path: root/78170-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78170 ***


“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.




                            HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
                           A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

                     CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.


        N^{o.} 6.]      SATURDAY, MAY 4, 1850.      [PRICE 2_d._




                        THE HEART OF MID-LONDON.


It was with singular pride that Mr. Thomas Bovington of Long Hornets,
Bucks, viewed his first ‘lot’ of fat bullocks as they filed their way
out of his stock-yard towards the nearest Station of the North Western
Railway. They were so sleek, so well fed, and so well behaved, that they
turned out of their stalls with the solemn sobriety of animals attending
their own funeral. Except a few capers cut by a lively West Highlander,
they sauntered along like beasts who had never had a care in their
lives. For how were they to know that the tips of their horns pointed to
that bourne from whence few bovine travellers return—Smithfield?
Smithfield, the Heart of Mid-London, the flower of the capital—the true,
original, London-Pride, always in full bloom! A merciful ignorance
blinded them to the fact that, the master who had fed and pampered them
with indulgent industry—who had administered their food out of the
scientific dietaries of Liebig; who had built their sheds after the
manner of Huxtable; who had stalled and herded them in imitation of
Pusey; who had littered them out of ‘Stevens’s Book of the Farm’—was
about, with equal care and attention to their comfort, to have them
converted into cash, and then into beef.

This was Mr. Bovington’s first transaction in bullocks. Since his
retirement from Northampton (where he made a small fortune by tanning
the hides he now so assiduously filled out), he had devoted his time,
his capital, and his energy to stock-farming. His sheep had always sold
well; so well indeed, that he had out-stocked the local markets; and, on
the previous morning, had driven off a threescore flock to the same
destination and on the same tragic errand, as that of his oxen. His
success in the production of mutton had given him courage: he had,
therefore, soared to beef. Only the Thursday before a neighbouring
farmer had pronounced of his herd to his face, that ‘a primer lot of
beasts he never see—nowheres.’

Mr. Bovington had several hours to spare before the passenger-train was
due in which he intended to follow his cattle. Like a thrifty man he
spent a part of it over his stock-book, to settle finally at what figure
he could afford to sell. He was an admirable book-keeper; he could tell
to an ounce how much oil-cake each ox had devoured, to a root how many
beets; and, to a wisp, how much straw had been used for litter. The
acreage of pasture was, also, minutely calculated. The result was, that
Mr. Bovington could find in an instant the cost price of each stone of
the flesh that had just departed of its own motion towards the shambles.

To a mercenary mind; to a man whose whole soul is ground down to
considerations of mere profit (considerations which many profound
politico-philosophers deplore as entering too largely into the
agricultural mind) the result of Mr. Bovington’s comparison of the cost
with the present market prices, would have been extremely
unsatisfactory. What he had produced at about 3_s._ 9_d._ per stone, he
found by the ‘Marklane Express’ was ‘dull at 3_s._ 6_d._, sinking the
offal.’ Neither had the season been favourable for sheep—at least, not
for _his_ sheep—and by them, too, he would be a loser. But what of that?
Mr. Bovington’s object was less profit than fame. As a beginner, he
wanted to establish a first-class character in the market; and, that
obtained, it would be time enough to turn his attention to the economics
of feeding and breeding. With what pride would he hear the praises of
those astute critics, the London butchers, as they walked round and
round, pinching and punching each particular ox, enumerating his various
good points, and contrasting it with the meaner, leaner stock of the
mere practical graziers! With what confidence he could command the top
price, and with what certainty he could maintain it for his ‘lots’ in
future!

Mr. Bovington was as merciful as he was above immediate gain. He could
not trust the stock he had nurtured and fed, to the uncontrolled
dominion of drovers. Though hurried to their doom, he would take care
that they should be killed ‘comfortably.’ He considered this as a sacred
duty, else he—who was a pattern to the parish—would not have thus
employed himself on a Sunday. As he took his ticket at the station, the
chimes for evening service had just struck out. His conscience smote
him. As his eye roved over the peaceful glades of Long Hornets, on which
the evening sun was lowering his beams, he contrasted the holy Sabbath
calm with the scene of excitement into which he was voluntarily plunging
himself. As a kind of salve to his troubled mind, he determined to pay
extra care and attention to the comfort of his cattle.

His consignment was to remain, till Smithfield market opened at eleven
o’clock on the Sunday night, at the Islington lairs. Thither Mr.
Bovington repaired—on landing at the Euston Station—in a very fast cab.
On his way, he calculated what the cost would be of all the fodder, all
the water, and all the attendance, which his sheep and oxen would have
received during their temporary sojourn. The first question he put,
therefore, to the drover on arriving at the lairs, was:

“What’s to pay?”

“Wot for?”

“Why,” replied the amateur grazier, “for the feed of my sheep since last
night!”

“Feed!” repeated the man with staring wonder. “Who ever heerd of feedin’
markit sheep? Why, they’ll be killed on Monday or Tuesday, won’t they?”

“If sold.”

“Well they’ll never want no more wittles, will they?”

“But they have had nothing since Saturday!”

“What on it! Sheep as comes to Smithfield _never_ has no feed, has
they?”

“Nor water either?” said Mr. Bovington.

“_I_ should think not!” replied the drover.

As he spoke, he drove the point of his goad into the backs of each of a
shorn flock that happened to be passing. He had no business with them,
but it was a way he had.

With sorrowful eyes, Mr. Bovington sought out his own sheep. Poor
things! They lay closely packed, with their tongues out, panting for
suction; for they were too weak to bleat. He would have given any money
to relieve them; but relief no money could buy.

Mr. Bovington was glad to find his bullocks in better plight. To them,
fodder and drink had been sparingly supplied, but they were wedged in so
tightly that they had hardly room to breathe. Their good looks—which had
cost him so much expenditure of oil-cake, and anxiety, and for which he
had expected so much praise from buyers—would be quite gone before they
got to Smithfield.

“It aint o’ no use a fretting,” said the master drover, “your’n aint no
worse off nor t’others. What you’ve got to do, is, to git to bed, and
meet me in the markit at four.” Naming a certain corner.

“Well,” said Mr. Bovington, seeing there was no help for it, “let it be
so; but I trust you will take care to get my lots driven down by humane
drovers.”

Mr. Whelter—that was the master-drover’s name—assented, in a manner that
showed he had not the remotest idea what a humane driver was, or where
the article was to be found.

Mr. Bovington could get no rest, and went his way towards the market,
long before the time appointed. Before he came within sight of
Smithfield, a din as of a noisy Pandemonium filled his ears. The
shouting of some of the drovers, the shrill whistle of others, the
barking of dogs, the bleating of sheep, and the lowing of cattle, were
the natural expressions of a crowded market; but, added to these, were
other sounds, which made Mr. Bovington shudder—something between the
pattering of a tremendous hailstorm, and the noise of ten thousand games
of single stick played, all at once, in sanguinary earnest.

He was not a particularly nervous man, and did not shudder without
reason. When he came into the market, he saw at a glance enough to know
that. He stood looking about him in positive horror.

To get the bullocks into their allotted stands, an incessant punishing
and torturing of the miserable animals—a sticking of prongs into the
tender part of their feet, and a twisting of their tails to make the
whole spine teem with pain—was going on: and this seemed as much a part
of the market, as the stones in its pavement. Across their horns, across
their hocks, across their haunches, Mr. Bovington saw the heavy blows
rain thick and fast, let him look where he would. Obdurate heads of
oxen, bent down in mute agony; bellowing heads of oxen lifted up,
snorting out smoke and slaver; ferocious men, cursing and swearing, and
belabouring oxen; made the place a panorama of cruelty and suffering. By
every avenue of access to the market, more oxen were pouring in:
bellowing, in the confusion, and under the falling blows, as if all the
church-organs in the world were wretched instruments—all there—and all
being tuned together. Mixed up with these oxen, were great flocks of
sheep, whose respective drovers were in agonies of mind to prevent their
being intermingled in the dire confusion; and who raved, shouted,
screamed, swore, whooped, whistled, danced like savages; and,
brandishing their cudgels, laid about them most remorselessly. All this
was being done, in a deep red glare of burning torches, which were in
themselves a strong addition to the horrors of the scene; for the men
who were arranging the sheep and lambs in their miserably confined pens,
and forcing them to their destination through alleys of the most
preposterously small dimensions, constantly dropped gouts of the blazing
pitch upon the miserable creatures’ backs; and to smell the singeing and
burning, and to see the poor things shrinking from this roasting,
inspired a sickness, a disgust, a pity and an indignation, almost
insupportable. To reflect that the gate of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital
was in the midst of this devilry, and that such a monument of years of
sympathy for human pain should stand there, jostling this disgraceful
record of years of disregard of brute endurance—to look up at the faint
lights in the windows of the houses where the people were asleep, and to
think that some of them had been to Public Prayers that Sunday, and had
typified the Divine love and gentleness, by the panting, footsore
creature, burnt, beaten, and needlessly tormented there, that night, by
thousands—suggested truths so inconsistent and so shocking, that the
Market of the Capital of the World seemed a ghastly and blasphemous
Nightmare.

“Does this happen _every_ Monday morning?” asked the horror-stricken
denizen of Long Hornets, of a respectable-looking man.

“This?” repeated the stranger. “Bless you! This is nothing to what it is
sometimes.” He then turned to a passing drover, who was vainly trying to
get some fifty sheep through a pen-alley calculated for the easy passage
of twenty. “How many are spoke for to-night, Ned?”

“How many? Why five-and-twenty-thousand sheep, and forty-one-hundred
beasts.”

“Ah! no more than an ordinary market, Sir,” said Mr. Bovington’s new
friend; “yet you see and hear what’s now going on to wedge these numbers
in. And it stands to reason, if you’ve got to jam together a fourth more
animals than there is space for, there _must_ be cruelty.”

“How much legitimate accommodation is there?” asked Mr. Bovington.

“There are pens for two-and-twenty-thousand sheep and they can tie up
twenty-seven-hundred beasts. Well! you hear; room has already been
‘spoke for,’ or bespoken, for three-thousand more sheep and
fourteen-hundred more cattle than there is proper space for.”

“What becomes of the surplus?”

“The beasts are formed, in the thoroughfares and in the outskirts of the
market, into what we call ‘off-droves;’ and the sheep wait outside,
anywhere, till they can get in.”

Here the conversation was interrupted by a sudden increase in the
demoniacal noises. Opposite the speakers, was a row of panting oxen,
each fastened by a slip-noose to a rail, as closely as their heads could
be jammed together. Some more were being tied up, and one creature had
just escaped. Instantly a dozen hoarse voices yelled:

“Out! out! out!”

The cry was echoed by a dozen others.

“Out! out! out!”

A wild hunt followed, and then a shower of blows on the back, horns and
sides, of the luckless truant. The concentrated punishment of two dozen
drovers’ sticks made the bull too glad to resume its original station.
It was then tied up, so tightly, that the swelled tongue protruded. That
the poor brute should be rendered powerless for motion for some time to
come, it was ‘hocked;’—that is to say, tremendous blows were inflicted
on its hind legs till it was completely hobbled.

Mr. Bovington was glad it was not one of his bullocks. “Are _many_
strangled by these tight nooses?” he asked.

“A good many in the course of the year, I should say. All the rails are
full now, and the off-droves are beginning.”

The battle raged faster and more furious than ever. In order to make the
most of the room, they were forming ‘ring-droves;’ that is, punishing
the animals till a certain number had turned all their heads together so
as to form the inside of a circle—which at last they did, to avoid the
blows inflicted on them. Mr. Bovington’s blood ran cold as he witnessed
the cruelty necessary for this evolution. After every imaginable torment
had been practised, to get them into the right position, a stray head
would occasionally protrude—where a tail should be—on the outside of the
ring. Tremendous blows were then repeated on the nose, neck, and horns,
till the tortured animal could turn; and when he succeeded, the goad was
‘jobbed’ into his flanks till he could wedge himself in, so as to form
his own proper radius of the dense circle.

“I have often seen their haunches streaming with blood,” said Mr.
Bovington’s companion, “before they could get into the ring. Why, a
friend of mine, a tanner at Kenilworth, was actually obliged to leave
off buying hides that came out of this market, because they were covered
with holes that had been bored in the live animals by the Smithfield
drovers. He called these skins Smithfield Cullanders.”

“Cruel wretches!”

“Well,” said the stranger, thoughtfully, “I can’t blame _them_. I have
known them forty years——”

“You are a salesman?”

“I _was_; but they worried me out of the market, for trying to get it
removed, and for giving evidence against it before Parliament.”

Mr. Brumpton (that was the name of the ousted salesman) did a little
fattening, now, on a few acres near London; and came occasionally to
Smithfield to buy and sell in a small way,—just, in fact, as Mr.
Bovington had begun to do.

“Well,” he continued, “I can’t lay all the blame on the drovers. What
can they do? If they have got one hundred beasts to wedge into a space
only big enough for seventy, they _must_ be cruel. Even the labour their
cruelty costs themselves is terrible. I have often seen drovers’ men
lying on the steps of doors, quite exhausted. None of them ever live
long.”

“How many are there?”

“About nine-hundred-and-fifty—licensed.”

A deafening hullabaloo arose again. A new ring-drove was being begun,
close by. Bovington threw up his hands in horror, when he saw that some
of his cherished cattle were to become members of it. The lively West
Highlander was struggling fiercely against his fate; but in vain: he was
goaded, beaten, and worried with dogs, till forced into the ring.

Bovington hastened to the appointed corner, to expostulate with Mr.
Whelter.

“How can _I_ help it!” was that individual’s consolation. “I spoke for
_all_ your beasts; but there was only room for seven on ’em to be tied
up; so the rest on ’em is in off-droves. Where else _can_ they be?”

“And my sheep?”

“Couldn’t get none on ’em in. They’re a waiting in the ‘Ram’ Yard, till
the sales empties some of the pens. You’ll find ’em in the first floor.”

“What! Up stairs?”

“Ah, in the one-pair back.”

Mr. Bovington elbowed his way to the Ram Inn, to confirm by his eyes
what he could not believe with his ears. Sure enough he found his
favourite ‘New Leicesters’ a whole flight of stairs above ground. How
they had ever been got up, or how they were ever to be got down,
surpassed his ingenuity to conjecture.

At length there was pen-room; and sorely were Mr. Bovington’s feelings
tried. When his little flock were got into the market, they met, and
were mixed with, the sold flocks that were going out. Confusion was now
worse confounded. The beating, the goading, the bustling, the shouting;
the bleating of the sheep; the short, sharp, snarling of the dogs; above
all, the stentorian oaths and imprecations of the drovers,—no human
imagination, unaided by the reality, could conceive. Several flocks were
intermixed, in a manner that made correct separation seem impossible;
but while Mr. Bovington shuddered at all this cruelty and
wickedness—SOLELY PRODUCED BY WANT OF SPACE, AND BY THE PREVIOUS DRIVING
THROUGH THE STREETS—he could not help admiring the instinct of the dogs,
and the ingenuity of the men, in lessening the confusion—the former
watching intently their masters’ faces for orders, and flying over the
backs of the moving floor of wool, to execute them.

“Go for ’em, Bob!”

Like lightning the dog belonging to the drover of Bovington’s sheep,
dashed over their backs, and he beheld the ear of a favourite wether
between its teeth. By some magic, however, this significant style of
ear-wigging directed the sheep into the alley that led to the empty
pens; and the others were pushed, punched, goaded, and thrashed, till
each score was jammed into the small enclosures, as tight as figs in a
drum.

“They seem a nice lot,” said Mr. Brumpton, who had followed the new
seller; “but how is it possible for the best butcher in London to tell
what they are, in a wedge like this. Can he know how they will cut up,
after the punishment they have had? Impossible: and what’s the
consequence? Why, he will deduct ten or fifteen per cent. from your
price for bruised meat. It is the same with bullocks.”

Mr. Bovington, at this hint, reverted to his herd of cattle with a fresh
pang. Crammed, rammed, and jammed as they were between raw-boned
Lincolnshires and half-fed Herefords—a narrow bristling grove of gaunt
shoeing-horns—how could his customers see and appreciate the fine
‘points’ of his fancy stock? He had worked for Fame; yet, however loud
her blast, who could hear it above the crushing din of Smithfield?

Mr. Bovington, having returned to the rendezvous, leaned against a
cutler’s door-post—where there was an old grindstone outside (which the
market-people, by much sharpening of their knives upon it, had worn
away, like an old cheese)—in profound rumination. He was at a dead lock.
He could not sell all his stock, and he could not withdraw it; for it
was so fearfully deteriorated from the treatment it had got, that he
felt sure the recovery of many of his sheep and oxen would be very
doubtful. The best thing he could wish for them was speedy death; and,
for himself, sales at any price.

His reflections were interrupted by the pleasing information, that
although some of his beasts that were tied up had been sold at the top
price, only a few of those in the off-droves could find customers at the
second, because the butchers could not get to see them. “And you see
they _will_ have the pull of the market, if they can get it.”

Mr. Bovington looked unutterable despair, and told the salesman
emphatically to _sell_.

“It don’t matter to him,” said Brumpton, who was again at poor
Bovington’s elbow, “what the animals fetch. Sold for much or little, the
salesman’s profit don’t vary—4_s._ a head for beasts, and from 10_s._ to
13_s._ a score for sheep, at whatever price he sells. That’s the system
here, and it don’t improve the profits of the grazier. Why should _he_
care what you get, or lose?”

Towards the close of the market, Mr. Bovington perceived, that if it
cost the animals intense torture to be got into their allotted places,
it took unmitigated brutality to get them out again. The breaking up of
a ring-drove might have made a treat for Nero; but honest Mr. Bovington
had had enough. He retired from the arena of innumerable bull-fights in
a state of mind in which disgust very much preponderated over personal
disappointment. “And mentioning bull-fights,” thought he to himself,
“Upon my life! I don’t think we are so much better than those people in
Spain after all, while we stand this sort of thing, and eat our dinners,
and make our wills.”

Mr. Brumpton and he determined to breakfast together, at the ‘Catherine
Wheel,’ in St. John Street.

“What remedy do you propose for these horrors?” asked our dejected
friend.

“A market in the suburbs,” was the answer.

“But look at the rapidity with which London spreads. How long will you
guarantee that any site you may select will remain ‘out of Town?’”

“Ah, that’s the difficulty,” said Brumpton. “In 1808, it was proposed to
remove the market to the ‘open fields’—Clerkenwell-fields; but, twenty
years afterwards, there was not a blade of grass to be seen near the
place. It was covered with bricks and mortar. Rahere-street—in the midst
of a dense neighbourhood—now stands on the very spot that was suggested.
Again, only last year a field between Camden-town and Holloway was
proposed; but since then, houses have been built up to the very hedge
that incloses it.”

“Islington market seems not to answer.”

“No; _I_ think it lies too low. They can’t drain it properly.”

“What is to be done, then?”

“I’ll tell you what I think would be best. Let a good site be fixed
upon; and don’t rest contented with that. Fence off, also, a certain
space around it with appropriate approaches. Let these be kept sacred
from innovating bricks. Deal with a new cattle-market as the Board of
Health proposes to deal with cemeteries. Isolate it. Allow of no
buildings, except for market purposes—of no encroachments
whatever—either upon the area itself or its new approaches.”

Mr. Bovington was about to hazard a remark about abattoirs, when
deafening cries again arose in the street.

“Mad bull! mad bull! mad bull!” resounded from Smithfield-bars.

“Mad bull! mad bull!” was echoed from the uttermost ends of St. John
Street.

Bovington looked out of window. A fine black ox was tearing furiously
along the pavement. Women were screaming and rushing into shops,
children scrambling out of the road, men hiding themselves in doorways,
boys in ecstacies of rapture, drovers as mad as the bull tearing after
him, sheep getting under the wheels of hackney-coaches, dogs half
choking themselves with worrying the wool off their backs, pigs
obstinately connecting themselves with a hearse and funeral, other oxen
looking into public-houses—everybody and everything disorganised, no
sort of animal able to go where it wanted or was wanted; nothing in its
right place; everything wrong everywhere; all the town in a brain fever
because of this infernal market!

The mad bull was Mr. Bovington’s West Highlander. He was quite prepared
for it. When he saw him going round the corner, and at the same moment
beheld a nursemaid, a baby, and a baked potato-can, fly into the air in
opposite directions, he was horrified, but not surprised. He followed
his West Highlander. He followed the crowd tearing after his West
Highlander, down St. John Street, through Jerusalem-passage, along
Clerkenwell Green, up a hill, and down an alley. He passed two disabled
apple-women, a fractured shop-front, an old man being put into a cab and
taken to the hospital. At last, he traced the favourite of his herds
into a back parlour in Liquorpond Street, into which he had violently
intruded through a tripe-shop, and where he was being slaughtered for
his own peace and for the safety of the neighbourhood; but not at all to
the satisfaction of an invalid who had leaped out of a turn-up bedstead,
into the little yard behind. The carcass of the West Highlander was sold
to a butcher for a sum which paid about half of what was demanded, from
its owner, for compensation to the different victims of its fury.

Mr. Bovington returned to Long Hornets a ‘wiser,’ though certainly
not—commercially speaking—a ‘better’ man. His adventures in Smithfield
had made a large hole in a 50_l._ note.

Some of his oxen were returned unsold. Two came back with the ‘foot
disease’, and the rest did not recover their value for six months.

Mr. Bovington has never tried Smithfield again. He regards it as a place
accursed. In distant Reigns, he says, it was an odious spot, associated
with cruelty, fanaticism, wickedness and torture; and in these later
days it is worthy of its ancient reputation. It is a doomed, but a
proper and consistent stronghold (according to Mr. Bovington) of
prejudice, ignorance, cupidity, and stupidity:—

           On some fond breast its parting soul relies,
           Some pious alderman its fame admires;
           Ev’n from its tomb, the voice of Suff’ring cries,
           Ev’n in its ashes live its wonted Fires!




               THE MINER’S DAUGHTERS.—A TALE OF THE PEAK.

                           IN THREE CHAPTERS.


                     CHAP. I.—THE CHILD’S TRAGEDY.

There is no really beautiful part of this kingdom so little known as the
Peak of Derbyshire. Matlock, with its tea-garden trumpery and
mock-heroic wonders; Buxton, with its bleak hills and fashionable
bathers; the truly noble Chatsworth and the venerable Haddon, engross
almost all that the public generally have seen of the Peak. It is talked
of as a land of mountains, which in reality are only hills; but its true
beauty lies in valleys that have been created by the rending of the
earth in some primeval convulsion, and which present a thousand charms
to the eyes of the lover of nature. How deliciously do the crystal
waters of the Wye and the Dove rush along such valleys, or dales, as
they there are called. With what a wild variety do the grey rocks soar
up amid their woods and copses. How airily stand in the clear heavens
the lofty limestone precipices, and the grey edges of rock gleam out
from the bare green downs—there _never_ called downs. What a genuine
Saxon air is there cast over the population, what a Saxon bluntness
salutes you in their speech!

It is into the heart of this region that we propose now to carry the
reader. Let him suppose himself with us now on the road from
Ashford-in-the-water to Tideswell. We are at the Bull’s Head, a little
inn on that road. There is nothing to create wonder, or a suspicion of a
hidden Arcadia in anything you see, but another step forward, and—there!
There sinks a world of valleys at your feet. To your left lies the
delicious Monsal Dale. Old Finn Hill lifts his grey head grandly over
it. Hobthrush’s Castle stands bravely forth in the hollow of his
side—grey, and desolate, and mysterious. The sweet Wye goes winding and
sounding at his feet, amid its narrow green meadows, green as the
emerald, and its dark glossy alders. Before us stretches on, equally
beautiful, Cressbrook Dale; Little Edale shows its cottages from amidst
its trees; and as we advance, the Mousselin-de-laine Mills stretch
across the mouth of Miller’s Dale, and startle with the aspect of so
much life amid so much solitude.

But our way is still onward. We resist the attraction of Cressbrook
village on its lofty eminence, and plunge to the right, into Wardlow
Dale. Here we are buried deep in woods, and yet behold still deeper the
valley descend below us. There is an Alpine feeling upon us. We are
carried once more, as in a dream, into the Saxon Switzerland. Above us
stretch the boldest ranges of lofty precipices, and deep amid the woods
are heard the voices of children. These come from a few workmen’s
houses, couched at the foot of a cliff that rises high and bright amid
the sun. That is Wardlow Cop; and there we mean to halt for a moment.
Forwards lies a wild region of hills, and valleys, and lead-mines, but
forward goes no road, except such as you can make yourself through the
tangled woods.

At the foot of Wardlow Cop, before this little hamlet of Bellamy Wick
was built, or the glen was dignified with the name of Raven Dale, there
lived a miner who had no term for his place of abode. He lived, he said,
under Wardlow Cop, and that contented him.

His house was one of those little, solid, grey limestone cottages, with
grey flagstone roofs, which abound in the Peak. It had stood under that
lofty precipice when the woods which now so densely fill the valley were
but newly planted. There had been a mine near it, which had no doubt
been the occasion of its erection in so solitary a place; but that mine
was now worked out, and David Dunster, the miner, now worked at a mine
right over the hills in Miller’s Dale. He was seldom at home, except at
night, and on Sundays. His wife, besides keeping her little house, and
digging and weeding in the strip of garden that lay on the steep slope
above the house, hemmed in with a stone wall, also seamed stockings for
a framework-knitter in Ashford, whither she went once or twice in the
week.

They had three children, a boy and two girls. The boy was about eight
years of age; the girls were about five and six. These children were
taught their lessons of spelling and reading by the mother, amongst her
other multifarious tasks; for she was one of those who are called
regular plodders. She was quiet, patient, and always doing, though never
in a bustle. She was not one of those who acquire a character for vast
industry by doing everything in a mighty flurry, though they contrive to
find time for a tolerable deal of gossip under the plea of resting a
bit, and which ‘resting a bit’ they always terminate by an exclamation
that ‘they must be off, though, for they have a world of work to do.’
Betty Dunster, on the contrary, was looked on as rather ‘a slow coach.’
If you remarked that she was a hard-working woman, the reply was, ‘Well,
she’s always doing—Betty’s work’s never done; but then she does na hurry
hersen.’ The fact was, Betty was a thin, spare woman, of no very strong
constitution, but of an untiring spirit. Her pleasure and rest were,
when David came home at night, to have his supper ready, and to sit down
opposite to him at the little round table, and help him, giving a bit
now and then to the children, that came and stood round, though they had
had their suppers, and were ready for bed as soon as they had seen
something of their ‘dad.’

David Dunster was one of those remarkably tall fellows that you see
about these hills, who seem of all things the very worst made men to
creep into the little mole holes on the hill sides that they call
lead-mines. But David did manage to burrow under and through the hard
limestone rocks as well as any of them. He was a hard-working man,
though he liked a sup of beer, as most Derbyshire men do, and sometimes
came home none of the soberest. He was naturally of a very hasty temper,
and would fly into great rages; and if he were put out by anything in
the working of the mines, or the conduct of his fellow-workmen, he would
stay away from home for days, drinking at Tideswell, or the Bull’s Head
at the top of Monsal Dale, or down at the Miners’ Arms at
Ashford-in-the-water.

Betty Dunster bore all this patiently. She looked on these things
somewhat as matters of course. At that time, and even now, how few
miners do not drink and ‘rol a bit,’ as they call it. She was,
therefore, tolerant, and let the storms blow over, ready always to
persuade her husband to go home and sleep off his drink and anger, but
if he were too violent, leaving him till another attempt might succeed
better. She was very fond of her children, and not only taught them on
week days their lessons, and to help her to seam, but also took them to
the Methodist Chapel in ‘Tidser,’ as they called Tideswell, whither,
whenever she could, she enticed David. David, too, in his way, was fond
of the children, especially of the boy, who was called David after him.
He was quite wrapped up in the lad, to use the phrase of the people in
that part; in fact, he was foolishly and mischievously fond of him. He
would give him beer to drink, ‘to make a true Briton on him,’ as he
said, spite of Betty’s earnest endeavour to prevent it,—telling him that
he was laying the foundation in the lad of the same faults that he had
himself. But David Dunster did not look on drinking as a fault at all.
It was what he had been used to all his life. It was what all the miners
had been used to for generations. A man was looked on as a milk-sop and
a Molly Coddle, that would not take his mug of ale, and be merry with
his comrades. It required the light of education, and the efforts that
have been made by the Temperance Societies, to break in on this ancient
custom of drinking, which, no doubt, has flourished in these hills since
the Danes and other Scandinavians, bored and perforated them of old for
the ores of lead and copper. To Betty Dunster’s remonstrances, and
commendations of tea, David would reply,—‘Botheration Betty, wench!
Dunna tell me about thy tea and such-like pig’s-wesh. It’s all very well
for women; but a man, Betty, a man mun ha’ a sup of real stingo, lass.
He mun ha’ summut to prop his ribs out, lass, as he delves through th’
chert and tood-stone. When tha weylds th’ maundrel (the pick), and I
wesh th’ dishes, tha shall ha’ th’ drink, my wench, and I’ll ha’ th’
tea. Till then, prithee let me aloon, and dunna bother me, for it’s no
use. It only kicks my monkey up.’

And Betty found that it was of no use; that it did only kick his monkey
up, and so she let him alone, except when she could drop in a persuasive
word or two. The mill-owners at Cressbrook and Miller’s Dale had
forbidden any public-house nearer than Edale, and they had more than
once called the people together to point out to them the mischiefs of
drinking, and the advantages to be derived from the very savings of
temperance. But all these measures, though they had some effect on the
mill people, had very little on the miners. They either sent to
Tideswell or Edale for kegs of beer to peddle at the mines, or they went
thither themselves on receiving their wages.

And let no one suppose that David Dunster was worse than his fellows; or
that Betty Dunster thought her case a particularly hard one. David was
‘pretty much of a muchness,’ according to the country phrase, with the
rest of his hard-working tribe, which was, and always had been, a
hard-drinking tribe; and Betty, though she wished it different, did not
complain, just because it was of no use, and because she was no worse
off than her neighbours.

Often when she went to ‘carry in her hose’ to Ashford, she left the
children at home by themselves. She had no alternative. They were there
in that solitary valley for many hours playing alone. And to them it was
not solitary. It was all that they knew of life, and that all was very
pleasant to them. In spring, they hunted for birds’-nests in the copses,
and amongst the rocks and grey stones that had fallen from them. In the
copses built the blackbirds and thrushes: in the rocks the firetails;
and the grey wagtails in the stones, which were so exactly of their own
colour, as to make it difficult to see them. In summer, they gathered
flowers and berries, and in the winter they played at horses, kings, and
shops, and sundry other things in the house.

On one of these occasions, a bright afternoon in autumn, the three
children had rambled down the glen, and found a world of amusement in
being teams of horses, in making a little mine at the foot of a tall
cliff, and in marching for soldiers, for they had one day—the only time
in their lives—seen some soldiers go through the village of Ashford,
when they had gone there with their mother, for she now and then took
them with her when she had something from the shop to carry besides her
bundle of hose. At length they came to the foot of an open hill which
swelled to a considerable height, with a round and climbable side, on
which grew a wilderness of bushes amid which lay scattered masses of
grey crag. A small winding path went up this, and they followed it. It
was not long, however, before they saw some things which excited their
eager attention. Little David, who was the guide, and assumed to himself
much importance as the protector of his sisters, exclaimed, ‘See here!’
and springing forward, plucked a fine crimson cluster of the mountain
bramble. His sisters, on seeing this, rushed on with like eagerness.
They soon forsook the little winding and craggy footpath, and hurried
through sinking masses of moss and dry grass, from bush to bush and
place to place. They were soon far up above the valley, and almost every
step revealed to them some delightful prize. The clusters of the
mountain bramble, resembling mulberries, and known only to the
inhabitants of the hills, were abundant, and were rapidly devoured. The
dewberry was as eagerly gathered,—its large, purple fruit passing with
them for blackberries. In their hands were soon seen posies of the
lovely grass of Parnassus, the mountain cistus, and the bright blue
geranium.

Higher and higher the little group ascended in this quest, till the
sight of the wide, naked hills, and the hawks circling round the lofty,
tower-like crags over their heads, made them feel serious and somewhat
afraid.

‘Where are we?’ asked Jane, the elder sister. ‘Arn’t we a long way from
hom?’

‘Let us go hom,’ said little Nancy. ‘I’m afeerd here;’ clutching hold of
Jane’s frock.

‘Pho, nonsense!’ said David, ‘what are you afreed on? I’ll tak care on
you, niver fear.’

And with this he assumed a bold and defying aspect, and said, ‘Come
along; there are nests in th’ hazzles up yonder.’

He began to mount again, but the two girls hung back and said, ‘Nay,
David, dunna go higher; we are both afreed;’ and Jane added, ‘It’s a
long wee from hom, I’m sure.’

‘And those birds screechen’ so up there; I darna go up,’ added little
Nancy. They were the hawks that she meant, which hovered whimpering and
screaming about the highest cliffs. David called them little cowards,
but began to descend and, presently, seeking for berries and flowers as
they descended, they regained the little winding, craggy road, and,
while they were calling to each other, discovered a remarkable echo on
the opposite hill side. On this, they shouted to it, and laughed, and
were half frightened when it laughed and shouted again. Little Nancy
said it must be an old man in the inside of the mountain; at which they
were all really afraid, though David put on a big look, and said,
‘Nonsense! it was nothing at all.’ But Jane asked how nothing at all
could shout and laugh as it did? and on this little Nancy plucked her
again by the frock, and said in turn, ‘Oh, dear, let’s go hom!’

But at this David gave a wild whoop to frighten them, and when the hill
whooped again, and the sisters began to run, he burst into laughter, and
the strange spectral Ha! ha! ha! that ran along the inside of the hill
as it were, completed their fear, and they stopped their ears with their
hands and scuttled away down the hill. But now David seized them, and
pulling their hands down from their heads, he said, ‘See here! what a
nice place with the stones sticking out like seats. Why, it’s like a
little house; let us stay and play a bit here.’ It was a little hollow
in the hill side surrounded by projecting stones like an amphitheatre.
The sisters were still afraid, but the sight of this little hollow with
its seats of crag had such a charm for them that they promised David
they would stop awhile, if he would promise not to shout and awake the
echo. David readily promised this, and so they sat down; David proposed
to keep a school, and cut a hazel wand from a bush and began to lord it
over his two scholars in a very pompous manner. The two sisters
pretended to be much afraid, and to read very diligently on pieces of
flat stone which they had picked up. And then David became a serjeant
and was drilling them for soldiers, and stuck pieces of fern into their
hair for cockades. And then, soon after, they were sheep, and he was the
shepherd; and he was catching his flock and going to shear them, and
made so much noise that Jane cried, ‘Hold! there’s the echo mocking us.’

At this they all were still. But David said, ‘Pho! never mind the echo;
I must shear my sheep:’ but just as he was seizing little Nancy to
pretend to shear her with a piece of stick, Jane cried out, ‘Look! look!
how black it is coming down the valley there! There’s going to be a
dreadful starm; let us hurry hom!’

David and Nancy both looked up, and agreed to run as fast down the hill
as they could. But the next moment the driving storm swept over the
hill, and the whole valley was hid in it. The three children still
hurried on, but it became quite dark, and they soon lost the track, and
were tossed about by the wind, so that they had difficulty to keep on
their legs. Little Nancy began to cry, and the three taking hold of each
other endeavoured in silence to make their way homewards. But presently
they all stumbled over a large stone, and fell some distance down the
hill. They were not hurt, but much frightened, for they now remembered
the precipices, and were afraid every minute of going over them. They
now strove to find the track by going up again, but they could not find
it anywhere. Sometimes they went upwards till they thought they were
quite too far, and then they went downwards till they were completely
bewildered; and then, like the Babes in the Wood, ‘They sate them down
and cried.’

But ere they had sate long, they heard footsteps, and listened. They
certainly heard them and shouted, but there was no answer. David
shouted, ‘Help! fayther! mother! help!’ but there was no answer. The
wind swept fiercely by; the hawks whimpered from the high crags, lost in
the darkness of the storm; and the rain fell, driving along icy cold.
Presently, there was a gleam of light through the clouds; the hill side
became visible, and through the haze they saw a tall figure as of an old
man ascending the hill. He appeared to carry two loads slung from his
shoulders by a strap; a box hanging before, and a bag hanging at his
back. He wound up the hill slowly and wearily, and presently he stopped
and relieving himself of his load, seated himself on a piece of crag to
rest. Again David shouted, but there still was no answer. The old man
sate as if no shout had been heard—immoveable.

‘It _is_ a man,’ said David, ‘and I _will_ make him hear;’ and with that
he shouted once more with all his might. But the old man made no sign of
recognition. He did not even turn his head, but he took off his hat and
began to wipe his brow as if warm with the ascent.

‘What can it be?’ said David in astonishment. ‘It _is_ a man, that’s
sartain. I’ll run and see.’

‘Nay, nay!’ shrieked the sisters. ‘Don’t, David! don’t! It’s perhaps the
old man out of the mountain that’s been mocking us. Perhaps,’ added
Jane, ‘he only comes out in starms and darkness.’

‘Stuff!’ said David, ‘an echo isn’t a man; it’s only our own voices.
I’ll see who it is; and away he darted, spite of the poor girl’s crying
in terror, ‘Don’t; don’t, David! Oh, don’t.’

But David was gone. He was not long in reaching the old man, who sate on
his stone breathing hard, as if out of breath with his ascent, but not
appearing to perceive David’s approach. The rain and the wind drove
fiercely upon him, but he did not seem to mind it. David was half afraid
to approach close to him, but he called out, ‘Help; help, mester!’ The
old man remained as unconscious of his presence. ‘Hillo!’ cried David
again. ‘Can you tell us the way down, mester?’ There was no answer, and
David was beginning to feel a shudder of terror run through every limb,
when the clouds cleared considerably, and he suddenly exclaimed, ‘Why,
it’s old Tobias Turton of top of Edale, and he’s as deaf as a door
nail!’

In an instant, David was at his side; seized his coat to make him aware
of his presence, and, on the old man perceiving him, shouted in his ear,
‘Which is the way down here, Mester Turton? Where’s the track?’

‘Down? Weighs o’ the back?’ said the old man; ‘ay, my lad, I was fain to
sit down; it does weigh o’ th’ back, sure enough.’

‘Where’s the foot-track?’ shouted David, again.

‘Th’ foot-track? Why, what art ta doing here, my lad, in such a starm?
Isn’t it David Dunster’s lad?’

David nodded. ‘Why, the track ’s here! see;’ and the old man stamped his
foot. ‘Get down hom, my lad, as fast as thou can. What dun they do
letting thee be upon th’ hills in such a dee as this?’

David nodded his thanks, and turned to descend the track, while the old
man adjusting his burden again, silently and wearily recommenced his way
upwards.

David shouted to his sisters as he descended, and they quickly replied.
He called to them to come towards him, as he was on the track, and was
afraid to quit it again. They endeavoured to do this; but the darkness
was now redoubled, and the wind and rain became more furious than ever.
The two sisters were soon bewildered amongst the bushes, and David, who
kept calling to them at intervals to direct their course towards him,
soon heard them crying bitterly. At this, he forgot the necessity of
keeping the track, and darting towards them, soon found them by
continuing to call to them, and took their hands to lead them to the
track. But they were now drenched through with the rain, and shivered
with cold and fear. David, with a stout heart endeavoured to cheer them.
He told them the track was close by, and that they would soon be at
home. But though the track was not ten yards off, somehow they did not
find it. Bushes and projecting rocks turned them out of their course;
and owing to the confusion caused by the wind, the darkness, and their
terror, they searched in vain for the track. Sometimes they thought they
had found it, and went on a few paces, only to stumble over loose
stones, or get entangled in the bushes.

It was now absolutely becoming night. Their terrors increased greatly.
They shouted and cried aloud, in the hope of making their parents hear
them. They felt sure that both father and mother must be come home; and
as sure that they would be hunting for them. But they did not reflect
that their parents could not tell in what direction they had gone. Both
father and mother were come home, and the mother had instantly rushed
out to try to find them, on perceiving that they were not in the house.
She had hurried to and fro, and called—not at first supposing they would
be far. But when she heard nothing of them, she ran in, and begged of
her husband to join in the search. But at first David Dunster would do
nothing. He was angry at them for going away from the house, and said he
was too tired to go on a wild-goose chase through the plantations after
them. ‘They are i’ th’ plantations,’ said he; ‘they are sheltering there
somewhere. Let them alone, and they’ll come home, with a good long tail
behind them.’

With this piece of a child’s song of sheep, David sat down to his
supper, and Betty Dunster hurried up the valley, shouting—‘Children,
where are you? David! Jane! Nancy! where are you?’

When she heard nothing of them, she hurried still more wildly up the
hill towards the village. When she arrived there—the distance of a
mile—she inquired from house to house, but no one had seen anything of
them. It was clear they had not been in that direction. An alarm was
thus created in the village; and several young men set out to join Mrs.
Dunster in the quest. They again descended the valley towards Dunster’s
house, shouting every now and then, and listening. The night was pitch
dark, and the rain fell heavily; but the wind had considerably abated,
and once they thought they heard a faint cry in answer to their call,
far down the valley. They were right; the children had heard the
shouting, and had replied to it. But they were far off. The young men
shouted again, but there was no answer; and after shouting once more
without success, they hastened on. When they reached David Dunster’s
house, they found the door open, and no one within. They knew that David
had set off in quest of the children himself, and they determined to
descend the valley. The distracted mother went with them, crying
silently to herself, and praying inwardly, and every now and then trying
to shout. But the young men raised their strong voices above hers, and
made the cliffs echo with their appeals.

Anon a voice answered them down the valley. They ran on as well as the
darkness would let them, and soon found that it was David Dunster, who
had been in the plantations on the other side of the valley; but hearing
nothing of the lost children, now joined them. He said he had heard the
cry from the hill side farther down, that answered to their shouts; and
he was sure that it was his boy David’s voice. But he had shouted again,
and there had been no answer but a wild scream as of terror, that made
his blood run cold.

‘O God!’ exclaimed the distracted mother, ‘what can it be? David! David!
Jane! Nancy!’

There was no answer. The young men bade Betty Dunster to contain
herself, and they would find the children before they went home again.
All held on down the valley, and in the direction whence the voice came.
Many times did the young men and the now strongly agitated father shout
and listen. At length they seemed to hear voices of weeping and moaning.
They listened—they were sure they heard a lamenting—it could only be the
children. But why then did they not answer? On struggled the men, and
Mrs. Dunster followed wildly after. Now, again, they stood and shouted,
and a kind of terrified scream followed the shout.

‘God in heaven!’ exclaimed the mother; ‘what is it? There is something
dreadful. My children! my children! where are you?’

‘Be silent, pray do, Mrs. Dunster,’ said one of the young men, ‘or we
cannot catch the sounds so as to follow them.’ They again listened, and
the wailings of the children were plainly heard. The whole party pushed
forward over stock and stone up the hill. They called again, and there
was a cry of ‘Here! here! fayther! mother! where are you?’

In a few moments more the whole party had reached the children, who
stood drenched with rain, and trembling violently, under a cliff that
gave no shelter, but was exposed especially to the wind and rain.

‘O Christ! My children!’ cried the mother wildly, struggling forwards
and clasping one in her arms. ‘Nancy! Jane! But where is David? David!
David! Oh, where is David? Where is your brother?’

The whole party was startled at not seeing the boy, and joined in a
simultaneous ‘Where is he? Where is your brother?’

The two children only wept and trembled more violently, and burst into
loud crying.

‘Silence!’ shouted the father. ‘Where is David, I tell ye? Is he lost?
David, lad, where ar ta?’

All listened, but there was no answer but the renewed crying of the two
girls.

‘Where is the lad, then?’ thundered forth the father with a terrible
oath.

The two terrified children cried, ‘Oh, down there! down there!’

‘Down where? Oh God!’ exclaimed one of the young men; ‘why it’s a
precipice! Down there?’

At this dreadful intelligence the mother gave a wild shriek, and fell
senseless on the ground. The young men caught her, and dragged her back
from the edge of the precipice. The father in the same moment, furious
at what he heard, seized the younger child that happened to be near him,
and shaking it violently, swore he would fling it down after the lad.

He was angry with the poor children, as if they had caused the
destruction of his boy. The young men seized him, and bade him think
what he was about; but the man believing his boy had fallen down the
precipice, was like a madman. He kicked at his wife as she lay on the
ground, as if she were guilty of this calamity by leaving the children
at home. He was furious against the poor girls, as if they had led their
brother into danger. In his violent rage he was a perfect maniac, and
the young men pushing him away, cried shame on him. In a while, the
desperate man torn by a hurricane of passion, sate himself down on a
crag, and burst into a tempest of tears, and struck his head violently
with his clenched fists, and cursed himself and everybody. It was a
dreadful scene.

Meantime, some of the young men had gone down below the precipice on
which the children had stood, and, feeling amongst the loose stones, had
found the body of poor little David. He was truly dead!

When he had heard the shout of his father, or of the young men, he had
given one loud shout in answer, and saying ‘Come on! never fear now!’
sprang forward, and was over the precipice in the dark, and flew down
and was dashed to pieces. His sisters heard a rush, a faint shriek, and
suddenly stopping, escaped the destruction that poor David had found.




                       NEW LIFE AND OLD LEARNING.


There is not, in the whole of Bacon’s writings, a remark more profoundly
characteristic of the man and his philosophy, than is embodied in his
epigram that Antiquity is the Youth of the World. If men could only have
had the courage to act upon this truth as soon as it was pointed out,—if
they could but have seen, that, in their mode of reckoning antiquity,
they made always the mistake of beginning the calculations from the
wrong end, and that, in everything relating to the progress of
knowledge, and the advancement of the species, the Present, not the
Past, should be deemed of superior authority,—how many miseries society
would have spared itself, and how much earlier it would have profited by
the greatest of its teachers, Experience!

‘For antiquity,’ says Lord Bacon, ‘the opinion which men cherish
concerning it is altogether negligent, and scarcely congruous even to
the name. For the old age and grandevity of the world are to be truly
counted as antiquity; which are properly to be ascribed to our times,
not to the younger age of the world, such as it was with the ancients.
Since that age, in respect to us indeed, is ancient and greater; but in
respect to the world itself, was new and lesser. And in reality, as we
look for a greater acquaintance with human affairs, and a more mature
judgment, from an old than from a young man, on account of his
experience, and the variety and abundance of the things which he has
seen, and heard, and considered, just so it is fit also that much
greater things be expected from our age (if it knew its strength, and
would endeavour and apply) than from the old times; as being a more
advanced age of the world, and enlarged and accumulate with numberless
experiences and observations.’

Have these pregnant sentences lost their meaning in the two centuries
and a half that have since rolled away? Let us take the wealthiest and
most distinguished seminary of learning now existing in England, and
judge.

At the commencement of the present century, when the Novum Organum had
been written nearly two hundred years, the examinations at the
University of Oxford, so far as they were scientific at all, and not
restricted to learned languages, turned entirely on the scholastic logic
which the Novum Organum had shown to be a foul obstruction to knowledge.
The new and true logic, as explained by Bacon, was never mentioned in
the venerable place; and the new discoveries of the laws of nature to
which it had led, formed no part of the general course of study, or of
the subjects of public examination. It was quite possible for an Oxford
man to have brought away a distinguished degree in the sciences, without
knowing the truths of universal gravitation, or of the celestial
motions, or of the planetary forces, or of any one of the provisions
made by nature for the stability of the system we inhabit; and the very
highest Oxford degree in the non-scientific departments, did not imply,
any more than it does even yet, the remotest knowledge of modern
languages or literature, of modern history or philosophy, of whether it
might not have been Cromwell who discovered America, or Columbus who
fought at Marston Moor. For any interest that the students at Oxford
University were required to take in such matters, the past three hundred
years might never have existed, or have been utterly annihilated, and
all their wondrous burden of experiences melted into air.

It was not till after the nineteenth century had begun, that some sense
of what had been going on in the world outside crept into the cloisters
at Oxford. Statutes were then passed to recognise the Newtonian
improvements in philosophy, and recommending, though not necessitating,
their adoption into the course for honours. Honours nevertheless
continued to be taken without them; and it is notorious that the soil
has been ungenial to their growth, and that they never have flourished
in it. Oxford, in effect, continued up to this day no other than it was
four centuries ago. Apart from the doubtful discipline of life and
manners attainable within its walls, it is still no more than a huge
theological school, where the lay youth of England are admitted to
participate in such meagre allowance of intellectual training as the
clergy think safe for themselves; where Manchester and Birmingham are
ignored; where the Greek and Latin authors continue in the same esteem
as when they actually contained whatever existed of learning left upon
the earth, and no education could proceed without them; and from which
there issue into the world yearly reinforcements of the upper classes of
society, less able to cope with the wants and duties that surround them,
and less acquainted with the laws and operations by which the present is
to be guided into the future, than any self-taught merchant’s clerk at
Liverpool, or any sharp engineer’s lad at the railway in Euston Square.

Now, what has been the answer from Oxford when reproaches of this kind
have been addressed to it? What was its answer when ridiculed, forty
years ago, for teaching what rational men had been laughing at for more
than a century? It amounted to this—that so intimately had the original
statutes of the University interwoven the Aristotelian methods with the
whole course of its studies and exercises, and so sacredly were its
officers bound to see to the enforcement of those statutes, that the
last stronghold from which any such learning could be dislodged was the
University, to which its mere forms and practices unhappily continued to
be essential, even long after every vestige of reality had vanished out
of them. In other words it was confessed that Oxford had been so
constructed as a place of study, that the rules and statutes which
should have been framed for the reception of truth, in whatever quarter
it might appear, had turned out to be only available for the retention
and perpetuation of error; and that Education, whose express province
everywhere else was to absorb and make profit of every new acquisition,
was miserably bound, on this spot only, to reject them all. Precisely
the same arguments have very lately been repeated. When the great ‘whip’
of the country parsons brought up a majority against the Modern History
statute twelve months ago, this was the plea on which bigotry rallied
her forces; and when more recently the statute was again proposed, the
same plea would have secured it the same reception, if the old flock of
reverend Thwack-’ums had not meanwhile tired of the expense and trouble
of being dragged in a drove from their parsonages to the Senate House,
to bleat forth ignorant _non placets_.

As it was, the History statute was passed with its notable limitation
against the events of the last sixty years. The Oxford scholar may now
sail down the stream of modern story as long as the water is smooth, or
the storm seen only in the distance; but as he nears the explosive point
of 1789, of which the vast and terrible wrecks are still tumbling around
us, a huge board warns him of ‘danger,’ and his frail little cock-boat
of history is driven forcibly all the way back again. Such is the point
of advance to which the present year of our Lord has brought the
University of Oxford. Such is the provision made at the wealthiest place
of education in the world, in the middle of the nineteenth century, for
that true and subtle understanding of modern life and institutions on
which the peaceful development of the twentieth century will mainly
depend! But Oxford was founded by a Church, which, amid all ludicrous
surrounding evidences of her failures and her follies, still claims to
be infallible; and the worst peculiarities of the founder cleave to the
foundation. The next fifty years will have to show, however, whether an
institution shall be allowed to continue in the annual disposal of some
half million or more of money for a purpose she so manifestly mistakes,
that even the learning she prefers to every other is less taught to her
scholars for the wisdom to be found in it, than for mere constructive
skill in the language by which that wisdom is conveyed.

Sydney Smith has remarked it as one of the great advantages of the
classical education in which we are trained in this country, that it
sets before us so many examples of sublimity in action, and of sublimity
in thought. ‘It is impossible for us,’ he exclaims, in one of those
noble lectures on moral philosophy of which the fragments have recently
been published, ‘in the first and most ardent years of life, to read the
great actions of the two greatest nations in the world, so beautifully
related, without catching, _ourselves_, some taste for greatness, and a
love for that glory which is gained by doing greater and better things
than other men. And though the state of order and discipline into which
the world is brought, does not enable a man frequently to do such
things, as every day produced in the fierce and eventful democraties of
Greece and Rome, yet, to love that which is great, is the best security
for hating that which is little; the best cure for envy; the safest
antidote for revenge; the surest pledge for the abhorrence of malice;
the noblest incitement to love truth and manly independence and
honourable labour, to glory in spotless innocence, and build up the
system of life upon the rock of integrity.’

But is the opportunity fairly afforded for this? Is not the attention
which ought to be fixed upon Things, to secure any part of the gain thus
eloquently set before us, for the most part distracted and occupied by
Words, in the system which commonly prevails? Has not the labour to be
undergone in obtaining the ready verbal skill exacted in College
examinations, a direct tendency to weaken our pleasure in the history,
philosophy, or poetry on which we grind and sharpen that verbal skill?
We apprehend that this is really the case; and that the old learning
which Oxford persists in thinking all-sufficient for the wants of our
new and busy life, is taught upon a method which strips it of its
noblest lessons, and withers its choicest fruit.

The question is a most serious one for those whom it most immediately
concerns, and whom it should warn of the danger of too manifestly
lagging behind the time. At this moment power is changing hands, as
certainly as in the days of those subtle and eager men who seated the
ancient learning on its throne; and who would as surely depose it now,
if founding new universities amongst us, and give it but its due and
proper place in the expanding circles of knowledge, as, four hundred
years ago, they admitted its just predominance, and established its
solitary sway. When periods of such vicissitude arrive, it is for those
who have been powerful heretofore, to look to their tenures of
authority. Upon nothing can they hope to rest, if not upon complete
accordance with the spirit of the age, and a thorough aptitude to its
necessities and wants. If the education of children is to continue
imperfect and bad, as Dean Swift tells us he had found it always in his
experience, in exact proportion to the wealth and grandeur of the
parents, the next generation of parents will have to look to the
continued security of their wealth and grandeur. The Earth is in
incessant motion. The time when it was supposed to be permanently fixed
in the centre of the universe has passed away for ever, and modes of
study only suited to that time will have to share the fate that has
befallen it.




                          THE RAILWAY STATION.


       They judge not well, who deem that once among us
       A spirit moved that now from earth has fled;
       Who say that at the busy sounds which throng us,
       Its shining wings for ever more have sped.

       Not all the turmoil of the Age of Iron
       Can scare that Spirit hence; like some sweet bird
       That loud harsh voices in its cage environ,
       It sings above them all, and will be heard!

       Not, for the noise of axes or of hammers,
       Will that sweet bird forsake her chosen nest;
       Her warblings pierce through all those deafening clamours
       But surer to their echoes in the breast.

       And not the Past alone, with all its guerdon
       Of twilight sounds and shadows, bids them rise;
       But soft, above the noontide heat and burden
       Of the stern present, float those melodies.

       Not with the baron bold, the minstrel tender,
       Not with the ringing sound of shield and lance,
       Not with the Field of Gold in all its splendour,
       Died out the generous flame of old Romance.

       Still, on a nobler strife than tilt or tourney,
       Rides forth the errant knight, with brow elate;
       Still patient pilgrims take, in hope, their journey;
       Still meek and cloistered spirits ‘stand and wait.’

       Still hath the living, moving, world around us,
       Its legends, fair with honour, bright with truth;
       Still, as in tales that in our childhood bound us,
       Love holds the fond traditions of its youth.

       We need not linger o’er the fading traces
       Of lost divinities; or seek to hold
       Their serious converse ’mid Earth’s green waste-places,
       Or by her lonely fountains, as of old:

       For, far remote from Nature’s fair creations,
       Within the busy mart, the crowded street,
       With sudden, sweet, unlooked-for revelations
       Of a bright presence we may chance to meet;

       E’en _now_, beside a restless tide’s commotion,
       I stand and hear, in broken music swell,
       Above the ebb and flow of Life’s great ocean,
       An under-song of greeting and farewell.

       For here are meetings: moments that inherit
       The hopes and wishes, that through months and years
       Have held such anxious converse with the spirit,
       That now its joy can only speak in tears;

       And here are partings: hands that soon must sever,
       Yet clasp the firmer; heart, that unto heart,
       Was ne’er so closely bound before, nor ever
       So near the other as when now they part;

       And here Time holds his steady pace unbroken,
       For all that crowds within his narrow scope;
       For all the language, uttered and unspoken,
       That will return when Memory comforts Hope!

       One short and hurried moment, and for ever
       Flies, like a dream, its sweetness and its pain;
       And, for the hearts that love, the hands that sever,
       Who knows what meetings are in store again?

       They who are left, unto their homes returning,
       With musing step, trace o’er each by-gone scene;
       And they upon their journey—doth no yearning,
       No backward glance, revert to what hath been?

       Yes! for awhile, perchance, a tear-drop starting,
       Dims the bright scenes that greet the eye and mind;
       But here—as ever in life’s cup of parting—
       Theirs is the bitterness who stay behind!

       So in life’s sternest, last farewell, may waken
       A yearning thought, a backward glance be thrown
       By them who leave: but oh! how blest the token,
       To those who stay behind when THEY are gone!




                             THE BROWN HAT.


‘My son,’ said the wisest of modern men—whose name, of course, it were
malicious to mention, and foolish also, the object being to promulgate
charity, not to excite rancour—‘My son, if you would go through life
easily, I can give you no better rule of conduct than this: _Never wear
a brown hat in Friesland_.’

Now, though this piece of counsel may sound as hieroglyphical and
mysterious as the well known precept by _Mr. Malaprop_ administered to
his offspring, when the latter was about to quit home, ‘Evil
communication is worth two in the bush,’ it is nevertheless susceptible
of the clearest and most explicit interpretation. Though the fruits of
particular and personal experience, it may be applied to every man who
wears a hat under the sun, the moon, the seven stars, or the Seven
Dials! let alone the Seven United Provinces!

The Brown Hat whence this saying sprung, was merely a hat of common
quality and uncommon comfort; soft to the head, not stiff; a screen for
eyes from the sun; a thing taking no place among the traveller’s
luggage—claiming no package of its own, and thus offering no
wrangling-stock to those most tiresome of Jacks among all
Jacks-in-office—to wit, Custom-house officers. It was a hat which the
_Hatto_ of hats must have accredited as the very perfection of a quiet,
middle-aged traveller’s _vade mecum_; something dull-looking, it is
true, for those whose thoughts are ‘wide-awake;’ something vulgar, for
any one troubled by aristocratic fancies as to his covering, and who
loves not to be confounded with his butterman; but withal a hat to be
defended by every man of sense, to be clung to by every creature capable
of headaches; a hat one could be bumped about in during a day of sixteen
hours, in carriage, cart, or third-class railway vehicle; a hat one
could lie in bed in for nightcap, or sit upon for cushion; a kindly,
comforting, unobtrusive hat—brown, because it was of the felt’s natural
colour, pliant as a piece of silk, submissive to wind, impervious to
rain. What can we say more? A castor, as the Pilgrim’s _Pollux_ put it,
‘fit to be buried in.’

Yet such was the hat, and none other, which—save your nerves be of
granite, your cheeks of brass, and your patience the patience of a
beaver—you are hereby solemnly warned not to wear in Friesland. In
London, when you please and where you please, but not in Meppel, and not
in Zwolle, and not in Sneek, and, most of all, not in the market-place
at Leenwarden. As wisely might you have tried to walk down a
village-street, in Lancashire, on Lifting-Monday (thirty years ago),
thinking to escape from the obliging maids and jolly wives, who lurked
behind their doors, bent on tossing every passing male in a kitchen
chair, as have hoped for ten seconds of peace,—supposing that in
Friesland (two autumns since) you took your walks abroad wearing a Brown
Hat!

It will be, peradventure, imagined by those who are not strong in their
geography, or who have not studied the Book of Dresses, or who entertain
little curiosity concerning one of the most noticeable and original
districts in Europe,—that these touchy Friesland folk themselves don or
doff nothing worth an Englishman turning his head to admire; carry aloft
what all the well-bred world carries,—and therefore cannot afford to let
any one thrive, save under the shadow of the ‘regulation beaver,’ to
which all polite Europe subscribes. Yet the case happens to be, that if
there be a land in which perpetual wonderment could make the traveller
wry-necked, that land is North Holland. Hong-Kong can hardly be
stranger, either in its composition or its maintenance. _So Sci_ herself
(in Mr. Sealy’s capital Chinese tale) did not boast a head-tire more
‘express and surprising,’ than the gentlewomen of all ages, through
whose active decision and passive contempt the Brown Hat had to run the
gauntlet.

Let us see if we can sketch this—though by no means catholically sure,
that some stratum of use or ornament, may not have been overlooked in
our specification. First, it is conceived that the hair upon the head of
the Frieslander, must be cut as close as though subject to the
pumpkin-shell barbarity of the pilgrim-fathers, when their scissors were
intent on shearing off love-locks. Upon this closely cropped poll, comes
first a knitted cap (Mrs. Loudon, perhaps, can tell whether there be an
aristocratic or established stitch formula for its knitting), over that
a silk scull cap. These tightly put on, the serious business of the
head-gear begins. The victim is next hooped, bound, lined, circled and
otherwise clasped up within gilt metal—various in its cut, provided it
only fits close, ‘as some one said,’ for headaches, to throb against.
The mistress of _Keetje_, the maid, is fond of having her kettle-cap
made of gilt silver, sometimes—if she be of old family—of pure gold; and
you will see her in the market-place, wearing, in addition to this
precious piece of trepanning, a metal tiara, such as Grecian Queens wear
upon the stage, stuck over with coarse jewels; nay, more, dangling at
the sides of her face, a pair of inconceivable gilt pendants, at a
distance looking like bunches of queer keys, or that minikin household
furniture our English ladies now choose to suspend from their girdles.
But this is not all. At the extreme angles of her forehead, _Keetje’s_
mistress—if a person of high fashion—must stick in two little square
plots or tufts of frizzled silk, to pass for curls. This done, she may
put on her cap of the finest lace, with its deep border or flap behind,
fashioned like the brim of the dustman’s hat, but from the costly
daintiness of its material, and the creamy whiteness of the throat it
lies against, somewhat more picturesque. Finally, if _Keetje’s_ mistress
be a Friesland _Miss Flamborough_ of ‘first water’—a lady who knows the
world, and has a spirit superior to old-fashioned prejudices—she must
have by way of crown, all to her four caps (one of precious metals), a
straw bonnet, a huge, heavy, coal-scuttle, festooned with loops and
streamers of gaudy ribbon, and thriftily guarded at the edge with a hem
or barrier of stout and gaudy printed chintz. Thus canopied are the
comely wives and widows (maidens, possibly dispensing with the bonnet),
who shrieked, clapped their hands, and, with every other possible
demonstration of offence, pursued the wearer of the Brown Hat in
Friesland.

On the habiliments of the male moiety of society, tediousness forbids
that we should expatiate; the less, as something will thus be left to be
treated on a future day, when the grave question of apparel may be more
solemnly entered upon. Enough for the moment, to say that it suits the
singularities of this critical land: a land in which a Swimming Lion is
the ensign, and of which His Majesty Topsy-Turvy might be sovereign; a
land in which there is hardly a crooked horizontal line to be found,
save among the sand-hills; a land in which, with all its neatness’ care,
scarce a building, be it church or market-house, palace or exchange, can
be prevailed upon to stand perpendicular; a land in which for air you
breathe extract of juniper, turf, tobacco, and stagnant waters, mixed; a
land in which people eat cheese with their tea, and where a child that
plucks a nest runs great danger of being whipped as an enemy to Church
and State—guilty of trying to let in the republican ocean; a land where
full-grown babies set up clockwork gentlemen and _papier mâche_ swans,
by way of animating their garden, and the weedy ponds in the same; a
land where full-grown men undertake and complete some of the most
magnificent enterprises which science can contrive for industry to carry
out; a land of teeming plenty and of high prices; a land of bad
digestions and beautiful complexions. No, the men of this land—the
shippers of Dordrecht, the potters of Delft, the gardeners of Broet, and
the dairy farmers of Harlingen, decked out for fair or frolic—must be
to-day left with all their uncouth and indescribable finery,
undescribable, it may be, for some future parable.

But as if in the above there had not been indicated enough of what yet
new and strange for Pilgrim to observe and to tolerate, and to smile at,
with English supercilious civility in this country, the very names of
places, even (as a descendant of Dr. Dilworth inadequately remarked),
‘are neither Christian nor becoming.’ One might bring one’s mind to bear
to be jeered at or stared at, in a land resounding with pompous and
euphonious words—by the Wissihiccon, for instance, or on the
Mississippi, or at Canandaigna, or among the Inscoraras, or when bound
for Passamaquoddy. Even the prize-scold at Billingsgate was silenced and
rendered meek by being called a _Chrononhotonthologos_.—There’s much in
four syllables! But in Friesland the traveller is handed over from
Workum to Higtum, and from Higtum to Midlum; thence perhaps to Boxum,
and from Boxum to Hallum, Dokkum, Kollum, &c., &c., &c.; going through
the whole alphabet of these ‘make-believe’ names, the very study of
which on the map is enough to make properly-brought-up persons
disdainful and critical! Yet, so far from feeling any proper sense of
their own position; so far from the slightest shame or shrinking; so far
from one single deprecatory ‘_Pray don’t make game of us! We are decent
folk after all, and well to do in the world, though some of us do come
from Sueek!_’—these are the people, so lost to every sense of the
ridiculous at home, as to tumble, towzle, and in every other conceivable
and contemptuous mode maltreat the useful, comfortable, authentic, and
in every respect unobtrusively defensible Brown Hat aforesaid! Did its
wearer stop before a shop-window to look wistfully at one of those
stupendous jars of pickles, which with a dozen of hard eggs for each
guest, form so prominent a feature of the Dutchman’s merry-making
suppers; his coat-tails were sure to be pulled by some grinning child,
broader than long, and in facture closely resembling Mr. Staunton’s
broadly-based new chessman. Did he lean over a gate to admire some
magnificent bird, the brilliant cleanlinesss of which on the green
carpet, gives us a new idea of the beauty of ox or cow, a head would be
picked up from the dyke-side; with a liberal emission of casual slang,
and as likely as not, a stone would have been thrown—did Holland contain
a single stone for a _David’s_ sling to utter. Did he adventure along
the Wall of Zwolle on a glowing autumn evening, or meekly take the
second best place on the _treckschuit_ which was to waft him down the
canal from Groningen to Delfzel (a water-path in its way, as peculiar
and contradictory of all received principles as any railroad ever
carried over house-tops at the Minories, or through the great
pleasure-gardens and greenhouses of a _Sir Timothy Dod_), it was always
one and the same story—one and the same contempt—one and the same
experience. Simple laughed with a most disconcerting and noisy
sincerity; and Gentle stuffed their handkerchiefs into their mouths—held
both their own sides and poked their neighbours. ‘Driving Cloud’ or
other of the Ojibbeway Indians if let loose in Clare-Market, would
hardly have been made to feel his conspicuousness more signally than our
traveller. There was neither privacy, place, nor pity, for the Brown Hat
in Friesland.

Therefore, the wisest of these in advising his son, may have meant to
say to him, ‘Never throw your oddity in the teeth of other men’s
oddities.’ You cannot expect immunity for your own whims, if you force
them upon other people’s whims. Never expect that your ‘_ism_’ will find
quarter among their ‘_isms_;’ or (to put the adage otherwise) he may
have desired to recommend a reading backwards of the old maxim—worn
threadbare, rather by trampling upon, than by carrying about, to
wit—‘Live, and let live.’

If then you would live a quiet life in Friesland, NEVER WEAR A BROWN
HAT!




                         ALCHEMY AND GUNPOWDER.


The day-dream of mankind has ever been the Unattainable. To sigh for
what is beyond our reach is from infancy to age, a fixed condition of
our nature. To it we owe all the improvement that distinguishes
civilised from savage life,—to it we are indebted for all the great
discoveries which, at long intervals, have rewarded thought.

Though the motives which stimulated the earliest inquiries were
frequently undefined, and, if curiously examined, would be found to be
sometimes questionable, it has rarely happened that the world has not
benefited by them in the end. Thus Astrology, which ascribed to the
stars an influence over the actions and destinies of man; Magic, which
attempted to reverse the laws of nature, and Alchemy, which aimed at
securing unlimited powers of self-reward; all tended to the final
establishment of useful science.

Of none of the sciences whose laws are fully understood, is this
description truer than of that now called Chemistry, which once was
Alchemy. That ‘knowledge of the substance or composition of bodies,’
which the Arabic root of both words implies, establishes a fact in place
of a chimera. Experimental philosophy has made Alchemy an impossible
belief, but the faith in it was natural in an age when reason was seldom
appealed to. The credulity which accepted witchcraft for a truth, was
not likely to reject the theory of the transmutation of metals, nor
strain at the dogma of perpetual youth and health;—the concomitants of
the Philosopher’s Stone.

The Alchemists claim for their science the remotest antiquity possible,
but it was not until three or four centuries after the Christian era
that the doctrine of transmutation began to spread. It was amongst the
Arabian physicians that it took root. Those learned men, through whom
was transmitted so much that was useful in astronomy, in mathematics,
and in medicine, were deeply tinctured with the belief in an universal
elixir, whose properties gave the power of multiplying gold, of
prolonging life indefinitely, and of making youth perpetual. The
discoveries which they made of the successful application of mercury in
many diseases, led them to suppose that this agent contained within
itself the germ of all curative influences, and was the basis of all
other metals. An Eastern imagination, ever prone to heighten the effects
of nature, was not slow to ascribe a preternatural force to this
medicine, but not finding it in its simple state, the practitioners of
the new science had recourse to combination, in the hope, by that means,
of attaining their object. To fix mercury became their first endeavour,
and this fixation they described as ‘catching the flying bird of
Hermes.’ Once embarked in the illusory experiment, it is easy to
perceive how far the Alchemists might be led; nor need it excite any
wonder that in pursuit of the ideal, they accidentally hit upon a good
deal that was real. The labours, therefore, of the Arabian physicians
were not thrown away, though they entangled the feet of science in
mazes, from which escape was only effected, after the lapse of centuries
of misdirected efforts.

From the period we have last spoken of, until the commencement of the
eleventh century, the only Alchemist of note is the Arabian Geber, who,
though he wrote on the perfections of metals, of the new found art of
making gold, in a word, on the philosopher’s stone, has only descended
to our times as the founder of that jargon, which passes under the name
of ‘gibberish.’ He was, however, a great authority in the middle ages,
and allusions to ‘Geber’s cooks,’ and ‘Geber’s kitchen,’ are frequent
amongst those who at length saw the error of their ways after wasting
their substance in the vain search for the elixir.

A longer interval might have elapsed but for the voice of Peter the
Hermit, whose fanatical scheme for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre
was the cause of that gradual absorption, by the nations of the West, of
the learning which had so long been buried in the East. The Crusaders,
or those, rather, who visited the shores of Syria under their
protection—the men whose skill in medicine and letters rendered them
useful to the invading armies—acquired a knowledge of the Arabian
languages, and of the sciences cultivated by Arabian philosophers, and
this knowledge they disseminated through Europe. Some part of it, it is
true, was derived from the Moors in Spain, but it was all conveyed in a
common tongue which began now to be understood. To this era belong the
names of Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile; of Isaac Beimiram, the son
of Solomon the physician; of Hali Abbas, the scholar of Abimeher Moyses,
the son of Sejar; of Aben Sina, better known as Avicenna, and sometimes
called Abohali; of Averroes of Cordova, surnamed the Commentator; of
Rasis, who is also called Almanzor and Albumasar; and of John of
Damascus, whose name has been latinised into Johannes Damascenus. All
these, physicians by profession, were more or less professors of
alchemy; and besides these were such as Artephius, who wrote alchemical
tracts about the year 1130, but who deserves rather to be remembered for
the cool assertion which he makes in his ‘Wisdom of Secrets’ that, at
the time he wrote he had reached the patriarchal—or fabulous—age of one
thousand and twenty-five years!

The thirteenth century came, and with it came two men who stand first,
as they then stood alone, in literary and scientific knowledge. One was
a German, the other an Englishman; the first was Albertus Magnus, the
last Roger Bacon.

Of the former, many wonderful stories are told:—such, for instance, as
his having given a banquet to the King of the Romans, in the gardens of
his cloister at Cologne, when he converted the intensity of winter into
a season of summer, full of flowers and fruits, which disappeared when
the banquet was over; and his having constructed a marvellous automaton,
called ‘Androïs,’ which, like the invention of his contemporary, Roger
Bacon, was said to be capable of auguring all questions, past, present,
and to come.

To know more than the rest of the world in any respect, but particularly
in natural philosophy, was a certain method by which to earn the name of
necromancer in the middle ages, and there are few whose occult fame has
stood higher than that of Roger Bacon. He was afraid, therefore, to
speak plainly—indeed, it was the custom of the early philosophers to
couch their knowledge in what Bacon himself calls the ‘tricks of
obscurity;’ and in his celebrated ‘_Epistola de Secretis_,’ he adverts
to the possibility of his being obliged to do the same thing, through
‘_the greatness of the secrets_ which he shall handle.’ With regard to
the invention of his greatest secret, we shall give the words in which
he speaks of the properties of gunpowder, and afterwards show in what
terms he concealed his knowledge. ‘_Noyses_,’ he says, ‘_may be made in
the aire like thunders_, yea, with greater horror than those that come
of nature; _for a little matter fitted to the quantity of a thimble,
maketh a horrible noise and wonderful lightning_. And this is done after
sundry fashions, _whereby any citie or armie may be destroyed_.’ A more
accurate description of the explosion of gunpowder could scarcely be
given, and it is not to be supposed that Bacon simply confined himself
to the theory of his art, when he knew so well the consequences arising
from a practical application of it. On this head there is a legend
extant, which has not, to our knowledge, been printed before, from which
we may clearly see why he contented himself with the cabalistic form in
which he conveyed his knowledge of what he deemed a fatal secret.

Attached to Roger Bacon’s laboratory, and a zealous assistant in the
manifold occupations with which the learned Franciscan occupied himself,
was a youthful student, whose name is stated to have been Hubert de
Dreux. He was a Norman, and many of the attributes of that people were
conspicuous in his character. He was of a quick intelligence and hasty
courage, fertile in invention, and prompt in action, eloquent of
discourse, and ready of hand; all excellent qualities, to which was
superadded an insatiable curiosity. Docile to receive instruction, and
apt to profit by it, Hubert became a great favourite with the
philosopher, and to him Bacon expounded many of the secrets—or supposed
secrets—of the art which he strove to bring to perfection. He instructed
him also in the composition of certain medicines, which Bacon himself
believed might be the means of prolonging life, though not to the
indefinite extent dreamt of by those who put their whole faith in the
Great Elixir.

But there never yet was an adept in any art or science who freely
communicated to his pupil the full amount of his own knowledge;
something for experience to gather, or for ingenuity to discover, is
always kept in reserve, and the instructions of Roger Bacon stopped
short at one point. He was himself engaged in the prosecution of that
chemical secret which he rightly judged to be a dangerous one, and,
while he experimented with the compound of sulphur, saltpetre and
charcoal, he kept himself apart from his general laboratory and wrought
in a separate cell, to which not even Hubert had access. To know that
the Friar had a mysterious occupation, which, more than the making of
gold or the universal medicine, engrossed him, was enough of itself to
rouse the young man’s curiosity; but when to this was added the fact,
that, from time to time, strange and mysterious noises were heard,
accompanied by bright corruscations and a new and singular odour,
penetrating through the chinks close to which his eyes were stealthily
rivetted, Hubert’s eagerness to know all that his master concealed had
no limit. He resolved to discover the secret, even though he should
perish in the attempt; he feared that there was good reason for the
accusation of dealing in the Black Art, which, more than all others the
monks of Bacon’s own convent countenanced; but this apprehension only
stimulated him the more. For some time Hubert waited without an
opportunity occurring for gratifying the secret longing of his heart; at
last it presented itself.

To afford medical assistance to the sick, was, perhaps, the most useful
practice of conventual life, and the monks had always amongst them
practitioners of the healing art, more or less skilful. Of this number,
Roger Bacon was the most eminent, not only in the monastery to which he
belonged, but in all Oxford.

It was about the hour of noon on a gloomy day towards the end of
November, in the year 1282, while the Friar and his pupil were severally
employed, the former in his secret cell, and the latter in the general
laboratory, that there arrived at the gate of the Franciscan convent a
messenger on horseback, the bearer of news from Abingdon that Walter de
Losely, the sheriff of Berkshire, had that morning met with a serious
accident by a hurt from a lance, and was then lying dangerously wounded
at the hostelry of the Chequers in Abingdon, whither he had been hastily
conveyed. The messenger added that the leech who had been called in was
most anxious for the assistance of the skilful Friar Roger Bacon, and
urgently prayed that he would lose no time in coming to the aid of the
wounded knight.

Great excitement prevailed amongst the monks on the receipt of this
intelligence, for Walter de Losely was not only a man of power and
influence, but moreover, a great benefactor to their order. Friar Bacon
was immediately sought and speedily made his appearance, the urgency of
the message admitting of no delay. He hastily enjoined Hubert to
continue the preparation of an amalgam which he was desirous of getting
into a forward state, and taking with him his case of instruments with
the bandages and salves which he thought needful, was soon mounted on an
easy, ambling palfrey on his way towards Abingdon, the impatient
messenger riding before him to announce his approach.

When he was gone, quiet again reigned in the convent, and Hubert de
Dreux resumed his occupation. But it did not attract him long. Suddenly
he raised his head from the work and his eyes were lit up with a gleam
in which joy and fear seemed equally blended. For the first time, for
months, he was quite alone. What if he could obtain access to his
master’s cell and penetrate the mystery in which his labours had been so
long enveloped! He cautiously stole to the door of the laboratory, and
peeped out into a long passage, at the further extremity of which a door
opened into a small court where, detached from the main edifice and
screened from all observation, was a small building which the Friar had
recently caused to be constructed. He looked about him timorously,
fearing lest he might be observed; but there was no cause for
apprehension, scarcely any inducement could have prevailed with the
superstitious Franciscans to turn their steps willingly in the direction
of Roger Bacon’s solitary cell.

Reassured by the silence, Hubert stole noiselessly onward, and
tremblingly approached the forbidden spot. His quick eye saw at a glance
that the key was not in the door, and his countenance fell. The Friar’s
treasure was locked up! He might see something, however, if he could not
enter the chamber. He knelt down, therefore, at the door, and peered
through the keyhole. As he pressed against the door, in doing so, it
yielded to his touch. In the haste with which Friar Bacon had closed the
entrance, the bolt had not been shot. Hubert rose hastily to his feet,
and the next moment he was in the cell, looking eagerly round upon the
crucibles and alembics, which bore witness to his master’s labours. But
beyond a general impression of work in hand, there was nothing to be
gleaned from this survey. An open parchment volume, in which the Friar
had recently been writing, next caught his attention. If the secret
should be there in any known language. Hubert knew something of the
Hebrew, but nothing yet of Arabic. He was reassured; the characters were
familiar to him; the language Latin. He seized the volume, and read the
few lines which the Friar had just traced on the last page.

They ran thus:—

‘Videas tamen utrum loquar in ænigmate vel secundum veritatem.’ And,
further (which we translate): ‘He that would see these things shall have
the key that openeth and no man shutteth, and when he shall shut no man
is able to open again.’

‘But the secret—the secret!’ cried Hubert, impatiently, ‘let me know
what “these things” are!’

He hastily turned the leaf back and read again. The passage was that one
in the ‘_Epistola de Secretis_’ which spoke of the artificial thunder
and lightning, and beneath it was the full and precise recipe for its
composition. This at once explained the strange noises and the flashes
of light which he had so anxiously noticed. Surprising and gratifying as
this discovery might be, there was, Hubert thought, something beyond.
Roger Bacon, he reasoned, was not one to practise an experiment like
this for mere amusement. It was, he felt certain, a new form of
invocation, more potent, doubtless, over the beings of another world,
than any charm yet recorded. Be it as it might, he would try whether,
from the materials around him, it were not in his power to produce the
same result.

‘Here are all the necessary ingredients,’ he exclaimed; ‘this yellowish
powder is the well known sulphur, in which I daily bathe the
argent-vive; this bitter, glistening substance is the salt of the rock,
the _salis petræ_; and this black calcination, the third agent—But the
proportions are given, and here stands a glass cucurbit in which they
should be mingled. It is of the form my master mostly uses—round, with a
small neck and a narrow mouth, to be luted closely, without doubt. He
has often told me that the sole regenerating power of the universe is
heat; yonder furnace shall supply it, and then Hubert de Dreux is his
master’s equal!’

                  *       *       *       *       *

The short November day was drawing to a close, when, after carefully
tending the wounded sheriff, and leaving such instructions with the
Abingdon leech as he judged sufficient for his patient’s well-doing,
Roger Bacon again mounted his palfrey, and turned its head in the
direction of Oxford. He was unwilling to be a loiterer after dark, and
his beast was equally desirous to be once more comfortably housed, so
that his homeward journey was accomplished even more rapidly than his
morning excursion; and barely an hour had elapsed when the Friar drew
the rein at the foot of the last gentle eminence, close to which lay the
walls of the cloistered city. To give the animal breathing-space, he
rode quietly up the ascent, and then paused for a few moments before he
proceeded, his mind intent on subjects foreign to the speculations of
all his daily associations.

Suddenly, as he mused on his latest discovery, and calculated to what
principal object it might be devoted, a stream of fiery light shot
rapidly athwart the dark, drear sky, and before he had space to think
what the meteor might portend, a roar as of thunder shook the air, and
simultaneous with it, a shrill, piercing scream, mingled with the
fearful sound; then burst forth a volume of flame, and on the wind came
floating a sulphurous vapour which, to him alone, revealed the nature of
the explosion he had just witnessed.

‘Gracious God!’ he exclaimed, while the cold sweat poured like
rain-drops down his forehead, ‘the fire has caught the fulminating
powder! But what meant that dreadful cry? Surely nothing of human life
has suffered! The boy Hubert,—but, no,—he was at work at the further
extremity of the building. But this is no time for vain conjecture,—let
me learn the worst at once!’

And with these words he urged his affrighted steed to its best pace, and
rode rapidly into the city.

All was consternation there: the tremendous noise had roused every
inhabitant, and people were hurrying to and fro, some hastening towards
the place from whence the sound had proceeded, others rushing wildly
from it. It was but too evident that a dreadful catastrophe, worse even
than Bacon dreaded, had happened. It was with difficulty he made his way
through the crowd, and came upon the ruin which still blazed fiercely,
appalling the stoutest of heart. There was a tumult of voices, but above
the outcries of the affrighted monks, and of the scared multitude, rose
the loud voice of the Friar, calling upon them to extinguish the flames.
This appeal turned all eyes towards him, and then associating him with
an evil, the cause of which they were unable to comprehend, the
maledictions of the monks broke forth.

‘Seize the accursed magician,’ they shouted; ‘he has made a fiery
compact with the demon! Already one victim is sacrificed,—our turn will
come next! See, here are the mangled limbs of his pupil, Hubert de
Dreux! The fiend has claimed his reward, and borne away his soul. Seize
on the wicked sorcerer, and take him to a dungeon!’

Roger Bacon sate stupified by the unexpected blow; he had no power, if
he had possessed the will, to offer the slightest resistance to the fury
of the enraged Franciscans, who, in the true spirit of ignorance, had
ever hated him for his acquirements. With a deep sigh for the fate of
the young man, whose imprudence he now saw had been the cause of this
dreadful event, he yielded himself up to his enemies; they tore him from
his palfrey, and with many a curse, and many a buffet, dragged him to
the castle, and lodged him in one of its deepest dungeons.

The flames from the ruined cell died out of themselves; but those which
the envy and dread of Bacon’s genius had kindled, were never
extinguished, but with his life.

In the long years of imprisonment which followed—the doom of the stake
being averted only by powerful intercession with the Pope—Bacon had
leisure to meditate on the value of all he had done to enlarge the
understanding and extend the knowledge of his species. ‘The prelates and
friars,’ he wrote in a letter which still remains, ‘have kept me
starving in close prison, nor will they suffer anyone to come to me,
fearing lest my writings should come to any other than the Pope and
themselves.’

He reflected that of all living men he stood well nigh alone in the
consciousness that in the greatest of his inventions he had produced a
discovery of incalculable value, but one for which on every account the
time was not ripe.

‘I will not die,’ he said, ‘without leaving to the world the evidence
that the secret was known to me whose marvellous power future ages shall
acknowledge. But not yet shall it be revealed. Generations must pass
away and the minds of men become better able to endure the light of
science, before they can profit by my discovery. Let him who already
possesses knowledge, guess the truth these words convey.’

And in place of the directions by which Hubert de Dreux had been guided,
he altered the sentence as follows:—

                        ‘Sed tamen salis petræ,
                                LURU MONE CAP UBRE
                      et sulphuris.’

The learned have found that these mystical words conceal the anagram of
_Carbonum pulvere_, the third ingredient in the composition of
Gunpowder.




                          “A GOOD PLAIN COOK.”


‘WANTED, a good plain Cook,’ is hungrily echoed from the columns of the
_Times_, by half the husbands and bachelors of Great Britain. According
to the true meaning of the words ‘A good plain Cook’—to judge from the
unskilful manner in which domestic cookery is carried on throughout the
length and breadth of the land—is a very great rarity. But the
conventional and the true meaning of the expression widely differ.

‘What is commonly self-called a plain cook,’ says a writer in the
_Examiner_, ‘is a cook who spoils food for low wages. She is a cook, not
because she knows anything about cookery, but because she prefers the
kitchen-fire to scrubbing floors, polishing grates, or making beds. A
cook who can boil a potato and dress a mutton-chop is one in a
thousand.’

Such very plain cooks will always exist for dyspeptic purposes, while
those who are in authority over them remain ignorant of an art which,
however much it may be slighted, exercises a crowning influence over
health and happiness. Eat we must; and it is literally a subject of
vital importance whether what we eat be properly adapted for healthful
digestion or not.

Medical statistics tell us that of all diseases with which the English
are afflicted, those arising directly or indirectly from impaired
digestive organs are the most prevalent. We are falsely accused in
consequence of over-eating; but the true cause of our ailments is bad
cooking. A Frenchman or a German devours much more at one of his own
inexhaustible _tables-d’hôte_ than an Englishman consumes at his
dining-table—and with impunity; for the foreigner’s food being properly
prepared is easily digested. ‘The true difference,’ says a pleasant
military writer in Blackwood’s Magazine, ‘between English and foreign
cookery is just this: in preparing butcher’s meat for the table, the aim
of foreign cookery is to make it tender, of English to make it hard. And
both systems equally effect their object, in spite of difficulties on
each side. The butcher’s meat, which you buy abroad, is tough,
coarse-grained, and stringy; yet foreign cookery sends this meat to
table tender. The butcher’s meat which you buy in England is tender
enough when it comes home; but domestic cookery sends it up hard. Don’t
tell me the hardness is in the meat itself. Nothing of the kind; it’s
altogether an achievement of the English cuisine. I appeal to a leg of
mutton, I appeal to a beef-steak, as they usually come to table; the
beef half-broiled, the mutton half-roasted. Judge for yourself. The
underdone portion of each is tender; the portion that’s dressed is hard.
Argal, the hardness is due to the dressing, not to the meat: it is a
triumph of domestic cookery. Engage a “good plain cook”—tell her to boil
a neck of mutton, that will show you what I mean. All London necks of
mutton come to table crescents, regularly curled.’

This is but too true: the real art of stewing is almost unknown in Great
Britain, and even in Ireland, despite the fame of an ‘Irish stew.’

Everything that is not roasted or fried, is boiled, ‘a gallop,’ till the
quality of tenderness is consolidated to the consistency of caoutchouc.
Such a thing as a stewpan is almost unknown in houses supported by less
than from three to five hundred a year.

These gastronomic grievances are solely due to neglected education. M.
Alexis Soyer, with a touch of that quiet irony which imparts to satire
its sharpest sting, dedicated his last Cookery-book ‘to the daughters of
Albion.’ Having some acquaintance with their deficiencies, he laid his
book slyly at their feet to drop such a hint as is conveyed when a
dictionary is handed to damsels who blunder in orthography, or when
watches are presented to correct unpunctuality. It is to be feared,
however, that ‘the daughters of Albion’ were too busy with less
useful—though to them scarcely less essential—accomplishments, to profit
by his hint. Cookery is a subject they have never been taught to regard
as worthy of their attention: rather, indeed, as one to be avoided; for
it is never discussed otherwise than apologetically, with a simpering
sort of jocularity, or as something which it is ‘low’ to know anything
about. When a certain diplomatist was reminded that his mother had been
a cook, he did not deny the fact; but assured the company, ‘upon his
honour, that she was a very bad one.’ People in the best society do not
hesitate to bore others with their ailments, and talk about cures and
physic; but conversation respecting prevention—which is better than
cure—and wholesomely prepared food is tabooed.

Young ladies of the leisure classes are educated to become uncommonly
acute critics of all that pertains to personal blandishment. They keep
an uncompromisingly tight hand over their milliners and ladies’ maids.
They can tell to a thread when a flounce is too narrow or a tuck too
deep. They are taught to a shade what colours suit their respective
complexions, and to a hair how their _coiffure_ ought to be arranged.
Woe unto the seamstress or handmaiden who sins in these matters! But her
‘good plain cook’—when a damsel is promoted to wedlock, and owns
one—passes unreproached for the most heinous offences. Badly seasoned
and ill assimilated soup; fish, without any fault of the fishmonger,
soft and flabby; meat rapidly roasted before fierce fires—burnt outside
and raw within; poultry rendered by the same process tempting to the
eye, till dissection reveals red and uncooked joints! These crimes, from
their frequency and the ignorance of ‘the lady of the house,’ remain
unpunished. Whereupon, husbands, tired of their Barmecide feasts—which
disappoint the taste more because they have often a promising look to
the eye—prefer better fare at their clubs; and escape the Scylla of bad
digestion, to be wrecked on the Charybdis of domestic discord. All this
is owing to the wife’s culinary ignorance, and to your ‘Good Plain
Cooks.’

We do not say that the daughters of the wealthy and well to do should be
submitted to regular kitchen apprenticeships, and taught the details of
cookery, any more than that they should learn to make shoes or to fit
and sew dresses. But it is desirable that they should acquire
_principles_—such principles as would enable them to apply prompt
correction to the errors of their hired cooks. It is no very bold
assertion that were such a knowing and judicious supervision generally
exercised, the stomach diseases, under which half our nation is said to
groan, would be materially abated.

Let us take a step or two lower in the ladder of English life, where
circumstances oblige the Good Plain Cook and the wife to be one and the
same person. Many a respectable clerk, and many a small farmer, is
doomed from one year’s end to another to a wearying disproportion of
cold, dry, uncomfortable dinners, because his wife’s knowledge of
cookery takes no wider range than that which pertains to the roasted,
boiled, and fried. Thousands of artisans and labourers are deprived of
half the actual nutriment of food, and of all the legitimate pleasures
of the table, because their better halves—though good plain cooks, in
the ordinary acceptation of the term—are in utter darkness as to
economising, and rendering palatable the daily sustenance of their
families. ‘If we could see,’ says a writer before quoted, ‘by the help
of an Asmodeus what is going on at the dinner-hour of the humbler of the
middle class, what a spectacle of discomfort, waste, ill-temper, and
consequent ill-conduct, it would be! The man quarrels with his wife
because there is nothing he can eat, and he generally makes up in drink
for the deficiencies in the article of food. Gin is the consolation to
the spirits and the resource to the baulked appetite. There is thus not
only the direct waste of food and detriment to health, but the farther
consequent waste of the use of spirits, with its injury to the habits
and the health. On the other hand, people who eat well drink moderately;
the satisfaction of appetite with relish dispensing with recourse to
stimulants. Good-humour, too, and good health follow a good meal, and by
a good meal we mean anything, however simple, well dressed in its way. A
rich man may live very expensively and very ill, and a poor one very
frugally but very well, if it be his good fortune to have a good cook in
his wife or his servant; and a ministering angel a good cook is, either
in the one capacity or the other, not only to those in humble
circumstances, but to many above them of the class served by what are
self-termed professed cooks, which is too frequently an affair of
profession purely, and who are to be distinguished from plain cooks only
in this, that they require larger wages for spoiling food, and spoil
much more in quantity, and many other articles to boot.’

Great would be the advantage to the community, if cookery were made a
branch of female education. To the poor, the gain would be incalculable.
‘Amongst the prizes which the Bountifuls of both sexes are fond of
bestowing in the country,’ we again quote the _Examiner_, ‘we should
like to see some offered for the best-boiled potato, the best-grilled
mutton-chop, and the best-seasoned hotch-potch soup or broth. In writing
of a well-boiled potato, we are aware that we shall incur the contempt
of many for attaching importance to a thing they suppose to be so
common; but the fact is, that their contempt arises, as is often the
origin of contempt, from their ignorance, there not being one person in
ten thousand who has ever seen and tasted that great rarity—a
well-boiled potato.’

This is scarcely an exaggeration. The importance attached to the point
by the highest gastronomic authorities, is shown by what took place,
some years since, at the meeting of a Pall Mall Club Committee specially
called for the selection of a cook. The candidates were an Englishman,
from the Albion Tavern, and a Frenchman recommended by Ude. The eminent
divine who presided in right of distinguished connoisseurship put the
first question to the candidates. It was this:—‘Can you boil a potato?’

Let us hope that these hints will fructify and be improved upon, and
that the first principles of cooking will become, in some way, a part of
female education. In schools, however, this will be difficult. It can
only be a branch of household education; and until it does so become, we
shall continue to be afflicted with ‘Good Plain Cooks.’




                     TWO-HANDED DICK THE STOCKMAN.
                       AN ADVENTURE IN THE BUSH.


Travelling in the Bush one rainy season, I put up for the night at a
small weatherbound inn, perched half way up a mountain range, where
several Bush servants on the tramp had also taken refuge from the
downpouring torrents. I had had a long and fatiguing ride over a very
bad country, so, after supper, retired into the furthest corner of the
one room that served for ‘kitchen, and parlour, and all,’ and there,
curled up in my blanket, in preference to the bed offered by our host,
which was none of the cleanest; with half-shut eyes, I glumly puffed at
my pipe in silence, allowing the hubble-bubble of the Bushmen’s gossip
to flow through my unnoting ears.

Fortunately for my peace, the publican’s stock of rum had been some time
exhausted, and as I was the latest comer, all the broiling and frying
had ceased, but a party sat round the fire, evidently set in for a spell
at ‘yarning.’ At first the conversation ran in ordinary channels, such
as short reminiscences of old world rascality, perils in the Bush. Till
at length a topic arose which seemed to have a paramount interest for
all. This was the prowess of a certain Two-Handed Dick the Stockman.

‘Yes, yes; I’ll tell you what it is, mates,’ said one; ‘this confounded
reading and writing, that don’t give plain fellows like you and me a
chance;—now, if it were to come to fighting for a living, I don’t care
whether it was half-minute time and London rules, rough and tumble, or
single stick, or swords and bayonets, or tomahawks,—I’m dashed if you
and me, and Two-Handed Dick, wouldn’t take the whole Legislative
Council, the Governor and Judges—one down ’tother come on. Though, to be
sure, Dick could thrash any two of us.’

I was too tired to keep awake, and dozed off, to be again and again
disturbed with cries of ‘Bravo, Dick!’ ‘That’s your sort!’ ‘Houray,
Dick!’ all signifying approval of that individual’s conduct in some
desperate encounter, which formed the subject of a stirring narrative.

For months after that night this idea of Two-Handed Dick haunted me, but
the bustle of establishing a new station at length drove it out of my
head.

I suppose a year had elapsed from the night when the fame of the
double-fisted stockman first reached me. I had to take a three days’
journey to buy a score of fine-woolled rams, through a country quite new
to me, which I chose because it was a short cut recently discovered. I
got over, the first day, forty-five miles comfortably. The second day,
in the evening, I met an ill-looking fellow walking with a broken
musket, and his arm in a sling. He seemed sulky, and I kept my hand on
my double-barrelled pistol all the time I was talking to him; he begged
a little tea and sugar, which I could not spare, but I threw him a fig
of tobacco. In answer to my questions about his arm, he told me, with a
string of oaths, that a bull, down in some mimosa flats, a day’s journey
a-head, had charged him, flung him into a water-hole, broken his arm,
and made him lose his sugar and tea bag. Bulls in Australia are
generally quiet, but this reminded me that some of the Highland black
cattle imported by the Australian Company, after being driven off by a
party of Gully Rakees (cattle stealers), had escaped into the mountains
and turned quite wild. Out of this herd, which was of a breed quite
unsuited to the country, a bull sometimes, when driven off by a stronger
rival, would descend to the mimosa flats, and wander about, solitary and
dangerously fierce.

It struck me as I rode off, that it was quite as well my friend’s arm
and musket had been disabled, for he did not look the sort of man it
would be pleasant to meet in a thicket of scrub, if he fancied the horse
you rode. So, keeping one eye over my shoulder, and a sharp look-out for
any other traveller of the same breed, I rode off at a brisk pace. I
made out afterwards that my foot friend was Jerry Jonson, hung for
shooting a bullock-driver, the following year.

At sun-down, when I reached the hut where I had intended to sleep, I
found it deserted, and so full of fleas, I thought it better to camp
out; so I hobbled out old Grey-tail on the best piece of grass I could
find which was very poor indeed.

The next morning when I went to look for my horse he was nowhere to be
found. I put the saddle on my head and tracked him for hours, it was
evident the poor beast had been travelling away in search of grass. I
walked until my feet were one mass of blisters; at length, when about to
give up the search in despair, having quite lost the track on stony
ground, I came upon the marks quite fresh in a bit of swampy ground, and
a few hundred yards further found Master Grey-tail rolling in the mud of
a nearly dry water-hole as comfortably as possible. I put down the
saddle and called him; at that moment I heard a loud roar and crash in a
scrub behind me, and out rushed at a terrific pace a black Highland bull
charging straight at me. I had only just time to throw myself on one
side flat on the ground as he thundered by me. My next move was to
scramble among a small clump of trees, one of great size, the rest were
mere saplings.

The bull having missed his mark, turned again, and first revenged
himself by tossing my saddle up in the air, until fortunately it lodged
in some bushes; then, having smelt me out, he commenced a circuit round
the trees, stamping, pawing, and bellowing frightfully. With his red
eyes and long sharp horns he looked like a demon; I was quite unarmed,
having broken my knife the day before; my pistols were in my holsters,
and I was wearied to death. My only chance consisted in dodging him
round the trees until he should be tired out. Deeply did I regret having
left my faithful dogs Boomer and Bounder behind.

The bull charged again and again, sometimes coming with such force
against the tree that he fell on his knees, sometimes bending the
saplings behind which I stood until his horns almost touched me. There
was not a branch I could lay hold of to climb up. How long this awful
game of ‘_touchwood_’ lasted, I know not; it seemed hours; after the
first excitement of self-preservation passed off, weariness again took
possession of me, and it required all the instinct of self-preservation
to keep me on my feet; several times the bull left me for a few seconds,
pacing suddenly away, bellowing his malignant discontent; but before I
could cross over to a better position he always came back at full speed.
My tongue clave to the roof of my mouth, my eyes grew hot and misty, my
knees trembled under me, I felt it impossible to hold out until dark. At
length I grew desperate, and determined to make a run for the opposite
covert the moment the bull turned towards the water-hole again. I felt
sure I was doomed, and thought of it until I grew indifferent. The bull
seemed to know I was worn out, and grew more fierce and rapid in his
charges, but just when I was going to sit down under the great tree and
let him do his worst, I heard the rattle of a horse among the rocks
above, and a shout that sounded like the voice of an angel. Then came
the barking of a dog, and the loud reports of a stockwhip, but the bull
with his devilish eyes fixed on me, never moved.

Up came a horseman at full speed; crack fell the lash on the black
bull’s hide; out spirted the blood in a long streak. The bull turned
savagely—charged the horseman. The horse wheeled round just enough to
baffle him—no more—again the lash descended, cutting like a long
flexible razor, but the mad bull was not to be beaten off by a whip: he
charged again and again; but he had met his match; right and left, as
needed, the horse turned, sometimes pivotting on his hind, sometimes on
his fore-legs.

The stockman shouted something, leapt from his horse, and strode forward
to meet the bull with an open knife between his teeth. As the beast
lowered his head to charge, he seemed to catch him by the horns. There
was a struggle, a cloud of dust, a stamping like two strong men
wrestling—I could not see clearly; but the next moment the bull was on
his back, the blood welling from his throat, his limbs quivering in
death.

The stranger, covered with mud and dust, came to me, saying as
unconcernedly as if he had been killing a calf in a slaughter-house,
‘He’s dead enough, young man; he won’t trouble anybody any more.’

I walked two or three paces toward the dead beast; my senses left me—I
fainted.

When I came to myself, my horse was saddled, bridled, and tied up to a
bush. My stranger friend was busy flaying the bull.

‘I should like to have a pair of boots out of the old devil,’ he
observed, in answer to my enquiring look, ‘before the dingoes and the
eagle hawks dig into his carcase.’

We rode out of the flats up a gentle ascent, as night was closing in. I
was not in talking humour; but I said, ‘You have saved my life.’

‘Well, I rather think I have’ but this was muttered in an under tone;
‘it’s not the first I have saved, or taken either, for that matter.’

I was too much worn out for thanking much, but I pulled out a silver
hunting-watch and put it into his hand. He pushed it back, almost
roughly, saying, ‘No, Sir, not now; I shalln’t take money or money’s
worth for that, though I may ask something some time. It’s nothing,
after all. I owed the old black devil a grudge for spoiling a blood
filly of mine; beside, though I didn’t know it when I rode up first, and
went at the beast to take the devil out of myself as much as anything,—I
rather think that you are the young gentleman that ran through the Bush
at night to Manchester Dan’s hut, when his wife was bailed up by the
Blacks, and shot one-eyed Jackey, in spite of the Governor’s
proclamation.’

‘You seem to know me,’ I answered; ‘pray may I ask who you are, if it is
a fair question, for I cannot remember ever having seen you before.’

‘Oh, they call me “Two-handed Dick,” in this country.’

The scene in the roadside inn flashed on my recollection. Before I could
say another word, a sharp turn round the shoulder of the range we were
traversing, brought us in sight of the fire of a shepherd’s hut. The
dogs ran out barking; we hallooed and cracked our whips, and the
hut-keeper came to meet us with a fire-stick in his hand.

‘Lord bless my heart and soul! Dick, is that thee at last? Well, I
thought thee were’t never coming;’ cried the hut-keeper, a little man,
who came limping forward very fast with the help of a crutch-handled
stick. ‘I say, Missis, Missis, here’s Dick, here’s Two-handed Dick.’

This was uttered in a shrill, hysterical sort of scream. Out came
‘Missis’ at the top of her speed, and began hugging Dick as he was
getting off his horse, her arms reached a little above his waist,
laughing and crying, both at the same time, while her husband kept fast
hold of the Stockman’s hand, muttering, ‘Lord, Dick, I’m so glad to see
thee.’ Meanwhile the dogs barking, and a flock of weaned lambs just
penned, ba’aing, made such a riot, that I was fairly bewildered. So,
feeling myself one too many, I slipped away, leading off both the horses
to the other side the hut, where I found a shepherd, who showed me a
grass paddock to feed the nags a bit before turning them out for the
night. I said to him, ‘What _is_ the meaning of all this going on
between your mate and his wife, and the big Stockman?’

‘The meaning, Stranger; why, that’s Two-handed Dick, and my mate is
little Jemmy that he saved, and Charley Anvils at the same time, when
the Blacks slaughtered the rest of the party, near on a dozen of them.’

On returning, I found supper smoking on the table, and we had made a
regular ‘Bush’ meal. The Stockman then told my adventure, and, when they
had exchanged all the news, I had little difficulty in getting the
hut-keeper to the point I wanted; the great difficulty lay in preventing
man and wife from telling the same story at the same time. However, by
judicious management, I was able to gather the following account of
_Two-handed Dick’s Fight and Ride_.

‘When first I met Dick he was second Stockman to Mr. Ronalds, and I took
a shepherd’s place there; it was my second place in this country, for
you see I left the Old Country in a bad year for the weaving trade, and
was one of the first batch of free emigrants that came out, the rest
were chiefly Irish. I found shepherding suit me very well, and my Missis
was hut-keeper. Well, Dick and I got very thick; I used to write his
letters for him, and read in an evening and so on. Well, though I
undertook a shepherd’s place I soon found I could handle an axe pretty
well. Throwing the shuttle gives the use of the arms, you see, and Dick
put into my head that I could make more money if I took to making
fences; I sharpening the rails and making the mortice-holes, and a
stranger man setting them. I did several jobs at odd times, and was
thought very handy. Well, Mr. Ronalds, during the time of the great
drought five years ago, determined to send up a lot of cattle to the
North, where he had heard there was plenty of water and grass, and form
a Station there. Dick was picked out as Stockman; a young gentleman, a
relation of Mr. Ronalds, went as head of the party, a very foolish,
conceited young man, who knew very little of Bush life, and would not be
taught. There were eight splitters and fencers, besides Charley Anvils,
the blacksmith, and two bullock drivers.

‘I got leave to go because I wanted to see the country and Dick asked.
My missis was sorely against my going. I was to be storekeeper, as well
as do any farming; and work if wanted.

‘We had two drays, and were well armed. We were fifteen days going up
before we got into the new country, and then we travelled five days;
sometimes twenty-four hours without water; and sometimes had to unload
the drays two or three times a day, to get over creeks. The fifth day we
came to very fine land; the grass met over our horses’ necks, and the
river was a chain of water-holes, all full, and as clear as crystal. The
kangaroos were hopping about as plentiful as rabbits in a warren; and
the grass by the river side had regular tracks of the emus, where they
went down to drink.

‘We had been among signs of the Blacks too, for five days, but had not
seen anything of them, although we could hear the devils cooing at
nightfall, calling to each other. We kept regular watch and watch at
first—four sentinels, and every man sleeping with his gun at hand.

‘Now, as it was Dick’s business to tail (follow) the cattle,
five-hundred head, I advised him to have his musket sawed off in the
barrel, so as to be a more handy size for using on horseback. He took my
advice; and Charley Anvils made a very good job of it, so that he could
bring it under his arm when hanging at his back from a rope sling, and
fire with one hand. It was lucky I thought of it, as it turned out.

‘At length the overseer fixed on a spot for the Station. It was very
well for water and grass, and a very pretty view, as he said, but it was
too near a thicket where the Blacks would lie in ambush, for safety. The
old Bushmen wanted it planted on a neck of land, where the waters
protected it all but one side, and there a row of fence would have made
it secure.

‘Well, we set to work, and soon had a lot of tall trees down. Charley
put up his forge and his grindstone, to keep the axe sharp, and I staid
with him. Dick went tailing the cattle, and the overseer sat on a log
and looked on. The second day a mob of Blacks came down on the opposite
side of the river. They were quite wild, regular _myals_, but some of
our men with green branches, went and made peace with them. They liked
our bread and sugar; and after a short time we had a lot of them helping
to draw rails, fishing for us, bringing wild honey, kangaroos, rats, and
firewood, in return for butter and food, so we began to be less careful
about our arms. We gave them iron tomahawks, and they soon found out
that they could cut out an opossum from a hollow in half-an-hour with
one of our tomahawks, while it took a day with one of their own stone
ones.

‘And so the time passed very pleasantly. We worked away. The young men
and gins worked for us. The chiefs adorned themselves with the trinkets
and clothes we gave them, and fished and hunted, and admired themselves
in the river.

‘Dick never trusted them; he stuck to his cattle; he warned us not to
trust them, and the overseer called him a bloodthirsty murdering
blackguard for his pains.

‘One day, the whole party were at work, chopping and trimming
weather-boards for the hut; the Blacks helping as usual. I was turning
the grindstone for Charley Anvils, and Dick was coming up to the dray to
get some tea, but there was a brow of a hill between him and us; the
muskets were all piled in one corner. I heard a howl, and then a
scream—our camp was full of armed Blacks. When I raised my head, I saw
the chief, Captain Jack we called him, with a broad axe in his hand, and
the next minute he had chopped the overseer’s head clean off; in two
minutes all my mates were on the ground. Three or four came running up
to us; one threw a spear at me, which I half parried with a pannikin I
was using to wet the grindstone, but it fixed deep in my hip, and part
of it I believe is there still. Charley Anvils had an axe in his hand,
and cut down the first two fellows that came up to him, but he was
floored in a minute with twenty wounds. They were so eager to kill me,
that one of them, luckily, or I should not have been alive now, cut the
spear in my hip short off. Another, a young lad I had sharpened a
tomahawk for a few days before, chopped me across the head; you can see
the white hair. Down I fell, and nothing could have saved us, but the
other savages had got the tarpaulin off, and were screaming with
delight, plundering the drays, which called my enemies off. Just then,
Dick came in sight. He saw what was the matter; but although there were
more than a hundred black devils, all armed, painted, bloody, and
yelling, he never stopped or hesitated, but rode slap through the camp,
fired bang among them, killing two, and knocking out the brains of
another. As he passed by a top rail, where an axe was sticking, he
caught it up. The men in the camp were dead enough; the chief warriors
had made the rush there, and every one was pierced with several spears,
or cut down from close behind by axes in the hands of the chiefs. We,
being further off, had been attacked by the boys only. Dick turned
towards us, and shouted my name; I could not answer, but I managed to
sit up an instant; he turned towards me, leaned down, caught me by the
jacket, and dragged me on before him like a log. Just then Charley, who
had crept under the grindstone, cried “Oh, Dick, don’t leave me!” As he
said that, a lot of them came running down, for they had seen enough to
know that, unless they killed us all, their job would not be half-done.
As Dick turned to face them, they gave way and flung spears, but they
could not hurt him; they managed to get between us and poor Charley.
Dick rode back a circuit, and dropped me among some bushes on a hill,
where I could see all. Four times he charged through and through a whole
mob, with an axe in one hand and his short musket in the other. He cut
them down right and left, as if he had been mowing; he scared the
wretches, although the old women kept screeching and urging them on, as
they always do. At length, by help of his stirrup leather, he managed to
get Charley up behind him. He never could have done it, but his mare
fought, and bit, and turned when he bid her, so he threw the bridle on
her neck, and could use that terrible left arm of his. Well, he came up
to the hill and lifted me on, and away we went for three or four miles,
but we knew the mare could not stand it long, so Dick got off and
walked. When the Blacks had pulled the drays’ loads to pieces, they
began to follow us, but Dick never lost heart’—

‘Nay, mate,’ interrupted Dick, ‘once I did; I shall never forget it,
when I came to put my last bullet in, it was too big.’

‘Good heavens,’ I exclaimed, ‘what did you do?’

‘Why, I put the bullet in my mouth, and kept chawing and chawing it, and
threatening the black devils all the while until at last it was small
enough, and then I rammed it down, and dropped on my knee and waited
until they came within twenty yards, and then I picked off Captain Jack,
the biggest villain of them all.’

Here Dick, being warmed, continued the story:—‘We could not stop; we
marched all evening and all night, and when the two poor creturs cried
for water, as they did most of the night, as often as I could I filled
my boots, and gave them to drink. I led the horse, and travelled seventy
miles without halting for more than a minute or two. Toward the last
they were as helpless as worn-out sheep. I tied them on. We had the luck
to fall in with a party travelling just when the old mare was about
giving in, and then we must all have died for want of water. Charley
Anvils had eighteen wounds, but, except losing two fingers, is none the
worse. Poor Jemmy, there, will never be fit for anything but a
hut-keeper; as for me, I had some scratches—nothing to hurt; and the old
mare lost an ear. I went back afterwards with the police, and squared
accounts with the Blacks.

‘And so you see, Stranger, the old woman thinks I saved her old man’s
life, although I would have done as much for any one; but I believe
there are some gentlemen in Sydney think I ought to have been hung for
what I did. Anyhow, since that scrimmage in the Bush, they always call
me “TWO-HANDED DICK.”’


    Published at the Office, No. 16, Wellington Street North, Strand.
            Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 ● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
 ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78170 ***