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Title: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 308

Author: Various

Editor: Robert Chambers
        William Chambers

Release date: June 6, 2015 [eBook #49150]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
        produced from images generously made available by The
        Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S EDINBURGH JOURNAL, NO. 308 ***

[Illustration: CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S
INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.

NO. 308. NEW SERIES.       SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1849.       PRICE 1½_d._]




THE HALF-BOARDER.

BY MRS ALARIC A. WATTS.


When a naturalist is desirous of describing any genus of peculiar
interest in the world of nature, we generally find him selecting one of
the kind as a specimen from which to draw his description of the whole
race; satisfied that, although distinctions may exist in minor details
between it and others of its species, the general characteristics will
be found alike in all.

In endeavouring to sketch the principal incidents in the history of a
class whose trials seem peculiarly interesting, because coming at a
period of life usually exempted from them, I have pursued a similar
course; and though the career of my heroine may present features
peculiar to itself, as must ever be the case with personal history,
her experiences will, I believe, be found to differ in no essential
particular from those of the great body of her sisterhood. It can
hardly be deemed necessary perhaps to begin the biography of the
half-boarder from the hour of her birth; it may be sufficient to state
that she is usually the eldest daughter of parents of the middle class,
depressed into comparative poverty either by misfortune or imprudence,
but blessed with the inalienable advantage of belonging to 'a good
family,' and being enabled to boast of relatives of consideration
in the world. Her earliest years are too often passed amid all the
horrors of genteel but biting penury; in witnessing, daily, cares that
have become familiarised, though not lightened, to her by frequent
recurrence; and sharing anxieties which, though studiously concealed
from her, experience has enabled her to divine, without suggesting any
means of alleviating. Her duties are sufficiently multifarious: she
shares the labours of

    'The little maid some four foot high,'

by taking upon herself the lighter portion of the house work; and adds
to this the heavier burthens of unremitting attendance on an ailing
mother, and constant endeavours to divert the anxieties of a careworn
father. She is the governess of such of her half-dozen brothers and
sisters as are old enough to profit by her instruction, enlightening
them with such gleams of knowledge as her own limited opportunities
may have enabled her to acquire; and is at the same time the playmate
and nurse of the younger members of her family. Thus matters usually
stand until our heroine is about fourteen years old, when some pressing
emergency induces the wife, notwithstanding her own repugnance, and
the strong discouragement of her husband, to apply to his family for
pecuniary assistance. The welldoing uncles or cousins, though at first
astonished at the assurance of the world in general, and their own
poor relation in particular, are not more hardhearted than is usual
with persons who have all their lives enjoyed an uninterrupted tide
of prosperity, and a family council is therefore held to consider
what should be done in the matter. It is agreed at once, without a
dissentient voice, that any pecuniary advances would be entirely out of
the question; that they would only patch matters for a time, without
being of any permanent service to the family; and, what is not the
least objection, might afford an inconvenient precedent for similar
applications in future emergencies: and it is finally determined that
the aid which will prove eventually of most service to the family, at
the least cost to themselves, may be afforded by assuming the charge
of the education of the eldest child. The matron of the conclave is
therefore deputed to make known to the applicant that, although they
feel themselves precluded from complying with the specific request
contained in her letter, yet that, being desirous of serving her family
in consideration of the blood relationship subsisting between her
husband and themselves, they have determined on relieving her from the
burthen of Maria's education.

The first feeling of the anxious circle on the receipt of this
announcement is one of unmixed disappointment. The father had not been
without hopes of the success of the application, though he professes
that the result is just what he had expected from the beginning. Maria
is but young, and her education at this precise period is comparatively
unimportant, while he is convinced that a compliance with the original
request would have relieved him from all difficulty, and have enabled
him satisfactorily to provide himself for his children's education;
while the mother, though by no means so sanguine on this head, has
nevertheless her own cause of disappointment in the cold and measured
tone of the communication, which she feels with all the sensitiveness
of misfortune. The matter, however, is talked over in all its bearings,
and by degrees a brighter light seems to break in upon them.

The father begins to consider that, although the aid offered is not
precisely that which he desired, it is nevertheless an important
assistance; and the mother soon loses sight of the affront to her
own _amour propre_ in the chilling tone in which the favour is
proffered, when she thinks of the advantages it promises to her child.
Both parents remember having noticed particularly the young ladies
of Miss Wilson's establishment at church, their superior gentility
both of appearance and deportment, and forthwith follows a bright
daydream on the advantage of Maria's becoming a day-boarder at that
establishment--thus securing the double benefit of the good education
for herself, without losing the advantage of the evening instruction
for her sisters, and the solace of her society to them all. A letter
of thanks for the consideration of the uncle or cousin is cheerfully
penned, a card of the terms of Miss Wilson's school is procured and
enclosed, and, for one entire evening, the whole family rejoice
together in the midst of their cares at this stroke of good-fortune.

For a whole week no reply is vouchsafed to the letter, and they
begin to feel anxious lest some stray word or unconsidered sentence
should have given offence to the persons they are most interested in
conciliating. At length, however, they are relieved on this head: a
brief note arrives, in which the writer regrets that they cannot fall
into the plan sketched out by the parents; but as their motive in
consenting to undertake the charge of the child at all, is to give
her the means of securing her own livelihood in a respectable manner,
they are of opinion that that object will be best attained by removing
her altogether from her own family, and placing her as half-boarder,
for a term of years, in some well-known school, for which they are
already on the look-out. The letter concludes by professing, with
extreme humility, that should this arrangement not coincide with the
parents' views, they would by no means desire its adoption; in which
case, however, it is very clearly intimated, they would of course feel
themselves relieved from any further responsibility in the matter.

The dictatorial tone and startling brevity of this communication fall
like an ice-bolt on the assembled group. The first impulse of the
father is to reject the offer altogether; but when he looks on the
anxious countenance of his child, he feels that he has no right to
sacrifice her permanent benefit to a mere consideration of feeling on
his own part. He accordingly smothers his resentment at the manner in
which the boon is offered, and tries to rejoice that the comforts of a
respectable home, and freedom from home cares and menial drudgery, are
by any means secured to his child.

An anxious consultation next ensues on the subject of her outfit: the
family wardrobe is produced in the little parlour; the least mended of
the under-garments are selected, and a clean white tucker is appended
to the well-worn best frock; the Sunday bonnet is relined with an
eighteenpenny sarsnet, and retrimmed with a threepenny ribbon; the
cost of half-a-dozen home-made muslin collars is calculated; and the
propriety of a new merino frock is finally canvassed and determined
on. The father looks on with an aching heart and a moistened eye as
the last article of absolute necessity is provided for by a cheerful
surrender, on the part of the mother, of her own squirrel boa and
scarlet shawl.

A few days elapse, during which our heroine endeavours to soften the
loss her absence will occasion in the household by redoubled diligence
on her own part. The fortnight's wash is anticipated by a few days;
she works early and late to mend up all the stockings; the children
are doubly tasked on the score of lessons; the sister next in age to
herself is enjoined to be very attentive to poor mamma, and the younger
children to render due obedience to her deputy. On the evening of the
Saturday following the father brings home a letter from his munificent
relative, announcing that a school having been found for the child,
she is to repair, on the Monday following, by Dawney's Wimbleton
Coach, where a place for her has been taken and paid for, to their
country-house; and intimating that it will not be necessary for the
father to be at the trouble of accompanying her himself, as her safety
has been secured by an order already issued to the gardener to be in
attendance at the end of the avenue on the arrival of the vehicle.

The intervening Sunday is a day of restless anxiety to the whole
family. Advice on the minutest particular of her future conduct is
affectionately bestowed on our heroine. A faint attempt at cheerfulness
is maintained by the whole circle, till the arrival of night and
darkness permits each individual to give free vent to the pent-up
feelings by an unrestrained burst of tears. The heart thus lightened
of its load, they sleep calmly, and rise in the morning of separation
conscious of a feeling of hope and cheerfulness, to which anxiety
has kept them strangers since the first opening of the important
negotiation.

The middle of Monday sees our heroine, for the first time in her
life, surrounded by all the refinements of a well-appointed English
gentleman's household. On her arrival she is conducted to the
school-room of her young cousins, where she joins the party at dinner,
and undergoes a somewhat unceremonious scrutiny on the part of the
young ladies. They are good-natured, thoughtless girls, however; and
though they do not fail to remark that her hands are rather coarse,
and that she wants the self-possession of a lady, the circumstance is
noted to each other in a carefully-subdued tone, and does not in anyway
influence their kindly dispositions towards her. They exhibit, by way
of amusing her, their toys and trinkets, and question her of her own
possessions and attainments; but meeting with little response on this
head, they try another resource, and considerately propose some merry
game. The young novice, alas, has never had time to play! but she
feels their kindness, and does her best to participate in the gaiety
around her. The lady-mother returns from her drive barely in time to
dress for dinner; and thus the awful period of introduction to her is
deferred until the accustomed hour of dessert summons the denizens of
the school-room and nursery to the dining-room.

I wish that truth would enable me to endow my heroine with that best
letter of introduction--personal beauty; but what girl of her age was
ever even pretty? The beautiful roundness of the features of childhood
is past, and the skeleton only of womanhood has succeeded it: hence the
falling-in chest, the long, thin arms, the bony ankles, the squareness
of figure, and, above all, the vacant or anxious school-girl face.
It is utterly impossible to conjure up beauty out of such materials;
they belong less to the individual than to the age, and nothing short
of time itself can remedy the evil. But when, to such disadvantages,
a frightened awkwardness of manner is superadded, as in the present
instance, by the unaccustomed appearance of everything around, and
the consciousness of a dubious position, it is hardly to be expected
that the result could be of a nature greatly to conciliate the favour
of an indifferent, not to say prejudiced, spectator; and the reader,
therefore, will not be surprised to learn that a reception perfectly
civil, though rather cold, is all that awaits the protégée in the
halls of her benefactors. The hostess fills her plate with fruit,
and the host, without asking her consent, adds a glass of wine; and
then both turn to listen to the wit of their own offspring, and talk
over the events of the day. In the course of some half-an-hour the
gentleman exhibits signs of an inclination to take his siesta, and the
rest of the party adjourn to the drawing-room, where a confidential
conversation ensues between madam and the resident governess, in
reference, apparently, to the dependent child, who, with the quick
instinct of inborn propriety, retreats towards the other end of the
room, where she endeavours to amuse the younger children; in which
she is so eminently successful, that the stately manner of the lady
gradually begins to relax. Previously to the arrival of coffee, she
is heard to request some trifling service at the hands of her little
relative; and before the conclusion of the evening, finds herself even
addressing the child as 'my dear!' The rest of the circle take their
cue from the lady-in-chief; and the young stranger, by degrees, feels
herself on a footing of intimacy almost approaching to equality.

With the earliest dawn our heroine is wide awake, the unaccustomed
luxury of down pillows having, she thinks, prevented her from sleeping
well. She wonders whether they are thinking of her at home, and how
her sister performed her new duties; and ponders with some anxiety
on her own future lot. Her father's relations have been very kind
to her, far more kind, indeed, than she had expected; and she does
not despair for the future. She is, however, rather annoyed at being
obliged to admit the assistance of a servant in dressing her, and
rejoices when the morning salutation with her cousins is over. However,
a walk round the extensive grounds tends somewhat to brace up her
nerves; and she receives a personal summons to attend her benefactress
in her dressing-room without experiencing any serious trepidation.
On her arrival in this sanctum she is desired to take a seat, and
has to undergo a rather minute cross-examination as to her personal
attainments, as well as in regard to her late habits and occupations.
Her replies elicit no further remark than a caution, not harshly
given, against bestowing any unnecessary confidences on these points
upon the lady, her future governess, and the companions of her future
home; whereof the advantages are forcibly pointed out to her, and a
due appreciation of their benefits earnestly enjoined. Then follows
the expression of a confident hope on the part of her monitor that
the great expense incurred to secure for her all these benefits will
be met by proportionate exertions on her part to profit to the very
utmost by the advantages thus generously placed within her reach. This
exordium brought to a close, and a dutiful acknowledgment returned
thereto, she is next interrogated as to the extent and quality of her
wardrobe, and replies with cheerful alacrity that she is well provided
for on that score; but whether a hint dropped to the governess by the
under-housemaid of the result of her observations at her toilet may
have suggested a doubt on this head, or whether a feeling of curiosity
is entertained by the lady as to what is considered a good provision by
a poor relation, is uncertain, but the poor girl is required to produce
the wardrobe, the extent of which does not preclude her from fulfilling
the mandate in person. The carpet-bag is brought down, and hastily
opened, and, with an involuntary gesture of distaste, as hastily
closed. The services of the maid of the young ladies are in instant
requisition, and an order is given to her to make a selection of the
more ordinary garments from the wardrobes of her young mistresses. The
damsel, though by no means approving of this wholesale appropriation of
what she has been accustomed to regard as her own ultimate property,
obeys her instructions, and soon returns with an ample supply of
half-worn garments, which, with an air of subdued sullenness, she
places before her mistress. The lady, who fathoms at once the origin
of her dissatisfaction, desires her, in a voice of some asperity,
instantly to pack them up; and secures a more cheerful compliance with
the mandate by an intimation that compensation will be made to her in
another way. These preliminaries adjusted, luncheon and the carriage
are ordered to be in readiness an hour before their usual time; the
lady announces her intention of personally introducing her protégée to
her new home; and then intimates that her presence may for the present
be dispensed with.

At the hour appointed the carriage is announced, the lady sweeps
in, followed by her young relative, and an hour's drive brings them
to the end of their journey. The aristocratic peal of the footman
remains unanswered for a period sufficiently long to admit of a brief
investigation of our heroine's future home. It is a large, red brick
house, old fashioned, but perfectly respectable in appearance, with a
multiplicity of windows, carefully veiled by blinds from top to bottom.
A small front garden intervenes between the house and the public
road, and is surrounded by a low brick wall, surmounted by a lofty
hedge of laurustinas, under which blooms a perpetual growth of the
blue periwinkle. The box-edges of the parterres are more than usually
luxuriant, and the gravel walk, though carefully swept, presents
visible signs of the moss of ages. The brass-plate on the outer gate,
and the ample steps leading into the house, are scrupulously clean.
On either side of the entrance hall, which is spacious, and even
handsome, stand two large professional-looking globes, appropriate
introductions to the world of knowledge beyond; while from the centre
branches off a square flight of broad, well-carpeted oak stairs, which,
if any criterion of the size of the rooms above, promise well for the
domestic comfort of the establishment.

In the absence of a footman--a functionary not admissible in a seminary
for young ladies--the party is conducted by a smart parlour-maid to
a well-proportioned, though somewhat chilly drawing-room, handsomely
furnished with chairs, guarded from use as carefully as 'the throne'
of Lady Margaret Bellenden at Tillietudlem, and footstools which,
though preserved by oil-silk covers, are yet guiltless of ever having
been pressed by the foot of human being. The chimneypiece exhibits
hand-screens as smart as gold paper and water-colours can make them,
in which the conflicting styles of the pupil and the master, though
ingeniously blended, are easily to be distinguished; and on the
principal table stands a valuable work-box, which the lady of the house
will not fail incidentally to remark was a present to her from her
affectionate pupils. The room, in short, is redolent of professional
decorations, from the Berlin wool and embroidery of the present day, to
the bygone glories of filigree and shellwork. The visitors have only
time to look around them, and select two chairs upon which they can
sit with a good conscience, before the mistress of the house presents
herself in the person of a very upright, ladylike woman, attired in
black silk of glossy freshness, and leading by the hand a beautiful
little girl, the pride of the school. The child (who is exquisitely
dressed for exhibition) has been committed to her charge by its
doting parents the day before they sailed for India, and she cannot,
therefore, persuade herself to lose sight of her for an instant. This
is said by way of apology; and the little piece of sentimentalism
having produced its desired effect, the child is quietly dismissed to
amuse herself at the other end of the room.

The important subject of terms and length of engagement having been
adjusted at a previous interview, the patroness has little to do beyond
introducing the new pupil to her new protector; and the identity of the
family name unhappily preventing her début as the orphan child of a
deceased schoolfellow, no alternative remains but to name her as Miss
Maria Armstrong, a young person in whose welfare she feels a lively
interest, the young lady being, in fact, a distant relative of Mr
Armstrong himself, the offspring, she is sorry to add, of an imprudent
marriage. How far her education may already have proceeded, the lady
has had no means of ascertaining, never having seen any member of the
family until the previous evening. She, however, without solicitude,
confides the child to her maternal care, in the fullest confidence that
whatever talents she may possess will receive the highest culture at
her hands, and in the hope that the same will be met by a corresponding
degree of diligence on the part of the young person herself, as on the
exercise of these talents, be they great or small, her future wellbeing
must depend. The lady believes that every necessary for the use of
one in the position of her protégée has been provided; but should
anything indispensable have been forgotten, she begs Mrs Sharp will
have the goodness to procure it. She has only further to request, that
no unnecessary intercourse with her own family may be encouraged on
the part of the child; such communications, if of frequent occurrence,
having a very obvious tendency to unsettle the mind, and unfit it
for its manifold duties. With these sentiments Mrs Sharp entirely
coincides. The lady rises, bestows a kiss on the little fairy--a
shake of the hand and half-a-guinea on the young dependent--and a bow
expressive of mingled cordiality and condescension on the mistress of
the house--and then, with a measured step, regains her equipage; and,
as the nursery rhyme has it--

    'The carriage drives off with a bound.'

As the new-comer is only a half-boarder, it cannot of course be
expected that the head of an establishment of pretensions equal to the
one of which we are speaking should herself introduce the stranger
to her dormitory; and as the attendance of a housemaid might lead
to unwarrantable expectations of future service, the little girl is
deputed to convoy Miss Armstrong to the room over the kitchen, the
left-hand closet of which will be found vacant for the reception of her
clothes. When this is accomplished, should any time remain previously
to the tea-bell, she had better inform herself of the names and
localities of the various departments, with which her little guide will
have pleasure in making her acquainted. The clothes are unpacked, and
put away, and the tour of the house is hardly accomplished when the
expected peal is rung. A rustling sound, accompanied by the shuffling
of many feet, is heard in the distance; the little girl safely pilots
her companion to the parlour door, leaving her to make her _entrée_
alone, and then skips off to join her companions in the refectory. The
young novice waits a few moments to gather both breath and courage, and
then gently taps at the door; a voice from within desires her to enter,
and she stands before half-a-dozen smart ladies at tea. A pause of a
moment succeeds, which is broken by the governess, who thinks (aloud)
that it will perhaps be the best plan for Miss Armstrong at once to
enter upon her duties. She is therefore desired to proceed along the
passage till she arrives at a green baize door, on opening which, a
second door will introduce her to the apartments of the young ladies.
She makes her exit from the parlour in the best manner she is able,
and experiences but little difficulty in discovering the eating-room,
from which issues a cheerful buzz of voices. She wisely resolves not
to give her courage time to cool, and so enters without observing the
preliminary ceremony of self-announcement. The sound of the opening
door produces an instantaneous hush, and at the same time directs
towards her the glance of four-and-twenty pair of curious eyes, besides
a piercingly-black individual pair appertaining to the French governess
at the head of the table. She stands perfectly astonished at her own
temerity; then thankfully sinks into a chair pointed out by that lady
on her left hand; accepts a cup of tea, which a choking sensation
in the throat prevents her from swallowing, and is conscious of an
unwilling suffusion of colour from the crown of her head to her very
fingers' ends. Tea and the tea things at length despatched, the usual
half hour supervenes previously to the period for preparing lessons,
advantage of which is taken by madame to inquire the name, age, &c. of
the new-comer; whilst the little figurante, whose position renders her
a sort of _avant-courier_ to the school-room of the proceedings in the
drawing-room, is captured by one of the elder girls, who, on pretence
of plaiting her hair, seats her on her knee in the midst of her own
peculiar set, and proceeds to extract, with very commendable ingenuity,
all the events of the day, reserving to herself the liberty of drawing
her own inferences from the detail, copious or meagre, as the case may
be. One circumstance connected with the arrival of the young stranger
does strike the privileged set with inexpressible astonishment.
If, as is asserted, she came in a private carriage, and that
carriage the veritable property of her friends, and not a 'trumpery
glass-coach'--how, then, could she be going to sleep in the room over
the kitchen?--that chamber of Blue-Beard reputation, strongly suspected
of harbouring mice, and convicted, beyond question, of being subject
to a very disagreeable odour! The thing is pronounced impossible, and
unworthy a moment's credit. In vain the child assures them, upon her
word and honour, she helped to put away her clothes; the proposition
is not to be believed for an instant. The informant, indignant at
having her veracity impeached, calls aloud on Miss Armstrong to
verify her assertion. The appeal is, however, happily overpowered by
a simultaneous shuffle of the feet of the inquisitors; she is quietly
slided from the knee on which she had been sitting, and the discussion
proceeds in the absence of the witness. There certainly is something
very unusual attending the new-comer: no note of preparation announced
her advent; no cheerful congratulations had been offered to themselves
on the prospect of a new companion; no hopes expressed that they
would do their best to make her home a pleasant one. And then the
circumstance of her taking her _first_ tea in the eating-room, to which
she was not even introduced; such a mark of contumely had never before
been suffered within the memory of the oldest school-girl present; and
of this fact they were themselves eye-witnesses. It was inexplicable:
they could not understand it. A single hour, however, suffices to solve
the mystery: the period at length arrives for preparing lessons, and
with it the housemaid to curl the hair of the younger children; and in
this labour of love Miss Armstrong is requested to lend her assistance!
A glimmering light as to her real position flashes across the minds
of the bewildered spectators. But when she is further required to
attend the children to their respective rooms, and light the candles
preparatory to the arrival of the elder girls, the matter is put beyond
a doubt: she is--she must be--a half-boarder!

Reader, picture to yourself, I beseech you, the estimation in which a
Christian slave is held by a follower of the true Prophet, a Nazarene
by a Jewish rabbi, a Pariah by a holy Brahmin of immaculate descent,
and you may then have some faint, some very faint idea, of the depths
to which this fact has sunk our heroine in the estimation of the major
part of her schoolfellows!

The young ladies are at length fairly disposed of for the night; and
the half-boarder, having completed her duties, descends again to the
school-room, which she finds in the possession of the housemaid and
a cloud of dust, the French teacher having joined the party in the
parlour. Thither she also repairs, and requests permission to retire
to her room. The concession is readily granted to her, and she gladly
seeks her bed, to sleep with what soundness of repose she may. Anxious
to fulfil the duties of her post to the spirit as well as to the letter
of the bond, she is dressed even before the school-bell rings, and is
ready on its summons to assist in the ablutions of the little ones. She
saves many a heedless chit a fine by herself folding up the forgotten
night-clothes; an indulgence, however, not to be taken as a precedent,
her duty being to aid in the reformation of evil habits, not to slur
them over. Having had no lessons marked out for her on this first
morning, she watches the order of proceedings, and helps the little
favourite to master the difficulties of a column of spelling.

After breakfast, the pupils having dispersed themselves in the garden
to taste the morning air (young ladies have no playground), the
half-boarder has a private audience of the superior, in order that,
her mental standing having been duly ascertained, she may be drafted
into class second or third, as the case may be. After rendering a
true and particular account of her acquirements in reading, writing,
needlework, &c. &c. and admitted her total ignorance of French,
music, and dancing, the order is given for her admission into the
third class, and beginning French forthwith. Dancing and music are
held out as stimulants to quicken her diligence in making herself
'generally useful,' in consideration of having been received into
the establishment at one-half the usual charge. Her duties cannot
very clearly be defined, but she will soon comprehend them. Soon,
indeed, poor girl! they being, in fact, to do all that is neglected
to be performed by the other members of the household--to stand in
the alternate relations of nursemaid and instructress of the younger
children, and of butt and fag to the elder ones. She must be prepared
to consider herself the link between the lower teacher and the upper
servant, willing to lend her aid to each, and to bear the blame due
to either; to labour with untiring diligence to improve her mind
and increase her accomplishments, and thus eventually supersede the
necessity for an under teacher at all.

These are multifarious duties, it must be admitted; but, as Dr Johnson
says, 'few things are impossible to ingenuity and perseverance.' She
has not been brought up in the lap of refinement, and therefore misses
not its comforts: she is blessed with a strong constitution and a
willing mind, loves learning for its own sake, and never forgets that
every member of her own family may be ultimately benefited through her
means.

It is true that at first it is painful to stand up with the little
class--herself a giant among pigmies; to be conscious of a sneering
smile on the part of the teacher as she draws a parallel between
her bodily height and her dwarfish information. It is mortifying
to know that her dresses have been discovered, by their misfit, to
have belonged to other parties--that the discrepancies between her
own initials and those on her linen have not been overlooked--and
to feel that the absence of a weekly allowance, and regular home
correspondence, are never-failing sources of unsympathising wonder.

All this is mortifying enough, but it is not all she has to undergo.
After rising early, and lying down late, and eating the bread of
carefulness, she finds that even the rigid performance of her own
duties, and the neglected work of half-a-dozen people besides, meets
at first with but little encouragement from the mistress of the house,
who receives it purely as a matter of course, while it does not fail
to awaken the distrust and jealousy of her subordinates. The cook
remembers her refusal to connive at the abstraction of 'a dust of
tea,' even when the key of the storeroom was actually in her hand;
and the housemaid bears in mind that Miss Johnson would have bestowed
upon her her last year's cloak on the arrival of her new _visite_, had
not the half-boarder suggested the necessity for asking leave. The
French teacher does not forget that, on the only occasion in which she
indulged in a little harmless flirtation with a whiskered cousin of her
own, the half-boarder looked reproof; the English teacher remembers her
refusal furtively to procure sundry little delicacies not included in
the daily bill of fare; while her assistant notes her strenuous efforts
to qualify herself to supersede her in her own department.

All these offences are registered and retaliated. The cook, when
reproved for any omission, stoutly declares that orders transmitted
through Miss Armstrong never reach her; the housemaid, in waiting
at table, contrives that the least savoury _plat_ shall fall to her
lot; the Parisienne shrugs her shoulders as she comments on her air
_bourgeois_; the English teacher frankly declares she never could like
her; whilst her subordinate sister 'hopes' that Miss Armstrong may
prove as simple as she appears.

But a Sacred Authority has assured us that though sorrow may endure
for a night, joy cometh in the morning; and the experience even of
a half-boarder demonstrates that a patient continuance in welldoing
is not without its reward. By degrees the lot of our heroine is
considerably ameliorated: the prejudice against her begins to wear
away; and even the English teacher, who has held out the longest,
having a character for consistency to maintain, is constrained to admit
that Miss Armstrong is an estimable and well-conducted young person.
Her desire to please is at length appreciated, and her poverty is even
admitted to be rather her misfortune than her fault. The great girls
cease to despise her--the little girls learn to love her. The higher
powers readily second the exertions for self-improvement which promise
to relieve them from the drudgery of initiatory instruction; and the
prize held out for the successful fulfilment of her humbler duties is
in process of time secured. Instruction in dancing and music commences
with the second half year, and glimmerings of still greater glories are
pointed out in the distance.

The governess, though an exacting, is not an unjust taskmistress. If
she requires much during school-hours, she allows the unusual luxuries
of fire and lights when school duty is over; and furthermore advances
the interests of her pupil by a statement, under her own hand, to the
benefactress of the half-boarder, that she promises to do honour to
that lady's patronage no less than to her own establishment.

Her successful progress in the road to learning, and in the good graces
of those around her, coupled with the encouragement afforded by a kind
word, and now and then a small present bestowed on her by the grateful
mamma of some infant prodigy, all combine to quicken her steps in the
race towards the grand object of her ambition--the qualifying herself
for the situation of a nursery governess. In the meantime, in the words
of Crabbe, her duty is--

                          ----'to feel
    Dependent helper always at the wheel;
    Her power minute, her compensation small,
    Her labours great, her life laborious all;
    Set after set the lower tribe to make
    Fit for the class which her superiors take.
    The road of learning for a time to track
    In roughest state, and then again go back,
    Just the same way on other troops to wait--
    Doorkeeper she at Learning's lower gate.'

This is her lot for some two years; but she has the encouragement
of knowing that her apprenticeship, though a hard one, is gradually
fitting her for the object of her ambition; while, as she advances in
her career, the experience of the past inspires her with confidence
for the future, since it proves to her that right principle and steady
perseverance are invincible, or they could never have enabled her
to overcome the trials and difficulties which beset the path of a
Half-Boarder.




INDIAN POLICE REVELATIONS.


We have frequently had occasion to observe that travellers differ
widely from each other, even as to such matters of fact as must
have come under the cognisance of their senses. The late Mr Rae
Wilson, for instance, who observed personally the falls of the
Narova, gives the measurement of the descent of water at something so
comparatively enormous, as to prove that he had unconsciously blended
in his imagination the whole of the rapids into one cataract; and we
ourselves, when gazing upon those troubled waters from the wooden
bridge that spans them, looked with such surprise upon the 'Yarrow
Visited,' as must, we fear, have coloured, in an opposite way from Mr
Wilson's, our impressions, and consequently our report. If travellers
who desire, both from interest and inclination, to be impartial differ
so widely in matters of fact, what shall be said of matters of opinion?
A compiler is frequently taunted with presuming to write critically of
countries he has never visited in person; but if he will only take the
pains to collect, and sift, and compare the jarring and often opposite
accounts of residents and travellers, we have a strong suspicion that
he will be found better qualified for his business than any of them!

India has always been _the_ Debateable Land of authors, both as to fact
and opinion. The books published upon that country contain the most
outrageous mass of contradictions extant; and each successive writer
gives the lie, without the smallest ceremony, to those who preceded
him. This cannot be wholly owing to our ignorance of the country and
the people. The Hon. Robert Lindsay was shut up with the natives almost
exclusively for twelve years; and he represents them as being so
honest, that he could intrust three or four thousand pounds' worth of
his property to a menial servant, wandering to the farthest extremity
of the country, and absent for twelve months at a time. Colonel
Davidson resided for many years, and travelled much in India; and he
turns the reverse of the medal, representing the native inhabitants as
thieves and vagabonds to a man. We must go further, therefore, than
the mere question of knowledge; for these two witnesses (whom we take
as the types of two numerous classes) are men of both knowledge and
honour. We must seek for an explanation of the mystery in the depths of
the human character.

The colour of an object, although really one of its inherent
properties, is always modified by the medium through which it is seen;
and nothing but care and reflection, or at least lengthened experience,
will enable us to correct the error, and trace the actual through
the apparent hue. In the same way, the qualities of a people in one
stage of civilisation cannot be judged of intuitively by a people in
another stage, because they are viewed through an uncongenial medium.
The Indians can no more be comprehended at once by Europeans, than
Europeans can be comprehended at once by the Indians. Much care will be
required to enable the two to arrive even at an approximation to a true
understanding of each other. Virtue and vice are not the substantive
and unbending terms we commonly imagine them to be. They receive a new
meaning, or a new force, in every new form of civilisation; the _lex
talionis_ of the ancient Jews, for instance, was abrogated by the more
advanced law of Christianity; and we meet with a hundred things in
history--

    'Things light or lovely in their acted time'--

which, in the present day, would be considered indications of positive
depravity. Few of the heroes of the middle ages would escape hanging or
the hulks in the nineteenth century, and fewer still of the heroines
would be received in a modern drawing-room!

To form a correct estimate of the Indians, we must compare them with
other Asiatic nations, and not with the inhabitants of Europe, where
the human character received a new and extraordinary development
through the collision of different and distant races of mankind.
According to the former standard, the Indians are much in advance,
which can only be accounted for by the vast extent of their country,
and the fluctuating movements of its population, interrupting in some
degree what is called the 'permanent' form of civilisation peculiar
to Asia. To estimate their moral and social prospects, however, and
the moral and social prospects of the Eastern world in general, we
must compare them with our own ancestors of a few centuries ago, among
whom we shall find quite as much grossness of taste, obtuseness of
feeling, tyranny, dishonesty, antagonism of classes, and puerile and
debasing superstition. The conflicting views of the Indian character
arise simply from the opposite idiosyncrasies of the observers.
Colonel Davidson finds theft common, and stigmatises the people with
the English name of thieves; while Mr Lindsay, marvelling at the
singular fidelity of his servants, ascribes to them the English virtue
of honesty. Both are deceived; for these two apparently opposite
qualities may, and do, meet in the same individuals, and are therefore
not of the nature of the English qualities of the same name. If we
encountered such passages in history, we should comprehend the seeming
anomaly, and at once refer it to a particular stage of civilisation;
but falling in with them in the course of our personal experience, and
suffering from the bad, or deriving advantage from the good quality,
we take no care to discriminate, but give praise or blame according
to the religious and moral dispensation we live under in Europe. The
tendency of this want of discrimination is adverse to Indian progress.
The people are at this moment undergoing, but more slowly, the change
which revolutionised the West; although this time Mohammed goes to
the mountain, since the mountain does not come to Mohammed. Europe
flings itself upon Asia, and Western knowledge ferments in the inert
mass of Eastern ignorance. We are numerically few, however, though
intellectually powerful; and it is of the utmost consequence that
we should comprehend clearly what we are about, so that our efforts
towards the advancement of those we have taken forcibly under our
tutelage should proceed in the right direction.

We have been led into these reflections by a very slight matter--a
little book, as coarse, vulgar, and tasteless as can well be
imagined; which professes to be the revelations of an orderly, or
police subordinate, attached to an Anglo-Indian provincial court.[1]
According to this authority, all India would appear to be one bloated
mass of crime and tumult, and the calm and beautiful pictures of such
writers as Sleeman would therefore require to be set down as impudent
fabrications. But we do not look for an account of English manners
in the Newgate Calendar; and the native scribe who in this little
book withdraws the curtain from the mysteries of Indian police may be
thanked for his contribution, partial as it is, to our knowledge of the
country. In fact it is impossible to talk with too much reprobation of
the police system of India. In venality and oppression it was never
surpassed even by the most corrupt nations either of the East or
the West, either in ancient or modern times. The reason is, that an
effective police must be spread like a network over the whole country,
and the Europeans are far too few for reasonable superintendence.
Old abuses thus remain unchecked, and vast multitudes of hereditary
scoundrels combine to cheat their superiors and oppress the people. The
police, in fact, are the objects of universal dread; and numberless
crimes escape unpunished, and even unexposed, because their victims
will rather suffer than invoke such fatal assistance.

At present, however, our business is more with the criminal than
the policeman; and the rough pictures of our Orderly show that the
peculiarity of Indian crime is its resemblance to the crime of old
and modern Europe at the same time. We see in it, under Indian
characteristics, the offences of mediæval Europe, extravagantly
combined with those of our own day. The priestly transgressors of the
dark ages are reproduced in the Pundahs and Poojarees of Benares; and
the English swindler who takes a handsome house, and victimises the
neighbouring tradesmen, has an Indian brother in the _soi-disant_
rajah, who confers his patronage as a prodigious favour.

The priests, it seems, perpetrate all sorts of crimes with perfect
impunity. 'Many a dark deed has been done, and is done, in the
extensive houses of these Pundahs and Poojarees. While the gong is
loudly sounding, and scores of athletic priests are blowing _sunkhs_[2]
in the numerous temples that are dotted about and around the houses,
the last expiring shriek of some victim is perhaps suppressed by the
noise. Disobedient _chelas_,[3] victims of jealousy and crime, die by
slow torture, or poison, or famine. No intimation is, or can be, given
to the police, for none but the initiated and privileged may enter
these houses, sanctified by the numerous temples. And who but the most
devoted and trustworthy are ever permitted to see the dark places
where crime is committed? It is believed generally--but I speak not
from experience (for being of the faith of Islam, I am not permitted
to approach such places)--that in the innermost recesses of several
temples is a shrine devoted to "Devee," or "Bhowanee;" those infernal
deities whose delight is in blood, where children of tender age are
enticed, and offered up on certain occasions. Frequent are the reports
made to the police that children are missing; the informants suspect
nobody, and no trace of the innocents is ever found.'

Another pest are the _dullals_ (brokers), who haunt the markets, and
levy a handsome per-centage on everything that is bought and sold. 'Go
into the _chouk_,[4] and attempt to purchase the most trivial article:
take up a pair of shoes, or a shawl, and you will find a _dullal_ at
your elbow. The man praises one thing, abuses another, beats down the
price of the vender authoritatively; and you are surprised that such
disinterested officiousness should be shown to a stranger in a crowded
chouk. The man civilly offers to take you whithersoever you please,
and to assist you in purchasing whatever you may require. You return
home, wondering what was the man's inducement to waste his own time in
chaffering for you. I lift the curtain to show you that the venders
and your _chaperone_ are in league; that your complaisant friend is a
dullal, who takes very good care to lower the vender's price only so
much as to admit of his coming in for a handsome _dusturee_.[5] The
difference between the bazaar price and the amount price of the article
sold is the _huq_[6] of the dullal. You will ask whether the vender
may not himself pocket the whole of the money? I answer that he dare
not. The whole of the dullals would cabal against him; would cry down
his wares; would thrash him within an inch of his life; would by force
prevent purchasers from attending his shop. Can such things be? you
ask. Can the authorities submit tamely to such outrages? Why do not the
parties who are cheated or bullied complain to the magistrate? They
have tried the experiment; and although in a few instances successful,
they have generally failed in obtaining redress from want of judicial
proof. Moral conviction is one thing, and judicial proof another. And
were a magistrate to punish on moral conviction alone, his judgment
would in all probability be reversed by the judge in appeal; who,
having to form his judgment by the written evidence, must be guided by
judicial proof alone.'

The _Budmashes_ practise a trick that is not unknown in England,
although known there chiefly under the modification of bills of
Exchange obtained from the unwary by means of advertisements in the
newspapers. 'Another common trick of the Budmashes is to entice
people of decent condition into their private houses with seductive
solicitations; and after amusing them, to keep them there until they
put their names to papers, just by way of showing specimens of their
autographs. They have documents ready cut and dry on stamp papers of
different value, duly witnessed by people who are in their pay, or
who participate in their frauds, to be converted into penal bonds for
value received. Months afterwards the unfortunate visitor is accosted
in any public place, in the presence of numerous witnesses, and asked
for the amount of his (extorted) bond. Of course the debt is denied,
and the demander is cursed only for his pains. But the Budmash calls
people to witness that he did ask his debtor to pay the amount of his
bond, which he refused to discharge. An action for debt is instituted.
The Budmash produces the bond before the _Moonsiff_. The witnesses are
summoned, and are merely asked, "Did you witness this _tumassook_?" "I
did, your worship," is the reply: "this is my signature." The witnesses
before whom the Budmash demanded the amount of the bond also confirm
the plaintiff's allegation. The defendant can only deny the claim,
and submit that the bond was extorted. "Where is the proof?" says the
Moonsiff. "I have none," is the reply. And a decree is given in favour
of plaintiff with costs. It is only when "Greek meets Greek" that the
result is different. Then the defendant acknowledges the deed, but
alleges that he has paid the amount with interest; and files a receipt
for the amount of the bond, with interest at twelve per cent., duly
attested by three "credible" witnesses, who appear before the _huzoor_,
and swear to their signatures, as well as to having seen the money
repaid to the plaintiff.'

We come now to the swindling rajah, whose proceedings are almost
amusing in their rascality. 'A common mode of swindling in the city of
Kashee, as practised by the clever Budmashes, is for one of the party
to personate a rajah on a visit of ceremony to the holy city, while
his companions pretend to precede him, and hire a stately _huvelee_
in Dal-ka-Munduvee, which they furnish for the nonce. Bulbhuddur
Singh sits in state as Rajah Guchpuch Rae, bedecked in false gems,
and dressed in shawls and _kimkhabs_.[7] His retainers go about the
city, and entice shawl-merchants and jewellers to the rajah's house.
They arrive with costly wares, and eagerly proceed to expose them;
but the rajah turns an indifferent eye upon them, and declares they
are not sufficiently choice for _him_. The _Soudagurs_[8] promise to
return next day. In the meantime the song and dance proceed with fierce
rivalry. Six sets of the best dancing-women exert their lungs and
limbs, and go through every fascinating movement to delight and amuse
Rajah Guchpuch Rae. "Where is my treasurer?" exclaims the rajah. "Bid
him bestow a largess of 100 _ushurfees_[9] on these soul-enslaving,
terrestrial houries." A retainer, after going through the farce of a
search, respectfully approaches his highness, and intimates that the
treasurer has not yet arrived. "The _nimukharam!_ _behaeyah!_"[10]
exclaims the rajah. "Here, fellows, see that a proper treasurer be in
attendance on the morrow, to whom we shall deliver our treasure and
_toshehkhanah_."[11] The rajah enjoys himself until no longer able
to sustain excitement; and then the _Gundrupins_[12] retire, and the
torches are extinguished.

'Next day there are several candidates for the honour of the
treasurer's office, who eagerly offer to serve. "The salary is 200
rupees a month," says the rajah; "and I hate accounts. Constant
attendance and implicit obedience are all I require." After rejecting
some, his highness fixes upon Lalla Umbeka Sahaee, who receives a
well-worn shawl as a _khillut_,[13] and an immense key. He ventures
to ask where the treasury is? and is told to wait until the _huzrut_
has leisure to show it to him. In the meantime the rajah suddenly
recollects that he has an immediate occasion for 1000 rupees, and he
shouts out, "Here, Bahadoor, take one thousand rupees from Lalla Umbeka
Sahaee, and give it to Bisheshur Singh, and be sure to take a receipt
for the money. Tell him it is the price of a ring I bought of him for
my favourite Goolbehar." Bahadoor asks the treasurer for the money. The
poor man looks aghast, and shows a huge key as all he has received of
the rajah's treasure. But Bahadoor tells him that Rajah Guchpuch Rae
never fails to cut off the ears of a disobedient servant. So the hint
is taken, and Lalla gives an order on his _shroff_ in the city for the
amount; and Bahadoor at once proceeds to realise the money. As evening
approaches, shawl-merchants and jewellers again appear, and press their
wares on the rajah. They see Lalla Umbeka Sahaee figuring as treasurer.
They are old acquaintance, and they ask him the amount of Guchpuch
Rae's treasure; in reply to which he simply shows _the_ key, about a
foot in length. The merchants open out their wares to entice the rajah,
but he says he will wait until all his things arrive. They offer to
leave their bundles for the rajah and his ladies to choose, which is
agreed to with apparent indifference. The song and dance proceed, as
usual, until midnight, when the torches are extinguished.

'Next morning, what a change has taken place! One old man is seated
at the doorway, dozing over a _chillum_ of _ganjah_. No other sign of
life is visible in Rajah Guchpuch Rae's palace. The treasurer arrives
first, opens and rubs his eyes, and asks the old man where the rajah
and his people have gone? He replies that they decamped before dawn.
In due course the Muhajuns, the jewellers, and birds of song arrive,
but nothing of the rajah is to be found; and smoke-stained walls, and
filth, and litter about the rooms, alone betray that revelry _had been_
there! The jewellers and Muhajuns turn in wrath upon Lalla Umbeka
Sahaee, and tax him with having aided to cheat them. They proceed
first to abuse, and then to beat him. In vain the poor man shows the
huge key, and laments his thousand rupees lost for ever. They drag
him to the _kotwal_, and charge him with having cheated them; and the
defrauded treasurer remains in durance vile for a week at least, and
gets off at last on proving himself to be one of the victims of this
system of swindling, and after feeing the police myrmidons pretty
roundly.'

Here we close, without further remark, a book from which the reader
will learn that the crimes of India are not remarkably different from
those of earlier England, although fostered by the worst police system
that ever disgraced and demoralised a country.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Revelations of an Orderly, being an Attempt to Expose the
Abuses of Administration by the Relation of Every-day Occurrences in
the Mofussil Courts. By Panchkouree Khan. London: Madden, 8 Leadenhall
Street. 1849.

[2] Large shells.

[3] Disciples--scholars.

[4] Market-square.

[5] Customary douceur.

[6] Right.

[7] Kingcobs.

[8] Tradespeople.

[9] Gold mohurs.

[10] Unfaithful to salt--shameless.

[11] Place for keeping valuables.

[12] A caste of Hindoo Nautch-girls.

[13] Dress of honour.




TRACINGS OF THE NORTH OF EUROPE.

GOTTENBURG TO CHRISTIANIA.


At six o'clock of the morning of the 4th July, Quist duly appeared with
the carriage at the door of the Gotha Kellare. It was a dull, cool,
drizzling morning, and I mentally rejoiced in having, against many
advices, resolved upon a vehicle which could afford me protection from
the elements. My baggage being arranged beside me in the carriage, so
that I could readily command anything I wanted--one of the greatest
of all comforts in solitary travelling--I hastily swallowed the cup
of coffee presented to me in my bedroom--the common custom of the
country--and was soon on the road to Christiania. I observed that two
hardy little horses were yoked to the carriage with rope-traces. Beside
Quist, who drove them, sat a man who was to bring back the cattle,
the first of a long series of such persons whom I was to see in that
situation during my journey, of all varieties of age, from twelve years
to threescore, in all kinds of clothes, from stout _wadmaal_ down to
bare decency. The robust, bulky frame of honest Quist generally made
these people appear like dwarfs by his side. As we drove rapidly along
the swampy plain surrounding Gottenburg, we met an immense number of
small market-carts, driven by peasant men or women, or both, generally
very lightly laden, and going at a trot, the people being usually
seated on a sort of chair, perched on elastic beams passing back at
an angle from the beams of the vehicle, so as to give somewhat the
effect of springs. I felt affected at seeing such a multitude of people
engaged in a labour so uneconomical, and which must consequently
remunerate them so ill; for of course where a man or woman give a day
of their own time, along with a horse's labour, to the business of
selling a single pig or lamb, a few chickens and eggs, or some such
trifling merchandise, the remuneration must be of the most miserable
kind. The poor too often struggle on in this manner, always busy, as
they allege, often working very hard, and wondering that, with all
their exertions, they make so little, when the plain truth is, that
their labour is so ill-directed, or is so uneconomically conducted,
and in the result of their labours they consequently do so little for
their fellow-creatures, that their little gains are exactly what is to
be expected, and what is strictly their due. The very best lesson that
we could teach a poor man, with a view to improving his fortunes, would
be that which led him, as far as possible, to extend his usefulness,
to substitute economical for uneconomical labour, and to concentrate
and divide employments. I beheld, with interest, in this exhibition of
the Swedish peasantry, the first aspect of an economy out of which it
has been the business of the last hundred years to reform the farming
population of my own country.

At the first station, which we reached in little more than an hour,
the horses which had been ordered were in waiting, along with a new
_loon_ of some kind to take care of them. The man in charge of the
used horses was then paid at a rate which appeared nearly equivalent
to threepence-halfpenny per English mile. But something more was
needed--_dricka-pinge_, or drinks-money, as Quist called it. In
England, something like half-a-crown would have been expected. In
Sweden, a few skillings--about twopence of our money--was given,
and most thankfully received. We then set out with our new horses.
The station, it may be remarked, is a place like a carrier's inn.
Travellers of a humble class may stop and refresh at it; but it expects
no gentlemen customers, and is unprepared for their reception. One or
two out of a long series are tolerable places, and it is necessary to
calculate so as to have any needful meals there, instead of the meaner
houses; but even with these better-sort of houses it is necessary to
order meals by the forebud, for a guest is so rare, that they have
no standing arrangements for his reception. My breakfast had been
ordered at the third station. It proved a decent, plain house, with
clean-boarded floors, and a few rude prints along the walls; and, had
there been wheaten bread, the eggs and coffee would have enabled me to
make a tolerable meal.

The country passed over to-day consisted of low rocky hills of soft
outline, with alluvial plains between. It is impossible for any
person of common powers of observation to fail to be struck with
the appearance of the rocky surface presented around Gottenburg and
along the road upon which I was now travelling. All the abruptnesses
and asperities usually seen upon rocks are here ground off: all is
smooth and rounded. Here you see great ridges, resembling the hull
of a ship turned keel uppermost, both in the general form and the
smoothness of surface. There you see great slopes, as straight and
smooth as an ashlar wall. Sometimes a kind of trough or channel is
seen between rising ridges, and of this the sides are usually quite
smooth. In general, there has been a certain weathering of the
exterior, though leaving the general plane--if I may use such an
expression--in its original state. Where the surface has been from any
cause protected from the elements, the smoothing is clearly seen to be
a true mechanical polish; that is to say, not a result of some causes
connected with the formation of the rock, but an effect proceeding from
some external agent which has operated on the rocks after they had
been thrown into their present arrangement as a surface for this part
of the earth. On these preserved surfaces we find striæ or scratches,
evidently a portion of the general operation, whatever it was; and
these striæ, as well as the channellings and ridges, lie in one
direction--namely, _compass_ N. E. and S. W. In numberless instances in
travelling to-day I took out my compass to test this point, where much
struck by the appearances, and the result was invariable. The valley
of the Gotha Elv lies from north to south; but this seems merely to
have exposed it to being impressed with these singular appearances.
There are several hill-faces which may be considered as an exception,
being rough and cliffy, sometimes with a talus of débris descending
from below the cliffy front, as in Salisbury Crags near Edinburgh. In
all such instances the face of the cliff is to the _south-west_; and
where this occurs in a valley, the opposite hill-face is invariably
smooth, with rounded surfaces, showing as if the smoothing agent had
moved from the north-east, failing to press against faces turned away
from that point of the compass, but bearing hard upon such as were
presented towards it. It was most impressive and interesting to read
in these facts so strange a tale of grand preterite operations of
nature. I had seen some of the few and scattered markings of the same
kind which exist on the surface of my own country, but was nevertheless
unprepared for the all but universal grinding to which Sweden has been
subjected. In Scotland one has to seek for the appearances in nooks
of the country; but here they are met at every step. Very often farm
establishments, and the inns at which the traveller stops, are placed
on smoothed plateaux of rock, the place thus acquiring from nature all
the benefit of a paved courtyard, as well as of a perfectly firm and
dry foundation. Often you can trace in these natural pavements the
primitive channellings and striæ, though hob-nails and wagon-wheels
have clattered over them for centuries.

The matter massed up against the smoothed valley-sides has all the
appearance of that of _moraines_ amongst the Alps. A moraine, as must
be known by many persons, is the accumulation of loose matter which
a glacier brings down in its course, and deposits at its base. The
matter seen here, as at the skirts of the Alpine glaciers, is a coarse,
pale, sandy clay, mixed with rough stones of all sizes up to many
tons--mixed confusedly--with here and there little nests of matter,
where the clay and sand have been separated and laid down by water.
Over this matter in some places are stratified sand and gravel, coming
to flat, terraced forms, like sea-beaches. These, however, are rare
objects. The tendency of the whole appearances, in an unprejudiced
mind, is to convey the idea that ice has been the cause of the
main phenomena. That water in any form could have produced them is
utterly inadmissible, though this was the supposition formed by the
first scientific observer, M. Sefstrom. Persons who have only read
descriptions of the appearances may think them explainable upon an
aqueous theory; but if they visit Sweden, and look at the surface with
their own eyes, they must, if open to conviction at all, see that no
such agent could have produced such effects. Only some agent applying
forcibly, pressingly, and with an equable, continuous motion--like a
plane going over a deal, or a plough in a furrow--could have so dressed
the original surface. Such an agent is ICE. The identity of the loose
matter with the moraines of existing glaciers points to the same
conclusion. I therefore believe, with M. Agassiz and others, that ice
has been the means of smoothing the surface of Sweden--ice on a scale
of grandeur beyond what we are accustomed to see; though how such a
glacial sheet was originated, and how it could move across the whole
irregular face of a large country, up hill and down hill, maintaining
over wide provinces one direction, I think it would be difficult to
explain. We perceive clearly the nature of the agent, and we see
this agent still at work upon the earth, though in a limited manner:
the only difficulty is as to the different physical circumstances on
which depended the magnitude of the phenomenon and the manner of its
application. The superficial arrangements of the loose matter speak of
a subsequent dip under water, a fact of which I shall have occasion to
show other evidences.

The country passed over in this day's journey is not interesting to
any but the geologist. It presents only a series of humble-looking
farmsteads, and one or two small and unimportant towns. The farmhouses
bear a general resemblance to those of Switzerland, but want the
overhanging eaves, and are less picturesque, though some are painted
of a red or ochrey colour, which gives a cleanly effect. Unlike
Switzerland, too, barns, byres, and all sorts of store-offices occupy
detached buildings, an arrangement by which the risk of fire is
materially reduced. The scenery, though sufficiently rude, is not
romantic; for the hills are in general only a few hundred feet above
the level of the sea, and their outline has been rendered tame by the
glacial polishing above described. The ice, as I sometimes surprised
my Scandinavian friends by remarking, has been a great enemy to the
picturesque in this region of the earth. Though there is no want of
population, the country is dull. One misses even the little taverns and
huckstry-shops which everywhere give a sort of life to the roadsides
in England and Scotland. In the afternoon we came to a fiord, and
found at its upper extremity the town of Uddevalla, containing from
3000 to 4000 inhabitants. Uddevalla is a name of no small interest in
science, because of a great bed of ancient shells found near it. This,
too, is a kind of object very rare, and only seen on a most limited
scale in the superficial formations of Britain. The effect was novel
and startling when, on the hill-face overlooking the fiord, and at the
height of two hundred feet above its waters, I found something like
a group of gravel-pits, but containing, instead of gravel, nothing
but shells! It is a nook among the hills, with a surface which has
originally been flat in the line of the fiord, though sloping forward
towards it. We can see that the whole space is filled to a great depth
with the exuviæ of marine mollusks, cockles, mussels, whelks, &c. all
of them species existing at this time in the Baltic, with only a thin
covering of vegetable mould on the surface. That surface has been
broken in several places by the peasantry, who dig and carry away these
spoils of ancient seas to spread them over their lands. I feel sure
that some of their excavations are twenty feet deep; yet that is not
the whole thickness of the shell-bed. Of course it is a proof of the
sea and land having formerly been at a different relative level; and
one more convincing could not be desired. I was familiar with this as
a geological fact; but the shell-bed of Uddevalla presented it with a
freshness and liveliness of evidence beyond what I would have expected.
Seeing these shells so entire, so like in all respects to any bed of
shells on the present shore, one looks upon the period antecedent to
the assumption of the present relative level as a thing of yesterday;
the whole series of intermediate events, including, what is probably
but a small part of it, the course of the written history of the human
race, seems concentrated into that brief space which, relatively to the
entire history of the universe, it actually occupies.

My halting-place for the first night was at Quistrom, ten and a-half
Swedish, or about seventy English miles from Gottenburg. This reminds
me to remark that the mile in Sweden, in consequence of an arrangement
adopted during the last century, is fixed at the tenth part of a
geographical degree, which, it will be remembered, is about 69½ English
miles. For such spaces as we require the term _mile_ to designate,
the Swedes speak of quarter and half-quarter miles. The roads exhibit
formidable 'milestones' for each quarter, usually adorned with the
initials of the king under whose reign they were erected. In the whole
of this day's journey I had passed only one gentleman's house--a pretty
place with a park, near Quistrom; and I was afterwards informed that it
belonged to an Englishman. Country-houses, of a character approaching
that of an English gentleman's mansion, are objects scarcely existing
in either Sweden or Norway, except in the immediate neighbourhood of
the larger towns.

At Quistrom I was shown into a large room in an upper floor,
uncarpeted, but strewed thickly with small pieces of pine spray and
juniper bush, the scent of which is abundantly pungent. This is a
description applicable to most public rooms in the country inns of
Scandinavia, the vegetable sprinkling being designed for exactly the
same effect as a sprinkling of yellow sand in British houses of a
humble class. In obedience to the forebud order, a meal was ready to
be laid down for me, consisting of two small dishes of animal food,
with milk, cheese, and hard cakes of rye. Everything was clean, though
homely. A married pair with a child had arrived in a light vehicle
about the same time with me; and as soon as I was done with eating,
I retired to my bedroom, that they might sup in privacy at the same
table. They had a bedroom at one side; I one at the other, a plain
small room, also uncarpeted, and possessing little furniture besides a
small couch of plain deals. I mention these things as characteristic
of the roadside inns all over the country. Here, as everywhere else,
there was snowy bed-linen. I feared the entomology of the house, but
was agreeably disappointed. The stories told of Sweden and Norway in
this respect are surely exaggerations. At least I can say, with a safe
conscience, that of the _cimicidæ_ I never saw one example, and of the
species _pulex irritans_ only two, during the whole time I was in the
country. It is a point not unworthy of notice, for, under different
impressions, I had for many nights much less steady sleep than is
desirable for a traveller.

An early walk next morning showed me the situation of the inn in a
pleasant valley, where a river terminates in a fiord. The river, I was
told, contains abundance of fine fish, and I bethought me that for an
angler such an opportunity of sport, with so cleanly an inn to live in,
might be very attractive. Quist having contrived the night before to
get several forebud notices sent on by a private hand free of expense,
I started at eight o'clock, with some uncertainty as to the conclusion
of my day's journey. The country passed over to-day consisted of low
rocky hills, all smoothed, with spaces between, filled up to various
heights with detrital matter. This matter usually composes flats, and
the ground therefore joins the rocky hills almost as mountain lakes
join the sides of the basins containing them--a feature speaking
significantly of the operations of the sea upon the stuff left at the
conclusion of the glacial action. Contrary to my expectation, very
few boulders appeared upon the hills. Sometimes a rill cuts down the
alluvial flat, and then we see a series of cultivated fields on the
bisected level spaces, frontiered by steep pastoral banks, all in a
flush of wild-flowers. The rounded gray rocky hills; the alluvial
flats, sometimes cultivated, sometimes in moorland; low, gray, stone
enclosures; red wooden houses scattered at wide intervals; now and then
a whitened church, with a red wooden spire, topping a low height--such
were the predominant features of the landscape during this morning's
drive. The people are remarkably civil and inoffensive: not a man or
boy do I pass or meet who does not take off his hat. I feel this as
courtesy, not as servility, and am careful to return each greeting
duly, in order that so amiable a custom may not suffer by me. There
is one singular impediment in travelling: almost every few hundred
yards--though often at very much wider intervals--a gate crosses the
road, being part of the system of farm enclosures, and having a regard
to the exclusion of cattle from the corn-fields. Generally some cottage
child or group of children is ready to run and open the gate for the
approaching vehicle; and for this service a minute coin, such as the
third or sixth of a skilling, is regarded as a rich reward. Where no
such aid is at hand, the charge-taker of the horses has to descend and
throw up the bar. Another novel feature of the roads is the frequent
appearance by the wayside of little posts bearing small boards, which
contain an inscription--as 'Hede, 200 alnar,' 'Hogdal, 134 alnar,' &c.
The explanation is, that the roads in Sweden and Norway are kept up by
the bonder or peasants, each taking charge of some small section near
his farm. The boards show for what piece each is answerable, the space
being indicated in ells. A public officer makes periodical rounds, to
see that each person executes his portion in a satisfactory manner,
and to impose fines where the duty is neglected. This system partakes
of the character of the compulsory furnishing of horses, and imparts
a curious idea of the state of public opinion in these countries
as to personal liberty. It appears that, let there be never such
liberal or democratic forms established on the continent, the state of
individual liberty remains the same: the central government is still
permitted to bandy about the simple subject at its pleasure. And the
oddest consideration is, that, amidst all the democratic struggles and
revolutionary writhings which occasionally take place, no one thinks of
complaining of these trammelments, or getting them corrected.

In the evening I approached a fiord called Swinesund, which forms
the northern limit of Sweden in this direction. At the last station
on the Swedish side an elderly officer-like man came up with great
politeness, and addressed me, first in Swedish, and afterwards in
German. It was his duty to search the baggage of travellers before
they should pass into Norway, though I cannot imagine for what
reason, unless the exaction of a rigs dollar, or some such trifle,
which I paid to save myself from detention, furnish one. At a house
on the Norwegian margin of the fiord something more was paid, my
passport inspected, and my name entered in a book. The tendency on
the continent to petty impositions of this kind is so great, that
here, even between two countries under one sovereign rule, they are
kept up. At this point a bag of Swedish money, with which I had been
furnished at Gottenburg, and with which I was just beginning to become
familiar, ceased to be useful, and a new kind became necessary. Laying
down rigs-gelt dollars and skillings, I had to take up with specie
dollars and marks. A rigs-gelt dollar, I may remark, is equivalent to
13½d. of English money, and the skilling is its forty-eighth part.
Calculations are, however, made in an all but imaginary denomination
called dollars and skillings _banco_, which are as 3 to 2 of the actual
rigs-gelt. The prevalent monies are, in reality, notes of 1, 3, 5
rigs-gelt dollars, and for 8, 12, 16 skillings banco, the smallest of
this paper-money being for 3½d. English. As may readily be imagined,
the threepence-halfpenny note is generally found in no very neat or
cleanly state; yet though it may be a mere clot of dirty paper, not
much different in appearance from a huddled-up spider's web, it will
be preferred by the natives to coin, provided it only retain the
signature of the government banker. In Norway, they have notes for
1 specie dollar (about 4s. 6d. English), 2, 5, and 10 dollars, with
silver marks and half-marks (9d. and 4¼.), and copper skillings. I
need scarcely remark that the plunge into a new money in the course of
continental travel is always a painful thing, and that it is a vexation
which occurs the more frequently the more rapidly you travel. On this
occasion I had had to make acquaintance with three kinds of money in
about a week.

I spent the night at Westgaard, the first station within Norway, and
one somewhat superior to the last. I here observed the first examples
of a piece of substantial furniture very common in the north--namely,
large chests or arks, usually bearing the name of a person, and an
old date in quaint lettering, such as 'Agnes Olsen, 1733.' During the
two previous days the weather had been dull and ungenial. The third
morning proved bright and clear, and I started at an early hour for
Frederickshald with elevated spirits. This place was a few miles out
of the way; but I was anxious to see the scene of the death of that
extraordinary prince who, as Johnson says--

    ----'left a name, at which the world grew pale,
    To point a moral, and adorn a tale.'

It was yet scarcely past seven o'clock when we drove into the inn-yard
at this little town. The landlord soon came, and being able to speak
well in French, and a little in English, he proved a most serviceable
ally. I was quickly on my way, under proper conduct, to the scene
of the assassination of poor Carl Tolv. Frederickshald is a neat,
cleanly town, at the head of one of the smaller fiords, and the fort
lies close by, perched upon a rocky eminence of considerable extent,
at the foot of which runs a river, noted for several fine waterfalls.
A painful ascent of two or three hundred feet, along zig-zagging
causeways and fortified walls, brings us to the fortress, which seems
to be now chiefly a mere post for soldiers, like Edinburgh and Stirling
castles. Behind the main buildings is a space of irregular rocky
ground, enclosed within the exterior defences. Here an enclosure of
trees and shrubs, and a little tumulus of stones, one of them bearing
a half-obliterated inscription, marks the spot where Charles XII. was
slain. He had invaded Norway in his usual madcap style; one of his
armies, consisting of 7000 men, had there been literally buried in a
snow-storm; he was now directing in person the siege of this fortress,
when an unknown hand despatched him by a shot which penetrated his
temple (December 11, 1718). He was found dead, but with his sword
half-drawn, as if to defend himself from some enemy, or to punish an
assassin, and it is accordingly believed that the wound was inflicted
by one of his own people. A survey of the ground supports this view
of the matter, as at such a place one does not readily see how the
fatal shot could have come from the fortress. I had afterwards an
opportunity of examining the dress worn at this time by the king, in
the Riddarsholm Church at Stockholm. The plain cocked-hat shows the
hole by which the bullet entered, and the right glove is stained with
blood, as if the unfortunate monarch, under the first impulse of the
moment, had clapped his hand upon the wound.

After breakfast, I took a walk around the town, and very much enjoyed
the views almost everywhere presented, but particularly one from a
noted place within a gentleman's pleasure-grounds. Frederickshald
appears to me a more pleasing and interesting place than the
guide-books allow. In the little park alluded to I found a private
cemetery, containing the graves of eight adults and three infants.
Each grave is a well-defined heap, with turf sides and ends, but a top
of bare earth, on which is laid a single wreath; all the rest of the
ground bare earth. Such is a prevalent style of sepulture in the north;
it has a neat and pretty effect. One likes to see a grave well-defined.
That smoothing of the ground, introduced in some of the improved modern
cemeteries of England, is not, I think, an approvable step. We desire
the 'mouldering heap,' so affectingly significant of what is below, and
so associated with all our old literary ideas upon the subject.

After receiving a lesson in Norwegian money from my intelligent
landlord, Mr Stein, and so many civilities of various kinds, that I
felt ashamed of the small bill which I had to pay, I set out on the
way to Christiania, returning for some miles along the way by which
I had come from Westgaard. As we drove out of the town, I was, as a
stranger, honoured with a sufficient quantity of observation by the
people. To add to the fracas produced by the carriage, a foal came
clattering along by our side, apparently under a filial mistake as
to one of our horses. Presently a cart was heard making a furious
rattle along the stones behind us, as if still further to make my poor
equipage an object of public attention. It was the mamma of the foal,
who, having missed her progeny in the market-place, was now anxious to
recover the lost one: there she came, with mouth distended, and eyes
glaring, the whole aspect expressing the utmost excitement, and saying
as plainly as words could have spoken it, 'What's all this?--taking
away my child!' The whole was so vividly like human affairs, that I
felt inclined to stop and apologise for our unintentional concern in
the elopement; but Quist settled the matter more summarily by a smart
application of his whip to the haunches of our undesired attaché. It
may be remarked that in Norway the foal is often allowed to accompany
its parent, even in coach-travelling. I have seen it come the whole
stage, never missing any opportunity afforded by a pause of our machine
to come up and indulge in the mode of nutrition appropriate to its age.
Horses are altogether less under strict rule in the north than with
us, and it appears to me as if they consequently were more _natural_
in their conduct. For one thing, they are eminently social with one
another. In the course of a long stage over a thinly-peopled country,
if we come at length to a park where a horse is feeding, even I could
almost say though out of sight, our own pachyderms are sure to get
up a great skirl of recognition, just as much as to say, 'How are
you?--how are you?' My predecessor, Mr Laing, alleges that they have a
rational way of eating not observed in the horses of less democratic
countries--taking first a quantity of their hay or corn, and then
a drink; but I cannot say I ever could observe them acting in this
bite-and-sup manner. Of their amazing steadiness, sureness of foot, and
hardiness, abundant evidence is presented to every traveller.

In the middle of the day we arrived at the brink of the river Glommen,
a copious stream, which contains the drainage of a large district in
the centre of Norway, and which is here remarkable for a cascade of
great grandeur. The fall is at a place about an English mile above the
ferry: the flood pours in one mass through a narrow channel, and makes
a descent of about seventy feet. It would be an unexceptionably fine
sight but for the details of an enormous timber-sawing and exporting
establishment which press in upon its beauties, and usurp not a few of
its most romantic points. The river runs fourteen English miles below
the waterfall, but so gently, that ships come up for the timber; and
the river is there accordingly an active commercial scene. I observed
at the falls specimens of the smoothed and dressed rocks, over which
the water streamed in an oblique direction--a fact than which nothing
could be more convincing as to the incompetency of water to produce the
effects attributed to the ice. The country is here low, and not marked
by any features of grandeur. There is an alluvial plain of the most
absolute flatness for fully a mile in every direction around the ferry;
and from the measurements which I made (starting from the surface of
the river at that point), I suspect this to be identical in elevation
above the sea with the terrace at Elsinore. This is, however, a point
which must be left for determination to the native inquirers.

We stopped for the night at Moss, a town on the Christiania Fiord,
where my servant and I had each an evening and morning meal, with
lodging, at a charge of about six shillings. Yet this was a good large
house, very tolerably furnished. A small silver coin (value about
5d.) laid in the hardened palm of the blithesome lass who served as
an attendant in all capacities made her the happiest of the happy. As
a serving-girl in Denmark, Sweden, or Norway, only gets about 30s. a
year of wages, it may readily be imagined that even so small a gratuity
as this is a great prize to her. It is necessary, however, to be
careful to give such a gratuity directly to the person for whom it is
designed, as it will not otherwise reach its destination. At this place
there are alluvial terraces at various elevations above the sea, and
precisely resembling the ancient sea-margins of the British coasts.
A circumstance worthy of note occurred in the business of measuring
their elevations, which I did with a regular levelling apparatus. The
sea is here presented in two detached bays, embracing a peninsula of
several miles in extent, yet approaching within two hundred yards of
each other, with only the division of a low isthmus. One of these bays
appeared by my survey as 0.9 foot above the level of the other. The
cause was in the wind, which blew up the one bay, and down the other.

There remained only a forenoon's journey to Christiania. As we
approached this capital, there was no observable improvement in the
appearance of the country; no better houses, no trimmer or larger
fields, no smarter-looking people; the same rough and homely character
over all things. The roads are made of the sand and gravel found
everywhere near their borders; no cuttings anywhere for improved
gradients. A rise of 1 in 5 is not uncommon when any of the rocky
ridges between the plains has to be crossed. Two miles from Christiania
we come to the brow of a hill, whence we see the bright white city
with its blue and red-tiled roofs lying below at the head of its
fiord, backed by green slopes ascending to the pine-clad hills. The
descent of this hill is terrible, from the extreme steepness of the
road, especially at its somewhat sharp turnings. Having a geologist's
climometer in my pocket, I measured the slope in some places with
all possible care, and found it actually on an angle of 16 degrees,
implying a rise of 1 in 3½ feet. I deemed this a strange sight so near
one of the capitals of Europe; but I must do the Norwegians the justice
to say that a better road is in the course of being made.

On the two last days' journeys we met many parties of Norwegian
infantry on their march or exercising. They are a good-looking
soldiery, neatly dressed in white duck-trousers and green frock-coats,
with burnished-leather hats rising to a metal peak, each bearing the
arms of Norway--a ramping lion holding a battle-axe. As to this ensign,
by the way, though gratifying to the national vanity, and poetically
conveying the idea which its originators intended, it belongs to a
class which cannot be scientifically contemplated without a shock. The
philosophical zoologist reflects on the adaptations of the natural
organs, and knowing the very peculiar formation of the anterior
extremities of the feline family--so well contrived for clutching and
tearing a prey, so useless for every other kind of prehension--he
cannot endure the idea of one of these animals being supposed to hold
a weapon only adapted to the hand of man. Heralds, if they could think
of anything beside their own profession, should study these things!

    R. C.




PLAN FOR MAINTAINING THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE LABOURING-CLASS.


It has often occurred to us, and we have once or twice hinted at the
idea in the Journal, that the working-classes might make a provision
for themselves in times of want, whether occasioned by failure of
employment or natural disability through disease or old age, if they
could be induced to agree to a system of stoppages like that which has
existed for ages in the mercantile navy for the support of Greenwich
Hospital. We find that, in 1843, probably before the date of any
reference of ours to the subject, though unknown to us, Mr David
Milne, a patriotic country gentleman of Scotland, and member of the
Scottish bar, made a suggestion to this effect to the commissioners who
conducted the Poor-Law inquiry in Scotland. His idea was this:--Let
some small sum, say sixpence a month, be deducted from the amount of
wages under a law to that effect, and thrown into a fund upon which
every contributor would have a claim. He conceived that, in five
years, so much would be accumulated, that the managers might begin
to give support to any number under a twentieth part of the original
contributors. Some one had suggested to Mr Milne that it might be well
if the law taxed the masters to an equal extent for the benefit of
the fund; but he rejected this idea, on the ground of its injustice,
and because it would induce employers to be less anxious to carry on
their works in unfavourable times for the sake of giving bread to their
people. 'It is also to be considered,' says Mr Milne, 'that the duty
of sixpence a month for each workman would, in ordinary times, when
trade is prosperous, and labourers in demand, actually fall upon the
employers, because the natural competition of trade would make up for
the deduction of duty by a corresponding rise of wages.' Mr Milne was,
however, not unwilling that appeals to, and even a general assessment
upon, the rich should be resorted to when the fund failed under the
pressure of any unusual calamity.

There cannot, we think, be a doubt that if this plan were practicable,
it would be a great improvement in our social economy. At present,
the bulk of the working-people of this country have scarcely anything
to save them from a state of dependence whenever they fail in getting
work, or are no longer fit for it. In Scotland, the able-bodied man
who cannot obtain work and wages, has no legal recourse to the poors'
funds. In England he has, but accompanied by conditions calculated
to lower the man in his own eyes; and therefore the privilege is no
true advantage. Even though the poors' funds were more available than
they are, the honest workman who wishes to maintain his self-respect
can never complacently place his trust in them; for though it is not
uncommon to hear individuals in humble life proclaiming that they have
a _right_ to them, the fact really is, that these funds are only a
product of the humanity and economy of the country, designed to insure
that there shall be no class left to misery and the barbarism attending
it, but not to interpose between any one and his obligation to gain his
own subsistence if possible. In plain truth, he who accepts parochial
relief sells away some of his very best rights as a citizen, as well
as his dignity as a man; and any one who wishes to exalt either the
social or political position of the labouring-class, should desire
nothing so much as to see them in the first place superior to all but
a remote chance of coming to this wretched expedient. If any feasible
and easy-working plan could be devised for enabling them, mainly by
sacrifices on their own part, to defy the prospect of becoming paupers,
or leaving their children to pauperism, they would certainly have
received the greatest boon that any philanthropist could confer upon
them.

We fear that no such plan is at present practicable. There is too much
prejudice among the labouring-class against their employers to admit of
its being received with general favour. While an honourable minority
would be glad to see their independence secured, the great mass would
undoubtedly prefer going on upon their present footing, careless how
soon the failure of business or the occurrence of sickness should
deprive them of an independent subsistence. Some such plan, however,
may be expected to be realised when the labouring-class shall have
acquired a just feeling for their own character, and a just sense
of their relation to the rest of society. It would only be a fair
and proper part of a social system in which the highest behests of a
true civilisation were worked out. How soon it may come about will
depend on the rapidity with which the education of the masses of the
people shall proceed. If, from any narrow views of whatever kind, a
member of the middle or upper classes in this country finds himself
thwarting the movements towards universal and improved education, let
him understand what he pays for the gratification he thus obtains. He
pays for it in large poor-rates and prison-rates, and in the distress
which his humanity must be continually receiving from the spectacle of
a multitude of his fellow-creatures lost to the sense of self-respect,
and consequently subjected to a vast load of misery.




THE LATE DR ZUMPT.


At an early stage of our labours, many years ago, we took occasion
to offer, for the consideration of the young, a memoir of Professor
Heyne of Gottingen, one of the greatest scholars of the age, and
who, by dint of perseverance, rose from a very humble to an exalted
station in life. Heyne presented not an uncommon instance of German
enthusiasm in scholarship. In our own country, erudition seems to
be pursued chiefly for the sake of professional advancement, and
consequently it seldom attains to any very lofty pitch. How few of our
scholars, it may be asked, know anything critically of the ancient
classics? How few write or speak Latin with elegance or purity? How
few ever saw any more recondite exemplars of Roman literature than
elementary school-books--the copy of a copy? In Germany, where no
sort of painstaking seems to be grudged, scholarship has gone, and
still goes on, immeasurably farther. As in the case of Heyne, Wolf,
Hermann, Boeckh, Vater, Gesenius, and others, men are there found
devoting themselves to a whole lifetime of earnest study in complete
forgetfulness of self. Living perhaps on the merest trifle, they bury
themselves in a library surrounded by old vellum-bound classics; and
there, poring over dingy yellow pages, they compare words with words,
examine into the merits of punctuation and orthography, and detect
new meanings, till they transfuse into themselves, as it were, the
very soul of their author. In this way, by collating old and priceless
versions of the classics--some of them in manuscript, and unique--they
are able to produce modern editions, which are greedily accepted
throughout European universities, and which have usually formed the
basis of elementary works for British compilers. We at least know of
few works in Latin common in our schools which have not been copied
in a reduced form from the painfully-constructed editions of German
scholars. We have been led into these observations from a desire to do
honour to the memory of one whose name has gone to swell the already
long list of German philologists.

Carl Gottlob Zumpt, the individual to whom we refer, was born at Berlin
in 1792. His parents were not wealthy: but in the circumstances in
which Prussia was placed at the beginning of the present century,
this was a matter of little importance. The oppressions of France
pretty nearly brought down all ranks into one common mass of distress
and poverty. To meet the cruel exactions of Napoleon, families gave
up every article of value to the state. For their gold they received
tokens in iron; and these acknowledgments are still treasured by
families, as lasting memorials of an adversity which took away
almost everything but life. Amidst these national sufferings and
humiliations, Carl Gottlob Zumpt received such an education as could
then be procured. Fortunately he required no incitement to learn: from
childhood he had been a diligent porer over books; and the acquisition
of languages cost him no trouble. Nature made him a scholar. After
passing through a series of schools and gymnasia in Berlin, he was
sent, by the advice of Buttman, the well-known grammarian, to the
university of Heidelberg, which at that time enjoyed a high reputation.
Kreuzer, Voss, Boeckh, belonged to it, all of them men of talent, and
celebrated for their philological learning. During Zumpt's residence at
Heidelberg, the university of Berlin was founded; and returning home,
he finished his education in his native city.

Though still a young man, Zumpt was already noted for his remarkable
attainments in the Greek and Roman languages. Thrown upon his own
resources, he soon distinguished himself, and was appointed a teacher
in one of the principal seminaries. From this position he subsequently
rose to be Professor of History in the Royal Military Academy, and
finally to be Professor of Roman Literature in the university of Berlin.

The life of a scholar is usually barren of incident. There is little to
tell about Zumpt. Amidst the cares of public teaching, he found time to
occupy himself in writing various works, critical and historical, all
connected with his favourite branch of study. To improve his knowledge
of antiquities, he made a tour through Italy and Greece, which, while
of considerable service to him as a man of letters, unfortunately
tended to injure his health. This tour was made in 1835, and after that
year Zumpt laboured still more assiduously at his critical editions of
the classics, unmindful of aught but that love of digging among ancient
words and thoughts which seems a fanaticism in the German mind. His
great aim was to be a Latinist worthy of the Augustine age itself. Nor
was he unsuccessful; for he wrote Latin with great elegance. He was
seldom required to speak the language; but when called on to do so, he
delivered himself with correctness and fluency. In this respect he is
supposed to have had no superior among his learned countrymen.

Holding this man in respect, not alone for his intellectual, but his
moral and social qualities, we shall always consider it as something
to say that we have enjoyed his personal acquaintance. In the course
of a tour in Germany, and short residence in Berlin in 1847, we had
the pleasure of visiting him at his house in the Burgher Strasse--a
terrace-like street on a branch of the Spree. We found Zumpt entombed
amidst his books. Tall in person, emaciated from study, and wrapped in
a dressing-gown, he rose and affectionately welcomed us to Berlin in
tolerable English--a language which, in compliment, he insisted all his
family should speak on every occasion of our visit. At this time he was
engaged on his edition of 'Quintus Curtius'--a work which will long be
regarded as a monument of his industry and learning.

One of the objects of our visit to Zumpt was to consult with him on
the subject of an enterprise in which he had recently engaged--the
joint editorship, with Dr Schmitz of Edinburgh, of a series of Latin
classics for use in schools. The projectors of this undertaking
were the publishers of the present sheet. Having in our own early
days experienced the dreary heaviness of ordinary school classics,
unrelieved by the slightest explanations in English touching the
subject or the authors, we were glad to be instrumental in putting into
the hands of youth a series which they could peruse with some degree
of pleasure, or at all events not with absolute weariness and disgust.
As Dr Zumpt entered heartily into the design, the arrangement promised
to have the advantage of naturalising in Britain a set of editions
drawn freshly from comparatively original sources, in place of the bald
reprints of antiquated copies. The task occupied the amiable scholar
during the remainder of his too short life, at the close of which he
had prepared the whole series excepting a portion of Horace, which
has consequently fallen into the hands of his nephew and son-in-law,
A. W. Zumpt. A victim to his study of ancient literature, his failing
eyesight first, and afterwards disordered viscera, admonished him to
take some species of relaxation. This counsel he took when too late.
In the hope of relief from his sufferings, he repaired to Carlsbad, a
watering-place in Bohemia; and there, to the great grief of his family
and friends, he died on the 25th of June last, in the fifty-eighth
year of his age. The decease of the illustrious Zumpt, together with
the loss of Orelli, and the veteran Hellenist, Gottfried Hermann, both
of whom died within the last eighteen months, leaves a blank among
European scholars which will not soon be filled up.

    W. C.




COLA MONTI.


The conceptions of female beauty which men form for themselves are
frequently, if not always, overturned by some plain face, in which
they find the mystic influence they had supposed to belong only to
features of a particular and more perfect mould. In like manner our
theories touching certain departments of literature are liable to be
damaged now and then by the appearance of a work which fulfils not
one of the conditions we had laid down as absolute necessities. Now
here, for instance, is a volume of fiction without even an attempt at
a plot, and yet with a perfect enchainment of interest--a hero without
adventures and without a heroine, yet whose fortunes we follow with a
true excitement! How does this come about? Why do we love plain women,
and admire ill-constructed books? Because there is an innate power
in the irregular features to excite our sympathies, and a quality in
authors, called Genius, to command them. No man, we will venture to
say, possessing common sensibility, can read 'Cola Monti,'[14] although
it is of the class of books for young people, without a thoughtful brow
and a glistening eye; and we have heard a family circle declare that
'they had found it impossible to lay down the volume till they had
finished it.'

Cola Monti is an Italian boy educated economically at a boarding-school
in England. His talent for drawing exhibited itself first in
caricatures of his companions, and he then ventured to try his hand
upon the master himself. 'This was irresistible; and when the Doctor
stood out in relief from the slate in all his peculiarities--his stiff
collar, his upright hair, and his spectacles--the likeness was such,
that the boys gave a general hurra. So much noise did they make, and so
intent were they, that no one heard the door open, until the original
of the portrait looked over Cola's shoulder and beheld--himself! It
was a terrible moment in schoolboy annals. The Doctor looked, frowned,
glanced round at the young rebels, then again at the slate. Whether it
was that natural vanity made him feel rather pleased to see the only
likeness of himself which had ever been taken, or whether Cola's sketch
had less of caricature than nature, it is impossible to say; but Doctor
Birch smiled--absolutely smiled! He was a good-tempered man, and the
boys knew it: they took advantage of it sometimes, the naughty fellows!
So the smile gradually went round, until it became a laugh, and the
schoolmaster could not help laughing too.' The boy-artist then, at the
instigation of his companions, resolved to try his chivalrous friend
and patron Archibald M'Kaye:--'Archibald looked surprised, and rather
vexed; for one of his weaknesses was, that he could not bear being
laughed at; however, he took his station. Cola finished the sketch,
but it was no caricature: it was a capital likeness of Archibald's
thoughtful head, with the soft curling hair, and the calm, serious
eyes. "Why, Cola, you ought to be an artist," cried the boys when they
saw it. Cola smiled, and his eyes kindled. "I will try!" he said in his
own heart, and from that day he drew no more caricatures.'

Cola Monti's national and personal sympathies were now strongly excited
in favour of a poor little Italian organ-boy, who was found dying
of starvation by the roadside. He had no other means of permanently
assisting him than by supplying him with drawings to sell, in the hope
of thus enabling him to collect a fund sufficient for the purchase
of a new organ, his own having been destroyed. This fund at length
amounted, by slow accumulations, to L.10 in silver; but the organ-boy,
who had become devotedly attached to his patron, could not consent to
be thus paid off. Poor Cola was now in destitution himself. His mother
had died; his stepfather refused to contribute longer to his support;
and in fact he was thrown adrift upon the world. The generous debate
between him and his protégé was terminated by both proceeding to London
upon the fortune of L.10--Cola to pursue his career of an artist, and
Seppi in the quality of his servant.

Arrived in London, 'Cola woke the next morning, dreaming that he was at
school again, and that, somehow or other, his class was all composed
of great stout farmers, who would persist in repeating their Italian
verbs with a strong Staffordshire accent. The dream vanished under the
influence of a bright sunbeam that crept through the small uncurtained
window, and just reached his nose. In London, the good-natured sun is
more partial to attic windows than to any other, and it made Cola's
tiny room quite cheerful. From thence he looked, not at the street,
which lay many feet below, but skywards, where, above the tops of the
houses, he could see the great dome of St Paul's lifting itself up,
grand and giant-like, with its ball and cross glistening in the clear
light of early morning. This was the first sight that struck Cola
in London. His artist-mind felt it to the uttermost. The numberless
streets below seemed so solemn and quiet, lying in the shadow of
the scarcely-risen sun; and though even now the sounds of life were
beginning to stir, they were but faint as yet, while over the dark and
half-awakened city watched its great temple, already illumined with
the sunbeams. It was a scene that Cola never forgot, and never will
while he lives.' He finds his way as soon as possible to the National
Gallery. 'I shall not enlarge upon the feelings of the boy-artist when
he beheld for the first time this grand collection of paintings. He
had seen many in his childhood; but the memory of them was grown dim.
He looked on these with the sensations of one blind, who re-enters a
long-forgotten world with his eyes opened. He began to understand and
to feel what Art really was. This new sense dazzled and overwhelmed
him; his heart beat wildly; he trembled; and fairly subdued with
emotion, he sat down in the darkest corner he could find, turned his
face away into the shadow, while the tears rose, large and silently, to
the long lashes, and dropped on the arm which he raised to hide them.'

Cola worked, played, and starved by turns, like other friendless
adventurers in London; and then came the grand event of his life--his
first Academy picture--which was very near being too late. 'Night and
day Cola worked, allowing himself only an hour or two for sleep, and
scarcely taking any food. His wild and desperate energy sustained him
to a degree almost miraculous. Under the influence of this terrible
excitement his powers seemed redoubled: he painted as he had never
painted before. Archibald, evening after evening, walked up from
Islington, not to talk or reason--he dared not do that in Cola's
present state--but to sit quietly in the painting-room, watching his
labours, and at times encouraging them with a few subdued words of
praise, which Cola sometimes scarcely heard. Even M'Kaye was astounded
by the almost miraculous way in which, day after day, the picture
advanced to completion beneath the young artist's hand; and as he
looked, he could not but acknowledge that there is nothing in this
world so strong, so daring, so all-powerful as genius.

'The first Monday in April came--there were but four-and-twenty hours
left; Tuesday--there were but twelve! Seppi stood by with the untasted
dinner, his bright black eyes continually filling with tears. He dared
not even speak to his young master, who, with wild and haggard looks,
was painting still.

'The clock struck six as Cola's now trembling hand put the last stroke
to his picture, and sank on a chair.

"It will do now, I think; it will not disgrace me at least."

"No, indeed it will not, dear Cola! It is a beautiful picture,"
whispered the gentle, encouraging voice of Archy, who had come direct
from Bread Street hither. "And now, do have some dinner, or, what will
be better for you, some tea."

"No, no; I can't eat: we shall lose the time: the Academy will be shut.
Seppi, I must have a cab, and go there at once."

'Archibald saw resistance would have been vain and cruel, so he quietly
suffered his friend to step into the cab, and followed him. All the
long ride to Trafalgar Square Cola did not utter a single word, but sat
motionless, with his picture in his arms. M'Kaye offered to hold it;
but the other rejected his aid with a slight motion of the head. At
last Cola relinquished this darling first-fruits of his genius with a
look something like that of a mother parting from a beloved child, and
then sank fainting into his friend's arms. That night Cola Monti was in
a brain fever.' The picture was successful, and the boy-caricaturist
grew at the same time to be an artist and a man.

Although Cola Monti, artistically speaking, is an imperfect story,
it possesses both power and promise of no ordinary kind. The power
is evident in the book itself: the promise rests upon the fact, that
the author is a young lady now struggling, by her own unaided genius,
through the stony and thorny paths of the literary profession. But we
would not have her rely upon genius alone, or consider 'Cola Monti'
as anything more than a promise or a pledge. It is like a gleam of
light disclosing partially, and for a moment, a scene which in some
measure owes its beauty and value to the mind of the beholder. It is
suggestive of high thoughts, fine aspirations, sad memories. It throws
the intellectual man back into his experiences, and impels the daring
and generous youth forward in the path of his hopes and resolves. But
in all this it relies upon those it addresses, pointing mysteriously
before and behind, and accomplishing nothing of itself. But this is
obviously owing to want of effort, not want of power. The author must
follow the example of her hero, and give her days and her nights to the
labour of her calling. She must look upon her heretofore attempts as so
many separate studies, and construct with toil and determination a work
of art not only harmonious in colouring, not only accurate in drawing,
but skilful in Design.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Cola Monti; or the Story of a Genius. By the Author of 'How to Win
Love,' 'Michael the Miner,' &c. London: Arthur Hall and Co. 1849.




LADY SETTLERS IN AUSTRALIA.


Dr Lang, in his description of the Port-Philip district, alludes to
the success which may there attend female settlers who carry on the
business of sheep-farming on their own account; and mentions the
following facts on the subject:--

'On the morning after our arrival at Geelong, Dr Thomson accompanied
me on a visit to Miss Drysdale, an elderly maiden lady from Scotland,
whose acquaintance and friendship I had had the honour of making on
my first visit to Geelong in the year 1843, when I had the pleasure
of spending a day or two under her hospitable roof. Miss Drysdale is
a lady of a highly-respectable family, and of superior intelligence,
her brother having been the late Sir William Drysdale, treasurer of
the city of Edinburgh. Having a considerable patrimony of her own,
and being of an active disposition, and fond of rural pursuits, she
had rented a large farm in Scotland, of which she superintended the
management in person; but being a martyr, as she told me, to the coughs
and colds, and other ills that flesh is heir to in our hyperborean
Scottish climate, she resolved to emigrate to a milder region, where
she might hope to enjoy better health, while she continued to indulge
in her favourite pursuits, and endeavour to exert a salutary influence
on some at least of her fellow-creatures, wherever Divine Providence
might fix her lot. And, I am happy to add, Miss Drysdale sees no reason
to regret the step she took, in pursuance of this resolution, in
emigrating to Philipsland. She has uniformly enjoyed excellent health;
she is in the midst of such scenes, and scenery, and occupations as
she delighted in at home; the property she invested in stock on her
arrival in the colony must have increased greatly during the interval
that has since elapsed; and she has not only exhibited the goodly
and influential example of a highly-respectable family living in the
fear of God, and in the zealous observance of all the ordinances of
religion, in a country in which, I am sorry to say, such examples are
rare, but she has had it in her power to render the most valuable
services to some who really required what she has proved to them--a
friend indeed. At the period of my first visit to Geelong Miss Drysdale
had two of the younger daughters of the late Mr Batman residing with
her, to whom she was benevolently discharging the duty of a parent; and
her character as a doer of good was generally known, and gratefully
acknowledged, in the vicinity.

'On her arrival in the colony, Miss Drysdale determined to "squat," as
it is styled in the phraseology of the country; that is, to settle on a
tract of unoccupied crown land, of sufficient extent for the pasturage
of considerable flocks and herds, with their increase for several
years--a tract, in all likelihood, from twenty-five to fifty square
miles in extent. For this land the occupant pays a yearly license-fee
to the government of L.10, which insures to him for the time being the
full possession of the entire tract; and it is universally understood
that while this fee is paid, and no offence committed against the laws
and the customs of squatting, the occupant shall not be disturbed,
unless the land is sold in the meantime to a _bona-fide_ purchaser, at
not less than L.1 an acre, or required for government purposes--neither
of which events is, in ordinary circumstances, at all likely to
happen. It has not been allowed, for a good many years past, to give
a squatting license of this kind to any person within a considerable
distance of a township or village; but Miss Drysdale was allowed, as a
special exception from this general rule, to occupy a station within
four miles of the town of Geelong. On that station she accordingly
erected a neat thatched cottage, with glazed rustic lattice-windows,
which she had carried out with her from home, formed a garden, and
fenced in a sufficient extent of superior land for cultivation. The
cottage had been greatly improved, both externally and internally, at
the period of my visit in 1846, and three years had made a wonderful
change for the better upon the garden, which had gravelled walks
dividing the different parterres--the only instance of the kind I had
seen in the country, and strongly reminding me of home.

'The situation of Miss Drysdale's cottage, to which she has judiciously
given the native name of the locality, Barrangoop, which signifies a
turf, is on a gentle grassy slope towards the Barwon River, with the
garden in front. The cottages of her farm-overseer and servants are
close at hand, and remind one of a respectable farming establishment in
_the old country_. On my first visit to Geelong, I found a respectable
young man, who had been three sessions at the university of Glasgow,
as an intending candidate for the Christian ministry, but who had
subsequently abandoned his studies, and gone out as a bounty emigrant
to Port Philip, acting in the humble capacity of tutor to the children
of Miss Drysdale's overseer, a respectable Scotch farmer, with a large
family. Upon the whole, there was something of a domestic character
about Miss Drysdale's establishment generally which is but rarely
seen at the squatting stations of the interior; and I could not help
thinking that the very horses and cattle seemed to consider themselves
more at home than elsewhere.

'After passing Geelong to the left, the Barwon River, which in this
part of its course is a beautiful stream, pursues a south-easterly
course, nearly parallel to that of the western arm of Port Philip, to
the great Southern Ocean. About nine or ten miles below Barrangoop
it spreads out into a series of lakes, as picturesque as any sheets
of water of that kind I have ever beheld. On my first visit to this
part of the country in 1843, I rode down to these lakes along with
Miss Newcome, another maiden lady, whom Miss Drysdale had some time
before taken into partnership with herself--partly, I presume, that she
might have some kindred spirit--which, I am happy to say, Miss Newcome
unquestionably is--to whom she might be able to whisper that "solitude
was sweet." Miss Newcome was quite at home on her high-spirited steed,
and we gallopped along through scenery of the richest description,
beautiful grassy plats alternating with clumps of trees of the most
graceful and ornamental foliage, till we reached the lakes. These
extensive sheets of glassy water, variegated with headlands and
islands, were absolutely alive with black swans, and other waterfowl,
sailing quietly along on their silent surface. There must have been
at least five hundred swans in view at one time on one of the lakes.
They were no "raræ aves" there. Their deep solitudes, however, are
effectually invaded now; for the white man will soon thin their ranks
in all probability, and force them to retreat before the progress of
civilisation.'




SCOTTISH BANKING.


There is now reason to think that in pursuit of this object our
Scottish neighbours have got considerably ahead of us here in England.
The subject, indeed, seems congenial to the shrewd faculties of our
northern fellow-countrymen. The founder of the Bank of England was
a Scotchman: a native of the same country originated the idea of
the Savings' Bank: and for a long period of time the facilities and
accommodations of banking have been known and practised beyond the
Tweed to an extent very much above what has been attained in this
country. Here banks may be said to exist solely or chiefly for the
wealthier classes of society; in Scotland the advantages which they
afford are widely diffused among the middle ranks, and are shared in
a large measure by the petty capitalists and retail traders of the
towns and villages. As a proof of the great extension of the system,
we find that throughout Scotland there is a bank for every 7500 of the
population--in some districts for every 5000. In London, the proportion
is stated to be only 1 for every 32,894; in some parts of England 1
for every 16,000. The rapid progress in wealth and civilisation which
has been made by a country naturally so poor and sterile, has been
attributed by many sagacious observers to the multiplication of its
banks, and to the facilities afforded by them. Capital has been made
to stimulate industry in a double ratio, by the increased activity
and quickened speed with which it circulates through the channels of
commerce. Above all, this great desideratum has been attained without
any sacrifice of the other prime requisite of sound banking--stability.
Within the last century and a-half it is computed that the loss to the
community in Scotland by the failure of the four or five public banks
which have stopped payment has not exceeded L.26,000. In England,
during a much shorter period, the loss occasioned by those fearful
catastrophes, both in London and in the country, with which experience
has made us familiar, has certainly exceeded as many millions. It
is also a fact of much significance, that in 1793, in 1825, and in
the late crisis of 1847, the Scottish banks rode out the storm which
proved fatal to so many English establishments. It seems, therefore,
no undue claim which is set up on the part of our northern neighbours,
to a better knowledge and more mature development of the principles
of banking than have been attained in this country.--_Morning
Chronicle._--[There is no more than justice done, as we believe, to
Scotch banking in this paragraph. During the last twenty years and
upwards, there have been many banks set up in England _on the Scotch
principle_, as it is called; but there have been many noted failures
among them. The fact is, that in England they introduce every feature
of Scottish banking _except the Scotch brains by which banking has
been so successfully conducted_. It is true Scotchmen have been got
to act as managers, secretaries, and cashiers; but what were all
these in the hands of a set of English directors, who necessarily
hold the chief sway? In an English joint-stock bank, the bulk of the
funds of the company will be found ventured out in the hands of a
few grand speculators, on whose good or bad fortune the fate of the
establishment depends. No such thing was ever done in a Scotch bank,
from the beginning down to this day. On the contrary, the life of the
institution lies in a quick circulation and frequent turning over of a
moderate capital amongst a _multitude of traders of good credit_. The
capital of an English joint-stock bank too often is an African river
losing itself in sands: that of a Scotch bank is a river dispersed in
a thousand channels of irrigation, to reappear in its entire form,
and with increased volume, after it has done its work. We do not
believe, after all, that there is any great witchcraft about banking
in Scotland. The prudence shown there is no more than what might be
expected of rational men. The failures in England are to be accounted
for not by their want of some extraordinary gift which chances to have
been vouchsafed to their northern neighbours, but by the fact, that
England is full of people hastening over-much to be rich, and in whose
circumstances there are of course great vicissitudes. If ever England
shall cool a little in Mammon-worship, and pursue business objects with
the moderation of the Scottish mind, it may succeed in joint-stock
banking to as great an extent as Scotland has done.]




PROFESSIONAL LIFE.


I cannot give you, my young friends, a better description of a
successful professional struggle, and the wear and tear of life,
than that which the commentary of Dr Johnson upon the life of
Cheyne affords. It is drawn by the graphic pen of the late editor
of the 'Medico-Chirurgical Review,' an eloquent Irishman, himself a
successful struggler. He adds--'We have followed Cheyne in his march
up-hill--we see him at its summit--we are to see him going down. Such
are the objects of human desires--sought with avidity--obtained with
difficulty--enjoyed with disappointment--and often, in themselves, the
source of irreparable evils. _Success_ in a profession now-a-days has
entailed, and entails, such labour on its possessor, that few who know
its real nature can envy it. Success means wealth and eminence bought
with the sacrifice of all healthy recreation both of body and mind. The
daily toil is relieved only by the nightly anxiety; and, worn by almost
uninterrupted exertion, the _fortunate_ man is deprived of most of the
social pleasures of life, and debarred from indulgence in its most
cherished affections. He acquires property, loses his health, and often
leaves the wealth of his industry to be squandered by children whom it
demoralises.' Besides all this, remember that it has been truly said,
in the most elevated position there is the least liberty, because that
very elevation invites observation, and excites _envy_. That merit and
that ability which would have carried a man successfully through the
crowd, will be found insufficient for him who is the object of general
scrutiny. You should recollect, gentlemen, that even the position won
by merit and ability may be lost by a want of that continued energy
and persevering struggle which overcame all the obstacles opposed to
your pioneering ascent. The champion in our profession, like in that
of Christianity, must be ever progressing. A fall from an eminence is
always perilous--in the medical sphere, _fatal_ to _fame_. The world,
in respect to our calling, may be esteemed as a school; the boy who has
obtained head place must labour assiduously to _retain_ that position
against his less fortunate competitors. Remember that sympathy is
enlisted for the swimmer to the shore, against the buffeting billows,
rather than for the individual who had encountered the same obstacles,
the same dangers, and the same difficulties, but who has now apparently
surmounted and escaped all.--_Lecture by Dr Hayden._




MRS FRY'S RULES.


1. Never lose any time: I do not think that lost which is spent in
amusement or recreation some time every day; but always be in the habit
of being employed. 2. Never err the least in truth. 3. Never say an
ill thing of a person when thou canst say a good thing of him; not
only speak charitably, but feel so. 4. Never be irritable or unkind to
anybody. 5. Never indulge thyself in luxuries that are not necessary.
6. Do all things with consideration, and when the path to act right is
most difficult, feel confidence in that Power alone which is able to
assist thee, and exert thy own powers as far as they go.--_Memoir of
Elizabeth Fry._




SONNET.

BY CALDER CAMPBELL.


    Too much--too much we make Earth's shadows fall
      Across our thoughts, neglecting, in the dark,
      The sunshine we might woo in lane or park,
    By listening to the hopeful skylark's call!
    We fear too much, and hope too little: all
      That's threatened is not lost: each one an ark
    Of safety well might build, if he a wall
      Would raise 'twixt rashness and despair! The lark
    Soars bravely towards the sun--but not too high;
      And we, like it, should dare and do; but dare
      As soldiers, urged by courage, not despair,
    To win a wise and bloodless victory:
      Though Life shrinks back before its vassal--Death;
      We know it springs again, undimmed by mortal breath!




ROUGET DE L'ISLE AND THE 'MARSEILLAISE.'


There appeared recently in this Journal the _fabulous_ account of
the origin of the 'Marseillaise:' the following is said to be the
_fact_:--In April 1792, at the opening of the campaign against Austria
and Prussia, Rouget de l'Isle was a captain of engineers stationed at
Strasburg. The day before the volunteers from that city were about to
join the main army of the Rhine, M. Dietrich, mayor of the city, gave
an entertainment, at which Rouget de l'Isle and several other officers
were present. A question arose as to what air should be played on the
departure of the new levies; and it was thought desirable that some
appropriate and spirited national song should be chosen. Various pieces
having been tried and rejected as unsuitable to the occasion, Rouget de
l'Isle left the company, retired to his own rooms, and in the course
of the evening wrote the words and music of 'Le Chant de l'Armée du
Rhin.' Before the party at the _mairie_ broke up, he returned with his
composition. Mademoiselle Dietrich accompanied him on the piano, and
he sang the inspiriting song to the delight of all present. It was
immediately put in rehearsal, played at parade the next day, and its
popularity at once established. Gradually it spread through France,
the Marseillais sang it on entering Paris, and the name it now bears
was irrevocably substituted for the original title. It was produced
on the stage of the Opera at Paris in October 1792, much in the style
in which Rachel gave it in 1848, and was received by the audience as
enthusiastically as it had been by the populace.




PICKING UP THOUGHTS.


Boys, you have heard of blacksmiths who became mayors and magistrates
of towns and cities, and men of great wealth and influence. What was
the secret of their success? Why, they picked up nails and pins in
the street, and carried them home in the pockets of their waistcoats.
Now, you must pick up thoughts in the same way, and fill your mind
with them; and they will grow into other thoughts almost while you are
asleep. The world is full of thoughts, and you will find them strewed
everywhere in your path.--_Elihu Burritt._




CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE.

CLASSICAL SERIES,

WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES IN ENGLISH.

_Edited by Dr Zumpt, of the University of Berlin, and Dr Schmitz,
Rector of the High School, Edinburgh._


_Now Published,_

 Latin Grammar,                                       3_s_  6_d_
 C. Julii Caesaris Commentarii de Bello Gallico,      2_s_  6_d_
 P. Virgilii Maronis Carmina,                         4_s_  6_d_
 C. Sallustii Crispi Catilina et Jugurtha,            2_s_  0_d_
 Q. Curtius Rufus, de Gestis Alexandri Magni,         3_s_  6_d_
 M. Tullii Ciceronis Orationes Selectae XII.,         3_s_  6_d_

    ⁂ Other works in preparation.

       *       *       *       *       *

Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, High Street, Edinburgh. Also sold by
    D. CHAMBERS, 20 Argyle Street, Glasgow; W. S. ORR, 147 Strand,
    London; and J. M'GLASHAN, 21 D'Olier Street, Dublin.--Printed
    by W. & R. CHAMBERS, Edinburgh.

       *       *       *       *       *

Transcriber's note--the following changes have been made to this text:

Page 332: painsfully to painfully.






End of Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No.308, by Various



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