon the country
+came the autocratic commissaries with these instructions; and,
+in too many instances, with the best intentions of torturing and
+tormenting the country, after their own fashion and according
+to their own views, to their heart's content. Down they came,
+with their history of the first republic in their heads, and the
+desire in their hearts of emulating the zeal of those fearful
+representatives of the people of the last century, who ruled in the
+departments, each a petty, but a bloody tyrant. To all alike the
+same violence of disposition must not be attributed: there were a
+few more prudent and better-thinking men among the number--although
+they, in certain instances, were afterwards accused in high quarters
+of mild laxity, and recalled as suspected of moderatism; but the
+many were evidently disposed to play the tyrant to the life, in
+their desperate measures to twist the country to their will. The
+times, however, were changed; the spirit of the age no longer
+permitted of the same violence. _Messieurs les Commissaires_ could
+not well proceed by the old-established and expeditious method of
+cementing the foundations of republics, one and indivisible, by
+blood, or erecting the scaffolding of the edifice on scaffolds.
+Shootings, drownings, and guillotinings were instruments rather
+too rough to be accepted by the manners of the time. But they
+had other means in their power, and according to the tenor of
+their instructions, which they thought to use, and attempted to
+use, with just as much effect. They dismissed functionaries in
+wholesale numbers--put their creatures, or those who cringed and
+worshipped, in their places, with orders to brow-beat and bully
+the recalcitrant, and with the exhibition of high example before
+their eyes. They threatened and accused; and when these means
+failed, according to their fancy, or when they were too mild for
+the taste of Master Commissary, the other underhand instruments
+of terrorism, already mentioned, were employed to make men crouch
+and tremble. The manner in which mobs have been excited against
+the better classes, or those who were suspected of moderatism, by
+manœuvres unequivocally traced to the agency of the commissaries
+themselves, and the frightful excesses committed, are matters
+of common notoriety and of newspaper history. The scenes of the
+old Revolution were resorted to, although in another form; and
+not only supposed anti-republican sentiment, but moderatism,
+was endeavoured to be kept down by agents of terror, and the
+ever-ready riotous populations of the great towns. It would be an
+endless and a useless task to re-transcribe all the scenes of the
+violence of an insensate mob, secretly got up by the republican
+agents in authority, more than secretly connived at, and openly
+and avowedly excused and applauded. The rod that the commissary
+himself could not prudently employ, he placed in the hands of a
+designedly inflamed and infuriated people, to scourge the country
+to his will. One of the strongest instances, however, may be found
+in that state of continual terror on the one hand, and violence
+on the other, which for many long weeks hung over the head of the
+doomed city of Lyons. See there the mob constituting itself into
+illegally armed bodies, sundered from and inimical to the national
+guards, assuming names, such as _les voraces_ and _les dévorants_,
+by which they themselves marked their character, ruling the whole
+city of Lyons by fear; exacting, spoliating, arresting _suspects_
+at will; searching the houses of quiet inhabitants under the
+pretext of conspiracies against the republic that did not exist,
+and of concealed arms, such as they themselves illegally bore,
+that never could be found; dragging trembling priests from the
+altar to be confined in cellars, because they were suspected of
+anti-republicanism; laying their hands upon church plate as the
+property of traitors; liberating prisoners arrested for revolt
+and disorder--arresting the magistrates who had condemned them;
+dictating their orders to military officers for the release of
+soldiers put under restraint; pulling a general from his horse,
+and nearly immolating him to the wrath of their high justice in
+the streets; commanding the fortresses, making barricades at the
+least opposition to their will, domineering over the whole city as
+masters--a herd of power-intoxicated savages--and the commissary
+looking on, applauding, sanctioning their deeds, rubbing his hands
+with satisfaction, and approving them with the words "_Allez, mes
+enfans! vous faites bien!_" Such scenes as these, carried to the
+utmost limits of anarchy and excess in Lyons, have been exhibited
+also in almost all the great towns of France, with all the effect of
+well-applied terrorism. There is scarcely one that has not similar
+outrages, from the violence of an excited mob, to lay to the charge
+of him who was set in authority over them--to work his will, so
+said the letter of his instructions--but to preserve peace and
+order, in a country where convulsions, collisions, and commotions
+were so infinitely to be dreaded and avoided--so should his duty
+have told him. It ought to be said, at the same time, that the
+acknowledged authorities of the government were aided in their high
+revolutionary mission, and in the extraordinary means they employed
+in its execution, by less acknowledged agents, in the persons of
+emissaries from the violent ultra clubs of Paris; who, arrogating to
+themselves the right to the true expression of the only true feeling
+of Paris--and consequently, _à fortiori_, of all France--racked the
+country with their manœuvres, their excitements to violence, their
+bullying threats and intimidations. Unacknowledged by government
+authority as they were, however, their missions were bestowed
+on them by the quondam friends and fellow-conspirators, under
+the former reign of the Minister of the Interior; their expenses
+were supported by funds, supplied no one could say by what hand,
+although most might divine; their measures were evidently taken
+in accordance, and in perfectly good understanding, with the
+departmental commissary.
+
+What, however, was the result? The very reverse from that intended
+by _Messieurs les Commissaires_ and their supporter, the Minister
+of the Interior. They over-reached themselves, and worked the very
+effect they attempted to exterminate. Instead of subjugating the
+departments to their will of ultra-republicanism by the violence
+of terrorism, they almost roused the whole better feeling of the
+country, at first quietly disposed and resigned, against the very
+principles of republicanism in general. The sentiment at first
+accepted was soured and embittered; the discontent and aversion
+daily increased; and it was more than once openly affirmed that
+the departments were ready to revolt, and formed the design of
+marching upon Paris. That this subject was actually discussed in
+large, and not even secret meetings in the provinces--and even in
+such as had been always considered ultra-liberal and democratic
+in their opinions, as parts of Normandy, for instance--admits of
+but little doubt; and this feeling, although it was never actually
+embodied in any living and active fact of resistance, may be taken
+as one example in support of the opinion, that the children may
+not always prove so submissive to the dictates of the mother,
+and may one day raise their voices and hold forth their hands to
+dispute her will. The open and general outbreak of the provinces,
+which was at one time expected, and was the common topic of
+conversation in Paris, was suppressed, however, by the influence
+of the better-thinking and more prudential men in the country. But
+the feeling of opposition and resistance did not fail to manifest
+itself in minor demonstrations. Expostulations were at first
+made against the tyranny and the inflammatory manœuvres of the
+government commissaries; then broke out angry remonstrances on the
+part of the _bourgeoisie_, backed by the better and quieter of the
+working-classes; and at last, when all these more legitimate means
+failed, the populations of several of the larger towns rose against
+the provisional despot, who played the autocrat and the tyrant in
+the name of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."
+
+The national guards took up arms to demand the revocation and
+the departure of the obnoxious commissary. The commissary, in
+opposition, acted the self-same part of which a despotic king
+has since been so violently accused by the republican journals.
+As Ferdinand of Naples is said to have excited the dregs of the
+populace, the lazzaroni, to aid him in a reactionary movement in his
+favour, so did even the republican commissary after the self-same
+system. He caused the mob to be roused to his assistance, as to that
+of the only true democratic friend of the people; he called upon
+them to take up arms and combat in his defence: the lazzaroni mob of
+the departments was the weapon he wielded to overcome the resistance
+of the majority to his will. In most instances the recalcitrant part
+of the provincial populations prevailed. In several of the larger
+towns, as in Bordeaux, Bourges, and many others, the commissary was
+obliged to take to flight: in some the palace of the little tyrant
+was stormed, he himself was made prisoner, and was taken to the
+railroad, and "packed off" back to that Paris which had sent him.
+In a very few instances only the influence of the commissary gained
+the day: in still less was he again returned, to be enforced upon
+the department from which he had been driven; and in one case he was
+sent back by the powers that were, only to be again ignominiously
+expelled.
+
+In the department of the Ariège, at the town of Foix, a journal,
+founded under the auspices of the commissaries of the government,
+and professing the most violent ultra-republican doctrines, was
+publicly burnt by the magistrates and most influential persons of
+the place, to show their contempt and abhorrence of the principles
+and actions of the authority set over them. Other instances of
+the general opposition, either to the commissaries themselves or
+to the agents they had appointed and supported, on account of
+their violence, their tyrannical measures, and their anarchical
+principles, are too numerous to quote; and, generally speaking, the
+feeling was so strong, that the _Messieurs les Commissaires_, or
+rather, _les Citoyens Commissaires_, were obliged to give way before
+the expression of popular indignation.
+
+The departments then, for the first time, have begun to show that
+they are determined not to be treated as the mere humble serfs
+of the capital,--that they are resolved to have a will and an
+action of their own. The results have been such that, even among
+the staunch republicans in the provinces, and among those who
+look to the republic as the only form of government at present
+suitable to France, symptoms of a tendency to a federal system have
+indubitably sprung up,--of a tendency, in fact, to that system
+in opposition to which, under the first revolution, the title of
+"one and indivisible,"--so little understood at the present day,
+so constantly repeated by the herd without any real meaning being
+attached to it,--was bestowed upon the republic. The fear of a
+powerfully organised resistance to the sacred principles of French
+republicanism,--unity and indivisibility,--is, at this very time,
+one of the bugbears by which those in power are terrified and
+haunted. But, whether this fear be well founded or not, it suffices
+for the present purpose, to show that a disunited feeling exists to
+a great extent between the departments and the capital; and that,
+while on the one hand the former begin to show a disposition to
+resist the overweening influence and tyrannical importance of the
+former, on the other, a dread is beginning to be expressed of their
+growing discontent, and a suspicion is constantly expressed of their
+increasing tendency to reactionary principles, likely to prove
+eventually subversive to the republic. Among those "lookers-on,"
+who proverbially "see the most of the game," there are some who, in
+their exceptional and impartial position as foreigners, are able
+to see expressed in letters from the provinces "curses, not loud,
+but deep," against "that detestable, unruly, and insolent Paris,
+that has made alone a hateful revolution, which it imposes on all
+France." It cannot, however, be said, at the same time, that any
+reactionary feeling against the republic itself, and a republican
+form of government, prevails in the country at large. That which
+is thought to be stigmatised by the ultra party with the term of
+"reaction," appears, as yet, to be nothing but the acceptation of
+a republic based upon the principles of peace and order; but, at
+the same time, an opposition to all views and doctrines likely to
+produce disorder and anarchy. And yet still, in another sense,
+the feeling of the country at large cannot be said to be strictly
+republican: the "true men" might be in vain sought except in the
+disorderly, tumultuous, excitable, and easily stirred populations of
+the great manufacturing towns.
+
+Shortly after the appointment of the obnoxious commissaries, several
+causes arose to increase the discontent of the departments, not only
+among the _ci-devant_ upper and middling classes, but among the
+lower classes,--particularly in the agricultural districts, and more
+especially among that peasant population that has so universally
+in France acquired a little property in land. One of these causes
+was the imposition of the new taxes. Under the former _régime_,
+France had been crushed down by the weight of its impositions. One
+of the first advantages of the republic was announced, in official
+proclamations, to consist in the removal of taxes, and in the
+enormous diminution of state expenses necessarily attendant upon a
+republican form of government. Already the country people looked to
+a release from the greater part of their obligations: the system of
+"no taxes at all," they thought, in their _naïveté_, was to follow;
+instead of which came very shortly the decree, begging the country
+for the loan of a certain proportion of the taxes for the ensuing
+year beforehand, in order to meet the deficiencies in the finances,
+followed up almost immediately by the more imperative ordinance,
+imposing the additional 45 per cent in support of the increased,
+not diminished, expenses of the republican government. In many
+parts of the country the peasant population refused to pay this
+additional tax, or responded only to the demand with that equivocal
+answer, so characteristic of the French peasant, "We'll see about
+it." It nevertheless, however, refused to pay at the same time the
+rents of its landlords, upon the pretext that it was ruined by the
+revolution, and the exactions of the republic. It was in vain that
+the government protested that these measures were necessitated by
+the financial dilapidations of the dethroned dynasty. Clear-sighted
+enough where their own interests are concerned, the French peasants
+in the provinces replied by denunciations of that odious Paris.
+Paris, they declared, had chosen to make for the nonce a revolution
+in which they had not aided, and which they had not desired; and
+then Paris turned to its own advantage alone the results of that
+revolution. It had imposed upon all France, by calling for resources
+from a country already drained, to be lavishly squandered in
+rewarding the idleness of its own tumultuous and unruly inhabitants
+among the working-classes, which it dreaded, by the establishment of
+its expensive so-called _ateliers nationaux_, and by paying fresh
+troops under the name _gardes mobiles_,--when the standing army was
+already such a burden the country,--for the sake of draining off and
+regularising the worst dregs of its own population, and satisfying
+the caprices of a riotous Parisian mob, that chose to object to the
+presence of the old military force among it, while it accepted a new
+defensive and repressive force, in addition to the former, under a
+new title. Upon such questions, of vital importance to their own
+interests, the country people of the provinces were not disposed
+to listen to argument or reason; and in the discontent at the
+exorbitant exactions of the capital the jealousy of the departments
+towards Paris waxed stronger and stronger.
+
+Another cause, which added greatly to the increasing apprehension
+and aversion was the preaching of the communist doctrines in Paris,
+upon the first establishment of republican principles, and the
+support apparently given to these wild and spoliating principles by
+certain members of the Provisional Government itself. If there be
+any feeling more alive than any other in the breast of the French
+peasant, it is that attached to the acquirement and the possession
+of landed property in however humble a form, be it but a small field
+or a tiny vineyard. If he has any hope, any ambition, any sentiment,
+which he thinks worth living for, it is the extension, by any and
+every means, of his small domain. On the fact of this possession
+are concentrated all the mainspring motives and agencies of his
+whole existence--in this, his industry, his talent, his cunning,
+his thoughts, his affections, his very love for his children, to
+whom he hopes to transmit it. The great _mobile_ of the character of
+the French peasant is self-interest in this respect. The doctrines,
+then, which preached that the possession of all landed property by
+individuals is an infamous spoliation of the _res publica_, filled
+the country people in the provinces with the liveliest alarm, and
+contributed to establish a still greater hatred to a state of things
+that tended to produce results so fatally detrimental to all that
+they held dear. The Parisian, almost as blindly ignorant of the
+state of his own country--which, in his theory that Paris is all
+France, he looks upon with indifference, if not contempt--as he is
+proverbially utterly ignorant of every other country beyond the
+frontiers of France, even the most neighbouring--and, in fact, of
+every thing that touches upon geography or the state of nations, of
+which he has only the vaguest and most incorrect notions--thought
+that all his wild fraternity schemes, developed and accepted by
+those who possessed nothing, in the capital, would be received
+with enthusiasm also by the "miserable, oppressed, and tyrannised
+inhabitant of the fields and plains;"--such was the language used,
+and eagerly caught up. The Parisian soon found, by experience, that
+he had made a gross mistake. The emissaries sent down into the
+provinces by the professors and high-priests of communism, or by the
+ultra clubs, and supported, there is every reason to believe, by
+the members of the government before alluded to, met only with the
+most active repulsion. Their Utopian ideas of universal fraternity
+and spoliation of property were scorned, scouted, and opposed:
+themselves were hooted, pelted, almost lapidated as incendiary
+enemies of the peasant. "The innocent and humble inhabitant of
+the fields" was indignant, insulted, aggrieved, that he should
+be so contemptuously considered "miserable and oppressed:" he
+showed himself in the light of the landed proprietor, the most
+avariciously interested in the possession of property, and by no
+means the _naif_ individual the Parisian had been accustomed to
+believe him, according to his text-books of _vaudevilles_ and
+melodramas. The agents of communistic doctrines were forced to
+retreat in dudgeon, to declare the French peasant the most ignorant
+and pig-headed animal upon earth, still under the yoke of the
+tyrants, and _endoctriné_ by the aristocrats; and to avow that
+the departments were not ripe for the enlightenment of communism,
+perhaps even to denounce them as infamously reactionary. Certain it
+is that communistic doctrines found no enthusiastic disciples in the
+country; or, if the propagandism made any steps, it was after the
+fashion so characteristically depicted in a caricature published
+by the _Charivari_, in which a peasant appears before the mayor of
+his _commune_ to say, that, since a general _partage des biens_ is
+to take place, he puts down his name for the _château_, but makes
+a most wofully wry face upon hearing that his own field has been
+already divided among the paupers of the village. The propagation of
+communism, then, only excited fears instead of hopes, consternation
+instead of joy, and tended still more to indispose the country
+people, and excite their aversion and discontent towards a state of
+things likely to become so prejudicial to their interests: more than
+ever, they were disposed to revolt.
+
+In this state was the feeling of the country at large when the
+general elections came on, accompanied by all the violence of
+party manœuvre to support the principles of ultra-republicanism,
+advocated by the unscrupulous minister of the nation; but all
+these efforts tended only to indispose it still more, and to call
+forth, in spite of the desperate opposition made, its sense in
+favour of respect of property, order, and moderatism of views in
+the republic, if republic there was to be. As is well known, an
+immense majority of those men of moderate principles, whom all
+the ill-judged and hateful efforts of the violent and reckless
+republicans at the head of affairs had so greatly contributed to
+form into a decided, self-conscious, and compact party of opponents,
+was returned to the Assembly. Most of the leading men of the liberal
+party under the former dynasty, who had stood forward as friends
+of progressive reform, but not as opponents to the constitutional
+monarchy principle, were likewise elected, with great majorities,
+by the suffrages of the people. The country declared its will to
+be against the views of the principal and stirring influence which
+emanated from the reckless man who governed the interior affairs
+of the country in the capital. But it did not forget, at the same
+time, and it still bears an inveterate grudge to the violent agents
+of that ultra-republicanism, chiefly concentrated in Paris, who
+had filled the country with disorder, tumult, terror, and, in some
+cases, bloodshed, by the atrocious and outrageous means it placed in
+the hands of a riotous mob to overawe them, and sway the direction
+of the elections, and by the base manœuvres employed to attain their
+ends. It does not forget the despotism of certain commissaries, who,
+after having their own lists of ultra-democratic candidates, whom
+they intended to force down the throats of the electors, printed,
+threatened the printer, who should dare to print any other, with
+their high displeasure, and caused them to shut up their press. It
+does not forget the seizure of those papers that proposed moderate
+candidates, with every attempt to strangle in practice that liberty
+of the press which was so clamorously claimed in theory. It does
+not forget the voters' lists torn from the hands of voters by a
+purposely excited mob. It does not forget the odious manœuvre by
+which agents were largely paid and sent about to cry "_Vive Henri
+V._" in the streets of towns, in order to induce the belief in
+a Bourbonist reactionary party, and thus rouse the passions and
+feelings of the flattered and declamation-intoxicated mob against
+the moderates, regardless of the consequences--of the animosity
+and the bloodshed. It does not forget the intimidation, the threat
+of fire and sword, the opposition by force to the voting of whole
+villages suspected of moderatism--the collision, the constraint,
+the conflict, the violence. It does not forget all this, nor also
+that it owes the outrage, the alarm, and the suffering, the ruin
+to peace and order, to commerce, to well-being, to fortune, to
+that central power which turned a legion of demons upon it, in the
+shape of revolutionary emissaries and agents. It forgets still
+less the scenes of Limoges, where a mob were turned loose into
+the polling-house to destroy the votes, drive out the national
+guards, disarm these defenders of order and right, and form a mob
+government, to rule and terrorise the town, while Master Commissary
+looked on, and told the people that it did well, and laughed in his
+sleeve. It forgets still less the fury of the disappointed upon
+the result of the elections, their incitements to insurrections,
+their preachings of armed resistance for the sake of annulling the
+elections, obtained, it must never be forgotten, by _universal
+suffrage_, in face of their culpable manœuvres: the emissaries
+again sent down from the clubs, and with an apparent connivance
+of certain ultra-members of the government, from the charge of
+which, now more than ever since the conspiracy of the 15th May,
+they will scarcely be able to acquit themselves: the efforts of
+these emissaries to make the easily excited and tumultuous lower
+classes take up arms, and the bloody conflicts in the streets of
+Rouen: the complicity of the very magistrates appointed by these
+members of the government--the terror and the bloodshed, and then
+the cry of the furious ultras that the people had been treacherously
+assassinated--the conspiracies and incendiary projects of the
+vanquished at Marseilles, the troubles of Lisle, of Amiens, of
+Lyons, of Aubusson, of Rhodez, of Toulouse, of Carcassonne--why
+swell the list of names?--of almost every town in France, all with
+the same intent of destroying those elections of representatives
+which the country had proclaimed in the sense of order and of
+moderatism. It forgets still less the dangers of that same 15th
+May, when the government was for a few hours overthrown, by the
+disorderly, the disappointed, the discontented, the violent ultra
+republicans, the conspirators of Paris,--when some of those, who
+had been formerly their rulers, were arrested as accomplices, and
+others still in power can scarcely yet again avoid the accusation
+and conviction of complicity.
+
+All the other troubles of this distracted country, since the
+revolution of February, may be passed over--the ruin to commerce,
+the poverty, misery, and want, the military revolts excited by
+the same emissaries to cause divisions in the army, as likewise
+the unhappy troubles of Nismes, where the disturbances took
+a religions tendency--as a conflict of creeds between Roman
+Catholics and Protestants, rather than a political or even a social
+character,--although they still bore evidence of the disorder of
+the times and the disturbance of the country. The elections, then,
+contributed more powerfully than ever to the fermentation, the
+discontent, the mistrust, and the ill-will of the country.
+
+In this state of France, with the feeling of impatient jealousy
+and irritation against tyranny and despotism expressed by the
+departments towards the capital, with the evident disunion between
+the provinces and Paris, what are likely to be the destinies of
+the Republic hereafter? Again it must be said--who can tell,
+who foresee, who predict? The Republic has been accepted, and
+is maintained, from a love of order and the _status quo_: but
+there is no enthusiasm, no admiration for the republican form of
+government throughout the country at large; there is, at most,
+indifference to any government, whatever it may be, provided it but
+insure the stability and prosperity of the country. If an opinion
+may be hazarded, however, it is, that the danger to the present
+established form of things will not arise so much from the conflict
+of contending parties in the capital, as from the discontent,
+disaffection, jealousy, and, perhaps, final outbreak and resistance
+of the departments. Terrorism has had its day; and it would be
+difficult, if not impossible, to apply the system once again to the
+country in its present state. What other means will the violent
+possess--what coercive measures, if, when parties come to an issue,
+the wearied and disgusted country should rise to protest against the
+disorders of Republican Paris? There seem at present to be none. The
+result of such an outbreak would be inevitable civil war. The strong
+instance before alluded to, of the determination of the departments
+to assert a will of their own, was given in a very striking
+manner in the affair of the 15th May. One of the conspirators got
+possession of the electric telegraph at the Home Office, and sent
+down despatches into all the provinces, to inform the country
+that the Assembly was dissolved, and the new government of the
+ultra-anarchist party had taken the reins of power. Instead of being
+awed into submission as heretofore, instead of calmly and resignedly
+accepting the _fait accompli_ as was their wont, the departments
+immediately rose to protest against the new revolution of Paris.
+Before a counter-despatch could be sent down into the provinces,
+to let them know that the former order of things was restored, the
+national guards of all the great towns were up and out, with the cry
+"to arms!" and it was resolved to march upon Paris. It was not only
+in the towns within a day's journey of the capital that the movement
+was spontaneously made. In the furthest parts of the country, from
+the cities of Avignon, Marseilles, Nismes, and all the south of
+France, the national guards were already on their way towards the
+capital, before the information that declared the more satisfactory
+result of the day could be made public. It is more than probable,
+then, that, should a desperate faction ever seize upon the power, or
+even should a close conflict of parties further endanger the safety
+of the country and its tottering welfare, that the provinces would
+again take up arms against Paris, and that a civil war would be the
+result.
+
+This is rather a suggestion hazarded, than a prediction made, as to
+the future fate of the French republic. Whatever that future may be,
+an uneasy submission on the part of a great anti-republican majority
+to the active agency of a small republican minority--but, at the
+same time, a desire of maintaining a government, whatever it may be,
+if supportable, for tranquillity's sake; a feeling of humiliation
+and degradation in this utter submission to the will of Paris
+throughout the country--but, at the same time, an apparent growing
+determination eventually to resist that will, should it at last
+prove intolerable--such is the present state of Republican France.
+
+
+
+
+COLONISATION.
+
+_Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia_,
+&c. By Lieut.-Colonel Sir T. MITCHELL, Surveyor-General, &c. 1 vol.
+London: Longmans.
+
+
+Australia is the greatest accession to substantial power ever made
+by England. It is the _gift_ of a _Continent_, unstained by war,
+usurpation, or the sufferings of a people. But even this is but a
+narrow view of its value. It is the addition of a territory, almost
+boundless, to the possessions of mankind; a location for a new
+family of man, capable of supporting a population equal to that of
+Europe; or probably, from its command of the ocean, and from the
+improved systems, not merely of commercial communication, but of
+agriculture itself, capable of supplying the wants of double the
+population of Europe. It is, in fact, the virtual future addition
+of three hundred millions of human beings, who otherwise would not
+have existed. And besides all this, and perhaps of a higher order
+than all, is the transfer of English civilisation, laws, habits,
+industrial activity, and national freedom, to the richest, but the
+most abject countries of the globe; an imperial England at the
+Antipodes, securing, invigorating, and crowning all its benefits by
+its religion.
+
+Within the last fifty years, the population of the British islands
+has nearly tripled; it is increasing in England alone at the rate of
+a thousand a day. In every kingdom of the Continent it is increasing
+in an immense ratio. The population is becoming too great for the
+means of existence. Every trade is overworked, every profession
+is overstocked, every expedient for a livelihood threatens to be
+exhausted under this vast and perpetual influx of life; and the
+question of questions is, How is this burthen to be lightened?
+
+There can be but one answer,--Emigration. For the last century,
+common sense, urged by common necessity, directed the stream of
+this emigration to the great outlying regions of the western world.
+North America was the chief recipient. Since the conquest of Canada,
+annual thousands had directed their emigration to the British
+possessions: the conquest of the Cape has drawn a large body of
+settlers to its fine climate; but Australia remained, and remains
+for the grand future field of British emigration.
+
+The subject has again come before the British public with additional
+interest. The Irish famine, the British financial difficulties,
+and the palpable hazard of leaving a vast pauperism to grow up
+in ignorance, have absolutely compelled an effort to relieve the
+country. A motion has just been made in Parliament by Lord Ashley,
+giving the most startling details of the infant population; and
+demanding the means of sending at least its orphan portion to some
+of those colonial possessions, where they may be trained to habits
+of industry, and have at least a chance of an honest existence. We
+shall give a few of these details, and they are of the very first
+importance to humanity. On the 6th of June Lord Ashley brought in a
+resolution, "That it is expedient that means be annually provided
+for the voluntary emigration, to some one of her Majesty's colonies,
+of a certain number of young persons of both sexes, who have been
+educated in the schools, ordinarily called 'ragged schools,' in and
+about the metropolis."
+
+In the speech preparatory to this resolution, a variety of
+statements were made, obtained from the clergy and laity of London.
+It was ascertained that the number of children, either deserted
+by their parents, or sent out by their parents to beg and steal,
+could not be less than 30,000 in the metropolis alone. Their habits
+were filthy, wretched, and depraved. Their places of living by day
+were the streets, and by night every conceivable haunt of misery
+and sin. They had no alternative but to starve, or to grow up into
+professional thieves, perhaps murderers. Of the general population,
+the police reports stated, that in 1847 there had been taken into
+custody 62,181 individuals of both sexes and all ages. Of these,
+20,702 were females, and 47,479 males. Of the whole, 15,693 were
+under twenty years of age, 3,682 between fifteen and ten, and 362
+under ten. Of the whole, 22,075 could neither read nor write, and
+35,227 could read only, or read and write imperfectly.
+
+The average attendance last year in the "ragged schools" was
+4000. Of these 400 had been in prison, 600 lived by begging, 178
+were the children of convicts, and 800 had lost one or both their
+parents, and of course were living by their own contrivances. Out
+of the 62,000, there were not less than 28,113 who had no trade, or
+occupation, or honest livelihood whatever!
+
+The statement then proceeded to consider the expense to which the
+nation was put to keep down crime. It will perhaps surprise those
+readers who object to the expenses of emigration.
+
+  In 1847. The expense of Parkhurst Prison was £14,349
+    "      Of Pentonville Prison,               18,307
+  In 1846. Of County Gaols,                    147,145
+    "      Of County Houses of Correction,     160,841
+    "      Of Rural Police,                    180,000
+    "      Of Prosecutions for Coining,          9,000
+  In 1847. Of Metropolitan Police,             363,164
+
+The whole but a few items, yet amounting to a million sterling
+annually. In this we observe the Millbank Penitentiary, an immense
+establishment, Newgate, the Compter, and the various places of
+detention in the city, are not included; and there is no notice of
+the expenses of building, which in the instance of the Penitentiary
+alone amounted to a million.
+
+Yet, to dry up the source of this tremendous evil, Lord Ashley
+asks only an expenditure of £100,000 annually, to transform 30,000
+growing thieves into honest men, idlers into cultivators of the
+soil, beggars into possessors of property, which the generality of
+settlers become, on an average of seven years.
+
+There can be no rational denial of the benefit, and even of the
+necessity, of rescuing those unfortunate creatures from a career
+which, beginning in vice and misery, must go on in public mischief,
+and end in individual ruin. Lord Ashley's suggestion is that the
+plan shall be first tried on the moderate scale of sending 500 boys,
+and 500 girls, chosen from the ragged schools of London, under
+proper superintendents, to the most fitting of the colonies; by
+which we understand Australia. The plan may then be extended to the
+other parts of the kingdom, to Scotland and Ireland. He concluded by
+placing his motion in the hands of government, who, through the Home
+Secretary, promised to give it all consideration.
+
+It is certainly lamentable that such statements are to be made;
+and we have little doubt that the foreign journalist will exult in
+this evidence of what they call "the depravity of England." But,
+it is to be remembered that London has a population of nearly two
+millions--that all the idleness, vice, and beggary of an island
+of twenty millions are constantly pouring into it--that _foreign_
+vice, idleness, and beggary contribute their share, and that
+what is abhorred and _corrected_ in England, is overlooked, and
+even cherished abroad. It is also to be remembered, that there
+is a continual temptation to plunder in the exposed wealth of
+the metropolis, and a continual temptation to mendicancy in the
+proverbial humanity of the people.
+
+Still, crime must be punished wherever it exists, and vice must be
+reformed wherever man has the means; and, therefore, we shall exult
+in the success of any judicious plan of emigration.
+
+It happens, at this moment, that there is an extraordinary demand
+for emigration; that every letter from Australia calls for a supply
+of human life, and especially for an emigration of females,--the
+proportion of males to females in some of the settlements being 9 to
+1, while the number of females predominates, by the last census in
+England.
+
+There is a daily demand for additional labourers, artificers, and
+household servants, and with offers of wages which in England
+neither labourer nor artisan could hope to obtain. Thousands are now
+offered employment, comfort, and prospective wealth in Australia,
+who must burthen the workhouse at home. The advantages are so
+evident, the necessity is so strong, and the opportunity is so
+prompt and perfect, that they _must_ result in a national plan of
+constant emigration, until Australia can contain no more--an event
+which may not happen for a thousand years.
+
+It happens, also, by a striking coincidence, that Australian
+discovery has just assumed new vigour; and that instead of the
+barrenness and deformity which were generally supposed to form
+the principal characteristics of this vast territory, immense
+tracts have been brought to European knowledge for the first time,
+exhibiting remarkable fertility, and even the most unexpected and
+singular beauty. We now give a sketch of the journey in which those
+discoveries were made.
+
+To explore the interior of this great country has been the object
+of successive expeditions for the last five-and-twenty years. But
+such was the want of system or the want of means, that nothing was
+done, except to increase the tales of wonder regarding the middle
+regions of Australia. The theorists were completely divided; one
+party insisting on the existence of a mediterranean or mighty lake
+in the central region, _because_ there was a tendency in some of the
+small rivers of the coast to flow inward. Others, with quite as much
+plausibility, laughed at the idea; and, from having felt a hot wind
+occasionally blowing from the west, had no doubt that the central
+region was a total waste, a desert of fiery sand, an Australian
+Sahara! while both parties seem to have been equally erroneous, so
+far as any actual discovery has been made.
+
+But it seems equally extraordinary, that even the only two
+expeditions which within our time have added largely to our
+knowledge, alike should have neglected the most obvious and
+almost the only useful means of discovery. The especial object of
+exploration must be, to ascertain the existence of considerable
+rivers pouring into the sea, because it is only thus that the
+government can effectively form settlements. The especial difficulty
+of the explorers is, to find provisions, or carry the means of
+subsistence along with them. Both difficulties would be obviated by
+the steam-boat, and by nothing else. The natural process, therefore,
+would be, to embark the expedition in a well appointed and well
+provisioned steamer; to anchor it at the necessary distance from the
+coast, which in general has deep and sheltered water, within the
+great rocky ridge; and then send out the explorers for fifty or a
+hundred miles north and south, making the steamer the headquarters.
+Thus they might ascertain every feature of the coast, inch by inch,
+be secure of subsistence, and be free from native hostility.
+
+Yet all the expeditions have been overland, generally with the most
+imminent hazard of being starved, and occasionally losing some of
+their number by attacks from the natives. Thus also the present
+expedition of the surveyor succeeded but in part, though it had
+the merit of discovering that the reports of Australian barrenness
+belonged but to narrow tracts, while the general character of the
+country towards the north was of striking fertility. The purpose of
+Sir T. Mitchell's late expedition was, to ascertain the probability
+of a route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria. But as this
+route was to be made dependent on a presumed river flowing into the
+gulf, the actual object was to reach the head of that river--an
+object which could have been more effectually attained by tracing it
+upward from the gulf; and, in consequence of not so tracing it, the
+expedition ultimately failed.
+
+To establish an easy connexion between the colony of New South
+Wales and the traffic of the Indian Ocean had long been a matter of
+great interest. Torres Strait, the only channel to the north, is
+a remarkably dangerous navigation; while, by forming an overland
+communication directly with the Gulf of Carpentaria to the west of
+the strait, the commerce would find an open sea. A trade in horses
+had also commenced with India, which was impeded by the hazards of
+the strait. There had also been a steam communication with England
+by Singapore, and there was a hope that this line might be connected
+with a line from the gulf.
+
+The idea of tracing a river towards the north was a conjecture
+of several years' standing, in some degree founded on the natural
+probability that an immense indentation of the land could not but
+exhibit some outlet for the course of a considerable fall of waters,
+and also that there had been a report by a Bushman, of having
+followed its course to the sea.
+
+After some difficulties with the governor, which were obviated by a
+vote of the Colonial Legislature of £2000 for the expenses of the
+expedition, it set out from Paramatta on the 17th of November 1845.
+The expedition consisted of Sir Thomas Mitchell; E. B. Kennedy,
+Esq., assistant-surveyor; William Stephenson, Esq., surgeon and
+naturalist; twenty-three convicts, who volunteered for the sake
+of a free pardon, which was to be their only payment; and three
+freemen. They had a numerous list of baggage conveyances, &c. &c.;
+eight drays, drawn by eighty bullocks; two boats, thirteen horses,
+four private horses, three light carts, and provisions for a year,
+including two hundred and fifty sheep, which travelled along with
+them, constituting a chief part of their animal food. They had also
+gelatine and pork. The surveyor-general preferred light carts, and
+horses in place of bullocks; but it was suggested that the strong
+drays were necessary, and that bullocks were more enduring than
+horses--the latter an opinion soon found to be erroneous. It is
+rather singular, that either opinion should not have been settled
+fifty years ago.
+
+Some natural and well-expressed reflections arise, in the course of
+this volume, on the lonely life of the settler. Its despondency,
+and its inutility to advance his moral nature, are in some measure
+attributed to the absence of the "gentler sex."
+
+"At this sheep station," says Sir Thomas, "I met with an individual
+who had seen better days, and had lost his property amid the wreck
+of colonial bankruptcies; a 'tee-totaller,' with Pope's 'Essay
+on Man' for his consolation, in a _bark hut_. This man spoke of
+the depravity of shepherd life as excessive.... The pastoral
+life, so favourable to the enjoyment of nature, has always been a
+favourite with the poets. But here it appears to be the antipodes
+of all poetry and propriety, simply because man's better half
+is wanting. Under this unfavourable aspect the white man comes
+before the aboriginal. Were they intruders, accompanied with wives
+and children, they would not be half so unwelcome. In this, too,
+consists one of the most striking differences between settling and
+squatting. Indeed, if it were an object to _uncivilise_ the human
+race, I know of no method more likely to effect it, than to isolate
+a man from the gentler sex and children. Remove afar off all courts
+of justice and means of redress of grievances, all churches and
+schools, all shops where he can make use of money, and then place
+him in close contact with savages. 'What better off am I than a
+black native!' was the exclamation of a shepherd to me."
+
+A general description of the aspect of New South Wales would be
+difficult, from its extreme diversity in parts; but the general
+face of the country is marked by lines of granite hills; short
+water-courses, which in summer are dry, or retain the water only
+in pools; clumps of trees, generally dotted over the soil, and
+occasional _prairies_. But the soil is generally fertile, and, in
+the spring, exhibits a great variety of flowers. Thus the land is
+every where fit for European life, though in the same latitude
+with the hottest portions of Africa. It has occasional gushes of
+intense heat, but they seem not to have affected the health of the
+expedition; and with that progress of comforts which follows all
+civilisation, the heat and cold alike may be successfully mitigated.
+We have not heard of any endemic in Australia; the epidemic has
+never visited its shores. The chief want in the pasture-grounds
+is water, but even that is merely the result of the rudeness of
+early settling; for vast quantities of water run to waste, or are
+lost in swamps, which future colonists will receive in tanks, and
+check with dams. The capricious abundance and deficiency of this
+prime necessary of life, for it is more essential than food, is
+shown in a striking, passage of this picturesque Journal. They were
+still within the sheep-feeding country. Water was much wanted.
+Mr Stephenson, the naturalist, was sent out on the inquiry. He
+returned soon, having met two of the mounted police, who told him
+that "a flood was coming down from the Turon Mountains."
+
+"But the little encampment was held in suspense. Still, the bed
+of the Macquarie continued so dry, that the report could scarcely
+be believed. Towards evening, a man was stationed with a gun, to
+give a signal on the appearance of the flood. The shades of evening
+came, but no flood; and the man returned. This was a period of
+considerable anxiety, for the need of water was urgent.
+
+"Some hours later, and after the moon had risen, a murmuring sound,
+like that of a distant waterfall, mingled with occasional cracks,
+as of breaking timber, drew our attention." They then returned to
+the river bank. Still no flood appeared, though they continued to
+hear the sounds of the crashing timber. At length an increase of the
+sounds told them that the water was in the next bend. All this, in
+a serene moonlight night, was new. At length it came, and came in
+power and beauty.
+
+"It rushed into our sight, glittering in the moonbeams, a moving
+_cataract_; tossing before it ancient trees, and snapping them
+against its banks. It was preceded by a _point_ of meandering water,
+picking its way, like a thing of life, through the deepest parts of
+the dark, dry, and shady bed of what thus again became a flowing
+river." The phenomenon might make a fine subject for the pencil, if
+our artists were not divided between the palace and the pigstye. The
+noble river rolling along under a _tropical_ moon; the wild country
+around, with its forests and hills touched by the light; the bronzed
+faces and bold figures of the men of the expedition, gazing with
+natural surprise and gladness at this relief, and at the majestic
+object before them; and even the cattle hurrying up from the
+encampment, to cool the thirst which had pressed so severely on them
+during the day, all were made for the finest efforts of the pencil.
+
+"By my party," says Sir T. Mitchell, "situated as we were at the
+time--beating about the country, and impeded in our journey solely
+by the almost total absence of water--suffering excessively from
+thirst and extreme heat,--I am convinced the scene can _never_ be
+forgotten! _There_ came abundance at once, the product of storms in
+the far-off mountains, that _overlooked our homes_! My first impulse
+was to have welcomed this flood on our knees; for the scene was
+sublime in itself, while the subject, an abundance of water sent to
+us in a desert, greatly heightened the effect to our eyes. I had
+witnessed nothing of the kind in all my Australian travels."
+
+But the writer is an accomplished man of science, and he leads the
+contemplation to still more glorious things, "Even the heavens
+presented something new, at least uncommon, and therefore in harmony
+with this scene. The variable Star of Argol had increased to the
+first magnitude, just above the beautiful constellation of the
+Southern Cross, which slightly inclined over the river, in the only
+portion of sky seen through the trees. That very red star, thus
+increasing in magnitude, might, as characteristic of her rivers,
+be recognised as the 'Star of Australia,' when Europeans cross the
+line. The flood gradually filled up the channel nearly bank high,
+while the living cataract travelled onward much slower than I had
+expected to see it; so slowly, indeed, that more than an hour after
+its first arrival, the _sweet music_ of the head of the flood was
+distinctly audible from my tent, as the murmur of waters and crash
+of logs travelled slowly through the tortuous windings of the river
+bed. I was finally lulled to sleep by that melody of waters."
+
+It has been often remarked, that Europeans once accustomed to a life
+of wandering, can never return to the life of cities; and even the
+clever journalist before us appears to have been a little captivated
+with this life of the wilderness. It may be easily admitted, that
+vigorous health, and active exercise, variety of objects, even if
+those objects are no more than new ridges of mountains or new rills
+of water; with keen appetite and sound sleep, are all excellent
+things in their style. But, is life given to man only to eat, gaze,
+and sleep? What is the life of the wilderness above that of the
+brute? The true improvement of man, and, therefore, the especial
+employment intended for man, is, that increase of knowledge, of
+command over the powers of nature, and of the various means of
+adding to the conveniences, comforts and value of human existence,
+which, delivered down to us by our forefathers, it is our part to
+deliver with increase to our posterity. But the savage improves in
+nothing; he is as much a brute this year as he was a thousand years
+ago. Savagery is, in practice, a total defeat and denial of all the
+original purposes for which our nature was made. And it is with some
+regret and more surprise, that we quote, from such a source, such
+language as the following:--
+
+"We set out, guided by our native friend," (a savage whom they had
+hired to lead them to some water-courses.) "He was a very perfect
+specimen of the _genus_ homo, and such as is _never_ to be seen,
+except in the precincts of savage life, _undegraded_ by any scale
+of _graduated classes_; and the countless _bars_ these present
+to the free enjoyment of existence." Whether this is actually a
+recommendation that we should throw off our clothes and walk in
+nudity, for the purpose of recovering the original elegance of our
+shapes, or whether it is the borrowed rapture of some savage in
+person which the gallant officer has transplanted into his pages,
+to vary his more rational conceptions, we know not; but he has
+_not_ made us converts to the pleasures of cold, hunger, filth, and
+bloodshed, which furnish the realities of savage life, even in the
+paradisaic solitudes of Australia.
+
+The savage, in his original state, is simply an animal, superior to
+his own dog only in sharpness of intellect; but wholly inferior to
+his dog in fidelity and affection. All savages are tyrannical--cruel
+to their wives, if wives they can be called--and in general
+cheating and plundering wherever they can. As to their bodily
+organs, of course, they cannot be perverted where they cannot
+reach temptation; but no savage comprehends moral restraint, and
+he gets drunk whenever he has the opportunity, and robs wherever
+he finds any thing to steal. On the other hand, civilisation
+necessarily enfeebles no man, and what the gallant Colonel regards
+as its "degradation of man by classes," produces quite the contrary
+effect; for the humbler the class, generally the more vigorous--as
+the peasant is a stronger man than the artisan, and the artisan
+than the nobleman. Even the idea that savage limbs can do more
+than civilised, is equally erroneous. A well clothed and well fed
+Englishman, if well formed, and with some training, will outwork,
+outrun, and outwrestle any savage from pole to pole. A ropedancer,
+a tumbler, or a horserider, at any of our theatres, though bred
+in the very heart of civilisation, or even in the hotbed of its
+temptations, will perform feats of activity which would defy all the
+muscles of a generation of savages. The truth is, that civilisation
+improves the features, the form, and the powers of the human frame.
+Men in society may be indolent, and throw away their advantages; but
+society is the place for man. Rousseau, once made a noise by talking
+nonsense on this subject; but Rousseau _knew_ that he was talking
+nonsense. Whether his imitators are equally cognisant of their own
+performances, is another question; but we come to better things.
+
+This journey settled the disputed point of "horses or bullocks,
+light carts, or heavy drays." The bullocks and the drays were a
+perpetual annoyance; to feed and water the one, and to drag the
+other, soon became the grand difficulty of the expedition. We find
+the Colonel perpetually leaving them to follow, when any peculiar
+object of exploration was in view. At length the whole "park" was
+left to take its rest, under the second in command; and the Colonel,
+with eight men, two native boys, fourteen horses, and two light
+carts, with provisions for ten weeks, moved to the northward, to
+trace where the division of the waters was to be found, and then
+follow some of them down to the Gulf.
+
+We were not prepared for the beauty sometimes exhibited by the
+Australian landscape. The Journal compares it to a succession
+of Ruysdaels. "The masses of rock, lofty trees, shining sands,
+and patches of water in wild confusion; the mimosæ, the
+Anthistiria-grass, of a red brown, contrasting most harmoniously
+with the light green bushes; all those again so opposed to the dark
+hues of the casuarinæ, mimosæ, and rifted rocks, that a Ruysdael or
+a Gainsborough might have found an inexhaustible stock of subjects
+for the pencil."
+
+This wild travelling has its discomforts, and now and then its
+dangers; but it is a perpetual source of exciting sensations.
+Every step is new, and every day's journey may place the traveller
+within some region of unexpected value or beauty. One of the hopes
+of the Journalist, on commencing this portion of his travels, was
+to discover a chain of hills to the northwest, from which he might
+trace the course of a river to the Gulf. At last this chain rose
+before his eyes.
+
+"The most interesting sight to me was that of blue pics at a great
+distance to the northwest, the object of all my dreams of discovery
+for years. _No white man had before seen them._ There we might hope
+to find the division of the waters still undiscovered--the pass to
+Carpentaria still unexplored. I called this hill Mount First-View,
+and descended, delighted with what I had seen from its rocky crest."
+The latitude was 27°, yet the thermometer at sunrise was but at 45°,
+at noon 68°, and at 9 P.M. 45°.
+
+The captivations of the scenery were equal to the delights of the
+temperature, though so near the tropics.--"An Australian morning
+is always charming. Amid those scenes of primæval nature it seemed
+exquisitely so. The barita or gymnoskina, the organ-magpie, was
+here represented by a much smaller bird, whose notes, resembling
+the softest breathings of a flute, were the only sounds that met
+the ear. What the stillness of evening adds to such sounds in other
+climes, is felt more intensely in the stillness of morn in this."
+
+The forms of the vegetation, both tree and shrub, are picturesque,
+and the colours are finer still:--"Instead of autumnal tints,
+there is a perpetual blending of the richest hues of autumn with
+the most brilliant verdure of spring; while the sun's welcome
+rays in a winter's morning, and the cool breath of the woods in a
+summer morning, are equally grateful. This was in the depth of the
+Australian winter, and, which sounds oddly to the European ear, in
+the 'merry month of June.'"
+
+Advancing still to the north, a country of an extraordinary kind was
+reached in July; and they had now found, that most important of all
+objects in a wilderness, a fine "flowing stream, full of sparkling
+water to the margin." The Journalist seems quite enamoured with
+the surrounding scene, a miniature Australian Switzerland:--"The
+hills overhanging it surpassed any I had ever seen, in picturesque
+outline. Some resembled Gothic cathedrals in ruins; some forts;
+other masses were perforated; and being mixed and contrasted with
+the flowing outlines of evergreen woods, and having a fine stream in
+the foreground, gave a charming appearance to the whole country. It
+was a vision worthy of the toils of a pilgrimage. Those beautiful
+recesses of unpeopled earth could no longer remain unknown. The
+better to mark them out on any map, I gave to the valley the name
+of Salvator Rosa. The rocks stood out sharply and sublimely from
+the thick woods, just as John Martin's fertile imagination would
+dash them out in his beautiful landscapes. I never saw any thing
+in nature come so near those creations of genius and imagination."
+But this river, which they followed for some time, ran so far to
+the east, that they justly began to doubt its being the one of
+which they were in search and they turned again to the north. They
+now passed into a fine level country, incomparably formed for
+settlement. "An almost boundless extent of the richest surface in
+a solitude corresponding to that of (southern) China, yet still
+unoccupied by man. A great reserve provided by Nature for the
+extension of his race."
+
+They left the Salvator between the 21st and 22d degrees of latitude,
+and moved to the north-west. There at length their aspirations,
+though only partially, were probably realised. In the middle of
+September they reached some heights, from which lay before them
+a vast extent of open downs traversed by a river, traceable to
+the utmost verge of the horizon, and falling to the _north-west_!
+"Ulloa's delight at the first view of the Pacific could not have
+surpassed mine," is the natural exclamation of the Journalist. "Nor
+could the fervour with which he was impressed have exceeded my sense
+of gratitude for being allowed to make such a discovery. From that
+rock the scene was so extensive as to leave _no room for doubt_ as
+to the course of the river, which, then and there revealed to me
+alone, seemed like a reward direct from Heaven for perseverance,
+and as a compensation for the many sacrifices which I had made, in
+order to solve the question as to the interior rivers of tropical
+Australia."
+
+From the 16th to the 24th of September the course of the river was
+followed, which still was north-west, but at this period the party
+returned. The reason stated is the failure of provisions. This must
+have been a most vexatious disappointment--so vexatious, that we
+cannot comprehend how it could have been submitted to without some
+more remarkable effort than any thing that we find recorded in these
+pages. That an expedition equipped for a four months' journey should
+have turned back at the very moment when a few days', perhaps a
+few hours', march, might have completed its object, is altogether
+incomprehensible, while it had any conceivable means of subsistence.
+In such a condition of things, the traveller ought to have eaten
+his horse, if he could get nothing else. But there was actually, at
+no great distance behind, a depôt of their own bullocks and sheep,
+all feeding comfortably, and, as the party found on marching back
+to them, "Sheep and cattle fat, the whole a sort of farm." A good
+stackyard had been set up, a storehouse had been built, a garden
+had been fenced in, and contained lettuce, radishes, melons, and
+cucumbers. Indeed, the whole establishment exhibited the effects of
+good order and discipline.
+
+Why, then, did not the Journalist return on his track, and establish
+the discovery which was the express object of his mission? This
+exceeds our knowledge. The only direct intimation of his necessities
+in these pages is, "our provisions were nearly out, the sun having
+reduced the _mess sugar and melted the bacon_, which had been
+boiled before we set out." Whether the _lean_ of Australian bacon
+may liquefy in the sun is more than our European experience can
+tell, but we presume it must be ranked among the wonders of a new
+country; at all events, the Journalist returned without having
+done the very thing for which his expedition had been fitted out,
+and left the object to be completed by his subordinate, who was
+subsequently despatched in the direction of the north-west. Thus,
+though probabilities are in favour of the river, which the Colonel
+named the Victoria, the point is by no means settled, and Australian
+curiosity may be disappointed after all.
+
+As the party approached the river, they saw considerable numbers of
+the natives. On reaching one of the lagoons, the shrieks of many
+women and children, and the angry voices of men, apprised them that
+they had at length overtaken the tribe, and unfortunately had come
+on them by surprise. "Aya, minya!" was vociferated repeatedly, and
+was understood to mean, "What do you want?" I steadily adhered to
+my own tactics towards the aborigines, and took not the slightest
+notice of them, but rode on according to my compass-bearing. On
+looking back for my men, I saw one beckoning me to return. He had
+observed two natives with spears and clubs hide themselves behind
+a bush in the direction in which I was advancing. On my halting,
+they stole away. The whole seemed to have been amusing themselves
+in the water during the noonday heat, which was excessive, and the
+cool shades round the lagoon looked most luxuriant. Our position, on
+the contrary, was any thing but enviable. Even there, in the heart
+of the interior, on a river utterly unheard of by white men, an
+iron tomahawk glittered in the hand of a chief. The anxious care of
+the females to carry off their children seemed the most agreeable
+feature of the scene. Some had been digging in the mud for worms,
+others searching for fresh-water mussels, and if the whole could
+have been witnessed unperceived, such a scene of domestic life
+among the aborigines had been worth a little more risk. The strong
+men assumed a strange attitude, which seemed very expressive of
+surprise, having the right knee bent, the left leg forward--the
+right arm dropping, but grasping clubs--the left arm raised, and
+the fingers spread out. "Aya, aya, minya," they continually shouted.
+However, the party rode on, and the shouts died away.
+
+The Journalist occasionally recovers from his enthusiasm for
+savagery. We have no more bursts in his earlier style, "Such
+truth and exemption from disease, such _intensity_ of existence,
+in short, must be far beyond the _enjoyments of civilised men_,
+with all that art can do for them. And the proof of this is to
+be found, in the failure of all attempts to persuade these free
+denizens of uncultivated earth to forsake it for the tilled ground.
+They prefer the land, unbroken and free from the earliest curse
+pronounced against the first banished and first created man." All
+this unfortunately shows nothing, but that the gallant Colonel would
+be the wiser for going back to his Bible, where he would find the
+words, "I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake."
+But at last (page 328) we have a sketch of the reality. "It would
+appear that, the finer the climate and the fewer man's wants, the
+more he sinks towards the condition of the lower animals. Where the
+natives had passed the night, no huts, even of bushes, had been set
+up. A few tufts of dry grass only marked the spot, where, beside a
+small fire, each person had sat, folded up like the capital letter
+N. Their occupation during the day was only wallowing in a muddy
+hole, in no respect cleaner than swine. They have no idea of any
+necessity for washing themselves between their birth and the grave,
+while groping in mud for worms." After admitting the filth, the
+indolence, and the uselessness of the savage; contrasting, however,
+his teeth and tongue favourably with those of the civilised man or
+child, of which he pronounces it to be "ten to one but he should
+find _only impurity and decay_," (a point in which we are wholly
+at issue with him,) he asks, "what then is civilisation in the
+economy of the human animal?" He answers, "Cultivated man despises
+the perishable substance, and pursues the immortal shadow." We are
+but little satisfied with the language of this solution, nor is
+its meaning much more intelligible. In the first place, man, in a
+civilised state, does not necessarily injure his bodily organs. The
+fool who cannot stir, or even sit, without a cigar in his mouth, or
+the drunkard who continually sacrifices health and understanding
+to intoxication, has only to condemn himself. But, give the savage
+tobacco and rum, and he will as speedily destroy his organs, and
+bring himself to the grave, as the most civilised profligate in
+existence. And as to the grand supposed use of civilisation--the
+fixing our minds on "immortal shadows"--if by this he meant giving
+us ideas of religion, there are many highly civilised nations
+which think but very little of religion, and many highly civilised
+persons who think of it nothing at all. Yet, it is only justice to
+the gallant Colonel to quote this sentence. "Animal gratification
+is transient and dull compared to the acquisition of knowledge, the
+gratification of mind,--the raptures of the poet, or the delight
+of the enthusiast, however imaginary. Such were my reflections on
+this day of rest, in the heart of a desert, while protected from the
+sun's rays by a blanket."
+
+But even his metaphysics are entirely a misconception. The original
+purpose of civilisation is, to enable man to live in society; that
+is, in peace, with the advantages of mutual assistance. That those
+objects are powerfully aided by religion is true, and that science
+may be best cultivated in settled life, is equally true; but those
+are merely collateral. Civilisation means the work of law, of safe
+intercourse, of secure property, and of all the safeguards of
+society which ultimately enable man to polish the general manners,
+and to improve the general mind. Religion is not the consequence,
+but the origin of Civilisation.
+
+We now take leave of the journey, with the sketch of the rivers.
+After moving for some distance between two streams, they approached
+the junction, which formed--"the broad, deep, and placid waters of a
+river as deep as the Murray. Pelicans and ducks floated upon it, and
+mussel shells of extraordinary size lay in such quantities, where
+the natives had been in the habit of eating them, as to resemble
+snow covering the ground. But even that reach seemed diminutive,
+when compared with the vast body of water of which traces had been
+left there; affording evidence, that though wide, they must have
+been impetuous in their course. Verdure alone shone now, over the
+wide extent to which the waters sometimes rose. Beyond that channel
+lay the almost boundless plains; the whole together forming the
+finest region I had ever seen in Australia."
+
+Still the luckless character of the Australian rivers appears; and
+after expecting that this fine channel, which there seemed navigable
+for steamers, would continue, in a few miles more it exhibited only
+ponds. Whether the great central stream may not exhibit the same
+caprice, is still the question.
+
+The party returned to Sydney in January 1847; and in March, Mr
+Kennedy, the second in command, was sent, as has been already
+stated, to explore the course of the Victoria.
+
+There are some valuable observations on the aborigines. It is
+said that they have good natural faculties, all one of them
+named Uranigh, an attendant on the expedition, obtains especial
+praise for sagacity, fidelity, and courage. But, from inevitable
+circumstances, it appears to be the fate of the natives to waste
+away before the European blood, and, even without any violence
+or oppression, gradually to vanish. To teach them to earn their
+bread, to adopt European habits of any kind, or even to live with
+any sense of comfort in the vicinity of European settlers, seems
+impossible, and thus they gradually retire into the interior. This
+process has so uniformly occurred in all colonised countries, where
+a new civilisation has been introduced, that it may be regarded as
+almost a law of nature. "Fire, grass, and kangaroos," are essential
+to native life; and when the pastures are no longer suffered to be
+burned, and when the kangaroos disappear, the savage _must_ retire.
+Sir T. Mitchell's favourite project would be, to send away a young
+married pair to the south of Europe, where they might learn the
+cultivation of the grape and olive, fig, &c.; then to bring them
+back with their children. But we are afraid they would make but few
+converts; that the benevolent experiment would be totally thrown
+away; and that the poor, idle, and useless being, whom Sir Thomas
+will persist in calling the noble savage, must be left to eat rats
+and mice, to live in misery and wretchedness, and to be inevitably
+pushed into the wilderness, to make way for a superior class of
+human capability.
+
+But, regarding the condition of the natives as utterly beyond
+European influence, except so far as it may and ought to be exerted
+to protect them from all injury,--there are other questions of high
+importance, relative to the condition of the convicts. The preamble
+of the Transport Act made the reformation of the culprit a primary
+object. There never was any use of forced labour so effective. The
+galley-slaves of France and Italy were in general made more wicked,
+if possible, by their imprisonment and work. We think it also
+next to an impossibility that any culprit, punished by temporary
+imprisonment, and then thrown out again among his associates, _can_
+change his habits. Who will employ a known felon? A single act of
+robbery may give him more means of gross gratification, than he
+could obtain by the severest toil in a twelvemonth. The temptation
+is too strong. The only hope of his recovery, is in his being sent
+where his bad character will not utterly prevent his getting a good
+one; where he will have profitable work, (let the profit be more or
+less;) where he will have few temptations, and none of his old ones;
+and where he may have a prospect of bettering his condition among
+his fellows. All these he had, and has, in New South Wales.
+
+But it is remarkable and unfortunate, that we seldom have a new
+head of the colonial department who does not bring with him some
+new theory; and the fashionable theory now is, to try the effect of
+prison discipline. We have no hesitation in denouncing this theory,
+as ineffectual, intolerably costly, highly dangerous, and even
+actually cruel. We take the points in succession: we doubt whether
+it has really reformed one prisoner out of a thousand. Its expense
+is enormous: the single prison at Millbank cost a million sterling,
+and probably £100,000 a-year for its support. The model prison at
+Pentonville is an architectural _bijou_, but terribly expensive.
+Men cannot be reformed by turnkeys in the most moral costume, or by
+locks of the most exquisite invention.--It is dangerous: because
+those felons, once let loose, almost invariably become felons
+again; and a general jail-delivery once a year, from handcuffs and
+shackles, may people the streets with ruffianism.--It is even cruel.
+The prisoners are not merely deprived, for a long succession of
+years, of all healthful exercise--for who ever could take healthful
+exercise within prison walls?--but shut out from all the view and
+enjoyment of nature, and especially from matrimony; they cannot
+be husbands or fathers. It is true, that the felon forfeits all
+rights, if they are found incompatible with the public safety; but
+we have no _right_ to inflict on him any suffering beyond that
+which is absolutely necessary. If by sending him to Australia we
+can accomplish, without cruelty, those objects which we _cannot_
+accomplish without cruelty at home, it is our duty to send him to
+Australia.
+
+We know that a middle system of imprisonment, to be followed by
+transportation, has been attempted, but we have no faith in its
+operations. The true place is Australia.
+
+Sir Thomas Mitchell, the very best authority on such subjects, tells
+us, "There is no country in which labour appears to be more required
+to render it available to, and habitable by civilised man, than New
+South Wales. _Without_ labour, the inhabitants must be savages, or
+such helpless people as we find the Aborigines. With equal truth, it
+may be asserted that there is _no region_ of earth susceptible of so
+much improvement solely by the labour and ingenuity of man." There
+are no unwholesome savannahs; the rocky ranges afford the means of
+forming reservoirs, &c., of water, which, under the tropics, is
+life, abundance, and health; there is an immensity if it be properly
+used, and Australia might be made the finest scene of vegetation and
+luxuriance in the world.
+
+We take our leave of this volume with regret. It is strikingly
+written; it excites and rewards curiosity, and (a few rambling
+ideas excepted) it powerfully increases our interest in Australian
+discovery, and in that whole mighty region of the Pacific, which
+God's providence has given into the hands of England, for the
+happiness of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+SIBERIA.
+
+_Travels in Siberia: including Excursions Northwards, down the Obi
+to the Polar Circle, and Southwards to the Chinese Frontier._ By
+ADOLPH ERMAN. Translated from the German by W. R. COOLEY. Two vols.
+London, 1848.
+
+
+Of no important portion of the dominions of the five great European
+powers are such vague and imperfect notions entertained, as of the
+vast tract comprised between Russia in Europe and the Kamschatkan
+sea, between the Chinese empire and the Arctic Ocean. Courageous
+explorers have not been wanting, of the inclement steppes and
+rugged mountains forming Europe's bulwark against the Mongul and
+the Tartar. Men of enterprise and distinction have undertaken the
+task, and executed it well. But their journeys, usually performed
+with special objects and scientific views, have been recorded
+for the most part in a similar spirit. Either an ardent love of
+science and zeal for its advancement, or the strong encouragement
+and liberal subsidies of an enlightened government, are requisite
+inducements to brave the perils and hardships of Siberian travel.
+The mere inquisitive and speculative traveller has difficulty
+in persuading himself, that the country can reward him for the
+discomfort and inconvenience he must endure in traversing it. Not
+that Siberia is entirely devoid of wild attractions and romantic
+associations. To the adventurous hunter, its vast forests and
+thinly-peopled plains give assurance of sport. The motley character
+of its native and immigrant population affords to the philosopher
+curious matter of consideration. A place of deportation for traitors
+and criminals--and not unfrequently for the innocent--its name is
+inseparably connected with the memory of innumerable unfortunates
+who have there pined out their existence in expiation of crime,
+or in obedience to mandates often as unjust as arbitrary. Fallen
+favourites of the Czars, rebels against their tyranny, traitors to
+their person, murderers, and other malefactors, and even prisoners
+of war, have here found a living grave till released by death,
+clemency, or flight. Did the tears of exiles fertilise, Siberia
+should be a teeming land. Since its first subjugation by Ivan the
+Terrible, how many a Russian magnate, lord of thousands of serfs,
+owner of millions of rubles, proud of his position, and confident
+of imperial favour, has suddenly found himself travelling eastward
+under escort, banished and a beggar. How many mournful trains of
+minor offenders have plodded their weary way across the Uralian
+chain, guarded by barbarian Bashkirs, to labour in the mines of
+Nerchinsk, or to lead a peasant's toilsome life on the margin of the
+Frozen Sea. From those vast and ice-bound regions, escape can rarely
+be accomplished. But at intervals, during the last five-and-thirty
+years, bearded and toil-worn men of martial aspect have crossed the
+German frontier, and astonished those they accosted by wild tales
+of suffering, and ignorance of the most notorious events. Some have
+inquired for Napoleon, and wept when they learned he was a captive,
+or dead. Circumstances of current history, known to each child
+and peasant, were to them a mystery and a marvel. These strange
+wanderers, escaped from long bondage in Siberia, were amongst the
+last survivors of that countless host led northwards by a Corsican's
+ambition, and whose funeral pile was lighted in Moscow's city.
+
+Amongst the delineators of Siberia and its inhabitants, of the
+produce, customs, and peculiarities of the country and its people,
+one of the most successful is the German gentleman and scholar whose
+admirable work has just now appeared in a clever English dress.
+The son of a man of great learning and high attainments, Mr Adolph
+Erman treads nobly in his father's footsteps. Still young, he has
+done much to increase the lustre of the honourable name transmitted
+to him. Born in the year 1806, he was but two-and-twenty years of
+age when he undertook, at his own cost, a journey round the world,
+having for its chief object a series of magnetical observations. The
+expedition was completely successful. Starting from Berlin to St
+Petersburg, he crossed northern Asia, with occasional digressions
+of a few hundred leagues, took ship at Okhotsk for Kamschatka,
+thence proceeded to California, visited Otaheite, and came round by
+Cape Horn and Rio Janeiro to Europe and Berlin. Then he sat down to
+write of what he had seen, entitling his work--"Journey round the
+Earth, across North Asia and both Oceans." But the tale of travel
+so extensive takes time to tell; and, up to the present date,
+he has not protracted his narrative beyond Okhotsk. What he has
+done, however, is complete in itself, very interesting, and withal
+somewhat voluminous, since its abridged translation forms two heavy
+octavos, heavy in amount of paper and print, but not, we must in
+justice admit, in the nature of their contents. Whilst recording
+scientific investigations, the author does not neglect subjects more
+generally interesting. Upon all he brings to bear an extraordinary
+amount of reading and research. The result is a book of travels of
+no ephemeral nature, but that will long be esteemed as a standard
+work, and respected as a valuable authority.
+
+Mr Erman commences his narrative of travel on the day of his
+departure from Berlin; but its earlier portion has been compressed
+by the translator, in order to escape as soon as possible from
+Europe, and get upon the less trodden ground east of Tobolsk. Much
+has been written of late years concerning European Russia and its
+inhabitants, and it was hardly to be expected that even so acute
+an observer as Mr Erman should find any thing particularly novel
+to say about them. He takes a sensible and practical view of the
+condition, character, and disposition of the population; and is
+happy in his detection and indication of national peculiarities.
+He does not, like the majority of travellers in Russia, enter the
+country with a settled determination to behold nothing, from the
+White Sea to the Black, but oppression and cruelty on the one
+hand, slavery and suffering upon the other. He does not come to a
+premature decision, that because Russia is ruled by an absolute
+monarch, all happiness, prosperity, and justice are essentially
+banished from the land. It is really pleasant to find a deviation
+from the established routine of books about Russia. These are now
+nearly all concocted upon one and the same plan. The recipe is as
+exact as any in Mrs Rundell: and is as conscientiously adhered to
+by literary cooks, as that great artist's invaluable precepts are
+by knights and ladies of the ladle. Tyranny, misery, and the knout
+are the chief ingredients of the savoury dish. We are shown a nation
+of cretins, crushed under the boot-heel of an imperial ogre; whilst
+a selfish, servile aristocracy salaam their admiration, and catch
+greedily at the titles and gewgaws thrown to them as a sop by their
+terrible master. This is the substance of the mess, which, being
+handsomely garnished with lying anecdotes of horrible cruelties
+practised upon the unfortunate population, is deemed sufficiently
+dainty to set before the public, and is forthwith devoured as
+genuine and nutritive food by the large body of simpletons who take
+type for a guarantee of veracity. Mr Erman despises the common trick
+and claptrap resorted to by vulgar writers. Avoiding anecdotage, and
+abuse of the powers that be, he gives, in brief shrewd paragraphs,
+glimpses of Muscovite character and feelings, which clearly prove
+the people of that vast empire to be far happier, more prosperous,
+and more practically free, than the inhabitants of many countries
+who boast of liberty because anarchy has replaced good government.
+Judging less from any distinct assertions or arguments advanced in
+these volumes, than from their general tenor, and by the inferences
+to be gleaned from them, we must consider the Russians a contented
+and flourishing nation, likely to make the larger strides in
+civilisation that they are unimpeded by revolutionary agitation.
+Propagandists meet little encouragement amongst the loyal and
+light-hearted subjects of the autocrat. "We have often observed at
+Moscow," says Mr Erman, "birch-trees hewn for fencing, yet still
+alive in the horizontal position, and throwing out shoots. The
+great distinction of the vegetable nature in this region is its
+tenacity of life; and, singularly enough, the same capability of
+existing under oppression, and of withstanding stubbornly every
+revolutionising influence, is here the characteristic of man also.
+The ear of the stranger is sure, at every turn of conversation, to
+catch the sounds--'Kak ni bud,' (no matter how,) with which the
+Russians are used to give expression to their habitual indifference,
+and renunciation of all care.... Notwithstanding the great variety
+of condition which the population exhibit, every thing has the stamp
+of nationality, and an obstinate adherence to established usage
+may be plainly recognised as a fundamental principle. Some foreign
+customs, indeed, are adopted from strangers residing in Moscow; but
+they are, at the same time, so changed as to be assimilated to the
+national manners. Russian nationality may be compared to a river,
+which receives other streams without changing its name; or, still
+better, to a living organism, which, while devouring every variety
+of food, continues still the same."
+
+It was on the 29th of July that Mr Erman, who travelled in
+company with the Norwegian professor Hansteen, left Moscow, and
+moved eastwards, passing through a productive country, strewn
+with populous and comfortable villages. At Pokròf, his first
+halting-place, his chamber walls were adorned with rude carvings and
+paintings, whose subjects were taken from the events of 1812, and
+represented the valiant deeds of the peasantry. Buikova, a village
+forty miles east of Moscow, was the farthest point to which the
+French penetrated. Their invasion has left but a faint impression
+upon the popular mind in Russia--even in Moscow, which suffered so
+much at their hands. Conflagrations have been common occurrences
+in that city, and the inhabitants are accustomed to be burned out.
+We read of seven such events, from the thirteenth to the beginning
+of the nineteenth century, in all of which the destruction was
+complete, or very nearly so. The fire of 1812 spared many of the
+stone churches, on whose towers "the Mahomedan crescent rises above
+the cross, a monument of earlier revolutions. The yoke of the Tatars
+was so lasting and oppressive, that later events of a similar kind
+seem comparatively unimportant; and even the French invasion is
+here thought little of, being usually compared with the irruptions
+of the Pechenegues and that of the Poles in later times, but never
+set on a level with the Tatar domination." The French have little
+prestige in Russia. Whatever respect they previously enjoyed there,
+was completely annihilated by the pitiful figure they cut in the
+Moscow campaign; retreating, as they did, a ragged, disorderly,
+frost-bitten remnant, before a swarm of armed peasants and irregular
+horse. And Muscovite sign-painters and saint-carvers decorate
+village walls with episodes of the disastrous overthrow of an army,
+probably the most powerful and really efficient ever got together.
+Any notion entertained by the Russians of French invincibility was
+as completely dissipated in that country by the events of 1812,
+as it was in Germany by the ensuing, and scarcely less important,
+campaign of 1813.
+
+Passing Murom, where a sort of Yankee tradition exists of a
+"robber-nightingale," which entices travellers into the woods by
+its song, and then kills them by the power of its notes, Mr Erman
+reached Nijni Novgorod at the moment of the great annual fair. The
+mixture of European and Asiatic produce and manufactures gives the
+Russian fairs an appearance singularly striking to the foreigner's
+eye. Things the most opposite are there brought together. _Obrasá_,
+or Greek holy images, amulets, and other objects used in the
+solemnities of the Græco-Russian church, are seen in juxtaposition
+with the elegant luxuries and superfluities of extreme European
+civilisation. The clumsy carvings of Uralian peasants are found in
+the next warerooms to the fragile and fashionable masterpieces of
+a Parisian milliner. The chief part of the goods come from great
+distances. Amongst the important articles of traffic are tea from
+China, horse-hides from Tatary, iron bars from Siberia, shawls
+of camel's-down from Bokhara. The Bokharians also import large
+quantities of cotton, partly raw and partly spun. This is one of the
+principal objects of trade at Nijni. Concerning the origin of this
+useful substance, curious fables were current in Russia not quite a
+century ago. "It appears to me certain," says Mr Erman, "that the
+story of the zoophytic plant called Baránez, or lamb-plant (formed
+as a diminutive from Barán, a sheep,) originated in some embellished
+account of the cotton plant. Herberstein relates it at full length
+and unchanged, just as he had heard it. 'There has been seen, near
+to the Caspian Sea, a seed, rather larger and rounder than that of
+a melon, from which, when set in the ground, is produced something
+similar to a lamb, of the altitude of five palms, having a very fine
+fleece, &c., &c. The German edition of Herberstein (Basel, 1563)
+adds that the Baránez has a head, eyes, ears, and all the limbs,
+like a sheep. But it mentions correctly '_the very fine fleece
+which the people of that country commonly made use of to pad their
+caps withal_.' This is the ordinary use which the Tatar tribes
+in general make of cotton at the present day." The fair at Nijni
+lasts two months, and brings together six hundred thousand persons
+of different nations and tribes, or about thirty-three times the
+number of the stationary population. It produces a large revenue
+to the imperial treasury,--the letting of the wooden booths, and
+of two thousand five hundred and twenty-two stone storerooms, (to
+each of which latter is attached a chamber for the owner of the
+goods to live in) alone yielding, so far back as 1825, nearly four
+hundred thousand rubles; whilst the population of the government, or
+district, amounting to nearly a million of souls, paid taxes to the
+amount of fourteen millions of rubles.
+
+Nijni Novgorod is the point of rendezvous for criminals from the
+western provinces of the empire, condemned to Siberian exile. They
+arrive there in small detachments, to pursue their journey in
+large bodies. In the vicinity of every post-house along the road
+is another building known as the Ostrog or fort, which is merely a
+large barrack divided into numerous small chambers, and surrounded
+by a fence of palisades, where the convicts are lodged upon the
+journey. From various passages scattered through Mr Erman's book, it
+appears that these Siberian exiles are by no means so badly treated
+as has frequently been stated and believed. In most instances the
+punishment derives its severity less from any painful toil or cruel
+discipline imposed upon them, than from the rigidity of the climate,
+the separation from friends, and the mortal ennui those accustomed
+to civilisation and society cannot but experience, whilst leading
+the monotonous life of a peasant or Cossack in regions as dreary
+as any the globe's surface affords. The first caravan of prisoners
+encountered by Mr Erman, at about a hundred versts beyond Nijni,
+were well clothed and cared for, and seemed neither dissatisfied
+with their past journey, nor overwhelmed with care about the
+future. "With every train of them are several waggons, drawn by
+post-horses, to carry the women and the old and infirm men; the
+rest follow in pairs, in a long train, after the waggons, escorted
+by a militia established in the villages. It is but rarely that
+one sees special offenders with fetters upon their legs during the
+march." The majority of tales circulated by romancing travellers,
+with reference to Siberian exile, have little foundation save in
+the imagination of the narrators. Amongst these fictions is to
+be reckoned the statement that certain classes of the banished
+are compelled to pass their lives in hunting the sable, and other
+animals. The great majority of the delinquents are condemned only to
+settle in Siberia; and when hard labour in the Uralian mines, and
+in certain manufactories, is superadded, it is generally for a year
+or other limited period. Those of the peasant class have to support
+themselves, whilst offenders of a higher rank, and unused to manual
+labour, have an allowance made them by the government. In various
+places Mr Erman met with exiles, from some of whom he obtained
+curious information. They are usually known by the mild name of
+"_the unfortunates_," and are held in no particular disfavour by
+the natives, with whose families they intermarry. By a remarkable
+enactment of the Russian law, serfs, when transported to Siberia,
+become in all respects as free as the peasants in western Europe. Mr
+Erman refers to this with strong approval, and attributes to it the
+happiest results. "I have often," he says, "heard intelligent and
+reflecting Russians mention, as an almost inexplicable paradox, that
+the peasants condemned to become settlers, all, without exception,
+and in a very short time, change their habits and lead an exemplary
+life; yet it is certain that the sense of the benefit conferred
+on them by the gift of personal freedom is the sole cause of this
+conversion. Banishment subservient to colonisation, instead of
+close imprisonment, is, indeed, an excellent feature in the Russian
+code; and though the substitution of forced labour in mines for the
+punishment of death may be traced back to Grecian example, yet the
+improving of the offender's condition by bestowing on him personal
+freedom, is an original as well as an admirable addition of a
+Russian legislator." It is of course by the higher class of exiles
+that the banishment is most severely felt; but these live in the
+towns, that the succour received from government may reach them the
+more easily, and submit, for the most part, with great equanimity
+to the startling change from the luxury of Moscow or St Petersburg,
+to the dulness and simplicity of Tobolsk, and even of worse places.
+Some of them have to do penance in church for a certain time after
+their arrival, and a portion of these continue the practice when
+it is no longer compulsory. At Beresov, a town in western Siberia,
+which Mr Erman passed through on an excursion northwards from
+Tobolsk, the oral chronicles of the inhabitants furnish curious
+details of the numerous illustrious exiles who have there ended
+their days. Menchikoff, the well-known favourite of Peter I., was
+one of these. "After his political extinction, he prepared himself,
+by devout penitence, for his natural decease. He worked with his
+own hands in erecting the little wooden church, now fallen to
+decay, which stands thirty or forty feet above the bank of the
+Sosva, at the southern extremity of the town: he then served in it
+as bell-ringer, and was finally buried by the grateful inhabitants
+of Beresov, immediately before the door of the building." It was
+here, at Beresov, that Mr Erman fell in with a number of unlucky
+conspirators, who had lost fortune, rank, and home, by their
+association in a recent abortive revolutionary attempt. Amongst them
+were a M. Gorski, at one time a count and general of cavalry, and
+the ex-chieftains Focht and Chernilov. They usually wore the costume
+of the country, but upon holidays they donned European coats, _in
+order to display the vestiges of the orders which had once been
+sewed upon them_. A curious instance of vanity, traceable, perhaps,
+to a desire to distinguish themselves from persons condemned to the
+same punishment for crimes of a more disgraceful nature.
+
+In the streets of Yekaterinburg, the first town of importance after
+crossing the Asian boundary, parties of exiles are a frequent
+spectacle; the number passing through in a year being estimated at
+five thousand, or about two-fifths of the annual export of convicts
+to Siberia, as stated by Mr Stepanov, whose statement, however,
+Mr Erman seems disposed to consider exaggerated. The detachments
+are usually guarded by Kosaks of the Ural, and by a company of
+Bashkir militia. These Uralian Kosaks are well uniformed, armed,
+and mounted, and enjoy the same privileges as the Kosaks of the
+Don. They are allowed an immunity from every impost, but are bound
+to devote themselves to the public service. Touching the Bashkirs,
+another irregular and half-savage militia, serving to swell the
+ranks of Russia's enormous army, Mr Erman, who made some stay at
+Yekaterinburg, the northern limit of their residence, gives curious
+particulars. They are the only aboriginal Siberian tribe whose mode
+of life regularly alternates from the nomadic to the fixed. Their
+winters are passed in permanent villages of wooden huts, erected
+usually upon the skirt of a forest. But when spring approaches,
+they collect their flocks and herds, strap hair tent-cloths upon
+their saddles, and are off to the plains. They appear to live
+upon horseback, and are indolent, indocile, and useless out of
+the saddle. The only thing the men do, is to drive home the mares
+at milking-time; all other domestic toil is left to the women.
+And although grass abounds in the summer pastures, hay is unknown
+amongst them. The cattle sustain life in winter as best they may, on
+stunted or decayed herbage, sought under the snow and gathered on
+the dunghills. Fermented mare's milk is the favorite drink of the
+Bashkirs, who live chiefly upon mutton and fish, and upon the fruit
+of the bird-cherry (_Prunus padus_) kneaded into a sort of cake.
+In the chase they make use of hawks, which they are particularly
+skilful in training. The smaller species of these birds are used to
+take hares, whilst the greater will strike foxes, and even wolves.
+The roving careless life of the Bashkirs possesses a peculiar charm,
+admitted even by the civilised Russians; and it is with no good will
+that, on the return of winter, the tribes re-enter their settled
+habitations. "They approach them with reluctance, and believe that
+Shaitan, or the evil spirit, has taken up his abode in the huts that
+oppress them with such a sense of restraint. The men accordingly
+remain at some distance from the settlement, and send the women
+forward, armed with staves, with which they strike the door of every
+hut, uttering loud imprecations; and it is not till they have made
+the rounds with their noisy exorcisms, that the men ride forward at
+full speed and with terrific shouts, to banish the dreaded demon
+from his lurking-place." The chief weapon of these Bedouins of the
+north is the same which so forcibly excited Captain Dalgetty's
+risibility upon his visit to the Children of the Mist. But although
+in these days of Paixhans and percussion, bows and arrows certainly
+appear rather anomalous, they are by no means contemptible weapons
+in the hands of some of the Siberian tribes. Of this Mr Erman had
+abundant opportunity to convince himself, especially when his ramble
+northwards from Tobolsk brought him amongst the Ostyaks of the river
+Obi. The ordinary hunting weapons of these people are bows six feet
+long, of very slight curve, and from which four-feet arrows are
+discharged with murderous effect. Much practice and strength are
+required to draw these bows; and our scientific traveller, who, not
+having taken the necessary precaution of shielding the left arm with
+a piece of horn, from the recoil of the string, had been unable to
+draw his bow to more than one third of the arrow's length, was not a
+little astounded to see an Ostyak pigmy, with sore eyes and a sickly
+aspect, send a blunt arrow one hundred and sixty feet, and strike
+the object aimed at, the stem of a larch, near its summit, fully
+sixty feet from the ground. Blunt arrows, headed with flattened iron
+balls, are used to kill sables and squirrels, that the skin may
+not be injured; the sharp ones are a settler for any quadruped the
+country produces.
+
+After many days' journey through Tatar villages of wooden huts,
+and towns that are little better, the first view of Tobolsk,
+obtained some miles before reaching the place, is quite imposing;
+and the traveller, who might think he had got a few stages
+beyond civilisation, is cheered and encouraged by the sight of
+church-towers, lofty monasteries, and well-built houses. In vain
+does he seek an inn. Such things are unknown in Siberia; and, if he
+has no acquaintance in the town, he must apply to the police-master,
+who recommends him to the hospitality of an inhabitant, by whom he
+is made welcome during his stay, without demand for remuneration,
+although, if proffered, it will sometimes be accepted. In this
+manner Mr Erman and his companions were accommodated in the upper
+storey of a well-built wooden house; and here their progress
+eastward was arrested by the character of the weather. It was the
+commencement of October, the period of transition from summer to
+winter, and the traveller's entrance into the town was rendered
+memorable by a heavy fall of snow--"white flies," as the postilions
+called the flakes, which they beheld with much pleasure. Their
+satisfaction was probably owing to the fact that in Siberia the
+coldest part of the year is the most favourable for travelling, a
+matter of interest to people of their profession. But the moment of
+transition, whilst the struggle lasts between summer and winter,
+when snow encumbers the ground, and frost has not yet hardened it,
+is known, as well as the similar period at the close of winter,
+as "the time of the unroading," (spoiling of the roads;) and the
+Russians have even manufactured a verb "to be unroaded." The snow
+obstructs wheeled carriages, and forbids the use of the sledge;
+and, unless peremptorily compelled to move forward, the Russian
+merchants--the most experienced of Siberian travellers--await, in
+some convenient resting-place, the hardening of the winter road.
+From Mr Erman's account, a better place than Tobolsk could scarcely
+be found, in those wild regions, wherein to pass a few weeks of
+compulsory inaction. Nevertheless, and although cordially received
+by the governor-general, Velyaminov, from whom, and from other
+Russian officers, he got much useful information, our traveller was
+impatient to be off. He had a pet scheme in view. From the very
+commencement of the journey he had planned an excursion to the mouth
+of the Obi, within the Arctic circle. To this he was partly induced
+by the desire of tracing certain magnetic lines, and partly by "the
+alluring prospect of enjoying, on the northern part of the Obi,
+the first undisturbed intercourse with the aboriginal possessors
+of the land, where they are little changed by foreign influence."
+Accordingly, towards the middle of November, the drifting ice upon
+the Irtuish having united into a solid sheet, Mr Erman joyfully
+made final preparations for his journey to Obdorsk. They were few,
+and soon completed. A Kosak guide and interpreter, a fur dress,
+a copper kettle, bread and ham, salted salmon and caviar, were
+stowed in a couple of sledges, one of which was light enough to
+be drawn by dogs or reindeer. It was held advisable also to take
+out a fresh passport, signed by the governor of Tobolsk, in lieu of
+the one delivered at St Petersburg, for, in places far removed from
+the great road across Siberia, people have confused and indistinct
+notions of the power which issues from the capital of the empire.
+The larger sledge was provided with otvódi or guides--two strong
+bars placed lengthways on either side the carriage to prevent
+an upset. "Towards the end of winter, the snow-ways, which are
+constantly travelled upon, have an undulating surface, like that
+of a stormy sea, and give the sledge a motion so like that of a
+ship tossed on the waves, that travellers unused to it often grow
+sea-sick on the road, and the use of otvódi is a very necessary
+precaution." Russian travelling, delightfully rapid, has many
+drawbacks. Upon the log-roads, (formed of tree-trunks,) the violent
+and incessant jolting is said to have even worse effects than the
+excessive undulations of the sledge. After a few years, it not
+only brings on a complete paralysis of the mental faculties of the
+Russian postilions, but also occasions spinal disease, to such an
+extent as to have obtained for those roads the significant name of
+spine-crushers.
+
+On the 22d November, when Mr Erman began his slide northwards,
+traffic had not yet given the road that wavy configuration so
+uncomfortable to the bilious traveller. The post from Tobolsk to
+Beresov had made but one journey on the winter-track, and the
+sledges glided rapidly and smoothly on the almost virgin snow-way.
+Beyond Tugalova, a village 140 miles from Tobolsk, they travelled on
+the frozen Irtuish, and frequently passed the self-acting machinery
+used for the winter fishing. This consists of a strong pole in an
+inclined position, with its lower extremity frozen fast in the
+ice. "At the upper end of this pole was a continuation made of
+switches, which, bending down, reached to the surface of the ice;
+at that point was a hole through which was let down the hook and
+line. The upper part of the apparatus is seen bent down more or less
+according as the bait is still untouched, or as a fish pulling at
+it has freed a check put to the elasticity of the rod, and is thus,
+in consequence of its own efforts, drawn nearer to the surface of
+the water." The ingenuity of this contrivance would avail little,
+however, were not means found of rousing the sleepy sturgeon from
+their winter slumbers. They lie in muddy hollows in the bed of the
+river, quite motionless, and clustered together for the sake of
+warmth. To awaken them, hard balls of clay, heated in the fire, are
+thrown from time to time into the water, below the line. Driven from
+their resting-place, they swim up stream, according to their custom,
+and come upon the bait. This mode of fishing is very productive.
+Fishing, of one kind or other, is the principal occupation of the
+Ostyaks, in the heart of whose country, after three or four days'
+journey, Mr Erman found himself. The rivers abound with excellent
+fish--eels, especially, being very abundant, but not much eaten,
+although their skins are in great request as window-panes. These are
+rubbed with fat, to make them more transparent, but there are small
+roundish swellings in the skin which refract and confound the rays
+of light. A better substitute for glass is a flake of ice, used by
+the Sosnovian Ostyaks, a tribe further north. The flakes are about a
+foot thick, and are propped from without by a pole, whose lower end
+bears obliquely against the ground. The fire, kept burning in the
+hut, thaws the inner surface of the ice, rendering it smooth as a
+mirror. A whiter and brighter light penetrates through these windows
+than through the fish-skins, which the Sosnovians use for boots, and
+even for clothes. Strong and air-tight, and well rubbed with fat,
+they are almost as warm as fur, and better against the wet.
+
+The commencement of a fishing season or expedition is celebrated
+by the Ostyaks with all manner of queer saturnalia. Although
+nominally Christians, and accustomed to attend church once a-year,
+they are very heathenish in some of their rites and ceremonies,
+and make a strange jumble of their old superstitions and their new
+faith. The priests do not invariably set them a good example.
+"Our Russian informant complained bitterly of the priest in his
+neighbourhood, who came into the village on holidays so drunk, that
+the congregation assembled to no purpose." With such pastors, no
+wonder if the sheep cleave to some of their ancient usages. Those
+who are departing on an expedition, slaughter a tame animal, and
+smear their faces with its blood, accompanying the sacrifice with
+a carousal. In one village Mr Erman found the huts remarkably
+empty, and was told that the men had just gone a-fishing, and that
+their wives were drinking brandy in the kabak or public-house. The
+sale of spirits in Siberia, as in all the Russian dominions, is a
+government monopoly, and brandy is only to be had in certain houses,
+to whose keepers the privilege is farmed. In a small dark room,
+scarcely ten paces wide, Mr Erman found ten or twelve Ostyak dames
+clustered round the bottle, and benevolently drunk. His account of
+their maudlin state is amusingly grave and sentimental. "A number
+of short corpulent figures, with black sparkling eyes, could be
+just seen, moving and mingling together, in the narrow space. They
+all talked with animation, and with remarkably delicate voices,
+which now gave expression only to soft and joyous emotions. They
+embraced, one after the other, the Yamschik, who entered with us;
+and their soft voices, now almost whining, seemed attuned, not so
+much to words of old acquaintance, as to the endearments of young
+and growing love." The ladies having emptied their purses without
+quenching their thirst, the good-natured German, who observed
+that "the pleasure of drinking had but just risen to its highest
+pitch," opened them a credit with the kabak-keeper. "They now took
+especial pains to show themselves deserving of the European treat,
+by good Christian observance. Devout Russians are in the habit of
+neutralising the Satanic operation of spirituous liquors by a rapid
+movement of the right hand, intended to describe the cross, or by a
+softly-ejaculated prayer, or merely by blowing the breath upon the
+glass. But the good-humoured Ostyaks, novices in Christian prayer as
+in drinking, made the sign of the cross to such an extent, so slowly
+and with such deep bowing of the body, as would be required by the
+church only on the most solemn occasions."
+
+Although much engrossed by fishing, the Ostyaks do not neglect the
+chase. Their thick woods abound in the better kinds of fur animals,
+and the annual tribute of two sable skins, payable by each family
+to the Russian government, is not very difficult to obtain. It is
+seldom found necessary to pay an equivalent in other skins. Although
+quite the beginning of winter, Mr Erman's host, in an Ostyak
+village, showed him a fine sable skin, which he kept in a strong
+box, like a treasure, concealed in a corner of his dwelling. Its
+value was diminished by a yellowish tinge, ascribed to the animal's
+having lived in a wood where there was too much light. Besides
+sable and squirrel, the reindeer, the fox, the glutton, and the
+elk, are objects of chase. Mr Erman tried to get at the fact of the
+enmity said to exist between the two latter animals. The reply to
+his inquiries was the old story current in Europe--how the glutton
+leaps from a branch on the elk's neck, and keeps his seat till the
+death of his steed. No one, however, had seen any thing of the kind:
+it was matter of tradition, handed down from their dead fathers.
+The ermine is taken in traps. The fox is in great variety, the
+most esteemed being the crossed stone fox, whose colour is partly
+a grayish yellow, partly white, so distributed that the grayish
+parts unite prettily to form a cross, one bar of which extends
+along the back, whilst the other stretches obliquely down the
+middle ribs to the belly. The fur of this animal is greatly prized
+by the Russian clergy, for whom pelisses, covered with natural
+crosses, are made from it. The latitude of the town of Beresov is
+the headquarters of the Siberian beaver, hunted not for the fur but
+for the precious castoreum or beaver-stone, to which such great
+medical virtues are ascribed. Attempts have been made in Germany
+to obtain from the beavers of that country a product which might
+replace that of Siberia; but all in vain. The fine quality is only
+to be had in the far north, where, as Mr Erman fancifully observes,
+nature scatters animal perfumes in place of fragrant flowers.
+"The Kosaks and Russian traders have exalted the beaver-stone
+into a panacea.... To the sentence, 'God arose, and our enemies
+were scattered,' the Siberians add, very characteristically, the
+apocryphal interpolation, 'and we are free from headache.' To ensure
+this most desirable condition, every one has recourse, at home or on
+his travels, and with the firmest faith, to two medicines, and only
+two, viz., beaver-stone, or beaver-efflux, as it is here called, and
+sal-ammoniac." From the strength of the castoreum, the Siberians
+infer that other parts of the animal must possess peculiar virtues.
+Gouty swellings are said to subside rapidly when rubbed with the
+fat, and the beaver's teeth are popularly believed to cure toothach.
+
+The beaver is the only fur animal in these latitudes that does not
+change its colour in the course of the year. This is probably owing
+to the circumstance, that in winter it dwells wholly in the water,
+thus enjoying a comparatively equable temperature. In the river
+Obi, at Beresov, the water does not usually freeze below the depth
+of four feet eight inches, and the beaver always has two entrances
+to his dwelling, one high on the bank above the stream, the other
+below the freezing limit. The architectural and wood-cutting habits
+of the animal are the same here as in America; but two assertions,
+new to Mr Erman, were made respecting it by the Beresov hunters. He
+was assured that "among beavers, as with bees and men, there are
+distinctions of ranks; each chief keeping a number of labourers,
+the toils of which he oversees and directs without taking part in
+them; and, again, it was stated that the contents of the castoreum
+bags depend on the moon." It was impossible to verify the veracity
+of these two statements. As regards the moon's influence, however,
+there is ground for a suspicion that its advantages are rather felt
+by the hunter, than essential to the virtues of the drug. Full moon
+is maintained, both by Ostyaks and Russians, to be the propitious
+time.
+
+The most northern tribe of Ostyaks, who dwell between the rivers
+Obi and Yenisei, surpass their southern neighbours in venatorial
+skill, as they, in their turn, are surpassed by the Samoyedes,
+who live in the northernmost regions of Siberia. The men of the
+Yenisei kill wolves, which, on account of their long soft hair,
+are reckoned greatly superior to the forest and steppe wolves of
+middle Siberia. They are also famed for their dexterity in killing
+and capturing reindeer. "Tying leathern cords between the tops of
+the antlers of their tame deer, they turn the animals loose, one
+by one, in the neighbourhood of a wild herd: these do not fail
+to attack the strangers, and their antlers becoming entangled
+in the cords during the contest, they are held fast by the tame
+deer till the men arrive. These Ostyaks know also how to plant
+spring-bows, which send the arrow against the animal's breast." But
+the Samoyedes, besides these ordinary artifices, have other and
+ingenious ways, peculiar to themselves, of ensnaring and slaying
+the brute creation, by putting themselves as much as possible on an
+equality with the animals pursued, going on all-fours, and imitating
+them in voice and clothing. The Polar bear is a common victim to
+their cunning devices, and even to their open attacks; for their
+intimate acquaintance with the formidable beast makes them regard
+him as an easy prey. "The Samoyedes assert that the white bear far
+exceeds the black bear in ferocity and strength, whilst fully equal
+to it in cunning; yet, owing to his unwieldiness, they encounter it
+without fear, and always reckon on victory as certain. A man will
+often go singly against a Polar bear, eight feet long, without any
+other weapon than his knife, which he fastens to the end of a pole.
+In spring and autumn these animals are found upon the ice, near the
+hole, whence the seals come forth to breathe. There the bear covers
+himself up with snow, facing the hole, and with one paw stretched
+into the water." The Samoyede seal-hunters imitate the bears, and
+when the seal walks out upon the ice, they shove a board over
+the hole and capture the phoca. Concerning the bear the Ostyaks
+entertain peculiar notions, viewing it with a sort of superstitious
+respect. "A member of the court of justice told me that, in suits
+between Russians and Ostyaks, it is still the custom here (at
+Beresov) to bring, into court the head of a bear, and that this
+animal, which is supposed to be omniscient, is there appealed to
+as a witness by the Ostyaks. In swearing, they make the gesture of
+eating, and call upon the bear to devour them in like manner if they
+do not tell the truth." Some similar reverence for Bruin exists, we
+believe, amongst certain North American tribes.
+
+The draught-dogs, so faithful and useful to the northern Siberians,
+often receive but scurvy treatment at their masters' hands. The
+Ostyaks, who are honesty personified, and who laugh at the common
+European precautions of locking up valuables and bolting doors,
+cannot endure the predatory propensities of their canine allies,
+and fly into a passion whenever an unlucky dog sneaks into their
+dwelling in search of warmth or food. The poor brute is immediately
+a mark for the blows and kicks of every body present, the storm
+of abuse being justified by the cunning and greediness of its
+object, who, if allowed to abide in the house, would soon reduce
+its inmates to short commons. There is some excuse for the dogs'
+voracity, however; for, according to Mr Erman's account, they are
+considerably more than half-starved, and are rarely admitted to the
+fire to be fed, save when they return weary and distressed from a
+long journey. Severe as is the cold in those regions, protection
+from it is not essential to the existence, or even to the health
+of these hardy dogs. They sleep outside the houses, in holes which
+they thaw in the snow by their own warmth. At Obdorsk, where there
+are no pastures, and consequently no horses, four hundred dogs are
+kept by sixty inhabitants, and each of them is estimated to draw
+five poods' (two hundred pounds) weight in the loaded sledge. About
+eight o'clock in the evening these four hundred brutes set up a
+hideous howling, by way of claiming their daily meal, consisting
+invariably of fish, which, for them as well as for their owners'
+consumption, is first dried in the sun and then pounded, bones and
+all. Except this evening concert, a bark or a cry is rarely uttered
+by these dogs, unless at first starting when yoked to the sledge,
+or on coming across a reindeer team upon the road. Hydrophobia
+would be a terrible scourge in this dog-district, but the disease
+is fortunately unknown there. Steller has stated the same thing
+of the dogs of Kamschatka, and Mr Erman concludes that the malady
+is a result of the European system of living in towns. And as the
+Siberian dogs are so very moderately fed, he infers that excess,
+not want, generates the morbid habit. We are inclined to attribute
+more importance to the quality than to the quantity of the food. A
+fish diet may be more conducive to a wholesome state of the animals'
+blood than the masses of horse-flesh, paunch, and other rank and
+unclean offal commonly given to dogs in Europe, and especially in
+England, where the carnivorous addictions of the bipeds induce a
+belief in the propriety of unlimited flesh-feeding for quadrupeds.
+
+The large annual importation of exiles, the system of conscription,
+and the advantages offered to public officers volunteering for
+Siberian service, are the most important and efficacious measures by
+which Russia proceeds gradually but steadily with the colonisation
+and civilisation of her Asiatic dominions. The conscripts are
+sometimes drawn, not only from Tobolsk, but from the remotest parts
+of Siberia, and the term of military service being twenty-eight
+years, it is probable that only a small proportion return to their
+native villages. Those who do are looked up to as oracles by
+their countrymen. They are objects of pride to their families and
+of respect to every body else; the place of honour is theirs by
+right, and they are addressed by the title of Master Soldier.[7]
+The ferry of the Irtuish, by Tobolsk, whose passage is considered
+the symbol of political death to the numerous exiles who each year
+cross it--bestows a step of rank on all public servants offering
+themselves for duty in Siberia Proper. The passion for rank,
+stronger in Russia than in any other country, drives hosts of
+officers across this important boundary; but as they are not obliged
+to remain more than three years, most of them return home at the end
+of that time. Far nearer to St Petersburg than the Asiatic frontier,
+civilisation is still at a very low ebb amongst the aboriginal
+tribes. Close to Nijni Novgorod, and within a very short distance
+of Moscow, the prevailing population consists of Cheremisses and
+Chuvashes, two tribes many of whose customs are nearly as barbarous
+as their names. These people are shy and timid, very slow in
+acquiring industrious habits, and addicted to sundry practices
+stamping them as semi-savages. In some places they cling to
+paganism, and offer up horned beasts, fruit, and vegetables to their
+various deities. The Chuvash ladies wear a sort of bustle of sheet
+copper, hanging from the girdle backwards over the hips, and having
+appended to it all manner of metal ornaments, making a perpetual
+clatter in walking. But these tribes are the pink of refinement
+by comparison with those in the northern portion of the Muscovite
+empire,--with the Ostyaks, who eat out of the same trough with
+their dogs, or with the Samoyedes who tear with their teeth, and
+swallow with infinite relish, huge lumps of raw and reeking flesh.
+The women of the latter people wear, as their favourite decoration,
+(certainly no inappropriate one) a glutton's tail, hanging down the
+back of their pelisse. Their hair is plaited in tails, to which all
+manner of lumber, brass and iron rings, and rusty musket-locks, are
+attached. Mr Erman's account of "Life in the _Chum_" (the skin tent
+of the Samoyedes) is quaint and graphic.
+
+  [7] _Gospodin Slujivui._ Gospodin is equivalent to the French
+  Monsieur or Seigneur, and Slujivui means literally one who has
+  served in the army.
+
+"The reindeer calf, which we had got on the way, was killed and cut
+up in front of the tent a few minutes, after our arrival. The men
+now brought the bleeding flesh into the tent, and began devouring
+it immediately, quite raw, with the heartiest appetite. The old man
+was satisfied with sucking the brain from the head, whilst each
+of our younger comrades gnawed away at a limb of the animal, even
+to the bone. They laughed at the amazement which my good-humoured
+Esthonian attendant expressed at their blood-stained faces; and
+when he gave them to understand, through the interpreter, that they
+were no better than wolves, they seemed quite unprepared for such
+reproof; replying gravely, that they were at the same time no worse
+than the wolves, since they shared honestly with them, and left
+the bones and some scraps of flesh merely for their sake." In this
+same tent there was a little monster of a boy named Peina, whom one
+reads of with a sort of shudder, and with a strong suspicion that
+the creature was not _canny_. Mr Erman himself seems to write of
+him with peculiar reserve, stating facts, but evidently unwilling
+to give an opinion as to the exact nature of the beast. Peina, who
+had first-rate masticators, got his share of the raw meat, which
+did not prevent his drawing on his mother's lacteal resources, and
+thumping her brutally till she honoured the draft, or handed him
+the pot-ladle, with which he supped scalding porridge to his great
+internal contentment. The travellers' bread, although frozen hard
+and not easy eating for adult jaws, disappeared by wholesale within
+those of Peina. At night the anomalous urchin was laid naked in a
+canoe-shaped basket, and covered up so thickly with furs that his
+cries seemed to come from the depths of the earth. In the morning
+his mother took him from his bed and set him up, still naked, before
+the fire to warm himself. Sugar, when first presented to him,
+he called snow, and threw away, but when once he had tasted the
+dainty, his demands for it were unceasing and peremptory. Taking
+into consideration the uncomfortable and uncleanly peculiarities
+of the Samoyedes, both young and old, we cannot feel surprised
+that Mr Erman's interpreter conceived an intense dislike to their
+society, and so managed matters that one morning, whilst the man of
+science was busy measuring a base-line to ascertain the heights of
+some mountains, his Samoyede companions suddenly disappeared with
+their tent and their reindeer, leaving him with three ill-equipped
+sledges and a few Ostyak attendants, and with no choice but to make
+the best of his way back to Obdorsk, whence he soon afterwards
+returned to Tobolsk. There he passed his Christmas, and then resumed
+his journey; but this time in a southerly direction. After having
+penetrated to sixty-seven degrees north, the region of eternal
+frost, he struck southwards to the latitude of the Land's End,
+making a dip into China, which furnishes some of the best chapters
+in his book.
+
+Irkutsk, the last town of importance north of the Chinese frontier,
+consists of nineteen hundred houses, fifty being of brick, and
+the remainder of wood, and is probably the cheapest place in the
+civilised world as regards articles of food. We say "civilised,"
+because, although situate in a barbarous region, and possessing
+a population of a very motley character, the town has much that
+is European in its aspect and usages. It possesses an exchange,
+government factories, where newly-arrived convicts are employed,
+a school of medicine, a gymnasium, and a handsome parade-ground.
+In the market, formed of wooden booths, the stores of food were
+enormous. Beef cost about a halfpenny a pound; of flour one penny
+would purchase nearly eight and a half pounds; partridges and
+heathfowl were sold at five farthings a-piece. But we are in haste
+to get amongst the Celestials. First comes a gallop across More
+Baikal, a large lake just beyond Irkutsk, on which the Russian
+government maintains an armed flotilla. This gallop is a fine bit of
+helter-skelter, over ice brilliant as glass. "There was no snow upon
+the ice, so that its surface shone like a polished mirror in the
+moonlight. The horses that were put under our sledges in Kadilnaya
+had to be held on each side till the very moment of starting, when
+they broke at once into full gallop, which they kept up till we
+landed on the further shore. We completed seven German miles in two
+hours and a quarter, undoubtedly the most extraordinary as well as
+the most speedy stage upon any route in Russia." Thence, onwards
+to the frontier line. "We followed the crowd that pressed forward
+towards a narrow door in the front of a long wooden building. This
+admitted us into the inner quadrangle of a Russian warehouse. A
+corresponding door, at the opposite side of this court, opens just
+upon a wooden barricade, which constitutes the barrier of China. In
+this there is a wide portal, ornamented with pillars, and displaying
+the Russian eagle above it, along with the cipher of the reigning
+emperor, Nicholas the First, by whom it was erected." On passing
+through this gate, the change is immediate and striking,--from
+Russian sobriety of aspect and hue to the gaudy finery of China.
+Maimachen, the name of the Chinese town visited by Mr Erman, has a
+very masquerading air to a European eye. The walls on either side
+of the streets do not look like house walls, the roofs being flat
+and invisible from the street. "Indeed, they are nearly altogether
+concealed by the gay-coloured paper lanterns and flags, with
+inscriptions on them, hung out on both sides of the way. Cords,
+with similar scrolls and lanterns, are likewise stretched from roof
+to roof across the street. These dazzling decorations stand out
+in glaring contrast with the dull yellow of the ground and walls.
+In the open crossings of the streets, which intersect each other
+at right angles, stood enormous chafing-dishes of cast-iron, like
+basins, upon a slender pedestal four feet in height. The benches
+by which they were surrounded were occupied by tea-drinkers, who
+sat smoking from the little pipes they carry at their girdles,
+whilst their kettles boiled at the common fire." Mr Erman had the
+good fortune to be on the frontier at the period of the Chinese
+festival of the White Moon, which is in fact the celebration of
+the new-year, and he had the still greater luck to be invited to
+share in it at Maimachen. He found the town in its gayest costume.
+The expenditure of flags and lanterns was prodigious. The scrolls
+usually contained the names of the families before whose houses
+they were hung out, coupled with words of auspicious import, as
+gladness, riches, wisdom, &c. There was a great firing of crackers
+and rockets, partly to celebrate the day, but chiefly in honour of
+the guests. Before dinner the latter were diverted by a theatrical
+representation. Maimachen boasts a regular company of actors, and
+upon this great occasion they did their best. Their orchestra was of
+a rather violent description, consisting of "wooden drums, shaped
+like casks, brass cymbals, and plates of the same metal, or gongs,
+held by a string and beaten with knockers, and wooden truncheons,
+of different sizes, which they used as castanets." There were no
+actresses; but the deficiency was not to be detected, the younger
+and more delicate men personating women to the life by the aid
+of wigs and long tresses of black hair, but especially by curls
+pressed flat upon the forehead. Masks were not used, but paint was
+in abundance; in some cases with a view to represent spectacles,
+mustachios, &c.; in others to conceal the human features, or give
+them a monstrous aspect. "One face was covered with coloured rays,
+issuing from the mouth. The same actor had also a feather on
+his head--in Chinese comedy the conventional mark of a ghost or
+apparition. Another wore a golden helmet, which constituted him a
+warrior. Several kept beating themselves incessantly on the hip with
+a cane, and by so doing intimated that they were on horseback." The
+play itself was more like a game of romps than any regular dramatic
+representation. Little was said; but, on the other hand, there was
+a deal of dancing, drumming, and running about. Mr Erman could make
+neither head nor tail of the proceedings. By way of experiment,
+however, he made some tender gestures to one of the pseudo-ladies,
+who acknowledged them in the most amiable manner, and after that the
+horsemen without horses paid him much attention, pointing with their
+sticks to his spectacles, and trying to touch them as they passed.
+All this greatly diverted the Mongol audience, evidently delighted
+to see a real counterpart to the painted spectacles of some of the
+actors.
+
+The play over, Mr Erman and the other guests, preceded by the
+uproarious orchestra, marched off to dinner at the house of the
+sarguchei or chief officer of Maimachen. This gentleman, a tall,
+thin person of stern countenance, dressed in gray velvet, had a
+white button on the crown of his black felt hat, indicating his
+rank, and a chalcedony ring, an inch wide, upon his right-hand
+thumb, this being a mark of official dignity. "His nails," says our
+traveller, "did not extend above half an inch beyond the tips of
+his fingers, his personal vanity being in this respect subdued, as
+might be expected in a man of sober mind and mature years." The man
+of short nails and sober mind was exceeding hospitable, welcomed
+his guests in a soft and sonorous voice, and sat down with them
+to dinner at tables covered with scarlet cloth. The regale that
+followed might have caused a European _chef_ to pale his ineffectual
+fires from sheer envy. It began, oddly enough, with fruits,
+sweetmeats, and tea. These discussed, a piece of fine paper, for a
+napkin, and a pair of ivory chopsticks, were laid before each guest,
+and the tables, which were six feet wide, were covered over thickly
+with small porcelain plates full of all manner of complicated
+edibles. Fat abounded in the dressing, to neutralise which weak
+vinegar was used. The first series of saucers duly honoured, a
+second was brought in and put on the top of its predecessor. Others
+followed, and as the previous stratum was never removed, there soon
+arose upon the table a lofty pile of gastronomical curiosities.
+Pipes and _chowsen_, a Chinese spirit distilled from rice, concluded
+the feast, as the strangers thought;--but they were vastly mistaken.
+The soup course had still to come, and that was followed by an
+infusion of cabbage-leaves, drawn out of an urn by a cock, and drunk
+steaming hot. How a dinner commencing with preserved apricots,
+and concluding with cabbage water, agreed with German stomachs,
+Mr Erman does not inform us. After managing to taste upwards of
+a hundred dishes, he went to visit the temple of Fo, whose court
+was guarded by two clay lions painted green, whilst at his shrine
+were deposited, on account of the festive season, a prodigious heap
+of delicacies. Whole sheep without the skin, plucked chickens,
+pheasants, and guinea-fowls, in their natural positions, and
+glistening with fat, lay in hillocks at the feet of half-a-dozen
+grotesque and indecent idols. On a long table, a wall of offerings
+was built up, consisting of dressed meat and cakes of every kind,
+the whole surrounded with an elaborate lattice-work of white dough,
+five or six feet high, the openings of which were filled with dried
+fruits and confectionary of the finest kind. Perfumed candles burned
+before the disgusting idols, and brass discs hung from the ceiling,
+and were struck with clappers when any bearing offerings approached.
+
+The contents of the shops at Maimachen gave Mr Erman a very
+high opinion of Chinese skill and ingenuity. He saw scientific
+instruments of great merit, very clever clockwork, paintings drawn
+and finished with the greatest care, (although highly objectionable
+by the indelicacy of their subjects,) porcelain, sculpture, bowls,
+vases, and figures of various kinds of stone. "There were large
+spherical bowls, and oval vases, of chalcedony and agate, and
+reliefs cut in cornelians, nephrit, and other coloured stones. Of
+the latter kind, the most common are flowers, the several parts of
+which are formed of various and tastefully selected stones, and then
+cemented with mastic on a foundation of stone. For many of these
+articles, highly elaborate, and at the same time quite useless, the
+merchants of Maimachen asked four thousand tea-bricks, (a standard
+of currency,) or about two thousand five hundred Russian dollars.
+In this we saw a proof of luxury and profuse expenditure amongst
+the Chinese. Many other branches of industry indicated enervation
+and effeminacy of manners:" musk, for instance, and other perfumes,
+enclosed in little bags, and considered indispensable appendages
+to a young man's dress. A curious plaything, considered equally
+essential, is composed of two polished balls, about an inch in
+diameter, which the men always carry with them. "These are taken
+in the right hand, at idle times, and rolled and rubbed one over
+the other with the fingers; the noise they make amuses, and perhaps
+there is something agreeable also in the feel of them. Here, in
+Maimachen, I saw some of these balls made of glass, striped green
+and white, and, hollow, containing within them a little lump of
+clay, which rattled with every motion." The musk and perfumes,
+however abundantly used, are all insufficient to counteract a very
+peculiar and unpleasant smell attributed by Mr Erman to the Chinese.
+He first perceived it at the theatre, and took it to arise from an
+inordinate addiction to leeks on the part of actors and audience,
+whose breath and clothes were infected with the disagreeable
+odour of that bulb. But he was subsequently induced to regard it
+as a national taint, a Chinese exhalation, not to be overcome by
+any amount of artificial perfume, and whose cause is matter of
+inquiry for the chemist. Doubtless the Chinese would get rid of it,
+were it possible so to do, for the care they bestow on personal
+beauty and elegance is very great. Another striking defect in the
+inhabitants of Maimachen is to be found in their black and decayed
+teeth. The cause of this Mr Erman suspects to be the solution of
+copper, produced by the empyreumatic oil of tobacco in the bronze
+mouth-pieces of their pipes.
+
+At a post-house upon his road back to Irkutsk, Mr Erman and his
+party were met by a deputation from no less a personage than the
+Khamba Lama, the high-priest of the Buraets, a Mongolian tribe
+closely allied in language and customs to the natives of the
+northern provinces of China. The embassy consisted of four lamas
+or priests attired in scarlet robes and bright yellow hats. They
+brought an invitation to a grand festival, which was readily
+accepted,--and a very remarkable business it proved to be. The
+discordant theatrical music at Maimachen was a mere trifle compared
+to the monstrous noise made by the Buraet kettle-drums, so large
+that they were dragged upon four wheels, and by copper trumpets ten
+feet long, borne by one man and blown by another. "The grave prelude
+of the wind instruments was like a roaring hurricane, and the
+chorus of brass gongs, drums, &c., resembled the crash of a falling
+mountain." In this place we find some curious and interesting
+details respecting the Buddhist religion and priesthood, after which
+Mr Erman returns to Irkutsk, and resumes his journey eastward,
+through the valley of the Lena, to the land of the Tunguzes and
+Yakuts. The chief town of the latter people, Yakutsk, is two degrees
+to the south of Beresov, which Mr Erman had visited on his way to
+Obdorsk; but, nevertheless, the cold is far more severe at the
+former place, where frozen earth is found near the surface all the
+year round, and the same condition of the ground continues to the
+depth of six hundred feet. "The inhabitants of the Swiss Alps would
+not unjustly think themselves lost if they were compelled to live at
+the height of ten thousand feet, or two thousand three hundred feet
+above the hospital of the great St Bernard, and there to support
+and clothe themselves by keeping cattle, and with the productions
+of the surrounding mountains; yet they would then, and not until
+they arrived at that height, be settled on ground having the same
+temperature which I found here amongst the Yakuts, who are rich in
+cattle. It would seem, therefore, as if that succeeded in Siberia
+which was impossible in Europe, if we did not take into account
+that the same constant temperature of the ground may be made up
+at different places of very different elements." Notwithstanding
+the severity of their climate and resistance of their frozen soil,
+the Yakuts are a prosperous people, having attained a considerable
+degree of civilisation, and amongst whom crime is rare, although
+the influence of Russian example and contact daily renders it less
+so. There is much interest in Mr Erman's account of them, and of
+the wandering Tunguzses, the last tribe with whom he consorted
+before his arrival at Okhotsk. Here his reception was not very
+flattering. "We were looked at with much curiosity from all the
+house-doors on the way, for the devout elders of the place had been
+filled with anxious forebodings by the accounts of the arrival of
+a foreigner. They signed themselves with the cross whenever he
+was mentioned. And I learned to-day that they had fears of war,
+conscription, and other calamities." Nor was their alarm abated by
+learning that "the heathen foreigner wore snow-shades (spectacles)
+even in thick weather, and that he carried a dog in the sledge
+with him. Thus the return to civilised man was marked in the first
+instance by the encounter of intolerant superstition, and it was
+necessary to forget the nobler traits of the wilderness before
+we could become reconciled to the Russians of Okhotsk." At which
+place Mr Erman's narrative ceases. We await with interest its
+promised continuation--an account of his adventures in Kamschatka,
+California, and the Pacific.
+
+
+
+
+THE SCOTTISH DEER FORESTS.
+
+_Lays of the Deer Forest, with Sketches of Olden and Modern Deer
+Hunting, &c. &c._ By JOHN SOBIESKI and CHARLES EDWARD STUART. 2
+vols., post 8vo. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London.
+
+
+We would that, like stout Lord Percy of yore, it were in our power
+at this present moment to chronicle a vow that we should forthwith
+take our pastime for three summer days on the pleasant hills of
+Scotland. Alas for us, that we are doomed, from divers causes, to
+absent ourselves from felicity awhile, and, amidst the heat and
+noise of London, listen with intense disgust to the brutal bayings
+of the Chartists! This very night, we hear, the ignoble hunt is to
+be up in Bishop Bonner's fields. Crowds of dirty, unshaven, squalid
+ruffians, who have not the strength to use the pike, but the will
+to employ the knife of the assassin--fellows whom even Cobden would
+be chary to recognise as his _quondam_ supporters, defenders, and
+dupes--not unmingled with foreign propagandists, whom even France,
+in the fury of her revolutionary tornado, repudiates--are thronging
+to the place of rendezvous, where, doubtless, their souls will
+be worthily regaled by the ravings of some rascally vendors of
+sedition, blasphemy, and treason. Then will ensue the usual scene
+which for nights has disgraced the metropolis. Some unfortunate
+tradesman, whose curiosity has been stronger than his prudence, will
+be fixed upon as a "special" or a spy--the cowards, presuming upon
+their numbers, and the apparent absence of all executive power,
+will attempt a deliberate murder--the police will sally from their
+hiding-place to the rescue--there will be a storm of brickbats, a
+determined charge with the baton, a shop or two will be gutted,
+some score of craniums cracked, and to-morrow morning the greasy
+patriots, at the bar of Bow Street, will read their recantation,
+and, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, protest
+their loyalty to the Queen. Such are the pastimes of merry England
+in the month of June, and such the results of that enlightened
+policy which yields every thing to popular clamour, adopts the
+most fatal delusions as distinct principles of right, and then
+shrinks, trembling and aghast, from the inevitable result of their
+development!
+
+We do not want--in this article, at least--to be political, and
+we vow that we took up our pen three minutes ago in a spirit of
+perfect good-will and harmony towards all manner of men. But
+the hoarse bawling of these cannibals has somewhat ruffled our
+temper, dispelled for the moment our dreams of the mountains, and
+forced us back to the sterner realities of popular tumult and
+the truncheon. If this sort of thing lasts, we shall indubitably
+emigrate. Assassination, as recommended by the modern Hamilcar, is
+by no manner of means to our taste. Our opinion coincides with that
+of the gracious Captain of Knockdunder, and, were we promoted to
+a judicial function, "the chiel they ca' the Fustler" should ere
+long fustle in a tow. Neither are we at all disposed to fraternise
+with the milder Cuffey--a fellow, by the way, who is not without
+some redeeming scintillations of humour. We have no wish to be
+introduced to him even at a mesmeric soiree; and, acting upon
+the principle of Jacquey, we shall pray heaven to decrease our
+acquaintance, and put the Tweed as speedily as possible between
+ourselves and the partisans of O'Connor. We hope the Lord Provost,
+though discomfited in his Police Bill, has been looking after the
+tranquillity of the Calton. If not, we must move further north, and
+finally locate ourselves somewhere in the vicinity of Dalnacardoch.
+The deuce is in it, if the revolutionary mania has penetrated
+to that sequestred region! No son of the mountains has ever yet
+given in his adhesion to the Charter--treason hath not stained the
+tartan, and no republican pins have ever been exposed beneath the
+checkered margin of the kilt. There is loyalty at least in the
+land which was traversed by Montrose and Dundee; and without the
+slightest fear that any of the numerous points of that interesting
+but incomprehensible public document, which Mr Joseph Hume proposes
+to condense, shall be unduly obtruded on our notice, we shall at
+once exchange our London dwelling for the more pleasant bothy of the
+hills.
+
+As for a companion, we shall seek none better--for we could not
+find one--than this last publication of the Stuarts. And here,
+once for all, let us draw a line of distinction betwixt the poetry
+and the prose of these very remarkable brothers. We have not the
+remotest intention of sitting in judgment on the "Lays," or of
+testing the poetical merits of John Sobieski and Charles Edward,
+either by the canons of Longinus, or by that superior code of
+literary laws which Maga has promulgated to the world. The poems,
+which occupy exclusively the first of these volumes, are, with one
+exception, fugitive in their nature, and appear to have been penned
+rather from occasional impulse, than from any deliberate intention
+of publication. Accordingly, we find that most of them relate to
+topics personal to the authors themselves--and with these we do not
+meddle. In others, there are flashes of the deep national spirit
+which still survives--though our rulers do not seem to mark it--in
+Scotland: indignation at the neglect with which too many of our
+national institutions have been treated, and mournful lamentings
+over the misfortunes of a former age. But the impulse which leads to
+the composition of poetry does not always imply its accomplishment.
+Poetry, as an art in which excellence can only be obtained by a
+combination of the simple and the sublime, requires a study far
+more intense and serious than the mere critic is apt to allow. In
+a former Number we devoted an article to an exposition of those
+principles, which are absolutely invariable in their application,
+and which must be thoroughly understood, if they are not intuitive
+to the poet; and, being in no mood for repetition, we shall simply
+say that we adhere to our recorded doctrines. The Stuarts, it must
+be confessed, are more successful with the rifle than the lyre. We
+would far rather meet them in the garb of the forester, than in the
+more fantastic fashion of the minstrel: be theirs the lot of Ryno
+the hunter, not the darkened destiny of the bard.
+
+Do, therefore, what you please with the first volume--pack it up
+in your portmanteau, or place it on the shelf beside Chambers'
+History and the collections of good old Bishop Forbes. But if you
+profess to be a deer-stalker--though we fear your profession to be
+false--or if you are but an aspiring neophyte, and hankerer after
+that proud position--or if you merely bound your aspirations towards
+the compassing of the death of a roebuck--or if simply you have a
+keen and a kindly eye for nature, and are a lover of the sylvan
+solitudes--in one or other, or all of these characters, we pray you
+to deal more leisurely with the other tone, which is the Hunter's
+Vade-Mecum, the best guide ever yet published to the haunts of the
+antlered monarch.
+
+We are fond of Mr Scrope, and we have an excessive partiality for St
+John. Two finer fellows never shouldered a rifle; and our conscience
+does not accuse us of having used too superlative, in epithet in
+their praise. This was the more creditable on our part, because
+we knew them both to be Southrons; and while freely admitting the
+sportsman-like qualities of the one, and the strong picturesque
+style and spirit of the other, we felt a slight, passing, but
+pardonable pang of jealousy, that they should have stepped in, and
+pre-occupied the native field. Where, thought we, are our Scottish
+deer-stalkers? Can the lads not handle a pen as well as touch a
+trigger? Will none of them, who have been trained to the hills since
+they were striplings, stand forth for the honour of Albyn, and try
+a match with these fustian-coated circumventers of the stag? By the
+shade of Domhnull Mac-Fhionnlaidlhnan Dan, we blush for the literary
+reputation of our country, and almost wish that we were young enough
+ourselves to take the hill against the invading Sassenach! At
+length--and we are delighted to see it--the reproach has been swept
+away. Two stalwart champions of the forest have risen in the persons
+of the Stuarts--they have encountered the Englishmen with their own
+weapons, and, in our opinion, beaten them hollow.
+
+Mr Scrope had the merit of producing the earliest work in which
+deer-stalking was treated as a distinct and peculiar branch of
+the art venatory. We speak of it now from recollection; for
+our copy, somewhat frayed and worn by the fingers of ambitious
+sportsmen, is in the snug corner of a library some hundred miles
+to the northward. But we remember well the Waltonian character of
+the book--the professional style in which the elder practitioner
+enforced his precepts upon the dawning intellect of his companion;
+and the adventures, neither few nor feeble, which were depicted
+in the heart of the Atholl forest. Taken as the production of
+an English sportsman, Mr Scrope's book is highly creditable:
+considered as the manual of a deer-stalker, it is at the best
+indifferent. Nor, indeed, could it well be otherwise. Not until
+middle age, if we are informed rightly, did Mr Scrope first send
+a ball into the ample shoulder of a hart: his young blood never
+beat tumultuously in his veins at the sight of the mighty creature
+rolling over upon the heather, and its antlers buried in the
+moss. His boyish enthusiasm, we fear, was expended upon game of
+less mark and likelihood--partridges, perchance, as they whirred
+from the turnips, or possibly he was "entered" with the hare.
+Wordsworth's maxim, that the boy is the father of the man, is
+peculiarly applicable in sporting matters. Upon the character of
+the country in which the latent spirit of the hunter is earliest
+developed, depends, in a great degree, his future success, and
+certainly his accomplishment as an Orion. The young squire, who
+has been brought up in the faith of Sykes, who never stirs abroad
+without a keeper, and who is accustomed to see his delicate pointers
+execute their manœuvres with almost mathematical precision on the
+flat stubbles of Norfolk, labours under a huge disadvantage in the
+higher branches of his science, compared with the Highland boy who
+has received his education on the hill. What though the single
+barrel of the latter be a clumsy implement indeed in competition
+with the Purdie which decorates the shoulder of the former--though
+the hound that sometimes attends him, though oftener he is alone,
+never slept a single night in a kennel, and is the ruggedest
+specimen of his kind--still he is in the enjoyment of advantages
+incomparably superior for the development of all his faculties,
+and the sharpening of every sense. The triumph of the sportsman
+does not lie so much in the killing as in the finding of his game.
+Were it otherwise, the pigeon-slayer of Battersea or the Red-house
+would have just claims to the honours of Sir Tristram, and the
+annihilator of poultry to rank with the Nimrods of the world. Our
+young friend the Squire shoots well--that is to say, he can kill
+with reasonable precision: but, after all, what is he save an
+instrument? Take Ponto away from him, tie up Juno, send a bullet
+through the brain of Basta, and a pretty beggarly account you will
+have of it in the evening when we come to the emptying of the bags!
+Or lead him down to the sea-shore, and show him a whaup, which in
+the English tongue is denominated a curlew; request him to use all
+his possible skill to compass possession of the bird; but do not set
+your heart on having it, else, as sure as fate, you are doomed to
+disappointment. Whaup is quite alive to his own interests, and by
+no means unsuspicious of the Saxon, who advances straight towards
+him with a hypocritical air of unconcern. Had the Highland lad been
+there, what a difference! He would have dropped like a stone behind
+that rock, wriggled like a serpent over the sand, kept the bird
+between himself and the sea, taken advantage of every inequality in
+the ground, discerned from the attitude of his quarry whether its
+suspicions were aroused or not, and in ten minutes a pluff of white
+smoke and a report would have announced its extermination. As it
+is, the curlew remains apparently unconcerned until the Lord of the
+Manor has reduced the intermediate distance to a hundred and twenty
+yards, and then, with a shrill whistle, takes flight along the
+margin of the tide. Or set him to stalk a blackcock, perched high
+of an Autumn morning on a dyke. How clumsily he sets about it! how
+miserable is his stoop! how wretchedly he calculates his distance!
+That wide-awake hat, which, for the sake of symmetry, he has been
+pleased to surmount with a feather, is as conspicuous to the country
+for miles round, and of course to the blackcock, as was the white
+plume of Murat in the field of battle, and as potent to effect a
+clearance, of which we presently have ocular demonstration.
+
+We contend, therefore, that it is extremely difficult for the man,
+be he ever so addicted to field-sports, who has been educated in
+a cultivated country, to disembarrass himself of the artificial
+habits which he is tolerably sure to acquire. His trolling may
+be excellent--indeed, English gentlemen are, generally speaking,
+first-rate shots--but he will be deficient in the science of the
+naturalist, and in that singular acuteness of perception which can
+hardly be gained save by an early intimacy with nature, on the
+mountain, the moor, or in the glen. No subsequent education or
+experience can make up for the normal deficiency, least of all in
+the pursuit of an animal so wary, so instinctive, and so peculiar in
+its habits as the deer. Of course we do not mean to deny that there
+is much which may be learned. What a pointer is to partridges, some
+wary and experienced forester may often be made to the deer; and
+if you put yourself under his tuition, and scrupulously obey his
+orders, you may very possibly succeed in attaining the object of
+your desires. Nor indeed can you do better, up to a certain point,
+notwithstanding the strictures of the Stuarts, who are, we think,
+unnecessarily wroth at the system which would call in the aid of
+any supplementary assistance. We hope no gentleman who has rented a
+forest for the ensuing season will be deterred from following the
+feet of a Highland Gamaliel on account of any ridicule which may
+be attached to the fact of his having been "taken up" to a deer.
+If he should rashly attempt stalking at his own hand, without any
+preliminary instruction, we should be sorry to found our hopes of
+dinner on the chance of his acquisition of a haunch.
+
+     "When advancing upon deer [say our authors]--except in strange
+     ground--the forester, or any other attendant, should be left
+     behind a stone, or in some covert, before the stalker commences
+     his approach; not from any recognition of the false reproach
+     made against the guides by Mr Scrope, but because there is
+     no occasion for an assistant, and the action of one has more
+     celerity, independence, and security from discovery, than when
+     a greater number are in motion. The charge made by the author
+     of 'The Art of Deer-stalking,' that the forester is often in
+     the way, and sometimes obstructs the shot, is not true, unless
+     in instances of inexperienced and awkward individuals, who are
+     not to be found among that class of foresters of whom the guest
+     of the _Atholl Forest_ proposes his remarks. With a MacKenzie,
+     or a MacDonald, a Catanach, and a MacHardie, the asserted
+     inconvenience must proceed from the ignorance or maladroitness
+     of the gray worm which crawls at his back, and who often does
+     not know what he is doing, or where he is going, with his
+     ideas _égaré_ on his sensitive knees and varnished Purdie,
+     unconscious of what he ought to do and nervous for what he ought
+     not, flurried with eagerness and disgusted with his posture,
+     and who, never seeing a deer except once in the year, is led
+     up to him like a 'blind burraid,' by one whose language he
+     scarcely understands. In general, therefore, the embarrassments
+     of the 'creep' are those of the superior, who is frequently so
+     ignorant, unpractised, and dependent upon the guidance of the
+     forester, that to be '_taken up to the deer_' has become the
+     modern forest phrase for the approach of the sportsman. This
+     contemptible term, and its contemptible practice, has only
+     been introduced within the last quarter century, since the
+     prevalence of stalking gentlemen utterly unacquainted with the
+     ground and pursuit of deer. Of old, the '_Seàlgair uasal nam
+     bèann_' was initiated to the hill when yet but a '_biorach_'
+     of a stalker; and when he became a matured hill-man, he should
+     no more have suffered himself to be--'_taken up_ to his deer'
+     by an attendant, than a Melton fox-hunter to be trained after
+     the hounds by a whipper-in with a leading rein.--What should
+     have been the sentiments of the old chiefs and Uaislean of the
+     last century--the Dukes of Atholl and Gordon--Glengarrie--John
+     Aberardar--Iain dubh Bhail-a-Chroäin--to hear a deer-hunter
+     speak of being '_taken up to his deer_!'--Certainly that he was
+     a noble 'amadan' or 'gille-crùbach,' who had not the faculties
+     or the limbs to act for himself.--But this is only one of the
+     many instances for which the hills of Gael may mourn with the
+     mountains of Gilboa--'_Quomodo ceciderunt robusti!_'"
+
+Far are we from insinuating that Mr Scrope is at all liable to the
+remarks contained in the foregoing extract. On the contrary, we
+hold him to be a man of vigorous mind and acute eye, and any thing
+but a contemptible foe to the stags, after the measure of his own
+experience. If he is deficient at all, it is in the poetry and
+higher mysteries of the art, which hardly would be expected from a
+stranger, whose initiation was necessarily late. Waverley, though a
+respectable shot, and a man of literary taste, would, we apprehend,
+have described the driving and disposition of the tainchel less
+effectively, and certainly far less truly, than Fergus M'Ivor; so
+great a difference is there betwixt the craft of the master and
+his pupil. Let Mr Scrope, therefore, rest content with the laurels
+he has won, and the trophies he has taken from the forest. Not
+unforgotten is his name in Atholl, nor unloved. Let him be a guide
+to the Southren, but he must not dream of rivalling the Stuarts in
+woodcraft, or Stoddart in the science of piscation.
+
+Of Mr St John's "Wild Sports of the Highlands," we have already
+spoken in terms of unqualified praise. A more delightful volume was
+never adapted for the pocket of the sportsman: a more truthful or
+observant work has seldom issued from the pen of the naturalist. His
+sketches and pictures of deer-stalking we allow to be as perfect in
+their way as the compositions of Landseer; and having said so much,
+we shall not make any further call upon that gentleman's blushes.
+Still, even his experience is limited, and his knowledge imperfect.
+He has given us a brilliant account of his own exploits upon the
+hill, but he has not lived long enough in the wilder haunts of the
+deer accurately to understand their habits. Not so our authors, who
+for years have been denizens of the mountains, speaking the tongue
+of the Gael, wearing the native garb, and following the chase with
+an ardour and enthusiasm unparalleled in these degenerate days.
+
+Gentlemen who complain of the inferior accommodation afforded by
+some of the more distant hostelries of Scotland--who are shocked
+at the absence of warming-pans, and tremulously nervous about
+your sanatory condition, when subjected to the enormity of damp
+sheets--how would you like to spend a few nights on the misty
+hill-side, or even in the hut of the hunters? We shall take you if
+you please to the latter spot, merely premising that, in order to
+reach it, we must cross the Findhorn, now roaring down in spate. A
+terrible stream is that Findhorn, as Mr St John well knows; but we
+question whether he ever ventured to ford it on the rise, as was
+done by one of the Stuarts. For the information of distant friends,
+we beg to put our imprimatur to the following description of this
+furious Highland flood, which rolled between the residence of the
+hunters and their favourite ground.
+
+     "That stream, however, which was so calm, and bright, and sunny,
+     when the otters floated down its current in a still summer's
+     morning, was a fierce and terrible enemy in its anger; and,
+     for a great part of the year, the dread of its uncertainty
+     and danger was a formidable cause for the preservation of
+     that profound solitude of the forest which so long made it
+     the sanctuary of deer, roe, and every kind of wild game. The
+     rapidity with which the river comes down, the impassable height
+     to which it rises in an incredibly short time, its incertitude
+     and fury, would render it an object of care to bold forders and
+     boatmen; but with the peasants of the 'laich,' unaccustomed,
+     like the Highlanders, to wrestle with a mountain torrent, and,
+     excepting in rare instances, unable to swim or manage a coble,
+     it inspires a dread, almost amounting to awe, and none except
+     ourselves ventured to keep a boat above the fishing-station of
+     Slui. Pent within a channel of rocks from fifty to a hundred
+     and eighty feet in height, the rise of the water is rapidly
+     exaggerated by the incapability of diffusion; and the length of
+     its course sometimes concealing beyond the horizon the storms by
+     which it is swelled at its source, its floods then descend with
+     unexpected violence. Frequently when, excepting a low wreath
+     upon Beann-Drineachain, the sun is shining in a cloudless sky,
+     and the water scarce ripples over the glittering ford, a deep
+     hollow sound--a dull approaching roar may be heard in the gorges
+     of the river; and almost before the wading fisherman can gain
+     the shore, a bank of water, loaded with trees, and rocks, and
+     wreck, will come down three--four--five feet abreast--sweeping
+     all before it in a thunder of foam and ruin. In ordinary cases,
+     after two days of rain, the stream will rise twenty or thirty
+     feet--it _has_ risen nearly ten fathoms in its rocky gulf; and
+     once upon this occasion it mounted fifteen feet in a quarter
+     of an hour. When the dawn broke, it appeared sweeping through
+     the trees, which the evening before hung fifty feet above its
+     brink--a black roaring tempest loaded with ruins and debris,
+     from which were seen to rise at times the white skeletons of
+     trees peeled of their bark, beams and couples of houses--a
+     cart--a door--a cradle, hurrying and tilting through the foam
+     and spray, like the scattered 'floatsome' of a wreck.
+
+     "It may be judged how far it was convenient in winter to hunt
+     a forest separated by such a boundary, of which the nearest
+     certain passage was by a bridge two miles to the west, with
+     frequently the view of hunting three miles to the east. Often we
+     have gone out in a clear sapphire morning, when there was scarce
+     a ripple on the pools, and the water on the ford was not over
+     our 'glunachan,' and when we returned at evening, and approached
+     through the dark veil of pines which descended to the river,
+     have heard a roar as if the world was rolling together down the
+     black trough before us, and as we came out on the bank, found a
+     furious tempest of water, tumbling, and plunging, and leaping,
+     over stock and rock twenty feet upon the clatach, where we had
+     left it whimpering among the pebbles in the morning; while, in
+     the far, deep, birch-embowered channel, where the stream was
+     then so still and placid that you could only guess its course by
+     the bright glistening eye which here and there blinked between
+     the trees and stones,--now it came yelling, and skirling, and
+     clamouring down the rocks and falls, as if all the air was full
+     of gibbering, babbling, laughing demons, who were muttering, and
+     yammering, and prophesying, and hooting, at what you were going
+     to do, if you attempted to cross."
+
+We pray you at your leisure to read on, and you will presently
+see what peril our authors underwent at the fearful fords of
+the Findhorn. Once or twice in our life we have been in similar
+jeopardy, and we can testify with unction to the singular sensations
+which beset a man in the midst of a roaring river, when the rapids
+are shooting away below, and the boulder-stones rolling beneath his
+feet. We pass over some perilous instances of adventure, which at
+length became so frequent as to lead to the construction of the hut.
+
+     "Such continually and unexpectedly were the ferries of the
+     Findhorn, and many such escapes we had, in daylight and in
+     darkness.--Twice I have been swamped, often nearly upset, and
+     more than once carried off my legs in the fords; and--I say it
+     with humility, and always under the mercy of heaven--that I owed
+     rescue either to actual swimming, or to the confidence inspired
+     by that power when struggling with the strong and terrible enemy.
+
+     "This continual exposure to battle and disappointment, however,
+     became at length too vexatious an abridgment of sport and
+     certainty; and as I would--and often--have made my bed under
+     a fir tree rather than go round by the bridge of Daltullich,
+     I resolved upon another alternative--to build in the forest a
+     '_bothan an t-sealgair_,' or 'hunter's hut,' where we might
+     lodge for the night when it was impossible to cross the water.
+
+     "There is a high and beautiful craig at the crook of the river
+     near the 'Little Eas,'--a precipice eighty feet in height, and
+     then like a vast stone helmet crowned with a feathery plume of
+     wood, which nodded over its brow. From its top you might drop
+     a bullet into the pool below, but on the south side there is
+     an accessible woody bank, down which, by planting your heels
+     firmly in the soil and among the roots of the trees, there is a
+     descent to a deep but smooth and sandy ford. Upon the summit of
+     the rock there is, or there was--my blessing upon it!--a thick
+     and beautiful bird-cherry, which hung over the craig, and whose
+     pendant branches, taking root on the edge of the steep, shot up
+     again like the banana, and formed a natural arbour and close
+     trellis along the margin of the precipice. Behind its little
+     gallery, there is a mighty holly, under which the snow rarely
+     lays in winter, or the rain drops in summer. Beneath the shelter
+     of this tree, and within the bank at its foot, I dug a little
+     cell large enough to hold two beds, a bench, a hearth, a table,
+     and a 'kistie.' The sides were lined with deals well caulked
+     with moss, and the roof was constructed in the same manner, but
+     covered with a tarpauling, which, lying in the slope of the
+     surrounding bank, carried off any water which might descend from
+     thaw or rain, and, when the autumn trees shook off their leaves,
+     could not be distinguished from the adjoining bank. Its door was
+     on the brink of the craig, veiled by the thick bird-cherries
+     on the edge of the precipice; and the entrance to the little
+     path, which ascended from either side upon the brow of the
+     rock, was concealed by a screen of birch and hazel, beneath
+     which the banks were covered with primroses, wood-anemones,
+     and forget-me-not. Bowers of honeysuckle and wild-roses twined
+     among the lower trees; and even in the tall pines above, the
+     rose sometimes climbed to the very top, where all its blossoms,
+     clustering to the sun, hung in white tassels out of the
+     dark-blue foliage. There the thrush and the blackbird sang at
+     morning and evening, and the owl cried at night, and the buck
+     belled upon the Torr.--Blessed, wild, free, joyous dwelling,
+     which we shall never see again!"
+
+A lovely place indeed must that have been in the pleasant days of
+summer! We do not wonder at the fondness with which the Stuarts
+speak of that lodge in the wilderness, reared as it was in the
+midst of the most beautiful and romantic scenery which exists
+within the compass of the seas of Britain, or, for aught we know,
+elsewhere. Years have rolled by since we last set foot upon the
+banks of Findhorn; but never shall we forget the glories of that
+deep ravine, or the noble woods of Altyre, still possessed by the
+descendants of the princely Comyns. Did we not expect to be summoned
+out within half an hour to contribute to the safety of the realm by
+breaking the head of a Chartist, we should ourselves launch out into
+description, and try conclusions with Horatio M'Culloch. But, after
+all, it would be a work of supererogation. Mr St John has already
+illustrated most charmingly that abode of the faithful; and he will
+not be displeased to see that, even in painting, he has met with
+formidable rivals. Rarely, indeed, have we met with any thing so
+perfect as the following sketch:--
+
+     "Near Slui on the Findhorn there is a range of precipices
+     and wooded steeps crowned with pine, and washed by a clear
+     and rippling stream of the river, through which there is an
+     excellent ford, very well known to the roe, for escaping to
+     the woods of Slui when pressed by the hounds. This reach is
+     called the Ledanreich, from a remarkable craig, a sheer naked
+     even wall of sandstone, lying in horizontal strata eighty or
+     ninety feet high: At the eastern extremity of this rock there
+     is a great division, partly separated from the main curtain by
+     a deep woody slope, which dips into the precipice with little
+     more inclination from the perpendicular than to admit of careful
+     footing. In the face of the divided craig, the decomposition of
+     the softer stone between the courses of the strata has wasted
+     it away into narrow galleries, which, passing behind the tall
+     pillars of the pines growing from the rifts and ledges, extend
+     along the face of the precipice, veiled by a deep tapestry of
+     ivy, which spreads over the mighty wall of rock, and hangs
+     from shelf to shelf over the covered ways. Beyond the craigs,
+     the bank of the forest, an abrupt steep, covered with oak and
+     copsewood, slopes down to the river, its brow darkened with a
+     deep-blue cloud of pines, and its descent carpeted with moss,
+     primroses, and pyrolas, here and there hollowed into quaint
+     'cuachs,' filled with hazels, thorns, and giant pines. Along
+     this woody scarp, and through its thick copse, the roe had made
+     narrow galleries, which communicated with the ivy corridors
+     on the face of the craig, to which there were corresponding
+     ways upon the opposite side. In that fortress of the rock, for
+     shelter from the sun and flies, and seclusion from the stir of
+     the world during the day in the heat of summer, the red-deer
+     and roe made their secret haunt, concealed behind the deep dim
+     veil of leaves, unseen and unsuspected in the cool hollows of
+     the cliff. The prying eye might search the craig from below,
+     and the beaters or the woodmen might whistle, and whoop, and
+     shout above, but nothing appeared or moved except the gray
+     falcon, which rose channering out of the rifts. Above the craig
+     the wooded bank was so abrupt, that to the front view there
+     was no indication of a slope, and any who passed quickly over
+     the brow was immediately out of sight. At each descent beyond
+     the extremities of the whole range of rocks there was a common
+     roe's run and pass, which was supposed to be 'deadly sure' if
+     the deer took the path, since the precipice below was believed
+     to be an infallible barrier against any intermediate escape.
+     Often, however, when pressed upon the terrace above, the deer
+     neither went through the passes nor turned against the beaters,
+     but vanished as if by magic--nobody could tell where; and it
+     was the common opinion of the drivers and fishermen, that, when
+     forced near the river, they threw themselves over the craigs
+     'for spite,'--a belief often confirmed by old Davie Simpson, who
+     declared that he had often found their bodies beneath the rocks,
+     and in the Cluach, the Clerk's Pool, and the 'Furling Hole.' He
+     did not, however, relate what _wounds_ they had, and the truth
+     was, that those which disappeared at the brow of the Ledanreich
+     dashed down the sudden dip of the bank between the precipices,
+     and, turning through the ivy corridors, went out through the
+     copse galleries upon the other side, and either descended to the
+     water or skirted below the pass, and went back into the forest.
+     Those which were found dead were such as had been mortally
+     wounded at some in-wood pass, and, unable to take, or cross
+     the water, had died on the beach, or been carried down by the
+     river. In the same mysterious passages which gave concealment
+     and escape to the stags and bucks, the does were used to lay
+     with their kids, and from thence at morning and evening they
+     brought them out to pluck the tender grass upon the green banks
+     beyond. Often from the brow above, or from behind the ivy
+     screen, we have watched their 'red garment' stealing through the
+     boughs, followed by their little pair drawing their slender legs
+     daintily through the wet dew, and turning their large velvet
+     ears to catch every passing sound upon the breeze as it brought
+     the hum of the water, or the crow of the distant cock--now
+     trotting before, now lingering behind their dam, now nestling
+     together, now starting off as the gale suddenly rustled the
+     leaves behind them--then listening and re-uniting in a timorous
+     plump, pricking their ears, and bobbing their little black noses
+     in the wind,--then, as the doe dropped on her knees in the moss,
+     and laid her side on the warm spot where the morning sun glanced
+     in through the branches, they gambolled about her, leaping over
+     her back, and running round in little circles, uttering that
+     soft, wild, plaintive cry like the treble note of an accordion,
+     till, weary of their sport, they lay down at her side, and
+     slept while she watched as only a mother can. No marvel it was
+     that they loved that safe and fair retreat, with all its songs
+     and flowers, its plenty and repose. All around was sweet, and
+     beautiful, and abundant, such as the poetical imagination of the
+     painter can rarely compose, and _never_, unless like Salvator
+     he has lived in the wilderness with its free denizens. Upon the
+     summit above the craig there was a broad and verdant terrace
+     surrounded by ivied pines and feathering birches, and upon a
+     little green glade in the midst grow two of the most beautiful
+     objects ever produced by art or nature. These were a pair of
+     twin thorns exactly similar in size, age, and form, and standing
+     about three yards from each other: their stems as straight as
+     shafts, and their round and even heads like vast bushes of wild
+     thyme, but each so overgrown with ivy and woodbine, that their
+     slender trunks appeared like fretted columns, over which the
+     thorny foliage served as a trellis to suspend the heavy plumes
+     of the ivy and the golden tassels of the woodbine. Many a
+     'ladye's bower' we have seen, and many a rich and costly plant
+     reared by the care of man, but none so beautiful as those lonely
+     sisters of the forest, planted by His hand in His great garden,
+     where none beheld but those for whom He made it lovely--the
+     ravens of the rock, the deer who couched under its shade by
+     night, and the birds who sang their matins and their even-song
+     out of its sweet boughs."
+
+If we go on quoting at this rate, we shall never reach the hill, and
+as yet we have not started from the hut. To say the truth, we are
+in no hurry, and neither, we suspect, upon many occasions were the
+Stuarts, indomitable huntsmen as they are. What though at night the
+river swept with the sound of thunder below, making the solid rock
+vibrate to its deep foundation,--what though the wind swept mightily
+down the ravine, swaying the trees like saplings, and threatening to
+tear them away,--what though the windows of heaven were open, and
+the deluge came down, and the bark of the hill-fox sounded sharp
+above the roaring of the water and the wood,--yet within that little
+bothy that rests upon the face of the craig, the wearied huntsmen
+slept peacefully; and in the morning, says one of them,--"I was
+awakened as usual by the whistle of the robin in the bird-cherry,
+and the sharp note of the blue bonnet sharpening his little saw on
+the top of the holly. I went out to the narrow terre-plain over the
+craig. The wind was gone, and the sun smiling on the still leaves
+and dewy grass--the flood torrent of the river dancing and laughing
+in its light, and the calm bright air breathing with the sweet
+perfume of the damp plants, and all the freshness and fragrance of
+the forest wilderness." We back it against the forest of Ardennes!
+
+Every true hunter is humane. What! you say--do you call it humane
+to persecute the unfortunate stag, the monarch of the wilds, to the
+death?--to drive rifle-bullets into the target of the harmless roe?
+to murder otters by the dozen, and to slaughter seals by the score?
+Indubitably we do. Let us reason a little upon this. Yesterday,
+you recollect that you dined upon very juvenile veal, smothered in
+a mess of dingy vegetable matter which we apprehend to have been
+sorrel, after the beastly fashion of the Gauls. Posterior to that,
+you devoured the larger moiety of a duckling. This morning we saw
+you, with our own eyes, regaling yourself at the club, between the
+intervals of muffin, with what assuredly were cutlets of lamb. After
+all this, can you have the face to stand up and defend your own
+humanity? For how many days had the sun dawned upon that luckless
+calf, the mangled fragments of which upon your platter rather
+resembled the rags of a kid-glove, than food meet for the stomach
+of a Christian? How long had the feeble quackle of Draco been heard
+round the row of peas near which he unsuspiciously perambulated,
+little dreaming how much the pods thereof were mixed up with his
+future destiny? How many races were run upon the meadow by that
+perished daughter of the sheep? Three infantine lives cut off simply
+for your sole gormandising! This is but a slight case. Set you down
+to a rook-pie, and you will engulf a dozen unfortunates before you
+bury your visage in the pewter. Pay for you at Blackwall, and the
+whitebait will disappear by the thousand. It is in vain that you
+attempt to shift the atrocity of your inordinate appetite from your
+own shoulders to those of the grazier, the butcher, the poulterer,
+or the fisherman. Cobden, or Joe Hume, or any other of the political
+economists belonging to the tribe who would starve the workman in
+order that they may guzzle themselves, will tell you that invariably
+the demand regulates the supply. You, therefore, are the responsible
+party: the young have fallen into your Scylla--the immature of
+days have been swept into the vortex of your Charybdis! Moreover,
+if you were a sportsman--which you are not--our minds would be
+grievously troubled for the future safety of the singing-birds.
+Welford, the friend of Bright, as we all remember, proposed a grand
+crusade throughout Britain against the feathered tribe; and you
+are not at all unlikely to join in a general St Bartholomew of the
+sparrows. Do you venture to retort upon us? Do you think we take
+life unnecessarily, or that we are base enough to use our weapons
+until the quarry has reached its prime? No calf or fawn ever fell
+by the hand of the genuine hunter--no cheeper or pout ever sullied
+the interior of the sportsman's bag. Not until the better part of
+his life has been run,--till his muscles are hard as iron, his slot
+deep, and his branches towering on the beam,--not until he has lived
+and loved, do we strike down, as if with lightning and painless
+death, the great hart in the middle of the wilderness. But to all
+innocent things--to the harmless indwellers of the forest and moor,
+the true hunter is a guardian and a friend. The strong man is ever
+brave, and none but the strong can pass to where the herds of the
+mountain dwell.
+
+One more scene at the Hut, and we shall illustrate this subject
+further.
+
+     "But though our bothie was far from resembling the Peri
+     Paribanon's cell, or the rock-palace where the old kaiser keeps
+     his court in the bowels of the Unterberg--we loved it, not
+     only for its bucks and stags, and all its greenwood cheer, but
+     for the love of nature by which it was surrounded. Beyond its
+     'vert and venison,' there was a world of life and interest for
+     those who had the eye to mark and the heart to read its book.
+     On every side we had companions; from the passenger which came
+     from Norway, to the little native guest--the robin which roosted
+     in the holly-bush above us. '_The_ robin?'--you smile and say.
+     Yes, there was but one. He lived in the bush, as we lived in
+     the bothie, and we were his neighbours too long not to be very
+     well acquainted. His species, as well as all the small tribes,
+     conformable to the minuteness of their range and habits, are
+     very local, and may be found all the year in, or near, the same
+     place; and those who feed them will rarely wait many minutes
+     for their appearance. There were many robins which lived about
+     the bothie, and all were continually in its vicinity, and very
+     tame; but none so gentle and grateful as our little neighbour
+     in the holly. They would, however, enter the hut, sit on the
+     bed or the table, and hop about the floor, and, when I went
+     out, follow me to the brae. They liked very much to see me turn
+     up the soil, which always provided them with a little feast;
+     accordingly, they were never absent at the planting of a shrub
+     or a flower; and when I brought home, in my shooting-bag, a
+     tuft of primroses, pyrolas, or lilies of the valley, they were
+     always in attendance to see them put into the bank. For watching
+     my occupation, they preferred something more elevated than the
+     ground, but not so high as the branches of the trees, which
+     were too far from the earth to give them a clear sight of what
+     I turned up; for their accommodation, therefore, I made little
+     crosses and crotchets, and, when I was planting, set them up
+     beside me, moving them as I proceeded from place to place.
+     Each was immediately occupied by an attentive observer; and,
+     whenever an insect or a worm was discovered, one of the nearest
+     darted down and caught it, even from between my fingers, and
+     disappeared for a few moments under the rock or behind the great
+     holly, to enjoy his success undisturbed. At his disappearance
+     his place was immediately occupied by another, but at the return
+     of the first it was amiably resigned by his successor. The
+     blue-bonnets were almost as numerous as the robins, but they
+     never arrived at the same intimacy and confidence. They never
+     entered the bothie in my presence, and even when I fed them
+     they would not approach as long as I remained outside the door;
+     but as soon as I went in they descended four or five together,
+     chattering and fluttering about the entrance, peeping in at
+     the little window, and stretching their necks as far as they
+     could, to see where I was, and if all was right. Then they would
+     begin their breakfast on what I had left for them, talking a
+     great deal about it, but occasionally ogling the door, in a
+     manner from which I concluded that there was but small esteem
+     or gratitude in their conversation.----Far different was the
+     friendship of our little neighbour in the holly. In the morning
+     he used to come down and perch on the arm of the bird-cherry,
+     which stretched over the precipice before the door, waiting
+     for its opening and the preparation of the breakfast, which he
+     always shared; and when we were seated he would venture over the
+     sill, and gather the crumbs about the table at our feet. Often
+     when the first blood-red streaks of the autumn morning shone
+     like lurid fire through the little window, we were awakened by
+     his sad and solitary whistle, as he sat on his usual branch,
+     his jet-black eye cast towards the door, impatient for our
+     appearance. Many of his little cousins there were in the wood,
+     with whom we were also well acquainted, and between us happened
+     many an incident, which increased our interest and familiarity.
+
+     "I remember a day, one of those deep still blue days so solemn
+     in the forest; the ground was covered with a foot of snow, and
+     all the trees were hanging like gigantic ostrich feathers; but
+     all the world was blue,--the sky was a sleeping mass of those
+     heavy indigo clouds which forebode a 'feeding storm,'--not a
+     tempest, but a fall of snow; for, in Scotland, snow is called
+     '_storm_,' however light and still it falls: thus, in tracking
+     the deer, we say he 'has brushed the _storm_ from the heather;'
+     and a '_feeding storm_' is when the clouds are continually
+     feeding the earth with its velvet pall.--The reflection of
+     those deep-blue clouds cast a delicate tint of the same colour
+     over the whitened world. I was standing with my back against a
+     huge pine--one of the old remnant of the great forest of Moray,
+     which had, no doubt, heard the bell toll for the first Stuart
+     earl.--I counted the rings in a smaller tree which once stood in
+     the same hollow;--I shunned its wreck as I would have avoided a
+     corpse which I could not bury, and always, when I passed near
+     it, averted my face; but one day running to cut off a buck, and
+     just heading him, I dropped on my knee to receive him as he
+     came out from a mass of junipers, and when reloading, I found
+     that I had knelt by the stump of my old friend.--I counted two
+     hundred and sixty-four rings in his wood!--how many earls had
+     he seen?--Well, I was leaning against his elder brother, as I
+     suppose by the size. I had been there for a long time, waiting
+     to hear the dogs bring back a buck from--I don't know now from
+     where.----As I had been through all the swamps, and stripes, and
+     wet hollows on that side of the forest, and waded through two
+     and three feet of snow-wreaths, my kilt and hose, and, as it
+     seemed, my flesh was saturated to the bones with 'snaw-bree,'
+     and I began to beat, first one foot, and then the other, to
+     quicken the blood, which was warm enough in my trunk.--I had
+     scarce commenced this exercise, when I heard a little 'tic!'
+     close to my ear, and the soft low voice of a bird--a sound,
+     neither a whistle nor a chirp, but which I knew very well before
+     I turned and saw the robin, who sat on a dry branch within a
+     yard of my cheek. I guessed what had brought him: he was very
+     cold, his ruffled back humped as round as a ball, and his tail
+     drooping almost perpendicular with his legs, as if it was a
+     little brown peg to lean on, like that on which the travelling
+     Tyrolean merchant rests his pack. He looked at me with his large
+     black eye, then, with a flirt of his tail and a bow with his
+     head, indicated that, if I had no objection, he should like to
+     descend to the place which I occupied; the object of which
+     he expressed, by turning his head sidelong, and directing one
+     eye into the black earth which my foot had beaten bare in the
+     snow. I immediately drew back a couple of feet, and he instantly
+     dropped into the spot of mould, peeped and picked under every
+     leaf and clod of earth, and, when there was nothing more, hopped
+     up on the guard of my rifle, on which I was leaning, and,
+     turning his head, looked at me with his upper eye.--I again
+     stepped forward, and recommenced my foot-exercise, during which
+     he returned to his branch, examining my progress with some
+     impatience. As soon as my foot was removed, he again dropped
+     into the hollow, and busily collected all the little grubs and
+     chrysales which, though too small for me to see as I stood, I
+     knew abounded beneath the sere leaves and thatch of moss and
+     sticks. In this manner I repeated his supply several times,
+     on one of which, when I was too long, or he too impatient, he
+     dropped from his perch, and hovered over the space in which my
+     foot was at work, and, as I continued, lighted on the point of
+     the other shoe, and remained there, peeping into the hollow,
+     until I withdrew my foot, and then descended to finish his
+     repast. When he was satisfied, he ruffed his feathers, looked
+     up sidelong to me, and, after a shake of satisfaction, resumed
+     his perch close to my head, and, after pruning and oiling his
+     feathers, mounted another branch higher, and opened his little
+     throat with that most sad, sweet, and intermitting warble which
+     gives such a melancholy charm to a still winter's day."
+
+Take a picture of the roe, and you will hardly doubt the humanity
+of our sportsmen. But why talk of it thus? No one, we hope,
+save a member of the Manchester manufacturing school could feel
+otherwise--certainly not a genuine hills-man; and we quote the
+passage simply for its extreme beauty and perfect fidelity to
+nature. No creature is more beautiful than the kid of the roe-deer,
+especially when seen in their rest, or moving through the ferns, on
+a summer evening, beside their gentle mother the doe.
+
+     "In the bedding season the does retire into the most secret
+     thickets, or other lonely places, to produce their young, and
+     cover them so carefully that they are very rarely found; we
+     have, however, deceived their vigilance. There was a solitary
+     doe which lived in the hollow below the Bràigh-cloiche-léithe
+     in Tarnaway. I suppose that we had killed her 'marrow;' but I
+     was careful not to disturb her haunt, for she was very fat and
+     round, stepped with much caution, and never went far to feed.
+     Accordingly, when at evening and morning she came out to pick
+     the sweet herbs at the foot of the brae, or by the little green
+     well in its face, I trode softly out of her sight, and if I
+     passed at noon, made a circuit from the black willows, or thick
+     junipers, where she reposed during the heat. At last, one fine
+     sunny morning I saw her come tripping out from her bower of
+     young birches as light as a fairy, and very gay and 'canty'--but
+     so thin, nobody but an old acquaintance could have known her.
+     For various mornings afterwards I saw her on the bank, but she
+     was always restless and anxious--listening and searching the
+     wind--trotting up and down--picking a leaf here and a leaf
+     there, and after her short and unsettled meal, she would take a
+     frisk round leap into the air--dart down into her secret bower,
+     and appear no more until the twilight. In a few days, however,
+     her excursions became a little more extended, generally to the
+     terrace above the bank, but never out of sight of the thicket
+     below. At length she ventured to a greater distance, and one day
+     I stole down the brae among the birches. In the middle of the
+     thicket there was a group of young trees growing out of a carpet
+     of deep moss, which yielded like a down pillow. The prints of
+     the doe's slender-forked feet were thickly tracked about the
+     hollow, and in the centre there was a bed of the velvet 'fog,'
+     which seemed a little higher than the rest, but so natural,
+     that it would not have been noticed by any unaccustomed eye. I
+     carefully lifted the green cushion, and under its veil, rolled
+     close together, the head of each resting on the flank of the
+     other, nestled two beautiful little kids, their large velvet
+     ears laid smooth on their dappled necks, their spotted sides
+     sleek and shining as satin, and their little delicate legs as
+     slender as hazel wands, shod with tiny glossy shoes as smooth
+     and black as ebony, while their large dark eyes looked at me out
+     of the corners with a full, mild, quiet gaze, which had not yet
+     learned to fear the hand of man: still they had a nameless doubt
+     which followed every motion of mine--their little limbs shrunk
+     from my touch, and their velvet fur rose and fell quickly; but
+     as I was about to replace the moss, one turned its head, lifted
+     its sleek ears towards me, and licked my hand as I laid their
+     soft mantle over them. I often saw them afterwards when they
+     grew strong, and came abroad upon the brae, and frequently
+     I called off old Dreadnought when he crossed their warm
+     track. Upon these occasions he would stand and look at me with
+     wonder--turn his head from side to side--snuff the ground again,
+     to see if it was possible that he could be mistaken--and when he
+     found that there was no disputing the scent, cock one ear at me
+     with a keener inquiry, and seeing that I was in earnest, trot
+     heavily onward with a sigh.
+
+     "The affection of the roe for their young is very strong; and
+     timid and feeble as they are by nature, inspired by the danger
+     of their offspring, they become brave and daring, and, in their
+     defence, will attack not only animals but men. We were one day
+     passing along the west walk of Eilean-Agais, and, beyond a turn
+     in the path, heard the sound of feet running towards us, and
+     immediately out shot a cat round the corner, and, close at her
+     heels, a doe pursuing her with great eagerness. Knowing that her
+     pursuer could not overtake her, and having no instinctive dread
+     of her kind, the cat did not give herself the trouble to run
+     faster than just sufficient to keep beyond her reach, while the
+     doe pursued her with an angry scrambling pace, and, whenever she
+     was near overtaking her, endeavoured to kneel on her back. This
+     is a mode of attack common to deer as well as cattle, which,
+     when they have overthrown their object, not only gore them with
+     their horns, but bruise and crush them with their knees. At our
+     appearance there was a pause; the cat cantered up the brae to
+     the top of a little rock, where she lay down in the sun to see
+     what would happen between us and her pursuer. The doe, after
+     a few bounds, turned round and looked indignantly at us, and
+     stamped and belled in great displeasure; this she continued for
+     some moments, glancing occasionally at the cat with a strong
+     desire to resume her chase; but being restrained by a sense of
+     prudence, she slowly ascended the hill, stopping at intervals to
+     stamp and bell at us, who knew very well that she had two kids
+     in the junipers upon the craig."
+
+Now let us up to the hill, where the mighty herds are feeding.
+Scotland will, in all probability, never see a tainchel more;
+indeed, save at a royal hunting, it were scarcely desirable now. The
+feudal system has melted away, the clans are broken and scattered,
+and we care not again to see a pageant which is indissolubly
+connected in our memories with national gallantry and misfortune.
+But the deer are still on the mountain and in the wood, and we shall
+seek them in their former haunt. Wood-stalking, though the Stuarts
+speak of it with considerable enthusiasm, was never much to our
+taste. It is true that the largest stags are generally to be met
+with in the wood, and we have followed the sport ere now in the
+Spessart, among the pines of Darmstadt, and the thickets of Strath
+Garve; but it must always partake more or less of the character
+of driving, and we never have felt, while engaged in it, that
+enthusiasm and keenness which sends the blood to the heart of the
+hunter when he first discovers a herd in the gorge of some solitary
+glen. Then he feels that he must put forth the whole resources of
+his art--that he must baffle the acutest of all instincts by the aid
+of human cunning--that he has a thousand difficulties to overcome
+before he can arrive within reach of his quarry, and that a single
+false step or miscalculation is sufficient to destroy the labour,
+the patience, and the vigilance of a day.
+
+Great, fat fallow-deer, waxing into obesity in a park, do not seem
+to mind the approach of a human being, even were he an alderman
+redolent of black-currant jelly. But the red-deer, as many incipient
+stalkers know to their cost, has a very different amount of
+perception. Unless you take the wind of him, he is off like a shot,
+though your distance may be upwards of a mile. In the words of the
+old stalker, "Above all things, let not the devil tempt you to
+trifle with a deer's nose: you may cross his sight, walk up to him
+in a gray coat, or, if standing against a tree or rock near your
+own colour, wait till he walks up to you; but you cannot cross his
+nose, even at an incredible distance, but he will feel the tainted
+air. Colours or forms may be deceptive or alike; there are gray,
+brown, and green rocks and stocks as well as men, and all these
+may be equivocal; but there is _but one scent of man_, and that he
+never doubts or mistakes; that is filled with danger and terror,
+and one whiff of its poison at a mile off, and, whether feeding or
+lying, his head is instantly up, his nose to the wind, and, in the
+next moment, his broad antlers turn, and he is away to the hill or
+the wood; and if there are no green peas, corn, or potatoes in the
+neighbourhood, he may not be seen on the same side of the forest
+for a month." A word to the wise, from the lips of a Celtic Solon!
+
+So much for your chance, if, in the plenitude of your full
+flavour, you take the hill, regardless of the currents of the air,
+which, moreover, are perpetually shifting. But there are other
+difficulties. Though not impossible, it is very ticklish work to get
+within shot of a deer by any other means save diligent creeping, and
+sometimes, when the ground is unusually flat and open, that method
+of approach is impracticable. Then there are divers enemies--that
+is, of yours, for in reality they are scouts to the deer--whom you
+must try particularly to avoid. This is not easy. Sometimes when
+you are sinuating like a serpent towards the especial stag of your
+heart, a blundering covey of grouse will start from the heather, and
+give an effectual alarm; sometimes the shrill whistle of the plover
+will change your anticipated triumph into mourning; and sometimes
+a charge of that disagreeable cavalry the mountain sheep, little
+less sagacious and wary than the deer themselves, will put the
+whole of the glen into disorder. But the worst enemies you have to
+guard against are the hinds, who are usually so disposed as to be
+out upon the feeding-grounds, and thus to mask the stag. In such a
+position, it becomes a point of honour to circumvent the lady, which
+is any thing but an easy task. The Stuarts give us an admirable
+recollection of such a scene in the forest of Glen-Fidich, which
+is so exciting that, though rather long, we make no apology for
+transferring it to the columns of Maga.
+
+     "After about an hour's stalking, we came upon the shoulder
+     of a long slope, which looks into the gorges of two or three
+     short glens, opening to a narrow plain, on which we saw a noble
+     sight--a herd of four or five hundred deer, among which were
+     many very fine stags. After having feasted my eyes with this
+     splendid sight--the illustrious cavalry of the hill, the crowned
+     and regal array of the wilderness--I began to calculate how to
+     make the approach, how to slip between the chain of vidette
+     hinds, and numerous picquets of small stags, which commanded
+     almost every knoll and hollow. In the centre of the main body,
+     with a large plump of hinds--which he herded within a wide
+     vacant circle--there was a mighty black hart, with a head like
+     a blasted pine, and a cluster of points in each crown. Though
+     each stag of the surrounding circle had not less than ten
+     points, there were none which approached his size, and they all
+     kept at a respectful distance, while he marched round and round
+     the central group of hinds. 'He will have them all in the ring
+     before long,' said MacLellan; 'yon's one of the old heroes of
+     the Monadh-liath; he has not been four-and-twenty hours in the
+     forest.' I looked with an eager and longing eye at his gigantic
+     stature, but there was no apparent possibility of approaching
+     even the outward circle of stags. The herd was scattered over
+     all the ground between the hills, and every little knoll and
+     eminence had its restless picquets, and plumps of discomfited
+     stags, which had been beaten by the great hart, and were chafing
+     about, driving off and broding the buttocks of all the inferior
+     stags which came in their way, then returning and staring
+     with jealous disgust at the mighty stranger, who gave them no
+     notice, except when one or two more audacious, or less severely
+     beaten, made a few steps before his companions; upon which he
+     immediately charged, drove them before him, and scattered the
+     nearest in every direction. Upon these occasions, some hind of
+     greater levity than the rest took the opportunity of extending
+     her pasture, or paying her compliments to her companions, for
+     which she immediately received a good prod in the haunch, and
+     was turned back again into the centre.
+
+     "'There is no doing any thing there,' said I.
+
+     "''Deed no', replied MacLellan, shutting up his glass, 'we be to
+     go down to the foot of the burn.'
+
+     "This was a stream which runs through the middle of the narrow
+     plain, and empties itself into the Fidich, about four miles
+     below, at the east end of the forest. Before resolving upon
+     this, however, we made an attempt to cross the little glen
+     to the north-west; but, after passing round one hill, and
+     nearly to the top of another, we fell in with a small herd
+     of insignificant stags, but none among them being worth the
+     disturbance of the great herd; and being unable to pass them
+     unobserved, we were obliged to adopt the last alternative, and
+     descend to the Fidich. In about an hour and a half we performed
+     this retrogration, and, having crossed at the forester's house,
+     ascended the burn till we again approached the deer, and
+     stealing from knoll to knoll, again came in sight of the herd.
+     The outskirts of its wide circle had been much broken and
+     deranged by the jousts and expulsions during our absence; and we
+     saw that it was impossible to get near the better stags without
+     taking the channel of the stream. We immediately descended
+     into the water, and crept up the middle, sometimes compelled
+     to crouch so low, that the pools reached our hips, and, as the
+     stones were round and slippery, it was very uneasy to proceed
+     without floundering and splashing. At length, however, we were
+     within the circle of the deer: there was not a breath of wind,
+     and the least sound was audible in the profound stillness.
+     We slipped through the water like eels, till we came to a
+     little rock, which, crossing the burn, made a shelving fall,
+     which there was no means of passing, but by drawing ourselves
+     up the shoot of the stream. With some difficulty I pushed my
+     rifle before me along the edge of the bank, and then, while
+     the water ran down our breasts, we glided up through the gush
+     of the stream, and reached the ledge above. The return of
+     the water, which I had obstructed, made, however, a rush and
+     plash different from its accustomed monotonous hum, and I had
+     scarce time to lay flat in the burn, when a _hind_ sprung up
+     within a few yards, and trotted briskly away, then another, and
+     another. I thought that all was over, and that, in the next
+     moment, we should hear all the clattering hoofs going over the
+     turf like a squadron of cavalry. All remained still, however,
+     and, in a few seconds, I saw the first hind wheel about, and
+     look back steadily towards the fall. I was rejoiced to observe
+     that she had not seen us, and had only been disturbed by the
+     unusual sound of the water. She continued, however, anxious and
+     suspicious--watched and listened--picked off the tops of the
+     heather--then walked on, with her ears laid back, and her neck
+     and step stilting away as stiff as if she had been hung up in
+     the larder for a week. This, however, was not the worst; all the
+     surrounding _hinds_ which noticed her gait gathered here and
+     there, and stood on the tops of the little knolls, like statues,
+     as straight as pucks, with nothing visible but their narrow
+     necks and two peg-legs, and their broad ears perked immovably
+     towards us, like long-eared bats. MacLellan gave me a rueful
+     look. 'Cha n'eil comas air.' 'Never mind,' said I, 'we shall
+     see who will be tired first.' The forester gave a glance of
+     satisfaction, slid up his glass on the dry bank, and we lay as
+     still as the stones around us, till the little trouts, which had
+     been disturbed by our convulsion, became so accustomed to our
+     shapes, that they again emerged from under the flat pebbles, and
+     returned to their station in the middle of the stream, skulling
+     their little tails between my legs with no more concern than if
+     I had been a forked tree. At length the immobility of the hinds
+     began to give way: first one ear turned back, then another,
+     then they became sensible of the flies, and began to flirt and
+     jerk as usual, and, finally, one applied her slender toe to
+     her ear, and another rubbed her velvet nose upon her knee;--it
+     was more than half an hour, however, before, one by one, they
+     began to steal away, perking and snuffing, and turning to gaze
+     at the least air that whiffed about them. At length they all
+     disappeared, except one gray, lean, haggard old grandmother
+     of hinds, who had no teeth, and limped with one leg, probably
+     from a wound which she received fifty or perhaps a hundred
+     years before I was born. Her vigilance, however, was only
+     sharpened by age; time, and the experience of many generations,
+     had made her acquainted with all the wiles and crafts of the
+     hill,--her eyes and ears were as active as a kid's, and I have
+     no doubt she could smell like Tobit's devil.--MacLellan looked
+     at her through his glass, and spit into the burn, and grinned
+     against the sun--as if he was lying in the bilboes instead of
+     cold water.--The old sorceress continued to watch us without
+     relaxation, and at last lay down on the brow of the knoll, and
+     employed her rumination in obstinate contemplation of the bank
+     under which we were ambushed. There was now no alternative but
+     to recommence our progress up the burn; and as I was determined
+     to circumvent the hind, I prepared for every inconvenience
+     which could be inflicted by the opposite vexations of a sharp,
+     rough, slippery, and gravelly stream. Fortunately, at the place
+     where we then were, it was so narrow, that we could hold by the
+     heather on both sides, and thus drag ourselves forward through
+     the water, between each of which advances I pushed my rifle on
+     before me. In this manner we reached the turn of the brook,
+     where I concluded that we should be round the shoulder of the
+     knoll, and out of sight of the hind, who lay upon its east brow.
+     This was effected so successfully, that, when we looked behind,
+     we only saw her back, and her head and ears still pointing at
+     the spot which we had left. One hundred yards more would bring
+     us within sight of the great hart; the general position of the
+     herd had not changed, and I hoped to find him near the central
+     knoll of the flat, at the base of which the burn circled. We
+     were almost surrounded by deer; but the greater number were
+     small vigilant hinds, the abomination and curse of a stalker.
+     At length, however, we reached the knoll, and rested, to take
+     breath, at its foot; I examined my rifle, to see that the lock
+     was clean and dry. We took a view of all around us, and, drawing
+     ourselves cautiously out of the burn, slid up through the
+     heather on the south side of the eminence.--Scarce, however, had
+     our legs cleared the stream, when we discovered a pair of ears
+     not above fifteen yards from the other side.--'_Mo mhallachd
+     ort!_' [My curse upon you]--whispered MacLellan. She had not
+     discovered us, however, and we glided round the base of the
+     knoll--but on the other side lay three hinds and a calf, and I
+     could see no trace of the great hart.--On the edge of the burn,
+     however, further up, there were five very good stags, and a
+     herd of about thirty deer, on the slope of the north brae. All
+     round us the ground was covered with hinds; for the prevalence
+     of the westerly wind, during the last few days, had drawn the
+     deer to that end of the forest. Upon the spot where I lay,
+     though I could only see a portion of the field, I counted four
+     hundred and seventy; and it was evident that no movement could
+     be made upon that side. We tried again the opposite slope of the
+     knoll;--the hind which we had first seen was still in the same
+     place, but she had laid down her head, and showed only the gray
+     line of her back over the heather. We drew ourselves cautiously
+     up the slope and looked over the summit. On the other side
+     there was a small flat moss, about seventy yards in breadth;
+     then another hillock; and to the left two more, with little
+     levels, and wet grassy hollows between them. Upon the side of
+     the first knoll there were two young stags and some hinds; but
+     the points of some good horns showed above the crest.--The
+     intervening ground was spotted with straggling hinds, and we
+     might lay where we were till to-morrow morning, without a chance
+     of getting near any of the good deer. While we deliberated,
+     MacLellan thought that, by crawling with extreme caution up a
+     wet hollow to the left, we might have a chance to approach the
+     stags whose horns we had seen behind the other knoll, and, as
+     nothing better could be done, we decided upon this attempt. The
+     sun was going down from the old towers of Auchandùn, and we had
+     no more time than would give light for this venture.--We slid
+     away towards the hollow, and, drawing ourselves, inch by inch,
+     though the heather and tall thin grass, had reached the middle
+     of the level between the hillocks, when we heard a stamp and
+     a short grunt close beside us--I had scarce time to turn my
+     head, and catch a glimpse of a base little gray hind who, in
+     crossing the hollow, had stumbled upon us.--It was but a moment:
+     a rapid wheel and rush through the long grass, and I heard the
+     career of a hundred feet going through the hollow. I sprung on
+     my knee, and skaled a dozen small stags and hinds which came
+     upon us full speed; for those behind, not knowing from whence
+     came the alarm, made straight for the hill. The herd were now
+     gathering in all directions; charging--flying--re-uniting,
+     dispersing, and reassembling in utter disorder, like a rout of
+     cavalry.--I made a run for the middle knoll,--two stags, with
+     pretty good heads, met me right in the face.--I did not stop
+     to look at them, but rushed up the brae.--What a sight was
+     seen from its top!--upwards of six hundred deer were charging
+     past--before, behind, around, in all directions.--The stately
+     figure which I sought--the mighty black hart, was slowly
+     ascending an eminence about three hundred yards off, from whence
+     he reconnoitred the ground below; while the disarray of stags
+     and hinds gathered round him, like rallying masses of hussars
+     in the rear of a supporting column. I was so intent upon the
+     king of the forest, that I saw nothing else.--No other heads,
+     forms, numbers, took any place in my senses; all my faculties
+     were on the summit of that height.--At this moment I felt my
+     kilt drawn gently; I took no notice--but a more decided pull
+     made me look round:--MacLellan motioned up the slope, and I
+     saw the points of a good head passing behind a little ridge,
+     about eighty yards away. I looked back at the hart--he was just
+     moving to the hill. What would I have given to have diminished
+     a hundred and fifty yards of the distance which divided us! He
+     passed slowly down the back of the eminence and disappeared, and
+     the gathering herd streamed after him. '_O Chìal! A Chìal!_'
+     exclaimed the forester--'_bithidh è air fàlbh!_' The stag whose
+     horns I had seen had come out from behind the ridge, and stood
+     with his broad side towards me, gazing at the herd; but as they
+     moved away, he now began to follow. The disappearance of the
+     great hart, and the disappointment of MacLellan, recalled me to
+     the last chance. I followed the retreating stag with my rifle,
+     passed it before his shoulder, whiz went the two-ounce ball, and
+     he rolled over headlong in the heath, on the other side of the
+     knoll, which the next stretch would have placed between us. I
+     looked to the hill above: the whole herd was streaming up the
+     long green hollow in its west shoulder headed 'by the mighty
+     of the desert.' They rounded and passed the brow, and sloped
+     upward on the other side, till the forest of heads appeared
+     bristling along the sky-line of the summit. In a few moments
+     afterwards, as the sun was going down upon Scùr-na-Lapaich, and
+     the far western hills of Loch Duaich, the terrible wide-forked
+     tree came out in the clear eastern sky on the top of the hill,
+     and, crowding after, at least two hundred heads--crossing, and
+     charging, and mingling--their polished points flashing in the
+     parting sunbeams, and from many a horn, the long steamers of the
+     moss fluttering and flying like the pennons and bannerolles of
+     lances. The herd continued to file along the ridge of the hill,
+     and wheeling below the crest, countermarched along the sky-line,
+     till their heads and horns slowly decreased against the light."
+
+With such a book as this before us, we could go on alternately
+commenting and extracting until we had broken the back of the
+Number. Even now we are dying to pilfer the account of the late
+Glengarry's course with "Black Dulochan," and the no less exciting
+history of the three day's ruse with a roebuck. But abstinence is a
+virtue which is forced upon us in the present instance, rather from
+the lack of space than from any exercise of voluntary discretion;
+and we shall now leave the deer without further molestation for
+a season, hoping soon to encounter them in person with our rifle
+somewhere about the skirts of Cairn-Gorm.
+
+This is, we have no hesitation in saying, the best work on
+deer-stalking which has yet been written; and the amount of
+information which it contains regarding the habits of the stag and
+roe, combined with the vivid pictures of which we have made such
+ample use, cannot fail to render it popular. In an antiquarian point
+of view, it is also highly interesting; for it embodies a large
+amount of traditionary lore, sketches of the clans, and fragments of
+Highland song, of much superior merit to those which have hitherto
+come into our hands. The disquisitions, too, upon the disappearance
+of some animals once indigenous to Scotland--such as the wolf,
+the elk, the wild bull, and the beaver--exhibit a great amount of
+research, and supply a gap which has long been wanted in the page of
+natural history.
+
+One word to the authors--though we fear our words must travel a long
+way before they can reach them in a foreign land. Why should they
+not recast and add to their second volume, so as to make it a single
+and unrivalled work upon the noblest sports of the Highlands? If
+it has proved so fascinating, as in truth we have felt it, in the
+more cumbrous shape of notes, how much better would it be if issued,
+not as an appendage to the poems, but in a distinct and articulate
+form? Perpend upon this, John Sobieski and Charles Edward, at
+your leisure; and let us add, that we trust some of your more
+gloomy anticipations may fall short of reality; that the walks of
+Eilean-Agais, that little Eden of the north, may again be gladdened
+by your presence; and that the sound of your hunting-horns may once
+more be heard in the woods of Tarnaway, and on the hills near the
+sources of the Findhorn.
+
+
+
+
+THE BURIED FLOWER.
+
+
+    In the silence of my chamber,
+      When the night is still and deep,
+    And the drowsy heave of ocean
+      Mutters in its charmèd sleep,
+
+    Oft I hear the angel voices
+      That have thrill'd me long ago,--
+    Voices of my lost companions,
+      Lying deep beneath the snow.
+
+    O, the garden I remember,
+      In the gay and sunny spring,
+    When our laughter made the thickets
+      And the arching alleys ring!
+
+    O the merry burst of gladness!
+      O the soft and tender tone!
+    O the whisper never utter'd
+      Save to one fond ear alone!
+
+    O the light of life that sparkled
+      In those bright and bounteous eyes!
+    O the blush of happy beauty,
+      Tell-tale of the heart's surprise!
+
+    O the radiant light that girdled
+      Field and forest, land and sea,
+    When we all were young together,
+      And the earth was new to me!
+
+    Where are now the flowers we tended?
+      Wither'd, broken, branch and stem;
+    Where are now the hopes we cherish'd?
+      Scatter'd to the winds with them.
+
+    For ye, too, were flowers, ye dear ones!
+      Nursed in hope and rear'd in love,
+    Looking fondly ever upward
+      To the clear blue heaven above:
+
+    Smiling on the sun that cheer'd us,
+      Rising lightly from the rain,
+    Never folding up your freshness
+      Save to give it forth again:
+
+    Never shaken, save by accents
+      From a tongue that was not free,
+    As the modest blossom trembles
+      At the wooing of the bee.
+
+    O! 'tis sad to lie and reckon
+      All the days of faded youth,
+    All the vows that we believed in,
+      All the words we spoke in truth.
+
+    Sever'd--were it sever'd only
+      By an idle thought of strife,
+    Such as time might knit together;
+      Not the broken chord of life!
+
+    O my heart! that once so truly
+      Kept another's time and tune,
+    Heart, that kindled in the spring-tide,
+      Look around thee in the noon.
+
+    Where are they who gave the impulse
+      To thy earliest thought and flow?
+    Look around the ruin'd garden--
+      All are wither'd, dropp'd, or low!
+
+    Seek the birth-place of the lily,
+      Dearer to the boyish dream
+    Than the golden cups of Eden,
+      Floating on its slumbrous stream;
+
+    Never more shalt thou behold her--
+      She, the noblest, fairest, best:
+    She that rose in fullest beauty,
+      Like a queen, above the rest.
+
+    Only still I keep her image
+      As a thought that cannot die,
+    He who raised the shade of Helen
+      Had no greater power than I.
+
+    O! I fling my spirit backward,
+      And I pass o'er years of pain;
+    All I loved is rising round me,
+      All the lost returns again.
+
+    Blow, for ever blow, ye breezes,
+      Warmly as ye did before!
+    Bloom again, ye happy gardens,
+      With the radiant tints of yore!
+
+    Warble out in spray and thicket,
+      All ye choristers unseen,
+    Let the leafy woodland echo
+      With an anthem to its queen!
+
+    Lo! she cometh in her beauty,
+      Stately with a Juno grace,
+    Raven locks, Madonna-braided
+      O'er her sweet and blushing face:
+
+    Eyes of deepest violet, beaming
+      With the love that knows not shame,--
+    Lips, that thrill my inmost being
+      With the utterance of a name.
+
+    And I bend the knee before her,
+      As a captive ought to bow,--
+    Pray thee, listen to my pleading,
+      Sovereign of my soul art thou!
+
+    O my dear and gentle lady,
+      Let me show thee all my pain,
+    Ere the words that late were prison'd
+      Sink into my heart again.
+
+    Love, they say, is very fearful
+      Ere its curtain be withdrawn,
+    Trembling at the thought of error
+      As the shadows scare the fawn.
+
+    Love hath bound me to thee, lady,
+      Since the well-remember'd day
+    When I first beheld thee coming
+      In the light of lustrous May.
+
+    Not a word I dared to utter--
+      More than he who, long ago,
+    Saw the heavenly shapes descending
+      Over Ida's slopes of snow:
+
+    When a low and solemn music
+      Floated through the listening grove,
+    And the throstle's song was silenced,
+      And the doling of the dove:
+
+    When immortal beauty open'd
+      All its grace to mortal sight,
+    And the awe of worship blended
+      With the throbbing of delight.
+
+    As the shepherd stood before them
+      Trembling in the Phrygian dell,
+    Even so my soul and being
+      Own'd the magic of the spell;
+
+    And I watch'd thee, ever fondly,
+      Watch'd thee, dearest, from afar,
+    With the mute and humble homage
+      Of the Indian to a star.
+
+    Thou wert still the Lady Flora
+      In her morning garb of bloom;
+    Where thou wert was light and glory,
+      Where thou wert not, dearth and gloom.
+
+    So for many a day I follow'd
+      For a long and weary while,
+    Ere my heart rose up to bless thee
+      For the yielding of a smile,--
+
+    Ere thy words were few and broken
+      As they answer'd back to mine,
+    Ere my lips had power to thank thee
+      For the gift vouchsafed by thine.
+
+    Then a mighty gush of passion
+      Through my inmost being ran;
+    Then my older life was ended,
+      And a dearer course began.
+
+    Dearer!--O, I cannot tell thee
+      What a load was swept away,
+    What a world of doubt and darkness
+      Faded in the dawning day!
+
+    All my error, all my weakness,
+      All my vain delusions fled:
+    Hope again revived, and gladness
+      Waved its wings above my head.
+
+    Like the wanderer of the desert,
+      When, across the dreary sand,
+    Breathes the perfume from the thickets
+      Bordering on the promised land;
+
+    When afar he sees the palm-trees
+      Cresting o'er the lonely well,
+    When he hears the pleasant tinkle
+      Of the distant camel's bell:
+
+    So a fresh and glad emotion
+      Rose within my swelling breast,
+    And I hurried swiftly onwards
+      To the haven of my rest.
+
+    Thou wert there with word and welcome,
+      With thy smile so purely sweet;
+    And I laid my heart before thee,
+      Laid it, darling, at thy feet!--
+
+    O ye words that sound so hollow
+      As I now recall your tone!
+    What are ye but empty echoes
+      Of a passion crush'd and gone?
+
+    Wherefore should I seek to kindle
+      Light, when all around is gloom?
+    Wherefore should I raise a phantom
+      O'er the dark and silent tomb?
+
+    Early wert thou taken, Mary!
+      In thy fair and glorious prime,
+    Ere the bees had ceased to murmur
+      Through the umbrage of the lime.
+
+    Buds were blowing, waters flowing,
+      Birds were singing on the tree,
+    Every thing was bright and glowing,
+      When the angels came for thee.
+
+    Death had laid aside his terror,
+      And he found thee calm and mild,
+    Lying in thy robes of whiteness,
+      Like a pure and stainless child.
+
+    Hardly had the mountain violet
+      Spread its blossoms on the sod,
+    Ere they laid the turf above thee,
+      And thy spirit rose to God.
+
+    Early wert thou taken, Mary!
+      And I know 'tis vain to weep--
+    Tears of mine can never wake thee
+      From thy sad and silent sleep.
+
+    O away! my thoughts are earthward!
+      Not asleep, my love! art thou,
+    Dwelling in the land of glory
+      With the saints and angels now.
+
+    Brighter, fairer far than living,
+      With no trace of woe or pain,
+    Robed in everlasting beauty,
+      Shall I see thee once again,
+
+    By the light that never fadeth,
+      Underneath eternal skies,
+    When the dawn of resurrection
+      Breaks o'er deathless Paradise.
+
+    W. E. A.
+
+
+
+
+HUZZA FOR THE RULE OF THE WHIGS!
+
+AIR--"_Old Rosin the Beau._"
+
+
+    All ye who are true to the altar and throne,
+      Come join in this ditty with me;
+    And you who don't like it may let it alone,
+      Or listen a little and see.
+    How quietly now we may sleep in our beds,
+      And waken as merry as grigs;
+    Though fears of rebellion hang over our heads,
+      We're safe while we're ruled by the Whigs.
+
+    In the 'nineties we saw (I remember the day)
+      Revolution disguised as Reform;
+    But the country was saved in a different way,
+      By the Pilot that weather'd the storm.
+    Our vessel was steer'd by the bravest and best,
+      And, except a few quality sprigs,
+    The whole English nation had thought it a jest
+      To propose being ruled by the Whigs.
+
+    But as matters now stand in this ill-fated realm,
+      When old comrades will give us the slip,
+    We are strangely compell'd to put men at the helm.
+      To prevent them from scuttling the ship.
+    Only think, for a moment, if Russell were out,
+      How wild he'd be running his rigs!
+    About popular rights he would make such a rout--
+      'Tis lucky we're ruled by the Whigs.
+
+    The Church--can you doubt what her danger would be
+      Were Tories at present in power?
+    Lord John, or his friends, we should certainly see
+      Attacking her posts every hour.
+    But as long as the Bishops may help out his lease,
+      He won't injure a hair of their wigs;
+    Nay, he even proposes the list to increase--
+      So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!
+
+    If Grey were at large, how he'd lay down the law
+      On the cures he for Ireland had found;
+    And swear that he never would rest till he saw
+      Her Establishment razed to the ground.
+    But Grey, while in office, sits muffled and mum,
+      Like a small bird asleep in the twigs;
+    And Ward, in the Commons, is equally dumb--
+      So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!
+
+    If any of us had made war on Repeal
+      With the weapons that Clarendon tries,
+    What shrieks of indignant invective from Shiel
+      At the wrongs of Old Erin would rise.
+    By millions of noisy Milesians back'd,
+      From the peer to the peasant that digs--
+    How would Monaghan murmur that juries were pack'd!--
+      So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!
+
+    On Aliens or Chartists to hear them declaim,
+      You'd think Castlereagh come from the dead.
+    Though the mixture of metaphors isn't the same,
+      And the courage and coolness are fled.
+    But the Whigs are becoming respectable men
+      As any that ever kept gigs,
+    They are practising _now_ all they preach'd against _then_--
+      So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!
+
+    Go on, my good lads--never think of retreat,
+      Though annoy'd by a squib or a squirt;
+    You're fulfilling the fate such impostors should meet,
+      And eating your bushel of dirt
+    Then swallow it fast, for your hour may not last--
+      We shall soon, if it pleases the pigs,
+    Give your places to men of a different cast,
+      And get rid of the rule of the Whigs!
+
+
+
+
+THE NAVIGATION LAWS.
+
+
+"When the Act of Navigation," says Adam Smith, "was made, though
+England and Holland were not actually at war, the most violent
+animosity subsisted between the two nations. It is not impossible,
+therefore, that some of the regulations of this famous act may have
+proceeded from national animosity. They _are as wise, however, as if
+they had all been dictated by the most deliberate wisdom_. National
+animosity, at that particular time, aimed at the very object which
+the most deliberate wisdom would have recommended,--the diminution
+of the naval power of Holland, the only naval power which could
+endanger the security of England. The Act of Navigation is not
+favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence
+which can arise from it. As defence, however, is of much more value
+than opulence, the Act of Navigation is perhaps the wisest of all
+the commercial regulations of England."[8] Before these pages issue
+from the press, this, undoubtedly the wisest of all the commercial
+regulations of Great Britain, and under which the maritime strength
+and colonial empire of England have risen to a pitch of grandeur
+unknown in any other age or country, will be numbered among the
+things which have been. The House of Commons, by a majority, have
+voted for the repeal of the Navigation Laws.
+
+  [8] _Wealth of Nations_, iv. c. 2.
+
+Free trade will soon have done its work, so far, at least, as the
+House of Commons is concerned. It is gradually but unceasingly
+advancing, and swallowing up successively all the great interests of
+the empire, save that of the capitalists, as it moves forward. The
+agricultural interests will find themselves deprived, in February
+next, of all protection; and the British cultivator exposed to
+the competition, without any shield save a nominal duty of 1s. a
+quarter, of states where wheat can be raised, with a fair profit
+in average years, at 18s. a quarter, and brought to this country
+for 10s. at the very utmost of freight. As soon as we have two fine
+harvests in succession, it will be seen to what state this system
+will reduce British rural production. The West India interests have
+been next assailed; and our colonies, upon whom free labour has
+been forced, upon a compensation being given to the proprietors on
+an average of a fourth of the value of their slaves, are speedily
+to be exposed, with no protection but a differential duty of 5s.
+6d. a hundredweight, diminishing 1s. 6d. a-year, till, in 1854, it
+disappears, to the competition of slave colonies, where sugar can be
+raised for £4 a ton, while in the British colonies the measures of
+government have precluded its being raised for less than £10 a ton.
+As a natural consequence, cultivation is about to cease in those
+noble settlements; the forest and the jungle will speedily supplant
+the smiling plantations, and £100,000,000 worth of British property
+will be lost beyond redemption.
+
+Domestic manufactures were at the same time assailed, though with a
+more gentle hand than rude produce. Protective duties on them were
+lowered, though not entirely removed; and the consequence is, that
+at this time there are 8000 hands wholly unemployed at Manchester,
+and above 10,000 at Glasgow, and distress to an unparalleled extent
+pervades the whole commercial and manufacturing classes. Nothing
+daunted by these calamitous results, so exactly what the opponents
+of free trade predicted would ensue, so diametrically the reverse
+of the unbounded prosperity which they promised the nation as the
+consequence of their changes, the Free-traders, in pursuance of
+their usual system of preferring their own opinions to the evidence
+of facts, are preparing to apply the same system to the commercial
+navy of the country, and, by the repeal of the Navigation Laws,
+against the opinion of Adam Smith, to depress our shipping interest
+as much as they encourage that of foreign states, and endanger our
+national existence, by crippling our own means of defence as much
+as they augment the means of attack in the hands of our enemies. Not
+content with rendering us dependent for a large part of our bread
+on foreign nations, they are determined on measures calculated to
+deprive us of the means of maintaining our naval superiority, or
+upholding the national independence. They are set upon saying the
+nation a few millions a-year in freight, though the consequence is,
+that we shall be alike unable to withstand a pacific blockade or
+hostile aggression.
+
+Many estimable and thoughtful persons in the country, struck with
+astonishment at the adoption and determined adherence to such a
+suicidal policy--alike by our rulers and a powerful party in the
+country--in the face of the decisive evidence afforded by facts, and
+the universal distress of the nation, as to its ruinous tendency,
+have come to the opinion, that we have been struck with a judicial
+blindness, and that Providence, as a just punishment for our sins,
+and for the furtherance of its mysterious designs in the general
+government of mankind, has rendered our own infatuation the means
+of working out our destruction. They think it affords a marvellous
+proof of the weakness of the human mind, and the impotence of man
+against the arm of his Creator, that this vast empire, which has
+done such mighty things in the annals of history, and which has
+stood proof against the hostility of the combined world, directed
+by consummate ability, when its rule was that of justice, should
+thus crumble away and perish, not from external violence or foreign
+aggression, but solely from domestic infatuation, when that rule has
+passed away. And observing that this country has already suffered
+greater losses, and been more severely crippled in its resources
+by the effects of three years of free trade and fettered currency
+policy, than by the whole efforts of France during a war of twenty
+years--and still the same course is blindly persevered in--they draw
+the conclusion that the evil is irremediable by human means, and
+that the nation, if not absolutely shipwrecked, will approach as
+near the verge of ruin as the providence of God will permit human
+infatuation to effect.
+
+Without denying that there is much truth in these observations, and
+humbly acknowledging a Divine superintendence alike in the rise and
+the decline, the prosperity and decay, of nations, it yet appears
+more reasonable to trace the extraordinary obstinacy of the ruling
+party in the nation to the causes which, humanly speaking, seem to
+have been mainly instrumental in producing it. The fanaticism of the
+political economists, who, like all other fanatics, are inaccessible
+to reason or experience, is, without doubt, a main cause of the
+disastrous policy to which the nation seems now irrevocably pledged.
+But a still more powerful agent in producing the determined
+adherence to this system, in the face of the most conclusive
+evidence of its pernicious tendency, is to be found in the _class_
+government which it is now apparent the Reform Bill has imposed upon
+the nation. It is now unhappily proved that the _trading_ interest,
+in whom a decisive majority both in the constituency and the number
+of seats in parliament has been vested by the Reform Bill, are
+alive, like all other classes, mainly to the suggestions of their
+own advantage; and that advantage they think is, to buy cheap and
+sell dear. Whatever we were in the days when Napoleon said it, we
+are now, if not a nation of shopkeepers, at least a nation _ruled
+by shopkeepers_. The colonies are entirely unrepresented. Schedules
+A and B, sixteen years ago, cut off all their representatives. The
+landed interest is in a minority, from two-thirds of the seats in
+the Commons being for boroughs; and those boroughs, owing to the
+depression of the producing classes by the currency laws, and the
+vast increase of the trading interests from the same cause, being
+for the most part under the direction of the commercial part of
+the community. It is in these circumstances that we are to look
+for the real causes of the adoption of free-trade principles of
+late years by our statesmen, and the determined adherence to it,
+in spite of all experience, by a majority of the House of Commons.
+Such conduct is the inevitable result of every _uniform_ system
+of representation, because that lands the government in the class
+government of the majority, composed of a particular interest. The
+evil was not felt under the old constitution, because it was _not_
+a class government, being based on a multifarious, not a uniform
+representation. Its _defects_, as they are now called, _i. e._ its
+nomination boroughs, combined with the extension of our colonial
+and shipping interests, had let in a most efficient representation
+of _all_ the interests in the empire, as well as that of the
+inhabitants of those islands, into the House of Commons. It is to
+this cause that the protection of _all_ interests by the old House
+of Commons is to be ascribed. Doubtless, under the old system the
+Corn Laws would have been upheld; but the West Indies would have
+been saved from ruin, domestic industry rescued from bankruptcy and
+the Navigation Laws, the palladium of our national independence,
+preserved from destruction.
+
+That the Navigation Laws have been a great advantage to our
+shipowners and seafaring interests is self-evident. They afforded
+superior advantages in conducting the trade of the empire to
+British over foreign shipowners; and they nursed up, accordingly,
+the immense and hardy body of British seamen, who have founded and
+protected our colonial empire, and rendered Great Britain the terror
+and admiration of the world. What, then, is the great benefit which
+is anticipated from the repeal of laws, the practical operation of
+which has been attended with such uniform and unparalleled benefits?
+The benefit is, that it will save our merchants some millions a-year
+in the payment of freights. It is calculated by the Free-traders
+that £30,000,000 yearly is paid by Great Britain for freights; and
+of this sum, it is thought a fourth, or £7,500,000 yearly, may be
+saved by the employment of foreign instead of British sailors in the
+conducting of our commerce, or the reduction of freight and seamen's
+wages in these islands, which will result from their unrestrained
+competition. This is the benefit to attain which our Navigation
+Laws, the nursery of our seamen, are to be sacrificed. And the
+question to be considered is,--Is the gain real, or apparent only;
+and, supposing it is real, is it worth the risk with which it is
+attended?
+
+Is the advantage real, or apparent only? Concede to the Free-traders
+all they contend for: call the saving to the nation annually in
+freights, to be effected by free trade in shipping, not £7,500,000
+but £10,000,000 annually. The strength of the argument will admit
+of almost any concession. Admit this, and consider what it is
+worth, and on whom it is made. It is not worth a _fiftieth part_
+of the revenue of the nation, which, in the produce of land and
+manufactures alone, is above £500,000,000 annually. A week of
+sunshine in autumn, a favourable set of Fall orders from America,
+the stoppage of a revolution in Europe, are each worth more to the
+nation. But, such as it is, from whom is it gained? Why, it is all
+_gained from our own people_: it is a saving effected to _one class
+of our inhabitants by impoverishing another class_. If our merchants
+and the purchasers from them pay £20,000,000 a-year for freight of
+goods sea-borne, instead of £30,000,000 as formerly, undoubtedly
+there is a saying of £10,000,000 _to them_, or the consumers who buy
+from them. But of whom is this saving made? From whom is it derived?
+Is it not from our shipbuilders, shipowners, and seamen, who get
+so much the less: either by being driven out of the market by
+foreign mercantile navies, or by getting their own profits or wages
+reduced by external competition to that amount? Ten millions now
+earned by shipowners and sailors in Great Britain, is, on the most
+favourable supposition for the Free-traders, _taken from them_, and
+given to the dealers in or consumers of the commodities which they
+transport. Is the nation, as a whole, any gainer by that transfer?
+If ten pounds are taken from John and given to James, are John and
+James, taken together, any gainers by the transfer? And is not the
+great family of the nation composed of all its members, not of John
+only, but of John and James taken together? Is not the repeal of the
+Navigation Laws, in this view robbing Peter to pay Paul? This is
+the mighty advantage, for the attainment of which we are going to
+crush by external competition our mercantile shipping; and endanger
+the national independence, by withering the nursery of the navy, by
+which it can alone be maintained! Can there be a stronger proof of
+how completely, by the operation of the Reform Bill, we have fallen
+under the influence of class government; and how entirely such
+class government blinds the vision even of the most clear-sighted,
+to any thing but the perception of its own immediate interests?
+
+The evidence taken before the Commons' committee, on the comparative
+cost of building and navigating ships in the north of Europe
+and in this country, comes to this, that both are about _twice_
+as expensive in this country as on the shores of the Baltic. A
+copper-sheathed vessel, which there costs £4500, cannot here be
+constructed for less than £9000: a master's wages there, which are
+£2, 11s. a month, are here £5 for the same period: seamen's, there
+7d. a day, besides provisions, &c., are here 1s. 2d. Every thing
+else is in the same proportion. Shipbuilding and ship-navigating are
+twice as costly in Great Britain as they are in Norway and Denmark.
+How could it be otherwise, when they have the materials of ships
+and rigging at their doors, while we have to transport them to the
+British shores from Canada or the Baltic; and they are the poor
+nations, whose money being scarce goes far, and we are the rich one,
+whose money being comparatively plentiful goes but a little way.
+Compare the cost of living in London during the season, with what
+it is in Aberdeen or Inverness, and you will at once see the main
+cause of the extraordinary difference in the value of money, and
+consequently in the money-price of articles, in the two situations.
+The difference in the cost of shipbuilding and seamanship, viz. one
+half, is nearly the same as the difference in the cost of raising
+sugar in our free-labour colonies and the foreign slave ones,
+which is £10 a ton in the former situation, and £4 in the latter.
+And it is in the perfect knowledge of the entire ruin which the
+approach even to a free trade in sugar has brought, under these
+circumstances, upon the British West India islands, that government
+are prepared to force a similar disastrous competition upon the
+British shipowners, and through them on the palladium of British
+independence, the royal navy.
+
+Mr Labouchere said, in the debate on this subject in the House
+of Commons, that the Protection Party seemed to consider every
+importation as in itself an evil, inasmuch as it displaced a
+corresponding amount of native industry; but that till he found that
+goods were brought by merchants into the country for nothing, he
+never could see how importation did not encourage domestic industry
+as much as home orders. This is manfully spoken: it comes home to
+the kernel of the question. It is pleasing to have to contend with
+such an antagonist. We will answer him equally briefly, and, as it
+seems to us, decisively. The difference between home orders and
+foreign orders is this, that the one encourages industry at _both
+ends_, viz., in the consumers and the producers; the other, at _one
+end only_, viz., in the consumer. This difference, however, may
+become vital to the national fortunes. If a London merchant pays
+£20,000 a-year to British shipowners and seamen, he keeps in motion
+at once the industry of the consumers, by whose produce the freights
+are ultimately paid, and the industry of the seafaring classes by
+whom they are earned. But if he pays the £20,000 a-year not to
+British but foreign shipowners, the only industry put in motion, so
+far as we are concerned, is that which raises the produce which is
+to pay the freight. The other end of the chain is placed in Norway
+or America, and any encouragement to industry there afforded is
+wholly lost to England. It is just the difference between rents
+spent in Great Britain, and rents spent in Paris or Naples.
+
+Doubtless they are the same thing, so far as the whole world is
+concerned; but are they the same thing so far as that portion of
+the world in which we are interested, viz., the British Islands,
+is concerned? Unquestionably they are not. What the Protectionists
+say is, not that no British industry is encouraged when importation
+takes place: they know perfectly it is encouraged at _their end_ of
+the line; what they say is, that it is not encouraged at the _other
+end_, because that other end rests in foreign states; and that it is
+unwise to encourage industry at _one end_ only, when it is possible
+to do so at _both_. Adam Smith saw this perfectly when he so well
+explained the difference between the home trade and foreign trade,
+and said the former was "worth all foreign trade put together." But
+his observations on this head are as much forgotten by the majority
+of our legislators as those he made on the great wisdom of our
+Navigation Laws, as the only security for our national independence.
+
+Mr M'Gregor said in debate on the same subject, that "he admitted
+our naval strength had co-existed with the Navigation Laws, but he
+denied that they were cause and effect. They had about as much to do
+with each other as the height of the Pyramids had with the floods
+of the Nile."[9] We agree with the honourable member for Glasgow in
+one part of this observation. The Navigation Laws have had as much
+to do with our maritime prosperity as the Pyramids had with the
+floods of the Nile; and we will tell the ex-secretary of the board
+of trade what the relation was--it was that of cause and effect.
+Mr M'Gregor is too well informed not to know that there exists in
+Cairo a _Nilometer_, and that, during the period of the inundation,
+the spirits of the people and the animation of commerce rise and
+fall with the rise or fall of the prolific stream. It is no wonder
+they do so, for it is the source of life and prosperity to the whole
+community. Raised by the power of the Pharaohs from the riches
+produced by the inundations of former times, the Pyramids are the
+Nilometer of antiquity, as much as the tower of Babel and the ruins
+of Babylon were the monument of the opulence of the plain of Shinar;
+or as Waterloo Bridge is of the wealth produced by the favourable
+maritime situation of London, or York Cathedral of the agricultural
+riches of the plains of Yorkshire. In all these causes there is a
+relation between the natural advantages which produce the riches
+and the durable monument to the construction of which they lead,
+and that relation is that of cause and effect. We entirely concur
+with the member for Glasgow in thinking that the same connexion,
+and no other, subsists between the Navigation Laws and the maritime
+greatness of England as existed formerly between the Pyramids of
+Egypt and the fertilising floods which encircle their base.
+
+  [9] _Times_, June 9, 1848.
+
+To prove that these remarks are not made at random, but that the
+Navigation Laws really are the foundation of the maritime greatness
+of England, and that, when they are repealed, it must of necessity
+languish and ultimately expire, we subjoin three tables: one showing
+the progress of British as compared with foreign shipping, from
+1801 to 1823, when the protection of the Navigation Laws was first
+infringed upon by the adoption of the reciprocity system with the
+Baltic powers; and another showing the comparative progress of our
+foreign and home shipping with Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Prussia,
+the countries with whom reciprocity treaties were first concluded,
+from 1823 to the end of 1847, when the reciprocity system had been a
+quarter of a century in operation.
+
+TABLE showing the comparative progress of British and Foreign
+Tonnage inwards, from 1821 to 1847, both inclusive, with Sweden,
+Norway, Denmark, and Prussia.
+
+[Transcriber's note: Column headings:  Y=Year. Bt=Brit. tons. Ft=For. tons.]
+
+  |      |     SWEDEN.    |     NORWAY.    |     DENMARK.   |     PRUSSIA.    |
+  |      |                |                |                |                 |
+  |  Y   |   Bt  |   Ft   |   Bt  |   Ft   |   Bt  |   Ft   |   Bt   |   Ft   |
+  +------+-------+--------+-------+--------+-------+--------+--------+--------+
+  | 1821 | 23,005|   8,508| 13,855|  61,342|  5,312|   3,969|  79,590|  37,720|
+  | 1822 | 20,799|  13,692| 13,377|  87,974|  7,096|   3,910| 102,847|  58,270|
+  | 1823 | 20,986|  22,529| 13,122| 117,015|  4,413|   4,795|  81,202|  86,013|
+  | 1824 | 17,074|  40,092| 11,419| 135,272|  6,738|  23,689|  94,664| 151,621|
+  | 1825 | 15,906|  53,141| 14,825| 157,916| 15,158|  50,943| 189,214| 182,752|
+  | 1826 | 11,829|  16,939| 13,603|  90,726| 22,000|  56,544| 119,060| 120,589|
+  | 1827 | 11,719|  21,822| 13,945|  96,420| 10,825|  52,456| 150,718| 109,184|
+  | 1828 | 14,877|  24,700| 10,826|  85,771| 17,464|  49,293| 133,753|  99,195|
+  | 1829 | 16,536|  25,046|  9,985|  86,205| 24,576|  53,390| 125,918| 127,861|
+  | 1830 | 12,116|  23,158|  6,459|  84,585| 12,210|  51,420| 102,758| 139,646|
+  | 1831 | 11,450|  38,689|  4,518| 114,865|  6,552|  62,190|  83,908| 140,532|
+  | 1832 |  8,335|  25,755|  3,789|  82,155|  7,268|  35,772|  62,079|  89,187|
+  | 1833 | 10,009|  29,454|  5,901|  98,931|  6,840|  38,620|  41,735| 108,753|
+  | 1834 | 15,353|  35,911|  6,403|  98,303|  5,691|  53,282|  32,021| 118,711|
+  | 1835 | 12,036|  35,061|  2,592|  95,049|  6,007|  49,008|  25,514| 124,144|
+  | 1836 | 10,865|  42,439|  1,573| 125,875|  2,152|  51,907|  42,567| 174,439|
+  | 1837 |  7,608|  42,602|  1,035|  88,004|  5,357|  55,961|  67,566| 145,742|
+  | 1838 | 10,425|  38,991|  1,364| 110,817|  3,466|  57,554|  86,734| 175,643|
+  | 1839 |  8,359|  49,270|  2,582| 109,228|  5,535| 106,960| 111,470| 229,208|
+  | 1840 | 11,953|  53,337|  3,161| 114,241|  6,327| 103,067| 112,709| 237,984|
+  | 1841 | 13,170|  46,795|    977| 113,045|  3,368|  83,009|  88,198| 210,254|
+  | 1842 | 15,296|  37,218|  1,385|  98,979|  5,499|  59,837|  87,202| 145,499|
+  | 1843 |  6,435|  44,184|  1,814|  97,248|  4,148|  82,940|  70,164| 163,745|
+  | 1844 | 12,806|  59,835|  1,315| 125,011|  7,423| 123,674| 108,626| 220,202|
+  | 1845 | 15,157|  89,923|  1,215| 129,897|  4,528|  84,566|  49,334| 256,711|
+  | 1846 | 12,625|  80,649|  3,313| 113,738|  9,531| 105,973|  63,425| 270,801|
+  | 1847 |  7,037| 117,918|  2,318| 128,075| 20,462| 116,382|  88,390| 303,225|
+
+--PORTER'S _Parliamentary Tables_; and _Parliamentary Report, 3d
+April 1848_.
+
+Thus, while our shipping with the whole world _quadrupled_, as
+compared with the foreign employed in the same trade, under the
+protective system, from 1801 to 1823; it declined under the
+reciprocity system of equal duties, in the countries to which that
+system was applied in the next twenty years, till it had dwindled
+to a perfect fraction;--our tonnage with Sweden being, in 1847,
+not more than a _sixteenth_ part of the foreign; with Norway, a
+_fiftieth_ part; with Denmark somewhat above a _sixth_; with Prussia
+somewhat under a _fourth_.
+
+But then it is said these are _selected_ states which do not give
+a fair average of the reciprocity system, or afford a correct
+criterion of its probable effects when applied, as it is about to
+be by a general repeal of the Navigation Laws, to the whole world.
+If they are "selected states," we can only say they were selected
+by Mr Huskisson and the Free-traders themselves as likely to afford
+the best specimen of the effect of their principles, and therefore
+as the first on which the experiment was to be made. But we are
+quite willing to take the general tonnage of the empire as the test;
+and we shall commence with a quotation from the tables of the great
+statistical apostle of free trade, Mr Porter, to show the effect
+of free trade in shipping on the comparative growth of our whole
+tonnage, as compared with that of foreign states, from 1801 to 1823,
+when the reciprocity system began; and again from thence lo 1847,
+when free trade in shipping was in full operation by the temporary
+suspension of the Navigation Laws, from the effect of the Orders
+in Council in March 1847 suspending the Navigation Laws under the
+pressure of the Irish famine:--
+
+  |       | Tons inward, | Tons inward |            |
+  | Year. |   British.   |   Foreign.  |   TOTAL.   |
+  +-------+--------------+-------------+------------+
+  | 1801  |     922,594  |    780,155  | 1,702,749  |
+  | 1802  |   1,333,005  |    480,251  | 1,813,256  |
+  | 1803  |   1,115,702  |    638,104  | 1,753,806  |
+  | 1804  |     904,932  |    607,299  | 1,512,231  |
+  | 1805  |     953,250  |    691,883  | 1,645,138  |
+  | 1806  |     904,367  |    612,904  | 1,517,271  |
+  | 1807  | Records lost |             |            |
+  | 1808  | Records lost |             |            |
+  | 1809  |     938,675  |    759,287  | 1,697,692  |
+  | 1810  |     896,001  |  1,176,243  | 2,072,244  |
+  | 1811  |              |             |            |
+  | 1812  |       Records destroyed by fire.        |
+  | 1813  |              |             |            |
+  | 1814  |   1,290,248  |    599,287  | 1,889,535  |
+  | 1815  |   1,372,108  |    746,985  | 2,119,093  |
+  | 1816  |   1,415,723  |    379,465  | 1,795,188  |
+  | 1817  |   1,625,121  |    445,011  | 2,070,132  |
+  | 1818  |   1,886,394  |    762,457  | 2,648,851  |
+  | 1819  |   1,809,128  |    542,684  | 2,351,812  |
+  | 1820  |   1,668,060  |    447,611  | 2,115,671  |
+  | 1821  |   1,599,274  |    396,256  | 1,995,530  |
+  | 1822  |   1,664,186  |    469,151  | 2,133,337  |
+
+--PORTER'S _Progress of the Nation_, 407.
+
+It appears from this most instructive table that, under the
+protection system, from 1801 to 1823, the British shipping employed
+in conducting our commerce had gained so decisively on the foreign
+employed in the same commerce, that it had increased, from having
+been on an average of five years, at the commencement of the second,
+about two British tons to one foreign, to be, on the last five
+years, about _four_ British tons to one foreign: in other words,
+during these twenty-two years, the proportion of British to foreign
+shipping had _doubled_.
+
+Turn now to the contrast afforded by the comparative progress of
+British and foreign shipping from 1823, when the reciprocity system
+was introduced with certain states, to 1847, when it was made
+universal by the suspension of the Navigation Laws in March of that
+year:--
+
+  | Year. | Tons inward, | Tons inward, |   TOTAL.   |
+  |       |   British.   |   Foreign.   |            |
+  +-------+--------------+--------------+------------+
+  | 1823  |  1,740,859   |    582,996   |  2,323,855 |
+  | 1824  |  1,797,320   |    759,441   |  2,556,761 |
+  | 1825  |  2,144,598   |    958,132   |  3,102,730 |
+  | 1826  |  1,950,630   |    694,116   |  2,644,746 |
+  | 1827  |  2,086,898   |    751,864   |  2,839,762 |
+  | 1828  |  2,094,357   |    634,620   |  2,728,977 |
+  | 1829  |  2,184,525   |    710,303   |  2,894,828 |
+  | 1830  |  2,180,042   |    758,828   |  2,938,870 |
+  | 1831  |  2,367,322   |    874,605   |  3,241,927 |
+  | 1832  |  2,185,980   |    639,979   |  2,825,959 |
+  | 1833  |  2,183,814   |    762,085   |  2,945,899 |
+  | 1834  |  2,298,263   |    833,905   |  3,132,168 |
+  | 1835  |  2,442,734   |    866,990   |  3,309,724 |
+  | 1836  |  2,505,473   |    988,899   |  3,494,372 |
+  | 1837  |  2,617,166   |  1,005,940   |  3,623,106 |
+  | 1838  |  2,785,387   |  1,211,666   |  3,997,053 |
+  | 1839  |  3,101,650   |  1,331,365   |  4,433,015 |
+  | 1840  |  3,197,501   |  1,460,294   |  4,657,795 |
+  | 1841  |  3,361,211   |  1,291,165   |  4,652,376 |
+  | 1842  |  3,294,725   |  1,205,303   |  4,500,028 |
+  | 1843  |  3,545,346   |  1,301,950   |  4,847,296 |
+  | 1844  |  3,647,463   |  1,402,138   |  5,049,601 |
+  | 1845  |  4,310,639   |  1,735,079   |  6,045,718 |
+  | 1846  |  4,294,733   |  1,806,282   |  6,101,015 |
+  | 1847  |  4,942,094   |  2,253,939   |  7,196,033 |
+
+  --PORTER'S _Progress of the Nation_, 407, 2d edition;
+  and _Parliamentary Paper, 3d April 1848_.
+
+Thus it appears that under the reciprocity system with some
+countries since 1823, and free trade in shipping with all in 1847,
+the foreign shipping employed in carrying on the British trade had
+so rapidly grown upon the British, that, while at the commencement
+of the period the British stood to the foreign as 174 to 58, or _3
+to 1_ exactly, at the close they stood as 49 to 22, or _somewhat
+above 2 to 1 only_. And observe the vast start of foreign shipping
+as compared with British, since free trade was introduced by Sir R.
+Peel in 1846. For while the British tonnage was to the foreign in
+1845 as 43 to 17, or as 2-1/2 to 1; in the year 1847 it was as 49
+to 229, or 2-1/3 to 1 only. So rapid has been the growth of foreign
+shipping over British in eighteen months of general free trade.
+In ten years of such a system, it is easy to see that the foreign
+tonnage employed in carrying on our trade will be equal to the
+British; and then our national independence is gone for ever, for we
+have nursed up in our harbours a body of foreign seamen equal to our
+own.
+
+But we have not yet done with the parliamentary returns. From the
+return 3d April 1848, it appears that the total tonnage, British and
+foreign, employed in carrying on our trade was--
+
+  British Islands.   Foreign.      Total.
+  4,942,094         2,253,939    7,196,033 tons.
+
+Deduct British and foreign tons employed in the colonial trade,
+viz.--
+
+                          Tons Brit.   Tons For.
+                            inward.    inward.
+
+  Brit. N. Amer. colonies   953,466     3,274
+  West Indies               243,388
+  Channel islands           131,899     3,049
+  Gibraltar                  11,623
+  Malta                      33,554     3,789
+  Ionian islands             13,101
+  Africa                    203,812     6,983
+  Asia and Australia        379,529     2,774
+
+  Total to colonies       1,970,372    19,847
+
+Thus the British trade to our colonial settlements is about _a
+hundred times_ the foreign, and constitutes nearly a _third_
+of the whole tonnage employed in carrying on our commerce, and
+about two-fifths of the total British tonnage,--(1,970,372 out of
+4,942,094.)
+
+But it is important to discover what proportion the British tonnage
+employed in conducting our trade with all the world, _except our
+colonies_, bears to the foreign tonnage employed in the same work.
+That is easily found:--
+
+                                Tons Brit.                  Tons For.
+  1847. Total British Tonnage,  4,942,094  Total For. ton.  2,253,939
+        Deduct British
+          colonial tonnage,     1,970,372    Foreign do.       19,847
+  Remains in trade with all     ---------                   ---------
+   the world except colonies,   2,971,722                   2,233,092
+
+So that, setting aside our colonial trade, the British tonnage is to
+the tonnage with all the rest of the world as 29 to 22, or as 4 to
+3 only! Considering the rapid strides which, under the reciprocity
+system established only with a limited number of countries in 1823,
+the foreign shipping is making in encroachment upon the British,
+this fact affords room for the most serious reflections. It is
+clear, from the great advance of foreign over British shipping in
+the single year of temporary suspension of the Navigation Laws,
+under the pressure of famine in 1847--viz. from 1,735,679, to
+2,253,979; while the British in the same period advanced only from
+4,310,639, to 4,942,094,--that two or three years of free trade in
+shipping will bring the foreign vessels employed in conducting our
+trade, exclusive of those engaged in the colonial, to an _equality
+with the British_. The moment that period arrives, our maritime
+superiority, and with it our national independence, hang entirely on
+our colonial trade, which, and which alone, strikes the balance at
+present in our favour. And yet, the colonial trade is the precise
+thing which it is the object of the repeal of the Navigation Laws
+to throw open to foreign nations! In their anxiety to cheapen every
+thing, the Free-traders would gladly expose our shipping interest
+engaged in the colonial trade to the same competition, which has
+already proved so disastrous to that part of it which is engaged in
+the traffic with foreign nations.
+
+Observe how one false step in policy by nations, like one deviation
+from virtue in private life, leads by natural consequences to a
+repetition of errors and crimes, till irreparable ruin ensues.
+The agricultural interest at home was first attacked; and by the
+cry of cheap bread, and the weight of class legislation, its
+protection was taken away. The West India islands were the next
+victims; because, if the farmer in England raises his wheat with
+nothing but a nominal protection, it was plausible to say the West
+India planter must raise his sugar on the same terms. The ruinous
+competition to which this exposed the West India planters naturally
+produced in them a desire to be liberated from any burdens to which
+they were subjected for the benefit of the mother country; and in
+this demand the Canadians, exposed to the competition of American
+grain, for a similar reason concurred. Thus the cry for cheap
+freights, originating in free-trade principles in England, came to
+be responded to from the British colonies on the other side of the
+Atlantic; and the Navigation Laws began to be repudiated by the
+colonies--the very thing which formerly it was their most anxious
+desire to uphold. The firm though unseen bond of mutual interest,
+founded on protective principles, which has hitherto held together
+the vast and widely separated dominions of the British empire, is
+dissolved. Being deprived of the benefit of protection, they very
+naturally wished to be relieved of its burdens. Such is the maze
+of error and danger into which we have been led by the sophistry
+of free trade; and such the way in which the greatest and best
+consolidated empires are first loosened, and then destroyed, by the
+delusions of those entrusted with their guidance.
+
+The manner in which foreign shipping has encroached upon British,
+since the reciprocity system began in 1823, is clearly proved by the
+centesimal proportions of each, published by Mr Porter, from 1820 to
+1844, both inclusive.
+
+It will be seen from the following table, that, since 1820, the
+centesimal proportion of British shipping employed in conducting our
+trade has _declined_ from 78 to 72, while that of foreign nations
+has _increased_ from 21 to 27. But this proportion, such as it is,
+is solely upheld by our colonial trade, which, as already shown,
+employs nearly 2,000,000 tons of our shipping. But for it, the
+encroachment of foreign on British shipping would appear in such
+alarming colours as to strike the most inconsiderate. It is the
+rapid growth of our colonial trade under the protective system which
+has alone concealed the ravages effected on it by free trade under
+the reciprocity.
+
+Centesimal Proportions of the British and Foreign Tonnage employed
+in the Import Trade of the United Kingdom from 1820 to 1844.
+
+  | Year.  |Brit. inward.|For. inward.|Year.|Brit. inward.|For. inward.|
+  +--------+-------------+------------+-----+-------------+------------+
+  | 1820   |   78·84     |    21·16   | 1834|    73·37    |    26·63   |
+  | 1821   |   80·14     |    19·86   | 1835|    73·85    |    26·15   |
+  | 1822   |   78·00     |    22·00   | 1836|    71·41    |    28·59   |
+  | 1823[10]   74·91     |    25·09   | 1837|    72·23    |    27·77   |
+  | 1824   |   70·29     |    29·71   | 1838|    69·68    |    30·32   |
+  | 1825   |   69·12     |    30·88   | 1839|    69·96    |    30·04   |
+  | 1826   |   73·75     |    26·25   | 1840|    68·64    |    31·36   |
+  | 1827   |   73·51     |    26·49   | 1841|    72·24    |    27·76   |
+  | 1828   |   76·74     |    23·26   | 1842|    73·21    |    26·79   |
+  | 1829   |   75·46     |    25·54   | 1843|    73·14    |    26·86   |
+  | 1830   |   74·18     |    25·82   | 1844|    72·23    |    27·77   |
+  | 1831   |   73·02     |    26·98   | 1845|     ...     |     ...    |
+  | 1832   |   77·35     |    22·65   | 1846|     ...     |     ...    |
+  | 1833   |   74·13     |    25·87   | 1847|     ...     |     ...    |
+
+  --PORTER'S _Progress of the Nation_, 416, 2d edition.
+
+    [10] Reciprocity System introduced.
+
+Mr Porter himself tells us that the centesimal proportion of our
+trade with the European powers has _declined_ (p. 410) from 65 to
+52·38, while that of our colonies has increased thus,--
+
+  |          |     1802.   |     1814.   |     1835.     |     1844.     |
+  |          | Tons. |Cent.| Tons. |Cent.|  Tons.  |Cent.|  Tons.  |Cent.|
+  |          |       |prop.|       |prop.|         |prop.|         |prop.|
+  |          +-------+-----+-------+-----+---------+-----+---------+-----+
+  |America   |336,344|18·54|343,658|19·32|  886,524|26·21|  984,850|19·50|
+  |Africa    |  7,270| 0·40| 13,514| 0·76|   40,131| 1·21|  157,364| 3·12|
+  |India, &c.| 67,627| 3·72| 74,117| 4·16|  161,473| 4·88|  264,978| 5·25|
+  |Australia |  ...  | ... |    488|  ·02|   16,019| 0·48|   36,454| 0·74|
+  |          +-------+-----+-------+-----+---------+-----+---------+-----+
+  |          |411,241|19·66|431,727|24·26|1,104,147|32·78|1,443,646|28·61|
+
+Such has been the working of the reciprocity system, as compared
+with the protective and colonial--in other words, free trade in
+shipping with some particular nations--in twenty years. And it is
+from this experience of the effects of the partial adoption of these
+principles that the Free-traders now propose to make it universal!
+
+America is the country to which, in comparison with Great Britain,
+the Free-traders constantly refer for a demonstration of the
+justice and beneficial operation of their principles. We accept the
+instance, and proceed to inquire into the comparative value of the
+American protected trade with our own colonies, and the American
+free trade with the United States, both at this time and in the
+respective progress of each for the last twenty-five years.
+
+The foreign and British tonnage with the United States, Canada, and
+the West Indies, in the year 1847, stood thus, viz.:--
+
+  |                                |British tons.|Foreign tons.|  Total. |
+  |                                +-------------+-------------+---------+
+  |British North American Colonies |   953,466   |     3,724   |  954,190|
+  |British West Indies             |   243,388   |      ...    |  243,388|
+  |                                +-------------+-------------+---------+
+  |    Total protected             | 1,196,854   |      ...    |1,197,578|
+  |United States of America        |             |             |         |
+  |  (unprotected)                 |   437,095   |   651,189   |1,088,284|
+
+  --_Parliamentary Paper, 3d April 1848._
+
+So that, while our West India and North American colonies, under
+this Protective system, support 1,196,854 tons of British shipping
+against 3,724 of foreign, or 300 to 1 nearly; the American trade
+with the United States only maintains 437,095 of British against
+651,189 of foreign; in other words, about 2 to 3 nearly! But the
+Free-traders think it better to adopt the system which makes the
+foreign shipping to the British as 3 to 2, than uphold the one which
+has brought the foreign shipping to the British, in the colonial
+trade, as 1 to 300!
+
+Observe, too, the decisive proof which the same return affords of
+the vast superiority, in every point of view, of our colonial trade
+to our foreign, even in the hands of our best free-trade customers,
+the Americans. For while less than 3,000,000 of souls between the
+West India and North American colonies furnished employment to
+1,197,000 tons of British and foreign shipping, of which 1,193,000
+was British; twenty millions of Americans in the United States only
+furnished employment to 1,088,284 tons of shipping, in all of which
+no more than 437,095 were British! And this is the pet instance
+of the Free-traders--their favourite _cheval de bataille_--to
+demonstrate the great superiority of free and foreign over protected
+and colonial trade!
+
+Again, if we take the comparative progress of British and American
+tonnage in conducting the trade of the United States, since the
+reciprocity system was begun in 1823, the same conclusion is forced
+upon the mind. Not only is the American shipping, throughout the
+whole period, superior to the British in the proportion generally of
+3 to 1, but this superiority in their favour remains undiminished in
+any material degree. We take the following returns from Mr Porter:--
+
+  Year.    British        American
+        tons inwards.   tons inwards.
+  1823      63,606         165,699
+  1826      47,711         151,765
+  1829      64,343         162,367
+  1832      95,203         167,359
+  1835      86,383         226,483
+  1838      83,203         357,467
+  1841     121,777         294,170
+  1844     206,183         338,737
+  1845     224,089         444,609
+  1846     205,123         435,399
+
+It is easy to see how it has happened that, in competition with the
+shipowners of every country, the British shipowners have suffered
+so much under the partial operation of the free-trade principles
+which the reciprocity system has afforded. It is the inevitable fate
+of the old and the rich state, in shipbuilding and agriculture, to
+be undersold by the young and the poor one. The reason is, that
+the old state, by the very magnitude of its wealth, the amount of
+its transactions, the number of its inhabitants, the multitude
+of its fabrics, is obliged to pay much higher for labour and
+materials of all sorts than the young and the poor one. Machinery
+and the steam-engine compensate, and more than compensate, this
+superiority in regard to manufactured articles. England undersells
+Hindostan, where wages are a penny or twopence a day, by the work
+of steam-power looms working on cotton raised on the banks of the
+Ganges. But there is no steam-power loom in shipbuilding any more
+than in agriculture. Great things in nautical affairs, as in rural
+economy, can be effected only by the labour of man's hands and the
+sweat of his brow, in the last ages of civilisation, as in the
+first. It would appear to be a permanent law of nature, to which
+there is no exception in any age of the world, or any stage of
+human progress, that the chief branches of industry on which the
+subsistence and defence of nations rest--agriculture, and the naval
+and military arts--are pursued more cheaply, and with more success
+by young and rising than old and opulent states. History is full of
+examples in which the manufactures of rich and ancient nations have
+obtained an undisputed supremacy over the fabrics of poor and rising
+ones; but it presents still more examples of the encroachments
+made on the industry and power of old nations by the agricultural
+produce, or naval and military efforts, of young ones. It is this
+law of nature which provides for the decay and ruin of nations when
+they are approaching the limit of their allotted space of existence,
+and should give place to others entering on the career which they
+have terminated. No efforts of human energy or virtue can prolong,
+for any considerable period, this allotted space. But it is the
+peculiar reproach of free trade, whether applied to agriculture or
+nautical affairs, that it tends to shorten, instead of prolonging,
+the life of the nation to which it is applied, by oppressing instead
+of relieving those vital branches of industry on which its existence
+depends, and thus both aggravates the natural evils incident to old
+age, and accelerates the approach of the political society to the
+tomb.
+
+When Mr Huskisson, in 1823, introduced the Reciprocity System, he
+did not dispute that it would injure our maritime interests; but he
+contended that it would open a new field for our manufactures,--that
+the time had now arrived when the Protective System could no longer
+be maintained, and it had become indispensable to sacrifice to a
+certain extent our maritime interests, in order to preserve the
+chief vents on Continental Europe for the industry of our artisans.
+The sacrifice was made, and the tables already given show with what
+fatal effect to our shipping interest. Has it extended the market
+for our manufactures, or diminished the jealousy with which they are
+regarded by the states of Continental Europe? Let the Zollverein
+league, at the head of which Prussia has placed herself, and which
+has imposed duties to an amount, in practical operation, of fifty
+per cent on our manufactures, give the answer. The exports which
+we send to the states of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Prussia, are
+still, after a quarter of a century's experience of the immense
+impulse it has given to their maritime interests, and corresponding
+depression to ours, a perfect trifle.[11] Our exports to America
+are less than they were fifteen years ago, despite the boasted
+conciliatory effect of twenty years' reciprocity.[12] What can be
+more injudicious, therefore, than to persist in, and even extend,
+a system which, without diminishing in the slightest degree the
+jealousy of Continental nations at our manufacturing superiority,
+has inflicted a serious and gratuitous wound on the naval resources
+by which alone that superiority can be maintained?
+
+  [11]
+
+    Exports from Great Britain--to
+        1844          Sweden           £108,475
+                      Norway            152,824
+                      Denmark           286,679
+                      Prussia           505,384
+
+    PORTER'S _Progress of the Nation_, p. 366, 2d edition.
+
+
+  [12]
+
+    Exports to United States of America:--
+
+    1836                      £12,425,605
+    1844                        7,938,079
+
+    PORTER, _ibid._
+
+
+We have recently made a very great stride in free-trade principles,
+by the sacrifice of our agricultural protection, and the throwing
+open the English markets to cultivators of all nations. In the
+three last months of 1846 and even of 1847, in consequence of the
+import duties being removed, above £30,000,000 sterling was sent
+out of the country to purchase foreign grain; and the moderate
+duty of eight shillings a quarter has since been reimposed on
+wheat,--yet it terminates in February next, and corn from all
+quarters will then be admitted for the nominal duty of one shilling
+a quarter. We have abandoned the protection of our colonies to
+conciliate the slave-growing states, and augment the market for
+Manchester goods in Cuba and Brazil. With what disastrous effects
+these changes have been attended, upon the best interests of the
+empire, need be told to none who are familiar with the total ruin
+which has in consequence overtaken our West India colonies, and the
+unprecedented distress which prevails in all the great seats of
+our manufacturing industry. The loss of half the realised wealth
+of Liverpool, Manchester, and Glasgow, and the creation of nearly
+a hundred thousand persons, including dependants, in a state of
+pauperism, in each of those once rich and prosperous cities, is the
+price which, in a year and a half, we have paid for the adoption by
+Sir R. Peel of Mr Cobden's principles of free trade, and Mr Jones
+Loyd's principles of a fettered currency. Have we, in consequence,
+reaped any countervailing advantage, or does the increase of our
+export and import trade show any benefit derived to the nation,
+to compensate such dreadful wounds inflicted on its internal
+prosperity, in the attempt to disarm the jealousy of foreign
+manufacturers? So far from it, our exports and imports have steadily
+_declined_ since free-trade principles were introduced. All the main
+sources of our strength have diminished since Sir R. Peel abandoned
+protection in July 1846.[13] In adopting these principles, we have
+gratuitously inflicted a grievous wound on our own people, without
+having obtained for them the shadow even of a benefit to compensate
+the evil.
+
+  [13]
+
+    |      |    EXPORTS.       |                |             |
+    |      |British Produce and|    IMPORTS.    |  REVENUE.   |
+    |      |  Manufactures.    |                |             |
+    |      | Declared Value.   |                |             |
+    +------+                   |                |             |
+    | 1845 |    £53,227,451    |  £85,281,958   | £52,009,324 |
+    | 1846 |     51,227,060    |   75,953,579   |  54,473,762 |
+    | 1847 |     50,897,790    |Not yet made up,|  52,082,757 |
+
+    --_Porter's Parl. Tables_; and _Parl. Paper, 3d April 1848_.
+
+
+Such have been the effects of free-trade principles on the
+comparative prosperity of British and foreign shipping, on the
+showing of the Free-traders themselves, and according to the
+figures which their great statistician, Mr Porter, has prepared
+and published at the Board of Trade. We were unwilling to mix up a
+great national question, such as the repeal of the Navigation Laws,
+with any subordinate examination as to the accuracy or inaccuracy
+of the view of our maritime affairs which these figures exhibit.
+Such is the strength of the case, that it will admit of almost any
+concession; and the opponents of their repeal have no occasion to
+go farther than to the statistics of their adversaries for the
+most decisive refutation of their principles. But there are two
+observations on the tables published by the Board of Trade, so
+important that they cannot be passed over in silence. The first is,
+that in 1834, when Mr Poulett Thomson was president of the Board of
+Trade, a regulation was made by the Board as to the measurement of
+vessels, which had the effect of adding _a fifth_ to the apparent
+tonnage of all British vessels, subsequent to that date. This
+change was clearly proved by the witnesses examined before the
+Commons' committee; but though Mr Porter, in his last edition of
+the _Progress of the Nation_, mentions the change, (p. 368,) he
+makes no allusion to it in comparing the amount of British and
+foreign tonnage since 1834. Of course a fifth must be deducted from
+British tonnage, as compared with foreign, since that time; and what
+overwhelming force does this give to the facts, already strong,
+in regard to the effect of the reciprocity system on our maritime
+interests!
+
+The second is, that the tonnage with countries near Great Britain,
+such as France, Belgium, and Holland, _includes steam vessels_
+carrying passengers, and their repeated voyages. In this way a boat,
+measuring 148 tons, and carrying passengers chiefly, comes to figure
+in the returns for 24,000 tons! It is evident that this important
+circumstance deprives the returns of such near states of all value
+in the estimate of the comparative amount of tonnage engaged in
+the trade with different countries. That with France will appear
+greatest in spring 1848, in consequence of the number of large
+vessels then employed in bringing back English residents expelled
+by, or terrified at, the Revolution--though that circumstance was
+putting a stop to nearly all the commercial intercourse between
+the two countries. As steam navigation has so immensely increased
+since 1834, when the changes in the measurement was introduced--and
+Great Britain, from its store of coal and iron, enjoys more of that
+traffic than all Europe put together--this is another circumstance
+which militates against the returns as exhibiting a fair view of our
+trade, compared with that of foreign nations, especially with near
+countries, and fully justifies Mr Porter's admission, when examined
+before the Lords' committee, that "considerable fallacy is to be
+found in the returns." Unfortunately for the Free-traders, however,
+who had the preparation of them in their hands, these fallacies all
+point one way--viz. to augment the apparent advantages of free trade
+in shipping.
+
+Such as free-trade principles are, they are evidently not likely to
+remain, if these islands are excepted, long in the ascendant either
+in the Old or the New World. The American tariff shows us how little
+we have to expect from Transatlantic favour to our manufactures:
+the savage expulsion of English labourers from France, how far the
+principles of "Liberty, Equality, and _Fraternity_," are likely
+to be acted upon by our enthusiastic and democratic neighbours
+on the Continent of Europe. It is clear from the communist and
+socialist principles now in the ascendant, both at Paris, Berlin,
+and Vienna, that the interests of _labour_ will above all things
+be considered by their governments in future times, and that the
+most rigorous measures, in the form of fiscal regulations, if not
+_absolute prohibition_, may shortly be expected in France, Italy,
+and Germany, against manufactures of any sort which interfere, or
+seem to interfere, with the interests of the dominant multitude of
+operatives. Why does our government adhere so strongly, in the face
+of the clearest evidence of their ruinous tendency, to the present
+system of free trade and a fettered currency? Because it works well
+for the great capitalists, who desire to have money dear, and the
+great manufacturers, who wish to have labour cheap, and because
+a majority of the House of Commons has been placed by the Reform
+Bill under their influence. Give the operatives the majority,
+and the opposite interest will instantly prevail. A successful
+Chartist revolt would at once send the whole free trade and fettered
+currency measures by the board in three months. In truth, it is
+the disasters they have produced which has revived Chartism, and
+rendered it so menacing in the land. We should like to see how
+long a legislature, elected by universal suffrage, would allow
+Spitalfields and Macclesfield to be pauperised by Lyons silks, and
+Manchester invaded by Rouen cottons, and the shipwrights of Hull and
+Sunderland to be ruined by Baltic shipbuilders. As the operative
+classes have obtained the ascendency in the principal Continental
+states, a similar jealousy of foreign interference with industry may
+with certainty be looked for in Continental Europe. Can any thing
+be more insane, therefore, than to persist in a policy fraught, as
+every thing around us demonstrates, with such ruinous social injury
+to ourselves, and which the progress of political change on the
+Continent renders incapable of producing the ultimate benefits,
+in exchange for those evils which their authors hold out as the
+inducing causes of the measures which have produced them?
+
+While the political changes which have recently occurred on the
+Continent of Europe have rendered any reciprocity of advantages
+utterly hopeless from the most violent adoption of free-trade
+principles, they have augmented in a proportional degree the
+dangers to this country of foreign aggression, and the risk to
+be apprehended from any diminution of our naval resources. The
+days have gone by when the dream of a free-trade millenium, in
+which a reciprocity of advantages is to extinguish all feelings
+of hostility, and war is to be looked back to as a relic of the
+pre-Adamite world, can with safety be indulged. It is rather too
+late to think of the termination of the angry passions of men, when
+Europe, in its length and breadth, is devastated alike by civil
+dissension and foreign warfare; when barricades have so recently
+been erected in all its chief capitals; when bloodshed is hourly
+expected in Paris and Berlin; when the Emperor of Austria has fled
+to Innspruck; when every station in London was, only a few days
+ago, occupied by armed battalions; and when a furious war, rousing
+the passions of whole races of men, is raging on the Mincio and the
+Elbe. Threatened by a raging fire in all the countries by which
+we are surrounded, uncertain whether we are not slumbering on the
+embers of a conflagration in our own, is this the time to relax
+in our warlike preparations, and, by crippling the nursery of our
+seamen, expose ourselves, without the means of resistance, to the
+assaults of hostile nations, envious of our fame, jealous of our
+manufactures, covetous of our wealth, desirous of our ruin?
+
+While Western Europe is torn by revolutionary passions, and the
+seeds of a dreadful, because a popular and general war, are rapidly
+springing to maturity from the Seine to the Vistula, Russia is
+silently but unceasingly gathering up its giant strength, and
+the Czar has already 300,000 men, and 800 pieces of cannon,
+ready to take the field against the revolutionary enthusiasts of
+France and Germany. Sooner or later the conflict must arrive. It
+is not unlikely that either a second Napoleon will lead another
+crusade of the western nations across the Niemen, or a second
+Alexander will conduct the forces of the desert to the banks of the
+Seine. Whichever proves victorious, England has equal cause for
+apprehension. If the balance of power is subverted on Continental
+Europe, how is the independence of this country to be maintained?
+How are our manufactures or revenue to be supported, if one
+prevailing power has subjugated all the other states of Europe
+to its sway? It is hard to say whether, in such circumstances,
+we should have most to dread from French fraternity or Russian
+hostility. But how is the balance of power to be preserved in
+Europe amidst the wreck of its principal states? when Prussia is
+revolutionised, and has passed over to the other side; when Austria
+is shattered and broken in pieces, and Italy has fallen under the
+dominion of a faction, distinguished beyond any thing else by its
+relentless hatred of the aristocracy, and jealousy of the fabrics
+of England? What has Great Britain to rely on in such a crisis but
+the energy of its seamen and the might of its navy, which might at
+least enable it to preserve its connexion with its own colonies,
+and maintain, as during the Continental blockade, its commerce
+with Transatlantic nations? And yet this is the moment which our
+rulers have selected for destroying the Navigation Laws, so long
+the bulwark of our mercantile marine, and permitting all the world
+to make those inroads on our shipping, which have already been
+partially effected by the nations with whom we have concluded
+reciprocity treaties!
+
+The defence of Great Britain must always mainly rest on our navy,
+and our navy is almost entirely dependent on the maintenance of
+our colonies. It is in the trade with the colonies that we can
+alone look for the means of resisting the general coalition of the
+European powers, which is certain, sooner or later, to arise against
+our maritime superiority, and the advent of which the spread of
+democratic principles, and the sway of operative jealousy on the
+Continent, is so evidently calculated to accelerate. But how are our
+colonies to be preserved, even for a few years, if free-trade severs
+the strong bond of interest which has hitherto attached them to the
+mother country, and the repeal of the Navigation Laws accustoms them
+to look to foreigners for the means of conducting their mercantile
+transactions? Charged with the defence of a colonial empire which
+encircles the earth, and has brought such countless treasures and
+boundless strength to the parent state, Great Britain at land is
+only a fourth-rate power, at least for Continental strife. At
+Waterloo, even, she could only array forty-five thousand men to
+contend with the conqueror of Europe for her existence. It is in
+our ships we must look for the means of maintaining our commerce,
+and asserting our independence against manufacturing jealousy,
+national rivalry, and foreign aggression. Is our navy, then, to
+be surrendered to the ceaseless encroachments of foreigners, in
+order to effect a saving of a few millions a-year on freights, reft
+from our own people, and sapping the foundations of our national
+independence?
+
+How can human wisdom or foresight, the energy of the Anglo-Saxons,
+or the courage of the Normans, maintain, for any length of time,
+our independence in the perilous position into which free-trade
+policy has, during the short period it has been in operation,
+brought us? The repeal of the Corn Laws has already brought an
+importation of eight or ten millions of foreign quarters annually
+upon our people--a full sixth of the national subsistence, and
+which will soon become indispensable to their existence. A simple
+non-intercourse act will alone enable Russia or America, without
+firing a shot, to compel us to lower the flag of Blake and Nelson.
+Stern famine will "guard the solitary coast," and famished
+multitudes demand national submission as the price of life. The
+repeal of the Navigation Laws will ere long bring the foreign seamen
+engaged in carrying on our trade to a superiority over our own,
+as has already taken place in so woful a manner with the Baltic
+powers. Hostile fleets will moor their ships of the line across our
+harbours, and throw back our starving multitudes on their own island
+for food, and their own market for employment. What will then avail
+our manufacturers and our fabrics,--the forges of Birmingham, the
+power-looms of Manchester, the iron-works of Lanarkshire,--if the
+enemies' squadrons blockade the Thames, the Mersey, and the Clyde,
+and famished millions are deprived alike of food and employment,
+by the suicidal policy of preceding rulers? Our present strength
+will then be the measure of our weakness; our vast population, as
+in a beleaguered town, the useless multitude which must be fed, and
+cannot fight,--our wealth, the glittering prize which will attract
+the rapacity of the spoiler. With indignant feelings, but caustic
+truth, our people will then curse the infatuated policy which
+abandoned the national defences, and handed them over, bound hand
+and foot, to the enemy, only the more the object of rapacity because
+such boundless wealth had accumulated in a few hands amongst them.
+Then will be seen, that with our own hands, as into the ancient
+city, we have admitted the enemies' bands; we have drawn the horse
+pregnant with armed men through our ramparts, and our weeping and
+dispersed descendants will exclaim with the Trojans of old--
+
+        "Fuimus Troës, fuit Ilium, et ingens
+    Gloria Teucrorum."
+
+
+_Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh._
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+Irregularities and inconsistencies in the ext 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.
+
+Page 11: There is a closing parenthesis missing in the following--(the
+blank left for the number was filled up with the word "three" in
+committee of the House of Commons. Nothing said about the issue in
+tail, as before ...
+
+Page 22: The transcriber has inserted "the" ... rope up to the spot
+where he ...
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume
+64, No. 393, July 1848, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, JULY 1848 ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64,
+No. 393, July 1848, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: December 28, 2013 [EBook #44533]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, JULY 1848 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brendan OConnor, Jonathan Ingram, Julia Neufeld
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Library of Early
+Journals.)
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
+
+Text enclosed by equal marks is translieterated Greek (+Polla ta
+deina+).
+
+The [)a] in "wach-unkam[)a]net" refers to an "a" with breve.
+
+Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+  BLACKWOOD'S
+
+  Edinburgh
+
+  MAGAZINE.
+
+  VOL. LXIV.
+
+  JULY-DECEMBER, 1848.
+
+  [Illustration: Buchanan]
+
+  WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH;
+
+  AND
+
+  37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
+
+  1848.
+
+  BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
+
+
+
+
+  BLACKWOOD'S
+
+  EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+  No. CCCXCIII.      JULY, 1848.       VOL. LXIV.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  THE LAWS OF LAND.                                1
+
+  LIFE IN THE "FAR WEST." PART II.                17
+
+  AMERICAN THOUGHTS ON EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS.      31
+
+  THE CAXTONS. Part IV.                           40
+
+  REPUBLICAN FRANCE.--JUNE 1848.                  51
+
+  COLONISATION.                                   66
+
+  SIBERIA.                                        76
+
+  THE SCOTTISH DEER FORESTS.                      92
+
+  THE BURIED FLOWER.                             108
+
+  HUZZA FOR THE RULE OF THE WHIGS.               112
+
+  THE NAVIGATION LAWS.                           114
+
+  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. CCCXCIII.      JULY, 1848.      VOL. LXIV.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAWS OF LAND.
+
+_A Treatise on the Succession to Property vacant by Death._ By J. R.
+M'CULLOCH, Esq. London: Longmans, 1848.
+
+
+Mr M'Culloch's book introduces us to a question much debated in this
+age of class jealousy. As soon as we open it, we are straightway
+environed with "a barbarous noise of owls and cuckoos, asses,
+apes, and dogs," amid whose jargon of phrases rises loudest and
+most frequent the cry of "commercial principles." It is a great
+grievance, it seems, that land should not be disposed of according
+to "commercial principles;" that hill and holt, and moor and dale,
+should not pass from seller to buyer with the same readiness as
+candles and calicoes. Truly we have enough, and more than enough, of
+these same commercial principles in all walks of thought. Even the
+pulpit is not free from them. Politics are positively smothered with
+them. Ethical science, with the shallowisms of Paley and Bentham
+round her neck, struggles feebly with them. The book-keeper is
+abroad every where, with an indestructible faith in double entry.
+The Spirit of the Age wears a pen behind his ear, and sits on a high
+stool with three legs. That the prevailing commercial principles
+should have been so long excluded from the absolute possession of
+our laws of land, and that those laws should have preserved to a
+time like this so much of their feudal character, is a notable proof
+of the adaptation of the laws to the general requirements of the
+community, and of the steadiness of that social system which is so
+essentially linked to the maintenance of these laws.
+
+The cry of complaint to which we have above alluded, is inspired by
+many diverse motives. As Mr Cochrane's ragged followers flocked to
+Trafalgar Square to denounce the income-tax, so many a man takes up
+the shout against the law of primogeniture and entail, as tying up
+lands and restricting their sale, who never had the wherewithal to
+purchase a single acre if all broad England was in the market. On
+the other hand, the purse-proud citizen, sore that ready money is
+not yet quite at the top of the tree, and that he does not receive
+the same consideration at St James's as in Change Alley, delights to
+have some grievance whereon he can vent his spleen; and really, in
+some stolid instances, persuades himself that he is kept out of the
+land which his gold could buy, through the agency of aristocratical
+laws, as if George Robins had been a mythical personage, or the
+advertisements of Farebrother, Clark, and Lye were a mockery and
+delusion.
+
+But the largest class of assailants are those who come to the
+debate fortified with certain specious economical arguments,
+generally derived from a one-sided view of some particular effect
+of these restrictive laws. To the demolition of these objectors
+Mr M'Culloch's work is more immediately addressed; and very
+effectually, in our opinion, does it accomplish its end. He has
+not, perhaps, treated the subject so widely as it might have been
+treated: he has not entered into the indirect social influences that
+might be traced to our system of the laws relating to land; but the
+economical part of the question he has grasped most completely, and
+supported by most able and practical reasoning.
+
+We must, we suppose, look for the text of the work, not where the
+text is usually found, but at the end. The following sentence,
+which is almost the concluding one, may be taken as the leading
+proposition of the work:--
+
+     "A powerful and widely-ramified aristocracy like that of
+     England, not resting for support on any oppressive laws, and
+     enjoying no privileges but which are for the public advantage,
+     is necessary to give stability and security to the government,
+     and freedom to the people. And our laws in regard to succession
+     being well fitted to maintain such an aristocracy, and, at the
+     same time, to inspire every other class with the full spirit of
+     industry and enterprise, to change them would not be foolish
+     merely, but criminal,--a _l�se majest�_ against the public
+     interests."--P. 172.
+
+It must not, however, be supposed from this remark, that any portion
+of the work is appropriated to a set defence of government by
+means of an aristocracy. By an aristocracy we mean the deposition
+of political power in the hands of men of leisure and education,
+as opposed to the tendency of the Reform Bill, to transfer
+the governing functions to the "practical" men of the trading
+and moneyed interests, and the analogous claims of Chartism,
+founded on Jack Cade's complaint, that the "king's council are
+no good workmen." In England, we are pretty sure to have an
+aristocracy--that is, the influences which affect government and
+legislation will emanate principally from that class which is
+socially at the head of the nation; and the question is, whether
+we are to have a mere moneyed aristocracy, or one qualified by
+those mixed and undefinable conditions which, more than any thing
+else, act to keep down the growing and eager ascendency of wealth
+_per se_. Among the safeguards of such an aristocracy as we have
+described, not the least powerful is to be found in the laws
+discussed in the work before us. Mr M'Culloch, as we have said,
+assumes the importance to the country of preserving the present
+characteristics of British aristocracy; and he therefore proceeds
+at once to show how the laws on which he treats operate for this
+preservation, and to rebut the objections advanced against them on
+the score of their relations to other classes of the community.
+
+One of the most frequent of these objections is, that the laws
+in question tend to diminish the productiveness of the land, and
+thereby inflict a serious injury on the community at large; that
+they prevent, in many instances, the landlord from granting leases
+to his tenant beyond the term of his own life; that the tenant, in
+consequence, is not willing to incur the outlay of drainage and
+other expensive improvements, because he is not secured by a lease;
+while the landlord, on the other hand, will not enter into these
+expenses, because he does not feel the same interest in his limited
+estate which he would in the unconditional fee-simple.
+
+Note first of all the logic of this argument. The tenant, it seems,
+will not spend his money in draining without a lease. As, however,
+a lease would suffice to induce him so to do, we might naturally
+suppose that the landlord's estate for life, or in tail, would be at
+least an equal inducement. These reasoners, however, aver, that the
+landlord is only to be tempted by the unrestricted fee. According to
+this progressive scale, it might be fairly, argued, that the tenant,
+on becoming lessee for years, would still require the landlord's
+life-interest; and the latter, when seised of the fee, would decline
+the requisite expense, except on a guarantee of immortality, and
+justify himself by Horace's authority,--
+
+                        "Tanquam
+    Sit proprium quidquam puncto quod mobilis hor�
+    Permutet dominos, et cedat in altera jura."
+
+But the general scope of an argument may be just, though clumsily
+stated and fallaciously supported. We are, however, at no loss for
+experiments on the largest scale whereby to test the theory here
+noticed. We have English agriculture, subjected to a limited law of
+entail, contrasted on the one hand with Scottish agriculture, under
+a law of perpetual entail, and on the other with that of France and
+its compulsory gavelkind. Mr M'Culloch has taken an elaborate view
+of the question in its relation to the tillage of the soil in these
+three countries respectively, more especially in France. We find,
+from the result of his investigation, that,--
+
+     "The average produce per acre of the crops of wheat in England
+     and Wales in good years, has been carefully estimated at
+     thirty-two bushels an acre, and it is certainly not under thirty
+     bushels. But in France the produce of wheat, even in the richest
+     and best cultivated departments, is little more, according to
+     the official returns and the best private authorities, than
+     twenty bushels an acre; and at an average of the entire kingdom,
+     it hardly amounts in a good year to fourteen bushels. This
+     result is completely decisive. It shows that one acre of land
+     in England yields, from its being better farmed, considerably
+     more wheat than two acres in France: and if we took barley or
+     oats, turnips, beef, or wool for a standard, the difference in
+     our favour would be seen to be still greater.... If labour were
+     taken for a standard instead of land, the result would be still
+     more in our favour. One man and one horse in England produce
+     more corn and other agricultural produce than three men and
+     three horses in France. Labour in the latter is misapplied and
+     wasted."--P. 117.
+
+Again:--
+
+     "While two husbandmen in France furnish a surplus of food above
+     their own consumption adequate for _one_ individual, the same
+     number of English husbandmen furnish a surplus for no fewer than
+     _four_ individuals; showing, that, as measured by its capacity
+     of providing for the other classes of the population, English is
+     to French agriculture as four to one."--P. 121.
+
+So much for the comparison of French and English agriculture. Let us
+now turn to Scotland:--
+
+     "In an Appendix to the 'Sketches of the History of Man,'
+     published in 1774, Lord Kames says, 'The quantity of land that
+     is locked up in Scotland by entails has damped the growing
+     spirit of agriculture. There is not produced sufficiency of
+     corn at home for our consumption; and our condition will become
+     worse and worse by new entails, till agriculture and industry be
+     annihilated.' Now the extent of land under entail in Scotland
+     has been certainly more than doubled, perhaps more than trebled,
+     since this paragraph was written, and yet agriculture and
+     manufactures have made a more rapid progress in Scotland in the
+     interval, and especially during the last thirty years, when
+     entails were most prevalent, than in England or in any other
+     country whatever."--P. 71.
+
+Lord Kames, in this respect, seems to have had the same subtle
+ingenuity in prophesying counter to the event, as distinguishes Mr
+Cobden.
+
+The first part of Mr M'Culloch's volume contains a cursory
+historical view of the earliest regulations of succession and
+inheritance. Thus, at p. 16, he traces the right of primogeniture,
+or preference of the eldest son, to the Mosaic law. We are far from
+maintaining that the specific details of the code promulgated on
+Sinai are a model of law for all nations; on the contrary, they
+were no doubt intended to be such as a wise human law-giver would
+frame, and consequently more or less applicable according to the
+changes and differences of social organisation. But we do hold that
+these laws indicate to mankind principles which are to be observed
+in all times and by all nations. Thus, the septennial release of
+debts, the return of every man to his possession in the year of
+jubilee, the prohibition of interest upon loans except to an alien,
+even the poor man's portion in the field and vineyard, may or
+may not be regulations adapted to a particular existing state of
+society. But they enunciate a principle of mercy and forbearance
+towards the poor and unfortunate, of which, we fear, our political
+economists and commercial legislators are too apt to lose sight. In
+conformity with this view, when we hear the right of primogeniture
+assailed as contrary to the law of nature, (by the way, where is
+this much-talked-of law of nature to be found?) we may safely appeal
+to the express recognition by the Jewish law of "the right of the
+first-born as the beginning of his father's strength," to show
+that the custom of primogeniture is at all events not repugnant to
+instinctive justice or the common-sense of mankind. The old Saxon
+law of gavelkind might be better adapted to a superabundance of
+land and a thin population; the preference of the youngest son, by
+the custom of Borough-English, might well prevail among the far
+progenitors of the Saxon race on the steppes of Scythia,[1] when
+the elder brothers would be sent forth to roam over the boundless
+plain with their flocks and herds, the youngest remaining at home to
+be the prop of his father's old age. But in a settled and cultivated
+country, and among an advanced people, we maintain succession by
+primogeniture to be the most consonant, as a matter of theory, to
+the social feelings and requirements of man; and we think our author
+has fully established his position as to the beneficial character of
+its practical results.
+
+  [1] We suspect this custom may be traced in the Scythian legends of
+  Herodotus. See his 4th book, chapters v., vi., and x.
+
+In the course of his historical survey, Mr M'Culloch has of course
+touched on the principle of succession under the Roman law, but
+more lightly than we should have expected in reference to a system
+which has entered so largely into our Scottish law, and which is
+still accepted as a model framework of legal principles in most of
+the universities of Christendom. And the slight notice taken traces
+an analogy between the feudal and civil principles of succession,
+which we think is altogether incorrect. Our author, in speaking of
+the Roman law of succession, appears to confound in some measure
+the Roman term _h�res_ with the English word _heir_. The civilian
+definition of _h�res_ is _qui ex testamento succedit in universum
+jus testatoris_. In Scotland the word _heir_ has much the same
+import:--"The law deems it reasonable," says Erskine, (_Inst._ book
+iii. tit. 8, �. 2) "that every fiar shall have the power by deed,
+during his life, to declare who shall have the lands after his
+death: and the person so favoured is called the _heir_." Whereas the
+feudal notion of the word _heir_ preserved in the English law, is of
+one upon whom the estate is cast, after the death of his ancestor,
+by act of law and right of blood. In other words, _h�res_ is he who
+is appointed by the will of the deceased to succeed to his civil
+rights, and, in default of such appointment, the person indicated
+by a certain general law. But the _heir_ (in English law) is the
+next and worthiest of blood, appointed by the common-law to succeed
+to his ancestor; although this rule of succession may be set aside
+by the appointment or will of the ancestor, if possessed of the
+fee-simple. Bearing in mind this distinction, we shall perceive the
+cause of Mr M'Culloch's error when he says--
+
+     "The Furian, the Voconian, and the Falcidian laws were passed,
+     the first two under the republic, and the latter under Augustus,
+     to secure the interests of children by limiting the power of
+     fathers to make settlements to their prejudice." P. 6.
+
+Now, the Voconian law, so far from protecting the interests of
+children, frequently operated in the case of daughters to prejudice
+them;--of this we have a remarkable instance in the case of Annius
+Asellus, dwelt upon by Cicero, in the second action against
+Verres, _Orat._ i., c. 41--44. The law prevented all registered or
+assessed (_censi_) citizens of Rome from appointing a female as
+their _h�res_. Again, the Furian and Falcidian laws were passed to
+secure the person nominated as _h�res_ from being prejudiced by
+the excessive amount of legacies under the will. Hence, if a man
+died leaving only daughters, he was prohibited by the Voconian law
+from appointing any of them as his _h�res_; and the other two laws
+restrained him from appointing a nominal _h�res_, and leaving his
+property to his daughters by way of legacies (_legata_.)
+
+In truth, the English notion of heirship, as succession by right
+of blood, seems to be entirely due to the northern nations and the
+feudal system. Under both systems, however, it is observable how
+the progress of legislation and society has been to increase the
+privileges and diminish the duties of the constituted successor. For
+as, in tenure by chivalry, the heir was rather the person to whom,
+in consequence of proximity of blood, the lord might look for the
+performance of the military services, than the fortunate acquirer of
+the property, so the Roman _h�res_ was regarded more in the light
+of one on whom devolved the religious, civil, and private duties
+of the deceased; frequently so burdensome that the inheritance was
+altogether refused, until the heir was guarded by such laws as the
+Furian and Falcidian.
+
+While we are in the humour of finding fault, we may notice a
+passage in which we think Mr M'Culloch has not dealt fairly with the
+English law. It is as follows:--
+
+     "In one respect the law of intestacy appears to stand much in
+     need of revision. It is interpreted so as to give, in many
+     cases, more to the eldest son than the real estate and his
+     share of the personalty. Suppose, for example, that a person
+     dies intestate, leaving an estate worth (say) L.100,000, with
+     a mortgage made by him upon it for half its value, or �50,000,
+     and leaving also �50,000 of personal property, in this case the
+     real estate is obviously worth only �50,000; and consistently
+     with the principles previously laid down, the eldest son
+     should succeed to the estate burdened with its debt, and the
+     personal property be divided among the children generally. But
+     a different rule has been permitted to grow up. The personal
+     property of persons dying intestate is the first fund for their
+     debts, though secured upon their estates; and it is the surplus
+     only, if there be any, after these debts are paid, that is
+     divisible among the children, who, in the above case, would be
+     entitled to nothing. This appears to be in all respects a most
+     objectionable arrangement."--P. 41.
+
+We cannot see any anomaly here. "It is a rule in equity," says
+Cruise, (_Digest_, tit. xv. c. 4,) "that where a person dies,
+leaving a variety of funds, one of which must be charged with a
+debt, that the fund which received the benefit by the contracting
+the debt shall make satisfaction." This seems to us perfectly just
+and reasonable, according to the principles of the English law. In
+the case put by Mr M'Culloch, the personalty of �50,000 obviously
+owes its existence to the mortgage debt; and it is, therefore,
+fairly applied to the discharge of that debt. But, _cessante
+ratione, cessat etiam lex_; this only applies where the deceased was
+himself the mortgager. Where the lands came to him mortgaged, his
+personal estate will not be liable, even though he may have made a
+covenant to pay it. We may refer the legal reader to the judgment
+of Lord King, delivered, with the assistance of Lord Chief-Justice
+Raymond and the Master of the Rolls, in Evelyn _v._ Evelyn, 2 P.
+Wms. 659. Compare Cope _v._ Cope, 1 Salk. 449. Shafto _v._ Shafto, 2
+P. Wms. 664.
+
+Although the custom of primogeniture and the law of entail exercise
+a similar influence on our social state, yet, as they may be said
+in some measure to go by a different path towards the same end, Mr
+M'Culloch has treated them separately. With respect to the first, he
+begins by rebutting Adam Smith's sweeping denunciation:--"Nothing
+can be more contrary to the real interest of a numerous family, than
+a right which, in order to enrich one, beggars all the rest of the
+children." _Wealth of Nations_, p. 171.
+
+     "On the contrary," says Mr M'Culloch, "we are well convinced
+     that much of the industry and of the superior wealth and
+     civilisation of modern Europe, may be ascribed to the influence
+     of the custom of primogeniture in determining the succession
+     to estates; and that, were it abolished, or superseded by the
+     opposite custom of equally dividing landed property among all
+     the children, or even among all the sons, they would suffer
+     universally by the change, the youngest as well as the oldest;
+     while it would most seriously compromise the interests of every
+     other class."--P. 28.
+
+The truth is, that the right of primogeniture is rather to be
+regarded as having for its object the benefit of the community,
+than the interest of the particular family. If a man has �50,000
+a-year and five sons, it may appear, at first sight, decidedly
+more conducive to "the greatest possible happiness of the greatest
+possible number," that each of these five sons should have �10,000
+a-year, than that one should possess the whole, or bulk, of the
+paternal property, and the other four be left to buffet their way
+through the world. But it is for the interest of the nation that
+its aristocracy should be founded in old families, fortified and
+graced by historical associations; and these are only to be kept up
+by a devolution of their lands according to the feudal rule. But,
+as regards the interest of the particular family, it will appear
+on consideration that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, this
+also is most effectually promoted by the law of primogeniture. By
+means of this law, the main stock of the family is left in its full
+strength as a nucleus round which the younger branches are united,
+and from which their members derive alike a great portion of their
+status in society, and inducement to advance themselves in their
+respective pursuits; and, on the other hand, the professions of
+the country are exalted and dignified by the infusion into their
+ranks of men of birth and education, who are, at the same time,
+dependent on those professions for their advancement. Sir Matthew
+Hale, as quoted by Mr M'Culloch, forcibly describes the results
+of the opposite system. "This equal division of inheritance," he
+says, speaking of the old times of Saxon gavelkind, "did by degrees
+bring the inhabitants to a low kind of country living; and families
+were broken; and the younger sons which, had they not had these
+little parcels of land to apply themselves to, would have betaken
+themselves to trades, or to military, or civil, or ecclesiastical
+employments, neglecting those opportunities, wholly applied
+themselves to those small divisions of land; whereby they neglected
+the opportunities of greater advantage of enriching themselves
+and the kingdom." And if it should be urged that Sir Matthew Hale
+could do little more than form an _� priori_ judgment of the social
+condition of England in the days of the Confessor, it should be
+remembered that the picture here drawn is precisely applicable to
+the state of France at the present day, and may easily be traced to
+its similar system of partition. An important public result of the
+same system, as regards the landholders in the exercise of their
+functions as citizens, may also be observed in that country. The
+large body of landed proprietors, amounting to between four and five
+millions, so far from being the leaders of the people, are, perhaps,
+the most inert and uninfluential class of the whole community. They
+pay the bulk of the taxes, and grumble accordingly; but beyond a
+vague dread of aristocracy--not unnaturally founded, perhaps, on the
+traditions of the vexatious privileges swept away in 1791--they seem
+disposed calmly to acquiesce in all the proclamations, charters,
+and chimeras that maybe thrust upon them by busier handlers of the
+tools of government, and behold revolutions concocted in Paris,
+and bursting over their heads, apparently without the remotest
+conception that it any wise rests with them to control or guide the
+convulsion.
+
+     "It has sometimes been contended that the custom of
+     primogeniture is injurious, from its interesting the leading
+     families of the country in the support of expensive public
+     establishments, in which their younger branches are most
+     commonly placed."--P. 38.
+
+This objection also Mr M'Culloch brings to the test of experiment,
+and shows that this bias, if it really exist, is little perceptible,
+and that the aristocracy have shown much more zeal to discharge
+the functions of the ill-paid offices of the army and navy, than
+to get into their hands the lucrative situations connected with
+the administration of justice. It was certainly not the immediate
+interest of the aristocracy, for instance, to maintain the offices
+of the six clerks in Chancery, the profits on which were estimated
+for compensation at sums varying, we believe, from �2500 to �1000
+per annum.
+
+The law of entail is traceable to the same human instincts as the
+law of primogeniture. The clannish feelings of the northern nations,
+their notion of representation by blood, and the territorial
+character of their citizenship, all combined to produce an anxiety
+to perpetuate the old stocks in the homes of their fathers. Nor is
+this desire of posthumous control over the transmission of lands
+the product, as is sometimes alleged, of an artificial state of
+society. Man's possessory instinct essentially connects itself with
+the future--_Serit arbores qu� alteri prosint s�culo._ The justice
+of gratifying this wish by general laws of the community is not
+more impeachable than that of guarding the indefeasible possession
+of the owner during his lifetime. It remains to be seen how far the
+sanction of entails is consistent with the good of the nation in
+general.
+
+Every lawyer knows that the progress of legal decisions in England
+has been adverse to entails, and that although the statute De Donis
+continues on the statute-book, yet it was long ago rendered almost
+nugatory by the introduction of fines and recoveries. Hence the term
+entail is now popularly applied to denote the strict settlement of
+lands, under provisions which prevent them from passing from the
+heirs to whom they are limited; this having been, of old, the result
+of an entail properly so called, though it now requires a more
+complicated mode of settling, and can only endure (so as to render
+the lands inalienable) for a life or any number of lives in being,
+and twenty-one years afterwards. This more popular meaning of the
+word entail is that which Mr M'Culloch follows--his object being to
+treat of the influence of tying up lands from alienation.
+
+Measuring the practice of entails by the rule of utility, Mr
+M'Culloch selects two points as the principal topics of discussion.
+
+     "In the first place, it is alleged in favour of entails that
+     they stimulate exertion and economy; that they hold out to
+     industry and ambition the strongest and safest excitement in the
+     prospect of founding an imperishable name and a powerful family,
+     and of being remembered and venerated by endless generations
+     as their chief and benefactor. And, in the second place, it is
+     said that entails form the only solid bulwark of a respectable
+     aristocracy, and prevent generations from being ruined by the
+     folly or misfortunes of an individual."--P. 78.
+
+The first of these propositions is, no doubt, partially true; but
+the motive put forward has not, we think, as a matter of experience,
+the force that might, at first sight, be attributed to it. Perhaps
+the keenest accumulators of wealth have not been those who have
+fixed their capital in a landed estate. The man of business habits
+and judicious speculation is drawn to make his fortune in obedience
+to a passion which is partly developed, and at all events fostered,
+by the pursuit of his life. It cannot be said to arise altogether
+from a notion of benefiting posterity, of being the founder of a
+house--the man of whom future Fitztomkynses shall be ashamed--that
+John Tomkins, merchant, sets at nought all the expostulations of
+self-indulgence:
+
+    "Tun' mare transilias? tibi tort� cannabe fulto
+     Coena sit in transtro? Veientanumque rubellum
+     Exhalet vapid� l�sum pice fissilis obba?"
+
+Enormous fortunes were accumulated during the declining days
+of the Roman republic. But entails being then unknown, and the
+Roman nobility having no territorial position, these fortunes,
+usually acquired by oppression and extortion in the provinces, were
+squandered in largesses and corruption at home. There was no other
+way in which a Roman citizen of great wealth could establish the
+influence of his family. He could not, like, all English gentleman,
+connect his name with a landed estate, and extend his influence by
+those good offices and local duties which lie so immediately open
+to a man in that capacity. As an almost necessary consequence, he
+sought for power through the demoralisation and corruption of the
+holders of the suffrage--causes which contributed more than any
+other to the downfall of the republic. By lavishing his gold in this
+manner, he obtained, not only political eminence for himself, but
+also that power which led to proconsulates and propr�torships among
+his heirs, and thus gave them the opportunity of repairing, by fresh
+exactions, his diminished revenues.
+
+Hence we should rather view the law of entail as an inducement to a
+man to perpetuate his thousands in broad acres than to acquire his
+fortune in the first instance. And, in conformity with this view,
+it may be observed, that it is more generally the son or other
+successor than the architect of the fortune himself who converts the
+accumulated wealth into this permanent form.
+
+Mr M'Culloch's second point--the preservation of families by means
+of entails--is one of wider interest and more general importance. In
+a bustling mercantile community like ours, we cannot too jealously
+guard any institution which, directly or indirectly, tends to
+preserve distinctions due to something more than mere wealth. And
+there can be no doubt that the system of entails has saved many
+an ancient line from being thrust from its home of centuries to
+a strange spot, and this not only among the titled and wealthy,
+but among the yeomanry and "statesmen." In England, of course, a
+family may frequently perish through the possession of an estate in
+fee-simple passing into the hands of an unthrifty representative
+of the line, as the settlements require constant renewal. But in
+Scotland the system of perpetual entail exercises a much more potent
+influence in their behalf. Mr M'Culloch, though he rebuts many of
+the objections urged against the Scottish law, is nevertheless
+anxious to see it assimilated in a great measure to that of
+England. There is, however, an exception which he would make to
+the rule against perpetuity of entails. It is with regard to the
+peerage, in which matter we cordially agree with him. There were,
+in ancient times, instances of barons who were degraded from their
+dignity on account of their lack of sufficient revenue to support
+their hereditary title. The independence and the dignity of the
+House of Lords would be alike maintained by an enactment enabling,
+or even obliging, all peers to tie up by perpetual entail a certain
+portion of their estates to accompany the title. Such anomalies
+as that of an Earl of Buchan (Lord Erskine's father, see Lord
+Campbell's _Lives of the Chancellors_) living in the uppermost flat
+of a sixteen-story house, would thereby be avoided with considerable
+advantage to the national interests.
+
+Mr M'Culloch, therefore, who quotes Sir William Temple and Dr
+Johnson on the same side, would preserve the law of perpetual entail
+for the Scottish peerage, and extend it also to that of England.
+In other respects he is, as we have above stated, in favour of a
+considerable modification of the Scottish law of entail. He admits,
+however, the difficulty of dealing with existing entails.
+
+     "These have established a right of property not only in the
+     actual possessors and their families, but, speaking generally,
+     in a wide circle of collateral heirs; nor could the rights of
+     the unborn heirs be affected without annulling the clauses in a
+     great number of settlements, and also in marriage-contracts and
+     other deeds _inter vivos_. It is, therefore, hardly possible
+     materially to relax the fetters of entails with strict justice
+     to all parties, though it might perhaps be slowly and gradually
+     effected without inflicting any very serious hardship on
+     any individual. We incline to think that this might be most
+     easily brought about by saving the rights of living heirs
+     of entail, and of such heirs as may be born under existing
+     marriage-contracts. The interests of the possible heirs that
+     might be prejudiced by the adoption of some such rule as this,
+     are of so very unsubstantial a description that they might
+     safely be neglected." P. 78.
+
+At the time we write, a measure is pending before Parliament,
+entitled "A Bill for the amendment of the Law of Entail in
+Scotland," and endorsed with the names of the Lord-Advocate, Sir
+George Grey, and Mr Solicitor-General for Scotland. Whatever
+difficulties Mr M'Culloch feels with regard to relaxing the fetters
+of entail, it is obvious that the contrivers of this bill are in
+nowise hampered by them. They go to work in the most off-hand manner
+possible. A short and unobtrusive-looking bill is to drive clean
+through all the existing settlements and deeds of tailzie, with
+their complicated train of clauses irritant and resolutive, as if no
+mortal was concerned in the matter, and estates were the proper toys
+of law-makers.
+
+The fact of the quantity of alienable land diminishing in a
+commercial country, while trade and population are increasing, is no
+doubt a state of things which calls for a remedy, since there must
+at some period or another, be a failure of land adequate to meet the
+requirements of realised fortunes. If, in the judgment of reasonable
+and practical observers, the difficulty could be met by making all
+future entails subject to be barred by a process analogous to that
+existing in England, we should think there could be no hesitation
+in affirming it to be the most just and most expedient course to
+introduce such a change, and leave the existing settlements in their
+contemplated perpetuity. If, however, it can be clearly established
+that already too much land is locked up in the northern kingdom,
+and that the soil now free from entail is insufficient to satisfy
+the requirements of future buyers, then we should say that the
+utmost care and skill were required in framing enactments which
+should adapt themselves to the justice of particular cases, and
+should, as far as might be, save existing and vested interests in
+their delicate multiplicity and connexion. If ever such care and
+skill were required, it would be in a measure which interferes
+more extensively with vested rights--usually with good reason a
+sacred thing in the eye of the law--than any which appears in the
+statute-books of the three kingdoms. A statute to convert the Irish
+tenants into owners of the fee-simple of their several holdings,
+(a project which has been talked of,) would scarcely be a more
+startling invasion of the rights of property as they are usually
+recognised. We do not, however, intend to impeach the general
+provisions of the bill. If, as we before observed, so important a
+change was found to be necessary, it is right to make it; and it is
+no more than was effected in England by a more gradual process--the
+subtle fictions of the law-courts, which virtually got rid of the
+statute De Donis. But we can anticipate nothing but uncertainty
+and multiplied litigation, from the apparently crude and careless
+project now before us.
+
+An instance of the loose wording of this bill strikes the reader
+in the very first section. It proposes to enact "that where any
+estate in Scotland shall be entailed by a deed of tailzie, dated
+on or after the first day of March one thousand eight hundred and
+forty-eight, it shall be lawful for any heir of entail, born after
+the date of such tailzie, being of full age, and in possession of
+such entailed estate in virtue of such tailzie, _to acquire such
+estate in fee-simple_, by applying to the Court of Session, &c."
+Now, what is this estate which the heir of entail is to acquire in
+fee-simple? The estate-tail, for so it is by hypothesis. But to
+talk of acquiring an estate-tail in fee-simple is nothing better
+than downright nonsense. An estate-tail is, by the origin of the
+word, cut or carved (taill�) out of the fee-simple. You may talk of
+converting or enlarging the part into the whole, but you cannot talk
+of acquiring the part in the entirety of the whole. This is not all;
+the bill plunges at once _in medias res_, without favouring us with
+any sort of definition of the important phrase, "heir of entail," in
+this and other clauses. The same expression in the statute 1 Jac.
+VII. c. 32, has already (see _Sandford's Entails_, p. 231) given
+rise to no small questioning and litigation, which promise to be
+renewed in abundance should this measure pass into a law. Again,
+perpetual inalienability is not an incident to all estates-tail.
+Lands merely bound by what are called the prohibitive clauses, may
+be alienated for a valuable consideration, though not by a voluntary
+or (as the Scotch say) gratuitous conveyance. Tailzies, however, to
+which no clauses are annexed, do not prevent the heir from conveying
+the lands in any manner he pleases. Now, as, the object of this bill
+is to relax the bonds of perpetual inalienability, we presume that
+only those tailzies which are guarded by the irritant and resolutive
+clauses are within its purview. If so, the general expression "deed
+of tailzie" should have been distinctly limited. If that expression
+should be held to comprehend all deeds of tailzie, which it must of
+course do when taken by itself, then the proposed act will exercise
+a very extensive disabling power, by restricting the unlimited right
+of alienation under tailzies of simple destination,[2] and the right
+of alienation for value under tailzies with prohibitive clauses
+only introduced, to the peculiar form and instrument pointed out by
+this bill, and which we suppose was devised in analogy to the forms
+substituted for fines and recoveries by the statute 3 & 4 Will. IV.
+c. 74.
+
+  [2] See Erskine's _Institutes_, B. iii. tit. 8, �� 21-25.
+
+We have already seen how Mr M'Culloch would deal with the difficulty
+of disturbing the devolution of lands already limited in perpetual
+entail--namely, by "saving the rights of living heirs of entail,
+and of heirs born under existing marriage-contracts." We think our
+author has not, in this passage, expressed himself with due legal
+perspicuity and precision. The phrase "living heirs of entail" is
+somewhat vague and uncertain; we presume Mr M'Culloch intended the
+living issue of the heir of entail in possession, and all living
+heirs-substitute and their living issue. Again, what are existing
+marriage-contracts? Probably those marriage-contracts are intended,
+which are annexed to marriages solemnised before the introduction of
+a new system. Both these suggestions, as we have interpreted them,
+might with justice, and advantage have formed part of the new law.
+It is true that this would, at all events for a considerable period
+of time, stop short of that assimilation of the Scottish law to the
+English which seems to have been a great object with the framers of
+this bill. But the two systems would gradually correspond; and we
+hold that there is a principle of justice involved in the upholding
+of contracts the objects of which are as yet unfulfilled. Where
+an English settler has limited lands to a man for life, remainder
+to his first and other sons successively in tail, he knew, at the
+time of making the settlement, that it was liable to be barred with
+consent of the eldest son on his coming of age. But it was not so
+with a Scotch settler who executed a deed of tailzie to several
+brothers as successive heirs-substitute; and the legislature has no
+right, without the gravest public cause, to step in and defeat his
+intention.
+
+But the bill, though intending to give far greater liberty to the
+owner of an entailed estate than Mr M'Culloch does, or, as we think,
+is consistent with justice, sets about affording him aid in the
+most ambiguous and misty manner conceivable. The 2d clause enacts
+that the heir of entail in possession, born after the date of the
+act, may disentail in the manner provided by the act; and an heir
+of entail born before the date of the act may similarly disentail,
+"with the consent (and not otherwise) of the heir-substitute next
+in succession, and heir-apparent under the entail of the heir in
+possession," he being born after the date of the act, and capable of
+contracting.
+
+We should recommend the tenant in tail to be very cautious how he
+attempts to "acquire his estate in fee-simple" under the provisions
+of this clause. He is to obtain the consent of the heir-substitute
+next in succession. So far his course is clear. But the same person
+is also designated by the term "heir-apparent under the entail of
+the heir in possession." Now, is this a qualification of the general
+term "heir-substitute next in succession," and must such person,
+under the act, be also heir-apparent? If so, what is the particular
+qualification required of him under the expression "heir-apparent?"
+Adhering to the use of the phrase in popular language, we must take,
+as the only circumstances under which the next heir-substitute and
+the heir-apparent are one and the same person, the case in which
+the first estate under the entail is limited to a man and the heirs
+of his body, and the second to his second son and the heirs of his
+body; then, supposing the eldest son to die in the lifetime of his
+father, the second son would be both the next heir-substitute and
+also the heir-apparent. Is this, therefore, the only case within
+the act? Scarcely, we should think, was it so intended. Are we,
+then, to interpret the word heir-apparent in the sense in which the
+phrase heir-presumptive is generally used; and must we suppose that
+the cases indicated are those in which there is no issue under the
+first entail, and therefore the next heir-substitute is what we
+should call heir-presumptive to the person in possession? If so,
+what is to become of the numerous cases where there is issue to
+take under the existing estate-tail? Or can it be that the issue
+in tail is altogether forgotten by this act, and that the person
+whose consent is required is merely the next heir-substitute in any
+case? We are inclined to think this the most probable explanation of
+this unfortunate clause, but can scarcely imagine that it will be
+suffered to pass into a law. A further ambiguity, however, arises
+with respect to this term heir-apparent, from its having a peculiar
+technical meaning in the Scottish law. "He who is entitled," says
+Erskine, "to enter heir to a deceased ancestor is, before his actual
+entry, styled, both in our statutes and by our writers, _apparent
+heir_." If the bill intends any reference to this legal acceptation
+of the phrase, we can only understand the person whose consent is
+required, to be such person as, being next heir-substitute, would,
+on the immediate decease of the possessor, be his apparent heir,
+or entitled to enter on the lands. This, again, shuts out all
+those estates where the possessor has issue in tail, and would,
+consequently, limit the operation of the bill to exceptional
+cases. We think we have said enough to convince our readers that
+this clause is not likely to set free many entailed estates in
+Scotland--at all events, not without a chaos of litigation, in which
+the elements of profit will have a tendency to range themselves on
+the side of the lawyers.
+
+The person whose consent is to be obtained (whoever that mysterious
+person may be) is, as we have seen, to be born after the date of
+the act. In conformity with this principle, one would have supposed
+that where the next heir-substitute shall have been born before
+that date, then it should be necessary to obtain the consent of the
+first person entitled to take _per formam doni_, who shall be born
+after this date, together with the consent of all those who are to
+take before him. The third clause, however, introduces a new form of
+protection to the settlement, and merely enacts that, in such cases,
+the consent of a certain number of the heirs-substitute is to be
+obtained, (the blank left for the number was filled up with the word
+"three" in committee of the House of Commons. Nothing said about the
+issue in tail, as before.
+
+Where the main enactments of the bill are so incomprehensible, it
+is useless to dwell on its details. We can only say, that whatever
+evils may be shown to exist under the present law, they will not
+only fail to be cured, but must be aggravated tenfold, by such a
+product of off-hand legislation--
+
+                        "Sent before its time
+    Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
+    And that so lamely and unfashionable,"
+
+that it must necessarily die of its own deformity, unless the
+law-courts will lick it into shape by their decisions,--a shape (as
+it must be) in which its own parents would not know it again.
+
+The law of real property in France exhibits a system so distinctly
+antagonistic to our English and Scottish law of entail, that we
+cannot be surprised at the attention with which Mr M'Culloch has
+investigated its influences.
+
+     "According to the law of France, a person with one child may
+     dispose at pleasure of a moiety of his property, the child
+     inheriting the other moiety as legitim, or matter of right; a
+     person having two children can only dispose of a third part
+     of his property; and those having more than two must divide
+     three-fourths of their property equally amongst them, one-fourth
+     part being all that is then left at their disposal. When a
+     father dies intestate, his property is equally divided among his
+     children, without respect to sex or seniority. Nothing can be
+     more distinctly opposed to the principles we have endeavoured
+     to establish, and to the system followed in this country, than
+     this law. It is therefore lucky that it is now no novelty. It
+     has been established for more than half a century, so that we
+     may trace and exhibit its practical influence over the condition
+     of the extensive population subject to its operation. Such an
+     experiment is of rare occurrence, but when made is invaluable.
+     And if its results should confirm the conclusions already
+     come to, it will go far to establish them on an unassailable
+     basis."--P. 80-81.
+
+We have already seen how these results may be traced in the state
+of French agriculture. They may also, we think, be discerned in the
+relative position which the landholders of France bear to other
+classes in the social scale. These, numbering between four and
+five millions, ought, as a class, to constitute the leaders of the
+nation. So far from this being the case, they are perhaps the most
+inert and uninfluential portion of the community, having apparently
+had little or no voice in the two revolutions which have swept over
+their heads within the last eighteen years, and as little in the
+erection, maintenance, or downfall of the Throne of the Barricades.
+It yet remains to be seen whether they will continue to accept every
+thing which the clubs of Paris are willing to force upon them. As
+tax-payers and cultivators of the soil, it can hardly suit them to
+be propagandists; as men who have something to lose, they will not
+readily give in to the dictatorial vagaries of Ledru Rollin. If,
+however, they would hold their own, it is time for them to be up and
+doing. France has been governed by a minority before now.
+
+We have always regarded it as one of the main advantages of a
+landed aristocracy, that it raises up a principle of social rank
+antagonistic to that of mere wealth. In France, the constant
+subdivision and transfer of land breaks down this influence,
+and causes land to be regarded as a mere marketable article and
+equivalent for money.
+
+     "In countries where the custom of primogeniture exercises a
+     powerful influence, families become identified with estates--the
+     family representing the estate, and the estate the family. The
+     wealth and consideration enjoyed by the latter depend upon, and
+     are intimately connected with, the possession of the lands
+     which have descended to them from their ancestors. They estimate
+     their value by another than a mere pecuniary standard. They are
+     attached to them by the oldest and most endearing associations;
+     and they are seldom parted with except under the most painful
+     circumstances. Hence the perpetuity of property in England in
+     the same families, notwithstanding the limited duration of
+     entails; great numbers of estates being at this moment enjoyed
+     by those whose ancestors acquired them at or soon after the
+     Conquest. But in France such feelings are proscribed. Estates
+     and families have there no abiding connexion; and at the demise
+     of an individual who has a number of children, his estate can
+     hardly escape being subdivided. And this effect of the law tends
+     to imbue the proprietors with corresponding sentiments and
+     feelings. 'Non seulement,' says M. De Tocqueville, 'la loi des
+     successions rend difficile aux familles de conserver intacts les
+     m�mes domaines, mais elle leur �te le d�sir de le tenter, et
+     elle les entra�ne, en quelque sorte, � coop�rer avec elle � leur
+     propre ruine.'"--P. 85-86.
+
+But Mr M'Culloch dwells more particularly on the injurious effects
+to agriculture from the parcelling out of the land into small
+properties. He shows that a small proprietor is not so efficient a
+cultivator of the soil as a tenant, in which doctrine Arthur Young
+had preceded him. He shows, also, that the subdivision of properties
+leads to the subdivision of farms, and urges that it is impossible
+to have good farming on small patches of land. Of the miseries of an
+agricultural system carried on by small farmers on petty holdings,
+we have already a sufficient example in Ireland. We cannot but
+think, however, that the progress of things in England has too much
+swallowed up those little farms of from thirty to fifty acres, which
+at one time were common over the country. Not but what capital is
+employed at a great disadvantage on these little holdings--but where
+there is a general system of good-sized farms, an intermixture, of
+smaller farms is not attended with injurious effects proportional
+to those which arise where the whole of the land is split up into
+minute parcels. And then small farmers furnish a link between the
+yeomanry and peasantry, which it is useful to maintain, cheering
+the poor man's lot by pointing out to him a path by which lie may
+advance from the position of a day-labourer to that of an occupier
+of land. On the same principle, we are rejoiced to observe the
+gradual extension of the allotment system; although it would have
+a still more beneficial effect, we think, if the land was granted
+in the shape of a croft about the cottage, thus giving the tenant a
+greater interest, and more individual sense of proprietorship, than
+when his piece of land is packed, along with a number of others,
+into a mass of unsightly patches.
+
+In connexion with the small holdings in Ireland, it should not be
+forgotten that this subdivision of the land results mainly from the
+practice of sub-letting; and this again has arisen in a great degree
+from the practice of granting long leases, the want of which in
+England has served, among many other things, for an outcry against
+the landlords. Mr M'Culloch has pointed out the evils of too long
+leases on the farming tenant, that they superinduce a sense of
+security which easily degenerates into indolence. But the influence
+on Ireland is even worse, by breaking up the land into small
+patches, on which the occupier can but just maintain himself, paying
+an exorbitant rent to the middleman. For it is not the eager demand
+for land amongst the Irish peasantry, as we sometimes hear, that has
+produced this subdivision of the land, but the subdivision that has
+produced the demand, by putting the cultivation of the land into the
+hands of a class who are unable, through want of skill and capital,
+to carry it on; who cannot, therefore, furnish employment for the
+labourers, and thus drive them to grasp at little parcels of land
+as their only means of securing a wretched subsistence; and this
+security, as we know, has more than once proved but a fancied one,
+as in the disastrous failure of the potato crop.
+
+While we are on this subject, we may draw the reader's attention
+to a very able pamphlet by an Irish gentleman, on Irish matters,
+which, though we believe it has never been published, has had
+an extensive private circulation. We allude to "An Address to
+the Members of the House, of Commons on the Landlord and Tenant
+Question, by Warren H. R. Jackson, Esq." The work, though somewhat
+tinged with the hard politico-economical school, is written with
+great shrewdness of thought and freedom from prejudice, and is well
+worthy the careful attention of the honourable House. The writer, in
+discussing the vexed question he has taken in hand, fully coincides
+with the general principles laid down by Mr M'Culloch. "This," he
+says, (speaking of the subdivision of land) "is one of the monster
+grievances of Ireland, and you will do little good unless you abate
+it." This abatement he would bring about mainly by prospective
+laws, as by placing all contracts for subletting _hors la loi_, and
+so taking away from the first lessee all power of recovering his
+rent from the actual tenant. We cannot but think that this would be
+found a most salutary enactment. It should be remembered, that the
+occupier is responsible to the owner of the freehold by the power
+of distress vested in the latter, and it is but just that he should
+be relieved from the liability to pay two rents--a liability which
+it is manifest no good farmer would incur, but which the squalid
+ravager of the soil in Ireland is always eager for.
+
+It has been said that no further legislative enactment is required
+in Ireland, and that administrative wisdom must do what yet
+remains to be done. Mr Jackson, however, shows that there are such
+deep-seated evils in Ireland as cannot be cured except by the direct
+interference of the legislature. But we think he expects too much
+from the Sale of Encumbered Estates Bill. An extensive change of
+proprietorship would, we are persuaded, be a great evil in Ireland.
+There is an attachment in general to the "ould stock" among their
+poorer neighbours, which would naturally be followed by a jealousy
+and prejudice against the new comers who displaced them. And this
+prejudice would of itself neutralise any efforts for improvement
+which the landlord might otherwise be disposed to make--although,
+in most cases, we should not expect much effort in this direction
+from a stranger mortgagee, often an unwilling purchaser, who would
+naturally be anxious to contract with those parties from whom he
+could obtain his rents with least trouble, leaving them to deal with
+the land as they liked, and thereby continuing and increasing the
+odious middleman system.
+
+Mr M'Culloch does not confine his examination of the compulsory
+partition in France to its influence on agriculture. He has
+discerned certain political effects of that and the concomitant
+system of which it is a part, with a precision which subsequent
+events have elevated into a sort of prophecy. The preface to his
+work is dated December 1847, and the work was published, we believe,
+early in January. There can, therefore, be no grounds for classing
+the following passage with those anticipations which are made after
+the event:--
+
+     "The aristocratical element is no longer to be found in French
+     society; and the compulsory division of the soil, while it
+     prevents the growth of an aristocracy, impresses the same
+     character of mobility upon landed possessions that is impressed
+     on the families of their occupiers. Hence the prevalent want of
+     confidence in the continuance of the present order of things in
+     France. What is there in that country to oppose an effectual
+     resistance to a revolutionary movement? Monarchy in France has
+     been stripped of those old associations and powerful bulwarks
+     whence it derives almost all its lustre and support in this
+     and other countries. The throne stands in solitary, though not
+     unenvied dignity, without the shelter of a single eminence,
+     exposed to the full force of the furious blasts that sweep
+     from every point of the surrounding level. There is nothing
+     intermediate, nothing to hinder a hostile majority in the
+     Chamber of Deputies from at once subverting the regal branch of
+     the constitution, or changing the reigning dynasty."--P. 132-133.
+
+Scarcely was the printer's ink dry on this passage when the Throne
+of the Barricades was gone. We have given our author full credit
+for his sagacity in penetrating into the future, but we think it
+would puzzle him to foretell what is to come next. We are disposed
+to doubt, however, whether an aristocracy could have preserved the
+throne of Louis Philippe. It is true that in our own country William
+of Nassau and George of Brunswick maintained their crowns by the
+aid of powerful sections of the nobility. But the revolutions which
+gave them those crowns were not the volcanic outbursts of popular
+force. Under such outbursts, no successful usurper, no "Hero-king,"
+no sovereign by the will of the people, has been able to devise a
+principle which shall establish his throne in security, and serve
+in the stead of that prestige of old hereditary succession, that
+grand feudal idea of kingly right, which is the essential fountain
+of the reverence that guards royalty. Louis Philippe would have
+confirmed his sovereignty by means of the influence exerted upon
+interested officials. No sooner was his power shaken in its unstable
+equilibrium than the men whom his gold had bought rushed to worship
+the rising sun of the young Republic. Napoleon, before him, would
+have built up a similar power on military glory: his doom was
+sealed when his eagles turned from the field of Leipsic. Cromwell
+employed religious fanaticism to the same end: the fanaticism
+lasted his time; but we will venture to say that, had he lived, his
+protectorate would not have reached the seventeen years allotted to
+the democratic King of the French.
+
+Our author is of opinion that, after all, the system of compulsory
+partition will fail to guard what has since become the French
+Republic:--
+
+     "But, though it were possible, which it is not, to obviate
+     the mischievous influence of the French and other plans for
+     preventing the increase and continuance of property in the same
+     families, it may be confidently predicted that they will, in
+     time to come as hitherto, wholly fail in their grand object of
+     perpetuating the ascendancy of the democracy. In old settled and
+     fully peopled countries, where the bulk of the population is
+     necessarily poor and dependent, an aristocracy is indispensable
+     for the support of a free system of government--'Il importe �
+     tous les peuples qui ont la pr�tention de devenir ou de rester
+     puissants, d'avoir une aristocratie, c'est-�-dire un corps
+     h�r�ditaire ou non, qui conserve et perpetue les traditions,
+     donne de l'esprit de suite � la politique, et se voue � l'art le
+     plus difficile de tous, qu' aujourd'hui cependant tout le monde
+     croit savoir sans l'avoir appris, celui de gouverner. Un peuple
+     sans aristocratic pourra briller dans les lettres et les arts,
+     mais sa gloire politique me semble devoir �tre passag�re comme
+     un m�teore.' CHEVALIER, _Lettres sur l'Amerique_, ii. 379," pp.
+     171, 172.
+
+We have already said that we think England certain to have an
+aristocracy of some description. The ambition of the people to
+advance themselves individually in the social scale will necessarily
+lead to a high value being set upon those advanced positions,
+and will tend to make them the fulcrum from which the country is
+governed. And we can conceive nothing more fatal to our national
+organisation than the result which would follow indirectly from the
+repeal of these laws. It may be supposed at first sight that no very
+vital question is involved here. Let those who suppose so, take a
+view of the probable condition of society which would ensue. These,
+and other so-called feudalities, being swept away, land becomes
+a commercial article, according to the desire of the plutocratic
+reformers. Estates are trucked about in the market like bills of
+exchange; constantly changing hands, their owners have little
+connexion with them or the people that live on them, regarding them
+merely in the light of so much realised capital. The old families
+gradually become dispossessed; mere wealth is recognised as the
+sole qualification for rank and influence; and the leading class
+in the state is composed of men who are an aristocracy by virtue
+of ready money. Far be it from us to undervalue the enterprise,
+integrity, and industry of our merchant manufacturers and tradesmen.
+But we will say that when we meet with a man, as we often do among
+those classes, endowed with a broad range of thought and high and
+noble aims, we regard him as possessing these qualities not as a
+consequence, but in spite of a commercial training. The immediate
+effects of such training are to narrow the mind and cramp the
+soul, not in respect of domestic and social life--for in these,
+perhaps, the middle classes are unsurpassed by any other--but in the
+provinces of the statesman and the politician.
+
+In these times, it seems to be commonly supposed that a
+legislator--like a poet--_nascitur, non fit_. There is a certain
+kind of training, the acquisition of a certain cast of thought,
+which are requisites for statesmen as a class, as much as his legal
+reading for a lawyer, or his apprenticeship for a handicraftsman.
+Statesmen, however, have to deal with practical matters; and
+therefore we think, as we have before said, that while the
+predominance of these requisites in the legislature is essential
+to good government, there may with advantage at the same time be
+a certain admixture of the men practically versed in commerce
+and manufactures. But this should be always a subordinate, not a
+leading, element in the principles which regulate the administration
+of government.--We repeat, that the counting-house, the loom, and
+the anvil, are not the best schools for legislators. For that
+office, a man requires leisure and education. We shall be told that
+a "Squire" is not necessarily an educated man. We do not maintain
+that he is. But, in the first place, as we cannot well have an
+education-test, we must go to the class in which, as a class, we
+find the highest and most enlarged form of education; and we believe
+that this qualification can, without question, be claimed for the
+leisure-class, or gentlemen of England. In the second place, it
+should be remembered, that if the squire is not always individually
+what we should call an educated man, he yet imbibes his thoughts
+and notions from those who are such, who give tone to the society
+in which he moves. In investigating the characteristics of classes,
+it can scarcely be but that a number of exceptions to our general
+rules will force themselves upon our attention. Yet, in good truth,
+we believe that almost all the individual examples which can be
+cited will bear out our estimate. The highest contributions to the
+legislature, on the part of the middle or commercial classes, have
+been the shrewd practical men of business, men of the stamp of Mr
+Hawes. As for the Cobdens and Brights, _et hoc genus omne_, their
+only motive principle appears to be the interests of _My Shop_.
+Their notion of loyalty, patriotism, and British prosperity, is
+nothing but low wages, high profits, and a brisk trade in calicoes.
+
+Many of our readers will recollect a passage in Cicero, (_Off._
+i. 42,) in which he reprobates, more or less, all commercial
+pursuits, in respect of their operations on the moral insight of
+man, and finishes with the praise of the culture of the soil, in
+these words: "Omnium rerum ex quibus aliquid acquiritur, nihil est
+agricultur� meli�s, nihil uberi�s, nihil dulci�s, nihil homine
+libero digni�s." In this country we should find it difficult to go
+along with the feelings of the old Roman republican on these points.
+But though we have already expressed our high sense of the social
+and domestic virtues of the middle or trading classes, yet we are
+most confident in the truth of our position, that the shop is the
+worst possible preparation for the senate. We know that there is
+a talk abroad about earnest workers, drones of the hive, and so
+forth. By all means, let every man work who is fit to work. But it
+is not necessary, nor is it desirable, that every man should work
+for gain. On the contrary, we hold that a class endowed with leisure
+is indispensable, not only for the grace and civilisation, but even
+for the moral well-being of a community. That money should become
+the one grand loadstar of thought and action is the bane of those
+societies where the pursuit of money is the general employment; but
+where there is such a leisure-class as we have spoken of, forming
+the topmost rank of a nation otherwise chiefly mercantile, there are
+numberless influences derived from it which percolate through the
+underlying masses, and check or modify the exclusive reverence for
+wealth to which they would otherwise be prone. Even a mere blind
+respect for rank or title exalts the mind immeasurably as compared
+with mammon-worship.
+
+While on the subject of our leisure-class, which is pretty nearly
+synonymous with the landed gentry, we must not pass over in silence
+a subject in connexion with which the outcry against "the drones
+of the hive" is frequently introduced. We refer to the Game-Laws.
+The whole question of these laws has been so fully discussed in a
+recent Number of this magazine, that we will not attempt in any
+way to open that controversy. But they are so commonly coupled
+with the Laws of Entail as "feudalities," and as interfering with
+the transmission of land according to "commercial principles,"
+that we could not altogether omit the mention of them. We will at
+this time only observe, that the denunciation of the Game-Laws is
+a part of the crusade which Hard-Cash, that arrogant monopolist
+who bears no brother near his throne, is waging against all other
+objects of interest or devotion. Let it not be supposed that laws
+are of minor importance because they relate to the amusements of any
+portion of the community. They may derive their importance from that
+circumstance as tending to raise up something which shall cope with
+the lust of gold. The game-preserving interest is worth maintenance
+if only as clashing with mammonism.
+
+While the brawlers about "improvement" and "progress," are heaping
+their meaningless abuse upon feudalities, we should be glad to
+know what they purpose to do with that greatest feudality of all,
+the Crown? Already there are symptoms of an intention to take that
+matter in hand. Mr Cobden and some of his Calibans have talked in
+the House of Commons about curtailing the "barbarous splendour" of
+the throne. They know nothing and care nothing about the historical
+association and constitutional truths embodied in the ancient
+appendages of royalty. How should they? They want somebody to look
+after the police, and take care that no one robs their till; that
+is their idea of government. They want a man (some of them being
+willing to allow him a small salary, though others think that it
+does not pay) to preach to the masses, and tell them not to steal,
+and to be content with their wages; that is their idea of the
+church. We do not think, however, that the tone of thought prevalent
+among the Manchester school is destined yet to lead the mind of
+England. And we are the less inclined to look forward to such a
+national debasement when we find so enlightened an advocate of
+free-trade policy as Mr M'Culloch--the advocate of a theory which we
+hold to be erroneous, but not the selfish and greedy clamourer for
+the gain of himself and his class--thus coming forward to vindicate
+the laws which preserve the hereditary character of our aristocracy,
+which lend so efficient an aid in shielding us from the crushing
+tread of mammonism, and in preventing "commercial principles" from
+introducing the ledger and day-book into our manor houses, and the
+counter into our farmers' parlours. In this view we most heartily
+thank our author for his noble and energetic contribution to our
+National Defences at the present time; and as there is a wide field
+open in connexion with the subject he has so powerfully handled,
+we cannot take leave of him without expressing a hope that we may
+before long listen to him again "on the same side."
+
+
+
+
+LIFE IN THE "FAR WEST."
+
+PART II.
+
+     The reader is informed that "Life in the Far West" is _no
+     fiction_. The scenes and incidents described are strictly true.
+     The characters are real, (the names being changed in two or
+     three instances only,) and all have been, and are, well known in
+     the Western country.
+
+
+"And Mary Brand herself,--what is she like?"
+
+"She's 'some' now; that _is_ a fact, and the biggest kind of punkin
+at that," would have been the answer from any man, woman, or child,
+in Memphis County, and truly spoken too; always understanding that
+the pumpkin is _the_ fruit to which the _ne-plus-ultra_ of female
+perfection is compared by the figuratively speaking westerns.
+
+Being an American woman, of course she was tall, and straight and
+slim as a hickory sapling, well formed withal, with rounded bust,
+and neck white and slender as the swan's. Her features were small,
+but finely chiselled; and in this, it may be remarked, the lower
+orders of the American women differ from, and far surpass the same
+class in England, or elsewhere, where the features, although far
+prettier, are more vulgar and commonplace. She had the bright blue
+eye, thin nose, and small but sweetly-formed mouth, the too fair
+complexion and dark brown hair, which characterise the beauty of the
+Anglo-American, the heavy masses (hardly curls) which fell over her
+face and neck contrasting with their polished whiteness. Such was
+Mary Brand: and to her good looks being added a sweet disposition,
+and all the good qualities of a thrifty housewife, it must be
+allowed that she fully justified the eulogiums of the good people of
+Memphis.
+
+Well, to cut a love-story short, in the which not a little moral
+courage is shown, young La Bont� fell desperately in love with
+the pretty Mary, and she with him; and small blame to her, for he
+was a proper lad of twenty--six feet in his moccassins--the best
+hunter and rifle-shot in the country, with many other advantages too
+numerous to mention. But when did the course, &c. e'er run smooth?
+When the affair had become a recognised "courting," (and Americans
+alone know the horrors of such prolonged purgatory,) they became,
+to use La Bont�'s words, "awful fond," and consequently about once
+a-week had their tiffs and makes-up.
+
+However, on one occasion, at a "husking," and during one of these
+tiffs, Mary, every inch a woman, to gratify some indescribable
+feeling, brought to her aid jealousy--that old serpent who has
+caused such mischief in this world; and by a flirtation over the
+corn-cobs with Big Pete, La Bont�'s former and only rival, struck
+so hard a blow at the latter's heart, that on the moment his brain
+caught fire, blood danced before his eyes, and he became like one
+possessed. Pete observed and enjoyed his struggling emotion--better
+for him had he minded his corn-shelling alone; and the more to annoy
+his rival, paid the most sedulous attention to the pretty Mary.
+
+Young La Bont� stood it as long as human nature, at boiling heat,
+could endure; but when Pete, in the exultation of his apparent
+triumph, crowned his success by encircling the slender waist of the
+girl with his arm, and snatched a sudden kiss, he jumped upright
+from his seat, and seizing a small whisky-keg which stood in the
+centre of the corn-shellers, he hurled it at his rival, and crying
+to him, hoarse with passion, "to follow if he was a man," he left
+the house.
+
+At that time, and even now, in the remoter states of the western
+country, rifles settled even the most trivial differences between
+the hot-blooded youths; and of such frequent occurrence and
+invariably bloody termination did they become, that they scarcely
+produced sufficient excitement to draw together half a dozen
+spectators of the duel.
+
+In the present case, however, so public was the quarrel, and so
+well known the parties concerned, that not only the people who had
+witnessed the affair, but all the neighbourhood thronged to the
+scene of action, where, in a large field in front of the house,
+the preliminaries of a duel between Pete and La Bont� were being
+arranged by their respective friends.
+
+Mary, when she discovered the mischief her thoughtlessness was
+likely to occasion, was almost beside herself with grief, but she
+knew how vain it would be to attempt to interfere. The poor girl,
+who was most ardently attached to La Bont�, was carried, swooning,
+into the house, where all the women congregated, and were locked in
+by old Brand, who, himself an old pioneer, thought but little of
+bloodshed, but refused to let the "women folk" witness the affray.
+
+Preliminaries arranged, the combatants took up their respective
+positions at either end of a space marked for the purpose, at forty
+paces from each other. They were both armed with heavy rifles, and
+had the usual hunting-pouches, containing ammunition, hanging over
+the shoulder. Standing with the butts of their rifles on the ground,
+they confronted each other, and the crowd drawing away a few paces
+only on each side, left one man to give the word. This was the
+single word "fire;" and after this signal was given, the combatants
+were at liberty to fire away until one or the other dropped.
+
+At the word both the men quickly raised their rifles to the
+shoulder, and as the sharp cracks rung instantaneously, they were
+seen to flinch, as either felt the pinging sensation of a bullet
+entering his flesh. Regarding each other steadily for a few moments,
+the blood running down La Bont�'s neck from a wound under the
+left jaw, whilst his opponent was seen to place his hand once to
+his right breast, as if to feel the position of his wound, they
+commenced reloading their rifles. As, however, Pete was in the
+act of forcing down the ball with his long hickory wiping-stick,
+he suddenly dropped his right arm,--the rifle slipped from his
+grasp,--and, reeling for a moment like a drunken man,--he fell dead
+to the ground.
+
+Even here, however, there was law of some kind or another, and the
+consequences of the duel were, that the constables were soon on the
+trail of La Bont� to arrest him. He, however, easily avoided them,
+and taking to the woods, lived for several days in as wild a state
+as the beasts he hunted and killed for his support.
+
+Tired of this, however, he resolved to quit the country, and betake
+himself to the mountains, for which life he had ever felt an
+inclination.
+
+When, therefore, he thought the officers of justice had tired of
+seeking him, and the coast was comparatively clear, he determined to
+start on his distant expedition to the Far West.
+
+Once more, before he carried his project into execution, he sought
+and had a last interview with Mary Brand.
+
+"Mary," said he, "I'm about to break. They're hunting me like a fall
+buck, and I'm bound to quit. Don't think any more about me, for I
+shall never come back." Poor Mary burst into tears, and bent her
+head on the table near which she was sitting. When again she raised
+it, she saw La Bont�, with his long rifle on his shoulder, striding
+with rapid steps from the house; and year after year rolled on, and
+he never returned.
+
+A few days after this he found himself at St Louis, the emporium
+of the fur trade, and the fast rising metropolis of the precocious
+settlements of the west. Here, a prey to the agony of mind which
+jealousy, remorse, and blighted love mix into a very puchero of
+misery, La Bont� got into the company of certain "rowdies," a class
+which every western city particularly abounds in; and anxious to
+drown his sorrows in any way, and quite unscrupulous as to the
+means, he plunged into all the vicious excitements of drinking,
+gambling, and fighting, which form the every-day amusements of the
+rising generation of St Louis.
+
+Perhaps in no other part of the United States, where indeed humanity
+is frequently to be seen in many curious and unusual phases, is
+there a population so marked in its general character, and at the
+same time divided into such distinct classes, as in the above-named
+city. Dating, as it does, its foundation from yesterday,--for what
+are thirty years in the growth of a metropolis?--its founders
+are now scarcely passed middle life, regarding with astonishment
+the growing works of their hands; and whilst gazing upon its busy
+quays, piled with grain and other produce of the west, its fleets
+of huge steamboats lying tier upon tier alongside the wharves, its
+well-stored warehouses and all the bustling concomitants of a great
+commercial depot, they can scarcely realise the memory of a few
+short years, when on the same spot nothing was to be seen but the
+few miserable hovels of a French village--the only sign of commerce
+the unwieldy bateaux of the Indian traders, laden with peltries
+from the distant regions of the Platte and Upper Missouri. Where
+now intelligent and wealthy merchants walk erect, in conscious
+substantiality of purse and credit, and direct the commerce of a
+vast and numerously-populated region, but the other day stalked,
+in dress of buckskin, the Indian trader of the west; and all the
+evidences of life, mayhap, consisted of the eccentric vagaries
+of the different bands of trappers and hardy mountaineers, who
+accompanied, some for pleasure and some as escort, the periodically
+arriving bateaux, laden with the beaver skins and buffalo robes
+collected during the season at the different trading posts in the
+Far West.
+
+These, nevertheless, were the men whose hardy enterprise opened to
+commerce and the plough the vast and fertile regions of the West.
+Rough and savage though they were, they alone were the pioneers
+of that extraordinary tide of civilisation which has poured its
+resistless current through tracts large enough for kings to govern;
+over a country now teeming with cultivation, where, a few short
+years ago, countless herds of buffalo roamed unmolested, the bear
+and deer abounded, and where the savage Indian skulked through the
+woods and prairies, lord of the unappreciated soil which now yields
+its prolific treasures to the spade and plough of civilised man. To
+the wild and half-savage trapper, who may be said to exhibit the
+energy, enterprise, and hardihood characteristic of the American
+people, divested of all the false and vicious glare with which a
+high state of civilisation, too rapidly attained, has obscured
+their real and genuine character, in which the above traits are
+eminently prominent--to these men alone is due the empire of the
+West--destined in a few short years to become the most important of
+those confederate states which compose the mighty union of North
+America.
+
+Sprung, then, out of the wild and adventurous fur trade, St Louis,
+still the emporium of that species of commerce, preserves even now,
+in the character of its population, many of the marked peculiarities
+which distinguished its early founders, who were identified with
+the primitive Indian in hardiness and instinctive wisdom. Whilst
+the French portion of the population retain the thoughtless levity
+and frivolous disposition of their original source, the Americans
+of St Louis, who may lay claim to be native, as it were, are as
+particularly distinguished for determination and energy of character
+as they are for physical strength and animal courage; and are
+remarkable, at the same time, for a singular aptitude in carrying
+out commercial enterprises to successful terminations, which would
+appear to be incompatible with the love of adventure and excitement
+which forms so prominent a feature in their character. In St Louis,
+nevertheless, and from her merchants, have emanated many commercial
+enterprises of gigantic speculation, not confined to its own
+locality or the distant Indian fur trade, but embracing all parts of
+the continent, and even a portion of the Old World. And here it must
+be remembered that St Louis is situated inland, at a distance of
+upwards of one thousand miles from the sea, and three thousand from
+the capital of the United States.
+
+Besides her merchants and upper class, who form a little
+aristocracy even here, she has a large portion of her population
+still connected with the Indian and fur trade, who preserve all
+their characteristics unacted upon by the influence of advancing
+civilisation, and between whom and other classes there is a marked
+distinction. There is, moreover, a large floating population of
+foreigners of all nations, who must possess no little amount of
+enterprise to be tempted to this spot, from whence they spread
+over the remote western tracts, still invested by the savage;
+and, therefore, if any of their blood is infused into the native
+population, the characteristic energy and enterprise is increased,
+and not tempered down, by the foreign cross.
+
+But perhaps the most singular of her casual population are the
+mountaineers, who, after several seasons spent in trapping, and with
+good store of dollars, arrive from the scene of their adventures,
+wild as savages, determined to enjoy themselves, for a time, in all
+the gaiety and dissipation of the western city. In one of the back
+streets of the town is a tavern well known as the "Rocky Mountain
+House," and here the trappers resort, drinking and fighting as long
+as their money lasts, which, as they are generous and lavish as
+Jack Tars, is for a few days only. Such scenes as are enacted in
+the Rocky Mountain House, both tragical and comical, are beyond the
+powers of pen to describe; and when a fandango is in progress, to
+which congregate the coquettish belles from "Vide Poche," as the
+French portion of a suburb is nicknamed,--the grotesque endeavours
+of the bear-like mountaineers to sport a figure on the light
+fantastic toe, and their insertions into the dance of the mystic
+jumps of Terpsichorean Indians when engaged in the "medicine"
+dances in honour of bear, of buffalo, or ravished scalp,--are such
+startling innovations on the choreographic art as would cause the
+shade of Gallini to quake and gibber in his pumps.
+
+Passing the open doors and windows of the Mountain House, the
+stranger stops short as the sounds of violin and banjo twang upon
+his ears, accompanied by extraordinary noises--which sound unearthly
+to the greenhorn listener, but which the initiated recognise as an
+Indian song roared out of the stentorian lungs, of a mountaineer,
+who, patting his stomach with open hands, to improve the necessary
+shake, choruses the well-known Indian chant:--
+
+    Hi--Hi--Hi--Hi,
+      Hi-i--Hi-i--Hi-i--Hi-i
+    Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya
+      Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya
+    Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi--hi,
+         &c. &c. &c.
+
+and polishing off the high notes with a whoop which makes the old
+wooden houses shake again, as it rattles and echoes down the street.
+
+Here, over fiery "monaghahela," Jean Batiste, the sallow half-breed
+voyageur from the north--and who, deserting the service of the
+"North-West," (the Hudson's Bay Company,) has come down the
+Mississippi, from the "Falls," to try the sweets and liberty of
+"free" trapping--hobnobs with a stalwart leather-clad "boy," just
+returned from trapping on the waters of Grand River, on the western
+side the mountains, who interlards his mountain jargon with Spanish
+words picked up in Taos and California. In one corner a trapper,
+lean and gaunt from the starving regions of the Yellow Stone, has
+just recognised an old companyero, with whom he hunted years before
+in the perilous country of the Blackfeet.
+
+"Why, John, old hos, how do you come on?"
+
+"What! Meek, old 'coon! I thought you were under?"
+
+One from Arkansa stalks into the centre of the room, with a pack of
+cards in his hand, and a handful of dollars in his hat. Squatting
+cross-legged on a buffalo robe, he smacks down the money, and cries
+out--"Ho, boys, hyar's a deck, and hyar's the beaver, (rattling the
+coin,) who dar set his hos? Wagh!"
+
+Tough are the yarns of wondrous hunts and Indian perils, of
+hairbreadth 'scapes and curious "fixes." Transcendant are the
+qualities of sundry rifles, which call these hunters masters; "plum"
+is the "centre" each vaunted barrel shoots; sufficing for a hundred
+wigs is the "hair" each hunter has "lifted" from Indians' scalps;
+multitudinous the "coups" he has "struck." As they drink so do they
+brag, first of their guns, their horses, and their squaws, and
+lastly of themselves:--and when it comes to that, "ware steel."
+
+La Bont�, on his arrival at St. Louis, found himself one day in no
+less a place than this; and here he made acquaintance with an old
+trapper about to start for the mountains in a few days, to hunt
+on the head waters of Platte and Green River. With this man he
+resolved to start, and, having still some hundred dollars in cash,
+he immediately set about equipping himself for the expedition. To
+effect this, he first of all visited the gun-store of Hawken, whose
+rifles are renowned in the mountains, and exchanged his own piece,
+which was of very small bore, for a regular mountain rifle. This was
+of very heavy metal, carrying about thirty-two balls to the pound,
+stocked to the muzzle and mounted with brass, its only ornament
+being a buffalo bull, looking exceedingly ferocious, which was not
+very artistically engraved upon the trap in the stock. Here, too, he
+laid in a few pounds of powder and lead, and all the necessaries for
+a long hunt.
+
+His next visit was to a smith's store, which smith was black by
+trade and black by nature, for he was a nigger, and, moreover,
+celebrated as being the best maker of beaver-traps in St Louis,
+and of whom he purchased six new traps, paying for the same twenty
+dollars--procuring, at the same time, an old trap-sack, made of
+stout buffalo skin, in which to carry them.
+
+We next find La Bont� and his companion--one Luke, better known
+as Grey-Eye, one of his eyes having been "gouged" in a mountain
+fray--at Independence, a little town situated on the Missouri,
+several hundred miles above St Louis, and within a short distance of
+the Indian frontier.
+
+Independence may be termed the "prairie port" of the western
+country. Here the caravans destined for Santa F� and the interior
+of Mexico, assemble to complete their necessary equipment. Mules
+and oxen are purchased, teamsters hired, and all stores and outfit
+laid in here for the long journey over the wide expanse of prairie
+ocean. Here, too, the Indian traders and the Rocky Mountain trappers
+rendezvous, collecting in sufficient force to ensure their safe
+passage through the Indian country. At the seasons of departure and
+arrival of these bands, the little town presents a lively scene
+of bustle and confusion. The wild and dissipated mountaineers get
+rid of their last dollars in furious orgies, treating all comers
+to galore of drink, and pledging each other, in horns of potent
+whisky, to successful hunts and "heaps of beaver." When every cent
+has disappeared from their pouches, the free trapper often makes
+away with rifle, traps, and animals, to gratify his "dry," (for your
+mountaineer is never "thirsty;") and then, "hos and beaver" gone, is
+necessitated to hire himself to one of the leaders of big bands, and
+hypothecate his services for an equipment of traps and animals. Thus
+La Bont� picked up three excellent mules for a mere song, with their
+accompanying pack saddles, _apishamores_,[3] and lariats, and the
+next day, with Luke, "put out" for Platte.
+
+  [3] Saddle-blanket made of buffalo-calf skin.
+
+As they passed through the rendezvous, which was encamped on a
+little stream beyond the town, even our young Mississippian was
+struck with the novelty of the scene. Upwards of forty huge waggons,
+of Connestoga and Pittsburg build, and covered with snow-white
+tilts, were ranged in a semicircle, or rather a horse-shoe form,
+on the flat open prairie, their long "tongues" (poles) pointing
+outwards; with the necessary harness for four pairs of mules, or
+eight yoke of oxen, lying on the ground beside them, spread in ready
+order for "hitching up." Round the waggons groups of teamsters, tall
+stalwart young Missourians, were engaged in busy preparation for the
+start, greasing the wheels, fitting or repairing harness, smoothing
+ox-bows, or overhauling their own moderate kits or "possibles."
+They were all dressed in the same fashion: a pair of "homespun"
+pantaloons, tucked into thick boots reaching nearly to the knee, and
+confined round the waist by a broad leathern belt, which supported a
+strong butcher knife in a sheath. A coarse checked shirt was their
+only other covering, with a fur cap on the head.
+
+Numerous camp-fires surrounded the waggons, and by them lounged
+wild-looking mountaineers, easily distinguished from the "greenhorn"
+teamsters by their dresses of buckskin, and their weather-beaten
+faces. Without an exception, these were under the influence of the
+rosy god; and one, who sat, the picture of misery, at a fire by
+himself--staring into the blaze with vacant countenance, his long
+matted hair hanging in unkempt masses over his face, begrimed with
+the dirt of a week, and pallid with the effects of ardent drink--was
+suffering from the usual consequences of having "kept it up"
+beyond the usual point, and now was paying the penalty in a fit of
+"horrors"--as _delirium tremens_ is most aptly termed by sailors and
+the unprofessional.
+
+In another part, the merchants of the caravan and Indian traders
+were superintending the lading of the waggons, or mule packs. These
+were dressed in civilised attire, and some bedizened in St Louis
+or Eastern City dandyism, to the infinite disgust of the mountain
+men, who look upon a bourge-way (bourgeois) with most undisguised
+contempt, despising the very simplest forms of civilisation. The
+picturesque appearance of the encampment was not a little heightened
+by the addition of several Indians from the neighbouring Shawnee
+settlement, who, mounted on their small active horses, on which they
+reclined, rather than sat, in negligent attitudes, quietly looked on
+at the novel scene, indifferent to the "chaff" which the thoughtless
+teamsters indulged in at their expense. Numbers of mules and horses
+were picketed at hand, while a large herd of noble oxen were being
+driven towards the camp--the wo-ha of the teamsters sounding far and
+near, as they collected the scattered beasts in order to yoke up.
+
+As most of the mountain men were utterly unable to move from camp,
+Luke and La Bont�, with three or four of the most sober, started
+in company, intending to wait on "Blue," a stream which runs into
+the Caw or Kanzas River, until the "balance" of the band came up.
+Mounting their mules, and leading the loose animals, they struck
+at once into the park-like prairie, and were out of sight of
+civilisation in an instant.
+
+It was the latter end of May, towards the close of the season of
+heavy rains, which in early spring render the climate of this
+country almost intolerable, at the same time that they serve to
+fertilise and thaw the soil, so long bound up by the winter's
+frosts. The grass was every where luxuriously green, and gaudy
+flowers dotted the surface of the prairie. This term, however,
+should hardly be applied to the beautiful undulating scenery of this
+park-like country. Unlike the flat monotony of the Grand Plains,
+here well wooded uplands clothed with forest trees of every species,
+and picturesque dells through which run clear and bubbling streams
+belted with gay-blossomed shrubs, every where present themselves;
+whilst on the level meadowland, topes of trees with spreading
+foliage afforded a shelter to the game and cattle, and well-timbered
+knolls rise at intervals from the plain.
+
+Many clear streams dashing over their pebbly beds intersect the
+country, from which, in the noonday's heat, the red-deer jump,
+shaking their wet sides, as the noise of approaching man disturbs
+them; and booming grouse rise from the tall luxuriant herbage at
+every step. Where the deep escarpments of the river banks exhibit
+the section of the earth, a rich alluvial soil of surprising depth
+appears to court the cultivation of civilised man; and in every
+feature it is evident that here nature has worked with kindliest and
+most bountiful hand.
+
+For hundreds of miles along the western or right bank of the
+Missouri does such a country as this extend, to which, for fertility
+and natural resources, no part of Europe can offer even feeble
+comparison. Sufficiently large to contain an enormous population,
+it has, besides, every advantage of position, and all the natural
+capabilities which should make it the happy abode of civilised man.
+Through this unpeopled country the United States pours her greedy
+thousands, to seize upon the barren territories of her feeble
+neighbour.
+
+Camping the first night on "Black Jack," our mountaineers here
+cut each man a spare hickory wiping-stick for his rifle, and La
+Bont�, who was the only greenhorn of the party, witnessed a savage
+ebullition of rage on the part of one of his companions, exhibiting
+the perfect unrestraint which these men impose upon their passions,
+and the barbarous anger which the slightest opposition to the will
+excites. One of the trappers, on arriving at the camping-place,
+dismounted from his horse, and, after divesting it of the saddle,
+endeavoured to lead his mule by the rope up to the spot where
+he wished to deposit his pack. Mule-like, however, the more he
+pulled the more stubbornly she remained in her tracks, planting
+her fore-legs firmly, and stretching out her neck with provoking
+obstinacy. If truth be told, it does require the temper of a
+thousand Jobs to manage a mule; and in no case does the wilful
+mulishness of the animal stir up one's choler more than in the very
+trick which this one was playing, and which is a daily occurrence.
+After tugging ineffectually for several minutes, winding the rope
+round his body, and throwing himself forward and suddenly with all
+his strength, the trapper actually foamed with passion; and although
+he might have subdued the animal at once by fastening the rope with
+a half-hitch round its nose, with an obstinacy equal to that of
+the mule itself he refused to attempt it, preferring to vanquish
+her by main strength. However, this failed, and with a volley of
+blasphemous imprecations the mountaineer suddenly seized his rifle,
+and, levelling it at the mule's head, shot her dead.
+
+Passing the Wa-ka-rasha, a well-timbered stream, they met a band
+of Osages going "to buffalo." These Indians, in common with some
+tribes of the Pawnees, shave the head, with the exception of a ridge
+from the forehead to the centre of the scalp, which is "roached" or
+hogged like the mane of a mule, and stands erect, plastered with
+unguents, and ornamented by feathers of the hawk and turkey. The
+naked scalp is often painted in mosaic with black and red, the face
+with shining vermilion. They were all naked to the breech-clout,
+the warmth of the sun having caused them to throw their dirty
+blankets from their shoulders. These Indians not unfrequently levy
+contributions on strangers whom they may accidentally meet; but they
+easily distinguish the determined mountaineer from the incautious
+greenhorn, and think it better to let the former alone.
+
+Crossing Vermilion, they arrived on the fifth day at "Blue," where
+they encamped in the broad timber which belts the creek, and there
+awaited the arrival of the remainder of the party.
+
+It was two days before they came up; but the day after, fourteen
+in number, they started for the mountains, striking a trail which
+follows the "Big Blue" in its course through the prairies, which, as
+they advance to the westward, are gradually smoothing away into a
+vast unbroken expanse of rolling plain. Herds of antelope began to
+show themselves, and some of the hunters, leaving the trail, soon
+returned with plenty of their tender meat. The luxuriant but coarse
+grass they had hitherto seen now changed into the nutritious and
+curly buffalo grass, and their animals soon improved in appearance
+on the excellent pasture. In a few days, without any adventure, they
+struck the Platte River, its shallow waters (from which it derives
+its name) spreading over a wide and sandy bed, numerous sand bars
+obstructing the sluggish current, and with nowhere sufficient water
+to wet the forder's knee.
+
+By this time, but few antelope having been seen, the party became
+entirely out of meat; and, one whole day and part of another having
+passed without so much as a sage rabbit having presented itself,
+not a few objurgations on the buffalo grumbled from the lips of the
+hunters, who expected ere this to have reached the land of plenty.
+La Bont� killed a fine deer, however, in the river bottom, after
+they had encamped, not one particle of which remained after supper
+that night, but which hardly took the rough edge off their keen
+appetites. Although already in the buffalo range, no traces of these
+animals had yet been seen; and as the country afforded but little
+game, and the party did not care to halt and lose time in hunting
+for it, they moved along hungry and sulky, the theme of conversation
+being the well remembered merits of good buffalo meat,--of "fat
+fleece," "hump rib," and "tender loin;" of delicious "boudins,"
+and marrow bones too good to think of. La Bont� had never seen the
+lordly animal, and consequently but half believed the accounts of
+the mountaineers, who described their countless bands as covering
+the prairie far as the eye could reach, and requiring days of travel
+to pass through; but the visions of such dainty and abundant feeding
+as they descanted on set his mouth watering, and danced before his
+eyes as he slept supperless, night after night, on the banks of the
+hungry Platte.
+
+One morning he had packed his animals before the rest, and was
+riding a mile in advance of the party, when he saw on one side the
+trail, looming in the refracted glare which mirages the plains,
+three large dark objects without shape or form, which rose and
+fell in the exaggerated light like ships at sea. Doubting what it
+could be, he approached the strange objects; and as the refraction
+disappeared before him, the dark masses assumed a more distinct
+form, and clearly moved with life. A little nearer, and he made
+them out--they were buffalo. Thinking to distinguish himself,
+the greenhorn dismounted from his mule, and quickly hobbled her,
+throwing his lasso on the ground to trail behind when he wished to
+catch her. Then, rifle in hand, he approached the huge animals, and,
+being a good hunter, knew well to take advantage of the inequalities
+of the ground and face the wind; by which means he crawled at length
+to within forty yards of the buffalo, who were quietly cropping the
+grass, unconscious of danger. Now, for the first time, he gazed upon
+the noble beast of which he had so often heard, and longed to see.
+With coal-black beard sweeping the ground as he fed, an enormous
+bull was in advance of the others, his wild brilliant eyes peering
+from an immense mass of shaggy hair, which covered his neck and
+shoulder. From this point his skin was bare as one's hand, a sleek
+and shining dun, and his ribs well covered with shaking flesh. As
+he leisurely cropped the short curly grass he occasionally lifted
+his tail into the air, and stamped his foot as a fly or musquito
+annoyed him--flapping the intruder with his tail, or snatching at
+the itching part with his ponderous head.
+
+When La Bont� had sufficiently admired the animal, he lifted his
+rifle, and, taking steady aim, and certain of his mark, pulled the
+trigger, expecting to see the huge beast fall over at the report.
+What was his surprise and consternation, however, to see the
+animal flinch as the ball struck him, but gallop off, followed by
+the others, and apparently unhurt. As is generally the case with
+greenhorns, he had fired too high, not understanding that the only
+certain spot to strike a buffalo is but a few inches above the
+brisket, and that above this a shot is rarely fatal. When he rose
+from the ground, he saw all the party halting in full view of his
+discomfiture; and when he joined them, loud were the laughs, and
+deep the regrets of the hungry at his first attempt.
+
+However, they now knew that they were in the country of meat; and a
+few miles farther, another band of stragglers presenting themselves,
+three of the hunters went in pursuit, La Bont� taking a mule to pack
+in the meat. He soon saw them crawling towards the band, and shortly
+two puffs of smoke, and the sharp cracks of their rifles showed
+that they had got within shot; and when he had ridden up, two fine
+buffaloes were stretched upon the ground. Now, for the first time,
+he was initiated into the mysteries of "butchering," and watched
+the hunters as they turned the carcass on the belly, stretching
+out the legs to support it on each side. A transverse cut was then
+made at the nape of the neck, and, gathering the long hair of the
+boss in one hand, the skin was separated from the shoulder. It was
+then laid open from this point to the tail, along the spine, and
+the skin was freed from the sides and pulled down to the brisket,
+but, still attached to it, was stretched upon the ground to receive
+the dissected portions. Then the shoulder was severed, the fleece
+removed from along the backbone, and the hump-ribs cut off with a
+tomahawk. All this was placed upon the skin; and after the "boudins"
+had been withdrawn from the stomach, and the tongue--a great
+dainty--taken from the head, the meat was packed upon the mule, and
+the whole party hurried to camp rejoicing.
+
+There was merry-making in the camp that night, and the way they
+indulged their appetites--or, in their own language, "throw'd" the
+meat "cold"--would have made the heart of a dyspeptic leap for joy
+or burst with envy. Far into the "still watches of the tranquil
+night" the fat-clad "depouille" saw its fleshy mass grow small
+by degrees and beautifully less, before the trenchant blades of
+the hungry mountaineers; appetising yards of well-browned "boudin"
+slipped glibly down their throats; rib after rib of tender hump
+was picked and flung to the wolves; and when human nature, with
+helpless gratitude, and confident that nothing of superexcellent
+comestibility remained, was lazily wiping the greasy knife that had
+done such good service,--a skilful hunter was seen to chuckle to
+himself as he raked the deep ashes of the fire, and drew therefrom
+a pair of tongues so admirably baked, so soft, so sweet, and of
+such exquisite flavour, that a veil is considerately drawn over
+the effects their discussion produced in the mind of our greenhorn
+La Bont�, and the raptures they excited in the bosom of that, as
+yet, most ignorant mountaineer. Still, as he ate he wondered,
+and wondering admired, that nature, in giving him such profound
+gastronomic powers, and such transcendent capabilities of digestion,
+had yet bountifully provided an edible so peculiarly adapted to his
+ostrich-like appetite, that after consuming nearly his own weight in
+rich and fat buffalo meat, he felt as easy and as incommoded as if
+he had been lightly supping on strawberries and cream.
+
+Sweet was the digestive pipe after such a feast, and soft the
+sleep and deep, which sealed the eyes of the contented trappers
+that night. It felt like the old thing, they said, to be once more
+amongst the "meat;" and, as they were drawing near the dangerous
+portion of the trail, they felt at home; although not a night now
+passed but, when they lay down on their buffalo robes to sleep, they
+could not be confident that that sleep was not their last--knowing
+full well that savage men were hovering near, thirsting for their
+lives.
+
+However, no enemies showed themselves as yet, and they proceeded
+quietly up the river, vast herds of buffaloes darkening the plains
+around them, affording them more than abundance of the choicest
+meat; but, to their credit be it spoken, no more was killed than
+absolutely required,--unlike the cruel slaughter made by most of the
+white travellers across the plains, who wantonly destroy these noble
+animals, not even for the excitement of sport, but in cold-blooded
+and insane butchery. La Bont� had practice enough to perfect him in
+the art, and, before the buffalo range was passed, he was ranked as
+a first-rate hunter. One evening he had left the camp for meat, and
+was approaching a band of cows for that purpose, crawling towards
+them along the bed of a dry hollow in the prairie, when he observed
+them suddenly jump away towards him, and immediately after a score
+of mounted Indians appeared in sight, whom, by their dress, he
+at once knew to be Pawnees and enemies. Thinking they might not
+discover him, he crouched down in the ravine; but a noise behind
+causing him to turn his head, he saw some five or six advancing up
+the bed of the dry creek, whilst several more were riding on the
+bluffs. The cunning savages had cut off his retreat to his mule,
+which he saw in the possession of one of the Indians. His presence
+of mind, however, did not desert him; and seeing at once that to
+remain where he was would be like being caught in a trap, (as the
+Indians could advance to the edge of the bluff and shoot him from
+above,) he made for the open prairie, determined at least to sell
+his scalp dearly, and make "a good fight." With a yell the Indians
+charged, but halted when they saw the sturdy trapper deliberately
+kneel, and, resting his rifle on the wiping-stick, take a steady
+aim as they advanced. Full well the Pawnees know, to their cost,
+that a mountaineer seldom pulls his trigger without sending a
+bullet to the mark; and, certain that one at least must fall, they
+hesitated to make the onslaught. Steadily the white retreated with
+his face to the foe, bringing the rifle to his shoulder the instant
+that one advanced within shot, the Indians galloping round, firing
+the few guns they had amongst them at long distances, but without
+effect. One young "brave," more daring than the rest, rode out
+of the crowd, and dashed at the hunter, throwing himself, as he
+passed within a few yards, from the saddle, and hanging over the
+opposite side of his horse,--presenting no other mark than his left
+foot,--discharged his bow from under the animal's neck, and with
+such good aim, that the arrow, whizzing through the air, struck the
+stock of La Bont�'s rifle, which was at his shoulder, and, glancing
+off, pierced his arm, inflicting, luckily, but a slight wound.
+Again the Indian turned in his course, the others encouraging him
+with loud war-whoops, and once more passing at still less distance,
+drew his arrow to the head. This time, however, the eagle eye of
+the white caught sight of the action, and suddenly rising from his
+knee as the Indian was approaching, hanging by his foot alone over
+the opposite side of the horse, he jumped towards the animal with
+outstretched arms and a loud yell, causing it to start so suddenly,
+and swerve from its course, that the Indian lost his foot-hold, and,
+after in vain struggling to regain his position, fell to the ground,
+but instantly rose upon his feet and gallantly confronted the
+mountaineer, striking his hand upon his brawny chest and shouting
+a loud whoop of defiance. In another instant the rifle of La Bont�
+had poured forth its contents; and the brave Indian, springing into
+the air, fell dead to the ground, just as the other trappers, who
+had heard the firing, galloped up to the spot, at sight of whom the
+Pawnees, with yells of disappointed vengeance, hastily retreated.
+
+That night La Bont� first lifted hair!
+
+A few days after they reached the point where the Platte divides
+into two great forks:--the northern one, stretching to the
+north-west, skirts the eastern base of the Black Hills, and sweeping
+round to the south rises in the vicinity of the mountain valley
+called the New Park, receiving the Laramie, Medicine Bow, and
+Sweet-Water creeks. The other, or "South Fork," strikes towards
+the mountains in a south-westerly direction, hugging the base of
+the main chain of the Rocky Mountains, and, fed by several small
+creeks, rises in the uplands of the Bayou Salado, near which is
+also the source of the Arkansa. To the forks of the Platte the
+valley of that river extends from three to five miles on each side,
+being enclosed by steep sandy bluffs, from the summits of which
+the prairies stretch away in broad undulating expanse to the north
+and south. The "bottom," as it is termed, is but thinly covered
+with timber, the cotton-woods being scattered only here and there;
+but some of the islands in the broad bed of the stream are well
+wooded, which leads to the inference that the trees on the banks
+have been felled by Indians who formerly frequented this river as
+a chosen hunting-ground. As during the long winters the pasture in
+the vicinity is scarce and withered, the Indians feed their horses
+on the bark of the sweet cotton-wood, upon which they subsist, and
+even fatten. Thus, wherever a village has been encamped, the trunks
+of these trees strew the ground, with their upper limbs and smaller
+branches peeled of their bark, and looking as white and smooth as if
+scraped with a knife.
+
+On the forks, however, the timber is heavier and of greater variety,
+some of the creeks being well wooded with ash and cherry, which
+break the monotony of the everlasting cotton-wood.
+
+Dense masses of buffalo still continued to darken the plains, and
+numerous bands of wolves hovered round the outskirts of the vast
+herds, singling out the sick and wounded animals, and preying upon
+the calves whom the rifles and arrows of the hunters had bereaved
+of their mothers. The white wolf is the invariable attendant upon
+the buffalo; and when one of these persevering animals is seen,
+it is certain sign that buffalo are not far distant. Besides the
+buffalo wolf, there are four distinct varieties common to the
+plains, and all more or less attendant upon the buffalo. These are
+the black, the gray, the brown, and last and least the _coyote_,
+or _cayeute_ of the mountaineers, the "_wach-unkam[)a]net_,"
+or "medicine wolf" of the Indians, who hold the latter animal in
+reverential awe. This little wolf, whose fur is of great thickness
+and beauty, although of diminutive size, is wonderfully sagacious,
+and makes up by cunning what it wants in physical strength. In
+bands of from three to thirty they will not unfrequently station
+themselves along the "runs" of the deer and the antelope, extending
+their line for many miles,--and the quarry being started, each
+wolf will follow in pursuit until tired, when it relinquishes the
+chase to another relay, following slowly after until the animal is
+fairly run down, when all hurry to the spot and speedily consume
+the carcass. The cayeute, however, is often made a tool of by his
+larger brethren, unless, indeed, he acts from motives of spontaneous
+charity. When a hunter has slaughtered game, and is in the act
+of butchering it, these little wolves sit patiently at a short
+distance from the scene of operations, while at a more respectful
+one the larger wolves (the white or gray) lope hungrily around,
+licking their chops in hungry expectation. Not unfrequently the
+hunter throws a piece of meat towards the smaller one, who seizes it
+immediately, and runs off with the morsel in his mouth. Before he
+gets many yards with his prize, the large wolf pounces with a growl
+upon him, and the cayeute, dropping the meat, returns to his former
+position, and will continue his act as long as the hunter pleases to
+supply him.
+
+Wolves are so common on the plains and in the mountains, that the
+hunter never cares to throw away a charge of ammunition upon them,
+although the ravenous animals are a constant source of annoyance to
+him, creeping to the camp-fire at night, and gnawing his saddles
+and _apishamores_, eating the skin ropes which secure the horses
+and mules to their pickets, and even their very hobbles, and not
+unfrequently killing or entirely disabling the animals themselves.
+
+Round the camp, during the night, the cayeute keeps unremitting
+watch, and the traveller not unfrequently starts from his bed with
+affright, as the mournful and unearthly chiding of the wolf breaks
+suddenly upon his ear: the long-drawn howl being taken up by others
+of the band, until it dies away in the distance, as some straggler
+passing within hearing answers to the note, and howls as he lopes
+away.
+
+Our party crossed the south fork about ten miles from its juncture
+with the main stream, and then, passing the prairie, struck the
+north fork a day's travel from the other. At the mouth of an
+ash-timbered creek they came upon Indian "sign," and, as now they
+were in the vicinity of the treacherous Sioux, they moved along
+with additional caution, Frapp and Gonneville, two experienced
+mountaineers, always heading the advance.
+
+About noon they had crossed over to the left bank of the fork,
+intending to camp on a large creek where some fresh beaver "sign"
+had attracted the attention of some of the trappers; and as, on
+further examination, it appeared that two or three lodges of that
+animal were not far distant, it was determined to remain here a day
+or two, and set their traps.
+
+Gonneville, old Luke, and La Bont�, had started up the creek, and
+were carefully examining the banks for "sign," when the former, who
+was in front, suddenly paused, and looking intently up the stream,
+held up his hand to his companions to signal them to stop.
+
+Luke and La Bont� both followed the direction of the trapper's
+intent and fixed gaze. The former uttered in a suppressed tone
+the expressive exclamation, Wagh!--the latter saw nothing but a
+wood-duck swimming swiftly down the stream, followed by her downy
+progeny.
+
+Gonneville turned his head, and extending his arm twice with a
+forward motion up the creek, whispered--"Les sauvages."
+
+"Injuns, sure, and Sioux at that," answered Luke.
+
+Still La Bont� looked, but nothing met his view but the duck with
+her brood, now rapidly approaching; and as he gazed, the bird
+suddenly took wing, and, flapping on the water, flew a short
+distance down the stream and once more settled on it.
+
+"Injuns?" he asked; "where are they?"
+
+"Whar?" repeated old Luke, striking the flint of his rifle, and
+opening the pan to examine the priming. "What brings a duck
+a-streakin it down stream, if humans aint behint her? and who's thar
+in these diggins but Injuns, and the worst kind; and we'd better
+push to camp, I'm thinking, if we mean to save our hair."
+
+"Sign" sufficient, indeed, it was to all the trappers, who, on being
+apprised of it, instantly drove in their animals, and picketed
+them; and hardly had they done so when a band of Indians made their
+appearance on the banks of the creek, from whence they galloped to
+the bluff which overlooked the camp at the distance of about six
+hundred yards; and crowning this, in number some forty or more,
+commenced brandishing their spears and guns, and whooping loud
+yells of defiance. The trappers had formed a little breast-work of
+their packs, forming a semicircle, the chord of which was made by
+the animals standing in a line, side by side, closely picketed and
+hobbled. Behind this defence stood the mountaineers, rifle in hand,
+and silent and determined. The Indians presently descended the bluff
+on foot, leaving their animals in charge of a few of the party, and,
+scattering, advanced under cover of the sage bushes which dotted
+the bottom, to about two hundred yards of the whites. Then a chief
+advanced before the rest, and made the sign for a talk with the
+Long-knives, which led to a consultation amongst the latter, as to
+the policy of acceding to it. They were in doubts as to the nation
+these Indians belonged to, some bands of the Sioux being friendly,
+and others bitterly hostile to the whites.
+
+Gonneville, who spoke the Sioux language, and was well acquainted
+with the nation, affirmed they belonged to a band called the
+Yanka-taus, well known to be the most evil-disposed of that
+treacherous nation; another of the party maintaining that they were
+Brul�s, and that the chief advancing towards them was the well-known
+Tah-sha-tunga or Bull Tail, a most friendly chief of that tribe.
+The majority, however, trusted to Gonneville, and he volunteered to
+go out to meet the Indian, and hear what he had to say. Divesting
+himself of all arms save his butcher-knife, he advanced towards
+the savage, who awaited his approach, enveloped in the folds of
+his blanket. At a glance he knew him to be a Yanka-tau, from the
+peculiar make of his moccassins, and the way in which his face was
+daubed with paint.
+
+"Howgh!" exclaimed both as they met; and, after a silence of a few
+moments, the Indian spoke, asking--"Why the Long-knives hid behind
+their packs, when his band approached? Were they afraid, or were
+they preparing a dog-feast to entertain their friends? That the
+whites were passing through his country, burning his wood, drinking
+his water, and killing his game; but he knew that they had now come
+to pay for the mischief they had done, and that the mules and horses
+they had brought with them were intended as a present to their red
+friends.
+
+"He was Mah-to-ga-shane," he said, "the Brave Bear: his tongue was
+short, but his arm long; and he loved rather to speak with his bow
+and his lance, than with the weapon of a squaw. He had said it: the
+Long-knives had horses with them and mules; and these were for him,
+he knew, and for his 'braves.' Let the White-face go back to his
+people and return with the animals, or he, the 'Brave Bear,' would
+have to come and take them; and his young men would get mad and
+would feel blood in their eyes; and then he would have no power over
+them; and the whites would have to 'go under.'"
+
+The trapper answered shortly.--"The Long-knives," he said, "had
+brought the horses for themselves--their hearts were big, but not
+towards the Yanka-taus: and if they had to give up their animals, it
+would be to _men_ and not _squaws_. They were not 'wah-keitcha,'[4]
+(French engag�s) but Long-knives; and, however short were the
+tongues of the Yanka-taus, theirs were still shorter, and their
+rifles longer. The Yanka-taus were dogs and squaws, and the
+Long-knives spat upon them."
+
+  [4] The French Canadians are called _wah-keitcha_--"bad
+  medicine"--by the Indians, who account them treacherous and
+  vindictive, and at the same time less daring than the American
+  hunters.
+
+Saying this, the trapper turned his back and rejoined his
+companions; whilst the Indian slowly proceeded to his people,
+who, on learning the contemptuous way in which their threats had
+been treated, testified their anger with loud yells; and, seeking
+whatever cover was afforded, commenced a scattering volley upon the
+camp of the mountaineers. The latter reserved their fire, treating
+with cool indifference the balls which began to rattle about them;
+but as the Indians, emboldened by this apparent inaction, rushed for
+a closer position, and exposed their bodies within a long range,
+half-a-dozen rifles rang from the assailed, and two Indians fell
+dead, one or two more being wounded. As yet, not one of the whites
+had been touched, but several of the animals had received wounds
+from the enemy's fire of balls and arrows. Indeed, the Indians
+remained at too great a distance to render the volleys from their
+crazy fusees any thing like effectual, and had to raise their pieces
+considerably to make their bullets reach as far as the camp. After
+having lost three of their band killed outright, and many more being
+wounded, their fire began to slacken, and they drew off to a greater
+distance, evidently resolved to beat a retreat; and retiring to
+the bluff, discharged their pieces in a last volley, mounted their
+horses and galloped off, carrying their wounded with them. This last
+volley, however, although intended as a mere bravado, unfortunately
+proved fatal to one of the whites. Gonneville, at the moment, was
+standing on one of the packs, in order to get an uninterrupted
+sight for a last shot, when one of the random bullets struck him
+in the breast. La Bont� caught him in his arms as he was about to
+fall, and, laying the wounded trapper gently on the ground,--they
+proceeded to strip him of his buckskin hunting-frock, to examine
+the wound. A glance was sufficient to convince his companions that
+the blow was mortal. The ball had passed through the lungs; and in
+a few moments the throat of the wounded man began to swell, as the
+choking blood ascended, and turned a livid blue colour. But a few
+drops of purple blood trickled from the wound,--a fatal sign,--and
+the eyes of the mountaineer were already glazing with death's icy
+touch. His hand still grasped the barrel of his rifle, which had
+done good service in the fray. Anon he essayed to speak, but, choked
+with blood, only a few inarticulate words reached the ears of his
+companions, who were bending over him.
+
+"Rubbed--out--at--last," they heard him say, the words gurgling in
+his blood-filled throat; and opening his eyes once more, and looking
+upwards to take a last look at the bright sun, the trapper turned
+gently on his side and breathed his last sigh.
+
+With no other tools than their scalp-knives, the hunters dug a
+grave on the banks of the creek; and whilst some were engaged in
+this work, others sought the bodies of the Indians they had slain
+in the attack, and presently returned with three reeking scalps,
+the trophies of the fight. The body of the mountaineer was then
+wrapped in a buffalo robe, the scalps being placed on the dead man's
+breast, laid in the shallow grave, and quickly covered--without a
+word of prayer, or sigh of grief; for, however much his companions
+may have felt, not a word escaped them; although the bitten lip and
+frowning brow told tale of anger more than sorrow, and vowed--what
+they thought would better please the spirit of the dead man than
+sorrow--lasting revenge.
+
+Trampling down the earth which filled the grave, they placed upon
+it a pile of heavy stones; and packing their mules once more, and
+taking a last look of their comrade's lonely resting-place, they
+turned their backs upon the stream, which has ever since been known
+as "Gonneville's Creek."
+
+If the reader casts his eye over any of the recent maps of the
+western country, which detail the features of the regions embracing
+the Rocky Mountains, and the vast prairies at their bases, he will
+not fail to observe that many of the creeks or smaller streams which
+feed the larger rivers,--as the Missouri, Platte, and Arkansa--are
+called by familiar proper names, both English and French. These
+are invariably christened after some unfortunate trapper, killed
+there in Indian fight; or treacherously slaughtered by the lurking
+savages, while engaged in trapping beaver on the stream. Thus
+alone is the memory of these hardy men perpetuated, at least of
+those whose fate is ascertained: for many, in every season, never
+return from their hunting expeditions, having met a sudden death
+from Indians, or a more lingering fate from accident or disease
+in some of the lonely gorges of the mountains, where no footfall
+save their own, or the heavy tread of grizzly bear, disturbs the
+unbroken silence of these awful solitudes. Then, as many winters
+pass without some old familiar faces making their appearance at the
+merry rendezvous, their long protracted absence may perhaps occasion
+such remarks, as to where such and such a mountain worthy can have
+betaken himself, to which the casual rejoinder of "Gone under,
+maybe," too often gives a short but certain answer.
+
+In all the philosophy of hardened hearts, our hunters turned from
+the spot where the unmourned trapper met his death. La Bont�,
+however, not yet entirely steeled by mountain life to a perfect
+indifference to human feeling, drew his hard hand across his eye,
+as the unbidden tear rose from his rough but kindly heart. He could
+not forget so soon the comrade they had lost, the companionship in
+the hunt or over the cheerful camp-fire, the narrator of many a
+tale of dangers past, of sufferings from hunger, cold, and thirst,
+and from untended wounds, of Indian perils, and of a life spent in
+such vicissitudes. One tear dropped from the young hunter's eye, and
+rolled down his cheek--the last for many a long year.
+
+In the forks of the northern branch of the Platte, formed by the
+junction of the Laramie, they found a big village of the Sioux
+encamped near the station of one of the fur companies. Here the
+party broke up; many, finding the alcohol of the traders an
+impediment to their further progress, remained some time in the
+vicinity, while La Bont�, Luke, and a trapper named Marcelline,
+started in a few days to the mountains, to trap on Sweet Water
+and Medicine Bow. They had leisure, however, to observe all the
+rascalities connected with the Indian trade, although at this season
+(August) hardly commenced. However, a band of Indians having come in
+with several packs of last year's robes, and being anxious to start
+speedily on their return, a trader from one of the forts had erected
+his lodge in the village.
+
+Here, he set to work immediately to induce the Indians to trade.
+First, a chief appointed three "soldiers" to guard the trader's
+lodge from intrusion; and who, amongst the thieving fraternity,
+can be invariably trusted. Then the Indians were invited to have a
+drink--a taste of the fire-water being given to all to incite them
+to trade. As the crowd presses upon the entrance to the lodge, and
+those in rear become impatient, some large-mouthed possessor of many
+friends, who has received a portion of the spirit, makes his way,
+with his mouth full of the liquor and cheeks distended, through
+the throng, and is instantly surrounded by his particular friends.
+Drawing the face of each, by turns, near his own, he squirts a small
+quantity into his open mouth, until the supply is exhausted, when he
+returns for more, and repeats the generous distribution.
+
+When paying for the robes, the traders, in measuring out the liquor
+in a tin half-pint cup, thrust their thumbs or the four fingers
+of the hand into the measure, in order that it may contain the
+less, or not unfrequently fill the bottom with melted buffalo fat,
+with the same object. So greedy are the Indians, that they never
+discover the cheat, and once under the influence of the liquor,
+cannot distinguish between the first cup of comparatively strong
+spirit, and the following ones diluted five hundred per cent, and
+poisonously drugged to boot.
+
+Scenes of drunkenness, riot, and bloodshed last until the trade
+is over, which in the winter occupies several weeks, during which
+period the Indians present the appearance, under the demoralising
+influence of the liquor, of demons rather than men.
+
+
+
+
+AMERICAN THOUGHTS ON EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS.
+
+
+  _Boston, May 1848._
+
+A thousand leagues of ocean, my Basil, are indeed between us, but it
+is no longer right to reckon distances by leagues. Time is your only
+measure. I know of a gentleman who had a home in Paris, while Paris
+was capable of homes, and he came every year across the Atlantic,
+only to fish for trout. Why do you stare? You know very well that
+you have often waited a fortnight for a good day to go a-fishing.
+Come, then, pack up your slender reed, and spend such a fortnight
+in a steamer. By God's favour you shall be the better for sea air;
+and in two weeks from Liverpool, you shall find yourself on the
+shores of a lake in the interior of the State of New York, where,
+since the fifth day of the creation, the trout have apparently been
+multiplying in a manner that would astonish a Malthus. Such is now
+that dissociable ocean, which was once thought too great a waste of
+waters to be passed by colonial members of parliament representing
+the provinces of America. "_Opposuit Natura_;" said Burke, "I cannot
+remove the eternal barriers of the creation." But Burke forgot his
+Greek:--
+
+"+Polla ta deina, kouden anthr�pou deinoteron pelei; touto kai poliou
+peran pontou cheimeri� not� ch�rei, peribrychioisi per�n ep'
+oidmasi;+"
+
+I know it is an old saw, but it is so freshened by the modern
+instance of steamers every week, that it has become quotable once
+more; and I have almost a mind to go on with the chorus, and show
+that Sophocles may be fairly rendered in favour of railways and
+iron-steeds. But the telegraph, Basil! I must even quote a bit of
+English for that. As gentle Cowper saith:--
+
+    "The tempest itself lags behind,
+     And the swift-wing'd arrows of light!"
+
+The wires are already stretched from Massachusetts, and almost
+from Halifax to the Gulf of Mexico. A spark here, and the lettered
+bulletin is reeling off in Louisiana! The fresh news will,
+hereafter, be hawked in the streets of Boston and along the wharves
+of New Orleans in the same hour. It will soon be sent farther
+still; and a British fleet in the Pacific may be served with orders
+from the Admiralty Board, not two weeks old. We are fairly in
+hand-shaking neighbourhood. I remember when European intelligence
+came to us rather as history than as news. It is not so now. While
+emotion is yet warm with you, it sets our own hearts throbbing. We,
+too, are, in the present tense, with Europe; for the revolutions
+of peace have been more wonderful than those of warfare. They have
+reunited what strife had sundered, and rendered England and America
+again one family.
+
+Talking of revolutions,--how hot the noon of the century is growing!
+You will allow, dear Basil, that we in America, are well situated
+to be lookers on. With all the security of distance, we have the
+advantages of nearness. You are on the stage--we are in the boxes.
+You go behind the scenes, and see the wire-working and machinery,
+but we get the effect of the spectacle. The great revolutionary
+drama is before us, and we can behold it calmly; interested, but not
+involved. For a devout or philosophical spectator, America is the
+true observatory. Here we can watch "the great Babel, and not feel
+the crowd." It is our own fault if, with such advantages, we do not
+anticipate the judgment of future ages, and arrive instinctively at
+conclusions which those who share the tumult itself must ordinarily
+learn in the soberness of after-thoughts, or, perhaps, by a dear
+experience.
+
+Did you ask how the doings in France appear in republican eyes?
+And pray what do you expect me to answer? You appear to think
+republicanism a specific instead of a generic term, and to expect
+us to hail the French as our kindred. As well might I suppose that
+your monarchical sympathies deeply interest you in the autocracy of
+Dahomey and D�rfur. A boy may play with a monkey, without admiring
+him; and although the monkey is a biped without feathers, the boy
+would not like to have him taken for a younger brother. Believe
+me, we are not yet ready to claim fraternity with the Provisional
+Government. _How we apples swim_, seems to be their salutation to
+America; but, for one, I reject the odorous impeachment. No one is
+very cordial, as yet, in returning it. There is a general gaping and
+staring; but the prevailing disposition towards France is to wait
+and see if she will be decent. You will agree with me, that this
+caution is creditable to the _Model Republic_.
+
+In the spectacle before us, believe me, then, we know how to
+distinguish the harlequin from the hero, and are not in danger
+of clapping hands at the buffoonery of Paris, when we have just
+been charmed by the solemn buskin in which London came upon the
+stage--reluctant to play her part, but prepared to go through it
+nobly. A French melodrama, of men in smocks chanting _Mourir pour la
+Patrie_, or priests, in defiled surplices, asperging and incensing
+May-poles, must of course suit the tastes of the groundlings; but
+such inexplicable dumb-shows are generally understood to be only
+the prelude to something tragic that is coming. For one, I look
+for solemn monologues from Pio Nono and Lamartine; and, by-and-by,
+expect a scene between the Soldan and the Czar. I do not look
+without feelings of awe, for I am sure it is the shadow of GOD'S own
+hand that is now passing over the nations. It is He that says, as of
+old, "remove the diadem and take off the crown; exalt him that is
+low, and abase him that is high." I am glad that others recognise
+his footsteps in the earth, and therefore was pleased with that
+motto lately quoted in Maga, from St Augustine--"GOD is patient,
+because He is eternal."
+
+For seventeen years we have been watching the great political
+Humpty-Dumpty, in his efforts to come to an equilibrium, and to
+stand firm in his place; and the end is, that Humpty-Dumpty is
+fallen, according to the oracular rhyme of Mother Goose. What
+shall we say of him, except that he was barricaded in, and has
+been barricaded out? Laugh as we may at the undefinableness
+of legitimacy, one feels that the lack of it makes a great
+difference in our disposition towards a discrowned king. Still,
+Louis-Philippe is treated with much forbearance, and men think of
+his hoar hairs and his eventful life. In one of our newspapers,
+a generous word has been spoken for his government, as about the
+best that France deserved, and his best measures have been reviewed
+with praise. Still, he is much disliked in America. One of his
+earliest Claremonts was with us; and when Lafayette made him a
+king, Americans felt as if they had a right to be pleased with his
+accession. But his quarrel with his benefactor turned the feeling
+strongly against him, for Lafayette was revered among us to the
+hour of his death. I think there is a general satisfaction with
+the fall of the Orleans dynasty; but it certainly has not been
+malicious or spiteful. An eminent American, who has lived long in
+Paris, has written two letters in the leading democratic newspaper
+of New York, in which the fallen monarch is more severely handled
+than he has been elsewhere. He is there said to be a much overrated
+man--possessed of no great talents, except those which enable him
+to dissimulate with the utmost cunning, and to manage with the
+basest perfidy. The writer, nevertheless, has no confidence in
+the revolution as having destroyed the monarchy; and quotes with
+approbation a sentiment which he says was advanced in conversation
+with himself, so long ago as 1830, by Odillon Barrot,--"_Enfin,
+monsieur, la France a besoin de se sentir gouvern�e_." He thinks two
+things will work against the Duc de Bordeaux--that he has married an
+Austrian, and grown fat; yet he confidently predicts that Henry V.
+will one day ascend the throne of his ancestors. "As for a republic
+that is to go on harmoniously, and with any thing like tolerable
+quiet, law, and order," he concludes, "I hold it to be just as
+impracticable as it would be to set up a Doge of Venice and a
+Council of Ten in the State of New York. _We hear only the voices of
+the revolutionists_, the rest of the nation being temporarily mute.
+The day will come, however, when the last will speak."
+
+These sentiments are not singular among us. I am agreeably surprised
+by the great moderation of our people and of our press. When the
+tidings of the outbreak reached us, it produced excitement, of
+course; but there was no echo of the French howl, and remarkably
+little enthusiasm, all things considered. You have seen reprinted in
+England some of the most foolish things that were said in our most
+worthless prints. The press in general behaved with great reserve
+and caution. Successive steamers brought continual abatements to
+the degree of confidence, or hope, that had been inspired in the
+minds of the more ardent; and so general was the candour of the
+newspapers, that when those of the Clay party were pettishly accused
+of a sympathy with tyranny, the charge was easily met by quotations
+from democratic newspapers, equally liable to the imputation, if a
+manly reprobation of revolutionary misrule and excess be sufficient
+to prove it. The truth is, our country was caught in the trap in
+1792. Then, the pulpit and the press strove together in glorifying
+France; and the remorse and burning shame that were the consequence,
+have left a very salutary impression.
+
+In fact, the violent democracy of Paris is exerting a beneficial
+effect upon our people. We see the degrading spectacle, and learn to
+value ourselves for a love of law and order. There is a reluctance
+to reduce ourselves to the level of such a republic as has sprung up
+like a mushroom in a night, and is likely to perish in the same way.
+Our own revolution was not one of drunken riot, and street-singing
+blouse-men: our constitution is not a mere poetical theory of
+liberty and equality, nor a socialist's dream of brotherhood. We
+now learn the secret of our strength, and of that comparative
+durability which has almost surprised ourselves. We are, after
+all, a transplanted slip of old England; nor are we so essentially
+changed, my Basil, as even you imagine. The spirit of our people
+is indeed democratic; but the spirit of our constitution is imbued
+with a stronger element. The facts concerning it will enable you
+to see one secret of our comparative success, and to judge whether
+France can possibly come to any thing as good. The founders of this
+republic were not Frenchmen, but Englishmen; I mean they were of
+English stock, and had learned all their notions of liberty from the
+history of England. Each province of America had taken shape under
+the British constitution; and when the provinces became independent,
+the general government was organised in such wise as to supply the
+place of that constitution. Its founders did not frame a new and
+untried constitution, a _priori_, according to their own schemes;
+they simply modified the great principles of British constitutional
+law to suit a new state of things, and a peculiar people. A
+monarchy was out of the question; but they did not intend to make a
+democracy. They only made a republic. The democratic spirit came in
+with Jefferson and French politics at the beginning of the present
+century. It has become dominant, but by no means triumphant; and
+its great obstacle has been the constitution. In the several states
+it has changed the constitutions one after the other, introducing
+universal suffrage, and other democratic features. But the national
+constitution has not been so easily reached; and it is the strength
+of the great party with which Clay and Webster are identified, and
+which is a constant check on the popular party. It is republican,
+but not simply democratic. The executive magistracy is elective;
+but the electors are not the people, directly, but electoral
+colleges, appointed by the several states; and the office itself is
+endowed with prerogatives, some of which are more unlimited than
+the corresponding rights of the British crown. Our senate is a mere
+modification of the House of Lords: it is a body more select than
+the lower house, and not so immediately responsible to constituents;
+and its practical working shows the great importance of such a
+balance-wheel in any government. There is no working without it, in
+spite of what your Roebucks may say. The House of Commons reappears
+in our House of Representatives, which, like its great original, is
+the safety-valve of popular feeling, and gives sonorous vent to a
+mighty pressure of steam and vapour, which would otherwise blow us
+to atoms, with a much less endurable noise. The whole fabric of our
+law is a precious patrimony derived, with our blood, from England.
+Our new states are filling up with emigrants from the continent
+of Europe, but they all adopt the law of their older sisters; and
+thus the institutions of the immortal Alfred may be found among the
+Swedes and Danes of Wisconsin. These, then, are the elements of
+our strength; and you observe they partake of the strength of the
+British empire, which has been legitimately and naturally imparted
+to us, like the mother's life-blood to the daughter of her womb. We
+have indeed characteristic peculiarities. We have tried some new
+experiments; but let not France suppose she can imitate them. We are
+a new country, a sparse population, and our people have their heads
+full of subduing the soil, and setting water-wheels in streams, and
+making roads and canals. We have no natural taste for insurrection
+and confusion, for we have nobody that is idle enough to want such
+work. Our new wine, then, has been put into new bottles; and the
+fool that attempts to decant it into the old vessels of Europe, will
+ruin it and them together.
+
+Our newspapers have pointed out another secret of our strength,
+which France cannot possibly enjoy. In spite of that wild prophecy
+of Lady Hester Stanhope to Lamartine--so much of which has come
+true--Paris is France, and will be France while France holds
+together. The city of Washington is not America; and its great acres
+of unoccupied building lots are the best thing about it. The State
+governments, which could not have been planned beforehand, but are a
+natural product of old events--which dispose of all local matters,
+and prevent sectional jealousies, which divide and balance power,
+and _satisfy small ambition_,--these are the helps, without which
+our national existence could not have been prolonged beyond the
+lifetime of Washington himself. The threatened disturbance of the
+admirable equilibrium which has heretofore been maintained between
+North and South, and East and West, by the introduction of Mexican
+and Texan states, and the power which it will throw into the hands
+of a few persons at the seat of government, is even now our most
+alarming danger. We know, from what we see among ourselves, that
+governments must take form, not from human devices, but from GOD'S
+providences. We ourselves are the results of circumstances: no
+scheming patriot could have made us what we are; and no imitative
+Frenchman can give to his country a government like ours; nor, if
+he could, would it survive beyond the lifetime of some individual,
+whose popularity would supply a temporary strength to its essential
+weakness. An imported constitution must be a sickly one, in any
+country on earth.
+
+For us, then, there is a legitimacy in our institutions which makes
+them durable, and dear to all classes of our people. But to be loyal
+to our own republic is by no means to be committed to universal
+republicanism, far less to be delighted with universal anarchy.
+You must pardon our tastes. We are young, and we think a jacket
+and shako becoming. We wear our appropriate costume as gracefully
+as we can. We are yet the growing, perhaps the awkward, but still
+the active boy. But when Europe befools itself, in its dotage, with
+republican attire, we lads have a right to laugh. It will do for us
+to play leap-frog, or cut any other caper that we choose; but who
+can restrain derision when corpulent imbecility assumes an unskirted
+coat, and submits its uncovered proportions to hootings and to
+kicks, or throws a ponderous summersault that less demonstrates
+agility than exposes nakedness!
+
+I speak for myself, and for many, very many of my countrymen. Our
+mere populace are of course possessed with the idea that a universal
+Yankee-doodle is the panacea for all the miseries of the world. It
+has been told them so often by demagogues, that they are pardonable.
+But even they would probably allow that the _Chinese_, for instance,
+are not yet quite ready for liberty-poles and ballet-boxes, and by
+degrees might be brought to confess as much for any country less
+remarkable and astonishing than our own. But there is a solid mass
+of good sense among us that is not so deceived. It consists of those
+who would rejoice to see a rational republic in France, or in any
+other country; but who know that, with the exception perhaps of
+Holland, such a thing is impossible, and that, in France, reason
+is more likely to reappear as the divinified harlot of Notre Dame
+than in any more respectable form. As to Great Britain, even our
+schoolboys have learned that, with all the stability of empire,
+it unites the freedom of a republic; and in spite of some feeling
+against John Bull, I scarcely know the man who would not be sorry
+to see it suddenly or violently revolutionised. On Irish affairs
+opinion is not so sane among us. Few of us know any thing about
+them; and for the sake of the starving peasantry of Ireland, there
+is some sympathy with its turbulent Gracchi. Believe it, the general
+tone of sentiment on this side the Atlantic, among reflecting men,
+is far more conservative than you imagine. Indeed, all classes
+stand amazed at the democracy of Europe. Our wildest enthusiasts
+are outdone, even by some who sit in the House of Commons; and the
+rampant socialism of Paris is as unlike the worst excesses of our
+elections, as the ferocity of a tiger is unlike the playfulness of
+a kitten. Young as we are, we are better mannered; and I must say,
+dear Basil, that when the older nations of the world are allowing
+themselves such license, we have a right to regard ourselves as
+taking new rank, and deserving more credit than has heretofore been
+given us, as, after all, a law-loving and law-maintaining people.
+
+You will say, as was said to the trumpeter in �sop--"No, no,--you
+make all the mischief; others cut throats, but you have set them
+on." But is the democratic spirit really of American origin?
+Our Plymouth orators--the men who annually glorify our earliest
+colonists--usually trace it to the Puritans, and through them to
+Geneva. At all events, it now infects the world, and those are
+the happy and the permanent governments which are prepared for
+its violence, by constitutional vents and floodgates. It is not
+to be stifled, or dammed up. We believe, therefore, that our own
+government is the best for ourselves, and few of us have any fear
+for that of England. On British matters we do not feel bound to
+judge by our own experiences. We are free to theorise on broader
+principles; and many of us form our own opinions, not as cool
+and critical foreigners, but as having a deep interest in the
+preservation of the institutions of our ancestors. Why should we
+not? The study of history carries us, at once, beyond the narrow
+limits of threescore years and ten, which is the age of our
+national existence, and as soon as we pass that boundary we too
+are Britons. The blood of our forefathers ran in English veins, or
+flowed for British freedom and sovereignty. This fact is enough to
+make our educated and reflecting men speculatively conservative
+as to British politics. We know the past, and do not feel the
+party-heats of the present in England. Hence I am far from being
+alone among my countrymen, in looking at English matters with an
+English heart. Even our commercial class have a reason for wishing
+internal peace and prosperity to England; and I believe there
+is generally something better than selfishness in the prevalent
+good-will toward her. I wish you could have watched, as I did, the
+feelings of our whole people, while lately, between the arrivals
+of two steamers, there was a solemn feeling of surprise as to what
+would be the results of the Chartist demonstration! Till the news
+came, the stoutest of us held our breath. I assure you, Basil, the
+peril of England was observed with a deep anxiety. During all that
+time I met not a respectable man who wished to see a revolutionary
+result. It was the talk of all circles. Our merchants trembled for
+England; our scholars hoped for her; a clerical gentleman assured
+me that he daily prayed for her. The press very generally predicted
+a triumph of order, but there were some specimens of newspaper
+literature that ventured an opposite augury. I wish you could have
+seen this city when the result was known. The news was received with
+a thrill. There was some laughing at the parturient mountain and
+the still-born mouse, but a graver cheerfulness was the reigning
+emotion. We deeply felt that, by the mercy of God, the world had
+been spared from a conflagration which the match of a madman could
+light, but which only another deluge could extinguish. For one, I
+was as a watcher by the sea-side, who, after a night of tempest,
+waits for the fog to rise, and then thanks God to see the good old
+ship coming home, in season, her masts all standing, and her flag
+untorn.
+
+I had felt fears, my Basil. What was not imaginable, when Europe
+presented the appearance of a table on which empires had fallen
+in a day, like card-houses blown down by the breath of children!
+I knew that neither France, nor Prussia, nor Austria, nor Italy,
+were any thing like England, which is founded on a rock, and knit
+together by joints and bands: but I felt that England is no longer
+what she was. With a Whig government she is never herself.[5] The
+Whigs are more than half Frenchmen. I tell you you seem to me not
+half enough afraid of your Whigs; they are worse than your Radicals.
+You show some uneasiness under the Jewish Disabilities Bill, but
+I wish you could see it as it strikes a looker-on. If time has on
+you the effect which distance has on me, you will yet look back on
+that measure as you now look back on the great mistake of 1829.
+It will haunt you like a nightmare, and you will regard it with
+less of anger than of shame and remorse; with the deep conviction
+that, if the friends of the constitution had done their duty, it
+never would have disgraced a Christian state. True, the Whigs are
+responsible for inflicting the blow; but what has been done to avert
+it? So far as I know, nothing commensurate with the greatness of
+the evil. You seem to give way to it as only one of many inroads
+upon old proprieties, which are inevitable, and cannot be withstood.
+But is the unchristianising of the state to be spoken of side by
+side with even the destruction of colonies, and the discouragement
+of agriculture? As it strikes me, it is not a thing of a class, it
+stands out a portent, a harbinger, a phenomenon of its own kind. Not
+that it surprises me. From Lord John Russell nothing that argues
+fatuity and lack of political principle should surprise any one.
+To carry out the plans to which he has committed himself, he must
+consistently pander to infidels, foster heretics, and subsidise
+Jews. To the reforms of the last score of years, there could be no
+more fitting sequel than this coalition with a people loaded with
+the hereditary burthen of the saving blood of the Crucified. I only
+marvel that the bill goes on so slowly. The Baron should have been
+long since in his place, and the Easter holidays should have been
+disregarded, out of respect to his feelings. It is astonishing
+that he is not already an ecclesiastical commissioner. The times
+are not now as during a former French revolution, when a British
+statesman could say[6]--"the Jews in Change Alley have not yet
+dared to hint their hopes of a mortgage on the revenues belonging
+to the see of Canterbury." You are always praising your church,
+Basil, but allow me to ask, Why you may not live to see a Jewish
+rabbi nominated to a bishopric. As I understand it, the obsequious
+chapter would be obliged to perform the election, and close all by
+anthems to Almighty GOD, ascribing to Him the glory of a gift so
+felicitous and so auspicious to the church! It would not be the
+first time, I believe, that Lord John has set the _Te Deum_ of
+cathedrals going, like the whistles of a juggler's barrel-organ.
+Forgive me, Basil; I am not mocking the agonies of your church, but
+I am scorning a British minister that can use for her destruction
+the powers confided to him for her nourishment and defence. I
+have learned my notions of your politics from Edmund Burke, and I
+remember what he said in his _Reflections on the French Revolution
+of 1792_--for, by the way, revolutions in France must be always
+referred to by dates, and will soon be known, like policemen, by
+letters and numbers. "The men of England," said that great and
+honest man, "the men I mean of light and leading in England, would
+be ashamed, as of a silly deceitful trick, to profess any religion
+in name which, by their proceedings, they appear to contemn." Does
+not Lord John profess to be a Christian? I must caution you, too,
+against supposing that I dislike the Israelites. Far from it. In my
+own country I am glad that they labour under no disabilities, and I
+can testify to their good order, decency, and propriety of behaviour
+as citizens. But we have "no past at our back," and nothing in our
+system which demands a prior consideration. No, Basil--I honour a
+Jew, however much I may pity him. Crying old clothes, or lolling in
+a banker's chariot, the Jew is to me a man of sacred associations.
+And then--a Jewish gentleman--he makes me think at once of the sons
+of Maccab�us and all the Asmoneans; those Hebrews of the Hebrews,
+those Tories of Israel! What natural sympathy has a Jewish gentleman
+with a Whig? Were I merely covetous of votes I would say--let the
+Jews in! I could trust _their_ conscience; I could appeal to their
+own feelings; I would put it to them whether their liberalism
+would consent to eat pork with the Gentiles, or to call in the
+uncircumcised to make laws for the synagogue. We pity the blindness
+of the Jews that offered their thirty pieces of silver--but we do
+not despise them. Our contempt settles on the head of the Christian
+who consented to take them at the bargain.
+
+  [5] We fully agree with our correspondent as to the danger of
+  Whiggery in our councils, but are so far reconciled to the Whigs
+  being in office at the present crisis, by the knowledge that, had
+  they been in opposition, they would, to a certain extent, have
+  fraternised with French Republicans and English Chartists. Who could
+  doubt that such would have been the conduct of the men who headed
+  physical force processions, and hounded on window-breaking vagabonds
+  in the Reform riots of 1830? What amount of profligate partisanship
+  might not be expected from the men who, when thirsting for office,
+  solemnly denounced as unconstitutional and unjust the course pursued
+  by a conservative government towards O'Connell, which identical
+  course they now, when in power, adopt towards Mitchell, a much less
+  dangerous criminal?
+
+  [6] Burke's _Reflections on the French Revolution_.
+
+You speak of this Jew bill as the first step! Why, yes, the first
+step in tragedy; there was a former one in farce. There is Sir Moses
+Montefiore! Who made him a knight? "A Jewish knight," said I, at
+the time--"hear it, ye dry bones,--ye cross-legged effigies--ye
+Paladins--ye Templars! Hear it, Du-Bois-Gilbert,--hear it, Richard
+Coeur-de-Lion! Yes, and thou, too, old Roger de Coverley! Hear it,
+thou true old English knight; for they that bought thine old clothes
+now come for thine old spurs!" So said I--wondering that no one
+seemed to wonder. The nineteenth century had not time to stare.
+There was not even a London _Punch_ to laugh at such a _Judy_, and
+so Moses was belted and spurred, no man gainsaying; and knighthood,
+that was Sidney's once, is just the thing for Sir Peter Laurie now.
+
+And if a Jewish knight, why not a Jewish senator! True, there is
+something grand in the idea of a nation that never, since the
+Wittenagemote, has seen a lawgiver unbaptised; and then there is
+still a red cross in the flag of England; and there has been a
+pleasing notion that the Christian faith was part and parcel with
+the British constitution; and even we in America, averse to church
+and state, have long allowed ourselves to admire one exception
+to the rule, and to confess the majestic figure made among the
+nations by a Christian empire, shining forth in splendid contrast
+to surrounding kingdoms, some of them infidel and some of them
+superstitious, but she alone the witness to reasonable faith, and
+faithful reason. But who regards it in this light? Who among you
+stands up to warn his country of the glory that is departing?
+Who has said any thing in parliament at all adequate to the
+turning-point of a nation's religion? I have looked for some one to
+speak as Burke would have spoken, of "uncovering your nakedness,
+by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been
+your boast and comfort." I have longed to see his promise made
+good,--"_we shall never be such fools_ as to call in an enemy to
+the substance of any system, to remove its corruptions, to supply
+its defects, or to perfect its construction." I read _The Times_,
+but as yet I have looked in vain. A few honest remonstrances have
+indeed been ventured amid cries of _oh, oh!_ and vociferations of
+buck-toothed laughter from the benches that support the honourable
+members from Cottonburgh and Calicopolis. But who has stood up as
+for altars and fires? I hope, ere this reaches you, the question
+will be creditably answered. I hope the Christianity of England will
+not die without a struggle. I suspect it will be of no use, but I
+look yet for some John of Gaunt in the House of Lords. Imagine him,
+my Basil:--
+
+                      "This sceptred isle,
+    This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
+    Renown�d for her deeds as far from home
+    (For _Christian service_ and _true chivalry_)
+    As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
+    Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son;
+    This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
+    _Dear for her reputation through the world,
+    Is now--paun'd out to Jews!_"
+
+This is what ought to be said; and I look for it, if not from lords
+spiritual, then even from lords temporal. But surely it would well
+become the primate's mouth! Of course, it would do little good; but
+then the religion of England would fall at least dramatically. It
+would make a picture quite as good as the death of Chatham. Do you
+remember the lawn-sleeves in that picture? The bishops are "in at
+the death,"--but nothing more.
+
+But another steamer has come in with news; and France is all the
+talk. The elections are over; the _Mod�r�s_ have triumphed; the
+National Assembly has convened, and the Provisional Government is
+at an end. _Vive Lamartine!_ Of course the stock of the republic
+takes a rise, but holders are not firm. The bloodshed at Rouen,
+the _�meutes_ at Elboeuf and Limoges, and the threats of the
+_Communistes_, do not precisely inspire confidence. Still, we are
+so far surprised, and those who have predicted favourably for
+France grow a little more sanguine in their hopes. I am glad to
+say that Louis Blanc has no sympathisers here. All are convinced
+that Lamartine will make the best of it, and that, if he fails,
+the republic will be suffocated and expire in a stench. For one,
+it seems to me that Lamartine is not bad enough to encounter
+successfully the frantic malice of his opponents, and that their
+eventual success is certain. Already, things have very likely taken
+a decisive turn, and by the time this letter reaches you, the doings
+of the Assembly will have enabled you to conjecture whether the
+nation is going by the long way, or the short cut, to Henry Fifth.
+As all will be stale before you can read what I now write, I will
+not presume to predict the immediate results; but I am sure that the
+assembling of such a set as have been returned to the legislature,
+would be enough to blow up the strongest government on earth.
+Jew, Dominican, pastor and bishop, poet and butcher, all in their
+tricoloured sashes--was there ever such a full-blown tulip-bed of
+liberty, equality, and fraternity!
+
+The announcement of several clergymen as members of the Assembly
+reminds me that there has been some sickly sentiment among us,
+about the _piety_ that has been displayed in this revolution.
+In Boston we are favoured with some strange types of religions
+enthusiasm; in fact, the type of Christianity that prevails among
+us is peculiarly our own; and like our improvements in machinery,
+deserves the proverbial name of a "Boston notion." Emerson, who is
+now illuminating England, may give you some idea of what I mean;
+and a queer story that is told of one of his disciples, may furnish
+you with an explanation of the fact, that some men see religion
+in the sacking of the Tuileries. The youth was at the Opera to
+see a celebrated _danseuse_, and excited general attention by his
+somewhat extraordinary applause. His enthusiasm so transported
+him, that the emotions of his heart became unconsciously audible.
+As the dancer began to whirl, he cried, "_Ah, that is poetry!_" As
+she stretched her toe to the horizontal, he exclaimed, "_That's
+divinity!_" but when she proceeded to an evolution that forced
+the ladies to pay attention to their fans, he burst into the
+climax--"_That's religion!_" If this be caricature, the Emersonians
+richly deserve it. They are laughed at even in Boston. But they
+are not alone in thinking well of the piety of Paris, and arguing
+from it that there will be no reign of terror; as if there was not
+vastly more show of religion in the first revolution! If there is
+an archbishop of Paris now, there was formerly a Talleyrand for
+high-priest and master of ceremonies. Oh, but they rejoin with a
+story! When the blouses were gutting the palace of its pictures
+and marbles, they found, among other works of art, an image of the
+Crucified. As a blouseman was about to dash it to atoms, there was a
+cry, "Save it--save the great teacher of fraternity!" The crucifix
+was accordingly saved, and borne about the streets amid songs and
+curses, and, very appropriately, "with lanterns and torches."
+"_Ah, that's religion!_" says your Emersonian. So, when recreant
+priests baptise a liberty-pole, or join a procession of blouses,
+with crosses and censers, _that's divinity_, at least. Was ever
+hypocrisy so revolting! The nauseous mockery has its only parallel
+in the writings of George Sand, who makes a favourite hero and
+heroine betake themselves to an adulterous bed, after duly reciting
+their prayers, in which the absent husband is very affectionately
+remembered. If a revolution thus begun is not destined to go
+speedily through all the ripening and rotting of a godless anarchy,
+it is to be accounted for only on the principle that "He who is
+Eternal can wait." The old scene at Notre Dame may not be actually
+revived, and the Bible may not be literally dragged through Paris
+again tied to an ass's tail; but the undisguised atrocities of the
+first revolution may, after all, be exceeded by the smooth-faced
+blasphemies of that which has already degraded the world's Redeemer
+into the patron saint of insurrection, and the father of infidel
+fraternity.
+
+Poor Lamartine! Is this the man, my Basil, whom you once likened to
+Chateaubriand? _Quantum mutatus!_ I knew him, till lately, only as a
+poet and a traveller. He certainly went to Palestine with the spirit
+of a palmer. He bathed in Siloa with enthusiasm, and almost expired
+of feeling under the venerable olive-trees of Gethsemane.
+
+How Frenchy--how intensely French! mass in the morning, and weeping
+and sighing,--a revel before nightfall, and desperate gaming. And
+this man to be the Cromwell of the commonwealth? He could hardly
+have been the Milton, though it would have been more becoming. And
+what will be his career? It is a pity Lady Hester Stanhope was not
+permitted to consult his stars in full when he met her on Mount
+Lebanon, when she praised his handsome foot and arched instep,
+and told him he should be very important in the history of the
+world. Ah, how certainly he will yet lament, if he does not lament
+already, the fulfilment of the oracle! Such weird sisters as Lady
+Hester generally tell _only half_, leaving the rest to imagination
+and to time. But whether this Phaeton, who has grasped the reins,
+is to set the world on fire; whether he, in turn, is only to try
+the game of Humpty-Dumpty and to fall; or whether, even as I write
+this, he be not already under the foot of Louis Blanc and his
+_Communistes_,--what probabilities or improbabilities shall aid my
+conjecture? This thing only will I venture as my surmise, though not
+my hope, that kings shall reign again in France, as if Lamartine
+never lived: that tricoloured cockades shall be made no more, and
+lilies be cultivated again: that there will soon be longings for a
+sight of the _drapeau blanc_, and a prince of the sons of St Louis:
+and that, fat as he is, and Bourbon as he is, and half Austrian as
+he has made himself, Henry Duke of Bordeaux will soon be known as
+HENRI LE D�SIR�.
+
+  Yours ever, my dear Basil,
+
+  ERNEST.
+
+
+
+
+THE CAXTONS--PART IV.
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning,
+day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom, and purity,
+and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness
+of a happy child. I doubt if any man can be called 'old' so long as
+he is an early riser, and an early _walker_. And oh, youth!--take
+my word of it,--youth in dressing-gown and slippers, dawdling over
+breakfast at noon, is a very decrepid ghastly image of that youth
+which sees the sun blush over the mountains, and the dews sparkle
+upon blossoming hedgerows.
+
+Passing by my father's study, I was surprised to see the windows
+unclosed--surprised more, on looking in, to see him bending over
+his books--for I had never before known him study till after the
+morning meal. Students are not usually early risers, for students,
+alas! whatever their age, are rarely young. Yes; the great work must
+be getting on in serious earnest. It was no longer dalliance with
+learning: this was work.
+
+I passed through the gates into the road. A few of the cottages were
+giving signs of returning life; but it was not yet the hour for
+labour, and no "Good morning, sir," greeted me on the road. Suddenly
+at a turn, which an overhanging beech-tree had before concealed, I
+came full upon my Uncle Roland.
+
+"What! you, sir? So early? Hark, the clock is striking five!"
+
+"Not later! I have walked well for a lame man. It must be more than
+four miles to ---- and back."
+
+"You have been to ----: not on business? No soul would be up."
+
+"Yes, at inns there is always some one up. Ostlers never sleep! I
+have been to order my humble chaise and pair. I leave you to day,
+nephew."
+
+"Ah, uncle, we have offended you. It was my folly--that cursed
+print--"
+
+"Pooh!" said my uncle, quickly. "Offended me, boy! I defy you!" and
+he pressed my hand roughly.
+
+"Yet this sudden determination! It was but yesterday, at the Roman
+Camp, that you planned an excursion with my father to C---- Castle."
+
+"Never depend upon a whimsical man. I must be in London to-night."
+
+"And return to morrow?"
+
+"I know not when," said my uncle, gloomily; and he was silent
+for some moments. At length, leaning less lightly on my arm, he
+continued--"Young man, you have pleased me. I love that open saucy
+brow of yours, on which nature has written 'Trust me.' I love those
+clear eyes that look man manfully in the face. I must know more of
+you--much of you. You must come and see me some day or other in your
+ancestor's ruined keep."
+
+"Come! that I will. And you shall show me the old tower--"
+
+"And the traces of the out-works;" cried my uncle, flourishing his
+stick.
+
+"And the pedigree--"
+
+"Ay, and your great-great-grandfather's armour, which he wore at
+Marston Moor--"
+
+"Yes, and the brass plate in the church, uncle."
+
+"The deuce is in the boy! Come here--come here; I've three minds to
+break your head, sir!"
+
+"It is a pity somebody had not broken the rascally printer's, before
+he had the impudence to disgrace us by having a family, uncle."
+
+Captain Roland tried hard to frown, but he could not. "Pshaw!" said
+he, stopping, and taking snuff. "The world of the dead is wide; why
+should the ghosts jostle us?"
+
+"We can never escape the ghosts, uncle. They haunt us always. We
+cannot think or act, but the soul of some man, who has lived before,
+points the way. The dead never die, especially since--"
+
+"Since what, boy? you speak well."
+
+"Since our great ancestor introduced printing," said I, majestically.
+
+My uncle whistled "_Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre_."
+
+I had not the heart to plague him further.
+
+"Peace!" said I, creeping cautiously within the circle of the stick.
+
+"No! I forewarn you--"
+
+"Peace! and describe to me my little cousin, your pretty
+daughter--for pretty I am sure she is."
+
+"Peace," said my uncle, smiling. "But you must come and judge for
+yourself."
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Uncle Roland was gone. Before he went, he was closeted for an hour
+with my father, who then accompanied him to the gate; and we all
+crowded round him as he stepped into his chaise. When the Captain
+was gone, I tried to sound my father as to the cause of so sudden a
+departure. But my father was impenetrable in all that related to his
+brother's secrets. Whether or not the Captain had ever confided to
+him the cause of his displeasure with his son,--a mystery which much
+haunted me,--my father was mute on that score, both to my mother
+and myself. For two or three days, however, Mr Caxton was evidently
+unsettled. He did not even take to his great work; but walked much
+alone, or accompanied only by the duck, and without even a book in
+his hand. But by degrees the scholarly habits returned to him; my
+mother mended his pens, and the work went on.
+
+For my part, left much to myself, especially in the mornings, I
+began to muse restlessly over the future. Ungrateful that I was, the
+happiness of home ceased to content me. I heard afar the roar of the
+great world, and roved impatient by the shore.
+
+At length, one evening, my father, with some modest hums and ha's,
+and an-unaffected blush on his fair forehead, gratified a prayer
+frequently urged on him, and read me some portions of "the great
+Work." I cannot express the feelings this lecture created--they
+were something akin to awe. For the design of this book was so
+immense--and towards its execution, a learning so vast and various
+had administered--that it seemed to me as if a spirit had opened to
+me a new world, which had always been before my feet, but which my
+own human blindness had hitherto concealed from me. The unspeakable
+patience with which all these materials had been collected year
+after year--the ease with which now, by the calm power of genius,
+they seemed of themselves to fall into harmony and system--the
+unconscious humility with which the scholar exposed the stores of
+a laborious life;--all combined to rebuke my own restlessness and
+ambition, while they filled me with a pride in my father, which
+saved my wounded egotism from a pang. Here, indeed, was one of those
+books which embrace an existence; like the Dictionary of Bayle, or
+the History of Gibbon, or the _Fasti Hellenici_ of Clinton,--it
+was a book to which thousands of books had contributed, only to
+make the originality of the single mind more bold and clear. Into
+the furnace all vessels of gold, of all ages, had been cast, but
+from the mould came the new coin, with its single stamp. And
+happily, the subject of the work did not forbid to the writer the
+indulgence of his _na�ve_, peculiar irony of humour--so quiet, yet
+so profound. My father's book was the "History of Human Error."
+It was, therefore, the moral history of mankind, told with truth
+and earnestness, yet with an arch unmalignant smile. Sometimes,
+indeed, the smile drew tears. But in all true humour lies its germ,
+pathos. Oh! by the goddess Moria or Folly, but he was at home in
+his theme! He viewed man first in the savage state, preferring in
+this the positive accounts of voyagers and travellers, to the vague
+myths of antiquity, and the dreams of speculators on our pristine
+state. From Australia and Abyssinia, he drew pictures of mortality
+unadorned, as lively as if he had lived amongst Bushmen and savages
+all his life. Then he crossed over the Atlantic, and brought before
+you the American Indian, with his noble nature, struggling into
+the dawn of civilisation, when friend Penn cheated him out of his
+birthright, and the Anglo-Saxon drove him back into darkness. He
+showed both analogy and contrast between this specimen of our kind,
+and others equally apart from the extremes of the savage state and
+the cultured. The Arab in his tent, the Teuton in his forests, the
+Greenlander in his boat, the Fin in his rein-deer car. Up sprang
+the rude gods of the north, and the resuscitated Druidism, passing
+from its earliest templeless belief into the later corruptions of
+crommell and idol. Up sprang, by their side, the Saturn of the
+Phoenicians, the mystic Budh of India, the elementary deities of the
+Pelasgian, the Naith and Serapis of Egypt, the Ormuzd of Persia, the
+Bel of Babylon, the winged genii of the graceful Etruria. How nature
+and life shaped the religion; how the religion shaped the manners;
+how, and by what influences, some tribes were formed for progress;
+how others were destined to remain stationary, or be swallowed up
+in war and slavery by their brethren, was told with a precision
+clear and strong as the voice of Fate. Not only an antiquarian and
+philologist, but an anatomist and philosopher--my father brought to
+bear on all these grave points, the various speculations involved
+in the distinctions of race. He showed how race in perfection
+is produced, up to a certain point, by admixture: how all mixed
+races have been the most intelligent--how, in proportion as local
+circumstance and religious faith permitted the early fusion of
+differing tribes, races improved and quickened into the refinements
+of civilisation. He tracked the progress and dispersion of the
+Hellenes, from their mythical cradle in Thessaly; and showed
+how those who settled near the sea-shores, and were compelled
+into commerce and intercourse with strangers, gave to Greece her
+marvellous accomplishments in arts and letters--the flowers of the
+ancient world. How others, like the Spartans, dwelling evermore in
+a camp, on guard against their neighbours, and rigidly preserving
+their Dorian purity of extraction, contributed neither artists, nor
+poets, nor philosophers to the golden treasure-house of mind. He
+took the old race of the Celts, Cimry, or Cimmerians. He compared
+the Celt who, as in Wales, the Scotch Highlands, in Bretagne, and
+in uncomprehended Ireland, retains his old characteristics and
+purity of breed, with the Celt whose blood, mixed by a thousand
+channels, dictates from Paris the manners and revolutions of the
+world. He compared the Norman in his ancient Scandinavian home,
+with that wonder of intelligence and chivalry which he became,
+fused imperceptibly with the Frank, the Goth, and the Anglo-Saxon.
+He compared the Saxon, stationary in the land of Horsa, with the
+colonist and civiliser of the globe, as he becomes, when he knows
+not through what channels--French, Flemish, Danish, Welch, Scotch,
+and Irish--he draws his sanguine blood. And out from all these
+speculations, to which I do such hurried and scanty justice, he drew
+the blessed truth, that carries hope to the land of the Caffre, the
+hut of the Bushman--that there is nothing in the flattened skull
+and the ebon aspect that rejects God's law, improvement; that by
+the same principle which raises the dog, the lowest of the animals
+in its savage state, to the highest after man,--viz. admixture of
+race--you can elevate into nations of majesty and power the outcasts
+of humanity, now your compassion or your scorn. But when my father
+got into the marrow of his theme--when, quitting these preliminary
+discussions, he fell pounce amongst the would-be wisdom of the wise;
+when he dealt with civilisation itself, its schools, and porticos,
+and academies; when he bared the absurdities couched beneath the
+colleges of the Egyptians, and the Symposia of the Greeks;--when he
+showed that, even in their own favourite pursuit of metaphysics,
+the Greeks were children; and in their own more practical region
+of politics, the Romans were visionaries and bunglers;--when,
+following the stream of error through the middle ages, he quoted the
+puerilities of Agrippa, the crudities of Cardan; and passed, with
+his calm smile, into the _salons_ of the chattering wits of Paris
+in the eighteenth century, oh, then his irony was that of Lucian,
+sweetened by the gentle spirit of Erasmus. For not even here was
+my father's satire of the cheerless and Mephistophelian school.
+From this record of error he drew forth the grand eras of truth. He
+showed how earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts
+may be errors. He proved how, in vast cycles, age after age, the
+human mind marches on--like the ocean, receding here, but there
+advancing. How from the speculations of the Greek sprang all true
+philosophy; how from the institutions of the Roman rose all durable
+systems of government; how from the robust follies of the North
+came the glory of chivalry, and the modern delicacies of honour,
+and the sweet harmonising influences of woman. He tracked the
+ancestry of our Sidneys and Bayards from the Hengists, Genserics,
+and Attilas. Full of all curious and quaint anecdote--of original
+illustration--of those niceties of learning which spring from a
+taste cultivated to the last exquisite polish--the book amused, and
+allured, and charmed; and erudition lost its pedantry now in the
+simplicity of Montaigne, now in the penetration of La Bruy�re. He
+lived in each time of which he wrote, and the time lived again in
+him. Ah, what a writer of romances he would have been, if--if what?
+If he had had as sad an experience of men's passions, as he had the
+happy intuition into their humours. But he who would see the mirror
+of the shore, must look where it is cast on the river, not the
+ocean. The narrow stream reflects the gnarled tree, and the pausing
+herd, and the village spire, and the romance of the landscape. But
+the sea reflects only the vast outline of the headland, and the
+lights of the eternal heaven.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+"It is Lombard Street to a China orange," quoth Uncle Jack.
+
+"Are the odds in favour of fame against failure so great? You do not
+speak, I fear, from experience, brother Jack," answered my father,
+as he stooped down to tickle the duck under the left ear.
+
+"But Jack Tibbets is not Augustine Caxton. Jack Tibbets is not a
+scholar, a genius, a wond--"
+
+"Stop," cried my father.
+
+"After all," said Mr Squills, "though I am no flatterer, Mr Tibbets
+is not so far out.... That part of your book which compares the
+crania or skulls of the different races is superb. Lawrence or Dr
+Pritchard could not have done the thing more neatly. Such a book
+must not be lost to the world; and I agree with Mr Tibbets that you
+should publish as soon as possible."
+
+"It is one thing to write and another to publish," said my father
+irresolutely. "When one considers all the great men who have
+published; when one thinks one is going to intrude one's-self
+audaciously into the company of Aristotle and Bacon, of Locke, of
+Herder--of all the grave philosophers who bend over nature with
+brows weighty with thought--one may well pause, and--"
+
+"Pooh!" interrupted Uncle Jack; "science is not a club, it is an
+ocean. It is open to the cockboat as the frigate. One man carries
+across it a freightage of ingots, another may fish there for
+herrings. Who can exhaust the sea? who say to intellect, the deeps
+of philosophy are preoccupied?"
+
+"Admirable!" cried Squills.
+
+"So it is really your advice, my friends," said my father, who
+seemed struck by Uncle Jack's eloquent illustration, "that I should
+desert my household gods; remove to London, since my own library
+ceases to supply my wants; take lodgings near the British Museum,
+and finish off one volume, at least, incontinently."
+
+"It is a duty you owe to your country," said Uncle Jack, solemnly.
+
+"And to yourself," urged Squills. "One must attend to the natural
+evacuations of the brain. Ah! you may smile, sir; but I have
+observed that if a man has much in his head, he must give it vent
+or it oppresses him; the whole system goes wrong. From being
+abstracted, he grows stupefied. The weight of the pressure affects
+the nerves. I would not even guarantee you from a stroke of
+paralysis."
+
+"Oh, Austin!" cried my mother tenderly, and throwing her arms round
+my father's neck.
+
+"Come, sir, you are conquered," said I.
+
+"And what is to become of you, Sisty?" asked my father. "Do you go
+with us, and unsettle your mind for the university?"
+
+"My uncle has invited me to his castle; and in the meanwhile I will
+stay here, fag hard, and take care of the duck."
+
+"All alone?" said my mother.
+
+"No. All alone! Why Uncle Jack will come here as often as ever, I
+hope."
+
+Uncle Jack shook his head.
+
+"No, my boy--I must go to town with your father. You don't
+understand these things. I shall see the booksellers for him. I
+know how these gentlemen are to be dealt with. I shall prepare the
+literary circles for the appearance of the book. In short, it is a
+sacrifice of interest I know. My Journal will suffer. But friendship
+and my country's good before all things!"
+
+"Dear Jack!" said my mother affectionately.
+
+"I cannot suffer it," cried my father. "You are making a good
+income. You are doing well where you are; and as to seeing the
+booksellers--why, when the work is ready, you can come to town for a
+week, and settle that affair."
+
+"Poor dear Austin," said Uncle Jack, with an air of superiority and
+compassion. "A week! Sir, the advent of a book that is to succeed
+requires the preparation of months. Pshaw! I am no genius, bu I am a
+practical man. I know what's what. Leave me alone."
+
+But my father continued obstinate and Uncle Jack at last ceased to
+urge the matter. The journey to fame and London was now settled; but
+my father would not hear of my staying behind.
+
+No; Pisistratus must needs go also to town and see the world; the
+duck would take care of itself.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+We had taken the precaution to send, the day before, to secure
+our due complement of places--four in all (including one for Mrs
+Primmins)--in, or upon, the fast family coach called the Sun,
+which had lately been set up for the special convenience of the
+neighbourhood.
+
+This luminary, rising in a town about seven miles distant
+from us, described at first a very erratic orbit amidst the
+contiguous villages before it finally struck into the high-road of
+enlightenment, and thence performed its journey, in the full eyes
+of man, at the majestic pace of six miles and a half an hour. My
+father, with his pockets full of books, and a quarto of "Gebelin on
+the Primitive World" for light reading under his arm; my mother,
+with a little basket, containing sandwiches and biscuits of her
+own baking; Mrs Primmins, with a new umbrella, purchased for the
+occasion, and a bird-cage containing a canary, endeared to her
+not more by song than age, and a severe pip through which she had
+successfully nursed it--and I myself, waited at the gates to welcome
+the celestial visitor. The gardener, with a wheel-barrow full of
+boxes and portmanteaus, stood a little in the van; and the footman,
+who was to follow when lodgings had been found, had gone to a rising
+eminence to watch the dawning of the expected planet, and apprise us
+of its approach by the concerted signal of a handkerchief fixed to a
+stick.
+
+The quaint old house looked at us mournfully from all its deserted
+windows. The litter before its threshold, and in its open hall;
+wisps of straw or hay that had been used for packing; baskets and
+boxes that had been examined and rejected; others, corded and
+piled, reserved to follow with the footman: and the two heated
+and hurried serving-women left behind standing half-way between
+house and garden-gate, whispering to each other, and looking as
+if they had not slept for weeks--gave to a scene, usually so trim
+and orderly, an aspect of pathetic abandonment and desolation. The
+genius of the place seemed to reproach us. I felt the omens were
+against us, and turned my earnest gaze from the haunts behind with
+a sigh, as the coach now drew up in all its grandeur. An important
+personage, who, despite the heat of the day, was enveloped in a vast
+superfluity of belcher, in the midst of which galloped a gilt fox,
+and who rejoiced in the name of "guard," descended to inform us
+politely that only three places, two inside and one out, were at our
+disposal, the rest having been pre-engaged a fortnight before our
+orders were received.
+
+Now, as I knew that Mrs Primmins was indispensable to the comforts
+of my honoured parents, (the more so, as she had once lived in
+London, and knew all its ways,) I suggested that she should take
+the outside seat, and that I should perform the journey on foot--a
+primitive mode of transport which has its charms to a young man with
+stout limbs and gay spirits. The guard's outstretched arm left my
+mother little time to oppose this proposition, to which my father
+assented with a silent squeeze of the hand. And, having promised to
+join them at a family hotel near the Strand, to which Mr Squills lad
+recommended them as peculiarly genteel and quiet, and waved my last
+farewell to my poor mother, who continued to stretch her meek face
+out of the window till the coach was whirled off in a cloud like one
+of the Homeric heroes, I turned within, to put up a few necessary
+articles in a small knapsack, which I remembered to have seen in the
+lumber-room, and which had appertained to my maternal grandfather;
+and with that on my shoulder, and a strong staff in my hand, I set
+off towards the great city at as brisk a pace as if I were only
+bound to the next village. Accordingly, about noon, I was both tired
+and hungry; and seeing by the wayside one of those pretty inns yet
+peculiar to England, but which, thanks to the railways, will soon be
+amongst the things before the Flood, I sate down at a table under
+some clipped limes, unbuckled my knapsack, and ordered my simple
+fare, with the dignity of one who, for the first time in his life,
+bespeaks his own dinner, and pays for it out of his own pocket.
+
+While engaged on a rasher of bacon and a tankard of what the
+landlord called "No mistake," two pedestrians, passing the same
+road which I had traversed, paused, cast a simultaneous look at
+my occupation, and, induced no doubt by its allurements, seated
+themselves under the same lime-trees, though at the farther end of
+the table. I surveyed the new-comers with the curiosity natural to
+my years.
+
+The elder of the two might have attained the age of thirty, though
+sundry deep lines, and hues formerly florid and now faded, speaking
+of fatigue, care, or dissipation, might have made him look somewhat
+older than he was. There was nothing very prepossessing in his
+appearance. He was dressed with a pretension ill suited to the
+costume appropriate to a foot-traveller. His coat was pinched and
+padded; two enormous pins, connected by a chain, decorated a very
+stiff stock of blue satin, dotted with yellow stars; his hands were
+cased in very dingy gloves which had once been straw-coloured,
+and the said hands played with a whalebone cane surmounted by a
+formidable knob, which gave it the appearance of a "life-preserver."
+As he took off a white napless hat, which he wiped with great care
+and affection with the sleeve of his right arm, a profusion of
+stiff curls instantly betrayed the art of man. Like my landlord's
+ale, in that wig there was "no mistake:" it was brought--(in the
+fashion of the wigs we see in the popular effigies of George IV. in
+his youth)--low over his forehead and raised at the top. The wig
+had been oiled, and the oil had imbibed no small quantity of dust;
+oil and dust had alike left their impression on the forehead and
+cheeks of the wig's proprietor. For the rest, the expression of his
+face was somewhat impudent and reckless, but not without a certain
+drollery in the corners of his eyes.
+
+The younger man was apparently about my own age, a year or two
+older perhaps--judging rather from his set and sinewy frame than
+his boyish countenance. And this last, boyish as it was, could not
+fail to demand the attention even of the most careless observer. It
+had not only the darkness but the character of the gipsy face, with
+large brilliant eyes, raven hair, long and wavy, but not curling;
+the features were aquiline but delicate, and when he spoke he showed
+teeth dazzling as pearls. It was impossible not to admire the
+singular beauty of the countenance; and yet, it had that expression
+at once stealthy and fierce, which war with society has stamped
+upon the lineaments of the race of which it reminded me. But,
+withal, there was somewhat of the air of a gentleman in this young
+wayfarer. His dress consisted of a black velveteen shooting-jacket,
+or rather short frock, with a broad leathern strap at the waist,
+loose white trousers, and a foraging cap, which he threw carelessly
+on the table as he wiped his brow. Turning round impatiently and
+with some haughtiness from his companion, he surveyed me with a
+quick observant flash of his piercing eyes, and then stretched
+himself at length on the bench, and appeared either to doze or muse,
+till, in obedience to his companion's orders, the board was spread
+with all the cold meats the larder could supply.
+
+"Beef!" said his companion, screwing a pinchbeck glass
+into his right eye. "Beef;--mottled, cowey--humph.
+Lamb;--oldish--rawish--muttony, humph. Pie;--stalish, veal?--no,
+pork. Ah! what will you have?"
+
+"Help yourself," replied the young man peevishly, as he sat up,
+looked disdainfully at the viands, and after a long pause, tasted
+first one, then the other, with many shrugs of the shoulders and
+muttered exclamations of discontent. Suddenly he looked up and
+called for brandy; and to my surprise, and I fear admiration, he
+drank nearly half a tumblerful of that poison undiluted, with a
+composure that spoke of habitual use.
+
+"Wrong!" said his companion, drawing the bottle to himself, and
+mixing the alcohol in careful proportions with water. "Wrong! coats
+of stomach soon wear out, with that kind of clothes' brush. Better
+stick to 'the yeasty foam' as sweet Will says. That young gentleman
+sets you a good example," and therewith the speaker nodded at me
+familiarly. Inexperienced as I was, I surmised at once that it was
+his intention to make acquaintance with the neighbour thus saluted.
+I was not deceived. "Any thing to tempt _you_, sir?" asked this
+social personage after a short pause, and describing a semicircle
+with the point of his knife.
+
+"I thank you, sir, but I have dined."
+
+"What then? 'Break out into a second course of mischief,' as the
+swan recommends--swan of Avon, sir! No? 'Well then, I charge you
+with this cup of sack.' Are you going far, if I may take the liberty
+to ask?"
+
+"To London, when I can get there!"
+
+"Oh!" said the traveller--while his young companion lifted his
+eyes; and I was again struck with their remarkable penetration and
+brilliancy.
+
+"London is the best place in the world for a lad of spirit. See life
+there; 'glass of fashion and mould of form.' Fond of the play, sir?"
+
+"I never saw one!"
+
+"Possible!" cried the gentleman, dropping the handle of his knife,
+and bringing up the point horizontally: "then, young man," he added
+solemnly, "you have, but I won't say what you have to see. I won't
+say--no, not if you could cover this table with golden guineas, and
+exclaim with the generous ardour so engaging in youth 'Mr Peacock,
+these are yours, if you will only say what I have to see!'"
+
+I laughed outright--may I be forgiven for the boast, but I had the
+reputation at school of a pleasant laugh. The young man's face grew
+dark at the sound: he pushed back his plate and sighed.
+
+"Why," continued his friend, "my companion here, who I suppose is
+about your own age, _he_ could tell you what a play is! he could
+tell you what life is. He has viewed the manners of the town:
+'perused the traders,' as the swan poetically remarks. Have you not,
+my lad, eh?"
+
+Thus directly appealed to, the boy looked up with a smile of scorn
+on his lips. "Yes, I know what life is, and I say that life, like
+poverty, has strange bedfellows. Ask me what life is now, and I say
+a melodrama; ask me what it is twenty years hence, and I shall say--"
+
+"A farce?" put in his comrade.
+
+"No, a tragedy--or comedy as Congreve wrote it."
+
+"And how is that?" I asked, interested and somewhat surprised at the
+tone of my contemporary.
+
+"Where the play ends in the triumph of the wittiest rogue. My friend
+hee has no chance!"
+
+"'Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley,' hem--yes--Hal Peacock maybe
+witty, but he is no rogue."
+
+"That was not exactly my meaning," said the boy dryly.
+
+"'A fico for your meaning,'" as the swan says. "Hallo,
+you, sir! Bully Host, clear the table, fresh tumblers--hot
+water--sugar--lemon, and the bottle's out! Smoke, sir?" and Mr
+Peacock offered me a cigar.
+
+Upon my refusal, he carefully twirled round a very uninviting
+specimen of some fabulous havannah--moistened it all over, as a
+boa-constrictor may do the ox he prepares for deglutition; bit
+off one end, and lighting the other from a little machine for
+that purpose which he drew from his pocket, he was soon absorbed
+in a vigorous effort (which the damp inherent in the weed long
+resisted) to poison the surrounding atmosphere. Therewith, the young
+gentleman, either from emulation or in self-defence, extracted from
+his own pouch a cigar-case of notable elegance, being of velvet,
+embroidered apparently by some fair hand, for "From Juliet" was very
+legibly worked thereon--selected a cigar of better appearance than
+that in favour with his comrade, and seemed quite as familiar with
+the tobacco as he had been with the brandy.
+
+"Fast, sir--fast lad that!" quoth Mr Peacock, in the short gasps
+which his resolute struggle with his uninviting victim alone
+permitted--"nothing but--(puff, puff)--your true--(suck--suck,)
+syl--syl--sylva--does for him. Out, by the Lord! 'the jaws of
+darkness have devoured it up;'" and again Mr Peacock applied to his
+phosphoric machine. This time patience and perseverance succeeded,
+and the heart of the cigar responded by a dull red spark (leaving
+the sides wholly untouched) to the indefatigable ardour of its wooer.
+
+This feat accomplished, Mr Peacock exclaimed triumphantly, "And now
+what say you, my lads, to a game at cards?--three of us--whist and
+a dummy?--nothing better--eh?" As he spoke, he produced from his
+coat-pocket a red silk handkerchief, a bunch of keys, a nightcap,
+a toothbrush, a piece of shaving-soap, four lumps of sugar, the
+remains of a bun, a razor, and a pack of cards. Selecting the last,
+and returning its motley accompaniments to the abyss whence they
+had emerged, he turned up, with a jerk of his thumb and finger, the
+knave of clubs, and, placing it on the top of the rest, slapped the
+cards emphatically on the table.
+
+"You are very good, but I don't know whist," said I.
+
+"Not know whist--not been to a play! not smoke! Then pray tell me,
+young man," (said he majestically, and with a frown,) "what on earth
+you _do_ know!"
+
+Much consternated by this direct appeal, and greatly ashamed of
+my ignorance of the cardinal points of erudition in Mr Peacock's
+estimation, I hung my head, and looked down.
+
+"That is right," renewed Mr Peacock, more benignly; "you have the
+ingenuous shame of youth. It is promising, sir--'lowliness is young
+ambition's ladder,' as the swan says. Mount the first step, and
+learn whist--sixpenny points to begin with."
+
+Notwithstanding my newness in actual life, I had had the good
+fortune to learn a little of the way before me, by those
+much-slandered guides called novels--works which are often to the
+inner world what maps are to the outer; and sundry recollections of
+"Gil Blas" and the "Vicar of Wakefield" came athwart me. I had no
+wish to emulate the worthy Moses, and felt that I might not have
+even the shagreen spectacles to boast of, in my negotiations with
+this new Mr Jenkinson. Accordingly, shaking my head, I called for my
+bill. As I took out my purse--knit by my mother--with one gold piece
+in one corner, and sundry silver ones in the other, I saw that the
+eyes of Mr Peacock twinkled.
+
+"Poor spirit, sir! poor spirit, young man! 'This avarice sticks
+deep,' as the swan beautifully observes. 'Nothing venture, nothing
+have.'"
+
+"Nothing have, nothing venture," I returned, plucking up spirit.
+
+"Nothing have!--Young sir, do you doubt my solidity--my capital--my
+'golden joys?'"
+
+"Sir, I spoke of myself. I am not rich enough to gamble."
+
+"Gamble!" exclaimed Mr Peacock, in virtuous indignation--"Gamble!
+what do you mean, sir? You insult me!" and he rose threateningly,
+and slapped his white hat on his wig.
+
+"Pshaw! let him alone, Hal," said the boy contemptuously. "Sir, if
+he is impertinent, thrash him." (This was to me.)
+
+"Impertinent!--thrash!" exclaimed Mr Peacock, waxing very red; but
+catching the sneer on his companion's lip, he sat down, and subsided
+into sullen silence.
+
+Meanwhile I paid my bill. This duty, rarely a cheerful one,
+performed, I looked round for my knapsack, and perceived that it was
+in the boy's hands. He was very coolly reading the address which, in
+case of accidents, I had prudently placed on it--Pisistratus Caxton,
+Esq., ---- Hotel, ---- Street, --, Strand.
+
+I took my knapsack from him, more surprised at such a breach of
+good manners in a young gentleman who knew life so well, than I
+should have been at a similar error on the part of Mr Peacock. He
+made no apology, but nodded farewell, and stretched himself at full
+length on the bench. Mr Peacock, now absorbed in a game of patience,
+vouchsafed no return to my parting salutation, and in another moment
+I was alone on the high-road. My thoughts turned long upon the young
+man I had left: mixed with a sort of instinctive compassionate
+foreboding of an ill future for one with such habits, and in such
+companionship, I felt an involuntary admiration, less even for his
+good looks than his ease, audacity, and the careless superiority he
+assumed over a comrade so much older than himself.
+
+The day was far gone when I saw the spires of a town at which I
+intended to rest for the night. The horn of a coach behind made me
+turn my head, and, as the vehicle passed me, I saw on the outside
+Mr Peacock, still struggling with a cigar--it could scarcely be
+the same--and his young friend stretched on the roof amongst the
+luggage, leaning his handsome head on his hand, and apparently
+unobservant both of me and every one else.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+I am apt--judging egotistically, perhaps, from my own experience--to
+measure a young man's chances of what is termed practical success in
+life, by what may seem at first two very vulgar qualities; viz., his
+inquisitiveness and his animal vivacity. A curiosity which springs
+forward to examine every thing new to his information--a nervous
+activity, approaching to restlessness, which rarely allows bodily
+fatigue to interfere with some object in view--constitute, in my
+mind, very profitable stock in hand to begin the world with.
+
+Tired as I was, after I had performed my ablutions, and refreshed
+myself in the little coffee-room of the inn at which I put up, with
+the pedestrian's best beverage, familiar and oft-calumniated tea,
+I could not resist the temptation of the broad bustling street,
+which, lighted with gas, shone on me through the dim windows of the
+coffee-room. I had never before seen a large town, and the contrast
+of lamp-lit, busy night in the streets, with sober, deserted night
+in the lanes and fields, struck me forcibly.
+
+I sauntered out, therefore, jostling and jostled, now gazing at
+the windows, now hurried along the tide of life, till I found
+myself before a cook' shop, round which clustered a small knot
+of housewives, citizens, and hungry-looking children. While
+contemplating this group, and marvelling how it comes to pass that
+the staple business of earth's majority is how, when, and where to
+eat, my ear was struck with "'In Troy there lies the scene,' as the
+illustrious Will remarks."
+
+Looking round, I perceived Mr Peacock pointing his stick towards
+an open doorway next to the cook's shop, the hall beyond which was
+lighted with gas, while, painted in black letters on a pane of glass
+over the door, was the word "Billiards."
+
+Suiting the action to the word, the speaker plunged at once into the
+aperture and vanished. The boy-copanion was following more slowly,
+when his eye caught mine. A slight blush came over his dark cheek;
+he stopped, and leaning against the door-jambs, gazed on me hard and
+long before he said--"Well met again, sir! You find it hard to amuse
+yourself in this dull place; the nights are long out of London."
+
+"Oh," said I, ingenuously, "every thing here amuses me; the lights,
+the shops, the crowd; but, then, to me every thing is new."
+
+The youth came from his lounging-place and moved on, as if inviting
+me to walk; while he answered, rather with bitter sullenness, than
+the melancholy his words expressed--
+
+"One thing, at least, cannot be new to you; it is an old truth with
+us before we leave the nursery--'Whatever is worth having must be
+bought; _ergo_, he who cannot buy, has nothing worth having.'"
+
+"I don't think," said I, wisely, "that the things best worth having
+can be bought at all. You see that poor dropsical jeweller standing
+before his shop-door,--his shop is the finest in the street,--and I
+dare say he would be very glad to give it to you or me in return for
+our good health and strong legs. Oh no! I think with my father--'All
+that are worth having are given to all;--that is, nature and
+labour.'"
+
+"Your father says that; and you go by what your father says!
+Of course, all fathers have preached that, and many other good
+doctrines, since Adam preached to Cain; but I don't see that the
+fathers have found their sons very credulous listeners."
+
+"So much the worse for the sons," said I bluntly.
+
+"Nature," continued my new acquaintance, without attending to my
+ejaculation--"nature indeed does give us much, and nature also
+orders each of us how to use her gifts. If nature gave you the
+propensity to drudge, you will drudge; if she gives me the ambition
+to rise, and the contempt for work, I may rise--but I certainly
+shall not work."
+
+"Oh," said I, "you agree with Squills, I suppose, and fancy we are
+all guided by the bumps on our foreheads?"
+
+"And the blood in our veins, and our mother's milk. We inherit other
+things besides gout and consumption. So you always do as your father
+tells you! Good boy!"
+
+I was piqued. Why we should be ashamed of being taunted for
+goodness, I never could understand; but certainly I felt humbled.
+However I answered sturdily--"If you had as good a father as I have,
+you would not think it so very extraordinary to do as he tells you."
+
+"Ah! so he is a very good father, is he! He must have a great trust
+in your sobriety and steadiness to let you wander about the world as
+he does."
+
+"I am going to join him in London."
+
+"In London! Oh, does he live there?"
+
+"He is going to live there for some time."
+
+"Then, perhaps, we may meet. I, too, am going to town."
+
+"Oh, we shall be sure to meet there!" said I, with frank gladness;
+for my interest in the young man was not diminished by his
+conversation, however much I disliked the sentiments it expressed.
+
+The lad laughed, and his laugh was peculiar. It was low, musical,
+but hollow and artificial.
+
+"Sure to meet! London is a large place: where shall you be found?"
+
+I gave him, without scruple, the address of the hotel at which I
+expected to find my father; although his deliberate inspection
+of my knapsack must already have apprised him of that address.
+He listened attentively, and repeated it twice over, as if to
+impress it on his memory; and we both walked on in silence, till,
+turning up a small passage, we suddenly found ourselves in a large
+churchyard,--a flagged path stretched diagonally across it towards
+the market-place, on which it bordered. In this churchyard, upon a
+grave-stone, sat a young Savoyard; his hurdy-gurdy, or whatever else
+his instrument might be called, was on his lap; and he was gnawing
+his crust, and feeding some poor little white mice (standing on
+their hind-legs on the hurdy-gurdy) as merrily as if he had chosen
+the gayest resting-place in the world.
+
+We both stopped. The Savoyard, seeing us, put his arch head on one
+side, showed all his white teeth in that happy smile so peculiar to
+his race, and in which poverty seems to beg so blithely, and gave
+the handle of his instrument a turn.
+
+"Poor child!" said I.
+
+"Aha, you pity him! but why? According to your rule, Mr Caxton, he
+is not so much to be pitied; the dropsical jeweller would give him
+as much for his limbs and health as for ours! How is it--answer me,
+son of so wise a father--that no one pities the dropsical jeweller,
+and all pity the healthy Savoyard? It is, sir, because there is a
+stern truth which is stronger than all Spartan lessons--Poverty _is_
+the master-ill of the world. Look round. Does poverty leave its
+signs over the graves? Look at that large tomb fenced round; read
+that long inscription:--'virtues'--'best of husbands'--'affectionate
+father'--'inconsolable grief'--'sleeps in the joyful hope,' &c., &c.
+Do you suppose these stoneless mounds hide no dust of what were men
+just as good? But no epitaph tells their virtues; bespeaks their
+wives' grief; or promises joyful hope to them!"
+
+"Does it matter? Does God care for the epitaph and tombstone?"
+
+"_Date qualche cosa!_" said the Savoyard, in his touching patois,
+still smiling, and holding out his little hand.
+
+Therein I dropped a small coin. The boy evinced his gratitude by a
+new turn of the hurdy-gurdy.
+
+"That is not labour," said my companion; "and had you found him at
+work, you had given him nothing. I too have my instrument to play
+upon and my mice to see after. Adieu!"
+
+He waved his hand, and strode irreverently over the graves back in
+the direction we had come.
+
+I stood before the fine tomb with its fine epitaph; the Savoyard
+looked at me wistfully.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+The Savoyard looked at me wistfully. I wished to enter into
+conversation with him. That was not easy. However, I began:--
+
+PISISTRATUS.--"You must be often hungry enough, my poor boy. Do the
+mice feed you?"
+
+SAVOYARD puts his head on one side, shakes it, and stroked his mice.
+
+PISISTRATUS.--"You are very fond of the mice; they are your only
+friends, I fear."
+
+SAVOYARD, evidently understanding Pisistratus, rubs his face gently
+against the mice, then puts them softly down on a grave, and gives a
+turn to the hurdy-gurdy. The mice play unconcernedly over the grave.
+
+PISISTRATUS, pointing first to the beasts, then to the
+instrument.--"Which do you like best, the mice or the hurdy-gurdy?"
+
+SAVOYARD shows his teeth--considers--stretches himself on the
+grass--plays with the mice--and answers volubly.
+
+PISISTRATUS, by the help of Latin comprehending that the Savoyard
+says, that the mice are alive and the hurdy-gurdy is not--"Yes, a
+live friend is better than a dead one. Mortua est hurda-gurda!"
+
+SAVOYARD shakes his head vehemently.--"N�--n�! Eccellenza, non �
+mortu!" and strikes up a lively air on the slandered instrument. The
+Savoyard's face brightens--he looks happy: the mice run from the
+grave into his bosom.
+
+PISISTRATUS, affected.--"Have you a father--An vivat pater?"
+
+SAVOYARD, with his face overcast.--"N�--eccellenza!" then pausing
+a little, he says briskly, "Si-Si!" and plays a solemn air on the
+hurdy-gurdy--stops--rests one hand on the instrument, and raises the
+other to heaven.
+
+PISISTRATUS understands.--"The father is like the hurdy-gurdy, at
+once dead and living. The mere form is a dead thing, but the music
+lives." Pisistratus drops another small piece of silver on the
+ground, and turns away.
+
+"God help and God bless thee, Savoyard. Thou hast done Pisistratus
+all the good in the world. Thou hast corrected the hard wisdom of
+the young gentleman in the velveteen jacket; Pisistratus is a better
+lad for having stopped to listen to thee."
+
+I regained the entrance to the churchyard--I looked back--there sate
+the Savoyard, still amidst men's graves, but under God's sky. He was
+still looking at me wistfully, and when he caught my eye, he pressed
+his hand to his heart, and smiled. "God help and God bless thee,
+young Savoyard."
+
+
+
+
+REPUBLICAN FRANCE.
+
+JUNE 1848.
+
+
+How far is the application to France, of the epithet employed in the
+title that heads these pages, a misnomer? This is a question that
+would be answered very differently by those who study its state of
+feeling, and those who judge its position by mere established fact.
+That the fact and the feeling are completely at issue throughout
+the country, is undoubted, indisputable. A republican government
+has been established by the _coup de main_ of a small minority in
+France--has been accepted by the hesitation of surprise--has been
+maintained by the desire of peace and order:--so far goes fact.
+Republican principles were hateful to the immense majority of
+the country at large in the past, uncongenial to its habits and
+sentiments, impossible according to its views; they are productive,
+as yet, of nothing but confusion, distress, ruin, riot, and
+mistrust, in the present; they are looked upon with alarm as regards
+their results in the future:--so much for feeling. Fact and feeling,
+then, are at variance and in collision. The result of the conflict
+lies hidden in the mysteries of that future, the issue of which, at
+no epoch of history, perhaps, clearseeing eyes and wise foreseeing
+heads could less pretend to predict, than in the present chaotic
+hurly-burly of European society. The politicians who declared that
+the general spirit of the country in France was, in their vague and
+fantastic language of the Chamber, _centre-gauche_, or the advocate
+of liberal progress, may have been very right,--but republican it
+never was, republican it is not. Republican--without pretension
+to the audacity of a prediction but just stated as impossible--it
+certainly does not as yet appear ever likely to become.
+
+In its present state of feeling, then, France--that is to say,
+the country, the provinces, the departments, or whatever France,
+out of Paris, may be called--is about as much genuine republican,
+as a white man who suddenly finds his face smeared over with the
+contents of a blacking-bottle is a genuine negro. But, for the sake
+of avoiding that confusion of terms and ideas in which the French
+themselves are so fond of indulging, to an extent that proves the
+deification of "the vague" to take far higher flights among them,
+especially in their republican tenets, than any flown by confused
+German head,--let it be taken as a rule, that fact is to have the
+precedence of feeling, as in most matters in the world,--and let it
+be supposed that the misnomer is no misnomer, that there has been no
+mistake, in truth, in the title of "Republican France."
+
+Between France out of Paris and France in Paris, a great
+distinction, in speaking of the country, must always be drawn;
+although, in the matter of republicanism in the feelings of the
+mass, the same blacking-bottle remark might be applied to the
+majority of the citizens of the capital, as to the country at large.
+No family of grown-up daughters, who have been tyrannically kept
+in the nursery like children when they no longer felt themselves
+such, and made to wear mamma's worn-out dresses scantily cut down
+to their shapes, could be more sundered in feeling from their
+lady-mother, and jealous of her overgrown charms, her gaiety, her
+splendour, and her power, than the departments,--kept in the nursery
+upon centralisation system, and fed upon the bread-and-milk of
+insignificance,--are of the tyrannical supremacy, the overweening
+superiority, and the disdainful airs, affected to her despised
+progeny by Mother Paris. The pursuance of the concentrating system
+has thus produced an estrangement in the family,--a jealousy and
+spite on the one hand, a greater and increasing assumption of airs
+of supremacy on the other. The family ties between Paris and France
+are as wholly disunited as family ties can be, in the necessities
+of a more or less intimate connexion: the mother has isolated, in
+her despotism, herself from her children, the children have imbibed
+distrust and envy of the mother. The consequence is, that there
+are two distinct families in feeling,--there are two Frances; there
+is the France of Paris, of Paris that asserts its right to be all
+France, and the France of the departments, that, in spite of the
+assertions of Paris, desire to put in their little claim for a
+small share in the name, and would like to have their own little
+fingers in the pies of revolutions, and changes of government in
+the family, that mamma cooks up. True, they are supposed to eat at
+the same table, but mamma has all the tit-bits. They have a voice
+in the family council, but it is when mamma has already issued
+her _dictum_, and declared that such and such things shall be as
+she has decided it. They help to support the family establishment
+with the moneys which mamma declares they must contribute out of
+their heritage; but then mamma, they declare, spends a most undue
+proportion upon herself, in dressing herself out with finery,
+keeping up an unnecessary state, and throwing away the sums confided
+to her to overpay a throng of unruly onhangers, with all the
+prodigality of fear; while they, the poor daughters, are made to put
+up with cast-off finery, and to be thwarted and twitted by harsh
+governesses, and to fight, as best they may, with an obstreperous
+herd of unpaid pensioners, which mamma's mismanagement has excited
+to uproar; and then, after all, to kiss hands and thank mamma for
+whatever they can get,--scanty sugar-plums and many cuffs. Is this
+to be endured? The children grumble much, and particularly since
+mamma has chosen to make changes in the direction of the household
+establishment of which they by no means approve, and has only
+produced confusion and disorder in it. But at present they can do no
+more than grumble; mamma has the rod, and they know that she will
+use it; mamma has the supreme influence, and habit makes them think
+they must abide by it. There is no doubt, at the same time, that the
+children and parent would unite in a common bond of union were the
+family honour to be asserted against an attack from any adversary
+to the family out of the house. Their intestine jealousies would be
+forgotten for the time, for the maintenance of the common good--a
+fancied good; for, after all, mother and daughters have the same
+blood, the same temperr and character, the same vain-glory, conceit,
+and irritability, the same strong prejudices of ignorance; and
+they would join hands and clamour together in the same opposition
+to the stranger. But this common-cause making, upon occasions of
+extraordinary pressure from without, detracts nothing, at other
+times, from the mistrust, jealousy, and angry susceptibility of the
+children in internal affairs. In moments of family crisis, will
+matters always go on as heretofore?
+
+Nurseries will be obstreperous sometimes, and children will revolt,
+and mammas may pass very uncomfortable moments in the face of angry
+daughters in rebellion. Will the children take upon themselves,
+at last, to protest against mamma's disdainful commands, and
+assert a will of their own, and a right to think for themselves?
+This question is one upon the solution of which depends the fate
+of France, as well as upon the many thousand chances which the
+capricious and ever-shifting gales of a revolutionary atmosphere
+may, at any moment, suddenly blow, like a spark into a powder
+barrel, shattering the face of the past, and changing the direction
+of the future. Twice already, since the revolution of February,
+has the question been nearly answered in the affirmative. The last
+instance, of which more anon, may be taken as a striking proof that
+the children may possibly not always submit to the dictates of the
+mother,--that family mistrust may break out into family quarrel,
+and family quarrel in nations is civil war. Who again, however,
+may venture to predict what shall be the destinies of Republican
+France,--what web of darkness or of light, of blood-streaked stuff
+or of gold-threaded tissue, it may be weaving with its agitated and
+troubled hands, or what force it may interpose to tear the work to
+shreds before it be even yet completed? Most may fear, none may say.
+But prediction, upon whatever cunning foresight it may be based,
+must always call a sort of feeling of inspiration, nearly allied to
+superstition, to its aid: and thus the fanciful mind may, without
+taking upon itself the airs of a Pythoness, give way to a little
+superstition, and yet, perhaps, be not too strongly condemned of
+folly. There exists an old prophecy in France, emanating from a monk
+of the middle ages, the authenticity of which cannot be doubted, or,
+at all events, cannot be disputed, in as far as it was in well-known
+existence at the commencement of this century. It predicts, in
+mystic language,--dark, it is true, but wonderfully clear after
+its verification,--all the many revolutionary changes that have
+taken place in France, and now once more proclaims the reign of the
+"sons of Brutus." "Armed men," it distinctly says, "will march upon
+the doomed city," "sword and fire will prevail against it," "the
+wolves will devour each other." May the seeming superstition of a
+fantastical question be pardoned! May not these words refer to the
+future outbreak of the provinces of France against the capital? If
+they do, in what sense, with what tendencies, to forward the views
+of what party, may it be? Be that as it may, however, it is not the
+obscure future that is dealt with here, but the present confused and
+uncertain state of Republican France.
+
+As it may be inferred from what has been said, Paris, then, has put
+on its crown, as capital, to some purpose. Never did despot assert
+his right to dictate his autocratic will to serfs and slaves more
+authoritatively than does revolutionary and republican Paris to
+the provinces of France. No three-tailed Bashaw of old melodrams
+could be more imperative in his ordinances, more arrogant in the
+conviction of the indisputability of his will. The bare supposition
+that the provinces could have a will of their own would strike
+Paris dumb with astonishment. Paris has been accustomed to consider
+itself not only as the heart, but the head, and the arms and legs
+to boot, of the whole country. The inert body has no more, in its
+consideration, to do, than allow itself to be fed with what scanty
+morsels of bounty and importance Paris may choose to afford, and
+then not to dare to grumble afterwards if the food prove unsavoury
+to its tastes, or indigestible to its susceptibilities. Paris is
+"Sir Oracle," and, when it speaks, no provincial "dog dare bark."
+Paris, thus, is the great type of the mainspring of the national
+character,--which works sometimes, we allow, for good as well
+as for evil:--namely, of that mixture of vanity and overweening
+conceit, which may be found at the bottom of almost every action
+of the French. It calls itself "the great capital of the civilised
+world;" and thus considers that, although the departments may be
+admitted to the reflected rays of lustre that emanate from its
+superior glory, they must look upon themselves as mere satellites,
+created to revolve at its liking and its high will, and perform
+their revolutions in whatever direction it deems fit to make its
+own revolution. Let it not be supposed that this representation
+is exaggerated, or that it proceeds from the distorted views of a
+foreigner. Hear the Parisian himself speak; list to his expressions
+of contempt for those unknown and barbarous regions called
+departments; mark how he asserts the unutterable superiority of
+his Parisian essence; see how he tosses his head and curls his lip
+with an infinitely aristocratic air, when he condescends to notice
+them with a word; and never was Paris more eager in the maintenance
+of its tyrannical supremacy; never was it more despotically and
+autocratically disposed; never more aristocratic, to use the pet
+phrase of the day, than under the rule of _soi-disant_ liberty, and
+of liberty of opinion, above all other liberties proclaimed by the
+French republic.
+
+What were the expressions of the first republican minister of the
+interior, that type of republican exclusiveness and despotism, in
+his famous and rather too famous _bulletins de la republique_,
+issued to all France as the language and opinions of the government
+of the day? Paris, they informed the world, was the heart of France,
+from which all life and living principle emanated, through which
+every drop of the country's blood must flow, in order that it might
+beat in unison, and be refreshed with true republican vitality.
+Paris, they said again, was the hand that had created and fashioned
+the republic, and that was to direct its steps, lead it vigorously
+forward in its way--as it was the head that conceived, it was the
+hand that executed: it was more than all this, it was the _soul_
+of France--the pure and true essence emanating from the new deity,
+the republic. Paris, they asserted in as many direct words, was
+the mistress whose will was to be obeyed. It is unnecessary to
+point out how little such declarations were in accordance with
+republican principles, what little affinity they had with the three
+great watchwords of the day, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."
+Republicanism in France, according to those old traditions, to which
+those who call themselves the only true and pure republicans seem
+always to be looking back as the only true and pure models for their
+admiration and imitation, was always based upon despotism, supported
+by constraint, compulsion, violence, and even terrorism; and the
+first efforts of modern republicanism were evidently exerted to
+place their old, newfangled, statue of bastard liberty upon the same
+heterogeneous pedestal. The instructions of the same Bashaw-minister
+to the emissaries whom he despatched as Bashaws of lesser and fewer
+tails into the provinces, to see that they were duly disposed to
+fall down and worship the Goddess Republic, that had been set up,
+were modelled after the same and still rougher fashion.
+
+The missionaries were invested with autocratic powers to make
+and unmake according to their own autocratic will; to send away
+functionaries who might appear lukewarm in the cause; to put
+in their places such acolytes as might better serve the altars
+of the goddess, and to offer up sacrifices to her, civil and
+military, judicial and political, as they might think pleasing
+to the divinity, or convenient and agreeable to their own hates
+and prejudices. They were particularly requested to _travailler_
+the country, to torture it, as the French phrase goes; and were
+taught, if they could not hammer the hard and unbending metal of
+departmental feeling to the shape they fancied, just gently to
+make the iron red-hot with the fire of terrorism, and then twist
+it to the suitable form. How well the workmen, in many instances,
+performed the task--how well they employed the fiery passions of the
+mob to produce the desired red-hot effect, and then strike--is a
+matter of historical fact.
+
+In the elections for the National Assembly, the same dogmas of
+republican religion were strenuously enforced. No emissaries of
+the Inquisition ever used more moral violence to propagate a faith
+among suspected schismatics, than did these ministers of republican
+despotism to enforce the full, entire, and uttermost doctrines
+of their creed, even to the minutest articles. Where the moral
+influence appeared unlikely to penetrate as deeply into men's
+hearts as was desired, other and more direct methods were adopted
+to make entire converts; and, when these methods were found too
+mild to work the intended effect, and purge the land of moderatism
+and anti-whole-hog-ism, another stronger and more racking dose
+was administered: the mob was excited to overawe with threat and
+terrorism, and, where it could not prevent, to destroy. How should
+the departments dare to have a will of their own? The rebellious
+children were to be whipped like schoolboys into learning their
+lessons of pure and undefiled republicanism, and reciting them
+as Master Commissioner taught them; there was no better rod in
+pickle for such naughty urchins than the scourge of the fury of a
+mob, carefully taught another lesson, and one it was not slow of
+learning--namely, that it was master, and must constrain obedience
+to its will; while, in fact, itself obeyed the influence, and
+was the instrument of the master-spirit that ruled up above, and
+made the best, or rather the worst use of its rule. That all
+these measures failed in a great measure--those of violence as
+well as those of moral constraint--is attributable to a variety
+of complicated reasons, connected with the present state of the
+departments; and the how and why they failed, will be the subject of
+a few considerations presently.
+
+What, again, were the expressions of the more violent and so-called
+only true republican party in the capital, proceeding from its
+organs, the clubs, upon the same occasion of the elections? To all
+the candidates who presented themselves before them, the same
+question was propounded. If, when the votes of all France were
+taken, it should be found that the departments declared themselves
+averse to the establishment of a republic, what would be the duty
+they would have to perform,--what steps would they take? Those who
+did not declare that they would turn against that National Assembly,
+of which they themselves might then be members, and take up arms
+to march upon it, were denounced as traitors to their country,
+unworthy of the votes of true men, and hooted from the tribune, in
+which they had dared to stand forward as future representatives of
+the people. It would have been in vain to insinuate to these good
+gentlemen, that, in the application of the principle of universal
+suffrage, in which every man was not only an elector, but eligible
+as representative, the voice of the majority would be the voice of
+all France; and that it was for all France, by the voice of its
+majority, to decide upon the form of government best suited to all
+France. In vain, indeed. The ready answer would invariably have
+been--that Paris was the mistress of France, and had a right to
+dictate its will; that Paris had made the revolution, and that,
+consequently, Paris was privileged to support the principles of
+that revolution, and to arrogate to itself all its advantages: that
+the country at large, in fact, had nothing to do but to give in its
+approval, and be happy that its concurrence was so far demanded, and
+that, should it dare to have an opinion of its own, woe betide it!
+All this insolent bombast of the ultra party in Paris might have
+been spared, however; the cause of "Paris _v._ the Departments" was
+never called into the court of the country. The departments had
+accepted the establishment of the republic as a _fait accompli_:
+they never desired to subvert the new order of things by another
+convulsion, that would have plunged the country, already so
+miserable, into an increase of misery; but they protested in favour
+of a republic of peace and order, upon moderate principles; and,
+lo and behold, Paris itself combined with them in this desire. The
+disappointed party of the directing master-spirits of Paris have
+been none the less furious in their expressions of contempt for
+the openly declared will of all France. They had long kicked down
+their idol of universal suffrage with disdain, as soon as they had
+found that, in spite of all the hidden machinery they had set to
+work in it, the idol had not obeyed their will, or declared their
+oracles. Universal suffrage they pronounced a hoax: constraint,
+tyranny, anarchy, conspiracy, civil war, were proclaimed by them
+the only true elements of the only true republic. Frantic with
+disappointment at the result of their own manoeuvres, by which they
+had been caught in their own toils, they seized upon the pretext
+of sympathy in the sorrows of another country; and, aided by the
+treachery of certain of their own party in authority, invaded the
+obnoxious Assembly, overthrew the government for an hour, and
+proclaimed a terrorist government of their own. Foiled again in
+this audacious attempt, _foiled at least for the time being_, they
+now endeavoured to patch up the shaking soil that has given way
+beneath their feet, and plunged their leaders into a quagmire, and
+to build new foundations for fresh aggressions upon the discontent
+of a part of the working-classes. For this purpose they have taken
+two newfangled tools into their hands, the one of impulsion, the
+other of repulsion--the one of enthusiasm, the other of alarm; and
+both are so vaguely fashioned, and of so unintelligible a nature,
+that the real fact of their existence can never be proved, although
+their use, their purpose, and their design, in the hands of these
+men, are very clear. The one of these tools is a bugbear, a phantom,
+a bogie, to which they endeavour to give as terrific an aspect
+as possible, in order to fright ignorant men over into their own
+ranks. This evil spirit, they declare, has an existence, although
+no one ever saw it, no one ever felt it, no one ever knew where it
+dwells. No superstitious people was ever endeavoured to be worked
+up into a more irrefragable belief of some mysterious demon that
+haunts them in dark woods and obscure places to devour them--nor,
+generally, with more complete success over the credulous; for fear
+is the most powerful agent over the minds of the masses, and more
+especially when the fear is of the unknown and mysterious: and
+certainly no demon was ever described with a more hideous or blacker
+face. This bogie, phantom, bugbear, is a supposed influence called
+"Reaction." No precise form is given to it, for that would be to
+deprive it of more than half its terrors. No! _onme ignotum pro
+terribili_ is the policy. Nothing can be more vague or indefinite
+than this same monster, Reaction; it remains an Ossianic cloudlike
+spectre, floating no one knows whence, but bringing death and
+pestilence in its train. If the working-classes suffer, it is the
+Reaction, they are told, that is the cause of all their sufferings.
+If all their exactions, however exorbitant and impossible, _are not
+conceded at once_, it is because that horrible Reaction labours
+that their just demands should be withheld. If the most violent of
+their own body are not elected as the true representatives of the
+people, it is because that pestilential Reaction has cast a spell
+over the minds of all the electors. The Reaction has also, potent
+demon although it be, all the freaks and caprices of a lesser imp;
+it performs the strangest and most incomprehensible feats,--for
+if a discontented mass of workmen revolt unsuccessfully, and gain
+not their ends, it was the Reaction again that was the cause of
+all. The Reaction, for its own vile reactionary purposes, it was,
+that treacherously induced them to revolt, when they themselves
+were naturally inclined to be the most peaceable, contented, and
+the least exorbitant people on the earth. See how perfidious,
+Machiavelic, and Jesuitical, is this horrible monster Reaction! Pity
+it is that, in order to establish the fact of its real existence,
+it should not as yet have made itself visible to mortal eyes in any
+incarnate form! The Reaction is, however, no less, men are told,
+the enemy of the republic, the adversary of all true republican
+principles, labouring ever to overthrow it; above all, the enemy
+of the people and the people's interests, their undermining
+serpent, their secret assassin. It is already sapping, unseen,
+the foundations of the republic, and it intends to pull down the
+ruins of that august structure upon the heads of the people, and
+crush it for ever beneath them. In spite of the infinite harm
+worked upon the spirit of the lower classes by the establishment
+of the belief in this phantom, there would, perhaps, be no real
+danger in the effect produced by the clamours of insensate ultra
+journals, the preachings of agitating demagogues, and the insidious
+insinuations of anarchist _meneurs_ among the crowd, did not certain
+members of the government itself, and some of those in authority,
+render themselves parties concerned to the propagation of the
+belief, either genuinely, from having been themselves carefully
+inoculated with the _virus_ of false fear, until they have really
+taken the disease, or designedly, for the advancement of their
+own purposes--did they not, in fact, throw a sop continually to
+mob-lecturers, by insinuating their own conviction in the existence
+of "bogie" by their decrees, edicts, and proclamations, and, when
+they are called to put down anarchy, never obey without crying
+"Reaction" at the same time, and vainly giving the phantom a
+slap on the face. As it is--and herein lies the evil--the people
+are taught that the National Assembly, as it is now constituted,
+is the concentrated essence of the spirit of Reaction--that the
+representatives of the people, with but few exceptions, are the
+ministering imps in a visible form of the invisible demon. If a
+word of reason is spoken in the Assembly against the clamours of
+unreasonable demand--"Look ye there! reaction!" is the cry; if it
+prepares safe measures of repression against the open efforts of
+anarchy--"reaction;" if it defends its own existence against the
+subversive attempts of conspirators--"reaction;" if it attempts
+to establish the republic upon a firm and solid, but moderate
+basis--"reaction;" if it does any thing--"reaction;" if it does
+nothing--"reaction;" if it cannot perform impossible wonders for the
+amelioration and prosperity of the lower working-classes,--at which,
+however, it labours most hard,--"reaction--reaction--reaction; the
+reaction of aristocratic feeling--the reaction of ill will--the
+reaction of indifference and indolence;" thereby always meaning
+reaction against the true republic, and its true representatives,
+the lower classes. The phantom Reaction is thus used as a tool
+by a wild and violent party against the present order of things;
+against the moderate majority of the Assembly more particularly;
+against all things and all men not suiting its views, its schemes,
+its dreams, and its ambitions; and the bugbear is not ill got up to
+scare the credulous of the lower classes more completely into the
+toils of the malcontents, with the fear that reaction really may
+destroy that idol from which they have been taught to expect all
+the good gifts of "roasted larks," for which they have only to open
+their mouths, and "showers of gold," for which they have only to
+stretch forth their hands--that idol that has been lacquered over
+with the false gilding of delusive promises by imprudent rulers, and
+which the many still fancy to be all of solid gold--in a word, the
+Republic. The reaction, in truth, exists not, or exists not in the
+manner that people would be led to believe. If it exists, it is in
+the disgust of the more laborious and less tumultuous of the lower
+classes themselves, who, in their increasing misery, would be happy
+to accept the Lama of Thibet, or any other abstraction, with an
+absolute government, in the place of the false idol of their hopes,
+that has as yet only deluded them into greater misery-- it is in the
+reactionary cry of the wretched, who call for "King Log," or any
+other senseless ruler that would bring with it peace, and order, and
+a hope of well-being.
+
+The other tool employed by the designing malcontents--that of
+impulsion--is the banner upon which is inscribed "_Republique
+Democratique_." We have a republic, it is true, they say, but not
+the republic of our wishes. This is only a mere republic like any
+other: we want a democratic republic, and the democratic republic is
+taken from us; but the democratic republic we must and will have.
+Ask them what they mean by their "_republique democratique_," they
+will not be able to inform you. They launch into phrases which are
+but phrases: they lose themselves in a cloudy confusion of terms and
+ideas: they pretend to give you vague and chaotic explanations, that
+are no explanations at all: they know not themselves what they mean.
+Universal suffrage upon its broadest basis, with all the rights
+and privileges thereto attached, in their most democratic sense,
+is no democratic republic according to their view. What is? Who
+can tell?--certainly not they. "They have clamoured for the moon,"
+says a wit of the day, "and the moon has been given them; and now
+they cry, 'we are betrayed; we wanted the sun, and the sun we will
+have.' But have a care! the sun will blind your eyes, my friends,
+and you will stagger in still greater darkness; the sun will burn
+your fingers, and you will smart beneath the blisters. But they heed
+not; they still clamour for the sun." At all events, the banner on
+which flaunts aloft the words--"_Republique d�mocratique_" is a good
+rallying banner for all malcontents, a good banner under which to
+enlist the unwary among their ranks. It is a cry, a clamour, and all
+the more enticing because it is vague, unexplained, mysterious in
+its fresh promises of some fancied good that has not yet arrived,
+full of the great and alluring unknown. Thus it serves a purpose.
+
+But to return from this long digression upon the efforts of
+subversive parties, to the state of feeling that subsists in
+Republican France between its now well-sorted and divided
+elements--Paris and the provinces.
+
+What are, again, the expressions used by the lower classes with
+regard to the departments? what the feelings they express? Ever
+the same. Paris, they declare, makes, has made, and will make all
+the revolutions of the country. Paris, consequently, is all in
+all in France: Paris is the mistress, and the queen, the supreme
+arbitress of the destinies of France: Paris must be obeyed in all
+its wishes and its high will. What were the words of the workmen of
+the national workshops, in a late revolt, to the Minister of Public
+Works? They were told that there was no longer any work for them in
+the capital, that their pretended labour was an irony of labour,
+that the country paid them for doing nothing, and that they were
+eating the bread of idleness under the name of work: they were told
+that they were to be dispersed in the provinces, to be employed
+upon great works of public utility--upon railroads and canals, that
+stood still for want of hands: while money was lavishly promised
+them for this work, which the treasury could no longer afford upon
+unproductive labour. What was their answer? That they, the people,
+had made the revolution in Paris, that they were the masters of
+Paris, that Paris was theirs, to work in it their work; that, as
+masters of Paris, they were not to be bid leave it; that leave it
+they would not; that if labour failed, money must be found them at
+all events, or they would find means of taking it; in short, that
+they would not be _degraded_ by being sent into the provinces. The
+workmen of Paris claim, then, to be the masters of the capital, and
+still more, in their esteem, the masters of all France. The people
+of Paris, then, is _the_ people; it owns no other. Now the people,
+in modern republican phrase, and alas! in government decrees also,
+is by no means the nation; it means the lower classes alone. The
+people, it has been previously declared, is the sovereign people,
+whose voice is the voice of God; then, they reply, by the simplest
+reasoning, the sovereign people, whose voice is the voice of
+God--it is alone we: it is the lower classes. But there is still
+another deduction to be drawn. Among the lower classes it is only
+the active, the stirring, the discontented, the disorderly and
+tumultuous, who come forward in evidence as the representatives of
+this people. And thus it is very clear that the sovereign people,
+whose voice is the voice of God, the sovereign of France, is a small
+body of uneducated, misled, and wrong-headed men in the capital.
+So stands the account in theory. And who can deny that, in theory,
+they are in truth the masters? Who shall say when the chances of
+revolutionary struggles may not make them so in fact?
+
+So stands the state of feeling on the side of Paris--how stands it
+on the other side?
+
+When the revolution of February broke out, the departments scarcely
+knew themselves, their wishes, or their feelings. They had no
+mutual understanding. They were taken by surprise. They had not
+the time to consult their sentiments. Notoriously anti-republican
+as has been shown to have been the spirit of all France in the
+departments, they accepted, however, from old habit, the _dictum_
+of Paris: they accepted, as has been before remarked, from that
+species of resignation shown in France to a _fait accompli_: they
+accepted from a wish to avoid all further convulsion, from a love
+of established order in whatever shape it might come--from a hope
+that, whatever the form of government proclaimed and imposed upon
+the country, all would "go well." And besides, the republic, they
+were told, was only a provisional form of government at a moment
+of crisis, when no other could be adopted: upon its future form of
+government, the country, it was said, was to be freely consulted:
+the provinces were not prepared for the ulterior _dictum_ of Paris,
+that, without consulting the nation at all, the republic was to be
+considered as definitive; and that those who desired a change would
+be regarded as traitors to their country. But France is not what it
+was; it is enlightened by the experience of successive revolutions.
+The jealousy of the departments, towards despotic Paris had long
+been boiling in men's hearts: it did not at first boil over; but
+when, instead of order and peace, the provinces found that the
+new government produced only results of disorder, animosity, and
+ruin, the departments began to grumble and murmur openly--for the
+first time they seemed determined to show that they ought to have,
+and would have, a will of their own. In the commencement all was
+tranquil. In some parts of France the republic was accepted, if
+not with that enthusiasm which lying Parisian papers would have
+induced the world to believe, at all events with a species of
+contentment, arising from the trust that a more equitable popular
+government would relieve the mass from some of those charges
+which weighed so heavily upon them under the former government,
+and remove constraints that were painful to them. In other parts,
+there prevailed a sort of sullen resignation to the establishment
+of a _r�gime_ which was dreaded from an experience of a hateful
+past, and was repulsive to its tastes--but it was a resignation to
+the _fait accompli_. Some thus hoped, and others feared; but all
+combined in assuming an attitude of quiet expectation.
+
+In this state was France, when an imprudent Minister of the
+Interior, pushed on by ambitious, designing, misguided, and reckless
+men, sent down as a scourge upon the country those commissaries
+of obnoxious memory, who were publicly charged to work their will
+upon the departments as they pleased, by the means they pleased, by
+whatever oppressive or repressive measures they pleased, provided
+they worked the suspected and mistrusted departments into a proper
+feeling of true republican principle, according to the most ultra
+traditional doctrines of old republicanism. Down upon the country
+came the autocratic commissaries with these instructions; and,
+in too many instances, with the best intentions of torturing and
+tormenting the country, after their own fashion and according
+to their own views, to their heart's content. Down they came,
+with their history of the first republic in their heads, and the
+desire in their hearts of emulating the zeal of those fearful
+representatives of the people of the last century, who ruled in the
+departments, each a petty, but a bloody tyrant. To all alike the
+same violence of disposition must not be attributed: there were a
+few more prudent and better-thinking men among the number--although
+they, in certain instances, were afterwards accused in high quarters
+of mild laxity, and recalled as suspected of moderatism; but the
+many were evidently disposed to play the tyrant to the life, in
+their desperate measures to twist the country to their will. The
+times, however, were changed; the spirit of the age no longer
+permitted of the same violence. _Messieurs les Commissaires_ could
+not well proceed by the old-established and expeditious method of
+cementing the foundations of republics, one and indivisible, by
+blood, or erecting the scaffolding of the edifice on scaffolds.
+Shootings, drownings, and guillotinings were instruments rather
+too rough to be accepted by the manners of the time. But they
+had other means in their power, and according to the tenor of
+their instructions, which they thought to use, and attempted to
+use, with just as much effect. They dismissed functionaries in
+wholesale numbers--put their creatures, or those who cringed and
+worshipped, in their places, with orders to brow-beat and bully
+the recalcitrant, and with the exhibition of high example before
+their eyes. They threatened and accused; and when these means
+failed, according to their fancy, or when they were too mild for
+the taste of Master Commissary, the other underhand instruments
+of terrorism, already mentioned, were employed to make men crouch
+and tremble. The manner in which mobs have been excited against
+the better classes, or those who were suspected of moderatism, by
+manoeuvres unequivocally traced to the agency of the commissaries
+themselves, and the frightful excesses committed, are matters
+of common notoriety and of newspaper history. The scenes of the
+old Revolution were resorted to, although in another form; and
+not only supposed anti-republican sentiment, but moderatism,
+was endeavoured to be kept down by agents of terror, and the
+ever-ready riotous populations of the great towns. It would be an
+endless and a useless task to re-transcribe all the scenes of the
+violence of an insensate mob, secretly got up by the republican
+agents in authority, more than secretly connived at, and openly
+and avowedly excused and applauded. The rod that the commissary
+himself could not prudently employ, he placed in the hands of a
+designedly inflamed and infuriated people, to scourge the country
+to his will. One of the strongest instances, however, may be found
+in that state of continual terror on the one hand, and violence
+on the other, which for many long weeks hung over the head of the
+doomed city of Lyons. See there the mob constituting itself into
+illegally armed bodies, sundered from and inimical to the national
+guards, assuming names, such as _les voraces_ and _les d�vorants_,
+by which they themselves marked their character, ruling the whole
+city of Lyons by fear; exacting, spoliating, arresting _suspects_
+at will; searching the houses of quiet inhabitants under the
+pretext of conspiracies against the republic that did not exist,
+and of concealed arms, such as they themselves illegally bore,
+that never could be found; dragging trembling priests from the
+altar to be confined in cellars, because they were suspected of
+anti-republicanism; laying their hands upon church plate as the
+property of traitors; liberating prisoners arrested for revolt
+and disorder--arresting the magistrates who had condemned them;
+dictating their orders to military officers for the release of
+soldiers put under restraint; pulling a general from his horse,
+and nearly immolating him to the wrath of their high justice in
+the streets; commanding the fortresses, making barricades at the
+least opposition to their will, domineering over the whole city as
+masters--a herd of power-intoxicated savages--and the commissary
+looking on, applauding, sanctioning their deeds, rubbing his hands
+with satisfaction, and approving them with the words "_Allez, mes
+enfans! vous faites bien!_" Such scenes as these, carried to the
+utmost limits of anarchy and excess in Lyons, have been exhibited
+also in almost all the great towns of France, with all the effect of
+well-applied terrorism. There is scarcely one that has not similar
+outrages, from the violence of an excited mob, to lay to the charge
+of him who was set in authority over them--to work his will, so
+said the letter of his instructions--but to preserve peace and
+order, in a country where convulsions, collisions, and commotions
+were so infinitely to be dreaded and avoided--so should his duty
+have told him. It ought to be said, at the same time, that the
+acknowledged authorities of the government were aided in their high
+revolutionary mission, and in the extraordinary means they employed
+in its execution, by less acknowledged agents, in the persons of
+emissaries from the violent ultra clubs of Paris; who, arrogating to
+themselves the right to the true expression of the only true feeling
+of Paris--and consequently, _� fortiori_, of all France--racked the
+country with their manoeuvres, their excitements to violence, their
+bullying threats and intimidations. Unacknowledged by government
+authority as they were, however, their missions were bestowed
+on them by the quondam friends and fellow-conspirators, under
+the former reign of the Minister of the Interior; their expenses
+were supported by funds, supplied no one could say by what hand,
+although most might divine; their measures were evidently taken
+in accordance, and in perfectly good understanding, with the
+departmental commissary.
+
+What, however, was the result? The very reverse from that intended
+by _Messieurs les Commissaires_ and their supporter, the Minister
+of the Interior. They over-reached themselves, and worked the very
+effect they attempted to exterminate. Instead of subjugating the
+departments to their will of ultra-republicanism by the violence
+of terrorism, they almost roused the whole better feeling of the
+country, at first quietly disposed and resigned, against the very
+principles of republicanism in general. The sentiment at first
+accepted was soured and embittered; the discontent and aversion
+daily increased; and it was more than once openly affirmed that
+the departments were ready to revolt, and formed the design of
+marching upon Paris. That this subject was actually discussed in
+large, and not even secret meetings in the provinces--and even in
+such as had been always considered ultra-liberal and democratic
+in their opinions, as parts of Normandy, for instance--admits of
+but little doubt; and this feeling, although it was never actually
+embodied in any living and active fact of resistance, may be taken
+as one example in support of the opinion, that the children may
+not always prove so submissive to the dictates of the mother,
+and may one day raise their voices and hold forth their hands to
+dispute her will. The open and general outbreak of the provinces,
+which was at one time expected, and was the common topic of
+conversation in Paris, was suppressed, however, by the influence
+of the better-thinking and more prudential men in the country. But
+the feeling of opposition and resistance did not fail to manifest
+itself in minor demonstrations. Expostulations were at first
+made against the tyranny and the inflammatory manoeuvres of the
+government commissaries; then broke out angry remonstrances on the
+part of the _bourgeoisie_, backed by the better and quieter of the
+working-classes; and at last, when all these more legitimate means
+failed, the populations of several of the larger towns rose against
+the provisional despot, who played the autocrat and the tyrant in
+the name of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."
+
+The national guards took up arms to demand the revocation and
+the departure of the obnoxious commissary. The commissary, in
+opposition, acted the self-same part of which a despotic king
+has since been so violently accused by the republican journals.
+As Ferdinand of Naples is said to have excited the dregs of the
+populace, the lazzaroni, to aid him in a reactionary movement in his
+favour, so did even the republican commissary after the self-same
+system. He caused the mob to be roused to his assistance, as to that
+of the only true democratic friend of the people; he called upon
+them to take up arms and combat in his defence: the lazzaroni mob of
+the departments was the weapon he wielded to overcome the resistance
+of the majority to his will. In most instances the recalcitrant part
+of the provincial populations prevailed. In several of the larger
+towns, as in Bordeaux, Bourges, and many others, the commissary was
+obliged to take to flight: in some the palace of the little tyrant
+was stormed, he himself was made prisoner, and was taken to the
+railroad, and "packed off" back to that Paris which had sent him.
+In a very few instances only the influence of the commissary gained
+the day: in still less was he again returned, to be enforced upon
+the department from which he had been driven; and in one case he was
+sent back by the powers that were, only to be again ignominiously
+expelled.
+
+In the department of the Ari�ge, at the town of Foix, a journal,
+founded under the auspices of the commissaries of the government,
+and professing the most violent ultra-republican doctrines, was
+publicly burnt by the magistrates and most influential persons of
+the place, to show their contempt and abhorrence of the principles
+and actions of the authority set over them. Other instances of
+the general opposition, either to the commissaries themselves or
+to the agents they had appointed and supported, on account of
+their violence, their tyrannical measures, and their anarchical
+principles, are too numerous to quote; and, generally speaking, the
+feeling was so strong, that the _Messieurs les Commissaires_, or
+rather, _les Citoyens Commissaires_, were obliged to give way before
+the expression of popular indignation.
+
+The departments then, for the first time, have begun to show that
+they are determined not to be treated as the mere humble serfs
+of the capital,--that they are resolved to have a will and an
+action of their own. The results have been such that, even among
+the staunch republicans in the provinces, and among those who
+look to the republic as the only form of government at present
+suitable to France, symptoms of a tendency to a federal system have
+indubitably sprung up,--of a tendency, in fact, to that system
+in opposition to which, under the first revolution, the title of
+"one and indivisible,"--so little understood at the present day,
+so constantly repeated by the herd without any real meaning being
+attached to it,--was bestowed upon the republic. The fear of a
+powerfully organised resistance to the sacred principles of French
+republicanism,--unity and indivisibility,--is, at this very time,
+one of the bugbears by which those in power are terrified and
+haunted. But, whether this fear be well founded or not, it suffices
+for the present purpose, to show that a disunited feeling exists to
+a great extent between the departments and the capital; and that,
+while on the one hand the former begin to show a disposition to
+resist the overweening influence and tyrannical importance of the
+former, on the other, a dread is beginning to be expressed of their
+growing discontent, and a suspicion is constantly expressed of their
+increasing tendency to reactionary principles, likely to prove
+eventually subversive to the republic. Among those "lookers-on,"
+who proverbially "see the most of the game," there are some who, in
+their exceptional and impartial position as foreigners, are able
+to see expressed in letters from the provinces "curses, not loud,
+but deep," against "that detestable, unruly, and insolent Paris,
+that has made alone a hateful revolution, which it imposes on all
+France." It cannot, however, be said, at the same time, that any
+reactionary feeling against the republic itself, and a republican
+form of government, prevails in the country at large. That which
+is thought to be stigmatised by the ultra party with the term of
+"reaction," appears, as yet, to be nothing but the acceptation of
+a republic based upon the principles of peace and order; but, at
+the same time, an opposition to all views and doctrines likely to
+produce disorder and anarchy. And yet still, in another sense,
+the feeling of the country at large cannot be said to be strictly
+republican: the "true men" might be in vain sought except in the
+disorderly, tumultuous, excitable, and easily stirred populations of
+the great manufacturing towns.
+
+Shortly after the appointment of the obnoxious commissaries, several
+causes arose to increase the discontent of the departments, not only
+among the _ci-devant_ upper and middling classes, but among the
+lower classes,--particularly in the agricultural districts, and more
+especially among that peasant population that has so universally
+in France acquired a little property in land. One of these causes
+was the imposition of the new taxes. Under the former _r�gime_,
+France had been crushed down by the weight of its impositions. One
+of the first advantages of the republic was announced, in official
+proclamations, to consist in the removal of taxes, and in the
+enormous diminution of state expenses necessarily attendant upon a
+republican form of government. Already the country people looked to
+a release from the greater part of their obligations: the system of
+"no taxes at all," they thought, in their _na�vet�_, was to follow;
+instead of which came very shortly the decree, begging the country
+for the loan of a certain proportion of the taxes for the ensuing
+year beforehand, in order to meet the deficiencies in the finances,
+followed up almost immediately by the more imperative ordinance,
+imposing the additional 45 per cent in support of the increased,
+not diminished, expenses of the republican government. In many
+parts of the country the peasant population refused to pay this
+additional tax, or responded only to the demand with that equivocal
+answer, so characteristic of the French peasant, "We'll see about
+it." It nevertheless, however, refused to pay at the same time the
+rents of its landlords, upon the pretext that it was ruined by the
+revolution, and the exactions of the republic. It was in vain that
+the government protested that these measures were necessitated by
+the financial dilapidations of the dethroned dynasty. Clear-sighted
+enough where their own interests are concerned, the French peasants
+in the provinces replied by denunciations of that odious Paris.
+Paris, they declared, had chosen to make for the nonce a revolution
+in which they had not aided, and which they had not desired; and
+then Paris turned to its own advantage alone the results of that
+revolution. It had imposed upon all France, by calling for resources
+from a country already drained, to be lavishly squandered in
+rewarding the idleness of its own tumultuous and unruly inhabitants
+among the working-classes, which it dreaded, by the establishment of
+its expensive so-called _ateliers nationaux_, and by paying fresh
+troops under the name _gardes mobiles_,--when the standing army was
+already such a burden the country,--for the sake of draining off and
+regularising the worst dregs of its own population, and satisfying
+the caprices of a riotous Parisian mob, that chose to object to the
+presence of the old military force among it, while it accepted a new
+defensive and repressive force, in addition to the former, under a
+new title. Upon such questions, of vital importance to their own
+interests, the country people of the provinces were not disposed
+to listen to argument or reason; and in the discontent at the
+exorbitant exactions of the capital the jealousy of the departments
+towards Paris waxed stronger and stronger.
+
+Another cause, which added greatly to the increasing apprehension
+and aversion was the preaching of the communist doctrines in Paris,
+upon the first establishment of republican principles, and the
+support apparently given to these wild and spoliating principles by
+certain members of the Provisional Government itself. If there be
+any feeling more alive than any other in the breast of the French
+peasant, it is that attached to the acquirement and the possession
+of landed property in however humble a form, be it but a small field
+or a tiny vineyard. If he has any hope, any ambition, any sentiment,
+which he thinks worth living for, it is the extension, by any and
+every means, of his small domain. On the fact of this possession
+are concentrated all the mainspring motives and agencies of his
+whole existence--in this, his industry, his talent, his cunning,
+his thoughts, his affections, his very love for his children, to
+whom he hopes to transmit it. The great _mobile_ of the character of
+the French peasant is self-interest in this respect. The doctrines,
+then, which preached that the possession of all landed property by
+individuals is an infamous spoliation of the _res publica_, filled
+the country people in the provinces with the liveliest alarm, and
+contributed to establish a still greater hatred to a state of things
+that tended to produce results so fatally detrimental to all that
+they held dear. The Parisian, almost as blindly ignorant of the
+state of his own country--which, in his theory that Paris is all
+France, he looks upon with indifference, if not contempt--as he is
+proverbially utterly ignorant of every other country beyond the
+frontiers of France, even the most neighbouring--and, in fact, of
+every thing that touches upon geography or the state of nations, of
+which he has only the vaguest and most incorrect notions--thought
+that all his wild fraternity schemes, developed and accepted by
+those who possessed nothing, in the capital, would be received
+with enthusiasm also by the "miserable, oppressed, and tyrannised
+inhabitant of the fields and plains;"--such was the language used,
+and eagerly caught up. The Parisian soon found, by experience, that
+he had made a gross mistake. The emissaries sent down into the
+provinces by the professors and high-priests of communism, or by the
+ultra clubs, and supported, there is every reason to believe, by
+the members of the government before alluded to, met only with the
+most active repulsion. Their Utopian ideas of universal fraternity
+and spoliation of property were scorned, scouted, and opposed:
+themselves were hooted, pelted, almost lapidated as incendiary
+enemies of the peasant. "The innocent and humble inhabitant of
+the fields" was indignant, insulted, aggrieved, that he should
+be so contemptuously considered "miserable and oppressed:" he
+showed himself in the light of the landed proprietor, the most
+avariciously interested in the possession of property, and by no
+means the _naif_ individual the Parisian had been accustomed to
+believe him, according to his text-books of _vaudevilles_ and
+melodramas. The agents of communistic doctrines were forced to
+retreat in dudgeon, to declare the French peasant the most ignorant
+and pig-headed animal upon earth, still under the yoke of the
+tyrants, and _endoctrin�_ by the aristocrats; and to avow that
+the departments were not ripe for the enlightenment of communism,
+perhaps even to denounce them as infamously reactionary. Certain it
+is that communistic doctrines found no enthusiastic disciples in the
+country; or, if the propagandism made any steps, it was after the
+fashion so characteristically depicted in a caricature published
+by the _Charivari_, in which a peasant appears before the mayor of
+his _commune_ to say, that, since a general _partage des biens_ is
+to take place, he puts down his name for the _ch�teau_, but makes
+a most wofully wry face upon hearing that his own field has been
+already divided among the paupers of the village. The propagation of
+communism, then, only excited fears instead of hopes, consternation
+instead of joy, and tended still more to indispose the country
+people, and excite their aversion and discontent towards a state of
+things likely to become so prejudicial to their interests: more than
+ever, they were disposed to revolt.
+
+In this state was the feeling of the country at large when the
+general elections came on, accompanied by all the violence of
+party manoeuvre to support the principles of ultra-republicanism,
+advocated by the unscrupulous minister of the nation; but all
+these efforts tended only to indispose it still more, and to call
+forth, in spite of the desperate opposition made, its sense in
+favour of respect of property, order, and moderatism of views in
+the republic, if republic there was to be. As is well known, an
+immense majority of those men of moderate principles, whom all
+the ill-judged and hateful efforts of the violent and reckless
+republicans at the head of affairs had so greatly contributed to
+form into a decided, self-conscious, and compact party of opponents,
+was returned to the Assembly. Most of the leading men of the liberal
+party under the former dynasty, who had stood forward as friends
+of progressive reform, but not as opponents to the constitutional
+monarchy principle, were likewise elected, with great majorities,
+by the suffrages of the people. The country declared its will to
+be against the views of the principal and stirring influence which
+emanated from the reckless man who governed the interior affairs
+of the country in the capital. But it did not forget, at the same
+time, and it still bears an inveterate grudge to the violent agents
+of that ultra-republicanism, chiefly concentrated in Paris, who
+had filled the country with disorder, tumult, terror, and, in some
+cases, bloodshed, by the atrocious and outrageous means it placed in
+the hands of a riotous mob to overawe them, and sway the direction
+of the elections, and by the base manoeuvres employed to attain their
+ends. It does not forget the despotism of certain commissaries, who,
+after having their own lists of ultra-democratic candidates, whom
+they intended to force down the throats of the electors, printed,
+threatened the printer, who should dare to print any other, with
+their high displeasure, and caused them to shut up their press. It
+does not forget the seizure of those papers that proposed moderate
+candidates, with every attempt to strangle in practice that liberty
+of the press which was so clamorously claimed in theory. It does
+not forget the voters' lists torn from the hands of voters by a
+purposely excited mob. It does not forget the odious manoeuvre by
+which agents were largely paid and sent about to cry "_Vive Henri
+V._" in the streets of towns, in order to induce the belief in
+a Bourbonist reactionary party, and thus rouse the passions and
+feelings of the flattered and declamation-intoxicated mob against
+the moderates, regardless of the consequences--of the animosity
+and the bloodshed. It does not forget the intimidation, the threat
+of fire and sword, the opposition by force to the voting of whole
+villages suspected of moderatism--the collision, the constraint,
+the conflict, the violence. It does not forget all this, nor also
+that it owes the outrage, the alarm, and the suffering, the ruin
+to peace and order, to commerce, to well-being, to fortune, to
+that central power which turned a legion of demons upon it, in the
+shape of revolutionary emissaries and agents. It forgets still
+less the scenes of Limoges, where a mob were turned loose into
+the polling-house to destroy the votes, drive out the national
+guards, disarm these defenders of order and right, and form a mob
+government, to rule and terrorise the town, while Master Commissary
+looked on, and told the people that it did well, and laughed in his
+sleeve. It forgets still less the fury of the disappointed upon
+the result of the elections, their incitements to insurrections,
+their preachings of armed resistance for the sake of annulling the
+elections, obtained, it must never be forgotten, by _universal
+suffrage_, in face of their culpable manoeuvres: the emissaries
+again sent down from the clubs, and with an apparent connivance
+of certain ultra-members of the government, from the charge of
+which, now more than ever since the conspiracy of the 15th May,
+they will scarcely be able to acquit themselves: the efforts of
+these emissaries to make the easily excited and tumultuous lower
+classes take up arms, and the bloody conflicts in the streets of
+Rouen: the complicity of the very magistrates appointed by these
+members of the government--the terror and the bloodshed, and then
+the cry of the furious ultras that the people had been treacherously
+assassinated--the conspiracies and incendiary projects of the
+vanquished at Marseilles, the troubles of Lisle, of Amiens, of
+Lyons, of Aubusson, of Rhodez, of Toulouse, of Carcassonne--why
+swell the list of names?--of almost every town in France, all with
+the same intent of destroying those elections of representatives
+which the country had proclaimed in the sense of order and of
+moderatism. It forgets still less the dangers of that same 15th
+May, when the government was for a few hours overthrown, by the
+disorderly, the disappointed, the discontented, the violent ultra
+republicans, the conspirators of Paris,--when some of those, who
+had been formerly their rulers, were arrested as accomplices, and
+others still in power can scarcely yet again avoid the accusation
+and conviction of complicity.
+
+All the other troubles of this distracted country, since the
+revolution of February, may be passed over--the ruin to commerce,
+the poverty, misery, and want, the military revolts excited by
+the same emissaries to cause divisions in the army, as likewise
+the unhappy troubles of Nismes, where the disturbances took
+a religions tendency--as a conflict of creeds between Roman
+Catholics and Protestants, rather than a political or even a social
+character,--although they still bore evidence of the disorder of
+the times and the disturbance of the country. The elections, then,
+contributed more powerfully than ever to the fermentation, the
+discontent, the mistrust, and the ill-will of the country.
+
+In this state of France, with the feeling of impatient jealousy
+and irritation against tyranny and despotism expressed by the
+departments towards the capital, with the evident disunion between
+the provinces and Paris, what are likely to be the destinies of
+the Republic hereafter? Again it must be said--who can tell,
+who foresee, who predict? The Republic has been accepted, and
+is maintained, from a love of order and the _status quo_: but
+there is no enthusiasm, no admiration for the republican form of
+government throughout the country at large; there is, at most,
+indifference to any government, whatever it may be, provided it but
+insure the stability and prosperity of the country. If an opinion
+may be hazarded, however, it is, that the danger to the present
+established form of things will not arise so much from the conflict
+of contending parties in the capital, as from the discontent,
+disaffection, jealousy, and, perhaps, final outbreak and resistance
+of the departments. Terrorism has had its day; and it would be
+difficult, if not impossible, to apply the system once again to the
+country in its present state. What other means will the violent
+possess--what coercive measures, if, when parties come to an issue,
+the wearied and disgusted country should rise to protest against the
+disorders of Republican Paris? There seem at present to be none. The
+result of such an outbreak would be inevitable civil war. The strong
+instance before alluded to, of the determination of the departments
+to assert a will of their own, was given in a very striking
+manner in the affair of the 15th May. One of the conspirators got
+possession of the electric telegraph at the Home Office, and sent
+down despatches into all the provinces, to inform the country
+that the Assembly was dissolved, and the new government of the
+ultra-anarchist party had taken the reins of power. Instead of being
+awed into submission as heretofore, instead of calmly and resignedly
+accepting the _fait accompli_ as was their wont, the departments
+immediately rose to protest against the new revolution of Paris.
+Before a counter-despatch could be sent down into the provinces,
+to let them know that the former order of things was restored, the
+national guards of all the great towns were up and out, with the cry
+"to arms!" and it was resolved to march upon Paris. It was not only
+in the towns within a day's journey of the capital that the movement
+was spontaneously made. In the furthest parts of the country, from
+the cities of Avignon, Marseilles, Nismes, and all the south of
+France, the national guards were already on their way towards the
+capital, before the information that declared the more satisfactory
+result of the day could be made public. It is more than probable,
+then, that, should a desperate faction ever seize upon the power, or
+even should a close conflict of parties further endanger the safety
+of the country and its tottering welfare, that the provinces would
+again take up arms against Paris, and that a civil war would be the
+result.
+
+This is rather a suggestion hazarded, than a prediction made, as to
+the future fate of the French republic. Whatever that future may be,
+an uneasy submission on the part of a great anti-republican majority
+to the active agency of a small republican minority--but, at the
+same time, a desire of maintaining a government, whatever it may be,
+if supportable, for tranquillity's sake; a feeling of humiliation
+and degradation in this utter submission to the will of Paris
+throughout the country--but, at the same time, an apparent growing
+determination eventually to resist that will, should it at last
+prove intolerable--such is the present state of Republican France.
+
+
+
+
+COLONISATION.
+
+_Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia_,
+&c. By Lieut.-Colonel Sir T. MITCHELL, Surveyor-General, &c. 1 vol.
+London: Longmans.
+
+
+Australia is the greatest accession to substantial power ever made
+by England. It is the _gift_ of a _Continent_, unstained by war,
+usurpation, or the sufferings of a people. But even this is but a
+narrow view of its value. It is the addition of a territory, almost
+boundless, to the possessions of mankind; a location for a new
+family of man, capable of supporting a population equal to that of
+Europe; or probably, from its command of the ocean, and from the
+improved systems, not merely of commercial communication, but of
+agriculture itself, capable of supplying the wants of double the
+population of Europe. It is, in fact, the virtual future addition
+of three hundred millions of human beings, who otherwise would not
+have existed. And besides all this, and perhaps of a higher order
+than all, is the transfer of English civilisation, laws, habits,
+industrial activity, and national freedom, to the richest, but the
+most abject countries of the globe; an imperial England at the
+Antipodes, securing, invigorating, and crowning all its benefits by
+its religion.
+
+Within the last fifty years, the population of the British islands
+has nearly tripled; it is increasing in England alone at the rate of
+a thousand a day. In every kingdom of the Continent it is increasing
+in an immense ratio. The population is becoming too great for the
+means of existence. Every trade is overworked, every profession
+is overstocked, every expedient for a livelihood threatens to be
+exhausted under this vast and perpetual influx of life; and the
+question of questions is, How is this burthen to be lightened?
+
+There can be but one answer,--Emigration. For the last century,
+common sense, urged by common necessity, directed the stream of
+this emigration to the great outlying regions of the western world.
+North America was the chief recipient. Since the conquest of Canada,
+annual thousands had directed their emigration to the British
+possessions: the conquest of the Cape has drawn a large body of
+settlers to its fine climate; but Australia remained, and remains
+for the grand future field of British emigration.
+
+The subject has again come before the British public with additional
+interest. The Irish famine, the British financial difficulties,
+and the palpable hazard of leaving a vast pauperism to grow up
+in ignorance, have absolutely compelled an effort to relieve the
+country. A motion has just been made in Parliament by Lord Ashley,
+giving the most startling details of the infant population; and
+demanding the means of sending at least its orphan portion to some
+of those colonial possessions, where they may be trained to habits
+of industry, and have at least a chance of an honest existence. We
+shall give a few of these details, and they are of the very first
+importance to humanity. On the 6th of June Lord Ashley brought in a
+resolution, "That it is expedient that means be annually provided
+for the voluntary emigration, to some one of her Majesty's colonies,
+of a certain number of young persons of both sexes, who have been
+educated in the schools, ordinarily called 'ragged schools,' in and
+about the metropolis."
+
+In the speech preparatory to this resolution, a variety of
+statements were made, obtained from the clergy and laity of London.
+It was ascertained that the number of children, either deserted
+by their parents, or sent out by their parents to beg and steal,
+could not be less than 30,000 in the metropolis alone. Their habits
+were filthy, wretched, and depraved. Their places of living by day
+were the streets, and by night every conceivable haunt of misery
+and sin. They had no alternative but to starve, or to grow up into
+professional thieves, perhaps murderers. Of the general population,
+the police reports stated, that in 1847 there had been taken into
+custody 62,181 individuals of both sexes and all ages. Of these,
+20,702 were females, and 47,479 males. Of the whole, 15,693 were
+under twenty years of age, 3,682 between fifteen and ten, and 362
+under ten. Of the whole, 22,075 could neither read nor write, and
+35,227 could read only, or read and write imperfectly.
+
+The average attendance last year in the "ragged schools" was
+4000. Of these 400 had been in prison, 600 lived by begging, 178
+were the children of convicts, and 800 had lost one or both their
+parents, and of course were living by their own contrivances. Out
+of the 62,000, there were not less than 28,113 who had no trade, or
+occupation, or honest livelihood whatever!
+
+The statement then proceeded to consider the expense to which the
+nation was put to keep down crime. It will perhaps surprise those
+readers who object to the expenses of emigration.
+
+  In 1847. The expense of Parkhurst Prison was �14,349
+    "      Of Pentonville Prison,               18,307
+  In 1846. Of County Gaols,                    147,145
+    "      Of County Houses of Correction,     160,841
+    "      Of Rural Police,                    180,000
+    "      Of Prosecutions for Coining,          9,000
+  In 1847. Of Metropolitan Police,             363,164
+
+The whole but a few items, yet amounting to a million sterling
+annually. In this we observe the Millbank Penitentiary, an immense
+establishment, Newgate, the Compter, and the various places of
+detention in the city, are not included; and there is no notice of
+the expenses of building, which in the instance of the Penitentiary
+alone amounted to a million.
+
+Yet, to dry up the source of this tremendous evil, Lord Ashley
+asks only an expenditure of �100,000 annually, to transform 30,000
+growing thieves into honest men, idlers into cultivators of the
+soil, beggars into possessors of property, which the generality of
+settlers become, on an average of seven years.
+
+There can be no rational denial of the benefit, and even of the
+necessity, of rescuing those unfortunate creatures from a career
+which, beginning in vice and misery, must go on in public mischief,
+and end in individual ruin. Lord Ashley's suggestion is that the
+plan shall be first tried on the moderate scale of sending 500 boys,
+and 500 girls, chosen from the ragged schools of London, under
+proper superintendents, to the most fitting of the colonies; by
+which we understand Australia. The plan may then be extended to the
+other parts of the kingdom, to Scotland and Ireland. He concluded by
+placing his motion in the hands of government, who, through the Home
+Secretary, promised to give it all consideration.
+
+It is certainly lamentable that such statements are to be made;
+and we have little doubt that the foreign journalist will exult in
+this evidence of what they call "the depravity of England." But,
+it is to be remembered that London has a population of nearly two
+millions--that all the idleness, vice, and beggary of an island
+of twenty millions are constantly pouring into it--that _foreign_
+vice, idleness, and beggary contribute their share, and that
+what is abhorred and _corrected_ in England, is overlooked, and
+even cherished abroad. It is also to be remembered, that there
+is a continual temptation to plunder in the exposed wealth of
+the metropolis, and a continual temptation to mendicancy in the
+proverbial humanity of the people.
+
+Still, crime must be punished wherever it exists, and vice must be
+reformed wherever man has the means; and, therefore, we shall exult
+in the success of any judicious plan of emigration.
+
+It happens, at this moment, that there is an extraordinary demand
+for emigration; that every letter from Australia calls for a supply
+of human life, and especially for an emigration of females,--the
+proportion of males to females in some of the settlements being 9 to
+1, while the number of females predominates, by the last census in
+England.
+
+There is a daily demand for additional labourers, artificers, and
+household servants, and with offers of wages which in England
+neither labourer nor artisan could hope to obtain. Thousands are now
+offered employment, comfort, and prospective wealth in Australia,
+who must burthen the workhouse at home. The advantages are so
+evident, the necessity is so strong, and the opportunity is so
+prompt and perfect, that they _must_ result in a national plan of
+constant emigration, until Australia can contain no more--an event
+which may not happen for a thousand years.
+
+It happens, also, by a striking coincidence, that Australian
+discovery has just assumed new vigour; and that instead of the
+barrenness and deformity which were generally supposed to form
+the principal characteristics of this vast territory, immense
+tracts have been brought to European knowledge for the first time,
+exhibiting remarkable fertility, and even the most unexpected and
+singular beauty. We now give a sketch of the journey in which those
+discoveries were made.
+
+To explore the interior of this great country has been the object
+of successive expeditions for the last five-and-twenty years. But
+such was the want of system or the want of means, that nothing was
+done, except to increase the tales of wonder regarding the middle
+regions of Australia. The theorists were completely divided; one
+party insisting on the existence of a mediterranean or mighty lake
+in the central region, _because_ there was a tendency in some of the
+small rivers of the coast to flow inward. Others, with quite as much
+plausibility, laughed at the idea; and, from having felt a hot wind
+occasionally blowing from the west, had no doubt that the central
+region was a total waste, a desert of fiery sand, an Australian
+Sahara! while both parties seem to have been equally erroneous, so
+far as any actual discovery has been made.
+
+But it seems equally extraordinary, that even the only two
+expeditions which within our time have added largely to our
+knowledge, alike should have neglected the most obvious and
+almost the only useful means of discovery. The especial object of
+exploration must be, to ascertain the existence of considerable
+rivers pouring into the sea, because it is only thus that the
+government can effectively form settlements. The especial difficulty
+of the explorers is, to find provisions, or carry the means of
+subsistence along with them. Both difficulties would be obviated by
+the steam-boat, and by nothing else. The natural process, therefore,
+would be, to embark the expedition in a well appointed and well
+provisioned steamer; to anchor it at the necessary distance from the
+coast, which in general has deep and sheltered water, within the
+great rocky ridge; and then send out the explorers for fifty or a
+hundred miles north and south, making the steamer the headquarters.
+Thus they might ascertain every feature of the coast, inch by inch,
+be secure of subsistence, and be free from native hostility.
+
+Yet all the expeditions have been overland, generally with the most
+imminent hazard of being starved, and occasionally losing some of
+their number by attacks from the natives. Thus also the present
+expedition of the surveyor succeeded but in part, though it had
+the merit of discovering that the reports of Australian barrenness
+belonged but to narrow tracts, while the general character of the
+country towards the north was of striking fertility. The purpose of
+Sir T. Mitchell's late expedition was, to ascertain the probability
+of a route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria. But as this
+route was to be made dependent on a presumed river flowing into the
+gulf, the actual object was to reach the head of that river--an
+object which could have been more effectually attained by tracing it
+upward from the gulf; and, in consequence of not so tracing it, the
+expedition ultimately failed.
+
+To establish an easy connexion between the colony of New South
+Wales and the traffic of the Indian Ocean had long been a matter of
+great interest. Torres Strait, the only channel to the north, is
+a remarkably dangerous navigation; while, by forming an overland
+communication directly with the Gulf of Carpentaria to the west of
+the strait, the commerce would find an open sea. A trade in horses
+had also commenced with India, which was impeded by the hazards of
+the strait. There had also been a steam communication with England
+by Singapore, and there was a hope that this line might be connected
+with a line from the gulf.
+
+The idea of tracing a river towards the north was a conjecture
+of several years' standing, in some degree founded on the natural
+probability that an immense indentation of the land could not but
+exhibit some outlet for the course of a considerable fall of waters,
+and also that there had been a report by a Bushman, of having
+followed its course to the sea.
+
+After some difficulties with the governor, which were obviated by a
+vote of the Colonial Legislature of �2000 for the expenses of the
+expedition, it set out from Paramatta on the 17th of November 1845.
+The expedition consisted of Sir Thomas Mitchell; E. B. Kennedy,
+Esq., assistant-surveyor; William Stephenson, Esq., surgeon and
+naturalist; twenty-three convicts, who volunteered for the sake
+of a free pardon, which was to be their only payment; and three
+freemen. They had a numerous list of baggage conveyances, &c. &c.;
+eight drays, drawn by eighty bullocks; two boats, thirteen horses,
+four private horses, three light carts, and provisions for a year,
+including two hundred and fifty sheep, which travelled along with
+them, constituting a chief part of their animal food. They had also
+gelatine and pork. The surveyor-general preferred light carts, and
+horses in place of bullocks; but it was suggested that the strong
+drays were necessary, and that bullocks were more enduring than
+horses--the latter an opinion soon found to be erroneous. It is
+rather singular, that either opinion should not have been settled
+fifty years ago.
+
+Some natural and well-expressed reflections arise, in the course of
+this volume, on the lonely life of the settler. Its despondency,
+and its inutility to advance his moral nature, are in some measure
+attributed to the absence of the "gentler sex."
+
+"At this sheep station," says Sir Thomas, "I met with an individual
+who had seen better days, and had lost his property amid the wreck
+of colonial bankruptcies; a 'tee-totaller,' with Pope's 'Essay
+on Man' for his consolation, in a _bark hut_. This man spoke of
+the depravity of shepherd life as excessive.... The pastoral
+life, so favourable to the enjoyment of nature, has always been a
+favourite with the poets. But here it appears to be the antipodes
+of all poetry and propriety, simply because man's better half
+is wanting. Under this unfavourable aspect the white man comes
+before the aboriginal. Were they intruders, accompanied with wives
+and children, they would not be half so unwelcome. In this, too,
+consists one of the most striking differences between settling and
+squatting. Indeed, if it were an object to _uncivilise_ the human
+race, I know of no method more likely to effect it, than to isolate
+a man from the gentler sex and children. Remove afar off all courts
+of justice and means of redress of grievances, all churches and
+schools, all shops where he can make use of money, and then place
+him in close contact with savages. 'What better off am I than a
+black native!' was the exclamation of a shepherd to me."
+
+A general description of the aspect of New South Wales would be
+difficult, from its extreme diversity in parts; but the general
+face of the country is marked by lines of granite hills; short
+water-courses, which in summer are dry, or retain the water only
+in pools; clumps of trees, generally dotted over the soil, and
+occasional _prairies_. But the soil is generally fertile, and, in
+the spring, exhibits a great variety of flowers. Thus the land is
+every where fit for European life, though in the same latitude
+with the hottest portions of Africa. It has occasional gushes of
+intense heat, but they seem not to have affected the health of the
+expedition; and with that progress of comforts which follows all
+civilisation, the heat and cold alike may be successfully mitigated.
+We have not heard of any endemic in Australia; the epidemic has
+never visited its shores. The chief want in the pasture-grounds
+is water, but even that is merely the result of the rudeness of
+early settling; for vast quantities of water run to waste, or are
+lost in swamps, which future colonists will receive in tanks, and
+check with dams. The capricious abundance and deficiency of this
+prime necessary of life, for it is more essential than food, is
+shown in a striking, passage of this picturesque Journal. They were
+still within the sheep-feeding country. Water was much wanted.
+Mr Stephenson, the naturalist, was sent out on the inquiry. He
+returned soon, having met two of the mounted police, who told him
+that "a flood was coming down from the Turon Mountains."
+
+"But the little encampment was held in suspense. Still, the bed
+of the Macquarie continued so dry, that the report could scarcely
+be believed. Towards evening, a man was stationed with a gun, to
+give a signal on the appearance of the flood. The shades of evening
+came, but no flood; and the man returned. This was a period of
+considerable anxiety, for the need of water was urgent.
+
+"Some hours later, and after the moon had risen, a murmuring sound,
+like that of a distant waterfall, mingled with occasional cracks,
+as of breaking timber, drew our attention." They then returned to
+the river bank. Still no flood appeared, though they continued to
+hear the sounds of the crashing timber. At length an increase of the
+sounds told them that the water was in the next bend. All this, in
+a serene moonlight night, was new. At length it came, and came in
+power and beauty.
+
+"It rushed into our sight, glittering in the moonbeams, a moving
+_cataract_; tossing before it ancient trees, and snapping them
+against its banks. It was preceded by a _point_ of meandering water,
+picking its way, like a thing of life, through the deepest parts of
+the dark, dry, and shady bed of what thus again became a flowing
+river." The phenomenon might make a fine subject for the pencil, if
+our artists were not divided between the palace and the pigstye. The
+noble river rolling along under a _tropical_ moon; the wild country
+around, with its forests and hills touched by the light; the bronzed
+faces and bold figures of the men of the expedition, gazing with
+natural surprise and gladness at this relief, and at the majestic
+object before them; and even the cattle hurrying up from the
+encampment, to cool the thirst which had pressed so severely on them
+during the day, all were made for the finest efforts of the pencil.
+
+"By my party," says Sir T. Mitchell, "situated as we were at the
+time--beating about the country, and impeded in our journey solely
+by the almost total absence of water--suffering excessively from
+thirst and extreme heat,--I am convinced the scene can _never_ be
+forgotten! _There_ came abundance at once, the product of storms in
+the far-off mountains, that _overlooked our homes_! My first impulse
+was to have welcomed this flood on our knees; for the scene was
+sublime in itself, while the subject, an abundance of water sent to
+us in a desert, greatly heightened the effect to our eyes. I had
+witnessed nothing of the kind in all my Australian travels."
+
+But the writer is an accomplished man of science, and he leads the
+contemplation to still more glorious things, "Even the heavens
+presented something new, at least uncommon, and therefore in harmony
+with this scene. The variable Star of Argol had increased to the
+first magnitude, just above the beautiful constellation of the
+Southern Cross, which slightly inclined over the river, in the only
+portion of sky seen through the trees. That very red star, thus
+increasing in magnitude, might, as characteristic of her rivers,
+be recognised as the 'Star of Australia,' when Europeans cross the
+line. The flood gradually filled up the channel nearly bank high,
+while the living cataract travelled onward much slower than I had
+expected to see it; so slowly, indeed, that more than an hour after
+its first arrival, the _sweet music_ of the head of the flood was
+distinctly audible from my tent, as the murmur of waters and crash
+of logs travelled slowly through the tortuous windings of the river
+bed. I was finally lulled to sleep by that melody of waters."
+
+It has been often remarked, that Europeans once accustomed to a life
+of wandering, can never return to the life of cities; and even the
+clever journalist before us appears to have been a little captivated
+with this life of the wilderness. It may be easily admitted, that
+vigorous health, and active exercise, variety of objects, even if
+those objects are no more than new ridges of mountains or new rills
+of water; with keen appetite and sound sleep, are all excellent
+things in their style. But, is life given to man only to eat, gaze,
+and sleep? What is the life of the wilderness above that of the
+brute? The true improvement of man, and, therefore, the especial
+employment intended for man, is, that increase of knowledge, of
+command over the powers of nature, and of the various means of
+adding to the conveniences, comforts and value of human existence,
+which, delivered down to us by our forefathers, it is our part to
+deliver with increase to our posterity. But the savage improves in
+nothing; he is as much a brute this year as he was a thousand years
+ago. Savagery is, in practice, a total defeat and denial of all the
+original purposes for which our nature was made. And it is with some
+regret and more surprise, that we quote, from such a source, such
+language as the following:--
+
+"We set out, guided by our native friend," (a savage whom they had
+hired to lead them to some water-courses.) "He was a very perfect
+specimen of the _genus_ homo, and such as is _never_ to be seen,
+except in the precincts of savage life, _undegraded_ by any scale
+of _graduated classes_; and the countless _bars_ these present
+to the free enjoyment of existence." Whether this is actually a
+recommendation that we should throw off our clothes and walk in
+nudity, for the purpose of recovering the original elegance of our
+shapes, or whether it is the borrowed rapture of some savage in
+person which the gallant officer has transplanted into his pages,
+to vary his more rational conceptions, we know not; but he has
+_not_ made us converts to the pleasures of cold, hunger, filth, and
+bloodshed, which furnish the realities of savage life, even in the
+paradisaic solitudes of Australia.
+
+The savage, in his original state, is simply an animal, superior to
+his own dog only in sharpness of intellect; but wholly inferior to
+his dog in fidelity and affection. All savages are tyrannical--cruel
+to their wives, if wives they can be called--and in general
+cheating and plundering wherever they can. As to their bodily
+organs, of course, they cannot be perverted where they cannot
+reach temptation; but no savage comprehends moral restraint, and
+he gets drunk whenever he has the opportunity, and robs wherever
+he finds any thing to steal. On the other hand, civilisation
+necessarily enfeebles no man, and what the gallant Colonel regards
+as its "degradation of man by classes," produces quite the contrary
+effect; for the humbler the class, generally the more vigorous--as
+the peasant is a stronger man than the artisan, and the artisan
+than the nobleman. Even the idea that savage limbs can do more
+than civilised, is equally erroneous. A well clothed and well fed
+Englishman, if well formed, and with some training, will outwork,
+outrun, and outwrestle any savage from pole to pole. A ropedancer,
+a tumbler, or a horserider, at any of our theatres, though bred
+in the very heart of civilisation, or even in the hotbed of its
+temptations, will perform feats of activity which would defy all the
+muscles of a generation of savages. The truth is, that civilisation
+improves the features, the form, and the powers of the human frame.
+Men in society may be indolent, and throw away their advantages; but
+society is the place for man. Rousseau, once made a noise by talking
+nonsense on this subject; but Rousseau _knew_ that he was talking
+nonsense. Whether his imitators are equally cognisant of their own
+performances, is another question; but we come to better things.
+
+This journey settled the disputed point of "horses or bullocks,
+light carts, or heavy drays." The bullocks and the drays were a
+perpetual annoyance; to feed and water the one, and to drag the
+other, soon became the grand difficulty of the expedition. We find
+the Colonel perpetually leaving them to follow, when any peculiar
+object of exploration was in view. At length the whole "park" was
+left to take its rest, under the second in command; and the Colonel,
+with eight men, two native boys, fourteen horses, and two light
+carts, with provisions for ten weeks, moved to the northward, to
+trace where the division of the waters was to be found, and then
+follow some of them down to the Gulf.
+
+We were not prepared for the beauty sometimes exhibited by the
+Australian landscape. The Journal compares it to a succession
+of Ruysdaels. "The masses of rock, lofty trees, shining sands,
+and patches of water in wild confusion; the mimos�, the
+Anthistiria-grass, of a red brown, contrasting most harmoniously
+with the light green bushes; all those again so opposed to the dark
+hues of the casuarin�, mimos�, and rifted rocks, that a Ruysdael or
+a Gainsborough might have found an inexhaustible stock of subjects
+for the pencil."
+
+This wild travelling has its discomforts, and now and then its
+dangers; but it is a perpetual source of exciting sensations.
+Every step is new, and every day's journey may place the traveller
+within some region of unexpected value or beauty. One of the hopes
+of the Journalist, on commencing this portion of his travels, was
+to discover a chain of hills to the northwest, from which he might
+trace the course of a river to the Gulf. At last this chain rose
+before his eyes.
+
+"The most interesting sight to me was that of blue pics at a great
+distance to the northwest, the object of all my dreams of discovery
+for years. _No white man had before seen them._ There we might hope
+to find the division of the waters still undiscovered--the pass to
+Carpentaria still unexplored. I called this hill Mount First-View,
+and descended, delighted with what I had seen from its rocky crest."
+The latitude was 27�, yet the thermometer at sunrise was but at 45�,
+at noon 68�, and at 9 P.M. 45�.
+
+The captivations of the scenery were equal to the delights of the
+temperature, though so near the tropics.--"An Australian morning
+is always charming. Amid those scenes of prim�val nature it seemed
+exquisitely so. The barita or gymnoskina, the organ-magpie, was
+here represented by a much smaller bird, whose notes, resembling
+the softest breathings of a flute, were the only sounds that met
+the ear. What the stillness of evening adds to such sounds in other
+climes, is felt more intensely in the stillness of morn in this."
+
+The forms of the vegetation, both tree and shrub, are picturesque,
+and the colours are finer still:--"Instead of autumnal tints,
+there is a perpetual blending of the richest hues of autumn with
+the most brilliant verdure of spring; while the sun's welcome
+rays in a winter's morning, and the cool breath of the woods in a
+summer morning, are equally grateful. This was in the depth of the
+Australian winter, and, which sounds oddly to the European ear, in
+the 'merry month of June.'"
+
+Advancing still to the north, a country of an extraordinary kind was
+reached in July; and they had now found, that most important of all
+objects in a wilderness, a fine "flowing stream, full of sparkling
+water to the margin." The Journalist seems quite enamoured with
+the surrounding scene, a miniature Australian Switzerland:--"The
+hills overhanging it surpassed any I had ever seen, in picturesque
+outline. Some resembled Gothic cathedrals in ruins; some forts;
+other masses were perforated; and being mixed and contrasted with
+the flowing outlines of evergreen woods, and having a fine stream in
+the foreground, gave a charming appearance to the whole country. It
+was a vision worthy of the toils of a pilgrimage. Those beautiful
+recesses of unpeopled earth could no longer remain unknown. The
+better to mark them out on any map, I gave to the valley the name
+of Salvator Rosa. The rocks stood out sharply and sublimely from
+the thick woods, just as John Martin's fertile imagination would
+dash them out in his beautiful landscapes. I never saw any thing
+in nature come so near those creations of genius and imagination."
+But this river, which they followed for some time, ran so far to
+the east, that they justly began to doubt its being the one of
+which they were in search and they turned again to the north. They
+now passed into a fine level country, incomparably formed for
+settlement. "An almost boundless extent of the richest surface in
+a solitude corresponding to that of (southern) China, yet still
+unoccupied by man. A great reserve provided by Nature for the
+extension of his race."
+
+They left the Salvator between the 21st and 22d degrees of latitude,
+and moved to the north-west. There at length their aspirations,
+though only partially, were probably realised. In the middle of
+September they reached some heights, from which lay before them
+a vast extent of open downs traversed by a river, traceable to
+the utmost verge of the horizon, and falling to the _north-west_!
+"Ulloa's delight at the first view of the Pacific could not have
+surpassed mine," is the natural exclamation of the Journalist. "Nor
+could the fervour with which he was impressed have exceeded my sense
+of gratitude for being allowed to make such a discovery. From that
+rock the scene was so extensive as to leave _no room for doubt_ as
+to the course of the river, which, then and there revealed to me
+alone, seemed like a reward direct from Heaven for perseverance,
+and as a compensation for the many sacrifices which I had made, in
+order to solve the question as to the interior rivers of tropical
+Australia."
+
+From the 16th to the 24th of September the course of the river was
+followed, which still was north-west, but at this period the party
+returned. The reason stated is the failure of provisions. This must
+have been a most vexatious disappointment--so vexatious, that we
+cannot comprehend how it could have been submitted to without some
+more remarkable effort than any thing that we find recorded in these
+pages. That an expedition equipped for a four months' journey should
+have turned back at the very moment when a few days', perhaps a
+few hours', march, might have completed its object, is altogether
+incomprehensible, while it had any conceivable means of subsistence.
+In such a condition of things, the traveller ought to have eaten
+his horse, if he could get nothing else. But there was actually, at
+no great distance behind, a dep�t of their own bullocks and sheep,
+all feeding comfortably, and, as the party found on marching back
+to them, "Sheep and cattle fat, the whole a sort of farm." A good
+stackyard had been set up, a storehouse had been built, a garden
+had been fenced in, and contained lettuce, radishes, melons, and
+cucumbers. Indeed, the whole establishment exhibited the effects of
+good order and discipline.
+
+Why, then, did not the Journalist return on his track, and establish
+the discovery which was the express object of his mission? This
+exceeds our knowledge. The only direct intimation of his necessities
+in these pages is, "our provisions were nearly out, the sun having
+reduced the _mess sugar and melted the bacon_, which had been
+boiled before we set out." Whether the _lean_ of Australian bacon
+may liquefy in the sun is more than our European experience can
+tell, but we presume it must be ranked among the wonders of a new
+country; at all events, the Journalist returned without having
+done the very thing for which his expedition had been fitted out,
+and left the object to be completed by his subordinate, who was
+subsequently despatched in the direction of the north-west. Thus,
+though probabilities are in favour of the river, which the Colonel
+named the Victoria, the point is by no means settled, and Australian
+curiosity may be disappointed after all.
+
+As the party approached the river, they saw considerable numbers of
+the natives. On reaching one of the lagoons, the shrieks of many
+women and children, and the angry voices of men, apprised them that
+they had at length overtaken the tribe, and unfortunately had come
+on them by surprise. "Aya, minya!" was vociferated repeatedly, and
+was understood to mean, "What do you want?" I steadily adhered to
+my own tactics towards the aborigines, and took not the slightest
+notice of them, but rode on according to my compass-bearing. On
+looking back for my men, I saw one beckoning me to return. He had
+observed two natives with spears and clubs hide themselves behind
+a bush in the direction in which I was advancing. On my halting,
+they stole away. The whole seemed to have been amusing themselves
+in the water during the noonday heat, which was excessive, and the
+cool shades round the lagoon looked most luxuriant. Our position, on
+the contrary, was any thing but enviable. Even there, in the heart
+of the interior, on a river utterly unheard of by white men, an
+iron tomahawk glittered in the hand of a chief. The anxious care of
+the females to carry off their children seemed the most agreeable
+feature of the scene. Some had been digging in the mud for worms,
+others searching for fresh-water mussels, and if the whole could
+have been witnessed unperceived, such a scene of domestic life
+among the aborigines had been worth a little more risk. The strong
+men assumed a strange attitude, which seemed very expressive of
+surprise, having the right knee bent, the left leg forward--the
+right arm dropping, but grasping clubs--the left arm raised, and
+the fingers spread out. "Aya, aya, minya," they continually shouted.
+However, the party rode on, and the shouts died away.
+
+The Journalist occasionally recovers from his enthusiasm for
+savagery. We have no more bursts in his earlier style, "Such
+truth and exemption from disease, such _intensity_ of existence,
+in short, must be far beyond the _enjoyments of civilised men_,
+with all that art can do for them. And the proof of this is to
+be found, in the failure of all attempts to persuade these free
+denizens of uncultivated earth to forsake it for the tilled ground.
+They prefer the land, unbroken and free from the earliest curse
+pronounced against the first banished and first created man." All
+this unfortunately shows nothing, but that the gallant Colonel would
+be the wiser for going back to his Bible, where he would find the
+words, "I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake."
+But at last (page 328) we have a sketch of the reality. "It would
+appear that, the finer the climate and the fewer man's wants, the
+more he sinks towards the condition of the lower animals. Where the
+natives had passed the night, no huts, even of bushes, had been set
+up. A few tufts of dry grass only marked the spot, where, beside a
+small fire, each person had sat, folded up like the capital letter
+N. Their occupation during the day was only wallowing in a muddy
+hole, in no respect cleaner than swine. They have no idea of any
+necessity for washing themselves between their birth and the grave,
+while groping in mud for worms." After admitting the filth, the
+indolence, and the uselessness of the savage; contrasting, however,
+his teeth and tongue favourably with those of the civilised man or
+child, of which he pronounces it to be "ten to one but he should
+find _only impurity and decay_," (a point in which we are wholly
+at issue with him,) he asks, "what then is civilisation in the
+economy of the human animal?" He answers, "Cultivated man despises
+the perishable substance, and pursues the immortal shadow." We are
+but little satisfied with the language of this solution, nor is
+its meaning much more intelligible. In the first place, man, in a
+civilised state, does not necessarily injure his bodily organs. The
+fool who cannot stir, or even sit, without a cigar in his mouth, or
+the drunkard who continually sacrifices health and understanding
+to intoxication, has only to condemn himself. But, give the savage
+tobacco and rum, and he will as speedily destroy his organs, and
+bring himself to the grave, as the most civilised profligate in
+existence. And as to the grand supposed use of civilisation--the
+fixing our minds on "immortal shadows"--if by this he meant giving
+us ideas of religion, there are many highly civilised nations
+which think but very little of religion, and many highly civilised
+persons who think of it nothing at all. Yet, it is only justice to
+the gallant Colonel to quote this sentence. "Animal gratification
+is transient and dull compared to the acquisition of knowledge, the
+gratification of mind,--the raptures of the poet, or the delight
+of the enthusiast, however imaginary. Such were my reflections on
+this day of rest, in the heart of a desert, while protected from the
+sun's rays by a blanket."
+
+But even his metaphysics are entirely a misconception. The original
+purpose of civilisation is, to enable man to live in society; that
+is, in peace, with the advantages of mutual assistance. That those
+objects are powerfully aided by religion is true, and that science
+may be best cultivated in settled life, is equally true; but those
+are merely collateral. Civilisation means the work of law, of safe
+intercourse, of secure property, and of all the safeguards of
+society which ultimately enable man to polish the general manners,
+and to improve the general mind. Religion is not the consequence,
+but the origin of Civilisation.
+
+We now take leave of the journey, with the sketch of the rivers.
+After moving for some distance between two streams, they approached
+the junction, which formed--"the broad, deep, and placid waters of a
+river as deep as the Murray. Pelicans and ducks floated upon it, and
+mussel shells of extraordinary size lay in such quantities, where
+the natives had been in the habit of eating them, as to resemble
+snow covering the ground. But even that reach seemed diminutive,
+when compared with the vast body of water of which traces had been
+left there; affording evidence, that though wide, they must have
+been impetuous in their course. Verdure alone shone now, over the
+wide extent to which the waters sometimes rose. Beyond that channel
+lay the almost boundless plains; the whole together forming the
+finest region I had ever seen in Australia."
+
+Still the luckless character of the Australian rivers appears; and
+after expecting that this fine channel, which there seemed navigable
+for steamers, would continue, in a few miles more it exhibited only
+ponds. Whether the great central stream may not exhibit the same
+caprice, is still the question.
+
+The party returned to Sydney in January 1847; and in March, Mr
+Kennedy, the second in command, was sent, as has been already
+stated, to explore the course of the Victoria.
+
+There are some valuable observations on the aborigines. It is
+said that they have good natural faculties, all one of them
+named Uranigh, an attendant on the expedition, obtains especial
+praise for sagacity, fidelity, and courage. But, from inevitable
+circumstances, it appears to be the fate of the natives to waste
+away before the European blood, and, even without any violence
+or oppression, gradually to vanish. To teach them to earn their
+bread, to adopt European habits of any kind, or even to live with
+any sense of comfort in the vicinity of European settlers, seems
+impossible, and thus they gradually retire into the interior. This
+process has so uniformly occurred in all colonised countries, where
+a new civilisation has been introduced, that it may be regarded as
+almost a law of nature. "Fire, grass, and kangaroos," are essential
+to native life; and when the pastures are no longer suffered to be
+burned, and when the kangaroos disappear, the savage _must_ retire.
+Sir T. Mitchell's favourite project would be, to send away a young
+married pair to the south of Europe, where they might learn the
+cultivation of the grape and olive, fig, &c.; then to bring them
+back with their children. But we are afraid they would make but few
+converts; that the benevolent experiment would be totally thrown
+away; and that the poor, idle, and useless being, whom Sir Thomas
+will persist in calling the noble savage, must be left to eat rats
+and mice, to live in misery and wretchedness, and to be inevitably
+pushed into the wilderness, to make way for a superior class of
+human capability.
+
+But, regarding the condition of the natives as utterly beyond
+European influence, except so far as it may and ought to be exerted
+to protect them from all injury,--there are other questions of high
+importance, relative to the condition of the convicts. The preamble
+of the Transport Act made the reformation of the culprit a primary
+object. There never was any use of forced labour so effective. The
+galley-slaves of France and Italy were in general made more wicked,
+if possible, by their imprisonment and work. We think it also
+next to an impossibility that any culprit, punished by temporary
+imprisonment, and then thrown out again among his associates, _can_
+change his habits. Who will employ a known felon? A single act of
+robbery may give him more means of gross gratification, than he
+could obtain by the severest toil in a twelvemonth. The temptation
+is too strong. The only hope of his recovery, is in his being sent
+where his bad character will not utterly prevent his getting a good
+one; where he will have profitable work, (let the profit be more or
+less;) where he will have few temptations, and none of his old ones;
+and where he may have a prospect of bettering his condition among
+his fellows. All these he had, and has, in New South Wales.
+
+But it is remarkable and unfortunate, that we seldom have a new
+head of the colonial department who does not bring with him some
+new theory; and the fashionable theory now is, to try the effect of
+prison discipline. We have no hesitation in denouncing this theory,
+as ineffectual, intolerably costly, highly dangerous, and even
+actually cruel. We take the points in succession: we doubt whether
+it has really reformed one prisoner out of a thousand. Its expense
+is enormous: the single prison at Millbank cost a million sterling,
+and probably �100,000 a-year for its support. The model prison at
+Pentonville is an architectural _bijou_, but terribly expensive.
+Men cannot be reformed by turnkeys in the most moral costume, or by
+locks of the most exquisite invention.--It is dangerous: because
+those felons, once let loose, almost invariably become felons
+again; and a general jail-delivery once a year, from handcuffs and
+shackles, may people the streets with ruffianism.--It is even cruel.
+The prisoners are not merely deprived, for a long succession of
+years, of all healthful exercise--for who ever could take healthful
+exercise within prison walls?--but shut out from all the view and
+enjoyment of nature, and especially from matrimony; they cannot
+be husbands or fathers. It is true, that the felon forfeits all
+rights, if they are found incompatible with the public safety; but
+we have no _right_ to inflict on him any suffering beyond that
+which is absolutely necessary. If by sending him to Australia we
+can accomplish, without cruelty, those objects which we _cannot_
+accomplish without cruelty at home, it is our duty to send him to
+Australia.
+
+We know that a middle system of imprisonment, to be followed by
+transportation, has been attempted, but we have no faith in its
+operations. The true place is Australia.
+
+Sir Thomas Mitchell, the very best authority on such subjects, tells
+us, "There is no country in which labour appears to be more required
+to render it available to, and habitable by civilised man, than New
+South Wales. _Without_ labour, the inhabitants must be savages, or
+such helpless people as we find the Aborigines. With equal truth, it
+may be asserted that there is _no region_ of earth susceptible of so
+much improvement solely by the labour and ingenuity of man." There
+are no unwholesome savannahs; the rocky ranges afford the means of
+forming reservoirs, &c., of water, which, under the tropics, is
+life, abundance, and health; there is an immensity if it be properly
+used, and Australia might be made the finest scene of vegetation and
+luxuriance in the world.
+
+We take our leave of this volume with regret. It is strikingly
+written; it excites and rewards curiosity, and (a few rambling
+ideas excepted) it powerfully increases our interest in Australian
+discovery, and in that whole mighty region of the Pacific, which
+God's providence has given into the hands of England, for the
+happiness of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+SIBERIA.
+
+_Travels in Siberia: including Excursions Northwards, down the Obi
+to the Polar Circle, and Southwards to the Chinese Frontier._ By
+ADOLPH ERMAN. Translated from the German by W. R. COOLEY. Two vols.
+London, 1848.
+
+
+Of no important portion of the dominions of the five great European
+powers are such vague and imperfect notions entertained, as of the
+vast tract comprised between Russia in Europe and the Kamschatkan
+sea, between the Chinese empire and the Arctic Ocean. Courageous
+explorers have not been wanting, of the inclement steppes and
+rugged mountains forming Europe's bulwark against the Mongul and
+the Tartar. Men of enterprise and distinction have undertaken the
+task, and executed it well. But their journeys, usually performed
+with special objects and scientific views, have been recorded
+for the most part in a similar spirit. Either an ardent love of
+science and zeal for its advancement, or the strong encouragement
+and liberal subsidies of an enlightened government, are requisite
+inducements to brave the perils and hardships of Siberian travel.
+The mere inquisitive and speculative traveller has difficulty
+in persuading himself, that the country can reward him for the
+discomfort and inconvenience he must endure in traversing it. Not
+that Siberia is entirely devoid of wild attractions and romantic
+associations. To the adventurous hunter, its vast forests and
+thinly-peopled plains give assurance of sport. The motley character
+of its native and immigrant population affords to the philosopher
+curious matter of consideration. A place of deportation for traitors
+and criminals--and not unfrequently for the innocent--its name is
+inseparably connected with the memory of innumerable unfortunates
+who have there pined out their existence in expiation of crime,
+or in obedience to mandates often as unjust as arbitrary. Fallen
+favourites of the Czars, rebels against their tyranny, traitors to
+their person, murderers, and other malefactors, and even prisoners
+of war, have here found a living grave till released by death,
+clemency, or flight. Did the tears of exiles fertilise, Siberia
+should be a teeming land. Since its first subjugation by Ivan the
+Terrible, how many a Russian magnate, lord of thousands of serfs,
+owner of millions of rubles, proud of his position, and confident
+of imperial favour, has suddenly found himself travelling eastward
+under escort, banished and a beggar. How many mournful trains of
+minor offenders have plodded their weary way across the Uralian
+chain, guarded by barbarian Bashkirs, to labour in the mines of
+Nerchinsk, or to lead a peasant's toilsome life on the margin of the
+Frozen Sea. From those vast and ice-bound regions, escape can rarely
+be accomplished. But at intervals, during the last five-and-thirty
+years, bearded and toil-worn men of martial aspect have crossed the
+German frontier, and astonished those they accosted by wild tales
+of suffering, and ignorance of the most notorious events. Some have
+inquired for Napoleon, and wept when they learned he was a captive,
+or dead. Circumstances of current history, known to each child
+and peasant, were to them a mystery and a marvel. These strange
+wanderers, escaped from long bondage in Siberia, were amongst the
+last survivors of that countless host led northwards by a Corsican's
+ambition, and whose funeral pile was lighted in Moscow's city.
+
+Amongst the delineators of Siberia and its inhabitants, of the
+produce, customs, and peculiarities of the country and its people,
+one of the most successful is the German gentleman and scholar whose
+admirable work has just now appeared in a clever English dress.
+The son of a man of great learning and high attainments, Mr Adolph
+Erman treads nobly in his father's footsteps. Still young, he has
+done much to increase the lustre of the honourable name transmitted
+to him. Born in the year 1806, he was but two-and-twenty years of
+age when he undertook, at his own cost, a journey round the world,
+having for its chief object a series of magnetical observations. The
+expedition was completely successful. Starting from Berlin to St
+Petersburg, he crossed northern Asia, with occasional digressions
+of a few hundred leagues, took ship at Okhotsk for Kamschatka,
+thence proceeded to California, visited Otaheite, and came round by
+Cape Horn and Rio Janeiro to Europe and Berlin. Then he sat down to
+write of what he had seen, entitling his work--"Journey round the
+Earth, across North Asia and both Oceans." But the tale of travel
+so extensive takes time to tell; and, up to the present date,
+he has not protracted his narrative beyond Okhotsk. What he has
+done, however, is complete in itself, very interesting, and withal
+somewhat voluminous, since its abridged translation forms two heavy
+octavos, heavy in amount of paper and print, but not, we must in
+justice admit, in the nature of their contents. Whilst recording
+scientific investigations, the author does not neglect subjects more
+generally interesting. Upon all he brings to bear an extraordinary
+amount of reading and research. The result is a book of travels of
+no ephemeral nature, but that will long be esteemed as a standard
+work, and respected as a valuable authority.
+
+Mr Erman commences his narrative of travel on the day of his
+departure from Berlin; but its earlier portion has been compressed
+by the translator, in order to escape as soon as possible from
+Europe, and get upon the less trodden ground east of Tobolsk. Much
+has been written of late years concerning European Russia and its
+inhabitants, and it was hardly to be expected that even so acute
+an observer as Mr Erman should find any thing particularly novel
+to say about them. He takes a sensible and practical view of the
+condition, character, and disposition of the population; and is
+happy in his detection and indication of national peculiarities.
+He does not, like the majority of travellers in Russia, enter the
+country with a settled determination to behold nothing, from the
+White Sea to the Black, but oppression and cruelty on the one
+hand, slavery and suffering upon the other. He does not come to a
+premature decision, that because Russia is ruled by an absolute
+monarch, all happiness, prosperity, and justice are essentially
+banished from the land. It is really pleasant to find a deviation
+from the established routine of books about Russia. These are now
+nearly all concocted upon one and the same plan. The recipe is as
+exact as any in Mrs Rundell: and is as conscientiously adhered to
+by literary cooks, as that great artist's invaluable precepts are
+by knights and ladies of the ladle. Tyranny, misery, and the knout
+are the chief ingredients of the savoury dish. We are shown a nation
+of cretins, crushed under the boot-heel of an imperial ogre; whilst
+a selfish, servile aristocracy salaam their admiration, and catch
+greedily at the titles and gewgaws thrown to them as a sop by their
+terrible master. This is the substance of the mess, which, being
+handsomely garnished with lying anecdotes of horrible cruelties
+practised upon the unfortunate population, is deemed sufficiently
+dainty to set before the public, and is forthwith devoured as
+genuine and nutritive food by the large body of simpletons who take
+type for a guarantee of veracity. Mr Erman despises the common trick
+and claptrap resorted to by vulgar writers. Avoiding anecdotage, and
+abuse of the powers that be, he gives, in brief shrewd paragraphs,
+glimpses of Muscovite character and feelings, which clearly prove
+the people of that vast empire to be far happier, more prosperous,
+and more practically free, than the inhabitants of many countries
+who boast of liberty because anarchy has replaced good government.
+Judging less from any distinct assertions or arguments advanced in
+these volumes, than from their general tenor, and by the inferences
+to be gleaned from them, we must consider the Russians a contented
+and flourishing nation, likely to make the larger strides in
+civilisation that they are unimpeded by revolutionary agitation.
+Propagandists meet little encouragement amongst the loyal and
+light-hearted subjects of the autocrat. "We have often observed at
+Moscow," says Mr Erman, "birch-trees hewn for fencing, yet still
+alive in the horizontal position, and throwing out shoots. The
+great distinction of the vegetable nature in this region is its
+tenacity of life; and, singularly enough, the same capability of
+existing under oppression, and of withstanding stubbornly every
+revolutionising influence, is here the characteristic of man also.
+The ear of the stranger is sure, at every turn of conversation, to
+catch the sounds--'Kak ni bud,' (no matter how,) with which the
+Russians are used to give expression to their habitual indifference,
+and renunciation of all care.... Notwithstanding the great variety
+of condition which the population exhibit, every thing has the stamp
+of nationality, and an obstinate adherence to established usage
+may be plainly recognised as a fundamental principle. Some foreign
+customs, indeed, are adopted from strangers residing in Moscow; but
+they are, at the same time, so changed as to be assimilated to the
+national manners. Russian nationality may be compared to a river,
+which receives other streams without changing its name; or, still
+better, to a living organism, which, while devouring every variety
+of food, continues still the same."
+
+It was on the 29th of July that Mr Erman, who travelled in
+company with the Norwegian professor Hansteen, left Moscow, and
+moved eastwards, passing through a productive country, strewn
+with populous and comfortable villages. At Pokr�f, his first
+halting-place, his chamber walls were adorned with rude carvings and
+paintings, whose subjects were taken from the events of 1812, and
+represented the valiant deeds of the peasantry. Buikova, a village
+forty miles east of Moscow, was the farthest point to which the
+French penetrated. Their invasion has left but a faint impression
+upon the popular mind in Russia--even in Moscow, which suffered so
+much at their hands. Conflagrations have been common occurrences
+in that city, and the inhabitants are accustomed to be burned out.
+We read of seven such events, from the thirteenth to the beginning
+of the nineteenth century, in all of which the destruction was
+complete, or very nearly so. The fire of 1812 spared many of the
+stone churches, on whose towers "the Mahomedan crescent rises above
+the cross, a monument of earlier revolutions. The yoke of the Tatars
+was so lasting and oppressive, that later events of a similar kind
+seem comparatively unimportant; and even the French invasion is
+here thought little of, being usually compared with the irruptions
+of the Pechenegues and that of the Poles in later times, but never
+set on a level with the Tatar domination." The French have little
+prestige in Russia. Whatever respect they previously enjoyed there,
+was completely annihilated by the pitiful figure they cut in the
+Moscow campaign; retreating, as they did, a ragged, disorderly,
+frost-bitten remnant, before a swarm of armed peasants and irregular
+horse. And Muscovite sign-painters and saint-carvers decorate
+village walls with episodes of the disastrous overthrow of an army,
+probably the most powerful and really efficient ever got together.
+Any notion entertained by the Russians of French invincibility was
+as completely dissipated in that country by the events of 1812,
+as it was in Germany by the ensuing, and scarcely less important,
+campaign of 1813.
+
+Passing Murom, where a sort of Yankee tradition exists of a
+"robber-nightingale," which entices travellers into the woods by
+its song, and then kills them by the power of its notes, Mr Erman
+reached Nijni Novgorod at the moment of the great annual fair. The
+mixture of European and Asiatic produce and manufactures gives the
+Russian fairs an appearance singularly striking to the foreigner's
+eye. Things the most opposite are there brought together. _Obras�_,
+or Greek holy images, amulets, and other objects used in the
+solemnities of the Gr�co-Russian church, are seen in juxtaposition
+with the elegant luxuries and superfluities of extreme European
+civilisation. The clumsy carvings of Uralian peasants are found in
+the next warerooms to the fragile and fashionable masterpieces of
+a Parisian milliner. The chief part of the goods come from great
+distances. Amongst the important articles of traffic are tea from
+China, horse-hides from Tatary, iron bars from Siberia, shawls
+of camel's-down from Bokhara. The Bokharians also import large
+quantities of cotton, partly raw and partly spun. This is one of the
+principal objects of trade at Nijni. Concerning the origin of this
+useful substance, curious fables were current in Russia not quite a
+century ago. "It appears to me certain," says Mr Erman, "that the
+story of the zoophytic plant called Bar�nez, or lamb-plant (formed
+as a diminutive from Bar�n, a sheep,) originated in some embellished
+account of the cotton plant. Herberstein relates it at full length
+and unchanged, just as he had heard it. 'There has been seen, near
+to the Caspian Sea, a seed, rather larger and rounder than that of
+a melon, from which, when set in the ground, is produced something
+similar to a lamb, of the altitude of five palms, having a very fine
+fleece, &c., &c. The German edition of Herberstein (Basel, 1563)
+adds that the Bar�nez has a head, eyes, ears, and all the limbs,
+like a sheep. But it mentions correctly '_the very fine fleece
+which the people of that country commonly made use of to pad their
+caps withal_.' This is the ordinary use which the Tatar tribes
+in general make of cotton at the present day." The fair at Nijni
+lasts two months, and brings together six hundred thousand persons
+of different nations and tribes, or about thirty-three times the
+number of the stationary population. It produces a large revenue
+to the imperial treasury,--the letting of the wooden booths, and
+of two thousand five hundred and twenty-two stone storerooms, (to
+each of which latter is attached a chamber for the owner of the
+goods to live in) alone yielding, so far back as 1825, nearly four
+hundred thousand rubles; whilst the population of the government, or
+district, amounting to nearly a million of souls, paid taxes to the
+amount of fourteen millions of rubles.
+
+Nijni Novgorod is the point of rendezvous for criminals from the
+western provinces of the empire, condemned to Siberian exile. They
+arrive there in small detachments, to pursue their journey in
+large bodies. In the vicinity of every post-house along the road
+is another building known as the Ostrog or fort, which is merely a
+large barrack divided into numerous small chambers, and surrounded
+by a fence of palisades, where the convicts are lodged upon the
+journey. From various passages scattered through Mr Erman's book, it
+appears that these Siberian exiles are by no means so badly treated
+as has frequently been stated and believed. In most instances the
+punishment derives its severity less from any painful toil or cruel
+discipline imposed upon them, than from the rigidity of the climate,
+the separation from friends, and the mortal ennui those accustomed
+to civilisation and society cannot but experience, whilst leading
+the monotonous life of a peasant or Cossack in regions as dreary
+as any the globe's surface affords. The first caravan of prisoners
+encountered by Mr Erman, at about a hundred versts beyond Nijni,
+were well clothed and cared for, and seemed neither dissatisfied
+with their past journey, nor overwhelmed with care about the
+future. "With every train of them are several waggons, drawn by
+post-horses, to carry the women and the old and infirm men; the
+rest follow in pairs, in a long train, after the waggons, escorted
+by a militia established in the villages. It is but rarely that
+one sees special offenders with fetters upon their legs during the
+march." The majority of tales circulated by romancing travellers,
+with reference to Siberian exile, have little foundation save in
+the imagination of the narrators. Amongst these fictions is to
+be reckoned the statement that certain classes of the banished
+are compelled to pass their lives in hunting the sable, and other
+animals. The great majority of the delinquents are condemned only to
+settle in Siberia; and when hard labour in the Uralian mines, and
+in certain manufactories, is superadded, it is generally for a year
+or other limited period. Those of the peasant class have to support
+themselves, whilst offenders of a higher rank, and unused to manual
+labour, have an allowance made them by the government. In various
+places Mr Erman met with exiles, from some of whom he obtained
+curious information. They are usually known by the mild name of
+"_the unfortunates_," and are held in no particular disfavour by
+the natives, with whose families they intermarry. By a remarkable
+enactment of the Russian law, serfs, when transported to Siberia,
+become in all respects as free as the peasants in western Europe. Mr
+Erman refers to this with strong approval, and attributes to it the
+happiest results. "I have often," he says, "heard intelligent and
+reflecting Russians mention, as an almost inexplicable paradox, that
+the peasants condemned to become settlers, all, without exception,
+and in a very short time, change their habits and lead an exemplary
+life; yet it is certain that the sense of the benefit conferred
+on them by the gift of personal freedom is the sole cause of this
+conversion. Banishment subservient to colonisation, instead of
+close imprisonment, is, indeed, an excellent feature in the Russian
+code; and though the substitution of forced labour in mines for the
+punishment of death may be traced back to Grecian example, yet the
+improving of the offender's condition by bestowing on him personal
+freedom, is an original as well as an admirable addition of a
+Russian legislator." It is of course by the higher class of exiles
+that the banishment is most severely felt; but these live in the
+towns, that the succour received from government may reach them the
+more easily, and submit, for the most part, with great equanimity
+to the startling change from the luxury of Moscow or St Petersburg,
+to the dulness and simplicity of Tobolsk, and even of worse places.
+Some of them have to do penance in church for a certain time after
+their arrival, and a portion of these continue the practice when
+it is no longer compulsory. At Beresov, a town in western Siberia,
+which Mr Erman passed through on an excursion northwards from
+Tobolsk, the oral chronicles of the inhabitants furnish curious
+details of the numerous illustrious exiles who have there ended
+their days. Menchikoff, the well-known favourite of Peter I., was
+one of these. "After his political extinction, he prepared himself,
+by devout penitence, for his natural decease. He worked with his
+own hands in erecting the little wooden church, now fallen to
+decay, which stands thirty or forty feet above the bank of the
+Sosva, at the southern extremity of the town: he then served in it
+as bell-ringer, and was finally buried by the grateful inhabitants
+of Beresov, immediately before the door of the building." It was
+here, at Beresov, that Mr Erman fell in with a number of unlucky
+conspirators, who had lost fortune, rank, and home, by their
+association in a recent abortive revolutionary attempt. Amongst them
+were a M. Gorski, at one time a count and general of cavalry, and
+the ex-chieftains Focht and Chernilov. They usually wore the costume
+of the country, but upon holidays they donned European coats, _in
+order to display the vestiges of the orders which had once been
+sewed upon them_. A curious instance of vanity, traceable, perhaps,
+to a desire to distinguish themselves from persons condemned to the
+same punishment for crimes of a more disgraceful nature.
+
+In the streets of Yekaterinburg, the first town of importance after
+crossing the Asian boundary, parties of exiles are a frequent
+spectacle; the number passing through in a year being estimated at
+five thousand, or about two-fifths of the annual export of convicts
+to Siberia, as stated by Mr Stepanov, whose statement, however,
+Mr Erman seems disposed to consider exaggerated. The detachments
+are usually guarded by Kosaks of the Ural, and by a company of
+Bashkir militia. These Uralian Kosaks are well uniformed, armed,
+and mounted, and enjoy the same privileges as the Kosaks of the
+Don. They are allowed an immunity from every impost, but are bound
+to devote themselves to the public service. Touching the Bashkirs,
+another irregular and half-savage militia, serving to swell the
+ranks of Russia's enormous army, Mr Erman, who made some stay at
+Yekaterinburg, the northern limit of their residence, gives curious
+particulars. They are the only aboriginal Siberian tribe whose mode
+of life regularly alternates from the nomadic to the fixed. Their
+winters are passed in permanent villages of wooden huts, erected
+usually upon the skirt of a forest. But when spring approaches,
+they collect their flocks and herds, strap hair tent-cloths upon
+their saddles, and are off to the plains. They appear to live
+upon horseback, and are indolent, indocile, and useless out of
+the saddle. The only thing the men do, is to drive home the mares
+at milking-time; all other domestic toil is left to the women.
+And although grass abounds in the summer pastures, hay is unknown
+amongst them. The cattle sustain life in winter as best they may, on
+stunted or decayed herbage, sought under the snow and gathered on
+the dunghills. Fermented mare's milk is the favorite drink of the
+Bashkirs, who live chiefly upon mutton and fish, and upon the fruit
+of the bird-cherry (_Prunus padus_) kneaded into a sort of cake.
+In the chase they make use of hawks, which they are particularly
+skilful in training. The smaller species of these birds are used to
+take hares, whilst the greater will strike foxes, and even wolves.
+The roving careless life of the Bashkirs possesses a peculiar charm,
+admitted even by the civilised Russians; and it is with no good will
+that, on the return of winter, the tribes re-enter their settled
+habitations. "They approach them with reluctance, and believe that
+Shaitan, or the evil spirit, has taken up his abode in the huts that
+oppress them with such a sense of restraint. The men accordingly
+remain at some distance from the settlement, and send the women
+forward, armed with staves, with which they strike the door of every
+hut, uttering loud imprecations; and it is not till they have made
+the rounds with their noisy exorcisms, that the men ride forward at
+full speed and with terrific shouts, to banish the dreaded demon
+from his lurking-place." The chief weapon of these Bedouins of the
+north is the same which so forcibly excited Captain Dalgetty's
+risibility upon his visit to the Children of the Mist. But although
+in these days of Paixhans and percussion, bows and arrows certainly
+appear rather anomalous, they are by no means contemptible weapons
+in the hands of some of the Siberian tribes. Of this Mr Erman had
+abundant opportunity to convince himself, especially when his ramble
+northwards from Tobolsk brought him amongst the Ostyaks of the river
+Obi. The ordinary hunting weapons of these people are bows six feet
+long, of very slight curve, and from which four-feet arrows are
+discharged with murderous effect. Much practice and strength are
+required to draw these bows; and our scientific traveller, who, not
+having taken the necessary precaution of shielding the left arm with
+a piece of horn, from the recoil of the string, had been unable to
+draw his bow to more than one third of the arrow's length, was not a
+little astounded to see an Ostyak pigmy, with sore eyes and a sickly
+aspect, send a blunt arrow one hundred and sixty feet, and strike
+the object aimed at, the stem of a larch, near its summit, fully
+sixty feet from the ground. Blunt arrows, headed with flattened iron
+balls, are used to kill sables and squirrels, that the skin may
+not be injured; the sharp ones are a settler for any quadruped the
+country produces.
+
+After many days' journey through Tatar villages of wooden huts,
+and towns that are little better, the first view of Tobolsk,
+obtained some miles before reaching the place, is quite imposing;
+and the traveller, who might think he had got a few stages
+beyond civilisation, is cheered and encouraged by the sight of
+church-towers, lofty monasteries, and well-built houses. In vain
+does he seek an inn. Such things are unknown in Siberia; and, if he
+has no acquaintance in the town, he must apply to the police-master,
+who recommends him to the hospitality of an inhabitant, by whom he
+is made welcome during his stay, without demand for remuneration,
+although, if proffered, it will sometimes be accepted. In this
+manner Mr Erman and his companions were accommodated in the upper
+storey of a well-built wooden house; and here their progress
+eastward was arrested by the character of the weather. It was the
+commencement of October, the period of transition from summer to
+winter, and the traveller's entrance into the town was rendered
+memorable by a heavy fall of snow--"white flies," as the postilions
+called the flakes, which they beheld with much pleasure. Their
+satisfaction was probably owing to the fact that in Siberia the
+coldest part of the year is the most favourable for travelling, a
+matter of interest to people of their profession. But the moment of
+transition, whilst the struggle lasts between summer and winter,
+when snow encumbers the ground, and frost has not yet hardened it,
+is known, as well as the similar period at the close of winter,
+as "the time of the unroading," (spoiling of the roads;) and the
+Russians have even manufactured a verb "to be unroaded." The snow
+obstructs wheeled carriages, and forbids the use of the sledge;
+and, unless peremptorily compelled to move forward, the Russian
+merchants--the most experienced of Siberian travellers--await, in
+some convenient resting-place, the hardening of the winter road.
+From Mr Erman's account, a better place than Tobolsk could scarcely
+be found, in those wild regions, wherein to pass a few weeks of
+compulsory inaction. Nevertheless, and although cordially received
+by the governor-general, Velyaminov, from whom, and from other
+Russian officers, he got much useful information, our traveller was
+impatient to be off. He had a pet scheme in view. From the very
+commencement of the journey he had planned an excursion to the mouth
+of the Obi, within the Arctic circle. To this he was partly induced
+by the desire of tracing certain magnetic lines, and partly by "the
+alluring prospect of enjoying, on the northern part of the Obi,
+the first undisturbed intercourse with the aboriginal possessors
+of the land, where they are little changed by foreign influence."
+Accordingly, towards the middle of November, the drifting ice upon
+the Irtuish having united into a solid sheet, Mr Erman joyfully
+made final preparations for his journey to Obdorsk. They were few,
+and soon completed. A Kosak guide and interpreter, a fur dress,
+a copper kettle, bread and ham, salted salmon and caviar, were
+stowed in a couple of sledges, one of which was light enough to
+be drawn by dogs or reindeer. It was held advisable also to take
+out a fresh passport, signed by the governor of Tobolsk, in lieu of
+the one delivered at St Petersburg, for, in places far removed from
+the great road across Siberia, people have confused and indistinct
+notions of the power which issues from the capital of the empire.
+The larger sledge was provided with otv�di or guides--two strong
+bars placed lengthways on either side the carriage to prevent
+an upset. "Towards the end of winter, the snow-ways, which are
+constantly travelled upon, have an undulating surface, like that
+of a stormy sea, and give the sledge a motion so like that of a
+ship tossed on the waves, that travellers unused to it often grow
+sea-sick on the road, and the use of otv�di is a very necessary
+precaution." Russian travelling, delightfully rapid, has many
+drawbacks. Upon the log-roads, (formed of tree-trunks,) the violent
+and incessant jolting is said to have even worse effects than the
+excessive undulations of the sledge. After a few years, it not
+only brings on a complete paralysis of the mental faculties of the
+Russian postilions, but also occasions spinal disease, to such an
+extent as to have obtained for those roads the significant name of
+spine-crushers.
+
+On the 22d November, when Mr Erman began his slide northwards,
+traffic had not yet given the road that wavy configuration so
+uncomfortable to the bilious traveller. The post from Tobolsk to
+Beresov had made but one journey on the winter-track, and the
+sledges glided rapidly and smoothly on the almost virgin snow-way.
+Beyond Tugalova, a village 140 miles from Tobolsk, they travelled on
+the frozen Irtuish, and frequently passed the self-acting machinery
+used for the winter fishing. This consists of a strong pole in an
+inclined position, with its lower extremity frozen fast in the
+ice. "At the upper end of this pole was a continuation made of
+switches, which, bending down, reached to the surface of the ice;
+at that point was a hole through which was let down the hook and
+line. The upper part of the apparatus is seen bent down more or less
+according as the bait is still untouched, or as a fish pulling at
+it has freed a check put to the elasticity of the rod, and is thus,
+in consequence of its own efforts, drawn nearer to the surface of
+the water." The ingenuity of this contrivance would avail little,
+however, were not means found of rousing the sleepy sturgeon from
+their winter slumbers. They lie in muddy hollows in the bed of the
+river, quite motionless, and clustered together for the sake of
+warmth. To awaken them, hard balls of clay, heated in the fire, are
+thrown from time to time into the water, below the line. Driven from
+their resting-place, they swim up stream, according to their custom,
+and come upon the bait. This mode of fishing is very productive.
+Fishing, of one kind or other, is the principal occupation of the
+Ostyaks, in the heart of whose country, after three or four days'
+journey, Mr Erman found himself. The rivers abound with excellent
+fish--eels, especially, being very abundant, but not much eaten,
+although their skins are in great request as window-panes. These are
+rubbed with fat, to make them more transparent, but there are small
+roundish swellings in the skin which refract and confound the rays
+of light. A better substitute for glass is a flake of ice, used by
+the Sosnovian Ostyaks, a tribe further north. The flakes are about a
+foot thick, and are propped from without by a pole, whose lower end
+bears obliquely against the ground. The fire, kept burning in the
+hut, thaws the inner surface of the ice, rendering it smooth as a
+mirror. A whiter and brighter light penetrates through these windows
+than through the fish-skins, which the Sosnovians use for boots, and
+even for clothes. Strong and air-tight, and well rubbed with fat,
+they are almost as warm as fur, and better against the wet.
+
+The commencement of a fishing season or expedition is celebrated
+by the Ostyaks with all manner of queer saturnalia. Although
+nominally Christians, and accustomed to attend church once a-year,
+they are very heathenish in some of their rites and ceremonies,
+and make a strange jumble of their old superstitions and their new
+faith. The priests do not invariably set them a good example.
+"Our Russian informant complained bitterly of the priest in his
+neighbourhood, who came into the village on holidays so drunk, that
+the congregation assembled to no purpose." With such pastors, no
+wonder if the sheep cleave to some of their ancient usages. Those
+who are departing on an expedition, slaughter a tame animal, and
+smear their faces with its blood, accompanying the sacrifice with
+a carousal. In one village Mr Erman found the huts remarkably
+empty, and was told that the men had just gone a-fishing, and that
+their wives were drinking brandy in the kabak or public-house. The
+sale of spirits in Siberia, as in all the Russian dominions, is a
+government monopoly, and brandy is only to be had in certain houses,
+to whose keepers the privilege is farmed. In a small dark room,
+scarcely ten paces wide, Mr Erman found ten or twelve Ostyak dames
+clustered round the bottle, and benevolently drunk. His account of
+their maudlin state is amusingly grave and sentimental. "A number
+of short corpulent figures, with black sparkling eyes, could be
+just seen, moving and mingling together, in the narrow space. They
+all talked with animation, and with remarkably delicate voices,
+which now gave expression only to soft and joyous emotions. They
+embraced, one after the other, the Yamschik, who entered with us;
+and their soft voices, now almost whining, seemed attuned, not so
+much to words of old acquaintance, as to the endearments of young
+and growing love." The ladies having emptied their purses without
+quenching their thirst, the good-natured German, who observed
+that "the pleasure of drinking had but just risen to its highest
+pitch," opened them a credit with the kabak-keeper. "They now took
+especial pains to show themselves deserving of the European treat,
+by good Christian observance. Devout Russians are in the habit of
+neutralising the Satanic operation of spirituous liquors by a rapid
+movement of the right hand, intended to describe the cross, or by a
+softly-ejaculated prayer, or merely by blowing the breath upon the
+glass. But the good-humoured Ostyaks, novices in Christian prayer as
+in drinking, made the sign of the cross to such an extent, so slowly
+and with such deep bowing of the body, as would be required by the
+church only on the most solemn occasions."
+
+Although much engrossed by fishing, the Ostyaks do not neglect the
+chase. Their thick woods abound in the better kinds of fur animals,
+and the annual tribute of two sable skins, payable by each family
+to the Russian government, is not very difficult to obtain. It is
+seldom found necessary to pay an equivalent in other skins. Although
+quite the beginning of winter, Mr Erman's host, in an Ostyak
+village, showed him a fine sable skin, which he kept in a strong
+box, like a treasure, concealed in a corner of his dwelling. Its
+value was diminished by a yellowish tinge, ascribed to the animal's
+having lived in a wood where there was too much light. Besides
+sable and squirrel, the reindeer, the fox, the glutton, and the
+elk, are objects of chase. Mr Erman tried to get at the fact of the
+enmity said to exist between the two latter animals. The reply to
+his inquiries was the old story current in Europe--how the glutton
+leaps from a branch on the elk's neck, and keeps his seat till the
+death of his steed. No one, however, had seen any thing of the kind:
+it was matter of tradition, handed down from their dead fathers.
+The ermine is taken in traps. The fox is in great variety, the
+most esteemed being the crossed stone fox, whose colour is partly
+a grayish yellow, partly white, so distributed that the grayish
+parts unite prettily to form a cross, one bar of which extends
+along the back, whilst the other stretches obliquely down the
+middle ribs to the belly. The fur of this animal is greatly prized
+by the Russian clergy, for whom pelisses, covered with natural
+crosses, are made from it. The latitude of the town of Beresov is
+the headquarters of the Siberian beaver, hunted not for the fur but
+for the precious castoreum or beaver-stone, to which such great
+medical virtues are ascribed. Attempts have been made in Germany
+to obtain from the beavers of that country a product which might
+replace that of Siberia; but all in vain. The fine quality is only
+to be had in the far north, where, as Mr Erman fancifully observes,
+nature scatters animal perfumes in place of fragrant flowers.
+"The Kosaks and Russian traders have exalted the beaver-stone
+into a panacea.... To the sentence, 'God arose, and our enemies
+were scattered,' the Siberians add, very characteristically, the
+apocryphal interpolation, 'and we are free from headache.' To ensure
+this most desirable condition, every one has recourse, at home or on
+his travels, and with the firmest faith, to two medicines, and only
+two, viz., beaver-stone, or beaver-efflux, as it is here called, and
+sal-ammoniac." From the strength of the castoreum, the Siberians
+infer that other parts of the animal must possess peculiar virtues.
+Gouty swellings are said to subside rapidly when rubbed with the
+fat, and the beaver's teeth are popularly believed to cure toothach.
+
+The beaver is the only fur animal in these latitudes that does not
+change its colour in the course of the year. This is probably owing
+to the circumstance, that in winter it dwells wholly in the water,
+thus enjoying a comparatively equable temperature. In the river
+Obi, at Beresov, the water does not usually freeze below the depth
+of four feet eight inches, and the beaver always has two entrances
+to his dwelling, one high on the bank above the stream, the other
+below the freezing limit. The architectural and wood-cutting habits
+of the animal are the same here as in America; but two assertions,
+new to Mr Erman, were made respecting it by the Beresov hunters. He
+was assured that "among beavers, as with bees and men, there are
+distinctions of ranks; each chief keeping a number of labourers,
+the toils of which he oversees and directs without taking part in
+them; and, again, it was stated that the contents of the castoreum
+bags depend on the moon." It was impossible to verify the veracity
+of these two statements. As regards the moon's influence, however,
+there is ground for a suspicion that its advantages are rather felt
+by the hunter, than essential to the virtues of the drug. Full moon
+is maintained, both by Ostyaks and Russians, to be the propitious
+time.
+
+The most northern tribe of Ostyaks, who dwell between the rivers
+Obi and Yenisei, surpass their southern neighbours in venatorial
+skill, as they, in their turn, are surpassed by the Samoyedes,
+who live in the northernmost regions of Siberia. The men of the
+Yenisei kill wolves, which, on account of their long soft hair,
+are reckoned greatly superior to the forest and steppe wolves of
+middle Siberia. They are also famed for their dexterity in killing
+and capturing reindeer. "Tying leathern cords between the tops of
+the antlers of their tame deer, they turn the animals loose, one
+by one, in the neighbourhood of a wild herd: these do not fail
+to attack the strangers, and their antlers becoming entangled
+in the cords during the contest, they are held fast by the tame
+deer till the men arrive. These Ostyaks know also how to plant
+spring-bows, which send the arrow against the animal's breast." But
+the Samoyedes, besides these ordinary artifices, have other and
+ingenious ways, peculiar to themselves, of ensnaring and slaying
+the brute creation, by putting themselves as much as possible on an
+equality with the animals pursued, going on all-fours, and imitating
+them in voice and clothing. The Polar bear is a common victim to
+their cunning devices, and even to their open attacks; for their
+intimate acquaintance with the formidable beast makes them regard
+him as an easy prey. "The Samoyedes assert that the white bear far
+exceeds the black bear in ferocity and strength, whilst fully equal
+to it in cunning; yet, owing to his unwieldiness, they encounter it
+without fear, and always reckon on victory as certain. A man will
+often go singly against a Polar bear, eight feet long, without any
+other weapon than his knife, which he fastens to the end of a pole.
+In spring and autumn these animals are found upon the ice, near the
+hole, whence the seals come forth to breathe. There the bear covers
+himself up with snow, facing the hole, and with one paw stretched
+into the water." The Samoyede seal-hunters imitate the bears, and
+when the seal walks out upon the ice, they shove a board over
+the hole and capture the phoca. Concerning the bear the Ostyaks
+entertain peculiar notions, viewing it with a sort of superstitious
+respect. "A member of the court of justice told me that, in suits
+between Russians and Ostyaks, it is still the custom here (at
+Beresov) to bring, into court the head of a bear, and that this
+animal, which is supposed to be omniscient, is there appealed to
+as a witness by the Ostyaks. In swearing, they make the gesture of
+eating, and call upon the bear to devour them in like manner if they
+do not tell the truth." Some similar reverence for Bruin exists, we
+believe, amongst certain North American tribes.
+
+The draught-dogs, so faithful and useful to the northern Siberians,
+often receive but scurvy treatment at their masters' hands. The
+Ostyaks, who are honesty personified, and who laugh at the common
+European precautions of locking up valuables and bolting doors,
+cannot endure the predatory propensities of their canine allies,
+and fly into a passion whenever an unlucky dog sneaks into their
+dwelling in search of warmth or food. The poor brute is immediately
+a mark for the blows and kicks of every body present, the storm
+of abuse being justified by the cunning and greediness of its
+object, who, if allowed to abide in the house, would soon reduce
+its inmates to short commons. There is some excuse for the dogs'
+voracity, however; for, according to Mr Erman's account, they are
+considerably more than half-starved, and are rarely admitted to the
+fire to be fed, save when they return weary and distressed from a
+long journey. Severe as is the cold in those regions, protection
+from it is not essential to the existence, or even to the health
+of these hardy dogs. They sleep outside the houses, in holes which
+they thaw in the snow by their own warmth. At Obdorsk, where there
+are no pastures, and consequently no horses, four hundred dogs are
+kept by sixty inhabitants, and each of them is estimated to draw
+five poods' (two hundred pounds) weight in the loaded sledge. About
+eight o'clock in the evening these four hundred brutes set up a
+hideous howling, by way of claiming their daily meal, consisting
+invariably of fish, which, for them as well as for their owners'
+consumption, is first dried in the sun and then pounded, bones and
+all. Except this evening concert, a bark or a cry is rarely uttered
+by these dogs, unless at first starting when yoked to the sledge,
+or on coming across a reindeer team upon the road. Hydrophobia
+would be a terrible scourge in this dog-district, but the disease
+is fortunately unknown there. Steller has stated the same thing
+of the dogs of Kamschatka, and Mr Erman concludes that the malady
+is a result of the European system of living in towns. And as the
+Siberian dogs are so very moderately fed, he infers that excess,
+not want, generates the morbid habit. We are inclined to attribute
+more importance to the quality than to the quantity of the food. A
+fish diet may be more conducive to a wholesome state of the animals'
+blood than the masses of horse-flesh, paunch, and other rank and
+unclean offal commonly given to dogs in Europe, and especially in
+England, where the carnivorous addictions of the bipeds induce a
+belief in the propriety of unlimited flesh-feeding for quadrupeds.
+
+The large annual importation of exiles, the system of conscription,
+and the advantages offered to public officers volunteering for
+Siberian service, are the most important and efficacious measures by
+which Russia proceeds gradually but steadily with the colonisation
+and civilisation of her Asiatic dominions. The conscripts are
+sometimes drawn, not only from Tobolsk, but from the remotest parts
+of Siberia, and the term of military service being twenty-eight
+years, it is probable that only a small proportion return to their
+native villages. Those who do are looked up to as oracles by
+their countrymen. They are objects of pride to their families and
+of respect to every body else; the place of honour is theirs by
+right, and they are addressed by the title of Master Soldier.[7]
+The ferry of the Irtuish, by Tobolsk, whose passage is considered
+the symbol of political death to the numerous exiles who each year
+cross it--bestows a step of rank on all public servants offering
+themselves for duty in Siberia Proper. The passion for rank,
+stronger in Russia than in any other country, drives hosts of
+officers across this important boundary; but as they are not obliged
+to remain more than three years, most of them return home at the end
+of that time. Far nearer to St Petersburg than the Asiatic frontier,
+civilisation is still at a very low ebb amongst the aboriginal
+tribes. Close to Nijni Novgorod, and within a very short distance
+of Moscow, the prevailing population consists of Cheremisses and
+Chuvashes, two tribes many of whose customs are nearly as barbarous
+as their names. These people are shy and timid, very slow in
+acquiring industrious habits, and addicted to sundry practices
+stamping them as semi-savages. In some places they cling to
+paganism, and offer up horned beasts, fruit, and vegetables to their
+various deities. The Chuvash ladies wear a sort of bustle of sheet
+copper, hanging from the girdle backwards over the hips, and having
+appended to it all manner of metal ornaments, making a perpetual
+clatter in walking. But these tribes are the pink of refinement
+by comparison with those in the northern portion of the Muscovite
+empire,--with the Ostyaks, who eat out of the same trough with
+their dogs, or with the Samoyedes who tear with their teeth, and
+swallow with infinite relish, huge lumps of raw and reeking flesh.
+The women of the latter people wear, as their favourite decoration,
+(certainly no inappropriate one) a glutton's tail, hanging down the
+back of their pelisse. Their hair is plaited in tails, to which all
+manner of lumber, brass and iron rings, and rusty musket-locks, are
+attached. Mr Erman's account of "Life in the _Chum_" (the skin tent
+of the Samoyedes) is quaint and graphic.
+
+  [7] _Gospodin Slujivui._ Gospodin is equivalent to the French
+  Monsieur or Seigneur, and Slujivui means literally one who has
+  served in the army.
+
+"The reindeer calf, which we had got on the way, was killed and cut
+up in front of the tent a few minutes, after our arrival. The men
+now brought the bleeding flesh into the tent, and began devouring
+it immediately, quite raw, with the heartiest appetite. The old man
+was satisfied with sucking the brain from the head, whilst each
+of our younger comrades gnawed away at a limb of the animal, even
+to the bone. They laughed at the amazement which my good-humoured
+Esthonian attendant expressed at their blood-stained faces; and
+when he gave them to understand, through the interpreter, that they
+were no better than wolves, they seemed quite unprepared for such
+reproof; replying gravely, that they were at the same time no worse
+than the wolves, since they shared honestly with them, and left
+the bones and some scraps of flesh merely for their sake." In this
+same tent there was a little monster of a boy named Peina, whom one
+reads of with a sort of shudder, and with a strong suspicion that
+the creature was not _canny_. Mr Erman himself seems to write of
+him with peculiar reserve, stating facts, but evidently unwilling
+to give an opinion as to the exact nature of the beast. Peina, who
+had first-rate masticators, got his share of the raw meat, which
+did not prevent his drawing on his mother's lacteal resources, and
+thumping her brutally till she honoured the draft, or handed him
+the pot-ladle, with which he supped scalding porridge to his great
+internal contentment. The travellers' bread, although frozen hard
+and not easy eating for adult jaws, disappeared by wholesale within
+those of Peina. At night the anomalous urchin was laid naked in a
+canoe-shaped basket, and covered up so thickly with furs that his
+cries seemed to come from the depths of the earth. In the morning
+his mother took him from his bed and set him up, still naked, before
+the fire to warm himself. Sugar, when first presented to him,
+he called snow, and threw away, but when once he had tasted the
+dainty, his demands for it were unceasing and peremptory. Taking
+into consideration the uncomfortable and uncleanly peculiarities
+of the Samoyedes, both young and old, we cannot feel surprised
+that Mr Erman's interpreter conceived an intense dislike to their
+society, and so managed matters that one morning, whilst the man of
+science was busy measuring a base-line to ascertain the heights of
+some mountains, his Samoyede companions suddenly disappeared with
+their tent and their reindeer, leaving him with three ill-equipped
+sledges and a few Ostyak attendants, and with no choice but to make
+the best of his way back to Obdorsk, whence he soon afterwards
+returned to Tobolsk. There he passed his Christmas, and then resumed
+his journey; but this time in a southerly direction. After having
+penetrated to sixty-seven degrees north, the region of eternal
+frost, he struck southwards to the latitude of the Land's End,
+making a dip into China, which furnishes some of the best chapters
+in his book.
+
+Irkutsk, the last town of importance north of the Chinese frontier,
+consists of nineteen hundred houses, fifty being of brick, and
+the remainder of wood, and is probably the cheapest place in the
+civilised world as regards articles of food. We say "civilised,"
+because, although situate in a barbarous region, and possessing
+a population of a very motley character, the town has much that
+is European in its aspect and usages. It possesses an exchange,
+government factories, where newly-arrived convicts are employed,
+a school of medicine, a gymnasium, and a handsome parade-ground.
+In the market, formed of wooden booths, the stores of food were
+enormous. Beef cost about a halfpenny a pound; of flour one penny
+would purchase nearly eight and a half pounds; partridges and
+heathfowl were sold at five farthings a-piece. But we are in haste
+to get amongst the Celestials. First comes a gallop across More
+Baikal, a large lake just beyond Irkutsk, on which the Russian
+government maintains an armed flotilla. This gallop is a fine bit of
+helter-skelter, over ice brilliant as glass. "There was no snow upon
+the ice, so that its surface shone like a polished mirror in the
+moonlight. The horses that were put under our sledges in Kadilnaya
+had to be held on each side till the very moment of starting, when
+they broke at once into full gallop, which they kept up till we
+landed on the further shore. We completed seven German miles in two
+hours and a quarter, undoubtedly the most extraordinary as well as
+the most speedy stage upon any route in Russia." Thence, onwards
+to the frontier line. "We followed the crowd that pressed forward
+towards a narrow door in the front of a long wooden building. This
+admitted us into the inner quadrangle of a Russian warehouse. A
+corresponding door, at the opposite side of this court, opens just
+upon a wooden barricade, which constitutes the barrier of China. In
+this there is a wide portal, ornamented with pillars, and displaying
+the Russian eagle above it, along with the cipher of the reigning
+emperor, Nicholas the First, by whom it was erected." On passing
+through this gate, the change is immediate and striking,--from
+Russian sobriety of aspect and hue to the gaudy finery of China.
+Maimachen, the name of the Chinese town visited by Mr Erman, has a
+very masquerading air to a European eye. The walls on either side
+of the streets do not look like house walls, the roofs being flat
+and invisible from the street. "Indeed, they are nearly altogether
+concealed by the gay-coloured paper lanterns and flags, with
+inscriptions on them, hung out on both sides of the way. Cords,
+with similar scrolls and lanterns, are likewise stretched from roof
+to roof across the street. These dazzling decorations stand out
+in glaring contrast with the dull yellow of the ground and walls.
+In the open crossings of the streets, which intersect each other
+at right angles, stood enormous chafing-dishes of cast-iron, like
+basins, upon a slender pedestal four feet in height. The benches
+by which they were surrounded were occupied by tea-drinkers, who
+sat smoking from the little pipes they carry at their girdles,
+whilst their kettles boiled at the common fire." Mr Erman had the
+good fortune to be on the frontier at the period of the Chinese
+festival of the White Moon, which is in fact the celebration of
+the new-year, and he had the still greater luck to be invited to
+share in it at Maimachen. He found the town in its gayest costume.
+The expenditure of flags and lanterns was prodigious. The scrolls
+usually contained the names of the families before whose houses
+they were hung out, coupled with words of auspicious import, as
+gladness, riches, wisdom, &c. There was a great firing of crackers
+and rockets, partly to celebrate the day, but chiefly in honour of
+the guests. Before dinner the latter were diverted by a theatrical
+representation. Maimachen boasts a regular company of actors, and
+upon this great occasion they did their best. Their orchestra was of
+a rather violent description, consisting of "wooden drums, shaped
+like casks, brass cymbals, and plates of the same metal, or gongs,
+held by a string and beaten with knockers, and wooden truncheons,
+of different sizes, which they used as castanets." There were no
+actresses; but the deficiency was not to be detected, the younger
+and more delicate men personating women to the life by the aid
+of wigs and long tresses of black hair, but especially by curls
+pressed flat upon the forehead. Masks were not used, but paint was
+in abundance; in some cases with a view to represent spectacles,
+mustachios, &c.; in others to conceal the human features, or give
+them a monstrous aspect. "One face was covered with coloured rays,
+issuing from the mouth. The same actor had also a feather on
+his head--in Chinese comedy the conventional mark of a ghost or
+apparition. Another wore a golden helmet, which constituted him a
+warrior. Several kept beating themselves incessantly on the hip with
+a cane, and by so doing intimated that they were on horseback." The
+play itself was more like a game of romps than any regular dramatic
+representation. Little was said; but, on the other hand, there was
+a deal of dancing, drumming, and running about. Mr Erman could make
+neither head nor tail of the proceedings. By way of experiment,
+however, he made some tender gestures to one of the pseudo-ladies,
+who acknowledged them in the most amiable manner, and after that the
+horsemen without horses paid him much attention, pointing with their
+sticks to his spectacles, and trying to touch them as they passed.
+All this greatly diverted the Mongol audience, evidently delighted
+to see a real counterpart to the painted spectacles of some of the
+actors.
+
+The play over, Mr Erman and the other guests, preceded by the
+uproarious orchestra, marched off to dinner at the house of the
+sarguchei or chief officer of Maimachen. This gentleman, a tall,
+thin person of stern countenance, dressed in gray velvet, had a
+white button on the crown of his black felt hat, indicating his
+rank, and a chalcedony ring, an inch wide, upon his right-hand
+thumb, this being a mark of official dignity. "His nails," says our
+traveller, "did not extend above half an inch beyond the tips of
+his fingers, his personal vanity being in this respect subdued, as
+might be expected in a man of sober mind and mature years." The man
+of short nails and sober mind was exceeding hospitable, welcomed
+his guests in a soft and sonorous voice, and sat down with them
+to dinner at tables covered with scarlet cloth. The regale that
+followed might have caused a European _chef_ to pale his ineffectual
+fires from sheer envy. It began, oddly enough, with fruits,
+sweetmeats, and tea. These discussed, a piece of fine paper, for a
+napkin, and a pair of ivory chopsticks, were laid before each guest,
+and the tables, which were six feet wide, were covered over thickly
+with small porcelain plates full of all manner of complicated
+edibles. Fat abounded in the dressing, to neutralise which weak
+vinegar was used. The first series of saucers duly honoured, a
+second was brought in and put on the top of its predecessor. Others
+followed, and as the previous stratum was never removed, there soon
+arose upon the table a lofty pile of gastronomical curiosities.
+Pipes and _chowsen_, a Chinese spirit distilled from rice, concluded
+the feast, as the strangers thought;--but they were vastly mistaken.
+The soup course had still to come, and that was followed by an
+infusion of cabbage-leaves, drawn out of an urn by a cock, and drunk
+steaming hot. How a dinner commencing with preserved apricots,
+and concluding with cabbage water, agreed with German stomachs,
+Mr Erman does not inform us. After managing to taste upwards of
+a hundred dishes, he went to visit the temple of Fo, whose court
+was guarded by two clay lions painted green, whilst at his shrine
+were deposited, on account of the festive season, a prodigious heap
+of delicacies. Whole sheep without the skin, plucked chickens,
+pheasants, and guinea-fowls, in their natural positions, and
+glistening with fat, lay in hillocks at the feet of half-a-dozen
+grotesque and indecent idols. On a long table, a wall of offerings
+was built up, consisting of dressed meat and cakes of every kind,
+the whole surrounded with an elaborate lattice-work of white dough,
+five or six feet high, the openings of which were filled with dried
+fruits and confectionary of the finest kind. Perfumed candles burned
+before the disgusting idols, and brass discs hung from the ceiling,
+and were struck with clappers when any bearing offerings approached.
+
+The contents of the shops at Maimachen gave Mr Erman a very
+high opinion of Chinese skill and ingenuity. He saw scientific
+instruments of great merit, very clever clockwork, paintings drawn
+and finished with the greatest care, (although highly objectionable
+by the indelicacy of their subjects,) porcelain, sculpture, bowls,
+vases, and figures of various kinds of stone. "There were large
+spherical bowls, and oval vases, of chalcedony and agate, and
+reliefs cut in cornelians, nephrit, and other coloured stones. Of
+the latter kind, the most common are flowers, the several parts of
+which are formed of various and tastefully selected stones, and then
+cemented with mastic on a foundation of stone. For many of these
+articles, highly elaborate, and at the same time quite useless, the
+merchants of Maimachen asked four thousand tea-bricks, (a standard
+of currency,) or about two thousand five hundred Russian dollars.
+In this we saw a proof of luxury and profuse expenditure amongst
+the Chinese. Many other branches of industry indicated enervation
+and effeminacy of manners:" musk, for instance, and other perfumes,
+enclosed in little bags, and considered indispensable appendages
+to a young man's dress. A curious plaything, considered equally
+essential, is composed of two polished balls, about an inch in
+diameter, which the men always carry with them. "These are taken
+in the right hand, at idle times, and rolled and rubbed one over
+the other with the fingers; the noise they make amuses, and perhaps
+there is something agreeable also in the feel of them. Here, in
+Maimachen, I saw some of these balls made of glass, striped green
+and white, and, hollow, containing within them a little lump of
+clay, which rattled with every motion." The musk and perfumes,
+however abundantly used, are all insufficient to counteract a very
+peculiar and unpleasant smell attributed by Mr Erman to the Chinese.
+He first perceived it at the theatre, and took it to arise from an
+inordinate addiction to leeks on the part of actors and audience,
+whose breath and clothes were infected with the disagreeable
+odour of that bulb. But he was subsequently induced to regard it
+as a national taint, a Chinese exhalation, not to be overcome by
+any amount of artificial perfume, and whose cause is matter of
+inquiry for the chemist. Doubtless the Chinese would get rid of it,
+were it possible so to do, for the care they bestow on personal
+beauty and elegance is very great. Another striking defect in the
+inhabitants of Maimachen is to be found in their black and decayed
+teeth. The cause of this Mr Erman suspects to be the solution of
+copper, produced by the empyreumatic oil of tobacco in the bronze
+mouth-pieces of their pipes.
+
+At a post-house upon his road back to Irkutsk, Mr Erman and his
+party were met by a deputation from no less a personage than the
+Khamba Lama, the high-priest of the Buraets, a Mongolian tribe
+closely allied in language and customs to the natives of the
+northern provinces of China. The embassy consisted of four lamas
+or priests attired in scarlet robes and bright yellow hats. They
+brought an invitation to a grand festival, which was readily
+accepted,--and a very remarkable business it proved to be. The
+discordant theatrical music at Maimachen was a mere trifle compared
+to the monstrous noise made by the Buraet kettle-drums, so large
+that they were dragged upon four wheels, and by copper trumpets ten
+feet long, borne by one man and blown by another. "The grave prelude
+of the wind instruments was like a roaring hurricane, and the
+chorus of brass gongs, drums, &c., resembled the crash of a falling
+mountain." In this place we find some curious and interesting
+details respecting the Buddhist religion and priesthood, after which
+Mr Erman returns to Irkutsk, and resumes his journey eastward,
+through the valley of the Lena, to the land of the Tunguzes and
+Yakuts. The chief town of the latter people, Yakutsk, is two degrees
+to the south of Beresov, which Mr Erman had visited on his way to
+Obdorsk; but, nevertheless, the cold is far more severe at the
+former place, where frozen earth is found near the surface all the
+year round, and the same condition of the ground continues to the
+depth of six hundred feet. "The inhabitants of the Swiss Alps would
+not unjustly think themselves lost if they were compelled to live at
+the height of ten thousand feet, or two thousand three hundred feet
+above the hospital of the great St Bernard, and there to support
+and clothe themselves by keeping cattle, and with the productions
+of the surrounding mountains; yet they would then, and not until
+they arrived at that height, be settled on ground having the same
+temperature which I found here amongst the Yakuts, who are rich in
+cattle. It would seem, therefore, as if that succeeded in Siberia
+which was impossible in Europe, if we did not take into account
+that the same constant temperature of the ground may be made up
+at different places of very different elements." Notwithstanding
+the severity of their climate and resistance of their frozen soil,
+the Yakuts are a prosperous people, having attained a considerable
+degree of civilisation, and amongst whom crime is rare, although
+the influence of Russian example and contact daily renders it less
+so. There is much interest in Mr Erman's account of them, and of
+the wandering Tunguzses, the last tribe with whom he consorted
+before his arrival at Okhotsk. Here his reception was not very
+flattering. "We were looked at with much curiosity from all the
+house-doors on the way, for the devout elders of the place had been
+filled with anxious forebodings by the accounts of the arrival of
+a foreigner. They signed themselves with the cross whenever he
+was mentioned. And I learned to-day that they had fears of war,
+conscription, and other calamities." Nor was their alarm abated by
+learning that "the heathen foreigner wore snow-shades (spectacles)
+even in thick weather, and that he carried a dog in the sledge
+with him. Thus the return to civilised man was marked in the first
+instance by the encounter of intolerant superstition, and it was
+necessary to forget the nobler traits of the wilderness before
+we could become reconciled to the Russians of Okhotsk." At which
+place Mr Erman's narrative ceases. We await with interest its
+promised continuation--an account of his adventures in Kamschatka,
+California, and the Pacific.
+
+
+
+
+THE SCOTTISH DEER FORESTS.
+
+_Lays of the Deer Forest, with Sketches of Olden and Modern Deer
+Hunting, &c. &c._ By JOHN SOBIESKI and CHARLES EDWARD STUART. 2
+vols., post 8vo. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London.
+
+
+We would that, like stout Lord Percy of yore, it were in our power
+at this present moment to chronicle a vow that we should forthwith
+take our pastime for three summer days on the pleasant hills of
+Scotland. Alas for us, that we are doomed, from divers causes, to
+absent ourselves from felicity awhile, and, amidst the heat and
+noise of London, listen with intense disgust to the brutal bayings
+of the Chartists! This very night, we hear, the ignoble hunt is to
+be up in Bishop Bonner's fields. Crowds of dirty, unshaven, squalid
+ruffians, who have not the strength to use the pike, but the will
+to employ the knife of the assassin--fellows whom even Cobden would
+be chary to recognise as his _quondam_ supporters, defenders, and
+dupes--not unmingled with foreign propagandists, whom even France,
+in the fury of her revolutionary tornado, repudiates--are thronging
+to the place of rendezvous, where, doubtless, their souls will
+be worthily regaled by the ravings of some rascally vendors of
+sedition, blasphemy, and treason. Then will ensue the usual scene
+which for nights has disgraced the metropolis. Some unfortunate
+tradesman, whose curiosity has been stronger than his prudence, will
+be fixed upon as a "special" or a spy--the cowards, presuming upon
+their numbers, and the apparent absence of all executive power,
+will attempt a deliberate murder--the police will sally from their
+hiding-place to the rescue--there will be a storm of brickbats, a
+determined charge with the baton, a shop or two will be gutted,
+some score of craniums cracked, and to-morrow morning the greasy
+patriots, at the bar of Bow Street, will read their recantation,
+and, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, protest
+their loyalty to the Queen. Such are the pastimes of merry England
+in the month of June, and such the results of that enlightened
+policy which yields every thing to popular clamour, adopts the
+most fatal delusions as distinct principles of right, and then
+shrinks, trembling and aghast, from the inevitable result of their
+development!
+
+We do not want--in this article, at least--to be political, and
+we vow that we took up our pen three minutes ago in a spirit of
+perfect good-will and harmony towards all manner of men. But
+the hoarse bawling of these cannibals has somewhat ruffled our
+temper, dispelled for the moment our dreams of the mountains, and
+forced us back to the sterner realities of popular tumult and
+the truncheon. If this sort of thing lasts, we shall indubitably
+emigrate. Assassination, as recommended by the modern Hamilcar, is
+by no manner of means to our taste. Our opinion coincides with that
+of the gracious Captain of Knockdunder, and, were we promoted to
+a judicial function, "the chiel they ca' the Fustler" should ere
+long fustle in a tow. Neither are we at all disposed to fraternise
+with the milder Cuffey--a fellow, by the way, who is not without
+some redeeming scintillations of humour. We have no wish to be
+introduced to him even at a mesmeric soiree; and, acting upon
+the principle of Jacquey, we shall pray heaven to decrease our
+acquaintance, and put the Tweed as speedily as possible between
+ourselves and the partisans of O'Connor. We hope the Lord Provost,
+though discomfited in his Police Bill, has been looking after the
+tranquillity of the Calton. If not, we must move further north, and
+finally locate ourselves somewhere in the vicinity of Dalnacardoch.
+The deuce is in it, if the revolutionary mania has penetrated
+to that sequestred region! No son of the mountains has ever yet
+given in his adhesion to the Charter--treason hath not stained the
+tartan, and no republican pins have ever been exposed beneath the
+checkered margin of the kilt. There is loyalty at least in the
+land which was traversed by Montrose and Dundee; and without the
+slightest fear that any of the numerous points of that interesting
+but incomprehensible public document, which Mr Joseph Hume proposes
+to condense, shall be unduly obtruded on our notice, we shall at
+once exchange our London dwelling for the more pleasant bothy of the
+hills.
+
+As for a companion, we shall seek none better--for we could not
+find one--than this last publication of the Stuarts. And here,
+once for all, let us draw a line of distinction betwixt the poetry
+and the prose of these very remarkable brothers. We have not the
+remotest intention of sitting in judgment on the "Lays," or of
+testing the poetical merits of John Sobieski and Charles Edward,
+either by the canons of Longinus, or by that superior code of
+literary laws which Maga has promulgated to the world. The poems,
+which occupy exclusively the first of these volumes, are, with one
+exception, fugitive in their nature, and appear to have been penned
+rather from occasional impulse, than from any deliberate intention
+of publication. Accordingly, we find that most of them relate to
+topics personal to the authors themselves--and with these we do not
+meddle. In others, there are flashes of the deep national spirit
+which still survives--though our rulers do not seem to mark it--in
+Scotland: indignation at the neglect with which too many of our
+national institutions have been treated, and mournful lamentings
+over the misfortunes of a former age. But the impulse which leads to
+the composition of poetry does not always imply its accomplishment.
+Poetry, as an art in which excellence can only be obtained by a
+combination of the simple and the sublime, requires a study far
+more intense and serious than the mere critic is apt to allow. In
+a former Number we devoted an article to an exposition of those
+principles, which are absolutely invariable in their application,
+and which must be thoroughly understood, if they are not intuitive
+to the poet; and, being in no mood for repetition, we shall simply
+say that we adhere to our recorded doctrines. The Stuarts, it must
+be confessed, are more successful with the rifle than the lyre. We
+would far rather meet them in the garb of the forester, than in the
+more fantastic fashion of the minstrel: be theirs the lot of Ryno
+the hunter, not the darkened destiny of the bard.
+
+Do, therefore, what you please with the first volume--pack it up
+in your portmanteau, or place it on the shelf beside Chambers'
+History and the collections of good old Bishop Forbes. But if you
+profess to be a deer-stalker--though we fear your profession to be
+false--or if you are but an aspiring neophyte, and hankerer after
+that proud position--or if you merely bound your aspirations towards
+the compassing of the death of a roebuck--or if simply you have a
+keen and a kindly eye for nature, and are a lover of the sylvan
+solitudes--in one or other, or all of these characters, we pray you
+to deal more leisurely with the other tone, which is the Hunter's
+Vade-Mecum, the best guide ever yet published to the haunts of the
+antlered monarch.
+
+We are fond of Mr Scrope, and we have an excessive partiality for St
+John. Two finer fellows never shouldered a rifle; and our conscience
+does not accuse us of having used too superlative, in epithet in
+their praise. This was the more creditable on our part, because
+we knew them both to be Southrons; and while freely admitting the
+sportsman-like qualities of the one, and the strong picturesque
+style and spirit of the other, we felt a slight, passing, but
+pardonable pang of jealousy, that they should have stepped in, and
+pre-occupied the native field. Where, thought we, are our Scottish
+deer-stalkers? Can the lads not handle a pen as well as touch a
+trigger? Will none of them, who have been trained to the hills since
+they were striplings, stand forth for the honour of Albyn, and try
+a match with these fustian-coated circumventers of the stag? By the
+shade of Domhnull Mac-Fhionnlaidlhnan Dan, we blush for the literary
+reputation of our country, and almost wish that we were young enough
+ourselves to take the hill against the invading Sassenach! At
+length--and we are delighted to see it--the reproach has been swept
+away. Two stalwart champions of the forest have risen in the persons
+of the Stuarts--they have encountered the Englishmen with their own
+weapons, and, in our opinion, beaten them hollow.
+
+Mr Scrope had the merit of producing the earliest work in which
+deer-stalking was treated as a distinct and peculiar branch of
+the art venatory. We speak of it now from recollection; for
+our copy, somewhat frayed and worn by the fingers of ambitious
+sportsmen, is in the snug corner of a library some hundred miles
+to the northward. But we remember well the Waltonian character of
+the book--the professional style in which the elder practitioner
+enforced his precepts upon the dawning intellect of his companion;
+and the adventures, neither few nor feeble, which were depicted
+in the heart of the Atholl forest. Taken as the production of
+an English sportsman, Mr Scrope's book is highly creditable:
+considered as the manual of a deer-stalker, it is at the best
+indifferent. Nor, indeed, could it well be otherwise. Not until
+middle age, if we are informed rightly, did Mr Scrope first send
+a ball into the ample shoulder of a hart: his young blood never
+beat tumultuously in his veins at the sight of the mighty creature
+rolling over upon the heather, and its antlers buried in the
+moss. His boyish enthusiasm, we fear, was expended upon game of
+less mark and likelihood--partridges, perchance, as they whirred
+from the turnips, or possibly he was "entered" with the hare.
+Wordsworth's maxim, that the boy is the father of the man, is
+peculiarly applicable in sporting matters. Upon the character of
+the country in which the latent spirit of the hunter is earliest
+developed, depends, in a great degree, his future success, and
+certainly his accomplishment as an Orion. The young squire, who
+has been brought up in the faith of Sykes, who never stirs abroad
+without a keeper, and who is accustomed to see his delicate pointers
+execute their manoeuvres with almost mathematical precision on the
+flat stubbles of Norfolk, labours under a huge disadvantage in the
+higher branches of his science, compared with the Highland boy who
+has received his education on the hill. What though the single
+barrel of the latter be a clumsy implement indeed in competition
+with the Purdie which decorates the shoulder of the former--though
+the hound that sometimes attends him, though oftener he is alone,
+never slept a single night in a kennel, and is the ruggedest
+specimen of his kind--still he is in the enjoyment of advantages
+incomparably superior for the development of all his faculties,
+and the sharpening of every sense. The triumph of the sportsman
+does not lie so much in the killing as in the finding of his game.
+Were it otherwise, the pigeon-slayer of Battersea or the Red-house
+would have just claims to the honours of Sir Tristram, and the
+annihilator of poultry to rank with the Nimrods of the world. Our
+young friend the Squire shoots well--that is to say, he can kill
+with reasonable precision: but, after all, what is he save an
+instrument? Take Ponto away from him, tie up Juno, send a bullet
+through the brain of Basta, and a pretty beggarly account you will
+have of it in the evening when we come to the emptying of the bags!
+Or lead him down to the sea-shore, and show him a whaup, which in
+the English tongue is denominated a curlew; request him to use all
+his possible skill to compass possession of the bird; but do not set
+your heart on having it, else, as sure as fate, you are doomed to
+disappointment. Whaup is quite alive to his own interests, and by
+no means unsuspicious of the Saxon, who advances straight towards
+him with a hypocritical air of unconcern. Had the Highland lad been
+there, what a difference! He would have dropped like a stone behind
+that rock, wriggled like a serpent over the sand, kept the bird
+between himself and the sea, taken advantage of every inequality in
+the ground, discerned from the attitude of his quarry whether its
+suspicions were aroused or not, and in ten minutes a pluff of white
+smoke and a report would have announced its extermination. As it
+is, the curlew remains apparently unconcerned until the Lord of the
+Manor has reduced the intermediate distance to a hundred and twenty
+yards, and then, with a shrill whistle, takes flight along the
+margin of the tide. Or set him to stalk a blackcock, perched high
+of an Autumn morning on a dyke. How clumsily he sets about it! how
+miserable is his stoop! how wretchedly he calculates his distance!
+That wide-awake hat, which, for the sake of symmetry, he has been
+pleased to surmount with a feather, is as conspicuous to the country
+for miles round, and of course to the blackcock, as was the white
+plume of Murat in the field of battle, and as potent to effect a
+clearance, of which we presently have ocular demonstration.
+
+We contend, therefore, that it is extremely difficult for the man,
+be he ever so addicted to field-sports, who has been educated in
+a cultivated country, to disembarrass himself of the artificial
+habits which he is tolerably sure to acquire. His trolling may
+be excellent--indeed, English gentlemen are, generally speaking,
+first-rate shots--but he will be deficient in the science of the
+naturalist, and in that singular acuteness of perception which can
+hardly be gained save by an early intimacy with nature, on the
+mountain, the moor, or in the glen. No subsequent education or
+experience can make up for the normal deficiency, least of all in
+the pursuit of an animal so wary, so instinctive, and so peculiar in
+its habits as the deer. Of course we do not mean to deny that there
+is much which may be learned. What a pointer is to partridges, some
+wary and experienced forester may often be made to the deer; and
+if you put yourself under his tuition, and scrupulously obey his
+orders, you may very possibly succeed in attaining the object of
+your desires. Nor indeed can you do better, up to a certain point,
+notwithstanding the strictures of the Stuarts, who are, we think,
+unnecessarily wroth at the system which would call in the aid of
+any supplementary assistance. We hope no gentleman who has rented a
+forest for the ensuing season will be deterred from following the
+feet of a Highland Gamaliel on account of any ridicule which may
+be attached to the fact of his having been "taken up" to a deer.
+If he should rashly attempt stalking at his own hand, without any
+preliminary instruction, we should be sorry to found our hopes of
+dinner on the chance of his acquisition of a haunch.
+
+     "When advancing upon deer [say our authors]--except in strange
+     ground--the forester, or any other attendant, should be left
+     behind a stone, or in some covert, before the stalker commences
+     his approach; not from any recognition of the false reproach
+     made against the guides by Mr Scrope, but because there is
+     no occasion for an assistant, and the action of one has more
+     celerity, independence, and security from discovery, than when
+     a greater number are in motion. The charge made by the author
+     of 'The Art of Deer-stalking,' that the forester is often in
+     the way, and sometimes obstructs the shot, is not true, unless
+     in instances of inexperienced and awkward individuals, who are
+     not to be found among that class of foresters of whom the guest
+     of the _Atholl Forest_ proposes his remarks. With a MacKenzie,
+     or a MacDonald, a Catanach, and a MacHardie, the asserted
+     inconvenience must proceed from the ignorance or maladroitness
+     of the gray worm which crawls at his back, and who often does
+     not know what he is doing, or where he is going, with his
+     ideas _�gar�_ on his sensitive knees and varnished Purdie,
+     unconscious of what he ought to do and nervous for what he ought
+     not, flurried with eagerness and disgusted with his posture,
+     and who, never seeing a deer except once in the year, is led
+     up to him like a 'blind burraid,' by one whose language he
+     scarcely understands. In general, therefore, the embarrassments
+     of the 'creep' are those of the superior, who is frequently so
+     ignorant, unpractised, and dependent upon the guidance of the
+     forester, that to be '_taken up to the deer_' has become the
+     modern forest phrase for the approach of the sportsman. This
+     contemptible term, and its contemptible practice, has only
+     been introduced within the last quarter century, since the
+     prevalence of stalking gentlemen utterly unacquainted with the
+     ground and pursuit of deer. Of old, the '_Se�lgair uasal nam
+     b�ann_' was initiated to the hill when yet but a '_biorach_'
+     of a stalker; and when he became a matured hill-man, he should
+     no more have suffered himself to be--'_taken up_ to his deer'
+     by an attendant, than a Melton fox-hunter to be trained after
+     the hounds by a whipper-in with a leading rein.--What should
+     have been the sentiments of the old chiefs and Uaislean of the
+     last century--the Dukes of Atholl and Gordon--Glengarrie--John
+     Aberardar--Iain dubh Bhail-a-Chro�in--to hear a deer-hunter
+     speak of being '_taken up to his deer_!'--Certainly that he was
+     a noble 'amadan' or 'gille-cr�bach,' who had not the faculties
+     or the limbs to act for himself.--But this is only one of the
+     many instances for which the hills of Gael may mourn with the
+     mountains of Gilboa--'_Quomodo ceciderunt robusti!_'"
+
+Far are we from insinuating that Mr Scrope is at all liable to the
+remarks contained in the foregoing extract. On the contrary, we
+hold him to be a man of vigorous mind and acute eye, and any thing
+but a contemptible foe to the stags, after the measure of his own
+experience. If he is deficient at all, it is in the poetry and
+higher mysteries of the art, which hardly would be expected from a
+stranger, whose initiation was necessarily late. Waverley, though a
+respectable shot, and a man of literary taste, would, we apprehend,
+have described the driving and disposition of the tainchel less
+effectively, and certainly far less truly, than Fergus M'Ivor; so
+great a difference is there betwixt the craft of the master and
+his pupil. Let Mr Scrope, therefore, rest content with the laurels
+he has won, and the trophies he has taken from the forest. Not
+unforgotten is his name in Atholl, nor unloved. Let him be a guide
+to the Southren, but he must not dream of rivalling the Stuarts in
+woodcraft, or Stoddart in the science of piscation.
+
+Of Mr St John's "Wild Sports of the Highlands," we have already
+spoken in terms of unqualified praise. A more delightful volume was
+never adapted for the pocket of the sportsman: a more truthful or
+observant work has seldom issued from the pen of the naturalist. His
+sketches and pictures of deer-stalking we allow to be as perfect in
+their way as the compositions of Landseer; and having said so much,
+we shall not make any further call upon that gentleman's blushes.
+Still, even his experience is limited, and his knowledge imperfect.
+He has given us a brilliant account of his own exploits upon the
+hill, but he has not lived long enough in the wilder haunts of the
+deer accurately to understand their habits. Not so our authors, who
+for years have been denizens of the mountains, speaking the tongue
+of the Gael, wearing the native garb, and following the chase with
+an ardour and enthusiasm unparalleled in these degenerate days.
+
+Gentlemen who complain of the inferior accommodation afforded by
+some of the more distant hostelries of Scotland--who are shocked
+at the absence of warming-pans, and tremulously nervous about
+your sanatory condition, when subjected to the enormity of damp
+sheets--how would you like to spend a few nights on the misty
+hill-side, or even in the hut of the hunters? We shall take you if
+you please to the latter spot, merely premising that, in order to
+reach it, we must cross the Findhorn, now roaring down in spate. A
+terrible stream is that Findhorn, as Mr St John well knows; but we
+question whether he ever ventured to ford it on the rise, as was
+done by one of the Stuarts. For the information of distant friends,
+we beg to put our imprimatur to the following description of this
+furious Highland flood, which rolled between the residence of the
+hunters and their favourite ground.
+
+     "That stream, however, which was so calm, and bright, and sunny,
+     when the otters floated down its current in a still summer's
+     morning, was a fierce and terrible enemy in its anger; and,
+     for a great part of the year, the dread of its uncertainty
+     and danger was a formidable cause for the preservation of
+     that profound solitude of the forest which so long made it
+     the sanctuary of deer, roe, and every kind of wild game. The
+     rapidity with which the river comes down, the impassable height
+     to which it rises in an incredibly short time, its incertitude
+     and fury, would render it an object of care to bold forders and
+     boatmen; but with the peasants of the 'laich,' unaccustomed,
+     like the Highlanders, to wrestle with a mountain torrent, and,
+     excepting in rare instances, unable to swim or manage a coble,
+     it inspires a dread, almost amounting to awe, and none except
+     ourselves ventured to keep a boat above the fishing-station of
+     Slui. Pent within a channel of rocks from fifty to a hundred
+     and eighty feet in height, the rise of the water is rapidly
+     exaggerated by the incapability of diffusion; and the length of
+     its course sometimes concealing beyond the horizon the storms by
+     which it is swelled at its source, its floods then descend with
+     unexpected violence. Frequently when, excepting a low wreath
+     upon Beann-Drineachain, the sun is shining in a cloudless sky,
+     and the water scarce ripples over the glittering ford, a deep
+     hollow sound--a dull approaching roar may be heard in the gorges
+     of the river; and almost before the wading fisherman can gain
+     the shore, a bank of water, loaded with trees, and rocks, and
+     wreck, will come down three--four--five feet abreast--sweeping
+     all before it in a thunder of foam and ruin. In ordinary cases,
+     after two days of rain, the stream will rise twenty or thirty
+     feet--it _has_ risen nearly ten fathoms in its rocky gulf; and
+     once upon this occasion it mounted fifteen feet in a quarter
+     of an hour. When the dawn broke, it appeared sweeping through
+     the trees, which the evening before hung fifty feet above its
+     brink--a black roaring tempest loaded with ruins and debris,
+     from which were seen to rise at times the white skeletons of
+     trees peeled of their bark, beams and couples of houses--a
+     cart--a door--a cradle, hurrying and tilting through the foam
+     and spray, like the scattered 'floatsome' of a wreck.
+
+     "It may be judged how far it was convenient in winter to hunt
+     a forest separated by such a boundary, of which the nearest
+     certain passage was by a bridge two miles to the west, with
+     frequently the view of hunting three miles to the east. Often we
+     have gone out in a clear sapphire morning, when there was scarce
+     a ripple on the pools, and the water on the ford was not over
+     our 'glunachan,' and when we returned at evening, and approached
+     through the dark veil of pines which descended to the river,
+     have heard a roar as if the world was rolling together down the
+     black trough before us, and as we came out on the bank, found a
+     furious tempest of water, tumbling, and plunging, and leaping,
+     over stock and rock twenty feet upon the clatach, where we had
+     left it whimpering among the pebbles in the morning; while, in
+     the far, deep, birch-embowered channel, where the stream was
+     then so still and placid that you could only guess its course by
+     the bright glistening eye which here and there blinked between
+     the trees and stones,--now it came yelling, and skirling, and
+     clamouring down the rocks and falls, as if all the air was full
+     of gibbering, babbling, laughing demons, who were muttering, and
+     yammering, and prophesying, and hooting, at what you were going
+     to do, if you attempted to cross."
+
+We pray you at your leisure to read on, and you will presently
+see what peril our authors underwent at the fearful fords of
+the Findhorn. Once or twice in our life we have been in similar
+jeopardy, and we can testify with unction to the singular sensations
+which beset a man in the midst of a roaring river, when the rapids
+are shooting away below, and the boulder-stones rolling beneath his
+feet. We pass over some perilous instances of adventure, which at
+length became so frequent as to lead to the construction of the hut.
+
+     "Such continually and unexpectedly were the ferries of the
+     Findhorn, and many such escapes we had, in daylight and in
+     darkness.--Twice I have been swamped, often nearly upset, and
+     more than once carried off my legs in the fords; and--I say it
+     with humility, and always under the mercy of heaven--that I owed
+     rescue either to actual swimming, or to the confidence inspired
+     by that power when struggling with the strong and terrible enemy.
+
+     "This continual exposure to battle and disappointment, however,
+     became at length too vexatious an abridgment of sport and
+     certainty; and as I would--and often--have made my bed under
+     a fir tree rather than go round by the bridge of Daltullich,
+     I resolved upon another alternative--to build in the forest a
+     '_bothan an t-sealgair_,' or 'hunter's hut,' where we might
+     lodge for the night when it was impossible to cross the water.
+
+     "There is a high and beautiful craig at the crook of the river
+     near the 'Little Eas,'--a precipice eighty feet in height, and
+     then like a vast stone helmet crowned with a feathery plume of
+     wood, which nodded over its brow. From its top you might drop
+     a bullet into the pool below, but on the south side there is
+     an accessible woody bank, down which, by planting your heels
+     firmly in the soil and among the roots of the trees, there is a
+     descent to a deep but smooth and sandy ford. Upon the summit of
+     the rock there is, or there was--my blessing upon it!--a thick
+     and beautiful bird-cherry, which hung over the craig, and whose
+     pendant branches, taking root on the edge of the steep, shot up
+     again like the banana, and formed a natural arbour and close
+     trellis along the margin of the precipice. Behind its little
+     gallery, there is a mighty holly, under which the snow rarely
+     lays in winter, or the rain drops in summer. Beneath the shelter
+     of this tree, and within the bank at its foot, I dug a little
+     cell large enough to hold two beds, a bench, a hearth, a table,
+     and a 'kistie.' The sides were lined with deals well caulked
+     with moss, and the roof was constructed in the same manner, but
+     covered with a tarpauling, which, lying in the slope of the
+     surrounding bank, carried off any water which might descend from
+     thaw or rain, and, when the autumn trees shook off their leaves,
+     could not be distinguished from the adjoining bank. Its door was
+     on the brink of the craig, veiled by the thick bird-cherries
+     on the edge of the precipice; and the entrance to the little
+     path, which ascended from either side upon the brow of the
+     rock, was concealed by a screen of birch and hazel, beneath
+     which the banks were covered with primroses, wood-anemones,
+     and forget-me-not. Bowers of honeysuckle and wild-roses twined
+     among the lower trees; and even in the tall pines above, the
+     rose sometimes climbed to the very top, where all its blossoms,
+     clustering to the sun, hung in white tassels out of the
+     dark-blue foliage. There the thrush and the blackbird sang at
+     morning and evening, and the owl cried at night, and the buck
+     belled upon the Torr.--Blessed, wild, free, joyous dwelling,
+     which we shall never see again!"
+
+A lovely place indeed must that have been in the pleasant days of
+summer! We do not wonder at the fondness with which the Stuarts
+speak of that lodge in the wilderness, reared as it was in the
+midst of the most beautiful and romantic scenery which exists
+within the compass of the seas of Britain, or, for aught we know,
+elsewhere. Years have rolled by since we last set foot upon the
+banks of Findhorn; but never shall we forget the glories of that
+deep ravine, or the noble woods of Altyre, still possessed by the
+descendants of the princely Comyns. Did we not expect to be summoned
+out within half an hour to contribute to the safety of the realm by
+breaking the head of a Chartist, we should ourselves launch out into
+description, and try conclusions with Horatio M'Culloch. But, after
+all, it would be a work of supererogation. Mr St John has already
+illustrated most charmingly that abode of the faithful; and he will
+not be displeased to see that, even in painting, he has met with
+formidable rivals. Rarely, indeed, have we met with any thing so
+perfect as the following sketch:--
+
+     "Near Slui on the Findhorn there is a range of precipices
+     and wooded steeps crowned with pine, and washed by a clear
+     and rippling stream of the river, through which there is an
+     excellent ford, very well known to the roe, for escaping to
+     the woods of Slui when pressed by the hounds. This reach is
+     called the Ledanreich, from a remarkable craig, a sheer naked
+     even wall of sandstone, lying in horizontal strata eighty or
+     ninety feet high: At the eastern extremity of this rock there
+     is a great division, partly separated from the main curtain by
+     a deep woody slope, which dips into the precipice with little
+     more inclination from the perpendicular than to admit of careful
+     footing. In the face of the divided craig, the decomposition of
+     the softer stone between the courses of the strata has wasted
+     it away into narrow galleries, which, passing behind the tall
+     pillars of the pines growing from the rifts and ledges, extend
+     along the face of the precipice, veiled by a deep tapestry of
+     ivy, which spreads over the mighty wall of rock, and hangs
+     from shelf to shelf over the covered ways. Beyond the craigs,
+     the bank of the forest, an abrupt steep, covered with oak and
+     copsewood, slopes down to the river, its brow darkened with a
+     deep-blue cloud of pines, and its descent carpeted with moss,
+     primroses, and pyrolas, here and there hollowed into quaint
+     'cuachs,' filled with hazels, thorns, and giant pines. Along
+     this woody scarp, and through its thick copse, the roe had made
+     narrow galleries, which communicated with the ivy corridors
+     on the face of the craig, to which there were corresponding
+     ways upon the opposite side. In that fortress of the rock, for
+     shelter from the sun and flies, and seclusion from the stir of
+     the world during the day in the heat of summer, the red-deer
+     and roe made their secret haunt, concealed behind the deep dim
+     veil of leaves, unseen and unsuspected in the cool hollows of
+     the cliff. The prying eye might search the craig from below,
+     and the beaters or the woodmen might whistle, and whoop, and
+     shout above, but nothing appeared or moved except the gray
+     falcon, which rose channering out of the rifts. Above the craig
+     the wooded bank was so abrupt, that to the front view there
+     was no indication of a slope, and any who passed quickly over
+     the brow was immediately out of sight. At each descent beyond
+     the extremities of the whole range of rocks there was a common
+     roe's run and pass, which was supposed to be 'deadly sure' if
+     the deer took the path, since the precipice below was believed
+     to be an infallible barrier against any intermediate escape.
+     Often, however, when pressed upon the terrace above, the deer
+     neither went through the passes nor turned against the beaters,
+     but vanished as if by magic--nobody could tell where; and it
+     was the common opinion of the drivers and fishermen, that, when
+     forced near the river, they threw themselves over the craigs
+     'for spite,'--a belief often confirmed by old Davie Simpson, who
+     declared that he had often found their bodies beneath the rocks,
+     and in the Cluach, the Clerk's Pool, and the 'Furling Hole.' He
+     did not, however, relate what _wounds_ they had, and the truth
+     was, that those which disappeared at the brow of the Ledanreich
+     dashed down the sudden dip of the bank between the precipices,
+     and, turning through the ivy corridors, went out through the
+     copse galleries upon the other side, and either descended to the
+     water or skirted below the pass, and went back into the forest.
+     Those which were found dead were such as had been mortally
+     wounded at some in-wood pass, and, unable to take, or cross
+     the water, had died on the beach, or been carried down by the
+     river. In the same mysterious passages which gave concealment
+     and escape to the stags and bucks, the does were used to lay
+     with their kids, and from thence at morning and evening they
+     brought them out to pluck the tender grass upon the green banks
+     beyond. Often from the brow above, or from behind the ivy
+     screen, we have watched their 'red garment' stealing through the
+     boughs, followed by their little pair drawing their slender legs
+     daintily through the wet dew, and turning their large velvet
+     ears to catch every passing sound upon the breeze as it brought
+     the hum of the water, or the crow of the distant cock--now
+     trotting before, now lingering behind their dam, now nestling
+     together, now starting off as the gale suddenly rustled the
+     leaves behind them--then listening and re-uniting in a timorous
+     plump, pricking their ears, and bobbing their little black noses
+     in the wind,--then, as the doe dropped on her knees in the moss,
+     and laid her side on the warm spot where the morning sun glanced
+     in through the branches, they gambolled about her, leaping over
+     her back, and running round in little circles, uttering that
+     soft, wild, plaintive cry like the treble note of an accordion,
+     till, weary of their sport, they lay down at her side, and
+     slept while she watched as only a mother can. No marvel it was
+     that they loved that safe and fair retreat, with all its songs
+     and flowers, its plenty and repose. All around was sweet, and
+     beautiful, and abundant, such as the poetical imagination of the
+     painter can rarely compose, and _never_, unless like Salvator
+     he has lived in the wilderness with its free denizens. Upon the
+     summit above the craig there was a broad and verdant terrace
+     surrounded by ivied pines and feathering birches, and upon a
+     little green glade in the midst grow two of the most beautiful
+     objects ever produced by art or nature. These were a pair of
+     twin thorns exactly similar in size, age, and form, and standing
+     about three yards from each other: their stems as straight as
+     shafts, and their round and even heads like vast bushes of wild
+     thyme, but each so overgrown with ivy and woodbine, that their
+     slender trunks appeared like fretted columns, over which the
+     thorny foliage served as a trellis to suspend the heavy plumes
+     of the ivy and the golden tassels of the woodbine. Many a
+     'ladye's bower' we have seen, and many a rich and costly plant
+     reared by the care of man, but none so beautiful as those lonely
+     sisters of the forest, planted by His hand in His great garden,
+     where none beheld but those for whom He made it lovely--the
+     ravens of the rock, the deer who couched under its shade by
+     night, and the birds who sang their matins and their even-song
+     out of its sweet boughs."
+
+If we go on quoting at this rate, we shall never reach the hill, and
+as yet we have not started from the hut. To say the truth, we are
+in no hurry, and neither, we suspect, upon many occasions were the
+Stuarts, indomitable huntsmen as they are. What though at night the
+river swept with the sound of thunder below, making the solid rock
+vibrate to its deep foundation,--what though the wind swept mightily
+down the ravine, swaying the trees like saplings, and threatening to
+tear them away,--what though the windows of heaven were open, and
+the deluge came down, and the bark of the hill-fox sounded sharp
+above the roaring of the water and the wood,--yet within that little
+bothy that rests upon the face of the craig, the wearied huntsmen
+slept peacefully; and in the morning, says one of them,--"I was
+awakened as usual by the whistle of the robin in the bird-cherry,
+and the sharp note of the blue bonnet sharpening his little saw on
+the top of the holly. I went out to the narrow terre-plain over the
+craig. The wind was gone, and the sun smiling on the still leaves
+and dewy grass--the flood torrent of the river dancing and laughing
+in its light, and the calm bright air breathing with the sweet
+perfume of the damp plants, and all the freshness and fragrance of
+the forest wilderness." We back it against the forest of Ardennes!
+
+Every true hunter is humane. What! you say--do you call it humane
+to persecute the unfortunate stag, the monarch of the wilds, to the
+death?--to drive rifle-bullets into the target of the harmless roe?
+to murder otters by the dozen, and to slaughter seals by the score?
+Indubitably we do. Let us reason a little upon this. Yesterday,
+you recollect that you dined upon very juvenile veal, smothered in
+a mess of dingy vegetable matter which we apprehend to have been
+sorrel, after the beastly fashion of the Gauls. Posterior to that,
+you devoured the larger moiety of a duckling. This morning we saw
+you, with our own eyes, regaling yourself at the club, between the
+intervals of muffin, with what assuredly were cutlets of lamb. After
+all this, can you have the face to stand up and defend your own
+humanity? For how many days had the sun dawned upon that luckless
+calf, the mangled fragments of which upon your platter rather
+resembled the rags of a kid-glove, than food meet for the stomach
+of a Christian? How long had the feeble quackle of Draco been heard
+round the row of peas near which he unsuspiciously perambulated,
+little dreaming how much the pods thereof were mixed up with his
+future destiny? How many races were run upon the meadow by that
+perished daughter of the sheep? Three infantine lives cut off simply
+for your sole gormandising! This is but a slight case. Set you down
+to a rook-pie, and you will engulf a dozen unfortunates before you
+bury your visage in the pewter. Pay for you at Blackwall, and the
+whitebait will disappear by the thousand. It is in vain that you
+attempt to shift the atrocity of your inordinate appetite from your
+own shoulders to those of the grazier, the butcher, the poulterer,
+or the fisherman. Cobden, or Joe Hume, or any other of the political
+economists belonging to the tribe who would starve the workman in
+order that they may guzzle themselves, will tell you that invariably
+the demand regulates the supply. You, therefore, are the responsible
+party: the young have fallen into your Scylla--the immature of
+days have been swept into the vortex of your Charybdis! Moreover,
+if you were a sportsman--which you are not--our minds would be
+grievously troubled for the future safety of the singing-birds.
+Welford, the friend of Bright, as we all remember, proposed a grand
+crusade throughout Britain against the feathered tribe; and you
+are not at all unlikely to join in a general St Bartholomew of the
+sparrows. Do you venture to retort upon us? Do you think we take
+life unnecessarily, or that we are base enough to use our weapons
+until the quarry has reached its prime? No calf or fawn ever fell
+by the hand of the genuine hunter--no cheeper or pout ever sullied
+the interior of the sportsman's bag. Not until the better part of
+his life has been run,--till his muscles are hard as iron, his slot
+deep, and his branches towering on the beam,--not until he has lived
+and loved, do we strike down, as if with lightning and painless
+death, the great hart in the middle of the wilderness. But to all
+innocent things--to the harmless indwellers of the forest and moor,
+the true hunter is a guardian and a friend. The strong man is ever
+brave, and none but the strong can pass to where the herds of the
+mountain dwell.
+
+One more scene at the Hut, and we shall illustrate this subject
+further.
+
+     "But though our bothie was far from resembling the Peri
+     Paribanon's cell, or the rock-palace where the old kaiser keeps
+     his court in the bowels of the Unterberg--we loved it, not
+     only for its bucks and stags, and all its greenwood cheer, but
+     for the love of nature by which it was surrounded. Beyond its
+     'vert and venison,' there was a world of life and interest for
+     those who had the eye to mark and the heart to read its book.
+     On every side we had companions; from the passenger which came
+     from Norway, to the little native guest--the robin which roosted
+     in the holly-bush above us. '_The_ robin?'--you smile and say.
+     Yes, there was but one. He lived in the bush, as we lived in
+     the bothie, and we were his neighbours too long not to be very
+     well acquainted. His species, as well as all the small tribes,
+     conformable to the minuteness of their range and habits, are
+     very local, and may be found all the year in, or near, the same
+     place; and those who feed them will rarely wait many minutes
+     for their appearance. There were many robins which lived about
+     the bothie, and all were continually in its vicinity, and very
+     tame; but none so gentle and grateful as our little neighbour
+     in the holly. They would, however, enter the hut, sit on the
+     bed or the table, and hop about the floor, and, when I went
+     out, follow me to the brae. They liked very much to see me turn
+     up the soil, which always provided them with a little feast;
+     accordingly, they were never absent at the planting of a shrub
+     or a flower; and when I brought home, in my shooting-bag, a
+     tuft of primroses, pyrolas, or lilies of the valley, they were
+     always in attendance to see them put into the bank. For watching
+     my occupation, they preferred something more elevated than the
+     ground, but not so high as the branches of the trees, which
+     were too far from the earth to give them a clear sight of what
+     I turned up; for their accommodation, therefore, I made little
+     crosses and crotchets, and, when I was planting, set them up
+     beside me, moving them as I proceeded from place to place.
+     Each was immediately occupied by an attentive observer; and,
+     whenever an insect or a worm was discovered, one of the nearest
+     darted down and caught it, even from between my fingers, and
+     disappeared for a few moments under the rock or behind the great
+     holly, to enjoy his success undisturbed. At his disappearance
+     his place was immediately occupied by another, but at the return
+     of the first it was amiably resigned by his successor. The
+     blue-bonnets were almost as numerous as the robins, but they
+     never arrived at the same intimacy and confidence. They never
+     entered the bothie in my presence, and even when I fed them
+     they would not approach as long as I remained outside the door;
+     but as soon as I went in they descended four or five together,
+     chattering and fluttering about the entrance, peeping in at
+     the little window, and stretching their necks as far as they
+     could, to see where I was, and if all was right. Then they would
+     begin their breakfast on what I had left for them, talking a
+     great deal about it, but occasionally ogling the door, in a
+     manner from which I concluded that there was but small esteem
+     or gratitude in their conversation.----Far different was the
+     friendship of our little neighbour in the holly. In the morning
+     he used to come down and perch on the arm of the bird-cherry,
+     which stretched over the precipice before the door, waiting
+     for its opening and the preparation of the breakfast, which he
+     always shared; and when we were seated he would venture over the
+     sill, and gather the crumbs about the table at our feet. Often
+     when the first blood-red streaks of the autumn morning shone
+     like lurid fire through the little window, we were awakened by
+     his sad and solitary whistle, as he sat on his usual branch,
+     his jet-black eye cast towards the door, impatient for our
+     appearance. Many of his little cousins there were in the wood,
+     with whom we were also well acquainted, and between us happened
+     many an incident, which increased our interest and familiarity.
+
+     "I remember a day, one of those deep still blue days so solemn
+     in the forest; the ground was covered with a foot of snow, and
+     all the trees were hanging like gigantic ostrich feathers; but
+     all the world was blue,--the sky was a sleeping mass of those
+     heavy indigo clouds which forebode a 'feeding storm,'--not a
+     tempest, but a fall of snow; for, in Scotland, snow is called
+     '_storm_,' however light and still it falls: thus, in tracking
+     the deer, we say he 'has brushed the _storm_ from the heather;'
+     and a '_feeding storm_' is when the clouds are continually
+     feeding the earth with its velvet pall.--The reflection of
+     those deep-blue clouds cast a delicate tint of the same colour
+     over the whitened world. I was standing with my back against a
+     huge pine--one of the old remnant of the great forest of Moray,
+     which had, no doubt, heard the bell toll for the first Stuart
+     earl.--I counted the rings in a smaller tree which once stood in
+     the same hollow;--I shunned its wreck as I would have avoided a
+     corpse which I could not bury, and always, when I passed near
+     it, averted my face; but one day running to cut off a buck, and
+     just heading him, I dropped on my knee to receive him as he
+     came out from a mass of junipers, and when reloading, I found
+     that I had knelt by the stump of my old friend.--I counted two
+     hundred and sixty-four rings in his wood!--how many earls had
+     he seen?--Well, I was leaning against his elder brother, as I
+     suppose by the size. I had been there for a long time, waiting
+     to hear the dogs bring back a buck from--I don't know now from
+     where.----As I had been through all the swamps, and stripes, and
+     wet hollows on that side of the forest, and waded through two
+     and three feet of snow-wreaths, my kilt and hose, and, as it
+     seemed, my flesh was saturated to the bones with 'snaw-bree,'
+     and I began to beat, first one foot, and then the other, to
+     quicken the blood, which was warm enough in my trunk.--I had
+     scarce commenced this exercise, when I heard a little 'tic!'
+     close to my ear, and the soft low voice of a bird--a sound,
+     neither a whistle nor a chirp, but which I knew very well before
+     I turned and saw the robin, who sat on a dry branch within a
+     yard of my cheek. I guessed what had brought him: he was very
+     cold, his ruffled back humped as round as a ball, and his tail
+     drooping almost perpendicular with his legs, as if it was a
+     little brown peg to lean on, like that on which the travelling
+     Tyrolean merchant rests his pack. He looked at me with his large
+     black eye, then, with a flirt of his tail and a bow with his
+     head, indicated that, if I had no objection, he should like to
+     descend to the place which I occupied; the object of which
+     he expressed, by turning his head sidelong, and directing one
+     eye into the black earth which my foot had beaten bare in the
+     snow. I immediately drew back a couple of feet, and he instantly
+     dropped into the spot of mould, peeped and picked under every
+     leaf and clod of earth, and, when there was nothing more, hopped
+     up on the guard of my rifle, on which I was leaning, and,
+     turning his head, looked at me with his upper eye.--I again
+     stepped forward, and recommenced my foot-exercise, during which
+     he returned to his branch, examining my progress with some
+     impatience. As soon as my foot was removed, he again dropped
+     into the hollow, and busily collected all the little grubs and
+     chrysales which, though too small for me to see as I stood, I
+     knew abounded beneath the sere leaves and thatch of moss and
+     sticks. In this manner I repeated his supply several times,
+     on one of which, when I was too long, or he too impatient, he
+     dropped from his perch, and hovered over the space in which my
+     foot was at work, and, as I continued, lighted on the point of
+     the other shoe, and remained there, peeping into the hollow,
+     until I withdrew my foot, and then descended to finish his
+     repast. When he was satisfied, he ruffed his feathers, looked
+     up sidelong to me, and, after a shake of satisfaction, resumed
+     his perch close to my head, and, after pruning and oiling his
+     feathers, mounted another branch higher, and opened his little
+     throat with that most sad, sweet, and intermitting warble which
+     gives such a melancholy charm to a still winter's day."
+
+Take a picture of the roe, and you will hardly doubt the humanity
+of our sportsmen. But why talk of it thus? No one, we hope,
+save a member of the Manchester manufacturing school could feel
+otherwise--certainly not a genuine hills-man; and we quote the
+passage simply for its extreme beauty and perfect fidelity to
+nature. No creature is more beautiful than the kid of the roe-deer,
+especially when seen in their rest, or moving through the ferns, on
+a summer evening, beside their gentle mother the doe.
+
+     "In the bedding season the does retire into the most secret
+     thickets, or other lonely places, to produce their young, and
+     cover them so carefully that they are very rarely found; we
+     have, however, deceived their vigilance. There was a solitary
+     doe which lived in the hollow below the Br�igh-cloiche-l�ithe
+     in Tarnaway. I suppose that we had killed her 'marrow;' but I
+     was careful not to disturb her haunt, for she was very fat and
+     round, stepped with much caution, and never went far to feed.
+     Accordingly, when at evening and morning she came out to pick
+     the sweet herbs at the foot of the brae, or by the little green
+     well in its face, I trode softly out of her sight, and if I
+     passed at noon, made a circuit from the black willows, or thick
+     junipers, where she reposed during the heat. At last, one fine
+     sunny morning I saw her come tripping out from her bower of
+     young birches as light as a fairy, and very gay and 'canty'--but
+     so thin, nobody but an old acquaintance could have known her.
+     For various mornings afterwards I saw her on the bank, but she
+     was always restless and anxious--listening and searching the
+     wind--trotting up and down--picking a leaf here and a leaf
+     there, and after her short and unsettled meal, she would take a
+     frisk round leap into the air--dart down into her secret bower,
+     and appear no more until the twilight. In a few days, however,
+     her excursions became a little more extended, generally to the
+     terrace above the bank, but never out of sight of the thicket
+     below. At length she ventured to a greater distance, and one day
+     I stole down the brae among the birches. In the middle of the
+     thicket there was a group of young trees growing out of a carpet
+     of deep moss, which yielded like a down pillow. The prints of
+     the doe's slender-forked feet were thickly tracked about the
+     hollow, and in the centre there was a bed of the velvet 'fog,'
+     which seemed a little higher than the rest, but so natural,
+     that it would not have been noticed by any unaccustomed eye. I
+     carefully lifted the green cushion, and under its veil, rolled
+     close together, the head of each resting on the flank of the
+     other, nestled two beautiful little kids, their large velvet
+     ears laid smooth on their dappled necks, their spotted sides
+     sleek and shining as satin, and their little delicate legs as
+     slender as hazel wands, shod with tiny glossy shoes as smooth
+     and black as ebony, while their large dark eyes looked at me out
+     of the corners with a full, mild, quiet gaze, which had not yet
+     learned to fear the hand of man: still they had a nameless doubt
+     which followed every motion of mine--their little limbs shrunk
+     from my touch, and their velvet fur rose and fell quickly; but
+     as I was about to replace the moss, one turned its head, lifted
+     its sleek ears towards me, and licked my hand as I laid their
+     soft mantle over them. I often saw them afterwards when they
+     grew strong, and came abroad upon the brae, and frequently
+     I called off old Dreadnought when he crossed their warm
+     track. Upon these occasions he would stand and look at me with
+     wonder--turn his head from side to side--snuff the ground again,
+     to see if it was possible that he could be mistaken--and when he
+     found that there was no disputing the scent, cock one ear at me
+     with a keener inquiry, and seeing that I was in earnest, trot
+     heavily onward with a sigh.
+
+     "The affection of the roe for their young is very strong; and
+     timid and feeble as they are by nature, inspired by the danger
+     of their offspring, they become brave and daring, and, in their
+     defence, will attack not only animals but men. We were one day
+     passing along the west walk of Eilean-Agais, and, beyond a turn
+     in the path, heard the sound of feet running towards us, and
+     immediately out shot a cat round the corner, and, close at her
+     heels, a doe pursuing her with great eagerness. Knowing that her
+     pursuer could not overtake her, and having no instinctive dread
+     of her kind, the cat did not give herself the trouble to run
+     faster than just sufficient to keep beyond her reach, while the
+     doe pursued her with an angry scrambling pace, and, whenever she
+     was near overtaking her, endeavoured to kneel on her back. This
+     is a mode of attack common to deer as well as cattle, which,
+     when they have overthrown their object, not only gore them with
+     their horns, but bruise and crush them with their knees. At our
+     appearance there was a pause; the cat cantered up the brae to
+     the top of a little rock, where she lay down in the sun to see
+     what would happen between us and her pursuer. The doe, after
+     a few bounds, turned round and looked indignantly at us, and
+     stamped and belled in great displeasure; this she continued for
+     some moments, glancing occasionally at the cat with a strong
+     desire to resume her chase; but being restrained by a sense of
+     prudence, she slowly ascended the hill, stopping at intervals to
+     stamp and bell at us, who knew very well that she had two kids
+     in the junipers upon the craig."
+
+Now let us up to the hill, where the mighty herds are feeding.
+Scotland will, in all probability, never see a tainchel more;
+indeed, save at a royal hunting, it were scarcely desirable now. The
+feudal system has melted away, the clans are broken and scattered,
+and we care not again to see a pageant which is indissolubly
+connected in our memories with national gallantry and misfortune.
+But the deer are still on the mountain and in the wood, and we shall
+seek them in their former haunt. Wood-stalking, though the Stuarts
+speak of it with considerable enthusiasm, was never much to our
+taste. It is true that the largest stags are generally to be met
+with in the wood, and we have followed the sport ere now in the
+Spessart, among the pines of Darmstadt, and the thickets of Strath
+Garve; but it must always partake more or less of the character
+of driving, and we never have felt, while engaged in it, that
+enthusiasm and keenness which sends the blood to the heart of the
+hunter when he first discovers a herd in the gorge of some solitary
+glen. Then he feels that he must put forth the whole resources of
+his art--that he must baffle the acutest of all instincts by the aid
+of human cunning--that he has a thousand difficulties to overcome
+before he can arrive within reach of his quarry, and that a single
+false step or miscalculation is sufficient to destroy the labour,
+the patience, and the vigilance of a day.
+
+Great, fat fallow-deer, waxing into obesity in a park, do not seem
+to mind the approach of a human being, even were he an alderman
+redolent of black-currant jelly. But the red-deer, as many incipient
+stalkers know to their cost, has a very different amount of
+perception. Unless you take the wind of him, he is off like a shot,
+though your distance may be upwards of a mile. In the words of the
+old stalker, "Above all things, let not the devil tempt you to
+trifle with a deer's nose: you may cross his sight, walk up to him
+in a gray coat, or, if standing against a tree or rock near your
+own colour, wait till he walks up to you; but you cannot cross his
+nose, even at an incredible distance, but he will feel the tainted
+air. Colours or forms may be deceptive or alike; there are gray,
+brown, and green rocks and stocks as well as men, and all these
+may be equivocal; but there is _but one scent of man_, and that he
+never doubts or mistakes; that is filled with danger and terror,
+and one whiff of its poison at a mile off, and, whether feeding or
+lying, his head is instantly up, his nose to the wind, and, in the
+next moment, his broad antlers turn, and he is away to the hill or
+the wood; and if there are no green peas, corn, or potatoes in the
+neighbourhood, he may not be seen on the same side of the forest
+for a month." A word to the wise, from the lips of a Celtic Solon!
+
+So much for your chance, if, in the plenitude of your full
+flavour, you take the hill, regardless of the currents of the air,
+which, moreover, are perpetually shifting. But there are other
+difficulties. Though not impossible, it is very ticklish work to get
+within shot of a deer by any other means save diligent creeping, and
+sometimes, when the ground is unusually flat and open, that method
+of approach is impracticable. Then there are divers enemies--that
+is, of yours, for in reality they are scouts to the deer--whom you
+must try particularly to avoid. This is not easy. Sometimes when
+you are sinuating like a serpent towards the especial stag of your
+heart, a blundering covey of grouse will start from the heather, and
+give an effectual alarm; sometimes the shrill whistle of the plover
+will change your anticipated triumph into mourning; and sometimes
+a charge of that disagreeable cavalry the mountain sheep, little
+less sagacious and wary than the deer themselves, will put the
+whole of the glen into disorder. But the worst enemies you have to
+guard against are the hinds, who are usually so disposed as to be
+out upon the feeding-grounds, and thus to mask the stag. In such a
+position, it becomes a point of honour to circumvent the lady, which
+is any thing but an easy task. The Stuarts give us an admirable
+recollection of such a scene in the forest of Glen-Fidich, which
+is so exciting that, though rather long, we make no apology for
+transferring it to the columns of Maga.
+
+     "After about an hour's stalking, we came upon the shoulder
+     of a long slope, which looks into the gorges of two or three
+     short glens, opening to a narrow plain, on which we saw a noble
+     sight--a herd of four or five hundred deer, among which were
+     many very fine stags. After having feasted my eyes with this
+     splendid sight--the illustrious cavalry of the hill, the crowned
+     and regal array of the wilderness--I began to calculate how to
+     make the approach, how to slip between the chain of vidette
+     hinds, and numerous picquets of small stags, which commanded
+     almost every knoll and hollow. In the centre of the main body,
+     with a large plump of hinds--which he herded within a wide
+     vacant circle--there was a mighty black hart, with a head like
+     a blasted pine, and a cluster of points in each crown. Though
+     each stag of the surrounding circle had not less than ten
+     points, there were none which approached his size, and they all
+     kept at a respectful distance, while he marched round and round
+     the central group of hinds. 'He will have them all in the ring
+     before long,' said MacLellan; 'yon's one of the old heroes of
+     the Monadh-liath; he has not been four-and-twenty hours in the
+     forest.' I looked with an eager and longing eye at his gigantic
+     stature, but there was no apparent possibility of approaching
+     even the outward circle of stags. The herd was scattered over
+     all the ground between the hills, and every little knoll and
+     eminence had its restless picquets, and plumps of discomfited
+     stags, which had been beaten by the great hart, and were chafing
+     about, driving off and broding the buttocks of all the inferior
+     stags which came in their way, then returning and staring
+     with jealous disgust at the mighty stranger, who gave them no
+     notice, except when one or two more audacious, or less severely
+     beaten, made a few steps before his companions; upon which he
+     immediately charged, drove them before him, and scattered the
+     nearest in every direction. Upon these occasions, some hind of
+     greater levity than the rest took the opportunity of extending
+     her pasture, or paying her compliments to her companions, for
+     which she immediately received a good prod in the haunch, and
+     was turned back again into the centre.
+
+     "'There is no doing any thing there,' said I.
+
+     "''Deed no', replied MacLellan, shutting up his glass, 'we be to
+     go down to the foot of the burn.'
+
+     "This was a stream which runs through the middle of the narrow
+     plain, and empties itself into the Fidich, about four miles
+     below, at the east end of the forest. Before resolving upon
+     this, however, we made an attempt to cross the little glen
+     to the north-west; but, after passing round one hill, and
+     nearly to the top of another, we fell in with a small herd
+     of insignificant stags, but none among them being worth the
+     disturbance of the great herd; and being unable to pass them
+     unobserved, we were obliged to adopt the last alternative, and
+     descend to the Fidich. In about an hour and a half we performed
+     this retrogration, and, having crossed at the forester's house,
+     ascended the burn till we again approached the deer, and
+     stealing from knoll to knoll, again came in sight of the herd.
+     The outskirts of its wide circle had been much broken and
+     deranged by the jousts and expulsions during our absence; and we
+     saw that it was impossible to get near the better stags without
+     taking the channel of the stream. We immediately descended
+     into the water, and crept up the middle, sometimes compelled
+     to crouch so low, that the pools reached our hips, and, as the
+     stones were round and slippery, it was very uneasy to proceed
+     without floundering and splashing. At length, however, we were
+     within the circle of the deer: there was not a breath of wind,
+     and the least sound was audible in the profound stillness.
+     We slipped through the water like eels, till we came to a
+     little rock, which, crossing the burn, made a shelving fall,
+     which there was no means of passing, but by drawing ourselves
+     up the shoot of the stream. With some difficulty I pushed my
+     rifle before me along the edge of the bank, and then, while
+     the water ran down our breasts, we glided up through the gush
+     of the stream, and reached the ledge above. The return of
+     the water, which I had obstructed, made, however, a rush and
+     plash different from its accustomed monotonous hum, and I had
+     scarce time to lay flat in the burn, when a _hind_ sprung up
+     within a few yards, and trotted briskly away, then another, and
+     another. I thought that all was over, and that, in the next
+     moment, we should hear all the clattering hoofs going over the
+     turf like a squadron of cavalry. All remained still, however,
+     and, in a few seconds, I saw the first hind wheel about, and
+     look back steadily towards the fall. I was rejoiced to observe
+     that she had not seen us, and had only been disturbed by the
+     unusual sound of the water. She continued, however, anxious and
+     suspicious--watched and listened--picked off the tops of the
+     heather--then walked on, with her ears laid back, and her neck
+     and step stilting away as stiff as if she had been hung up in
+     the larder for a week. This, however, was not the worst; all the
+     surrounding _hinds_ which noticed her gait gathered here and
+     there, and stood on the tops of the little knolls, like statues,
+     as straight as pucks, with nothing visible but their narrow
+     necks and two peg-legs, and their broad ears perked immovably
+     towards us, like long-eared bats. MacLellan gave me a rueful
+     look. 'Cha n'eil comas air.' 'Never mind,' said I, 'we shall
+     see who will be tired first.' The forester gave a glance of
+     satisfaction, slid up his glass on the dry bank, and we lay as
+     still as the stones around us, till the little trouts, which had
+     been disturbed by our convulsion, became so accustomed to our
+     shapes, that they again emerged from under the flat pebbles, and
+     returned to their station in the middle of the stream, skulling
+     their little tails between my legs with no more concern than if
+     I had been a forked tree. At length the immobility of the hinds
+     began to give way: first one ear turned back, then another,
+     then they became sensible of the flies, and began to flirt and
+     jerk as usual, and, finally, one applied her slender toe to
+     her ear, and another rubbed her velvet nose upon her knee;--it
+     was more than half an hour, however, before, one by one, they
+     began to steal away, perking and snuffing, and turning to gaze
+     at the least air that whiffed about them. At length they all
+     disappeared, except one gray, lean, haggard old grandmother
+     of hinds, who had no teeth, and limped with one leg, probably
+     from a wound which she received fifty or perhaps a hundred
+     years before I was born. Her vigilance, however, was only
+     sharpened by age; time, and the experience of many generations,
+     had made her acquainted with all the wiles and crafts of the
+     hill,--her eyes and ears were as active as a kid's, and I have
+     no doubt she could smell like Tobit's devil.--MacLellan looked
+     at her through his glass, and spit into the burn, and grinned
+     against the sun--as if he was lying in the bilboes instead of
+     cold water.--The old sorceress continued to watch us without
+     relaxation, and at last lay down on the brow of the knoll, and
+     employed her rumination in obstinate contemplation of the bank
+     under which we were ambushed. There was now no alternative but
+     to recommence our progress up the burn; and as I was determined
+     to circumvent the hind, I prepared for every inconvenience
+     which could be inflicted by the opposite vexations of a sharp,
+     rough, slippery, and gravelly stream. Fortunately, at the place
+     where we then were, it was so narrow, that we could hold by the
+     heather on both sides, and thus drag ourselves forward through
+     the water, between each of which advances I pushed my rifle on
+     before me. In this manner we reached the turn of the brook,
+     where I concluded that we should be round the shoulder of the
+     knoll, and out of sight of the hind, who lay upon its east brow.
+     This was effected so successfully, that, when we looked behind,
+     we only saw her back, and her head and ears still pointing at
+     the spot which we had left. One hundred yards more would bring
+     us within sight of the great hart; the general position of the
+     herd had not changed, and I hoped to find him near the central
+     knoll of the flat, at the base of which the burn circled. We
+     were almost surrounded by deer; but the greater number were
+     small vigilant hinds, the abomination and curse of a stalker.
+     At length, however, we reached the knoll, and rested, to take
+     breath, at its foot; I examined my rifle, to see that the lock
+     was clean and dry. We took a view of all around us, and, drawing
+     ourselves cautiously out of the burn, slid up through the
+     heather on the south side of the eminence.--Scarce, however, had
+     our legs cleared the stream, when we discovered a pair of ears
+     not above fifteen yards from the other side.--'_Mo mhallachd
+     ort!_' [My curse upon you]--whispered MacLellan. She had not
+     discovered us, however, and we glided round the base of the
+     knoll--but on the other side lay three hinds and a calf, and I
+     could see no trace of the great hart.--On the edge of the burn,
+     however, further up, there were five very good stags, and a
+     herd of about thirty deer, on the slope of the north brae. All
+     round us the ground was covered with hinds; for the prevalence
+     of the westerly wind, during the last few days, had drawn the
+     deer to that end of the forest. Upon the spot where I lay,
+     though I could only see a portion of the field, I counted four
+     hundred and seventy; and it was evident that no movement could
+     be made upon that side. We tried again the opposite slope of the
+     knoll;--the hind which we had first seen was still in the same
+     place, but she had laid down her head, and showed only the gray
+     line of her back over the heather. We drew ourselves cautiously
+     up the slope and looked over the summit. On the other side
+     there was a small flat moss, about seventy yards in breadth;
+     then another hillock; and to the left two more, with little
+     levels, and wet grassy hollows between them. Upon the side of
+     the first knoll there were two young stags and some hinds; but
+     the points of some good horns showed above the crest.--The
+     intervening ground was spotted with straggling hinds, and we
+     might lay where we were till to-morrow morning, without a chance
+     of getting near any of the good deer. While we deliberated,
+     MacLellan thought that, by crawling with extreme caution up a
+     wet hollow to the left, we might have a chance to approach the
+     stags whose horns we had seen behind the other knoll, and, as
+     nothing better could be done, we decided upon this attempt. The
+     sun was going down from the old towers of Auchand�n, and we had
+     no more time than would give light for this venture.--We slid
+     away towards the hollow, and, drawing ourselves, inch by inch,
+     though the heather and tall thin grass, had reached the middle
+     of the level between the hillocks, when we heard a stamp and
+     a short grunt close beside us--I had scarce time to turn my
+     head, and catch a glimpse of a base little gray hind who, in
+     crossing the hollow, had stumbled upon us.--It was but a moment:
+     a rapid wheel and rush through the long grass, and I heard the
+     career of a hundred feet going through the hollow. I sprung on
+     my knee, and skaled a dozen small stags and hinds which came
+     upon us full speed; for those behind, not knowing from whence
+     came the alarm, made straight for the hill. The herd were now
+     gathering in all directions; charging--flying--re-uniting,
+     dispersing, and reassembling in utter disorder, like a rout of
+     cavalry.--I made a run for the middle knoll,--two stags, with
+     pretty good heads, met me right in the face.--I did not stop
+     to look at them, but rushed up the brae.--What a sight was
+     seen from its top!--upwards of six hundred deer were charging
+     past--before, behind, around, in all directions.--The stately
+     figure which I sought--the mighty black hart, was slowly
+     ascending an eminence about three hundred yards off, from whence
+     he reconnoitred the ground below; while the disarray of stags
+     and hinds gathered round him, like rallying masses of hussars
+     in the rear of a supporting column. I was so intent upon the
+     king of the forest, that I saw nothing else.--No other heads,
+     forms, numbers, took any place in my senses; all my faculties
+     were on the summit of that height.--At this moment I felt my
+     kilt drawn gently; I took no notice--but a more decided pull
+     made me look round:--MacLellan motioned up the slope, and I
+     saw the points of a good head passing behind a little ridge,
+     about eighty yards away. I looked back at the hart--he was just
+     moving to the hill. What would I have given to have diminished
+     a hundred and fifty yards of the distance which divided us! He
+     passed slowly down the back of the eminence and disappeared, and
+     the gathering herd streamed after him. '_O Ch�al! A Ch�al!_'
+     exclaimed the forester--'_bithidh � air f�lbh!_' The stag whose
+     horns I had seen had come out from behind the ridge, and stood
+     with his broad side towards me, gazing at the herd; but as they
+     moved away, he now began to follow. The disappearance of the
+     great hart, and the disappointment of MacLellan, recalled me to
+     the last chance. I followed the retreating stag with my rifle,
+     passed it before his shoulder, whiz went the two-ounce ball, and
+     he rolled over headlong in the heath, on the other side of the
+     knoll, which the next stretch would have placed between us. I
+     looked to the hill above: the whole herd was streaming up the
+     long green hollow in its west shoulder headed 'by the mighty
+     of the desert.' They rounded and passed the brow, and sloped
+     upward on the other side, till the forest of heads appeared
+     bristling along the sky-line of the summit. In a few moments
+     afterwards, as the sun was going down upon Sc�r-na-Lapaich, and
+     the far western hills of Loch Duaich, the terrible wide-forked
+     tree came out in the clear eastern sky on the top of the hill,
+     and, crowding after, at least two hundred heads--crossing, and
+     charging, and mingling--their polished points flashing in the
+     parting sunbeams, and from many a horn, the long steamers of the
+     moss fluttering and flying like the pennons and bannerolles of
+     lances. The herd continued to file along the ridge of the hill,
+     and wheeling below the crest, countermarched along the sky-line,
+     till their heads and horns slowly decreased against the light."
+
+With such a book as this before us, we could go on alternately
+commenting and extracting until we had broken the back of the
+Number. Even now we are dying to pilfer the account of the late
+Glengarry's course with "Black Dulochan," and the no less exciting
+history of the three day's ruse with a roebuck. But abstinence is a
+virtue which is forced upon us in the present instance, rather from
+the lack of space than from any exercise of voluntary discretion;
+and we shall now leave the deer without further molestation for
+a season, hoping soon to encounter them in person with our rifle
+somewhere about the skirts of Cairn-Gorm.
+
+This is, we have no hesitation in saying, the best work on
+deer-stalking which has yet been written; and the amount of
+information which it contains regarding the habits of the stag and
+roe, combined with the vivid pictures of which we have made such
+ample use, cannot fail to render it popular. In an antiquarian point
+of view, it is also highly interesting; for it embodies a large
+amount of traditionary lore, sketches of the clans, and fragments of
+Highland song, of much superior merit to those which have hitherto
+come into our hands. The disquisitions, too, upon the disappearance
+of some animals once indigenous to Scotland--such as the wolf,
+the elk, the wild bull, and the beaver--exhibit a great amount of
+research, and supply a gap which has long been wanted in the page of
+natural history.
+
+One word to the authors--though we fear our words must travel a long
+way before they can reach them in a foreign land. Why should they
+not recast and add to their second volume, so as to make it a single
+and unrivalled work upon the noblest sports of the Highlands? If
+it has proved so fascinating, as in truth we have felt it, in the
+more cumbrous shape of notes, how much better would it be if issued,
+not as an appendage to the poems, but in a distinct and articulate
+form? Perpend upon this, John Sobieski and Charles Edward, at
+your leisure; and let us add, that we trust some of your more
+gloomy anticipations may fall short of reality; that the walks of
+Eilean-Agais, that little Eden of the north, may again be gladdened
+by your presence; and that the sound of your hunting-horns may once
+more be heard in the woods of Tarnaway, and on the hills near the
+sources of the Findhorn.
+
+
+
+
+THE BURIED FLOWER.
+
+
+    In the silence of my chamber,
+      When the night is still and deep,
+    And the drowsy heave of ocean
+      Mutters in its charm�d sleep,
+
+    Oft I hear the angel voices
+      That have thrill'd me long ago,--
+    Voices of my lost companions,
+      Lying deep beneath the snow.
+
+    O, the garden I remember,
+      In the gay and sunny spring,
+    When our laughter made the thickets
+      And the arching alleys ring!
+
+    O the merry burst of gladness!
+      O the soft and tender tone!
+    O the whisper never utter'd
+      Save to one fond ear alone!
+
+    O the light of life that sparkled
+      In those bright and bounteous eyes!
+    O the blush of happy beauty,
+      Tell-tale of the heart's surprise!
+
+    O the radiant light that girdled
+      Field and forest, land and sea,
+    When we all were young together,
+      And the earth was new to me!
+
+    Where are now the flowers we tended?
+      Wither'd, broken, branch and stem;
+    Where are now the hopes we cherish'd?
+      Scatter'd to the winds with them.
+
+    For ye, too, were flowers, ye dear ones!
+      Nursed in hope and rear'd in love,
+    Looking fondly ever upward
+      To the clear blue heaven above:
+
+    Smiling on the sun that cheer'd us,
+      Rising lightly from the rain,
+    Never folding up your freshness
+      Save to give it forth again:
+
+    Never shaken, save by accents
+      From a tongue that was not free,
+    As the modest blossom trembles
+      At the wooing of the bee.
+
+    O! 'tis sad to lie and reckon
+      All the days of faded youth,
+    All the vows that we believed in,
+      All the words we spoke in truth.
+
+    Sever'd--were it sever'd only
+      By an idle thought of strife,
+    Such as time might knit together;
+      Not the broken chord of life!
+
+    O my heart! that once so truly
+      Kept another's time and tune,
+    Heart, that kindled in the spring-tide,
+      Look around thee in the noon.
+
+    Where are they who gave the impulse
+      To thy earliest thought and flow?
+    Look around the ruin'd garden--
+      All are wither'd, dropp'd, or low!
+
+    Seek the birth-place of the lily,
+      Dearer to the boyish dream
+    Than the golden cups of Eden,
+      Floating on its slumbrous stream;
+
+    Never more shalt thou behold her--
+      She, the noblest, fairest, best:
+    She that rose in fullest beauty,
+      Like a queen, above the rest.
+
+    Only still I keep her image
+      As a thought that cannot die,
+    He who raised the shade of Helen
+      Had no greater power than I.
+
+    O! I fling my spirit backward,
+      And I pass o'er years of pain;
+    All I loved is rising round me,
+      All the lost returns again.
+
+    Blow, for ever blow, ye breezes,
+      Warmly as ye did before!
+    Bloom again, ye happy gardens,
+      With the radiant tints of yore!
+
+    Warble out in spray and thicket,
+      All ye choristers unseen,
+    Let the leafy woodland echo
+      With an anthem to its queen!
+
+    Lo! she cometh in her beauty,
+      Stately with a Juno grace,
+    Raven locks, Madonna-braided
+      O'er her sweet and blushing face:
+
+    Eyes of deepest violet, beaming
+      With the love that knows not shame,--
+    Lips, that thrill my inmost being
+      With the utterance of a name.
+
+    And I bend the knee before her,
+      As a captive ought to bow,--
+    Pray thee, listen to my pleading,
+      Sovereign of my soul art thou!
+
+    O my dear and gentle lady,
+      Let me show thee all my pain,
+    Ere the words that late were prison'd
+      Sink into my heart again.
+
+    Love, they say, is very fearful
+      Ere its curtain be withdrawn,
+    Trembling at the thought of error
+      As the shadows scare the fawn.
+
+    Love hath bound me to thee, lady,
+      Since the well-remember'd day
+    When I first beheld thee coming
+      In the light of lustrous May.
+
+    Not a word I dared to utter--
+      More than he who, long ago,
+    Saw the heavenly shapes descending
+      Over Ida's slopes of snow:
+
+    When a low and solemn music
+      Floated through the listening grove,
+    And the throstle's song was silenced,
+      And the doling of the dove:
+
+    When immortal beauty open'd
+      All its grace to mortal sight,
+    And the awe of worship blended
+      With the throbbing of delight.
+
+    As the shepherd stood before them
+      Trembling in the Phrygian dell,
+    Even so my soul and being
+      Own'd the magic of the spell;
+
+    And I watch'd thee, ever fondly,
+      Watch'd thee, dearest, from afar,
+    With the mute and humble homage
+      Of the Indian to a star.
+
+    Thou wert still the Lady Flora
+      In her morning garb of bloom;
+    Where thou wert was light and glory,
+      Where thou wert not, dearth and gloom.
+
+    So for many a day I follow'd
+      For a long and weary while,
+    Ere my heart rose up to bless thee
+      For the yielding of a smile,--
+
+    Ere thy words were few and broken
+      As they answer'd back to mine,
+    Ere my lips had power to thank thee
+      For the gift vouchsafed by thine.
+
+    Then a mighty gush of passion
+      Through my inmost being ran;
+    Then my older life was ended,
+      And a dearer course began.
+
+    Dearer!--O, I cannot tell thee
+      What a load was swept away,
+    What a world of doubt and darkness
+      Faded in the dawning day!
+
+    All my error, all my weakness,
+      All my vain delusions fled:
+    Hope again revived, and gladness
+      Waved its wings above my head.
+
+    Like the wanderer of the desert,
+      When, across the dreary sand,
+    Breathes the perfume from the thickets
+      Bordering on the promised land;
+
+    When afar he sees the palm-trees
+      Cresting o'er the lonely well,
+    When he hears the pleasant tinkle
+      Of the distant camel's bell:
+
+    So a fresh and glad emotion
+      Rose within my swelling breast,
+    And I hurried swiftly onwards
+      To the haven of my rest.
+
+    Thou wert there with word and welcome,
+      With thy smile so purely sweet;
+    And I laid my heart before thee,
+      Laid it, darling, at thy feet!--
+
+    O ye words that sound so hollow
+      As I now recall your tone!
+    What are ye but empty echoes
+      Of a passion crush'd and gone?
+
+    Wherefore should I seek to kindle
+      Light, when all around is gloom?
+    Wherefore should I raise a phantom
+      O'er the dark and silent tomb?
+
+    Early wert thou taken, Mary!
+      In thy fair and glorious prime,
+    Ere the bees had ceased to murmur
+      Through the umbrage of the lime.
+
+    Buds were blowing, waters flowing,
+      Birds were singing on the tree,
+    Every thing was bright and glowing,
+      When the angels came for thee.
+
+    Death had laid aside his terror,
+      And he found thee calm and mild,
+    Lying in thy robes of whiteness,
+      Like a pure and stainless child.
+
+    Hardly had the mountain violet
+      Spread its blossoms on the sod,
+    Ere they laid the turf above thee,
+      And thy spirit rose to God.
+
+    Early wert thou taken, Mary!
+      And I know 'tis vain to weep--
+    Tears of mine can never wake thee
+      From thy sad and silent sleep.
+
+    O away! my thoughts are earthward!
+      Not asleep, my love! art thou,
+    Dwelling in the land of glory
+      With the saints and angels now.
+
+    Brighter, fairer far than living,
+      With no trace of woe or pain,
+    Robed in everlasting beauty,
+      Shall I see thee once again,
+
+    By the light that never fadeth,
+      Underneath eternal skies,
+    When the dawn of resurrection
+      Breaks o'er deathless Paradise.
+
+    W. E. A.
+
+
+
+
+HUZZA FOR THE RULE OF THE WHIGS!
+
+AIR--"_Old Rosin the Beau._"
+
+
+    All ye who are true to the altar and throne,
+      Come join in this ditty with me;
+    And you who don't like it may let it alone,
+      Or listen a little and see.
+    How quietly now we may sleep in our beds,
+      And waken as merry as grigs;
+    Though fears of rebellion hang over our heads,
+      We're safe while we're ruled by the Whigs.
+
+    In the 'nineties we saw (I remember the day)
+      Revolution disguised as Reform;
+    But the country was saved in a different way,
+      By the Pilot that weather'd the storm.
+    Our vessel was steer'd by the bravest and best,
+      And, except a few quality sprigs,
+    The whole English nation had thought it a jest
+      To propose being ruled by the Whigs.
+
+    But as matters now stand in this ill-fated realm,
+      When old comrades will give us the slip,
+    We are strangely compell'd to put men at the helm.
+      To prevent them from scuttling the ship.
+    Only think, for a moment, if Russell were out,
+      How wild he'd be running his rigs!
+    About popular rights he would make such a rout--
+      'Tis lucky we're ruled by the Whigs.
+
+    The Church--can you doubt what her danger would be
+      Were Tories at present in power?
+    Lord John, or his friends, we should certainly see
+      Attacking her posts every hour.
+    But as long as the Bishops may help out his lease,
+      He won't injure a hair of their wigs;
+    Nay, he even proposes the list to increase--
+      So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!
+
+    If Grey were at large, how he'd lay down the law
+      On the cures he for Ireland had found;
+    And swear that he never would rest till he saw
+      Her Establishment razed to the ground.
+    But Grey, while in office, sits muffled and mum,
+      Like a small bird asleep in the twigs;
+    And Ward, in the Commons, is equally dumb--
+      So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!
+
+    If any of us had made war on Repeal
+      With the weapons that Clarendon tries,
+    What shrieks of indignant invective from Shiel
+      At the wrongs of Old Erin would rise.
+    By millions of noisy Milesians back'd,
+      From the peer to the peasant that digs--
+    How would Monaghan murmur that juries were pack'd!--
+      So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!
+
+    On Aliens or Chartists to hear them declaim,
+      You'd think Castlereagh come from the dead.
+    Though the mixture of metaphors isn't the same,
+      And the courage and coolness are fled.
+    But the Whigs are becoming respectable men
+      As any that ever kept gigs,
+    They are practising _now_ all they preach'd against _then_--
+      So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!
+
+    Go on, my good lads--never think of retreat,
+      Though annoy'd by a squib or a squirt;
+    You're fulfilling the fate such impostors should meet,
+      And eating your bushel of dirt
+    Then swallow it fast, for your hour may not last--
+      We shall soon, if it pleases the pigs,
+    Give your places to men of a different cast,
+      And get rid of the rule of the Whigs!
+
+
+
+
+THE NAVIGATION LAWS.
+
+
+"When the Act of Navigation," says Adam Smith, "was made, though
+England and Holland were not actually at war, the most violent
+animosity subsisted between the two nations. It is not impossible,
+therefore, that some of the regulations of this famous act may have
+proceeded from national animosity. They _are as wise, however, as if
+they had all been dictated by the most deliberate wisdom_. National
+animosity, at that particular time, aimed at the very object which
+the most deliberate wisdom would have recommended,--the diminution
+of the naval power of Holland, the only naval power which could
+endanger the security of England. The Act of Navigation is not
+favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence
+which can arise from it. As defence, however, is of much more value
+than opulence, the Act of Navigation is perhaps the wisest of all
+the commercial regulations of England."[8] Before these pages issue
+from the press, this, undoubtedly the wisest of all the commercial
+regulations of Great Britain, and under which the maritime strength
+and colonial empire of England have risen to a pitch of grandeur
+unknown in any other age or country, will be numbered among the
+things which have been. The House of Commons, by a majority, have
+voted for the repeal of the Navigation Laws.
+
+  [8] _Wealth of Nations_, iv. c. 2.
+
+Free trade will soon have done its work, so far, at least, as the
+House of Commons is concerned. It is gradually but unceasingly
+advancing, and swallowing up successively all the great interests of
+the empire, save that of the capitalists, as it moves forward. The
+agricultural interests will find themselves deprived, in February
+next, of all protection; and the British cultivator exposed to
+the competition, without any shield save a nominal duty of 1s. a
+quarter, of states where wheat can be raised, with a fair profit
+in average years, at 18s. a quarter, and brought to this country
+for 10s. at the very utmost of freight. As soon as we have two fine
+harvests in succession, it will be seen to what state this system
+will reduce British rural production. The West India interests have
+been next assailed; and our colonies, upon whom free labour has
+been forced, upon a compensation being given to the proprietors on
+an average of a fourth of the value of their slaves, are speedily
+to be exposed, with no protection but a differential duty of 5s.
+6d. a hundredweight, diminishing 1s. 6d. a-year, till, in 1854, it
+disappears, to the competition of slave colonies, where sugar can be
+raised for �4 a ton, while in the British colonies the measures of
+government have precluded its being raised for less than �10 a ton.
+As a natural consequence, cultivation is about to cease in those
+noble settlements; the forest and the jungle will speedily supplant
+the smiling plantations, and �100,000,000 worth of British property
+will be lost beyond redemption.
+
+Domestic manufactures were at the same time assailed, though with a
+more gentle hand than rude produce. Protective duties on them were
+lowered, though not entirely removed; and the consequence is, that
+at this time there are 8000 hands wholly unemployed at Manchester,
+and above 10,000 at Glasgow, and distress to an unparalleled extent
+pervades the whole commercial and manufacturing classes. Nothing
+daunted by these calamitous results, so exactly what the opponents
+of free trade predicted would ensue, so diametrically the reverse
+of the unbounded prosperity which they promised the nation as the
+consequence of their changes, the Free-traders, in pursuance of
+their usual system of preferring their own opinions to the evidence
+of facts, are preparing to apply the same system to the commercial
+navy of the country, and, by the repeal of the Navigation Laws,
+against the opinion of Adam Smith, to depress our shipping interest
+as much as they encourage that of foreign states, and endanger our
+national existence, by crippling our own means of defence as much
+as they augment the means of attack in the hands of our enemies. Not
+content with rendering us dependent for a large part of our bread
+on foreign nations, they are determined on measures calculated to
+deprive us of the means of maintaining our naval superiority, or
+upholding the national independence. They are set upon saying the
+nation a few millions a-year in freight, though the consequence is,
+that we shall be alike unable to withstand a pacific blockade or
+hostile aggression.
+
+Many estimable and thoughtful persons in the country, struck with
+astonishment at the adoption and determined adherence to such a
+suicidal policy--alike by our rulers and a powerful party in the
+country--in the face of the decisive evidence afforded by facts, and
+the universal distress of the nation, as to its ruinous tendency,
+have come to the opinion, that we have been struck with a judicial
+blindness, and that Providence, as a just punishment for our sins,
+and for the furtherance of its mysterious designs in the general
+government of mankind, has rendered our own infatuation the means
+of working out our destruction. They think it affords a marvellous
+proof of the weakness of the human mind, and the impotence of man
+against the arm of his Creator, that this vast empire, which has
+done such mighty things in the annals of history, and which has
+stood proof against the hostility of the combined world, directed
+by consummate ability, when its rule was that of justice, should
+thus crumble away and perish, not from external violence or foreign
+aggression, but solely from domestic infatuation, when that rule has
+passed away. And observing that this country has already suffered
+greater losses, and been more severely crippled in its resources
+by the effects of three years of free trade and fettered currency
+policy, than by the whole efforts of France during a war of twenty
+years--and still the same course is blindly persevered in--they draw
+the conclusion that the evil is irremediable by human means, and
+that the nation, if not absolutely shipwrecked, will approach as
+near the verge of ruin as the providence of God will permit human
+infatuation to effect.
+
+Without denying that there is much truth in these observations, and
+humbly acknowledging a Divine superintendence alike in the rise and
+the decline, the prosperity and decay, of nations, it yet appears
+more reasonable to trace the extraordinary obstinacy of the ruling
+party in the nation to the causes which, humanly speaking, seem to
+have been mainly instrumental in producing it. The fanaticism of the
+political economists, who, like all other fanatics, are inaccessible
+to reason or experience, is, without doubt, a main cause of the
+disastrous policy to which the nation seems now irrevocably pledged.
+But a still more powerful agent in producing the determined
+adherence to this system, in the face of the most conclusive
+evidence of its pernicious tendency, is to be found in the _class_
+government which it is now apparent the Reform Bill has imposed upon
+the nation. It is now unhappily proved that the _trading_ interest,
+in whom a decisive majority both in the constituency and the number
+of seats in parliament has been vested by the Reform Bill, are
+alive, like all other classes, mainly to the suggestions of their
+own advantage; and that advantage they think is, to buy cheap and
+sell dear. Whatever we were in the days when Napoleon said it, we
+are now, if not a nation of shopkeepers, at least a nation _ruled
+by shopkeepers_. The colonies are entirely unrepresented. Schedules
+A and B, sixteen years ago, cut off all their representatives. The
+landed interest is in a minority, from two-thirds of the seats in
+the Commons being for boroughs; and those boroughs, owing to the
+depression of the producing classes by the currency laws, and the
+vast increase of the trading interests from the same cause, being
+for the most part under the direction of the commercial part of
+the community. It is in these circumstances that we are to look
+for the real causes of the adoption of free-trade principles of
+late years by our statesmen, and the determined adherence to it,
+in spite of all experience, by a majority of the House of Commons.
+Such conduct is the inevitable result of every _uniform_ system
+of representation, because that lands the government in the class
+government of the majority, composed of a particular interest. The
+evil was not felt under the old constitution, because it was _not_
+a class government, being based on a multifarious, not a uniform
+representation. Its _defects_, as they are now called, _i. e._ its
+nomination boroughs, combined with the extension of our colonial
+and shipping interests, had let in a most efficient representation
+of _all_ the interests in the empire, as well as that of the
+inhabitants of those islands, into the House of Commons. It is to
+this cause that the protection of _all_ interests by the old House
+of Commons is to be ascribed. Doubtless, under the old system the
+Corn Laws would have been upheld; but the West Indies would have
+been saved from ruin, domestic industry rescued from bankruptcy and
+the Navigation Laws, the palladium of our national independence,
+preserved from destruction.
+
+That the Navigation Laws have been a great advantage to our
+shipowners and seafaring interests is self-evident. They afforded
+superior advantages in conducting the trade of the empire to
+British over foreign shipowners; and they nursed up, accordingly,
+the immense and hardy body of British seamen, who have founded and
+protected our colonial empire, and rendered Great Britain the terror
+and admiration of the world. What, then, is the great benefit which
+is anticipated from the repeal of laws, the practical operation of
+which has been attended with such uniform and unparalleled benefits?
+The benefit is, that it will save our merchants some millions a-year
+in the payment of freights. It is calculated by the Free-traders
+that �30,000,000 yearly is paid by Great Britain for freights; and
+of this sum, it is thought a fourth, or �7,500,000 yearly, may be
+saved by the employment of foreign instead of British sailors in the
+conducting of our commerce, or the reduction of freight and seamen's
+wages in these islands, which will result from their unrestrained
+competition. This is the benefit to attain which our Navigation
+Laws, the nursery of our seamen, are to be sacrificed. And the
+question to be considered is,--Is the gain real, or apparent only;
+and, supposing it is real, is it worth the risk with which it is
+attended?
+
+Is the advantage real, or apparent only? Concede to the Free-traders
+all they contend for: call the saving to the nation annually in
+freights, to be effected by free trade in shipping, not �7,500,000
+but �10,000,000 annually. The strength of the argument will admit
+of almost any concession. Admit this, and consider what it is
+worth, and on whom it is made. It is not worth a _fiftieth part_
+of the revenue of the nation, which, in the produce of land and
+manufactures alone, is above �500,000,000 annually. A week of
+sunshine in autumn, a favourable set of Fall orders from America,
+the stoppage of a revolution in Europe, are each worth more to the
+nation. But, such as it is, from whom is it gained? Why, it is all
+_gained from our own people_: it is a saving effected to _one class
+of our inhabitants by impoverishing another class_. If our merchants
+and the purchasers from them pay �20,000,000 a-year for freight of
+goods sea-borne, instead of �30,000,000 as formerly, undoubtedly
+there is a saying of �10,000,000 _to them_, or the consumers who buy
+from them. But of whom is this saving made? From whom is it derived?
+Is it not from our shipbuilders, shipowners, and seamen, who get
+so much the less: either by being driven out of the market by
+foreign mercantile navies, or by getting their own profits or wages
+reduced by external competition to that amount? Ten millions now
+earned by shipowners and sailors in Great Britain, is, on the most
+favourable supposition for the Free-traders, _taken from them_, and
+given to the dealers in or consumers of the commodities which they
+transport. Is the nation, as a whole, any gainer by that transfer?
+If ten pounds are taken from John and given to James, are John and
+James, taken together, any gainers by the transfer? And is not the
+great family of the nation composed of all its members, not of John
+only, but of John and James taken together? Is not the repeal of the
+Navigation Laws, in this view robbing Peter to pay Paul? This is
+the mighty advantage, for the attainment of which we are going to
+crush by external competition our mercantile shipping; and endanger
+the national independence, by withering the nursery of the navy, by
+which it can alone be maintained! Can there be a stronger proof of
+how completely, by the operation of the Reform Bill, we have fallen
+under the influence of class government; and how entirely such
+class government blinds the vision even of the most clear-sighted,
+to any thing but the perception of its own immediate interests?
+
+The evidence taken before the Commons' committee, on the comparative
+cost of building and navigating ships in the north of Europe
+and in this country, comes to this, that both are about _twice_
+as expensive in this country as on the shores of the Baltic. A
+copper-sheathed vessel, which there costs �4500, cannot here be
+constructed for less than �9000: a master's wages there, which are
+�2, 11s. a month, are here �5 for the same period: seamen's, there
+7d. a day, besides provisions, &c., are here 1s. 2d. Every thing
+else is in the same proportion. Shipbuilding and ship-navigating are
+twice as costly in Great Britain as they are in Norway and Denmark.
+How could it be otherwise, when they have the materials of ships
+and rigging at their doors, while we have to transport them to the
+British shores from Canada or the Baltic; and they are the poor
+nations, whose money being scarce goes far, and we are the rich one,
+whose money being comparatively plentiful goes but a little way.
+Compare the cost of living in London during the season, with what
+it is in Aberdeen or Inverness, and you will at once see the main
+cause of the extraordinary difference in the value of money, and
+consequently in the money-price of articles, in the two situations.
+The difference in the cost of shipbuilding and seamanship, viz. one
+half, is nearly the same as the difference in the cost of raising
+sugar in our free-labour colonies and the foreign slave ones,
+which is �10 a ton in the former situation, and �4 in the latter.
+And it is in the perfect knowledge of the entire ruin which the
+approach even to a free trade in sugar has brought, under these
+circumstances, upon the British West India islands, that government
+are prepared to force a similar disastrous competition upon the
+British shipowners, and through them on the palladium of British
+independence, the royal navy.
+
+Mr Labouchere said, in the debate on this subject in the House
+of Commons, that the Protection Party seemed to consider every
+importation as in itself an evil, inasmuch as it displaced a
+corresponding amount of native industry; but that till he found that
+goods were brought by merchants into the country for nothing, he
+never could see how importation did not encourage domestic industry
+as much as home orders. This is manfully spoken: it comes home to
+the kernel of the question. It is pleasing to have to contend with
+such an antagonist. We will answer him equally briefly, and, as it
+seems to us, decisively. The difference between home orders and
+foreign orders is this, that the one encourages industry at _both
+ends_, viz., in the consumers and the producers; the other, at _one
+end only_, viz., in the consumer. This difference, however, may
+become vital to the national fortunes. If a London merchant pays
+�20,000 a-year to British shipowners and seamen, he keeps in motion
+at once the industry of the consumers, by whose produce the freights
+are ultimately paid, and the industry of the seafaring classes by
+whom they are earned. But if he pays the �20,000 a-year not to
+British but foreign shipowners, the only industry put in motion, so
+far as we are concerned, is that which raises the produce which is
+to pay the freight. The other end of the chain is placed in Norway
+or America, and any encouragement to industry there afforded is
+wholly lost to England. It is just the difference between rents
+spent in Great Britain, and rents spent in Paris or Naples.
+
+Doubtless they are the same thing, so far as the whole world is
+concerned; but are they the same thing so far as that portion of
+the world in which we are interested, viz., the British Islands,
+is concerned? Unquestionably they are not. What the Protectionists
+say is, not that no British industry is encouraged when importation
+takes place: they know perfectly it is encouraged at _their end_ of
+the line; what they say is, that it is not encouraged at the _other
+end_, because that other end rests in foreign states; and that it is
+unwise to encourage industry at _one end_ only, when it is possible
+to do so at _both_. Adam Smith saw this perfectly when he so well
+explained the difference between the home trade and foreign trade,
+and said the former was "worth all foreign trade put together." But
+his observations on this head are as much forgotten by the majority
+of our legislators as those he made on the great wisdom of our
+Navigation Laws, as the only security for our national independence.
+
+Mr M'Gregor said in debate on the same subject, that "he admitted
+our naval strength had co-existed with the Navigation Laws, but he
+denied that they were cause and effect. They had about as much to do
+with each other as the height of the Pyramids had with the floods
+of the Nile."[9] We agree with the honourable member for Glasgow in
+one part of this observation. The Navigation Laws have had as much
+to do with our maritime prosperity as the Pyramids had with the
+floods of the Nile; and we will tell the ex-secretary of the board
+of trade what the relation was--it was that of cause and effect.
+Mr M'Gregor is too well informed not to know that there exists in
+Cairo a _Nilometer_, and that, during the period of the inundation,
+the spirits of the people and the animation of commerce rise and
+fall with the rise or fall of the prolific stream. It is no wonder
+they do so, for it is the source of life and prosperity to the whole
+community. Raised by the power of the Pharaohs from the riches
+produced by the inundations of former times, the Pyramids are the
+Nilometer of antiquity, as much as the tower of Babel and the ruins
+of Babylon were the monument of the opulence of the plain of Shinar;
+or as Waterloo Bridge is of the wealth produced by the favourable
+maritime situation of London, or York Cathedral of the agricultural
+riches of the plains of Yorkshire. In all these causes there is a
+relation between the natural advantages which produce the riches
+and the durable monument to the construction of which they lead,
+and that relation is that of cause and effect. We entirely concur
+with the member for Glasgow in thinking that the same connexion,
+and no other, subsists between the Navigation Laws and the maritime
+greatness of England as existed formerly between the Pyramids of
+Egypt and the fertilising floods which encircle their base.
+
+  [9] _Times_, June 9, 1848.
+
+To prove that these remarks are not made at random, but that the
+Navigation Laws really are the foundation of the maritime greatness
+of England, and that, when they are repealed, it must of necessity
+languish and ultimately expire, we subjoin three tables: one showing
+the progress of British as compared with foreign shipping, from
+1801 to 1823, when the protection of the Navigation Laws was first
+infringed upon by the adoption of the reciprocity system with the
+Baltic powers; and another showing the comparative progress of our
+foreign and home shipping with Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Prussia,
+the countries with whom reciprocity treaties were first concluded,
+from 1823 to the end of 1847, when the reciprocity system had been a
+quarter of a century in operation.
+
+TABLE showing the comparative progress of British and Foreign
+Tonnage inwards, from 1821 to 1847, both inclusive, with Sweden,
+Norway, Denmark, and Prussia.
+
+[Transcriber's note: Column headings:  Y=Year. Bt=Brit. tons. Ft=For. tons.]
+
+  |      |     SWEDEN.    |     NORWAY.    |     DENMARK.   |     PRUSSIA.    |
+  |      |                |                |                |                 |
+  |  Y   |   Bt  |   Ft   |   Bt  |   Ft   |   Bt  |   Ft   |   Bt   |   Ft   |
+  +------+-------+--------+-------+--------+-------+--------+--------+--------+
+  | 1821 | 23,005|   8,508| 13,855|  61,342|  5,312|   3,969|  79,590|  37,720|
+  | 1822 | 20,799|  13,692| 13,377|  87,974|  7,096|   3,910| 102,847|  58,270|
+  | 1823 | 20,986|  22,529| 13,122| 117,015|  4,413|   4,795|  81,202|  86,013|
+  | 1824 | 17,074|  40,092| 11,419| 135,272|  6,738|  23,689|  94,664| 151,621|
+  | 1825 | 15,906|  53,141| 14,825| 157,916| 15,158|  50,943| 189,214| 182,752|
+  | 1826 | 11,829|  16,939| 13,603|  90,726| 22,000|  56,544| 119,060| 120,589|
+  | 1827 | 11,719|  21,822| 13,945|  96,420| 10,825|  52,456| 150,718| 109,184|
+  | 1828 | 14,877|  24,700| 10,826|  85,771| 17,464|  49,293| 133,753|  99,195|
+  | 1829 | 16,536|  25,046|  9,985|  86,205| 24,576|  53,390| 125,918| 127,861|
+  | 1830 | 12,116|  23,158|  6,459|  84,585| 12,210|  51,420| 102,758| 139,646|
+  | 1831 | 11,450|  38,689|  4,518| 114,865|  6,552|  62,190|  83,908| 140,532|
+  | 1832 |  8,335|  25,755|  3,789|  82,155|  7,268|  35,772|  62,079|  89,187|
+  | 1833 | 10,009|  29,454|  5,901|  98,931|  6,840|  38,620|  41,735| 108,753|
+  | 1834 | 15,353|  35,911|  6,403|  98,303|  5,691|  53,282|  32,021| 118,711|
+  | 1835 | 12,036|  35,061|  2,592|  95,049|  6,007|  49,008|  25,514| 124,144|
+  | 1836 | 10,865|  42,439|  1,573| 125,875|  2,152|  51,907|  42,567| 174,439|
+  | 1837 |  7,608|  42,602|  1,035|  88,004|  5,357|  55,961|  67,566| 145,742|
+  | 1838 | 10,425|  38,991|  1,364| 110,817|  3,466|  57,554|  86,734| 175,643|
+  | 1839 |  8,359|  49,270|  2,582| 109,228|  5,535| 106,960| 111,470| 229,208|
+  | 1840 | 11,953|  53,337|  3,161| 114,241|  6,327| 103,067| 112,709| 237,984|
+  | 1841 | 13,170|  46,795|    977| 113,045|  3,368|  83,009|  88,198| 210,254|
+  | 1842 | 15,296|  37,218|  1,385|  98,979|  5,499|  59,837|  87,202| 145,499|
+  | 1843 |  6,435|  44,184|  1,814|  97,248|  4,148|  82,940|  70,164| 163,745|
+  | 1844 | 12,806|  59,835|  1,315| 125,011|  7,423| 123,674| 108,626| 220,202|
+  | 1845 | 15,157|  89,923|  1,215| 129,897|  4,528|  84,566|  49,334| 256,711|
+  | 1846 | 12,625|  80,649|  3,313| 113,738|  9,531| 105,973|  63,425| 270,801|
+  | 1847 |  7,037| 117,918|  2,318| 128,075| 20,462| 116,382|  88,390| 303,225|
+
+--PORTER'S _Parliamentary Tables_; and _Parliamentary Report, 3d
+April 1848_.
+
+Thus, while our shipping with the whole world _quadrupled_, as
+compared with the foreign employed in the same trade, under the
+protective system, from 1801 to 1823; it declined under the
+reciprocity system of equal duties, in the countries to which that
+system was applied in the next twenty years, till it had dwindled
+to a perfect fraction;--our tonnage with Sweden being, in 1847,
+not more than a _sixteenth_ part of the foreign; with Norway, a
+_fiftieth_ part; with Denmark somewhat above a _sixth_; with Prussia
+somewhat under a _fourth_.
+
+But then it is said these are _selected_ states which do not give
+a fair average of the reciprocity system, or afford a correct
+criterion of its probable effects when applied, as it is about to
+be by a general repeal of the Navigation Laws, to the whole world.
+If they are "selected states," we can only say they were selected
+by Mr Huskisson and the Free-traders themselves as likely to afford
+the best specimen of the effect of their principles, and therefore
+as the first on which the experiment was to be made. But we are
+quite willing to take the general tonnage of the empire as the test;
+and we shall commence with a quotation from the tables of the great
+statistical apostle of free trade, Mr Porter, to show the effect
+of free trade in shipping on the comparative growth of our whole
+tonnage, as compared with that of foreign states, from 1801 to 1823,
+when the reciprocity system began; and again from thence lo 1847,
+when free trade in shipping was in full operation by the temporary
+suspension of the Navigation Laws, from the effect of the Orders
+in Council in March 1847 suspending the Navigation Laws under the
+pressure of the Irish famine:--
+
+  |       | Tons inward, | Tons inward |            |
+  | Year. |   British.   |   Foreign.  |   TOTAL.   |
+  +-------+--------------+-------------+------------+
+  | 1801  |     922,594  |    780,155  | 1,702,749  |
+  | 1802  |   1,333,005  |    480,251  | 1,813,256  |
+  | 1803  |   1,115,702  |    638,104  | 1,753,806  |
+  | 1804  |     904,932  |    607,299  | 1,512,231  |
+  | 1805  |     953,250  |    691,883  | 1,645,138  |
+  | 1806  |     904,367  |    612,904  | 1,517,271  |
+  | 1807  | Records lost |             |            |
+  | 1808  | Records lost |             |            |
+  | 1809  |     938,675  |    759,287  | 1,697,692  |
+  | 1810  |     896,001  |  1,176,243  | 2,072,244  |
+  | 1811  |              |             |            |
+  | 1812  |       Records destroyed by fire.        |
+  | 1813  |              |             |            |
+  | 1814  |   1,290,248  |    599,287  | 1,889,535  |
+  | 1815  |   1,372,108  |    746,985  | 2,119,093  |
+  | 1816  |   1,415,723  |    379,465  | 1,795,188  |
+  | 1817  |   1,625,121  |    445,011  | 2,070,132  |
+  | 1818  |   1,886,394  |    762,457  | 2,648,851  |
+  | 1819  |   1,809,128  |    542,684  | 2,351,812  |
+  | 1820  |   1,668,060  |    447,611  | 2,115,671  |
+  | 1821  |   1,599,274  |    396,256  | 1,995,530  |
+  | 1822  |   1,664,186  |    469,151  | 2,133,337  |
+
+--PORTER'S _Progress of the Nation_, 407.
+
+It appears from this most instructive table that, under the
+protection system, from 1801 to 1823, the British shipping employed
+in conducting our commerce had gained so decisively on the foreign
+employed in the same commerce, that it had increased, from having
+been on an average of five years, at the commencement of the second,
+about two British tons to one foreign, to be, on the last five
+years, about _four_ British tons to one foreign: in other words,
+during these twenty-two years, the proportion of British to foreign
+shipping had _doubled_.
+
+Turn now to the contrast afforded by the comparative progress of
+British and foreign shipping from 1823, when the reciprocity system
+was introduced with certain states, to 1847, when it was made
+universal by the suspension of the Navigation Laws in March of that
+year:--
+
+  | Year. | Tons inward, | Tons inward, |   TOTAL.   |
+  |       |   British.   |   Foreign.   |            |
+  +-------+--------------+--------------+------------+
+  | 1823  |  1,740,859   |    582,996   |  2,323,855 |
+  | 1824  |  1,797,320   |    759,441   |  2,556,761 |
+  | 1825  |  2,144,598   |    958,132   |  3,102,730 |
+  | 1826  |  1,950,630   |    694,116   |  2,644,746 |
+  | 1827  |  2,086,898   |    751,864   |  2,839,762 |
+  | 1828  |  2,094,357   |    634,620   |  2,728,977 |
+  | 1829  |  2,184,525   |    710,303   |  2,894,828 |
+  | 1830  |  2,180,042   |    758,828   |  2,938,870 |
+  | 1831  |  2,367,322   |    874,605   |  3,241,927 |
+  | 1832  |  2,185,980   |    639,979   |  2,825,959 |
+  | 1833  |  2,183,814   |    762,085   |  2,945,899 |
+  | 1834  |  2,298,263   |    833,905   |  3,132,168 |
+  | 1835  |  2,442,734   |    866,990   |  3,309,724 |
+  | 1836  |  2,505,473   |    988,899   |  3,494,372 |
+  | 1837  |  2,617,166   |  1,005,940   |  3,623,106 |
+  | 1838  |  2,785,387   |  1,211,666   |  3,997,053 |
+  | 1839  |  3,101,650   |  1,331,365   |  4,433,015 |
+  | 1840  |  3,197,501   |  1,460,294   |  4,657,795 |
+  | 1841  |  3,361,211   |  1,291,165   |  4,652,376 |
+  | 1842  |  3,294,725   |  1,205,303   |  4,500,028 |
+  | 1843  |  3,545,346   |  1,301,950   |  4,847,296 |
+  | 1844  |  3,647,463   |  1,402,138   |  5,049,601 |
+  | 1845  |  4,310,639   |  1,735,079   |  6,045,718 |
+  | 1846  |  4,294,733   |  1,806,282   |  6,101,015 |
+  | 1847  |  4,942,094   |  2,253,939   |  7,196,033 |
+
+  --PORTER'S _Progress of the Nation_, 407, 2d edition;
+  and _Parliamentary Paper, 3d April 1848_.
+
+Thus it appears that under the reciprocity system with some
+countries since 1823, and free trade in shipping with all in 1847,
+the foreign shipping employed in carrying on the British trade had
+so rapidly grown upon the British, that, while at the commencement
+of the period the British stood to the foreign as 174 to 58, or _3
+to 1_ exactly, at the close they stood as 49 to 22, or _somewhat
+above 2 to 1 only_. And observe the vast start of foreign shipping
+as compared with British, since free trade was introduced by Sir R.
+Peel in 1846. For while the British tonnage was to the foreign in
+1845 as 43 to 17, or as 2-1/2 to 1; in the year 1847 it was as 49
+to 229, or 2-1/3 to 1 only. So rapid has been the growth of foreign
+shipping over British in eighteen months of general free trade.
+In ten years of such a system, it is easy to see that the foreign
+tonnage employed in carrying on our trade will be equal to the
+British; and then our national independence is gone for ever, for we
+have nursed up in our harbours a body of foreign seamen equal to our
+own.
+
+But we have not yet done with the parliamentary returns. From the
+return 3d April 1848, it appears that the total tonnage, British and
+foreign, employed in carrying on our trade was--
+
+  British Islands.   Foreign.      Total.
+  4,942,094         2,253,939    7,196,033 tons.
+
+Deduct British and foreign tons employed in the colonial trade,
+viz.--
+
+                          Tons Brit.   Tons For.
+                            inward.    inward.
+
+  Brit. N. Amer. colonies   953,466     3,274
+  West Indies               243,388
+  Channel islands           131,899     3,049
+  Gibraltar                  11,623
+  Malta                      33,554     3,789
+  Ionian islands             13,101
+  Africa                    203,812     6,983
+  Asia and Australia        379,529     2,774
+
+  Total to colonies       1,970,372    19,847
+
+Thus the British trade to our colonial settlements is about _a
+hundred times_ the foreign, and constitutes nearly a _third_
+of the whole tonnage employed in carrying on our commerce, and
+about two-fifths of the total British tonnage,--(1,970,372 out of
+4,942,094.)
+
+But it is important to discover what proportion the British tonnage
+employed in conducting our trade with all the world, _except our
+colonies_, bears to the foreign tonnage employed in the same work.
+That is easily found:--
+
+                                Tons Brit.                  Tons For.
+  1847. Total British Tonnage,  4,942,094  Total For. ton.  2,253,939
+        Deduct British
+          colonial tonnage,     1,970,372    Foreign do.       19,847
+  Remains in trade with all     ---------                   ---------
+   the world except colonies,   2,971,722                   2,233,092
+
+So that, setting aside our colonial trade, the British tonnage is to
+the tonnage with all the rest of the world as 29 to 22, or as 4 to
+3 only! Considering the rapid strides which, under the reciprocity
+system established only with a limited number of countries in 1823,
+the foreign shipping is making in encroachment upon the British,
+this fact affords room for the most serious reflections. It is
+clear, from the great advance of foreign over British shipping in
+the single year of temporary suspension of the Navigation Laws,
+under the pressure of famine in 1847--viz. from 1,735,679, to
+2,253,979; while the British in the same period advanced only from
+4,310,639, to 4,942,094,--that two or three years of free trade in
+shipping will bring the foreign vessels employed in conducting our
+trade, exclusive of those engaged in the colonial, to an _equality
+with the British_. The moment that period arrives, our maritime
+superiority, and with it our national independence, hang entirely on
+our colonial trade, which, and which alone, strikes the balance at
+present in our favour. And yet, the colonial trade is the precise
+thing which it is the object of the repeal of the Navigation Laws
+to throw open to foreign nations! In their anxiety to cheapen every
+thing, the Free-traders would gladly expose our shipping interest
+engaged in the colonial trade to the same competition, which has
+already proved so disastrous to that part of it which is engaged in
+the traffic with foreign nations.
+
+Observe how one false step in policy by nations, like one deviation
+from virtue in private life, leads by natural consequences to a
+repetition of errors and crimes, till irreparable ruin ensues.
+The agricultural interest at home was first attacked; and by the
+cry of cheap bread, and the weight of class legislation, its
+protection was taken away. The West India islands were the next
+victims; because, if the farmer in England raises his wheat with
+nothing but a nominal protection, it was plausible to say the West
+India planter must raise his sugar on the same terms. The ruinous
+competition to which this exposed the West India planters naturally
+produced in them a desire to be liberated from any burdens to which
+they were subjected for the benefit of the mother country; and in
+this demand the Canadians, exposed to the competition of American
+grain, for a similar reason concurred. Thus the cry for cheap
+freights, originating in free-trade principles in England, came to
+be responded to from the British colonies on the other side of the
+Atlantic; and the Navigation Laws began to be repudiated by the
+colonies--the very thing which formerly it was their most anxious
+desire to uphold. The firm though unseen bond of mutual interest,
+founded on protective principles, which has hitherto held together
+the vast and widely separated dominions of the British empire, is
+dissolved. Being deprived of the benefit of protection, they very
+naturally wished to be relieved of its burdens. Such is the maze
+of error and danger into which we have been led by the sophistry
+of free trade; and such the way in which the greatest and best
+consolidated empires are first loosened, and then destroyed, by the
+delusions of those entrusted with their guidance.
+
+The manner in which foreign shipping has encroached upon British,
+since the reciprocity system began in 1823, is clearly proved by the
+centesimal proportions of each, published by Mr Porter, from 1820 to
+1844, both inclusive.
+
+It will be seen from the following table, that, since 1820, the
+centesimal proportion of British shipping employed in conducting our
+trade has _declined_ from 78 to 72, while that of foreign nations
+has _increased_ from 21 to 27. But this proportion, such as it is,
+is solely upheld by our colonial trade, which, as already shown,
+employs nearly 2,000,000 tons of our shipping. But for it, the
+encroachment of foreign on British shipping would appear in such
+alarming colours as to strike the most inconsiderate. It is the
+rapid growth of our colonial trade under the protective system which
+has alone concealed the ravages effected on it by free trade under
+the reciprocity.
+
+Centesimal Proportions of the British and Foreign Tonnage employed
+in the Import Trade of the United Kingdom from 1820 to 1844.
+
+  | Year.  |Brit. inward.|For. inward.|Year.|Brit. inward.|For. inward.|
+  +--------+-------------+------------+-----+-------------+------------+
+  | 1820   |   78�84     |    21�16   | 1834|    73�37    |    26�63   |
+  | 1821   |   80�14     |    19�86   | 1835|    73�85    |    26�15   |
+  | 1822   |   78�00     |    22�00   | 1836|    71�41    |    28�59   |
+  | 1823[10]   74�91     |    25�09   | 1837|    72�23    |    27�77   |
+  | 1824   |   70�29     |    29�71   | 1838|    69�68    |    30�32   |
+  | 1825   |   69�12     |    30�88   | 1839|    69�96    |    30�04   |
+  | 1826   |   73�75     |    26�25   | 1840|    68�64    |    31�36   |
+  | 1827   |   73�51     |    26�49   | 1841|    72�24    |    27�76   |
+  | 1828   |   76�74     |    23�26   | 1842|    73�21    |    26�79   |
+  | 1829   |   75�46     |    25�54   | 1843|    73�14    |    26�86   |
+  | 1830   |   74�18     |    25�82   | 1844|    72�23    |    27�77   |
+  | 1831   |   73�02     |    26�98   | 1845|     ...     |     ...    |
+  | 1832   |   77�35     |    22�65   | 1846|     ...     |     ...    |
+  | 1833   |   74�13     |    25�87   | 1847|     ...     |     ...    |
+
+  --PORTER'S _Progress of the Nation_, 416, 2d edition.
+
+    [10] Reciprocity System introduced.
+
+Mr Porter himself tells us that the centesimal proportion of our
+trade with the European powers has _declined_ (p. 410) from 65 to
+52�38, while that of our colonies has increased thus,--
+
+  |          |     1802.   |     1814.   |     1835.     |     1844.     |
+  |          | Tons. |Cent.| Tons. |Cent.|  Tons.  |Cent.|  Tons.  |Cent.|
+  |          |       |prop.|       |prop.|         |prop.|         |prop.|
+  |          +-------+-----+-------+-----+---------+-----+---------+-----+
+  |America   |336,344|18�54|343,658|19�32|  886,524|26�21|  984,850|19�50|
+  |Africa    |  7,270| 0�40| 13,514| 0�76|   40,131| 1�21|  157,364| 3�12|
+  |India, &c.| 67,627| 3�72| 74,117| 4�16|  161,473| 4�88|  264,978| 5�25|
+  |Australia |  ...  | ... |    488|  �02|   16,019| 0�48|   36,454| 0�74|
+  |          +-------+-----+-------+-----+---------+-----+---------+-----+
+  |          |411,241|19�66|431,727|24�26|1,104,147|32�78|1,443,646|28�61|
+
+Such has been the working of the reciprocity system, as compared
+with the protective and colonial--in other words, free trade in
+shipping with some particular nations--in twenty years. And it is
+from this experience of the effects of the partial adoption of these
+principles that the Free-traders now propose to make it universal!
+
+America is the country to which, in comparison with Great Britain,
+the Free-traders constantly refer for a demonstration of the
+justice and beneficial operation of their principles. We accept the
+instance, and proceed to inquire into the comparative value of the
+American protected trade with our own colonies, and the American
+free trade with the United States, both at this time and in the
+respective progress of each for the last twenty-five years.
+
+The foreign and British tonnage with the United States, Canada, and
+the West Indies, in the year 1847, stood thus, viz.:--
+
+  |                                |British tons.|Foreign tons.|  Total. |
+  |                                +-------------+-------------+---------+
+  |British North American Colonies |   953,466   |     3,724   |  954,190|
+  |British West Indies             |   243,388   |      ...    |  243,388|
+  |                                +-------------+-------------+---------+
+  |    Total protected             | 1,196,854   |      ...    |1,197,578|
+  |United States of America        |             |             |         |
+  |  (unprotected)                 |   437,095   |   651,189   |1,088,284|
+
+  --_Parliamentary Paper, 3d April 1848._
+
+So that, while our West India and North American colonies, under
+this Protective system, support 1,196,854 tons of British shipping
+against 3,724 of foreign, or 300 to 1 nearly; the American trade
+with the United States only maintains 437,095 of British against
+651,189 of foreign; in other words, about 2 to 3 nearly! But the
+Free-traders think it better to adopt the system which makes the
+foreign shipping to the British as 3 to 2, than uphold the one which
+has brought the foreign shipping to the British, in the colonial
+trade, as 1 to 300!
+
+Observe, too, the decisive proof which the same return affords of
+the vast superiority, in every point of view, of our colonial trade
+to our foreign, even in the hands of our best free-trade customers,
+the Americans. For while less than 3,000,000 of souls between the
+West India and North American colonies furnished employment to
+1,197,000 tons of British and foreign shipping, of which 1,193,000
+was British; twenty millions of Americans in the United States only
+furnished employment to 1,088,284 tons of shipping, in all of which
+no more than 437,095 were British! And this is the pet instance
+of the Free-traders--their favourite _cheval de bataille_--to
+demonstrate the great superiority of free and foreign over protected
+and colonial trade!
+
+Again, if we take the comparative progress of British and American
+tonnage in conducting the trade of the United States, since the
+reciprocity system was begun in 1823, the same conclusion is forced
+upon the mind. Not only is the American shipping, throughout the
+whole period, superior to the British in the proportion generally of
+3 to 1, but this superiority in their favour remains undiminished in
+any material degree. We take the following returns from Mr Porter:--
+
+  Year.    British        American
+        tons inwards.   tons inwards.
+  1823      63,606         165,699
+  1826      47,711         151,765
+  1829      64,343         162,367
+  1832      95,203         167,359
+  1835      86,383         226,483
+  1838      83,203         357,467
+  1841     121,777         294,170
+  1844     206,183         338,737
+  1845     224,089         444,609
+  1846     205,123         435,399
+
+It is easy to see how it has happened that, in competition with the
+shipowners of every country, the British shipowners have suffered
+so much under the partial operation of the free-trade principles
+which the reciprocity system has afforded. It is the inevitable fate
+of the old and the rich state, in shipbuilding and agriculture, to
+be undersold by the young and the poor one. The reason is, that
+the old state, by the very magnitude of its wealth, the amount of
+its transactions, the number of its inhabitants, the multitude
+of its fabrics, is obliged to pay much higher for labour and
+materials of all sorts than the young and the poor one. Machinery
+and the steam-engine compensate, and more than compensate, this
+superiority in regard to manufactured articles. England undersells
+Hindostan, where wages are a penny or twopence a day, by the work
+of steam-power looms working on cotton raised on the banks of the
+Ganges. But there is no steam-power loom in shipbuilding any more
+than in agriculture. Great things in nautical affairs, as in rural
+economy, can be effected only by the labour of man's hands and the
+sweat of his brow, in the last ages of civilisation, as in the
+first. It would appear to be a permanent law of nature, to which
+there is no exception in any age of the world, or any stage of
+human progress, that the chief branches of industry on which the
+subsistence and defence of nations rest--agriculture, and the naval
+and military arts--are pursued more cheaply, and with more success
+by young and rising than old and opulent states. History is full of
+examples in which the manufactures of rich and ancient nations have
+obtained an undisputed supremacy over the fabrics of poor and rising
+ones; but it presents still more examples of the encroachments
+made on the industry and power of old nations by the agricultural
+produce, or naval and military efforts, of young ones. It is this
+law of nature which provides for the decay and ruin of nations when
+they are approaching the limit of their allotted space of existence,
+and should give place to others entering on the career which they
+have terminated. No efforts of human energy or virtue can prolong,
+for any considerable period, this allotted space. But it is the
+peculiar reproach of free trade, whether applied to agriculture or
+nautical affairs, that it tends to shorten, instead of prolonging,
+the life of the nation to which it is applied, by oppressing instead
+of relieving those vital branches of industry on which its existence
+depends, and thus both aggravates the natural evils incident to old
+age, and accelerates the approach of the political society to the
+tomb.
+
+When Mr Huskisson, in 1823, introduced the Reciprocity System, he
+did not dispute that it would injure our maritime interests; but he
+contended that it would open a new field for our manufactures,--that
+the time had now arrived when the Protective System could no longer
+be maintained, and it had become indispensable to sacrifice to a
+certain extent our maritime interests, in order to preserve the
+chief vents on Continental Europe for the industry of our artisans.
+The sacrifice was made, and the tables already given show with what
+fatal effect to our shipping interest. Has it extended the market
+for our manufactures, or diminished the jealousy with which they are
+regarded by the states of Continental Europe? Let the Zollverein
+league, at the head of which Prussia has placed herself, and which
+has imposed duties to an amount, in practical operation, of fifty
+per cent on our manufactures, give the answer. The exports which
+we send to the states of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Prussia, are
+still, after a quarter of a century's experience of the immense
+impulse it has given to their maritime interests, and corresponding
+depression to ours, a perfect trifle.[11] Our exports to America
+are less than they were fifteen years ago, despite the boasted
+conciliatory effect of twenty years' reciprocity.[12] What can be
+more injudicious, therefore, than to persist in, and even extend,
+a system which, without diminishing in the slightest degree the
+jealousy of Continental nations at our manufacturing superiority,
+has inflicted a serious and gratuitous wound on the naval resources
+by which alone that superiority can be maintained?
+
+  [11]
+
+    Exports from Great Britain--to
+        1844          Sweden           �108,475
+                      Norway            152,824
+                      Denmark           286,679
+                      Prussia           505,384
+
+    PORTER'S _Progress of the Nation_, p. 366, 2d edition.
+
+
+  [12]
+
+    Exports to United States of America:--
+
+    1836                      �12,425,605
+    1844                        7,938,079
+
+    PORTER, _ibid._
+
+
+We have recently made a very great stride in free-trade principles,
+by the sacrifice of our agricultural protection, and the throwing
+open the English markets to cultivators of all nations. In the
+three last months of 1846 and even of 1847, in consequence of the
+import duties being removed, above �30,000,000 sterling was sent
+out of the country to purchase foreign grain; and the moderate
+duty of eight shillings a quarter has since been reimposed on
+wheat,--yet it terminates in February next, and corn from all
+quarters will then be admitted for the nominal duty of one shilling
+a quarter. We have abandoned the protection of our colonies to
+conciliate the slave-growing states, and augment the market for
+Manchester goods in Cuba and Brazil. With what disastrous effects
+these changes have been attended, upon the best interests of the
+empire, need be told to none who are familiar with the total ruin
+which has in consequence overtaken our West India colonies, and the
+unprecedented distress which prevails in all the great seats of
+our manufacturing industry. The loss of half the realised wealth
+of Liverpool, Manchester, and Glasgow, and the creation of nearly
+a hundred thousand persons, including dependants, in a state of
+pauperism, in each of those once rich and prosperous cities, is the
+price which, in a year and a half, we have paid for the adoption by
+Sir R. Peel of Mr Cobden's principles of free trade, and Mr Jones
+Loyd's principles of a fettered currency. Have we, in consequence,
+reaped any countervailing advantage, or does the increase of our
+export and import trade show any benefit derived to the nation,
+to compensate such dreadful wounds inflicted on its internal
+prosperity, in the attempt to disarm the jealousy of foreign
+manufacturers? So far from it, our exports and imports have steadily
+_declined_ since free-trade principles were introduced. All the main
+sources of our strength have diminished since Sir R. Peel abandoned
+protection in July 1846.[13] In adopting these principles, we have
+gratuitously inflicted a grievous wound on our own people, without
+having obtained for them the shadow even of a benefit to compensate
+the evil.
+
+  [13]
+
+    |      |    EXPORTS.       |                |             |
+    |      |British Produce and|    IMPORTS.    |  REVENUE.   |
+    |      |  Manufactures.    |                |             |
+    |      | Declared Value.   |                |             |
+    +------+                   |                |             |
+    | 1845 |    �53,227,451    |  �85,281,958   | �52,009,324 |
+    | 1846 |     51,227,060    |   75,953,579   |  54,473,762 |
+    | 1847 |     50,897,790    |Not yet made up,|  52,082,757 |
+
+    --_Porter's Parl. Tables_; and _Parl. Paper, 3d April 1848_.
+
+
+Such have been the effects of free-trade principles on the
+comparative prosperity of British and foreign shipping, on the
+showing of the Free-traders themselves, and according to the
+figures which their great statistician, Mr Porter, has prepared
+and published at the Board of Trade. We were unwilling to mix up a
+great national question, such as the repeal of the Navigation Laws,
+with any subordinate examination as to the accuracy or inaccuracy
+of the view of our maritime affairs which these figures exhibit.
+Such is the strength of the case, that it will admit of almost any
+concession; and the opponents of their repeal have no occasion to
+go farther than to the statistics of their adversaries for the
+most decisive refutation of their principles. But there are two
+observations on the tables published by the Board of Trade, so
+important that they cannot be passed over in silence. The first is,
+that in 1834, when Mr Poulett Thomson was president of the Board of
+Trade, a regulation was made by the Board as to the measurement of
+vessels, which had the effect of adding _a fifth_ to the apparent
+tonnage of all British vessels, subsequent to that date. This
+change was clearly proved by the witnesses examined before the
+Commons' committee; but though Mr Porter, in his last edition of
+the _Progress of the Nation_, mentions the change, (p. 368,) he
+makes no allusion to it in comparing the amount of British and
+foreign tonnage since 1834. Of course a fifth must be deducted from
+British tonnage, as compared with foreign, since that time; and what
+overwhelming force does this give to the facts, already strong,
+in regard to the effect of the reciprocity system on our maritime
+interests!
+
+The second is, that the tonnage with countries near Great Britain,
+such as France, Belgium, and Holland, _includes steam vessels_
+carrying passengers, and their repeated voyages. In this way a boat,
+measuring 148 tons, and carrying passengers chiefly, comes to figure
+in the returns for 24,000 tons! It is evident that this important
+circumstance deprives the returns of such near states of all value
+in the estimate of the comparative amount of tonnage engaged in
+the trade with different countries. That with France will appear
+greatest in spring 1848, in consequence of the number of large
+vessels then employed in bringing back English residents expelled
+by, or terrified at, the Revolution--though that circumstance was
+putting a stop to nearly all the commercial intercourse between
+the two countries. As steam navigation has so immensely increased
+since 1834, when the changes in the measurement was introduced--and
+Great Britain, from its store of coal and iron, enjoys more of that
+traffic than all Europe put together--this is another circumstance
+which militates against the returns as exhibiting a fair view of our
+trade, compared with that of foreign nations, especially with near
+countries, and fully justifies Mr Porter's admission, when examined
+before the Lords' committee, that "considerable fallacy is to be
+found in the returns." Unfortunately for the Free-traders, however,
+who had the preparation of them in their hands, these fallacies all
+point one way--viz. to augment the apparent advantages of free trade
+in shipping.
+
+Such as free-trade principles are, they are evidently not likely to
+remain, if these islands are excepted, long in the ascendant either
+in the Old or the New World. The American tariff shows us how little
+we have to expect from Transatlantic favour to our manufactures:
+the savage expulsion of English labourers from France, how far the
+principles of "Liberty, Equality, and _Fraternity_," are likely
+to be acted upon by our enthusiastic and democratic neighbours
+on the Continent of Europe. It is clear from the communist and
+socialist principles now in the ascendant, both at Paris, Berlin,
+and Vienna, that the interests of _labour_ will above all things
+be considered by their governments in future times, and that the
+most rigorous measures, in the form of fiscal regulations, if not
+_absolute prohibition_, may shortly be expected in France, Italy,
+and Germany, against manufactures of any sort which interfere, or
+seem to interfere, with the interests of the dominant multitude of
+operatives. Why does our government adhere so strongly, in the face
+of the clearest evidence of their ruinous tendency, to the present
+system of free trade and a fettered currency? Because it works well
+for the great capitalists, who desire to have money dear, and the
+great manufacturers, who wish to have labour cheap, and because
+a majority of the House of Commons has been placed by the Reform
+Bill under their influence. Give the operatives the majority,
+and the opposite interest will instantly prevail. A successful
+Chartist revolt would at once send the whole free trade and fettered
+currency measures by the board in three months. In truth, it is
+the disasters they have produced which has revived Chartism, and
+rendered it so menacing in the land. We should like to see how
+long a legislature, elected by universal suffrage, would allow
+Spitalfields and Macclesfield to be pauperised by Lyons silks, and
+Manchester invaded by Rouen cottons, and the shipwrights of Hull and
+Sunderland to be ruined by Baltic shipbuilders. As the operative
+classes have obtained the ascendency in the principal Continental
+states, a similar jealousy of foreign interference with industry may
+with certainty be looked for in Continental Europe. Can any thing
+be more insane, therefore, than to persist in a policy fraught, as
+every thing around us demonstrates, with such ruinous social injury
+to ourselves, and which the progress of political change on the
+Continent renders incapable of producing the ultimate benefits,
+in exchange for those evils which their authors hold out as the
+inducing causes of the measures which have produced them?
+
+While the political changes which have recently occurred on the
+Continent of Europe have rendered any reciprocity of advantages
+utterly hopeless from the most violent adoption of free-trade
+principles, they have augmented in a proportional degree the
+dangers to this country of foreign aggression, and the risk to
+be apprehended from any diminution of our naval resources. The
+days have gone by when the dream of a free-trade millenium, in
+which a reciprocity of advantages is to extinguish all feelings
+of hostility, and war is to be looked back to as a relic of the
+pre-Adamite world, can with safety be indulged. It is rather too
+late to think of the termination of the angry passions of men, when
+Europe, in its length and breadth, is devastated alike by civil
+dissension and foreign warfare; when barricades have so recently
+been erected in all its chief capitals; when bloodshed is hourly
+expected in Paris and Berlin; when the Emperor of Austria has fled
+to Innspruck; when every station in London was, only a few days
+ago, occupied by armed battalions; and when a furious war, rousing
+the passions of whole races of men, is raging on the Mincio and the
+Elbe. Threatened by a raging fire in all the countries by which
+we are surrounded, uncertain whether we are not slumbering on the
+embers of a conflagration in our own, is this the time to relax
+in our warlike preparations, and, by crippling the nursery of our
+seamen, expose ourselves, without the means of resistance, to the
+assaults of hostile nations, envious of our fame, jealous of our
+manufactures, covetous of our wealth, desirous of our ruin?
+
+While Western Europe is torn by revolutionary passions, and the
+seeds of a dreadful, because a popular and general war, are rapidly
+springing to maturity from the Seine to the Vistula, Russia is
+silently but unceasingly gathering up its giant strength, and
+the Czar has already 300,000 men, and 800 pieces of cannon,
+ready to take the field against the revolutionary enthusiasts of
+France and Germany. Sooner or later the conflict must arrive. It
+is not unlikely that either a second Napoleon will lead another
+crusade of the western nations across the Niemen, or a second
+Alexander will conduct the forces of the desert to the banks of the
+Seine. Whichever proves victorious, England has equal cause for
+apprehension. If the balance of power is subverted on Continental
+Europe, how is the independence of this country to be maintained?
+How are our manufactures or revenue to be supported, if one
+prevailing power has subjugated all the other states of Europe
+to its sway? It is hard to say whether, in such circumstances,
+we should have most to dread from French fraternity or Russian
+hostility. But how is the balance of power to be preserved in
+Europe amidst the wreck of its principal states? when Prussia is
+revolutionised, and has passed over to the other side; when Austria
+is shattered and broken in pieces, and Italy has fallen under the
+dominion of a faction, distinguished beyond any thing else by its
+relentless hatred of the aristocracy, and jealousy of the fabrics
+of England? What has Great Britain to rely on in such a crisis but
+the energy of its seamen and the might of its navy, which might at
+least enable it to preserve its connexion with its own colonies,
+and maintain, as during the Continental blockade, its commerce
+with Transatlantic nations? And yet this is the moment which our
+rulers have selected for destroying the Navigation Laws, so long
+the bulwark of our mercantile marine, and permitting all the world
+to make those inroads on our shipping, which have already been
+partially effected by the nations with whom we have concluded
+reciprocity treaties!
+
+The defence of Great Britain must always mainly rest on our navy,
+and our navy is almost entirely dependent on the maintenance of
+our colonies. It is in the trade with the colonies that we can
+alone look for the means of resisting the general coalition of the
+European powers, which is certain, sooner or later, to arise against
+our maritime superiority, and the advent of which the spread of
+democratic principles, and the sway of operative jealousy on the
+Continent, is so evidently calculated to accelerate. But how are our
+colonies to be preserved, even for a few years, if free-trade severs
+the strong bond of interest which has hitherto attached them to the
+mother country, and the repeal of the Navigation Laws accustoms them
+to look to foreigners for the means of conducting their mercantile
+transactions? Charged with the defence of a colonial empire which
+encircles the earth, and has brought such countless treasures and
+boundless strength to the parent state, Great Britain at land is
+only a fourth-rate power, at least for Continental strife. At
+Waterloo, even, she could only array forty-five thousand men to
+contend with the conqueror of Europe for her existence. It is in
+our ships we must look for the means of maintaining our commerce,
+and asserting our independence against manufacturing jealousy,
+national rivalry, and foreign aggression. Is our navy, then, to
+be surrendered to the ceaseless encroachments of foreigners, in
+order to effect a saving of a few millions a-year on freights, reft
+from our own people, and sapping the foundations of our national
+independence?
+
+How can human wisdom or foresight, the energy of the Anglo-Saxons,
+or the courage of the Normans, maintain, for any length of time,
+our independence in the perilous position into which free-trade
+policy has, during the short period it has been in operation,
+brought us? The repeal of the Corn Laws has already brought an
+importation of eight or ten millions of foreign quarters annually
+upon our people--a full sixth of the national subsistence, and
+which will soon become indispensable to their existence. A simple
+non-intercourse act will alone enable Russia or America, without
+firing a shot, to compel us to lower the flag of Blake and Nelson.
+Stern famine will "guard the solitary coast," and famished
+multitudes demand national submission as the price of life. The
+repeal of the Navigation Laws will ere long bring the foreign seamen
+engaged in carrying on our trade to a superiority over our own,
+as has already taken place in so woful a manner with the Baltic
+powers. Hostile fleets will moor their ships of the line across our
+harbours, and throw back our starving multitudes on their own island
+for food, and their own market for employment. What will then avail
+our manufacturers and our fabrics,--the forges of Birmingham, the
+power-looms of Manchester, the iron-works of Lanarkshire,--if the
+enemies' squadrons blockade the Thames, the Mersey, and the Clyde,
+and famished millions are deprived alike of food and employment,
+by the suicidal policy of preceding rulers? Our present strength
+will then be the measure of our weakness; our vast population, as
+in a beleaguered town, the useless multitude which must be fed, and
+cannot fight,--our wealth, the glittering prize which will attract
+the rapacity of the spoiler. With indignant feelings, but caustic
+truth, our people will then curse the infatuated policy which
+abandoned the national defences, and handed them over, bound hand
+and foot, to the enemy, only the more the object of rapacity because
+such boundless wealth had accumulated in a few hands amongst them.
+Then will be seen, that with our own hands, as into the ancient
+city, we have admitted the enemies' bands; we have drawn the horse
+pregnant with armed men through our ramparts, and our weeping and
+dispersed descendants will exclaim with the Trojans of old--
+
+        "Fuimus Tro�s, fuit Ilium, et ingens
+    Gloria Teucrorum."
+
+
+_Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh._
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+Irregularities and inconsistencies in the ext 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.
+
+Page 11: There is a closing parenthesis missing in the following--(the
+blank left for the number was filled up with the word "three" in
+committee of the House of Commons. Nothing said about the issue in
+tail, as before ...
+
+Page 22: The transcriber has inserted "the" ... rope up to the spot
+where he ...
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume
+64, No. 393, July 1848, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, JULY 1848 ***
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64,
+No. 393, July 1848, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: December 28, 2013 [EBook #44533]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, JULY 1848 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brendan OConnor, Jonathan Ingram, Julia Neufeld
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Library of Early
+Journals.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+
+<h1>
+BLACKWOOD'S<br />
+
+<span class="oldenglish">Edinburgh</span><br />
+
+MAGAZINE.</h1>
+
+<p class="center">VOL. LXIV.</p>
+
+<p class="center">JULY-DECEMBER, 1848.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 175px;">
+<img src="images/buchanan.jpg" width="175" height="200" alt="buchanan" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">WILLIAM BLACKWOOD &amp; SONS, EDINBURGH;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><small>AND</small></p>
+
+<p class="center">37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.</p>
+
+<p class="center">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+<p class="center">1848.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="center">BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+<p class="center b15">BLACKWOOD'S<br />
+
+EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+No. CCCXCIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;JULY, 1848.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">Vol. LXIV.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><br />CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="contents">
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Laws of Land.</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Life in the "Far West." Part II.</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">American Thoughts on European Revolutions.</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Caxtons.</span> Part IV.</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Republican France.&mdash;June 1848.</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Colonisation.</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_66">66</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Siberia.</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Scottish Deer Forests.</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_92">92</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Buried Flower.</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Huzza for the Rule of the Whigs.</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Navigation Laws.</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_114">114</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p class="center space-above">
+<big>EDINBURGH:</big></p>
+
+<p class="center">WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;<br />
+AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><small><em>To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed.</em></small></p>
+
+<p class="center"><small>SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.<br />
+&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br />
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.</small>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">&nbsp;</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="center b13">BLACKWOOD'S<br />
+
+EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+No. CCCXCIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;JULY, 1848.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">Vol. LXIV.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>THE LAWS OF LAND.</h2>
+
+<p><em>A Treatise on the Succession to Property vacant by Death.</em> By <span class="smcap">J. R. M'Culloch</span>,
+Esq. London: Longmans, 1848.</p>
+
+
+<p>Mr M'Culloch's book introduces
+us to a question much debated in this
+age of class jealousy. As soon as we
+open it, we are straightway environed
+with "a barbarous noise of owls and
+cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs," amid
+whose jargon of phrases rises loudest
+and most frequent the cry of "commercial
+principles." It is a great
+grievance, it seems, that land should
+not be disposed of according to "commercial
+principles;" that hill and holt,
+and moor and dale, should not pass
+from seller to buyer with the same
+readiness as candles and calicoes.
+Truly we have enough, and more
+than enough, of these same commercial
+principles in all walks of thought.
+Even the pulpit is not free from them.
+Politics are positively smothered with
+them. Ethical science, with the shallowisms
+of Paley and Bentham round
+her neck, struggles feebly with them.
+The book-keeper is abroad every
+where, with an indestructible faith in
+double entry. The Spirit of the Age
+wears a pen behind his ear, and sits on
+a high stool with three legs. That
+the prevailing commercial principles
+should have been so long excluded
+from the absolute possession of our
+laws of land, and that those laws
+should have preserved to a time like
+this so much of their feudal character,
+is a notable proof of the adaptation of
+the laws to the general requirements
+of the community, and of the steadiness
+of that social system which is so
+essentially linked to the maintenance
+of these laws.</p>
+
+<p>The cry of complaint to which we
+have above alluded, is inspired by
+many diverse motives. As Mr Cochrane's
+ragged followers flocked to Trafalgar
+Square to denounce the income-tax,
+so many a man takes up the
+shout against the law of primogeniture
+and entail, as tying up lands and restricting
+their sale, who never had the
+wherewithal to purchase a single acre
+if all broad England was in the market.
+On the other hand, the purse-proud
+citizen, sore that ready money is not
+yet quite at the top of the tree, and
+that he does not receive the same consideration
+at St James's as in Change
+Alley, delights to have some grievance
+whereon he can vent his spleen; and
+really, in some stolid instances, persuades
+himself that he is kept out of
+the land which his gold could buy,
+through the agency of aristocratical
+laws, as if George Robins had been a
+mythical personage, or the advertisements
+of Farebrother, Clark, and Lye
+were a mockery and delusion.</p>
+
+<p>But the largest class of assailants
+are those who come to the debate fortified
+with certain specious economical
+arguments, generally derived from a
+one-sided view of some particular
+effect of these restrictive laws. To
+the demolition of these objectors Mr
+M'Culloch's work is more immediately
+addressed; and very effectually, in our
+opinion, does it accomplish its end.
+He has not, perhaps, treated the subject
+so widely as it might have been
+treated: he has not entered into the
+indirect social influences that might be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>
+traced to our system of the laws relating
+to land; but the economical
+part of the question he has grasped
+most completely, and supported by
+most able and practical reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>We must, we suppose, look for the
+text of the work, not where the text
+is usually found, but at the end. The
+following sentence, which is almost
+the concluding one, may be taken as
+the leading proposition of the work:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"A powerful and widely-ramified aristocracy
+like that of England, not resting
+for support on any oppressive laws, and
+enjoying no privileges but which are for
+the public advantage, is necessary to give
+stability and security to the government,
+and freedom to the people. And our laws
+in regard to succession being well fitted
+to maintain such an aristocracy, and, at
+the same time, to inspire every other class
+with the full spirit of industry and enterprise,
+to change them would not be foolish
+merely, but criminal,&mdash;a <i lang="FR" xml:lang="FR">lèse majesté</i>
+against the public interests."&mdash;P. 172.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>It must not, however, be supposed
+from this remark, that any portion of
+the work is appropriated to a set defence
+of government by means of an
+aristocracy. By an aristocracy we
+mean the deposition of political power
+in the hands of men of leisure and
+education, as opposed to the tendency
+of the Reform Bill, to transfer the governing
+functions to the "practical"
+men of the trading and moneyed interests,
+and the analogous claims of
+Chartism, founded on Jack Cade's
+complaint, that the "king's council
+are no good workmen." In England,
+we are pretty sure to have an aristocracy&mdash;that
+is, the influences which
+affect government and legislation will
+emanate principally from that class
+which is socially at the head of the
+nation; and the question is, whether
+we are to have a mere moneyed aristocracy,
+or one qualified by those mixed
+and undefinable conditions which,
+more than any thing else, act to keep
+down the growing and eager ascendency
+of wealth <em>per se</em>. Among the
+safeguards of such an aristocracy as
+we have described, not the least
+powerful is to be found in the laws
+discussed in the work before us. Mr
+M'Culloch, as we have said, assumes
+the importance to the country of preserving
+the present characteristics of
+British aristocracy; and he therefore
+proceeds at once to show how the laws
+on which he treats operate for this
+preservation, and to rebut the objections
+advanced against them on the
+score of their relations to other classes
+of the community.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most frequent of these
+objections is, that the laws in question
+tend to diminish the productiveness
+of the land, and thereby inflict a
+serious injury on the community at
+large; that they prevent, in many
+instances, the landlord from granting
+leases to his tenant beyond the term
+of his own life; that the tenant, in
+consequence, is not willing to incur
+the outlay of drainage and other expensive
+improvements, because he is not
+secured by a lease; while the landlord,
+on the other hand, will not enter into
+these expenses, because he does not
+feel the same interest in his limited
+estate which he would in the unconditional
+fee-simple.</p>
+
+<p>Note first of all the logic of this
+argument. The tenant, it seems, will
+not spend his money in draining without
+a lease. As, however, a lease
+would suffice to induce him so to do,
+we might naturally suppose that the
+landlord's estate for life, or in tail,
+would be at least an equal inducement.
+These reasoners, however,
+aver, that the landlord is only to be
+tempted by the unrestricted fee. According
+to this progressive scale, it
+might be fairly, argued, that the tenant,
+on becoming lessee for years, would
+still require the landlord's life-interest;
+and the latter, when seised of the fee,
+would decline the requisite expense,
+except on a guarantee of immortality,
+and justify himself by Horace's authority,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">"Tanquam<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sit proprium quidquam puncto quod mobilis horæ<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Permutet dominos, et cedat in altera jura."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But the general scope of an argument
+may be just, though clumsily
+stated and fallaciously supported. We
+are, however, at no loss for experiments
+on the largest scale whereby
+to test the theory here noticed. We
+have English agriculture, subjected
+to a limited law of entail, contrasted
+on the one hand with Scottish agriculture,
+under a law of perpetual entail,
+and on the other with that of
+France and its compulsory gavelkind.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+Mr M'Culloch has taken an elaborate
+view of the question in its relation to
+the tillage of the soil in these three
+countries respectively, more especially
+in France. We find, from the result
+of his investigation, that,&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"The average produce per acre of the
+crops of wheat in England and Wales in
+good years, has been carefully estimated
+at thirty-two bushels an acre, and it is
+certainly not under thirty bushels. But
+in France the produce of wheat, even in
+the richest and best cultivated departments,
+is little more, according to the
+official returns and the best private authorities,
+than twenty bushels an acre;
+and at an average of the entire kingdom,
+it hardly amounts in a good year to fourteen
+bushels. This result is completely
+decisive. It shows that one acre of land
+in England yields, from its being better
+farmed, considerably more wheat than
+two acres in France: and if we took
+barley or oats, turnips, beef, or wool for
+a standard, the difference in our favour
+would be seen to be still greater....
+If labour were taken for a standard instead
+of land, the result would be still
+more in our favour. One man and one
+horse in England produce more corn and
+other agricultural produce than three
+men and three horses in France. Labour
+in the latter is misapplied and
+wasted."&mdash;P. 117.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Again:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"While two husbandmen in France
+furnish a surplus of food above their own
+consumption adequate for <em>one</em> individual,
+the same number of English husbandmen
+furnish a surplus for no fewer than <em>four</em>
+individuals; showing, that, as measured
+by its capacity of providing for the other
+classes of the population, English is to
+French agriculture as four to one."&mdash;P.
+121.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>So much for the comparison of
+French and English agriculture. Let
+us now turn to Scotland:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"In an Appendix to the 'Sketches of
+the History of Man,' published in 1774,
+Lord Kames says, 'The quantity of land
+that is locked up in Scotland by entails
+has damped the growing spirit of agriculture.
+There is not produced sufficiency
+of corn at home for our consumption; and
+our condition will become worse and
+worse by new entails, till agriculture and
+industry be annihilated.' Now the extent
+of land under entail in Scotland has been
+certainly more than doubled, perhaps more
+than trebled, since this paragraph was
+written, and yet agriculture and manufactures
+have made a more rapid progress
+in Scotland in the interval, and especially
+during the last thirty years, when entails
+were most prevalent, than in England
+or in any other country whatever."&mdash;P.
+71.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Lord Kames, in this respect, seems
+to have had the same subtle ingenuity
+in prophesying counter to the
+event, as distinguishes Mr Cobden.</p>
+
+<p>The first part of Mr M'Culloch's
+volume contains a cursory historical
+view of the earliest regulations of succession
+and inheritance. Thus, at
+p. 16, he traces the right of primogeniture,
+or preference of the eldest
+son, to the Mosaic law. We are far
+from maintaining that the specific details
+of the code promulgated on Sinai
+are a model of law for all nations;
+on the contrary, they were no doubt
+intended to be such as a wise human
+law-giver would frame, and consequently
+more or less applicable according
+to the changes and differences
+of social organisation. But we do
+hold that these laws indicate to
+mankind principles which are to be
+observed in all times and by all nations.
+Thus, the septennial release
+of debts, the return of every man to
+his possession in the year of jubilee,
+the prohibition of interest upon loans
+except to an alien, even the poor
+man's portion in the field and vineyard,
+may or may not be regulations
+adapted to a particular existing state
+of society. But they enunciate a
+principle of mercy and forbearance
+towards the poor and unfortunate, of
+which, we fear, our political economists
+and commercial legislators are
+too apt to lose sight. In conformity
+with this view, when we hear the
+right of primogeniture assailed as
+contrary to the law of nature, (by the
+way, where is this much-talked-of
+law of nature to be found?) we may
+safely appeal to the express recognition
+by the Jewish law of "the
+right of the first-born as the beginning
+of his father's strength," to show
+that the custom of primogeniture is at
+all events not repugnant to instinctive
+justice or the common-sense of mankind.
+The old Saxon law of gavelkind
+might be better adapted to a
+superabundance of land and a thin
+population; the preference of the
+youngest son, by the custom of Borough-English,
+might well prevail
+among the far progenitors of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+Saxon race on the steppes of Scythia,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>
+when the elder brothers would be
+sent forth to roam over the boundless
+plain with their flocks and herds, the
+youngest remaining at home to be the
+prop of his father's old age. But in
+a settled and cultivated country, and
+among an advanced people, we maintain
+succession by primogeniture to
+be the most consonant, as a matter of
+theory, to the social feelings and requirements
+of man; and we think our
+author has fully established his position
+as to the beneficial character of
+its practical results.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of his historical survey,
+Mr M'Culloch has of course
+touched on the principle of succession
+under the Roman law, but more
+lightly than we should have expected
+in reference to a system which has
+entered so largely into our Scottish
+law, and which is still accepted as a
+model framework of legal principles
+in most of the universities of Christendom.
+And the slight notice taken
+traces an analogy between the feudal
+and civil principles of succession,
+which we think is altogether incorrect.
+Our author, in speaking of the Roman
+law of succession, appears to confound
+in some measure the Roman term
+<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">hæres</i> with the English word <em>heir</em>.
+The civilian definition of <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">hæres</i> is <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">qui
+ex testamento succedit in universum
+jus testatoris</i>. In Scotland the word
+<em>heir</em> has much the same import:&mdash;"The
+law deems it reasonable," says
+Erskine, (<cite>Inst.</cite> book iii. tit. 8, §. 2)
+"that every fiar shall have the power
+by deed, during his life, to declare
+who shall have the lands after his
+death: and the person so favoured is
+called the <em>heir</em>." Whereas the feudal
+notion of the word <em>heir</em> preserved in
+the English law, is of one upon whom
+the estate is cast, after the death of
+his ancestor, by act of law and right
+of blood. In other words, <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">hæres</i> is he
+who is appointed by the will of the
+deceased to succeed to his civil rights,
+and, in default of such appointment,
+the person indicated by a certain
+general law. But the <em>heir</em> (in English
+law) is the next and worthiest of
+blood, appointed by the common-law
+to succeed to his ancestor; although
+this rule of succession may be set
+aside by the appointment or will of
+the ancestor, if possessed of the fee-simple.
+Bearing in mind this distinction,
+we shall perceive the cause of
+Mr M'Culloch's error when he says&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"The Furian, the Voconian, and the
+Falcidian laws were passed, the first two
+under the republic, and the latter under
+Augustus, to secure the interests of children
+by limiting the power of fathers to
+make settlements to their prejudice." P. 6.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Now, the Voconian law, so far from
+protecting the interests of children,
+frequently operated in the case of
+daughters to prejudice them;&mdash;of this
+we have a remarkable instance in the
+case of Annius Asellus, dwelt upon by
+Cicero, in the second action against
+Verres, <cite>Orat.</cite> i., c. 41&mdash;44. The law
+prevented all registered or assessed
+(<i lang="it" xml:lang="it">censi</i>) citizens of Rome from appointing
+a female as their <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">hæres</i>. Again,
+the Furian and Falcidian laws were
+passed to secure the person nominated
+as <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">hæres</i> from being prejudiced by the
+excessive amount of legacies under
+the will. Hence, if a man died leaving
+only daughters, he was prohibited by
+the Voconian law from appointing any
+of them as his <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">hæres</i>; and the other two
+laws restrained him from appointing
+a nominal <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">hæres</i>, and leaving his property
+to his daughters by way of
+legacies (<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">legata</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>In truth, the English notion of heirship,
+as succession by right of blood,
+seems to be entirely due to the
+northern nations and the feudal system.
+Under both systems, however,
+it is observable how the progress
+of legislation and society has been
+to increase the privileges and diminish
+the duties of the constituted
+successor. For as, in tenure by chivalry,
+the heir was rather the person
+to whom, in consequence of proximity
+of blood, the lord might look for the
+performance of the military services,
+than the fortunate acquirer of the property,
+so the Roman <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">hæres</i> was regarded
+more in the light of one
+on whom devolved the religious, civil,
+and private duties of the deceased;
+frequently so burdensome that the
+inheritance was altogether refused,
+until the heir was guarded by such
+laws as the Furian and Falcidian.</p>
+
+<p>While we are in the humour of finding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+fault, we may notice a passage in
+which we think Mr M'Culloch has
+not dealt fairly with the English law.
+It is as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"In one respect the law of intestacy
+appears to stand much in need of revision.
+It is interpreted so as to give, in
+many cases, more to the eldest son than
+the real estate and his share of the personalty.
+Suppose, for example, that a
+person dies intestate, leaving an estate
+worth (say) L.100,000, with a mortgage
+made by him upon it for half its value, or
+£50,000, and leaving also £50,000 of personal
+property, in this case the real estate
+is obviously worth only £50,000; and
+consistently with the principles previously
+laid down, the eldest son should succeed
+to the estate burdened with its debt,
+and the personal property be divided
+among the children generally. But a
+different rule has been permitted to grow
+up. The personal property of persons
+dying intestate is the first fund for their
+debts, though secured upon their estates;
+and it is the surplus only, if there be any,
+after these debts are paid, that is divisible
+among the children, who, in the above
+case, would be entitled to nothing. This
+appears to be in all respects a most objectionable
+arrangement."&mdash;P. 41.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>We cannot see any anomaly here.
+"It is a rule in equity," says Cruise,
+(<cite>Digest</cite>, tit. xv. c. 4,) "that where a
+person dies, leaving a variety of funds,
+one of which must be charged with a
+debt, that the fund which received the
+benefit by the contracting the debt
+shall make satisfaction." This seems
+to us perfectly just and reasonable,
+according to the principles of the English
+law. In the case put by Mr
+M'Culloch, the personalty of £50,000
+obviously owes its existence to the
+mortgage debt; and it is, therefore,
+fairly applied to the discharge of that
+debt. But, <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">cessante ratione, cessat etiam
+lex</i>; this only applies where the deceased
+was himself the mortgager.
+Where the lands came to him mortgaged,
+his personal estate will not be
+liable, even though he may have made
+a covenant to pay it. We may refer
+the legal reader to the judgment of
+Lord King, delivered, with the assistance
+of Lord Chief-Justice Raymond
+and the Master of the Rolls, in Evelyn
+<em>v.</em> Evelyn, 2 P. Wms. 659. Compare
+Cope <em>v.</em> Cope, 1 Salk. 449. Shafto <em>v.</em>
+Shafto, 2 P. Wms. 664.</p>
+
+<p>Although the custom of primogeniture
+and the law of entail exercise a
+similar influence on our social state, yet,
+as they may be said in some measure
+to go by a different path towards the
+same end, Mr M'Culloch has treated
+them separately. With respect to the
+first, he begins by rebutting Adam
+Smith's sweeping denunciation:&mdash;"Nothing
+can be more contrary to the real
+interest of a numerous family, than a
+right which, in order to enrich one,
+beggars all the rest of the children."
+<cite>Wealth of Nations</cite>, p. 171.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"On the contrary," says Mr M'Culloch,
+"we are well convinced that much
+of the industry and of the superior wealth
+and civilisation of modern Europe, may
+be ascribed to the influence of the custom
+of primogeniture in determining the
+succession to estates; and that, were it
+abolished, or superseded by the opposite
+custom of equally dividing landed property
+among all the children, or even
+among all the sons, they would suffer
+universally by the change, the youngest as
+well as the oldest; while it would most
+seriously compromise the interests of
+every other class."&mdash;P. 28.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The truth is, that the right of primogeniture
+is rather to be regarded as
+having for its object the benefit of the
+community, than the interest of the
+particular family. If a man has
+£50,000 a-year and five sons, it may
+appear, at first sight, decidedly more
+conducive to "the greatest possible
+happiness of the greatest possible
+number," that each of these five sons
+should have £10,000 a-year, than that
+one should possess the whole, or bulk,
+of the paternal property, and the other
+four be left to buffet their way through
+the world. But it is for the interest
+of the nation that its aristocracy
+should be founded in old families, fortified
+and graced by historical associations;
+and these are only to be kept
+up by a devolution of their lands
+according to the feudal rule. But, as
+regards the interest of the particular
+family, it will appear on consideration
+that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred,
+this also is most effectually promoted
+by the law of primogeniture.
+By means of this law, the main stock of
+the family is left in its full strength as
+a nucleus round which the younger
+branches are united, and from which
+their members derive alike a great
+portion of their status in society, and
+inducement to advance themselves in
+their respective pursuits; and, on the
+other hand, the professions of the
+country are exalted and dignified by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+the infusion into their ranks of men of
+birth and education, who are, at the
+same time, dependent on those professions
+for their advancement. Sir
+Matthew Hale, as quoted by Mr
+M'Culloch, forcibly describes the results
+of the opposite system. "This
+equal division of inheritance," he says,
+speaking of the old times of Saxon
+gavelkind, "did by degrees bring the
+inhabitants to a low kind of country
+living; and families were broken; and
+the younger sons which, had they not
+had these little parcels of land to apply
+themselves to, would have betaken
+themselves to trades, or to military,
+or civil, or ecclesiastical employments,
+neglecting those opportunities, wholly
+applied themselves to those small divisions
+of land; whereby they neglected
+the opportunities of greater advantage
+of enriching themselves and the kingdom."
+And if it should be urged that
+Sir Matthew Hale could do little more
+than form an <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">à priori</i> judgment of the
+social condition of England in the
+days of the Confessor, it should be
+remembered that the picture here
+drawn is precisely applicable to the
+state of France at the present day,
+and may easily be traced to its similar
+system of partition. An important
+public result of the same system, as
+regards the landholders in the exercise
+of their functions as citizens, may also
+be observed in that country. The
+large body of landed proprietors,
+amounting to between four and five
+millions, so far from being the leaders
+of the people, are, perhaps, the most
+inert and uninfluential class of the
+whole community. They pay the bulk
+of the taxes, and grumble accordingly;
+but beyond a vague dread of aristocracy&mdash;not
+unnaturally founded, perhaps,
+on the traditions of the vexatious
+privileges swept away in 1791&mdash;they
+seem disposed calmly to acquiesce
+in all the proclamations, charters, and
+chimeras that maybe thrust upon them
+by busier handlers of the tools of
+government, and behold revolutions
+concocted in Paris, and bursting over
+their heads, apparently without the
+remotest conception that it any wise
+rests with them to control or guide
+the convulsion.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"It has sometimes been contended that
+the custom of primogeniture is injurious,
+from its interesting the leading families
+of the country in the support of expensive
+public establishments, in which their
+younger branches are most commonly
+placed."&mdash;P. 38.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>This objection also Mr M'Culloch
+brings to the test of experiment, and
+shows that this bias, if it really exist,
+is little perceptible, and that the aristocracy
+have shown much more zeal
+to discharge the functions of the ill-paid
+offices of the army and navy,
+than to get into their hands the lucrative
+situations connected with the
+administration of justice. It was certainly
+not the immediate interest of
+the aristocracy, for instance, to maintain
+the offices of the six clerks in
+Chancery, the profits on which were
+estimated for compensation at sums
+varying, we believe, from £2500 to
+£1000 per annum.</p>
+
+<p>The law of entail is traceable to the
+same human instincts as the law of
+primogeniture. The clannish feelings
+of the northern nations, their notion
+of representation by blood, and the
+territorial character of their citizenship,
+all combined to produce an anxiety
+to perpetuate the old stocks in
+the homes of their fathers. Nor is this
+desire of posthumous control over the
+transmission of lands the product, as
+is sometimes alleged, of an artificial
+state of society. Man's possessory
+instinct essentially connects itself with
+the future&mdash;<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Serit arbores quæ alteri
+prosint sæculo.</i> The justice of gratifying
+this wish by general laws of the
+community is not more impeachable
+than that of guarding the indefeasible
+possession of the owner during his
+lifetime. It remains to be seen how
+far the sanction of entails is consistent
+with the good of the nation in
+general.</p>
+
+<p>Every lawyer knows that the progress
+of legal decisions in England has
+been adverse to entails, and that
+although the statute De Donis continues
+on the statute-book, yet it was
+long ago rendered almost nugatory by
+the introduction of fines and recoveries.
+Hence the term entail is now
+popularly applied to denote the strict
+settlement of lands, under provisions
+which prevent them from passing from
+the heirs to whom they are limited;
+this having been, of old, the result of
+an entail properly so called, though it
+now requires a more complicated mode
+of settling, and can only endure (so as
+to render the lands inalienable) for a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+life or any number of lives in being,
+and twenty-one years afterwards.
+This more popular meaning of the
+word entail is that which Mr M'Culloch
+follows&mdash;his object being to treat
+of the influence of tying up lands from
+alienation.</p>
+
+<p>Measuring the practice of entails
+by the rule of utility, Mr M'Culloch
+selects two points as the principal
+topics of discussion.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"In the first place, it is alleged in favour
+of entails that they stimulate exertion
+and economy; that they hold out to
+industry and ambition the strongest and
+safest excitement in the prospect of founding
+an imperishable name and a powerful
+family, and of being remembered and
+venerated by endless generations as their
+chief and benefactor. And, in the second
+place, it is said that entails form the only
+solid bulwark of a respectable aristocracy,
+and prevent generations from being
+ruined by the folly or misfortunes of an
+individual."&mdash;P. 78.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The first of these propositions is, no
+doubt, partially true; but the motive
+put forward has not, we think, as a
+matter of experience, the force that
+might, at first sight, be attributed to
+it. Perhaps the keenest accumulators
+of wealth have not been those who
+have fixed their capital in a landed
+estate. The man of business habits
+and judicious speculation is drawn to
+make his fortune in obedience to a
+passion which is partly developed, and
+at all events fostered, by the pursuit
+of his life. It cannot be said to arise
+altogether from a notion of benefiting
+posterity, of being the founder of a
+house&mdash;the man of whom future Fitztomkynses
+shall be ashamed&mdash;that
+John Tomkins, merchant, sets at
+nought all the expostulations of self-indulgence:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Tun' mare transilias? tibi tortâ cannabe fulto<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Cœna sit in transtro? Veientanumque rubellum<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">Exhalet vapidâ læsum pice fissilis obba?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noind">Enormous fortunes were accumulated
+during the declining days of the Roman
+republic. But entails being then
+unknown, and the Roman nobility
+having no territorial position, these
+fortunes, usually acquired by oppression
+and extortion in the provinces,
+were squandered in largesses and corruption
+at home. There was no other
+way in which a Roman citizen of
+great wealth could establish the influence
+of his family. He could not, like,
+all English gentleman, connect his
+name with a landed estate, and extend
+his influence by those good offices and
+local duties which lie so immediately
+open to a man in that capacity. As
+an almost necessary consequence, he
+sought for power through the demoralisation
+and corruption of the holders
+of the suffrage&mdash;causes which contributed
+more than any other to the
+downfall of the republic. By lavishing
+his gold in this manner, he obtained,
+not only political eminence for himself,
+but also that power which led
+to proconsulates and proprætorships
+among his heirs, and thus gave them
+the opportunity of repairing, by fresh
+exactions, his diminished revenues.</p>
+
+<p>Hence we should rather view the
+law of entail as an inducement to a
+man to perpetuate his thousands in
+broad acres than to acquire his fortune
+in the first instance. And, in conformity
+with this view, it may be observed,
+that it is more generally the
+son or other successor than the architect
+of the fortune himself who converts
+the accumulated wealth into this
+permanent form.</p>
+
+<p>Mr M'Culloch's second point&mdash;the
+preservation of families by means of
+entails&mdash;is one of wider interest and
+more general importance. In a bustling
+mercantile community like ours,
+we cannot too jealously guard any
+institution which, directly or indirectly,
+tends to preserve distinctions
+due to something more than mere
+wealth. And there can be no doubt
+that the system of entails has saved
+many an ancient line from being
+thrust from its home of centuries to a
+strange spot, and this not only among
+the titled and wealthy, but among the
+yeomanry and "statesmen." In England,
+of course, a family may frequently
+perish through the possession
+of an estate in fee-simple passing into
+the hands of an unthrifty representative
+of the line, as the settlements require
+constant renewal. But in Scotland
+the system of perpetual entail
+exercises a much more potent influence
+in their behalf. Mr M'Culloch,
+though he rebuts many of the objections
+urged against the Scottish law, is
+nevertheless anxious to see it assimilated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+in a great measure to that of
+England. There is, however, an exception
+which he would make to the
+rule against perpetuity of entails. It
+is with regard to the peerage, in which
+matter we cordially agree with him.
+There were, in ancient times, instances
+of barons who were degraded from
+their dignity on account of their lack
+of sufficient revenue to support their
+hereditary title. The independence
+and the dignity of the House of Lords
+would be alike maintained by an enactment
+enabling, or even obliging, all
+peers to tie up by perpetual entail a
+certain portion of their estates to
+accompany the title. Such anomalies
+as that of an Earl of Buchan (Lord
+Erskine's father, see Lord Campbell's
+<cite>Lives of the Chancellors</cite>) living in the
+uppermost flat of a sixteen-story
+house, would thereby be avoided with
+considerable advantage to the national
+interests.</p>
+
+<p>Mr M'Culloch, therefore, who quotes
+Sir William Temple and Dr Johnson
+on the same side, would preserve the
+law of perpetual entail for the Scottish
+peerage, and extend it also to
+that of England. In other respects he
+is, as we have above stated, in favour
+of a considerable modification of the
+Scottish law of entail. He admits,
+however, the difficulty of dealing with
+existing entails.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"These have established a right of
+property not only in the actual possessors
+and their families, but, speaking generally,
+in a wide circle of collateral heirs;
+nor could the rights of the unborn heirs
+be affected without annulling the clauses
+in a great number of settlements, and also
+in marriage-contracts and other deeds
+<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">inter vivos</i>. It is, therefore, hardly possible
+materially to relax the fetters of
+entails with strict justice to all parties,
+though it might perhaps be slowly and
+gradually effected without inflicting any
+very serious hardship on any individual.
+We incline to think that this might be
+most easily brought about by saving the
+rights of living heirs of entail, and of
+such heirs as may be born under existing
+marriage-contracts. The interests of the
+possible heirs that might be prejudiced by
+the adoption of some such rule as this,
+are of so very unsubstantial a description
+that they might safely be neglected."
+P. 78.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>At the time we write, a measure is
+pending before Parliament, entitled
+"A Bill for the amendment of the Law
+of Entail in Scotland," and endorsed
+with the names of the Lord-Advocate,
+Sir George Grey, and Mr Solicitor-General
+for Scotland. Whatever difficulties
+Mr M'Culloch feels with regard
+to relaxing the fetters of entail, it is
+obvious that the contrivers of this bill
+are in nowise hampered by them. They
+go to work in the most off-hand manner
+possible. A short and unobtrusive-looking
+bill is to drive clean through
+all the existing settlements and deeds
+of tailzie, with their complicated train
+of clauses irritant and resolutive, as if
+no mortal was concerned in the
+matter, and estates were the proper
+toys of law-makers.</p>
+
+<p>The fact of the quantity of alienable
+land diminishing in a commercial
+country, while trade and population
+are increasing, is no doubt a state of
+things which calls for a remedy, since
+there must at some period or another,
+be a failure of land adequate to meet
+the requirements of realised fortunes.
+If, in the judgment of reasonable and
+practical observers, the difficulty could
+be met by making all future entails
+subject to be barred by a process
+analogous to that existing in England,
+we should think there could be no
+hesitation in affirming it to be the
+most just and most expedient course
+to introduce such a change, and leave
+the existing settlements in their contemplated
+perpetuity. If, however, it
+can be clearly established that already
+too much land is locked up in the
+northern kingdom, and that the soil
+now free from entail is insufficient to
+satisfy the requirements of future
+buyers, then we should say that the
+utmost care and skill were required
+in framing enactments which should
+adapt themselves to the justice of
+particular cases, and should, as far
+as might be, save existing and vested
+interests in their delicate multiplicity
+and connexion. If ever such care and
+skill were required, it would be in a
+measure which interferes more extensively
+with vested rights&mdash;usually with
+good reason a sacred thing in the eye
+of the law&mdash;than any which appears in
+the statute-books of the three kingdoms.
+A statute to convert the Irish
+tenants into owners of the fee-simple
+of their several holdings, (a project
+which has been talked of,) would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+scarcely be a more startling invasion
+of the rights of property as they are
+usually recognised. We do not, however,
+intend to impeach the general
+provisions of the bill. If, as we before
+observed, so important a change was
+found to be necessary, it is right to
+make it; and it is no more than was
+effected in England by a more gradual
+process&mdash;the subtle fictions of the law-courts,
+which virtually got rid of the
+statute De Donis. But we can anticipate
+nothing but uncertainty and
+multiplied litigation, from the apparently
+crude and careless project now
+before us.</p>
+
+<p>An instance of the loose wording of
+this bill strikes the reader in the very
+first section. It proposes to enact
+"that where any estate in Scotland
+shall be entailed by a deed of tailzie,
+dated on or after the first day of
+March one thousand eight hundred and
+forty-eight, it shall be lawful for any
+heir of entail, born after the date of
+such tailzie, being of full age, and in
+possession of such entailed estate in
+virtue of such tailzie, <em>to acquire such
+estate in fee-simple</em>, by applying to the
+Court of Session, &amp;c." Now, what is
+this estate which the heir of entail is
+to acquire in fee-simple? The estate-tail,
+for so it is by hypothesis. But to
+talk of acquiring an estate-tail in fee-simple
+is nothing better than downright
+nonsense. An estate-tail is, by
+the origin of the word, cut or carved
+(taillé) out of the fee-simple. You
+may talk of converting or enlarging
+the part into the whole, but you cannot
+talk of acquiring the part in the
+entirety of the whole. This is not all;
+the bill plunges at once <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">in medias res</i>,
+without favouring us with any sort of
+definition of the important phrase,
+"heir of entail," in this and other
+clauses. The same expression in
+the statute 1 Jac. VII. c. 32, has
+already (see <cite>Sandford's Entails</cite>, p.
+231) given rise to no small questioning
+and litigation, which promise to
+be renewed in abundance should this
+measure pass into a law. Again, perpetual
+inalienability is not an incident
+to all estates-tail. Lands merely
+bound by what are called the prohibitive
+clauses, may be alienated for a
+valuable consideration, though not by
+a voluntary or (as the Scotch say)
+gratuitous conveyance. Tailzies, however,
+to which no clauses are annexed,
+do not prevent the heir from conveying
+the lands in any manner he
+pleases. Now, as, the object of this
+bill is to relax the bonds of perpetual
+inalienability, we presume that only
+those tailzies which are guarded by
+the irritant and resolutive clauses are
+within its purview. If so, the general
+expression "deed of tailzie" should
+have been distinctly limited. If that
+expression should be held to comprehend
+all deeds of tailzie, which it must
+of course do when taken by itself, then
+the proposed act will exercise a very
+extensive disabling power, by restricting
+the unlimited right of alienation
+under tailzies of simple destination,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>
+and the right of alienation
+for value under tailzies with prohibitive
+clauses only introduced, to the
+peculiar form and instrument pointed
+out by this bill, and which we suppose
+was devised in analogy to the
+forms substituted for fines and recoveries
+by the statute 3 &amp; 4 Will. IV.
+c. 74.</p>
+
+<p>We have already seen how Mr
+M'Culloch would deal with the difficulty
+of disturbing the devolution of
+lands already limited in perpetual
+entail&mdash;namely, by "saving the rights
+of living heirs of entail, and of heirs
+born under existing marriage-contracts."
+We think our author has
+not, in this passage, expressed himself
+with due legal perspicuity and
+precision. The phrase "living heirs
+of entail" is somewhat vague and uncertain;
+we presume Mr M'Culloch
+intended the living issue of the heir
+of entail in possession, and all living
+heirs-substitute and their living issue.
+Again, what are existing marriage-contracts?
+Probably those marriage-contracts
+are intended, which are
+annexed to marriages solemnised
+before the introduction of a new
+system. Both these suggestions, as
+we have interpreted them, might
+with justice, and advantage have
+formed part of the new law. It is
+true that this would, at all events
+for a considerable period of time, stop
+short of that assimilation of the Scottish
+law to the English which seems<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+to have been a great object with the
+framers of this bill. But the two
+systems would gradually correspond;
+and we hold that there is a principle
+of justice involved in the upholding
+of contracts the objects of which are
+as yet unfulfilled. Where an English
+settler has limited lands to a man for
+life, remainder to his first and other
+sons successively in tail, he knew, at
+the time of making the settlement,
+that it was liable to be barred with
+consent of the eldest son on his coming
+of age. But it was not so with a
+Scotch settler who executed a deed of
+tailzie to several brothers as successive
+heirs-substitute; and the legislature
+has no right, without the gravest
+public cause, to step in and defeat his
+intention.</p>
+
+<p>But the bill, though intending to
+give far greater liberty to the owner
+of an entailed estate than Mr M'Culloch
+does, or, as we think, is consistent
+with justice, sets about affording him
+aid in the most ambiguous and misty
+manner conceivable. The 2d clause
+enacts that the heir of entail in possession,
+born after the date of the act,
+may disentail in the manner provided
+by the act; and an heir of entail born
+before the date of the act may similarly
+disentail, "with the consent (and
+not otherwise) of the heir-substitute
+next in succession, and heir-apparent
+under the entail of the heir in possession,"
+he being born after the date of
+the act, and capable of contracting.</p>
+
+<p>We should recommend the tenant
+in tail to be very cautious how he
+attempts to "acquire his estate in
+fee-simple" under the provisions of
+this clause. He is to obtain the consent
+of the heir-substitute next in succession.
+So far his course is clear.
+But the same person is also designated
+by the term "heir-apparent under the
+entail of the heir in possession." Now,
+is this a qualification of the general
+term "heir-substitute next in succession,"
+and must such person, under
+the act, be also heir-apparent? If so,
+what is the particular qualification
+required of him under the expression
+"heir-apparent?" Adhering to the
+use of the phrase in popular language,
+we must take, as the only circumstances
+under which the next heir-substitute
+and the heir-apparent are
+one and the same person, the case in
+which the first estate under the entail
+is limited to a man and the heirs of
+his body, and the second to his second
+son and the heirs of his body; then,
+supposing the eldest son to die in the
+lifetime of his father, the second son
+would be both the next heir-substitute
+and also the heir-apparent. Is this,
+therefore, the only case within the
+act? Scarcely, we should think, was
+it so intended. Are we, then, to interpret
+the word heir-apparent in the
+sense in which the phrase heir-presumptive
+is generally used; and must
+we suppose that the cases indicated
+are those in which there is no issue
+under the first entail, and therefore
+the next heir-substitute is what we
+should call heir-presumptive to the
+person in possession? If so, what is
+to become of the numerous cases where
+there is issue to take under the existing
+estate-tail? Or can it be that the
+issue in tail is altogether forgotten by
+this act, and that the person whose
+consent is required is merely the next
+heir-substitute in any case? We are
+inclined to think this the most probable
+explanation of this unfortunate
+clause, but can scarcely imagine that
+it will be suffered to pass into a law.
+A further ambiguity, however, arises
+with respect to this term heir-apparent,
+from its having a peculiar technical
+meaning in the Scottish law.
+"He who is entitled," says Erskine,
+"to enter heir to a deceased ancestor
+is, before his actual entry, styled, both
+in our statutes and by our writers,
+<em>apparent heir</em>." If the bill intends
+any reference to this legal acceptation
+of the phrase, we can only understand
+the person whose consent is required,
+to be such person as, being next heir-substitute,
+would, on the immediate
+decease of the possessor, be his apparent
+heir, or entitled to enter on the
+lands. This, again, shuts out all those
+estates where the possessor has issue
+in tail, and would, consequently, limit
+the operation of the bill to exceptional
+cases. We think we have said enough
+to convince our readers that this clause
+is not likely to set free many entailed
+estates in Scotland&mdash;at all events, not
+without a chaos of litigation, in which
+the elements of profit will have a tendency
+to range themselves on the side
+of the lawyers.</p>
+
+<p>The person whose consent is to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+obtained (whoever that mysterious
+person may be) is, as we have seen,
+to be born after the date of the act.
+In conformity with this principle, one
+would have supposed that where the
+next heir-substitute shall have been
+born before that date, then it should
+be necessary to obtain the consent of
+the first person entitled to take <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">per
+formam doni</i>, who shall be born after
+this date, together with the consent of
+all those who are to take before him.
+The third clause, however, introduces
+a new form of protection to the settlement,
+and merely enacts that, in such
+cases, the consent of a certain number
+of the heirs-substitute is to be obtained,
+(the blank left for the number
+was filled up with the word "three"
+in committee of the House of Commons.
+Nothing said about the issue
+in tail, as before.</p>
+
+<p>Where the main enactments of the
+bill are so incomprehensible, it is useless
+to dwell on its details. We can
+only say, that whatever evils may be
+shown to exist under the present law,
+they will not only fail to be cured, but
+must be aggravated tenfold, by such a
+product of off-hand legislation&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">"Sent before its time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that so lamely and unfashionable,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noind">that it must necessarily die of its own
+deformity, unless the law-courts will
+lick it into shape by their decisions,&mdash;a
+shape (as it must be) in which its
+own parents would not know it again.</p>
+
+<p>The law of real property in France
+exhibits a system so distinctly antagonistic
+to our English and Scottish
+law of entail, that we cannot be surprised
+at the attention with which Mr
+M'Culloch has investigated its influences.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"According to the law of France, a
+person with one child may dispose at
+pleasure of a moiety of his property, the
+child inheriting the other moiety as legitim,
+or matter of right; a person having
+two children can only dispose of a third
+part of his property; and those having
+more than two must divide three-fourths
+of their property equally amongst them,
+one-fourth part being all that is then left
+at their disposal. When a father dies intestate,
+his property is equally divided
+among his children, without respect to sex
+or seniority. Nothing can be more distinctly
+opposed to the principles we have
+endeavoured to establish, and to the system
+followed in this country, than this
+law. It is therefore lucky that it is now
+no novelty. It has been established for
+more than half a century, so that we may
+trace and exhibit its practical influence
+over the condition of the extensive population
+subject to its operation. Such an
+experiment is of rare occurrence, but
+when made is invaluable. And if its results
+should confirm the conclusions already
+come to, it will go far to establish them
+on an unassailable basis."&mdash;P. 80-81.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>We have already seen how these
+results may be traced in the state of
+French agriculture. They may also,
+we think, be discerned in the relative
+position which the landholders of
+France bear to other classes in the
+social scale. These, numbering between
+four and five millions, ought,
+as a class, to constitute the leaders of
+the nation. So far from this being the
+case, they are perhaps the most inert
+and uninfluential portion of the community,
+having apparently had little
+or no voice in the two revolutions
+which have swept over their heads
+within the last eighteen years, and as
+little in the erection, maintenance, or
+downfall of the Throne of the Barricades.
+It yet remains to be seen
+whether they will continue to accept
+every thing which the clubs of Paris
+are willing to force upon them. As
+tax-payers and cultivators of the soil,
+it can hardly suit them to be propagandists;
+as men who have something
+to lose, they will not readily give in
+to the dictatorial vagaries of Ledru
+Rollin. If, however, they would hold
+their own, it is time for them to be up
+and doing. France has been governed
+by a minority before now.</p>
+
+<p>We have always regarded it as one
+of the main advantages of a landed
+aristocracy, that it raises up a principle
+of social rank antagonistic to
+that of mere wealth. In France, the
+constant subdivision and transfer of
+land breaks down this influence, and
+causes land to be regarded as a mere
+marketable article and equivalent for
+money.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"In countries where the custom of
+primogeniture exercises a powerful influence,
+families become identified with
+estates&mdash;the family representing the estate,
+and the estate the family. The
+wealth and consideration enjoyed by the
+latter depend upon, and are intimately<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+connected with, the possession of the lands
+which have descended to them from their
+ancestors. They estimate their value by
+another than a mere pecuniary standard.
+They are attached to them by the oldest
+and most endearing associations; and they
+are seldom parted with except under the
+most painful circumstances. Hence the
+perpetuity of property in England in the
+same families, notwithstanding the limited
+duration of entails; great numbers of
+estates being at this moment enjoyed by
+those whose ancestors acquired them at or
+soon after the Conquest. But in France
+such feelings are proscribed. Estates and
+families have there no abiding connexion;
+and at the demise of an individual who
+has a number of children, his estate can
+hardly escape being subdivided. And
+this effect of the law tends to imbue the
+proprietors with corresponding sentiments
+and feelings. 'Non seulement,' says M.
+De Tocqueville, 'la loi des successions
+rend difficile aux familles de conserver
+intacts les mêmes domaines, mais elle leur
+òte le désir de le tenter, et elle les entraîne,
+en quelque sorte, à coopérer avec
+elle à leur propre ruine.'"&mdash;P. 85-86.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>But Mr M'Culloch dwells more particularly
+on the injurious effects to
+agriculture from the parcelling out of
+the land into small properties. He
+shows that a small proprietor is not
+so efficient a cultivator of the soil as a
+tenant, in which doctrine Arthur
+Young had preceded him. He shows,
+also, that the subdivision of properties
+leads to the subdivision of farms, and
+urges that it is impossible to have good
+farming on small patches of land. Of
+the miseries of an agricultural system
+carried on by small farmers on petty
+holdings, we have already a sufficient
+example in Ireland. We cannot but
+think, however, that the progress of
+things in England has too much swallowed
+up those little farms of from
+thirty to fifty acres, which at one time
+were common over the country. Not
+but what capital is employed at a
+great disadvantage on these little holdings&mdash;but
+where there is a general system
+of good-sized farms, an intermixture,
+of smaller farms is not attended
+with injurious effects proportional to
+those which arise where the whole of
+the land is split up into minute parcels.
+And then small farmers furnish a link
+between the yeomanry and peasantry,
+which it is useful to maintain, cheering
+the poor man's lot by pointing out to
+him a path by which lie may advance
+from the position of a day-labourer to
+that of an occupier of land. On the
+same principle, we are rejoiced to observe
+the gradual extension of the allotment
+system; although it would
+have a still more beneficial effect, we
+think, if the land was granted in the
+shape of a croft about the cottage,
+thus giving the tenant a greater interest,
+and more individual sense of proprietorship,
+than when his piece of
+land is packed, along with a number
+of others, into a mass of unsightly
+patches.</p>
+
+<p>In connexion with the small holdings
+in Ireland, it should not be forgotten
+that this subdivision of the
+land results mainly from the practice
+of sub-letting; and this again has
+arisen in a great degree from the
+practice of granting long leases,
+the want of which in England has
+served, among many other things, for
+an outcry against the landlords. Mr
+M'Culloch has pointed out the evils of
+too long leases on the farming tenant,
+that they superinduce a sense of security
+which easily degenerates into
+indolence. But the influence on Ireland
+is even worse, by breaking up
+the land into small patches, on which
+the occupier can but just maintain
+himself, paying an exorbitant rent to
+the middleman. For it is not the
+eager demand for land amongst the
+Irish peasantry, as we sometimes
+hear, that has produced this subdivision
+of the land, but the subdivision
+that has produced the demand, by
+putting the cultivation of the land
+into the hands of a class who are
+unable, through want of skill and
+capital, to carry it on; who cannot,
+therefore, furnish employment for the
+labourers, and thus drive them to
+grasp at little parcels of land as their
+only means of securing a wretched
+subsistence; and this security, as we
+know, has more than once proved but
+a fancied one, as in the disastrous
+failure of the potato crop.</p>
+
+<p>While we are on this subject, we
+may draw the reader's attention to a
+very able pamphlet by an Irish gentleman,
+on Irish matters, which,
+though we believe it has never been
+published, has had an extensive private
+circulation. We allude to "An
+Address to the Members of the House,
+of Commons on the Landlord and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+Tenant Question, by Warren H. R.
+Jackson, Esq." The work, though
+somewhat tinged with the hard politico-economical
+school, is written
+with great shrewdness of thought and
+freedom from prejudice, and is well
+worthy the careful attention of the
+honourable House. The writer, in
+discussing the vexed question he has
+taken in hand, fully coincides with
+the general principles laid down by
+Mr M'Culloch. "This," he says,
+(speaking of the subdivision of land)
+"is one of the monster grievances of
+Ireland, and you will do little good
+unless you abate it." This abatement
+he would bring about mainly
+by prospective laws, as by placing all
+contracts for subletting <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">hors la loi</i>,
+and so taking away from the first
+lessee all power of recovering his rent
+from the actual tenant. We cannot
+but think that this would be found a
+most salutary enactment. It should
+be remembered, that the occupier is
+responsible to the owner of the freehold
+by the power of distress vested
+in the latter, and it is but just that
+he should be relieved from the liability
+to pay two rents&mdash;a liability which it
+is manifest no good farmer would incur,
+but which the squalid ravager of
+the soil in Ireland is always eager
+for.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that no further
+legislative enactment is required in
+Ireland, and that administrative wisdom
+must do what yet remains to be
+done. Mr Jackson, however, shows
+that there are such deep-seated evils
+in Ireland as cannot be cured except
+by the direct interference of the legislature.
+But we think he expects too
+much from the Sale of Encumbered
+Estates Bill. An extensive change
+of proprietorship would, we are persuaded,
+be a great evil in Ireland.
+There is an attachment in general to
+the "ould stock" among their poorer
+neighbours, which would naturally be
+followed by a jealousy and prejudice
+against the new comers who displaced
+them. And this prejudice would of
+itself neutralise any efforts for improvement
+which the landlord might otherwise
+be disposed to make&mdash;although,
+in most cases, we should not expect
+much effort in this direction from a
+stranger mortgagee, often an unwilling
+purchaser, who would naturally
+be anxious to contract with those
+parties from whom he could obtain his
+rents with least trouble, leaving them
+to deal with the land as they liked,
+and thereby continuing and increasing
+the odious middleman system.</p>
+
+<p>Mr M'Culloch does not confine his
+examination of the compulsory partition
+in France to its influence on
+agriculture. He has discerned certain
+political effects of that and the concomitant
+system of which it is a part,
+with a precision which subsequent
+events have elevated into a sort of
+prophecy. The preface to his work is
+dated December 1847, and the work
+was published, we believe, early in
+January. There can, therefore, be no
+grounds for classing the following passage
+with those anticipations which
+are made after the event:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"The aristocratical element is no longer
+to be found in French society; and the
+compulsory division of the soil, while it
+prevents the growth of an aristocracy,
+impresses the same character of mobility
+upon landed possessions that is impressed
+on the families of their occupiers. Hence
+the prevalent want of confidence in the
+continuance of the present order of things
+in France. What is there in that country
+to oppose an effectual resistance to a
+revolutionary movement? Monarchy in
+France has been stripped of those old associations
+and powerful bulwarks whence
+it derives almost all its lustre and support
+in this and other countries. The
+throne stands in solitary, though not
+unenvied dignity, without the shelter of
+a single eminence, exposed to the full
+force of the furious blasts that sweep
+from every point of the surrounding
+level. There is nothing intermediate,
+nothing to hinder a hostile majority in the
+Chamber of Deputies from at once subverting
+the regal branch of the constitution,
+or changing the reigning dynasty."&mdash;P.
+132-133.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Scarcely was the printer's ink dry
+on this passage when the Throne of
+the Barricades was gone. We have
+given our author full credit for his
+sagacity in penetrating into the future,
+but we think it would puzzle him to
+foretell what is to come next. We
+are disposed to doubt, however, whether
+an aristocracy could have preserved
+the throne of Louis Philippe.
+It is true that in our own country
+William of Nassau and George of
+Brunswick maintained their crowns by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+the aid of powerful sections of the
+nobility. But the revolutions which
+gave them those crowns were not the
+volcanic outbursts of popular force.
+Under such outbursts, no successful
+usurper, no "Hero-king," no sovereign
+by the will of the people, has
+been able to devise a principle which
+shall establish his throne in security,
+and serve in the stead of that prestige
+of old hereditary succession, that
+grand feudal idea of kingly right,
+which is the essential fountain of
+the reverence that guards royalty.
+Louis Philippe would have confirmed
+his sovereignty by means of the
+influence exerted upon interested
+officials. No sooner was his power
+shaken in its unstable equilibrium
+than the men whom his gold had
+bought rushed to worship the rising
+sun of the young Republic. Napoleon,
+before him, would have built up
+a similar power on military glory:
+his doom was sealed when his eagles
+turned from the field of Leipsic.
+Cromwell employed religious fanaticism
+to the same end: the fanaticism
+lasted his time; but we will venture
+to say that, had he lived, his protectorate
+would not have reached the
+seventeen years allotted to the democratic
+King of the French.</p>
+
+<p>Our author is of opinion that, after
+all, the system of compulsory partition
+will fail to guard what has since
+become the French Republic:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"But, though it were possible, which
+it is not, to obviate the mischievous
+influence of the French and other plans
+for preventing the increase and continuance
+of property in the same families,
+it may be confidently predicted that
+they will, in time to come as hitherto,
+wholly fail in their grand object of perpetuating
+the ascendancy of the democracy.
+In old settled and fully peopled
+countries, where the bulk of the population
+is necessarily poor and dependent,
+an aristocracy is indispensable for the
+support of a free system of government&mdash;'Il
+importe à tous les peuples qui ont la
+prétention de devenir ou de rester puissants,
+d'avoir une aristocratie, c'est-à-dire
+un corps héréditaire ou non, qui conserve
+et perpetue les traditions, donne de
+l'esprit de suite à la politique, et se voue
+à l'art le plus difficile de tous, qu'
+aujourd'hui cependant tout le monde
+croit savoir sans l'avoir appris, celui de
+gouverner. Un peuple sans aristocratic
+pourra briller dans les lettres et les arts,
+mais sa gloire politique me semble
+devoir être passagère comme un méteore.'
+<span class="smcap">Chevalier</span>, <cite>Lettres sur l'Amerique</cite>, ii.
+379," pp. 171, 172.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>We have already said that we
+think England certain to have an
+aristocracy of some description. The
+ambition of the people to advance
+themselves individually in the social
+scale will necessarily lead to a high
+value being set upon those advanced
+positions, and will tend to make them
+the fulcrum from which the country is
+governed. And we can conceive
+nothing more fatal to our national
+organisation than the result which
+would follow indirectly from the repeal
+of these laws. It may be supposed
+at first sight that no very vital
+question is involved here. Let those
+who suppose so, take a view of the
+probable condition of society which
+would ensue. These, and other so-called
+feudalities, being swept away,
+land becomes a commercial article,
+according to the desire of the plutocratic
+reformers. Estates are trucked
+about in the market like bills of exchange;
+constantly changing hands,
+their owners have little connexion
+with them or the people that live on
+them, regarding them merely in the
+light of so much realised capital. The
+old families gradually become dispossessed;
+mere wealth is recognised
+as the sole qualification for rank and
+influence; and the leading class in
+the state is composed of men who are
+an aristocracy by virtue of ready
+money. Far be it from us to undervalue
+the enterprise, integrity, and
+industry of our merchant manufacturers
+and tradesmen. But we will
+say that when we meet with a man,
+as we often do among those classes,
+endowed with a broad range of
+thought and high and noble aims,
+we regard him as possessing these
+qualities not as a consequence, but
+in spite of a commercial training.
+The immediate effects of such training
+are to narrow the mind and
+cramp the soul, not in respect of
+domestic and social life&mdash;for in these,
+perhaps, the middle classes are unsurpassed
+by any other&mdash;but in the provinces
+of the statesman and the
+politician.</p>
+
+<p>In these times, it seems to be commonly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+supposed that a legislator&mdash;like
+a poet&mdash;<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">nascitur, non fit</i>. There is a
+certain kind of training, the acquisition
+of a certain cast of thought, which
+are requisites for statesmen as a class,
+as much as his legal reading for a lawyer,
+or his apprenticeship for a handicraftsman.
+Statesmen, however, have
+to deal with practical matters; and
+therefore we think, as we have before
+said, that while the predominance of
+these requisites in the legislature is
+essential to good government, there
+may with advantage at the same time
+be a certain admixture of the men
+practically versed in commerce and
+manufactures. But this should be always
+a subordinate, not a leading, element
+in the principles which regulate
+the administration of government.&mdash;We
+repeat, that the counting-house,
+the loom, and the anvil, are not the
+best schools for legislators. For that
+office, a man requires leisure and education.
+We shall be told that a
+"Squire" is not necessarily an educated
+man. We do not maintain that
+he is. But, in the first place, as we
+cannot well have an education-test,
+we must go to the class in which, as a
+class, we find the highest and most
+enlarged form of education; and we
+believe that this qualification can,
+without question, be claimed for the
+leisure-class, or gentlemen of England.
+In the second place, it should
+be remembered, that if the squire is
+not always individually what we
+should call an educated man, he yet
+imbibes his thoughts and notions from
+those who are such, who give tone to
+the society in which he moves. In
+investigating the characteristics of
+classes, it can scarcely be but that a
+number of exceptions to our general
+rules will force themselves upon our
+attention. Yet, in good truth, we believe
+that almost all the individual
+examples which can be cited will bear
+out our estimate. The highest contributions
+to the legislature, on the
+part of the middle or commercial
+classes, have been the shrewd practical
+men of business, men of the stamp
+of Mr Hawes. As for the Cobdens
+and Brights, <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">et hoc genus omne</i>, their
+only motive principle appears to be
+the interests of <em>My Shop</em>. Their notion
+of loyalty, patriotism, and British
+prosperity, is nothing but low wages,
+high profits, and a brisk trade in calicoes.</p>
+
+<p>Many of our readers will recollect
+a passage in Cicero, (<cite>Off.</cite> i. 42,) in
+which he reprobates, more or less, all
+commercial pursuits, in respect of their
+operations on the moral insight of
+man, and finishes with the praise of
+the culture of the soil, in these words:
+"Omnium rerum ex quibus aliquid
+acquiritur, nihil est agriculturâ meliùs,
+nihil uberiùs, nihil dulciùs, nihil homine
+libero digniùs." In this country we
+should find it difficult to go along
+with the feelings of the old Roman
+republican on these points. But
+though we have already expressed
+our high sense of the social and domestic
+virtues of the middle or
+trading classes, yet we are most confident
+in the truth of our position,
+that the shop is the worst possible
+preparation for the senate. We know
+that there is a talk abroad about
+earnest workers, drones of the hive,
+and so forth. By all means, let every
+man work who is fit to work. But it
+is not necessary, nor is it desirable,
+that every man should work for gain.
+On the contrary, we hold that a class
+endowed with leisure is indispensable,
+not only for the grace and civilisation,
+but even for the moral well-being of
+a community. That money should
+become the one grand loadstar of
+thought and action is the bane of
+those societies where the pursuit of
+money is the general employment;
+but where there is such a leisure-class
+as we have spoken of, forming the
+topmost rank of a nation otherwise
+chiefly mercantile, there are numberless
+influences derived from it which
+percolate through the underlying
+masses, and check or modify the
+exclusive reverence for wealth to
+which they would otherwise be prone.
+Even a mere blind respect for rank or
+title exalts the mind immeasurably as
+compared with mammon-worship.</p>
+
+<p>While on the subject of our leisure-class,
+which is pretty nearly synonymous
+with the landed gentry, we must
+not pass over in silence a subject in
+connexion with which the outcry
+against "the drones of the hive" is
+frequently introduced. We refer to
+the Game-Laws. The whole question
+of these laws has been so fully discussed
+in a recent Number of this magazine,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+that we will not attempt in any
+way to open that controversy. But
+they are so commonly coupled with
+the Laws of Entail as "feudalities,"
+and as interfering with the transmission
+of land according to "commercial
+principles," that we could not altogether
+omit the mention of them. We
+will at this time only observe, that the
+denunciation of the Game-Laws is a
+part of the crusade which Hard-Cash,
+that arrogant monopolist who bears no
+brother near his throne, is waging
+against all other objects of interest or
+devotion. Let it not be supposed that
+laws are of minor importance because
+they relate to the amusements of any
+portion of the community. They may
+derive their importance from that circumstance
+as tending to raise up something
+which shall cope with the lust of
+gold. The game-preserving interest
+is worth maintenance if only as clashing
+with mammonism.</p>
+
+<p>While the brawlers about "improvement"
+and "progress," are heaping their
+meaningless abuse upon feudalities,
+we should be glad to know what they
+purpose to do with that greatest feudality
+of all, the Crown? Already
+there are symptoms of an intention to
+take that matter in hand. Mr Cobden
+and some of his Calibans have talked
+in the House of Commons about curtailing
+the "barbarous splendour" of
+the throne. They know nothing and
+care nothing about the historical association
+and constitutional truths embodied
+in the ancient appendages of
+royalty. How should they? They want
+somebody to look after the police, and
+take care that no one robs their till;
+that is their idea of government. They
+want a man (some of them being
+willing to allow him a small salary,
+though others think that it does not
+pay) to preach to the masses, and tell
+them not to steal, and to be content
+with their wages; that is their idea of
+the church. We do not think, however,
+that the tone of thought prevalent
+among the Manchester school is
+destined yet to lead the mind of England.
+And we are the less inclined to
+look forward to such a national debasement
+when we find so enlightened an
+advocate of free-trade policy as Mr
+M'Culloch&mdash;the advocate of a theory
+which we hold to be erroneous, but not
+the selfish and greedy clamourer for
+the gain of himself and his class&mdash;thus
+coming forward to vindicate the laws
+which preserve the hereditary character
+of our aristocracy, which lend so
+efficient an aid in shielding us from
+the crushing tread of mammonism,
+and in preventing "commercial principles"
+from introducing the ledger
+and day-book into our manor houses,
+and the counter into our farmers'
+parlours. In this view we most heartily
+thank our author for his noble and
+energetic contribution to our National
+Defences at the present time; and as
+there is a wide field open in connexion
+with the subject he has so
+powerfully handled, we cannot take
+leave of him without expressing a
+hope that we may before long listen
+to him again "on the same side."</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>LIFE IN THE "FAR WEST."</h2>
+
+<h3>PART II.</h3>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="hanging">[The reader is informed that "Life in the Far West" is <em>no fiction</em>. The scenes and
+incidents described are strictly true. The characters are real, (the names being
+changed in two or three instances only,) and all have been, and are, well known
+in the Western country.]</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>"And Mary Brand herself,&mdash;what
+is she like?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's 'some' now; that <em>is</em> a fact,
+and the biggest kind of punkin at
+that," would have been the answer
+from any man, woman, or child, in
+Memphis County, and truly spoken
+too; always understanding that the
+pumpkin is <em>the</em> fruit to which the
+<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">ne-plus-ultra</i> of female perfection is
+compared by the figuratively speaking
+westerns.</p>
+
+<p>Being an American woman, of
+course she was tall, and straight and
+slim as a hickory sapling, well formed
+withal, with rounded bust, and neck
+white and slender as the swan's.
+Her features were small, but finely
+chiselled; and in this, it may be remarked,
+the lower orders of the
+American women differ from, and far
+surpass the same class in England,
+or elsewhere, where the features,
+although far prettier, are more
+vulgar and commonplace. She had
+the bright blue eye, thin nose, and
+small but sweetly-formed mouth,
+the too fair complexion and dark
+brown hair, which characterise the
+beauty of the Anglo-American,
+the heavy masses (hardly curls)
+which fell over her face and neck
+contrasting with their polished whiteness.
+Such was Mary Brand: and to
+her good looks being added a sweet
+disposition, and all the good qualities
+of a thrifty housewife, it must be allowed
+that she fully justified the eulogiums
+of the good people of Memphis.</p>
+
+<p>Well, to cut a love-story short, in
+the which not a little moral courage
+is shown, young La Bonté fell desperately
+in love with the pretty Mary,
+and she with him; and small blame
+to her, for he was a proper lad of
+twenty&mdash;six feet in his moccassins&mdash;the
+best hunter and rifle-shot in the
+country, with many other advantages
+too numerous to mention. But when
+did the course, &amp;c. e'er run smooth?
+When the affair had become a recognised
+"courting," (and Americans
+alone know the horrors of such prolonged
+purgatory,) they became, to
+use La Bonté's words, "awful fond,"
+and consequently about once a-week
+had their tiffs and makes-up.</p>
+
+<p>However, on one occasion, at a
+"husking," and during one of these
+tiffs, Mary, every inch a woman, to
+gratify some indescribable feeling,
+brought to her aid jealousy&mdash;that old
+serpent who has caused such mischief
+in this world; and by a flirtation
+over the corn-cobs with Big
+Pete, La Bonté's former and only
+rival, struck so hard a blow at the
+latter's heart, that on the moment his
+brain caught fire, blood danced before
+his eyes, and he became like one
+possessed. Pete observed and enjoyed
+his struggling emotion&mdash;better
+for him had he minded his corn-shelling
+alone; and the more to annoy
+his rival, paid the most sedulous attention
+to the pretty Mary.</p>
+
+<p>Young La Bonté stood it as long
+as human nature, at boiling heat,
+could endure; but when Pete, in the
+exultation of his apparent triumph,
+crowned his success by encircling the
+slender waist of the girl with his arm,
+and snatched a sudden kiss, he
+jumped upright from his seat, and
+seizing a small whisky-keg which
+stood in the centre of the corn-shellers,
+he hurled it at his rival, and
+crying to him, hoarse with passion,
+"to follow if he was a man," he left
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>At that time, and even now, in the
+remoter states of the western country,
+rifles settled even the most trivial
+differences between the hot-blooded
+youths; and of such frequent occurrence
+and invariably bloody termination
+did they become, that they
+scarcely produced sufficient excitement
+to draw together half a dozen spectators
+of the duel.</p>
+
+<p>In the present case, however, so
+public was the quarrel, and so well<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+known the parties concerned, that
+not only the people who had witnessed
+the affair, but all the neighbourhood
+thronged to the scene of action, where,
+in a large field in front of the house,
+the preliminaries of a duel between
+Pete and La Bonté were being arranged
+by their respective friends.</p>
+
+<p>Mary, when she discovered the
+mischief her thoughtlessness was
+likely to occasion, was almost beside
+herself with grief, but she knew how
+vain it would be to attempt to interfere.
+The poor girl, who was most
+ardently attached to La Bonté, was
+carried, swooning, into the house,
+where all the women congregated,
+and were locked in by old Brand,
+who, himself an old pioneer, thought
+but little of bloodshed, but refused to
+let the "women folk" witness the affray.</p>
+
+<p>Preliminaries arranged, the combatants
+took up their respective positions
+at either end of a space marked
+for the purpose, at forty paces from
+each other. They were both armed
+with heavy rifles, and had the usual
+hunting-pouches, containing ammunition,
+hanging over the shoulder.
+Standing with the butts of their rifles
+on the ground, they confronted each
+other, and the crowd drawing away a
+few paces only on each side, left one
+man to give the word. This was the
+single word "fire;" and after this
+signal was given, the combatants were
+at liberty to fire away until one or the
+other dropped.</p>
+
+<p>At the word both the men quickly
+raised their rifles to the shoulder, and
+as the sharp cracks rung instantaneously,
+they were seen to flinch, as
+either felt the pinging sensation of a
+bullet entering his flesh. Regarding
+each other steadily for a few moments,
+the blood running down La Bonté's
+neck from a wound under the left jaw,
+whilst his opponent was seen to place
+his hand once to his right breast, as if
+to feel the position of his wound, they
+commenced reloading their rifles. As,
+however, Pete was in the act of forcing
+down the ball with his long hickory
+wiping-stick, he suddenly dropped his
+right arm,&mdash;the rifle slipped from his
+grasp,&mdash;and, reeling for a moment like
+a drunken man,&mdash;he fell dead to the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>Even here, however, there was law
+of some kind or another, and the consequences
+of the duel were, that the
+constables were soon on the trail of
+La Bonté to arrest him. He, however,
+easily avoided them, and taking
+to the woods, lived for several days in
+as wild a state as the beasts he hunted
+and killed for his support.</p>
+
+<p>Tired of this, however, he resolved
+to quit the country, and betake himself
+to the mountains, for which life he
+had ever felt an inclination.</p>
+
+<p>When, therefore, he thought the
+officers of justice had tired of seeking
+him, and the coast was comparatively
+clear, he determined to start on his
+distant expedition to the Far West.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, before he carried his
+project into execution, he sought and
+had a last interview with Mary Brand.</p>
+
+<p>"Mary," said he, "I'm about to
+break. They're hunting me like a fall
+buck, and I'm bound to quit. Don't
+think any more about me, for I shall
+never come back." Poor Mary burst
+into tears, and bent her head on the
+table near which she was sitting.
+When again she raised it, she saw La
+Bonté, with his long rifle on his shoulder,
+striding with rapid steps from the
+house; and year after year rolled on,
+and he never returned.</p>
+
+<p>A few days after this he found himself
+at St Louis, the emporium of the
+fur trade, and the fast rising metropolis
+of the precocious settlements of
+the west. Here, a prey to the agony
+of mind which jealousy, remorse, and
+blighted love mix into a very puchero
+of misery, La Bonté got into the company
+of certain "rowdies," a class
+which every western city particularly
+abounds in; and anxious to drown
+his sorrows in any way, and quite
+unscrupulous as to the means, he
+plunged into all the vicious excitements
+of drinking, gambling, and fighting,
+which form the every-day amusements
+of the rising generation of St
+Louis.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps in no other part of the
+United States, where indeed humanity
+is frequently to be seen in many curious
+and unusual phases, is there a population
+so marked in its general character,
+and at the same time divided into such
+distinct classes, as in the above-named
+city. Dating, as it does, its foundation
+from yesterday,&mdash;for what are thirty
+years in the growth of a metropolis?&mdash;its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+founders are now scarcely passed
+middle life, regarding with astonishment
+the growing works of their hands;
+and whilst gazing upon its busy quays,
+piled with grain and other produce of
+the west, its fleets of huge steamboats
+lying tier upon tier alongside the
+wharves, its well-stored warehouses
+and all the bustling concomitants of
+a great commercial depot, they can
+scarcely realise the memory of a few
+short years, when on the same spot
+nothing was to be seen but the few
+miserable hovels of a French village&mdash;the
+only sign of commerce the unwieldy
+bateaux of the Indian traders,
+laden with peltries from the distant
+regions of the Platte and Upper Missouri.
+Where now intelligent and
+wealthy merchants walk erect, in conscious
+substantiality of purse and
+credit, and direct the commerce of a
+vast and numerously-populated region,
+but the other day stalked, in dress of
+buckskin, the Indian trader of the
+west; and all the evidences of life,
+mayhap, consisted of the eccentric
+vagaries of the different bands of
+trappers and hardy mountaineers, who
+accompanied, some for pleasure and
+some as escort, the periodically arriving
+bateaux, laden with the beaver
+skins and buffalo robes collected during
+the season at the different trading
+posts in the Far West.</p>
+
+<p>These, nevertheless, were the men
+whose hardy enterprise opened to commerce
+and the plough the vast and fertile
+regions of the West. Rough and
+savage though they were, they alone
+were the pioneers of that extraordinary
+tide of civilisation which has
+poured its resistless current through
+tracts large enough for kings to
+govern; over a country now teeming
+with cultivation, where, a few short
+years ago, countless herds of buffalo
+roamed unmolested, the bear and
+deer abounded, and where the savage
+Indian skulked through the woods
+and prairies, lord of the unappreciated
+soil which now yields its prolific
+treasures to the spade and plough of
+civilised man. To the wild and half-savage
+trapper, who may be said to
+exhibit the energy, enterprise, and
+hardihood characteristic of the American
+people, divested of all the false
+and vicious glare with which a high
+state of civilisation, too rapidly attained,
+has obscured their real and
+genuine character, in which the above
+traits are eminently prominent&mdash;to
+these men alone is due the empire
+of the West&mdash;destined in a few short
+years to become the most important
+of those confederate states which compose
+the mighty union of North
+America.</p>
+
+<p>Sprung, then, out of the wild and
+adventurous fur trade, St Louis, still
+the emporium of that species of commerce,
+preserves even now, in the
+character of its population, many of
+the marked peculiarities which distinguished
+its early founders, who were
+identified with the primitive Indian
+in hardiness and instinctive wisdom.
+Whilst the French portion of the population
+retain the thoughtless levity
+and frivolous disposition of their original
+source, the Americans of St
+Louis, who may lay claim to be native,
+as it were, are as particularly distinguished
+for determination and energy
+of character as they are for physical
+strength and animal courage; and
+are remarkable, at the same time, for
+a singular aptitude in carrying out
+commercial enterprises to successful
+terminations, which would appear to
+be incompatible with the love of adventure
+and excitement which forms
+so prominent a feature in their character.
+In St Louis, nevertheless,
+and from her merchants, have emanated
+many commercial enterprises of
+gigantic speculation, not confined to
+its own locality or the distant Indian
+fur trade, but embracing all parts of
+the continent, and even a portion of
+the Old World. And here it must be
+remembered that St Louis is situated
+inland, at a distance of upwards
+of one thousand miles from the sea,
+and three thousand from the capital of
+the United States.</p>
+
+<p>Besides her merchants and upper
+class, who form a little aristocracy
+even here, she has a large portion of
+her population still connected with the
+Indian and fur trade, who preserve all
+their characteristics unacted upon by
+the influence of advancing civilisation,
+and between whom and other classes
+there is a marked distinction. There is,
+moreover, a large floating population
+of foreigners of all nations, who must
+possess no little amount of enterprise
+to be tempted to this spot, from
+whence they spread over the remote
+western tracts, still invested by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+savage; and, therefore, if any of their
+blood is infused into the native population,
+the characteristic energy and
+enterprise is increased, and not tempered
+down, by the foreign cross.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps the most singular of her
+casual population are the mountaineers,
+who, after several seasons spent in
+trapping, and with good store of
+dollars, arrive from the scene of their
+adventures, wild as savages, determined
+to enjoy themselves, for a time,
+in all the gaiety and dissipation of the
+western city. In one of the back
+streets of the town is a tavern well
+known as the "Rocky Mountain
+House," and here the trappers resort,
+drinking and fighting as long as their
+money lasts, which, as they are generous
+and lavish as Jack Tars, is for
+a few days only. Such scenes as are
+enacted in the Rocky Mountain House,
+both tragical and comical, are beyond
+the powers of pen to describe;
+and when a fandango is in progress,
+to which congregate the coquettish
+belles from "Vide Poche," as the
+French portion of a suburb is nicknamed,&mdash;the
+grotesque endeavours of
+the bear-like mountaineers to sport a
+figure on the light fantastic toe, and
+their insertions into the dance of the
+mystic jumps of Terpsichorean Indians
+when engaged in the "medicine"
+dances in honour of bear, of buffalo,
+or ravished scalp,&mdash;are such startling
+innovations on the choreographic art
+as would cause the shade of Gallini to
+quake and gibber in his pumps.</p>
+
+<p>Passing the open doors and windows
+of the Mountain House, the
+stranger stops short as the sounds of
+violin and banjo twang upon his ears,
+accompanied by extraordinary noises&mdash;which
+sound unearthly to the greenhorn
+listener, but which the initiated
+recognise as an Indian song roared
+out of the stentorian lungs, of a mountaineer,
+who, patting his stomach with
+open hands, to improve the necessary
+shake, choruses the well-known Indian
+chant:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hi&mdash;Hi&mdash;Hi&mdash;Hi,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hi-i&mdash;Hi-i&mdash;Hi-i&mdash;Hi-i<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hi-ya&mdash;hi-ya&mdash;hi-ya&mdash;hi-ya<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Hi-ya&mdash;hi-ya&mdash;hi-ya&mdash;hi-ya<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hi-ya&mdash;hi-ya&mdash;hi&mdash;hi,<br /></span>
+<span class="i5">&amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noind">and polishing off the high notes with
+a whoop which makes the old wooden
+houses shake again, as it rattles and
+echoes down the street.</p>
+
+<p>Here, over fiery "monaghahela,"
+Jean Batiste, the sallow half-breed
+voyageur from the north&mdash;and who,
+deserting the service of the "North-West,"
+(the Hudson's Bay Company,)
+has come down the Mississippi,
+from the "Falls," to try the sweets
+and liberty of "free" trapping&mdash;hobnobs
+with a stalwart leather-clad
+"boy," just returned from trapping on
+the waters of Grand River, on the
+western side the mountains, who interlards
+his mountain jargon with
+Spanish words picked up in Taos
+and California. In one corner a
+trapper, lean and gaunt from the starving
+regions of the Yellow Stone, has
+just recognised an old companyero,
+with whom he hunted years before in
+the perilous country of the Blackfeet.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, John, old hos, how do you
+come on?"</p>
+
+<p>"What! Meek, old 'coon! I thought
+you were under?"</p>
+
+<p>One from Arkansa stalks into the
+centre of the room, with a pack of
+cards in his hand, and a handful of
+dollars in his hat. Squatting cross-legged
+on a buffalo robe, he smacks
+down the money, and cries out&mdash;"Ho,
+boys, hyar's a deck, and hyar's
+the beaver, (rattling the coin,) who
+dar set his hos? Wagh!"</p>
+
+<p>Tough are the yarns of wondrous
+hunts and Indian perils, of hairbreadth
+'scapes and curious "fixes." Transcendant
+are the qualities of sundry rifles,
+which call these hunters masters;
+"plum" is the "centre" each vaunted
+barrel shoots; sufficing for a hundred
+wigs is the "hair" each hunter has
+"lifted" from Indians' scalps; multitudinous
+the "coups" he has "struck."
+As they drink so do they brag, first of
+their guns, their horses, and their
+squaws, and lastly of themselves:&mdash;and
+when it comes to that, "ware steel."</p>
+
+<p>La Bonté, on his arrival at St.
+Louis, found himself one day in no
+less a place than this; and here he
+made acquaintance with an old trapper
+about to start for the mountains
+in a few days, to hunt on the head
+waters of Platte and Green River.
+With this man he resolved to start,
+and, having still some hundred dollars
+in cash, he immediately set about
+equipping himself for the expedition.
+To effect this, he first of all visited the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+gun-store of Hawken, whose rifles are
+renowned in the mountains, and exchanged
+his own piece, which was of
+very small bore, for a regular mountain
+rifle. This was of very heavy
+metal, carrying about thirty-two balls
+to the pound, stocked to the muzzle
+and mounted with brass, its only ornament
+being a buffalo bull, looking exceedingly
+ferocious, which was not
+very artistically engraved upon the
+trap in the stock. Here, too, he laid in
+a few pounds of powder and lead, and
+all the necessaries for a long hunt.</p>
+
+<p>His next visit was to a smith's store,
+which smith was black by trade and
+black by nature, for he was a nigger,
+and, moreover, celebrated as being the
+best maker of beaver-traps in St
+Louis, and of whom he purchased six
+new traps, paying for the same twenty
+dollars&mdash;procuring, at the same time,
+an old trap-sack, made of stout buffalo
+skin, in which to carry them.</p>
+
+<p>We next find La Bonté and his
+companion&mdash;one Luke, better known
+as Grey-Eye, one of his eyes having
+been "gouged" in a mountain fray&mdash;at
+Independence, a little town situated
+on the Missouri, several hundred miles
+above St Louis, and within a short
+distance of the Indian frontier.</p>
+
+<p>Independence may be termed the
+"prairie port" of the western country.
+Here the caravans destined for Santa
+Fé and the interior of Mexico, assemble
+to complete their necessary equipment.
+Mules and oxen are purchased,
+teamsters hired, and all stores and
+outfit laid in here for the long journey
+over the wide expanse of prairie
+ocean. Here, too, the Indian traders
+and the Rocky Mountain trappers
+rendezvous, collecting in sufficient
+force to ensure their safe passage
+through the Indian country. At the
+seasons of departure and arrival of
+these bands, the little town presents
+a lively scene of bustle and confusion.
+The wild and dissipated mountaineers
+get rid of their last dollars in furious
+orgies, treating all comers to galore
+of drink, and pledging each other, in
+horns of potent whisky, to successful
+hunts and "heaps of beaver."
+When every cent has disappeared
+from their pouches, the free trapper
+often makes away with rifle, traps,
+and animals, to gratify his "dry," (for
+your mountaineer is never "thirsty;")
+and then, "hos and beaver" gone, is
+necessitated to hire himself to one of
+the leaders of big bands, and hypothecate
+his services for an equipment of
+traps and animals. Thus La Bonté
+picked up three excellent mules for a
+mere song, with their accompanying
+pack saddles, <i>apishamores</i>,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> and lariats,
+and the next day, with Luke,
+"put out" for Platte.</p>
+
+<p>As they passed through the rendezvous,
+which was encamped on a little
+stream beyond the town, even our
+young Mississippian was struck with
+the novelty of the scene. Upwards
+of forty huge waggons, of Connestoga
+and Pittsburg build, and covered with
+snow-white tilts, were ranged in a
+semicircle, or rather a horse-shoe
+form, on the flat open prairie, their
+long "tongues" (poles) pointing outwards;
+with the necessary harness for
+four pairs of mules, or eight yoke of
+oxen, lying on the ground beside
+them, spread in ready order for "hitching
+up." Round the waggons groups
+of teamsters, tall stalwart young Missourians,
+were engaged in busy preparation
+for the start, greasing the
+wheels, fitting or repairing harness,
+smoothing ox-bows, or overhauling
+their own moderate kits or "possibles."
+They were all dressed in the
+same fashion: a pair of "homespun"
+pantaloons, tucked into thick boots
+reaching nearly to the knee, and confined
+round the waist by a broad
+leathern belt, which supported a strong
+butcher knife in a sheath. A coarse
+checked shirt was their only other
+covering, with a fur cap on the head.</p>
+
+<p>Numerous camp-fires surrounded
+the waggons, and by them lounged
+wild-looking mountaineers, easily distinguished
+from the "greenhorn"
+teamsters by their dresses of buckskin,
+and their weather-beaten faces. Without
+an exception, these were under
+the influence of the rosy god; and one,
+who sat, the picture of misery, at a
+fire by himself&mdash;staring into the blaze
+with vacant countenance, his long
+matted hair hanging in unkempt
+masses over his face, begrimed with
+the dirt of a week, and pallid with the
+effects of ardent drink&mdash;was suffering<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+from the usual consequences of having
+"kept it up" beyond the usual point,
+and now was paying the penalty in a
+fit of "horrors"&mdash;as <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">delirium tremens</i>
+is most aptly termed by sailors and
+the unprofessional.</p>
+
+<p>In another part, the merchants of
+the caravan and Indian traders were
+superintending the lading of the waggons,
+or mule packs. These were
+dressed in civilised attire, and some
+bedizened in St Louis or Eastern
+City dandyism, to the infinite disgust
+of the mountain men, who look upon
+a bourge-way (bourgeois) with most
+undisguised contempt, despising the
+very simplest forms of civilisation.
+The picturesque appearance of the
+encampment was not a little heightened
+by the addition of several Indians
+from the neighbouring Shawnee settlement,
+who, mounted on their small
+active horses, on which they reclined,
+rather than sat, in negligent attitudes,
+quietly looked on at the novel scene,
+indifferent to the "chaff" which the
+thoughtless teamsters indulged in at
+their expense. Numbers of mules
+and horses were picketed at hand,
+while a large herd of noble oxen were
+being driven towards the camp&mdash;the
+wo-ha of the teamsters sounding far
+and near, as they collected the scattered
+beasts in order to yoke up.</p>
+
+<p>As most of the mountain men were
+utterly unable to move from camp,
+Luke and La Bonté, with three or
+four of the most sober, started in
+company, intending to wait on "Blue,"
+a stream which runs into the Caw or
+Kanzas River, until the "balance" of
+the band came up. Mounting their
+mules, and leading the loose animals,
+they struck at once into the park-like
+prairie, and were out of sight of civilisation
+in an instant.</p>
+
+<p>It was the latter end of May, towards
+the close of the season of
+heavy rains, which in early spring
+render the climate of this country
+almost intolerable, at the same time
+that they serve to fertilise and thaw
+the soil, so long bound up by the
+winter's frosts. The grass was every
+where luxuriously green, and gaudy
+flowers dotted the surface of the
+prairie. This term, however, should
+hardly be applied to the beautiful
+undulating scenery of this park-like
+country. Unlike the flat monotony
+of the Grand Plains, here well wooded
+uplands clothed with forest trees of
+every species, and picturesque dells
+through which run clear and bubbling
+streams belted with gay-blossomed
+shrubs, every where present themselves;
+whilst on the level meadowland,
+topes of trees with spreading
+foliage afforded a shelter to the game
+and cattle, and well-timbered knolls
+rise at intervals from the plain.</p>
+
+<p>Many clear streams dashing over
+their pebbly beds intersect the country,
+from which, in the noonday's
+heat, the red-deer jump, shaking their
+wet sides, as the noise of approaching
+man disturbs them; and booming
+grouse rise from the tall luxuriant
+herbage at every step. Where the
+deep escarpments of the river banks
+exhibit the section of the earth, a
+rich alluvial soil of surprising depth
+appears to court the cultivation of
+civilised man; and in every feature
+it is evident that here nature has
+worked with kindliest and most bountiful
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>For hundreds of miles along the
+western or right bank of the Missouri
+does such a country as this extend,
+to which, for fertility and natural resources,
+no part of Europe can offer even
+feeble comparison. Sufficiently large
+to contain an enormous population, it
+has, besides, every advantage of position,
+and all the natural capabilities
+which should make it the happy
+abode of civilised man. Through this
+unpeopled country the United States
+pours her greedy thousands, to seize
+upon the barren territories of her
+feeble neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>Camping the first night on "Black
+Jack," our mountaineers here cut each
+man a spare hickory wiping-stick for
+his rifle, and La Bonté, who was the
+only greenhorn of the party, witnessed
+a savage ebullition of rage on
+the part of one of his companions,
+exhibiting the perfect unrestraint
+which these men impose upon their
+passions, and the barbarous anger
+which the slightest opposition to the
+will excites. One of the trappers, on
+arriving at the camping-place, dismounted
+from his horse, and, after
+divesting it of the saddle, endeavoured
+to lead his mule by the rope up to
+the spot where he wished to deposit his
+pack. Mule-like, however, the more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+he pulled the more stubbornly she
+remained in her tracks, planting her
+fore-legs firmly, and stretching out
+her neck with provoking obstinacy.
+If truth be told, it does require the
+temper of a thousand Jobs to manage
+a mule; and in no case does the wilful
+mulishness of the animal stir up
+one's choler more than in the very
+trick which this one was playing, and
+which is a daily occurrence. After
+tugging ineffectually for several
+minutes, winding the rope round his
+body, and throwing himself forward
+and suddenly with all his strength,
+the trapper actually foamed with
+passion; and although he might have
+subdued the animal at once by fastening
+the rope with a half-hitch round
+its nose, with an obstinacy equal to
+that of the mule itself he refused to
+attempt it, preferring to vanquish her
+by main strength. However, this
+failed, and with a volley of blasphemous
+imprecations the mountaineer
+suddenly seized his rifle, and, levelling
+it at the mule's head, shot her dead.</p>
+
+<p>Passing the Wa-ka-rasha, a well-timbered
+stream, they met a band of
+Osages going "to buffalo." These
+Indians, in common with some tribes
+of the Pawnees, shave the head, with
+the exception of a ridge from the
+forehead to the centre of the scalp,
+which is "roached" or hogged like the
+mane of a mule, and stands erect,
+plastered with unguents, and ornamented
+by feathers of the hawk and
+turkey. The naked scalp is often
+painted in mosaic with black and red,
+the face with shining vermilion.
+They were all naked to the breech-clout,
+the warmth of the sun having
+caused them to throw their dirty
+blankets from their shoulders. These
+Indians not unfrequently levy contributions
+on strangers whom they may
+accidentally meet; but they easily
+distinguish the determined mountaineer
+from the incautious greenhorn,
+and think it better to let the former
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>Crossing Vermilion, they arrived
+on the fifth day at "Blue," where they
+encamped in the broad timber which
+belts the creek, and there awaited the
+arrival of the remainder of the party.</p>
+
+<p>It was two days before they came
+up; but the day after, fourteen in
+number, they started for the mountains,
+striking a trail which follows
+the "Big Blue" in its course through
+the prairies, which, as they advance to
+the westward, are gradually smoothing
+away into a vast unbroken expanse
+of rolling plain. Herds of antelope
+began to show themselves, and some
+of the hunters, leaving the trail, soon
+returned with plenty of their tender
+meat. The luxuriant but coarse grass
+they had hitherto seen now changed
+into the nutritious and curly buffalo
+grass, and their animals soon improved
+in appearance on the excellent
+pasture. In a few days, without
+any adventure, they struck the Platte
+River, its shallow waters (from which
+it derives its name) spreading over a
+wide and sandy bed, numerous sand
+bars obstructing the sluggish current,
+and with nowhere sufficient water to
+wet the forder's knee.</p>
+
+<p>By this time, but few antelope
+having been seen, the party became
+entirely out of meat; and, one whole
+day and part of another having passed
+without so much as a sage rabbit
+having presented itself, not a few
+objurgations on the buffalo grumbled
+from the lips of the hunters, who
+expected ere this to have reached
+the land of plenty. La Bonté killed
+a fine deer, however, in the river
+bottom, after they had encamped,
+not one particle of which remained
+after supper that night, but which
+hardly took the rough edge off their
+keen appetites. Although already in
+the buffalo range, no traces of these
+animals had yet been seen; and as
+the country afforded but little game,
+and the party did not care to halt and
+lose time in hunting for it, they
+moved along hungry and sulky, the
+theme of conversation being the well
+remembered merits of good buffalo
+meat,&mdash;of "fat fleece," "hump rib,"
+and "tender loin;" of delicious
+"boudins," and marrow bones too
+good to think of. La Bonté had
+never seen the lordly animal, and
+consequently but half believed the
+accounts of the mountaineers, who
+described their countless bands as
+covering the prairie far as the eye
+could reach, and requiring days of
+travel to pass through; but the
+visions of such dainty and abundant
+feeding as they descanted on set his
+mouth watering, and danced before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+his eyes as he slept supperless, night
+after night, on the banks of the hungry
+Platte.</p>
+
+<p>One morning he had packed his
+animals before the rest, and was
+riding a mile in advance of the party,
+when he saw on one side the trail,
+looming in the refracted glare which
+mirages the plains, three large dark
+objects without shape or form, which
+rose and fell in the exaggerated light
+like ships at sea. Doubting what it
+could be, he approached the strange
+objects; and as the refraction disappeared
+before him, the dark masses
+assumed a more distinct form, and
+clearly moved with life. A little
+nearer, and he made them out&mdash;they
+were buffalo. Thinking to distinguish
+himself, the greenhorn dismounted
+from his mule, and quickly hobbled
+her, throwing his lasso on the ground
+to trail behind when he wished to
+catch her. Then, rifle in hand, he
+approached the huge animals, and,
+being a good hunter, knew well to
+take advantage of the inequalities of
+the ground and face the wind; by
+which means he crawled at length to
+within forty yards of the buffalo, who
+were quietly cropping the grass, unconscious
+of danger. Now, for the
+first time, he gazed upon the noble
+beast of which he had so often heard,
+and longed to see. With coal-black
+beard sweeping the ground as he fed,
+an enormous bull was in advance of
+the others, his wild brilliant eyes
+peering from an immense mass of
+shaggy hair, which covered his neck
+and shoulder. From this point his
+skin was bare as one's hand, a sleek
+and shining dun, and his ribs well
+covered with shaking flesh. As he
+leisurely cropped the short curly
+grass he occasionally lifted his tail
+into the air, and stamped his foot as
+a fly or musquito annoyed him&mdash;flapping
+the intruder with his tail, or
+snatching at the itching part with his
+ponderous head.</p>
+
+<p>When La Bonté had sufficiently
+admired the animal, he lifted his rifle,
+and, taking steady aim, and certain of
+his mark, pulled the trigger, expecting
+to see the huge beast fall over at the
+report. What was his surprise and
+consternation, however, to see the
+animal flinch as the ball struck him,
+but gallop off, followed by the others,
+and apparently unhurt. As is generally
+the case with greenhorns, he
+had fired too high, not understanding
+that the only certain spot to strike a
+buffalo is but a few inches above the
+brisket, and that above this a shot is
+rarely fatal. When he rose from the
+ground, he saw all the party halting
+in full view of his discomfiture; and
+when he joined them, loud were the
+laughs, and deep the regrets of the
+hungry at his first attempt.</p>
+
+<p>However, they now knew that they
+were in the country of meat; and a
+few miles farther, another band of
+stragglers presenting themselves,
+three of the hunters went in pursuit,
+La Bonté taking a mule to pack in
+the meat. He soon saw them crawling
+towards the band, and shortly
+two puffs of smoke, and the sharp
+cracks of their rifles showed that
+they had got within shot; and when
+he had ridden up, two fine buffaloes
+were stretched upon the ground.
+Now, for the first time, he was initiated
+into the mysteries of "butchering,"
+and watched the hunters as
+they turned the carcass on the belly,
+stretching out the legs to support it
+on each side. A transverse cut was
+then made at the nape of the neck,
+and, gathering the long hair of the
+boss in one hand, the skin was separated
+from the shoulder. It was then
+laid open from this point to the tail,
+along the spine, and the skin was
+freed from the sides and pulled down
+to the brisket, but, still attached to
+it, was stretched upon the ground to
+receive the dissected portions. Then
+the shoulder was severed, the fleece
+removed from along the backbone,
+and the hump-ribs cut off with a
+tomahawk. All this was placed upon
+the skin; and after the "boudins" had
+been withdrawn from the stomach,
+and the tongue&mdash;a great dainty&mdash;taken
+from the head, the meat was
+packed upon the mule, and the whole
+party hurried to camp rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p>There was merry-making in the
+camp that night, and the way they
+indulged their appetites&mdash;or, in their
+own language, "throw'd" the meat
+"cold"&mdash;would have made the heart
+of a dyspeptic leap for joy or burst
+with envy. Far into the "still
+watches of the tranquil night" the
+fat-clad "depouille" saw its fleshy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+mass grow small by degrees and beautifully
+less, before the trenchant blades
+of the hungry mountaineers; appetising
+yards of well-browned "boudin"
+slipped glibly down their throats; rib
+after rib of tender hump was picked
+and flung to the wolves; and when
+human nature, with helpless gratitude,
+and confident that nothing of
+superexcellent comestibility remained,
+was lazily wiping the greasy
+knife that had done such good service,&mdash;a
+skilful hunter was seen to chuckle
+to himself as he raked the deep ashes
+of the fire, and drew therefrom a pair
+of tongues so admirably baked, so
+soft, so sweet, and of such exquisite
+flavour, that a veil is considerately
+drawn over the effects their discussion
+produced in the mind of our greenhorn
+La Bonté, and the raptures they
+excited in the bosom of that, as yet,
+most ignorant mountaineer. Still,
+as he ate he wondered, and wondering
+admired, that nature, in giving him
+such profound gastronomic powers,
+and such transcendent capabilities of
+digestion, had yet bountifully provided
+an edible so peculiarly adapted
+to his ostrich-like appetite, that after
+consuming nearly his own weight in
+rich and fat buffalo meat, he felt as
+easy and as incommoded as if he had
+been lightly supping on strawberries
+and cream.</p>
+
+<p>Sweet was the digestive pipe after
+such a feast, and soft the sleep and
+deep, which sealed the eyes of the
+contented trappers that night. It felt
+like the old thing, they said, to be
+once more amongst the "meat;" and,
+as they were drawing near the dangerous
+portion of the trail, they felt at
+home; although not a night now
+passed but, when they lay down on
+their buffalo robes to sleep, they could
+not be confident that that sleep was
+not their last&mdash;knowing full well that
+savage men were hovering near, thirsting
+for their lives.</p>
+
+<p>However, no enemies showed themselves
+as yet, and they proceeded
+quietly up the river, vast herds of
+buffaloes darkening the plains around
+them, affording them more than abundance
+of the choicest meat; but, to
+their credit be it spoken, no more was
+killed than absolutely required,&mdash;unlike
+the cruel slaughter made by most
+of the white travellers across the
+plains, who wantonly destroy these
+noble animals, not even for the excitement
+of sport, but in cold-blooded
+and insane butchery. La Bonté had
+practice enough to perfect him in the
+art, and, before the buffalo range was
+passed, he was ranked as a first-rate
+hunter. One evening he had left the
+camp for meat, and was approaching
+a band of cows for that purpose,
+crawling towards them along the bed
+of a dry hollow in the prairie, when
+he observed them suddenly jump away
+towards him, and immediately after a
+score of mounted Indians appeared in
+sight, whom, by their dress, he at
+once knew to be Pawnees and enemies.
+Thinking they might not discover
+him, he crouched down in the
+ravine; but a noise behind causing
+him to turn his head, he saw some
+five or six advancing up the bed of
+the dry creek, whilst several more
+were riding on the bluffs. The cunning
+savages had cut off his retreat to
+his mule, which he saw in the possession
+of one of the Indians. His
+presence of mind, however, did not
+desert him; and seeing at once that
+to remain where he was would be like
+being caught in a trap, (as the Indians
+could advance to the edge of the bluff
+and shoot him from above,) he made
+for the open prairie, determined at
+least to sell his scalp dearly, and make
+"a good fight." With a yell the
+Indians charged, but halted when
+they saw the sturdy trapper deliberately
+kneel, and, resting his rifle
+on the wiping-stick, take a steady
+aim as they advanced. Full well the
+Pawnees know, to their cost, that a
+mountaineer seldom pulls his trigger
+without sending a bullet to the mark;
+and, certain that one at least must
+fall, they hesitated to make the onslaught.
+Steadily the white retreated
+with his face to the foe, bringing the
+rifle to his shoulder the instant that
+one advanced within shot, the Indians
+galloping round, firing the few guns
+they had amongst them at long distances,
+but without effect. One young
+"brave," more daring than the rest,
+rode out of the crowd, and dashed at
+the hunter, throwing himself, as he
+passed within a few yards, from the
+saddle, and hanging over the opposite
+side of his horse,&mdash;presenting no
+other mark than his left foot,&mdash;discharged<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+his bow from under the animal's
+neck, and with such good aim,
+that the arrow, whizzing through the
+air, struck the stock of La Bonté's
+rifle, which was at his shoulder, and,
+glancing off, pierced his arm, inflicting,
+luckily, but a slight wound. Again
+the Indian turned in his course, the
+others encouraging him with loud
+war-whoops, and once more passing
+at still less distance, drew his arrow
+to the head. This time, however,
+the eagle eye of the white caught sight
+of the action, and suddenly rising from
+his knee as the Indian was approaching,
+hanging by his foot alone over
+the opposite side of the horse, he
+jumped towards the animal with outstretched
+arms and a loud yell, causing
+it to start so suddenly, and swerve
+from its course, that the Indian lost
+his foot-hold, and, after in vain struggling
+to regain his position, fell to the
+ground, but instantly rose upon his
+feet and gallantly confronted the
+mountaineer, striking his hand upon
+his brawny chest and shouting a loud
+whoop of defiance. In another instant
+the rifle of La Bonté had poured
+forth its contents; and the brave
+Indian, springing into the air, fell
+dead to the ground, just as the other
+trappers, who had heard the firing,
+galloped up to the spot, at sight
+of whom the Pawnees, with yells
+of disappointed vengeance, hastily
+retreated.</p>
+
+<p>That night La Bonté first lifted
+hair!</p>
+
+<p>A few days after they reached the
+point where the Platte divides into
+two great forks:&mdash;the northern one,
+stretching to the north-west, skirts
+the eastern base of the Black Hills,
+and sweeping round to the south rises
+in the vicinity of the mountain valley
+called the New Park, receiving the
+Laramie, Medicine Bow, and Sweet-Water
+creeks. The other, or "South
+Fork," strikes towards the mountains
+in a south-westerly direction, hugging
+the base of the main chain of the
+Rocky Mountains, and, fed by several
+small creeks, rises in the uplands of
+the Bayou Salado, near which is also
+the source of the Arkansa. To the
+forks of the Platte the valley of that
+river extends from three to five miles
+on each side, being enclosed by steep
+sandy bluffs, from the summits of
+which the prairies stretch away in
+broad undulating expanse to the north
+and south. The "bottom," as it is
+termed, is but thinly covered with
+timber, the cotton-woods being scattered
+only here and there; but some
+of the islands in the broad bed of the
+stream are well wooded, which leads
+to the inference that the trees on the
+banks have been felled by Indians who
+formerly frequented this river as a
+chosen hunting-ground. As during
+the long winters the pasture in the
+vicinity is scarce and withered, the
+Indians feed their horses on the bark
+of the sweet cotton-wood, upon which
+they subsist, and even fatten. Thus,
+wherever a village has been encamped,
+the trunks of these trees strew the
+ground, with their upper limbs and
+smaller branches peeled of their bark,
+and looking as white and smooth as if
+scraped with a knife.</p>
+
+<p>On the forks, however, the timber
+is heavier and of greater variety, some
+of the creeks being well wooded with
+ash and cherry, which break the monotony
+of the everlasting cotton-wood.</p>
+
+<p>Dense masses of buffalo still continued
+to darken the plains, and
+numerous bands of wolves hovered
+round the outskirts of the vast herds,
+singling out the sick and wounded
+animals, and preying upon the calves
+whom the rifles and arrows of the
+hunters had bereaved of their mothers.
+The white wolf is the invariable attendant
+upon the buffalo; and when one
+of these persevering animals is seen, it
+is certain sign that buffalo are not
+far distant. Besides the buffalo wolf,
+there are four distinct varieties common
+to the plains, and all more or less
+attendant upon the buffalo. These
+are the black, the gray, the brown,
+and last and least the <em>coyote</em>, or
+<i>cayeute</i> of the mountaineers, the
+"<i>wach-unkamănet</i>," or "medicine
+wolf" of the Indians, who hold the
+latter animal in reverential awe. This
+little wolf, whose fur is of great thickness
+and beauty, although of diminutive
+size, is wonderfully sagacious, and
+makes up by cunning what it wants
+in physical strength. In bands of
+from three to thirty they will not unfrequently
+station themselves along
+the "runs" of the deer and the antelope,
+extending their line for many
+miles,&mdash;and the quarry being started,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+each wolf will follow in pursuit until
+tired, when it relinquishes the chase to
+another relay, following slowly after
+until the animal is fairly run down,
+when all hurry to the spot and speedily
+consume the carcass. The cayeute,
+however, is often made a tool of by
+his larger brethren, unless, indeed, he
+acts from motives of spontaneous charity.
+When a hunter has slaughtered
+game, and is in the act of butchering
+it, these little wolves sit patiently at
+a short distance from the scene of
+operations, while at a more respectful
+one the larger wolves (the white or
+gray) lope hungrily around, licking
+their chops in hungry expectation.
+Not unfrequently the hunter throws a
+piece of meat towards the smaller
+one, who seizes it immediately, and
+runs off with the morsel in his mouth.
+Before he gets many yards with his
+prize, the large wolf pounces with a
+growl upon him, and the cayeute,
+dropping the meat, returns to his former
+position, and will continue his
+act as long as the hunter
+pleases to supply him.</p>
+
+<p>Wolves are so common on the
+plains and in the mountains, that the
+hunter never cares to throw away a
+charge of ammunition upon them, although
+the ravenous animals are a
+constant source of annoyance to him,
+creeping to the camp-fire at night,
+and gnawing his saddles and <i>apishamores</i>,
+eating the skin ropes which
+secure the horses and mules to their
+pickets, and even their very hobbles,
+and not unfrequently killing or entirely
+disabling the animals themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Round the camp, during the night,
+the cayeute keeps unremitting watch,
+and the traveller not unfrequently
+starts from his bed with affright, as
+the mournful and unearthly chiding of
+the wolf breaks suddenly upon his
+ear: the long-drawn howl being taken
+up by others of the band, until it dies
+away in the distance, as some straggler
+passing within hearing answers to the
+note, and howls as he lopes away.</p>
+
+<p>Our party crossed the south fork
+about ten miles from its juncture with
+the main stream, and then, passing the
+prairie, struck the north fork a day's
+travel from the other. At the mouth
+of an ash-timbered creek they came
+upon Indian "sign," and, as now they
+were in the vicinity of the treacherous
+Sioux, they moved along with additional
+caution, Frapp and Gonneville,
+two experienced mountaineers, always
+heading the advance.</p>
+
+<p>About noon they had crossed over
+to the left bank of the fork, intending
+to camp on a large creek where some
+fresh beaver "sign" had attracted the
+attention of some of the trappers; and
+as, on further examination, it appeared
+that two or three lodges of that animal
+were not far distant, it was determined
+to remain here a day or two,
+and set their traps.</p>
+
+<p>Gonneville, old Luke, and La Bonté,
+had started up the creek, and were
+carefully examining the banks for
+"sign," when the former, who was in
+front, suddenly paused, and looking
+intently up the stream, held up his
+hand to his companions to signal them
+to stop.</p>
+
+<p>Luke and La Bonté both followed
+the direction of the trapper's intent
+and fixed gaze. The former uttered
+in a suppressed tone the expressive
+exclamation, Wagh!&mdash;the latter saw
+nothing but a wood-duck swimming
+swiftly down the stream, followed by
+her downy progeny.</p>
+
+<p>Gonneville turned his head, and
+extending his arm twice with a forward
+motion up the creek, whispered&mdash;"Les
+sauvages."</p>
+
+<p>"Injuns, sure, and Sioux at that,"
+answered Luke.</p>
+
+<p>Still La Bonté looked, but nothing
+met his view but the duck with her
+brood, now rapidly approaching; and
+as he gazed, the bird suddenly took
+wing, and, flapping on the water,
+flew a short distance down the stream
+and once more settled on it.</p>
+
+<p>"Injuns?" he asked; "where are
+they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whar?" repeated old Luke,
+striking the flint of his rifle, and opening
+the pan to examine the priming.
+"What brings a duck a-streakin it
+down stream, if humans aint behint
+her? and who's thar in these diggins
+but Injuns, and the worst kind; and
+we'd better push to camp, I'm thinking,
+if we mean to save our hair."</p>
+
+<p>"Sign" sufficient, indeed, it was to all
+the trappers, who, on being apprised
+of it, instantly drove in their animals,
+and picketed them; and hardly had
+they done so when a band of Indians
+made their appearance on the banks<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+of the creek, from whence they galloped
+to the bluff which overlooked the
+camp at the distance of about six
+hundred yards; and crowning this, in
+number some forty or more, commenced
+brandishing their spears and
+guns, and whooping loud yells of
+defiance. The trappers had formed a
+little breast-work of their packs, forming
+a semicircle, the chord of which
+was made by the animals standing in
+a line, side by side, closely picketed
+and hobbled. Behind this defence
+stood the mountaineers, rifle in hand,
+and silent and determined. The Indians
+presently descended the bluff on
+foot, leaving their animals in charge of
+a few of the party, and, scattering,
+advanced under cover of the sage
+bushes which dotted the bottom, to
+about two hundred yards of the whites.
+Then a chief advanced before the rest,
+and made the sign for a talk with
+the Long-knives, which led to a consultation
+amongst the latter, as to the
+policy of acceding to it. They were
+in doubts as to the nation these Indians
+belonged to, some bands of the
+Sioux being friendly, and others bitterly
+hostile to the whites.</p>
+
+<p>Gonneville, who spoke the Sioux
+language, and was well acquainted
+with the nation, affirmed they belonged
+to a band called the Yanka-taus, well
+known to be the most evil-disposed
+of that treacherous nation; another
+of the party maintaining that they
+were Brulés, and that the chief advancing
+towards them was the well-known
+Tah-sha-tunga or Bull Tail, a
+most friendly chief of that tribe. The
+majority, however, trusted to Gonneville,
+and he volunteered to go out to
+meet the Indian, and hear what he
+had to say. Divesting himself of all
+arms save his butcher-knife, he advanced
+towards the savage, who
+awaited his approach, enveloped in
+the folds of his blanket. At a glance
+he knew him to be a Yanka-tau,
+from the peculiar make of his moccassins,
+and the way in which his face
+was daubed with paint.</p>
+
+<p>"Howgh!" exclaimed both as they
+met; and, after a silence of a few moments,
+the Indian spoke, asking&mdash;"Why
+the Long-knives hid behind
+their packs, when his band approached?
+Were they afraid, or were they
+preparing a dog-feast to entertain
+their friends? That the whites were
+passing through his country, burning
+his wood, drinking his water, and killing
+his game; but he knew that they
+had now come to pay for the mischief
+they had done, and that the mules and
+horses they had brought with them
+were intended as a present to their
+red friends.</p>
+
+<p>"He was Mah-to-ga-shane," he
+said, "the Brave Bear: his tongue
+was short, but his arm long; and he
+loved rather to speak with his bow
+and his lance, than with the weapon
+of a squaw. He had said it: the Long-knives
+had horses with them and
+mules; and these were for him, he
+knew, and for his 'braves.' Let the
+White-face go back to his people and
+return with the animals, or he, the
+'Brave Bear,' would have to come
+and take them; and his young men
+would get mad and would feel blood
+in their eyes; and then he would have
+no power over them; and the whites
+would have to 'go under.'"</p>
+
+<p>The trapper answered shortly.&mdash;"The
+Long-knives," he said, "had
+brought the horses for themselves&mdash;their
+hearts were big, but not towards
+the Yanka-taus: and if they had to
+give up their animals, it would be to
+<em>men</em> and not <em>squaws</em>. They were not
+'wah-keitcha,'<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> (French engagés) but
+Long-knives; and, however short
+were the tongues of the Yanka-taus,
+theirs were still shorter, and their
+rifles longer. The Yanka-taus were
+dogs and squaws, and the Long-knives
+spat upon them."</p>
+
+<p>Saying this, the trapper turned his
+back and rejoined his companions;
+whilst the Indian slowly proceeded to
+his people, who, on learning the contemptuous
+way in which their threats
+had been treated, testified their anger
+with loud yells; and, seeking whatever
+cover was afforded, commenced
+a scattering volley upon the camp of
+the mountaineers. The latter reserved
+their fire, treating with cool
+indifference the balls which began to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+rattle about them; but as the Indians,
+emboldened by this apparent inaction,
+rushed for a closer position, and
+exposed their bodies within a long
+range, half-a-dozen rifles rang from
+the assailed, and two Indians fell
+dead, one or two more being wounded.
+As yet, not one of the whites had
+been touched, but several of the animals
+had received wounds from the
+enemy's fire of balls and arrows.
+Indeed, the Indians remained at too
+great a distance to render the volleys
+from their crazy fusees any thing like
+effectual, and had to raise their pieces
+considerably to make their bullets
+reach as far as the camp. After having
+lost three of their band killed
+outright, and many more being wounded,
+their fire began to slacken, and
+they drew off to a greater distance,
+evidently resolved to beat a retreat;
+and retiring to the bluff, discharged
+their pieces in a last volley, mounted
+their horses and galloped off, carrying
+their wounded with them. This
+last volley, however, although intended
+as a mere bravado, unfortunately
+proved fatal to one of the whites.
+Gonneville, at the moment, was
+standing on one of the packs, in order
+to get an uninterrupted sight for a
+last shot, when one of the random
+bullets struck him in the breast. La
+Bonté caught him in his arms as he
+was about to fall, and, laying the
+wounded trapper gently on the
+ground,&mdash;they proceeded to strip him
+of his buckskin hunting-frock, to examine
+the wound. A glance was
+sufficient to convince his companions
+that the blow was mortal. The ball
+had passed through the lungs; and in
+a few moments the throat of the
+wounded man began to swell, as the
+choking blood ascended, and turned
+a livid blue colour. But a few drops
+of purple blood trickled from the
+wound,&mdash;a fatal sign,&mdash;and the eyes of
+the mountaineer were already glazing
+with death's icy touch. His
+hand still grasped the barrel of his
+rifle, which had done good service in
+the fray. Anon he essayed to speak,
+but, choked with blood, only a few
+inarticulate words reached the ears
+of his companions, who were bending
+over him.</p>
+
+<p>"Rubbed&mdash;out&mdash;at&mdash;last," they
+heard him say, the words gurgling in
+his blood-filled throat; and opening
+his eyes once more, and looking upwards
+to take a last look at the bright
+sun, the trapper turned gently on his
+side and breathed his last sigh.</p>
+
+<p>With no other tools than their
+scalp-knives, the hunters dug a grave
+on the banks of the creek; and whilst
+some were engaged in this work,
+others sought the bodies of the Indians
+they had slain in the attack, and
+presently returned with three reeking
+scalps, the trophies of the fight. The
+body of the mountaineer was then
+wrapped in a buffalo robe, the scalps
+being placed on the dead man's breast,
+laid in the shallow grave, and
+quickly covered&mdash;without a word of
+prayer, or sigh of grief; for, however
+much his companions may have felt,
+not a word escaped them; although
+the bitten lip and frowning brow told
+tale of anger more than sorrow, and
+vowed&mdash;what they thought would
+better please the spirit of the dead
+man than sorrow&mdash;lasting revenge.</p>
+
+<p>Trampling down the earth which
+filled the grave, they placed upon it
+a pile of heavy stones; and packing
+their mules once more, and taking a
+last look of their comrade's lonely
+resting-place, they turned their backs
+upon the stream, which has ever since
+been known as "Gonneville's Creek."</p>
+
+<p>If the reader casts his eye over any
+of the recent maps of the western
+country, which detail the features of
+the regions embracing the Rocky
+Mountains, and the vast prairies at
+their bases, he will not fail to observe
+that many of the creeks or smaller
+streams which feed the larger rivers,&mdash;as
+the Missouri, Platte, and Arkansa&mdash;are
+called by familiar proper
+names, both English and French.
+These are invariably christened after
+some unfortunate trapper, killed there
+in Indian fight; or treacherously
+slaughtered by the lurking savages,
+while engaged in trapping beaver on the
+stream. Thus alone is the memory of
+these hardy men perpetuated, at least
+of those whose fate is ascertained:
+for many, in every season, never
+return from their hunting expeditions,
+having met a sudden death
+from Indians, or a more lingering fate
+from accident or disease in some of
+the lonely gorges of the mountains,
+where no footfall save their own, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+the heavy tread of grizzly bear, disturbs
+the unbroken silence of these
+awful solitudes. Then, as many winters
+pass without some old familiar
+faces making their appearance at the
+merry rendezvous, their long protracted
+absence may perhaps occasion
+such remarks, as to where such and
+such a mountain worthy can have
+betaken himself, to which the casual
+rejoinder of "Gone under, maybe,"
+too often gives a short but certain
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>In all the philosophy of hardened
+hearts, our hunters turned from the
+spot where the unmourned trapper
+met his death. La Bonté, however,
+not yet entirely steeled by mountain
+life to a perfect indifference to human
+feeling, drew his hard hand across
+his eye, as the unbidden tear rose
+from his rough but kindly heart. He
+could not forget so soon the comrade
+they had lost, the companionship in
+the hunt or over the cheerful camp-fire,
+the narrator of many a tale of
+dangers past, of sufferings from hunger,
+cold, and thirst, and from untended
+wounds, of Indian perils, and
+of a life spent in such vicissitudes.
+One tear dropped from the young
+hunter's eye, and rolled down his
+cheek&mdash;the last for many a long year.</p>
+
+<p>In the forks of the northern branch
+of the Platte, formed by the junction of
+the Laramie, they found a big village
+of the Sioux encamped near the station
+of one of the fur companies.
+Here the party broke up; many, finding
+the alcohol of the traders an impediment
+to their further progress, remained
+some time in the vicinity,
+while La Bonté, Luke, and a trapper
+named Marcelline, started in a few
+days to the mountains, to trap on
+Sweet Water and Medicine Bow.
+They had leisure, however, to observe
+all the rascalities connected with the
+Indian trade, although at this season
+(August) hardly commenced. However,
+a band of Indians having come
+in with several packs of last year's
+robes, and being anxious to start
+speedily on their return, a trader
+from one of the forts had erected his
+lodge in the village.</p>
+
+<p>Here, he set to work immediately
+to induce the Indians to trade. First,
+a chief appointed three "soldiers" to
+guard the trader's lodge from intrusion;
+and who, amongst the thieving
+fraternity, can be invariably trusted.
+Then the Indians were invited to
+have a drink&mdash;a taste of the fire-water
+being given to all to incite
+them to trade. As the crowd presses
+upon the entrance to the lodge, and
+those in rear become impatient, some
+large-mouthed possessor of many
+friends, who has received a portion of
+the spirit, makes his way, with his
+mouth full of the liquor and cheeks
+distended, through the throng, and
+is instantly surrounded by his particular
+friends. Drawing the face of
+each, by turns, near his own, he
+squirts a small quantity into his open
+mouth, until the supply is exhausted,
+when he returns for more, and repeats
+the generous distribution.</p>
+
+<p>When paying for the robes, the traders,
+in measuring out the liquor in a
+tin half-pint cup, thrust their thumbs
+or the four fingers of the hand into the
+measure, in order that it may contain
+the less, or not unfrequently fill
+the bottom with melted buffalo fat,
+with the same object. So greedy are
+the Indians, that they never discover
+the cheat, and once under the influence
+of the liquor, cannot distinguish
+between the first cup of comparatively
+strong spirit, and the following
+ones diluted five hundred per cent,
+and poisonously drugged to boot.</p>
+
+<p>Scenes of drunkenness, riot, and
+bloodshed last until the trade is over,
+which in the winter occupies several
+weeks, during which period the Indians
+present the appearance, under
+the demoralising influence of the
+liquor, of demons rather than men.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>AMERICAN THOUGHTS ON EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS.</h2>
+
+
+<p class="sig">
+<em>Boston, May 1848.</em>
+</p>
+
+<p>A thousand leagues of ocean, my
+Basil, are indeed between us, but it
+is no longer right to reckon distances
+by leagues. Time is your only measure.
+I know of a gentleman who had a
+home in Paris, while Paris was capable
+of homes, and he came every year
+across the Atlantic, only to fish for
+trout. Why do you stare? You
+know very well that you have often
+waited a fortnight for a good day to
+go a-fishing. Come, then, pack up
+your slender reed, and spend such a
+fortnight in a steamer. By God's
+favour you shall be the better for sea
+air; and in two weeks from Liverpool,
+you shall find yourself on the shores
+of a lake in the interior of the State
+of New York, where, since the fifth
+day of the creation, the trout have
+apparently been multiplying in a
+manner that would astonish a Malthus.
+Such is now that dissociable
+ocean, which was once thought too
+great a waste of waters to be passed
+by colonial members of parliament
+representing the provinces of America.
+"<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Opposuit Natura</i>;" said Burke, "I
+cannot remove the eternal barriers of
+the creation." But Burke forgot his
+Greek:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>"Πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ, κοὐδεν ανθρώπου
+δεινότερον πελει·τοῦτο καὶ πολιοῦ πέραν
+πόντου χειμερίῳ νοτῳ χωρεί, περιβρυχίοισι
+περῶν ἐρ' oἴδμασι·"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>I know it is an old saw, but it is so
+freshened by the modern instance of
+steamers every week, that it has become
+quotable once more; and I have
+almost a mind to go on with the
+chorus, and show that Sophocles may
+be fairly rendered in favour of railways
+and iron-steeds. But the telegraph,
+Basil! I must even quote a bit
+of English for that. As gentle Cowper
+saith:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The tempest itself lags behind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i1">And the swift-wing'd arrows of light!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noind">The wires are already stretched from
+Massachusetts, and almost from Halifax
+to the Gulf of Mexico. A spark
+here, and the lettered bulletin is reeling
+off in Louisiana! The fresh news
+will, hereafter, be hawked in the
+streets of Boston and along the
+wharves of New Orleans in the same
+hour. It will soon be sent farther
+still; and a British fleet in the Pacific
+may be served with orders from
+the Admiralty Board, not two weeks
+old. We are fairly in hand-shaking
+neighbourhood. I remember when
+European intelligence came to us rather
+as history than as news. It is
+not so now. While emotion is yet
+warm with you, it sets our own hearts
+throbbing. We, too, are, in the present
+tense, with Europe; for the revolutions
+of peace have been more wonderful
+than those of warfare. They
+have reunited what strife had sundered,
+and rendered England and America
+again one family.</p>
+
+<p>Talking of revolutions,&mdash;how hot
+the noon of the century is growing!
+You will allow, dear Basil, that we in
+America, are well situated to be lookers
+on. With all the security of distance,
+we have the advantages of nearness.
+You are on the stage&mdash;we are in the
+boxes. You go behind the scenes, and
+see the wire-working and machinery,
+but we get the effect of the spectacle.
+The great revolutionary drama is before
+us, and we can behold it calmly;
+interested, but not involved. For a
+devout or philosophical spectator,
+America is the true observatory.
+Here we can watch "the great Babel,
+and not feel the crowd." It is our
+own fault if, with such advantages,
+we do not anticipate the judgment of
+future ages, and arrive instinctively
+at conclusions which those who share
+the tumult itself must ordinarily learn
+in the soberness of after-thoughts, or,
+perhaps, by a dear experience.</p>
+
+<p>Did you ask how the doings in
+France appear in republican eyes?
+And pray what do you expect me to
+answer? You appear to think republicanism
+a specific instead of a generic
+term, and to expect us to hail the
+French as our kindred. As well
+might I suppose that your monarchical
+sympathies deeply interest you in
+the autocracy of Dahomey and Dârfur.
+A boy may play with a monkey,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+without admiring him; and although
+the monkey is a biped without feathers,
+the boy would not like to have him
+taken for a younger brother. Believe
+me, we are not yet ready to claim fraternity
+with the Provisional Government.
+<em>How we apples swim</em>, seems
+to be their salutation to America; but,
+for one, I reject the odorous impeachment.
+No one is very cordial, as yet,
+in returning it. There is a general
+gaping and staring; but the prevailing
+disposition towards France is to
+wait and see if she will be decent.
+You will agree with me, that this caution
+is creditable to the <em>Model Republic</em>.</p>
+
+<p>In the spectacle before us, believe
+me, then, we know how to distinguish
+the harlequin from the hero, and are
+not in danger of clapping hands at the
+buffoonery of Paris, when we have
+just been charmed by the solemn
+buskin in which London came upon
+the stage&mdash;reluctant to play her part,
+but prepared to go through it nobly.
+A French melodrama, of men in
+smocks chanting <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Mourir pour la Patrie</i>,
+or priests, in defiled surplices,
+asperging and incensing May-poles,
+must of course suit the tastes of the
+groundlings; but such inexplicable
+dumb-shows are generally understood
+to be only the prelude to something
+tragic that is coming. For one, I look
+for solemn monologues from Pio Nono
+and Lamartine; and, by-and-by, expect
+a scene between the Soldan and
+the Czar. I do not look without feelings
+of awe, for I am sure it is the
+shadow of <span class="smcap">God's</span> own hand that is
+now passing over the nations. It is
+He that says, as of old, "remove the
+diadem and take off the crown; exalt
+him that is low, and abase him that
+is high." I am glad that others recognise
+his footsteps in the earth, and
+therefore was pleased with that motto
+lately quoted in Maga, from St Augustine&mdash;"<span class="smcap">God</span>
+is patient, because He is
+eternal."</p>
+
+<p>For seventeen years we have been
+watching the great political Humpty-Dumpty,
+in his efforts to come to an
+equilibrium, and to stand firm in his
+place; and the end is, that Humpty-Dumpty
+is fallen, according to the
+oracular rhyme of Mother Goose.
+What shall we say of him, except
+that he was barricaded in, and has
+been barricaded out? Laugh as we
+may at the undefinableness of legitimacy,
+one feels that the lack of it
+makes a great difference in our disposition
+towards a discrowned king.
+Still, Louis-Philippe is treated with
+much forbearance, and men think of
+his hoar hairs and his eventful life.
+In one of our newspapers, a generous
+word has been spoken for his government,
+as about the best that France
+deserved, and his best measures have
+been reviewed with praise. Still, he
+is much disliked in America. One of
+his earliest Claremonts was with us;
+and when Lafayette made him a king,
+Americans felt as if they had a right
+to be pleased with his accession. But
+his quarrel with his benefactor turned
+the feeling strongly against him, for
+Lafayette was revered among us to
+the hour of his death. I think there
+is a general satisfaction with the fall
+of the Orleans dynasty; but it certainly
+has not been malicious or spiteful.
+An eminent American, who has
+lived long in Paris, has written two
+letters in the leading democratic newspaper
+of New York, in which the fallen
+monarch is more severely handled
+than he has been elsewhere. He is
+there said to be a much overrated
+man&mdash;possessed of no great talents,
+except those which enable him to dissimulate
+with the utmost cunning,
+and to manage with the basest perfidy.
+The writer, nevertheless, has
+no confidence in the revolution as
+having destroyed the monarchy; and
+quotes with approbation a sentiment
+which he says was advanced in conversation
+with himself, so long ago as
+1830, by Odillon Barrot,&mdash;"<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Enfin,
+monsieur, la France a besoin de se sentir
+gouvernée</i>." He thinks two things
+will work against the Duc de Bordeaux&mdash;that
+he has married an Austrian,
+and grown fat; yet he confidently
+predicts that Henry V. will
+one day ascend the throne of his ancestors.
+"As for a republic that is to
+go on harmoniously, and with any
+thing like tolerable quiet, law, and
+order," he concludes, "I hold it to be
+just as impracticable as it would be
+to set up a Doge of Venice and a
+Council of Ten in the State of New
+York. <em>We hear only the voices of the
+revolutionists</em>, the rest of the nation
+being temporarily mute. The day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+will come, however, when the last
+will speak."</p>
+
+<p>These sentiments are not singular
+among us. I am agreeably surprised
+by the great moderation of our people
+and of our press. When the tidings
+of the outbreak reached us, it produced
+excitement, of course; but there was
+no echo of the French howl, and remarkably
+little enthusiasm, all things
+considered. You have seen reprinted
+in England some of the most foolish
+things that were said in our most
+worthless prints. The press in general
+behaved with great reserve and
+caution. Successive steamers brought
+continual abatements to the degree of
+confidence, or hope, that had been
+inspired in the minds of the more
+ardent; and so general was the candour
+of the newspapers, that when
+those of the Clay party were pettishly
+accused of a sympathy with
+tyranny, the charge was easily met
+by quotations from democratic newspapers,
+equally liable to the imputation,
+if a manly reprobation of revolutionary
+misrule and excess be sufficient
+to prove it. The truth is, our country
+was caught in the trap in 1792. Then,
+the pulpit and the press strove together
+in glorifying France; and the remorse
+and burning shame that were the consequence,
+have left a very salutary
+impression.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, the violent democracy of
+Paris is exerting a beneficial effect
+upon our people. We see the degrading
+spectacle, and learn to value
+ourselves for a love of law and order.
+There is a reluctance to reduce ourselves
+to the level of such a republic as
+has sprung up like a mushroom in a
+night, and is likely to perish in the same
+way. Our own revolution was not
+one of drunken riot, and street-singing
+blouse-men: our constitution is not
+a mere poetical theory of liberty and
+equality, nor a socialist's dream of
+brotherhood. We now learn the
+secret of our strength, and of that
+comparative durability which has
+almost surprised ourselves. We are,
+after all, a transplanted slip of old
+England; nor are we so essentially
+changed, my Basil, as even you
+imagine. The spirit of our people is
+indeed democratic; but the spirit of
+our constitution is imbued with a
+stronger element. The facts concerning
+it will enable you to see one secret
+of our comparative success, and to
+judge whether France can possibly
+come to any thing as good. The
+founders of this republic were not
+Frenchmen, but Englishmen; I mean
+they were of English stock, and had
+learned all their notions of liberty
+from the history of England. Each
+province of America had taken shape
+under the British constitution; and
+when the provinces became independent,
+the general government was
+organised in such wise as to supply
+the place of that constitution. Its
+founders did not frame a new and
+untried constitution, a <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">priori</i>, according
+to their own schemes; they simply
+modified the great principles of British
+constitutional law to suit a new state
+of things, and a peculiar people. A
+monarchy was out of the question;
+but they did not intend to make a
+democracy. They only made a republic.
+The democratic spirit came in
+with Jefferson and French politics at
+the beginning of the present century.
+It has become dominant, but by no
+means triumphant; and its great obstacle
+has been the constitution. In
+the several states it has changed the
+constitutions one after the other, introducing
+universal suffrage, and
+other democratic features. But the
+national constitution has not been so
+easily reached; and it is the strength
+of the great party with which Clay
+and Webster are identified, and which
+is a constant check on the popular
+party. It is republican, but not
+simply democratic. The executive
+magistracy is elective; but the electors
+are not the people, directly, but electoral
+colleges, appointed by the several
+states; and the office itself is endowed
+with prerogatives, some of which are
+more unlimited than the corresponding
+rights of the British crown. Our senate
+is a mere modification of the House of
+Lords: it is a body more select than
+the lower house, and not so immediately
+responsible to constituents; and
+its practical working shows the great
+importance of such a balance-wheel
+in any government. There is no working
+without it, in spite of what your
+Roebucks may say. The House of
+Commons reappears in our House of
+Representatives, which, like its great
+original, is the safety-valve of popular<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+feeling, and gives sonorous vent to a
+mighty pressure of steam and vapour,
+which would otherwise blow us to
+atoms, with a much less endurable
+noise. The whole fabric of our law
+is a precious patrimony derived, with
+our blood, from England. Our new
+states are filling up with emigrants
+from the continent of Europe, but
+they all adopt the law of their older
+sisters; and thus the institutions of
+the immortal Alfred may be found
+among the Swedes and Danes of
+Wisconsin. These, then, are the
+elements of our strength; and you
+observe they partake of the strength
+of the British empire, which has been
+legitimately and naturally imparted
+to us, like the mother's life-blood to
+the daughter of her womb. We have
+indeed characteristic peculiarities.
+We have tried some new experiments;
+but let not France suppose she can
+imitate them. We are a new country,
+a sparse population, and our people
+have their heads full of subduing
+the soil, and setting water-wheels in
+streams, and making roads and canals.
+We have no natural taste for insurrection
+and confusion, for we have
+nobody that is idle enough to want
+such work. Our new wine, then, has
+been put into new bottles; and the
+fool that attempts to decant it into
+the old vessels of Europe, will ruin it
+and them together.</p>
+
+<p>Our newspapers have pointed out
+another secret of our strength, which
+France cannot possibly enjoy. In
+spite of that wild prophecy of Lady
+Hester Stanhope to Lamartine&mdash;so
+much of which has come true&mdash;Paris
+is France, and will be France while
+France holds together. The city of
+Washington is not America; and its
+great acres of unoccupied building
+lots are the best thing about it. The
+State governments, which could not
+have been planned beforehand, but
+are a natural product of old events&mdash;which
+dispose of all local matters, and
+prevent sectional jealousies, which
+divide and balance power, and <em>satisfy
+small ambition</em>,&mdash;these are the helps,
+without which our national existence
+could not have been prolonged beyond
+the lifetime of Washington himself.
+The threatened disturbance of the admirable
+equilibrium which has heretofore
+been maintained between North
+and South, and East and West, by the
+introduction of Mexican and Texan
+states, and the power which it will
+throw into the hands of a few persons
+at the seat of government, is even
+now our most alarming danger. We
+know, from what we see among ourselves,
+that governments must take
+form, not from human devices, but
+from <span class="smcap">God's</span> providences. We ourselves
+are the results of circumstances:
+no scheming patriot could have made
+us what we are; and no imitative
+Frenchman can give to his country a
+government like ours; nor, if he could,
+would it survive beyond the lifetime
+of some individual, whose popularity
+would supply a temporary strength
+to its essential weakness. An imported
+constitution must be a sickly
+one, in any country on earth.</p>
+
+<p>For us, then, there is a legitimacy
+in our institutions which makes them
+durable, and dear to all classes of our
+people. But to be loyal to our own
+republic is by no means to be committed
+to universal republicanism, far
+less to be delighted with universal
+anarchy. You must pardon our tastes.
+We are young, and we think a jacket
+and shako becoming. We wear our
+appropriate costume as gracefully as
+we can. We are yet the growing,
+perhaps the awkward, but still the
+active boy. But when Europe befools
+itself, in its dotage, with republican
+attire, we lads have a right to laugh.
+It will do for us to play leap-frog, or
+cut any other caper that we choose;
+but who can restrain derision when
+corpulent imbecility assumes an unskirted
+coat, and submits its uncovered
+proportions to hootings and to kicks,
+or throws a ponderous summersault
+that less demonstrates agility than
+exposes nakedness!</p>
+
+<p>I speak for myself, and for many, very
+many of my countrymen. Our mere
+populace are of course possessed with
+the idea that a universal Yankee-doodle
+is the panacea for all the miseries
+of the world. It has been told them
+so often by demagogues, that they are
+pardonable. But even they would
+probably allow that the <em>Chinese</em>, for
+instance, are not yet quite ready for
+liberty-poles and ballet-boxes, and by
+degrees might be brought to confess
+as much for any country less remarkable
+and astonishing than our own.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+But there is a solid mass of good sense
+among us that is not so deceived. It
+consists of those who would rejoice to
+see a rational republic in France, or
+in any other country; but who know
+that, with the exception perhaps of
+Holland, such a thing is impossible,
+and that, in France, reason is more
+likely to reappear as the divinified harlot
+of Notre Dame than in any more
+respectable form. As to Great Britain,
+even our schoolboys have learned
+that, with all the stability of empire,
+it unites the freedom of a republic;
+and in spite of some feeling against
+John Bull, I scarcely know the man
+who would not be sorry to see it
+suddenly or violently revolutionised.
+On Irish affairs opinion is not so sane
+among us. Few of us know any
+thing about them; and for the sake of
+the starving peasantry of Ireland,
+there is some sympathy with its turbulent
+Gracchi. Believe it, the general
+tone of sentiment on this side the
+Atlantic, among reflecting men, is far
+more conservative than you imagine.
+Indeed, all classes stand amazed at
+the democracy of Europe. Our wildest
+enthusiasts are outdone, even by
+some who sit in the House of Commons;
+and the rampant socialism of
+Paris is as unlike the worst excesses
+of our elections, as the ferocity of a
+tiger is unlike the playfulness of a
+kitten. Young as we are, we are
+better mannered; and I must say,
+dear Basil, that when the older nations
+of the world are allowing themselves
+such license, we have a right to regard
+ourselves as taking new rank, and
+deserving more credit than has heretofore
+been given us, as, after all, a law-loving
+and law-maintaining people.</p>
+
+<p>You will say, as was said to the trumpeter
+in Æsop&mdash;"No, no,&mdash;you make
+all the mischief; others cut throats,
+but you have set them on." But
+is the democratic spirit really of American
+origin? Our Plymouth orators&mdash;the
+men who annually glorify our
+earliest colonists&mdash;usually trace it to
+the Puritans, and through them to
+Geneva. At all events, it now infects
+the world, and those are the happy
+and the permanent governments which
+are prepared for its violence, by constitutional
+vents and floodgates. It
+is not to be stifled, or dammed up.
+We believe, therefore, that our own
+government is the best for ourselves,
+and few of us have any fear for that of
+England. On British matters we do
+not feel bound to judge by our own
+experiences. We are free to theorise
+on broader principles; and many of
+us form our own opinions, not as cool
+and critical foreigners, but as having
+a deep interest in the preservation of
+the institutions of our ancestors. Why
+should we not? The study of history
+carries us, at once, beyond the narrow
+limits of threescore years and ten,
+which is the age of our national existence,
+and as soon as we pass that
+boundary we too are Britons. The
+blood of our forefathers ran in English
+veins, or flowed for British freedom
+and sovereignty. This fact is
+enough to make our educated and
+reflecting men speculatively conservative
+as to British politics. We
+know the past, and do not feel the
+party-heats of the present in England.
+Hence I am far from being alone
+among my countrymen, in looking at
+English matters with an English heart.
+Even our commercial class have a
+reason for wishing internal peace and
+prosperity to England; and I believe
+there is generally something better
+than selfishness in the prevalent good-will
+toward her. I wish you could
+have watched, as I did, the feelings of
+our whole people, while lately, between
+the arrivals of two steamers,
+there was a solemn feeling of surprise
+as to what would be the results of
+the Chartist demonstration! Till the
+news came, the stoutest of us held
+our breath. I assure you, Basil, the
+peril of England was observed with a
+deep anxiety. During all that time I
+met not a respectable man who wished
+to see a revolutionary result. It was
+the talk of all circles. Our merchants
+trembled for England; our scholars
+hoped for her; a clerical gentleman
+assured me that he daily prayed for
+her. The press very generally predicted
+a triumph of order, but there
+were some specimens of newspaper
+literature that ventured an opposite
+augury. I wish you could have seen
+this city when the result was known.
+The news was received with a thrill.
+There was some laughing at the parturient
+mountain and the still-born
+mouse, but a graver cheerfulness was
+the reigning emotion. We deeply<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+felt that, by the mercy of God, the
+world had been spared from a conflagration
+which the match of a madman
+could light, but which only
+another deluge could extinguish. For
+one, I was as a watcher by the sea-side,
+who, after a night of tempest,
+waits for the fog to rise, and then
+thanks God to see the good old ship
+coming home, in season, her masts all
+standing, and her flag untorn.</p>
+
+<p>I had felt fears, my Basil. What was
+not imaginable, when Europe presented
+the appearance of a table on which
+empires had fallen in a day, like card-houses
+blown down by the breath of
+children! I knew that neither France,
+nor Prussia, nor Austria, nor Italy,
+were any thing like England, which is
+founded on a rock, and knit together
+by joints and bands: but I felt that
+England is no longer what she was.
+With a Whig government she is never
+herself.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> The Whigs are more than half
+Frenchmen. I tell you you seem to me
+not half enough afraid of your Whigs;
+they are worse than your Radicals.
+You show some uneasiness under the
+Jewish Disabilities Bill, but I wish
+you could see it as it strikes a looker-on.
+If time has on you the effect
+which distance has on me, you will yet
+look back on that measure as you now
+look back on the great mistake of 1829.
+It will haunt you like a nightmare, and
+you will regard it with less of anger
+than of shame and remorse; with
+the deep conviction that, if the friends
+of the constitution had done their
+duty, it never would have disgraced
+a Christian state. True, the Whigs
+are responsible for inflicting the blow;
+but what has been done to avert it?
+So far as I know, nothing commensurate
+with the greatness of the evil.
+You seem to give way to it as only
+one of many inroads upon old proprieties,
+which are inevitable, and cannot
+be withstood. But is the unchristianising
+of the state to be spoken of
+side by side with even the destruction
+of colonies, and the discouragement
+of agriculture? As it strikes
+me, it is not a thing of a class, it
+stands out a portent, a harbinger,
+a phenomenon of its own kind. Not
+that it surprises me. From Lord
+John Russell nothing that argues
+fatuity and lack of political principle
+should surprise any one. To carry out
+the plans to which he has committed
+himself, he must consistently pander to
+infidels, foster heretics, and subsidise
+Jews. To the reforms of the last
+score of years, there could be no more
+fitting sequel than this coalition
+with a people loaded with the
+hereditary burthen of the saving
+blood of the Crucified. I only marvel
+that the bill goes on so slowly. The
+Baron should have been long since in
+his place, and the Easter holidays
+should have been disregarded, out of
+respect to his feelings. It is astonishing
+that he is not already an ecclesiastical
+commissioner. The times are
+not now as during a former French
+revolution, when a British statesman
+could say<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>&mdash;"the Jews in Change
+Alley have not yet dared to hint their
+hopes of a mortgage on the revenues
+belonging to the see of Canterbury."
+You are always praising your church,
+Basil, but allow me to ask, Why you
+may not live to see a Jewish rabbi
+nominated to a bishopric. As I understand
+it, the obsequious chapter
+would be obliged to perform the election,
+and close all by anthems to
+Almighty <span class="smcap">God</span>, ascribing to Him the
+glory of a gift so felicitous and so
+auspicious to the church! It would
+not be the first time, I believe, that
+Lord John has set the <em>Te Deum</em> of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+cathedrals going, like the whistles of a
+juggler's barrel-organ. Forgive me,
+Basil; I am not mocking the agonies
+of your church, but I am scorning a
+British minister that can use for her
+destruction the powers confided to him
+for her nourishment and defence. I
+have learned my notions of your politics
+from Edmund Burke, and I remember
+what he said in his <cite>Reflections
+on the French Revolution of 1792</cite>&mdash;for,
+by the way, revolutions in France
+must be always referred to by dates,
+and will soon be known, like policemen,
+by letters and numbers. "The
+men of England," said that great and
+honest man, "the men I mean of
+light and leading in England, would be
+ashamed, as of a silly deceitful trick, to
+profess any religion in name which, by
+their proceedings, they appear to contemn."
+Does not Lord John profess to
+be a Christian? I must caution you,
+too, against supposing that I dislike
+the Israelites. Far from it. In my
+own country I am glad that they
+labour under no disabilities, and I can
+testify to their good order, decency,
+and propriety of behaviour as citizens.
+But we have "no past at our back,"
+and nothing in our system which demands
+a prior consideration. No,
+Basil&mdash;I honour a Jew, however much
+I may pity him. Crying old clothes,
+or lolling in a banker's chariot, the
+Jew is to me a man of sacred associations.
+And then&mdash;a Jewish gentleman&mdash;he
+makes me think at once of
+the sons of Maccabæus and all the
+Asmoneans; those Hebrews of the
+Hebrews, those Tories of Israel! What
+natural sympathy has a Jewish gentleman
+with a Whig? Were I merely
+covetous of votes I would say&mdash;let the
+Jews in! I could trust <em>their</em> conscience;
+I could appeal to their own feelings;
+I would put it to them whether their
+liberalism would consent to eat pork
+with the Gentiles, or to call in the
+uncircumcised to make laws for the
+synagogue. We pity the blindness of
+the Jews that offered their thirty
+pieces of silver&mdash;but we do not despise
+them. Our contempt settles on the
+head of the Christian who consented
+to take them at the bargain.</p>
+
+<p>You speak of this Jew bill as the
+first step! Why, yes, the first step in
+tragedy; there was a former one in
+farce. There is Sir Moses Montefiore!
+Who made him a knight? "A Jewish
+knight," said I, at the time&mdash;"hear
+it, ye dry bones,&mdash;ye cross-legged
+effigies&mdash;ye Paladins&mdash;ye Templars!
+Hear it, Du-Bois-Gilbert,&mdash;hear
+it, Richard Cœur-de-Lion! Yes,
+and thou, too, old Roger de Coverley!
+Hear it, thou true old English knight;
+for they that bought thine old clothes
+now come for thine old spurs!" So
+said I&mdash;wondering that no one seemed
+to wonder. The nineteenth century
+had not time to stare. There was not
+even a London <em>Punch</em> to laugh at such
+a <em>Judy</em>, and so Moses was belted and
+spurred, no man gainsaying; and
+knighthood, that was Sidney's once,
+is just the thing for Sir Peter Laurie
+now.</p>
+
+<p>And if a Jewish knight, why not a
+Jewish senator! True, there is something
+grand in the idea of a nation
+that never, since the Wittenagemote,
+has seen a lawgiver unbaptised; and
+then there is still a red cross in the
+flag of England; and there has been
+a pleasing notion that the Christian
+faith was part and parcel with the
+British constitution; and even we in
+America, averse to church and state,
+have long allowed ourselves to admire
+one exception to the rule, and to confess
+the majestic figure made among
+the nations by a Christian empire,
+shining forth in splendid contrast to
+surrounding kingdoms, some of them
+infidel and some of them superstitious,
+but she alone the witness to reasonable
+faith, and faithful reason. But
+who regards it in this light? Who
+among you stands up to warn his
+country of the glory that is departing?
+Who has said any thing in parliament
+at all adequate to the turning-point of
+a nation's religion? I have looked for
+some one to speak as Burke would have
+spoken, of "uncovering your nakedness,
+by throwing off that Christian
+religion which has hitherto been your
+boast and comfort." I have longed
+to see his promise made good,&mdash;"<em>we
+shall never be such fools</em> as to call in an
+enemy to the substance of any system,
+to remove its corruptions, to supply
+its defects, or to perfect its construction."
+I read <cite>The Times</cite>, but as yet I
+have looked in vain. A few honest
+remonstrances have indeed been ventured
+amid cries of <em>oh, oh!</em> and vociferations
+of buck-toothed laughter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+from the benches that support the
+honourable members from Cottonburgh
+and Calicopolis. But who has
+stood up as for altars and fires? I
+hope, ere this reaches you, the question
+will be creditably answered. I
+hope the Christianity of England will
+not die without a struggle. I suspect
+it will be of no use, but I look yet for
+some John of Gaunt in the House of
+Lords. Imagine him, my Basil:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i18">"This sceptred isle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Renownèd for her deeds as far from home<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(For <em>Christian service</em> and <em>true chivalry</em>)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><em>Dear for her reputation through the world</em>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><em>Is now&mdash;paun'd out to Jews!</em>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is what ought to be said; and
+I look for it, if not from lords spiritual,
+then even from lords temporal. But
+surely it would well become the primate's
+mouth! Of course, it would
+do little good; but then the religion
+of England would fall at least dramatically.
+It would make a picture
+quite as good as the death of Chatham.
+Do you remember the lawn-sleeves in
+that picture? The bishops are "in at
+the death,"&mdash;but nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>But another steamer has come in
+with news; and France is all the
+talk. The elections are over; the
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Modérés</i> have triumphed; the National
+Assembly has convened, and the Provisional
+Government is at an end.
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Vive Lamartine!</i> Of course the stock
+of the republic takes a rise, but
+holders are not firm. The bloodshed
+at Rouen, the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">émeutes</i> at Elbœuf and
+Limoges, and the threats of the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Communistes</i>,
+do not precisely inspire confidence.
+Still, we are so far surprised, and
+those who have predicted favourably
+for France grow a little more sanguine
+in their hopes. I am glad to say that
+Louis Blanc has no sympathisers
+here. All are convinced that Lamartine
+will make the best of it, and that,
+if he fails, the republic will be suffocated
+and expire in a stench. For
+one, it seems to me that Lamartine is
+not bad enough to encounter successfully
+the frantic malice of his opponents,
+and that their eventual success is certain.
+Already, things have very likely
+taken a decisive turn, and by the time
+this letter reaches you, the doings of
+the Assembly will have enabled you
+to conjecture whether the nation is
+going by the long way, or the short
+cut, to Henry Fifth. As all will be
+stale before you can read what I now
+write, I will not presume to predict
+the immediate results; but I am sure
+that the assembling of such a set as
+have been returned to the legislature,
+would be enough to blow up the
+strongest government on earth. Jew,
+Dominican, pastor and bishop, poet
+and butcher, all in their tricoloured
+sashes&mdash;was there ever such a full-blown
+tulip-bed of liberty, equality,
+and fraternity!</p>
+
+<p>The announcement of several clergymen
+as members of the Assembly
+reminds me that there has been some
+sickly sentiment among us, about the
+<em>piety</em> that has been displayed in this
+revolution. In Boston we are favoured
+with some strange types of
+religions enthusiasm; in fact, the
+type of Christianity that prevails
+among us is peculiarly our own; and like
+our improvements in machinery, deserves
+the proverbial name of a "Boston
+notion." Emerson, who is now
+illuminating England, may give you
+some idea of what I mean; and a
+queer story that is told of one of his
+disciples, may furnish you with an explanation
+of the fact, that some men
+see religion in the sacking of the Tuileries.
+The youth was at the Opera
+to see a celebrated <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">danseuse</i>, and excited
+general attention by his somewhat
+extraordinary applause. His
+enthusiasm so transported him, that
+the emotions of his heart became unconsciously
+audible. As the dancer began
+to whirl, he cried, "<em>Ah, that is
+poetry!</em>" As she stretched her toe to the
+horizontal, he exclaimed, "<em>That's divinity!</em>"
+but when she proceeded to an
+evolution that forced the ladies to pay
+attention to their fans, he burst into the
+climax&mdash;"<em>That's religion!</em>" If this be
+caricature, the Emersonians richly deserve
+it. They are laughed at even in
+Boston. But they are not alone in thinking
+well of the piety of Paris, and arguing
+from it that there will be no reign
+of terror; as if there was not vastly
+more show of religion in the first revolution!
+If there is an archbishop<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+of Paris now, there was formerly a
+Talleyrand for high-priest and master
+of ceremonies. Oh, but they rejoin
+with a story! When the blouses were
+gutting the palace of its pictures and
+marbles, they found, among other
+works of art, an image of the Crucified.
+As a blouseman was about to dash it
+to atoms, there was a cry, "Save it&mdash;save
+the great teacher of fraternity!"
+The crucifix was accordingly saved,
+and borne about the streets amid
+songs and curses, and, very appropriately,
+"with lanterns and torches."
+"<em>Ah, that's religion!</em>" says your Emersonian.
+So, when recreant priests
+baptise a liberty-pole, or join a procession
+of blouses, with crosses and
+censers, <em>that's divinity</em>, at least. Was
+ever hypocrisy so revolting! The
+nauseous mockery has its only parallel
+in the writings of George Sand, who
+makes a favourite hero and heroine
+betake themselves to an adulterous
+bed, after duly reciting their prayers,
+in which the absent husband is very
+affectionately remembered. If a revolution
+thus begun is not destined to
+go speedily through all the ripening
+and rotting of a godless anarchy, it is
+to be accounted for only on the principle
+that "He who is Eternal can
+wait." The old scene at Notre Dame
+may not be actually revived, and the
+Bible may not be literally dragged
+through Paris again tied to an ass's
+tail; but the undisguised atrocities of
+the first revolution may, after all, be
+exceeded by the smooth-faced blasphemies
+of that which has already degraded
+the world's Redeemer into the
+patron saint of insurrection, and the
+father of infidel fraternity.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Lamartine! Is this the man,
+my Basil, whom you once likened to
+Chateaubriand? <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Quantum mutatus!</i>
+I knew him, till lately, only as a poet
+and a traveller. He certainly went
+to Palestine with the spirit of a
+palmer. He bathed in Siloa with enthusiasm,
+and almost expired of feeling
+under the venerable olive-trees of
+Gethsemane.</p>
+
+<p>How Frenchy&mdash;how intensely
+French! mass in the morning, and
+weeping and sighing,&mdash;a revel before
+nightfall, and desperate gaming. And
+this man to be the Cromwell of the
+commonwealth? He could hardly
+have been the Milton, though it would
+have been more becoming. And what
+will be his career? It is a pity Lady
+Hester Stanhope was not permitted to
+consult his stars in full when he met
+her on Mount Lebanon, when she
+praised his handsome foot and arched
+instep, and told him he should be very
+important in the history of the world.
+Ah, how certainly he will yet lament,
+if he does not lament already, the fulfilment
+of the oracle! Such weird
+sisters as Lady Hester generally tell
+<em>only half</em>, leaving the rest to imagination
+and to time. But whether this
+Phaeton, who has grasped the reins,
+is to set the world on fire; whether
+he, in turn, is only to try the game of
+Humpty-Dumpty and to fall; or whether,
+even as I write this, he be not
+already under the foot of Louis Blanc
+and his <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Communistes</i>,&mdash;what probabilities
+or improbabilities shall aid my conjecture?
+This thing only will I venture
+as my surmise, though not my
+hope, that kings shall reign again in
+France, as if Lamartine never lived:
+that tricoloured cockades shall be
+made no more, and lilies be cultivated
+again: that there will soon be longings
+for a sight of the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">drapeau blanc</i>, and
+a prince of the sons of St Louis: and
+that, fat as he is, and Bourbon as he
+is, and half Austrian as he has made
+himself, Henry Duke of Bordeaux
+will soon be known as <span class="smcap">Henri le
+Désiré</span>.</p>
+
+<p>
+Yours ever, my dear Basil,</p>
+<p class="sig">
+<span class="smcap">Ernest</span>.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>THE CAXTONS&mdash;PART IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I was always an early riser. Happy
+the man who is! Every morning,
+day comes to him with a virgin's
+love, full of bloom, and purity, and
+freshness. The youth of nature is
+contagious, like the gladness of a
+happy child. I doubt if any man
+can be called 'old' so long as he
+is an early riser, and an early
+<em>walker</em>. And oh, youth!&mdash;take my
+word of it,&mdash;youth in dressing-gown
+and slippers, dawdling over breakfast
+at noon, is a very decrepid ghastly
+image of that youth which sees the sun
+blush over the mountains, and the dews
+sparkle upon blossoming hedgerows.</p>
+
+<p>Passing by my father's study, I
+was surprised to see the windows unclosed&mdash;surprised
+more, on looking in,
+to see him bending over his books&mdash;for
+I had never before known him
+study till after the morning meal.
+Students are not usually early risers,
+for students, alas! whatever their age,
+are rarely young. Yes; the great
+work must be getting on in serious
+earnest. It was no longer dalliance
+with learning: this was work.</p>
+
+<p>I passed through the gates into the
+road. A few of the cottages were
+giving signs of returning life; but it
+was not yet the hour for labour, and
+no "Good morning, sir," greeted me
+on the road. Suddenly at a turn,
+which an overhanging beech-tree had
+before concealed, I came full upon my
+Uncle Roland.</p>
+
+<p>"What! you, sir? So early? Hark,
+the clock is striking five!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not later! I have walked well
+for a lame man. It must be more
+than four miles to &mdash;&mdash; and back."</p>
+
+<p>"You have been to &mdash;&mdash;: not on
+business? No soul would be up."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, at inns there is always some
+one up. Ostlers never sleep! I have
+been to order my humble chaise and
+pair. I leave you to day, nephew."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, uncle, we have offended you.
+It was my folly&mdash;that cursed print&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh!" said my uncle, quickly.
+"Offended me, boy! I defy you!"
+and he pressed my hand roughly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet this sudden determination!
+It was but yesterday, at the Roman
+Camp, that you planned an excursion
+with my father to C&mdash;&mdash; Castle."</p>
+
+<p>"Never depend upon a whimsical
+man. I must be in London to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"And return to morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know not when," said my uncle,
+gloomily; and he was silent for some
+moments. At length, leaning less
+lightly on my arm, he continued&mdash;"Young
+man, you have pleased me. I
+love that open saucy brow of yours, on
+which nature has written 'Trust me.'
+I love those clear eyes that look man
+manfully in the face. I must know
+more of you&mdash;much of you. You must
+come and see me some day or other in
+your ancestor's ruined keep."</p>
+
+<p>"Come! that I will. And you shall
+show me the old tower&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And the traces of the out-works;"
+cried my uncle, flourishing
+his stick.</p>
+
+<p>"And the pedigree&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, and your great-great-grandfather's
+armour, which he wore at
+Marston Moor&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and the brass plate in the
+church, uncle."</p>
+
+<p>"The deuce is in the boy! Come
+here&mdash;come here; I've three minds to
+break your head, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is a pity somebody had not
+broken the rascally printer's, before he
+had the impudence to disgrace us by
+having a family, uncle."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Roland tried hard to frown,
+but he could not. "Pshaw!" said he,
+stopping, and taking snuff. "The
+world of the dead is wide; why should
+the ghosts jostle us?"</p>
+
+<p>"We can never escape the ghosts,
+uncle. They haunt us always. We
+cannot think or act, but the soul of
+some man, who has lived before,
+points the way. The dead never die,
+especially since&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Since what, boy? you speak well."</p>
+
+<p>"Since our great ancestor introduced
+printing," said I, majestically.</p>
+
+<p>My uncle whistled "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Malbrook
+s'en va-t-en guerre</i>."</p>
+
+<p>I had not the heart to plague him
+further.</p>
+
+<p>"Peace!" said I, creeping cautiously
+within the circle of the stick.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No! I forewarn you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Peace! and describe to me my
+little cousin, your pretty daughter&mdash;for
+pretty I am sure she is."</p>
+
+<p>"Peace," said my uncle, smiling.
+"But you must come and judge for
+yourself."</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER X.</h3>
+
+<p>Uncle Roland was gone. Before he
+went, he was closeted for an hour with
+my father, who then accompanied
+him to the gate; and we all crowded
+round him as he stepped into his
+chaise. When the Captain was gone,
+I tried to sound my father as to
+the cause of so sudden a departure.
+But my father was impenetrable in
+all that related to his brother's
+secrets. Whether or not the Captain
+had ever confided to him the cause
+of his displeasure with his son,&mdash;a
+mystery which much haunted me,&mdash;my
+father was mute on that score,
+both to my mother and myself. For
+two or three days, however, Mr
+Caxton was evidently unsettled. He
+did not even take to his great work;
+but walked much alone, or accompanied
+only by the duck, and without
+even a book in his hand. But by
+degrees the scholarly habits returned
+to him; my mother mended his pens,
+and the work went on.</p>
+
+<p>For my part, left much to myself,
+especially in the mornings, I began
+to muse restlessly over the future.
+Ungrateful that I was, the happiness
+of home ceased to content me. I
+heard afar the roar of the great world,
+and roved impatient by the shore.</p>
+
+<p>At length, one evening, my father,
+with some modest hums and ha's, and
+an-unaffected blush on his fair forehead,
+gratified a prayer frequently
+urged on him, and read me some portions
+of "the great Work." I cannot
+express the feelings this lecture
+created&mdash;they were something akin
+to awe. For the design of this book
+was so immense&mdash;and towards its
+execution, a learning so vast and
+various had administered&mdash;that it
+seemed to me as if a spirit had
+opened to me a new world, which had
+always been before my feet, but which
+my own human blindness had hitherto
+concealed from me. The unspeakable
+patience with which all
+these materials had been collected
+year after year&mdash;the ease with which
+now, by the calm power of genius,
+they seemed of themselves to fall into
+harmony and system&mdash;the unconscious
+humility with which the scholar
+exposed the stores of a laborious
+life;&mdash;all combined to rebuke my
+own restlessness and ambition, while
+they filled me with a pride in my
+father, which saved my wounded
+egotism from a pang. Here, indeed,
+was one of those books which embrace
+an existence; like the Dictionary of
+Bayle, or the History of Gibbon, or
+the <cite>Fasti Hellenici</cite> of Clinton,&mdash;it
+was a book to which thousands of
+books had contributed, only to make
+the originality of the single mind more
+bold and clear. Into the furnace all
+vessels of gold, of all ages, had been
+cast, but from the mould came the
+new coin, with its single stamp. And
+happily, the subject of the work did
+not forbid to the writer the indulgence
+of his <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">naïve</i>, peculiar irony of humour&mdash;so
+quiet, yet so profound. My
+father's book was the "History of
+Human Error." It was, therefore,
+the moral history of mankind, told
+with truth and earnestness, yet with
+an arch unmalignant smile. Sometimes,
+indeed, the smile drew tears.
+But in all true humour lies its germ,
+pathos. Oh! by the goddess Moria or
+Folly, but he was at home in his theme!
+He viewed man first in the savage
+state, preferring in this the positive
+accounts of voyagers and travellers,
+to the vague myths of antiquity, and
+the dreams of speculators on our
+pristine state. From Australia and
+Abyssinia, he drew pictures of mortality
+unadorned, as lively as if he
+had lived amongst Bushmen and
+savages all his life. Then he crossed
+over the Atlantic, and brought before
+you the American Indian, with his
+noble nature, struggling into the
+dawn of civilisation, when friend
+Penn cheated him out of his birthright,
+and the Anglo-Saxon drove
+him back into darkness. He showed
+both analogy and contrast between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+this specimen of our kind, and others
+equally apart from the extremes of
+the savage state and the cultured.
+The Arab in his tent, the Teuton
+in his forests, the Greenlander in his
+boat, the Fin in his rein-deer car.
+Up sprang the rude gods of the north,
+and the resuscitated Druidism, passing
+from its earliest templeless belief
+into the later corruptions of crommell
+and idol. Up sprang, by their side,
+the Saturn of the Phœnicians, the
+mystic Budh of India, the elementary
+deities of the Pelasgian, the
+Naith and Serapis of Egypt, the
+Ormuzd of Persia, the Bel of Babylon,
+the winged genii of the graceful
+Etruria. How nature and life shaped
+the religion; how the religion shaped
+the manners; how, and by what influences,
+some tribes were formed for
+progress; how others were destined
+to remain stationary, or be swallowed
+up in war and slavery by their
+brethren, was told with a precision
+clear and strong as the voice of Fate.
+Not only an antiquarian and philologist,
+but an anatomist and philosopher&mdash;my
+father brought to bear on all
+these grave points, the various speculations
+involved in the distinctions of
+race. He showed how race in perfection
+is produced, up to a certain
+point, by admixture: how all mixed
+races have been the most intelligent&mdash;how,
+in proportion as local circumstance
+and religious faith permitted the
+early fusion of differing tribes, races
+improved and quickened into the refinements
+of civilisation. He tracked
+the progress and dispersion of the
+Hellenes, from their mythical cradle in
+Thessaly; and showed how those who
+settled near the sea-shores, and were
+compelled into commerce and intercourse
+with strangers, gave to Greece
+her marvellous accomplishments in arts
+and letters&mdash;the flowers of the ancient
+world. How others, like the Spartans,
+dwelling evermore in a camp, on guard
+against their neighbours, and rigidly
+preserving their Dorian purity of extraction,
+contributed neither artists, nor
+poets, nor philosophers to the golden
+treasure-house of mind. He took the
+old race of the Celts, Cimry, or Cimmerians.
+He compared the Celt who,
+as in Wales, the Scotch Highlands,
+in Bretagne, and in uncomprehended
+Ireland, retains his old characteristics
+and purity of breed, with the Celt
+whose blood, mixed by a thousand
+channels, dictates from Paris the manners
+and revolutions of the world. He
+compared the Norman in his ancient
+Scandinavian home, with that wonder
+of intelligence and chivalry which he
+became, fused imperceptibly with the
+Frank, the Goth, and the Anglo-Saxon.
+He compared the Saxon, stationary
+in the land of Horsa, with the
+colonist and civiliser of the globe, as he
+becomes, when he knows not through
+what channels&mdash;French, Flemish,
+Danish, Welch, Scotch, and Irish&mdash;he
+draws his sanguine blood. And out
+from all these speculations, to which I
+do such hurried and scanty justice,
+he drew the blessed truth, that carries
+hope to the land of the Caffre, the hut
+of the Bushman&mdash;that there is nothing
+in the flattened skull and the ebon
+aspect that rejects God's law, improvement;
+that by the same principle
+which raises the dog, the lowest of
+the animals in its savage state, to the
+highest after man,&mdash;viz. admixture
+of race&mdash;you can elevate into nations
+of majesty and power the outcasts of
+humanity, now your compassion or
+your scorn. But when my father got
+into the marrow of his theme&mdash;when,
+quitting these preliminary discussions,
+he fell pounce amongst the would-be
+wisdom of the wise; when he dealt
+with civilisation itself, its schools, and
+porticos, and academies; when he bared
+the absurdities couched beneath the colleges
+of the Egyptians, and the Symposia
+of the Greeks;&mdash;when he showed
+that, even in their own favourite pursuit
+of metaphysics, the Greeks were
+children; and in their own more practical
+region of politics, the Romans
+were visionaries and bunglers;&mdash;when,
+following the stream of error through
+the middle ages, he quoted the puerilities
+of Agrippa, the crudities of
+Cardan; and passed, with his calm
+smile, into the <em>salons</em> of the chattering
+wits of Paris in the eighteenth century,
+oh, then his irony was that of Lucian,
+sweetened by the gentle spirit of Erasmus.
+For not even here was my
+father's satire of the cheerless and Mephistophelian
+school. From this record
+of error he drew forth the grand eras
+of truth. He showed how earnest men
+never think in vain, though their
+thoughts may be errors. He proved<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+how, in vast cycles, age after age, the
+human mind marches on&mdash;like the
+ocean, receding here, but there advancing.
+How from the speculations
+of the Greek sprang all true philosophy;
+how from the institutions of the
+Roman rose all durable systems of government;
+how from the robust follies of
+the North came the glory of chivalry,
+and the modern delicacies of honour,
+and the sweet harmonising influences
+of woman. He tracked the ancestry
+of our Sidneys and Bayards from the
+Hengists, Genserics, and Attilas. Full
+of all curious and quaint anecdote&mdash;of
+original illustration&mdash;of those niceties
+of learning which spring from a taste
+cultivated to the last exquisite polish&mdash;the
+book amused, and allured, and
+charmed; and erudition lost its pedantry
+now in the simplicity of Montaigne,
+now in the penetration of La
+Bruyère. He lived in each time of
+which he wrote, and the time lived
+again in him. Ah, what a writer of
+romances he would have been, if&mdash;if
+what? If he had had as sad an experience
+of men's passions, as he had
+the happy intuition into their humours.
+But he who would see the mirror of
+the shore, must look where it is cast
+on the river, not the ocean. The narrow
+stream reflects the gnarled tree,
+and the pausing herd, and the village
+spire, and the romance of the landscape.
+But the sea reflects only the
+vast outline of the headland, and the
+lights of the eternal heaven.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XI.</h3>
+
+<p>"It is Lombard Street to a China
+orange," quoth Uncle Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"Are the odds in favour of fame
+against failure so great? You do not
+speak, I fear, from experience, brother
+Jack," answered my father, as he
+stooped down to tickle the duck under
+the left ear.</p>
+
+<p>"But Jack Tibbets is not Augustine
+Caxton. Jack Tibbets is not a
+scholar, a genius, a wond&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop," cried my father.</p>
+
+<p>"After all," said Mr Squills,
+"though I am no flatterer, Mr Tibbets
+is not so far out.... That part of your
+book which compares the crania or
+skulls of the different races is superb.
+Lawrence or Dr Pritchard could not
+have done the thing more neatly.
+Such a book must not be lost to the
+world; and I agree with Mr Tibbets
+that you should publish as soon as
+possible."</p>
+
+<p>"It is one thing to write and another
+to publish," said my father irresolutely.
+"When one considers all
+the great men who have published;
+when one thinks one is going to intrude
+one's-self audaciously into the company
+of Aristotle and Bacon, of
+Locke, of Herder&mdash;of all the grave
+philosophers who bend over nature
+with brows weighty with thought&mdash;one
+may well pause, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh!" interrupted Uncle Jack;
+"science is not a club, it is an ocean.
+It is open to the cockboat as the frigate.
+One man carries across it a
+freightage of ingots, another may fish
+there for herrings. Who can exhaust
+the sea? who say to intellect, the deeps
+of philosophy are preoccupied?"</p>
+
+<p>"Admirable!" cried Squills.</p>
+
+<p>"So it is really your advice, my
+friends," said my father, who seemed
+struck by Uncle Jack's eloquent illustration,
+"that I should desert my
+household gods; remove to London,
+since my own library ceases to supply
+my wants; take lodgings near the
+British Museum, and finish off one
+volume, at least, incontinently."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a duty you owe to your
+country," said Uncle Jack, solemnly.</p>
+
+<p>"And to yourself," urged Squills.
+"One must attend to the natural evacuations
+of the brain. Ah! you may
+smile, sir; but I have observed that if
+a man has much in his head, he must
+give it vent or it oppresses him; the
+whole system goes wrong. From
+being abstracted, he grows stupefied.
+The weight of the pressure affects the
+nerves. I would not even guarantee
+you from a stroke of paralysis."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Austin!" cried my mother
+tenderly, and throwing her arms round
+my father's neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, sir, you are conquered,"
+said I.</p>
+
+<p>"And what is to become of you,
+Sisty?" asked my father. "Do you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+go with us, and unsettle your mind
+for the university?"</p>
+
+<p>"My uncle has invited me to his
+castle; and in the meanwhile I will
+stay here, fag hard, and take care of
+the duck."</p>
+
+<p>"All alone?" said my mother.</p>
+
+<p>"No. All alone! Why Uncle
+Jack will come here as often as ever,
+I hope."</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Jack shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"No, my boy&mdash;I must go to town
+with your father. You don't understand
+these things. I shall see the
+booksellers for him. I know how these
+gentlemen are to be dealt with. I
+shall prepare the literary circles for
+the appearance of the book. In short,
+it is a sacrifice of interest I know. My
+Journal will suffer. But friendship
+and my country's good before all
+things!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Jack!" said my mother affectionately.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot suffer it," cried my
+father. "You are making a good
+income. You are doing well where
+you are; and as to seeing the
+booksellers&mdash;why, when the work is
+ready, you can come to town for a
+week, and settle that affair."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor dear Austin," said Uncle
+Jack, with an air of superiority and
+compassion. "A week! Sir, the
+advent of a book that is to succeed
+requires the preparation of months.
+Pshaw! I am no genius, bu I am a
+practical man. I know what's what.
+Leave me alone."</p>
+
+<p>But my father continued obstinate
+and Uncle Jack at last ceased to urge
+the matter. The journey to fame and
+London was now settled; but my
+father would not hear of my staying
+behind.</p>
+
+<p>No; Pisistratus must needs go
+also to town and see the world; the
+duck would take care of itself.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XII.</h3>
+
+<p>We had taken the precaution to
+send, the day before, to secure our
+due complement of places&mdash;four in all
+(including one for Mrs Primmins)&mdash;in,
+or upon, the fast family coach called
+the Sun, which had lately been set up
+for the special convenience of the
+neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>This luminary, rising in a town
+about seven miles distant from us,
+described at first a very erratic orbit
+amidst the contiguous villages before
+it finally struck into the high-road of
+enlightenment, and thence performed
+its journey, in the full eyes of man, at
+the majestic pace of six miles and a
+half an hour. My father, with his
+pockets full of books, and a quarto
+of "Gebelin on the Primitive World"
+for light reading under his arm; my
+mother, with a little basket, containing
+sandwiches and biscuits of her
+own baking; Mrs Primmins, with a
+new umbrella, purchased for the occasion,
+and a bird-cage containing a
+canary, endeared to her not more by
+song than age, and a severe pip through
+which she had successfully nursed it&mdash;and
+I myself, waited at the gates to
+welcome the celestial visitor. The
+gardener, with a wheel-barrow full of
+boxes and portmanteaus, stood a little
+in the van; and the footman, who was
+to follow when lodgings had been
+found, had gone to a rising eminence
+to watch the dawning of the expected
+planet, and apprise us of its approach
+by the concerted signal of a handkerchief
+fixed to a stick.</p>
+
+<p>The quaint old house looked at us
+mournfully from all its deserted windows.
+The litter before its threshold,
+and in its open hall; wisps of straw
+or hay that had been used for packing;
+baskets and boxes that had been
+examined and rejected; others, corded
+and piled, reserved to follow with the
+footman: and the two heated and
+hurried serving-women left behind
+standing half-way between house and
+garden-gate, whispering to each other,
+and looking as if they had not slept
+for weeks&mdash;gave to a scene, usually so
+trim and orderly, an aspect of pathetic
+abandonment and desolation. The
+genius of the place seemed to reproach
+us. I felt the omens were against us,
+and turned my earnest gaze from the
+haunts behind with a sigh, as the
+coach now drew up in all its grandeur.
+An important personage, who, despite
+the heat of the day, was enveloped
+in a vast superfluity of belcher, in the
+midst of which galloped a gilt fox, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+who rejoiced in the name of "guard,"
+descended to inform us politely that
+only three places, two inside and one
+out, were at our disposal, the rest
+having been pre-engaged a fortnight
+before our orders were received.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as I knew that Mrs Primmins
+was indispensable to the comforts of
+my honoured parents, (the more so,
+as she had once lived in London, and
+knew all its ways,) I suggested that
+she should take the outside seat, and
+that I should perform the journey on
+foot&mdash;a primitive mode of transport
+which has its charms to a young man
+with stout limbs and gay spirits. The
+guard's outstretched arm left my mother
+little time to oppose this proposition,
+to which my father assented
+with a silent squeeze of the hand.
+And, having promised to join them at
+a family hotel near the Strand, to
+which Mr Squills lad recommended
+them as peculiarly genteel and quiet,
+and waved my last farewell to my poor
+mother, who continued to stretch her
+meek face out of the window till the
+coach was whirled off in a cloud like
+one of the Homeric heroes, I turned
+within, to put up a few necessary articles
+in a small knapsack, which I
+remembered to have seen in the lumber-room,
+and which had appertained
+to my maternal grandfather; and with
+that on my shoulder, and a strong
+staff in my hand, I set off towards the
+great city at as brisk a pace as if I
+were only bound to the next village.
+Accordingly, about noon, I was both
+tired and hungry; and seeing by the
+wayside one of those pretty inns yet
+peculiar to England, but which, thanks
+to the railways, will soon be amongst
+the things before the Flood, I sate
+down at a table under some clipped
+limes, unbuckled my knapsack, and
+ordered my simple fare, with the
+dignity of one who, for the first
+time in his life, bespeaks his own
+dinner, and pays for it out of his own
+pocket.</p>
+
+<p>While engaged on a rasher of bacon
+and a tankard of what the landlord
+called "No mistake," two pedestrians,
+passing the same road which I had
+traversed, paused, cast a simultaneous
+look at my occupation, and, induced
+no doubt by its allurements, seated
+themselves under the same lime-trees,
+though at the farther end of the table.
+I surveyed the new-comers with the
+curiosity natural to my years.</p>
+
+<p>The elder of the two might have
+attained the age of thirty, though
+sundry deep lines, and hues formerly
+florid and now faded, speaking of
+fatigue, care, or dissipation, might
+have made him look somewhat older
+than he was. There was nothing
+very prepossessing in his appearance.
+He was dressed with a pretension ill
+suited to the costume appropriate to a
+foot-traveller. His coat was pinched
+and padded; two enormous pins, connected
+by a chain, decorated a very
+stiff stock of blue satin, dotted with
+yellow stars; his hands were cased
+in very dingy gloves which had once
+been straw-coloured, and the said
+hands played with a whalebone cane
+surmounted by a formidable knob,
+which gave it the appearance of a "life-preserver."
+As he took off a white napless
+hat, which he wiped with great
+care and affection with the sleeve of
+his right arm, a profusion of stiff
+curls instantly betrayed the art of
+man. Like my landlord's ale, in
+that wig there was "no mistake:"
+it was brought&mdash;(in the fashion of the
+wigs we see in the popular effigies of
+George IV. in his youth)&mdash;low over
+his forehead and raised at the top.
+The wig had been oiled, and the oil
+had imbibed no small quantity of dust;
+oil and dust had alike left their impression
+on the forehead and cheeks
+of the wig's proprietor. For the rest,
+the expression of his face was somewhat
+impudent and reckless, but not
+without a certain drollery in the corners
+of his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The younger man was apparently
+about my own age, a year or two
+older perhaps&mdash;judging rather from
+his set and sinewy frame than his boyish
+countenance. And this last, boyish
+as it was, could not fail to demand
+the attention even of the most careless
+observer. It had not only the darkness
+but the character of the gipsy
+face, with large brilliant eyes, raven
+hair, long and wavy, but not curling;
+the features were aquiline but delicate,
+and when he spoke he showed
+teeth dazzling as pearls. It was impossible
+not to admire the singular
+beauty of the countenance; and yet,
+it had that expression at once stealthy
+and fierce, which war with society<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+has stamped upon the lineaments of
+the race of which it reminded me.
+But, withal, there was somewhat of
+the air of a gentleman in this young
+wayfarer. His dress consisted of a
+black velveteen shooting-jacket, or
+rather short frock, with a broad
+leathern strap at the waist, loose
+white trousers, and a foraging cap,
+which he threw carelessly on the table
+as he wiped his brow. Turning round
+impatiently and with some haughtiness
+from his companion, he surveyed
+me with a quick observant flash of his
+piercing eyes, and then stretched himself
+at length on the bench, and appeared
+either to doze or muse, till, in
+obedience to his companion's orders,
+the board was spread with all the cold
+meats the larder could supply.</p>
+
+<p>"Beef!" said his companion, screwing
+a pinchbeck glass into his right
+eye. "Beef;&mdash;mottled, cowey&mdash;humph.
+Lamb;&mdash;oldish&mdash;rawish&mdash;muttony,
+humph. Pie;&mdash;stalish,
+veal?&mdash;no, pork. Ah! what will
+you have?"</p>
+
+<p>"Help yourself," replied the young
+man peevishly, as he sat up, looked
+disdainfully at the viands, and after a
+long pause, tasted first one, then the
+other, with many shrugs of the shoulders
+and muttered exclamations of discontent.
+Suddenly he looked up and
+called for brandy; and to my surprise,
+and I fear admiration, he drank nearly
+half a tumblerful of that poison undiluted,
+with a composure that spoke
+of habitual use.</p>
+
+<p>"Wrong!" said his companion,
+drawing the bottle to himself, and
+mixing the alcohol in careful proportions
+with water. "Wrong! coats
+of stomach soon wear out, with that
+kind of clothes' brush. Better stick
+to 'the yeasty foam' as sweet Will
+says. That young gentleman sets you
+a good example," and therewith the
+speaker nodded at me familiarly. Inexperienced
+as I was, I surmised at
+once that it was his intention to make
+acquaintance with the neighbour thus
+saluted. I was not deceived. "Any
+thing to tempt <em>you</em>, sir?" asked this
+social personage after a short pause,
+and describing a semicircle with the
+point of his knife.</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you, sir, but I have dined."</p>
+
+<p>"What then? 'Break out into a
+second course of mischief,' as the swan
+recommends&mdash;swan of Avon, sir!
+No? 'Well then, I charge you with
+this cup of sack.' Are you going far, if
+I may take the liberty to ask?"</p>
+
+<p>"To London, when I can get there!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said the traveller&mdash;while
+his young companion lifted his
+eyes; and I was again struck with
+their remarkable penetration and
+brilliancy.</p>
+
+<p>"London is the best place in the
+world for a lad of spirit. See life
+there; 'glass of fashion and mould
+of form.' Fond of the play, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never saw one!"</p>
+
+<p>"Possible!" cried the gentleman,
+dropping the handle of his knife, and
+bringing up the point horizontally:
+"then, young man," he added solemnly,
+"you have, but I won't say what
+you have to see. I won't say&mdash;no, not
+if you could cover this table with
+golden guineas, and exclaim with the
+generous ardour so engaging in youth
+'Mr Peacock, these are yours, if you
+will only say what I have to see!'"</p>
+
+<p>I laughed outright&mdash;may I be forgiven
+for the boast, but I had the reputation
+at school of a pleasant laugh.
+The young man's face grew dark at
+the sound: he pushed back his plate
+and sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," continued his friend, "my
+companion here, who I suppose is
+about your own age, <em>he</em> could tell you
+what a play is! he could tell you what
+life is. He has viewed the manners
+of the town: 'perused the traders,'
+as the swan poetically remarks.
+Have you not, my lad, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Thus directly appealed to, the boy
+looked up with a smile of scorn on
+his lips. "Yes, I know what life is,
+and I say that life, like poverty, has
+strange bedfellows. Ask me what
+life is now, and I say a melodrama;
+ask me what it is twenty years hence,
+and I shall say&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A farce?" put in his comrade.</p>
+
+<p>"No, a tragedy&mdash;or comedy as
+Congreve wrote it."</p>
+
+<p>"And how is that?" I asked, interested
+and somewhat surprised at the
+tone of my contemporary.</p>
+
+<p>"Where the play ends in the triumph
+of the wittiest rogue. My friend hee
+has no chance!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley,'
+hem&mdash;yes&mdash;Hal Peacock maybe witty,
+but he is no rogue."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That was not exactly my meaning,"
+said the boy dryly.</p>
+
+<p>"'A fico for your meaning,'" as the
+swan says. "Hallo, you, sir! Bully
+Host, clear the table, fresh tumblers&mdash;hot
+water&mdash;sugar&mdash;lemon, and the
+bottle's out! Smoke, sir?" and Mr
+Peacock offered me a cigar.</p>
+
+<p>Upon my refusal, he carefully
+twirled round a very uninviting specimen
+of some fabulous havannah&mdash;moistened
+it all over, as a boa-constrictor
+may do the ox he prepares
+for deglutition; bit off one end, and
+lighting the other from a little machine
+for that purpose which he drew from
+his pocket, he was soon absorbed in
+a vigorous effort (which the damp
+inherent in the weed long resisted)
+to poison the surrounding atmosphere.
+Therewith, the young gentleman,
+either from emulation or in self-defence,
+extracted from his own pouch
+a cigar-case of notable elegance, being
+of velvet, embroidered apparently by
+some fair hand, for "From Juliet"
+was very legibly worked thereon&mdash;selected
+a cigar of better appearance
+than that in favour with his comrade,
+and seemed quite as familiar with the
+tobacco as he had been with the
+brandy.</p>
+
+<p>"Fast, sir&mdash;fast lad that!" quoth
+Mr Peacock, in the short gasps which
+his resolute struggle with his uninviting
+victim alone permitted&mdash;"nothing
+but&mdash;(puff, puff)&mdash;your true&mdash;(suck&mdash;suck,)
+syl&mdash;syl&mdash;sylva&mdash;does
+for him. Out, by the Lord! 'the jaws
+of darkness have devoured it up;'" and
+again Mr Peacock applied to his phosphoric
+machine. This time patience
+and perseverance succeeded, and the
+heart of the cigar responded by a dull
+red spark (leaving the sides wholly
+untouched) to the indefatigable
+ardour of its wooer.</p>
+
+<p>This feat accomplished, Mr Peacock
+exclaimed triumphantly, "And now
+what say you, my lads, to a game at
+cards?&mdash;three of us&mdash;whist and a
+dummy?&mdash;nothing better&mdash;eh?" As
+he spoke, he produced from his coat-pocket
+a red silk handkerchief, a
+bunch of keys, a nightcap, a toothbrush,
+a piece of shaving-soap, four
+lumps of sugar, the remains of a bun,
+a razor, and a pack of cards. Selecting
+the last, and returning its motley
+accompaniments to the abyss whence
+they had emerged, he turned up, with
+a jerk of his thumb and finger, the
+knave of clubs, and, placing it on the
+top of the rest, slapped the cards emphatically
+on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"You are very good, but I don't
+know whist," said I.</p>
+
+<p>"Not know whist&mdash;not been to a
+play! not smoke! Then pray tell me,
+young man," (said he majestically, and
+with a frown,) "what on earth you <em>do</em>
+know!"</p>
+
+<p>Much consternated by this direct
+appeal, and greatly ashamed of my
+ignorance of the cardinal points of
+erudition in Mr Peacock's estimation,
+I hung my head, and looked down.</p>
+
+<p>"That is right," renewed Mr Peacock,
+more benignly; "you have the
+ingenuous shame of youth. It is promising,
+sir&mdash;'lowliness is young ambition's
+ladder,' as the swan says.
+Mount the first step, and learn whist&mdash;sixpenny
+points to begin with."</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding my newness in
+actual life, I had had the good fortune
+to learn a little of the way before me,
+by those much-slandered guides called
+novels&mdash;works which are often to the
+inner world what maps are to the
+outer; and sundry recollections of
+"Gil Blas" and the "Vicar of Wakefield"
+came athwart me. I had no
+wish to emulate the worthy Moses,
+and felt that I might not have even
+the shagreen spectacles to boast of, in
+my negotiations with this new Mr
+Jenkinson. Accordingly, shaking my
+head, I called for my bill. As I took
+out my purse&mdash;knit by my mother&mdash;with
+one gold piece in one corner, and
+sundry silver ones in the other, I saw
+that the eyes of Mr Peacock twinkled.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor spirit, sir! poor spirit, young
+man! 'This avarice sticks deep,'
+as the swan beautifully observes.
+'Nothing venture, nothing have.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing have, nothing venture,"
+I returned, plucking up spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing have!&mdash;Young sir, do
+you doubt my solidity&mdash;my capital&mdash;my
+'golden joys?'"</p>
+
+<p>"Sir, I spoke of myself. I am not
+rich enough to gamble."</p>
+
+<p>"Gamble!" exclaimed Mr Peacock,
+in virtuous indignation&mdash;"Gamble!
+what do you mean, sir? You insult
+me!" and he rose threateningly, and
+slapped his white hat on his wig.</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw! let him alone, Hal,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+said the boy contemptuously. "Sir,
+if he is impertinent, thrash him."
+(This was to me.)</p>
+
+<p>"Impertinent!&mdash;thrash!" exclaimed
+Mr Peacock, waxing very red; but
+catching the sneer on his companion's
+lip, he sat down, and subsided into
+sullen silence.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile I paid my bill. This
+duty, rarely a cheerful one, performed,
+I looked round for my knapsack, and
+perceived that it was in the boy's
+hands. He was very coolly reading
+the address which, in case of accidents,
+I had prudently placed on it&mdash;Pisistratus
+Caxton, Esq., &mdash;&mdash; Hotel,
+&mdash;&mdash; Street, &mdash;, Strand.</p>
+
+<p>I took my knapsack from him, more
+surprised at such a breach of good
+manners in a young gentleman who
+knew life so well, than I should have
+been at a similar error on the part of
+Mr Peacock. He made no apology,
+but nodded farewell, and stretched
+himself at full length on the bench.
+Mr Peacock, now absorbed in a game
+of patience, vouchsafed no return to
+my parting salutation, and in another
+moment I was alone on the high-road.
+My thoughts turned long upon the
+young man I had left: mixed with a
+sort of instinctive compassionate foreboding
+of an ill future for one with
+such habits, and in such companionship,
+I felt an involuntary admiration,
+less even for his good looks
+than his ease, audacity, and the careless
+superiority he assumed over a
+comrade so much older than himself.</p>
+
+<p>The day was far gone when I saw
+the spires of a town at which I intended
+to rest for the night. The
+horn of a coach behind made me
+turn my head, and, as the vehicle
+passed me, I saw on the outside Mr
+Peacock, still struggling with a cigar&mdash;it
+could scarcely be the same&mdash;and
+his young friend stretched on the roof
+amongst the luggage, leaning his
+handsome head on his hand, and
+apparently unobservant both of me
+and every one else.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XIII.</h3>
+
+<p>I am apt&mdash;judging egotistically, perhaps,
+from my own experience&mdash;to
+measure a young man's chances of
+what is termed practical success in
+life, by what may seem at first two
+very vulgar qualities; viz., his inquisitiveness
+and his animal vivacity. A
+curiosity which springs forward to
+examine every thing new to his information&mdash;a
+nervous activity, approaching
+to restlessness, which rarely
+allows bodily fatigue to interfere with
+some object in view&mdash;constitute, in
+my mind, very profitable stock in
+hand to begin the world with.</p>
+
+<p>Tired as I was, after I had performed
+my ablutions, and refreshed
+myself in the little coffee-room of the
+inn at which I put up, with the pedestrian's
+best beverage, familiar and
+oft-calumniated tea, I could not resist
+the temptation of the broad bustling
+street, which, lighted with gas, shone
+on me through the dim windows of
+the coffee-room. I had never before
+seen a large town, and the contrast of
+lamp-lit, busy night in the streets,
+with sober, deserted night in the lanes
+and fields, struck me forcibly.</p>
+
+<p>I sauntered out, therefore, jostling
+and jostled, now gazing at the windows,
+now hurried along the tide of
+life, till I found myself before a cook'
+shop, round which clustered a small
+knot of housewives, citizens, and
+hungry-looking children. While contemplating
+this group, and marvelling
+how it comes to pass that the staple
+business of earth's majority is how,
+when, and where to eat, my ear was
+struck with "'In Troy there lies the
+scene,' as the illustrious Will remarks."</p>
+
+
+<p>Looking round, I perceived Mr Peacock
+pointing his stick towards an open
+doorway next to the cook's shop,
+the hall beyond which was lighted
+with gas, while, painted in black letters
+on a pane of glass over the door,
+was the word "Billiards."</p>
+
+<p>Suiting the action to the word, the
+speaker plunged at once into the aperture
+and vanished. The boy-copanion
+was following more slowly,
+when his eye caught mine. A slight
+blush came over his dark cheek; he
+stopped, and leaning against the door-jambs,
+gazed on me hard and long
+before he said&mdash;"Well met again,
+sir! You find it hard to amuse yourself
+in this dull place; the nights are
+long out of London."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said I, ingenuously, "every
+thing here amuses me; the lights, the
+shops, the crowd; but, then, to me
+every thing is new."</p>
+
+<p>The youth came from his lounging-place
+and moved on, as if inviting me
+to walk; while he answered, rather
+with bitter sullenness, than the melancholy
+his words expressed&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"One thing, at least, cannot be new
+to you; it is an old truth with us
+before we leave the nursery&mdash;'Whatever
+is worth having must be bought;
+<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">ergo</i>, he who cannot buy, has nothing
+worth having.'"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think," said I, wisely,
+"that the things best worth having
+can be bought at all. You see that
+poor dropsical jeweller standing before
+his shop-door,&mdash;his shop is the finest
+in the street,&mdash;and I dare say he would
+be very glad to give it to you or me in
+return for our good health and strong
+legs. Oh no! I think with my father&mdash;'All
+that are worth having are given
+to all;&mdash;that is, nature and labour.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Your father says that; and you
+go by what your father says! Of
+course, all fathers have preached that,
+and many other good doctrines, since
+Adam preached to Cain; but I don't
+see that the fathers have found their
+sons very credulous listeners."</p>
+
+<p>"So much the worse for the sons,"
+said I bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>"Nature," continued my new acquaintance,
+without attending to my
+ejaculation&mdash;"nature indeed does give
+us much, and nature also orders each
+of us how to use her gifts. If nature
+gave you the propensity to drudge,
+you will drudge; if she gives me the
+ambition to rise, and the contempt
+for work, I may rise&mdash;but I certainly
+shall not work."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said I, "you agree with
+Squills, I suppose, and fancy we are
+all guided by the bumps on our foreheads?"</p>
+
+<p>"And the blood in our veins, and
+our mother's milk. We inherit other
+things besides gout and consumption.
+So you always do as your father tells
+you! Good boy!"</p>
+
+<p>I was piqued. Why we should
+be ashamed of being taunted for
+goodness, I never could understand;
+but certainly I felt humbled.
+However I answered sturdily&mdash;"If
+you had as good a father as I have,
+you would not think it so very extraordinary
+to do as he tells you."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! so he is a very good father,
+is he! He must have a great trust
+in your sobriety and steadiness to let
+you wander about the world as he
+does."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to join him in London."</p>
+
+<p>"In London! Oh, does he live
+there?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is going to live there for some
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, perhaps, we may meet. I,
+too, am going to town."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we shall be sure to meet
+there!" said I, with frank gladness;
+for my interest in the young man was
+not diminished by his conversation,
+however much I disliked the sentiments
+it expressed.</p>
+
+<p>The lad laughed, and his laugh was
+peculiar. It was low, musical, but
+hollow and artificial.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure to meet! London is a large
+place: where shall you be found?"</p>
+
+<p>I gave him, without scruple, the
+address of the hotel at which I expected
+to find my father; although his
+deliberate inspection of my knapsack
+must already have apprised him of that
+address. He listened attentively, and
+repeated it twice over, as if to impress
+it on his memory; and we both
+walked on in silence, till, turning up
+a small passage, we suddenly found
+ourselves in a large churchyard,&mdash;a
+flagged path stretched diagonally
+across it towards the market-place,
+on which it bordered. In this churchyard,
+upon a grave-stone, sat a
+young Savoyard; his hurdy-gurdy, or
+whatever else his instrument might be
+called, was on his lap; and he was
+gnawing his crust, and feeding some
+poor little white mice (standing on
+their hind-legs on the hurdy-gurdy)
+as merrily as if he had chosen the
+gayest resting-place in the world.</p>
+
+<p>We both stopped. The Savoyard,
+seeing us, put his arch head on one
+side, showed all his white teeth in
+that happy smile so peculiar to his
+race, and in which poverty seems to
+beg so blithely, and gave the handle
+of his instrument a turn.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor child!" said I.</p>
+
+<p>"Aha, you pity him! but why?
+According to your rule, Mr Caxton,
+he is not so much to be pitied; the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+dropsical jeweller would give him as
+much for his limbs and health as for
+ours! How is it&mdash;answer me, son of
+so wise a father&mdash;that no one pities
+the dropsical jeweller, and all pity
+the healthy Savoyard? It is, sir,
+because there is a stern truth which
+is stronger than all Spartan lessons&mdash;Poverty
+<em>is</em> the master-ill of the world.
+Look round. Does poverty leave its
+signs over the graves? Look at that
+large tomb fenced round; read that
+long inscription:&mdash;'virtues'&mdash;'best of
+husbands'&mdash;'affectionate father'&mdash;'inconsolable
+grief'&mdash;'sleeps in the
+joyful hope,' &amp;c., &amp;c. Do you suppose
+these stoneless mounds hide no
+dust of what were men just as good?
+But no epitaph tells their virtues;
+bespeaks their wives' grief; or promises
+joyful hope to them!"</p>
+
+<p>"Does it matter? Does God care
+for the epitaph and tombstone?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i lang="it" xml:lang="it">Date qualche cosa!</i>" said the
+Savoyard, in his touching patois, still
+smiling, and holding out his little
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Therein I dropped a small coin.
+The boy evinced his gratitude by a
+new turn of the hurdy-gurdy.</p>
+
+<p>"That is not labour," said my companion;
+"and had you found him at
+work, you had given him nothing. I
+too have my instrument to play upon
+and my mice to see after. Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>He waved his hand, and strode irreverently
+over the graves back in the
+direction we had come.</p>
+
+<p>I stood before the fine tomb with
+its fine epitaph; the Savoyard looked
+at me wistfully.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XIV.</h3>
+
+<p>The Savoyard looked at me wistfully.
+I wished to enter into conversation
+with him. That was not easy.
+However, I began:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pisistratus.</span>&mdash;"You must be often
+hungry enough, my poor boy. Do the
+mice feed you?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Savoyard</span> puts his head on one
+side, shakes it, and stroked his mice.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pisistratus.</span>&mdash;"You are very
+fond of the mice; they are your only
+friends, I fear."</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Savoyard</span>, evidently understanding
+Pisistratus, rubs his face gently
+against the mice, then puts them softly
+down on a grave, and gives a turn to
+the hurdy-gurdy. The mice play unconcernedly
+over the grave.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pisistratus</span>, pointing first to the
+beasts, then to the instrument.&mdash;"Which
+do you like best, the mice or
+the hurdy-gurdy?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Savoyard</span> shows his teeth&mdash;considers&mdash;stretches
+himself on the grass&mdash;plays
+with the mice&mdash;and answers
+volubly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pisistratus</span>, by the help of Latin
+comprehending that the Savoyard
+says, that the mice are alive and the
+hurdy-gurdy is not&mdash;"Yes, a live
+friend is better than a dead one.
+Mortua est hurda-gurda!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Savoyard</span> shakes his head vehemently.&mdash;"Nô&mdash;nô!
+Eccellenza, non
+ê mortu!" and strikes up a lively air
+on the slandered instrument. The
+Savoyard's face brightens&mdash;he looks
+happy: the mice run from the grave
+into his bosom.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pisistratus</span>, affected.&mdash;"Have you
+a father&mdash;An vivat pater?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Savoyard</span>, with his face overcast.&mdash;"Nô&mdash;eccellenza!"
+then pausing a
+little, he says briskly, "Si-Si!" and
+plays a solemn air on the hurdy-gurdy&mdash;stops&mdash;rests
+one hand on the
+instrument, and raises the other to
+heaven.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pisistratus</span> understands.&mdash;"The
+father is like the hurdy-gurdy, at once
+dead and living. The mere form is a
+dead thing, but the music lives."
+Pisistratus drops another small piece
+of silver on the ground, and turns
+away.</p>
+
+<p>"God help and God bless thee,
+Savoyard. Thou hast done Pisistratus
+all the good in the world. Thou
+hast corrected the hard wisdom of
+the young gentleman in the velveteen
+jacket; Pisistratus is a better lad for
+having stopped to listen to thee."</p>
+
+<p>I regained the entrance to the
+churchyard&mdash;I looked back&mdash;there
+sate the Savoyard, still amidst men's
+graves, but under God's sky. He was
+still looking at me wistfully, and when
+he caught my eye, he pressed his hand
+to his heart, and smiled. "God help
+and God bless thee, young Savoyard."</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>REPUBLICAN FRANCE.</h2>
+
+<h3>JUNE 1848.</h3>
+
+
+<p>How far is the application to France,
+of the epithet employed in the title
+that heads these pages, a misnomer?
+This is a question that would be answered
+very differently by those who
+study its state of feeling, and those
+who judge its position by mere established
+fact. That the fact and the
+feeling are completely at issue throughout
+the country, is undoubted, indisputable.
+A republican government
+has been established by the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">coup de
+main</i> of a small minority in France&mdash;has
+been accepted by the hesitation of
+surprise&mdash;has been maintained by the
+desire of peace and order:&mdash;so far goes
+fact. Republican principles were
+hateful to the immense majority of
+the country at large in the past, uncongenial
+to its habits and sentiments,
+impossible according to its views; they
+are productive, as yet, of nothing but
+confusion, distress, ruin, riot, and
+mistrust, in the present; they are
+looked upon with alarm as regards
+their results in the future:&mdash;so much
+for feeling. Fact and feeling, then,
+are at variance and in collision. The
+result of the conflict lies hidden in the
+mysteries of that future, the issue of
+which, at no epoch of history, perhaps,
+clearseeing eyes and wise foreseeing
+heads could less pretend to predict,
+than in the present chaotic hurly-burly
+of European society. The politicians
+who declared that the general
+spirit of the country in France was, in
+their vague and fantastic language of
+the Chamber, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">centre-gauche</i>, or the
+advocate of liberal progress, may have
+been very right,&mdash;but republican it
+never was, republican it is not. Republican&mdash;without
+pretension to the
+audacity of a prediction but just
+stated as impossible&mdash;it certainly does
+not as yet appear ever likely to become.</p>
+
+<p>In its present state of feeling, then,
+France&mdash;that is to say, the country,
+the provinces, the departments, or
+whatever France, out of Paris, may
+be called&mdash;is about as much genuine
+republican, as a white man who suddenly
+finds his face smeared over with
+the contents of a blacking-bottle is a
+genuine negro. But, for the sake of
+avoiding that confusion of terms and
+ideas in which the French themselves
+are so fond of indulging, to an extent
+that proves the deification of "the
+vague" to take far higher flights among
+them, especially in their republican
+tenets, than any flown by confused
+German head,&mdash;let it be taken as a
+rule, that fact is to have the precedence
+of feeling, as in most matters in
+the world,&mdash;and let it be supposed that
+the misnomer is no misnomer, that
+there has been no mistake, in truth, in
+the title of "Republican France."</p>
+
+<p>Between France out of Paris and
+France in Paris, a great distinction,
+in speaking of the country, must always
+be drawn; although, in the
+matter of republicanism in the feelings
+of the mass, the same blacking-bottle
+remark might be applied to the
+majority of the citizens of the capital,
+as to the country at large. No family
+of grown-up daughters, who have been
+tyrannically kept in the nursery like
+children when they no longer felt
+themselves such, and made to wear
+mamma's worn-out dresses scantily
+cut down to their shapes, could be
+more sundered in feeling from their
+lady-mother, and jealous of her overgrown
+charms, her gaiety, her splendour,
+and her power, than the
+departments,&mdash;kept in the nursery
+upon centralisation system, and
+fed upon the bread-and-milk of
+insignificance,&mdash;are of the tyrannical
+supremacy, the overweening superiority,
+and the disdainful airs, affected
+to her despised progeny
+by Mother Paris. The pursuance of
+the concentrating system has thus
+produced an estrangement in the
+family,&mdash;a jealousy and spite on the
+one hand, a greater and increasing
+assumption of airs of supremacy on
+the other. The family ties between
+Paris and France are as wholly disunited
+as family ties can be, in the
+necessities of a more or less intimate
+connexion: the mother has isolated,
+in her despotism, herself from her children,
+the children have imbibed distrust
+and envy of the mother. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+consequence is, that there are two
+distinct families in feeling,&mdash;there
+are two Frances; there is the France
+of Paris, of Paris that asserts its
+right to be all France, and the France
+of the departments, that, in spite
+of the assertions of Paris, desire
+to put in their little claim for a
+small share in the name, and would
+like to have their own little fingers in
+the pies of revolutions, and changes of
+government in the family, that mamma
+cooks up. True, they are supposed
+to eat at the same table, but mamma
+has all the tit-bits. They have a voice
+in the family council, but it is when
+mamma has already issued her <em>dictum</em>,
+and declared that such and such things
+shall be as she has decided it. They
+help to support the family establishment
+with the moneys which mamma
+declares they must contribute out
+of their heritage; but then mamma,
+they declare, spends a most undue
+proportion upon herself, in dressing
+herself out with finery, keeping up an
+unnecessary state, and throwing away
+the sums confided to her to overpay
+a throng of unruly onhangers, with all
+the prodigality of fear; while they, the
+poor daughters, are made to put up
+with cast-off finery, and to be thwarted
+and twitted by harsh governesses,
+and to fight, as best they may, with
+an obstreperous herd of unpaid pensioners,
+which mamma's mismanagement
+has excited to uproar; and then,
+after all, to kiss hands and thank
+mamma for whatever they can get,&mdash;scanty
+sugar-plums and many cuffs.
+Is this to be endured? The children
+grumble much, and particularly since
+mamma has chosen to make changes
+in the direction of the household
+establishment of which they by no
+means approve, and has only produced
+confusion and disorder in it. But at
+present they can do no more than
+grumble; mamma has the rod, and
+they know that she will use it;
+mamma has the supreme influence,
+and habit makes them think they
+must abide by it. There is no doubt,
+at the same time, that the children
+and parent would unite in a common
+bond of union were the family honour
+to be asserted against an attack from
+any adversary to the family out of
+the house. Their intestine jealousies
+would be forgotten for the time, for
+the maintenance of the common
+good&mdash;a fancied good; for, after
+all, mother and daughters have
+the same blood, the same temperr
+and character, the same vain-glory,
+conceit, and irritability, the same
+strong prejudices of ignorance; and
+they would join hands and clamour
+together in the same opposition to the
+stranger. But this common-cause
+making, upon occasions of extraordinary
+pressure from without, detracts
+nothing, at other times, from the mistrust,
+jealousy, and angry susceptibility
+of the children in internal affairs.
+In moments of family crisis, will
+matters always go on as heretofore?</p>
+
+<p>Nurseries will be obstreperous sometimes,
+and children will revolt, and
+mammas may pass very uncomfortable
+moments in the face of angry
+daughters in rebellion. Will the
+children take upon themselves, at
+last, to protest against mamma's disdainful
+commands, and assert a will
+of their own, and a right to think for
+themselves? This question is one
+upon the solution of which depends
+the fate of France, as well as upon the
+many thousand chances which the
+capricious and ever-shifting gales of
+a revolutionary atmosphere may, at
+any moment, suddenly blow, like a
+spark into a powder barrel, shattering
+the face of the past, and changing
+the direction of the future. Twice
+already, since the revolution of February,
+has the question been nearly
+answered in the affirmative. The
+last instance, of which more anon,
+may be taken as a striking proof
+that the children may possibly not
+always submit to the dictates of
+the mother,&mdash;that family mistrust
+may break out into family quarrel,
+and family quarrel in nations is
+civil war. Who again, however,
+may venture to predict what shall be
+the destinies of Republican France,&mdash;what
+web of darkness or of light, of
+blood-streaked stuff or of gold-threaded
+tissue, it may be weaving
+with its agitated and troubled hands,
+or what force it may interpose to
+tear the work to shreds before
+it be even yet completed? Most
+may fear, none may say. But prediction,
+upon whatever cunning foresight
+it may be based, must always
+call a sort of feeling of inspiration,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+nearly allied to superstition, to its
+aid: and thus the fanciful mind may,
+without taking upon itself the airs of
+a Pythoness, give way to a little superstition,
+and yet, perhaps, be not too
+strongly condemned of folly. There exists
+an old prophecy in France, emanating
+from a monk of the middle ages,
+the authenticity of which cannot be
+doubted, or, at all events, cannot be
+disputed, in as far as it was in well-known
+existence at the commencement
+of this century. It predicts, in
+mystic language,&mdash;dark, it is true, but
+wonderfully clear after its verification,&mdash;all
+the many revolutionary changes
+that have taken place in France, and
+now once more proclaims the reign
+of the "sons of Brutus." "Armed
+men," it distinctly says, "will march
+upon the doomed city," "sword and
+fire will prevail against it," "the
+wolves will devour each other." May
+the seeming superstition of a fantastical
+question be pardoned! May not
+these words refer to the future outbreak
+of the provinces of France
+against the capital? If they do, in
+what sense, with what tendencies, to
+forward the views of what party, may
+it be? Be that as it may, however,
+it is not the obscure future that is
+dealt with here, but the present confused
+and uncertain state of Republican
+France.</p>
+
+<p>As it may be inferred from what has
+been said, Paris, then, has put on its
+crown, as capital, to some purpose.
+Never did despot assert his right to
+dictate his autocratic will to serfs and
+slaves more authoritatively than does
+revolutionary and republican Paris
+to the provinces of France. No
+three-tailed Bashaw of old melodrams
+could be more imperative in
+his ordinances, more arrogant in
+the conviction of the indisputability
+of his will. The bare supposition
+that the provinces could have a will
+of their own would strike Paris dumb
+with astonishment. Paris has been
+accustomed to consider itself not only
+as the heart, but the head, and the
+arms and legs to boot, of the whole
+country. The inert body has no more,
+in its consideration, to do, than allow
+itself to be fed with what scanty morsels
+of bounty and importance Paris
+may choose to afford, and then not to
+dare to grumble afterwards if the food
+prove unsavoury to its tastes, or indigestible
+to its susceptibilities. Paris
+is "Sir Oracle," and, when it speaks,
+no provincial "dog dare bark."
+Paris, thus, is the great type of
+the mainspring of the national character,&mdash;which
+works sometimes,
+we allow, for good as well as for
+evil:&mdash;namely, of that mixture of
+vanity and overweening conceit, which
+may be found at the bottom of almost
+every action of the French. It calls
+itself "the great capital of the
+civilised world;" and thus considers
+that, although the departments may be
+admitted to the reflected rays of lustre
+that emanate from its superior glory,
+they must look upon themselves as
+mere satellites, created to revolve at its
+liking and its high will, and perform
+their revolutions in whatever direction
+it deems fit to make its own revolution.
+Let it not be supposed that this
+representation is exaggerated, or that
+it proceeds from the distorted views
+of a foreigner. Hear the Parisian himself
+speak; list to his expressions of
+contempt for those unknown and barbarous
+regions called departments;
+mark how he asserts the unutterable
+superiority of his Parisian essence;
+see how he tosses his head and curls
+his lip with an infinitely aristocratic air,
+when he condescends to notice them
+with a word; and never was Paris more
+eager in the maintenance of its tyrannical
+supremacy; never was it more
+despotically and autocratically disposed;
+never more aristocratic, to use
+the pet phrase of the day, than under
+the rule of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">soi-disant</i> liberty, and of
+liberty of opinion, above all other
+liberties proclaimed by the French
+republic.</p>
+
+<p>What were the expressions of the
+first republican minister of the interior,
+that type of republican exclusiveness
+and despotism, in his famous and
+rather too famous <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bulletins de la republique</i>,
+issued to all France as the
+language and opinions of the government
+of the day? Paris, they informed
+the world, was the heart of France,
+from which all life and living principle
+emanated, through which every drop
+of the country's blood must flow, in
+order that it might beat in unison, and
+be refreshed with true republican
+vitality. Paris, they said again, was
+the hand that had created and fashioned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+the republic, and that was to direct its
+steps, lead it vigorously forward in its
+way&mdash;as it was the head that conceived,
+it was the hand that executed: it
+was more than all this, it was the <em>soul</em>
+of France&mdash;the pure and true essence
+emanating from the new deity, the republic.
+Paris, they asserted in as
+many direct words, was the mistress
+whose will was to be obeyed. It is
+unnecessary to point out how little
+such declarations were in accordance
+with republican principles, what little
+affinity they had with the three great
+watchwords of the day, "Liberty,
+Equality, and Fraternity." Republicanism
+in France, according to those
+old traditions, to which those who call
+themselves the only true and pure republicans
+seem always to be looking
+back as the only true and pure models
+for their admiration and imitation,
+was always based upon despotism,
+supported by constraint, compulsion,
+violence, and even terrorism; and the
+first efforts of modern republicanism
+were evidently exerted to place their
+old, newfangled, statue of bastard
+liberty upon the same heterogeneous
+pedestal. The instructions of the same
+Bashaw-minister to the emissaries
+whom he despatched as Bashaws of
+lesser and fewer tails into the provinces,
+to see that they were duly disposed to
+fall down and worship the Goddess Republic,
+that had been set up, were
+modelled after the same and still
+rougher fashion.</p>
+
+<p>The missionaries were invested with
+autocratic powers to make and unmake
+according to their own autocratic will;
+to send away functionaries who might
+appear lukewarm in the cause; to put
+in their places such acolytes as might
+better serve the altars of the goddess,
+and to offer up sacrifices to her, civil
+and military, judicial and political, as
+they might think pleasing to the divinity,
+or convenient and agreeable to
+their own hates and prejudices. They
+were particularly requested to <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">travailler</i>
+the country, to torture it, as the
+French phrase goes; and were taught,
+if they could not hammer the hard and
+unbending metal of departmental
+feeling to the shape they fancied, just
+gently to make the iron red-hot with
+the fire of terrorism, and then twist it
+to the suitable form. How well the
+workmen, in many instances, performed
+the task&mdash;how well they employed
+the fiery passions of the mob to
+produce the desired red-hot effect, and
+then strike&mdash;is a matter of historical
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>In the elections for the National
+Assembly, the same dogmas of republican
+religion were strenuously enforced.
+No emissaries of the Inquisition
+ever used more moral violence
+to propagate a faith among suspected
+schismatics, than did these ministers
+of republican despotism to enforce the
+full, entire, and uttermost doctrines of
+their creed, even to the minutest
+articles. Where the moral influence appeared
+unlikely to penetrate as deeply
+into men's hearts as was desired, other
+and more direct methods were adopted
+to make entire converts; and, when
+these methods were found too mild to
+work the intended effect, and purge the
+land of moderatism and anti-whole-hog-ism,
+another stronger and more
+racking dose was administered: the
+mob was excited to overawe with
+threat and terrorism, and, where it
+could not prevent, to destroy. How
+should the departments dare to have a
+will of their own? The rebellious
+children were to be whipped like
+schoolboys into learning their lessons
+of pure and undefiled republicanism,
+and reciting them as Master Commissioner
+taught them; there was no
+better rod in pickle for such naughty
+urchins than the scourge of the fury
+of a mob, carefully taught another
+lesson, and one it was not slow of
+learning&mdash;namely, that it was master,
+and must constrain obedience to its
+will; while, in fact, itself obeyed the
+influence, and was the instrument of
+the master-spirit that ruled up above,
+and made the best, or rather the worst
+use of its rule. That all these measures
+failed in a great measure&mdash;those
+of violence as well as those of moral
+constraint&mdash;is attributable to a variety
+of complicated reasons, connected with
+the present state of the departments;
+and the how and why they failed,
+will be the subject of a few considerations
+presently.</p>
+
+<p>What, again, were the expressions
+of the more violent and so-called only
+true republican party in the capital,
+proceeding from its organs, the clubs,
+upon the same occasion of the elections?
+To all the candidates who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+presented themselves before them, the
+same question was propounded. If,
+when the votes of all France were
+taken, it should be found that the
+departments declared themselves
+averse to the establishment of a republic,
+what would be the duty they
+would have to perform,&mdash;what steps
+would they take? Those who did not
+declare that they would turn against
+that National Assembly, of which
+they themselves might then be members,
+and take up arms to march upon
+it, were denounced as traitors to their
+country, unworthy of the votes of true
+men, and hooted from the tribune, in
+which they had dared to stand forward
+as future representatives of the people.
+It would have been in vain to insinuate
+to these good gentlemen, that, in
+the application of the principle of
+universal suffrage, in which every man
+was not only an elector, but eligible
+as representative, the voice of the majority
+would be the voice of all France;
+and that it was for all France, by the
+voice of its majority, to decide upon
+the form of government best suited to
+all France. In vain, indeed. The
+ready answer would invariably have
+been&mdash;that Paris was the mistress of
+France, and had a right to dictate
+its will; that Paris had made the
+revolution, and that, consequently,
+Paris was privileged to support the
+principles of that revolution, and to
+arrogate to itself all its advantages:
+that the country at large, in fact, had
+nothing to do but to give in its approval,
+and be happy that its concurrence
+was so far demanded, and that,
+should it dare to have an opinion of
+its own, woe betide it! All this insolent
+bombast of the ultra party in
+Paris might have been spared, however;
+the cause of "Paris <em>v.</em> the Departments"
+was never called into the
+court of the country. The departments
+had accepted the establishment of the
+republic as a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fait accompli</i>: they never
+desired to subvert the new order of
+things by another convulsion, that
+would have plunged the country, already
+so miserable, into an increase of
+misery; but they protested in favour
+of a republic of peace and order, upon
+moderate principles; and, lo and behold,
+Paris itself combined with them
+in this desire. The disappointed party
+of the directing master-spirits of Paris
+have been none the less furious in
+their expressions of contempt for the
+openly declared will of all France.
+They had long kicked down their idol
+of universal suffrage with disdain, as
+soon as they had found that, in spite
+of all the hidden machinery they had
+set to work in it, the idol had not
+obeyed their will, or declared their
+oracles. Universal suffrage they pronounced
+a hoax: constraint, tyranny,
+anarchy, conspiracy, civil war, were
+proclaimed by them the only true
+elements of the only true republic.
+Frantic with disappointment at the
+result of their own manœuvres, by
+which they had been caught in their
+own toils, they seized upon the pretext
+of sympathy in the sorrows of
+another country; and, aided by the
+treachery of certain of their own party
+in authority, invaded the obnoxious
+Assembly, overthrew the government
+for an hour, and proclaimed a terrorist
+government of their own. Foiled
+again in this audacious attempt, <em>foiled
+at least for the time being</em>, they now
+endeavoured to patch up the shaking
+soil that has given way beneath their
+feet, and plunged their leaders into a
+quagmire, and to build new foundations
+for fresh aggressions upon the discontent
+of a part of the working-classes.
+For this purpose they have taken two
+newfangled tools into their hands, the
+one of impulsion, the other of repulsion&mdash;the
+one of enthusiasm, the
+other of alarm; and both are so
+vaguely fashioned, and of so unintelligible
+a nature, that the real
+fact of their existence can never
+be proved, although their use,
+their purpose, and their design, in
+the hands of these men, are very
+clear. The one of these tools is a
+bugbear, a phantom, a bogie, to which
+they endeavour to give as terrific an
+aspect as possible, in order to fright
+ignorant men over into their own
+ranks. This evil spirit, they declare,
+has an existence, although no one
+ever saw it, no one ever felt it, no one
+ever knew where it dwells. No superstitious
+people was ever endeavoured
+to be worked up into a more irrefragable
+belief of some mysterious
+demon that haunts them in dark
+woods and obscure places to devour
+them&mdash;nor, generally, with more complete
+success over the credulous; for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+fear is the most powerful agent over
+the minds of the masses, and more
+especially when the fear is of the unknown
+and mysterious: and certainly
+no demon was ever described with a
+more hideous or blacker face. This
+bogie, phantom, bugbear, is a supposed
+influence called "Reaction." No
+precise form is given to it, for that
+would be to deprive it of more than
+half its terrors. No! <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">onme ignotum
+pro terribili</i> is the policy. Nothing
+can be more vague or indefinite than
+this same monster, Reaction; it remains
+an Ossianic cloudlike spectre,
+floating no one knows whence, but
+bringing death and pestilence in its
+train. If the working-classes suffer,
+it is the Reaction, they are told, that
+is the cause of all their sufferings. If
+all their exactions, however exorbitant
+and impossible, <em>are not conceded
+at once</em>, it is because that horrible Reaction
+labours that their just demands
+should be withheld. If the most violent
+of their own body are not elected
+as the true representatives of the
+people, it is because that pestilential
+Reaction has cast a spell over the
+minds of all the electors. The Reaction
+has also, potent demon although it be,
+all the freaks and caprices of a lesser
+imp; it performs the strangest and
+most incomprehensible feats,&mdash;for if a
+discontented mass of workmen revolt
+unsuccessfully, and gain not their ends,
+it was the Reaction again that was the
+cause of all. The Reaction, for its own
+vile reactionary purposes, it was, that
+treacherously induced them to revolt,
+when they themselves were naturally
+inclined to be the most peaceable,
+contented, and the least exorbitant
+people on the earth. See how perfidious,
+Machiavelic, and Jesuitical, is
+this horrible monster Reaction! Pity
+it is that, in order to establish the
+fact of its real existence, it should not
+as yet have made itself visible to
+mortal eyes in any incarnate form!
+The Reaction is, however, no less,
+men are told, the enemy of the republic,
+the adversary of all true republican
+principles, labouring ever to overthrow
+it; above all, the enemy of the people
+and the people's interests, their undermining
+serpent, their secret assassin.
+It is already sapping, unseen, the foundations
+of the republic, and it intends
+to pull down the ruins of that august
+structure upon the heads of the people,
+and crush it for ever beneath them.
+In spite of the infinite harm worked
+upon the spirit of the lower classes by
+the establishment of the belief in this
+phantom, there would, perhaps, be
+no real danger in the effect produced
+by the clamours of insensate ultra
+journals, the preachings of agitating
+demagogues, and the insidious insinuations
+of anarchist <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">meneurs</i> among the
+crowd, did not certain members of the
+government itself, and some of those
+in authority, render themselves parties
+concerned to the propagation of
+the belief, either genuinely, from having
+been themselves carefully inoculated
+with the <em>virus</em> of false fear, until
+they have really taken the disease, or
+designedly, for the advancement of
+their own purposes&mdash;did they not,
+in fact, throw a sop continually to
+mob-lecturers, by insinuating their
+own conviction in the existence of
+"bogie" by their decrees, edicts, and
+proclamations, and, when they are
+called to put down anarchy, never
+obey without crying "Reaction" at
+the same time, and vainly giving the
+phantom a slap on the face. As it is&mdash;and
+herein lies the evil&mdash;the people
+are taught that the National Assembly,
+as it is now constituted, is the
+concentrated essence of the spirit of
+Reaction&mdash;that the representatives of
+the people, with but few exceptions,
+are the ministering imps in a visible
+form of the invisible demon. If a
+word of reason is spoken in the Assembly
+against the clamours of unreasonable
+demand&mdash;"Look ye there! reaction!"
+is the cry; if it prepares safe
+measures of repression against the
+open efforts of anarchy&mdash;"reaction;"
+if it defends its own existence against
+the subversive attempts of conspirators&mdash;"reaction;"
+if it attempts to
+establish the republic upon a firm
+and solid, but moderate basis&mdash;"reaction;"
+if it does any thing&mdash;"reaction;"
+if it does nothing&mdash;"reaction;"
+if it cannot perform impossible
+wonders for the amelioration and prosperity
+of the lower working-classes,&mdash;at
+which, however, it labours most
+hard,&mdash;"reaction&mdash;reaction&mdash;reaction;
+the reaction of aristocratic feeling&mdash;the
+reaction of ill will&mdash;the reaction
+of indifference and indolence;" thereby
+always meaning reaction against the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+true republic, and its true representatives,
+the lower classes. The phantom
+Reaction is thus used as a tool by a
+wild and violent party against the
+present order of things; against the
+moderate majority of the Assembly
+more particularly; against all things
+and all men not suiting its views, its
+schemes, its dreams, and its ambitions;
+and the bugbear is not ill got
+up to scare the credulous of the lower
+classes more completely into the toils
+of the malcontents, with the fear that
+reaction really may destroy that idol
+from which they have been taught to
+expect all the good gifts of "roasted
+larks," for which they have only to
+open their mouths, and "showers of
+gold," for which they have only to
+stretch forth their hands&mdash;that idol
+that has been lacquered over with
+the false gilding of delusive promises
+by imprudent rulers, and
+which the many still fancy to be
+all of solid gold&mdash;in a word, the Republic.
+The reaction, in truth, exists
+not, or exists not in the manner that
+people would be led to believe. If it
+exists, it is in the disgust of the more
+laborious and less tumultuous of the
+lower classes themselves, who, in their
+increasing misery, would be happy to
+accept the Lama of Thibet, or any
+other abstraction, with an absolute
+government, in the place of the false
+idol of their hopes, that has as yet
+only deluded them into greater misery&mdash;
+it is in the reactionary cry of the
+wretched, who call for "King Log," or
+any other senseless ruler that would
+bring with it peace, and order, and a
+hope of well-being.</p>
+
+<p>The other tool employed by the
+designing malcontents&mdash;that of impulsion&mdash;is
+the banner upon which is inscribed
+"<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Republique Democratique</i>."
+We have a republic, it is true, they
+say, but not the republic of our wishes.
+This is only a mere republic like
+any other: we want a democratic republic,
+and the democratic republic is
+taken from us; but the democratic
+republic we must and will have. Ask
+them what they mean by their "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">republique
+democratique</i>," they will not
+be able to inform you. They launch
+into phrases which are but phrases:
+they lose themselves in a cloudy confusion
+of terms and ideas: they pretend
+to give you vague and chaotic
+explanations, that are no explanations
+at all: they know not themselves
+what they mean. Universal suffrage
+upon its broadest basis, with all the
+rights and privileges thereto attached,
+in their most democratic sense, is no
+democratic republic according to their
+view. What is? Who can tell?&mdash;certainly
+not they. "They have clamoured
+for the moon," says a wit of
+the day, "and the moon has been
+given them; and now they cry, 'we
+are betrayed; we wanted the sun,
+and the sun we will have.' But have
+a care! the sun will blind your eyes,
+my friends, and you will stagger in
+still greater darkness; the sun will
+burn your fingers, and you will smart
+beneath the blisters. But they heed
+not; they still clamour for the sun." At
+all events, the banner on which flaunts
+aloft the words&mdash;"<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Republique démocratique</i>"
+is a good rallying banner for
+all malcontents, a good banner under
+which to enlist the unwary among
+their ranks. It is a cry, a clamour,
+and all the more enticing because it
+is vague, unexplained, mysterious in
+its fresh promises of some fancied
+good that has not yet arrived, full of
+the great and alluring unknown. Thus
+it serves a purpose.</p>
+
+<p>But to return from this long digression
+upon the efforts of subversive
+parties, to the state of feeling that
+subsists in Republican France between
+its now well-sorted and divided elements&mdash;Paris
+and the provinces.</p>
+
+<p>What are, again, the expressions
+used by the lower classes with regard
+to the departments? what the
+feelings they express? Ever the
+same. Paris, they declare, makes, has
+made, and will make all the revolutions
+of the country. Paris, consequently,
+is all in all in France: Paris
+is the mistress, and the queen, the
+supreme arbitress of the destinies of
+France: Paris must be obeyed in all
+its wishes and its high will. What
+were the words of the workmen of the
+national workshops, in a late revolt, to
+the Minister of Public Works? They
+were told that there was no longer
+any work for them in the capital, that
+their pretended labour was an irony
+of labour, that the country paid them
+for doing nothing, and that they were
+eating the bread of idleness under the
+name of work: they were told that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+they were to be dispersed in the provinces,
+to be employed upon great
+works of public utility&mdash;upon railroads
+and canals, that stood still for
+want of hands: while money was
+lavishly promised them for this
+work, which the treasury could
+no longer afford upon unproductive
+labour. What was their answer?
+That they, the people, had made the
+revolution in Paris, that they were
+the masters of Paris, that Paris was
+theirs, to work in it their work; that,
+as masters of Paris, they were not to
+be bid leave it; that leave it they
+would not; that if labour failed, money
+must be found them at all events,
+or they would find means of taking it;
+in short, that they would not be <em>degraded</em>
+by being sent into the provinces.
+The workmen of Paris claim,
+then, to be the masters of the capital,
+and still more, in their esteem, the
+masters of all France. The people of
+Paris, then, is <em>the</em> people; it owns no
+other. Now the people, in modern
+republican phrase, and alas! in government
+decrees also, is by no means
+the nation; it means the lower classes
+alone. The people, it has been previously
+declared, is the sovereign people,
+whose voice is the voice of God; then,
+they reply, by the simplest reasoning,
+the sovereign people, whose voice is
+the voice of God&mdash;it is alone we: it is
+the lower classes. But there is still
+another deduction to be drawn.
+Among the lower classes it is only the
+active, the stirring, the discontented,
+the disorderly and tumultuous, who
+come forward in evidence as the representatives
+of this people. And
+thus it is very clear that the sovereign
+people, whose voice is the voice
+of God, the sovereign of France, is a
+small body of uneducated, misled, and
+wrong-headed men in the capital. So
+stands the account in theory. And
+who can deny that, in theory, they are
+in truth the masters? Who shall say
+when the chances of revolutionary
+struggles may not make them so in fact?</p>
+
+<p>So stands the state of feeling on the
+side of Paris&mdash;how stands it on the
+other side?</p>
+
+<p>When the revolution of February
+broke out, the departments scarcely
+knew themselves, their wishes, or
+their feelings. They had no mutual
+understanding. They were taken by
+surprise. They had not the time to
+consult their sentiments. Notoriously
+anti-republican as has been shown to
+have been the spirit of all France
+in the departments, they accepted,
+however, from old habit, the <em>dictum</em>
+of Paris: they accepted, as has been
+before remarked, from that species of
+resignation shown in France to a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fait
+accompli</i>: they accepted from a wish
+to avoid all further convulsion, from
+a love of established order in whatever
+shape it might come&mdash;from a hope
+that, whatever the form of government
+proclaimed and imposed upon
+the country, all would "go well."
+And besides, the republic, they were
+told, was only a provisional form of
+government at a moment of crisis,
+when no other could be adopted:
+upon its future form of government,
+the country, it was said, was to be
+freely consulted: the provinces were
+not prepared for the ulterior <em>dictum</em> of
+Paris, that, without consulting the
+nation at all, the republic was to be
+considered as definitive; and that those
+who desired a change would be regarded
+as traitors to their country.
+But France is not what it was; it is
+enlightened by the experience of
+successive revolutions. The jealousy
+of the departments, towards despotic
+Paris had long been boiling in men's
+hearts: it did not at first boil over;
+but when, instead of order and peace,
+the provinces found that the new
+government produced only results of
+disorder, animosity, and ruin, the
+departments began to grumble and
+murmur openly&mdash;for the first time
+they seemed determined to show that
+they ought to have, and would have, a
+will of their own. In the commencement
+all was tranquil. In some parts
+of France the republic was accepted,
+if not with that enthusiasm which
+lying Parisian papers would have
+induced the world to believe, at all
+events with a species of contentment,
+arising from the trust that a more
+equitable popular government would
+relieve the mass from some of those
+charges which weighed so heavily
+upon them under the former government,
+and remove constraints that
+were painful to them. In other parts,
+there prevailed a sort of sullen resignation
+to the establishment of a
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">régime</i> which was dreaded from an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+experience of a hateful past, and was
+repulsive to its tastes&mdash;but it was a
+resignation to the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fait accompli</i>. Some
+thus hoped, and others feared; but
+all combined in assuming an attitude
+of quiet expectation.</p>
+
+<p>In this state was France, when an
+imprudent Minister of the Interior,
+pushed on by ambitious, designing,
+misguided, and reckless men, sent
+down as a scourge upon the country
+those commissaries of obnoxious
+memory, who were publicly charged
+to work their will upon the departments
+as they pleased, by the means
+they pleased, by whatever oppressive
+or repressive measures they pleased,
+provided they worked the suspected
+and mistrusted departments into a
+proper feeling of true republican principle,
+according to the most ultra
+traditional doctrines of old republicanism.
+Down upon the country
+came the autocratic commissaries with
+these instructions; and, in too many
+instances, with the best intentions of
+torturing and tormenting the country,
+after their own fashion and according
+to their own views, to their heart's
+content. Down they came, with their
+history of the first republic in their
+heads, and the desire in their hearts
+of emulating the zeal of those fearful
+representatives of the people of the
+last century, who ruled in the departments,
+each a petty, but a bloody
+tyrant. To all alike the same violence
+of disposition must not be attributed:
+there were a few more prudent and
+better-thinking men among the number&mdash;although
+they, in certain instances,
+were afterwards accused in high
+quarters of mild laxity, and recalled
+as suspected of moderatism; but the
+many were evidently disposed to play
+the tyrant to the life, in their desperate
+measures to twist the country to their
+will. The times, however, were
+changed; the spirit of the age no
+longer permitted of the same violence.
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Messieurs les Commissaires</i> could not
+well proceed by the old-established
+and expeditious method of cementing
+the foundations of republics, one and
+indivisible, by blood, or erecting the
+scaffolding of the edifice on scaffolds.
+Shootings, drownings, and guillotinings
+were instruments rather too
+rough to be accepted by the manners
+of the time. But they had
+other means in their power, and
+according to the tenor of their instructions,
+which they thought to use,
+and attempted to use, with just as
+much effect. They dismissed functionaries
+in wholesale numbers&mdash;put their
+creatures, or those who cringed and worshipped,
+in their places, with orders to
+brow-beat and bully the recalcitrant,
+and with the exhibition of high
+example before their eyes. They
+threatened and accused; and when
+these means failed, according to their
+fancy, or when they were too mild
+for the taste of Master Commissary,
+the other underhand instruments of
+terrorism, already mentioned, were
+employed to make men crouch and
+tremble. The manner in which mobs
+have been excited against the better
+classes, or those who were suspected
+of moderatism, by manœuvres unequivocally
+traced to the agency of the
+commissaries themselves, and the
+frightful excesses committed, are
+matters of common notoriety and of
+newspaper history. The scenes of
+the old Revolution were resorted to,
+although in another form; and not
+only supposed anti-republican sentiment,
+but moderatism, was endeavoured
+to be kept down by agents of
+terror, and the ever-ready riotous
+populations of the great towns. It
+would be an endless and a useless task
+to re-transcribe all the scenes of the
+violence of an insensate mob, secretly
+got up by the republican agents in
+authority, more than secretly connived
+at, and openly and avowedly excused
+and applauded. The rod that the commissary
+himself could not prudently
+employ, he placed in the hands of a
+designedly inflamed and infuriated
+people, to scourge the country to his
+will. One of the strongest instances,
+however, may be found in that state
+of continual terror on the one hand, and
+violence on the other, which for
+many long weeks hung over the head
+of the doomed city of Lyons. See
+there the mob constituting itself into
+illegally armed bodies, sundered from
+and inimical to the national guards,
+assuming names, such as <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">les voraces</i>
+and <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">les dévorants</i>, by which they
+themselves marked their character,
+ruling the whole city of Lyons by fear;
+exacting, spoliating, arresting
+<em>suspects</em> at will; searching the houses
+of quiet inhabitants under the pretext
+of conspiracies against the republic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+that did not exist, and of concealed
+arms, such as they themselves illegally
+bore, that never could be found;
+dragging trembling priests from the
+altar to be confined in cellars, because
+they were suspected of anti-republicanism;
+laying their hands upon
+church plate as the property of traitors;
+liberating prisoners arrested for
+revolt and disorder&mdash;arresting the
+magistrates who had condemned
+them; dictating their orders to military
+officers for the release of soldiers
+put under restraint; pulling a general
+from his horse, and nearly immolating
+him to the wrath of their high justice
+in the streets; commanding the fortresses,
+making barricades at the least
+opposition to their will, domineering
+over the whole city as masters&mdash;a herd
+of power-intoxicated savages&mdash;and the
+commissary looking on, applauding,
+sanctioning their deeds, rubbing his
+hands with satisfaction, and approving
+them with the words "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Allez, mes
+enfans! vous faites bien!</i>" Such scenes
+as these, carried to the utmost limits
+of anarchy and excess in Lyons, have
+been exhibited also in almost all the
+great towns of France, with all the
+effect of well-applied terrorism. There
+is scarcely one that has not similar
+outrages, from the violence of an excited
+mob, to lay to the charge of him
+who was set in authority over them&mdash;to
+work his will, so said the letter of
+his instructions&mdash;but to preserve
+peace and order, in a country where
+convulsions, collisions, and commotions
+were so infinitely to be dreaded
+and avoided&mdash;so should his duty have
+told him. It ought to be said, at the
+same time, that the acknowledged
+authorities of the government were
+aided in their high revolutionary
+mission, and in the extraordinary
+means they employed in its execution,
+by less acknowledged agents, in the
+persons of emissaries from the violent
+ultra clubs of Paris; who, arrogating
+to themselves the right to the true
+expression of the only true feeling of
+Paris&mdash;and consequently, <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">à fortiori</i>, of
+all France&mdash;racked the country with
+their manœuvres, their excitements
+to violence, their bullying threats and
+intimidations. Unacknowledged by
+government authority as they were,
+however, their missions were bestowed
+on them by the quondam friends and
+fellow-conspirators, under the former
+reign of the Minister of the Interior;
+their expenses were supported by
+funds, supplied no one could say by
+what hand, although most might divine;
+their measures were evidently
+taken in accordance, and in perfectly
+good understanding, with the departmental
+commissary.</p>
+
+<p>What, however, was the result?
+The very reverse from that intended
+by <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Messieurs les Commissaires</i> and
+their supporter, the Minister of the
+Interior. They over-reached themselves,
+and worked the very effect
+they attempted to exterminate. Instead
+of subjugating the departments
+to their will of ultra-republicanism by
+the violence of terrorism, they almost
+roused the whole better feeling of the
+country, at first quietly disposed and
+resigned, against the very principles
+of republicanism in general. The sentiment
+at first accepted was soured
+and embittered; the discontent and
+aversion daily increased; and it was
+more than once openly affirmed that
+the departments were ready to revolt,
+and formed the design of marching
+upon Paris. That this subject was
+actually discussed in large, and not
+even secret meetings in the provinces&mdash;and
+even in such as had been always
+considered ultra-liberal and democratic
+in their opinions, as parts of Normandy,
+for instance&mdash;admits of but
+little doubt; and this feeling, although
+it was never actually embodied in any
+living and active fact of resistance,
+may be taken as one example in support
+of the opinion, that the children
+may not always prove so submissive
+to the dictates of the mother, and may
+one day raise their voices and hold
+forth their hands to dispute her will.
+The open and general outbreak of the
+provinces, which was at one time expected,
+and was the common topic of
+conversation in Paris, was suppressed,
+however, by the influence of the better-thinking
+and more prudential men in
+the country. But the feeling of opposition
+and resistance did not fail to
+manifest itself in minor demonstrations.
+Expostulations were at first
+made against the tyranny and the inflammatory
+manœuvres of the government
+commissaries; then broke out
+angry remonstrances on the part of the
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bourgeoisie</i>, backed by the better and
+quieter of the working-classes; and
+at last, when all these more legitimate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+means failed, the populations of several
+of the larger towns rose against
+the provisional despot, who played the
+autocrat and the tyrant in the name of
+"Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."</p>
+
+<p>The national guards took up arms
+to demand the revocation and the departure
+of the obnoxious commissary.
+The commissary, in opposition, acted
+the self-same part of which a despotic
+king has since been so violently accused
+by the republican journals. As Ferdinand
+of Naples is said to have excited
+the dregs of the populace, the
+lazzaroni, to aid him in a reactionary
+movement in his favour, so did even
+the republican commissary after the
+self-same system. He caused the mob
+to be roused to his assistance, as to that
+of the only true democratic friend of
+the people; he called upon them to take
+up arms and combat in his defence: the
+lazzaroni mob of the departments was
+the weapon he wielded to overcome the
+resistance of the majority to his will.
+In most instances the recalcitrant part
+of the provincial populations prevailed.
+In several of the larger towns, as in
+Bordeaux, Bourges, and many others,
+the commissary was obliged to take to
+flight: in some the palace of the little
+tyrant was stormed, he himself was
+made prisoner, and was taken to the
+railroad, and "packed off" back to
+that Paris which had sent him. In a
+very few instances only the influence
+of the commissary gained the day: in
+still less was he again returned, to be
+enforced upon the department from
+which he had been driven; and in one
+case he was sent back by the powers
+that were, only to be again ignominiously
+expelled.</p>
+
+<p>In the department of the Ariège, at
+the town of Foix, a journal, founded
+under the auspices of the commissaries
+of the government, and professing the
+most violent ultra-republican doctrines,
+was publicly burnt by the
+magistrates and most influential persons
+of the place, to show their contempt
+and abhorrence of the principles
+and actions of the authority set over
+them. Other instances of the general
+opposition, either to the commissaries
+themselves or to the agents they had
+appointed and supported, on account
+of their violence, their tyrannical measures,
+and their anarchical principles,
+are too numerous to quote; and, generally
+speaking, the feeling was so
+strong, that the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Messieurs les Commissaires</i>,
+or rather, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">les Citoyens Commissaires</i>,
+were obliged to give way before
+the expression of popular indignation.</p>
+
+<p>The departments then, for the first
+time, have begun to show that they
+are determined not to be treated as
+the mere humble serfs of the capital,&mdash;that
+they are resolved to have a will
+and an action of their own. The results
+have been such that, even among
+the staunch republicans in the provinces,
+and among those who look to
+the republic as the only form of government
+at present suitable to France,
+symptoms of a tendency to a federal
+system have indubitably sprung up,&mdash;of
+a tendency, in fact, to that system
+in opposition to which, under the first
+revolution, the title of "one and indivisible,"&mdash;so
+little understood at the
+present day, so constantly repeated by
+the herd without any real meaning being
+attached to it,&mdash;was bestowed upon
+the republic. The fear of a powerfully
+organised resistance to the sacred
+principles of French republicanism,&mdash;unity
+and indivisibility,&mdash;is, at this
+very time, one of the bugbears by which
+those in power are terrified and haunted.
+But, whether this fear be well
+founded or not, it suffices for the present
+purpose, to show that a disunited
+feeling exists to a great extent between
+the departments and the capital;
+and that, while on the one hand
+the former begin to show a disposition
+to resist the overweening influence and
+tyrannical importance of the former,
+on the other, a dread is beginning to
+be expressed of their growing discontent,
+and a suspicion is constantly
+expressed of their increasing tendency
+to reactionary principles, likely to
+prove eventually subversive to the
+republic. Among those "lookers-on,"
+who proverbially "see the most
+of the game," there are some who,
+in their exceptional and impartial
+position as foreigners, are able to see
+expressed in letters from the provinces
+"curses, not loud, but deep," against
+"that detestable, unruly, and insolent
+Paris, that has made alone a hateful
+revolution, which it imposes on all
+France." It cannot, however, be said,
+at the same time, that any reactionary
+feeling against the republic itself, and
+a republican form of government,
+prevails in the country at large. That
+which is thought to be stigmatised by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+the ultra party with the term of
+"reaction," appears, as yet, to be
+nothing but the acceptation of a republic
+based upon the principles of
+peace and order; but, at the same
+time, an opposition to all views and
+doctrines likely to produce disorder
+and anarchy. And yet still, in another
+sense, the feeling of the country at
+large cannot be said to be strictly
+republican: the "true men" might be
+in vain sought except in the disorderly,
+tumultuous, excitable, and
+easily stirred populations of the great
+manufacturing towns.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after the appointment of
+the obnoxious commissaries, several
+causes arose to increase the discontent
+of the departments, not only among
+the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ci-devant</i> upper and middling
+classes, but among the lower classes,&mdash;particularly
+in the agricultural districts,
+and more especially among that
+peasant population that has so universally
+in France acquired a little property
+in land. One of these causes
+was the imposition of the new taxes.
+Under the former <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">régime</i>, France had
+been crushed down by the weight of its
+impositions. One of the first advantages
+of the republic was announced,
+in official proclamations, to consist in
+the removal of taxes, and in the enormous
+diminution of state expenses
+necessarily attendant upon a republican
+form of government. Already
+the country people looked to a release
+from the greater part of their obligations:
+the system of "no taxes at all,"
+they thought, in their <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">naïveté</i>, was to
+follow; instead of which came very
+shortly the decree, begging the country
+for the loan of a certain proportion
+of the taxes for the ensuing year
+beforehand, in order to meet the deficiencies
+in the finances, followed
+up almost immediately by the more
+imperative ordinance, imposing the
+additional 45 per cent in support
+of the increased, not diminished, expenses
+of the republican government.
+In many parts of the country the peasant
+population refused to pay this
+additional tax, or responded only to
+the demand with that equivocal answer,
+so characteristic of the French
+peasant, "We'll see about it." It
+nevertheless, however, refused to pay
+at the same time the rents of its landlords,
+upon the pretext that it was
+ruined by the revolution, and the
+exactions of the republic. It was in
+vain that the government protested
+that these measures were necessitated
+by the financial dilapidations of the
+dethroned dynasty. Clear-sighted
+enough where their own interests are
+concerned, the French peasants in the
+provinces replied by denunciations of
+that odious Paris. Paris, they declared,
+had chosen to make for the
+nonce a revolution in which they had
+not aided, and which they had not
+desired; and then Paris turned to its
+own advantage alone the results of
+that revolution. It had imposed upon
+all France, by calling for resources
+from a country already drained, to be
+lavishly squandered in rewarding the
+idleness of its own tumultuous and
+unruly inhabitants among the working-classes,
+which it dreaded, by the
+establishment of its expensive so-called
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ateliers nationaux</i>, and by paying
+fresh troops under the name
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">gardes mobiles</i>,&mdash;when the standing
+army was already such a burden
+the country,&mdash;for the sake of draining
+off and regularising the worst dregs
+of its own population, and satisfying
+the caprices of a riotous Parisian mob,
+that chose to object to the presence of
+the old military force among it, while
+it accepted a new defensive and repressive
+force, in addition to the
+former, under a new title. Upon
+such questions, of vital importance to
+their own interests, the country people
+of the provinces were not disposed to
+listen to argument or reason; and
+in the discontent at the exorbitant
+exactions of the capital the jealousy
+of the departments towards Paris
+waxed stronger and stronger.</p>
+
+<p>Another cause, which added greatly
+to the increasing apprehension and
+aversion was the preaching of the communist
+doctrines in Paris, upon the first
+establishment of republican principles,
+and the support apparently given to
+these wild and spoliating principles by
+certain members of the Provisional
+Government itself. If there be any
+feeling more alive than any other in
+the breast of the French peasant, it is
+that attached to the acquirement and
+the possession of landed property in
+however humble a form, be it but a
+small field or a tiny vineyard. If he has
+any hope, any ambition, any sentiment,
+which he thinks worth living for,
+it is the extension, by any and every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+means, of his small domain. On the
+fact of this possession are concentrated
+all the mainspring motives and agencies
+of his whole existence&mdash;in this, his
+industry, his talent, his cunning, his
+thoughts, his affections, his very love
+for his children, to whom he hopes to
+transmit it. The great <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mobile</i> of the
+character of the French peasant is
+self-interest in this respect. The
+doctrines, then, which preached that
+the possession of all landed property
+by individuals is an infamous spoliation
+of the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">res publica</i>, filled the country
+people in the provinces with the liveliest
+alarm, and contributed to establish
+a still greater hatred to a state of
+things that tended to produce results so
+fatally detrimental to all that they held
+dear. The Parisian, almost as blindly
+ignorant of the state of his own country&mdash;which,
+in his theory that Paris is
+all France, he looks upon with indifference,
+if not contempt&mdash;as he is
+proverbially utterly ignorant of every
+other country beyond the frontiers
+of France, even the most neighbouring&mdash;and,
+in fact, of every thing that
+touches upon geography or the state
+of nations, of which he has only the
+vaguest and most incorrect notions&mdash;thought
+that all his wild fraternity
+schemes, developed and accepted by
+those who possessed nothing, in the
+capital, would be received with enthusiasm
+also by the "miserable,
+oppressed, and tyrannised inhabitant
+of the fields and plains;"&mdash;such was
+the language used, and eagerly caught
+up. The Parisian soon found, by experience,
+that he had made a gross
+mistake. The emissaries sent down
+into the provinces by the professors and
+high-priests of communism, or by the
+ultra clubs, and supported, there is
+every reason to believe, by the members
+of the government before alluded
+to, met only with the most active
+repulsion. Their Utopian ideas of
+universal fraternity and spoliation of
+property were scorned, scouted, and
+opposed: themselves were hooted,
+pelted, almost lapidated as incendiary
+enemies of the peasant. "The innocent
+and humble inhabitant of the
+fields" was indignant, insulted, aggrieved,
+that he should be so contemptuously
+considered "miserable and
+oppressed:" he showed himself in the
+light of the landed proprietor, the
+most avariciously interested in the
+possession of property, and by no
+means the <em>naif</em> individual the Parisian
+had been accustomed to believe him,
+according to his text-books of <em>vaudevilles</em>
+and melodramas. The agents
+of communistic doctrines were forced
+to retreat in dudgeon, to declare the
+French peasant the most ignorant and
+pig-headed animal upon earth, still
+under the yoke of the tyrants, and
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">endoctriné</i> by the aristocrats; and to
+avow that the departments were not
+ripe for the enlightenment of communism,
+perhaps even to denounce them
+as infamously reactionary. Certain
+it is that communistic doctrines found
+no enthusiastic disciples in the country;
+or, if the propagandism made
+any steps, it was after the fashion so
+characteristically depicted in a caricature
+published by the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Charivari</i>, in
+which a peasant appears before the
+mayor of his <em>commune</em> to say, that,
+since a general <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">partage des biens</i> is to
+take place, he puts down his name for
+the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">château</i>, but makes a most wofully
+wry face upon hearing that his own
+field has been already divided among
+the paupers of the village. The propagation
+of communism, then, only excited
+fears instead of hopes, consternation
+instead of joy, and tended still
+more to indispose the country people,
+and excite their aversion and discontent
+towards a state of things likely to
+become so prejudicial to their interests:
+more than ever, they were disposed to
+revolt.</p>
+
+<p>In this state was the feeling of the
+country at large when the general
+elections came on, accompanied by all
+the violence of party manœuvre to
+support the principles of ultra-republicanism,
+advocated by the unscrupulous
+minister of the nation; but all these
+efforts tended only to indispose it still
+more, and to call forth, in spite of the
+desperate opposition made, its sense
+in favour of respect of property, order,
+and moderatism of views in the republic,
+if republic there was to be.
+As is well known, an immense majority
+of those men of moderate principles,
+whom all the ill-judged and
+hateful efforts of the violent and reckless
+republicans at the head of affairs
+had so greatly contributed to form
+into a decided, self-conscious, and
+compact party of opponents, was returned
+to the Assembly. Most of the
+leading men of the liberal party under<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
+the former dynasty, who had stood
+forward as friends of progressive reform,
+but not as opponents to the
+constitutional monarchy principle,
+were likewise elected, with great majorities,
+by the suffrages of the people.
+The country declared its will to be
+against the views of the principal and
+stirring influence which emanated from
+the reckless man who governed the
+interior affairs of the country in the
+capital. But it did not forget, at the
+same time, and it still bears an inveterate
+grudge to the violent agents
+of that ultra-republicanism, chiefly
+concentrated in Paris, who had filled
+the country with disorder, tumult,
+terror, and, in some cases, bloodshed,
+by the atrocious and outrageous means
+it placed in the hands of a riotous mob
+to overawe them, and sway the direction
+of the elections, and by the base
+manœuvres employed to attain their
+ends. It does not forget the despotism
+of certain commissaries, who, after
+having their own lists of ultra-democratic
+candidates, whom they intended
+to force down the throats of the electors,
+printed, threatened the printer,
+who should dare to print any other,
+with their high displeasure, and caused
+them to shut up their press. It does
+not forget the seizure of those papers
+that proposed moderate candidates,
+with every attempt to strangle in
+practice that liberty of the press which
+was so clamorously claimed in theory.
+It does not forget the voters' lists torn
+from the hands of voters by a purposely
+excited mob. It does not forget
+the odious manœuvre by which agents
+were largely paid and sent about to
+cry "<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Vive Henri V.</i>" in the streets of
+towns, in order to induce the belief
+in a Bourbonist reactionary party,
+and thus rouse the passions and feelings
+of the flattered and declamation-intoxicated
+mob against the moderates,
+regardless of the consequences&mdash;of
+the animosity and the bloodshed. It
+does not forget the intimidation, the
+threat of fire and sword, the opposition
+by force to the voting of whole villages
+suspected of moderatism&mdash;the collision,
+the constraint, the conflict, the violence.
+It does not forget all this,
+nor also that it owes the outrage,
+the alarm, and the suffering, the
+ruin to peace and order, to commerce,
+to well-being, to fortune, to that
+central power which turned a legion
+of demons upon it, in the shape of revolutionary
+emissaries and agents. It
+forgets still less the scenes of Limoges,
+where a mob were turned loose into
+the polling-house to destroy the votes,
+drive out the national guards, disarm
+these defenders of order and right, and
+form a mob government, to rule and
+terrorise the town, while Master Commissary
+looked on, and told the people
+that it did well, and laughed in his
+sleeve. It forgets still less the fury
+of the disappointed upon the result of
+the elections, their incitements to insurrections,
+their preachings of armed
+resistance for the sake of annulling the
+elections, obtained, it must never be
+forgotten, by <em>universal suffrage</em>, in face
+of their culpable manœuvres: the
+emissaries again sent down from the
+clubs, and with an apparent connivance
+of certain ultra-members of the
+government, from the charge of which,
+now more than ever since the conspiracy
+of the 15th May, they will scarcely
+be able to acquit themselves: the
+efforts of these emissaries to make the
+easily excited and tumultuous lower
+classes take up arms, and the bloody
+conflicts in the streets of Rouen: the
+complicity of the very magistrates appointed
+by these members of the government&mdash;the
+terror and the bloodshed,
+and then the cry of the furious
+ultras that the people had been treacherously
+assassinated&mdash;the conspiracies
+and incendiary projects of the vanquished
+at Marseilles, the troubles of
+Lisle, of Amiens, of Lyons, of Aubusson,
+of Rhodez, of Toulouse, of Carcassonne&mdash;why
+swell the list of names?&mdash;of
+almost every town in France, all
+with the same intent of destroying those
+elections of representatives which the
+country had proclaimed in the sense
+of order and of moderatism. It
+forgets still less the dangers of that
+same 15th May, when the government
+was for a few hours overthrown,
+by the disorderly, the disappointed,
+the discontented, the violent ultra
+republicans, the conspirators of Paris,&mdash;when
+some of those, who had
+been formerly their rulers, were
+arrested as accomplices, and others
+still in power can scarcely yet again
+avoid the accusation and conviction
+of complicity.</p>
+
+<p>All the other troubles of this distracted
+country, since the revolution
+of February, may be passed over&mdash;the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+ruin to commerce, the poverty, misery,
+and want, the military revolts excited
+by the same emissaries to cause divisions
+in the army, as likewise the
+unhappy troubles of Nismes, where
+the disturbances took a religions tendency&mdash;as
+a conflict of creeds between
+Roman Catholics and Protestants,
+rather than a political or even a
+social character,&mdash;although they still
+bore evidence of the disorder of the
+times and the disturbance of the
+country. The elections, then, contributed
+more powerfully than ever to
+the fermentation, the discontent, the
+mistrust, and the ill-will of the
+country.</p>
+
+<p>In this state of France, with the
+feeling of impatient jealousy and
+irritation against tyranny and despotism
+expressed by the departments
+towards the capital, with the evident
+disunion between the provinces and
+Paris, what are likely to be the destinies
+of the Republic hereafter?
+Again it must be said&mdash;who can tell,
+who foresee, who predict? The Republic
+has been accepted, and is maintained,
+from a love of order and the
+<em>status quo</em>: but there is no enthusiasm,
+no admiration for the republican form
+of government throughout the country
+at large; there is, at most, indifference
+to any government, whatever
+it may be, provided it but
+insure the stability and prosperity of
+the country. If an opinion may be
+hazarded, however, it is, that the
+danger to the present established form
+of things will not arise so much from
+the conflict of contending parties in
+the capital, as from the discontent,
+disaffection, jealousy, and, perhaps,
+final outbreak and resistance of the
+departments. Terrorism has had its
+day; and it would be difficult, if not
+impossible, to apply the system once
+again to the country in its present
+state. What other means will the
+violent possess&mdash;what coercive measures,
+if, when parties come to an
+issue, the wearied and disgusted
+country should rise to protest against
+the disorders of Republican Paris?
+There seem at present to be none.
+The result of such an outbreak would
+be inevitable civil war. The strong
+instance before alluded to, of the determination
+of the departments to
+assert a will of their own, was given
+in a very striking manner in the affair
+of the 15th May. One of the conspirators
+got possession of the electric
+telegraph at the Home Office, and
+sent down despatches into all the provinces,
+to inform the country that the
+Assembly was dissolved, and the new
+government of the ultra-anarchist
+party had taken the reins of power.
+Instead of being awed into submission
+as heretofore, instead of calmly and
+resignedly accepting the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fait accompli</i>
+as was their wont, the departments
+immediately rose to protest against
+the new revolution of Paris. Before
+a counter-despatch could be sent down
+into the provinces, to let them know
+that the former order of things was
+restored, the national guards of all
+the great towns were up and out, with
+the cry "to arms!" and it was resolved
+to march upon Paris. It was not only
+in the towns within a day's journey
+of the capital that the movement was
+spontaneously made. In the furthest
+parts of the country, from the cities of
+Avignon, Marseilles, Nismes, and all
+the south of France, the national
+guards were already on their way
+towards the capital, before the information
+that declared the more
+satisfactory result of the day could be
+made public. It is more than probable,
+then, that, should a desperate
+faction ever seize upon the power, or
+even should a close conflict of parties
+further endanger the safety of the
+country and its tottering welfare,
+that the provinces would again take
+up arms against Paris, and that a
+civil war would be the result.</p>
+
+<p>This is rather a suggestion hazarded,
+than a prediction made, as to the
+future fate of the French republic.
+Whatever that future may be, an
+uneasy submission on the part of a
+great anti-republican majority to the
+active agency of a small republican
+minority&mdash;but, at the same time, a
+desire of maintaining a government,
+whatever it may be, if supportable,
+for tranquillity's sake; a feeling of
+humiliation and degradation in this
+utter submission to the will of Paris
+throughout the country&mdash;but, at the
+same time, an apparent growing determination
+eventually to resist that
+will, should it at last prove intolerable&mdash;such
+is the present state of Republican
+France.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>COLONISATION.</h2>
+
+<p><cite>Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia</cite>, &amp;c. By Lieut.-Colonel
+Sir <span class="smcap">T. Mitchell</span>, Surveyor-General, &amp;c. 1 vol. London: Longmans.</p>
+
+
+<p>Australia is the greatest accession
+to substantial power ever made
+by England. It is the <em>gift</em> of a <em>Continent</em>,
+unstained by war, usurpation,
+or the sufferings of a people. But
+even this is but a narrow view of its
+value. It is the addition of a territory,
+almost boundless, to the possessions
+of mankind; a location for a new
+family of man, capable of supporting a
+population equal to that of Europe;
+or probably, from its command of the
+ocean, and from the improved systems,
+not merely of commercial communication,
+but of agriculture itself, capable
+of supplying the wants of double
+the population of Europe. It is, in
+fact, the virtual future addition of three
+hundred millions of human beings, who
+otherwise would not have existed.
+And besides all this, and perhaps of a
+higher order than all, is the transfer
+of English civilisation, laws, habits,
+industrial activity, and national freedom,
+to the richest, but the most
+abject countries of the globe; an imperial
+England at the Antipodes,
+securing, invigorating, and crowning
+all its benefits by its religion.</p>
+
+<p>Within the last fifty years, the
+population of the British islands has
+nearly tripled; it is increasing in
+England alone at the rate of a thousand
+a day. In every kingdom of the
+Continent it is increasing in an immense
+ratio. The population is becoming
+too great for the means of
+existence. Every trade is overworked,
+every profession is overstocked,
+every expedient for a livelihood
+threatens to be exhausted under
+this vast and perpetual influx of life;
+and the question of questions is, How
+is this burthen to be lightened?</p>
+
+<p>There can be but one answer,&mdash;Emigration.
+For the last century, common
+sense, urged by common necessity,
+directed the stream of this
+emigration to the great outlying regions
+of the western world. North
+America was the chief recipient.
+Since the conquest of Canada, annual
+thousands had directed their emigration
+to the British possessions: the
+conquest of the Cape has drawn a large
+body of settlers to its fine climate;
+but Australia remained, and remains
+for the grand future field of British
+emigration.</p>
+
+<p>The subject has again come before
+the British public with additional interest.
+The Irish famine, the British
+financial difficulties, and the palpable
+hazard of leaving a vast pauperism to
+grow up in ignorance, have absolutely
+compelled an effort to relieve the
+country. A motion has just been
+made in Parliament by Lord Ashley,
+giving the most startling details of
+the infant population; and demanding
+the means of sending at least its
+orphan portion to some of those colonial
+possessions, where they may be
+trained to habits of industry, and
+have at least a chance of an honest
+existence. We shall give a few of
+these details, and they are of the very
+first importance to humanity. On the
+6th of June Lord Ashley brought in a
+resolution, "That it is expedient that
+means be annually provided for the
+voluntary emigration, to some one of
+her Majesty's colonies, of a certain
+number of young persons of both
+sexes, who have been educated in the
+schools, ordinarily called 'ragged
+schools,' in and about the metropolis."</p>
+
+<p>In the speech preparatory to this
+resolution, a variety of statements
+were made, obtained from the clergy
+and laity of London. It was ascertained
+that the number of children,
+either deserted by their parents, or
+sent out by their parents to beg and
+steal, could not be less than 30,000 in
+the metropolis alone. Their habits
+were filthy, wretched, and depraved.
+Their places of living by day were the
+streets, and by night every conceivable
+haunt of misery and sin. They had
+no alternative but to starve, or to
+grow up into professional thieves,
+perhaps murderers. Of the general
+population, the police reports stated,
+that in 1847 there had been taken
+into custody 62,181 individuals of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+both sexes and all ages. Of these,
+20,702 were females, and 47,479 males.
+Of the whole, 15,693 were under
+twenty years of age, 3,682 between
+fifteen and ten, and 362 under ten.
+Of the whole, 22,075 could neither
+read nor write, and 35,227 could read
+only, or read and write imperfectly.</p>
+
+<p>The average attendance last year in
+the "ragged schools" was 4000. Of
+these 400 had been in prison, 600
+lived by begging, 178 were the children
+of convicts, and 800 had lost one or
+both their parents, and of course were
+living by their own contrivances. Out
+of the 62,000, there were not less than
+28,113 who had no trade, or occupation,
+or honest livelihood whatever!</p>
+
+<p>The statement then proceeded to
+consider the expense to which the
+nation was put to keep down crime.
+It will perhaps surprise those readers
+who object to the expenses of emigration.</p>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="crime">
+<tr><td align="left">In 1847.</td><td align="left">The expense of Parkhurst Prison was</td><td align="right">£14,349</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="left">Of Pentonville Prison,</td><td align="right">18,307</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">In 1846.</td><td align="left">Of County Gaols,</td><td align="right">147,145</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="left">Of County Houses of Correction,</td><td align="right">160,841</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="left">Of Rural Police,</td><td align="right">180,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">"</td><td align="left">Of Prosecutions for Coining,</td><td align="right">9,000</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">In 1847.</td><td align="left">Of Metropolitan Police,</td><td align="right">363,164</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p class="noind">The whole but a few items, yet amounting
+to a million sterling annually. In
+this we observe the Millbank Penitentiary,
+an immense establishment,
+Newgate, the Compter, and the various
+places of detention in the city,
+are not included; and there is no notice
+of the expenses of building, which in
+the instance of the Penitentiary alone
+amounted to a million.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, to dry up the source of this
+tremendous evil, Lord Ashley asks
+only an expenditure of £100,000 annually,
+to transform 30,000 growing
+thieves into honest men, idlers into
+cultivators of the soil, beggars into
+possessors of property, which the generality
+of settlers become, on an
+average of seven years.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no rational denial of
+the benefit, and even of the necessity,
+of rescuing those unfortunate
+creatures from a career which, beginning
+in vice and misery, must go on in
+public mischief, and end in individual
+ruin. Lord Ashley's suggestion is
+that the plan shall be first tried on the
+moderate scale of sending 500 boys,
+and 500 girls, chosen from the ragged
+schools of London, under proper superintendents,
+to the most fitting of
+the colonies; by which we understand
+Australia. The plan may then be
+extended to the other parts of the
+kingdom, to Scotland and Ireland.
+He concluded by placing his motion
+in the hands of government, who,
+through the Home Secretary, promised
+to give it all consideration.</p>
+
+<p>It is certainly lamentable that such
+statements are to be made; and we
+have little doubt that the foreign journalist
+will exult in this evidence of
+what they call "the depravity of
+England." But, it is to be remembered
+that London has a population
+of nearly two millions&mdash;that all the
+idleness, vice, and beggary of an island
+of twenty millions are constantly
+pouring into it&mdash;that <em>foreign</em> vice, idleness,
+and beggary contribute their
+share, and that what is abhorred and
+<em>corrected</em> in England, is overlooked,
+and even cherished abroad. It is also
+to be remembered, that there is a continual
+temptation to plunder in the
+exposed wealth of the metropolis, and
+a continual temptation to mendicancy
+in the proverbial humanity of the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>Still, crime must be punished wherever
+it exists, and vice must be reformed
+wherever man has the means;
+and, therefore, we shall exult in the
+success of any judicious plan of emigration.</p>
+
+<p>It happens, at this moment, that there
+is an extraordinary demand for emigration;
+that every letter from Australia
+calls for a supply of human life,
+and especially for an emigration of
+females,&mdash;the proportion of males to
+females in some of the settlements
+being 9 to 1, while the number of
+females predominates, by the last
+census in England.</p>
+
+<p>There is a daily demand for additional
+labourers, artificers, and household
+servants, and with offers of wages
+which in England neither labourer
+nor artisan could hope to obtain.
+Thousands are now offered employment,
+comfort, and prospective wealth
+in Australia, who must burthen the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+workhouse at home. The advantages
+are so evident, the necessity is so
+strong, and the opportunity is so
+prompt and perfect, that they <em>must</em>
+result in a national plan of constant
+emigration, until Australia can contain
+no more&mdash;an event which may not
+happen for a thousand years.</p>
+
+<p>It happens, also, by a striking coincidence,
+that Australian discovery has
+just assumed new vigour; and that
+instead of the barrenness and deformity
+which were generally supposed
+to form the principal characteristics
+of this vast territory,
+immense tracts have been brought to
+European knowledge for the first
+time, exhibiting remarkable fertility,
+and even the most unexpected and
+singular beauty. We now give a
+sketch of the journey in which those
+discoveries were made.</p>
+
+<p>To explore the interior of this great
+country has been the object of successive
+expeditions for the last five-and-twenty
+years. But such was the
+want of system or the want of means,
+that nothing was done, except to increase
+the tales of wonder regarding
+the middle regions of Australia. The
+theorists were completely divided;
+one party insisting on the existence of
+a mediterranean or mighty lake in the
+central region, <em>because</em> there was a
+tendency in some of the small rivers
+of the coast to flow inward. Others,
+with quite as much plausibility, laughed
+at the idea; and, from having felt
+a hot wind occasionally blowing from
+the west, had no doubt that the central
+region was a total waste, a desert
+of fiery sand, an Australian Sahara!
+while both parties seem to have been
+equally erroneous, so far as any actual
+discovery has been made.</p>
+
+<p>But it seems equally extraordinary,
+that even the only two expeditions
+which within our time have added
+largely to our knowledge, alike should
+have neglected the most obvious and
+almost the only useful means of discovery.
+The especial object of exploration
+must be, to ascertain the
+existence of considerable rivers pouring
+into the sea, because it is only
+thus that the government can effectively
+form settlements. The especial
+difficulty of the explorers is, to
+find provisions, or carry the means of
+subsistence along with them. Both
+difficulties would be obviated by the
+steam-boat, and by nothing else. The
+natural process, therefore, would be,
+to embark the expedition in a well appointed
+and well provisioned steamer;
+to anchor it at the necessary distance
+from the coast, which in general has
+deep and sheltered water, within the
+great rocky ridge; and then send out
+the explorers for fifty or a hundred
+miles north and south, making the
+steamer the headquarters. Thus they
+might ascertain every feature of the
+coast, inch by inch, be secure of subsistence,
+and be free from native hostility.</p>
+
+<p>Yet all the expeditions have been
+overland, generally with the most imminent
+hazard of being starved, and
+occasionally losing some of their
+number by attacks from the natives.
+Thus also the present expedition of
+the surveyor succeeded but in part,
+though it had the merit of discovering
+that the reports of Australian barrenness
+belonged but to narrow tracts,
+while the general character of the
+country towards the north was of
+striking fertility. The purpose of
+Sir T. Mitchell's late expedition was,
+to ascertain the probability of a route
+from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria.
+But as this route was to be
+made dependent on a presumed river
+flowing into the gulf, the actual object
+was to reach the head of that
+river&mdash;an object which could have
+been more effectually attained by
+tracing it upward from the gulf; and,
+in consequence of not so tracing it,
+the expedition ultimately failed.</p>
+
+<p>To establish an easy connexion between
+the colony of New South Wales
+and the traffic of the Indian Ocean
+had long been a matter of great interest.
+Torres Strait, the only channel
+to the north, is a remarkably dangerous
+navigation; while, by forming an
+overland communication directly with
+the Gulf of Carpentaria to the west of
+the strait, the commerce would find
+an open sea. A trade in horses had
+also commenced with India, which
+was impeded by the hazards of the
+strait. There had also been a steam
+communication with England by Singapore,
+and there was a hope that this
+line might be connected with a line
+from the gulf.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of tracing a river towards<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+the north was a conjecture of several
+years' standing, in some degree founded
+on the natural probability that an
+immense indentation of the land could
+not but exhibit some outlet for the
+course of a considerable fall of waters,
+and also that there had been a report
+by a Bushman, of having followed its
+course to the sea.</p>
+
+<p>After some difficulties with the governor,
+which were obviated by a vote
+of the Colonial Legislature of £2000
+for the expenses of the expedition, it
+set out from Paramatta on the 17th
+of November 1845. The expedition
+consisted of Sir Thomas Mitchell; E.
+B. Kennedy, Esq., assistant-surveyor;
+William Stephenson, Esq., surgeon
+and naturalist; twenty-three convicts,
+who volunteered for the sake of a free
+pardon, which was to be their only
+payment; and three freemen. They
+had a numerous list of baggage conveyances,
+&amp;c. &amp;c.; eight drays,
+drawn by eighty bullocks; two boats,
+thirteen horses, four private horses,
+three light carts, and provisions for a
+year, including two hundred and fifty
+sheep, which travelled along with
+them, constituting a chief part of their
+animal food. They had also gelatine
+and pork. The surveyor-general
+preferred light carts, and horses in
+place of bullocks; but it was suggested
+that the strong drays were
+necessary, and that bullocks were
+more enduring than horses&mdash;the latter
+an opinion soon found to be erroneous.
+It is rather singular, that
+either opinion should not have been
+settled fifty years ago.</p>
+
+<p>Some natural and well-expressed
+reflections arise, in the course of this
+volume, on the lonely life of the
+settler. Its despondency, and its inutility
+to advance his moral nature,
+are in some measure attributed to the
+absence of the "gentler sex."</p>
+
+<p>"At this sheep station," says Sir
+Thomas, "I met with an individual
+who had seen better days, and had
+lost his property amid the wreck of
+colonial bankruptcies; a 'tee-totaller,'
+with Pope's 'Essay on Man' for his
+consolation, in a <em>bark hut</em>. This man
+spoke of the depravity of shepherd life
+as excessive.... The pastoral life,
+so favourable to the enjoyment of nature,
+has always been a favourite with
+the poets. But here it appears to be
+the antipodes of all poetry and propriety,
+simply because man's better
+half is wanting. Under this unfavourable
+aspect the white man comes before
+the aboriginal. Were they intruders,
+accompanied with wives and children,
+they would not be half so unwelcome.
+In this, too, consists one of the most
+striking differences between settling
+and squatting. Indeed, if it were an
+object to <em>uncivilise</em> the human race, I
+know of no method more likely to
+effect it, than to isolate a man from the
+gentler sex and children. Remove
+afar off all courts of justice and means
+of redress of grievances, all churches
+and schools, all shops where he can
+make use of money, and then place
+him in close contact with savages.
+'What better off am I than a black
+native!' was the exclamation of a
+shepherd to me."</p>
+
+<p>A general description of the aspect
+of New South Wales would be difficult,
+from its extreme diversity in
+parts; but the general face of the
+country is marked by lines of granite
+hills; short water-courses, which in
+summer are dry, or retain the water
+only in pools; clumps of trees, generally
+dotted over the soil, and occasional
+<em>prairies</em>. But the soil is generally
+fertile, and, in the spring,
+exhibits a great variety of flowers.
+Thus the land is every where fit for
+European life, though in the same
+latitude with the hottest portions of
+Africa. It has occasional gushes of
+intense heat, but they seem not to
+have affected the health of the expedition;
+and with that progress of comforts
+which follows all civilisation, the
+heat and cold alike may be successfully
+mitigated. We have not heard
+of any endemic in Australia; the epidemic
+has never visited its shores. The
+chief want in the pasture-grounds is
+water, but even that is merely the result
+of the rudeness of early settling;
+for vast quantities of water run to
+waste, or are lost in swamps, which
+future colonists will receive in tanks,
+and check with dams. The capricious
+abundance and deficiency of this prime
+necessary of life, for it is more essential
+than food, is shown in a striking,
+passage of this picturesque Journal.
+They were still within the sheep-feeding
+country. Water was much
+wanted. Mr Stephenson, the naturalist,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+was sent out on the inquiry.
+He returned soon, having met two of
+the mounted police, who told him that
+"a flood was coming down from the
+Turon Mountains."</p>
+
+<p>"But the little encampment was
+held in suspense. Still, the bed of the
+Macquarie continued so dry, that the
+report could scarcely be believed. Towards
+evening, a man was stationed
+with a gun, to give a signal on the appearance
+of the flood. The shades of
+evening came, but no flood; and the
+man returned. This was a period of
+considerable anxiety, for the need of
+water was urgent.</p>
+
+<p>"Some hours later, and after the
+moon had risen, a murmuring sound,
+like that of a distant waterfall, mingled
+with occasional cracks, as of breaking
+timber, drew our attention." They
+then returned to the river bank. Still
+no flood appeared, though they continued
+to hear the sounds of the
+crashing timber. At length an increase
+of the sounds told them that
+the water was in the next bend. All
+this, in a serene moonlight night, was
+new. At length it came, and came
+in power and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"It rushed into our sight, glittering
+in the moonbeams, a moving <em>cataract</em>;
+tossing before it ancient trees, and
+snapping them against its banks. It
+was preceded by a <em>point</em> of meandering
+water, picking its way, like a
+thing of life, through the deepest parts
+of the dark, dry, and shady bed of
+what thus again became a flowing
+river." The phenomenon might make
+a fine subject for the pencil, if our
+artists were not divided between the
+palace and the pigstye. The noble
+river rolling along under a <em>tropical</em>
+moon; the wild country around, with
+its forests and hills touched by the
+light; the bronzed faces and bold
+figures of the men of the expedition,
+gazing with natural surprise and gladness
+at this relief, and at the majestic
+object before them; and even the
+cattle hurrying up from the encampment,
+to cool the thirst which had
+pressed so severely on them during
+the day, all were made for the finest
+efforts of the pencil.</p>
+
+<p>"By my party," says Sir T. Mitchell,
+"situated as we were at the
+time&mdash;beating about the country, and
+impeded in our journey solely by
+the almost total absence of water&mdash;suffering
+excessively from thirst and
+extreme heat,&mdash;I am convinced the
+scene can <em>never</em> be forgotten! <em>There</em>
+came abundance at once, the product
+of storms in the far-off mountains,
+that <em>overlooked our homes</em>! My first
+impulse was to have welcomed this
+flood on our knees; for the scene was
+sublime in itself, while the subject, an
+abundance of water sent to us in a
+desert, greatly heightened the effect
+to our eyes. I had witnessed nothing
+of the kind in all my Australian travels."</p>
+
+<p>But the writer is an accomplished
+man of science, and he leads the contemplation
+to still more glorious things,
+"Even the heavens presented something
+new, at least uncommon, and
+therefore in harmony with this scene.
+The variable Star of Argol had increased
+to the first magnitude, just
+above the beautiful constellation of
+the Southern Cross, which slightly
+inclined over the river, in the only
+portion of sky seen through the trees.
+That very red star, thus increasing
+in magnitude, might, as characteristic
+of her rivers, be recognised as the
+'Star of Australia,' when Europeans
+cross the line. The flood gradually
+filled up the channel nearly bank high,
+while the living cataract travelled onward
+much slower than I had expected
+to see it; so slowly, indeed,
+that more than an hour after its first
+arrival, the <em>sweet music</em> of the head of
+the flood was distinctly audible from
+my tent, as the murmur of waters and
+crash of logs travelled slowly through
+the tortuous windings of the river bed.
+I was finally lulled to sleep by that
+melody of waters."</p>
+
+<p>It has been often remarked, that
+Europeans once accustomed to a life
+of wandering, can never return to the
+life of cities; and even the clever journalist
+before us appears to have been
+a little captivated with this life of the
+wilderness. It may be easily admitted,
+that vigorous health, and active exercise,
+variety of objects, even if those
+objects are no more than new ridges
+of mountains or new rills of water; with
+keen appetite and sound sleep, are all
+excellent things in their style. But,
+is life given to man only to eat, gaze,
+and sleep? What is the life of the wilderness
+above that of the brute? The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+true improvement of man, and, therefore,
+the especial employment intended
+for man, is, that increase of
+knowledge, of command over the
+powers of nature, and of the various
+means of adding to the conveniences,
+comforts and value of human existence,
+which, delivered down to us by
+our forefathers, it is our part to deliver
+with increase to our posterity.
+But the savage improves in nothing; he
+is as much a brute this year as he was
+a thousand years ago. Savagery is,
+in practice, a total defeat and denial of
+all the original purposes for which our
+nature was made. And it is with some
+regret and more surprise, that we
+quote, from such a source, such language
+as the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We set out, guided by our native
+friend," (a savage whom they had hired
+to lead them to some water-courses.)
+"He was a very perfect specimen of
+the <em>genus</em> homo, and such as is <em>never</em> to
+be seen, except in the precincts of savage
+life, <em>undegraded</em> by any scale of
+<em>graduated classes</em>; and the countless
+<em>bars</em> these present to the free enjoyment
+of existence." Whether this is
+actually a recommendation that we
+should throw off our clothes and walk
+in nudity, for the purpose of recovering
+the original elegance of our shapes,
+or whether it is the borrowed rapture
+of some savage in person which the
+gallant officer has transplanted into
+his pages, to vary his more rational
+conceptions, we know not; but he has
+<em>not</em> made us converts to the pleasures
+of cold, hunger, filth, and bloodshed,
+which furnish the realities of savage
+life, even in the paradisaic solitudes
+of Australia.</p>
+
+<p>The savage, in his original state, is
+simply an animal, superior to his own
+dog only in sharpness of intellect; but
+wholly inferior to his dog in fidelity
+and affection. All savages are tyrannical&mdash;cruel
+to their wives, if wives
+they can be called&mdash;and in general
+cheating and plundering wherever
+they can. As to their bodily organs,
+of course, they cannot be perverted
+where they cannot reach temptation;
+but no savage comprehends moral restraint,
+and he gets drunk whenever
+he has the opportunity, and robs
+wherever he finds any thing to steal.
+On the other hand, civilisation necessarily
+enfeebles no man, and what the
+gallant Colonel regards as its "degradation
+of man by classes," produces
+quite the contrary effect; for the humbler
+the class, generally the more vigorous&mdash;as
+the peasant is a stronger
+man than the artisan, and the artisan
+than the nobleman. Even the idea
+that savage limbs can do more than
+civilised, is equally erroneous. A well
+clothed and well fed Englishman, if
+well formed, and with some training,
+will outwork, outrun, and outwrestle
+any savage from pole to pole.
+A ropedancer, a tumbler, or a horserider,
+at any of our theatres, though
+bred in the very heart of civilisation,
+or even in the hotbed of its temptations,
+will perform feats of activity
+which would defy all the muscles of
+a generation of savages. The truth is,
+that civilisation improves the features,
+the form, and the powers of the human
+frame. Men in society may be indolent,
+and throw away their advantages; but
+society is the place for man. Rousseau,
+once made a noise by talking
+nonsense on this subject; but Rousseau
+<em>knew</em> that he was talking nonsense.
+Whether his imitators are equally
+cognisant of their own performances,
+is another question; but we come to
+better things.</p>
+
+<p>This journey settled the disputed
+point of "horses or bullocks, light
+carts, or heavy drays." The bullocks
+and the drays were a perpetual annoyance;
+to feed and water the one, and
+to drag the other, soon became the grand
+difficulty of the expedition. We find
+the Colonel perpetually leaving them
+to follow, when any peculiar object
+of exploration was in view. At length
+the whole "park" was left to take its
+rest, under the second in command; and
+the Colonel, with eight men, two native
+boys, fourteen horses, and two light
+carts, with provisions for ten weeks,
+moved to the northward, to trace
+where the division of the waters was
+to be found, and then follow some of
+them down to the Gulf.</p>
+
+<p>We were not prepared for the beauty
+sometimes exhibited by the Australian
+landscape. The Journal compares it
+to a succession of Ruysdaels. "The
+masses of rock, lofty trees, shining
+sands, and patches of water in wild
+confusion; the mimosæ, the Anthistiria-grass,
+of a red brown, contrasting
+most harmoniously with the light<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+green bushes; all those again so
+opposed to the dark hues of the casuarinæ,
+mimosæ, and rifted rocks, that
+a Ruysdael or a Gainsborough might
+have found an inexhaustible stock of
+subjects for the pencil."</p>
+
+<p>This wild travelling has its discomforts,
+and now and then its dangers;
+but it is a perpetual source of exciting
+sensations. Every step is new, and
+every day's journey may place the
+traveller within some region of unexpected
+value or beauty. One of the
+hopes of the Journalist, on commencing
+this portion of his travels, was to
+discover a chain of hills to the northwest,
+from which he might trace the
+course of a river to the Gulf. At last
+this chain rose before his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"The most interesting sight to me
+was that of blue pics at a great distance
+to the northwest, the object of
+all my dreams of discovery for years.
+<em>No white man had before seen them.</em>
+There we might hope to find the
+division of the waters still undiscovered&mdash;the
+pass to Carpentaria still
+unexplored. I called this hill Mount
+First-View, and descended, delighted
+with what I had seen from its rocky
+crest." The latitude was 27°, yet the
+thermometer at sunrise was but at
+45°, at noon 68°, and at 9 <small>P.M.</small> 45°.</p>
+
+<p>The captivations of the scenery were
+equal to the delights of the temperature,
+though so near the tropics.&mdash;"An
+Australian morning is always
+charming. Amid those scenes of primæval
+nature it seemed exquisitely so.
+The barita or gymnoskina, the organ-magpie,
+was here represented by a
+much smaller bird, whose notes, resembling
+the softest breathings of a
+flute, were the only sounds that met
+the ear. What the stillness of evening
+adds to such sounds in other climes,
+is felt more intensely in the stillness
+of morn in this."</p>
+
+<p>The forms of the vegetation, both
+tree and shrub, are picturesque, and
+the colours are finer still:&mdash;"Instead
+of autumnal tints, there is a perpetual
+blending of the richest hues of autumn
+with the most brilliant verdure of
+spring; while the sun's welcome rays
+in a winter's morning, and the cool
+breath of the woods in a summer
+morning, are equally grateful. This
+was in the depth of the Australian
+winter, and, which sounds oddly to
+the European ear, in the 'merry month
+of June.'"</p>
+
+<p>Advancing still to the north, a
+country of an extraordinary kind was
+reached in July; and they had now
+found, that most important of all objects
+in a wilderness, a fine "flowing
+stream, full of sparkling water to the
+margin." The Journalist seems quite
+enamoured with the surrounding scene,
+a miniature Australian Switzerland:&mdash;"The
+hills overhanging it surpassed
+any I had ever seen, in picturesque
+outline. Some resembled Gothic cathedrals
+in ruins; some forts; other
+masses were perforated; and being
+mixed and contrasted with the flowing
+outlines of evergreen woods, and
+having a fine stream in the foreground,
+gave a charming appearance to the
+whole country. It was a vision worthy
+of the toils of a pilgrimage. Those
+beautiful recesses of unpeopled earth
+could no longer remain unknown.
+The better to mark them out on any
+map, I gave to the valley the name of
+Salvator Rosa. The rocks stood out
+sharply and sublimely from the thick
+woods, just as John Martin's fertile
+imagination would dash them out in
+his beautiful landscapes. I never saw
+any thing in nature come so near those
+creations of genius and imagination."
+But this river, which they followed for
+some time, ran so far to the east, that
+they justly began to doubt its being
+the one of which they were in search
+and they turned again to the north.
+They now passed into a fine level
+country, incomparably formed for settlement.
+"An almost boundless extent
+of the richest surface in a solitude
+corresponding to that of (southern)
+China, yet still unoccupied by man.
+A great reserve provided by Nature
+for the extension of his race."</p>
+
+<p>They left the Salvator between the
+21st and 22d degrees of latitude, and
+moved to the north-west. There at
+length their aspirations, though only
+partially, were probably realised.
+In the middle of September they
+reached some heights, from which lay
+before them a vast extent of open
+downs traversed by a river, traceable
+to the utmost verge of the horizon,
+and falling to the <em>north-west</em>! "Ulloa's
+delight at the first view of the Pacific
+could not have surpassed mine," is the
+natural exclamation of the Journalist.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+"Nor could the fervour with which
+he was impressed have exceeded my
+sense of gratitude for being allowed to
+make such a discovery. From that
+rock the scene was so extensive as to
+leave <em>no room for doubt</em> as to the
+course of the river, which, then and
+there revealed to me alone, seemed like
+a reward direct from Heaven for perseverance,
+and as a compensation for
+the many sacrifices which I had made,
+in order to solve the question as to
+the interior rivers of tropical Australia."</p>
+
+<p>From the 16th to the 24th of September
+the course of the river was
+followed, which still was north-west,
+but at this period the party returned.
+The reason stated is the failure of provisions.
+This must have been a most
+vexatious disappointment&mdash;so vexatious,
+that we cannot comprehend how it
+could have been submitted to without
+some more remarkable effort than any
+thing that we find recorded in these
+pages. That an expedition equipped
+for a four months' journey should have
+turned back at the very moment when
+a few days', perhaps a few hours',
+march, might have completed its
+object, is altogether incomprehensible,
+while it had any conceivable means of
+subsistence. In such a condition of
+things, the traveller ought to have
+eaten his horse, if he could get nothing
+else. But there was actually, at no
+great distance behind, a depôt of their
+own bullocks and sheep, all feeding
+comfortably, and, as the party found
+on marching back to them, "Sheep
+and cattle fat, the whole a sort of
+farm." A good stackyard had been
+set up, a storehouse had been built,
+a garden had been fenced in, and contained
+lettuce, radishes, melons, and
+cucumbers. Indeed, the whole establishment
+exhibited the effects of good
+order and discipline.</p>
+
+<p>Why, then, did not the Journalist
+return on his track, and establish the
+discovery which was the express
+object of his mission? This exceeds
+our knowledge. The only direct intimation
+of his necessities in these pages
+is, "our provisions were nearly out,
+the sun having reduced the <em>mess sugar
+and melted the bacon</em>, which had been
+boiled before we set out." Whether the
+<em>lean</em> of Australian bacon may liquefy
+in the sun is more than our European
+experience can tell, but we presume it
+must be ranked among the wonders of
+a new country; at all events, the Journalist
+returned without having done
+the very thing for which his expedition
+had been fitted out, and left the
+object to be completed by his subordinate,
+who was subsequently despatched
+in the direction of the north-west.
+Thus, though probabilities are in favour
+of the river, which the Colonel named
+the Victoria, the point is by no means
+settled, and Australian curiosity may
+be disappointed after all.</p>
+
+<p>As the party approached the river,
+they saw considerable numbers of
+the natives. On reaching one of the
+lagoons, the shrieks of many women
+and children, and the angry voices of
+men, apprised them that they had at
+length overtaken the tribe, and unfortunately
+had come on them by surprise.
+"Aya, minya!" was vociferated
+repeatedly, and was understood
+to mean, "What do you want?" I
+steadily adhered to my own tactics
+towards the aborigines, and took not
+the slightest notice of them, but rode
+on according to my compass-bearing.
+On looking back for my men, I saw
+one beckoning me to return. He had
+observed two natives with spears and
+clubs hide themselves behind a bush
+in the direction in which I was advancing.
+On my halting, they stole
+away. The whole seemed to have
+been amusing themselves in the water
+during the noonday heat, which was
+excessive, and the cool shades round
+the lagoon looked most luxuriant.
+Our position, on the contrary, was
+any thing but enviable. Even there,
+in the heart of the interior, on a river
+utterly unheard of by white men, an
+iron tomahawk glittered in the hand
+of a chief. The anxious care of the
+females to carry off their children
+seemed the most agreeable feature of
+the scene. Some had been digging in
+the mud for worms, others searching
+for fresh-water mussels, and if the
+whole could have been witnessed unperceived,
+such a scene of domestic
+life among the aborigines had been
+worth a little more risk. The strong
+men assumed a strange attitude, which
+seemed very expressive of surprise,
+having the right knee bent, the left leg forward&mdash;the
+right arm dropping, but
+grasping clubs&mdash;the left arm raised,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+and the fingers spread out. "Aya,
+aya, minya," they continually shouted.
+However, the party rode on, and the
+shouts died away.</p>
+
+<p>The Journalist occasionally recovers
+from his enthusiasm for savagery. We
+have no more bursts in his earlier style,
+"Such truth and exemption from disease,
+such <em>intensity</em> of existence, in
+short, must be far beyond the <em>enjoyments
+of civilised men</em>, with all that
+art can do for them. And the proof
+of this is to be found, in the failure of
+all attempts to persuade these free
+denizens of uncultivated earth to forsake
+it for the tilled ground. They
+prefer the land, unbroken and free
+from the earliest curse pronounced
+against the first banished and first
+created man." All this unfortunately
+shows nothing, but that the gallant
+Colonel would be the wiser for going
+back to his Bible, where he would find
+the words, "I will not again curse the
+ground any more for man's sake."
+But at last (page 328) we have a sketch
+of the reality. "It would appear
+that, the finer the climate and the
+fewer man's wants, the more he sinks
+towards the condition of the lower
+animals. Where the natives had
+passed the night, no huts, even of
+bushes, had been set up. A few tufts
+of dry grass only marked the spot,
+where, beside a small fire, each person
+had sat, folded up like the capital
+letter N. Their occupation during
+the day was only wallowing in a
+muddy hole, in no respect cleaner
+than swine. They have no idea of
+any necessity for washing themselves
+between their birth and the grave,
+while groping in mud for worms."
+After admitting the filth, the indolence,
+and the uselessness of the savage;
+contrasting, however, his teeth and
+tongue favourably with those of the
+civilised man or child, of which he
+pronounces it to be "ten to one but
+he should find <em>only impurity and decay</em>,"
+(a point in which we are wholly
+at issue with him,) he asks, "what
+then is civilisation in the economy of
+the human animal?" He answers,
+"Cultivated man despises the perishable
+substance, and pursues the immortal
+shadow." We are but little
+satisfied with the language of this solution,
+nor is its meaning much more
+intelligible. In the first place, man,
+in a civilised state, does not necessarily
+injure his bodily organs. The
+fool who cannot stir, or even sit, without
+a cigar in his mouth, or the drunkard
+who continually sacrifices health
+and understanding to intoxication,
+has only to condemn himself. But,
+give the savage tobacco and rum, and
+he will as speedily destroy his organs,
+and bring himself to the grave, as the
+most civilised profligate in existence.
+And as to the grand supposed use of
+civilisation&mdash;the fixing our minds on
+"immortal shadows"&mdash;if by this he
+meant giving us ideas of religion,
+there are many highly civilised nations
+which think but very little of religion,
+and many highly civilised persons who
+think of it nothing at all. Yet, it is only
+justice to the gallant Colonel to quote
+this sentence. "Animal gratification
+is transient and dull compared to the
+acquisition of knowledge, the gratification
+of mind,&mdash;the raptures of
+the poet, or the delight of the enthusiast,
+however imaginary. Such were
+my reflections on this day of rest, in
+the heart of a desert, while protected
+from the sun's rays by a blanket."</p>
+
+<p>But even his metaphysics are entirely
+a misconception. The original purpose
+of civilisation is, to enable man
+to live in society; that is, in peace,
+with the advantages of mutual assistance.
+That those objects are powerfully
+aided by religion is true, and
+that science may be best cultivated in
+settled life, is equally true; but those
+are merely collateral. Civilisation
+means the work of law, of safe intercourse,
+of secure property, and of all
+the safeguards of society which ultimately
+enable man to polish the general
+manners, and to improve the
+general mind. Religion is not the
+consequence, but the origin of Civilisation.</p>
+
+<p>We now take leave of the journey,
+with the sketch of the rivers. After
+moving for some distance between
+two streams, they approached the junction,
+which formed&mdash;"the broad, deep,
+and placid waters of a river as deep
+as the Murray. Pelicans and ducks
+floated upon it, and mussel shells of
+extraordinary size lay in such
+quantities, where the natives had
+been in the habit of eating them, as
+to resemble snow covering the ground.
+But even that reach seemed diminutive,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+when compared with the vast
+body of water of which traces had
+been left there; affording evidence,
+that though wide, they must have
+been impetuous in their course.
+Verdure alone shone now, over the
+wide extent to which the waters
+sometimes rose. Beyond that channel
+lay the almost boundless plains;
+the whole together forming the finest
+region I had ever seen in Australia."</p>
+
+<p>Still the luckless character of the
+Australian rivers appears; and after
+expecting that this fine channel, which
+there seemed navigable for steamers,
+would continue, in a few miles more
+it exhibited only ponds. Whether the
+great central stream may not exhibit
+the same caprice, is still the question.</p>
+
+<p>The party returned to Sydney in
+January 1847; and in March, Mr
+Kennedy, the second in command,
+was sent, as has been already stated,
+to explore the course of the Victoria.</p>
+
+<p>There are some valuable observations
+on the aborigines. It is said
+that they have good natural faculties,
+all one of them named Uranigh, an
+attendant on the expedition, obtains
+especial praise for sagacity, fidelity,
+and courage. But, from inevitable circumstances,
+it appears to be the fate of
+the natives to waste away before the
+European blood, and, even without any
+violence or oppression, gradually to
+vanish. To teach them to earn their
+bread, to adopt European habits of
+any kind, or even to live with any
+sense of comfort in the vicinity of
+European settlers, seems impossible,
+and thus they gradually retire into
+the interior. This process has so
+uniformly occurred in all colonised
+countries, where a new civilisation has
+been introduced, that it may be regarded
+as almost a law of nature.
+"Fire, grass, and kangaroos," are
+essential to native life; and when the
+pastures are no longer suffered to be
+burned, and when the kangaroos disappear,
+the savage <em>must</em> retire. Sir
+T. Mitchell's favourite project would
+be, to send away a young married
+pair to the south of Europe, where
+they might learn the cultivation of the
+grape and olive, fig, &amp;c.; then to
+bring them back with their children.
+But we are afraid they would make
+but few converts; that the benevolent
+experiment would be totally thrown
+away; and that the poor, idle, and
+useless being, whom Sir Thomas will
+persist in calling the noble savage,
+must be left to eat rats and mice, to
+live in misery and wretchedness, and
+to be inevitably pushed into the wilderness,
+to make way for a superior
+class of human capability.</p>
+
+<p>But, regarding the condition of the
+natives as utterly beyond European
+influence, except so far as it may and
+ought to be exerted to protect them
+from all injury,&mdash;there are other
+questions of high importance, relative
+to the condition of the convicts. The
+preamble of the Transport Act made
+the reformation of the culprit a primary
+object. There never was any use of
+forced labour so effective. The galley-slaves
+of France and Italy were in
+general made more wicked, if possible,
+by their imprisonment and work. We
+think it also next to an impossibility
+that any culprit, punished by temporary
+imprisonment, and then thrown
+out again among his associates, <em>can</em>
+change his habits. Who will employ
+a known felon? A single act of
+robbery may give him more means of
+gross gratification, than he could
+obtain by the severest toil in a twelvemonth.
+The temptation is too strong.
+The only hope of his recovery, is in
+his being sent where his bad character
+will not utterly prevent his getting a
+good one; where he will have profitable
+work, (let the profit be more or
+less;) where he will have few temptations,
+and none of his old ones; and
+where he may have a prospect of
+bettering his condition among his
+fellows. All these he had, and has,
+in New South Wales.</p>
+
+<p>But it is remarkable and unfortunate,
+that we seldom have a new head of the
+colonial department who does not bring
+with him some new theory; and the
+fashionable theory now is, to try the
+effect of prison discipline. We have
+no hesitation in denouncing this theory,
+as ineffectual, intolerably costly,
+highly dangerous, and even actually
+cruel. We take the points in succession:
+we doubt whether it has really
+reformed one prisoner out of a thousand.
+Its expense is enormous: the single
+prison at Millbank cost a million sterling,
+and probably £100,000 a-year
+for its support. The model prison at
+Pentonville is an architectural <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bijou</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+but terribly expensive. Men cannot
+be reformed by turnkeys in the most
+moral costume, or by locks of the most
+exquisite invention.&mdash;It is dangerous:
+because those felons, once let loose,
+almost invariably become felons
+again; and a general jail-delivery
+once a year, from handcuffs and
+shackles, may people the streets with
+ruffianism.&mdash;It is even cruel. The
+prisoners are not merely deprived, for
+a long succession of years, of all
+healthful exercise&mdash;for who ever could
+take healthful exercise within prison
+walls?&mdash;but shut out from all the
+view and enjoyment of nature, and especially
+from matrimony; they cannot
+be husbands or fathers. It is true, that
+the felon forfeits all rights, if they are
+found incompatible with the public
+safety; but we have no <em>right</em> to inflict
+on him any suffering beyond that
+which is absolutely necessary. If by
+sending him to Australia we can accomplish,
+without cruelty, those objects
+which we <em>cannot</em> accomplish
+without cruelty at home, it is our
+duty to send him to Australia.</p>
+
+<p>We know that a middle system of
+imprisonment, to be followed by transportation,
+has been attempted, but we
+have no faith in its operations. The
+true place is Australia.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas Mitchell, the very best
+authority on such subjects, tells us,
+"There is no country in which labour
+appears to be more required to render
+it available to, and habitable by civilised
+man, than New South Wales.
+<em>Without</em> labour, the inhabitants must
+be savages, or such helpless people as
+we find the Aborigines. With
+equal truth, it may be asserted that
+there is <em>no region</em> of earth susceptible
+of so much improvement solely by
+the labour and ingenuity of man."
+There are no unwholesome savannahs;
+the rocky ranges afford the means of
+forming reservoirs, &amp;c., of water,
+which, under the tropics, is life, abundance,
+and health; there is an immensity
+if it be properly used, and
+Australia might be made the finest
+scene of vegetation and luxuriance in
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>We take our leave of this volume
+with regret. It is strikingly written;
+it excites and rewards curiosity, and
+(a few rambling ideas excepted) it
+powerfully increases our interest in
+Australian discovery, and in that
+whole mighty region of the Pacific,
+which God's providence has given into
+the hands of England, for the happiness
+of mankind.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h2>SIBERIA.</h2>
+
+<p><cite>Travels in Siberia: including Excursions Northwards, down the Obi to the Polar
+Circle, and Southwards to the Chinese Frontier.</cite> By <span class="smcap">Adolph Erman</span>. Translated
+from the German by <span class="smcap">W. R. Cooley</span>. Two vols. London, 1848.</p>
+
+
+<p>Of no important portion of the
+dominions of the five great European
+powers are such vague and imperfect
+notions entertained, as of the vast
+tract comprised between Russia in
+Europe and the Kamschatkan sea,
+between the Chinese empire and the
+Arctic Ocean. Courageous explorers
+have not been wanting, of the inclement
+steppes and rugged mountains
+forming Europe's bulwark against the
+Mongul and the Tartar. Men of
+enterprise and distinction have undertaken
+the task, and executed it well.
+But their journeys, usually performed
+with special objects and scientific
+views, have been recorded for the most
+part in a similar spirit. Either an ardent
+love of science and zeal for its
+advancement, or the strong encouragement
+and liberal subsidies of an enlightened
+government, are requisite
+inducements to brave the perils and
+hardships of Siberian travel. The
+mere inquisitive and speculative traveller
+has difficulty in persuading
+himself, that the country can reward
+him for the discomfort and inconvenience
+he must endure in traversing it.
+Not that Siberia is entirely devoid of
+wild attractions and romantic associations.
+To the adventurous hunter, its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+vast forests and thinly-peopled plains
+give assurance of sport. The motley
+character of its native and immigrant
+population affords to the philosopher
+curious matter of consideration. A
+place of deportation for traitors and
+criminals&mdash;and not unfrequently for
+the innocent&mdash;its name is inseparably
+connected with the memory of innumerable
+unfortunates who have there
+pined out their existence in expiation
+of crime, or in obedience to mandates
+often as unjust as arbitrary. Fallen
+favourites of the Czars, rebels against
+their tyranny, traitors to their person,
+murderers, and other malefactors,
+and even prisoners of war, have
+here found a living grave till released by
+death, clemency, or flight. Did the
+tears of exiles fertilise, Siberia should
+be a teeming land. Since its first subjugation
+by Ivan the Terrible, how many
+a Russian magnate, lord of thousands
+of serfs, owner of millions of rubles,
+proud of his position, and confident of
+imperial favour, has suddenly found
+himself travelling eastward under
+escort, banished and a beggar. How
+many mournful trains of minor offenders
+have plodded their weary way
+across the Uralian chain, guarded by
+barbarian Bashkirs, to labour in the
+mines of Nerchinsk, or to lead a
+peasant's toilsome life on the margin
+of the Frozen Sea. From those vast and
+ice-bound regions, escape can rarely be
+accomplished. But at intervals, during
+the last five-and-thirty years, bearded
+and toil-worn men of martial aspect
+have crossed the German frontier, and
+astonished those they accosted by wild
+tales of suffering, and ignorance of the
+most notorious events. Some have
+inquired for Napoleon, and wept when
+they learned he was a captive, or
+dead. Circumstances of current history,
+known to each child and peasant,
+were to them a mystery and a marvel.
+These strange wanderers, escaped
+from long bondage in Siberia, were
+amongst the last survivors of that
+countless host led northwards by a
+Corsican's ambition, and whose funeral
+pile was lighted in Moscow's city.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the delineators of Siberia
+and its inhabitants, of the produce,
+customs, and peculiarities of the country
+and its people, one of the most
+successful is the German gentleman
+and scholar whose admirable work
+has just now appeared in a clever
+English dress. The son of a man
+of great learning and high attainments,
+Mr Adolph Erman treads
+nobly in his father's footsteps. Still
+young, he has done much to increase
+the lustre of the honourable
+name transmitted to him. Born in
+the year 1806, he was but two-and-twenty
+years of age when he undertook,
+at his own cost, a journey round
+the world, having for its chief object
+a series of magnetical observations.
+The expedition was completely successful.
+Starting from Berlin to St
+Petersburg, he crossed northern Asia,
+with occasional digressions of a few
+hundred leagues, took ship at Okhotsk
+for Kamschatka, thence proceeded to
+California, visited Otaheite, and came
+round by Cape Horn and Rio Janeiro
+to Europe and Berlin. Then he sat
+down to write of what he had seen,
+entitling his work&mdash;"Journey round
+the Earth, across North Asia and both
+Oceans." But the tale of travel so
+extensive takes time to tell; and, up
+to the present date, he has not protracted
+his narrative beyond Okhotsk.
+What he has done, however, is complete
+in itself, very interesting, and
+withal somewhat voluminous, since
+its abridged translation forms two
+heavy octavos, heavy in amount of
+paper and print, but not, we must in
+justice admit, in the nature of their
+contents. Whilst recording scientific
+investigations, the author does not
+neglect subjects more generally interesting.
+Upon all he brings to bear
+an extraordinary amount of reading
+and research. The result is a book of
+travels of no ephemeral nature, but
+that will long be esteemed as a standard
+work, and respected as a valuable
+authority.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Erman commences his narrative
+of travel on the day of his departure
+from Berlin; but its earlier portion
+has been compressed by the translator,
+in order to escape as soon
+as possible from Europe, and get
+upon the less trodden ground east
+of Tobolsk. Much has been written
+of late years concerning European
+Russia and its inhabitants, and it was
+hardly to be expected that even so
+acute an observer as Mr Erman
+should find any thing particularly
+novel to say about them. He takes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+a sensible and practical view of the
+condition, character, and disposition
+of the population; and is happy in
+his detection and indication of national
+peculiarities. He does not,
+like the majority of travellers in
+Russia, enter the country with a
+settled determination to behold nothing,
+from the White Sea to the
+Black, but oppression and cruelty on
+the one hand, slavery and suffering
+upon the other. He does not come
+to a premature decision, that because
+Russia is ruled by an absolute
+monarch, all happiness, prosperity,
+and justice are essentially banished
+from the land. It is really pleasant
+to find a deviation from the established
+routine of books about Russia. These
+are now nearly all concocted upon one
+and the same plan. The recipe is as
+exact as any in Mrs Rundell: and is
+as conscientiously adhered to by
+literary cooks, as that great artist's
+invaluable precepts are by knights
+and ladies of the ladle. Tyranny,
+misery, and the knout are the chief
+ingredients of the savoury dish.
+We are shown a nation of cretins,
+crushed under the boot-heel of an imperial
+ogre; whilst a selfish, servile
+aristocracy salaam their admiration,
+and catch greedily at the titles and
+gewgaws thrown to them as a sop
+by their terrible master. This is the
+substance of the mess, which, being
+handsomely garnished with lying
+anecdotes of horrible cruelties practised
+upon the unfortunate population,
+is deemed sufficiently dainty to set
+before the public, and is forthwith
+devoured as genuine and nutritive
+food by the large body of simpletons
+who take type for a guarantee of
+veracity. Mr Erman despises the
+common trick and claptrap resorted
+to by vulgar writers. Avoiding
+anecdotage, and abuse of the powers
+that be, he gives, in brief shrewd paragraphs,
+glimpses of Muscovite character
+and feelings, which clearly prove
+the people of that vast empire to
+be far happier, more prosperous, and
+more practically free, than the inhabitants
+of many countries who boast
+of liberty because anarchy has replaced
+good government. Judging
+less from any distinct assertions or
+arguments advanced in these volumes,
+than from their general tenor, and
+by the inferences to be gleaned from
+them, we must consider the Russians
+a contented and flourishing nation,
+likely to make the larger strides in
+civilisation that they are unimpeded
+by revolutionary agitation. Propagandists
+meet little encouragement
+amongst the loyal and light-hearted
+subjects of the autocrat.
+"We have often observed at Moscow,"
+says Mr Erman, "birch-trees hewn
+for fencing, yet still alive in the horizontal
+position, and throwing out
+shoots. The great distinction of
+the vegetable nature in this region is
+its tenacity of life; and, singularly
+enough, the same capability of existing
+under oppression, and of
+withstanding stubbornly every revolutionising
+influence, is here the
+characteristic of man also. The ear
+of the stranger is sure, at every turn
+of conversation, to catch the sounds&mdash;'Kak
+ni bud,' (no matter how,)
+with which the Russians are used to
+give expression to their habitual indifference,
+and renunciation of all
+care.... Notwithstanding the
+great variety of condition which the
+population exhibit, every thing has
+the stamp of nationality, and an
+obstinate adherence to established
+usage may be plainly recognised as a
+fundamental principle. Some foreign
+customs, indeed, are adopted from
+strangers residing in Moscow; but
+they are, at the same time, so changed
+as to be assimilated to the national
+manners. Russian nationality may
+be compared to a river, which receives
+other streams without changing its
+name; or, still better, to a living
+organism, which, while devouring
+every variety of food, continues still
+the same."</p>
+
+<p>It was on the 29th of July that
+Mr Erman, who travelled in company
+with the Norwegian professor
+Hansteen, left Moscow, and moved
+eastwards, passing through a productive
+country, strewn with populous
+and comfortable villages. At Pokròf,
+his first halting-place, his chamber
+walls were adorned with rude carvings
+and paintings, whose subjects were
+taken from the events of 1812, and
+represented the valiant deeds of the
+peasantry. Buikova, a village forty
+miles east of Moscow, was the farthest
+point to which the French penetrated.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+Their invasion has left but a faint
+impression upon the popular mind in
+Russia&mdash;even in Moscow, which suffered
+so much at their hands. Conflagrations
+have been common occurrences
+in that city, and the inhabitants
+are accustomed to be burned out.
+We read of seven such events, from
+the thirteenth to the beginning of the
+nineteenth century, in all of which
+the destruction was complete, or very
+nearly so. The fire of 1812 spared
+many of the stone churches, on whose
+towers "the Mahomedan crescent
+rises above the cross, a monument of
+earlier revolutions. The yoke of the
+Tatars was so lasting and oppressive,
+that later events of a similar kind
+seem comparatively unimportant;
+and even the French invasion is here
+thought little of, being usually compared
+with the irruptions of the
+Pechenegues and that of the Poles in
+later times, but never set on a level
+with the Tatar domination." The
+French have little prestige in Russia.
+Whatever respect they previously
+enjoyed there, was completely annihilated
+by the pitiful figure they cut in
+the Moscow campaign; retreating, as
+they did, a ragged, disorderly, frost-bitten
+remnant, before a swarm of
+armed peasants and irregular horse.
+And Muscovite sign-painters and saint-carvers
+decorate village walls with episodes
+of the disastrous overthrow of an
+army, probably the most powerful and
+really efficient ever got together. Any
+notion entertained by the Russians
+of French invincibility was as completely
+dissipated in that country by
+the events of 1812, as it was in Germany
+by the ensuing, and scarcely
+less important, campaign of 1813.</p>
+
+<p>Passing Murom, where a sort of
+Yankee tradition exists of a "robber-nightingale,"
+which entices travellers
+into the woods by its song, and then
+kills them by the power of its notes,
+Mr Erman reached Nijni Novgorod at
+the moment of the great annual fair.
+The mixture of European and Asiatic
+produce and manufactures gives the
+Russian fairs an appearance singularly
+striking to the foreigner's eye. Things
+the most opposite are there brought
+together. <i>Obrasá</i>, or Greek holy
+images, amulets, and other objects
+used in the solemnities of the Græco-Russian
+church, are seen in juxtaposition
+with the elegant luxuries and
+superfluities of extreme European
+civilisation. The clumsy carvings of
+Uralian peasants are found in the
+next warerooms to the fragile and
+fashionable masterpieces of a Parisian
+milliner. The chief part of the goods
+come from great distances. Amongst
+the important articles of traffic are
+tea from China, horse-hides from
+Tatary, iron bars from Siberia, shawls
+of camel's-down from Bokhara. The
+Bokharians also import large quantities
+of cotton, partly raw and partly
+spun. This is one of the principal
+objects of trade at Nijni. Concerning
+the origin of this useful substance,
+curious fables were current in
+Russia not quite a century ago. "It
+appears to me certain," says Mr Erman,
+"that the story of the zoophytic
+plant called Baránez, or lamb-plant
+(formed as a diminutive from Barán,
+a sheep,) originated in some embellished
+account of the cotton plant.
+Herberstein relates it at full length
+and unchanged, just as he had heard
+it. 'There has been seen, near to
+the Caspian Sea, a seed, rather larger
+and rounder than that of a melon,
+from which, when set in the ground,
+is produced something similar to a
+lamb, of the altitude of five palms,
+having a very fine fleece, &amp;c., &amp;c. The
+German edition of Herberstein (Basel,
+1563) adds that the Baránez has
+a head, eyes, ears, and all the limbs,
+like a sheep. But it mentions correctly
+'<em>the very fine fleece which the
+people of that country commonly made
+use of to pad their caps withal</em>.' This
+is the ordinary use which the Tatar
+tribes in general make of cotton at
+the present day." The fair at Nijni
+lasts two months, and brings together
+six hundred thousand persons of different
+nations and tribes, or about
+thirty-three times the number of the
+stationary population. It produces a
+large revenue to the imperial treasury,&mdash;the
+letting of the wooden booths, and
+of two thousand five hundred and
+twenty-two stone storerooms, (to
+each of which latter is attached a
+chamber for the owner of the goods
+to live in) alone yielding, so far back
+as 1825, nearly four hundred thousand
+rubles; whilst the population of the
+government, or district, amounting to
+nearly a million of souls, paid taxes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+to the amount of fourteen millions of
+rubles.</p>
+
+<p>Nijni Novgorod is the point of rendezvous
+for criminals from the western
+provinces of the empire, condemned
+to Siberian exile. They arrive there
+in small detachments, to pursue their
+journey in large bodies. In the vicinity
+of every post-house along the
+road is another building known as the
+Ostrog or fort, which is merely a
+large barrack divided into numerous
+small chambers, and surrounded by a
+fence of palisades, where the convicts
+are lodged upon the journey. From
+various passages scattered through
+Mr Erman's book, it appears that
+these Siberian exiles are by no means
+so badly treated as has frequently
+been stated and believed. In most
+instances the punishment derives its
+severity less from any painful toil or
+cruel discipline imposed upon them,
+than from the rigidity of the climate,
+the separation from friends, and the
+mortal ennui those accustomed to
+civilisation and society cannot but
+experience, whilst leading the monotonous
+life of a peasant or Cossack in
+regions as dreary as any the globe's
+surface affords. The first caravan of
+prisoners encountered by Mr Erman,
+at about a hundred versts beyond
+Nijni, were well clothed and cared
+for, and seemed neither dissatisfied
+with their past journey, nor overwhelmed
+with care about the future.
+"With every train of them are several
+waggons, drawn by post-horses, to
+carry the women and the old and
+infirm men; the rest follow in pairs,
+in a long train, after the waggons,
+escorted by a militia established in
+the villages. It is but rarely that
+one sees special offenders with fetters
+upon their legs during the march."
+The majority of tales circulated by
+romancing travellers, with reference
+to Siberian exile, have little foundation
+save in the imagination of the
+narrators. Amongst these fictions is
+to be reckoned the statement that
+certain classes of the banished are
+compelled to pass their lives in hunting
+the sable, and other animals. The
+great majority of the delinquents are
+condemned only to settle in Siberia;
+and when hard labour in the Uralian
+mines, and in certain manufactories,
+is superadded, it is generally for a
+year or other limited period. Those
+of the peasant class have to support
+themselves, whilst offenders of a
+higher rank, and unused to manual
+labour, have an allowance made them
+by the government. In various places
+Mr Erman met with exiles, from some
+of whom he obtained curious information.
+They are usually known by
+the mild name of "<em>the unfortunates</em>,"
+and are held in no particular disfavour
+by the natives, with whose families
+they intermarry. By a remarkable
+enactment of the Russian law, serfs,
+when transported to Siberia, become
+in all respects as free as the peasants
+in western Europe. Mr Erman refers
+to this with strong approval, and
+attributes to it the happiest results.
+"I have often," he says, "heard intelligent
+and reflecting Russians mention,
+as an almost inexplicable paradox,
+that the peasants condemned to become
+settlers, all, without exception,
+and in a very short time, change their
+habits and lead an exemplary life;
+yet it is certain that the sense of the
+benefit conferred on them by the gift
+of personal freedom is the sole cause
+of this conversion. Banishment subservient
+to colonisation, instead of
+close imprisonment, is, indeed, an
+excellent feature in the Russian code;
+and though the substitution of forced
+labour in mines for the punishment of
+death may be traced back to Grecian
+example, yet the improving of the
+offender's condition by bestowing on
+him personal freedom, is an original
+as well as an admirable addition of a
+Russian legislator." It is of course
+by the higher class of exiles that the
+banishment is most severely felt; but
+these live in the towns, that the succour
+received from government may
+reach them the more easily, and submit,
+for the most part, with great
+equanimity to the startling change
+from the luxury of Moscow or St
+Petersburg, to the dulness and simplicity
+of Tobolsk, and even of worse
+places. Some of them have to do
+penance in church for a certain time
+after their arrival, and a portion of
+these continue the practice when it is
+no longer compulsory. At Beresov,
+a town in western Siberia, which Mr
+Erman passed through on an excursion
+northwards from Tobolsk, the
+oral chronicles of the inhabitants<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+furnish curious details of the numerous
+illustrious exiles who have there
+ended their days. Menchikoff, the
+well-known favourite of Peter I., was
+one of these. "After his political
+extinction, he prepared himself, by
+devout penitence, for his natural decease.
+He worked with his own
+hands in erecting the little wooden
+church, now fallen to decay, which
+stands thirty or forty feet above the
+bank of the Sosva, at the southern
+extremity of the town: he then
+served in it as bell-ringer, and was
+finally buried by the grateful inhabitants
+of Beresov, immediately before
+the door of the building." It was
+here, at Beresov, that Mr Erman fell
+in with a number of unlucky conspirators,
+who had lost fortune, rank,
+and home, by their association in a
+recent abortive revolutionary attempt.
+Amongst them were a M. Gorski, at
+one time a count and general of cavalry,
+and the ex-chieftains Focht
+and Chernilov. They usually wore
+the costume of the country, but upon
+holidays they donned European coats,
+<em>in order to display the vestiges of the
+orders which had once been sewed upon
+them</em>. A curious instance of vanity,
+traceable, perhaps, to a desire to distinguish
+themselves from persons
+condemned to the same punishment
+for crimes of a more disgraceful
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>In the streets of Yekaterinburg, the
+first town of importance after crossing
+the Asian boundary, parties of exiles are
+a frequent spectacle; the number passing
+through in a year being estimated
+at five thousand, or about two-fifths of
+the annual export of convicts to
+Siberia, as stated by Mr Stepanov,
+whose statement, however, Mr Erman
+seems disposed to consider exaggerated.
+The detachments are usually
+guarded by Kosaks of the Ural, and
+by a company of Bashkir militia.
+These Uralian Kosaks are well uniformed,
+armed, and mounted, and
+enjoy the same privileges as the
+Kosaks of the Don. They are allowed
+an immunity from every impost, but
+are bound to devote themselves to
+the public service. Touching the
+Bashkirs, another irregular and half-savage
+militia, serving to swell the
+ranks of Russia's enormous army, Mr
+Erman, who made some stay at Yekaterinburg,
+the northern limit of
+their residence, gives curious particulars.
+They are the only aboriginal
+Siberian tribe whose mode of life
+regularly alternates from the nomadic
+to the fixed. Their winters are passed
+in permanent villages of wooden huts,
+erected usually upon the skirt of a
+forest. But when spring approaches,
+they collect their flocks and herds,
+strap hair tent-cloths upon their
+saddles, and are off to the plains.
+They appear to live upon horseback,
+and are indolent, indocile, and useless
+out of the saddle. The only thing the
+men do, is to drive home the mares at
+milking-time; all other domestic toil
+is left to the women. And although
+grass abounds in the summer pastures,
+hay is unknown amongst them. The
+cattle sustain life in winter as best
+they may, on stunted or decayed herbage,
+sought under the snow and
+gathered on the dunghills. Fermented
+mare's milk is the favorite drink of
+the Bashkirs, who live chiefly upon
+mutton and fish, and upon the fruit
+of the bird-cherry (<i>Prunus padus</i>)
+kneaded into a sort of cake. In the
+chase they make use of hawks, which
+they are particularly skilful in training.
+The smaller species of these
+birds are used to take hares, whilst
+the greater will strike foxes, and even
+wolves. The roving careless life of the
+Bashkirs possesses a peculiar charm,
+admitted even by the civilised Russians;
+and it is with no good will that,
+on the return of winter, the tribes re-enter
+their settled habitations. "They
+approach them with reluctance, and believe
+that Shaitan, or the evil spirit,
+has taken up his abode in the huts
+that oppress them with such a sense
+of restraint. The men accordingly
+remain at some distance from the
+settlement, and send the women forward,
+armed with staves, with which
+they strike the door of every hut,
+uttering loud imprecations; and it is
+not till they have made the rounds
+with their noisy exorcisms, that the
+men ride forward at full speed and
+with terrific shouts, to banish the
+dreaded demon from his lurking-place."
+The chief weapon of these
+Bedouins of the north is the same
+which so forcibly excited Captain
+Dalgetty's risibility upon his visit to
+the Children of the Mist. But although<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+in these days of Paixhans and
+percussion, bows and arrows certainly
+appear rather anomalous, they
+are by no means contemptible weapons
+in the hands of some of the Siberian
+tribes. Of this Mr Erman had
+abundant opportunity to convince
+himself, especially when his ramble
+northwards from Tobolsk brought
+him amongst the Ostyaks of the river
+Obi. The ordinary hunting weapons
+of these people are bows six feet long,
+of very slight curve, and from which
+four-feet arrows are discharged with
+murderous effect. Much practice and
+strength are required to draw these
+bows; and our scientific traveller,
+who, not having taken the necessary
+precaution of shielding the left arm
+with a piece of horn, from the recoil
+of the string, had been unable to
+draw his bow to more than one third
+of the arrow's length, was not a little
+astounded to see an Ostyak pigmy,
+with sore eyes and a sickly aspect,
+send a blunt arrow one hundred and
+sixty feet, and strike the object aimed
+at, the stem of a larch, near its summit,
+fully sixty feet from the ground.
+Blunt arrows, headed with flattened
+iron balls, are used to kill sables and
+squirrels, that the skin may not be
+injured; the sharp ones are a settler
+for any quadruped the country produces.</p>
+
+<p>After many days' journey through
+Tatar villages of wooden huts, and
+towns that are little better, the first
+view of Tobolsk, obtained some miles
+before reaching the place, is quite imposing;
+and the traveller, who might
+think he had got a few stages beyond
+civilisation, is cheered and encouraged
+by the sight of church-towers, lofty
+monasteries, and well-built houses.
+In vain does he seek an inn. Such
+things are unknown in Siberia; and,
+if he has no acquaintance in the town,
+he must apply to the police-master,
+who recommends him to the hospitality
+of an inhabitant, by whom he is
+made welcome during his stay, without
+demand for remuneration, although,
+if proffered, it will sometimes
+be accepted. In this manner Mr
+Erman and his companions were accommodated
+in the upper storey of a
+well-built wooden house; and here
+their progress eastward was arrested
+by the character of the weather. It
+was the commencement of October,
+the period of transition from summer
+to winter, and the traveller's entrance
+into the town was rendered memorable
+by a heavy fall of snow&mdash;"white
+flies," as the postilions called the
+flakes, which they beheld with much
+pleasure. Their satisfaction was probably
+owing to the fact that in
+Siberia the coldest part of the year is
+the most favourable for travelling,
+a matter of interest to people of
+their profession. But the moment of
+transition, whilst the struggle lasts
+between summer and winter, when
+snow encumbers the ground, and
+frost has not yet hardened it, is known,
+as well as the similar period at the
+close of winter, as "the time of the
+unroading," (spoiling of the roads;)
+and the Russians have even manufactured
+a verb "to be unroaded."
+The snow obstructs wheeled carriages,
+and forbids the use of the sledge; and,
+unless peremptorily compelled to move
+forward, the Russian merchants&mdash;the
+most experienced of Siberian travellers&mdash;await,
+in some convenient resting-place,
+the hardening of the winter
+road. From Mr Erman's account, a
+better place than Tobolsk could
+scarcely be found, in those wild regions,
+wherein to pass a few weeks of compulsory
+inaction. Nevertheless, and
+although cordially received by the
+governor-general, Velyaminov, from
+whom, and from other Russian officers,
+he got much useful information,
+our traveller was impatient to be off.
+He had a pet scheme in view. From
+the very commencement of the journey
+he had planned an excursion to the
+mouth of the Obi, within the Arctic
+circle. To this he was partly induced
+by the desire of tracing certain magnetic
+lines, and partly by "the alluring
+prospect of enjoying, on the northern
+part of the Obi, the first undisturbed
+intercourse with the aboriginal possessors
+of the land, where they are
+little changed by foreign influence."
+Accordingly, towards the middle of November,
+the drifting ice upon the Irtuish
+having united into a solid sheet, Mr
+Erman joyfully made final preparations
+for his journey to Obdorsk. They were
+few, and soon completed. A Kosak
+guide and interpreter, a fur dress, a
+copper kettle, bread and ham, salted
+salmon and caviar, were stowed in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+couple of sledges, one of which was
+light enough to be drawn by dogs or
+reindeer. It was held advisable also
+to take out a fresh passport, signed
+by the governor of Tobolsk, in lieu of
+the one delivered at St Petersburg,
+for, in places far removed from the
+great road across Siberia, people have
+confused and indistinct notions of the
+power which issues from the capital
+of the empire. The larger sledge was
+provided with otvódi or guides&mdash;two
+strong bars placed lengthways on
+either side the carriage to prevent an
+upset. "Towards the end of winter,
+the snow-ways, which are constantly
+travelled upon, have an undulating
+surface, like that of a stormy sea, and
+give the sledge a motion so like that
+of a ship tossed on the waves, that
+travellers unused to it often grow sea-sick
+on the road, and the use of otvódi
+is a very necessary precaution."
+Russian travelling, delightfully rapid,
+has many drawbacks. Upon the log-roads,
+(formed of tree-trunks,) the
+violent and incessant jolting is said to
+have even worse effects than the excessive
+undulations of the sledge.
+After a few years, it not only brings
+on a complete paralysis of the mental
+faculties of the Russian postilions,
+but also occasions spinal disease, to
+such an extent as to have obtained
+for those roads the significant name
+of spine-crushers.</p>
+
+<p>On the 22d November, when Mr
+Erman began his slide northwards,
+traffic had not yet given the road that
+wavy configuration so uncomfortable
+to the bilious traveller. The post
+from Tobolsk to Beresov had made
+but one journey on the winter-track,
+and the sledges glided rapidly and
+smoothly on the almost virgin snow-way.
+Beyond Tugalova, a village
+140 miles from Tobolsk, they travelled
+on the frozen Irtuish, and frequently
+passed the self-acting machinery used
+for the winter fishing. This consists
+of a strong pole in an inclined position,
+with its lower extremity frozen fast in
+the ice. "At the upper end of this
+pole was a continuation made of
+switches, which, bending down, reached
+to the surface of the ice; at that
+point was a hole through which was
+let down the hook and line. The
+upper part of the apparatus is seen
+bent down more or less according as
+the bait is still untouched, or as a fish
+pulling at it has freed a check put to
+the elasticity of the rod, and is thus,
+in consequence of its own efforts,
+drawn nearer to the surface of the
+water." The ingenuity of this contrivance
+would avail little, however,
+were not means found of rousing the
+sleepy sturgeon from their winter
+slumbers. They lie in muddy hollows
+in the bed of the river, quite motionless,
+and clustered together for the
+sake of warmth. To awaken them,
+hard balls of clay, heated in the fire,
+are thrown from time to time into the
+water, below the line. Driven from
+their resting-place, they swim up
+stream, according to their custom, and
+come upon the bait. This mode of
+fishing is very productive. Fishing, of
+one kind or other, is the principal occupation
+of the Ostyaks, in the heart
+of whose country, after three or four
+days' journey, Mr Erman found himself.
+The rivers abound with excellent
+fish&mdash;eels, especially, being very
+abundant, but not much eaten, although
+their skins are in great request
+as window-panes. These are rubbed
+with fat, to make them more transparent,
+but there are small roundish
+swellings in the skin which refract and
+confound the rays of light. A better
+substitute for glass is a flake of ice,
+used by the Sosnovian Ostyaks, a
+tribe further north. The flakes are
+about a foot thick, and are propped
+from without by a pole, whose lower
+end bears obliquely against the ground.
+The fire, kept burning in the hut,
+thaws the inner surface of the ice,
+rendering it smooth as a mirror. A
+whiter and brighter light penetrates
+through these windows than through
+the fish-skins, which the Sosnovians
+use for boots, and even for clothes.
+Strong and air-tight, and well rubbed
+with fat, they are almost as warm as
+fur, and better against the wet.</p>
+
+<p>The commencement of a fishing
+season or expedition is celebrated by
+the Ostyaks with all manner of
+queer saturnalia. Although nominally
+Christians, and accustomed to
+attend church once a-year, they are
+very heathenish in some of their
+rites and ceremonies, and make a
+strange jumble of their old superstitions
+and their new faith. The priests
+do not invariably set them a good<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+example. "Our Russian informant
+complained bitterly of the priest in his
+neighbourhood, who came into the village
+on holidays so drunk, that the congregation
+assembled to no purpose."
+With such pastors, no wonder if the
+sheep cleave to some of their ancient
+usages. Those who are departing on
+an expedition, slaughter a tame animal,
+and smear their faces with its blood, accompanying
+the sacrifice with a carousal.
+In one village Mr Erman found
+the huts remarkably empty, and was
+told that the men had just gone a-fishing,
+and that their wives were
+drinking brandy in the kabak or
+public-house. The sale of spirits in
+Siberia, as in all the Russian dominions,
+is a government monopoly,
+and brandy is only to be had in certain
+houses, to whose keepers the
+privilege is farmed. In a small dark
+room, scarcely ten paces wide, Mr
+Erman found ten or twelve Ostyak
+dames clustered round the bottle, and
+benevolently drunk. His account of
+their maudlin state is amusingly grave
+and sentimental. "A number of short
+corpulent figures, with black sparkling
+eyes, could be just seen, moving and
+mingling together, in the narrow
+space. They all talked with animation,
+and with remarkably delicate
+voices, which now gave expression
+only to soft and joyous emotions.
+They embraced, one after the other,
+the Yamschik, who entered with us;
+and their soft voices, now almost
+whining, seemed attuned, not so much
+to words of old acquaintance, as to the
+endearments of young and growing
+love." The ladies having emptied
+their purses without quenching their
+thirst, the good-natured German, who
+observed that "the pleasure of drinking
+had but just risen to its highest
+pitch," opened them a credit with the
+kabak-keeper. "They now took
+especial pains to show themselves deserving
+of the European treat, by
+good Christian observance. Devout
+Russians are in the habit of neutralising
+the Satanic operation of spirituous
+liquors by a rapid movement of
+the right hand, intended to describe
+the cross, or by a softly-ejaculated
+prayer, or merely by blowing the
+breath upon the glass. But the good-humoured
+Ostyaks, novices in Christian
+prayer as in drinking, made the
+sign of the cross to such an extent, so
+slowly and with such deep bowing of
+the body, as would be required by the
+church only on the most solemn occasions."</p>
+
+<p>Although much engrossed by fishing,
+the Ostyaks do not neglect the
+chase. Their thick woods abound in
+the better kinds of fur animals, and
+the annual tribute of two sable skins,
+payable by each family to the Russian
+government, is not very difficult to
+obtain. It is seldom found necessary
+to pay an equivalent in other skins.
+Although quite the beginning of
+winter, Mr Erman's host, in an
+Ostyak village, showed him a fine
+sable skin, which he kept in a strong
+box, like a treasure, concealed in a
+corner of his dwelling. Its value
+was diminished by a yellowish tinge,
+ascribed to the animal's having lived
+in a wood where there was too much
+light. Besides sable and squirrel, the
+reindeer, the fox, the glutton, and the
+elk, are objects of chase. Mr Erman
+tried to get at the fact of the enmity
+said to exist between the two latter animals.
+The reply to his inquiries was
+the old story current in Europe&mdash;how
+the glutton leaps from a branch on the
+elk's neck, and keeps his seat till the
+death of his steed. No one, however,
+had seen any thing of the kind: it was
+matter of tradition, handed down from
+their dead fathers. The ermine is
+taken in traps. The fox is in great
+variety, the most esteemed being the
+crossed stone fox, whose colour is
+partly a grayish yellow, partly white,
+so distributed that the grayish parts
+unite prettily to form a cross, one bar
+of which extends along the back,
+whilst the other stretches obliquely
+down the middle ribs to the belly.
+The fur of this animal is greatly prized
+by the Russian clergy, for whom
+pelisses, covered with natural crosses,
+are made from it. The latitude of the
+town of Beresov is the headquarters
+of the Siberian beaver, hunted not
+for the fur but for the precious castoreum
+or beaver-stone, to which such
+great medical virtues are ascribed.
+Attempts have been made in Germany
+to obtain from the beavers of
+that country a product which might
+replace that of Siberia; but all in
+vain. The fine quality is only to be
+had in the far north, where, as Mr<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+Erman fancifully observes, nature
+scatters animal perfumes in place of
+fragrant flowers. "The Kosaks and
+Russian traders have exalted the
+beaver-stone into a panacea....
+To the sentence, 'God arose, and
+our enemies were scattered,' the
+Siberians add, very characteristically,
+the apocryphal interpolation, 'and
+we are free from headache.' To ensure
+this most desirable condition,
+every one has recourse, at home or on
+his travels, and with the firmest faith,
+to two medicines, and only two, viz.,
+beaver-stone, or beaver-efflux, as it is
+here called, and sal-ammoniac." From
+the strength of the castoreum, the
+Siberians infer that other parts of the
+animal must possess peculiar virtues.
+Gouty swellings are said to subside
+rapidly when rubbed with the fat,
+and the beaver's teeth are popularly
+believed to cure toothach.</p>
+
+<p>The beaver is the only fur animal
+in these latitudes that does not change
+its colour in the course of the year.
+This is probably owing to the circumstance,
+that in winter it dwells wholly
+in the water, thus enjoying a comparatively
+equable temperature. In the
+river Obi, at Beresov, the water does
+not usually freeze below the depth of
+four feet eight inches, and the beaver
+always has two entrances to his dwelling,
+one high on the bank above the
+stream, the other below the freezing
+limit. The architectural and wood-cutting
+habits of the animal are the
+same here as in America; but two
+assertions, new to Mr Erman, were
+made respecting it by the Beresov
+hunters. He was assured that
+"among beavers, as with bees and
+men, there are distinctions of ranks;
+each chief keeping a number of labourers,
+the toils of which he oversees
+and directs without taking part in
+them; and, again, it was stated that
+the contents of the castoreum bags depend
+on the moon." It was impossible
+to verify the veracity of these
+two statements. As regards the
+moon's influence, however, there is
+ground for a suspicion that its advantages
+are rather felt by the hunter,
+than essential to the virtues of the
+drug. Full moon is maintained, both
+by Ostyaks and Russians, to be the
+propitious time.</p>
+
+<p>The most northern tribe of Ostyaks,
+who dwell between the rivers Obi and
+Yenisei, surpass their southern neighbours
+in venatorial skill, as they, in
+their turn, are surpassed by the
+Samoyedes, who live in the northernmost
+regions of Siberia. The men of
+the Yenisei kill wolves, which, on account
+of their long soft hair, are
+reckoned greatly superior to the forest
+and steppe wolves of middle Siberia.
+They are also famed for their dexterity
+in killing and capturing reindeer.
+"Tying leathern cords between the
+tops of the antlers of their tame deer,
+they turn the animals loose, one by
+one, in the neighbourhood of a wild
+herd: these do not fail to attack the
+strangers, and their antlers becoming
+entangled in the cords during the contest,
+they are held fast by the tame
+deer till the men arrive. These
+Ostyaks know also how to plant
+spring-bows, which send the arrow
+against the animal's breast." But
+the Samoyedes, besides these ordinary
+artifices, have other and ingenious
+ways, peculiar to themselves, of ensnaring
+and slaying the brute creation,
+by putting themselves as much as
+possible on an equality with the animals
+pursued, going on all-fours, and
+imitating them in voice and clothing.
+The Polar bear is a common victim to
+their cunning devices, and even to
+their open attacks; for their intimate
+acquaintance with the formidable
+beast makes them regard him as an
+easy prey. "The Samoyedes assert
+that the white bear far exceeds the
+black bear in ferocity and strength,
+whilst fully equal to it in cunning; yet,
+owing to his unwieldiness, they encounter
+it without fear, and always
+reckon on victory as certain. A man
+will often go singly against a Polar bear,
+eight feet long, without any other
+weapon than his knife, which he fastens
+to the end of a pole. In spring and
+autumn these animals are found upon
+the ice, near the hole, whence the seals
+come forth to breathe. There the
+bear covers himself up with snow,
+facing the hole, and with one paw
+stretched into the water." The Samoyede
+seal-hunters imitate the bears,
+and when the seal walks out upon the
+ice, they shove a board over the hole
+and capture the phoca. Concerning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+the bear the Ostyaks entertain peculiar
+notions, viewing it with a sort of
+superstitious respect. "A member of
+the court of justice told me that, in
+suits between Russians and Ostyaks,
+it is still the custom here (at Beresov)
+to bring, into court the head of a bear,
+and that this animal, which is supposed
+to be omniscient, is there appealed
+to as a witness by the Ostyaks.
+In swearing, they make the gesture of
+eating, and call upon the bear to devour
+them in like manner if they do not tell
+the truth." Some similar reverence
+for Bruin exists, we believe, amongst
+certain North American tribes.</p>
+
+<p>The draught-dogs, so faithful and
+useful to the northern Siberians, often
+receive but scurvy treatment at their
+masters' hands. The Ostyaks, who
+are honesty personified, and who
+laugh at the common European precautions
+of locking up valuables and
+bolting doors, cannot endure the predatory
+propensities of their canine
+allies, and fly into a passion whenever
+an unlucky dog sneaks into their
+dwelling in search of warmth or food.
+The poor brute is immediately a mark
+for the blows and kicks of every body
+present, the storm of abuse being
+justified by the cunning and greediness
+of its object, who, if allowed to
+abide in the house, would soon reduce
+its inmates to short commons. There
+is some excuse for the dogs' voracity,
+however; for, according to Mr Erman's
+account, they are considerably more
+than half-starved, and are rarely admitted
+to the fire to be fed, save when
+they return weary and distressed from
+a long journey. Severe as is the cold
+in those regions, protection from it is
+not essential to the existence, or even
+to the health of these hardy dogs.
+They sleep outside the houses, in holes
+which they thaw in the snow by their
+own warmth. At Obdorsk, where
+there are no pastures, and consequently
+no horses, four hundred dogs
+are kept by sixty inhabitants, and each
+of them is estimated to draw five poods'
+(two hundred pounds) weight in the
+loaded sledge. About eight o'clock in
+the evening these four hundred brutes
+set up a hideous howling, by way of
+claiming their daily meal, consisting
+invariably of fish, which, for them as
+well as for their owners' consumption,
+is first dried in the sun and then
+pounded, bones and all. Except this
+evening concert, a bark or a cry is
+rarely uttered by these dogs, unless at
+first starting when yoked to the sledge,
+or on coming across a reindeer team
+upon the road. Hydrophobia would
+be a terrible scourge in this dog-district,
+but the disease is fortunately
+unknown there. Steller has stated
+the same thing of the dogs of Kamschatka,
+and Mr Erman concludes that
+the malady is a result of the European
+system of living in towns. And as the
+Siberian dogs are so very moderately
+fed, he infers that excess, not want,
+generates the morbid habit. We are
+inclined to attribute more importance
+to the quality than to the quantity of
+the food. A fish diet may be more
+conducive to a wholesome state of the
+animals' blood than the masses of
+horse-flesh, paunch, and other rank
+and unclean offal commonly given to
+dogs in Europe, and especially in
+England, where the carnivorous addictions
+of the bipeds induce a belief in
+the propriety of unlimited flesh-feeding
+for quadrupeds.</p>
+
+<p>The large annual importation of
+exiles, the system of conscription,
+and the advantages offered to public
+officers volunteering for Siberian service,
+are the most important and
+efficacious measures by which Russia
+proceeds gradually but steadily with
+the colonisation and civilisation of
+her Asiatic dominions. The conscripts
+are sometimes drawn, not
+only from Tobolsk, but from the remotest
+parts of Siberia, and the term
+of military service being twenty-eight
+years, it is probable that only a small
+proportion return to their native villages.
+Those who do are looked up
+to as oracles by their countrymen.
+They are objects of pride to their
+families and of respect to every body
+else; the place of honour is theirs by
+right, and they are addressed by the
+title of Master Soldier.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> The ferry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+of the Irtuish, by Tobolsk, whose
+passage is considered the symbol of
+political death to the numerous exiles
+who each year cross it&mdash;bestows a
+step of rank on all public servants
+offering themselves for duty in Siberia
+Proper. The passion for rank,
+stronger in Russia than in any other
+country, drives hosts of officers across
+this important boundary; but as they
+are not obliged to remain more than
+three years, most of them return
+home at the end of that time. Far
+nearer to St Petersburg than the
+Asiatic frontier, civilisation is still at
+a very low ebb amongst the aboriginal
+tribes. Close to Nijni Novgorod,
+and within a very short distance of
+Moscow, the prevailing population
+consists of Cheremisses and Chuvashes,
+two tribes many of whose
+customs are nearly as barbarous as
+their names. These people are shy
+and timid, very slow in acquiring
+industrious habits, and addicted to
+sundry practices stamping them as
+semi-savages. In some places they
+cling to paganism, and offer up
+horned beasts, fruit, and vegetables
+to their various deities. The
+Chuvash ladies wear a sort of bustle
+of sheet copper, hanging from the
+girdle backwards over the hips, and
+having appended to it all manner of
+metal ornaments, making a perpetual
+clatter in walking. But these tribes
+are the pink of refinement by comparison
+with those in the northern
+portion of the Muscovite empire,&mdash;with
+the Ostyaks, who eat out of the same
+trough with their dogs, or with the
+Samoyedes who tear with their teeth,
+and swallow with infinite relish, huge
+lumps of raw and reeking flesh. The
+women of the latter people wear, as their
+favourite decoration, (certainly no inappropriate
+one) a glutton's tail,
+hanging down the back of their pelisse.
+Their hair is plaited in tails, to which
+all manner of lumber, brass and iron
+rings, and rusty musket-locks, are
+attached. Mr Erman's account of
+"Life in the <i>Chum</i>" (the skin tent
+of the Samoyedes) is quaint and
+graphic.</p>
+
+<p>"The reindeer calf, which we had
+got on the way, was killed and cut up
+in front of the tent a few minutes,
+after our arrival. The men now
+brought the bleeding flesh into the
+tent, and began devouring it immediately,
+quite raw, with the heartiest
+appetite. The old man was satisfied
+with sucking the brain from the head,
+whilst each of our younger comrades
+gnawed away at a limb of the animal,
+even to the bone. They laughed at
+the amazement which my good-humoured
+Esthonian attendant expressed
+at their blood-stained faces;
+and when he gave them to understand,
+through the interpreter, that
+they were no better than wolves, they
+seemed quite unprepared for such
+reproof; replying gravely, that they
+were at the same time no worse
+than the wolves, since they shared
+honestly with them, and left the bones
+and some scraps of flesh merely for
+their sake." In this same tent there
+was a little monster of a boy named
+Peina, whom one reads of with a sort
+of shudder, and with a strong suspicion
+that the creature was not <em>canny</em>.
+Mr Erman himself seems to write of
+him with peculiar reserve, stating
+facts, but evidently unwilling to give
+an opinion as to the exact nature of
+the beast. Peina, who had first-rate
+masticators, got his share of the raw
+meat, which did not prevent his
+drawing on his mother's lacteal resources,
+and thumping her brutally
+till she honoured the draft, or
+handed him the pot-ladle, with which
+he supped scalding porridge to his
+great internal contentment. The
+travellers' bread, although frozen
+hard and not easy eating for adult
+jaws, disappeared by wholesale within
+those of Peina. At night the
+anomalous urchin was laid naked in
+a canoe-shaped basket, and covered
+up so thickly with furs that his cries
+seemed to come from the depths of
+the earth. In the morning his
+mother took him from his bed and
+set him up, still naked, before the fire
+to warm himself. Sugar, when first
+presented to him, he called snow, and
+threw away, but when once he had
+tasted the dainty, his demands for it
+were unceasing and peremptory.
+Taking into consideration the uncomfortable
+and uncleanly peculiarities of
+the Samoyedes, both young and old,
+we cannot feel surprised that Mr
+Erman's interpreter conceived an intense
+dislike to their society, and so
+managed matters that one morning,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+whilst the man of science was busy
+measuring a base-line to ascertain
+the heights of some mountains, his
+Samoyede companions suddenly disappeared
+with their tent and their
+reindeer, leaving him with three ill-equipped
+sledges and a few Ostyak
+attendants, and with no choice but to
+make the best of his way back to
+Obdorsk, whence he soon afterwards
+returned to Tobolsk. There he
+passed his Christmas, and then resumed
+his journey; but this time in a
+southerly direction. After having
+penetrated to sixty-seven degrees
+north, the region of eternal frost, he
+struck southwards to the latitude of
+the Land's End, making a dip into
+China, which furnishes some of the
+best chapters in his book.</p>
+
+<p>Irkutsk, the last town of importance
+north of the Chinese frontier, consists
+of nineteen hundred houses, fifty being
+of brick, and the remainder of wood,
+and is probably the cheapest place in
+the civilised world as regards articles
+of food. We say "civilised," because,
+although situate in a barbarous region,
+and possessing a population of a very
+motley character, the town has much
+that is European in its aspect and
+usages. It possesses an exchange,
+government factories, where newly-arrived
+convicts are employed, a
+school of medicine, a gymnasium, and
+a handsome parade-ground. In the
+market, formed of wooden booths, the
+stores of food were enormous. Beef
+cost about a halfpenny a pound; of
+flour one penny would purchase nearly
+eight and a half pounds; partridges
+and heathfowl were sold at five
+farthings a-piece. But we are in
+haste to get amongst the Celestials.
+First comes a gallop across More
+Baikal, a large lake just beyond
+Irkutsk, on which the Russian government
+maintains an armed flotilla.
+This gallop is a fine bit of helter-skelter,
+over ice brilliant as glass.
+"There was no snow upon the ice, so
+that its surface shone like a polished
+mirror in the moonlight. The horses
+that were put under our sledges in
+Kadilnaya had to be held on each side
+till the very moment of starting, when
+they broke at once into full gallop,
+which they kept up till we landed on
+the further shore. We completed
+seven German miles in two hours and
+a quarter, undoubtedly the most extraordinary
+as well as the most
+speedy stage upon any route in Russia."
+Thence, onwards to the frontier line.
+"We followed the crowd that pressed
+forward towards a narrow door in the
+front of a long wooden building.
+This admitted us into the inner quadrangle
+of a Russian warehouse. A corresponding
+door, at the opposite side of
+this court, opens just upon a wooden
+barricade, which constitutes the barrier
+of China. In this there is a
+wide portal, ornamented with pillars,
+and displaying the Russian
+eagle above it, along with the cipher
+of the reigning emperor, Nicholas
+the First, by whom it was erected."
+On passing through this gate, the
+change is immediate and striking,&mdash;from
+Russian sobriety of aspect and
+hue to the gaudy finery of China.
+Maimachen, the name of the Chinese
+town visited by Mr Erman, has a very
+masquerading air to a European eye.
+The walls on either side of the streets
+do not look like house walls, the roofs
+being flat and invisible from the street.
+"Indeed, they are nearly altogether
+concealed by the gay-coloured paper
+lanterns and flags, with inscriptions
+on them, hung out on both sides of
+the way. Cords, with similar scrolls
+and lanterns, are likewise stretched
+from roof to roof across the street.
+These dazzling decorations stand out
+in glaring contrast with the dull yellow
+of the ground and walls. In the open
+crossings of the streets, which intersect
+each other at right angles, stood
+enormous chafing-dishes of cast-iron,
+like basins, upon a slender pedestal
+four feet in height. The benches by
+which they were surrounded were
+occupied by tea-drinkers, who sat
+smoking from the little pipes they
+carry at their girdles, whilst their
+kettles boiled at the common fire."
+Mr Erman had the good fortune to be
+on the frontier at the period of the
+Chinese festival of the White Moon,
+which is in fact the celebration of the
+new-year, and he had the still
+greater luck to be invited to share
+in it at Maimachen. He found the
+town in its gayest costume. The expenditure
+of flags and lanterns was
+prodigious. The scrolls usually contained
+the names of the families before
+whose houses they were hung out,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+coupled with words of auspicious import,
+as gladness, riches, wisdom, &amp;c.
+There was a great firing of crackers
+and rockets, partly to celebrate the
+day, but chiefly in honour of the
+guests. Before dinner the latter were
+diverted by a theatrical representation.
+Maimachen boasts a regular
+company of actors, and upon this
+great occasion they did their best.
+Their orchestra was of a rather violent
+description, consisting of "wooden
+drums, shaped like casks, brass cymbals,
+and plates of the same metal,
+or gongs, held by a string and beaten
+with knockers, and wooden truncheons,
+of different sizes, which they used as
+castanets." There were no actresses;
+but the deficiency was not to be detected,
+the younger and more delicate
+men personating women to the life by
+the aid of wigs and long tresses of
+black hair, but especially by curls
+pressed flat upon the forehead. Masks
+were not used, but paint was in abundance;
+in some cases with a view to
+represent spectacles, mustachios, &amp;c.;
+in others to conceal the human features,
+or give them a monstrous aspect. "One
+face was covered with coloured rays,
+issuing from the mouth. The same
+actor had also a feather on his head&mdash;in
+Chinese comedy the conventional
+mark of a ghost or apparition. Another
+wore a golden helmet, which
+constituted him a warrior. Several
+kept beating themselves incessantly
+on the hip with a cane, and by so
+doing intimated that they were on
+horseback." The play itself was more
+like a game of romps than any regular
+dramatic representation. Little was
+said; but, on the other hand, there was
+a deal of dancing, drumming, and
+running about. Mr Erman could make
+neither head nor tail of the proceedings.
+By way of experiment, however,
+he made some tender gestures
+to one of the pseudo-ladies, who acknowledged
+them in the most amiable
+manner, and after that the horsemen
+without horses paid him much attention,
+pointing with their sticks to his
+spectacles, and trying to touch them
+as they passed. All this greatly diverted
+the Mongol audience, evidently
+delighted to see a real counterpart to
+the painted spectacles of some of the
+actors.</p>
+
+<p>The play over, Mr Erman and the
+other guests, preceded by the uproarious
+orchestra, marched off to dinner
+at the house of the sarguchei or chief
+officer of Maimachen. This gentleman,
+a tall, thin person of stern countenance,
+dressed in gray velvet, had a
+white button on the crown of his
+black felt hat, indicating his rank, and
+a chalcedony ring, an inch wide, upon
+his right-hand thumb, this being a
+mark of official dignity. "His nails,"
+says our traveller, "did not extend
+above half an inch beyond the tips of
+his fingers, his personal vanity being
+in this respect subdued, as might be
+expected in a man of sober mind and
+mature years." The man of short
+nails and sober mind was exceeding
+hospitable, welcomed his guests in a
+soft and sonorous voice, and sat down
+with them to dinner at tables covered
+with scarlet cloth. The regale that
+followed might have caused a European
+<em>chef</em> to pale his ineffectual fires
+from sheer envy. It began, oddly
+enough, with fruits, sweetmeats, and
+tea. These discussed, a piece of fine
+paper, for a napkin, and a pair of
+ivory chopsticks, were laid before each
+guest, and the tables, which were six
+feet wide, were covered over thickly
+with small porcelain plates full of all
+manner of complicated edibles. Fat
+abounded in the dressing, to neutralise
+which weak vinegar was used. The
+first series of saucers duly honoured,
+a second was brought in and put on
+the top of its predecessor. Others
+followed, and as the previous stratum
+was never removed, there soon arose
+upon the table a lofty pile of gastronomical
+curiosities. Pipes and <i>chowsen</i>,
+a Chinese spirit distilled from rice,
+concluded the feast, as the strangers
+thought;&mdash;but they were vastly mistaken.
+The soup course had still to
+come, and that was followed by an
+infusion of cabbage-leaves, drawn out
+of an urn by a cock, and drunk steaming
+hot. How a dinner commencing
+with preserved apricots, and concluding
+with cabbage water, agreed with
+German stomachs, Mr Erman does
+not inform us. After managing to
+taste upwards of a hundred dishes, he
+went to visit the temple of Fo, whose
+court was guarded by two clay lions
+painted green, whilst at his shrine
+were deposited, on account of the
+festive season, a prodigious heap of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+delicacies. Whole sheep without the
+skin, plucked chickens, pheasants, and
+guinea-fowls, in their natural positions,
+and glistening with fat, lay in
+hillocks at the feet of half-a-dozen
+grotesque and indecent idols. On a
+long table, a wall of offerings was
+built up, consisting of dressed meat
+and cakes of every kind, the whole
+surrounded with an elaborate lattice-work
+of white dough, five or six feet
+high, the openings of which were
+filled with dried fruits and confectionary
+of the finest kind. Perfumed
+candles burned before the disgusting
+idols, and brass discs hung from the
+ceiling, and were struck with clappers
+when any bearing offerings approached.</p>
+
+<p>The contents of the shops at Maimachen
+gave Mr Erman a very high
+opinion of Chinese skill and ingenuity.
+He saw scientific instruments of great
+merit, very clever clockwork, paintings
+drawn and finished with the
+greatest care, (although highly objectionable
+by the indelicacy of their
+subjects,) porcelain, sculpture, bowls,
+vases, and figures of various kinds of
+stone. "There were large spherical
+bowls, and oval vases, of chalcedony
+and agate, and reliefs cut in cornelians,
+nephrit, and other coloured
+stones. Of the latter kind, the most
+common are flowers, the several parts
+of which are formed of various and
+tastefully selected stones, and then
+cemented with mastic on a foundation
+of stone. For many of these articles,
+highly elaborate, and at the same
+time quite useless, the merchants of
+Maimachen asked four thousand tea-bricks,
+(a standard of currency,) or
+about two thousand five hundred
+Russian dollars. In this we saw a
+proof of luxury and profuse expenditure
+amongst the Chinese. Many
+other branches of industry indicated
+enervation and effeminacy of manners:"
+musk, for instance, and other
+perfumes, enclosed in little bags, and
+considered indispensable appendages
+to a young man's dress. A curious
+plaything, considered equally essential,
+is composed of two polished balls,
+about an inch in diameter, which the
+men always carry with them. "These
+are taken in the right hand, at idle
+times, and rolled and rubbed one over
+the other with the fingers; the noise
+they make amuses, and perhaps there
+is something agreeable also in the
+feel of them. Here, in Maimachen, I
+saw some of these balls made of glass,
+striped green and white, and, hollow,
+containing within them a little lump
+of clay, which rattled with every
+motion." The musk and perfumes,
+however abundantly used, are all
+insufficient to counteract a very peculiar
+and unpleasant smell attributed
+by Mr Erman to the Chinese. He
+first perceived it at the theatre, and
+took it to arise from an inordinate
+addiction to leeks on the part of
+actors and audience, whose breath
+and clothes were infected with the
+disagreeable odour of that bulb. But
+he was subsequently induced to regard
+it as a national taint, a Chinese exhalation,
+not to be overcome by any
+amount of artificial perfume, and
+whose cause is matter of inquiry for
+the chemist. Doubtless the Chinese
+would get rid of it, were it possible so
+to do, for the care they bestow on
+personal beauty and elegance is very
+great. Another striking defect in the
+inhabitants of Maimachen is to be
+found in their black and decayed
+teeth. The cause of this Mr Erman
+suspects to be the solution of copper,
+produced by the empyreumatic oil of
+tobacco in the bronze mouth-pieces
+of their pipes.</p>
+
+<p>At a post-house upon his road back
+to Irkutsk, Mr Erman and his party
+were met by a deputation from no
+less a personage than the Khamba
+Lama, the high-priest of the Buraets,
+a Mongolian tribe closely allied in
+language and customs to the natives
+of the northern provinces of China.
+The embassy consisted of four lamas
+or priests attired in scarlet robes and
+bright yellow hats. They brought
+an invitation to a grand festival,
+which was readily accepted,&mdash;and a
+very remarkable business it proved to
+be. The discordant theatrical music
+at Maimachen was a mere trifle compared
+to the monstrous noise made
+by the Buraet kettle-drums, so large
+that they were dragged upon four
+wheels, and by copper trumpets ten
+feet long, borne by one man and
+blown by another. "The grave prelude
+of the wind instruments was like
+a roaring hurricane, and the chorus
+of brass gongs, drums, &amp;c., resembled
+the crash of a falling mountain." In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+this place we find some curious and
+interesting details respecting the
+Buddhist religion and priesthood,
+after which Mr Erman returns to
+Irkutsk, and resumes his journey
+eastward, through the valley of the
+Lena, to the land of the Tunguzes
+and Yakuts. The chief town of the
+latter people, Yakutsk, is two degrees
+to the south of Beresov, which Mr Erman
+had visited on his way to Obdorsk;
+but, nevertheless, the cold is far more
+severe at the former place, where
+frozen earth is found near the surface
+all the year round, and the same condition
+of the ground continues to the
+depth of six hundred feet. "The
+inhabitants of the Swiss Alps would
+not unjustly think themselves lost if
+they were compelled to live at the
+height of ten thousand feet, or two
+thousand three hundred feet above
+the hospital of the great St Bernard,
+and there to support and clothe themselves
+by keeping cattle, and with the
+productions of the surrounding mountains;
+yet they would then, and not
+until they arrived at that height, be
+settled on ground having the same
+temperature which I found here
+amongst the Yakuts, who are rich
+in cattle. It would seem, therefore,
+as if that succeeded in Siberia which
+was impossible in Europe, if we did
+not take into account that the same
+constant temperature of the ground
+may be made up at different places of
+very different elements." Notwithstanding
+the severity of their climate
+and resistance of their frozen soil, the
+Yakuts are a prosperous people, having
+attained a considerable degree of
+civilisation, and amongst whom crime
+is rare, although the influence of
+Russian example and contact daily
+renders it less so. There is much
+interest in Mr Erman's account of
+them, and of the wandering Tunguzses,
+the last tribe with whom he consorted
+before his arrival at Okhotsk. Here
+his reception was not very flattering.
+"We were looked at with much
+curiosity from all the house-doors on
+the way, for the devout elders of the
+place had been filled with anxious
+forebodings by the accounts of the
+arrival of a foreigner. They signed
+themselves with the cross whenever
+he was mentioned. And I learned
+to-day that they had fears of war,
+conscription, and other calamities."
+Nor was their alarm abated by learning
+that "the heathen foreigner wore
+snow-shades (spectacles) even in thick
+weather, and that he carried a dog in
+the sledge with him. Thus the return
+to civilised man was marked in the
+first instance by the encounter of
+intolerant superstition, and it was
+necessary to forget the nobler traits
+of the wilderness before we could
+become reconciled to the Russians of
+Okhotsk." At which place Mr Erman's
+narrative ceases. We await with
+interest its promised continuation&mdash;an
+account of his adventures in Kamschatka,
+California, and the Pacific.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>THE SCOTTISH DEER FORESTS.</h2>
+
+<p><cite>Lays of the Deer Forest, with Sketches of Olden and Modern Deer Hunting, &amp;c.
+&amp;c.</cite> By <span class="smcap">John Sobieski</span> and <span class="smcap">Charles Edward Stuart</span>. 2 vols., post 8vo. William
+Blackwood &amp; Sons, Edinburgh and London.</p>
+
+
+<p>We would that, like stout Lord
+Percy of yore, it were in our power at
+this present moment to chronicle a
+vow that we should forthwith take
+our pastime for three summer days on
+the pleasant hills of Scotland. Alas
+for us, that we are doomed, from
+divers causes, to absent ourselves from
+felicity awhile, and, amidst the heat
+and noise of London, listen with intense
+disgust to the brutal bayings of
+the Chartists! This very night, we
+hear, the ignoble hunt is to be up in
+Bishop Bonner's fields. Crowds of
+dirty, unshaven, squalid ruffians, who
+have not the strength to use the pike,
+but the will to employ the knife of the
+assassin&mdash;fellows whom even Cobden
+would be chary to recognise as his
+<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">quondam</i> supporters, defenders, and
+dupes&mdash;not unmingled with foreign
+propagandists, whom even France, in
+the fury of her revolutionary tornado,
+repudiates&mdash;are thronging to the place
+of rendezvous, where, doubtless, their
+souls will be worthily regaled by the
+ravings of some rascally vendors of
+sedition, blasphemy, and treason. Then
+will ensue the usual scene which for
+nights has disgraced the metropolis.
+Some unfortunate tradesman, whose
+curiosity has been stronger than his
+prudence, will be fixed upon as a
+"special" or a spy&mdash;the cowards, presuming
+upon their numbers, and the
+apparent absence of all executive
+power, will attempt a deliberate murder&mdash;the
+police will sally from their
+hiding-place to the rescue&mdash;there will
+be a storm of brickbats, a determined
+charge with the baton, a shop or two
+will be gutted, some score of craniums
+cracked, and to-morrow morning the
+greasy patriots, at the bar of Bow
+Street, will read their recantation, and,
+in the face of overwhelming evidence
+to the contrary, protest their loyalty
+to the Queen. Such are the pastimes
+of merry England in the month of
+June, and such the results of that
+enlightened policy which yields every
+thing to popular clamour, adopts the
+most fatal delusions as distinct principles
+of right, and then shrinks, trembling
+and aghast, from the inevitable
+result of their development!</p>
+
+<p>We do not want&mdash;in this article, at
+least&mdash;to be political, and we vow that
+we took up our pen three minutes ago
+in a spirit of perfect good-will and
+harmony towards all manner of men.
+But the hoarse bawling of these cannibals
+has somewhat ruffled our temper,
+dispelled for the moment our dreams
+of the mountains, and forced us back
+to the sterner realities of popular
+tumult and the truncheon. If this
+sort of thing lasts, we shall indubitably
+emigrate. Assassination, as recommended
+by the modern Hamilcar,
+is by no manner of means to our
+taste. Our opinion coincides with
+that of the gracious Captain of Knockdunder,
+and, were we promoted to a
+judicial function, "the chiel they ca'
+the Fustler" should ere long fustle in
+a tow. Neither are we at all disposed
+to fraternise with the milder Cuffey&mdash;a
+fellow, by the way, who is not without
+some redeeming scintillations of
+humour. We have no wish to be
+introduced to him even at a mesmeric
+soiree; and, acting upon the principle
+of Jacquey, we shall pray heaven to
+decrease our acquaintance, and put
+the Tweed as speedily as possible between
+ourselves and the partisans of
+O'Connor. We hope the Lord Provost,
+though discomfited in his Police
+Bill, has been looking after the tranquillity
+of the Calton. If not, we
+must move further north, and finally
+locate ourselves somewhere in the
+vicinity of Dalnacardoch. The
+deuce is in it, if the revolutionary
+mania has penetrated to that sequestred
+region! No son of the mountains
+has ever yet given in his adhesion to
+the Charter&mdash;treason hath not stained
+the tartan, and no republican pins
+have ever been exposed beneath the
+checkered margin of the kilt. There
+is loyalty at least in the land which
+was traversed by Montrose and Dundee;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+and without the slightest fear
+that any of the numerous points of
+that interesting but incomprehensible
+public document, which Mr Joseph
+Hume proposes to condense, shall be
+unduly obtruded on our notice, we
+shall at once exchange our London
+dwelling for the more pleasant bothy
+of the hills.</p>
+
+<p>As for a companion, we shall seek
+none better&mdash;for we could not find
+one&mdash;than this last publication of the
+Stuarts. And here, once for all, let
+us draw a line of distinction betwixt
+the poetry and the prose of these very
+remarkable brothers. We have not
+the remotest intention of sitting in
+judgment on the "Lays," or of testing
+the poetical merits of John Sobieski
+and Charles Edward, either
+by the canons of Longinus, or by
+that superior code of literary laws
+which Maga has promulgated to the
+world. The poems, which occupy
+exclusively the first of these volumes,
+are, with one exception, fugitive in
+their nature, and appear to have been
+penned rather from occasional impulse,
+than from any deliberate intention of
+publication. Accordingly, we find that
+most of them relate to topics personal
+to the authors themselves&mdash;and with
+these we do not meddle. In others,
+there are flashes of the deep national
+spirit which still survives&mdash;though our
+rulers do not seem to mark it&mdash;in
+Scotland: indignation at the neglect
+with which too many of our national
+institutions have been treated, and
+mournful lamentings over the misfortunes
+of a former age. But the impulse
+which leads to the composition
+of poetry does not always imply
+its accomplishment. Poetry, as an
+art in which excellence can only be
+obtained by a combination of the
+simple and the sublime, requires a
+study far more intense and serious
+than the mere critic is apt to allow.
+In a former Number we devoted an
+article to an exposition of those principles,
+which are absolutely invariable
+in their application, and which must
+be thoroughly understood, if they are
+not intuitive to the poet; and, being
+in no mood for repetition, we shall
+simply say that we adhere to our
+recorded doctrines. The Stuarts, it
+must be confessed, are more successful
+with the rifle than the lyre. We
+would far rather meet them in the
+garb of the forester, than in the more
+fantastic fashion of the minstrel: be
+theirs the lot of Ryno the hunter, not
+the darkened destiny of the bard.</p>
+
+<p>Do, therefore, what you please with
+the first volume&mdash;pack it up in your
+portmanteau, or place it on the shelf
+beside Chambers' History and the
+collections of good old Bishop Forbes.
+But if you profess to be a deer-stalker&mdash;though
+we fear your profession to
+be false&mdash;or if you are but an aspiring
+neophyte, and hankerer after that
+proud position&mdash;or if you merely
+bound your aspirations towards the
+compassing of the death of a roebuck&mdash;or
+if simply you have a keen and a
+kindly eye for nature, and are a lover
+of the sylvan solitudes&mdash;in one or
+other, or all of these characters, we
+pray you to deal more leisurely with
+the other tone, which is the Hunter's
+Vade-Mecum, the best guide ever yet
+published to the haunts of the antlered
+monarch.</p>
+
+<p>We are fond of Mr Scrope, and
+we have an excessive partiality for
+St John. Two finer fellows never
+shouldered a rifle; and our conscience
+does not accuse us of having used too
+superlative, in epithet in their praise.
+This was the more creditable on our
+part, because we knew them both to
+be Southrons; and while freely admitting
+the sportsman-like qualities
+of the one, and the strong picturesque
+style and spirit of the other, we felt a
+slight, passing, but pardonable pang
+of jealousy, that they should have
+stepped in, and pre-occupied the
+native field. Where, thought we, are
+our Scottish deer-stalkers? Can the
+lads not handle a pen as well as
+touch a trigger? Will none of them,
+who have been trained to the hills
+since they were striplings, stand
+forth for the honour of Albyn, and
+try a match with these fustian-coated
+circumventers of the stag? By the
+shade of Domhnull Mac-Fhionnlaidlhnan
+Dan, we blush for the literary
+reputation of our country, and almost
+wish that we were young enough
+ourselves to take the hill against the
+invading Sassenach! At length&mdash;and
+we are delighted to see it&mdash;the reproach
+has been swept away. Two
+stalwart champions of the forest have
+risen in the persons of the Stuarts&mdash;they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+have encountered the Englishmen
+with their own weapons, and, in
+our opinion, beaten them hollow.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Scrope had the merit of producing
+the earliest work in which deer-stalking
+was treated as a distinct and
+peculiar branch of the art venatory.
+We speak of it now from recollection;
+for our copy, somewhat frayed and
+worn by the fingers of ambitious
+sportsmen, is in the snug corner of a
+library some hundred miles to the
+northward. But we remember well
+the Waltonian character of the book&mdash;the
+professional style in which the
+elder practitioner enforced his precepts
+upon the dawning intellect of his
+companion; and the adventures,
+neither few nor feeble, which were
+depicted in the heart of the Atholl
+forest. Taken as the production of
+an English sportsman, Mr Scrope's
+book is highly creditable: considered
+as the manual of a deer-stalker, it is
+at the best indifferent. Nor, indeed,
+could it well be otherwise. Not until
+middle age, if we are informed rightly,
+did Mr Scrope first send a ball into
+the ample shoulder of a hart: his
+young blood never beat tumultuously
+in his veins at the sight of the mighty
+creature rolling over upon the heather,
+and its antlers buried in the moss.
+His boyish enthusiasm, we fear, was
+expended upon game of less mark and
+likelihood&mdash;partridges, perchance, as
+they whirred from the turnips, or
+possibly he was "entered" with the
+hare. Wordsworth's maxim, that the
+boy is the father of the man, is peculiarly
+applicable in sporting matters.
+Upon the character of the country in
+which the latent spirit of the hunter
+is earliest developed, depends, in a
+great degree, his future success, and
+certainly his accomplishment as an
+Orion. The young squire, who has
+been brought up in the faith of Sykes,
+who never stirs abroad without a
+keeper, and who is accustomed to see
+his delicate pointers execute their
+manœuvres with almost mathematical
+precision on the flat stubbles of Norfolk,
+labours under a huge disadvantage
+in the higher branches of his
+science, compared with the Highland
+boy who has received his education
+on the hill. What though the single
+barrel of the latter be a clumsy implement
+indeed in competition with the
+Purdie which decorates the shoulder
+of the former&mdash;though the hound that
+sometimes attends him, though oftener
+he is alone, never slept a single night
+in a kennel, and is the ruggedest specimen
+of his kind&mdash;still he is in the
+enjoyment of advantages incomparably
+superior for the development of
+all his faculties, and the sharpening of
+every sense. The triumph of the
+sportsman does not lie so much in the
+killing as in the finding of his game.
+Were it otherwise, the pigeon-slayer
+of Battersea or the Red-house would
+have just claims to the honours of Sir
+Tristram, and the annihilator of
+poultry to rank with the Nimrods of
+the world. Our young friend the
+Squire shoots well&mdash;that is to say, he
+can kill with reasonable precision:
+but, after all, what is he save an instrument?
+Take Ponto away from
+him, tie up Juno, send a bullet through
+the brain of Basta, and a pretty beggarly
+account you will have of it in
+the evening when we come to the
+emptying of the bags! Or lead him
+down to the sea-shore, and show him
+a whaup, which in the English tongue
+is denominated a curlew; request him
+to use all his possible skill to compass
+possession of the bird; but do not set
+your heart on having it, else, as sure
+as fate, you are doomed to disappointment.
+Whaup is quite alive to his
+own interests, and by no means unsuspicious
+of the Saxon, who advances
+straight towards him with a hypocritical
+air of unconcern. Had the
+Highland lad been there, what a difference!
+He would have dropped like
+a stone behind that rock, wriggled
+like a serpent over the sand, kept the
+bird between himself and the sea,
+taken advantage of every inequality
+in the ground, discerned from the
+attitude of his quarry whether its
+suspicions were aroused or not, and
+in ten minutes a pluff of white smoke
+and a report would have announced
+its extermination. As it is, the curlew
+remains apparently unconcerned until
+the Lord of the Manor has reduced
+the intermediate distance to a hundred
+and twenty yards, and then, with a
+shrill whistle, takes flight along the
+margin of the tide. Or set him to
+stalk a blackcock, perched high of an
+Autumn morning on a dyke. How
+clumsily he sets about it! how miserable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+is his stoop! how wretchedly he
+calculates his distance! That wide-awake
+hat, which, for the sake of
+symmetry, he has been pleased to
+surmount with a feather, is as conspicuous
+to the country for miles round,
+and of course to the blackcock, as
+was the white plume of Murat in the
+field of battle, and as potent to effect
+a clearance, of which we presently
+have ocular demonstration.</p>
+
+<p>We contend, therefore, that it is extremely
+difficult for the man, be he ever
+so addicted to field-sports, who has been
+educated in a cultivated country, to
+disembarrass himself of the artificial
+habits which he is tolerably sure to acquire.
+His trolling may be excellent&mdash;indeed,
+English gentlemen are, generally
+speaking, first-rate shots&mdash;but he
+will be deficient in the science of the naturalist,
+and in that singular acuteness
+of perception which can hardly be
+gained save by an early intimacy with
+nature, on the mountain, the moor, or in
+the glen. No subsequent education or
+experience can make up for the normal
+deficiency, least of all in the pursuit
+of an animal so wary, so instinctive,
+and so peculiar in its habits as the
+deer. Of course we do not mean to
+deny that there is much which may
+be learned. What a pointer is to
+partridges, some wary and experienced
+forester may often be made to the
+deer; and if you put yourself under
+his tuition, and scrupulously obey his
+orders, you may very possibly succeed
+in attaining the object of your desires.
+Nor indeed can you do better, up to a
+certain point, notwithstanding the
+strictures of the Stuarts, who are, we
+think, unnecessarily wroth at the
+system which would call in the aid
+of any supplementary assistance. We
+hope no gentleman who has rented a
+forest for the ensuing season will be
+deterred from following the feet of a
+Highland Gamaliel on account of any
+ridicule which may be attached to the
+fact of his having been "taken up"
+to a deer. If he should rashly attempt
+stalking at his own hand, without any
+preliminary instruction, we should be
+sorry to found our hopes of dinner on
+the chance of his acquisition of a
+haunch.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"When advancing upon deer [say
+our authors]&mdash;except in strange ground&mdash;the
+forester, or any other attendant,
+should be left behind a stone, or in
+some covert, before the stalker commences
+his approach; not from any
+recognition of the false reproach made
+against the guides by Mr Scrope, but
+because there is no occasion for an assistant,
+and the action of one has more
+celerity, independence, and security from
+discovery, than when a greater number
+are in motion. The charge made by the
+author of 'The Art of Deer-stalking,'
+that the forester is often in the way, and
+sometimes obstructs the shot, is not true,
+unless in instances of inexperienced and
+awkward individuals, who are not to be
+found among that class of foresters of
+whom the guest of the <em>Atholl Forest</em> proposes
+his remarks. With a MacKenzie,
+or a MacDonald, a Catanach, and a MacHardie,
+the asserted inconvenience must
+proceed from the ignorance or maladroitness
+of the gray worm which crawls
+at his back, and who often does not know
+what he is doing, or where he is going,
+with his ideas <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">égaré</i> on his sensitive
+knees and varnished Purdie, unconscious
+of what he ought to do and nervous for
+what he ought not, flurried with eagerness
+and disgusted with his posture, and
+who, never seeing a deer except once in
+the year, is led up to him like a 'blind
+burraid,' by one whose language he
+scarcely understands. In general, therefore,
+the embarrassments of the 'creep'
+are those of the superior, who is frequently
+so ignorant, unpractised, and
+dependent upon the guidance of the forester,
+that to be '<em>taken up to the deer</em>'
+has become the modern forest phrase for
+the approach of the sportsman. This contemptible
+term, and its contemptible practice,
+has only been introduced within the
+last quarter century, since the prevalence
+of stalking gentlemen utterly unacquainted
+with the ground and pursuit of deer.
+Of old, the '<i lang="ga" xml:lang="ga">Seàlgair uasal nam bèann</i>'
+was initiated to the hill when yet but a
+'<i>biorach</i>' of a stalker; and when he
+became a matured hill-man, he should no
+more have suffered himself to be&mdash;'<em>taken
+up</em> to his deer' by an attendant, than a
+Melton fox-hunter to be trained after the
+hounds by a whipper-in with a leading
+rein.&mdash;What should have been the sentiments
+of the old chiefs and Uaislean of
+the last century&mdash;the Dukes of Atholl
+and Gordon&mdash;Glengarrie&mdash;John Aberardar&mdash;Iain
+dubh Bhail-a-Chroäin&mdash;to hear
+a deer-hunter speak of being '<em>taken up
+to his deer</em>!'&mdash;Certainly that he was
+a noble 'amadan' or 'gille-crùbach,'
+who had not the faculties or the limbs to
+act for himself.&mdash;But this is only one of
+the many instances for which the hills of
+Gael may mourn with the mountains of
+Gilboa&mdash;'<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Quomodo ceciderunt robusti!</i>'"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Far are we from insinuating that
+Mr Scrope is at all liable to the remarks
+contained in the foregoing
+extract. On the contrary, we hold
+him to be a man of vigorous mind
+and acute eye, and any thing but a
+contemptible foe to the stags, after the
+measure of his own experience. If he
+is deficient at all, it is in the poetry
+and higher mysteries of the art, which
+hardly would be expected from a
+stranger, whose initiation was necessarily
+late. Waverley, though a respectable
+shot, and a man of literary
+taste, would, we apprehend, have
+described the driving and disposition
+of the tainchel less effectively, and
+certainly far less truly, than Fergus
+M'Ivor; so great a difference is there
+betwixt the craft of the master and
+his pupil. Let Mr Scrope, therefore,
+rest content with the laurels he has
+won, and the trophies he has taken
+from the forest. Not unforgotten is
+his name in Atholl, nor unloved. Let
+him be a guide to the Southren, but
+he must not dream of rivalling the
+Stuarts in woodcraft, or Stoddart in
+the science of piscation.</p>
+
+<p>Of Mr St John's "Wild Sports of the
+Highlands," we have already spoken
+in terms of unqualified praise. A
+more delightful volume was never
+adapted for the pocket of the sportsman:
+a more truthful or observant
+work has seldom issued from the pen
+of the naturalist. His sketches and
+pictures of deer-stalking we allow to
+be as perfect in their way as the compositions
+of Landseer; and having
+said so much, we shall not make any
+further call upon that gentleman's
+blushes. Still, even his experience is
+limited, and his knowledge imperfect.
+He has given us a brilliant account
+of his own exploits upon the hill, but
+he has not lived long enough in the
+wilder haunts of the deer accurately
+to understand their habits. Not so
+our authors, who for years have been
+denizens of the mountains, speaking
+the tongue of the Gael, wearing the
+native garb, and following the chase
+with an ardour and enthusiasm unparalleled
+in these degenerate days.</p>
+
+<p>Gentlemen who complain of the inferior
+accommodation afforded by some
+of the more distant hostelries of Scotland&mdash;who
+are shocked at the absence
+of warming-pans, and tremulously
+nervous about your sanatory condition,
+when subjected to the enormity of
+damp sheets&mdash;how would you like to
+spend a few nights on the misty hill-side,
+or even in the hut of the hunters?
+We shall take you if you please to the
+latter spot, merely premising that, in
+order to reach it, we must cross the
+Findhorn, now roaring down in spate.
+A terrible stream is that Findhorn, as
+Mr St John well knows; but we
+question whether he ever ventured to
+ford it on the rise, as was done by one
+of the Stuarts. For the information
+of distant friends, we beg to put our
+imprimatur to the following description
+of this furious Highland flood,
+which rolled between the residence of
+the hunters and their favourite
+ground.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"That stream, however, which was so
+calm, and bright, and sunny, when the
+otters floated down its current in a still
+summer's morning, was a fierce and
+terrible enemy in its anger; and, for a
+great part of the year, the dread of its
+uncertainty and danger was a formidable
+cause for the preservation of that profound
+solitude of the forest which so long
+made it the sanctuary of deer, roe, and
+every kind of wild game. The rapidity
+with which the river comes down, the
+impassable height to which it rises in an
+incredibly short time, its incertitude and
+fury, would render it an object of care
+to bold forders and boatmen; but with
+the peasants of the 'laich,' unaccustomed,
+like the Highlanders, to wrestle
+with a mountain torrent, and, excepting
+in rare instances, unable to swim or
+manage a coble, it inspires a dread, almost
+amounting to awe, and none except
+ourselves ventured to keep a boat above
+the fishing-station of Slui. Pent within
+a channel of rocks from fifty to a hundred
+and eighty feet in height, the rise
+of the water is rapidly exaggerated by
+the incapability of diffusion; and the
+length of its course sometimes concealing
+beyond the horizon the storms by which
+it is swelled at its source, its floods then
+descend with unexpected violence. Frequently
+when, excepting a low wreath
+upon Beann-Drineachain, the sun is shining
+in a cloudless sky, and the water
+scarce ripples over the glittering ford, a
+deep hollow sound&mdash;a dull approaching
+roar may be heard in the gorges of the
+river; and almost before the wading
+fisherman can gain the shore, a bank of
+water, loaded with trees, and rocks, and
+wreck, will come down three&mdash;four&mdash;five
+feet abreast&mdash;sweeping all before it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+in a thunder of foam and ruin. In
+ordinary cases, after two days of rain,
+the stream will rise twenty or thirty feet&mdash;it
+<em>has</em> risen nearly ten fathoms in its
+rocky gulf; and once upon this occasion
+it mounted fifteen feet in a quarter of an
+hour. When the dawn broke, it appeared
+sweeping through the trees, which the
+evening before hung fifty feet above its
+brink&mdash;a black roaring tempest loaded
+with ruins and debris, from which were
+seen to rise at times the white skeletons
+of trees peeled of their bark, beams and
+couples of houses&mdash;a cart&mdash;a door&mdash;a
+cradle, hurrying and tilting through the
+foam and spray, like the scattered 'floatsome'
+of a wreck.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be judged how far it was convenient
+in winter to hunt a forest separated
+by such a boundary, of which the
+nearest certain passage was by a bridge
+two miles to the west, with frequently
+the view of hunting three miles to the
+east. Often we have gone out in a clear
+sapphire morning, when there was scarce
+a ripple on the pools, and the water on
+the ford was not over our 'glunachan,'
+and when we returned at evening, and
+approached through the dark veil of pines
+which descended to the river, have heard
+a roar as if the world was rolling together
+down the black trough before us, and
+as we came out on the bank, found a furious
+tempest of water, tumbling, and
+plunging, and leaping, over stock and
+rock twenty feet upon the clatach, where
+we had left it whimpering among the
+pebbles in the morning; while, in the
+far, deep, birch-embowered channel, where
+the stream was then so still and placid
+that you could only guess its course by
+the bright glistening eye which here and
+there blinked between the trees and
+stones,&mdash;now it came yelling, and skirling,
+and clamouring down the rocks and
+falls, as if all the air was full of gibbering,
+babbling, laughing demons, who were
+muttering, and yammering, and prophesying,
+and hooting, at what you were going
+to do, if you attempted to cross."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>We pray you at your leisure to
+read on, and you will presently see
+what peril our authors underwent at
+the fearful fords of the Findhorn.
+Once or twice in our life we have
+been in similar jeopardy, and we can
+testify with unction to the singular
+sensations which beset a man in the
+midst of a roaring river, when the
+rapids are shooting away below, and
+the boulder-stones rolling beneath
+his feet. We pass over some perilous
+instances of adventure, which at
+length became so frequent as to lead
+to the construction of the hut.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"Such continually and unexpectedly
+were the ferries of the Findhorn, and
+many such escapes we had, in daylight
+and in darkness.&mdash;Twice I have been
+swamped, often nearly upset, and more
+than once carried off my legs in the fords;
+and&mdash;I say it with humility, and always
+under the mercy of heaven&mdash;that I owed
+rescue either to actual swimming, or to
+the confidence inspired by that power
+when struggling with the strong and
+terrible enemy.</p>
+
+<p>"This continual exposure to battle and
+disappointment, however, became at
+length too vexatious an abridgment of
+sport and certainty; and as I would&mdash;and
+often&mdash;have made my bed under a
+fir tree rather than go round by the
+bridge of Daltullich, I resolved upon
+another alternative&mdash;to build in the forest
+a '<i lang="ga" xml:lang="ga">bothan an t-sealgair</i>,' or 'hunter's
+hut,' where we might lodge for the night
+when it was impossible to cross the
+water.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a high and beautiful craig at
+the crook of the river near the 'Little
+Eas,'&mdash;a precipice eighty feet in height,
+and then like a vast stone helmet crowned
+with a feathery plume of wood, which
+nodded over its brow. From its top you
+might drop a bullet into the pool below,
+but on the south side there is an accessible
+woody bank, down which, by planting
+your heels firmly in the soil and
+among the roots of the trees, there is a
+descent to a deep but smooth and sandy
+ford. Upon the summit of the rock there
+is, or there was&mdash;my blessing upon it!&mdash;a
+thick and beautiful bird-cherry, which
+hung over the craig, and whose pendant
+branches, taking root on the edge of the
+steep, shot up again like the banana, and
+formed a natural arbour and close trellis
+along the margin of the precipice. Behind
+its little gallery, there is a mighty
+holly, under which the snow rarely lays
+in winter, or the rain drops in summer.
+Beneath the shelter of this tree, and
+within the bank at its foot, I dug a little
+cell large enough to hold two beds, a
+bench, a hearth, a table, and a 'kistie.'
+The sides were lined with deals well
+caulked with moss, and the roof was constructed
+in the same manner, but covered
+with a tarpauling, which, lying in the slope
+of the surrounding bank, carried off any
+water which might descend from thaw
+or rain, and, when the autumn trees shook
+off their leaves, could not be distinguished
+from the adjoining bank. Its door was
+on the brink of the craig, veiled by the
+thick bird-cherries on the edge of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+precipice; and the entrance to the little
+path, which ascended from either side
+upon the brow of the rock, was concealed
+by a screen of birch and hazel, beneath
+which the banks were covered with primroses,
+wood-anemones, and forget-me-not.
+Bowers of honeysuckle and wild-roses
+twined among the lower trees; and even
+in the tall pines above, the rose sometimes
+climbed to the very top, where all its
+blossoms, clustering to the sun, hung in
+white tassels out of the dark-blue foliage.
+There the thrush and the blackbird sang
+at morning and evening, and the owl
+cried at night, and the buck belled upon
+the Torr.&mdash;Blessed, wild, free, joyous
+dwelling, which we shall never see
+again!"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>A lovely place indeed must that
+have been in the pleasant days of
+summer! We do not wonder at the
+fondness with which the Stuarts speak
+of that lodge in the wilderness, reared
+as it was in the midst of the most
+beautiful and romantic scenery which
+exists within the compass of the seas
+of Britain, or, for aught we know,
+elsewhere. Years have rolled by since
+we last set foot upon the banks of
+Findhorn; but never shall we forget
+the glories of that deep ravine, or the
+noble woods of Altyre, still possessed
+by the descendants of the princely
+Comyns. Did we not expect to be
+summoned out within half an hour to
+contribute to the safety of the realm
+by breaking the head of a Chartist,
+we should ourselves launch out into
+description, and try conclusions with
+Horatio M'Culloch. But, after all,
+it would be a work of supererogation.
+Mr St John has already illustrated
+most charmingly that abode of the
+faithful; and he will not be displeased
+to see that, even in painting, he has
+met with formidable rivals. Rarely,
+indeed, have we met with any thing
+so perfect as the following sketch:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"Near Slui on the Findhorn there is a
+range of precipices and wooded steeps
+crowned with pine, and washed by a clear
+and rippling stream of the river, through
+which there is an excellent ford, very well
+known to the roe, for escaping to the
+woods of Slui when pressed by the hounds.
+This reach is called the Ledanreich, from
+a remarkable craig, a sheer naked even
+wall of sandstone, lying in horizontal
+strata eighty or ninety feet high: At the
+eastern extremity of this rock there is a
+great division, partly separated from the
+main curtain by a deep woody slope, which
+dips into the precipice with little more
+inclination from the perpendicular than to
+admit of careful footing. In the face of
+the divided craig, the decomposition of
+the softer stone between the courses of
+the strata has wasted it away into narrow
+galleries, which, passing behind the
+tall pillars of the pines growing from the
+rifts and ledges, extend along the face of
+the precipice, veiled by a deep tapestry of
+ivy, which spreads over the mighty wall
+of rock, and hangs from shelf to shelf over
+the covered ways. Beyond the craigs,
+the bank of the forest, an abrupt steep,
+covered with oak and copsewood, slopes
+down to the river, its brow darkened with
+a deep-blue cloud of pines, and its descent
+carpeted with moss, primroses, and pyrolas,
+here and there hollowed into quaint
+'cuachs,' filled with hazels, thorns, and
+giant pines. Along this woody scarp, and
+through its thick copse, the roe had made
+narrow galleries, which communicated
+with the ivy corridors on the face of the
+craig, to which there were corresponding
+ways upon the opposite side. In that
+fortress of the rock, for shelter from the
+sun and flies, and seclusion from the stir
+of the world during the day in the heat
+of summer, the red-deer and roe made their
+secret haunt, concealed behind the deep
+dim veil of leaves, unseen and unsuspected
+in the cool hollows of the cliff. The prying
+eye might search the craig from below,
+and the beaters or the woodmen might
+whistle, and whoop, and shout above, but
+nothing appeared or moved except the
+gray falcon, which rose channering out of
+the rifts. Above the craig the wooded
+bank was so abrupt, that to the front view
+there was no indication of a slope, and
+any who passed quickly over the brow
+was immediately out of sight. At each
+descent beyond the extremities of the
+whole range of rocks there was a common
+roe's run and pass, which was supposed
+to be 'deadly sure' if the deer took the
+path, since the precipice below was believed
+to be an infallible barrier against
+any intermediate escape. Often, however,
+when pressed upon the terrace above, the
+deer neither went through the passes nor
+turned against the beaters, but vanished
+as if by magic&mdash;nobody could tell where;
+and it was the common opinion of the
+drivers and fishermen, that, when forced
+near the river, they threw themselves over
+the craigs 'for spite,'&mdash;a belief often
+confirmed by old Davie Simpson, who
+declared that he had often found their
+bodies beneath the rocks, and in the
+Cluach, the Clerk's Pool, and the 'Furling
+Hole.' He did not, however, relate
+what <em>wounds</em> they had, and the truth was,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+that those which disappeared at the brow
+of the Ledanreich dashed down the sudden
+dip of the bank between the precipices,
+and, turning through the ivy corridors,
+went out through the copse galleries upon
+the other side, and either descended to
+the water or skirted below the pass, and
+went back into the forest. Those which
+were found dead were such as had been
+mortally wounded at some in-wood pass,
+and, unable to take, or cross the water,
+had died on the beach, or been carried
+down by the river. In the same mysterious
+passages which gave concealment
+and escape to the stags and bucks, the
+does were used to lay with their kids,
+and from thence at morning and evening
+they brought them out to pluck the tender
+grass upon the green banks beyond. Often
+from the brow above, or from behind the
+ivy screen, we have watched their 'red
+garment' stealing through the boughs,
+followed by their little pair drawing their
+slender legs daintily through the wet dew,
+and turning their large velvet ears to
+catch every passing sound upon the breeze
+as it brought the hum of the water, or
+the crow of the distant cock&mdash;now
+trotting before, now lingering behind
+their dam, now nestling together, now
+starting off as the gale suddenly rustled
+the leaves behind them&mdash;then listening
+and re-uniting in a timorous plump, pricking
+their ears, and bobbing their little
+black noses in the wind,&mdash;then, as the
+doe dropped on her knees in the moss,
+and laid her side on the warm spot where
+the morning sun glanced in through the
+branches, they gambolled about her, leaping
+over her back, and running round in
+little circles, uttering that soft, wild, plaintive
+cry like the treble note of an accordion,
+till, weary of their sport, they lay
+down at her side, and slept while she
+watched as only a mother can. No marvel
+it was that they loved that safe and
+fair retreat, with all its songs and flowers,
+its plenty and repose. All around was
+sweet, and beautiful, and abundant, such
+as the poetical imagination of the painter
+can rarely compose, and <em>never</em>, unless like
+Salvator he has lived in the wilderness
+with its free denizens. Upon the summit
+above the craig there was a broad and
+verdant terrace surrounded by ivied pines
+and feathering birches, and upon a little
+green glade in the midst grow two of the
+most beautiful objects ever produced by
+art or nature. These were a pair of twin
+thorns exactly similar in size, age, and
+form, and standing about three yards
+from each other: their stems as straight
+as shafts, and their round and even heads
+like vast bushes of wild thyme, but each
+so overgrown with ivy and woodbine, that
+their slender trunks appeared like fretted
+columns, over which the thorny foliage
+served as a trellis to suspend the heavy
+plumes of the ivy and the golden tassels
+of the woodbine. Many a 'ladye's bower'
+we have seen, and many a rich and costly
+plant reared by the care of man, but none
+so beautiful as those lonely sisters of the
+forest, planted by His hand in His great
+garden, where none beheld but those for
+whom He made it lovely&mdash;the ravens of
+the rock, the deer who couched under its
+shade by night, and the birds who sang
+their matins and their even-song out of its
+sweet boughs."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>If we go on quoting at this rate, we
+shall never reach the hill, and as yet
+we have not started from the hut.
+To say the truth, we are in no hurry,
+and neither, we suspect, upon many
+occasions were the Stuarts, indomitable
+huntsmen as they are. What
+though at night the river swept with
+the sound of thunder below, making
+the solid rock vibrate to its deep
+foundation,&mdash;what though the wind
+swept mightily down the ravine,
+swaying the trees like saplings, and
+threatening to tear them away,&mdash;what
+though the windows of heaven were
+open, and the deluge came down, and
+the bark of the hill-fox sounded
+sharp above the roaring of the water
+and the wood,&mdash;yet within that little
+bothy that rests upon the face of the
+craig, the wearied huntsmen slept
+peacefully; and in the morning, says
+one of them,&mdash;"I was awakened as
+usual by the whistle of the robin in
+the bird-cherry, and the sharp note of
+the blue bonnet sharpening his little
+saw on the top of the holly. I went
+out to the narrow terre-plain over the
+craig. The wind was gone, and the
+sun smiling on the still leaves and
+dewy grass&mdash;the flood torrent of the
+river dancing and laughing in its light,
+and the calm bright air breathing
+with the sweet perfume of the damp
+plants, and all the freshness and
+fragrance of the forest wilderness."
+We back it against the forest of
+Ardennes!</p>
+
+<p>Every true hunter is humane.
+What! you say&mdash;do you call it humane
+to persecute the unfortunate stag, the
+monarch of the wilds, to the death?&mdash;to
+drive rifle-bullets into the target
+of the harmless roe? to murder otters
+by the dozen, and to slaughter seals<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+by the score? Indubitably we do.
+Let us reason a little upon this. Yesterday,
+you recollect that you dined
+upon very juvenile veal, smothered in
+a mess of dingy vegetable matter
+which we apprehend to have been
+sorrel, after the beastly fashion of the
+Gauls. Posterior to that, you devoured
+the larger moiety of a duckling.
+This morning we saw you, with our
+own eyes, regaling yourself at the
+club, between the intervals of muffin,
+with what assuredly were cutlets of
+lamb. After all this, can you have
+the face to stand up and defend your
+own humanity? For how many days
+had the sun dawned upon that luckless
+calf, the mangled fragments of
+which upon your platter rather resembled
+the rags of a kid-glove,
+than food meet for the stomach
+of a Christian? How long had
+the feeble quackle of Draco been
+heard round the row of peas
+near which he unsuspiciously perambulated,
+little dreaming how much
+the pods thereof were mixed up
+with his future destiny? How many
+races were run upon the meadow by
+that perished daughter of the sheep?
+Three infantine lives cut off simply
+for your sole gormandising! This is
+but a slight case. Set you down to a
+rook-pie, and you will engulf a dozen
+unfortunates before you bury your
+visage in the pewter. Pay for you at
+Blackwall, and the whitebait will disappear
+by the thousand. It is in vain
+that you attempt to shift the atrocity
+of your inordinate appetite from your
+own shoulders to those of the grazier,
+the butcher, the poulterer, or the
+fisherman. Cobden, or Joe Hume,
+or any other of the political economists
+belonging to the tribe who would
+starve the workman in order that they
+may guzzle themselves, will tell you
+that invariably the demand regulates
+the supply. You, therefore, are the responsible
+party: the young have fallen
+into your Scylla&mdash;the immature of
+days have been swept into the vortex
+of your Charybdis! Moreover, if you
+were a sportsman&mdash;which you are not&mdash;our
+minds would be grievously
+troubled for the future safety of the
+singing-birds. Welford, the friend of
+Bright, as we all remember, proposed
+a grand crusade throughout Britain
+against the feathered tribe; and you
+are not at all unlikely to join in a
+general St Bartholomew of the sparrows.
+Do you venture to retort upon
+us? Do you think we take life unnecessarily,
+or that we are base enough
+to use our weapons until the quarry
+has reached its prime? No calf or
+fawn ever fell by the hand of the
+genuine hunter&mdash;no cheeper or pout
+ever sullied the interior of the sportsman's
+bag. Not until the better part
+of his life has been run,&mdash;till his
+muscles are hard as iron, his slot deep,
+and his branches towering on the
+beam,&mdash;not until he has lived and
+loved, do we strike down, as if with
+lightning and painless death, the great
+hart in the middle of the wilderness.
+But to all innocent things&mdash;to the
+harmless indwellers of the forest and
+moor, the true hunter is a guardian
+and a friend. The strong man is ever
+brave, and none but the strong can
+pass to where the herds of the mountain
+dwell.</p>
+
+<p>One more scene at the Hut, and we
+shall illustrate this subject further.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"But though our bothie was far from
+resembling the Peri Paribanon's cell, or
+the rock-palace where the old kaiser
+keeps his court in the bowels of the Unterberg&mdash;we
+loved it, not only for its
+bucks and stags, and all its greenwood
+cheer, but for the love of nature by which
+it was surrounded. Beyond its 'vert
+and venison,' there was a world of life
+and interest for those who had the eye
+to mark and the heart to read its book.
+On every side we had companions; from
+the passenger which came from Norway,
+to the little native guest&mdash;the robin which
+roosted in the holly-bush above us. '<em>The</em>
+robin?'&mdash;you smile and say. Yes, there
+was but one. He lived in the bush, as we
+lived in the bothie, and we were his neighbours
+too long not to be very well acquainted.
+His species, as well as all the
+small tribes, conformable to the minuteness
+of their range and habits, are very
+local, and may be found all the year in,
+or near, the same place; and those who
+feed them will rarely wait many minutes
+for their appearance. There were many
+robins which lived about the bothie, and
+all were continually in its vicinity, and
+very tame; but none so gentle and grateful
+as our little neighbour in the holly.
+They would, however, enter the hut, sit
+on the bed or the table, and hop about
+the floor, and, when I went out, follow
+me to the brae. They liked very much
+to see me turn up the soil, which always
+provided them with a little feast; accordingly,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+they were never absent at the
+planting of a shrub or a flower; and when
+I brought home, in my shooting-bag, a
+tuft of primroses, pyrolas, or lilies of the
+valley, they were always in attendance to
+see them put into the bank. For watching
+my occupation, they preferred something
+more elevated than the ground, but
+not so high as the branches of the trees,
+which were too far from the earth to give
+them a clear sight of what I turned up;
+for their accommodation, therefore, I
+made little crosses and crotchets, and,
+when I was planting, set them up beside
+me, moving them as I proceeded from
+place to place. Each was immediately
+occupied by an attentive observer; and,
+whenever an insect or a worm was discovered,
+one of the nearest darted down
+and caught it, even from between my
+fingers, and disappeared for a few moments
+under the rock or behind the great
+holly, to enjoy his success undisturbed.
+At his disappearance his place was immediately
+occupied by another, but at
+the return of the first it was amiably resigned
+by his successor. The blue-bonnets
+were almost as numerous as the
+robins, but they never arrived at the same
+intimacy and confidence. They never
+entered the bothie in my presence, and
+even when I fed them they would not
+approach as long as I remained outside
+the door; but as soon as I went in they
+descended four or five together, chattering
+and fluttering about the entrance,
+peeping in at the little window, and
+stretching their necks as far as they could,
+to see where I was, and if all was right.
+Then they would begin their breakfast on
+what I had left for them, talking a great
+deal about it, but occasionally ogling the
+door, in a manner from which I concluded
+that there was but small esteem or gratitude
+in their conversation.&mdash;&mdash;Far different
+was the friendship of our little neighbour
+in the holly. In the morning he
+used to come down and perch on the arm
+of the bird-cherry, which stretched over
+the precipice before the door, waiting for
+its opening and the preparation of the
+breakfast, which he always shared; and
+when we were seated he would venture
+over the sill, and gather the crumbs about
+the table at our feet. Often when the
+first blood-red streaks of the autumn morning
+shone like lurid fire through the little
+window, we were awakened by his sad
+and solitary whistle, as he sat on his
+usual branch, his jet-black eye cast towards
+the door, impatient for our appearance.
+Many of his little cousins there
+were in the wood, with whom we were
+also well acquainted, and between us
+happened many an incident, which increased
+our interest and familiarity.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember a day, one of those deep
+still blue days so solemn in the forest;
+the ground was covered with a foot of
+snow, and all the trees were hanging like
+gigantic ostrich feathers; but all the
+world was blue,&mdash;the sky was a sleeping
+mass of those heavy indigo clouds which
+forebode a 'feeding storm,'&mdash;not a tempest,
+but a fall of snow; for, in Scotland,
+snow is called '<em>storm</em>,' however light and
+still it falls: thus, in tracking the deer,
+we say he 'has brushed the <em>storm</em> from
+the heather;' and a '<em>feeding storm</em>' is
+when the clouds are continually feeding
+the earth with its velvet pall.&mdash;The reflection
+of those deep-blue clouds cast a
+delicate tint of the same colour over the
+whitened world. I was standing with
+my back against a huge pine&mdash;one of the
+old remnant of the great forest of Moray,
+which had, no doubt, heard the bell toll
+for the first Stuart earl.&mdash;I counted the
+rings in a smaller tree which once stood
+in the same hollow;&mdash;I shunned its wreck
+as I would have avoided a corpse which
+I could not bury, and always, when I
+passed near it, averted my face; but one
+day running to cut off a buck, and just
+heading him, I dropped on my knee to
+receive him as he came out from a mass
+of junipers, and when reloading, I found
+that I had knelt by the stump of my old
+friend.&mdash;I counted two hundred and
+sixty-four rings in his wood!&mdash;how many
+earls had he seen?&mdash;Well, I was leaning
+against his elder brother, as I suppose
+by the size. I had been there for a long
+time, waiting to hear the dogs bring back
+a buck from&mdash;I don't know now from
+where.&mdash;&mdash;As I had been through all the
+swamps, and stripes, and wet hollows on
+that side of the forest, and waded through
+two and three feet of snow-wreaths, my
+kilt and hose, and, as it seemed, my flesh was
+saturated to the bones with 'snaw-bree,'
+and I began to beat, first one foot, and then
+the other, to quicken the blood, which
+was warm enough in my trunk.&mdash;I had
+scarce commenced this exercise, when I
+heard a little 'tic!' close to my ear,
+and the soft low voice of a bird&mdash;a sound,
+neither a whistle nor a chirp, but which
+I knew very well before I turned and
+saw the robin, who sat on a dry branch
+within a yard of my cheek. I guessed
+what had brought him: he was very
+cold, his ruffled back humped as round as
+a ball, and his tail drooping almost perpendicular
+with his legs, as if it was a
+little brown peg to lean on, like that on
+which the travelling Tyrolean merchant
+rests his pack. He looked at me with
+his large black eye, then, with a flirt of
+his tail and a bow with his head, indicated
+that, if I had no objection, he
+should like to descend to the place which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+I occupied; the object of which he expressed,
+by turning his head sidelong,
+and directing one eye into the black
+earth which my foot had beaten bare in
+the snow. I immediately drew back a
+couple of feet, and he instantly dropped
+into the spot of mould, peeped and picked
+under every leaf and clod of earth, and,
+when there was nothing more, hopped up
+on the guard of my rifle, on which I was
+leaning, and, turning his head, looked at
+me with his upper eye.&mdash;I again stepped
+forward, and recommenced my foot-exercise,
+during which he returned to his
+branch, examining my progress with some
+impatience. As soon as my foot was
+removed, he again dropped into the hollow,
+and busily collected all the little
+grubs and chrysales which, though too
+small for me to see as I stood, I knew
+abounded beneath the sere leaves and
+thatch of moss and sticks. In this manner
+I repeated his supply several times,
+on one of which, when I was too long, or
+he too impatient, he dropped from his
+perch, and hovered over the space in
+which my foot was at work, and, as I
+continued, lighted on the point of the
+other shoe, and remained there, peeping
+into the hollow, until I withdrew my foot,
+and then descended to finish his repast.
+When he was satisfied, he ruffed his
+feathers, looked up sidelong to me, and,
+after a shake of satisfaction, resumed his
+perch close to my head, and, after pruning
+and oiling his feathers, mounted
+another branch higher, and opened his
+little throat with that most sad, sweet,
+and intermitting warble which gives such
+a melancholy charm to a still winter's
+day."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Take a picture of the roe, and you
+will hardly doubt the humanity of our
+sportsmen. But why talk of it thus?
+No one, we hope, save a member of
+the Manchester manufacturing school
+could feel otherwise&mdash;certainly not a
+genuine hills-man; and we quote the
+passage simply for its extreme beauty
+and perfect fidelity to nature. No
+creature is more beautiful than the
+kid of the roe-deer, especially when
+seen in their rest, or moving through
+the ferns, on a summer evening, beside
+their gentle mother the doe.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"In the bedding season the does retire
+into the most secret thickets, or other
+lonely places, to produce their young, and
+cover them so carefully that they are very
+rarely found; we have, however, deceived
+their vigilance. There was a solitary doe
+which lived in the hollow below the
+Bràigh-cloiche-léithe in Tarnaway. I suppose
+that we had killed her 'marrow;'
+but I was careful not to disturb her
+haunt, for she was very fat and round,
+stepped with much caution, and never
+went far to feed. Accordingly, when at
+evening and morning she came out to pick
+the sweet herbs at the foot of the brae, or
+by the little green well in its face, I trode
+softly out of her sight, and if I passed at
+noon, made a circuit from the black willows,
+or thick junipers, where she reposed
+during the heat. At last, one fine sunny
+morning I saw her come tripping out
+from her bower of young birches as light
+as a fairy, and very gay and 'canty'&mdash;but
+so thin, nobody but an old acquaintance
+could have known her. For various
+mornings afterwards I saw her on the
+bank, but she was always restless and
+anxious&mdash;listening and searching the
+wind&mdash;trotting up and down&mdash;picking a
+leaf here and a leaf there, and after her
+short and unsettled meal, she would take
+a frisk round leap into the air&mdash;dart down
+into her secret bower, and appear no more
+until the twilight. In a few days, however,
+her excursions became a little more
+extended, generally to the terrace above
+the bank, but never out of sight of the
+thicket below. At length she ventured
+to a greater distance, and one day I stole
+down the brae among the birches. In
+the middle of the thicket there was a
+group of young trees growing out of a
+carpet of deep moss, which yielded like a
+down pillow. The prints of the doe's
+slender-forked feet were thickly tracked
+about the hollow, and in the centre there
+was a bed of the velvet 'fog,' which
+seemed a little higher than the rest, but
+so natural, that it would not have been
+noticed by any unaccustomed eye. I
+carefully lifted the green cushion, and
+under its veil, rolled close together, the
+head of each resting on the flank of the
+other, nestled two beautiful little kids, their
+large velvet ears laid smooth on their
+dappled necks, their spotted sides sleek
+and shining as satin, and their little delicate
+legs as slender as hazel wands, shod
+with tiny glossy shoes as smooth and
+black as ebony, while their large dark
+eyes looked at me out of the corners with
+a full, mild, quiet gaze, which had not
+yet learned to fear the hand of man: still
+they had a nameless doubt which followed
+every motion of mine&mdash;their little limbs
+shrunk from my touch, and their velvet
+fur rose and fell quickly; but as I was
+about to replace the moss, one turned its
+head, lifted its sleek ears towards me,
+and licked my hand as I laid their soft
+mantle over them. I often saw them
+afterwards when they grew strong, and
+came abroad upon the brae, and frequently
+I called off old Dreadnought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+when he crossed their warm track. Upon
+these occasions he would stand and look
+at me with wonder&mdash;turn his head from
+side to side&mdash;snuff the ground again, to
+see if it was possible that he could be
+mistaken&mdash;and when he found that there
+was no disputing the scent, cock one ear
+at me with a keener inquiry, and seeing
+that I was in earnest, trot heavily onward
+with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"The affection of the roe for their young
+is very strong; and timid and feeble as
+they are by nature, inspired by the danger
+of their offspring, they become brave and
+daring, and, in their defence, will attack
+not only animals but men. We were one
+day passing along the west walk of
+Eilean-Agais, and, beyond a turn in the
+path, heard the sound of feet running towards
+us, and immediately out shot a cat
+round the corner, and, close at her heels,
+a doe pursuing her with great eagerness.
+Knowing that her pursuer could not overtake
+her, and having no instinctive dread
+of her kind, the cat did not give herself
+the trouble to run faster than just sufficient
+to keep beyond her reach, while the
+doe pursued her with an angry scrambling
+pace, and, whenever she was near overtaking
+her, endeavoured to kneel on her
+back. This is a mode of attack common
+to deer as well as cattle, which, when
+they have overthrown their object, not
+only gore them with their horns, but
+bruise and crush them with their knees.
+At our appearance there was a pause;
+the cat cantered up the brae to the top of
+a little rock, where she lay down in the
+sun to see what would happen between
+us and her pursuer. The doe, after a few
+bounds, turned round and looked indignantly
+at us, and stamped and belled in
+great displeasure; this she continued for
+some moments, glancing occasionally at
+the cat with a strong desire to resume
+her chase; but being restrained by a sense
+of prudence, she slowly ascended the hill,
+stopping at intervals to stamp and bell at
+us, who knew very well that she had two
+kids in the junipers upon the craig."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Now let us up to the hill, where the
+mighty herds are feeding. Scotland
+will, in all probability, never see a
+tainchel more; indeed, save at a royal
+hunting, it were scarcely desirable
+now. The feudal system has melted
+away, the clans are broken and scattered,
+and we care not again to see a
+pageant which is indissolubly connected
+in our memories with national
+gallantry and misfortune. But the
+deer are still on the mountain and in
+the wood, and we shall seek them in
+their former haunt. Wood-stalking,
+though the Stuarts speak of it with
+considerable enthusiasm, was never
+much to our taste. It is true that the
+largest stags are generally to be met
+with in the wood, and we have followed
+the sport ere now in the Spessart,
+among the pines of Darmstadt,
+and the thickets of Strath Garve; but
+it must always partake more or less
+of the character of driving, and we
+never have felt, while engaged in it,
+that enthusiasm and keenness which
+sends the blood to the heart of the
+hunter when he first discovers a herd
+in the gorge of some solitary glen.
+Then he feels that he must put forth
+the whole resources of his art&mdash;that
+he must baffle the acutest of all instincts
+by the aid of human cunning&mdash;that
+he has a thousand difficulties
+to overcome before he can arrive
+within reach of his quarry, and that a
+single false step or miscalculation is
+sufficient to destroy the labour, the
+patience, and the vigilance of a day.</p>
+
+<p>Great, fat fallow-deer, waxing into
+obesity in a park, do not seem to mind
+the approach of a human being, even
+were he an alderman redolent of black-currant
+jelly. But the red-deer, as
+many incipient stalkers know to their
+cost, has a very different amount of
+perception. Unless you take the wind
+of him, he is off like a shot, though
+your distance may be upwards of a
+mile. In the words of the old stalker,
+"Above all things, let not the devil
+tempt you to trifle with a deer's
+nose: you may cross his sight, walk
+up to him in a gray coat, or, if
+standing against a tree or rock near
+your own colour, wait till he walks
+up to you; but you cannot cross
+his nose, even at an incredible distance,
+but he will feel the tainted
+air. Colours or forms may be deceptive
+or alike; there are gray, brown,
+and green rocks and stocks as well
+as men, and all these may be equivocal;
+but there is <em>but one scent of man</em>,
+and that he never doubts or mistakes;
+that is filled with danger and terror,
+and one whiff of its poison at a mile
+off, and, whether feeding or lying, his
+head is instantly up, his nose to the
+wind, and, in the next moment, his
+broad antlers turn, and he is away to
+the hill or the wood; and if there are
+no green peas, corn, or potatoes in the
+neighbourhood, he may not be seen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+on the same side of the forest for a
+month." A word to the wise, from
+the lips of a Celtic Solon!</p>
+
+<p>So much for your chance, if, in the
+plenitude of your full flavour, you take
+the hill, regardless of the currents of
+the air, which, moreover, are perpetually
+shifting. But there are other
+difficulties. Though not impossible,
+it is very ticklish work to get within
+shot of a deer by any other means
+save diligent creeping, and sometimes,
+when the ground is unusually flat and
+open, that method of approach is impracticable.
+Then there are divers enemies&mdash;that
+is, of yours, for in reality
+they are scouts to the deer&mdash;whom
+you must try particularly to avoid. This
+is not easy. Sometimes when you
+are sinuating like a serpent towards
+the especial stag of your heart, a
+blundering covey of grouse will start
+from the heather, and give an effectual
+alarm; sometimes the shrill whistle
+of the plover will change your anticipated
+triumph into mourning; and
+sometimes a charge of that disagreeable
+cavalry the mountain sheep, little
+less sagacious and wary than the deer
+themselves, will put the whole of the
+glen into disorder. But the worst
+enemies you have to guard against are
+the hinds, who are usually so disposed
+as to be out upon the feeding-grounds,
+and thus to mask the stag. In such
+a position, it becomes a point of honour
+to circumvent the lady, which is any
+thing but an easy task. The Stuarts
+give us an admirable recollection of
+such a scene in the forest of Glen-Fidich,
+which is so exciting that,
+though rather long, we make no apology
+for transferring it to the columns
+of Maga.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>"After about an hour's stalking, we
+came upon the shoulder of a long slope,
+which looks into the gorges of two or
+three short glens, opening to a narrow
+plain, on which we saw a noble sight&mdash;a
+herd of four or five hundred deer,
+among which were many very fine stags.
+After having feasted my eyes with this
+splendid sight&mdash;the illustrious cavalry of
+the hill, the crowned and regal array of
+the wilderness&mdash;I began to calculate how
+to make the approach, how to slip between
+the chain of vidette hinds, and
+numerous picquets of small stags, which
+commanded almost every knoll and hollow.
+In the centre of the main body,
+with a large plump of hinds&mdash;which he
+herded within a wide vacant circle&mdash;there
+was a mighty black hart, with a
+head like a blasted pine, and a cluster of
+points in each crown. Though each stag
+of the surrounding circle had not less
+than ten points, there were none which
+approached his size, and they all kept at
+a respectful distance, while he marched
+round and round the central group of
+hinds. 'He will have them all in the
+ring before long,' said MacLellan; 'yon's
+one of the old heroes of the Monadh-liath;
+he has not been four-and-twenty hours in
+the forest.' I looked with an eager and
+longing eye at his gigantic stature, but
+there was no apparent possibility of approaching
+even the outward circle of
+stags. The herd was scattered over all
+the ground between the hills, and every
+little knoll and eminence had its restless
+picquets, and plumps of discomfited stags,
+which had been beaten by the great hart,
+and were chafing about, driving off and
+broding the buttocks of all the inferior
+stags which came in their way, then returning
+and staring with jealous disgust
+at the mighty stranger, who gave them
+no notice, except when one or two more
+audacious, or less severely beaten, made
+a few steps before his companions; upon
+which he immediately charged, drove
+them before him, and scattered the nearest
+in every direction. Upon these occasions,
+some hind of greater levity than
+the rest took the opportunity of extending
+her pasture, or paying her compliments
+to her companions, for which she immediately
+received a good prod in the
+haunch, and was turned back again into
+the centre.</p>
+
+<p>"'There is no doing any thing there,'
+said I.</p>
+
+<p>"''Deed no', replied MacLellan, shutting
+up his glass, 'we be to go down to
+the foot of the burn.'</p>
+
+<p>"This was a stream which runs through
+the middle of the narrow plain, and
+empties itself into the Fidich, about four
+miles below, at the east end of the forest.
+Before resolving upon this, however, we
+made an attempt to cross the little glen
+to the north-west; but, after passing
+round one hill, and nearly to the top of
+another, we fell in with a small herd of
+insignificant stags, but none among them
+being worth the disturbance of the great
+herd; and being unable to pass them unobserved,
+we were obliged to adopt the
+last alternative, and descend to the Fidich.
+In about an hour and a half we
+performed this retrogration, and, having
+crossed at the forester's house, ascended
+the burn till we again approached the
+deer, and stealing from knoll to knoll,
+again came in sight of the herd. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+outskirts of its wide circle had been much
+broken and deranged by the jousts and
+expulsions during our absence; and we
+saw that it was impossible to get near the
+better stags without taking the channel
+of the stream. We immediately descended
+into the water, and crept up the
+middle, sometimes compelled to crouch
+so low, that the pools reached our hips,
+and, as the stones were round and slippery,
+it was very uneasy to proceed without
+floundering and splashing. At length,
+however, we were within the circle of the
+deer: there was not a breath of wind, and
+the least sound was audible in the profound
+stillness. We slipped through the
+water like eels, till we came to a little
+rock, which, crossing the burn, made a
+shelving fall, which there was no means
+of passing, but by drawing ourselves up
+the shoot of the stream. With some
+difficulty I pushed my rifle before me
+along the edge of the bank, and then,
+while the water ran down our breasts, we
+glided up through the gush of the stream,
+and reached the ledge above. The return
+of the water, which I had obstructed,
+made, however, a rush and plash different
+from its accustomed monotonous hum, and
+I had scarce time to lay flat in the burn,
+when a <em>hind</em> sprung up within a few
+yards, and trotted briskly away, then
+another, and another. I thought that all
+was over, and that, in the next moment,
+we should hear all the clattering hoofs
+going over the turf like a squadron of
+cavalry. All remained still, however,
+and, in a few seconds, I saw the first hind
+wheel about, and look back steadily towards
+the fall. I was rejoiced to observe
+that she had not seen us, and had only
+been disturbed by the unusual sound of
+the water. She continued, however,
+anxious and suspicious&mdash;watched and
+listened&mdash;picked off the tops of the heather&mdash;then
+walked on, with her ears laid
+back, and her neck and step stilting away
+as stiff as if she had been hung up in the
+larder for a week. This, however, was
+not the worst; all the surrounding <em>hinds</em>
+which noticed her gait gathered here and
+there, and stood on the tops of the little
+knolls, like statues, as straight as pucks,
+with nothing visible but their narrow
+necks and two peg-legs, and their broad
+ears perked immovably towards us, like
+long-eared bats. MacLellan gave me a
+rueful look. 'Cha n'eil comas air.'
+'Never mind,' said I, 'we shall see who
+will be tired first.' The forester gave a
+glance of satisfaction, slid up his glass on
+the dry bank, and we lay as still as the
+stones around us, till the little trouts,
+which had been disturbed by our convulsion,
+became so accustomed to our shapes,
+that they again emerged from under the
+flat pebbles, and returned to their station
+in the middle of the stream, skulling
+their little tails between my legs with no
+more concern than if I had been a forked
+tree. At length the immobility of the
+hinds began to give way: first one ear
+turned back, then another, then they became
+sensible of the flies, and began to
+flirt and jerk as usual, and, finally, one
+applied her slender toe to her ear, and
+another rubbed her velvet nose upon her
+knee;&mdash;it was more than half an hour,
+however, before, one by one, they began
+to steal away, perking and snuffing, and
+turning to gaze at the least air that
+whiffed about them. At length they all
+disappeared, except one gray, lean, haggard
+old grandmother of hinds, who had
+no teeth, and limped with one leg, probably
+from a wound which she received fifty
+or perhaps a hundred years before I was
+born. Her vigilance, however, was only
+sharpened by age; time, and the experience
+of many generations, had made her
+acquainted with all the wiles and crafts
+of the hill,&mdash;her eyes and ears were as
+active as a kid's, and I have no doubt
+she could smell like Tobit's devil.&mdash;MacLellan
+looked at her through his glass,
+and spit into the burn, and grinned
+against the sun&mdash;as if he was lying in
+the bilboes instead of cold water.&mdash;The
+old sorceress continued to watch us without
+relaxation, and at last lay down on
+the brow of the knoll, and employed her
+rumination in obstinate contemplation of
+the bank under which we were ambushed.
+There was now no alternative but to
+recommence our progress up the burn;
+and as I was determined to circumvent
+the hind, I prepared for every inconvenience
+which could be inflicted by the
+opposite vexations of a sharp, rough,
+slippery, and gravelly stream. Fortunately,
+at the place where we then were,
+it was so narrow, that we could hold by
+the heather on both sides, and thus drag
+ourselves forward through the water, between
+each of which advances I pushed
+my rifle on before me. In this manner we
+reached the turn of the brook, where I
+concluded that we should be round the
+shoulder of the knoll, and out of sight of
+the hind, who lay upon its east brow.
+This was effected so successfully, that,
+when we looked behind, we only saw her
+back, and her head and ears still pointing
+at the spot which we had left. One hundred
+yards more would bring us within sight of
+the great hart; the general position of the
+herd had not changed, and I hoped to find
+him near the central knoll of the flat, at
+the base of which the burn circled. We
+were almost surrounded by deer; but the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+greater number were small vigilant hinds,
+the abomination and curse of a stalker.
+At length, however, we reached the
+knoll, and rested, to take breath, at its
+foot; I examined my rifle, to see that
+the lock was clean and dry. We took a
+view of all around us, and, drawing ourselves
+cautiously out of the burn, slid up
+through the heather on the south side of
+the eminence.&mdash;Scarce, however, had our
+legs cleared the stream, when we discovered
+a pair of ears not above fifteen
+yards from the other side.&mdash;'<i lang="ga" xml:lang="ga">Mo mhallachd
+ort!</i>' [My curse upon you]&mdash;whispered
+MacLellan. She had not discovered
+us, however, and we glided
+round the base of the knoll&mdash;but on the
+other side lay three hinds and a calf,
+and I could see no trace of the great
+hart.&mdash;On the edge of the burn, however,
+further up, there were five very good
+stags, and a herd of about thirty deer,
+on the slope of the north brae. All round
+us the ground was covered with hinds;
+for the prevalence of the westerly wind,
+during the last few days, had drawn the
+deer to that end of the forest. Upon the
+spot where I lay, though I could only see
+a portion of the field, I counted four hundred
+and seventy; and it was evident
+that no movement could be made upon
+that side. We tried again the opposite
+slope of the knoll;&mdash;the hind which we
+had first seen was still in the same place,
+but she had laid down her head, and
+showed only the gray line of her back
+over the heather. We drew ourselves
+cautiously up the slope and looked over
+the summit. On the other side there
+was a small flat moss, about seventy yards
+in breadth; then another hillock; and to
+the left two more, with little levels, and
+wet grassy hollows between them. Upon
+the side of the first knoll there were two
+young stags and some hinds; but the points
+of some good horns showed above the crest.&mdash;The
+intervening ground was spotted
+with straggling hinds, and we might lay
+where we were till to-morrow morning,
+without a chance of getting near any of
+the good deer. While we deliberated,
+MacLellan thought that, by crawling with
+extreme caution up a wet hollow to the
+left, we might have a chance to approach
+the stags whose horns we had seen behind
+the other knoll, and, as nothing better
+could be done, we decided upon this
+attempt. The sun was going down from
+the old towers of Auchandùn, and we had
+no more time than would give light for
+this venture.&mdash;We slid away towards the
+hollow, and, drawing ourselves, inch by
+inch, though the heather and tall thin
+grass, had reached the middle of the level
+between the hillocks, when we heard a
+stamp and a short grunt close beside us&mdash;I
+had scarce time to turn my head, and
+catch a glimpse of a base little gray hind
+who, in crossing the hollow, had stumbled
+upon us.&mdash;It was but a moment: a rapid
+wheel and rush through the long grass,
+and I heard the career of a hundred feet
+going through the hollow. I sprung on
+my knee, and skaled a dozen small stags
+and hinds which came upon us full speed;
+for those behind, not knowing from whence
+came the alarm, made straight for the hill.
+The herd were now gathering in all directions;
+charging&mdash;flying&mdash;re-uniting, dispersing,
+and reassembling in utter disorder,
+like a rout of cavalry.&mdash;I made a run for
+the middle knoll,&mdash;two stags, with pretty
+good heads, met me right in the face.&mdash;I
+did not stop to look at them, but rushed
+up the brae.&mdash;What a sight was seen from
+its top!&mdash;upwards of six hundred deer
+were charging past&mdash;before, behind,
+around, in all directions.&mdash;The stately
+figure which I sought&mdash;the mighty black
+hart, was slowly ascending an eminence
+about three hundred yards off, from
+whence he reconnoitred the ground below;
+while the disarray of stags and hinds
+gathered round him, like rallying masses
+of hussars in the rear of a supporting
+column. I was so intent upon the king
+of the forest, that I saw nothing else.&mdash;No
+other heads, forms, numbers, took any
+place in my senses; all my faculties were
+on the summit of that height.&mdash;At this
+moment I felt my kilt drawn gently; I
+took no notice&mdash;but a more decided pull
+made me look round:&mdash;MacLellan motioned
+up the slope, and I saw the points
+of a good head passing behind a little
+ridge, about eighty yards away. I looked
+back at the hart&mdash;he was just moving to
+the hill. What would I have given to
+have diminished a hundred and fifty yards
+of the distance which divided us! He
+passed slowly down the back of the eminence
+and disappeared, and the gathering
+herd streamed after him. '<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">O Chìal! A
+Chìal!</i>' exclaimed the forester&mdash;'<i lang="ga" xml:lang="ga">bithidh
+è air fàlbh!</i>' The stag whose horns I
+had seen had come out from behind the
+ridge, and stood with his broad side towards
+me, gazing at the herd; but as
+they moved away, he now began to follow.
+The disappearance of the great hart, and
+the disappointment of MacLellan, recalled
+me to the last chance. I followed the
+retreating stag with my rifle, passed it
+before his shoulder, whiz went the two-ounce
+ball, and he rolled over headlong
+in the heath, on the other side of the
+knoll, which the next stretch would have
+placed between us. I looked to the hill
+above: the whole herd was streaming up
+the long green hollow in its west shoulder<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+headed 'by the mighty of the desert.'
+They rounded and passed the brow, and
+sloped upward on the other side, till the
+forest of heads appeared bristling along
+the sky-line of the summit. In a few
+moments afterwards, as the sun was going
+down upon Scùr-na-Lapaich, and the far
+western hills of Loch Duaich, the terrible
+wide-forked tree came out in the clear
+eastern sky on the top of the hill, and,
+crowding after, at least two hundred heads&mdash;crossing,
+and charging, and mingling&mdash;their
+polished points flashing in the parting
+sunbeams, and from many a horn,
+the long steamers of the moss fluttering
+and flying like the pennons and bannerolles
+of lances. The herd continued to
+file along the ridge of the hill, and wheeling
+below the crest, countermarched along
+the sky-line, till their heads and horns
+slowly decreased against the light."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>With such a book as this before us,
+we could go on alternately commenting
+and extracting until we had broken
+the back of the Number. Even now
+we are dying to pilfer the account of
+the late Glengarry's course with
+"Black Dulochan," and the no less
+exciting history of the three day's ruse
+with a roebuck. But abstinence is a
+virtue which is forced upon us in the
+present instance, rather from the lack
+of space than from any exercise of
+voluntary discretion; and we shall now
+leave the deer without further molestation
+for a season, hoping soon to encounter
+them in person with our rifle
+somewhere about the skirts of Cairn-Gorm.</p>
+
+<p>This is, we have no hesitation in
+saying, the best work on deer-stalking
+which has yet been written; and the
+amount of information which it contains
+regarding the habits of the stag
+and roe, combined with the vivid pictures
+of which we have made such ample
+use, cannot fail to render it popular.
+In an antiquarian point of view, it is
+also highly interesting; for it embodies
+a large amount of traditionary lore,
+sketches of the clans, and fragments
+of Highland song, of much superior
+merit to those which have hitherto
+come into our hands. The disquisitions,
+too, upon the disappearance of
+some animals once indigenous to
+Scotland&mdash;such as the wolf, the elk,
+the wild bull, and the beaver&mdash;exhibit
+a great amount of research, and supply
+a gap which has long been wanted
+in the page of natural history.</p>
+
+<p>One word to the authors&mdash;though
+we fear our words must travel a long
+way before they can reach them in a
+foreign land. Why should they not
+recast and add to their second volume,
+so as to make it a single and unrivalled
+work upon the noblest sports of the
+Highlands? If it has proved so fascinating,
+as in truth we have felt it, in
+the more cumbrous shape of notes,
+how much better would it be if issued,
+not as an appendage to the poems,
+but in a distinct and articulate form?
+Perpend upon this, John Sobieski and
+Charles Edward, at your leisure; and
+let us add, that we trust some of your
+more gloomy anticipations may fall
+short of reality; that the walks of
+Eilean-Agais, that little Eden of the
+north, may again be gladdened by
+your presence; and that the sound of
+your hunting-horns may once more be
+heard in the woods of Tarnaway, and
+on the hills near the sources of the
+Findhorn.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">&nbsp;</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>THE BURIED FLOWER.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the silence of my chamber,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When the night is still and deep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the drowsy heave of ocean<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Mutters in its charmèd sleep,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oft I hear the angel voices<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That have thrill'd me long ago,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Voices of my lost companions,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lying deep beneath the snow.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O, the garden I remember,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the gay and sunny spring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When our laughter made the thickets<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the arching alleys ring!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O the merry burst of gladness!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O the soft and tender tone!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O the whisper never utter'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Save to one fond ear alone!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O the light of life that sparkled<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In those bright and bounteous eyes!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O the blush of happy beauty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Tell-tale of the heart's surprise!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O the radiant light that girdled<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Field and forest, land and sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When we all were young together,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the earth was new to me!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where are now the flowers we tended?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Wither'd, broken, branch and stem;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where are now the hopes we cherish'd?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Scatter'd to the winds with them.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For ye, too, were flowers, ye dear ones!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nursed in hope and rear'd in love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Looking fondly ever upward<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To the clear blue heaven above:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Smiling on the sun that cheer'd us,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rising lightly from the rain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Never folding up your freshness<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Save to give it forth again:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Never shaken, save by accents<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From a tongue that was not free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the modest blossom trembles<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At the wooing of the bee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O! 'tis sad to lie and reckon<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All the days of faded youth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All the vows that we believed in,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All the words we spoke in truth.<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">&nbsp;</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sever'd&mdash;were it sever'd only<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By an idle thought of strife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such as time might knit together;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not the broken chord of life!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O my heart! that once so truly<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Kept another's time and tune,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heart, that kindled in the spring-tide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Look around thee in the noon.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where are they who gave the impulse<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To thy earliest thought and flow?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look around the ruin'd garden&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All are wither'd, dropp'd, or low!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Seek the birth-place of the lily,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Dearer to the boyish dream<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than the golden cups of Eden,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Floating on its slumbrous stream;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Never more shalt thou behold her&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She, the noblest, fairest, best:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She that rose in fullest beauty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like a queen, above the rest.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Only still I keep her image<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As a thought that cannot die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He who raised the shade of Helen<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Had no greater power than I.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O! I fling my spirit backward,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And I pass o'er years of pain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All I loved is rising round me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All the lost returns again.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Blow, for ever blow, ye breezes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Warmly as ye did before!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bloom again, ye happy gardens,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With the radiant tints of yore!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Warble out in spray and thicket,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All ye choristers unseen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let the leafy woodland echo<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With an anthem to its queen!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lo! she cometh in her beauty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Stately with a Juno grace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Raven locks, Madonna-braided<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O'er her sweet and blushing face:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Eyes of deepest violet, beaming<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With the love that knows not shame,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lips, that thrill my inmost being<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With the utterance of a name.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And I bend the knee before her,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As a captive ought to bow,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pray thee, listen to my pleading,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sovereign of my soul art thou!<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">&nbsp;</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O my dear and gentle lady,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Let me show thee all my pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere the words that late were prison'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sink into my heart again.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Love, they say, is very fearful<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ere its curtain be withdrawn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trembling at the thought of error<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As the shadows scare the fawn.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Love hath bound me to thee, lady,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Since the well-remember'd day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When I first beheld thee coming<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the light of lustrous May.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not a word I dared to utter&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">More than he who, long ago,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saw the heavenly shapes descending<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Over Ida's slopes of snow:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When a low and solemn music<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Floated through the listening grove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the throstle's song was silenced,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the doling of the dove:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When immortal beauty open'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All its grace to mortal sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the awe of worship blended<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With the throbbing of delight.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">As the shepherd stood before them<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Trembling in the Phrygian dell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even so my soul and being<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Own'd the magic of the spell;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And I watch'd thee, ever fondly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Watch'd thee, dearest, from afar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the mute and humble homage<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the Indian to a star.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou wert still the Lady Flora<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In her morning garb of bloom;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where thou wert was light and glory,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where thou wert not, dearth and gloom.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So for many a day I follow'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For a long and weary while,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere my heart rose up to bless thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For the yielding of a smile,&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ere thy words were few and broken<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As they answer'd back to mine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere my lips had power to thank thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For the gift vouchsafed by thine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then a mighty gush of passion<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Through my inmost being ran;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then my older life was ended,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And a dearer course began.<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">&nbsp;</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Dearer!&mdash;O, I cannot tell thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What a load was swept away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What a world of doubt and darkness<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Faded in the dawning day!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All my error, all my weakness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All my vain delusions fled:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hope again revived, and gladness<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Waved its wings above my head.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Like the wanderer of the desert,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When, across the dreary sand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Breathes the perfume from the thickets<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Bordering on the promised land;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When afar he sees the palm-trees<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Cresting o'er the lonely well,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When he hears the pleasant tinkle<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of the distant camel's bell:<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So a fresh and glad emotion<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rose within my swelling breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I hurried swiftly onwards<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To the haven of my rest.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Thou wert there with word and welcome,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With thy smile so purely sweet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I laid my heart before thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Laid it, darling, at thy feet!&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O ye words that sound so hollow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As I now recall your tone!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What are ye but empty echoes<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of a passion crush'd and gone?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Wherefore should I seek to kindle<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Light, when all around is gloom?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherefore should I raise a phantom<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">O'er the dark and silent tomb?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Early wert thou taken, Mary!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In thy fair and glorious prime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere the bees had ceased to murmur<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Through the umbrage of the lime.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Buds were blowing, waters flowing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Birds were singing on the tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Every thing was bright and glowing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When the angels came for thee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Death had laid aside his terror,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And he found thee calm and mild,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lying in thy robes of whiteness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like a pure and stainless child.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hardly had the mountain violet<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Spread its blossoms on the sod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere they laid the turf above thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And thy spirit rose to God.<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">&nbsp;</a></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Early wert thou taken, Mary!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And I know 'tis vain to weep&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tears of mine can never wake thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From thy sad and silent sleep.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O away! my thoughts are earthward!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not asleep, my love! art thou,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dwelling in the land of glory<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With the saints and angels now.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Brighter, fairer far than living,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With no trace of woe or pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Robed in everlasting beauty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Shall I see thee once again,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">By the light that never fadeth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Underneath eternal skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the dawn of resurrection<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Breaks o'er deathless Paradise.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i20">W. E. A.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h2>HUZZA FOR THE RULE OF THE WHIGS!</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Air</span>&mdash;"<em>Old Rosin the Beau.</em>"</h3>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All ye who are true to the altar and throne,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Come join in this ditty with me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And you who don't like it may let it alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or listen a little and see.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How quietly now we may sleep in our beds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And waken as merry as grigs;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though fears of rebellion hang over our heads,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We're safe while we're ruled by the Whigs.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the 'nineties we saw (I remember the day)<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Revolution disguised as Reform;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the country was saved in a different way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By the Pilot that weather'd the storm.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our vessel was steer'd by the bravest and best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And, except a few quality sprigs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The whole English nation had thought it a jest<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To propose being ruled by the Whigs.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But as matters now stand in this ill-fated realm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When old comrades will give us the slip,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We are strangely compell'd to put men at the helm.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To prevent them from scuttling the ship.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only think, for a moment, if Russell were out,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How wild he'd be running his rigs!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">About popular rights he would make such a rout&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Tis lucky we're ruled by the Whigs.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The Church&mdash;can you doubt what her danger would be<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Were Tories at present in power?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lord John, or his friends, we should certainly see<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Attacking her posts every hour.<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">&nbsp;</a></span>
+<span class="i0">But as long as the Bishops may help out his lease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He won't injure a hair of their wigs;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, he even proposes the list to increase&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If Grey were at large, how he'd lay down the law<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On the cures he for Ireland had found;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And swear that he never would rest till he saw<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Her Establishment razed to the ground.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But Grey, while in office, sits muffled and mum,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like a small bird asleep in the twigs;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Ward, in the Commons, is equally dumb&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If any of us had made war on Repeal<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With the weapons that Clarendon tries,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What shrieks of indignant invective from Shiel<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At the wrongs of Old Erin would rise.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By millions of noisy Milesians back'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From the peer to the peasant that digs&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How would Monaghan murmur that juries were pack'd!&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">On Aliens or Chartists to hear them declaim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You'd think Castlereagh come from the dead.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though the mixture of metaphors isn't the same,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the courage and coolness are fled.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But the Whigs are becoming respectable men<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As any that ever kept gigs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They are practising <em>now</em> all they preach'd against <em>then</em>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Go on, my good lads&mdash;never think of retreat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Though annoy'd by a squib or a squirt;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You're fulfilling the fate such impostors should meet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And eating your bushel of dirt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then swallow it fast, for your hour may not last&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We shall soon, if it pleases the pigs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give your places to men of a different cast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And get rid of the rule of the Whigs!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2>THE NAVIGATION LAWS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"When the Act of Navigation,"
+says Adam Smith, "was made, though
+England and Holland were not actually
+at war, the most violent animosity
+subsisted between the two nations.
+It is not impossible, therefore,
+that some of the regulations of this
+famous act may have proceeded from
+national animosity. They <em>are as wise,
+however, as if they had all been dictated
+by the most deliberate wisdom</em>. National
+animosity, at that particular
+time, aimed at the very object which
+the most deliberate wisdom would
+have recommended,&mdash;the diminution
+of the naval power of Holland, the
+only naval power which could endanger
+the security of England. The
+Act of Navigation is not favourable to
+foreign commerce, or to the growth of
+that opulence which can arise from it.
+As defence, however, is of much more
+value than opulence, the Act of Navigation
+is perhaps the wisest of all the
+commercial regulations of England."<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a>
+Before these pages issue from the
+press, this, undoubtedly the wisest of
+all the commercial regulations of Great
+Britain, and under which the maritime
+strength and colonial empire of England
+have risen to a pitch of grandeur
+unknown in any other age or country,
+will be numbered among the things
+which have been. The House of
+Commons, by a majority, have voted
+for the repeal of the Navigation Laws.</p>
+
+<p>Free trade will soon have done its
+work, so far, at least, as the House of
+Commons is concerned. It is gradually
+but unceasingly advancing, and swallowing
+up successively all the great
+interests of the empire, save that of
+the capitalists, as it moves forward.
+The agricultural interests will find
+themselves deprived, in February next,
+of all protection; and the British cultivator
+exposed to the competition,
+without any shield save a nominal duty
+of 1s. a quarter, of states where wheat
+can be raised, with a fair profit in
+average years, at 18s. a quarter, and
+brought to this country for 10s. at the
+very utmost of freight. As soon as
+we have two fine harvests in succession,
+it will be seen to what state this
+system will reduce British rural production.
+The West India interests
+have been next assailed; and our
+colonies, upon whom free labour has
+been forced, upon a compensation
+being given to the proprietors on an
+average of a fourth of the value of
+their slaves, are speedily to be exposed,
+with no protection but a differential
+duty of 5s. 6d. a hundredweight, diminishing
+1s. 6d. a-year, till, in 1854, it
+disappears, to the competition of slave
+colonies, where sugar can be raised for
+£4 a ton, while in the British colonies
+the measures of government have precluded
+its being raised for less than
+£10 a ton. As a natural consequence,
+cultivation is about to cease in those
+noble settlements; the forest and the
+jungle will speedily supplant the
+smiling plantations, and £100,000,000
+worth of British property will be lost
+beyond redemption.</p>
+
+<p>Domestic manufactures were at
+the same time assailed, though
+with a more gentle hand than rude
+produce. Protective duties on them
+were lowered, though not entirely
+removed; and the consequence is,
+that at this time there are 8000
+hands wholly unemployed at Manchester,
+and above 10,000 at Glasgow,
+and distress to an unparalleled extent
+pervades the whole commercial
+and manufacturing classes. Nothing
+daunted by these calamitous results,
+so exactly what the opponents of free
+trade predicted would ensue, so diametrically
+the reverse of the unbounded
+prosperity which they promised
+the nation as the consequence
+of their changes, the Free-traders, in
+pursuance of their usual system of
+preferring their own opinions to the
+evidence of facts, are preparing to
+apply the same system to the commercial
+navy of the country, and, by
+the repeal of the Navigation Laws,
+against the opinion of Adam Smith, to
+depress our shipping interest as much
+as they encourage that of foreign
+states, and endanger our national
+existence, by crippling our own means<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+of defence as much as they augment
+the means of attack in the hands of
+our enemies. Not content with rendering
+us dependent for a large part
+of our bread on foreign nations, they
+are determined on measures calculated
+to deprive us of the means of maintaining
+our naval superiority, or upholding
+the national independence.
+They are set upon saying the nation
+a few millions a-year in freight, though
+the consequence is, that we shall be
+alike unable to withstand a pacific
+blockade or hostile aggression.</p>
+
+<p>Many estimable and thoughtful persons
+in the country, struck with astonishment
+at the adoption and determined
+adherence to such a suicidal
+policy&mdash;alike by our rulers and a
+powerful party in the country&mdash;in the
+face of the decisive evidence afforded
+by facts, and the universal distress of
+the nation, as to its ruinous tendency,
+have come to the opinion, that we
+have been struck with a judicial blindness,
+and that Providence, as a just
+punishment for our sins, and for the
+furtherance of its mysterious designs
+in the general government of mankind,
+has rendered our own infatuation the
+means of working out our destruction.
+They think it affords a marvellous
+proof of the weakness of the
+human mind, and the impotence of
+man against the arm of his Creator,
+that this vast empire, which has done
+such mighty things in the annals of
+history, and which has stood proof
+against the hostility of the combined
+world, directed by consummate ability,
+when its rule was that of justice,
+should thus crumble away and perish,
+not from external violence or foreign
+aggression, but solely from domestic
+infatuation, when that rule has
+passed away. And observing that this
+country has already suffered greater
+losses, and been more severely crippled
+in its resources by the effects of three
+years of free trade and fettered currency
+policy, than by the whole efforts
+of France during a war of twenty
+years&mdash;and still the same course is
+blindly persevered in&mdash;they draw the
+conclusion that the evil is irremediable
+by human means, and that the
+nation, if not absolutely shipwrecked,
+will approach as near the verge of
+ruin as the providence of God will
+permit human infatuation to effect.</p>
+
+<p>Without denying that there is much
+truth in these observations, and humbly
+acknowledging a Divine superintendence
+alike in the rise and the decline,
+the prosperity and decay, of nations,
+it yet appears more reasonable to trace
+the extraordinary obstinacy of the
+ruling party in the nation to the causes
+which, humanly speaking, seem to
+have been mainly instrumental in producing
+it. The fanaticism of the political
+economists, who, like all other
+fanatics, are inaccessible to reason or
+experience, is, without doubt, a main
+cause of the disastrous policy to which
+the nation seems now irrevocably
+pledged. But a still more powerful
+agent in producing the determined
+adherence to this system, in the face of
+the most conclusive evidence of its
+pernicious tendency, is to be found in
+the <em>class</em> government which it is now
+apparent the Reform Bill has imposed
+upon the nation. It is now unhappily
+proved that the <em>trading</em> interest, in
+whom a decisive majority both in the
+constituency and the number of seats
+in parliament has been vested by the
+Reform Bill, are alive, like all other
+classes, mainly to the suggestions of
+their own advantage; and that advantage
+they think is, to buy cheap and sell
+dear. Whatever we were in the days
+when Napoleon said it, we are now, if
+not a nation of shopkeepers, at least a
+nation <em>ruled by shopkeepers</em>. The
+colonies are entirely unrepresented.
+Schedules A and B, sixteen years ago,
+cut off all their representatives. The
+landed interest is in a minority, from
+two-thirds of the seats in the Commons
+being for boroughs; and those
+boroughs, owing to the depression of
+the producing classes by the currency
+laws, and the vast increase of the trading
+interests from the same cause, being
+for the most part under the direction of
+the commercial part of the community.
+It is in these circumstances that we
+are to look for the real causes of the
+adoption of free-trade principles of
+late years by our statesmen, and the
+determined adherence to it, in spite of
+all experience, by a majority of the
+House of Commons. Such conduct is
+the inevitable result of every <em>uniform</em>
+system of representation, because that
+lands the government in the class government
+of the majority, composed of
+a particular interest. The evil was
+not felt under the old constitution,
+because it was <em>not</em> a class government,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+being based on a multifarious, not a
+uniform representation. Its <em>defects</em>, as
+they are now called, <em>i. e.</em> its nomination
+boroughs, combined with the extension
+of our colonial and shipping
+interests, had let in a most efficient
+representation of <em>all</em> the interests in
+the empire, as well as that of the inhabitants
+of those islands, into the
+House of Commons. It is to this
+cause that the protection of <em>all</em> interests
+by the old House of Commons
+is to be ascribed. Doubtless, under
+the old system the Corn Laws would
+have been upheld; but the West Indies
+would have been saved from ruin,
+domestic industry rescued from bankruptcy
+and the Navigation Laws, the
+palladium of our national independence,
+preserved from destruction.</p>
+
+<p>That the Navigation Laws have been
+a great advantage to our shipowners
+and seafaring interests is self-evident.
+They afforded superior advantages in
+conducting the trade of the empire to
+British over foreign shipowners; and
+they nursed up, accordingly, the immense
+and hardy body of British
+seamen, who have founded and protected
+our colonial empire, and rendered
+Great Britain the terror and
+admiration of the world. What, then,
+is the great benefit which is anticipated
+from the repeal of laws, the
+practical operation of which has been
+attended with such uniform and unparalleled
+benefits? The benefit is,
+that it will save our merchants some
+millions a-year in the payment of
+freights. It is calculated by the Free-traders
+that £30,000,000 yearly is paid
+by Great Britain for freights; and of
+this sum, it is thought a fourth, or
+£7,500,000 yearly, may be saved by
+the employment of foreign instead of
+British sailors in the conducting of our
+commerce, or the reduction of freight
+and seamen's wages in these islands,
+which will result from their unrestrained
+competition. This is the
+benefit to attain which our Navigation
+Laws, the nursery of our seamen,
+are to be sacrificed. And the question
+to be considered is,&mdash;Is the gain real,
+or apparent only; and, supposing it is
+real, is it worth the risk with which
+it is attended?</p>
+
+<p>Is the advantage real, or apparent
+only? Concede to the Free-traders
+all they contend for: call the saving
+to the nation annually in freights, to
+be effected by free trade in shipping,
+not £7,500,000 but £10,000,000 annually.
+The strength of the argument
+will admit of almost any concession.
+Admit this, and consider
+what it is worth, and on whom it is
+made. It is not worth a <em>fiftieth part</em>
+of the revenue of the nation, which,
+in the produce of land and manufactures
+alone, is above £500,000,000
+annually. A week of sunshine in
+autumn, a favourable set of Fall orders
+from America, the stoppage of a revolution
+in Europe, are each worth more
+to the nation. But, such as it is, from
+whom is it gained? Why, it is all
+<em>gained from our own people</em>: it is a
+saving effected to <em>one class of our inhabitants
+by impoverishing another class</em>.
+If our merchants and the purchasers
+from them pay £20,000,000 a-year for
+freight of goods sea-borne, instead of
+£30,000,000 as formerly, undoubtedly
+there is a saying of £10,000,000 <em>to
+them</em>, or the consumers who buy from
+them. But of whom is this saving
+made? From whom is it derived?
+Is it not from our shipbuilders, shipowners,
+and seamen, who get so much
+the less: either by being driven out
+of the market by foreign mercantile
+navies, or by getting their own profits
+or wages reduced by external competition
+to that amount? Ten millions
+now earned by shipowners and sailors
+in Great Britain, is, on the most
+favourable supposition for the Free-traders,
+<em>taken from them</em>, and given to
+the dealers in or consumers of the
+commodities which they transport.
+Is the nation, as a whole, any gainer
+by that transfer? If ten pounds are
+taken from John and given to James,
+are John and James, taken together,
+any gainers by the transfer? And is
+not the great family of the nation
+composed of all its members, not of
+John only, but of John and James
+taken together? Is not the repeal of
+the Navigation Laws, in this view
+robbing Peter to pay Paul? This is
+the mighty advantage, for the attainment
+of which we are going to crush
+by external competition our mercantile
+shipping; and endanger the
+national independence, by withering
+the nursery of the navy, by which it
+can alone be maintained! Can there
+be a stronger proof of how completely,
+by the operation of the Reform Bill,
+we have fallen under the influence of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+class government; and how entirely
+such class government blinds the
+vision even of the most clear-sighted,
+to any thing but the perception of its
+own immediate interests?</p>
+
+<p>The evidence taken before the Commons'
+committee, on the comparative
+cost of building and navigating ships
+in the north of Europe and in this
+country, comes to this, that both are
+about <em>twice</em> as expensive in this
+country as on the shores of the
+Baltic. A copper-sheathed vessel,
+which there costs £4500, cannot here
+be constructed for less than £9000:
+a master's wages there, which are
+£2, 11s. a month, are here £5 for the
+same period: seamen's, there 7d. a
+day, besides provisions, &amp;c., are here
+1s. 2d. Every thing else is in the
+same proportion. Shipbuilding and
+ship-navigating are twice as costly
+in Great Britain as they are in Norway
+and Denmark. How could it be
+otherwise, when they have the materials
+of ships and rigging at their
+doors, while we have to transport
+them to the British shores from
+Canada or the Baltic; and they are
+the poor nations, whose money being
+scarce goes far, and we are the rich
+one, whose money being comparatively
+plentiful goes but a little way.
+Compare the cost of living in London
+during the season, with what it is in
+Aberdeen or Inverness, and you will
+at once see the main cause of the extraordinary
+difference in the value of
+money, and consequently in the
+money-price of articles, in the two
+situations. The difference in the cost
+of shipbuilding and seamanship, viz.
+one half, is nearly the same as the
+difference in the cost of raising sugar
+in our free-labour colonies and the
+foreign slave ones, which is £10 a
+ton in the former situation, and
+£4 in the latter. And it is in the
+perfect knowledge of the entire ruin
+which the approach even to a free
+trade in sugar has brought, under
+these circumstances, upon the British
+West India islands, that government
+are prepared to force a similar disastrous
+competition upon the British
+shipowners, and through them on the
+palladium of British independence,
+the royal navy.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Labouchere said, in the debate
+on this subject in the House of Commons,
+that the Protection Party
+seemed to consider every importation
+as in itself an evil, inasmuch as it
+displaced a corresponding amount of
+native industry; but that till he found
+that goods were brought by merchants
+into the country for nothing, he never
+could see how importation did not encourage
+domestic industry as much as
+home orders. This is manfully spoken:
+it comes home to the kernel of the question.
+It is pleasing to have to contend
+with such an antagonist. We will answer
+him equally briefly, and, as it seems
+to us, decisively. The difference between
+home orders and foreign orders
+is this, that the one encourages industry
+at <em>both ends</em>, viz., in the consumers
+and the producers; the other, at <em>one
+end only</em>, viz., in the consumer. This
+difference, however, may become vital
+to the national fortunes. If a London
+merchant pays £20,000 a-year to
+British shipowners and seamen, he
+keeps in motion at once the industry
+of the consumers, by whose produce
+the freights are ultimately paid, and
+the industry of the seafaring classes
+by whom they are earned. But if he
+pays the £20,000 a-year not to British
+but foreign shipowners, the only
+industry put in motion, so far as we
+are concerned, is that which raises the
+produce which is to pay the freight.
+The other end of the chain is placed
+in Norway or America, and any encouragement
+to industry there afforded
+is wholly lost to England. It is just
+the difference between rents spent in
+Great Britain, and rents spent in
+Paris or Naples.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless they are the same thing,
+so far as the whole world is concerned;
+but are they the same thing so far as
+that portion of the world in which we
+are interested, viz., the British Islands,
+is concerned? Unquestionably they
+are not. What the Protectionists say
+is, not that no British industry is encouraged
+when importation takes
+place: they know perfectly it is encouraged
+at <em>their end</em> of the line;
+what they say is, that it is not encouraged
+at the <em>other end</em>, because that
+other end rests in foreign states; and
+that it is unwise to encourage industry
+at <em>one end</em> only, when it is possible
+to do so at <em>both</em>. Adam Smith saw this
+perfectly when he so well explained the
+difference between the home trade and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+foreign trade, and said the former was
+"worth all foreign trade put together."
+But his observations on this head are
+as much forgotten by the majority of
+our legislators as those he made on the
+great wisdom of our Navigation Laws,
+as the only security for our national
+independence.</p>
+
+<p>Mr M'Gregor said in debate on the
+same subject, that "he admitted our
+naval strength had co-existed with
+the Navigation Laws, but he denied
+that they were cause and effect. They
+had about as much to do with each other
+as the height of the Pyramids had with
+the floods of the Nile."<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> We agree with
+the honourable member for Glasgow
+in one part of this observation. The
+Navigation Laws have had as much to
+do with our maritime prosperity as the
+Pyramids had with the floods of the
+Nile; and we will tell the ex-secretary
+of the board of trade what the relation
+was&mdash;it was that of cause and effect. Mr
+M'Gregor is too well informed not to
+know that there exists in Cairo a
+<em>Nilometer</em>, and that, during the period
+of the inundation, the spirits of the
+people and the animation of commerce
+rise and fall with the rise or fall of
+the prolific stream. It is no wonder
+they do so, for it is the source of life
+and prosperity to the whole community.
+Raised by the power of the
+Pharaohs from the riches produced by
+the inundations of former times, the
+Pyramids are the Nilometer of antiquity,
+as much as the tower of Babel
+and the ruins of Babylon were the monument
+of the opulence of the plain
+of Shinar; or as Waterloo Bridge is of
+the wealth produced by the favourable
+maritime situation of London, or York
+Cathedral of the agricultural riches of
+the plains of Yorkshire. In all these
+causes there is a relation between the
+natural advantages which produce the
+riches and the durable monument to
+the construction of which they lead,
+and that relation is that of cause and
+effect. We entirely concur with the
+member for Glasgow in thinking that
+the same connexion, and no other,
+subsists between the Navigation Laws
+and the maritime greatness of England
+as existed formerly between the
+Pyramids of Egypt and the fertilising
+floods which encircle their base.</p>
+
+<p>To prove that these remarks are
+not made at random, but that the Navigation
+Laws really are the foundation
+of the maritime greatness of England,
+and that, when they are repealed,
+it must of necessity languish and
+ultimately expire, we subjoin three
+tables: one showing the progress
+of British as compared with foreign
+shipping, from 1801 to 1823, when
+the protection of the Navigation Laws
+was first infringed upon by the adoption
+of the reciprocity system with the
+Baltic powers; and another showing
+the comparative progress of our
+foreign and home shipping with
+Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and
+Prussia, the countries with whom
+reciprocity treaties were first concluded,
+from 1823 to the end of 1847,
+when the reciprocity system had been
+a quarter of a century in operation.</p>
+
+<p class="hanging"><span class="smcap">Table</span> showing the comparative progress of British and Foreign Tonnage inwards,
+from 1821 to 1847, both inclusive, with Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Prussia.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><br />
+[Transcriber's note: Column headings:  Y=Year. Bt=Brit. tons. Ft=For. tons.]</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="compare tonnage">
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="center" colspan="2">SWEDEN.</td><td align="center" colspan="2">NORWAY.</td><td align="center" colspan="2">DENMARK.</td><td align="center" colspan="2">PRUSSIA.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">Y</td><td align="center">Bt</td><td align="center">Ft</td><td align="center">Bt</td><td align="center">Ft</td><td align="center">Bt</td><td align="center">Ft</td><td align="right">Bt</td><td align="center">Ft</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1821</td><td align="right">23,005</td><td align="right">8,508</td><td align="right">13,855</td><td align="right">61,342</td><td align="right">5,312</td><td align="right">3,969</td><td align="right">79,590</td><td align="right">37,720</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1822</td><td align="right">20,799</td><td align="right">13,692</td><td align="right">13,377</td><td align="right">87,974</td><td align="right">7,096</td><td align="right">3,910</td><td align="right">102,847</td><td align="right">58,270</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1823</td><td align="right">20,986</td><td align="right">22,529</td><td align="right">13,122</td><td align="right">117,015</td><td align="right">4,413</td><td align="right">4,795</td><td align="right">81,202</td><td align="right">86,013</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1824</td><td align="right">17,074</td><td align="right">40,092</td><td align="right">11,419</td><td align="right">135,272</td><td align="right">6,738</td><td align="right">23,689</td><td align="right">94,664</td><td align="right">151,621</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1825</td><td align="right">15,906</td><td align="right">53,141</td><td align="right">14,825</td><td align="right">157,916</td><td align="right">15,158</td><td align="right">50,943</td><td align="right">189,214</td><td align="right">182,752</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1826</td><td align="right">11,829</td><td align="right">16,939</td><td align="right">13,603</td><td align="right">90,726</td><td align="right">22,000</td><td align="right">56,544</td><td align="right">119,060</td><td align="right">120,589</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1827</td><td align="right">11,719</td><td align="right">21,822</td><td align="right">13,945</td><td align="right">96,420</td><td align="right">10,825</td><td align="right">52,456</td><td align="right">150,718</td><td align="right">109,184</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1828</td><td align="right">14,877</td><td align="right">24,700</td><td align="right">10,826</td><td align="right">85,771</td><td align="right">17,464</td><td align="right">49,293</td><td align="right">133,753</td><td align="right">99,195</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1829</td><td align="right">16,536</td><td align="right">25,046</td><td align="right">9,985</td><td align="right">86,205</td><td align="right">24,576</td><td align="right">53,390</td><td align="right">125,918</td><td align="right">127,861</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>1830</td><td align="right">12,116</td><td align="right">23,158</td><td align="right">6,459</td><td align="right">84,585</td><td align="right">12,210</td><td align="right">51,420</td><td align="right">102,758</td><td align="right">139,646</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1831</td><td align="right">11,450</td><td align="right">38,689</td><td align="right">4,518</td><td align="right">114,865</td><td align="right">6,552</td><td align="right">62,190</td><td align="right">83,908</td><td align="right">140,532</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1832</td><td align="right">8,335</td><td align="right">25,755</td><td align="right">3,789</td><td align="right">82,155</td><td align="right">7,268</td><td align="right">35,772</td><td align="right">62,079</td><td align="right">89,187</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1833</td><td align="right">10,009</td><td align="right">29,454</td><td align="right">5,901</td><td align="right">98,931</td><td align="right">6,840</td><td align="right">38,620</td><td align="right">41,735</td><td align="right">108,753</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1834</td><td align="right">15,353</td><td align="right">35,911</td><td align="right">6,403</td><td align="right">98,303</td><td align="right">5,691</td><td align="right">53,282</td><td align="right">32,021</td><td align="right">118,711</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1835</td><td align="right">12,036</td><td align="right">35,061</td><td align="right">2,592</td><td align="right">95,049</td><td align="right">6,007</td><td align="right">49,008</td><td align="right">25,514</td><td align="right">124,144</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1836</td><td align="right">10,865</td><td align="right">42,439</td><td align="right">1,573</td><td align="right">125,875</td><td align="right">2,152</td><td align="right">51,907</td><td align="right">42,567</td><td align="right">174,439</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1837</td><td align="right">7,608</td><td align="right">42,602</td><td align="right">1,035</td><td align="right">88,004</td><td align="right">5,357</td><td align="right">55,961</td><td align="right">67,566</td><td align="right">145,742</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1838</td><td align="right">10,425</td><td align="right">38,991</td><td align="right">1,364</td><td align="right">110,817</td><td align="right">3,466</td><td align="right">57,554</td><td align="right">86,734</td><td align="right">175,643</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1839</td><td align="right">8,359</td><td align="right">49,270</td><td align="right">2,582</td><td align="right">109,228</td><td align="right">5,535</td><td align="right">106,960</td><td align="right">111,470</td><td align="right">229,208</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1840</td><td align="right">11,953</td><td align="right">53,337</td><td align="right">3,161</td><td align="right">114,241</td><td align="right">6,327</td><td align="right">103,067</td><td align="right">112,709</td><td align="right">237,984</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1841</td><td align="right">13,170</td><td align="right">46,795</td><td align="right">977</td><td align="right">113,045</td><td align="right">3,368</td><td align="right">83,009</td><td align="right">88,198</td><td align="right">210,254</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1842</td><td align="right">15,296</td><td align="right">37,218</td><td align="right">1,385</td><td align="right">98,979</td><td align="right">5,499</td><td align="right">59,837</td><td align="right">87,202</td><td align="right">145,499</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1843</td><td align="right">6,435</td><td align="right">44,184</td><td align="right">1,814</td><td align="right">97,248</td><td align="right">4,148</td><td align="right">82,940</td><td align="right">70,164</td><td align="right">163,745</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1844</td><td align="right">12,806</td><td align="right">59,835</td><td align="right">1,315</td><td align="right">125,011</td><td align="right">7,423</td><td align="right">123,674</td><td align="right">108,626</td><td align="right">220,202</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1845</td><td align="right">15,157</td><td align="right">89,923</td><td align="right">1,215</td><td align="right">129,897</td><td align="right">4,528</td><td align="right">84,566</td><td align="right">49,334</td><td align="right">256,711</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1846</td><td align="right">12,625</td><td align="right">80,649</td><td align="right">3,313</td><td align="right">113,738</td><td align="right">9,531</td><td align="right">105,973</td><td align="right">63,425</td><td align="right">270,801</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1847</td><td align="right">7,037</td><td align="right">117,918</td><td align="right">2,318</td><td align="right">128,075</td><td align="right">20,462</td><td align="right">116,382</td><td align="right">88,390</td><td align="right">303,225</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>&mdash;<span class="smcap">Porter's</span> <cite>Parliamentary Tables</cite>; and <cite>Parliamentary Report, 3d April 1848</cite>.</p>
+
+<p><br />Thus, while our shipping with the
+whole world <em>quadrupled</em>, as compared
+with the foreign employed in the same
+trade, under the protective system,
+from 1801 to 1823; it declined under
+the reciprocity system of equal duties,
+in the countries to which that system
+was applied in the next twenty years,
+till it had dwindled to a perfect fraction;&mdash;our
+tonnage with Sweden being,
+in 1847, not more than a <em>sixteenth</em> part
+of the foreign; with Norway, a <em>fiftieth</em>
+part; with Denmark somewhat above
+a <em>sixth</em>; with Prussia somewhat under
+a <em>fourth</em>.</p>
+
+<p>But then it is said these are <em>selected</em>
+states which do not give a fair average
+of the reciprocity system, or afford a
+correct criterion of its probable effects
+when applied, as it is about to be by a
+general repeal of the Navigation Laws,
+to the whole world. If they are
+"selected states," we can only say
+they were selected by Mr Huskisson
+and the Free-traders themselves
+as likely to afford the best specimen of
+the effect of their principles, and therefore
+as the first on which the experiment
+was to be made. But we are quite
+willing to take the general tonnage of
+the empire as the test; and we shall
+commence with a quotation from the
+tables of the great statistical apostle of
+free trade, Mr Porter, to show the
+effect of free trade in shipping on the
+comparative growth of our whole tonnage,
+as compared with that of foreign
+states, from 1801 to 1823, when the
+reciprocity system began; and again
+from thence lo 1847, when free trade
+in shipping was in full operation by
+the temporary suspension of the Navigation
+Laws, from the effect of the Orders
+in Council in March 1847 suspending
+the Navigation Laws under the
+pressure of the Irish famine:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="tonnage">
+<tr><td align="right"></td><td align="center">Tons inward,</td><td align="center">Tons inward</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Year.</td><td align="center">British.</td><td align="center">Foreign.</td><td align="center"><span class="smcap">Total.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1801&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">922,594&nbsp;</td><td align="right">780,155&nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,702,749&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1802&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,333,005&nbsp;</td><td align="right">480,251&nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,813,256&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1803&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,115,702&nbsp;</td><td align="right">638,104&nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,753,806&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1804&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">904,932&nbsp;</td><td align="right">607,299&nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,512,231&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1805&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">953,250&nbsp;</td><td align="right">691,883&nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,645,138&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1806&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">904,367&nbsp;</td><td align="right">612,904&nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,517,271&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1807&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="left">Records lost</td><td align="center">.......</td><td align="center">.......</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1808&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="left">Records lost</td><td align="center">.......</td><td align="center">.......</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1809&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">938,675&nbsp;</td><td align="right">759,287&nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,697,692&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1810&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">896,001&nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,176,243&nbsp;</td><td align="right">2,072,244&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1811&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="center">.......</td><td align="center">.......</td><td align="center">.......</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1812&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="left" colspan="3">Records destroyed by fire.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1813&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="center">.......</td><td align="center">.......</td><td align="center">.......</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1814&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,290,248&nbsp;</td><td align="right">599,287&nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,889,535&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1815&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,372,108&nbsp;</td><td align="right">746,985&nbsp;</td><td align="right">2,119,093&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1816&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,415,723&nbsp;</td><td align="right">379,465&nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,795,188&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1817&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,625,121&nbsp;</td><td align="right">445,011&nbsp;</td><td align="right">2,070,132&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1818&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,886,394&nbsp;</td><td align="right">762,457&nbsp;</td><td align="right">2,648,851&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1819&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,809,128&nbsp;</td><td align="right">542,684&nbsp;</td><td align="right">2,351,812&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1820&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,668,060&nbsp;</td><td align="right">447,611&nbsp;</td><td align="right">2,115,671&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1821&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,599,274&nbsp;</td><td align="right">396,256&nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,995,530&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1822&nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right">1,664,186&nbsp;</td><td align="right">469,151&nbsp;</td><td align="right">2,133,337&nbsp;</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p class="center">&mdash;<span class="smcap">Porter's</span> <cite>Progress of the Nation</cite>, 407.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It appears from this most instructive
+table that, under the protection system,
+from 1801 to 1823, the British
+shipping employed in conducting our
+commerce had gained so decisively
+on the foreign employed in the same
+commerce, that it had increased, from
+having been on an average of five years,
+at the commencement of the second,
+about two British tons to one foreign,
+to be, on the last five years, about
+<em>four</em> British tons to one foreign: in
+other words, during these twenty-two
+years, the proportion of British to
+foreign shipping had <em>doubled</em>.</p>
+
+<p>Turn now to the contrast afforded
+by the comparative progress of British
+and foreign shipping from 1823, when
+the reciprocity system was introduced
+with certain states, to 1847, when it
+was made universal by the suspension
+of the Navigation Laws in March of
+that year:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="reciprocity">
+<tr><td align="center">Year.</td><td align="center">Tons inward,</td><td align="center">Tons inward,</td><td align="center"><span class="smcap">Total.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="center">British.</td><td align="center">Foreign.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1823</td><td align="right">1,740,859</td><td align="right">582,996</td><td align="right">2,323,855</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1824</td><td align="right">1,797,320</td><td align="right">759,441</td><td align="right">2,556,761</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1825</td><td align="right">2,144,598</td><td align="right">958,132</td><td align="right">3,102,730</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1826</td><td align="right">1,950,630</td><td align="right">694,116</td><td align="right">2,644,746</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1827</td><td align="right">2,086,898</td><td align="right">751,864</td><td align="right">2,839,762</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1828</td><td align="right">2,094,357</td><td align="right">634,620</td><td align="right">2,728,977</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1829</td><td align="right">2,184,525</td><td align="right">710,303</td><td align="right">2,894,828</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1830</td><td align="right">2,180,042</td><td align="right">758,828</td><td align="right">2,938,870</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1831</td><td align="right">2,367,322</td><td align="right">874,605</td><td align="right">3,241,927</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1832</td><td align="right">2,185,980</td><td align="right">639,979</td><td align="right">2,825,959</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1833</td><td align="right">2,183,814</td><td align="right">762,085</td><td align="right">2,945,899</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1834</td><td align="right">2,298,263</td><td align="right">833,905</td><td align="right">3,132,168</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1835</td><td align="right">2,442,734</td><td align="right">866,990</td><td align="right">3,309,724</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1836</td><td align="right">2,505,473</td><td align="right">988,899</td><td align="right">3,494,372</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1837</td><td align="right">2,617,166</td><td align="right">1,005,940</td><td align="right">3,623,106</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1838</td><td align="right">2,785,387</td><td align="right">1,211,666</td><td align="right">3,997,053</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1839</td><td align="right">3,101,650</td><td align="right">1,331,365</td><td align="right">4,433,015</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1840</td><td align="right">3,197,501</td><td align="right">1,460,294</td><td align="right">4,657,795</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1841</td><td align="right">3,361,211</td><td align="right">1,291,165</td><td align="right">4,652,376</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1842</td><td align="right">3,294,725</td><td align="right">1,205,303</td><td align="right">4,500,028</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1843</td><td align="right">3,545,346</td><td align="right">1,301,950</td><td align="right">4,847,296</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1844</td><td align="right">3,647,463</td><td align="right">1,402,138</td><td align="right">5,049,601</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1845</td><td align="right">4,310,639</td><td align="right">1,735,079</td><td align="right">6,045,718</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1846</td><td align="right">4,294,733</td><td align="right">1,806,282</td><td align="right">6,101,015</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1847</td><td align="right">4,942,094</td><td align="right">2,253,939</td><td align="right">7,196,033</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p class="center">
+&mdash;<span class="smcap">Porter's</span> <cite>Progress of the Nation</cite>, 407, 2d edition;<br />
+and <cite>Parliamentary Paper, 3d April 1848</cite>.
+</p>
+
+<p><br />Thus it appears that under the
+reciprocity system with some countries
+since 1823, and free trade in shipping
+with all in 1847, the foreign shipping
+employed in carrying on the British
+trade had so rapidly grown upon the
+British, that, while at the commencement
+of the period the British stood
+to the foreign as 174 to 58, or <em>3 to 1</em>
+exactly, at the close they stood as 49
+to 22, or <em>somewhat above 2 to 1 only</em>.
+And observe the vast start of foreign
+shipping as compared with British,
+since free trade was introduced by Sir
+R. Peel in 1846. For while the British
+tonnage was to the foreign in 1845 as
+43 to 17, or as 2<sup><small>1</small></sup>&frasl;<sub><small>2</small></sub> to 1; in the year
+1847 it was as 49 to 229, or 2<sup><small>1</small></sup>&frasl;<sub><small>3</small></sub> to 1 only.
+So rapid has been the growth of foreign
+shipping over British in eighteen
+months of general free trade. In
+ten years of such a system, it is
+easy to see that the foreign tonnage
+employed in carrying on our trade
+will be equal to the British; and then
+our national independence is gone for
+ever, for we have nursed up in our
+harbours a body of foreign seamen
+equal to our own.</p>
+
+<p>But we have not yet done with the
+parliamentary returns. From the
+return 3d April 1848, it appears that
+the total tonnage, British and foreign,
+employed in carrying on our trade
+was&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Third April">
+<tr><td align="right">British Islands.</td><td align="center">Foreign.</td><td align="center">Total.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">4,942,094</td><td align="right">2,253,939</td><td align="right">7,196,033 tons.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">4,942,094</td><td align="right">2,253,939</td><td align="right">7,196,033 tons.</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<p>
+Deduct British and foreign tons employed
+in the colonial trade, viz.&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="deduct">
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="right">Tons Brit.</td><td align="right">Tons For.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="right">inward.</td><td align="right">inward.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Brit. N. Amer. colonies</td><td align="right">953,466</td><td align="right">3,274</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">West Indies</td><td align="right">243,388</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Channel islands</td><td align="right">131,899</td><td align="right">3,049</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Gibraltar</td><td align="right">11,623</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Malta</td><td align="right">33,554</td><td align="right">3,789</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Ionian islands</td><td align="right">13,101</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Africa</td><td align="right">203,812</td><td align="right">6,983</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Asia and Australia</td><td align="right">379,529</td><td align="right">2,774</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Total to colonies</td><td align="right">1,970,372</td><td align="right">19,847</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>Thus the British trade to our colonial
+settlements is about <em>a hundred
+times</em> the foreign, and constitutes
+nearly a <em>third</em> of the whole tonnage
+employed in carrying on our commerce,
+and about two-fifths of the
+total British tonnage,&mdash;(1,970,372 out
+of 4,942,094.)</p>
+
+<p>But it is important to discover
+what proportion the British tonnage
+employed in conducting our trade
+with all the world, <em>except our colonies</em>,
+bears to the foreign tonnage employed
+in the same work. That is easily
+found:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="world">
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="right">Tons Brit.</td><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="right">Tons For.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1847. Total British Tonnage,</td><td align="right">4,942,094</td><td align="right">Total For. ton.</td><td align="right">2,253,939</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Deduct British colonial tonnage,</td><td align="right">1,970,372</td><td align="right">Foreign do.</td><td align="right">19,847</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Remains in trade with all the world except colonies,</td><td align="right"><span class="bt">2,971,722</span></td><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><span class="bt">2,233,092</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>So that, setting aside our colonial
+trade, the British tonnage is to the
+tonnage with all the rest of the world
+as 29 to 22, or as 4 to 3 only! Considering
+the rapid strides which, under
+the reciprocity system established
+only with a limited number of countries
+in 1823, the foreign shipping is
+making in encroachment upon the
+British, this fact affords room for the
+most serious reflections. It is clear,
+from the great advance of foreign over
+British shipping in the single year of
+temporary suspension of the Navigation
+Laws, under the pressure of famine
+in 1847&mdash;viz. from 1,735,679, to
+2,253,979; while the British in the
+same period advanced only from
+4,310,639, to 4,942,094,&mdash;that two or
+three years of free trade in shipping
+will bring the foreign vessels employed
+in conducting our trade, exclusive of
+those engaged in the colonial, to an
+<em>equality with the British</em>. The moment
+that period arrives, our maritime
+superiority, and with it our national
+independence, hang entirely on our
+colonial trade, which, and which alone,
+strikes the balance at present in our
+favour. And yet, the colonial trade
+is the precise thing which it is the
+object of the repeal of the Navigation
+Laws to throw open to foreign nations!
+In their anxiety to cheapen every
+thing, the Free-traders would gladly
+expose our shipping interest engaged in
+the colonial trade to the same competition,
+which has already proved so disastrous
+to that part of it which is engaged
+in the traffic with foreign nations.</p>
+
+<p>Observe how one false step in policy
+by nations, like one deviation from
+virtue in private life, leads by natural
+consequences to a repetition of errors
+and crimes, till irreparable ruin ensues.
+The agricultural interest at
+home was first attacked; and by the
+cry of cheap bread, and the weight of
+class legislation, its protection was
+taken away. The West India islands
+were the next victims; because, if
+the farmer in England raises his
+wheat with nothing but a nominal
+protection, it was plausible to say the
+West India planter must raise his
+sugar on the same terms. The ruinous
+competition to which this exposed the
+West India planters naturally produced
+in them a desire to be liberated
+from any burdens to which they were
+subjected for the benefit of the mother
+country; and in this demand the
+Canadians, exposed to the competition
+of American grain, for a similar
+reason concurred. Thus the cry for
+cheap freights, originating in free-trade
+principles in England, came to be
+responded to from the British colonies
+on the other side of the Atlantic; and
+the Navigation Laws began to be repudiated
+by the colonies&mdash;the very thing
+which formerly it was their most
+anxious desire to uphold. The firm
+though unseen bond of mutual interest,
+founded on protective principles,
+which has hitherto held together the
+vast and widely separated dominions
+of the British empire, is dissolved.
+Being deprived of the benefit of
+protection, they very naturally wished
+to be relieved of its burdens. Such
+is the maze of error and danger into
+which we have been led by the
+sophistry of free trade; and such the
+way in which the greatest and best
+consolidated empires are first loosened,
+and then destroyed, by the delusions
+of those entrusted with their guidance.</p>
+
+<p>The manner in which foreign shipping
+has encroached upon British, since
+the reciprocity system began in 1823, is
+clearly proved by the centesimal proportions
+of each, published by Mr Porter,
+from 1820 to 1844, both inclusive.</p>
+
+<p>It will be seen from the following
+table, that, since 1820, the centesimal
+proportion of British shipping employed
+in conducting our trade has
+<em>declined</em> from 78 to 72, while that of
+foreign nations has <em>increased</em> from 21
+to 27. But this proportion, such as
+it is, is solely upheld by our colonial
+trade, which, as already shown, employs
+nearly 2,000,000 tons of our
+shipping. But for it, the encroachment
+of foreign on British shipping would
+appear in such alarming colours as to
+strike the most inconsiderate. It is
+the rapid growth of our colonial trade
+under the protective system which has
+alone concealed the ravages effected
+on it by free trade under the reciprocity.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Centesimal Proportions of the British and Foreign Tonnage employed in the Import
+Trade of the United Kingdom from 1820 to 1844.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Centesimal">
+<tr><td align="center">Year.</td><td align="center">Brit. inward.</td><td align="center">For. inward.</td><td align="center">Year.</td><td align="center">Brit. inward.</td><td align="center">For. inward.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1820</td><td align="right">78·84</td><td align="right">21·16</td><td align="right">1834</td><td align="right">73·37</td><td align="right">26·63</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1821</td><td align="right">80·14</td><td align="right">19·86</td><td align="right">1835</td><td align="right">73·85</td><td align="right">26·15</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1822</td><td align="right">78·00</td><td align="right">22·00</td><td align="right">1836</td><td align="right">71·41</td><td align="right">28·59</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1823<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></td><td align="right">74·91</td><td align="right">25·09</td><td align="right">1837</td><td align="right">72·23</td><td align="right">27·77</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1824</td><td align="right">70·29</td><td align="right">29·71</td><td align="right">1838</td><td align="right">69·68</td><td align="right">30·32</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1825</td><td align="right">69·12</td><td align="right">30·88</td><td align="right">1839</td><td align="right">69·96</td><td align="right">30·04</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1826</td><td align="right">73·75</td><td align="right">26·25</td><td align="right">1840</td><td align="right">68·64</td><td align="right">31·36</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1827</td><td align="right">73·51</td><td align="right">26·49</td><td align="right">1841</td><td align="right">72·24</td><td align="right">27·76</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1828</td><td align="right">76·74</td><td align="right">23·26</td><td align="right">1842</td><td align="right">73·21</td><td align="right">26·79</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1829</td><td align="right">75·46</td><td align="right">25·54</td><td align="right">1843</td><td align="right">73·14</td><td align="right">26·86</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1830</td><td align="right">74·18</td><td align="right">25·82</td><td align="right">1844</td><td align="right">72·23</td><td align="right">27·77</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1831</td><td align="right">73·02</td><td align="right">26·98</td><td align="right">1845</td><td align="right">...</td><td align="right">...</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1832</td><td align="right">77·35</td><td align="right">22·65</td><td align="right">1846</td><td align="right">...</td><td align="right">...</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1833</td><td align="right">74·13</td><td align="right">25·87</td><td align="right">1847</td><td align="right">...</td><td align="right">...</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p class="center">&mdash;<span class="smcap">Porter's</span> <cite>Progress of the Nation</cite>, 416, 2d edition.<br />
+
+</p>
+
+<p><br />Mr Porter himself tells us that
+the centesimal proportion of our trade
+with the European powers has <em>declined</em>
+(p. 410) from 65 to 52·38, while
+that of our colonies has increased
+thus,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="colonies">
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="center" colspan="2">1802.</td><td align="center" colspan="2">1814.</td><td align="center" colspan="2">1835.</td><td align="center" colspan="2">1844.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="center">Tons.</td><td align="center">Cent. prop.</td><td align="center">Tons.</td><td align="center">Cent. prop.</td><td align="right">Tons.</td><td align="right">Cent. prop.</td><td align="right">Tons.</td><td align="right">Cent. prop.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">America</td><td align="right">336,344</td><td align="right">18·54</td><td align="right">343,658</td><td align="right">19·32</td><td align="right">886,524</td><td align="right">26·21</td><td align="right">984,850</td><td align="right">19·50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Africa</td><td align="right">7,270</td><td align="right">0·40</td><td align="right">13,514</td><td align="right">0·76</td><td align="right">40,131</td><td align="right">1·21</td><td align="right">157,364</td><td align="right">3·12</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">India, &amp;c.</td><td align="right">67,627</td><td align="right">3·72</td><td align="right">74,117</td><td align="right">4·16</td><td align="right">161,473</td><td align="right">4·88</td><td align="right">264,978</td><td align="right">5·25</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Australia</td><td align="right">...</td><td align="right">...</td><td align="right">488</td><td align="right">·02</td><td align="right">16,019</td><td align="right">0·48</td><td align="right">36,454</td><td align="right">0·74</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="right">411,241</td><td align="right">19·66</td><td align="right">431,727</td><td align="right">24·26</td><td align="right">1,104,147</td><td align="right">32·78</td><td align="right">1,443,646</td><td align="right">28·61</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><br />Such has been the working of the
+reciprocity system, as compared with
+the protective and colonial&mdash;in other
+words, free trade in shipping with
+some particular nations&mdash;in twenty
+years. And it is from this experience
+of the effects of the partial adoption of
+these principles that the Free-traders
+now propose to make it universal!</p>
+
+<p>America is the country to which,
+in comparison with Great Britain, the
+Free-traders constantly refer for a
+demonstration of the justice and beneficial
+operation of their principles. We
+accept the instance, and proceed to
+inquire into the comparative value of
+the American protected trade with
+our own colonies, and the American
+free trade with the United States, both
+at this time and in the respective progress
+of each for the last twenty-five
+years.</p>
+
+<p>The foreign and British tonnage
+with the United States, Canada, and
+the West Indies, in the year 1847,
+stood thus, viz.:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="British">
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><span class="bb">British tons.</span></td><td align="right"><span class="bb">Foreign tons.</span></td><td align="right"><span class="bb">Total.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">British North American Colonies</td><td align="right">953,466</td><td align="right">3,724</td><td align="right">954,190</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">British West Indies</td><td align="right"><span class="bb">243,388</span></td><td align="right"><span class="bb">.......</span></td><td align="right"><span class="bb">243,388</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Total protected</td><td align="right">1,196,854</td><td align="right">.......</td><td align="right">1,197,578</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">United States of America (unprotected)</td><td align="right">437,095</td><td align="right">651,189</td><td align="right">1,088,284</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p class="center">&mdash;<cite>Parliamentary Paper, 3d April 1848.</cite>
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><br />So that, while our West India and
+North American colonies, under this
+Protective system, support 1,196,854
+tons of British shipping against 3,724
+of foreign, or 300 to 1 nearly; the
+American trade with the United States
+only maintains 437,095 of British
+against 651,189 of foreign; in other
+words, about 2 to 3 nearly! But the
+Free-traders think it better to adopt
+the system which makes the foreign
+shipping to the British as 3 to 2, than
+uphold the one which has brought the
+foreign shipping to the British, in the
+colonial trade, as 1 to 300!</p>
+
+<p>Observe, too, the decisive proof
+which the same return affords of the
+vast superiority, in every point of
+view, of our colonial trade to our
+foreign, even in the hands of our best
+free-trade customers, the Americans.
+For while less than 3,000,000 of souls
+between the West India and North
+American colonies furnished employment
+to 1,197,000 tons of British and
+foreign shipping, of which 1,193,000
+was British; twenty millions of Americans
+in the United States only furnished
+employment to 1,088,284 tons
+of shipping, in all of which no more
+than 437,095 were British! And this
+is the pet instance of the Free-traders&mdash;their
+favourite <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">cheval de bataille</i>&mdash;to
+demonstrate the great superiority of
+free and foreign over protected and
+colonial trade!</p>
+
+<p>Again, if we take the comparative
+progress of British and American tonnage
+in conducting the trade of the
+United States, since the reciprocity
+system was begun in 1823, the same
+conclusion is forced upon the mind.
+Not only is the American shipping,
+throughout the whole period, superior
+to the British in the proportion generally
+of 3 to 1, but this superiority
+in their favour remains undiminished
+in any material degree. We take the
+following returns from Mr Porter:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="inwards">
+<tr><td align="right">Year.</td><td align="center">British</td><td align="center">American</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="right">tons inwards.</td><td align="right">tons inwards.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1823</td><td align="right">63,606</td><td align="right">165,699</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1826</td><td align="right">47,711</td><td align="right">151,765</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1829</td><td align="right">64,343</td><td align="right">162,367</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1832</td><td align="right">95,203</td><td align="right">167,359</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1835</td><td align="right">86,383</td><td align="right">226,483</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1838</td><td align="right">83,203</td><td align="right">357,467</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1841</td><td align="right">121,777</td><td align="right">294,170</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1844</td><td align="right">206,183</td><td align="right">338,737</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1845</td><td align="right">224,089</td><td align="right">444,609</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1846</td><td align="right">205,123</td><td align="right">435,399</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><br />It is easy to see how it has happened
+that, in competition with the
+shipowners of every country, the British
+shipowners have suffered so much
+under the partial operation of the
+free-trade principles which the reciprocity
+system has afforded. It is the
+inevitable fate of the old and the
+rich state, in shipbuilding and agriculture,
+to be undersold by the young
+and the poor one. The reason is,
+that the old state, by the very magnitude
+of its wealth, the amount of its
+transactions, the number of its inhabitants,
+the multitude of its fabrics,
+is obliged to pay much higher for
+labour and materials of all sorts than
+the young and the poor one. Machinery
+and the steam-engine compensate,
+and more than compensate,
+this superiority in regard to manufactured
+articles. England undersells
+Hindostan, where wages are a penny
+or twopence a day, by the work of
+steam-power looms working on cotton
+raised on the banks of the Ganges.
+But there is no steam-power loom in
+shipbuilding any more than in agriculture.
+Great things in nautical
+affairs, as in rural economy, can be
+effected only by the labour of man's
+hands and the sweat of his brow, in
+the last ages of civilisation, as in the
+first. It would appear to be a permanent
+law of nature, to which there
+is no exception in any age of the
+world, or any stage of human progress,
+that the chief branches of industry on
+which the subsistence and defence of
+nations rest&mdash;agriculture, and the
+naval and military arts&mdash;are pursued
+more cheaply, and with more success
+by young and rising than old and
+opulent states. History is full of examples
+in which the manufactures of
+rich and ancient nations have obtained
+an undisputed supremacy over the
+fabrics of poor and rising ones; but it
+presents still more examples of the
+encroachments made on the industry
+and power of old nations by the agricultural
+produce, or naval and military
+efforts, of young ones. It is this
+law of nature which provides for the
+decay and ruin of nations when they
+are approaching the limit of their
+allotted space of existence, and should
+give place to others entering on the
+career which they have terminated.
+No efforts of human energy or virtue
+can prolong, for any considerable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+period, this allotted space. But it is
+the peculiar reproach of free trade,
+whether applied to agriculture or
+nautical affairs, that it tends to
+shorten, instead of prolonging, the
+life of the nation to which it is applied,
+by oppressing instead of relieving
+those vital branches of industry
+on which its existence depends, and
+thus both aggravates the natural evils
+incident to old age, and accelerates
+the approach of the political society
+to the tomb.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr Huskisson, in 1823, introduced
+the Reciprocity System, he did
+not dispute that it would injure our
+maritime interests; but he contended
+that it would open a new field for our
+manufactures,&mdash;that the time had now
+arrived when the Protective System
+could no longer be maintained, and it
+had become indispensable to sacrifice
+to a certain extent our maritime interests,
+in order to preserve the chief
+vents on Continental Europe for the
+industry of our artisans. The sacrifice
+was made, and the tables already
+given show with what fatal effect to
+our shipping interest. Has it extended
+the market for our manufactures, or
+diminished the jealousy with which
+they are regarded by the states of
+Continental Europe? Let the Zollverein
+league, at the head of which
+Prussia has placed herself, and which
+has imposed duties to an amount, in
+practical operation, of fifty per cent
+on our manufactures, give the answer.
+The exports which we send to the
+states of Sweden, Norway, Denmark,
+and Prussia, are still, after a quarter
+of a century's experience of the immense
+impulse it has given to their
+maritime interests, and corresponding
+depression to ours, a perfect trifle.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>
+Our exports to America are less than
+they were fifteen years ago, despite
+the boasted conciliatory effect of
+twenty years' reciprocity.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> What can
+be more injudicious, therefore, than to
+persist in, and even extend, a system
+which, without diminishing in the
+slightest degree the jealousy of Continental
+nations at our manufacturing
+superiority, has inflicted a serious and
+gratuitous wound on the naval resources
+by which alone that superiority
+can be maintained?</p>
+
+<p>We have recently made a very great
+stride in free-trade principles, by the
+sacrifice of our agricultural protection,
+and the throwing open the English
+markets to cultivators of all nations.
+In the three last months of 1846 and
+even of 1847, in consequence of the
+import duties being removed, above
+£30,000,000 sterling was sent out
+of the country to purchase foreign
+grain; and the moderate duty of eight
+shillings a quarter has since been reimposed
+on wheat,&mdash;yet it terminates
+in February next, and corn from all
+quarters will then be admitted for the
+nominal duty of one shilling a quarter.
+We have abandoned the protection
+of our colonies to conciliate the slave-growing
+states, and augment the market
+for Manchester goods in Cuba and
+Brazil. With what disastrous effects
+these changes have been attended,
+upon the best interests of the empire,
+need be told to none who are familiar
+with the total ruin which has in consequence
+overtaken our West India
+colonies, and the unprecedented distress
+which prevails in all the great
+seats of our manufacturing industry.
+The loss of half the realised wealth of
+Liverpool, Manchester, and Glasgow,
+and the creation of nearly a hundred
+thousand persons, including dependants,
+in a state of pauperism, in each
+of those once rich and prosperous
+cities, is the price which, in a year and
+a half, we have paid for the adoption
+by Sir R. Peel of Mr Cobden's principles
+of free trade, and Mr Jones
+Loyd's principles of a fettered currency.
+Have we, in consequence,
+reaped any countervailing advantage,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+or does the increase of our export
+and import trade show any benefit
+derived to the nation, to compensate
+such dreadful wounds inflicted on its
+internal prosperity, in the attempt to
+disarm the jealousy of foreign manufacturers?
+So far from it, our exports
+and imports have steadily
+<em>declined</em> since free-trade principles
+were introduced. All the main sources
+of our strength have diminished since
+Sir R. Peel abandoned protection in
+July 1846.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> In adopting these principles,
+we have gratuitously inflicted
+a grievous wound on our own people,
+without having obtained for them the
+shadow even of a benefit to compensate
+the evil.</p>
+
+<p>Such have been the effects of free-trade
+principles on the comparative
+prosperity of British and foreign shipping,
+on the showing of the Free-traders
+themselves, and according to
+the figures which their great statistician,
+Mr Porter, has prepared and
+published at the Board of Trade. We
+were unwilling to mix up a great national
+question, such as the repeal of
+the Navigation Laws, with any subordinate
+examination as to the accuracy
+or inaccuracy of the view of our maritime
+affairs which these figures exhibit.
+Such is the strength of the case, that
+it will admit of almost any concession;
+and the opponents of their repeal have
+no occasion to go farther than to the
+statistics of their adversaries for the
+most decisive refutation of their principles.
+But there are two observations
+on the tables published by the
+Board of Trade, so important that
+they cannot be passed over in silence.
+The first is, that in 1834, when Mr
+Poulett Thomson was president of
+the Board of Trade, a regulation was
+made by the Board as to the measurement
+of vessels, which had the effect
+of adding <em>a fifth</em> to the apparent tonnage
+of all British vessels, subsequent
+to that date. This change was clearly
+proved by the witnesses examined
+before the Commons' committee; but
+though Mr Porter, in his last edition
+of the <cite>Progress of the Nation</cite>, mentions
+the change, (p. 368,) he makes
+no allusion to it in comparing the
+amount of British and foreign tonnage
+since 1834. Of course a fifth must
+be deducted from British tonnage, as
+compared with foreign, since that
+time; and what overwhelming force
+does this give to the facts, already
+strong, in regard to the effect of the
+reciprocity system on our maritime
+interests!</p>
+
+<p>The second is, that the tonnage
+with countries near Great Britain,
+such as France, Belgium, and Holland,
+<em>includes steam vessels</em> carrying
+passengers, and their repeated voyages.
+In this way a boat, measuring
+148 tons, and carrying passengers
+chiefly, comes to figure in the returns
+for 24,000 tons! It is evident that
+this important circumstance deprives
+the returns of such near states of all
+value in the estimate of the comparative
+amount of tonnage engaged in
+the trade with different countries.
+That with France will appear greatest
+in spring 1848, in consequence of the
+number of large vessels then employed
+in bringing back English residents
+expelled by, or terrified at, the Revolution&mdash;though
+that circumstance was
+putting a stop to nearly all the commercial
+intercourse between the two
+countries. As steam navigation has
+so immensely increased since 1834,
+when the changes in the measurement
+was introduced&mdash;and Great Britain,
+from its store of coal and iron, enjoys
+more of that traffic than all Europe put
+together&mdash;this is another circumstance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+which militates against the returns as
+exhibiting a fair view of our trade,
+compared with that of foreign nations,
+especially with near countries, and
+fully justifies Mr Porter's admission,
+when examined before the Lords'
+committee, that "considerable fallacy
+is to be found in the returns." Unfortunately
+for the Free-traders, however,
+who had the preparation of them
+in their hands, these fallacies all point
+one way&mdash;viz. to augment the apparent
+advantages of free trade in shipping.</p>
+
+<p>Such as free-trade principles are,
+they are evidently not likely to remain,
+if these islands are excepted,
+long in the ascendant either in the
+Old or the New World. The American
+tariff shows us how little we have to
+expect from Transatlantic favour to
+our manufactures: the savage expulsion
+of English labourers from France,
+how far the principles of "Liberty,
+Equality, and <em>Fraternity</em>," are likely
+to be acted upon by our enthusiastic
+and democratic neighbours on the
+Continent of Europe. It is clear
+from the communist and socialist
+principles now in the ascendant, both
+at Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, that
+the interests of <em>labour</em> will above all
+things be considered by their governments
+in future times, and that the
+most rigorous measures, in the form
+of fiscal regulations, if not <em>absolute
+prohibition</em>, may shortly be expected
+in France, Italy, and Germany,
+against manufactures of any sort
+which interfere, or seem to interfere,
+with the interests of the dominant
+multitude of operatives. Why does our
+government adhere so strongly, in the
+face of the clearest evidence of their
+ruinous tendency, to the present system
+of free trade and a fettered currency?
+Because it works well for the great
+capitalists, who desire to have money
+dear, and the great manufacturers,
+who wish to have labour cheap, and
+because a majority of the House of
+Commons has been placed by the Reform
+Bill under their influence. Give
+the operatives the majority, and the
+opposite interest will instantly prevail.
+A successful Chartist revolt
+would at once send the whole free
+trade and fettered currency measures
+by the board in three months. In truth,
+it is the disasters they have produced
+which has revived Chartism, and
+rendered it so menacing in the land.
+We should like to see how long a
+legislature, elected by universal suffrage,
+would allow Spitalfields and
+Macclesfield to be pauperised by Lyons
+silks, and Manchester invaded by
+Rouen cottons, and the shipwrights of
+Hull and Sunderland to be ruined by
+Baltic shipbuilders. As the operative
+classes have obtained the ascendency
+in the principal Continental states, a
+similar jealousy of foreign interference
+with industry may with certainty be
+looked for in Continental Europe. Can
+any thing be more insane, therefore,
+than to persist in a policy fraught, as
+every thing around us demonstrates,
+with such ruinous social injury to ourselves,
+and which the progress of political
+change on the Continent renders
+incapable of producing the ultimate
+benefits, in exchange for those evils
+which their authors hold out as the inducing
+causes of the measures which
+have produced them?</p>
+
+<p>While the political changes which
+have recently occurred on the Continent
+of Europe have rendered any reciprocity
+of advantages utterly hopeless
+from the most violent adoption of
+free-trade principles, they have augmented
+in a proportional degree the
+dangers to this country of foreign aggression,
+and the risk to be apprehended
+from any diminution of our
+naval resources. The days have
+gone by when the dream of a free-trade
+millenium, in which a reciprocity
+of advantages is to extinguish all
+feelings of hostility, and war is to be
+looked back to as a relic of the pre-Adamite
+world, can with safety be indulged.
+It is rather too late to think
+of the termination of the angry passions
+of men, when Europe, in its
+length and breadth, is devastated alike
+by civil dissension and foreign warfare;
+when barricades have so recently
+been erected in all its chief capitals;
+when bloodshed is hourly expected in
+Paris and Berlin; when the Emperor
+of Austria has fled to Innspruck; when
+every station in London was, only a
+few days ago, occupied by armed battalions;
+and when a furious war,
+rousing the passions of whole races
+of men, is raging on the Mincio and
+the Elbe. Threatened by a raging
+fire in all the countries by which we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+are surrounded, uncertain whether we
+are not slumbering on the embers of a
+conflagration in our own, is this the
+time to relax in our warlike preparations,
+and, by crippling the nursery of
+our seamen, expose ourselves, without
+the means of resistance, to the assaults
+of hostile nations, envious of our fame,
+jealous of our manufactures, covetous
+of our wealth, desirous of our ruin?</p>
+
+<p>While Western Europe is torn by
+revolutionary passions, and the seeds
+of a dreadful, because a popular and
+general war, are rapidly springing to
+maturity from the Seine to the Vistula,
+Russia is silently but unceasingly
+gathering up its giant strength, and
+the Czar has already 300,000 men,
+and 800 pieces of cannon, ready to take
+the field against the revolutionary enthusiasts
+of France and Germany.
+Sooner or later the conflict must arrive.
+It is not unlikely that either a
+second Napoleon will lead another
+crusade of the western nations across
+the Niemen, or a second Alexander
+will conduct the forces of the desert
+to the banks of the Seine. Whichever
+proves victorious, England has equal
+cause for apprehension. If the balance
+of power is subverted on Continental
+Europe, how is the independence of
+this country to be maintained? How
+are our manufactures or revenue to
+be supported, if one prevailing power
+has subjugated all the other states of
+Europe to its sway? It is hard to
+say whether, in such circumstances,
+we should have most to dread from
+French fraternity or Russian hostility.
+But how is the balance of power to be
+preserved in Europe amidst the wreck
+of its principal states? when Prussia
+is revolutionised, and has passed over
+to the other side; when Austria is
+shattered and broken in pieces, and
+Italy has fallen under the dominion of
+a faction, distinguished beyond any
+thing else by its relentless hatred of
+the aristocracy, and jealousy of the
+fabrics of England? What has Great
+Britain to rely on in such a crisis but
+the energy of its seamen and the might
+of its navy, which might at least enable
+it to preserve its connexion with
+its own colonies, and maintain, as
+during the Continental blockade, its
+commerce with Transatlantic nations?
+And yet this is the moment which our
+rulers have selected for destroying the
+Navigation Laws, so long the bulwark
+of our mercantile marine, and permitting
+all the world to make those inroads
+on our shipping, which have already
+been partially effected by the nations
+with whom we have concluded reciprocity
+treaties!</p>
+
+<p>The defence of Great Britain must
+always mainly rest on our navy, and
+our navy is almost entirely dependent
+on the maintenance of our colonies.
+It is in the trade with the colonies
+that we can alone look for the means
+of resisting the general coalition of
+the European powers, which is certain,
+sooner or later, to arise against our
+maritime superiority, and the advent
+of which the spread of democratic
+principles, and the sway of operative
+jealousy on the Continent, is so evidently
+calculated to accelerate. But
+how are our colonies to be preserved,
+even for a few years, if free-trade
+severs the strong bond of interest which
+has hitherto attached them to the
+mother country, and the repeal of the
+Navigation Laws accustoms them to
+look to foreigners for the means of
+conducting their mercantile transactions?
+Charged with the defence of
+a colonial empire which encircles the
+earth, and has brought such countless
+treasures and boundless strength to
+the parent state, Great Britain at
+land is only a fourth-rate power, at
+least for Continental strife. At Waterloo,
+even, she could only array forty-five
+thousand men to contend with
+the conqueror of Europe for her existence.
+It is in our ships we must
+look for the means of maintaining our
+commerce, and asserting our independence
+against manufacturing jealousy,
+national rivalry, and foreign
+aggression. Is our navy, then, to be
+surrendered to the ceaseless encroachments
+of foreigners, in order to effect
+a saving of a few millions a-year on
+freights, reft from our own people,
+and sapping the foundations of our
+national independence?</p>
+
+<p>How can human wisdom or foresight,
+the energy of the Anglo-Saxons,
+or the courage of the Normans, maintain,
+for any length of time, our independence
+in the perilous position into
+which free-trade policy has, during the
+short period it has been in operation,
+brought us? The repeal of the Corn
+Laws has already brought an importation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+of eight or ten millions of foreign
+quarters annually upon our people&mdash;a
+full sixth of the national subsistence,
+and which will soon become indispensable
+to their existence. A simple
+non-intercourse act will alone enable
+Russia or America, without firing a
+shot, to compel us to lower the
+flag of Blake and Nelson. Stern
+famine will "guard the solitary coast,"
+and famished multitudes demand
+national submission as the price of
+life. The repeal of the Navigation
+Laws will ere long bring the foreign
+seamen engaged in carrying on our
+trade to a superiority over our own, as
+has already taken place in so woful
+a manner with the Baltic powers.
+Hostile fleets will moor their ships of
+the line across our harbours, and
+throw back our starving multitudes
+on their own island for food, and their
+own market for employment. What
+will then avail our manufacturers and
+our fabrics,&mdash;the forges of Birmingham,
+the power-looms of Manchester,
+the iron-works of Lanarkshire,&mdash;if
+the enemies' squadrons blockade the
+Thames, the Mersey, and the Clyde,
+and famished millions are deprived
+alike of food and employment, by the
+suicidal policy of preceding rulers?
+Our present strength will then be the
+measure of our weakness; our vast
+population, as in a beleaguered town,
+the useless multitude which must be
+fed, and cannot fight,&mdash;our wealth,
+the glittering prize which will attract
+the rapacity of the spoiler. With indignant
+feelings, but caustic truth,
+our people will then curse the infatuated
+policy which abandoned the
+national defences, and handed them
+over, bound hand and foot, to the
+enemy, only the more the object of rapacity
+because such boundless wealth
+had accumulated in a few hands
+amongst them. Then will be seen,
+that with our own hands, as into the
+ancient city, we have admitted the enemies'
+bands; we have drawn the horse
+pregnant with armed men through our
+ramparts, and our weeping and dispersed
+descendants will exclaim with
+the Trojans of old&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Fuimus Troës, fuit Ilium, et ingens<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gloria Teucrorum."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p class="center space-above"><em>Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh.</em></p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h2>FOOTNOTES:</h2>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> We suspect this custom may be traced in the Scythian legends of Herodotus.
+See his 4th book, chapters v., vi., and x.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> See Erskine's <cite>Institutes</cite>, B. iii. tit. 8, §§ 21-25.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Saddle-blanket made of buffalo-calf skin.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> The French Canadians are called <i>wah-keitcha</i>&mdash;"bad medicine"&mdash;by the Indians,
+who account them treacherous and vindictive, and at the same time less daring than
+the American hunters.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> We fully agree with our correspondent as to the danger of Whiggery in our
+councils, but are so far reconciled to the Whigs being in office at the present crisis, by
+the knowledge that, had they been in opposition, they would, to a certain extent, have
+fraternised with French Republicans and English Chartists. Who could doubt that
+such would have been the conduct of the men who headed physical force processions,
+and hounded on window-breaking vagabonds in the Reform riots of 1830? What
+amount of profligate partisanship might not be expected from the men who, when
+thirsting for office, solemnly denounced as unconstitutional and unjust the course
+pursued by a conservative government towards O'Connell, which identical course they
+now, when in power, adopt towards Mitchell, a much less dangerous criminal?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Burke's <cite>Reflections on the French Revolution</cite>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <i>Gospodin Slujivui.</i> Gospodin is equivalent to the French Monsieur or Seigneur,
+and Slujivui means literally one who has served in the army.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <cite>Wealth of Nations</cite>, iv. c. 2.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <cite>Times</cite>, June 9, 1848.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Reciprocity System introduced.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>Exports from Great Britain&mdash;to</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="exports from">
+
+<tr><td align="left">1844</td><td align="left">Sweden</td><td align="right">£108,475</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">.......</td><td align="left">Norway</td><td align="right">152,824</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">.......</td><td align="left">Denmark</td><td align="right">286,679</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">.......</td><td align="left">Prussia</td><td align="right">505,384</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p class="center">
+<span class="smcap">Porter's</span> <cite>Progress of the Nation</cite>, p. 366, 2d edition.<br />
+
+</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Exports to United States of America:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="exports to">
+<tr><td align="left">1836</td><td align="right">£12,425,605</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1844</td><td align="right">7,938,079</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">&nbsp;</td><td align="center"><span class="smcap">Porter</span>, <em>ibid.</em></td></tr>
+</table></div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a>
+</p>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align="left">&nbsp;</td><td align="center"><span class="smcap">Exports.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">&nbsp;</td><td align="center">British Produce and</td><td align="center"><span class="smcap">Imports.</span></td><td align="center"><span class="smcap">Revenue.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">&nbsp;</td><td align="center">Manufactures.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">&nbsp;</td><td align="center">Declared Value.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1845</td><td align="right">£53,227,451</td><td align="right">£85,281,958</td><td align="right">£52,009,324</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1846</td><td align="right">51,227,060</td><td align="right">75,953,579</td><td align="right">54,473,762</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">1847</td><td align="right">50,897,790</td><td align="left">Not yet made up,</td><td align="right">52,082,757</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p class="center"><br />
+&mdash;<cite>Porter's Parl. Tables</cite>; and <i>Parl. Paper, 3d April 1848</i>.<br />
+
+</p></div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<div class="tn"><h3>Transcriber's note:</h3>
+
+<p>Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed.</p>
+
+<p>Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where the missing quote should be placed.</p>
+
+<p>The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</p>
+
+<p>Page 11: There is a closing parenthesis missing in the following&mdash;(the blank left for the number
+was filled up with the word "three"
+in committee of the House of Commons.
+Nothing said about the issue
+in tail, as before ...</p>
+
+<p>Page 22: The transcriber has inserted "the" ... rope up to the spot where he ...
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume
+64, No. 393, July 1848, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, JULY 1848 ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64,
+No. 393, July 1848, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: December 28, 2013 [EBook #44533]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, JULY 1848 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brendan OConnor, Jonathan Ingram, Julia Neufeld
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Library of Early
+Journals.)
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
+
+Text enclosed by equal marks is translieterated Greek (+Polla ta
+deina+).
+
+The [)a] in "wach-unkam[)a]net" refers to an "a" with breve.
+
+Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+  BLACKWOOD'S
+
+  Edinburgh
+
+  MAGAZINE.
+
+  VOL. LXIV.
+
+  JULY-DECEMBER, 1848.
+
+  [Illustration: Buchanan]
+
+  WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH;
+
+  AND
+
+  37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
+
+  1848.
+
+  BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
+
+
+
+
+  BLACKWOOD'S
+
+  EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+  No. CCCXCIII.      JULY, 1848.       VOL. LXIV.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  THE LAWS OF LAND.                                1
+
+  LIFE IN THE "FAR WEST." PART II.                17
+
+  AMERICAN THOUGHTS ON EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS.      31
+
+  THE CAXTONS. Part IV.                           40
+
+  REPUBLICAN FRANCE.--JUNE 1848.                  51
+
+  COLONISATION.                                   66
+
+  SIBERIA.                                        76
+
+  THE SCOTTISH DEER FORESTS.                      92
+
+  THE BURIED FLOWER.                             108
+
+  HUZZA FOR THE RULE OF THE WHIGS.               112
+
+  THE NAVIGATION LAWS.                           114
+
+  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. CCCXCIII.      JULY, 1848.      VOL. LXIV.
+
+
+
+
+THE LAWS OF LAND.
+
+_A Treatise on the Succession to Property vacant by Death._ By J. R.
+M'CULLOCH, Esq. London: Longmans, 1848.
+
+
+Mr M'Culloch's book introduces us to a question much debated in this
+age of class jealousy. As soon as we open it, we are straightway
+environed with "a barbarous noise of owls and cuckoos, asses,
+apes, and dogs," amid whose jargon of phrases rises loudest and
+most frequent the cry of "commercial principles." It is a great
+grievance, it seems, that land should not be disposed of according
+to "commercial principles;" that hill and holt, and moor and dale,
+should not pass from seller to buyer with the same readiness as
+candles and calicoes. Truly we have enough, and more than enough, of
+these same commercial principles in all walks of thought. Even the
+pulpit is not free from them. Politics are positively smothered with
+them. Ethical science, with the shallowisms of Paley and Bentham
+round her neck, struggles feebly with them. The book-keeper is
+abroad every where, with an indestructible faith in double entry.
+The Spirit of the Age wears a pen behind his ear, and sits on a high
+stool with three legs. That the prevailing commercial principles
+should have been so long excluded from the absolute possession of
+our laws of land, and that those laws should have preserved to a
+time like this so much of their feudal character, is a notable proof
+of the adaptation of the laws to the general requirements of the
+community, and of the steadiness of that social system which is so
+essentially linked to the maintenance of these laws.
+
+The cry of complaint to which we have above alluded, is inspired by
+many diverse motives. As Mr Cochrane's ragged followers flocked to
+Trafalgar Square to denounce the income-tax, so many a man takes up
+the shout against the law of primogeniture and entail, as tying up
+lands and restricting their sale, who never had the wherewithal to
+purchase a single acre if all broad England was in the market. On
+the other hand, the purse-proud citizen, sore that ready money is
+not yet quite at the top of the tree, and that he does not receive
+the same consideration at St James's as in Change Alley, delights to
+have some grievance whereon he can vent his spleen; and really, in
+some stolid instances, persuades himself that he is kept out of the
+land which his gold could buy, through the agency of aristocratical
+laws, as if George Robins had been a mythical personage, or the
+advertisements of Farebrother, Clark, and Lye were a mockery and
+delusion.
+
+But the largest class of assailants are those who come to the
+debate fortified with certain specious economical arguments,
+generally derived from a one-sided view of some particular effect
+of these restrictive laws. To the demolition of these objectors
+Mr M'Culloch's work is more immediately addressed; and very
+effectually, in our opinion, does it accomplish its end. He has
+not, perhaps, treated the subject so widely as it might have been
+treated: he has not entered into the indirect social influences that
+might be traced to our system of the laws relating to land; but the
+economical part of the question he has grasped most completely, and
+supported by most able and practical reasoning.
+
+We must, we suppose, look for the text of the work, not where the
+text is usually found, but at the end. The following sentence,
+which is almost the concluding one, may be taken as the leading
+proposition of the work:--
+
+     "A powerful and widely-ramified aristocracy like that of
+     England, not resting for support on any oppressive laws, and
+     enjoying no privileges but which are for the public advantage,
+     is necessary to give stability and security to the government,
+     and freedom to the people. And our laws in regard to succession
+     being well fitted to maintain such an aristocracy, and, at the
+     same time, to inspire every other class with the full spirit of
+     industry and enterprise, to change them would not be foolish
+     merely, but criminal,--a _lese majeste_ against the public
+     interests."--P. 172.
+
+It must not, however, be supposed from this remark, that any portion
+of the work is appropriated to a set defence of government by
+means of an aristocracy. By an aristocracy we mean the deposition
+of political power in the hands of men of leisure and education,
+as opposed to the tendency of the Reform Bill, to transfer
+the governing functions to the "practical" men of the trading
+and moneyed interests, and the analogous claims of Chartism,
+founded on Jack Cade's complaint, that the "king's council are
+no good workmen." In England, we are pretty sure to have an
+aristocracy--that is, the influences which affect government and
+legislation will emanate principally from that class which is
+socially at the head of the nation; and the question is, whether
+we are to have a mere moneyed aristocracy, or one qualified by
+those mixed and undefinable conditions which, more than any thing
+else, act to keep down the growing and eager ascendency of wealth
+_per se_. Among the safeguards of such an aristocracy as we have
+described, not the least powerful is to be found in the laws
+discussed in the work before us. Mr M'Culloch, as we have said,
+assumes the importance to the country of preserving the present
+characteristics of British aristocracy; and he therefore proceeds
+at once to show how the laws on which he treats operate for this
+preservation, and to rebut the objections advanced against them on
+the score of their relations to other classes of the community.
+
+One of the most frequent of these objections is, that the laws
+in question tend to diminish the productiveness of the land, and
+thereby inflict a serious injury on the community at large; that
+they prevent, in many instances, the landlord from granting leases
+to his tenant beyond the term of his own life; that the tenant, in
+consequence, is not willing to incur the outlay of drainage and
+other expensive improvements, because he is not secured by a lease;
+while the landlord, on the other hand, will not enter into these
+expenses, because he does not feel the same interest in his limited
+estate which he would in the unconditional fee-simple.
+
+Note first of all the logic of this argument. The tenant, it seems,
+will not spend his money in draining without a lease. As, however,
+a lease would suffice to induce him so to do, we might naturally
+suppose that the landlord's estate for life, or in tail, would be at
+least an equal inducement. These reasoners, however, aver, that the
+landlord is only to be tempted by the unrestricted fee. According to
+this progressive scale, it might be fairly, argued, that the tenant,
+on becoming lessee for years, would still require the landlord's
+life-interest; and the latter, when seised of the fee, would decline
+the requisite expense, except on a guarantee of immortality, and
+justify himself by Horace's authority,--
+
+                        "Tanquam
+    Sit proprium quidquam puncto quod mobilis horae
+    Permutet dominos, et cedat in altera jura."
+
+But the general scope of an argument may be just, though clumsily
+stated and fallaciously supported. We are, however, at no loss for
+experiments on the largest scale whereby to test the theory here
+noticed. We have English agriculture, subjected to a limited law of
+entail, contrasted on the one hand with Scottish agriculture, under
+a law of perpetual entail, and on the other with that of France and
+its compulsory gavelkind. Mr M'Culloch has taken an elaborate view
+of the question in its relation to the tillage of the soil in these
+three countries respectively, more especially in France. We find,
+from the result of his investigation, that,--
+
+     "The average produce per acre of the crops of wheat in England
+     and Wales in good years, has been carefully estimated at
+     thirty-two bushels an acre, and it is certainly not under thirty
+     bushels. But in France the produce of wheat, even in the richest
+     and best cultivated departments, is little more, according to
+     the official returns and the best private authorities, than
+     twenty bushels an acre; and at an average of the entire kingdom,
+     it hardly amounts in a good year to fourteen bushels. This
+     result is completely decisive. It shows that one acre of land
+     in England yields, from its being better farmed, considerably
+     more wheat than two acres in France: and if we took barley or
+     oats, turnips, beef, or wool for a standard, the difference in
+     our favour would be seen to be still greater.... If labour were
+     taken for a standard instead of land, the result would be still
+     more in our favour. One man and one horse in England produce
+     more corn and other agricultural produce than three men and
+     three horses in France. Labour in the latter is misapplied and
+     wasted."--P. 117.
+
+Again:--
+
+     "While two husbandmen in France furnish a surplus of food above
+     their own consumption adequate for _one_ individual, the same
+     number of English husbandmen furnish a surplus for no fewer than
+     _four_ individuals; showing, that, as measured by its capacity
+     of providing for the other classes of the population, English is
+     to French agriculture as four to one."--P. 121.
+
+So much for the comparison of French and English agriculture. Let us
+now turn to Scotland:--
+
+     "In an Appendix to the 'Sketches of the History of Man,'
+     published in 1774, Lord Kames says, 'The quantity of land that
+     is locked up in Scotland by entails has damped the growing
+     spirit of agriculture. There is not produced sufficiency of
+     corn at home for our consumption; and our condition will become
+     worse and worse by new entails, till agriculture and industry be
+     annihilated.' Now the extent of land under entail in Scotland
+     has been certainly more than doubled, perhaps more than trebled,
+     since this paragraph was written, and yet agriculture and
+     manufactures have made a more rapid progress in Scotland in the
+     interval, and especially during the last thirty years, when
+     entails were most prevalent, than in England or in any other
+     country whatever."--P. 71.
+
+Lord Kames, in this respect, seems to have had the same subtle
+ingenuity in prophesying counter to the event, as distinguishes Mr
+Cobden.
+
+The first part of Mr M'Culloch's volume contains a cursory
+historical view of the earliest regulations of succession and
+inheritance. Thus, at p. 16, he traces the right of primogeniture,
+or preference of the eldest son, to the Mosaic law. We are far from
+maintaining that the specific details of the code promulgated on
+Sinai are a model of law for all nations; on the contrary, they
+were no doubt intended to be such as a wise human law-giver would
+frame, and consequently more or less applicable according to the
+changes and differences of social organisation. But we do hold that
+these laws indicate to mankind principles which are to be observed
+in all times and by all nations. Thus, the septennial release of
+debts, the return of every man to his possession in the year of
+jubilee, the prohibition of interest upon loans except to an alien,
+even the poor man's portion in the field and vineyard, may or
+may not be regulations adapted to a particular existing state of
+society. But they enunciate a principle of mercy and forbearance
+towards the poor and unfortunate, of which, we fear, our political
+economists and commercial legislators are too apt to lose sight. In
+conformity with this view, when we hear the right of primogeniture
+assailed as contrary to the law of nature, (by the way, where is
+this much-talked-of law of nature to be found?) we may safely appeal
+to the express recognition by the Jewish law of "the right of the
+first-born as the beginning of his father's strength," to show
+that the custom of primogeniture is at all events not repugnant to
+instinctive justice or the common-sense of mankind. The old Saxon
+law of gavelkind might be better adapted to a superabundance of
+land and a thin population; the preference of the youngest son, by
+the custom of Borough-English, might well prevail among the far
+progenitors of the Saxon race on the steppes of Scythia,[1] when
+the elder brothers would be sent forth to roam over the boundless
+plain with their flocks and herds, the youngest remaining at home to
+be the prop of his father's old age. But in a settled and cultivated
+country, and among an advanced people, we maintain succession by
+primogeniture to be the most consonant, as a matter of theory, to
+the social feelings and requirements of man; and we think our author
+has fully established his position as to the beneficial character of
+its practical results.
+
+  [1] We suspect this custom may be traced in the Scythian legends of
+  Herodotus. See his 4th book, chapters v., vi., and x.
+
+In the course of his historical survey, Mr M'Culloch has of course
+touched on the principle of succession under the Roman law, but
+more lightly than we should have expected in reference to a system
+which has entered so largely into our Scottish law, and which is
+still accepted as a model framework of legal principles in most of
+the universities of Christendom. And the slight notice taken traces
+an analogy between the feudal and civil principles of succession,
+which we think is altogether incorrect. Our author, in speaking of
+the Roman law of succession, appears to confound in some measure
+the Roman term _haeres_ with the English word _heir_. The civilian
+definition of _haeres_ is _qui ex testamento succedit in universum
+jus testatoris_. In Scotland the word _heir_ has much the same
+import:--"The law deems it reasonable," says Erskine, (_Inst._ book
+iii. tit. 8, Sec. 2) "that every fiar shall have the power by deed,
+during his life, to declare who shall have the lands after his
+death: and the person so favoured is called the _heir_." Whereas the
+feudal notion of the word _heir_ preserved in the English law, is of
+one upon whom the estate is cast, after the death of his ancestor,
+by act of law and right of blood. In other words, _haeres_ is he who
+is appointed by the will of the deceased to succeed to his civil
+rights, and, in default of such appointment, the person indicated
+by a certain general law. But the _heir_ (in English law) is the
+next and worthiest of blood, appointed by the common-law to succeed
+to his ancestor; although this rule of succession may be set aside
+by the appointment or will of the ancestor, if possessed of the
+fee-simple. Bearing in mind this distinction, we shall perceive the
+cause of Mr M'Culloch's error when he says--
+
+     "The Furian, the Voconian, and the Falcidian laws were passed,
+     the first two under the republic, and the latter under Augustus,
+     to secure the interests of children by limiting the power of
+     fathers to make settlements to their prejudice." P. 6.
+
+Now, the Voconian law, so far from protecting the interests of
+children, frequently operated in the case of daughters to prejudice
+them;--of this we have a remarkable instance in the case of Annius
+Asellus, dwelt upon by Cicero, in the second action against
+Verres, _Orat._ i., c. 41--44. The law prevented all registered or
+assessed (_censi_) citizens of Rome from appointing a female as
+their _haeres_. Again, the Furian and Falcidian laws were passed to
+secure the person nominated as _haeres_ from being prejudiced by
+the excessive amount of legacies under the will. Hence, if a man
+died leaving only daughters, he was prohibited by the Voconian law
+from appointing any of them as his _haeres_; and the other two laws
+restrained him from appointing a nominal _haeres_, and leaving his
+property to his daughters by way of legacies (_legata_.)
+
+In truth, the English notion of heirship, as succession by right
+of blood, seems to be entirely due to the northern nations and the
+feudal system. Under both systems, however, it is observable how
+the progress of legislation and society has been to increase the
+privileges and diminish the duties of the constituted successor. For
+as, in tenure by chivalry, the heir was rather the person to whom,
+in consequence of proximity of blood, the lord might look for the
+performance of the military services, than the fortunate acquirer of
+the property, so the Roman _haeres_ was regarded more in the light
+of one on whom devolved the religious, civil, and private duties
+of the deceased; frequently so burdensome that the inheritance was
+altogether refused, until the heir was guarded by such laws as the
+Furian and Falcidian.
+
+While we are in the humour of finding fault, we may notice a
+passage in which we think Mr M'Culloch has not dealt fairly with the
+English law. It is as follows:--
+
+     "In one respect the law of intestacy appears to stand much in
+     need of revision. It is interpreted so as to give, in many
+     cases, more to the eldest son than the real estate and his
+     share of the personalty. Suppose, for example, that a person
+     dies intestate, leaving an estate worth (say) L.100,000, with
+     a mortgage made by him upon it for half its value, or L50,000,
+     and leaving also L50,000 of personal property, in this case the
+     real estate is obviously worth only L50,000; and consistently
+     with the principles previously laid down, the eldest son
+     should succeed to the estate burdened with its debt, and the
+     personal property be divided among the children generally. But
+     a different rule has been permitted to grow up. The personal
+     property of persons dying intestate is the first fund for their
+     debts, though secured upon their estates; and it is the surplus
+     only, if there be any, after these debts are paid, that is
+     divisible among the children, who, in the above case, would be
+     entitled to nothing. This appears to be in all respects a most
+     objectionable arrangement."--P. 41.
+
+We cannot see any anomaly here. "It is a rule in equity," says
+Cruise, (_Digest_, tit. xv. c. 4,) "that where a person dies,
+leaving a variety of funds, one of which must be charged with a
+debt, that the fund which received the benefit by the contracting
+the debt shall make satisfaction." This seems to us perfectly just
+and reasonable, according to the principles of the English law. In
+the case put by Mr M'Culloch, the personalty of L50,000 obviously
+owes its existence to the mortgage debt; and it is, therefore,
+fairly applied to the discharge of that debt. But, _cessante
+ratione, cessat etiam lex_; this only applies where the deceased was
+himself the mortgager. Where the lands came to him mortgaged, his
+personal estate will not be liable, even though he may have made a
+covenant to pay it. We may refer the legal reader to the judgment
+of Lord King, delivered, with the assistance of Lord Chief-Justice
+Raymond and the Master of the Rolls, in Evelyn _v._ Evelyn, 2 P.
+Wms. 659. Compare Cope _v._ Cope, 1 Salk. 449. Shafto _v._ Shafto, 2
+P. Wms. 664.
+
+Although the custom of primogeniture and the law of entail exercise
+a similar influence on our social state, yet, as they may be said
+in some measure to go by a different path towards the same end, Mr
+M'Culloch has treated them separately. With respect to the first, he
+begins by rebutting Adam Smith's sweeping denunciation:--"Nothing
+can be more contrary to the real interest of a numerous family, than
+a right which, in order to enrich one, beggars all the rest of the
+children." _Wealth of Nations_, p. 171.
+
+     "On the contrary," says Mr M'Culloch, "we are well convinced
+     that much of the industry and of the superior wealth and
+     civilisation of modern Europe, may be ascribed to the influence
+     of the custom of primogeniture in determining the succession
+     to estates; and that, were it abolished, or superseded by the
+     opposite custom of equally dividing landed property among all
+     the children, or even among all the sons, they would suffer
+     universally by the change, the youngest as well as the oldest;
+     while it would most seriously compromise the interests of every
+     other class."--P. 28.
+
+The truth is, that the right of primogeniture is rather to be
+regarded as having for its object the benefit of the community,
+than the interest of the particular family. If a man has L50,000
+a-year and five sons, it may appear, at first sight, decidedly
+more conducive to "the greatest possible happiness of the greatest
+possible number," that each of these five sons should have L10,000
+a-year, than that one should possess the whole, or bulk, of the
+paternal property, and the other four be left to buffet their way
+through the world. But it is for the interest of the nation that
+its aristocracy should be founded in old families, fortified and
+graced by historical associations; and these are only to be kept up
+by a devolution of their lands according to the feudal rule. But,
+as regards the interest of the particular family, it will appear
+on consideration that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, this
+also is most effectually promoted by the law of primogeniture. By
+means of this law, the main stock of the family is left in its full
+strength as a nucleus round which the younger branches are united,
+and from which their members derive alike a great portion of their
+status in society, and inducement to advance themselves in their
+respective pursuits; and, on the other hand, the professions of
+the country are exalted and dignified by the infusion into their
+ranks of men of birth and education, who are, at the same time,
+dependent on those professions for their advancement. Sir Matthew
+Hale, as quoted by Mr M'Culloch, forcibly describes the results
+of the opposite system. "This equal division of inheritance," he
+says, speaking of the old times of Saxon gavelkind, "did by degrees
+bring the inhabitants to a low kind of country living; and families
+were broken; and the younger sons which, had they not had these
+little parcels of land to apply themselves to, would have betaken
+themselves to trades, or to military, or civil, or ecclesiastical
+employments, neglecting those opportunities, wholly applied
+themselves to those small divisions of land; whereby they neglected
+the opportunities of greater advantage of enriching themselves
+and the kingdom." And if it should be urged that Sir Matthew Hale
+could do little more than form an _a priori_ judgment of the social
+condition of England in the days of the Confessor, it should be
+remembered that the picture here drawn is precisely applicable to
+the state of France at the present day, and may easily be traced to
+its similar system of partition. An important public result of the
+same system, as regards the landholders in the exercise of their
+functions as citizens, may also be observed in that country. The
+large body of landed proprietors, amounting to between four and five
+millions, so far from being the leaders of the people, are, perhaps,
+the most inert and uninfluential class of the whole community. They
+pay the bulk of the taxes, and grumble accordingly; but beyond a
+vague dread of aristocracy--not unnaturally founded, perhaps, on the
+traditions of the vexatious privileges swept away in 1791--they seem
+disposed calmly to acquiesce in all the proclamations, charters,
+and chimeras that maybe thrust upon them by busier handlers of the
+tools of government, and behold revolutions concocted in Paris,
+and bursting over their heads, apparently without the remotest
+conception that it any wise rests with them to control or guide the
+convulsion.
+
+     "It has sometimes been contended that the custom of
+     primogeniture is injurious, from its interesting the leading
+     families of the country in the support of expensive public
+     establishments, in which their younger branches are most
+     commonly placed."--P. 38.
+
+This objection also Mr M'Culloch brings to the test of experiment,
+and shows that this bias, if it really exist, is little perceptible,
+and that the aristocracy have shown much more zeal to discharge
+the functions of the ill-paid offices of the army and navy, than
+to get into their hands the lucrative situations connected with
+the administration of justice. It was certainly not the immediate
+interest of the aristocracy, for instance, to maintain the offices
+of the six clerks in Chancery, the profits on which were estimated
+for compensation at sums varying, we believe, from L2500 to L1000
+per annum.
+
+The law of entail is traceable to the same human instincts as the
+law of primogeniture. The clannish feelings of the northern nations,
+their notion of representation by blood, and the territorial
+character of their citizenship, all combined to produce an anxiety
+to perpetuate the old stocks in the homes of their fathers. Nor is
+this desire of posthumous control over the transmission of lands
+the product, as is sometimes alleged, of an artificial state of
+society. Man's possessory instinct essentially connects itself with
+the future--_Serit arbores quae alteri prosint saeculo._ The justice
+of gratifying this wish by general laws of the community is not
+more impeachable than that of guarding the indefeasible possession
+of the owner during his lifetime. It remains to be seen how far the
+sanction of entails is consistent with the good of the nation in
+general.
+
+Every lawyer knows that the progress of legal decisions in England
+has been adverse to entails, and that although the statute De Donis
+continues on the statute-book, yet it was long ago rendered almost
+nugatory by the introduction of fines and recoveries. Hence the term
+entail is now popularly applied to denote the strict settlement of
+lands, under provisions which prevent them from passing from the
+heirs to whom they are limited; this having been, of old, the result
+of an entail properly so called, though it now requires a more
+complicated mode of settling, and can only endure (so as to render
+the lands inalienable) for a life or any number of lives in being,
+and twenty-one years afterwards. This more popular meaning of the
+word entail is that which Mr M'Culloch follows--his object being to
+treat of the influence of tying up lands from alienation.
+
+Measuring the practice of entails by the rule of utility, Mr
+M'Culloch selects two points as the principal topics of discussion.
+
+     "In the first place, it is alleged in favour of entails that
+     they stimulate exertion and economy; that they hold out to
+     industry and ambition the strongest and safest excitement in the
+     prospect of founding an imperishable name and a powerful family,
+     and of being remembered and venerated by endless generations
+     as their chief and benefactor. And, in the second place, it is
+     said that entails form the only solid bulwark of a respectable
+     aristocracy, and prevent generations from being ruined by the
+     folly or misfortunes of an individual."--P. 78.
+
+The first of these propositions is, no doubt, partially true; but
+the motive put forward has not, we think, as a matter of experience,
+the force that might, at first sight, be attributed to it. Perhaps
+the keenest accumulators of wealth have not been those who have
+fixed their capital in a landed estate. The man of business habits
+and judicious speculation is drawn to make his fortune in obedience
+to a passion which is partly developed, and at all events fostered,
+by the pursuit of his life. It cannot be said to arise altogether
+from a notion of benefiting posterity, of being the founder of a
+house--the man of whom future Fitztomkynses shall be ashamed--that
+John Tomkins, merchant, sets at nought all the expostulations of
+self-indulgence:
+
+    "Tun' mare transilias? tibi torta cannabe fulto
+     Coena sit in transtro? Veientanumque rubellum
+     Exhalet vapida laesum pice fissilis obba?"
+
+Enormous fortunes were accumulated during the declining days
+of the Roman republic. But entails being then unknown, and the
+Roman nobility having no territorial position, these fortunes,
+usually acquired by oppression and extortion in the provinces, were
+squandered in largesses and corruption at home. There was no other
+way in which a Roman citizen of great wealth could establish the
+influence of his family. He could not, like, all English gentleman,
+connect his name with a landed estate, and extend his influence by
+those good offices and local duties which lie so immediately open
+to a man in that capacity. As an almost necessary consequence, he
+sought for power through the demoralisation and corruption of the
+holders of the suffrage--causes which contributed more than any
+other to the downfall of the republic. By lavishing his gold in this
+manner, he obtained, not only political eminence for himself, but
+also that power which led to proconsulates and propraetorships among
+his heirs, and thus gave them the opportunity of repairing, by fresh
+exactions, his diminished revenues.
+
+Hence we should rather view the law of entail as an inducement to a
+man to perpetuate his thousands in broad acres than to acquire his
+fortune in the first instance. And, in conformity with this view,
+it may be observed, that it is more generally the son or other
+successor than the architect of the fortune himself who converts the
+accumulated wealth into this permanent form.
+
+Mr M'Culloch's second point--the preservation of families by means
+of entails--is one of wider interest and more general importance. In
+a bustling mercantile community like ours, we cannot too jealously
+guard any institution which, directly or indirectly, tends to
+preserve distinctions due to something more than mere wealth. And
+there can be no doubt that the system of entails has saved many
+an ancient line from being thrust from its home of centuries to
+a strange spot, and this not only among the titled and wealthy,
+but among the yeomanry and "statesmen." In England, of course, a
+family may frequently perish through the possession of an estate in
+fee-simple passing into the hands of an unthrifty representative
+of the line, as the settlements require constant renewal. But in
+Scotland the system of perpetual entail exercises a much more potent
+influence in their behalf. Mr M'Culloch, though he rebuts many of
+the objections urged against the Scottish law, is nevertheless
+anxious to see it assimilated in a great measure to that of
+England. There is, however, an exception which he would make to
+the rule against perpetuity of entails. It is with regard to the
+peerage, in which matter we cordially agree with him. There were,
+in ancient times, instances of barons who were degraded from their
+dignity on account of their lack of sufficient revenue to support
+their hereditary title. The independence and the dignity of the
+House of Lords would be alike maintained by an enactment enabling,
+or even obliging, all peers to tie up by perpetual entail a certain
+portion of their estates to accompany the title. Such anomalies
+as that of an Earl of Buchan (Lord Erskine's father, see Lord
+Campbell's _Lives of the Chancellors_) living in the uppermost flat
+of a sixteen-story house, would thereby be avoided with considerable
+advantage to the national interests.
+
+Mr M'Culloch, therefore, who quotes Sir William Temple and Dr
+Johnson on the same side, would preserve the law of perpetual entail
+for the Scottish peerage, and extend it also to that of England.
+In other respects he is, as we have above stated, in favour of a
+considerable modification of the Scottish law of entail. He admits,
+however, the difficulty of dealing with existing entails.
+
+     "These have established a right of property not only in the
+     actual possessors and their families, but, speaking generally,
+     in a wide circle of collateral heirs; nor could the rights of
+     the unborn heirs be affected without annulling the clauses in a
+     great number of settlements, and also in marriage-contracts and
+     other deeds _inter vivos_. It is, therefore, hardly possible
+     materially to relax the fetters of entails with strict justice
+     to all parties, though it might perhaps be slowly and gradually
+     effected without inflicting any very serious hardship on
+     any individual. We incline to think that this might be most
+     easily brought about by saving the rights of living heirs
+     of entail, and of such heirs as may be born under existing
+     marriage-contracts. The interests of the possible heirs that
+     might be prejudiced by the adoption of some such rule as this,
+     are of so very unsubstantial a description that they might
+     safely be neglected." P. 78.
+
+At the time we write, a measure is pending before Parliament,
+entitled "A Bill for the amendment of the Law of Entail in
+Scotland," and endorsed with the names of the Lord-Advocate, Sir
+George Grey, and Mr Solicitor-General for Scotland. Whatever
+difficulties Mr M'Culloch feels with regard to relaxing the fetters
+of entail, it is obvious that the contrivers of this bill are in
+nowise hampered by them. They go to work in the most off-hand manner
+possible. A short and unobtrusive-looking bill is to drive clean
+through all the existing settlements and deeds of tailzie, with
+their complicated train of clauses irritant and resolutive, as if no
+mortal was concerned in the matter, and estates were the proper toys
+of law-makers.
+
+The fact of the quantity of alienable land diminishing in a
+commercial country, while trade and population are increasing, is no
+doubt a state of things which calls for a remedy, since there must
+at some period or another, be a failure of land adequate to meet the
+requirements of realised fortunes. If, in the judgment of reasonable
+and practical observers, the difficulty could be met by making all
+future entails subject to be barred by a process analogous to that
+existing in England, we should think there could be no hesitation
+in affirming it to be the most just and most expedient course to
+introduce such a change, and leave the existing settlements in their
+contemplated perpetuity. If, however, it can be clearly established
+that already too much land is locked up in the northern kingdom,
+and that the soil now free from entail is insufficient to satisfy
+the requirements of future buyers, then we should say that the
+utmost care and skill were required in framing enactments which
+should adapt themselves to the justice of particular cases, and
+should, as far as might be, save existing and vested interests in
+their delicate multiplicity and connexion. If ever such care and
+skill were required, it would be in a measure which interferes
+more extensively with vested rights--usually with good reason a
+sacred thing in the eye of the law--than any which appears in the
+statute-books of the three kingdoms. A statute to convert the Irish
+tenants into owners of the fee-simple of their several holdings,
+(a project which has been talked of,) would scarcely be a more
+startling invasion of the rights of property as they are usually
+recognised. We do not, however, intend to impeach the general
+provisions of the bill. If, as we before observed, so important a
+change was found to be necessary, it is right to make it; and it is
+no more than was effected in England by a more gradual process--the
+subtle fictions of the law-courts, which virtually got rid of the
+statute De Donis. But we can anticipate nothing but uncertainty
+and multiplied litigation, from the apparently crude and careless
+project now before us.
+
+An instance of the loose wording of this bill strikes the reader
+in the very first section. It proposes to enact "that where any
+estate in Scotland shall be entailed by a deed of tailzie, dated
+on or after the first day of March one thousand eight hundred and
+forty-eight, it shall be lawful for any heir of entail, born after
+the date of such tailzie, being of full age, and in possession of
+such entailed estate in virtue of such tailzie, _to acquire such
+estate in fee-simple_, by applying to the Court of Session, &c."
+Now, what is this estate which the heir of entail is to acquire in
+fee-simple? The estate-tail, for so it is by hypothesis. But to
+talk of acquiring an estate-tail in fee-simple is nothing better
+than downright nonsense. An estate-tail is, by the origin of the
+word, cut or carved (taille) out of the fee-simple. You may talk of
+converting or enlarging the part into the whole, but you cannot talk
+of acquiring the part in the entirety of the whole. This is not all;
+the bill plunges at once _in medias res_, without favouring us with
+any sort of definition of the important phrase, "heir of entail," in
+this and other clauses. The same expression in the statute 1 Jac.
+VII. c. 32, has already (see _Sandford's Entails_, p. 231) given
+rise to no small questioning and litigation, which promise to be
+renewed in abundance should this measure pass into a law. Again,
+perpetual inalienability is not an incident to all estates-tail.
+Lands merely bound by what are called the prohibitive clauses, may
+be alienated for a valuable consideration, though not by a voluntary
+or (as the Scotch say) gratuitous conveyance. Tailzies, however, to
+which no clauses are annexed, do not prevent the heir from conveying
+the lands in any manner he pleases. Now, as, the object of this bill
+is to relax the bonds of perpetual inalienability, we presume that
+only those tailzies which are guarded by the irritant and resolutive
+clauses are within its purview. If so, the general expression "deed
+of tailzie" should have been distinctly limited. If that expression
+should be held to comprehend all deeds of tailzie, which it must of
+course do when taken by itself, then the proposed act will exercise
+a very extensive disabling power, by restricting the unlimited right
+of alienation under tailzies of simple destination,[2] and the right
+of alienation for value under tailzies with prohibitive clauses
+only introduced, to the peculiar form and instrument pointed out by
+this bill, and which we suppose was devised in analogy to the forms
+substituted for fines and recoveries by the statute 3 & 4 Will. IV.
+c. 74.
+
+  [2] See Erskine's _Institutes_, B. iii. tit. 8, Secs. 21-25.
+
+We have already seen how Mr M'Culloch would deal with the difficulty
+of disturbing the devolution of lands already limited in perpetual
+entail--namely, by "saving the rights of living heirs of entail,
+and of heirs born under existing marriage-contracts." We think our
+author has not, in this passage, expressed himself with due legal
+perspicuity and precision. The phrase "living heirs of entail" is
+somewhat vague and uncertain; we presume Mr M'Culloch intended the
+living issue of the heir of entail in possession, and all living
+heirs-substitute and their living issue. Again, what are existing
+marriage-contracts? Probably those marriage-contracts are intended,
+which are annexed to marriages solemnised before the introduction of
+a new system. Both these suggestions, as we have interpreted them,
+might with justice, and advantage have formed part of the new law.
+It is true that this would, at all events for a considerable period
+of time, stop short of that assimilation of the Scottish law to the
+English which seems to have been a great object with the framers of
+this bill. But the two systems would gradually correspond; and we
+hold that there is a principle of justice involved in the upholding
+of contracts the objects of which are as yet unfulfilled. Where
+an English settler has limited lands to a man for life, remainder
+to his first and other sons successively in tail, he knew, at the
+time of making the settlement, that it was liable to be barred with
+consent of the eldest son on his coming of age. But it was not so
+with a Scotch settler who executed a deed of tailzie to several
+brothers as successive heirs-substitute; and the legislature has no
+right, without the gravest public cause, to step in and defeat his
+intention.
+
+But the bill, though intending to give far greater liberty to the
+owner of an entailed estate than Mr M'Culloch does, or, as we think,
+is consistent with justice, sets about affording him aid in the
+most ambiguous and misty manner conceivable. The 2d clause enacts
+that the heir of entail in possession, born after the date of the
+act, may disentail in the manner provided by the act; and an heir
+of entail born before the date of the act may similarly disentail,
+"with the consent (and not otherwise) of the heir-substitute next
+in succession, and heir-apparent under the entail of the heir in
+possession," he being born after the date of the act, and capable of
+contracting.
+
+We should recommend the tenant in tail to be very cautious how he
+attempts to "acquire his estate in fee-simple" under the provisions
+of this clause. He is to obtain the consent of the heir-substitute
+next in succession. So far his course is clear. But the same person
+is also designated by the term "heir-apparent under the entail of
+the heir in possession." Now, is this a qualification of the general
+term "heir-substitute next in succession," and must such person,
+under the act, be also heir-apparent? If so, what is the particular
+qualification required of him under the expression "heir-apparent?"
+Adhering to the use of the phrase in popular language, we must take,
+as the only circumstances under which the next heir-substitute and
+the heir-apparent are one and the same person, the case in which
+the first estate under the entail is limited to a man and the heirs
+of his body, and the second to his second son and the heirs of his
+body; then, supposing the eldest son to die in the lifetime of his
+father, the second son would be both the next heir-substitute and
+also the heir-apparent. Is this, therefore, the only case within
+the act? Scarcely, we should think, was it so intended. Are we,
+then, to interpret the word heir-apparent in the sense in which the
+phrase heir-presumptive is generally used; and must we suppose that
+the cases indicated are those in which there is no issue under the
+first entail, and therefore the next heir-substitute is what we
+should call heir-presumptive to the person in possession? If so,
+what is to become of the numerous cases where there is issue to
+take under the existing estate-tail? Or can it be that the issue
+in tail is altogether forgotten by this act, and that the person
+whose consent is required is merely the next heir-substitute in any
+case? We are inclined to think this the most probable explanation of
+this unfortunate clause, but can scarcely imagine that it will be
+suffered to pass into a law. A further ambiguity, however, arises
+with respect to this term heir-apparent, from its having a peculiar
+technical meaning in the Scottish law. "He who is entitled," says
+Erskine, "to enter heir to a deceased ancestor is, before his actual
+entry, styled, both in our statutes and by our writers, _apparent
+heir_." If the bill intends any reference to this legal acceptation
+of the phrase, we can only understand the person whose consent is
+required, to be such person as, being next heir-substitute, would,
+on the immediate decease of the possessor, be his apparent heir,
+or entitled to enter on the lands. This, again, shuts out all
+those estates where the possessor has issue in tail, and would,
+consequently, limit the operation of the bill to exceptional
+cases. We think we have said enough to convince our readers that
+this clause is not likely to set free many entailed estates in
+Scotland--at all events, not without a chaos of litigation, in which
+the elements of profit will have a tendency to range themselves on
+the side of the lawyers.
+
+The person whose consent is to be obtained (whoever that mysterious
+person may be) is, as we have seen, to be born after the date of
+the act. In conformity with this principle, one would have supposed
+that where the next heir-substitute shall have been born before
+that date, then it should be necessary to obtain the consent of the
+first person entitled to take _per formam doni_, who shall be born
+after this date, together with the consent of all those who are to
+take before him. The third clause, however, introduces a new form of
+protection to the settlement, and merely enacts that, in such cases,
+the consent of a certain number of the heirs-substitute is to be
+obtained, (the blank left for the number was filled up with the word
+"three" in committee of the House of Commons. Nothing said about the
+issue in tail, as before.
+
+Where the main enactments of the bill are so incomprehensible, it
+is useless to dwell on its details. We can only say, that whatever
+evils may be shown to exist under the present law, they will not
+only fail to be cured, but must be aggravated tenfold, by such a
+product of off-hand legislation--
+
+                        "Sent before its time
+    Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
+    And that so lamely and unfashionable,"
+
+that it must necessarily die of its own deformity, unless the
+law-courts will lick it into shape by their decisions,--a shape (as
+it must be) in which its own parents would not know it again.
+
+The law of real property in France exhibits a system so distinctly
+antagonistic to our English and Scottish law of entail, that we
+cannot be surprised at the attention with which Mr M'Culloch has
+investigated its influences.
+
+     "According to the law of France, a person with one child may
+     dispose at pleasure of a moiety of his property, the child
+     inheriting the other moiety as legitim, or matter of right; a
+     person having two children can only dispose of a third part
+     of his property; and those having more than two must divide
+     three-fourths of their property equally amongst them, one-fourth
+     part being all that is then left at their disposal. When a
+     father dies intestate, his property is equally divided among his
+     children, without respect to sex or seniority. Nothing can be
+     more distinctly opposed to the principles we have endeavoured
+     to establish, and to the system followed in this country, than
+     this law. It is therefore lucky that it is now no novelty. It
+     has been established for more than half a century, so that we
+     may trace and exhibit its practical influence over the condition
+     of the extensive population subject to its operation. Such an
+     experiment is of rare occurrence, but when made is invaluable.
+     And if its results should confirm the conclusions already
+     come to, it will go far to establish them on an unassailable
+     basis."--P. 80-81.
+
+We have already seen how these results may be traced in the state
+of French agriculture. They may also, we think, be discerned in the
+relative position which the landholders of France bear to other
+classes in the social scale. These, numbering between four and
+five millions, ought, as a class, to constitute the leaders of the
+nation. So far from this being the case, they are perhaps the most
+inert and uninfluential portion of the community, having apparently
+had little or no voice in the two revolutions which have swept over
+their heads within the last eighteen years, and as little in the
+erection, maintenance, or downfall of the Throne of the Barricades.
+It yet remains to be seen whether they will continue to accept every
+thing which the clubs of Paris are willing to force upon them. As
+tax-payers and cultivators of the soil, it can hardly suit them to
+be propagandists; as men who have something to lose, they will not
+readily give in to the dictatorial vagaries of Ledru Rollin. If,
+however, they would hold their own, it is time for them to be up and
+doing. France has been governed by a minority before now.
+
+We have always regarded it as one of the main advantages of a
+landed aristocracy, that it raises up a principle of social rank
+antagonistic to that of mere wealth. In France, the constant
+subdivision and transfer of land breaks down this influence,
+and causes land to be regarded as a mere marketable article and
+equivalent for money.
+
+     "In countries where the custom of primogeniture exercises a
+     powerful influence, families become identified with estates--the
+     family representing the estate, and the estate the family. The
+     wealth and consideration enjoyed by the latter depend upon, and
+     are intimately connected with, the possession of the lands
+     which have descended to them from their ancestors. They estimate
+     their value by another than a mere pecuniary standard. They are
+     attached to them by the oldest and most endearing associations;
+     and they are seldom parted with except under the most painful
+     circumstances. Hence the perpetuity of property in England in
+     the same families, notwithstanding the limited duration of
+     entails; great numbers of estates being at this moment enjoyed
+     by those whose ancestors acquired them at or soon after the
+     Conquest. But in France such feelings are proscribed. Estates
+     and families have there no abiding connexion; and at the demise
+     of an individual who has a number of children, his estate can
+     hardly escape being subdivided. And this effect of the law tends
+     to imbue the proprietors with corresponding sentiments and
+     feelings. 'Non seulement,' says M. De Tocqueville, 'la loi des
+     successions rend difficile aux familles de conserver intacts les
+     memes domaines, mais elle leur ote le desir de le tenter, et
+     elle les entraine, en quelque sorte, a cooperer avec elle a leur
+     propre ruine.'"--P. 85-86.
+
+But Mr M'Culloch dwells more particularly on the injurious effects
+to agriculture from the parcelling out of the land into small
+properties. He shows that a small proprietor is not so efficient a
+cultivator of the soil as a tenant, in which doctrine Arthur Young
+had preceded him. He shows, also, that the subdivision of properties
+leads to the subdivision of farms, and urges that it is impossible
+to have good farming on small patches of land. Of the miseries of an
+agricultural system carried on by small farmers on petty holdings,
+we have already a sufficient example in Ireland. We cannot but
+think, however, that the progress of things in England has too much
+swallowed up those little farms of from thirty to fifty acres, which
+at one time were common over the country. Not but what capital is
+employed at a great disadvantage on these little holdings--but where
+there is a general system of good-sized farms, an intermixture, of
+smaller farms is not attended with injurious effects proportional
+to those which arise where the whole of the land is split up into
+minute parcels. And then small farmers furnish a link between the
+yeomanry and peasantry, which it is useful to maintain, cheering
+the poor man's lot by pointing out to him a path by which lie may
+advance from the position of a day-labourer to that of an occupier
+of land. On the same principle, we are rejoiced to observe the
+gradual extension of the allotment system; although it would have
+a still more beneficial effect, we think, if the land was granted
+in the shape of a croft about the cottage, thus giving the tenant a
+greater interest, and more individual sense of proprietorship, than
+when his piece of land is packed, along with a number of others,
+into a mass of unsightly patches.
+
+In connexion with the small holdings in Ireland, it should not be
+forgotten that this subdivision of the land results mainly from the
+practice of sub-letting; and this again has arisen in a great degree
+from the practice of granting long leases, the want of which in
+England has served, among many other things, for an outcry against
+the landlords. Mr M'Culloch has pointed out the evils of too long
+leases on the farming tenant, that they superinduce a sense of
+security which easily degenerates into indolence. But the influence
+on Ireland is even worse, by breaking up the land into small
+patches, on which the occupier can but just maintain himself, paying
+an exorbitant rent to the middleman. For it is not the eager demand
+for land amongst the Irish peasantry, as we sometimes hear, that has
+produced this subdivision of the land, but the subdivision that has
+produced the demand, by putting the cultivation of the land into the
+hands of a class who are unable, through want of skill and capital,
+to carry it on; who cannot, therefore, furnish employment for the
+labourers, and thus drive them to grasp at little parcels of land
+as their only means of securing a wretched subsistence; and this
+security, as we know, has more than once proved but a fancied one,
+as in the disastrous failure of the potato crop.
+
+While we are on this subject, we may draw the reader's attention
+to a very able pamphlet by an Irish gentleman, on Irish matters,
+which, though we believe it has never been published, has had
+an extensive private circulation. We allude to "An Address to
+the Members of the House, of Commons on the Landlord and Tenant
+Question, by Warren H. R. Jackson, Esq." The work, though somewhat
+tinged with the hard politico-economical school, is written with
+great shrewdness of thought and freedom from prejudice, and is well
+worthy the careful attention of the honourable House. The writer, in
+discussing the vexed question he has taken in hand, fully coincides
+with the general principles laid down by Mr M'Culloch. "This," he
+says, (speaking of the subdivision of land) "is one of the monster
+grievances of Ireland, and you will do little good unless you abate
+it." This abatement he would bring about mainly by prospective
+laws, as by placing all contracts for subletting _hors la loi_, and
+so taking away from the first lessee all power of recovering his
+rent from the actual tenant. We cannot but think that this would be
+found a most salutary enactment. It should be remembered, that the
+occupier is responsible to the owner of the freehold by the power
+of distress vested in the latter, and it is but just that he should
+be relieved from the liability to pay two rents--a liability which
+it is manifest no good farmer would incur, but which the squalid
+ravager of the soil in Ireland is always eager for.
+
+It has been said that no further legislative enactment is required
+in Ireland, and that administrative wisdom must do what yet
+remains to be done. Mr Jackson, however, shows that there are such
+deep-seated evils in Ireland as cannot be cured except by the direct
+interference of the legislature. But we think he expects too much
+from the Sale of Encumbered Estates Bill. An extensive change of
+proprietorship would, we are persuaded, be a great evil in Ireland.
+There is an attachment in general to the "ould stock" among their
+poorer neighbours, which would naturally be followed by a jealousy
+and prejudice against the new comers who displaced them. And this
+prejudice would of itself neutralise any efforts for improvement
+which the landlord might otherwise be disposed to make--although,
+in most cases, we should not expect much effort in this direction
+from a stranger mortgagee, often an unwilling purchaser, who would
+naturally be anxious to contract with those parties from whom he
+could obtain his rents with least trouble, leaving them to deal with
+the land as they liked, and thereby continuing and increasing the
+odious middleman system.
+
+Mr M'Culloch does not confine his examination of the compulsory
+partition in France to its influence on agriculture. He has
+discerned certain political effects of that and the concomitant
+system of which it is a part, with a precision which subsequent
+events have elevated into a sort of prophecy. The preface to his
+work is dated December 1847, and the work was published, we believe,
+early in January. There can, therefore, be no grounds for classing
+the following passage with those anticipations which are made after
+the event:--
+
+     "The aristocratical element is no longer to be found in French
+     society; and the compulsory division of the soil, while it
+     prevents the growth of an aristocracy, impresses the same
+     character of mobility upon landed possessions that is impressed
+     on the families of their occupiers. Hence the prevalent want of
+     confidence in the continuance of the present order of things in
+     France. What is there in that country to oppose an effectual
+     resistance to a revolutionary movement? Monarchy in France has
+     been stripped of those old associations and powerful bulwarks
+     whence it derives almost all its lustre and support in this
+     and other countries. The throne stands in solitary, though not
+     unenvied dignity, without the shelter of a single eminence,
+     exposed to the full force of the furious blasts that sweep
+     from every point of the surrounding level. There is nothing
+     intermediate, nothing to hinder a hostile majority in the
+     Chamber of Deputies from at once subverting the regal branch of
+     the constitution, or changing the reigning dynasty."--P. 132-133.
+
+Scarcely was the printer's ink dry on this passage when the Throne
+of the Barricades was gone. We have given our author full credit
+for his sagacity in penetrating into the future, but we think it
+would puzzle him to foretell what is to come next. We are disposed
+to doubt, however, whether an aristocracy could have preserved the
+throne of Louis Philippe. It is true that in our own country William
+of Nassau and George of Brunswick maintained their crowns by the
+aid of powerful sections of the nobility. But the revolutions which
+gave them those crowns were not the volcanic outbursts of popular
+force. Under such outbursts, no successful usurper, no "Hero-king,"
+no sovereign by the will of the people, has been able to devise a
+principle which shall establish his throne in security, and serve
+in the stead of that prestige of old hereditary succession, that
+grand feudal idea of kingly right, which is the essential fountain
+of the reverence that guards royalty. Louis Philippe would have
+confirmed his sovereignty by means of the influence exerted upon
+interested officials. No sooner was his power shaken in its unstable
+equilibrium than the men whom his gold had bought rushed to worship
+the rising sun of the young Republic. Napoleon, before him, would
+have built up a similar power on military glory: his doom was
+sealed when his eagles turned from the field of Leipsic. Cromwell
+employed religious fanaticism to the same end: the fanaticism
+lasted his time; but we will venture to say that, had he lived, his
+protectorate would not have reached the seventeen years allotted to
+the democratic King of the French.
+
+Our author is of opinion that, after all, the system of compulsory
+partition will fail to guard what has since become the French
+Republic:--
+
+     "But, though it were possible, which it is not, to obviate
+     the mischievous influence of the French and other plans for
+     preventing the increase and continuance of property in the same
+     families, it may be confidently predicted that they will, in
+     time to come as hitherto, wholly fail in their grand object of
+     perpetuating the ascendancy of the democracy. In old settled and
+     fully peopled countries, where the bulk of the population is
+     necessarily poor and dependent, an aristocracy is indispensable
+     for the support of a free system of government--'Il importe a
+     tous les peuples qui ont la pretention de devenir ou de rester
+     puissants, d'avoir une aristocratie, c'est-a-dire un corps
+     hereditaire ou non, qui conserve et perpetue les traditions,
+     donne de l'esprit de suite a la politique, et se voue a l'art le
+     plus difficile de tous, qu' aujourd'hui cependant tout le monde
+     croit savoir sans l'avoir appris, celui de gouverner. Un peuple
+     sans aristocratic pourra briller dans les lettres et les arts,
+     mais sa gloire politique me semble devoir etre passagere comme
+     un meteore.' CHEVALIER, _Lettres sur l'Amerique_, ii. 379," pp.
+     171, 172.
+
+We have already said that we think England certain to have an
+aristocracy of some description. The ambition of the people to
+advance themselves individually in the social scale will necessarily
+lead to a high value being set upon those advanced positions,
+and will tend to make them the fulcrum from which the country is
+governed. And we can conceive nothing more fatal to our national
+organisation than the result which would follow indirectly from the
+repeal of these laws. It may be supposed at first sight that no very
+vital question is involved here. Let those who suppose so, take a
+view of the probable condition of society which would ensue. These,
+and other so-called feudalities, being swept away, land becomes
+a commercial article, according to the desire of the plutocratic
+reformers. Estates are trucked about in the market like bills of
+exchange; constantly changing hands, their owners have little
+connexion with them or the people that live on them, regarding them
+merely in the light of so much realised capital. The old families
+gradually become dispossessed; mere wealth is recognised as the
+sole qualification for rank and influence; and the leading class
+in the state is composed of men who are an aristocracy by virtue
+of ready money. Far be it from us to undervalue the enterprise,
+integrity, and industry of our merchant manufacturers and tradesmen.
+But we will say that when we meet with a man, as we often do among
+those classes, endowed with a broad range of thought and high and
+noble aims, we regard him as possessing these qualities not as a
+consequence, but in spite of a commercial training. The immediate
+effects of such training are to narrow the mind and cramp the
+soul, not in respect of domestic and social life--for in these,
+perhaps, the middle classes are unsurpassed by any other--but in the
+provinces of the statesman and the politician.
+
+In these times, it seems to be commonly supposed that a
+legislator--like a poet--_nascitur, non fit_. There is a certain
+kind of training, the acquisition of a certain cast of thought,
+which are requisites for statesmen as a class, as much as his legal
+reading for a lawyer, or his apprenticeship for a handicraftsman.
+Statesmen, however, have to deal with practical matters; and
+therefore we think, as we have before said, that while the
+predominance of these requisites in the legislature is essential
+to good government, there may with advantage at the same time be
+a certain admixture of the men practically versed in commerce
+and manufactures. But this should be always a subordinate, not a
+leading, element in the principles which regulate the administration
+of government.--We repeat, that the counting-house, the loom, and
+the anvil, are not the best schools for legislators. For that
+office, a man requires leisure and education. We shall be told that
+a "Squire" is not necessarily an educated man. We do not maintain
+that he is. But, in the first place, as we cannot well have an
+education-test, we must go to the class in which, as a class, we
+find the highest and most enlarged form of education; and we believe
+that this qualification can, without question, be claimed for the
+leisure-class, or gentlemen of England. In the second place, it
+should be remembered, that if the squire is not always individually
+what we should call an educated man, he yet imbibes his thoughts
+and notions from those who are such, who give tone to the society
+in which he moves. In investigating the characteristics of classes,
+it can scarcely be but that a number of exceptions to our general
+rules will force themselves upon our attention. Yet, in good truth,
+we believe that almost all the individual examples which can be
+cited will bear out our estimate. The highest contributions to the
+legislature, on the part of the middle or commercial classes, have
+been the shrewd practical men of business, men of the stamp of Mr
+Hawes. As for the Cobdens and Brights, _et hoc genus omne_, their
+only motive principle appears to be the interests of _My Shop_.
+Their notion of loyalty, patriotism, and British prosperity, is
+nothing but low wages, high profits, and a brisk trade in calicoes.
+
+Many of our readers will recollect a passage in Cicero, (_Off._
+i. 42,) in which he reprobates, more or less, all commercial
+pursuits, in respect of their operations on the moral insight of
+man, and finishes with the praise of the culture of the soil, in
+these words: "Omnium rerum ex quibus aliquid acquiritur, nihil est
+agricultura melius, nihil uberius, nihil dulcius, nihil homine
+libero dignius." In this country we should find it difficult to go
+along with the feelings of the old Roman republican on these points.
+But though we have already expressed our high sense of the social
+and domestic virtues of the middle or trading classes, yet we are
+most confident in the truth of our position, that the shop is the
+worst possible preparation for the senate. We know that there is
+a talk abroad about earnest workers, drones of the hive, and so
+forth. By all means, let every man work who is fit to work. But it
+is not necessary, nor is it desirable, that every man should work
+for gain. On the contrary, we hold that a class endowed with leisure
+is indispensable, not only for the grace and civilisation, but even
+for the moral well-being of a community. That money should become
+the one grand loadstar of thought and action is the bane of those
+societies where the pursuit of money is the general employment; but
+where there is such a leisure-class as we have spoken of, forming
+the topmost rank of a nation otherwise chiefly mercantile, there are
+numberless influences derived from it which percolate through the
+underlying masses, and check or modify the exclusive reverence for
+wealth to which they would otherwise be prone. Even a mere blind
+respect for rank or title exalts the mind immeasurably as compared
+with mammon-worship.
+
+While on the subject of our leisure-class, which is pretty nearly
+synonymous with the landed gentry, we must not pass over in silence
+a subject in connexion with which the outcry against "the drones
+of the hive" is frequently introduced. We refer to the Game-Laws.
+The whole question of these laws has been so fully discussed in a
+recent Number of this magazine, that we will not attempt in any
+way to open that controversy. But they are so commonly coupled
+with the Laws of Entail as "feudalities," and as interfering with
+the transmission of land according to "commercial principles,"
+that we could not altogether omit the mention of them. We will at
+this time only observe, that the denunciation of the Game-Laws is
+a part of the crusade which Hard-Cash, that arrogant monopolist
+who bears no brother near his throne, is waging against all other
+objects of interest or devotion. Let it not be supposed that laws
+are of minor importance because they relate to the amusements of any
+portion of the community. They may derive their importance from that
+circumstance as tending to raise up something which shall cope with
+the lust of gold. The game-preserving interest is worth maintenance
+if only as clashing with mammonism.
+
+While the brawlers about "improvement" and "progress," are heaping
+their meaningless abuse upon feudalities, we should be glad to
+know what they purpose to do with that greatest feudality of all,
+the Crown? Already there are symptoms of an intention to take that
+matter in hand. Mr Cobden and some of his Calibans have talked in
+the House of Commons about curtailing the "barbarous splendour" of
+the throne. They know nothing and care nothing about the historical
+association and constitutional truths embodied in the ancient
+appendages of royalty. How should they? They want somebody to look
+after the police, and take care that no one robs their till; that
+is their idea of government. They want a man (some of them being
+willing to allow him a small salary, though others think that it
+does not pay) to preach to the masses, and tell them not to steal,
+and to be content with their wages; that is their idea of the
+church. We do not think, however, that the tone of thought prevalent
+among the Manchester school is destined yet to lead the mind of
+England. And we are the less inclined to look forward to such a
+national debasement when we find so enlightened an advocate of
+free-trade policy as Mr M'Culloch--the advocate of a theory which we
+hold to be erroneous, but not the selfish and greedy clamourer for
+the gain of himself and his class--thus coming forward to vindicate
+the laws which preserve the hereditary character of our aristocracy,
+which lend so efficient an aid in shielding us from the crushing
+tread of mammonism, and in preventing "commercial principles" from
+introducing the ledger and day-book into our manor houses, and the
+counter into our farmers' parlours. In this view we most heartily
+thank our author for his noble and energetic contribution to our
+National Defences at the present time; and as there is a wide field
+open in connexion with the subject he has so powerfully handled,
+we cannot take leave of him without expressing a hope that we may
+before long listen to him again "on the same side."
+
+
+
+
+LIFE IN THE "FAR WEST."
+
+PART II.
+
+     The reader is informed that "Life in the Far West" is _no
+     fiction_. The scenes and incidents described are strictly true.
+     The characters are real, (the names being changed in two or
+     three instances only,) and all have been, and are, well known in
+     the Western country.
+
+
+"And Mary Brand herself,--what is she like?"
+
+"She's 'some' now; that _is_ a fact, and the biggest kind of punkin
+at that," would have been the answer from any man, woman, or child,
+in Memphis County, and truly spoken too; always understanding that
+the pumpkin is _the_ fruit to which the _ne-plus-ultra_ of female
+perfection is compared by the figuratively speaking westerns.
+
+Being an American woman, of course she was tall, and straight and
+slim as a hickory sapling, well formed withal, with rounded bust,
+and neck white and slender as the swan's. Her features were small,
+but finely chiselled; and in this, it may be remarked, the lower
+orders of the American women differ from, and far surpass the same
+class in England, or elsewhere, where the features, although far
+prettier, are more vulgar and commonplace. She had the bright blue
+eye, thin nose, and small but sweetly-formed mouth, the too fair
+complexion and dark brown hair, which characterise the beauty of the
+Anglo-American, the heavy masses (hardly curls) which fell over her
+face and neck contrasting with their polished whiteness. Such was
+Mary Brand: and to her good looks being added a sweet disposition,
+and all the good qualities of a thrifty housewife, it must be
+allowed that she fully justified the eulogiums of the good people of
+Memphis.
+
+Well, to cut a love-story short, in the which not a little moral
+courage is shown, young La Bonte fell desperately in love with
+the pretty Mary, and she with him; and small blame to her, for he
+was a proper lad of twenty--six feet in his moccassins--the best
+hunter and rifle-shot in the country, with many other advantages too
+numerous to mention. But when did the course, &c. e'er run smooth?
+When the affair had become a recognised "courting," (and Americans
+alone know the horrors of such prolonged purgatory,) they became,
+to use La Bonte's words, "awful fond," and consequently about once
+a-week had their tiffs and makes-up.
+
+However, on one occasion, at a "husking," and during one of these
+tiffs, Mary, every inch a woman, to gratify some indescribable
+feeling, brought to her aid jealousy--that old serpent who has
+caused such mischief in this world; and by a flirtation over the
+corn-cobs with Big Pete, La Bonte's former and only rival, struck
+so hard a blow at the latter's heart, that on the moment his brain
+caught fire, blood danced before his eyes, and he became like one
+possessed. Pete observed and enjoyed his struggling emotion--better
+for him had he minded his corn-shelling alone; and the more to annoy
+his rival, paid the most sedulous attention to the pretty Mary.
+
+Young La Bonte stood it as long as human nature, at boiling heat,
+could endure; but when Pete, in the exultation of his apparent
+triumph, crowned his success by encircling the slender waist of the
+girl with his arm, and snatched a sudden kiss, he jumped upright
+from his seat, and seizing a small whisky-keg which stood in the
+centre of the corn-shellers, he hurled it at his rival, and crying
+to him, hoarse with passion, "to follow if he was a man," he left
+the house.
+
+At that time, and even now, in the remoter states of the western
+country, rifles settled even the most trivial differences between
+the hot-blooded youths; and of such frequent occurrence and
+invariably bloody termination did they become, that they scarcely
+produced sufficient excitement to draw together half a dozen
+spectators of the duel.
+
+In the present case, however, so public was the quarrel, and so
+well known the parties concerned, that not only the people who had
+witnessed the affair, but all the neighbourhood thronged to the
+scene of action, where, in a large field in front of the house,
+the preliminaries of a duel between Pete and La Bonte were being
+arranged by their respective friends.
+
+Mary, when she discovered the mischief her thoughtlessness was
+likely to occasion, was almost beside herself with grief, but she
+knew how vain it would be to attempt to interfere. The poor girl,
+who was most ardently attached to La Bonte, was carried, swooning,
+into the house, where all the women congregated, and were locked in
+by old Brand, who, himself an old pioneer, thought but little of
+bloodshed, but refused to let the "women folk" witness the affray.
+
+Preliminaries arranged, the combatants took up their respective
+positions at either end of a space marked for the purpose, at forty
+paces from each other. They were both armed with heavy rifles, and
+had the usual hunting-pouches, containing ammunition, hanging over
+the shoulder. Standing with the butts of their rifles on the ground,
+they confronted each other, and the crowd drawing away a few paces
+only on each side, left one man to give the word. This was the
+single word "fire;" and after this signal was given, the combatants
+were at liberty to fire away until one or the other dropped.
+
+At the word both the men quickly raised their rifles to the
+shoulder, and as the sharp cracks rung instantaneously, they were
+seen to flinch, as either felt the pinging sensation of a bullet
+entering his flesh. Regarding each other steadily for a few moments,
+the blood running down La Bonte's neck from a wound under the
+left jaw, whilst his opponent was seen to place his hand once to
+his right breast, as if to feel the position of his wound, they
+commenced reloading their rifles. As, however, Pete was in the
+act of forcing down the ball with his long hickory wiping-stick,
+he suddenly dropped his right arm,--the rifle slipped from his
+grasp,--and, reeling for a moment like a drunken man,--he fell dead
+to the ground.
+
+Even here, however, there was law of some kind or another, and the
+consequences of the duel were, that the constables were soon on the
+trail of La Bonte to arrest him. He, however, easily avoided them,
+and taking to the woods, lived for several days in as wild a state
+as the beasts he hunted and killed for his support.
+
+Tired of this, however, he resolved to quit the country, and betake
+himself to the mountains, for which life he had ever felt an
+inclination.
+
+When, therefore, he thought the officers of justice had tired of
+seeking him, and the coast was comparatively clear, he determined to
+start on his distant expedition to the Far West.
+
+Once more, before he carried his project into execution, he sought
+and had a last interview with Mary Brand.
+
+"Mary," said he, "I'm about to break. They're hunting me like a fall
+buck, and I'm bound to quit. Don't think any more about me, for I
+shall never come back." Poor Mary burst into tears, and bent her
+head on the table near which she was sitting. When again she raised
+it, she saw La Bonte, with his long rifle on his shoulder, striding
+with rapid steps from the house; and year after year rolled on, and
+he never returned.
+
+A few days after this he found himself at St Louis, the emporium
+of the fur trade, and the fast rising metropolis of the precocious
+settlements of the west. Here, a prey to the agony of mind which
+jealousy, remorse, and blighted love mix into a very puchero of
+misery, La Bonte got into the company of certain "rowdies," a class
+which every western city particularly abounds in; and anxious to
+drown his sorrows in any way, and quite unscrupulous as to the
+means, he plunged into all the vicious excitements of drinking,
+gambling, and fighting, which form the every-day amusements of the
+rising generation of St Louis.
+
+Perhaps in no other part of the United States, where indeed humanity
+is frequently to be seen in many curious and unusual phases, is
+there a population so marked in its general character, and at the
+same time divided into such distinct classes, as in the above-named
+city. Dating, as it does, its foundation from yesterday,--for what
+are thirty years in the growth of a metropolis?--its founders
+are now scarcely passed middle life, regarding with astonishment
+the growing works of their hands; and whilst gazing upon its busy
+quays, piled with grain and other produce of the west, its fleets
+of huge steamboats lying tier upon tier alongside the wharves, its
+well-stored warehouses and all the bustling concomitants of a great
+commercial depot, they can scarcely realise the memory of a few
+short years, when on the same spot nothing was to be seen but the
+few miserable hovels of a French village--the only sign of commerce
+the unwieldy bateaux of the Indian traders, laden with peltries
+from the distant regions of the Platte and Upper Missouri. Where
+now intelligent and wealthy merchants walk erect, in conscious
+substantiality of purse and credit, and direct the commerce of a
+vast and numerously-populated region, but the other day stalked,
+in dress of buckskin, the Indian trader of the west; and all the
+evidences of life, mayhap, consisted of the eccentric vagaries
+of the different bands of trappers and hardy mountaineers, who
+accompanied, some for pleasure and some as escort, the periodically
+arriving bateaux, laden with the beaver skins and buffalo robes
+collected during the season at the different trading posts in the
+Far West.
+
+These, nevertheless, were the men whose hardy enterprise opened to
+commerce and the plough the vast and fertile regions of the West.
+Rough and savage though they were, they alone were the pioneers
+of that extraordinary tide of civilisation which has poured its
+resistless current through tracts large enough for kings to govern;
+over a country now teeming with cultivation, where, a few short
+years ago, countless herds of buffalo roamed unmolested, the bear
+and deer abounded, and where the savage Indian skulked through the
+woods and prairies, lord of the unappreciated soil which now yields
+its prolific treasures to the spade and plough of civilised man. To
+the wild and half-savage trapper, who may be said to exhibit the
+energy, enterprise, and hardihood characteristic of the American
+people, divested of all the false and vicious glare with which a
+high state of civilisation, too rapidly attained, has obscured
+their real and genuine character, in which the above traits are
+eminently prominent--to these men alone is due the empire of the
+West--destined in a few short years to become the most important of
+those confederate states which compose the mighty union of North
+America.
+
+Sprung, then, out of the wild and adventurous fur trade, St Louis,
+still the emporium of that species of commerce, preserves even now,
+in the character of its population, many of the marked peculiarities
+which distinguished its early founders, who were identified with
+the primitive Indian in hardiness and instinctive wisdom. Whilst
+the French portion of the population retain the thoughtless levity
+and frivolous disposition of their original source, the Americans
+of St Louis, who may lay claim to be native, as it were, are as
+particularly distinguished for determination and energy of character
+as they are for physical strength and animal courage; and are
+remarkable, at the same time, for a singular aptitude in carrying
+out commercial enterprises to successful terminations, which would
+appear to be incompatible with the love of adventure and excitement
+which forms so prominent a feature in their character. In St Louis,
+nevertheless, and from her merchants, have emanated many commercial
+enterprises of gigantic speculation, not confined to its own
+locality or the distant Indian fur trade, but embracing all parts of
+the continent, and even a portion of the Old World. And here it must
+be remembered that St Louis is situated inland, at a distance of
+upwards of one thousand miles from the sea, and three thousand from
+the capital of the United States.
+
+Besides her merchants and upper class, who form a little
+aristocracy even here, she has a large portion of her population
+still connected with the Indian and fur trade, who preserve all
+their characteristics unacted upon by the influence of advancing
+civilisation, and between whom and other classes there is a marked
+distinction. There is, moreover, a large floating population of
+foreigners of all nations, who must possess no little amount of
+enterprise to be tempted to this spot, from whence they spread
+over the remote western tracts, still invested by the savage;
+and, therefore, if any of their blood is infused into the native
+population, the characteristic energy and enterprise is increased,
+and not tempered down, by the foreign cross.
+
+But perhaps the most singular of her casual population are the
+mountaineers, who, after several seasons spent in trapping, and with
+good store of dollars, arrive from the scene of their adventures,
+wild as savages, determined to enjoy themselves, for a time, in all
+the gaiety and dissipation of the western city. In one of the back
+streets of the town is a tavern well known as the "Rocky Mountain
+House," and here the trappers resort, drinking and fighting as long
+as their money lasts, which, as they are generous and lavish as
+Jack Tars, is for a few days only. Such scenes as are enacted in
+the Rocky Mountain House, both tragical and comical, are beyond the
+powers of pen to describe; and when a fandango is in progress, to
+which congregate the coquettish belles from "Vide Poche," as the
+French portion of a suburb is nicknamed,--the grotesque endeavours
+of the bear-like mountaineers to sport a figure on the light
+fantastic toe, and their insertions into the dance of the mystic
+jumps of Terpsichorean Indians when engaged in the "medicine"
+dances in honour of bear, of buffalo, or ravished scalp,--are such
+startling innovations on the choreographic art as would cause the
+shade of Gallini to quake and gibber in his pumps.
+
+Passing the open doors and windows of the Mountain House, the
+stranger stops short as the sounds of violin and banjo twang upon
+his ears, accompanied by extraordinary noises--which sound unearthly
+to the greenhorn listener, but which the initiated recognise as an
+Indian song roared out of the stentorian lungs, of a mountaineer,
+who, patting his stomach with open hands, to improve the necessary
+shake, choruses the well-known Indian chant:--
+
+    Hi--Hi--Hi--Hi,
+      Hi-i--Hi-i--Hi-i--Hi-i
+    Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya
+      Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya
+    Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi--hi,
+         &c. &c. &c.
+
+and polishing off the high notes with a whoop which makes the old
+wooden houses shake again, as it rattles and echoes down the street.
+
+Here, over fiery "monaghahela," Jean Batiste, the sallow half-breed
+voyageur from the north--and who, deserting the service of the
+"North-West," (the Hudson's Bay Company,) has come down the
+Mississippi, from the "Falls," to try the sweets and liberty of
+"free" trapping--hobnobs with a stalwart leather-clad "boy," just
+returned from trapping on the waters of Grand River, on the western
+side the mountains, who interlards his mountain jargon with Spanish
+words picked up in Taos and California. In one corner a trapper,
+lean and gaunt from the starving regions of the Yellow Stone, has
+just recognised an old companyero, with whom he hunted years before
+in the perilous country of the Blackfeet.
+
+"Why, John, old hos, how do you come on?"
+
+"What! Meek, old 'coon! I thought you were under?"
+
+One from Arkansa stalks into the centre of the room, with a pack of
+cards in his hand, and a handful of dollars in his hat. Squatting
+cross-legged on a buffalo robe, he smacks down the money, and cries
+out--"Ho, boys, hyar's a deck, and hyar's the beaver, (rattling the
+coin,) who dar set his hos? Wagh!"
+
+Tough are the yarns of wondrous hunts and Indian perils, of
+hairbreadth 'scapes and curious "fixes." Transcendant are the
+qualities of sundry rifles, which call these hunters masters; "plum"
+is the "centre" each vaunted barrel shoots; sufficing for a hundred
+wigs is the "hair" each hunter has "lifted" from Indians' scalps;
+multitudinous the "coups" he has "struck." As they drink so do they
+brag, first of their guns, their horses, and their squaws, and
+lastly of themselves:--and when it comes to that, "ware steel."
+
+La Bonte, on his arrival at St. Louis, found himself one day in no
+less a place than this; and here he made acquaintance with an old
+trapper about to start for the mountains in a few days, to hunt
+on the head waters of Platte and Green River. With this man he
+resolved to start, and, having still some hundred dollars in cash,
+he immediately set about equipping himself for the expedition. To
+effect this, he first of all visited the gun-store of Hawken, whose
+rifles are renowned in the mountains, and exchanged his own piece,
+which was of very small bore, for a regular mountain rifle. This was
+of very heavy metal, carrying about thirty-two balls to the pound,
+stocked to the muzzle and mounted with brass, its only ornament
+being a buffalo bull, looking exceedingly ferocious, which was not
+very artistically engraved upon the trap in the stock. Here, too, he
+laid in a few pounds of powder and lead, and all the necessaries for
+a long hunt.
+
+His next visit was to a smith's store, which smith was black by
+trade and black by nature, for he was a nigger, and, moreover,
+celebrated as being the best maker of beaver-traps in St Louis,
+and of whom he purchased six new traps, paying for the same twenty
+dollars--procuring, at the same time, an old trap-sack, made of
+stout buffalo skin, in which to carry them.
+
+We next find La Bonte and his companion--one Luke, better known
+as Grey-Eye, one of his eyes having been "gouged" in a mountain
+fray--at Independence, a little town situated on the Missouri,
+several hundred miles above St Louis, and within a short distance of
+the Indian frontier.
+
+Independence may be termed the "prairie port" of the western
+country. Here the caravans destined for Santa Fe and the interior
+of Mexico, assemble to complete their necessary equipment. Mules
+and oxen are purchased, teamsters hired, and all stores and outfit
+laid in here for the long journey over the wide expanse of prairie
+ocean. Here, too, the Indian traders and the Rocky Mountain trappers
+rendezvous, collecting in sufficient force to ensure their safe
+passage through the Indian country. At the seasons of departure and
+arrival of these bands, the little town presents a lively scene
+of bustle and confusion. The wild and dissipated mountaineers get
+rid of their last dollars in furious orgies, treating all comers
+to galore of drink, and pledging each other, in horns of potent
+whisky, to successful hunts and "heaps of beaver." When every cent
+has disappeared from their pouches, the free trapper often makes
+away with rifle, traps, and animals, to gratify his "dry," (for your
+mountaineer is never "thirsty;") and then, "hos and beaver" gone, is
+necessitated to hire himself to one of the leaders of big bands, and
+hypothecate his services for an equipment of traps and animals. Thus
+La Bonte picked up three excellent mules for a mere song, with their
+accompanying pack saddles, _apishamores_,[3] and lariats, and the
+next day, with Luke, "put out" for Platte.
+
+  [3] Saddle-blanket made of buffalo-calf skin.
+
+As they passed through the rendezvous, which was encamped on a
+little stream beyond the town, even our young Mississippian was
+struck with the novelty of the scene. Upwards of forty huge waggons,
+of Connestoga and Pittsburg build, and covered with snow-white
+tilts, were ranged in a semicircle, or rather a horse-shoe form,
+on the flat open prairie, their long "tongues" (poles) pointing
+outwards; with the necessary harness for four pairs of mules, or
+eight yoke of oxen, lying on the ground beside them, spread in ready
+order for "hitching up." Round the waggons groups of teamsters, tall
+stalwart young Missourians, were engaged in busy preparation for the
+start, greasing the wheels, fitting or repairing harness, smoothing
+ox-bows, or overhauling their own moderate kits or "possibles."
+They were all dressed in the same fashion: a pair of "homespun"
+pantaloons, tucked into thick boots reaching nearly to the knee, and
+confined round the waist by a broad leathern belt, which supported a
+strong butcher knife in a sheath. A coarse checked shirt was their
+only other covering, with a fur cap on the head.
+
+Numerous camp-fires surrounded the waggons, and by them lounged
+wild-looking mountaineers, easily distinguished from the "greenhorn"
+teamsters by their dresses of buckskin, and their weather-beaten
+faces. Without an exception, these were under the influence of the
+rosy god; and one, who sat, the picture of misery, at a fire by
+himself--staring into the blaze with vacant countenance, his long
+matted hair hanging in unkempt masses over his face, begrimed with
+the dirt of a week, and pallid with the effects of ardent drink--was
+suffering from the usual consequences of having "kept it up"
+beyond the usual point, and now was paying the penalty in a fit of
+"horrors"--as _delirium tremens_ is most aptly termed by sailors and
+the unprofessional.
+
+In another part, the merchants of the caravan and Indian traders
+were superintending the lading of the waggons, or mule packs. These
+were dressed in civilised attire, and some bedizened in St Louis
+or Eastern City dandyism, to the infinite disgust of the mountain
+men, who look upon a bourge-way (bourgeois) with most undisguised
+contempt, despising the very simplest forms of civilisation. The
+picturesque appearance of the encampment was not a little heightened
+by the addition of several Indians from the neighbouring Shawnee
+settlement, who, mounted on their small active horses, on which they
+reclined, rather than sat, in negligent attitudes, quietly looked on
+at the novel scene, indifferent to the "chaff" which the thoughtless
+teamsters indulged in at their expense. Numbers of mules and horses
+were picketed at hand, while a large herd of noble oxen were being
+driven towards the camp--the wo-ha of the teamsters sounding far and
+near, as they collected the scattered beasts in order to yoke up.
+
+As most of the mountain men were utterly unable to move from camp,
+Luke and La Bonte, with three or four of the most sober, started
+in company, intending to wait on "Blue," a stream which runs into
+the Caw or Kanzas River, until the "balance" of the band came up.
+Mounting their mules, and leading the loose animals, they struck
+at once into the park-like prairie, and were out of sight of
+civilisation in an instant.
+
+It was the latter end of May, towards the close of the season of
+heavy rains, which in early spring render the climate of this
+country almost intolerable, at the same time that they serve to
+fertilise and thaw the soil, so long bound up by the winter's
+frosts. The grass was every where luxuriously green, and gaudy
+flowers dotted the surface of the prairie. This term, however,
+should hardly be applied to the beautiful undulating scenery of this
+park-like country. Unlike the flat monotony of the Grand Plains,
+here well wooded uplands clothed with forest trees of every species,
+and picturesque dells through which run clear and bubbling streams
+belted with gay-blossomed shrubs, every where present themselves;
+whilst on the level meadowland, topes of trees with spreading
+foliage afforded a shelter to the game and cattle, and well-timbered
+knolls rise at intervals from the plain.
+
+Many clear streams dashing over their pebbly beds intersect the
+country, from which, in the noonday's heat, the red-deer jump,
+shaking their wet sides, as the noise of approaching man disturbs
+them; and booming grouse rise from the tall luxuriant herbage at
+every step. Where the deep escarpments of the river banks exhibit
+the section of the earth, a rich alluvial soil of surprising depth
+appears to court the cultivation of civilised man; and in every
+feature it is evident that here nature has worked with kindliest and
+most bountiful hand.
+
+For hundreds of miles along the western or right bank of the
+Missouri does such a country as this extend, to which, for fertility
+and natural resources, no part of Europe can offer even feeble
+comparison. Sufficiently large to contain an enormous population,
+it has, besides, every advantage of position, and all the natural
+capabilities which should make it the happy abode of civilised man.
+Through this unpeopled country the United States pours her greedy
+thousands, to seize upon the barren territories of her feeble
+neighbour.
+
+Camping the first night on "Black Jack," our mountaineers here
+cut each man a spare hickory wiping-stick for his rifle, and La
+Bonte, who was the only greenhorn of the party, witnessed a savage
+ebullition of rage on the part of one of his companions, exhibiting
+the perfect unrestraint which these men impose upon their passions,
+and the barbarous anger which the slightest opposition to the will
+excites. One of the trappers, on arriving at the camping-place,
+dismounted from his horse, and, after divesting it of the saddle,
+endeavoured to lead his mule by the rope up to the spot where
+he wished to deposit his pack. Mule-like, however, the more he
+pulled the more stubbornly she remained in her tracks, planting
+her fore-legs firmly, and stretching out her neck with provoking
+obstinacy. If truth be told, it does require the temper of a
+thousand Jobs to manage a mule; and in no case does the wilful
+mulishness of the animal stir up one's choler more than in the very
+trick which this one was playing, and which is a daily occurrence.
+After tugging ineffectually for several minutes, winding the rope
+round his body, and throwing himself forward and suddenly with all
+his strength, the trapper actually foamed with passion; and although
+he might have subdued the animal at once by fastening the rope with
+a half-hitch round its nose, with an obstinacy equal to that of
+the mule itself he refused to attempt it, preferring to vanquish
+her by main strength. However, this failed, and with a volley of
+blasphemous imprecations the mountaineer suddenly seized his rifle,
+and, levelling it at the mule's head, shot her dead.
+
+Passing the Wa-ka-rasha, a well-timbered stream, they met a band
+of Osages going "to buffalo." These Indians, in common with some
+tribes of the Pawnees, shave the head, with the exception of a ridge
+from the forehead to the centre of the scalp, which is "roached" or
+hogged like the mane of a mule, and stands erect, plastered with
+unguents, and ornamented by feathers of the hawk and turkey. The
+naked scalp is often painted in mosaic with black and red, the face
+with shining vermilion. They were all naked to the breech-clout,
+the warmth of the sun having caused them to throw their dirty
+blankets from their shoulders. These Indians not unfrequently levy
+contributions on strangers whom they may accidentally meet; but they
+easily distinguish the determined mountaineer from the incautious
+greenhorn, and think it better to let the former alone.
+
+Crossing Vermilion, they arrived on the fifth day at "Blue," where
+they encamped in the broad timber which belts the creek, and there
+awaited the arrival of the remainder of the party.
+
+It was two days before they came up; but the day after, fourteen
+in number, they started for the mountains, striking a trail which
+follows the "Big Blue" in its course through the prairies, which, as
+they advance to the westward, are gradually smoothing away into a
+vast unbroken expanse of rolling plain. Herds of antelope began to
+show themselves, and some of the hunters, leaving the trail, soon
+returned with plenty of their tender meat. The luxuriant but coarse
+grass they had hitherto seen now changed into the nutritious and
+curly buffalo grass, and their animals soon improved in appearance
+on the excellent pasture. In a few days, without any adventure, they
+struck the Platte River, its shallow waters (from which it derives
+its name) spreading over a wide and sandy bed, numerous sand bars
+obstructing the sluggish current, and with nowhere sufficient water
+to wet the forder's knee.
+
+By this time, but few antelope having been seen, the party became
+entirely out of meat; and, one whole day and part of another having
+passed without so much as a sage rabbit having presented itself,
+not a few objurgations on the buffalo grumbled from the lips of the
+hunters, who expected ere this to have reached the land of plenty.
+La Bonte killed a fine deer, however, in the river bottom, after
+they had encamped, not one particle of which remained after supper
+that night, but which hardly took the rough edge off their keen
+appetites. Although already in the buffalo range, no traces of these
+animals had yet been seen; and as the country afforded but little
+game, and the party did not care to halt and lose time in hunting
+for it, they moved along hungry and sulky, the theme of conversation
+being the well remembered merits of good buffalo meat,--of "fat
+fleece," "hump rib," and "tender loin;" of delicious "boudins,"
+and marrow bones too good to think of. La Bonte had never seen the
+lordly animal, and consequently but half believed the accounts of
+the mountaineers, who described their countless bands as covering
+the prairie far as the eye could reach, and requiring days of travel
+to pass through; but the visions of such dainty and abundant feeding
+as they descanted on set his mouth watering, and danced before his
+eyes as he slept supperless, night after night, on the banks of the
+hungry Platte.
+
+One morning he had packed his animals before the rest, and was
+riding a mile in advance of the party, when he saw on one side the
+trail, looming in the refracted glare which mirages the plains,
+three large dark objects without shape or form, which rose and
+fell in the exaggerated light like ships at sea. Doubting what it
+could be, he approached the strange objects; and as the refraction
+disappeared before him, the dark masses assumed a more distinct
+form, and clearly moved with life. A little nearer, and he made
+them out--they were buffalo. Thinking to distinguish himself,
+the greenhorn dismounted from his mule, and quickly hobbled her,
+throwing his lasso on the ground to trail behind when he wished to
+catch her. Then, rifle in hand, he approached the huge animals, and,
+being a good hunter, knew well to take advantage of the inequalities
+of the ground and face the wind; by which means he crawled at length
+to within forty yards of the buffalo, who were quietly cropping the
+grass, unconscious of danger. Now, for the first time, he gazed upon
+the noble beast of which he had so often heard, and longed to see.
+With coal-black beard sweeping the ground as he fed, an enormous
+bull was in advance of the others, his wild brilliant eyes peering
+from an immense mass of shaggy hair, which covered his neck and
+shoulder. From this point his skin was bare as one's hand, a sleek
+and shining dun, and his ribs well covered with shaking flesh. As
+he leisurely cropped the short curly grass he occasionally lifted
+his tail into the air, and stamped his foot as a fly or musquito
+annoyed him--flapping the intruder with his tail, or snatching at
+the itching part with his ponderous head.
+
+When La Bonte had sufficiently admired the animal, he lifted his
+rifle, and, taking steady aim, and certain of his mark, pulled the
+trigger, expecting to see the huge beast fall over at the report.
+What was his surprise and consternation, however, to see the
+animal flinch as the ball struck him, but gallop off, followed by
+the others, and apparently unhurt. As is generally the case with
+greenhorns, he had fired too high, not understanding that the only
+certain spot to strike a buffalo is but a few inches above the
+brisket, and that above this a shot is rarely fatal. When he rose
+from the ground, he saw all the party halting in full view of his
+discomfiture; and when he joined them, loud were the laughs, and
+deep the regrets of the hungry at his first attempt.
+
+However, they now knew that they were in the country of meat; and a
+few miles farther, another band of stragglers presenting themselves,
+three of the hunters went in pursuit, La Bonte taking a mule to pack
+in the meat. He soon saw them crawling towards the band, and shortly
+two puffs of smoke, and the sharp cracks of their rifles showed
+that they had got within shot; and when he had ridden up, two fine
+buffaloes were stretched upon the ground. Now, for the first time,
+he was initiated into the mysteries of "butchering," and watched
+the hunters as they turned the carcass on the belly, stretching
+out the legs to support it on each side. A transverse cut was then
+made at the nape of the neck, and, gathering the long hair of the
+boss in one hand, the skin was separated from the shoulder. It was
+then laid open from this point to the tail, along the spine, and
+the skin was freed from the sides and pulled down to the brisket,
+but, still attached to it, was stretched upon the ground to receive
+the dissected portions. Then the shoulder was severed, the fleece
+removed from along the backbone, and the hump-ribs cut off with a
+tomahawk. All this was placed upon the skin; and after the "boudins"
+had been withdrawn from the stomach, and the tongue--a great
+dainty--taken from the head, the meat was packed upon the mule, and
+the whole party hurried to camp rejoicing.
+
+There was merry-making in the camp that night, and the way they
+indulged their appetites--or, in their own language, "throw'd" the
+meat "cold"--would have made the heart of a dyspeptic leap for joy
+or burst with envy. Far into the "still watches of the tranquil
+night" the fat-clad "depouille" saw its fleshy mass grow small
+by degrees and beautifully less, before the trenchant blades of
+the hungry mountaineers; appetising yards of well-browned "boudin"
+slipped glibly down their throats; rib after rib of tender hump
+was picked and flung to the wolves; and when human nature, with
+helpless gratitude, and confident that nothing of superexcellent
+comestibility remained, was lazily wiping the greasy knife that had
+done such good service,--a skilful hunter was seen to chuckle to
+himself as he raked the deep ashes of the fire, and drew therefrom
+a pair of tongues so admirably baked, so soft, so sweet, and of
+such exquisite flavour, that a veil is considerately drawn over
+the effects their discussion produced in the mind of our greenhorn
+La Bonte, and the raptures they excited in the bosom of that, as
+yet, most ignorant mountaineer. Still, as he ate he wondered,
+and wondering admired, that nature, in giving him such profound
+gastronomic powers, and such transcendent capabilities of digestion,
+had yet bountifully provided an edible so peculiarly adapted to his
+ostrich-like appetite, that after consuming nearly his own weight in
+rich and fat buffalo meat, he felt as easy and as incommoded as if
+he had been lightly supping on strawberries and cream.
+
+Sweet was the digestive pipe after such a feast, and soft the
+sleep and deep, which sealed the eyes of the contented trappers
+that night. It felt like the old thing, they said, to be once more
+amongst the "meat;" and, as they were drawing near the dangerous
+portion of the trail, they felt at home; although not a night now
+passed but, when they lay down on their buffalo robes to sleep, they
+could not be confident that that sleep was not their last--knowing
+full well that savage men were hovering near, thirsting for their
+lives.
+
+However, no enemies showed themselves as yet, and they proceeded
+quietly up the river, vast herds of buffaloes darkening the plains
+around them, affording them more than abundance of the choicest
+meat; but, to their credit be it spoken, no more was killed than
+absolutely required,--unlike the cruel slaughter made by most of the
+white travellers across the plains, who wantonly destroy these noble
+animals, not even for the excitement of sport, but in cold-blooded
+and insane butchery. La Bonte had practice enough to perfect him in
+the art, and, before the buffalo range was passed, he was ranked as
+a first-rate hunter. One evening he had left the camp for meat, and
+was approaching a band of cows for that purpose, crawling towards
+them along the bed of a dry hollow in the prairie, when he observed
+them suddenly jump away towards him, and immediately after a score
+of mounted Indians appeared in sight, whom, by their dress, he
+at once knew to be Pawnees and enemies. Thinking they might not
+discover him, he crouched down in the ravine; but a noise behind
+causing him to turn his head, he saw some five or six advancing up
+the bed of the dry creek, whilst several more were riding on the
+bluffs. The cunning savages had cut off his retreat to his mule,
+which he saw in the possession of one of the Indians. His presence
+of mind, however, did not desert him; and seeing at once that to
+remain where he was would be like being caught in a trap, (as the
+Indians could advance to the edge of the bluff and shoot him from
+above,) he made for the open prairie, determined at least to sell
+his scalp dearly, and make "a good fight." With a yell the Indians
+charged, but halted when they saw the sturdy trapper deliberately
+kneel, and, resting his rifle on the wiping-stick, take a steady
+aim as they advanced. Full well the Pawnees know, to their cost,
+that a mountaineer seldom pulls his trigger without sending a
+bullet to the mark; and, certain that one at least must fall, they
+hesitated to make the onslaught. Steadily the white retreated with
+his face to the foe, bringing the rifle to his shoulder the instant
+that one advanced within shot, the Indians galloping round, firing
+the few guns they had amongst them at long distances, but without
+effect. One young "brave," more daring than the rest, rode out
+of the crowd, and dashed at the hunter, throwing himself, as he
+passed within a few yards, from the saddle, and hanging over the
+opposite side of his horse,--presenting no other mark than his left
+foot,--discharged his bow from under the animal's neck, and with
+such good aim, that the arrow, whizzing through the air, struck the
+stock of La Bonte's rifle, which was at his shoulder, and, glancing
+off, pierced his arm, inflicting, luckily, but a slight wound.
+Again the Indian turned in his course, the others encouraging him
+with loud war-whoops, and once more passing at still less distance,
+drew his arrow to the head. This time, however, the eagle eye of
+the white caught sight of the action, and suddenly rising from his
+knee as the Indian was approaching, hanging by his foot alone over
+the opposite side of the horse, he jumped towards the animal with
+outstretched arms and a loud yell, causing it to start so suddenly,
+and swerve from its course, that the Indian lost his foot-hold, and,
+after in vain struggling to regain his position, fell to the ground,
+but instantly rose upon his feet and gallantly confronted the
+mountaineer, striking his hand upon his brawny chest and shouting
+a loud whoop of defiance. In another instant the rifle of La Bonte
+had poured forth its contents; and the brave Indian, springing into
+the air, fell dead to the ground, just as the other trappers, who
+had heard the firing, galloped up to the spot, at sight of whom the
+Pawnees, with yells of disappointed vengeance, hastily retreated.
+
+That night La Bonte first lifted hair!
+
+A few days after they reached the point where the Platte divides
+into two great forks:--the northern one, stretching to the
+north-west, skirts the eastern base of the Black Hills, and sweeping
+round to the south rises in the vicinity of the mountain valley
+called the New Park, receiving the Laramie, Medicine Bow, and
+Sweet-Water creeks. The other, or "South Fork," strikes towards
+the mountains in a south-westerly direction, hugging the base of
+the main chain of the Rocky Mountains, and, fed by several small
+creeks, rises in the uplands of the Bayou Salado, near which is
+also the source of the Arkansa. To the forks of the Platte the
+valley of that river extends from three to five miles on each side,
+being enclosed by steep sandy bluffs, from the summits of which
+the prairies stretch away in broad undulating expanse to the north
+and south. The "bottom," as it is termed, is but thinly covered
+with timber, the cotton-woods being scattered only here and there;
+but some of the islands in the broad bed of the stream are well
+wooded, which leads to the inference that the trees on the banks
+have been felled by Indians who formerly frequented this river as
+a chosen hunting-ground. As during the long winters the pasture in
+the vicinity is scarce and withered, the Indians feed their horses
+on the bark of the sweet cotton-wood, upon which they subsist, and
+even fatten. Thus, wherever a village has been encamped, the trunks
+of these trees strew the ground, with their upper limbs and smaller
+branches peeled of their bark, and looking as white and smooth as if
+scraped with a knife.
+
+On the forks, however, the timber is heavier and of greater variety,
+some of the creeks being well wooded with ash and cherry, which
+break the monotony of the everlasting cotton-wood.
+
+Dense masses of buffalo still continued to darken the plains, and
+numerous bands of wolves hovered round the outskirts of the vast
+herds, singling out the sick and wounded animals, and preying upon
+the calves whom the rifles and arrows of the hunters had bereaved
+of their mothers. The white wolf is the invariable attendant upon
+the buffalo; and when one of these persevering animals is seen,
+it is certain sign that buffalo are not far distant. Besides the
+buffalo wolf, there are four distinct varieties common to the
+plains, and all more or less attendant upon the buffalo. These are
+the black, the gray, the brown, and last and least the _coyote_,
+or _cayeute_ of the mountaineers, the "_wach-unkam[)a]net_,"
+or "medicine wolf" of the Indians, who hold the latter animal in
+reverential awe. This little wolf, whose fur is of great thickness
+and beauty, although of diminutive size, is wonderfully sagacious,
+and makes up by cunning what it wants in physical strength. In
+bands of from three to thirty they will not unfrequently station
+themselves along the "runs" of the deer and the antelope, extending
+their line for many miles,--and the quarry being started, each
+wolf will follow in pursuit until tired, when it relinquishes the
+chase to another relay, following slowly after until the animal is
+fairly run down, when all hurry to the spot and speedily consume
+the carcass. The cayeute, however, is often made a tool of by his
+larger brethren, unless, indeed, he acts from motives of spontaneous
+charity. When a hunter has slaughtered game, and is in the act
+of butchering it, these little wolves sit patiently at a short
+distance from the scene of operations, while at a more respectful
+one the larger wolves (the white or gray) lope hungrily around,
+licking their chops in hungry expectation. Not unfrequently the
+hunter throws a piece of meat towards the smaller one, who seizes it
+immediately, and runs off with the morsel in his mouth. Before he
+gets many yards with his prize, the large wolf pounces with a growl
+upon him, and the cayeute, dropping the meat, returns to his former
+position, and will continue his act as long as the hunter pleases to
+supply him.
+
+Wolves are so common on the plains and in the mountains, that the
+hunter never cares to throw away a charge of ammunition upon them,
+although the ravenous animals are a constant source of annoyance to
+him, creeping to the camp-fire at night, and gnawing his saddles
+and _apishamores_, eating the skin ropes which secure the horses
+and mules to their pickets, and even their very hobbles, and not
+unfrequently killing or entirely disabling the animals themselves.
+
+Round the camp, during the night, the cayeute keeps unremitting
+watch, and the traveller not unfrequently starts from his bed with
+affright, as the mournful and unearthly chiding of the wolf breaks
+suddenly upon his ear: the long-drawn howl being taken up by others
+of the band, until it dies away in the distance, as some straggler
+passing within hearing answers to the note, and howls as he lopes
+away.
+
+Our party crossed the south fork about ten miles from its juncture
+with the main stream, and then, passing the prairie, struck the
+north fork a day's travel from the other. At the mouth of an
+ash-timbered creek they came upon Indian "sign," and, as now they
+were in the vicinity of the treacherous Sioux, they moved along
+with additional caution, Frapp and Gonneville, two experienced
+mountaineers, always heading the advance.
+
+About noon they had crossed over to the left bank of the fork,
+intending to camp on a large creek where some fresh beaver "sign"
+had attracted the attention of some of the trappers; and as, on
+further examination, it appeared that two or three lodges of that
+animal were not far distant, it was determined to remain here a day
+or two, and set their traps.
+
+Gonneville, old Luke, and La Bonte, had started up the creek, and
+were carefully examining the banks for "sign," when the former, who
+was in front, suddenly paused, and looking intently up the stream,
+held up his hand to his companions to signal them to stop.
+
+Luke and La Bonte both followed the direction of the trapper's
+intent and fixed gaze. The former uttered in a suppressed tone
+the expressive exclamation, Wagh!--the latter saw nothing but a
+wood-duck swimming swiftly down the stream, followed by her downy
+progeny.
+
+Gonneville turned his head, and extending his arm twice with a
+forward motion up the creek, whispered--"Les sauvages."
+
+"Injuns, sure, and Sioux at that," answered Luke.
+
+Still La Bonte looked, but nothing met his view but the duck with
+her brood, now rapidly approaching; and as he gazed, the bird
+suddenly took wing, and, flapping on the water, flew a short
+distance down the stream and once more settled on it.
+
+"Injuns?" he asked; "where are they?"
+
+"Whar?" repeated old Luke, striking the flint of his rifle, and
+opening the pan to examine the priming. "What brings a duck
+a-streakin it down stream, if humans aint behint her? and who's thar
+in these diggins but Injuns, and the worst kind; and we'd better
+push to camp, I'm thinking, if we mean to save our hair."
+
+"Sign" sufficient, indeed, it was to all the trappers, who, on being
+apprised of it, instantly drove in their animals, and picketed
+them; and hardly had they done so when a band of Indians made their
+appearance on the banks of the creek, from whence they galloped to
+the bluff which overlooked the camp at the distance of about six
+hundred yards; and crowning this, in number some forty or more,
+commenced brandishing their spears and guns, and whooping loud
+yells of defiance. The trappers had formed a little breast-work of
+their packs, forming a semicircle, the chord of which was made by
+the animals standing in a line, side by side, closely picketed and
+hobbled. Behind this defence stood the mountaineers, rifle in hand,
+and silent and determined. The Indians presently descended the bluff
+on foot, leaving their animals in charge of a few of the party, and,
+scattering, advanced under cover of the sage bushes which dotted
+the bottom, to about two hundred yards of the whites. Then a chief
+advanced before the rest, and made the sign for a talk with the
+Long-knives, which led to a consultation amongst the latter, as to
+the policy of acceding to it. They were in doubts as to the nation
+these Indians belonged to, some bands of the Sioux being friendly,
+and others bitterly hostile to the whites.
+
+Gonneville, who spoke the Sioux language, and was well acquainted
+with the nation, affirmed they belonged to a band called the
+Yanka-taus, well known to be the most evil-disposed of that
+treacherous nation; another of the party maintaining that they were
+Brules, and that the chief advancing towards them was the well-known
+Tah-sha-tunga or Bull Tail, a most friendly chief of that tribe.
+The majority, however, trusted to Gonneville, and he volunteered to
+go out to meet the Indian, and hear what he had to say. Divesting
+himself of all arms save his butcher-knife, he advanced towards
+the savage, who awaited his approach, enveloped in the folds of
+his blanket. At a glance he knew him to be a Yanka-tau, from the
+peculiar make of his moccassins, and the way in which his face was
+daubed with paint.
+
+"Howgh!" exclaimed both as they met; and, after a silence of a few
+moments, the Indian spoke, asking--"Why the Long-knives hid behind
+their packs, when his band approached? Were they afraid, or were
+they preparing a dog-feast to entertain their friends? That the
+whites were passing through his country, burning his wood, drinking
+his water, and killing his game; but he knew that they had now come
+to pay for the mischief they had done, and that the mules and horses
+they had brought with them were intended as a present to their red
+friends.
+
+"He was Mah-to-ga-shane," he said, "the Brave Bear: his tongue was
+short, but his arm long; and he loved rather to speak with his bow
+and his lance, than with the weapon of a squaw. He had said it: the
+Long-knives had horses with them and mules; and these were for him,
+he knew, and for his 'braves.' Let the White-face go back to his
+people and return with the animals, or he, the 'Brave Bear,' would
+have to come and take them; and his young men would get mad and
+would feel blood in their eyes; and then he would have no power over
+them; and the whites would have to 'go under.'"
+
+The trapper answered shortly.--"The Long-knives," he said, "had
+brought the horses for themselves--their hearts were big, but not
+towards the Yanka-taus: and if they had to give up their animals, it
+would be to _men_ and not _squaws_. They were not 'wah-keitcha,'[4]
+(French engages) but Long-knives; and, however short were the
+tongues of the Yanka-taus, theirs were still shorter, and their
+rifles longer. The Yanka-taus were dogs and squaws, and the
+Long-knives spat upon them."
+
+  [4] The French Canadians are called _wah-keitcha_--"bad
+  medicine"--by the Indians, who account them treacherous and
+  vindictive, and at the same time less daring than the American
+  hunters.
+
+Saying this, the trapper turned his back and rejoined his
+companions; whilst the Indian slowly proceeded to his people,
+who, on learning the contemptuous way in which their threats had
+been treated, testified their anger with loud yells; and, seeking
+whatever cover was afforded, commenced a scattering volley upon the
+camp of the mountaineers. The latter reserved their fire, treating
+with cool indifference the balls which began to rattle about them;
+but as the Indians, emboldened by this apparent inaction, rushed for
+a closer position, and exposed their bodies within a long range,
+half-a-dozen rifles rang from the assailed, and two Indians fell
+dead, one or two more being wounded. As yet, not one of the whites
+had been touched, but several of the animals had received wounds
+from the enemy's fire of balls and arrows. Indeed, the Indians
+remained at too great a distance to render the volleys from their
+crazy fusees any thing like effectual, and had to raise their pieces
+considerably to make their bullets reach as far as the camp. After
+having lost three of their band killed outright, and many more being
+wounded, their fire began to slacken, and they drew off to a greater
+distance, evidently resolved to beat a retreat; and retiring to
+the bluff, discharged their pieces in a last volley, mounted their
+horses and galloped off, carrying their wounded with them. This last
+volley, however, although intended as a mere bravado, unfortunately
+proved fatal to one of the whites. Gonneville, at the moment, was
+standing on one of the packs, in order to get an uninterrupted
+sight for a last shot, when one of the random bullets struck him
+in the breast. La Bonte caught him in his arms as he was about to
+fall, and, laying the wounded trapper gently on the ground,--they
+proceeded to strip him of his buckskin hunting-frock, to examine
+the wound. A glance was sufficient to convince his companions that
+the blow was mortal. The ball had passed through the lungs; and in
+a few moments the throat of the wounded man began to swell, as the
+choking blood ascended, and turned a livid blue colour. But a few
+drops of purple blood trickled from the wound,--a fatal sign,--and
+the eyes of the mountaineer were already glazing with death's icy
+touch. His hand still grasped the barrel of his rifle, which had
+done good service in the fray. Anon he essayed to speak, but, choked
+with blood, only a few inarticulate words reached the ears of his
+companions, who were bending over him.
+
+"Rubbed--out--at--last," they heard him say, the words gurgling in
+his blood-filled throat; and opening his eyes once more, and looking
+upwards to take a last look at the bright sun, the trapper turned
+gently on his side and breathed his last sigh.
+
+With no other tools than their scalp-knives, the hunters dug a
+grave on the banks of the creek; and whilst some were engaged in
+this work, others sought the bodies of the Indians they had slain
+in the attack, and presently returned with three reeking scalps,
+the trophies of the fight. The body of the mountaineer was then
+wrapped in a buffalo robe, the scalps being placed on the dead man's
+breast, laid in the shallow grave, and quickly covered--without a
+word of prayer, or sigh of grief; for, however much his companions
+may have felt, not a word escaped them; although the bitten lip and
+frowning brow told tale of anger more than sorrow, and vowed--what
+they thought would better please the spirit of the dead man than
+sorrow--lasting revenge.
+
+Trampling down the earth which filled the grave, they placed upon
+it a pile of heavy stones; and packing their mules once more, and
+taking a last look of their comrade's lonely resting-place, they
+turned their backs upon the stream, which has ever since been known
+as "Gonneville's Creek."
+
+If the reader casts his eye over any of the recent maps of the
+western country, which detail the features of the regions embracing
+the Rocky Mountains, and the vast prairies at their bases, he will
+not fail to observe that many of the creeks or smaller streams which
+feed the larger rivers,--as the Missouri, Platte, and Arkansa--are
+called by familiar proper names, both English and French. These
+are invariably christened after some unfortunate trapper, killed
+there in Indian fight; or treacherously slaughtered by the lurking
+savages, while engaged in trapping beaver on the stream. Thus
+alone is the memory of these hardy men perpetuated, at least of
+those whose fate is ascertained: for many, in every season, never
+return from their hunting expeditions, having met a sudden death
+from Indians, or a more lingering fate from accident or disease
+in some of the lonely gorges of the mountains, where no footfall
+save their own, or the heavy tread of grizzly bear, disturbs the
+unbroken silence of these awful solitudes. Then, as many winters
+pass without some old familiar faces making their appearance at the
+merry rendezvous, their long protracted absence may perhaps occasion
+such remarks, as to where such and such a mountain worthy can have
+betaken himself, to which the casual rejoinder of "Gone under,
+maybe," too often gives a short but certain answer.
+
+In all the philosophy of hardened hearts, our hunters turned from
+the spot where the unmourned trapper met his death. La Bonte,
+however, not yet entirely steeled by mountain life to a perfect
+indifference to human feeling, drew his hard hand across his eye,
+as the unbidden tear rose from his rough but kindly heart. He could
+not forget so soon the comrade they had lost, the companionship in
+the hunt or over the cheerful camp-fire, the narrator of many a
+tale of dangers past, of sufferings from hunger, cold, and thirst,
+and from untended wounds, of Indian perils, and of a life spent in
+such vicissitudes. One tear dropped from the young hunter's eye, and
+rolled down his cheek--the last for many a long year.
+
+In the forks of the northern branch of the Platte, formed by the
+junction of the Laramie, they found a big village of the Sioux
+encamped near the station of one of the fur companies. Here the
+party broke up; many, finding the alcohol of the traders an
+impediment to their further progress, remained some time in the
+vicinity, while La Bonte, Luke, and a trapper named Marcelline,
+started in a few days to the mountains, to trap on Sweet Water
+and Medicine Bow. They had leisure, however, to observe all the
+rascalities connected with the Indian trade, although at this season
+(August) hardly commenced. However, a band of Indians having come in
+with several packs of last year's robes, and being anxious to start
+speedily on their return, a trader from one of the forts had erected
+his lodge in the village.
+
+Here, he set to work immediately to induce the Indians to trade.
+First, a chief appointed three "soldiers" to guard the trader's
+lodge from intrusion; and who, amongst the thieving fraternity,
+can be invariably trusted. Then the Indians were invited to have a
+drink--a taste of the fire-water being given to all to incite them
+to trade. As the crowd presses upon the entrance to the lodge, and
+those in rear become impatient, some large-mouthed possessor of many
+friends, who has received a portion of the spirit, makes his way,
+with his mouth full of the liquor and cheeks distended, through
+the throng, and is instantly surrounded by his particular friends.
+Drawing the face of each, by turns, near his own, he squirts a small
+quantity into his open mouth, until the supply is exhausted, when he
+returns for more, and repeats the generous distribution.
+
+When paying for the robes, the traders, in measuring out the liquor
+in a tin half-pint cup, thrust their thumbs or the four fingers
+of the hand into the measure, in order that it may contain the
+less, or not unfrequently fill the bottom with melted buffalo fat,
+with the same object. So greedy are the Indians, that they never
+discover the cheat, and once under the influence of the liquor,
+cannot distinguish between the first cup of comparatively strong
+spirit, and the following ones diluted five hundred per cent, and
+poisonously drugged to boot.
+
+Scenes of drunkenness, riot, and bloodshed last until the trade
+is over, which in the winter occupies several weeks, during which
+period the Indians present the appearance, under the demoralising
+influence of the liquor, of demons rather than men.
+
+
+
+
+AMERICAN THOUGHTS ON EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS.
+
+
+  _Boston, May 1848._
+
+A thousand leagues of ocean, my Basil, are indeed between us, but it
+is no longer right to reckon distances by leagues. Time is your only
+measure. I know of a gentleman who had a home in Paris, while Paris
+was capable of homes, and he came every year across the Atlantic,
+only to fish for trout. Why do you stare? You know very well that
+you have often waited a fortnight for a good day to go a-fishing.
+Come, then, pack up your slender reed, and spend such a fortnight
+in a steamer. By God's favour you shall be the better for sea air;
+and in two weeks from Liverpool, you shall find yourself on the
+shores of a lake in the interior of the State of New York, where,
+since the fifth day of the creation, the trout have apparently been
+multiplying in a manner that would astonish a Malthus. Such is now
+that dissociable ocean, which was once thought too great a waste of
+waters to be passed by colonial members of parliament representing
+the provinces of America. "_Opposuit Natura_;" said Burke, "I cannot
+remove the eternal barriers of the creation." But Burke forgot his
+Greek:--
+
+"+Polla ta deina, kouden anthropou deinoteron pelei; touto kai poliou
+peran pontou cheimerio noto chorei, peribrychioisi peron ep'
+oidmasi;+"
+
+I know it is an old saw, but it is so freshened by the modern
+instance of steamers every week, that it has become quotable once
+more; and I have almost a mind to go on with the chorus, and show
+that Sophocles may be fairly rendered in favour of railways and
+iron-steeds. But the telegraph, Basil! I must even quote a bit of
+English for that. As gentle Cowper saith:--
+
+    "The tempest itself lags behind,
+     And the swift-wing'd arrows of light!"
+
+The wires are already stretched from Massachusetts, and almost
+from Halifax to the Gulf of Mexico. A spark here, and the lettered
+bulletin is reeling off in Louisiana! The fresh news will,
+hereafter, be hawked in the streets of Boston and along the wharves
+of New Orleans in the same hour. It will soon be sent farther
+still; and a British fleet in the Pacific may be served with orders
+from the Admiralty Board, not two weeks old. We are fairly in
+hand-shaking neighbourhood. I remember when European intelligence
+came to us rather as history than as news. It is not so now. While
+emotion is yet warm with you, it sets our own hearts throbbing. We,
+too, are, in the present tense, with Europe; for the revolutions
+of peace have been more wonderful than those of warfare. They have
+reunited what strife had sundered, and rendered England and America
+again one family.
+
+Talking of revolutions,--how hot the noon of the century is growing!
+You will allow, dear Basil, that we in America, are well situated
+to be lookers on. With all the security of distance, we have the
+advantages of nearness. You are on the stage--we are in the boxes.
+You go behind the scenes, and see the wire-working and machinery,
+but we get the effect of the spectacle. The great revolutionary
+drama is before us, and we can behold it calmly; interested, but not
+involved. For a devout or philosophical spectator, America is the
+true observatory. Here we can watch "the great Babel, and not feel
+the crowd." It is our own fault if, with such advantages, we do not
+anticipate the judgment of future ages, and arrive instinctively at
+conclusions which those who share the tumult itself must ordinarily
+learn in the soberness of after-thoughts, or, perhaps, by a dear
+experience.
+
+Did you ask how the doings in France appear in republican eyes?
+And pray what do you expect me to answer? You appear to think
+republicanism a specific instead of a generic term, and to expect
+us to hail the French as our kindred. As well might I suppose that
+your monarchical sympathies deeply interest you in the autocracy of
+Dahomey and Darfur. A boy may play with a monkey, without admiring
+him; and although the monkey is a biped without feathers, the boy
+would not like to have him taken for a younger brother. Believe
+me, we are not yet ready to claim fraternity with the Provisional
+Government. _How we apples swim_, seems to be their salutation to
+America; but, for one, I reject the odorous impeachment. No one is
+very cordial, as yet, in returning it. There is a general gaping and
+staring; but the prevailing disposition towards France is to wait
+and see if she will be decent. You will agree with me, that this
+caution is creditable to the _Model Republic_.
+
+In the spectacle before us, believe me, then, we know how to
+distinguish the harlequin from the hero, and are not in danger
+of clapping hands at the buffoonery of Paris, when we have just
+been charmed by the solemn buskin in which London came upon the
+stage--reluctant to play her part, but prepared to go through it
+nobly. A French melodrama, of men in smocks chanting _Mourir pour la
+Patrie_, or priests, in defiled surplices, asperging and incensing
+May-poles, must of course suit the tastes of the groundlings; but
+such inexplicable dumb-shows are generally understood to be only
+the prelude to something tragic that is coming. For one, I look
+for solemn monologues from Pio Nono and Lamartine; and, by-and-by,
+expect a scene between the Soldan and the Czar. I do not look
+without feelings of awe, for I am sure it is the shadow of GOD'S own
+hand that is now passing over the nations. It is He that says, as of
+old, "remove the diadem and take off the crown; exalt him that is
+low, and abase him that is high." I am glad that others recognise
+his footsteps in the earth, and therefore was pleased with that
+motto lately quoted in Maga, from St Augustine--"GOD is patient,
+because He is eternal."
+
+For seventeen years we have been watching the great political
+Humpty-Dumpty, in his efforts to come to an equilibrium, and to
+stand firm in his place; and the end is, that Humpty-Dumpty is
+fallen, according to the oracular rhyme of Mother Goose. What
+shall we say of him, except that he was barricaded in, and has
+been barricaded out? Laugh as we may at the undefinableness
+of legitimacy, one feels that the lack of it makes a great
+difference in our disposition towards a discrowned king. Still,
+Louis-Philippe is treated with much forbearance, and men think of
+his hoar hairs and his eventful life. In one of our newspapers,
+a generous word has been spoken for his government, as about the
+best that France deserved, and his best measures have been reviewed
+with praise. Still, he is much disliked in America. One of his
+earliest Claremonts was with us; and when Lafayette made him a
+king, Americans felt as if they had a right to be pleased with his
+accession. But his quarrel with his benefactor turned the feeling
+strongly against him, for Lafayette was revered among us to the
+hour of his death. I think there is a general satisfaction with
+the fall of the Orleans dynasty; but it certainly has not been
+malicious or spiteful. An eminent American, who has lived long in
+Paris, has written two letters in the leading democratic newspaper
+of New York, in which the fallen monarch is more severely handled
+than he has been elsewhere. He is there said to be a much overrated
+man--possessed of no great talents, except those which enable him
+to dissimulate with the utmost cunning, and to manage with the
+basest perfidy. The writer, nevertheless, has no confidence in
+the revolution as having destroyed the monarchy; and quotes with
+approbation a sentiment which he says was advanced in conversation
+with himself, so long ago as 1830, by Odillon Barrot,--"_Enfin,
+monsieur, la France a besoin de se sentir gouvernee_." He thinks two
+things will work against the Duc de Bordeaux--that he has married an
+Austrian, and grown fat; yet he confidently predicts that Henry V.
+will one day ascend the throne of his ancestors. "As for a republic
+that is to go on harmoniously, and with any thing like tolerable
+quiet, law, and order," he concludes, "I hold it to be just as
+impracticable as it would be to set up a Doge of Venice and a
+Council of Ten in the State of New York. _We hear only the voices of
+the revolutionists_, the rest of the nation being temporarily mute.
+The day will come, however, when the last will speak."
+
+These sentiments are not singular among us. I am agreeably surprised
+by the great moderation of our people and of our press. When the
+tidings of the outbreak reached us, it produced excitement, of
+course; but there was no echo of the French howl, and remarkably
+little enthusiasm, all things considered. You have seen reprinted in
+England some of the most foolish things that were said in our most
+worthless prints. The press in general behaved with great reserve
+and caution. Successive steamers brought continual abatements to
+the degree of confidence, or hope, that had been inspired in the
+minds of the more ardent; and so general was the candour of the
+newspapers, that when those of the Clay party were pettishly accused
+of a sympathy with tyranny, the charge was easily met by quotations
+from democratic newspapers, equally liable to the imputation, if a
+manly reprobation of revolutionary misrule and excess be sufficient
+to prove it. The truth is, our country was caught in the trap in
+1792. Then, the pulpit and the press strove together in glorifying
+France; and the remorse and burning shame that were the consequence,
+have left a very salutary impression.
+
+In fact, the violent democracy of Paris is exerting a beneficial
+effect upon our people. We see the degrading spectacle, and learn to
+value ourselves for a love of law and order. There is a reluctance
+to reduce ourselves to the level of such a republic as has sprung up
+like a mushroom in a night, and is likely to perish in the same way.
+Our own revolution was not one of drunken riot, and street-singing
+blouse-men: our constitution is not a mere poetical theory of
+liberty and equality, nor a socialist's dream of brotherhood. We
+now learn the secret of our strength, and of that comparative
+durability which has almost surprised ourselves. We are, after
+all, a transplanted slip of old England; nor are we so essentially
+changed, my Basil, as even you imagine. The spirit of our people
+is indeed democratic; but the spirit of our constitution is imbued
+with a stronger element. The facts concerning it will enable you
+to see one secret of our comparative success, and to judge whether
+France can possibly come to any thing as good. The founders of this
+republic were not Frenchmen, but Englishmen; I mean they were of
+English stock, and had learned all their notions of liberty from the
+history of England. Each province of America had taken shape under
+the British constitution; and when the provinces became independent,
+the general government was organised in such wise as to supply the
+place of that constitution. Its founders did not frame a new and
+untried constitution, a _priori_, according to their own schemes;
+they simply modified the great principles of British constitutional
+law to suit a new state of things, and a peculiar people. A
+monarchy was out of the question; but they did not intend to make a
+democracy. They only made a republic. The democratic spirit came in
+with Jefferson and French politics at the beginning of the present
+century. It has become dominant, but by no means triumphant; and
+its great obstacle has been the constitution. In the several states
+it has changed the constitutions one after the other, introducing
+universal suffrage, and other democratic features. But the national
+constitution has not been so easily reached; and it is the strength
+of the great party with which Clay and Webster are identified, and
+which is a constant check on the popular party. It is republican,
+but not simply democratic. The executive magistracy is elective;
+but the electors are not the people, directly, but electoral
+colleges, appointed by the several states; and the office itself is
+endowed with prerogatives, some of which are more unlimited than
+the corresponding rights of the British crown. Our senate is a mere
+modification of the House of Lords: it is a body more select than
+the lower house, and not so immediately responsible to constituents;
+and its practical working shows the great importance of such a
+balance-wheel in any government. There is no working without it, in
+spite of what your Roebucks may say. The House of Commons reappears
+in our House of Representatives, which, like its great original, is
+the safety-valve of popular feeling, and gives sonorous vent to a
+mighty pressure of steam and vapour, which would otherwise blow us
+to atoms, with a much less endurable noise. The whole fabric of our
+law is a precious patrimony derived, with our blood, from England.
+Our new states are filling up with emigrants from the continent
+of Europe, but they all adopt the law of their older sisters; and
+thus the institutions of the immortal Alfred may be found among the
+Swedes and Danes of Wisconsin. These, then, are the elements of
+our strength; and you observe they partake of the strength of the
+British empire, which has been legitimately and naturally imparted
+to us, like the mother's life-blood to the daughter of her womb. We
+have indeed characteristic peculiarities. We have tried some new
+experiments; but let not France suppose she can imitate them. We are
+a new country, a sparse population, and our people have their heads
+full of subduing the soil, and setting water-wheels in streams, and
+making roads and canals. We have no natural taste for insurrection
+and confusion, for we have nobody that is idle enough to want such
+work. Our new wine, then, has been put into new bottles; and the
+fool that attempts to decant it into the old vessels of Europe, will
+ruin it and them together.
+
+Our newspapers have pointed out another secret of our strength,
+which France cannot possibly enjoy. In spite of that wild prophecy
+of Lady Hester Stanhope to Lamartine--so much of which has come
+true--Paris is France, and will be France while France holds
+together. The city of Washington is not America; and its great acres
+of unoccupied building lots are the best thing about it. The State
+governments, which could not have been planned beforehand, but are a
+natural product of old events--which dispose of all local matters,
+and prevent sectional jealousies, which divide and balance power,
+and _satisfy small ambition_,--these are the helps, without which
+our national existence could not have been prolonged beyond the
+lifetime of Washington himself. The threatened disturbance of the
+admirable equilibrium which has heretofore been maintained between
+North and South, and East and West, by the introduction of Mexican
+and Texan states, and the power which it will throw into the hands
+of a few persons at the seat of government, is even now our most
+alarming danger. We know, from what we see among ourselves, that
+governments must take form, not from human devices, but from GOD'S
+providences. We ourselves are the results of circumstances: no
+scheming patriot could have made us what we are; and no imitative
+Frenchman can give to his country a government like ours; nor, if
+he could, would it survive beyond the lifetime of some individual,
+whose popularity would supply a temporary strength to its essential
+weakness. An imported constitution must be a sickly one, in any
+country on earth.
+
+For us, then, there is a legitimacy in our institutions which makes
+them durable, and dear to all classes of our people. But to be loyal
+to our own republic is by no means to be committed to universal
+republicanism, far less to be delighted with universal anarchy.
+You must pardon our tastes. We are young, and we think a jacket
+and shako becoming. We wear our appropriate costume as gracefully
+as we can. We are yet the growing, perhaps the awkward, but still
+the active boy. But when Europe befools itself, in its dotage, with
+republican attire, we lads have a right to laugh. It will do for us
+to play leap-frog, or cut any other caper that we choose; but who
+can restrain derision when corpulent imbecility assumes an unskirted
+coat, and submits its uncovered proportions to hootings and to
+kicks, or throws a ponderous summersault that less demonstrates
+agility than exposes nakedness!
+
+I speak for myself, and for many, very many of my countrymen. Our
+mere populace are of course possessed with the idea that a universal
+Yankee-doodle is the panacea for all the miseries of the world. It
+has been told them so often by demagogues, that they are pardonable.
+But even they would probably allow that the _Chinese_, for instance,
+are not yet quite ready for liberty-poles and ballet-boxes, and by
+degrees might be brought to confess as much for any country less
+remarkable and astonishing than our own. But there is a solid mass
+of good sense among us that is not so deceived. It consists of those
+who would rejoice to see a rational republic in France, or in any
+other country; but who know that, with the exception perhaps of
+Holland, such a thing is impossible, and that, in France, reason
+is more likely to reappear as the divinified harlot of Notre Dame
+than in any more respectable form. As to Great Britain, even our
+schoolboys have learned that, with all the stability of empire,
+it unites the freedom of a republic; and in spite of some feeling
+against John Bull, I scarcely know the man who would not be sorry
+to see it suddenly or violently revolutionised. On Irish affairs
+opinion is not so sane among us. Few of us know any thing about
+them; and for the sake of the starving peasantry of Ireland, there
+is some sympathy with its turbulent Gracchi. Believe it, the general
+tone of sentiment on this side the Atlantic, among reflecting men,
+is far more conservative than you imagine. Indeed, all classes
+stand amazed at the democracy of Europe. Our wildest enthusiasts
+are outdone, even by some who sit in the House of Commons; and the
+rampant socialism of Paris is as unlike the worst excesses of our
+elections, as the ferocity of a tiger is unlike the playfulness of
+a kitten. Young as we are, we are better mannered; and I must say,
+dear Basil, that when the older nations of the world are allowing
+themselves such license, we have a right to regard ourselves as
+taking new rank, and deserving more credit than has heretofore been
+given us, as, after all, a law-loving and law-maintaining people.
+
+You will say, as was said to the trumpeter in AEsop--"No, no,--you
+make all the mischief; others cut throats, but you have set them
+on." But is the democratic spirit really of American origin?
+Our Plymouth orators--the men who annually glorify our earliest
+colonists--usually trace it to the Puritans, and through them to
+Geneva. At all events, it now infects the world, and those are
+the happy and the permanent governments which are prepared for
+its violence, by constitutional vents and floodgates. It is not
+to be stifled, or dammed up. We believe, therefore, that our own
+government is the best for ourselves, and few of us have any fear
+for that of England. On British matters we do not feel bound to
+judge by our own experiences. We are free to theorise on broader
+principles; and many of us form our own opinions, not as cool
+and critical foreigners, but as having a deep interest in the
+preservation of the institutions of our ancestors. Why should we
+not? The study of history carries us, at once, beyond the narrow
+limits of threescore years and ten, which is the age of our
+national existence, and as soon as we pass that boundary we too
+are Britons. The blood of our forefathers ran in English veins, or
+flowed for British freedom and sovereignty. This fact is enough to
+make our educated and reflecting men speculatively conservative
+as to British politics. We know the past, and do not feel the
+party-heats of the present in England. Hence I am far from being
+alone among my countrymen, in looking at English matters with an
+English heart. Even our commercial class have a reason for wishing
+internal peace and prosperity to England; and I believe there
+is generally something better than selfishness in the prevalent
+good-will toward her. I wish you could have watched, as I did, the
+feelings of our whole people, while lately, between the arrivals
+of two steamers, there was a solemn feeling of surprise as to what
+would be the results of the Chartist demonstration! Till the news
+came, the stoutest of us held our breath. I assure you, Basil, the
+peril of England was observed with a deep anxiety. During all that
+time I met not a respectable man who wished to see a revolutionary
+result. It was the talk of all circles. Our merchants trembled for
+England; our scholars hoped for her; a clerical gentleman assured
+me that he daily prayed for her. The press very generally predicted
+a triumph of order, but there were some specimens of newspaper
+literature that ventured an opposite augury. I wish you could have
+seen this city when the result was known. The news was received with
+a thrill. There was some laughing at the parturient mountain and
+the still-born mouse, but a graver cheerfulness was the reigning
+emotion. We deeply felt that, by the mercy of God, the world had
+been spared from a conflagration which the match of a madman could
+light, but which only another deluge could extinguish. For one, I
+was as a watcher by the sea-side, who, after a night of tempest,
+waits for the fog to rise, and then thanks God to see the good old
+ship coming home, in season, her masts all standing, and her flag
+untorn.
+
+I had felt fears, my Basil. What was not imaginable, when Europe
+presented the appearance of a table on which empires had fallen
+in a day, like card-houses blown down by the breath of children!
+I knew that neither France, nor Prussia, nor Austria, nor Italy,
+were any thing like England, which is founded on a rock, and knit
+together by joints and bands: but I felt that England is no longer
+what she was. With a Whig government she is never herself.[5] The
+Whigs are more than half Frenchmen. I tell you you seem to me not
+half enough afraid of your Whigs; they are worse than your Radicals.
+You show some uneasiness under the Jewish Disabilities Bill, but
+I wish you could see it as it strikes a looker-on. If time has on
+you the effect which distance has on me, you will yet look back on
+that measure as you now look back on the great mistake of 1829.
+It will haunt you like a nightmare, and you will regard it with
+less of anger than of shame and remorse; with the deep conviction
+that, if the friends of the constitution had done their duty, it
+never would have disgraced a Christian state. True, the Whigs are
+responsible for inflicting the blow; but what has been done to avert
+it? So far as I know, nothing commensurate with the greatness of
+the evil. You seem to give way to it as only one of many inroads
+upon old proprieties, which are inevitable, and cannot be withstood.
+But is the unchristianising of the state to be spoken of side by
+side with even the destruction of colonies, and the discouragement
+of agriculture? As it strikes me, it is not a thing of a class, it
+stands out a portent, a harbinger, a phenomenon of its own kind. Not
+that it surprises me. From Lord John Russell nothing that argues
+fatuity and lack of political principle should surprise any one.
+To carry out the plans to which he has committed himself, he must
+consistently pander to infidels, foster heretics, and subsidise
+Jews. To the reforms of the last score of years, there could be no
+more fitting sequel than this coalition with a people loaded with
+the hereditary burthen of the saving blood of the Crucified. I only
+marvel that the bill goes on so slowly. The Baron should have been
+long since in his place, and the Easter holidays should have been
+disregarded, out of respect to his feelings. It is astonishing
+that he is not already an ecclesiastical commissioner. The times
+are not now as during a former French revolution, when a British
+statesman could say[6]--"the Jews in Change Alley have not yet
+dared to hint their hopes of a mortgage on the revenues belonging
+to the see of Canterbury." You are always praising your church,
+Basil, but allow me to ask, Why you may not live to see a Jewish
+rabbi nominated to a bishopric. As I understand it, the obsequious
+chapter would be obliged to perform the election, and close all by
+anthems to Almighty GOD, ascribing to Him the glory of a gift so
+felicitous and so auspicious to the church! It would not be the
+first time, I believe, that Lord John has set the _Te Deum_ of
+cathedrals going, like the whistles of a juggler's barrel-organ.
+Forgive me, Basil; I am not mocking the agonies of your church, but
+I am scorning a British minister that can use for her destruction
+the powers confided to him for her nourishment and defence. I
+have learned my notions of your politics from Edmund Burke, and I
+remember what he said in his _Reflections on the French Revolution
+of 1792_--for, by the way, revolutions in France must be always
+referred to by dates, and will soon be known, like policemen, by
+letters and numbers. "The men of England," said that great and
+honest man, "the men I mean of light and leading in England, would
+be ashamed, as of a silly deceitful trick, to profess any religion
+in name which, by their proceedings, they appear to contemn." Does
+not Lord John profess to be a Christian? I must caution you, too,
+against supposing that I dislike the Israelites. Far from it. In my
+own country I am glad that they labour under no disabilities, and I
+can testify to their good order, decency, and propriety of behaviour
+as citizens. But we have "no past at our back," and nothing in our
+system which demands a prior consideration. No, Basil--I honour a
+Jew, however much I may pity him. Crying old clothes, or lolling in
+a banker's chariot, the Jew is to me a man of sacred associations.
+And then--a Jewish gentleman--he makes me think at once of the sons
+of Maccabaeus and all the Asmoneans; those Hebrews of the Hebrews,
+those Tories of Israel! What natural sympathy has a Jewish gentleman
+with a Whig? Were I merely covetous of votes I would say--let the
+Jews in! I could trust _their_ conscience; I could appeal to their
+own feelings; I would put it to them whether their liberalism
+would consent to eat pork with the Gentiles, or to call in the
+uncircumcised to make laws for the synagogue. We pity the blindness
+of the Jews that offered their thirty pieces of silver--but we do
+not despise them. Our contempt settles on the head of the Christian
+who consented to take them at the bargain.
+
+  [5] We fully agree with our correspondent as to the danger of
+  Whiggery in our councils, but are so far reconciled to the Whigs
+  being in office at the present crisis, by the knowledge that, had
+  they been in opposition, they would, to a certain extent, have
+  fraternised with French Republicans and English Chartists. Who could
+  doubt that such would have been the conduct of the men who headed
+  physical force processions, and hounded on window-breaking vagabonds
+  in the Reform riots of 1830? What amount of profligate partisanship
+  might not be expected from the men who, when thirsting for office,
+  solemnly denounced as unconstitutional and unjust the course pursued
+  by a conservative government towards O'Connell, which identical
+  course they now, when in power, adopt towards Mitchell, a much less
+  dangerous criminal?
+
+  [6] Burke's _Reflections on the French Revolution_.
+
+You speak of this Jew bill as the first step! Why, yes, the first
+step in tragedy; there was a former one in farce. There is Sir Moses
+Montefiore! Who made him a knight? "A Jewish knight," said I, at
+the time--"hear it, ye dry bones,--ye cross-legged effigies--ye
+Paladins--ye Templars! Hear it, Du-Bois-Gilbert,--hear it, Richard
+Coeur-de-Lion! Yes, and thou, too, old Roger de Coverley! Hear it,
+thou true old English knight; for they that bought thine old clothes
+now come for thine old spurs!" So said I--wondering that no one
+seemed to wonder. The nineteenth century had not time to stare.
+There was not even a London _Punch_ to laugh at such a _Judy_, and
+so Moses was belted and spurred, no man gainsaying; and knighthood,
+that was Sidney's once, is just the thing for Sir Peter Laurie now.
+
+And if a Jewish knight, why not a Jewish senator! True, there is
+something grand in the idea of a nation that never, since the
+Wittenagemote, has seen a lawgiver unbaptised; and then there is
+still a red cross in the flag of England; and there has been a
+pleasing notion that the Christian faith was part and parcel with
+the British constitution; and even we in America, averse to church
+and state, have long allowed ourselves to admire one exception
+to the rule, and to confess the majestic figure made among the
+nations by a Christian empire, shining forth in splendid contrast
+to surrounding kingdoms, some of them infidel and some of them
+superstitious, but she alone the witness to reasonable faith, and
+faithful reason. But who regards it in this light? Who among you
+stands up to warn his country of the glory that is departing?
+Who has said any thing in parliament at all adequate to the
+turning-point of a nation's religion? I have looked for some one to
+speak as Burke would have spoken, of "uncovering your nakedness,
+by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been
+your boast and comfort." I have longed to see his promise made
+good,--"_we shall never be such fools_ as to call in an enemy to
+the substance of any system, to remove its corruptions, to supply
+its defects, or to perfect its construction." I read _The Times_,
+but as yet I have looked in vain. A few honest remonstrances have
+indeed been ventured amid cries of _oh, oh!_ and vociferations of
+buck-toothed laughter from the benches that support the honourable
+members from Cottonburgh and Calicopolis. But who has stood up as
+for altars and fires? I hope, ere this reaches you, the question
+will be creditably answered. I hope the Christianity of England will
+not die without a struggle. I suspect it will be of no use, but I
+look yet for some John of Gaunt in the House of Lords. Imagine him,
+my Basil:--
+
+                      "This sceptred isle,
+    This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
+    Renowned for her deeds as far from home
+    (For _Christian service_ and _true chivalry_)
+    As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
+    Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son;
+    This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
+    _Dear for her reputation through the world,
+    Is now--paun'd out to Jews!_"
+
+This is what ought to be said; and I look for it, if not from lords
+spiritual, then even from lords temporal. But surely it would well
+become the primate's mouth! Of course, it would do little good; but
+then the religion of England would fall at least dramatically. It
+would make a picture quite as good as the death of Chatham. Do you
+remember the lawn-sleeves in that picture? The bishops are "in at
+the death,"--but nothing more.
+
+But another steamer has come in with news; and France is all the
+talk. The elections are over; the _Moderes_ have triumphed; the
+National Assembly has convened, and the Provisional Government is
+at an end. _Vive Lamartine!_ Of course the stock of the republic
+takes a rise, but holders are not firm. The bloodshed at Rouen,
+the _emeutes_ at Elboeuf and Limoges, and the threats of the
+_Communistes_, do not precisely inspire confidence. Still, we are
+so far surprised, and those who have predicted favourably for
+France grow a little more sanguine in their hopes. I am glad to
+say that Louis Blanc has no sympathisers here. All are convinced
+that Lamartine will make the best of it, and that, if he fails,
+the republic will be suffocated and expire in a stench. For one,
+it seems to me that Lamartine is not bad enough to encounter
+successfully the frantic malice of his opponents, and that their
+eventual success is certain. Already, things have very likely taken
+a decisive turn, and by the time this letter reaches you, the doings
+of the Assembly will have enabled you to conjecture whether the
+nation is going by the long way, or the short cut, to Henry Fifth.
+As all will be stale before you can read what I now write, I will
+not presume to predict the immediate results; but I am sure that the
+assembling of such a set as have been returned to the legislature,
+would be enough to blow up the strongest government on earth.
+Jew, Dominican, pastor and bishop, poet and butcher, all in their
+tricoloured sashes--was there ever such a full-blown tulip-bed of
+liberty, equality, and fraternity!
+
+The announcement of several clergymen as members of the Assembly
+reminds me that there has been some sickly sentiment among us,
+about the _piety_ that has been displayed in this revolution.
+In Boston we are favoured with some strange types of religions
+enthusiasm; in fact, the type of Christianity that prevails among
+us is peculiarly our own; and like our improvements in machinery,
+deserves the proverbial name of a "Boston notion." Emerson, who is
+now illuminating England, may give you some idea of what I mean;
+and a queer story that is told of one of his disciples, may furnish
+you with an explanation of the fact, that some men see religion
+in the sacking of the Tuileries. The youth was at the Opera to
+see a celebrated _danseuse_, and excited general attention by his
+somewhat extraordinary applause. His enthusiasm so transported
+him, that the emotions of his heart became unconsciously audible.
+As the dancer began to whirl, he cried, "_Ah, that is poetry!_" As
+she stretched her toe to the horizontal, he exclaimed, "_That's
+divinity!_" but when she proceeded to an evolution that forced
+the ladies to pay attention to their fans, he burst into the
+climax--"_That's religion!_" If this be caricature, the Emersonians
+richly deserve it. They are laughed at even in Boston. But they
+are not alone in thinking well of the piety of Paris, and arguing
+from it that there will be no reign of terror; as if there was not
+vastly more show of religion in the first revolution! If there is
+an archbishop of Paris now, there was formerly a Talleyrand for
+high-priest and master of ceremonies. Oh, but they rejoin with a
+story! When the blouses were gutting the palace of its pictures
+and marbles, they found, among other works of art, an image of the
+Crucified. As a blouseman was about to dash it to atoms, there was a
+cry, "Save it--save the great teacher of fraternity!" The crucifix
+was accordingly saved, and borne about the streets amid songs and
+curses, and, very appropriately, "with lanterns and torches."
+"_Ah, that's religion!_" says your Emersonian. So, when recreant
+priests baptise a liberty-pole, or join a procession of blouses,
+with crosses and censers, _that's divinity_, at least. Was ever
+hypocrisy so revolting! The nauseous mockery has its only parallel
+in the writings of George Sand, who makes a favourite hero and
+heroine betake themselves to an adulterous bed, after duly reciting
+their prayers, in which the absent husband is very affectionately
+remembered. If a revolution thus begun is not destined to go
+speedily through all the ripening and rotting of a godless anarchy,
+it is to be accounted for only on the principle that "He who is
+Eternal can wait." The old scene at Notre Dame may not be actually
+revived, and the Bible may not be literally dragged through Paris
+again tied to an ass's tail; but the undisguised atrocities of the
+first revolution may, after all, be exceeded by the smooth-faced
+blasphemies of that which has already degraded the world's Redeemer
+into the patron saint of insurrection, and the father of infidel
+fraternity.
+
+Poor Lamartine! Is this the man, my Basil, whom you once likened to
+Chateaubriand? _Quantum mutatus!_ I knew him, till lately, only as a
+poet and a traveller. He certainly went to Palestine with the spirit
+of a palmer. He bathed in Siloa with enthusiasm, and almost expired
+of feeling under the venerable olive-trees of Gethsemane.
+
+How Frenchy--how intensely French! mass in the morning, and weeping
+and sighing,--a revel before nightfall, and desperate gaming. And
+this man to be the Cromwell of the commonwealth? He could hardly
+have been the Milton, though it would have been more becoming. And
+what will be his career? It is a pity Lady Hester Stanhope was not
+permitted to consult his stars in full when he met her on Mount
+Lebanon, when she praised his handsome foot and arched instep,
+and told him he should be very important in the history of the
+world. Ah, how certainly he will yet lament, if he does not lament
+already, the fulfilment of the oracle! Such weird sisters as Lady
+Hester generally tell _only half_, leaving the rest to imagination
+and to time. But whether this Phaeton, who has grasped the reins,
+is to set the world on fire; whether he, in turn, is only to try
+the game of Humpty-Dumpty and to fall; or whether, even as I write
+this, he be not already under the foot of Louis Blanc and his
+_Communistes_,--what probabilities or improbabilities shall aid my
+conjecture? This thing only will I venture as my surmise, though not
+my hope, that kings shall reign again in France, as if Lamartine
+never lived: that tricoloured cockades shall be made no more, and
+lilies be cultivated again: that there will soon be longings for a
+sight of the _drapeau blanc_, and a prince of the sons of St Louis:
+and that, fat as he is, and Bourbon as he is, and half Austrian as
+he has made himself, Henry Duke of Bordeaux will soon be known as
+HENRI LE DESIRE.
+
+  Yours ever, my dear Basil,
+
+  ERNEST.
+
+
+
+
+THE CAXTONS--PART IV.
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning,
+day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom, and purity,
+and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness
+of a happy child. I doubt if any man can be called 'old' so long as
+he is an early riser, and an early _walker_. And oh, youth!--take
+my word of it,--youth in dressing-gown and slippers, dawdling over
+breakfast at noon, is a very decrepid ghastly image of that youth
+which sees the sun blush over the mountains, and the dews sparkle
+upon blossoming hedgerows.
+
+Passing by my father's study, I was surprised to see the windows
+unclosed--surprised more, on looking in, to see him bending over
+his books--for I had never before known him study till after the
+morning meal. Students are not usually early risers, for students,
+alas! whatever their age, are rarely young. Yes; the great work must
+be getting on in serious earnest. It was no longer dalliance with
+learning: this was work.
+
+I passed through the gates into the road. A few of the cottages were
+giving signs of returning life; but it was not yet the hour for
+labour, and no "Good morning, sir," greeted me on the road. Suddenly
+at a turn, which an overhanging beech-tree had before concealed, I
+came full upon my Uncle Roland.
+
+"What! you, sir? So early? Hark, the clock is striking five!"
+
+"Not later! I have walked well for a lame man. It must be more than
+four miles to ---- and back."
+
+"You have been to ----: not on business? No soul would be up."
+
+"Yes, at inns there is always some one up. Ostlers never sleep! I
+have been to order my humble chaise and pair. I leave you to day,
+nephew."
+
+"Ah, uncle, we have offended you. It was my folly--that cursed
+print--"
+
+"Pooh!" said my uncle, quickly. "Offended me, boy! I defy you!" and
+he pressed my hand roughly.
+
+"Yet this sudden determination! It was but yesterday, at the Roman
+Camp, that you planned an excursion with my father to C---- Castle."
+
+"Never depend upon a whimsical man. I must be in London to-night."
+
+"And return to morrow?"
+
+"I know not when," said my uncle, gloomily; and he was silent
+for some moments. At length, leaning less lightly on my arm, he
+continued--"Young man, you have pleased me. I love that open saucy
+brow of yours, on which nature has written 'Trust me.' I love those
+clear eyes that look man manfully in the face. I must know more of
+you--much of you. You must come and see me some day or other in your
+ancestor's ruined keep."
+
+"Come! that I will. And you shall show me the old tower--"
+
+"And the traces of the out-works;" cried my uncle, flourishing his
+stick.
+
+"And the pedigree--"
+
+"Ay, and your great-great-grandfather's armour, which he wore at
+Marston Moor--"
+
+"Yes, and the brass plate in the church, uncle."
+
+"The deuce is in the boy! Come here--come here; I've three minds to
+break your head, sir!"
+
+"It is a pity somebody had not broken the rascally printer's, before
+he had the impudence to disgrace us by having a family, uncle."
+
+Captain Roland tried hard to frown, but he could not. "Pshaw!" said
+he, stopping, and taking snuff. "The world of the dead is wide; why
+should the ghosts jostle us?"
+
+"We can never escape the ghosts, uncle. They haunt us always. We
+cannot think or act, but the soul of some man, who has lived before,
+points the way. The dead never die, especially since--"
+
+"Since what, boy? you speak well."
+
+"Since our great ancestor introduced printing," said I, majestically.
+
+My uncle whistled "_Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre_."
+
+I had not the heart to plague him further.
+
+"Peace!" said I, creeping cautiously within the circle of the stick.
+
+"No! I forewarn you--"
+
+"Peace! and describe to me my little cousin, your pretty
+daughter--for pretty I am sure she is."
+
+"Peace," said my uncle, smiling. "But you must come and judge for
+yourself."
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Uncle Roland was gone. Before he went, he was closeted for an hour
+with my father, who then accompanied him to the gate; and we all
+crowded round him as he stepped into his chaise. When the Captain
+was gone, I tried to sound my father as to the cause of so sudden a
+departure. But my father was impenetrable in all that related to his
+brother's secrets. Whether or not the Captain had ever confided to
+him the cause of his displeasure with his son,--a mystery which much
+haunted me,--my father was mute on that score, both to my mother
+and myself. For two or three days, however, Mr Caxton was evidently
+unsettled. He did not even take to his great work; but walked much
+alone, or accompanied only by the duck, and without even a book in
+his hand. But by degrees the scholarly habits returned to him; my
+mother mended his pens, and the work went on.
+
+For my part, left much to myself, especially in the mornings, I
+began to muse restlessly over the future. Ungrateful that I was, the
+happiness of home ceased to content me. I heard afar the roar of the
+great world, and roved impatient by the shore.
+
+At length, one evening, my father, with some modest hums and ha's,
+and an-unaffected blush on his fair forehead, gratified a prayer
+frequently urged on him, and read me some portions of "the great
+Work." I cannot express the feelings this lecture created--they
+were something akin to awe. For the design of this book was so
+immense--and towards its execution, a learning so vast and various
+had administered--that it seemed to me as if a spirit had opened to
+me a new world, which had always been before my feet, but which my
+own human blindness had hitherto concealed from me. The unspeakable
+patience with which all these materials had been collected year
+after year--the ease with which now, by the calm power of genius,
+they seemed of themselves to fall into harmony and system--the
+unconscious humility with which the scholar exposed the stores of
+a laborious life;--all combined to rebuke my own restlessness and
+ambition, while they filled me with a pride in my father, which
+saved my wounded egotism from a pang. Here, indeed, was one of those
+books which embrace an existence; like the Dictionary of Bayle, or
+the History of Gibbon, or the _Fasti Hellenici_ of Clinton,--it
+was a book to which thousands of books had contributed, only to
+make the originality of the single mind more bold and clear. Into
+the furnace all vessels of gold, of all ages, had been cast, but
+from the mould came the new coin, with its single stamp. And
+happily, the subject of the work did not forbid to the writer the
+indulgence of his _naive_, peculiar irony of humour--so quiet, yet
+so profound. My father's book was the "History of Human Error."
+It was, therefore, the moral history of mankind, told with truth
+and earnestness, yet with an arch unmalignant smile. Sometimes,
+indeed, the smile drew tears. But in all true humour lies its germ,
+pathos. Oh! by the goddess Moria or Folly, but he was at home in
+his theme! He viewed man first in the savage state, preferring in
+this the positive accounts of voyagers and travellers, to the vague
+myths of antiquity, and the dreams of speculators on our pristine
+state. From Australia and Abyssinia, he drew pictures of mortality
+unadorned, as lively as if he had lived amongst Bushmen and savages
+all his life. Then he crossed over the Atlantic, and brought before
+you the American Indian, with his noble nature, struggling into
+the dawn of civilisation, when friend Penn cheated him out of his
+birthright, and the Anglo-Saxon drove him back into darkness. He
+showed both analogy and contrast between this specimen of our kind,
+and others equally apart from the extremes of the savage state and
+the cultured. The Arab in his tent, the Teuton in his forests, the
+Greenlander in his boat, the Fin in his rein-deer car. Up sprang
+the rude gods of the north, and the resuscitated Druidism, passing
+from its earliest templeless belief into the later corruptions of
+crommell and idol. Up sprang, by their side, the Saturn of the
+Phoenicians, the mystic Budh of India, the elementary deities of the
+Pelasgian, the Naith and Serapis of Egypt, the Ormuzd of Persia, the
+Bel of Babylon, the winged genii of the graceful Etruria. How nature
+and life shaped the religion; how the religion shaped the manners;
+how, and by what influences, some tribes were formed for progress;
+how others were destined to remain stationary, or be swallowed up
+in war and slavery by their brethren, was told with a precision
+clear and strong as the voice of Fate. Not only an antiquarian and
+philologist, but an anatomist and philosopher--my father brought to
+bear on all these grave points, the various speculations involved
+in the distinctions of race. He showed how race in perfection
+is produced, up to a certain point, by admixture: how all mixed
+races have been the most intelligent--how, in proportion as local
+circumstance and religious faith permitted the early fusion of
+differing tribes, races improved and quickened into the refinements
+of civilisation. He tracked the progress and dispersion of the
+Hellenes, from their mythical cradle in Thessaly; and showed
+how those who settled near the sea-shores, and were compelled
+into commerce and intercourse with strangers, gave to Greece her
+marvellous accomplishments in arts and letters--the flowers of the
+ancient world. How others, like the Spartans, dwelling evermore in
+a camp, on guard against their neighbours, and rigidly preserving
+their Dorian purity of extraction, contributed neither artists, nor
+poets, nor philosophers to the golden treasure-house of mind. He
+took the old race of the Celts, Cimry, or Cimmerians. He compared
+the Celt who, as in Wales, the Scotch Highlands, in Bretagne, and
+in uncomprehended Ireland, retains his old characteristics and
+purity of breed, with the Celt whose blood, mixed by a thousand
+channels, dictates from Paris the manners and revolutions of the
+world. He compared the Norman in his ancient Scandinavian home,
+with that wonder of intelligence and chivalry which he became,
+fused imperceptibly with the Frank, the Goth, and the Anglo-Saxon.
+He compared the Saxon, stationary in the land of Horsa, with the
+colonist and civiliser of the globe, as he becomes, when he knows
+not through what channels--French, Flemish, Danish, Welch, Scotch,
+and Irish--he draws his sanguine blood. And out from all these
+speculations, to which I do such hurried and scanty justice, he drew
+the blessed truth, that carries hope to the land of the Caffre, the
+hut of the Bushman--that there is nothing in the flattened skull
+and the ebon aspect that rejects God's law, improvement; that by
+the same principle which raises the dog, the lowest of the animals
+in its savage state, to the highest after man,--viz. admixture of
+race--you can elevate into nations of majesty and power the outcasts
+of humanity, now your compassion or your scorn. But when my father
+got into the marrow of his theme--when, quitting these preliminary
+discussions, he fell pounce amongst the would-be wisdom of the wise;
+when he dealt with civilisation itself, its schools, and porticos,
+and academies; when he bared the absurdities couched beneath the
+colleges of the Egyptians, and the Symposia of the Greeks;--when he
+showed that, even in their own favourite pursuit of metaphysics,
+the Greeks were children; and in their own more practical region
+of politics, the Romans were visionaries and bunglers;--when,
+following the stream of error through the middle ages, he quoted the
+puerilities of Agrippa, the crudities of Cardan; and passed, with
+his calm smile, into the _salons_ of the chattering wits of Paris
+in the eighteenth century, oh, then his irony was that of Lucian,
+sweetened by the gentle spirit of Erasmus. For not even here was
+my father's satire of the cheerless and Mephistophelian school.
+From this record of error he drew forth the grand eras of truth. He
+showed how earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts
+may be errors. He proved how, in vast cycles, age after age, the
+human mind marches on--like the ocean, receding here, but there
+advancing. How from the speculations of the Greek sprang all true
+philosophy; how from the institutions of the Roman rose all durable
+systems of government; how from the robust follies of the North
+came the glory of chivalry, and the modern delicacies of honour,
+and the sweet harmonising influences of woman. He tracked the
+ancestry of our Sidneys and Bayards from the Hengists, Genserics,
+and Attilas. Full of all curious and quaint anecdote--of original
+illustration--of those niceties of learning which spring from a
+taste cultivated to the last exquisite polish--the book amused, and
+allured, and charmed; and erudition lost its pedantry now in the
+simplicity of Montaigne, now in the penetration of La Bruyere. He
+lived in each time of which he wrote, and the time lived again in
+him. Ah, what a writer of romances he would have been, if--if what?
+If he had had as sad an experience of men's passions, as he had the
+happy intuition into their humours. But he who would see the mirror
+of the shore, must look where it is cast on the river, not the
+ocean. The narrow stream reflects the gnarled tree, and the pausing
+herd, and the village spire, and the romance of the landscape. But
+the sea reflects only the vast outline of the headland, and the
+lights of the eternal heaven.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+"It is Lombard Street to a China orange," quoth Uncle Jack.
+
+"Are the odds in favour of fame against failure so great? You do not
+speak, I fear, from experience, brother Jack," answered my father,
+as he stooped down to tickle the duck under the left ear.
+
+"But Jack Tibbets is not Augustine Caxton. Jack Tibbets is not a
+scholar, a genius, a wond--"
+
+"Stop," cried my father.
+
+"After all," said Mr Squills, "though I am no flatterer, Mr Tibbets
+is not so far out.... That part of your book which compares the
+crania or skulls of the different races is superb. Lawrence or Dr
+Pritchard could not have done the thing more neatly. Such a book
+must not be lost to the world; and I agree with Mr Tibbets that you
+should publish as soon as possible."
+
+"It is one thing to write and another to publish," said my father
+irresolutely. "When one considers all the great men who have
+published; when one thinks one is going to intrude one's-self
+audaciously into the company of Aristotle and Bacon, of Locke, of
+Herder--of all the grave philosophers who bend over nature with
+brows weighty with thought--one may well pause, and--"
+
+"Pooh!" interrupted Uncle Jack; "science is not a club, it is an
+ocean. It is open to the cockboat as the frigate. One man carries
+across it a freightage of ingots, another may fish there for
+herrings. Who can exhaust the sea? who say to intellect, the deeps
+of philosophy are preoccupied?"
+
+"Admirable!" cried Squills.
+
+"So it is really your advice, my friends," said my father, who
+seemed struck by Uncle Jack's eloquent illustration, "that I should
+desert my household gods; remove to London, since my own library
+ceases to supply my wants; take lodgings near the British Museum,
+and finish off one volume, at least, incontinently."
+
+"It is a duty you owe to your country," said Uncle Jack, solemnly.
+
+"And to yourself," urged Squills. "One must attend to the natural
+evacuations of the brain. Ah! you may smile, sir; but I have
+observed that if a man has much in his head, he must give it vent
+or it oppresses him; the whole system goes wrong. From being
+abstracted, he grows stupefied. The weight of the pressure affects
+the nerves. I would not even guarantee you from a stroke of
+paralysis."
+
+"Oh, Austin!" cried my mother tenderly, and throwing her arms round
+my father's neck.
+
+"Come, sir, you are conquered," said I.
+
+"And what is to become of you, Sisty?" asked my father. "Do you go
+with us, and unsettle your mind for the university?"
+
+"My uncle has invited me to his castle; and in the meanwhile I will
+stay here, fag hard, and take care of the duck."
+
+"All alone?" said my mother.
+
+"No. All alone! Why Uncle Jack will come here as often as ever, I
+hope."
+
+Uncle Jack shook his head.
+
+"No, my boy--I must go to town with your father. You don't
+understand these things. I shall see the booksellers for him. I
+know how these gentlemen are to be dealt with. I shall prepare the
+literary circles for the appearance of the book. In short, it is a
+sacrifice of interest I know. My Journal will suffer. But friendship
+and my country's good before all things!"
+
+"Dear Jack!" said my mother affectionately.
+
+"I cannot suffer it," cried my father. "You are making a good
+income. You are doing well where you are; and as to seeing the
+booksellers--why, when the work is ready, you can come to town for a
+week, and settle that affair."
+
+"Poor dear Austin," said Uncle Jack, with an air of superiority and
+compassion. "A week! Sir, the advent of a book that is to succeed
+requires the preparation of months. Pshaw! I am no genius, bu I am a
+practical man. I know what's what. Leave me alone."
+
+But my father continued obstinate and Uncle Jack at last ceased to
+urge the matter. The journey to fame and London was now settled; but
+my father would not hear of my staying behind.
+
+No; Pisistratus must needs go also to town and see the world; the
+duck would take care of itself.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+We had taken the precaution to send, the day before, to secure
+our due complement of places--four in all (including one for Mrs
+Primmins)--in, or upon, the fast family coach called the Sun,
+which had lately been set up for the special convenience of the
+neighbourhood.
+
+This luminary, rising in a town about seven miles distant
+from us, described at first a very erratic orbit amidst the
+contiguous villages before it finally struck into the high-road of
+enlightenment, and thence performed its journey, in the full eyes
+of man, at the majestic pace of six miles and a half an hour. My
+father, with his pockets full of books, and a quarto of "Gebelin on
+the Primitive World" for light reading under his arm; my mother,
+with a little basket, containing sandwiches and biscuits of her
+own baking; Mrs Primmins, with a new umbrella, purchased for the
+occasion, and a bird-cage containing a canary, endeared to her
+not more by song than age, and a severe pip through which she had
+successfully nursed it--and I myself, waited at the gates to welcome
+the celestial visitor. The gardener, with a wheel-barrow full of
+boxes and portmanteaus, stood a little in the van; and the footman,
+who was to follow when lodgings had been found, had gone to a rising
+eminence to watch the dawning of the expected planet, and apprise us
+of its approach by the concerted signal of a handkerchief fixed to a
+stick.
+
+The quaint old house looked at us mournfully from all its deserted
+windows. The litter before its threshold, and in its open hall;
+wisps of straw or hay that had been used for packing; baskets and
+boxes that had been examined and rejected; others, corded and
+piled, reserved to follow with the footman: and the two heated
+and hurried serving-women left behind standing half-way between
+house and garden-gate, whispering to each other, and looking as
+if they had not slept for weeks--gave to a scene, usually so trim
+and orderly, an aspect of pathetic abandonment and desolation. The
+genius of the place seemed to reproach us. I felt the omens were
+against us, and turned my earnest gaze from the haunts behind with
+a sigh, as the coach now drew up in all its grandeur. An important
+personage, who, despite the heat of the day, was enveloped in a vast
+superfluity of belcher, in the midst of which galloped a gilt fox,
+and who rejoiced in the name of "guard," descended to inform us
+politely that only three places, two inside and one out, were at our
+disposal, the rest having been pre-engaged a fortnight before our
+orders were received.
+
+Now, as I knew that Mrs Primmins was indispensable to the comforts
+of my honoured parents, (the more so, as she had once lived in
+London, and knew all its ways,) I suggested that she should take
+the outside seat, and that I should perform the journey on foot--a
+primitive mode of transport which has its charms to a young man with
+stout limbs and gay spirits. The guard's outstretched arm left my
+mother little time to oppose this proposition, to which my father
+assented with a silent squeeze of the hand. And, having promised to
+join them at a family hotel near the Strand, to which Mr Squills lad
+recommended them as peculiarly genteel and quiet, and waved my last
+farewell to my poor mother, who continued to stretch her meek face
+out of the window till the coach was whirled off in a cloud like one
+of the Homeric heroes, I turned within, to put up a few necessary
+articles in a small knapsack, which I remembered to have seen in the
+lumber-room, and which had appertained to my maternal grandfather;
+and with that on my shoulder, and a strong staff in my hand, I set
+off towards the great city at as brisk a pace as if I were only
+bound to the next village. Accordingly, about noon, I was both tired
+and hungry; and seeing by the wayside one of those pretty inns yet
+peculiar to England, but which, thanks to the railways, will soon be
+amongst the things before the Flood, I sate down at a table under
+some clipped limes, unbuckled my knapsack, and ordered my simple
+fare, with the dignity of one who, for the first time in his life,
+bespeaks his own dinner, and pays for it out of his own pocket.
+
+While engaged on a rasher of bacon and a tankard of what the
+landlord called "No mistake," two pedestrians, passing the same
+road which I had traversed, paused, cast a simultaneous look at
+my occupation, and, induced no doubt by its allurements, seated
+themselves under the same lime-trees, though at the farther end of
+the table. I surveyed the new-comers with the curiosity natural to
+my years.
+
+The elder of the two might have attained the age of thirty, though
+sundry deep lines, and hues formerly florid and now faded, speaking
+of fatigue, care, or dissipation, might have made him look somewhat
+older than he was. There was nothing very prepossessing in his
+appearance. He was dressed with a pretension ill suited to the
+costume appropriate to a foot-traveller. His coat was pinched and
+padded; two enormous pins, connected by a chain, decorated a very
+stiff stock of blue satin, dotted with yellow stars; his hands were
+cased in very dingy gloves which had once been straw-coloured,
+and the said hands played with a whalebone cane surmounted by a
+formidable knob, which gave it the appearance of a "life-preserver."
+As he took off a white napless hat, which he wiped with great care
+and affection with the sleeve of his right arm, a profusion of
+stiff curls instantly betrayed the art of man. Like my landlord's
+ale, in that wig there was "no mistake:" it was brought--(in the
+fashion of the wigs we see in the popular effigies of George IV. in
+his youth)--low over his forehead and raised at the top. The wig
+had been oiled, and the oil had imbibed no small quantity of dust;
+oil and dust had alike left their impression on the forehead and
+cheeks of the wig's proprietor. For the rest, the expression of his
+face was somewhat impudent and reckless, but not without a certain
+drollery in the corners of his eyes.
+
+The younger man was apparently about my own age, a year or two
+older perhaps--judging rather from his set and sinewy frame than
+his boyish countenance. And this last, boyish as it was, could not
+fail to demand the attention even of the most careless observer. It
+had not only the darkness but the character of the gipsy face, with
+large brilliant eyes, raven hair, long and wavy, but not curling;
+the features were aquiline but delicate, and when he spoke he showed
+teeth dazzling as pearls. It was impossible not to admire the
+singular beauty of the countenance; and yet, it had that expression
+at once stealthy and fierce, which war with society has stamped
+upon the lineaments of the race of which it reminded me. But,
+withal, there was somewhat of the air of a gentleman in this young
+wayfarer. His dress consisted of a black velveteen shooting-jacket,
+or rather short frock, with a broad leathern strap at the waist,
+loose white trousers, and a foraging cap, which he threw carelessly
+on the table as he wiped his brow. Turning round impatiently and
+with some haughtiness from his companion, he surveyed me with a
+quick observant flash of his piercing eyes, and then stretched
+himself at length on the bench, and appeared either to doze or muse,
+till, in obedience to his companion's orders, the board was spread
+with all the cold meats the larder could supply.
+
+"Beef!" said his companion, screwing a pinchbeck glass
+into his right eye. "Beef;--mottled, cowey--humph.
+Lamb;--oldish--rawish--muttony, humph. Pie;--stalish, veal?--no,
+pork. Ah! what will you have?"
+
+"Help yourself," replied the young man peevishly, as he sat up,
+looked disdainfully at the viands, and after a long pause, tasted
+first one, then the other, with many shrugs of the shoulders and
+muttered exclamations of discontent. Suddenly he looked up and
+called for brandy; and to my surprise, and I fear admiration, he
+drank nearly half a tumblerful of that poison undiluted, with a
+composure that spoke of habitual use.
+
+"Wrong!" said his companion, drawing the bottle to himself, and
+mixing the alcohol in careful proportions with water. "Wrong! coats
+of stomach soon wear out, with that kind of clothes' brush. Better
+stick to 'the yeasty foam' as sweet Will says. That young gentleman
+sets you a good example," and therewith the speaker nodded at me
+familiarly. Inexperienced as I was, I surmised at once that it was
+his intention to make acquaintance with the neighbour thus saluted.
+I was not deceived. "Any thing to tempt _you_, sir?" asked this
+social personage after a short pause, and describing a semicircle
+with the point of his knife.
+
+"I thank you, sir, but I have dined."
+
+"What then? 'Break out into a second course of mischief,' as the
+swan recommends--swan of Avon, sir! No? 'Well then, I charge you
+with this cup of sack.' Are you going far, if I may take the liberty
+to ask?"
+
+"To London, when I can get there!"
+
+"Oh!" said the traveller--while his young companion lifted his
+eyes; and I was again struck with their remarkable penetration and
+brilliancy.
+
+"London is the best place in the world for a lad of spirit. See life
+there; 'glass of fashion and mould of form.' Fond of the play, sir?"
+
+"I never saw one!"
+
+"Possible!" cried the gentleman, dropping the handle of his knife,
+and bringing up the point horizontally: "then, young man," he added
+solemnly, "you have, but I won't say what you have to see. I won't
+say--no, not if you could cover this table with golden guineas, and
+exclaim with the generous ardour so engaging in youth 'Mr Peacock,
+these are yours, if you will only say what I have to see!'"
+
+I laughed outright--may I be forgiven for the boast, but I had the
+reputation at school of a pleasant laugh. The young man's face grew
+dark at the sound: he pushed back his plate and sighed.
+
+"Why," continued his friend, "my companion here, who I suppose is
+about your own age, _he_ could tell you what a play is! he could
+tell you what life is. He has viewed the manners of the town:
+'perused the traders,' as the swan poetically remarks. Have you not,
+my lad, eh?"
+
+Thus directly appealed to, the boy looked up with a smile of scorn
+on his lips. "Yes, I know what life is, and I say that life, like
+poverty, has strange bedfellows. Ask me what life is now, and I say
+a melodrama; ask me what it is twenty years hence, and I shall say--"
+
+"A farce?" put in his comrade.
+
+"No, a tragedy--or comedy as Congreve wrote it."
+
+"And how is that?" I asked, interested and somewhat surprised at the
+tone of my contemporary.
+
+"Where the play ends in the triumph of the wittiest rogue. My friend
+hee has no chance!"
+
+"'Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley,' hem--yes--Hal Peacock maybe
+witty, but he is no rogue."
+
+"That was not exactly my meaning," said the boy dryly.
+
+"'A fico for your meaning,'" as the swan says. "Hallo,
+you, sir! Bully Host, clear the table, fresh tumblers--hot
+water--sugar--lemon, and the bottle's out! Smoke, sir?" and Mr
+Peacock offered me a cigar.
+
+Upon my refusal, he carefully twirled round a very uninviting
+specimen of some fabulous havannah--moistened it all over, as a
+boa-constrictor may do the ox he prepares for deglutition; bit
+off one end, and lighting the other from a little machine for
+that purpose which he drew from his pocket, he was soon absorbed
+in a vigorous effort (which the damp inherent in the weed long
+resisted) to poison the surrounding atmosphere. Therewith, the young
+gentleman, either from emulation or in self-defence, extracted from
+his own pouch a cigar-case of notable elegance, being of velvet,
+embroidered apparently by some fair hand, for "From Juliet" was very
+legibly worked thereon--selected a cigar of better appearance than
+that in favour with his comrade, and seemed quite as familiar with
+the tobacco as he had been with the brandy.
+
+"Fast, sir--fast lad that!" quoth Mr Peacock, in the short gasps
+which his resolute struggle with his uninviting victim alone
+permitted--"nothing but--(puff, puff)--your true--(suck--suck,)
+syl--syl--sylva--does for him. Out, by the Lord! 'the jaws of
+darkness have devoured it up;'" and again Mr Peacock applied to his
+phosphoric machine. This time patience and perseverance succeeded,
+and the heart of the cigar responded by a dull red spark (leaving
+the sides wholly untouched) to the indefatigable ardour of its wooer.
+
+This feat accomplished, Mr Peacock exclaimed triumphantly, "And now
+what say you, my lads, to a game at cards?--three of us--whist and
+a dummy?--nothing better--eh?" As he spoke, he produced from his
+coat-pocket a red silk handkerchief, a bunch of keys, a nightcap,
+a toothbrush, a piece of shaving-soap, four lumps of sugar, the
+remains of a bun, a razor, and a pack of cards. Selecting the last,
+and returning its motley accompaniments to the abyss whence they
+had emerged, he turned up, with a jerk of his thumb and finger, the
+knave of clubs, and, placing it on the top of the rest, slapped the
+cards emphatically on the table.
+
+"You are very good, but I don't know whist," said I.
+
+"Not know whist--not been to a play! not smoke! Then pray tell me,
+young man," (said he majestically, and with a frown,) "what on earth
+you _do_ know!"
+
+Much consternated by this direct appeal, and greatly ashamed of
+my ignorance of the cardinal points of erudition in Mr Peacock's
+estimation, I hung my head, and looked down.
+
+"That is right," renewed Mr Peacock, more benignly; "you have the
+ingenuous shame of youth. It is promising, sir--'lowliness is young
+ambition's ladder,' as the swan says. Mount the first step, and
+learn whist--sixpenny points to begin with."
+
+Notwithstanding my newness in actual life, I had had the good
+fortune to learn a little of the way before me, by those
+much-slandered guides called novels--works which are often to the
+inner world what maps are to the outer; and sundry recollections of
+"Gil Blas" and the "Vicar of Wakefield" came athwart me. I had no
+wish to emulate the worthy Moses, and felt that I might not have
+even the shagreen spectacles to boast of, in my negotiations with
+this new Mr Jenkinson. Accordingly, shaking my head, I called for my
+bill. As I took out my purse--knit by my mother--with one gold piece
+in one corner, and sundry silver ones in the other, I saw that the
+eyes of Mr Peacock twinkled.
+
+"Poor spirit, sir! poor spirit, young man! 'This avarice sticks
+deep,' as the swan beautifully observes. 'Nothing venture, nothing
+have.'"
+
+"Nothing have, nothing venture," I returned, plucking up spirit.
+
+"Nothing have!--Young sir, do you doubt my solidity--my capital--my
+'golden joys?'"
+
+"Sir, I spoke of myself. I am not rich enough to gamble."
+
+"Gamble!" exclaimed Mr Peacock, in virtuous indignation--"Gamble!
+what do you mean, sir? You insult me!" and he rose threateningly,
+and slapped his white hat on his wig.
+
+"Pshaw! let him alone, Hal," said the boy contemptuously. "Sir, if
+he is impertinent, thrash him." (This was to me.)
+
+"Impertinent!--thrash!" exclaimed Mr Peacock, waxing very red; but
+catching the sneer on his companion's lip, he sat down, and subsided
+into sullen silence.
+
+Meanwhile I paid my bill. This duty, rarely a cheerful one,
+performed, I looked round for my knapsack, and perceived that it was
+in the boy's hands. He was very coolly reading the address which, in
+case of accidents, I had prudently placed on it--Pisistratus Caxton,
+Esq., ---- Hotel, ---- Street, --, Strand.
+
+I took my knapsack from him, more surprised at such a breach of
+good manners in a young gentleman who knew life so well, than I
+should have been at a similar error on the part of Mr Peacock. He
+made no apology, but nodded farewell, and stretched himself at full
+length on the bench. Mr Peacock, now absorbed in a game of patience,
+vouchsafed no return to my parting salutation, and in another moment
+I was alone on the high-road. My thoughts turned long upon the young
+man I had left: mixed with a sort of instinctive compassionate
+foreboding of an ill future for one with such habits, and in such
+companionship, I felt an involuntary admiration, less even for his
+good looks than his ease, audacity, and the careless superiority he
+assumed over a comrade so much older than himself.
+
+The day was far gone when I saw the spires of a town at which I
+intended to rest for the night. The horn of a coach behind made me
+turn my head, and, as the vehicle passed me, I saw on the outside
+Mr Peacock, still struggling with a cigar--it could scarcely be
+the same--and his young friend stretched on the roof amongst the
+luggage, leaning his handsome head on his hand, and apparently
+unobservant both of me and every one else.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+I am apt--judging egotistically, perhaps, from my own experience--to
+measure a young man's chances of what is termed practical success in
+life, by what may seem at first two very vulgar qualities; viz., his
+inquisitiveness and his animal vivacity. A curiosity which springs
+forward to examine every thing new to his information--a nervous
+activity, approaching to restlessness, which rarely allows bodily
+fatigue to interfere with some object in view--constitute, in my
+mind, very profitable stock in hand to begin the world with.
+
+Tired as I was, after I had performed my ablutions, and refreshed
+myself in the little coffee-room of the inn at which I put up, with
+the pedestrian's best beverage, familiar and oft-calumniated tea,
+I could not resist the temptation of the broad bustling street,
+which, lighted with gas, shone on me through the dim windows of the
+coffee-room. I had never before seen a large town, and the contrast
+of lamp-lit, busy night in the streets, with sober, deserted night
+in the lanes and fields, struck me forcibly.
+
+I sauntered out, therefore, jostling and jostled, now gazing at
+the windows, now hurried along the tide of life, till I found
+myself before a cook' shop, round which clustered a small knot
+of housewives, citizens, and hungry-looking children. While
+contemplating this group, and marvelling how it comes to pass that
+the staple business of earth's majority is how, when, and where to
+eat, my ear was struck with "'In Troy there lies the scene,' as the
+illustrious Will remarks."
+
+Looking round, I perceived Mr Peacock pointing his stick towards
+an open doorway next to the cook's shop, the hall beyond which was
+lighted with gas, while, painted in black letters on a pane of glass
+over the door, was the word "Billiards."
+
+Suiting the action to the word, the speaker plunged at once into the
+aperture and vanished. The boy-copanion was following more slowly,
+when his eye caught mine. A slight blush came over his dark cheek;
+he stopped, and leaning against the door-jambs, gazed on me hard and
+long before he said--"Well met again, sir! You find it hard to amuse
+yourself in this dull place; the nights are long out of London."
+
+"Oh," said I, ingenuously, "every thing here amuses me; the lights,
+the shops, the crowd; but, then, to me every thing is new."
+
+The youth came from his lounging-place and moved on, as if inviting
+me to walk; while he answered, rather with bitter sullenness, than
+the melancholy his words expressed--
+
+"One thing, at least, cannot be new to you; it is an old truth with
+us before we leave the nursery--'Whatever is worth having must be
+bought; _ergo_, he who cannot buy, has nothing worth having.'"
+
+"I don't think," said I, wisely, "that the things best worth having
+can be bought at all. You see that poor dropsical jeweller standing
+before his shop-door,--his shop is the finest in the street,--and I
+dare say he would be very glad to give it to you or me in return for
+our good health and strong legs. Oh no! I think with my father--'All
+that are worth having are given to all;--that is, nature and
+labour.'"
+
+"Your father says that; and you go by what your father says!
+Of course, all fathers have preached that, and many other good
+doctrines, since Adam preached to Cain; but I don't see that the
+fathers have found their sons very credulous listeners."
+
+"So much the worse for the sons," said I bluntly.
+
+"Nature," continued my new acquaintance, without attending to my
+ejaculation--"nature indeed does give us much, and nature also
+orders each of us how to use her gifts. If nature gave you the
+propensity to drudge, you will drudge; if she gives me the ambition
+to rise, and the contempt for work, I may rise--but I certainly
+shall not work."
+
+"Oh," said I, "you agree with Squills, I suppose, and fancy we are
+all guided by the bumps on our foreheads?"
+
+"And the blood in our veins, and our mother's milk. We inherit other
+things besides gout and consumption. So you always do as your father
+tells you! Good boy!"
+
+I was piqued. Why we should be ashamed of being taunted for
+goodness, I never could understand; but certainly I felt humbled.
+However I answered sturdily--"If you had as good a father as I have,
+you would not think it so very extraordinary to do as he tells you."
+
+"Ah! so he is a very good father, is he! He must have a great trust
+in your sobriety and steadiness to let you wander about the world as
+he does."
+
+"I am going to join him in London."
+
+"In London! Oh, does he live there?"
+
+"He is going to live there for some time."
+
+"Then, perhaps, we may meet. I, too, am going to town."
+
+"Oh, we shall be sure to meet there!" said I, with frank gladness;
+for my interest in the young man was not diminished by his
+conversation, however much I disliked the sentiments it expressed.
+
+The lad laughed, and his laugh was peculiar. It was low, musical,
+but hollow and artificial.
+
+"Sure to meet! London is a large place: where shall you be found?"
+
+I gave him, without scruple, the address of the hotel at which I
+expected to find my father; although his deliberate inspection
+of my knapsack must already have apprised him of that address.
+He listened attentively, and repeated it twice over, as if to
+impress it on his memory; and we both walked on in silence, till,
+turning up a small passage, we suddenly found ourselves in a large
+churchyard,--a flagged path stretched diagonally across it towards
+the market-place, on which it bordered. In this churchyard, upon a
+grave-stone, sat a young Savoyard; his hurdy-gurdy, or whatever else
+his instrument might be called, was on his lap; and he was gnawing
+his crust, and feeding some poor little white mice (standing on
+their hind-legs on the hurdy-gurdy) as merrily as if he had chosen
+the gayest resting-place in the world.
+
+We both stopped. The Savoyard, seeing us, put his arch head on one
+side, showed all his white teeth in that happy smile so peculiar to
+his race, and in which poverty seems to beg so blithely, and gave
+the handle of his instrument a turn.
+
+"Poor child!" said I.
+
+"Aha, you pity him! but why? According to your rule, Mr Caxton, he
+is not so much to be pitied; the dropsical jeweller would give him
+as much for his limbs and health as for ours! How is it--answer me,
+son of so wise a father--that no one pities the dropsical jeweller,
+and all pity the healthy Savoyard? It is, sir, because there is a
+stern truth which is stronger than all Spartan lessons--Poverty _is_
+the master-ill of the world. Look round. Does poverty leave its
+signs over the graves? Look at that large tomb fenced round; read
+that long inscription:--'virtues'--'best of husbands'--'affectionate
+father'--'inconsolable grief'--'sleeps in the joyful hope,' &c., &c.
+Do you suppose these stoneless mounds hide no dust of what were men
+just as good? But no epitaph tells their virtues; bespeaks their
+wives' grief; or promises joyful hope to them!"
+
+"Does it matter? Does God care for the epitaph and tombstone?"
+
+"_Date qualche cosa!_" said the Savoyard, in his touching patois,
+still smiling, and holding out his little hand.
+
+Therein I dropped a small coin. The boy evinced his gratitude by a
+new turn of the hurdy-gurdy.
+
+"That is not labour," said my companion; "and had you found him at
+work, you had given him nothing. I too have my instrument to play
+upon and my mice to see after. Adieu!"
+
+He waved his hand, and strode irreverently over the graves back in
+the direction we had come.
+
+I stood before the fine tomb with its fine epitaph; the Savoyard
+looked at me wistfully.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+The Savoyard looked at me wistfully. I wished to enter into
+conversation with him. That was not easy. However, I began:--
+
+PISISTRATUS.--"You must be often hungry enough, my poor boy. Do the
+mice feed you?"
+
+SAVOYARD puts his head on one side, shakes it, and stroked his mice.
+
+PISISTRATUS.--"You are very fond of the mice; they are your only
+friends, I fear."
+
+SAVOYARD, evidently understanding Pisistratus, rubs his face gently
+against the mice, then puts them softly down on a grave, and gives a
+turn to the hurdy-gurdy. The mice play unconcernedly over the grave.
+
+PISISTRATUS, pointing first to the beasts, then to the
+instrument.--"Which do you like best, the mice or the hurdy-gurdy?"
+
+SAVOYARD shows his teeth--considers--stretches himself on the
+grass--plays with the mice--and answers volubly.
+
+PISISTRATUS, by the help of Latin comprehending that the Savoyard
+says, that the mice are alive and the hurdy-gurdy is not--"Yes, a
+live friend is better than a dead one. Mortua est hurda-gurda!"
+
+SAVOYARD shakes his head vehemently.--"No--no! Eccellenza, non e
+mortu!" and strikes up a lively air on the slandered instrument. The
+Savoyard's face brightens--he looks happy: the mice run from the
+grave into his bosom.
+
+PISISTRATUS, affected.--"Have you a father--An vivat pater?"
+
+SAVOYARD, with his face overcast.--"No--eccellenza!" then pausing
+a little, he says briskly, "Si-Si!" and plays a solemn air on the
+hurdy-gurdy--stops--rests one hand on the instrument, and raises the
+other to heaven.
+
+PISISTRATUS understands.--"The father is like the hurdy-gurdy, at
+once dead and living. The mere form is a dead thing, but the music
+lives." Pisistratus drops another small piece of silver on the
+ground, and turns away.
+
+"God help and God bless thee, Savoyard. Thou hast done Pisistratus
+all the good in the world. Thou hast corrected the hard wisdom of
+the young gentleman in the velveteen jacket; Pisistratus is a better
+lad for having stopped to listen to thee."
+
+I regained the entrance to the churchyard--I looked back--there sate
+the Savoyard, still amidst men's graves, but under God's sky. He was
+still looking at me wistfully, and when he caught my eye, he pressed
+his hand to his heart, and smiled. "God help and God bless thee,
+young Savoyard."
+
+
+
+
+REPUBLICAN FRANCE.
+
+JUNE 1848.
+
+
+How far is the application to France, of the epithet employed in the
+title that heads these pages, a misnomer? This is a question that
+would be answered very differently by those who study its state of
+feeling, and those who judge its position by mere established fact.
+That the fact and the feeling are completely at issue throughout
+the country, is undoubted, indisputable. A republican government
+has been established by the _coup de main_ of a small minority in
+France--has been accepted by the hesitation of surprise--has been
+maintained by the desire of peace and order:--so far goes fact.
+Republican principles were hateful to the immense majority of
+the country at large in the past, uncongenial to its habits and
+sentiments, impossible according to its views; they are productive,
+as yet, of nothing but confusion, distress, ruin, riot, and
+mistrust, in the present; they are looked upon with alarm as regards
+their results in the future:--so much for feeling. Fact and feeling,
+then, are at variance and in collision. The result of the conflict
+lies hidden in the mysteries of that future, the issue of which, at
+no epoch of history, perhaps, clearseeing eyes and wise foreseeing
+heads could less pretend to predict, than in the present chaotic
+hurly-burly of European society. The politicians who declared that
+the general spirit of the country in France was, in their vague and
+fantastic language of the Chamber, _centre-gauche_, or the advocate
+of liberal progress, may have been very right,--but republican it
+never was, republican it is not. Republican--without pretension
+to the audacity of a prediction but just stated as impossible--it
+certainly does not as yet appear ever likely to become.
+
+In its present state of feeling, then, France--that is to say,
+the country, the provinces, the departments, or whatever France,
+out of Paris, may be called--is about as much genuine republican,
+as a white man who suddenly finds his face smeared over with the
+contents of a blacking-bottle is a genuine negro. But, for the sake
+of avoiding that confusion of terms and ideas in which the French
+themselves are so fond of indulging, to an extent that proves the
+deification of "the vague" to take far higher flights among them,
+especially in their republican tenets, than any flown by confused
+German head,--let it be taken as a rule, that fact is to have the
+precedence of feeling, as in most matters in the world,--and let it
+be supposed that the misnomer is no misnomer, that there has been no
+mistake, in truth, in the title of "Republican France."
+
+Between France out of Paris and France in Paris, a great
+distinction, in speaking of the country, must always be drawn;
+although, in the matter of republicanism in the feelings of the
+mass, the same blacking-bottle remark might be applied to the
+majority of the citizens of the capital, as to the country at large.
+No family of grown-up daughters, who have been tyrannically kept
+in the nursery like children when they no longer felt themselves
+such, and made to wear mamma's worn-out dresses scantily cut down
+to their shapes, could be more sundered in feeling from their
+lady-mother, and jealous of her overgrown charms, her gaiety, her
+splendour, and her power, than the departments,--kept in the nursery
+upon centralisation system, and fed upon the bread-and-milk of
+insignificance,--are of the tyrannical supremacy, the overweening
+superiority, and the disdainful airs, affected to her despised
+progeny by Mother Paris. The pursuance of the concentrating system
+has thus produced an estrangement in the family,--a jealousy and
+spite on the one hand, a greater and increasing assumption of airs
+of supremacy on the other. The family ties between Paris and France
+are as wholly disunited as family ties can be, in the necessities
+of a more or less intimate connexion: the mother has isolated, in
+her despotism, herself from her children, the children have imbibed
+distrust and envy of the mother. The consequence is, that there
+are two distinct families in feeling,--there are two Frances; there
+is the France of Paris, of Paris that asserts its right to be all
+France, and the France of the departments, that, in spite of the
+assertions of Paris, desire to put in their little claim for a
+small share in the name, and would like to have their own little
+fingers in the pies of revolutions, and changes of government in
+the family, that mamma cooks up. True, they are supposed to eat at
+the same table, but mamma has all the tit-bits. They have a voice
+in the family council, but it is when mamma has already issued
+her _dictum_, and declared that such and such things shall be as
+she has decided it. They help to support the family establishment
+with the moneys which mamma declares they must contribute out of
+their heritage; but then mamma, they declare, spends a most undue
+proportion upon herself, in dressing herself out with finery,
+keeping up an unnecessary state, and throwing away the sums confided
+to her to overpay a throng of unruly onhangers, with all the
+prodigality of fear; while they, the poor daughters, are made to put
+up with cast-off finery, and to be thwarted and twitted by harsh
+governesses, and to fight, as best they may, with an obstreperous
+herd of unpaid pensioners, which mamma's mismanagement has excited
+to uproar; and then, after all, to kiss hands and thank mamma for
+whatever they can get,--scanty sugar-plums and many cuffs. Is this
+to be endured? The children grumble much, and particularly since
+mamma has chosen to make changes in the direction of the household
+establishment of which they by no means approve, and has only
+produced confusion and disorder in it. But at present they can do no
+more than grumble; mamma has the rod, and they know that she will
+use it; mamma has the supreme influence, and habit makes them think
+they must abide by it. There is no doubt, at the same time, that the
+children and parent would unite in a common bond of union were the
+family honour to be asserted against an attack from any adversary
+to the family out of the house. Their intestine jealousies would be
+forgotten for the time, for the maintenance of the common good--a
+fancied good; for, after all, mother and daughters have the same
+blood, the same temperr and character, the same vain-glory, conceit,
+and irritability, the same strong prejudices of ignorance; and
+they would join hands and clamour together in the same opposition
+to the stranger. But this common-cause making, upon occasions of
+extraordinary pressure from without, detracts nothing, at other
+times, from the mistrust, jealousy, and angry susceptibility of the
+children in internal affairs. In moments of family crisis, will
+matters always go on as heretofore?
+
+Nurseries will be obstreperous sometimes, and children will revolt,
+and mammas may pass very uncomfortable moments in the face of angry
+daughters in rebellion. Will the children take upon themselves,
+at last, to protest against mamma's disdainful commands, and
+assert a will of their own, and a right to think for themselves?
+This question is one upon the solution of which depends the fate
+of France, as well as upon the many thousand chances which the
+capricious and ever-shifting gales of a revolutionary atmosphere
+may, at any moment, suddenly blow, like a spark into a powder
+barrel, shattering the face of the past, and changing the direction
+of the future. Twice already, since the revolution of February,
+has the question been nearly answered in the affirmative. The last
+instance, of which more anon, may be taken as a striking proof that
+the children may possibly not always submit to the dictates of the
+mother,--that family mistrust may break out into family quarrel,
+and family quarrel in nations is civil war. Who again, however,
+may venture to predict what shall be the destinies of Republican
+France,--what web of darkness or of light, of blood-streaked stuff
+or of gold-threaded tissue, it may be weaving with its agitated and
+troubled hands, or what force it may interpose to tear the work to
+shreds before it be even yet completed? Most may fear, none may say.
+But prediction, upon whatever cunning foresight it may be based,
+must always call a sort of feeling of inspiration, nearly allied to
+superstition, to its aid: and thus the fanciful mind may, without
+taking upon itself the airs of a Pythoness, give way to a little
+superstition, and yet, perhaps, be not too strongly condemned of
+folly. There exists an old prophecy in France, emanating from a monk
+of the middle ages, the authenticity of which cannot be doubted, or,
+at all events, cannot be disputed, in as far as it was in well-known
+existence at the commencement of this century. It predicts, in
+mystic language,--dark, it is true, but wonderfully clear after
+its verification,--all the many revolutionary changes that have
+taken place in France, and now once more proclaims the reign of the
+"sons of Brutus." "Armed men," it distinctly says, "will march upon
+the doomed city," "sword and fire will prevail against it," "the
+wolves will devour each other." May the seeming superstition of a
+fantastical question be pardoned! May not these words refer to the
+future outbreak of the provinces of France against the capital? If
+they do, in what sense, with what tendencies, to forward the views
+of what party, may it be? Be that as it may, however, it is not the
+obscure future that is dealt with here, but the present confused and
+uncertain state of Republican France.
+
+As it may be inferred from what has been said, Paris, then, has put
+on its crown, as capital, to some purpose. Never did despot assert
+his right to dictate his autocratic will to serfs and slaves more
+authoritatively than does revolutionary and republican Paris to
+the provinces of France. No three-tailed Bashaw of old melodrams
+could be more imperative in his ordinances, more arrogant in the
+conviction of the indisputability of his will. The bare supposition
+that the provinces could have a will of their own would strike
+Paris dumb with astonishment. Paris has been accustomed to consider
+itself not only as the heart, but the head, and the arms and legs
+to boot, of the whole country. The inert body has no more, in its
+consideration, to do, than allow itself to be fed with what scanty
+morsels of bounty and importance Paris may choose to afford, and
+then not to dare to grumble afterwards if the food prove unsavoury
+to its tastes, or indigestible to its susceptibilities. Paris is
+"Sir Oracle," and, when it speaks, no provincial "dog dare bark."
+Paris, thus, is the great type of the mainspring of the national
+character,--which works sometimes, we allow, for good as well
+as for evil:--namely, of that mixture of vanity and overweening
+conceit, which may be found at the bottom of almost every action
+of the French. It calls itself "the great capital of the civilised
+world;" and thus considers that, although the departments may be
+admitted to the reflected rays of lustre that emanate from its
+superior glory, they must look upon themselves as mere satellites,
+created to revolve at its liking and its high will, and perform
+their revolutions in whatever direction it deems fit to make its
+own revolution. Let it not be supposed that this representation
+is exaggerated, or that it proceeds from the distorted views of a
+foreigner. Hear the Parisian himself speak; list to his expressions
+of contempt for those unknown and barbarous regions called
+departments; mark how he asserts the unutterable superiority of
+his Parisian essence; see how he tosses his head and curls his lip
+with an infinitely aristocratic air, when he condescends to notice
+them with a word; and never was Paris more eager in the maintenance
+of its tyrannical supremacy; never was it more despotically and
+autocratically disposed; never more aristocratic, to use the pet
+phrase of the day, than under the rule of _soi-disant_ liberty, and
+of liberty of opinion, above all other liberties proclaimed by the
+French republic.
+
+What were the expressions of the first republican minister of the
+interior, that type of republican exclusiveness and despotism, in
+his famous and rather too famous _bulletins de la republique_,
+issued to all France as the language and opinions of the government
+of the day? Paris, they informed the world, was the heart of France,
+from which all life and living principle emanated, through which
+every drop of the country's blood must flow, in order that it might
+beat in unison, and be refreshed with true republican vitality.
+Paris, they said again, was the hand that had created and fashioned
+the republic, and that was to direct its steps, lead it vigorously
+forward in its way--as it was the head that conceived, it was the
+hand that executed: it was more than all this, it was the _soul_
+of France--the pure and true essence emanating from the new deity,
+the republic. Paris, they asserted in as many direct words, was
+the mistress whose will was to be obeyed. It is unnecessary to
+point out how little such declarations were in accordance with
+republican principles, what little affinity they had with the three
+great watchwords of the day, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."
+Republicanism in France, according to those old traditions, to which
+those who call themselves the only true and pure republicans seem
+always to be looking back as the only true and pure models for their
+admiration and imitation, was always based upon despotism, supported
+by constraint, compulsion, violence, and even terrorism; and the
+first efforts of modern republicanism were evidently exerted to
+place their old, newfangled, statue of bastard liberty upon the same
+heterogeneous pedestal. The instructions of the same Bashaw-minister
+to the emissaries whom he despatched as Bashaws of lesser and fewer
+tails into the provinces, to see that they were duly disposed to
+fall down and worship the Goddess Republic, that had been set up,
+were modelled after the same and still rougher fashion.
+
+The missionaries were invested with autocratic powers to make
+and unmake according to their own autocratic will; to send away
+functionaries who might appear lukewarm in the cause; to put
+in their places such acolytes as might better serve the altars
+of the goddess, and to offer up sacrifices to her, civil and
+military, judicial and political, as they might think pleasing
+to the divinity, or convenient and agreeable to their own hates
+and prejudices. They were particularly requested to _travailler_
+the country, to torture it, as the French phrase goes; and were
+taught, if they could not hammer the hard and unbending metal of
+departmental feeling to the shape they fancied, just gently to
+make the iron red-hot with the fire of terrorism, and then twist
+it to the suitable form. How well the workmen, in many instances,
+performed the task--how well they employed the fiery passions of the
+mob to produce the desired red-hot effect, and then strike--is a
+matter of historical fact.
+
+In the elections for the National Assembly, the same dogmas of
+republican religion were strenuously enforced. No emissaries of
+the Inquisition ever used more moral violence to propagate a faith
+among suspected schismatics, than did these ministers of republican
+despotism to enforce the full, entire, and uttermost doctrines
+of their creed, even to the minutest articles. Where the moral
+influence appeared unlikely to penetrate as deeply into men's
+hearts as was desired, other and more direct methods were adopted
+to make entire converts; and, when these methods were found too
+mild to work the intended effect, and purge the land of moderatism
+and anti-whole-hog-ism, another stronger and more racking dose
+was administered: the mob was excited to overawe with threat and
+terrorism, and, where it could not prevent, to destroy. How should
+the departments dare to have a will of their own? The rebellious
+children were to be whipped like schoolboys into learning their
+lessons of pure and undefiled republicanism, and reciting them
+as Master Commissioner taught them; there was no better rod in
+pickle for such naughty urchins than the scourge of the fury of a
+mob, carefully taught another lesson, and one it was not slow of
+learning--namely, that it was master, and must constrain obedience
+to its will; while, in fact, itself obeyed the influence, and
+was the instrument of the master-spirit that ruled up above, and
+made the best, or rather the worst use of its rule. That all
+these measures failed in a great measure--those of violence as
+well as those of moral constraint--is attributable to a variety
+of complicated reasons, connected with the present state of the
+departments; and the how and why they failed, will be the subject of
+a few considerations presently.
+
+What, again, were the expressions of the more violent and so-called
+only true republican party in the capital, proceeding from its
+organs, the clubs, upon the same occasion of the elections? To all
+the candidates who presented themselves before them, the same
+question was propounded. If, when the votes of all France were
+taken, it should be found that the departments declared themselves
+averse to the establishment of a republic, what would be the duty
+they would have to perform,--what steps would they take? Those who
+did not declare that they would turn against that National Assembly,
+of which they themselves might then be members, and take up arms
+to march upon it, were denounced as traitors to their country,
+unworthy of the votes of true men, and hooted from the tribune, in
+which they had dared to stand forward as future representatives of
+the people. It would have been in vain to insinuate to these good
+gentlemen, that, in the application of the principle of universal
+suffrage, in which every man was not only an elector, but eligible
+as representative, the voice of the majority would be the voice of
+all France; and that it was for all France, by the voice of its
+majority, to decide upon the form of government best suited to all
+France. In vain, indeed. The ready answer would invariably have
+been--that Paris was the mistress of France, and had a right to
+dictate its will; that Paris had made the revolution, and that,
+consequently, Paris was privileged to support the principles of
+that revolution, and to arrogate to itself all its advantages: that
+the country at large, in fact, had nothing to do but to give in its
+approval, and be happy that its concurrence was so far demanded, and
+that, should it dare to have an opinion of its own, woe betide it!
+All this insolent bombast of the ultra party in Paris might have
+been spared, however; the cause of "Paris _v._ the Departments" was
+never called into the court of the country. The departments had
+accepted the establishment of the republic as a _fait accompli_:
+they never desired to subvert the new order of things by another
+convulsion, that would have plunged the country, already so
+miserable, into an increase of misery; but they protested in favour
+of a republic of peace and order, upon moderate principles; and,
+lo and behold, Paris itself combined with them in this desire. The
+disappointed party of the directing master-spirits of Paris have
+been none the less furious in their expressions of contempt for
+the openly declared will of all France. They had long kicked down
+their idol of universal suffrage with disdain, as soon as they had
+found that, in spite of all the hidden machinery they had set to
+work in it, the idol had not obeyed their will, or declared their
+oracles. Universal suffrage they pronounced a hoax: constraint,
+tyranny, anarchy, conspiracy, civil war, were proclaimed by them
+the only true elements of the only true republic. Frantic with
+disappointment at the result of their own manoeuvres, by which they
+had been caught in their own toils, they seized upon the pretext
+of sympathy in the sorrows of another country; and, aided by the
+treachery of certain of their own party in authority, invaded the
+obnoxious Assembly, overthrew the government for an hour, and
+proclaimed a terrorist government of their own. Foiled again in
+this audacious attempt, _foiled at least for the time being_, they
+now endeavoured to patch up the shaking soil that has given way
+beneath their feet, and plunged their leaders into a quagmire, and
+to build new foundations for fresh aggressions upon the discontent
+of a part of the working-classes. For this purpose they have taken
+two newfangled tools into their hands, the one of impulsion, the
+other of repulsion--the one of enthusiasm, the other of alarm; and
+both are so vaguely fashioned, and of so unintelligible a nature,
+that the real fact of their existence can never be proved, although
+their use, their purpose, and their design, in the hands of these
+men, are very clear. The one of these tools is a bugbear, a phantom,
+a bogie, to which they endeavour to give as terrific an aspect
+as possible, in order to fright ignorant men over into their own
+ranks. This evil spirit, they declare, has an existence, although
+no one ever saw it, no one ever felt it, no one ever knew where it
+dwells. No superstitious people was ever endeavoured to be worked
+up into a more irrefragable belief of some mysterious demon that
+haunts them in dark woods and obscure places to devour them--nor,
+generally, with more complete success over the credulous; for fear
+is the most powerful agent over the minds of the masses, and more
+especially when the fear is of the unknown and mysterious: and
+certainly no demon was ever described with a more hideous or blacker
+face. This bogie, phantom, bugbear, is a supposed influence called
+"Reaction." No precise form is given to it, for that would be to
+deprive it of more than half its terrors. No! _onme ignotum pro
+terribili_ is the policy. Nothing can be more vague or indefinite
+than this same monster, Reaction; it remains an Ossianic cloudlike
+spectre, floating no one knows whence, but bringing death and
+pestilence in its train. If the working-classes suffer, it is the
+Reaction, they are told, that is the cause of all their sufferings.
+If all their exactions, however exorbitant and impossible, _are not
+conceded at once_, it is because that horrible Reaction labours
+that their just demands should be withheld. If the most violent of
+their own body are not elected as the true representatives of the
+people, it is because that pestilential Reaction has cast a spell
+over the minds of all the electors. The Reaction has also, potent
+demon although it be, all the freaks and caprices of a lesser imp;
+it performs the strangest and most incomprehensible feats,--for
+if a discontented mass of workmen revolt unsuccessfully, and gain
+not their ends, it was the Reaction again that was the cause of
+all. The Reaction, for its own vile reactionary purposes, it was,
+that treacherously induced them to revolt, when they themselves
+were naturally inclined to be the most peaceable, contented, and
+the least exorbitant people on the earth. See how perfidious,
+Machiavelic, and Jesuitical, is this horrible monster Reaction! Pity
+it is that, in order to establish the fact of its real existence,
+it should not as yet have made itself visible to mortal eyes in any
+incarnate form! The Reaction is, however, no less, men are told,
+the enemy of the republic, the adversary of all true republican
+principles, labouring ever to overthrow it; above all, the enemy
+of the people and the people's interests, their undermining
+serpent, their secret assassin. It is already sapping, unseen,
+the foundations of the republic, and it intends to pull down the
+ruins of that august structure upon the heads of the people, and
+crush it for ever beneath them. In spite of the infinite harm
+worked upon the spirit of the lower classes by the establishment
+of the belief in this phantom, there would, perhaps, be no real
+danger in the effect produced by the clamours of insensate ultra
+journals, the preachings of agitating demagogues, and the insidious
+insinuations of anarchist _meneurs_ among the crowd, did not certain
+members of the government itself, and some of those in authority,
+render themselves parties concerned to the propagation of the
+belief, either genuinely, from having been themselves carefully
+inoculated with the _virus_ of false fear, until they have really
+taken the disease, or designedly, for the advancement of their
+own purposes--did they not, in fact, throw a sop continually to
+mob-lecturers, by insinuating their own conviction in the existence
+of "bogie" by their decrees, edicts, and proclamations, and, when
+they are called to put down anarchy, never obey without crying
+"Reaction" at the same time, and vainly giving the phantom a
+slap on the face. As it is--and herein lies the evil--the people
+are taught that the National Assembly, as it is now constituted,
+is the concentrated essence of the spirit of Reaction--that the
+representatives of the people, with but few exceptions, are the
+ministering imps in a visible form of the invisible demon. If a
+word of reason is spoken in the Assembly against the clamours of
+unreasonable demand--"Look ye there! reaction!" is the cry; if it
+prepares safe measures of repression against the open efforts of
+anarchy--"reaction;" if it defends its own existence against the
+subversive attempts of conspirators--"reaction;" if it attempts
+to establish the republic upon a firm and solid, but moderate
+basis--"reaction;" if it does any thing--"reaction;" if it does
+nothing--"reaction;" if it cannot perform impossible wonders for the
+amelioration and prosperity of the lower working-classes,--at which,
+however, it labours most hard,--"reaction--reaction--reaction; the
+reaction of aristocratic feeling--the reaction of ill will--the
+reaction of indifference and indolence;" thereby always meaning
+reaction against the true republic, and its true representatives,
+the lower classes. The phantom Reaction is thus used as a tool
+by a wild and violent party against the present order of things;
+against the moderate majority of the Assembly more particularly;
+against all things and all men not suiting its views, its schemes,
+its dreams, and its ambitions; and the bugbear is not ill got up to
+scare the credulous of the lower classes more completely into the
+toils of the malcontents, with the fear that reaction really may
+destroy that idol from which they have been taught to expect all
+the good gifts of "roasted larks," for which they have only to open
+their mouths, and "showers of gold," for which they have only to
+stretch forth their hands--that idol that has been lacquered over
+with the false gilding of delusive promises by imprudent rulers, and
+which the many still fancy to be all of solid gold--in a word, the
+Republic. The reaction, in truth, exists not, or exists not in the
+manner that people would be led to believe. If it exists, it is in
+the disgust of the more laborious and less tumultuous of the lower
+classes themselves, who, in their increasing misery, would be happy
+to accept the Lama of Thibet, or any other abstraction, with an
+absolute government, in the place of the false idol of their hopes,
+that has as yet only deluded them into greater misery-- it is in the
+reactionary cry of the wretched, who call for "King Log," or any
+other senseless ruler that would bring with it peace, and order, and
+a hope of well-being.
+
+The other tool employed by the designing malcontents--that of
+impulsion--is the banner upon which is inscribed "_Republique
+Democratique_." We have a republic, it is true, they say, but not
+the republic of our wishes. This is only a mere republic like any
+other: we want a democratic republic, and the democratic republic is
+taken from us; but the democratic republic we must and will have.
+Ask them what they mean by their "_republique democratique_," they
+will not be able to inform you. They launch into phrases which are
+but phrases: they lose themselves in a cloudy confusion of terms and
+ideas: they pretend to give you vague and chaotic explanations, that
+are no explanations at all: they know not themselves what they mean.
+Universal suffrage upon its broadest basis, with all the rights
+and privileges thereto attached, in their most democratic sense,
+is no democratic republic according to their view. What is? Who
+can tell?--certainly not they. "They have clamoured for the moon,"
+says a wit of the day, "and the moon has been given them; and now
+they cry, 'we are betrayed; we wanted the sun, and the sun we will
+have.' But have a care! the sun will blind your eyes, my friends,
+and you will stagger in still greater darkness; the sun will burn
+your fingers, and you will smart beneath the blisters. But they heed
+not; they still clamour for the sun." At all events, the banner on
+which flaunts aloft the words--"_Republique democratique_" is a good
+rallying banner for all malcontents, a good banner under which to
+enlist the unwary among their ranks. It is a cry, a clamour, and all
+the more enticing because it is vague, unexplained, mysterious in
+its fresh promises of some fancied good that has not yet arrived,
+full of the great and alluring unknown. Thus it serves a purpose.
+
+But to return from this long digression upon the efforts of
+subversive parties, to the state of feeling that subsists in
+Republican France between its now well-sorted and divided
+elements--Paris and the provinces.
+
+What are, again, the expressions used by the lower classes with
+regard to the departments? what the feelings they express? Ever
+the same. Paris, they declare, makes, has made, and will make all
+the revolutions of the country. Paris, consequently, is all in
+all in France: Paris is the mistress, and the queen, the supreme
+arbitress of the destinies of France: Paris must be obeyed in all
+its wishes and its high will. What were the words of the workmen of
+the national workshops, in a late revolt, to the Minister of Public
+Works? They were told that there was no longer any work for them in
+the capital, that their pretended labour was an irony of labour,
+that the country paid them for doing nothing, and that they were
+eating the bread of idleness under the name of work: they were told
+that they were to be dispersed in the provinces, to be employed
+upon great works of public utility--upon railroads and canals, that
+stood still for want of hands: while money was lavishly promised
+them for this work, which the treasury could no longer afford upon
+unproductive labour. What was their answer? That they, the people,
+had made the revolution in Paris, that they were the masters of
+Paris, that Paris was theirs, to work in it their work; that, as
+masters of Paris, they were not to be bid leave it; that leave it
+they would not; that if labour failed, money must be found them at
+all events, or they would find means of taking it; in short, that
+they would not be _degraded_ by being sent into the provinces. The
+workmen of Paris claim, then, to be the masters of the capital, and
+still more, in their esteem, the masters of all France. The people
+of Paris, then, is _the_ people; it owns no other. Now the people,
+in modern republican phrase, and alas! in government decrees also,
+is by no means the nation; it means the lower classes alone. The
+people, it has been previously declared, is the sovereign people,
+whose voice is the voice of God; then, they reply, by the simplest
+reasoning, the sovereign people, whose voice is the voice of
+God--it is alone we: it is the lower classes. But there is still
+another deduction to be drawn. Among the lower classes it is only
+the active, the stirring, the discontented, the disorderly and
+tumultuous, who come forward in evidence as the representatives of
+this people. And thus it is very clear that the sovereign people,
+whose voice is the voice of God, the sovereign of France, is a small
+body of uneducated, misled, and wrong-headed men in the capital.
+So stands the account in theory. And who can deny that, in theory,
+they are in truth the masters? Who shall say when the chances of
+revolutionary struggles may not make them so in fact?
+
+So stands the state of feeling on the side of Paris--how stands it
+on the other side?
+
+When the revolution of February broke out, the departments scarcely
+knew themselves, their wishes, or their feelings. They had no
+mutual understanding. They were taken by surprise. They had not
+the time to consult their sentiments. Notoriously anti-republican
+as has been shown to have been the spirit of all France in the
+departments, they accepted, however, from old habit, the _dictum_
+of Paris: they accepted, as has been before remarked, from that
+species of resignation shown in France to a _fait accompli_: they
+accepted from a wish to avoid all further convulsion, from a love
+of established order in whatever shape it might come--from a hope
+that, whatever the form of government proclaimed and imposed upon
+the country, all would "go well." And besides, the republic, they
+were told, was only a provisional form of government at a moment
+of crisis, when no other could be adopted: upon its future form of
+government, the country, it was said, was to be freely consulted:
+the provinces were not prepared for the ulterior _dictum_ of Paris,
+that, without consulting the nation at all, the republic was to be
+considered as definitive; and that those who desired a change would
+be regarded as traitors to their country. But France is not what it
+was; it is enlightened by the experience of successive revolutions.
+The jealousy of the departments, towards despotic Paris had long
+been boiling in men's hearts: it did not at first boil over; but
+when, instead of order and peace, the provinces found that the
+new government produced only results of disorder, animosity, and
+ruin, the departments began to grumble and murmur openly--for the
+first time they seemed determined to show that they ought to have,
+and would have, a will of their own. In the commencement all was
+tranquil. In some parts of France the republic was accepted, if
+not with that enthusiasm which lying Parisian papers would have
+induced the world to believe, at all events with a species of
+contentment, arising from the trust that a more equitable popular
+government would relieve the mass from some of those charges
+which weighed so heavily upon them under the former government,
+and remove constraints that were painful to them. In other parts,
+there prevailed a sort of sullen resignation to the establishment
+of a _regime_ which was dreaded from an experience of a hateful
+past, and was repulsive to its tastes--but it was a resignation to
+the _fait accompli_. Some thus hoped, and others feared; but all
+combined in assuming an attitude of quiet expectation.
+
+In this state was France, when an imprudent Minister of the
+Interior, pushed on by ambitious, designing, misguided, and reckless
+men, sent down as a scourge upon the country those commissaries
+of obnoxious memory, who were publicly charged to work their will
+upon the departments as they pleased, by the means they pleased, by
+whatever oppressive or repressive measures they pleased, provided
+they worked the suspected and mistrusted departments into a proper
+feeling of true republican principle, according to the most ultra
+traditional doctrines of old republicanism. Down upon the country
+came the autocratic commissaries with these instructions; and,
+in too many instances, with the best intentions of torturing and
+tormenting the country, after their own fashion and according
+to their own views, to their heart's content. Down they came,
+with their history of the first republic in their heads, and the
+desire in their hearts of emulating the zeal of those fearful
+representatives of the people of the last century, who ruled in the
+departments, each a petty, but a bloody tyrant. To all alike the
+same violence of disposition must not be attributed: there were a
+few more prudent and better-thinking men among the number--although
+they, in certain instances, were afterwards accused in high quarters
+of mild laxity, and recalled as suspected of moderatism; but the
+many were evidently disposed to play the tyrant to the life, in
+their desperate measures to twist the country to their will. The
+times, however, were changed; the spirit of the age no longer
+permitted of the same violence. _Messieurs les Commissaires_ could
+not well proceed by the old-established and expeditious method of
+cementing the foundations of republics, one and indivisible, by
+blood, or erecting the scaffolding of the edifice on scaffolds.
+Shootings, drownings, and guillotinings were instruments rather
+too rough to be accepted by the manners of the time. But they
+had other means in their power, and according to the tenor of
+their instructions, which they thought to use, and attempted to
+use, with just as much effect. They dismissed functionaries in
+wholesale numbers--put their creatures, or those who cringed and
+worshipped, in their places, with orders to brow-beat and bully
+the recalcitrant, and with the exhibition of high example before
+their eyes. They threatened and accused; and when these means
+failed, according to their fancy, or when they were too mild for
+the taste of Master Commissary, the other underhand instruments
+of terrorism, already mentioned, were employed to make men crouch
+and tremble. The manner in which mobs have been excited against
+the better classes, or those who were suspected of moderatism, by
+manoeuvres unequivocally traced to the agency of the commissaries
+themselves, and the frightful excesses committed, are matters
+of common notoriety and of newspaper history. The scenes of the
+old Revolution were resorted to, although in another form; and
+not only supposed anti-republican sentiment, but moderatism,
+was endeavoured to be kept down by agents of terror, and the
+ever-ready riotous populations of the great towns. It would be an
+endless and a useless task to re-transcribe all the scenes of the
+violence of an insensate mob, secretly got up by the republican
+agents in authority, more than secretly connived at, and openly
+and avowedly excused and applauded. The rod that the commissary
+himself could not prudently employ, he placed in the hands of a
+designedly inflamed and infuriated people, to scourge the country
+to his will. One of the strongest instances, however, may be found
+in that state of continual terror on the one hand, and violence
+on the other, which for many long weeks hung over the head of the
+doomed city of Lyons. See there the mob constituting itself into
+illegally armed bodies, sundered from and inimical to the national
+guards, assuming names, such as _les voraces_ and _les devorants_,
+by which they themselves marked their character, ruling the whole
+city of Lyons by fear; exacting, spoliating, arresting _suspects_
+at will; searching the houses of quiet inhabitants under the
+pretext of conspiracies against the republic that did not exist,
+and of concealed arms, such as they themselves illegally bore,
+that never could be found; dragging trembling priests from the
+altar to be confined in cellars, because they were suspected of
+anti-republicanism; laying their hands upon church plate as the
+property of traitors; liberating prisoners arrested for revolt
+and disorder--arresting the magistrates who had condemned them;
+dictating their orders to military officers for the release of
+soldiers put under restraint; pulling a general from his horse,
+and nearly immolating him to the wrath of their high justice in
+the streets; commanding the fortresses, making barricades at the
+least opposition to their will, domineering over the whole city as
+masters--a herd of power-intoxicated savages--and the commissary
+looking on, applauding, sanctioning their deeds, rubbing his hands
+with satisfaction, and approving them with the words "_Allez, mes
+enfans! vous faites bien!_" Such scenes as these, carried to the
+utmost limits of anarchy and excess in Lyons, have been exhibited
+also in almost all the great towns of France, with all the effect of
+well-applied terrorism. There is scarcely one that has not similar
+outrages, from the violence of an excited mob, to lay to the charge
+of him who was set in authority over them--to work his will, so
+said the letter of his instructions--but to preserve peace and
+order, in a country where convulsions, collisions, and commotions
+were so infinitely to be dreaded and avoided--so should his duty
+have told him. It ought to be said, at the same time, that the
+acknowledged authorities of the government were aided in their high
+revolutionary mission, and in the extraordinary means they employed
+in its execution, by less acknowledged agents, in the persons of
+emissaries from the violent ultra clubs of Paris; who, arrogating to
+themselves the right to the true expression of the only true feeling
+of Paris--and consequently, _a fortiori_, of all France--racked the
+country with their manoeuvres, their excitements to violence, their
+bullying threats and intimidations. Unacknowledged by government
+authority as they were, however, their missions were bestowed
+on them by the quondam friends and fellow-conspirators, under
+the former reign of the Minister of the Interior; their expenses
+were supported by funds, supplied no one could say by what hand,
+although most might divine; their measures were evidently taken
+in accordance, and in perfectly good understanding, with the
+departmental commissary.
+
+What, however, was the result? The very reverse from that intended
+by _Messieurs les Commissaires_ and their supporter, the Minister
+of the Interior. They over-reached themselves, and worked the very
+effect they attempted to exterminate. Instead of subjugating the
+departments to their will of ultra-republicanism by the violence
+of terrorism, they almost roused the whole better feeling of the
+country, at first quietly disposed and resigned, against the very
+principles of republicanism in general. The sentiment at first
+accepted was soured and embittered; the discontent and aversion
+daily increased; and it was more than once openly affirmed that
+the departments were ready to revolt, and formed the design of
+marching upon Paris. That this subject was actually discussed in
+large, and not even secret meetings in the provinces--and even in
+such as had been always considered ultra-liberal and democratic
+in their opinions, as parts of Normandy, for instance--admits of
+but little doubt; and this feeling, although it was never actually
+embodied in any living and active fact of resistance, may be taken
+as one example in support of the opinion, that the children may
+not always prove so submissive to the dictates of the mother,
+and may one day raise their voices and hold forth their hands to
+dispute her will. The open and general outbreak of the provinces,
+which was at one time expected, and was the common topic of
+conversation in Paris, was suppressed, however, by the influence
+of the better-thinking and more prudential men in the country. But
+the feeling of opposition and resistance did not fail to manifest
+itself in minor demonstrations. Expostulations were at first
+made against the tyranny and the inflammatory manoeuvres of the
+government commissaries; then broke out angry remonstrances on the
+part of the _bourgeoisie_, backed by the better and quieter of the
+working-classes; and at last, when all these more legitimate means
+failed, the populations of several of the larger towns rose against
+the provisional despot, who played the autocrat and the tyrant in
+the name of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."
+
+The national guards took up arms to demand the revocation and
+the departure of the obnoxious commissary. The commissary, in
+opposition, acted the self-same part of which a despotic king
+has since been so violently accused by the republican journals.
+As Ferdinand of Naples is said to have excited the dregs of the
+populace, the lazzaroni, to aid him in a reactionary movement in his
+favour, so did even the republican commissary after the self-same
+system. He caused the mob to be roused to his assistance, as to that
+of the only true democratic friend of the people; he called upon
+them to take up arms and combat in his defence: the lazzaroni mob of
+the departments was the weapon he wielded to overcome the resistance
+of the majority to his will. In most instances the recalcitrant part
+of the provincial populations prevailed. In several of the larger
+towns, as in Bordeaux, Bourges, and many others, the commissary was
+obliged to take to flight: in some the palace of the little tyrant
+was stormed, he himself was made prisoner, and was taken to the
+railroad, and "packed off" back to that Paris which had sent him.
+In a very few instances only the influence of the commissary gained
+the day: in still less was he again returned, to be enforced upon
+the department from which he had been driven; and in one case he was
+sent back by the powers that were, only to be again ignominiously
+expelled.
+
+In the department of the Ariege, at the town of Foix, a journal,
+founded under the auspices of the commissaries of the government,
+and professing the most violent ultra-republican doctrines, was
+publicly burnt by the magistrates and most influential persons of
+the place, to show their contempt and abhorrence of the principles
+and actions of the authority set over them. Other instances of
+the general opposition, either to the commissaries themselves or
+to the agents they had appointed and supported, on account of
+their violence, their tyrannical measures, and their anarchical
+principles, are too numerous to quote; and, generally speaking, the
+feeling was so strong, that the _Messieurs les Commissaires_, or
+rather, _les Citoyens Commissaires_, were obliged to give way before
+the expression of popular indignation.
+
+The departments then, for the first time, have begun to show that
+they are determined not to be treated as the mere humble serfs
+of the capital,--that they are resolved to have a will and an
+action of their own. The results have been such that, even among
+the staunch republicans in the provinces, and among those who
+look to the republic as the only form of government at present
+suitable to France, symptoms of a tendency to a federal system have
+indubitably sprung up,--of a tendency, in fact, to that system
+in opposition to which, under the first revolution, the title of
+"one and indivisible,"--so little understood at the present day,
+so constantly repeated by the herd without any real meaning being
+attached to it,--was bestowed upon the republic. The fear of a
+powerfully organised resistance to the sacred principles of French
+republicanism,--unity and indivisibility,--is, at this very time,
+one of the bugbears by which those in power are terrified and
+haunted. But, whether this fear be well founded or not, it suffices
+for the present purpose, to show that a disunited feeling exists to
+a great extent between the departments and the capital; and that,
+while on the one hand the former begin to show a disposition to
+resist the overweening influence and tyrannical importance of the
+former, on the other, a dread is beginning to be expressed of their
+growing discontent, and a suspicion is constantly expressed of their
+increasing tendency to reactionary principles, likely to prove
+eventually subversive to the republic. Among those "lookers-on,"
+who proverbially "see the most of the game," there are some who, in
+their exceptional and impartial position as foreigners, are able
+to see expressed in letters from the provinces "curses, not loud,
+but deep," against "that detestable, unruly, and insolent Paris,
+that has made alone a hateful revolution, which it imposes on all
+France." It cannot, however, be said, at the same time, that any
+reactionary feeling against the republic itself, and a republican
+form of government, prevails in the country at large. That which
+is thought to be stigmatised by the ultra party with the term of
+"reaction," appears, as yet, to be nothing but the acceptation of
+a republic based upon the principles of peace and order; but, at
+the same time, an opposition to all views and doctrines likely to
+produce disorder and anarchy. And yet still, in another sense,
+the feeling of the country at large cannot be said to be strictly
+republican: the "true men" might be in vain sought except in the
+disorderly, tumultuous, excitable, and easily stirred populations of
+the great manufacturing towns.
+
+Shortly after the appointment of the obnoxious commissaries, several
+causes arose to increase the discontent of the departments, not only
+among the _ci-devant_ upper and middling classes, but among the
+lower classes,--particularly in the agricultural districts, and more
+especially among that peasant population that has so universally
+in France acquired a little property in land. One of these causes
+was the imposition of the new taxes. Under the former _regime_,
+France had been crushed down by the weight of its impositions. One
+of the first advantages of the republic was announced, in official
+proclamations, to consist in the removal of taxes, and in the
+enormous diminution of state expenses necessarily attendant upon a
+republican form of government. Already the country people looked to
+a release from the greater part of their obligations: the system of
+"no taxes at all," they thought, in their _naivete_, was to follow;
+instead of which came very shortly the decree, begging the country
+for the loan of a certain proportion of the taxes for the ensuing
+year beforehand, in order to meet the deficiencies in the finances,
+followed up almost immediately by the more imperative ordinance,
+imposing the additional 45 per cent in support of the increased,
+not diminished, expenses of the republican government. In many
+parts of the country the peasant population refused to pay this
+additional tax, or responded only to the demand with that equivocal
+answer, so characteristic of the French peasant, "We'll see about
+it." It nevertheless, however, refused to pay at the same time the
+rents of its landlords, upon the pretext that it was ruined by the
+revolution, and the exactions of the republic. It was in vain that
+the government protested that these measures were necessitated by
+the financial dilapidations of the dethroned dynasty. Clear-sighted
+enough where their own interests are concerned, the French peasants
+in the provinces replied by denunciations of that odious Paris.
+Paris, they declared, had chosen to make for the nonce a revolution
+in which they had not aided, and which they had not desired; and
+then Paris turned to its own advantage alone the results of that
+revolution. It had imposed upon all France, by calling for resources
+from a country already drained, to be lavishly squandered in
+rewarding the idleness of its own tumultuous and unruly inhabitants
+among the working-classes, which it dreaded, by the establishment of
+its expensive so-called _ateliers nationaux_, and by paying fresh
+troops under the name _gardes mobiles_,--when the standing army was
+already such a burden the country,--for the sake of draining off and
+regularising the worst dregs of its own population, and satisfying
+the caprices of a riotous Parisian mob, that chose to object to the
+presence of the old military force among it, while it accepted a new
+defensive and repressive force, in addition to the former, under a
+new title. Upon such questions, of vital importance to their own
+interests, the country people of the provinces were not disposed
+to listen to argument or reason; and in the discontent at the
+exorbitant exactions of the capital the jealousy of the departments
+towards Paris waxed stronger and stronger.
+
+Another cause, which added greatly to the increasing apprehension
+and aversion was the preaching of the communist doctrines in Paris,
+upon the first establishment of republican principles, and the
+support apparently given to these wild and spoliating principles by
+certain members of the Provisional Government itself. If there be
+any feeling more alive than any other in the breast of the French
+peasant, it is that attached to the acquirement and the possession
+of landed property in however humble a form, be it but a small field
+or a tiny vineyard. If he has any hope, any ambition, any sentiment,
+which he thinks worth living for, it is the extension, by any and
+every means, of his small domain. On the fact of this possession
+are concentrated all the mainspring motives and agencies of his
+whole existence--in this, his industry, his talent, his cunning,
+his thoughts, his affections, his very love for his children, to
+whom he hopes to transmit it. The great _mobile_ of the character of
+the French peasant is self-interest in this respect. The doctrines,
+then, which preached that the possession of all landed property by
+individuals is an infamous spoliation of the _res publica_, filled
+the country people in the provinces with the liveliest alarm, and
+contributed to establish a still greater hatred to a state of things
+that tended to produce results so fatally detrimental to all that
+they held dear. The Parisian, almost as blindly ignorant of the
+state of his own country--which, in his theory that Paris is all
+France, he looks upon with indifference, if not contempt--as he is
+proverbially utterly ignorant of every other country beyond the
+frontiers of France, even the most neighbouring--and, in fact, of
+every thing that touches upon geography or the state of nations, of
+which he has only the vaguest and most incorrect notions--thought
+that all his wild fraternity schemes, developed and accepted by
+those who possessed nothing, in the capital, would be received
+with enthusiasm also by the "miserable, oppressed, and tyrannised
+inhabitant of the fields and plains;"--such was the language used,
+and eagerly caught up. The Parisian soon found, by experience, that
+he had made a gross mistake. The emissaries sent down into the
+provinces by the professors and high-priests of communism, or by the
+ultra clubs, and supported, there is every reason to believe, by
+the members of the government before alluded to, met only with the
+most active repulsion. Their Utopian ideas of universal fraternity
+and spoliation of property were scorned, scouted, and opposed:
+themselves were hooted, pelted, almost lapidated as incendiary
+enemies of the peasant. "The innocent and humble inhabitant of
+the fields" was indignant, insulted, aggrieved, that he should
+be so contemptuously considered "miserable and oppressed:" he
+showed himself in the light of the landed proprietor, the most
+avariciously interested in the possession of property, and by no
+means the _naif_ individual the Parisian had been accustomed to
+believe him, according to his text-books of _vaudevilles_ and
+melodramas. The agents of communistic doctrines were forced to
+retreat in dudgeon, to declare the French peasant the most ignorant
+and pig-headed animal upon earth, still under the yoke of the
+tyrants, and _endoctrine_ by the aristocrats; and to avow that
+the departments were not ripe for the enlightenment of communism,
+perhaps even to denounce them as infamously reactionary. Certain it
+is that communistic doctrines found no enthusiastic disciples in the
+country; or, if the propagandism made any steps, it was after the
+fashion so characteristically depicted in a caricature published
+by the _Charivari_, in which a peasant appears before the mayor of
+his _commune_ to say, that, since a general _partage des biens_ is
+to take place, he puts down his name for the _chateau_, but makes
+a most wofully wry face upon hearing that his own field has been
+already divided among the paupers of the village. The propagation of
+communism, then, only excited fears instead of hopes, consternation
+instead of joy, and tended still more to indispose the country
+people, and excite their aversion and discontent towards a state of
+things likely to become so prejudicial to their interests: more than
+ever, they were disposed to revolt.
+
+In this state was the feeling of the country at large when the
+general elections came on, accompanied by all the violence of
+party manoeuvre to support the principles of ultra-republicanism,
+advocated by the unscrupulous minister of the nation; but all
+these efforts tended only to indispose it still more, and to call
+forth, in spite of the desperate opposition made, its sense in
+favour of respect of property, order, and moderatism of views in
+the republic, if republic there was to be. As is well known, an
+immense majority of those men of moderate principles, whom all
+the ill-judged and hateful efforts of the violent and reckless
+republicans at the head of affairs had so greatly contributed to
+form into a decided, self-conscious, and compact party of opponents,
+was returned to the Assembly. Most of the leading men of the liberal
+party under the former dynasty, who had stood forward as friends
+of progressive reform, but not as opponents to the constitutional
+monarchy principle, were likewise elected, with great majorities,
+by the suffrages of the people. The country declared its will to
+be against the views of the principal and stirring influence which
+emanated from the reckless man who governed the interior affairs
+of the country in the capital. But it did not forget, at the same
+time, and it still bears an inveterate grudge to the violent agents
+of that ultra-republicanism, chiefly concentrated in Paris, who
+had filled the country with disorder, tumult, terror, and, in some
+cases, bloodshed, by the atrocious and outrageous means it placed in
+the hands of a riotous mob to overawe them, and sway the direction
+of the elections, and by the base manoeuvres employed to attain their
+ends. It does not forget the despotism of certain commissaries, who,
+after having their own lists of ultra-democratic candidates, whom
+they intended to force down the throats of the electors, printed,
+threatened the printer, who should dare to print any other, with
+their high displeasure, and caused them to shut up their press. It
+does not forget the seizure of those papers that proposed moderate
+candidates, with every attempt to strangle in practice that liberty
+of the press which was so clamorously claimed in theory. It does
+not forget the voters' lists torn from the hands of voters by a
+purposely excited mob. It does not forget the odious manoeuvre by
+which agents were largely paid and sent about to cry "_Vive Henri
+V._" in the streets of towns, in order to induce the belief in
+a Bourbonist reactionary party, and thus rouse the passions and
+feelings of the flattered and declamation-intoxicated mob against
+the moderates, regardless of the consequences--of the animosity
+and the bloodshed. It does not forget the intimidation, the threat
+of fire and sword, the opposition by force to the voting of whole
+villages suspected of moderatism--the collision, the constraint,
+the conflict, the violence. It does not forget all this, nor also
+that it owes the outrage, the alarm, and the suffering, the ruin
+to peace and order, to commerce, to well-being, to fortune, to
+that central power which turned a legion of demons upon it, in the
+shape of revolutionary emissaries and agents. It forgets still
+less the scenes of Limoges, where a mob were turned loose into
+the polling-house to destroy the votes, drive out the national
+guards, disarm these defenders of order and right, and form a mob
+government, to rule and terrorise the town, while Master Commissary
+looked on, and told the people that it did well, and laughed in his
+sleeve. It forgets still less the fury of the disappointed upon
+the result of the elections, their incitements to insurrections,
+their preachings of armed resistance for the sake of annulling the
+elections, obtained, it must never be forgotten, by _universal
+suffrage_, in face of their culpable manoeuvres: the emissaries
+again sent down from the clubs, and with an apparent connivance
+of certain ultra-members of the government, from the charge of
+which, now more than ever since the conspiracy of the 15th May,
+they will scarcely be able to acquit themselves: the efforts of
+these emissaries to make the easily excited and tumultuous lower
+classes take up arms, and the bloody conflicts in the streets of
+Rouen: the complicity of the very magistrates appointed by these
+members of the government--the terror and the bloodshed, and then
+the cry of the furious ultras that the people had been treacherously
+assassinated--the conspiracies and incendiary projects of the
+vanquished at Marseilles, the troubles of Lisle, of Amiens, of
+Lyons, of Aubusson, of Rhodez, of Toulouse, of Carcassonne--why
+swell the list of names?--of almost every town in France, all with
+the same intent of destroying those elections of representatives
+which the country had proclaimed in the sense of order and of
+moderatism. It forgets still less the dangers of that same 15th
+May, when the government was for a few hours overthrown, by the
+disorderly, the disappointed, the discontented, the violent ultra
+republicans, the conspirators of Paris,--when some of those, who
+had been formerly their rulers, were arrested as accomplices, and
+others still in power can scarcely yet again avoid the accusation
+and conviction of complicity.
+
+All the other troubles of this distracted country, since the
+revolution of February, may be passed over--the ruin to commerce,
+the poverty, misery, and want, the military revolts excited by
+the same emissaries to cause divisions in the army, as likewise
+the unhappy troubles of Nismes, where the disturbances took
+a religions tendency--as a conflict of creeds between Roman
+Catholics and Protestants, rather than a political or even a social
+character,--although they still bore evidence of the disorder of
+the times and the disturbance of the country. The elections, then,
+contributed more powerfully than ever to the fermentation, the
+discontent, the mistrust, and the ill-will of the country.
+
+In this state of France, with the feeling of impatient jealousy
+and irritation against tyranny and despotism expressed by the
+departments towards the capital, with the evident disunion between
+the provinces and Paris, what are likely to be the destinies of
+the Republic hereafter? Again it must be said--who can tell,
+who foresee, who predict? The Republic has been accepted, and
+is maintained, from a love of order and the _status quo_: but
+there is no enthusiasm, no admiration for the republican form of
+government throughout the country at large; there is, at most,
+indifference to any government, whatever it may be, provided it but
+insure the stability and prosperity of the country. If an opinion
+may be hazarded, however, it is, that the danger to the present
+established form of things will not arise so much from the conflict
+of contending parties in the capital, as from the discontent,
+disaffection, jealousy, and, perhaps, final outbreak and resistance
+of the departments. Terrorism has had its day; and it would be
+difficult, if not impossible, to apply the system once again to the
+country in its present state. What other means will the violent
+possess--what coercive measures, if, when parties come to an issue,
+the wearied and disgusted country should rise to protest against the
+disorders of Republican Paris? There seem at present to be none. The
+result of such an outbreak would be inevitable civil war. The strong
+instance before alluded to, of the determination of the departments
+to assert a will of their own, was given in a very striking
+manner in the affair of the 15th May. One of the conspirators got
+possession of the electric telegraph at the Home Office, and sent
+down despatches into all the provinces, to inform the country
+that the Assembly was dissolved, and the new government of the
+ultra-anarchist party had taken the reins of power. Instead of being
+awed into submission as heretofore, instead of calmly and resignedly
+accepting the _fait accompli_ as was their wont, the departments
+immediately rose to protest against the new revolution of Paris.
+Before a counter-despatch could be sent down into the provinces,
+to let them know that the former order of things was restored, the
+national guards of all the great towns were up and out, with the cry
+"to arms!" and it was resolved to march upon Paris. It was not only
+in the towns within a day's journey of the capital that the movement
+was spontaneously made. In the furthest parts of the country, from
+the cities of Avignon, Marseilles, Nismes, and all the south of
+France, the national guards were already on their way towards the
+capital, before the information that declared the more satisfactory
+result of the day could be made public. It is more than probable,
+then, that, should a desperate faction ever seize upon the power, or
+even should a close conflict of parties further endanger the safety
+of the country and its tottering welfare, that the provinces would
+again take up arms against Paris, and that a civil war would be the
+result.
+
+This is rather a suggestion hazarded, than a prediction made, as to
+the future fate of the French republic. Whatever that future may be,
+an uneasy submission on the part of a great anti-republican majority
+to the active agency of a small republican minority--but, at the
+same time, a desire of maintaining a government, whatever it may be,
+if supportable, for tranquillity's sake; a feeling of humiliation
+and degradation in this utter submission to the will of Paris
+throughout the country--but, at the same time, an apparent growing
+determination eventually to resist that will, should it at last
+prove intolerable--such is the present state of Republican France.
+
+
+
+
+COLONISATION.
+
+_Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia_,
+&c. By Lieut.-Colonel Sir T. MITCHELL, Surveyor-General, &c. 1 vol.
+London: Longmans.
+
+
+Australia is the greatest accession to substantial power ever made
+by England. It is the _gift_ of a _Continent_, unstained by war,
+usurpation, or the sufferings of a people. But even this is but a
+narrow view of its value. It is the addition of a territory, almost
+boundless, to the possessions of mankind; a location for a new
+family of man, capable of supporting a population equal to that of
+Europe; or probably, from its command of the ocean, and from the
+improved systems, not merely of commercial communication, but of
+agriculture itself, capable of supplying the wants of double the
+population of Europe. It is, in fact, the virtual future addition
+of three hundred millions of human beings, who otherwise would not
+have existed. And besides all this, and perhaps of a higher order
+than all, is the transfer of English civilisation, laws, habits,
+industrial activity, and national freedom, to the richest, but the
+most abject countries of the globe; an imperial England at the
+Antipodes, securing, invigorating, and crowning all its benefits by
+its religion.
+
+Within the last fifty years, the population of the British islands
+has nearly tripled; it is increasing in England alone at the rate of
+a thousand a day. In every kingdom of the Continent it is increasing
+in an immense ratio. The population is becoming too great for the
+means of existence. Every trade is overworked, every profession
+is overstocked, every expedient for a livelihood threatens to be
+exhausted under this vast and perpetual influx of life; and the
+question of questions is, How is this burthen to be lightened?
+
+There can be but one answer,--Emigration. For the last century,
+common sense, urged by common necessity, directed the stream of
+this emigration to the great outlying regions of the western world.
+North America was the chief recipient. Since the conquest of Canada,
+annual thousands had directed their emigration to the British
+possessions: the conquest of the Cape has drawn a large body of
+settlers to its fine climate; but Australia remained, and remains
+for the grand future field of British emigration.
+
+The subject has again come before the British public with additional
+interest. The Irish famine, the British financial difficulties,
+and the palpable hazard of leaving a vast pauperism to grow up
+in ignorance, have absolutely compelled an effort to relieve the
+country. A motion has just been made in Parliament by Lord Ashley,
+giving the most startling details of the infant population; and
+demanding the means of sending at least its orphan portion to some
+of those colonial possessions, where they may be trained to habits
+of industry, and have at least a chance of an honest existence. We
+shall give a few of these details, and they are of the very first
+importance to humanity. On the 6th of June Lord Ashley brought in a
+resolution, "That it is expedient that means be annually provided
+for the voluntary emigration, to some one of her Majesty's colonies,
+of a certain number of young persons of both sexes, who have been
+educated in the schools, ordinarily called 'ragged schools,' in and
+about the metropolis."
+
+In the speech preparatory to this resolution, a variety of
+statements were made, obtained from the clergy and laity of London.
+It was ascertained that the number of children, either deserted
+by their parents, or sent out by their parents to beg and steal,
+could not be less than 30,000 in the metropolis alone. Their habits
+were filthy, wretched, and depraved. Their places of living by day
+were the streets, and by night every conceivable haunt of misery
+and sin. They had no alternative but to starve, or to grow up into
+professional thieves, perhaps murderers. Of the general population,
+the police reports stated, that in 1847 there had been taken into
+custody 62,181 individuals of both sexes and all ages. Of these,
+20,702 were females, and 47,479 males. Of the whole, 15,693 were
+under twenty years of age, 3,682 between fifteen and ten, and 362
+under ten. Of the whole, 22,075 could neither read nor write, and
+35,227 could read only, or read and write imperfectly.
+
+The average attendance last year in the "ragged schools" was
+4000. Of these 400 had been in prison, 600 lived by begging, 178
+were the children of convicts, and 800 had lost one or both their
+parents, and of course were living by their own contrivances. Out
+of the 62,000, there were not less than 28,113 who had no trade, or
+occupation, or honest livelihood whatever!
+
+The statement then proceeded to consider the expense to which the
+nation was put to keep down crime. It will perhaps surprise those
+readers who object to the expenses of emigration.
+
+  In 1847. The expense of Parkhurst Prison was L14,349
+    "      Of Pentonville Prison,               18,307
+  In 1846. Of County Gaols,                    147,145
+    "      Of County Houses of Correction,     160,841
+    "      Of Rural Police,                    180,000
+    "      Of Prosecutions for Coining,          9,000
+  In 1847. Of Metropolitan Police,             363,164
+
+The whole but a few items, yet amounting to a million sterling
+annually. In this we observe the Millbank Penitentiary, an immense
+establishment, Newgate, the Compter, and the various places of
+detention in the city, are not included; and there is no notice of
+the expenses of building, which in the instance of the Penitentiary
+alone amounted to a million.
+
+Yet, to dry up the source of this tremendous evil, Lord Ashley
+asks only an expenditure of L100,000 annually, to transform 30,000
+growing thieves into honest men, idlers into cultivators of the
+soil, beggars into possessors of property, which the generality of
+settlers become, on an average of seven years.
+
+There can be no rational denial of the benefit, and even of the
+necessity, of rescuing those unfortunate creatures from a career
+which, beginning in vice and misery, must go on in public mischief,
+and end in individual ruin. Lord Ashley's suggestion is that the
+plan shall be first tried on the moderate scale of sending 500 boys,
+and 500 girls, chosen from the ragged schools of London, under
+proper superintendents, to the most fitting of the colonies; by
+which we understand Australia. The plan may then be extended to the
+other parts of the kingdom, to Scotland and Ireland. He concluded by
+placing his motion in the hands of government, who, through the Home
+Secretary, promised to give it all consideration.
+
+It is certainly lamentable that such statements are to be made;
+and we have little doubt that the foreign journalist will exult in
+this evidence of what they call "the depravity of England." But,
+it is to be remembered that London has a population of nearly two
+millions--that all the idleness, vice, and beggary of an island
+of twenty millions are constantly pouring into it--that _foreign_
+vice, idleness, and beggary contribute their share, and that
+what is abhorred and _corrected_ in England, is overlooked, and
+even cherished abroad. It is also to be remembered, that there
+is a continual temptation to plunder in the exposed wealth of
+the metropolis, and a continual temptation to mendicancy in the
+proverbial humanity of the people.
+
+Still, crime must be punished wherever it exists, and vice must be
+reformed wherever man has the means; and, therefore, we shall exult
+in the success of any judicious plan of emigration.
+
+It happens, at this moment, that there is an extraordinary demand
+for emigration; that every letter from Australia calls for a supply
+of human life, and especially for an emigration of females,--the
+proportion of males to females in some of the settlements being 9 to
+1, while the number of females predominates, by the last census in
+England.
+
+There is a daily demand for additional labourers, artificers, and
+household servants, and with offers of wages which in England
+neither labourer nor artisan could hope to obtain. Thousands are now
+offered employment, comfort, and prospective wealth in Australia,
+who must burthen the workhouse at home. The advantages are so
+evident, the necessity is so strong, and the opportunity is so
+prompt and perfect, that they _must_ result in a national plan of
+constant emigration, until Australia can contain no more--an event
+which may not happen for a thousand years.
+
+It happens, also, by a striking coincidence, that Australian
+discovery has just assumed new vigour; and that instead of the
+barrenness and deformity which were generally supposed to form
+the principal characteristics of this vast territory, immense
+tracts have been brought to European knowledge for the first time,
+exhibiting remarkable fertility, and even the most unexpected and
+singular beauty. We now give a sketch of the journey in which those
+discoveries were made.
+
+To explore the interior of this great country has been the object
+of successive expeditions for the last five-and-twenty years. But
+such was the want of system or the want of means, that nothing was
+done, except to increase the tales of wonder regarding the middle
+regions of Australia. The theorists were completely divided; one
+party insisting on the existence of a mediterranean or mighty lake
+in the central region, _because_ there was a tendency in some of the
+small rivers of the coast to flow inward. Others, with quite as much
+plausibility, laughed at the idea; and, from having felt a hot wind
+occasionally blowing from the west, had no doubt that the central
+region was a total waste, a desert of fiery sand, an Australian
+Sahara! while both parties seem to have been equally erroneous, so
+far as any actual discovery has been made.
+
+But it seems equally extraordinary, that even the only two
+expeditions which within our time have added largely to our
+knowledge, alike should have neglected the most obvious and
+almost the only useful means of discovery. The especial object of
+exploration must be, to ascertain the existence of considerable
+rivers pouring into the sea, because it is only thus that the
+government can effectively form settlements. The especial difficulty
+of the explorers is, to find provisions, or carry the means of
+subsistence along with them. Both difficulties would be obviated by
+the steam-boat, and by nothing else. The natural process, therefore,
+would be, to embark the expedition in a well appointed and well
+provisioned steamer; to anchor it at the necessary distance from the
+coast, which in general has deep and sheltered water, within the
+great rocky ridge; and then send out the explorers for fifty or a
+hundred miles north and south, making the steamer the headquarters.
+Thus they might ascertain every feature of the coast, inch by inch,
+be secure of subsistence, and be free from native hostility.
+
+Yet all the expeditions have been overland, generally with the most
+imminent hazard of being starved, and occasionally losing some of
+their number by attacks from the natives. Thus also the present
+expedition of the surveyor succeeded but in part, though it had
+the merit of discovering that the reports of Australian barrenness
+belonged but to narrow tracts, while the general character of the
+country towards the north was of striking fertility. The purpose of
+Sir T. Mitchell's late expedition was, to ascertain the probability
+of a route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria. But as this
+route was to be made dependent on a presumed river flowing into the
+gulf, the actual object was to reach the head of that river--an
+object which could have been more effectually attained by tracing it
+upward from the gulf; and, in consequence of not so tracing it, the
+expedition ultimately failed.
+
+To establish an easy connexion between the colony of New South
+Wales and the traffic of the Indian Ocean had long been a matter of
+great interest. Torres Strait, the only channel to the north, is
+a remarkably dangerous navigation; while, by forming an overland
+communication directly with the Gulf of Carpentaria to the west of
+the strait, the commerce would find an open sea. A trade in horses
+had also commenced with India, which was impeded by the hazards of
+the strait. There had also been a steam communication with England
+by Singapore, and there was a hope that this line might be connected
+with a line from the gulf.
+
+The idea of tracing a river towards the north was a conjecture
+of several years' standing, in some degree founded on the natural
+probability that an immense indentation of the land could not but
+exhibit some outlet for the course of a considerable fall of waters,
+and also that there had been a report by a Bushman, of having
+followed its course to the sea.
+
+After some difficulties with the governor, which were obviated by a
+vote of the Colonial Legislature of L2000 for the expenses of the
+expedition, it set out from Paramatta on the 17th of November 1845.
+The expedition consisted of Sir Thomas Mitchell; E. B. Kennedy,
+Esq., assistant-surveyor; William Stephenson, Esq., surgeon and
+naturalist; twenty-three convicts, who volunteered for the sake
+of a free pardon, which was to be their only payment; and three
+freemen. They had a numerous list of baggage conveyances, &c. &c.;
+eight drays, drawn by eighty bullocks; two boats, thirteen horses,
+four private horses, three light carts, and provisions for a year,
+including two hundred and fifty sheep, which travelled along with
+them, constituting a chief part of their animal food. They had also
+gelatine and pork. The surveyor-general preferred light carts, and
+horses in place of bullocks; but it was suggested that the strong
+drays were necessary, and that bullocks were more enduring than
+horses--the latter an opinion soon found to be erroneous. It is
+rather singular, that either opinion should not have been settled
+fifty years ago.
+
+Some natural and well-expressed reflections arise, in the course of
+this volume, on the lonely life of the settler. Its despondency,
+and its inutility to advance his moral nature, are in some measure
+attributed to the absence of the "gentler sex."
+
+"At this sheep station," says Sir Thomas, "I met with an individual
+who had seen better days, and had lost his property amid the wreck
+of colonial bankruptcies; a 'tee-totaller,' with Pope's 'Essay
+on Man' for his consolation, in a _bark hut_. This man spoke of
+the depravity of shepherd life as excessive.... The pastoral
+life, so favourable to the enjoyment of nature, has always been a
+favourite with the poets. But here it appears to be the antipodes
+of all poetry and propriety, simply because man's better half
+is wanting. Under this unfavourable aspect the white man comes
+before the aboriginal. Were they intruders, accompanied with wives
+and children, they would not be half so unwelcome. In this, too,
+consists one of the most striking differences between settling and
+squatting. Indeed, if it were an object to _uncivilise_ the human
+race, I know of no method more likely to effect it, than to isolate
+a man from the gentler sex and children. Remove afar off all courts
+of justice and means of redress of grievances, all churches and
+schools, all shops where he can make use of money, and then place
+him in close contact with savages. 'What better off am I than a
+black native!' was the exclamation of a shepherd to me."
+
+A general description of the aspect of New South Wales would be
+difficult, from its extreme diversity in parts; but the general
+face of the country is marked by lines of granite hills; short
+water-courses, which in summer are dry, or retain the water only
+in pools; clumps of trees, generally dotted over the soil, and
+occasional _prairies_. But the soil is generally fertile, and, in
+the spring, exhibits a great variety of flowers. Thus the land is
+every where fit for European life, though in the same latitude
+with the hottest portions of Africa. It has occasional gushes of
+intense heat, but they seem not to have affected the health of the
+expedition; and with that progress of comforts which follows all
+civilisation, the heat and cold alike may be successfully mitigated.
+We have not heard of any endemic in Australia; the epidemic has
+never visited its shores. The chief want in the pasture-grounds
+is water, but even that is merely the result of the rudeness of
+early settling; for vast quantities of water run to waste, or are
+lost in swamps, which future colonists will receive in tanks, and
+check with dams. The capricious abundance and deficiency of this
+prime necessary of life, for it is more essential than food, is
+shown in a striking, passage of this picturesque Journal. They were
+still within the sheep-feeding country. Water was much wanted.
+Mr Stephenson, the naturalist, was sent out on the inquiry. He
+returned soon, having met two of the mounted police, who told him
+that "a flood was coming down from the Turon Mountains."
+
+"But the little encampment was held in suspense. Still, the bed
+of the Macquarie continued so dry, that the report could scarcely
+be believed. Towards evening, a man was stationed with a gun, to
+give a signal on the appearance of the flood. The shades of evening
+came, but no flood; and the man returned. This was a period of
+considerable anxiety, for the need of water was urgent.
+
+"Some hours later, and after the moon had risen, a murmuring sound,
+like that of a distant waterfall, mingled with occasional cracks,
+as of breaking timber, drew our attention." They then returned to
+the river bank. Still no flood appeared, though they continued to
+hear the sounds of the crashing timber. At length an increase of the
+sounds told them that the water was in the next bend. All this, in
+a serene moonlight night, was new. At length it came, and came in
+power and beauty.
+
+"It rushed into our sight, glittering in the moonbeams, a moving
+_cataract_; tossing before it ancient trees, and snapping them
+against its banks. It was preceded by a _point_ of meandering water,
+picking its way, like a thing of life, through the deepest parts of
+the dark, dry, and shady bed of what thus again became a flowing
+river." The phenomenon might make a fine subject for the pencil, if
+our artists were not divided between the palace and the pigstye. The
+noble river rolling along under a _tropical_ moon; the wild country
+around, with its forests and hills touched by the light; the bronzed
+faces and bold figures of the men of the expedition, gazing with
+natural surprise and gladness at this relief, and at the majestic
+object before them; and even the cattle hurrying up from the
+encampment, to cool the thirst which had pressed so severely on them
+during the day, all were made for the finest efforts of the pencil.
+
+"By my party," says Sir T. Mitchell, "situated as we were at the
+time--beating about the country, and impeded in our journey solely
+by the almost total absence of water--suffering excessively from
+thirst and extreme heat,--I am convinced the scene can _never_ be
+forgotten! _There_ came abundance at once, the product of storms in
+the far-off mountains, that _overlooked our homes_! My first impulse
+was to have welcomed this flood on our knees; for the scene was
+sublime in itself, while the subject, an abundance of water sent to
+us in a desert, greatly heightened the effect to our eyes. I had
+witnessed nothing of the kind in all my Australian travels."
+
+But the writer is an accomplished man of science, and he leads the
+contemplation to still more glorious things, "Even the heavens
+presented something new, at least uncommon, and therefore in harmony
+with this scene. The variable Star of Argol had increased to the
+first magnitude, just above the beautiful constellation of the
+Southern Cross, which slightly inclined over the river, in the only
+portion of sky seen through the trees. That very red star, thus
+increasing in magnitude, might, as characteristic of her rivers,
+be recognised as the 'Star of Australia,' when Europeans cross the
+line. The flood gradually filled up the channel nearly bank high,
+while the living cataract travelled onward much slower than I had
+expected to see it; so slowly, indeed, that more than an hour after
+its first arrival, the _sweet music_ of the head of the flood was
+distinctly audible from my tent, as the murmur of waters and crash
+of logs travelled slowly through the tortuous windings of the river
+bed. I was finally lulled to sleep by that melody of waters."
+
+It has been often remarked, that Europeans once accustomed to a life
+of wandering, can never return to the life of cities; and even the
+clever journalist before us appears to have been a little captivated
+with this life of the wilderness. It may be easily admitted, that
+vigorous health, and active exercise, variety of objects, even if
+those objects are no more than new ridges of mountains or new rills
+of water; with keen appetite and sound sleep, are all excellent
+things in their style. But, is life given to man only to eat, gaze,
+and sleep? What is the life of the wilderness above that of the
+brute? The true improvement of man, and, therefore, the especial
+employment intended for man, is, that increase of knowledge, of
+command over the powers of nature, and of the various means of
+adding to the conveniences, comforts and value of human existence,
+which, delivered down to us by our forefathers, it is our part to
+deliver with increase to our posterity. But the savage improves in
+nothing; he is as much a brute this year as he was a thousand years
+ago. Savagery is, in practice, a total defeat and denial of all the
+original purposes for which our nature was made. And it is with some
+regret and more surprise, that we quote, from such a source, such
+language as the following:--
+
+"We set out, guided by our native friend," (a savage whom they had
+hired to lead them to some water-courses.) "He was a very perfect
+specimen of the _genus_ homo, and such as is _never_ to be seen,
+except in the precincts of savage life, _undegraded_ by any scale
+of _graduated classes_; and the countless _bars_ these present
+to the free enjoyment of existence." Whether this is actually a
+recommendation that we should throw off our clothes and walk in
+nudity, for the purpose of recovering the original elegance of our
+shapes, or whether it is the borrowed rapture of some savage in
+person which the gallant officer has transplanted into his pages,
+to vary his more rational conceptions, we know not; but he has
+_not_ made us converts to the pleasures of cold, hunger, filth, and
+bloodshed, which furnish the realities of savage life, even in the
+paradisaic solitudes of Australia.
+
+The savage, in his original state, is simply an animal, superior to
+his own dog only in sharpness of intellect; but wholly inferior to
+his dog in fidelity and affection. All savages are tyrannical--cruel
+to their wives, if wives they can be called--and in general
+cheating and plundering wherever they can. As to their bodily
+organs, of course, they cannot be perverted where they cannot
+reach temptation; but no savage comprehends moral restraint, and
+he gets drunk whenever he has the opportunity, and robs wherever
+he finds any thing to steal. On the other hand, civilisation
+necessarily enfeebles no man, and what the gallant Colonel regards
+as its "degradation of man by classes," produces quite the contrary
+effect; for the humbler the class, generally the more vigorous--as
+the peasant is a stronger man than the artisan, and the artisan
+than the nobleman. Even the idea that savage limbs can do more
+than civilised, is equally erroneous. A well clothed and well fed
+Englishman, if well formed, and with some training, will outwork,
+outrun, and outwrestle any savage from pole to pole. A ropedancer,
+a tumbler, or a horserider, at any of our theatres, though bred
+in the very heart of civilisation, or even in the hotbed of its
+temptations, will perform feats of activity which would defy all the
+muscles of a generation of savages. The truth is, that civilisation
+improves the features, the form, and the powers of the human frame.
+Men in society may be indolent, and throw away their advantages; but
+society is the place for man. Rousseau, once made a noise by talking
+nonsense on this subject; but Rousseau _knew_ that he was talking
+nonsense. Whether his imitators are equally cognisant of their own
+performances, is another question; but we come to better things.
+
+This journey settled the disputed point of "horses or bullocks,
+light carts, or heavy drays." The bullocks and the drays were a
+perpetual annoyance; to feed and water the one, and to drag the
+other, soon became the grand difficulty of the expedition. We find
+the Colonel perpetually leaving them to follow, when any peculiar
+object of exploration was in view. At length the whole "park" was
+left to take its rest, under the second in command; and the Colonel,
+with eight men, two native boys, fourteen horses, and two light
+carts, with provisions for ten weeks, moved to the northward, to
+trace where the division of the waters was to be found, and then
+follow some of them down to the Gulf.
+
+We were not prepared for the beauty sometimes exhibited by the
+Australian landscape. The Journal compares it to a succession
+of Ruysdaels. "The masses of rock, lofty trees, shining sands,
+and patches of water in wild confusion; the mimosae, the
+Anthistiria-grass, of a red brown, contrasting most harmoniously
+with the light green bushes; all those again so opposed to the dark
+hues of the casuarinae, mimosae, and rifted rocks, that a Ruysdael or
+a Gainsborough might have found an inexhaustible stock of subjects
+for the pencil."
+
+This wild travelling has its discomforts, and now and then its
+dangers; but it is a perpetual source of exciting sensations.
+Every step is new, and every day's journey may place the traveller
+within some region of unexpected value or beauty. One of the hopes
+of the Journalist, on commencing this portion of his travels, was
+to discover a chain of hills to the northwest, from which he might
+trace the course of a river to the Gulf. At last this chain rose
+before his eyes.
+
+"The most interesting sight to me was that of blue pics at a great
+distance to the northwest, the object of all my dreams of discovery
+for years. _No white man had before seen them._ There we might hope
+to find the division of the waters still undiscovered--the pass to
+Carpentaria still unexplored. I called this hill Mount First-View,
+and descended, delighted with what I had seen from its rocky crest."
+The latitude was 27 deg., yet the thermometer at sunrise was but at 45 deg.,
+at noon 68 deg., and at 9 P.M. 45 deg.
+
+The captivations of the scenery were equal to the delights of the
+temperature, though so near the tropics.--"An Australian morning
+is always charming. Amid those scenes of primaeval nature it seemed
+exquisitely so. The barita or gymnoskina, the organ-magpie, was
+here represented by a much smaller bird, whose notes, resembling
+the softest breathings of a flute, were the only sounds that met
+the ear. What the stillness of evening adds to such sounds in other
+climes, is felt more intensely in the stillness of morn in this."
+
+The forms of the vegetation, both tree and shrub, are picturesque,
+and the colours are finer still:--"Instead of autumnal tints,
+there is a perpetual blending of the richest hues of autumn with
+the most brilliant verdure of spring; while the sun's welcome
+rays in a winter's morning, and the cool breath of the woods in a
+summer morning, are equally grateful. This was in the depth of the
+Australian winter, and, which sounds oddly to the European ear, in
+the 'merry month of June.'"
+
+Advancing still to the north, a country of an extraordinary kind was
+reached in July; and they had now found, that most important of all
+objects in a wilderness, a fine "flowing stream, full of sparkling
+water to the margin." The Journalist seems quite enamoured with
+the surrounding scene, a miniature Australian Switzerland:--"The
+hills overhanging it surpassed any I had ever seen, in picturesque
+outline. Some resembled Gothic cathedrals in ruins; some forts;
+other masses were perforated; and being mixed and contrasted with
+the flowing outlines of evergreen woods, and having a fine stream in
+the foreground, gave a charming appearance to the whole country. It
+was a vision worthy of the toils of a pilgrimage. Those beautiful
+recesses of unpeopled earth could no longer remain unknown. The
+better to mark them out on any map, I gave to the valley the name
+of Salvator Rosa. The rocks stood out sharply and sublimely from
+the thick woods, just as John Martin's fertile imagination would
+dash them out in his beautiful landscapes. I never saw any thing
+in nature come so near those creations of genius and imagination."
+But this river, which they followed for some time, ran so far to
+the east, that they justly began to doubt its being the one of
+which they were in search and they turned again to the north. They
+now passed into a fine level country, incomparably formed for
+settlement. "An almost boundless extent of the richest surface in
+a solitude corresponding to that of (southern) China, yet still
+unoccupied by man. A great reserve provided by Nature for the
+extension of his race."
+
+They left the Salvator between the 21st and 22d degrees of latitude,
+and moved to the north-west. There at length their aspirations,
+though only partially, were probably realised. In the middle of
+September they reached some heights, from which lay before them
+a vast extent of open downs traversed by a river, traceable to
+the utmost verge of the horizon, and falling to the _north-west_!
+"Ulloa's delight at the first view of the Pacific could not have
+surpassed mine," is the natural exclamation of the Journalist. "Nor
+could the fervour with which he was impressed have exceeded my sense
+of gratitude for being allowed to make such a discovery. From that
+rock the scene was so extensive as to leave _no room for doubt_ as
+to the course of the river, which, then and there revealed to me
+alone, seemed like a reward direct from Heaven for perseverance,
+and as a compensation for the many sacrifices which I had made, in
+order to solve the question as to the interior rivers of tropical
+Australia."
+
+From the 16th to the 24th of September the course of the river was
+followed, which still was north-west, but at this period the party
+returned. The reason stated is the failure of provisions. This must
+have been a most vexatious disappointment--so vexatious, that we
+cannot comprehend how it could have been submitted to without some
+more remarkable effort than any thing that we find recorded in these
+pages. That an expedition equipped for a four months' journey should
+have turned back at the very moment when a few days', perhaps a
+few hours', march, might have completed its object, is altogether
+incomprehensible, while it had any conceivable means of subsistence.
+In such a condition of things, the traveller ought to have eaten
+his horse, if he could get nothing else. But there was actually, at
+no great distance behind, a depot of their own bullocks and sheep,
+all feeding comfortably, and, as the party found on marching back
+to them, "Sheep and cattle fat, the whole a sort of farm." A good
+stackyard had been set up, a storehouse had been built, a garden
+had been fenced in, and contained lettuce, radishes, melons, and
+cucumbers. Indeed, the whole establishment exhibited the effects of
+good order and discipline.
+
+Why, then, did not the Journalist return on his track, and establish
+the discovery which was the express object of his mission? This
+exceeds our knowledge. The only direct intimation of his necessities
+in these pages is, "our provisions were nearly out, the sun having
+reduced the _mess sugar and melted the bacon_, which had been
+boiled before we set out." Whether the _lean_ of Australian bacon
+may liquefy in the sun is more than our European experience can
+tell, but we presume it must be ranked among the wonders of a new
+country; at all events, the Journalist returned without having
+done the very thing for which his expedition had been fitted out,
+and left the object to be completed by his subordinate, who was
+subsequently despatched in the direction of the north-west. Thus,
+though probabilities are in favour of the river, which the Colonel
+named the Victoria, the point is by no means settled, and Australian
+curiosity may be disappointed after all.
+
+As the party approached the river, they saw considerable numbers of
+the natives. On reaching one of the lagoons, the shrieks of many
+women and children, and the angry voices of men, apprised them that
+they had at length overtaken the tribe, and unfortunately had come
+on them by surprise. "Aya, minya!" was vociferated repeatedly, and
+was understood to mean, "What do you want?" I steadily adhered to
+my own tactics towards the aborigines, and took not the slightest
+notice of them, but rode on according to my compass-bearing. On
+looking back for my men, I saw one beckoning me to return. He had
+observed two natives with spears and clubs hide themselves behind
+a bush in the direction in which I was advancing. On my halting,
+they stole away. The whole seemed to have been amusing themselves
+in the water during the noonday heat, which was excessive, and the
+cool shades round the lagoon looked most luxuriant. Our position, on
+the contrary, was any thing but enviable. Even there, in the heart
+of the interior, on a river utterly unheard of by white men, an
+iron tomahawk glittered in the hand of a chief. The anxious care of
+the females to carry off their children seemed the most agreeable
+feature of the scene. Some had been digging in the mud for worms,
+others searching for fresh-water mussels, and if the whole could
+have been witnessed unperceived, such a scene of domestic life
+among the aborigines had been worth a little more risk. The strong
+men assumed a strange attitude, which seemed very expressive of
+surprise, having the right knee bent, the left leg forward--the
+right arm dropping, but grasping clubs--the left arm raised, and
+the fingers spread out. "Aya, aya, minya," they continually shouted.
+However, the party rode on, and the shouts died away.
+
+The Journalist occasionally recovers from his enthusiasm for
+savagery. We have no more bursts in his earlier style, "Such
+truth and exemption from disease, such _intensity_ of existence,
+in short, must be far beyond the _enjoyments of civilised men_,
+with all that art can do for them. And the proof of this is to
+be found, in the failure of all attempts to persuade these free
+denizens of uncultivated earth to forsake it for the tilled ground.
+They prefer the land, unbroken and free from the earliest curse
+pronounced against the first banished and first created man." All
+this unfortunately shows nothing, but that the gallant Colonel would
+be the wiser for going back to his Bible, where he would find the
+words, "I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake."
+But at last (page 328) we have a sketch of the reality. "It would
+appear that, the finer the climate and the fewer man's wants, the
+more he sinks towards the condition of the lower animals. Where the
+natives had passed the night, no huts, even of bushes, had been set
+up. A few tufts of dry grass only marked the spot, where, beside a
+small fire, each person had sat, folded up like the capital letter
+N. Their occupation during the day was only wallowing in a muddy
+hole, in no respect cleaner than swine. They have no idea of any
+necessity for washing themselves between their birth and the grave,
+while groping in mud for worms." After admitting the filth, the
+indolence, and the uselessness of the savage; contrasting, however,
+his teeth and tongue favourably with those of the civilised man or
+child, of which he pronounces it to be "ten to one but he should
+find _only impurity and decay_," (a point in which we are wholly
+at issue with him,) he asks, "what then is civilisation in the
+economy of the human animal?" He answers, "Cultivated man despises
+the perishable substance, and pursues the immortal shadow." We are
+but little satisfied with the language of this solution, nor is
+its meaning much more intelligible. In the first place, man, in a
+civilised state, does not necessarily injure his bodily organs. The
+fool who cannot stir, or even sit, without a cigar in his mouth, or
+the drunkard who continually sacrifices health and understanding
+to intoxication, has only to condemn himself. But, give the savage
+tobacco and rum, and he will as speedily destroy his organs, and
+bring himself to the grave, as the most civilised profligate in
+existence. And as to the grand supposed use of civilisation--the
+fixing our minds on "immortal shadows"--if by this he meant giving
+us ideas of religion, there are many highly civilised nations
+which think but very little of religion, and many highly civilised
+persons who think of it nothing at all. Yet, it is only justice to
+the gallant Colonel to quote this sentence. "Animal gratification
+is transient and dull compared to the acquisition of knowledge, the
+gratification of mind,--the raptures of the poet, or the delight
+of the enthusiast, however imaginary. Such were my reflections on
+this day of rest, in the heart of a desert, while protected from the
+sun's rays by a blanket."
+
+But even his metaphysics are entirely a misconception. The original
+purpose of civilisation is, to enable man to live in society; that
+is, in peace, with the advantages of mutual assistance. That those
+objects are powerfully aided by religion is true, and that science
+may be best cultivated in settled life, is equally true; but those
+are merely collateral. Civilisation means the work of law, of safe
+intercourse, of secure property, and of all the safeguards of
+society which ultimately enable man to polish the general manners,
+and to improve the general mind. Religion is not the consequence,
+but the origin of Civilisation.
+
+We now take leave of the journey, with the sketch of the rivers.
+After moving for some distance between two streams, they approached
+the junction, which formed--"the broad, deep, and placid waters of a
+river as deep as the Murray. Pelicans and ducks floated upon it, and
+mussel shells of extraordinary size lay in such quantities, where
+the natives had been in the habit of eating them, as to resemble
+snow covering the ground. But even that reach seemed diminutive,
+when compared with the vast body of water of which traces had been
+left there; affording evidence, that though wide, they must have
+been impetuous in their course. Verdure alone shone now, over the
+wide extent to which the waters sometimes rose. Beyond that channel
+lay the almost boundless plains; the whole together forming the
+finest region I had ever seen in Australia."
+
+Still the luckless character of the Australian rivers appears; and
+after expecting that this fine channel, which there seemed navigable
+for steamers, would continue, in a few miles more it exhibited only
+ponds. Whether the great central stream may not exhibit the same
+caprice, is still the question.
+
+The party returned to Sydney in January 1847; and in March, Mr
+Kennedy, the second in command, was sent, as has been already
+stated, to explore the course of the Victoria.
+
+There are some valuable observations on the aborigines. It is
+said that they have good natural faculties, all one of them
+named Uranigh, an attendant on the expedition, obtains especial
+praise for sagacity, fidelity, and courage. But, from inevitable
+circumstances, it appears to be the fate of the natives to waste
+away before the European blood, and, even without any violence
+or oppression, gradually to vanish. To teach them to earn their
+bread, to adopt European habits of any kind, or even to live with
+any sense of comfort in the vicinity of European settlers, seems
+impossible, and thus they gradually retire into the interior. This
+process has so uniformly occurred in all colonised countries, where
+a new civilisation has been introduced, that it may be regarded as
+almost a law of nature. "Fire, grass, and kangaroos," are essential
+to native life; and when the pastures are no longer suffered to be
+burned, and when the kangaroos disappear, the savage _must_ retire.
+Sir T. Mitchell's favourite project would be, to send away a young
+married pair to the south of Europe, where they might learn the
+cultivation of the grape and olive, fig, &c.; then to bring them
+back with their children. But we are afraid they would make but few
+converts; that the benevolent experiment would be totally thrown
+away; and that the poor, idle, and useless being, whom Sir Thomas
+will persist in calling the noble savage, must be left to eat rats
+and mice, to live in misery and wretchedness, and to be inevitably
+pushed into the wilderness, to make way for a superior class of
+human capability.
+
+But, regarding the condition of the natives as utterly beyond
+European influence, except so far as it may and ought to be exerted
+to protect them from all injury,--there are other questions of high
+importance, relative to the condition of the convicts. The preamble
+of the Transport Act made the reformation of the culprit a primary
+object. There never was any use of forced labour so effective. The
+galley-slaves of France and Italy were in general made more wicked,
+if possible, by their imprisonment and work. We think it also
+next to an impossibility that any culprit, punished by temporary
+imprisonment, and then thrown out again among his associates, _can_
+change his habits. Who will employ a known felon? A single act of
+robbery may give him more means of gross gratification, than he
+could obtain by the severest toil in a twelvemonth. The temptation
+is too strong. The only hope of his recovery, is in his being sent
+where his bad character will not utterly prevent his getting a good
+one; where he will have profitable work, (let the profit be more or
+less;) where he will have few temptations, and none of his old ones;
+and where he may have a prospect of bettering his condition among
+his fellows. All these he had, and has, in New South Wales.
+
+But it is remarkable and unfortunate, that we seldom have a new
+head of the colonial department who does not bring with him some
+new theory; and the fashionable theory now is, to try the effect of
+prison discipline. We have no hesitation in denouncing this theory,
+as ineffectual, intolerably costly, highly dangerous, and even
+actually cruel. We take the points in succession: we doubt whether
+it has really reformed one prisoner out of a thousand. Its expense
+is enormous: the single prison at Millbank cost a million sterling,
+and probably L100,000 a-year for its support. The model prison at
+Pentonville is an architectural _bijou_, but terribly expensive.
+Men cannot be reformed by turnkeys in the most moral costume, or by
+locks of the most exquisite invention.--It is dangerous: because
+those felons, once let loose, almost invariably become felons
+again; and a general jail-delivery once a year, from handcuffs and
+shackles, may people the streets with ruffianism.--It is even cruel.
+The prisoners are not merely deprived, for a long succession of
+years, of all healthful exercise--for who ever could take healthful
+exercise within prison walls?--but shut out from all the view and
+enjoyment of nature, and especially from matrimony; they cannot
+be husbands or fathers. It is true, that the felon forfeits all
+rights, if they are found incompatible with the public safety; but
+we have no _right_ to inflict on him any suffering beyond that
+which is absolutely necessary. If by sending him to Australia we
+can accomplish, without cruelty, those objects which we _cannot_
+accomplish without cruelty at home, it is our duty to send him to
+Australia.
+
+We know that a middle system of imprisonment, to be followed by
+transportation, has been attempted, but we have no faith in its
+operations. The true place is Australia.
+
+Sir Thomas Mitchell, the very best authority on such subjects, tells
+us, "There is no country in which labour appears to be more required
+to render it available to, and habitable by civilised man, than New
+South Wales. _Without_ labour, the inhabitants must be savages, or
+such helpless people as we find the Aborigines. With equal truth, it
+may be asserted that there is _no region_ of earth susceptible of so
+much improvement solely by the labour and ingenuity of man." There
+are no unwholesome savannahs; the rocky ranges afford the means of
+forming reservoirs, &c., of water, which, under the tropics, is
+life, abundance, and health; there is an immensity if it be properly
+used, and Australia might be made the finest scene of vegetation and
+luxuriance in the world.
+
+We take our leave of this volume with regret. It is strikingly
+written; it excites and rewards curiosity, and (a few rambling
+ideas excepted) it powerfully increases our interest in Australian
+discovery, and in that whole mighty region of the Pacific, which
+God's providence has given into the hands of England, for the
+happiness of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+SIBERIA.
+
+_Travels in Siberia: including Excursions Northwards, down the Obi
+to the Polar Circle, and Southwards to the Chinese Frontier._ By
+ADOLPH ERMAN. Translated from the German by W. R. COOLEY. Two vols.
+London, 1848.
+
+
+Of no important portion of the dominions of the five great European
+powers are such vague and imperfect notions entertained, as of the
+vast tract comprised between Russia in Europe and the Kamschatkan
+sea, between the Chinese empire and the Arctic Ocean. Courageous
+explorers have not been wanting, of the inclement steppes and
+rugged mountains forming Europe's bulwark against the Mongul and
+the Tartar. Men of enterprise and distinction have undertaken the
+task, and executed it well. But their journeys, usually performed
+with special objects and scientific views, have been recorded
+for the most part in a similar spirit. Either an ardent love of
+science and zeal for its advancement, or the strong encouragement
+and liberal subsidies of an enlightened government, are requisite
+inducements to brave the perils and hardships of Siberian travel.
+The mere inquisitive and speculative traveller has difficulty
+in persuading himself, that the country can reward him for the
+discomfort and inconvenience he must endure in traversing it. Not
+that Siberia is entirely devoid of wild attractions and romantic
+associations. To the adventurous hunter, its vast forests and
+thinly-peopled plains give assurance of sport. The motley character
+of its native and immigrant population affords to the philosopher
+curious matter of consideration. A place of deportation for traitors
+and criminals--and not unfrequently for the innocent--its name is
+inseparably connected with the memory of innumerable unfortunates
+who have there pined out their existence in expiation of crime,
+or in obedience to mandates often as unjust as arbitrary. Fallen
+favourites of the Czars, rebels against their tyranny, traitors to
+their person, murderers, and other malefactors, and even prisoners
+of war, have here found a living grave till released by death,
+clemency, or flight. Did the tears of exiles fertilise, Siberia
+should be a teeming land. Since its first subjugation by Ivan the
+Terrible, how many a Russian magnate, lord of thousands of serfs,
+owner of millions of rubles, proud of his position, and confident
+of imperial favour, has suddenly found himself travelling eastward
+under escort, banished and a beggar. How many mournful trains of
+minor offenders have plodded their weary way across the Uralian
+chain, guarded by barbarian Bashkirs, to labour in the mines of
+Nerchinsk, or to lead a peasant's toilsome life on the margin of the
+Frozen Sea. From those vast and ice-bound regions, escape can rarely
+be accomplished. But at intervals, during the last five-and-thirty
+years, bearded and toil-worn men of martial aspect have crossed the
+German frontier, and astonished those they accosted by wild tales
+of suffering, and ignorance of the most notorious events. Some have
+inquired for Napoleon, and wept when they learned he was a captive,
+or dead. Circumstances of current history, known to each child
+and peasant, were to them a mystery and a marvel. These strange
+wanderers, escaped from long bondage in Siberia, were amongst the
+last survivors of that countless host led northwards by a Corsican's
+ambition, and whose funeral pile was lighted in Moscow's city.
+
+Amongst the delineators of Siberia and its inhabitants, of the
+produce, customs, and peculiarities of the country and its people,
+one of the most successful is the German gentleman and scholar whose
+admirable work has just now appeared in a clever English dress.
+The son of a man of great learning and high attainments, Mr Adolph
+Erman treads nobly in his father's footsteps. Still young, he has
+done much to increase the lustre of the honourable name transmitted
+to him. Born in the year 1806, he was but two-and-twenty years of
+age when he undertook, at his own cost, a journey round the world,
+having for its chief object a series of magnetical observations. The
+expedition was completely successful. Starting from Berlin to St
+Petersburg, he crossed northern Asia, with occasional digressions
+of a few hundred leagues, took ship at Okhotsk for Kamschatka,
+thence proceeded to California, visited Otaheite, and came round by
+Cape Horn and Rio Janeiro to Europe and Berlin. Then he sat down to
+write of what he had seen, entitling his work--"Journey round the
+Earth, across North Asia and both Oceans." But the tale of travel
+so extensive takes time to tell; and, up to the present date,
+he has not protracted his narrative beyond Okhotsk. What he has
+done, however, is complete in itself, very interesting, and withal
+somewhat voluminous, since its abridged translation forms two heavy
+octavos, heavy in amount of paper and print, but not, we must in
+justice admit, in the nature of their contents. Whilst recording
+scientific investigations, the author does not neglect subjects more
+generally interesting. Upon all he brings to bear an extraordinary
+amount of reading and research. The result is a book of travels of
+no ephemeral nature, but that will long be esteemed as a standard
+work, and respected as a valuable authority.
+
+Mr Erman commences his narrative of travel on the day of his
+departure from Berlin; but its earlier portion has been compressed
+by the translator, in order to escape as soon as possible from
+Europe, and get upon the less trodden ground east of Tobolsk. Much
+has been written of late years concerning European Russia and its
+inhabitants, and it was hardly to be expected that even so acute
+an observer as Mr Erman should find any thing particularly novel
+to say about them. He takes a sensible and practical view of the
+condition, character, and disposition of the population; and is
+happy in his detection and indication of national peculiarities.
+He does not, like the majority of travellers in Russia, enter the
+country with a settled determination to behold nothing, from the
+White Sea to the Black, but oppression and cruelty on the one
+hand, slavery and suffering upon the other. He does not come to a
+premature decision, that because Russia is ruled by an absolute
+monarch, all happiness, prosperity, and justice are essentially
+banished from the land. It is really pleasant to find a deviation
+from the established routine of books about Russia. These are now
+nearly all concocted upon one and the same plan. The recipe is as
+exact as any in Mrs Rundell: and is as conscientiously adhered to
+by literary cooks, as that great artist's invaluable precepts are
+by knights and ladies of the ladle. Tyranny, misery, and the knout
+are the chief ingredients of the savoury dish. We are shown a nation
+of cretins, crushed under the boot-heel of an imperial ogre; whilst
+a selfish, servile aristocracy salaam their admiration, and catch
+greedily at the titles and gewgaws thrown to them as a sop by their
+terrible master. This is the substance of the mess, which, being
+handsomely garnished with lying anecdotes of horrible cruelties
+practised upon the unfortunate population, is deemed sufficiently
+dainty to set before the public, and is forthwith devoured as
+genuine and nutritive food by the large body of simpletons who take
+type for a guarantee of veracity. Mr Erman despises the common trick
+and claptrap resorted to by vulgar writers. Avoiding anecdotage, and
+abuse of the powers that be, he gives, in brief shrewd paragraphs,
+glimpses of Muscovite character and feelings, which clearly prove
+the people of that vast empire to be far happier, more prosperous,
+and more practically free, than the inhabitants of many countries
+who boast of liberty because anarchy has replaced good government.
+Judging less from any distinct assertions or arguments advanced in
+these volumes, than from their general tenor, and by the inferences
+to be gleaned from them, we must consider the Russians a contented
+and flourishing nation, likely to make the larger strides in
+civilisation that they are unimpeded by revolutionary agitation.
+Propagandists meet little encouragement amongst the loyal and
+light-hearted subjects of the autocrat. "We have often observed at
+Moscow," says Mr Erman, "birch-trees hewn for fencing, yet still
+alive in the horizontal position, and throwing out shoots. The
+great distinction of the vegetable nature in this region is its
+tenacity of life; and, singularly enough, the same capability of
+existing under oppression, and of withstanding stubbornly every
+revolutionising influence, is here the characteristic of man also.
+The ear of the stranger is sure, at every turn of conversation, to
+catch the sounds--'Kak ni bud,' (no matter how,) with which the
+Russians are used to give expression to their habitual indifference,
+and renunciation of all care.... Notwithstanding the great variety
+of condition which the population exhibit, every thing has the stamp
+of nationality, and an obstinate adherence to established usage
+may be plainly recognised as a fundamental principle. Some foreign
+customs, indeed, are adopted from strangers residing in Moscow; but
+they are, at the same time, so changed as to be assimilated to the
+national manners. Russian nationality may be compared to a river,
+which receives other streams without changing its name; or, still
+better, to a living organism, which, while devouring every variety
+of food, continues still the same."
+
+It was on the 29th of July that Mr Erman, who travelled in
+company with the Norwegian professor Hansteen, left Moscow, and
+moved eastwards, passing through a productive country, strewn
+with populous and comfortable villages. At Pokrof, his first
+halting-place, his chamber walls were adorned with rude carvings and
+paintings, whose subjects were taken from the events of 1812, and
+represented the valiant deeds of the peasantry. Buikova, a village
+forty miles east of Moscow, was the farthest point to which the
+French penetrated. Their invasion has left but a faint impression
+upon the popular mind in Russia--even in Moscow, which suffered so
+much at their hands. Conflagrations have been common occurrences
+in that city, and the inhabitants are accustomed to be burned out.
+We read of seven such events, from the thirteenth to the beginning
+of the nineteenth century, in all of which the destruction was
+complete, or very nearly so. The fire of 1812 spared many of the
+stone churches, on whose towers "the Mahomedan crescent rises above
+the cross, a monument of earlier revolutions. The yoke of the Tatars
+was so lasting and oppressive, that later events of a similar kind
+seem comparatively unimportant; and even the French invasion is
+here thought little of, being usually compared with the irruptions
+of the Pechenegues and that of the Poles in later times, but never
+set on a level with the Tatar domination." The French have little
+prestige in Russia. Whatever respect they previously enjoyed there,
+was completely annihilated by the pitiful figure they cut in the
+Moscow campaign; retreating, as they did, a ragged, disorderly,
+frost-bitten remnant, before a swarm of armed peasants and irregular
+horse. And Muscovite sign-painters and saint-carvers decorate
+village walls with episodes of the disastrous overthrow of an army,
+probably the most powerful and really efficient ever got together.
+Any notion entertained by the Russians of French invincibility was
+as completely dissipated in that country by the events of 1812,
+as it was in Germany by the ensuing, and scarcely less important,
+campaign of 1813.
+
+Passing Murom, where a sort of Yankee tradition exists of a
+"robber-nightingale," which entices travellers into the woods by
+its song, and then kills them by the power of its notes, Mr Erman
+reached Nijni Novgorod at the moment of the great annual fair. The
+mixture of European and Asiatic produce and manufactures gives the
+Russian fairs an appearance singularly striking to the foreigner's
+eye. Things the most opposite are there brought together. _Obrasa_,
+or Greek holy images, amulets, and other objects used in the
+solemnities of the Graeco-Russian church, are seen in juxtaposition
+with the elegant luxuries and superfluities of extreme European
+civilisation. The clumsy carvings of Uralian peasants are found in
+the next warerooms to the fragile and fashionable masterpieces of
+a Parisian milliner. The chief part of the goods come from great
+distances. Amongst the important articles of traffic are tea from
+China, horse-hides from Tatary, iron bars from Siberia, shawls
+of camel's-down from Bokhara. The Bokharians also import large
+quantities of cotton, partly raw and partly spun. This is one of the
+principal objects of trade at Nijni. Concerning the origin of this
+useful substance, curious fables were current in Russia not quite a
+century ago. "It appears to me certain," says Mr Erman, "that the
+story of the zoophytic plant called Baranez, or lamb-plant (formed
+as a diminutive from Baran, a sheep,) originated in some embellished
+account of the cotton plant. Herberstein relates it at full length
+and unchanged, just as he had heard it. 'There has been seen, near
+to the Caspian Sea, a seed, rather larger and rounder than that of
+a melon, from which, when set in the ground, is produced something
+similar to a lamb, of the altitude of five palms, having a very fine
+fleece, &c., &c. The German edition of Herberstein (Basel, 1563)
+adds that the Baranez has a head, eyes, ears, and all the limbs,
+like a sheep. But it mentions correctly '_the very fine fleece
+which the people of that country commonly made use of to pad their
+caps withal_.' This is the ordinary use which the Tatar tribes
+in general make of cotton at the present day." The fair at Nijni
+lasts two months, and brings together six hundred thousand persons
+of different nations and tribes, or about thirty-three times the
+number of the stationary population. It produces a large revenue
+to the imperial treasury,--the letting of the wooden booths, and
+of two thousand five hundred and twenty-two stone storerooms, (to
+each of which latter is attached a chamber for the owner of the
+goods to live in) alone yielding, so far back as 1825, nearly four
+hundred thousand rubles; whilst the population of the government, or
+district, amounting to nearly a million of souls, paid taxes to the
+amount of fourteen millions of rubles.
+
+Nijni Novgorod is the point of rendezvous for criminals from the
+western provinces of the empire, condemned to Siberian exile. They
+arrive there in small detachments, to pursue their journey in
+large bodies. In the vicinity of every post-house along the road
+is another building known as the Ostrog or fort, which is merely a
+large barrack divided into numerous small chambers, and surrounded
+by a fence of palisades, where the convicts are lodged upon the
+journey. From various passages scattered through Mr Erman's book, it
+appears that these Siberian exiles are by no means so badly treated
+as has frequently been stated and believed. In most instances the
+punishment derives its severity less from any painful toil or cruel
+discipline imposed upon them, than from the rigidity of the climate,
+the separation from friends, and the mortal ennui those accustomed
+to civilisation and society cannot but experience, whilst leading
+the monotonous life of a peasant or Cossack in regions as dreary
+as any the globe's surface affords. The first caravan of prisoners
+encountered by Mr Erman, at about a hundred versts beyond Nijni,
+were well clothed and cared for, and seemed neither dissatisfied
+with their past journey, nor overwhelmed with care about the
+future. "With every train of them are several waggons, drawn by
+post-horses, to carry the women and the old and infirm men; the
+rest follow in pairs, in a long train, after the waggons, escorted
+by a militia established in the villages. It is but rarely that
+one sees special offenders with fetters upon their legs during the
+march." The majority of tales circulated by romancing travellers,
+with reference to Siberian exile, have little foundation save in
+the imagination of the narrators. Amongst these fictions is to
+be reckoned the statement that certain classes of the banished
+are compelled to pass their lives in hunting the sable, and other
+animals. The great majority of the delinquents are condemned only to
+settle in Siberia; and when hard labour in the Uralian mines, and
+in certain manufactories, is superadded, it is generally for a year
+or other limited period. Those of the peasant class have to support
+themselves, whilst offenders of a higher rank, and unused to manual
+labour, have an allowance made them by the government. In various
+places Mr Erman met with exiles, from some of whom he obtained
+curious information. They are usually known by the mild name of
+"_the unfortunates_," and are held in no particular disfavour by
+the natives, with whose families they intermarry. By a remarkable
+enactment of the Russian law, serfs, when transported to Siberia,
+become in all respects as free as the peasants in western Europe. Mr
+Erman refers to this with strong approval, and attributes to it the
+happiest results. "I have often," he says, "heard intelligent and
+reflecting Russians mention, as an almost inexplicable paradox, that
+the peasants condemned to become settlers, all, without exception,
+and in a very short time, change their habits and lead an exemplary
+life; yet it is certain that the sense of the benefit conferred
+on them by the gift of personal freedom is the sole cause of this
+conversion. Banishment subservient to colonisation, instead of
+close imprisonment, is, indeed, an excellent feature in the Russian
+code; and though the substitution of forced labour in mines for the
+punishment of death may be traced back to Grecian example, yet the
+improving of the offender's condition by bestowing on him personal
+freedom, is an original as well as an admirable addition of a
+Russian legislator." It is of course by the higher class of exiles
+that the banishment is most severely felt; but these live in the
+towns, that the succour received from government may reach them the
+more easily, and submit, for the most part, with great equanimity
+to the startling change from the luxury of Moscow or St Petersburg,
+to the dulness and simplicity of Tobolsk, and even of worse places.
+Some of them have to do penance in church for a certain time after
+their arrival, and a portion of these continue the practice when
+it is no longer compulsory. At Beresov, a town in western Siberia,
+which Mr Erman passed through on an excursion northwards from
+Tobolsk, the oral chronicles of the inhabitants furnish curious
+details of the numerous illustrious exiles who have there ended
+their days. Menchikoff, the well-known favourite of Peter I., was
+one of these. "After his political extinction, he prepared himself,
+by devout penitence, for his natural decease. He worked with his
+own hands in erecting the little wooden church, now fallen to
+decay, which stands thirty or forty feet above the bank of the
+Sosva, at the southern extremity of the town: he then served in it
+as bell-ringer, and was finally buried by the grateful inhabitants
+of Beresov, immediately before the door of the building." It was
+here, at Beresov, that Mr Erman fell in with a number of unlucky
+conspirators, who had lost fortune, rank, and home, by their
+association in a recent abortive revolutionary attempt. Amongst them
+were a M. Gorski, at one time a count and general of cavalry, and
+the ex-chieftains Focht and Chernilov. They usually wore the costume
+of the country, but upon holidays they donned European coats, _in
+order to display the vestiges of the orders which had once been
+sewed upon them_. A curious instance of vanity, traceable, perhaps,
+to a desire to distinguish themselves from persons condemned to the
+same punishment for crimes of a more disgraceful nature.
+
+In the streets of Yekaterinburg, the first town of importance after
+crossing the Asian boundary, parties of exiles are a frequent
+spectacle; the number passing through in a year being estimated at
+five thousand, or about two-fifths of the annual export of convicts
+to Siberia, as stated by Mr Stepanov, whose statement, however,
+Mr Erman seems disposed to consider exaggerated. The detachments
+are usually guarded by Kosaks of the Ural, and by a company of
+Bashkir militia. These Uralian Kosaks are well uniformed, armed,
+and mounted, and enjoy the same privileges as the Kosaks of the
+Don. They are allowed an immunity from every impost, but are bound
+to devote themselves to the public service. Touching the Bashkirs,
+another irregular and half-savage militia, serving to swell the
+ranks of Russia's enormous army, Mr Erman, who made some stay at
+Yekaterinburg, the northern limit of their residence, gives curious
+particulars. They are the only aboriginal Siberian tribe whose mode
+of life regularly alternates from the nomadic to the fixed. Their
+winters are passed in permanent villages of wooden huts, erected
+usually upon the skirt of a forest. But when spring approaches,
+they collect their flocks and herds, strap hair tent-cloths upon
+their saddles, and are off to the plains. They appear to live
+upon horseback, and are indolent, indocile, and useless out of
+the saddle. The only thing the men do, is to drive home the mares
+at milking-time; all other domestic toil is left to the women.
+And although grass abounds in the summer pastures, hay is unknown
+amongst them. The cattle sustain life in winter as best they may, on
+stunted or decayed herbage, sought under the snow and gathered on
+the dunghills. Fermented mare's milk is the favorite drink of the
+Bashkirs, who live chiefly upon mutton and fish, and upon the fruit
+of the bird-cherry (_Prunus padus_) kneaded into a sort of cake.
+In the chase they make use of hawks, which they are particularly
+skilful in training. The smaller species of these birds are used to
+take hares, whilst the greater will strike foxes, and even wolves.
+The roving careless life of the Bashkirs possesses a peculiar charm,
+admitted even by the civilised Russians; and it is with no good will
+that, on the return of winter, the tribes re-enter their settled
+habitations. "They approach them with reluctance, and believe that
+Shaitan, or the evil spirit, has taken up his abode in the huts that
+oppress them with such a sense of restraint. The men accordingly
+remain at some distance from the settlement, and send the women
+forward, armed with staves, with which they strike the door of every
+hut, uttering loud imprecations; and it is not till they have made
+the rounds with their noisy exorcisms, that the men ride forward at
+full speed and with terrific shouts, to banish the dreaded demon
+from his lurking-place." The chief weapon of these Bedouins of the
+north is the same which so forcibly excited Captain Dalgetty's
+risibility upon his visit to the Children of the Mist. But although
+in these days of Paixhans and percussion, bows and arrows certainly
+appear rather anomalous, they are by no means contemptible weapons
+in the hands of some of the Siberian tribes. Of this Mr Erman had
+abundant opportunity to convince himself, especially when his ramble
+northwards from Tobolsk brought him amongst the Ostyaks of the river
+Obi. The ordinary hunting weapons of these people are bows six feet
+long, of very slight curve, and from which four-feet arrows are
+discharged with murderous effect. Much practice and strength are
+required to draw these bows; and our scientific traveller, who, not
+having taken the necessary precaution of shielding the left arm with
+a piece of horn, from the recoil of the string, had been unable to
+draw his bow to more than one third of the arrow's length, was not a
+little astounded to see an Ostyak pigmy, with sore eyes and a sickly
+aspect, send a blunt arrow one hundred and sixty feet, and strike
+the object aimed at, the stem of a larch, near its summit, fully
+sixty feet from the ground. Blunt arrows, headed with flattened iron
+balls, are used to kill sables and squirrels, that the skin may
+not be injured; the sharp ones are a settler for any quadruped the
+country produces.
+
+After many days' journey through Tatar villages of wooden huts,
+and towns that are little better, the first view of Tobolsk,
+obtained some miles before reaching the place, is quite imposing;
+and the traveller, who might think he had got a few stages
+beyond civilisation, is cheered and encouraged by the sight of
+church-towers, lofty monasteries, and well-built houses. In vain
+does he seek an inn. Such things are unknown in Siberia; and, if he
+has no acquaintance in the town, he must apply to the police-master,
+who recommends him to the hospitality of an inhabitant, by whom he
+is made welcome during his stay, without demand for remuneration,
+although, if proffered, it will sometimes be accepted. In this
+manner Mr Erman and his companions were accommodated in the upper
+storey of a well-built wooden house; and here their progress
+eastward was arrested by the character of the weather. It was the
+commencement of October, the period of transition from summer to
+winter, and the traveller's entrance into the town was rendered
+memorable by a heavy fall of snow--"white flies," as the postilions
+called the flakes, which they beheld with much pleasure. Their
+satisfaction was probably owing to the fact that in Siberia the
+coldest part of the year is the most favourable for travelling, a
+matter of interest to people of their profession. But the moment of
+transition, whilst the struggle lasts between summer and winter,
+when snow encumbers the ground, and frost has not yet hardened it,
+is known, as well as the similar period at the close of winter,
+as "the time of the unroading," (spoiling of the roads;) and the
+Russians have even manufactured a verb "to be unroaded." The snow
+obstructs wheeled carriages, and forbids the use of the sledge;
+and, unless peremptorily compelled to move forward, the Russian
+merchants--the most experienced of Siberian travellers--await, in
+some convenient resting-place, the hardening of the winter road.
+From Mr Erman's account, a better place than Tobolsk could scarcely
+be found, in those wild regions, wherein to pass a few weeks of
+compulsory inaction. Nevertheless, and although cordially received
+by the governor-general, Velyaminov, from whom, and from other
+Russian officers, he got much useful information, our traveller was
+impatient to be off. He had a pet scheme in view. From the very
+commencement of the journey he had planned an excursion to the mouth
+of the Obi, within the Arctic circle. To this he was partly induced
+by the desire of tracing certain magnetic lines, and partly by "the
+alluring prospect of enjoying, on the northern part of the Obi,
+the first undisturbed intercourse with the aboriginal possessors
+of the land, where they are little changed by foreign influence."
+Accordingly, towards the middle of November, the drifting ice upon
+the Irtuish having united into a solid sheet, Mr Erman joyfully
+made final preparations for his journey to Obdorsk. They were few,
+and soon completed. A Kosak guide and interpreter, a fur dress,
+a copper kettle, bread and ham, salted salmon and caviar, were
+stowed in a couple of sledges, one of which was light enough to
+be drawn by dogs or reindeer. It was held advisable also to take
+out a fresh passport, signed by the governor of Tobolsk, in lieu of
+the one delivered at St Petersburg, for, in places far removed from
+the great road across Siberia, people have confused and indistinct
+notions of the power which issues from the capital of the empire.
+The larger sledge was provided with otvodi or guides--two strong
+bars placed lengthways on either side the carriage to prevent
+an upset. "Towards the end of winter, the snow-ways, which are
+constantly travelled upon, have an undulating surface, like that
+of a stormy sea, and give the sledge a motion so like that of a
+ship tossed on the waves, that travellers unused to it often grow
+sea-sick on the road, and the use of otvodi is a very necessary
+precaution." Russian travelling, delightfully rapid, has many
+drawbacks. Upon the log-roads, (formed of tree-trunks,) the violent
+and incessant jolting is said to have even worse effects than the
+excessive undulations of the sledge. After a few years, it not
+only brings on a complete paralysis of the mental faculties of the
+Russian postilions, but also occasions spinal disease, to such an
+extent as to have obtained for those roads the significant name of
+spine-crushers.
+
+On the 22d November, when Mr Erman began his slide northwards,
+traffic had not yet given the road that wavy configuration so
+uncomfortable to the bilious traveller. The post from Tobolsk to
+Beresov had made but one journey on the winter-track, and the
+sledges glided rapidly and smoothly on the almost virgin snow-way.
+Beyond Tugalova, a village 140 miles from Tobolsk, they travelled on
+the frozen Irtuish, and frequently passed the self-acting machinery
+used for the winter fishing. This consists of a strong pole in an
+inclined position, with its lower extremity frozen fast in the
+ice. "At the upper end of this pole was a continuation made of
+switches, which, bending down, reached to the surface of the ice;
+at that point was a hole through which was let down the hook and
+line. The upper part of the apparatus is seen bent down more or less
+according as the bait is still untouched, or as a fish pulling at
+it has freed a check put to the elasticity of the rod, and is thus,
+in consequence of its own efforts, drawn nearer to the surface of
+the water." The ingenuity of this contrivance would avail little,
+however, were not means found of rousing the sleepy sturgeon from
+their winter slumbers. They lie in muddy hollows in the bed of the
+river, quite motionless, and clustered together for the sake of
+warmth. To awaken them, hard balls of clay, heated in the fire, are
+thrown from time to time into the water, below the line. Driven from
+their resting-place, they swim up stream, according to their custom,
+and come upon the bait. This mode of fishing is very productive.
+Fishing, of one kind or other, is the principal occupation of the
+Ostyaks, in the heart of whose country, after three or four days'
+journey, Mr Erman found himself. The rivers abound with excellent
+fish--eels, especially, being very abundant, but not much eaten,
+although their skins are in great request as window-panes. These are
+rubbed with fat, to make them more transparent, but there are small
+roundish swellings in the skin which refract and confound the rays
+of light. A better substitute for glass is a flake of ice, used by
+the Sosnovian Ostyaks, a tribe further north. The flakes are about a
+foot thick, and are propped from without by a pole, whose lower end
+bears obliquely against the ground. The fire, kept burning in the
+hut, thaws the inner surface of the ice, rendering it smooth as a
+mirror. A whiter and brighter light penetrates through these windows
+than through the fish-skins, which the Sosnovians use for boots, and
+even for clothes. Strong and air-tight, and well rubbed with fat,
+they are almost as warm as fur, and better against the wet.
+
+The commencement of a fishing season or expedition is celebrated
+by the Ostyaks with all manner of queer saturnalia. Although
+nominally Christians, and accustomed to attend church once a-year,
+they are very heathenish in some of their rites and ceremonies,
+and make a strange jumble of their old superstitions and their new
+faith. The priests do not invariably set them a good example.
+"Our Russian informant complained bitterly of the priest in his
+neighbourhood, who came into the village on holidays so drunk, that
+the congregation assembled to no purpose." With such pastors, no
+wonder if the sheep cleave to some of their ancient usages. Those
+who are departing on an expedition, slaughter a tame animal, and
+smear their faces with its blood, accompanying the sacrifice with
+a carousal. In one village Mr Erman found the huts remarkably
+empty, and was told that the men had just gone a-fishing, and that
+their wives were drinking brandy in the kabak or public-house. The
+sale of spirits in Siberia, as in all the Russian dominions, is a
+government monopoly, and brandy is only to be had in certain houses,
+to whose keepers the privilege is farmed. In a small dark room,
+scarcely ten paces wide, Mr Erman found ten or twelve Ostyak dames
+clustered round the bottle, and benevolently drunk. His account of
+their maudlin state is amusingly grave and sentimental. "A number
+of short corpulent figures, with black sparkling eyes, could be
+just seen, moving and mingling together, in the narrow space. They
+all talked with animation, and with remarkably delicate voices,
+which now gave expression only to soft and joyous emotions. They
+embraced, one after the other, the Yamschik, who entered with us;
+and their soft voices, now almost whining, seemed attuned, not so
+much to words of old acquaintance, as to the endearments of young
+and growing love." The ladies having emptied their purses without
+quenching their thirst, the good-natured German, who observed
+that "the pleasure of drinking had but just risen to its highest
+pitch," opened them a credit with the kabak-keeper. "They now took
+especial pains to show themselves deserving of the European treat,
+by good Christian observance. Devout Russians are in the habit of
+neutralising the Satanic operation of spirituous liquors by a rapid
+movement of the right hand, intended to describe the cross, or by a
+softly-ejaculated prayer, or merely by blowing the breath upon the
+glass. But the good-humoured Ostyaks, novices in Christian prayer as
+in drinking, made the sign of the cross to such an extent, so slowly
+and with such deep bowing of the body, as would be required by the
+church only on the most solemn occasions."
+
+Although much engrossed by fishing, the Ostyaks do not neglect the
+chase. Their thick woods abound in the better kinds of fur animals,
+and the annual tribute of two sable skins, payable by each family
+to the Russian government, is not very difficult to obtain. It is
+seldom found necessary to pay an equivalent in other skins. Although
+quite the beginning of winter, Mr Erman's host, in an Ostyak
+village, showed him a fine sable skin, which he kept in a strong
+box, like a treasure, concealed in a corner of his dwelling. Its
+value was diminished by a yellowish tinge, ascribed to the animal's
+having lived in a wood where there was too much light. Besides
+sable and squirrel, the reindeer, the fox, the glutton, and the
+elk, are objects of chase. Mr Erman tried to get at the fact of the
+enmity said to exist between the two latter animals. The reply to
+his inquiries was the old story current in Europe--how the glutton
+leaps from a branch on the elk's neck, and keeps his seat till the
+death of his steed. No one, however, had seen any thing of the kind:
+it was matter of tradition, handed down from their dead fathers.
+The ermine is taken in traps. The fox is in great variety, the
+most esteemed being the crossed stone fox, whose colour is partly
+a grayish yellow, partly white, so distributed that the grayish
+parts unite prettily to form a cross, one bar of which extends
+along the back, whilst the other stretches obliquely down the
+middle ribs to the belly. The fur of this animal is greatly prized
+by the Russian clergy, for whom pelisses, covered with natural
+crosses, are made from it. The latitude of the town of Beresov is
+the headquarters of the Siberian beaver, hunted not for the fur but
+for the precious castoreum or beaver-stone, to which such great
+medical virtues are ascribed. Attempts have been made in Germany
+to obtain from the beavers of that country a product which might
+replace that of Siberia; but all in vain. The fine quality is only
+to be had in the far north, where, as Mr Erman fancifully observes,
+nature scatters animal perfumes in place of fragrant flowers.
+"The Kosaks and Russian traders have exalted the beaver-stone
+into a panacea.... To the sentence, 'God arose, and our enemies
+were scattered,' the Siberians add, very characteristically, the
+apocryphal interpolation, 'and we are free from headache.' To ensure
+this most desirable condition, every one has recourse, at home or on
+his travels, and with the firmest faith, to two medicines, and only
+two, viz., beaver-stone, or beaver-efflux, as it is here called, and
+sal-ammoniac." From the strength of the castoreum, the Siberians
+infer that other parts of the animal must possess peculiar virtues.
+Gouty swellings are said to subside rapidly when rubbed with the
+fat, and the beaver's teeth are popularly believed to cure toothach.
+
+The beaver is the only fur animal in these latitudes that does not
+change its colour in the course of the year. This is probably owing
+to the circumstance, that in winter it dwells wholly in the water,
+thus enjoying a comparatively equable temperature. In the river
+Obi, at Beresov, the water does not usually freeze below the depth
+of four feet eight inches, and the beaver always has two entrances
+to his dwelling, one high on the bank above the stream, the other
+below the freezing limit. The architectural and wood-cutting habits
+of the animal are the same here as in America; but two assertions,
+new to Mr Erman, were made respecting it by the Beresov hunters. He
+was assured that "among beavers, as with bees and men, there are
+distinctions of ranks; each chief keeping a number of labourers,
+the toils of which he oversees and directs without taking part in
+them; and, again, it was stated that the contents of the castoreum
+bags depend on the moon." It was impossible to verify the veracity
+of these two statements. As regards the moon's influence, however,
+there is ground for a suspicion that its advantages are rather felt
+by the hunter, than essential to the virtues of the drug. Full moon
+is maintained, both by Ostyaks and Russians, to be the propitious
+time.
+
+The most northern tribe of Ostyaks, who dwell between the rivers
+Obi and Yenisei, surpass their southern neighbours in venatorial
+skill, as they, in their turn, are surpassed by the Samoyedes,
+who live in the northernmost regions of Siberia. The men of the
+Yenisei kill wolves, which, on account of their long soft hair,
+are reckoned greatly superior to the forest and steppe wolves of
+middle Siberia. They are also famed for their dexterity in killing
+and capturing reindeer. "Tying leathern cords between the tops of
+the antlers of their tame deer, they turn the animals loose, one
+by one, in the neighbourhood of a wild herd: these do not fail
+to attack the strangers, and their antlers becoming entangled
+in the cords during the contest, they are held fast by the tame
+deer till the men arrive. These Ostyaks know also how to plant
+spring-bows, which send the arrow against the animal's breast." But
+the Samoyedes, besides these ordinary artifices, have other and
+ingenious ways, peculiar to themselves, of ensnaring and slaying
+the brute creation, by putting themselves as much as possible on an
+equality with the animals pursued, going on all-fours, and imitating
+them in voice and clothing. The Polar bear is a common victim to
+their cunning devices, and even to their open attacks; for their
+intimate acquaintance with the formidable beast makes them regard
+him as an easy prey. "The Samoyedes assert that the white bear far
+exceeds the black bear in ferocity and strength, whilst fully equal
+to it in cunning; yet, owing to his unwieldiness, they encounter it
+without fear, and always reckon on victory as certain. A man will
+often go singly against a Polar bear, eight feet long, without any
+other weapon than his knife, which he fastens to the end of a pole.
+In spring and autumn these animals are found upon the ice, near the
+hole, whence the seals come forth to breathe. There the bear covers
+himself up with snow, facing the hole, and with one paw stretched
+into the water." The Samoyede seal-hunters imitate the bears, and
+when the seal walks out upon the ice, they shove a board over
+the hole and capture the phoca. Concerning the bear the Ostyaks
+entertain peculiar notions, viewing it with a sort of superstitious
+respect. "A member of the court of justice told me that, in suits
+between Russians and Ostyaks, it is still the custom here (at
+Beresov) to bring, into court the head of a bear, and that this
+animal, which is supposed to be omniscient, is there appealed to
+as a witness by the Ostyaks. In swearing, they make the gesture of
+eating, and call upon the bear to devour them in like manner if they
+do not tell the truth." Some similar reverence for Bruin exists, we
+believe, amongst certain North American tribes.
+
+The draught-dogs, so faithful and useful to the northern Siberians,
+often receive but scurvy treatment at their masters' hands. The
+Ostyaks, who are honesty personified, and who laugh at the common
+European precautions of locking up valuables and bolting doors,
+cannot endure the predatory propensities of their canine allies,
+and fly into a passion whenever an unlucky dog sneaks into their
+dwelling in search of warmth or food. The poor brute is immediately
+a mark for the blows and kicks of every body present, the storm
+of abuse being justified by the cunning and greediness of its
+object, who, if allowed to abide in the house, would soon reduce
+its inmates to short commons. There is some excuse for the dogs'
+voracity, however; for, according to Mr Erman's account, they are
+considerably more than half-starved, and are rarely admitted to the
+fire to be fed, save when they return weary and distressed from a
+long journey. Severe as is the cold in those regions, protection
+from it is not essential to the existence, or even to the health
+of these hardy dogs. They sleep outside the houses, in holes which
+they thaw in the snow by their own warmth. At Obdorsk, where there
+are no pastures, and consequently no horses, four hundred dogs are
+kept by sixty inhabitants, and each of them is estimated to draw
+five poods' (two hundred pounds) weight in the loaded sledge. About
+eight o'clock in the evening these four hundred brutes set up a
+hideous howling, by way of claiming their daily meal, consisting
+invariably of fish, which, for them as well as for their owners'
+consumption, is first dried in the sun and then pounded, bones and
+all. Except this evening concert, a bark or a cry is rarely uttered
+by these dogs, unless at first starting when yoked to the sledge,
+or on coming across a reindeer team upon the road. Hydrophobia
+would be a terrible scourge in this dog-district, but the disease
+is fortunately unknown there. Steller has stated the same thing
+of the dogs of Kamschatka, and Mr Erman concludes that the malady
+is a result of the European system of living in towns. And as the
+Siberian dogs are so very moderately fed, he infers that excess,
+not want, generates the morbid habit. We are inclined to attribute
+more importance to the quality than to the quantity of the food. A
+fish diet may be more conducive to a wholesome state of the animals'
+blood than the masses of horse-flesh, paunch, and other rank and
+unclean offal commonly given to dogs in Europe, and especially in
+England, where the carnivorous addictions of the bipeds induce a
+belief in the propriety of unlimited flesh-feeding for quadrupeds.
+
+The large annual importation of exiles, the system of conscription,
+and the advantages offered to public officers volunteering for
+Siberian service, are the most important and efficacious measures by
+which Russia proceeds gradually but steadily with the colonisation
+and civilisation of her Asiatic dominions. The conscripts are
+sometimes drawn, not only from Tobolsk, but from the remotest parts
+of Siberia, and the term of military service being twenty-eight
+years, it is probable that only a small proportion return to their
+native villages. Those who do are looked up to as oracles by
+their countrymen. They are objects of pride to their families and
+of respect to every body else; the place of honour is theirs by
+right, and they are addressed by the title of Master Soldier.[7]
+The ferry of the Irtuish, by Tobolsk, whose passage is considered
+the symbol of political death to the numerous exiles who each year
+cross it--bestows a step of rank on all public servants offering
+themselves for duty in Siberia Proper. The passion for rank,
+stronger in Russia than in any other country, drives hosts of
+officers across this important boundary; but as they are not obliged
+to remain more than three years, most of them return home at the end
+of that time. Far nearer to St Petersburg than the Asiatic frontier,
+civilisation is still at a very low ebb amongst the aboriginal
+tribes. Close to Nijni Novgorod, and within a very short distance
+of Moscow, the prevailing population consists of Cheremisses and
+Chuvashes, two tribes many of whose customs are nearly as barbarous
+as their names. These people are shy and timid, very slow in
+acquiring industrious habits, and addicted to sundry practices
+stamping them as semi-savages. In some places they cling to
+paganism, and offer up horned beasts, fruit, and vegetables to their
+various deities. The Chuvash ladies wear a sort of bustle of sheet
+copper, hanging from the girdle backwards over the hips, and having
+appended to it all manner of metal ornaments, making a perpetual
+clatter in walking. But these tribes are the pink of refinement
+by comparison with those in the northern portion of the Muscovite
+empire,--with the Ostyaks, who eat out of the same trough with
+their dogs, or with the Samoyedes who tear with their teeth, and
+swallow with infinite relish, huge lumps of raw and reeking flesh.
+The women of the latter people wear, as their favourite decoration,
+(certainly no inappropriate one) a glutton's tail, hanging down the
+back of their pelisse. Their hair is plaited in tails, to which all
+manner of lumber, brass and iron rings, and rusty musket-locks, are
+attached. Mr Erman's account of "Life in the _Chum_" (the skin tent
+of the Samoyedes) is quaint and graphic.
+
+  [7] _Gospodin Slujivui._ Gospodin is equivalent to the French
+  Monsieur or Seigneur, and Slujivui means literally one who has
+  served in the army.
+
+"The reindeer calf, which we had got on the way, was killed and cut
+up in front of the tent a few minutes, after our arrival. The men
+now brought the bleeding flesh into the tent, and began devouring
+it immediately, quite raw, with the heartiest appetite. The old man
+was satisfied with sucking the brain from the head, whilst each
+of our younger comrades gnawed away at a limb of the animal, even
+to the bone. They laughed at the amazement which my good-humoured
+Esthonian attendant expressed at their blood-stained faces; and
+when he gave them to understand, through the interpreter, that they
+were no better than wolves, they seemed quite unprepared for such
+reproof; replying gravely, that they were at the same time no worse
+than the wolves, since they shared honestly with them, and left
+the bones and some scraps of flesh merely for their sake." In this
+same tent there was a little monster of a boy named Peina, whom one
+reads of with a sort of shudder, and with a strong suspicion that
+the creature was not _canny_. Mr Erman himself seems to write of
+him with peculiar reserve, stating facts, but evidently unwilling
+to give an opinion as to the exact nature of the beast. Peina, who
+had first-rate masticators, got his share of the raw meat, which
+did not prevent his drawing on his mother's lacteal resources, and
+thumping her brutally till she honoured the draft, or handed him
+the pot-ladle, with which he supped scalding porridge to his great
+internal contentment. The travellers' bread, although frozen hard
+and not easy eating for adult jaws, disappeared by wholesale within
+those of Peina. At night the anomalous urchin was laid naked in a
+canoe-shaped basket, and covered up so thickly with furs that his
+cries seemed to come from the depths of the earth. In the morning
+his mother took him from his bed and set him up, still naked, before
+the fire to warm himself. Sugar, when first presented to him,
+he called snow, and threw away, but when once he had tasted the
+dainty, his demands for it were unceasing and peremptory. Taking
+into consideration the uncomfortable and uncleanly peculiarities
+of the Samoyedes, both young and old, we cannot feel surprised
+that Mr Erman's interpreter conceived an intense dislike to their
+society, and so managed matters that one morning, whilst the man of
+science was busy measuring a base-line to ascertain the heights of
+some mountains, his Samoyede companions suddenly disappeared with
+their tent and their reindeer, leaving him with three ill-equipped
+sledges and a few Ostyak attendants, and with no choice but to make
+the best of his way back to Obdorsk, whence he soon afterwards
+returned to Tobolsk. There he passed his Christmas, and then resumed
+his journey; but this time in a southerly direction. After having
+penetrated to sixty-seven degrees north, the region of eternal
+frost, he struck southwards to the latitude of the Land's End,
+making a dip into China, which furnishes some of the best chapters
+in his book.
+
+Irkutsk, the last town of importance north of the Chinese frontier,
+consists of nineteen hundred houses, fifty being of brick, and
+the remainder of wood, and is probably the cheapest place in the
+civilised world as regards articles of food. We say "civilised,"
+because, although situate in a barbarous region, and possessing
+a population of a very motley character, the town has much that
+is European in its aspect and usages. It possesses an exchange,
+government factories, where newly-arrived convicts are employed,
+a school of medicine, a gymnasium, and a handsome parade-ground.
+In the market, formed of wooden booths, the stores of food were
+enormous. Beef cost about a halfpenny a pound; of flour one penny
+would purchase nearly eight and a half pounds; partridges and
+heathfowl were sold at five farthings a-piece. But we are in haste
+to get amongst the Celestials. First comes a gallop across More
+Baikal, a large lake just beyond Irkutsk, on which the Russian
+government maintains an armed flotilla. This gallop is a fine bit of
+helter-skelter, over ice brilliant as glass. "There was no snow upon
+the ice, so that its surface shone like a polished mirror in the
+moonlight. The horses that were put under our sledges in Kadilnaya
+had to be held on each side till the very moment of starting, when
+they broke at once into full gallop, which they kept up till we
+landed on the further shore. We completed seven German miles in two
+hours and a quarter, undoubtedly the most extraordinary as well as
+the most speedy stage upon any route in Russia." Thence, onwards
+to the frontier line. "We followed the crowd that pressed forward
+towards a narrow door in the front of a long wooden building. This
+admitted us into the inner quadrangle of a Russian warehouse. A
+corresponding door, at the opposite side of this court, opens just
+upon a wooden barricade, which constitutes the barrier of China. In
+this there is a wide portal, ornamented with pillars, and displaying
+the Russian eagle above it, along with the cipher of the reigning
+emperor, Nicholas the First, by whom it was erected." On passing
+through this gate, the change is immediate and striking,--from
+Russian sobriety of aspect and hue to the gaudy finery of China.
+Maimachen, the name of the Chinese town visited by Mr Erman, has a
+very masquerading air to a European eye. The walls on either side
+of the streets do not look like house walls, the roofs being flat
+and invisible from the street. "Indeed, they are nearly altogether
+concealed by the gay-coloured paper lanterns and flags, with
+inscriptions on them, hung out on both sides of the way. Cords,
+with similar scrolls and lanterns, are likewise stretched from roof
+to roof across the street. These dazzling decorations stand out
+in glaring contrast with the dull yellow of the ground and walls.
+In the open crossings of the streets, which intersect each other
+at right angles, stood enormous chafing-dishes of cast-iron, like
+basins, upon a slender pedestal four feet in height. The benches
+by which they were surrounded were occupied by tea-drinkers, who
+sat smoking from the little pipes they carry at their girdles,
+whilst their kettles boiled at the common fire." Mr Erman had the
+good fortune to be on the frontier at the period of the Chinese
+festival of the White Moon, which is in fact the celebration of
+the new-year, and he had the still greater luck to be invited to
+share in it at Maimachen. He found the town in its gayest costume.
+The expenditure of flags and lanterns was prodigious. The scrolls
+usually contained the names of the families before whose houses
+they were hung out, coupled with words of auspicious import, as
+gladness, riches, wisdom, &c. There was a great firing of crackers
+and rockets, partly to celebrate the day, but chiefly in honour of
+the guests. Before dinner the latter were diverted by a theatrical
+representation. Maimachen boasts a regular company of actors, and
+upon this great occasion they did their best. Their orchestra was of
+a rather violent description, consisting of "wooden drums, shaped
+like casks, brass cymbals, and plates of the same metal, or gongs,
+held by a string and beaten with knockers, and wooden truncheons,
+of different sizes, which they used as castanets." There were no
+actresses; but the deficiency was not to be detected, the younger
+and more delicate men personating women to the life by the aid
+of wigs and long tresses of black hair, but especially by curls
+pressed flat upon the forehead. Masks were not used, but paint was
+in abundance; in some cases with a view to represent spectacles,
+mustachios, &c.; in others to conceal the human features, or give
+them a monstrous aspect. "One face was covered with coloured rays,
+issuing from the mouth. The same actor had also a feather on
+his head--in Chinese comedy the conventional mark of a ghost or
+apparition. Another wore a golden helmet, which constituted him a
+warrior. Several kept beating themselves incessantly on the hip with
+a cane, and by so doing intimated that they were on horseback." The
+play itself was more like a game of romps than any regular dramatic
+representation. Little was said; but, on the other hand, there was
+a deal of dancing, drumming, and running about. Mr Erman could make
+neither head nor tail of the proceedings. By way of experiment,
+however, he made some tender gestures to one of the pseudo-ladies,
+who acknowledged them in the most amiable manner, and after that the
+horsemen without horses paid him much attention, pointing with their
+sticks to his spectacles, and trying to touch them as they passed.
+All this greatly diverted the Mongol audience, evidently delighted
+to see a real counterpart to the painted spectacles of some of the
+actors.
+
+The play over, Mr Erman and the other guests, preceded by the
+uproarious orchestra, marched off to dinner at the house of the
+sarguchei or chief officer of Maimachen. This gentleman, a tall,
+thin person of stern countenance, dressed in gray velvet, had a
+white button on the crown of his black felt hat, indicating his
+rank, and a chalcedony ring, an inch wide, upon his right-hand
+thumb, this being a mark of official dignity. "His nails," says our
+traveller, "did not extend above half an inch beyond the tips of
+his fingers, his personal vanity being in this respect subdued, as
+might be expected in a man of sober mind and mature years." The man
+of short nails and sober mind was exceeding hospitable, welcomed
+his guests in a soft and sonorous voice, and sat down with them
+to dinner at tables covered with scarlet cloth. The regale that
+followed might have caused a European _chef_ to pale his ineffectual
+fires from sheer envy. It began, oddly enough, with fruits,
+sweetmeats, and tea. These discussed, a piece of fine paper, for a
+napkin, and a pair of ivory chopsticks, were laid before each guest,
+and the tables, which were six feet wide, were covered over thickly
+with small porcelain plates full of all manner of complicated
+edibles. Fat abounded in the dressing, to neutralise which weak
+vinegar was used. The first series of saucers duly honoured, a
+second was brought in and put on the top of its predecessor. Others
+followed, and as the previous stratum was never removed, there soon
+arose upon the table a lofty pile of gastronomical curiosities.
+Pipes and _chowsen_, a Chinese spirit distilled from rice, concluded
+the feast, as the strangers thought;--but they were vastly mistaken.
+The soup course had still to come, and that was followed by an
+infusion of cabbage-leaves, drawn out of an urn by a cock, and drunk
+steaming hot. How a dinner commencing with preserved apricots,
+and concluding with cabbage water, agreed with German stomachs,
+Mr Erman does not inform us. After managing to taste upwards of
+a hundred dishes, he went to visit the temple of Fo, whose court
+was guarded by two clay lions painted green, whilst at his shrine
+were deposited, on account of the festive season, a prodigious heap
+of delicacies. Whole sheep without the skin, plucked chickens,
+pheasants, and guinea-fowls, in their natural positions, and
+glistening with fat, lay in hillocks at the feet of half-a-dozen
+grotesque and indecent idols. On a long table, a wall of offerings
+was built up, consisting of dressed meat and cakes of every kind,
+the whole surrounded with an elaborate lattice-work of white dough,
+five or six feet high, the openings of which were filled with dried
+fruits and confectionary of the finest kind. Perfumed candles burned
+before the disgusting idols, and brass discs hung from the ceiling,
+and were struck with clappers when any bearing offerings approached.
+
+The contents of the shops at Maimachen gave Mr Erman a very
+high opinion of Chinese skill and ingenuity. He saw scientific
+instruments of great merit, very clever clockwork, paintings drawn
+and finished with the greatest care, (although highly objectionable
+by the indelicacy of their subjects,) porcelain, sculpture, bowls,
+vases, and figures of various kinds of stone. "There were large
+spherical bowls, and oval vases, of chalcedony and agate, and
+reliefs cut in cornelians, nephrit, and other coloured stones. Of
+the latter kind, the most common are flowers, the several parts of
+which are formed of various and tastefully selected stones, and then
+cemented with mastic on a foundation of stone. For many of these
+articles, highly elaborate, and at the same time quite useless, the
+merchants of Maimachen asked four thousand tea-bricks, (a standard
+of currency,) or about two thousand five hundred Russian dollars.
+In this we saw a proof of luxury and profuse expenditure amongst
+the Chinese. Many other branches of industry indicated enervation
+and effeminacy of manners:" musk, for instance, and other perfumes,
+enclosed in little bags, and considered indispensable appendages
+to a young man's dress. A curious plaything, considered equally
+essential, is composed of two polished balls, about an inch in
+diameter, which the men always carry with them. "These are taken
+in the right hand, at idle times, and rolled and rubbed one over
+the other with the fingers; the noise they make amuses, and perhaps
+there is something agreeable also in the feel of them. Here, in
+Maimachen, I saw some of these balls made of glass, striped green
+and white, and, hollow, containing within them a little lump of
+clay, which rattled with every motion." The musk and perfumes,
+however abundantly used, are all insufficient to counteract a very
+peculiar and unpleasant smell attributed by Mr Erman to the Chinese.
+He first perceived it at the theatre, and took it to arise from an
+inordinate addiction to leeks on the part of actors and audience,
+whose breath and clothes were infected with the disagreeable
+odour of that bulb. But he was subsequently induced to regard it
+as a national taint, a Chinese exhalation, not to be overcome by
+any amount of artificial perfume, and whose cause is matter of
+inquiry for the chemist. Doubtless the Chinese would get rid of it,
+were it possible so to do, for the care they bestow on personal
+beauty and elegance is very great. Another striking defect in the
+inhabitants of Maimachen is to be found in their black and decayed
+teeth. The cause of this Mr Erman suspects to be the solution of
+copper, produced by the empyreumatic oil of tobacco in the bronze
+mouth-pieces of their pipes.
+
+At a post-house upon his road back to Irkutsk, Mr Erman and his
+party were met by a deputation from no less a personage than the
+Khamba Lama, the high-priest of the Buraets, a Mongolian tribe
+closely allied in language and customs to the natives of the
+northern provinces of China. The embassy consisted of four lamas
+or priests attired in scarlet robes and bright yellow hats. They
+brought an invitation to a grand festival, which was readily
+accepted,--and a very remarkable business it proved to be. The
+discordant theatrical music at Maimachen was a mere trifle compared
+to the monstrous noise made by the Buraet kettle-drums, so large
+that they were dragged upon four wheels, and by copper trumpets ten
+feet long, borne by one man and blown by another. "The grave prelude
+of the wind instruments was like a roaring hurricane, and the
+chorus of brass gongs, drums, &c., resembled the crash of a falling
+mountain." In this place we find some curious and interesting
+details respecting the Buddhist religion and priesthood, after which
+Mr Erman returns to Irkutsk, and resumes his journey eastward,
+through the valley of the Lena, to the land of the Tunguzes and
+Yakuts. The chief town of the latter people, Yakutsk, is two degrees
+to the south of Beresov, which Mr Erman had visited on his way to
+Obdorsk; but, nevertheless, the cold is far more severe at the
+former place, where frozen earth is found near the surface all the
+year round, and the same condition of the ground continues to the
+depth of six hundred feet. "The inhabitants of the Swiss Alps would
+not unjustly think themselves lost if they were compelled to live at
+the height of ten thousand feet, or two thousand three hundred feet
+above the hospital of the great St Bernard, and there to support
+and clothe themselves by keeping cattle, and with the productions
+of the surrounding mountains; yet they would then, and not until
+they arrived at that height, be settled on ground having the same
+temperature which I found here amongst the Yakuts, who are rich in
+cattle. It would seem, therefore, as if that succeeded in Siberia
+which was impossible in Europe, if we did not take into account
+that the same constant temperature of the ground may be made up
+at different places of very different elements." Notwithstanding
+the severity of their climate and resistance of their frozen soil,
+the Yakuts are a prosperous people, having attained a considerable
+degree of civilisation, and amongst whom crime is rare, although
+the influence of Russian example and contact daily renders it less
+so. There is much interest in Mr Erman's account of them, and of
+the wandering Tunguzses, the last tribe with whom he consorted
+before his arrival at Okhotsk. Here his reception was not very
+flattering. "We were looked at with much curiosity from all the
+house-doors on the way, for the devout elders of the place had been
+filled with anxious forebodings by the accounts of the arrival of
+a foreigner. They signed themselves with the cross whenever he
+was mentioned. And I learned to-day that they had fears of war,
+conscription, and other calamities." Nor was their alarm abated by
+learning that "the heathen foreigner wore snow-shades (spectacles)
+even in thick weather, and that he carried a dog in the sledge
+with him. Thus the return to civilised man was marked in the first
+instance by the encounter of intolerant superstition, and it was
+necessary to forget the nobler traits of the wilderness before
+we could become reconciled to the Russians of Okhotsk." At which
+place Mr Erman's narrative ceases. We await with interest its
+promised continuation--an account of his adventures in Kamschatka,
+California, and the Pacific.
+
+
+
+
+THE SCOTTISH DEER FORESTS.
+
+_Lays of the Deer Forest, with Sketches of Olden and Modern Deer
+Hunting, &c. &c._ By JOHN SOBIESKI and CHARLES EDWARD STUART. 2
+vols., post 8vo. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London.
+
+
+We would that, like stout Lord Percy of yore, it were in our power
+at this present moment to chronicle a vow that we should forthwith
+take our pastime for three summer days on the pleasant hills of
+Scotland. Alas for us, that we are doomed, from divers causes, to
+absent ourselves from felicity awhile, and, amidst the heat and
+noise of London, listen with intense disgust to the brutal bayings
+of the Chartists! This very night, we hear, the ignoble hunt is to
+be up in Bishop Bonner's fields. Crowds of dirty, unshaven, squalid
+ruffians, who have not the strength to use the pike, but the will
+to employ the knife of the assassin--fellows whom even Cobden would
+be chary to recognise as his _quondam_ supporters, defenders, and
+dupes--not unmingled with foreign propagandists, whom even France,
+in the fury of her revolutionary tornado, repudiates--are thronging
+to the place of rendezvous, where, doubtless, their souls will
+be worthily regaled by the ravings of some rascally vendors of
+sedition, blasphemy, and treason. Then will ensue the usual scene
+which for nights has disgraced the metropolis. Some unfortunate
+tradesman, whose curiosity has been stronger than his prudence, will
+be fixed upon as a "special" or a spy--the cowards, presuming upon
+their numbers, and the apparent absence of all executive power,
+will attempt a deliberate murder--the police will sally from their
+hiding-place to the rescue--there will be a storm of brickbats, a
+determined charge with the baton, a shop or two will be gutted,
+some score of craniums cracked, and to-morrow morning the greasy
+patriots, at the bar of Bow Street, will read their recantation,
+and, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, protest
+their loyalty to the Queen. Such are the pastimes of merry England
+in the month of June, and such the results of that enlightened
+policy which yields every thing to popular clamour, adopts the
+most fatal delusions as distinct principles of right, and then
+shrinks, trembling and aghast, from the inevitable result of their
+development!
+
+We do not want--in this article, at least--to be political, and
+we vow that we took up our pen three minutes ago in a spirit of
+perfect good-will and harmony towards all manner of men. But
+the hoarse bawling of these cannibals has somewhat ruffled our
+temper, dispelled for the moment our dreams of the mountains, and
+forced us back to the sterner realities of popular tumult and
+the truncheon. If this sort of thing lasts, we shall indubitably
+emigrate. Assassination, as recommended by the modern Hamilcar, is
+by no manner of means to our taste. Our opinion coincides with that
+of the gracious Captain of Knockdunder, and, were we promoted to
+a judicial function, "the chiel they ca' the Fustler" should ere
+long fustle in a tow. Neither are we at all disposed to fraternise
+with the milder Cuffey--a fellow, by the way, who is not without
+some redeeming scintillations of humour. We have no wish to be
+introduced to him even at a mesmeric soiree; and, acting upon
+the principle of Jacquey, we shall pray heaven to decrease our
+acquaintance, and put the Tweed as speedily as possible between
+ourselves and the partisans of O'Connor. We hope the Lord Provost,
+though discomfited in his Police Bill, has been looking after the
+tranquillity of the Calton. If not, we must move further north, and
+finally locate ourselves somewhere in the vicinity of Dalnacardoch.
+The deuce is in it, if the revolutionary mania has penetrated
+to that sequestred region! No son of the mountains has ever yet
+given in his adhesion to the Charter--treason hath not stained the
+tartan, and no republican pins have ever been exposed beneath the
+checkered margin of the kilt. There is loyalty at least in the
+land which was traversed by Montrose and Dundee; and without the
+slightest fear that any of the numerous points of that interesting
+but incomprehensible public document, which Mr Joseph Hume proposes
+to condense, shall be unduly obtruded on our notice, we shall at
+once exchange our London dwelling for the more pleasant bothy of the
+hills.
+
+As for a companion, we shall seek none better--for we could not
+find one--than this last publication of the Stuarts. And here,
+once for all, let us draw a line of distinction betwixt the poetry
+and the prose of these very remarkable brothers. We have not the
+remotest intention of sitting in judgment on the "Lays," or of
+testing the poetical merits of John Sobieski and Charles Edward,
+either by the canons of Longinus, or by that superior code of
+literary laws which Maga has promulgated to the world. The poems,
+which occupy exclusively the first of these volumes, are, with one
+exception, fugitive in their nature, and appear to have been penned
+rather from occasional impulse, than from any deliberate intention
+of publication. Accordingly, we find that most of them relate to
+topics personal to the authors themselves--and with these we do not
+meddle. In others, there are flashes of the deep national spirit
+which still survives--though our rulers do not seem to mark it--in
+Scotland: indignation at the neglect with which too many of our
+national institutions have been treated, and mournful lamentings
+over the misfortunes of a former age. But the impulse which leads to
+the composition of poetry does not always imply its accomplishment.
+Poetry, as an art in which excellence can only be obtained by a
+combination of the simple and the sublime, requires a study far
+more intense and serious than the mere critic is apt to allow. In
+a former Number we devoted an article to an exposition of those
+principles, which are absolutely invariable in their application,
+and which must be thoroughly understood, if they are not intuitive
+to the poet; and, being in no mood for repetition, we shall simply
+say that we adhere to our recorded doctrines. The Stuarts, it must
+be confessed, are more successful with the rifle than the lyre. We
+would far rather meet them in the garb of the forester, than in the
+more fantastic fashion of the minstrel: be theirs the lot of Ryno
+the hunter, not the darkened destiny of the bard.
+
+Do, therefore, what you please with the first volume--pack it up
+in your portmanteau, or place it on the shelf beside Chambers'
+History and the collections of good old Bishop Forbes. But if you
+profess to be a deer-stalker--though we fear your profession to be
+false--or if you are but an aspiring neophyte, and hankerer after
+that proud position--or if you merely bound your aspirations towards
+the compassing of the death of a roebuck--or if simply you have a
+keen and a kindly eye for nature, and are a lover of the sylvan
+solitudes--in one or other, or all of these characters, we pray you
+to deal more leisurely with the other tone, which is the Hunter's
+Vade-Mecum, the best guide ever yet published to the haunts of the
+antlered monarch.
+
+We are fond of Mr Scrope, and we have an excessive partiality for St
+John. Two finer fellows never shouldered a rifle; and our conscience
+does not accuse us of having used too superlative, in epithet in
+their praise. This was the more creditable on our part, because
+we knew them both to be Southrons; and while freely admitting the
+sportsman-like qualities of the one, and the strong picturesque
+style and spirit of the other, we felt a slight, passing, but
+pardonable pang of jealousy, that they should have stepped in, and
+pre-occupied the native field. Where, thought we, are our Scottish
+deer-stalkers? Can the lads not handle a pen as well as touch a
+trigger? Will none of them, who have been trained to the hills since
+they were striplings, stand forth for the honour of Albyn, and try
+a match with these fustian-coated circumventers of the stag? By the
+shade of Domhnull Mac-Fhionnlaidlhnan Dan, we blush for the literary
+reputation of our country, and almost wish that we were young enough
+ourselves to take the hill against the invading Sassenach! At
+length--and we are delighted to see it--the reproach has been swept
+away. Two stalwart champions of the forest have risen in the persons
+of the Stuarts--they have encountered the Englishmen with their own
+weapons, and, in our opinion, beaten them hollow.
+
+Mr Scrope had the merit of producing the earliest work in which
+deer-stalking was treated as a distinct and peculiar branch of
+the art venatory. We speak of it now from recollection; for
+our copy, somewhat frayed and worn by the fingers of ambitious
+sportsmen, is in the snug corner of a library some hundred miles
+to the northward. But we remember well the Waltonian character of
+the book--the professional style in which the elder practitioner
+enforced his precepts upon the dawning intellect of his companion;
+and the adventures, neither few nor feeble, which were depicted
+in the heart of the Atholl forest. Taken as the production of
+an English sportsman, Mr Scrope's book is highly creditable:
+considered as the manual of a deer-stalker, it is at the best
+indifferent. Nor, indeed, could it well be otherwise. Not until
+middle age, if we are informed rightly, did Mr Scrope first send
+a ball into the ample shoulder of a hart: his young blood never
+beat tumultuously in his veins at the sight of the mighty creature
+rolling over upon the heather, and its antlers buried in the
+moss. His boyish enthusiasm, we fear, was expended upon game of
+less mark and likelihood--partridges, perchance, as they whirred
+from the turnips, or possibly he was "entered" with the hare.
+Wordsworth's maxim, that the boy is the father of the man, is
+peculiarly applicable in sporting matters. Upon the character of
+the country in which the latent spirit of the hunter is earliest
+developed, depends, in a great degree, his future success, and
+certainly his accomplishment as an Orion. The young squire, who
+has been brought up in the faith of Sykes, who never stirs abroad
+without a keeper, and who is accustomed to see his delicate pointers
+execute their manoeuvres with almost mathematical precision on the
+flat stubbles of Norfolk, labours under a huge disadvantage in the
+higher branches of his science, compared with the Highland boy who
+has received his education on the hill. What though the single
+barrel of the latter be a clumsy implement indeed in competition
+with the Purdie which decorates the shoulder of the former--though
+the hound that sometimes attends him, though oftener he is alone,
+never slept a single night in a kennel, and is the ruggedest
+specimen of his kind--still he is in the enjoyment of advantages
+incomparably superior for the development of all his faculties,
+and the sharpening of every sense. The triumph of the sportsman
+does not lie so much in the killing as in the finding of his game.
+Were it otherwise, the pigeon-slayer of Battersea or the Red-house
+would have just claims to the honours of Sir Tristram, and the
+annihilator of poultry to rank with the Nimrods of the world. Our
+young friend the Squire shoots well--that is to say, he can kill
+with reasonable precision: but, after all, what is he save an
+instrument? Take Ponto away from him, tie up Juno, send a bullet
+through the brain of Basta, and a pretty beggarly account you will
+have of it in the evening when we come to the emptying of the bags!
+Or lead him down to the sea-shore, and show him a whaup, which in
+the English tongue is denominated a curlew; request him to use all
+his possible skill to compass possession of the bird; but do not set
+your heart on having it, else, as sure as fate, you are doomed to
+disappointment. Whaup is quite alive to his own interests, and by
+no means unsuspicious of the Saxon, who advances straight towards
+him with a hypocritical air of unconcern. Had the Highland lad been
+there, what a difference! He would have dropped like a stone behind
+that rock, wriggled like a serpent over the sand, kept the bird
+between himself and the sea, taken advantage of every inequality in
+the ground, discerned from the attitude of his quarry whether its
+suspicions were aroused or not, and in ten minutes a pluff of white
+smoke and a report would have announced its extermination. As it
+is, the curlew remains apparently unconcerned until the Lord of the
+Manor has reduced the intermediate distance to a hundred and twenty
+yards, and then, with a shrill whistle, takes flight along the
+margin of the tide. Or set him to stalk a blackcock, perched high
+of an Autumn morning on a dyke. How clumsily he sets about it! how
+miserable is his stoop! how wretchedly he calculates his distance!
+That wide-awake hat, which, for the sake of symmetry, he has been
+pleased to surmount with a feather, is as conspicuous to the country
+for miles round, and of course to the blackcock, as was the white
+plume of Murat in the field of battle, and as potent to effect a
+clearance, of which we presently have ocular demonstration.
+
+We contend, therefore, that it is extremely difficult for the man,
+be he ever so addicted to field-sports, who has been educated in
+a cultivated country, to disembarrass himself of the artificial
+habits which he is tolerably sure to acquire. His trolling may
+be excellent--indeed, English gentlemen are, generally speaking,
+first-rate shots--but he will be deficient in the science of the
+naturalist, and in that singular acuteness of perception which can
+hardly be gained save by an early intimacy with nature, on the
+mountain, the moor, or in the glen. No subsequent education or
+experience can make up for the normal deficiency, least of all in
+the pursuit of an animal so wary, so instinctive, and so peculiar in
+its habits as the deer. Of course we do not mean to deny that there
+is much which may be learned. What a pointer is to partridges, some
+wary and experienced forester may often be made to the deer; and
+if you put yourself under his tuition, and scrupulously obey his
+orders, you may very possibly succeed in attaining the object of
+your desires. Nor indeed can you do better, up to a certain point,
+notwithstanding the strictures of the Stuarts, who are, we think,
+unnecessarily wroth at the system which would call in the aid of
+any supplementary assistance. We hope no gentleman who has rented a
+forest for the ensuing season will be deterred from following the
+feet of a Highland Gamaliel on account of any ridicule which may
+be attached to the fact of his having been "taken up" to a deer.
+If he should rashly attempt stalking at his own hand, without any
+preliminary instruction, we should be sorry to found our hopes of
+dinner on the chance of his acquisition of a haunch.
+
+     "When advancing upon deer [say our authors]--except in strange
+     ground--the forester, or any other attendant, should be left
+     behind a stone, or in some covert, before the stalker commences
+     his approach; not from any recognition of the false reproach
+     made against the guides by Mr Scrope, but because there is
+     no occasion for an assistant, and the action of one has more
+     celerity, independence, and security from discovery, than when
+     a greater number are in motion. The charge made by the author
+     of 'The Art of Deer-stalking,' that the forester is often in
+     the way, and sometimes obstructs the shot, is not true, unless
+     in instances of inexperienced and awkward individuals, who are
+     not to be found among that class of foresters of whom the guest
+     of the _Atholl Forest_ proposes his remarks. With a MacKenzie,
+     or a MacDonald, a Catanach, and a MacHardie, the asserted
+     inconvenience must proceed from the ignorance or maladroitness
+     of the gray worm which crawls at his back, and who often does
+     not know what he is doing, or where he is going, with his
+     ideas _egare_ on his sensitive knees and varnished Purdie,
+     unconscious of what he ought to do and nervous for what he ought
+     not, flurried with eagerness and disgusted with his posture,
+     and who, never seeing a deer except once in the year, is led
+     up to him like a 'blind burraid,' by one whose language he
+     scarcely understands. In general, therefore, the embarrassments
+     of the 'creep' are those of the superior, who is frequently so
+     ignorant, unpractised, and dependent upon the guidance of the
+     forester, that to be '_taken up to the deer_' has become the
+     modern forest phrase for the approach of the sportsman. This
+     contemptible term, and its contemptible practice, has only
+     been introduced within the last quarter century, since the
+     prevalence of stalking gentlemen utterly unacquainted with the
+     ground and pursuit of deer. Of old, the '_Sealgair uasal nam
+     beann_' was initiated to the hill when yet but a '_biorach_'
+     of a stalker; and when he became a matured hill-man, he should
+     no more have suffered himself to be--'_taken up_ to his deer'
+     by an attendant, than a Melton fox-hunter to be trained after
+     the hounds by a whipper-in with a leading rein.--What should
+     have been the sentiments of the old chiefs and Uaislean of the
+     last century--the Dukes of Atholl and Gordon--Glengarrie--John
+     Aberardar--Iain dubh Bhail-a-Chroaein--to hear a deer-hunter
+     speak of being '_taken up to his deer_!'--Certainly that he was
+     a noble 'amadan' or 'gille-crubach,' who had not the faculties
+     or the limbs to act for himself.--But this is only one of the
+     many instances for which the hills of Gael may mourn with the
+     mountains of Gilboa--'_Quomodo ceciderunt robusti!_'"
+
+Far are we from insinuating that Mr Scrope is at all liable to the
+remarks contained in the foregoing extract. On the contrary, we
+hold him to be a man of vigorous mind and acute eye, and any thing
+but a contemptible foe to the stags, after the measure of his own
+experience. If he is deficient at all, it is in the poetry and
+higher mysteries of the art, which hardly would be expected from a
+stranger, whose initiation was necessarily late. Waverley, though a
+respectable shot, and a man of literary taste, would, we apprehend,
+have described the driving and disposition of the tainchel less
+effectively, and certainly far less truly, than Fergus M'Ivor; so
+great a difference is there betwixt the craft of the master and
+his pupil. Let Mr Scrope, therefore, rest content with the laurels
+he has won, and the trophies he has taken from the forest. Not
+unforgotten is his name in Atholl, nor unloved. Let him be a guide
+to the Southren, but he must not dream of rivalling the Stuarts in
+woodcraft, or Stoddart in the science of piscation.
+
+Of Mr St John's "Wild Sports of the Highlands," we have already
+spoken in terms of unqualified praise. A more delightful volume was
+never adapted for the pocket of the sportsman: a more truthful or
+observant work has seldom issued from the pen of the naturalist. His
+sketches and pictures of deer-stalking we allow to be as perfect in
+their way as the compositions of Landseer; and having said so much,
+we shall not make any further call upon that gentleman's blushes.
+Still, even his experience is limited, and his knowledge imperfect.
+He has given us a brilliant account of his own exploits upon the
+hill, but he has not lived long enough in the wilder haunts of the
+deer accurately to understand their habits. Not so our authors, who
+for years have been denizens of the mountains, speaking the tongue
+of the Gael, wearing the native garb, and following the chase with
+an ardour and enthusiasm unparalleled in these degenerate days.
+
+Gentlemen who complain of the inferior accommodation afforded by
+some of the more distant hostelries of Scotland--who are shocked
+at the absence of warming-pans, and tremulously nervous about
+your sanatory condition, when subjected to the enormity of damp
+sheets--how would you like to spend a few nights on the misty
+hill-side, or even in the hut of the hunters? We shall take you if
+you please to the latter spot, merely premising that, in order to
+reach it, we must cross the Findhorn, now roaring down in spate. A
+terrible stream is that Findhorn, as Mr St John well knows; but we
+question whether he ever ventured to ford it on the rise, as was
+done by one of the Stuarts. For the information of distant friends,
+we beg to put our imprimatur to the following description of this
+furious Highland flood, which rolled between the residence of the
+hunters and their favourite ground.
+
+     "That stream, however, which was so calm, and bright, and sunny,
+     when the otters floated down its current in a still summer's
+     morning, was a fierce and terrible enemy in its anger; and,
+     for a great part of the year, the dread of its uncertainty
+     and danger was a formidable cause for the preservation of
+     that profound solitude of the forest which so long made it
+     the sanctuary of deer, roe, and every kind of wild game. The
+     rapidity with which the river comes down, the impassable height
+     to which it rises in an incredibly short time, its incertitude
+     and fury, would render it an object of care to bold forders and
+     boatmen; but with the peasants of the 'laich,' unaccustomed,
+     like the Highlanders, to wrestle with a mountain torrent, and,
+     excepting in rare instances, unable to swim or manage a coble,
+     it inspires a dread, almost amounting to awe, and none except
+     ourselves ventured to keep a boat above the fishing-station of
+     Slui. Pent within a channel of rocks from fifty to a hundred
+     and eighty feet in height, the rise of the water is rapidly
+     exaggerated by the incapability of diffusion; and the length of
+     its course sometimes concealing beyond the horizon the storms by
+     which it is swelled at its source, its floods then descend with
+     unexpected violence. Frequently when, excepting a low wreath
+     upon Beann-Drineachain, the sun is shining in a cloudless sky,
+     and the water scarce ripples over the glittering ford, a deep
+     hollow sound--a dull approaching roar may be heard in the gorges
+     of the river; and almost before the wading fisherman can gain
+     the shore, a bank of water, loaded with trees, and rocks, and
+     wreck, will come down three--four--five feet abreast--sweeping
+     all before it in a thunder of foam and ruin. In ordinary cases,
+     after two days of rain, the stream will rise twenty or thirty
+     feet--it _has_ risen nearly ten fathoms in its rocky gulf; and
+     once upon this occasion it mounted fifteen feet in a quarter
+     of an hour. When the dawn broke, it appeared sweeping through
+     the trees, which the evening before hung fifty feet above its
+     brink--a black roaring tempest loaded with ruins and debris,
+     from which were seen to rise at times the white skeletons of
+     trees peeled of their bark, beams and couples of houses--a
+     cart--a door--a cradle, hurrying and tilting through the foam
+     and spray, like the scattered 'floatsome' of a wreck.
+
+     "It may be judged how far it was convenient in winter to hunt
+     a forest separated by such a boundary, of which the nearest
+     certain passage was by a bridge two miles to the west, with
+     frequently the view of hunting three miles to the east. Often we
+     have gone out in a clear sapphire morning, when there was scarce
+     a ripple on the pools, and the water on the ford was not over
+     our 'glunachan,' and when we returned at evening, and approached
+     through the dark veil of pines which descended to the river,
+     have heard a roar as if the world was rolling together down the
+     black trough before us, and as we came out on the bank, found a
+     furious tempest of water, tumbling, and plunging, and leaping,
+     over stock and rock twenty feet upon the clatach, where we had
+     left it whimpering among the pebbles in the morning; while, in
+     the far, deep, birch-embowered channel, where the stream was
+     then so still and placid that you could only guess its course by
+     the bright glistening eye which here and there blinked between
+     the trees and stones,--now it came yelling, and skirling, and
+     clamouring down the rocks and falls, as if all the air was full
+     of gibbering, babbling, laughing demons, who were muttering, and
+     yammering, and prophesying, and hooting, at what you were going
+     to do, if you attempted to cross."
+
+We pray you at your leisure to read on, and you will presently
+see what peril our authors underwent at the fearful fords of
+the Findhorn. Once or twice in our life we have been in similar
+jeopardy, and we can testify with unction to the singular sensations
+which beset a man in the midst of a roaring river, when the rapids
+are shooting away below, and the boulder-stones rolling beneath his
+feet. We pass over some perilous instances of adventure, which at
+length became so frequent as to lead to the construction of the hut.
+
+     "Such continually and unexpectedly were the ferries of the
+     Findhorn, and many such escapes we had, in daylight and in
+     darkness.--Twice I have been swamped, often nearly upset, and
+     more than once carried off my legs in the fords; and--I say it
+     with humility, and always under the mercy of heaven--that I owed
+     rescue either to actual swimming, or to the confidence inspired
+     by that power when struggling with the strong and terrible enemy.
+
+     "This continual exposure to battle and disappointment, however,
+     became at length too vexatious an abridgment of sport and
+     certainty; and as I would--and often--have made my bed under
+     a fir tree rather than go round by the bridge of Daltullich,
+     I resolved upon another alternative--to build in the forest a
+     '_bothan an t-sealgair_,' or 'hunter's hut,' where we might
+     lodge for the night when it was impossible to cross the water.
+
+     "There is a high and beautiful craig at the crook of the river
+     near the 'Little Eas,'--a precipice eighty feet in height, and
+     then like a vast stone helmet crowned with a feathery plume of
+     wood, which nodded over its brow. From its top you might drop
+     a bullet into the pool below, but on the south side there is
+     an accessible woody bank, down which, by planting your heels
+     firmly in the soil and among the roots of the trees, there is a
+     descent to a deep but smooth and sandy ford. Upon the summit of
+     the rock there is, or there was--my blessing upon it!--a thick
+     and beautiful bird-cherry, which hung over the craig, and whose
+     pendant branches, taking root on the edge of the steep, shot up
+     again like the banana, and formed a natural arbour and close
+     trellis along the margin of the precipice. Behind its little
+     gallery, there is a mighty holly, under which the snow rarely
+     lays in winter, or the rain drops in summer. Beneath the shelter
+     of this tree, and within the bank at its foot, I dug a little
+     cell large enough to hold two beds, a bench, a hearth, a table,
+     and a 'kistie.' The sides were lined with deals well caulked
+     with moss, and the roof was constructed in the same manner, but
+     covered with a tarpauling, which, lying in the slope of the
+     surrounding bank, carried off any water which might descend from
+     thaw or rain, and, when the autumn trees shook off their leaves,
+     could not be distinguished from the adjoining bank. Its door was
+     on the brink of the craig, veiled by the thick bird-cherries
+     on the edge of the precipice; and the entrance to the little
+     path, which ascended from either side upon the brow of the
+     rock, was concealed by a screen of birch and hazel, beneath
+     which the banks were covered with primroses, wood-anemones,
+     and forget-me-not. Bowers of honeysuckle and wild-roses twined
+     among the lower trees; and even in the tall pines above, the
+     rose sometimes climbed to the very top, where all its blossoms,
+     clustering to the sun, hung in white tassels out of the
+     dark-blue foliage. There the thrush and the blackbird sang at
+     morning and evening, and the owl cried at night, and the buck
+     belled upon the Torr.--Blessed, wild, free, joyous dwelling,
+     which we shall never see again!"
+
+A lovely place indeed must that have been in the pleasant days of
+summer! We do not wonder at the fondness with which the Stuarts
+speak of that lodge in the wilderness, reared as it was in the
+midst of the most beautiful and romantic scenery which exists
+within the compass of the seas of Britain, or, for aught we know,
+elsewhere. Years have rolled by since we last set foot upon the
+banks of Findhorn; but never shall we forget the glories of that
+deep ravine, or the noble woods of Altyre, still possessed by the
+descendants of the princely Comyns. Did we not expect to be summoned
+out within half an hour to contribute to the safety of the realm by
+breaking the head of a Chartist, we should ourselves launch out into
+description, and try conclusions with Horatio M'Culloch. But, after
+all, it would be a work of supererogation. Mr St John has already
+illustrated most charmingly that abode of the faithful; and he will
+not be displeased to see that, even in painting, he has met with
+formidable rivals. Rarely, indeed, have we met with any thing so
+perfect as the following sketch:--
+
+     "Near Slui on the Findhorn there is a range of precipices
+     and wooded steeps crowned with pine, and washed by a clear
+     and rippling stream of the river, through which there is an
+     excellent ford, very well known to the roe, for escaping to
+     the woods of Slui when pressed by the hounds. This reach is
+     called the Ledanreich, from a remarkable craig, a sheer naked
+     even wall of sandstone, lying in horizontal strata eighty or
+     ninety feet high: At the eastern extremity of this rock there
+     is a great division, partly separated from the main curtain by
+     a deep woody slope, which dips into the precipice with little
+     more inclination from the perpendicular than to admit of careful
+     footing. In the face of the divided craig, the decomposition of
+     the softer stone between the courses of the strata has wasted
+     it away into narrow galleries, which, passing behind the tall
+     pillars of the pines growing from the rifts and ledges, extend
+     along the face of the precipice, veiled by a deep tapestry of
+     ivy, which spreads over the mighty wall of rock, and hangs
+     from shelf to shelf over the covered ways. Beyond the craigs,
+     the bank of the forest, an abrupt steep, covered with oak and
+     copsewood, slopes down to the river, its brow darkened with a
+     deep-blue cloud of pines, and its descent carpeted with moss,
+     primroses, and pyrolas, here and there hollowed into quaint
+     'cuachs,' filled with hazels, thorns, and giant pines. Along
+     this woody scarp, and through its thick copse, the roe had made
+     narrow galleries, which communicated with the ivy corridors
+     on the face of the craig, to which there were corresponding
+     ways upon the opposite side. In that fortress of the rock, for
+     shelter from the sun and flies, and seclusion from the stir of
+     the world during the day in the heat of summer, the red-deer
+     and roe made their secret haunt, concealed behind the deep dim
+     veil of leaves, unseen and unsuspected in the cool hollows of
+     the cliff. The prying eye might search the craig from below,
+     and the beaters or the woodmen might whistle, and whoop, and
+     shout above, but nothing appeared or moved except the gray
+     falcon, which rose channering out of the rifts. Above the craig
+     the wooded bank was so abrupt, that to the front view there
+     was no indication of a slope, and any who passed quickly over
+     the brow was immediately out of sight. At each descent beyond
+     the extremities of the whole range of rocks there was a common
+     roe's run and pass, which was supposed to be 'deadly sure' if
+     the deer took the path, since the precipice below was believed
+     to be an infallible barrier against any intermediate escape.
+     Often, however, when pressed upon the terrace above, the deer
+     neither went through the passes nor turned against the beaters,
+     but vanished as if by magic--nobody could tell where; and it
+     was the common opinion of the drivers and fishermen, that, when
+     forced near the river, they threw themselves over the craigs
+     'for spite,'--a belief often confirmed by old Davie Simpson, who
+     declared that he had often found their bodies beneath the rocks,
+     and in the Cluach, the Clerk's Pool, and the 'Furling Hole.' He
+     did not, however, relate what _wounds_ they had, and the truth
+     was, that those which disappeared at the brow of the Ledanreich
+     dashed down the sudden dip of the bank between the precipices,
+     and, turning through the ivy corridors, went out through the
+     copse galleries upon the other side, and either descended to the
+     water or skirted below the pass, and went back into the forest.
+     Those which were found dead were such as had been mortally
+     wounded at some in-wood pass, and, unable to take, or cross
+     the water, had died on the beach, or been carried down by the
+     river. In the same mysterious passages which gave concealment
+     and escape to the stags and bucks, the does were used to lay
+     with their kids, and from thence at morning and evening they
+     brought them out to pluck the tender grass upon the green banks
+     beyond. Often from the brow above, or from behind the ivy
+     screen, we have watched their 'red garment' stealing through the
+     boughs, followed by their little pair drawing their slender legs
+     daintily through the wet dew, and turning their large velvet
+     ears to catch every passing sound upon the breeze as it brought
+     the hum of the water, or the crow of the distant cock--now
+     trotting before, now lingering behind their dam, now nestling
+     together, now starting off as the gale suddenly rustled the
+     leaves behind them--then listening and re-uniting in a timorous
+     plump, pricking their ears, and bobbing their little black noses
+     in the wind,--then, as the doe dropped on her knees in the moss,
+     and laid her side on the warm spot where the morning sun glanced
+     in through the branches, they gambolled about her, leaping over
+     her back, and running round in little circles, uttering that
+     soft, wild, plaintive cry like the treble note of an accordion,
+     till, weary of their sport, they lay down at her side, and
+     slept while she watched as only a mother can. No marvel it was
+     that they loved that safe and fair retreat, with all its songs
+     and flowers, its plenty and repose. All around was sweet, and
+     beautiful, and abundant, such as the poetical imagination of the
+     painter can rarely compose, and _never_, unless like Salvator
+     he has lived in the wilderness with its free denizens. Upon the
+     summit above the craig there was a broad and verdant terrace
+     surrounded by ivied pines and feathering birches, and upon a
+     little green glade in the midst grow two of the most beautiful
+     objects ever produced by art or nature. These were a pair of
+     twin thorns exactly similar in size, age, and form, and standing
+     about three yards from each other: their stems as straight as
+     shafts, and their round and even heads like vast bushes of wild
+     thyme, but each so overgrown with ivy and woodbine, that their
+     slender trunks appeared like fretted columns, over which the
+     thorny foliage served as a trellis to suspend the heavy plumes
+     of the ivy and the golden tassels of the woodbine. Many a
+     'ladye's bower' we have seen, and many a rich and costly plant
+     reared by the care of man, but none so beautiful as those lonely
+     sisters of the forest, planted by His hand in His great garden,
+     where none beheld but those for whom He made it lovely--the
+     ravens of the rock, the deer who couched under its shade by
+     night, and the birds who sang their matins and their even-song
+     out of its sweet boughs."
+
+If we go on quoting at this rate, we shall never reach the hill, and
+as yet we have not started from the hut. To say the truth, we are
+in no hurry, and neither, we suspect, upon many occasions were the
+Stuarts, indomitable huntsmen as they are. What though at night the
+river swept with the sound of thunder below, making the solid rock
+vibrate to its deep foundation,--what though the wind swept mightily
+down the ravine, swaying the trees like saplings, and threatening to
+tear them away,--what though the windows of heaven were open, and
+the deluge came down, and the bark of the hill-fox sounded sharp
+above the roaring of the water and the wood,--yet within that little
+bothy that rests upon the face of the craig, the wearied huntsmen
+slept peacefully; and in the morning, says one of them,--"I was
+awakened as usual by the whistle of the robin in the bird-cherry,
+and the sharp note of the blue bonnet sharpening his little saw on
+the top of the holly. I went out to the narrow terre-plain over the
+craig. The wind was gone, and the sun smiling on the still leaves
+and dewy grass--the flood torrent of the river dancing and laughing
+in its light, and the calm bright air breathing with the sweet
+perfume of the damp plants, and all the freshness and fragrance of
+the forest wilderness." We back it against the forest of Ardennes!
+
+Every true hunter is humane. What! you say--do you call it humane
+to persecute the unfortunate stag, the monarch of the wilds, to the
+death?--to drive rifle-bullets into the target of the harmless roe?
+to murder otters by the dozen, and to slaughter seals by the score?
+Indubitably we do. Let us reason a little upon this. Yesterday,
+you recollect that you dined upon very juvenile veal, smothered in
+a mess of dingy vegetable matter which we apprehend to have been
+sorrel, after the beastly fashion of the Gauls. Posterior to that,
+you devoured the larger moiety of a duckling. This morning we saw
+you, with our own eyes, regaling yourself at the club, between the
+intervals of muffin, with what assuredly were cutlets of lamb. After
+all this, can you have the face to stand up and defend your own
+humanity? For how many days had the sun dawned upon that luckless
+calf, the mangled fragments of which upon your platter rather
+resembled the rags of a kid-glove, than food meet for the stomach
+of a Christian? How long had the feeble quackle of Draco been heard
+round the row of peas near which he unsuspiciously perambulated,
+little dreaming how much the pods thereof were mixed up with his
+future destiny? How many races were run upon the meadow by that
+perished daughter of the sheep? Three infantine lives cut off simply
+for your sole gormandising! This is but a slight case. Set you down
+to a rook-pie, and you will engulf a dozen unfortunates before you
+bury your visage in the pewter. Pay for you at Blackwall, and the
+whitebait will disappear by the thousand. It is in vain that you
+attempt to shift the atrocity of your inordinate appetite from your
+own shoulders to those of the grazier, the butcher, the poulterer,
+or the fisherman. Cobden, or Joe Hume, or any other of the political
+economists belonging to the tribe who would starve the workman in
+order that they may guzzle themselves, will tell you that invariably
+the demand regulates the supply. You, therefore, are the responsible
+party: the young have fallen into your Scylla--the immature of
+days have been swept into the vortex of your Charybdis! Moreover,
+if you were a sportsman--which you are not--our minds would be
+grievously troubled for the future safety of the singing-birds.
+Welford, the friend of Bright, as we all remember, proposed a grand
+crusade throughout Britain against the feathered tribe; and you
+are not at all unlikely to join in a general St Bartholomew of the
+sparrows. Do you venture to retort upon us? Do you think we take
+life unnecessarily, or that we are base enough to use our weapons
+until the quarry has reached its prime? No calf or fawn ever fell
+by the hand of the genuine hunter--no cheeper or pout ever sullied
+the interior of the sportsman's bag. Not until the better part of
+his life has been run,--till his muscles are hard as iron, his slot
+deep, and his branches towering on the beam,--not until he has lived
+and loved, do we strike down, as if with lightning and painless
+death, the great hart in the middle of the wilderness. But to all
+innocent things--to the harmless indwellers of the forest and moor,
+the true hunter is a guardian and a friend. The strong man is ever
+brave, and none but the strong can pass to where the herds of the
+mountain dwell.
+
+One more scene at the Hut, and we shall illustrate this subject
+further.
+
+     "But though our bothie was far from resembling the Peri
+     Paribanon's cell, or the rock-palace where the old kaiser keeps
+     his court in the bowels of the Unterberg--we loved it, not
+     only for its bucks and stags, and all its greenwood cheer, but
+     for the love of nature by which it was surrounded. Beyond its
+     'vert and venison,' there was a world of life and interest for
+     those who had the eye to mark and the heart to read its book.
+     On every side we had companions; from the passenger which came
+     from Norway, to the little native guest--the robin which roosted
+     in the holly-bush above us. '_The_ robin?'--you smile and say.
+     Yes, there was but one. He lived in the bush, as we lived in
+     the bothie, and we were his neighbours too long not to be very
+     well acquainted. His species, as well as all the small tribes,
+     conformable to the minuteness of their range and habits, are
+     very local, and may be found all the year in, or near, the same
+     place; and those who feed them will rarely wait many minutes
+     for their appearance. There were many robins which lived about
+     the bothie, and all were continually in its vicinity, and very
+     tame; but none so gentle and grateful as our little neighbour
+     in the holly. They would, however, enter the hut, sit on the
+     bed or the table, and hop about the floor, and, when I went
+     out, follow me to the brae. They liked very much to see me turn
+     up the soil, which always provided them with a little feast;
+     accordingly, they were never absent at the planting of a shrub
+     or a flower; and when I brought home, in my shooting-bag, a
+     tuft of primroses, pyrolas, or lilies of the valley, they were
+     always in attendance to see them put into the bank. For watching
+     my occupation, they preferred something more elevated than the
+     ground, but not so high as the branches of the trees, which
+     were too far from the earth to give them a clear sight of what
+     I turned up; for their accommodation, therefore, I made little
+     crosses and crotchets, and, when I was planting, set them up
+     beside me, moving them as I proceeded from place to place.
+     Each was immediately occupied by an attentive observer; and,
+     whenever an insect or a worm was discovered, one of the nearest
+     darted down and caught it, even from between my fingers, and
+     disappeared for a few moments under the rock or behind the great
+     holly, to enjoy his success undisturbed. At his disappearance
+     his place was immediately occupied by another, but at the return
+     of the first it was amiably resigned by his successor. The
+     blue-bonnets were almost as numerous as the robins, but they
+     never arrived at the same intimacy and confidence. They never
+     entered the bothie in my presence, and even when I fed them
+     they would not approach as long as I remained outside the door;
+     but as soon as I went in they descended four or five together,
+     chattering and fluttering about the entrance, peeping in at
+     the little window, and stretching their necks as far as they
+     could, to see where I was, and if all was right. Then they would
+     begin their breakfast on what I had left for them, talking a
+     great deal about it, but occasionally ogling the door, in a
+     manner from which I concluded that there was but small esteem
+     or gratitude in their conversation.----Far different was the
+     friendship of our little neighbour in the holly. In the morning
+     he used to come down and perch on the arm of the bird-cherry,
+     which stretched over the precipice before the door, waiting
+     for its opening and the preparation of the breakfast, which he
+     always shared; and when we were seated he would venture over the
+     sill, and gather the crumbs about the table at our feet. Often
+     when the first blood-red streaks of the autumn morning shone
+     like lurid fire through the little window, we were awakened by
+     his sad and solitary whistle, as he sat on his usual branch,
+     his jet-black eye cast towards the door, impatient for our
+     appearance. Many of his little cousins there were in the wood,
+     with whom we were also well acquainted, and between us happened
+     many an incident, which increased our interest and familiarity.
+
+     "I remember a day, one of those deep still blue days so solemn
+     in the forest; the ground was covered with a foot of snow, and
+     all the trees were hanging like gigantic ostrich feathers; but
+     all the world was blue,--the sky was a sleeping mass of those
+     heavy indigo clouds which forebode a 'feeding storm,'--not a
+     tempest, but a fall of snow; for, in Scotland, snow is called
+     '_storm_,' however light and still it falls: thus, in tracking
+     the deer, we say he 'has brushed the _storm_ from the heather;'
+     and a '_feeding storm_' is when the clouds are continually
+     feeding the earth with its velvet pall.--The reflection of
+     those deep-blue clouds cast a delicate tint of the same colour
+     over the whitened world. I was standing with my back against a
+     huge pine--one of the old remnant of the great forest of Moray,
+     which had, no doubt, heard the bell toll for the first Stuart
+     earl.--I counted the rings in a smaller tree which once stood in
+     the same hollow;--I shunned its wreck as I would have avoided a
+     corpse which I could not bury, and always, when I passed near
+     it, averted my face; but one day running to cut off a buck, and
+     just heading him, I dropped on my knee to receive him as he
+     came out from a mass of junipers, and when reloading, I found
+     that I had knelt by the stump of my old friend.--I counted two
+     hundred and sixty-four rings in his wood!--how many earls had
+     he seen?--Well, I was leaning against his elder brother, as I
+     suppose by the size. I had been there for a long time, waiting
+     to hear the dogs bring back a buck from--I don't know now from
+     where.----As I had been through all the swamps, and stripes, and
+     wet hollows on that side of the forest, and waded through two
+     and three feet of snow-wreaths, my kilt and hose, and, as it
+     seemed, my flesh was saturated to the bones with 'snaw-bree,'
+     and I began to beat, first one foot, and then the other, to
+     quicken the blood, which was warm enough in my trunk.--I had
+     scarce commenced this exercise, when I heard a little 'tic!'
+     close to my ear, and the soft low voice of a bird--a sound,
+     neither a whistle nor a chirp, but which I knew very well before
+     I turned and saw the robin, who sat on a dry branch within a
+     yard of my cheek. I guessed what had brought him: he was very
+     cold, his ruffled back humped as round as a ball, and his tail
+     drooping almost perpendicular with his legs, as if it was a
+     little brown peg to lean on, like that on which the travelling
+     Tyrolean merchant rests his pack. He looked at me with his large
+     black eye, then, with a flirt of his tail and a bow with his
+     head, indicated that, if I had no objection, he should like to
+     descend to the place which I occupied; the object of which
+     he expressed, by turning his head sidelong, and directing one
+     eye into the black earth which my foot had beaten bare in the
+     snow. I immediately drew back a couple of feet, and he instantly
+     dropped into the spot of mould, peeped and picked under every
+     leaf and clod of earth, and, when there was nothing more, hopped
+     up on the guard of my rifle, on which I was leaning, and,
+     turning his head, looked at me with his upper eye.--I again
+     stepped forward, and recommenced my foot-exercise, during which
+     he returned to his branch, examining my progress with some
+     impatience. As soon as my foot was removed, he again dropped
+     into the hollow, and busily collected all the little grubs and
+     chrysales which, though too small for me to see as I stood, I
+     knew abounded beneath the sere leaves and thatch of moss and
+     sticks. In this manner I repeated his supply several times,
+     on one of which, when I was too long, or he too impatient, he
+     dropped from his perch, and hovered over the space in which my
+     foot was at work, and, as I continued, lighted on the point of
+     the other shoe, and remained there, peeping into the hollow,
+     until I withdrew my foot, and then descended to finish his
+     repast. When he was satisfied, he ruffed his feathers, looked
+     up sidelong to me, and, after a shake of satisfaction, resumed
+     his perch close to my head, and, after pruning and oiling his
+     feathers, mounted another branch higher, and opened his little
+     throat with that most sad, sweet, and intermitting warble which
+     gives such a melancholy charm to a still winter's day."
+
+Take a picture of the roe, and you will hardly doubt the humanity
+of our sportsmen. But why talk of it thus? No one, we hope,
+save a member of the Manchester manufacturing school could feel
+otherwise--certainly not a genuine hills-man; and we quote the
+passage simply for its extreme beauty and perfect fidelity to
+nature. No creature is more beautiful than the kid of the roe-deer,
+especially when seen in their rest, or moving through the ferns, on
+a summer evening, beside their gentle mother the doe.
+
+     "In the bedding season the does retire into the most secret
+     thickets, or other lonely places, to produce their young, and
+     cover them so carefully that they are very rarely found; we
+     have, however, deceived their vigilance. There was a solitary
+     doe which lived in the hollow below the Braigh-cloiche-leithe
+     in Tarnaway. I suppose that we had killed her 'marrow;' but I
+     was careful not to disturb her haunt, for she was very fat and
+     round, stepped with much caution, and never went far to feed.
+     Accordingly, when at evening and morning she came out to pick
+     the sweet herbs at the foot of the brae, or by the little green
+     well in its face, I trode softly out of her sight, and if I
+     passed at noon, made a circuit from the black willows, or thick
+     junipers, where she reposed during the heat. At last, one fine
+     sunny morning I saw her come tripping out from her bower of
+     young birches as light as a fairy, and very gay and 'canty'--but
+     so thin, nobody but an old acquaintance could have known her.
+     For various mornings afterwards I saw her on the bank, but she
+     was always restless and anxious--listening and searching the
+     wind--trotting up and down--picking a leaf here and a leaf
+     there, and after her short and unsettled meal, she would take a
+     frisk round leap into the air--dart down into her secret bower,
+     and appear no more until the twilight. In a few days, however,
+     her excursions became a little more extended, generally to the
+     terrace above the bank, but never out of sight of the thicket
+     below. At length she ventured to a greater distance, and one day
+     I stole down the brae among the birches. In the middle of the
+     thicket there was a group of young trees growing out of a carpet
+     of deep moss, which yielded like a down pillow. The prints of
+     the doe's slender-forked feet were thickly tracked about the
+     hollow, and in the centre there was a bed of the velvet 'fog,'
+     which seemed a little higher than the rest, but so natural,
+     that it would not have been noticed by any unaccustomed eye. I
+     carefully lifted the green cushion, and under its veil, rolled
+     close together, the head of each resting on the flank of the
+     other, nestled two beautiful little kids, their large velvet
+     ears laid smooth on their dappled necks, their spotted sides
+     sleek and shining as satin, and their little delicate legs as
+     slender as hazel wands, shod with tiny glossy shoes as smooth
+     and black as ebony, while their large dark eyes looked at me out
+     of the corners with a full, mild, quiet gaze, which had not yet
+     learned to fear the hand of man: still they had a nameless doubt
+     which followed every motion of mine--their little limbs shrunk
+     from my touch, and their velvet fur rose and fell quickly; but
+     as I was about to replace the moss, one turned its head, lifted
+     its sleek ears towards me, and licked my hand as I laid their
+     soft mantle over them. I often saw them afterwards when they
+     grew strong, and came abroad upon the brae, and frequently
+     I called off old Dreadnought when he crossed their warm
+     track. Upon these occasions he would stand and look at me with
+     wonder--turn his head from side to side--snuff the ground again,
+     to see if it was possible that he could be mistaken--and when he
+     found that there was no disputing the scent, cock one ear at me
+     with a keener inquiry, and seeing that I was in earnest, trot
+     heavily onward with a sigh.
+
+     "The affection of the roe for their young is very strong; and
+     timid and feeble as they are by nature, inspired by the danger
+     of their offspring, they become brave and daring, and, in their
+     defence, will attack not only animals but men. We were one day
+     passing along the west walk of Eilean-Agais, and, beyond a turn
+     in the path, heard the sound of feet running towards us, and
+     immediately out shot a cat round the corner, and, close at her
+     heels, a doe pursuing her with great eagerness. Knowing that her
+     pursuer could not overtake her, and having no instinctive dread
+     of her kind, the cat did not give herself the trouble to run
+     faster than just sufficient to keep beyond her reach, while the
+     doe pursued her with an angry scrambling pace, and, whenever she
+     was near overtaking her, endeavoured to kneel on her back. This
+     is a mode of attack common to deer as well as cattle, which,
+     when they have overthrown their object, not only gore them with
+     their horns, but bruise and crush them with their knees. At our
+     appearance there was a pause; the cat cantered up the brae to
+     the top of a little rock, where she lay down in the sun to see
+     what would happen between us and her pursuer. The doe, after
+     a few bounds, turned round and looked indignantly at us, and
+     stamped and belled in great displeasure; this she continued for
+     some moments, glancing occasionally at the cat with a strong
+     desire to resume her chase; but being restrained by a sense of
+     prudence, she slowly ascended the hill, stopping at intervals to
+     stamp and bell at us, who knew very well that she had two kids
+     in the junipers upon the craig."
+
+Now let us up to the hill, where the mighty herds are feeding.
+Scotland will, in all probability, never see a tainchel more;
+indeed, save at a royal hunting, it were scarcely desirable now. The
+feudal system has melted away, the clans are broken and scattered,
+and we care not again to see a pageant which is indissolubly
+connected in our memories with national gallantry and misfortune.
+But the deer are still on the mountain and in the wood, and we shall
+seek them in their former haunt. Wood-stalking, though the Stuarts
+speak of it with considerable enthusiasm, was never much to our
+taste. It is true that the largest stags are generally to be met
+with in the wood, and we have followed the sport ere now in the
+Spessart, among the pines of Darmstadt, and the thickets of Strath
+Garve; but it must always partake more or less of the character
+of driving, and we never have felt, while engaged in it, that
+enthusiasm and keenness which sends the blood to the heart of the
+hunter when he first discovers a herd in the gorge of some solitary
+glen. Then he feels that he must put forth the whole resources of
+his art--that he must baffle the acutest of all instincts by the aid
+of human cunning--that he has a thousand difficulties to overcome
+before he can arrive within reach of his quarry, and that a single
+false step or miscalculation is sufficient to destroy the labour,
+the patience, and the vigilance of a day.
+
+Great, fat fallow-deer, waxing into obesity in a park, do not seem
+to mind the approach of a human being, even were he an alderman
+redolent of black-currant jelly. But the red-deer, as many incipient
+stalkers know to their cost, has a very different amount of
+perception. Unless you take the wind of him, he is off like a shot,
+though your distance may be upwards of a mile. In the words of the
+old stalker, "Above all things, let not the devil tempt you to
+trifle with a deer's nose: you may cross his sight, walk up to him
+in a gray coat, or, if standing against a tree or rock near your
+own colour, wait till he walks up to you; but you cannot cross his
+nose, even at an incredible distance, but he will feel the tainted
+air. Colours or forms may be deceptive or alike; there are gray,
+brown, and green rocks and stocks as well as men, and all these
+may be equivocal; but there is _but one scent of man_, and that he
+never doubts or mistakes; that is filled with danger and terror,
+and one whiff of its poison at a mile off, and, whether feeding or
+lying, his head is instantly up, his nose to the wind, and, in the
+next moment, his broad antlers turn, and he is away to the hill or
+the wood; and if there are no green peas, corn, or potatoes in the
+neighbourhood, he may not be seen on the same side of the forest
+for a month." A word to the wise, from the lips of a Celtic Solon!
+
+So much for your chance, if, in the plenitude of your full
+flavour, you take the hill, regardless of the currents of the air,
+which, moreover, are perpetually shifting. But there are other
+difficulties. Though not impossible, it is very ticklish work to get
+within shot of a deer by any other means save diligent creeping, and
+sometimes, when the ground is unusually flat and open, that method
+of approach is impracticable. Then there are divers enemies--that
+is, of yours, for in reality they are scouts to the deer--whom you
+must try particularly to avoid. This is not easy. Sometimes when
+you are sinuating like a serpent towards the especial stag of your
+heart, a blundering covey of grouse will start from the heather, and
+give an effectual alarm; sometimes the shrill whistle of the plover
+will change your anticipated triumph into mourning; and sometimes
+a charge of that disagreeable cavalry the mountain sheep, little
+less sagacious and wary than the deer themselves, will put the
+whole of the glen into disorder. But the worst enemies you have to
+guard against are the hinds, who are usually so disposed as to be
+out upon the feeding-grounds, and thus to mask the stag. In such a
+position, it becomes a point of honour to circumvent the lady, which
+is any thing but an easy task. The Stuarts give us an admirable
+recollection of such a scene in the forest of Glen-Fidich, which
+is so exciting that, though rather long, we make no apology for
+transferring it to the columns of Maga.
+
+     "After about an hour's stalking, we came upon the shoulder
+     of a long slope, which looks into the gorges of two or three
+     short glens, opening to a narrow plain, on which we saw a noble
+     sight--a herd of four or five hundred deer, among which were
+     many very fine stags. After having feasted my eyes with this
+     splendid sight--the illustrious cavalry of the hill, the crowned
+     and regal array of the wilderness--I began to calculate how to
+     make the approach, how to slip between the chain of vidette
+     hinds, and numerous picquets of small stags, which commanded
+     almost every knoll and hollow. In the centre of the main body,
+     with a large plump of hinds--which he herded within a wide
+     vacant circle--there was a mighty black hart, with a head like
+     a blasted pine, and a cluster of points in each crown. Though
+     each stag of the surrounding circle had not less than ten
+     points, there were none which approached his size, and they all
+     kept at a respectful distance, while he marched round and round
+     the central group of hinds. 'He will have them all in the ring
+     before long,' said MacLellan; 'yon's one of the old heroes of
+     the Monadh-liath; he has not been four-and-twenty hours in the
+     forest.' I looked with an eager and longing eye at his gigantic
+     stature, but there was no apparent possibility of approaching
+     even the outward circle of stags. The herd was scattered over
+     all the ground between the hills, and every little knoll and
+     eminence had its restless picquets, and plumps of discomfited
+     stags, which had been beaten by the great hart, and were chafing
+     about, driving off and broding the buttocks of all the inferior
+     stags which came in their way, then returning and staring
+     with jealous disgust at the mighty stranger, who gave them no
+     notice, except when one or two more audacious, or less severely
+     beaten, made a few steps before his companions; upon which he
+     immediately charged, drove them before him, and scattered the
+     nearest in every direction. Upon these occasions, some hind of
+     greater levity than the rest took the opportunity of extending
+     her pasture, or paying her compliments to her companions, for
+     which she immediately received a good prod in the haunch, and
+     was turned back again into the centre.
+
+     "'There is no doing any thing there,' said I.
+
+     "''Deed no', replied MacLellan, shutting up his glass, 'we be to
+     go down to the foot of the burn.'
+
+     "This was a stream which runs through the middle of the narrow
+     plain, and empties itself into the Fidich, about four miles
+     below, at the east end of the forest. Before resolving upon
+     this, however, we made an attempt to cross the little glen
+     to the north-west; but, after passing round one hill, and
+     nearly to the top of another, we fell in with a small herd
+     of insignificant stags, but none among them being worth the
+     disturbance of the great herd; and being unable to pass them
+     unobserved, we were obliged to adopt the last alternative, and
+     descend to the Fidich. In about an hour and a half we performed
+     this retrogration, and, having crossed at the forester's house,
+     ascended the burn till we again approached the deer, and
+     stealing from knoll to knoll, again came in sight of the herd.
+     The outskirts of its wide circle had been much broken and
+     deranged by the jousts and expulsions during our absence; and we
+     saw that it was impossible to get near the better stags without
+     taking the channel of the stream. We immediately descended
+     into the water, and crept up the middle, sometimes compelled
+     to crouch so low, that the pools reached our hips, and, as the
+     stones were round and slippery, it was very uneasy to proceed
+     without floundering and splashing. At length, however, we were
+     within the circle of the deer: there was not a breath of wind,
+     and the least sound was audible in the profound stillness.
+     We slipped through the water like eels, till we came to a
+     little rock, which, crossing the burn, made a shelving fall,
+     which there was no means of passing, but by drawing ourselves
+     up the shoot of the stream. With some difficulty I pushed my
+     rifle before me along the edge of the bank, and then, while
+     the water ran down our breasts, we glided up through the gush
+     of the stream, and reached the ledge above. The return of
+     the water, which I had obstructed, made, however, a rush and
+     plash different from its accustomed monotonous hum, and I had
+     scarce time to lay flat in the burn, when a _hind_ sprung up
+     within a few yards, and trotted briskly away, then another, and
+     another. I thought that all was over, and that, in the next
+     moment, we should hear all the clattering hoofs going over the
+     turf like a squadron of cavalry. All remained still, however,
+     and, in a few seconds, I saw the first hind wheel about, and
+     look back steadily towards the fall. I was rejoiced to observe
+     that she had not seen us, and had only been disturbed by the
+     unusual sound of the water. She continued, however, anxious and
+     suspicious--watched and listened--picked off the tops of the
+     heather--then walked on, with her ears laid back, and her neck
+     and step stilting away as stiff as if she had been hung up in
+     the larder for a week. This, however, was not the worst; all the
+     surrounding _hinds_ which noticed her gait gathered here and
+     there, and stood on the tops of the little knolls, like statues,
+     as straight as pucks, with nothing visible but their narrow
+     necks and two peg-legs, and their broad ears perked immovably
+     towards us, like long-eared bats. MacLellan gave me a rueful
+     look. 'Cha n'eil comas air.' 'Never mind,' said I, 'we shall
+     see who will be tired first.' The forester gave a glance of
+     satisfaction, slid up his glass on the dry bank, and we lay as
+     still as the stones around us, till the little trouts, which had
+     been disturbed by our convulsion, became so accustomed to our
+     shapes, that they again emerged from under the flat pebbles, and
+     returned to their station in the middle of the stream, skulling
+     their little tails between my legs with no more concern than if
+     I had been a forked tree. At length the immobility of the hinds
+     began to give way: first one ear turned back, then another,
+     then they became sensible of the flies, and began to flirt and
+     jerk as usual, and, finally, one applied her slender toe to
+     her ear, and another rubbed her velvet nose upon her knee;--it
+     was more than half an hour, however, before, one by one, they
+     began to steal away, perking and snuffing, and turning to gaze
+     at the least air that whiffed about them. At length they all
+     disappeared, except one gray, lean, haggard old grandmother
+     of hinds, who had no teeth, and limped with one leg, probably
+     from a wound which she received fifty or perhaps a hundred
+     years before I was born. Her vigilance, however, was only
+     sharpened by age; time, and the experience of many generations,
+     had made her acquainted with all the wiles and crafts of the
+     hill,--her eyes and ears were as active as a kid's, and I have
+     no doubt she could smell like Tobit's devil.--MacLellan looked
+     at her through his glass, and spit into the burn, and grinned
+     against the sun--as if he was lying in the bilboes instead of
+     cold water.--The old sorceress continued to watch us without
+     relaxation, and at last lay down on the brow of the knoll, and
+     employed her rumination in obstinate contemplation of the bank
+     under which we were ambushed. There was now no alternative but
+     to recommence our progress up the burn; and as I was determined
+     to circumvent the hind, I prepared for every inconvenience
+     which could be inflicted by the opposite vexations of a sharp,
+     rough, slippery, and gravelly stream. Fortunately, at the place
+     where we then were, it was so narrow, that we could hold by the
+     heather on both sides, and thus drag ourselves forward through
+     the water, between each of which advances I pushed my rifle on
+     before me. In this manner we reached the turn of the brook,
+     where I concluded that we should be round the shoulder of the
+     knoll, and out of sight of the hind, who lay upon its east brow.
+     This was effected so successfully, that, when we looked behind,
+     we only saw her back, and her head and ears still pointing at
+     the spot which we had left. One hundred yards more would bring
+     us within sight of the great hart; the general position of the
+     herd had not changed, and I hoped to find him near the central
+     knoll of the flat, at the base of which the burn circled. We
+     were almost surrounded by deer; but the greater number were
+     small vigilant hinds, the abomination and curse of a stalker.
+     At length, however, we reached the knoll, and rested, to take
+     breath, at its foot; I examined my rifle, to see that the lock
+     was clean and dry. We took a view of all around us, and, drawing
+     ourselves cautiously out of the burn, slid up through the
+     heather on the south side of the eminence.--Scarce, however, had
+     our legs cleared the stream, when we discovered a pair of ears
+     not above fifteen yards from the other side.--'_Mo mhallachd
+     ort!_' [My curse upon you]--whispered MacLellan. She had not
+     discovered us, however, and we glided round the base of the
+     knoll--but on the other side lay three hinds and a calf, and I
+     could see no trace of the great hart.--On the edge of the burn,
+     however, further up, there were five very good stags, and a
+     herd of about thirty deer, on the slope of the north brae. All
+     round us the ground was covered with hinds; for the prevalence
+     of the westerly wind, during the last few days, had drawn the
+     deer to that end of the forest. Upon the spot where I lay,
+     though I could only see a portion of the field, I counted four
+     hundred and seventy; and it was evident that no movement could
+     be made upon that side. We tried again the opposite slope of the
+     knoll;--the hind which we had first seen was still in the same
+     place, but she had laid down her head, and showed only the gray
+     line of her back over the heather. We drew ourselves cautiously
+     up the slope and looked over the summit. On the other side
+     there was a small flat moss, about seventy yards in breadth;
+     then another hillock; and to the left two more, with little
+     levels, and wet grassy hollows between them. Upon the side of
+     the first knoll there were two young stags and some hinds; but
+     the points of some good horns showed above the crest.--The
+     intervening ground was spotted with straggling hinds, and we
+     might lay where we were till to-morrow morning, without a chance
+     of getting near any of the good deer. While we deliberated,
+     MacLellan thought that, by crawling with extreme caution up a
+     wet hollow to the left, we might have a chance to approach the
+     stags whose horns we had seen behind the other knoll, and, as
+     nothing better could be done, we decided upon this attempt. The
+     sun was going down from the old towers of Auchandun, and we had
+     no more time than would give light for this venture.--We slid
+     away towards the hollow, and, drawing ourselves, inch by inch,
+     though the heather and tall thin grass, had reached the middle
+     of the level between the hillocks, when we heard a stamp and
+     a short grunt close beside us--I had scarce time to turn my
+     head, and catch a glimpse of a base little gray hind who, in
+     crossing the hollow, had stumbled upon us.--It was but a moment:
+     a rapid wheel and rush through the long grass, and I heard the
+     career of a hundred feet going through the hollow. I sprung on
+     my knee, and skaled a dozen small stags and hinds which came
+     upon us full speed; for those behind, not knowing from whence
+     came the alarm, made straight for the hill. The herd were now
+     gathering in all directions; charging--flying--re-uniting,
+     dispersing, and reassembling in utter disorder, like a rout of
+     cavalry.--I made a run for the middle knoll,--two stags, with
+     pretty good heads, met me right in the face.--I did not stop
+     to look at them, but rushed up the brae.--What a sight was
+     seen from its top!--upwards of six hundred deer were charging
+     past--before, behind, around, in all directions.--The stately
+     figure which I sought--the mighty black hart, was slowly
+     ascending an eminence about three hundred yards off, from whence
+     he reconnoitred the ground below; while the disarray of stags
+     and hinds gathered round him, like rallying masses of hussars
+     in the rear of a supporting column. I was so intent upon the
+     king of the forest, that I saw nothing else.--No other heads,
+     forms, numbers, took any place in my senses; all my faculties
+     were on the summit of that height.--At this moment I felt my
+     kilt drawn gently; I took no notice--but a more decided pull
+     made me look round:--MacLellan motioned up the slope, and I
+     saw the points of a good head passing behind a little ridge,
+     about eighty yards away. I looked back at the hart--he was just
+     moving to the hill. What would I have given to have diminished
+     a hundred and fifty yards of the distance which divided us! He
+     passed slowly down the back of the eminence and disappeared, and
+     the gathering herd streamed after him. '_O Chial! A Chial!_'
+     exclaimed the forester--'_bithidh e air falbh!_' The stag whose
+     horns I had seen had come out from behind the ridge, and stood
+     with his broad side towards me, gazing at the herd; but as they
+     moved away, he now began to follow. The disappearance of the
+     great hart, and the disappointment of MacLellan, recalled me to
+     the last chance. I followed the retreating stag with my rifle,
+     passed it before his shoulder, whiz went the two-ounce ball, and
+     he rolled over headlong in the heath, on the other side of the
+     knoll, which the next stretch would have placed between us. I
+     looked to the hill above: the whole herd was streaming up the
+     long green hollow in its west shoulder headed 'by the mighty
+     of the desert.' They rounded and passed the brow, and sloped
+     upward on the other side, till the forest of heads appeared
+     bristling along the sky-line of the summit. In a few moments
+     afterwards, as the sun was going down upon Scur-na-Lapaich, and
+     the far western hills of Loch Duaich, the terrible wide-forked
+     tree came out in the clear eastern sky on the top of the hill,
+     and, crowding after, at least two hundred heads--crossing, and
+     charging, and mingling--their polished points flashing in the
+     parting sunbeams, and from many a horn, the long steamers of the
+     moss fluttering and flying like the pennons and bannerolles of
+     lances. The herd continued to file along the ridge of the hill,
+     and wheeling below the crest, countermarched along the sky-line,
+     till their heads and horns slowly decreased against the light."
+
+With such a book as this before us, we could go on alternately
+commenting and extracting until we had broken the back of the
+Number. Even now we are dying to pilfer the account of the late
+Glengarry's course with "Black Dulochan," and the no less exciting
+history of the three day's ruse with a roebuck. But abstinence is a
+virtue which is forced upon us in the present instance, rather from
+the lack of space than from any exercise of voluntary discretion;
+and we shall now leave the deer without further molestation for
+a season, hoping soon to encounter them in person with our rifle
+somewhere about the skirts of Cairn-Gorm.
+
+This is, we have no hesitation in saying, the best work on
+deer-stalking which has yet been written; and the amount of
+information which it contains regarding the habits of the stag and
+roe, combined with the vivid pictures of which we have made such
+ample use, cannot fail to render it popular. In an antiquarian point
+of view, it is also highly interesting; for it embodies a large
+amount of traditionary lore, sketches of the clans, and fragments of
+Highland song, of much superior merit to those which have hitherto
+come into our hands. The disquisitions, too, upon the disappearance
+of some animals once indigenous to Scotland--such as the wolf,
+the elk, the wild bull, and the beaver--exhibit a great amount of
+research, and supply a gap which has long been wanted in the page of
+natural history.
+
+One word to the authors--though we fear our words must travel a long
+way before they can reach them in a foreign land. Why should they
+not recast and add to their second volume, so as to make it a single
+and unrivalled work upon the noblest sports of the Highlands? If
+it has proved so fascinating, as in truth we have felt it, in the
+more cumbrous shape of notes, how much better would it be if issued,
+not as an appendage to the poems, but in a distinct and articulate
+form? Perpend upon this, John Sobieski and Charles Edward, at
+your leisure; and let us add, that we trust some of your more
+gloomy anticipations may fall short of reality; that the walks of
+Eilean-Agais, that little Eden of the north, may again be gladdened
+by your presence; and that the sound of your hunting-horns may once
+more be heard in the woods of Tarnaway, and on the hills near the
+sources of the Findhorn.
+
+
+
+
+THE BURIED FLOWER.
+
+
+    In the silence of my chamber,
+      When the night is still and deep,
+    And the drowsy heave of ocean
+      Mutters in its charmed sleep,
+
+    Oft I hear the angel voices
+      That have thrill'd me long ago,--
+    Voices of my lost companions,
+      Lying deep beneath the snow.
+
+    O, the garden I remember,
+      In the gay and sunny spring,
+    When our laughter made the thickets
+      And the arching alleys ring!
+
+    O the merry burst of gladness!
+      O the soft and tender tone!
+    O the whisper never utter'd
+      Save to one fond ear alone!
+
+    O the light of life that sparkled
+      In those bright and bounteous eyes!
+    O the blush of happy beauty,
+      Tell-tale of the heart's surprise!
+
+    O the radiant light that girdled
+      Field and forest, land and sea,
+    When we all were young together,
+      And the earth was new to me!
+
+    Where are now the flowers we tended?
+      Wither'd, broken, branch and stem;
+    Where are now the hopes we cherish'd?
+      Scatter'd to the winds with them.
+
+    For ye, too, were flowers, ye dear ones!
+      Nursed in hope and rear'd in love,
+    Looking fondly ever upward
+      To the clear blue heaven above:
+
+    Smiling on the sun that cheer'd us,
+      Rising lightly from the rain,
+    Never folding up your freshness
+      Save to give it forth again:
+
+    Never shaken, save by accents
+      From a tongue that was not free,
+    As the modest blossom trembles
+      At the wooing of the bee.
+
+    O! 'tis sad to lie and reckon
+      All the days of faded youth,
+    All the vows that we believed in,
+      All the words we spoke in truth.
+
+    Sever'd--were it sever'd only
+      By an idle thought of strife,
+    Such as time might knit together;
+      Not the broken chord of life!
+
+    O my heart! that once so truly
+      Kept another's time and tune,
+    Heart, that kindled in the spring-tide,
+      Look around thee in the noon.
+
+    Where are they who gave the impulse
+      To thy earliest thought and flow?
+    Look around the ruin'd garden--
+      All are wither'd, dropp'd, or low!
+
+    Seek the birth-place of the lily,
+      Dearer to the boyish dream
+    Than the golden cups of Eden,
+      Floating on its slumbrous stream;
+
+    Never more shalt thou behold her--
+      She, the noblest, fairest, best:
+    She that rose in fullest beauty,
+      Like a queen, above the rest.
+
+    Only still I keep her image
+      As a thought that cannot die,
+    He who raised the shade of Helen
+      Had no greater power than I.
+
+    O! I fling my spirit backward,
+      And I pass o'er years of pain;
+    All I loved is rising round me,
+      All the lost returns again.
+
+    Blow, for ever blow, ye breezes,
+      Warmly as ye did before!
+    Bloom again, ye happy gardens,
+      With the radiant tints of yore!
+
+    Warble out in spray and thicket,
+      All ye choristers unseen,
+    Let the leafy woodland echo
+      With an anthem to its queen!
+
+    Lo! she cometh in her beauty,
+      Stately with a Juno grace,
+    Raven locks, Madonna-braided
+      O'er her sweet and blushing face:
+
+    Eyes of deepest violet, beaming
+      With the love that knows not shame,--
+    Lips, that thrill my inmost being
+      With the utterance of a name.
+
+    And I bend the knee before her,
+      As a captive ought to bow,--
+    Pray thee, listen to my pleading,
+      Sovereign of my soul art thou!
+
+    O my dear and gentle lady,
+      Let me show thee all my pain,
+    Ere the words that late were prison'd
+      Sink into my heart again.
+
+    Love, they say, is very fearful
+      Ere its curtain be withdrawn,
+    Trembling at the thought of error
+      As the shadows scare the fawn.
+
+    Love hath bound me to thee, lady,
+      Since the well-remember'd day
+    When I first beheld thee coming
+      In the light of lustrous May.
+
+    Not a word I dared to utter--
+      More than he who, long ago,
+    Saw the heavenly shapes descending
+      Over Ida's slopes of snow:
+
+    When a low and solemn music
+      Floated through the listening grove,
+    And the throstle's song was silenced,
+      And the doling of the dove:
+
+    When immortal beauty open'd
+      All its grace to mortal sight,
+    And the awe of worship blended
+      With the throbbing of delight.
+
+    As the shepherd stood before them
+      Trembling in the Phrygian dell,
+    Even so my soul and being
+      Own'd the magic of the spell;
+
+    And I watch'd thee, ever fondly,
+      Watch'd thee, dearest, from afar,
+    With the mute and humble homage
+      Of the Indian to a star.
+
+    Thou wert still the Lady Flora
+      In her morning garb of bloom;
+    Where thou wert was light and glory,
+      Where thou wert not, dearth and gloom.
+
+    So for many a day I follow'd
+      For a long and weary while,
+    Ere my heart rose up to bless thee
+      For the yielding of a smile,--
+
+    Ere thy words were few and broken
+      As they answer'd back to mine,
+    Ere my lips had power to thank thee
+      For the gift vouchsafed by thine.
+
+    Then a mighty gush of passion
+      Through my inmost being ran;
+    Then my older life was ended,
+      And a dearer course began.
+
+    Dearer!--O, I cannot tell thee
+      What a load was swept away,
+    What a world of doubt and darkness
+      Faded in the dawning day!
+
+    All my error, all my weakness,
+      All my vain delusions fled:
+    Hope again revived, and gladness
+      Waved its wings above my head.
+
+    Like the wanderer of the desert,
+      When, across the dreary sand,
+    Breathes the perfume from the thickets
+      Bordering on the promised land;
+
+    When afar he sees the palm-trees
+      Cresting o'er the lonely well,
+    When he hears the pleasant tinkle
+      Of the distant camel's bell:
+
+    So a fresh and glad emotion
+      Rose within my swelling breast,
+    And I hurried swiftly onwards
+      To the haven of my rest.
+
+    Thou wert there with word and welcome,
+      With thy smile so purely sweet;
+    And I laid my heart before thee,
+      Laid it, darling, at thy feet!--
+
+    O ye words that sound so hollow
+      As I now recall your tone!
+    What are ye but empty echoes
+      Of a passion crush'd and gone?
+
+    Wherefore should I seek to kindle
+      Light, when all around is gloom?
+    Wherefore should I raise a phantom
+      O'er the dark and silent tomb?
+
+    Early wert thou taken, Mary!
+      In thy fair and glorious prime,
+    Ere the bees had ceased to murmur
+      Through the umbrage of the lime.
+
+    Buds were blowing, waters flowing,
+      Birds were singing on the tree,
+    Every thing was bright and glowing,
+      When the angels came for thee.
+
+    Death had laid aside his terror,
+      And he found thee calm and mild,
+    Lying in thy robes of whiteness,
+      Like a pure and stainless child.
+
+    Hardly had the mountain violet
+      Spread its blossoms on the sod,
+    Ere they laid the turf above thee,
+      And thy spirit rose to God.
+
+    Early wert thou taken, Mary!
+      And I know 'tis vain to weep--
+    Tears of mine can never wake thee
+      From thy sad and silent sleep.
+
+    O away! my thoughts are earthward!
+      Not asleep, my love! art thou,
+    Dwelling in the land of glory
+      With the saints and angels now.
+
+    Brighter, fairer far than living,
+      With no trace of woe or pain,
+    Robed in everlasting beauty,
+      Shall I see thee once again,
+
+    By the light that never fadeth,
+      Underneath eternal skies,
+    When the dawn of resurrection
+      Breaks o'er deathless Paradise.
+
+    W. E. A.
+
+
+
+
+HUZZA FOR THE RULE OF THE WHIGS!
+
+AIR--"_Old Rosin the Beau._"
+
+
+    All ye who are true to the altar and throne,
+      Come join in this ditty with me;
+    And you who don't like it may let it alone,
+      Or listen a little and see.
+    How quietly now we may sleep in our beds,
+      And waken as merry as grigs;
+    Though fears of rebellion hang over our heads,
+      We're safe while we're ruled by the Whigs.
+
+    In the 'nineties we saw (I remember the day)
+      Revolution disguised as Reform;
+    But the country was saved in a different way,
+      By the Pilot that weather'd the storm.
+    Our vessel was steer'd by the bravest and best,
+      And, except a few quality sprigs,
+    The whole English nation had thought it a jest
+      To propose being ruled by the Whigs.
+
+    But as matters now stand in this ill-fated realm,
+      When old comrades will give us the slip,
+    We are strangely compell'd to put men at the helm.
+      To prevent them from scuttling the ship.
+    Only think, for a moment, if Russell were out,
+      How wild he'd be running his rigs!
+    About popular rights he would make such a rout--
+      'Tis lucky we're ruled by the Whigs.
+
+    The Church--can you doubt what her danger would be
+      Were Tories at present in power?
+    Lord John, or his friends, we should certainly see
+      Attacking her posts every hour.
+    But as long as the Bishops may help out his lease,
+      He won't injure a hair of their wigs;
+    Nay, he even proposes the list to increase--
+      So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!
+
+    If Grey were at large, how he'd lay down the law
+      On the cures he for Ireland had found;
+    And swear that he never would rest till he saw
+      Her Establishment razed to the ground.
+    But Grey, while in office, sits muffled and mum,
+      Like a small bird asleep in the twigs;
+    And Ward, in the Commons, is equally dumb--
+      So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!
+
+    If any of us had made war on Repeal
+      With the weapons that Clarendon tries,
+    What shrieks of indignant invective from Shiel
+      At the wrongs of Old Erin would rise.
+    By millions of noisy Milesians back'd,
+      From the peer to the peasant that digs--
+    How would Monaghan murmur that juries were pack'd!--
+      So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!
+
+    On Aliens or Chartists to hear them declaim,
+      You'd think Castlereagh come from the dead.
+    Though the mixture of metaphors isn't the same,
+      And the courage and coolness are fled.
+    But the Whigs are becoming respectable men
+      As any that ever kept gigs,
+    They are practising _now_ all they preach'd against _then_--
+      So huzza for the rule of the Whigs!
+
+    Go on, my good lads--never think of retreat,
+      Though annoy'd by a squib or a squirt;
+    You're fulfilling the fate such impostors should meet,
+      And eating your bushel of dirt
+    Then swallow it fast, for your hour may not last--
+      We shall soon, if it pleases the pigs,
+    Give your places to men of a different cast,
+      And get rid of the rule of the Whigs!
+
+
+
+
+THE NAVIGATION LAWS.
+
+
+"When the Act of Navigation," says Adam Smith, "was made, though
+England and Holland were not actually at war, the most violent
+animosity subsisted between the two nations. It is not impossible,
+therefore, that some of the regulations of this famous act may have
+proceeded from national animosity. They _are as wise, however, as if
+they had all been dictated by the most deliberate wisdom_. National
+animosity, at that particular time, aimed at the very object which
+the most deliberate wisdom would have recommended,--the diminution
+of the naval power of Holland, the only naval power which could
+endanger the security of England. The Act of Navigation is not
+favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence
+which can arise from it. As defence, however, is of much more value
+than opulence, the Act of Navigation is perhaps the wisest of all
+the commercial regulations of England."[8] Before these pages issue
+from the press, this, undoubtedly the wisest of all the commercial
+regulations of Great Britain, and under which the maritime strength
+and colonial empire of England have risen to a pitch of grandeur
+unknown in any other age or country, will be numbered among the
+things which have been. The House of Commons, by a majority, have
+voted for the repeal of the Navigation Laws.
+
+  [8] _Wealth of Nations_, iv. c. 2.
+
+Free trade will soon have done its work, so far, at least, as the
+House of Commons is concerned. It is gradually but unceasingly
+advancing, and swallowing up successively all the great interests of
+the empire, save that of the capitalists, as it moves forward. The
+agricultural interests will find themselves deprived, in February
+next, of all protection; and the British cultivator exposed to
+the competition, without any shield save a nominal duty of 1s. a
+quarter, of states where wheat can be raised, with a fair profit
+in average years, at 18s. a quarter, and brought to this country
+for 10s. at the very utmost of freight. As soon as we have two fine
+harvests in succession, it will be seen to what state this system
+will reduce British rural production. The West India interests have
+been next assailed; and our colonies, upon whom free labour has
+been forced, upon a compensation being given to the proprietors on
+an average of a fourth of the value of their slaves, are speedily
+to be exposed, with no protection but a differential duty of 5s.
+6d. a hundredweight, diminishing 1s. 6d. a-year, till, in 1854, it
+disappears, to the competition of slave colonies, where sugar can be
+raised for L4 a ton, while in the British colonies the measures of
+government have precluded its being raised for less than L10 a ton.
+As a natural consequence, cultivation is about to cease in those
+noble settlements; the forest and the jungle will speedily supplant
+the smiling plantations, and L100,000,000 worth of British property
+will be lost beyond redemption.
+
+Domestic manufactures were at the same time assailed, though with a
+more gentle hand than rude produce. Protective duties on them were
+lowered, though not entirely removed; and the consequence is, that
+at this time there are 8000 hands wholly unemployed at Manchester,
+and above 10,000 at Glasgow, and distress to an unparalleled extent
+pervades the whole commercial and manufacturing classes. Nothing
+daunted by these calamitous results, so exactly what the opponents
+of free trade predicted would ensue, so diametrically the reverse
+of the unbounded prosperity which they promised the nation as the
+consequence of their changes, the Free-traders, in pursuance of
+their usual system of preferring their own opinions to the evidence
+of facts, are preparing to apply the same system to the commercial
+navy of the country, and, by the repeal of the Navigation Laws,
+against the opinion of Adam Smith, to depress our shipping interest
+as much as they encourage that of foreign states, and endanger our
+national existence, by crippling our own means of defence as much
+as they augment the means of attack in the hands of our enemies. Not
+content with rendering us dependent for a large part of our bread
+on foreign nations, they are determined on measures calculated to
+deprive us of the means of maintaining our naval superiority, or
+upholding the national independence. They are set upon saying the
+nation a few millions a-year in freight, though the consequence is,
+that we shall be alike unable to withstand a pacific blockade or
+hostile aggression.
+
+Many estimable and thoughtful persons in the country, struck with
+astonishment at the adoption and determined adherence to such a
+suicidal policy--alike by our rulers and a powerful party in the
+country--in the face of the decisive evidence afforded by facts, and
+the universal distress of the nation, as to its ruinous tendency,
+have come to the opinion, that we have been struck with a judicial
+blindness, and that Providence, as a just punishment for our sins,
+and for the furtherance of its mysterious designs in the general
+government of mankind, has rendered our own infatuation the means
+of working out our destruction. They think it affords a marvellous
+proof of the weakness of the human mind, and the impotence of man
+against the arm of his Creator, that this vast empire, which has
+done such mighty things in the annals of history, and which has
+stood proof against the hostility of the combined world, directed
+by consummate ability, when its rule was that of justice, should
+thus crumble away and perish, not from external violence or foreign
+aggression, but solely from domestic infatuation, when that rule has
+passed away. And observing that this country has already suffered
+greater losses, and been more severely crippled in its resources
+by the effects of three years of free trade and fettered currency
+policy, than by the whole efforts of France during a war of twenty
+years--and still the same course is blindly persevered in--they draw
+the conclusion that the evil is irremediable by human means, and
+that the nation, if not absolutely shipwrecked, will approach as
+near the verge of ruin as the providence of God will permit human
+infatuation to effect.
+
+Without denying that there is much truth in these observations, and
+humbly acknowledging a Divine superintendence alike in the rise and
+the decline, the prosperity and decay, of nations, it yet appears
+more reasonable to trace the extraordinary obstinacy of the ruling
+party in the nation to the causes which, humanly speaking, seem to
+have been mainly instrumental in producing it. The fanaticism of the
+political economists, who, like all other fanatics, are inaccessible
+to reason or experience, is, without doubt, a main cause of the
+disastrous policy to which the nation seems now irrevocably pledged.
+But a still more powerful agent in producing the determined
+adherence to this system, in the face of the most conclusive
+evidence of its pernicious tendency, is to be found in the _class_
+government which it is now apparent the Reform Bill has imposed upon
+the nation. It is now unhappily proved that the _trading_ interest,
+in whom a decisive majority both in the constituency and the number
+of seats in parliament has been vested by the Reform Bill, are
+alive, like all other classes, mainly to the suggestions of their
+own advantage; and that advantage they think is, to buy cheap and
+sell dear. Whatever we were in the days when Napoleon said it, we
+are now, if not a nation of shopkeepers, at least a nation _ruled
+by shopkeepers_. The colonies are entirely unrepresented. Schedules
+A and B, sixteen years ago, cut off all their representatives. The
+landed interest is in a minority, from two-thirds of the seats in
+the Commons being for boroughs; and those boroughs, owing to the
+depression of the producing classes by the currency laws, and the
+vast increase of the trading interests from the same cause, being
+for the most part under the direction of the commercial part of
+the community. It is in these circumstances that we are to look
+for the real causes of the adoption of free-trade principles of
+late years by our statesmen, and the determined adherence to it,
+in spite of all experience, by a majority of the House of Commons.
+Such conduct is the inevitable result of every _uniform_ system
+of representation, because that lands the government in the class
+government of the majority, composed of a particular interest. The
+evil was not felt under the old constitution, because it was _not_
+a class government, being based on a multifarious, not a uniform
+representation. Its _defects_, as they are now called, _i. e._ its
+nomination boroughs, combined with the extension of our colonial
+and shipping interests, had let in a most efficient representation
+of _all_ the interests in the empire, as well as that of the
+inhabitants of those islands, into the House of Commons. It is to
+this cause that the protection of _all_ interests by the old House
+of Commons is to be ascribed. Doubtless, under the old system the
+Corn Laws would have been upheld; but the West Indies would have
+been saved from ruin, domestic industry rescued from bankruptcy and
+the Navigation Laws, the palladium of our national independence,
+preserved from destruction.
+
+That the Navigation Laws have been a great advantage to our
+shipowners and seafaring interests is self-evident. They afforded
+superior advantages in conducting the trade of the empire to
+British over foreign shipowners; and they nursed up, accordingly,
+the immense and hardy body of British seamen, who have founded and
+protected our colonial empire, and rendered Great Britain the terror
+and admiration of the world. What, then, is the great benefit which
+is anticipated from the repeal of laws, the practical operation of
+which has been attended with such uniform and unparalleled benefits?
+The benefit is, that it will save our merchants some millions a-year
+in the payment of freights. It is calculated by the Free-traders
+that L30,000,000 yearly is paid by Great Britain for freights; and
+of this sum, it is thought a fourth, or L7,500,000 yearly, may be
+saved by the employment of foreign instead of British sailors in the
+conducting of our commerce, or the reduction of freight and seamen's
+wages in these islands, which will result from their unrestrained
+competition. This is the benefit to attain which our Navigation
+Laws, the nursery of our seamen, are to be sacrificed. And the
+question to be considered is,--Is the gain real, or apparent only;
+and, supposing it is real, is it worth the risk with which it is
+attended?
+
+Is the advantage real, or apparent only? Concede to the Free-traders
+all they contend for: call the saving to the nation annually in
+freights, to be effected by free trade in shipping, not L7,500,000
+but L10,000,000 annually. The strength of the argument will admit
+of almost any concession. Admit this, and consider what it is
+worth, and on whom it is made. It is not worth a _fiftieth part_
+of the revenue of the nation, which, in the produce of land and
+manufactures alone, is above L500,000,000 annually. A week of
+sunshine in autumn, a favourable set of Fall orders from America,
+the stoppage of a revolution in Europe, are each worth more to the
+nation. But, such as it is, from whom is it gained? Why, it is all
+_gained from our own people_: it is a saving effected to _one class
+of our inhabitants by impoverishing another class_. If our merchants
+and the purchasers from them pay L20,000,000 a-year for freight of
+goods sea-borne, instead of L30,000,000 as formerly, undoubtedly
+there is a saying of L10,000,000 _to them_, or the consumers who buy
+from them. But of whom is this saving made? From whom is it derived?
+Is it not from our shipbuilders, shipowners, and seamen, who get
+so much the less: either by being driven out of the market by
+foreign mercantile navies, or by getting their own profits or wages
+reduced by external competition to that amount? Ten millions now
+earned by shipowners and sailors in Great Britain, is, on the most
+favourable supposition for the Free-traders, _taken from them_, and
+given to the dealers in or consumers of the commodities which they
+transport. Is the nation, as a whole, any gainer by that transfer?
+If ten pounds are taken from John and given to James, are John and
+James, taken together, any gainers by the transfer? And is not the
+great family of the nation composed of all its members, not of John
+only, but of John and James taken together? Is not the repeal of the
+Navigation Laws, in this view robbing Peter to pay Paul? This is
+the mighty advantage, for the attainment of which we are going to
+crush by external competition our mercantile shipping; and endanger
+the national independence, by withering the nursery of the navy, by
+which it can alone be maintained! Can there be a stronger proof of
+how completely, by the operation of the Reform Bill, we have fallen
+under the influence of class government; and how entirely such
+class government blinds the vision even of the most clear-sighted,
+to any thing but the perception of its own immediate interests?
+
+The evidence taken before the Commons' committee, on the comparative
+cost of building and navigating ships in the north of Europe
+and in this country, comes to this, that both are about _twice_
+as expensive in this country as on the shores of the Baltic. A
+copper-sheathed vessel, which there costs L4500, cannot here be
+constructed for less than L9000: a master's wages there, which are
+L2, 11s. a month, are here L5 for the same period: seamen's, there
+7d. a day, besides provisions, &c., are here 1s. 2d. Every thing
+else is in the same proportion. Shipbuilding and ship-navigating are
+twice as costly in Great Britain as they are in Norway and Denmark.
+How could it be otherwise, when they have the materials of ships
+and rigging at their doors, while we have to transport them to the
+British shores from Canada or the Baltic; and they are the poor
+nations, whose money being scarce goes far, and we are the rich one,
+whose money being comparatively plentiful goes but a little way.
+Compare the cost of living in London during the season, with what
+it is in Aberdeen or Inverness, and you will at once see the main
+cause of the extraordinary difference in the value of money, and
+consequently in the money-price of articles, in the two situations.
+The difference in the cost of shipbuilding and seamanship, viz. one
+half, is nearly the same as the difference in the cost of raising
+sugar in our free-labour colonies and the foreign slave ones,
+which is L10 a ton in the former situation, and L4 in the latter.
+And it is in the perfect knowledge of the entire ruin which the
+approach even to a free trade in sugar has brought, under these
+circumstances, upon the British West India islands, that government
+are prepared to force a similar disastrous competition upon the
+British shipowners, and through them on the palladium of British
+independence, the royal navy.
+
+Mr Labouchere said, in the debate on this subject in the House
+of Commons, that the Protection Party seemed to consider every
+importation as in itself an evil, inasmuch as it displaced a
+corresponding amount of native industry; but that till he found that
+goods were brought by merchants into the country for nothing, he
+never could see how importation did not encourage domestic industry
+as much as home orders. This is manfully spoken: it comes home to
+the kernel of the question. It is pleasing to have to contend with
+such an antagonist. We will answer him equally briefly, and, as it
+seems to us, decisively. The difference between home orders and
+foreign orders is this, that the one encourages industry at _both
+ends_, viz., in the consumers and the producers; the other, at _one
+end only_, viz., in the consumer. This difference, however, may
+become vital to the national fortunes. If a London merchant pays
+L20,000 a-year to British shipowners and seamen, he keeps in motion
+at once the industry of the consumers, by whose produce the freights
+are ultimately paid, and the industry of the seafaring classes by
+whom they are earned. But if he pays the L20,000 a-year not to
+British but foreign shipowners, the only industry put in motion, so
+far as we are concerned, is that which raises the produce which is
+to pay the freight. The other end of the chain is placed in Norway
+or America, and any encouragement to industry there afforded is
+wholly lost to England. It is just the difference between rents
+spent in Great Britain, and rents spent in Paris or Naples.
+
+Doubtless they are the same thing, so far as the whole world is
+concerned; but are they the same thing so far as that portion of
+the world in which we are interested, viz., the British Islands,
+is concerned? Unquestionably they are not. What the Protectionists
+say is, not that no British industry is encouraged when importation
+takes place: they know perfectly it is encouraged at _their end_ of
+the line; what they say is, that it is not encouraged at the _other
+end_, because that other end rests in foreign states; and that it is
+unwise to encourage industry at _one end_ only, when it is possible
+to do so at _both_. Adam Smith saw this perfectly when he so well
+explained the difference between the home trade and foreign trade,
+and said the former was "worth all foreign trade put together." But
+his observations on this head are as much forgotten by the majority
+of our legislators as those he made on the great wisdom of our
+Navigation Laws, as the only security for our national independence.
+
+Mr M'Gregor said in debate on the same subject, that "he admitted
+our naval strength had co-existed with the Navigation Laws, but he
+denied that they were cause and effect. They had about as much to do
+with each other as the height of the Pyramids had with the floods
+of the Nile."[9] We agree with the honourable member for Glasgow in
+one part of this observation. The Navigation Laws have had as much
+to do with our maritime prosperity as the Pyramids had with the
+floods of the Nile; and we will tell the ex-secretary of the board
+of trade what the relation was--it was that of cause and effect.
+Mr M'Gregor is too well informed not to know that there exists in
+Cairo a _Nilometer_, and that, during the period of the inundation,
+the spirits of the people and the animation of commerce rise and
+fall with the rise or fall of the prolific stream. It is no wonder
+they do so, for it is the source of life and prosperity to the whole
+community. Raised by the power of the Pharaohs from the riches
+produced by the inundations of former times, the Pyramids are the
+Nilometer of antiquity, as much as the tower of Babel and the ruins
+of Babylon were the monument of the opulence of the plain of Shinar;
+or as Waterloo Bridge is of the wealth produced by the favourable
+maritime situation of London, or York Cathedral of the agricultural
+riches of the plains of Yorkshire. In all these causes there is a
+relation between the natural advantages which produce the riches
+and the durable monument to the construction of which they lead,
+and that relation is that of cause and effect. We entirely concur
+with the member for Glasgow in thinking that the same connexion,
+and no other, subsists between the Navigation Laws and the maritime
+greatness of England as existed formerly between the Pyramids of
+Egypt and the fertilising floods which encircle their base.
+
+  [9] _Times_, June 9, 1848.
+
+To prove that these remarks are not made at random, but that the
+Navigation Laws really are the foundation of the maritime greatness
+of England, and that, when they are repealed, it must of necessity
+languish and ultimately expire, we subjoin three tables: one showing
+the progress of British as compared with foreign shipping, from
+1801 to 1823, when the protection of the Navigation Laws was first
+infringed upon by the adoption of the reciprocity system with the
+Baltic powers; and another showing the comparative progress of our
+foreign and home shipping with Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Prussia,
+the countries with whom reciprocity treaties were first concluded,
+from 1823 to the end of 1847, when the reciprocity system had been a
+quarter of a century in operation.
+
+TABLE showing the comparative progress of British and Foreign
+Tonnage inwards, from 1821 to 1847, both inclusive, with Sweden,
+Norway, Denmark, and Prussia.
+
+[Transcriber's note: Column headings:  Y=Year. Bt=Brit. tons. Ft=For. tons.]
+
+  |      |     SWEDEN.    |     NORWAY.    |     DENMARK.   |     PRUSSIA.    |
+  |      |                |                |                |                 |
+  |  Y   |   Bt  |   Ft   |   Bt  |   Ft   |   Bt  |   Ft   |   Bt   |   Ft   |
+  +------+-------+--------+-------+--------+-------+--------+--------+--------+
+  | 1821 | 23,005|   8,508| 13,855|  61,342|  5,312|   3,969|  79,590|  37,720|
+  | 1822 | 20,799|  13,692| 13,377|  87,974|  7,096|   3,910| 102,847|  58,270|
+  | 1823 | 20,986|  22,529| 13,122| 117,015|  4,413|   4,795|  81,202|  86,013|
+  | 1824 | 17,074|  40,092| 11,419| 135,272|  6,738|  23,689|  94,664| 151,621|
+  | 1825 | 15,906|  53,141| 14,825| 157,916| 15,158|  50,943| 189,214| 182,752|
+  | 1826 | 11,829|  16,939| 13,603|  90,726| 22,000|  56,544| 119,060| 120,589|
+  | 1827 | 11,719|  21,822| 13,945|  96,420| 10,825|  52,456| 150,718| 109,184|
+  | 1828 | 14,877|  24,700| 10,826|  85,771| 17,464|  49,293| 133,753|  99,195|
+  | 1829 | 16,536|  25,046|  9,985|  86,205| 24,576|  53,390| 125,918| 127,861|
+  | 1830 | 12,116|  23,158|  6,459|  84,585| 12,210|  51,420| 102,758| 139,646|
+  | 1831 | 11,450|  38,689|  4,518| 114,865|  6,552|  62,190|  83,908| 140,532|
+  | 1832 |  8,335|  25,755|  3,789|  82,155|  7,268|  35,772|  62,079|  89,187|
+  | 1833 | 10,009|  29,454|  5,901|  98,931|  6,840|  38,620|  41,735| 108,753|
+  | 1834 | 15,353|  35,911|  6,403|  98,303|  5,691|  53,282|  32,021| 118,711|
+  | 1835 | 12,036|  35,061|  2,592|  95,049|  6,007|  49,008|  25,514| 124,144|
+  | 1836 | 10,865|  42,439|  1,573| 125,875|  2,152|  51,907|  42,567| 174,439|
+  | 1837 |  7,608|  42,602|  1,035|  88,004|  5,357|  55,961|  67,566| 145,742|
+  | 1838 | 10,425|  38,991|  1,364| 110,817|  3,466|  57,554|  86,734| 175,643|
+  | 1839 |  8,359|  49,270|  2,582| 109,228|  5,535| 106,960| 111,470| 229,208|
+  | 1840 | 11,953|  53,337|  3,161| 114,241|  6,327| 103,067| 112,709| 237,984|
+  | 1841 | 13,170|  46,795|    977| 113,045|  3,368|  83,009|  88,198| 210,254|
+  | 1842 | 15,296|  37,218|  1,385|  98,979|  5,499|  59,837|  87,202| 145,499|
+  | 1843 |  6,435|  44,184|  1,814|  97,248|  4,148|  82,940|  70,164| 163,745|
+  | 1844 | 12,806|  59,835|  1,315| 125,011|  7,423| 123,674| 108,626| 220,202|
+  | 1845 | 15,157|  89,923|  1,215| 129,897|  4,528|  84,566|  49,334| 256,711|
+  | 1846 | 12,625|  80,649|  3,313| 113,738|  9,531| 105,973|  63,425| 270,801|
+  | 1847 |  7,037| 117,918|  2,318| 128,075| 20,462| 116,382|  88,390| 303,225|
+
+--PORTER'S _Parliamentary Tables_; and _Parliamentary Report, 3d
+April 1848_.
+
+Thus, while our shipping with the whole world _quadrupled_, as
+compared with the foreign employed in the same trade, under the
+protective system, from 1801 to 1823; it declined under the
+reciprocity system of equal duties, in the countries to which that
+system was applied in the next twenty years, till it had dwindled
+to a perfect fraction;--our tonnage with Sweden being, in 1847,
+not more than a _sixteenth_ part of the foreign; with Norway, a
+_fiftieth_ part; with Denmark somewhat above a _sixth_; with Prussia
+somewhat under a _fourth_.
+
+But then it is said these are _selected_ states which do not give
+a fair average of the reciprocity system, or afford a correct
+criterion of its probable effects when applied, as it is about to
+be by a general repeal of the Navigation Laws, to the whole world.
+If they are "selected states," we can only say they were selected
+by Mr Huskisson and the Free-traders themselves as likely to afford
+the best specimen of the effect of their principles, and therefore
+as the first on which the experiment was to be made. But we are
+quite willing to take the general tonnage of the empire as the test;
+and we shall commence with a quotation from the tables of the great
+statistical apostle of free trade, Mr Porter, to show the effect
+of free trade in shipping on the comparative growth of our whole
+tonnage, as compared with that of foreign states, from 1801 to 1823,
+when the reciprocity system began; and again from thence lo 1847,
+when free trade in shipping was in full operation by the temporary
+suspension of the Navigation Laws, from the effect of the Orders
+in Council in March 1847 suspending the Navigation Laws under the
+pressure of the Irish famine:--
+
+  |       | Tons inward, | Tons inward |            |
+  | Year. |   British.   |   Foreign.  |   TOTAL.   |
+  +-------+--------------+-------------+------------+
+  | 1801  |     922,594  |    780,155  | 1,702,749  |
+  | 1802  |   1,333,005  |    480,251  | 1,813,256  |
+  | 1803  |   1,115,702  |    638,104  | 1,753,806  |
+  | 1804  |     904,932  |    607,299  | 1,512,231  |
+  | 1805  |     953,250  |    691,883  | 1,645,138  |
+  | 1806  |     904,367  |    612,904  | 1,517,271  |
+  | 1807  | Records lost |             |            |
+  | 1808  | Records lost |             |            |
+  | 1809  |     938,675  |    759,287  | 1,697,692  |
+  | 1810  |     896,001  |  1,176,243  | 2,072,244  |
+  | 1811  |              |             |            |
+  | 1812  |       Records destroyed by fire.        |
+  | 1813  |              |             |            |
+  | 1814  |   1,290,248  |    599,287  | 1,889,535  |
+  | 1815  |   1,372,108  |    746,985  | 2,119,093  |
+  | 1816  |   1,415,723  |    379,465  | 1,795,188  |
+  | 1817  |   1,625,121  |    445,011  | 2,070,132  |
+  | 1818  |   1,886,394  |    762,457  | 2,648,851  |
+  | 1819  |   1,809,128  |    542,684  | 2,351,812  |
+  | 1820  |   1,668,060  |    447,611  | 2,115,671  |
+  | 1821  |   1,599,274  |    396,256  | 1,995,530  |
+  | 1822  |   1,664,186  |    469,151  | 2,133,337  |
+
+--PORTER'S _Progress of the Nation_, 407.
+
+It appears from this most instructive table that, under the
+protection system, from 1801 to 1823, the British shipping employed
+in conducting our commerce had gained so decisively on the foreign
+employed in the same commerce, that it had increased, from having
+been on an average of five years, at the commencement of the second,
+about two British tons to one foreign, to be, on the last five
+years, about _four_ British tons to one foreign: in other words,
+during these twenty-two years, the proportion of British to foreign
+shipping had _doubled_.
+
+Turn now to the contrast afforded by the comparative progress of
+British and foreign shipping from 1823, when the reciprocity system
+was introduced with certain states, to 1847, when it was made
+universal by the suspension of the Navigation Laws in March of that
+year:--
+
+  | Year. | Tons inward, | Tons inward, |   TOTAL.   |
+  |       |   British.   |   Foreign.   |            |
+  +-------+--------------+--------------+------------+
+  | 1823  |  1,740,859   |    582,996   |  2,323,855 |
+  | 1824  |  1,797,320   |    759,441   |  2,556,761 |
+  | 1825  |  2,144,598   |    958,132   |  3,102,730 |
+  | 1826  |  1,950,630   |    694,116   |  2,644,746 |
+  | 1827  |  2,086,898   |    751,864   |  2,839,762 |
+  | 1828  |  2,094,357   |    634,620   |  2,728,977 |
+  | 1829  |  2,184,525   |    710,303   |  2,894,828 |
+  | 1830  |  2,180,042   |    758,828   |  2,938,870 |
+  | 1831  |  2,367,322   |    874,605   |  3,241,927 |
+  | 1832  |  2,185,980   |    639,979   |  2,825,959 |
+  | 1833  |  2,183,814   |    762,085   |  2,945,899 |
+  | 1834  |  2,298,263   |    833,905   |  3,132,168 |
+  | 1835  |  2,442,734   |    866,990   |  3,309,724 |
+  | 1836  |  2,505,473   |    988,899   |  3,494,372 |
+  | 1837  |  2,617,166   |  1,005,940   |  3,623,106 |
+  | 1838  |  2,785,387   |  1,211,666   |  3,997,053 |
+  | 1839  |  3,101,650   |  1,331,365   |  4,433,015 |
+  | 1840  |  3,197,501   |  1,460,294   |  4,657,795 |
+  | 1841  |  3,361,211   |  1,291,165   |  4,652,376 |
+  | 1842  |  3,294,725   |  1,205,303   |  4,500,028 |
+  | 1843  |  3,545,346   |  1,301,950   |  4,847,296 |
+  | 1844  |  3,647,463   |  1,402,138   |  5,049,601 |
+  | 1845  |  4,310,639   |  1,735,079   |  6,045,718 |
+  | 1846  |  4,294,733   |  1,806,282   |  6,101,015 |
+  | 1847  |  4,942,094   |  2,253,939   |  7,196,033 |
+
+  --PORTER'S _Progress of the Nation_, 407, 2d edition;
+  and _Parliamentary Paper, 3d April 1848_.
+
+Thus it appears that under the reciprocity system with some
+countries since 1823, and free trade in shipping with all in 1847,
+the foreign shipping employed in carrying on the British trade had
+so rapidly grown upon the British, that, while at the commencement
+of the period the British stood to the foreign as 174 to 58, or _3
+to 1_ exactly, at the close they stood as 49 to 22, or _somewhat
+above 2 to 1 only_. And observe the vast start of foreign shipping
+as compared with British, since free trade was introduced by Sir R.
+Peel in 1846. For while the British tonnage was to the foreign in
+1845 as 43 to 17, or as 2-1/2 to 1; in the year 1847 it was as 49
+to 229, or 2-1/3 to 1 only. So rapid has been the growth of foreign
+shipping over British in eighteen months of general free trade.
+In ten years of such a system, it is easy to see that the foreign
+tonnage employed in carrying on our trade will be equal to the
+British; and then our national independence is gone for ever, for we
+have nursed up in our harbours a body of foreign seamen equal to our
+own.
+
+But we have not yet done with the parliamentary returns. From the
+return 3d April 1848, it appears that the total tonnage, British and
+foreign, employed in carrying on our trade was--
+
+  British Islands.   Foreign.      Total.
+  4,942,094         2,253,939    7,196,033 tons.
+
+Deduct British and foreign tons employed in the colonial trade,
+viz.--
+
+                          Tons Brit.   Tons For.
+                            inward.    inward.
+
+  Brit. N. Amer. colonies   953,466     3,274
+  West Indies               243,388
+  Channel islands           131,899     3,049
+  Gibraltar                  11,623
+  Malta                      33,554     3,789
+  Ionian islands             13,101
+  Africa                    203,812     6,983
+  Asia and Australia        379,529     2,774
+
+  Total to colonies       1,970,372    19,847
+
+Thus the British trade to our colonial settlements is about _a
+hundred times_ the foreign, and constitutes nearly a _third_
+of the whole tonnage employed in carrying on our commerce, and
+about two-fifths of the total British tonnage,--(1,970,372 out of
+4,942,094.)
+
+But it is important to discover what proportion the British tonnage
+employed in conducting our trade with all the world, _except our
+colonies_, bears to the foreign tonnage employed in the same work.
+That is easily found:--
+
+                                Tons Brit.                  Tons For.
+  1847. Total British Tonnage,  4,942,094  Total For. ton.  2,253,939
+        Deduct British
+          colonial tonnage,     1,970,372    Foreign do.       19,847
+  Remains in trade with all     ---------                   ---------
+   the world except colonies,   2,971,722                   2,233,092
+
+So that, setting aside our colonial trade, the British tonnage is to
+the tonnage with all the rest of the world as 29 to 22, or as 4 to
+3 only! Considering the rapid strides which, under the reciprocity
+system established only with a limited number of countries in 1823,
+the foreign shipping is making in encroachment upon the British,
+this fact affords room for the most serious reflections. It is
+clear, from the great advance of foreign over British shipping in
+the single year of temporary suspension of the Navigation Laws,
+under the pressure of famine in 1847--viz. from 1,735,679, to
+2,253,979; while the British in the same period advanced only from
+4,310,639, to 4,942,094,--that two or three years of free trade in
+shipping will bring the foreign vessels employed in conducting our
+trade, exclusive of those engaged in the colonial, to an _equality
+with the British_. The moment that period arrives, our maritime
+superiority, and with it our national independence, hang entirely on
+our colonial trade, which, and which alone, strikes the balance at
+present in our favour. And yet, the colonial trade is the precise
+thing which it is the object of the repeal of the Navigation Laws
+to throw open to foreign nations! In their anxiety to cheapen every
+thing, the Free-traders would gladly expose our shipping interest
+engaged in the colonial trade to the same competition, which has
+already proved so disastrous to that part of it which is engaged in
+the traffic with foreign nations.
+
+Observe how one false step in policy by nations, like one deviation
+from virtue in private life, leads by natural consequences to a
+repetition of errors and crimes, till irreparable ruin ensues.
+The agricultural interest at home was first attacked; and by the
+cry of cheap bread, and the weight of class legislation, its
+protection was taken away. The West India islands were the next
+victims; because, if the farmer in England raises his wheat with
+nothing but a nominal protection, it was plausible to say the West
+India planter must raise his sugar on the same terms. The ruinous
+competition to which this exposed the West India planters naturally
+produced in them a desire to be liberated from any burdens to which
+they were subjected for the benefit of the mother country; and in
+this demand the Canadians, exposed to the competition of American
+grain, for a similar reason concurred. Thus the cry for cheap
+freights, originating in free-trade principles in England, came to
+be responded to from the British colonies on the other side of the
+Atlantic; and the Navigation Laws began to be repudiated by the
+colonies--the very thing which formerly it was their most anxious
+desire to uphold. The firm though unseen bond of mutual interest,
+founded on protective principles, which has hitherto held together
+the vast and widely separated dominions of the British empire, is
+dissolved. Being deprived of the benefit of protection, they very
+naturally wished to be relieved of its burdens. Such is the maze
+of error and danger into which we have been led by the sophistry
+of free trade; and such the way in which the greatest and best
+consolidated empires are first loosened, and then destroyed, by the
+delusions of those entrusted with their guidance.
+
+The manner in which foreign shipping has encroached upon British,
+since the reciprocity system began in 1823, is clearly proved by the
+centesimal proportions of each, published by Mr Porter, from 1820 to
+1844, both inclusive.
+
+It will be seen from the following table, that, since 1820, the
+centesimal proportion of British shipping employed in conducting our
+trade has _declined_ from 78 to 72, while that of foreign nations
+has _increased_ from 21 to 27. But this proportion, such as it is,
+is solely upheld by our colonial trade, which, as already shown,
+employs nearly 2,000,000 tons of our shipping. But for it, the
+encroachment of foreign on British shipping would appear in such
+alarming colours as to strike the most inconsiderate. It is the
+rapid growth of our colonial trade under the protective system which
+has alone concealed the ravages effected on it by free trade under
+the reciprocity.
+
+Centesimal Proportions of the British and Foreign Tonnage employed
+in the Import Trade of the United Kingdom from 1820 to 1844.
+
+  | Year.  |Brit. inward.|For. inward.|Year.|Brit. inward.|For. inward.|
+  +--------+-------------+------------+-----+-------------+------------+
+  | 1820   |   78.84     |    21.16   | 1834|    73.37    |    26.63   |
+  | 1821   |   80.14     |    19.86   | 1835|    73.85    |    26.15   |
+  | 1822   |   78.00     |    22.00   | 1836|    71.41    |    28.59   |
+  | 1823[10]   74.91     |    25.09   | 1837|    72.23    |    27.77   |
+  | 1824   |   70.29     |    29.71   | 1838|    69.68    |    30.32   |
+  | 1825   |   69.12     |    30.88   | 1839|    69.96    |    30.04   |
+  | 1826   |   73.75     |    26.25   | 1840|    68.64    |    31.36   |
+  | 1827   |   73.51     |    26.49   | 1841|    72.24    |    27.76   |
+  | 1828   |   76.74     |    23.26   | 1842|    73.21    |    26.79   |
+  | 1829   |   75.46     |    25.54   | 1843|    73.14    |    26.86   |
+  | 1830   |   74.18     |    25.82   | 1844|    72.23    |    27.77   |
+  | 1831   |   73.02     |    26.98   | 1845|     ...     |     ...    |
+  | 1832   |   77.35     |    22.65   | 1846|     ...     |     ...    |
+  | 1833   |   74.13     |    25.87   | 1847|     ...     |     ...    |
+
+  --PORTER'S _Progress of the Nation_, 416, 2d edition.
+
+    [10] Reciprocity System introduced.
+
+Mr Porter himself tells us that the centesimal proportion of our
+trade with the European powers has _declined_ (p. 410) from 65 to
+52.38, while that of our colonies has increased thus,--
+
+  |          |     1802.   |     1814.   |     1835.     |     1844.     |
+  |          | Tons. |Cent.| Tons. |Cent.|  Tons.  |Cent.|  Tons.  |Cent.|
+  |          |       |prop.|       |prop.|         |prop.|         |prop.|
+  |          +-------+-----+-------+-----+---------+-----+---------+-----+
+  |America   |336,344|18.54|343,658|19.32|  886,524|26.21|  984,850|19.50|
+  |Africa    |  7,270| 0.40| 13,514| 0.76|   40,131| 1.21|  157,364| 3.12|
+  |India, &c.| 67,627| 3.72| 74,117| 4.16|  161,473| 4.88|  264,978| 5.25|
+  |Australia |  ...  | ... |    488|  .02|   16,019| 0.48|   36,454| 0.74|
+  |          +-------+-----+-------+-----+---------+-----+---------+-----+
+  |          |411,241|19.66|431,727|24.26|1,104,147|32.78|1,443,646|28.61|
+
+Such has been the working of the reciprocity system, as compared
+with the protective and colonial--in other words, free trade in
+shipping with some particular nations--in twenty years. And it is
+from this experience of the effects of the partial adoption of these
+principles that the Free-traders now propose to make it universal!
+
+America is the country to which, in comparison with Great Britain,
+the Free-traders constantly refer for a demonstration of the
+justice and beneficial operation of their principles. We accept the
+instance, and proceed to inquire into the comparative value of the
+American protected trade with our own colonies, and the American
+free trade with the United States, both at this time and in the
+respective progress of each for the last twenty-five years.
+
+The foreign and British tonnage with the United States, Canada, and
+the West Indies, in the year 1847, stood thus, viz.:--
+
+  |                                |British tons.|Foreign tons.|  Total. |
+  |                                +-------------+-------------+---------+
+  |British North American Colonies |   953,466   |     3,724   |  954,190|
+  |British West Indies             |   243,388   |      ...    |  243,388|
+  |                                +-------------+-------------+---------+
+  |    Total protected             | 1,196,854   |      ...    |1,197,578|
+  |United States of America        |             |             |         |
+  |  (unprotected)                 |   437,095   |   651,189   |1,088,284|
+
+  --_Parliamentary Paper, 3d April 1848._
+
+So that, while our West India and North American colonies, under
+this Protective system, support 1,196,854 tons of British shipping
+against 3,724 of foreign, or 300 to 1 nearly; the American trade
+with the United States only maintains 437,095 of British against
+651,189 of foreign; in other words, about 2 to 3 nearly! But the
+Free-traders think it better to adopt the system which makes the
+foreign shipping to the British as 3 to 2, than uphold the one which
+has brought the foreign shipping to the British, in the colonial
+trade, as 1 to 300!
+
+Observe, too, the decisive proof which the same return affords of
+the vast superiority, in every point of view, of our colonial trade
+to our foreign, even in the hands of our best free-trade customers,
+the Americans. For while less than 3,000,000 of souls between the
+West India and North American colonies furnished employment to
+1,197,000 tons of British and foreign shipping, of which 1,193,000
+was British; twenty millions of Americans in the United States only
+furnished employment to 1,088,284 tons of shipping, in all of which
+no more than 437,095 were British! And this is the pet instance
+of the Free-traders--their favourite _cheval de bataille_--to
+demonstrate the great superiority of free and foreign over protected
+and colonial trade!
+
+Again, if we take the comparative progress of British and American
+tonnage in conducting the trade of the United States, since the
+reciprocity system was begun in 1823, the same conclusion is forced
+upon the mind. Not only is the American shipping, throughout the
+whole period, superior to the British in the proportion generally of
+3 to 1, but this superiority in their favour remains undiminished in
+any material degree. We take the following returns from Mr Porter:--
+
+  Year.    British        American
+        tons inwards.   tons inwards.
+  1823      63,606         165,699
+  1826      47,711         151,765
+  1829      64,343         162,367
+  1832      95,203         167,359
+  1835      86,383         226,483
+  1838      83,203         357,467
+  1841     121,777         294,170
+  1844     206,183         338,737
+  1845     224,089         444,609
+  1846     205,123         435,399
+
+It is easy to see how it has happened that, in competition with the
+shipowners of every country, the British shipowners have suffered
+so much under the partial operation of the free-trade principles
+which the reciprocity system has afforded. It is the inevitable fate
+of the old and the rich state, in shipbuilding and agriculture, to
+be undersold by the young and the poor one. The reason is, that
+the old state, by the very magnitude of its wealth, the amount of
+its transactions, the number of its inhabitants, the multitude
+of its fabrics, is obliged to pay much higher for labour and
+materials of all sorts than the young and the poor one. Machinery
+and the steam-engine compensate, and more than compensate, this
+superiority in regard to manufactured articles. England undersells
+Hindostan, where wages are a penny or twopence a day, by the work
+of steam-power looms working on cotton raised on the banks of the
+Ganges. But there is no steam-power loom in shipbuilding any more
+than in agriculture. Great things in nautical affairs, as in rural
+economy, can be effected only by the labour of man's hands and the
+sweat of his brow, in the last ages of civilisation, as in the
+first. It would appear to be a permanent law of nature, to which
+there is no exception in any age of the world, or any stage of
+human progress, that the chief branches of industry on which the
+subsistence and defence of nations rest--agriculture, and the naval
+and military arts--are pursued more cheaply, and with more success
+by young and rising than old and opulent states. History is full of
+examples in which the manufactures of rich and ancient nations have
+obtained an undisputed supremacy over the fabrics of poor and rising
+ones; but it presents still more examples of the encroachments
+made on the industry and power of old nations by the agricultural
+produce, or naval and military efforts, of young ones. It is this
+law of nature which provides for the decay and ruin of nations when
+they are approaching the limit of their allotted space of existence,
+and should give place to others entering on the career which they
+have terminated. No efforts of human energy or virtue can prolong,
+for any considerable period, this allotted space. But it is the
+peculiar reproach of free trade, whether applied to agriculture or
+nautical affairs, that it tends to shorten, instead of prolonging,
+the life of the nation to which it is applied, by oppressing instead
+of relieving those vital branches of industry on which its existence
+depends, and thus both aggravates the natural evils incident to old
+age, and accelerates the approach of the political society to the
+tomb.
+
+When Mr Huskisson, in 1823, introduced the Reciprocity System, he
+did not dispute that it would injure our maritime interests; but he
+contended that it would open a new field for our manufactures,--that
+the time had now arrived when the Protective System could no longer
+be maintained, and it had become indispensable to sacrifice to a
+certain extent our maritime interests, in order to preserve the
+chief vents on Continental Europe for the industry of our artisans.
+The sacrifice was made, and the tables already given show with what
+fatal effect to our shipping interest. Has it extended the market
+for our manufactures, or diminished the jealousy with which they are
+regarded by the states of Continental Europe? Let the Zollverein
+league, at the head of which Prussia has placed herself, and which
+has imposed duties to an amount, in practical operation, of fifty
+per cent on our manufactures, give the answer. The exports which
+we send to the states of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Prussia, are
+still, after a quarter of a century's experience of the immense
+impulse it has given to their maritime interests, and corresponding
+depression to ours, a perfect trifle.[11] Our exports to America
+are less than they were fifteen years ago, despite the boasted
+conciliatory effect of twenty years' reciprocity.[12] What can be
+more injudicious, therefore, than to persist in, and even extend,
+a system which, without diminishing in the slightest degree the
+jealousy of Continental nations at our manufacturing superiority,
+has inflicted a serious and gratuitous wound on the naval resources
+by which alone that superiority can be maintained?
+
+  [11]
+
+    Exports from Great Britain--to
+        1844          Sweden           L108,475
+                      Norway            152,824
+                      Denmark           286,679
+                      Prussia           505,384
+
+    PORTER'S _Progress of the Nation_, p. 366, 2d edition.
+
+
+  [12]
+
+    Exports to United States of America:--
+
+    1836                      L12,425,605
+    1844                        7,938,079
+
+    PORTER, _ibid._
+
+
+We have recently made a very great stride in free-trade principles,
+by the sacrifice of our agricultural protection, and the throwing
+open the English markets to cultivators of all nations. In the
+three last months of 1846 and even of 1847, in consequence of the
+import duties being removed, above L30,000,000 sterling was sent
+out of the country to purchase foreign grain; and the moderate
+duty of eight shillings a quarter has since been reimposed on
+wheat,--yet it terminates in February next, and corn from all
+quarters will then be admitted for the nominal duty of one shilling
+a quarter. We have abandoned the protection of our colonies to
+conciliate the slave-growing states, and augment the market for
+Manchester goods in Cuba and Brazil. With what disastrous effects
+these changes have been attended, upon the best interests of the
+empire, need be told to none who are familiar with the total ruin
+which has in consequence overtaken our West India colonies, and the
+unprecedented distress which prevails in all the great seats of
+our manufacturing industry. The loss of half the realised wealth
+of Liverpool, Manchester, and Glasgow, and the creation of nearly
+a hundred thousand persons, including dependants, in a state of
+pauperism, in each of those once rich and prosperous cities, is the
+price which, in a year and a half, we have paid for the adoption by
+Sir R. Peel of Mr Cobden's principles of free trade, and Mr Jones
+Loyd's principles of a fettered currency. Have we, in consequence,
+reaped any countervailing advantage, or does the increase of our
+export and import trade show any benefit derived to the nation,
+to compensate such dreadful wounds inflicted on its internal
+prosperity, in the attempt to disarm the jealousy of foreign
+manufacturers? So far from it, our exports and imports have steadily
+_declined_ since free-trade principles were introduced. All the main
+sources of our strength have diminished since Sir R. Peel abandoned
+protection in July 1846.[13] In adopting these principles, we have
+gratuitously inflicted a grievous wound on our own people, without
+having obtained for them the shadow even of a benefit to compensate
+the evil.
+
+  [13]
+
+    |      |    EXPORTS.       |                |             |
+    |      |British Produce and|    IMPORTS.    |  REVENUE.   |
+    |      |  Manufactures.    |                |             |
+    |      | Declared Value.   |                |             |
+    +------+                   |                |             |
+    | 1845 |    L53,227,451    |  L85,281,958   | L52,009,324 |
+    | 1846 |     51,227,060    |   75,953,579   |  54,473,762 |
+    | 1847 |     50,897,790    |Not yet made up,|  52,082,757 |
+
+    --_Porter's Parl. Tables_; and _Parl. Paper, 3d April 1848_.
+
+
+Such have been the effects of free-trade principles on the
+comparative prosperity of British and foreign shipping, on the
+showing of the Free-traders themselves, and according to the
+figures which their great statistician, Mr Porter, has prepared
+and published at the Board of Trade. We were unwilling to mix up a
+great national question, such as the repeal of the Navigation Laws,
+with any subordinate examination as to the accuracy or inaccuracy
+of the view of our maritime affairs which these figures exhibit.
+Such is the strength of the case, that it will admit of almost any
+concession; and the opponents of their repeal have no occasion to
+go farther than to the statistics of their adversaries for the
+most decisive refutation of their principles. But there are two
+observations on the tables published by the Board of Trade, so
+important that they cannot be passed over in silence. The first is,
+that in 1834, when Mr Poulett Thomson was president of the Board of
+Trade, a regulation was made by the Board as to the measurement of
+vessels, which had the effect of adding _a fifth_ to the apparent
+tonnage of all British vessels, subsequent to that date. This
+change was clearly proved by the witnesses examined before the
+Commons' committee; but though Mr Porter, in his last edition of
+the _Progress of the Nation_, mentions the change, (p. 368,) he
+makes no allusion to it in comparing the amount of British and
+foreign tonnage since 1834. Of course a fifth must be deducted from
+British tonnage, as compared with foreign, since that time; and what
+overwhelming force does this give to the facts, already strong,
+in regard to the effect of the reciprocity system on our maritime
+interests!
+
+The second is, that the tonnage with countries near Great Britain,
+such as France, Belgium, and Holland, _includes steam vessels_
+carrying passengers, and their repeated voyages. In this way a boat,
+measuring 148 tons, and carrying passengers chiefly, comes to figure
+in the returns for 24,000 tons! It is evident that this important
+circumstance deprives the returns of such near states of all value
+in the estimate of the comparative amount of tonnage engaged in
+the trade with different countries. That with France will appear
+greatest in spring 1848, in consequence of the number of large
+vessels then employed in bringing back English residents expelled
+by, or terrified at, the Revolution--though that circumstance was
+putting a stop to nearly all the commercial intercourse between
+the two countries. As steam navigation has so immensely increased
+since 1834, when the changes in the measurement was introduced--and
+Great Britain, from its store of coal and iron, enjoys more of that
+traffic than all Europe put together--this is another circumstance
+which militates against the returns as exhibiting a fair view of our
+trade, compared with that of foreign nations, especially with near
+countries, and fully justifies Mr Porter's admission, when examined
+before the Lords' committee, that "considerable fallacy is to be
+found in the returns." Unfortunately for the Free-traders, however,
+who had the preparation of them in their hands, these fallacies all
+point one way--viz. to augment the apparent advantages of free trade
+in shipping.
+
+Such as free-trade principles are, they are evidently not likely to
+remain, if these islands are excepted, long in the ascendant either
+in the Old or the New World. The American tariff shows us how little
+we have to expect from Transatlantic favour to our manufactures:
+the savage expulsion of English labourers from France, how far the
+principles of "Liberty, Equality, and _Fraternity_," are likely
+to be acted upon by our enthusiastic and democratic neighbours
+on the Continent of Europe. It is clear from the communist and
+socialist principles now in the ascendant, both at Paris, Berlin,
+and Vienna, that the interests of _labour_ will above all things
+be considered by their governments in future times, and that the
+most rigorous measures, in the form of fiscal regulations, if not
+_absolute prohibition_, may shortly be expected in France, Italy,
+and Germany, against manufactures of any sort which interfere, or
+seem to interfere, with the interests of the dominant multitude of
+operatives. Why does our government adhere so strongly, in the face
+of the clearest evidence of their ruinous tendency, to the present
+system of free trade and a fettered currency? Because it works well
+for the great capitalists, who desire to have money dear, and the
+great manufacturers, who wish to have labour cheap, and because
+a majority of the House of Commons has been placed by the Reform
+Bill under their influence. Give the operatives the majority,
+and the opposite interest will instantly prevail. A successful
+Chartist revolt would at once send the whole free trade and fettered
+currency measures by the board in three months. In truth, it is
+the disasters they have produced which has revived Chartism, and
+rendered it so menacing in the land. We should like to see how
+long a legislature, elected by universal suffrage, would allow
+Spitalfields and Macclesfield to be pauperised by Lyons silks, and
+Manchester invaded by Rouen cottons, and the shipwrights of Hull and
+Sunderland to be ruined by Baltic shipbuilders. As the operative
+classes have obtained the ascendency in the principal Continental
+states, a similar jealousy of foreign interference with industry may
+with certainty be looked for in Continental Europe. Can any thing
+be more insane, therefore, than to persist in a policy fraught, as
+every thing around us demonstrates, with such ruinous social injury
+to ourselves, and which the progress of political change on the
+Continent renders incapable of producing the ultimate benefits,
+in exchange for those evils which their authors hold out as the
+inducing causes of the measures which have produced them?
+
+While the political changes which have recently occurred on the
+Continent of Europe have rendered any reciprocity of advantages
+utterly hopeless from the most violent adoption of free-trade
+principles, they have augmented in a proportional degree the
+dangers to this country of foreign aggression, and the risk to
+be apprehended from any diminution of our naval resources. The
+days have gone by when the dream of a free-trade millenium, in
+which a reciprocity of advantages is to extinguish all feelings
+of hostility, and war is to be looked back to as a relic of the
+pre-Adamite world, can with safety be indulged. It is rather too
+late to think of the termination of the angry passions of men, when
+Europe, in its length and breadth, is devastated alike by civil
+dissension and foreign warfare; when barricades have so recently
+been erected in all its chief capitals; when bloodshed is hourly
+expected in Paris and Berlin; when the Emperor of Austria has fled
+to Innspruck; when every station in London was, only a few days
+ago, occupied by armed battalions; and when a furious war, rousing
+the passions of whole races of men, is raging on the Mincio and the
+Elbe. Threatened by a raging fire in all the countries by which
+we are surrounded, uncertain whether we are not slumbering on the
+embers of a conflagration in our own, is this the time to relax
+in our warlike preparations, and, by crippling the nursery of our
+seamen, expose ourselves, without the means of resistance, to the
+assaults of hostile nations, envious of our fame, jealous of our
+manufactures, covetous of our wealth, desirous of our ruin?
+
+While Western Europe is torn by revolutionary passions, and the
+seeds of a dreadful, because a popular and general war, are rapidly
+springing to maturity from the Seine to the Vistula, Russia is
+silently but unceasingly gathering up its giant strength, and
+the Czar has already 300,000 men, and 800 pieces of cannon,
+ready to take the field against the revolutionary enthusiasts of
+France and Germany. Sooner or later the conflict must arrive. It
+is not unlikely that either a second Napoleon will lead another
+crusade of the western nations across the Niemen, or a second
+Alexander will conduct the forces of the desert to the banks of the
+Seine. Whichever proves victorious, England has equal cause for
+apprehension. If the balance of power is subverted on Continental
+Europe, how is the independence of this country to be maintained?
+How are our manufactures or revenue to be supported, if one
+prevailing power has subjugated all the other states of Europe
+to its sway? It is hard to say whether, in such circumstances,
+we should have most to dread from French fraternity or Russian
+hostility. But how is the balance of power to be preserved in
+Europe amidst the wreck of its principal states? when Prussia is
+revolutionised, and has passed over to the other side; when Austria
+is shattered and broken in pieces, and Italy has fallen under the
+dominion of a faction, distinguished beyond any thing else by its
+relentless hatred of the aristocracy, and jealousy of the fabrics
+of England? What has Great Britain to rely on in such a crisis but
+the energy of its seamen and the might of its navy, which might at
+least enable it to preserve its connexion with its own colonies,
+and maintain, as during the Continental blockade, its commerce
+with Transatlantic nations? And yet this is the moment which our
+rulers have selected for destroying the Navigation Laws, so long
+the bulwark of our mercantile marine, and permitting all the world
+to make those inroads on our shipping, which have already been
+partially effected by the nations with whom we have concluded
+reciprocity treaties!
+
+The defence of Great Britain must always mainly rest on our navy,
+and our navy is almost entirely dependent on the maintenance of
+our colonies. It is in the trade with the colonies that we can
+alone look for the means of resisting the general coalition of the
+European powers, which is certain, sooner or later, to arise against
+our maritime superiority, and the advent of which the spread of
+democratic principles, and the sway of operative jealousy on the
+Continent, is so evidently calculated to accelerate. But how are our
+colonies to be preserved, even for a few years, if free-trade severs
+the strong bond of interest which has hitherto attached them to the
+mother country, and the repeal of the Navigation Laws accustoms them
+to look to foreigners for the means of conducting their mercantile
+transactions? Charged with the defence of a colonial empire which
+encircles the earth, and has brought such countless treasures and
+boundless strength to the parent state, Great Britain at land is
+only a fourth-rate power, at least for Continental strife. At
+Waterloo, even, she could only array forty-five thousand men to
+contend with the conqueror of Europe for her existence. It is in
+our ships we must look for the means of maintaining our commerce,
+and asserting our independence against manufacturing jealousy,
+national rivalry, and foreign aggression. Is our navy, then, to
+be surrendered to the ceaseless encroachments of foreigners, in
+order to effect a saving of a few millions a-year on freights, reft
+from our own people, and sapping the foundations of our national
+independence?
+
+How can human wisdom or foresight, the energy of the Anglo-Saxons,
+or the courage of the Normans, maintain, for any length of time,
+our independence in the perilous position into which free-trade
+policy has, during the short period it has been in operation,
+brought us? The repeal of the Corn Laws has already brought an
+importation of eight or ten millions of foreign quarters annually
+upon our people--a full sixth of the national subsistence, and
+which will soon become indispensable to their existence. A simple
+non-intercourse act will alone enable Russia or America, without
+firing a shot, to compel us to lower the flag of Blake and Nelson.
+Stern famine will "guard the solitary coast," and famished
+multitudes demand national submission as the price of life. The
+repeal of the Navigation Laws will ere long bring the foreign seamen
+engaged in carrying on our trade to a superiority over our own,
+as has already taken place in so woful a manner with the Baltic
+powers. Hostile fleets will moor their ships of the line across our
+harbours, and throw back our starving multitudes on their own island
+for food, and their own market for employment. What will then avail
+our manufacturers and our fabrics,--the forges of Birmingham, the
+power-looms of Manchester, the iron-works of Lanarkshire,--if the
+enemies' squadrons blockade the Thames, the Mersey, and the Clyde,
+and famished millions are deprived alike of food and employment,
+by the suicidal policy of preceding rulers? Our present strength
+will then be the measure of our weakness; our vast population, as
+in a beleaguered town, the useless multitude which must be fed, and
+cannot fight,--our wealth, the glittering prize which will attract
+the rapacity of the spoiler. With indignant feelings, but caustic
+truth, our people will then curse the infatuated policy which
+abandoned the national defences, and handed them over, bound hand
+and foot, to the enemy, only the more the object of rapacity because
+such boundless wealth had accumulated in a few hands amongst them.
+Then will be seen, that with our own hands, as into the ancient
+city, we have admitted the enemies' bands; we have drawn the horse
+pregnant with armed men through our ramparts, and our weeping and
+dispersed descendants will exclaim with the Trojans of old--
+
+        "Fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium, et ingens
+    Gloria Teucrorum."
+
+
+_Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh._
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+Irregularities and inconsistencies in the ext 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.
+
+Page 11: There is a closing parenthesis missing in the following--(the
+blank left for the number was filled up with the word "three" in
+committee of the House of Commons. Nothing said about the issue in
+tail, as before ...
+
+Page 22: The transcriber has inserted "the" ... rope up to the spot
+where he ...
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume
+64, No. 393, July 1848, by Various
+
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