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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75623 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Charlotte’s Convoy.]
+
+
+
+
+THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE.
+
+AUGUST, 1861.
+
+
+
+
+Philip.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+BREVIS ESSE LABORO.
+
+Never, General Baynes afterwards declared, did fever come and go so
+pleasantly as that attack to which we have seen the Mrs. General advert
+in her letter to her sister, Mrs. Major MacWhirter. The cold fit was
+merely a lively, pleasant chatter and rattle of the teeth; the hot fit
+an agreeable warmth; and though the ensuing sleep, with which I believe
+such aguish attacks are usually concluded, was enlivened by several
+dreams of death, demons, and torture, how felicitous it was to wake and
+find that dreadful thought of ruin removed which had always, for the
+last few months, ever since Dr. Firmin’s flight and the knowledge of
+his own imprudence, pursued the good-natured gentleman! What! this boy
+might go to college, and that get his commission; and their meals need be
+embittered by no more dreadful thoughts of the morrow, and their walks
+no longer were dogged by imaginary bailiffs, and presented a gaol in the
+vista! It was too much bliss; and again and again the old soldier said
+his thankful prayers, and blessed his benefactor.
+
+Philip thought no more of his act of kindness, except to be very
+grateful, and very happy that he had rendered other people so. He could
+no more have taken the old man’s all, and plunged that innocent family
+into poverty, than he could have stolen the forks off my table. But other
+folks were disposed to rate his virtue much more highly; and amongst
+these was my wife, who chose positively to worship this young gentleman,
+and I believe would have let him smoke in her drawing-room if he had
+been so minded, and though her genteelest acquaintances were in the
+room. Goodness knows what a noise and what piteous looks are produced if
+ever the master of the house chooses to indulge in a cigar after dinner;
+but then, you understand, _I_ have never declined to claim mine and my
+children’s right because an old gentleman would be inconvenienced: and
+this is what I tell Mrs. Pen. If I order a coat from my tailor, must I
+refuse to pay him because a rogue steals it, and ought I to expect to be
+let off? Women won’t see matters of fact in a matter-of-fact point of
+view, and justice, unless it is tinged with a little romance, gets no
+respect from them.
+
+So, forsooth, because Philip has performed this certainly most generous,
+most dashing, most reckless piece of extravagance, he is to be held up
+as a perfect _preux chevalier_. The most riotous dinners are ordered for
+him. We are to wait until he comes to breakfast, and he is pretty nearly
+always late. The children are to be sent round to kiss uncle Philip,
+as he is now called. The children? I wonder the mother did not jump up
+and kiss him too. _Elle en était capable._ As for the osculations which
+took place between Mrs. Pendennis and her new-found young friend, Miss
+Charlotte Baynes, they were perfectly ridiculous; two school children
+could not have behaved more absurdly; and I don’t know which seemed to be
+the youngest of these two. There were colloquies, assignations, meetings
+on the ramparts, on the pier, where know I?—and the servants and little
+children of the two establishments were perpetually trotting to and
+fro with letters from dearest Laura to dearest Charlotte, and dearest
+Charlotte to her dearest Mrs. Pendennis. Why, my wife absolutely went
+the length of saying that dearest Charlotte’s mother, Mrs. Baynes, was a
+worthy, clever woman, and a good mother—a woman whose tongue never ceased
+clacking about the regiment, and all the officers, and all the officers’
+wives; of whom, by the way, she had very little good to tell.
+
+“A worthy mother, is she, my dear?” I say. “But, oh, mercy! Mrs. Baynes
+would be an awful mother-in-law!”
+
+I shuddered at the thought of having such a commonplace, hard, ill-bred
+woman in a state of quasi authority over me.
+
+On this Mrs. Laura must break out in quite a petulant tone—“Oh, how
+_stale_ this kind of thing is, Arthur, from a man _qui veut passer pour
+un homme d’esprit_! You are always attacking mothers-in-law!”
+
+“Witness Mrs. Mackenzie, my love—Clive Newcome’s mother-in-law. That’s a
+nice creature; not selfish, not wicked, not——”
+
+“Not nonsense, Arthur!”
+
+“Mrs. Baynes knew Mrs. Mackenzie in the West Indies, as she knew all the
+female army. She considers Mrs. Mackenzie was a most elegant, handsome,
+dashing woman—only a little too fond of the admiration of our sex. There
+was, I own, a fascination about Captain Goby. Do you remember, my love,
+that man with the stays and dyed hair, who——”
+
+“Oh, Arthur! When our girls marry, I suppose you will teach their
+husbands to abuse, and scorn, and mistrust _their_ mother-in-law. Will
+he, my darlings? will he, my blessings?” (This apart to the children, if
+you please.) “Go! I have no patience with such talk!”
+
+“Well, my love, Mrs. Baynes is a most agreeable woman; and when I have
+heard that story about the Highlanders at the Cape of Good Hope a few
+times more” (I do not tell it here, for it has nothing to do with the
+present history), “I daresay I shall begin to be amused by it.”
+
+“Ah! here comes Charlotte, I’m glad to say. How pretty she is! What a
+colour! What a dear creature!”
+
+To all which of course I could not say a contradictory word, for a
+prettier, fresher lass than Miss Baynes, with a sweeter voice, face,
+laughter, it was difficult to see.
+
+“Why does mamma like Charlotte better than she likes us?” says our dear
+and justly indignant eldest girl.
+
+“I could not love her better if I were her _mother-in-law_,” says Laura,
+running to her young friend, casting a glance at me over her shoulder;
+and that kissing nonsense begins between the two ladies. To be sure the
+girl looks uncommonly bright and pretty with her pink cheeks, her bright
+eyes, her slim form, and that charming white India shawl which her father
+brought home for her.
+
+To this osculatory party enters presently Mr. Philip Firmin, who has been
+dawdling about the ramparts ever since breakfast. He says he has been
+reading law there. He has found a jolly quiet place to read. Law, has he?
+And much good may it do him! Why has he not gone back to his law, and his
+reviewing?
+
+“You must—you _must_ stay on a little longer. You have only been here
+five days. Do, Charlotte, ask Philip to stay a little.”
+
+All the children sing in a chorus, “Oh, do, uncle Philip, stay a little
+longer!” Miss Baynes says, “I hope you will stay, Mr. Firmin,” and looks
+at him.
+
+“Five days has he been here? Five years. Five lives. Five hundred years.
+What do you mean? In that little time of—let me see, a hundred and twenty
+hours, and at least a half of them for sleep and dinner (for Philip’s
+appetite was very fine)—do you mean that in that little time his heart,
+cruelly stabbed by a previous monster in female shape, has healed, got
+quite well, and actually begun to be wounded again? Have two walks on
+the pier, as many visits to the Tintelleries (where he hears the story
+of the Highlanders at the Cape of Good Hope with respectful interest), a
+word or two about the weather, a look or two, a squeezekin, perhaps, of
+a little handykin—I say, do you mean that this absurd young idiot, and
+that little round-faced girl, pretty, certainly, but only just out of the
+schoolroom—do you mean to say that they have—— Upon my word, Laura, this
+is too bad. Why, Philip has not a penny piece in the world.”
+
+“Yes, he has a hundred pounds, and expects to sell his mare for ninety
+at least. He has excellent talents. He can easily write three articles a
+week in the _Pall Mall Gazette_. I am sure no one writes so well, and it
+is much better done and more amusing than it used to be. That is three
+hundred a year. Lord Ringwood must be applied to, and must and shall
+get him something. Don’t you know that Captain Baynes stood by Colonel
+Ringwood’s side at Busaco, and that they were the closest friends? And
+pray, how did _we_ get on, I should like to know? How did _we_ get on,
+baby?”
+
+“How did we det on?” says the baby.
+
+“Oh, woman! woman!” yells the father of the family. “Why, Philip Firmin
+has all the habits of a rich man with the pay of a mechanic. Do you
+suppose he ever sate in a second-class carriage in his life, or denied
+himself any pleasure to which he had a mind? He gave five francs to a
+beggar girl yesterday.”
+
+“He had always a noble heart,” says my wife. “He gave a fortune to a
+whole family a week ago; and” (out comes the pocket-handkerchief—oh, of
+course, the pocket-handkerchief)—“and—‘God loves a cheerful giver!’”
+
+“He is careless; he is extravagant; he is lazy;—I don’t know that he is
+remarkably clever——”
+
+“Oh, yes! he is your friend, of course. Now, abuse him—_do_, Arthur!”
+
+“And, pray, when did you become acquainted with this astounding piece of
+news?” I inquire.
+
+“When? From the very first moment when I saw Charlotte looking at him, to
+be sure. The poor child said to me only yesterday, ‘Oh, Laura! he is our
+preserver!’ And their preserver he has been, under Heaven.”
+
+“Yes. But he has not got a five-pound note!” I cry.
+
+“Arthur, I am surprised at you. Oh, men, men are awfully worldly! Do you
+suppose Heaven will not send him help at its good time, and be kind to
+him who has rescued so many from ruin? Do you suppose the prayers, the
+blessings of that father, of those little ones, of that dear child, will
+not avail him? Suppose he has to wait a year, ten years, have they not
+time, and will not the good day come?”
+
+Yes. This was actually the talk of a woman of sense and discernment when
+her prejudices and romance were not in the way, and she looked forward to
+the marriage of these folks, some ten years hence, as confidently as if
+they were both rich, and going to St. George’s to-morrow.
+
+As for making a romantic story of it, or spinning out love conversations
+between Jenny and Jessamy, or describing moonlight raptures and
+passionate outpourings of two young hearts and so forth—excuse me, _s’il
+vous plait_. I am a man of the world, and of a certain age. Let the young
+people fill in this outline, and colour it as they please. Let the old
+folks who read, lay down the book a minute, and remember. It is well
+remembered, isn’t it, that time? Yes, good John Anderson, and Mrs. John.
+Yes, good Darby and Joan. The lips won’t tell now, what they did once.
+To-day is for the happy, and to-morrow for the young, and yesterday, is
+not that dear and here too?
+
+I was in the company of an elderly gentleman, not very long since, who
+was perfectly sober, who is not particularly handsome, or healthy, or
+wealthy, or witty; and who, speaking of his past life, volunteered to
+declare that he would gladly live every minute of it over again. Is a
+man who can say that a hardened sinner, not aware how miserable he ought
+to be by rights, and therefore really in a most desperate and deplorable
+condition; or is he _fortunatus nimium_, and ought his statue to be put
+up in the most splendid and crowded thoroughfare of the town? Would you,
+who are reading this, for example, like to live _your_ life over again?
+What has been its chief joy? What are to-day’s pleasures? Are they so
+exquisite that you would prolong them for ever? Would you like to have
+the roast beef on which you have dined brought back again to table, and
+have more beef, and more, and more? Would you like to hear yesterday’s
+sermon over and over again—eternally voluble? Would you like to get on
+the Edinburgh mail, and travel outside for fifty hours as you did in your
+youth? You might as well say you would like to go into the flogging-room,
+and take a turn under the rods: you would like to be thrashed over again
+by your bully at school: you would like to go to the dentist’s, where
+your dear parents were in the habit of taking you: you would like to
+be taking hot Epsom salts, with a piece of dry bread to take away the
+taste: you would like to be jilted by your first love: you would like
+to be going in to your father to tell him you had contracted debts to
+the amount of _x_ + _y_ + _z_, whilst you were at the university. As I
+consider the passionate griefs of childhood, the weariness and sameness
+of shaving, the agony of corns, and the thousand other ills to which
+flesh is heir, I cheerfully say for one, I am not anxious to wear it for
+ever. No. I do not want to go to school again. I do not want to hear
+Trotman’s sermon over again. Take me out and finish me. Give me the
+cup of hemlock at once. Here’s a health to you, my lads. Don’t weep,
+my Simmias. Be cheerful, my Phædon. Ha! I feel the co-o-old stealing,
+stealing upwards. Now it is in my ankles—no more gout in my foot: now my
+knees are numb. What, is—is that poor executioner crying too? Good-bye.
+Sacrifice a cock to Æscu—to Æscula— ... Have you ever read the chapter in
+Grote’s _History_? Ah! When the Sacred Ship returns from Delos, and is
+telegraphed as entering into port, may we be at peace and ready!
+
+What is this funeral chant, when the pipes should be playing gaily as
+Love, and Youth, and Spring, and Joy are dancing under the windows? Look
+you. Men not so wise as Socrates have their demons, who will be heard
+and whisper in the queerest times and places. Perhaps I shall have to
+tell of a funeral presently, and shall be outrageously cheerful; or of an
+execution, and shall split my sides with laughing. Arrived at my time of
+life, when I see a penniless young friend falling in love and thinking of
+course of committing matrimony, what can I do but be melancholy? How is a
+man to marry who has not enough to keep ever so miniature a brougham—ever
+so small a house—not enough to keep himself, let alone a wife and family?
+Gracious powers! is it not blasphemy to marry without fifteen hundred
+a year? Poverty, debt, protested bills, duns, crime, fall assuredly on
+the wretch who has not fifteen—say at once two thousand a year; for you
+can’t live decently in London for less. And a wife whom you have met a
+score of times at balls or breakfasts, and with her best dresses and
+behaviour at a country house;—how do you know how she will turn out; what
+her temper is; what her relations are likely to be? Suppose she has poor
+relations, or loud coarse brothers who are always dropping in to dinner?
+What is her mother like; and can you bear to have that woman meddling and
+domineering over your establishment? Old General Baynes was very well; a
+weak, quiet, and presentable old man: but Mrs. General Baynes, and that
+awful Mrs. Major MacWhirter,—and those hobbledehoys of boys in creaking
+shoes, hectoring about the premises? As a man of the world I saw all
+these dreadful liabilities impending over the husband of Miss Charlotte
+Baynes, and could not view them without horror. Gracefully and slightly,
+but wittily and in my sarcastic way, I thought it my duty to show up the
+oddities of the Baynes family to Philip. I mimicked the boys, and their
+clumping blucher-boots. I touched off the dreadful military ladies,
+very smartly and cleverly as I thought, and as if I never supposed that
+Philip had any idea of Miss Baynes. To do him justice, he laughed once
+or twice; then he grew very red. His sense of humour is very limited;
+that even Laura allows. Then he came out with strong expression, and
+said it was a confounded shame, and strode off with his cigar. And when
+I remarked to my wife how susceptible he was in some things, and how
+little in the matter of joking, she shrugged her shoulders and said,
+“Philip not only understood perfectly well what I said, but would tell it
+all to Mrs. General and Mrs. Major on the first opportunity.” And this
+was the fact, as Mrs. Baynes took care to tell me _afterwards_. She was
+aware who was her _enemy_. She was aware who spoke ill of her, and her
+blessed darling _behind our backs_. And “do you think it was to see _you_
+or any one belonging to your _stuck-up house_, sir, that we came to you
+so often, which we certainly did, day and night, breakfast and supper,
+and no thanks to you? No, sir! ha, ha!” I can see her flaunting out of
+my sitting-room as she speaks, with a strident laugh, and snapping her
+dingily-gloved fingers at the door. Oh, Philip, Philip! To think that you
+were such a coward as to go and tell her! But I pardon him. From my heart
+I pity and pardon him.
+
+For the step which he is meditating, you may be sure that the young man
+himself does not feel the smallest need of pardon or pity. He is in
+a state of happiness so crazy that it is useless to reason with him.
+Not being at all of a poetical turn originally, the wretch is actually
+perpetrating verse in secret, and my servants found fragments of his
+manuscript on the dressing-table in his bedroom. _Heart_ and _art_,
+_sever_ and _for ever_, and so on; what stale rhymes are these? I do not
+feel at liberty to give in entire the poem which our maid found in Mr.
+Philip’s room, and brought sniggering to my wife, who only said, “Poor
+thing!” The fact is, it was too pitiable. Such maundering rubbish! Such
+stale rhymes, and such old thoughts! But then, says Laura, “I daresay all
+people’s love-making is not amusing to their neighbours; and I know who
+wrote not very wise love-verses when he was young.” No, I won’t publish
+Philip’s verses, until some day he shall mortally offend me. I can recall
+some of my own written under similar circumstances with twinges of shame;
+and shall drop a veil of decent friendship over my friend’s folly.
+
+Under that veil, meanwhile, the young man is perfectly contented, nay,
+uproariously happy. All earth and nature smiles round about him. “When
+Jove meets his Juno, in Homer, sir,” says Philip, in his hectoring way,
+“don’t immortal flowers of beauty spring up around them, and rainbows of
+celestial hues bend over their heads? Love, sir, flings a halo round the
+loved one. Where she moves, rise roses, hyacinths, and ambrosial odours.
+Don’t talk to me about poverty, sir! He either fears his fate too much or
+his desert is small, who dares not put it to the touch and win or lose it
+all! Haven’t I endured poverty? Am I not as poor now as a man can be—and
+what is there in it? Do I want for anything? Haven’t I got a guinea in my
+pocket? Do I owe any man anything? Isn’t there manna in the wilderness
+for those who have faith to walk in it? That’s where you fail, Pen. By
+all that is sacred, you have no faith; your heart is cowardly, sir; and
+if you are to escape, as perhaps you may, I suspect it is by your wife
+that you will be saved. Laura has a trust in heaven, but Arthur’s morals
+are a genteel atheism. Just reach me that claret—the wine’s not bad. I
+say your morals are a genteel atheism, and I shudder when I think of your
+condition. Talk to _me_ about a brougham being necessary for the comfort
+of a woman! A broomstick to ride to the moon! And I don’t say that a
+brougham is not a comfort, mind you; but that, when it is a necessity,
+mark you, Heaven will provide it! Why, sir, hang it, look at me! Ain’t I
+suffering in the most abject poverty? I ask you is there a man in London
+so poor as I am? And since my father’s ruin do I want for anything? I
+want for shelter for a day or two. Good. There’s my dear Little Sister
+ready to give it me. I want for money. Does not that sainted widow’s
+cruse pour its oil out for me? Heaven bless and reward her. Boo!” (Here,
+for reasons which need not be named, the orator squeezes his fists into
+his eyes.) “I want shelter; ain’t I in good quarters? I want work;
+haven’t I got work, and did you not get it for me? You should just see,
+sir, how I polished off that book of travels this morning. I read some
+of the article to Char——, to Miss ——, to some friends, in fact. I don’t
+mean to say that they are very intellectual people, but your common
+humdrum average audience is the public to try. Recollect Molière and his
+housekeeper, you know.”
+
+“By the housekeeper, do you mean Mrs. Baynes?” I ask, in my _amontillado_
+manner. (By the way, who ever heard of _amontillado_ in the early
+days of which I write?) “In manner she would do, and I daresay in
+accomplishments; but I doubt about her temper.”
+
+“You’re almost as worldly as the Twysdens, by George, you are! Unless
+persons are of a certain _monde_, you don’t value them. A little
+adversity would do you good, Pen; and I heartily wish you might get it,
+except for the dear wife and children. You measure your morality by
+May-fair standards; and if an angel unawares came to you in pattens and
+a cotton umbrella, you would turn away from her. _You_ would never have
+found out the Little Sister. A duchess—God bless her! A creature of an
+imperial generosity, and delicacy, and intrepidity, and the finest sense
+of humour, but she drops her _h_’s often, and how could you pardon such a
+crime? Sir, you are my better in wit and a dexterous application of your
+powers; but I think, sir,” says Phil, curling the flaming mustachios, “I
+am your superior in a certain magnanimity; though, by Jove, old fellow,
+man and boy, you have always been one of the best fellows in the world
+to P. F.; one of the best fellows, and the most generous, and the most
+cordial,—that you have: only you _do_ rile me when you sing in that
+confounded May-fair twang.”
+
+Here one of the children summoned us to tea—and “Papa was laughing, and
+uncle Philip was flinging his hands about and pulling his beard off,”
+said the little messenger.
+
+“I shall keep a fine lock of it for you, Nelly, my dear,” says uncle
+Philip. On which the child said, “Oh, no! I know whom you’ll give it to,
+don’t I, mamma?” and she goes up to her mamma, and whispers.
+
+Miss Nelly knows? At what age do those little match-makers begin to know,
+and how soon do they practise the use of their young eyes, their little
+smiles, wiles, and ogles? This young woman, I believe, coquetted whilst
+she was yet a baby in arms, over her nurse’s shoulder. Before she could
+speak, she could be proud of her new vermilion shoes, and would point
+out the charms of her blue sash. She was jealous in the nursery, and her
+little heart had beat for years and years before she left off pinafores.
+
+For whom will Philip keep a lock of that red, red gold which curls round
+his face? Can you guess? Of what colour is the hair in that little locket
+which the gentleman himself occultly wears? A few months ago, I believe,
+a pale straw-coloured wisp of hair occupied that place of honour; now it
+is a chesnut-brown, as far as I can see, of precisely the same colour
+as that which waves round Charlotte Baynes’ pretty face, and tumbles
+in clusters on her neck, very nearly the colour of Mrs. Paynter’s this
+last season. So, you see, we chop and we change: straw gives place to
+chesnut, and chesnut is succeeded by ebony; and, for our own parts, we
+defy time; and if you want a lock of my hair, Belinda, take this pair of
+scissors, and look in that cupboard, in the bandbox marked No. 3, and cut
+off a thick glossy piece, darling, and wear it, dear, and my blessings go
+with thee! What is this? Am I sneering because Corydon and Phyllis are
+wooing and happy? You see I pledged myself not to have any sentimental
+nonsense. To describe love-making is immoral and immodest; you know it
+is. To describe it as it really is, or would appear to you and me as
+lookers-on, would be to describe the most dreary farce, to chronicle
+the most tautological twaddle. To take a note of sighs, hand-squeezes,
+looks at the moon, and so forth—does this business become our dignity as
+historians? Come away from those foolish young people—they don’t want
+us; and dreary as their farce is, and tautological as their twaddle, you
+may be sure it amuses them, and that they are happy enough without us.
+Happy? Is there any happiness like it, pray? Was it not rapture to watch
+the messenger, to seize the note, and fee the bearer?—to retire out of
+sight of all prying eyes and read:—“Dearest! Mamma’s cold is better this
+morning. The Joneses came to tea, and Julia sang. I did not enjoy it,
+as my dear was at his _horrid dinner_, where I hope he amused himself.
+Send me a word by Buttles, who brings this, if only to say you are your
+Louisa’s own, own,” &c. &c. &c. That used to be the kind of thing.
+In such coy lines artless Innocence used to whisper its little vows.
+So she used to smile; so she used to warble; so she used to prattle.
+Young people, at present engaged in the pretty sport, be assured your
+middle-aged parents have played the game, and remember the rules of it.
+Yes, under papa’s bow-window of a waistcoat is a heart which took very
+violent exercise when that waist was slim. Now he sits tranquilly in
+his tent, and watches the lads going in for their innings. Why, look at
+grandmamma in her spectacles reading that sermon. In _her_ old heart
+there is a corner as romantic still as when she used to read the _Wild
+Irish Girl_ or the _Scottish Chiefs_ in the days of her misshood. And as
+for your grandfather, my dears, to see him now you would little suppose
+that that calm, polished, dear old gentleman was once as wild—as wild
+as Orson.... Under my windows, as I write, there passes an itinerant
+flower-merchant. He has his roses and geraniums on a cart drawn by a
+quadruped—a little long-eared quadruped, which lifts up its voice, and
+sings after its manner. When I was young, donkeys used to bray precisely
+in the same way; and others will heehaw so, when we are silent and our
+ears hear no more.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+DRUM IST’S SO WOHL MIR IN DER WELT.
+
+Our new friends lived for a while contentedly enough at Boulogne, where
+they found comrades and acquaintances gathered together from those many
+regions which they had visited in the course of their military career.
+Mrs. Baynes, out of the field, was the commanding officer over the
+general. She ordered his clothes for him, tied his neckcloth into a neat
+bow, and, on tea-party evenings, pinned his brooch into his shirt-frill.
+She gave him to understand when he had had enough to eat or drink at
+dinner, and explained, with great frankness, how this or that dish did
+not agree with him. If he was disposed to exceed, she would call out, in
+a loud voice: “Remember, general, what you took this morning!” Knowing
+his constitution, as she said, she knew the remedies which were necessary
+for her husband, and administered them to him with great liberality.
+Resistance was impossible, as the veteran officer acknowledged. “The
+boys have fought about the medicine since we came home,” he confessed,
+“but she has me under her thumb, by George. She really is a magnificent
+physician, now. She has got some invaluable prescriptions, and in India
+she used to doctor the whole station.” She would have taken the present
+writer’s little household under her care, and proposed several remedies
+for my children, until their alarmed mother was obliged to keep them out
+of her sight. I am not saying this was an agreeable woman. Her voice
+was loud and harsh. The anecdotes which she was for ever narrating
+related to military personages in foreign countries with whom I was
+unacquainted, and whose history failed to interest me. She took her wine
+with much spirit, whilst engaged in this prattle. I have heard talk not
+less foolish in much finer company, and known people delighted to listen
+to anecdotes of the duchess and the marchioness who would yawn over
+the history of Captain Jones’s quarrels with his lady, or Mrs. Major
+Wolfe’s monstrous flirtations with young Ensign Kyd. My wife, with the
+mischievousness of her sex, would mimic the Baynes’ conversation very
+drolly, but always insisted that she was not more really vulgar than many
+much greater persons.
+
+For all this, Mrs. General Baynes did not hesitate to declare that we
+were “stuck-up” people; and from the very first setting eyes on us, she
+declared, that she viewed us with a constant darkling suspicion. Mrs. P.
+was a harmless, washed-out creature with nothing in her. As for that high
+and mighty Mr. P. and _his_ airs, she would be glad to know whether the
+wife of a British general officer who had seen service in _every part
+of the globe_, and met the _most distinguished_ governors, generals,
+and their ladies, several of whom _were noblemen_—she would be glad to
+know whether such people were not good enough for, &c. &c. Who has not
+met with these difficulties in life, and who can escape them? “Hang it,
+sir,” Phil would say, twirling the red mustachios, “I like to be hated by
+some fellows;” and it must be owned that Mr. Philip got what he liked.
+I suppose Mr. Philip’s friend and biographer had something of the same
+feeling. At any rate, in regard of this lady the hypocrisy of politeness
+was very hard to keep up; wanting us for reasons of her own, she covered
+the dagger with which she would have stabbed us: but we knew it was
+there clenched in her skinny hand in her meagre pocket. She would pay us
+the most fulsome compliments with anger raging out of her eyes—a little
+hate-bearing woman, envious, malicious, but loving her cubs, and nursing
+them, and clutching them in her lean arms with a jealous strain. It was
+“Good-bye, darling! I shall leave you here with your friends. Oh, how
+kind you are to her, Mrs. Pendennis! How can I ever thank you, and Mr. P.
+I am sure;” and she looked as if she could poison both of us, as she went
+away, curtseying and darting dreary parting smiles.
+
+This lady had an intimate friend and companion in arms, Mrs. Colonel
+Bunch, in fact, of the—the Bengal cavalry, who was now in Europe with
+Bunch and their children, who were residing at Paris for the young folks’
+education. At first, as we have heard, Mrs. Baynes’ predilections had
+been all for Tours, where her sister was living, and where lodgings
+were cheap and food reasonable in proportion. But Bunch happening to
+pass through Boulogne on his way to his wife at Paris, and meeting his
+old comrade, gave General Baynes such an account of the cheapness and
+pleasures of the French capital, as to induce the general to think of
+bending his steps thither. Mrs. Baynes would not hear of such a plan.
+She was all for her dear sister and Tours; but when, in the course of
+conversation, Colonel Bunch described a ball at the Tuileries, where he
+and Mrs. B. had been received with the most flattering politeness by the
+royal family, it was remarked that Mrs. Baynes’ mind underwent a change.
+When Bunch went on to aver that the balls at Government House at Calcutta
+were nothing compared to those at the Tuileries or the Prefecture of
+the Seine; that the English were invited and respected everywhere; that
+the ambassador was most hospitable; that the clergymen were admirable;
+and that at their boarding-house, kept by Madame la Générale Baronne
+de Smolensk, at the Petit Château d’Espagne, Avenue de Valmy, Champs
+Elysées, they had balls twice a month, the most comfortable apartments,
+the most choice society, and every comfort and luxury at so many francs
+per month, with an allowance for children—I say Mrs. Baynes was very
+greatly moved. “It is not,” she said, “in consequence of the balls at the
+ambassador’s or the Tuileries, for I am an old woman; and in spite of
+what you say, colonel, I can’t fancy, after Government House, anything
+more magnificent in any French palace. It is not for _me_, goodness
+knows, I speak: but the children should have education, and my Charlotte
+an entrée into the world; and what you say of the invaluable clergyman,
+Mr. X——, I have been thinking of it all night; but above all, above all,
+of the chances of education for my darlings. Nothing should give way to
+that—nothing!” On this a long and delightful conversation and calculation
+took place. Bunch produced his bills at the Baroness de Smolensk’s. The
+two gentlemen jotted up accounts, and made calculations all through the
+evening. It was hard even for Mrs. Baynes to force the figures into such
+a shape as to make them accord with the general’s income; but, driven
+away by one calculation after another, she returned again and again to
+the charge, until she overcame the stubborn arithmetical difficulties,
+and the pounds, shillings, and pence lay prostrate before her. They
+could save upon this point; they could screw upon that; they _must_ make
+a sacrifice to educate the children. “Sarah Bunch and her girls go to
+Court, indeed! Why shouldn’t mine go?” she asked. On which her general
+said, “By George, Eliza, that’s the point you are thinking of.” On which
+Eliza said, “No,” and repeated “No” a score of times, growing more angry
+as she uttered each denial. And she declared before Heaven she did _not_
+want to go to any Court. Had she not refused to be presented at home,
+though Mrs. Colonel Flack went, because she did not choose to go to the
+wicked expense of a train? And it was base of the general, _base_ and
+_mean_ of him to say so. And there was a fine scene, as I am given to
+understand; not that I was present at this family fight: but my informant
+was Mr. Firmin; and Mr. Firmin had his information from a little person
+who, about this time, had got to prattle out all the secrets of her young
+heart to him; who would have jumped off the pier-head with her hand in
+his if he had said “Come,” without his hand if he had said “Go:” a little
+person whose whole life had been changed—changed for a month past—changed
+in one minute, that minute when she saw Philip’s fiery whiskers and heard
+his great big voice saluting her father amongst the commissioners on the
+_quai_ before the custom-house.
+
+Tours was, at any rate, a hundred and fifty miles farther off than Paris
+from—from a city where a young gentleman lived in whom Miss Charlotte
+Baynes felt an interest; hence, I suppose, arose her delight that her
+parents had determined upon taking up their residence in the larger and
+nearer city. Besides, she owned, in the course of her artless confidences
+to my wife, that, when together, mamma and aunt MacWhirter quarrelled
+unceasingly; and had once caused the old boys, the major and the
+general, to call each other out. She preferred, then, to live away from
+aunt Mac. She had never had such a friend as Laura, never. She had never
+been so happy as at Boulogne, never. She should always love everybody
+in our house, that she should, for ever and ever—and so forth, and so
+forth. The ladies meet; cling together; osculations are carried round
+the whole family circle, from our wondering eldest boy, who cries, “I
+say, hullo! what are you kissing me so about?” to darling baby, crowing
+and sputtering unconscious in the rapturous young girl’s embraces. I
+tell you, these two women were making fools of themselves, and they were
+burning with enthusiasm for the “preserver” of the Baynes family, as they
+called that big fellow yonder, whose biographer I have aspired to be.
+The lazy rogue lay basking in the glorious warmth and sunshine of early
+love. He would stretch his big limbs out in our garden; pour out his
+feelings with endless volubility; call upon _hominum divumque voluptas,
+alma Venus_; vow that he had never lived or been happy until now; declare
+that he laughed poverty to scorn and all her ills; and fume against his
+masters of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, because they declined to insert
+certain love verses which Mr. Philip now composed almost every day. Poor
+little Charlotte! And didst thou receive those treasures of song; and
+wonder over them, not perhaps comprehending them altogether; and lock
+them up in thy heart’s inmost casket as well as in thy little desk; and
+take them out in quiet hours, and kiss them, and bless Heaven for giving
+thee such jewels? I daresay. I can fancy all this, without seeing it. I
+can read the little letters in the little desk, without picking lock or
+breaking seal. Poor little letters! Sometimes they are not spelt right,
+quite; but I don’t know that the style is worse for that. Poor little
+letters! You are flung to the winds sometimes and forgotten with all
+your sweet secrets and loving artless confessions; but not always—no,
+not always. As for Philip, who was the most careless creature alive, and
+left all his clothes and haberdashery sprawling on his bed-room floor, he
+had at this time a breast-pocket stuffed out with papers which crackled
+in the most ridiculous way. He was always looking down at this precious
+pocket, and putting one of his great hands over it as though he would
+guard it. The pocket did not contain bank-notes, you may be sure of that.
+It contained documents stating that mamma’s cold is better; the Joneses
+came to tea, and Julia sang, &c. Ah, friend, however old you are now,
+however cold you are now, however tough, I hope you, too, remember how
+Julia sang, and the Joneses came to tea.
+
+Mr. Philip stayed on week after week, declaring to my wife that she
+was a perfect angel for keeping him so long. Bunch wrote from his
+boarding-house more and more enthusiastic reports about the comforts of
+the establishment. For his sake, Madame la Baronne de Smolensk would
+make unheard-of sacrifices, in order to accommodate the general and his
+distinguished party. The balls were going to be perfectly splendid that
+winter. There were several old Indians living near; in fact, they could
+form a regular little club. It was agreed that Baynes should go and
+reconnoitre the ground. He did go. Madame de Smolensk, a most elegant
+woman, had a magnificent dinner for him—quite splendid, I give you my
+word, but only what they have every day. Soup, of course, my love; fish,
+capital wine, and, I should say, some five or six and thirty made dishes.
+The general was quite enraptured. Bunch had put his boys to a famous
+school, where they might “whop” the French boys, and learn all the modern
+languages. The little ones would dine early; the baroness would take
+the whole family at an astonishingly cheap rate. In a word, the Baynes’
+column got the route for Paris shortly before our family-party was
+crossing the seas to return to London fogs and duty.
+
+You have, no doubt, remarked how, under certain tender circumstances,
+women will help one another. They help where they ought not to help.
+When Mr. Darby ought to be separated from Miss Joan, and the best
+thing that could happen for both would be a _lettre de cachet_ to whip
+off Mons. Darby to the Bastille for five years, and an order from her
+parents to lock up Mademoiselle Jeanne in a convent, some aunt, some
+relative, some pitying female friend is sure to be found, who will
+give the pair a chance of meeting, and turn her head away whilst those
+unhappy lovers are warbling endless good-byes close up to each other’s
+ears. My wife, I have said, chose to feel this absurd sympathy for the
+young people about whom we have been just talking. As the days for
+Charlotte’s departure drew near, this wretched, misguiding matron would
+take the girl out walking into I know not what unfrequented bye-lanes,
+quiet streets, rampart-nooks, and the like; and la! by the most singular
+coincidence, Mr. Philip’s hulking boots would assuredly come tramping
+after the women’s little feet. What will you say, when I tell you, that I
+myself, the father of the family, the renter of the old-fashioned house,
+Rue Roucoule, Haute Ville, Boulogne-sur-Mer—as I am going into my own
+study—am met at the threshold by Helen, my eldest daughter, who puts her
+little arms before the glass-door at which I was about to enter, and
+says, “You must not go in there, papa! Mamma says we none of us are to go
+in there.”
+
+“And why, pray?” I ask.
+
+“Because uncle Philip and Charlotte are talking secrets there; and nobody
+is to disturb them—_nobody_!”
+
+Upon my word, wasn’t this too monstrous? Am I Sir Pandarus of Troy
+become? Am I going to allow a penniless young man to steal away the heart
+of a young girl who has not twopence halfpenny to her fortune? Shall I, I
+say, lend myself to this most unjustifiable intrigue?
+
+“Sir,” says my wife (we happened to have been bred up from childhood
+together, and I own to have had one or two foolish initiatory flirtations
+before I settled down to matrimonial fidelity)—“Sir,” says she, “when you
+were so wild—so spoony, I think is your elegant word—about Blanche, and
+used to put letters into a hollow tree for her at home, I used to see the
+letters, and I never disturbed them. These two people have much warmer
+hearts, and are a great deal fonder of each other, than you and Blanche
+used to be. I should not like to separate Charlotte from Philip now. It
+is too late, sir. She can never like anybody else as she likes him. If
+she lives to be a hundred, she will never forget him. Why should not the
+poor thing be happy a little, while she may?”
+
+An old house, with a green old courtyard and an ancient mossy wall,
+through breaks of which I can see the roofs and gables of the quaint
+old town, the city below, the shining sea, and the white English cliffs
+beyond; a green old courtyard, and a tall old stone house rising up in
+it, grown over with many a creeper on which the sun casts flickering
+shadows; and under the shadows, and through the glass of a tall gray
+window, I can just peep into a brown twilight parlour, and there I see
+two hazy figures by a table. One slim figure has brown hair, and one has
+flame-coloured whiskers. Look! a ray of sunshine has just peered into the
+room, and is lighting the whiskers up!
+
+“Poor little thing,” whispers my wife, very gently. “They are going away
+to-morrow. Let them have their talk out. She is crying her little eyes
+out, I am sure. Poor little Charlotte!”
+
+Whilst my wife was pitying Miss Charlotte in this pathetic way, and was
+going, I daresay, to have recourse to her own pocket-handkerchief, as
+I live, there came a burst of laughter from the darkling chamber where
+the two lovers were billing and cooing. First came Mr. Philip’s great
+boom (such a roar—such a haw-haw, or hee-haw, I never heard any other
+_two_-legged animal perform). Then follows Miss Charlotte’s tinkling
+peal; and presently that young person comes out into the garden, with
+her round face not bedewed with tears at all, but perfectly rosy, fresh,
+dimpled, and good-humoured. Charlotte gives me a little curtsey, and my
+wife a hand and a kind glance. They retreat through the open casement,
+twining round each other, as the vine does round the window; though
+which is the vine and which is the window in this simile, I pretend not
+to say—I can’t see through either of them, that is the truth. They pass
+through the parlour, and into the street beyond, doubtless: and as for
+Mr. Philip, I presently see _his_ head popped out of his window in the
+upper floor with his great pipe in his mouth. He can’t “work” without his
+pipe, he says; and my wife believes him. Work indeed!
+
+Miss Charlotte paid us another little visit that evening, when we
+happened to be alone. The children were gone to bed. The darlings!
+Charlotte must go up and kiss them. Mr. Philip Firmin was out. She did
+not seem to miss him in the least, nor did she make a single inquiry for
+him. We had been so good to her—so kind. How should she ever forget our
+great kindness? She had been so happy—oh! so happy! She had never been
+so happy before. She would write often and often, and Laura would write
+constantly—wouldn’t she? “Yes, dear child!” says my wife. And now a
+little more kissing, and it is time to go home to the Tintelleries. What
+a lovely night! Indeed the moon was blazing in full round in the purple
+heavens, and the stars were twinkling by myriads.
+
+“Good-bye, dear Charlotte; happiness go with you!” I seize her hand. I
+feel a paternal desire to kiss her fair, round face. Her sweetness, her
+happiness, her artless good-humour, and gentleness has endeared her to us
+all. As for me, I love her with a fatherly affection. “Stay, my dear!” I
+cry, with a happy gallantry. “I’ll go home with you to the Tintelleries.”
+
+You should have seen the fair round face _then_! Such a piteous
+expression came over it! She looked at my wife; and as for that Mrs.
+Laura she pulled the tail of my coat.
+
+“What do you mean, my dear?” I ask.
+
+“Don’t go out on such a dreadful night. You’ll catch cold!” says Laura.
+
+“Cold, my love!” I say. “Why, it’s as fine a night as ever——”
+
+“Oh! you—you _stoopid_!” says Laura, and begins to laugh. And there goes
+Miss Charlotte tripping away from us without a word more!
+
+Philip came in about half an hour afterwards. And do you know I very
+strongly suspect that he had been waiting round the corner. Few things
+escape _me_, you see, when I have a mind to be observant. And, certainly,
+if I had thought of that possibility and that I might be spoiling sport,
+I should not have proposed to Miss Charlotte to walk home with her.
+
+At a very early hour on the next morning my wife arose, and spent, in my
+opinion, a great deal of unprofitable time, bread, butter, cold beef,
+mustard and salt, in compiling a heap of sandwiches, which were tied
+up in a copy of the _Pall Mall Gazette_. That persistence in making
+sandwiches, in providing cakes and other refreshments for a journey, is
+a strange infatuation in women; as if there was not always enough to
+eat to be had at road inns and railway stations! What a good dinner we
+used to have at Montreuil in the old days, before railways were, and
+when the diligence spent four or six and twenty cheerful hours on its
+way to Paris! I think the finest dishes are not to be compared to that
+well-remembered fricandeau of youth, nor do wines of the most dainty
+vintage surpass the rough, honest, blue ordinaire which was served at
+the plenteous inn-table. I took our bale of sandwiches down to the
+office of the Messageries, whence our friends were to start. We saw six
+of the Baynes family packed into the interior of the diligence; and the
+boys climb cheerily into the rotonde. Charlotte’s pretty lips and hands
+wafted kisses to us from her corner. Mrs. General Baynes commanded the
+column, pushed the little ones into their places in the ark, ordered the
+general and young ones hither and thither with her parasol, declined to
+give the grumbling porters any but the smallest gratuity, and talked
+a shrieking jargon of French and Hindustanee to the people assembled
+round the carriage. My wife has that command over me that she actually
+made me demean myself so far as to deliver the sandwich parcel to one
+of the Baynes boys. I said, “Take this,” and the poor wretch held out
+his hand eagerly, evidently expecting that I was about to tip him with a
+five-franc piece or some such coin. _Fouette, cocher!_ The horses squeal.
+The huge machine jingles over the road, and rattles down the street.
+Farewell, pretty Charlotte, with your sweet face and sweet voice and kind
+eyes! But why, pray, is Mr. Philip Firmin not here to say farewell too?
+
+Before the diligence got under way, the Baynes boys had fought, and
+quarrelled, and wanted to mount on the imperial or cabriolet of the
+carriage, where there was only one passenger as yet. But the conductor
+called the lads off, saying that the remaining place was engaged by a
+gentleman, whom they were to take up on the road. And who should this
+turn out to be? Just outside the town a man springs up to the imperial;
+his light luggage, it appears, was on the coach already, and that luggage
+belonged to Philip Firmin. Ah, monsieur! and that was the reason, was it,
+why they were so merry yesterday—the parting day? Because they were not
+going to part just then. Because, when the time of execution drew near,
+they had managed to smuggle a little reprieve! Upon my conscience, I
+never heard of such imprudence in the whole course of my life! Why, it is
+starvation—certain misery to one and the other. “I don’t like to meddle
+in other people’s affairs,” I say to my wife; “but I have no patience
+with such folly, or with myself for not speaking to General Baynes on the
+subject. I shall write to the general.”
+
+“My dear, the general knows all about it,” says Charlotte’s, Philip’s
+(in my opinion) most injudicious friend. “We have talked about it, and,
+like a man of sense, the general makes light of it. ‘Young folks will be
+young folks,’ he says; ‘and, by George! ma’am, when I married—I should
+say, when Mrs. B. ordered me to marry her—she had nothing, and I but my
+captain’s pay. People get on, somehow. Better for a young man to marry,
+and keep out of idleness and mischief; and, I promise you, the chap who
+marries my girl gets a treasure. I like the boy for the sake of my old
+friend Phil Ringwood. I don’t see that the fellows with the rich wives
+are much the happier, or that men should wait to marry until they are
+gouty old rakes.’ And, it appears, the general instanced several officers
+of his own acquaintance; some of whom had married when they were young
+and poor; some who had married when they were old and sulky; some who had
+never married at all. And he mentioned his comrade, my own uncle, the
+late Major Pendennis, whom he called a selfish old creature, and hinted
+that the major had jilted some lady in early life, whom he would have
+done much better to marry.”
+
+And so Philip is actually gone after his charmer, and is pursuing her
+_summâ diligentiâ_? The Baynes family has allowed this penniless young
+law student to make love to their daughter, to accompany them to Paris,
+to appear as the almost recognized son of the house. “Other people,
+when they were young, wanted to make imprudent marriages,” says my wife
+(as if that wretched _tu quoque_ were any answer to my remark!) “This
+penniless law student might have a good sum of money if he chose to press
+the Baynes family to pay him what, after all, they owe him.” And so
+poor little Charlotte was to be her father’s ransom! To be sure, little
+Charlotte did not object to offer herself up in payment of her papa’s
+debt! And though I objected as a moral man and a prudent man, and a
+father of a family, I could not be very seriously angry. I am secretly of
+the disposition of the time-honoured _père de famille_ in the comedies,
+the irascible old gentleman in the crop wig and George-the-Second coat,
+who is always menacing “Tom the young dog” with his cane. When the deed
+is done, and Miranda (the little sly-boots!) falls before my squaretoes
+and shoe-buckles, and Tom the young dog kneels before me in his white
+ducks, and they cry out in a pretty chorus, “Forgive us, grandpapa!” I
+say, “Well, you rogue, boys will be boys. Take her, sirrah! Be happy
+with her; and, hark ye! in this pocket-book you will find ten thousand,”
+&c. &c. You all know the story: I cannot help liking it, however old it
+may be. In love, somehow, one is pleased that young people should dare
+a little. Was not Bessy Eldon famous as an economist, and Lord Eldon
+celebrated for wisdom and caution? and did not John Scott marry Elizabeth
+Surtees when they had scarcely twopence a year between them? “Of course,
+my dear,” I say to the partner of my existence, “now this madcap fellow
+is utterly ruined, now is the very time he ought to marry. The accepted
+doctrine is that a man should spend his own fortune, then his wife’s
+fortune, and then he may begin to get on at the bar. Philip has a hundred
+pounds, let us say; Charlotte has nothing; so that in about six weeks we
+may look to hear of Philip being in successful practice——”
+
+“Successful nonsense!” cries the lady. “Don’t go on like a cold-blooded
+calculating machine! You don’t believe a word of what you say, and a more
+imprudent person never lived than you yourself were as a young man.”
+This was departing from the question, which women will do. “Nonsense!”
+again says my romantic being of a partner-of-existence. “Don’t tell ME,
+sir. They WILL be provided for! Are we to be for ever taking care of the
+morrow, and not trusting that we shall be cared for? _You_ may call your
+way of thinking prudence. I call it _sinful worldliness_, sir.” When my
+life-partner speaks in a certain strain, I know that remonstrance is
+useless, and argument unavailing, and I generally resort to cowardly
+subterfuges, and sneak out of the conversation by a pun, a side joke,
+or some other flippancy. Besides, in this case, though I argue against
+my wife, my sympathy is on her side. I know Mr. Philip is imprudent and
+headstrong, but I should like him to succeed, and be happy. I own he is a
+scapegrace, but I wish him well.
+
+So, just as the diligence of Laffitte and Caillard is clearing out of
+Boulogne town, the conductor causes the carriage to stop, and a young
+fellow has mounted up on the roof in a twinkling; and the postilion says,
+“Hi!” to his horses, and away those squealing greys go clattering. And a
+young lady, happening to look out of one of the windows of the intérieur,
+has perfectly recognized the young gentleman who leaped up to the roof so
+nimbly; and the two boys who were in the rotonde would have recognized
+the gentleman, but that they were already eating the sandwiches which my
+wife had provided. And so the diligence goes on, until it reaches that
+hill, where the girls used to come and offer to sell you apples; and some
+of the passengers descend and walk, and the tall young man on the roof
+jumps down, and approaches the party in the interior, and a young lady
+cries out, “La!” and her mamma looks impenetrably grave, and not in the
+least surprised; and her father gives a wink of one eye, and says, “It’s
+him, is it, by George!” and the two boys coming out of the rotonde, their
+mouths full of sandwich, cry out, “Hullo! It’s Mr. Firmin.”
+
+“How do you do, ladies?” he says, blushing as red as an apple, and
+his heart thumping—but that may be from walking up hill. And he puts
+a hand towards the carriage-window, and a little hand comes out and
+lights on his. And Mrs. General Baynes, who is reading a religious
+work, looks up and says, “Oh! how do you do, Mr. Firmin?” And this is
+the remarkable dialogue that takes place. It is not very witty; but
+Philip’s tones send a rapture into one young heart: and when he is
+absent, and has climbed up to his place in the cabriolet, the kick of
+his boots on the roof gives the said young heart inexpressible comfort
+and consolation. Shine stars and moon. Shriek grey horses through the
+calm night. Snore sweetly, papa and mamma, in your corners, with your
+pocket-handkerchiefs tied round your old fronts! I suppose, under all
+the stars of heaven, there is nobody more happy than that child in that
+carriage—that wakeful girl, in sweet maiden meditation—who has given her
+heart to the keeping of the champion who is so near her. Has he not been
+always their champion and preserver? Don’t they owe to his generosity
+everything in life? One of the little sisters wakes wildly, and cries in
+the night, and Charlotte takes the child into her arms and soothes her.
+“Hush, dear! He’s there—he’s there,” she whispers, as she bends over
+the child. Nothing wrong can happen with _him_ there, she feels. If the
+robbers were to spring out from yonder dark pines, why, he would jump
+down, and they would all fly before him! The carriage rolls on through
+sleeping villages, and as the old team retires all in a halo of smoke,
+and the fresh horses come clattering up to their pole, Charlotte sees a
+well-known white face in the gleam of the carriage lanterns. Through the
+long avenues, the great vehicle rolls on its course. The dawn peers over
+the poplars: the stars quiver out of sight: the sun is up in the sky, and
+the heaven is all in a flame. The night is over—the night of nights. In
+all the round world, whether lighted by stars or sunshine, there were not
+two people more happy than these had been.
+
+A very short time afterwards, at the end of October, our own little
+sea-side sojourn came to an end. That astounding bill for broken glass,
+chairs, crockery, was paid. The London steamer takes us all on board on
+a beautiful, sunny autumn evening, and lands us at the Custom-house Quay
+in the midst of a deep, dun fog, through which our cabs have to work
+their way over greasy pavements, and bearing two loads of silent and
+terrified children. Ah, that return, if but after a fortnight’s absence
+and holiday! Oh, that heap of letters lying in a ghastly pile, and yet
+so clearly visible in the dim twilight of master’s study! We cheerfully
+breakfast by candlelight for the first two days after my arrival at home,
+and I have the pleasure of cutting a part of my chin off because it is
+too dark to shave at nine o’clock in the morning.
+
+My wife can’t be so unfeeling as to laugh and be merry because I have
+met with an accident which temporarily disfigures me? If the dun fog
+makes her jocular, she has a very queer sense of humour. She has a
+letter before her, over which she is perfectly radiant. When she is
+especially pleased I can see by her face and a particular animation and
+affectionateness towards the rest of the family. On this present morning
+her face beams out of the fog-clouds. The room is illuminated by it, and
+perhaps by the two candles which are placed one on either side of the
+urn. The fire crackles, and flames, and spits most cheerfully; and the
+sky without, which is of the hue of brown paper, seems to set off the
+brightness of the little interior scene.
+
+“A letter from Charlotte, papa,” cries one little girl, with an air of
+consequence. “And a letter from uncle Philip, papa!” cries another; “and
+they like Paris so much,” continues the little reporter.
+
+“And there, sir, didn’t I tell you?” cries the lady, handing me over a
+letter.
+
+“Mamma always told you so,” echoes the child, with an important nod of
+the head; “and I shouldn’t be surprised if he were to be _very rich_,
+should you, mamma?” continues this arithmetician.
+
+I would not put Miss Charlotte’s letter into print if I could, for do you
+know that little person’s grammar was frequently incorrect; there were
+three or four words spelt wrongly; and the letter was so _scored_ and
+_marked_ with _dashes_ under _every_ other _word_, that it is clear to
+me her education had been neglected; and as I am very fond of her, I do
+not wish to make fun of her. And I can’t print Mr. Philip’s letter, for
+I haven’t kept it. Of what use keeping letters? I say, Burn, burn, burn.
+No heart-pangs. No reproaches. No yesterday. Was it happy, or miserable?
+To think of it is always melancholy. Go to! I daresay it is the thought
+of that fog, which is making this sentence so dismal. Meanwhile there is
+Madam Laura’s face smiling out of the darkness, as pleased as may be; and
+no wonder, she is always happy when her friends are so.
+
+Charlotte’s letter contained a full account of the settlement of the
+Baynes family at Madame Smolensk’s boarding-house, where they appear to
+have been really very comfortable, and to have lived at a very cheap
+rate. As for Mr. Philip, he made his way to a crib, to which his artist
+friends had recommended him, on the Faubourg St. Germain side of the
+water—the Hotel Poussin, in the street of that name, which lies, you
+know, between the Mazarin Library and the Musée des Beaux Arts. In former
+days, my gentleman had lived in state and bounty in the English hotels
+and quarter. Now he found himself very handsomely lodged for thirty
+francs per month, and with five or six pounds, he has repeatedly said
+since, he could carry through the month very comfortably. I don’t say,
+my young traveller, that _you_ can be so lucky now-a-days. Are we not
+telling a story of twenty years ago? Aye marry. Ere steam-coaches had
+begun to scream on French rails; and when Louis Philippe was king.
+
+As soon as Mr. Philip Firmin is ruined he must needs fall in love. In
+order to be near the beloved object, he must needs follow her to Paris,
+and give up his promised studies for the bar at home; where, to do him
+justice, I believe the fellow would never have done any good. And he has
+not been in Paris a fortnight when that fantastic jade Fortune, who had
+seemed to fly away from him, gives him a smiling look of recognition, as
+if to say, “Young gentleman, I have not quite done with you.”
+
+The good fortune was not much. Do not suppose that Philip suddenly drew
+a twenty-thousand pound prize in a lottery. But, being in much want of
+money, he suddenly found himself enabled to earn some in a way pretty
+easy to himself.
+
+In the first place, Philip found his friends Mr. and Mrs. Mugford in a
+bewildered state in the midst of Paris, in which city Mugford would never
+consent to have a _laquais de place_, being firmly convinced to the day
+of his death that he knew the French language quite sufficiently for all
+purposes of conversation. Philip, who had often visited Paris before,
+came to the aid of his friends in a two-franc dining-house, which he
+frequented for economy’s sake; and they, because they thought the banquet
+there provided not only cheap, but most magnificent and satisfactory. He
+interpreted for them, and rescued them from their perplexity, whatever
+it was. He treated them handsomely to caffy on the bullyvard, as Mugford
+said on returning home and in recounting the adventure to me. “He can’t
+forget that he has been a swell: and he does do things like a gentleman,
+that Firmin does. He came back with us to our hotel—Meurice’s,” said Mr.
+Mugford, “and who should drive into the yard and step out of his carriage
+but Lord Ringwood—you know Lord Ringwood; everybody knows him. As he
+gets out of his carriage—‘What! is that you, Philip?’ says his lordship,
+giving the young fellow his hand. ‘Come and breakfast with me to-morrow
+morning.’ And away he goes most friendly.”
+
+How came it to pass that Lord Ringwood, whose instinct of
+self-preservation was strong—who, I fear, was rather a selfish
+nobleman—and who, of late, as we have heard, had given orders to refuse
+Mr. Philip entrance at his door—should all of a sudden turn round and
+greet the young man with cordiality? In the first place, Philip had
+never troubled his lordship’s knocker at all; and second, as luck would
+have it, on this very day of their meeting his lordship had been to dine
+with that well-known Parisian resident and _bon vivant_, my Lord Viscount
+Trim, who had been governor of the Sago Islands when Colonel Baynes was
+there with his regiment, the gallant 100th. And the general and his old
+West India governor meeting at church, my Lord Trim straightway asked
+General Baynes to dinner, where Lord Ringwood was present, along with
+other distinguished company, whom at present we need not particularize.
+Now it has been said that Philip Ringwood, my lord’s brother, and Captain
+Baynes in early youth had been close friends, and that the colonel had
+died in the captain’s arms. Lord Ringwood, who had an excellent memory
+when he chose to use it, was pleased on this occasion to remember General
+Baynes and his intimacy with his brother in old days. And of those old
+times they talked; the general waxing more eloquent, I suppose, than his
+wont over Lord Trim’s excellent wine. And in the course of conversation
+Philip was named, and the general, warm with drink, poured out a most
+enthusiastic eulogium on his young friend, and mentioned how noble and
+self-denying Philip’s conduct had been in his own case. And perhaps Lord
+Ringwood was pleased at hearing these praises of his brother’s grandson;
+and perhaps he thought of old times, when he had a heart, and he and
+his brother loved each other. And though he might think Philip Firmin
+an absurd young blockhead for giving up any claims which he might have
+on General Baynes, at any rate I have no doubt his lordship thought,
+‘This boy is not likely to come begging money from me!’ Hence, when he
+drove back to his hotel on the very night after this dinner, and in the
+court-yard saw that Philip Firmin, his brother’s grandson, the heart of
+the old nobleman was smitten with a kindly sentiment, and he bade Philip
+to come and see him.
+
+I have described some of Philip’s oddities, and amongst these was a very
+remarkable change in his appearance, which ensued very speedily after
+his ruin. I know that the greater number of story readers are young, and
+those who are ever so old remember that their own young days occurred but
+a very, very short while ago. Don’t you remember, most potent, grave,
+and reverend senior, when you were a junior, and actually rather pleased
+with new clothes? Does a new coat or a waistcoat cause you any pleasure
+now? To a well-constituted middle-aged gentleman, I rather trust a smart
+new suit causes a sensation of uneasiness—not from the tightness of the
+fit, which may be a reason—but from the gloss and splendour. When my late
+kind friend, Mrs. ——, gave me the emerald tabinet waistcoat, with the
+gold shamrocks, I wore it once to go to Richmond to dine with her; but
+I buttoned myself so closely in an upper coat, that I am sure nobody in
+the omnibus saw what a painted vest I had on. Gold sprigs and emerald
+tabinet, what a gorgeous raiment! It has formed for ten years the chief
+ornament of my wardrobe; and though I have never dared to wear it since,
+I always think with a secret pleasure of possessing that treasure. Do
+women, when they are sixty, like handsome and fashionable attire, and a
+youthful appearance? Look at Lady Jezebel’s blushing cheek, her raven
+hair, her splendid garments! But this disquisition may be carried to too
+great a length. I want to note a fact which has occurred not seldom in my
+experience—that men who have been great dandies will often and suddenly
+give up their long-accustomed splendour of dress, and walk about, most
+happy and contented, with the shabbiest of coats and hats. No. The
+majority of men are not vain about their dress. For instance, within a
+very few years, men used to have pretty feet. See in what a resolute
+way they have kicked their pretty boots off almost to a man, and wear
+great, thick, formless, comfortable walking boots, of shape scarcely more
+graceful than a tub!
+
+When Philip Firmin first came on the town there were dandies still; there
+were dazzling waistcoats of velvet and brocade, and tall stocks with
+cataracts of satin; there were pins, studs, neck-chains, I know not what
+fantastic splendours of youth. His varnished boots grew upon forests of
+trees. He had a most resplendent silver-gilt dressing-case, presented to
+him by his father (for which, it is true, the doctor neglected to pay,
+leaving that duty to his son). “It is a mere ceremony,” said the worthy
+doctor, “a cumbrous thing you may fancy at first; but take it about with
+you. It looks well on a man’s dressing-table at a country house. It
+_poses_ a man, you understand. I have known women come in and peep at it.
+A trifle you may say, my boy; but what is the use of flinging any chance
+in life away?” Now, when misfortune came, young Philip flung away all
+these magnificent follies. He wrapped himself _virtute suâ_; and I am
+bound to say a more queer-looking fellow than friend Philip seldom walked
+the pavement of London or Paris. He could not wear the nap off all his
+coats, or rub his elbows into rags in six months; but, as he would say
+of himself with much simplicity, “I do think I run to seed more quickly
+than any fellow I ever knew. All my socks in holes, Mrs. Pendennis; all
+my shirt-buttons gone, I give you my word. I don’t know how the things
+hold together, and why they don’t tumble to pieces. I suspect I must
+have a bad laundress.” Suspect! My children used to laugh and crow as
+they sewed buttons on to him. As for the Little Sister, she broke into
+his apartments in his absence, and said that it turned her hair grey to
+see the state of his poor wardrobe. I believe that Mrs. Brandon put in
+surreptitious linen into his drawers. He did not know. He wore the shirts
+in a contented spirit. The glossy boots began to crack and then to burst,
+and Philip wore them with perfect equanimity. Where were the beautiful
+lavender and lemon gloves of last year? His great naked hands (with
+which he gesticulates so grandly) were as brown as an Indian’s now. We
+had liked him heartily in his days of splendour; we loved him now in his
+threadbare suit.
+
+I can fancy the young man striding into the room where his lordship’s
+guests were assembled. In the presence of great or small, Philip has
+always been entirely unconcerned, and he is one of the half-dozen men
+I have seen in my life upon whom rank made no impression. It appears
+that, on occasion of this breakfast, there were one or two dandies
+present who were aghast at Philip’s freedom of behaviour. He engaged
+in conversation with a famous French statesman; contradicted him with
+much energy in his own language; and when the statesman asked whether
+monsieur was membre du Parlement? Philip burst into one of his roars of
+laughter, which almost breaks the glasses on a table, and said, “Je suis
+journaliste, monsieur, à vos ordres!” Young Timbury of the embassy was
+aghast at Philip’s insolence; and Dr. Botts, his lordship’s travelling
+physician, looked at him with a terrified face. A bottle of claret was
+brought, which almost all the gentlemen present began to swallow, until
+Philip, tasting his glass, called out, “Faugh. It’s corked!” “So it is,
+and very badly corked,” growls my lord, with one of his usual oaths. “Why
+didn’t some of you fellows speak? Do you like corked wine?” There were
+gallant fellows round that table who would have drunk corked black dose,
+had his lordship professed to like senna. The old host was tickled and
+amused. “Your mother was a quiet soul, and your father used to bow like a
+dancing-master. You ain’t much like him. I dine at home most days. Leave
+word in the morning with my people, and come when you like, Philip,” he
+growled. A part of this news Philip narrated to us in his letter, and
+other part was given verbally by Mr. and Mrs. Mugford on their return to
+London. “I tell you, sir,” says Mugford, “he has been taken by the hand
+by some of the tiptop people, and I have booked him at three guineas a
+week for a letter to the _Pall Mall Gazette_.”
+
+And this was the cause of my wife’s exultation and triumphant “Didn’t
+I tell you?” Philip’s foot was on the ladder; and who so capable of
+mounting to the top? When happiness and a fond and lovely girl were
+waiting for him there, would he lose heart, spare exertion, or be afraid
+to climb? He had no truer well-wisher than myself, and no friend who
+liked him better, though, I daresay, many admired him much more than I
+did. But these were women for the most part; and women become so absurdly
+unjust and partial to persons whom they love, when these latter are in
+misfortune, that I am surprised Mr. Philip did not quite lose his head
+in his poverty, with such fond flatterers and sycophants round about
+him. Would you grudge him the consolation to be had from these sweet
+uses of adversity? Many a heart would be hardened but for the memory of
+past griefs; when eyes, now averted, perhaps, were full of sympathy, and
+hands, now cold, were eager to soothe and succour.
+
+
+
+
+The Dissolution of the Union.
+
+
+Hardly any event, even in these days of great events, is more melancholy
+or memorable than the disruption of the United States. The history of
+England is entitled (with a doubtful exception in favour of that of Rome)
+to be considered as the most important chapter in the annals of the human
+race; for it describes the growth of institutions and the development
+of principles by which the largest and far the most flourishing part
+of mankind regulate their affairs. In another century, our language
+and literature, and, to a great extent, our laws and institutions,
+will express the thoughts and control the conduct of the population of
+more than half the world; and we have, therefore, an interest closely
+resembling that which connects blood relations in the prosperity of the
+great nations sprung from the same stock as ourselves.
+
+To every one who takes this view of the feelings which ought to exist
+between England and the United States, it must be matter of sincere
+regret that anything should diminish the friendliness of our relations.
+There is, however, reason to fear that the Americans have been deeply
+mortified by the feeling with which the secession of the Southern States
+has been regarded in this country; and if newspaper articles are taken
+as sufficient evidence of public feeling on the subject, it must be
+admitted that the feeling, if not wise, is at least intelligible. Our
+principal journals have, no doubt, uniformly treated the disruption of
+the Union and the prospect of civil war as great evils; but they have
+frequently taken a ground which is not in itself reasonable, and which
+to all Americans, and especially to all Northerners, must be excessively
+offensive, respecting the whole dispute. They almost invariably discuss
+the subject as if the case were the simple one of a dependency wishing
+to free itself from the yoke of a superior, and they constantly dwell
+upon that most inconclusive and irritating of all topics, the charge
+of inconsistency. With what pretence of fairness, it is said, can you
+Americans object to the secession of the Southern States, when your
+own nation was founded in secession from the British empire? It would
+be as reasonable to ask how a man, who has successfully defended one
+action, can ever have the face to be plaintiff in another. The fact,
+that resistance to a constituted government may sometimes be right, no
+more proves that it can never be wrong, than the fact that it is right
+to shoot an invader proves that there is no such crime as murder. The
+analogy between George III. and Washington, and President Lincoln and
+President Davis, is just near enough to be at once delusive and annoying.
+If the object is to vex the Americans, and chuckle with more or less
+ingenuity over their troubles, the course which our most influential
+papers have taken is a wise one. If we wish to understand the merits of
+the question, and the way in which it presents itself to those whom it
+principally concerns, we must take a very different view of it.
+
+To Englishmen in general, American politics present a sort of maze
+without a plan. The strange names of Indian places and rulers were
+described by Sydney Smith as non-conductors of sympathy, and in American
+politics a somewhat similar effect is produced by the opposite cause.
+There is nothing impressive in the names of the politicians, and nothing
+distinctive in their measures. Men are elected to high office, who,
+beyond their own State, were utterly unknown; and the announcement of
+their respective “platforms” and “tickets” leaves most English readers
+of American news as hopelessly in the dark as if it were made in some
+unknown tongue.
+
+Much of this confusion is undoubtedly due to the general ignorance which
+prevails in this country as to the nature and gist of American politics.
+Hardly any one knows what is the real nature of the Union—how it is
+related to the individual States—what are the sort of questions which
+arise out of that relation, and what would be implied in its disruption.
+In the absence of a clear general view of these matters, it is idle to
+attempt to form an opinion on the present condition of the seceding
+States, or to criticize the policy of those who wish either to destroy or
+to maintain the Union by force of arms. It is the object of this paper to
+give a general sketch of these matters in relation to the present state
+of affairs. The United States of America formed, up to the time of the
+late secession, a body politic of an unexampled kind. Both in ancient
+and modern times confederacies have frequently been established. The old
+German empire, the existing Germanic Confederation, Switzerland, and the
+Dutch United Provinces, are instances. The United States of America are
+distinguished from other confederacies by the circumstance that they
+exercise a direct jurisdiction not only over the States, but also over
+the individuals who compose those States. This distinction is one of
+practical and substantial importance; and without a distinct notion of
+the way in which it works the character of the Union and its politics can
+hardly be understood. Its leading features are shortly as follows.
+
+The colonial history of the United States supplies several instances
+in which they associated themselves together for common defence. The
+New England colonies did so in the seventeenth century, and their
+association lasted without the notice of the mother country for forty
+years. Another union of a somewhat similar kind was attempted in the
+course of the eighteenth century, not out of any feeling of hostility
+to Great Britain, but simply for purposes of mutual assistance. During
+the War of Independence a third confederacy was formed, by the help of
+which the struggle with England was brought to a successful conclusion.
+Subsequently to the year 1783 the league between the thirteen States
+continued under another form; but their connection, as in former cases,
+was nothing more than a confederacy the units of which were States,
+and not individuals. The constitution which is at present undergoing
+the process of dissolution was framed by the principal statesmen of the
+nation in 1787, and by June, 1790, was finally ratified and accepted
+by all the States. No one who reads it with attention, and follows
+out its practical application in the subsequent history and present
+condition of the States, can fail to see that the language common
+amongst Englishmen in relation to the dissolution of the Union proceeds
+upon an inadequate notion of the importance of the benefits which the
+constitution confers, the magnitude of the interests which it protects,
+and the practical importance of the questions which would be at once
+raised by its dissolution. There cannot be a greater mistake than that
+of viewing the States as a mere league, some of the members of which are
+struggling to retain the rest as allies against their will; or as a sort
+of transatlantic Austria, insisting on the subjugation of a transatlantic
+Venice.
+
+The following sketch of the principal provisions of the constitution may
+serve to give a definite notion of what it is for which the Northerners
+are preparing to fight. Every one knows that the United States are
+governed by a President and a Congress, consisting of two Houses,
+the Senate and the House of Representatives; but viewing them, as we
+naturally do, principally from without, the way in which the powers of
+government are divided between Congress and the State legislatures, and
+the consequences which that division involves, are less familiar to us.
+
+The powers conferred by the constitution on Congress are as follows. It
+may impose taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, which, however, must be
+uniform on all the inhabitants of the States. It may borrow money on
+the credit of the United States of America. It may regulate commerce,
+lay down a general rule of naturalization, regulate the coinage, and
+punish offences relating to it. It has also the care of post-offices
+and post roads, and the superintendence of copyright, both in books
+and in inventions. It has jurisdiction over offences committed at sea.
+It has the power of war and peace, the control of the United States’
+army and navy, and military law. It regulates the calling out and the
+organization of the State militia for common purposes. It is the sole
+government of the district of Columbia, in which Washington is situated;
+and it has power to make laws binding on the individual citizens of every
+State in the Union, for the purpose of executing any of these powers.
+All sovereign powers not included under these heads are reserved to the
+individual States, but they are expressly prohibited from exercising
+their sovereignty in certain ways. No State may enter into alliances, or
+make peace or war, or emit bills of credit, or make anything but gold and
+silver coin a tender in payment of debts, or pass any bill of attainder,
+_ex post facto_ law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or
+grant any title of nobility.
+
+It has not been uncommon in Europe for States to give themselves
+constitutions which have been ridiculed in this country (often not
+reasonably) on the ground that the provisions which had the largest
+sound were in fact mere empty words. This cannot be said of the American
+constitution. Its practical efficiency is secured by the only means which
+can secure it—the institution of independent courts of justice bound
+to put a judicial construction upon its provisions, and armed with the
+powers necessary to make that construction prevail in fact. These courts
+treat the constitution as they would treat any other law, and freely
+exercise the power of deciding whether the acts of the individual States,
+or even those of Congress itself, are unconstitutional and therefore
+illegal. The courts in question are divisible into three classes. In
+the first class stands the Supreme Court of the United States; in the
+second are the circuit courts; and in the third, the district courts.
+The Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in diplomatic cases, in
+admiralty and maritime cases, in cases arising between individual
+States, and in cases in which the United States are a party. It also
+entertains appeals from the circuit and district courts. The circuit
+courts and district courts are local, and closely resemble each other in
+the general character of their jurisdiction, though the circuit courts
+are the more important of the two. They entertain all civil causes above
+500 dollars in which the United States is a party, or in which an alien
+is a party, or in which the citizen of one State sues the citizen of
+another. They have also criminal jurisdiction in all cases in which the
+offence is committed against the laws of the United States, and they
+decide questions relating to revenue laws and the laws of patents and
+copyrights. In the territories which are not yet formed into States the
+law is administered by district courts.
+
+The consequence of this system is, that in relation to all the mass of
+powers conferred upon Congress by the constitution, the citizens of the
+United States are governed by, and are in their individual capacity
+responsible to, the authorities of the United States to the exclusion of
+those of their own States, and in many points they can appeal not only
+from the law courts, but from the State legislatures, to the general law
+of the United States. For example: Dartmouth College obtained from the
+Supreme Court a decision that a law of the State of New Hampshire, by
+which its charter was altered without its consent, was void, as being
+opposed to that article of the constitution which prohibits the States
+from “passing laws impairing the obligation of contracts.” In the same
+manner another State assigned lands for the use of the Indians, and
+declared that those lands should not be taxed. The land was afterwards
+sold to other persons, and after the sale the State repealed the law
+freeing the land from taxation. This law was held to be void on the same
+ground.
+
+The constitutional right of Congress to tax carriages in a particular
+manner, to tax unrepresented districts, to pass a law giving debts to
+the United States priority over others, and to incorporate a national
+bank, are instances of the sort of questions on which the Supreme Court
+has given judicial decisions. These decisions, whether they are between
+State and State, between the United States and some particular State,
+or between States and individuals, are enforced by regular executive
+officers like any other judicial decisions.
+
+The practical consequences of the system, of which these are a few of the
+most prominent features, are far more important than the language which
+we generally use about it would imply. We are so much accustomed to the
+extraordinary rapidity with which the United States advance in wealth
+and power, that we are a little apt to look upon their prosperity as an
+ultimate fact requiring no explanation. In fact, like everything else,
+it has its causes, and, no doubt, one of the most important of them is
+the influence of the Union. There can be no doubt that it contributes
+immensely to the prosperity of every State which belongs to it, and that
+its maintenance forms almost the only means by which the settlement and
+government of the continent can be provided for. In the first place,
+so long as it exists, war between any of the States which compose it
+is impossible. If we recollect what has been the general character of
+the history of modern Europe, this in itself must be considered as an
+advantage which can hardly be bought too dear. In the next place, it
+provides every American citizen with a sphere of activity unequalled for
+extent and variety in the history of mankind. He may make his choice
+between more than thirty great nations, of any one of which he can, by
+mere residence, constitute himself a citizen. In each of them he is as
+much at home as an Englishman in Ireland, if not more. In each he is,
+to a great extent, under the same laws; he enjoys the same political
+rights; and the most important of these are guaranteed by all the other
+members of the Union. Under any circumstances, these would be valuable
+results; but, under the special circumstances of North America, their
+value is greatly enhanced. The population is by far the most migratory
+in the world. It is inordinately bent upon every kind of enterprise by
+which money is to be made, and the consequence is that anything which
+could shackle the free movement of the people to any part of the country,
+or diminish the ease with which they can at present establish themselves
+wherever they please, would be intolerable to them. The existence of the
+Union favours these tendencies in the highest degree. Its dissolution
+would place a serious check upon them. The existing constitution not
+only protects the whole of the United States from intestine war, but
+gives to each of them, and to all the citizens of each, rights which are
+unexampled elsewhere. We are so much accustomed to think and speak of
+the United States as a single nation, that we forget the means by which
+they gained, and by which (if at all) they must retain, that character.
+There is no other part of the world in which communities larger and
+more powerful than most nations can settle their differences with each
+other and with individuals by the ordinary course of law, in the proper
+sense of the word, and not by diplomatic negotiations. It is, for many
+purposes, as easy to sue or to be sued by the semi-sovereign States
+of the American Union as to sue or be sued by an English corporation;
+and this circumstance enables a set of relations to be formed amongst
+them which do not exist elsewhere, and invests them, when they are
+formed, with guarantees which but for the existence of the Union could
+not be given. When we remember the vital importance which, under the
+special circumstances of the country, attaches to roads, railways, the
+navigation of the great rivers and lakes, and other matters, in each of
+which numerous half-independent States have different and often jarring
+interests, the practical importance of a system of judicature by which
+their relations may be regulated becomes apparent. Probably there is
+no considerable commercial company in the Union which would not find
+the security of its property depreciated, and its power of enforcing
+its rights and guaranteeing the discharge of its obligations sensibly
+diminished, by the dissolution of the Union, and the closing of the
+Federal courts.
+
+With regard to foreign politics, the matter is too plain for doubt.
+The dissolution of the Union would go far to destroy altogether the
+diplomatic influence and external political power of the United States;
+and, indeed, some influential writers have gone so far as to maintain
+that such a result ought to be regarded in this country not merely with
+equanimity but with satisfaction. It would, we are told, diminish the
+insolence and the swagger which so often offend foreigners. Whatever
+truth there may be in this, it must be gall and wormwood to Americans.
+
+Such being the general nature and advantages of the Union, it is not to
+be expected that the Americans in general should view its dissolution
+with equanimity; nor can there be a doubt that if they mean to resist
+it by force, now is the time at which that force must be used. If the
+Southern States were allowed to secede without resistance, the Union
+would be at an end, and it is impossible to predict where the process of
+dissolution would stop. The history of the Union shows that slavery is by
+no means the only question which may threaten its integrity. At the time
+of the Hartford Convention the New England States seriously threatened
+secession. If the Southerners succeed in their present undertaking, it is
+highly probable that the Western States, of which the Mississippi is the
+natural outlet, may follow their example, and if they did so the process
+might easily go farther.
+
+These considerations explain the importance which the Americans attach to
+the Union, and the necessity under which they are placed of defending it
+by force at this point if they mean to defend it at all. It is urged in
+opposition to this, that it is inconsistent in republicans to attempt to
+force men to continue members of a community which they wish to leave,
+and that it is particularly inconsistent in the Americans to do so,
+because they owe their own national existence to a revolt against Great
+Britain. There are several independent answers to this argument, each of
+which ought to prevent either _bonâ-fide_ inquirers or accurate reasoners
+from using it. In the first place, it proves nothing, for the question
+is not whether the Americans are consistent, but whether they are
+right—that is, whether they are taking the course which is, on the whole,
+best and wisest. To charge them with inconsistency, even if the charge
+were true, could produce nothing but irritation; for if such a charge
+were made out, it would come to this: “You are quite right in trying to
+reduce the South to obedience, but you must admit that the principles
+which your grandfathers fought for in 1776 were false.” If they are
+right, what is the use of vexing them about their grandfathers? If they
+are wrong, why increase the difficulty of convincing them by undertaking
+to show that the error is condemned by the example of their grandfathers?
+The whole argument is invidious, and serves no other purpose than that of
+creating prejudice and rancour.
+
+In the second place the charge is altogether untrue. The tone of jovial,
+half-chuckling banter which is the curse of newspaper writing, so much
+obscures the arguments which are put forward on this subject, that it is
+generally difficult to do exact justice to them. Sometimes it appears as
+if the writer meant to say that under a republican form of government
+no one ought to be made to do anything he disliked. This, of course,
+would be fatal not only to the rights of such governments to suppress
+insurrection, but to their right to administer civil or criminal justice.
+At other times the ground taken appears to be substantially this—that
+republican institutions generally, and the government of the United
+States in particular, are founded on the principle that every body of men
+competent in point of number and local situation to form an independent
+political body, has a right, as against any other body of which it forms
+a part, to announce its intention of doing so, and immediately to carry
+that intention into execution, and that the body of which it forms a
+part has no right forcibly to prevent it. This, it is asserted, is the
+only principle on which the American Declaration of Independence can be
+justified, and it equally justifies the Confederate States in seceding
+from the Union.
+
+This argument proceeds on an entire misconception of the principles
+by which nations ought to regulate their relations to each other.
+The conduct of independent communities towards each other must, on
+all occasions of importance, be regulated not by rule, but by direct
+reference to the principles upon which rules are founded; that is to
+say, by the direct consideration of the consequences of the particular
+act; and it is by this principle, and not in virtue of some imaginary
+right, that successful resistance to constituted authorities is to be
+justified. The establishment of American independence was, on the whole,
+a good thing both for Great Britain and for the United States; and this,
+and this only, was the justification of those who contributed to it. How
+does it follow from this that the secession of the Southern States would
+also be justifiable? The only intelligible meaning of which the principle
+under consideration is capable is, that the original State ought always
+to consider itself practically bound by the opinion of the revolting
+State, that the success of their revolt is for the common good; which is
+manifestly absurd. There are, in truth (as might be shown by independent
+arguments), no such thing as rights between communities, and it is
+therefore absurd to charge the United States with their violation. The
+conduct of both, or of either party, may be wise, beneficial, honourable,
+deceitful, foolish, or injurious; but, apart from the express rights
+conferred by the constitution, which, as far as they go, are beyond all
+doubt in favour of the Northern States, there is, and can be, no question
+of right between them.
+
+This mode of viewing the subject is that which might properly be applied
+to the case of a European power in which the relations between the
+governors and the governed have never been explicitly determined, but
+depend upon general principles of reasoning. For example, if Ireland were
+to proclaim its independence, they would supply the means of forming an
+opinion about it. In America the case is altogether different. There
+is no question of oppression; there is no assertion that the South has
+been in any way threatened or injured; and, on the other hand, there is
+a constitution solemnly instituted only seventy-five years ago, under
+which the Southerners have acted ever since, of which they have reaped
+every advantage to the very utmost, and which they now claim a right to
+throw to the winds, without assigning any other cause than their own will
+to do so. Their case is not that of resistance to authority, legitimate
+or illegitimate; it is the wrongful repudiation of a relationship which
+they have no right to dissolve. It is as if a wife, after hen-pecking her
+husband for twenty years, claimed a right to divorce him.
+
+The whole history of the question of slavery and of the party questions
+connected with it for the last forty years are proofs of this.[1] It is
+far less familiar to Englishmen than from its importance it deserves to
+be. The names, indeed, of the Missouri Compromise, Mason and Dixie’s
+Line, the Border Ruffians, and the War in Kansas, are familiar enough
+to us all, but hardly any one attaches any definite meaning to them.
+The subject, however, forms a connected whole, and when its bearings
+are understood, it throws great light on the present proceedings, both
+of the North and of the South. In order to understand the matter, it
+is necessary to say a few words as to the constitution of Congress.
+Each State has in the House of Representatives one member for every
+30,000 inhabitants. Three-fifths of the slaves count as inhabitants,
+and by this means the Southerners, though their white population is
+far smaller than the population of the Northern States, have about as
+many representatives. Moreover, each State, large or small, sends two
+representatives to the Senate.
+
+When the constitution was established, slave-holding was nearly
+universal; but it was acknowledged by all the leading statesmen of the
+day, that it was an evil, though they described it as an inherited, and
+for the time an inevitable one. In the Northern States, where the slaves
+were few, and where white labour could obviously compete with that of
+negroes, slavery was rapidly abolished, and by degrees the distinction
+between slave and free States came to coincide with the distinction
+between North and South. As this gradually became the leading feature in
+American politics, the Southern States exerted themselves to the utmost
+to obtain a majority, or, at any rate, to secure an equality of votes,
+in the Senate. The only way in which this could be done was by adding
+to the Union as many slave States as possible. As Miss Martineau truly
+says, “the key to the entire policy of the United States for the last
+quarter of a century is the effort of the South to maintain a majority in
+the Senate at Washington.” The original United States, as is well known,
+were thirteen in number, namely, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut,
+Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Virginia,
+North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Maryland. The western
+boundaries of several of these, and especially those of Virginia, were
+almost entirely undefined. Soon after the recognition of independence,
+the boundaries of Virginia were fixed, the lands excluded thrown into a
+common stock, and an arrangement was made that slavery should never be
+established on them. Whether or no this arrangement was constitutional,
+is a question which has been much discussed, but it was made and has been
+acted on. Several States, including Ohio, Kentucky, and others, were
+formed out of them.
+
+In 1803, the immense territory of Louisiana, which included not only the
+State so named, but districts subsequently formed into several others,
+was purchased by the United States from France; and in 1819, the State of
+Missouri, which had formed part of this territory, applied for admission
+to the Union, and a great debate arose as to the terms on which it was
+to be admitted. If it was admitted as a slave State, slavery would be
+in a majority in the Senate; if not, in a minority. Ultimately, it was
+admitted as a slave State; but, at the same time, it was provided that
+slavery should be prohibited in every other part of the Union north of
+36° 30′ north latitude (which is known as Mason and Dixie’s line). This
+arrangement was made in 1819, and is the well-known Missouri compromise.
+Its effect was to make slavery distinctly a Southern institution, and
+from that time the great effort of Southern politicians has been to get
+into the Union as many States as possible south of 36° 30′. This was the
+object of almost all Southern policy for many years, and in particular
+was the secret of the annexation of Texas, which it was intended to form
+into five States, sending ten members to the Senate. At last the North,
+which in political warfare has always been far inferior in skill and
+energy to the South, tried to counteract this by adding free States on
+the other hand. This gave rise to what was known as the compromise of
+1850. California was added on the terms of choosing its own constitution,
+and it chose against slavery; but this was counterbalanced by the
+enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law. In 1854, the Missouri compromise
+was repealed, and new States, whether north or south of 36° 30′, were
+allowed to choose whether they would permit slavery or not. This was at
+the time when Kansas and Nebraska, both of which lay to the north of that
+line, were on the point of becoming States. Great efforts were made, both
+by the North and by the South, to determine the inhabitants of Kansas to
+vote for slavery. On the one side, the Northerners supplied settlers; on
+the other, the Southerners instigated the “mean whites,” who form the
+most degraded class in the Southern States, to enter the territory and
+force the choice of the electors—an object which they effected after
+outrages of various kinds, which broke out at one time into a sort of
+small civil war.
+
+Such have been the leading events of the controversy between the North
+and the South during the last forty years. Throughout the greater part,
+and especially throughout the latter part of it, the South have had,
+beyond all comparison, the larger share of the influence and power of
+the Union. Every successive President, for many years past, has more or
+less represented Southern views. The whole course of Federal legislation
+has been in the interests of the South. The foreign policy of the Union,
+especially its American policy, has been usually dictated principally
+by their wish to add new slave States to the Union; and even the
+decrees of the Supreme Court have not been free from traces of Southern
+influence. Many circumstances have contributed to put the South in this
+position; the most remarkable being the comparatively small number and
+superior adroitness of the Southern planters, who have much greater
+political aptitude and more independence than the Northern statesmen—the
+simplicity and directness of their political objects—and, above all,
+their comparative indifference to the maintenance of the Union. Though
+they have enjoyed to the utmost all the advantages which the Union
+had to give—though they have directed its policy, forced the Northern
+States, in the case of the Fugitive Slave Law, to discharge humiliating
+functions for them, and gone far towards effecting the object, to
+borrow a well-known expression, of “making slavery national and freedom
+sectional,” they care far less about the Union than the Northerners.
+They enjoy over them all the advantages which a simple society has over
+one which is at once wealthy, ambitious, and complex. The planter’s
+pursuits are so simple that the considerations which influence other
+Americans affect him but slightly. Whatever becomes of the rest of the
+Union, he can grow and sell his cotton, so long as he has slaves and
+customers. He cares, and has reason to care, comparatively little for the
+enterprises which excite a passionate enthusiasm amongst the Northerners,
+and which tend to the conversion of the whole continent, in the shortest
+possible space of time, into one enormous hive of moderate comfort.
+To the North, the dissolution of the Union means the establishment of
+internal frontiers, the destruction of the Federal jurisdiction, and with
+it a severe shock to all sorts of commercial enterprises, the opening
+of fruitful sources of jealousy, and the diminution of the external
+prestige of the nation. To the South it means nothing very formidable.
+As secession would be their act, and not that of their rivals, it would
+not hurt, but rather flatter, their national pride. They would have it in
+their power to reopen the slave trade; and as their internal enterprises
+are few, in comparison with those of the North, they would care
+comparatively little for the destruction of the Federal jurisdiction.
+These circumstances have enabled the Southerners for years to hold the
+threat of dissolving the Union over the North as a means of coercion, and
+there can be no doubt at all that the threat has been most effective. For
+a long period Northern politicians have made every sort of concession to
+the South, in order to avoid the question which is now forced upon them,
+for no assignable reason except that for the first time for the last
+quarter of a century a Northern president has been chosen.
+
+It is scarcely possible to imagine any state of things more insufferable
+to men of spirit, than such a course of conduct as this. Indeed in many
+of the steps of the long struggle between the North and the South it is
+impossible to deny that the Northerners showed great want of resolution,
+and down to the attack on Fort Sumter they continued to display a degree
+of forbearance which was hardly dignified. It is of course difficult, if
+not impossible, for any one who was not in America, or who had not an
+intimate personal knowledge of the state of feeling there, to express any
+positive opinion as to the course of the extraordinary change which that
+transaction produced. It seems, however, to be like the case of a man
+who, after putting up with all sorts of hard words and rough conduct, is
+interrupted in the midst of expostulations and offers of compromise by
+a box on the ear. Some ridicule was cast by the English papers on what
+was described as the unstatesmanlike and technically legal view of the
+question between the North and South, and of the way in which it was to
+be treated, which the President put forward in his proclamation on taking
+office. Some of our most influential newspaper writers thought that it
+fell below the occasion, and that a manifesto announcing a course of
+policy based on general considerations would have been more appropriate.
+Such criticisms betray ignorance of the fundamental principles of the
+American constitution. The consequence of the institution of the Supreme
+and Federal courts, and of the reduction of the constitution to the form
+of a written document technically interpreted by professional lawyers,
+has been to remove numerous questions which we treat as questions of
+policy to the domain of strict law, and to invest legal doctrines with
+a prominence and importance unknown to any other nation. So long as
+no actual physical force was applied to the property or forces of the
+Union, the Federal law was not broken. The crime of treason is defined
+to consist in “levying war against the United States, or adhering
+to their enemies only.” The President has well-defined legal powers
+and responsibilities, and is bound by oath to act upon them. It is,
+therefore, natural enough that both he and the Northern States generally
+should have submitted patiently to acts on the part of the Southern
+States which no Continental government would have permitted on the part
+of any member of the nation, and which even in the British Islands would
+have been illegal.
+
+The eagerness with which the Northerners deprecated “coercion” in the
+early stages of the business, probably showed little more than reluctance
+to strike the first blow. A parallel might have arisen in England in the
+days of the Irish volunteers before the Union. It would have been quite
+consistent, then, for the newspapers and men of business to entreat
+the Government to take every possible means of avoiding collision,
+to allow the volunteers to assemble and the Irish Parliament to pass
+any resolutions it pleased, and yet to burst out into any degree of
+indignation and excitement if the English troops had been actually
+attacked and the Lord Lieutenant shipped back to England. It is very
+probable that Englishmen would have been less forbearing before the blow
+was struck, and less noisy afterwards; but this is a mere question of
+temperament.
+
+These remarks show that the Northerners are entitled to more sympathy
+than they have received from the most influential part of the English
+press. They are fighting for an object of real importance. If they were
+to fight at all, now is their time, and they have received for many
+years past a series of provocations of the most exasperating kind. It
+does not, however, follow from this that they are wise in fighting, nor
+does it follow that they have any just ground to complain of the conduct
+which our Government has pursued towards them. The wisdom of fighting
+depends principally on the prospect of success; and on that point, there
+can be no doubt of the great weight of the arguments pressed on the
+Northern States by several English papers, and especially with admirable
+vigour and great knowledge by the _Economist_. These difficulties may
+be summed up in one. The constitution of the United States proceeds on
+the assumption that each member of the Union wishes to maintain it. To
+enforce it _in invitos_ is very like a contradiction in terms. Suppose
+that the South is utterly defeated and crushed in the field, and that
+Mr. Davis and some others are hanged for treason; and, further, suppose
+that in the year 1864 the South succeeds, as it has so often succeeded,
+in electing a Southern President and out-manœuvring the North: the result
+would be grotesque if it were not so melancholy. It would be precisely
+as if a man sued successfully for the restitution of conjugal rights
+against a woman who, after making his life a burden to him, had left him
+without cause. No doubt he would get the advantage of her company at bed
+and board, but who would wish for it? To enforce conjugal rights against
+a woman bent on making her husband wretched, is in a most emphatic way
+cutting off one’s nose to be revenged on one’s face, and, to a cool
+observer, the process now going on in the States is of much the same
+character. This assumes success, but another familiar proverb shows how
+doubtful even such success as this must be. One man may take a horse to
+the water, but twenty cannot make him drink. If they are so minded, the
+North have a fair prospect of being able to crush the Southern armies, to
+take their forts, and to reduce any cities which may hold out; but how
+will they make them send members to Congress, recognize the jurisdiction
+of the Federal courts, and admit the Federal officers who administer the
+offices vested by the constitution in the Congress? A permanent military
+occupation of every town and village in all the Southern States would be
+necessary to carry out these objects; and this seems to English observers
+to be altogether out of the question. If this difficulty were overcome,
+the State legislatures would still be protected by the very constitution
+which the army of occupation would come to enforce; nor would it be
+possible, without fatal inconsistency, to prohibit free discussion in
+newspapers, public meetings, and the like. All this would be fatal to
+continuous compulsion.
+
+These observations are so obvious and weighty, that any considerate
+Englishman would, as far as his private opinion went, be decided by them;
+but those who insist upon them with so much force ought to remember that
+there is another side to the subject. To advise brave and high-spirited
+men to permit, or not to resist, the forcible, wrongful destruction of
+institutions to which they rightly attach the highest value, on the
+ground that it is extremely difficult to maintain them, is what men who
+recognize the claims of courage and spirit ought to be loth to do. That
+the North has right on its side, there can be no doubt. That it has
+sustained grievous wrongs and insults, is equally plain. Surely it is
+a question rather for them than for us, whether there is a reasonable
+prospect of redressing those wrongs by force of arms. A nation, like an
+individual, may easily overrate difficulties. It is by no means clear
+that the tone of the South will be so haughty as it is at present, or
+that their determination to resist will be unanimous after they have
+felt the weight of the Northern army. There is no doubt on each side a
+superabundance of the very fiercest kind of talk, and of protestations of
+unflinching constancy; but it by no means follows that it would survive
+the horrors of battles and sieges, and the awful prospect of servile
+insurrection. At any rate, no one can know whether it will or not till
+they try. Ireland would have been independent long ago if we had taken
+the advice of disinterested foreigners about it. In 1857 many writers on
+the Continent and in the United States supposed that they had proved in
+the most convincing manner that we never could reconquer India. Nothing
+that is worth keeping in this world can be kept without an effort; and it
+is premature to say that fighting is of no use till it has been fairly
+tried. We have a fair right to dwell on all the difficulties and horrors
+of the task; but in common justice it must be admitted that the North are
+fighting in a good cause and for a high stake.
+
+Though it would be hard to deny that some injustice has been done to
+the Northerners by the tone of the most influential of our newspapers,
+nothing can be more false in substance or rude in manner than the
+imputations thrown by the Americans on the policy of the English
+government. There is something so puerile in the notion that the
+recognition of the belligerent rights of the Southerners involves an
+approval of their proceedings, that it is difficult to argue seriously
+against it. Unless the Northerners mean to execute their prisoners as
+murderers and traitors, they must treat them as belligerents. That is,
+they must recognize the very rights which they blame us for recognizing.
+No doubt their real grievance is that their vanity has been wounded by
+the manner in which their performances have been criticized by English
+writers. The preceding observations are intended to show how far they
+have a just cause of complaint, but it is highly probable that the fact
+that we have not taken their demonstrations in quite the same heroic
+vein as that in which they are made has had as much to do with their
+ill-temper and bad manners, as the misconception as to the true state of
+the case, which certainly has pervaded much of our current literature.
+For this cause of offence no apology and no regret is due. One of the
+principal services which one nation can render to another, especially
+where their language and literature are identical, is that of letting
+them know when they are exposing themselves. In America, both politics
+and periodical literature have fallen, to a great extent, into the hands
+of an ill-educated class. The excessive vulgarity of a great part of
+what they say and write gives far too low a notion of the strong points
+of the American character, and has a fatal tendency to make their policy
+as unworthy a representative of the real powers of their minds as their
+literature unquestionably is. It is very desirable that every reasonable
+opportunity should be taken of showing the noisy and ill-bred people
+who have constituted themselves the representatives of the opinions and
+feelings of the United States, that we rate them exactly at what they
+are worth, and that their brag and fustian have just as much and just
+as little effect upon us as the raw-head-and-bloody-bones swagger which
+were the precursors of the famous battle of the cabbage-garden in 1848.
+The proposal that the North and South should forget their differences
+in a joint piratical attack upon Canada and Cuba, is worthy only of
+the infamous source from which it proceeds. Those who make it ought to
+recollect that something more than newspaper articles will be wanted to
+conquer a British colony. Hard words seem at present to be more in their
+line than broken bones, and they are much less to the purpose.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[1] _See_ Miss Martineau’s pamphlet, _A History of the American
+Compromises_. Reprinted, with additions, from the _Daily News_. Chapman,
+1856.
+
+
+
+
+Burlesques.
+
+
+It is a long stride from Aristophanes to the young men who write the
+satirical dramatic pieces of the present day—and yet but one step. It
+might be a safe thing to say that that one step is from the sublime to
+the ridiculous; but it would scarcely be just. In one important respect
+Aristophanes and the burlesque writers of the present day are, like Cæsar
+and Pompey in the estimation of the learned negro, very much alike,
+especially Aristophanes. Aristophanes, who was certainly the father of
+the burlesque, claimed to have a moral purpose in his buffoonery; but
+any one who reads over his _Frogs_ or _Clouds_ must inevitably arrive at
+the conclusion of the candid German critic, Mueller—that in every word
+he wrote, and every piece of “business” he set down, the Greek author
+had it chiefly in view to make his audience laugh. George the Third may
+have been excused for regarding Wilkes as a Wilkesite; but no one knew,
+or ought to have known, better than Aristophanes, that Socrates was not
+a sophist. The burlesque writers of our day crack jokes upon Alderman
+Carden and Mr. Tupper, not with any hope, or design, of making the one
+a juster magistrate, or the other a better poet, but simply to get a
+laugh for the actors and for themselves. That Aristophanes had often no
+other aim is abundantly proved in every scene of the _Frogs_ and the
+_Clouds_. In the former, he claimed to have a very high purpose—nothing
+less than the reform of the Greek drama, which, though then only in its
+infancy, was said to be in a state of decline. We, in these days, deplore
+the decline of the drama when the stage is more than two thousand years
+old. Aristophanes lamented its decline when it was yet associated with
+wine lees and a cart. We talk fondly and regretfully of the good old
+days of Kemble and Kean. Aristophanes and his fellows talked of the good
+old times of Æschylus and Euripides. No doubt the critics in Euripides’
+day sighed for the past glories of the age of Thespis. But let us see
+how Aristophanes set about reforming the Greek drama by means of his
+burlesques. In the _Frogs_, which is especially devoted to that object,
+we find Bacchus lamenting the decline of the tragic art. He has a great
+longing for Euripides, and determines to visit the infernal world and
+bring that much-regretted poet back to earth. He sets out in company
+with his servant, Xanthias, crosses the Acherusian lake in Charon’s
+boat, serenaded on his way by a chorus of frogs, and arrives in the
+Shades. Here he finds Æschylus and Euripides, and proposes that they
+should give him a taste of their quality. Pluto takes the chair, and
+the two poets stand opposite to each other and deliver the most pompous
+specimens of their poetical powers. They sing, they declaim, and each
+tries to outdo the other in fine words and ponderous sentences. They are
+both so very grand and so very heavy, that Bacchus is quite unable to
+decide between them. In this difficulty he calls for a pair of scales,
+and proceeds to weigh separate verses of each poet against each other;
+when, notwithstanding all the efforts of Euripides to produce ponderous
+lines, those of Æschylus always make those of his rival kick the beam.
+Bacchus, in the meantime, has become a convert to the merits of Æschylus,
+though he had sworn to Euripides to take him back with him to the upper
+world. So, dismissing Euripides with a parody of one of his own verses
+in the _Hippolytus_, Bacchus returns to the living world with Æschylus.
+The whole idea of this burlesque is undoubtedly well conceived, and Greek
+scholars can tell with what admirable felicity Aristophanes imitates the
+peculiarities of style of Æschylus and Euripides in the speeches he puts
+into their mouths; but they must, at the same time, confess that there is
+more of fun and banter about the whole proceeding than earnest purpose.
+You are made to laugh _at_ the two poets; and we can well imagine how
+some actor of the time, by a pompous air and manner in representing
+Æschylus, may have produced shouts of laughter at that poet’s expense.
+A parallel scene to that in the infernal regions is often witnessed in
+actual life in the Slave States of America. Two niggers will sit opposite
+to each other and talk, one against the other, for hours at a stretch,
+each trying to outdo his opponent in long words and fine-sounding
+sentences. Aristophanes just puts the two great Greek tragic poets in
+this ridiculous position. The ignorant who witnessed this burlesque of
+the _Frogs_ must have come away with the notion, not that Æschylus and
+Euripides were very fine and impressive poets, but that they were two
+pompous and ridiculous old fogies. After that affair of the scales, one
+is sadly inclined to question Aristophanes’ respect for these two poets.
+
+There is a double purpose in the _Frogs_—to reform dramatic composition,
+and also to reform the practices of the stage. In this latter task
+Aristophanes shows, even more unmistakeably than in the former, that his
+chief aim is to raise a laugh. The Greek dramatic authors of the time
+had been in the habit of resorting to certain expedients of a gross and
+filthy character, in order to sustain the flagging interest of their
+plays. When Bacchus and Xanthias come on in the _Frogs_, a colloquy
+ensues as to the value of these expedients, and the propriety of using
+them. Xanthias is desirous to indulge in the usual “gags” to make the
+audience laugh; but Bacchus, who is anxious to reform the stage, protests
+against them. “Let us have no more of this sort of thing,” he says,
+“it is filthy and gross, and altogether unworthy of the dramatic art.”
+Aristophanes, however, takes good care that his two characters shall talk
+sufficiently about these gross practices, and he raises as much laughter
+by talking about them, as though he had embodied them in the dialogue
+and action of his play, and adopted them as his own. In the scene where
+Hercules pops his head out at the door and frightens Bacchus, the author
+forgets his high moral purpose altogether, and makes Bacchus do the very
+things which the _Frogs_ was written to reprobate and put down. So in
+the _Babylonians_ and _Acharnians_, where he attacks the demagogue Cleon,
+and in the _Clouds_, where he attacks Socrates, he is obviously bent
+upon nothing so much as the amusement of his audience at the expense of
+two well-known public characters. The Greek scholar, however, will judge
+Aristophanes by another standard. His mastery over the Attic dialect was
+complete, and it was all the more striking when placed in contrast with
+the rude Greek pronunciation and the broken Greek of foreigners. Perhaps
+no writer of any age combined so much exuberant wit, broad humour,
+playful fancy, and originality of invention, as Aristophanes. He also
+stands alone in his power of twisting language into new and grotesque
+forms. His droll imitations of animal sounds, and his eccentric verses
+formed of the grunts of pigs and the croaking of frogs, are quite in the
+spirit of our modern punning. Still it is not easy to regard him as a
+reformer and a regenerator of public morals, even though St. Chrysostom
+was wont to keep his plays under his pillow. Plutarch admired neither his
+puns nor his purpose. That high authority was evidently of Dr. Johnson’s
+opinion with respect to a punster. He regards Aristophanes’ antitheses
+and plays upon words as an outrage upon the language, and adds, that
+the “audiences which admired such a poet must have been morally and
+intellectually depraved.” Critics say the same thing of the audiences
+which admire the burlesques of the present day, but possibly with less
+justification.
+
+The stage method adopted by the burlesque writers of our time is
+strikingly similar to that followed by Aristophanes. Scenes of dialogue
+and scenic display are alternated in both. In the modern burlesque, the
+front scenes are enlivened by broad comic duets and nigger dances. Then
+the “flats” are drawn off, and we have an elaborate “set”—a castle, a
+mountain pass, or a picturesque sea-shore, where the ballet takes the
+place of the Greek chorus. Thus, in the _Frogs_, we have a front scene
+of broad comic business between Bacchus and Xanthias, and then a grand
+full stage “set” of the Acherusian lake, with Charon coming alongside
+in his boat. Lastly, we have what the modern playbill calls a “grand
+transformation scene,” in the infernal regions, where blue-fire would
+have come in very appropriately, had it been then invented. Although the
+Greeks, probably, did not use scenes, but dropped the curtain between
+the divisions of their plays, yet some of the burlesques of Aristophanes
+will be found to be well adapted to the modern method. Substituting an
+æsthetical critic for Bacchus, and Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, or Samuel
+Johnson and John Dryden, for Æschylus and Euripides, very good fun might
+be got out of a version of the _Frogs_ at the Olympic or the Strand. It
+might be a question, however, if the gods would understand it. Still, if
+the æsthetical critic had a comic servant, and said and did such things
+as Bacchus says and does, he could not fail to make them laugh.
+
+We have said that it is but one step from Aristophanes to the burlesque
+writers of the present time. That is, as near as possible, the truth.
+The Romans had no burlesque drama, in the Aristophanic sense. Their most
+extravagant comedies never dealt with real personages; but aimed at
+representing life and manners, and teaching morals by means of a dramatic
+fable, which was exemplary, and not didactic. They were comedies of real
+life, in the truest sense of the word; the puns and witticisms in which,
+though sometimes rather coarse and broad, as in Plautus, never bordered
+upon the outrageous and the extravagant. In the search for specimens of
+burlesque dramatic literature of the kind we are now considering, we
+may hop almost from Aristophanes to Gay, from the _Æolosicon_ to the
+_Beggar’s Opera_. As Aristophanes claimed, in the _Frogs_, to have the
+purpose of ridiculing the bad tragedies of the time, so Gay professed, in
+his _Beggar’s Opera_, to declare war against the Italian opera, which, at
+that time, was asserting its sway over the public taste, to the serious
+damage of the legitimate drama. Witnessing the _Beggar’s Opera_, as it
+is performed in our day, we can readily understand its great popularity
+on its first production. Its songs are enough to account for that. But
+it is certainly not easy to understand how it came to be regarded as a
+telling and pungent burlesque upon Italian opera. It does not turn the
+laugh against opera, in the shape it now assumes. When Macheath sings
+song after song to Polly, with a few unmeaning words of prose “dialogue”
+between, we have no suspicion that he is ridiculing the absurd formula
+of the Italian opera. The actor does nothing to indicate anything of the
+kind. He is solely intent on singing his songs well, and we are solely
+intent on hearing them sung. Instead of being a burlesque upon opera,
+it is an opera itself, recommended only in that it possesses the one
+enjoyable element of an opera—good music. This is only another proof that
+the burlesque writer can never trust to his satire and his “purpose,”
+to make his piece “go” with the public. Aristophanes introduced the
+gross jokes, which he condemned, to rescue his satire from dulness; and
+Gay adopted sprightly airs, for the same purpose. Walker, who first
+played Macheath, was a better actor than he was a singer; and it is
+probable that, to this circumstance, the _Beggar’s Opera_ owes its great
+reputation as a burlesque. Walker imitated the manner of the Italian
+actors to perfection, and caused roars of laughter by gestures and by
+mimicry of operatic action, which are now altogether lost sight of. Had
+Quin, for whom the part was originally intended, played Macheath, the
+burlesque of the piece would, probably, never have been brought out; and
+the _Beggar’s Opera_ would have been originally what it is now—simply a
+pleasing burletta. The most opposite opinions were expressed with regard
+to the piece at the time. Swift said, “It placed all kinds of vice in
+the strongest and most odious light.” Another critic asserted that,
+“after an exhibition of the _Beggar’s Opera_, the gains of robbers were
+multiplied.” Dr. Johnson declares both these decisions to be exaggerated,
+and hits the real truth—a truth which applies to the burlesque drama
+universally. “The play,” he says, “was written only to divert, without
+any moral purpose, and is therefore not likely to do good; nor can it be
+conceived, without more speculation than life requires and admits, to be
+productive of much evil. Highwaymen and housebreakers seldom frequent
+the playhouse, or mingle in elegant diversions; nor is it possible for
+any one to imagine that he may rob in safety, because he sees Macheath
+reprieved upon the stage.” The doctor’s first remark was literally true.
+The piece was written solely to divert. Gay aimed at a “purpose” in his
+original design, and when he had carried it out, Colley Cibber rejected
+the piece. Gay’s friends, Swift and Spence, did not think the piece would
+succeed, though the Duke of Argyle (with a preternatural perception of
+jokes for a Scotchman) swore that it would. It was not until Gay subdued
+his “purpose,” and put in some extra ballads, that Rich accepted the
+piece; and then, in this shape, it made “Gay rich and Rich gay,” as the
+jokers said at the time.
+
+Having hopped from Aristophanes to Gay, we may now skip from Gay to
+Sheridan without overleaping any remarkable example of the burlesque
+drama. The _Critic_ is possibly the smartest burlesque ever written;
+and yet its purpose is a shallow pretence. Like the _Beggar’s Opera_,
+the _Critic_ was written to amuse, and it fulfils no other object. It
+cannot be said to be a satire upon the critics of the period, since the
+remarks of Dangle and Sneer, during the rehearsal of the tragedy, are
+pointedly framed with the view of calling forth a smart response from
+Puff, and are not in any way examples of the theatrical criticism of the
+time. Sheridan arranges everything to give occasion for an exhibition of
+his own smartness. He spreads the stage with crackers, as it were, and
+cares not who steps upon them and sets them banging for the amusement of
+the audience. Thus the tragedy opens with two sentinels asleep, to give
+occasion for a joke when they awake:—
+
+    _Dang._ Hey! why, I thought these fellows had been asleep?
+
+    _Puff._ Only a pretence; there’s the art of it: they were spies
+    of Lord Burleigh’s.
+
+    _Sneer._ But isn’t it odd they were never taken notice of, not
+    even by the commander-in-chief?
+
+    _Puff._ O Lud, sir! if people who want to listen, or overhear,
+    were not always connived at in a tragedy, there would be no
+    carrying on any plot in the world.
+
+    _Dang._ That’s certain.
+
+Here a laugh is raised at the artificiality of the stage; but the satire
+suggests no remedy. Both speakers are satisfied that these things must be
+so in a tragedy. In every instance where the satire is directed against
+the practices of the stage, the remarks, though highly diverting, are
+simply truisms. Thus, when Leicester asks the knights if they are all
+resolved to conquer or be free, and they answer, “All,” Dangle chimes in,
+“_Nem. con._ egad.” To which Puff replies, “Oh, yes! where they do agree
+on the stage, their unanimity is wonderful.” This remark never fails
+to produce a hearty laugh; and yet it would be difficult to say what
+we laugh at. The dramatic art inexorably demands that where unanimity
+is to be expressed it should be expressed as briefly and _unanimously_
+as possible. If we laugh at anything here, it is at the fixed and
+unalterable canons of the dramatic art, which the peculiar turn of
+Sneer’s remark places in a ridiculous light. It is hard to discover at
+what particular folly or vice the _Critic_ is aimed. All the characters
+are satirists by turns; Puff pokes his fun at the drama; and Sneer and
+Dangle poke their fun at Puff, only to encounter a sharper retort. All
+are so confoundedly witty, that you cannot tell which are the butts and
+which the sharp-shooters. Nothing is more apparent in the dialogue of the
+tragedy than the desire of the author to show off his own cleverness.
+Some passages which are intended as burlesques of fine writing are as
+near as possible the real thing. Thus, England’s fate at the approach of
+the Armada—
+
+    “Like a clipp’d guinea, trembles in the scale.”
+
+The guinea is certainly a vulgar image, but the thought is a happy one.
+The whole of the passage in which this occurs contains no hint of the
+ridiculous until we come to the “trembling guinea,” and that but very
+slightly turns the scale to the side of absurdity. When Sheridan tried
+fine writing in earnest he was not so successful. His own _Pizarro_ was
+a greater burlesque than Mr. Puff’s _Spanish Armada_. _Pizarro_, in its
+highest flights, is “downright booth at a fair.”
+
+Travelling downwards from Sheridan’s time, we meet with no notable
+example of a burlesque in dramatic form until we come to _Bombastes
+Furioso_, first produced about the year 1809. We have never been able
+to discover that the author of this production had any special moral,
+political, literary, or other “purpose” whatever. At any rate, he claims
+none for himself; and we do not know that any one has made the claim
+for him. Bombast in general would seem to be the mark at which the
+arrows are let fly; but the incidents of the piece are so extravagant
+and capricious, that we are tempted to believe the author sat down to
+write without having any fixed idea what he was going to make it. A
+king and a general making love to a cook-maid in a kitchen presents
+but a very vulgar and commonplace antithesis, and would be altogether
+offensive, but for the mock chivalry which is sustained in the demeanour
+and language of the king and the general. The conduct of these two
+characters accords with a kind of harmless lunacy which is natural in so
+far as it exists in nature. Two lunatics of this class might extemporize
+the challenge and duel scene in their ward at Bedlam, and the random
+performance would be very funny. We are, therefore, inclined to regard
+_Bombastes Furioso_ as a “lune.” Still, the piece is characterized by
+many merits. Its thorough-paced extravagance is not the least of them.
+The peculiar diction, too, is singularly well suited to burlesque. Wit,
+there is little or none; but its place is more than supplied by humorous
+expression and absurd similitudes.
+
+The entrance of Bombastes, followed by his army, consisting of one
+drummer, one fifer, and two soldiers of unequal stature, is in the true
+spirit of burlesque. In the whole range of burlesque-dramatic literature,
+there is, perhaps, no single passage which produces so much effect as
+Bombastes’ address to his army. Yet it consists of only three lines—
+
+    _Bombas._ (_confidentially_).
+
+    Meet me this ev’ning at the Barley-Mow;
+    I’ll bring your pay—you see I’m busy now.
+    (_In a loud, commanding tone_)
+    Begone, brave army, and don’t kick up a row!
+
+Nor could anything be more ludicrous than the entrance of Bombastes
+in the wood, intent on suicide, preceded by a fifer playing “Michael
+Wiggins:”
+
+    _Bombas._
+
+    Gentle musician, let thy dulcet strain
+    Proceed—play “Michael Wiggins” o’er again.
+    Music’s the food of love—give o’er, give o’er,
+    For I must batten on that food no more.
+
+Who has not enjoyed the whimsical idea of challenging the whole human
+race by hanging a pair of jack boots on a tree, and writing on them—
+
+    Who dares this pair of boots displace,
+    Must meet Bombastes face to face.
+
+In _Bombastes Furioso_, we have burlesque clothed in its proper dress,
+not in the toga of a didactic philosopher, but in the spangled frippery
+of a mummer. For the first time it discards “purpose,” and speaks in its
+own proper language—doggrel rhyme.
+
+Mr. Planché was the pioneer of the new school, and his sole purpose was
+to divert holiday audiences (chiefly composed of boys and girls home for
+the Christmas and Easter vacations) with appropriate dramatic versions
+of pretty fairy tales. His compositions were rather extravaganzas than
+burlesques, and depended for their success more upon the romantic
+interest of the story and the wit of the dialogue than upon their satire.
+Mr. Planché may claim the merit—if merit it be—of having first introduced
+the pun into these compositions: and it must be allowed that he punned
+with discretion; which is certainly more than we can say of his younger
+successors in the craft of joke-making. When Mr. Planché was at the
+height of his fame as a burlesque writer, these pieces were brought out
+only at holiday time; in some cases as a substitute for the pantomime,
+which, in certain quarters, was beginning to be voted low and vulgar. It
+sufficed then to tell the dramatic story in sprightly rhymes, slightly
+sprinkled with puns and allusions to the events of the day. Ballet,
+glittering fairy scenery, parodies set to popular airs and red and blue
+fire, did the rest. The satire contained in these pieces was of a very
+harmless kind, and rarely aimed at any game higher than the Thames Tunnel
+or the Lord Mayor’s show. Of late years, however, pieces of this class
+have asserted a much more extended sway. They are now played in season
+and out of season, and at one, if not two theatres they hold the stage
+all the year round, and constitute the chief attraction. The young school
+of burlesque writers follow a method peculiarly their own, though, of
+course, they are largely indebted to the traditions of their immediate
+predecessors. The chief elements which enter into the composition of
+these pieces are, pretty scenery, negro melodies, “break-down” dances,
+and outrageous puns. It is also a necessary condition to their success,
+that one or more saucy actresses with good legs should be employed in
+their performance. The music and the scenery go for much, the puns
+go for more, but the comic dance goes for most of all. The literature
+which enters into the composition of the more successful pieces of this
+description is not by any means to be despised as an intellectual effort.
+The young men who can so industriously torture the English language into
+such strange and startling meanings, through a thousand lines of rhyme,
+evidently possess an amount of talent and application which, if properly
+directed, might be of real service to letters; or, if not to letters,
+to some industrial pursuit. Tom Hood, who was considered the prince of
+punsters, in his day, could have had no conception of the height to which
+punning has attained (or, perhaps, we ought to say the depth to which
+it has fallen) in our time. A pun a day would, perhaps, have been the
+extent of the indulgence which Hood would have allowed himself; but these
+burlesque writers fire them off in volleys, and glory in startling the
+English language from its propriety. As regards punning, the whole tribe
+of jokers follow exactly the same method, as may be seen by reference to
+the burlesques of the present season. Hear how Mr. William Brough, in his
+burlesque of _Endymion_, clatters his _pans_:—
+
+    _Pan._
+
+    Oh! long-ear’d but short-sighted fauns, desist;
+    To the great Pan, ye little pitchers, list;
+    Pan knows a thing or two. In point of fact,
+    He’s a deep Pan, and anything but cracked;
+    A perfect _oracle_ Pan deems himself; he
+    Is earthenwarish; so, of course, is delfy (Delphi).
+    Trust then to Pan your troubles to remove—
+    A warming-Pan he’ll to your courage prove;
+    A prophet, he foresees the ills you fear;
+    So for them all you have your Pan a seer (panacea).
+
+Here every thought is designed as a peg whereon to hang a pun. The author
+would seem to have been fearful of having nothing but his punning for his
+pains in two instances, where he finds it necessary to add explanatory
+notes. Now see with what labour Mr. Byron, in his _Cinderella_, carries
+coals to the joke market:—
+
+    _Cind._
+
+    Cinders and coals I am accustomed to,
+    They seem to me to tinge all things I view.
+
+    _Prince._
+
+    The fact I can’t say causes me surprise,
+    For _Kohl_ is frequently in ladies’ eyes.
+
+    _Cind._
+
+    At morn, when reading, as the fire up burns,
+    The printer’s stops to semi-_coal-uns_ turns;
+    I might as well read _Coke_.
+
+    _Prince._
+
+    Quite right you are.
+    He’s very useful reading at the _bar_.
+    Who is your favourite poet? _Hobbs?_
+
+    _Cind._
+
+                                      Not quite;
+    No; I think _Cole_ridge is my favourite;
+    His melan-_coally_ suits my situation;
+    My dinner always is a _coald coal_-lation.
+    Smoke pictures all things seem, whate’er may be ’em,
+    A cyclorama, through the _Coal I see ’em_.
+
+    _Prince._
+
+    Is there no way from out a path so black?
+
+    _Cind._
+
+    There’s no way out; my life’s a _cul_ de sac.
+
+Of course, authors who have so little respect for the legitimate meaning
+of English words cannot be expected to pay regard to the rules of English
+grammar; nor is it to be imagined that their course of solid reading has
+been such as to enable them to know that Hobbes was not particularly
+distinguished for his poetry. But all this is included in the broad,
+general licence which these poets take out. In another piece, _Bluebeard
+from a New Point of Hue_,—the puns you see even extend to the playbill
+and the title-page of the production—the same author takes occasion, on
+the same principle, to pun until all is _blue_. Fatima calls Abomilique a
+“blue bore.”
+
+    _Abom._
+
+    Everything takes that colour in my eyes;
+    This, ’stead of being fash’nablest of flies,
+    And red, when I look at it, in two twos,
+    Changes its form and colour—it’s a _blouse_.
+    ’Stead of yellow covering, my foot
+    Seems, in my eyes, clad in a _Blu_cher boot.
+    Every hotel I may put up at, boasts
+    The selfsame sign—of course, it’s the _Blue_-Posts.
+    Whene’er a portrait-painter I employ,
+    He makes me look like Gainsborough’s Blue Boy.
+    My palanquin, the one I bought for you,
+    Becomes an omnibus, the Royal _Blue_.
+    Ladies seem blue-stockings and bloomers through it;
+    Each song I hear appears composed by _Blewitt_;
+    In my siesta, every afternoon,
+    I dream I’m in the air in a big _b’loon_.
+
+This is simply a long punning exercise, of a sustained effort to the
+jingling of words of similar sound, but wholly destitute of similarity of
+sense. There is not that startling conjunction of similar dissimilarities
+which constitutes the true pun. It cannot be said that there is any wit
+in making Bluebeard see everything blue, because his beard is blue. If he
+had been remarkable for his blue eyes, there might have been some point
+in it.
+
+Sydney Smith, who was as little accustomed to found his jokes upon a just
+estimate of things as any of the burlesque writers, once said that it
+required a surgical operation to get a joke into the head of a Scotchman.
+Yet plain James Hogg has given us a better specimen of a pun than any of
+these professional English wits. Some one at table mentioned that it was
+reported Dr. Parr had married a woman beneath him in station. “Ay, ay,”
+said Hogg, “she is, nae doot, below Parr.” Here is a pun perfect in all
+its parts, preserving at once exactness of sound and sense, and giving
+at the same time a humorous colouring to a commonplace fact. The above
+specimens, however, are the best in the pieces before us. The majority
+of the puns are of the most audacious kind, many of them suggestive of a
+joker in the last stage of drivelling senility.
+
+This excessive and bad punning upon words merely is a poor substitute
+for true wit and humour. Half of the puns are lost upon the audience
+owing to their obscurity and the rapidity with which they follow upon
+each other’s heels. And even when they are “taken,” the delight they give
+is simply of the kind which is afforded by a Chinese puzzle: they are
+ingenious, and that is all. Punning upon words merely is not a difficult
+thing, if you could only condescend to give your mind to it. The art
+might be taught in six easy lessons, as Mr. Smart teaches writing, and as
+other professors teach crochet and Berlin-wool work. We can quite imagine
+how any of these burlesque writers might have improved James the First
+in the art. James was a great punster; but his style would be considered
+primitive in these days. On one occasion, his Majesty made a punning
+speech to the professors of the University of Edinburgh.[2] They had been
+engaged in a philosophical disputation, and his Majesty complimented
+them one after the other by name. We may give this as a specimen of his
+Majesty’s style before receiving lessons:—
+
+“Methinks these gentlemen by their very names have been destined for the
+acts which they have had in hand to-day. Adam was the father of all, and
+very fitly Adamson had the first part in this act. The defender is justly
+called Fairly: his thesis had some fair lies, and he defended them very
+fairly and with many fair lies given to his oppugners. And why should not
+Mr. Lands be the first to enter the lands? but now I clearly see that
+all lands are not barren, for certainly he hath shown a fertile wit.
+Mr. Young is very old in Aristotle. Mr. Reed need not be red (oh!) with
+blushing for his actions this day. Mr. King disputed very kingly and of
+a kingly purpose anent the royal supremacy of reason over anger and all
+passions.”
+
+After six lessons his Majesty would have come out in the following
+flowing style:—
+
+“Adam having been the _fust_ man, it is only natural that Adamson
+should talk _fust_ian. We are in hopes, however, that _Adam_son will
+_Eve_ntually _Cain_ (explanatory note: _gain_) experience, and be _Abel_
+to do better; for it is fit and proper that Adamson should be the first
+man in learning, re_garden_ him in connection with _Eden_burgh. Mr.
+Young is _youngry_ after knowledge, and we fear is in some danger,
+through studying Aristotle too much, of coming to be _’ung_ before he
+is much _older_. We were afraid that Mr. Reed would have been _red_uced
+for an argument; but we perceive he is _red_ivivus, and has _red_eemed
+his character from being _red_iculous. Verily, Mr. Fairly”—but enough;
+this would have been quite sufficient for the punning preceptor to frame
+and glaze and put in his window as a testimony to his skill in teaching
+the whole art of pun-making. It is on record, that King James prepared
+himself for his jokes by a course of study and stimulants, and did not
+venture to fire them off until after the sixth bottle. If such simple
+exercises required so much stimulation, what must be the process which
+the punsters of our day find it necessary to resort to? The Turkish bath
+is said to bring out a vast amount of latent and unsuspected filth from
+the skin. Is there any similar process for acting upon the brain?
+
+Satire is a weapon which has been used with good effect by skilful hands
+in books and in speeches, both in ancient and modern times; but we cannot
+discover that it has done any great or signal execution when wielded
+by the burlesque writer on the stage. Aristophanes certainly did not
+revive the palmy days of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. It is true
+it has been asserted that he did; but will any one please to mention
+the successors of these three great masters who are worthy to be named
+in the same category? It might be easier to specify the harm than to
+estimate the good which flowed from the comedies of Aristophanes. Not
+only the Greek drama, but Greece itself, dated its decline from those
+days. And, besides, it is not at all certain that when Aristophanes
+exhibited Socrates suspended in a basket, spouting incomprehensible
+doctrine—incomprehensible at that time—he did not sow the seeds of the
+hemlock to which the greatest of all the Greeks was condemned. It is true
+that Socrates was not sentenced until nearly twenty years afterwards;
+but Aristophanes was one of the first to throw mud at him, and it was
+only through the persistency with which his detractors followed the
+dramatist’s example that some of the mud eventually stuck. The Athenians
+knew and felt, when it was too late, that the most virtuous man of their
+age had been sacrificed to an idle and reckless clamour. Here then, to
+begin with, is a suspicion of murder attaching to burlesque. In the
+present day, the only murder of which it can be found guilty is the
+murder of the English language.
+
+If Dr. Johnson were alive to pronounce sentence, we know what would
+become of the burlesque writers: they would swing every man Jack—or
+shall we say Joe?—of them. It is to be laid to their charge that they
+have familiarized the educated public with the use of slang. Slang words
+and phrases are now of frequent occurrence in our literature. We meet
+with them not alone in a low class of publications, but in the leading
+articles of newspapers, in the orations of senators, and even in books
+of a solid and standard character. If these burlesques have done us this
+amount of harm, and have done us no other good than to excite the “loud
+laugh” indiscriminately at the expense of things worthy and unworthy,
+what shall we say of them? May we not sigh for those palmy days of the
+drama which are past and gone?
+
+Nevertheless, we can have no sympathy with those who complain that
+these burlesques have elbowed the legitimate drama off the stage. The
+true legitimacy of the drama may well be questioned, when it cannot
+maintain its claims against this bastard pretender. We have seen (on rare
+occasions) that good sterling plays will always draw the public; and if,
+in default of these, the public prefer comparatively harmless puns and
+parodies to the pollution of translations from the French, perhaps it may
+be allowed that, of the two evils, they choose the least.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[2] _History of University of Edinburgh._
+
+
+
+
+When thou Sleepest.
+
+
+    When thou sleepest, lulled in night,
+      Art thou lost in vacancy?
+    Does no silent inward light,
+      Softly breaking, fall on thee?
+    Does no dream on quiet wing
+      Float a moment mid that ray,
+    Touch some answering mental string,
+      Wake a note, and pass away?
+
+    When thou watchest, as the hours
+      Mute and blind are speeding on,
+    O’er that rayless path, where lowers
+      Muffled midnight, black and lone;
+    Comes there nothing hovering near,
+      Thought or half reality,
+    Whispering marvels in thine ear,
+      Every word a mystery,
+
+    Chanting low an ancient lay,
+      Every plaintive note a spell,
+    Clearing memory’s clouds away,
+      Showing scenes thy heart loves well?
+    Songs forgot, in childhood sung,
+      Airs in youth beloved and known,
+    Whispered by that airy tongue,
+      Once again are made thine own.
+
+    Be it dream in haunted sleep,
+      Be it thought in vigil lone,
+    Drink’st thou not a rapture deep
+      From the feeling, ’tis thine own?
+    All thine own; thou need’st not tell
+      What bright form thy slumber blest;—
+    All thine own; remember well
+      Night and shade were round thy rest.
+
+    Nothing looked upon thy bed,
+      Save the lonely watch-light’s gleam;
+    Not a whisper, not a tread
+      Scared thy spirit’s glorious dream.
+    Sometimes, when the midnight gale
+      Breathed a moan and then was still,
+    Seemed the spell of thought to fail,
+      Checked by one ecstatic thrill;
+
+    Felt as all external things,
+      Robed in moonlight, smote thine eye;
+    Then thy spirit’s waiting wings
+      Quivered, trembled, spread to fly;
+    Then th’ aspirer wildly swelling
+      Looked, where mid transcendency
+    Star to star was mutely telling
+      Heaven’s resolve and fate’s decree.
+
+    Oh! it longed for holier fire
+      Than this spark in earthly shrine;
+    Oh! it soared, and higher, higher,
+      Sought to reach a home divine.
+    Hopeless quest! soon weak and weary
+      Flagged the pinion, drooped the plume,
+    And again in sadness dreary
+      Came the baffled wanderer home.
+
+    And again it turned for soothing
+      To th’ unfinished, broken dream;
+    While, the ruffled current smoothing,
+      Thought rolled on her startled stream.
+    I have felt this cherished feeling,
+      Sweet and known to none but me;
+    Still I felt it nightly healing
+      Each dark day’s despondency.
+
+                                                        CHARLOTTE BRONTË.
+
+
+
+
+The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson.
+
+BY ONE OF THE FIRM.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+PREFACE.
+
+It will be observed by the literary and commercial world that, in this
+transaction, the name of the really responsible party does not show on
+the title-page. I—George Robinson—am that party. When our Mr. Jones
+objected to the publication of these memoirs unless they appeared as
+coming from the firm itself, I at once gave way. I had no wish to offend
+the firm, and, perhaps, encounter a lawsuit for the empty honour of
+seeing my name advertised as that of an author. We talked the matter over
+with our Mr. Brown, who, however, was at that time in affliction, and
+not able to offer much that was available. One thing he did say: “As we
+are partners,” said Mr. Brown, “let’s be partners to the end.” “Well,”
+said I, “if you say so, Mr. Brown, so it shall be.” I never supposed that
+Mr. Brown would set the Thames on fire, and soon learnt that he was not
+the man to amass a fortune by British commerce. He was not made for the
+guild of Merchant Princes. But he was the senior member of our firm, and
+I always respected the old-fashioned doctrine of capital in the person of
+our Mr. Brown.
+
+When Mr. Brown said, “Let’s be partners to the end. It won’t be for long,
+Mr. Robinson,” I never said another word. “No,” said I, “Mr. Brown;
+you’re not what you was—and you’re down a peg; I’m not the man to take
+advantage and go against your last wishes. Whether for long or whether
+for short we’ll pull through in the same boat to the end. It shall be put
+on the title-page—‘By One of the Firm.’” “God bless you, Mr. Robinson,”
+said he; “God bless you.”
+
+And then Mr. Jones started another objection. The reader will soon
+realize that anything I do is sure to be wrong with Mr. Jones. It
+wouldn’t be him else. He next declares that I can’t write English, and
+that the book must be corrected, and put out by an editor? Now, when I
+inform the discerning British Public that every advertisement that has
+been posted by Brown, Jones, and Robinson, during the last three years
+has come from my own unaided pen, I think few will doubt my capacity to
+write the “Memoirs of Brown, Jones, and Robinson,” without any editor
+whatsoever.
+
+On this head I was determined to be firm. What! after preparing, and
+correcting, and publishing such thousands of advertisements in prose and
+verse and in every form of which the language is susceptible, to be told
+that I couldn’t write English! It was Jones all over. If there is a party
+envious of the genius of another party in this sublunary world that party
+is our Mr. Jones.
+
+But I was again softened by a touching appeal from our senior partner.
+Mr. Brown, though prosaic enough in his general ideas, was still
+sometimes given to the Muses; and now, with a melancholy and tender
+cadence, he quoted the following lines:—
+
+    “Let dogs delight,” said he, “to bark and bite,” said he,
+    “For ’tis their nature to—
+    But ’tis a shameful sight to see when partners of one firm like we
+    Fall out, and chide, and fight!”
+
+So I gave in again.
+
+It was then arranged that one of Smith and Elder’s young men should look
+through the manuscript, and make any few alterations which the taste of
+the public might require. It might be that the sonorous, and, if I may
+so express myself, magniloquent phraseology in which I was accustomed to
+invite the attention of the nobility and gentry to our last importations
+was not suited for the purposes of light literature, such as this. “In
+fiction, Mr. Robinson, your own unaided talents would doubtless make you
+great,” said to me the editor of this Magazine; “but if I may be allowed
+an opinion, I do think that in the delicate task of composing memoirs a
+little assistance may perhaps be not inexpedient.”
+
+This was prettily worded; so what with this, and what with our Mr.
+Brown’s poetry, I gave way; but I reserved to myself the right of an
+epistolary preface in my own name. So here it is.
+
+    LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—I am not a bit ashamed of my part in
+    the following transaction. I have done what little in me lay
+    to further British commerce. British commerce is not now what
+    it was. It is becoming open and free like everything else
+    that is British—open to the poor man as well as to the rich.
+    That bugbear Capital is a crumbling old tower, and is pretty
+    nigh brought to its last ruin. Credit is the polished shaft
+    of the temple on which the new world of trade will be content
+    to lean. That, I take it, is the one great doctrine of modern
+    commerce. Credit—credit—credit. Get credit, and capital will
+    follow. Doesn’t the word speak for itself? Must not credit be
+    respectable? And is not the word “respectable” the highest term
+    of praise which can be applied to the British tradesman?
+
+    Credit is the polished shaft of the temple. But with what are
+    you to polish it? The stone does not come from the quarry
+    with its gloss on: man’s labour is necessary to give it that
+    beauteous exterior. Then wherewith shall we polish credit?
+    I answer the question at once. With the pumice-stone and
+    sand-paper of advertisement.
+
+    Different great men have promulgated the different
+    means by which they have sought to subjugate the world.
+    “Audacity—audacity—audacity,” was the lesson which one hero
+    taught. “Agitate—agitate—agitate,” was the counsel of a second.
+    “Register—register—register,” of a third. But I say—Advertise,
+    advertise, advertise! And I say it again and again—Advertise,
+    advertise, advertise! It is, or should be, the Shibboleth
+    of British commerce. That it certainly will be so I, George
+    Robinson, hereby venture to prophesy, feeling that on this
+    subject something but little short of inspiration has touched
+    my eager pen.
+
+    There are those—men of the old school, who cannot rouse
+    themselves to see and read the signs of the time, men who
+    would have been in the last ranks, let them have lived when
+    they would—who object to it that it is untrue,—who say that
+    advertisements do not keep the promises which they make. But
+    what says the poet,—he whom we teach our children to read?
+    What says the stern moralist to his wicked mother in the play?
+    “Assume a virtue if you have it not?” And so say I. “Assume a
+    virtue if you have it not.” It would be a great trade virtue in
+    a haberdasher to have forty thousand pairs of best hose lying
+    ready for sale in his warehouse. Let him assume that virtue if
+    he have it not. Is not this the way in which we all live, and
+    the only way in which it is possible to live comfortably. A
+    gentleman gives a dinner party. His lady, who has to work all
+    day like a dray-horse and scold the servants besides, to get
+    things into order, loses her temper. We all pretty well know
+    what that means. Well; up to the moment when she has to show,
+    she is as bitter a piece of goods as may be. But, nevertheless,
+    she comes down all smiles, although she knows that at that
+    moment the drunken cook is spoiling the fish. She assumes a
+    virtue, though she has it not; and who will say she is not
+    right?
+
+    Well; I say again and again to all young tradesmen—Advertise,
+    advertise, advertise;—and don’t stop to think too much about
+    capital. It is a bugbear. Capital is a bugbear; and it is
+    talked about by those who have it,—and by some that have not so
+    much of it neither,—for the sake of putting down competition,
+    and keeping the market to themselves.
+
+    There’s the same game going on all the world over; and it’s
+    the natural game for mankind to play at. They who’s up a bit
+    is all for keeping down them who is down; and they who is down
+    is so very soft through being down, that they’ve not spirit to
+    force themselves up. Now I saw that very early in life. There
+    is always going on a battle between aristocracy and democracy.
+    Aristocracy likes to keep itself to itself; and democracy is
+    just of the same opinion, only wishes to become aristocracy
+    first.
+
+    We of the people are not very fond of dukes; but we’d all like
+    to be dukes well enough ourselves. Now there are dukes in
+    trade as well as in society. Capitalists are our dukes; and as
+    they don’t like to have their heels trod upon any more than
+    the other ones, why they are always preaching up capital. It
+    is their star and garter, their coronet, their ermine, their
+    robe of state, their cap of maintenance, their wand of office,
+    their noli me tangere. But stars and garters, caps and wands,
+    and all other noli me tangeres, are gammon to those who can
+    see through them. And capital is gammon. Capital is a very nice
+    thing if you can get it. It is the desirable result of trade. A
+    tradesman looks to end with a capital. But it’s gammon to say
+    that he can’t begin without it. You might as well say a man
+    can’t marry unless he has first got a family. Why, he marries
+    that he may have a family. It’s putting the cart before the
+    horse.
+
+    It’s my opinion that any man can be a duke if so be it’s born
+    to him. It requires neither wit nor industry, nor any pushing
+    nor go-ahead whatsoever. A man may sit still in his arm-chair,
+    half asleep half his time, and only half awake the other,
+    and be as good a duke as need be. Well; it’s just the same
+    in trade. If a man is born to a dukedom there, if he begins
+    with a large capital, why, I for one would not thank him to be
+    successful. Any fool could do as much as that. He has only to
+    keep on polishing his own star and garter, and there are lots
+    of people to swear that there is no one like him.
+
+    But give me the man who can be a duke without being born to it.
+    Give me the man who can go ahead in trade without capital; who
+    can begin the world with a quick pair of hands, a quick brain
+    to govern them, and can end with a capital.
+
+    Well, there you are; a young tradesman beginning the world
+    without capital. Capital, though it’s a bugbear, nevertheless
+    it’s a virtue. Therefore as you haven’t got it, you must
+    assume it. That’s credit. Credit I take to be the belief of
+    other people in a thing that doesn’t really exist. When you go
+    into your friend Smith’s house, and find Mrs. S. all smiles,
+    you give her credit for the sweetest of tempers. Your friend
+    S. knows better; but then you see she’s had wit enough to
+    obtain credit. When I draw a bill at three months, and get it
+    discounted, I do the same thing. That’s credit. Give me credit
+    enough, and I don’t care a brass button for capital. If I could
+    have but one wish, I would never ask a fairy for a second or
+    a third. Let me have but unreserved credit, and I’ll beat any
+    duke of either aristocracy.
+
+    To obtain credit the only certain method is to advertise.
+    Advertise, advertise, advertise. That is, assume, assume,
+    assume. Go on assuming your virtue. The more you haven’t got
+    it, the more you must assume it. The bitterer your own heart
+    is about that drunken cook and that idle husband who will do
+    nothing to assist you, the sweeter you must smile. Smile sweet
+    enough, and all the world will believe you. Advertise long
+    enough, and credit will come.
+
+    But there must be some nous in your advertisements; there must
+    be a system, and there must be some wit in your system. It
+    won’t suffice now-a-days to stick up on a black wall a simple
+    placard to say that you have forty thousand best new hose just
+    arrived. Any wooden-headed fellow can do as much as that. That
+    might have served in the olden times that we hear of, twenty
+    years since; but the game to be successful in these days must
+    be played in another sort of fashion. There must be some
+    finish about your advertisements, something new in your style,
+    something that will startle in your manner. If a man can make
+    himself a real master of this art, we may say that he has
+    learnt his trade, whatever that trade may be. Let him know how
+    to advertise, and the rest will follow.
+
+    It may be that I shouldn’t boast; but yet I do boast that I
+    have made some little progress in this business. If I haven’t
+    yet practised the art in all its perfections, nevertheless I
+    flatter myself I have learned how to practise it. Regarding
+    myself as something of a master of this art, and being actuated
+    by purely philanthropic motives in my wish to make known my
+    experience, I now put these memoirs before the public.
+
+    It will, of course, be urged against me that I have not been
+    successful in what I have already attempted, and that our house
+    has failed. This is true. I have not been successful: our house
+    has failed. But with whom has the fault been? Certainly not in
+    my department.
+
+    The fact is, and in this my preface I will not keep the truth
+    back from a discerning public, that no firm on earth—or indeed
+    elsewhere—could be successful in which our Mr. Jones is one of
+    the partners. There is an overweening vanity about that man
+    which is quite upsetting. I confess I have been unable to stand
+    it. Vanity is always allied to folly, and the relationship
+    is very close in the person of our Mr. Jones. Of Mr. Brown I
+    will never bring myself to say one disrespectful word. He is
+    not now what he was once. From the bottom of my heart I pity
+    his misfortunes. Think what it must be to be papa to a Goneril
+    and a Regan—without the Cordelia. I have always looked on Mrs.
+    Jones as a regular Goneril; and as for the Regan, why it seems
+    to me that Miss Brown is likely to be Miss Regan to the end of
+    the chapter.
+
+    No; of Mr. Brown I will say nothing disrespectful; but he
+    never was the man to be first partner in an advertising firm.
+    That was our mistake. He had old-fashioned views about capital
+    which were very burdensome. My mistake was this—that in joining
+    myself with Mr. Brown, I compromised my principles, and held
+    out as it were a left hand to capital. He had not much, as will
+    be seen; but he thought a deal of what he had got, and talked a
+    deal of it too. This impeded my wings. This prevented me from
+    soaring. One cannot touch pitch and not be defiled. I have been
+    untrue to myself in having had any dealings on the basis of
+    capital; and hence has it arisen that hitherto I have failed.
+
+    I make these confessions hoping that they may be serviceable
+    to trade in general. A man cannot learn a great secret, and
+    the full use of a great secret, all at once. My eyes are now
+    open. I shall not again make so fatal a mistake. I am still
+    young. I have now learned my lesson more thoroughly, and I yet
+    anticipate success with some confidence.
+
+    Had Mr. Brown at once taken my advice, had his few thousand
+    pounds been liberally expended in commencing a true system of
+    advertising, we should have been—I can hardly surmise where we
+    should have been. He was for sticking altogether to the old
+    system. Mr. Jones was for mixing the old and the new, for
+    laying in stock and advertising as well, with a capital of
+    4,000_l._ What my opinion is of Mr. Jones I will not now say,
+    but of Mr. Brown I will never utter one word of disparagement.
+
+    I have now expressed what few words I wish to utter on my own
+    bottom. As to what has been done in the following pages by the
+    young man who has been employed to look over these memoirs and
+    put them into shape, it is not for me to speak. It may be that
+    I think they might have read more natural-like had no other
+    cook had a finger in the pie. The facts, however, are facts
+    still. These have not been altered.
+
+    Ladies and gentlemen, you who have so long distinguished our
+    firm by a liberal patronage, to you I now respectfully appeal,
+    and in showing to you a new article I beg to assure you with
+    perfect confidence that there is nothing equal to it at the
+    price at present in the market. The supply on hand is immense,
+    but as a sale of unprecedented rapidity is anticipated, may I
+    respectfully solicit your early orders? If not approved of the
+    article shall be changed.
+
+    Ladies and gentlemen,
+
+        We have the honour to subscribe ourselves,
+
+            With every respect,
+
+                Your most obedient humble servants,
+
+                                         BROWN, JONES, and ROBINSON,
+                                                Per GEORGE ROBINSON.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE EARLY HISTORY OF OUR MR. BROWN, WITH SOME FEW WORDS OF MR. JONES.
+
+O Commerce, how wonderful are thy ways, how vast thy power, how invisible
+thy dominion! Who can restrain thee and forbid thy further progress?
+Kings are but as infants in thy hands, and emperors, despotic in all
+else, are bound to obey thee! Thou civilizest, hast civilized, and wilt
+civilize. Civilization is thy mission, and man’s welfare thine appointed
+charge. The nation that most warmly fosters thee shall ever be the
+greatest in the earth; and without thee no nation shall endure for a
+day. Thou art our Alpha and our Omega, our beginning and our end; the
+marrow of our bones, the salt of our life, the sap of our branches, the
+corner-stone of our temple, the rock of our foundation. We are built
+on thee, and for thee, and with thee. To worship thee should be man’s
+chiefest care, to know thy hidden ways his chosen study.
+
+One maxim hast thou, O Commerce, great and true and profitable above all
+others—one law which thy votaries should never transgress. “Buy in the
+cheapest market and sell in the dearest.” May those divine words be ever
+found engraved on the hearts of Brown, Jones, and Robinson!
+
+Of Mr. Brown, the senior member of our firm, it is expedient that
+some short memoir should be given. At the time at which we signed our
+articles in 185-, Mr. Brown had just retired from the butter trade. It
+does not appear that in his early youth he ever had the advantage of an
+apprenticeship, and he seems to have been employed in various branches
+of trade in the position, if one may say so, of an outdoor messenger. In
+this capacity he entered the service of Mr. McCockerell, a retail butter
+dealer in Smithfield. When Mr. McCockerell died, our Mr. Brown married
+his widow, and thus found himself elevated at once to the full-blown
+dignity of a tradesman. He and his wife lived together for thirty years,
+and it is believed that in the temper of his lady he found some alloy to
+the prosperity which he had achieved. The widow McCockerell, in bestowing
+her person upon Mr. Brown, had not intended to endow him also with entire
+dominion over her shop and chattels. She loved to be supreme over her
+butter tubs, and she loved also to be supreme over her till. Brown’s
+views on the rights of women were more in accordance with the law of the
+land as laid down in the statutes. He opined that a _femme couverte_
+could own no property, not even a butter tub;—and hence quarrels arose.
+
+After thirty years of contests such as these Mr. Brown found himself
+victorious, made so not by the power of arguments, nor by that of his
+own right arm, but by the demise of Mrs. Brown. That amiable lady died,
+leaving two daughters to lament their loss, and a series of family
+quarrels by which she did whatever lay in her power to embarrass her
+husband, but by which she could not prevent him from becoming absolute
+owner of the butter business, and of the stock in trade.
+
+The two young ladies had not been brought up to the ways of the counter;
+and as Mr. Brown was not himself especially expert at that particular
+business in which his money was embarked, he prudently thought it
+expedient to dispose of the shop and goodwill. This he did to advantage;
+and thus at the age of fifty-five he found himself again on the world
+with 4,000_l._ in his pocket.
+
+At this period one of his daughters was no longer under his own charge.
+Sarah Jane, the eldest of the two, was already Mrs. Jones. She had been
+captivated by the black hair and silk waistcoat of Mr. Jones, and had
+gone off with him in opposition to the wishes of both parents. This, she
+was aware, was not matter of much moment, for the opposition of one was
+sure to bring about a reconciliation with the other. And such was soon
+the case. Mrs. Brown would not see her daughter, or allow Jones to put
+his foot inside the butter-shop; Mr. Brown consequently took lodgings for
+them in the neighbourhood, and hence a close alliance sprung up between
+the future partners.
+
+At this crisis Maryanne devoted herself to her mother. It was admitted
+by all who knew her that Maryanne Brown had charms. At that time she was
+about twenty-four years of age, and was certainly a fine young woman.
+She was particularly like her mother, a little too much inclined to
+corpulence, and there may be those who would not allow that her hair was
+auburn. Mr. Robinson, however, who was then devotedly attached to her,
+was of that opinion, and was ready to maintain his views against any man
+who would dare to say that it was red.
+
+There was a dash about Maryanne Brown at that period which endeared her
+greatly to Mr. Robinson. She was quite above anything mean, and when
+her papa was left a widower in possession of four thousand pounds, she
+was one of those who were most anxious to induce him to go to work with
+spirit in his new business. She was all for advertising; that must be
+confessed of her, though her subsequent conduct was not all that it
+should have been. Maryanne Brown, when tried in the furnace, did not come
+out pure gold; but this, at any rate, shall be confessed in her behalf,
+that she had a dash about her, and understood more of the tricks of trade
+than any other of her family.
+
+Mrs. McCockerell died about six months after her eldest daughter’s
+marriage. She was generally called Mrs. McCockerell in the neighbourhood
+of Smithfield, though so many years had passed since she had lost her
+right to that name. Indeed, she generally preferred being so styled, as
+Mr. Brown was peculiarly averse to it. The name was wormwood to him, and
+this was quite sufficient to give it melody in her ears.
+
+The good lady died about six months after her daughter’s marriage. She
+was struck with apoplexy, and at that time had not been reconciled to
+her married daughter. Sarah Jane, nevertheless, when she heard what had
+occurred, came over to Smithfield. Her husband was then in employment
+as shopman at the large haberdashery house in Skinner Street, and lived
+with his wife in lodgings in Cowcross Street. They were supported nearly
+entirely by Mr. Brown, and therefore owed to him at this crisis not only
+obedience, but dutiful affection.
+
+When, however, Sarah Jane first heard of her mother’s illness, she
+seemed to think that she couldn’t quarrel with her father fast enough.
+Jones had an idea that the old lady’s money must go to her daughters,
+that she had the power of putting it altogether out of the hands of her
+husband, and that having the power she would certainly exercise it. On
+this speculation he had married; and as he and his wife fully concurred
+in their financial views, it was considered expedient by them to lose no
+time in asserting their right. This they did as soon as the breath was
+out of the old lady’s body.
+
+Jones had married Sarah Jane solely with this view; and, indeed, it was
+highly improbable that he should have done so on any other consideration.
+Sarah Jane was certainly not a handsome girl. Her neck was scraggy,
+her arms lean, and her lips thin; and she resembled neither her father
+nor her mother. Her light brown, sandy hair, which always looked as
+though it were too thin and too short to adapt itself to any feminine
+usage, was also not of her family; but her disposition was a compound of
+the paternal and maternal qualities. She had all her father’s painful
+hesitating timidity, and with it all her mother’s grasping spirit. If
+there ever was an eye that looked sharp after the pence, that could weigh
+the ounces of a servant’s meal at a glance, and foresee and prevent the
+expenditure of a farthing, it was the eye of Sarah Jane Brown. They say
+that it is as easy to save a fortune as to make one, and in this way, if
+in no other, Jones may be said to have got a fortune with his wife.
+
+As soon as the breath was out of Mrs. McCockerell’s body, Sarah Jane was
+there, taking inventory of the stock. At that moment poor Mr. Brown was
+very much to be pitied. He was always a man of feeling, and even if his
+heart was not touched by his late loss, he knew what was due to decency.
+It behoved him now as a widower to forget the deceased lady’s faults,
+and to put her under the ground with solemnity. This was done with the
+strictest propriety; and although he must, of course, have been thinking
+a good deal at that time as to whether he was to be a beggar or a rich
+man, nevertheless he conducted himself till after the funeral as though
+he hadn’t a care on his mind, except the loss of Mrs. B.
+
+Maryanne was as much on the alert as her sister. She had been for the
+last six months her mother’s pet, as Sarah Jane had been her father’s
+darling. There was some excuse, therefore, for Maryanne when she
+endeavoured to get what she could in the scramble. Sarah Jane played the
+part of Goneril to the life, and would have denied her father the barest
+necessaries of existence, had it not ultimately turned out that the
+property was his own.
+
+Maryanne was not well pleased to see her sister returning to the house
+at such a moment. She, at least, had been dutiful to her mother, or, if
+undutiful, not openly so. If Mrs. McCockerell had the power of leaving
+her property to whom she pleased, it would be only natural that she
+should leave it to the daughter who had obeyed her, and not to the
+daughter who had added to personal disobedience the worse fault of having
+been on friendly terms with her father.
+
+This, one would have thought, would have been clear at any rate to Jones,
+if not to Sarah Jane; but they both seemed at this time to have imagined
+that the eldest child had some right to the inheritance as being the
+eldest. It will be observed by this and by many other traits in his
+character that Mr. Jones had never enjoyed the advantages of an education.
+
+Mrs. McCockerell never spoke after the fit first struck her. She
+never moved an eye, or stirred a limb, or uttered a word. It was a
+wretched household at that time. The good lady died on a Wednesday, and
+was gathered to her fathers at Kensal Green Cemetery on the Tuesday
+following. During the intervening days Mr. Jones and Sarah Jane took on
+themselves as though they were owners of everything. Maryanne did try to
+prevent the inventory, not wishing it to appear that Mrs. Jones had any
+right to meddle; but the task was too congenial to Sarah Jane’s spirit to
+allow of her giving it over. She revelled in the work. It was a delight
+to her to search out hidden stores of useless wealth,—to bring forth to
+the light forgotten hoards of cups and saucers, and to catalogue every
+rag on the premises.
+
+The house at this time was not a pleasant one. Mr. Brown, finding that
+Jones, in whom he had trusted, had turned against him, put himself very
+much into the hands of a young friend of his, named George Robinson. Who
+and what George Robinson was will be told in the next chapter.
+
+“There are three questions,” said Robinson, “to be asked and
+answered:—Had Mrs. B. the power to make a will? If so, did she make a
+will? And if so, what was the will she made?”
+
+Mr. Brown couldn’t remember whether or no there had been any signing of
+papers at his marriage. A good deal of rum and water, he said, had been
+drunk; and there might have been signing too,—but he didn’t remember it.
+
+Then there was the search for the will. This was supposed to be in the
+hands of one Brisket, a butcher, for whom it was known Mrs. McCockerell
+had destined the hand of her younger daughter. Mr. Brisket had been
+a great favourite with the old lady, and she had often been heard to
+declare that he should have the wife and money, or the money without the
+wife. This she said to coerce Maryanne into the match.
+
+But Brisket, when questioned, declared that he had no will in his
+possession. At this time he kept aloof from the house and showed no
+disposition to meddle with the affairs of the family. Indeed, all through
+these trying days he behaved honestly, if not with high feeling. In
+recounting the doings of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, it will sometimes
+be necessary to refer to Mr. Brisket. He shall always be spoken of as an
+honest man. He did all that in him lay to mar the bright hopes of one who
+was perhaps not the most insignificant of that firm. He destroyed the
+matrimonial hopes of Mr. Robinson, and left him to wither like a blighted
+trunk on a lone waste. But he was, nevertheless, an honest man, and so
+much shall be said of him. Let us never forget that “An honest man is the
+noblest work of God.”
+
+Brisket, when asked, said that he had no will, and that he knew of none.
+In fact there was no will forthcoming, and there is no doubt that the old
+woman was cut off before she had made one. It may also be premised that
+had she made one it would have been invalid, seeing that Mr. Brown, as
+husband, was, in fact, the owner of the whole affair.
+
+Sarah Jane and Maryanne, when they found that no document was
+forthcoming, immediately gave out that they intended to take on
+themselves the duties of joint heiresses, and an alliance, offensive
+and defensive, was sworn between them. At this time Mr. Brown employed
+a lawyer, and the heiresses, together with Jones, employed another.
+There could be no possible doubt as to Mr. Brown being the owner of the
+property, however infatuated on such a subject Jones and his wife may
+have been. No lawyer in London could have thought that the young women
+had a leg to stand upon. Nevertheless, the case was undertaken, and Brown
+found himself in the middle of a lawsuit. Sarah Jane and Maryanne both
+remained in the house in Smithfield to guard the property on their own
+behalf. Mr. Brown also remained to guard it on his behalf. The business
+for a time was closed. This was done in opposition both to Mr. Brown and
+Maryanne; but Mrs. Jones could not bring herself to permit the purchase
+of a firkin of butter, unless the transaction could be made absolutely
+under her own eyes; and even then she would insist on superintending the
+retail herself and selling every pound, short weight. It was the custom
+of the trade, she said; and to depart from it would ruin them.
+
+Things were in this condition, going from bad to worse, when Jones came
+over one evening, and begged an interview with Mr. Brown. That interview
+was the commencement of the partnership. From such small matters do great
+events arise.
+
+At that interview Mr. Robinson was present. Mr. Brown indeed declared
+that he would have no conversation with Jones on business affairs, unless
+in the presence of a third party. Jones represented that if they went
+on as they were now doing, the property would soon be swallowed up by
+the lawyers. To this Mr. Brown, whose forte was not eloquence, tacitly
+assented with a deep groan.
+
+“Then,” said Jones, “let us divide it into three portions. You shall have
+one; Sarah Jane a second; and I will manage the third on behalf of my
+sister-in-law, Maryanne. If we arrange it well, the lawyers will never
+get a shilling.”
+
+The idea of a compromise appeared to Mr. Brown to be not uncommendable;
+but a compromise on such terms as those could not of course be listened
+to. Robinson strongly counselled him to nail his colours to the mast, and
+kick Mr. Jones downstairs. But Mr. Brown had not spirit for this.
+
+“One’s children is one’s children,” said he to Robinson, when they went
+apart into the shop to talk the matter over. “The fruit of one’s loins,
+and the prop of one’s age.”
+
+Robinson could not help thinking that Sarah Jane was about as bad a prop
+as any that ever a man leant on; but he was too generous to say so.
+The matter was ended at last by a compromise. “Go on with the business
+together,” said Robinson; “Mr. Brown keeping, of course, a preponderating
+share in his own hands.”
+
+“I don’t like butter,” said Jones. “Nothing great can be done in butter.”
+
+“It is a very safe line,” said Mr. Brown, “if the connection is good.”
+
+“The connection must have been a good deal damaged,” said Robinson,
+“seeing that the shop has been closed for a fortnight. Besides, it’s a
+woman’s business, and you have no woman to manage it,” added he, fearing
+that Mrs. Jones might be brought in, to the detriment of all concerned.
+
+Jones suggested haberdashery; Robinson, guided by a strong idea that
+there is a more absolute opening for the advertising line in haberdashery
+than in any other business, assented.
+
+“Then let it be haberdashery,” said Mr. Brown, with a sigh. And so that
+was settled.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE EARLY HISTORY OF MR. ROBINSON.
+
+And haberdashery it was. But here it may be as well to say a few words
+as to Mr. Robinson, and to explain how he became a member of the firm.
+He had been in his boyhood—a bill-sticker; and he defies the commercial
+world to show that he ever denied it. In his earlier days he carried
+the paste and pole, and earned a livelihood by putting up notices of
+theatrical announcements on the hoardings of the metropolis. There was,
+however, that within him which Nature did not intend to throw away on the
+sticking of bills, as was found out quickly enough by those who employed
+him. The lad, while he was running the streets with his pole in his hand,
+and his pot round his neck, learned first to read, and then to write what
+others might read. From studying the bills which he carried, he soon
+took to original composition; and it may be said of him, that in fluency
+of language and richness of imagery few surpassed him. In person Mr.
+Robinson was a genteel young man, though it cannot be said of him that
+he possessed manly beauty. He was slight and active, intelligent in his
+physiognomy, and polite in his demeanour. Perhaps it may be unnecessary
+to say anything further on this head.
+
+Mr. Robinson had already established himself as an author in his own
+line, and was supporting himself decently by his own unaided abilities,
+when he first met Maryanne Brown in the Regent’s Park. She was then
+walking with her sister, and resolutely persisted in disregarding all
+those tokens of admiration which he found himself unable to restrain.
+
+There certainly was a dash about Maryanne Brown that at certain moments
+was invincible. Hooped petticoats on the back of her sister looked
+like hoops, and awkward hoops. They were angular, lopsided, and lumpy.
+But Maryanne wore her hoops as a duchess wears her crinoline. Her
+well-starched muslin dress would swell off from her waist in a manner
+that was irresistible to George Robinson. “Such grouping!” as he said
+to his friend Walker. “Such a flow of drapery! such tournure! Ah, my
+dear fellow, the artist’s eye sees these things at a glance.” And then,
+walking at a safe distance, he kept his eyes on them.
+
+“I’m sure that fellow’s following us,” said Sarah Jane, looking back at
+him with all her scorn.
+
+“There’s no law against that, I suppose,” said Maryanne tartly. So much
+as that Mr. Robinson did succeed in hearing.
+
+The girls entered their mother’s house; but as they did so, Maryanne
+lingered for a moment in the doorway. Was it accident, or was it not? Did
+the fair girl choose to give her admirer one chance, or was it that she
+was careful not to crush her starch by too rapid an entry?
+
+“I shall be in Regent’s Park on Sunday afternoon,” whispered Robinson,
+as he passed by the house, with his hand to his mouth. It need hardly be
+said that the lady vouchsafed him no reply.
+
+On the following Sunday George Robinson was again in the park, and
+after wandering among its rural shades for half a day, he was rewarded
+by seeing the goddess of his idolatry. Miss Brown was there with a
+companion, but not with Sarah Jane. He had already, as though by
+instinct, conceived in his heart as powerful an aversion for one sister
+as affection for the other, and his delight was therefore unbounded when
+he saw that she he loved was there, while she he hated was away.
+
+’Twere long to tell, at the commencement of this narrative, how a
+courtship was commenced and carried on; how Robinson sighed, at first in
+vain and then not in vain; how good-natured was Miss Twizzle, the bosom
+friend of Maryanne; and how Robinson for a time walked and slept and fed
+on roses.
+
+There was at that time a music class held at a certain elegant room
+near Osnaburgh Church in the New Road, at which Maryanne and her friend
+Miss Twizzle were accustomed to attend. Those lessons were sometimes
+prosecuted in the evening, and those evening studies sometimes resulted
+in a little dance. We may say that after a while that was their habitual
+tendency, and that the lady pupils were permitted to introduce their male
+friends on condition that the gentlemen paid a shilling each for the
+privilege. It was in that room that George Robinson passed the happiest
+hours of his chequered existence. He was soon expert in all the figures
+of the mazy dance, and was excelled by no one in the agility of his
+step or the endurance of his performances. It was by degrees rumoured
+about that he was something higher than he seemed to be, and those best
+accustomed to the place used to call him the Poet. It must be remembered
+that at this time Mrs. McCockerell was still alive, and that as Sarah
+Jane had then become Mrs. Jones, Maryanne was her mother’s favourite,
+and destined to receive all her mother’s gifts. Of the name and person
+of William Brisket, George Robinson was then in happy ignorance, and the
+first introduction between them took place in that Hall of Harmony.
+
+’Twas about eleven o’clock in the evening, when the light feet of the
+happy dancers had already been active for some hour or so in the worship
+of their favourite muse, that Robinson was standing up with his arm round
+his fair one’s waist, immediately opposite to the door of entrance.
+His right arm still embraced her slight girdle, whilst with his left
+hand he wiped the perspiration from his brow. She leaned against him
+palpitating, for the motion of the music had been quick, and there had
+been some amicable contest among the couples. It is needless to say that
+George Robinson and Maryanne Brown had suffered no defeat. At that moment
+a refreshing breeze of the night air was wafted into the room from the
+opened door, and Robinson, looking up, saw before him a sturdy, thickset
+man, with mottled beefy face, and by his side there stood a spectre.
+“It’s your sister,” whispered he to Maryanne, in a tone of horror.
+
+“Oh, laws! there’s Bill,” said she, and then she fainted. The gentleman
+with the mottled face was indeed no other than Mr. Brisket, the purveyor
+of meat, for whose arms Mrs. McCockerell had destined the charms of her
+younger daughter. Conduct baser than that of Mrs. Jones on this occasion
+is not perhaps recorded in history. She was no friend of Brisket’s.
+She had it not at heart to forward her mother’s views. At this period
+of their lives she and her mother never met. But she had learned her
+sister’s secret, and having it in her power to crush her sister’s
+happiness, had availed herself of the opportunity.
+
+“There he is,” said she, quite aloud, so that the whole room should
+hear. “He’s a bill-sticker!” and she pointed the finger of scorn at her
+sister’s lover.
+
+“I’m one who have always earned my own living,” said Robinson, “and never
+had occasion to hang on to any one.” This he said knowing that Jones’s
+lodgings were paid for by Mr. Brown.
+
+Hereupon Mr. Brisket walked across the room, and as he walked there was
+a cloud of anger on his brow. “Perhaps, young man,” he said,—and as he
+spoke he touched Robinson on the shoulder,—“perhaps, young man, you
+wouldn’t mind having a few words with me outside the door.”
+
+“Sir,” said the other with some solemnity, “I am not aware that I have
+the honour of your acquaintance.”
+
+“I’m William Brisket, butcher,” said he; “and if you don’t come out when
+I asks you, by jingo, I’ll carry you.”
+
+The lady had fainted. The crowd of dancers was standing round with
+inquiring faces. That female spectre repeated the odious words, still
+pointing at him with her finger, “He’s a bill-sticker!” Brisket was full
+fourteen stone, whereas Robinson might perhaps be ten. What was Robinson
+to do?
+
+“Are you going to walk out, or am I going to carry you?” said the
+Hercules of the slaughter-house.
+
+“I will do anything,” said Robinson, “to relieve a lady’s embarrassment.”
+
+They walked out on to the landing-place, whither not a few of the
+gentlemen and some of the ladies followed them.
+
+“I say, young man,” said Brisket, “do you know who that young woman is?”
+
+“I certainly have the honour of her acquaintance,” said Robinson.
+
+“But perhaps you haven’t the honour of knowing that she’s my wife,—as is
+to be. Now you know it.” And then the coarse monster eyed him from head
+to foot. “Now you may go home to your mother,” said he. “But don’t tell
+her anything of it, because it’s a secret.”
+
+He was fifteen stone at least, and Robinson was hardly ten. Oh, how vile
+is the mastery which matter still has over mind in many of the concerns
+of life! How can a man withstand the assault of a bull? What was Robinson
+to do? He walked downstairs into the street, leaving Maryanne behind with
+the butcher.
+
+Some days after this he contrived a meeting with his love, and he then
+learned the history of that engagement.
+
+“She hated Brisket,” she said. “He was odious to her. He was always
+greasy and smelt of meat;—but he had a respectable business.”
+
+“And is my Maryanne mercenary?” said Robinson.
+
+“Now, George,” said she, “it’s no use you scolding me, and I won’t be
+scolded. Ma says that I must be civil to him, and I’m not going to
+quarrel with ma. At any rate not yet.”
+
+“But surely, Maryanne——”
+
+“It’s no good you surelying me, George, for I won’t be surelyed. If you
+don’t like me, you can leave me.”
+
+“Maryanne, I adore you.”
+
+“That’s all very well, and I hope you do; but why did you make a row with
+that man the other night?”
+
+“But, dearest love, he made the row with me.”
+
+“And when you did make it,” continued Maryanne, “why didn’t you see it
+out?”
+
+Robinson did not find it easy to answer. That matter has still dominion
+over mind, though the days are coming when mind shall have dominion over
+matter, was a lesson which, in after days, it would be sweet to teach
+her. But at the present moment the time did not serve for such teaching.
+
+“A man must look after his own, George, or else he’ll go to the wall,”
+she said, with a sneer. And then he parted from her in anger.
+
+But his love did not on that account wax cool, and so in his misery he
+had recourse to their mutual friend, Miss Twizzle.
+
+“The truth is this,” said Miss Twizzle, “I believe she’d take him,
+because he’s respectable and got a business.”
+
+“He’s horribly vulgar,” said Robinson.
+
+“Oh, bother!” said Miss Twizzle. “I know nothing about that. He’s got a
+business, and whoever marries Brisket won’t have to look for a bed to
+sleep on. But there’s a hitch about the money.”
+
+Then Mr. Robinson learned the facts. Mrs. McCockerell, as she was still
+called, had promised to give her daughter five hundred pounds as her
+marriage portion, but Mr. Brisket would not go to the altar till he got
+the money. “He wanted to extend himself,” he said, “and would not marry
+till he saw his way.” Hence had arisen that delay which Maryanne had
+solaced by her attendance at the music-hall.
+
+“But if you’re in earnest,” said Miss Twizzle, “don’t you be down on your
+luck. Go to old Brown, and make friends with him. He’ll stand up for you,
+because he knows his wife favours Brisket.”
+
+George Robinson did go to Mr. Brown, and on the father the young man’s
+eloquence was not thrown away.
+
+“She shall be yours, Mr. Robinson,” he said, after the first fortnight.
+“But we must be very careful with Mrs. B.”
+
+After the second fortnight Mrs. B. was no more! And in this way it came
+to pass that George Robinson was present as Mr. Brown’s adviser when that
+scheme respecting the haberdashery was first set on foot.
+
+
+
+
+At Westminster.
+
+
+This is Westminster Hall. You know it at once. To your left is one door
+for Parliament; to your right are seven, for the lawyers. If you peep
+into the first of these legal entrances, you will probably see the
+cake-woman; and if the court is sitting you will certainly find an eager
+knot of grey-bearded, spectacled, wigged, and gowned barristers, engaged
+on “three corners,” Bath buns, and pennyworths of plum gingerbread.
+Passing through this reminiscence of schooldays, you will bewilder
+yourself among a series of doors that shut one upon another. You will
+possibly avoid the cross-cutting and divergent passages, and, with the
+help of a sad policeman, lifting a heavy crimson curtain, you will take
+off your hat, and find yourself in a court of justice. The first thing
+you look for is a “place,” which you find high up in the back seats;
+and when this has been climbed into, with more or less noise, you find
+yourself facing the bench. By the bench, of course I mean the judges.
+They are peculiar. Their dress is rather startling at first, till you get
+used to it; but it is nothing to their caps, which are represented by a
+little black spot on the top of the wig, and, therefore, may be said to
+out-muffin the muffin cap of the Bluecoat boy. You may, perhaps, imagine
+that a remorseful, or, perhaps, shamefaced feeling on the part of the
+last invented judge has led to his contenting himself with a mere white
+spot. But be this as it may, from reasons of either dress or feature,
+our judges do not quite look like ordinary human beings; at all events,
+the casual observer is sure to deny them that privilege. One likens a
+celebrated dispenser of justice to a benevolent and intellectual gorilla;
+another believes that all judges give one some dim idea of a blinking,
+dozy kind of barn owl; a third suggests good old ladies—motherly persons,
+given to advice and management, and the having of their own way; while
+one more daring has even compared the celebrated and, as I said before,
+“newly invented” summer up, to a jolly apple-cheeked old maid, sitting
+in judgment upon her married sisters. Perhaps it is not until these
+humourists see them as judges in their own cause that they discover them
+to be neither blind, weak, nor old-womanish.
+
+[Illustration: The Plaintiff.
+
+The Defendant.]
+
+[Illustration: The Jury.]
+
+But between the back seats and the bench, look for the bar, and if you
+don’t exactly see the bar, you will the counsel, which is the same thing.
+Possibly you may hear them—for they are given to talking; to each other,
+if they have no better resource; but to the jury, or at all events to the
+judge, if they can find an occasion: some who, curiously enough, have
+round noses, round eyes, round mouths, and double chins, are sonorous,
+emphatic, and what we will call portwiney: others are ponderous, slow,
+chest-speaking men, but these are mostly tall, lank, and coarse-haired,
+with terrible noses—long, from the bridge downward, and blunt at the
+point; some, again, of the sharp, acid, suspicious sort—shriek a great
+deal; while there are a few—great men these—who are so confidential and
+communicative, that they seem (using a colloquial phrase) to talk to the
+jury “like a father.”
+
+Among the counsel who having nothing to say either for self or client,
+and who (as I suppose, consequently) amuse themselves with a great deal
+of light-porter’s work, in carrying fat bags, full of important papers;
+there are many who make a great show of extracting valuable precedents
+from thick calf-bound law books, and having neither briefs to study nor
+motions to make, engage themselves in inditing the obscurest directions
+for further thick volumes, on the smallest slips of paper procurable,
+which slips—folded into the semblance of pipe-lights—they, at the hazard
+of turning illegal summersaults, pass on to the short usher with the bald
+head.
+
+But do not, for one moment, imagine that when you have looked at the
+judges and the counsel and taken in the general aspect and bearings of
+the court, that you have at all exhausted its points of interest; on the
+contrary, the “interest” is all to come. You wish to know what is going
+on—is it debt or slander? breach of promise or breach of contract? and
+curiously enough, it is generally the latter. Contracts of all sorts,
+that are supposed to form a kind of barrier against law, and which, at
+all events, are held as safeguards or talismans, are mostly the direct
+road to that monosyllabic mantrap; some people never think of breaking a
+contract so long as it is merely implied, but reduced to black and white
+they want to tear a hole in it directly,—indeed, in the sense in which
+it has been said that all mischief is caused by woman, you will find
+that every action at law has a “document” lying at the bottom of it—from
+promissory notes up to architects’ estimates, this will always hold good.
+
+Well, having seen both Bench and Bar, and wishing to understand what they
+are both engaged in, let us suppose a case. We will say that an obstinate
+man, one Bullhead, has his action against a plausible man, one Floater.
+Now the unconvincible Bullhead, who thinks that he has never yet been
+taken in, has somehow at various times, and upon the flimsiest of all
+possible pretences, handed over to said Floater sums of money to the
+amount of—say two hundred pounds: between the possible inconvenience of
+losing so large a sum of money and the wish to show that his wisdom is
+equal to his obstinacy, he has brought the little dispute out of his own
+frying-pan into the judicial fire.
+
+There he stands, or rather leans in the witness-box, carefully checking
+off his short answers with his forefinger on the sleeve of his coat, and
+screwing his face on one side, as if to concentrate all his intellect
+into the left eye that is so widely open; he looks very untractable, with
+his stumpy brows knitted closely over his thick stumpy nose; but what
+chance can he possibly have against such a cool hand as the defendant,
+Floater, Esq., with his very white stick-up hair bearing witness to
+his respectability, and his very black lay-down eyebrows covering the
+unbarnacled portion of those side-glancing eyes? How gently his jewelled
+fingers are laid on the edge of the witness-box! how shockingly informal
+the “document”—of whatever sort—proves to be during his examination—what
+a respectable man he is! Three letters after his name. Do you think
+he would have trusted himself in such a lion’s den as this if he were
+not assured of getting the best of it? Oh, no! this is the sort of
+thing—either in court or out of court—that he lives on, and lives very
+well too. Barring anxieties and worries, which all are liable to—with the
+exception of constant flitting, which, to some people, is a mere matter
+of health; put on one side a few visits to the Queen’s Bench, and this is
+a highly prosperous man! He has his spring lamb out of its due season;
+asparagus; five suits of clothes and three servants; he has managed
+somehow to rear a large family, and, what is more, to dispose of them in
+various ways; he will, most probably, fail in accumulating money, may,
+perhaps, die in extreme poverty—there is no knowing; but as he is not a
+miser, as he began life without a farthing, and as, moreover, he is an
+easy-going sort of philosopher in his way, he may content himself to the
+last; and contentment, as we know, is a very hard thing to compass after
+all.
+
+Of course, and as usual, the jury hardly know what to make of it;
+the stout foreman inclines to the plaintiff in despite of law; but
+he is evidently puzzled all the same; the thin man with the bridgy
+nose, the cold man with the round head, and the argumentative juryman
+with the mutton-chop whisker, all look at it, as they say, “legally,”
+and decide in favour of the defendant. The jocular “party,” with the
+curly red hair and the two tufts of chin-growing beard, treats it all
+as good fun, and is ready to give his verdict for the defendant too,
+because as he says:—“He is such a jolly old humbug, you know,” which
+mode of settlement, however, is not looked upon as sufficient by his
+two neighbours, to whom it is a much more serious matter. One of these
+is trying to make up his mind, a feat he has never yet successfully
+accomplished, so I suppose that as usual it will be made up for him by
+somebody else; as for the other, after three hours’ reflection he has
+really come to a decision, but, unfortunately, it is entirely opposed to
+everything that the judge will tell them in his summing up, and of course
+they will all be led by his lordship.
+
+My lord is neither a mumbling nor a short-tempered judge; he will
+take them in hand kindly, explain away both counsel for plaintiff and
+for defendant, and read them a great deal of his notes, which are a
+thousandfold clearer, fuller, and more accurate than the reporter’s
+“flimsy,” although during the trial he has been distinctly seen to write
+four long letters, has gone twice to sleep, and has made seven recondite
+legal jokes, including the famous ever-recurring and side-splitting
+innuendo of calling upon the usher to cry silence, or “Sss-h,” whenever
+the somewhat indistinctly speaking junior for the plaintiff rises—there
+will be no withstanding his clear-headedness.
+
+[Illustration: The Judge.
+
+The Counsel.]
+
+As you would imagine, these jurors have been in turn led away by the
+opposing counsel. For the plaintiff; they were made to admire the
+consummate common sense and discretion of the plaintiff, Bullhead, who
+having diluted his ordinary keenness with that admirable faith in human
+nature, which is the keystone of all commercial transactions in this
+arcadian world, has for the first time in his life, found his confidence
+misplaced by the conduct of the defendant. Said the advocate: far be it
+from him to call Floater, Esq., M.Q.S., by any derogatory appellations;
+he was not a swindler, he was not a rogue, he was not a wolf in sheep’s
+clothing, he was perhaps the victim of a misconception or a want of
+memory, but a very honourable man all the same—an opinion which the jury
+would endorse by giving full damages to his discreet and sensible client.
+
+[Illustration: The Attorneys.]
+
+But, said the counsel for the defendant—a foxy man with reddish hair,
+angular eyes, and a mouth that seems to have a hole punched in each end
+of it: he would not call Mr. Bullhead a villain of the deepest die, he
+would not say that he had laid a plot to blast the happiness of the
+domestic health of his unfortunate, his scrupulously respectable, and
+he would add his distinguished client; no, not he—far from it, he would
+suppose that an obtuseness of intellect on the part of the, at all
+events, short-tempered plaintiff, had led him to imagine, and so forth.
+And by the way, notice how these foxy counsel do cuddle themselves
+up, how they look askance, and wriggle about to show their honesty and
+straightforwardness,—for indeed I suppose we must admit that they are
+honest and straightforward from their point of view, although they do
+shake their heads at his lordship whenever a particularly damaging
+statement is put forward by the opposite side, and although they do paint
+black with a grey tint, and find a few spots upon the purest white. Thank
+goodness, they have the attorneys to throw the blame upon when there
+happens to be any, and the attorneys sitting under the bar, and putting
+their heads together, have, I suppose, shoulders broad enough to bear it.
+
+These two do not look ingenuous: here is the smooth and the rough. The
+rough one never seems to believe a word that is said to him, while the
+smooth one appears to take in everything. The one, half shutting his
+eyes, draws his face down and his forehead up, into all the fifty lines
+of unbelief, while Smoothman drags his cheeks into such a lovely smiling
+look of faith in everything you have to propose, that you really begin
+to wonder how that underhung jaw and knitted brow came into the same
+company. Well, there is not very much to choose between them—if Diogenes
+is given to sharp practice, Smoothman is a very bulldog for holding on
+wherever he gets his teeth in; and for twisting a grievance into court,
+for sublimating an action into a verdict, and a verdict into bills of
+costs, I think they are equally to be trusted.
+
+So we will say that this trial has gone against the angry plaintiff; that
+it is one more feather in the cap of Foxy Q.C., and money in the purse to
+Floater, M.Q.S.; that the jury are aware of having supported the glory of
+the English nation and the majesty of the law; that the learned judge,
+disrobed and unwigged, is no longer a good old lady, but a distinguished
+gentleman; and the ushers having cried Ssss-h all the day, which seems to
+be their responsible and arduous and only duty, are going home to dinner,
+leaving the reporters to pack up and follow.
+
+One word about the “Press” before we part. Just one word to note the
+elderly press-man, who is of a shrewd, parroty appearance, and who has
+sat in court so many years reporting, that his grey hair has at last
+taken the form, colour, and texture of a judge’s wig: his aspect is
+severe; he seems to have imbibed the spirit of that justice which he has
+passed his life in recording.
+
+
+
+
+Agnes of Sorrento.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE ARTIST MONK.
+
+On the evening when Agnes and her grandmother had returned from the
+convent, as they were standing after their supper looking over the
+garden parapet into the gorge, their attention was caught by a man in an
+ecclesiastical habit, slowly climbing the rocky pathway towards them.
+
+“Isn’t that brother Antonio?” asked Dame Elsie, leaning forward to
+observe more narrowly. “Yes, to be sure it is.”
+
+“Oh, how glad I am!” exclaimed Agnes, springing up with vivacity, and
+looking eagerly down the path by which the stranger was approaching.
+
+A few moments more of clambering, and the stranger met the two women at
+the gate with a gesture of benediction. He was apparently a little past
+the middle point of life, and entering on its shady afternoon. He was
+tall and well proportioned, and his features had the spare delicacy of
+the Italian outline. The round brow fully developed in all the perceptive
+and æsthetic regions, the keen eye shadowed by long dark lashes, the
+thin flexible lips, the sunken cheek, where on the slightest emotion
+there fluttered a brilliant flush of colour,—all were signs telling of
+the enthusiast in whom the nervous and spiritual predominated over the
+animal. At times, his eye had a dilating brightness, as if from the
+flickering of some inward fire which was slowly consuming the mortal
+part, and its expression was brilliant even to the verge of insanity.
+His dress was the simple, coarse, white stuff gown of the Dominican
+friars, over which he wore a darker travelling garment of coarse cloth,
+with a hood, from whose deep shadows his bright mysterious eyes looked
+like jewels from a cavern. At his side dangled a great rosary and cross
+of black wood, and under his arm he carried a portfolio secured with a
+leathern strap, which seemed stuffed to bursting with papers.
+
+Father Antonio, whom we have thus introduced to the reader, was a
+travelling preaching monk from the convent of San Marco in Florence, on a
+pastoral and artistic tour through Italy.
+
+Convents in the Middle Ages were the retreats of multitudes, of different
+natures, who did not wish to live in a state of perpetual warfare and
+offence, and all the elegant arts flourished under their protecting
+shadows. Ornamental gardening, pharmacy, drawing, painting, carving in
+wood, illumination, and calligraphy, were not unfrequent occupations of
+the holy fathers, and the convent has given to the illustrious roll of
+Italian art some of its most brilliant names. No institution in modern
+Europe had a more established reputation in all these respects than the
+convent of San Marco in Florence. In its best days, it was as near an
+approach to an ideal community, associated to unite religion, beauty,
+and utility, as ever has existed on earth. It was a retreat from the
+commonplace prose of life into an atmosphere at once devotional and
+poetic; and prayers and sacred hymns consecrated the elegant labours
+of the chisel and the pencil, no less than the more homely ones of the
+still and the crucible. San Marco, far from being that kind of sluggish
+lagoon often imagined in conventual life, was rather a sheltered hotbed
+of ideas—fervid with intellectual and moral energy, and before the age
+in every radical movement. At this period, Savonarola, the poet and
+prophet of the Italian religious world of his day, was Superior of
+this convent, pouring through all the members of the Order the fire
+of his own impassioned nature, and seeking to lead them back to the
+fervours of more primitive and evangelical ages, and in the reaction of
+a worldly and corrupt Church was beginning to feel the power of that
+current which at last drowned his eloquent voice in the cold waters of
+martyrdom. Savonarola was an Italian Luther—differing from him as the
+more ethereally strung and nervous Italian differs from the bluff and
+burly German; and like Luther he became in his time the centre of every
+living thing in society about him. He inspired the pencils of artists,
+guided the councils of statesmen, and, a poet himself, was an inspiration
+to poets. Everywhere in Italy the monks of his Order were travelling,
+restoring the shrines, preaching against the voluptuous and unworthy
+pictures with which sensual artists had desecrated the churches, and
+calling the people back by their exhortations to the purity of primitive
+Christianity.
+
+Father Antonio was a younger brother of Elsie, and had early become a
+member of the San Marco, enthusiastic not less in religion than in art.
+His intercourse with his sister had few points of sympathy, Elsie being
+as decided a utilitarian as any old Yankee female born in the granite
+hills of New Hampshire, and pursuing with a hard and sharp energy her
+narrow plan of life for Agnes. She regarded her brother as a very
+properly religious person, considering his calling, but was a little
+bored with his exuberant devotion, and absolutely indifferent to his
+artistic enthusiasm. Agnes, on the contrary, had from a child attached
+herself to her uncle with all the energy of a sympathetic nature, and
+his yearly visits had been looked forward to on her part with intense
+expectation. To him she could say a thousand things which instinctively
+she concealed from her grandmother; and Elsie was well pleased with
+the confidence, because it relieved her a little from the vigilant
+guardianship that she otherwise held over the girl: when Father Antonio
+was about, she had leisure now and then for a little private gossip of
+her own.
+
+“Dear uncle, how glad I am to see you once more!” was the eager
+salutation with which the young girl received the monk, as he gained the
+little garden; “and you have brought your pictures,—oh, I know you have
+so many pretty things to show me!”
+
+“Well, well, child,” said Elsie, “don’t begin upon that now: a little
+talk of bread and cheese will be more in point. Come in, brother, and
+wash your feet, and let me beat the dust out of your cloak, and give you
+something to stay nature; for you must be fasting.”
+
+“Thank you, sister,” said the monk; “and as for you, pretty one, never
+mind what she says. Uncle Antonio will show his little Agnes everything
+by-and-by.—A good little thing it is, sister.”
+
+“Yes, yes, good enough,—and too good,” said Elsie, bustling about;—“roses
+can’t help having thorns, I suppose.”
+
+“Only our ever-blessed Rose of Sharon, the dear mystical Rose of
+Paradise, can boast of having no thorns,” said the monk, bowing and
+crossing himself devoutly.
+
+Agnes clasped her hands on her bosom and bowed also, while Elsie stopped
+with her knife in the middle of a loaf of black bread, and crossed
+herself with somewhat of impatience,—like a worldly-minded person of our
+day, who is interrupted in the midst of an observation by a grace.
+
+After the rites of hospitality had been duly observed, the old dame
+seated herself contentedly at her door with her distaff, resigned Agnes
+to the safe guardianship of her uncle, and had a feeling of security
+in seeing them sitting together on the parapet of the garden, with
+the portfolio spread out between them; the warm twilight glow of the
+evening sky lighting up their figures as they bent in ardent interest
+over its contents. The portfolio showed a fluttering collection of
+sketches,—fruits, flowers, animals, insects, faces, figures, shrines,
+buildings, trees; all, in short, that might strike the mind of a man
+to whose eye nothing on the face of the earth is without beauty and
+significance.
+
+“Oh, how beautiful!” exclaimed the girl, taking up one sketch, in which a
+bunch of rosy cyclamen was painted rising out of a bed of moss.
+
+“Ah, that, indeed, my dear!” said the artist. “Would you had seen the
+place where I painted it! I stopped there to recite my prayers one
+morning; ’twas by the side of a beautiful cascade, and all the ground was
+covered with these lovely cyclamens, and the air was musky with their
+fragrance. Ah, the bright rose-coloured leaves! I can get no colour like
+them, unless some angel would bring me some from those sunset clouds
+yonder.”
+
+“And oh, dear uncle, what lovely primroses!” pursued Agnes, taking up
+another paper.
+
+“Yes, child; but you should have seen them when I was coming down the
+south side of the Apennines;—these were everywhere so pale and sweet,
+they seemed like the humility of our most Blessed Mother in her lowly
+mortal state. I am minded to make a border of primroses to the leaf in
+the Breviary where is the ‘Hail, Mary!’ for it seems as if that flower
+doth ever say, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord!’”
+
+“And what will you do with the cyclamen, uncle? does not that mean
+something?”
+
+“Yes, daughter,” replied the monk, readily entering into that symbolical
+strain which permeated all the heart and mind of the religious of
+his day; “I _can_ see a meaning in it. For you see that the cyclamen
+puts forth its leaves in early spring deeply engraven with mystical
+characters, and loves cool shadows and moist, dark places, but comes at
+length to wear a royal crown of crimson; and it seems to me like the
+saints who dwell in convents and other prayerful places, and have the
+word of God graven in their hearts in youth, till their hearts blossom
+into fervent love and they are crowned with royal graces.”
+
+“Ah!” sighed Agnes, “how beautiful and blessed to be among such!”
+
+“Thou sayest well, dear child. Blessed are the flowers of God that grow
+in cool solitudes, and have never been profaned by the hot sun and dust
+of this world!”
+
+“I should like to be such a one,” said Agnes. “I often think, when I
+visit the sisters at the convent, that I long to be one of them.”
+
+“A pretty story!” cried Dame Elsie, who had heard the last words. “What!
+go into a convent and leave your poor grandmother all alone, when she has
+toiled night and day for so many years to get a dowry for you and find
+you a worthy husband!”
+
+“I don’t want any husband in this world, grandmamma,” said Agnes.
+
+“What talk is this? Not want a good husband to take care of you when your
+poor old grandmother is gone? Who will provide for you?”
+
+“He who took care of the blessed Saint Agnes, grandmamma.”
+
+“Saint Agnes, to be sure! That was a great many years ago, and times have
+altered since then;—in these days girls must have husbands.”
+
+“But if the darling hath a vocation?” suggested the artist, mildly.
+
+“Vocation! I’ll see to that! She shan’t have a vocation! Do you suppose
+I’m going to toil, and spin, and wear myself to the bone, and have her
+slip through my fingers at last with a vocation? No, indeed!”
+
+“Indeed, dear grandmother, don’t be angry!” pleaded Agnes. “I will do
+just as you say,—only I don’t want a husband.”
+
+“Well, well, my little heart,—one thing at a time; you shan’t have him
+till you say yes willingly,” said Elsie, in a mollified tone.
+
+Agnes turned again to the portfolio and busied herself with it, her eyes
+dilating as she ran over the sketches.
+
+“Ah! what pretty, pretty bird is this?” she asked.
+
+“Knowest thou not that bird, with his little red beak?” said the artist.
+“When our dear Lord hung bleeding and no man pitied Him, this bird,
+filled with tender love, tried to draw out the nails with his poor little
+beak—so much better were the birds than we hard-hearted sinners!—hence he
+hath honour in many pictures. See here—I shall put him in the office of
+the Sacred Heart, in a little nest curiously built in a running vine of
+passion-flower. See here, daughter—I have a great commission to execute
+a breviary for our house, and our holy father was pleased to say that
+the spirit of the blessed Angelico had in some little humble measure
+descended on me, and now I am busy day and night; for not a twig rustles,
+not a bird flies, nor a flower blossoms, but I begin to see therein some
+hint of holy adornment to my blessed work.”
+
+“Oh, uncle Antonio, how happy you must be!” exclaimed Agnes, her large
+eyes dilating and filling with tears.
+
+“Happy!—child, am I not?” returned the monk, looking up and crossing
+himself. “Holy Mother, am I not? Do I not walk the earth in a dream of
+bliss, and see the footsteps of my most Blessed Lord and his dear Mother
+on every rock and hill? I see the flowers rise up in clouds to adore
+them. What am I, unworthy sinner, that such grace is granted me? Often
+I fall on my face before the humblest flower where my dear Lord hath
+written his name, and confess I am unworthy the honour of copying his
+sweet handiwork.”
+
+The artist spoke these words with his hands clasped and his fervid eyes
+upraised, like a man in an ecstasy; nor can our more prosaic English give
+an idea of the fluent simplicity and grace with which such images melt
+into that lovely tongue that seems made to be the natural language of
+poetry and enthusiasm.
+
+Agnes looked up to him with awe, as to some celestial being; but there
+was a sympathetic glow in her face, and she crossed her hands on her
+bosom, as her manner often was when much moved, and, drawing a deep sigh,
+ejaculated:—“Would that such gifts were mine!”
+
+“They are thine, sweet one,” replied the monk. “In Christ’s dear kingdom
+is no ‘mine’ or ‘thine,’ but all that each hath is the property of
+the others. I never rejoice so much in my art as when I think of the
+communion of saints; and that all that our Blessed Lord will work through
+me is the property of the humblest soul in his kingdom. When I see one
+flower rarer than another, or a bird singing on a twig, I take note of
+the same, and say, ‘This lovely work of God shall be for some shrine, or
+the border of a missal, or the foreground of an altar-piece, and thus
+shall his saints be comforted.’”
+
+“But,” said Agnes, fervently, “how little can a poor young maiden do! Ah,
+I do so long to offer myself up in some way to the dear Lord who gave
+Himself for us, and for his most Blessed Church!”
+
+As Agnes spoke these words, her cheek, usually so clear and pale, became
+suffused with a tremulous colour, and her dark eyes beamed with a deep,
+divine expression; a moment after, the colour slowly faded, her head
+drooped, and her long dark lashes fell on her cheek, while her hands
+were folded on her bosom. The eye of the monk was watching her with an
+enkindled glance.
+
+“Is she not the very presentment of our Blessed Lady in the
+Annunciation?” said he to himself. “Surely, this grace is upon her for
+this special purpose. My prayers are answered.”
+
+“Daughter,” he began, in a gentle tone, “a glorious work has been done of
+late in Florence under the preaching of our blessed Superior. Could you
+believe it, daughter, in these times of backsliding and rebuke there have
+been found painters base enough to paint the pictures of vile, abandoned
+women in the character of our Blessed Lady; yea, and princes have been
+found wicked enough to buy them and put them up in churches, so that the
+people have had the Mother of all Purity presented to them in the guise
+of a vile harlot. Is it not dreadful?”
+
+“How horrible!” ejaculated Agnes.
+
+“Ah, but you should have seen the great procession through Florence, when
+all the little children were inspired by the heavenly preaching of our
+blessed Master. These dear little ones, carrying the blessed cross and
+singing the hymns our Master had written for them, went from house to
+house and church to church, demanding that everything that was vile and
+base should be delivered up to the flames; and the people, beholding,
+thought that the angels had indeed come down, so they brought forth all
+their loose pictures and vile books, such as Boccaccio’s romances and
+other defilements, and the children made a great bonfire of them in
+the Grand Piazza, and thus thousands of vile things were consumed and
+scattered. And then our blessed Master exhorted the artists to give their
+pencils to Christ and his Mother, and to seek for her image among pious
+and holy women living a veiled and secluded life, like that our Lady
+lived before the blessed Annunciation. ‘Think you,’ he continued, ‘that
+the blessed Angelico obtained the grace to set forth our Lady in such
+heavenly wise, by gazing about the streets on mincing women tricked out
+in all the world’s bravery?—Did he not find her image in holy solitudes,
+among modest and prayerful saints?’”
+
+“Ah,” exclaimed Agnes, drawing in her breath with an expression of awe,
+“what mortal would dare to sit for the image of our Lady!”
+
+“Dear child, there be women whom the Lord crowns with beauty when they
+know it not, and our dear Mother sheds so much of her spirit into their
+hearts that it shines out in their faces; among such must the painter
+look. Dear little child, be not ignorant that our Lord hath shed this
+great grace on thee. I have received a light that thou art to be the
+model for the ‘Hail, Mary!’ in my Breviary.”
+
+“Oh, no, no, no! it cannot be!” cried Agnes, covering her face.
+
+“My daughter, thou art very beautiful, and this beauty was given thee not
+for thyself, but to be laid like a sweet flower on the altar of thy Lord.
+Think how blessed, if, through thee, the faithful be reminded of the
+modesty and humility of Mary, so that their prayers become more fervent!
+Would it not be a great grace?”
+
+“Dear uncle,” replied Agnes, “I am Christ’s child. If it be as you
+say,—which I did not know,—give me some days to pray and prepare my soul,
+that I may offer myself in all humility.”
+
+During this conversation Elsie had left the garden and gone a little way
+down the gorge, to have a few moments of gossip with an old crony of
+hers. The light of the evening sky had gradually faded away, and the full
+moon was pouring a shower of silver upon the orange-trees. As Agnes sat
+on the parapet, with the moonlight streaming down on her young, spiritual
+face, now tremulous with deep suppressed emotion, the painter thought he
+had never seen any human creature that looked nearer to his conception of
+a celestial being.
+
+They both sat awhile in that kind of quietude which often falls between
+two who have stirred some deep fountain of emotion. All was so still
+around them, that the drip and trickle of the little stream which
+fell from the garden wall into the dark abyss of the gorge, could be
+distinctly heard as it pattered from one rocky point to another, with a
+light, lulling sound. Suddenly their revery was disturbed by the shadow
+of a figure which passed into the moonlight and seemed to have risen
+from the side of the gorge. A man, enveloped in a dark cloak with a
+peaked hood, stepped across the moss-grown garden parapet, stood a moment
+irresolute, then the cloak dropped suddenly from him, and the cavalier
+appeared in the moonlight before Agnes. He bore in his hand a tall stalk
+of white lily, with open blossoms and buds and tender fluted green
+leaves, such as one sees in a thousand pictures of the Annunciation. The
+moonlight fell full upon his face, revealing his haughty yet beautiful
+features, agitated by some profound emotion. The monk and the girl were
+both too much surprised for a moment to utter a sound; and when, after
+an instant, the monk made a half-movement as if to speak, the cavalier
+raised his right hand with a sudden authoritative gesture which silenced
+him. Then turning toward Agnes, he knelt, and kissed the hem of her robe,
+and laying the lily in her lap, exclaimed, “Holiest and dearest—oh!
+forget not to pray for me!” He rose again in a moment, and, throwing his
+cloak around him, sprang over the garden wall, and was heard rapidly
+descending into the shadows of the gorge.
+
+All this passed so quickly that it seemed to both the spectators like a
+dream. The splendid man, with his jewelled weapons, his haughty bearing
+and air of easy command, bowing with such solemn humility before the
+peasant girl, reminded the monk of the barbaric princes in the wonderful
+legends he had read, who had been drawn by some heavenly inspiration to
+come and render themselves up to the teachings of holy virgins, chosen of
+the Lord, in divine solitudes. In the poetical world in which he lived
+such marvels were possible: there were a thousand precedents for them in
+that dream-land of the devout, “The Lives of the Saints.”
+
+“My daughter,” he said, after looking vainly down the dark shadows to
+track the path of the stranger, “have you ever seen this man before?”
+
+“Yes, uncle; yesterday evening I saw him for the first time, when sitting
+at my stand at the gate of the city. It was at the Ave Maria; he came up
+there and asked my prayers, and gave me a diamond ring for the shrine of
+Saint Agnes, which I carried to the convent.
+
+“Behold, my dear daughter, the confirmation of what I have just said to
+thee! It is evident that our Lady hath endowed thee with the great grace
+of a beauty which draws the soul upward toward the angels, instead of
+downward to sensual things, like the beauty of worldly women. What saith
+the blessed poet Dante of the beauty of the holy Beatrice?—that it said
+to every man who looked on her, ‘_Aspire!_’ Great is the grace; and thou
+must give special praise therefor.”
+
+“I would,” said Agnes, thoughtfully, “that I knew who this stranger is,
+and what is his great trouble and need,—his eyes are so full of sorrow.
+Giulietta said he was the king’s brother, and was called the Lord Adrian.
+What sorrow can he have, or what need for the prayers of a poor maid like
+me?”
+
+“Perhaps the Lord hath pierced him with a longing after the celestial
+beauty and heavenly purity of paradise, and wounded him with a divine
+sorrow, as happened to Saint Francis and to the blessed Saint Dominic,”
+said the monk. “Beauty is the Lord’s arrow, wherewith He pierceth to
+the inmost soul, with a divine longing and languishment which find rest
+only in Him. Hence, thou seest, the wounds of love in saints are always
+painted by us with holy flames ascending from them. Have good courage,
+sweet child, and pray with fervour for this youth: there be no prayers
+sweeter before the throne of God than those of spotless maidens. The
+Scripture saith, ‘The beloved feedeth among the lilies.’”
+
+At this moment was heard the sharp, decided tramp of Elsie re-entering
+the garden.
+
+“Come, Agnes,” she cried, “it is time for you to begin your prayers, or,
+the saints know, I shall not get you to bed till midnight. I suppose
+prayers are a good thing,” she added, seating herself wearily; “but if
+one must have so many of them, one must get about them early: there’s
+reason in all things.”
+
+Agnes, who had been sitting abstractedly on the parapet, with her head
+drooped over the lily-spray, now seemed to collect herself. She rose up
+in a grave and thoughtful manner, and, going forward to the shrine of the
+Madonna, removed the flowers of the morning, and, holding the vase under
+the spout of the fountain all feathered with waving maidenhair, filled it
+with fresh water, the drops falling from it in a thousand little silver
+rings in the moonlight.
+
+“I have a thought,” said the monk to himself, drawing from his girdle a
+pencil and hastily sketching by the moonlight. What he drew was a fragile
+maiden form, sitting with clasped hands on a mossy ruin, gazing on a
+spray of white lilies which lay before her. He called it, The Blessed
+Virgin pondering the Lily of the Annunciation.
+
+“Hast thou ever reflected,” he asked of Agnes, “what that lily might be
+like which the angel Gabriel brought to our Lady?—for, trust me, it was
+no mortal flower, but grew by the river of life. I have often meditated
+thereon, that it was like unto living silver with a light in itself,
+like the moon—even as our Lord’s garments in the Transfiguration, which
+glistened like the snow. I have cast about in myself by what device a
+painter might represent so marvellous a flower.”
+
+“Now, brother Antonio,” Elsie broke in, “if you begin to talk to the
+child about such matters, our Lady alone knows when we shall get to bed.
+I am sure I’m as good a Christian as anybody; but, as I said, there’s
+reason in all things: one cannot always be wondering and inquiring into
+heavenly matters—as to every feather in Saint Michael’s wings, and as to
+our Lady’s girdle and shoestrings and thimble and work-basket; and when
+one gets through with our Lady, then one has it all to go over about her
+mother, the blessed Saint Anne (may her name be ever praised!) I mean no
+disrespect, but the saints are reasonable folk, and must see that poor
+folk must live, and, in order to live, must think of something else now
+and then besides _them_. That’s my mind, brother.”
+
+“Well, well, sister,” returned the monk, placidly, “no doubt you are
+right. There shall be no quarrelling in the Lord’s vineyard: every one
+hath his manner and place, and you follow the lead of the blessed Saint
+Martha, which is holy and honourable.”
+
+“Honourable! I should think it might be!” retorted Elsie. “I warrant me,
+if everything had been left to Saint Mary’s doings, our Blessed Lord and
+the Twelve Apostles might have gone supperless. But it’s Martha gets all
+the work, and Mary all the praise.”
+
+“Quite right, quite right,” said the monk, abstractedly, while he stood
+out in the moonlight busily sketching the fountain. By just such a
+fountain he thought our Lady might have washed the clothes of the Blessed
+Babe. Doubtless there was some such in the court of her dwelling, all
+mossy and with sweet waters for ever singing a song of praise.
+
+Elsie was now heard within the house making energetic commotion, rattling
+pots and pans, and effecting decided movements among the simple furniture
+of the dwelling; probably with a view to preparing for the night’s repose
+of her guest.
+
+Meanwhile Agnes, kneeling before the shrine, was going through, with
+great feeling and tenderness, the various manuals and movements of
+nightly devotion which her own religious fervour and the zeal of
+her spiritual advisers had enjoined upon her. Christianity, when it
+entered Italy, came among a people every act of whose life was coloured
+and consecrated by symbolic and ritual acts of heathenism. The only
+possible way to uproot this was in supplanting it by Christian ritual
+and symbolism equally minute and pervading. Besides, in those ages when
+the Christian preacher was utterly destitute of all such help as the
+press now gives in keeping under the eye of converts the great inspiring
+truths of religion, it was one of the first offices of every saint whose
+preaching stirred the heart of the people, to devise symbolic forms,
+signs, and observances, by which the mobile and fluctuating heart of
+the multitude might crystallize into habits of devout remembrance. The
+rosary, the crucifix, the shrine, the banner, the processions, were
+catechisms and tracts invented for those who could not read, wherein
+the substance of pages was condensed and gave itself to the eye and
+the touch. Let us not, from the height of our day, with the better
+appliances which a universal press gives us, sneer at the homely rounds
+of the ladder by which the first multitudes of the Lord’s flock climbed
+heavenward.
+
+If there seemed somewhat mechanical in the number of times which Agnes
+repeated the “Hail, Mary!”—in the prescribed number of times she rose,
+or bowed, or crossed herself, or laid her forehead in low humility on
+the flags of the pavement, it was redeemed by the earnest fervour which
+inspired each action. However foreign to the habits of a Northern mind
+or education such a mode of prayer may be, these forms to her were all
+helpful and significant; her soul was borne by them Godward, and often,
+as she prayed, it seemed to her that she could feel the dissolving of all
+earthy things, and the pressing nearer and nearer of the great cloud of
+witnesses who ever surround the humblest member of Christ’s mystical body.
+
+    “Sweet loving hearts around her beat,
+      Sweet helping hands are stirred,
+    And palpitates the veil between
+      With breathings almost heard.”
+
+Certain English writers, looking entirely from a worldly and
+philosophical stand-point, are utterly at a loss to account for the
+power which certain Italian women of obscure birth came to exercise in
+the councils of nations merely by the force of a mystical piety; but the
+Northern mind of Europe is entirely unfitted to read and appreciate the
+psychological religious phenomena of Southern races. The temperament
+which in our modern days has been called the mediæval, and which with
+us is only exceptional, is more or less a race-peculiarity of Southern
+climates, and gives that objectiveness to the conception of spiritual
+things from which grew up a complete ritual and a whole world of
+religious art. The Southern saints and religious artists were seers—men
+and women of that peculiar fineness and delicacy of temperament which
+made them peculiarly apt to receive and project outward the truths of
+the spiritual life; they were in that state of “divine madness” which is
+favourable to the most intense conception of the poet and artist, and
+something of this influence descended through all the channels of the
+people.
+
+When Agnes rose from prayer, she had a serene, exalted expression, like
+one who walks with some unseen excellence and meditates on some untold
+joy. As she was crossing the court to come towards her uncle, her eye
+was attracted by the sparkle of something on the ground, and, stooping,
+she picked up a heart-shaped locket, curiously made of a large amethyst,
+and fastened with a golden arrow. As she pressed upon this, the locket
+opened and disclosed to her view a folded paper. Her mood at this moment
+was so calm and elevated that she received the incident with no start or
+quiver of the nerves. To her it seemed a providential token, which would
+probably bring to her some further knowledge of this mysterious being who
+had been so especially confided to her intercessions.
+
+Agnes had learned of the superior of the convent the art of reading
+writing, which would never have been the birthright of the peasant-girl
+in her times, and the moonlight had that dazzling clearness which
+revealed every letter.
+
+She stood by the parapet, one hand lying in the white blossoming alyssum
+which filled its marble crevices, while she seriously read and pondered
+the contents of the paper.
+
+    TO AGNES.
+
+    Sweet saint, sweet lady, may a sinful soul
+    Approach thee with an offering of love,
+    And lay at thy dear feet a weary heart
+    That loves thee, as it loveth God above?
+    If blessed Mary may without a stain
+    Receive the love of sinners most defiled,
+    If the fair saints that walk with her in white
+    Refuse not love from earth’s most guilty child,
+    Shouldst thou, sweet lady, then that love deny
+    Which all-unworthy at thy feet is laid?
+    Ah, gentlest angel, be not more severe
+    Than the dear heavens unto a loving prayer!
+    Howe’er unworthily that prayer be said,
+    Let thine acceptance be like that on high!
+
+There might have been times in Agnes’ life when the reception of this
+note would have astonished and perplexed her; but the whole strain
+of thought and conversation this evening had been in exalted and
+poetical regions, and the soft stillness of the hour, the wonderful
+calmness and clearness of the moonlight, all seemed in unison with the
+strange incident that had occurred, and with the still stranger tenor
+of the paper. The soft melancholy and half-religious tone of it was
+in accordance with the whole undercurrent of her life, and prevented
+that start of alarm which any homage of a more worldly form might have
+excited. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that she read it
+many times with pauses and intervals of deep thought, and then with a
+movement of natural and girlish curiosity examined the rich jewel which
+had enclosed the paper. At last, seeming to collect her thoughts, she
+folded the paper and replaced it in its sparkling recess, and, unlocking
+the door of the shrine, laid the gem with its inclosure beneath the
+lily-spray, as another offering to the Madonna. “Dear Mother,” she
+prayed, “if indeed it be so, may he rise from loving me to loving thee
+and thy dear Son, who is Lord of all! Amen!” Thus praying, she locked the
+door and turned thoughtfully to her repose, leaving the monk pacing up
+and down in the moonlit garden.
+
+Meanwhile the cavalier was standing on the velvet mossy bridge which
+spanned the stream at the bottom of the gorge, watching the play of
+moonbeams on layer after layer of tremulous silver foliage in the clefts
+of the black, rocky walls on either side. The moon rode so high in the
+deep violet-coloured sky, that her beams came down almost vertically,
+making green and translucent the leaves through which they passed, and
+throwing strongly marked shadows here and there on the flower-embroidered
+moss of the old bridge. There was that solemn, plaintive stillness in the
+air which makes the least sound—the hum of an insect’s wing, the cracking
+of a twig, the patter of falling water—distinct and impressive.
+
+It needs not to be explained how the cavalier, following the steps of
+Agnes and her grandmother at a distance, had threaded the path by which
+they ascended to their little sheltered nook—how he had lingered within
+hearing of Agnes’ voice, and moving among the surrounding rocks and
+trees, and drawing nearer and nearer as evening shadows drew on, had
+listened to the conversation, hoping that some unexpected chance might
+gain him a moment’s speech with his enchantress.
+
+The reader will have gathered from a previous chapter that the conception
+which Agnes had formed as to the real position of her admirer from
+the reports of Giulietta was false, and that in reality he was not
+Lord Adrian, the brother of the king, but an outcast and landless
+representative of one branch of an ancient and noble Roman family, whose
+estates had been confiscated and whose relations had been murdered, to
+satisfy the boundless rapacity of Cæsar Borgia, the infamous favourite of
+the notorious Alexander VI.
+
+The natural temperament of Agostino Sarelli had been rather that of the
+poet and artist than of the warrior. In the beautiful gardens of his
+ancestral home it had been his delight to muse over the pages of Dante
+and Ariosto, to sing to the lute, and to write in the facile flowing
+rhyme of his native Italian the fancies of the dream-land of his youth.
+
+He was the younger brother of the family and the favourite son and
+companion of his mother; who, being of a tender and religious nature, had
+brought him up in habits of the most implicit reverence and devotion for
+the institutions of his forefathers.
+
+The storm which swept over his house and blasted all his worldly
+prospects, blasted, too, and withered all those religious hopes and
+beliefs by which alone sensitive and affectionate natures can be healed
+of the wounds of adversity without leaving distortion or scar. For his
+house had been overthrown, his elder brother cruelly and treacherously
+murdered, himself and his retainers robbed and cast out, by a man who had
+the entire sanction and support of the head of the Christian Church, the
+Vicar of Christ on Earth. So said the current belief of his times—the
+faith in which his sainted mother died; and the difficulty with which a
+man breaks away from such ties is in exact proportion to the refinement
+and elevation of his nature.
+
+In the mind of our young nobleman there was a double current. He was a
+Roman, and the traditions of his house went back to the time of Mutius
+Scævola; and his old nurse had told him often that grand story of how
+the young hero stood with his right hand in the fire rather than betray
+his honour. If the legends of Rome’s ancient heroes cause the pulses of
+colder climes and alien races to throb with sympathetic heroism, what
+must their power be to one who says, “_These were my fathers?_” Agostino
+read Plutarch, and thought, “_I_, too, am a Roman!” and then he looked
+on the power that held sway over the Tarpeian Rock and the halls of the
+old “Sanctus Senatus,” and asked himself, “By what right does it hold
+these?” He knew full well that, in the popular belief, all those hardy
+and virtuous old Romans, whose deeds of heroism so transported him, were
+burning in hell for the crime of having been born before Christ; and he
+asked himself, as he looked on the horrible and unnatural luxury and vice
+which defiled the papal chair and ran riot through every ecclesiastical
+Order, whether such men, without faith, without conscience, and without
+even decency, were indeed the only authorized successors of Christ and
+his Apostles?
+
+To us, of course, from our modern stand-point, the question has an easy
+solution; but not so in those days, when the Christianity of the known
+world was in the Romish Church, and when the choice seemed to be between
+that and infidelity. Not yet had Luther flared aloft the bold, cheery
+torch which showed the faithful how to disentangle Christianity from
+Ecclesiasticism. Luther in those days was a star lying low in the gray
+horizon of a yet unawakened dawn.
+
+All through Italy at this time there was the restless throbbing and
+pulsating, the aimless outreach of the popular heart, which marks
+the decline of one cycle of religious faith and calls for some great
+awakening and renewal. Savonarola, the priest and prophet of this dumb
+desire, was beginning to heave a great heart of conflict towards that
+mighty struggle with the vices and immoralities of his times, in which
+he was yet to sink a martyr; and even now his course was beginning to be
+obstructed by the full energy of the whole aroused serpent brood which
+hissed and knotted in the holy places of Rome.
+
+Here, then, was our Agostino, with a nature intensely fervent and
+poetic—every fibre of whose soul and nervous system had been from
+childhood skilfully woven and intertwisted with the ritual and faith of
+his fathers,—yearning towards the grave of his mother; yearning towards
+the legends of saints and angels with which she had lulled his cradle
+slumbers and sanctified his childhood’s pillow, and yet burning with the
+indignation of a whole line of old Roman ancestors against an injustice
+and oppression wrought under the full approbation of the head of that
+religion. Half his nature was all the while battling the other half.
+Would he be Roman, or would he be Christian? All the Roman in him said,
+“No!” when he thought of submission to the patent and open injustice
+and fiendish tyranny which had disinherited him, slain his kindred, and
+held its impure reign by torture and by blood. He looked on the splendid
+snow-crowned mountains whose old silver senate engirdle Rome with an
+eternal and silent majesty of presence, and he thought how often in
+ancient times they had been a shelter to free blood that would not endure
+oppression; and so gathering to his banner the crushed and scattered
+retainers of his father’s house, and offering refuge and protection to
+multitudes of others whom the crimes and rapacities of the Borgias had
+stripped of possessions and means of support, he fled to a fastness
+in the mountains between Rome and Naples, and became an independent
+chieftain, living by his sword.
+
+The rapacity, cruelty, and misgovernment of the various regular
+authorities of Italy at this time, made brigandage a respectable and
+honoured institution in the eyes of the people; though it was ostensibly
+banned both by Pope and Prince. Besides, in the multitude of contending
+factions which were every day wrangling for supremacy, it soon became
+apparent, even to the ruling authorities, that a band of fighting-men
+under a gallant leader, advantageously posted in the mountains and
+understanding all their passes, was a power of no small importance to be
+employed on one side or the other; therefore it happened, that, though
+nominally outlawed or excommunicated, they were secretly protected on
+both sides, with a view to securing their assistance in critical turns of
+affairs.
+
+Among the common people of the towns and villages their relations were
+of the most comfortable kind, their depredations being chiefly confined
+to the rich and prosperous; who, as they wrung their wealth out of the
+people, were not considered particular objects of compassion when the
+same kind of high-handed treatment was extended towards themselves.
+
+The most spirited and brave of the young peasantry, if they wished to
+secure the smiles of the girls of their neighbourhood and win hearts past
+redemption, found no surer avenue to favour than in joining the brigands.
+The leaders of these bands sometimes piqued themselves on elegant tastes
+and accomplishments; and one of them is said to have sent to the poet
+Tasso, in his misfortunes and exile, an offer of honourable asylum and
+protection in his mountain-fortress.
+
+Agostino Sarelli saw himself, in fact, a powerful chief; and there were
+times when the splendid scenery of his mountain-fastness, its inspiring
+air, its wild eagle-like grandeur, independence, and security, gave
+him a proud contentment, and he looked at his sword and loved it as a
+bride. But then again there were moods when he felt all that yearning and
+disquiet of soul which the man of wide and tender moral organization must
+feel who has had his faith shaken in the religion of his fathers. To such
+a man the quarrel with his childhood’s faith is a never-ending anguish;
+especially is it so with a religion so objective, so pictorial, and so
+interwoven with the whole physical and nervous nature of man, as that
+which grew up and flowered in modern Italy.
+
+Agostino was like a man who lives in an eternal struggle of
+self-justification,—his reason for ever going over and over with its plea
+before his regretful and never-satisfied heart, which was drawn every
+hour of the day by some chain of memory towards the faith whose visible
+administrators he detested with the whole force of his moral being. When
+the vesper-bell, with its plaintive call, sounded amid the purple shadows
+of the olive-silvered mountains,—when the distant voices of chanting
+priest and choir reached him solemnly from afar,—when he looked into a
+church with its cloudy pictures of angels and its window-panes flaming
+with venerable forms of saints and martyrs,—he experienced a yearning
+anguish, a pain and conflict, which all the effort of his reason could
+not subdue. How to be a Christian and yet defy the authorized Head of
+the Christian Church, or how to be a Christian and recognize foul men
+of obscene and rapacious deeds as Christ’s representatives, was the
+inextricable Gordian knot which his sword could not divide. He dared
+not approach the sacrament, he dared not pray; he sometimes felt wild
+impulses to tread down in riotous despair every fragment of a religious
+belief which seemed to live in his heart only to torture him. He had
+heard priests scoff over the wafer they consecrated,—he had known them
+to mingle poison for rivals in the sacramental wine,—and yet God had
+kept silence and not struck them dead. Like the Psalmist of old he
+cried, “Verily, I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in
+innocency. Is there a God that judgeth in the earth?”
+
+The first time he saw Agnes bending like a flower in the slanting evening
+sunbeams by the old gate of Sorrento, while he stood looking down the
+street lined with kneeling forms, and striving to hold his own soul in
+the sarcastic calm of utter indifference, he felt himself struck to
+the heart by an influence he could not define. The sight of that young
+face, with its clear beautiful lines and its tender fervour, recalled a
+thousand influences of the happiest and purest hours of his life, and
+drew him with an attraction he vainly strove to hide under an air of
+mocking gallantry.
+
+When she looked him in the face with such grave, surprised eyes of
+innocent confidence, and promised to pray for him, he felt a remorseful
+tenderness, as if he had profaned a shrine. All that was passionate,
+poetic, and romantic in his nature was awakened, to blend itself in a
+strange mingling of despairing sadness and of tender veneration about
+this sweet image of perfect purity and faith. Never does love strike
+so deep and immediate a root as in a sorrowful and desolated nature;
+there it has nothing to dispute the soil, and soon fills it with its
+interlacing fibres.
+
+In this case it was not merely Agnes that he sighed for, but she stood to
+him as the fair symbol of that life-peace, that rest of soul, which he
+had lost, it seemed to him, for ever.
+
+“Behold this pure, believing child,” he said to himself,—“a true member
+of that blessed Church to which thou art a rebel! How peacefully this
+lamb walketh the old ways trodden by saints and martyrs, while thou
+art an infidel and unbeliever!” And then a stern voice within him
+answered,—“What then? Is the Holy Ghost indeed alone dispensed through
+the medium of Alexander and his scarlet crew of cardinals? Hath the power
+to bind and to loose in Christ’s Church been indeed given to whoever can
+buy it with the wages of robbery and oppression? Why does every prayer
+and pious word of the faithful reproach me? Why is God silent? Or is
+there any God? Oh, Agnes, Agnes! dear lily, fair lamb, lead a sinner into
+the green pastures where thou restest!”
+
+So wrestled the strong nature, tempest-tossed in its strength,—so slept
+the trustful, blessed in its trust,—then in Italy, as now in all lands.
+
+
+
+
+A County Ball.
+
+
+Amongst the pleasures in pursuit of which it is the custom to undergo
+an extraordinary amount of hardship and suffering, the County Ball
+is entitled to be mentioned, inasmuch as it happens often at a time
+of year when frost and snow prevail; and that enthusiasm will carry
+carriage-loads of people a distance of twelve or even twenty miles,
+that they may dance in a crowd, denser even than that of a London ball,
+if that is possible, and not go home till morning, when daylight has
+probably appeared.
+
+It generally takes place at the Town Hall, or at the best inn’s
+best room, which is decorated with garlands and banners, on which
+are represented the arms of the noble and influential families of
+the neighbourhood; and there are portraits of aldermen and other
+distinguished citizens of the town, illustrious for their civic virtues
+or for having made their fortunes. And if you have not provided yourself
+with a ticket beforehand, you have the privilege of being able to pay at
+the door.
+
+The music, when not supplied by the kind permission of the colonel of the
+nearest regiment, is formed of the town band, and is remarkable chiefly
+for the fact that, as the evening proceeds, their intonation becomes
+more uncertain, but their performance generally more spirited and wilder
+in execution. The company is composed partly of visitors and partly of
+natives; the visitors being mostly swells from London and other distant
+places, and having the conventional manners and customs of such; but the
+natives may be distinguished by something more of distinct individual
+character, and there is just a tinge of the rural in their aspect.
+
+The native comes out strong in waistcoats—his array in that respect being
+gorgeous. In ordinary “society” the waistcoat may be said to be, as it
+were, merged in the man—a uniform sombreness pervading the entire evening
+dress. But the country gentleman evidently cherishes his waistcoat—has
+his favourite waistcoats, which he brings out on great occasions; and it
+is evident that he has expended much thought on the selection, and that
+as he expands his chest so as to display as much as possible of that
+portion of his person, he is proportionately proud of the result.
+
+[Illustration: BIRD’S-EYE VIEWS OF SOCIETY. NO. V. A County Ball.]
+
+The County Ball is a great opportunity for the exhibition of uniforms,
+militia, deputy lieutenant, and other fancy dresses; and it is probable
+that there are few men with any position at all, who don’t find an excuse
+for becoming something or other that entitles them to wear a little gold
+embroidery on their coat, or a silver stripe down their trousers. As for
+Scotchmen, it is believed that none are to be found, however mild in
+appearance or manners, who, if their wardrobes were searched, would not
+be found to possess, only waiting an opportunity to be worn, a complete
+Highland suit, kilt and etceteras—if, indeed, the word complete can ever
+be properly applied to that description of costume.
+
+When the usual quantity of quadrilles, waltzes, lancers, country dances,
+cotillons, reels, and “pop-go-the-weasels,” have been danced or struggled
+through, in the nature of things comes supper, and then you will
+observe that a comic man, generally recognized as such, and evidently a
+great favourite in that part of the country, is called upon to make a
+speech—returning thanks for the toast of “The Ladies,” probably; and he
+rises to do so with the air of one who feels that he is the right man,
+and the confidence following from a conviction that he is in the right
+place. He proceeds to deliver a speech, which the county paper afterwards
+describes as “replete with wit and humour,” and as received by the
+delighted company with “one continued roar of laughter.”
+
+I began by saying something about hardship and suffering, but those words
+are now withdrawn. What does it matter, if people are good-humoured, and
+bent upon being amused and amusing others, whether they are driven to
+the scene of the festivity one or twenty miles, or if the state of the
+weather is many degrees above freezing point? If the party be a merry
+one, the longer the journey the better. May County Balls continue and
+flourish!
+
+
+
+
+My Scotch School.
+
+
+I have read a good deal of late, in this Magazine and elsewhere, about
+English public schools, their advantages and disadvantages, their merits
+and their shortcomings. Have the public any ears to hear something about
+the public schools of Scotland? Professor John Stuart Blackie has written
+often and with great force about the Scottish universities, showing that
+they exhibit the very defects which “Paterfamilias” has pointed out as
+existing in the public schools of England, with some others to boot. I am
+not aware that any one has treated in the same way of the Scottish public
+schools. I am desirous to supply this defect for two—as I think—good
+reasons. First, because I myself received the rudiments of my education
+at one of those Scottish schools, and therefore know something of the
+subject; and, secondly, because there is a great deal of misapprehension
+in England with respect to Scotch schools and Scotch education generally.
+The popular idea here seems to be that Scotland, as regards education,
+is a sort of Tom Tiddler’s ground, a place where the people, both high
+and low, roll and wallow in education—a land where the rivers run with
+fertilizing lore; where all the pines are trees of knowledge; where
+grammar is raked out of the ditches; and where even Greek roots are to be
+had on the barren hill-sides for the trouble of digging. If this be true,
+Scotland stands not where it did when I went to school.
+
+Let me premise that I am not going to enter into a disquisition on the
+subject, to analyze the plan of Scottish education, nor to be didactic
+in any way whatever. I am simply about to give a sketch of my Scotch
+school—the school I went to to be prepared for the university. There were
+penny postage-stamps when I went to my Scotch school; the Reform Bill
+had been passed eight years previously; daguerrotypes and the electric
+telegraph were coming in. So it was but the other day. My school was the
+parochial, or parish school, the school of all Scotch boys who dwell
+in the country, whether high or low, gentle or simple. Here in England
+the word “parish” is associated with all kinds of indignity—with the
+Workhouse, the lock-up, the pound, the pauper’s allowance. It may,
+therefore, seem to the English reader, ignorant of Scottish matters, when
+I say I went to the parish school, that I wore a muffin cap and premature
+knee-breeches (if the English mind can associate Scotland with these
+nether integuments in any shape), and was educated at the public expense.
+Let me dissipate this popular error.
+
+The parochial school in Scotland claims equal dignity with the parish
+Kirk. It is the chief educational establishment—the public school in
+fact—of the district, and is part of the national system for spreading
+education and enlightenment among the people of Scotland. The Kirk in
+Scotland, that is to say, the Established Kirk, is supported by a levy
+upon the occupiers of the land. The tax, however, is an indirect one,
+and therefore does not provoke the discontent caused by tithes and
+church-rates in England. The heritors, that is to say the landowners,
+pay the amount (on a scale in proportion to the price of grain), and
+repay themselves out of the rents of their tenants. This payment is not
+set down as a separate item in the rent-charge, and so the tenant pays
+his tithes and rates as he pays the tax upon his tea and tobacco. He is
+bled without knowing it. The parish school shares in this revenue with
+the parish kirk, but to a limited extent. Turning to the statistical
+account of my parish—written by the hand which directed the earliest
+calligraphical exercises of the one which now pens this—I find that
+the said parish is six miles long by five miles broad, and contains—or
+did contain then—a population of 1,661 souls. Those English persons
+who indulge in extravagant notions of the abundance of educational
+provision in the North may be a little surprised to learn that for this
+widely-scattered population there were only two schools, each capable
+of accommodating no more than sixty or seventy scholars. The endowments
+of these educational establishments were by no means magnificent. The
+allowance to the master of the parochial school (who was required to be
+a college man of considerable classical attainments) was 34_l._ 4_s._
+4_d._ per annum, with a dwelling-house and garden, and the fees of the
+scholars.[3] The fees ranged from 10_s._ to 1_l._ per annum—ten shillings
+for reading, writing, and arithmetic, and an extra ten for the classics.
+The master of the other school—an auxiliary seminary established by the
+General Assembly—received 25_l._ per annum and a cow’s keep, with the
+fees, averaging about ten shillings per annum for each scholar. It was
+not required that the master of this establishment should be a high
+classic, or indeed a classic at all. The appointment was vested in the
+minister, who was well content to select the candidate, whose letter,
+soliciting the appointment, exhibited the fewest errors in orthography.
+Perfection in that branch of grammar he never looked for and never got;
+for how could you expect irreproachable orthography for 25_l._ a year
+and a cow’s keep? The worthy man—the minister—made great exertions to
+establish and carry on this school; but it was always a great source of
+trouble to him. College men, of course, disdained to accept so trifling a
+salary; or to undertake so undignified a duty as the instruction of poor
+cottars’ children in the alphabet. The minister was, therefore, obliged
+to accept the services of any half-educated aspirant for the honours
+of a dominie, who could bring testimony to his respectability, and
+write a tolerable letter. Most of the teachers—for there were frequent
+changes—were Highlanders, who were more conversant with Gaelic than with
+English, and who had learned the latter language as a foreign tongue.
+They all spoke with a fearful Highland twang, all were married, all had
+slatternly wives, and unreasonably large families. The cow that was kept
+at the public expense for the sustenance (lacteally) of the General
+Assembly’s schoolmaster had a hard time of it. Provender was scarce, and
+the demand for milk excessive; and the schoolmaster’s cow generally died
+of exhaustion, after a year or two of self-sacrifice.
+
+I remember once going with the minister to pay a visit to the Assembly’s
+Institute in these parts. When we arrived the academic grove was
+deserted, and we were informed that the “squeelmaister and the loons
+were oot on the peat moss.” There we found them, the dominie putting his
+pupils through a very novel kind of military exercise. He had collected
+his army on his own division of the moss, where his peats lay in stacks,
+ready to be carted home, when he could afford to pay for the cartage.
+We arrived on the scene just as the review began. “Now, poys,” said the
+dominie, taking up a peat in each hand, “this is a sword and this is a
+cun”—the Highland pronunciation of “gun”—“shoulder arms, poys.” Here
+the “poys” took a peat in each hand and shouldered them. “March, poys,”
+said the dominie, flourishing his peat sword; and away marched the boys
+with their peats, until they reached the school-house, when the dominie
+made them defile into a shed and ground arms; that is to say, lay down
+their peats in a heap convenient for the domestic use. This was what
+the dominie called his gymnastic exercises, which, he boasted, combined
+amusement and exercise with instruction; but a suspicion arising that
+these gymnastics were nothing more nor less than a Highland device for
+carrying home the dominie’s fuel on an economical principle, an order was
+issued from head-quarters that such military instruction should only take
+place in play-hours, and should not be included in the regular curriculum
+of study.
+
+But I am wandering away from my own school, nestling five miles off among
+the trees under the shadow of the old kirk. It is a plain one-storey
+building divided into two parts; the one, consisting of three rooms
+and a kitchen, forming the home of the schoolmaster, and the other the
+schoolroom,—a tolerably large and airy apartment, with roughly plastered
+walls, and furnished with deal desks and forms of the universal school
+fashion. I do not remember that there were, at any time, more than sixty
+scholars. They were gathered together from all parts of the parish. Some
+of them came from a distance of four or five miles, and brought their
+dinners with them, the provision invariably consisting of a little tin
+can of milk and a bag of oat-cakes. It was a rule that each scholar
+should contribute a load or two of peats every quarter for the school
+fire; but some of them chose to bring a peat with them every morning.
+These scholars made their morning’s journey to school rather heavily
+loaded, having to carry, besides their satchel, the tin can of milk, the
+white calico bag of oat-cake, and the peat. We were of all ages, sexes,
+and conditions in this school. There was the son of the laird, the heir
+to an ancient baronetcy. He wore corderoys like the rest of us, and had
+five rows of broad-headed nails in his shoes. There were several sons of
+the minister, all destined for one or other of the learned professions;
+there were the sons of gentlemen farmers and the sons of poor cottars,
+their dependants; and with these, on terms of the broadest academic
+equality, mingled the grandson of the parish sexton and bell-ringer, the
+son of a widow occasionally receiving parochial relief, and the sons and
+daughters of carpenters, blacksmiths, and farm-servants, including the
+female descendant of old Lizzy—pauper and egg vendor—who lit the school
+fire and swept the school floor in discharge of young Lizzy’s fees. No
+distinction of rank was preserved in any way whatever. The laird’s son
+and the grave-digger’s son stood up in the same class side by side, and
+I remember that the expectant baronet was often “taken down” by the
+heir of the mortuary mattock. In the reading classes the boys and girls
+were all mingled together, and I have often seen a big, hulking fellow
+of eighteen—some ambitious cottar’s son who had taken to education
+late—standing next to a little girl in short petticoats and heel-strapped
+shoes. There was little jealousy on the score of religious belief in the
+parish. There were several Roman Catholic boys among us, and they joined
+in all our exercises, except the reading of the Bible and the saying of
+the Shorter Catechism. At these times the Roman Catholic boys sat in
+their seats and amused themselves; and not unfrequently, when memory
+failed with regard to Justification, Sanctification, and Adoption, we,
+Protestants, smarting under the consequences, were tempted to wish from
+the bottom of our hearts that we had been brought up Papists.
+
+There was one feature of our school which appears very startling to me
+now, but which was never regarded as extraordinary by any of us at the
+time. It was this. Illegitimate mingled with the legitimate offspring of
+the same parents. Our parish was rather celebrated for irregularity in
+the matter of births, owing entirely to a local proneness to irregularity
+in the matter of marriage. This was not confined to the lower classes.
+Gentlemen farmers, who moved in the minister’s own circle, occasionally
+appeared before the Session to be admonished, and this sometimes led to
+the scandalous anomaly of a gentleman farmer dining at the manse one week
+and sitting on the stool of repentance the next. As there was only one
+school in the neighbourhood, and as it was considered imperative that
+every child, no matter what the circumstances of its birth, or position,
+should be educated, it constantly happened that there were several
+duplicates of families at the parochial school. In several instances,
+that I well remember, the illegitimate scion lived in perfect harmony
+with the legitimate in the bosom of the same family, and not unfrequently
+the illegitimate member was regarded as the flower of the flock. I can
+call up before me now two Marys and two Peters. The two Marys lived under
+the same roof as sisters, and I never heard a word of reproach cast at
+the elder Mary, albeit she was prettiest, cleverest, and illegitimate.
+It was different with the two Peters. Peter the First lived with his
+mother, Hagar, in the desert, an outcast from the paternal roof. But
+on the common ground of the parochial school, he sat on the same form,
+stood up in the same class, and shared equally in the Justification and
+Adoption of the Shorter Catechism with Peter the true-born. Peter the
+Base often enjoyed the satisfaction of giving Peter the True a “good
+licking;” but these quarrels never originated in resentment, arising
+out of their invidious relationship. So, you see, we were a strange,
+heterogeneous assemblage at this Scotch school.
+
+A stranger aspect still was occasionally presented when two or three
+grown men and women took their places among us. I remember Betty, the
+laird’s nurse, coming for a quarter to improve her handwriting; and,
+nearly at the same time, the grown-up son of a neighbouring farmer, who
+had an ambition to become acquainted with mensuration and surveying.
+Betty had scarcely got to “round hand,” before the farmer’s son, who
+was accustomed to pursue his studies on the opposite side of the desk,
+fell in love with her, and the upshot of it was that the farmer’s son
+and Betty threw learning to the winds, and went and got married before
+the quarter was out. When Betty was squaring her elbows out at the large
+text, the laird’s son was wont to take great delight in walking past her
+and jogging her arm, in revenge for the ruthless way in which Betty used
+to clean out his ears with a piece of rough flannel on washing nights.
+
+An almost universal circumstance tends to make every Scottish parochial
+schoolmaster discontented with his position and impatient of his
+duties. The parish-school is the stepping-stone to the kirk, and each
+schoolmaster when he is installed at the dominie’s desk, begins to long
+for the day when he will “wag his head in the poopit.” The school-house
+is the hard shell of the chrysalis; the manse, the flowery elysium of the
+full-fledged butterfly. When I went to school, our schoolmaster was in
+full cry after a kirk and a cure of souls. He spent a good deal of his
+time in reading the newspapers, and, as it appeared to me, in looking out
+for the demise of neighbouring ministers. Every morning after prayers, he
+read the newspapers for about an hour, during which time, we, the pupils,
+sat and learned our lessons, or more often amused ourselves, as quietly
+as we could. When any unusual disturbance took place, the master threw
+the “tag”—a piece of a gig trace burnt at the end to make it hard—at the
+offender. The pupil hit by it—no matter whether he was the real culprit
+or not—was expected to carry the instrument of punishment to the master
+and to accept flagellation, commonly on the hands, but not unfrequently
+(when the prospect of a kirk looked hazy and dim) upon a part of the body
+which required preliminary untrussing of points to be got at. It fell to
+the lot of Lizzy, the sweeper’s granddaughter, most frequently to have
+to take up the “tag.” Lizzy, it is true, was a very “limb” in point of
+trouble; but she had always more than her fair share of the gig trace.
+The way in which our schoolmaster lifted his hand against the female sex
+would have wholly disqualified him, in a nautical drama, from claiming
+the name of a British tar. The English reader may think that it equally
+disqualified him for the position of a British schoolmaster; but I do not
+remember that any one was shocked by these proceedings at the time. If a
+parent complained, it was not on the score of the indignity, but because
+the “tag” left its marks.
+
+The course of instruction pursued at our school included reading,
+writing, arithmetic, geography, and the classics. In the general branches
+all sorts, sizes, and sexes, stood up together in the same classes,
+according to their relative state of advancement. The Greek and Latin
+classes only were select, they being composed of some half-dozen boys of
+superior station destined to go to college when they had mastered Latin
+enough to enable them to spell through Cæsar and Virgil. With these the
+master took considerable pains for his own credit’s sake; for it would
+have been an eternal disgrace to him had his pupils been rejected on
+their first easy examination at Aberdeen. In the other branches the
+method pursued was one entirely of routine. Nothing was explained in
+a rational or intelligible way. The only reading books in the school
+were the Bible and McCulloch’s first, second, and third _Courses of
+Reading_, three progressive volumes of badly selected extracts from
+various authors; and at these we hammered away day after day, and over
+and over again, from the moment we entered the school until the moment
+we left it. There was not a single History in the school—not even a
+History of England in its most modest form of abridgment. As for myself,
+my early knowledge of English history was entirely derived from a sheet
+of coloured portraits of the English kings pasted up on the wall of my
+box-bed at home. My knowledge of the dates of their reigns, and the order
+of their succession, is even now vividly associated with that coloured
+sheet. Geography was taught from a book. We learned boundaries and the
+names of countries by heart, and chattered them like parrots; but of the
+characteristics of countries and their inhabitants we learned nothing
+beyond that such and such a people “were a hardy race, who devoted
+themselves to agriculture,” and the like. Arithmetic was taught in the
+same way. When we had, by an entirely mechanical and illogical process,
+committed to memory the multiplication table, we were given over to
+somebody’s “Arithmetic,” to puzzle over rules and make our answers to
+the questions tally, by any means whatever, with those in the book. I
+remember, with regard to the rule of three, that we used to try one
+position after the other, until we worked out the right answer. The
+dominie never condescended to explain the simple logic of the process.
+The result is, as regards myself, that I am to this day the greatest
+dunce at figures in the world. I believe I have been detected refusing to
+purchase oranges at two for three halfpence, but readily agreeing to take
+five for sixpence, with the idea that it was a better bargain.
+
+At the time of which I speak it was a rule of faith with all Scotch
+schoolmasters that flagellation was the primary and most important agent
+in the work of education. “Spare the rod, and you spoil the child,”
+should have been written over the door of every parochial school. Every
+boy who entered the portals of my Scotch school with a consciousness
+of being imperfect in any lesson, left all hope of immunity from the
+tag behind him. The slightest mistake in spelling, or in saying the
+Shorter Catechism—that hated Shorter Catechism!—was punished by one or
+more strokes of the tag on the extended hand. I have seen the order go
+down a whole class, “Hold out your hand, sir.” And crack, crack, crack
+went the tag on our unflinching palms. We knew if we flinched we should
+get a double dose, and perhaps on another and more sensitive part of
+our bodies. I think I may safely say that a day never passed without
+a flogging. Two or three times a week the “tag” was the occasion of a
+regular scene. This was when some spirited or big boy refused to hold
+out his hand or untruss. I remember one notable occasion when the master
+attempted to inflict the “extreme punishment” on a big ploughman of
+eighteen or nineteen. There was a regular fight between them: and several
+times master and pupil went down together on the floor, rolling and
+struggling with all the desperation of men engaged in a mortal combat.
+Both parties called upon the pupils to come to their assistance; but
+we, small boys, were too much alarmed to side with either, albeit our
+sympathies were decidedly with the ploughman. The result of this conflict
+was highly agreeable to us all. The dominie was laid up for a week with
+bruised legs, and during that time there was “no school.” The terror
+inspired by the tag caused the boys to frequently play the truant; in
+the vernacular this was called “fugieing.” Scarcely a day passed that
+some boy did not “fugie,” or fly the school. There was one boy who was
+particularly distinguished for this art. He had been punished for it over
+and over again, and beaten at all points until he was black and blue,
+but still he would “fugie.” He would come away from home in the morning
+with his satchel and dinner; but, instead of going to school, would
+betake himself to the forest, and spend the day in birds’-nesting, or
+in devouring “blaeberries.” When his retreat was discovered, the master
+started one morning in pursuit of him, followed by all the scholars in
+a pack. We had a regular hunt, and greatly we enjoyed the sport, not
+caring so much for the fate of the fugitive, as for the holiday and the
+exemption for a few hours from lessons and the tag. Sandy, for that was
+the fugitive’s name, was unearthed like a fox, and hunted like one, all
+through the wood, and over the burn, and up the hill-side to a clump
+of tall fir-trees, where, finding the dominie close upon him, with the
+tag vengefully waved aloft, Sandy clambered up the smooth stem of a
+tall larch-tree, and perched himself triumphantly among its topmost
+branches. The dominie, who was not deficient in pluck when upholding the
+prerogative of the tag, immediately made the attempt to follow him; but
+finding the branches rather too slight to bear his weight, he was glad
+to slide down again, after having successfully climbed the stem. Having
+in vain commanded Sandy to come down, the dominie held a council of war
+with himself for a few minutes, and suddenly resolved upon his strategy.
+One of the boys was despatched to a neighbouring farm-house for an axe.
+When it was brought, the dominie set to work at the root of the tree,
+and, when he had given it two or three strokes, called out once more
+to Sandy—“Will you come down, sir?” Sandy looked cautiously over from
+his nest among the branches to see what probability there was of the
+dominie’s being able to fell the tree, and, apparently, coming to the
+conclusion that he couldn’t do it, contemptuously answered—“Na, I winna
+come doon.” Once more the dominie laid the axe at the root of Sandy’s
+citadel, and though he made little progress in cutting it, the tree shook
+at every stroke, until Sandy, becoming rather uncomfortable, consented
+to come down. He had no sooner reached the ground, than he was collared
+and marched off to the school in triumph, and was duly whipped by extreme
+process.
+
+Our parents rarely interfered to protect us from the tag, when it was
+administered in moderation; though occasionally some noise was made
+when a boy was sent home utterly incapacitated from occupying a sitting
+position. The miller’s wife—a strong-minded dame of the “rampaging”
+order—so far from being maternally indignant when her son, Johnny, was
+sent home in a state of pulp, would occasionally call in to enjoin the
+dominie not to spare him. This lady was a chief actor in one of our most
+memorable “scenes.” Her son Johnny had “fugied” for several days running,
+and had been found out and duly whipped by the maternal order. Some time
+after this the good lady found Johnny hiding in the mill, about the
+middle of the day, when he ought to have been at school. I remember well
+what came of that discovery. Late one afternoon we were startled from our
+studies by a noise of wheels, the clattering of some iron instrument,
+and the accents of a shrill, angry voice. The master immediately ran out
+to see what was the matter, and we, the pupils, took the opportunity to
+rush to the windows. It was the miller’s wife, who had arrived with her
+son Johnny in a cart, keeping guard over him with the kitchen tongs.
+The next minute Johnny was driven into the schoolroom by his infuriate
+parent, who banged him with the tongs as he ran. I shall never forget the
+scene that ensued. “Now have your wull o’ him,” said the Spartan parent
+to the dominie. The dominie thus licensed, got out the tag; but Johnny
+no sooner caught sight of that instrument than he was nerved to the most
+desperate resistance. The moment the dominie advanced to seize him Johnny
+scrambled over a desk and dodged him; and when the dominie ran round
+after him he scrambled back again. The miller’s wife now came to the
+dominie’s assistance, and for nearly a quarter of an hour both together
+hunted Johnny over the desks and forms, hitting out at him with the tag
+and the tongs, while the books, and slates, and milk-cans were scattered
+all over the floor like broken armour on a battle-field. It was not until
+Johnny was fairly out of breath that he gave in; and then he lay down
+on his back on the floor, and turning himself rapidly round as on a
+pivot, menaced first the dominie and then his mother with his iron-shod
+feet. Johnny managed to resist the extreme penalty designed for him, but
+what with the bumps he received in riding over the desks, and the random
+blows from the tongs and the tag, he had punishment enough and to spare.
+Of course, as we all saw and felt that this constant flagellation was
+both cruel and unjust, we were never any better for it, and bore it or
+resisted it manfully, as martyrs bear and resist persecution.
+
+But notwithstanding the loose and desultory, not to say brutal, system
+pursued at our school, the pupils of all degrees managed, in some way or
+other, to acquire a very respectable quantum of knowledge, or, if not
+knowledge itself, the groundwork of knowledge. The boys who learned Greek
+and Latin went to college and took their degrees; the farmers’ sons went
+home to give a higher intellectual life to the society in which their
+families moved; and the humbler class of scholars carried away with them
+to the plough’s tail, the carpenter’s bench, and the smithy, just enough
+of the rudiments of learning to enable them to cultivate themselves by
+after study. This fact may seem a contradiction to the picture I have
+given of my Scotch school. In Scotland, however, bad teaching and a
+high state of mental cultivation among the masses are quite consistent.
+The fact is, the middle and lower classes in Scotland have a passion
+for learning. The dearest ambition of the poor cottar is to educate his
+children, and, if possible, to give one, at least, such an amount of
+schooling as will fit him for a higher station than that occupied by his
+parents. A poor hillside crofter will starve himself and his family for
+ten years of their life to send one of the boys to college and qualify
+him for the kirk. Such boys, however, learn more poring over their books
+by the humble fireside at home, or out in the fields in the intervals of
+their farm work, than at the school. They learn under every disadvantage,
+because they are spurred on by a love of knowledge and a desire to raise
+themselves. It is this universal thirst after knowledge and intellectual
+cultivation that gives Scotland so decided a pre-eminence as regards
+general education. Persons who can neither read nor write are common
+enough in England, not alone in the country districts, but also in the
+great towns. I doubt if you could find one such in all Scotland. The
+classes corresponding to the “hinds” and “navvies” of England, cannot
+only read and write, but are capable of enjoying literature in its higher
+developments. Our farming-men at home used to spend their evenings,
+after their frugal supper of kail brose, in reading the newspapers and
+discussing the debates in Parliament. Our herd-boy taught himself the
+elements of astronomy out in the fields, while tending the cattle. He was
+the first to tell me the names of the planets and point them out to me.
+I taught him, in return, a little Latin; and I remember, during my last
+year at college, meeting this herd-boy in the quadrangle, arrayed in the
+red toga. I have since heard that he carried off the first mathematical
+prize.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[3] In an abstract of a bill for bettering the condition of the
+schoolmasters of Scotland, passed at the beginning of the century, it is
+laid down that “the amount of salary to each parochial schoolmaster shall
+not be less than the average annual wages of a day labourer, nor above
+that of two day labourers.”
+
+
+
+
+The Convict out in the World.
+
+
+At stated periods, the governor of a convict prison gives audience to
+such inmates of his mansion as may have complaints to make, or petitions
+to prefer; and of the demands most commonly heard, from old and young,
+one of the commonest is: “Please, sir, may I grow?” It sounds odd to hear
+the naïve request put by some square-shouldered grey-haired fellow; but
+it is usually found so reasonable that, after a word or two of inquiry,
+the governor consents. The man wishes to let his hair grow within the
+next three or four months before his leaving the prison; and it is the
+first step towards his release, whether it be on the expiry of his
+sentence, or on his earning a “conditional pardon.” Subsequently, the
+chaplain of the prison sends forth certain formal questions as to the
+man’s prospect of obtaining honest employment out of doors; and about a
+month before the date of his departure, the chaplain addresses a letter
+to any person by whom the prisoner hopes to be employed, describing the
+man’s state of health, stating his conduct in prison, and asking whether
+his report upon the subject of employment is true, or whether he has
+any other means of support. In the majority of cases, I am told, the
+replies are “satisfactory;” but, in some instances, they are otherwise,
+and, in some, the man can give no reference. Within my own very limited
+range of individual observation, I have observed in England the same
+circumstance which I have noticed in Ireland—that the prisoner often
+has a dread of returning to his friends, not only because he fears that
+his character will be known, but because he is too well aware that
+those with whom he has been acquainted before he entered the prison
+will draw him back into evil courses. At once, then, we perceive a very
+unexpected symptom of improvement: the desire of the prisoner to cut all
+connection with his family, and to avow that he has no means, no chance
+of obtaining help or employment, is one of the most tangible results of
+his reformation. In cases where the reply is unsatisfactory, or the man
+can give no reference, the governor and chaplain fill up a form in which
+they express an opinion whether he is able to earn his livelihood. From
+these inquiries and records returns are made to the Secretary of State,
+specifying the men who are eligible to be recommended for release under
+a conditional pardon. On receiving the order of the Secretary of State,
+the licence is printed on a small parchment form, and on the back of that
+form is the following schedule of conditions:—
+
+    “1. The power of revoking or altering the licence of a convict
+    will most certainly be exercised in case of his misconduct.
+
+    “2. If, therefore, he wishes to retain the privilege which, by
+    his good behaviour under penal discipline, he has obtained, he
+    must prove, by his subsequent conduct, that he is really worthy
+    of her Majesty’s clemency.
+
+    “3. To produce a forfeiture of the licence, it is by no means
+    necessary that the holder should be convicted of any new
+    offence. If he associate with notoriously bad characters,
+    leads an idle and dissolute life, or has no visible means of
+    obtaining an honest livelihood, &c., it will be assumed that
+    he is about to relapse into crime, and he will be at once
+    apprehended, and recommitted to prison under his original
+    sentence.”
+
+Dressed in clothes provided for him by the prison, and suited to his
+probable occupation, whether as an artisan or a labourer, his parchment
+licence in his pocket, and the first instalment of his gratuity—probably
+2_l._, more or less—with a soldier’s railway pass for the place of
+his destination, the prisoner sets out. In less lucky instances, he
+simply walks forth into space “to take his chance”—that is, to beg for
+employment from those who are too busy to attend to him, or to supply
+his necessities by some more familiar means. Upon the whole, however,
+we might classify the prisoners into three classes: those who return
+to their friends, those who proceed at once to some familiar place of
+resort, and those who seek the “Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society.”
+
+I have already explained that those persons who were convicted under
+the Peel’s Servitude Act of 1853, which accidentally omitted to provide
+for the conditional pardon, form a class which has occasioned some
+perplexity, but is gradually dying out. The men of this class are
+divided into four “stages:” those in the second stage have sixpence a
+week towards their gratuity, in the third ninepence, in the fourth one
+shilling. Men sentenced under the amended Act of 1857 are divided into
+three “stages:” in the second stage they receive fourpence a week, and
+in the third eightpence. The larger sums given to the men of the first
+class, together with some other indulgences in prison, are allowed as a
+compensation for their losing the chance of getting a ticket-of-leave,
+either in the colonies or at home. The accumulated gratuity sometimes
+rises to a considerable amount. A friend who has studied the subject
+minutely has found it to range as high as 27_l._ or 28_l._; usually it
+ranges from 8_l._ to 20_l._; and he computes the average to be about
+12_l._ As you already know, this is not handed to the man in one sum.
+Supposing his gratuity to be of the average amount, on leaving the
+prison he will receive 2_l._, with the deduction of a few pence for
+postage which will be incurred on his account after his departure. Ten
+days later he will receive 2_l._ more, at the end of two months 4_l._,
+and at the end of three months the balance of 4_l._; so that he will be
+five months and a half before he can draw the whole sum. Thus, if he is
+discharged on the 1st of January, he will not have cleared his prison
+account until the end of June. He cannot draw any of the instalments
+without obtaining the endorsement of a clergyman, magistrate, or some
+known persons, to a form which shows that he is living respectably and
+supporting himself by honest work. Some time since, I am told by the
+same friend, the discharged prisoners were often unable to obtain any of
+their gratuity, and in most instances could not arrive at the closing
+balance. It too frequently happened that the man would return to his
+friends, recover his original character—that is, become a vagabond
+and a thief—and so lose the power to procure the valuable endorsement
+of a magistrate or clergyman. Another danger attended all convicts,
+and still, I fear, attends the most hardened or the most desolate. At
+every post where the man was likely to emerge from his seclusion was
+stationed an agent appointed by the very worst of all “the dangerous
+classes”—some Fagin or Fagin’s man, the caterer for criminal customers.
+This functionary is of the same genus with those who tout at the
+landing-pier of watering-places, with vocal cards issuing from their
+mouths in praise of certain inns. The gentleman sallying forth from one
+of her Majesty’s mansions, found himself suddenly courted as a welcome
+customer, a “distinguished person,” with every convenience offered to him
+for spending the money in his pocket as fast as possible, and perhaps for
+discounting the great expectations of the next few months.
+
+It was a knowledge of these facts which, in 1857, induced Mr. Whitbread,
+the Member for Bedford, at present one of the Lords of the Admiralty,
+to suggest the establishment of an Association for the express purpose
+of holding out a helping hand to the discharged prisoner. He invited
+Mr. William Bayne Rankin and other friends to assist him. Some lent
+him their names, which were in themselves of great value; others gave
+him their money, and some few rendered active co-operation. Mr. Rankin
+became the honorary secretary of the Association, and Mr. F. Partridge
+its secretary. By degrees the “Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society,” which
+is still an independent charitable body, has become a sort of volunteer
+auxiliary to the Convict Department. The Association prepared forms,
+which were sent to every convict prison in England; the nature of the
+society is explained to each prisoner before his discharge; and he
+accepts the help or not entirely according to his own free choice. In
+early days, many prisoners hesitated to comply with the first peremptory
+condition imposed by the society—that the whole of the gratuity should be
+placed in its hands. Judged by graduates in a school not calculated to
+afford the happiest study of human motives, the charitable gentlemen in
+Westminster were regarded as a great joint-stock crimping establishment;
+and the newly released suspected that they were to be as much victimized
+as the German “redemptioners” were in America. By degrees, however, this
+suspicion wore off; a knowledge of the manner in which the society worked
+spread amongst the class on whose behalf it acted, and the business of
+the corporation has expanded accordingly. At first, there would be two or
+three cases a week; there are now three or four a day. At first, there
+was scarcely work enough for one secretary; now the society employs a
+secretary, two clerks, and one or two agents, and finds the machinery
+altogether insufficient for its exigencies. During the last year, the
+moneys passing through the hands of the society have amounted to an
+aggregate between 10,000_l._ and 12,000_l._, composed principally of the
+prisoners’ own money; for it must be confessed that no society has ever
+done so much with such a narrow modicum of means. The list of actual
+subscribers is slender, and we observed that the heaviest share of the
+burden falls upon a very few in that short list. At the same time,
+gentlemen at a distance do not scruple to claim the co-operation of the
+society in helping forward individuals who may have excited a local or
+individual interest.
+
+The prisoner comes to the office of the society, at 39, Charing Cross,
+with the papers of his discharge, including one of the forms stating
+that he is recommended by the governor of the prison which he has left.
+This paper specifies his registered number in the prison, his name and
+sentence, his age on conviction, religion and education, date and place
+of conviction, nature of crime, previous convictions and nature of
+crimes, character in separate confinements, character on public works,
+trade and degree of proficiency, capacity for hard labour, the employment
+desired, the prisoner’s willingness to emigrate, amount of gratuity
+due, probable period of discharge, with any remarks which the governor
+may think fit to add. The society disposes of its clients in three
+ways—first, by obtaining employment for them; secondly, by enabling them
+to return to their friends; and thirdly, by assisting them to emigrate.
+The first case which came before the society was in May, 1857; in the
+interval it has helped more than 1,900 prisoners. The secretaries believe
+that, of the total number, not more than 100 have been re-convicted.
+There are no positive data to establish this fact, but there are hopes
+that hereafter it may be tested by direct record. With regard to the
+men who are helped, they may be subdivided into two classes—those for
+whom situations are found by the advice of the society; and those who
+obtain work themselves, and are helped to procure tools or materials for
+work. The women remain at a “Home” provided for them, and in most cases
+enter as domestic servants. Where the society itself recommends its
+client for employment, and gives him a character, his antecedents are
+distinctly mentioned; but where he obtains work by his own independent
+search, his circumstances are not disclosed. I have inspected the books
+of the society, and have traced a considerable number of cases, both
+of men and women. Out of the whole number, I have before me a list of
+twenty-five, and I am able to say that they are not exceptional, but
+may be paralleled by far more in the books for the current year. The
+kinds of employment are as various as that indicated in the _London
+Directory_. The men are engaged as bakers, milkmen, painters, builders,
+cabinet-makers, commercial travellers, fishmongers, engineers, watermen,
+hawkers, goldsmiths, &c. The cases to which I refer range over periods of
+more than a year; some very few are a little less, some extend to three
+or four years. A few men have been placed in independent business. In two
+instances a business was purchased for a man, and in both those instances
+the person assisted is going on well. In all these cases there is
+complete information down to the latest date in the present year. In one
+instance, a man who appears to have squandered a part of his gratuity,
+came to the society at the eleventh hour in want of five shillings to
+procure tools. There was something in the earnestness of the man which
+attracted attention; on inquiry, his story proved to be correct; the
+tools were furnished him, and he is now employed by a great building
+firm. He learned the particular handicraft in which he is engaged, at
+Portland. Another instance falls under my personal observation, and it
+is interesting for special reasons. It is that of a young man who, since
+his discharge, has obtained work under an old employer, to whom he told
+all that had happened to him. By his discipline in prison, by acquiring
+a consciousness of his powers as a workman, with an insight into the
+opening offered through industry and energy, the man had evidently
+surmounted the original sense of the degradation. When I met him,
+accidentally, I observed no desire to parade himself, nor do I suppose
+he would have preferred to see his departure from his late residence
+announced in the _Court Circular_; but he did rather seek my notice,
+no doubt as that of a witness to his working skill, his diligence, and
+his substantial advancement; and he seemed to feel that the character
+which he had acquired at Portland was a substantial testimony to his
+capacity, industry, and resolution. The man is a very good specimen of a
+sharp Englishman. I have met, of course quite casually, with one or two
+instances of the same kind.
+
+Another prisoner, assisted by the society, was discharged more than
+three years and a half ago. He found employment for himself; but after
+the society had assisted him, he came back to it for a character. He
+was warned that, if it were given, his employer must be told of his
+antecedents, but he still seemed to think the character necessary. The
+person who was about to engage him, a tradesman in a considerable way of
+business, called upon the secretary of the society. The instant he heard
+that his servant had been a convict, he turned away, declaring that it
+was useless to think of engaging him. The secretary stopped him, and
+inquired the amount of risk which the employer would incur; it turned
+out that the man would probably have 2_l._ or 3_l._ in his hands at a
+time, and that a guarantee of 5_l._ would cover the risk. The secretary
+undertook to guarantee that amount; and the man has remained in the
+same place for considerably more than three years, with such thorough
+satisfaction to his employer that that gentleman has spontaneously
+released the society from its liability. This case also is peculiarly
+interesting, as showing how the employing classes may be made to learn,
+by their own inquiry and practical experience, that a fellow-creature who
+is once a criminal needs not always be so.
+
+Special arrangements are made for disposing of the women who leave the
+Refuge at Fulham. This place, as well as other portions of our English
+system, is pointed out as analogous to the “Intermediate” stage in
+Ireland, but the analogy is very faint. I mentioned the half-pint of beer
+allowed to the fourth class at Portland, as one amongst other indulgences
+to compensate for the loss of transportation for prisoners convicted
+between 1853 and 1857. Objections might be made to the dietary at Fulham,
+as being on too high a scale; and it is wholly unlike the homely fare
+which contents the hard-worked labourer at Lusk, or the penitent at
+the Golden Bridge in Dublin. The Fulham Refuge is also distinguished
+from the Intermediate prisons of Ireland by less liberty of action,
+and by containing within itself places of punishment. Still, it is an
+improvement on older prisons, and is not without _proportionate_ results.
+From the 1st of January to the end of May, 1861, seventy-two women were
+discharged from the Fulham Refuge, and were thus distributed:—Sent to
+parents, eighteen; sent to husbands, seven; to other relatives, fifteen;
+to friends, three; to service, direct from the Refuge, one; to the
+Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society, with a view to service or emigration,
+twenty-six; sent out on their own account, having no home, eight. The
+reports of the first four classes are pronounced to be “satisfactory,”
+with the exception of two in the first class and one in the second. Of
+the first class three had no home, but had children in workhouses, whom
+they went to rejoin. Three others have joined friends under anything but
+hopeful circumstances. One is at service in the house of a clergyman;
+and another, whose husband is a convict in Australia, is understood to
+be “going on well.” When any woman is sent out from the Refuge, steps
+are taken to ascertain where she will be received, and to secure her
+safe arrival, with authenticated reports of the fact. Communication is
+always made with the clergyman of the district to which the discharged
+prisoner proceeds; and, says Mrs. Harpour, the lady superintendent of
+the Refuge at Fulham, in a letter to Sir Joshua Jebb, “much is learned
+in this mode of the sad and miserable way in which these poor creatures
+have been brought up, and the temptations with which they were surrounded
+immediately on their return to their deplorable haunts. It excites our
+sympathy, and makes us feel that something must be done by the public,
+or all our efforts cannot but be fruitless in many cases. I can only
+hope and pray that the publicity which is now being given to the convict
+system, will induce the Christian public to lend us a helping hand. We
+do not ask for their money, but for their sympathy and a little of their
+time.” I have statements of cases in which prisoners who have left the
+Refuge have done well; but, in this as in other instances, I am cautioned
+against their publication, lest exaggerated inferences should be drawn
+from contracted data. And at the Refuge, as throughout the English
+establishments, I have failed to obtain anything like the same full,
+detailed, and long-continued information about convicts at large, which I
+was enabled to obtain by my own personal examination in Ireland.
+
+One grand resource for the disposal of English convicts, especially of
+men whose term of incarceration may be shortened by “ticket-of-leave,”
+is transportation. Theoretically, transportation is still continued
+to Bermuda, Gibraltar, and Western Australia; but the transport of
+convicts to Bermuda has been indefinitely suspended. Of the Australian
+arrangements the most recent account is afforded me in an extract from
+the unpublished Report to the Directors of Convict Prisons, by the
+religious instructor, who sailed in the convict ship _Palmerston_, and
+landed his charges at Fremantle in February.
+
+                                   “_Millbank Prison, May 27, 1861._
+
+    “... I visited the prison on the third or fourth day after
+    the men were landed. The chaplain and deputy superintendent
+    kindly accompanied me. It resembles Portland more than any
+    other I know. The cells are small in size, and the interior
+    arrangements on the same principle as at that prison.
+
+    “There were two large association rooms occupied, I believe,
+    at night by artisans whom I found employed in the smiths’
+    forge and carpenters’ shop, which are very extensive, and
+    where work on a large scale was being carried on under the
+    superintendence of the Royal Engineer department. Some large
+    rooms on the basement floor were fitted up as printing-offices,
+    and prisoners were employed here in doing all the Government
+    printing required for the colony.
+
+    “There were, I believe, about 400 men in the prison at this
+    time, including about eighty landed from the _Palmerston_.
+    These last were employed, some few in the workshops, and the
+    remainder on the roads, working in gangs.
+
+    “The rations were abundant, and of excellent quality; served,
+    precisely as they are at Millbank, to the men in their cells.
+
+    “On the general parade, I noticed that the reconvicted, or men
+    remitted to the establishment, and the men sent up for short
+    sentences from the police-office, were paraded apart, and
+    distinguished from the general prisoners by a different dress.
+
+    “Being desirous of seeing how the remainder of the men who had
+    come out under our charge in the _Palmerston_ were disposed
+    of, and how the probationary period of six months (through
+    which all convicts are required to pass before they can
+    receive the greater degree of freedom of a ticket-of-licence)
+    is passed through, I visited, in company with Dr. Watson, the
+    surgeon superintendent, four of the out-stations. We found all
+    these stations occupied by men who also had come out in the
+    _Palmerston_; and I was informed that, for some time previous
+    to the arrival of that ship, the road-making had been much
+    interrupted for want of men.
+
+    “The parties consisted of from 40 to 80 men, lodged in huts.
+    They were in charge of a warder; and in most places there was
+    one of the Royal Engineers to direct the works on the roads,
+    and two or three convict constables to preserve order and
+    superintend the men at work and in their quarters. The men work
+    on the roads from four to five miles each way, and, whenever I
+    saw them, appeared to be diligently employed.
+
+    “Their sleeping-places were divided by partitions of slanting
+    boards, and they took their meals in messes of six or eight
+    at separate tables; the rations being supplied from the
+    chief stations, Perth and Guildford, and the whole from the
+    Commissariat in the first instance. They are also allowed
+    tobacco.
+
+    “The men at these stations were cheerful and industrious; they
+    made no complaints, except in reference to the heat of the
+    climate and mosquitoes. Those within reach of the river were
+    permitted to bathe in it in the morning. The hours of labour
+    were from six to six—one hour, I believe, for breakfast, and
+    one and a half for dinner were allowed.
+
+    “However desirable it may be to execute works of this nature at
+    a distance from where a proper degree of control may be kept
+    up, I cannot but say that I felt anxious for the welfare of
+    the prisoners who, during their detention in these huts, would
+    be exposed to great temptation and demoralization. In fact,
+    these stations were, in every respect, inferior to the larger
+    and more regularly-arranged stations which I recollect to have
+    visited in Tasmania peninsula. It is also obvious that the
+    sooner the men who go out in a convict-ship can be separated,
+    after they are disembarked, the better for them in every way.
+
+    “The men at these stations appeared perfectly aware of the
+    uselessness of attempting escape in a colony which has no
+    known outlet to any other. In point of fact, were the attempt
+    made, their footsteps in the sand would be unerringly traced
+    by the extraordinary sagacity of the natives attached to each
+    police-station for the purpose; they would be captured, or
+    perish for want of water.
+
+    “I shall now endeavour to describe their prospects of
+    employment when liberated on a ticket-of-leave, from what came
+    under my own observation.
+
+    “A few men who were sent out in the _Palmerston_, having
+    completed a large portion of their sentence at home (two
+    of them with commuted sentence), were discharged from the
+    establishment in about eight days after their arrival. They
+    were supplied with a ticket-of-leave dress, a portion of their
+    gratuity, and a pass for twenty-four hours, to enable them to
+    seek employment. I travelled in the steamboat from Fremantle to
+    Perth on the day some of them left the prison....
+
+    “The social status of the sober and industrious convict settler
+    is perfectly assured. In the country districts no difference is
+    made between him and the free settler.
+
+                                          “I am, gentlemen,” &c. &c.
+
+After reading only this brief, sober, and most authentic report, the
+reader will begin to doubt whether transportation can be what it was
+once supposed to be—a very terrible penalty, severance of natural ties,
+death to family associations, and so forth. It has had its terrors, and
+at more than one season, but the season has always been limited. In July,
+1827, came into operation an Act extending transportation to various
+felonious offences. In the following year there was a great decline in
+such offences—the new Act had stricken terror; but in the very next year
+the influence of the punishment had declined; by degrees transportation
+ceased to be regarded with alarm, and now it is admitted to be a positive
+reward. Writing years back, Archbishop Whately shows the dawn of this
+feeling. He quotes the words of convicts, crying out with delight at
+the accommodation on board ship; thanking God for having been carried
+to a country where they were well off; writing home with presents to
+masters whom they had robbed, and even offering patronage and assistance
+in a country where a man is sure to make his fortune. The keen-sighted
+teacher of logic foresaw that such dangerous knowledge must spread in the
+mother-country.
+
+If no longer available as a deterrent, is transportation a purely
+beneficial auxiliary? Let us look into _that_ question. During the
+present session of Parliament, Mr. Childers, the Member for Pontefract,
+obtained a Select Committee “to inquire into the present system of
+transportation, its utility, and effect upon colonization, and to report
+whether any improvement could be effected therein.” The committee was,
+upon the whole, well manned. Mr. Childers himself has a practical
+knowledge of the subject, from his connection with Australia; and I
+believe one purpose of the inquiry was to show that, in consideration
+for the Australian colonies generally, transportation ought to be wholly
+abandoned, even to Western Australia. The net result of the report is,
+that the committee advises no interference, but delicately suggests that
+transportation should continue as it is carried on now, under the actual
+circumstances of the day. These circumstances are remarkable. It has been
+resolved to suppress the convict prisons in Bermuda and Gibraltar. The
+gross number of convicts in England, as well as in Ireland, appears to be
+actually diminishing. The free colonies of Australia have passed laws for
+preventing the admission of any licence-holder or expiree, under severe
+penalties to be inflicted upon any ship-master who shall infringe the
+local law. Some convicts have escaped from Western Australia, but not
+in great numbers, and the alarm on the subject appears to have subsided,
+though the feeling of repugnance is as strong as ever.
+
+It comes out in evidence, that the Western Australians can employ a
+certain amount of convict labour, but cannot employ much more than they
+now have, at the present rate of annual supply. Many employers prefer
+convicts, as more tractable than free labourers, and they are decidedly
+pleased at the exclusion Acts of the free colonies. Mr. Burgess and
+other witnesses declare that crime has not increased in proportion to
+the number of convicts, a considerable proportion of the men having
+behaved well; but they draw marked distinctions between a bad order of
+convicts and a better order, strongly hinting that a careful selection
+should be made; and I am disposed to believe that these hints will not be
+lost upon the head office in Parliament Street. Several of the colonists
+had desired the introduction of convicts, because they looked forward
+to the official expenditure on account of the establishment, &c.; and
+these speculators have been disappointed. They were particularly annoyed
+because provisions for convicts were furnished from other colonies,
+whereas they claimed a protective system of trade, as the correlative
+of the convict burden. Amongst eastern colonists are many who formerly
+approved of transportation, but they found “the character of the
+convicts grow worse as the criminal laws of England were ameliorated and
+softened.” A very curious lesson is brought out incidentally. “Formerly,”
+says Mr. Hewitt, of Tasmania—the last colony in which convictism was
+abolished, much to the chagrin of Governor Denison and the authorities
+in England—“we got men sent to us for political offences, for poaching,
+machine-breaking, and so on; and there was always a very large body of
+convicts who prided themselves that they were not thieves and rogues; but
+since the alteration of the laws in this country, it seems to me that
+every man who comes out has committed some grave offence.”
+
+On one point all appear to be agreed: that the old assignment system,
+and _à fortiori_ any Norfolk Island system, which tends to mass
+convicts together in bodies undiluted by the elements of ordinary
+society, can never more be tolerated. Those who view the subject with
+a practical knowledge, and yet without local predilections, believe
+that transportation cannot be continued much longer, even to Western
+Australia. I am well aware that the Irish as well as the English
+authorities desire that that outlet should be retained, and I see
+objections to any _sudden_ closing of it; but that it ought to be
+abolished within a comparatively few years I am convinced. I have the
+very highest authority for the avowal, that the crime, which irresistibly
+impelled Sir William Molesworth’s Committee to pronounce the doom of
+convictism in Australia generally, cannot be prevented or effectively
+controlled in Western Australia, even now. One of the most experienced
+officials, Mr. Thomas Frederick Elliot, of the Colonial Office, was
+amongst those who stood against the abolition proceedings of 1837;
+but “further observation,” he says, “has altered my opinion.” The
+convicts who remained in Sydney and New South Wales have done harm.
+Western Australia may profit from the expedient while the colony is
+in a languishing state, but it can never be a substitute for ordinary
+colonization. The relief is not “beneficial to this country”—“the
+numbers sent out are too trifling to be of any account,” either to the
+mother country or to the colony. “In every point of view I think that
+transportation as a system has come to an end, and that its day is past.”
+
+Before I proceed to close this series of papers with the conclusions
+which have been forced upon me in my survey of the whole, in Ireland
+and England, I must refer once more to the case set forth on behalf
+of the English system. The fate of my last paper appears to have been
+curious. In some quarters it has been regarded as too favourable to
+the English system, while the chief conductors of that system think
+that I have “not done them justice.” I am told that I have fallen into
+many errors, and that the comparison which I have made between England
+and Ireland is disparaging to England. In the most explicit terms that
+could be employed I have invited correction of errors. I have avowed my
+readiness to incorporate in this third paper any emendations with which
+I can be supplied; my object being, not to advocate one system or to
+disparage another, but simply to lay before your readers, as far as my
+examination of the two systems and your space would permit, the facts
+themselves. The communications upon the subject have been very numerous
+and protracted. Throughout all, I have been met by Sir Joshua Jebb with
+the most handsome consideration and a generous frankness. The result,
+however, is that I have a lengthened statement, from his pen, going over
+the ground from the time when “sound principles were laid down in 1842 by
+the then Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham, for establishing probationary
+periods of discipline at home, in order to the disposal of the convict
+by transportation;” and this statement I now take bodily, with some very
+slight curtailment.
+
+    “The difficulties which occurred at that time in Van Diemen’s
+    Land prevented the development of these principles, and led to
+    a modified arrangement under Earl Grey and Sir George Grey.
+    Under the system as it was then settled, from 1847 to 1853, a
+    printed notice was communicated to every convict, telling him
+    that the first period of probation would be passed in solitary
+    confinement for some time; and employment on the public works
+    for the second period; the third stage under a ticket-of-leave
+    in one of the colonies. The incentives to industry and good
+    conduct, during the two first periods, were very fully
+    explained in this document. They consisted of remissions of
+    the imprisonment, gratuities, badges marking the progress of
+    each individual, and other records, by which a man’s fate was
+    placed in his own hands, and was mainly dependent upon his own
+    exertions.
+
+    “In regard to the third period of probation, however,
+    with a ticket-of-leave, the following conditions were
+    promulgated:—‘The holder of a ticket-of-leave will be required
+    to remain within a certain district; he will not be released
+    from the custody of the Government until engaged to serve
+    an employer for twelve months; he will then be placed under
+    the supervision of the police, will be required to register
+    his place of abode, and periodically report himself to the
+    police,’ &c. Pentonville and Portland afford the fullest means
+    of judging of the system of discipline and the results of the
+    two periods which were to be enforced in this country. The
+    commissioners of the former prison, after anxiously watching
+    the moral effects of the great experiment conducted for five
+    years under their superintendence, thus recorded the conclusion
+    at which they had arrived, in a report dated in 1847:—‘We feel
+    warranted in expressing our firm conviction, that the moral
+    results of the discipline have been most encouraging, and
+    attended with a success which, we believe, is without parallel
+    in the history of penal discipline.’
+
+    “With respect to Portland, Captain Whitty, in his report for
+    1850, after stating his conviction that the system of following
+    up a period of separate confinement by associated labours, was
+    working well, states:—‘The subdued, improved, and disciplined
+    state in which the convicts generally arrive at Portland from
+    the stage of separate confinement, appears to be an admirable
+    preparation for their transfer to the greater degree of freedom
+    unavoidable on public works.’ Captain Knight, who succeeded
+    Captain Whitty as Governor, remarks in his report for 1851:—‘I
+    have frequently watched the working parties from positions in
+    which I could not have been seen by them, and I have seldom
+    seen a greater amount of willingness or industry displayed
+    by men whose livelihood depended upon their exertions.’ [I
+    myself was a witness of the same degree of cheerful industry,
+    in 1861.] It appears from the returns, that 400 men are at the
+    present time quarrying and loading from the great ditch of
+    the fortress about three tons a man, for which a contractor
+    had previously received 1_s._ 5_d._ a ton. The net saving to
+    the Government, after deducting 4_d._ for the cost of plant,
+    would give 3_s._ 3_d._ a day as the net earnings of each man
+    in the working parties; whilst the entire cost, exclusive of
+    buildings, will not exceed 1_s._ 9_d._ a head. Were it not
+    that a proportion of the convicts are detained at school,
+    and employed as cooks, tailors, &c., the prison would be
+    self-supporting; and had there been opportunity for the full
+    development of convict labour, at least one-half of the usual
+    cost of such works would have been saved.
+
+    “Though Portland is only known to the general public as a
+    place where an outbreak occurred some years ago; and though
+    the discipline has endured the rudest shocks from the changes
+    consequent on the cessation of transportation,—which not only
+    disappointed the expectations that had been held out to the
+    men, but entirely shook their confidence, and was the cause
+    of the outbreak referred to,—the establishment never was in
+    a much higher state of discipline and efficiency than at the
+    present time. The breakwater and fortifications, too, are
+    advancing towards completion, and already constitute a grand
+    and imperishable monument of what can be effected by convict
+    labour.
+
+    “From 1848 to 1853, during which time alone the established
+    system appears to have been in full operation, everything went
+    on swimmingly. It was ‘all right,’ in the English prisons of
+    Pentonville and Portland; and we have it on the authority of
+    Sir W. Denison, the Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, that in 1851
+    the convicts sent from public works were generally conducting
+    themselves as honestly and industriously as unconvicted
+    farm-servants in England. Every interest was then satisfied.
+    The mother-country annually got rid of some 3,000 of her
+    criminal population, and the colony obtained the advantage of
+    cheap labour. This was the culminating point of a sound and
+    carefully devised system of penal and reformatory discipline.
+    [Sir Joshua Jebb states, in one of his reports, that we never
+    may hope to see the like again. The last ship sailed in 1852;
+    and though he must have cast a lingering look after it, he
+    appears to have manfully set to work to repair the breach made
+    in the system of discipline.]
+
+    “An Act was passed in 1853, under the provisions of which a
+    large proportion of convicts might be sentenced to ‘penal
+    servitude,’ instead of transportation. It will not escape
+    notice that, during the whole period of a convict’s being
+    employed on public works, he is placed in a condition
+    intermediate between imprisonment and liberty. During this
+    portion of the sentence, as I described in a former article,
+    the men work in association; good order being preserved by
+    the presence of an officer with each party; and their return
+    from distant works in the open quarries at Portland, or from
+    dockyards or fortifications at Portsmouth or Chatham, being
+    insured by watchfulness of guards. With a view to afford
+    greater encouragement, it was considered desirable to divide
+    this probationary period into four progressive stages, to each
+    of which certain ameliorations and privileges were attached.
+    In the last stage, especially, a proportion of the men are
+    selected for ‘special service,’ in which they pursue their
+    several avocations, relieved from any direct supervision. At
+    Portland, they may be seen passing to and fro with tools,
+    attending points on the railways, &c.; at Dartmoor, they attend
+    cattle on the hills, and perform various farm operations,
+    independent of control. A large body of these men have also
+    been employed at Woking assisting in the completion of the new
+    prison, and others are to be sent to Broadmoor.
+
+    “We now come to the consideration of the third period of the
+    system, with a probation pass or a ticket-of-leave designed
+    for a distant colony, but now forced on our attention at home.
+    Here the range is limited to the few convicts who since 1852
+    have been sent to Western Australia, and the English system
+    in its entirety requires to be judged by the few openings
+    afforded in that colony. Here we see an intermediate system,
+    expressly designed to fit the man for colonial life and labour,
+    in full operation, on a plan suggested by Sir Joshua Jebb
+    in 1849. It is well known to any one who has experience of
+    convicts, that release from imprisonment will alone afford
+    any sure test of character; and it is to this test, in the
+    face of all the difficulties which had to be encountered, that
+    an appeal has necessarily been made. The system of granting
+    pardons, revocable on certain conditions, popularly known as
+    tickets-of-leave, has been adopted from the colonial stage, an
+    a precautionary measure; and the benevolent assistance of the
+    public has been sought in every way that has been possible.
+    On mature consideration, however, and on very sufficient
+    grounds, it has been deemed inexpedient to do more, either
+    in giving effect to the principle of the probation gangs,
+    or the supervision of police. There is scarcely an officer
+    in the convict service who does not strongly entertain this
+    conviction. [After alluding to the help afforded by the
+    chaplains and the Prisoners’ Aid Society, the statement
+    proceeds.] Thousands have been rescued from criminal courses
+    and tided over their greatest difficulties, by these most wise
+    and economical preventive measures.
+
+    “We now come to the results, which are given in the
+    accompanying comprehensive tabular returns. [The tables are
+    placed at the end of this article.]
+
+    “If the results be carefully consulted, it must be confessed
+    they have been more favourable than could have been
+    anticipated; for though twenty, or perhaps even twenty-five,
+    per cent., may have returned upon the hands of the Government
+    in seven or eight years, it is a fact that the number sentenced
+    has diminished from 3,311 in 1848, when the great majority were
+    transported to Van Diemen’s Land,[4] to an average, during the
+    last three years, of 2,226, when the great majority have been
+    released at home. Many causes must have combined to produce a
+    result so wholly subversive of all previous calculations;[5]
+    but a sound, deterrent, and, at the same time, an enlightened
+    and Christian discipline, steadily persevered in under the
+    authority of every Secretary of State since 1838, may fairly be
+    allowed to claim its share.
+
+    “In an admirable article which appeared in the _Times_ of
+    the 18th of April last, the writer has ‘hit the right nail
+    on the head.’ After a graphic description of desperate and
+    highly-skilled ruffians returning to their malpractices, after
+    confinement, with greater zest than ever, he states—‘These
+    constitute the ugly percentage of convicts with which nothing
+    can be done, the true blackamoors of the system who can never
+    be washed white.’ Here it is, and, perhaps, here only we fail.
+
+    “We find the following, in Sir Joshua Jebb’s report for
+    1849:—‘In connexion with the subject of modification of the
+    present system, I would submit the expediency of establishing
+    a more severe system of discipline, and of enforcing a more
+    protracted term of imprisonment, in the case of all men
+    convicted of heinous offences, especially such as were
+    accompanied by violence, and in certain cases. It is impossible
+    to state the precise operations of such measures, or the
+    extent to which they might be applied; but if the very worst
+    characters were imprisoned for the whole term of life, or
+    during their respective sentences, at some penal establishment
+    at home, or in the colonies, others disposed of by
+    tickets-of-leave in Western Australia, and the residue released
+    at home with conditional pardons, or encouraged to emigrate,
+    I believe that no sensible inconvenience could possibly be
+    experienced.’
+
+    “The foregoing is a brief sketch of the English system and
+    its results, deprived as it is of its mainstay, namely, a
+    satisfactory means of disposing of the convicts who are subject
+    to the two first probationary stages; and defective, as it
+    is admitted to be, in the means of dealing with the ‘true
+    blackamoors of the system.’”
+
+This document is, as I have said, the statement of Sir Joshua Jebb, very
+slightly curtailed to bring it within your space. I have abridged a small
+portion of the retrospect at the commencement, and have shortened the
+transitions here and there; and that is all the change. The writer has
+not allowed himself to take the broadest view of the subject; which we
+shall not quite understand, unless we glance at the chronic controversy
+between the two systems of England and Ireland. In 1857, Sir Joshua
+Jebb made a report professing to describe the Irish system, and stating
+his own opinion upon it. I certainly could not adopt Sir Joshua Jebb’s
+description of the arrangements in Ireland; nor can I entirely agree
+with what he supposes to be the object of inquiry: namely, to ascertain
+whether the probationary prisoners should be withdrawn from the higher
+stages on public works, and congregated in the huts of the intermediate
+stage; whether discharged prisoners could not be placed under the
+supervision of the police, and whether employment could not be found
+for prisoners released on licence as in Ireland. Sir Joshua meets these
+questions in the negative, and I believe I am correct in stating his
+conclusions thus:—
+
+    “Firstly. The character of the convicts in this country, and
+    the circumstances, differ so much from those of Ireland, that
+    any plan for congregating them together under less control than
+    is at present exercised, would not be calculated to render them
+    more fit for discharge, or give the officers to whose care they
+    might be consigned better, or even the same, opportunities of
+    judging their character as those which exist at present.
+
+    “Secondly. That even if such objects could be promoted by
+    removing selected convicts into separate, small, intermediate
+    establishments, with diminished control and more voluntary
+    action, the exhibition of convict discipline in such a form
+    would impair the exemplary character and deterrent effects of a
+    sentence of penal servitude, which, on all accounts, it is most
+    essential to preserve as the most formidable of our secondary
+    punishments.
+
+    “Thirdly. That any general superintendence of the police would
+    be impossible in England, without obstructing the employment of
+    the men.
+
+    “Fourthly. That if such measures could be systematically
+    organized, it would be very desirable to afford convicts
+    some special information or instruction in connection with
+    their future prospects during the last few months of their
+    confinement—not in separate, intermediate establishments
+    disconnected from the prisons, but in the stage of discipline
+    which precedes discharge.”
+
+I have already said, that controversy in the subjunctive mood is totally
+worthless. You can establish no logical conclusion except by a statement
+of facts, which, like the figures in an arithmetical sum, render the
+ultimate fact, the _x_ to be proven, a matter of moral certainty.
+Undoubtedly there are great differences in the character of Englishmen
+and of Irishmen, and, therefore, in the character of the convicts of
+the two countries; but the points of resemblance between all civilized
+communities are more numerous than the points of difference. This is
+peculiarly the case with races under the same governments and laws; and
+when we select a special class, formed by the aberrant tendencies of all
+humanity, we increase the ratio of resemblance. The treatment of convicts
+in the two countries might vary; we have no reason to assume that it
+should be fundamentally opposed.
+
+Secondly, there is reason to doubt whether the deterrent element ever has
+much force in the operation of penal servitude, of imprisonment, or of
+any penalty save those involving acute physical suffering for very short
+periods. The deterrent effect is severe in the case of hanging, flogging,
+torture, and the like. In the case of correctional discipline, the effect
+seems to be produced, far more, by a sort of compulsory teaching. Through
+the force of facts, the involuntary student is made to learn that a
+dishonest line of conduct cannot be pursued, but must sooner or later be
+frustrated; therefore that an honester course of life is unavoidable,
+and the attempt to avoid it foolish. At one time transportation, was a
+penalty accounted “secondary” to death alone; but I have already shown
+you that in 1861 it is accounted an actual boon, an increase to the
+opportunities and enjoyments of life. Indeed it is, literally, in this
+auxiliary sense that transportation to Western Australia, which still
+tolerates the practice, is now recommended. In England, as well as in
+Ireland, it is claimed as usefully completing that round of correctional
+discipline which ends in reformation—holding out a hope to the reformed
+convict of employment in a sphere where he will have the reward of
+industry without disgrace. But in Ireland, we see that as the criminal
+advances through his course of penal servitude, the whole system is made
+to have the character of correction, and to awaken the hope of betterment
+through honest exertion.
+
+Thirdly, the statement that the general superintendence of the police
+would be impossible in England, without obstructing the employment of
+the men or without converting the men into spies and tyrants, is thus
+far a pure assumption. Not a shadow of evidence to establish it has been
+shown to me. I know that policemen have interfered injuriously, but they
+have not yet been instructed in a different line of conduct; and I also
+know that there are, amongst the chief officers of the police in the
+counties, those who are perfectly competent to study such a subject, and
+who are prepared to begin the inquiry in a favourable spirit. But we must
+also remember that the police do not represent the only class of public
+servants who might be employed to act in this behalf, and report the
+conduct of men out on licence.
+
+The fourth objection applies, in some degree, to the English arrangement,
+in which the teaching of trades is by no means systematic; for it is
+principally confined to the earlier stages of imprisonment, while the
+employment of the vast majority on public works sends them into the
+world only as common labourers. In Ireland, the adaptation of the
+instruction is much more individualized, and the Intermediate stages turn
+out a much greater variety of callings.
+
+A fifth objection on which the English authorities lay very great stress
+is, that if the English convict be suffered to go at large, as he is at
+Lusk, he will, perhaps in the very first hour of his freedom, run away
+to rejoin his friends; particularly if he be a married man: nothing
+will restrain him from decamping to rejoin his wife and family! “The
+introduction of the Irish system into this country, the first element
+being imperfect liberty granted to a man whose own act could make it
+absolute in a moment, and would debar the married man from the society
+of his wife and children, would do so much violence to every feeling
+of his mind, that we could not be surprised if the slight barrier were
+instantly broken which held him from the world. One of our most deserving
+prisoners, lately discharged, of whose sincerity I have the highest
+opinion, told me some months since that if 10,000_l._ were offered to
+him to stay for twelve months, with nothing if he insisted on going to
+his wife and children, then he would prefer the liberty to the money.”
+So writes the chaplain of Portland Prison, in an unpublished report
+forwarded to me, with his usual kindness and frankness, by Sir Joshua
+Jebb; who also insists strongly on the same point.
+
+Now, at several of the prisons I have been shown convicts who are
+employed on “special service,” and whom I have confounded with the
+more numerous body of prisoners working at large on Southsea Common.
+This mistake is corrected by a friendly note from the Governor of
+Portsmouth Prison. “The greater number of the men,” he says, “were
+ordinary prisoners—in the ordinary stages, and still under the usual
+surveillance.” The man I referred to, who wished to be transferred from
+that spot, was not in the special class at all. “Had he been so,” writes
+Captain Rose, “the privilege of change of labour would probably have been
+accorded to him. He merely asked for a transfer of party—a very common
+demand, and rarely founded on any sufficient reason. Another point in
+which I wish to correct you, or I should rather say, to make myself more
+clear than perhaps I did during our far too hurried interview, relates
+to the adoption of an ‘Intermediate stage,’ from which it might be
+inferred that I advocated the Irish system in its integrity (the word
+being there employed). I was careful to guard myself against this; and
+in saying that I would willingly enlarge the special class to one or two
+hundred men, for the purpose of employing them on Portsdown Hill, without
+prison dress, and merely attended by a few picked officers as general
+superintendents (equally undistinguished by any distinctive dress), I
+reserved the important question whether they should be there located
+as in Ireland, or be still subjected to the ordinary routine of prison
+discipline and restraint, going to and returning from their distant
+labour daily by special train. The difference would be most important,
+and, in fact, constitutes the point mainly at issue between Sir Joshua
+Jebb and Captain Crofton. Should you write again, perhaps you will make
+this more clear.”[6]
+
+From these corrections with which I have been favoured, we gather two
+things. First, that the special class are exempted from surveillance:
+they are employed in carrying messages, and in other duties which send
+them abroad into the world, like the trusted members of the Intermediate
+class in Ireland. The application of the principle, indeed, is so
+fractional, that all comparisons which I see attempted between it and the
+Irish Intermediate system are untenable. But, secondly, the corrections
+appear to me to show that in England there is no resistless impulse
+to break through the moral restraint, and that in this respect the
+Englishman is quite as amenable as the Irishman. I have never been told,
+with regard either to Portsmouth or any other English prison, that they
+limit this privilege to bachelors.
+
+Another incident appears to me sufficient not only to corroborate my
+doubt, but to annihilate the official presumption in England. Recently
+there have been those very important extensions of the Convict Prison
+at Woking, to which Sir Joshua Jebb alludes in the statement I have
+embodied. The work was carried on, in part at least, by convicts from
+another prison—from Portland, I believe. The men were not taken from
+those on special service; they were not selected even from those
+accustomed to labour out of bounds; they were, I have been told, “just
+the ordinary prisoners.” I have not visited Woking, but I am also
+informed that they were diligent at their work; and that there was no
+escape, nor any serious attempt at escape, if any at all. The prisoners
+were fifty in number; and, again, I was not told that they were all
+selected from the unmarried class. It appears to me, therefore, that this
+imputed family _storge_ is a myth.
+
+I have bestowed great attention and pains on the endeavour to find out if
+the leading objectors in the English system had actually made themselves
+masters of the Irish system in its details, even so far as I have done
+myself. I have sometimes feared that I pressed my questions upon them
+further than was courteous; though I must confess that I have uniformly
+been met with a frankness as candid as it was kind. I have not only found
+that the study of the Irish system has been very partial, and that the
+judgment against it has been formed on arguments in the subjunctive mood
+and the most arbitrary assumptions, but I have also observed that even
+with regard to the English system, there is not the same mastery of the
+whole process in detail that I noticed in Ireland. For instance, I am not
+aware that the leading authorities of the English system have personally
+examined the working of the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society, or have in
+many instances personally traced the behaviour of discharged convicts out
+in employment.
+
+The investigation of the subject, in one respect, is neither easy nor
+inviting. I have myself observed amongst discharged English prisoners
+an unbecoming levity, mingled with a marked ill feeling towards the
+prison authorities; and I am not satisfied that all the prisoners who
+seek the aid of the society in Charing Cross, are conscious of the
+obligations which they owe to it. I felt less pained at the exhibition
+for the sake of the society and its officers, than for the sake of the
+men who thus betrayed their total unfitness to guide themselves through
+the world into which they were again thrown. My hearing is considerably
+keener than most men’s, and probably the applicants for succour were
+not aware that I could hear every word of the conversation which was
+going forward between them in groups; but I did, and the whispered talk
+related to plans of amusement, of social meetings, of sports by no means
+elevating, and of gambling. I have forborne to ask the secretary whether
+ingratitude is the rule, because no such questioning should be instituted
+without an authority to compel which should absolve the respondent
+from responsibility; but I believe that no investigation could be more
+interesting than one into the conduct of prisoners whom the society has
+relieved, and particularly into their bearing towards those who have
+helped them. I doubt whether the authorities of our convict system have
+examined into this part of the matter at all. It is impossible not to
+make a comparison between the peculiar bearing of the English prisoners
+and the entirely opposite demeanour of the prisoners in Ireland. The
+manner there is more free, the men speak with less reserve, and they
+look less “cowed,” but they are much graver; and, if they do not deal in
+professions of gratitude, they permit you to see that the treatment that
+they have received and the opportunities opened to them are taken very
+much to heart.
+
+The fact is, that the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society requires to be
+placed on a much broader basis. In order that it should act with thorough
+efficacy, it ought to be converted into a public department, with
+authority to take cognizance of all prisoners leaving prison, to follow
+up its information respecting discharged prisoners, and to dispose of
+them with a freer choice than it can at present command. As I have before
+remarked, there are several public organizations which might supply an
+agency, but it is not for me to dictate any particular arrangement. In my
+three reports on the convict systems, I have limited myself to a plain
+statement of such facts as I was able to verify, and as I could group
+into a summary of the general subject. Another change needed to render
+the society efficient, and therefore secure of public support and of its
+future position, is that the prisoners who seek its aid should be trained
+to a greater variety of callings, so that no opportunities may be lost
+through the over supply in one particular branch of industry or a want in
+another branch. But, thirdly, and most chiefly, the discharged prisoners
+who are candidates for the patronage of the society should come to it
+in a condition of better moral training. They should have learned, not
+simply the outward fashion of their behaviour, but the facts concerning
+themselves which would suffice alone to prompt better feelings; and they
+should have been more thoroughly taught, by the mode of discipline, to
+appreciate the kindness so spontaneously extended to them.
+
+The requirements which appear to me necessary for the complete efficiency
+of the society, and, therefore, for its stability, imply two radical
+changes in its position. The first is a more distinct legislative and
+official recognition of it as a constituent part of the English convict
+system. For either the society is surplusage, or it is an essential;
+and if it is essential, it should be brought into a more universal and
+co-ordinate working with the rest of the establishment. The second change
+is, that the convicts should pass through something analogous to the
+Intermediate stage of the Irish system.[7]
+
+It seems to me quite time that the rivalry, displayed in the reports
+on both sides of the Channel, should be absolutely and finally
+discontinued. I must confess that the documents before me go to show
+that the initiative of aggression was taken on the English side,—that
+representations with regard to the working of the Irish system were put
+forward with a high official authority on this side of the Channel, and
+that they called for rectification from the other side; but it is idle
+to enter into any retrospective award upon the merits of that obsolete
+controversy. Our business is to take things as we find them _now_, and
+to do the best we can both for England and for Ireland. I have already
+said, that the Irish system appears to me to be the best; and I ascribe
+its excellence to these three reasons—that, being the most recent
+invention, it comprises the chief advantages of previous systems, with
+new applications and extensions of tried principles admirably designed by
+Captain Crofton; that it is planned upon a consideration of the objects
+to be attained, irrespectively of difficulties or predilections; and that
+it is carried out by men who are personally familiar with its details in
+every part.
+
+I am not prepared to say that all details of the arrangement in Ireland
+are essential to the completeness of an equally good system in England;
+but the principles upon which the Irish system relies are applicable
+over the whole globe, and they are consequently drawing the attention
+of the most intelligent and active criminal reformers in distant
+countries. I know that their progress is watched from Heidelberg, which
+has itself been a great centre of prison improvement, under that able
+and enthusiastic lawyer, Professor Mitternaier. Among the reforms which
+have been pushed forward by the immortal Cavour, is a system of convict
+discipline established at Pianosa, a small island lying south of Elba.
+Tuscany has always been celebrated for reforms of the kind; and it is
+not losing its reputation in our own day. One of the distinguishing
+traits in the Pianosa system is the introduction of the Intermediate
+stage, which Cavour had thoroughly studied; and the Superintendent of
+the Prisons, M. de Peri, reports with great satisfaction on the working
+of the new plan. A little farther east, at Corfu, we see M. Cozziris,
+the Inspector-general of the Prisons in the Ionian Islands, diligently
+following out the same work. His report for the year, which is now before
+me, shows a thorough acquaintance with the Intermediate system, and a
+proportionate admiration of it.[8] While I was in the United States, I
+had the opportunity of visiting some of those prisons which have often
+been mentioned as examples of modern improvement, and such unquestionably
+they were a few years back. It is no reproach to the intelligence of
+the American reformers that, in great part by their help, we have since
+surpassed them; and it must be allowed that they might have made more
+progress than they have, but for that unlucky working of their government
+system, which so periodically and thoroughly removes the higher officers
+in all departments of the State. Amongst the leading managers of
+these prisons, however, I found considerable interest excited by the
+reference to the Irish system, and a ready disposition to enter into its
+advantages; which have been the subject of a special explanation in the
+_Philadelphia Journal of Prison Discipline_ for January of the present
+year. In other countries, therefore, even more remote from Ireland than
+England, there is no reluctance to study the newest experiment, and to
+profit by its instruction.
+
+I can well understand that there are difficulties in altering the
+arrangements of any system; and our arrangements in England have been
+particularly designed to suit a past state of circumstances, and to
+attain particular objects. The leading objects were—the construction
+of prisons so designed as to facilitate the ready inspection of large
+numbers; the mustering of very numerous bodies of men upon public
+works, which was thought to be an economical and beneficial employment
+of convict labour; and the ultimate disposal of the convict by
+transportation. Transportation has nearly ceased; we have arrived at the
+perception that labouring on public works is not exclusively the best
+discipline for all criminals; and we have learned that the best system
+of our day attains its striking success by subdividing the prisoners
+into small bodies and dealing with them in detail individually. A show
+of transportation exists to tantalize the English officials, the system
+of public works goes on with as much success as ever, and we have large
+prisons on our hands; to say nothing of the fact, that the authors of
+the living picture are naturally proud of the high development which has
+been given to it. To get rid of these accessories of the system is the
+greatest difficulty in any change, and I admit it in its fullest force.
+
+Other difficulties have been alleged—the greater delicacy of the
+Englishman who has been criminal in concealing his shame, and, therefore,
+in shrinking from any Intermediate stage; his impatience, under the
+enforcement of conditions, to the ticket-of-licence, and the indomitable
+impetuosity which will make every married convict break bounds the
+instant he is placed in a state of half freedom; the reluctance of
+English employers to co-operate, and other special distinctions ascribed
+to the English character. But, on closer scrutiny, the force of these
+difficulties is refuted by facts which I have stated in the foregoing
+pages. Indeed, I have found the raw materials for the Irish system
+scattered throughout English prisons, only they are not turned to
+account, and are not placed in their natural order. I have expressed
+my readiness to put forward any facts to prove that the English system
+attains results equal to those which exist in Ireland, but I have been
+supplied with no such facts. What we claim in England, by all the
+rights of urgent necessity, of national intelligence, and of national
+resources, is the most perfect system of convict system that the world
+can supply,—whether we call that system “Irish,” or, as I should prefer
+to call it, British. The one step needed for the introduction of those
+tried principles amongst us is, to institute a thorough inquiry; and,
+undoubtedly, Parliament is bound to inquire, and, having inquired, to
+deal with the ascertained facts. Until that be done, we English are left
+with a system not so good as the one we might have; we are compelled to
+suffer for more crime than would otherwise exist in the country; and
+uneducated misguided multitudes are suffered to stray into destruction,
+from which they might otherwise be rescued.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Subjoined are the tables mentioned at page 240. The following facts are
+necessary to complete the information conveyed in the first table:—
+
+  No. 1.—9,180 orders of licence have been issued to the
+    directors for the release of male convicts from the different
+    convict prisons since the commencement of the system in
+    October, 1853, out of which 834 have had their licences
+    revoked and 1,038 have been reconvicted to penal servitude or
+    transportation, making a total of 1,872 who have forfeited
+    their licence; being an average percentage of 20.3, or an
+    average of 2.2 per annum, during the seven and a half years of
+    its operation.
+
+  No. 2.—9,180 orders of licence have been issued; out of which
+    number, 1,363, or 14.8 per cent., were returned to convict
+    prisons for larceny and light offences, and 509, or 5.5 per
+    cent., for offences of a graver character, in seven and a half
+    years; being 1.9 per cent. per annum of light offences, and 0.7
+    per cent. per annum of more serious crimes.
+
+  No. 3.—3,307 convicts have been transported to Western
+    Australia during the years 1853 to 1861; out of which, it may
+    be assumed from the reports received, that from 5 to 8 per
+    cent. only may have relapsed into crime. This, if taken into
+    account, would reduce the average results of the English system.
+
+RETURN of the NUMBER of MALE CONVICTS released under ORDERS of LICENCE in
+each Year, from October 1853, to April 1861; showing the NUMBER returned
+to the CONVICT PRISONS, either by having had their LICENCES REVOKED
+for trifling Offences, or by being sentenced to PENAL SERVITUDE or
+TRANSPORTATION.
+
+  --------+--------+--------------------------------------------------
+          |        | Number of MALE CONVICTS whose Licences have been
+          |        |     revoked, or who have been reconvicted.
+          |        +---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
+   Years. |   No.  |  1853.  |  1854.  |  1855.  |  1856.  |  1857.  |
+          |Licensed+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
+          |        |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+          |        |Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|
+          |        |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+  --------+--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
+          |        |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+  1853[9] |    335 |  1 |    |  7 | 10 |  3 |  5 |  2 |  4 |  2 |  5 |
+  1854    |  1,895 |    |    | 14 | 19 | 63 | 53 | 38 | 64 | 19 | 33 |
+  1855    |  2,528 |    |    |    |    | 40 | 47 |126 |190 | 99 | 64 |
+  1856    |  2,007 |    |    |    |    |    |    | 49 |131 |122 |106 |
+  1857    |    674 |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    | 15 | 34 |
+  1858    |    318 |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+  1859    |    260 |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+  1860    |    818 |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+  1861[10]|    345 |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+  --------+--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
+  Totals  |  9,180 |  1 |    | 21 | 29 |106 |105 |215 |389 |257 |242 |
+  --------+--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
+
+  ---------------------------------------------------------+---------+----
+       Number of MALE CONVICTS whose Licences have been    |   Per   |
+            revoked, or who have been reconvicted          | Centage.| P
+  ---------+---------+---------+---------+-----+-----+---- +----+----+ e
+    1858.  |  1859.  |  1860.  |  1861.  |Total|Total|Grand|    |    | r
+  ----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ Rev.| Rec.|Total|    |    | i
+      |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |     |     |     |Rev.|Rec.| o
+  Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|     |     |     |    |    | d
+      |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |     |     |     |    |    | .
+  ----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+-----+-----+----+----+----
+      |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |     |     |     |    |    |Y.M.
+      |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |  15 |  24 |  39 | 4.5| 7.1|7 6
+    5 | 10 |  2 |  3 |  2 |    |    |    | 143 | 182 | 325 | 7.5| 9.6|7 3
+   36 | 24 | 12 | 15 |  1 |  7 |    |  1 | 314 | 348 | 662 |12.5|13.7|6 3
+   52 | 52 | 26 | 33 |  8 | 13 |    |  2 | 257 | 337 | 594 |12.8|16.7|5 3
+   31 | 20 | 14 | 22 |  8 |  5 |  1 |  1 |  69 |  82 | 151 |10.2|12.1|4 3
+    7 | 10 | 12 | 12 |  6 |  4 |    |    |  25 |  26 |  51 | 7.8| 8.1|3 3
+      |    |  5 |  4 |  3 | 10 |    |  1 |   8 |  15 |  23 | 3.0| 6.1|2 3
+      |    |    |    |  2 | 15 |    |    |   2 |  15 |  17 | 0.2| 1.8|1 3
+      |    |    |    |    |    |  1 |  9 |   1 |   9 |  10 | 0.2| 2.6|0 3
+  ----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+-----+-----+----+----+----
+  131 |116 | 71 | 89 | 30 | 54 |  2 | 14 | 834 |1,038|1,872| 9.0|11.3|
+  ----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+-----+-----+----+----+----
+
+The following shows the percentage per annum of Male Convicts returned
+to Convict Prisons, either by revocation of licence, or under fresh
+sentences, to Penal Servitude or Transportation, during the 7½ years the
+system has been in operation:—
+
+                         licensed        Per ct.   Yrs.       Per ct.
+  Of the Number   335    from Oct.
+                      to 31st Dec. 1853  11.6  or in 7½      1.5 per ann.
+         ”      1,895 in the year  1854  16.11   ”   7¼      2.2   ”
+         ”      2,528      ”       1855  26.2    ”   6¼      4.1   ”
+         ”      2,007      ”       1856  29.5    ”   5¼      5.5   ”
+         ”        674      ”       1857  22.3    ”   4¼      5.1   ”
+         ”        318      ”       1858  15.9    ”   3¼      4.5   ”
+         ”        200      ”       1859   9.1    ”   2¼      4.0   ”
+         ”        818      ”       1860   2.0    ”   1¼      1.5   ”
+         ”        34 to 31st March 1861   2.8    ”   3 mos.  0.12  ”
+
+As regards the nature of the Crimes for which the 834 Male Convicts had
+their licences only revoked, and the 1,038 who have been re-convicted for
+fresh offences, the following is an analysis:—
+
+MINOR OFFENCES.
+
+  Larceny                                         650
+  Offences against vagrant act                    126
+  Assaults on police                               34
+  Desertion                                        18
+  Picking pockets                                  27
+  Wilful damage                                    14
+  Assault                                         118
+  Offences against game laws                       21
+  Theft, misdemeanour, and other offences         355
+                                                -----
+                  Total                         1,363
+
+OFFENCES OF A GRAVER CHARACTER.
+
+  Murder                                            2
+  Forgery, uttering forged notes or base coin      44
+  Burglary                                        106
+  Robbery                                          41
+  Robbery with violence                            16
+  Highway robbery                                   6
+  Cutting and wounding with intent                  6
+  Felony, housebreaking, sheep-stealing, &c.      284
+  Arson                                             4
+                                                -----
+          Total                                   509
+          Minor offences                        1,363
+                                                -----
+                  Total                         1,872
+
+RETURN of the NUMBER of FEMALE CONVICTS released under ORDERS of LICENCE
+in each Year, from October 1853, to June 1861; showing the NUMBER
+returned to CONVICT PRISONS, either by having had their LICENCES REVOKED
+for trifling Offences, or by being sentenced to PENAL SERVITUDE or
+TRANSPORTATION.
+
+  --------+--------+--------------------------------------------------
+          |        |Number of FEMALE CONVICTS whose Licences have been
+          |        |     revoked, or who have been reconvicted.
+          |        +---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
+   Years. |   No.  |  1853.  |  1854.  |  1855.  |  1856.  |  1857.  |
+          |Licensed+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
+          |        |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+          |        |Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|
+          |        |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+  --------+--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
+          |        |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+  1853[11]|      — |  — |  — |  — |  — |  — |  — |  — |  — |  — |  — |
+  1854    |     40 |    |    |    |    |  1 |    |  1 |  1 |    |    |
+  1855    |    115 |    |    |    |    |  2 |  1 | 10 |  7 |  5 |  2 |
+  1856    |    221 |    |    |    |    |    |    | 10 | 11 | 14 |  8 |
+  1857    |     55 |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |  5 |  3 |
+  1858    |     18 |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+  1859    |     29 |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+  1860    |    183 |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+  1861[12]|    103 |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
+  --------+--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
+  Totals  |    764 |    |    |    |    |  3 |  1 | 21 | 19 | 24 | 13 |
+  --------+--------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
+
+  ---------------------------------------------------------+---------+----
+      Number of FEMALE CONVICTS whose Licences have been   |   Per   |
+            revoked, or who have been reconvicted          | Centage.| P
+  ---------+---------+---------+---------+-----+-----+---- +----+----+ e
+    1858.  |  1859.  |  1860.  |  1861.  |Total|Total|Grand|    |    | r
+  ----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+ Rev.| Rec.|Total|    |    | i
+      |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |     |     |     |Rev.|Rec.| o
+  Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|Rev.|Rec.|     |     |     |    |    | d
+      |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |     |     |     |    |    | .
+  ----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+-----+-----+----+----+----
+      |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |     |     |     |    |    |Y.M.
+    — |  — |  — |  — |  — |  — |  — |  — |   — |   — |   — |   —|   —| —
+      |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |   2 |   1 |   3 | 5. | 1.5|7 8
+    1 |  3 |    |  1 |    |    |    |    |  18 |  14 |  32 |14.7|12.1|6 5
+    7 |  9 |  2 |  1 |    |  1 |    |    |  33 |  30 |  63 |14.9|13.5|5 5
+    1 |  1 |  1 |  1 |    |  2 |    |    |   7 |   7 |  14 |12.7|12.7|4 5
+      |  1 |    |    |    |  1 |    |    |     |   2 |   2 |    |11.1|3 5
+      |    |  1 |    |    |  1 |    |    |   1 |   1 |   2 | 3.4| 3.4|2 5
+      |    |    |    |  4 |  3 |    |  5 |   4 |   8 |  12 | 2.1| 4.2|1 5
+      |    |    |    |    |    |    |  2 |     |   2 |   2 |    | 1.9|0 5
+  ----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+-----+-----+----+----+----
+    9 | 14 |  4 |  3 |  4 |  8 |    |  7 |  65 |  65 | 130 | 8.5| 8.5|
+  ----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-----+-----+-----+----+----+----
+
+The following shows the percentage per annum of Female Convicts returned
+to Convict Prisons, either by revocation of licence, or under fresh
+sentences, to Penal Servitude or Transportation, during the seven years
+and eight months the system has been in operation:—
+
+                      licensed      Per ct.   Yrs. M.  Per ct.
+  Of the No. 40    from Oct. 1853
+                 to 31st Dec. 1854   6.5 or in  7  8  0.8 per ann.
+      ”     115   in the year 1855  26.8   ”    6  5  4.0    ”
+      ”     221        ”      1856  28.4   ”    5  5  5.2    ”
+      ”      55        ”      1857  25.4   ”    4  5  5.9    ”
+      ”      18        ”      1858  11.1   ”    3  5  3.2    ”
+      ”      29        ”      1859   6.8   ”    2  5  3.3    ”
+      ”     183        ”      1860   6.3   ”    1  5  4.4    ”
+      ”     103   to 1st June 1861   1.9   ”    0  5         ”
+
+As regards the nature of the Crimes for which the 65 Female Convicts had
+their licences only revoked, and the 65 who have been re-convicted for
+fresh offences, the following is an analysis:—
+
+MINOR OFFENCES.
+
+  Larceny                            72
+  Wilful damage                       2
+  Breach of peace                     3
+  Vagrancy                            5
+  Theft                              26
+  Disorderly conduct                  4
+  Picking Pockets                     4
+                                   ----
+            Total                   116
+
+OFFENCES OF A GRAVER CHARACTER.
+
+  Uttering base coin                  2
+  Unlawful possession                 3
+  Horse-stealing                      1
+  Robbery                             2
+  Receiving stolen goods              1
+  Wounding                            1
+  Housebreaking                       4
+                                   ----
+            Total                    14
+            Minor offences          116
+                                   ----
+               Total                130
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[4] In the years from 1841 to 1845, the average annual number of convicts
+sent to Van Diemen’s Land was 3,527.
+
+[5] One of the official calculations laid before the Government was, that
+in the event of transportation being abolished, it would be necessary to
+provide accommodation for 28,000 offenders, in addition to that which
+then existed.
+
+[6] There were two other clerical errors in the part of the paper
+referring to Portsmouth. The thirty-three convicts were fulfilling
+sentence not under the new, but under the old Act; and in lieu of
+seventy-three under report for misconduct, it should have been
+thirteen—an important difference.
+
+[7] The annual report of the Directors of Convict Prisons for 1860,
+published recently, more than confirms the report which I made to you,
+and which was published in your April number. The excellent working
+and progress of the Irish system continue with increasing force. The
+Government prisons contain accommodation for 3,000 convicts; the
+total number incarcerated in the first year of the new system, 1854,
+exclusively of the 345 convicts in the county prisons, and several
+hundreds in Bermuda or Gibraltar, was 3,933, and it has decreased, by a
+steady progress, to 1,492. In 1861 the number convicted has decreased
+from 710 to 331. This is the more remarkable, since the deportation
+of convicts from Ireland ranged from 600 to 1,540 in the five years
+preceding 1854. Out of 5,500 convicts discharged in the last seven
+years, 1,462 were discharged on licence; 89 licences have been revoked,
+amounting to seven per cent. “We do not,” say the Directors, “believe
+a single case can be proved of a convict having been reported for
+infringing the condition of his licence, and still remaining at large in
+this country.”
+
+[8] Statistica del Penitenziario di Corfu, per gli Anni 1857, 1858, 1859.
+Compilata da Giovanni Cozziris, Governatore del Penitenziario di Corfu,
+ed Inspettore Generale delle Prigioni dello Stato Ionio.
+
+[9] From October to December 31st, 1853.
+
+[10] To 31st March, 1861.
+
+[11] From October, 1853.
+
+[12] To June, 1861.
+
+
+
+
+Roundabout Papers.—No. XV.
+
+OGRES.
+
+
+I daresay the reader has remarked that the upright and independent
+vowel, which stands in the vowel-list between E and O, has formed the
+subject of the main part of these essays. How does that vowel feel
+this morning?—fresh, good-humoured, and lively? The Roundabout lines,
+which fall from this pen, are correspondingly brisk and cheerful. Has
+anything, on the contrary, disagreed with the vowel? Has its rest been
+disturbed, or was yesterday’s dinner too good, or yesterday’s wine not
+good enough? Under such circumstances, a darkling, misanthropic tinge, no
+doubt, is cast upon the paper. The jokes, if attempted, are elaborate and
+dreary. The bitter temper breaks out. That sneering manner is adopted,
+which you know, and which exhibits itself so especially when the writer
+is speaking about women. A moody carelessness comes over him. He sees
+no good in any body or thing; and treats gentlemen, ladies, history,
+and things in general, with a like gloomy flippancy. Agreed. When the
+vowel in question is in that mood; if you like airy gaiety and tender
+gushing benevolence—if you want to be satisfied with yourself and the
+rest of your fellow-beings; I recommend you, my dear creature, to go
+to some other shop in Cornhill, or turn to some other article. There
+are moods in the mind of the vowel of which we are speaking, when it is
+ill-conditioned and captious. Who always keeps good health, and good
+humour? Do not philosophers grumble? Are not sages sometimes out of
+temper? and do not angel-women go off in tantrums? To-day my mood is
+dark. I scowl as I dip my pen in the inkstand.
+
+Here is the day come round—for everything here is done with the utmost
+regularity:—intellectual labour, seventeen hours; meals, thirty-two
+minutes; exercise, a hundred and forty-eight minutes; conversation with
+the family, chiefly literary, and about the housekeeping, one hour and
+four minutes; sleep, three hours and fifteen minutes (at the end of the
+month, when the Magazine is complete, I own I take eight minutes more);
+and the rest for the toilette and the world. Well, I say, the _Roundabout
+Paper Day_ being come, and the subject long since settled in my mind, an
+excellent subject—a most telling, lively, and popular subject—I go to
+breakfast determined to finish that meal in 9¾ minutes, as usual, and
+then retire to my desk and work, when—oh, provoking!—here in the paper
+is the very subject treated, on which I was going to write! Yesterday
+another paper which I saw treated it—and of course, as I need not tell
+you, spoiled it. Last Saturday, another paper had an article on the
+subject; perhaps you may guess what it was—but I won’t tell you. Only
+this is true, my favourite subject, which was about to make the best
+paper we have had for a long time; my bird, my game that I was going to
+shoot and serve up with such a delicate sauce, has been found by other
+sportsmen; and pop, pop, pop, a half-dozen of guns have banged at it,
+mangled it, and brought it down.
+
+“And can’t you take some other text?” say you. All this is mighty well.
+But if you have set your heart on a certain dish for dinner, be it cold
+boiled veal, or what you will; and they bring you turtle and venison,
+don’t you feel disappointed? During your walk you have been making up
+your mind that that cold meat, with moderation and a pickle, will be a
+very sufficient dinner: you have accustomed your thoughts to it; and
+here, in place of it, is a turkey, surrounded by coarse sausages, or a
+reeking pigeon-pie, or a fulsome roast-pig. I have known many a good and
+kind man made furiously angry by such a _contretemps_. I have known him
+lose his temper, call his wife and servants names, and a whole household
+made miserable. If, then, as is notoriously the case, it is too dangerous
+to baulk a man about his dinner, how much more about his article? I
+came to my meal with an ogre-like appetite and gusto. Fee, faw, fum!
+Wife, where is that tender little Princekin? Have you trussed him, and
+did you stuff him nicely, and have you taken care to baste him and do
+him, not too brown, as I told you? Quick! I am hungry! I begin to whet
+my knife, to roll my eyes about, and roar and clap my huge chest like a
+gorilla; and then my poor Ogrina has to tell me that the little princes
+have all run away, whilst she was in the kitchen, making the paste to
+bake them in! I pause in the description. I won’t condescend to report
+the bad language, which you know must ensue, when an ogre, whose mind is
+ill-regulated, and whose habits of self-indulgence are notorious, finds
+himself disappointed of his greedy hopes. What treatment of his wife,
+what abuse and brutal behaviour to his children, who, though ogrillons,
+are children! My dears, you may fancy, and need not ask my delicate pen
+to describe, the language and behaviour of a vulgar, coarse, greedy,
+large man with an immense mouth and teeth, that are too frequently
+employed in the gobbling and crunching of raw man’s meat.
+
+And in this circuitous way you see I have reached my present
+subject, which is, Ogres. You fancy they are dead or only fictitious
+characters—mythical representatives of strength, cruelty, stupidity, and
+lust for blood? Though they had seven-leagued boots, you remember all
+sorts of little whipping-snapping Tom Thumbs used to elude and outrun
+them. They were so stupid that they gave into the most shallow ambuscades
+and artifices: witness that well-known ogre who, because Jack cut open
+the hasty-pudding, instantly ripped open his own stupid waistcoat and
+interior. They were cruel, brutal, disgusting with their sharpened teeth,
+immense knives, and roaring voices: but they always ended by being
+overcome by little Tom Thumbkins, or some other smart little champion.
+
+Yes; that they were conquered in the end, there is no doubt. They plunged
+headlong (and uttering the most frightful bad language) into some pit
+where Jack came with his smart _couteau de chasse_ and whipped their
+brutal heads off. They would be going to devour maidens,
+
+    “But ever when it seemed
+      Their need was at the sorest,
+    A knight, in armour bright,
+      Came riding through the forest.”
+
+And, down after a combat, would go the brutal persecutor with a lance
+through his midriff. Yes, I say, this is very true and well. But you
+remember that round the ogre’s cave, the ground was covered, for hundreds
+and hundreds of yards, _with the bones of the victims_ whom he had lured
+into the castle. Many knights and maids came to him and perished under
+his knife and teeth. Were dragons the same as ogres? Monsters dwelling
+in caverns, whence they rushed, attired in plate armour, wielding pikes
+and torches, and destroying stray passengers who passed by their lair?
+Monsters, brutes, rapacious tyrants, ruffians, as they were, doubtless
+they ended by being overcome. But, before they were destroyed, they did
+a deal of mischief. The bones round their caves were countless. They had
+sent many brave souls to Hades, before their own fled, howling, out of
+their rascal carcasses, to the same place of gloom.
+
+There is no greater mistake than to suppose that fairies, champions,
+distressed damsels, and by consequence ogres have ceased to exist. It may
+not be _ogreable_ to them (pardon the horrible pleasantry, but, as I am
+writing in the solitude of my chamber, I am grinding my teeth—yelling,
+roaring, and cursing—brandishing my scissors and paper-cutter, and, as
+it were, have become an ogre). I say there is no greater mistake than
+to suppose that ogres have ceased to exist. We all _know_ ogres. Their
+caverns are round us, and about us. There are the castles of several
+ogres within a mile of the spot where I write. I think some of them
+suspect I am an ogre myself. I am not: but I know they are. I visit
+them. I don’t mean to say that they take a cold roast prince out of the
+cupboard, and have a cannibal feast before _me_. But I see the bones
+lying about the roads to their houses, and in the areas and gardens.
+Politeness, of course, prevents me from making any remarks; but I know
+them well enough. One of the ways to know ’em is to watch the scared
+looks of the ogres’ wives and children. They lead an awful life. They
+are present at dreadful cruelties. In their excesses those ogres will
+stab about, and kill not only strangers who happen to call in and ask a
+night’s lodging, but they will outrage, murder, and chop up their own
+kin. We all know ogres, I say, and have been in their dens often. It is
+not necessary that ogres who ask you to dine should offer their guests
+the _peculiar dish_ which they like. They cannot always get a Tom Thumb
+family. They eat mutton and beef too; and I daresay even go out to tea,
+and invite you to drink it. But I tell you there are numbers of them
+going about in the world. And now you have my word for it, and this
+little hint, it is quite curious what an interest society may be made to
+have for you, by your determining to find out the ogres you meet there.
+
+What does the man mean? says Mrs. Downright, to whom a joke is a very
+grave thing. I mean, madam, that in the company assembled in your genteel
+drawing-room, who bow here and there and smirk in white neckcloths,
+you receive men who elbow through life successfully enough, but who
+are ogres in private: men wicked, false, rapacious, flattering; cruel
+hectors at home; smiling courtiers abroad; causing wives, children,
+servants, parents, to tremble before them, and smiling and bowing as
+they bid strangers welcome into their castles. I say, there are men
+who have crunched the bones of victim after victim; in whose closets
+lie skeletons picked frightfully clean. When these ogres come out into
+the world, you don’t suppose they show their knives, and their great
+teeth? A neat simple white neckcloth, a merry rather obsequious manner,
+a cadaverous look, perhaps, now and again, and a rather dreadful grin;
+but I know ogres very considerably respected: and when you hint to such
+and such a man, “My dear sir, Mr. Sharpus, whom you appear to like, is,
+I assure you, a most dreadful cannibal;” the gentleman cries, “Oh, psha,
+nonsense! Daresay not so black as he is painted. Daresay not worse than
+his neighbours.” We condone everything in this country—private treason,
+falsehood, flattery, cruelty at home, roguery, and double dealing—What?
+Do you mean to say in your acquaintance you don’t know ogres guilty of
+countless crimes of fraud and force, and that knowing them you don’t
+shake hands with them; dine with them at your table; and meet them at
+their own? Depend upon it, in the time when there were real live ogres
+in real caverns or castles, gobbling up real knights and virgins—when
+they went into the world—the neighbouring market-town, let us say, or
+earl’s castle; though their nature and reputation were pretty well known,
+their notorious foibles were never alluded to. You would say, “What,
+Blunderbore, my boy! How do you do? How well and fresh you look! What’s
+the receipt you have for keeping so young and rosy?” And your wife would
+softly ask after Mrs. Blunderbore and the dear children. Or it would
+be, “My dear Humguffin! try that pork. It is home-bred, home-fed, and,
+I promise you, tender. Tell me if you think it is as good as yours?
+John, a glass of Burgundy to Colonel Humguffin!” You don’t suppose there
+would be any unpleasant allusions to disagreeable home-reports regarding
+Humguffin’s manner of furnishing his larder? I say we all of us know
+ogres. We shake hands and dine with ogres. And if inconvenient moralists
+tell us we are cowards for our pains, we turn round with a _tu quoque_,
+or say that we don’t meddle with other folk’s affairs; that people are
+much less black than they are painted, and so on. What? Won’t half the
+county go to Ogreham Castle? Won’t some of the clergy say grace at
+dinner? Won’t the mothers bring their daughters to dance with the young
+Rawheads? And if Lady Ogreham happens to die—I won’t say to go the way of
+all flesh, that is too revolting—I say if Ogreham is a widower, do you
+aver, on your conscience and honour, that mothers will not be found to
+offer their young girls to supply the lamented lady’s place? How stale
+this misanthropy is! Something must have disagreed with this cynic. Yes,
+my good woman. I daresay you would like to call another subject. Yes, my
+fine fellow; ogre at home, supple as a dancing-master abroad, and shaking
+in thy pumps, and wearing a horrible grin of sham gaiety to conceal thy
+terror, lest I should point thee out:—thou art prosperous and honoured,
+art thou? I say thou hast been a tyrant and a robber. Thou hast plundered
+the poor. Thou hast bullied the weak. Thou hast laid violent hands on
+the goods of the innocent and confiding. Thou hast made a prey of the
+meek and gentle who asked for thy protection. Thou hast been hard to thy
+kinsfolk, and cruel to thy family. Go, monster! Ah, when shall little
+Jack come and drill daylight through thy wicked cannibal carcass? I see
+the ogre pass on, bowing right and left to the company; and he gives a
+dreadful sidelong glance of suspicion as he is talking to my lord bishop
+in the corner there.
+
+Ogres in our days need not be giants at all. In former times, and in
+children’s books, where it is necessary to paint your moral in such large
+letters that there can be no mistake about it, ogres are made with that
+enormous mouth and _ratelier_ which you know of, and with which they
+can swallow down a baby, almost without using that great knife which
+they always carry. They are too cunning now-a-days. They go about in
+society, slim, small, quietly dressed, and showing no especially great
+appetite. In my own young days there used to be play ogres—men who would
+devour a young fellow in one sitting, and leave him without a bit of
+flesh on his bones. They were quiet gentlemanlike-looking people. They
+got the young fellow into their cave. Champagne, paté de foie-gras, and
+numberless good things were handed about; and then, having eaten, the
+young man was devoured in his turn. I believe these card and dice ogres
+have died away almost as entirely as the hasty-pudding giants whom Tom
+Thumb overcame. Now, there are ogres in City courts who lure you into
+their dens. About our Cornish mines I am told there are many most
+plausible ogres, who tempt you into their caverns and pick your bones
+there. In a certain newspaper there used to be lately a whole column
+of advertisements from ogres who would put on the most plausible, nay,
+piteous appearance, in order to inveigle their victims. You would read,
+“A tradesman, established for seventy years in the City, and known, and
+much respected by Messrs. N. M. Rothschild and Baring Brothers, has
+pressing need for three pounds until next Saturday. He can give security
+for half a million, and forty thousand pounds will be given for the use
+of the loan,” and so on; or, “An influential body of capitalists are
+about to establish a company, of which the business will be enormous and
+the profits proportionately prodigious. They will require A SECRETARY,
+of good address and appearance, at a salary of two thousand per annum.
+He need not be able to write, but address and manners are absolutely
+necessary. As a mark of confidence in the company, he will have to
+deposit,” &c.; or, “A young widow (of pleasing manners and appearance)
+who has a pressing necessity for four pounds ten for three weeks, offers
+her Erard’s grand piano valued at three hundred guineas; a diamond cross
+of eight hundred pounds; and board and lodging in her elegant villa
+near Banbury Cross, with the best references and society, in return for
+the loan.” I suspect these people are ogres. There are ogres and ogres.
+Polyphemus was a great, tall, one-eyed, notorious ogre, fetching his
+victims out of a hole, and gobbling them one after another. There could
+be no mistake about _him_. But so were the Syrens ogres—pretty blue-eyed
+things, peeping at you coaxingly from out of the water, and singing their
+melodious wheedles. And the bones round their caves were more numerous
+than the ribs, skulls, and thigh-bones round the cavern of hulking
+Polypheme.
+
+To the castle-gates of some of these monsters up rides the dapper
+champion of the pen; puffs boldly upon the horn which hangs by the chain;
+enters the hall resolutely, and challenges the big tyrant sulking within.
+We defy him to combat, the enormous roaring ruffian! We give him a
+meeting on the green plain before his castle. Green? No wonder it should
+be green: it is manured with human bones. After a few graceful wheels and
+curvets, we take our ground. We stoop over our saddle. ’Tis but to kiss
+the locket of our lady-love’s hair. And now the vizor is up: the lance is
+in rest (Gillott’s iron is the point for me). A touch of the spur in the
+gallant sides of Pegasus, and we gallop at the great brute.
+
+“Cut off his ugly head, Flibbertygibbet, my squire!” And who are these
+who pour out of the castle? the imprisoned maidens, the maltreated
+widows, the poor old hoary grandfathers, who have been locked up in the
+dungeons these scores and scores of years, writhing under the tyranny
+of that ruffian! Ah! ye knights of the pen! May honour be your shield
+and truth tip your lances! Be gentle to all gentle people. Be modest to
+women. Be tender to children. And as for the Ogre Humbug, out sword, and
+have at him.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75623 ***