BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCLXXXIII. SEPTEMBER, 1847. Vol. LXII.

CONTENTS.

[Pg 259]

BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCLXXXIII. SEPTEMBER, 1847. Vol. LXII.

HOW I STOOD FOR THE DREEPDAILY BURGHS.

CHAPTER I.

"My dear Dunshunner," said my friend Robert M'Corkindale as he entered my apartments one fine morning in June last, "do you happen to have seen the share-list? Things are looking in Liverpool as black as thunder. The bullion is all going out of the country, and the banks are refusing to discount."

Bob M'Corkindale might very safely have kept his information to himself. I was, to say the truth, most painfully aware of the facts which he unfeelingly obtruded upon my notice. Six weeks before, in the full confidence that the panic was subsiding, I had recklessly invested my whole capital in the shares of a certain railway company, which for the present shall be nameless; and each successive circular from my broker conveyed the doleful intelligence that the stock was going down to Erebus. Under these circumstances I certainly felt very far from being comfortable. I could not sell out except at a ruinous loss; and I could not well afford to hold on for any length of time, unless there was a reasonable prospect of a speedy amendment of the market. Let me confess it—I had of late come out rather too strong. When a man has made money easily, he is somewhat prone to launch into expense, and to presume too largely upon his credit. I had been idiot enough to make my debut in the sporting world—had started a couple of horses upon the verdant turf of Paisley—and, as a matter of course, was remorselessly sold by my advisers. These and some other minor amusements had preyed deleteriously upon my purse. In fact, I had not the ready; and as every tradesman throughout Glasgow was quaking in his shoes at the panic, and inconveniently eager to realise, I began to feel the reverse of comfortable, and was shy of showing myself in Buchanan Street. Several documents of a suspicious appearance—owing to the beastly practice of wafering, which is still adhered to by a certain class of correspondents—were lying upon my table at the moment when Bob entered. I could see that the villain comprehended their nature at a glance; but there was no use in attempting to mystify him. The Political Economist was, as I was well aware, in very much the same predicament as myself.

"To tell you the truth, M'Corkindale, I have not opened a share-list for a week. The faces of some of our friends are quite long enough to serve as a tolerable exponent of the market; and I saw Grabbie pass about five minutes ago with a yard of misery in his visage. But what's the news?"

"Every thing that is bad! Total stoppage expected in a week, and the mills already put upon short time."

"You don't say so!"

[Pg 260]"It is a fact. Dunshunner, this infernal tampering with the currency will be the ruin of every mother's son of us!"—and here Bob, in a fit of indignant enthusiasm, commenced a vivid harangue upon the principles of contraction and expansion, bullion, the metallic standard, and the bank reserves, which no doubt was extremely sound, but which I shall not recapitulate to the reader.

"That's all very well, Bob," said I—"very good in theory, but we should confine ourselves at present to practice. The main question seems to me to be this. How are we to get out of our present fix? I presume you are not at present afflicted with a remarkable plethory of cash?"

"Every farthing I have in the world is locked up in a falling line."

"Any debts?"

"Not many; but quite enough to make me meditate a temporary retirement to Boulogne."

"I believe you are better off than I am. I not only owe money, but am terribly bothered about some bills."

"That's awkward. Would it not be advisable to bolt?"

"I don't think so. You used to tell me, Bob, that credit was the next best thing to capital. Now, I don't despair of redeeming my capital yet, if I can only keep up my credit."

"Right, undoubtedly, as you generally are. Do you know, Dunshunner, you deserve credit for your notions on political economy. But how is that to be done? Every body is realising; the banks won't discount; and when your bills become due, they will be, to a dead certainty, protested."

"Well—and what then?"

"Squalor carceris, etcetera."

"Hum—an unpleasant alternative, certainly. Come, Bob I put your wits to work. You used to be a capital hand for devices, and there must be some way or other of steering clear. Time is all we want."

"Ay, to be sure—time is the great thing. It would be very unpleasant to look out on the world through a grating during the summer months!"

"I perspire at the bare idea!"

"Not a soul in town—all your friends away in the Highlands boating, or fishing, or shooting grouse—and you pent up in a stifling apartment of eight feet square, with nobody to talk to save the turnkey, and no prospect from the window, except a deserted gooseberry stall!"

"O Bob, don't talk in that way! You make me perfectly miserable."

"And all this for a ministerial currency crotchet? 'Pon my soul, it's too bad! I wish those fellows in Parliament——"

"Well? Go on."

"By Jove! I've an idea at last!"

"You don't say so! My dear Bob—out with it!"

"Dunshunner, are you a man of pluck?"

"I should think I am."

"And ready to go the whole hog, if required?"

"The entire animal."

"Then I'll tell you what it is—the elections will be on immediately—and, by St Andrew, we'll put you up for Parliament!"

"Me!"

"You. Why not? There are hundreds of men there quite as hard up, and not half so clever as yourself."

"And what good would that do me?"

"Don't you see? You need not care a farthing about your debts then, for the personal liberty of a member of the House of Commons is sacred. You can fire away right and left at the currency; and who knows, if you play your cards well, but you may get a comfortable place?"

"Well, you are a genius, Bob! But then, what sort of principles should I profess?"

"That is a matter which requires consideration. What are your own feelings on the subject?"

"Perfect indifference. I am pledged to no party, and am free to exercise my independent judgment."

"Of course, of course! We shall take care to stick all that into the address; but you must positively come forward with some kind of tangible political views. The currency will do for one point, but as to the others I see a difficulty."

"Suppose I were to start as a Peelite?

"Something may be said in favour of that view; but, on the whole, I should rather say not. That party[Pg 261] may not look up for some little time, and then the currency is a stumbling-block in the way. No, Dunshunner, I do not think, upon my honour, that it would be wise for you to commit yourself in that quarter at the present moment."

"Suppose I try the Protectionist dodge? One might come it very strong against the foreigners, and in favour of native industry. Eh, Bob? What do you say to that? It is an advantage to act with gentlemen."

"True; but at the same time, I see many objections. The principles of the country party are not yet thoroughly understood by the people, and I should like to have you start with at least popularity on your side."

"Radical, then? What do you think of Annual Parliaments, Universal Suffrage, Vote by Ballot, and separation of Church and State?"

"I am clear against that. These views are not popular with the Electors, and even the mob would entertain a strong suspicion that you were humbugging them."

"What, then, on earth am I to do?"

"I will tell you. Come out as a pure and transparent Whig. In the present position of parties, it is at least a safe course to pursue, and it is always the readiest step to the possession of the loaves and the fishes."

"Bob, I don't like the Whigs!"

"No more do I. They are a bad lot; but they are in, and that is every thing. Yes, Augustus," continued Bob solemnly, "there is nothing else for it. You must start as a pure Whig, upon the Revolution principles of sixteen hundred and eighty-eight."

"It would be a great relief to my mind, Bob, if you would tell me what those principles really are?"

"I have not the remotest idea; but we have plenty time to look them up."

"Then, I suppose I must swallow the Dutchman and the Massacre of Glencoe?"

"Yes, and the Darien business into the bargain. These are the principles of your party, and of course you are bound to subscribe."

"Well! you know best; but I'd rather do any thing else."

"Pooh! never fear; you and Whiggery will agree remarkably well. That matter, then, we may consider as settled. The next point to be thought of is the constituency."

"Ay, to be sure! what place am I to start for? I have got no interest, and if I had any, there are no nomination burghs in Scotland."

"Aren't there? That's all you know, my fine fellow! Hark ye, Dunshunner, more than half of the Scottish burghs are at this moment held by nominees!"

"You amaze me, Bob! The thing is impossible! The Reform Bill, that great charter of our liberties——"

"Bravo! There spoke the Whig! The Reform Bill, you think, put an end to nomination? It did nothing of the kind, it merely transferred it. Did you ever hear of such things as Cliques?"

"I have. But they are tremendously unpopular."

"Nevertheless, they hold the returning power. There is a Clique in almost every town throughout Scotland, which loads the electors as quietly, but as surely, as the blind man is conducted by his dog. These are modelled on the true Venetian principles of secrecy and terrorism. They control the whole constituency, put in the member, and in return monopolise the whole patronage of the place. If you have the Clique with you, you are almost sure of your election; if not, except in the larger towns, you have not a shadow of success. Now, what I want to impress upon you is this, that where-ever you go, be sure that you communicate with the Clique."

"But how am I to find it out?

"That is not always an easy matter, for nobody will acknowledge that they belong to it. However, the thing is not impossible, and we shall certainly make the experiment. Come, then, I suppose you agree with me, that it is hopeless to attempt the larger towns?"

"Clearly. So far as I see, they are all provided already with candidates."

"And you may add, Cliques, Dunshunner. Well, then, let us search[Pg 262] among the smaller places. What would you think of a dash at the Stirling District of Burghs?"

"Why, there are at least half-a-dozen candidates in the field."

"True, that would naturally lessen your chance. Depend upon it, some one of them has already found the key to the Clique. But there's the Dreepdaily District with nobody standing for it, except the Honourable Paul Pozzlethwaite; and I question whether he knows himself the nature or the texture of his politics. Really, Dunshunner, that's the very place for you; and if we look sharp after it, I bet the long odds that you will carry it in a canter."

"Do you really think so?

"I do indeed; and the sooner you start the better. Let me see. I know Provost Binkie of Dreepdaily. He is a Railway bird, was an original Glenmutchkin shareholder, and fortunately sold out at a premium. He is a capital man to begin with, and I think will be favourable to you: besides, Dreepdaily is in old Whig burgh. I am not so sure of Kittleweem. It is a shade more respectable than Dreepdaily, and has always been rather Conservative. The third burgh, Drouthielaw, is a nest of Radicalism; but I think it may be won over, if we open the public-houses."

"But, about expenses, Bob—won't it be a serious matter?"

"Why, you must lay your account with spending some five or six hundred pounds upon the nail; and I advise you to sell stock to that amount at least. The remainder, should it cost you more, can stand over."

"Bob, five or six hundred pounds is a very serious sum!"

"Granted—but then look at the honour and the immunity you will enjoy. Recollect that yours is an awkward predicament. If you don't get into Parliament, I see nothing for it but a stoppage."

"That's true enough. Well—hang it, then, I will start!"

"There's a brave fellow! I should not in the least wonder to see you in the Cabinet yet. The sooner you set about preparing your address the better."

"What! without seeing Provost Binkie?"

"To be sure. What is the use of wading when you can plunge at once into deep water? Besides, let me, tell you that you are a great deal more likely to get credit when it is understood that you are an actual candidate."

"There is something in that too. But I say, Bob—you really must help me with the address. I am a bad hand at these things, and shall never be able to tickle up the electors without your assistance."

"I'll do all I can. Just ring for a little sherry and water, and we'll set to work. I make no doubt that, between us, we can polish off a plausible placard."

Two hours afterwards, I forwarded through the post-office, a missive addressed to the editor of the Dreepdaily Patriot, with the following document enclosed. I am rather proud of it, as a manifesto of my political principles.

"TO THE ELECTORS OF THE UNITED DISTRICT OF BURGHS OF DREEPDAILY, DROUTHIELAW, AND KITTLEWEEM.

"Gentlemen,—I am induced, by a requisition, to which are appended the signatures of a large majority of your influential and patriotic body, to offer myself as a candidate for the high honour of your representation in the ensuing session of Parliament. Had I consulted my own inclination, I should have preferred the leisure of retirement and the pursuit of those studies so congenial to my taste, to the more stormy and agitating of politics. But a deep sense of public duty compels me to respond to your call.

"My views upon most subjects are so well known to many of you, that a lengthened explanation of them would probably be superfluous. Still, however, it may be right and proper for me to explain generally what they are.

"My principles are based upon the great and glorious Revolution settlement of 1688, which, by abolishing, or at least superseding, hereditary right, intrusted the guardianship of the crown to an enlightened oligarchy for the protection of an unparticipating people. That oligarchy is now [Pg 263]most ably represented by her Majesty's present Ministers, to whom, unhesitatingly and uncompromisingly, except upon a very few matters, I give in my adhesion so long as they shall continue in office.

"Opposed to faction and an enemy to misrule, I am yet friendly to many changes of a sweeping and organic character. Without relaxing the ties which at present bind together church and state in harmonious coalition and union, I would gradually confiscate the revenues of the one for the increasing necessities of the other. I never would become a party to an attack upon the House of Peers, so long as it remains subservient to the will of the Commons; nor would I alter or extend the franchise, except from cause shown, and the declared and universal wish of the non-electors.

"I highly approve of the policy which has been pursued towards Ireland, and of further concessions to a deep-rooted system of agitation. I approve of increased endowments to that much neglected country; and I applaud that generosity which relieves it from all participation in the common burdens of the state. Such a line of policy cannot fail to elevate the moral tone, and to develop the internal resources of Ireland; and I never wish to see the day when the Scotsman and the Irishman may, in so far as taxation is concerned, be placed upon an equal footing. It appears to me a highly equitable adjustment that the savings of the first should be appropriated for the wants of the second.

"I am in favour of the centralising system, which, by drafting away the wealth and talent of the provinces, must augment the importance of London. I am strongly opposed to the maintenance of my local or Scottish institutions, which can merely serve to foster a spirit of decayed nationality; and I am of opinion that all boards and offices should be transferred to England, with the exception of those connected with the Dreepdaily district, which it is the bounden duty of the legislature to protect and preserve.

"I am a friend to the spread of education, but hostile to any system by means of which religion, especially Protestantism, may be taught.

"I am a supporter of free trade in all its branches. I cannot see any reason for the protection of native industry, and am ready to support any fundamental measure by means of which articles of foreign manufacture maybe brought to compete in the home market with our own, without restriction and without reciprocity. It has always appeared to me that our imports are of far greater importance than our exports. I think that any lowering of price which may be the result of such a commercial policy, will be more than adequately compensated by a coercive measure which shall compel the artisan to augment the period of his labour. I am against any short hours' bill, and am of opinion that infant labour should be stringently and universally enforced.

"With regard to the currency, I feel that I may safely leave that matter in the hands of her Majesty's present Ministers, who have never shown any indisposition to oppose themselves to the popular wish.

"These, gentlemen, are my sentiments; and I think that, upon consideration, you will find them such as may entitle me to your cordial support. I need not say how highly I shall value the trust, or how zealously I shall endeavour to promote your local interests. These, probably, can be best advanced by a cautious regard to my own.

"On any other topics I shall be happy to give you the fullest and most satisfactory explanation. I shall merely add, as a summary of my opinions, that while ready on the one hand to coerce labour, so as to stimulate internal industry to the utmost, and to add largely to the amount of our population; I am, upon the other, a friend to the liberty of the subject, and to the promotion of such genial and sanatory measures as suit the tendency of our enlightened age, the diffusion of universal philanthropy, and the spread of popular opinion. I remain, GENTLEMEN, with the deepest respect, your very obedient and humble servant,

"Augustus Reginald Dunshunner.
"St Mirren's House,
"June, 1847."

The editor of the Dreepdaily Patriot, wisely considering that this [Pg 264]advertisement was the mere prelude to many more, was kind enough to dedicate a leading article to an exposition of my past services. I am not a vain man; so that I shall not here reprint the panegyric passed upon myself, or the ovation which my friend foresaw. Indeed, I am so far from vain, that I really began to think, while perusing the columns of the Patriot, that I had somewhat foolishly shut my eyes hitherto to the greatness of that talent, and the brilliancy of those parts which were now proclaimed to the world. Yes; it was quite clear that I had hitherto been concealing my candle under a bushel—that I was cut out by nature for a legislator—and that I was the very man for the Dreepdaily electors. Under this conviction, I started upon my canvass, munimented with letters of introduction from M'Corkindale, who, much against his inclination, was compelled to remain at home.

CHAPTER II.

Dreepdaily is a beautiful little town, embosomed in an amphitheatre of hills which have such a winning way with the clouds that the summits are seldom visible. Dreepdaily, if situated in Arabia, would be deemed a Paradise. All round it the vegetation is long, and lithe, and luxuriant; the trees keep their verdure late; and the rush of the nettles is amazing.

How the inhabitants contrive to live, is to me a matter of mystery. There is no particular trade or calling exercised in the place—no busy hum of artisans, or clanking of hammer or machinery. Round the suburbs, indeed, there are rows of mean-looking cottages, each with its strapping lass in the national short gown at the door, from the interior of which resounds the boom of the weaver's shuttle. There is also one factory at a little distance; but when you reach the town itself, all is supereminently silent. In fine weather, crowds of urchins of both sexes are seen sunning themselves on the quaint-looking flights of steps by which the doors, usually on the second story, are approached; and as you survey the swarms of bare-legged and flaxen-haired infantry, you cannot help wondering in your heart what has become of the adult population. It is only towards evening that the seniors appear. Then you may find them either congregated on the bridge discussing politics and polemics, or lounging in the little square in affectionate vicinity to the public-house, or leaning over the windows in their shirt-sleeves, in the tranquil enjoyment of a pipe. In short, the cares and the bustle of the world, even in this railroad age, seem to have fallen lightly on the pacific burghers of Dreepdaily. According to their own account, the town was once a peculiar favourite of royalty. It boasts of a charter from King David the First, and there is an old ruin in the neighbourhood which is said to have been a palace of that redoubted monarch. It may be so, for there is no accounting for constitutions; but had I been King David, I certainly should have preferred, a place where the younger branches of the family would have been less liable to the accident of catarrh.

Dreepdaily, in the olden time, was among the closest of all the burghs. Its representation had a fixed price, which was always rigorously exacted and punctually paid; and for half a year thereafter, the corporation made merry thereon. The Reform Bill, therefore, was by no means popular in the council. A number of discontented Radicals and of small householders, who hitherto had been excluded from participation in the good things of the state, now got upon the roll, and seemed determined for a time to carry matters with a high hand, and to return a member of their own. And doubtless they would have succeeded, had not the same spirit been abroad in the sister burghs of Drouthielaw and Kittleweem, which, for some especial reason or other, known doubtless to Lord John Russell, but utterly unintelligible to the rest of mankind, were, though situated in different counties, associated with Dreepdaily in the return of their future member. Each of these places had a separate interest, and started a separate man;[Pg 265] so that, amidst this conflict of Liberalism, the old member for Dreepdaily, a Conservative, again slipped into his place. The consequence was, that the three burghs were involved in a desperate feud.

In these days there lived in Dreepdaily one Laurence Linklater, more commonly known by the name of Tod Lowrie, who exercised the respectable functions of a writer and a messenger-at-arms. Lowrie was a remarkably acute individual, of the Gilbert Glossin school, by no means scrupulous in his dealings, but of singular plausibility and courage. He had started in life as a Radical, but finding that that line did not pay well, he had prudently subsided into a Whig, and in that capacity had acquired a sort of local notoriety. He had contrived, moreover, to gain a tolerable footing in Drouthielaw, and in the course of time became intimately acquainted with the circumstances of its inhabitants, and under the plea of agency had contrived to worm the greater part of their title-deeds into his keeping.

It then occurred to Lowrie, that, notwithstanding the discordant situation of the burghs, something might be done to effect a union under his own especial chieftainship. Not that he cared in his heart one farthing about the representation—Tyrian and Trojan were in reality the same to him—but he saw that the gain of these burghs would be of immense advantage to his party, and he determined that the advantage should be balanced by a corresponding profit to himself. Accordingly, he began quietly to look to the state of the neglected register; lodged objections to all claims given in by parties upon whom he could not depend; smuggled a sufficient number of his own clients and adherents upon the roll, and in the course of three years, was able to intimate to an eminent Whig partisan, that he, Laurence Linklater, held in his own hands the representation of the Dreepdaily Burghs, could turn the election either way he pleased, and was open to reasonable terms.

The result was, that Mr Linklater was promoted to a very lucrative county office, and moreover, that the whole patronage of the district was thereafter observed to flow through the Laurentian channel. Of course all those who could claim kith or kindred with Lowrie were provided for in the first instance; but there were stray crumbs still going, and in no one case could even a gaugership be obtained without the adhesion of an additional vote. Either the applicant must be ready to sell his independence, or, if that were done already, to pervert the politics of a relative. A Whig member was returned at the next election by an immense majority; and for some time Linklater reigned supreme in the government of Dreepdaily and Drouthielaw.

But death, which spares no governors, knocked at the door of Linklater. A surfeit of partan-pie, after the triumphant termination of a law-suit, threw the burghs into a state of anarchy. Lowrie was gathered unto his fathers, and there was no one to reign in his stead.

At least there was no apparent ruler. Every one observed, that the stream of patronage and of local jobbing still flowed on as copiously as before, but nobody could discover by what hands it was now directed. Suspicion fastened its eyes for some time upon Provost Binkie; but the vehement denials of that gentleman, though not in themselves conclusive, at last gained credence from the fact that a situation which he had solicited from Government for his nephew was given to another person. Awful rumours began to circulate of the existence of a secret junta. Each man regarded his neighbour with intense suspicion and distrust, because, for any thing he knew, that neighbour might be a member of the terrible tribunal, by means of which all the affairs of the community were regulated, and a single ill-timed word might absolutely prove his ruin. Such, indeed, in one instance was the case. In an evil hour for himself, an independent town-councillor thought fit to denounce the Clique, as an unconstitutional and tyrannical body, and to table a motion for an inquiry as to its nature, members, and proceedings. So strong was the general alarm that he could not even find a seconder. But the matter did not stop there. The rash meddler had drawn upon himself the vengeance of a remorseless[Pg 266] foe. His business began to fall off; rumours of the most malignant description were circulated regarding his character; two of his relatives who held situations were dismissed without warning and without apology; his credit was assailed in every quarter; and in less than six months after he had made that most unfortunate, harangue, the name of Thomas Gritt, baker in Dreepdaily, was seen to figure in the Gazette. So fell Gritt a martyr, and if any one mourned for him, it was in secret, and the profoundest awe.

Such was the political state of matters, at the time when I rode down the principal street of Dreepdaily. I need hardly say that I did not know a single soul in the burgh; in that respect, indeed, there was entire reciprocity on both sides, for the requisition referred to in my address was a felicitous fiction by M'Corkindale. I stopped before a substantial bluff-looking house, the lower part of which was occupied as a shop, and a scroll above informed me that the proprietor was Walter Binkie, grocer.

A short squat man, with an oleaginous face and remarkably bushy eyebrows, was in the act of weighing out a pennyworth of "sweeties" to a little girl as I entered.

"Is the Provost of Dreepdaily within?" asked I.

"I'se warrant he's that," was the reply; "Hae, my dear, there's a sugar almond t'ye into the bargain. Gae your waus hame noo, and tell your mither that I've some grand new tea. Weel, sir, what was you wanting?"

"I wish particularly to speak to the Provost."

"Weel then, speak awa'," and he straightway squatted himself before his ledger.

"I beg your pardon, sir! Have I really the honour of addressing—;"

"Walter Binkie, the Provost of this burgh. But if ye come on Council matters, ye're lang ahint the hour. I'm just steppin' up to denner, and I never do business after that."

"But perhaps you will allow me—"

"I will allow nae man, sir, to interrupt my leisure. If ye're wanting ony thing, gang to the Town Clerk."

"Permit me one moment—my name is Dunshunner."

"Eh, what!" cried the Provost, bounding from his stool, "speak lower or the lad will hear ye. Are ye the gentleman that's stannin' for the burrows?"

"The same."

"Lord-sake! what for did ye no say that afore? Jims! I say, Jims! Look after the shop! Come this way, sir, up the stair, and take care ye dinna stumble on that toom cask o' saut."

I followed the Provost up a kind of corkscrew stair, until we emerged upon a landing-place in his own proper domicile. We entered the dining room. It was showily furnished; with an enormous urn of paper roses in the grate, two stuffed parroquets upon the mantel-piece, a flamingo coloured carpet, enormous worsted bell-pulls, and a couple of portraits by some peripatetic follower of Vandyke, one of them representing the Provost in his civic costume, and the other bearing some likeness to a fat female in a turban, with a Cairngorm brooch about the size of a platter on her breast, and no want of carmine on the space dedicated to the cheeks.

The Provost locked the door, and then clapped his ear to the key-hole. He next approached the window, drew down the blinds so as effectually to prevent any opposite scrutiny, and motioned me to a seat.

"And so ye're Mr Dunshunner?" said he. "Oh man, but I've been wearyin' to see you!"

"Indeed! you flatter me very much."

"Nae flattery, Mr Dunshunner—name! I'm a plain honest man, that's a', and naebody can say that Wattie Binkie, has blawn in their lug. And sae ye're comin forrard for the burrows? It's a bauld thing, sir—a bauld thing, and a great honour ye seek. No that I think ye winna do honour to it, but it's a great trust for sae young a man; a heavy responsibility, as a body may say, to hang upon a callant's shouthers."

"I hope, Mr Binkie, that my future conduct may show that I can at least act up to my professions."

"Nae doubt, sir—I'm no misdoubtin' ye, and to say the truth ye[Pg 267] profess weel. I've read yer address, sir, and I like yer principles—they're the stench auld Whig anes—keep a' we can to ourselves, and haud a gude grup. But wha's bringing ye forrard? Wha signed yer requisition? No the Kittleweem folk, I hope?—That wad be a sair thing against ye."

"Why, no—certainly not. The fact is, Mr Binkie, that I have not seen the requisition. Its contents were communicated by a third party, on whom I have the most perfect reliance; and, as I understood there was some delicacy in the matter, I did not think it proper to insist upon a sight of the signatures."

The Provost gave a long whistle.

"I see it noo!" he said, "I see it! I ken't there was something gaun on forbye the common. Ye're a lucky man, Mr Dunshunner, and ye're election is as sure as won. Ye've been spoken to by them ye ken o'!"

"Upon my word—I do not understand—"

"Ay—ay! Ye're richt to be cautious. Weel I wat they are kittle cattle to ride the water on. But wha was't, sir,—wha was't? Ye needna be feared of me. I ken how to keep a secret."

"Really, Mr Binkie, except through a third party, as I have told you already I have had no communication with any one."

"Weel—they are close—there's nae denyin' that. But ye surely maun hae some inkling o' the men—Them that's ahint the screen, ye ken?"

"Indeed, I have not. But stay—if you allude to the Clique——"

"Wheest, sir, wheest!" cried the Provost in an agitated tone of voice. "Gudesake, tak care what ye say—ye dinna ken wha may hear ye. Ye hae spoken a word that I havena heard this mony a day without shaking in my shoon. Ay speak ceevily o' the dell—ye dinna ken how weel ye may be acquaunt!"

"Surely, sir, there can be no harm in mentioning the——"

"No under that name, Mr Dunshunner—no under that name, and no here. I wadna ca' them that on the tap of Ben-Nevis without a grue. Ay—and sae They are wi' ye, are they? Weel, they are a queer set!"

"You know the parties then, Mr Binkie?"

"I ken nae mair aboot them than I ken whaur to find the caverns o' the east wind. Whether they are three or thretty or a hunder surpasses my knowledge, but they hae got the secret o' the fern seed and walk about invisible. It is a'thegether a great mystery, but doubtless ye will obtain a glimpse. In the mean time, since ye come from that quarter, I am bound to obey."

"You are very kind, I am sure, Mr Binkie. May I ask then your opinion of matters as they stand at present?"

"Our present member, Mr Whistlerigg, will no stand again. He's got some place or ither up in London; and, my certie, he's worked weel for it! There's naebody else stannin' forbye that man Pozzlethaite, and he disna verra weel ken what he is himsel'. If it's a' richt yonder," continued the Provost, jerking his thumb over his left shoulder, "ye're as gude as elected."

As it would have been extremely impolitic for me under present circumstances to have disclaimed all connection with a body which exercised an influence so marked and decided, I allowed Provost Binkie to remain under the illusion that I was the chosen candidate of the Clique. In fact I had made up my mind that I should become so at any cost, so soon as it vouchsafed to disclose itself and appear before my longing eyes. I therefore launched at once into practical details, in the discussion of which the Provost exhibited both shrewdness and good-will. He professed his readiness at once to become chairman of my committee, drew out a list of the most influential persons in the burgh to whom I ought immediately to apply, and gave me much information regarding the politics of the other places. From what he said, I gathered that, with the aid of the Clique, I was sure of Dreepdaily and Drouthielaw—as to the electors of Kittleweem, they were, in his opinion, "a wheen dirt," whom it would be useless to consult, and hopeless to conciliate. I certainly had no previous idea that the bulk of the electors had so little to say in the choice of their own[Pg 268] representative. When I ventured to hint at the remote possibility of a revolt, the Provost indignantly exclaimed—

"They daurna, sir—they daurna for the lives of them do it! Set them up indeed! Let me see ony man that wad venture to vote against the Town Council and the—and them, and I'll make a clean sweep of him out of Dreepdaily!"

Nothing in short could have been more satisfactory than this statement.

Whilst we were conversing together, I heard of a sudden a jingling in the next apartment, as it some very aged and decrepid harpsichord were being exorcised into the unusual effort of a tune. I glanced inquiringly to the door, but the Provost took no notice of my look. In a little time, however, there was a short preliminary cough, and a female voice of considerable compass took up the following strain. I remember the words not more from their singularity, than from the introduction to which they were the prelude:—

"I heard a wee bird singing clear,
In the tight, tight month o' June—
'What garr'd ye buy when stocks were high,
And sell when shares were doun?

'Gin ye hae play'd me fause, my luve,
In simmer 'mang the rain;
When siller's scant and scarce at Yule
I'll pay ye back again!

'O bonny were the Midland Halves,
When credit was sae free!—
But wae betide the Southron loon
That sold thae Halves to me!'"

I declare, upon the word of a Railway Director, that I was never more taken aback in my life. Attached as I have been from youth to the Scottish ballad poetry, I never yet had heard a ditty of this peculiar stamp, which struck me as a happy combination of tender fancy with the sterner realities of the Exchange. Provost Binkie smiled as he remarked my amazement.

"It's only my daughter Maggie, Mr Dunshunner," he said. "Puir thing! It's little she has here to amuse her, and sae she whiles writes thae kind o' sangs hersel'. She's weel up to the railroads, for ye ken I was an auld Glenmutchkin holder."

"Indeed! Was that song Miss Binkie's own composition?" asked I, with considerable interest.

"Atweel it is that, and mair too. Maggie, haud your skirling!—ye're interrupting me and the gentleman."

"I beg, on no account, Mr Binkie, that I may be allowed to interfere with your daughter's amusement. Indeed it is full time that I were betaking myself to the hotel, unless you will honour me so far as to introduce me to Miss Binkie."

"Deil a bit o' you gangs to the hotel to-night!" replied the hospitable Provost. "You bide where you are to denner and bed, and we'll hae a comfortable crack over matters in the evening. Maggie! come ben, lass, and speak to Mr Dunshunner."

Miss Binkie, who I am strongly of opinion was all the while conscious of the presence of a stranger, now entered from the adjoining room. She was really a pretty girl; tall, with lively sparkling eyes and a profusion of dark hair, which she wore in the somewhat exploded shape of ringlets. I was not prepared for such an apparition, and I daresay blushed as I paid my compliments.

Margaret Binkie, however, had no sort of mauvaise honte about her. She had received her final polish in a Glasgow boarding-school, and did decided credit to the seminary in which the operation had been performed. At all events she was the reverse of shy, for in less than a quarter of an hour we were rattling away as though we had been acquainted from childhood; and, to say the truth, I found myself getting into something like a strong flirtation. Old Binkie grinned a delighted smile, and went out to superintend the decanting of a bottle of port.

I need not, I think, expatiate upon the dinner which followed. The hotch-potch was unexceptionable, the salmon curdy, and the lamb roasted without a fault; and if the red-armed Hebe who attended was somewhat awkward in her motions, she was at least zealous to a degree. The Provost got into high feather, and kept plying me perpetually with wine. When the cloth was removed, he[Pg 269] drank with all formality to my success; and, as Margaret Binkie, with a laugh, did due honour to the toast, I could not do less than indulge in a little flight of fancy as I proposed the ladies, and, in connexion with them, the Flower of Dreepdaily—a sentiment which was acknowledged with a blush.

After Miss Binkie retired, the Provost grew more and more convivial. He would not enter into business, but regaled me with numerous anecdotes of his past exploits, and of the lives and conversation of his compatriots in the Town Council—some of whom appeared, from his description, to be very facetious individuals indeed. More particularly, he dwelt upon the good qualities and importance of a certain Mr Thomas Gills, better known to his friends and kinsfolk by the sobriquet of Toddy Tam, and recommended me by all means to cultivate the acquaintance of that personage. But, however otherwise loquacious, nothing would persuade the Provost to launch out upon the subject of the Clique. He really seemed to entertain as profound a terror of that body as ever Huguenot did of the Inquisition, and he cut me short at last by ejaculating—

"Sae nae mair on't, Mr Dunshunner—sae nae mair on't! It's ill talking on thae things. Ye dinna ken what the Clique is, nor whaur it is. But this I ken, that they are every where and a' aboot us; they hear every thing that passes in this house, and I whiles suspect that Mysie, the servant lass, is naething else than ane o' them in petticoats!"

More than this I could not elicit. After we had finished a considerable quantum of port, we adjourned to the drawing-room, and, tea over, Miss Binkie sang to me several of her own songs, whilst the Provost snored upon the sofa. Both the songs and the singer were clever, the situation was interesting, and, somehow or other, I found my fingers more than once in contact with Maggie's, as I turned over the leaves of the music.

At last the Provost rose, with a stertoracious grunt. I thought this might be the signal for retiring to rest; but such were not the habits of Dreepdaily. Salt herrings and finnan haddocks were produced along with the hot water and accompaniments; and I presume it was rather late before my host conducted me to my chamber. If I dreamed at all that night, it must have been of Margaret Binkie.

CHAPTER III.

The next morning, whilst dressing, I heard a blithe voice carolling on the stair. It was the orison of Margaret Binkie as she descended to the breakfast-room. I listened and caught the following verses:—

"O hand away frae me," she said,
"I pray you let me be!
Hae you the shares ye held, my lord,
What time ye courted me?

"'Tis woman's weird to luve and pine,
And man's is to forget:
Hold you the shares, Lord James," she said,
"Or hae ye sold them yet?"

"My York Extensions, bought at par,
I sold at seven pund prem.—
And, O my heart is sair to think
I had nae mair of them!"

"That is really a remarkable girl!" thought I, as I stropped my razor. "Such genius, such animation, and such a thorough knowledge of the market! She would make a splendid wife for a railway-director."

"Come away, Mr Dunshunner," said the Provost, as I entered the parlour. "I hope ye are yaup, for ye have a lang day's wark before ye."

"I am sure it would be an agreeable one, sir, if accompanied with such sweet music as I heard this morning. Pardon me, Miss Binkie, but you really are a perfect Sappho."

"You are too good, I am sure, Mr Dunshunner. Will you take tea or coffee?"

"Maggie," said the Provost, "I maun put a stop to that skirling—it's well eneuch for the night, but the morning is the time for business. Mr Dunshunner, I've been thinking over this job of ours, and here is a bit listie of the maist influential persons in Dreepdaily, that you must positeevely see this day. They wad be affronted[Pg 270] if they kenned ye were here without calling on them. Noo, mark me,—I dinna just say that ony o' them is the folk ye ken o', but it's no ava unlikely; sae ye maun even use yer ain discretion. Tak an auld man's word for it, and aye put your best fit foremost."

I acquiesced in the justice of the suggestion, although I was really unconscious which foot deserved the precedence. The Provost continued—

"Just ae word mair. Promising is a cheap thing, and ye needna be vera sparing of it. If ony body speaks to ye about a gaugership, or a place in the Customs or the Post-office, just gie ye a bit wink, tak out your note-book, and make a mark wi' the keelavine pen. It aye looks weel, and gangs as far as a downright promise. Deny or refuse naebody. Let them think that ye can do every thing wi' the ministry; and if there should happen to be a whaup in the rape, let them even find it out theirsells. Tell them that ye stand up for Dreepdaily, and its auld charter, and the Whig constitution, and liberal principles. Maist feck o' them disna ken what liberal principles is, but they like the word. I whiles think that liberal principles means saying muckle and doing naething, but you needna tell them that. The Whigs are lang-headed chiells, and they hae had the sense to claim a' the liberality to themsells, ever since the days o' the Reform Bill."

Such and such-like were the valuable maxims which Provost Binkie instilled into my mind during the progress of breakfast. I must say they made a strong impression upon me; and any candidate who may hereafter come forward for the representation of a Scottish burgh, on principles similar to my own, would do well to peruse and remember them.

At length I rose to go.

"Do I carry your good wishes along with me, Miss Binkie, on my canvass?"

"Most cordially, Mr Dunshunner; I shall be perfectly miserable until I learn your success. I can assure you of my support, and earnestly wish I was an elector."

"Enviable would be the Member of Parliament who could represent so charming a constituency!"

"Oh, Mr Dunshunner!"

Directed by the Provost's list, I set forth in search of my constituency. The first elector whose shop I entered was a draper of the name of M'Auslan. I found him in the midst of his tartans.

"Mr M'Auslan, I presume?"

"Ay," was the curt response.

"Allow me to introduce myself, sir. My name is Dunshunner."

"Oh."

"You are probably aware, sir, that I am a candidate for the representation of these burghs?"

"Ay."

"I hope and trust, Mr M'Auslan, that my principles are such as meet with your approbation?"

"Maybe."

"I am a friend, sir, to civil and religious liberty,—to Dreepdaily and its charter,—to the old Whig constitution of 1688,—and to the true interests of the people."

"Weel?"

"Confound the fellow!" thought I, "was there ever such an insensate block? I must bring him to the point at once. Mr M'Auslan," I continued in a very, insinuating tone, "such being my sentiments, may I venture to calculate on your support?"

"There's twa words to that bargain," replied M'Auslan, departing from monosyllables.

"Any further explanation that may be required, I am sure, will readily—"

"It's nae use."

"How?" said I, a good deal alarmed. "Is it possible you are already pledged?"

"No."

"Then what objection—"

"I made naue. I see ye dinna ken us here. The pear's no ripe yet."

"What pear?" asked I, astonished at this horticultural allusion.

"Hark ye," said M'Auslan, looking stealthily around him, and for the first time exhibiting some marks of intelligence in his features—"Hark ye,—hae ye seen Toddy Tam yet?"

"Mr Gills? Not yet. I am just going to wait upon him; but Provost Binkie has promised me his support."

"Wha cares for Provost Binkie! Gang to Toddy Tam."

Not one other word could I extract from the oracular M'Auslan; so, like a pilgrim, I turned my face towards[Pg 271] Mecca, and sallied forth in quest of this all-important personage. On my way, however, I entered the house of another voter, one Shanks, a member of the Town Council, from whom I received equally unsatisfactory replies. He, like M'Auslan, pointed steadily towards Toddy Tam. Now, who and what was the individual who, by the common consent of his townsmen, had earned so honourable an epithet?

Mr Thomas Gills had at one time been a clerk in the office of the departed Linklater. His function was not strictly legal, nor confined to the copying of processes: it had a broader and wider scope, and was exercised in a more congenial manner. In short, Mr Gills was a kind of provider for the establishment. His duties were to hunt out business; which he achieved to a miracle by frequenting every possible public-house, and wringing from them, amidst their cups, the stories of the wrongs of his compotators. Wo to the wight who sate down for an afternoon's conviviality with Toddy Tam! Before the mixing of the fourth tumbler, the ingenious Gills was sure to elicit some hardship or grievance, for which benignant Themis could give redress; and rare, indeed, was the occurrence of the evening on which he did not capture some additional clients. He would even go the length of treating his victim, when inordinately shy, until the fatal mandate was given, and retraction utterly impossible.

Such decided business talents, of course, were not overlooked by the sagacious Laurence Linklater. Gills enjoyed a large salary, the greater moiety of which he consumed in alcoholic experiments; and shortly before the decease of his patron, he was promoted to the lucrative and easy office of some county registrarship. He now began to cultivate conviviality for its own especial sake. It was no longer dangerous to drink with him; for though, from habit, he continued to poke into grievances, he never, on the following morning, pursued the subject further. But what was most remarkable about Toddy Tam was, his independence. He never truckled to dictation from any quarter; but, whilst Binkie and the rest were in fear and terror of the Clique, he openly defied that body, and dared them to do their worst. He was the only man in Dreepdaily who ventured to say that Tom Gritts was right in the motion he had made, and he further added, that if he, Thomas Gills, had been in the Town Council, the worthy and patriotic baker should not have wanted a seconder. This was considered a very daring speech, and one likely to draw down the vengeance of the unrelenting junta: but the thunder slept in the cloud, and Mr Gills enjoyed himself as before.

I found him in his back parlour, in company with a very rosy individual. Although it was not yet noon, a case-bottle and glasses were on the table, and the whole apartment stunk abominably with the fumes of whisky.

"Sit in, Mr Dunshunner, sit in!" said Toddy Tam, in a tone of great cordiality, after I had effected my introduction. "Ye'll no hae had your morning yet? Lass, bring in a clean glass for the gentleman."

"I hope you will excuse me, Mr Gills. I really never do—"

"Hoots—nonsense! Ye maun be neighbour-like, ye ken—we a' expect it at Dreepdaily." And so saying, Toddy Tam, poured me out a full glass of spirits. I had as lieve have swallowed ink, but I was forced to constrain myself and bolt it.

"Ay, and so ye are coming round to us as a candidate, are ye? What d'ye think o' that, Mr Thamson—hae ye read Mr Dunshunner's address?"

The rubicund individual chuckled, leered, and rose to go, but Toddy Tam laid a heavy hand upon his shoulder.

"Sit ye down, man," he said; "I've naething to say to Mr Dunshunner that the hail warld may not hear, nor him to me neither, I hope."

"Certainly not," said I; "and I really should feel it as a great obligation if Mr Thomson would be kind enough to remain."

"That's right, lad!" shouted Gills. "Nae hole-and-corner work for me! A' fair and abune board, and the deil fly away with the Clique!"

Had Thomson been an ordinary man, he probably would have grown pale at this daring objurgation: as it was, he fidgetted in his chair, and his face became a shade more crimson.

"Weel, now," continued Toddy[Pg 272] Tam, "let us hear what Mr Dunshunner has got to say for himsel'. There's naething like hearing opinions before we put ony questions."

Thus adjured, I went through the whole of my political confession of faith, laying, of course, due stress upon the great and glorious Revolution of 1688, and my devotion to the cause of liberality. Toddy Tam and his companion heard me to the end without interruption.

"Gude—sae far gude, Mr Dunshunner," said Gills. "I see little to objeck to in your general principles; but for a' that I'm no going to pledge mysel until I ken mair o' ye. I hope, sir, that ye're using nae underhand influence—that there has been nae communings with the Clique, a body that I perfeckly abominate? Dreepdaily shall never be made a pocket burrow, so long as Thomas Gills has any influence in it."

I assured Mr Gills, what was the naked truth, that I had no knowledge whatever of the Clique.

"Ye see, Mr Dunshunner," continued Toddy Tam, "we are a gey and independent sort of people here, and we want to be independently represented. My gude friend, Mr Thamson here, can tell you that I have had a sair fecht against secret influence, and I am amaist feared that some men like the Provost owe me a grudge for it. He's a pawkie loon, the Provost, and kens brawly how to play his cards."

"He's a' that!" ejaculated Thomson.

"But I dinna care a snuff of tobacco for the haill of the Town Council, or the Clique. Give me a man of perfeck independence, and I'll support him. I voted for the last member sair against my conscience, for he was put up by the Clique, and never came near us: but I hope better things frae you, Mr Dunshunner, if you should happen to be returned. Mind, I don't say that I am going to support ye—I maun think about it; but if ye are a good man and a true, and no a nominee, I dare say that both my gude freend Thamson, and mysell, will no objeck to lend you a helping-hand."

This was all I could extract from Toddy Tam, and, though favourable, it was far from being satisfactory. There was a want, from some cause or another, of that cordial support which I had been led to anticipate; and I almost felt half inclined to abandon the enterprise altogether. However, after having issued my address, this would have looked like cowardice. I therefore diligently prosecuted my canvass, and contrived, in the course of the day, to encounter a great portion of the electors. Very few pledged themselves. Some surly independents refused point-blank, alleging that they did not intend to vote at all: others declined to promise, until they should know how Toddy Tam and other magnates were likely to go. My only pledges were from the sworn retainers of the Provost.

"Well, Mr Dunshunner, what success?" cried Miss Margaret Binkie, as I returned rather jaded from my circuit. "I hope you have found all the Dreepdaily people quite favourable?"

"Why no, Miss Binkie, not quite so much so as I could desire. Your townsmen here seem uncommonly slow in making up their minds to any thing."

"Oh, that is always their way. I have heard Papa say that the same thing took place at last election, and that nobody declared for Mr Whistlerigg until the very evening before the nomination. So you see you must not lose heart."

"If my visit to Dreepdaily should have no other result, Miss Binkie, I shall always esteem it one of the most fortunate passages of my life, since it has given me the privilege of your acquaintance."

"Oh, Mr Dunshunner! How can you speak so? I am afraid you are a great flatterer!" replied Miss Binkie, pulling at the same time a sprig of geranium to pieces. "But you look tired—pray take a glass of wine."

"By no means, Miss Binkie. A word from you is a sufficient cordial. Happy geranium!" said I picking up the petals.

Now I know very well that all this sort of thing is wrong, and that a man has no business to begin flirtations if he cannot see his way to the end of them. At the same time I hold the individual who dislikes flirtations to be a fool, and sometimes they are utterly irresistible.

"Now, Mr Dunshunner, I do beg you won't! Pray sit down on the sofa, for I am sure you are tired, and[Pg 273] if you like to listen I shall sing you a little ballad I have composed to-day."

"I would rather hear you sing than an angel," said I; "but pray do not debar me the privilege of standing by your side."

"Just as you please;" and Margaret began to rattle away on the harpsichord.

"O whaur hae ye been, Augustus, my son?
O whaur hae ye been, my winsome young man?
I hae been to the voters—mither, mak my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' canvassing, and fain wad lay me doun.

"O whaur are your plumpers, Augustus, my son?
O whaur are your split votes, my winsome young man?
They are sold to the Clique—Mither, mak my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' canvassing, and fain wad lay me doun.

"O I fear ye are cheated, Augustus, my son,
O I fear ye are done for, my winsome young man!
'I hae been to my true love—'"

I could stand this no longer.

"Charming, cruel girl!" cried I dropping on one knee,—"why will you thus sport with my feelings? Where else should I seek for my true love but here?"

I don't know what might have been the sequel of the scene, had not my good genius, in the shape of Mysie the servant girl, at this moment burst into the apartment. Miss Binkie with great presence of mind dropped her handkerchief, which afforded me an excellent excuse for recovering my erect position.

Mysie was the bearer of a billet, addressed to myself, and marked "private and particular." I opened it and read as follows.

"Sir—Some of those who are well disposed towards you have arranged to meet this night, and are desirous of a private interview at which full and mutual explanations may be given. It may be right to mention to you that the question of the currency will form the basis of any political arrangement; and it is expected that you will then be prepared to state explicitly your views with regard to bullion. Something more than pledges upon this subject will be required.

"As this meeting will be a strictly private one, the utmost secrecy must be observed. Be on the bridge at eleven o'clock this night, and you will be conducted to the appointed place. Do not fail as you value your own interest. Yours, &c.

"Shell Out."

"Who brought this letter, Mysie?" said I, considerably flustered at its contents.

"A laddie. He said there was nae answer, and ran awa'."

"No bad news, I hope, Mr Dunshunner?" said Margaret timidly.

I looked at Miss Binkie. Her eye was still sparkling, and her cheek flushed. She evidently was annoyed at the interruption, and expected a renewal of the conversation. But I felt that I had gone quite far enough, if not a little beyond the line of prudence. It is easy to make a declaration, but remarkably difficult to back out of it; and I began to think that, upon the whole, I had been a little too precipitate. On the plea, therefore, of business, I emerged into the open air; and, during a walk of a couple of miles, held secret communing with myself.

"Here you are again, Dunshunner, my fine fellow, putting your foot into it as usual! If it had not been for the arrival of the servant, you would have been an engaged man at this moment, and saddled with a father-in-law in the shape of a vender of molasses. Besides, it is my private opinion that you don't care sixpence about the girl. But it is the old story. This is the third time since Christmas that you have been on the point of committing matrimony, and if you don't look sharp after yourself, you will be sold an especial bargain! Now, frankly and fairly, do you not acknowledge yourself to be an idiot?"

I did. Men are generally very candid and open in their confessions to themselves; and the glaring absurdity of my conduct was admitted without any hesitation. I resolved to mend my ways accordingly, and to eschew for the future all tête-à-têtes with the too fascinating Maggie Binkie. That point disposed of, I returned to the mysterious missive. To say the truth,[Pg 274] I did not much like it. Had these been the days of Burking, I should have entertained some slight personal apprehension; but as there was no such danger, I regarded it either as a hoax, or as some electioneering ruse, the purpose of which I could not fathom. However, as it is never wise to throw away any chance, I determined to keep the appointment; and, if a meeting really were held, to give the best explanations in my power to my correspondent, Mr Shell Out, and his friends. In this mood of mind I returned to the Provost's dwelling.

The dinner that day was not so joyous as before. Old Binkie questioned me very closely as to the result of my visits, and seemed chagrined that Toddy Tam had not been more definite in his promises of support.

"Ye maun hae Tam," said the Provost. "He disna like the Clique—I hope naebody's listening—nor the Clique him; but he stands weel wi' the Independents, and the Seceders will go wi' him to a man. We canna afford to lose Gills. I'll send ower for him, and see if we canna talk him into reason. Haith, though, we'll need mair whisky, for Tam requires an unco deal of slockening!"

Tam, however, proved to be from home, and therefore the Provost and I were left to our accustomed duet. He complained grievously of my abstemiousness, which for divers reasons I thought it prudent to observe. An extra tumbler might again have made Miss Binkie a cherub in my eyes.

I am afraid that the young lady thought me a very changeable person. When the Provost fell asleep, she allowed the conversation to languish, until it reached that awful degree of pause which usually precedes the popping of the question. But this time I was on my guard, and held out with heroic stubbornness. I did not even launch out upon the subject of poetry, which Maggie rather cleverly introduced; for there is a decided affinity between the gay science and the tender passion, and it is difficult to preserve indifference when quoting from the "Loves of the Angels." I thought it safer to try metaphysics. It is not easy to extract an amorous avowal, even by implication, from a discourse upon the theory of consciousness; and I flatter myself that Kant, if he could have heard me that evening, would have returned home with some novel lights upon the subject. Miss Binkie seemed to think that I might have selected a more congenial theme; for she presently exhibited symptoms of pettishness, took up a book, and applied herself diligently to the perusal of a popular treatise upon knitting.

Shortly afterwards, the Provost awoke, and his daughter took occasion to retire. She held out her hand to me with rather a reproachful look, but, though sorely tempted, I did not indulge in a squeeze.

"That's a fine lassie—a very fine lassie!" remarked the Provost, as he severed a Welch rabbit into twain. "Ye are no a family man yet, Mr Dunshunner, and ye maybe canna comprehend what a comfort she has been to me. I'm auld now, and a thocht failing; but it is a great relief to me to ken that, when I am in my grave, Maggie winna be tocherless. I've laid up a braw nest-egg for her ower at the bank yonder."

I of course coincided in the praise of Miss Binkie, but showed so little curiosity as to the contents of the indicated egg, that the Provost thought proper to enlighten me, and hinted at eight thousand pounds. It is my positive belief that the worthy man expected an immediate proposal: if so, he was pretty egregiously mistaken. I could not, however, afford, at this particular crisis, to offend him, and accordingly stuck to generals. As the hour of meeting was approaching, I thought it necessary to acquaint him with the message I had received, in order to account for my exit at so unseasonable a time.

"It's verra odd,"—said the Provost,—"very odd! A' Dreepdaily should be in their beds by this time; and I canna think there could be a meeting without me hearing of it. It's just the reverse o' constitutional to keep folk trailing aboot the toun at this time o' nicht, and the brig is a queer place for a tryst."

"You do not surely apprehend, Mr Binkie, that there is any danger?"

"No just that, but you'll no be the waur o' a rung. Ony gait, I'll send to Saunders Caup, the toun-officer, to[Pg 275] be on the look-out. If any body offers to harm ye, be sure ye cry out, and Saunders will be up in a crack. He's as stieve as steel, and an auld Waterloo man."

As a considerable number of years has elapsed since the last great European conflict, I confess that my confidence in the capabilities of Mr Caup, as an ally, was inferior to my belief in his prowess. I therefore declined the proposal, but accepted the weapon; and, after a valedictory tumbler with my host, emerged into the darkened street.

CHAPTER IV.

Francis Osbaldistone, when he encountered the famous Rob Roy by night, was in all probability, notwithstanding Sir Walter's assertion to the contrary, in a very tolerable state of trepidation. At least I know that I was, as I neared the bridge of Dreepdaily. It was a nasty night of wind rain, and not a soul was stirring in the street—the surface of which did little credit to the industry of the paving department, judging from the number of dubs in which I found involuntary accommodation. As I floundered through the mire, I breathed any thing but benedictions on the mysterious Shell Out, who was the cause of my midnight wandering.

Just as I reached the bridge, beneath which the river was roaring rather uncomfortably, a ragged-looking figure started out from an entry. A solitary lamp, suspended from above, gave me a full view of this personage, who resembled an animated scarecrow.

He stared me full in the face, and then muttered, with a wink and a leer,—

"Was ye seekin' for ony body the nicht? Eh wow, man, but it's cauld!"

"Who may you be, my friend?" said I, edging off from my unpromising acquaintance.

"Wha may I be?" replied the other: "that's a gude one! Gosh, d'ye no ken me? Aum Geordie Dowie, the town bauldy, that's as weel kent as the Provost hissell."

To say the truth, Geordie was a very truculent-looking character to be an innocent. However, bauldies are usually harmless.

"And what have you got to say to me, Geordie?"

"If ye're the man I think ye are,
And ye're name begins wi' a D,
Just tak ye tae yer soople shanks,
And tramp alang wi' me,"

quavered the idiot, who, like many others, had a natural turn for poetry.

"And where are we going to, Geordie, my man?" said I in a soothing voice.

"Ye'll find that when we get there," replied the bauldy.

"Hey the bonnie gill-stoup!
Ho the bonnie gill-stoup!
Gie me walth o' barley bree,
And leeze me on the gill-stoup!"

"But you can at least tell me who sent you here, Geordie?" said I, anxious for further information before intrusting myself to such erratic guidance.

He of the gill-stoups lifted up his voice and sang—

"Cam' ye by Tweedside,
Or cam' ye by Flodden?
Met ye the deil
On the braes o' Culloden?

"Three imps o' darkness
I saw in a neuk,
Riving the red-coats,
And roasting the Deuk.

"Quo' ane o' them—'Geordie,
Gae down to the brig,
I'm yaup for my supper,
And fetch us a Whig.'"

"Ha! ha! ha! Hoo d'ye like that, my man? Queer freends ye've gotten noo, and ye'll need a lang spune to sup kail wi' them. But come awa'. I canna stand here the haill nicht listening to your havers."

Although the hint conveyed by Mr Dowie's ingenious verses was rather of an alarming nature, I made up my mind at once to run all risks and follow him. Geordie strode on, selecting apparently the most unfrequented lanes, and making, as I anxiously observed, for a remote part of the suburbs. Nor was his voice silent during our progress, for he kept regaling me with a series of snatches, which,[Pg 276] being for the most part of a supernatural and diabolical tendency, did not much contribute towards the restoration of my equanimity. At length he paused before a small house, the access to which was by a downward flight of steps.

"Ay—this is the place!" he muttered. "I ken it weel. It's no just bad the whusky that they sell, but they needna put sae muckle water intil't."

So saying, he descended the stair. I followed. There was no light in the passage, but the bauldy went forward, stumbling and groping in the dark. I saw a bright ray streaming through a crevice, and three distinct knocks were given.

"Come in, whaever ye are!" said a bluff voice; and I entered a low apartment, in which the candles looked yellow through a fog of tobacco-smoke. Three men were seated at a deal table, covered with the implements of national conviviality: and to my intense astonishment none of the three were strangers to me. I at once recognised the features of the taciturn M'Auslan, the wary Shanks, and the independent Mr Thomas Gills.

"There's the man ye wanted," said Geordie Dowie, slapping me familiarly on the shoulder.—"Whaur's the dram ye promised me?

"In Campbelltown my love was born;
Her mither in Glen Turrit!
But Ferintosh is the place for me.
For that's the strangest speerit!"

"Hand yer clavering tongue, ye common village!" said Toddy Tam. "Wad ye bring in the neebourhood on us? M'Auslan, gi'e the body his dram, and then see him out of the door. We manna be interfered wi' in our cracks."

M'Auslan obeyed. A large glass of alcohol was given to my guide, who swallowed it with a sigh of pleasure.

"Eh, man! that's gude and strang! It's no ilka whusky that'll mak Geordie Dowie pech. Fair fa' yer face, my bonny M'Auslan! could you no just gi'e us anither?"

"Pit him out!" said the remorseless Gills. "It's just extraordinar how fond the creature is o' drink!" and Geordie was forcibly ejected, after an ineffectual clutch at the bottle.

"Sit ye down, Mr Dunshunner," said Toddy Tam, addressing himself to me; "sit ye down, and mix yoursel' a tumbler. I daresay now ye was a little surprised at the note ye got this morning, eh?"

"Why, certainly, Mr Gills, I did not anticipate the pleasure——"

"Ay, I kenned ye wad wonder at it. But ilka place has it's ain way o' doing business, and this is ours—quiet and cozy, ye see. Ise warrant, too, ye thocht M'Auslan a queer ane because he wadna speak out?"

I laughed dubiously towards M'Auslan, who responded with the austerest of possible grins.

"And Shanks, too," continued Toddy Tam; "Shanks wadna speak out neither. They're auld-farrant hands baith o' them, Mr Dunshunner, and they didna like to promise ony thing without me. We three aye gang thegither."

"I hope, then, Mr Gills, that I may calculate upon your support and that of your friends. My views upon the currency——"

"Ay! that's speaking out at ance. Hoo muckle?"

"Ay! hoo muckle?" interposed M'Auslan, with a glistening eye.

"I really do not understand you, gentlemen."

"Troth, then, ye're slow at the uptak," remarked Gills, after a meaning pause. "I see we maun be clear and conceese. Hark ye, Mr Dunshunner,—wha do ye think we are?"

"Three most respectable gentlemen, for whom I have the highest possible regard."

"Hoots!—nonsense! D'ye no ken?"

"No," was my puzzled response.

"Weel, then," said Toddy Tam, advancing his lips to my ear, and pouring forth an alcoholic whisper—"we three can do mair than ye think o'.—It's huz that is the Clique!"

I recoiled in perfect amazement, and gazed in succession upon the countenances of the three compatriots. Yes—there could be no doubt about it—I was in the presence of the tremendous junta of Dreepdaily; the veil of Isis had been lifted up, and the principal figure upon the pedestal was the magnanimous and independent[Pg 277] Gills. Always a worshipper of genius, I began to entertain a feeling little short of veneration towards Toddy Tam. The admirable manner in which he had contrived to conceal his real power from the public—his assumed indignation and horror of the Clique—and his hold over all classes of the electors, demonstrated him at once to be a consummate master of the political art. Machiavelli could not have devised a subtler stratagem than Gills.

"That's just the plain truth o' the matter," observed Shanks, who had hitherto remained silent. "We three is the Clique, and we hae the representation o' the burrow in our hands. Now, to speak to the point, if we put our names down on your Committee, you carry the election, and we're ready to come to an understanding upon fair and liberal grounds."

And we did come to an understanding upon grounds which might be justly characterised as fair on the one side, and certainly liberal on the other. There was of course some little discussion as to the lengths I was expected to go in financial matters; and it was even hinted that, with regard to bullion, the Honourable Mr Pozzlethwaite might possibly entertain as enlarged views as myself. However, we fortunately succeeded in adjusting all our differences. I not only promised to give the weight of my name to a bill, but exhibited, upon the spot, a draft which met with the cordial approbation of my friends, and which indeed was so satisfactory, that they did not offer to return it.

"That's a' right then," said Toddy Tam, inserting the last-mentioned document in a greasy pocket-book. "Our names go down on your Committy, and the election is as gude as won!"

An eldritch laugh at a little window, which communicated with the street, at this moment electrified the speaker. There was a glimpse of a human face seen through the dingy pane.

A loud oath burst from the lips of Toddy Thomas.

"Some deevil has been watching us!" he cried. "Rin, M'Auslan, rin for your life, and grip him afore he can turn the corner! I wad not for a thoosand pund that this nicht's wark were to get wind!"

M'Auslan rushed, as desired; but all his efforts were ineffectual. The fugitive, whoever he was, had very prudently dived into the darkness, and the draper returned without his victim.

"What is to be done?" said I. "It strikes me, gentlemen, that this may turn out to be a very unpleasant business."

"Nae fears—nae fears!" said Toddy Tam, looking, however, the reverse of comfortable. "It will hae been some callant trying to fley us, that's a'. But, mind ye—no a word o' this to ony living human being, and aboon a' to Provost Binkie. I've keepit him for four years in the dark, and it never wad do to show the cat the road to the kirn!"

I acquiesced in the precautionary arrangement, and we parted; Toddy Tam and his friends having, by this time, disposed of all the surplus fluid. It was very late before I reached the Provost's dwelling.

I suppose that next morning I had overslept myself; for, when I awoke, I heard Miss Binkie in full operation at the piano. This time, however, she was not singing alone, for a male voice was audible in conjunction with hers.

"It would be in amazing consolation to me if somebody would carry off that girl!" thought I, as I proceeded with my toilet. "I made a deuced fool of myself to her yesterday; and, to say the truth, I don't very well know how to look her in the face!"

However, there was no help for it, so I proceeded down stairs. The first individual I recognised in the breakfast parlour was M'Corkindale. He was engaged in singing, along with Miss Binkie, some idiotical catch about a couple of albino mice.

"Bob!" cried I. "my dear Bob, I am delighted to see you;—what on earth has brought you here?"

"A gig and a foundered mare," replied the matter-of-fact M'Corkindale. "The fact is, that I was anxious to hear about your canvass; and, as there was nothing to do in Glasgow—by the way, Dunshunner, the banks have put on the screw again—I resolved to satisfy my own curiosity in person. I arrived this morning, and Miss Binkie has been kind enough to ask me to stay breakfast."

"I am sure both papa and I are[Pg 278] always happy to see Mr M'Corkindale," said Margaret, impressively.

"I am afraid," said I, "that I have interrupted your music: I did not know, M'Corkindale, that you were so eminent a performer."

"I hold with Aristotle," replied Bob modestly, "that music and political economy are at the head of all the sciences. But it is very seldom that one can meet with so accomplished a partner as Miss Binkie."

"Oh, ho!" thought I. But here the entrance of the Provost diverted the conversation, and we all sat down to breakfast. Old Binkie was evidently dying to know the result of my interview on the previous evening, but I was determined to keep him in the dark. Bob fed like an ogre, and made prodigious efforts to be polite.

After breakfast, on the pretext of business we went out for a walk. The economist lighted his cigar.

"Snug quarters these, Dunshunner, at the Provost's."

"Very. But, Bob, things are looking rather well here. I had a negotiation last night which has as good as settled the business."

"I am very glad to hear it—Nice girl, Miss Binkie; very pretty eyes, and a good foot and ankle."

"An unexceptionable instep. What do you think!—I have actually discovered the Clique at last."

"You don't say so! Do you think old Binkie has saved money?"

"I am sure he has. I look upon Dreepdaily as pretty safe now; and I propose going over this afternoon to Drouthielaw. What would you recommend?"

"I think you are quite right; but somebody should stay here to look after your interests. There is no depending upon these fellows. I'll tell you what—while you are at Drouthielaw I shall remain here, and occupy your quarters. The Committee will require some man of business to drill them in, and I don't care if I spare you the time."

I highly applauded this generous resolution; at the same time I was not altogether blind to the motive. Bob, though an excellent fellow in the main, did not usually sacrifice himself to his friends; and I began to suspect that Maggie Binkie—with whom, by the way, he had some previous acquaintance—was somehow or other connected with his enthusiasm. As matters stood, I of course entertained no objection: on the contrary, I thought it no breach of confidence to repeat the history of the nest-egg.

Bob pricked up his ears.

"Indeed!" said he; "that is a fair figure as times go; and, to judge from appearances, the stock in trade must be valuable."

"Cargoes of sugar," said I, "oceans of rum, and no end whatever of molasses!"

"A very creditable chairman, indeed, for your Committee, Dunshunner," replied Bob. "Then I presume you agree that I should stay here, whilst you prosecute your canvass?"

I assented, and we returned to the house. In the course of the forenoon the list of my Committee was published, and, to the great joy of the Provost, the names of Thomas Gill, Alexander M'Auslan, and Simon Shanks appeared. He could not, for the life of him, understand how they had all come forward so readily. A meeting of my friends was afterwards held, at which I delivered a short harangue upon the constitution of 1688, which seemed to give general satisfaction; and before I left the room, I had the pleasure of seeing the Committee organised, with Bob officiating as secretary. It was the opinion of every one that Pozzlethwaite had not a chance. I then partook of a light luncheon, and after bidding farewell to Miss Binkie, who, on the whole, seemed to take matters very coolly, I drove off for Drouthielaw. I need not relate my adventures in that respectable burgh. They were devoid of any thing like interest, and not quite so satisfactory in their result as I could have wished. However, the name of Gills was known even at that distance, and his views had considerable weight with some of the religious denominations. So far as I was concerned, I had no sinecure of it. It cost me three nights' hard drinking to conciliate the leaders of the Anabaptists, and at least three more before the chiefs of the Antinomians would surrender. As to the Old Light gentry, I gave them up in despair, for I could not hope to have survived the consequences of so serious a conflict.

 [Pg 279]

CHAPTER V.

Parliament was at length dissolved; the new writs were issued, and the day of nomination fixed for the Dreepdaily burghs. For a time it appeared to myself, and indeed to almost every one else, that my return was perfectly secure. Provost Binkie was in great glory, and the faces of the unknown Clique were positively radiant with satisfaction. But a storm was brewing in another quarter, upon which we had not previously calculated.

The Honourable Mr Pozzlethwaite, my opponent, had fixed his head-quarters in Drouthielaw, and to all appearance was making very little progress in Dreepdaily. Indeed, in no sense of the word could Pozzlethwaite be said to be popular. He was a middle-aged man, as blind as a bat, and, in order to cure the defect, he ornamented his visage with an immense pair of green spectacles, which, it may be easily conceived, did not add to the beauty of his appearance. In speech he was slow and verbose, in manner awkward, in matter almost wholly unintelligible. He professed principles which he said were precisely the same as those advocated by the late Jeremy Bentham; and certainly, if he was correct in this, I do not regret that my parents omitted to bring me up at the feet of the utilitarian Gamaliel. In short, Paul was prosy to a degree, had not an atom of animation in his whole composition, and could no more have carried a crowd along with him than he could have supported Atlas upon his shoulders. A portion, however, of philosophic weavers, and a certain section of the Seceders had declared in his favour; and, moreover, it was just possible that he might gain the suffrages of some of the Conservatives. Kittleweem, the Tory burgh, had hitherto preserved the appearance of strict neutrality. I had attempted to address the electors of that place, but I found that the hatred of Dreepdaily and of its Clique was more powerful than my eloquence; and, somehow or other, the benighted savages did not comprehend the merits of the Revolution Settlement of 1688, and were as violently national as the Celtic race before the invention of trews. Kittleweem had equipped half a regiment for Prince Charles in the Forty-five, and still piqued itself on its staunch Episcopacy. A Whig, therefore, could hardly expect to be popular in such a den of prejudice. By the advice of M'Corkindale, I abstained from any further efforts, which might possibly have tended to exasperate the electors, and left Kittleweem to itself, in the hope that it would maintain an armed neutrality.

And so it probably might have done, but for an unexpected occurrence. Two days before the nomination, a new candidate appeared on the field. Sholto Douglas was the representative of one of the oldest branches of his distinguished name, and the race to which he more immediately belonged had ever been foremost in the ranks of Scottish chivalry and patriotism. In fact, no family had suffered more from their attachment to the cause of legitimacy than the Douglases of Inveriachan. Forfeiture after forfeiture had cut down their broad lands to a narrow estate, and but for an unexpected Indian legacy, the present heir would have been marching as a subaltern in a foot regiment. But a large importation of rupees had infused new life and spirit into the bosom of Sholto Douglas. Young, eager, and enthusiastic, he determined to rescue himself from obscurity; and the present state of the Dreepdaily burghs appeared to offer a most tempting opportunity. Douglas was, of course, Conservative to the backbone; but, more than that, he openly proclaimed himself a friend of the people, and a supporter of the rights of labour.

"Confound the fellow!" said Bob M'Corkindale to me, the morning after Sholto's address had been placarded through the burghs, "who would have thought of an attack of this kind from such a quarter. Have you seen his manifesto, Dunshunner?"

"Yes—here it is in the Patriot. The editor, however, gives him it soundly in the leading article. I like his dogmatic style and wholesale denunciation of the Tories."

[Pg 280]"I'll tell you what it is, though—I look upon this as any thing but a joke. Douglas is evidently not a man to stand upon old aristocratic pretensions. He has got the right sow by the ear this time, and, had he started a little earlier, might have roused the national spirit to a very unpleasant pitch. You observe what he says about Scotland, the neglect of her local interests, and the manner in which she has been treated, with reference to Ireland?"

"I do. And you will be pleased to recollect that but for yourself, something of the same kind would have appeared in my address."

"If you mean that as a reproach, Dunshunner, you are wrong. How was it possible to have started you as a Whig upon patriotic principles?"

"Well—that's true enough. At the same time, I cannot help wishing that we had said a word or two about the interests to the north of the Tweed."

"What is done cannot be undone. We must now stick by the Revolution Settlement."

"Do you know, Bob, I think we have given them quite enough of that same settlement already. Those fellows at Kittleweem laughed in my face the last time that I talked about it, and I am rather afraid that it won't go down on the hustings."

"Try the sanatory condition of the towns, then, and universal conciliation to Ireland," replied the Economist. "I have given orders to hire two hundred Paddies, who have come over for the harvest, at a shilling a-head, and of course you may depend upon their voices, and also their shillelahs, if needful. I think we should have a row. It would be a great matter to make Douglas unpopular; and, with a movement of my little finger, I could turn out a whole legion of navigators."

"No, Bob, you had better not. It is just possible they might make a mistake, and shy brickbats at the wrong candidate. It will be safer, I think, to leave the mob to itself: at the same time, we shall not be the worse for the Tipperary demonstration. And how looks the canvass?"

"Tolerably well, but not perfectly secure. The Clique has done its very best, but at the same, time there is undeniably a growing feeling against it. Many people grumble about its dominion, and are fools enough to say that they have a right to think for themselves."

"Could you not circulate a report that Pozzlethwaite is the man of the Clique?"

"The idea is ingenious, but I fear it would hardly work. Dreepdaily is well known to be the head-quarters of the confederation, and the name of Provost Binkie is inseparably connected with it."

"By the way, M'Corkindale, it struck me that you looked rather sweet upon Miss Binkie last evening."

"I did. In fact I popped the question," replied Robert calmly.

"Indeed! Were you accepted?"

"Conditionally. If we gain the election she becomes Mrs M'Corkindale—if we lose, I suppose I shall have to return to Glasgow in a state of celibacy."

"A curious contract, certainly! Well, Bob, since your success is involved in mine, we must fight a desperate battle."

"I wish, though, that Mr Sholto Douglas had been kind enough to keep out of the way," observed M'Corkindale.

The morning of the day appointed for the nomination dawned upon the people of Dreepdaily with more than usual splendour. For once, there was no mist upon the surrounding hills, and the sky was clear as sapphire. I rose early to study my speech, which had received the finishing touches from M'Corkindale on the evening before; and I flatter myself it was as pretty a piece of Whig rhetoric as ever was spouted from a hustings. Toddy Tam, indeed, had objected, upon seeing a draft, that "there was nae banes intil it;" but the political economist was considered by the committee a superior authority on such subjects to Gills. After having carefully conned it over, I went down stairs, where the whole party were already assembled. A large blue and yellow flag, with the inscription, "Dunshunner and the Good Cause!" was hung out from the window, to the intense delight of a gang of urchins, who testified to the popularity of the candidate by ceaseless vociferation to "poor out." The[Pg 281] wall opposite, however, bore some memoranda of an opposite tendency, for I could see some large placards, newly pasted up, on which the words, "Electors of Dreepdaily! you are sold by the Clique!" were conspicuous in enormous capitals. I heard, too, something like a ballad chanted, in which my name seemed to be coupled, irreverently, with that of the independent Gills.

Provost Binkie—who, in common with the rest of the company, wore upon his bosom an enormous blue and buff cockade, prepared by the fair hands of his daughter—saluted me with great cordiality. I ought to observe that the Provost had been kept as much as possible in the dark regarding the actual results of the canvass. He was to propose me, and it was thought that his nerves would be more steady if he came forward under the positive conviction of success.

"This is a great day, Mr Dunshunner—a grand day for Dreepdaily," he said. "A day, if I may sae speak, o' triumph and rejoicing! The news o' this will rin frae one end o' the land to the ither—for the e'en o' a' Scotland is fixed on Dreepdaily, and the stench auld Whig principles is sure to prevail, even like a mighty river that rins down in spate to the sea!"

I justly concluded that this figure of speech formed part of the address to the electors which for the two last days had been simmering in the brain of the worthy magistrate, along with the fumes of the potations he had imbibed, as incentives to the extraordinary effort. Of course I took care to appear to participate in his enthusiasm. My mind, however, was very far from being thoroughly at ease.

As twelve o'clock, which was the hour of nomination, drew near, there was a great muster at my committee-room. The band of the Independent Tee-totallers, who to a man were in my interest, was in attendance. They had been well primed with ginger cordial, and were obstreperous to a gratifying degree.

Toddy Tam came up to me with a face of the colour of carnation.

"I think it richt to tell ye, Mr Dunshunner, that there will be a bit o' a bleeze ower yonder at the hustings. The Kittleweem folk hae come through in squads, and Lord Hartside's tenantry have marched in a body, wi' Sholto Douglas's colours flying."

"And the Drouthielaw fellows—what has become of them?"

"Od, they're no wi' us either—they're just savage at the Clique! Gudesake, Mr Dunshunner, tak tent, and dinna say a word aboot huz. I intend mysell to denounce the body, and may be that will do us gude."

I highly approved of Mr Gills' determination, and as the time had now come, we formed in column, and marched towards the hustings with the tee-total band in front, playing a very lugubrious imitation of "Glorious Apollo."

The other candidates had already taken their places. The moment I was visible to the audience, I was assailed by a volley of yells, among which, cries of "Doun wi' the Clique!"—"Wha bought them?"—"Nae nominee!"—"We've had eneuch o' the Whigs!" etcetera, were distinctly audible. This was not at all the kind of reception I had bargained for;—however, there was nothing for it but to put on a smiling face, and I reciprocated courtesies as well as I could with both of my honourable opponents.

During the reading of the writ and the Bribery Act, there was a deal of joking, which I presume was intended to be good-humoured. At the same time there could be no doubt that it was distinctly personal. I heard my name associated with epithets of any thing but an endearing description, and, to say the truth, if choice had been granted, I would far rather have been at Jericho than in the front of the hustings at Dreepdaily. A man must be, indeed, intrepid, and conscious of a good cause, who can oppose himself without blenching to the objurgation of an excited mob.

The Honourable Paul Pozzlethwaite, on account of his having been the earliest candidate in the field, was first proposed by a town-councillor of Drouthielaw. This part of the ceremony appeared to excite[Pg 282] but little interest, the hooting and cheering being pretty equally distributed.

It was now our turn.

"Gang forrard, Provost, and be sure ye speak oot!" said Toddy Tam; and Mr Binkie advanced accordingly.

Thereupon such a row commenced as I never had witnessed before. Yelling is a faint word to express the sounds of that storm of extraordinary wrath which descended upon the head of the devoted Provost. "Clique! Clique!" resounded on every side, and myriads of eyes, ferocious as those of the wild-cat, were bent scowlingly on my worthy proposer. In vain did he gesticulate—in vain implore. The voice of Demosthenes—nay, the deep bass of Stentor himself—could not have been heard amidst that infernal uproar; so that, after working his arms for a time like the limbs of a telegraph, and exerting himself until he became absolutely swart in the face, Binkie was fain to give it up, and retired amidst a whirlwind of abuse.

"May the deil fly awa' wi' the hail pack o' them!" said he, almost blubbering with excitement and indignation. "Wha wad ever hae thocht to have seen the like o' this? and huz, too, that gied them the Reform Bill! Try your hand at them, Tam, for my heart's amaist broken!"

The bluff independent character of Mr Gills, and his reputed purity from all taint of the Clique, operated considerably in his favour. He advanced amidst general cheering, and cries of "Noo for Toddy Tam!" "Let's hear Mr Gills!" and the like; and as he tossed his hat aside and clenched his brawny fist, he really looked the incarnation of a sturdy and independent elector. His style, too, was decidedly popular—

"Listen tae me!" he said, "and let thae brawlin', braggin', bletherin' idiwits frae Drouthielaw haud their lang clavering tongues, and no keep rowtin' like a herd o' senseless nowte! (Great cheering from Dreepdaily and Kittleweem—considerable disapprobation from Drouthielaw.) I ken them weel, the auld haverils! (cheers.) But you, my freends, that I have dwalt wi' for twenty years, is it possible that ye can believe for one moment that I wad submit to be dictated to by a Clique? (Cries of "no! no!" "It's no you, Tam!" and confusion.) No me? I dinna thank ye for that! Wull ony man daur to say to my face, that I ever colleagued wi' a pack that wad buy and sell the haill of us as readily as ye can deal wi' sheep's-heads in the public market? (Laughter.) Div ye think that if Mr Dunshunner was ony way mixed up wi' that gang, I wad be here this day tae second him? Div ye think——"

Here Mr Gills met with a singular interruption. A remarkable figure attired in a red coat and cocked-hat, at one time probably the property of a civic officer, and who had been observed for some time bobbing about in front of the hustings, was now elevated upon the shoulders of a yeoman, and displayed to the delighted spectators the features of Geordie Dowie.

"Ay, Toddy Tam, are ye there, man?" cried Geordie with a malignant grin. "What was you and the Clique doin' at Nanse Finlayson's on Friday nicht?"

"What was it, Geordie? What was it?" cried a hundred voices.

"Am I to be interrupted by a natural?" cried Gills, looking, however, considerably flushed in the face.

"What hae ye dune wi' the notes, Tam, that the lang chield up by there gied ye? And whaur's your freends, Shanks and M'Auslan? See that ye steek to the window neist time, ma man!" cried Geordie with demoniac ferocity.

This was quite enough for the mob, who seldom require any excuse for a display of their hereditary privileges. A perfect hurricane of hissing, and of yelling arose, and Gills, though he fought like a hero, was at last forced to retire from the contest. Had Geordie Dowie's windpipe been within his grasp at that moment, I would not have insured for any amount the life of the perfidious spy.

Sholto Douglas was proposed and seconded amidst great cheering, and then Pozzlethwaite rose to speak. I do not very well recollect what he said, for I had quite enough to do in thinking about, myself, and the Honourable Paul would have conferred a material obligation upon me, if he had[Pg 283] talked for an hour longer. At length my turn came.

"Electors of Dreepdaily!"—

That was the whole of my speech, at least the whole of it that was audible to any one human being. Humboldt, if I recollect right, talks in one of his travels of having somewhere encountered a mountain composed of millions of entangled snakes, whose hissing might have equalled that of the transformed legions of Pandemonium. I wish Humboldt, for the sake of scientific comparison, could have been upon the hustings that day! Certain I am, that the sibilation did not leave my ears for a fortnight afterwards, and even now, in my slumbers, I am haunted by a wilderness of asps! However, at the urgent entreaty of M'Corkindale, I went on for about ten minutes, though I was quivering in every limb, and as pale as a ghost; and in order that the public might not lose the benefit of my sentiments, I concluded by handing a copy of my speech, interlarded with fictitious cheers, to the reporter for the Dreepdaily Patriot. That document may still be seen by the curious in the columns of that impartial newspaper.

I will state this for Sholto Douglas, that he behaved like a perfect gentleman. There was in his speech no triumph over the discomfiture which the other candidates had received; on the contrary, he rather rebuked the audience for not having listened to us with greater patience. He then went on with his oration. I need hardly say it was a national one, and it was most enthusiastically cheered.

All that I need mention about the show of hands is, that it was not by any means hollow in my favour.

That afternoon we were not quite so lively in the Committee-room as usual. The serenity of Messrs Gills, M'Auslan, and Shanks,—and, perhaps, I may add of myself—was a good deal shaken by the intelligence that a broadside with the tempting title of "Full and Particular Account of an interview between the Clique and Mr Dunshunner, held at Nanse Finlayson's Tavern, on Friday last, and how they came to terms. By an Eyewitness," was circulating like wildfire through the streets. To have been beaten by a Douglas was nothing, but to have been so artfully entrapped by a bauldy!

Provost Binkie, too, was dull and dissatisfied. The reception he had met with in his native town was no doubt a severe mortification, but the feeling that he had been used as a catspaw and implement of the Clique, was, I suspected, uppermost in his mind. Poor man! We had great difficulty that evening in bringing him to his sixth tumbler.

Even M'Corkindale was hipped. I own I was surprised at this, for I knew of old the indefatigable spirit and keen energy of my friend, and I thought that with such a stake as he had in the contest, he would even have redoubled his exertions. Such, however, was not the case.

I pass over the proceedings at the poll. From a very early hour it became perfectly evident that my chance was utterly gone; and, indeed, had it been possible, I should have left Dreepdaily before the close. At four o'clock the numbers stood thus:—

We had an awful scene in the Committee-room. Gills, who had been drinking all day, shed copious floods of tears; Shanks was disconsolate; and M'Auslan refused to be comforted. Of course I gave the usual pledge, that on the very first opportunity I should come forward again to reassert the independence of the burghs, now infamously sacrificed to a Conservative; but the cheering at this announcement was of the very faintest description, and I doubt whether any one believed me. Two hours afterwards I was miles away from Dreepdaily.

I have since had letters from that place, which inform me that the Clique is utterly discomfited; that for some days the component members of it might be seen wandering through the streets, and pouring their husky sorrows into the ears of every stray listener whom they could find, until they became a positive nuisance.[Pg 284] My best champion, however, was the Editor of the Patriot. That noble and dauntless individual continued for weeks afterwards to pour forth Jeremiads upon my defeat, and stigmatised my opponents and their supporters as knaves, miscreants, and nincompoops. I was, he maintained, the victim of a base conspiracy, and the degraded town of Dreepdaily would never be able thereafter to rear its polluted head in the Royal Convention of Burghs.

Whilst these things were going on in Dreepdaily, I was closeted with M'Corkindale in Glasgow.

"So, then, you have lost your election," said he.

"And you have lost your wife."

"Neither of the two accidents appear to be irreparable," replied Robert.

"How so? Do you still think of Miss Binkie?"

"By no means. I made some little inquiry the day before the election, and discovered that a certain nest-egg was enormously exaggerated, if not altogether fictitious."

"Well, Bob, there is certainly nobody like yourself for getting information."

"I do my best. May I inquire into the nature of your future movements?"

"I have not yet made up my mind. These election matters put every thing else out of one's head. Let me see—August is approaching, and I half promised the Captain of M'Alcohol to spend a few weeks with him at his shooting-quarters."

"Are you aware, Dunshunner, that one of your bills falls due at the Gorbals Bank upon Tuesday next?"

"Mercy upon me, Bob! I had forgotten all about it."

I did not go to the Highlands after all. The fatigue and exertion we had undergone rendered it quite indispensable that my friend Robert and I should relax a little. Accordingly we have both embarked for a short run upon the Continent.

Boulogue-sur-Mer.
12th August 1847.

[Pg 285]

THE CRUSADE OF THE CHILDREN.

Some years ago, while the pastoral charge of the little Saxon village of Grönstetten, from some neglect in the proper authorities, remained vacant, that neighborhood was visited by a strange religious epidemic. It had formerly, indeed, been one of the most cheerful places; standing together, house by house, in the midst of a large, well cultivated plain, on which the fields, scarcely marked out from one another save by neighbourly tokens, stretched with their green level to the side, of the woods, only varied by the different colours of the several crops. The little old church, surrounded by a few spreading trees, stood at the end of the village on some higher ground, raising its gilded steeple into the blue air, so that it always seemed to be touched by an evening sun. Neither wall nor fence was to be seen, and the surrounding level looked like the single farm of a brotherhood; the peasants, noticing of a fine Sunday afternoon how the season had advanced their wheat or flax, appeared to a stranger almost as much interested in one patch as in another. Various games and exercises went on amongst the young men and boys after work and school hours, on the piece of common near the churchyard, while the young maidens and the old people with their children stood by. Nowhere were holidays, occasions of marriage, and old festival traditions more fondly kept; in every house at Christmas, while snow was on the ground and on the bare woods, the window shone so brightly against the icicles hanging from the roof, as the Christmas-tree, with its prettily-adorned branches, was lighted-up; and the whole united family surprised each other with carefully prepared gifts. Then at Easter time, when spring was bursting out of trees and earth, and the birds beginning to sing again, you might have seen with what joy the children rolled their coloured paschal eggs along the grass, parents entering into their feelings with smiles. It was a serious business for them to dress and water the graves under the church wall, wreathing the small head-stones with garlands of fresh wild-flowers, gathered about the ruins of the old castle, which rose on a neighbouring height. Nor did many evenings ever pass that there was not some meeting of the young people in one of the village houses, where the girls brought their spindles, or pieces of cloth to make a bedcover for the dame; while the youths stood by to seize the opportunity for sundry advances of rustic courtship. All this gaiety was by no means inconsistent with the industry in which this resembled other villages of the district; and as little did it result from any want of earnestness and serious thought in matters of religion, or in the attendance upon those services to which the church in due season called every one. For it was while the venerable old pastor lived, that this state of things lasted at Grönstetten. The good man himself diffused by his presence among them, as well as by his precepts, a spirit not only of devotion, but of cheerfulness; nor would he have failed, in case of any causeless absence from church, or on occasion of a breach of morality, to visit, and faithfully reprove the offender. Even after his death, when the services were only occasionally performed by strangers, the change of feeling in the village would not have occurred, but for some other circumstances; doubtless the people themselves possessed sufficient independence and ground of faith to pursue their lives according, to the true temper of rational men, had none interfered with them.

But, about this time, there came frequently to Grönstetten several preachers of a new and almost unknown sect, and of a cast altogether different from what the people had been accustomed to. These persons considered that in time past at Grönstetten all had been in a manner spiritually dead; that men there, indeed, were as good as asleep to all eternal realities, or were at best dreamers of false peace. Not only[Pg 286] did they, in their fervid addresses, exaggerate the vileness of human nature, and set it against itself, but the idea of goodness placed by them before the mind, seemed one wholly different from its own direction of progress, if not altogether unattainable. Many simple natural affections were by them almost represented as sinful, while they looked upon the customary diversions in the light of unholy levities, and upon the old holiday practices as traditions quite heathenish. In short, the heaven to which they pointed so mystically, appeared to consist in an utter contrast to all conceptions which were ever formed on earth, to every joy which had been felt by men, even in their moments of purest contact with each other and nature; the reward of some great sacrifice and toil, which were to be undergone. There was much talk of strange, unutterable changes to take place on the earth, for which preparation was to be made; and the new preachers exulted in the interpretation of prophecies, which they fancied could be understood beforehand, in making men uneasy at thought of all outward coming of the Lord, of wars, and destruction, which would make the world worse than ever it had been. Their meeting-house, opened in an old barn, was at first frequented chiefly by women, since the men and older people had a natural dislike to innovation; but eventually the very newness of the doctrine began to gain ground for it, and the fact of its being so distinct from that of the late pastor, only tended to reflect upon his memory. There is, certainly, something in our nature, by which those things most opposed to it, as in a kind of fascination at times lay hold of it; so in hateful dreams or ghost-fears. Especially if the soul be not regularly furnished with supplies of healthy and cheerful enlightenment; and thus it was that this kind of unearth-like religion, imported by men of zeal for the most part sincere and also assisted by sympathy with other places in the neighbourhood, exerted so much influence at the village of Grönstetten. The first symptom of this was exhibited in a certain secret discomfort at home, a sense of division between persons of the same household, which made them look strangely and wonderingly on each other. It seemed, indeed, to be a principal and favourite object of the new-comers to gain over the female members; they aimed their chief blow at the family sacredness, alleging the words, "I am come to set the husband against the wife, the son against the father, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." People came to feel nature also as discordant with themselves; the very grass and trees, and the quietness of the air, seemed to many not so good as before; the mute, inanimate things appeared almost as so many tempting wiles of a hidden power which was below, working through all, and meaning man evil. One would have thought, as they stood listlessly at their doors of an evening, looking beyond into the distance, that they would have taken up staff or scrip and set out on pilgrimage, had they but known where to go, or what to do. After all, however, this state of matters wore itself out, and gradually returned to something like the former; nor would any one have been the worse, rather, in truth, a little wiser, upon the eventual settlement of a new pastor at Grönstetten. Only, indeed, that a few who had not joined in the late feeling, and who had previously been united to their neighbours by intercourse, had for the time seemed to be excluded from their better sympathies, became more worldly, and were inclined to scoff at holy things. As in all cases of extremes, the bad had grown more addicted to vice, none stretching out to them a better hand; and it was long ere a reviving sense of brotherhood did much to raise them higher.

Still the most peculiar feature of this excitement was, that, as if its impulse must extend through every class, the younger people latterly showed signs of a religious emotion, yet stronger and more remarkable than in those less subject to impressions from their years. What they saw and heard in others had sunk into the children's minds, which brooded upon it as if upon the sense of some dispeace, and contradiction at the heart of domestic forms; as if to their[Pg 287] clearer instinct various inconsistencies in the practice of life, nay in the parental relations, had been revealed; yet for which the true remedy had been by them misconceived. This appeared with many of them partly in the shape of impatience to go forth into the world, a weariness when the sun light, shining into the cottage, stole from chair to chair, and the clock ticked monotonously against the wall. Something that was to be done and suffered seemed to lie far without; the object of their lives and souls, from which friends, parents, with their daily earth-customs, were tyrannically withholding them. But chiefly, perhaps, from ill-judged, dealing with this vague desire, was it frequently betrayed in enthusiastic words, in a sort of unaccountable, ecstasy in trances, which some reckoned prophetic. Instead of the life-like, careless, childish games, and little quaint devices, which formerly enlivened the house or open air, they gathered together praying, as if for the fulfilment of an unspeakable distantlonging; they went up the street, or across the fields, singing devout hymns. One or another at home would stand up by the table, unabashed by the presence of elder people, and speak from the seeming influence of some internal communication, mystical, half-articulate words, and piously-sounding reproofs or exhortations. It was in vain to chide or chastise them; trustful obedience, humility, content with home, simple duties, cheerful playfulness, were during this interval gone. Parents expected every day to see the childish train assemble and depart from the village on some rapture-wandering; and they were careful every night to lock the doors, and see their family in bed.

None had watched throughout the course of this remarkable visitation, more unaffected by its power than the steadfast, intelligent old Wendel, schoolmaster of Grönstetten; but, especially, he observed its effect upon his own peculiar charge with no small measure of careful anxiety. One fine afternoon, towards the end of school-time, he dismissed the children from their tasks, and gathering them around his seat near the open casements, intimated his intention of relating to them a story from true history, as was occasionally his custom. The old dame his wife, and his daughter, were seated behind him with their work; and the venerable gray-haired man looked cheerfully on the crowd of sober young faces in front, as if he would have diffused somewhat of the spirit of childhood again from his own experience into their innocence. A book from which he had been reading at mid-day lay upon his little desk. Far beyond, out in the upper air shown through the window, a golden sunlight came over the cool green woods, and fell upon the gray towers of the old ruined castle of Grönstetten.

"Children," said he, "yonder old castle takes us back in thought to the time of which I would speak. You must know, that in the old time things were very different from what they are now, although the same green earth and blue air enclosed between them men and children who were at heart the same as ourselves. However, the world was then in great darkness and ignorance: there were no books for children, nor picture's such as you have here to show you what is in other countries; nor were there any schools except for churchmen. The good Heavenly Father, who is always teaching men, doth it by degrees; and for a long time it was only the priests and learned clerks who knew any thing of what God had been doing with the world. This knowledge remained chiefly in their heads; but when the help of strong arms against unbelievers was needed, the time came in which warriors and people also were partly let into the secret. The heart of all Christendom was stirred with the thought that pilgrims were denied access to the place where such great matters had been transacted, and that the holy ground of our Saviour's burial was in the keeping of infidels, as if once more the stone which had been rolled away was put back, and Christ were buried again. Warriors and workmen, having now a part, as it were, in the Church, set out in multitudes to rescue Jerusalem. It was then, too, that the Lord of Grönstetten left his castle, seeking to expiate[Pg 288] many a crime he had committed by travelling so many leagues, and striking so many blows. All this was, no doubt, calculated to teach those who went, and those to whom they afterwards returned, not to place their heaven on earth, nor to make up for concerns of the soul by bodily things; when they found, there also, enemies of flesh and blood, and after all the sepulchre empty. Long after this, when the enthusiasm of men about the Holy Land was beginning to fail, and they were looking for the road to Heaven in other ways, the lingering spirit which had once led them forth, seemed to descend in a simpler and purer way into the hearts of children. You may be sure that to Them at home, where all lessons and thoughts were learnt out of the shape of visible things, the sight of those brilliant pageants ever passing towards the East—the tales of pilgrims who came from thence—had been to them as a longing dream. The natural feeling of the young is like that of a heaven near to them—of a holy delight to be at once gained, and without conception of the long, difficult way between, or even of the real entrance to it. The firmament which lies overhead appears to descend upon the very earth at a distance, and all visions and radiant things to issue from an everlasting morning source that is attainable. They know not how, in reality, the natural world is rounded upon itself, so that over every particular spot a continual morn, noon, evening, and night are indeed breaking, and that only in this same station should the life of each individual be best carried out, not leaving it, but accepting there every quiet degree of heaven. At this period of which I speak it became more and more the fashion of the Church, and of those who made pictures or images for shrines, to represent the Saviour as a young child in the arms of Mary his mother. For priests and grown men, the patron was Madonna; whereas Jesus seemed to have himself become again a little Child, appealing finally to the hearts of children. When the Holy City and its land were relapsing once more into the hands of Moslems, many beheld visions and dreams of the Virgin, who, with a sad and pleading face, held out her son, or appeared to be vainly attempting to approach his grave. In France, Italy, and the south of our own German land, children and young people, as if without conference between each other, began very generally to imitate that desire which was already passing away from older persons. They took vows, and banded themselves together to deliver the Holy Land from bondage; nor were there wanting monks and priests who encouraged this emotion, proclaiming that God had chosen the weak things of this earth to confound the strong; and out of the mouths of babes and sucklings would perfect praise. Sometimes you might have seen parents, who in their ignorance partook of this enthusiasm, yoking their oxen to rude carts, and, with their children seated on their household goods, leaving home to find out the Holy Land; and at every city which they came in sight of, the children would shout joyfully, asking if that were Jerusalem. But in one part of Germany at least those vague wishes were drawn out at last into action by the mysterious visits of one, attired like a palmer, with staff and scallop-shell, who passed from house to house, declaring the Divine call. At his voice, the group playing merrily by the wayside was changed into a throng of serious figures: fathers and mothers who returned from church or market found that this strange wayfarer, during their absence, had stood at their hearth. In their longing to be concerned in some behest more pure and worthy than those which were enjoined by earthly friends, the young regarded all common tasks as trivial; they forgot their own childhood in this phantom-Christ who seemed to call them away. The trees and roofs of home!—what were they to the spires and palms of that Jerusalem? And they looked upon the old people as foolish utterly. To the parents, truly this loss of love between them and those they had nourished was very dreadful—this Heaven, that would alienate and draw away their offspring into it, yet had no reference to their own hopes and wishes! In our times, the wise father knows how better to deal with such inexperienced dreams, which indeed are now rather more apt to represent this living world[Pg 289] too brightly than to scorn it for spiritual objects; he suffers the boy to take time and find out the reality. But in those days heaven and earth were confounded; they knew not with what words or means to disprove these fancies; there was no world of books wherein the young soul might spend its superfluous thought and distinguish facts from ideas. Thus had they recourse only to outward watchfulness; to locking doors, and separating the children from their companions, whereby the more proud and wilful were but more confirmed. They waited for escape, and got away even by making holes in the walls; issuing forth from home as to a festival procession, which, swelling by degrees to many thousands, was heard passing by the villages, and on toward the East. The eldest was not more than eighteen, while numbers there were of far tenderer years, who, singing as they went, travelled under guidance only of the sky, as each morning it lightened up with radiance, and marked some especial valley or mountain-path as the last verge of a golden Orient. From towns or castles they held apart, sustained merely by the fruits of the earth, or by the gifts of solitary peasants, who rejoiced to offer food to the holy pilgrimage, while at the same time they carefully shut in their own children until it was long out of sight. But as the country grew around them more waste and desert, as they traversed wide, lonely, and barren plains, deep forests, or toilsome hills, the case became different. Some, scattered from the rest, lost their way; others, from weariness and hunger alone, dropped down and died—boys and girls, who in that hour only remembered the bitterness of their mothers' hearts for their loss. Still the main body continued to press forward, encouraged by some bolder spirits amongst them, or by the steadfast, confiding faith of others; for it was the youngest often who seemed to be filled with such patient constancy, so ineffable a sense of Divine aid, that they would scarce have hesitated to cross the deep river on foot, or to throw themselves from the loftiest precipices. Ever and anon, beyond some rude ascent, the broad level of the earth would stretch before them to the silvery horizon, so bright, so green, so beautiful, that methought it was the border of a holier country. Or when the rainbow suddenly spanned the distance with its vivid arch, those who were foremost appeared to the last already to be entering through its gate of triumph into a land of glorious colours, of celestial transfigurement. Then would the stragglers press on in haste to make up with them, but only in time to mix with the crowd which now stood shivering and confused in the shadow of that cloud from which the meteor had passed away. Nevertheless, who could doubt but that the land which they sought, which had been attained by so many multitudes before, truly existed? Were not all these things but signs of its being—tokens that beckoned onward, or difficulties they were to conquer? And when at length the hearts of the children, hitherto sustained by fellow-feeling and the deep excitement of their imagination, did sink down utterly before these hardships, in ignorance of their way—when they had begun to think wistfully each of his own home, with its little daily tasks—then there appeared mysteriously, to guide them, the form of that unknown palmer who had first called them forth. It boots not to follow, step by step, their after wanderings—the further evils which befel them—by what weary ways, by what disappointments, and what incitements they were encountered, until—still led by that strange messenger, whether man, or fiend, or angel—they reached the coasts of the sea. For there, indeed, was the dream of those children bitterly dispelled; there they found a city where men spoke and thought only of buying and selling—where they lived to get gold. Thither, in truth, there came many barks from the East—from that region which had appeared to the children full only of thoughts and sacred mysteries; but the vessels were laden with silks and spices for the rich and noble at home. And, alas! lamentable was the fate of the young pilgrims, falling into the avaricious hands of those, who perchance had heard of their childish visions to draw them thus forth into their power. Because they had nothing else but their beloved gold to exchange for the costly products of the East, those merchants did not scruple even to send to Moors and[Pg 290] Saracens for slaves these poor youthful victims who had so delivered themselves up. The Ships were filled with many Christian children, who were thus borne by the wind and sea, as it were, into a region of utter doubt and evil—having cause almost to regard all old beliefs as falsehood, and all men as pitiless and unfriendly. It is sad, my children, to think how true these things were; that so many fair young maidens, who had been their fathers' and mothers' pride, were forced to brook the will of Turkish lords, growing up forgetful of that faith, which became to them as an early, foolish vision; that so many once happy boys should wear away their lives in bondage beneath that very air which they had fancied holier than their own. Yet these had all issued forth in joyous expectation, filled with the hope of heaven. For so it is always on this earth, that happiness and goodness are really to be derived for us human beings through the commonest things. Not far away, nor in any thing which we cannot easily do, but nearer and nearer every day to home, and what we are concerned with, is the Joy, the Peace which glimmers out of every living thing. When you hear of God and heaven, you ought not to think of these as having any meaning separated from direct, unhesitating, simple life—since God is in every growing leaf about us, no less than in the sky; and there is a part of heaven revealed in each right action of this day, in each smile of approval from your parents, and in all temperate earthly joys. Had these unhappy children continued but at home, believing like children that what was good for those older than they was good for themselves also,—looking through their parents at life and death, the necessities of home would have ever drawn round them a line of certainty, sufficient even amidst that unfavourable ancient time. But as it was, they were plunged all at once into a state of complete helplessness, where yesterday had no connexion with today's work, where there was nothing to remind them of their former selves, only that their wish to wander forth to fairer scenes now exchanged for a sick heart-longing after Home, in which many pined away. However, there was One of the captive youths at Tunis to whom this Thought of the spot he had so foolishly left became gradually a sort of nourishment and support, as it grew more clear and fond. Even after his religious belief, for want of the due confirmation, had almost died away, or yielded to his Moorish master's commands, yet the recollection of childish years came in its place, growing and strengthening the more the longer his captivity endured. In his master's train did this youth visit first Mecca, which followers of the Prophet consider holy, and finally also Jerusalem itself. In the latter place, which, so many years before, he and his companions had ignorantly set out to reach, he now was struck with painful wonder, both at all things there, and at himself. Nothing more beautiful or holy was there here than elsewhere. The fields, the woods, and the hut where he was born were, in his mind, fairer far than this pale, scattered city, with its deep, dark valleys of tombs, into which the gray Desert crept. Almost a scorn of all beliefs flashed upon him as he saw the dusty pilgrims prostrate around a piece of silent stone in the church of the Sepulchre, while the turbaned faces of the Moslem sneered behind. Only there still abode in his heart one deep holy Thought, which seemed alone to contain many others unknown—the thought of that one place on earth which had been the source to him of pure feelings, and where he had once been so near to some different beginning of life. It appeared to him that it indeed was worthy to make a pilgrimage to, and that, if he could again return thither, he should from it behold the true opening into things which were at present to him dead and unintelligible. The last hope of his better nature had, as it were, passed unnoticed over his head, and now shone far behind, instead of in the airy future; and thus be remembered how, long ago, on their childish adventure, he had seen with misgiving the Eastern morning sun before them renew its splendour over again in the West.

"At last, accordingly, this same wanderer did escape from thraldom, and come back to his native Germany. On reaching the place where his father's little hut had stood, by the side of the clear forest stream, which he[Pg 291] remembered well, yet he found it gone, to the very threshold-posts. The clear stream ran past still under the old tree roots, and the entrance into the wood was there; but nothing remained of the dwelling whence he had stolen forth in the early morning to join the children's march, before its blue smoke had risen up over the forest top against the sky. There arose within him clearly, as he stood in a bitter trance, every little circumstance of the household;—what his father and his mother were; the common and quiet joy, without words, which he knew not till then had been hidden in sleep, and in meal-times, and in trifling acts; the happiness which he now felt would have grown daily out of helping them in their declining years. Yet these had been forsaken for a dream, excited perchance by evening radiance on the hills, by bright skies seen through the trees, by distant sounds, the very delight of which was lost when home was left. He stood close at hand, and, notwithstanding, the whole was more irrecoverable than ever—the open air came down to the foundations, and was spread across the chamber floor. The late dead forest was now putting forth its green buds—the grass was verdant with the spring—flowers were blossoming in it—birds were singing—and all nature was warmly bursting up again into full life after winter. The bells of the convent near rang loudly for the vesper-service, as it was Easter-day, the festival of Resurrection; and when the wanderer turned round the forest, he beheld village children rolling on the grass their coloured Paschal eggs. In these many years the unhappy departure of him and his companions had been forgotten. All were rejoicing because of some nameless cheer. But at the door of one cottage there sat an old pair upon a wooden bench, enjoying the warm evening air, and gazing at the children—while a young maiden, their daughter, stood behind in the doorway, her fair hair tinged with the golden light. These good people accosted the wanderer kindly, for they saw that his features were darkened by hotter suns; and it seemed to them that perhaps, he was a pilgrim and had been in the East. Their greeting was in accordance with the custom at that season of Easter, and they said, 'Peace be with you—Christ is risen,' expecting the usual answer—'Yea, he is risen indeed.' But the wanderer stared blankly upon them and the young girl, wondering, in truth, as all the events of his past life came fast upon his mind, and as he recollected the old feelings with which he had set out from home. For a deep mystery of Home appeared at that moment to be revealed to him; he almost understood why it was vain, and had been to him vain, to seek abroad for that which all the while was nearest of all things to the soul. Yet, on the other hand, the old people were much surprised, when he told them that night of his wanderings, how it was that he who had visited the Sepulchre itself, did not perceive there best that the Saviour was risen. And it could perhaps only be thoroughly apprehended by the returned pilgrim himself, when once more there arose for him a home on the spot where his father's cottage had stood, and when it was shared with him by that fair young maiden whose countenance had first again restored to him the conception of life which he had lost. For then it was that, in the fulfilment of common simple necessities, in unquestioning intercourse with natural things, and in gradual progress to the holy grave, he felt truly how the pure and complete hope of happiness proceeds out of the bosom of human life; how the desire of goodness must be drawn out of real experience; and how enthusiasm disproportioned to its object is dangerous and false. It was thus, my children," said the old schoolmaster, looking round them all in succession, "that one of the children who sought the Holy Land far off, was taught to seek it near at hand; and that perhaps many knights and pilgrims of the Crusade may have found it on their return. And the mistakes of that period are doubtless capable of their benefit to us.

"It is now with us no longer a formal, but a spiritual system of things; the heavenly good, the communion of God with man, are no more confined to particular places and signs, nor, on the other hand, to singular acts and language. Christ hath made all things, yea, the very commonest, holy[Pg 292] to us and sacramental, if we only strive to apprehend their deep inward meaning. It is the religion of The Homely,—of Him who as a child in Bethlehem concerned himself with little household matters as they befell; and thus prepared himself for being about his Greater Father's business in the Temple. Duty extends her mighty, solemn chain unbrokenly from the lowest to the highest: nay, the least insect in the grass performs a behest that is not to be contemned. This was one chief lesson of The Great Master's earthly life,—and in his Resurrection from death, also, taught he his disciples not to limit his presence to any one form of things, but to look for it in all: when they found the Grave empty, and yet in an ordinary figure, or in a passenger by the way, they suddenly recognised their Lord, and He seemed to break out of every thing that was around them. There is nothing now in itself common or unclean, nothing in itself that contains a peculiar sacred virtue; but that which is next and nearest ourselves is capable, by inexpressible degrees, of all good, having been framed by God Himself. So often we seek far off what would have come to us and been ours, had we but sat still, waiting, acting with a simple heart. We mark out to us high deeds, we would fain search out somewhat great and painful to accomplish,—as if there were not small matters enough, and pleasant ones,—ay, and the most difficult, toilsome ones too, with their secret crowns and garlands of reward,—all bounded within the poorest threshold!—Now, my little youths and maidens, having listened so gravely to the old man's discourse, go like children and play yourselves homeward: there, and here you have need of all reverence, obedience, and thoughtfulness."

Whether or not old Wendel's hearers appreciated the particulars of his lesson, we are not aware; but from the excitement in the village having after that taken a decided turn, we may suppose that, on the whole, it was not without its use there and round about the place. And so, if more perfectly expressed, and when rightly and fully understood, the doctrine implied by this and numberless similar facts in human history might be in many another community.

TAXIDERMY IN ROME

In turning over the voluminous records of our travels abroad, we pause more particularly at those passages of our journals which relate to the study of Natural History. In these occur frequent references to agreeable pedestrian rambles undertaken alone, or in the company of unaffected friends, in France and Switzerland, Italy and its islands: of whole days spent, and twilight at last surprising us still bending over the unexplored treasures of unexhausted museums. Of Paris winters cheerfully passed in the enceinte of the class-rooms of the Sorbonne; of pleasant occasions in which our ears refused to take cognisance of the sound of town clocks and dinner bells, while our eyes were so agreeably forgetting themselves amid the profusion and variety of southern fish and bird markets. On this, if on any portion of our by-gone life, we look back with sadness indeed, but with a sadness unembittered by regrets; our only sorrow here being, that we knew not earlier in life those studies of which it may be pre-eminently said, that while they "delight abroad they hinder not at home." Happy indeed are the children who dream of butterflies, and wise the parents who encourage theirs to intertwine objects of natural history with their earliest associations! Not only has this charming study a strong tendency to confirm the health, to embellish the mind, and to improve the moral character of those who pursue it;

"Pour le bien savourer, c'est trop peu que des sens;
Il faut une âme pure et des goûts innocens;"

it is likewise a strong bond of union between man and man—where shall we find such another? Hounds and horses[Pg 293] may connect, indeed, a greater number, but if one of the field breaks his neck, who cares? "he should have been better mounted,"[1] or else, "he could not ride;"—but ours is a gentler and a kindlier community. Where else exists that unanimity to which this body may justly lay claim? Not in the professions, where law detracts, medicine dislikes, and the church does not always hold the truth in charity; nor yet amidst mankind in general, for philosophers misquote, scholars revile, merchants monopolise, courtiers traduce, statesmen deceive: but here no conflicting interests, nor uncharitable surmises, no morbid sensibility, nor false and narrow views of life, arise to estrange those whom Linnæus and Cuvier have once united in fellowship. Constant, cheerful, unaffected, and sincere, the happy members of our coterie, every where, and in all ranks alike, show an instinctive tact in making each other out, and once friends continue so for life. We speak from long and intimate acquaintance with many naturalists: to some, courteous reader, we purpose, with your consent, hereafter to introduce you. Our object meanwhile is, to set before you now two humble foreigners of the gentler sex, who have passed their whole lives in the study and practice of taxidermy. Real and zealous enthusiasts are Annetta Cadet and her mother, who, in order to surprise in their haunts, and study before they embalm them, the various inhabitants of the Campagna about Rome, think nothing of braving any amount of heat, fatigue, and inconvenience; and such adepts are they in this art, that when stuffed, their birds, beasts, and reptiles seem to have received new life at their hands, and to be about to spring from the ground or to leave their perches, and glide out of sight. When, therefore, you shall have examined the out-doors[2] antiquities, (and unless you would reconstruct the Forum for the thousandth time on some original plan of your own, or were to go mare's-nest hunting amidst the ruins with certain German Barbatuli,—the Bunsenists of a season—ten days will be more than sufficient,) we charge you not to fail calling at No. 23, Via della Vite, where, if you should possess any lurking propensities for natural history, they are sure to be elicited. As to your first reception, if this should be of a somewhat abnormal kind, why, so was ours;—for Cadet and her mother are certainly originals: but that you should not be disconcerted, and in order to prepare you for the personal appearance, as well as the unusual qualities of our friends, we transcribe the memorandum of our own introduction to them. Prince Musignano, whose birds they mounted, professor Metaxa, who sent rare insects for them to determine, and W——who affirmed, (par parenthèse,) that no one could stuff birds like them but himself, had all prœconised their accomplishments to us; so one morning with a note-book full of queries, and a bottle full of insects, we descended the Scalinata, and knocked at the door. It was opened by a cord pulled from above, while a female voice demanded, more solito, "chi c'e?" On answering, that our visit was to the Signore who prepared insects, the voice said, "Come up, go in at the door to the right, and we will join you as soon as we have made ourselves tidy." Obeying this Little-red-riding-hood invitation, we entered the reception room, and began to amuse ourselves with a survey of a score or two of queer-looking pictures, (for the most part without frames,) with which the walls were adorned; strange landscapes were there, and allegorical subjects, treated with an equal [Pg 294]perversity. On one that first caught our eye, a waning moon, resting on the grass with its horns upwards, formed a couch for Diana and Endymion; from this we had turned to a naked nymph with a pretty face, and a torso half hidden under a cataract of dishevelled tresses, "not penitent enough for a Magdalen," thought we, when mother and daughter entering together, "Ecco la mia madre," said the girl pointing to the picture in question. "Come?" asked we, "that your mother?" "Certainly, it was painted by my own father, six months after their marriage; she was then as you see, una bella giovanne assai." "Was your father, then, a painter by profession?" "Not originally," interposed the old dame: "he was designed for a missionary by his patron, who brought him over from his native country, San Domingo, when a boy; but the old man dying shortly afterwards, the Propaganda undertook to complete the youth's education with the same view. As, however, he chose to think that painting, not preaching, was his calling, and as an attachment had sprung up between us, and I preferred passing my life with him rather than with Santa Ursula and her virgins, to whom my friends would have dedicated me, we determined to take our own case into our own hands, married without asking permission, and then, to support ourselves, I turned my attention to Taxidermy and he to the Fine Arts. Thus we managed to subsist till Annetta was nine years old, when I lost him." "And I," interposed Annetta, "gained a score of old botany books, and these beautiful paintings; I wonder no one comes to propose for me." "E pazza quella ragazza!" said the mother; and, to judge by her appearance and attire alone, she might have been so. Her descent sufficiently accounted for her woolly hair; but in addition to its negro texture, it was unteazled and neglected, being mixed with bits of feather and other extraneous elements. She was swathed from head to foot in coarse soiled dimity; in one hand she was holding a half stuffed hawk, in the other a sponge, dipped in some arsenical solution to preserve it. Our eyes had never rested upon so wild, so plain, so apparently hopeless a slattern; but these unpromising appearances were soon forgotten, and amply made amends for by the intelligence of her remarks, and the sprightliness of her conversation; and we know,

"Before such merits all objections fly,
Pritchard's genteel, and Garrick six feet high."

The officina was a curious place, and worthy of its mistress. It was something between a shambles, a museum, and a tanyard, and exhaled in consequence the mixed effluvia of decomposing flesh, alcohol, tannin, and the oil of petroleum. In one corner stood a large tawny dog, stuffed, and fixed to a board, with a new pair of eyes in his head, and his mouth well furnished with grinders. "Era molto vecchio questo cane," going up to introduce him to our notice, and patting his back affectionately: "his sockets have not had such eyes in them for many a day, nor his jaws such teeth. I have strengthened his legs with wire, and restored the proper curl to the tail; nothing further is now lacking but some tufts of hair to cover these bare patches on his haunches, when his master will at once recognise unaltered the favourite of fourteen years ago." "And whence the supplies necessary for your purpose?" "From this," replied she, drawing out from under the table a skin of the same tawny colour, "Eccola," and then pinching off with her tweezers a small tuft from the supplementary hide, and gumming over with a camel's hair brush, a bare spot, she proceeded to cover it. "And what's your remedy here?" said we, laying our hand upon a large duck,[3] whose glossy grass-green neck had lost much of its plumage, especially at the base, where it is wont to be, encircled with a cravat of white feathers. "By robbing others of the same family: for I always think a bird, while he lacks any of his feathers, is looking reproachfully at[Pg 295] me, and if a parrot could find tongue it might say,

''Tis cruel to look ragged now I'm dead;
Annetta, give my tail a little red.'

But here are my stores;" and, touching a spring, the door of a small room opened, and revealed unstuffed skins of all sorts, dangling from strings like Fantoccini near the Sapienza, at Christmas-time. "Yonder is a bird, Annetta, that shot across our path yesterday in the villa Borghese; was he not then a foreigner of distinction escaped from the prince's aviary?"—"No; a Campagna bird, but rare;" and she proceeded to display his lapis-lazuli wings, which shone like burnished armour, and were set off by a brilliant edging of black feathers, as polished as jet, while the back was a rich dark brown, and the neck and breast light azure. "Oh! stuff us one of these birds, pray!"—"Non dubitate, one shall be on his perch expecting you when you return to Rome in November."—"And we must have, too, that beautiful neighbour of his who wears a short silk spencer over his back and shoulders, and a full-breasted waistcoat of buff."—"The Alcedo Hispida: he shall be ready too; they call him hereabouts, 'Martin the Fisher.'"

We took leave for the time, but frequently returned to the workshop. On one occasion, we asked Cadet how she attained such skill in taxidermy? "Our art," she replied, "like yours, consists mainly in observation, and therefore it must needs come slowly. In fact it has taken my mother and myself fifteen years to learn the natural instincts, habits, and attitudes of the birds and beasts of the Roman Fauna; every summer we visit their haunts, and bring back such specimens as we may catch or as the peasants, who all know us, may bring. Thus, we return, ever richly laden, sometimes with the carcass of an eagle, or it may be of an African Phenicopterus; or, failing in such large game, we are tolerably sure of porcupines, fine snakes, a nest of vipers, specimens of our three several kinds of tortoises, and different species of land crabs; to say nothing of the Tarantulas, Scholias, and Hippobosques, which I pin round my bonnet, or pop into spirits of wine. As to stuffing—the witnessing how some, who call themselves naturalists, stuff birds, has been long as a beacon to me! They really seem to forget, that it is one thing to prepare a goose for the spit, and another to fill his skin for the museum; they cram whatever they have in hand, as Fuocista Beppo crams a sky-rocket to repletion. Few take the natural shape as a model for the embalmed body. In such hands, sparrows become linnets, owls appear to have died of apoplexy, kestril eyes shine in Civetta's sockets, and the jackdaw has a pupil like the vulture. Then in grouping, they make all to look straight forward, as if, when a hawk has swooped upon a teal, his eyes did not turn downwards in the direction of his victim, or those of the poor teal upwards, in the direction of the expected blow; he too, should be represented as striving to extend his neck beyond the drooping screen of the other's impenetrable wing. Then birds of prey should not perch like barn-door fowls, nor a parrot divide his toes before and behind unequally; yet some taxidermists there are, who consider these things trifles!" "Well, sir, what do you think of my daughter's stuffing?" said the old woman. "Why, that she stuffs beautifully, but the smell of those old hides in the corner makes me sick." Whereupon they both laughed out at our affectation. "A doctor, and made sick!" said they, and they laughed again. "Have you heard of the Brazilian consul's lion?" interrogated the daughter, endeavouring to make us forget our sickness by exciting our curiosity. "No; nor even that he had a lion." "Oh, tell the story to the Signor Dottore, mother!" said the girl; "I can't for laughing." Upon which the old woman, summoning to her aid a ludicrously solemn look, prefaced the anecdote by supposing "We must know the Brazilian consul?"—"Not even by name."—"In that case we were to understand that he was by nature a man of great tenderness of character, but had once been chafed into an act of extraordinary ferocity, killing with his own hand, during the last year of his consulate, (but unfortunately, like Ulysses, without a witness,) a lordly lion: as there was[Pg 296] no embalmer on the spot, he simply flayed his victim, and preserved the skin with spice till his return last year, when the wish naturally arose to have the lion mounted after the most approved models, in order that the dimensions of the body and the respective length of tusks, tail, and claws, might appear to the best advantage, making it very evident that this had been a lion that none but Hercules or a Brazilian consul would have ventured to cope with. On making inquiries for an accomplished embalmer, our diplomatist unfortunately stumbles upon a Frenchman—a gentleman of rare accomplishments, as they all are, perfectly versed, by his own account, in that ancient Egyptian art in all its branches; this man, on seeing the skin, takes care duly to appreciate the courage of the consul in killing so immense a beast, whom he promises forthwith to restore to his pristine dimensions and fierceness of physiognomy; his adroitness is rewarded by carte blanche, to purchase any amount of spices and cotton he may require, and his honoraire is fixed at fifty scudi on the completion of the job. Hoping to increase the family satisfaction by showing them the lion once again on his legs, without their previously witnessing the steps by which this was to be effected, he requests that in the interval no one would visit the workshop." "Mind you make him big enough;" says the Consul, signing the contract. "Laissez-moi faire," rejoins the other. After three weeks' mystery, the artist sends for his employer, who, speedily obeying the summons, finds the exhibition-room arranged for a surprise, and the Frenchman in anticipation of an assured triumph, rubbing his hands before a curtain, on the other side of which is the object of this visit. "Hortense, levez la toile!" says the Frenchman, giving the word of command. Hortense does as he is bid; up goes the curtain, and the Consul beholds his old friend, not only with a new face but with a new body: whereat, astounded and aghast,—"That's not, my lion, sir," says the Brazilian. "How, sir, not your lion; whose lion then?—you are facetious." "I facetious, sir," roars the impatient lion-killer, "and what should make me facetious?" "I have the honour to tell you, sir, that this is your lion," says the Frenchman chafing in his turn. "And I have the honour to tell you, then," reiterated the other, "that you never saw a lion." When the Consular family assembled, it was worse still; the children laughed in his face, and the lady said, "that but for his mane and colour she should not have guessed what animal he personated." It was a family misfortune. "Why did you trust a Frenchman with it?" asked his affectionate spouse: "you recollect that Alfieri calls them a nation of Charlatans, whose origin is mud,[4] and that all he ever learned of them was, to be silent when they spoke." "But what's to be done now?" demands the disconsolate man. "Send for the little women who understand stuffing, and take their advice." "So we went," continued the old woman, "and were personally introduced to this lion." "Ah! che Leone!" interrupted the daughter, laughing at the recollection of the quizzical beast. "A lion indeed!" said the mother laughing, but less boisterously than her daughter. "What a king of the forest!" said the girl, going off again into inextinguishable merriment: "mother, do you remember his eyes sunk in his head as if he had died of a decline, his chest pinched in to correspond, his belly bulging out like the pouch of an opossum, with all her family at home, his mouth twisted into a sardonic grin, his teeth like some old dowager, one row overlapping the other, his cheeks inflated as if his stomach was in his mouth, and then the position of one of his fore-legs, evidently copied from that of the old bronze horse on the Capitol, while his tail wound three times and a half round its own tip!" "Basta, basta!" said the old woman, "he was a queer lion, and looked easy enough to kill if you could only keep your gravity while you attacked him." "And what said the Consul?" asked we, laughing with them. "The Consul cospettoed again and again, and was for knocking him off his legs at[Pg 297] once, and then giving him to us to re-arrange. 'You and your daughter,' said he, 'will take him home and do what you can for me;' but we told him plainly, that to expect a new birth, after such a miscarriage as this, was only to indulge a vain hope, sure to issue in new disappointment. Why, the very tail would have taken us a fortnight to uncurl and make a lion's tail of it; the ears were quite past redemption; the bustle might have been removed from behind, and the wadding placed in front, where it was wanted; but the hide itself was corrugated into plaits that nothing could have removed. 'Cospetto!' said the Consul, poveretto, who had nothing else to say—'and am I thus to lose my lion, the only lion I ever killed, and such a fine lion too!' and then he fell to abusing the Frenchman. 'I can't keep him here to show my friends,' pursued he; 'for it is obvious, if I do, that instead of admiring my courage, they will only ridicule me, and perhaps betray me into the hands of that rogue Pinelli as a fit subject for his caricature.' We could not say they would not; so we recommended him, upon the whole, as the best thing under the misfortune, to re-consult the French artist. 'Scelarato porco! consult him about a lion? why the commonest daub on a Trattoria sign-board gives a better idea of the noble animal than this." "It is difficult to stuff a lion," said the girl, half apologetically: "one cost me a fortnight's hard work to prepare." "Yes," added the mother eagerly—"yes, but he looked like a lion, he did." Then turning to us, "Well, sir, at last, as we could not help the Consul, he was obliged to have recourse to this Frenchman again, who admitted that the bulk of the animal was in the wrong place, and une idée trop large, and removed some of it accordingly. With respect to the hind-quarters, he cleverly got rid of this difficulty, by inserting three-quarters of the noble beast into a den, formed in a recess of the drawing-room, and hung with a profusion of green paper, representing bushes falling across its mouth, while beyond them protruded the head and open jaws of the lord of the forest, as reconnoitring the ground previous to a sally upon the guests; and there, doubtless, he is still exhibiting.".... Well did Cadet herself avoid the errors she thus ridiculed. We possess one of her animated groups, of which the subject is an eagle killing a snake, and the execution is so true to nature, and so beautifully disposed for effect as to render improvement impossible: from some such original did the Locrian and Girgenti mints copy one of their finest reverses, and Virgil and Ariosto their lively descriptions. Our bird, which lay, a month before, an unsightly mass of blood-stained feathers, broken-winged, on the ground, when he came into our possession, stuffed, looked not only alive but in action. The talon which supported the body seemed to grasp the perch beneath it so tightly, as to convey a very lively impression both of his prehensile powers and of his weight; round the other, (embracing it as in a vice,) writhed the body of a large snake; the eagle's neck was erect, his head slightly bent, his wonderfully expressive eye glancing downwards, his hooked beak opening and disclosing the tongue slightly raised; the scant feathers round the olfactory fissures up; the snake hissing, his head elevated, and darting upwards, to anticipate the lacerating blow:

"Hic sinuosa volumina versat,
Arrectisque horret squammis, et sibilat ore,
Arduus insurgens; illa haud minus urget adunco,
Luctantem rostro."

The delusion as to the substance and weight of the bird was perfect. At first we doubted being able to lift him without considerable effort. On making the attempt, however, we find him light as a Nola jar. A glorious bird is the eagle, well worthy the attention and regard bestowed on him in ancient times by prophet, priest, and poet; but had they been silent, we should have learned the veneration in which he was popularly held by the frequent recurrence of his image—whether incised on Egyptian obelisk, chiselled by Grecian hands on ornamented casque, guarding the tombs of heroes, grasping the thunderbolts of colossal Joves, perched on Latin, standards, carrying off young Ganymedes[Pg 298] to wait, invitâ Junone, on the gods above[5]—or bearing aloft, on consecrated coin, some most religious and gracious Augusta to Glory and to Olympus!

One day, meeting the elder Cadet in the street returning alone from the bird-market—a very unusual occurrence, for they generally hunted in couples—we asked after the daughter, and hearing she was ammalata assai, and wanted one of our little pills to set her to rights, turned in with the mother, and found the young naturalista reclining on an ill-stuffed bergère, with a large Coluber coiled round her temples, and a half-prepared Hoopœ in her hand. In the same apartment were a vulture picking an old shoe to pieces under the belly of an Esquimaux dog, and some little land-tortoises nibbling away at a large lettuce in the middle of the floor. Our inquiries were somewhat embarrassed by the unusual circumstances of our patient, particularly by the presence of the snake, which now began to untwist. "See! he has recognised his master," said the dame: "or perhaps has raised his head with a view of taking part in the consultation." We had seen snakes entwining the lovely brow of Medusa, in marble, cameo, and intaglio—painted snakes in clusters hissing in the hair of the Eumenides—but a living snake wound round living temples we had never seen till to-day. "Come, sir, you are only the snake to Esculapius; and though I am not ungrateful for what you have done in refreshing my hot forehead with your cool skin, now the doctor is come, bon giorno!" and, removing him like a turban from her head, she placed him in a box at her side. This was, then, that Epidaurian Coluber which we had so frequently seen in marble effigy wound round the consultation cane of the God of Physic,[6] and not to be viewed by us alive for the first time without interest. "Mother," said the younger Cadet, brightening up when she perceived this, "bring our snake-boxes, and let us show them all to the dottore." In less than five minutes the cases were before us. The first contained a mother blind-worm and her viviparous family of ten offspring, not two inches long, while she stretched to about twelve. A Coluber Natrix inhabited the second. "He is a great favourite with children in Sardinia," said Cadet, "twisting himself round their arms, and sucking milk from their mouths; but if these supplies fail, he feeds on frogs and fish. His flesh is a sovereign remedy, say our doctors, in skin diseases; and they also say—but you know best how true this may be—that one of the late Dukes of Bavaria became a father by merely eating fowls that had been fattened on them." A Coluber Austriacus followed—a rare snake, and chiefly remarkable for his pleasant herbaceous smell, very unlike what proceeded from a neighbouring box, holding a Coluber Viperinus, who secretes, when irritated, a yellow fluid of intense fœtor, like the mixed stinks from asafœtida and rotten eggs. The specimen in this box was large. It had vomited, we were told, two frogs the day after its capture; and on cutting open another of the same species, Annetta had seen a living toad creep, Jonas-like, from the paunch, and make the best of three legs to escape, the fourth being already disposed of, and digested in the body of the serpent. The solitary Coluber Atro-virens passed next in review. She gave him a character for preferring good cheer to the best company, ex gr.—Out of two taken last week, one only survived; the other devoured his friend in the night, and next morning they found his enormously distended body dilated almost to transparency, and palpitating under the feeble movement of the victim, doubled up in his inside, but not yet dead. Being very exclusive, some call him "il milordo;" others, from[Pg 299] the beauty of his colour, "il bello." When about to moult, his wonted vivacity changes to moroseness. Like a mad dog, he will snap at every thing. Perhaps the loss of all his beauty, which then takes place, may account for such peevishness. A glaucomatous state of the eye always precedes by some days the moult, which is accomplished by the skin cracking from the jaws, and afterwards being reflected over the head and shoulders, till by degrees the snake skins himself alive, leaving his old investment turned completely inside out. As gross a feeder as an alderman, he more frequently recovers from a surfeit, perhaps because, though a glutton, he will not touch wine.

Snakes are not so plentiful about Rome as farther south. Terracina in particular swarms with them, as did its ancient predecessor Amycle, which was once nearly depopulated by them. Their chief haunt hereabouts is two miles beyond the Porta Salara, at a place called Serpentina, on the opposite side of the Tiber, and nearly in front of the embouchure of the Cremara. At last we come to the family viper box, which perhaps we "would like to peep into with our gloves on?" "Per Carita, no," said we seizing the naturalista's hand—"on no account—a bite would be no joke!" Cadet laughed, observing that curiosity should not be baulked by timidity for a trifle.—"A trifle! had she ever been bitten, then?" "Come? sicuro ogni anno." It was of familiar occurrence: the part would swell, be stiff and sore for a couple of days, but that was all. Fontana found that it required four large and very angry vipers to kill a dog—of course it must require as many to kill a man. As to the Egyptian Queen's death being caused by a viper's bite, that question having been properly ventilated (ventillata) by Professor Lancisci, might be considered as set at rest. One viper could not kill one person, much less three; and we might remember that Cleopatra's memorable asp is said to have bitten two maids of honour, Neæra and Carmione, before it came to her turn, by which time the poison must have been expended and the viper's tooth dry. "Two things," added she, "I have noted about vipers; one regards the parturient viper, and is to the effect that, a prisoner, she never survives her confinement many days; long before the quarante jours y compris l'accouchement[7] are over, she has ceased to be a mother and a viper. The other regards her progeny, and is this; that young viperlings come into the world in full maturity of malice, offering to bite as soon as their mouths are open, and flying at each other when they have no other society to attack. We have five varieties in Rome." "Is the viper deaf, Cadet?" "You should read the experiments of Peter Manni, a great friend of ours who tames snakes; these will completely satisfy your curiosity on this point:" and she fetched us the work of Manni, in which he gives curious account of the influence exercised upon several varieties of the species by the sound of a pianoforte, and afterwards goes on to relate the effects produced upon the same serpents by electricity and light. "The Viper," says he, "was impassive to the second of these agents, suffering a lighted candle to be brought close to his eyes before he turned away his head; of the harmless snakes, Coluber Esculapius came up to look at a lighted torch, but, finding it too strong for him, gnashed his teeth and bolted; Coluber Elaphis bore the heat of a lighted candle in his mouth with apparent indifference; but the Coluber Atro-virens flew at it in a passion, snapping and biting while he struggled to retreat; he also appeared most distressed under the application of slight electric shocks, from which indeed all the snakes suffered, and the smaller ones died."

The action of some poisons upon snakes is similar to that on our own economy. For instance, on administering half a grain of strychnine to a full-grown Coluber Atro-virens, four minutes elapsed before, any change was visible. During this period the snake moved in the hand with his usual vivacity; the flesh then began to grow rigid under the finger; and in half a minute, the whole body, with the exception of three inches of[Pg 300] coil, was seized with a tetanic spasm—the beautiful imbrication of the scales was dislocated by the violence of the muscular action, and the sleek round cylinder of the body was hardened into knots and reduced to half its former bulk. Reviving for a few seconds, the snake started, opened its jaws, but immediately afterwards became stiff and motionless except at the tail, which continued to exhibit feeble contractile action for about twenty minutes. After death, the body, losing its unnatural rigidity, became unnaturally supple, seemed without a spine, and might be doubled upon itself like a ribbon. In two cases which we witnessed of individuals poisoned by strychnine, similar tetanic phenomena were observed. Corrosive sublimate and prussic acid do not appear to act on snakes either with such violence or rapidity as on warm-blooded animals; for a dose of three grains of the former, and several drops of the latter, (Majendie's,) remained inactive for a quarter of an hour; then, two grains of arsenic being added, the snake suddenly raised his head half a foot from the ground, remained motionless as in a trance, for a minute, then fell back quite dead. We are not proud of these experiments, nor do we intend to repeat such; but having been guilty of them, the recital of the results can do no harm.

What various and even opposite qualities, owing to the supposed versatility of his character, have been ever attributed to the serpent! Viewed as fancy dictated, under different phases, men were not content to ascribe to him their vices only, but must also attribute to him most of their moral excellencies: wisdom, prudence, vigilance, fortitude and sobriety were all his; he was symbolical of the divine nature, of eternity, and of youth. Long before viper broth was used in medicine, the Coluber was at Hygeia's side by the fountain of health, and was twined round the stick of Esculapius, at once silent and expeditious in his motion. Harpocrates favoured, and Mercury the Olympic messenger employed him as his deputy; though victim on one occasion to the archery of Apollo, the god of verse found something in his

—————"winding 'bout
Of linked structure long drawn out,"

so akin to poetry, (particularly to the kind called epic,) that he took an additional cognomen (Pythius) out of compliment to him; whilst Alexander and Augustus, those worthy descendants of Jove (whom he is said to have befriended in his amours), stamped his image on their coins, and assumed it as their crest. So far we behold him in favour both with gods and men: but opinions vary, applause is inconstant; and accordingly we equally find him charged with envy, hatred, malice, hypocrisy, ingratitude, cruelty, and almost every other vice. He is also accused of devastating towns, of usurping islands,[8] of impeding armies,[9] of destroying priests at the altar, and it is certain that he lent his name to heresy, and permitted the great Heresiarch to assume his form in order to beguile Eve.

[Pg 301]

MATERIALS FOR A HISTORY OF OIL PAINTING.[10]

In the prosecution of an object, it often happens that the means employed lead unexpectedly to results of immeasurably more importance than the end originally proposed; and that, while the ostensible end may turn out to be a failure or of doubtful benefit, some real good, some lasting advantage, shall be brought out by the exercise of the ability, energy, and faithfulness of the agents employed.

The mind can scarcely work on given materials without making some discovery. In this sense did Socrates adopt the line of Hesiod—

We are of those who would doubt the advantages proposed by the Commission of the Fine Arts. If it were likely to lead to a permanent patronage for great works, it would be a boon indeed; but if it be the cause of only a temporary excitement, holding out a promise which it has no means of fulfilling, encouraging talent, and making it unprofitable, turning it from the line in which it is wanted, to that in which it is not likely to be sought after, the artists will have little reason in the end to be thankful for the establishing of this Commission. The competition which it proposes is not altogether wholesome: it is sicklied over from the beginning with the fear and jealousy of a class. The tried hands of an academy abstain from a contest which may take away from them the honour (in the world's eye) which has been exclusively appropriated to them; and the new aspirants work at too probable a loss, scarcely hoping that their labours will be adopted or rewarded: while in that absence of a higher competition, the public, and possibly the Commission itself, expect inferiority; and if these great pictures, great in dimensions as in attempt, are not purchased by the public, there can be little hope that any private dwellings will contain them. If the object be to adorn the Houses of Parliament with pictures, it would be far better to select from the painters we have, and give them their work to do, than to raise up a host of artists, nine-tenths of whom must sink under a hopeless lack of employment; for there is not a general taste for the particular style which it is the object of the Commission to promote, nor can there well be in a country where there are so few public edifices of importance and of public resort, and so few palaces capable of containing works of great size. Indeed the art of decoration is with us quite of another character, and one little adapted for the display of great works. There, is paint in profusion, and of a dazzling splendour,—we do not mean to speak slightingly of this architectural adjunct;—but there is little room for the sobriety of great art; and be it remembered that art, to be great, must have in it a certain sobriety, awe, and majesty, that does not quite accord with our style of decoration. We require a kind of furniture decoration. We doubt if in our Houses of Parliament and palaces, much room will be spared to what is so facetiously termed "High Art." Nor can we expect to be always building Houses of Parliament; and, therefore, too soon the magniloquent patronage must come to an end. Domesticity is the habit of modern life, (for even our club-houses are of that character, and assume the appearance of a home;) and, for such habits, easel pictures will ever have the greatest charm. Nor would it be correct to deny to them a very scope in the field of art. We doubt if we can recur to any extensive patronage for frescoes; and their great cost must exclude them from our churches, which we are more desirous of multiplying than of ornamenting. Nor can we wonder at this; for, whereas the churches and all public buildings in Italy, were and are open at all times, and the great works they contain, are to be seen every day, and at every[Pg 302] hour of the day, with us it is a great thing to have them open once or twice in the week, for an hour and a half at a time. So that we fear the Commission for the promotion of the Fine Arts are, as far as we can judge of their ostensible object, in a labyrinth, from which if they find an exit, they will not have enlarged their prospect, and will have to congratulate themselves, at best, on being where they were when they entered it.

We do not here express a doubt as to the advantage of our having a Commission of the Fine Arts. We only doubt their judgment in the exclusiveness of their aim, and the largeness of their implied promises.

But if there be a suspicion of failure in the ostensible object, in some of its working the greatest benefit will have been conferred upon modern art. A more judicious or more fortunate choice could not have been made, than that made in the appointment of the Secretary to the Commission. Much as the world has reason to regret that this appointment has for a long, too long a period, been a sore let and hinderance to Mr Eastlake in the practice of his art,—the conscientious view he has taken of the duties of his office, and his entire faithfulness in discharging them, have led to results of a most beneficial character,—beneficial to artists, and to the arts as a perpetuity. His highly valuable work, though with the most modest title, "Materials for a History of Oil Painting," is the real boon, and will be the lasting proof of his faithful service. Considering the sacrifice with which a work of so much labour, thought, and research must have been achieved, we hope the Commissioners are empowered to reward his energy, ability, and fidelity, according to their merits, and according to the sacrifice.

Mr Eastlake, justly judging it to be of the first importance, in whatever schemes might be entertained for the promotion of the Fine Arts, to secure to the artist the best materials, and the approved methods of the best times, and to give him as complete a knowledge of the history of the art he professes as might be obtained, undertook to search out and examine records with the greatest care, leaving as little to conjecture as possible. He could not dictate to the mind, but he might be able to put means into the hands of genius; the more perfect the instruments, the greater would be the freedom, and, what is of no small importance, the more durable would be the works. The first step in this direction was evidently towards a knowledge of what had been done, and had been universally admired and approved:—to discover first, if possible, what was the method and what were the technical means in the hands of Titian and Correggio, of Rubens and most of the Flemish painters.

Aware of the discussions and disputes concerning the invention of Van Eyck, he found it necessary to trace the progress of art from its earliest records to the date of the supposed discoverer of painting in oil—or rather discoverers, Hubert and John Van Eyck, in 1410. The conclusion to which the documentary evidence led him was this, that:—

"The technical improvements which Van Eyck introduced were unquestionably great; but the mere materials employed by him may have differed little, if at all, from those which had been long familiar. The application of oil painting to figures, and such other objects as (with rare exceptions) had before been executed only in tempera, was a consequence of an improvement in the vehicle." "It is apparent, that much has been attributed to John Van Eyck, which was really the invention of Hubert; and both may have been indebted to earlier painters for the elements of their improved process."

The very early use of oil in painting need not here be discussed, though it was necessary to go into much detail in forming a history of the art, which was the object of Mr Eastlake. Perhaps, the earliest in our practice will be found to have been in England, and may have been the legacy of art bequeathed at the departure of the Romans. It did not commence in Italy. "The use of resinous solutions combined in various proportions with oil, as a medium or vehicle for the colours, was an early[Pg 303] technical characteristic of the northern schools, and merits attention here, accordingly."

It is the opinion of the author of "Materials for a History," &c., that the Van Eycks did not so much invent as improve; it was therefore most desirable to ascertain what was previously ready to their hands to be improved. And as to the improvement, that was perhaps really less than has been supposed, the application being the novelty. Oleo-resinous varnishes had before been in use, even from a very early period; but the admixture of these with the pigments was the great step in advance, and it may be inferred that the method of rendering these oleo-resinous vehicles colourless, or nearly so, was the great invention of John Van Eyck.

Drying oil was well known to the ancients, that is before the Christian era. "Dioscorides, whose works were familiar to medieval writers on medicine, is supposed to have lived in the age of Augustus. He mentions two drying oils; walnut-oil and poppy-oil. The principal materials employed in modern oil painting were at least ready for the artist, and waited only for a Van Eyck,—in the age of Ludius[11] and the painters of Pompeii."

We will not attempt further to pursue the history of oil painting to the time of the Van Eycks; suffice it to say, that a recipe of Theophilus, a monk of the twelfth century, furnishes materials—an oleo-resinous vehicle generally used after the time of Van Eyck—and that the improvement by Van Eyck was the substituting amber for the sandarach of Theophilus. The work of Theophilus has recently appeared, translated by Mr Hendrie from the Latin, and forms a very valuable addition to the painter's library, as well as to that of the curious and scientific, in general. The artist will find in Mr Hendrie's preface, the information he will be most desirous to possess. He strongly insists upon amber varnish as being the real vehicle or discovery of Van Eyck, and lays much stress upon a certain distilled oil as a diluent. He says:—

"Amber varnish, and probably other thick oil varnishes, would be equally benefitted, thinned with this distilled oil. It dries without a pellicle when mixed with colours. Colours used for finishing a picture, such as in the light for solid painting, or glazing for colour and shadows, are rendered very pure and without the slightest appearance of a skin, although it may be plentifully used. It dries much more slowly than any other distilled oil, and hence its great value, as it allows the artist as much time as he requires, in order to blend his colours and finish his work. In conjunction with amber varnish, it forms a vehicle which leaves nothing to be desired, and which doubtless was the vehicle of Van Eyck, and in many instances of the Venetian masters, and of Correggio; the different modes of painting necessarily producing the varied appearances of the different schools and masters."

This promises the remedy for the[Pg 304] disease, as it were, of vehicles, the not drying from the bottom, which will delight every artist, if he finds it a practical truth. We confess, we somewhat fear the sanguine temperament of the translator of Theophilus, and should have preferred some proof to the bare assertion that the picture by John Bellini, in the National Gallery, was painted in amber varnish. Nor can we quite trust his translation of the recipe for making this amber varnish. We were startled with this account of 1 lb litharge to 1 lb linseed oil and 4 ounces of amber—is he correct in translating spigelhors litharge? It should be rosin. With regard to the value of amber varnish, Mr Eastlake quite agrees with Mr Hendrie. Another important improvement of the Van Eycks was the substitution of calcined white copperas for litharge. In a note, Mr Eastlake gives the information that on experiment it has been proved that oil does not take up any portion of the copperas, which nevertheless renders it very drying and hard, but that oil does take up sugar of lead. It should be added, however, that he does not think lead so prejudicial to colours as some have thought it to be.

The value of Mr Eastlake's book chiefly consists in the documentary evidence which is now brought to bear upon the question of vehicles; and doubtless, that which is subsequent to the time of Van Eyck is by far the most valuable. Evidence is produced not only of oils in use, and the methods of purifying them, but of varnishes, and recipes for making them, likewise of the colours used. There is yet, however, much untold with regard to the Italian practice, concerning which Mr Eastlake proposes to treat in a second volume. Yet, with regard to the Italian methods, we are not left without some important knowledge, which, however, must be considered as offered rather incidentally; for the Italians having modified, and in some respects much varied the vehicle they derived from the Flemish masters, their methods were again partially adopted by the latter; so that the methods of these two great schools of art could not be kept entirely separate.

To those much acquainted with art, it will be thought of the utmost importance to obtain any recipes of the time of Rubens and Vandyke. Such we are in possession of—contained in a manuscript in the British Museum—of which we may expect the publication entire. It may be interesting to give some account of this MS. and its author. The manuscript is entitled "Pictoria, Sculptura, Tinctoria, et quæsub alternarum artium spectantia, in Lingua Latinâ, Gallicâ, Italicâ, Germanicâ conscripta, a Petro Paulo, Rubens, Vandyke, Somers, Greenberry, Jansen, &c.—Fo. xix. A.D. 1620; T. de Mayerne." Theodore Mayerne, the author, was born at Geneva, 1573. "He selected the medical profession; and after studying at Montpelier and Paris, accompanied Henri Duc de Rohan to Germany and Italy. On his return he opened a school, in which he delivered lectures to students in surgery and medicine. This proceeding, and the innovation, as it then appears to have been, of employing mineral specifics in the healing art, excited a spirit of opposition which led to a public resolution, emanating from the faculty at Paris, in which his practice was condemned. His reputation rapidly increased from this period. He had before been appointed one of the physicians in ordinary to Henry IV. In 1611, James I. invited him to England, and appointed him his first physician. De Mayerne enjoyed the same title under Charles I. He died at Chelsea, leaving a large fortune, 1655."... "Dallaway, in his annotations on Walpole, after noticing the influence of De Mayerne's medical practice on the modern pharmacopœia, remarks that 'his application of chemistry to the composition of pigments, and which he liberally communicated to the painters who enjoyed the royal patronage,—to Rubens, Vandyke, and Pelitot—tended most essentially to the promotion of the art. From his experiments were discovered the principal colours to be used for enamelling, and the means of vitrifying them. Rubens painted his portrait; certainly one of the finest now extant. It originally ornamented the Arundel collection: was then at Dr Mead's, Lord Besborough's, and is[Pg 305] now (1826) at Cleveland House.'... A monarch who was so fond of painting as Charles I., was fortunate in having the assistance of a person who combined a love of art with a scientific knowledge applicable to its mechanical operations. It is not surprising that such an amateur as De Mayerne should enjoy the confidence of the first painters of his time; or that in return for the useful hints which he was sometimes enabled to give them, they should freely open to him the results of their practical knowledge. Such communications, registered at the time by an intelligent observer, threw considerable light on the state of painting at one of its most brilliant periods, and tend especially to illustrate the habits of the Flemish and Dutch schools."

De Mayerne records the use of sand in purifying oils, as a communication from Mytens, painter to Charles I., before the arrival of Vandyke. "Coming from such a source," says Mr Eastlake, "it may be classed among the processes which were familiar to the Flemish and Dutch painters."

The works of the Flemish and Dutch painters are undoubtedly those which the artists of the present day would desire to be the tests of vehicles and of colours. They can scarcely have, therefore, a more valuable document than this manuscript of De Mayerne, the friend of Vandyke. From this source there is much information with regard to colours. It has always been supposed that Rubens in particular was lavish in the use of Naples yellow. It was largely used by the Italian painters; but it is omitted in the list of colours of the Dutch and Flemish. Many yellows, which in oil alone will not stand, are, it seems, durable if protected by an oleo-resinous medium. After enumerating many other yellows, Mr Eastlake remarks—"There was, however, one substance, viz. gamboge, now undeservedly fallen into disuse in oil painting, which is superior to most, if not to all, of those above named; the colouring matter united with its resinous portion, which renders it more durable in oil painting, may be easily freed from mere gum. De Mayerne, it would seem on good grounds, pronounces in its favour; and his speculations respecting the best mode of using it are confirmed by modern authorities. Gamboge, he observes, furnishes a beautiful yellow, constant, unfading, and that works freely."

We are not surprised to see another pigment commended; we have long used it, but believe it is unknown as a colour by the artists of the present day, though, we suspect, sold by colour-makers for common work as a cheap brown. It is common coal. De Mayerne says, "The shadows of flesh are well rendered by pit-coal, which should not be burned." It is also recommended by Van Mander, and by Norgate, "whose directions for oil painting correspond in all outward particulars with the Flemish methods." In some experiments recorded by Sir Joshua Reynolds—there are the words "Gamboge and oil—but no colour remains;" yet it should be observed that where it is protected it is most durable. We believe the Aloes Cavallino, spoken of in terms of commendation by Leonardo da Vinci, to be an excellent transparent colour—and well calculated to give great richness to browns and to greens. It is certainly very interesting to know the colours actually used by the best masters of bye-gone days,—but we must not forget that modern science may greatly have improved many, and produced others, and has surer grounds to pronounce on their permanency. Mr Field, in his Chromatography, has rendered a very great service to art.

It is not only the varnish, or rather the gums which compose the varnishes, that should be considered with great attention, in reviewing this subject,—but the great stress which seems to have been universally laid upon the necessity of purifying the oils. And this necessity is insisted upon from the earliest times. Even after all the precaution and pains taken to purify oils, there will be a tendency to turn yellow upon the surface. Rubens, in a letter, speaks of this, and gives orders for his pictures, which were packed freshly painted, to be exposed to the sun. And this practice of exposure to the sun seems to have been adopted generally in Italy, as well as [Pg 306]elsewhere, not only for the purpose of drying the paint more readily, but for the freeing the surface from the yellowing of the oil, the deleterious portion of which is thus taken up by the atmosphere and the heat of the sun.

We have unhesitatingly exposed the surfaces of freshly painted pictures not only to the sun, but to all weathers,—and that not for a few hours but for weeks—and always with advantage. There is another method also which will be found equally beneficial. When the surface is greasy, and will not take water from the sponge, it may be truly conjectured that this deleterious quality of the oil has exuded. We always remove it by sand and water—the coarser the sand the better; the finer, being more silicious, is more likely to cut. But we must observe that even though the picture be not fairly dry, excepting under very rough usage, the paint will not be at all removed. Even after this cleansing, the oil will still, for a considerable time, throw up this greasy product. We remove it, therefore, again and again until, after a week or ten days' trial, we find the surface free from grease; and we are strongly inclined to think the colours undergo no change when this clearance has been once well effected. In a letter from Mrs Merrifield, she strongly recommends this exposure of pictures to the sun and atmosphere; and says it was universally practised. This should not, however, prevent the previous purification of the oils; for there is no writer upon the subject that does not insist upon this. Mr Eastlake's book furnishes recipes of all ages. Frequent washings with water, to which a little salt is added, and fine sand to take down the impurities of the oil, may be safely recommended. In describing the process taught by the Gesuate, friends of Perugino, the Padre Gesuato adds, "Observe, that wherever you find oil mentioned, this purified oil is meant."

It would appear that the pigments were, formerly as now, ground only in oil: the vernix was added to the colour, by drops, when on the palette; so that, should the new, or recovered old vehicles, if such they be, come into general use, it will not be necessary to discard the supply of oil colours from the shops of our colour-makers. The colours in tubes, which happily have superseded the bladders, will still be in general request. Northcote thought it a great advantage to the old Italian masters that they were under the necessity of making most of their colours themselves. This, certainly, was not the case in the earlier times; for the monks, who were every thing—physicians, painters, chemists, &c.—were not only the patrons and dealers, but were makers of the colours also. We cannot quite agree with Northcote. The only objection we have to offer to the present system of tube colours is as regards their cost; for, considering the value of the materials, the cost of putting them up seems very exorbitant. This is of little consequence, indeed, in painting easel pictures of no great size; but if we are to proceed on the large scale, which the Commission for the Fine Arts encourages, it would become a matter of some consideration. It has been supposed that the first colour-shop in London was set up by a servant of Sir Godfrey Kneller's; but there is reason to believe, from some incidental remarks, that the trade existed in De Mayerne's time. Some painters of great eminence had their favourite colour-makers, employed, probably, by themselves exclusively. In a letter, Titian regrets the death of the man who prepared his white,—and De Mayerne says of Vandyke, "He spoke to me of all exquisite white, compared with which the finest whitelead appears gray, which he says is known to M. Rubens. Also of a man who dissolved amber without carbonising it, so that the solution was pale yellow, transparent." We learn from this that there were then colour-makers and varnish-makers, and also that the brilliant white of Rubens may not always have been whitelead.

There seems to have been in the fourteenth century a kind of painting practised in England which much attracted the notice of foreigners. It was of water-colours on cloth—"on closely woven linen saturated with gum water. This, when dry, is stretched on the floor over coarse woollen frieze cloths; and the artists,[Pg 307] walking over the linen with clean feet, proceed to design and colour historical figures and other subjects. And because the linen is laid quite flat on the woollen cloths, the water-colours do not flow and spread, but remain where they are placed, the moisture sinking through into the woollen cloths underneath, which absorb it. In like manner, the outlines of the brush remain defined, for the gum in the linen prevents the spreading of such lines. Yet, after this linen is painted, its thinness is no more obscured than if it was not painted at all, as the colours have no body." This does not at all resemble the kind of tempera painting in use in Flanders to imitate tapestry; for it is noticed as peculiar to England by a native of Flanders. May not this method be again, with some advantage, restored for the getting in the subjects of large pictures? The cloth so painted might easily be put on other cloth prepared with a ground.

The subject of grounds is not omitted: it is one of importance; and the artist will do well to study Mr Eastlake's book, if he would have a ground that might suit his after-work. All grounds made with glues are bad—they not only crack, but change the colours. M. Merimée accurately examined the grounds of some of Titian's pictures—and found starch and paste. It is supposed that grounds in which red-lead and umber have been used darken all the pigments.

The Venetians usually preferred painting on cloth, and not unfrequently chose the finest. There was a canvass used in Italy, and chiefly by the Bolognese school, which gives much richness, its peculiar texture being seen even through tolerably thick paint—the threads are in squares, and rather coarse. We are surprised that such is not to be met with in our shops. We have often endeavoured to obtain it without success. On canvass of this kind some painters, and among them Guercino, contrived greatly to raise the lights—so that as seen side-ways they appear to bulge. We are not aware how this was done.

We take some credit to ourselves for having in the pages of Maga, so long ago as June 1839—promoted an inquiry into the nature of the vehicles used by the old masters. And this we did, knowing that we should incur some odium and contemptuous disapprobation at the hands of artists, too many of whom were jealous of any supposed superiority in their great predecessors, and were generally satisfied with the meguilp, (mastic varnish, beat up with drying oil,) which had, nevertheless, been proved so deceitful from the first days of its adoption. The readiness with which it was made, the facility of working which it offered, and its immediate brilliancy, were temptations too great to be resisted. The too common use of this vehicle, we confess, led us too far in a contrary direction—to set ourselves against all varnishes whatever; and we laid, perhaps, too much stress upon the authority of Tingry, who speaks strongly against the admixture[12] of varnishes with oil; and, with this bias, we reviewed, in Maga, M. Merimée's work, in which, certainly with mistranslations of the Latin of Theophilus, as well as of Italian quotations, he insisted upon the use principally of copal, though without any distrust of mastic.

The difference between the texture of old paint, that is of the good age, both Italian and Flemish, and that which modern practice had exhibited, was too manifest to be overlooked; and we never could bring ourselves to believe that the meguilp in use, by itself, ever had or ever would produce that solid brilliancy or substantial transparency which was and is the great charm in the genuine works of the[Pg 308] good old time of the art. And we believe still that all experience is against it, and that the era of its adoption is marked in the history of art by the visible deterioration in the quality of the painted surfaces. Bad as we conceive the use of mastic always to have been, it was not, until comparatively modern times, employed in the most injurious manner. The Flemish and Italian recipes incorporated it with the oil, together, generally, with other substances, by heat, and not, according to the subsequent modern practice, merely dissolved in turpentine and added to the oil. Of all varnishes mastic is the softest, most liable to decomposition, most readily affected by atmospheric changes, having no protection or medium of incorporation, being merely liquified with turpentine, which, evaporating, leaves the mastic to the injuries of air and moisture. Oil varnishes are, however, of another character, and we are converted to their use by historic evidence, and authorities which cannot be doubted. We do not assert that the exact recipes and formulæ, for the compositions of the true oleo-resinous vehicles are not now in possession of the public. We are inclined to think they are; but, as we are promised by Mr Eastlake another volume, chiefly upon the Italian practice, which, too, we presume to think was the best, we in some degree force ourselves to suspend our judgment, resting our hope for what is to come upon the undeniable value of what has been already given us.

When we formerly treated of this subject, we mentioned the great reliance we placed upon the results of the accurate research and experiments of a friend, P. Rainier, Esq., M.D. of the Albany. It is greatly to be regretted that, at his death, his papers were not properly collected and arranged for use; they are, it is to be feared, lost. We well remember his assertion, that the paint of the old masters invariably vitrified by fire. In proof, he scraped off some paint from an old picture, (it was in the shadow part of back-ground, and not very thick, and where there was not, apparently, any white-lead). He laid it on some platina, and subjected it to the heat of the blow-pipe. The oil first exploded, and the paint was vitrified. Hence, originated the borax medium—remarkable property of which was its capability of being used with water as a diluent or with oil,—thus being a kind of union of the earlier temperas and the oil medium. This borax-glass vehicle was certainly a discovery, or rediscovery, as he was inclined to think it, of our highly valued friend, P. Rainier. We say re-discovery, remembering his playful assumption of a motto, "Veterem revocavit artem." He was probably led to this use of a glass composed of borax, by the vitrification of the pigments; and we still suspect that, in some of the old Italian recipes, glass, with borax as an ingredient, will be found. "A peculiar kind of Venetian glass," says Mr Eastlake, "used, when pulverised, as a dryer, contained a considerable portion of lead; and if it acted chemically, may have derived its siccative quality from that ingredient." The question here naturally suggests itself, Why was a peculiar glass used for this purpose, when it was perfectly well known that lead of itself would have been sufficient? Again, in page 358, from the Mayerne MS., as quoting the authority of Mytens; "This oil (mancop) does not dry of itself easily, but it is usually ground with Venetian glass, and thus to the sun in a glass bottle. This should be shaken every four days for three or four weeks: it should then be carefully decanted for use, leaving the sediment with the glass." It is a question if the glass was here solely used to facilitate the sediment.

Vitrification would not depend upon the introduction of glass only,—calcined bones, which, it is now known, were much used in vehicles, will produce the same result. In a note, page 345, Mr Eastlake says that he requested Mr Marris Dimsdale to analyse a fragment of a picture by Cariani of Bergamo, (a contemporary and scholar, or imitator of Giorgione;)—the result being, that "one portion ran fairly into a vitrified state. Hypothetically," adds Mr Dimsdale, "I should say it had burned bones in it." And again, "Every colour mixed with phosphate of lime, (calcined bones,) vitrifies when exposed to strong heat. As Venetian pigments vitrify, might[Pg 309] not phosphate of lime have been used as a dryer?"

We cannot but suspect any medium under which the pigments will not vitrify. The publication of Mr Eastlake's most important and valuable volume, rather strengthens our reliance upon the various communications made to us by Mr Rainier. For instance, many years ago, we used, at his recommendation, sandarach, dissolved in spike oil, and then mixed with the oil heated. It may not be amiss here, as sandarach is now so strongly recommended, and shown at least to have formed a part of one of the precious vehicles, to state the result of its use some twenty years ago. A picture we then painted with it, is still without a crack, extremely hard, and though by no means well painted, is good in texture, and resembles in the quality of the pigments very much that of the old schools. Though for some years shut up in a portfolio, the colours do not appear to have undergone any change.

Although it will not probably be found that borax was used in the good recipes by name, it may have been in the Venetian glass—at all events, though we are now rather in search of what was in use, than what may be useful and good in itself, as it were de novo, it may be worth while to remember the double facility it offers of use with oil or water, both or either; and it may be added that the experience of some years shows nothing against it and much in its favour. We have thought it to be a preservative of colours. In our review of M. Merimée, we threw out a conjecture that it might have been the Gummi Fornis in the recipe of Theophilus—and which M. Merimée believed to be copal. But we are quite convinced of our error by the arguments—we might say proofs—adduced by Mrs Merrifield, contained in a note, in her admirable and most useful volume, "Cennino Cennini." That it was sandarach there can be no doubt; and we were in consequence induced to try the making the vehicle according to the recipe of Theophilus, and perfectly succeeded. It has a pleasant lustre, not that somewhat disagreeable shine which is often visible in pictures painted with copal. For the quality of sandarach Mrs Merrifield quotes Raffael Borghini, from his "Reposo"—"If you would have your varnish very brilliant, use much sandarach."

Mr Eastlake has shown that Mrs Merrifield was not quite so fortunate in her remark against M. Merimée's conjecture that the "Gummi Fornis" was copal. "As that is brought from America, it could not possibly have been known to Theophilus, who lived between three and four hundred years previous to the discovery of that country." The name copal, as that of Brazil, is not indigenous to America. Both that gum and dye were African, and transferred to the similar productions of the New World. It is curious that a distinction made between "vernice," and "vernice liquida" should be the means of ascertaining the gum given in the recipe of Theophilus which M Merimée believed to be copal. Vernice was the name of sandarach, and was in common use in its dry state, as pounce, but when made into a varnish with oil, it was called vernice liquida.

To those who delight in etymologies, it will afford amusement to learn that the word varnish is with much reason conjectured to be derived from the name of a daughter of one of the Ptolemies, celebrated for her amber-coloured hair,—the heroine of the poem of Callimachus of which we have only the translation by Catullus, the "Coma Berenices." Eustathius, the commentator on Homer of the twelfth century, states that amber (ἢλεκτρον) in his day was called βερονίκη. Salmasius spells it βερενικι. "Even during the classic ages of Greece β represented φ in certain dialects." Veronica, in the Lucca M.S., (eighth century,) more than once occurs among the ingredients of varnishes. "And it is remarkable," adds Mr Eastlake, "that in the copies of the same recipes in the Mappæ Clavicula (twelfth century) the word is spelt in the genitive—Verenicis and Vernicis," and thus we come by very legitimate derivation to the English word varnish. Sandarach, however, becoming in process of time the common substitute for amber, took the name: and to distinguish this oleo-resinous varnish[Pg 310] from that of the real amber, the latter is called "Vernice liquida gentile." The "Mappæ Clavicula," spoken of above, is a very curious publication, in the last No. of the Archæologia, vol. xxxii. part 1, of a MS. treatise on the preparation of pigments during the middle ages. Speaking of the vernice liquida, Mr Eastlake says:—

"The amber varnish had been adopted in its stead by the early Flemish painters, and though often represented by[13] copal, had never been entirely laid aside; it had even returned to the north from Italy in the hands of Gentileschi. Rembrandt, from motives of economy, may have employed the scarcely less durable common "vernix" or sandarac oil varnish; and for certain effects may have reckoned on its tint. Either this, or the rapidly drying Venice amber before described, was in all probability used by him freely."

Mr Eastlake thinks that the darkness of the vehicle had been allowed to increase (and the darker the thicker it would be) with the darkness of the colour employed. That this was the case, we might conjecture, not only from the works of Rembrandt, but we think it may be so seen in some of the back-grounds of Correggio. "The influence of the colour of the vehicle on the quantity and depth of shadow is indeed plainly to be traced in the general style of oil painting, as compared with tempera and other methods." In a note on this passage we are told that "Sandrart relates, it is to be hoped on no good authority, that Rubens induced Jordaens to paint some works in tempera for tapestries, in the hope that his rival, by being accustomed to the light style of colouring suitable to tempera, might lose his characteristic force in oil. The biographer even adds that the scheme answered."

Now we make this quotation, which is not creditable to Sandrart, to remove if we may its sting: for who would wish this moral stigma to rest upon the character of so great a man as Rubens? We have no doubt the advice was conscientiously given, and with a true accurate judgment of the powers of Jordaens. We can easily imagine that the heavy handling, the somewhat muddy loading of the colour in every part of the pictures of Jordaens, must have been offensive to Rubens, who so delighted in the freer, fresher, and more variable colouring and handling. And such is the judgment which the present day passes upon Jordaens, to the depreciation of his works, and in vindication of the advice of Rubens.

As both amber and sandarac had a tendency to darken the colours, "a lighter treatment," Mr Eastlake adds, "has rarely been successful without a modification of the vehicle itself." In treating more fully of the Italian methods, we shall probably have many recipes for this purpose. We are, however, in possession of a recipe of this kind described by Armenini of Faenga about the middle of the sixteenth century, as used by Correggio and Parmigiano. His authorities, he informs us, for so designating it were the immediate scholars of those masters; and he states that he had himself witnessed its general use throughout Lombardy by the best painters. His description is as follows. "Some took clear fir turpentine, dissolved it in a pipkin on a very moderate fire; when it was dissolved, they added an equal quantity of petroleum, (naptha,) throwing it in immediately on removing the liquified turpentine." A long note is appended upon this varnish or 'olio d'abezzo,' with a very interesting note by an Italian writer of the present century, who attributes the preservation of Corregio's pictures to its use. He adds also his own experience. Having applied this varnish to four old pictures, he proceeds:—

"After an interval of more than thirty years, those pictures have not only retained their freshness, but it seems that the colours, and especially the whites, have become more agreeable to the eye, exhibiting, not indeed the lustre of glass, but a clearness like that of a recently painted picture,[Pg 311] and without yellowing in the least. I also applied the varnish on the head of all Academy figure, painted by me about five-and-twenty years since. On the rest of the figure I made experiments with other varnishes and glazings. This head surpasses all the other portions in a very striking manner; it appears freshly painted, and still moist with oil, retaining its tints perfectly. The coat of varnish is extremely thin, yet, on gently washing the surface, it has not suffered. The lustre is uniform; it is not the gloss of enamel or glass, but precisely that degree of shine which is most desirable in a picture."

Mr Eastlake enters upon a dissertation on the Italian and Flemish modes of painting, discriminating the transparency by glazing, and the transparency by preserving the light grounds. The ground does not appear throughout the pictures of Correggio, universally so in those of Rubens and most of the Flemish and Dutch schools. Both methods have their peculiar value. We should be sorry to see the substantial richness of Correggio, with his pearly grays seen under a body of transparent colouring, exchanged even for the free first sketchy getting in of the subject by Rubens. On this part of the subject it is scarcely wise to give a decided opinion. Every artist will adapt either method to his own power, his own conceptions, and intentions. Rembrandt struck out a method strictly belonging to neither system, with a partial use of each. He would be unwise who would attempt to limit the power of the palette—we speak here only of its materials.

At the end of the volume are extracts from the notes of Sir Joshua Reynolds. They are extremely interesting, both from their examples of success, and warnings by failure. We cannot help reflecting, on reading these notes, upon the great importance of such a work as Mr Eastlake's. Had Sir Joshua Reynolds been in possession of such a volume, how many of his pictures, now perished and perishing, would have been preserved for immortality! and how much better might even the best have been by the certainty of means which would have been within his reach! and we should not have had to regret, as we often do in looking at some of his best pictures, that somewhat heavy labouring after a brilliancy and a power not always compatible, and perhaps not then attainable, which shows that his mind was thoroughly imbued with a full sense of the excellency of the great masters, but that he wanted such a work as the learning, the research, and discriminating judgment of Mr Eastlake now offers for the study and practice of every professor of the art. To these notes are added some interesting remarks by our author upon the effects of the recipes with which the pictures were painted, as they are now visible in the works themselves.

This book could not have appeared at a more fit time. The English school is becoming of too great importance to waste any of its powers any longer in the perishing and weak materials of our various meguilps; and the German school may be arrested by it in their backward progress to the old, quaint, dry method which the old masters themselves quitted as soon as the improvements of the Van Eycks, and the modifications of those improvements by their successors, established upon a basis for immortality painting in oil.

We must forbear, lest our readers may be wearied with the name of varnish, and may think we resemble that unfortunate painter, who, bewildering his wits upon the subject, became deranged, and varnished his clothes with turpentine varnish, and went in this state shining through the streets.

[Pg 312]

LE PREMIER PAS.

There appears to be something pedantical in criticising a popular proverb—something vexatious in calling in question the sort of ancestral wisdom it is supposed to contain—in disputing a truth, which has been formalised and accepted by the general assent and perpetual iteration, at all hours of the day, by all sorts of talkers. Besides, who knows not that a proverb is not a logical statement? It is always a one-sided view of the matter, so that the most opposite of proverbs may be equally true; it gains its currency, and its very force and pungency, by a bold exclusion at once of all that qualification, and exception, and limitation, which your exact thinkers require. We will not, therefore, enter into any profane or captious dispute of one of the most current of the whole family of proverbs, that which assigns so great a value to the premier pas, to the first step, in any enterprise or career of life, so that this once accomplished, all the rest is easy, all the rest is done, ce n'est que le premier pas qui conte. We will not criticise, nor qualify, nor except; only this we will say, that many a first step has been made that led nowhere,—to nothing; that a multitude of professional and other aspirants would allow, if they reflected on it a moment, that they had, all their lives long, at certain intervals, been making first steps, and never made any other. More glory, doubtless, is due to them for having overcome so many successive difficulties. Whilst, on the other hand, many who have advanced to eminence in their chosen career, would find it hard to distinguish, in that gradual progress which toil and talent had together commanded, any one first step, or stride, which set them going on their prosperous path, any step a jot more extraordinary than the rest, or that did more towards the completion of the journey than the first step one makes in walking from Edinburgh to Leith. They would have as much difficulty in describing the premier pas which started them on the road to fortune, as many a good Christian, well brought up from youth to manhood, would feel if called upon to answer a Whitfield or a Wesley, as to the precise day and hour of his conversion. The truth is, we apprehend, that in this popular proverb, two several matters are confused together under one name, thus giving to it a greater force than it should legitimately possess; the premier pas not only signifies that first step one takes on any of the high roads which conduct to wealth or honours, but under the same title is also included, we suspect, those startling turns and tricks of fortune, on which no human wit can calculate, and which raise a man suddenly into some new and unexpected position in the world. All kinds of fortunate starting points are mingled together in one view, and under one title; an thus, the first step becomes magnified into half the journey, as indeed it is sometimes the whole of it.

For instance—a Meinherr Tettenborn was passing the weary, half-employed hours at a merchant's desk, kicking his heels, probably, on one of those tall uneasy stools which, with strange mockery of disproportion, raise the lowest functionary to the highest footing, but which nevertheless contribute to preserve the due distinctions of society, by inflicting all possible discomfort on the elevated sitter. Perhaps there was some association of ideas between the military profession, and the equestrian position he occasionally found it convenient to assume; however that may be, Meinherr Tettenborn suddenly bethought him, that he would bestride a high-trotting horse instead of his tall black stool. He threw away the pen for the sword. At this time all Europe was up in arms against Napoleon; so that, although he entered the Service of the Emperor of Russia, he was still but enlisting in the common cause, in which his own Germany was more interested than may other country. He entered, as may be supposed, in the lowest rank of officers; and, as cornet, or with some[Pg 313] such title, you may picture him at the head of a small troop of horse, despatched for forage or some ordinary service of the like kind. As he was thus conducting his little troop, he spied "something black" lying in a field by the side of the road. He cantered up to it. The something black was nothing less than a small park of artillery, sixteen guns, which the enemy had left behind them, perhaps in some false alarm, or for want of horses to draw them, but apparently for the very purpose of being captured by Meinherr Tettenborn. He ordered up his little troop, harnessed their horses to the guns, and rode back triumphant to the camp. The Emperor himself was present. News was speedily brought him of the capture of a park of artillery, and the illustrious victor was introduced. Many questions were not asked of the how, or the when, or the where; the guns happened to be particularly welcome; the Emperor took from his own neck the order of the Iron Cross, and suspended it round the neck of the fortunate young soldier, greeting him, at the same time, with the title of General Tettenborn! The general was a brave man, was equal to his new position, captured other guns in another manner, and rose, we will not venture to say how high in the Imperial service.

Now this very anecdote we have heard cited as an example, illustrating the proverb, ce n'est que le premier pas, &c. Yet this finding something black lying quietly in the green fields, which proved to be a park of artillery waiting to be captured, cannot certainly be set down amongst the early steps of a military career, is not known amongst the means or stages of promotion, but is manifestly one of those joyous caprices which Fortune occasionally indulges in, for the express purpose, we presume, that castle-building in the air may never go quite out of fashion.

In a very amusing collection of anecdotes, entitled, Fêtes et Souvenirs du Congrès Vienne, par le Comte A. de la Garde, there is a good story told of one of these capricious visitations of Fortune, which came,—where Fortune does not often play her more amiable tricks,—to a miserable poet, releasing him at once from poverty and his jaded muse. We regret to be obliged to tell the story from memory. We ought to have preserved the book, if only out of gratitude—for it was the most pleasant travelling companion, the best fellowship for a diligence or a steam-boat, we remember to have encountered. But the market price of the small paper-bound volumes (such was the shape in which it came to us) was so little—it being one of those editions which the journalists on the Continent often print to distribute gratis to the subscribers to their journal—that no pains were taken to preserve it. Very absurd! We print books so cheap, that the book loses half its value: it is bought and not read; or read once, and thrown aside, or destroyed.

Poor Dubois was one of that unhappy class, which we are given to understand is dying out of Europe, (we hope for the sake of suffering humanity that this is true); of that class, which we in England used to call Grub Street poets. He flourished at the time of the Empire, and had been flourishing during the whole of the eventful period that preceded the elevation of Napoleon. Poor Dubois had alternately applauded and satirised all parties, and written songs for all sentiments; but had extracted very little either of praise or pocket-money from any of the reigning powers, whether republican or imperial. He was quite in despair. Still young in years, but with worn-out rhymes, he was lamenting one day to his sister his melancholy and hopeless fate. This damsel was in the service of Pauline the sister of Napoleon. "Write me a sonnet," said she, "about Pauline, and about beauty, and let me try what I can do." A beautiful sonnet, and a sonnet about beauty, are two very different things. Dubois made nothing of his task, but did it out of hand: his sister took the sonnet with her.

It was not long before she had an opportunity, in her capacity of femme de chambre, of speaking to Pauline about her brother the poet. She[Pg 314] produced her sonnet about beauty. Pauline did not exactly read it; no one but the writer, and a few afflicted friends, and those heroic souls who do things to say they have done them, ever do read sonnets; but she glanced her eye down the rhymes, and saw her own name in harmonious connexion with some very sweet epithets. Therefore she asked what she could do for the poet—what it was he wanted? Alas! every thing! was the prompt and candid reply,—some little post, some modest appointment.

Now it happened that Fouché at that time was doing his best to conciliate the fair Pauline, who with or without reason, had shown a little humour against the minister of police. He had frequently entreated her to make use of his power in favour of any of her friends. "Well," said the good-natured Pauline, "this Fouché is always plaguing me to ask for something; give me a desk."

A lady's pen upon the smooth vellum—you know how fleetly it runs, and what pretty exaggeration of phrase must necessarily flow from it. The style, the very elegance of the note, demands it. Dubois was in an instant, and most charmingly converted into a man of neglected genius and unmerited distress. What was the happy turn of expression is lost to us for ever: but as Fouché read the note, he understood that there was a man of talent to be assisted, and, what was still more to the purpose, an opportunity of showing his gallantry to Pauline.

The next day the minister rode forth in state accompanied by four mounted gens-d'armes. Following the address which had been given him, he found himself in one of the least inviting parts of Paris, far better known to his own myrmidons of police than to himself. But, arrived before the enormous pile of building, which was said to enclose our poet amidst its swarm of tenants, he made vain inquiries for Monsieur Dubois. At last an old crone came to his assistance: she remembered him; she had washed for him, and had never been paid. If you do not wish to be forgotten by all the world, take care there is some one living to whom you are in debt.

Meanwhile Dubois, from his aërial habitation, had heard his own name pronounced, and looking out at window caught sight of the gens-d'armes. For which of his satires or libels he was to undergo the honour of prosecution, he could not divine; but that his poetical effusions were at last to bring him into hapless notoriety, was the only conclusion he could arrive at. That he was still perfectly safe, inasmuch as write what he would nobody read, was the last idea likely to suggest itself to the poet. He would have rushed down stairs, but steps were heard ascending. So much furniture as a cupboard may stand for, the bare walls of his solitary room did not display. There was nothing for it but to leap into what he called his bed, and hide beneath the blankets, always presuming they were long enough to cover both extremities at once. The minister, undeterred by the difficulties of the ascent, and animated by his gallantry towards Pauline, continued to mount, and at length entered the poet's retreat. Great are the eccentricities of genius, and lamentable the resources of pride and poverty, thought Fouché, as he gently drew the blankets down, and discovered the dismayed Dubois. Some conciliatory words soon relieved him of his terror. The awful visit of the minister of police had terminated—could it be credited!—in an invitation to breakfast with him next morning.

Judge if he failed in his appointment; judge if he was not surprised beyond all measure of astonishment, when the minister politely asked him whether he would accept so trifling a post as that of Commissaire-général of Police of the Isle of Elba, with we know not how many hundreds of francs per annum, with half-a-year's salary in advance, and all travelling expenses paid. The little condition was added that he must quit Paris directly, for the post had been too long vacant, and there were reasons which demanded his immediate presence at Elba. How he contrived to accept with any gravity, without a[Pg 315] broad grin upon his face, can never be known. He would certainly have bounded to the ceiling; but by good fortune, or happy instinct, he had convulsively clasped his chair with both hands, and so anchored himself to the ground.

Off he started the very next day, happier than Sancho Panza, to the government of his island; for his post virtually constituted him the governor of Elba. Nor was the stream of his good fortune half exhausted. For immediately on his arrival he was appealed to for a decision, between two rich and rival capitalists, both desirous of undertaking to work certain mines lately discovered in the island. One offered him a large share in the future profits; the other a large sum of ready money. Our governor decided for the ready money.

When a gallant man renders a service, he does not run and proclaim it immediately. Fouché allowed a few days to transpire before he waited on Pauline. He then alluded to the appointment he had made; he hoped she was content with the manner in which he had provided for her client, Dubois.

"Dubois! Dubois!" said the lady, "I know of no Dubois."

The whole affair had entirely escaped her memory. Fouché assisted in recalling it.

"Oh, true!" she said, "the brother of my chambermaid; well, did you give him any little employment? What did you make of him?"

Fouché saw his error, bit his lips, and let the subject pass.

That very evening a messenger was despatched to recall Dubois—and home he came; but "with money in both pockets"—a little capital of solid francs. Poet as he was, the man had sense; he did not spend, but invested it, and the revenue enabled him to assume the life and bearing of a gentleman. We leave him prospering, and to prosper.

It is said, that Fouché did all he could to keep this story secret. But Pauline discovered the truth, and was malicious enough to disclose it to Napoleon, who more than once jested his minister on his governor of Elba.

There is a sort of premier pas known, we believe, amongst gamesters—at least trusted to very implicitly, we remember, amongst schoolboy gamesters—that which commences a run of good luck. When the cards, or the dice, have been cruelly against us, if the tide once turn, it will flow steadily for some time in its new and happier direction. In the palace of a certain Russian prince, whose name of course it is impossible to remember, for it is one of those names you do not think of attempting to pronounce even to yourself—you look at it merely, and use it as the Chinese their more learned combinations of characters, where they pass at once from the visible sign to the idea, without any intermediate oral stage. In the palace of this prince, you are surprised to see in the most splendid of its splendid suite of apartments, suspended behind a glass case—a set of harness!—common harness for a couple of coach horses, such as you may see in any gentleman's stable. Of course, it attracts more attention than all the pictures, and statues, and marble tables with their porphyry vases and gold clocks.

"The thing you know is neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the devil it got there!"

You inquire, and are told the following story.

The Prince of ———— was one night led into deep and desperate play. He had staked estate after estate, and lost them; he had staked his plate, his pictures, his jewels, the furniture of his house, and lost them; his mansion itself, and lost it. The luck would not turn. His carriage and horses had been long waiting for him at the door, he staked them and lost! He had nothing more; he threw up the window, and leant out of it in utter despair. There stood his carriage and horses, the subject of his last wager. He had now nothing left. Yes! There was the harness! Nothing had been said of the harness. The carriage and the horses were lost, but not the harness. His opponent agreed to this interpretation of the wager. They played for the harness. He won! They played for the carriage and horses,—he won. They played for the palace, for the plate, the pictures, the furniture,—he won. They played for[Pg 316] estate after estate,—he still won. He won all back again, and rose from that table the same rich man he had sat down to it. Had he not good reason to suspend that harness in his very best saloon?

There is such a thing as a first step most fortunately adverse, in whose failure there is salvation. There are some well-known instances where wealthy young noblemen have been rescued from the pernicious habit of gaming by a first loss, which, though it partly crippled them, sent them back from what might otherwise have proved the road to utter ruin. When a man would tamper with any species of vice, a happy misadventure, thoroughly disgusting him with his experiment, is the most precious lesson he can receive. In the collection of anecdotes we have before alluded to, there was one of this kind which struck us very forcibly. It is all admirable instance of the biter bit; but here the young man who wished to be nibbling at roguery, (who in this instance happens also to be a Russian nobleman,) got so excellent and so salutary a lesson, that we almost forgive the old and consummate rogue who gave it.

The first Congress of Vienna had collected together all manner of Jew and Gentile—all who could in any way contribute to pleasure, which seemed the great object of the assembly; for balls, fêtes, concerts, parties of every description were following in endless succession, till one fine morning news came that the lion was loose again. Napoleon had broke from Elba—and every one scampered to his own home. Amongst the rest was a clever Jew and a rich, who, being very magnificently apparelled, and having that to lend which many desired to borrow, had found no difficulty in edging himself amongst the grandees of the society. This man wore upon his finger a superb diamond ring. The Count of —— was struck with admiration at it, and as a matter of pure curiosity, inquired what might be the value of so magnificent a stone. The Hebrew gentleman, with the most charming candour in the world, confessed it was not a stone—it was merely an imitation. A real diamond of the same magnitude, he said, would indeed be of great value, but this, although a very clever imitation, and as such highly prized by himself, was nothing better than paste. The Count requested to look at it closer, to take it in his hand and examine it; he flattered himself that he knew something of precious stones; he protested that it was a real diamond. The Hebrew smiled a courteous denial. The Count grew interested in the question, and asked permission to show it to a friend. This was granted without hesitation, and the Count carried the ring to a jeweller, whose opinion upon such a matter he knew must be decisive. Was it a diamond or not? It was a diamond, said the jeweller, and of the very purest water. Had he any doubt of it? None at all. Would he purchase it? Why—humph—he could not pretend to give the full value for such a stone—it might lie on his hands for some time—he would give 80,000 rubles for it. You will give 80,000 rubles for this ring? I will, said the jeweller. At that moment, the spirit of covetousness and of trickery entered into the soul of the young nobleman. Back he went to his Hebrew acquaintance, whom he found seated at the whist table. Restoring him the ring, he said that he was more persuaded than ever that it was a real diamond, and that he would give him 50,000 rubles for it on the spot. (A pretty profit, he thought, of 30,000 rubles.) The Jew, quietly replacing the ring on his finger, protested he would by no means rob the gentleman, as he knew that it was not a diamond. The Count urged the matter. At length, after much insistance on the one part, and reluctance on the other, the proprietor of the ring appealed to his partners in the game of whist. "You see, gentleman," said he, "how it is—the Count is so confident in his connoisseurship that he insists upon giving me 50,000 rubles for my ring, which I declare to be paste." "And I declare it to be a diamond," said the Count, "and, taking all risk upon myself, will give you 50,000 rubles for it." The bargain was concluded, and the ring and the money changed hands.

The Count flew to the jeweller. "Here is the ring—let me have the 80,000 rubles." "For this! Pooh! it[Pg 317] is paste—not worth so many sous—worth nothing."

Th Jew had two rings exactly alike, with the little difference, that in the one was a real stone, in the other an imitation. By dexterously changing the one for the other, he had contrived to give this beneficial lesson to the young, nobleman, which, it is to be hoped, prevented him, for ever after, from entering the list with sharpers, or trying by unworthy means to over-reach his neighbours.

But to return to what is more generally alluded to as the premier pas—that first success which starts the aspirant on his road to fortune or to fame. It is the barrister and the physician who, amongst all professional men, have most frequently to record some happy chance or adventure that came to the aid of their skill, knowledge, and industry; and of the first brief, or of the first patient, the history is not unfrequently told with singular delight. The story we have to tell, and to which the above remarks and anecdotes may be considered by the reader, if he will, as a sort of preamble, regards the first patient of one who, commencing under great difficulties, rose ultimately to the head of his profession. It belongs to both those classes which, we observed in the commencement, are often mingled indiscriminately together. It has in it something of the marvellous, and yet afforded but a fair opening to genuine talent; it was a first step which the fairies presided over, and yet it was a step on the firm earth, and the first of a series which only true genius and worth could have completed. We are fortunate here in having the words before us of the French author from whom we quote, and we have but to render the anecdote—biography, or romance, whichever it may be—in whatever of the lively style of M. Felix Tournachon our pen can catch, or, under the necessity we are to abridge, we can hope to transfer to our pages.

THE FIRST PATIENT

...He was not then the great doctor that you know him now. At that time he was neither officer of the Legion of Honour, nor professor of the Faculty of Paris. Hardly was he known to some few companions of his studies. The horses that drew his carriage were not then born; the pole of his landau was flourishing green in the forest.

He had obtained his title of physician, and lived in a poor garret—as one says—as if there were any garrets that are rich; and to accomplish this miserable result, to have his painted bed-stead, his table of sham mahogany, two chairs wretchedly stuffed, and his books—what efforts had it not cost him!

He was so poor!

Have you ever known any of these indefatigable young students, born in the humblest ranks, who spend upon their arid labour their ten, their twenty best years of life, without a thought or a care for the pleasures of their age or the passing day?—youthful stoics who march with firm step, and alone, towards an end which, alas! all do not attain!

You have wept at that old drama, that old eternal scene which is recounted every day—yet not so old, it is renewed also every day:—the bare chamber, no better than a loft—the truckle-bed—the broken pitcher—the heap of straw—the sentimental lithographist will not forget the guttering candle stuck into the neck of a bottle. Thus much for the accessories, then for the persons of the scene; a workman, the father who expects to die in the hospital—his four children—always four—who have not broken their fast that day—and the mother is lying-in with her fifth—and it is winter, for these poor people choose winter always for their lying-in.

Oh! all this is very true and piteous—I weep with you at the cry of those suffering children—at the sobs of their mother. Yet there is another poverty which you know not, which it is never intended that you should know. A silent poverty that goes dressed in its black coat, polished, it[Pg 318] is true, where polish should not come, and with a slaty hue—produced by the frequent application of ink to its threadbare surface. It is a courageous poverty which resists all aid—even from that fictitious fund, a debt—which dresses itself as you would dress, if your coat were ten years old—which invites no sympathy—which may be seen in the sombre evening stopping a moment before the baker's shop, or the wired windows of the money-changer, but passing on again without a sigh heard. Oh, this poverty in a black coat! And then it enters into its cold and solitary chamber, without even the sad consolation of weeping with another. No Lady Bountiful comes here. In the picture just now described, she would be seen in the background, entering in at the door, her servant behind loaded with raiment and provisions. What should she here? What brings you here, madam? Who could have sent you here? We are rich! If we were poor should we not sell these books?—all these books are ours; madam, we want nothing. Carry your amiable charity elsewhere.

Our young doctor had installed himself in the fifth floor of that historic street, La Cloître-Saint-Mery,—a quarter of the town, poor, disinherited, sad as himself. Where else, indeed, could he have carried his mutilated furniture,—which in other quarters would have only excited distrust? There was he waiting for fortune—not, be it understood, in his bed, but following science laboriously, uninterruptedly. His life was so retired—so modest—so silent, that hardly was he known in the house. On the day of his arrival, he had said to the porter, or rather porteress, "Madam, I am a doctor—if any one should want me." This was all the publicity of the new doctor—his sole announcement, his only advertisement. As his fellow lodgers could gather nothing of him to gratify or excite curiosity—as his unfrequented door was always strictly closed, they soon ceased to concern themselves about him. His name even was forgotten; they simply called him the doctor—and with this title our readers also must be contented, unless their own ingenuity should enable them to discover another.

One night our doctor heard unaccustomed noises in the house, doors slamming, people walking to and fro. Presently some one knocked at his door—verily at his door. What was it? Was the patient come at last—that first patient, so anxiously expected? He was dressed in an instant.

"The Countess is dying!" some one cried through the door. "Come, directly!"

He was at her bedside in a minute.

The Countess! Such was the title given in derision to precisely the poorest and most miserable old woman in the house. She had been at one period of her life in the service of a noble family as femme-de-chambre; and as a woman who had seen something of the great world, she held unqualified strangers at a certain distance, and, to use a common phrase, kept herself to herself. This had procured her the ill-will and ill-opinion of several other old crones inhabiting the same house, who made her the subject of their perpetual scandal. Without doubt, she had poisoned her last master, and could not look a Christian in the face; or at very least she had robbed him. Did you ask for proofs? She had a treasure stitched into a mattress. But she was nearly dying with hunger? Yes—the niggard! She starved herself, she could not spend her treasure.

Monstrous inventions! The poverty of the Countess, as they called her in mockery, was complete. Niggard she was, and had good reason to be so, in order to subsist on the little annuity she had contrived, in the days of her service, to scrape together. For the rest, as we have no wish to disguise the truth, the Countess was by no means an amiable person—bitter and selfish, hostile to all the world, as venomous as her detractors, and without pity for others, as those so often are who have suffered much themselves.

She was now stretched motionless on her bed. The old crones had come about her less from humanity than to discover the secrets of her den, the access to which she had hitherto strictly defended. She held in her left hand a small packet wrapped up[Pg 319] in half a pocket-handkerchief, which she clutched convulsively. It was the treasure, they all exclaimed.

Her case was a grave one—a congestion of the brain. The doctor bled her, and then wrote his prescription—his first! The bleeding brought the Countess to herself. When she heard him tell one of the bystanders to go to the chemist and get the potion,—

"Potion!" she exclaimed, laying hold of the paper, "I want no potion—I am not ill. Do you think I have money to pay for your drugs? Go away!—all of you—go!"

She crumpled the prescription in her hand, and was about to throw it on the floor, when something in the paper apparently arrested her. She read the prescription, and, turning to the doctor with a manner quite changed and subdued, asked how much it would cost? She then opened the little packet she had held till then so jealously in her hand. All the old crones stretched forward. A few franc-pieces and some great sous were all the treasure it contained.

That first client, so long looked for, was come at last. Our doctor had his patient—that first patient whom one pets and caresses, to whom one is nurse as well as physician. No uncertain diagnostics there—no retarded visits, no hasty prescriptions. If this one die, it is verily his fault. He devoted himself, body and soul, to the old woman. Certainly the fees would not be very brilliant, nor would the cure spread his reputation very widely. He thought not of this—but save her he must! He absolutely loved this unamiable Countess. He assembled the ban et arrière-ban of science, and armed himself cap-à-pie in knowledge for her defence.

The object of all this solicitude received his attentions, however, with an increasing ill-humour, for each fresh medicine made a fresh demand upon her purse. "How long will this last?" she said one day; "I must go out—I have no more money—I must go out this very day."

"Do not disturb yourself," began the Doctor.

"Not disturb myself!" she interrupted; "easy to say! Instead of giving me these drinks and draughts, give me something that will put a little strength into me—for I must go out."

"Listen to me! remain tranquil a few days"—She turned round from him with impatience.

"To leave your chamber now would be to expose your life. Give me but four days; and if you have no more money, I will charge myself with the medicines."

"You!" cried the Countess, looking up with astonishment.

"And why not me?" said the young Doctor. "You shall return it to me some time—when you will."

"You! who have not often a dinner for yourself!"

"Who says that?" asked the Doctor, blushing involuntarily.

"All the house says it."

"Miserable stuff!" he replied; "will you accept what I offer? If I promise, you may be sure I can perform."

The old woman looked at him with surprise, and at length consented to accept his offer and take his remedies.

The young Doctor hastened to his chamber, shut fast the door, and looked round him, with his arms folded—"What is there here," said he, "that I can sell?"

What he found to sell I do not know. Enough that he supplied the Countess with a sum sufficient to procure her the necessary medicines, and to relieve her from care as to the wants of life for some short time. The case proceeded favourably.

At night, as he was returning from one of those solitary walks in which he was accustomed to exhale his sadness, and also to gather fresh resolution for the struggle he had undertaken with destiny, and was slowly mounting the long, dark, dilapidated staircase that led up to that fifth floor on which he resided, he stumbled over some obstacle, and, on looking closer, found it was the body of a woman lying outstretched upon the stairs. It was the Countess. In spite of solicitations and her own promise, she had gone out; but her strength had failed her. She had fallen, and now lay insensible.

Our young Doctor, braving all malicious interpretations, carried her to his own room, which was the nearest place of refuge, and there, by the aid[Pg 320] of some cordials he administered, restored her to her senses. She opened her eyes, looked around her, and understanding in whose room she was, she said, with a scrutinising air, "You are miserably lodged here." It was the only observation his amiable patient made, and she repeated it several times—"You must be miserably off." Even when she had returned to her own room, and he had left her for the night, she still said nothing but—"You are miserably lodged!"

The next morning, when the Doctor visited his patient—and you may be sure his visit was an early one—to his surprise, she was on foot, with sleeves tucked up, sweeping, dusting, and putting to rights her little abode. He was astonished. The shock which she had received the day before, instead of injuring her, had apparently aided in her restoration. She was quite gay.

"You are resolved to kill yourself, then?" said the Doctor.

"I was never better in my life," she answered.

"Do not be too confident," was his reply. "You must keep your room two or three days; and this time," he added, with a smile, "I shall keep guard over you myself."

The Countess consented with a most childlike docility. She would do what he pleased; only yesterday she was obliged to go out—it was absolutely necessary. There was so much gentleness in her altered manner, that the Doctor was disposed to regard this as an alarming symptom in her case.

However, it, was not so. Her health, day by day, improved, and the relation between the patient and her medical attendant became more amicable. She proposed, by way of some return, to assist him in his bachelor housekeeping. It would give her no trouble. An hour in the morning, when he was at his lectures, some of which he still followed; and then she could cook, and she could mend. These offers the young Doctor declined with a sort of alarm. Who but himself could readjust those habiliments, whose strong and whose weak points he so very well knew? What needle could, on this ground, be half so skilful as his own? And cooking! Cooking with him! Cook what? On what? In what? It was in vain that the Countess insisted; he would hear of no such thing. He kept his poverty veiled—it was his sacred territory.

Some few days after the Countess's health might be said to be quite re-established, our young Doctor, on entering his room, was surprised to see a letter lying on his table. Correspondence, for the mere sake of letter-writing, he had quite foregone as a pure waste of time; and he had no relatives who interested themselves in his fate, or who could have any thing to communicate. Nevertheless, there the letter was, addressed duly to himself. He looked at it with an uncomfortable foreboding, assured that it must bring him some new care, or report some strange disaster.

He sat down, and tore open the envelope. He bounded from his seat again with surprise—the letter enclosed fifteen notes of the Bank of France! It is no fairy tale, but simple history; fifteen good notes of one thousand francs each.

Inside the envelope was written:—"This treasure belongs to you as your property. Use it without scruple. The hand that transmits it does but accomplish a legitimate restitution. May the gifts of Fortune conduct you to the Temple of Happiness!" There was no signature.

"Why, it is a dream, a hallucination. Am I growing light-headed?" said the Doctor. But no—it was no dream; there they were—before him—on the little table—those, fifteen miraculous pieces of paper. He turned his head away from them; but when he looked again, there they were—in the same place—in the same order—motionless. I leave you to guess his agitation and his many mingled emotions. From whom could this godsend have come? He read and reread, and turned the letter in every direction. He racked his brain to no purpose to discover his anonymous benefactor. He knew, and was known to, scarcely any one. He strode about his chamber—as well as he could stride in it—inventing the wildest suppositions, which were rejected as soon as made. Suddenly he stopped—struck his forehead as a new thought occurred to him—"Bah!" he[Pg 321] cried; "absurd!—impossible!—and yet——"

In a moment he was at the door of the Countess. He paused a moment before he knocked. There was from the landing-place a window at right angles to that of the old woman's apartment and if her window-curtain happened to be drawn aside, which, however, was rarely the case, it was easy to see from it into her room. On the present occasion, not only was the curtain drawn aside, but her window was open, and the Doctor could see this fairy, accused of lavishing banknotes of a thousand francs, kneeling before a wretched stove, striving with her feeble breath to rekindle a few bits of charcoal, on which there stood some indescribable culinary vessel, containing an odious sort of porridge, at once her dinner and her breakfast!

The Doctor shook his head—it could not be the Countess. Yet, completely to satisfy himself, he entered. She gave him her ordinary welcome, neither more nor less—talked, as usual, of her former masters, of the dreadful price of bread, and the wicked scandal of her neighbours. But what most completely set all suspicion at rest was the manner in which she spoke of the debt which she owed him. "I cannot yet repay you what you advanced for my medicines," she said, with all the natural embarrassment of an honest debtor speaking to a creditor. "You will be wanting it, perhaps. Now don't be angry at what I say—one is always in want of one's little money. In a few days I will try and give you at least something on account."

"No," said the Doctor, when he was alone: "I can make nothing of it. Away with all guesses!" He resolved to profit by the good fortune, be the giver whom it might. And he hoped so to manage matters, that if, at a future day, an opportunity for its restoration should occur, he should be able to avail himself of it.

He was soon installed in a more convenient apartment, better furnished, and supplied, above all, with a more abundant library. The young Doctor was radiant with hope. Yet he did not quit his old quarter of the town. It need not be said that he took formal leave of his first patient the Countess.

From this time every thing prospered with him. As it generally happens, the first difficulty conquered, every thing succeeded to his wish. It is the first turn of the wheel which costs so much; once out of the rut, and the carriage rolls. By degrees a little circle of clients was formed, which augmented necessarily every day. His name began to spread. Even from his old residence, where he led so solitary a life, the reputation had followed him of a severe and laborious student, and the cure of the Countess was a known proof of his skill.

Like the generality of the profession, he now divided his day into two portions; the morning he devoted to his visits, the afternoon to the reception of his patients. Returning to his home one day a little before the accustomed hour, he perceived a crowd of persons collected in the street through which he was passing. Perhaps some accident had happened, and his presence might be useful. He made his way, therefore, through the crowd. Yet he nowhere discovered any object which could have collected it. He was merely surrounded on every side by groups engaged in earnest yet subdued conversation. The greater part were women, and both men and women were generally of a mature age, and of that sort of physiognomy which one can only describe as odd—faces ready made for the pencil of the caricaturist. The Doctor, who had no idle time, was about to make his escape, when a general movement took place in the crowd, and he found himself borne along irresistibly with the rest through a large door, which it seemed had just opened, into a spacious hall or amphitheatre. At the upper end was a stage; on the stage a large, strangely-fashioned wheel was placed; and by the side of the wheel stood a little child, dressed in a sky-blue tunic, with a red girdle round its waist, its hair curled and lying upon its shoulders, and a bandage across its eyes. The wheel and the child formed together a sort of mythological representation of Fortune. They were drawing the lottery.

After amusing himself for some time with the novelty of the spectacle, the Doctor began to make serious efforts to extricate himself. As he was[Pg 322] threading his way through the crowd, and looking this way and that to detect the easiest mode of egress, he saw, underneath a small gallery at the side of the amphitheatre, in a place which seemed to be reserved for the more favoured or more constant worshippers in that temple of Fortune, a face, the last he should have expected to find there. It was no other than the Countess. She was seated there with all the gravity in the world, inclining with a courteous attention to an old man with gray hairs and smooth brown coat, who was very deferentially addressing her.

Having disengaged himself from the throng, and returned to his own house, this appearance of the Countess recurred very forcibly to his mind. "After all," thought he, "it was the Countess!—it was none but she who sent those notes." The enigma was solved. He had made his fortune in the lottery, and without knowing it. He determined to visit his old patient the next morning.

That very evening, however, he was waited on by the same old gentleman in brown coat and gray hairs, who was seen speaking to her at the lottery. He came with a rueful face, requesting him to visit immediately Madame ——, giving the Countess her right name, which it is now too late in our story to introduce. Whatever may have been the case at some previous time, the wheel of Fortune had that day bitterly disappointed her hopes. She had been carried home insensible. The Doctor hastened to her. It was too late. She had been again attacked by a congestion of the brain, which this time had proved fatal.

There appeared no hopes of a complete solution of the enigma.

"Ah!" said the same old gentleman, as he stood moralising by his side, "the same luck never comes twice—she should have tried other numbers."

The Doctor saw immediately that the old gentleman had been in the confidence of the deceased. He questioned him. There was a look of significance, which betrayed plainly that he knew all. He was in fact one of those who earn their subsistence by writing letters for those who are deficient in the skill of penmanship or epistolary composition. He had written the very letter itself; to his pen was owing that sort of copy-book phrase, "May the gifts of Fortune conduct to the Temple of Happiness!" The Doctor had in truth, as he often said when alluding to the subject, made his fortune in the lottery.

We wish we could leave the story here, and let the reader suppose that gratitude alone had induced the old woman to act so generous a part. But the whole truth should be honestly told. There was a mixture of superstition in the case. It was his number that had won the prize, and she considered it, as expressed in the letter which accompanied the notes, in the light of his property. In all countries where a lottery has been long established, the strangest superstitions grow up concerning what are called lucky numbers. In Italy, where this manner of increasing the public revenue is still resorted to, not only is any number which has presented itself under peculiar circumstances sure to be propitious, but there is a well-known book, of acknowledged authority we believe, containing a list of words, with a special number attached to each word, by the aid of which you can convert into a lucky number any extraordinary event which has occurred to you. Let any thing happen of public or private interest—let any thing have been dreamt, or even talked of that was at all surprising, you have only to look in this dictionary for the word which may be supposed to contain the essence of the matter; as, for instance, fire, death, birth—and the number that is opposite that word will assuredly win your fortune. When the Countess first saw the prescription of the young Doctor, she was going to throw it angrily on the floor; but her eye was suddenly riveted by the numbers in it—the numbers of the grains and ozs. in the cabalistic writing—and she felt assured that in these lucky numbers her fortune was made. The first stake she played she played for him; and, singularly enough, she won! But, as the old gentleman in the brown coat observed, the virtue of the prescription was exhausted. She should have sought for numbers from some other quarter; the second trial she made ended in a severe loss, and was the immediate occasion of her death.

[Pg 323]

COULTER'S CRUISE.[14]

Another book of adventure in the island-studded Pacific. The vast tract of water that rolls its billows from Australia to America, from Japan to Peru, offers a wide field to the wanderer; and a library might be written, free from repetition and monotony, concerning the lands it washes, and the countless nations dwelling upon its shores. Nevertheless, we should have had more relish for this book had it reached us a few months earlier. Dr Coulter, who returned from ploughing the ocean so far back as 1836, would have done wisely to have published the record of his cruise somewhat sooner than in July 1847. A short half-year would have made all the difference, by giving him the start in point of time of a dangerous competitor, recently and laudatorily noticed in the pages of Maga. After the pungent and admirably written narrative of that accomplished able seaman, Herman Melville, few books of the same class but must appear flat and unprofitable. The order of things should have been reversed. Omoo would have found readers at any time, and although twenty publishers had combined with fifty authors to deluge the public with the Pacific Ocean during the five previous years. We are not quite so sure that Dr Coulter's book will be largely perused, treading thus closely upon the heels of Mr Melville. Not that the ground gone over is the same, or the book without interest. On reading the title-page we were assailed by an idea which we would gladly have seen realised on further perusal. One sometimes—rarely, it is true—meets with characters in works of fiction so skilfully drawn, so true to nature, so impregnated with an odour of reality, as to impress us with the conviction that they have actually lived, moved, and had being, and passed through the adventures set down for them by their creator. It is the case with many of the personages in Scott's novels. We should highly enjoy hearing any one assert, that there never existed such persons as Jeanie Deans and Edie Ochiltree; that Caleb Balderstone was an imaginary servitor, or Dugald Dalgetty the mythical man-at-arms of a poet's fancy. We would pitch the lie into the teeth of the incredulous idiot, and with a single tap on the sconce send him skirling and skeltering down the staircase. And, to pass from great things to small, we avouch that the gaunt and diverting man of medicine of whom frequent and honourable mention is made in the pages of Omoo, did inspire us with a notion of his reality, of which, up to the present time of writing, we have been unable wholly to divest ourselves. When we first took up Dr Coulter's narrative of adventure in America and the Southern Seas, it was with the hope, almost with the expectation, that the original Dr Longghost, encouraged by his former shipmate's example, had temporarily exchanged scalpel for goosequill, and indited an account of the dangers he had run since his affectionate parting with Typee on the pleasant shores of Tahiti. We were disappointed. To say nothing of diversity of dates, and other circumstances, rendering identity improbable, Longghost of the "Julia" would have written, we are well assured, a far quainter and more spicy book than that lately launched by Coulter of the "Stratford." It would have been of fuller flavour, and also more elegant, the result of the goblin mediciner's wild seafaring life, grafted on his old Lucullian reminiscences, on the shadowy souvenir of those happy days when he fed on salmis, and flirted with duchesses, long, long before he[Pg 324] dreamed of cruising after whales, and sharing the filthy inconveniences of little Jule's detestable forecastle. It would have been, to the narrative of John Coulter, M.D., as ripe Falernian or racy hock, to ale of some strength but middling flavour, where there is no stint of malt, but which has been somewhat spoiled in the brew. We are quite certain that the tales of Caffrarian lion-hunts, with which Longghost cheered the dull watches of the night, and beguiled the Julia's mariners of their wonder, were of very different kidney to the pig-and-nigger-killing narratives of Mr Coulter. Of this, we repeat, we are morally certain; but as we like, unnecessary though it be, to have our convictions confirmed through the medium of our optics, we now summon Doctor Longghost to commence, the very instant this number of the Magazine reaches his hands—and reach them it assuredly will, though his present abode be in farthest Ind or frozen Greenland—a detailed and bona fide history of his Life and Adventures, from the day he chipped the shell up to that upon which he shall send to press the last sheet of his valuable autobiography. And we pledge ourselves to bestow upon his book what Aaron Bang calls an amber immortalisation, by embalming it in a review; treating him tenderly, as one we dearly cherish.

Neither pleasant recollections of Omoo, nor equally agreeable anticipations of Longghost's lucubrations, shall prevent our doing full justice to Coulter. Mr Melville made a charming book out of most slender materials. What had he to write about? Literally next to nothing. The fag-end of a cruise, and a few weeks' residence on an island, whose aspect, inhabitants, and all pertaining to it, had already been minutely and well described by Kotzebue and other voyagers. But he has found more to say that is worth reading, about what he saw in his very limited sphere of observation, than Dr Coulter has concerning his extensive voyages and travels "on the Western Coast of South America, and the interior of California, including a narrative of incidents at the Kingsmill Islands, New Ireland, New Britain, New Guinea, and other islands in the Pacific Ocean." And with respect to the manner of saying it, the Yankee has it hollow. Dr Coulter's style is careless, often feeble, and defaced by grammatical errors, so glaring that one marvels they escaped correction at the very printers' hands. It says much, therefore, for the fertility of the subject, for the novelty and curiosity of the scenes visited and incidents encountered by the adventurous doctor of medicine, that his book, although devoid of the graces of composition, is upon the whole both instructive and amusing.

To understand the desultory to-and-fro nature of Dr Coulter's cruise, it is necessary to read his preface, where he gives some general information concerning the singular and precarious commerce known as the Pacific Trade. This is carried on between the ports on the western coast of North and South America, the Pacific Islands, and the coasts of China, and is very lucrative, but often dangerous. The articles of trade and barter are exceedingly various. Europe contributes wines, brandy, hardware, and sundry manufactured goods; California sends deals, corn, and furs; the various islands furnish arrow-root, oil, pearls, dye-woods, tortoiseshell, &c. The ships engaged in the traffic, and which are of many sizes and countries, are usually owned, wholly or in part, by the captain or supercargo, and consequently, wholly unfettered in their course, they wander from port to port, according to the caprice of the hour, or the chances of an advantageous market. For protection against pirates, and against the attacks of the fierce and savage tribes with whom they frequently come in collision, they are well armed and manned. The precaution is no idle one, nor could it possibly be dispensed with. "Few of these trading vessels ever return with their cargoes to the coast of the Americas, China, the Sandwich Islands, or Australia, without having frequent fights with the savages, and there are some of them, who have reckless captains and crews on board, that never can end a trading[Pg 325] transaction with the natives without a row."

Whether reckless or not, fighting appears to be an every-day sport with the warlike pearl-seekers of the Pacific—one which the meekest and most amiable navigators cannot avoid sharing in. We infer this compelled pugnacity from Dr Coulter's adventures when sailing in the Hound, a smart brigantine commanded by the gallant Captain Trainer. For although the doctor started as surgeon to the ship Stratford, and finally returned to England in her, he was long an absentee from her state room, and cruising on board the Hound. It happened thus. With a degree of thoughtlessness hardly pardonable in one of his profession, he made a practice of sleeping on deck, even when season and climate rendered such an exposed bed-place highly insalubrious. The consequence was a severe attack of rheumatism, and on making the coast of California he was fain to land, and take up his abode in a Roman Catholic Mission-house. The ship was ready for sea, bound to the far west for whales but the doctor was by no means in a like state of preparation, and the captain, seeing his crippled condition, urged him to remain on shore. Captain Lock was a sort of amateur medico, who prided himself on his Esculapian skill, and, although sorry to lose his surgeon's society, he evidently rather chuckled at the idea of having an opportunity to exercise his accomplishments. So Doctor Coulter allowed himself to be persuaded, and making an appointment to meet the Stratford, Deo volente, at Tahiti in the month of November, he remained under the care of the Spanish padre at the Mission, much to his own satisfaction, but probably not quite so much to that of any unlucky mariner upon whose fractured limb or diseased body Captain Lock may subsequently have found it necessary to practise. And even the doctor, although the motion of the ship was agony to his aching bones, and the rough service she was proceeding on would hardly have suited one in his crippled state, must surely have experienced some regret in thus deserting the whaler, from whose decks he had witnessed so many gallant contests with the oleaginous monster of the deep. Whaling is indeed a glorious sport, as far superior to your salmon fishing and fox hunting, as those diversions are to bobbing for gudgeon and chasing rats with a terrier. And whilst the excitement it occasions must, we apprehend, be the strongest possible to be known, short of that of the battle-field, it has the advantage of being much less dangerous than it looks. The ideas suggested to a landsman by the description of an attack on a whale, are those of extreme peril to all engaged in it, a peril from which the chances against their escaping alive are at least ten to one. A few hardy fellows pull up to a creature that looks like a small island on the surface of the sea, and one sweep of whose tail or flukes is sufficient to knock their frail bark into splinters; they dash their harpoons into his huge flanks, and submit to be towed through the waves by the maddened monster at a rate that makes the water boil round their bows. Such is the power of the fish, that if he came in contact with a ship, during his headlong course, his weight and impetus would stave in her sides. Sometimes he runs straightforward; at others in circles, with irregular rapidity. Still the boat sticks to him, until the smart of his hurt subsiding, or through fatigue, he slackens his speed, enabling his enemies to approach and to pierce him with fresh wounds. At last, when the waters around are reddened with his blood, comes the death-flurry. "Stern all!" The boats stand clear, and the fish disappears in the cloud of spray that he, dashes up in his dying agonies. His flukes quiver, he plunges heavily, and all is over. Perhaps, and this frequently happens, in the course of the contest a boat has been cut in two, or so far damaged as to fill and sink. But the crew are seldom lost. They support themselves by aid of the oars, until their comrades pick them up. Whaling seamen are paid by shares in the profits of the voyage, which arrangement of course contributes to render them zealous and daring.

Such are the scenes described[Pg 326] in the early part of Dr Coulter's book, some of them with tolerable spirit. The whale captured, next comes the cutting in and boiling out of the blubber—the former a laborious and often a dangerous process, the latter, anything but an odoriferous one. The death of a whale is the signal for the arrival of a host of sharks—blue, brown, and shovel-nosed—all eager to make a meal off the defunct leviathan. "We were all day surrounded with sea-fowl of various kinds—haglets, peterels, &c.—picking up floating particles of blubber as it passed astern, and vast numbers of large blue sharks that kept continually plunging on the fish, and rendered it very unsafe for the man to go down and point the hook into the hole cut for it; indeed we were frequently obliged to jerk him up off the whale out of their way by the aid of the rope round him for that purpose." The carcass and head on board, the fires are lighted, the kettle boils, and the ship speeds merrily on her course—the crew reckoning their share of gain, and listening anxiously for the welcome sound of "There he blows!"—the look-out man's usual cry on sighting a whale.

When he left the Stratford, Dr Coulter bade adieu to the grand seasport of whale-catching, in which he had taken the passive part of a spectator. But his hand, if unskilled to hurl the harpoon, was familiar with rifle and fowling-piece. Both of these, with an ample supply of lead, powder, and shot, his kind friend, Captain Lock, left with him at the mission of Yerba Buena, literally Good Grass, a Californian town in the bay of St Francisco. And as soon as pure air, repose, and the use of the Temescal, or hot-air bath, had restored the doctor's health, he scoured his fire-arms and made ready for the chase. A looker-on at sea, on terra firma he proved himself a perfect Nimrod. From that day forward nothing that wore fur or feather could escape his sure eye and steady hand. From the quail to the swan, from the frightened squirrel to the formidable grisly bear, all birds and beasts felt his power, and fell before his unerring rifle. Nor had he long to wait for opportunities of distributing his bullets with fatal effect amongst foes whose form was human, although in customs and civilisation they were but one degree above the brutes of the forest. After some months' stay in California, taken up chiefly with hunting and fishing excursions, but of which the doctor, anxious to get to sea again, gives but a brief account, he began to consider how he should best reach his rendezvous at Tahiti. He had plenty of time before him; but the whaling season on the west coast of America being at an end, he could hardly expect a westward bound English or American ship to touch at St Francisco for a considerable time to come. He had some notion of proceeding by a coasting vessel to a more southerly port, when one morning a fine brigantine hove in sight under a cloud of snow-white sail, and came to an anchor in the bay. Upon going on board, he recognised all old acquaintance in the captain of the Hound, whom he had formerly met—the doctor has been a great rover—at a seaport in Chili. Captain Trainer was trading along the coast, buying furs; had come into port for fresh water and repairs; was off for a cruise in the Indian archipelago; and calculated on winding it up by a visit to the Society Islands. The prospect of variety and adventure held out by such a voyage exactly chimed in with the doctor's undecided and erratic mood, as its projected termination did with his promise to rejoin his ship at Tahiti; so, without more ado, he made terms with his friend Trainer, and took up a passenger's berth on board the Hound.

The schooner answering to this canine appellation was a rakish, fast-sailing craft of two hundred tons burden, fitted out expressly for the Pacific trade. She carried four small carronades and a long nine-pounder, a sufficiency of small arms, and a smart crew of sixteen hands. Boarding-nettings she had, too, ready to be triced up in case of need; and altogether she had no occasion to dread any enemy she was at all likely to meet. Her captain was an Englishman born, frank and fearless, and a thorough sailor. Dr Coulter represents him as a kind-hearted and humane man, desirous to trade fairly and amicably with the savages, and not,[Pg 327] after the fashion of many desperado skippers in those latitudes, to clench his bargains by blows and bloodshed. This admitted, it must be confessed that the captain was unfortunate; for during the time Dr Coulter sailed with him, we find him continually at loggerheads with the natives. For the most part, however, the strife was brought on by the treachery and robber-like propensities of the latter, who, whilst trading with their European customers, seldom neglect an opportunity of boarding their ships and cutting their throats. As soon as a vessel comes to anchor they surround it with their canoes, and show great anxiety to get on board, especially the women, whom many vessels admit, but whom Captain Trainer managed to keep off by tabooing his ship. The vice and immorality prevalent in most of the Pacific Islands is carried to a frightful pitch, doubtless greatly encouraged by the example of the reckless and dissolute mariners. Any stimulus of that kind was unnecessary to barbarians originally cruel, treacherous, and licentious in a very high degree. Cannibalism is prevalent amongst them. At Drummond's Island, one of the Kingsmill group, the first land where the Hound made any stay after leaving St Francisco, Dr Coulter had abundant proof of this. Except upon the coast, where the disgust shown by Europeans had rendered them ashamed of it, or at least anxious to conceal it, the natives did not deny the practice. Some of the men wore necklaces composed of the bones of human feet and hands, which clattered at each motion of the body. And other human bones were to be seen in their houses. They eat only strangers and enemies taken in battle; and as the occasional cutting off of a boats' crew or straggling watering party from a European ship is insufficient to keep their larders supplied, they get up constant wars with the natives of other islands. Amongst themselves, too, they are very quarrelsome. Dr Coulter, when at Drummond's Island, was present at a grand council, where, after a certain amount of singing, stamping, and speech-making, the warriors came from words to blows, and one of them was killed by a spear-thrust. To satisfy the honour and appease the wrath of his followers and partisans, a peace-offering was necessary. It consisted of six fighting cocks, with which and with the corpse of their chief the warriors took their departure, perfectly satisfied. Cock-fighting is a sport to which most of the Pacific tribes are passionately addicted.

When the Kingsmill savages had got all they could out of Captain Trainer, and trade was over, and the ship about to depart, they came out in their true colours. Previously they had been amiable and affable enough, contenting themselves with small pilferings, and with robbing Dr Coulter, whose curiosity took him on shore, of his clothes, which they replaced with a fish-skin cap and a war-mat. They now showed hostile intentions—attacked a boat, killed one of the crew, and then made an open attack on the schooner with a whole fleet of armed canoes. A shower of grape played havoc amongst them, and sank or capsized several of their craft; but they still persevered in their advance, and clung to the vessel's sides and to the boarding-nettings until repelled by cutlass and pistol. Thus began and ended most of the quarrels with the natives, who, usually the aggressors, were invariably defeated, but not without hard fighting and some loss on the part of the assailed. Captain Trainer, however, was not always quite blameless in the provocation of quarrels, which always terminated in heavy loss to the misguided savages. At New Hanover a foolish jest, which his experience of the people he had to deal with ought to have prevented him from indulging in, was cause of much bloodshed, and nearly occasioned the loss of the vessel, and destruction of the crew. Trade had gone on merrily and amicably for several days, when Trainer expressed a desire for a remarkable necklace of shells and teeth worn by one of the chiefs. The wearer was willing, and a bargain struck. The necklace was tightly knotted, and the purchaser propose to cut it. By way of a joke, "instead of cutting the cord, which he held in one hand, he raised the knife in a threatening manner as if about to stab the man." Practical jokes are always foolish and in bad taste,—jeu[Pg 328] de mains, jeu de vilains, as the French proverb says;—and the results of this one were very serious. "The native took instant alarm, thought the captain was in earnest, made a spring clear of him, which broke his necklace, and plunged overboard. A few natives on deck at the time followed his example." A fierce fight, in which several of the schooner's crew were wounded, and a large number of the islanders killed, was the consequence of this thoughtless act. And scarcely had the assailants been repelled when the vessel was found to be on fire, ignited gun and pistol wadding having fallen through an open hatch amongst inflammable dunnage. By great exertion the flames were overcome, and the Hound sailed from the inlet where these unpleasant occurrences had taken place.

From Dr Coulter's account, the islands of the Pacific are the scene of continual acts of injustice, oppression, and insubordination. It constantly happens that seamen, seduced by the prospect of a sensual and idle life, and weary of hard work and uncertain pay on board traders and whalers, desert their ships and settle amongst the savages. Sometimes they are driven to this by ill-usage from their captains, often fierce and hard-hearted men. When a vessel becomes short-handed, it is a common practice to inveigle Indians on board; and if fair promises are insufficient to induce them to serve as sailors, to take them away by force. At Tacames, in Colombia, Dr Coulter fell in with a Californian who had served for some time on board an American ship. Jack, so his Yankee shipmates had christened him, had gone on board, in company with another of his tribe, to sell furs, and had not been allowed to go ashore again. His companion died of grief and ill-treatment on the coast of Japan, and Jack, when his services were no longer needed, was left at Tacames, two or three thousand miles from his native land. He belonged to a wandering tribe who lived by bartering furs for powder, tobacco, and other Indian necessaries, and, as an experienced and intrepid hunter, was invaluable to Dr Coulter. The account of their expeditions in the South American forests is highly interesting, and we are willing to believe unexaggerated, although some portions of the doctor's venatorial adventures and experiences, both in South America and elsewhere, do remind us a little of the marvels recorded in a diverting and apocryphal book put forth a few years ago by all ingenious nautical author. On the first day of their sortie, Jack and his employer, after passing unharmed through jungles peopled by gigantic monkeys of great boldness, who made various attempts to purloin their caps and guns, but did not otherwise molest them, reached a deep ravine, where the barking and howling of beasts were loud and incessant. Presently a wild horse dashed past them, pursued by a brace of tigers. The horse dropped from fatigue, the tigers sprang upon him, the ambushed hunters fired. The doctor's tiger was killed on the spot; "my shot, after passing through him, entered the horse's neck, and killed him also." Jack's aim had been less deadly; his beast was wounded, but still active and dangerous. Dr Coulter proposed giving him the contents of his second barrel, but the guide preferred to use his knife. The account of the hand-to-hand combat that ensued reminds us of those graphic records of bruising matches that occasionally grace the columns of the weekly newspapers. Pierce Egan himself could hardly recount the progress of a "mill" between the "Tipton Slasher and the Paddington Pet" in terser and more knowing style than that employed by John Coulter in narrating the set-to between Jack and the tiger. "Jack went boldly up to him; the infuriated animal grinned horridly and writhed rapidly about, throwing up a good deal of dust from the dry ground. One plunge of the knife—a roar; into him again—a hideous grin and a tumble about, some blood scattered on the ground; at him again—a miss stroke of the knife; try once more—both down and nearly covered with dust." Whereupon the bottle-holder felt strongly inclined to fire, but was deterred by fear of hitting his own man. "The tiger had now hold of either the Indian or his clothes, as both rolled together; yet the knife was busily at work. At last his arm was raised high up with the red dripping instrument; and after one more[Pg 329] angry plunge of it, the tiger turned on his back, his paws and whole frame quivering, and with an attempt at a ghastly grin he fell over on his side and died. Jack then stood up, covered with the animal's blood, and his first ejaculation was 'un diablo;' in English, 'one devil.'" A strong term, but scarcely misapplied to this plucky and hilarious tiger, whom we conclude, from his continual grinning, to have been a near relation of the laughing hyena. He died game, with a smile on his lips. Jack escaped punishment, barring "a faint bite on the shoulder, and a few tears of the paws on his arms," of which the hardy fellow made little account, but, after skinning the carrion, proceeded onward in triumph, through forests whose impervious foliage allowed no glimpse of the sky, where the sunbeams came with a mild green tint through the masses of impending leaves; down rivers fringed with lofty trees, whose branches were alive with parrots and kingfishers; where the monkey screamed, the tiger howled, and the disgusting alligator, coated with slime and mud, crawled lazily away at the paddle's splash. In this manner the brace of bold hunters reached the small town of Tolo; and whilst abiding there, intelligence came of one of those petty and partial revolutions so common in South American republics. A malcontent colonel and a few hundred men, unpaid by the needy government, were extorting their arrears by the strong hand from the towns upon the coast. They made a determined attack on Tolo, which had been hastily fortified, and was resolutely defended. The rebels were beaten off; and as they retreated, a party of cavalry came up, killed many, and made prisoners of the rest. Jack, whose shooting iron, as he styled his gun, had made itself heard with great effect during the siege, joined in pursuit, scrutinised the pockets of the fallen, and secured an amount of specie that filled his heart with joy. To complete his contentment, Dr Coulter interceded for him with the captain, who gave the poor fellow a free passage back to his own country.

The tigers and patriots of Colombia, ugly customers though they be, are far less formidable than the highwaymen and grisly bears abounding in California. The robbers go about on horseback, well armed and provided with lassos, which they throw over the heads of their victims. The usual objects of their attack are travellers for trade or amusement—any one, in short, who carries saddlebags—and sometimes even the hunter, toiling his way to a seaport with a bundle of furs upon his back, is held worth despoiling of his hard-earned burden. But Californian hunters, cautious and keen-eyed, and deadly shots, seldom allow themselves to be surprised, or give up their plunder without a tussle. The doctor tells us of one fellow, a sort of Californian Natty Bumpo, with whom he passed some time, and who had defeated and slain with his own hand a gang of six robbers, making prize of their horses, arms, and accoutrements. In the woods and prairies of those wild districts, men become inured to hardship and danger of every kind. And to those who can dine by the bivouac fire and under the shade of the forest as cheerfully and heartily as in gilded halls and off polished mahogany, and who can sleep as soundly on fresh turf as in a luxurious feather-bed, California is a paradise, realising those happy hunting grounds to which the Indian warrior believes death a passage. The lakes and rivers abound with fish and wild fowl—trout and salmon, swans, geese, and ducks; the hazel-nut covers are alive with feathered game; the forests and mountains with buffalo, deer, hares, and innumerable other animals. Of beasts of prey, the principal are the jaguar or spotted leopard, the puma or American lion, and bears—black, brown, and grisly. These three specimens of the bruin family differ greatly in their habits and degree of ferocity. The black and brown bears are peaceable, well-behaved animals, whose principal occupation seems to consist in furnishing amusement for the hunters by their comical antics. At night they come round the fires; "but you need not trouble yourselves about a dozen of them, as, in most instances, they will let you alone, and keep a respectful distance, sitting on their haunches, scratching themselves with their fore-paws, wondering what brought you there, and taking a look[Pg 330] round to ascertain whether you have any spare meat left for their supper." The grisly bear is of far more formidable character. Swift of foot, very powerful, and of enormous size, he jumps on the back of the largest buffalo, and kills him with apparent ease. He walks out from behind a rock or thicket, drives the hunters from their fire, and, if they have not left him the materials of a hearty meal, follows them with alarming boldness and rapidity. Dr Coulter relates a running fight he had with one of them, who pursued him and his companion for nearly a mile, and fell only when he had received fifteen rifle-balls in his head and body. They do not always take so much shooting, one ball or two sometimes sufficing as a quietus; but this fellow was unusually large and tenacious of life. "The hunter said, when he buried his tomahawk in the skull of the brute, as he yet, though blind with the shot, kept upon his haunches—'I'm of opinion, grisly bear, you're the biggest and hardest critter of your kind to kill ever I shot at.'" The Indians cut off the claws of these beasts, and wear them on a string round their necks as trophies of bravery and prowess.

We have loitered on dry land, and deserted the Hound, whose vagabond course led her, after quitting the Kingsmill group, to the distant shores of New Ireland, one of the Australasian islands. Here the king of the country came on board—a tall, coal-black man of commanding appearance, a fine specimen of a savage, decorated with bones, shells, and red feathers. Some of his front teeth were dyed red—a Papuan custom which Dr Coulter assures us, and we readily believe, gives a demon-like finish to these ferocious barbarians. His majesty was accompanied by an Englishman, one Thomas Manners, who had been landed at his own request from a whale ship, and had passed ten years amongst the savages, to whom in manners and appearance he was considerably assimilated. He had married the king's daughter, was a great chief, and perfectly contented with his condition. There appear to be a vast number of these barbarised Europeans dwelling on the various islands of the Pacific, some amongst the savages, over whom they usually exercise considerable authority, others alone, in isolated nooks, often with Indian wives and a numerous half-cast progeny. The doctor scarcely touched anywhere without meeting with one or more of these outcasts from civilisation, the adventures of most of whom would furnish abundant materials for a Robinsonade. Some of them, deserters from ships or runaway Australian convicts, kept out of the way; but others, bolder or having a clearer conscience, gladly served as interpreters, and supplied the voyagers with useful information. And on more than one occasion, the crew of the Hound found themselves engaged as allies in the civil wars of constant occurrence amongst the bellicose barbarians of the Pacific. Dr Coulter, especially, greatly distinguished himself as an amateur warrior. He is a most adventurous fellow, and assuredly made a mistake when he devoted himself to the study of the healing art, instead of to some more martial profession. His vocation was evidently to kill, not to cure. He does not inform us whether his rifle aided in repelling the various attacks on the Hound, but is less reserved concerning his achievements on shore, and at New Ireland fairly comes out in a military capacity, as a sort of British Auxiliary Legion to a scouting party of natives. The New Irishmen, emulous of their brethren in the old country, are for ever in hot water, squabbling amongst themselves, and keeping up a desultory border warfare, varied by an occasional pitched battle, as a natural sequel to which the slain are duly devoured by the victors, with or without such sauce as their savage cookery book, or, more properly speaking, their oral culinary traditions, may suggest. Dr Coulter was so fascinated by the beautiful scenery and strange customs of the island, and with the hospitable entertainment he found at the sign of the Three Skulls—an Indian council house from whose roof three tall poles arose, supporting human heads—that he resolved upon a lengthened excursion amongst these interesting aborigines, and committed himself, after putting on what he terms his go-ashore-among-savages suit, to the guidance of his friend[Pg 331] Rownaa, son and heir of the red-toothed monarch already described. He had not far to go to become acquainted with the comforts of the country. On reaching an outpost, he obtained a peep into a cannibal larder. A party of the enemy had attempted a surprise, had been discovered and repelled, with the loss of two of their number, who were forthwith trussed for the spit. The modus operandi was rather violent, as was manifest to the doctor when he looked into the canoe where the bodies lay, carefully covered up with leaves. "They had been fairly riddled with arrows and spears, and their skulls were beaten flat with clubs. The legs were amputated at the knees, hands off at the wrists, hair cut off the head, &c., preparatory to cooking them." The doctor made bold to express his disgust at this horrible sight, but the natives, by way of extenuation, gave him to understand that it was "eatee for eatee," and that if they fell into the hands of their enemies, they would be converted into collops and forthwith dined upon. Four of them had been captured that morning, and would soon, if not rescued, be in the hands of the cook. To save them from this unpleasant alternative, twenty men advanced stealthily into the hostile territory, accompanied by Rownaa and Dr Coulter. The doctor was curious to see the fun, and thought himself safest with his friend the prince. After a short march they fell in with the prisoners, guarded by forty or fifty savages; a sharp fight ensued, in which the doctor at first took no part, thinking, not without reason, that he had no right to take the lives of men who had done him no injury. At last, however, "a serious consideration for my personal safety, and the necessity for self-defence, compelled me to fire both barrels of my gun into the advancing crowd." The ice thus broken, the double-barrelled rifle spoke out boldly and decided the day—the doctor celebrating his triumph by a stentorian hurrah that completed the panic of the discomfited foe. And thenceforward he shot savages at a handsome allowance. The apologetic and deprecatory tone in which he records his exploits is amusing enough. He pleads expediency and necessity, and tries to make it out justifiable homicide; whilst he evidently has a lurking consciousness that he need not have thrust himself into scenes and places where it became necessary or advisable to shed blood. To return to his ship, he had to coast the island, and to pass the territory of a tribe hostile to his friends. Canoes came out to assail those on which Dr Coulter and his allies were embarked. He was again compelled to smother humanity, prime, load, and fire as fast as he could, although "it grieved me afterwards to think I used such a death-dealing weapon with so much earnestness." Touching repentance! Compassionate Coulter! But "his dander was up," he says, and he thought no more, but acted. As anybody else would probably have done, on finding himself assailed by a flotilla of howling savages, with blood-coloured teeth, poisoned arrows, and a decided taste for the flesh of a wholesome white man. What business the doctor had in such a predicament, is altogether another question. "Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?"

The New Irishmen have some queer customs. The night following the battle was passed by Dr Coulter at one of their outposts, where he was prevented sleeping by the strange torches kept burning in the house he lodged at. They consisted of long sticks, with a quantity of cocoa-nut fibre steeped in rosin and twisted round the top. These were lighted, and held by naked men, who relieved each other. The idols worshipped by these heathens are of a peculiarly ludicrous description, ten feet high, made of polished wood, with arms akimbo, oyster shells for eyes, and red pegs for teeth. The expression of the face is one of grotesque laughter, irresistibly provocative of mirth in the beholder. In one respect the example of these savages might be followed with advantage by more civilised communities. Their cemeteries are invariably remote from their dwellings, in lonely and unfrequented spots.

The ship's company of the Hound had been long without seeing any but savage faces, and it was with much satisfaction that on entering a bay on the coast of Papua or New Guinea,[Pg 332] they perceived a brig riding at anchor. She hoisted the stars and stripes, and presently her captain paid a visit to the Hound. A Scotch Highlander by birth, his name Stewart, he was a daring and unscrupulous dog as ever fired a round of grape into a mob of South Sea savages. He had the reputation of a tolerably fair dealer, but some of his articles of traffic were extraordinary and disgusting. He was once at Cook's Straits, New Zealand, when there was a great fight amongst the tribes. A feast was to follow, and to save land-carriage, the cannibals freighted Stewart's ship with the provisions for their horrible banquet. "He took on board upwards of two hundred dead bodies, cut up and well packed, with eighteen or twenty chiefs, sailed round, delivered his cargo, and received in payment a large quantity of dressed flax, which he afterwards brought to Sydney and sold at a satisfactory price." After this, people looked askance at him, and held their noses when he passed; but Stewart jingled his dollars, and said it was no one's business but his own, admitting, however, that it was "a stinking cargo." Like the Roman emperor, he denied that good coin could carry an evil smell. "Another trifling affair," Dr Coulter writes, "blemished his character." Cargoes of ebony, neither more nor less; slaves bought in Australasia, and sold to the Dutch and Chinese. Human flesh, quick or dead, was a favourite article of commerce with this respectable Highlandman. In those remote regions, however, men cannot always pick their society, and Coulter and Trainer were glad enough to meet this dealer in dead and live stock, who was an old acquaintance of both of them. They went on board his vessel and dined with him, and it was agreed that the brigand schooner should keep together as long as circumstances permitted. After several days' profitable trading, chiefly in ambergris, tortoiseshell, pearls, and birds of Paradise, and which ended, wonderful to say, without a skirmish with the natives, they coasted along the north shore of the island, and came to an anchor in Gilvink's Bay, at its westernmost extremity, alongside the "Eternal Safety," a Chinese trading junk. According to the custom of his countrymen in those seas, the Chinese skipper had told the Papuans all manner of lies about the Europeans, and had warned them against trading with them. Stewart discovered this by means of an old acquaintance, a Sandwich islander and expert cook, who gladly left the junk, where he received a larger allowance of rattan than he liked, to officiate in the caboose of the American brig. Once safe upon the Yankee's deck, Mr Sing vented his indignation against his late master in a volley of abuse, interspersed with comical and contemptuous gestures. The Chinaman actually danced with rage, and at last levelled a matchlock at the object of his fury; but on Stewart's opening a port, and disclosing the grim muzzle of a carronade, he suspended, his warlike demonstrations. A supply of articles for barter with the natives was obtained from his junk, and the same afternoon a fresh breeze swept the European ships out of the bay.

The last place to which we shall accompany Dr Coulter is a district on the south coast of New Guinea, inhabited by the warlike and ferocious tribe of the Horraforas, who, at the period of his visit, lived happily under the paternal rule of King Connel the First. Terence Connel was a County Kerry boy, who had gone through many strange adventures in his own country and elsewhere. A deserter from a regiment of the line, he had served for some time under Captain Starlight's banner, and had distinguished himself by his intrepidity and zeal in house-burning, cattle-houghing, and other nocturnal amusements peculiar to the "first flower of the sea." After a couple of years of this praiseworthy career, he had been captured, tried, and transported to Australia. He escaped, with ten fellow-convicts, and, after various adventures, reached Papua. Nine of their number were slain by the Horraforas, who spared the two others and made them serve against a hostile tribe. Connel's companion was killed in a fight, but Connel greatly distinguished himself, and became head-chief, or king. Under his guidance and protection, we find Captain Trainer, four of his crew, and the indefatigable Coulter, wandering in the Horrafora territory, through [Pg 333]magnificent tropical scenery, where snakes abounded, rats were as big as ordinary cats, the mosquitos flew about in dense clouds, huge bats flapped their mirky wings beneath the branches of gigantic trees, and immense saucer-eyed owls glared from out the gloom. Hog-hunting was the principal sport here; but the Horraforas were at war, as usual, and Dr Coulter's services were again put in requisition. Fighting is the business of life with these savages, and with an Irish king at their head, their combative propensity was not likely to be weakened. They have scouts out continually, and but for this precaution, as Connel explained, "one tribe would break in on top of t'other, be murdherin' man, woman, and child, and carrying off the rest to sell to the Chinese for slaves, all through divilment, or fair divarsion." To guard against surprise, the natives live in trees, amongst whose branches they construct commodious sleeping apartments. They ascend and descend by a notched pole, drawn up at night, and take their meals on the ground below.

The party from the schooner soon found they had got themselves into trouble, being cut off from their vessel by the Whitepaints, a race of savages thus named by Dr Coulter from their habit of disguising their dusky complexion with a ghastly coating of white. A battle was inevitable, and Connel disposed his forces with all the tact of an experienced general. About a thousand of the enemy were opposed to eight hundred and fifty Horraforas, but the latter had the Englishmen to help them, and especially Dr Coulter, who, with his terrible rifle, was a host in himself. The Whitepaints came on to within about four hundred yards of their foe, and halted, their chief still advancing and yelling defiance, in hopes of drawing the Horraforas from their cover on the verge of a forest. His appearance was any thing but prepossessing. He was "a giant of a man, hair and beard powdered with chalk, face painted black, and body white all over!" Connel implored his allies to render him a great service by picking off this ugly heathen, and inquired who was the best shot. Trainer named the doctor, who "had really no wish to pull a trigger, except in actual self-defence." But Trainer and Connel pressed him to fire, and at last overcame his scruples. With charming modesty, he avoids naming himself as the man who made the huge Papuan magpie bite the dust. "Thus urged by Connel," he says, "one of our party rested his gun on the lower branch of a tree, took deliberate aim, and fired!" This "one of our party" was of course the doctor, the sailors being armed with short muskets, incapable of carrying so far. The shot took effect. Whitepaint ceased his capering, "stood fixed and upright like a daubed statue," and "was about receiving another shot (from the doctor's second barrel, we presume) when he fell heavily forward and lay motionless." Whereupon the Whitepaints advanced, and the six Englishmen "set to work in real earnest popping" off the cannibals. And soon becoming "madly excited by the scene, we continued to load and fire as fast as we could, accompanying almost every shot or volley with a Hurra! nearly as wild as the savage yell." Dr Coulter had got rid of his scruples, and Trainer and the seamen appear never to have had any. The latter "were eager to run down the mound for the purpose of enjoying a bayoneting match; but Trainer would not permit such folly, and told them to amuse themselves firing at them from where we were, which they did with great perseverance." The unfortunate Whitepaints were totally defeated, their tribe cut up root and branch, their women taken to wife by the victors, and themselves slung upon poles like rabbits and carried off to be buried, as Connel expressed it, in "the infernal stomachs" of their cannibal conquerors. The doctor and his companions being by no means anxious to witness the abominable feast, moved on with Connel, and, after a visit to the Whitepaint town, or rather rookery, the houses being built in trees, like those of the Horraforas, paddled down a river, through beautiful scenery, which Dr Coulter indicates, rather than describes. He is a poor hand at description, the worthy doctor, although evidently not devoid of a certain feeling for the glories of a tropical landscape. But he lacks words, and his attempts at a pen-and-ink[Pg 334] picture are painfully meagre and unsatisfactory. After shooting a rapid, where the river falls about fourteen feet, and down which the natives conducted their canoes with singular dexterity, the country became more open, and the mast-heads of the brig and schooner appeared in the distance. "Sail ho!" bellowed Trainer, rejoiced at the sight of his floating home. And in his exhilaration, he resolved to "take a rise" out of Stewart. Concealing himself and men in the bottom of the canoe, he gave the hint to Connel, whose savage subjects forthwith set up a hideous war-whoop, which very nearly procured the incorrigible joker a volley of grape from his own ship. This final and unnecessary danger over, Dr Coulter, to his considerable satisfaction, once more found himself safely housed in the cabin of the Hound, relieved from all apprehension of becoming a corner dish at a cannibal dinner. In which snug quarters and comfortable security he will be found by those curious farther to pursue the thread of his adventures.

THREE MONTHS AT GAZA.

After quitting the Arab chiefs,[15] Sidney rode slowly and silently towards the little town of Gaza. He was seized with a strange fit of melancholy, and this sudden revulsion of feeling proceeded from no perceptible cause. He cared very little about parting either with Aali or Sheikh Salem. Lascelles Hamilton was a much more amusing companion than either of the Moslems. But from some inexplicable train of thought, Sidney's mind was filled with fancies, which followed one another like the phantasms of a fever, and produced a depression of spirits alarming to himself. He was naturally so little addicted to low spirits, or melancholy, that he felt convinced the present fit must be the forerunner of some serious malady, and that the mysterious warning given him by Sheikh Salem, not to delay long at Gaza, arose from the sagacious Arab perceiving the traces of incipient fever marked on his forehead. At last he succeeded, by reproaching himself with his own pusillanimity, in rousing his mind, and directing his attention to the scenery around, and to the view of the town before him.

That view was well calculated to dispel blue devils. It was picturesque, gay, and luxuriantly green; and the contrast it offered to the parched desert behind, and the memory of the sandy fog of the Khamsin, made its contemplation a physical enjoyment. On each side of the lane along which the travellers proceeded, a tall fence of cactus separated them from verdant plantations of mulberry trees, orchards, and gardens. The creaking of water wheels, and the splashing of the water from the revolving buckets, were sounds which, if not musical to the ear, were delightful to the sense of hearing, from the ideas of coolness and cleanliness they suggested. Those only who have wandered in the desert under a burning sun, or sailed for days and nights in a crowded Levantine caick, can conceive the exquisite sensation that the sight of an old black bucket of fresh water conveys to the human soul. The sense of coolness indicated by the dark stain of constant immersion, and the liberality of wealth testified by the leaky stream flowing from the ill connected staves, have given many a traveller in the "gorgeous east" greater pleasure than he could have derived from an invitation to a banquet with Lucullus.

Beyond the wave of the corn fields the verdure of the gardens, and the shade of the trees, rose the little city of Gaza,—a small and picturesque spot, with a few minarets and towers, and ruined walls rising above the houses. It crowns a moderate elevation, once occupied by a strong citadel, so well fortified by nature and art as to have merited emphatically the appellation of "the strong." It stands a monument of the glory of the Israelite warrior Sampson, and a[Pg 335] proof of the ease with which heroic valour, in a petty fortress commanded by a Persian eunuch, could arrest the progress of the Macedonian hero, Alexander the Great. At the entrance of the town our travellers stumbled over some ruins, which they were gravely informed marked the remains of the gateway from which Sampson had carried away the gates. Beside it, a small building with a low dome has been constructed by the Mohammedans, and is shown as the tomb of Sampson.

Before this tomb, a considerable number of people, and a guard of Albanian soldiers, was now stationed. They soon brought our travellers to a halt, and compelled them to dismount in order to undergo an examination as long and inquisitorial as that to which poor foreigners are subjected at the police office of Vienna. Their motives for visiting Gaza, were inquired into, and particularly their connexion with the party they had just quitted. The result of the examination did not appear to be perfectly satisfactory, though Sidney told very frankly that Sheikh Salem and his son were of the party, truly declaring at the same time, that as they had crossed the desert disguised in female apparel, and surrounded by their own attendants, he had no knowledge of their presence until the party was joined by the Sheikh of Hebron that day. An Osmanlee secretary of the governor of Gaza, one of those Mamaluke custom-house officers, or revenue collectors of Mohammed Ali, to whom the statesmen of France looked for the foundation of an Arabic empire in Egypt and Syria, now made his appearance, to decide on the fate of the English spies, for such they were evidently considered.

After a second examination, it was decided that the party must undergo a quarantine of observation until their companions should arrive. It was in vain to oppose this decision; so Sidney, Lascelles Hamilton, and Achmet were marched through the middle of the town of Gaza, and lodged in a tower near the centre of the barracks, in order to preserve the place from the danger of contagion. Two Albanian soldiers were appointed to act as guardians or sentinels to the prisoners, who were also allowed to hire a cook. The guards kept up, a constant communication with their friends, and the cook walked himself to the market to make his purchases, so that the quarantine was very evidently rather a police than a sanatory measure.

The tower in which the travellers were lodged was within the circuit of the remains of a noble building, constructed by the templars, or the knights of St John, who long defended this bulwark of the kingdom of Jerusalem against the infidel soldans of Egypt. The first morning of quarantine was spent walking and smoking on the terraced roof of a large arched hall, once a dormitory, or a hospital of the Christian soldiery, now tenanted by a small body of irregular cavalry. As Mohammed Ali was, according to the established system of his Arabic empire, cheating them out of their pay, they were eager to hire their horses to our travellers for the journey to Jerusalem. There captain, aspiring to the profits of a muleteer, contrasted with the fierce templar of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe as the trading monarch, Mohammed Ali, forms an antithesis to the generous Saladin. The terrace overlooked a delightful country, and Sidney felt positively pleased that the restraint of quarantine compelled him to be idle. Before him was spread a rich cultivated plain, closely covered with olive trees, and bounded by a range of hills, crowned by the peak of Sampson's mount, rising prominent over the rest of the chain. The long waving branches of palm trees scattered about in every direction, the trains of loaded camels arriving and departing, and the active population in constant movement round the town, gave Gaza the air of a flourishing place.

But though Sidney found great pleasure in contemplating this scene, seated on his carpet, pipe in hand, and Achmet expressed in a variety of languages his delight at smoking the pipe of repose, after quitting the saddle of fatigue, neither the scene nor the repose appeared to produce a tranquillising effect on the mind of Mr Lascelles Hamilton. That gentleman[Pg 336] displayed the extreme of impatience at his confinement, and spent hour after hour in vain exhortations to Sidney, to make some endeavours to be released from imprisonment. Failing with Sidney, he had even attempted to move Achmet. It was all useless: Sidney had not gazed on green trees, gardens, and human beings for some days, nor had Achmet smoked a pipe of repose since he had quitted the valley of the Nile; so the one could do nothing but contemplate, and the other nothing but smoke.

In the evening, the incessant volubility of Lascelles Hamilton awakened in Sidney a wish to take a stroll through the town. On proposing this walk to the Albanian guards, they immediately agreed to accompany the travellers, and suggested a visit to the Mosque, which had been a Christian church, and then a sojourn in the principal coffee-house in the bazar. The church, now converted into the principal mosque of Gaza, is said to have been constructed in the fifth century. It is well worth visiting, though there can be no doubt that the coffee-house has an air of much greater antiquity, if the marks of Decay's effacing fingers be a proof of age. The manner adopted by the quarantine of Gaza for exhibiting the enforcement of the sanatory regulations to the whole population, was an excellent illustration of the effects of the influence of public opinion in Turkey.

Next day was occupied in preparing for the journey to Jerusalem. Sidney had brought a letter from Cairo to a Christian Arab, named Elias es Shami, so called because he was a native of Sham el Keber, or the great city of Damascus. This worthy was the consular agent of some one of the European powers, but affected to be consul for all. His house was ornamented with five or six flag-staffs, and from these, on days of public rejoicing, the standards of England and France were displayed at the corners farthest apart. He declared himself, in his Damascene French, consul of all the powers, or, as he phrased it, "Je suis moi, consul, de toutes les potences." And it really did not require this certificate to convince most of his visitors, that, like many of the trading consuls of the Levant, he was somewhat of a gallows bird. In the position in which he was placed, Sidney conceived this worthy consular agent might afford him some advice.

On arriving at the house with the flag-staffs, Achmet was sent in to present the letter. In spite of the quarantine, it was received and read by Elias of Sham without difficulty. But though the consul lad no fear of plague before his eyes, he had a strong aversion to hold any intercourse with persons suspected of being spies by the officers of Mohammed Ali, and Ibrahim Pasha. He accordingly positively declined the visit of Sidney, and sent down his vice-consul, a tall youth with lantern jaws, to inform the travellers in the middle of the street, that Mr Elias of Sham, the British consul, could not recognise any traveller in Syria to be an Englishman, who did not wear the English dress on his body, and a round hat on his head. This communication was so completely in the classic style of English diplomacy in the Levant, that Hassan's axiom concerning the sanity of Elchees and Ambassadors, rushed to the recollection of Sidney, and he perceived that even trading consuls felt bound to put a touch of folly ill their official communications to vouch for their diplomatic authority.

Rather amused than discomposed by this reception, Sidney bethought himself of another letter he possessed, to a Persian merchant named Ibrahim, and called by Turks Sishman. Fat Abraham pretended to be Persian consul, so it was proposed to try whether the Mohammedan had more of the trader, and less of the diplomat than his Christian colleague. As the quarantine regulations gave nobody any concern, it was determined to make this visit as imposing as possible. Achmet arranged the procession, and marched before the travellers as dragoman, himself preceded by two Albanian soldiers armed to the teeth; the cook and two more Albanians followed in the rear, and with the greatest dignity, the whole body moved through the bazaar to the shop of Fat Abraham.

[Pg 337]Ibrahim Sishman was found seated in his counting-house. This counting-house, like most of the shops in a Turkish bazaar, bore a close resemblance to the lion's den at the zoological gardens, the grating in front being removed, and the floor raised about three feet above the mud of the narrow street; if the pathway between the dens of the traders in the bazaar of Gaza deserve to be dignified with the name of street. Fat Ibrahim had very little the look of a Persian; instead of possessing the genteel figure of that noble race, he was a squat fellow, with a large mouth, a tallow face, and two arms hanging down from his shoulders at six inches distance from his body, as if unable to approach nearer from some electrical influence. He was, however, by no means very fat, so that his nick-name of Fat Ibrahim was merely a distinctive epithet, borne as Europeans bear the name of Black, Brown, White, or Green, without their skin being of the colour of a dun cow, or a Brazilian parroquet. The Persian dealt largely in tobacco and coffee on his own account, and in various articles of other people's property, of which he exhibited specimens on the walls of his den, for besides being a consul he called himself a banker and general merchant.

He received Sidney and his companion with great affability, and as soon as they were seated like a couple of tailors on his shop floor, he plied them with pipes and coffee, and a stream of conversation which eclipsed the volubility of Mr Lascelles Hamilton in the desert. He was by no means deficient in wit, and talked of the scrape into which the travellers had fallen by their accidental intercourse with Sheikh Salem, as the public news of the bazar; while he induced them to recount their visit to his brother consul, the Shamite, whom he ridiculed as a booby, who always acted as a general merchant when he ought to act as a banker, and as a banker when he ought to act as a consul. The Persian concluded by telling Sidney, that he had now arrived at the right consular shop for protection. Persia and England were the best of friends, and as the English consul from Sham had been offering for French contracts, he hoped soon to display the flag of England in his own courtyard.

A week was drawing to its close, and our travellers were still retained in their state of quarantine at large. Sidney enjoyed himself walking about and visiting the bazar, but poor Mr Lascelles Hamilton began to be alarmed at the delay, and, strange to say, became thoughtful and silent. He affected great anxiety for the fate of the companions he had left behind, but Sidney suspected his melancholy arose from fear of losing his baggage. He declared too that it was of the greatest consequence for him to reach Jerusalem in the shortest space of time, and kept a small bundle constantly near him as if ready for a sudden start should the opportunity of escape present itself. The anxiety of Lascelles Hamilton had increased to a nervous pitch, when late one evening Ringlady and Campbell were suddenly ushered into the tower where our travellers were lodged. Their delay had been caused in part by the Khamsin wind, and in part by their sluggish movements.

Next morning, the whole party proceeded to pay Hafiz Bey, the governor of Gaza, a visit, and obtain his authority to quit his government. Hafiz Bey received them with great politeness, granted them every thing they asked, but invited them to ride out with him to see two robbers impaled, and meet a courier from Mohammed Ali with a small body of Bedoween cavalry. The invitation was equivalent to a command; so although none of the party had any curiosity to see the rare sight of an impalement executed by the express orders of Ibrahim Pasha on two Arab soldiers, who had stolen a few bushels of beans, still they were compelled to accept the offer without any appearance of dissatisfaction. Lascelles Hamilton alone attempted to excuse himself, and only joined the party when he perceived that his absence would render him an object of suspicion to the Bey. The governor mounted the whole party, and even Campbell, in spite of his aversion to equestrian exercise, felt tolerably at home when he perceived[Pg 338] that he could place himself on a quiet looking steed with a round well-padded cloth saddle.

The scene was well worthy seeing, though we must omit all description of the impalement, which our travellers refused to witness. Hafiz Bey had prepared a species of review, the fame of which he probably conceived might tend to make Lord Palmerston pause before he launched his thunders against Gaza. The meeting of the Bedoweens from Egypt with the Bedoweens of Gaza was accompanied by a sham fight, executed with considerable art, though consisting of little more than an extended combination of single combats. The captain of each troop rode forward, and when they had approached sufficiently near, one fired his carbine or pistol, and then gallopped away; the other followed, and if he could gain on his adversary, chose his distance to return the fire. Each horseman in succession from both troops advanced, repeating the same manœuvre, but often describing circles in their flight or in their advance for the purpose of cutting off the boldest of their adversaries, who might have ventured too far in the eagerness of pursuit. It was only when this was successfully accomplished that any attempt was made to close and use the sabre, though even in these last and desperate encounters, the great object was rather to secure prisoners than to slay enemies. The lance was evidently regarded by both parties as a useless weapon. The meanest trooper of the desert was so completely master of this unwieldy weapon as to avoid or parry its thrust with perfect confidence, so that when Bedoween met Bedoween, lances were laid aside.

The mimic fight, however, continued longer, and was extended over a much greater space of ground than Hafiz Bey had contemplated. He evidently began to grow uneasy, a circumstance which our travellers attributed to the effect of the impalement on his nerves, though it really arose from the fear he began to entertain that his severity in punishing theft had wounded the sympathies of the Arabs. He accordingly despatched one of his own Curds to request the Arab chief to draw nearer to the infantry, and thus place themselves within the range of his artillery, and perhaps for the purpose of enforcing this order, he directed his Curdish horsemen to move towards the rear of the Bedoweens. The Arabs clearly disapproved of the movement, and disliked the orders, so without deigning to salute Hafiz Bey, both his own Arabs of Gaza and the new-comers from Egypt suddenly set off at a gallop and soon disappeared among the hills towards the desert. An endeavour was made to treat this incident as a part of the review, but alarm soon seized both the spectators and the troops that remained, and the Bey was obliged to scamper back to Gaza as fast as possible, lest some treason should place another in possession of his government before his arrival.

In the evening, the Franks were again summoned to pay Hafiz Bey a visit, but neither Mr Lascelles Hamilton nor the accomplished Mohammed, the dragoman of Mr Ringlady, could be found. Achmet too had fallen ill in the morning, so that the party had to present itself before the governor with diminished splendour. On their arrival at the divan, they beheld a Frank in an European dress seated beside Hafiz Bey, and a consular cavas standing near the door. Inquiries were soon made for Mr Lascelles Hamilton, and when the Frank on the sofa heard that he was nowhere to be found, he jumped up and made twenty inquiries one after the other in English, as strongly marked with a foreign accent as that of Mr Lascelles Hamilton, but by no means equal to it in choice of words or correctness of grammatical construction. The worthy stranger then informed the travellers that he was an agent of the British Consulate at Alexandria, sent to arrest Mr Lascelles Hamilton for a variety of offences committed under a variety of names.

The hue and cry was now raised, but no Mr Lascelles Hamilton was to be found, and it almost appeared difficult to produce any evidence that such a person had ever existed. Dozens of persons who had seen him that morning, and every morning he had spent at Gaza, became alarmed lest[Pg 339] they should be in some way compromised by a connexion with him, and stoutly denied that such a person had accompanied Sidney to Gaza. Sidney himself, amused with the events of the day, boasted to Campbell that he would achieve fame as a literary man by writing a novel in three volumes based on the adventures of a single day at Gaza. In the mean time, Ringlady became frantic on discovering, in the search for Lascelles Hamilton, that he had lost not only his pearl of dragomans, the accomplished Mohammed, but likewise the whole of his baggage, which the accomplished Mohammed had doubtless carried off by mistake. To increase the grief of the party at losing these two valuable companions, it appeared that the best part of the baggage of Sidney and Campbell had also disappeared, but whether with the Frank or the Mussulman, it was impossible to say. The night was spent in vain endeavours to ascertain the direction in which the fugitives had fled. Hafiz Bey sent out horsemen on every road, who probably did not go very far from the fear of falling in with the Bedoweens. Achmet, however, who now began to recover from his attack of illness, declared, that all search would be useless, for he felt sure that his brother dragoman—the father of a jackass, as he politely termed him—had attempted to poison him in order to escape to the Arabs with the Frank Sheitan.

Day after day elapsed, and no tidings were heard either of the fugitives or the baggage. The deputy consul from Alexandria informed the travellers, that Mr Lascelles Hamilton had been the secretary of an English gentleman of fortune, and during his patron's absence from home, he had thought fit to decamp with numerous papers and a large sum of money. With this provision, he had been travelling over the Continent under a variety of names, and presenting himself at different places as a relation of various distinguished families, proving his identity by the letters and papers in his possession. He had escaped many times when even more closely pursued than at Gaza. A courier arriving for the Alexandrian, informed him at last, that Mohammed the pearl of dragomans had been seen on the road to Egypt, beyond El Arish. As it now appeared that the quarry had doubled back, in order probably to escape by sea from Alexandria as the spot where his presence would be least suspected, the consular agent set off after his victim. It was something like a lap-dog pursuing a fox. Rumours of the Palmerstonian wars were now beginning to alarm the East, so that our travellers found themselves in a situation of considerable embarrassment.

The sudden departure of their baggage was more frequently deplored by the travellers than the loss of their companion's society. Part of their cash had been lodged in their trunks—a fact not unknown to the observant Mohammed—and their funds were now very low. Mr Ringlady had, however, a letter for Elias, of Sham, whom he considered to be the English consul; and though Sidney informed him of the reception he had met with on presenting a similar letter, he trusted to his elegant appearance and mellifluous voice for complete success in obtaining as much cash as he might require to continue his journey to Beyrout.

Ringlady and Campbell, in new paletots and black hats, proceeded to wait on the consul, banker, and general trader of Sham. That worthy, however, had already arrived at the conviction that a war between Turkey and Egypt, and between England and France, was inevitable, and that victory would as inevitably accompany the arms of Egypt and Gaul. His interest confirmed this conviction. As sometimes happens in the lax mercantile morality of the consular system in the Levant, he was the agent of two rival banking establishments, one supported by English, and the other by French funds. The English capitalists being far away, and unable to exercise any direct control over their funds, the Shamite considered it an excellent opportunity for confiscating their funds. He termed the confiscation an act of justice, for the English had intrusted him with their money though they knew that he was already the agent of a rival establishment, and the law declares that all acts contrary to the policy of trade are invalid. The consul illustrated his argument in the following words:—"I am a mule;[Pg 340] I hired my labour to the French, and they loaded me with money-bags. I worked, and worked, and worked. The English saw I could carry more, so they placed money-bags on my back, and cheated the French out of my labour. The burden is now heavy, and honour requires me to throw away the money-bags of the English." The mule accordingly proceeded to kick them off in the public road, but took care to place his own friends on the spot to pick them up.

He nevertheless received Ringlady and Campbell with politeness, treated them to coffee and long pipes, and discoursed on the state of Palestine. He advised them to make the best of their way to Beyrout, informing them that the climate of Syria was peculiarly dangerous to English constitutions towards the commencement of the month of June. The most experienced physicians had predicted a great mortality of Franks during the ensuing summer, and Englishmen were observed to suffer most severely from Syrian fevers. Mr Ringlady now introduced the business of their visit in formal terms, but Campbell was so delighted with his new friend that he exclaimed, "Ye're a friendly soul, Signor Console Elias; but we're no feared for the climate; it's cash we want, and either Mr Ringlady or I can gie ye a circular note on a London bank, or a bill on a hoose in Beyrout." The face of Elias now assumed as profound a gravity as if he had been suddenly called upon to decide on the fate of Syria. After some reflexion he replied,—"Gentlemen, I regret to say that it is not in my power to advance you any money, as you have no letter of credit especially addressed to me. The letter I hold in my hand is only one of introduction." In vain circular notes were exhibited, and letters, of credit on Beyrout; Elias was inexorable. After Mr Ringlady had explained at some length, and with great eloquence, every question of mercantile law, and every principle of social duty connected with their wants, the travellers were compelled to take their leave of their consular friend without obtaining a farthing of his coin.

The travellers now held a council to decide on their future movements. At this council, it was decided that Ringlady and Campbell should set off next day for Jerusalem with the scanty supply of cash they possessed, and from the Holy City transmit a supply of money to Sidney. Sidney's funds were completely exhausted by the payments he was compelled to make to the Albanians and Turks, who considered his quarantine had given them a right to divide his purse. It was by no means prudent to dispute their impositions, lest a pretext for delay should arise out of the dispute, though, after paying all the claims brought against him, Sidney remained with only a few dollars in his possession. The detention of a few days more in Gaza he regarded with great indifference; and when he saw the elegant Mr Ringlady set off with his quarantine cook installed as dragoman, he could not resist quizzing the mellifluous lawyer on the diminished splendour of his equipage, and contrasting his present figure with the magnificent appearance of his train as it was marshalled by Mohammed the pearl of dragomans under the walls of the renowned city of Belbeis.

Sidney, as soon as his companions were departed, resolved to seek out a private habitation, and thus avoid the expense, entailed on him by his residence in the tower he had hitherto occupied. To effect this, he called on his Persian friend Ibrahim Sishman, to secure his assistance in hiring a room. The Persian possessed a house in the immediate vicinity of his den in the bazaar, in which he occasionally lodged his correspondents when they visited Gaza, and generally used as a storehouse for his tobacco and coffee. His own dwelling and harem was situated in a distant quarter of the town. He now offered Sidney the use of the empty house, telling him he might occupy it as soon as he liked and quit it whenever he pleased. The offer was made with a degree of good will that showed it was not a mere compliment; so two hammals were set to work immediately to scrub the floors with soap and water, and Achmet was sent to get Sidney's scanty baggage removed to his new domicile.

While Sidney was detained at Gaza, he found himself compelled to pass a good deal of his time seated [Pg 341]cross-legged in Fat Abraham's den in the bazaar conversing, with his host and the customers who stopped before the spot, on the political and commercial news of Palestine. His host also generally passed part of the evening with him under the pretext of rational conversation, but more probably to avail himself of an opportunity of imbibing a tumbler of strong punch. From the Persian, however, Sidney learned a good deal concerning the state of Syria, and perceived the full meaning of the warning Sheikh Salem had given not to delay at Gaza.

The Moslem population of Syria and Palestine, particularly landed proprietors and hereditary Sheikhs, were universally dissatisfied with the avarice and extortion displayed by the enlightened and civilised government of Ibrahim Pasha and his father Mohammed Ali. And it was now well known that an extensive correspondence had been established by the Porte with all the influential chiefs, for the purpose of exciting the people to rebellion. The interference of Great Britain as an ally of Turkey was considered certain, and Sidney, to his astonishment, found all the intrigues of the Foreign Office and its restless secretary better known to a Persian tobacconist at Gaza than to the British consuls in Egypt.

On the other hand, Ibrahim Sishman explained to him that the Christians were generally favourable to the Egyptian government. In his financial oppression Mohammed Ali had placed Christian and Moslem on perfect equality; but as the Moslem population was taxed with greater difficulty than the Christian, he found it advantageous to employ this last as spies on their neighbours, and preferred intrusting the financial administration to their care. By this means, they were rendered the partisans of Egypt, and as France was the ally of Mohammed Ali, they became the enemies of Turkey and England. Many of the Christians were now employed in watching the movements of the Moslem Sheikhs, and, to increase their estimation with Ibrahim Pasha, they acted as spies on every English traveller who visited Syria.

Ibrahim informed Sidney that the banker Elias had made a merit of refusing to supply the Englishmen with funds at the divan of Hafiz Bey. But as Mohammed Ali had by his last courier renewed his orders to treat Englishmen with proper attention, Hafiz Bey had only laughed at his suspicions, and consequently the Persian had ventured to entertain Sidney as his guest, without incurring any suspicion of being engaged in political intrigues with England.

The first week of this strange life passed away very pleasantly; but, before the second was terminated, Sidney became tired of the waste of time; and as no news arrived from his companions who had preceded him to Jerusalem, he gave his host Ibrahim a bill on Beyrout, and made all his preparations for quitting Gaza.

In the morning, when he had sent out Achmet to hire horses, and was engaged in smoking what he hoped would be his last pipe at Gaza, an old slave belonging to the household of the Persian presented himself. Sidney stretched out his hand to receive the money for his bill, which he supposed Ibrahim had sent, not being able to bring it himself at that early hour; but, instead of a bag of money, the slave delivered to him a letter and a bunch of keys. Sidney, supposing there was some mistake, declined the letter and keys, and asked for his money. He could induce the slave to utter no words but "Read it." This was not the easiest task in the world, for Sidney was more familiar with the text of Makrizi than with the epistolary correspondence of modern traders. After some trouble he satisfied himself that the contents of the letter were nearly as follows:—

"Prince of my esteem! Sovereign of my respect! Milord, Beyzadé, and Khan!—To be a good man like thy servant Ibrahim, profiteth nothing in an evil hour. Thy host is compelled to fly to collect money for his friends. He is in thy debt, but he places all his wealth at thy disposal, and will arrange accounts at his return. Preserve his house and his fame as thou lovest righteousness!—Thy servant and friend, Ibrahim Sishman."

From this epistle Sidney could only collect one fact with certainty, and that was, that his friend Ibrahim Sishman had decamped with the bill[Pg 342] on Beyrout, leaving him at Gaza without a dollar.

While he was meditating on this new misfortune, Achmet rushed into the room, exclaiming, with the greatest vehemence,—"They won't let us go! Are we slaves? Are we not Englishmen? Come to the Bey, Mr Sidney—come to the Bey." As Sidney could extract nothing from Achmet but a rapid repetition of these words, nor conjecture what relationship existed between the Bey and the letter in his hand, to which Achmet pointed in a paroxysm of rage which choked his utterance, to the Bey he resolved to go. He marched off accordingly with the letter and the bunch of keys in his hand.

On arriving at the divan of Hafiz Bey, he found many of the principal inhabitants of Gaza already assembled; and he had no sooner saluted the Bey and the visitors, according to the formal ceremonial of Turkish etiquette, than the governor said, with great gravity—"Now, here is the Englishman, what have you to say?" Rodoan Aga, a fat old Mussulman, and one of the principal contractors for provisioning the troops of Mohammed Ali and the pilgrims of the Damascus Hadj in their passage, through the Desert, opened the case.

Rodoan Aga said, that the much-esteemed Persian merchant Ibrahim of Hamadan, called Sishman, had been suddenly compelled to visit Damascus, in order to secure some money in danger of falling into the hands of the rebel sheikhs, and that he had left the Frank bazerguian, or merchant, in charge of his business and his magazines at Gaza. The keys of the magazines and the letter of instructions were in the hands of the Frank, and he, Rodoan, and several others present, held orders on the Frank both for the payment and the receipt of various sums of money and bales of goods. The letter written by Ibrahim to Sidney was now read before the divan, and each man offered his remarks on it. All agreed that Sidney was thereby named the lawful agent of Ibrahim, and that he could not refuse the trust confided to him.

In vain the Englishman declared he was no merchant, and explained that Ibrahim Sishman had decamped with his bill on Beyrout. In vain he solicited Hafiz Bey to give him the means of continuing his journey to Beyrout, where he possessed the means of paying every expense he might incur. In vain, too, he offered to give his claim on Ibrahim either to Hafiz Bey or to Rodoan. It was whispered about by his enemy the Consul Elias that he was agent of the British Government, sent to purchase provisions for an invading army; and Hafiz feared to allow him to depart until he received precise instructions on the subject from Ibrahim Pasha himself. He consequently recommended Sidney to wait a day or two for news from Ibrahim Sishman; and concerning his departure he replied only, "Bakalum, we shall see."

The discussion at the divan of Hafiz Bey lasted all the morning. Rodoan Aga and the Moslems of Gaza retired to dine and take their mid-day nap, while Sidney retired to his room to meditate on his embarrassed position. Had he possessed a couple of horses, or money enough to purchase them, he would, without a moment's hesitation, have put his foot in the stirrup and left Gaza, its consuls, and its governor behind, and trusted to his good fortune for finding his way to Jerusalem. But his empty purse rendered every project of flight impossible. His wits being now sharpened by his misfortunes, he easily perceived that Rodoan Aga was in league with his host, Fat Abraham, and he had no doubt that the departure of the Persian was really connected with the political storm which threatened Syria. Even Hafiz Bey, he felt assured, possessed some knowledge of the intrigues of the Sublime Porte against Mohammed Ali's domination, and made use of this mercantile affair as a veil to other projects. The more Sidney reflected, the greater he saw his danger to be; and yet he was only the more convinced of his utter helplessness amidst the mesh of intrigues with which he was surrounded. He became seriously alarmed at his position, as soon as he saw that no exertions of his own could possibly improve it. He fell into a reverie on the doctrine of predestination in the East, which seemed to him, in his present situation, infinitely more[Pg 343] rational than it had ever appeared before. The moral and religious disposition of the Arabs and Turks began to appear to him as much the result of the air and climate as the plague itself; and there seemed as much danger of their affecting the intellects of a traveller who delayed too long within the sphere of their operation, as of the plague affecting his body.

His escape was really hopeless. No more travellers were likely to pass through Gaza during the summer, and Hafiz Bey was not likely to allow him to communicate either with Jerusalem, Beyrout, or Damascus. He threw himself on his sofa in despair, and remained plunged in a series of conjectures, each one more disagreeable than its predecessor.

Achmet, after placing his master's breakfast before him, had sallied out to the bazaar to collect news. In about an hour he returned, and found Sidney still overpowered with melancholy thoughts. "Mr Sidney! Mr Sidney! the coffee cold," shouted Achmet.

"Curse the coffee!" replied Sidney, whose mind naturally enough reverted to the magazine filled with coffee in the room below him, of which he had suddenly become the commission merchant. But he rose up to see how Achmet bore their mutual misfortune. To his astonishment, Achmet's black face was radiant with joy. Amazed at the change, for when he had last looked at Achmet he was in a furious passion at their detention, Sidney said—"Achmet, you seem pleased to stay in this accursed spot, Gaza!"

Achmet rejoined—"Me no pleased—me no help."

"Well then, Achmet, bring me some warm coffee, and let me hear what consoles you?"

Achmet soon appeared with a fresh supply of Mocha; and while Sidney was proceeding with breakfast, he seated himself near the door on his heels, as was his habit whenever he proposed holding a long conversation with his master.

To Sidney's question, "Now, Achmet, tell me what I must do?" Achmet replied—"You must keep Ibrahim's shop, Mr Sidney, to be sure;—you merchant, me slave—plenty of tobacco—all go very good." He then placed all the facts he had collected in the bazaar before his master's mind, and unfolded his own thoughts in comments on them, concluding by declaring, that Sidney must act as the representative of Ibrahim Sishman in the shop in the bazaar, or submit to see some other person elected by the inhabitants of Gaza to act in his place, and perhaps starve in a strange land. As some consolation, Achmet assured his master that there could be no doubt that the affairs of Ibrahim were really in a prosperous way, and that in a very short time they would be able to collect money enough to pay the bill on Beyrout, and then they could turn over the administration of the trust committed to their charge to some other deputy. The picture Achmet drew of Sidney seated like a tailor in the den in the bazaar, doling out tobacco and coffee to the citizens of Gaza, was so comic, that, in spite of all his embarrassments, Sidney burst into a hearty laugh.

However Sidney might dislike being a tobacconist in Gaza, his good sense soon convinced him that Achmet had taken a very just view of his position. Willingly or unwillingly, fate had predestined him to keep Fat Abraham's shop. He felt, too, that if any thing must be done, the true mode is to do it as well as possible; and without any more hesitation he took up the bunch of keys and walked with Achmet to the shop, where he was soon seen seated, cross-legged, poring over the books and accounts of the Persian consul. In these researches Achmet afforded him valuable assistance; for without his aid even the simple mysteries of Arabic book-keeping might have remained an impenetrable labyrinth. Once engaged in mercantile business, Sidney paid the greatest attention to his charge, in the hope that he would thereby succeed in shortening the period of his compulsory residence at Gaza. Even Rodoan Aga was so delighted with his proceedings, that he advised him to settle down for life as a tobacconist.

Week after week now crept slowly away. No news arrived from Ringlady and Campbell. Ibrahim Sishman gave no signs of his existence; Hafiz Bey received no communications from Damascus; insurrections and disturbances were heard of in every[Pg 344] direction, and the names of Sheikh Salem and his ally the Sheikh of Hebron were mingled with reports of a general rebellion in Palestine.

In the mean time Sidney found the gains of Oriental commerce in its regular channel through the bazaar of Gaza very small indeed; and though he emulated the frugality of an Arab, he was unable to save the little sum required to attempt to escape. He was by the flight of Ibrahim suddenly burdened with the maintenance of his host's harem, and had discovered, to his utter consternation, that he was bound to maintain two wives and four children he had never seen. Every evening his matrimonial duties were brought to his recollection before he closed his shop by the accursed slave who presented him with the letter and the keys which had robbed him of his liberty. That slave came and demanded five piastres, or one shilling, for the maintenance of the harem next day; a few extra demands were made at stated periods; and Sidney was himself astonished to perceive that a household, consisting of eight or nine individuals, could live with apparent satisfaction on the trifling sum of one shilling per diem. The sum, however, moderate as it was, absorbed all the profits of the retail trade, and the more extended commercial transactions of the Persian were now interrupted by the disturbed state of the country.

In vain Sidney toiled to accumulate a sum large enough to pay his expenses to Beyrout; his savings were always swept away by some unavoidable payment. He at last began to despair, and fancy himself spell-bound on the verge of the Desert; and the sad alternative of being compelled to pass twelve years of his life as a tobacconist at Gaza—one of his relatives having passed that period in the south of France a detenu of Napoleon's tyranny—continually presented itself to his imagination, and ended by plunging him into a dangerous state of melancholy.

Determined at last to make a decisive effort to break his bonds, Sidney resolved to despatch Achmet to Damascus with a petition to Ibrahim Pasha; for he saw that without an order from that pasha there was very little chance of his getting away from Gaza. Accordingly he made an application to Hafiz Bey, at his public divan, to allow Achmet to accompany the first courier he might despatch to Damascus; and at the same time he endeavoured to send letters to inform the English consuls at Damascus, Beyrout, and Alexandria of his unfortunate situation. Hafiz Bey did not venture to refuse his request; but a new difficulty now occurred. Sheikh Salem had assembled a considerable force in the mountains which bound the plain extending from Gaza, to Jaffa, and kept the garrison of Gaza in such a state of alarm, that Hafiz Bey declined sending away any courier until he should hear that Ibrahim Pasha had reinforced the garrisons of Jerusalem and Jaffa.

It was now evident that Sidney's anxiety was injuring his health, and his condition excited the compassion of Rodoan Aga, who visited him every evening to console him. Finding his attempts to persuade Sidney to settle at Gaza vain, he one evening addressed him thus:—

"Thou art ill, and eager to quit us, Seid Aga?"

"If I fly to the desert, and take the lance of a Bedouwee, I will remain no longer at Gaza," was the reply.

"Thou desirest to return to England?

"It is the country of my fathers—if I can escape from this spot, I will hasten thither."

"Dost thou not see, O Seid Aga! that Hafiz Bey feareth to let thee depart? He feareth that dog of a usurer, the consul from Sham, who placeth the arms of England over his door, and lendeth money under their shadow at eighteen per cent, and acts as a spy for the great Pasha."

"Hafiz may lose his head, and the usurer his money-bags, in the storm that is now gathering," said Sidney in his wrath.

"Thou hast said it," quoth Rodoan Aga with much satisfaction. "NOW will I reveal to thee how thou canst escape in spite of the Bey and the usurer, and thou wilt aid us in England."

Sidney now listened eagerly to the plan of escape proposed by Rodoan. It was, to suggest that Sidney should send a letter to Sheikh Salem, [Pg 345]conjuring him to assist in furthering his escape from Gaza, in order that he might repair to Latakich to embark in the fire-ship of the Nemtsch. "Doubt not," added the Aga, "that Salem will soon find means to accomplish thy wish. I will send one for thy letter in an hour." Saying this, Rodoan rose and shuffled out of the room.

It required no great stretch of sagacity for Sidney to perceive that the Turkish party at Gaza now expected to derive some advantage from his presence in England, and for that reason they favoured his escape. It was not his business to point out to them the errors of their intriguing policy, so he sat down to pen a letter to Sheikh Salem. Though short, it was not very easily written, and it was hardly terminated ere an old Arab entered his room, and said he was going to bring tobacco from Beit Mirsim for Rodoan Aga, and came to ask for a letter, or teskereh. Something in the sound of the voice was familiar to Sidney, and on scrutinising the person of his visitor, Sidney recollected that he was one of the guides who had attended them in crossing the desert. The letter was immediately consigned to his care, with an exhortation to deliver it as soon as possible into the hands of Sheikh Salem, and a good backshish as a weight to impress it on the memory.

In a few days the proceedings of Sheikh Salem threw all Gaza into a state of commotion. Rumours were spread that he had ventured to detain Osman Effendi, the brother-in-law of Hafiz Bey, and a large sum of money belonging to some of the principal inhabitants of the town. Early one morning, Sidney was summoned to the divan of the governor, by a Chiaous in full uniform. At this divan, all the civil and military authorities, and most of the principal inhabitants of Gaza were assembled, all looking particularly grave. After Sidney's entrance a long pause ensued, during which he had time to reconnoitre this provincial assembly of Arabs. Seated near Hafiz Bey, his eye fell on the figure of Hassan, the friend of Sheikh Salem, who had weighed the intellects of European ambassadors in the well-poised balance of his own common sense. The sight of the Arabic philosopher cheered Sidney, who felt a conviction that he was now destined to escape from the meshes in which he had been entangled by the mad diplomacy of the trading consul of Gaza.

Hassan at length broke silence, addressing his words to Hafiz Bey, but making their import interesting to all the assembled Sheikhs and Agas. He announced himself as the envoy of Sheikh Salem of Nablous, and Sheikh Abderrahman of Hebron, sent to make a long list of complaints against Hafiz Bey and Osman Effendi; but he concluded by suggesting that means of composing all disputes might be found, if Hafiz Bey would compel the merchants of Gaza to undertake the administration of the affairs of Ibrahim of Hamadan, called Sishman, and release Seid Aga the English Beyzadé, who was violently detained at Gaza, under the pretext that he was a Frank bazerguian or usurer like the Christian consuls. The conclusion of Hassan's harangue was in the clear and precise style of common sense, and far removed from the misty sublime of Frank diplomacy. His words were, "If Seid Aga, the English Beyzadé, has debts in Gaza, Sheikh Salem will pay them; if the English Beyzadé wants money, or horses, or camels, Sheikh Salem will furnish them; whatever obstacles oppose the immediate departure of the Beyzadé, Sheikh Salem will remove them; and whatever injury he may sustain, Sheikh Salem will most assuredly revenge it. On his head, and on mine, I avouch it."

In reply to this speech of Hassan, Hafiz Bey made one much longer and more formal. A long discussion ensued, which occupied the morning. In the evening it was resumed, and at last it was concluded by arrangement between Hassan and Hafiz Bey, in which these two worthy plenipotentiaries, like most European ambassadors, abandoned all consideration of the affairs of their allies, and settled that part of the matter in dispute, as much as possible to their mutual satisfaction. It was agreed[Pg 346] that Sheikh Salem should release Osman Effendi, and the money belonging to him and Hafiz Bey, and that Sidney should accompany Hassan, and quit Gaza at daylight next morning.

That evening Sidney gave twenty piastres to the slave from the harem, in order that his two wives and four children, with their slaves, might feel as much joy in getting quit of their Frank lord, as he did in obtaining a divorce from them. The keys of the shop and house, and the books, the tobacco, and the coffee of Ibrahim Sishman, were consigned to the care of Rodoan Aga; and Sidney and Achmet moved off that very night to the lodging of Hassan and his Arab attendants, in order to make sure of their powerful protection.

Long before daylight they were on horseback, and the rising sun was just gilding the humble minarets and the fragile buildings of Gaza, as Sidney turned to take his last look of the spot where he had spent nearly three months, seated crosslegged like a tailor, in its bazaar, acting the tobacconist. It was already something like the idle vision of a morning dream, exquisitely real, but ridiculously improbable. It was impossible to take a last look of the place as the colouring of the scene changed rapidly under the rays of the rising sun, without a feeling of melancholy; so that it was not without an effort that Sidney turned his back for ever on Gaza. He recollected the deep depression of spirits that had affected him as he entered on a lovely evening; and he now quitted in a brilliant morning of a Syrian summer, with a feeling of softened melancholy, hoping that he left it a wiser man than he had entered its walls, and satisfied that he could never forget the experience he had acquired in the little den he had so long occupied in its bazaar.

Sidney's subsequent adventures in Syria were not very varied. He soon learned that he was extremely fortunate in not accompanying Ringlady and Campbell to Jerusalem. He now heard for the first time that they had been murdered in an excursion to the pools of Solomon, before it had been in their power to obtain a single dollar to transmit to Gaza. Sheikh Salem, too, was prevented from meeting him on the road by other cares; but he sent a messenger with a purse, and a handsome sabre, which now adorns Sidney's library in Hyde Park Place. The messenger recommended Hassan to turn back from Jamne to the desolate walls of Askalon, where a boat would be found to convey Sidney to Latakieh. At Latakieh accordingly he arrived, and immediately embarked on board the Austrian steamer.

As he was never one of the devoted admirers of the simplicity of the administrative forms in the Ottoman Empire, nor even very enthusiastic in praise of the simple virtues of the Arabic race, we presume that he does not consider either the social or political condition of a nation in any way dependent on its commercial policy; for surely, if he thought Free Trade was destined to produce in Britain the effects it has produced in Turkey, he would not have supported it. We have heard him observe of Turkey, that in order to derive all the advantages conferred on the Ottoman Empire by the freedom of commerce, it is necessary for a native to emigrate, and become a foreigner. It is to be hoped we are not to be compelled to pursue the same course, ere we can enjoy all the fruits of our own legislation.

[Pg 347]

BYWAYS OF HISTORY.[16]

We have sometimes been disposed to regard with extreme impatience the fragmentary manner in which history is now written amongst us. Lives of the Queens—Lives of the Kings—Lives of our Statesmen—Lives of our Chancellors—thus breaking up into detached and isolated figures the great and animated group which every age presents. If our writers cannot grapple—and it is indeed a herculean task—with the annals of a nation, why not give us at least some single period, a reign or epoch, in its unbroken entirety? If they cut up the old man of history into this multitude of pieces, into what kettle or cauldron will they throw him that will boil him into youth and unity again? The scattered members are all that will remain to us. But our impatience on this matter would be very fruitlessly expressed. Such is the mode, such the fashion in the gentle craft of authorship. It were better, perhaps, to submit at once with a good grace—take whatever is worth the having, come in what shape it will, and keep our own good-humour into the bargain.

Amongst these fragmentary sketches, few have pleased us more than the two small volumes that designate themselves as Byways of History. Indeed, without pretending to do so, and notwithstanding their desultory nature, they give a very fair picture of the great period of the middle ages of which they treat, in its darker as well as its brighter points of view. There is also more novelty in the anecdotes than could have been expected, considering how well gleaned a field the authoress has had to traverse; and there is a playfulness in the style which, to youthful readers especially, will be found very attractive, though it may not always be sufficiently pungent to stir the stiffer muscles that grow about the upper lip of a sexagenarian critic.

"Byways" in history there are, strictly speaking, none at all; least of all can the peasant war in Germany, the principal subject of these volumes, be thought to lie amongst the secondary and less important transactions of the past. Whatever facts throw light upon the temper and modes of thinking of a bygone age, are of the very essence of history, though they may not immediately relate to crowned heads or official dignitaries. Yet, adopting the latitude of common speech, the title is significant enough. It is not the actions of kings and emperors, or the fate of nations and dynasties, that the fair historian undertakes to record; and as such a narrative is generally looked upon as the highway of history, she who diverges from it may be said to be traversing its byways. Only the byways, be it understood, may be the very roads which a good traveller would first and most industriously explore.

Ladies are said to hold it as one of their prerogatives to be a little unreasonable in their exactions, and a little self-contradictory in their sentiments. Our authoress appears, in one point, disposed to assert this prerogative of her sex. In ordinary cases, we know of nothing more impertinent than to appeal to the common process of litigious argumentation against these fair despots of society; but we doubt whether we should be acting even in the true spirit of gallantry, if we recognised any such prerogative in the domain of literature. It is open to any writer who thinks fit so to do, to disparage the present age by comparing it with olden times. It is also open to him, if he should be so minded, to show that these olden times, so much vaunted, were in fact far more culpable than ourselves, even in those points where we are guilty. But to none is it open—in the same book—to do both the one and the other; to disparage the present by comparison with the past, and then prove the past to have been ten times worse than the present. This is more than can reasonably fall to the share of any one author, or authoress.[Pg 348] He cannot have it both ways. He cannot have the pleasure of putting the present age to shame by a contrast with the past, and the pleasure, almost as great, of exposing in their true colours the vices of a past that has been too indulgently surveyed.

But something of this license Mrs Sinnett seems disposed to take. At p. 37 we have to submit, with the rest of our contemporaries, to the following rebuke:—"When we hear it publicly proclaimed that it is a great thing for a young nobleman to postpone 'his pleasures' for a week or two for the sake of performing a service to his country, we cannot but begin to doubt whether, in the education of our privileged classes, we have really improved much on the system of the 'dark ages.' Then, at least, it was not thought that any class had a right to make 'its pleasures' its chief consideration."

Indeed! Yet we are told in other parts that the landlords of those times not only made their pleasures their chief consideration, but wrung by violence the last groschen from the peasant's hand in order to procure them. At p. 55, vol. ii., after an account of the pleasures of the kings and nobles, we have the following description of the peasant:—"And what, then, was the condition of the people all this while? 'Look here upon this picture and on this!' All taxes and imposts fell, as a matter of course, on the lower orders; the humble citizen, the laborious peasant, had to toil and earn by the sweat of his brow, not his own daily bread, but the means of luxurious indulgence to his insolent masters; yet if the wild boar came tearing up his fields and vineyards, and the knight and his followers dashed after him with a troop of horsemen dogs, he had no redress, and dared not even kill the beast, lest he should interfere with the pleasures of his lord.... New methods and pretences for extorting money from the people were devised every day."

It would be easy to multiply similar quotations. The landlords of ancient times, with whom it was plainly intimated we could bear no flattering comparison, are held up, we see, to complete reprobation.

The difference between the bad landlord of ancient and of modern times, (for we presume the good and the bad, the wheat and the tares, were sown together then as now,) we believe to be this. The modern bad landlord takes his rent—a rent obtained often by a ruinous competition for the soil—and thinks no more of the matter; thinks nothing of the tenant, whether he has offered a higher rent than he can well pay, or of the labourer, whether the wages he receives are sufficient to support him in health. The ancient bad landlord was a positive extortioner; he did look after his tenants or his serfs—to see if there was any thing more he could take from them; he looked into the roost for the last hen, and behind the barn-door for the last egg. When we censure the modern landlord for being an absentee, reckless of his tenantry, we in fact tacitly demand from him a higher strain of virtue than we exact from other wealthy classes, who are allowed to receive without inquiry, and expend without control, the utmost income which fortune and the laws have given them. He is at worst the "sluggard king," indifferent to a world of which he knows nothing, and absorbed only in the pursuit of his own pleasures. But the bad landlord of feudal times had the active vices of the robber and the tyrant.

Let no one study the middle ages in the hope—which some seem to entertain—of extracting from them the lesson peculiarly applicable to ourselves. The feudal times are utterly past. Some of their forms, or some shadow of their forms, may still linger amongst us; but their spirit is as utterly past as that which animated an Athenian democracy, or the court of the Great King. We must study our duty as citizens, as Christians, in the circumstances around us, in the eternal Writing before us: we shall gain nothing by the fantastic gloss, with its grotesque illuminations, which the middle ages supply. This turning and struggling towards the past is but the backward looking of those whom the current is still carrying down the stream: it were wiser to look before, and on either side of them; they will better see whither they are going.—

It will perhaps be thought that throughout these volumes the sympathies[Pg 349] of the authoress are a little too chameleon-like,—somewhat too mobile, and take their changeful hue from the immediate subject, or the last light thrown upon it. Now the knight, with his faith in God and his own right arm, his self-reliance, his daring and devotion, claims from the lady, as is most just, his meed of applause. But by-and-by she catches him upon his marauding expedition, the ruthless spoliator of the burgher, the contemptuous oppressor of the artisan; and she does not spare her censure. One moment she appears to join in the regret that the age of chivalry is gone! The next moment the same phrase rings differently, and when contemplating the oppressed condition of the peasantry, she rejoices that the age of chivalry is gone! In one part she makes honourable mention of the training the youthful nobleman received in the halls of the great, where he acted as page; but cannot, in another part, refrain from a little satire on this very system of training. "Noble young gentlemen," she says p. 32, "who would not to save their lives have employed themselves in any useful art or manufacture, had no objection to lay cloths, carry up dishes, wait at table, hold horses, and lead them to the stables; and noble young ladies did not disdain to perform many of the offices of a chambermaid at a hotel, for a knightly guest."

We note this versatility of feeling, but hardly for the purpose of blaming it; for indeed it is the peculiar characteristic of the middle ages thus to play with our sympathies. They present so many and such different phases, their institutions are capable of being viewed under such opposite lights, that it requires more care and watchfulness than is perhaps consistent with simple honesty of thought and feeling, to preserve one's self from these fluctuations of sentiment. One who yields unaffectedly to the genuine impressions which the history of this period produces, will find his Ohs and his Hahs breaking out in a very contradictory manner. That knight, with lance at rest which challenges the whole fighting world—whatever can be tilted at,—who would not be that knight? But the man cannot read; and thinks an old woman can bewitch him by her spells, and that his priest, by some spell also, can absolve him. That monk, with folded arms over a heart so well folded too—who would not be that monk? But the man has mingled asceticism with his piety till he knows not which is which; and let a woman in her youth and beauty traverse his path, he crosses himself, as if not the angel of this world, but the demon of another had appeared before him. In looking at these phantasmagoria of the past, we must be content to see and to feel for the moment; there is no stereotyped expression of face with which we can regard the whole.

We have soon exhausted our critical cavils, and shall look at leisure through these volumes for some of those points which interested us during their perusal. Amongst the first things we had noted for quotation is an account of our old friend Gotz von Berlichingen—him of the Iron Hand—which we somehow liked the better for there being no allusion to the drama of Goethe. Nobody whom the information could in the least interest, needed to be told that it was the hero of the drama whose real life and adventures he was getting acquainted with. We find, however, on re-perusal, that this account is too long to be extracted: we leave it untouched for those who peruse the work; and shall make our first quotation from the description of the Hanse Towns. Here is a curious passage, which shows that the mere collecting together in towns, and making some advance in the great art of money-getting, is no guarantee against superstitions as gross and ridiculous as any that haunt the boor in his cottage.

Those who indulge in, or applaud practical jests, should read on farther in the same chapter (p. 102.) We heartily wish that the professors of this species of wit were every one of them conducted in his turn into the "Paradise" here described; of which it may be sufficient to intimate that "it was provided with a bench and a good store of rods."

On monastic institutions, Mrs Sinnett has some very just and equitable remarks.

Restoration! Restore the Heptarchy! as Canning on one occasion exclaimed. And yet we understand that of late there has been a gentle sigh, and some half-formed projects for the revival of monastic institutions. We hear from the preface to Maitland's "Essays on the Dark Ages," that a circular was issued by persons of no contemptible influence in the church, headed "Revival of Monastic and Conventual Institutions on a plan adapted to the exigencies of the reformed Catholic religion." As Mr Maitland says of the plan—it would be after all but "a playing at monkery." Where, we would ask, is the irrevocable vow? Where is the unchangeable fate, the civil death, that awaited the inmate of the monastic house? Where is the superstitious admiration of the crowd without? Where all those religious ideas that made renouncement of life so sacred and meritorious? And where, moreover, is that insecure and unprotected condition of a half-civilised age, which made the retreat of the monastery so precious to the wearied and wounded spirit? You are charmed with an oasis in the desert;—you must spread the desert first, if you would realise the charm. What are monastic walls, to you,—who can take a lodging in Cheapside, and be as solitary, as undisturbed, as utterly forgotten as if the grave had closed upon you?

Viewed strictly as a portion of the past, and in relation to all the [Pg 351]circumstances that gave origin and value to them, we confess we have a partiality for the old monasteries. Some of the popular censures which are still dealt upon them are founded upon erroneous ideas of the nature and purposes of such institutions. They are blamed repeatedly for their ignorance and their neglect of learning. They were not instituted for the preservation or advancement of learning. Originally they were not even ecclesiastical, but consisted of pious laymen, who wished to devote their souls to God, by drawing them out of the mire of their daily lives. Profane learning was more frequently regarded as a thing forbidden, than numbered amongst the objects which might engage their attention. "Solitude, labour, silence, and prayer—these were the elements of monastic life; and the question was not, how the monk might most effectually gather and diffuse learning, but—when, indeed, any question came to be raised—whether he might lawfully cultivate learning at all?"—(Maitland, p. 160.)

The charge of indolence, also—(the two epithets of "lazy and ignorant," generally go together, in the popular phraseology, when monks are spoken of)—is made without any discrimination, and bestowed as well upon bodies of men remarkable for their industrious and persevering cultivation of the soil, as upon the pampered and corrupted monastery. Amongst the rules of the Benedictines, labour figures conspicuously. In many cases it was the hard work of emigrants who first subdue the soil, that was performed by these sacred and secluded men. But, when an admiring world thought fit, in its sagacity, to reward a voluntary poverty by endowing and enriching it,—when the monastery became a wealthy landlord, with treasures of gold and silver in its coffers—then, as might be expected, labour declined,—the monk grew lazy, and the description which Mrs Percy Sinnett quotes from an old author, was, no doubt, very generally applicable to him. "Every other minute he comes out of his cell—then goes in again—then comes out again to look if the sun is not near setting." The world behaved towards the monk as an old gentleman we remember to have read of in some play, who, charmed with the temperance which his young friend had exhibited, rewarded it by putting his cellar of choice wines at his disposal. He was afterwards indignant at finding that the virtue of his protégé had not increased under his kind encouragement.

The remarks of Mrs P. Sinnett, which we have just quoted, on monastic life, usher in a very entertaining account of the origin and growth of the "Abbey of Altenberg." Here is a fragment of it:—

If the ass was a great favourite with the monk, it was still more so with the populace. With no other animal was so much of the rough humour of the middle ages associated. It might be worth consideration how far the introduction of the ass in certain religious or semi-religious festivals—as in the feast of the ass—has aided in investing him with that peculiar grave humour which modern wits associate with him. Apropos of this feast of the ass, we may as well correct a general error which Robertson has led his readers into, when he describes it as "a festival in commemoration of the Virgin Mary's flight into Egypt." The Virgin Mary appears to have had nothing to do with it, and the ass from which the festival took its name was not that on which she fled into Egypt, but the ass of Balaam. We rely on the authority of Maitland, whose "Essays on the Dark Ages" we have before alluded to—a not very amiable writer, by the way, and far more acrimonious than the importance of his contributions to our knowledge entitles him to be, but evidently a very formidable antagonist to those who deal in loose and careless statements. "The dramatis personæ of this celebrated interlude," he tells us, "were miscellaneous enough. There were Jews and Gentiles, as the representatives of their several bodies—Moses and Aaron and the prophets—Virgilius Maro—Nebuchadnezzar—The Sibyl, &. &c. Among them, however, was Balaam on his ass; and this (not, one would think, the most important or striking part of the show) seems to have suited the popular taste, and given the name to the whole performance and festival. I should have supposed, that Nebuchadnezzar's delivering over the three children to his armed men, and then burning them in a furnace made on purpose, in the middle of the church, would have been a more imposing part of the spectacle; but I pretend not to decide in matters of taste, and certainly Balaam's ass appears to have been the favourite. The plan of the piece seems to have been, that each of the persons was called out in his turn to sing or say something suitable to his character, and among others, 'Balaam ornatus, sedens super asinam,' having spurs on his heels, and holding the reins in his hands, struck and spurred his ass, and a youth holding a sword in his hand, barred his progress. Whereupon another youth, under the belly of the ass, and speaking for the abused animal, cries out, 'Why, &c., &c.'"—in the well-known terms of the colloquy.

"Indeed the ass," says the same[Pg 353] writer in a note, "seems to be always a favourite with the public, and to give the tone and title wherever he appears. In the twelfth century, an order of monks was formed whose humility (or at least their rule) did not permit them to ride on horseback. The public (I hope to the satisfaction of these humble men) entirely overlooked them, eclipsed as they were by the animals on which they rode, and called it ordo Asinorum."

There is an account here of "Prussia in the Old Times," which will be read with interest; the more so as we suspect it is a portion of history not very familiar to English readers. We mean the period from the conquest of Prussia, and its conversion to Christianity by the knights of the Teutonic Order, to the year 1526, when Albert, Grand-master of that order, made a treaty with Sigismund, king of Poland, with whom he had been at war, by which it was stipulated that Albert should hold the duchy as lay prince, doing homage—how times have changed!—to the king of Poland!

We shall devote our remaining space, however, to some extracts from Mrs P. Sinnett's account of the peasant war, the subject which occupies the whole of the second volume.

In every historical or biographical work which treats of the Reformation in Germany, there will be found a short, and only a short, notice of the peasant war, which broke out on the preaching of Luther, and of the fury of the anabaptists and others; and in every such notice the reader will find it uniformly stated that these disturbances and insurrections, though assuming a religious character, were in their origin substantially of a political or social nature, springing, in short, from the misery and destitution of the lower orders. But we do not know where the English reader will find this general statement so well verified, or so fully developed, as in the little work before us. In every part of Germany we see partial insurrections repeatedly taking place, all having the same unhappy origin; and our wonder is, not that the preaching of the Reformation should have communicated a new vitality to these insurrectionary movements, but that, after being allied with religious feeling, and religious sanction and enthusiasm, they were not still more tremendous in their results.

Here is one of the earliest of these insurrections: it is a type of the class. The chapter is headed

[Pg 354]In reading this paragraph, one is at first struck with the superfluous incongruity of preaching against "costly attire and silk and silver cords" to the ragged and shoeless populace that formed the chief part of the drummer's audience. But a little reflection suggests that, in the first place, it gives a preacher a great hold over a mob, to inveigh against the sins of their superiors, and that, in the next place, there is a very easy transition from inveighing against the sins of the rich, to disputing their privileges, and comtemning their power and authority.

Yes, the drummer of Niklashausen was their god for the moment. Yearning for help, and unable to help themselves, such simple crowds are ready to believe in any voice that promises a coming salvation. But now the Bishops of Mainz and Wurzburg, and the Senate of Nuremberg, began to bestir themselves. Hans Boheim, after concluding one of his exhortations, had invited his followers on the next holiday to come without their wives and children, and "to come armed." What would have ensued at the next assembly we are left only to guess, for the prophet, while sleeping quietly in his house, was, in the middle of the night, fairly kidnapped by the Bishop of Wurzburg, and thrown into prison.

Some sixteen thousand of his disciples marched off to Wurzburg to set him free. But the Bishop spoke them softly, and after some demonstrations of violence, they began to retreat. "Group after group slowly retired, scattering in different directions; but the Bishop watched his opportunity, and when they had all peaceably turned their backs, he sent out his men-at-arms who fell upon them, and cut many down, and took many prisoners. Great numbers took refuge in a church; but, threatened with fire and starvation, they at length surrendered. The prophet was burned to death on a field near the castle of Wurzburg." Exeunt omnes.

We pass on at one bound to the chief hero of these peasant wars, whom Mrs Percy Sinnett undertakes, in the French phrase, to rehabilitate—in other words, to wash a little white. That Thomas Munzer has had hard justice dealt to him, we are quite disposed to believe. Both the great parties who divided the world of letters between them—the Roman Catholics and the Protestants—were decidedly hostile to him. The Roman Catholics would dwell upon his enormities in order to charge them upon the Protestants; the Protestants, anxious to escape so ill-omened a connexion, and show the world they had no alliance with such enthusiasts, would spare no term of abuse, and would not venture a single word in his defence. Robertson, writing with a quite Lutheran feeling, expresses nothing but unmitigated condemnation. He describes the projects of himself and his followers as being little more than the simple madness "of levelling every distinction amongst mankind." Nor will he allow him[Pg 355] even the ordinary virtues of the fanatic. "He had all the extravagance, but not the courage which enthusiasts usually possess." According to Robertson, he was nothing better than a madman, and a coward.

We think that Mrs Percy Sinnett has satisfactorily proved that Munzer was not a coward, and that he is entitled to all that respect which is due to those sincere and furious fanatics, who are perhaps the greatest pests which ever appear in society; men who may die, for aught we know, with all the zeal and merit of martyrs, but whom the world must nevertheless get rid of, in what way it can, and as soon as possible.

Yet we like to see justice done to every historical character, and therefore shall follow Mrs Sinnett through some portion of her biography of Munzer.

So it seems. In this place sprang up the Anabaptists, whose conduct became so wild and fanatical, that the civil power thought itself compelled to interfere. The most violent of them were seized and thrown into prison; but the greater part left the city, some going to Wittenberg and others to Bohemia.

To Bohemia also went Munzer. But he again appears in the year following, (1522,) preaching in Altstedt in Thuringia. His violence against the old religion seems to have been increased. After one of his sermons, his audience rushed out to a chapel in the neighbourhood, famous as a shrine for pilgrims, and not only destroyed all the images of the saints, but burnt the chapel itself. We have an account of a sermon which he preached here before the two Saxon princes, Frederick and John; and it certainly exhibits a very striking union of the two master passions which animate the class of men to which Munzer is described as belonging—the odium theologicum, and the zeal for the reformation of mankind. "He exhorted them to root out idolatry from the land, and establish the gospel by force. Priests, monks, and ungodly rulers who should oppose this, were to be slain; for the ungodly had no right to live longer than the[Pg 356] elect would permit them. He told, also, some home-truths to his noble auditors. The princes and lords themselves, he said, were at the bottom of much mischief: they seized on all things as their property; the birds in the air, the fish in the waters, the plants upon the earth, all must be theirs; and when they had secured these good things for themselves, they were willing enough to publish God's command to the poor, and say, 'Thou shalt not steal;' but for themselves, they will have none of it. They rob the poor peasant and labourer of all that he has, and then, if he touches the least thing, he must hang."

The prophet and the inspired man—for he claimed to be both—was shortly after chased out of Altstedt. He went to Nurnberg, and was driven out of Nurnberg. He had now entirely broken with Luther, who wrote to the Senate of the town, cautioning them not to receive him. He wandered for some time about southern Germany, preaching where he could find an opportunity, but often hunted from place to place, and not knowing whither to turn. At length he reached the town of Muhlhausen, the populace of which was prepared to welcome him. But the Senate, alarmed at the tenor of his discourses, forbade him to preach. Thereupon a great commotion rose amongst the people; throngs pouring in from the neighbouring villages; and the streets filled all night long with a restless and clamorous crowd. Many of the patrician families left the city, the Common Council elected Munzer for their chief pastor; a new Senate was chosen under the threats and violence of the populace, in which Munzer and his friends were included. Munzer for a time was supreme.

Melancthon has stated that Munzer lived at Muhlhausen in all manner of luxury and profligacy, like a great lord, for more than a year. Mrs Sinnett tells us that he passed there only eight weeks; and we are disposed to conclude with her that the rest of the statement is as loosely and carelessly made. Eye-witnesses describe Munzer as one who awed the people by his presence, by the force of his character, and by a personal influence which could have resulted only from "the great moral earnestness which dwelt within him." His habits of life are declared to have been simple and austere; and the tender attachment which he is proved to have manifested towards his wife, Mrs Sinnett argues, was quite inconsistent with the licentious course attributed to him.

The charge of cowardice, which is so conspicuously brought forward by Dr Robertson, seems also to have but slender foundation. The "difficulty with which he was persuaded to take the field," resolves itself into the having been a degree more prudent, or a degree less rash, than his headstrong companion, Pfeiffer; who, having had a dream wherein "he saw himself in a barn, surrounded by a vast multitude of mice, on which he made a tremendous onslaught," concluded that he should obtain as easy a victory over the princes and nobles now arrayed against the fanatics of Muhlhausen, and, therefore, urged Munzer to take the field. When the day of trial came, "he who had never so much as seen a battle," found himself the leader of an undisciplined, discordant multitude, who, even in point of numbers, were not equal to the military force which was being[Pg 357] led, by experienced generals, against him. At this moment he behaved with desperate energy; he quelled the treachery of one portion of his followers by the immediate execution of the priest who had ventured to be their spokesman; and he raised the rest from the consternation that had seized them, by one of his violent harangues, and by that fortunate allusion, which all historians have noticed, to a rainbow that suddenly appeared in the sky, and which happened to be the device painted on his banner.

That the ensuing battle should be converted speedily into a rout was inevitable. That Munzer, in the general flight, sought to conceal himself from his pursuers, by hiding in a loft, can be considered no fair proof of cowardice. It is what the bravest men have been reduced to do in the day of disaster. No one who wears the oak leaf on King Charles's day thinks that he is commemorating an act of cowardice in that prince, because he concealed himself in the tree rather than show himself to his enemies. How he comported himself in the last scene of all, does not here appear; but it seems that the victors made a cruel use of their power. "He was given over to the fierce Count Ernst of Mansfield, who 'went horribly to work with him.' (ist graülich mit ihm umgegangen.)"

What can be done for the restoration of Thomas Munzer's character, Mrs Sinnett is entitled to praise for having performed. But we must be permitted to observe, that in speaking of the general purposes of this fanatic and his party, she has been led a little too far, either by the feeling of advocacy, which the subject has called forth, or by some of the German authorities she has consulted. In particular, we think her manifestly unjust to the memory of Luther, whom she heavily censures for the part he took in this war between the peasant and the noble. Luther compassionated the peasant, there can be no doubt; but Luther must have seen—what surely every man in possession of his right understanding must have seen—that there was no help to the peasant from insurrection and war; and that prophets who were inspiring them with hopes of some great revolution in society, with visions of equal and universal happiness, were but leading them to destruction.

We shall hope to meet Mrs Sinnett again in some of the by-ways of history, walking with a somewhat surer step, and keeping her sympathies under somewhat better control.

[Pg 358]

REQUIEM.

[To the Music of Mozart.]
BY DELTA.

[Pg 359]

GIACOMO DA VALENCIA; OR, THE STUDENT OF BOLOGNA.

A TALE.[17]

CHAPTER I.

Of all the students that assembled at Bologna, A.D. 1324, Giacomo da Valencia was the most popular and the most beloved. His wealth, his liberality, his noble spirit, his handsome person, his bravery, and his wit, gave him a just title to this pre-eminence.

Of all the beauties of the town of Bologna, whose mission it was in the same year of grace, 1324, to turn the heads and inflame the hearts of this assemblage of students, none could be compared to Constantia, niece of Giovanni D'Andrea, one of the most celebrated jurisconsults of his age.

Of course, then, they loved each other, this peerless couple. No. Only the student loved. The lady was fancy-free. The perverse god, having shot one arrow forth—buried it up to the very feather—"would not shoot his other." No prayers and no clamour could avail: he held it loosely in his hand, letting its golden point trail idly upon the sand.

In vain had Giacomo been the most constant attendant upon mass; in vain had he lingered hour after hour on the promenade to catch one look of recognition; in vain had he courted every family she visited, and for the last six months had selected his acquaintances on one principle only,—that they were hers, and might introduce him to her presence. All his efforts were fruitless—Constantia, so amiable to all others, so sweet, so gentle, was cold to him. She would not love. Why not? What was there wanting in our cavalier? Was it birth, or wealth, or nobility of spirit, or personal beauty? No, nothing was wanting—nothing in him. But, for her, the hour had not yet struck. It was summer all around, but the heart of the virgin—the rose of Bologna—was still sleeping in its coiled leaves, and not to day would it unfold itself.

But the passion of Giacomo was invincible: no coldness could repulse, no denial reduce him to despair. Love cannot exist, cannot endure, say reasonable people, without hope. True. But a great passion bears its own hope in its bosom. Neither was it in the nature or temperament of Giacomo lightly to relinquish any enterprise he had once undertaken. The following incident in his college life will serve to show the ardent, serious, and indomitable temper of the lover of Constantia. A French cavalier, lately emancipated from the university of Paris, who, while there, had borne off the prize from all—not, indeed, in scholarship, but for his unrivalled dexterity in the noble art of defence,—had visited Bologna, and challenged to a trial of skill the most renowned champion it could boast. They would cross their rapiers, the challenge said, for the honour of their respective universities. This proclamation of the Parisian, affixed, according to custom, to the college gates, was no sooner read than all eyes were turned to Giacomo. To him alone could the honour of the university be safely intrusted; indeed, if he should decline the challenge, it was doubtful whether any other would risk a trial of skill from which he had retreated. Thus pointed out by public opinion as the champion of the university, and solicited by his fellow students to sustain its reputation in the high and noble science of defence, he overcame the first repugnance which he felt to what seemed to him the boastful acceptance of a boastful challenge. He and the Frenchman met. The Frenchman manifested the greater skill; it seemed evident that the contest would end in the defeat of the Bolognese. "Let us try," said Giacomo, "with the naked rapier;" for hitherto the points had been guarded. That such a [Pg 360]proposition should have come from him who was manifestly the least skilful of the two, seemed the result of passion, of blind anger at approaching defeat. Mere madness! cried some of his best friends. But it was not madness, it was not passion; it was deliberately done. He knew that the earnestness of the combat would call forth all his own skill and energy to the utmost; it might very probably have the opposite effect upon his adversary. His reasoning was justified by the event. His antagonist had no sooner accepted the proposition—no sooner had the pointed been substituted for the guarded rapier, than the rival fencers seemed to have changed characters. The French cavalier grew cautious; his rapid and brilliant attack gave place to defensive and more measured movements. While the Bolognese, whom his friends expected to see fall a sacrifice to his impetuosity of temper, became more rapid, more self-possessed, more bold and decisive in his play. He now very soon, and happily without any fatal result to his antagonist, established his superiority, and vindicated the honour of his university. When chidden for his rashness, and what was thought a freak of passion, he answered that he never acted in a more cool and calculating spirit in his life. "I did but burn the ships behind me that I might fight the better. I am never so calm," he added, "or so thoroughly master of myself, as when most in earnest; and this is not generally the character of a Parisian."

Such was the serious, brave, and resolute spirit of Giacomo. But he had other qualities than those which made him the most popular student bf the university; and as a proof of this, we need only mention that he was the intimate friend of Petrarch, at this time also a student at Bologna. Though despatched to this university by his father for the express purpose of prosecuting the study of the law, Petrarch was wrapt up in his Latin classics and his poetry; and it was precisely in our brave and handsome cavalier that he found the companion who most completely sympathised with him in his pursuits, and most correctly appreciated his nascent genius.

These two friends had been walking together in silence for some time under the long colonnades which then, as now, lined the streets of Bologna. A more noble pair have rarely traversed those colonnades. The poet, remarkable for his beauty, was in his youth very studious of elegance in his dress; and the short velvet cloak, with its border of gold or silver lace, was always thrown over his slight, but finely moulded figure, with a grace which would have satisfied the eye of a painter. From time to time he might be seen to brush away, or to shake off, the specks of dust which had settled on it, or to re-adjust, by a movement intended to appear unconscious, the folds of its drapery. His companion, taller, and of a somewhat larger build, and far more costly in his attire, though utterly unoccupied with it, walked "like one of the lions" by his side.

"My dear Giacomo," said Petrarch, breaking the long silence, "what has befallen you? Not a word—certainly not two in any coherent succession, have you uttered for the last hour."

"Neither to-day, nor yesterday!" muttered Giacomo to himself, certainly not in answer to his friend,—"Neither to-day, nor yesterday—perhaps, she means never to go to mass again."

"What are you talking, or rather, thinking of?"

"What I am always thinking of, my dear Petrarch,—what I shall never cease thinking of till it prove my destruction—which some spirit of divination tells me that it will."

"Really, really, Giacomo," said his friend, "you show in this a most insane pertinacity. Here are you, week after week, month after month——"

"I know it—know all you would say.—Good God! how beautiful she is!"

"Here are you—for I will speak."—continued his youthful but grave associate, "who are simply the most perfect cavalier in all Bologna—(one would not flatter, but this physic is, in some cases, absolutely necessary)—at once the boast and envy of the whole university—wasting, consuming yourself away, in a perpetual[Pg 361] fever after the only woman, I take it upon me to declare——"

"Psha! psha! Tell me, if you would have me listen, what further can I do? I have wooed her in sonnets, which ought to have affected her, for Petrarch polished the verse. Nothing touches her. She is as obdurate as steel. Not a smile—not, at least, for me—and for all others she smiles how sweetly, how intelligently, how divinely! But by the Holy Cross! she shall love me! Petrarch, she shall!—she shall!"

"My dear Giacomo, you rave. Be a little reasonable. Lover as you are, stay on this side of madness. Love on—if it must be so—love her for ever; but do not for ever be striving for a return of your passion. Take home your unrequited love into your bosom—nourish it there—but do not exasperate it by a bootless and incessant struggle against fate. For my part, I can conceive there may be a strange sweet luxury in this solitary love that lives in one breast alone. It is all your own. It is fed, kindled, diversified, sustained by your own imagination. It is passion without the gross thraldom of circumstance. It is the pure relation of soul to soul, without the vast, intricate, unmanageable relationship of life to life."

"To you, a poet," replied Giacomo with a slight tone of sarcasm, "such a passion may be possible. Perhaps you care not for more heat than serves to animate and make fluent the verse. Pleased with the glow of fancy and of feeling, you can stop short of possession. I cannot! Oh, you poets! you fuse your passion with your genius: you describe, you do not feel."

"Not feel!" exclaimed Petrarch "we cannot then describe."

"Oh, yes! you can describe. You fling the golden light of imagination, like a light from heaven, round the object of your adoration; but, in return, the real woman is translated herself to the skyey region of imagination. She becomes the creature of your thoughts. You are conscious that the glory you have flung around her, you can re-assume. Petrarch, Petrarch! if you ever love, if you are constant to any woman from Springtime to the last leaf of Autumn, it will be to some fair creature who dwells for ever, and only, in your imagination, whom you will never press to your bosom. You poets love beauty, you love passion, you love all things fair and great, and you make a vision of them all. You sing them, and there's an end."

"Well, well," said the poet, warding off the attack with a smile, "I have brought down, it seems, a severe castigation on myself."

"Dear, dear Petrarch! let it teach you never again to give advice to a lover, unless it be to show him how, or where, he is to meet his mistress. Fool that I am! she is, perhaps, all this time in the Church of St Giovanni." And without another word he darted up a street that led to that same church, leaving his friend to follow or not, as he pleased.

CHAPTER II.

There was, indeed, something like perversity, it must be allowed, in this firm refusal of Constantia to reward so devoted an attachment. Even her stern, grave uncle, whose judicial functions were not likely to give him much leisure or disposition to interfere with the love affairs of his niece, had dropt a hint that the suit of Giacomo da Valencia would not be displeasing to himself. Bologna could not have supplied a more fitting match; our lover, therefore, was not guilty of presumption, though of much obstinacy. It was his right, this blessed hand of Constantia—he felt it was his right, and he would win it.

Some one, some day, she must surely love, he argued to himself, and why not me? and why not now? Oh, could I but plead my passion, he would say, alone,—pour it out unrestrained at her feet, she would surely see how reasonable it was that she should love, that she ought, that she must! To his excited and impetuous mood of mind, it appeared that nothing but the artificial barrier which the customs of society interposed in their[Pg 362] intercourse, prevented his success. He could never see her alone, never speak unreservedly and passionately. The presence of others imposed restraints on both; and if an opportunity occurred to speak without being overheard, the few moments were filled with embarrassment by reason of their brief and precarious tenure. Nay, what were a few moments to him who had so full a heart to utter? "Oh, could I place her there!" he would exclaim, pointing to the upper end of the spacious room he occupied, "and there kneel down, and pray before her, as men do to their saints! Oh Nature! Oh Heaven! you would not so desert me, that my prayer should be fruitless."

Yes! if she were there alone, no other mortal near! This thought so wrought within him, took so strong possession of his mind, that it led him to a thousand projects for its realisation. What if he carried her off by force from her uncle's residence, and brought her there? Surely the humility, the passionate devotion with which he would entreat her, would atone for the rash and violent means he had used to bring her within the scope of his supplications; and the utter submission, and profound respect of his manner, would immediately convince her that he had no design upon her freedom of will, and that she might confide with entire safety to his honour. And as to the feasibility of the project, popular and beloved as he was in the university, there were numbers of students quite ready to engage in any scheme he should propose, however hazardous it might be. It would be very easy for him to organise a little band of the most faithful and the boldest of his adherents, who, with a due mixture of stratagem and force, would accomplish this new and harmless species of abduction.

The uncle of Constantia held, as we have intimated, a high judicial post, and was sometimes absent from Bologna, administering justice amongst the several dependencies of the republic. On one of these occasions Constantia was sitting with a female friend, who had been invited to stay with her during his absence from home. The room they sat in was one of those fine old Gothic chambers, which the pencil of Haghe delights to reproduce and restore for us; and to his pencil we willingly leave the description of it. Constantia was seated on one of those tall arm-chairs, with straight high back, which beauty then made graceful to the eye, and leaned her little chin upon her doubled hand, as she listened to her friend, Leonora, who was reading her a lecture upon the very theme which makes the burden of our story, her coldness to Giacomo.

"What would you have? what do you expect?" was the triumphant close of her harangue.

"What would I have?" replied Constantia. "Myself! I would possess myself in peace and stillness—What do I expect? I do not live on expectation. I love my present life—its calm, its contentment, its freedom. Why would you help to rob me of these?"

"Freedom! So, then, you fear the tyrant in the husband. But, my dear Constantia, where there are only two in the society, there is an even chance for the tyranny."

"A pleasant prospect! But you mistake me, Leonora. It is not the husband in his tyranny I fear,—I have not come to think of that; it is the lover and his love! I would not be infected by the turmoil of his passion. I dread it. Friends let me have and cherish. Leonora, be you always one of them; but for this turbulent Love, may the lightest down upon his pinion never touch me! How soft it seems, how light, as light and soft as the down we rob the swan's neck of; but touch it, and it burns, and fans a fever into the veins. I do love my own calm life, and I will keep it."

As she spoke thus, she rose from her seat and advanced towards the window. The two friends stood looking together down the street, which, as the sun descended, began to be deserted of its usual crowd. Their attention was arrested by a numerous body of footmen, and other attendants, who were escorting apparently some lady in a sedan chair. They were rather surprised to observe that the sedan chair directed its course [Pg 363]towards their own house. A knocking at the door was heard; and soon after their servant brought them word, that a certain Signora —— desired urgently to speak with Constantia, but that she could not quit her chair. The person whose name was announced, was an old lady, one of Constantia's most intimate friends; she descended immediately into the hall to meet her. She precipitated herself towards the sedan chair, the door of which stood open; a slight impulse from some bystander, from a hand which trembled as it touched her, carried her forward, and she found herself seated in what indeed was an empty chair. Before she had time to raise an alarm, she found herself borne swiftly and softly along the street. Leonora, who had followed her friend down the stairs, and was a witness to her singular disappearance, called up all the servants of the establishment, and despatched them after their mistress. They followed, but to no purpose. The running footmen, on either side of the sedan, drew their swords. They were students in disguise. Giacomo had succeeded in his daring enterprise.

Constantia had hardly collected her thoughts, when she perceived that her chair was carried through a lofty archway up a broad flight of stairs, and deposited in a spacious apartment, once the proud saloon of a palatial residence, though the whole building, of which it formed a part, had since been constituted a portion of the university. All her attendants except one left the room. We need not say that it was Giacomo who handed her from her temporary imprisonment.

To judge from their bearing and attitude, you would have said that it was Giacomo who was the captive, bending before the mercy of Constantia. She stood there, upright, calm, inflexible. He was, indeed, at her mercy. He felt that his life depended on this present moment, and on the few words that should fall from her lips. He led her to the upper end of the room where his imagination had so often placed her. He knelt—he sued.

Beginning with abrupt protests and exclamations, his impassioned pleading gradually grew more continuous, but not less vehement, till it flowed in the full torrent of a lover's eloquence. On all this turbulent pathos Constantia looked calmly down, more in sorrow than in anger. From the moment she understood in whose power she was, she had ceased (so much justice she had at least done to the character of her lover) to have any alarm whatever on her own account; but she was filled with regret, disquietude, and concern for the fatal consequences which might ensue to himself from the unwarrantable step he had taken. "Restore me to my uncle's before he shall hear of this," were the only words she vouchsafed in return to all his passionate appeal.

But the pleading of the desperate lover was not, as may well be supposed, allowed to proceed without interruption. Leonora, a young girl of spirit and animation, immediately sent forth the servants of the household to rouse up the friends of the family, and to spread every where the report of the strange outrage which had been committed upon one of the most respected families of Bologna. A fleet messenger was especially despatched to the uncle of Constantia, distant only a few miles from the town, to recall him to a scene where his presence was so much required. There was a perpetual standing feud between the citizens of Bologna and the students of the university, which had often disturbed the tranquillity of the city; it was therefore with extreme alacrity and zeal that the townsmen rushed in crowds into the streets, armed with the best weapons they could procure, to rescue the niece of their venerable judge, and to punish the gross outrage which they conceived had been perpetrated.

When, however, the multitude came in front of the large mansion or palace in which Giacomo resided, and which was tenanted entirely by students, the great majority of whom were his zealous partisans, and all of whom were prepared, in any quarrel whatever, to take part against the townsmen, they found the enterprise they had undertaken to be one of no little difficulty. The huge gates were closed and barred, while the windows above were occupied by a spirited garrison who had already supplied themselves[Pg 364] with missiles of every description to annoy their assailants. These latter began, with true Italian energy, to pull up the posts out of the street, to form battering-rams with which to force the gates. They thundered at them with dreadful din, shaking the whole edifice; and in spite of the missiles despatched in quick succession from above, seemed to be on the point of effecting an entrance.

When Constantia heard this horrible din she turned pale with affright—Giacomo pale with rage. He could make no impression on the cold beauty before him—his suppressed passion was suffocating him. Against these assailants all his impetuosity could burst forth—them he knew at least how to defy;—here was an enemy he could vanquish, or, at worst, a defeat he knew how to sustain. When, therefore, several of his friends rushed breathless into the room to tell him that the great gates began to creak upon their hinges, and were likely to be beaten in, he almost welcomed this new species of contest. Conducting Constantia into a side-room, where she would be out of reach of the ensuing tumult and disorder, and where an aged matron waited to attend upon her, he went with his friends to meet the rest of his companions in arms, who were anxious to consult him on the next measures which in their present emergency should be taken.

The house, or palazzo, was built on a plan very customary in such structures. In the centre were the tall gates, now undergoing the battery of the citizens, which opened upon a square, lofty, paved court or hall, supported by columns, and forming a carriage-way up to the foot of the staircase. Originally you passed through the hall into a garden beyond, but when the building had been converted into a residence for students, and made a part, in fact, of the university, a wall had been erected, separating the garden from the house. This wall, though lofty, did not, however, rise to the level of the roof of the hall; both light and air were admitted from above it, and you still saw the topmost branches of the orange-trees and the summits of the fountains that were playing in the garden beyond. From either side of this hall rose the broad and marble staircase which led into the interior of the house.

Upon both branches of this noble staircase, whose steps faced the entrance, Giacomo stationed his gallant band, armed each of them at least with his rapier. He then commissioned one of his companions to proclaim to the besiegers from a window above, that if they would cease their battering, and retreat a few paces from the gates, they should be opened to them.

To this the crowd assented, presuming that it could imply nothing else than a surrender. The great doors were opened. They rushed forward; but the staircase they thought to ascend so readily was occupied every inch of it by a brave phalanx, which awaited them with glittering swords, held forward in spear fashion, tier above tier. The first rank of this disordered multitude had no desire whatever to be thrust forward by those in the rear on the points held forth by this determined phalanx. A great number of them passed harmless between the two staircases, but the wall we have described prevented any egress in that direction; and when the lower part of the hall was quite full, the struggle commenced in earnest between those of the crowd who desired to retreat, and those who, knowing nothing of the peril of their companions, were still urging forward. The struggle rose to a combat. The students, who, at the express desire of Giacomo, stood steadily at their post, and preserved a dead silence, were undisturbed spectators of the tumult, and saw their adversaries in desperate strife, the one against the other.

They seemed to be on the point of obtaining, in this singular manner, a bloodless victory, when Andrea, the uncle of Constantia, together with the Podestà, made their appearance, with such military force as could be assembled at the moment. This had immediately one good effect; the crowd without, by making way for the Podestà, released their companions within, still struggling for escape. The military force of the Podestà soon stood confronted with the little band of students. Yet these were so well placed, had so decidedly the advantage[Pg 365] of position, and their leader was so well known for his prowess and indomitable courage, that there was a great unwillingness to commence the attack, and very loud calls were made upon them to surrender to the majesty of the law.

For Giacomo, the combat was what his blood boiled for. Would that he could have fought single-handed—he alone—and perilled, and have lost his life! But when he saw the respected form of the uncle of Constantia—when he reflected that the experiment he had so long desired, had been made and failed—that the cold virgin whom he had left up stairs was still invincible, whoever else he might conquer or resist, and that he should be exposing the lives of his companions in a combat where to him there was now no victory—he lowered his sword, and made treaty of peace with the Podestà. On consideration that none other but himself should suffer any species of penalty for that day's transaction, he offered to resign Constantia to her uncle, and himself to the pleasure of the Podestà. These terms were very readily accepted; his companions alone seemed reluctant to acquiesce in them.

CHAPTER III.

While all this tumult was raging round the house, and within the heart of Giacomo, the student's lamp was burning, how calm, how still, in the remote and secluded chamber of his friend Petrarch! To him, out of a kind and considerate regard, and from no distrust in his zeal or attachment, the ardent lover had concealed his perilous enterprise. Remote from the whole scene, and remote from all the passions of it, sat the youthful sage; not remote, however, from deep excitements of his own. Far from it. Reflection has her emotions thrilling as those of passion. He who has not closed his door upon the world, and sat down with books and his own thoughts in a solitude like this—may have lived, we care not in how gay a world, or how passionate an existence,—he has yet an excitement to experience, which, if not so violent, is far more prolonged, deeper, and more sustained than any he has known,—than any which the most brilliant scenes, or the most clamorous triumphs of life, can furnish. What is all the sparkling exhilaration of society, the wittiest and the fairest,—what all the throbbings and perturbations of love itself, compared with the intense feeling of the youthful thinker, who has man, and God, and eternity for his fresh contemplations,—who, for the first time, perceives in his solitude all the grand enigmas of human existence lying unsolved about him? His brow is not corrugated, his eye is not inflamed: he sits calm and serene—a child would look into his face and be drawn near to him—but it seems to him that on his beating heart the very hand of God is lying.

The poet had closed his door, and unrolled before his solitary lamp his favourite manuscript, "The Tusculan Disputations of Cicero." How well that solitary lamp burning on so vivid and so noiseless—the only thing there in motion, but whose very motion makes the stillness more evident, the calm more felt; how well that lamp—the very soul, as it seems, of the little chamber it illumines—harmonises with the student's mood! How it makes bright the solitude around him! How it brings sense of companionship and of life where nothing but it—and thought—are stirring!

But though the young student had seated himself to his intellectual feast, it was evident that he was not quite at his ease; there was something which occasioned him a slight disquietude. In truth he was destined, by his father, to be "learned in the law;" was enjoying a stolen fruit; and whatever the well-known proverb may say, we have never found, ourselves, that any enjoyment is heightened by a sense of insecurity in its possession, or a thought of the possible penalty which may be the consequence of its indulgence. Petrarch might have been observed to listen attentively to every footstep on the great staircase that served the whole wing of the building to which his little turret belonged;[Pg 366] and till the step was lost, or he was sure that it had stopped at some lower stage in the house, he suspended the perusal of his manuscript, and sat prepared to drop the precious treasure into a chest that stood open at his feet, and to replace it by an enormous volume of jurisprudence which lay ready at hand for this piece of hypocritical service. This peculiarly nervous condition was the result of a paternal visit which had been paid him, most unexpectedly, a few evenings before. His father, suspecting that he was more devoted to the classics than to the study of the law, started suddenly from Avignon, stole upon his son unforewarned, ruthlessly snatched from him the prized manuscripts in which he found him absorbed, and committed them to the flames. Petrarch, of gentle temper, and full of filial respect, ventured upon no resistance; but when he saw his Virgil and his Cicero put upon his funeral pyre, he burst into a flood of uncontrollable tears. His father, who was not himself without a love of classic literature, but who was anxious for his son's advancement in the world, and his study of a profession on which that advancement appeared entirely to depend, was smit with compassion and some remorse. These last two manuscripts he rescued himself from the flames, and restored to his disconsolate son, with the repeated admonition, however, to indulge less in their perusal, nor to allow them to take the place due to the science of jurisprudence.

"Science!" said the young enthusiast, who had recovered something of his self-possession: "Can conclusions wrested often with perverted ingenuity from artificial principles and arbitrary axioms, be honoured with the name of science? And the law, to obtain this fictitious resemblance to a science, leaves justice behind and unthought of. I will study it, my father, as I would practise any mechanical art, if you should prescribe it as a means of being serviceable to my family; but you—who are a scholar—ah! place not a tissue of technicalities, however skilfully interwoven, on a level with truth, which has its basis in the nature of things. I would help my fellow-men to justice; but must I spend my life, and dry up and impoverish my very soul, in regulating his disputes according to rules that are something very different from justice?—often mere logical deductions from certain legal abstractions, in which all moral right and wrong,—all substantial justice between man and man, is utterly forgotten?"

"My son," said the father, "you are young, and therefore rash. You think it, perhaps, an easy thing to do justice between man and man. We cannot do justice between man and man. No combination of honesty and intelligence can effect it; the whole compass of society affords no means for its accomplishment. To administer moral justice, each case must be decided on its own peculiar merits, and those merits are to be found in the motives of the human heart. We cannot promise men justice. But we must terminate their disputes. Therefore it is we have a system of law—our only substitute for justice—by which men are contented to be governed because it is a system, and applicable to all alike. Believe me, that wise and able men of all countries are well occupied in rendering more symmetrical, more imposing, and as little immoral and unjust as possible, their several systems of jurisprudence."

Petrarch was silent; it was neither his wish nor his policy to prolong the discussion. Besides, his heart was too full. Had he dared, he would have pleaded for his own liberty; for choice of poverty and intellectual freedom—for poverty and greatness! But what he felt within him of the promptings of ambition, the assurance of fame, the consciousness of genius, he had too much modesty to express. He could not do justice to himself, without appearance of overweening pride. It was better to be silent than to say but half.

It was the remembrance of this visit which, on the present occasion, made him listen with a painful curiosity to every step upon the stairs. And now a step was heard. It came nearer and nearer, higher and higher—a rapid step which never paused an instant till it reached his own door. A loud knocking followed. But this time it was no spy upon his literary[Pg 367] hours. On opening the door, a fellow-student, breathless with haste, rushed into the room, and related the tragical event which had taken place at the house of their common friend Giacomo.

Petrarch immediately descended and ran to meet his friend. He found him already a prisoner! The Podestà, willing, however, to treat the unhappy student with as much lenity as possible, had converted his own apartments into his prison. He well knew, also, the honourable character of his prisoner; the granting this indulgence enabled him to exact his word of honour not to escape, and he probably judged, considering the extreme popularity of Giacomo in the university, that this was a greater security for his safe custody than any walls, or any guard, which he had at his command in Bologna.

Petrarch was horror-struck when he came fully to apprehend the extreme peril to which his friend had exposed himself. Whatever were his motives, he had committed, in fact, a capital offence, and one to be classed amongst the most heinous; it was the crime of abduction he had perpetrated, and for which he stood exposed to the penalty of death. The poet fell weeping into the arms of his friend.

"Alas!" said Giacomo, "she would not hear me!" The inflexibility of Constantia was still the only grief that dwelt upon his mind. "She stood there—on that spot—I could kiss the traces of her footstep could I see them—cold, cold as the statue—I might have prayed with better hope to the sculptured marble!"

But Petrarch did not limit his kind offices to sympathy and lamentation. Meditative as he was by character, and little habituated to what is called the business of life, he saw clearly the grave nature of his friend's position. The crime which Giacomo had actually committed—the abduction from her home of a noble virgin—subjected him, as we have said, to the punishment of death. Those only who could have read his heart, or knew the purity of his intentions, could have acquitted him; and even to those, his conduct would have appeared rash and unjustifiable. But to the citizens of Bologna, irritated and all but at war with the university, disposed to magnify every offence committed by a member of that body, and exasperated, moreover, by the late fruitless contest in which they had been engaged—the act of Giacomo would appear in all its unmitigated criminality. They were, in fact, resolved that he should not escape the utmost rigour of the law; they were already clamouring aloud for his death—his public execution.

There was but one man in Bologna who could save him. This was Romeo de' Pepoli, a man exceedingly rich—by far the richest in the city—and who, by a popular use of his wealth, had obtained a great ascendency in the republic. This Romeo de' Pepoli was secretly aiming at the tyranny. He failed, owing to the awakened jealousy of the people; but although he himself was banished from the city at the very moment when he seemed about to reap the fruits of his nefarious intrigues, he prepared the way to power for his sons, who were for some time tyrants of Bologna. There was no doubt that this man—and he alone—was able, if he chose, to rescue Giacomo from his threatened fate. For should his influence with the citizens fail to mitigate their animosity, still, in all the ill-assured governments of that day, such exorbitant wealth as he possessed gave something more than influence. Judgments of law were almost always to be bought, if a price high enough could be paid, or an armed force could be hired which would set the judgment of a court at defiance, and prevent its execution.

To this eminent citizen and nobleman Petrarch betook himself. So remarkable an event as that which had lately transpired in the city, we may be sure, had drawn the attention of this wily and ambitious personage. At first he had adopted the indignation and anger of the citizens, as being the part most likely to increase his popularity. But on reflection it had occurred to him, that a still greater advantage might perhaps be taken of this event, if, through his skilful mediation, and a dexterous advocacy of the cause of Giacomo, he should be able to obtain the favour and partisanship of the more spirited members of the university. Over these, no one had[Pg 368] so great an influence as Giacomo—in the cause of no one could they be more deeply interested—nor was it likely that, an occasion would arise in which he could serve them more signally than by coming to his rescue. On the other hand, a thousand ways would still be open to appease and conciliate the offended citizens. Add to all which, Giacomo himself, like all those on whom classical literature and the early histories of Rome and of Greece were just re-opening, was distinguished by an ardent zeal for liberty. Without seeking actually to intermeddle in the political affairs of the city, he and his associates were accustomed—probably in much the same manner as the German students of the present day—to proclaim and uphold the cause of freedom in their songs, and with the oratory of the wine-cup. They might be calculated on as stanch friends to the republic, and deadly opponents to the tyranny. To gain over this band of ardent and enthusiastic spirits, would be a great step in the prosecution of his ambitious enterprise. Even their neutrality would be an incalculable advantage to him.

Petrarch had been always well received by one who was anxious to win all sorts of golden opinions, and therefore desirous to be thought an admirer of learning and a patron of youthful genius. On the present occasion, he found the ambitious nobleman singularly courteous, and not indisposed to listen to his ardent vindication of Giacomo. With the usual artifice of such men, Pepoli appeared to be listening to the reasoning of the young advocate, whilst he was revolving only his own thoughts, and was not unwilling to let it appear that predeterminations of his own were the results of another's eloquence.

"Let me see your unfortunate friend," he said, with a sort of relenting air; "something, perhaps, maybe done—I cannot tell. But you see the whole town is in arms against him. I shall be risking," he added with a smile,—for there is nothing more common with crafty men than to speak the very truth in a light jesting manner, giving their earnest motives the air of sport, and so expressing and disguising themselves at the same time—"I shall be risking all my popularity with the good Bolognese—I must proceed cautiously."

Petrarch ran back, full of sanguine hope, to his friend, and repeated the result of his mission. Giacomo shook his head mournfully. He was slow to enter into the exhilarating prospects placed before him. Perhaps he had read deeper into the character of this man than Petrarch.

The interview which Pepoli desired took place. What circuitous terms the ambitious man employed to suggest the price which was to be paid for his intermediation, we do not know; but the smile on the lip of Giacomo was interpreted as the smile of intelligence and acquiescence. Of intelligence it certainly was. At this interview it was agreed that the student should assemble together some of the most ardent and influential of his friends, that he should present Pepoli to them, and induce them to swear a sort of allegiance and fidelity to his cause, in return for the aid he pledged himself to bring to Giacomo.

With the liberty allowed by the Podestà to his prisoner, it was not difficult to arrange this meeting. He was permitted to invite to supper a considerable number of his most faithful adherents and intimate associates. It being understood that Pepoli was to be one of the guests, there was still less scruple in granting this permission.

The supper passed off, as may be supposed under such circumstances, with little hilarity. Being brought to a conclusion, Giacomo, at whose side sat Pepoli, entreated the attention of his guests. He rose and addressed them. He began by proclaiming the intended mediation of Pepoli in his behalf. Cheers followed this announcement. He proceeded to enlarge on the wealth, the power, the manifest pre-eminence in the state which Pepoli had acquired. The students still applauded, but the exact drift of these somewhat ambiguous praises—ambiguous in the mouth of a republican speaking of a republican—they could not well perceive. Pepoli alone seemed to understand and to approve. He then solemnly called upon his[Pg 369] friends to take an oath with him before he died.

"But you shall not die!" was the exclamation with which both Pepoli and the students interrupted him.

"An oath," he continued, not heeding this interruption, "which I exact from you in the name of friendship, in the name of virtue, in the name of liberty. Is it not generous, this offer of Pepoli—of him who has been the champion of the citizen against the student—the most popular man in all Bologna,—is it not generous that he should step forward to rescue my life from the blind rage and mad injustice of the multitude? But you must understand there is a certain price to be given for this generosity. You do not expect him to sacrifice his popularity, which is his power, out of mere compassion to one who has never courted nor applauded him, without receiving, in return, some compensation. If you accept his benefits, you must forward his counsels, you must promote his designs. Say, will you swear?"

"Yes! yes! we swear!" was the general response.

"Students of Bologna!" he proceeded, elevating his voice. "I accept this mark of your friendship. For my sake you have promised to swear. Now hear the oath I propose, and to which I bind you. This man offers me my life, and the price of it is—the liberty of Bologna! Fellow students, Romeo de' Pepoli aims at the tyranny. Swear that you will never, on any condition, for any boon, aid him in his flagitious enterprise; that you will thwart, and resist, and combat it to the utmost. Swear that you will, at all times, reject his mediation—as I now reject, utterly and with scorn, the service that he proffers me. I unmask him to you ere I die. I, too, have lived for one good purpose. This man, my friends, would be tyrant of Bologna—swear, to me that he shall not!"

There was a pause of a few seconds. But it was soon evident that the noble spirit—of patriotism and of self-sacrifice—of their admired friend, had found a genuine response in all his hearers. He had touched the true chord. Carried forward by his disinterested enthusiasm, and pledged by the promise he, had somewhat artfully extorted from them, they rose, and with one voice repeated the oath proposed to, them. Pepoli, pale and aghast, and utterly confounded, and catching here and there the flashing of the half-drawn steel, made a precipitate retreat. Of all the assembly, Petrarch alone remained silent—he alone failed, or forgot, to take the oath;—full of concern for the safety of his noble friend, full of admiration for his greatness, he fell weeping upon his neck.

CONCLUSION.

After this, there was no more hope for the prisoner. If to the anger of the Bolognese was added the determined enmity of Romeo de' Pepoli, now resolved on his destruction, from what quarter could a ray of hope proceed? He was even now removed—such was the influence which the new enemy he had provoked possessed over the Podestà—to the common prison, and treated in all respects like a condemned malefactor. The university pleaded its privilege to judge a member of their own body, but the angry feeling of the citizens would not permit them for a moment to listen to this plea. There, was no power on earth to save him—and his fault was so light! A man more honourable did not exist. The purity of Constantia was more safe in his hands than in any others—he loved her so well.

We are not sufficiently in the "tragic vein" to follow the prisoner through the last hours of his confinement, and of his existence. To be struck dead in the flush of life, with all his passions in full bloom upon him, was a hard decree. Sometimes he protested vehemently against the palpable injustice and cruelty of his sentence; but, in general, he found his consolation in the mournful sentiment, that had he lived, he should have been miserable—for the great desire of his life was doomed to be thwarted. "I told you," he said one day to his friend[Pg 370] Petrarch, "that this love would work my destruction. It has so; but its great misery has made destruction itself indifferent."

We willingly draw a veil over the last fatal scene, and all the horrors that precede a public death. Throughout this scene his courage never forsook him; but flashes of uncontrollable indignation would occasionally break from him, and occasionally a sigh of more tender despondency would escape. The last tear he shed, the last complaint he murmured, was still to the coldness of Constantia: "We should have been so happy, had she loved—and now!—"

History records that the execution of Giacomo, as well by infringing the supposed privileges of the university as by the indignation it excited in the large circle of his friends and companions, nearly led to the withdrawal of the university from the town of Bologna. The students and the professors seceded in a mass, and retired to Sienna. No entreaties could bring them back; the glory of Bologna might have been extinguished for ever. The Podestà and other magistrates of the town were compelled at length to send a solemn deputation. They promised, in future, to respect their privileges; and, by raising the salaries of the professors, and some other popular measures, they eventually prevailed upon them to return.

Petrarch had not left the city with the rest—he had lingered behind to perform the last rites and honours to the remains of Giacomo—to raise the tomb and inscribe it with his verse.

Upon that tomb the solitary moon was now shining. But who was that figure robed in deepest black that knelt beside it, so sadly, with so desponding a stillness, her forehead pressed against the marble? Was it, too, marble? No. The chisel may create beauty as exquisite, but never combine it with so great a sorrow. It was Constantia. Too late! Too late! She brought her tears where one smile would have given life and happiness. She felt the worth of him who had so passionately loved her, when nothing remained to love but the ashes in that urn. That pleading in the student's chamber seemed vain—and at the moment it was vain; but when she recalled it in her own solitude, her heart had half assented. She remembered how tenderly—with what an ardent and gentle worship—he had pressed her hand; her own hand trembled then to the touch which at the time it had coldly rejected. When, moreover, she heard, through their common friend Petrarch, of the noble manner in which he had refused the aid of Pepoli, and chose death rather than the least dishonour, and thought to herself—this man loved me!—all her heart was won. Alas! too late!

She now knelt at the tomb of Giacomo, afflicted with regret that amounted to remorse. She raised her head—she raised her hand—there was that within it which glittered in the moonbeam. But her hand was suddenly arrested. Petrarch, a frequent visitor at that tomb, had seen and prevented this movement of despair. "No! no!" he cried. "Beautiful creature, and too much beloved—live on—live! And when some other Giacomo appears, make compensation to heaven—by loving him!"

[Pg 371]

HENRY IV.[18]

So closely united are the arts of history and romance, that they may almost be said to be twin sisters. In both, the subjects are the same: and the objects which the artists have in view in handling them are identical. To impress the mind by the narrative of heroic, or melt it by that of tragic events—to delineate the varieties of character, incident, and catastrophes—to unfold the secret springs which influence the most important changes, and often confound the wisest anticipations—to trace the chain of causes and effects in human transactions from their unobserved origin to their ultimate results, is equally the object of both arts. The delineation of character, passion, and transaction is the great end of both, but to neither is the subordinate aid of description or pictorial embellishment denied. On the contrary, to both they constitute one of the principal charms of this art. The sphere of description is different, but the object and the impressions are the same. The novelist paints individual places, and strives to transfer to the mind of the reader a reflection of the brilliant scenes created in his own imagination. The historian embraces a wider sphere, and aims rather at portraying the general features of whole districts of country, or even quarters of the globe. But a painter's eye, a poet's mind, are equally required by both; and not the least interesting parts of the works of either are those in which the author leaves the busy and checkered scenes of dramatic incident, to dwell amidst the recesses of inanimate beauty,—to traverse the Alps with their shepherds, or the Pampas with their Gauchos, and mingle with the turbid course of human events somewhat of the purity which breathes amidst the works of Nature.

Notwithstanding this identity of object and art, there is nothing more certain than that romance writers in general have not made the best historians. Poets also, whose art so closely resembles that of the novelist, have in general failed when they invoked the historic muse. Smollett was in many respects an admirable romance writer; but the author of "Roderick Random" has left a History of England, which is nothing but a compilation of parliamentary debates and gazettes. Scott's powers as a romance writer were so great and various, and his delineations of historic scenes, characters, and events, so graphic and powerful, that it seemed next to impossible that he should not be equally successful as a historian, especially when the theme was one so varied and animating as the "Life of Napoleon." Voltaire's genius was universal, and seemed equally adapted to every object of human pursuit; but his historical works, though deservedly popular as school books, have never risen to an eminence approaching that justly attained by his tragedies and critical disquisitions.

What is very remarkable, and is just the reverse of what might a priori have been expected, the point in which romance writers in general fail, when they undertake history, is in giving sufficient life and animation to their narrative. Like race-horses, they seem in general incapable of carrying any considerable weight. They would break down under the panoply which a steed of Norman or Flemish extraction can sustain without difficulty. Their imagination is only kindled when it is at liberty to roam at will over a world of their own creation. Confined to the narration of actual events, limited to the delineation of real character, cramped by the description of actual scenes, their powers fail, their ardour is weakened, their fire is lost. A mind comparatively prosaic, subject to such burdens, speedily out-strips them even on their own element; and the scholar with his authorities kindles the imagination to[Pg 372] an extent which the poet with his verses can hardly excel. Witness Livy's pictured pages—Gibbon's historical descriptions. Yet minds of the most elevated cast have occasionally, though at long intervals from each other, succeeded in uniting the historic and romantic arts. Homer's Iliad is the annals of the Siege of Troy in verse; his Odyssey, the versified Travels of Ulysses; and in the recent "Histoire des Girondins" by Lamartine, we have convincing proof that it is possible to unite the most ardent and enthusiastic poetical mind with the research, knowledge of character, and dramatic power, requisite to make the most interesting tragic annals.

As a romance writer, Mr James unquestionably is entitled to a high place. He has great historical information, especially of the olden times and their leading characters; an accurate personal knowledge of various countries, more particularly France, Flanders, and England; great acquaintance with the dress, manners, arms, and accoutrements of former days; and a very remarkable power of describing as well the ever-changing events of ancient story as the varied scenes of inanimate nature. His best novels, "Attila," "Philip Augustus," "Mary of Burgundy," "The Robbers," "The Smugglers," "Morley Ernstein," "Henry Masterton," are happy specimens of the historical romance. The great and deserved success which has attended the uniform edition of his novels now in course of publication, sufficiently proves that his reputation rests on a broader and securer basis than the fleeting patronage of fashion or the transient interest of individual satire. The great risk which he runs, is from the number of his works. It is dangerous to write thirty books. The most prolific imagination runs into repetition, when repeatedly tasked with invention. Homer himself could not have written twenty Iliads; Shakspeare's fame has been not a little enhanced by his having left only twenty-seven plays; that of Sophocles, by only seven of his having come down to modern times. Perhaps the best thing that a good fairy could do for James's fame—as was said of Dryden—would be to withdraw two-thirds of his productions from subsequent times.

One of the greatest charms of Mr James's writings is the beautiful ideas, clothed in felicitous language, which are to be found profusely scattered over them. It is not the general opinion that he excels in this respect; on the contrary, nothing is more common in conversation than to hear it remarked, that it is in depth of thought, and knowledge of the human heart, that he is deficient. But this opinion arises from the frequency, sometimes, perhaps, redundancy of his pictures of nature, and the brilliant colours in which he never fails to array her finest scenes. Thoughts the most beautiful are frequently concealed amidst profusion of description, as fruit sometimes amidst luxuriance of leaves. Take for example the following, on one of the most familiar objects in nature—a drop of rain.

Mr James cannot be considered as a historical writer of the highest class. He gives a spirited and agreeable narrative of the events of the reign or period which he has undertaken to describe, and in many passages the descriptive powers of the romance writer are strikingly conspicuous.[Pg 373] He is diligent and worthy in the consultation of authorities, and free from any undue bias in the drawing of characters or narrative of events. But he has neither the philosophic glance of Guizot, nor the military fire of Napier, nor the incomparable descriptive powers of Gibbon. His merit, and it is a very great one, consists in the lucid and spirited telling of the story, interspersed with interesting descriptions of the scenes of the leading incidents, and dramatic portraiture of the principal characters. His greatest fault—no trifling one—is the perplexity produced in the mind of the reader by the want of proper grouping and arrangement, and the introduction of a vast number of characters and events at once into the story, without any preparatory description, to enable him to appreciate the one or understand the other. This is a very natural error for a romance writer to fall into when he undertakes history; because, in novels, where characters are few, and the events only such as happen to them, there is no need of previous preparation of the reader's mind, of such grouping and perspective, for the simplification and illustration of events. But, in history, where the events are so numerous and complicated, and each actor in general occupies only an inconsiderable portion of the canvass, it is indispensable, if the writer would avoid prolixity of details, or achieve that object so well known to artists, which they denominate breadth of effect.

Biography should be, and when properly handled is, the most interesting branch of historical composition. It has the immense advantage—the value of which can only be properly appreciated by those who undertake to write general history—of being limited to the leading characters who have appeared on the theatre of the world, and consequently steering clear of the intermediate periods of uninteresting or tedious occurrence. How to get over these without exhausting the patience of his readers, on the one hand, or incurring the reproach of omitting some events of importance, on the other, is the great difficulty of general history. The biographer seizes the finest points of the story; he dwells only on the exploits of his hero, and casts the rest into the shade. If this style of composition does not afford room for those general and important views on the general march of events, or progress of our species, which constitute the most valuable part of the highest branch of history, it presents much greater opportunities for securing the interest of the general reader, and awakening that sympathy in the breast of others, which it is the great object of the fine arts to produce. It has one immense advantage—it possesses unity of subject, it is characterised by singleness of interest. The virtues or vices, the triumphs or misfortunes, the glories or ruin of one individual, form the main subject of the narrative. It is on them that the attention of the writer is fixed; it is to enhance their interest that his efforts are exhausted. The actions of others, the surrounding events, only require to be displayed in so far as they bear upon, or are connected with the exploits of the hero. But as great men usually appear in, or create by their single efforts, important eras in the annals of mankind, it rarely happens that the characters selected for biography are not surrounded by a cluster of others, which renders their Lives almost a general history of the period during which they communicated their impress to the events of the world; and thus their biography combines unity of interest with the highest importance in event.

This was pre-eminently the case with the history of Henry IV. of France. So important, indeed, were the events crowded into his lifetime, so great and lasting have been the consequences of his triumph, so prodigious the impulse which his genius communicated, not only to his own country, but to Europe, that he may almost be said to have created an era in modern times. The first of the Bourbon family, he was, in truth, the founder of the French monarchy, in one sense of the term. He first gave it unity, consistence, and power; he first rendered it formidable to the liberties of Europe. Before his time, during the reigns of the princes of the House of Valois, it was rather a cluster[Pg 374] of separate and almost independent feudatories, than a compact and homogeneous empire. So powerful were these great vassals, so slender the force which the crown could command to control them, that France on many occasions made the narrowest possible escape from sharing the fate of Germany, and seeing in its chief nobles—the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, the Counts of Toulouse—independent monarchs rendering, like the electors of Brandenberg, Saxony, and Bavaria, only a nominal allegiance to their feudal superior. The religious wars, which broke out with the Reformation, still farther increased the divisions, and severed the ties of this distracted kingdom.

The contest of the rural nobility of the south, attached to the new opinions as fervently as the Scottish Covenanters, with the more numerous and concentrated Roman Catholics of the north, who clung with superstitious tenacity to the pomp and ceremonies of the ancient worship, continued through several successive generations, not only drenched the kingdom with blood, but altered the character, and obliterated the virtues of its inhabitants. Revenge became the only passion that retained its sway over the human heart; cruelty so common, that its atrocity was no longer perceived. The massacre of St Bartholomew, that lasting and indelible stain on ancient, as the massacre in the prisons, and the Reign of Terror, are on modern French history, is not to be regarded as the work of a blood-thirsty tyrant, aided by a corrupt and perfidious court. The public crimes of the rulers of men never can exceed, except by a few degrees, those for which the nation is prepared. It is the frenzy of the general mind which suggests and renders practicable the atrocious deeds, by which, happily at long intervals from each other, the annals of mankind are stained. The proscriptions of the Triumvirate, the alternate slaughters of Marius and Sylla, the massacre of St Bartholomew, the auto-da-fes of Castile, the reign of the Duke of Alva in Flanders, the butchery of the wars of the Roses in England, the blood shed by Robespierre in France, all proceeded from a frenzied state of the public mind, which made the great body of the people not only noways revolt at, but cordially support those savage deeds, at which, when recounted in the pages of history, all subsequent ages shudder. Even the massacre of St Bartholomew, perhaps the most atrocious, because the most cold-blooded and perfidious, of all those horrid deeds, excited at the time no feeling of indignation in the Roman Catholic party throughout Europe. On the Contrary, it was universally and cordially approved of by those of that persuasion in every country, as a most effectual and expedient, and withal justifiable way of lopping off a gangrened arm from the body politic, and extinguishing a pestilent heresy. The discharges of the cannon from the castle of St Angelo, and the Te Deum sung in St Peter's, on the arrival of the glorious intelligence, by the Head of the faithful at Rome, were re-echoed by the acclamation—without, so far as appears, a single exception—of the whole Romish world.[19]

It was the cessation of the hideous scenes of bloodshed and massacre which had signalised the civil wars in the reigns of the Valois princes, and the religious dissensions that succeeded them, which gave Henry IV. his great and deserved reputation. Like Napoleon, he calmed, by his acquisition of the throne, the passions of a nation in arms against itself. The hereditary feuds, the dreadful retaliations, the mutual proscriptions, the fierce passions, the frightful revenge of the feudal and Huguenot wars, were stilled as if by the wand of a mighty enchanter.

Henry IV. was the man of his age; and hence it was that he achieved this prodigy. His mental and physical qualities were precisely those which his time demanded; and it was this [Pg 375]combination which enabled him to achieve his astonishing success. Bold, active, and enterprising, he presented that mixture of warlike virtues with chivalrous graces which it is the great object of romance to portray, and which may be said to form the ideal of the European character. He possessed that individual gallantry, that personal daring, that spontaneous generosity, which, even more than commanding intellectual qualities, succeed in winning the hearts of mankind. Ever the foremost in attack, the last in retreat, he excelled his boldest knights in personal courage. The battle-field was to him a scene of exultation. He had the true heroic character. Like the youth in Tacitus, he loved danger itself, not the rewards of valour. Nor were the mental qualities and combinations requisite in the general awanting. On the contrary, he possessed them in the very highest degree. Active, enterprising, indefatigable, he was ever in the field with the advanced guard, and often ran the greatest personal danger from his anxiety to see with his own eyes the position or forces of the enemy. His skill in partisan strife, on which so much of success in war then depended—in the surprise of castles, the siege of towns, the capture of convoys, the sudden irruption into territories, equalled all that poetry had conceived of the marvellous. His deeds, as narrated by the cool pen of Sully, resemble rather the fabulous exploits of knight-errantry than the events of real life. It was thus, by slow degrees and painful efforts, that he gradually brought up his inconsiderable party, at first not a fourth part of the forces of the League, to something like a level with his formidable opponents; and at length was enabled to rout them in decisive battles, and establish his fortunes on a permanent foundation in the fields of Arques and Ivry.

The contest at first appeared to be so unequal as to be altogether hopeless. Though the undoubted heir to the crown, his forces, when the succession opened to him by the assassination of Henry III., were so inconsiderable compared to those of the League, that it seemed impossible that he could fight his way to the throne. The Huguenots were only two millions of souls, and the Roman Catholics were eighteen millions. The latter were in possession of the capital, wielded the resources of its rich and ardent population, and had all the principal towns and strongholds of the kingdom in their hands. It was in the distant provinces, especially of the south, that the strength of the Protestants lay: their forces were the lances of the rural nobility, and the stout arms of the peasants in Dauphiny, the Cevennes, and around La Rochelle. But all history, and especially that of France, demonstrates how inadequate in general are the resources of remote and far-severed provinces to maintain a protracted contest with an enemy in possession of the capital, the fortresses, and ruling the standing army of the kingdom. The forces of the Catholics in this instance were the more formidable, that they were warlike and experienced, trained to the practical duties of soldiers in previous civil wars, united in a league which, like the Solemn League and Covenant in Scotland, formed an unseen bond uniting together the most distant parts of the monarchy, and directed by the Duke of Guise, a leader second to none in capacity and daring, and equal to any in ruthless energy and unscrupulous wickedness.

It was the personal qualities, heroic spirit, and individual talents of the King which enabled him to triumph over this formidable combination. Never was evinced in a more striking light the influence of individual gallantry and conduct on national fortunes; or a more convincing illustration of the undoubted truth, that when important changes are about to be made in human affairs, Providence frequently makes use of the agency of individual greatness. But for Henry's capacity and determination, the Protestants would have been crushed, and the civil war terminated in the first campaign. But, like all other illustrious men, he became great in the school of adversity. His energy, resources, and perseverance triumphed over every difficulty, extricated him from every peril, and at length enabled him to triumph over every opposition. It was his wonderful partisan qualities—the secrecy, skill, and daring of[Pg 376] his enterprises, which first laid the foundation of his fortune, by drawing to his standard many of those restless spirits, let loose over the country by the former wars, who in every age are attracted by the courage, capacity, and liberality of a leader. He was thus enabled to augment the little army of the Huguenots by a considerable accession of bold and valuable soldiers from the opposite faith, but who cared more for the capacity of their leader than for either the psalms of the Huguenots or the high mass of the Catholics.

By degrees, many even of the Romish nobility, penetrated with admiration at the manner in which the heir of the crown combated for his rights, joined his standard, in the secret hope that when he came to the throne he would revert to the faith of the majority of his subjects. He won all hearts, even in the enemy's ranks, by his generosity, humanity, and heroic spirit. The soldiers worshipped the hero who shared all their hardships, and whose greatest pleasure was ever to be the first in advancing into the enemy's fire; the officers were filled with enthusiasm for the prince who treated them all with the hearty courtesy of the camp, and claimed no distinction save that which all felt to be due to pre-eminent valour and never-failing capacity. Even his weaknesses augmented the general interest in his character; and when it was known that the leader whose exploits riveted the attention of all Europe, not unfrequently stole from the council-board or the tent to pursue some fugitive fair one through a forest, or subdue the obduracy of high-born beauty, by watching all night before her castle walls, the age of romance seemed to have returned to the earth, and all hearts were interested in the hero who appeared to unite the greatness of ancient patriotism with the spirit of modern chivalry.

Nor did Henry's conduct, when he had taken Paris and conquered the throne, belie the expectations formed by this brilliant dawn of his career. He proved not merely a warrior, but the father of his people. Great projects of amelioration were set on foot—greater still were in preparation, when he perished by the hand of Ravaillac. His celebrated saying, that he "hoped to see the time when every peasant should have his fowl in his pot," reveals the paternal spirit of his government. It is vain to say these were the acts of his ministers; that Sully was the real sovereign. The answer of Queen Elizabeth, when the success of her reign was imputed to the capacity of her ministers, "Did you ever know a fool choose a wise one?" affords the decisive reply to all such depreciatory attempts. Under his beneficent rule, industry was protected, commerce revived; canals, roads, and bridges penetrated the country in every direction; and, most marvellous of all, religious schisms were healed and religious fury stilled. The abjuration by the successful monarch of the faith in which he had been bred, and the warriors of which had combated for him, was unquestionably a measure called for, in a temporal view, by the interest of his dominions at the time, not less than by his own tenure of the throne. When it is recollected that the Huguenots did not at that period exceed two millions, among twenty which France contained, it becomes at once apparent, that, in a country so recently convulsed by the passions of religious and civil dissension, conformity with the faith of the great majority was the sole condition on which tranquillity could have been restored, discord appeased, a stable government established, or the crown transmitted to the descendants of the reigning monarch. And, while his biographer must lament the necessity to which he was subjected, of bending religious conviction to political expedience, all must admire the wisdom of the Edict of Nantes, which, without shocking the prejudices of the Catholics, secured liberty of conscience and just immunities to the Protestants; and which, if adhered to by succeeding monarchs, on the equitable spirit in which it had been conceived by its author, would probably have left the direct heirs of Henry IV. still on the throne of France, and averted all the bloodshed and horrors of the Revolution.

Henry IV., however, was not a perfect character; had he been so, he would not have been a child of Adam.[Pg 377] He had the usual proportion of the weaknesses, some of the faults, of humanity. They were, for the most part, however, of that kind which are nearly allied to virtues, and to which heroic characters have, in every age, in a peculiar manner been subject. Heroism, love, and poetry, ever have and ever will be found united: they are, in truth, as Lamartine has expressed it, twin sisters of each other; they issued at a single birth from the same parents. We may regret that it is so; but if we do, we had better extend our regrets a little farther, and lament that we are not all immaculate as our First Parents were in the bowers of Paradise. His irregularities are universally known, and have, perhaps, rendered him as celebrated in France as his warlike exploits or pacific virtues; for they fell in with the prevailing passion of the nation, and were felt by all to be some excuse for their own indulgences. They are celebrated even in the well-known air which has become, in a manner, the National Anthem:—

"Vive Henri IV.!
Vive le roi vaillant!
Ce Diable à quatre
A le triple talent
De boire et de battre,
Et d'être vert galant."

Henry IV., however, had more apology than most men for these frailties. He lived in an age, and had been bred up in a court, in which female virtue was so rare that it had come to pass for a chimera, and licentious indulgence so frequent that it had become a habit, and ceased to be a subject of reproach. Naturally ardent, susceptible, and impetuous, he was immersed in a society in which intrigue with high-born beauty was universally considered as the great object and chief employment of life. The poetry and romances which were in every hand inculcated nothing else. His own Queen, Margaret of Valois, gave him the first example of such irregularities, and while she set no bounds to her jealousy of his mistresses, particularly La Belle Gabrielle, who so long held the monarch captive, she had no hesitation in bestowing her own favours on successive lovers with as little scruple as the King himself. In some instances, however, he was more completely inexcusable. It is remarkable that the attachments of Henry became more violent as he advanced in life, and had attained the period when the passions are usually found to cool. In some instances they impelled him into acts of vehemence and oppression wholly unworthy of his character and heart. His passion, late in years, for the young Princess of Condé—a child of seventeen, who might have been his granddaughter—and which prompted her flight with her husband to the Low Countries, on which he was preparing war for her recovery when cut short by death, was ridiculous in one of his age, and grossly criminal to one in her circumstances. But these passions pursued him to the very last; and when his tomb was broken open, and remained exposed, by the Parisian mob during the fury of the Revolution, the nicely combed and highly perfumed beard, the scent of which filled the air, proved that the dagger of Ravaillac had struck him while still immersed in the frivolities which tarnished his heroic exploits.[20]

In truth, without detracting from the many great and good qualities of the hero of the Bourbon family, it may safely be affirmed that his fame in subsequent times has been to the full as great as he deserved. Many circumstances have contributed to this happy partiality of subsequent times. His reign was filled with great and glorious actions; and that endeared him to the heroic and the brave. His court was the abode of gallantry—his life devotion to beauty; and that won for him the applause of the fair. He did wonders, and designed still greater, for the internal improvement of his dominions and the increase of his people's happiness; and that secured for him the approbation of the philanthropic and thoughtful. He gained for the Protestants religious freedom and immunity from persecution; and that secured their[Pg 378] eternal gratitude. He restored to the Church of Rome the religious supremacy which had been so fiercely disputed, and in so many other countries had been lost; and that shut the mouths of the Catholics. He stilled the fury of civil, and pacified the fierceness of religious discord; and that justly won for him the gratitude of all. His reign formed a bright contrast to the frightful civil wars and universal bloodshed which had preceded it. Like Napoleon, he closed the gulf of revolution; and the admiration of subsequent times was the worthy meed of the inestimable service thus rendered to humanity. They have not diminished, perhaps exaggerated, the tribute. He was the first of a race of sovereigns who for two centuries sat in the direct line on the throne of France, and the collateral descendants of whom still hold it. Family partiality, courtly panegyric, thus came to be largely mingled with the just tribute of a nation's gratitude. The writers of other countries, particularly England and Germany, joined in the chorus of applause to the prince who had secured to the Protestant faith its just rights in so important a kingdom as France. The vices or weakness of subsequent sovereigns—the feeble rule of Louis XIII.; the tyrannical conduct, the splendid talents of Louis XIV.; the corruptions of the Regent Orleans; the disgraceful sensuality of Louis XV.; the benevolent heart, but passive resignation of Louis XVI.—rose up successively in striking contrast to his heroic deeds, vigorous government, and equitable administration. But, without disregarding the influence of these circumstances in brightening the halo which still surrounds the memory of Henry IV., the sober voice of distant and subsequent history must pronounce him one of the greatest princes who have adorned modern history, and certainly the greatest, after Charlemagne and Napoleon, who ever sat on the throne of France.

But it is time to put a period to this general disquisition, to give some extracts from the work of our author, in justice both to its own merits and the character of the hero which it is intended to portray.

Mr James gives the following interesting particulars concerning the birth and early years of Henry:—

At a subsequent period, when he had attained the era, and was engaged in the studies of youth, his character and pursuits are thus described.

The Massacre of St Bartholomew, which has given an infamous immortality to the name of Charles IX., was unquestionably the great cause of reviving the religious wars which in the early part of his reign seemed to have been in a great measure stilled. Mr James does not add much to the information on the subject already furnished by the French historians, but he sums it up in a dramatic and interesting manner.

Our space will not permit of our quoting the entire passage, and we shall rather proceed to the period when the assassination of Henry III. opened to the King of Navarre the throne of France. The situation of the monarch, when this brilliant but perilous succession opened to him, is thus justly described by Mr James:—

The battle of Arques was the first in which the great martial and heroic qualities of the King were displayed in their full lustre; and there Mr James's animated pen finds a fit subject for description. We pass on, however, to the battle of Ivry, which was, if possible, yet more marvellous and decisive; for the superiority of force on the part of the League was still greater; and Henry's heroic band had dwindled away to little more than one of Napoleon's divisions.

Henry's generous temper, and, withal, turn for fun and drollery, is well depicted in the account of his forgiveness of Mayenne, the ablest of his opponents—

A most imperfect idea of Henry's character, however, would be formed, if his gallantry in action, conduct in war, and generosity in victory alone are taken into view. His pacific administration, and plans of social improvement, are also worthy of the very highest admiration; and his premature death is, perhaps, chiefly to be lamented, because it prevented so many of them from being carried into full effect. They are thus sketched by Mr James on the authority of Sully, the King's prime minister:—

The close of this glorious and beneficent reign is thus described:—

The extracts we have now given, will convey to our readers a fair idea of this very interesting and valuable work. We earnestly recommend it to their attention: when once in their hands, it will speak for itself. Several emendations, some in the composition, others in the construction, will, doubtless, in another edition, suggest themselves to the judgment and good taste of the author. There are no arguments to chapters, no index, and no table of contents. These, in a work of history, are indispensable, and should be added forthwith. A novelist who brings five or six characters on the stage, can afford to let them explain their own story; but a historian, who is involved in the transactions of five or six hundred, has need of every mechanical aid which industry can furnish, to enable his readers to follow the complicated thread of events, or turn to them again, when required on reference. It is to be wished, also, that Mr James would intersperse his spirited narrative, especially in the scenes of memorable events, with a few of those beautiful descriptions of Nature with which his novels abound, and which would be peculiarly appropriate in a work on French history, from his intimate acquaintance with the topography and scenery of the places where his story is laid.

Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh.

Footnotes:

[1] "Gentlemen," said a quondam acquaintance of ours, rising to return thanks to a party of fox-hunters who had proposed his health—"I thank you all for drinking my health, and E. for speaking as he has just done of my riding. You all know that a younger son has not much choice in horse-flesh; but should it please Providence to take my elder brother, you would see me differently mounted, and I might then, perhaps, be able to do something more worthy of your commendation; so allow me to propose in return for your kindness, 'The chances of the chase.'"

[2] Out-doors—because, as we have said in Birboniana, it would take years to explore the numismatic and other treasures of the museums.

[3] Anas Boschias.

[4] In allusion to the ancient name of Paris, "Lutetia,"—from lutum, mud.

[5] "Invitâ que Jovi nectar Junone ministrat."—Ovid.

[6] Divine honours were first paid to this snake in Rome on occasion of a great pestilence which prevailed during the consulate of Q. Fabius and J. Brutus. His form, rudely sculptured, and much water-worn, is still to be made out on the side of a stone barque, stranded in a Tiber-washed garden belonging to a convent of Franciscans, which convent, rich in Christian as well as these Pagan relics, possesses the complete osteology of two of the Apostles.

[7] See the Affiche of the Parisian Sage Femme; passim.

[8] Colubraria insula maris Balearinci colubris scatens, vulg. Dragonera.

[9] Vide Aulus Gellius, lib. vi.

[10] Materials for a History of Oil Painting. By C. L. Eastlake, R.A.

[11] We venture to throw out a conjecture respecting this Ludius, (by the bye, there were two of that name,) as an attempt to throw some light upon a passage in the "Sirmio" of Catullus, which has puzzled and led the commentators into very far-fetched explanations. The lines are—

"Salve, O venusta Sirmio! atque hero gaude:
Gaudete, vosque, Ludiæ lacus undæ:
Ridete, quidquid est domi cachinnorum."

I have adopted the word Ludiæ, before it is so in some editions given. Catullus, returning from his profitless expedition into Asia Minor, addresses his home (his villa) with affectionate address of a weary and longing traveller. He speaks of his home delights, his accustomed bed,—and then terminates with the above lines. What were the "Ludiæ lacus undæ?" May it allude to the pictures painted on the walls of his villa; and very probably by this Ludius—for the word domi would seem to indicate something within his dwelling, and this idea answers accurately to the sort of pictures which Pliny represents Ludius to have painted. Though Catullus is said to have died in his forty-sixth year, B.C. 40, and Augustus, A.D. 14, it is very possible that Ludius, who is said to have lived in the time of Augustus, may have ornamented with his pictures the villa of Catullus. We offer this conjecture for no more than it is worth—it may be at least as probable as many others which have been made.

[12] "Some of the English painters," says Tingry, "too anxious to receive the fruits of their composition, neglect this precaution, (preserving the colours in newly painted pictures before they are varnished, by covering them with white of egg.) Several artists even paint in varnish, and apply it with their colors. This precipitate method gives brilliancy to their compositions at the very moment of their being finished; but their lustre is temporary and of short duration. It renders it impossible for them to clean their paintings, which are, besides, liable to crack and lose their colour. In a word, it is not uncommon to see an artist survive his own works."

[13] Van Stry asserted that copal was constantly used by Cuyp—his pictures are remarkably hard.

[14] Adventures on the Western Coast of South America, &c. By John Coulter, M.D. London: 1847.

[15] See No. CCCLXXXI, page 21.

[16] Byways of History, from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century. By Mrs Percy Sinnett.

[17] See Sismondi's History of the Italian Republics, vol. iii. p. 58.

[18] Life of Henry IV. of France. By G. P. R. James, Esq. 3 Vols. London, 1847.

[19] See Capefigue, Hist. de la Ligue et de Henry IV., iii. 239. He is a Roman Catholic writer, and therefore cannot be suspected of Huguenot partiality, or aversion to the Church of Rome.

[20] Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins, vii. 374. We hope ere long to make our readers acquainted with this magnificent work.

Transcriber's Notes:

Punctuation has been corrected without note.

Other than the corrections noted by hover information, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original.