Initial commit of ebook 78184 filesHEADmain

1 files changed, 2418 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/78184-0.txt b/78184-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7064bb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/78184-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2418 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78184 ***
+
+
+     “_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+
+
+                            HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
+                           A WEEKLY JOURNAL.
+
+
+                     CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+
+      N^{o.} 19.]      SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 1850.      [PRICE 2_d._
+
+
+
+
+                        THE LAST OF A LONG LINE.
+
+
+                      IN TWO CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.
+
+Sir Roger Rockville of Rockville was the last of a very long line. It
+extended from the Norman Conquest to the present century. His first
+known ancestor came over with William, and must have been a man of some
+mark, either of bone and sinew, or of brain, for he obtained what the
+Americans would call a prime location. As his name does not occur in the
+Roll of Battle Abbey, he was, of course, not of a very high Norman
+extraction; but he had done enough, it seems, in the way of knocking
+down Saxons, to place himself on a considerable eminence in this
+kingdom. The centre of his domains was conspicuous far over the country,
+through a high range of rock overhanging one of the sweetest rivers in
+England. On one hand lay a vast tract of rich marsh land, capable, as
+society advanced, of being converted into meadows; and on the other, as
+extensive moorlands, finely undulating, and abounding with woods and
+deer.
+
+Here the original Sir Roger built his castle on the summit of the range
+of rock, with huts for his followers; and became known directly all over
+the country of Sir Roger de Rockville, or Sir Roger of the hamlet on the
+Rock. Sir Roger, no doubt, was a mighty hunter before the lord of the
+feudal district: it is certain that his descendants were. For
+generations they led a jolly life at Rockville, and were always ready to
+exchange the excitement of the chase for a bit of civil war. Without
+that the country would have grown dull, and ale and venison lost their
+flavour. There was no gay London in those days, and a good brisk
+skirmish with their neighbours in helm and hauberk was the way of
+spending their season. It was their parliamentary debate, and was
+necessary to thin their woods. Protection and Free Trade were as much
+the great topics of interest as they are now, only they did not trouble
+themselves so much about Corn bills. Their bills were of good steel, and
+their protective measures were arrows a cloth-yard long. Protection
+meant a good suit of mail; and a castle with its duly prescribed moats,
+bastions, portcullises, and donjon keep. Free Trade was a lively inroad
+into the neighbouring baron’s lands, and the importation thence of
+goodly herds and flocks. Foreign cattle for home consumption was as
+_sticking an article_ in their markets as in ours, only the blows were
+expended on one another’s heads, instead of the heads of foreign
+bullocks—that is, bullocks from over the Welch or Scotch Marches, as
+from beyond the next brook.
+
+Thus lived the Rockvilles for ages. In all the iron combats of those
+iron times they took care to have their quota. Whether it were Stephen
+against Matilda, or Richard against his father, or John against the
+barons; whether it were York or Lancaster, or Tudor or Stuart. The
+Rockvilles were to be found in the _mêlée_, and winning power and lands.
+So long as it required only stalwart frames and stout blows, no family
+cut a more conspicuous figure. The Rockvilles were at Bosworth Field.
+The Rockvilles fought in Ireland under Elizabeth. The Rockvilles were
+staunch defenders of the cause in the war of Charles I. with his
+Parliament. The Rockvilles even fought for James II. at the Boyne, when
+three-fourths of the most loyal of the English nobility and gentry had
+deserted him in disgust and indignation. But from that hour they had
+been less conspicuous.
+
+The opposition to the successful party, that of William of Orange, of
+course brought them into disgrace: and though they were never molested
+on that account, they retired to their estate, and found it convenient
+to be as unobtrusive as possible. Thenceforward you heard no more of the
+Rockvilles in the national annals. They became only of consequence in
+their own district. They acted as magistrates. They served as high
+sheriffs. They were a substantial county family, and nothing more.
+Education and civilisation advanced; a wider and very different field of
+action and ambition opened upon the aristocracy of England. Our fleets
+and armies abroad, our legislature at home, law and the church,
+presented brilliant paths to the ambition of those thirsting for
+distinction, and the good things that follow it. But somehow the
+Rockvilles did not expand with this expansion. So long as it required
+only a figure of six feet high, broad shoulders, and a strong arm, they
+were a great and conspicuous race. But when the head became the member
+most in request, they ceased to go a-head. Younger sons, it is true,
+served in army and in navy, and filled the family pulpit, but they
+produced no generals, no admirals, no archbishops. The Rockvilles of
+Rockville were very conservative, very exclusive, and very stereotype.
+Other families grew poor, and enriched themselves again by marrying
+plebeian heiresses. New families grew up out of plebeian blood into
+greatness, and intermingled the vigour of their fresh earth with the
+attenuated aristocratic soil. Men of family became great lawyers, great
+statesmen, great prelates, and even great poets and philosophers. The
+Rockvilles remained high, proud, bigotted, and _borné_.
+
+The Rockvilles married Rockvilles, or their first cousins, the
+Cesgvilles, simply to prevent property going out of the family. They
+kept the property together. They did not lose an acre, and they were a
+fine, tall, solemn race—and nothing more. What ailed them?
+
+If you saw Sir Roger Rockville,—for there was an eternal Sir Roger
+filling his office of high sheriff,—he had a very fine carriage, and a
+very fine retinue in the most approved and splendid of antique
+costumes;—if you saw him sitting on the bench at quarter sessions, he
+was a tall, stately, and solemn man. If you saw Lady Rockville shopping,
+in her handsome carriage, with very handsomely attired servants; saw her
+at the county ball, or on the race-stand, she was a tall, aristocratic,
+and stately lady. That was in the last generation—the present could
+boast of no Lady Rockville.
+
+Great outward respect was shown to the Rockvilles on account of the
+length of their descent, and the breadth of their acres. They were
+always, when any stranger asked about them, declared, with a serious and
+important air, to be a very ancient, honourable, and substantial family.
+“Oh! a great family are the Rockvilles, a very great family.”
+
+But if you came to close quarters with the members of this great and
+highly distinguished family, you soon found yourself fundamentally
+astonished: you had a sensation come over you, as if you were trying,
+like Moses, to draw water from a rock, without his delegated power.
+There was a goodly outside of things before you, but nothing came of it.
+You talked, hoping to get talking in return, but you got little more
+than “noes” and “yeses,” and “oh! indeeds!” and “reallys,” and sometimes
+not even that, but a certain look of aristocratic dignity or
+dignification, that was meant to serve for all answers. There was a sort
+of resting on aristocratic oars or “sculls,” that were not to be too
+vulgarly handled. There was a feeling impressed on you, that eight
+hundred years of descent and ten thousand a-year in landed income did
+not trouble themselves with the trifling things that gave distinction to
+lesser people—such as literature, fine arts, politics, and general
+knowledge. These were very well for those who had nothing else to pride
+themselves on, but for the Rockvilles—oh! certainly they were by no
+means requisite.
+
+In fact, you found yourself, with a little variation, in the predicament
+of Cowper’s people,
+
+                       —— who spent their lives
+               In dropping buckets into empty wells,
+               And _growing tired_ of drawing nothing up.
+
+Who hasn’t often come across these “dry wells” of society; solemn gulphs
+out of which you can pump nothing up? You know them; they are at your
+elbow every day in large and brilliant companies, and defy the best
+sucking-buckets ever invented to extract anything from them. But the
+Rockvilles were each and all of this adust description. It was a family
+feature, and they seemed, if either, rather proud of it. They must be
+so; for proud they were, amazingly proud; and they had nothing besides
+to be proud of, except their acres, and their ancestors.
+
+But the fact was, they could not help it. It was become organic. They
+had acted the justice of peace, maintained the constitution against
+upstarts and manufacturers, signed warrants, supported the church and
+the house of correction, committed poachers, and then rested on the
+dignity of their ancestors for so many generations, that their skulls,
+brains, constitutions, and nervous systems, were all so completely
+moulded into that shape and baked into that mould, that a Rockville
+would be a Rockville to the end of time, if God and Nature would have
+allowed it. But such things wear out. The American Indians and the
+Australian nations wear out; they are not progressive, and as Nature
+abhors a vacuum, she does not forget the vacuum wherever it may be,
+whether in a hot desert, or in a cold and stately Rockville;—a very
+ancient, honourable, and substantial family that lies fallow till the
+thinking faculty literally dies out.
+
+For several generations there had been symptoms of decay about the
+Rockville family. Not in its property, that was as large as ever; not in
+their personal stature and physical aspect. The Rockvilles continued, as
+they always had been, a tall and not bad-looking family. But they grew
+gradually less prolific. For a hundred and fifty years past there had
+seldom been more than two, or at most three, children. There had
+generally been an heir to the estate, and another to the family pulpit,
+and sometimes a daughter married to some neighbouring squire. But Sir
+Roger’s father had been an only child, and Sir Roger himself was an only
+child. The danger of extinction to the family, apparent as it was, had
+never induced Sir Roger to marry. At the time that we are turning our
+attention upon him, he had reached the mature age of sixty. Nobody
+believed that Sir Roger now would marry; he was the last, and likely to
+be, of his line.
+
+It is worth while here to take a glance at Sir Roger and his estate.
+They wore a strange contrast. The one bore all the signs of progress,
+the other of a stereotyped feudality. The estate, which in the days of
+the first Sir Roger de Rockville had been half morass and half
+wilderness, was now cultivated to the pitch of British agricultural
+science. The marshlands beyond the river were one splendid expanse of
+richest meadows, yielding a rental of four solid pounds per acre. Over
+hill and dale on this side for miles, where formerly ran wild deer, and
+grew wild woodlands or furze-bushes, now lay excellent farms and
+hamlets, and along the ridge of the ancient cliffs rose the most
+magnificent woods. Woods, too, clothed the steep hill-sides, and swept
+down to the noble river, their very boughs hanging far out over its
+clear and rapid waters. In the midst of these fine woods stood Rockville
+Hall, the family seat of the Rockvilles. It reared its old brick walls
+above the towering mass of elms, and travellers at a distance recognised
+it for what it was, the mansion of an ancient and wealthy family.
+
+The progress of England in arts, science, commerce, and manufacture, had
+carried Sir Roger’s estate along with it. It was full of active and
+moneyed farmers, and flourished under modern influences. How lucky it
+would have been for the Rockville family had it done the same!
+
+But amid this estate there was Sir Roger solitary, and the last of the
+line. He had grown well enough—there was nothing stunted about him, so
+far as you could see on the surface. In stature, he exceeded six feet.
+His colossal elms could not boast of a properer relative growth. He was
+as large a landlord, and as tall a justice of the peace, as you could
+desire; but, unfortunately, he was, after all, only the shell of a man.
+Like many of his veteran elms, there was a very fine stem, only it was
+hollow. There was a man, just with the rather awkward deficiency of a
+soul.
+
+And it were no difficult task to explain, either, how this had come
+about. The Rockvilles saw plainly enough the necessity of manuring their
+lands, but they scorned the very idea of manuring their family. What!
+that most ancient, honourable, and substantial family, suffer any of the
+common earth of humanity to gather about its roots! The Rockvilles were
+so careful of their good blood, that they never allied it to any but
+blood as pure and inane as their own. Their elms flourished in the
+rotten earth of plebeian accumulations, and their acres produced large
+crops of corn from the sewage of towns and fat sinks, but the Rockvilles
+themselves took especial care that no vulgar vigour from the real heap
+of ordinary human nature should infuse a new force of intellect into
+their race. The Rockvilles needed nothing; they had all that an ancient,
+honourable, and substantial family could need. The Rockvilles had no
+need to study at school—why should they? They did not want to get on.
+The Rockvilles did not aspire to distinction for talent in the world—why
+should they? They had a large estate. So the Rockville soul, unused from
+generation to generation, grew—
+
+                Fine by degrees, and _spiritually_ less,
+
+till it tapered off into nothing.
+
+Look at the last of a long line in the midst of his fine estate. Tall he
+was, with a stoop in his shoulders, and a bowing of his head on one
+side, as if he had been accustomed to stand under the low boughs of his
+woods, and peer after intruders. And that was precisely the fact. His
+features were thin and sharp; his nose prominent and keen in its
+character; his eyes small, black, and peering like a mole’s, or a hungry
+swine’s. Sir Roger was still oracular on the bench, after consulting his
+clerk, a good lawyer,—and looked up to by the neighbouring squires in
+election matters, for he was an unswerving tory. You never heard of a
+rational thing that he had said in the whole course of his life; but
+that mattered little, he was a gentleman of solemn aspect, of stately
+gait, and of a very ancient family.
+
+With ten thousand a-year, and his rental rising, he was still, however,
+a man of overwhelming cares. What mattered a fine estate if all the
+world was against him? And Sir Roger firmly believed that he stood in
+that predicament. He had grown up to regard the world as full of little
+besides upstarts, radicals, manufacturers, and poachers. All were
+banded, in his belief, against the landed interest. It demanded all the
+energy of his very small faculties to defend himself and the world
+against them.
+
+Unfortunately for his peace, a large manufacturing town had sprung up
+within a couple of miles of him. He could see its red-brick walls, and
+its red-tiled roofs, and its tall smoke-vomiting chimneys, growing and
+extending over the slopes beyond the river. It was to him the most
+irritating sight in the world; for what were all those swarming weavers
+and spinners but arrant radicals, upstarts, sworn foes of the ancient
+institutions and the landed interests of England? Sir Roger had passed
+through many a desperate conflict with them for the return of members to
+parliament. They brought forward men that were utter wormwood to all his
+feelings, and they paid no more respect to him and his friends on such
+occasions than they did to the meanest creature living. Reverence for
+ancient blood did not exist in that plebeian and rapidly multiplying
+tribe. There were master manufacturers there actually that looked and
+talked as big as himself, and _entre nous_, a vast deal more cleverly.
+The people talked of rights and franchises, and freedom of speech and of
+conscience, in a way that was really frightful. Then they were given
+most inveterately to running out in whole and everlasting crowds on
+Sundays and holidays into the fields and woods; and as there was no part
+of the neighbourhood half so pleasant as the groves and river banks of
+Rockville, they came swarming up there in crowds that were enough to
+drive any man of acres frantic.
+
+Unluckily, there were roads all about Rockville; foot roads, and high
+roads, and bridle roads. There was a road up the river side, all the way
+to Rockville woods, and when it reached them, it divided like a fork,
+and one pony or footpath led straight up a magnificent grove of a mile
+long, ending close to the hall; and another ran all along the river
+side, under the hills and branches of the wood.
+
+Oh, delicious were these woods! In the river there were islands, which
+were covered in summer with the greenest grass, and the freshest of
+willows, and the clear waters rushed around them in the most inviting
+manner imaginable. And there were numbers of people extremely ready to
+accept this delectable invitation of these waters. There they came in
+fine weather, and as these islands were only separated from the mainland
+by a little and very shallow stream, it was delightful for lovers to get
+across—with laughter, and treading on stepping-stones, and slipping off
+the stepping-stones up to the ankles into the cool brook, and pretty
+screams, and fresh laughter, and then landing on those sunny, and to
+them really enchanted, islands. And then came fishermen, solitary
+fishermen, and fishermen in rows; fishermen lying in the flowery grass,
+with fragrant meadow-sweet and honey-breathing clover all about their
+ears; and fishermen standing in file, as if they were determined to
+clear all the river of fish in one day. And there were other lovers, and
+troops of loiterers, and shouting roysterers, going along under the
+boughs of the wood, and following the turns of that most companionable
+of rivers. And there were boats going up and down; boats full of young
+people, all holiday finery and mirth, and boats with duck-hunters and
+other, to Sir Roger, detestable marauders, with guns and dogs, and great
+bottles of beer. In the fine grove, on summer days, there might be found
+hundreds of people. There were pic-nic parties, fathers and mothers with
+whole families of children, and a grand promenade of the delighted
+artisans and their wives or sweethearts.
+
+In the times prior to the sudden growth of the neighbouring town, Great
+Stockington, and to the simultaneous development of the love-of-nature
+principle in the Stockingtonians, nothing had been thought of all these
+roads. The roads were well enough till they led to these inroads. Then
+Sir Roger aroused himself. This must be changed. The roads must be
+stopped. Nothing was easier to his fancy. His fellow-justices, Sir
+Benjamin Bullockshed and Squire Sheepshank, had asked his aid to stop
+the like nuisances, and it had been done at once. So Sir Roger put up
+notices all about, that the roads were to be stopped by an Order of
+Session, and these notices were signed, as required by law, by their
+worships of Bullockshed and Sheepshank. But Sir Roger soon found that it
+was one thing to stop a road leading from One-man-Town to Lonely Lodge,
+and another to attempt to stop those from Great Stockington to
+Rockville.
+
+On the very first Sunday after the exhibition of those notice-boards,
+there was a ferment in the grove of Rockville, as if all the bees in the
+county were swarming there, with all the wasps and hornets to boot.
+Great crowds were collected before each of these obnoxious placards, and
+the amount of curses vomited forth against them was really shocking for
+any day, but more especially for a Sunday. Presently there was a rush at
+them; they were torn down, and simultaneously pitched into the river.
+There were great crowds swarming all about Rockville all that day, and
+with looks so defiant that Sir Roger more than once contemplated sending
+off for the Yeoman Cavalry to defend his house, which he seriously
+thought in danger.
+
+But so far from being intimidated from proceeding, this demonstration
+only made Sir Roger the more determined. To have so desperate and
+irreverent a population coming about his house and woods, now presented
+itself in a much more formidable aspect than ever. So, next day, not
+only were the placards once more hoisted, but rewards offered for the
+discovery of the offenders, attended with all the maledictions of the
+insulted majesty of the law. No notice was taken of this, but the whole
+of Great Stockington was in a buzz and an agitation. There were posters
+plastered all over the walls of the town, four times as large as Sir
+Roger’s notices, in this style:—
+
+“Englishmen! your dearest rights are menaced! The Woods of Rockville,
+your ancient, rightful, and enchanting resorts, are to be closed to you.
+Stockingtonians! the eyes of the world are upon you. ‘Awake! arise! or
+be for ever fallen!’ England expects every man to do his duty! And your
+duty is to resist and defy the grasping soil-lords, to seize on your
+ancient Patrimony!”
+
+“Patrimony! Ancient and rightful resort of Rockville!” Sir Roger was
+astounded at the audacity of this upstart, plebeian race. What! they
+actually claimed Rockville, the heritage of a hundred successive
+Rockvilles, as their own. Sir Roger determined to carry it to the
+Sessions; and at the Sessions was a magnificent muster of all his
+friends. There was Sir Roger himself in the chair; and on either hand, a
+prodigious row of county squire-archy. There was Sir Benjamin
+Bullockshed, and Sir Thomas Tenterhook, and all the squires,—Sheepshank,
+Ramsbottom, Turnbull, Otterbrook, and Swagsides. The Clerk of Session
+read the notice for the closing of all the footpaths through the woods
+of Rockville, and declared that this notice had been duly, and for the
+required period publicly, posted. The Stockingtonians protested by their
+able lawyer Daredeville, against any order for the closing of these
+ancient woods—the inestimable property of the public.
+
+“Property of the public!” exclaimed Sir Roger. “Property of the public!”
+echoed the multitudinous voices of indignant Bullocksheds, Tenterhooks,
+and Ramsbottoms. “Why, Sir, do you dispute the right of Sir Roger
+Rockville to his own estate?”
+
+“By no means;” replied the undaunted Daredeville; “the estate of
+Rockville is unquestionably the property of the honourable baronet, Sir
+Roger Rockville; but the roads through it are the as unquestionable
+property of the public.”
+
+The whole bench looked at itself; that is, at each other, in wrathful
+astonishment. The swelling in the diaphragms of the squires Otterbrook,
+Turnbull, and Swagsides, and all the rest of the worshipful row, was too
+big to admit of utterance. Only Sir Roger himself burst forth with an
+abrupt—
+
+“Impudent fellows! But I’ll see them —— first!”
+
+“Grant the order!” said Sir Benjamin Bullockshed; and the whole bench
+nodded assent. The able lawyer Daredeville retired with a pleasant
+smile. He saw an agreeable prospect of plenty of grist to his mill. Sir
+Roger was rich, and so was Great Stockington. He rubbed his hands, not
+in the least like a man defeated, and thought to himself, “Let them go
+at it—all right.”
+
+The next day the placards on the Rockville estate were changed for
+others bearing “STOPPED BY ORDER OF SESSIONS!” and alongside of them
+were huge carefully painted boards, denouncing on all trespassers
+prosecutions according to law. The same evening came a prodigious
+invasion of Stockingtonians—tore all the boards and placards down, and
+carried them on their shoulders to Great Stockington, singing as they
+went, “See, the Conquering Heroes come!” They set them up in the centre
+of the Stockington marketplace, and burnt them, along with, an effigy of
+Sir Roger Rockville.
+
+That was grist at once to the mill of the able lawyer Daredeville. He
+looked on, and rubbed his hands. Warrants were speedily issued by the
+Baronets of Bullockshed and Tenterhook, for the apprehension of the
+individuals who had been seen carrying off the notice-boards, for
+larceny, and against a number of others for trespass. There was plenty
+of work for Daredeville and his brethren of the robe; but it all ended,
+after the flying about of sundry mandamuses and assize trials, in Sir
+Roger finding that though Rockville was his, the roads through it were
+the public’s.
+
+As Sir Roger drove homeward from the assize, which finally settled the
+question of these footpaths, he heard the bells in all the steeples of
+Great Stockington burst forth with a grand peal of triumph. He closed
+first the windows of his fine old carriage, and sunk into a corner; but
+he could not drown the intolerable sound. “But,” said he, “I’ll stop
+their pic-nic-ing. I’ll stop their fishing. I’ll have hold of them for
+trespassing and poaching!” There was war henceforth between Rockville
+and Great Stockington.
+
+On the very next Sunday there came literally thousands of the jubilant
+Stockingtonians to Rockville. They had brought baskets, and were for
+dining, and drinking success to all footpaths. But in the great grove
+there were keepers, and watchers, who warned them to keep the path, that
+narrow well-worn line up the middle of the grove. “What! were they not
+to sit on the grass?”—“No!”—“What! were they not to pic-nic?”—“No! not
+there!”
+
+The Stockingtonians felt a sudden damp on their spirits. But the river
+bank! The cry was “To the river bank! There they _would_ pic-nic.” The
+crowd rushed away down the wood, but on the river bank they found a
+whole regiment of watchers, who pointed again to the narrow line of
+footpath, and told them not to trespass beyond it. But the islands! they
+went over to the islands. But there too were Sir Roger’s forces, who
+warned them back! There was no road there—all found there would be
+trespassers, and be duly punished.
+
+The Stockingtonians discovered that their triumph was not quite so
+complete as they had flattered themselves. The footpaths were theirs,
+but that was all. Their ancient license was at an end. If they came
+there, there was no more fishing; if they came in crowds, there was no
+more pic-nic-ing; if they walked through the woods in numbers, they must
+keep to Indian file, or they were summoned before the county magistrates
+for trespass, and were soundly fined; and not even the able Daredeville
+would undertake to defend them.
+
+The Stockingtonians were chop-fallen, but they were angry and dogged;
+and they thronged up to the village and the front of the hall. They
+filled the little inn in the hamlet—they went by scores, and roving all
+over the churchyard, read epitaphs
+
+                That teach the rustic moralists to die,
+
+but don’t teach them to give up their old indulgences very
+good-humouredly. They went and sat in rows on the old churchyard wall,
+opposite to the very windows of the irate Sir Roger. They felt
+themselves beaten, and Sir Roger felt himself beaten. True, he could
+coerce them to the keeping of the footpaths—but, then, they had the
+footpaths! True, thought the Stockingtonians, we have the footpaths, but
+then the pic-nic-ing, and the fishing, and the islands! The
+Stockingtonians were full of sullen wrath, and Sir Roger was—oh, most
+expressive old Saxon phrase—HAIRSORE! Yes, he was one universal round of
+vexation and jealousy of his rights. Every hair in his body was like a
+pin sticking into him. Come within a dozen yards of him; nay, at the
+most, blow on him, and he was excruciated—you rubbed his sensitive hairs
+at a furlong’s distance.
+
+The next Sunday the people found the churchyard locked up, except during
+service, when beadles walked there, and desired them not to loiter and
+disturb the congregation, closing the gates, and showing them out like a
+flock of sheep the moment the service was over. This was fuel to the
+already boiling blood of Stockington. The week following, what was their
+astonishment to find a much frequented ruin gone! it was actually gone!
+not a trace of it; but the spot where it had stood for ages, turfed,
+planted with young spruce trees, and fenced off with post and rail! The
+exasperated people now launched forth an immensity of fulminations
+against the churl Sir Roger, and a certain number of them resolved to
+come and seat themselves in the street of the hamlet and there dine; but
+a terrific thunderstorm, which seemed in league with Sir Roger, soon
+routed them, drenched them through, and on attempting to seek shelter in
+the cottages, the poor people said they were very sorry, but it was as
+much as their holdings were worth, and they dare not admit them.
+
+Sir Roger had triumphed! It was all over with the old delightful days at
+Rockville. There was an end of pic-nic-ing, of fishing, and of roving in
+the islands. One sturdy disciple of Izaak Walton, indeed, dared to fling
+a line from the banks of Rockville grove, but Sir Roger came upon him
+and endeavoured to seize him. The man coolly walked into the middle of
+the river, and, without a word, continued his fishing.
+
+“Get out there!” exclaimed Sir Roger, “that is still on my property.”
+The man walked through the river to the other bank, where he knew that
+the land was rented by a farmer. “Give over,” shouted Sir Roger, “I tell
+you the water is mine.”
+
+“Then,” said the fellow, “bottle it up, and be hanged to you! Don’t you
+see it is running away to Stockington?”
+
+There was bad blood between Rockville and Stockington-green. Stockington
+was incensed, and Sir Roger was hairsore.
+
+A new nuisance sprung up. The people of Stockington looked on the
+cottagers of Rockville as sunk in deepest darkness under such a man as
+Sir Roger and his cousin the vicar. They could not pic-nic, but they
+thought they could hold a camp-meeting; they could not fish for roach,
+but they thought they might for souls. Accordingly there assembled
+crowds of Stockingtonians on the green of Rockville, with a chair and a
+table, and a preacher with his head bound in a red handkerchief; and
+soon there was a sound of hymns, and a zealous call to come out of the
+darkness of the spiritual Babylon. But this was more than Sir Roger
+could bear; he rushed forth with all his servants, keepers, and
+cottagers, overthrew the table, and routing the assembly, chased them to
+the boundary of his estate.
+
+The discomfited Stockingtonians now fulminated awful judgments on the
+unhappy Sir Roger, as a persecutor and a malignant. They dared not enter
+again on his park, but they came to the very verge of it, and held
+weekly meetings on the highway, in which they sang and declaimed as
+loudly as possible, that the winds might bear their voices to Sir
+Roger’s ears.
+
+To such a position was now reduced the last of the long line of
+Rockville. The spirit of a policeman had taken possession of him. He had
+keepers and watchers out on all sides, but that did not satisfy him. He
+was perpetually haunted with the idea that poachers were after his game,
+that trespassers were in his woods. His whole life was now spent in
+stealing to and fro in his fields and plantations, and prowling along
+his river side. He looked under hedges, and watched for long hours under
+the forest trees. If any one had a curiosity to see Sir Roger, they had
+only to enter his fields by the wood side, and wander a few yards from
+the path, and he was almost sure to spring out over the hedge, and in
+angry tones demand their name and address. The descendant of the
+chivalrous and steel-clad De Rockvilles was sunk into a restless spy on
+his own ample property. There was but one idea in his mind—encroachment.
+It was destitute of all other furniture but the musty technicalities of
+warrants and commitments. There was a stealthy and skulking manner in
+everything that he did. He went to church on Sundays, but it was no
+longer by the grand iron gate opposite to his house, that stood
+generally with a large spider’s web woven over the lock, and several
+others in different corners of the fine iron tracery, bearing evidence
+of the long period since it had been opened. How different to the time
+when the Sir Roger and Lady of Rockville had had these gates thrown wide
+on a Sunday morning, and, with all their train of household servants
+after their back, with true antique dignity, marched with much proud
+humility into the house of God. Now, Sir Roger—the solitary, suspicious,
+undignified Sir Roger, the keeper and policeman of his own
+property—stole in at a little side gate from his paddock, and back the
+same way, wondering all the time whether there was not somebody in his
+pheasant preserves, or Sunday trespassers in his grove.
+
+If you entered his house, it gave you as cheerless a feeling as its
+owner. There was the conservatory, so splendid with rich plants and
+flowers in his mother’s time—now a dusty receptacle of hampers, broken
+hand-glasses, and garden tools. These tools could never be used, for the
+gardens were grown wild. Tall grass grew in the walks, and the huge
+unpruned shrubs disputed the passage with you. In the wood above the
+gardens, reached by several flights of fine, but now moss-grown, steps,
+there stood a pavilion, once clearly very beautiful. It was now damp and
+ruinous—its walls covered with greenness and crawling insects. It was a
+great lurking-place of Sir Roger when on the watch for poachers.
+
+The line of the Rockvilles was evidently running fast out. It had
+reached the extremity of imbecility and contempt—it must soon reach its
+close.
+
+Sir Roger used to make his regular annual visit to town; but of late,
+when there, he had wandered restlessly about the streets, peeping into
+the shop-windows; and if it rained, standing under entries for hours
+after, till it was gone over. The habit of lurking and peering about,
+was upon him; and his feet bore him instinctively into those narrow and
+crowded alleys where swarm the poachers of the city—the trespassers and
+anglers in the game preserves and streams of humanity. He had lost all
+pleasure in his club; the most exciting themes of political life
+retained no piquancy for him. His old friends ceased to find any
+pleasure in him. He was become the driest of all dry wells. Poachers,
+and anglers, and Methodists, haunted the wretched purlieus of his lost
+fading-out mind, and he resolved to go to town no more. His whole nature
+was centred in his woods. He was for ever on the watch; and when at
+Rockville again, if he heard a door clap when in bed, he thought it a
+gun in his woods, and started up, and was out with his keepers.
+
+Of what value was that magnificent estate to him?—those superb woods;
+those finely-hanging cliffs; that clear and _riant_ river coming
+travelling on, and taking a noble sweep below his windows,—that glorious
+expanse of neat verdant meadows stretching almost to Stockington, and
+enlivened by numerous herds of the most beautiful cattle—those old farms
+and shady lanes overhung with hazel and wild rose; the glittering brook,
+and the songs of woodland birds—what were they to that worn-out old man,
+that victim of the delusive doctrine of blood, of the man-trap of an
+hereditary name?
+
+There the poet could come, and feel the presence of divinity in that
+noble scene, and hear sublime whispers in the trees, and create new
+heavens and earths from the glorious chaos of nature around him, and in
+one short hour live an empyrean of celestial life and love. There could
+come the very humblest children of the plebeian town, and feel a throb
+of exquisite delight pervade their bosoms at the sight of the very
+flowers on the sod, and see heaven in the infinite blue above them. And
+poor Sir Roger, the holder, but not the possessor of all, walked only in
+a region of sterility, with no sublimer ideas than poachers and
+trespassers—no more rational enjoyment than the brute indulgence of
+hunting like a ferret, and seizing his fellow-men like a bulldog. He was
+a specimen of human nature degenerated, retrograded from the divine to
+the bestial, through the long-operating influences of false notions and
+institutions, continued beyond their time. He had only the soul of a
+keeper. Had he been only a keeper, he had been a much happier man.
+
+His time was at hand. The severity which he had long dealt out towards
+all sorts of offenders made him the object of the deepest vengeance. In
+a lonely hollow of his woods, watching at midnight with two of his men,
+there came a sturdy knot of poachers. An affray ensued. The men
+perceived that their old enemy, Sir Roger, was there: and the blow of a
+hedge-stake stretched him on the earth. His keepers fled—and thus
+ignominiously terminated the long line of the Rockvilles. Sir Roger was
+the last of his line, but not of his class. There is a feudal art of
+sinking, which requires no study; and the Rockvilles are but one family
+amongst thousands who have perished in its practice.
+
+
+
+
+                       THE CHEMISTRY OF A CANDLE.
+
+
+The Wilkinsons were having a small party,—it consisted of themselves and
+Uncle Bagges—at which the younger members of the family, home for the
+holidays, had been just admitted to assist after dinner. Uncle Bagges
+was a gentleman from whom his affectionate relatives cherished
+expectations of a testamentary nature. Hence the greatest attention was
+paid by them to the wishes of Mr. Bagges, as well as to every
+observation which he might be pleased to make.
+
+“Eh! what? you sir,” said Mr. Bagges, facetiously addressing himself to
+his eldest nephew, Harry,—“Eh! what? I am glad to hear, sir, that you
+are doing well at school. Now—eh? now, are you clever enough to tell me
+where was Moses when he put the candle out?”
+
+“That depends, uncle,” answered the young gentleman, “on whether he had
+lighted the candle to see with at night, or by daylight, to seal a
+letter.”
+
+“Eh! Very good, now! ’Pon my word, very good,” exclaimed Uncle Bagges.
+“You must be Lord Chancellor, sir—Lord Chancellor, one of these days.”
+
+“And now, uncle,” asked Harry, who was a favourite with the old
+gentleman, “can you tell me what you do when you put a candle out?”
+
+“Clap an extinguisher on it, you young rogue, to be sure.”
+
+“Oh! but I mean, you cut off its supply of oxygen,” said Master Harry.
+
+“Cut off its ox’s—eh? what? I shall cut off your nose, you young dog,
+one of these fine days.”
+
+“He means something he heard at the Royal Institution,” observed Mrs.
+Wilkinson. “He reads a great deal about chemistry, and he attended
+Professor Faraday’s lectures there on the chemical history of a candle,
+and has been full of it ever since.”
+
+“Now, you sir,” said Uncle Bagges, “come you here to me, and tell me
+what you have to say about this chemical, eh?—or comical; which?—this
+comical chemical history of a candle.”
+
+“He’ll bore you, Bagges,” said Mr. Wilkinson. “Harry, don’t be
+troublesome to your uncle.”
+
+“Troublesome! Oh, not at all. He amuses me. I like to hear him. So let
+him teach his old uncle the comicality and chemicality of a farthing
+rushlight.”
+
+“A wax candle will be nicer and cleaner, uncle, and answer the same
+purpose. There’s one on the mantel-shelf. Let me light it.”
+
+“Take care you don’t burn your fingers, or set anything on fire,” said
+Mrs. Wilkinson.
+
+“Now, uncle,” commenced Harry, having drawn his chair to the side of Mr.
+Bagges, “we have got our candle burning. What do you see?”
+
+“Let me put on my spectacles,” answered the uncle.
+
+“Look down on the top of the candle around the wick. See, it is a little
+cup full of melted wax. The heat of the flame has melted the wax just
+round the wick. The cold air keeps the outside of it hard, so as to make
+the rim of it. The melted wax in the little cup goes up through the wick
+to be burnt, just as oil does in the wick of a lamp. What do you think
+makes it go up, uncle?”
+
+“Why—why, the flame draws it up, doesn’t it?”
+
+“Not exactly, uncle. It goes up through little tiny passages in the
+cotton wick, because very, very small channels, or pipes, or pores, have
+the power in themselves of sucking up liquids. What they do it by is
+called cap—something.”
+
+“Capillary attraction, Harry,” suggested Mr. Wilkinson.
+
+“Yes, that’s it; just as a sponge sucks up water, or a bit of lump-sugar
+the little drop of tea or coffee left in the bottom of a cup. But I
+mustn’t say much more about this, or else you will tell me I am doing
+something very much like teaching my grandmother to—you know what.”
+
+“Your grandmother, eh, young sharpshins?”
+
+“No—I mean my uncle. Now, I’ll blow the candle out, like Moses; not to
+be in the dark, though, but to see into what it is. Look at the smoke
+rising from the wick. I’ll hold a bit of lighted paper in the smoke, so
+as not to touch the wick. But see, for all that, the candle lights
+again. So this shows that the melted wax sucked up through the wick is
+turned into vapour; and the vapour burns. The heat of the burning vapour
+keeps on melting more wax, and that is sucked up too within the flame,
+and turned into vapour, and burnt, and so on till the wax is all used
+up, and the candle is gone. So the flame, uncle, you see, is the last of
+the candle, and the candle seems to go through the flame into
+nothing—although it doesn’t, but goes into several things, and isn’t it
+curious, as Professor Faraday said, that the candle should look so
+splendid and glorious in going away?”
+
+“How well he remembers, doesn’t he?” observed Mrs. Wilkinson.
+
+“I dare say,” proceeded Harry, “that the flame of the candle looks flat
+to you; but if we were to put a lamp glass over it, so as to shelter it
+from the draught, you would see it is round,—round sideways, and running
+up to a peak. It is drawn up by the hot air; you know that hot air
+always rises, and that is the way smoke is taken up the chimney. What
+should you think was in the middle of the flame?”
+
+“I should say, fire,” replied Uncle Bagges.
+
+“Oh, no! The flame is hollow. The bright flame we see is something no
+thicker than a thin peel, or skin; and it doesn’t touch the wick. Inside
+of it is the vapour I told you of just now. If you put one end of a bent
+pipe into the middle of the flame, and let the other end of the pipe dip
+into a bottle, the vapour or gas from the candle will mix with the air
+there; and if you set fire to the mixture of gas from the candle and air
+in the bottle, it would go off with a bang.”
+
+“I wish you’d do that, Harry,” said Master Tom, the younger brother of
+the juvenile lecturer.
+
+“I want the proper things,” answered Harry. “Well, uncle, the flame of
+the candle is a little shining case, with gas in the inside of it, and
+air on the outside, so that the case of flame is between the air and the
+gas. The gas keeps going into the flame to burn, and when the candle
+burns properly, none of it ever passes out through the flame; and none
+of the air ever gets in through the flame to the gas. The greatest heat
+of the candle is in this skin, or peel, or case of flame.”
+
+“Case of flame!” repeated Mr. Bagges. “Live and learn. I should have
+thought a candle-flame was as thick as my poor old noddle.”
+
+“I can show you the contrary,” said Harry. “I take this piece of white
+paper, look, and hold it a second or two down upon the candle-flame,
+keeping the flame very steady. Now I’ll rub off the black of the smoke,
+and—there—you find that the paper is scorched in the shape of a ring;
+but inside the ring it is only dirtied, and not singed at all.”
+
+“Seeing is believing,” remarked the uncle.
+
+“But,” proceeded Harry, “there is more in the candle-flame than the gas
+that comes out of the candle. You know a candle won’t burn without air.
+There must be always air around the gas, and touching it like, to make
+it burn. If a candle hasn’t got enough air, it goes out, or burns badly,
+so that some of the vapour inside of the flame comes out through it in
+the form of smoke, and this is the reason of a candle smoking. So now
+you know why a great clumsy dip smokes more than a neat wax candle; it
+is because the thick wick of the dip makes too much fuel in proportion
+to the air that can get to it.”
+
+“Dear me! Well, I suppose there is a reason for everything,” exclaimed
+the young philosopher’s mamma.
+
+“What should you say, now,” continued Harry, “if I told you that the
+smoke that comes out of a candle is the very thing that makes a candle
+light? Yes; a candle shines by consuming its own smoke. The smoke of a
+candle is a cloud of small dust, and the little grains of the dust are
+bits of charcoal, or carbon, as chemists call it. They are made in the
+flame, and burnt in the flame, and, while burning, make the flame
+bright. They are burnt the moment they are made; but the flame goes on
+making more of them as fast as it burns them; and that is how it keeps
+bright. The place they are made in, is in the case of flame itself,
+where the strongest heat is. The great heat separates them from the gas
+which comes from the melted wax, and, as soon as they touch the air on
+the outside of the thin case of flame, they burn.”
+
+“Can you tell how it is that the little bits of carbon cause the
+brightness of the flame?” asked Mr. Wilkinson.
+
+“Because they are pieces of solid matter,” answered Harry. “To make a
+flame shine, there must always be some solid—or at least liquid—matter
+in it.”
+
+“Very good,” said Mr. Bagges,—“solid stuff necessary to brightness.”
+
+“Some gases and other things,” resumed Harry, “that burn with a flame
+you can hardly see, burn splendidly when something solid is put into
+them. Oxygen and hydrogen—tell me if I use too hard words, uncle—oxygen
+and hydrogen gases, if mixed together and blown through a pipe, burn
+with plenty of heat but with very little light. But if their flame is
+blown upon a piece of quicklime, it gets so bright as to be quite
+dazzling. Make the smoke of oil of turpentine pass through the same
+flame, and it gives the flame a beautiful brightness directly.”
+
+“I wonder,” observed Uncle Bagges, “what has made you such a bright
+youth.”
+
+“Taking after uncle, perhaps,” retorted his nephew. “Don’t put my candle
+and me out. Well, carbon or charcoal is what causes the brightness of
+all lamps, and candles, and other common lights; so, of course, there is
+carbon in what they are all made of.”
+
+“So carbon is smoke, eh? and light is owing to your carbon. Giving light
+out of smoke, eh? as they say in the classics,” observed Mr. Bagges.
+
+“But what becomes of the candle,” pursued Harry, “as it burns away?
+where does it go?”
+
+“Nowhere,” said his mamma, “I should think. It burns to nothing.”
+
+“Oh, dear, no!” said Harry, “everything—everybody goes somewhere.”
+
+“Eh!—rather an important consideration that,” Mr. Bagges moralised.
+
+“You can see it goes into smoke, which makes soot for one thing,”
+pursued Harry. “There are other things it goes into, not to be seen by
+only looking, but you can get to see them by taking the right
+means,—just put your hand over the candle, uncle.”
+
+“Thank you, young gentleman, I had rather be excused.”
+
+“Not close enough down to burn you, uncle; higher up. There,—you feel a
+stream of hot air; so something seems to rise from the candle. Suppose
+you were to put a very long slender gas-burner over the flame, and let
+the flame burn just within the end of it, as if it were a chimney,—some
+of the hot steam would go up and come out at the top, but a sort of dew
+would be left behind in the glass chimney, if the chimney was cold
+enough when you put it on. There are ways of collecting this sort of
+dew, and when it is collected it turns out to be really water. I am not
+joking, uncle. Water is one of the things which the candle turns into in
+burning,—water coming out of fire. A jet of oil gives above a pint of
+water in burning. In some lighthouses they burn, Professor Faraday says,
+up to two gallons of oil in a night, and if the windows are cold the
+steam from the oil clouds the inside of the windows, and, in frosty
+weather, freezes into ice.”
+
+“Water out of a candle, eh?” exclaimed Mr. Bagges. “As hard to get, I
+should have thought, as blood out of a post. Where does it come from?”
+
+“Part from the wax, and part from the air, and yet not a drop of it
+comes either from the air or the wax. What do you make of that, uncle?”
+
+“Eh? Oh! I’m no hand at riddles. Give it up.”
+
+“No riddle at all, uncle. The part that comes from the wax isn’t water,
+and the part that comes from the air isn’t water, but when put together
+they become water. Water is a mixture of two things, then. This can be
+shown. Put some iron wire or turnings into a gun-barrel open at both
+ends. Heat the middle of the barrel red-hot in a little furnace. Keep
+the heat up, and send the steam of boiling water through the red-hot
+gun-barrel. What will come out at the other end of the barrel won’t be
+steam; it will be gas, which doesn’t turn to water again when it gets
+cold, and which burns if you put a light to it. Take the turnings out of
+the gun-barrel, and you will find them changed to rust, and heavier than
+when they were put in. Part of the water is the gas that comes out of
+the barrel, the other part is what mixes with the iron turnings, and
+changes them to rust, and makes them heavier. You can fill a bladder
+with the gas that comes out of the gun-barrel, or you can pass bubbles
+of it up into a jar of water turned upside down in a trough, and, as I
+said, you can make this part of the water burn.”
+
+“Eh?” cried Mr. Bagges. “Upon my word! One of these days, we shall have
+you setting the Thames on fire.”
+
+“Nothing more easy,” said Harry, “than to burn part of the Thames, or of
+any other water; I mean the gas that I have just told you about, which
+is called hydrogen. In burning, hydrogen produces water again, like the
+flame of the candle. Indeed, hydrogen is that part of the water, formed
+by a candle burning, that comes from the wax. All things that have
+hydrogen in them produce water in burning, and the more there is in them
+the more they produce. When pure hydrogen burns, nothing comes from it
+but water, no smoke or soot at all. If you were to burn one ounce of it,
+the water you would get would be just nine ounces. There are many ways
+of making hydrogen, besides out of steam by the hot gun-barrel. I could
+show it you in a moment by pouring a little sulphuric acid mixed with
+water into a bottle upon a few zinc or steel filings, and putting a cork
+in the bottle with a little pipe through it, and setting fire to the gas
+that would come from the mouth of the pipe. We should find the flame
+very hot, but having scarcely any brightness. I should like you to see
+the curious qualities of hydrogen, particularly how light it is, so as
+to carry things up in the air; and I wish I had a small balloon to fill
+with it and make go up to the ceiling, or a bag-pipe full of it to blow
+soap-bubbles with, and show how much faster they rise than common ones,
+blown with the breath.”
+
+“So do I,” interposed Master Tom.
+
+“And so,” resumed Harry, “hydrogen, you know, uncle, is part of water,
+and just one-ninth part.”
+
+“As hydrogen is to water, so is a tailor to an ordinary individual, eh?”
+Mr. Bagges remarked.
+
+“Well, now then, uncle, if hydrogen is the tailor’s part of the water,
+what are the other eight parts? The iron turnings used to make hydrogen
+in the gun-barrel, and rusted, take just those eight parts from the
+water in the shape of steam, and are so much the heavier. Burn iron
+turnings in the air, and they make the same rust, and gain just the same
+in weight. So the other eight parts must be found in the air for one
+thing, and in the rusted iron turnings for another, and they must also
+be in the water; and now the question is, how to get at them?”
+
+“Out of the water? Fish for them, I should say,” suggested Mr. Bagges.
+
+“Why, so we can,” said Harry. “Only, instead of hooks and lines, we must
+use wires—two wires, one from one end, the other from the other, of a
+galvanic battery. Put the points of these wires into water, a little
+distance apart, and they instantly take the water to pieces. If they are
+of copper, or a metal that will rust easily, one of them begins to rust,
+and air-bubbles come up from the other. These bubbles are hydrogen. The
+other part of the water mixes with the end of the wire and makes rust.
+But if the wires are of gold, or a metal that does not rust easily,
+air-bubbles rise from the ends of both wires. Collect the bubbles from
+both wires in a tube, and fire them, and they turn to water again; and
+this water is exactly the same weight as the quantity that has been
+changed into the two gases. Now then, uncle, what should you think water
+was composed of?”
+
+“Eh? well—I suppose of those very identical two gases, young gentleman.”
+
+“Right, uncle. Recollect that the gas from one of the wires was
+hydrogen, the one-ninth of water. What should you guess the gas from the
+other wire to be?”
+
+“Stop—eh?—wait a bit—eh?—oh!—why, the other eight-ninths, to be sure.”
+
+“Good again, uncle. Now this gas that is eight-ninths of water is the
+gas called oxygen that I mentioned just now. This is a very curious gas.
+It won’t burn in air at all itself, like gas from a lamp, but it has a
+wonderful power of making things burn that are lighted and put into it.
+If you fill a jar with it——”
+
+“How do you manage that?” Mr. Bagges inquired.
+
+“You fill the jar with water,” answered Harry, “and you stand it upside
+down in a vessel full of water too. Then you let bubbles of the gas up
+into the jar and they turn out the water and take its place. Put a
+stopper in the neck of the jar, or hold a glass plate against the mouth
+of it, and you can take it out of the water and so have bottled oxygen.
+A lighted candle put into a jar of oxygen blazes up directly and is
+consumed before you can say Jack Robinson. Charcoal burns away in it as
+fast, with beautiful bright sparks—phosphorus with a light that dazzles
+you to look at—and a piece of iron or steel just made red-hot at the end
+first, is burnt in oxygen quicker than a stick would be in common air.
+The experiment of burning things in oxygen beats any fire-works.”
+
+“Oh, how jolly!” exclaimed Tom.
+
+“Now we see, uncle,” Harry continued, “that water is hydrogen and oxygen
+united together, that water is got wherever hydrogen is burnt in common
+air, that a candle won’t burn without air, and that when a candle burns
+there is hydrogen in it burning, and forming water. Now, then, where
+does the hydrogen of the candle get the oxygen from, to turn into water
+with it?”
+
+“From the air, eh?”
+
+“Just so. I can’t stop to tell you of the other things which there is
+oxygen in, and the many beautiful and amusing ways of getting it. But as
+there is oxygen in the air, and as oxygen makes things burn at such a
+rate, perhaps you wonder why air does not make things burn as fast as
+oxygen. The reason is, that there is something else in the air that
+mixes with the oxygen and weakens it.”
+
+“Makes a sort of gaseous grog of it, eh?” said Mr. Bagges. “But how is
+that proved?”
+
+“Why, there is a gas, called nitrous gas, which, if you mix it with
+oxygen, takes all the oxygen into itself, and the mixture of the nitrous
+gas and oxygen, if you put water with it, goes into the water. Mix
+nitrous gas and air together in a jar over water, and the nitrous gas
+takes away the oxygen, and then the water sucks up the mixed oxygen and
+nitrous gas, and that part of the air which weakens the oxygen is left
+behind. Burning phosphorus in confined air will also take all the oxygen
+from it, and there are other ways of doing the same thing. The portion
+of the air left behind is called nitrogen. You wouldn’t know it from
+common air by the look; it has no colour, taste, nor smell, and it won’t
+burn. But things won’t burn in it, either; and anything on fire put into
+it goes out directly. It isn’t fit to breathe,—and a mouse, or any
+animal, shut up in it, dies. It isn’t poisonous, though; creatures only
+die in it for want of oxygen. We breathe it with oxygen, and then it
+does no harm, but good; for if we breathed pure oxygen, we should
+breathe away so violently, that we should soon breathe our life out. In
+the same way, if the air were nothing but oxygen, a candle would not
+last above a minute.”
+
+“What a tallow-chandler’s bill we should have!” remarked Mrs. Wilkinson.
+
+“‘If a house were on fire in oxygen,’ as Professor Faraday said, ‘every
+iron bar, or rafter, or pillar, every nail and iron tool, and the
+fire-place itself; all the zinc and copper roofs, and leaden coverings,
+and gutters, and pipes, would consume and burn, increasing the
+combustion.’”
+
+“That would be, indeed, burning ‘like a house on fire,’” observed Mr.
+Bagges.
+
+“‘Think,’” said Harry, continuing his quotation, “‘of the Houses of
+Parliament, or a steam-engine manufactory. Think of an iron-proof
+chest—no proof against oxygen. Think of a locomotive and its
+train,—every engine, every carriage, and even every rail would be set on
+fire and burnt up.’ So now, uncle, I think you see what the use of
+nitrogen is, and especially how it prevents a candle from burning out
+too fast.”
+
+“Eh?” said Mr. Bagges. “Well, I will say I do think we are under
+considerable obligations to nitrogen.”
+
+“I have explained to you, uncle,” pursued Harry, “how a candle, in
+burning, turns into water. But it turns into something else besides
+that; there is a stream of hot air going up from it that won’t condense
+into dew; some of that is the nitrogen of the air which the candle has
+taken all the oxygen from. But there is more in it than nitrogen. Hold a
+long glass tube over a candle, so that the stream of hot air from it may
+go up through the tube. Hold a jar over the end of the tube to collect
+some of the stream of hot air. Put some lime-water, which looks quite
+clear, into the jar; stop the jar, and shake it up. The lime-water,
+which was quite clear before, turns milky. Then there is something made
+by the burning of the candle that changes the colour of the lime-water.
+That is a gas, too, and you can collect it, and examine it. It is to be
+got from several things, and is a part of all chalk, marble, and the
+shells of eggs or of shell-fish. The easiest way to make it is by
+pouring muriatic or sulphuric acid on chalk or marble. The marble or
+chalk begins to hiss or bubble, and you can collect the bubbles in the
+same way that you can oxygen. The gas made by the candle in burning, and
+which also is got out of the chalk and marble, is called carbonic acid.
+It puts out a light in a moment; it kills any animal that breathes it,
+and it is really poisonous to breathe, because it destroys life even
+when mixed with a pretty large quantity of common air. The bubbles made
+by beer when it ferments, are carbonic acid, so is the air that fizzes
+out of soda-water,—and it is good to swallow though it is deadly to
+breathe. It is got from chalk by burning the chalk as well as by putting
+acid to it, and burning the carbonic acid out of chalk makes the chalk
+lime. This is why people are killed sometimes by getting in the way of
+the wind that blows from lime-kilns.”
+
+“Of which it is advisable carefully to keep to the windward,” Mr.
+Wilkinson observed.
+
+“The most curious thing about carbonic acid gas,” proceeded Harry, “is
+its weight. Although it is only a sort of air, it is so heavy that you
+can pour it from one vessel into another. You may dip a cup of it and
+pour it down upon a candle, and it will put the candle out, which would
+astonish an ignorant person; because carbonic acid gas is as invisible
+as the air, and the candle seems to be put out by nothing. A soap-bubble
+or common air floats on it like wood on water. Its weight is what makes
+it collect in brewers’ vats; and also in wells, where it is produced
+naturally; and owing to its collecting in such places it causes the
+deaths we so often hear about of those who go down into them without
+proper care. It is found in many springs of water, more or less; and a
+great deal of it comes out of the earth in some places. Carbonic acid
+gas is what stupifies the dogs in the Grotto del Cane. Well, but how is
+carbonic acid gas made by the candle?”
+
+“I hope with your candle you you’ll throw some light upon the subject,”
+said Uncle Bagges.
+
+“I hope so,” answered Harry. “Recollect it is the burning of the smoke,
+or soot, or carbon of the candle that makes the candle-flame bright.
+Also that the candle won’t burn without air. Likewise that it will not
+burn in nitrogen, or air that has been deprived of oxygen. So the carbon
+of the candle mingles with oxygen, in burning, to make carbonic acid
+gas, just as the hydrogen does to form water. Carbonic acid gas, then,
+is carbon or charcoal dissolved in oxygen. Here is black soot getting
+invisible and changing into air; and this seems strange, uncle, doesn’t
+it?”
+
+“Ahem! Strange, if true,” answered Mr. Bagges. “Eh?—well! I suppose it’s
+all right.”
+
+“Quite so, uncle. Burn carbon or charcoal either in the air or in
+oxygen, and it is sure always to make carbonic acid, and nothing else,
+if it is dry. No dew or mist gathers in a cold glass jar if you burn dry
+charcoal in it. The charcoal goes entirely into carbonic acid gas, and
+leaves nothing behind but ashes, which are only earthy stuff that was in
+the charcoal, but not part of the charcoal itself. And now, shall I tell
+you something about carbon?”
+
+“With all my heart,” assented Mr. Bagges.
+
+“I said that there was carbon or charcoal in all common lights,—so there
+is in every common kind of fuel. If you heat coal or wood away from the
+air, some gas comes away, and leaves behind coke from coal, and charcoal
+from wood; both carbon, though not pure. Heat carbon as much as you will
+in a close vessel, and it does not change in the least; but let the air
+get to it, and then it burns and flies off in carbonic acid gas. This
+makes carbon so convenient for fuel. But it is ornamental as well as
+useful, uncle. The diamond is nothing else than carbon.”
+
+“The diamond, eh? You mean the black diamond.”
+
+“No; the diamond, really and truly. The diamond is only carbon in the
+shape of a crystal.”
+
+“Eh? and can’t some of your clever chemists crystallise a little bit of
+carbon, and make a Koh-i-noor?”
+
+“Ah, uncle, perhaps we shall, some day. In the meantime I suppose we
+must be content with making carbon so brilliant as it is in the flame of
+a candle. Well; now you see that a candle-flame is vapour burning, and
+the vapour, in burning, turns into water and carbonic acid gas. The
+oxygen of both the carbonic acid gas and the water comes from the air,
+and the hydrogen and carbon together are the vapour. They are distilled
+out of the melted wax by the heat. But, you know, carbon alone can’t be
+distilled by any heat. It can be distilled, though, when it is joined
+with hydrogen, as it is in the wax, and then the mixed hydrogen and
+carbon rise in gas of the same kind as the gas in the streets, and that
+also is distilled by heat from coal. So a candle is a little gas
+manufactory in itself, that burns the gas as fast as it makes it.”
+
+“Haven’t you pretty nearly come to your candle’s end?” said Mr.
+Wilkinson.
+
+“Nearly. I only want to tell uncle, that the burning of a candle is
+almost exactly like our breathing. Breathing is consuming oxygen, only
+not so fast as burning. In breathing we throw out water in vapour and
+carbonic acid from our lungs, and take oxygen in. Oxygen is as necessary
+to support the life of the body, as it is to keep up the flame of a
+candle.”
+
+“So,” said Mr. Bagges, “man is a candle, eh? and Shakespeare knew that,
+I suppose, (as he did most things,) when he wrote—
+
+                       ‘Out, out, brief candle!’
+
+“Well, well; we old ones are moulds, and you young squires are dips and
+rushlights, eh? Any more to tell us about the candle?”
+
+“I could tell you a great deal more about oxygen, and hydrogen, and
+carbon, and water, and breathing, that Professor Faraday said, if I had
+time; but you should go and hear him yourself, uncle.”
+
+“Eh? well! I think I will. Some of us seniors may learn something from a
+juvenile lecture, at any rate, if given by a Faraday. And now, my boy, I
+will tell you what,” added Mr. Bagges, “I am very glad to find you so
+fond of study and science; and you deserve to be encouraged; and so I’ll
+give you a what-d’ ye-call-it?—a Galvanic Battery on your next
+birth-day; and so much for your teaching your old uncle the chemistry of
+a candle.”
+
+
+
+
+                             AN OLD HAUNT.
+
+
+        The rippling water, with its drowsy tone,—
+          The tall elms, tow’ring in their stately pride,—
+        And—sorrow’s type—the willow sad and lone,
+          Kissing in graceful woe the murmuring tide;—
+
+        The grey church-tower,—and dimly seen beyond,
+          The faint hills gilded by the parting sun,—
+        All were the same, and seem’d with greeting fond
+          To welcome me as they of old had done.
+
+        And for a while I stood as in a trance,
+          On that loved spot, forgetting toil and pain;—
+        Buoyant my limbs, and keen and bright my glance,
+          For that brief space I was a boy again!
+
+        Again with giddy mates I careless play’d,
+          Or plied the quiv’ring oar, on conquest bent;—
+        Again, beneath the tall elms’ silent shade,
+          I woo’d the fair, and won the sweet consent.
+
+        But brief, alas! the spell,—for suddenly
+          Peal’d from the tower the old familiar chimes,
+        And with their clear, heart-thrilling melody,
+          Awaked the spectral forms of darker times.
+
+        And I remember’d all that years had wrought—
+          How bow’d my care-worn frame, how dimm’d my eye,
+        How poor the gauds by Youth so keenly sought,
+          How quench’d and dull Youth’s aspirations high!
+
+        And in half mournful, half upbraiding host,
+          Duties neglected—high resolves unkept—
+        And many a heart by death or falsehood lost,
+          In lightning current o’er my bosom swept.
+
+        Then bow’d the stubborn knees, as backward sped
+          The self-accusing thoughts in dread array,
+        And slowly, from their long-congealèd bed,
+          Forced the remorseful tears their silent way.
+
+        Bitter, yet healing drops! in mercy sent,
+          Like soft dews falling on a thirsty plain,—
+        And ’ere those chimes their last faint notes had spent,
+          Strengthen’d and calm’d, I stood erect again.
+
+        Strengthen’d, the tasks allotted to fulfil;—
+          Calm’d, the thick-coming sorrows to endure;
+        Fearful of nought but of my own frail will,—
+          In His Almighty strength and aid secure.
+
+        For a sweet voice had whisper’d hope to me,—
+          Had through my darkness shed a kindly ray;—
+        It said: “The past is fix’d immutably,
+          Yet is there comfort in the coming day!”
+
+
+
+
+                           THE HIPPOPOTAMUS.
+
+
+Before we give a more exclusive attention to the “illustrious stranger,”
+we think it will be advisable to present the reader with a brief
+authentic account of the circumstances which led to the honour conferred
+upon England by the visit of this extraordinary personage. These
+circumstances are little known to the world; indeed, we have reason to
+believe they have never before been published.
+
+The British Consul at Cairo had frequently intimated to His Highness the
+Pasha of Egypt, that a live hippopotamus would be regarded as a very
+interesting and valuable present in England. Now, there were sundry
+difficulties of a serious nature involved in this business. In the first
+place, the favourite resort of the hippopotami is a thousand or fifteen
+hundred miles distant from Cairo; in the second place, the hippopotamus
+being amphibious, is not easily come-at-able; when he is environed, he
+is a tremendous antagonist, by reason of his great strength, enormous
+weight, his wrathfulness when excited, and we may add his prodigious
+mouth with its huge tusks. We are speaking of the _male_ hippopotamus.
+He is often slain by a number of rifle-balls (he only makes a comic grin
+of scorn at a few) and laid low from a distance: but as to being taken
+alive, that is a triumph which has scarcely ever been permitted to
+mortal man of modern times. It is quite a different matter in respect of
+the elephant. He cannot take to the water, and neither dive clean away,
+nor upset your boat with a plunge of his forehead; besides which you
+cannot get two tame renegade hippopotami to assist in the capture and
+subjugation of a relative, as is the case with elephants. Accordingly,
+His Highness the Pasha, not liking to compromise the dignity of
+despotism, and his own position as sovereign of Egypt, by promising
+anything which he might, perhaps, be unable to perform, turned a deaf
+ear to the repeated overtures of the British Consul. He never refused
+his request; he simply did not hear what he said, or could not be made
+to have a clear understanding as to what the Consul really wanted. His
+Highness had already given him the skin and bones of hippopotami, and
+many other animals alive and dead. If he wished for any birds, he was
+welcome to as many as he pleased!
+
+It so chanced, however, that Abbas Pasha took it into his head, or
+somebody told him, that we had in England several extraordinary breeds
+of dogs, horses, and cows,—hounds that could catch a gazelle by sheer
+fleetness, small fighting-dogs that would master a bull,—horses that
+could compete with his finest Arabian steeds, and beat them in a hard
+day’s hunt over rough ground. He bethought himself, therefore, of the
+hippopotamus. One good turn of this kind might deserve another of a
+different kind.
+
+“So, Consul,” said the Pasha abruptly one day, when Mr. Murray was
+dining with him, “so, you want a hippopotamus?”
+
+“Very much, your Highness.”
+
+“And you think that such an animal would be an acceptable present to
+your Queen and country?”
+
+“He would be accounted a great rarity,” said the Consul; “our
+naturalists would receive him with open arms—figuratively speaking,—and
+the public would crowd to pay their respects to him.”
+
+Abbas Pasha laughed at this pleasantry of the Consul. “Well,” said he,
+“we will inquire about this matter.” He half-turned his head over one
+shoulder to his attendants: “Send here the Governor of Nubia!” The
+attendants thus ordered made their salam, and retired.
+
+Anybody, not previously aware of the easy habits of a despotic
+sovereign, would naturally conclude that the Governor of Nubia was, at
+this time, in Cairo, and at no great distance from the royal abode. But
+it was not so. The Governor of Nubia was simply there—at home—smoking
+his pipe in Nubia. This brief and unadorned order, therefore, involved a
+post-haste messenger on a dromedary across the Desert, with a boat up
+the Nile, and then more dromedaries, and then another boat, and again a
+dromedary, till the Pasha’s mandate was delivered. We next behold the
+Governor of Nubia, in full official trim, proceeding post-haste with his
+suite across the Desert, and down the Nile, travelling day and night,
+until finally he is announced to the Pasha, and admitted to his most
+serene and fumigatious presence. The Governor makes his grand salam.
+
+“Governor,” says the Pasha—and we have this unique dialogue on the best
+authority—“Governor, have you hippopotami in your country?”
+
+“We have, your Highness.”
+
+Abbas Pasha reflected a moment; then said—“Send to me the Commander of
+the Nubian army. Now, go!”
+
+This was the whole dialogue. The Governor made his salam, and retired.
+With the same haste and ceremony, so far as the two things can be
+combined, he returned to Nubia by boat, and dromedary, and horse, and
+covered litter; and the same hour found the Commander of the army of
+Nubia galloping across the Desert with his attendants, in obedience to
+the royal mandate.
+
+The Pasha, knowing that all means of speed will be used, and what those
+means will be, together with the nature of the route, is able to
+calculate to a day when the Commander ought to arrive—and therefore
+_must_ arrive,—at his peril, otherwise. The British Consul is invited to
+dine with his Highness on this day.
+
+Duly, as expected, the Commander of the Nubian army arrives, and is
+announced, just as the repast is concluded. He is forthwith ushered into
+the presence of the sublime beard and turban. Coffee and pipes are being
+served. The Commander makes his grand salam, shutting his eyes before
+the royal pipe.
+
+“Commander,” says the Pasha, without taking his pipe from his mouth, “I
+hear that you have hippopotami in your country.”
+
+“It is true, your Highness; but——”
+
+“Bring me a live hippopotamus—a young one. Now, go!”
+
+This was actually the dialogue which took place on the occasion—and the
+whole of it. The Commander of the Nubian forces made his grand
+salam—retired—and returned as he came,—“big” with the importance of his
+errand,—but also not without considerable anxiety for its result.
+
+Arriving at Dongola, the Commander summoned his chief officers and
+captains of the Nubian hosts to a council of war on the subject of the
+hippopotamus hunt, on the result of which—he intimated—several heads
+were at stake, besides his own. A similar communication was speedily
+forwarded to the chief officers of the right wing of the army, quartered
+in their tents at Sennaar. The picked men of all the forces having been
+selected, the two parties met in boats at an appointed village on the
+banks of the Nile, and there concerted their measures for the
+expedition.
+
+The Commander divided the chosen body into several parties, and away
+they sped up the Nile. They followed the course of the river, beyond the
+point where it branches off into the Blue Nile, and the White Nile. Good
+fortune at length befel one of the parties; but this cost much time, and
+many unsuccessful efforts—now pursuing a huge savage river-horse, with
+rifle-balls and flying darts; now pursued by him in turn with foaming
+jaws and gnashing tusks—all of which may readily be conjectured, from
+the fact that they did not fall in with their prize till they had
+reached a distance, up the White Nile, of one thousand five hundred
+miles above Cairo. In the doublings and re-doublings of attack and
+retreat, of pursuit and flight, and renewed assault, they must of course
+have traversed in all, at least two thousand miles.
+
+Something pathetic attaches to the death of the mother of “our
+hero,”—something which touches our common nature, but which such hunters
+as Mr. Gordon Cumming would not be at all able to understand. A large
+female hippopotamus being wounded, was in full flight up the river; but
+presently a ball or two reached a mortal part, and then the maternal
+instinct made the animal pause. She fled no more, but turned aside, and
+made towards a heap of brushwood and water-bushes that grew on the banks
+of the river, in order (as the event showed) to die beside her young
+one. She was unable to proceed so far, and sank dying beneath the water.
+The action, however, had been so evidently caused by some strong impulse
+and attraction in that direction, that the party instantly proceeded to
+the clump of water-bushes. Nobody moved—not a green flag stirred; not a
+sprig trembled; but directly they entered, out burst a burly young
+hippopotamus-calf, and plunged head foremost down the river banks. He
+had all but escaped, when amidst the excitement and confusion of the
+picked men, one of them who had “more character” than the rest, made a
+blow at the slippery prize with his boat-hook, and literally brought him
+up by burying the hook in his fat black flank. Two other hunters—next to
+him in presence of mind and energy—threw their arms round the great
+barrel-bellied infant, and hoisted him into the boat, which nearly
+capsized with the weight and struggle.
+
+In this one circumstance of a hippopotamus being ordered by his Highness
+Abbas Pasha, has been pleasantly shown the ease and brevity with which
+matters are managed by a despotic government. We complain at home—and
+with how much reason, everybody knows too well—of the injurious and
+provoking slowness of all good legislative acts; but here we have a
+beautiful little instance, or series of little instances, of going
+rather too fast. Things are settled off-hand in the East by a royal
+mandate—from the strangling of a whole seraglio, to the suckling of a
+young hippopotamus.
+
+Returning down the Nile with their unwieldy prize, for whose wounded
+flank the best surgical attendance the country afforded, was of course
+procured, it soon became a matter of immense importance and profound
+consultation as to how and on what the innocent young monster should be
+fed. He would not touch flesh of any kind; he did not seem to relish
+fruit; and he evidently did not, at present, understand grass. A live
+fish was put into his mouth, but he instantly gave a great gape and
+allowed it to flap its way out again and fall into the water. Before
+long, however, the party reached a village. The Commander of the army
+saw what to do. He ordered his men to seize all the cows in the village,
+and milk them. This was found very acceptable to their interesting
+charge, who presently despatched a quantity that alarmed them, lest they
+should be unable to keep up the due balance of supply and demand. The
+surplus milk, however, they carried away in gourds and earthen vessels.
+But they found it would not keep: it became sour butter, and melted into
+oil. They were, therefore, compelled, after a milking, to carry off with
+them one of the best cows. In this way they returned fifteen hundred
+miles down the Nile, stopping at every village on their way—seizing all
+the cows and milking them dry. By these means they managed to supply the
+“table” of the illustrious captive, whose capacities in disposing of the
+beverage appeared to increase daily.
+
+The hunting-division of the army, headed by the Commander-in-Chief,
+arrived at Cairo with their prize on the 14th of November, 1849. The
+journey down the Nile, from the place where he was captured, _viz._, the
+White Nile, had occupied between five and six months. This, therefore,
+with a few additional days, may be regarded as the age of our
+hippopotamus on reaching Cairo. The colour of his skin, at that time,
+was for the most part of a dull, reddish tone, very like that (to
+compare great things with small) of a naked new-born mouse. The
+Commander hastened to the palace to report his arrival with the prize to
+his royal master, into the charge of whose officers he most gladly
+resigned it. His Highness, having been informed of the little affair of
+the succession of “cows,” determined to place the vivacious un-weaned
+“infant prodigy” in the hands of the British Consul without a moment’s
+delay.
+
+The announcement was accordingly made with oriental formality by the
+chief officer of Abbas Pasha’s palace, to whom the Honorable Mr. Murray
+made a suitable present in return for the good tidings. A lieutenant of
+the Nubian army, with a party of soldiers, arrived shortly after,
+bringing with them the animal, whose renown had already filled the whole
+city. He excited full as much curiosity in Cairo, as he has since done
+here, being quite as great a rarity. This will be easily intelligible
+when the difficulties of the capture, and the immense distance of the
+journey are taken into consideration, with all the contingencies of men,
+boats, provisions, cows, and other necessary expenses.
+
+The overjoyed Consul had already made all his preparations for receiving
+the illustrious stranger. He had, in the first place, secured the
+services of Hamet Safi Cannana, well known for his experience and skill
+in the care and management of animals. A commodious apartment had then
+been fitted up in the court-yard of the Consul’s house, with one door
+leading out to a bath. As the winter would have to be passed in Cairo,
+proper means were employed for making this a warm, or tepid bath. Here
+then our hippopotamus lived, “the observed of all observers,” drinking
+so many gallons of milk a day (never less than twenty or thirty quarts)
+that he soon produced a scarcity of that article in Cairo. Nor will this
+be so much a matter of surprise, when it is considered that they do not
+understand there the excellent methods of manufacturing enough milk to
+answer any demand, which obtains with us in London, where such an event
+as a scarcity of milk was never known by the oldest inhabitant.
+
+Meanwhile active preparations were making for his arrival in Alexandria,
+to be shipped on board the Ripon steamer. The vessel was furnished with
+a house on the main-deck, opening by steps down into a tank in the hold,
+containing four hundred gallons of water. It had been built and fitted
+up at Southampton from a plan furnished by Mr. Mitchell, Secretary of
+the Zoological Gardens in the Regent’s Park, to whose energies and
+foresight we are indebted for the safe possession of this grotesque,
+good-tempered and unique monster. The tank, by various arrangements,
+they contrived to fill with _fresh_ water every other day. A large
+quantity was taken on board in casks; a fresh supply at Malta; and,
+besides this, which was by no means enough, they made use of the
+condensed water of the engines, which amounted to upwards of three
+hundred gallons per day. As there are some hippopotami who enjoy the sea
+on certain coasts of the world, it is not improbable but our friend
+would soon have got used to sea-water; but Mr. Mitchell was determined
+to run no risks, prudently considering that, in the first place, the
+strength of the salt water, to one whose mother had been accustomed, and
+her ancestors for generations, to the mild streams of Nilus, might
+disagree with “young pickle;” and secondly, if he chanced to take to it
+amazingly, how would he bear the change when he arrived at his mansion
+in the Regent’s Park. Fresh water, therefore, was provided for his bath
+every other day throughout the voyage.
+
+The British Consul began to prepare for the departure of his noble guest
+at the end of April; and in the early part of May, the Consul took an
+affectionate leave of him, and would have embraced him, but that the
+extraordinary girth of his body rendered such a demonstration
+impossible.
+
+So, our hippopotamus departed from Grand Cairo in a large padded cart.
+He had refused a very nice horse-box which the Consul had provided for
+him. Some feeling about his dignity, we suppose; though Hamet Safi
+Cannana considered the objection arose from a certain care of his skin,
+which might have got a little chafe or hard rub in the horse-box. It was
+a lesson to Mr. Murray for life. No effort, of course, was made to
+compel the great personage to enter this machine, because it is one of
+Hamet’s principles of management never to irritate an animal—always to
+keep him in good temper—never, directly and immediately to thwart his
+will in anything that is not injurious, impracticable, or particularly
+unreasonable. Very delightful all this! Who would not be a hippopotamus?
+Who that was not Caesar, would not wish to be Pompey?
+
+On arriving at Alexandria, full ten thousand people rushed out into the
+streets to see our hippopotamus pass. If no one had ever seen the
+amphibious prodigy in Cairo, it is not to be wondered at that the mental
+condition of Alexandria was in the same lamentable degree of darkness.
+
+The crowd was so great, that the British Consul (whose feelings had so
+mastered him on taking leave of his guest, that he had been obliged to
+follow the _cortége_) was under the necessity of applying to the
+Governor of Alexandria for an escort of troops. This was forthwith
+granted, and down they came galloping along the streets of Alexandria,
+with waving scimetars! It was well the hippopotamus did not see them
+from his padded cart, where he lay asleep—it might have caused a little
+misunderstanding.
+
+Order being restored, and a great lane made in the crowd, Hamet Safi
+Cannana commenced the gradual and delicate process of awaking the great
+personage. In the course of an hour or so, during which time the escort
+of soldiers all “stood attention,” the excited feelings of the anxious
+lane of population were gratified by the sight of the Arab ceremoniously
+advancing in gentleman-usher fashion, while close behind him slowly
+lounged the hippopotamus.
+
+He embarked on board the Ripon, where he was soon joined by his
+Excellency General Jung Bahadoor Ranajee, and the Nepaulese princes, his
+brothers. These latter personages would have been great objects of
+attraction under any other circumstances; but what could stand against
+such a rival as the occupant of the great house and bath on the
+main-deck?
+
+During the voyage, “our fat friend” attached himself yet more strongly
+to his attendant and interpreter, Hamet; indeed, the devotion to his
+person which this assiduous and thoughtful person had manifested from
+his first promotion to the office, had been of a kind to secure such a
+result from any one at all accessible to kindly affections. Hamet had
+commenced by sleeping side-by-side with his charge in the house at
+Cairo, and adopted the same arrangement for the night during the first
+week of the voyage to England. Finding, however, as the weather grew
+warmer, and the hippopotamus bigger and bigger, that this was attended
+with some inconvenience, Hamet had a hammock slung from the beams
+immediately over the place where he used to sleep—in fact, just over his
+side of the bed—by which means he was raised two or three feet above his
+usual position. Into this hammock got Hamet, and having assured the
+hippopotamus, both by his voice, and by extending one arm over the side
+so as to touch him, that he was there as usual at his side, and “all was
+right,” he presently fell asleep. How long he slept Hamet does not know,
+but he was awoke by the sensation of a jerk and a hoist, and found
+himself lying on the bed in his old place, close beside our fat friend.
+Hamet tried the experiment once more: but the same thing again occurred.
+No sooner was he asleep than the hippopotamus got up—raised his broad
+nose beneath the heaviest part of the hammock that swung lowest, and by
+an easy and adroit toss, pitched Hamet clean out. After this, Hamet,
+acting on his rule of never thwarting his charge in anything reasonable,
+abandoned the attempt of a separate bed, and took up his nightly
+quarters by his side as before.
+
+As for the voyage, it was passed pleasantly enough by the most important
+of the illustrious strangers on board. His Excellency the Nepaulese
+ambassador, together with the prince his brother, were uncommonly
+seasick; but as for our fat friend, he enjoyed himself all the way. He
+liked his bath, for which there was no lack of fresh water supplies, and
+his provisions were equally satisfactory. Two cows and ten goats had
+been taken on board for his sole use and service; these, however, not
+being found sufficient for a “growing youth,” the ship’s cow was
+confiscated for the use of his table; and this addition, together with
+we forget how many dozen sacks of Indian corn meal, enabled him to reach
+our shores in excellent health and spirits.
+
+A word as to the title of “river-horse,” when taken in conjunction with
+his personal appearance, his habits, and his diet. The hippopotamus has
+nothing in common with the horse; he seems to us rather an aquatic pig,
+or a four-footed land porpoise. In fact, he appears to partake of the
+wild boar, the bull, and the porpoise—the latter predominating at
+present, but when he gets his tusks, we much fear there will be an
+alteration in his manners for the worse. As to his eventual size, the
+prospect is alarming. He is at present only seven months old, and he
+will continue growing till he is fifteen years of age. What news for the
+London cows!
+
+Arrived at Southampton, our hippopotamus, house and all, with Hamet Safi
+Cannana at his side, was hoisted up at the vessel’s yard-arm, and
+gradually lowered upon a great iron truck, which was then wheeled off to
+the railway station. The whole concern was deposited in the special
+carriage of a special train, and on this he travelled from Southampton
+to London. He arrived at the Zoological Gardens in the Regent’s Park at
+ten o’clock at night, and found Lord Brougham, Professor Owen, Thomas
+Bell, and Mr. Mitchell all waiting (we believe they were not in court
+dresses) to receive him. They were presently joined by the learned
+Editor of the “Annals of Natural History,” the learned Editor of the
+“Zoologist,” in company with Mr. Van Voorst, and several artists who
+made sketches by the light of a lanthorn. Doyle, Wolff, Harrison Weir,
+Foster, (for the “Illustrated London News”) and others, were all in
+assiduous attendance, watchful of every varying outline. The illustrious
+stranger descended from his carriage, and entered the gardens. First
+went the lanthorn; then Hamet Safi Cannana with a bag of dates slung
+over his shoulder; and after him slowly lounged our uncouth treasure,
+with a prodigy of a grin such as he alone can give, expressive of his
+humorous sense of all the honours and luxuries that awaited him.
+
+We understand it is a cabinet secret, that the Pasha has ordered a fresh
+party of hunting soldiers to proceed up the river, as far as the White
+Nile, to search for another young hippopotamus—a female! We may,
+therefore, look forward to the unrivalled fame of possessing a royal
+pair—“sure _such_ a pair” as were never yet seen in any collection of
+Natural History—to say nothing of the chance of a progeny. These are
+national questions,—why should they be cabinet secrets?
+
+We are certainly a strange people—we English. Our indefatigable energies
+and matchless wealth often exhibit themselves in eccentric fancies. No
+wonder, foreigners—philosophers and all—are so much puzzled what to make
+of us. They point to the unaided efforts of a Waghorn, and to his
+widow’s pension-mite—and then they point to our hippopotamus! Truly, it
+is not easy to reply to the inference, and impossible to evade it. We
+have had a Chaucer and a Milton, a Hobbes, and a Newton, a Watt and a
+Winsor; and we have had other great poets, and philosophers, and
+machinists, and men of learning and science, and have several of each
+now living among us: but any amount of a people’s anxious interest,
+which the present state of popular education induces, is very limited
+indeed compared to that which is felt by all classes for a Tom Thumb, a
+Jim Crow, or our present Idol. Howbeit, as the last is really a great
+improvement on the two former fascinating exotics, it is to be hoped
+that we shall, in course of time, more habitually display some kind of
+discrimination in the objects of our devotion.
+
+
+
+
+                                 CHIPS.
+
+
+                            RAILWAY COMFORT
+
+In all the utilities of Railway travelling, England is supreme. Speed,
+represented by from thirty to sixty miles an hour, “just (to quote the
+words of Lubin Log) as the passenger pleases;” punctuality, that admits
+of the setting of watches by arrivals and departures; and safety,
+exemplified by the loss of no human life from any other cause than the
+carelessness of the sufferer, during the past two years, are proofs of
+British supremacy in locomotion. Yet—by a strange perversity not easily
+accounted for in a country known all over the rest of the world as the
+Kingdom of Comfort—the point apparently aimed at is to render the
+transit of the human frame as uncomfortable an operation as possible.
+Every elegance and luxury is bestowed upon waiting-rooms where extreme
+punctuality renders it unnecessary for people to wait; and upon
+refreshment-rooms in which travellers are allowed ten minutes to scald
+themselves with boiling coffee, or to choke themselves with impossible
+pork-pies; but carriages in which travellers have to be cramped up,
+often for hours, and sometimes for whole days, are apparently contrived
+to inflict as much torture as practicable. In order to force those who
+cannot afford it into the first-class, second and third-class carriages
+are only one and two degrees removed from cattle pens. And that these
+should not be too delicious, the humbler order of passengers will not
+easily forget that a director once proposed to hire a number of
+chimney-sweeps to render—what, with the best company, are nothing better
+than locomotive hutches—perfectly untenable.
+
+They manage these things better abroad. There a detestable
+class-feeling—a contemptible purse-worship, which rigidly separates
+people according to their pecuniary circumstances; which metes out the
+smallest privilege or comfort at a price—does not exist to prevent the
+managers of railways from making the journeys of their customers and
+supporters as pleasant as possible. On the French railroads, (setting
+aside the question that the fares are much lower,) the second-class
+carriages are comfortably cushioned, having pretty silk blinds to keep
+out the sun; windows that really are capable of being pulled up and
+down, besides hooks for hats,—a great convenience on a journey. For the
+blinds, indeed, an enterprising blind-maker in France agreed to furnish
+them to one railway company, gratis, on condition that they used no
+other for a certain number of years, and allowed him to make them the
+medium of his advertisements. Talk of advertising vans—can they be
+compared to the brilliant notion of advertising railways—trains of
+puffs, wafting the genius of inventors faster than the wind! We throw
+out the hint to the “advertising world” in this country.
+
+In winter, even in an English first-class carriage, there is no
+protection against frost and damp; but in nearly all the foreign
+railways, no sooner does the winter set in than the first-class
+traveller finds the bottom of his carriage provided with a long tin case
+full of hot water. In the cold months, masses of woollen cloth and
+railway wrappers, are seen shaking in the corners of first-class English
+carriages with shivering, comfortless, human beings inside them,
+despairing of any sort of warmth whatever.
+
+Comfort in railway travelling is, however brought to the highest
+perfection in Germany. An esteemed correspondent at Vienna writes to us
+on this subject in the following terms:—On the “_Wiener-Neustäder
+Eisenbahn_,” (the Vienna and Neustadt Railway), the carriages of the
+first, second, and third-class may each be said to resemble a spacious
+room, furnished with seats, something like a concert-room, and having a
+broad passage down the middle. Thus one may get up, walk towards a
+friend a dozen seats off; or, if you require more air or a change of
+position, you will find the backs of the seats shift so as to enable you
+to turn round, and sit down the other way without inconvenience to any
+one. I need not say that on this railway there is no struggle for “that
+corner place with your back to the engine,” which is a desirable object
+throughout our three kingdoms,—for every place is a corner place, having
+light and air, and you may sit which way you please.
+
+Attached to each carriage, and going the whole length of the train, is a
+broad wooden plank, along which the guards are constantly walking, so
+that the slightest thing amiss could scarcely occur without their
+perceiving it immediately. Just before the arrival of the train at any
+station, one of these functionaries—for there are several—quietly opens
+the door and, instead of calling out “I say, you sir!” or “Come, marm,
+your ticket, I carn’t be a waitin’ here all day,” as we have heard in
+England, walks without any hurry or bustle down the division from one
+end to the other, repeating, in a clear and ordinary tone of voice the
+name of the station which is being approached, and requiring the tickets
+of such passengers as are going to alight there. With such an
+arrangement—giving ample time for the gathering together of coats,
+canes, umbrellas, reticules, and so forth—even Martha Struggles herself
+might have got through a journey unscathed and “unflustered.”
+
+The admirable arrangement displayed in America, as well as in Germany,
+for receiving tickets without that delay which has been so much
+complained of in England, cannot be sufficiently applauded. When however
+delay is unavoidable, to receive the mails, or from some other cause, no
+sooner does the train stop, than a waiter, or sometimes a pretty
+waitress—who is more likely to find customers—trips up the steps with a
+tray laden with iced water and lemonade, glasses of light wine or
+_maitrank_,(a kind of Burridge-cup,) biscuits, cakes, and other edible
+nick-nacks, so that the passenger may take some slight refection without
+getting down.
+
+In the railway from Bonn to Cologne, on the Rhine, they have pushed
+convenience yet farther, having provided the first-class carriages with
+tables, so that during the journey, one pressed for time may write
+letters with the greatest ease; pens and a portable inkstand being all
+that is necessary for that purpose. Paper may be had at the station.
+
+It has been also suggested on several of the continental railways, that
+such travellers as chose to pay for the space, might have a regular bed;
+a great convenience for ladies or invalids, unable to bear the fatigue
+of a journey of many hours by night.
+
+These hints might be followed with very great advantage to the
+shareholders in particular and to the public in general, by the
+directors of British lines.
+
+
+
+
+                           IMPROVING A BULL.
+
+
+The highly respectable old lady who addressed us on a former occasion,
+has obliged us with another communication, on a most important subject:—
+
+“Sir,—You would have heard before, but the cause was a mad bull, which
+being tossed might at my age be very ill-convenient. But that’s nothing
+to what I’m going to tell you. Only to think of the power of horns!
+Bulls tosses very high, I’ve heard, but did you ever hear, Mr.
+Conductor, of a mad bull tossing a widow and six children across the
+sea, half over the side of the round world, from our Borough to
+Australia? Well you may stare, but it’s a fact!
+
+“The bull run right at me, full butt, and so I grasped my umbrella with
+both hands and ran to where the shops was—drat the boys, how they did
+screech about one!—and it was cold water, which I doesn’t often drink,
+by which means I came to in a pastry-cook’s. The name was Bezzle, I see
+it on a bag while she was putting in gingerbread nuts for Mrs. Jenks’s
+baby, which I bought not to be under obligation for stepping in.
+
+“‘Gracious mussy, Mrs. Bezzle,’ says I, ‘why wasn’t I killed? What ever
+is the reason of them bulls?’
+
+“Says she, ‘It’s market day.’
+
+“‘Smithfield!’ says I.
+
+“Says Mrs. Bezzle, ‘Mum, all the abuse and outcry against Smithfield is
+very narrow-minded.’
+
+“Says I, ‘How so?’
+
+“Says she, ‘It don’t consider shop-keepers. When a bull takes a line of
+street, it drives the people into the shops on either side, and they
+make purchases for fear of being gored.’
+
+“‘Heighty teighty, mum,’ I says, ‘you are alluding to my gingerbread.’
+
+“Says she, ‘I scorn allusions. It’s a rule. Whether it’s bulls or
+thunderstorms, or what it is we look to, we respects whatever sends us
+customers.’
+
+“Says I, ‘Mrs. Bezzle, you astonish me. Where’s your family trade?’
+
+“Says she, ‘There are too many traders. Where one of us earns meat,
+three of us only earn potatoes.’
+
+“‘Emigrate,’ says I.
+
+“Says she, ‘That’s very well, but then,’ says she, ‘in such a move it’s
+hard to know which way to put one’s foot, and when a step’s made, if
+it’s a wrong one, it’s not easy to retrace it.’
+
+“‘Spirited trading—’ says I.
+
+“‘Ah!’ says she, cutting me short rudely; but I forgive her, owing to
+her feelings. ‘Take Chandlery, within seven minutes of this door, mum.
+One man sells soap under cost price, and other things at profit, hoping
+to bring people to his shop for soap, and then get them to buy other
+articles. But his neighbour sells cheap herrings in the same way;
+another sacrifices pickles, and another makes light of the candle
+business. What’s the result? Folks buy in the cheapest market; go for
+soap to the man who sells that at the ruin prices, go for herrings to
+his neighbour, go down the other street for pickles, and get candles
+over the way.’
+
+“‘Well,’ says I, ‘that’s an Illustration of Cheapness, but,’ says I,
+‘it’s dishonest. A fair trader has no right to sell an article at less
+than its first cost.’
+
+“‘No right!’ says she. ‘And I dessay he thinks he has no right to
+starve. It’s very hard to judge. The young tradesman, with his little
+capital and knowledge of a trade, has got his sweetheart and his
+ambition. He must wedge into society somehow, and he begins with the
+sharp end.’
+
+“‘But,’ says I, ‘it isn’t sharp, Mrs. Bezzle.’
+
+“So she shakes her head; says she, ‘I’ll give you an example which is
+true, and one out of a many.’
+
+“‘I once knew an excellent young man who died of cholera. He left a
+widow and three little children. After deducting all expenses for her
+husband’s burial, the widow found that she possessed a hundred pounds.
+With fear and trembling, she embarked this money, in an effort to
+support herself. With it she fitted up a little shop, and had begun to
+earn a livelihood, when——’
+
+“‘Well, Mrs. Bezzle, what prevented her?’
+
+——“‘An empty house close by was taken by another person following her
+trade. Immediately her receipts diminished. One cannot live except by
+bread that can be got out of a neighbour’s cupboard. The widow and the
+children have already lost eighty pounds, have only twenty left; their
+house is taken by the year, and so they still are in it; and the poor
+lost woman cannot be comforted. Her hope is gone.’
+
+“‘Heigh, dear,’ says I, ‘it wasn’t so in my young days. I believe this
+is owing to overpopulation,’ says I.
+
+“‘Well,’ says Mrs. Bezzle, perking up. ‘It’s cruel to blame us for our
+struggles. What if I _have_ got nine, and six on ’em dependant on penny
+tarts and gingerbread for meat, drink, washing, and lodging, are they to
+be thrown in my teeth?’
+
+“‘Emigrate,’ says I, six times more pointedly than before.
+
+“‘Where to?’ says she, ‘and how? Who can tell me that?’
+
+“‘Go and lay your case before Parson Pullaway; he knows our M.P., and
+_he_ knows all about colonial places. Hasn’t his brother’s wife’s first
+cousin got one of them? He is Sub-under-Secretary to Lord Oxfordmixture,
+who has all the emigration settlements under his thumb.’
+
+“‘I’ll think about it,’ says Mrs. Bezzle, quite struck-like,—for down
+came the scales on the counter like a shot, and the whole ounce of
+sugar-candy jumped into the little boy’s apron of its own accord. He had
+come for two penn’orth on pretence of a cough. ‘Besides, didn’t Mr.
+Pullaway christen seven out of my nine children, and not a penny of the
+fees owing for?’
+
+“The last word as ever I spoke to Mrs. Bezzle was, ‘Emigrate!’
+
+“Well, who would have thought it? Next week Mrs. Bezzle’s business was
+to sell. The week after, it was sold. The week after that, Mrs. Bezzle
+and her son Tom, and Tom’s wife, and Tom’s brother Sam, and Mrs.
+Bezzle’s eldest daughter, and little James, and Sarah, and Mary Ann, and
+the two little urchins, were on board a ship, at Liverpool, bound for
+Port Philip. That’s a year, come Michaelmas, ago.
+
+“But, drat ’em, why didn’t they pay the postage? Two-and-two is a
+consideration when butter (best fresh) is a rising a penny a pound every
+week. Not but what I was glad to hear from Mrs. Bezzle. Tom and his
+wife, and his brother Sam, are settled in a ‘run;’ and though there was
+some words I couldn’t make out, I dare say they didn’t explain how a
+‘run’ could be a settlement. ‘Quite the reverse!’ as Mrs. Jenks said—(I
+have made it up with her, though she did insinuate the gingerbread nuts
+the mad bull made me buy gave her babby the cholera; and, bless it! it
+was only the teeth after all). Mrs. Bezzle has settled herself in the
+mutton-pie and cheesecake line, and has no fear of opposition; and as in
+Port Philip there is good digestions and plenty of ’em, pies is popular.
+Prices, too, is better,—penny pies being tuppence. James is on the
+‘run,’ along with his eldest brother. Sarah an’t married yet,—for out of
+six offers, a young gal of seventeen has a right to be puzzled for six
+months or so, and more dropping in every week. Mary Anne is family
+governess to a rich copper-man, with plenty of stock—I suppose by that
+he is in the soup line. However, all is doing well.
+
+“Well, Mr. Conductor, it was all owing to that bull, wasn’t it? If I
+hadn’t improved that solemn occasion, where would Mrs. Bezzle, and four
+out of six of her helpless offspring have been by this time?—why, in the
+workhus.”
+
+
+
+
+                           LUNGS FOR LONDON.
+
+
+Travellers describe nothing to be so much dreaded by the people of the
+East as a flight of locusts, except indeed a settlement of locusts. When
+those devouring insects alight on the fields and pastures, they begin
+from a centre composed of myriads, and eat up everything green within
+radii extending over not acres, but miles. They fall upon gardens and
+leave them deserts; and upon a field they do not permit so much as a
+blade of grass to indicate where grass was.
+
+Although, in fact, these little devastators do not trouble us; in
+effect, Londoners are the victims of equally efficient destroyers of
+their green places.
+
+Bricklayers are spreading the webs and meshes of houses with such
+fearful rapidity in every direction, that the people are being gradually
+confined within narrow prisons, only open at the top for the admission
+of what would be air if it were not smoke. Suburban open spaces are
+being entombed in brick-and-mortar mausoleums for the suffocation as
+well as for the accommodation of an increasing populace; who, if they
+wish to get breath, can find nowhere to draw it from, short of a long
+journey. The Lungs of London have undergone congestion, and even their
+cells are underground.
+
+Of all the neighbourhoods of which London is a collection, Finsbury and
+Islington have suffered most. Within the recollection of middle-aged
+memories, Clerkenwell Green was of the right colour; Moorfields,
+Spafields, and the East India Company’s Fields, were adorned with grass;
+and he must be young indeed who cannot remember cricket-playing in White
+Conduit, Canonbury, Shepherd and Shepherdess, Rhodes, and Laycock’s,
+besides countless acres of other “Fields,” which are now blotted out
+from the face of the Country to become Town, in the densest sense of the
+word. Thanks to the window tax and the bricklayer, fresh air will be
+thoroughly bricked out, unless a vigorous effort be made to stop the
+invasion of burnt clay and water.
+
+Mr. Lloyd, a gentleman of Islington who dreamt a few years since that he
+lived in the country, but has recently awoke to the conviction that his
+once suburban residence has been completely incorporated with the town,
+determined, if possible, to arrest the invasion of habitations. His plan
+is to dam out the flood of encroachment by emparking a large space at
+Islington for the behoof of the Borough of Finsbury, which contains a
+population of three hundred thousand panting souls. This space is,
+according to his plan, that which surrounds the village of Highbury, one
+of the highest and airiest suburbs of London. It is within two miles of
+the City, and might be rendered accessible to Victoria Park in the east,
+and to Regent’s Park in the west. The proposed enclosure will take in a
+good portion of the course of the New River, and a large quantity of
+ground so well and picturesquely wooded, that a paling and a name are
+only requisite to convert it at once into a park. In shape the enclosure
+would be a triangle, the base of which is the Holloway Road and Hopping
+Lane, and the apex, a point at which the Seven Sisters’ Road joins the
+Green Lanes. The extent of these grounds is about three hundred acres,
+and the total cost of securing them to the public is not more than one
+hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
+
+Mr. Lloyd has been vigorously agitating this matter for more than nine
+years, and yet—such is the pace at which the public are apt to move in
+affairs in which the public alone is itself concerned—it is only lately
+that he has obtained an attentive hearing for his plan.
+
+A prospect of success appears now, however, to dawn. Public meetings
+have been lately held in every district concerned, in which every sort
+of co-operation has been promised. A single difficulty seems to stand in
+the way; one little thing needful is only required to turn the project
+into an accomplished fact, and that is, the money,—one hundred and fifty
+thousand pounds merely. Mr. Lloyd and his coadjutors have, we believe,
+mentioned their little difficulty at the Treasury, and are awaiting an
+answer. This state of things would form a curious problem for De Morgan,
+Quetelet, or others learned in the doctrine of probabilities: given,
+official routine multiplied by systematic delay, what are the chances of
+the cash required within the present generation?
+
+A park for Finsbury is too urgent a demand for a dense population to
+allow of much time being wasted in knocking at the door of the Treasury.
+The public must bestir _themselves_ in the scheme, and it will soon be
+accomplished and carried out.
+
+
+
+
+                          THE LOVE OF NATURE.
+
+
+         Where the green banners of the forest float,
+           Where, from the Sun’s imperial domain,
+         Armour’d in gold, attentive to the note
+           Of piping birds, the sturdy trees remain,
+           Those never-angered armies; where the plain
+         Boasts to the day its bosom ornaments
+           Of corn and fruitage; where the low refrain
+         Of seaside music song on song invents,
+       Laden with placid thought, whereto the heart assents,
+         Often I wander. Nor does the light Noon,
+           Garrulous to man’s eye, declaring all
+         That Morning pale (watched by her spectre moon,
+           Or solemn Vesper, seated near the pall
+           Of Day) holds unrevealed; nor does the fall
+         Of curtain on our human pantomime,
+           The sweeping by of Day’s black funeral
+         Through Night’s awe-stricken realms, with tread sublime,
+       Chiefly delight my heart; beauty pervades all time.
+         Morning: the Day is innocent, and weeps;
+           Noon: she is wedded and enjoys the Earth;
+         Evening: wearied of the world she sleeps.
+           Night watches till another Day has birth.
+           The innocence of Morning, and the mirth
+         Of Noon, the holy calm of Eventide,
+           The watching while Day is not, there is dearth
+         Of joy within his soul who hath not cried:
+       “I welcome all, O God,—share all Thou wilt provide!”
+
+
+
+
+                THE PRESERVATION OF LIFE FROM SHIPWRECK.
+
+
+It is a difficult matter to reconcile with the sympathy, which it is
+well-known the sufferings of the unfortunate always receive in England,
+the apparent apathy which exists among the public, on a subject so
+important as the preservation of Life from Shipwreck. Several pleas in
+extenuation have been urged by those most interested. In the first
+place, there is that natural hardihood and contempt of danger in the
+English sailor, which it is, occasionally, impossible to tame down to
+anything like prudence and forethought. This indomitable spirit of
+emulation and daring, is found to be the greatest enemy to the adoption
+of any of those appliances which science has rendered available. The
+Deal boatman trusts his life in precisely the same sort of craft that
+his father, and his father’s father, did before him. Confident in, and
+proud of, the skill which he has inherited from them, he scorns to
+tarnish, as he falsely reasons, his name by the habitual use of buoy or
+belt, lest those of his comrades who are firmly entrenched behind their
+ancient prejudices, should set him down as faint-hearted, and unworthy
+the honourable name of a “Deal boatman.”
+
+The still more inaccessible Scotch fisherman, with his four thousand
+piscatory brethren, “shoots his nets” on the exposed coast of Caithness,
+in the open boat used by his ancestors, notwithstanding the evil
+consequences which have often ensued. The latest example of the ill
+effects of this tenacity of opinion occurred two years since, when a
+fearful gale, which did more or less damage along the whole eastern face
+of England and Scotland, wrecked and damaged a hundred and twenty-four
+of their boats, drowned a hundred men, and occasioned a loss to the
+fishing community of above seven thousand pounds, which, although a
+large sum, will not bear any comparison with the misery and destitution
+thus entailed upon the widows and orphans of the lost.
+
+It is impossible to say how many of these unfortunate men might have
+been saved, had they had proper harbours to run for, with lights and
+beacons to warn, and life-boats to afford assistance; proper boats to
+keep the sea, and buoys and belts, as a last resource; but surely we are
+warranted in thinking that fully one half would have been left among us.
+
+In both these examples, it must be acknowledged that it would be a
+useless effort to attempt any sudden innovations on these deeply-seated
+prejudices; the only thing that can be done, in either case, is to let
+the new principle quietly work of itself. Let us find a life-belt for
+the Deal boatman, which he can wear and work in, until in it he
+recognises his best friend; let the Scotch fisherman have ocular
+demonstration that the “model” boat prosecutes the fishery with equal
+success, and far greater safety and comfort in bad weather, and we shall
+soon have a different system of things.
+
+In the course of each year an average of something like six hundred ship
+disasters occur on the shores of this kingdom alone,—some wrecked
+through stress of weather; some by carelessness, and other disgraceful
+causes; some through mistaking lights, or having been lured to
+destruction by useless ones; some through actual rottenness of timber;
+some dashed to pieces on the very rock for which they were anxiously
+looking half a mile further a-head, where it _ought_ to have been,
+according to the chart; and some from other causes, more or less easily
+averted. These losses are attended by the almost incredible destruction
+of a thousand lives, and the value of tens of thousands of pounds
+sterling.
+
+The shocking wreck of the Orion—not, we say with sorrow, the last
+occurrence of the kind—startled, for a moment, the public from their
+culpable apathy. But the shock passed away; and attention to this
+subject is gradually subsiding into the usual indifference. The details
+of this catastrophe ought to have had a more permanent effect on the
+public mind. In the moment of danger, the gear of the boats was so
+imperfect, that these could only be released from their davits by
+capsizing their human cargoes into the deep. Even when they righted,
+they immediately filled, for the plug-holes were actually unstopped. The
+most ordinary precautions for saving life were not at hand, as
+precautions. The hen-coops, barrels, seats, combings, and other means of
+escape, by which many were saved, were purely accidental
+life-preservers.
+
+Every English ship, before leaving port, should be submitted to a
+supervising power similar to the inspection that emigrant ships undergo,
+in order that it should be certified that means, both simple and
+efficacious, for the safety of the passengers and crew, exist on
+board—boats, belts, mattresses, rafts; everything, in short, that can
+add to the security of those about to “go down to the sea in ships.”
+
+That this sort of supervision is effectual, is proved by the few
+disasters which happen to the vessels of the Royal Navy. In these ships,
+everything is not only kept in its proper place, to be ready when
+wanted, but each man is constantly exercised in what he is to do with it
+when no danger is apprehended, that he may be in a state of prompt
+efficiency when it is. The Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean
+squadron can step on board any one of his ships in the middle of the
+night; and although three-fourths of its crew are asleep in their
+hammocks, he can, by ordering the “beat to quarters,” make sure of every
+man being at his post in seven minutes, ready for action or for any
+sudden disaster. This sort of discipline it is which is so much required
+in the merchant navy. In case of a ship striking, a dozen men rush to do
+one thing,—perhaps to release a boat from one of her davits,—and,
+consequently, swamp the boat, by leaving the stern rope untouched.
+Captain Basil Hall, in his “Fragments of Voyages and Travels,” describes
+the vigilant precaution daily made even against the loss of one life. To
+each life-buoy there is as regular a “service” as to any other part or
+apparatus of the ship. He says:—
+
+“On the top of the mast is fixed a port-fire, calculated to burn, I
+think, twenty minutes or half-an-hour; this is ignited most ingeniously
+by the same process which lets the buoy down into the water. So that a
+man falling overboard at night, is directed to the buoy by the blaze on
+the top of its pole or mast, and the boat sent to rescue him also knows
+in what direction to pull. Even supposing, however, the man not to have
+gained the life-buoy, it is clear that, if above the surface at all, he
+must be somewhere in that neighbourhood; and if he shall have gone down,
+it is still some satisfaction, by recovering the buoy, to ascertain that
+the poor wretch is not left to perish by inches. The method by which
+this excellent invention is attached to the ship, and dropped into the
+water in a single instant, is perhaps not the least ingenious part of
+the contrivance. The buoy is generally fixed amidships over the stern,
+where it is held securely in its place by being strung, or threaded, as
+it were, on two strong perpendicular iron rods fixed to the taffrail,
+and inserted in holes piercing the framework of the buoy. The apparatus
+is kept in its place by what is called a slip-stopper, a sort of
+catch-bolt or detent, which can be unlocked at pleasure, by merely
+pulling a trigger. Upon withdrawing the stopper, the whole machine slips
+along the rods, and falls at once into the ship’s wake. The trigger
+which unlocks the slip-stopper is furnished with a lanyard, passing
+through a hole in the stern, and having at its inner end a large knob,
+marked ‘Life-Buoy;’ this alone is used in the day-time. Close at hand is
+another wooden knob, marked ‘Lock,’ fastened to the end of a line fixed
+to the trigger of a gun-lock primed with powder: and so arranged, that
+when the line is pulled, the port-fire is instantly ignited, while, at
+the same moment, the life-buoy descends, and floats merrily away,
+blazing like a lighthouse. It would surely be an improvement to have
+both these operations always performed simultaneously, that is, by one
+pull of the string. The port-fire would thus be lighted in every case of
+letting go the buoy; and I suspect the smoke in the day-time would often
+be as useful in guiding the boat, as the blaze always is at night. The
+gunner who has charge of the life-buoy lock sees it freshly and
+carefully primed every evening at quarters, of which he makes a report
+to the captain. In the morning the priming is taken out, and the lock
+uncocked. During the night a man is always stationed at this part of the
+ship, and every half-hour, when the bell strikes, he calls out
+‘Life-buoy!’ to show that he is awake and at his post, exactly in the
+same manner as the lookout-men abaft, on the beam, and forward, call out
+‘Starboard quarter!’ ‘Starboard gangway!’ ‘Starboard bow!’ and so on,
+completely round the ship, to prove that they are not napping.”
+
+We should like to hear of Government experimenting with rockets and
+mortars, with a view to their improvement. Often the safety of a whole
+ship’s company has depended upon the strength of a light cord, attached
+to a rocket, which has been lying in store for years; often it has
+happened that this very cord has been _just_ a few feet too short! or
+has snapped, or has got entangled, or something else equally simple, but
+equally fatal. Let us look also to our _quasi_ life-boats, some so heavy
+that they cannot be launched, or so dangerous as to drown their own
+crews—some constructed one way, some another—none on any recognised and
+universal principle. We are very proud of our name of Englishmen, and
+lay the flattering unction to our soul, that we are a highly civilised
+and reasonable community; but whilst we grow magniloquent in praises of
+our country and her commerce, we forget that we owe it all to the poor
+Jack Tar, for whose life and comfort we don’t seem to care a fig. Else
+why have these inquiries not been before instituted? What is the use of
+our Trinity Boards, and Ballast Boards, and Lighthouse Boards, and all
+other Boards, if the seaman is not to know one light from another when
+he sees it, or if it is to be placed so that he _cannot_ see it? What is
+the use of our keeping up a Hydrographic department, at an expense
+little short of thirty thousand a-year, if the surveys, and charts, and
+valuable data, the result of its labours, are to be so little
+appreciated? The truth is, that the masters of many of the mercantile
+marine are incapable of taking advantage of them, and of other
+improvements in nautical science, from incompetence. We trust, however,
+that the bill intended to remedy _that_ defect, lately introduced by the
+Ministry into the House of Commons, will, if passed, have the desired
+object. Although it has been abandoned “at this late period of the
+session” out of respect to the approaching 12th of August and 1st of
+September, we trust it will be taken up again soon after the next
+meeting of Parliament.
+
+
+
+
+                           WINGED TELEGRAPHS.
+
+
+Magnetic Electricity for telegraphic purposes has nearly superseded
+pigeons. Till very recently a regular “service” of Carrier Pigeons
+existed between London and Paris, for the quick conveyance of such
+intelligence as was likely to affect the funds. The French capital was
+the focus of the system, in exemplification of the adage that “all roads
+lead to Paris,” and pigeon expresses branched off in all directions from
+that city even to St. Petersburg. Relays of them are still kept up
+between Paris and Madrid, besides a few other places. The most
+celebrated relays of winged messengers were those which bore
+intelligence between Antwerp, Brussels, and Paris. In the former city a
+society of pigeon fanciers, for amusement and emulation, keeps up an
+establishment of them. Their doings are amusingly chronicled in Kohl’s
+last book of Travels, _Reisen in den Neiderlanden_.
+
+Having been invited to join some members of the Society of Antwerp
+Pigeon Fanciers, he wended his way about five o’clock one morning
+through the silent streets of the ancient city. A few members of the
+association, he says, who directed the expedition, were followed by
+servants carrying two flat baskets, in which the pigeons, about to be
+dispatched, were carefully deposited. As we proceeded along, my
+companions related to me some particulars concerning the carrier
+pigeons, or “_pigeons voyageurs_,” as these winged messengers are
+designated. The carriers are a peculiar race of pigeons endowed with
+powers of memory and observation which enable them to find their way to
+any place by a course along which they have once flown. Every kind of
+pigeon is not capable of being taught to do this. Of the methods adopted
+by the Antwerp association for training and teaching these carriers, I
+learnt the following particulars.
+
+Supposing a dispatch of pigeons is to be sent off from Antwerp to
+Brussels or Paris, the birds are kept for some time at the place of
+arrival or terminus, and during that interval are plentifully fed and
+carefully tended. By little excursive flights, taken day by day, they
+are gradually familiarised with different parts of the town in which
+they have been nurtured, and with places in its vicinity. When
+sufficiently practised in finding their way to short distances, the
+pigeons are conveyed to a station some leagues from their dove-cote.
+Here they are kept for a time without food, and then set to flight. On
+taking wing, they rapidly soar to a vast height, scanning the line of
+the horizon to discern the church spires, or other lofty points which
+enable them to distinguish their home. Some of the less intelligent
+birds lose their way, and are seen no more. Those who return home (to
+Paris, or wherever else it may be), are again plentifully fed. Then
+after a little space of time they are carried in baskets some miles
+further in the direction of Antwerp; again they are put on a short
+allowance of food and negligently tended. When the pigeons depart on
+their next flight, the Parisian church spires have sunk far beneath the
+horizon; however, they soon succeed in combining that portion of the
+route with which they are acquainted with the part as yet unknown to
+them. They hover round and round in the air, seeking to catch one or
+other thread that is to guide them through the labyrinth. Some find it;
+others do not.
+
+In this manner the carrier pigeons are practised bit by bit along the
+whole distance between Paris and Antwerp. They attentively observe, or
+study, and learn by heart, each conspicuous object which serves them as
+a land-mark on the way. It is usual to exercise particular pigeons
+between the two cities, which it is wished to connect by this sort of
+postal communication; and it is necessary to have a certain number for
+going, and others for returning. After the birds have been accustomed to
+inhabit a certain district, and to travel by a particular route, it is
+not found easy to divert them from their wonted course, and to make them
+available in any other direction.
+
+My friends, the members of the Antwerp Society, assured me that their
+pigeons had frequently flown from Paris to Antwerp in six or seven
+hours; consequently in a much shorter time than that in which the same
+journey is performed by the railway train. By bird’s flight, the
+distance between the two cities is forty miles (German[1]), and
+therefore it follows that these carrier pigeons must travel at the rate
+of from twenty to thirty English miles an hour. It is scarcely
+conceivable that they should possess the strength of wing and vigour of
+lungs requisite for such a flight; and it is no unfrequent occurrence
+for several of them to die on arriving at their journey’s end. In stormy
+weather the loss of two-thirds of the birds dispatched on such a long
+flight, is a disaster always to be counted on. It is, therefore, usual
+to send off a whole flock, all bearing the same intelligence, so as to
+ensure the chance of one at least reaching its destination.
+
+Footnote 1:
+
+  The German mile includes nearly three and a half English miles.
+
+The pigeon expedition which I saw dispatched from Antwerp, consisted of
+about thirty birds. The point of departure was a somewhat elevated site
+in the outskirts of the city. A spot like this is always made choice of,
+lest the pigeons, on first taking flight, should lose themselves amidst
+the house-tops and church spires of the city with which they are
+unacquainted; and by having the open country before them, they are
+enabled to trace out their own land-marks. When the pigeons are to be
+sent off on lengthened journeys, it is usual to convey them to the point
+of departure at a very early hour in the morning:—by this means they are
+dispatched in quietude, unmolested by an assemblage of curious gazers,
+and they have the light of a whole day before them for their journey.
+Carrier pigeons do not pursue their flight after night-fall, being then
+precluded by the darkness from seeing the surrounding country with
+sufficient distinctness to enable them to discern their resting-places,
+or stations. In the obscurity of night the whole flock might light on
+strange dove-cotes, and be captured; an accident which would occasion
+the total failure of a postal expedition, for the few pigeons who might
+escape capture, would, on the return of morning, be bewildered, and
+unable to recombine their plan of route.
+
+Pigeons are not suited for postal communication between places so remote
+one from another that the journey cannot be completed in a single day.
+If it can be accomplished in one flight, so much the better. Antwerp and
+Paris are, I believe, the extreme points of distance within which
+carrier pigeons are capable of journeying with certainty.
+
+Herr Kohl gives no account of these stations or stages. We once saw one
+at Montrieul, the first station beyond Dover, towards Paris. The town
+stands on a high eminence, and is well adapted for the purpose. The cote
+was on the roof of a _café_. It was a square apartment with a flat
+ceiling, in which was cut a small door or trap: on the inside of this
+was fixed a small bell. If a Dover pigeon had alighted on the trap, the
+bell would have rung, and called the attention of an attendant always in
+waiting. The pigeon would have been secured, the dispatch taken from
+under its wing, and the messenger put into its cage. In a twinkling the
+cyphered paper would be fastened under the wing of the Beauvais or
+Amiens pigeon, and it would be sent off. On arriving at its destination,
+the same formula would be gone through, and the Paris pigeon would take
+the dispatch to its destination. Although several pigeons, even in fine
+weather, are entrusted with the same message, two seldom arrive at the
+common destination at the same time, so that at each place the operation
+we have described is frequently repeated, in order that at least one of
+many dispatches may be certain of arriving at the destination.
+
+These establishments were costly. Besides the great number of pigeons
+necessary to be kept at each station, some of the single birds were
+valuable. Fifty and sixty pounds was sometimes given for a clever
+pigeon. Those between Dover and Montrieul, and _vice versâ_, were among
+the most valuable, for none but sharp-sighted messengers could find
+their way across the Channel; few flights were sent away without some
+members of it being lost.
+
+But to return to the Antwerp pigeons—and to Mr. Kohl. Having, he
+continues, reached the open, elevated spot before-mentioned, the flat
+baskets carried by the servants were uncovered, and the little
+_voyageurs_ rapidly winged their way upwards. The intelligence they were
+to convey to Paris was written in little billets, fastened under their
+wings. The pigeons I saw sent off had been brought in covered baskets
+from Paris, and were as yet totally unacquainted with Antwerp and its
+environs. Their ignorance of the locality was manifest in the wavering
+uncertainty of their movements when they first took wing. On rising into
+the air, they gathered closely together, like foreigners in a strange
+country, and presently they steered their course along the confines of
+the city, in a direction quite contrary to that of Paris. They then
+soared upwards, spirally, and after several irregular movements (during
+which they seemed to be looking for the right way, and hesitating which
+course to take), they all suddenly darted off to south-west, directing
+their rapid flight straight to Paris, as if gladly quitting inhospitable
+Antwerp, where they had been scantily fed and carelessly tended.
+
+As soon as the birds were fairly out of sight, the pigeon-trainers
+proceeded homeward, not a little gratified by the conviction that their
+fleet messengers, with the intelligence they bore under their wings,
+would outstrip the speed of a railway train which had started some time
+before them.
+
+To me the most interesting point in the whole scene was the interval
+(about the space of a quarter of an hour) during which the pigeons
+wavered to and fro, seeking their way in a state of uncertainty. That
+appeared to me to be a wonderful manifestation of intelligence on the
+part of the birds. It is frequently affirmed that the carrier pigeon
+finds its way without the exercise of intelligence or observation, and
+merely by the aid of some incomprehensible instinct; but, from my own
+observations of the Antwerp pigeons, I am convinced that this is a
+mistake. Another circumstance tending to show that the birds are guided
+by something more than mere instinct, is, that during foggy weather the
+employment of carrier pigeons is found to be almost as impracticable as
+the use of the optical telegraph. But though it is not the practice to
+dispatch carrier pigeons at times when the atmosphere is very thickly
+obscured by fog, yet, owing to the keenness and accuracy of the visual
+power of these birds, which is much more perfect than that of man, they
+have an advantage over the telegraph. The latter is wholly useless when
+the atmosphere is only slightly obscured; but carrier pigeons frequently
+soar quite above the region of mist, and are thus enabled to trace their
+course without interruption. Stations of carrier pigeons are established
+in most of the principal towns of Belgium.
+
+The members of the Antwerp pigeon-training society, whom I accompanied
+on the occasion above described, were citizens of the middle class of
+society. But in Belgium, pigeon-training has its attractions even for
+persons of rank and wealth, many of whom are enthusiastic pigeon
+fanciers; indeed, pigeon-flying is as fashionable an amusement in
+Belgium as horse racing in England. Prizes, consisting of sums of money
+as high as sixty thousand francs, are frequently won in matches of
+pigeons—to say nothing of the betting to which those matches give
+occasion.
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+                Monthly Supplement of “HOUSEHOLD WORDS,”
+                      Conducted by CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+
+                       _Price 2d., Stamped, 3d._,
+
+                         THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE
+                                   OF
+                             CURRENT EVENTS.
+
+
+  _The Number, containing a history of the past month, was issued with
+                             the Magazines._
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
+
+
+ ● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
+ ● Renumbered footnotes.
+ ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
+ ● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a
+     single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in
+     1^{st}).
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78184 ***