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Title: Memorials and Other Papers — Volume 1

Author: Thomas De Quincey

Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6169]
                Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

Credits: Anne Soulard, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMORIALS AND OTHER PAPERS — VOLUME 1 ***




Anne Soulard, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team.



MEMORIALS, AND OTHER PAPERS, VOL. I.

BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY




FROM THE AUTHOR, TO THE AMERICAN EDITOR OF HIS WORKS.



These papers I am anxious to put into the hands of your house, and, so
far as regards the U.S., of your house exclusively; not with any view
to further emolument, but as an acknowledgment of the services which you
have already rendered me; namely, first, in having brought together so
widely scattered a collection--a difficulty which in my own hands by
too painful an experience I had found from nervous depression to be
absolutely insurmountable; secondly, in having made me a participator in
the pecuniary profits of the American edition, without solicitation or
the shadow of any expectation on my part, without any legal claim that
I could plead, or equitable warrant in established usage, solely and
merely upon your own spontaneous motion. Some of these new papers, I
hope, will not be without their value in the eyes of those who have
taken an interest in the original series. But at all events, good or
bad, they are now tendered to the appropriation of your individual
house, the Messrs. TICKNOR & FIELDS, according to the amplest extent of
any power to make such a transfer that I may be found to possess by law
or custom in America.

I wish this transfer were likely to be of more value. But the veriest
trifle, interpreted by the spirit in which I offer it, may express my
sense of the liberality manifested throughout this transaction by your
honorable house.

Ever believe me, my dear sir,

Your faithful and obliged,

THOMAS DE QUINCEY.




CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.



EXPLANATORY NOTICES THE ORPHAN HEIRESS.  VISIT TO LAXTON
  THE PRIORY
OXFORD THE PAGAN ORACLES THE REVOLUTION OF GREECE




EXPLANATORY NOTICES.



Many of the papers in my collected works were originally written under
one set of disadvantages, and are now revised under another. They were
written generally under great pressure as to time, in order to catch the
critical periods of monthly journals; written oftentimes at a distance
from the press (so as to have no opportunity for correction); and always
written at a distance from libraries, so that very many statements,
references, and citations, were made on the authority of my unassisted
memory. Under such circumstances were most of the papers composed; and
they are now reissued in a corrected form, sometimes even partially
recast, under the distraction of a nervous misery which embarrasses my
efforts in a mode and in a degree inexpressible by words. Such, indeed,
is the distress produced by this malady, that, if the present act of
republication had in any respect worn the character of an experiment, I
should have shrunk from it in despondency. But the experiment, so far
as there was any, had been already tried for me vicariously amongst the
Americans; a people so nearly repeating our own in style of intellect,
and in the composition of their reading class, that a success amongst
them counts for a success amongst ourselves. For some few of the
separate papers in these volumes I make pretensions of a higher cast.
These pretensions I will explain hereafter. All the rest I resign to the
reader's unbiased judgment, adding here, with respect to four of them,
a few prefatory words--not of propitiation or deprecation, but simply
in explanation as to points that would otherwise be open to
misconstruction.

1. The paper on "Murder as one of the Fine Arts" [Footnote: Published
in the "Miscellaneous Essays."] seemed to exact from me some account of
Williams, the dreadful London murderer of the last generation; not only
because the amateurs had so much insisted on his merit as the supreme of
artists for grandeur of design and breadth of style; and because, apart
from this momentary connection with my paper, the man himself merited
a record for his matchless audacity, combined with so much of snaky
subtlety, and even insinuating amiableness, in his demeanor; but also
because, apart from the man himself, the works of the man (those two of
them especially which so profoundly impressed the nation in 1812) were
in themselves, for dramatic effect, the most impressive on record.
Southey pronounced their preeminence when he said to me that they ranked
amongst the few domestic events which, by the depth and the expansion
of horror attending them, had risen to the dignity of a _national_
interest. I may add that this interest benefited also by the mystery
which invested the murders; mystery as to various points but especially
as respected one important question, Had the murderer any accomplice?
[Footnote: Upon a large overbalance of probabilities, it was, however,
definitively agreed amongst amateurs that Williams must have been alone
in these atrocities. Meantime, amongst the colorable presumptions on
the other side was this:--Some hours after the last murder, a man was
apprehended at Barnet (the first stage from London on a principal
north road), encumbered with a quantity of plate. How he came by it,
or whither he was going, he steadfastly refused to say. In the daily
journals, which he was allowed to see, he read with eagerness the
police examinations of Williams; and on the same day which announced the
catastrophe of Williams, he also committed suicide in his cell.] There
was, therefore, reason enough, both in the man's hellish character,
and in the mystery which surrounded him, for a Postscript [Footnote:
Published in the "Note Book."] to the original paper; since, in a lapse
of forty-two years, both the man and his deeds had faded away from the
knowledge of the present generation; but still I am sensible that my
record is far too diffuse. Feeling this at the very time of writing,
I was yet unable to correct it; so little self-control was I able
to exercise under the afflicting agitations and the unconquerable
impatience of my nervous malady.

2. "War." [Footnote: Published in "Narrative and Miscellaneous
Essays."]--In this paper, from having faultily adjusted its proportions
in the original outline, I find that I have dwelt too briefly and too
feebly upon the capital interest at stake. To apply a correction to
some popular misreadings of history, to show that the criminal (because
trivial) occasions of war are not always its true causes, or to suggest
that war (if resigned to its own natural movement of progress) is
cleansing itself and ennobling itself constantly and inevitably, were it
only through its connection with science ever more and more exquisite,
and through its augmented costliness,--all this may have its use in
offering some restraint upon the levity of action or of declamation in
Peace Societies. But all this is below the occasion. I feel that far
grander interests are at stake in this contest. The Peace Societies
are falsely appreciated, when they are described as merely deaf to the
lessons of experience, and as too "_romantic_" in their expectations.
The very opposite is, to _my_ thinking, their criminal reproach. He that
is romantic errs usually by too much elevation. He violates the standard
of reasonable expectation, by drawing too violently upon the nobilities
of human nature. But, on the contrary, the Peace Societies would, if
their power kept pace with their guilty purposes, work degradation for
man by drawing upon his most effeminate and luxurious cravings for ease.
Most heartily, and with my profoundest sympathy, do I go along with
Wordsworth in his grand lyrical proclamation of a truth not less divine
than it is mysterious, not less triumphant than it is sorrowful, namely,
that amongst God's holiest instruments for the elevation of human
nature is "mutual slaughter" amongst men; yes, that "Carnage is
God's daughter." Not deriving my own views in this matter from
Wordsworth,--not knowing even whether I hold them on the same grounds,
since Wordsworth has left _his_ grounds unexplained,--nevertheless
I cite them in honor, as capable of the holiest justification. The
instruments rise in grandeur, carnage and mutual slaughter rise in
holiness, exactly as the motives and the interests rise on behalf of
which such awful powers are invoked. Fighting for truth in its last
recesses of sanctity, for human dignity systematically outraged, or
for human rights mercilessly trodden under foot--champions of such
interests, men first of all descry, as from a summit suddenly revealed,
the possible grandeur of bloodshed suffered or inflicted. Judas and
Simon Maccabæus in days of old, Gustavus Adolphus [Footnote: The
Thirty Years' War, from 1618 to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, was
notoriously the last and the decisive conflict between Popery and
Protestantism; the result of that war it was which finally enlightened
all the Popish princes of Christendom as to the impossibility of
ever suppressing the antagonist party by mere force of arms. I am
not meaning, however, to utter any opinion whatever on the religious
position of the two great parties. It is sufficient for entire sympathy
with the royal Swede, that he fought for the freedom of conscience. Many
an enlightened Roman Catholic, supposing only that he were not a Papist,
would have given his hopes and his confidence to the Protestant king.]
in modern days, fighting for the violated rights of conscience
against perfidious despots and murdering oppressors, exhibit to us
the incarnations of Wordsworth's principle. Such wars are of rare
occurrence. Fortunately they are so; since, under the possible
contingencies of human strength and weakness, it might else happen
that the grandeur of the principle should suffer dishonor through the
incommensurate means for maintaining it. But such cases, though emerging
rarely, are always to be reserved in men's minds as ultimate appeals to
what is most divine in man. Happy it is for human welfare that the
blind heart of man is a thousand times wiser than his understanding. An
_arrière pensée_ should lie hidden in all minds--a holy reserve as to
cases which _may_ arise similar to such as HAVE arisen, where a merciful
bloodshed [Footnote: "_Merciful bloodshed_"--In reading either the later
religious wars of the Jewish people under the Maccabees, or the earlier
under Joshua, every philosophic reader will have felt the true and
transcendent spirit of mercy which resides virtually in such wars, as
maintaining the unity of God against Polytheism and, by trampling
on cruel idolatries, as indirectly opening the channels for benign
principles of morality through endless generations of men. Here
especially he will have read one justification of Wordsworth's bold
doctrine upon war. Thus far he will destroy a wisdom working from afar,
but, as regards the immediate present, he will be apt to adopt the
ordinary view, namely, that in the Old Testament severity prevails
approaching to cruelty. Yet, on consideration, he will be disposed
to qualify this opinion. He will have observed many indications of a
relenting kindness and a tenderness of love in the Mosaical ordinances.
And recently there has been suggested another argument tending to the
same conclusion. In the last work of Mr. Layard ('Discoveries in the
Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1853') are published some atrocious
monuments of the Assyrian cruelty in the treatment of military captives.
In one of the plates of Chap xx., at page 456, is exhibited some unknown
torture applied to the head, and in another, at page 458, is exhibited
the abominable process, applied to two captives, of flaying them alive.
One such case had been previously recorded in human literature, and
illustrated by a plate. It occurs in a Dutch voyage to the islands of
the East. The subject of the torment in that case as a woman who had
been charged with some act of infidelity to her husband. And the local
government, being indignantly summoned to interfere by some Christian
strangers, had declined to do so, on the plea that the man was master
within his own house. But the Assyrian case was worse. This torture was
there applied, not upon a sudden vindictive impulse, but in cold blood,
to a simple case apparently of civil disobedience or revolt. Now, when
we consider how intimate, and how ancient, was the connection between
Assyria and Palestine, how many things (in war especially) were
transferred mediately through the intervening tribes (all habitually
cruel), from the people on the Tigris to those on the Jordan, I
feel convinced that Moses must have interfered most peremptorily and
determinately, and not merely by verbal ordinances, but by establishing
counter usages against this spirit of barbarity, otherwise it would have
increased contagiously, whereas we meet with no such hellish atrocities
amongst the children of Israel. In the case of one memorable outrage by
a Hebrew tribe, the national vengeance which overtook it was complete
and tearful beyond all that history has recorded] has been authorized
by the express voice of God. Such a reserve cannot be dispensed with. It
belongs to the principle of progress in man that he should forever keep
open a secret commerce in the last resort with the spirit of martyrdom
on behalf of man's most saintly interests. In proportion as the
instruments for upholding or retrieving such saintly interests should
come to be dishonored or less honored, would the inference be valid that
those interests were shaking in their foundations. And any confederation
or compact of nations for abolishing war would be the inauguration of a
downward path for man.

A battle is by possibility the grandest, and also the meanest, of human
exploits. It is the grandest when it is fought for godlike truth, for
human dignity, or for human rights; it is the meanest when it is fought
for petty advantages (as, by way of example, for accession of territory
which adds nothing to the security of a frontier), and still more when
it is fought simply as a gladiator's trial of national prowess. This is
the principle upon which, very naturally, our British school-boys value
a battle. Painful it is to add, that this is the principle upon which
our adult neighbors the French seem to value a battle.

To any man who, like myself, admires the high-toned, martial gallantry
of the French, and pays a cheerful tribute of respect to their many
intellectual triumphs, it is painful to witness the childish state of
feeling which the French people manifest on every possible question
that connects itself at any point with martial pretensions. A battle
is valued by them on the same principles, not better and not worse, as
govern our own schoolboys. Every battle is viewed by the boys as a
test applied to the personal prowess of each individual soldier; and,
naturally amongst boys, it would be the merest hypocrisy to take any
higher ground. But amongst adults, arrived at the power of reflecting
and comparing, we look for something nobler. We English estimate
Waterloo, not by its amount of killed and wounded, but as the battle
which terminated a series of battles, having one common object, namely,
the overthrow of a frightful tyranny. A great sepulchral shadow rolled
away from the face of Christendom as that day's sun went down to his
rest; for, had the success been less absolute, an opportunity would have
offered for negotiation, and consequently for an infinity of intrigues
through the feuds always gathering upon national jealousies amongst
allied armies. The dragon would soon have healed his wounds; after which
the prosperity of the despotism would have been greater than before.
But, without reference to Waterloo in particular, _we_, on _our_ part,
find it impossible to contemplate any memorable battle otherwise than
according to its tendency towards some commensurate object. To the
French this must be impossible, seeing that no lofty (that is, no
disinterested) purpose has ever been so much as counterfeited for a
French war, nor therefore for a French battle. Aggression, cloaked at
the very utmost in the garb of retaliation for counter aggressions
on the part of the enemy, stands forward uniformly in the van of such
motives as it is thought worth while to plead. But in French casuistry
it is not held necessary to plead _any_thing; war justifies itself. To
fight for the experimental purpose of trying the proportions of martial
merit, but (to speak frankly) for the purpose of publishing and renewing
to Europe the proclamation of French superiority--_that_ is the object
of French wars. Like the Spartan of old, the Frenchman would hold that
a state of peace, and not a state of war, is the state which calls for
apology; and that already from the first such an apology must wear a
very suspicious aspect of paradox.

3. "The English Mail-Coach." [Footnote: Published in the "Miscellaneous
Essays."]--This little paper, according to my original intention,
formed part of the "Suspiria de Profundis," from which, for a momentary
purpose, I did not scruple to detach it, and to publish it apart, as
sufficiently intelligible even when dislocated from its place in
a larger whole. To my surprise, however, one or two critics, not
carelessly in conversation, but deliberately in print, professed their
inability to apprehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow the links
of the connection between its several parts. I am myself as little
able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking
obscurity, as those critics found themselves to unravel my logic.
Possibly I may not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. I
will therefore sketch a brief abstract of the little paper according to
my own original design, and then leave the reader to judge how far this
design is kept in sight through the actual execution.

Thirty-seven years ago, or rather more, accident made me, in the dead
of night, and of a night memorably solemn, the solitary witness to an
appalling scene, which threatened instant death, in a shape the most
terrific, to two young people, whom I had no means of assisting, except
in so far as I was able to give them a most hurried warning of their
danger; but even _that_ not until they stood within the very shadow
of the catastrophe, being divided from the most frightful of deaths by
scarcely more, if more at all, than seventy seconds.

Such was the scene, such in its outline, from which the whole of this
paper radiates as a natural expansion. The scene is circumstantially
narrated in Section the Second, entitled, "The Vision of Sudden Death."

But a movement of horror and of spontaneous recoil from this dreadful
scene naturally carried the whole of that scene, raised and idealised,
into my dreams, and very soon into a rolling succession of dreams.
The actual scene, as looked down upon from the box of the mail, was
transformed into a dream, as tumultuous and changing as a musical fugue.
This troubled Dream is circumstantially reported in Section the Third,
entitled, "Dream-Fugue upon the Theme of Sudden Death." What I had
beheld from my seat upon the mail,--the scenical strife of action and
passion, of anguish and fear, as I had there witnessed them moving in
ghostly silence; this duel between life and death narrowing itself to a
point of such exquisite evanescence as the collision neared,--all these
elements of the scene blended, under the law of association, with
the previous and permanent features of distinction investing the mail
itself, which features at that time lay--1st, in velocity unprecedented;
2dly, in the power and beauty of the horses: 3dly, in the official
connection with the government of a great nation; and, 4thly, in the
function, almost a consecrated function, of publishing and diffusing
through the land the great political events, and especially the great
battles during a conflict of unparalleled grandeur. These honorary
distinctions are all described circumstantially in the FIRST or
introductory section ("The Glory of Motion"). The three first were
distinctions maintained at all times; but the fourth and grandest
belonged exclusively to the war with Napoleon; and this it was
which most naturally introduced Waterloo into the dream. Waterloo, I
understood, was the particular feature of the "Dream-Fugue" which my
censors were least able to account for. Yet surely Waterloo, which, in
common with every other great battle, it had been our special privilege
to publish over all the land, most naturally entered the Dream under the
license of our privilege. If not--if there be anything amiss--let the
Dream be responsible. The Dream is a law to itself; and as well quarrel
with a rainbow for showing, or for _not_ showing, a secondary arch.
So far as I know, every element in the shifting movements of the Dream
derived itself either primarily from the incidents of the actual scene,
or from secondary features associated with the mail. For example, the
cathedral aisle derived itself from the mimic combination of features
which grouped themselves together at the point of approaching collision,
namely, an arrow-like section of the road, six hundred yards long,
under the solemn lights described, with lofty trees meeting overhead in
arches. The guard's horn, again--a humble instrument in itself--was yet
glorified as the organ of publication for so many great national
events. And the incident of the Dying Trumpeter, who rises from a marble
bas-relief, and carries a marble trumpet to his marble lips for the
purpose of warning the female infant, was doubtless secretly suggested
by my own imperfect effort to seize the guard's horn, and to blow a
warning blast. But the Dream knows best; and the Dream, I say again, is
the responsible party.

4. "The Spanish Nun." [Footnote: Published in "Narrative and
Miscellaneous Essays."]--There are some narratives, which, though pure
fictions from first to last, counterfeit so vividly the air of grave
realities, that, if deliberately offered for such, they would for a time
impose upon everybody. In the opposite scale there are other narratives,
which, whilst rigorously true, move amongst characters and scenes so
remote from our ordinary experience, and through, a state of society
so favorable to an adventurous cast of incidents, that they would
everywhere pass for romances, if severed from the documents which attest
their fidelity to facts. In the former class stand the admirable
novels of De Foe; and, on a lower range, within the same category, the
inimitable "Vicar of Wakefield;" upon which last novel, without at all
designing it, I once became the author of the following instructive
experiment. I had given a copy of this little novel to a beautiful girl
of seventeen, the daughter of a statesman in Westmoreland, not designing
any deception (nor so much as any concealment) with respect to the
fictitious character of the incidents and of the actors in that famous
tale. Mere accident it was that had intercepted those explanations as to
the extent of fiction in these points which in this case it would
have been so natural to make. Indeed, considering the exquisite
verisimilitude of the work meeting with such absolute inexperience in
the reader, it was almost a duty to have made them. This duty, however,
something had caused me to forget; and when next I saw the young
mountaineer, I forgot that I _had_ forgotten it. Consequently, at first
I was perplexed by the unfaltering gravity with which my fair young
friend spoke of Dr. Primrose, of Sophia and her sister, of Squire
Thornhill, &c., as real and probably living personages, who could sue
and be sued. It appeared that this artless young rustic, who had never
heard of novels and romances as a bare possibility amongst all the
shameless devices of London swindlers, had read with religious fidelity
every word of this tale, so thoroughly life-like, surrendering her
perfect faith and her loving sympathy to the different persons in the
tale, and the natural distresses in which they are involved, without
suspecting, for a moment, that by so much as a breathing of exaggeration
or of embellishment the pure gospel truth of the narrative could have
been sullied. She listened, in a kind of breathless stupor, to my frank
explanation--that not part only, but the whole, of this natural tale
was a pure invention. Scorn and indignation flashed from her eyes. She
regarded herself as one who had been hoaxed and swindled; begged me
to take back the book; and never again, to the end of her life, could
endure to look into the book, or to be reminded of that criminal
imposture which Dr. Oliver Goldsmith had practised upon her youthful
credulity.

In that case, a book altogether fabulous, and not meaning to offer
itself for anything else, had been read as genuine history. Here, on the
other hand, the adventures of the Spanish Nun, which in every detail of
time and place have since been sifted and authenticated, stood a good
chance at one period of being classed as the most lawless of romances.
It is, indeed, undeniable, and this arises as a natural result from the
bold, adventurous character of the heroine, and from the unsettled state
of society at that period in Spanish America, that a reader the most
credulous would at times be startled with doubts upon what seems so
unvarying a tenor of danger and lawless violence. But, on the other
hand, it is also undeniable that a reader the most obstinately sceptical
would be equally startled in the very opposite direction, on remarking
that the incidents are far from being such as a romance-writer would
have been likely to invent; since, if striking, tragic, and even
appalling, they are at times repulsive. And it seems evident that, once
putting himself to the cost of a wholesale fiction, the writer would
have used his privilege more freely for his own advantage. Whereas the
author of these memoirs clearly writes under the coercion and restraint
of a _notorious reality_, that would not suffer him to ignore or to
modify the leading facts. Then, as to the objection that few people
or none have an experience presenting such uniformity of perilous
adventure, a little closer attention shows that the experience in this
case is _not_ uniform; and so far otherwise, that a period of several
years in Kate's South American life is confessedly suppressed; and on
no other ground whatever than that this long parenthesis is _not_
adventurous, not essentially differing from the monotonous character of
ordinary Spanish life.

Suppose the case, therefore, that Kate's memoirs had been thrown upon
the world with no vouchers for their authenticity beyond such internal
presumptions as would have occurred to thoughtful readers, when
reviewing the entire succession of incidents, I am of opinion that the
person best qualified by legal experience to judge of evidence
would finally have pronounced a favorable award; since it is easy to
understand that in a world so vast as the Peru, the Mexico, the Chili,
of Spaniards during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, and
under the slender modification of Indian manners as yet effected by the
Papal Christianization of those countries, and in the neighborhood of
a river-system so awful, of a mountain-system so unheard-of in Europe,
there would probably, by blind, unconscious sympathy, grow up a tendency
to lawless and gigantesque ideals of adventurous life; under which,
united with the duelling code of Europe, many things would become
trivial and commonplace experiences that to us home-bred English ("_qui
musas colimus severiores_") seem monstrous and revolting.

Left, therefore, to itself, _my_ belief is, that the story of the
Military Nun would have prevailed finally against the demurs of the
sceptics. However, in the mean time, all such demurs were suddenly and
_officially_ silenced forever. Soon after the publication of Kate's
memoirs, in what you may call an early stage of her _literary_ career,
though two centuries after her _personal_ career had closed, a regular
controversy arose upon the degree of credit due to these extraordinary
confessions (such they may be called) of the poor conscience-haunted
nun. Whether these in Kate's original MS. were entitled "Autobiographic
Sketches," or "Selections Grave and Gay," from the military experiences
of a Nun, or possibly "The Confessions of a Biscayan Fire-Eater," is
more than I know. No matter: confessions they were; and confessions
that, when at length published, were absolutely mobbed and hustled by
a gang of misbelieving (that is, _miscreant_) critics. And this fact is
most remarkable, that the person who originally headed the incredulous
party, namely, Senor de Ferrer, a learned Castilian, was the very same
who finally authenticated, by _documentary_ evidence, the extraordinary
narrative in those parts which had most of all invited scepticism. The
progress of the dispute threw the decision at length upon the archives
of the Spanish Marine. Those for the southern ports of Spain had been
transferred, I believe, from Cadiz and St. Lucar to Seville; chiefly,
perhaps, through the confusions incident to the two French invasions of
Spain in our own day [1st, that under Napoleon; 2dly, that under the
Due d'Angoulême]. Amongst these archives, subsequently amongst those of
Cuzco, in South America; 3dly, amongst the records of some royal courts
in Madrid; 4thly, by collateral proof from the Papal Chancery; 5thly,
from Barcelona--have been drawn together ample attestations of all the
incidents recorded by Kate. The elopement from St. Sebastian's, the
doubling of Cape Horn, the shipwreck on the coast of Peru, the rescue of
the royal banner from the Indians of Chili, the fatal duel in the dark,
the astonishing passage of the Andes, the tragical scenes at Tucuman and
Cuzco, the return to Spain in obedience to a royal and a papal summons,
the visit to Rome and the interview with the Pope--finally, the return
to South America, and the mysterious disappearance at Vera Cruz, upon
which no light was ever thrown--all these capital heads of the
narrative have been established beyond the reach of scepticism: and,
in consequence, the story was soon after adopted as historically
established, and was reported at length by journals of the highest
credit in Spain and Germany, and by a Parisian journal so cautious and
so distinguished for its ability as the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.

I must not leave the impression upon my readers that this complex body
of documentary evidences has been searched and appraised by myself.
Frankly I acknowledge that, on the sole occasion when any opportunity
offered itself for such a labor, I shrank from it as too fatiguing--and
also as superfluous; since, if the proofs had satisfied the compatriots
of Catalina, who came to the investigation with hostile feelings of
partisanship, and not dissembling their incredulity,--armed also (and in
Mr. de Ferrer's case conspicuously armed) with the appropriate learning
for giving effect to this incredulity,--it could not become a stranger
to suppose himself qualified for disturbing a judgment that had been
so deliberately delivered. Such a tribunal of native Spaniards being
satisfied, there was no further opening for demur. The ratification of
poor Kate's memoirs is now therefore to be understood as absolute, and
without reserve.

This being stated,--namely, such an attestation from competent
authorities to the truth of Kate's narrative as may save all readers
from my fair Westmoreland friend's disaster,--it remains to give such an
answer, as without further research _can_ be given, to a question pretty
sure of arising in all reflective readers' thoughts--namely, does there
anywhere survive a portrait of Kate? I answer--and it would be both
mortifying and perplexing if I could _not_--_Yes_. One such portrait
there is confessedly; and seven years ago this was to be found at
Aix-la-Chapelle, in the collection of Herr Sempeller. The name of
the artist I am not able to report; neither can I say whether
Herr Sempeller's collection still remains intact, and remains at
Aix-la-Chapelle.

But inevitably to most readers who review the circumstances of a case so
extraordinary, it will occur that beyond a doubt _many_ portraits of the
adventurous nun must have been executed. To have affronted the wrath of
the Inquisition, and to have survived such an audacity, would of itself
be enough to found a title for the martial nun to a national interest.
It is true that Kate had not taken the veil; she had stopped short
of the deadliest crime known to the Inquisition; but still her
transgressions were such as to require a special indulgence; and this
indulgence was granted by a Pope to the intercession of a king--the
greatest then reigning. It was a favor that could not have been asked
by any greater man in this world, nor granted by any less. Had no other
distinction settled upon Kate, this would have been enough to fix the
gaze of her own nation. But her whole life constituted Kate's supreme
distinction. There can be no doubt, therefore, that, from the year 1624
(that is, the last year of our James I.), she became the object of
an admiration in her own country that was almost idolatrous. And this
admiration was not of a kind that rested upon any partisan-schism
amongst her countrymen. So long as it was kept alive by her bodily
presence amongst them, it was an admiration equally aristocratic and
popular,--shared alike by the rich and the poor, by the lofty and the
humble. Great, therefore, would be the demand for her portrait. There
is a tradition that Velasquez, who had in 1623 executed a portrait of
Charles I. (then Prince of Wales), was amongst those who in the three
or four following years ministered to this demand. It is believed, also,
that, in travelling from Genoa and Florence to Rome, she sat to various
artists, in order to meet the interest about herself already rising
amongst the cardinals and other dignitaries of the Romish church. It is
probable, therefore, that numerous pictures of Kate are yet lurking
both in Spain and Italy, but not known as such. For, as the public
consideration granted to her had grown out of merits and qualities
purely personal, and was kept alive by no local or family memorials
rooted in the land, or surviving herself, it was inevitable that, as
soon as she herself died, all identification of her portraits would
perish: and the portraits would thenceforwards be confounded with the
similar memorials, past all numbering, which every year accumulates as
the wrecks from household remembrances of generations that are passing
or passed, that are fading or faded, that are dying or buried. It is
well, therefore, amongst so many irrecoverable ruins, that, in
the portrait at Aix-la-Chapelle, we still possess one undoubted
representation (and therefore in some degree a means for identifying
_other_ representations) of a female so memorably adorned by nature;
gifted with capacities so unparalleled both of doing and suffering;
who lived a life so stormy, and perished by a fate so unsearchably
mysterious.




THE ORPHAN HEIRESS

I.

VISIT TO LAXTON.



My route, after parting from Lord Westport at Birmingham, lay, as I have
mentioned in the "Autobiographic Sketches," through Stamford to Laxton,
the Northamptonshire seat of Lord Carbery. From Stamford, which I
had reached by some intolerable old coach, such as in those days too
commonly abused the patience and long-suffering of Young England, I
took a post-chaise to Laxton. The distance was but nine miles, and the
postilion drove well, so that I could not really have been long upon the
road; and yet, from gloomy rumination upon the unhappy destination which
I believed myself approaching within three or four months, never had I
weathered a journey that seemed to me so long and dreary. As I alighted
on the steps at Laxton, the first dinner-bell rang; and I was hurrying
to my toilet, when my sister Mary, who had met me in the portico,
begged me first of all to come into Lady Carbery's [Footnote: Lady
Carbery.--"To me, individually, she was the one sole friend that ever I
could regard as entirely fulfilling the offices of an honest friendship.
She had known me from infancy; when I was in my first year of life,
she, an orphan and a great heiress, was in her tenth or eleventh."--See
closing pages of "_Autobiographic Sketches_."] dressing-room, her
ladyship having something special to communicate, which related (as I
understood her) to one Simon. "What Simon? Simon Peter?"--O, no, you
irreverend boy, no Simon at all with an S, but Cymon with a C,--Dryden's
Cymon,--  "That whistled as he went for want of thought.'"

This one indication was a key to the whole explanation that followed.
The sole visitors, it seemed, at that time to Laxton, beside my sister
and myself, were Lord and Lady Massey. They were understood to be
domesticated at Laxton for a very long stay. In reality, my own private
construction of the case (though unauthorized by anything ever hinted to
me by Lady Carbery) was, that Lord Massey might probably be under some
cloud of pecuniary embarrassments, such as suggested prudentially an
absence from Ireland. Meantime, what was it that made him an object of
peculiar interest to Lady Carbery? It was the singular revolution
which, in one whom all his friends looked upon as sold to constitutional
torpor, suddenly, and beyond all hope, had kindled a new and nobler
life. Occupied originally by no shadow of any earthly interest, killed
by _ennui_, all at once Lord Massey had fallen passionately in love with
a fair young countrywoman, well connected, but bringing him no fortune
(I report only from hearsay), and endowing him simply with the priceless
blessing of her own womanly charms, her delightful society, and her
sweet, Irish style of innocent gayety. No transformation that ever
legends or romances had reported was more memorable. Lapse of time
(for Lord Massey had now been married three or four years), and deep
seclusion from general society, had done nothing, apparently, to
lower the tone of his happiness. The expression of this happiness
was noiseless and unobtrusive; no marks were there of vulgar
uxoriousness--nothing that could provoke the sneer of the worldling; but
not the less so entirely had the society of his young wife created a
new principle of life within him, and evoked some nature hitherto
slumbering, and which, no doubt, would else have continued to slumber
till his death, that, at moments when he believed himself unobserved, he
still wore the aspect of an impassioned lover.


                           "He beheld
  A vision, and adored the thing he saw.
  Arabian fiction never filled the world
  With half the wonders that were wrought for _him_.
  Earth breathed in one great presence of the spring
  Her chamber window did surpass in glory
  The portals of the dawn."


And in no case was it more literally realized, as daily almost I
witnessed, that


                           "All Paradise
  Could, by the simple opening of a door,
  Let itself in upon him."
  [Footnote: Wordsworth's "Vandracour and Julia."]


For never did the drawing-room door open, and suddenly disclose the
beautiful figure of Lady Massey, than a mighty cloud seemed to roll away
from the young Irishman's brow. At this time it happened, and indeed
it often happened, that Lord Carbery was absent in Ireland. It was
probable, therefore, that during the long couple of hours through which
the custom of those times bound a man to the dinner-table after the
disappearance of the ladies, his time would hang heavily on his hands.
To me, therefore, Lady Carbery looked, having first put me in possession
of the case, for assistance to her hospitality, under the difficulties I
have stated. She thoroughly loved Lady Massey, as, indeed, nobody could
help doing; and for _her_ sake, had there been no separate interest
surrounding the young lord, it would have been most painful to her that
through Lord Carbery's absence a periodic tedium should oppress her
guest at that precise season of the day which traditionally dedicated
itself to genial enjoyment. Glad, therefore, was she that an ally had
come at last to Laxton, who might arm her purposes of hospitality with
some powers of self-fulfilment. And yet, for a service of that nature,
could she reasonably rely upon me? Odious is the hobble-de-hoy to the
mature young man. Generally speaking, that cannot be denied. But in me,
though naturally the shyest of human beings, intense commerce with men
of every rank, from the highest to the lowest, had availed to dissipate
all arrears of _mauvaise honte_; I could talk upon innumerable subjects;
and, as the readiest means of entering immediately upon business, I was
fresh from Ireland, knew multitudes of those whom Lord Massey either
knew or felt an interest in, and, at that happy period of life, found
it easy, with three or four glasses of wine, to call back the golden
spirits which were now so often deserting me. Renovated, meantime, by
a hot bath, I was ready at the second summons of the dinner-bell, and
descended a new creature to the drawing-room. Here I was presented to
the noble lord and his wife. Lord Massey was in figure shortish, but
broad and stout, and wore an amiable expression of face. That I could
execute Lady Carbery's commission, I felt satisfied at once. And,
accordingly, when the ladies had retired from the dining-room, I found
an easy opening, in various circumstances connected with the Laxton
stables, for introducing naturally a picturesque and contrasting sketch
of the stud and the stables at Westport. The stables and everything
connected with the stables at Laxton were magnificent; in fact, far
out of symmetry with the house, which, at that time, was elegant and
comfortable, but not splendid. As usual in English establishments,
all the appointments were complete, and carried to the same point of
exquisite finish. The stud of hunters was first-rate and extensive; and
the whole scene, at closing the stables for the night, was so splendidly
arranged and illuminated, that Lady Carbery would take all her visitors
once or twice a week to admire it. On the other hand, at Westport you
might fancy yourself overlooking the establishment of some Albanian
Pacha. Crowds of irregular helpers and grooms, many of them totally
unrecognized by Lord Altamont, some half countenanced by this or that
upper servant, some doubtfully tolerated, some _not_ tolerated, but
nevertheless slipping in by postern doors when the enemy had
withdrawn, made up a strange mob as regarded the human element in this
establishment. And Dean Browne regularly asserted that five out of six
amongst these helpers he himself could swear to as active boys from
Vinegar Hill. Trivial enough, meantime, in our eyes, was any little
matter of rebellion that they might have upon their consciences. High
treason we willingly winked at. But what we could _not_ wink at was the
systematic treason which they committed against our comfort, namely, by
teaching our horses all imaginable tricks, and training them up in the
way along which they should _not_ go, so that when they were old they
were very little likely to depart from it. Such a set of restive,
hard-mouthed wretches as Lord Westport and I daily had to bestride,
no tongue could describe. There was a cousin of Lord Westport's,
subsequently created Lord Oranmore, distinguished for his horsemanship,
and always splendidly mounted from his father's stables at Castle
M'Garret, to whom our stormy contests with ruined tempers and vicious
habits yielded a regular comedy of fun; and, in order to improve it, he
would sometimes bribe Lord Westport's treacherous groom into misleading
us, when floundering amongst bogs, into the interior labyrinths of these
morasses. Deep, however, as the morass, was this man's remorse when,
on leaving Westport, I gave him the heavy golden perquisite, which my
mother (unaware of the tricks he had practised upon me) had by letter
instructed me to give. He was a mere savage boy from the central bogs of
Connaught, and, to the great amusement of Lord Westport, he persisted
in calling me "your majesty" for the rest of that day; and by all other
means open to him he expressed his penitence. But the dean insisted
that, no matter for his penitence in the matter of the bogs, he had
certainly carried a pike at Vinegar Hill; and probably had stolen a
pair of boots at Furnes, when he kindly made a call at the Deanery,
in passing through that place to the field of battle. It is always a
pleasure to see the engineer of mischief "hoist with his own petard;"
[Footnote: "Hamlet," but also "Ovid:"--"Lex nec justior ulla est, **Quam
necis artifices arte perire sua."] and it happened that the horses
assigned to draw a post-chariot carrying Lord Westport, myself, and the
dean, on our return journey to Dublin, were a pair utterly ruined by a
certain under-postilion, named Moran. This particular ruin did Mr. Moran
boast to have contributed as his separate contribution to the general
ruinations of the stables. And the particular object was, that _his_
horses, and consequently himself, might be left in genial laziness.
But, as Nemesis would have it, Mr. Moran was the charioteer specially
appointed to this particular service. We were to return by easy journeys
of twenty-five miles a day, or even less; since every such interval
brought us to the house of some hospitable family, connected by
friendship or by blood with Lord Altamont. Fervently had Lord Westport
pleaded with his father for an allowance of four horses; not at all with
any foolish view to fleeting aristocratic splendor, but simply to the
luxury of rapid motion. But Lord Altamont was firm in resisting this
petition at that time. The remote consequence was, that by way of
redressing the violated equilibrium to our feelings, we subscribed
throughout Wales to extort six horses from the astonished innkeepers,
most of whom declined the requisition, and would furnish only four, on
the plea that the leaders would only embarrass the other horses; but one
at Bangor, from whom we coolly requested eight, recoiled from our demand
as from a sort of miniature treason. How so? Because in this island he
had always understood eight horses to be consecrated to royal use. Not
at all, we assured him; Pickford, the great carrier, always horsed his
wagons with eight. And the law knew of no distinction between wagon and
post-chaise, coach-horse or cart-horse. However, we could not compass
this point of the eight horses, the double _quadriga_, in one single
instance; but the true reason we surmised to be, not the pretended
puritanism of loyalty to the house of Guelph, but the running short
of the innkeeper's funds. If he had to meet a daily average call for
twenty-four horses, then it might well happen that our draft upon him
for eight horses at one pull would bankrupt him for a whole day.

But I am anticipating. Returning to Ireland and Mr. Moran, the vicious
driver of vicious horses, the immediate consequence to _him_ of this
unexpected limitation to a pair of horses was, that all his knavery in
one hour recoiled upon himself. The horses whom he had himself trained
to vice and restiveness, in the hope that thus his own services and
theirs might be less in request, now became the very curse of his life.
Every morning, duly as an attempt was made to put them in motion, they
began to back, and no arts, gentle or harsh, would for a moment avail to
coax or to coërce them into the counter direction. Could retrogression
by any metaphysics have been translated into progress, we excelled in
that; it was our _forte_; we could have backed to the North Pole. That
might be the way to glory, or at least to distinction--_sic itur ad
astra_; unfortunately, it was not the way to Dublin. Consequently, on
_every_ day of our journey--and the days were ten--not once, but
always, we had the same deadly conflict to repeat; and this being always
unavailing, found its solution uniformly in the following ultimate
resource. Two large-boned horses, usually taken from the plough, were
harnessed on as leaders. By main force they hauled our wicked wheelers
into the right direction, and forced them, by pure physical superiority,
into working. We furnished a joyous and comic spectacle to every town
and village through which we passed. The whole community, men and
children, came out to assist at our departure; and all alike were
diverted, but not the less irritated, by the demoniac obstinacy of
the brutes, who seemed under the immediate inspiration of the fiend.
Everybody was anxious to share in the scourging which was administered
to them right and left; and once propelled into a gallop (or such a
gallop as our Brobdignagian leaders could accomplish), they were forced
into keeping it up. But, without rehearsing all the details of the
case, it may be readily conceived that the amount of trouble distributed
amongst our whole party was enormous. Once or twice the friends at whose
houses we slept were able to assist us. But generally they either had
no horses, or none of the commanding power demanded. Often, again, it
happened, as our route was very circuitous, that no inns lay in our
neighborhood; or, if there _were_ inns, the horses proved to be of too
slight a build. At Ballinasloe, and again at Athlone, half the town came
out to help us; and, having no suitable horses, thirty or forty men,
with shouts of laughter, pulled at ropes fastened to our pole and
splinter-bar, and compelled the snorting demons into a flying gallop.
But, naturally, a couple of miles saw this resource exhausted. Then came
the necessity of "drawing the covers," as the dean called it; that is,
hunting amongst the adjacent farmers for powerful cattle. This labor (O,
Jupiter, thanks be for _that_!) fell upon Mr. Moran. And sometimes it
would happen that the horses, which it had cost him three or four hours
to find, could be spared only for four or five miles. Such a journey can
rarely have been accomplished. Our zigzag course had prolonged it into
from two hundred and thirty to two hundred and fifty miles; and it is
literally true that, of this entire distance from Westport House to
Sackville-street, Dublin, not one furlong had been performed under
the spontaneous impulse of our own horses. Their diabolic resistance
continued to the last. And one may venture to hope that the sense of
final subjugation to man must have proved penally bitter to the horses.
But, meantime, it vexes one that such wretches should be fed with
good old hay and oats; as well littered down also in their stalls as a
prebendary; and by many a stranger, ignorant of their true character,
should have been patted and caressed. Let us hope that a fate, to which
more than once they were nearly forcing _us_, namely, regress over a
precipice, may ultimately have been their own. Once I saw such another
case dramatically carried through to its natural crisis in the
Liverpool Mail. It was on the stage leading into Lichfield; there was no
conspiracy, as in our Irish case; one horse only out of the four was the
criminal; and, according to the queen's bench (Denman, C. J.), there
is no conspiracy competent to one agent; but he was even more signally
under a demoniac possession of mutinous resistance to man. The case was
really a memorable one. If ever there was a distinct proclamation
of rebellion against man, it was made by that brutal horse; and I,
therefore, being a passenger on the box, took a note of the case; and
on a proper occasion I may be induced to publish it, unless some Houynhm
should whinny against me a chancery injunction.

From these wild, Tartar-like stables of Connaught, how vast was the
transition to that perfection of elegance, and of adaptation between
means and ends, that reigned from centre to circumference through the
stables at Laxton! _I_, as it happened, could report to Lord Massey
their earlier condition; he to me could report their immediate changes.
I won him easily to an interest in my own Irish experiences, so fresh,
and in parts so grotesque, wilder also by much in Connaught than in Lord
Massey's county of Limerick; whilst he (without affecting any delight
in the hunting systems of Northamptonshire and Leicestershire) yet
took pleasure in explaining to me those characteristic features of the
English midland hunting as centralized at Melton, which even then gave
to it the supreme rank for brilliancy and unity of effect amongst all
varieties of the chase. [Footnote: If mere names were allowed to dazzle
the judgment, how magnificent to a gallant young Englishman of twenty
seems at first the _tiger-hunting_ of India, which yet (when examined
searchingly) turns out the meanest and most _cowardly_ mode of hunting
known to human experience. _Buffalo-hunting_ is much more dignified as
regards the courageous exposure of the hunter; but, from all accounts,
its excitement is too momentary and evanescent; one rifle-shot, and the
crisis is past. Besides that, the generous and honest character of the
buffalo disturbs the cordiality of the sport. The very opposite reason
disturbs the interest of lion-hunting, especially at the Cape. The lion
is everywhere a cowardly wretch, unless when sublimed into courage by
famine; but, in southern Africa, he is the most currish of enemies.
Those who fancied so much adventurousness in the lion conflicts of Mr.
Gordon Cumming appear never to have read the missionary travels of Mr.
Moffat. The poor missionary, without any arms whatever, came to think
lightly of half a dozen lions seen drinking through the twilight at
the very same pond or river as himself. Nobody can have any wish to
undervalue the adventurous gallantry of Mr. G. Cumming. But, in the
single case of the Cape lion, there is an unintentional advantage taken
from the traditional name of lion, as though the Cape lion were such as
that which ranges the torrid zone.]

Horses had formed the natural and introductory topic of conversation
between us. What we severally knew of Ireland, though in different
quarters,--what we both knew of Laxton, the barbaric splendor, and the
civilized splendor,--had naturally an interest for us both in their
contrasts (at one time so picturesque, at another so grotesque), which
illuminated our separate recollections. But my quick instinct soon made
me aware that a jealousy was gathering in Lord Massey's mind around
such a topic, as though too ostentatiously levelled to his particular
knowledge, or to his _animal_ condition of taste. But easily I slipped
off into another key. At Laxton, it happened that the library was
excellent. Founded by whom, I never heard; but certainly, when used by
a systematic reader, it showed itself to have been systematically
collected; it stretched pretty equably through two centuries,--namely,
from about 1600 to 1800,--and might, perhaps, amount to seventeen
thousand volumes. Lord Massey was far from illiterate; and his interest
in books was unaffected, if limited, and too often interrupted, by
defective knowledge. The library was dispersed through six or seven
small rooms, lying between the drawing-room in one wing, and the
dining-room in the opposite wing. This dispersion, however, already
furnished the ground of a rude classification. In some one of these
rooms was Lord Massey always to be found, from the forenoon to the
evening. And was it any fault of _his_ that his daughter, little Grace,
about two years old, pursued him down from her nursery every morning,
and insisted upon seeing innumerable pictures, lurking (as she had
discovered) in many different recesses of the library? More and more
from this quarter it was that we drew the materials of our daily
after-dinner conversation. One great discouragement arises commonly to
the student, where the particular library in which he reads has been so
disordinately collected that he cannot _pursue_ a subject once started.
Now, at Laxton, the books had been so judiciously brought together, so
many hooks and eyes connected them, that the whole library formed what
one might call a series of _strata_, naturally allied, through which you
might quarry your way consecutively for many months. On rainy days,
and often enough one had occasion to say through rainy weeks, what a
delightful resource did this library prove to both of us! And one day
it occurred to us, that, whereas the stables and the library were both
jewels of attraction, the latter had been by much the least costly.
Pretty often I have found, when any opening has existed for making the
computation, that, in a library containing a fair proportion of books
illustrated with plates, about ten shillings a volume might be taken
as expressing, upon a sufficiently large number of volumes, small and
great, the fair average cost of the whole. On this basis, the library
at Laxton would have cost less than nine thousand pounds. On the other
hand, thirty-five horses (hunters, racers, roadsters, carriage-horses,
etc.) might have cost about eight thousand pounds, or a little more.
But the library entailed no permanent cost beyond the annual loss of
interest; the books did not eat, and required no aid from veterinary
[Footnote: "_Veterinary_."--By the way, whence comes this odd-looking
word? The word _veterana_ I have met with in monkish writers, to express
_domesticated quadrupeds_; and evidently from that word must have
originated the word _veterinary_. But the question is still but one step
removed; for, how came _veterana_ by that acceptation in rural economy?]
surgeons; whereas, for the horses, not only such ministrations were
intermittingly required, but a costly permanent establishment of
grooms and helpers. Lord Carbery, who had received an elaborate Etonian
education, was even more earnestly a student than his friend Lord
Massey, who had probably been educated at home under a private tutor.
He read everything connected with general politics (meaning by _general_
not personal politics) and with social philosophy. At Laxton, indeed;
it was that I first saw Godwin's "Political Justice;" not the second and
emasculated edition in _octavo_, but the original _quarto_ edition, with
all its virus as yet undiluted of raw anti-social Jacobinism.

At Laxton it was that I first saw the entire aggregate labors,
brigaded, as it were, and paraded as if for martial review, of that most
industrious benefactor to the early stages of our English historical
literature, Thomas Hearne. Three hundred guineas, I believe, had been
the price paid cheerfully at one time for a complete set of Hearne. At
Laxton, also, it was that first I saw the total array of works edited
by Dr. Birch. It was a complete _armilustrium_, a _recognitio_, or
mustering, as it were, not of pompous Praetorian cohorts, or unique
guardsmen, but of the yeomanry, the militia, or what, under the old
form of expression, you might regard as the _trained bands_ of our
literature--the fund from which ultimately, or in the last resort,
students look for the materials of our vast and myriad-faced literature.
A French author of eminence, fifty years back, having occasion to speak
of our English literature collectively, in reference to the one point
of its _variety_, being also a man of honor, and disdaining that sort
of patriotism which sacrifices the truth to nationality, speaks of
our pretensions in these words: _Les Anglois qui ont une littérature
infiniment plus variée que la nôtre_. This fact is a feature in our
national pretensions that could ever have been regarded doubtfully
merely through insufficient knowledge. Dr. Johnson, indeed, made it the
distinguishing merit of the French, that they "have a book upon every
subject." But Dr. Johnson was not only capricious as regards temper
and variable humors, but as regards the inequality of his knowledge.
Incoherent and unsystematic was Dr. Johnson's information in most cases.
Hence his extravagant misappraisement of Knolles, the Turkish historian,
which is exposed so severely by Spittler, the German, who, again, is
himself miserably superficial in his analysis of English history.
Hence the feeble credulity which Dr. Johnson showed with respect to
the forgery of De Foe (under the masque of Captain Carleton) upon the
Catalonian campaign of Lord Peterborough. But it is singular that a
literature, so unrivalled as ours in its compass and variety, should not
have produced any, even the shallowest, manual of itself. And thus it
happens, for example, that writers so laborious and serviceable as Birch
are in any popular sense scarcely known. I showed to Lord Massey, among
others of his works, that which relates to Lord Worcester's (that is,
Lord Glamorgan's) negotiations with the Papal nuncio in Ireland, about
the year 1644, &c. Connected with these negotiations were many names
amongst Lord Massey's own ancestors; so that here he suddenly alighted
upon a fund of archæologic memorabilia, connecting what interested him
as an Irishman in general with what most interested him as the head of
a particular family. It is remarkable, also, as an indication of the
_general_ nobility and elevation which had accompanied the revolution
in his life, that concurrently with the constitutional torpor previously
besetting him, had melted away the intellectual torpor under which he
had found books until recently of little practical value. Lady Carbery
had herself told me that the two revolutions went on simultaneously. He
began to take an interest in literature when life itself unfolded a new
interest, under the companionship of his youthful wife. And here, by the
way, as subsequently in scores of other instances, I saw broad evidences
of the credulity with which we have adopted into our grave political
faith the rash and malicious sketches of our novelists. With Fielding
commenced the practice of systematically traducing our order of country
gentlemen. His picture of Squire Western is not only a malicious, but
also an incongruous libel. The squire's ordinary language is impossible,
being alternately bookish and absurdly rustic. In reality, the
conventional dialect ascribed to the rustic order in general--to
peasants even more than to gentlemen--in our English plays and novels,
is a childish and fantastic babble, belonging to no form of real
breathing life; nowhere intelligible; not in _any_ province; whilst, at
the same time, all provinces--Somersetshire, Devonshire, Hampshire--are
confounded with our midland counties; and positively the diction of
Parricombe and Charricombe from Exmoor Forest is mixed up with the
pure Icelandic forms of the English lakes, of North Yorkshire, and of
Northumberland. In Scotland, it needs but a slight intercourse with the
peasantry to distinguish various dialects--the Aberdonian and Fifeshire,
for instance, how easily distinguished, even by an English alien, from
the western dialects of Ayrshire, &c.! And I have heard it said,
by Scottish purists in this matter, that even Sir Walter Scott is
chargeable with considerable licentiousness in the management of his
colloquial Scotch. Yet, generally speaking, it bears the strongest
impress of truthfulness. But, on the other hand, how false and powerless
does this same Sir Walter become, when the necessities of his tale
oblige him at any time to come amongst the English peasantry! His
magic wand is instantaneously broken; and he moves along by a babble
of impossible forms, as fantastic as any that our London theatres have
traditionally ascribed to English rustics, to English sailors, and to
Irishmen universally. Fielding is open to the same stern criticism, as a
deliberate falsehood-monger; and from the same cause--want of energy
to face the difficulty of mastering a real living idiom. This defect in
language, however, I cite only as one feature in the complex falsehood
which disfigures Fielding's portrait of the English country gentleman.
Meantime the question arises, Did he mean his Squire Western for a
_representative_ portrait? Possibly not. He might design it expressly as
a sketch of an individual, and by no means of a class. And the fault
may be, after all, not in _him_, the writer, but in _us_, the falsely
interpreting readers. But, be that as it may, and figure to ourselves as
we may the rustic squire of a hundred to a hundred and fifty years back
(though manifestly at utter war, in the portraitures of our novelists,
with the realities handed down to us by our Parliamentary annals), on
that _arena_ we are dealing with objects of pure speculative curiosity.
Far different is the same question, when practically treated for
purposes of present legislation or philosophic inference. One hundred
years ago, such was the difficulty of social intercourse, simply from
the difficulty of locomotion (though even then this difficulty was much
lowered to the English, as beyond comparison the most equestrian of
nations), that it is possible to imagine a shade of difference as still
distinguishing the town-bred man from the rustic; though, considering
the multiplied distribution of our assize towns, our cathedral towns,
our sea-ports, and our universities, all so many recurring centres of
civility, it is not very easy to imagine such a thing in an island
no larger than ours. But can any human indulgence be extended to the
credulity which assumes the same possibility as existing for us in the
very middle of the nineteenth century? At a time when every week sees
the town banker drawn from our rural gentry; railway directors in every
quarter transferring themselves indifferently from town to country, from
country to town; lawyers, clergymen, medical men, magistrates, local
judges, &c., all shifting in and out between town and country; rural
families all intermarrying on terms of the widest freedom with town
families; all again, in the persons of their children, meeting for study
at the same schools, colleges, military academies, &c.; by what furious
forgetfulness of the realities belonging to the case, has it been
possible for writers in public journals to persist in arguing national
questions upon the assumption of a bisection in our population--a double
current, on the one side steeped to the lips in town prejudices, on the
other side traditionally sold to rustic views and doctrines? Such double
currents, like the Rhone flowing through the Lake of Geneva, and yet
refusing to intermingle, probably _did_ exist, and had an important
significance in the Low Countries of the fifteenth century, or between
the privileged cities and the unprivileged country of Germany down to
the Thirty Years' War; but, for us, they are in the last degree
fabulous distinctions, pure fairy tales; and the social economist or the
historian who builds on such phantoms as that of a rustic aristocracy
still retaining any substantial grounds of distinction from the town
aristocracies, proclaims the hollowness of any and all his doctrines
that depend upon such assumptions. Lord Carbery was a thorough
fox-hunter. The fox-hunting of the adjacent county of Leicestershire was
not then what it is now. The state of the land was radically different
for the foot of the horse, the nature and distribution of the fences
was different; so that a class of horses thoroughly different was then
required. But then, as now, it offered the finest exhibition of the
fox-chase that is known in Europe; and then, as now, this is the best
adapted among all known varieties of hunting to the exhibition
of adventurous and skilful riding, and generally, perhaps, to the
development of manly and athletic qualities. Lord Carbery, during the
season, might be immoderately addicted to this mode of sporting, having
naturally a pleasurable feeling connected with his own reputation as a
skilful and fearless horseman. But, though the chases were in those days
longer than they are at present, small was the amount of time really
abstracted from that which he had disposable for general purposes;
amongst which purposes ranked foremost his literary pursuits. And,
however much he transcended the prevailing conception of his order, as
sketched by satiric and often ignorant novelists, he might be regarded,
in all that concerned the liberalization of his views, as pretty fairly
representing that order. Thus, through every _real_ experience, the
crazy notion of a rural aristocracy flowing apart from the urban
aristocracy, and standing on a different level of culture as to
intellect, of polish as to manners, and of interests as to social
objects, a notion at all times false as a fact, now at length became
with all thoughtful men monstrous as a possibility.

Meantime Lord Massey was reached by reports, both through Lady Carbery
and myself, of something which interested him more profoundly than all
earthly records of horsemanship, or any conceivable questions connected
with books. Lady Carbery, with a view to the amusement of Lady Massey
and my sister, for both of whom youth and previous seclusion had created
a natural interest in all such scenes, accepted two or three times in
every week dinner invitations to all the families on her visiting list,
and lying within her winter circle, which was measured, by a radius of
about seventeen miles. For, dreadful as were the roads in those days,
when the Bath, the Bristol, or the Dover mail was equally perplexed
oftentimes to accomplish Mr. Palmer's rate of seven miles an hour, a
distance of seventeen was yet easily accomplished in one hundred minutes
by the powerful Laxton horses. Magnificent was the Laxton turn-out;
and in the roomy travelling coach of Lady Carbery, made large enough to
receive upon occasion even a bed, it would have been an idle scruple to
fear the crowding a party which mustered only three besides myself. For
Lord Massey uniformly declined joining us; in which I believe that he
was right. A schoolboy like myself had fortunately no dignity to lose.
But Lord Massey, a needy Irish peer (or, strictly speaking, since the
Union no peer at all, though still an hereditary lord), was bound to be
trebly vigilant over his surviving honors. This he owed to his country
as well as to his family. He recoiled from what he figured to himself
(but too often falsely figured) as the haughty and disdainful English
nobility---all so rich, all so polished in manner, all so punctiliously
correct in the ritual of _bienséance_. Lord Carbery might face them
gayly and boldly: for _he_ was rich, and, although possessing Irish
estates and an Irish mansion, was a thorough Englishman by education
and early association. "But I," said Lord Massey, "had a careless Irish
education, and am never quite sure that I may not be trespassing on some
mysterious law of English good-breeding." In vain I suggested to him
that most of what passed amongst foreigners and amongst Irishmen for
English _hauteur_ was pure reserve, which, among all people that were
bound over by the inevitable restraints of their rank (imposing, it must
be remembered, jealous duties as well as privileges), was sure to become
the operative feeling. I contended that in the English situation there
was no escaping this English reserve, except by great impudence and
defective sensibility; and that, if examined, reserve was the truest
expression of respect towards those who were its objects. In vain did
Lady Carbery back me in this representation. He stood firm, and never
once accompanied us to any dinner-party. Northamptonshire, I know not
why, is (or then was) more thickly sown with aristocratic families than
any in the kingdom. Many elegant and pretty women there naturally
were in these parties; but undoubtedly our two Laxton baronesses shone
advantageously amongst them. A boy like myself could lay no restraint
upon the after-dinner feelings of the gentlemen; and almost uniformly
I heard such verdicts passed upon the personal attractions of both, but
especially Lady Massey, as tended greatly to soothe the feelings of Lord
Massey. It is singular that Lady Massey universally carried off the palm
of unlimited homage. Lady Carbery was a regular beauty, and publicly
known for such; both were fine figures, and apparently not older
than twenty-six; but in her Irish friend people felt something more
thoroughly artless and feminine--for the masculine understanding of
Lady Carbery in some way communicated its commanding expression to
her deportment. I reported to Lord Massey, in terms of unexceptionable
decorum, those flattering expressions of homage, which sometimes from
the lips of young men, partially under the influence of wine, had
taken a form somewhat too enthusiastic for a literal repetition to a
chivalrous and adoring husband.

Meantime, the reader has been kept long enough at Laxton to warrant me
in presuming some curiosity or interest to have gathered within his mind
about the mistress of the mansion. Who was Lady Carbery? what was her
present position, and what had been her original position, in society?
All readers of Bishop Jeremy Taylor [Footnote: The Life of Jeremy
Taylor, by Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta, is most elaborately
incorrect. From want of research, and a chronology in some places
thoroughly erroneous, various important facts are utterly misstated; and
what is most to be regretted, in a matter deeply affecting the bishop's
candor and Christian charity, namely, a controversial correspondence
with a Somersetshire Dissenting clergyman, the wildest misconception has
vitiated the entire result. That fractional and splintered condition,
into which some person had cut up the controversy with a view to his own
more convenient study of its chief elements, Heber had misconceived
as the actual form in which these parts had been originally exchanged
between the disputants--a blunder of the worst consequence, and having
the effect of translating general expressions (such as recorded a moral
indignation against ancient fallacies or evasions connected with the
dispute) into direct ebullitions of scorn or displeasure personally
against his immediate antagonist. And the charge of intolerance and
defective charity becomes thus very much stronger against the poor
bishop, because it takes the shape of a confession extorted by mere
force of truth from an else reluctant apologist, that would most gladly
have denied everything that he _could_ deny. The Life needs more than
ever to be accurately written, since it has been thus chaotically
mis-narrated by a prelate of so much undeniable talent. I once began a
very elaborate life myself, and in these words: "Jeremy Taylor, the most
eloquent and the subtlest of Christian philosophers, was the son of
a barber, and the son-in-law of a king,"--alluding to the tradition
(imperfectly verified, I believe) that he married an illegitimate
daughter of Charles I. But this sketch was begun more than thirty years
ago; and I retired from the labor as too overwhelmingly exacting in
all that related to the philosophy and theology of that man so
"myriad-minded," and of that century so anarchical.] must be aware
of that religious Lady Carbery, who was the munificent (and, for her
kindness, one might say the filial) patroness of the all-eloquent and
subtle divine. She died before the Restoration, and, consequently,
before her spiritual director could have ascended the Episcopal throne.
The title of Carbery was at that time an earldom; the earl married
again, and his second countess was also a devout patroness of Taylor.
Having no peerage at hand, I do not know by what mode of derivation the
modern title of the nineteenth century had descended from the old one of
the seventeenth. I presume that some collateral branch of the original
family had succeeded to the barony when the limitations of the original
settlement had extinguished the earldom. But to me, who saw revived
another religious Lady Carbery, distinguished for her beauty and
accomplishments, it was interesting to read of the two successive ladies
who had borne that title one hundred and sixty years before, and whom no
reader of Jeremy Taylor is ever allowed to forget, since almost all
his books are dedicated to one or other of the pious family that had
protected him. Once more there was a religious Lady Carbery, supporting
locally the Church of England, patronizing schools, diffusing the most
extensive relief to every mode of indigence or distress. A century and a
half ago such a Lady Carbery was in South Wales, at the "Golden Grove;"
now such another Lady Carbery was in central England, at Laxton. The two
cases, divided by six generations, interchanged a reciprocal interest,
since in both cases it was young ladies, under the age of thirty, that
originated the movement, and in both cases these ladies bore the
same title; and I will therefore retrace rapidly the outline of that
contemporary case so familiarly known to myself.

Colonel Watson and General Smith had been amongst the earliest friends
of my mother's family. Both served for many years in India: the first
in the Company's army, the other upon the staff of the king's forces in
that country. Each, about the same time, made a visit to England, and
each of them, I believe, with the same principal purpose of providing
for the education of his daughter; for each happened to have one sole
child, which child, in each case, was a girl of singular beauty; and
both of these little ladies were entitled to very large fortunes. The
colonel and the general, being on brotherly terms of intimacy, resolved
to combine their plans for the welfare of their daughters. What they
wanted was, not a lady that could teach them any special arts
or accomplishments--all these could be purchased;--but the two
qualifications indispensable for the difficult situation of
lady-superintendent over two children so singularly separated from all
relatives whatever, were, in the first place, knowledge of the world,
and integrity for keeping at a distance all showy adventurers that might
else offer themselves, with unusual advantages, as suitors for the favor
of two great heiresses; and, secondly, manners exquisitely polished.
Looking to that last requisition, it seems romantic to mention, that
the lady selected for the post, with the fullest approbation of
both officers, was one who began life as the daughter of a little
Lincolnshire farmer. What her maiden name had been, I do not at this
moment remember; but this name was of very little importance, being
soon merged in that of Harvey, bestowed on her at the altar by a country
gentleman. The squire--not very rich, I believe, but rich enough to rank
as a matrimonial prize in the lottery of a country girl, whom one
single step of descent in life might have brought within sight of menial
service--had been captivated by the young woman's beauty; and this, at
that period, when accompanied by the advantages of youth, must have been
resplendent. I, who had known her all my life, down to my sixteenth year
(during which year she died), and who naturally, therefore, referred her
origin back to some remote ancestral generation, nevertheless, in her
sole case, was made to feel that there might be some justification for
the Church of England discountenancing in her Liturgy, "marriage with
your great-grandmother; neither shalt thou marry thy great-grandfather's
widow." She, poor thing! at that time was thinking little of marriage;
for even then, though known only to herself and her _femme de chambre_,
that dreadful organic malady (cancer) was raising its adder's crest,
under which finally she died. But, in spite of languor interchanging
continually with disfiguring anguish, she still impressed one as a regal
beauty. Her person, indeed, and figure, _would_ have tended towards such
a standard; but all was counteracted, and thrown back into the mould of
sweet natural womanhood, by the cherubic beauty of her features. These
it was--these features, so purely childlike--that reconciled me in a
moment of time to great-grandmotherhood. The stories about Ninon de
l'Enclos are French fables--speaking plainly, are falsehoods; and sorry
I am that a nation so amiable as the French should habitually disregard
truth, when coming into collision with their love for the extravagant.
But, if anything could reconcile me to these monstrous old fibs about
Ninon at ninety, it would be the remembrance of this English enchantress
on the high-road to seventy. Guess, reader, what she must have been at
twenty-eight to thirty-two, when she became the widow of the Gerenian
horseman, Harvey. How bewitching she must have looked in her widow's
caps! So had once thought Colonel Watson, who happened to be in England
at that period; and to the charming widow this man of war propounded his
hand in marriage. This hand, this martial hand, for reason inexplicable
to me, Mrs. Harvey declined; and the colonel bounced off in a rage to
Bengal. There were others who saw young Mrs. Harvey, as well as Colonel
Watson. And amongst them was an ancient German gentleman, to what
century belonging I do not know, who had every possible bad quality
known to European experience, and a solitary good one, namely, eight
hundred thousand pounds sterling. The man's name was Schreiber.
Schreiber was an aggregate resulting from the conflux of all conceivable
bad qualities. That was the elementary base of Schreiber; and the
superstructure, or Corinthian decoration of his frontispiece, was, that
Schreiber cultivated one sole science, namely, the science of taking
snuff. Here were two separate objects for contemplation: one, bright as
Aurora--that radiant Koh-i-noor, or mountain of light--the eight hundred
thousand pounds; the other, sad, fuscous, begrimed with the snuff of
ages, namely, the most ancient Schreiber. Ah! if they _could_ have
been divided--these twin yoke-fellows--and that ladies might have the
privilege of choosing between them! For the moment there was no prudent
course open to Mrs. Harvey, but that of marrying Schreiber (which she
did, and survived); and, subsequently, when the state of the market
became favorable to such "conversions" of stock, then the new Mrs.
Schreiber parted from Schreiber, and disposed of her interest in
Schreiber at a settled rate in three per cent. consols and terminable
annuities; for every _coupon_ of Schreiber receiving a _bonus_ of so
many thousand pounds, paid down according to the rate agreed on by
the lawyers of the two parties; or, strictly speaking, _quarrelled on_
between the adverse factions; for agreement it was hard to effect upon
any point. The deadly fear which had been breathed into him by Mrs.
Schreiber's scale of expenditure in a Park Lane house proved her most
salutary ally. Coerced by this horrid vision, Schreiber consented (which
else he never would have done) to grant her an allowance, for life, of
about two thousand per annum. Could _that_ be reckoned an anodyne
for the torment connected with a course of Schreiber? I pretend to no
opinion.

Such were the facts: and exactly at this point in her career had Mrs.
Schreiber arrived, when, once more, Colonel Watson and General Smith
were visiting England, and for the last time, on the errand of settling
permanently some suitable establishment for their two infant daughters.
The superintendence of this they desired to devolve upon some lady,
qualified by her manners and her connections for introducing the young
ladies, when old enough, into general society. Mrs. Schreiber was the
very person required. Intellectually she had no great pretensions; but
these she did not need: her character was irreproachable, her manners
were polished, and her own income placed her far above all mercenary
temptations. She had not thought fit to accept the station of Colonel
Watson's wife, but some unavowed feeling prompted her to undertake, with
enthusiasm, the duties of a mother to the colonel's daughter. Chiefly
on Miss Watson's account it was at first that she extended her maternal
cares to General Smith's daughter; but very soon so sweet and winning
was the disposition of Miss Smith that Mrs. Schreiber apparently loved
_her_ the best.

Both, however, appeared under a combination of circumstances too
singularly romantic to fail of creating an interest that was universal.
Both were solitary children, unchallenged by any relatives. Neither had
ever known what it was to taste of love, paternal or maternal. Their
mothers had been long dead--not consciously seen by either; and their
fathers, not surviving their last departure from home long enough to see
them again, died before returning from India. What a world of desolation
seemed to exist for them! How silent was every hall into which, by
natural right, they should have had entrance! Several people, kind,
cordial people, men and women, were scattered over England, that, during
their days of infancy, would have delighted to receive them; but, by
some fatality, when they reached their fifteenth year, and might have
been deemed old enough to undertake visits, all of these paternal
friends, except two, had died; nor had they, by that time, any relatives
at all that remained alive, or were eligible as associates. Strange,
indeed, was the contrast between the silent past of their lives and that
populous future to which their large fortunes would probably introduce
them. Throw open a door in the rear that should lay bare the long
vista of chambers through which their childhood might symbolically be
represented as having travelled--what silence! what solemn solitude!
Open a door in advance that should do the same figurative office for the
future--suddenly what a jubilation! what a tumult of festal greetings!

But the succeeding stages of life did not, perhaps, in either case fully
correspond to the early promise. Rank and station the two young ladies
attained; but rank and station do not always throw people upon prominent
stages of action or display. Many a family, possessing both rank and
wealth, and not undistinguished possibly by natural endowments of an
order fitted for brilliant popularity, never emerge from obscurity, or
not into any splendor that can be called national; sometimes, perhaps,
from a temper unfitted for worthy struggles in the head of the house;
possibly from a haughty, possibly a dignified disdain of popular arts,
hatred of petty rhetoric, petty sycophantic courtships, petty canvassing
tricks; or again, in many cases, because accidents of ill-luck have
intercepted the fair proportion of success due to the merits of the
person; whence, oftentimes, a hasty self-surrender to impulses of
permanent disgust. But, more frequently than any other cause, I fancy
that impatience of the long struggle required for any distinguished
success interferes to thin the ranks of competitors for the prizes of
public ambition. Perseverance is soon refrigerated in those who fall
back under any result, defeated or not defeated, upon splendid mansions
and luxuries of every kind, already far beyond their needs or their
wishes. The soldier described by the Roman satirist as one who had lost
his purse, was likely enough, under the desperation of his misfortune,
to see nothing formidable in any obstacle that crossed his path towards
another supplementary purse; whilst the very same obstacle might
reasonably alarm one who, in retreating, fell back under the battlements
of twenty thousand per annum. In the present case, there was nothing
at all to move wonder in the final result under so continual a siege of
temptation from the seductions of voluptuous ease; the only wonder
is, that one of the young ladies, namely, Miss Watson, whose mind was
masculine, and in some directions aspiring, should so readily have
acquiesced in a result which she might have anticipated from the
beginning.

Happy was the childhood, happy the early dawn of womanhood, which
these two young ladies passed under the guardianship of Mrs. Schreiber.
Education in those days was not the austere old lady that she is now.
At least, in the case of young ladies, her exactions were merciful and
considerate. If Miss Smith sang pretty well, and Miss Watson _very_
well, and with the power of singing difficult _part_ music at sight,
they did so for the same reason that the lark sings, and chiefly under
the same gentle tuition--that of nature, glad almighty nature, breathing
inspiration from her Delphic tripod of happiness, and health, and hope.
Mrs. Schreiber pretended to no intellectual gifts whatever; and yet,
practically, she was wiser than many who have the greatest. First of
all other tasks which she imposed upon her wards, was that of daily
exercise, and exercise carried to _excess_. She insisted upon four
hours' exercise daily; and, as young ladies walk fast, _that_ would have
yielded, at the rate of three and a half miles per hour, thirteen plus
one third miles. But only two and a half hours were given to walking;
the other one and a half to riding. No day was a day of rest; absolutely
none. Days so stormy that they "kept the raven to her nest," snow the
heaviest, winds the most frantic, were never listened to as any ground
of reprieve from the ordinary exaction. I once knew (that is, not
personally, for I never saw her, but through the reports of her many
friends) an intrepid lady, [Footnote: If I remember rightly, some
account is given of this palæstric lady and her stern Pædo-gymnastics,
in a clever book on household medicine and surgery under circumstances
of inevitable seclusion from professional aid, written about the year
1820-22, by Mr. Haden, a surgeon of London.] living in the city of
London (that is, technically the _city_, as opposed to Westminster,
etc., Mary-le-bone, etc.), who made a point of turning out her newborn
infants for a pretty long airing, even on the day of their birth. It
made no difference to her whether the month were July or January; good,
undeniable air is to be had in either month. Once only she was baffled,
and most indignant it made her, because the little thing chose to
be born at half-past nine P. M.; so that, by the time its toilet was
finished, bonnet and cloak all properly adjusted, the watchman was
calling "Past eleven, and a cloudy night;" upon which, most reluctantly,
she was obliged to countermand the orders for that day's exercise, and
considered herself, like the Emperor Titus, to have lost a day. But what
came of the London lady's or of Mrs. Schreiber's Spartan discipline?
Did the little blind kittens of Gracechurch-street, who were ordered by
their penthesiléan mamma, on the very day of their nativity, to face the
most cruel winds--did _they_, or did Mrs. Schreiber's wards, justify,
in after life, this fierce discipline, by commensurate results of
hardiness? In words written beyond all doubt by Shakspeare, though not
generally recognized as his, it might have been said to any one of this
Amazonian brood,--                   "Now mild may be thy life;
  For a more blust'rous birth had never babe.
  Quiet and gentle be thy temperature;
  For thou'rt the rudeliest welcomed to this world
  That e'er was woman's child. Happy be the sequel!
  Thou hast as chiding a nativity
  As fire, air, water, earth, and heaven, can make,
  To herald thee from darkness!"--_Pericles, Act III._

As to the city kittens, I heard that the treatment prospered; but the
man who reported this added, that by original constitution they were
as strong as Meux's dray-horses; and thus, after all, they may simply
illustrate the old logical _dictum_ ascribed to some medical man, that
the reason why London children of the wealthier classes are noticeable
even to a proverb for their robustness and bloom, is because none but
those who are already vigorous to excess, and who start with advantages
of health far beyond the average scale, have much chance of surviving
that most searching quarantine, which, in such [Footnote: For myself,
meantime, I am far from assenting to all the romantic abuse applied to
the sewerage and the church-yards of London, and even more violently
to the river Thames. As a tidal river, even: beyond the metropolitan
bridges, the Thames undoubtedly does much towards cleansing the
atmosphere, whatever may be the condition of its waters. And one most
erroneous postulate there is from which the _Times_ starts in all its
arguments, namely, this, that supposing the Thames to be even a vast
sewer, in short, the _cloaca maxima_ of London, there is in that
arrangement of things any special reproach applying to our mighty
English capital. On the contrary, _all_ great cities that ever were
founded have sought out, as their first and elementary condition,
the adjacency of some great cleansing river. In the long process of
development through which cities pass, commerce and other functions of
civilization come to usurp upon the earlier functions of such rivers,
and sometimes (through increasing efforts of luxurious refinement) may
come entirely to absorb them. But, in the infancy of every great
city, the chief function for which she looks to her river is that of
purification. Be thou my huge _cloaca_, says infant Babylon to the
Euphrates, says infant Nineveh to the Tigris, says infant Rome to the
Tiber. So far is that reproach from having any special application
to London. Smoke is not unwholesome; in many circumstances it is
salubrious, as a counter-agent to worse influences. Even sewerage is
chiefly insalubrious from its moisture, and not, in any degree yet
demonstrated, from its odor.] an atmosphere, they are summoned to
weather at starting. Coming, however, to the special case of Mrs.
Schreiber's household, I am bound to report that in no instance have I
known young ladies so thoroughly steeled against all the ordinary host
of petty maladies which, by way of antithesis to the capital warfare
of dangerous complaints, might be called the _guerilla_ nosology;
influenza, for instance, in milder forms, catarrh, headache, toothache,
dyspepsia in transitory shapes, etc. Always the spirits of the two girls
were exuberant; the enjoyment of life seemed to be intense, and never
did I know either of them to suffer from _ennui_. My conscious knowledge
of them commenced when I was about two years old, they being from ten to
twelve years older. Mrs. Schreiber had been amongst my mother's earliest
friends as Mrs. Harvey, and in days when my mother had opportunities
of doing her seasonable services. And as there were three special
advantages which adorned my mother, and which ranked in Mrs. Schreiber's
estimate as the highest which earth could show, namely: 1°, that she
spoke and wrote English with singular elegance; 2°, that her manners
were eminently polished; and 3°, that, even in that early stage of
my mother's life, a certain tone of religiosity, and even of ascetic
devotion, was already diffused as a luminous mist that served to exalt
the coloring of her morality. To this extent Mrs. Schreiber approved of
religion; but nothing of a sectarian cast could she have tolerated; nor
had she anything of that nature to apprehend from my mother. Viewing my
mother, therefore, as a pure model of an English matron, and feeling for
her, besides, a deeper sentiment of friendship and affection than for
anybody else on her visiting list, it was natural enough that she should
come with her wards on an annual visit to "The Farm" (a pretty, rustic
dwelling occupied by my father in the neighborhood of Manchester),
and subsequently (when _that_ arose) to Greenhay. [Footnote:
"_Greenhay_."--As this name might, under a false interpretation, seem
absurd as including incongruous elements, I ought, in justification of
my mother, who devised the name, to have mentioned that _hay_ was meant
for the old English word (derived from the old French word _haie_)
indicating a rural enclosure. Conventionally, a _hay_ or _haie_ was
understood to mean a country-house within a verdant ring-fence, narrower
than a park: which word park, in Scotch use, means any enclosure
whatever, though not twelve feet square; but in English use (witness
Captain Burt's wager about Culloden parks) means an enclosure measured
by square miles, and usually accounted to want its appropriate
furniture, unless tenanted by deer. By the way, it is a singular
illustration of a fact illustrated in one way or other every hour,
namely, of the imperfect knowledge which England possesses of England,
that, within these last eight or nine months, I saw in the _Illustrated
London News_ an article assuming that the red deer was unknown in
England. Whereas, if the writer had ever been at the English lakes
during the hunting season, he might have seen it actually hunted
over Martindale forest and its purlieus. Or, again, in Devonshire and
Cornwall, over Dartmoor, etc., and, I believe, in many other regions,
though naturally narrowing as civilization widens. The writer is equally
wrong in supposing the prevailing deer of our parks to be the _roe_
deer, which are very little known. It is the _fallow_ deer that chiefly
people our parks. Red deer were also found at Blenheim, in Oxfordshire,
when it was visited by Dr. Johnson, as may be seen in "Boswell."] As
my father always retained a town-house in Manchester (somewhere in
Fountain-street), and, though a plain, unpretending man, was literary
to the extent of having written a book, all things were so arranged that
there was no possibility of any commercial mementos ever penetrating to
the rural retreat of his family; such mementos, I mean, as, by reviving
painful recollections of that ancient Schreiber, who was or ought to be
by this time extinct, would naturally be odious and distressing. Here,
therefore, liberated from all jealousy of overlooking eyes, such as
haunted persons of their expectations at Brighton, Weymouth, Sidmouth,
or Bath, Miss Smith and Miss Watson used to surrender themselves without
restraint to their glad animal impulses of girlish gayety, like the
fawns of antelopes when suddenly transferred from tiger-haunted thickets
to the serene preserves of secluded rajahs. On these visits it was, that
I, as a young pet whom they carried about like a doll from my second to
my eighth or ninth year, learned to know them; so as to take a fraternal
interest in the succeeding periods of their lives. Their fathers I
certainly had not seen; nor had they, consciously. These two fathers
must both have died in India, before my inquiries had begun to travel
in that direction. But, as old acquaintances of my mother's, both
had visited The Farm before I was born; and about General Smith, in
particular, there had survived amongst the servants a remembrance which
seemed to us (that is to them and to myself) ludicrously awful, though,
at that time, the practice was common throughout our Indian possessions.
He had a Hindoo servant with him; and this servant every night stretched
himself along the "sill" or outer threshold of the door; so that he
might have been trodden on by the general when retiring to rest; and
from this it was but a moderate step in advance to say that he _was_
trodden on. Upon which basis many other wonders were naturally reared.
Miss Smith's father, therefore, furnished matter for a not very amiable
tradition; but Miss Smith herself was the sweetest-tempered and the
loveliest of girls, and the most thoroughly English in the style of her
beauty. Far different every way was Miss Watson. In person she was
a finished beauty of the very highest pretensions, and generally
recognized as such; that is to say, her figure was fine and queenly;
her features were exquisitely cut, as regarded their forms and the
correspondences of their parts; and usually by artists her face was said
to be Grecian. Perhaps the nostrils, mouth, and forehead, might be
so; but nothing could be less Grecian, or more eccentric in form and
position, than the eyes. They were placed obliquely, in a way that I
do not remember to have seen repeated in any other face whatever. Large
they were, and particularly long, tending to an almond-shape; equally
strange, in fact, as to color, shape, and position: but the remarkable
position of these eyes would have absorbed your gaze to the obliteration
of all other features or peculiarities in the face, were it not for one
other even more remarkable distinction affecting her complexion: this
lay in a suffusion that mantled upon her cheeks, of a color amounting
almost to carmine. Perhaps it might be no more than what Pindar meant by
the _porphyreon phos erotos_, which Gray has falsely [Footnote: Falsely,
because poxphuxeos rarely, perhaps, means in the Greek use what we mean
properly by _purple_, and _could_ not mean it in the Pindaric passage;
much oftener it denotes some shade of _crimson_, or else of _puniceus_,
or blood-red. Gibbon was never more mistaken than when he argued that
all the endless disputing about the _purpureus_ of the ancients
might have been evaded by attending to its Greek designation, namely,
_porphyry_-colored: since, said he, porphyry is always of the same
color. Not at all. Porphyry, I have heard, runs through as large a gamut
of hues as marble; but, if this should be an exaggeration, at all events
porphyry is far from being so monochromatic as Gibbon's argument would
presume. The truth is, colors were as loosely and latitudinarially
distinguished by the Greeks and Romans as degrees of affinity and
consanguinity are everywhere. _My son-in-law_, says a woman, and she
means _my stepson._ _My cousin_, she says, and she means any mode
of relationship in the wide, wide world. _Nos neveux_, says a French
writer, and means not _our nephews_, but _our grandchildren_, or more
generally _our descendants_.] translated as "the bloom of young desire,
and PURPLE light of love." It was not unpleasing, and gave a lustre
to the eyes, but it added to the eccentricity of the face; and by all
strangers it was presumed to be an artificial color, resulting from
some mode of applying a preparation more brilliant than rouge. But to us
children, so constantly admitted to her toilet, it was well known to
be entirely natural. Generally speaking, it is not likely to assist the
effect of a young woman's charms, that she presents any such variety in
her style of countenance as could naturally be called _odd_. But Miss
Watson, by the somewhat scenical effect resulting from the harmony
between her fine figure and her fine countenance, triumphed over all
that might else have been thought a blemish; and when she was presented
at court on occasion of her marriage, the king himself pronounced her,
to friends of Mrs. Schreiber, the most splendid of all the brides
that had yet given lustre to his reign. In such cases the judgments of
rustic, undisciplined tastes, though marked by narrowness, and often by
involuntary obedience to vulgar ideals (which, for instance, makes them
insensible to all the deep sanctities of beauty that sleep amongst the
Italian varieties of the Madonna face), is not without its appropriate
truth. Servants and rustics all thrilled in sympathy with the sweet
English loveliness of Miss Smith; but all alike acknowledged, with
spontaneous looks of homage, the fine presence and finished beauty
of Miss Watson. Naturally, from the splendor with which they were
surrounded, and the notoriety of their great expectations,--so much to
dazzle in one direction, and, on the other hand, something for as tender
a sentiment as pity, in the fact of both from so early an age having
been united in the calamity of orphanage,--go where they might, these
young women drew all eyes upon themselves; and from the _audible_
comparisons sometimes made between them, it might be imagined that if
ever there were a situation fitted to nourish rivalship and jealousy,
between two girls, here it might be anticipated in daily operation. But,
left to themselves, the yearnings of the female heart tend naturally
towards what is noble; and, unless where it has been tried too heavily
by artificial incitements applied to the pride, I do not believe that
women generally are disposed to any unfriendly jealousy of each other.
Why should they? Almost every woman, when strengthened in those charms
which nature has given to her by such as she can in many ways give
to herself, must feel that she has her own separate domain of empire
unaffected by the most sovereign beauty upon earth. Every man that ever
existed has probably his own peculiar talent (if only it were detected),
in which he would be found to excel all the rest of his race. And in
every female face possessing any attractions at all, no matter what
may be her general inferiority, there lurks some secret peculiarity
of expression--some mesmeric individuality--which is valid within its
narrower range--limited superiority over the supreme of beauties within
a narrow circle. It is unintelligibly but mesmerically potent, this
secret fascination attached to features oftentimes that are absolutely
plain; and as one of many cases within my own range of positive
experience, I remember in confirmation, at this moment, that in a
clergyman's family, counting three daughters, all on a visit to my
mother, the youngest, Miss F---- P----, who was strikingly and memorably
plain, never walked out on the Clifton Downs unattended, but she was
followed home by a crowd of admiring men, anxious to learn her rank
and abode; whilst the middle sister, eminently handsome, levied no such
_visible_ tribute of admiration on the public.

I mention this fact, one of a thousand similar facts, simply by way
of reminding the reader of what he must himself have often witnessed;
namely, that no woman is condemned by nature to any ignoble necessity
of repining against the power of other women; her own may be far more
confined, but within its own circle may possibly, measured against
that of the haughtiest beauty, be the profounder. However, waiving the
question thus generally put here, and as it specially affected these two
young women that virtually were sisters, any question of precedency in
power or display, when brought into collision with sisterly affection,
had not a momentary existence. Each had soon redundant proofs of her
own power to attract suitors without end; and, for the more or the less,
_that_ was felt to be a matter of accident. Never, on this earth, I am
satisfied, did that pure sisterly love breathe a more steady inspiration
than now into the hearts and through the acts of these two generous
girls; neither was there any sacrifice which either would have refused
_to_ or _for_ the other. The period, however, was now rapidly shortening
during which they would have any opportunity for testifying this
reciprocal love. Suitors were flocking around them, as rank as
cormorants in a storm. The grim old chancellor (one, if not both, of
the young ladies having been a ward in Chancery) had all his
legal jealousies awakened on their behalf. The worshipful order of
_adventurers_ and _fortune-hunters_, at that time chiefly imported from
Ireland, as in times more recent from Germany, and other moustachoed
parts of the continent, could not live under the raking fire of Mrs.
Schreiber, on the one side, with her female tact and her knowledge of
life, and of the chancellor, with his huge discretional power, on the
other. That particular chancellor, whom the chronology of the case
brought chiefly into connection with Miss Watson's interests, was (if
my childish remembrances do not greatly mislead me) the iracund Lord
Thurlow. Lovers and wooers this grim lawyer regarded as the most
impertinent order of animals in universal zoology; and of these, in Miss
Watson's case, he had a whole menagerie to tend. Penelope, according
to some school-boy remembrance of mine, had one hundred and eighteen
suitors. These young ladies had almost as many. Heavens! what a crew
of Comus to follow or to lead! And what a suitable person was
this truculent old lord on the woolsack to enact the part of
shepherd--Corydon, suppose, or Alphesibæus--to this goodly set of lambs!
How he must have admired the hero of the "Odyssey," who in one way or
other accounted for all the wooers that "sorned" upon his house, and
had a receipt for their bodies from the grave-digger of Ithaca! But even
this wily descendant of Sisyphus would have found it no such easy matter
to deal with the English suitors, who were not the feeble voluptuaries
of the Ionian Islands, that suffered themselves to be butchered as
unresistingly as sheep in the shambles--actually standing at one end of
a banqueting-room to be shot at with bows and arrows, not having pluck
enough to make a rush--but were _game_ men; all young, strong, rich, and
in most cases technically "noble;" all, besides, contending for one or
other of two prizes a thousand times better fitted to inspire romantic
ardor than the poor, withered Penelope. One, by the way, amongst these
suitors (I speak of those who addressed Miss Watson), merits a
separate commemoration, as having drawn from Sheridan his very happiest
_impromptu_--and an _impromptu_ that was really such--(the rarest of
all things from Sheridan). This was Lord Belgrave, eldest son of Lord
Grosvenor—then an earl, but at some period, long subsequent to this,
raised to the Marquisate of Westminster, a title naturally suggesting
in itself a connection with the vast Grosvenor property, sweeping across
the whole area of that most aristocratic region in the metropolis now
called _Belgravia_, which was then a name unknown; and this Hesperian
region had as yet no architectural value, and consequently no
ground-rent value, simply because the world of fashion and distinction
had as yet not expanded itself in that direction. In those days the
territorial importance of this great house rested exclusively upon its
connection with the county of Chester. In this connection it was that
the young Viscount Belgrave had been introduced, by his family interest,
into the House of Commons; he had delivered his maiden speech with some
effect; and had been heard favorably on various subsequent occasions;
on one of which it was that, to the extreme surprise of the house, he
terminated his speech with a passage from Demosthenes--not presented in
English, but in sounding Attic Greek. Latin is a privileged dialect in
parliament. But Greek! It would not have been at all more startling
to the usages of the house, had his lordship quoted Persic or Telinga.
Still, though felt as something verging on the ridiculous, there was an
indulgent feeling to a young man fresh from academic bowers, which would
not have protected a mature man of the world. Everybody bit his lips,
and as yet did _not_ laugh. But the final issue stood on the edge of a
razor. A gas, an inflammable atmosphere, was trembling sympathetically
through the whole excited audience; all depended on a match being
applied to this gas whilst yet in the very act of escaping. Deepest
silence still prevailed; and, had any commonplace member risen to
address the house in an ordinary business key, all would have blown
over. Unhappily for Lord Belgrave, in that critical moment up rose
the one solitary man, to wit, Sheridan, whose look, whose voice, whose
traditional character, formed a prologue to what was coming. Here let
the reader understand that, throughout the "Iliad," all speeches or
commands, questions or answers, are introduced by Homer under some
peculiar formula. For instance, replies are usually introduced thus:


    "_But him answering thus addressed the sovereign Agamemnon;_"


or; in sonorous Greek:


  "Ton d' apameibomenos prosephé kreion Agamemnon;"


or, again, according to the circumstances:


  "But him sternly surveying saluted the swift-footed Achilles;"
  "Ton d'ar', upodra idon, prosephé podas okus Achilleus."


This being premised, and that every one of the audience, though
pretending to no Greek, yet, from his school-boy remembrances, was as
well acquainted with these _formulæ_ as with the scriptural formula
of _Verily, verily, I say unto you, &c._, Sheridan, without needing to
break its force by explanations, solemnly opened thus:

  "Ton d' apameibomenos prosephé Sheridanios heros."_

Simply to have commenced his answer in Greek would have sufficiently met
the comic expectation then thrilling the house; but, when it happened
that this Greek (so suitable to the occasion) was also the one sole
morsel of Greek that everybody in that assembly understood, the effect,
as may be supposed, was overwhelming, and wrapt the whole house in what
might be called a fiery explosion of laughter. Meantime, as prizes in
the matrimonial lottery, and prizes in all senses, both young ladies
were soon carried off. Miss Smith, whose expectations I never happened
to hear estimated, married a great West India proprietor; and Miss
Watson, who (according to the popular report) would succeed to six
thousand a year on her twenty-first birthday, married Lord Carbery.
Miss Watson inherited also from her father something which would not
generally be rated very highly, namely, a chancery lawsuit, with the
East India Company for defendant. However, if the company is a potent
antagonist, thus far it is an eligible one, that, in the event of losing
the suit, the honorable company is solvent; and such an event, after
some nine or ten years' delay, did really befall the company. The
question at issue respected some docks which Colonel Watson had built
for the company in some Indian port. And in the end this lawsuit,
though so many years doubtful in its issue, proved very valuable to Miss
Watson; I have heard (but cannot vouch for it) not less valuable than
that large part of her property which had been paid over without demur
upon her twenty-first birth-day. Both young ladies married happily; but
in marriage they found their separation, and in that separation a shock
to their daily comfort which was never replaced to either. As to Miss
Smith's husband, I did not know him; but Lord Carbery was every way an
estimable man; in some things worthy of admiration; and his wife never
ceased to esteem and admire him. But she yearned for the society of her
early friend; and this being placed out of her reach by the accidents of
life, she fell early into a sort of disgust with her own advantages of
wealth and station, which, promising so much, were found able to perform
nothing at all in this first and last desire of her heart. A portrait of
her friend hung in the drawing-room; but Lady Carbery did not willingly
answer the questions that were sometimes prompted by its extraordinary
loveliness. There are women to whom a female friendship is
indispensable, and cannot be supplied by any companion of the other sex.
That blessing, therefore, of her golden youth, turned eventually into
a curse for her after-life; for I believe that, through one accident or
another, they never met again after they became married women. To me,
as one of those who had known and loved Miss Smith, Lady Carbery always
turned the more sunny side of her nature; but to the world generally she
presented a chilling and somewhat severe aspect--as to a vast illusion
that rested upon pillars of mockery and frauds. Honors, beauty of
the first order, wealth, and the power which follows wealth as its
shadow--what could these do? what _had_ they done? In proportion as they
had settled heavily upon herself, she had found them to entail a load
of responsibility; and those claims upon her she had labored to fulfil
conscientiously; but else they had only precipitated the rupture of such
ties as had given sweetness to her life.

From the first, therefore, I had been aware, on this visit to Laxton,
that Lady Carbery had changed, and was changing. She had become
religious; so much I knew from my sister's letters. And, in fact, this
change had been due to her intercourse with my mother. But, in reality,
her premature disgust with the world would, at any rate, have made her
such; and, had any mode of monastic life existed for Protestants, I
believe that she would before this have entered it, supposing Lord
Carbery to have consented. People generally would have stated the case
most erroneously; they would have said that she was sinking into gloom
under religious influences; whereas the very contrary was the truth;
namely, that, having sunk into gloomy discontent with life, and its
miserable performances as contrasted with its promises, she sought
relief and support to her wounded feelings from religion.

But the change brought with it a difficult trial to myself. She
recoiled, by natural temperament and by refinement of taste, from all
modes of religious enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a large word, and in many
cases I could not go along with her; but _canting_ of all descriptions
was odious to both of us alike. To cultivate religious knowledge in an
intellectual way, she very well understood that she must study divinity.
And she relied upon me for assisting her. Not that she made the mistake
of ascribing to me any knowledge on that subject; but I could learn;
and, whatsoever I _had_ learned, she knew, by experience, that I
could make abundantly plain to her understanding. Wherever I did _not_
understand, I was far too sincere to dissemble that fact. Where I _did_
understand, I could enable _her_ to understand.

On the subject of theology, it was not easy indeed for anybody, man or
boy, to be more ignorant than myself. My studies in that field had been
none at all. Nor was this any subject for wonder, or (considering my
age) for blame. In reality, to make theology into a captivating study
for the young, it must be translated into controversial theology. And
in what way could such a polemic interest be evoked except through
political partisanship? But such partisanship connects itself naturally
with the irritability of sectarianism, and but little with the majestic
repose of a church such as the Romish or the Anglican, founded upon the
broad basis of national majorities, and sheltered from danger, or the
sense of danger, by state protection. Dissenters stand upon another
footing. The Dissenter from the national church, whether in England or
in France, is reminded by his own distinguishing religious opinions of
the historic struggles through which those opinions have travelled. The
doctrines which give to his own sect a peculiar denomination are also
those which record its honorable political conflicts; so that his own
connection, through his religious brotherhood, with the civil history of
his country, furnishes a standing motive of pride for some acquaintance
more or less with divinity; since it is by deviating painfully,
conscientiously, and at some periods dangerously, from the established
divinity, that his fathers have achieved their station in the great
drama of the national evolution.

But, whilst I was ignorant of theology, as a direct and separate branch
of study, the points are so many at which theology inosculates with
philosophy, and with endless casual and random suggestions of the
self-prompted reason, that inevitably from that same moment in which I
began to find a motive for directing my thoughts to this new subject, I
wanted not something to say that might have perplexed an antagonist,
or (in default of such a vicious associate) that might have amused a
friend, more especially a friend so predisposed to a high estimate of
myself as Lady Carbery. Sometimes I did more than amuse her; I startled
her, and I even startled myself, with distinctions that to this hour
strike me as profoundly just, and as undeniably novel. Two out of many I
will here repeat; and with the more confidence, that in these two I can
be sure of repeating the exact thoughts; whereas, in very many other
cases, it would not be so certain that they might not have been
insensibly modified by cross-lights or disturbing shadows from
intervening speculations.

1. Lady Carbery one day told me that she could not see any reasonable
ground for what is said of Christ, and elsewhere of John the Baptist,
that he opened his mission by preaching "repentance." Why "repentance"?
Why then, more than at any other time? Her reason for addressing this
remark to me was, that she fancied there might be some error in the
translation of the Greek expression. I replied that, in my opinion,
there was; and that I had myself always been irritated by the entire
irrelevance of the English word, and by something very like cant, on
which the whole burden of the passage is thrown. How was it any natural
preparation for a vast spiritual revolution, that men should first of
all acknowledge any special duty of repentance? The repentance, if
any movement of that nature could intelligibly be supposed called for,
should more naturally _follow_ this great revolution--which, as
yet, both in its principle and in its purpose, was altogether
mysterious--than herald it, or ground it. In my opinion, the Greek word
_metanoia_ concealed a most profound meaning--a meaning of prodigious
compass--which bore no allusion to any ideas whatever of repentance. The
_meta_ carried with it an emphatic expression of its original idea--the
idea of transfer, of translation, of transformation; or, if we prefer a
Grecian to a Roman apparelling, the idea of a _metamorphosis_. And this
idea, to what is it applied? Upon what object is this idea of spiritual
transfiguration made to bear? Simply upon the _noetic_ or intellectual
faculty--the faculty of shaping and conceiving things under their true
relations. The holy herald of Christ, and Christ himself the finisher of
prophecy, made proclamation alike of the same mysterious summons, as
a baptism or rite of initiation; namely, _Metanoei_. Henceforth
transfigure your theory of moral truth; the old theory is laid aside as
infinitely insufficient; a new and spiritual revelation is established.
_Metanoeite_--contemplate moral truth as radiating from a new centre;
apprehend it under transfigured relations.

John the Baptist, like other earlier prophets, delivered a message
which, probably enough, he did not himself more than dimly understand,
and never in its full compass of meaning. Christ occupied another
station. Not only was he the original Interpreter, but he was
himself the Author--Founder, at once, and Finisher--of that great
transfiguration applied to ethics, which he and the Baptist alike
announced as forming the code for the new and revolutionary era now
opening its endless career. The human race was summoned to bring a
transfiguring sense and spirit of interpretation (_metanoia_) to a
transfigured ethics--an altered organ to an altered object. This is by
far the grandest miracle recorded in Scripture. No exhibition of blank
power--not the arresting of the earth's motion--not the calling back of
the dead unto life, can approach in grandeur to this miracle which we
all daily behold; namely, the inconceivable mystery of having written
and sculptured upon the tablets of man's heart a new code of moral
distinctions, all modifying--many reversing--the old ones. What
would have been thought of any prophet, if he should have promised to
transfigure the celestial mechanics; if he had said, I will create a new
pole-star, a new zodiac, and new laws of gravitation; briefly, I will
make new earth and new heavens? And yet a thousand times more awful it
was to undertake the writing of new laws upon the spiritual conscience
of man. _Metanoeite_ (was the cry from the wilderness), wheel into a new
centre your moral system; _geocentric_ has that system been up to this
hour--that is, having earth and the earthly for its starting-point;
henceforward make it _heliocentric_ (that is, with the sun, or the
heavenly for its principle of motion).

2. A second remark of mine was, perhaps, not more important, but it
was, on the whole, better calculated to startle the prevailing
preconceptions; for, as to the new system of morals introduced by
Christ, generally speaking, it is too dimly apprehended in its great
differential features to allow of its miraculous character being
adequately appreciated; one flagrant illustration of which is furnished
by our experience in Affghanistan, where some officers, wishing to
impress Akhbar Khan with the beauty of Christianity, very judiciously
repeated to him the Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount, by both
of which the Khan was profoundly affected, and often recurred to them;
but others, under the notion of conveying to him a more _comprehensive_
view of the Scriptural ethics, repeated to him the Ten Commandments;
although, with the sole exception of the two first, forbidding idolatry
and Polytheism, there is no word in these which could have displeased or
surprised a Pagan, and therefore nothing characteristic of Christianity.
Meantime my second remark was substantially this which follows: What is
a religion? To Christians it means, over and above a mode of worship,
a dogmatic (that is, a doctrinal) system; a great body of doctrinal
truths, moral and spiritual. But to the ancients (to the Greeks and
Romans, for instance), it meant nothing of the kind. A religion was
simply a _cultus_, a _thræskeia_, a mode of ritual worship, in which
there might be two differences, namely: 1. As to the particular deity
who furnished the motive to the worship; 2. As to the ceremonial, or
mode of conducting the worship. But in no case was there so much as
a pretence of communicating any religious truths, far less any moral
truths. The obstinate error rooted in modern minds is, that, doubtless,
the moral instruction was bad, as being heathen; but that still it was
as good as heathen opportunities allowed it to be. No mistake can
be greater. Moral instruction had no existence even in the plan or
intention of the religious service. The Pagan priest or flamen never
dreamed of any function like that of _teaching_ as in any way connected
with his office. He no more undertook to teach morals than to teach
geography or cookery. He taught nothing. What he undertook was, simply
to _do_: namely, to present authoritatively (that is, authorized and
supported by some civil community, Corinth, or Athens, or Rome, which
he represented) the homage and gratitude of that community to the
particular deity adored. As to morals or just opinions upon the
relations to man of the several divinities, all this was resigned to
the teaching of nature; and for any polemic functions the teaching was
resigned to the professional philosophers--academic, peripatetic, stoic,
etc. By religion it was utterly ignored.

The reader must do me the favor to fix his attention upon the real
question at issue. What I say--what then I said to Lady Carbery--is
this: that, by failing to notice as a _differential_ feature of
Christianity this involution of a doctrinal part, we elevate Paganism
to a dignity which it never dreamed of. Thus, for instance, in the
Eleusinian mysteries, what was the main business transacted? I, for my
part, in harmony with my universal theory on this subject,--namely, that
there could be no doctrinal truth delivered in a Pagan religion,--have
always maintained that the only end and purpose of the mysteries was a
more solemn and impressive worship of a particular goddess. Warburton,
on the other hand, would insist upon it that some great affirmative
doctrines, interesting to man, such as the immortality of the soul,
a futurity of retribution, &c., might be here commemorated. And now,
nearly a hundred years after Warburton, what is the opinion of scholars
upon this point? Two of the latest and profoundest I will cite:--1.
Lobeck, in his "Aglaophamus," expressly repels all such notions; 2.
Otfried Mueller, in the twelfth chapter, twenty-fourth section, of his
"Introduction to a System of Mythology," says: "I have here gone on
the assumption which I consider unavoidable, that there was no regular
instruction, no dogmatical communication, connected with the Grecian
worship in general. _There could be nothing_ of the kind introduced
into the public service from the way in which it was conducted, for
the priest _did not address the people at all_." These opinions, which
exactly tallied with my own assertion to Lady Carbery, that all religion
amongst the Pagans resolved itself into a mere system of ceremonial
worship, a pompous and elaborate _cultus_, were not brought forward in
Germany until about ten or twelve years ago; whereas, my doctrine was
expressly insisted on in 1800; that is, forty years earlier than any of
these German writers had turned their thoughts in that direction.

Had I, then, really all that originality on this subject which for
many years I secretly claimed? Substantially I had, because this great
distinction between the modern (or Christian) idea of "a religion" and
the ancient (or Pagan) idea of "a religion," I had nowhere openly
seen expressed in words. To myself exclusively I was indebted for it.
Nevertheless, it is undeniable that this conception must have been long
ago germinating in the world, and perhaps bearing fruit. This is past
all denial, since, about thirteen or fourteen years ago, I read in some
journal (a French journal, I think) this statement: namely, that some
oriental people--Turks, according to my present impression, but it might
have been Arabs--make an old traditional distinction (so said the French
journal) between what they call "religions of the book" and all other
religions. The religions of the book, according to them, are three, all
equally founded upon written and producible documents, namely: first,
the Judaic system, resting upon the Pentateuch, or more truly, I should
imagine, upon the Law and the Prophets; secondly, the Christian system,
resting upon the Old and New Testaments; thirdly, the Mahometan system,
resting confessedly upon the Koran. The very meaning, therefore, of
styling these systems, by way of honorable distinction, _religions of
the book_, is, not that accidentally they had written vouchers for
their creed, whereas the others had only oral vouchers, but that they
severally offer to men's acceptance a large body of philosophic truth,
such as requires and presupposes a book. Whereas the various religions
contradistinguished from these three--namely, the whole body of Pagan
idolatries--are mere forms of adoration addressed to many different
divinities; and the brief reason why they are essentially opposed to
religions of the book is, not that they _have_ not, but logically that
they _cannot_ have, books or documents, inasmuch as they have no truths
to deliver. They do not profess to teach anything whatsoever. What they
profess, as their justifying distinction, is, to adore a certain deity,
or a certain collective Pantheon, according to certain old authorized
forms--authorized, that is to say, by fixed, ancient, and oftentimes
local traditions.

What was the great practical inference from the new distinction which I
offered? It was this: that Christianity (which included Judaism as
its own germinal principle, and Islamism as its own adaptation to a
barbarous and imperfect civilization) carried along with itself its own
authentication; since, whilst other religions introduced men simply to
ceremonies and usages, which could furnish no aliment or material for
their intellect, Christianity provided an eternal _palæstra_ or place of
exercise for the human understanding vitalized by human affections: for
every problem whatever, interesting to the human intellect, provided
only that it bears a _moral_ aspect, immediately passes into the field
of religious speculation. Religion had thus become the great organ of
human culture. Lady Carbery advanced half-way to meet me in these new
views, finding my credentials as a theologian in my earnestness and my
sincerity. She herself was painfully and sorrowfully in earnest. She had
come at this early age of seven or eight and twenty, to the most bitter
sense of hollowness, and (in a philosophic sense) of _treachery_ as
under-lying all things that stood round her; and she sought escape, if
escape there were, through religion. Religion was to be sought in the
Bible. But was the Bible intelligible at the first glance? Far from
it. Search the Scriptures, was the cry in Protestant lands amongst all
people, however much at war with each other. But I often told her that
this was a vain pretence, without some knowledge of Greek. Or perhaps
not always and absolutely a pretence; because, undoubtedly, it is true
that oftentimes mere ignorant simplicity may, by bringing into direct
collision passages that are reciprocally illustrative, restrain an error
or illuminate a truth. And a reason, which I have since given in print
(a reason additional to Bentley's), for neglecting the thirty thousand
various readings collected by the diligence of the New Testament
collators, applied also to this case, namely: That, first, the
transcendent nature, and, secondly, the _recurrent_ nature, of
Scriptural truths cause them to surmount verbal disturbances. A
doctrine, for instance, which is sowed broadcast over the Scriptures,
and recurs, on an average, three times in every chapter, cannot be
affected by the casual inaccuracy of a phrase, since the phrase is
continually varied. And, therefore, I would not deny the possibility
of an effectual searching by very unlearned persons. Our authorized
translators of the Bible in the Shakspearian age were not in any
exquisite sense learned men; they were very able men, and in a better
sense able than if they had been philologically profound scholars, which
at that time, from the imperfect culture of philology, they could not
easily have been; men they were whom religious feeling guided correctly
in choosing their expressions, and with whom the state of the language
in some respects cooperated, by furnishing a diction more homely,
fervent, and pathetic, than would now be available. For their apostolic
functions English was the language most in demand. But in polemic or
controversial cases Greek is indispensable. And of this Lady Carbery was
sufficiently convinced by my own demur on the word _metanoia_. If I were
right, how profoundly wrong must those have been whom my new explanation
superseded. She resolved, therefore, immediately on my suggesting it,
that she would learn Greek; or, at least, that limited form of Greek
which was required for the New Testament. In the language of Terence,
dictum factum--no sooner said than done. On the very next morning we all
rode in to Stamford, our nearest town for such a purpose, and astounded
the bookseller's apprentice by ordering four copies of the Clarendon
Press Greek Testament, three copies of Parkhurst's Greek and English
Lexicon, and three copies of some grammar, but what I have now
forgotten. The books were to come down by the mail-coach without delay.
Consequently, we were soon at work. Lady Massey and my sister, not being
sustained by the same interest as Lady Carbery, eventually relaxed in
their attention. But Lady Carbery was quite in earnest, and very soon
became expert in the original language of the New Testament.

I wished much that she should have gone on to the study of Herodotus.
And I described to her the situation of the vivacious and mercurial
Athenian, in the early period of Pericles, as repeating in its main
features, for the great advantage of that Grecian Froissart, the
situation of Adam during his earliest hours in Paradise, himself being
the describer to the affable archangel. The same genial climate there
was; the same luxuriation of nature in her early prime; the same
ignorance of his own origin in the tenant of this lovely scenery; and
the same eager desire to learn it. [Footnote: "About me round I saw  Hill, dale, and shady woods, and sunny plains,
  And liquid lapse of murmuring streams; by these
  Creatures that lived and moved, and walked or flew;
  Birds on the branches warbling; all things smiled;
  With fragrance and with joy my heart o'erflowed.
  Myself I then perused, and limb by limb
  Surveyed, and sometimes went, and sometimes ran
  With supple joints, as lively vigor led;
  _But who I was or where, or from what cause_,
  Knew not."--_Paradise Lost_, Book viii.
The _who_, the _where_ (in any extended sense, that is, as regarded the
_external_ relations of his own country), and the _from what cause_--all
these were precisely what the Grecian did _not_ know, and first learned
from Herodotus.] The very truth, and mere facts of history, reaching
Herodotus through such a haze of remote abstraction, and suffering a
sort of refraction at each translation from atmosphere to atmosphere,
whilst continually the uninteresting parts dropped away as the whole
moved onwards, unavoidably assumed the attractions of romance. And thus
it has happened that the air of marvellousness, which seems connected
with the choice and preferences of Herodotus, is in reality the natural
gift of his position. Culling from a field of many nations and many
generations, reasonably he preferred such narratives as, though possible
enough, wore the coloring of romance. Without any violation of the
truth, the mere extent of his field as to space and time gave him great
advantages for the wild and the marvellous. Meantime, this purpose
of ours with regard to Herodotus was defeated. Whilst we were making
preparations for it, suddenly one morning from his Limerick estate of
Carass returned Lord Carbery. And, by accident, his welcome was a rough
one; for, happening to find Lady Carbery in the breakfast-room, and
naturally throwing his arm about her neck to kiss her, "Ruffian," a
monster of a Newfoundland dog, singularly beautiful in his coloring,
and almost as powerful as a leopard, flew at him vindictively as at a
stranger committing an assault, and his mistress had great difficulty in
calling him off. Lord Carbery smiled a little at our Greek studies; and,
in turn, made us smile, who knew the original object of these studies,
when he suggested mildly that three or four books of the "Iliad" would
have been as easily mastered, and might have more fully rewarded our
trouble. I contented myself with replying (for I knew how little
Lady Carbery would have liked to plead the _religious_ motive to
her husband), that Parkhurst (and there was at that time no other
Greek-_English_ Lexicon) would not have been available for Homer;
neither, it is true, would he have been available for Herodotus.
But, considering the simplicity and uniformity of style in both
these authors, I had formed a plan (not very hard of execution) for
interleaving Parkhurst with such additional words as might have been
easily mustered from the special dictionaries (Græco-Latin) dedicated
separately to the service of the historian and of the poet. I do not
believe that more than fifteen hundred _extra_ words would have been
required; and these, entered at the rate of twenty per hour, would have
occupied only ten days, for seven and a half hours each. However, from
one cause or other, this plan was never brought to bear. The preliminary
labor upon the lexicon always enforced a delay; and any delay, in
such case, makes an opening for the irruption of a thousand unforeseen
hindrances, that finally cause the whole plan to droop insensibly. The
time came at last for leaving Laxton, and I did not see Lady Carbery
again for nearly an entire year.

In passing through the park-gates of Laxton, on my departure northward,
powerfully, and as if "with the might of waters," my mind turned round
to contemplate that strange enlargement of my experience which had
happened to me within the last three months. I had seen, and become
familiarly acquainted with, a young man, who had in a manner died to
every object around him, had died an intellectual death, and suddenly
had been called back to life and real happiness--had been, in effect,
raised from the dead--by the accident of meeting a congenial female
companion. But, secondly, that very lady from whose lips I first heard
this remarkable case of blight and restoration, had herself passed
through an equal though not a similar blight, and was now seeking
earnestly, though with what success I could never estimate, some similar
restoration to some new mode of hopeful existence, through intercourse
with religious philosophy. What vast revolutions (vast for the
individual) within how narrow a circle! What blindness to approaching
catastrophes, in the midst of what nearness to the light! And for
myself, whom accident had made the silent observer of these changes, was
it not likely enough that I also was rushing forward to court and woo
some frantic mode of evading an endurance that by patience might have
been borne, or by thoughtfulness might have been disarmed? Misgivingly I
went forwards, feeling forever that, through clouds of thick darkness,
I was continually nearing a danger, or was myself perhaps wilfully
provoking a trial, before which my constitutional despondency would
cause me to lie down without a struggle.


II.

THE PRIORY.



To teach is to learn: according to an old experience, it is the very
best mode of learning--the surest, and the shortest. And hence, perhaps,
it may be, that in the middle ages by the monkish word _scholaris_ was
meant indifferently he that learned and he that taught. Never in any
equal number of months had my understanding so much expanded as during
this visit to Laxton. The incessant demand made upon me by Lady Carbery
for solutions of the many difficulties besetting the study of divinity
and the Greek Testament, or for such approximations to solutions as my
resources would furnish, forced me into a preternatural tension of all
the faculties applicable to that purpose. Lady Carbery insisted upon
calling me her "Admirable Crichton;" and it was in vain that I demurred
to this honorary title upon two grounds: first, as being one towards
which I had no natural aptitudes or predisposing advantages; secondly
(which made her stare), as carrying with it no real or enviable
distinction. The splendor supposed to be connected with the attainments
of Crichton I protested against, as altogether imaginary. How far that
person really had the accomplishments ascribed to him, I waived as a
question not worth investigating. My objection commenced at an earlier
point: real or not real, the accomplishments were, as I insisted, vulgar
and trivial. Vulgar, that is, when put forward as exponents or
adequate expressions of intellectual grandeur. The whole rested on a
misconception; the limitary idea of knowledge was confounded with the
infinite idea of power. To have a quickness in copying or mimicking
other men, and in learning to do dexterously what _they_ did
clumsily,--ostentatiously to keep glittering before men's eyes a
thaumaturgic versatility such as that of a rope-dancer, or of an Indian
juggler, in petty accomplishments,--was a mode of the very vulgarest
ambition: one effort of productive power,--a little book, for instance,
which should impress or should agitate several successive generations of
men, even though far below the higher efforts of human creative art--as,
for example, the "De Imitatione Christi," or "The Pilgrim's Progress,"
or" Robinson Crusoe," or "The Vicar of Wakefield,"--was worth any
conceivable amount of attainments when rated as an evidence of anything
that could justly denominate a man "admirable." One felicitous ballad
of forty lines might have enthroned Crichton as really admirable, whilst
the pretensions actually put forward on his behalf simply install him
as a cleverish or dexterous ape. However, as Lady Carbery did not forego
her purpose of causing me to shine under every angle, it would have been
ungrateful in me to refuse my cooperation with her plans, however little
they might wear a face of promise. Accordingly I surrendered myself for
two hours daily to the lessons in horsemanship of a principal groom who
ranked as a first-rate rough-rider; and I gathered manifold experiences
amongst the horses--so different from the wild, hard-mouthed horses at
Westport, that were often vicious, and sometimes trained to vice. Here,
though spirited, the horses were pretty generally gentle, and all had
been regularly broke. My education was not entirely neglected even as
regarded sportsmanship; that great branch of philosophy being confided
to one of the keepers, who was very attentive to me, in deference to
the interest in myself expressed by his idolized mistress, but otherwise
regarded me probably as an object of mysterious curiosity rather than of
sublunary hope.

Equally, in fact, as regarded my physics and my metaphysics,--in short,
upon all lines of advance that interested my ambition,--I was going
rapidly ahead. And, speaking seriously, in what regarded my intellectual
expansion, never before or since had I been so distinctly made aware
of it. No longer did it seem to move upon the hour-hand, whose advance,
though certain, is yet a pure matter of inference, but upon the
seconds'-hand, which _visibly_ comes on at a trotting pace. Everything
prospered, except my own present happiness, and the possibility of any
happiness for some years to come. About two months after leaving
Laxton, my fate in the worst shape I had anticipated was solemnly and
definitively settled. My guardians agreed that the most prudent course,
with a view to my pecuniary interests, was to place me at the Manchester
Grammar School; not with a view to further improvement in my classical
knowledge, though the head-master was a sound scholar, but simply with
a view to one of the school _exhibitions_. [Footnote:
"_Exhibitions_."--This is the technical name in many cases,
corresponding to the _bursæ_ or _bursaries_ of the continent; from which
word bursæ is derived, I believe, the German term _Bursch_,--that is, a
bursarius, or student, who lives at college upon the salary allowed
by such a bursary. Some years ago the editor of a Glasgow daily paper
called upon Oxford and Cambridge, with a patronizing flourish, to
imitate some one or more of the Scottish universities in founding such
systems of aliment for poor students otherwise excluded from academic
advantages. Evidently he was unaware that they had existed for centuries
before the state of civilization in Scotland had allowed any opening
for the foundation of colleges or academic life. Scottish bursaries, or
exhibitions (a term which Shakspeare uses, very near the close of the
first act in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," as the technical expression
in England), were few, and not generally, I believe, exceeding ten
pounds a-year. The English were many, and of more ancient standing, and
running from forty pounds to one hundred pounds a-year. Such was the
simple difference between the two countries: otherwise they agreed
altogether.] Amongst the countless establishments, scattered all over
England by the noble munificence of English men and English women in
past generations, for connecting the provincial towns with the two royal
universities of the land, this Manchester school was one; in addition to
other great local advantages (namely, _inter alia_, a fine old library
and an ecclesiastical foundation, which in this present generation has
furnished the materials for a bishopric of Manchester, with its deanery
and chapter), this noble foundation secured a number of exhibitions
at Brasenose College, Oxford, to those pupils of the school who should
study at Manchester for three consecutive years. The pecuniary amount
of these exhibitions has since then increased considerably through the
accumulation of funds, which the commercial character of that great
city had caused to be neglected. At that time, I believe each exhibition
yielded about forty guineas a-year, and was legally tenable for seven
successive years. Now, to me this would have offered a most seasonable
advantage, had it been resorted to some two years earlier. My small
patrimonial inheritance gave to me, as it did to each of my four
brothers, exactly one hundred and fifty pounds a-year: and to each of my
sisters exactly one hundred pounds a-year. The Manchester exhibition of
forty guineas a-year would have raised this income for seven years to a
sum close upon two hundred pounds a-year. But at present I was half-way
on the road to the completion of my sixteenth year. Commencing my period
of pupilage from that time, I should not have finished it until I had
travelled half-way through my nineteenth year. And the specific evil
that already weighed upon me with a sickening oppression was the
premature expansion of my mind; and, as a foremost consequence,
intolerance of boyish society. I ought to have entered upon my
_triennium_ of school-boy servitude at the age of thirteen. As things
were,--a delay with which I had nothing to do myself,--this and the
native character of my mind had thrown the whole arrangement awry. For
the better half of the three years I endured it patiently. But it had at
length begun to eat more corrosively into my peace of mind than ever I
had anticipated. The head-master was substantially superannuated for the
duties of his place. Not that intellectually he showed any symptoms of
decay: but in the spirits and physical energies requisite for his duties
he did: not so much age, as disease, it was that incapacitated him. In
the course of a long day, beginning at seven A. M. and stretching down
to five P. M., he succeeded in reaching the further end of his duties.
But how? Simply by consolidating pretty nearly into one continuous scene
of labor the entire ten hours. The full hour of relaxation which the
traditions of this ancient school and the by-laws had consecrated to
breakfast was narrowed into ten, or even seven minutes. The two hours'
interval, in like manner prescribed by the old usages from twelve to two
P. M., was pared down to forty minutes, or less. In this way he walked
conscientiously through the services of the day, fulfilling to the
letter every section the minutest of the traditional rubric. But he
purchased this consummation at the price of all comfort to himself: and,
having done _that_, he felt himself the more entitled to neglect
the comfort of others. The case was singular: he neither showed any
indulgence to himself more than to others (which, however, could do
nothing towards indemnifying others for the severe confinement which his
physical decay inflicted upon them--a point wholly forgotten by him);
nor, secondly, in thus tenaciously holding on to his place did he (I am
satisfied) govern himself by any mercenary thought or wish, but simply
by an austere sense of duty. He discharged his public functions with
constant fidelity, and with superfluity of learning; and felt, perhaps
not unreasonably, that possibly the same learning united with the
same zeal might not revolve as a matter of course in the event of his
resigning the place. I hide from myself no part of the honorable motives
which might (and probably _did_) exclusively govern him in adhering to
the place. But not by one atom the less did the grievous results of his
inability to grapple with his duties weigh upon all within his sphere,
and upon myself, by cutting up the time available for exercise, most
ruinously.

Precisely at the worst crisis of this intolerable darkness (for such,
without exaggeration, it was in its effects upon my spirits) arose, and
for five or six months steadily continued, a consolation of that nature
which hardly in dreams I could have anticipated. For even in dreams
would it have seemed reasonable, or natural, that Laxton, with its
entire society, should transfer itself to Manchester? Some mighty
caliph, or lamp-bearing Aladdin, might have worked such marvels: but
else who, or by what machinery? Nevertheless, without either caliph or
Aladdin, and by the most natural of mere human agencies, this change was
suddenly accomplished.

Mr. White, whom I have already had occasion to mention elsewhere, was in
those days the most eminent surgeon by much in the north of England.
He had by one whole generation run before the phrenologists and
craniologists,--having already measured innumerable skulls amongst the
omnigenous seafaring population of Liverpool, illustrating all the races
of men,--and was in society a most urbane and pleasant companion. On my
mother's suggestion, he had been summoned to Laxton, in the hope that he
might mitigate the torments of Mrs. Schreiber's malady. If I am right
in supposing that to have been cancer, I presume that he could not have
added much to the prescriptions of the local doctor. And yet, on the
other hand, it is a fact--so slowly did new views travel in those days,
when scientific journals were few, and roads were heavy--that ten years
later than this period I knew a case, namely, the case of a butcher's
wife in Somersetshire who had never enjoyed the benefit of hemlock in
relieving the pangs of a cancerous complaint, until an accident brought
Mr. Hey, son to the celebrated Hey of Leeds, into the poor woman's
neighborhood.

What might be the quality or the extent of that relief with which Mr.
White was able to crown the expectations of poor Mrs. Schreiber, I do
not know; but that the relief could not have been imaginary is certain,
for he was earnestly invited to repeat his visits, costly as unavoidably
they were. Mrs. Schreiber did not reside at Laxton. Tenderly as she
loved Lady Carbery, it did not seem consistent with her dignity that she
should take a station that might have been grossly misinterpreted;
and accordingly she bought or hired a miniature kind of villa, called
_Tixover_, distant about four miles from Laxton. A residence in such a
house, so sad and silent at this period of affliction for its mistress,
would have offered too cheerless a life to Mr. White. He took up his
abode, therefore, at Laxton during his earliest visit; and this happened
to coincide with that particular visit of my own during which I was
initiating Lady Carbery into the mysteries of New Testament Greek.
Already as an infant I had known Mr. White; but now, when daily riding
over to Tixover in company, and daily meeting at breakfast and dinner,
we became intimate. Greatly I profited by this intimacy; and some part
of my pleasure in the Laxton plan of migration to Manchester was drawn
from the prospect of renewing it. Such a migration was suggested by Mr.
White himself; and fortunately he _could_ suggest it without even the
appearance of any mercenary views. His interest lay the other way. The
large special retainer, which it was felt but reasonable to pay him
under circumstances so peculiar, naturally disturbed Mr. White; whilst
the benefits of visits so discontinuous became more and more doubtful.
He proposed it, therefore, as a measure of prudence, that Mrs. Schreiber
should take up her abode in Manchester. This counsel was adopted; and
the entire Laxton party in one week struck their Northamptonshire tents,
dived, as it were, into momentary darkness, by a loitering journey of
stages, short and few, out of consideration for the invalid, and rose
again in the gloomy streets of Manchester.

Gloomy they were at that time--mud below, smoke above--for no torch of
improvement had yet explored the ancient habitations of this Lancashire
capital. Elsewhere I have expressed the inexhaustible admiration which
I cherish for the _moral_ qualities, the unrivalled energy and
perseverance, of that native Lancashire population, as yet not much
alloyed with Celtic adulteration. My feelings towards them are the same
as were eloquently and impressively avowed by the late eminent Dr. Cooke
Taylor, after an _official_ inquiry into their situation. But in
those days the Manchester people realized the aspiration of the noble
Scythian; not the place it was that glorified _them_, but they that
glorified the place. No great city (which technically it then was
not, but simply a town or large village) could present so repulsive an
exterior as the Manchester of that day. Lodgings of _any_ sort could
with difficulty be obtained, and at last only by breaking up the party.
The poor suffering lady, with her two friends, Lady Carbery and my
mother, hired one house, Lord and Lady Massey another, and two others
were occupied by attendants--all the servants, except one lady's-maid,
being every night separated by a quarter of a mile from their
mistresses. To me, however, all these discomforts were scarcely apparent
in the prodigious revolution for the better which was now impressed upon
the tenor of my daily life. I lived in the house of the head-master;
but every night I had leave to adjourn for four or five hours to the
drawing-room of Lady Carbery. Her anxiety about Mrs. Schreiber would
not allow of her going abroad into society, unless upon the rarest
occasions. And I, on my part, was too happy in her conversation--so
bold, so novel, and so earnest--voluntarily to have missed any one hour
of it.

Here, by the way, let me mention that on this occasion arose a case of
pretended "_tuft-hunting_," which I, who stood by a silent observer,
could not but feel to involve a malicious calumny. Naturally it happened
that coroneted carriages, superb horses, and numerous servants, in a
town so unostentatious and homely as the Manchester of that day, drew
the public gaze, and effectually advertised the visit of the Laxton
ladies. Respect for the motive which had prompted this visit coöperated
with admiration for the distinguished personal qualities of Lady
Carbery, to draw upon her from several leading families in the town such
little services and attentions as pass naturally, under a spontaneous
law of courtesy, between those who are at home and those who suffer
under the disadvantages of _strangership_. The Manchester people, who
made friendly advances to Lady Carbery, did so, I am persuaded, with
no ulterior objects whatsoever of pressing into the circle of an
aristocratic person; neither did Lady Carbery herself interpret their
attentions in any such ungenerous spirit, but accepted them cordially,
as those expressions of disinterested goodness which I am persuaded that
in reality they were. Amongst the families that were thus attentive to
her, in throwing open for her use various local advantages of baths,
libraries, picture-galleries, etc., were the wife and daughters of Mr.
White himself. Now, one of these daughters was herself the wife of a
baronet, Sir Richard Clayton, who had honorably distinguished himself
in literature by translating and _improving_ the work of Tenhove the
Dutchman (or Belgian?) upon the house of the _De' Medici_--a work which
Mr. Roscoe considered "the most engaging work that has, perhaps, ever
appeared on a subject of literary history." Introduced as Lady Clayton
had been amongst the elite of our aristocracy, it could not be supposed
that she would be at all solicitous about an introduction to the wife
of an Irish nobleman, simply _as_ such, and apart from her personal
endowments. Those endowments, it is true,--namely, the beauty and the
talents of Lady Carbery, made known in Manchester through Mr. White's
report of them, and combined with the knowledge of her generous devotion
to her dying friend, secluding her steadily from all society through a
period of very many months,--did, and reasonably might, interest many
Manchester people on her behalf. In all this there was nothing to be
ashamed of; and, judging from what personally I witnessed, this seems to
have been the true nature and extent of the "tuft-hunting;" and I
have noticed it at all simply because there is a habit almost national
growing up amongst us of imputing to each other some mode of unmanly
prostration before the aristocracy, but with as little foundation for
the charge generally, I believe, as I am satisfied there was in this
particular instance.

Mr. White possessed a museum--formed chiefly by himself, and originally,
perhaps, directed simply to professional objects, such as would have
little chance for engaging the attention of females. But surgeons and
speculative physicians, beyond all other classes of intellectual men,
cultivate the most enlarged and liberal curiosity; so that Mr. White's
museum furnished attractions to an unusually large variety of tastes.
I had myself already seen it; and it struck me that Mr. White would be
gratified if Lady Carbery would herself ask to see it; which accordingly
she did; and thus at once removed the painful feeling that he might be
extorting from her an expression of interest in his collection which she
did not really feel.

Amongst the objects which gave a scientific interest to the collection,
naturally I have forgotten one and all--first, midst, and last; for this
is one of the cases in which we all felicitate ourselves upon the art
and gift of forgetting; that art which the great Athenian [Footnote:
"The great Athenian"--Themistocles.] noticed as amongst the _desiderata_
of human life--that gift which, if in some rare cases it belongs only
to the regal prerogatives of the grave, fortunately in many thousands of
other cases is accorded by the treachery of a human brain. Heavens! what
a curse it were, if every chaos, which is stamped upon the mind by fairs
such as that London fair of St. Bartholomew in years long past, or by
the records of battles and skirmishes through the monotonous pages
of history, or by the catalogues of libraries stretching over a dozen
measured miles, could not be erased, but arrayed itself in endless files
incapable of obliteration, as often as the eyes of our human memory
happened to throw back their gaze in that direction! Heaven be praised,
I have forgotten everything; all the earthly trophies of skill or
curious research; even the ærolithes, that might possibly _not_ be
earthly, but presents from some superior planet. Nothing survives,
except the _humanities_ of the collection; and amongst these, two only
I will molest the reader by noticing. One of the two was a _mummy;_ the
other was a _skeleton_. I, that had previously seen the museum, warned
Lady Carbery of both; but much it mortified us that only the skeleton
was shown. Perhaps the mummy was too closely connected with the personal
history of Mr. White for exhibition to strangers; it was that of a lady
who had been attended medically for some years by Mr. White, and had
owed much alleviation of her sufferings to his inventive skill. She had,
therefore, felt herself called upon to memorialize her gratitude by a
very large bequest--not less (I have heard) than twenty-five thousand
pounds; but with this condition annexed to the gift--that she should be
embalmed as perfectly as the resources in that art of London and Paris
could accomplish, and that once a year Mr. White, accompanied by two
witnesses of credit, should withdraw the veil from her face. The lady
was placed in a common English clock-case, having the usual glass face;
but a veil of white velvet obscured from all profane eyes the silent
features behind. The clock I had myself seen, when a child, and had
gazed upon it with inexpressible awe. But, naturally, on my report of
the case, the whole of our party were devoured by a curiosity to see the
departed fair one. Had Mr. White, indeed, furnished us with the key of
the museum, leaving us to our own discretion, but restricting us only
(like a cruel Bluebeard) from looking into any ante-room, great is my
fear that the perfidious question would have arisen amongst us--what
o'clock it was? and all possible ante-rooms would have given way to the
just fury of our passions. I submitted to Lady Carbery, as a liberty
which might be excused by the torrid extremity of our thirst after
knowledge, that she (as our leader) should throw out some angling
question moving in the line of our desires; upon which hint Mr. White,
if he had any touch of indulgence to human infirmity--unless Mount
Caucasus were his mother, and a she-wolf his nurse--would surely relent,
and act as his conscience must suggest. But Lady Carbery reminded me
of the three Calendars in the "Arabian Nights," and argued that, as the
ladies of Bagdad were justified in calling upon a body of porters to
kick those gentlemen into the street, being people who had abused the
indulgences of hospitality, much more might Mr. White do so with us; for
the Calendars were the children of kings (Shahzades), which we were not;
and had found their curiosity far more furiously irritated; in fact,
Zobeide had no right to trifle with any man's curiosity in that
ferocious extent; and a counter right arose, as any chancery of human
nature would have ruled, to demand a solution of what had been so
maliciously arranged towards an anguish of insupportable temptation.
Thus, however, it happened that the mummy, who left such valuable
legacies, and founded such bilious fevers of curiosity, was not seen by
us; nor even the miserable clock-case.

The mummy, therefore, was not seen; but the skeleton was. Who was he? It
is not every day that one makes the acquaintance of a skeleton; and with
regard to such a thing--thing, shall one say, or person?--there is a
favorable presumption from beforehand; which is this: As he is of
no use, neither profitable nor ornamental to any person whatever,
absolutely _de trop_ in good society, what but distinguished merit
of some kind or other could induce any man to interfere with that
gravitating tendency that by an eternal _nisus_ is pulling him below
ground? Lodgings are dear in England. True it is that, according to the
vile usage on the continent, one room serves a skeleton for bed-room and
sitting-room; neither is his expense heavy, as regards wax-lights, fire,
or "bif-steck." But still, even a skeleton is chargeable; and, if any
dispute should arise about his maintenance, the parish will do
nothing. Mr. White's skeleton, therefore, being costly, was presumably
meritorious, before we had seen him or heard a word in his behalf.
It was, in fact, the skeleton of an eminent robber, or perhaps of a
murderer. But I, for my part, reserved a faint right of suspense. And
as to the profession of robber in those days exercised on the roads
of England, it was a liberal profession, which required more
accomplishments than either the bar or the pulpit: from the beginning it
presumed a most bountiful endowment of heroic qualifications--strength,
health, agility, and exquisite horsemanship, intrepidity of the first
order, presence of mind, courtesy, and a general ambidexterity of
powers for facing all accidents, and for turning to a good account
all unlooked-for contingencies. The finest men in England, physically
speaking, throughout the eighteenth century, the very noblest specimens
of man considered as an animal, were beyond a doubt the mounted robbers
who cultivated their profession on the great leading roads, namely,
on the road from London to York (technically known as "the great north
road"); on the road west to Bath, and thence to Exeter and Plymouth;
north-westwards from London to Oxford, and thence to Chester; eastwards
to Tunbridge; southwards by east to Dover; then inclining westwards to
Portsmouth; more so still, through Salisbury to Dorsetshire and Wilts.
These great roads were farmed out as so many Roman provinces amongst
pro-consuls. Yes, but with a difference, you will say, in respect
of moral principles. Certainly with a difference; for the English
highwayman had a sort of conscience for gala-days, which could not often
be said of the Roman governor or procurator. At this moment we see that
the opening for the forger of bank-notes is brilliant; but practically
it languishes, as being too brilliant; it demands an array of talent for
engraving, etc., which, wherever it exists, is sufficient to carry a man
forward upon principles reputed honorable. Why, then, should _he_ court
danger and disreputability? But in that century the special talents
which led to distinction upon the high road had oftentimes no career
open to them elsewhere. The mounted robber on the highways of England,
in an age when all gentlemen travelled with fire-arms, lived in an
element of danger and adventurous gallantry; which, even from those who
could least allow him any portion of their esteem, extorted sometimes a
good deal of their unwilling admiration. By the necessities of the
case, he brought into his perilous profession some brilliant
qualities--intrepidity, address, promptitude of decision; and, if to
these he added courtesy, and a spirit (native or adopted) of forbearing
generosity, he seemed almost a man that merited public encouragement;
since very plausibly it might be argued that his profession was sure to
exist; that, if he were removed, a successor would inevitably arise,
and that successor might or might _not_ carry the same liberal and
humanizing temper into his practice. The man whose skeleton was now
before us had ranked amongst the most chivalrous of his order, and was
regarded by some people as vindicating the national honor in a point
where not very long before it had suffered a transient eclipse. In the
preceding generation, it had been felt as throwing a shade of disgrace
over the public honor, that the championship of England upon the high
road fell for a time into French hands; upon French prowess rested
the burden of English honor, or, in Gallic phrase, of English _glory_.
Claude Duval, a French man of undeniable courage, handsome, and
noted for his chivalrous devotion to women, had been honored, on his
condemnation to the gallows, by the tears of many ladies who attended
his trial, and by their sympathizing visits during his imprisonment. But
the robber represented by the skeleton in Mr. White's museum (whom let
us call X, since his true name has perished) added to the same heroic
qualities a person far more superb. Still it was a dreadful drawback
from his pretensions, if he had really practised as a murderer. Upon
what ground did that suspicion arise? In candor (for candor is due even
to a skeleton) it ought to be mentioned that the charge, if it amounted
to so much, arose with a lady from some part of Cheshire--the district
of Knutsford, I believe;--but, wherever it was, in the same district,
during the latter part of his career, had resided our X. At first he was
not suspected even as a robber--as yet not so much as suspected of
being suspicious; in a simple rustic neighborhood, amongst good-natured
peasants, for a long time he was regarded with simple curiosity, rather
than suspicion; and even the curiosity pointed to his horse more than
to himself. The robber had made himself popular amongst the
kind-hearted rustics by his general courtesy. Courtesy and the spirit
of neighborliness go a great way amongst country people; and the worst
construction of the case was, that he might be an embarrassed gentleman
from Manchester or Liverpool, hiding himself from his creditors, who
are notoriously a very immoral class of people. At length, however, a
violent suspicion broke loose against him; for it was ascertained that
on certain nights, when, perhaps, he had _extra_ motives for concealing
the fact of having been abroad, he drew woollen stockings over his
horse's feet, with the purpose of deadening the sound in riding up a
brick-paved entry, common to his own stable and that of a respectable
neighbor. Thus far there was a reasonable foundation laid for suspicion;
but suspicion of what? Because a man attends to the darning of his
horse's stockings, why must he be meditating murder? The fact is--and
known from the very first to a select party of amateurs--that X, our
superb-looking skeleton, did, about three o'clock on a rainy Wednesday
morning, in the dead of winter, ride silently out of Knutsford; and
about forty-eight hours afterwards, on a rainy Friday, silently and
softly did that same superb blood-horse, carrying that same blood-man,
namely, our friend the superb skeleton, pace up the quiet brick entry,
in a neat pair of socks, on his return.

During that interval of forty-eight hours, an atrocious murder was
committed in the ancient city of Bristol. By whom? That question is to
this day unanswered. The scene of it was a house on the west side of the
College Green, which is in fact that same quadrangle planted with trees,
and having on its southern side the Bristol Cathedral, up and down
which, early in the reign of George III., Chatterton walked in jubilant
spirits with fair young women of Bristol; up and down which, some thirty
years later, Robert Southey and S. T. C. walked with young Bristol
belles from a later generation. The subjects of the murder were an
elderly lady bearing some such name as Rusborough, and her
female servant. Mystery there was none as to the motive of the
murder--manifestly it was a hoard of money that had attracted the
assassin; but there was great perplexity as to the agent or agents
concerned in the atrocious act, and as to the mode by which an entrance,
under the known precautions of the lady, could have been effected.
Because a thorough-bred horse could easily have accomplished the
distance to and fro (say three hundred miles) within the forty-eight
hours, and because the two extreme dates of this forty-eight hours'
absence tallied with the requisitions of the Bristol tragedy, it did
not follow that X must have had a hand in it. And yet, had these
coincidences _then_ been observed, they would certainly--now that strong
suspicions had been directed to the man from the extraordinary character
of his nocturnal precautions--not have passed without investigation. But
the remoteness of Bristol, and the rarity of newspapers in those days,
caused these indications to pass unnoticed. Bristol knew of no such
Knutsford highwayman--Knutsford knew of no such Bristol murder. It is
singular enough that these earlier grounds of suspicion against X were
not viewed as such by anybody, until they came to be combined with
another and final ground. Then the presumptions seemed conclusive.
But, by that time, X himself had been executed for a robbery; had
been manufactured into a skeleton by the famous surgeon, Cruickshank,
assisted by Mr. White and other pupils. All interest in the case
had subsided in Knutsford, that could now have cleared up the case
satisfactorily; and thus it happened that to this day the riddle, which
was read pretty decisively in a northern county, still remains a riddle
in the south. When I saw the College Green house in 1809-10, it was
apparently empty, and, as I was told, had always been empty since the
murder: forty years had not cicatrized the bloody remembrance; and, to
this day, perhaps, it remains amongst the gloomy traditions of Bristol.

But whether the Bristol house has or has not shaken off that odor of
blood which offended the nostrils of tenants, it is, I believe, certain
that the city annals have not shaken off the mystery: which yet to
certain people in Knutsford, as I have said, and to us the spectators of
the skeleton, immediately upon hearing one damning fact from the lips
of Mr. White, seemed to melt away and evaporate as convincingly as if we
had heard the explanation issuing in the terms of a confession from the
mouth of the skeleton itself. What, then, _was_ the fact? With pain, and
reluctantly, we felt its force, as we looked at the royal skeleton,
and reflected on the many evidences which he had given of courage, and
perhaps of other noble qualities. The ugly fact was this: In a few weeks
after the College Green tragedy, Knutsford, and the whole neighborhood
as far as Warrington (the half-way town between Liverpool and
Manchester), were deluged with gold and silver coins, moidores, and
dollars, from the Spanish mint of Mexico, etc. These, during the
frequent scarcities of English silver currency, were notoriously current
in England. Now, it is an unhappy fact, and subsequently became known
to the Bristol and London police, that a considerable part of poor
Mrs. Rusborough's treasure lay in such coins, gold and silver, from the
Spanish colonial mints.

Lady Carbery at this period made an effort to teach me Hebrew, by way of
repaying in _kind_ my pains in teaching Greek to _her_. Where, and upon
what motive, she had herself begun to learn Hebrew, I forget: but in
Manchester she had resumed this study with energy on a casual impulse
derived from a certain Dr. Bailey, a clergyman of this city, who had
published a Hebrew Grammar. The doctor was the most unworldly and
guileless of men. Amongst his orthodox brethren he was reputed a
"Methodist;" and not without reason; for some of his Low-Church views he
pushed into practical extravagances that looked like fanaticism, or even
like insanity. Lady Carbery wished naturally to testify her gratitude
for his services by various splendid presents: but nothing would the
good doctor accept, unless it assumed a shape that might be available
for the service of the paupers amongst his congregation. The Hebrew
studies, however, notwithstanding the personal assistance which we drew
from the kindness of Dr. Bailey, languished. For this there were
several reasons; but it was enough that the systematic vagueness in the
pronunciation of this, as of the other Oriental languages, disgusted
both of us. A word which could not be pronounced with any certainty, was
not in a true sense possessed. Let it be understood, however, that it
was not the correct and original pronunciation that we cared for--_that_
has perished probably beyond recall, even in the case of Greek, in spite
of the Asiatic and the Insular Greeks--what we demanded in vain was any
pronunciation whatever that should be articulate, apprehensible, and
intercommunicable, such as might differentiate the words: whereas a
system of mere vowels too inadequately strengthened by consonants,
seemed to leave all words pretty nearly alike. One day, in a pause of
languor amongst these arid Hebrew studies, I read to her, with a beating
heart, "The Ancient Mariner." It had been first published in 1798;
and, about this time (1801), was re-published in the first _two_-volume
edition of "The Lyrical Ballads." Well I knew Lady Carbery's
constitutional inaptitude for poetry; and not for the world would I have
sought sympathy from her or from anybody else upon that part of the L.
B. which belonged to Wordsworth. But I fancied that the wildness of this
tale, and the triple majesties of Solitude, of Mist, and of the Ancient
Unknown Sea, might have won her into relenting; and, in fact, she
listened with gravity and deep attention. But, on reviewing afterwards
in conversation such passages as she happened to remember, she laughed
at the finest parts, and shocked me by calling the mariner himself "an
old quiz;" protesting that the latter part of his homily to the wedding
guest clearly pointed him out as the very man meant by Providence for
a stipendiary curate to the good Dr. Bailey in his over-crowded church.
[Footnote: St. James', according to my present recollection.] With an
albatross perched on his shoulder, and who might be introduced to the
congregation as the immediate organ of his conversion, and supported
by the droning of a bassoon, she represented the mariner lecturing to
advantage in English; the doctor overhead in the pulpit enforcing it in
Hebrew. Angry I was, though forced to laugh. But of what use is anger or
argument in a duel with female criticism? Our ponderous masculine wits
are no match for the mercurial fancy of women. Once, however, I had a
triumph: to my great surprise, one day, she suddenly repeated by heart,
to Dr. Bailey, the beautiful passage--

  "It ceased, yet still the sails made on," &c.


asking what he thought of _that?_ As it happened, the simple, childlike
doctor had more sensibility than herself; for, though he had never in
his whole homely life read more of poetry than he had drunk of Tokay or
Constantia,--in fact, had scarcely heard tell of any poetry but Watts'
Hymns,--he seemed petrified: and at last, with a deep sigh, as if
recovering from the spasms of a new birth, said, "I never heard anything
so beautiful in my whole life."

During the long stay of the Laxton party in Manchester, occurred a
Christmas; and at Christmas--that is, at the approach of this great
Christian festival, so properly substituted in England for the Pagan
festival of January and the New Year--there was, according to ancient
usage, on the breaking up for the holidays, at the Grammar School,
a solemn celebration of the season by public speeches. Among the six
speakers, I, of course (as one of the three boys who composed the head
class), held a distinguished place; and it followed, also, as a matter
of course, that all my friends congregated on this occasion to do me
honor. What I had to recite was a copy of Latin verses (Alcaics) on the
recent conquest of Malta. _Melite Britannis Subacta_--this was the title
of my worshipful nonsense. The whole strength of the Laxton party had
mustered on this occasion. Lady Carbery made a point of bringing in her
party every creature whom she could influence. And, probably, there
were in that crowded audience many old Manchester friends of my father,
loving his memory, and thinking to honor it by kindness to his son.
Furious, at any rate, was the applause which greeted me: furious was
my own disgust. Frantic were the clamors as I concluded my nonsense.
Frantic was my inner sense of shame at the childish exhibition to which,
unavoidably, I was making myself a party. Lady Carbery had, at first,
directed towards me occasional glances, expressing a comic sympathy
with the thoughts which she supposed to be occupying my mind. But these
glances ceased; and I was recalled by the gloomy sadness in her altered
countenance to some sense of my own extravagant and disproportionate
frenzy on this occasion: from the indulgent kindness with which she
honored me, her countenance on this occasion became a mirror to my own.
At night she assured me, when talking over the case, that she had
never witnessed an expression of such settled misery, and also (so she
fancied) of misanthropy, as that which darkened my countenance in those
moments of apparent public triumph, no matter how trivial the occasion,
and amidst an uproar of friendly felicitation. I look back to that state
of mind as almost a criminal reproach to myself, if it were not for
the facts of the case. But, in excuse for myself, this fact, above
all others, ought to be mentioned--that, over and above the killing
oppression to my too sensitive system of the monotonous school tasks,
and the ruinous want of exercise, I had fallen under medical advice the
most misleading that it is possible to imagine. The physician and
the surgeon of my family were men too eminent, it seemed to me, and,
consequently, with time too notoriously bearing a high pecuniary
value, for any school-boy to detain them with complaints. Under these
circumstances, I threw myself for aid, in a case so simple that any
clever boy in a druggist's shop would have known how to treat it, upon
the advice of an old, old apothecary, who had full authority from my
guardians to run up a most furious account against me for medicine. This
being the regular mode of payment, inevitably, and unconsciously, he
was biased to a mode of treatment; namely, by drastic medicines varied
without end, which fearfully exasperated the complaint. This complaint,
as I now know, was the simplest possible derangement of the liver, a
torpor in its action that might have been put to rights in three days.
In fact, one week's pedestrian travelling amongst the Caernarvonshire
mountains effected a revolution in my health such as left me nothing to
complain of.

An odd thing happened by the merest accident. I, when my Alcaics had run
down their foolish larum, instead of resuming my official place as one
of the trinity who composed the head class, took a seat by the side of
Lady Carbery. On the other side of her was seated a stranger: and this
stranger, whom mere chance had thrown next to her, was Lord Belgrave,
her old and at one time (as some people fancied) favored suitor. In
this there was nothing at all extraordinary. Lord Grey de Wilton, an old
_alumnus_ of this Manchester Grammar School, and an _alumnus_ during
the early reign of this same _Archididascalus_, made a point of showing
honor to his ancient tutor, especially now when reputed to be decaying;
and with the same view he brought Lord Belgrave, who had become his
son-in-law after his rejection by Lady Carbery. The whole was a very
natural accident. But Lady Carbery was not sufficiently bronzed by
worldly habits to treat this accident with _nonchalance_. She did not
_to the public eye_ betray any embarrassment; but afterwards she told me
that no incident could have been more distressing to her.

Some months after this, the Laxton party quitted Manchester, having no
further motive for staying. Mrs. Schreiber was now confessedly dying:
medical skill could do no more for her; and this being so, there was
no reason why she should continue to exchange her own quiet little
Rutlandshire cottage for the discomforts of smoky lodgings. Lady Carbery
retired like some golden pageant amongst the clouds; thick darkness
succeeded; the ancient torpor reestablished itself; and my health grew
distressingly worse. Then it was, after dreadful self-conflicts, that
I took the unhappy resolution of which the results are recorded in the
"Opium Confessions." At this point, the reader must understand, comes
in that chapter of my life; and for all which concerns that delirious
period I refer him to those "Confessions." Some anxiety I had, on
leaving Manchester, lest my mother should suffer too much from this rash
step; and on that impulse I altered the direction of my wanderings; not
going (as I had originally planned) to the English Lakes, but making
first of all for St. John's Priory, Chester, at that time my mother's
residence. There I found my maternal uncle, Captain Penson, of the
Bengal establishment, just recently come home on a two years' leave of
absence; and there I had an interview with my mother. By a temporary
arrangement I received a weekly allowance, which would have enabled me
to live in _any_ district of Wales, either North or South; for Wales,
both North and South, is (or at any rate _was_) a land of exemplary
cheapness. For instance, at Talyllyn, in Merionethshire, or anywhere
off the line of tourists, I and a lieutenant in our English navy paid
sixpence uniformly for a handsome dinner; sixpence, I mean, apiece. But
two months later came a golden blockhead, who instructed the people that
it was "sinful" to charge less than three shillings. In Wales, meantime,
I suffered grievously from want of books; and fancying, in my
profound ignorance of the world, that I could borrow money upon my own
expectations, or, at least, that I could do so with the joint security
of Lord Westport (now Earl of Altamont, upon his father's elevation to
the Marquisate of Sligo), or (failing _that_) with the security of his
amiable and friendly cousin, the Earl of Desart, I had the unpardonable
folly to quit the deep tranquillities of North Wales for the uproars,
and perils, and the certain miseries, of London. I had borrowed ten
guineas from Lady Carbery; and at that time, when my purpose was known
to nobody, I might have borrowed any sum I pleased. But I could never
again avail myself of that resource, because I must have given some
address, in order to insure the receipt of Lady Carbery's answer; and in
that case, so sternly conscientious was she, that, under the notion of
saving me from ruin, my address would have been immediately communicated
to my guardians, and by them would have been confided to the unrivalled
detective talents, in those days, of Townsend, or some other Bow-street
officer.

       *       *        *       *        *

That episode, or impassioned parenthesis in my life, which is
comprehended in "The Confessions of the Opium-Eater," had finished;
suppose it over and gone, and once more, after the storms of London,
suppose me resting from my dreadful remembrances, in the deep monastic
tranquillity, of St. John's Priory; and just then, by accident, with no
associates except my mother and my uncle. What was the Priory like? Was
it young or old, handsome or plain? What was my uncle the captain like?
Young or old, handsome or plain? Wait a little, my reader; give me time,
and I will tell you all. My uncle's leave of absence from India had
not expired; in fact, it had nine or ten months still to run; and
this accident furnished us all with an opportunity of witnessing his
preternatural activity. One morning early in April of the year 1803,
a gentleman called at the Priory, and mentioned, as the news of the
morning brought down by the London mail, that there had been a very
hot and very sudden "press" along the Thames, and simultaneously at the
outports. Indeed, before this the spiteful tone of Sebastiani's Report,
together with the arrogant comment in the _Moniteur_ on the supposed
inability of Great Britain to contend "single-handed" with France; and,
finally, the public brutality to our ambassador, had prepared us all for
war. But, then, might not all this blow over? No; apart from any
choice or preference of war on the part of Napoleon, his very existence
depended upon war. He lived by and through the army. Without a
succession of wars and martial glories in reserve for the army, what
interest had _they_ in Napoleon? This was obscurely acknowledged by
everybody. More or less consciously perceived, a feeling deep and strong
ran through the nation that it was vain to seek expedients or delays; a
mighty strife had to be fought out, which could not be evaded. Thence it
was that the volunteer system was so rapidly and earnestly developed.
As a first stage in the process of national enthusiasm, this was
invaluable. The first impulse drew out the material.

Next, as might have been foreseen, came an experience which taught us
seasonably that these redundant materials, crude and miscellaneous,
required a winnowing and sifting, which very soon we had; and the result
was, an incomparable militia. Chester shone conspicuously in this noble
competition. But here, as elsewhere, at first there was no cavalry. Upon
that arose a knot of gentlemen, chiefly those who hunted, and in a very
few hours laid the foundation of a small cavalry force. Three troops
were raised in the _city_ of Chester, one of the three being given to my
uncle. The whole were under the command of Colonel Dod, who had a landed
estate in the county, and who (like my uncle) had been in India. But
Colonel Dod and the captains of the two other troops gave comparatively
little aid. The whole working activities of the system rested with my
uncle. Then first I saw energy: then first I knew what it meant. All the
officers of the three troops exchanged dinner-parties with each other;
and consequently they dined at the Priory often enough to make us
acquainted with their characteristic qualities. That period had not
yet passed away, though it was already passing, when gentlemen did
not willingly leave the dinner-table in a state of absolute sobriety.
Colonel Dod and my uncle had learned in Bengal, under the coërcion of
the climate, habits of temperance. But the others (though few, perhaps,
might be systematic drinkers) were careless in this respect, and drank
under social excitement quite enough to lay bare the ruling tendencies
of their several characters. Being English, naturally the majority were
energetic, and beyond all things despised dreaming _fainéans_ (such,
for instance, as we find the politicians, or even the conspirators, of
Italy, Spain, and Germany, whose whole power of action evaporates in
talking, and histrionically gesticulating). Yet still the best of them
seemed inert by comparison with my uncle, and to regard _his_ standard
of action and exertion as trespassing to a needless degree upon ordinary
human comfort.

Commonplace, meantime, my uncle was in the character of his intellect;
there he fell a thousand leagues below my mother, to whom he looked up
with affectionate astonishment. But, as a man of action, he ran so far
ahead of men generally, that he ceased to impress one as commonplace.
He, if any man ever did, realized the Roman poet's description of being
_natus rebus agendis_--sent into this world not for talking, but for
doing; not for counsel, but for execution. On that field he was a
portentous man, a monster; and, viewing him as such, I am disposed to
concede a few words to what modern slang denominates his "antecedents."

Two brothers and one sister (namely, my mother) composed the
household choir of children gathering round the hearth of my maternal
grand-parents, whose name was Penson. My grandfather at one time held an
office under the king; how named, I once heard, but have forgotten;
only this I remember, that it was an office which conferred the title of
_Esquire;_ so that upon each and all of his several coffins, lead,
oak, mahogany, he was entitled to proclaim himself an _Armiger;_ which,
observe, is the newest, oldest, most classic mode of saying that one
is privileged to bear arms in a sense intelligible only to the
Herald's College. This _Armiger_, this undeniable Squire, was doubly
distinguished: first, by his iron constitution and impregnable
health; which were of such quality, and like the sword of Michael, the
warrior-angel ("Paradise Lost," B. vi.), had "from the armory of God
been given him tempered so," that no insurance office, trafficking in
life-annuities, would have ventured to look him in the face. People
thought him good, like a cat, for eight or nine generations; nor did any
man perceive at what avenue death could find, or disease could force, a
practicable breach; and yet, such anchorage have all human hopes, in the
very midst of these windy anticipations, this same granite grandpapa of
mine, not yet very far ahead of sixty, being in fact three-score years
and none, suddenly struck his flag, and found himself, in his privileged
character of _Armiger_, needing those door (coffin-door) plates, which
all reasonable people had supposed to be reserved for the manufacturing
hands of some remote century. "_Armiger_, pack up your traps"--"Collige
sarcinas"--"Squire, you're wanted:" these dreadful citations were
inevitable; come they must; but surely, as everybody thought, not in
the eighteenth, or, perhaps, even the nineteenth century. _Diis aliter
visum._ My grandfather, built for an _Æonian_ duration, did not come
within hail of myself; whilst his gentle partner, my grandmother, who
made no show of extra longevity, lived down into my period, and had the
benefit of my acquaintance through half a dozen years. If she turned
this piece of good fortune to no great practical account, that (you
know) was no fault of mine. Doubtless, I was ready with my advice,
freely and gratuitously, if she had condescended to ask for it.
Returning to my grandfather: the other distinguishing endowment, by
which he was so favorably known and remembered amongst his friends,
was the magical versatility of his talents, and his power of
self-accommodation to all humors, tempers, and ages.

  "Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res."

And in allusion to this line from Horace it was, that amongst his
literary friends he was known familiarly by the name of Aristippus. His
sons, Edward and Thomas, resembled him, by all accounts, in nothing;
neither physically, nor in moral versatility. These two sons of the
Squire, Edward and Thomas, through some traditional prejudice in the
family, had always directed their views to the military profession. In
such a case, the king's army is naturally that to which a young man's
expectations turn. But to wait, and after all by possibility to wait in
vain, did not suit my fiery grandfather. The interest which he could put
into motion was considerable; but it was more applicable to the service
of the East India Company than to any branch of the home service. This
interest was so exerted that in one day he obtained a lieutenantcy in
the Company's service for each of his sons. About 1780 or 1781, both
young men, aged severally sixteen and seventeen years, went out to join
their regiments, both regiments being on the Bengal establishment. Very
different were their fates; yet their qualifications ought to have been
the same, or differing only as sixteen differs from seventeen; and also
as sixteen overflowing with levity differs from seventeen prematurely
thoughtful. Edward Penson was early noticed for his high principle, for
his benignity, and for a thoughtfulness somewhat sorrowful, that seemed
to have caught in childhood some fugitive glimpse of his own too
brief career. At noonday, in some part of Bengal, he went out of doors
bareheaded, and died in a few hours.

In 1800-1801, my mother had become dissatisfied with Bath as a
residence; and, being free from all ties connecting her with any one
county of England rather than another, she resolved to traverse the most
attractive parts of the island, and, upon personal inspection, to
select a home; not a ready-built home, but the ground on which she might
herself create one; for it happened that amongst the few infirmities
besetting my mother's habits and constitution of mind, was the costly
one of seeking her chief intellectual excitement in architectural
creations. She individually might be said to have built Greenhay; since
to _her_ views of domestic elegance and propriety my father had resigned
_almost_ everything. This was her _coup-d'essai_; secondly, she built
the complement to the Priory in Cheshire, which cost about one thousand
pounds; thirdly, Westhay, in Somersetshire, about twelve miles from
Bristol, which, including the land attached to the house, cost twelve
thousand five hundred pounds, not including subsequent additions; but
this was built at the cost of my uncle; finally, Weston Lea, close
to Bath, which being designed simply for herself in old age, with a
moderate establishment of four servants (and some reasonable provision
of accommodations for a few visitors), cost originally, I believe, not
more than one thousand pounds--excluding, however, the cost of all after
alterations.

It may serve to show how inevitably an amateur architect, without
professional aid and counsel, will be defrauded, that the first of
these houses, which cost six thousand pounds, sold for no more than
twenty-five hundred pounds, and the third for no more than five thousand
pounds. The person who superintended the workmen, and had the whole
practical management of one amongst these four houses, was a common
builder, without capital or education, and the greatest knave that
personally I have known. It may illustrate the way in which lady
architects, without professional aid, are and ever will be defrauded,
that, after all was finished, and the entire wood-work was to be
measured and valued, each party, of course, needing to be represented
by a professional agent, naturally the knavish builder was ready at
earliest dawn with _his_ agent; but, as regarded my mother's interest,
the task of engaging such an agent had been confided to a neighboring
clergyman,--"evangelical," of course, and a humble sycophant of Hannah
More, but otherwise the most helpless of human beings, baptized or
infidel. He contented himself with instructing a young gentleman, aged
about fifteen, to take his pony and ride over to a distant cathedral
town, which was honored by the abode of a virtuous though drunken
surveyor. This respectable drunkard he was to engage, and also with
obvious discretion to fee beforehand. All which was done: the drunken
surveyor had a sort of fits, it was understood, that always towards
sunset inclined him to assume the horizontal posture. Fortunately,
however, for that part of mankind whom circumstances had brought under
the necessity of communicating with him, these fits were intermitting;
so that, for instance, in the present case, upon a severe call arising
for his pocketing the fee of ten guineas, he astonished his whole
household by suddenly standing bolt upright as stiff as a poker; his
sister remarking to the young gentleman that he (the visitor) was in
luck that evening: it wasn't everybody that could get that length in
dealing with Mr. X. O. However, it is distressing to relate that the
fits immediately returned; and, with that degree of exasperation which
made it dangerous to suggest the idea of a receipt; since that must have
required the vertical attitude. Whether that attitude ever was recovered
by the unfortunate gentleman, I do not know. Forty-and-four years have
passed since then. Almost everybody connected with the case has had time
to assume permanently the horizontal posture,--namely, that knave of
a builder, whose knaveries (gilded by that morning sun of June) were
controlled by nobody; that sycophantish parson; that young gentleman of
fifteen (now, alas! fifty-nine), who must long since have sown his wild
oats; that unhappy pony of eighteen (now, alas! sixty-two, if living;
ah! venerable pony, that must (or mustest) now require thy oats to be
boiled); in short, one and all of these venerabilities--knaves, ponies,
drunkards, receipts--have descended, I believe, to chaos or to Hades,
with hardly one exception. Chancery itself, though somewhat of an Indian
juggler, could not play with such aerial balls as these.

On what ground it was that my mother quarrelled with the advantages of
Bath, so many and so conspicuous, I cannot guess. At that time, namely,
the opening of the nineteenth century, the old traditionary custom of
the place had established for young and old the luxury of sedan-chairs.
Nine tenths, at least, of the colds and catarrhs, those initial stages
of all pulmonary complaints (the capital scourge of England), are caught
in the transit between the door of a carriage and the genial atmosphere
of the drawing-room. By a sedan-chair all this danger was evaded: your
two chairmen marched right into the hall: the hall-door was closed;
and not until then was the roof and the door of your chair opened: the
translation was--from one room to another. To my mother, and many in
her situation, the sedan-chair recommended itself also by advantages of
another class. Immediately on coming to Bath her carriage was "laid up
in ordinary." The trifling rent of a coach-house, some slight annual
repairs, and the tax, composed the whole annual cost. At that time, and
throughout the war, the usual estimate for the cost of a close carriage
in London was three hundred and twenty pounds; since, in order to have
the certain services of two horses, it was indispensable to keep three.
Add to this the coachman, the wear-and-tear of harness, and the duty;
and, even in Bath, a cheaper place than London, you could not accomplish
the total service under two hundred and seventy pounds. Now, except the
duty, all this expense was at once superseded by the sedan-chair--rarely
costing you above ten shillings a week, that is, twenty-five guineas
a year, and liberating you from all care or anxiety. The duty on four
wheels, it is true, was suddenly exalted by Mr. Pitt's triple assessment
from twelve guineas to thirty-six; but what a trifle by comparison with
the cost of horses and coachman! And, then, no demands for money were
ever met so cheerfully by my mother as those which went to support Mr.
Pitt's policy against Jacobinism and Regicide. At present, after five
years' sinecure existence, unless on the rare summons of a journey, this
dormant carriage was suddenly undocked, and put into commission. Taking
with her two servants, and one of my sisters, my mother now entered
upon a _periplus_, or systematic circumnavigation of all England; and
in England only--through the admirable machinery matured for such a
purpose, namely, inns, innkeepers, servants, horses, all first-rate of
their class--it was possible to pursue such a scheme in the midst of
domestic comfort. My mother's resolution was--to see all England with
her own eyes, and to judge for herself upon the qualifications of each
county, each town (not being a bustling seat of commerce), and each
village (having any advantages of scenery), for contributing the main
elements towards a home that might justify her in building a house.
The qualifications insisted on were these five: good medical advice
somewhere in the neighborhood; first-rate means of education; elegant
(or, what most people might think, aristocratic) society; agreeable
scenery: and so far the difficulty was not insuperable in the way of
finding all the four advantages concentrated. But my mother insisted on
a fifth, which in those days insured the instant shipwreck of the entire
scheme; this was a church of England parish clergyman, who was to be
strictly orthodox, faithful to the articles of our English church, yet
to these articles as interpreted by Evangelical divinity. My mother's
views were precisely those of her friend Mrs. Hannah More, of
Wilberforce, of Henry Thornton, of Zachary Macaulay (father of the
historian), and generally of those who were then known amongst sneerers
as "the Clapham saints." This one requisition it was on which the scheme
foundered. And the fact merits recording as an exposition of the broad
religious difference between the England of that day and of this. At
present, no difficulty would be found as to this fifth requisition.
"Evangelical" clergymen are now sown broad-cast; at that period, there
were not, on an average, above six or eight in each of the fifty-two
counties.

The conditions, as a whole, were in fact incapable of being realized;
where two or three were attained, three or two failed. It was too
much to exact so many advantages from any one place, unless London; or
really, if any other place could be looked to with hope in such a chase,
that place was Bath--the very city my mother was preparing to leave.
Yet, had this been otherwise, and the prospect of success more
promising, I have not a doubt that the pretty gem, which suddenly was
offered at a price unintelligibly low, in the ancient city of Chester,
would have availed (as instantly it _did_ avail, and, perhaps, ought
to have availed) in obscuring those five conditions of which else each
separately for itself had seemed a _conditio sine qua non_. This gem was
an ancient house, on a miniature scale, called the _Priory_; and, until
the dissolution of religious houses in the earlier half of the sixteenth
century, had formed part of the Priory attached to the ancient church
(still flourishing) of St. John's. Towards the end of the sixteenth and
through the first quarter of the seventeenth century, this Priory had
been in the occupation of Sir Robert Cotton, the antiquary, the friend
of Ben Jonson, of Coke, of Selden, etc., and advantageously known as one
of those who applied his legal and historical knowledge to the bending
back into constitutional moulds of those despotic twists which new
interests and false counsels had developed in the Tudor and Stuart
dynasties. It was an exceedingly pretty place; and the kitchen, upon the
ground story, which had a noble groined ceiling of stone, indicated, by
its disproportionate scale, the magnitude of the establishment to which
once it had ministered. Attached to this splendid kitchen were tributary
offices, etc. On the upper story were exactly five rooms: namely, a
servants' dormitory, meant in Sir Robert's day for two beds [Footnote:
The contrivance amongst our ancestors, even at haughty Cambridge and
haughtier Oxford, was, that one bed rising six inches from the floor
ran (in the day-time) under a loftier bed; it ran upon castors or little
wheels. The learned word for a little wheel is _trochlea_; from which
Grecian and Latin term comes the English word _truckle_-bed.] at the
least; and a servants' sitting-room. These were shut off into a separate
section, with a little staircase (like a ship's companion-ladder) and a
little lobby of its own. But the principal section on this upper story
had been dedicated to the use of Sir Robert, and consisted of a pretty
old hall, lighted by an old monastic-painted window in the door of
entrance; secondly, a rather elegant dining-room; thirdly, a bed-room.
The glory of the house internally lay in the monastic kitchen; and,
secondly, in what a Frenchman would have called, properly, Sir Robert's
own _apartment_ [Footnote: _Apartment_.--Our English use of the word
"apartment" is absurd, since it leads to total misconceptions. We read
in French memoirs innumerable of _the king's apartment_, of _the queen's
apartment_, etc., and for us English the question arises, How? Had the
king, had her majesty, only one room? But, my friend, they might have a
thousand rooms, and yet have only one apartment. An apartment means, in
the continental use, a section or _compartment_ of an edifice.] of three
rooms; but, thirdly and chiefly, in a pile of ruined archways, most
picturesque so far as they went, but so small that Drury Lane could
easily have found room for them on its stage. These stood in the
miniature pleasure-ground, and were constantly resorted to by artists
for specimens of architectural decays, or of nature working for the
concealment of such decays by her ordinary processes of gorgeous floral
vegetation. Ten rooms there may have been in the Priory, as offered to
my mother for less than five hundred pounds. A drawing-room, bed-rooms,
dressing-rooms, etc., making about ten more, were added by my mother for
a sum under one thousand pounds. The same miniature scale was observed
in all these additions. And, as the Priory was not within the walls of
the city, whilst the river Dee, flowing immediately below, secured
it from annoyance on one side, and the church, with its adjacent
church-yard, insulated it from the tumults of life on all the other
sides, an atmosphere of conventual stillness and tranquillity brooded
over it and all around it forever.

Such was the house, such was the society, in which I now found myself;
and upon the whole I might describe myself as being, according to
the modern phrase, "in a false position." I had, for instance, a vast
superiority, as was to have been expected, in bookish attainments, and
in adroitness of logic; whilst, on the other hand, I was ridiculously
short-sighted or blind in all fields of ordinary human experience.
It must not be supposed that I regarded my own particular points of
superiority, or that I used them, with any vanity or view to present
advantages. On the contrary, I sickened over them, and labored to defeat
them. But in vain I sowed errors in my premises, or planted absurdities
in my assumptions. Vainly I tried such blunders as putting four terms
into a syllogism, which, as all the world knows, ought to run on three;
a tripod it ought to be, by all rules known to man, and, behold, I
forced it to become a quadruped. Upon my uncle's military haste,
and tumultuous energy in pressing his opinions, all such delicate
refinements were absolutely thrown away. With disgust _I_ saw, with
disgust _he_ saw, that too apparently the advantage lay with me in the
result; and, whilst I worked like a dragon to place myself in the wrong,
some fiend apparently so counterworked me, that eternally I was reminded
of the Manx half-pennies, which lately I had continually seen current in
North Wales, bearing for their heraldic distinction three human legs in
armor, but so placed in relation to each other that always one leg
is vertical and mounting guard on behalf of the other two, which,
therefore, are enabled to sprawl aloft in the air--in fact, to be as
absurdly negligent as they choose, relying upon their vigilant brother
below, and upon the written legend or motto, STABIT QUOCUNQUE JECERIS
(Stand it will upright, though you should fling it in any conceivable
direction). What gave another feature of distraction and incoherency to
my position was, that I still occupied the position of a reputed
boy, nay, a child, in the estimate of my audience, and of a child in
disgrace. Time enough had not passed since my elopement from school
to win for me, in minds so fresh from that remembrance, a station of
purification and assoilment. Oxford might avail to assoil me, and to
throw into a distant retrospect my boyish trespasses; but as yet Oxford
had not arrived. I committed, besides, a great fault in taking often a
tone of mock seriousness, when the detection of the playful extravagance
was left to the discernment or quick sympathy of the hearer; and I was
blind to the fact, that neither my mother nor my uncle was distinguished
by any natural liveliness of vision for the comic, or any toleration
for the extravagant. My mother, for example, had an awful sense of
conscientious fidelity in the payment of taxes. Many a respectable
family I have known that would privately have encouraged a smuggler,
and, in consequence, were beset continually by mock smugglers,
offering, with airs of affected mystery, home commodities liable to
no custom-house objections whatsoever, only at a hyperbolical price.
I remember even the case of a duke, who bought in Piccadilly, under
laughable circumstances of complex disguise, some silk handkerchiefs,
falsely pretending to be foreign, and was so incensed at finding himself
to have been committing no breach of law whatever, but simply to have
been paying double the ordinary shop price, that he pulled up the
_soi-disant_ smuggler to Bowstreet, even at the certain price of
exposure to himself. The charge he alleged against the man was the
untenable one of _not_ being a smuggler. My mother, on the contrary,
pronounced all such attempts at cheating the king, or, as I less harshly
termed it, cheating the tax-gatherer, as being equal in guilt to a fraud
upon one's neighbor, or to direct appropriation of another man's purse.
I, on my part, held, that government, having often defrauded me through
its agent and creature the post-office, by monstrous over-charges on
letters, had thus created in my behalf a right of retaliation. And
dreadfully it annoyed my mother, that I, stating this right in a very
plausible rule-of-three form--namely, As is the income of the said
fraudulent government to my poor patrimonial income of one hundred and
fifty pounds per annum, so is any one special fraud (as, for instance,
that of yesterday morning, amounting to thirteen pence upon a single
letter) to that equitable penalty which I am entitled to recover upon
the goods and chattels (wherever found) of the ill-advised Britannic
government. During the war with Napoleon, the income of this government
ran, to all amounts, between fifty and seventy millions pounds sterling.
Awful, therefore, seemed the inheritance of retaliation, inexhaustible
the fund of reprisals, into which I stepped. Since, even a single case
of robbery, such as I could plead by dozens, in the course of a few
years, though no more than thirteen pence, yet multiplied into seventy
million times two hundred and forty pence, _minus_ one hundred and fifty
pounds, made a very comfortable property. The right was clear; and the
sole difficulty lay in asserting it; in fact, that same difficulty
which beset the philosopher of old, in arguing with the Emperor Hadrian;
namely, the want of thirty legions for the purpose of clearly pointing
out to Cæsar where it was that the truth lay; the secret truth; that
rarest of all "nuggets."

This counter-challenge of government, as the first mover in a system
of frauds, annoyed, but also perplexed my mother exceedingly. For an
argument that shaped itself into a rule-of-three illustration seemed
really to wear too candid an aspect for summary and absolute rejection.

Such discussions wore to me a comic shape. But altogether serious were
the disputes upon INDIA--a topic on separate grounds equally interesting
to us all, as the mightiest of English colonies, and the superbest
monument of demoniac English energy, revealing itself in such men as
Clive, Hastings, and soon after in the two Wellesleys. To my mother, as
the grave of one brother, as the home of another, and as a new centre
from which Christianity (she hoped) would mount like an eagle; for just
about that time the Bible Society was preparing its initial movements;
whilst to my uncle India appeared as the _arena_ upon which his
activities were yet to find their adequate career. With respect to the
Christianization of India, my uncle assumed a hope which he did not
really feel; and in another point, more trying to himself personally, he
had soon an opportunity for showing the sincerity of this deference to
his spiritual-minded sister. For, very soon after his return to India,
he received a civil appointment (_Superintendent of Military Buildings
in Bengal_), highly lucrative, and the more so as it could be held
conjointly with his military rank; but a good deal of its pecuniary
advantages was said to lie in fees, or perquisites, privately offered,
but perfectly regular and official, which my mother (misunderstanding
the Indian system) chose to call "bribes." A very ugly word was _that_;
but I argued that even at home, even in the courts at Westminster, in
the very fountains of justice, private fees constituted one part of the
salaries--a fair and official part, so long as Parliament had not made
such fees illegal by commuting them for known and fixed equivalents.

 It was mere ignorance of India, as I dutifully insisted against
"Mamma," that could confound these regular oriental "nuzzers" with the
clandestine wages of corruption. The _pot-de-vin_ of French tradition,
the pair of gloves (though at one time very costly gloves) to an English
judge of assize on certain occasions, never was offered nor received in
the light of a bribe. And (until regularly abolished by the legislature)
I insisted--but vainly insisted--that these and similar _honoraria_
ought to be accepted, because else you were lowering the prescriptive
rights and value of the office, which you--a mere _locum tenens_ for
some coming successor--had no right to do upon a solitary scruple or
crotchet, arising probably from dyspepsia. Better men, no doubt, than
ever stood in _your_ stockings, had pocketed thankfully the gifts of
ancient, time-honored custom. My uncle, however, though not with the
carnal recusancy which besieged the spiritual efforts of poor Cuthbert
Headrigg, that incorrigible worldling, yet still with intermitting
doubts, followed my mother's earnest entreaties, and the more
meritoriously (I conceive), as he yielded, in a point deeply affecting
his interest, to a system of arguments very imperfectly convincing
to his understanding. He held the office in question for as much (I
believe) as eighteen or nineteen years; and, by knowing old bilious
Indians, who laughed immoderately at my uncle and my mother, as the
proper growth of a priory or some such monastic establishment, I have
been assured that nothing short of two hundred thousand pounds ought,
under the long tenure of office, to have been remitted to England. But,
then, said one of these gentlemen, if your uncle lived (as I have heard
that he did) in Calcutta and Meer-ut, at the rate of four thousand
pounds a year, _that_ would account for a considerable share of a mine
which else would seem to have been worked in vain. Unquestionably, my
uncle's system of living was under no circumstances a self-denying
one. To enjoy, and to make others enjoy--_that_ was his law of action.
Indeed, a more liberal creature, or one of more princely munificence,
never lived.

It might seem useless to call back any fragment of conversations
relating to India which passed more than fifty years ago, were it not
for two reasons: one of which is this,--that the errors (natural at that
time) which I vehemently opposed, not from any greater knowledge that I
had, but from closer reflection, are even now the prevailing errors
of the English people. My mother, for instance, uniformly spoke of
the English as the subverters of ancient thrones. I, on the contrary,
insisted that nothing political was ancient in India. Our own original
opponents, the Rajahs of Oude and Bengal, had been all upstarts: in the
Mysore, again, our more recent opponents, Hyder, and his son Tippoo,
were new men altogether, whose grandfathers were quite unknown. Why
was it that my mother, why is it that the English public at this day,
connect so false an image--that of high, cloudy antiquity --with the
thrones of India? It is simply from an old habit of associating the
spirit of change and rapid revolution with the activities of Europe;
so that, by a natural reaction of thought, the Orient is figured as the
home of motionless monotony. In things religious, in habits, in costume,
it _is_ so. But so far otherwise in things political, that no instance
can be alleged of any dynasty or system of government that has endured
beyond a century or two in the East. Taking India in particular, the
Mogul dynasty, established by Baber, the great-grandson of Timour, did
not subsist in any vigor for two centuries; and yet this was by far
the most durable of all established princely houses. Another argument
against England urged by my mother (but equally urged by the English
people at this day) was, that she had in no eminent sense been a
benefactress to India; or, expressing it in words of later date, that
the only memorials of our rule, supposing us suddenly ejected from
India, would be vast heaps of champagne-bottles. I, on the other hand,
alleged that our benefits, like all truly great and lasting benefits
(religious benefits, for instance), must not be sought in external
memorials of stone and masonry. Higher by far than the Mogul gifts of
mile-stones, or travelling stations, or even roads and tanks, were the
gifts of security, of peace, of law, and settled order. These blessings
were travelling as fast as our rule advanced. I could not _then_ appeal
to the cases of Thuggee extirpated, of the Pindanees (full fifteen
thousand bloody murderers) forever exterminated, or of the Marhattas
bridled forever--a robber nation that previously had descended at
intervals with a force of sometimes one hundred and fifty thousand
troopers upon the afflicted province of Bengal, and Oude its neighbor;
because these were events as yet unborn. But they were the natural
extensions of that beneficent system on which I rested my argument. The
two terrors of India at that particular time were Holkar and Scindiah
(pronounced _Sindy_), who were soon cut short in their career by the
hostilities which they provoked with us, but would else have proved,
in combination, a deadlier scourge to India than either Hyder or his
ferocious son. My mother, in fact, a great reader of the poet Cowper,
drew from _him_ her notions of Anglo-Indian policy and its effects.
Cowper, in his "Task," puts the question,--  "Is India free? and does she wear her plumed
  And jewelled turban with a smile of peace,
  Or do we grind her still?"

Pretty much the same authority it is which the British public of this
day has for its craze upon the subject of English oppression amongst the
Hindoos.

My uncle, meantime, who from his Indian experience should reasonably
have known so much better, was disposed, from the mere passive habits of
hearing and reading unresistingly so many assaults of this tone against
our Indian policy, to go along with my mother. But he was too just, when
forced into reflection upon the subject, not to bend at times to my
way of stating the case for England. Suddenly, however, our Indian
discussions were brought to a close by the following incident. My uncle
had brought with him to England some Arabian horses, and amongst them a
beautiful young Persian mare, called Sumroo, the gentlest of her race.
Sumroo it was that he happened to be riding, upon a frosty day. Unused
to ice, she came down with him, and broke his right leg. This accident
laid him up for a month, during which my mother and I read to him by
turns. One book, which one day fell to my share by accident, was De
Foe's "Memoirs of a Cavalier." This book attempts to give a picture of
the Parliamentary war; but in some places an unfair, and everywhere a
most superficial account. I said so; and my uncle, who had an old craze
in behalf of the book, opposed me with asperity; and, in the course of
what he said, under some movement of ill-temper, he asked me, in a way
which I felt to be taunting, how I could consent to waste my time as I
did. Without any answering warmth, I explained that my guardians, having
quarrelled with me, would not grant for my use anything beyond my school
allowance of one hundred pounds per annum. But was it not possible that
even this sum might by economy be made to meet the necessities of the
case? I replied that, from what I had heard, very probably it was. Would
I undertake an Oxford life upon such terms? Most gladly, I said. Upon
that opening he spoke to my mother; and the result was, that, within
seven days from the above conversation, I found myself entering that
time-honored university.




OXFORD.

I.

OXFORD.



It was in winter, and in the wintry weather of the year 1803, that I
first entered Oxford with a view to its vast means of education, or
rather with a view to its vast advantages for study. A ludicrous story
is told of a young candidate for clerical orders--that, being asked by
the bishop's chaplain if he had ever "been to Oxford," as a colloquial
expression for having had an academic education, he replied, "No: but he
had twice been to Abingdon:" Abingdon being only seven miles distant.
In the same sense I might say that once before I had been at Oxford:
but _that_ was as a transient visitor with Lord W----, when we were both
children. Now, on the contrary, I approached these venerable towers in
the character of a student, and with the purpose of a long connection;
personally interested in the constitution of the university, and
obscurely anticipating that in this city, or at least during the period
of my nominal attachment to this academic body, the remoter parts of
my future life would unfold before me. All hearts were at this time
occupied with the public interests of the country. The "sorrow of the
time" was ripening to a second harvest. Napoleon had commenced his
Vandal, or rather Hunnish War with Britain, in the spring of this year,
about eight months before; and profound public interest it was, into
which the very coldest hearts entered, that a little divided with me
the else monopolizing awe attached to the solemn act of launching myself
upon the world. That expression may seem too strong as applied to one
who had already been for many months a houseless wanderer in Wales, and
a solitary roamer in the streets of London. But in those situations,
it must be remembered, I was an unknown, unacknowledged vagrant; and
without money I could hardly run much risk, except of breaking my neck.
The perils, the pains, the pleasures, or the obligations, of the world,
scarcely exist in a proper sense for him who has no funds. Perfect
weakness is often secure; it is by imperfect power, turned against its
master, that men are snared and decoyed. Here in Oxford I should be
called upon to commence a sort of establishment upon the splendid
English scale; here I should share in many duties and responsibilities,
and should become henceforth an object of notice to a large society. Now
first becoming separately and individually answerable for my conduct,
and no longer absorbed into the general unit of a family, I felt myself,
for the first time, burthened with the anxieties of a man, and a member
of the world.

Oxford, ancient mother! hoary with ancestral honors, time-honored, and,
haply, it may be, time-shattered power--I owe thee nothing! Of thy vast
riches I took not a shilling, though living amongst multitudes who owed
to thee their daily bread. Not the less I owe thee justice; for that
is a universal debt. And at this moment, when I see thee called to
thy audit by unjust and malicious accusers--men with the hearts of
inquisitors and the purposes of robbers--I feel towards thee something
of filial reverence and duty. However, I mean not to speak as an
advocate, but as a conscientious witness in the simplicity of truth;
feeling neither hope nor fear of a personal nature, without fee, and
without favor.

I have been assured from many quarters that the great body of the public
are quite in the dark about the whole manner of living in our English
universities; and that a considerable portion of that public, misled by
the totally different constitution of universities in Scotland, Ireland,
and generally on the continent, as well as by the different arrangements
of collegiate life in those institutions, are in a state worse than
ignorant (that is, more unfavorable to the truth)--starting, in fact,
from prejudices, and absolute errors of fact, which operate most
uncharitably upon their construction of those insulated statements,
which are continually put forward by designing men. Hence, I can well
believe that it will be an acceptable service, at this particular
moment, when the very constitution of the two English universities is
under the unfriendly revision of Parliament, when some roving commission
may be annually looked for, under a contingency which I will not utter
in words (for I reverence the doctrine of _euphæmismos_), far worse
than Cromwellian, that is, merely personal, and to winnow the existing
corporation from disaffection to the state--a Henry the Eighth
commission of sequestration, and levelled at the very integrity of
the institution--under such prospects, I can well believe that a true
account of Oxford _as it is_ (which will be valid also for Cambridge)
must be welcome both to friend and foe. And instead of giving this
account didactically, or according to a logical classification of the
various items in the survey, I will give it historically, or according
to the order in which the most important facts of the case opened
themselves before myself, under the accidents of my own personal
inquiry. No situation could be better adapted than my own for eliciting
information; for, whereas most young men come to the university under
circumstances of absolute determination as to the choice of their
particular college, and have, therefore, no cause for search or inquiry,
I, on the contrary, came thither in solitary self-dependence, and in the
loosest state of indetermination.

Though neither giving nor accepting invitations for the first two years
of my residence, never but once had I reason to complain of a sneer,
or indeed any allusion whatever to habits which might be understood to
express poverty. Perhaps even then I had no reason to complain, for
my own conduct in that instance was unwise; and the allusion, though a
personality, and so far ill-bred, might be meant in real kindness. The
case was this: I neglected my dress in one point habitually; that is,
I wore clothes until they were threadbare--partly in the belief that my
gown would conceal their main defects, but much more from carelessness
and indisposition to spend upon a tailor what I had destined for
a bookseller. At length, an official person, of some weight in the
college, sent me a message on the subject through a friend. It was
couched in these terms: That, let a man possess what talents or
accomplishments he might, it was not possible for him to maintain his
proper station, in the public respect, amongst so many servants and
people, servile to external impressions, without some regard to the
elegance of his dress.

A reproof so courteously prefaced I could not take offence at; and at
that time I resolved to spend some cost upon decorating my person. But
always it happened that some book, or set of books,--that passion being
absolutely endless, and inexorable as the grave,--stepped between me and
my intentions; until one day, upon arranging my toilet hastily before
dinner, I suddenly made the discovery that I had no waistcoat (or
_vest_, as it is now called, through conceit or provincialism), which
was not torn or otherwise dilapidated; whereupon, buttoning up my coat
to the throat, and drawing my gown as close about me as possible, I went
into the public "hall" (so is called in Oxford the public eating-room)
with no misgiving. However, I was detected; for a grave man, with a
superlatively grave countenance, who happened on that day to sit next
me, but whom I did not personally know, addressing his friend sitting
opposite, begged to know if he had seen the last Gazette, because he
understood that it contained an order in council laying an interdict
upon the future use of waistcoats. His friend replied, with the same
perfect gravity, that it was a great satisfaction to his mind that his
majesty's government should have issued so sensible an order; which
he trusted would be soon followed up by an interdict on breeches,
they being still more disagreeable to pay for. This said, without the
movement on either side of a single muscle, the two gentlemen passed to
other subjects; and I inferred, upon the whole, that, having detected
my manoeuvre, they wished to put me on my guard in the only way open to
them. At any rate, this was the sole personality, or equivocal allusion
of any sort, which ever met my ear during the years that I asserted my
right to be as poor as I chose. And, certainly, my censors were right,
whatever were the temper in which they spoke, kind or unkind; for a
little extra care in the use of clothes will always, under almost any
extremity of poverty, pay for so much extra cost as is essential to
neatness and decorum, if not even to elegance. They were right, and I
was wrong, in a point which cannot be neglected with impunity.

But, to enter upon my own history, and my sketch of Oxford life.--Late
on a winter's night, in the latter half of December, 1803, when a
snow-storm, and a heavy one, was already gathering in the air, a lazy
Birmingham coach, moving at four and a half miles an hour, brought
me through the long northern suburb of Oxford, to a shabby coach-inn,
situated in the Corn Market. Business was out of the question at that
hour. But the next day I assembled all the acquaintances I had in
the university, or had to my own knowledge; and to them, in council
assembled, propounded my first question: What college would they,
in their superior state of information, recommend to my choice?
This question leads to the first great characteristic of Oxford, as
distinguished from most other universities. Before me at this moment lie
several newspapers, reporting, at length, the installation in office
(as Chancellor) of the Duke of Wellington. The original Oxford report,
having occasion to mention the particular college from which the
official procession moved, had said, no doubt, that the gates of
University, the halls of University, &c., were at such a point of
time thrown open. But most of the provincial editors, not at all
comprehending that the reference was to an individual college, known by
the name of University College, one of twenty-five such establishments
in Oxford, had regularly corrected it into "gates of the University,"
&c. Here is the first misconception of all strangers. And this feature
of Oxford it is which has drawn such exclamations of astonishment from
foreigners. Lipsius, for example, protested with fervor, on first seeing
this vast establishment of Oxford, that one college of this university
was greater in its power and splendor, that it glorified and illustrated
the honors of literature more conspicuously by the pomps with which
it invested the ministers and machinery of education, than any entire
university of the continent.

What is a university almost everywhere else? It announces little more,
as respects the academic buildings, than that here is to be found the
place of rendezvous--the exchange, as it were, or, under a different
figure, the _palæstra_ of the various parties connected with the
prosecution of liberal studies. This is their "House of Call," their
general place of muster and parade. Here it is that the professors and
the students converge, with the certainty of meeting each other. Here,
in short, are the lecture-rooms in all the faculties. Well: thus far we
see an arrangement of convenience--that is, of convenience for one of
the parties, namely, the professors. To them it spares the disagreeable
circumstances connected with a private reception of their students
at their own rooms. But to the students it is a pure matter of
indifference. In all this there is certainly no service done to the
cause of good learning, which merits a state sanction, or the aid of
national funds. Next, however, comes an academic library, sometimes a
good one; and here commences a real use in giving a national station
to such institutions, because their durable and monumental existence,
liable to no flux or decay from individual caprice, or accidents of
life, and their authentic station, as expressions of the national
grandeur, point them out to the bequests of patriotic citizens. They
fall also under the benefit of another principle--the conservative
feeling of amateurship. Several great collections have been bequeathed
to the British Museum, for instance--not chiefly _as_ a national
institution, and under feelings of nationality, but because, being such,
it was also permanent; and thus the painful labors of collecting were
guaranteed from perishing. Independently of all this, I, for my
part, willingly behold the surplus of national funds dedicated to the
consecration, as it were, of learning, by raising temples to its honor,
even where they answer no purpose of direct use. Next, after the
service of religion, I would have the service of learning externally
embellished, recommended to the affections of men, and hallowed by the
votive sculptures, as I may say, of that affection, gathering in amount
from age to age. _Magnificabo apostolatum meum_ is a language almost
as becoming to the missionaries and ministers of knowledge, as to
the ambassadors of religion. It is fit that by pompous architectural
monuments, that a voice may forever be sounding audibly in human ears
of homage to these powers, and that even alien feelings may be compelled
into secret submission to their influence. Therefore, amongst the number
of those who value such things, upon the scale of direct proximate
utility, rank not me: that _arithmetica officina_ is in my years
abominable. But still I affirm that, in our analysis of an ordinary
university, or "college" as it is provincially called, we have not yet
arrived at any element of service rendered to knowledge or education,
large enough to call for very extensive national aid. Honor has thus
far been rendered to the good cause by a public attestation, and that is
well: but no direct promotion has been given to that cause, no impulse
communicated to its progress, such that it can be held out as a result
commensurate to the name and pretensions of a university. As yet there
is nothing accomplished which is beyond the strength of any little
commercial town. And as to the library in particular, besides that in
all essential departments it might be bought, to order, by one day's
common subscription of Liverpool or Glasgow merchants, students very
rarely indeed have admission to its free use.

What other functions remain to a university? For those which I have
mentioned of furnishing a point of rendezvous to the great body of
professors and students, and a point of concentration to the different
establishments of implements and machinery for elaborate researches [as,
for instance, of books and MSS., in the first place; secondly, of
maps, charts, and globes; and, thirdly, perhaps of the costly apparatus
required for such studies as Sideral astronomy, galvanic chemistry
or physiology, &c.]; all these are uses which cannot be regarded in a
higher light than as conveniences merely incidental and collateral to
the main views of the founders. There are, then, two much loftier
and more commanding ends met by the idea and constitution of such
institutions, and which first rise to a rank of dignity sufficient to
occupy the views of a legislator, or to warrant a national interest.
These ends are involved: 1st, in the practice of conferring _degrees_,
that is, formal attestations and guarantees of competence to give
advice, instruction, or aid, in the three great branches of liberal
knowledge applicable to human life; 2d, in that appropriation of fixed
funds to fixed professorships, by means of which the uninterrupted
succession of public and authorized teachers is sustained in all the
higher branches of knowledge, from generation to generation, and from
century to century. By the latter result it is secured that the great
well-heads of liberal knowledge and of severe science shall never grow
dry. By the former it is secured that this unfailing fountain shall
be continually applied to the production and to the _tasting_ of fresh
labors in endless succession for the public service, and thus, in
effect, that the great national fountain shall not be a stagnant
reservoir, but, by an endless _derivation_ (to speak in a Roman
metaphor!), applied to a system of national irrigation. These are the
two great functions and qualifications of a collegiate incorporation:
one providing to each separate generation its own separate rights of
heirship to all the knowledge accumulated by its predecessors, and
converting a mere casual life-annuity into an estate of inheritance--a
mere fleeting _agonisma_ into a _ktæma es æi_; the other securing for
this eternal dowry as wide a distribution as possible: the one function
regarding the dimension of _length_ in the endless series of ages
through which it propagates its gifts; the other regarding the dimension
of _breadth_ in the large application throughout any one generation
of these gifts to the public service. Here are grand functions, high
purposes; but neither one nor the other demands any edifices of stone
and marble; neither one nor the other presupposes any edifice at all
built with human hands. A collegiate incorporation, the church militant
of knowledge, in its everlasting struggle with darkness and error, is,
in this respect, like the church of Christ--that is, it is always and
essentially invisible to the fleshly eye. The pillars of this church are
human champions; its weapons are great truths so shaped as to meet the
shifting forms of error; its armories are piled and marshalled in human
memories; its cohesion lies in human zeal, in discipline, in childlike
docility; and all its triumphs, its pomps, and glories, must forever
depend upon talent, upon the energies of the will, and upon the
harmonious cooperation of its several divisions. Thus far, I say, there
is no call made out for _any_ intervention of the architect.

Let me apply all this to Oxford. Among the four functions commonly
recognized by the founders of universities, which are--1st, to find
a set of halls or places of meeting; 2d, to find the implements and
accessaries of study; 3d, to secure the succession of teachers and
learners; 4th, to secure the profitable application of their attainments
to the public service. Of these four, the two highest need no buildings;
and the other two, which are mere collateral functions of convenience,
need only a small one. Wherefore, then, and to what end, are the vast
systems of building, the palaces and towers of Oxford? These are either
altogether superfluous, mere badges of ostentation and luxurious wealth,
or they point to some fifth function not so much as contemplated by
other universities, and, at present, absolutely and chimerically beyond
their means of attainment. Formerly we used to hear attacks upon the
Oxford discipline as fitted to the true _intellectual_ purposes of a
modern education. Those attacks, weak and most uninstructed in facts,
false as to all that they challenged, and puerile as to what implicitly
they propounded for homage, are silent. But, of late, the battery has
been pointed against the Oxford discipline in its _moral_ aspects, as
fitted for the government and restraint of young men, or even as at all
contemplating any such control. The Beverleys would have us suppose,
not only that the great body of the students are a licentious crew,
acknowledging no discipline or restraints, but that the grave elders of
the university, and those who wield the nominal authority of the
place, passively resign the very shows of power, and connive at general
excesses, even when they do not absolutely authorize them in their
personal examples. Now, when such representations are made, to what
standard of a just discipline is it that these writers would be
understood as appealing? Is it to some ideal, or to some existing
and known reality? Would they have England suppose that they are here
comparing the actual Oxford with some possible hypothetic or imaginable
Oxford,--with some ideal case, that is to say, about which great
discussions would arise as to its feasibility,--or that they are
comparing it with some known standard of discipline actually realized
and sustained for generations, in Leipsic, suppose, or Edinburgh, or
Leyden, or Salamanca? This is the question of questions, to which we
may demand an answer; and, according to that answer, observe the dilemma
into which these furciferous knaves must drop. If they are comparing
Oxford simply with some ideal and better Oxford, in some ideal and
better world, in that case all they have said--waiving its falsehoods of
fact--is no more than a flourish of rhetoric, and the whole
discussion may be referred to the shadowy combats of scholastic
declamation-mongers--those mock gladiators, and _umbratiles doctores_.
But if, on the other hand, they pretend to take their station upon the
known basis of some existing institution,--if they will pretend that, in
this impeachment of Oxford, they are proceeding upon a silent comparison
with Edinburgh, Glasgow, Jena, Leipsic, Padua, &c.,--then are they
self-exposed, as men not only without truth, but without shame. For now
comes in, as a sudden revelation, and as a sort of _deus ex machina_,
for the vindication of the truth, the simple answer to that question
proposed above, Wherefore, and to what end, are the vast edifices of
Oxford? A university, as universities are in general, needs not, I have
shown, to be a visible body--a building raised with hands. Wherefore,
then, is the _visible_ Oxford? To what _fifth_ end, refining upon the
ordinary ends of such institutions, is the far-stretching system of
Oxford _hospitia_, or monastic hotels, directed by their founders, or
applied by their present possessors? Hearken, reader, to the answer:

These vast piles are applied to an end, absolutely indispensable to any
even tolerable system of discipline, and yet absolutely unattainable
upon any commensurate scale in any other university of Europe. They are
applied to the personal settlement and domestication of the students
within the gates and walls of that college to whose discipline they are
amenable. Everywhere else the young men live _where_ they please and
_as_ they please; necessarily distributed amongst the towns-people; in
any case, therefore, liable to no control or supervision whatever; and
in those cases where the university forms but a small part of a vast
capital city, as it does in Paris, Edinburgh, Madrid, Vienna, Berlin,
and Petersburg, liable to every mode of positive temptation and
distraction, which besiege human life in high-viced and luxurious
communities. Here, therefore, it is a mockery to talk of discipline;
of a nonentity there can be no qualities; and we need not ask for the
description of the discipline in situations where discipline there can
be none. One slight anomaly I have heard of as varying _pro tanto_
the uniform features of this picture. In Glasgow I have heard of an
arrangement by which young academicians are placed in the family of a
professor. Here, as members of a private household, and that household
under the presiding eye of a conscientious, paternal, and judicious
scholar, doubtless they would enjoy as absolute a shelter from peril
and worldly contagion as parents could wish; but not _more_ absolute,
I affirm, than belongs, unavoidably, to the monastic seclusion of an
Oxford college--the gates of which open to no egress after nine o'clock
at night, nor after eleven to any ingress which is not regularly
reported to a proper officer of the establishment. The two forms of
restraint are, as respects the effectual amount of control, equal; and
were they equally diffused, Glasgow and Oxford would, in this point,
stand upon the same level of discipline. But it happens that the
Glasgow case was a personal accident; personal, both as regarded him who
volunteered the exercise of this control, and those who volunteered to
appropriate its benefits; whereas the Oxford case belongs to the very
system, is coextensive with the body of undergraduates, and, from the
very arrangement of Oxford life, is liable to no decay or intermission.

Here, then, the reader apprehends the first great characteristic
distinction of Oxford--that distinction which extorted the rapturous
admiration of Lipsius as an exponent of enormous wealth, but which I
now mention as applying, with ruinous effect, to the late calumnies upon
Oxford, as an inseparable exponent of her meritorious discipline. She,
most truly and severely an "Alma Mater" gathers all the juvenile part of
her flock within her own fold, and beneath her own vigilant supervision.
In Cambridge there is, so far, a laxer administration of this rule,
that, when any college overflows, undergraduates are allowed to lodge
at large in the town. But in Oxford this increase of peril and
discretionary power is thrown by preference upon the senior graduates,
who are seldom below the age of twenty-two or twenty-three; and the
college accommodations are reserved, in almost their whole extent, for
the most youthful part of the society. This extent is prodigious. Even
in my time, upwards of two thousand persons were lodged within the
colleges; none having fewer than two rooms, very many having three, and
men of rank, or luxurious habits, having often large suites of rooms.
But that was a time of war, which Oxford experience has shown to have
operated most disproportionably as a drain upon the numbers disposable
for liberal studies; and the total capacity of the university was far
from being exhausted. There are now, I believe, between five and six
thousand names upon the Oxford books; and more than four thousand, I
understand, of constant residents. So that Oxford is well able to lodge,
and on a very sumptuous scale, a small army of men; which expression of
her great splendor I now mention (as I repeat) purely as applying to
the question of her machinery for enforcing discipline. This part of
her machinery, it will be seen, is unique, and absolutely peculiar to
herself. Other universities, boasting no such enormous wealth, cannot
be expected to act upon her system of seclusion. Certainly, I make it
no reproach to other universities, that, not possessing the means of
sequestering their young men from worldly communion, they must abide by
the evils of a laxer discipline. It is their misfortune, and not their
criminal neglect, which consents to so dismal a relaxation of academic
habits. But let them not urge this misfortune in excuse at one time,
and at another virtually disavow it. Never let _them_ take up a stone to
throw at Oxford, upon this element of a wise education; since in them,
through that original vice in their constitution, the defect of
all means for secluding and insulating their society, discipline is
abolished by anticipation--being, in fact, an impossible thing; for the
walls of the college are subservient to no purpose of life, but only to
a purpose of convenience; they converge the students for the hour or two
of what is called lecture; which over, each undergraduate again becomes
_sui juris_, is again absorbed into the crowds of the world, resorts to
whatsoever haunts he chooses, and finally closes his day at----if,
in any sense, at home--at a home which is not merely removed from the
supervision and control, but altogether from the bare knowledge, of
his academic superiors. How far this discipline is well administered in
other points at Oxford, will appear from the rest of my account. But,
thus far, at least, it must be conceded, that Oxford, by and
through this one unexampled distinction--her vast disposable fund
of accommodations for junior members within her own private
cloisters--possesses an advantage which she could not forfeit, if she
would, towards an effectual knowledge of each man's daily habits, and a
control over him which is all but absolute.

This knowledge and this control is much assisted and concentrated by the
division of the university into separate colleges. Here comes another
feature of the Oxford system. Elsewhere the university is a single
college; and this college is the university. But in Oxford the
university expresses, as it were, the army, and the colleges express the
several brigades, or regiments.

To resume, therefore, my own thread of personal narration. On the next
morning after my arrival in Oxford, I assembled a small council of
friends to assist me in determining at which of the various separate
societies I should enter, and whether as a "commoner," or as a
"gentleman commoner." Under the first question was couched the following
latitude of choice: I give the names of the colleges, and the numerical
account of their numbers, as it stood in January, 1832; for this will
express, as well as the list of that day, (which I do not accurately
know), the _proportions_ of importance amongst them.

                                          Mem.
  1. University College ................. 207
  2. Balliol         "  ................. 257
  3. Merton          "  ................. 124
  4. Exeter          "  ................. 299
  5. Oriel           "  ................. 293
  6. Queen's         "  ................. 351
  7. New             "  ................. 157
  8. Lincoln         "  ................. 141
  9. All Souls'      "  .................  98
  10. Magdalene      "  ................. 165
  11. Brazennose     "  ................. 418
  12. Corpus Christi "  ................. 127
  13. Christ Church  "  ................. 949
  14. Trinity        "  ................. 259
  15. St. John's     "  ................. 218
  16. Jesus          "  ................. 167
  17. Wadham         "  ................. 217
  18. Pembroke       "  ................. 189
  19. Worcester      "  ................. 231

Then, besides these colleges, five _Halls_, as they are technically
called, (the term _Hall_ implying chiefly that they are societies not
endowed, or not endowed with fellowships as the colleges are), namely:

                                    Mem.
  1. St. Mary Hall.  ..............  83
  2. Magdalen   "    .............. 178
  3. New Inn    "    ..............  10
  4. St. Alban  "    ..............  41
  5. St. Edmund "    ..............  96

Such being the names, and general proportions on the scale of local
importance, attached to the different communities, next comes the very
natural question, What are the chief determining motives for guiding
the selection amongst them? These I shall state. First of all, a man
not otherwise interested in the several advantages of the colleges has,
however, in all probability, some choice between a small society and a
large one; and thus far a mere ocular inspection of the list will serve
to fix his preference. For my part, supposing other things equal, I
greatly preferred the most populous college, as being that in which
any single member, who might have reasons for standing aloof from the
general habits of expense, of intervisiting, etc., would have the best
chance of escaping a jealous notice. However, amongst those "other
things" which I presumed equal, one held a high place in my estimation,
which a little inquiry showed to be very far from equal. All the
colleges have chapels, but all have not organs; nor, amongst those which
have, is the same large use made of the organ. Some preserve the full
cathedral service; others do not. Christ Church, meantime, fulfilled
_all_ conditions: for the chapel here happens to be the cathedral of the
diocese; the service, therefore, is full and ceremonial; the college,
also, is far the most splendid, both in numbers, rank, wealth, and
influence. Hither I resolved to go; and immediately I prepared to call
on the head.

The "head," as he is called generically, of an Oxford college (his
_specific_ appellation varies almost with every college--principal,
provost, master, rector, warden, etc.), is a greater man than the
uninitiated suppose. His situation is generally felt as conferring a
degree of rank not much less than episcopal; and, in fact, the head of
Brazennose at that time, who happened to be the Bishop of Bangor, was
not held to rank much above his brothers in office. Such being the rank
of heads generally, _a fortiori_, that of Christ Church was to be had
in reverence; and this I knew. He is always, _ex officio_, dean of the
diocese; and, in his quality of college head, he only, of all deans that
ever were heard of, is uniformly considered a greater man than his own
diocesan. But it happened that the present dean had even higher titles
to consideration. Dr. Cyril Jackson had been tutor to the Prince of
Wales (George IV.); he had repeatedly refused a bishopric; and _that_,
perhaps, is entitled to place a man one degree above him who has
accepted one. He was also supposed to have made a bishop, and
afterwards, at least, it is certain that lie made his own brother a
bishop. All things weighed, Dr. Cyril Jackson seemed so very great a
personage that I now felt the value of my long intercourse with great
Dons in giving me confidence to face a lion of this magnitude.

Those who know Oxford are aware of the peculiar feelings which have
gathered about the name and pretensions of Christ Church; feelings of
superiority and leadership in the members of that college, and often
enough of defiance and jealousy on the part of other colleges. Hence
it happens that you rarely find yourself in a shop, or other place of
public resort, with a Christ-Church man, but he takes occasion, if young
and frivolous, to talk loudly of the Dean, as an indirect expression of
his own connection with this splendid college; the title of _Dean_ being
exclusively attached to the headship of Christ Church. The Dean, as may
be supposed, partakes in this superior dignity of his "House;" he
is officially brought into connection with all orders of the British
aristocracy--often with royal personages; and with the younger branches
of the aristocracy his office places him in a relation of authority and
guardianship--exercised, however, through inferior ministry, and seldom
by direct personal interference. The reader must understand that, with
rare exceptions, all the princes and nobles of Great Britain, who choose
to benefit by an academic education, resort either to Christ Church
College in Oxford, or to Trinity College in Cambridge; these are the
alternatives. Naturally enough, my young friends were somewhat startled
at my determination to call upon so great a man; a letter, they fancied,
would be a better mode of application. I, however, who did not adopt the
doctrine that no man is a hero to his valet, was of opinion that very
few men indeed are heroes to themselves. The cloud of external pomp,
which invests them to the eyes of the _attoniti_ cannot exist to their
own; they do not, like Kehama, entering the eight gates of Padalon at
once, meet and contemplate their own grandeurs; but, more or less, are
conscious of acting a part. I did not, therefore, feel the tremor which
was expected of a novice, on being ushered into so solemn a presence.


II.

OXFORD.



The Dean was sitting in a spacious library or study, elegantly, if not
luxuriously furnished. Footmen, stationed as repeaters, as if at some
fashionable rout, gave a momentary importance to my unimportant self,
by the thundering tone of their annunciations. All the machinery of
aristocratic life seemed indeed to intrench this great Don's approaches;
and I was really surprised that so very great a man should condescend
to rise on my entrance. But I soon found that, if the Dean's station and
relation to the higher orders had made him lofty, those same relations
had given a peculiar suavity to his manners. Here, indeed, as on other
occasions, I noticed the essential misconception, as to the demeanor of
men of rank, which prevails amongst those who have no personal access to
their presence. In the fabulous pictures of novels (such novels as once
abounded), and in newspaper reports of conversations, real or pretended,
between the king and inferior persons, we often find the writer
expressing _his_ sense of aristocratic assumption, by making the
king address people without their titles. The Duke of Wellington,
for instance, or Lord Liverpool, figures usually, in such scenes, as
"Wellington," or "Arthur," and as "Liverpool." Now, as to the private
talk of George IV. in such cases, I do not pretend to depose; but,
speaking generally, I may say that the practice of the highest classes
takes the very opposite course. Nowhere is a man so sure of his titles
or official distinctions as amongst _them_; for, it is upon giving to
every man the very extreme punctilio of his known or supposed claims,
that they rely for the due observance of their own. Neglecting no form
of courtesy suited to the case, they seek, in this way, to remind
men unceasingly of what they expect; and the result is what I
represent--that people in the highest stations, and such as bring them
continually into contact with inferiors, are, of all people, the least
addicted to insolence or defect of courtesy. Uniform suavity of manner
is indeed rarely found, except in men of high rank. Doubtless this
may arise upon a motive of self-interest, jealous of giving the least
opening or invitation to the retorts of ill-temper or low breeding. But,
whatever be its origin, such I believe to be the fact. In a very long
conversation of a general nature upon the course of my studies, and the
present direction of my reading, Dr. Cyril Jackson treated me just as he
would have done his equal in station and in age. Coming, at length, to
the particular purpose of my visit at this time to himself, he assumed a
little more of his official stateliness. He condescended to say that
it would have given him pleasure to reckon me amongst his flock; "But,
sir," he said, in a tone of some sharpness, "your guardians have acted
improperly. It was their duty to have given me at least one year's
notice of their intention to place you at Christ Church. At present I
have not a dog-kennel in my college untenanted." Upon this, I observed
that nothing remained for me to do but to apologize for having occupied
so much of his time; that, for myself, I now first heard of this
preliminary application; and that, as to my guardians, I was bound to
acquit them of all oversight in this instance, they being no parties
to my present scheme. The Dean expressed his astonishment at this
statement. I, on my part, was just then making my parting bows, and had
reached the door, when a gesture of the Dean's, courteously waving me
back to the sofa I had quitted, invited me to resume my explanations;
and I had a conviction at the moment that the interview would have
terminated in the Dean's suspending his standing rule in my favor. But,
just at that moment, the thundering heralds of the Dean's hall announced
some man of high rank: the sovereign of Christ Church seemed distressed
for a moment; but then recollecting himself, bowed in a way to indicate
that I was dismissed. And thus it happened that I did not become a
member of Christ Church.

A few days passed in thoughtless indecision. At the end of that time, a
trivial difficulty arose to settle my determination. I had brought about
fifty guineas to Oxford; but the expenses of an Oxford inn, with almost
daily entertainments to young friends, had made such inroads upon this
sum, that, after allowing for the contingencies incident to a college
initiation, enough would not remain to meet the usual demand for what is
called "caution money." This is a small sum, properly enough demanded of
every student, when matriculated, as a pledge for meeting any loss from
unsettled arrears, such as his sudden death or his unannounced departure
might else continually be inflicting upon his college. By releasing
the college, therefore, from all necessity for degrading vigilance or
persecution, this demand does, in effect, operate beneficially to the
feelings of all parties. In most colleges it amounts to twenty-five
pounds: in one only it was considerably less. And this trifling
consideration it was, concurring with a reputation _at that time_ for
relaxed discipline, which finally determined me in preferring W---
College to all others. This college had the capital disadvantage, in my
eyes, that its chapel possessed no organ, and no musical service.
But any other choice would have driven me to an instant call for more
money--a measure which, as too flagrantly in contradiction to the whole
terms on which I had volunteered to undertake an Oxford life, I could
not find nerves to face.

At W---- College, therefore, I entered: and here arises the proper
occasion for stating the true costs of an Oxford education. First comes
the question of _lodging_. This item varies, as may be supposed; but my
own case will place on record the two extremes of cost in one particular
college, nowadays differing, I believe, from the general standard. The
first rooms assigned me, being small and ill-lighted, as part of an
old Gothic building, were charged at four guineas a year. These I soon
exchanged for others a little better, and for them I paid six guineas.
Finally, by privilege of seniority, I obtained a handsome set of
well-proportioned rooms, in a modern section of the college, charged
at ten guineas a year. This set was composed of three rooms; namely, an
airy bedroom, a study, and a spacious room for receiving visitors. This
range of accommodation is pretty general in Oxford, and, upon the whole,
may be taken perhaps as representing the average amount of luxury in
this respect, and at the average amount of cost. The furniture and the
fittings up of these rooms cost me about twenty-five guineas; for
the Oxford rule is, that if you take the rooms (which is at your
own option), in that case, you _third_ the furniture and the
embellishments--that is, you succeed to the total cost diminished by
one third. You pay, therefore, two guineas out of each three to your
_immediate_ predecessor. But, as he also may have succeeded to the
furniture upon the same terms, whenever there happens to have been a
rapid succession of occupants, the original cost to a remote predecessor
is sometimes brought down, by this process of diminution, to a mere
fraction of the true value; and yet no individual occupant can complain
of any heavy loss. Whilst upon this subject, I may observe that, in the
seventeenth century, in Milton's time, for example (about 1624), and
for more than sixty years after that era, the practice of _chumship_
prevailed: every set of chambers was possessed by two cooccupants;
they had generally the same bed-room, and a common study; and they were
called _chums_. This practice, once all but universal, is now entirely
extinct; and the extinction serves to mark the advance of the country,
not so much in luxury as in refinement.

The next item which I shall notice is that which in college bills is
expressed by the word _Tutorage_. This is the same in all colleges,
I believe, namely, ten guineas per annum. And this head suggests an
explanation which is most important to the reputation of Oxford, and
fitted to clear up a very extensive delusion. Some years ago, a most
elaborate statement was circulated of the number and costly endowment
of the Oxford professorships. Some thirty or more there were, it was
alleged, and five or six only which were not held as absolute sinecures.
Now, this is a charge which I am not here meaning to discuss.
Whether defensible or not, I do not now inquire. It is the practical
interpretation and construction of this charge which I here wish to
rectify. In most universities, except those of England, the professors
are the body on whom devolves the whole duty and burthen of teaching;
they compose the sole fountains of instruction; and if these fountains
fail, the fair inference is, that the one great purpose of the
institution is defeated. But this inference, valid for all other places,
is not so for Oxford and Cambridge. And here, again, the difference
arises out of the peculiar distribution of these bodies into separate
and independent colleges. Each college takes upon itself the regular
instruction of its separate inmates--of these and of no others; and for
this office it appoints, after careful selection, trial, and probation,
the best qualified amongst those of its senior members who choose to
undertake a trust of such heavy responsibility. These officers are
called Tutors; and they are connected by duties and by accountability,
not with the university at all, but with their own private colleges. The
professors, on the other hand, are _public_ functionaries, not
connected (as respects the exercise of their duties) with any college
whatsoever--not even with their own--but altogether and exclusively
with the whole university. Besides the public tutors appointed in each
college, on the scale of one to each dozen or score of students, there
are also tutors strictly private, who attend any students in search of
special and extraordinary aid, on terms settled privately by themselves.
Of these persons, or their existence, the college takes no cognizance;
but between the two classes of tutors, the most studious young
men--those who would be most likely to avail themselves of the lectures
read by the professors--have their whole time pretty severely occupied:
and the inference from all this is, not only that the course of Oxford
education would suffer little if no professors at all existed, but also
that, if the existing professors were _ex abundanti_ to volunteer
the most exemplary spirit of exertion, however much this spectacle of
conscientious dealing might edify the university, it would contribute
but little to the promotion of academic purposes. The establishment of
professors is, in fact, a thing of ornament and pomp. Elsewhere, they
are the working servants; but, in Oxford, the ministers corresponding to
them bear another name,--they are called _Tutors_. These are the working
agents in the Oxford system; and the professors, with salaries in many
cases merely nominal, are persons sequestered, and properly sequestered,
to the solitary cultivation and advancement of knowledge, which a
different order of men is appointed to communicate.

Here let us pause for one moment, to notice another peculiarity in the
Oxford system, upon the tendency of which I shall confidently make my
appeal to the good sense of all unprejudiced readers. I have said
that the _tutors_ of Oxford correspond to the _professors_ of
other universities. But this correspondence, which is absolute and
unquestionable as regards the point then at issue,--namely, where we
are to look for that limb of the establishment on which rests the main
teaching agency,--is liable to considerable qualification, when we
examine the mode of their teaching. In both cases, this is conveyed by
what is termed "lecturing;"--but what is the meaning of a lecture in
Oxford and elsewhere? Elsewhere, it means a solemn dissertation, read,
or sometimes histrionically declaimed, by the professor. In Oxford,
it means an exercise performed orally by the students, occasionally
assisted by the tutor, and subject, in its whole course, to his
corrections, and what may be called his _scholia_, or collateral
suggestions and improvements. Now, differ as men may as to other
features of the Oxford, compared with the hostile system, here I
conceive that there is no room for doubt or demur. An Oxford lecture
imposes a real, _bona fide_ task upon the student; it will not
suffer him to fall asleep, either literally or in the energies of his
understanding; it is a real drill, under the excitement, perhaps, of
personal competition, and under the review of a superior scholar. But,
in Germany, under the declamations of the professor, the young men are
often literally sleeping; nor is it easy to see how the attention can be
kept from wandering, on this plan, which subjects the auditor to no
risk of sudden question or personal appeal. As to the prizes given for
essays, etc., by the professors, these have the effect of drawing forth
latent talent, but they can yield no criterion of the attention paid
to the professor; not to say that the competition for these prizes is a
matter of choice. Sometimes it is true that examinations take place;
but the Oxford lecture is a daily examination; and, waiving _that_,
what chance is there (I would ask) for searching examinations, for
examinations conducted with the requisite _auctoritas_ (or weight
of influence derived from personal qualities), if--which may Heaven
prevent!--the German tenure of professorships were substituted for
our British one: that is, if for independent and liberal teachers were
substituted poor mercenary haberdashers of knowledge--cap in hand to
opulent students--servile to their caprices--and, at one blow, degrading
the science they profess, the teacher, and the pupil? Yet I hear that
such advice _was_ given to a Royal Commission, sent to investigate one
or more of the Scottish universities. In the German universities, every
professor holds his situation, not in his good behavior, but on the
capricious pleasure of the young men who resort to his market. He opens
a shop, in fact: others, without limit, generally men of no credit or
known respectability, are allowed to open rival shops; and the result
is, sometimes, that the whole kennel of scoundrel professors ruin one
another; each standing with his mouth open, to leap at any bone thrown
amongst them, from the table of the "Burschen;" all hating,
fighting, calumniating each other, until the land is sick of its base
knowledge-mongers, and would vomit the loathsome crew, were any natural
channel open to their instincts of abhorrence. The most important of the
Scottish professorships--those which are fundamentally morticed to
the moral institutions of the land--are upon the footing of Oxford
tutorships, as regards emoluments; that is, they are not suffered to
keep up a precarious mendicant existence, upon the alms of the students,
or upon their fickle admirations. It is made imperative upon a candidate
for admission into the ministry of the Scottish Kirk, that he shall show
a certificate of attendance through a given number of seasons at given
lectures.

The next item in the quarterly (or, technically, the _term_) bills of
Oxford is for servants. This, in my college, and, I believe, in all
others, amounted, nominally, to two guineas a year. That sum, however,
was paid to a principal servant, whom, perhaps, you seldom or never
saw; the actual attendance upon yourself being performed by one of his
deputies; and to this deputy--who is, in effect, a _factotum_, combining
in his single person all the functions of chambermaid, valet, waiter at
meals, and porter or errand-boy--by the custom of the place and your own
sense of propriety, you cannot but give something or other in the shape
of perquisites. I was told, on entering, that half a guinea a quarter
was the customary allowance,--the same sum, in fact, as was levied
by the college for his principal; but I gave mine a guinea a quarter,
thinking that little enough for the many services he performed; and
others, who were richer than myself, I dare say, often gave much
more. Yet, sometimes, it struck me, from the gratitude which his looks
testified, on my punctual payment of this guinea,--for it was the only
bill with regard to which I troubled myself to practise any severe
punctuality,--that perhaps some thoughtless young man might give him
less, or might even forget to give anything; and, at all events, I have
reason to believe that half that sum would have contented him. These
minutiae I record purposely; my immediate object being to give
a rigorous statement of the real expenses incident to an English
university education, partly as a guide to the calculations of parents,
and partly as an answer to the somewhat libellous exaggerations which
are current on this subject, in times like these, when even the truth
itself, and received in a spirit of candor the most indulgent, may be
all too little to defend these venerable seats of learning from the ruin
which seems brooding over them. Yet, no! Abominable is the language of
despair even in a desperate situation. And, therefore, Oxford, ancient
mother! and thou, Cambridge, twin-light of England! be vigilant and
erect, for the enemy stands at all your gates! Two centuries almost
have passed since the boar was within your vineyards, laying waste and
desolating your heritage. Yet that storm was not final, nor that eclipse
total. May this also prove but a trial and a shadow of affliction! which
affliction, may it prove to you, mighty incorporations, what, sometimes,
it is to us, poor, frail _homunculi_--a process of purification, a
solemn and oracular warning! And, when that cloud is overpast, then,
rise, ancient powers, wiser and better--ready, like the _lampudæphoroi_
of old, to enter upon a second _stadium_, and to transmit the sacred
torch through a second period of twice [Footnote: Oxford may confessedly
claim a duration of that extent; and the pretensions of Cambridge,
in that respect, if less aspiring, are, however, as I believe, less
accurately determined.] five hundred years. So prays a loyal _alumnus_,
whose presumption, if any be, in taking upon himself a monitory tone, is
privileged by zeal and filial anxiety.

To return, however, into the track from which I have digressed. The
reader will understand that any student is at liberty to have private
servants of his own, as many and of what denomination he pleases. This
point, as many others of a merely personal bearing, when they happen to
stand in no relation to public discipline, neither the university nor
the particular college of the student feels summoned or even authorized
to deal with. Neither, in fact, does any other university in Europe; and
why, then, notice the case? Simply thus: if the Oxford discipline, in
this particular chapter, has nothing special or peculiar about it, yet
the case to which it applies _has_, and is almost exclusively found in
our universities. On the continent it happens most rarely that a student
has any funds disposable for luxuries so eminently such as grooms or
footmen; but at Oxford and Cambridge the case occurs often enough to
attract notice from the least vigilant eye. And thus we find set down to
the credit account of other universities the non-existence of luxury
in this or other modes, whilst, meantime, it is well known to the fair
inquirer that each or all are indulgences, not at all or so much as
in idea proscribed by the sumptuary edicts of those universities; but,
simply, by the lower scale of their general revenues. And this lower
scale, it will be said--how do you account for that? I answer, not so
much by the general inferiority of continental Europe to Great Britain
in _diffusive_ wealth (though that argument goes for something, it being
notorious that, whilst immoderate wealth, concentrated in a small number
of hands, exists in various continental states upon a larger scale than
with us, moderately large estates, on the other hand, are, with them,
as one to two hundred, or even two hundred and fifty, in comparison of
ours), but chiefly upon this fact, which is too much overlooked, that
the foreign universities are not peopled from the wealthiest classes,
which are the class either already noble, or wishing to become such.
And why is that? Purely from the vicious constitution of society on
the continent, where all the fountains of honor lie in the military
profession or in the diplomatic. We English, haters and revilers
of ourselves beyond all precedent, disparagers of our own eminent
advantages beyond all sufferance of honor or good sense, and daily
playing into the hands of foreign enemies, who hate us out of mere
envy or shame, have amongst us some hundreds of writers who will die or
suffer martyrdom upon this proposition--that aristocracy, and the spirit
and prejudices of aristocracy, are more operative (more effectually and
more extensively operative) amongst ourselves, than in any other known
society of men. Now, I, who believe all errors to arise in some narrow,
partial, or angular view of truth, am seldom disposed to meet any
sincere affirmation by a blank, unmodified denial. Knowing, therefore,
that some acute observers do really believe this doctrine as to the
aristocratic forces, and the way in which they mould English society,
I cannot but suppose that some symptoms do really exist of such a
phenomenon; and the only remark I shall here make on the case is
this, that, very often, where any force or influence reposes upon deep
realities, and upon undisturbed foundations, _there_ will be the
least heard of loquacious and noisy expressions of its power; which
expressions arise most, not where the current is most violent, but where
(being possibly the weakest) it is most fretted with resistance.

In England, the very reason why the aristocratic feeling makes itself
so sensibly felt and so distinctly an object of notice to the censorious
observer is, because it maintains a troubled existence amongst counter
and adverse influences, so many and so potent. This might be illustrated
abundantly. But, as respects the particular question before me, it
will be sufficient to say this: With us the profession and exercise of
knowledge, as a means of livelihood, is honorable; on the continent it
is not so. The knowledge, for instance, which is embodied in the three
learned professions, does, with us, lead to distinction and civil
importance; no man can pretend to deny this; nor, by consequence, that
the professors personally take rank with the highest order of gentlemen.
Are they not, I demand, everywhere with us on the same footing, in point
of rank and consideration, as those who bear the king's commission
in the army and navy? Can this be affirmed of the continent, either
generally, or, indeed, partially? I say, _no_. Let us take Germany, as
an illustration. Many towns (for anything I know, all) present us with
a regular bisection of the resident _notables_, or wealthier class, into
two distinct (often hostile) coteries: one being composed of those
who are "_noble_;" the other, of families equally well educated and
accomplished, but _not_, in the continental sense, "noble." The meaning
and value of the word is so entirely misapprehended by the best English
writers, being, in fact, derived from our own way of applying it, that
it becomes important to ascertain its true value. A "nobility," which is
numerous enough to fill a separate ball-room in every sixth-rate town,
it needs no argument to show, cannot be a nobility in any English sense.
In fact, an _edelmann_ or nobleman, in the German sense, is strictly
what we mean by a _born gentleman_; with this one only difference, that,
whereas, with us, the rank which denominates a man such passes off by
shades so insensible, and almost infinite, into the ranks below, that
it becomes impossible to assign it any strict demarkation or lines of
separation; on the contrary, the continental noble points to certain
fixed barriers, in the shape of privileges, which divide him, _per
saltum_, from those who are below his own order. But were it not for
this one legal benefit of accurate circumscription and slight favor, the
continental noble, whether Baron of Germany, Count of France, or Prince
of Sicily and of Russia, is simply on a level with the common landed
_esquire_ of Britain, and _not_ on a level in very numerous cases.

Such being the case, how paramount must be the spirit of aristocracy in
continental society! Our _haute noblesse_--our genuine nobility, who are
such in the general feeling of their compatriots--will do _that_ which
the phantom of nobility of the continent will not: the spurious
nobles of Germany will not mix, on equal terms, with their untitled
fellow-citizens, living in the same city and in the same style as
themselves; they will not meet them in the same ball or concert-room.
Our great territorial nobility, though sometimes forming exclusive
circles (but not, however, upon any principle of high birth), do so
daily. They mix as equal partakers in the same amusements of races,
balls, musical assemblies, with the baronets (or _elite_ of the gentry);
with the landed esquires (or middle gentry); with the superior order of
tradesmen (who, in Germany, are absolute ciphers, for political weight,
or social consideration, but, with us, constitute the lower and broader
stratum of the nobilitas, [Footnote: It may be necessary to inform some
readers that the word _noble_, by which so large a system of imposition
and fraud, as to the composition of foreign society, has long been
practised upon the credulity of the British, corresponds to our word
_gentlemanly_ (or, rather, to the vulgar word _genteel_, if that word
were ever used legally, or _extra gradum_), not merely upon the argument
of its _virtual_ and operative value in the general estimate of men
(that is, upon the argument that a count, baron, &c., does not, _qua_
such, command any deeper feeling of respect or homage than a British
esquire), but also upon the fact, that, originally, in all English
registers, as, for instance, in the Oxford matriculation registers, all
the upper gentry (knights, esquires, &c.) are technically designated by
the word _nobiles_.--_See Chambeilayuc_, &c.] or gentry). The obscure
baronage of Germany, it is undeniable, insist upon having "an atmosphere
of their own;" whilst the Howards, the Stanleys, the Talbots, of
England; the Hamiltons, the Douglases, the Gordons, of Scotland,
are content to acknowledge a sympathy with the liberal part of their
untitled countrymen, in that point which most searchingly tries the
principle of aristocratic pride, namely, in their pleasures. To have the
same pursuits of business with another, may be a result of accident or
position; to have the same pleasures, being a matter of choice, argues
a community of nature in the _moral_ sensibilities, in that part of our
constitution which differences one man from another in the capacities of
greatness and elevation. As with their amusements, so with their graver
employments; the same mutual repulsion continues to divide the two
orders through life.

The nobles either live in gloomy seclusion upon their private funds,
wherever the privilege of primogeniture has enabled them to do so; or,
having no funds at all (the case of ninety-nine in one hundred), they go
into the army; that profession, the profession of arms, being regarded
as the only one compatible with an _edelmann's_ pretensions. Such was
once the feeling in England; such is still the feeling on the continent.
It is a prejudice naturally clinging to a semi-barbarous (because
growing out of a barbarous) state, and, in its degree, clinging to every
stage of imperfect civilization; and, were there no other argument, this
would be a sufficient one, that England, under free institutions, has
outrun the continent, in real civilization, by a century; a fact which
is concealed by the forms of luxurious refinement in a few exclusive
classes, too often usurping the name and honors of radical civilization.

From the super-appreciation of the military profession arises a
corresponding contempt of all other professions whatsoever _paid
by fellow-citizens_, and not by the king or the state. The clerical
profession is in the most abject degradation throughout Southern
Germany; and the reason why this forces itself less imperiously upon
the public notice is, that, in rural situations, from the absence of a
resident gentry (speaking generally), the pastor is brought into rare
collision with those who style themselves _noble_; whilst, in towns, the
clergy find people enough to countenance those who, being in the same
circumstances as to comfort and liberal education, are also under the
same ban of rejection from the "nobility," or born gentry. The legal
profession is equally degraded; even a barrister or advocate holds a
place in the public esteem little differing from that of an Old Bailey
attorney of the worst class. And this result is the less liable to
modification from personal qualities, inasmuch as there is no great
theatre (as with us) for individual display. Forensic eloquence is
unknown in Germany, as it is too generally on the continent, from
the defect of all popular or open judicatures. A similar defect of
deliberative assemblies--such, at least, as represent any popular
influences and debate with open doors--intercepts the very possibility
of senatorial eloquence. [Footnote: The subject is amusingly illustrated
by an anecdote of Goethe, recorded by himself in his autobiography. Some
physiognomist, or phrenologist, had found out, in Goethe's structure
of head, the sure promise of a great orator. "Strange infatuation of
nature!" observes Goethe, on this assurance, "to endow me so richly and
liberally for that particular destination which only the institutions of
my country render impossible. Music for the deaf! Eloquence without an
audience!"] That of the pulpit only remains. But even of this--whether
it be from want of the excitement and contagious emulation from the
other fields of oratory, or from the peculiar genius of Lutheranism--no
models have yet arisen that could, for one moment, sustain a comparison
with those of England or France. The highest names in this department
would not, to a foreign ear, carry with them any of that significance or
promise which surrounds the names of Jeremy Taylor or Barrow, Bossuet or
Bourdaloue, to those even who have no personal acquaintance with their
works. This absence of all fields for gathering public distinctions
cooperates, in a very powerful way, with the contempt of the born
gentry, to degrade these professions; and this double agency is, a third
time, reinforced by those political arrangements which deny every form
of state honor or conspicuous promotion to the very highest description
of excellence, whether of the bar, the pulpit, or the civic council.
Not "the fluent Murray," or the accomplished Erskine, from the English
bar--not Pericles or Demosthenes, from the fierce democracies of
Greece--not Paul preaching at Athens--could snatch a wreath from public
homage, nor a distinction from the state, nor found an influence, nor
leave behind them an operative model, in Germany, as now constituted.
Other walks of emolument are still more despised. Alfieri, a continental
"noble," that is, a born gentleman, speaks of bankers as we in England
should of a Jewish usurer, or tricking money-changer. The liberal
trades, such as those which minister to literature or the fine arts,
which, with us, confer the station of gentleman upon those who exercise
them, are, in the estimate of a continental "noble," fitted to assign a
certain rank or place in the train and equipage of a gentleman, but
not to entitle their most eminent professors to sit down, except by
sufferance, in his presence. And, upon this point, let not the reader
derive his notions from the German books: the vast majority of German
authors are not "noble;" and, of those who are, nine tenths are liberal
in this respect, and speak the language of liberality, not by sympathy
with their own order, or as representing _their_ feelings, but in virtue
of democratic or revolutionary politics.

Such as the rank is, and the public estimation of the leading
professions, such is the natural condition of the universities which
rear them. The "nobles" going generally into the army, or leading lives
of indolence, the majority by far of those who resort to universities do
so as a means of future livelihood. Few seek an academic life in Germany
who have either money to throw away on superfluities and external show,
or who have such a rank to support as might stimulate their pride to
expenses beyond their means. Parsimony is, therefore, in these places,
the governing law; and pleasure, not less fervently wooed than at
Oxford or at Cambridge, putting off her robes of elegance and ceremony,
descends to grossness, and not seldom to abject brutality.

The sum of my argument is--that, because, in comparison of the army, no
other civil profession is, in itself, held of sufficient dignity; and
not less, perhaps, because, under governments essentially unpopular,
none of these professions has been so dignified artificially by the
state, or so attached to any ulterior promotion, either through
the state or in the state, as to meet the demands of aristocratic
pride--none of them is cultivated as a means of distinction, but
originally as a means of livelihood; that the universities, as the
nurseries of these unhonored professions, share naturally in _their_
degradation; and that, from this double depreciation of the place and
its final objects, few or none resort thither who can be supposed
to bring any extra funds for supporting a system of luxury; that the
general temperance, or sobriety of demeanor, is far enough, however,
from keeping pace with the absence of costly show; and that, for this
absence even, we are to thank their poverty rather than their will. It
is to the great honor, in my opinion, of our own country, that
those often resort to her fountains who have no motive but that of
disinterested reverence for knowledge; seeking, as all men perceive,
neither emolument directly from university funds, nor knowledge as the
means of emolument. Doubtless, it is neither dishonorable, nor, on a
large scale, possible to be otherwise, that students should pursue their
academic career chiefly as ministerial to their capital object of a
future livelihood. But still I contend that it is for the interest of
science and good letters that a considerable body of volunteers should
gather about their banners, without pay or hopes of preferment. This
takes place on a larger scale at Oxford and Cambridge than elsewhere;
and it is but a trivial concession in return, on the part of the
university, that she should allow, even if she had the right to
withhold, the privilege of living within her walls as they would have
lived at their fathers' seats; with one only reserve, applied to all
modes of expense that are, in themselves, immoral excesses, or occasions
of scandal, or of a nature to interfere too much with the natural hours
of study, or specially fitted to tempt others of narrower means to
ruinous emulation.

Upon these principles, as it seems to me, the discipline of the
university is founded. The keeping of hunters, for example, is
unstatutable. Yet, on the other hand, it is felt to be inevitable that
young men of high spirit, familiar with this amusement, will find means
to pursue it in defiance of all the powers, however exerted, that can
properly be lodged in the hands of academic officers. The range of
the proctor's jurisdiction is limited by positive law; and what should
hinder a young man, bent upon his pleasure, from fixing the station of
his hunter a few miles out of Oxford, and riding to cover on a hack,
unamenable to any censure? For, surely, in this age, no man could
propose so absurd a thing as a general interdiction of riding. How, in
fact, does the university proceed? She discountenances the practice;
and, if forced upon her notice, she visits it with censure, and that
sort of punishment which lies within her means. But she takes no pains
to search out a trespass, which, by the mere act of seeking to evade
public display in the streets of the university, already tends to limit
itself; and which, besides, from its costliness, can never become a
prominent nuisance. This I mention as illustrating the spirit of her
legislation; and, even in this case, the reader must carry along with
him the peculiar distinction which I have pressed with regard to English
universities, in the existence of a large volunteer order of students
seeking only the liberalization, and not the profits, of academic life.
In arguing upon their case, it is not the fair logic to say: These
pursuits taint the decorum of the studious character; it is not fair to
calculate how much is lost to the man of letters by such addiction to
fox-hunting; but, on the contrary, what is gained to the fox-hunter,
who would, at any rate, be such, by so considerable a homage paid to
letters, and so inevitable a commerce with men of learning. Anything
whatsoever attained in this direction, is probably so much more than
would have been attained under a system of less toleration. _Lucro
ponamus_, we say, of the very least success in such a case. But, in
speaking of toleration as applied to acts or habits positively against
the statutes, I limit my meaning to those which, in their own nature,
are morally indifferent, and are discountenanced simply as indirectly
injurious, or as peculiarly open to excess. Because, on graver offences
(as gambling, &c.), the malicious impeachers of Oxford must well have
known that no toleration whatsoever is practised or thought of. Once
brought under the eye of the university in a clear case and on clear
evidence, it would be punished in the most exemplary way open to a
limited authority; by _rustication_, at least--that is, banishment for
a certain number of terms, and consequent loss of these terms--supposing
the utmost palliation of circumstances; and, in an aggravated case, or
in a second offence, most certainly by final expulsion.

But it is no part of duty to serve the cause even of good morals by
impure means; and it is as difficult beforehand to prevent the existence
of vicious practices so long as men have, and ought to have, the means
of seclusion liable to no violation, as it is afterwards difficult,
without breach of honor, to obtain proof of their existence. Gambling
has been known to exist in some dissenting institutions; and, in my
opinion, with no blame to the presiding authorities. As to Oxford in
particular, no such habit was generally prevalent in my time; it is not
an English vice; nor did I ever hear of any great losses sustained in
this way. But, were it otherwise, I must hold, that, considering the
numbers, rank, and great opulence, of the students, such a habit would
impeach the spirit and temper of the age rather than the vigilance or
magisterial fidelity of the Oxford authorities. They are limited, like
other magistrates, by honor and circumstances, in a thousand ways; and
if a knot of students will choose to meet for purposes of gaming, they
must always have it in their power to baffle every honorable or becoming
attempt at detecting them. But upon this subject I shall make two
statements, which may have some effect in moderating the uncharitable
judgments upon Oxford discipline. The first respects the age of those
who are the objects of this discipline; on which point a very grave
error prevails. In the last Parliament, not once, but many times over,
Lord Brougham and others assumed that the students of Oxford were
chiefly _boys_; and this, not idly or casually, but pointedly, and with
a view to an ulterior argument; for instance, by way of proving how
little they were entitled to judge of those thirty-nine articles to
which their assent was demanded. Now, this argued a very extraordinary
ignorance; and the origin of the error showed the levity in which their
legislation was conducted. These noble lords had drawn their ideas of
a university exclusively from Glasgow. Here, it is well known, and I
mention it neither for praise nor blame, that students are in the habit
of coming at the early age of fourteen. These may allowably be styled
_boys_. But, with regard to Oxford, eighteen is about the _earliest_
age at which young men begin their residence: twenty and upwards is,
therefore, the age of the majority; that is, twenty is the _minimum_
of age for the vast majority; as there must always be more men of three
years' standing, than of two or of one. Apply this fact to the question
of discipline: young men beyond twenty, generally,--that is to say,
of the age which qualifies men for seats in the national council,--can
hardly, with decency, either be called or treated as boys; and many
things become impossible as applied to _them_, which might be of easy
imposition upon an assemblage _really_ childish. In mere justice,
therefore, when speculating upon this whole subject of Oxford
discipline, the reader must carry along with him, at every step, the
recollection of that signal difference as to age, which I have now
stated, between Oxonians and those students whom the hostile party
contemplate in their arguments. [Footnote: Whilst I am writing, a debate
of the present Parliament, reported on Saturday, March 7, 1835,
presents us with a determinate repetition of the error which I have
been exposing; and, again, as in the last Parliament, this error is not
_inert_, but is used for a hostile (apparently a malicious) purpose;
nay, which is remarkable, it is the _sole_ basis upon which the
following argument reposes. Lord Radnor again assumes that the students
of Oxford are "boys;" he is again supported in this misrepresentation by
Lord Brougham; and again the misrepresentation is applied to a purpose
of assault upon the English universities, but especially upon Oxford.
And the nature of the assault does not allow any latitude in construing
the word _boys_, nor any room for evasion as respects the total charge,
except what goes the length of a total retraction. The charge is, that,
in a requisition made at the very threshold of academic life, upon the
under standing and the honor of the students, the university burdens
their consciences to an extent, which, in after life, when reflection
has enlightened them to the meaning of their engagements, proves either
a snare to those who trifle with their engagements, or an insupportable
burden to those who do not. For the inculpation of the party imposing
such oaths, it is essential that the party taking them should be in a
childish condition of the moral sense, and the sense of responsibility;
whereas, amongst the Oxonian _under_-graduates, I will venture to say
that the number is larger of those who rise above than of those who fall
below twenty; and, as to sixteen (assumed as the representative age by
Lord Radnor), in my time, I heard of only one student, amongst, perhaps,
sixteen hundred, who was so young. I grieve to see that the learned
prelate, who replied to the assailants, was so much taken by surprise;
the defence might have been made triumphant. With regard to oaths
incompatible with the spirit of modern manners, and yet formally
unrepealed--_that_ is a case of neglect and indolent oversight. But the
_gravamen_ of that reproach does not press exclusively upon Oxford; all
the ancient institutions of Europe are tainted in the same way, more
especially the monastic orders of the Romish church.] Meantime, to show
that, even under every obstacle presented by this difference of age, the
Oxford authorities do, nevertheless, administer their discipline with
fidelity, with intrepidity, and with indifference as respects the high
and the low, I shall select from a crowd of similar recollections two
anecdotes, which are but trifles in themselves, and yet are not such to
him who recognizes them as expressions of a uniform system of dealing.

A great whig lord (Earl C----) happened (it may be ten years ago) to
present himself one day at Trinity (the leading college of Cambridge),
for the purpose of introducing Lord F----ch, his son, as a future
member of that splendid society. Possibly it mortified his aristocratic
feelings to hear the head of the college, even whilst welcoming the
young nobleman in courteous terms, yet suggesting, with some solemnity,
that, before taking any final resolution in the matter, his lordship
would do well to consider whether he were fully prepared to submit
himself to college discipline; for that, otherwise, it became his
own duty frankly to declare that the college would not look upon his
accession to their society as any advantage. This language arose out of
some recent experience of refractory and turbulent conduct upon the part
of various young men of rank; but it is very possible that the noble
earl, in his surprise at a salutation so uncourtly, might regard it, in
a tory mouth, as having some lurking reference to his own whig politics.
If so, he must have been still more surprised to hear of another case,
which would meet him before he left Cambridge, and which involved some
frank dealing as well as frank speaking, when a privilege of exception
might have been presumed, if tory politics, or services the most
memorable, could ever create such a privilege. The Duke of W----had two
sons at Oxford. The affair is now long past; and it cannot injure either
of them to say, that one of the brothers trespassed against the college
discipline, in some way, which compelled (or was thought to compel) the
presiding authorities into a solemn notice of his conduct. Expulsion
appeared to be the appropriate penalty of his offences: but, at this
point, a just hesitation arose. Not in any servile spirit, but under a
proper feeling of consideration for so eminent a public benefactor as
this young nobleman's father, the rulers paused--and at length signified
to him that he was at liberty to withdraw himself privately from the
college, but also, and at the same time, from the university. He did so;
and his brother, conceiving him to have been harshly treated, withdrew
also; and both transferred themselves to Cambridge. That could not be
prevented: but there they were received with marked reserve. One was
_not_ received, I believe, in a technical sense; and the other was
received conditionally; and such restrictions were imposed upon his
future conduct as served most amply, and in a case of great notoriety,
to vindicate the claims of discipline, and, in an extreme case, a case
so eminently an extreme one that none like it is ever likely to recur,
to proclaim the footing upon which the very highest rank is received
at the English universities. Is that footing peculiar _to them_? I
willingly believe that it is not; and, with respect to Edinburgh
and Glasgow, I am persuaded that their weight of dignity is quite
sufficient, and would be exerted to secure the same subordination from
men of rank, if circumstances should ever bring as large a number of
that class within their gates, and if their discipline were equally
applicable to the habits of students not domiciled within their walls.
But, as to the smaller institutions for education within the pale of
dissent, I feel warranted in asserting, from the spirit of the anecdotes
which have reached me, that they have not the _auctoritas_ requisite for
adequately maintaining their dignity.

So much for the aristocracy of our English universities: their glory is,
and the happiest application of their vast influence, that they have
the power to be republican, as respects their internal condition.
Literature, by substituting a different standard of rank, tends to
republican equality; and, as one instance of this, properly belonging to
the chapter of _servants_, which originally led to this discussion, it
ought to be known that the class of "servitors," once a large body in
Oxford, have gradually become practically extinct under the growing
liberality of the age. They carried in their academic dress a mark of
their inferiority; they waited at dinner on those of higher rank, and
performed other menial services, humiliating to themselves, and latterly
felt as no less humiliating to the general name and interests of
learning. The better taste, or rather the relaxing pressure of
aristocratic prejudice, arising from the vast diffusion of trade and the
higher branches of mechanic art, have gradually caused these functions
of the order (even where the law would not permit the extinction of
the order) to become obsolete. In my time, I was acquainted with two
servitors: but one of them was rapidly pushed forward into a higher
station; and the other complained of no degradation, beyond the grievous
one of exposing himself to the notice of young women in the streets,
with an untasselled cap; but this he contrived to evade, by generally
going abroad without his academic dress. The _servitors_ of Oxford are
the _sizars_ of Cambridge; and I believe the same changes [Footnote:
These changes have been accomplished, according to my imperfect
knowledge of the case, in two ways: first, by dispensing with the
services whenever that could be done; and, secondly, by a wise
discontinuance of the order itself in those colleges which were left to
their own choice in this matter.] have taken place in both.

One only account with the college remains to be noticed; but this is the
main one. It is expressed in the bills by the word _battels_, derived
from the old monkish word _patella_ (or batella), a plate; and it
comprehends whatsoever is furnished for dinner and for supper, including
malt liquor, but not wine, as well as the materials for breakfast,
or for any casual refreshment to country visitors, excepting only
groceries. These, together with coals and fagots, candles, wine, fruit,
and other more trifling _extras_, which are matters of personal choice,
form so many private accounts against your name, and are usually
furnished by tradesmen living near to the college, and sending their
servants daily to receive orders. Supper, as a meal not universally
taken, in many colleges is served privately in the student's own room;
though some colleges still retain the ancient custom of a public supper.
But dinner is, in all colleges, a public meal, taken in the refectory or
"hall" of the society; which, with the chapel and library, compose the
essential public _suite_ belonging to every college alike. No absence is
allowed, except to the sick, or to those who have formally applied for
permission to give a dinner-party. A fine is imposed on all other cases
of absence. Wine is not generally allowed in the public hall, except to
the "high table," that is, the table at which the fellows and some other
privileged persons are entitled to dine. The head of the college rarely
dines in public. The other tables, and, after dinner, the high table,
usually adjourn to their wine, either upon invitations to private
parties, or to what are called the "common rooms" of the several
orders--graduates and undergraduates, &c. The dinners are always plain,
and without pretensions--those, I mean, in the public hall; indeed,
nothing _can_ be plainer in most colleges--a simple choice between two
or three sorts of animal food, and the common vegetables. No fish, even
as a regular part of the fare; no soups, no game; nor, except on some
very rare festivity, did I ever see a variation from this plain fare at
Oxford. This, indeed, is proved sufficiently by the average amount of
the _battels_. Many men "battel" at the rate of a guinea a week: I
did so for years: that is, at the rate of three shillings a day for
everything connected with meals, excepting only tea, sugar, milk,
and wine. It is true that wealthier men, more expensive men, and more
careless men, often "battelled" much higher; but, if they persisted in
this excess, they incurred censures, more and more urgent, from the head
of the college.

Now, let us sum up; premising that the extreme duration of residence
in any college at Oxford amounts to something under thirty weeks. It
is possible to keep "short terms," as the phrase is, by a residence of
thirteen weeks, or ninety-one days; but, as this abridged residence
is not allowed, except in here and there a college, I shall assume--as
something beyond the strict _maximum_ of residence--thirty weeks as my
basis. The account will then stand thus:

  1. Rooms,......................................... £10 10 0
  2. Tutorage,................ .....................  10 10 0
  3. Servants (subject to the explanations made above),
      say...........................................   5  5 0
  4. Battels (allowing one shilling a day beyond what
     I and others spent in much dearer times; that is,
     allowing twenty-eight shillings weekly), for
     thirty weeks,..................................  40  4 0
                                                     --------                                                     £66  9 0

This will be a liberal calculation for the college bill. What remains?
1. Candles, which the reader will best calculate upon the standard of
his own general usage in this particular. 2. Coals, which are remarkably
dear at Oxford--dearer, perhaps, than anywhere else in the island; say,
three times as dear as at Edinburgh. 3. Groceries. 4. Wine. 5. Washing.
This last article was, in my time, regulated by the college, as there
were certain privileged washer-women, between whom and the students
it was but fair that some proper authority should interfere to prevent
extortion, in return for the monopoly granted. Six guineas was the
regulated sum; but this paid for everything,--table-linen, &c., as
well as for wearing apparel; and it was understood to cover the whole
twenty-eight or thirty weeks. However, it was open to every man to
make his own arrangements, by insisting on a separate charge for each
separate article. All other expenses of a merely personal nature, such
as postage, public amusements, books, clothes, &c., as they have no
special connection with Oxford, but would, probably, be balanced by
corresponding, if not the very same, expenses in any other place or
situation, I do not calculate. What I have specified are the expenses
which would accrue to a student in consequence of leaving his father's
house. The rest would, in these days, be the same, perhaps, everywhere.
How much, then, shall we assume as the total charge on account of
Oxford? Candles, considering the quantity of long days amongst the
thirty weeks, may be had for one shilling and sixpence a week; for few
students--unless they have lived in India, after which a physical change
occurs in the sensibility of the nostrils--are finical enough to burn
wax-lights. This will amount to two pounds, five shillings. Coals,
say sixpence a day; for threepence a day will amply feed one grate in
Edinburgh; and there are many weeks in the thirty which will demand no
fire at all. Groceries and wine, which are all that remain, I cannot
calculate. But suppose we allow for the first a shilling a day, which
will be exactly ten guineas for thirty weeks; and for the second,
nothing at all. Then the extras, in addition to the college bills, will
stand thus:

  Washing for thirty weeks, at the privileged rate, .. £6  6  0
  Candles, ...........................................  2  5  0
  Fire, ..............................................  5  5  0
  Groceries, ......................................... 10 10  0
                                                      ---------                                         Total, ..... £24  6  0

The college bills, therefore, will be sixty-six pounds, nine shillings;
the extras, not furnished by the college, will be about twenty-four
pounds, six shillings,--making a total amount of ninety pounds, fifteen
shillings. And for this sum, annually, a man may defray _every_ expense
incident to an Oxford life, through a period of weeks (namely, thirty)
something more than he will be permitted to reside. It is true, that,
for the _first_ year, there will be, in addition to this, his outfit:
and for _every_ year there will be his journeys. There will also be
twenty-two weeks uncovered by this estimate; but for these it is not my
business to provide, who deal only with Oxford.

That this estimate is true, I know too feelingly. Would that it were
_not_! would that it were false! Were it so, I might the better justify
to myself that commerce with fraudulent Jews which led me so early to
commence the dilapidation of my small fortune. It _is_ true; and true
for a period (1804-8) far dearer than this. And to any man who questions
its accuracy I address this particular request--that he will lay his
hand upon the special item which he disputes. I anticipate that he will
answer thus: "I dispute none: it is not by positive things that your
estimate errs, but by negations. It is the absence of all allowance for
indispensable items that vitiates the calculation." Very well: but to
this, as to other things, we may apply the words of Dr. Johnson--"Sir,
the reason I drink no wine, is because I can practise abstinence,
but not temperance." Yes: in all things, abstinence is easier than
temperance; for a little enjoyment has invariably the effect of awaking
the sense of enjoyment, irritating it, and setting it on edge. I,
therefore, recollecting my own case, have allowed for _no_
wine-parties. Let our friend, the abstraction we are speaking of, give
breakfast-parties, if he chooses to give any; and certainly to give none
at all, unless he were dedicated to study, would seem very churlish.
Nobody can be less a friend than myself to monkish and ascetic
seclusion, unless it were for twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four.

But, however this be settled, let no mistake be made; nor let that be
charged against the system which is due to the habits of individuals.
Early in the last century, Dr. Newton, the head of a college in Oxford,
wrote a large book against the Oxford system, as ruinously expensive.
But then, as now, the real expense was due to no cause over which the
colleges could exercise any effectual control. It is due exclusively to
the habits of social intercourse amongst the young men; from which _he_
may abstain who chooses. But, for any academic authorities to interfere
by sumptuary laws with the private expenditure of grown men, many of
them, in a legal sense, _of age_, and all near it, must appear romantic
and extravagant, for this (or, indeed, any) stage of society. A tutor
being required, about 1810, to fix the amount of allowance for a young
man of small fortune, nearly related to myself, pronounced three hundred
and twenty pounds little enough. He had this allowance, and was ruined
in consequence of the credit which it procured for him, and the society
it connected him with. The majority have two hundred pounds a year: but
my estimate stands good, for all that.

Having stated, generally, the expenses of the Oxford system, I am bound,
in candor, to mention one variety in the mode of carrying this system
into effect, open to every man's adoption, which confers certain
privileges, but, at the same time (by what exact mode, I know not),
considerably increases the cost, and in that degree disturbs my
calculation. The great body of undergraduates, or students, are divided
into two classes--_Commoners_, and _Gentlemen Commoners_. Perhaps
nineteen out of twenty belong to the former class; and it is for that
class, as having been my own, that I have made my estimate. The other
class of _Gentlemen Commoners_ (who, at Cambridge, bear the name of
_Fellow Commoners_) wear a peculiar dress, and have some privileges
which naturally imply some corresponding increase of cost; but why this
increase should go to the extent of doubling the total expense, as it is
generally thought to do, or how it _can_ go to that extent, I am unable
to explain. The differences which attach to the rank of "Gentlemen
Commoners" are these: At his entrance he pays double "caution money;"
that is, whilst Commoners in general pay about twenty-five guineas, he
pays fifty; but this can occur only once; and, besides, in strict point
of right, this sum is only a deposit, and is liable to be withdrawn on
leaving the university, though it is commonly enough finally presented
to the college in the shape of plate. The next difference is, that, by
comparison with the Commoner, he wears a much more costly dress.
The Commoner's gown is made of what is called _prince's stuff_; and,
together with the cap, costs about five guineas. But the Gentleman
Commoner has two gowns--an undress for the morning, and a full
dress-gown for the evening; both are made of silk, and the latter is
very elaborately ornamented. The cap also is more costly, being covered
with velvet instead of cloth. At Cambridge, again, the tassel is made
of gold fringe or bullion, which, in Oxford, is peculiar to the caps of
noblemen; and there are many other varieties in that university,
where the dress for "pensioners" (that is, the Oxford "Commoners") is
specially varied in almost every college; the object being, perhaps,
to give a ready means to the academic officers for ascertaining, at a
glance, not merely the general fact that such or such a delinquent is a
gownsman (which is all that can be ascertained at Oxford), but also the
particular college to which he belongs. Allowance being made for these
two items of "dress" and "caution-money," both of which apply only to
the original outfit, I know of no others in which the expenditure of
a Gentleman Commoner ought to exceed, or could with propriety exceed,
those of a Commoner. He has, indeed, a privilege as regards the choice
of rooms; he chooses first, and probably chooses those rooms which,
being best, are dearest; that is, they are on a level with the best;
but usually there are many sets almost equally good; and of these the
majority will be occupied by Commoners. So far, there is little opening
for a difference. More often, again, it will happen that a man of this
aristocratic class keeps a private servant; yet this happens also to
Commoners, and is, besides, no properly college expense. Tutorage is
charged double to a Gentleman Commoner--namely, twenty guineas a year:
this is done upon a fiction (as it sometimes turns out) of separate
attention, or aid given in a private way to his scholastic pursuits.
Finally, there arises naturally another and peculiar source of expense
to the "Gentleman Commoner," from a fact implied in his Cambridge
designation of "_Fellow_ Commoner," _commensalis_--namely, that he
associates at meals with the "fellows" and other authorities of the
college. Yet this again expresses rather the particular shape which
his expenditure assumes than any absolute increase in its amount. He
subscribes to a regular mess, and pays, therefore, whether present or
not; but so, in a partial sense, does the Commoner, by his forfeits for
"absent commons." He subscribes also to a regular fund for wine; and,
therefore, he does not enjoy that immunity from wine-drinking which is
open to the Commoner. Yet, again, as the Commoner does but rarely avail
himself of this immunity, as he drinks no less wine than the Gentleman
Commoner, and, generally speaking, wine not worse in quality, it
is difficult to see any ground for a regular assumption of higher
expenditure in the one class than the other. However, the universal
impression favors that assumption. All people believe that the rank of
Gentleman Commoner imposes an expensive burden, though few people ever
ask why. As a matter of fact, I believe it to be true that Gentlemen
Commoners spend more by a third, or a half, than any equal number of
Commoners, taken without selection. And the reason is obvious: those who
become Gentlemen Commoners are usually determined to that course by the
accident of having very large funds; they are eldest sons, or only sons,
or men already in possession of estates, or else (which is as common a
case as all the rest put together) they are the heirs of newly-acquired
wealth--sons of the _nouveaux riches_--a class which often requires
a generation or two to rub off the insolence of a too conscious
superiority. I have called them an "aristocratic" class; but, in
strictness, they are not such; they form a privileged class, indeed,
but their privileges are few and trifling, not to add that these very
privileges are connected with one or two burdens, more than outweighing
them in the estimate of many; and, upon the whole, the chief distinction
they enjoy is that of advertising themselves to the public as men
of great wealth, or great expectations; and, therefore, as subjects
peculiarly adapted to fraudulent attempts. Accordingly, it is not found
that the sons of the nobility are much inclined to enter this order:
these, if they happen to be the eldest sons of earls, or of any peers
above the rank of viscount, so as to enjoy a title themselves by the
courtesy of England, have special privileges in both universities as to
length of residence, degrees, &c.; and their rank is ascertained by
a special dress. These privileges it is not usual to forego; though
sometimes that happens, as, in my time, in the instance of Lord George
Grenville (now Lord Nugent); he neither entered at the aristocratic
college (Christ Church), nor wore the dress of a nobleman. Generally,
however, an elder son appears in his true character of nobleman; but the
younger sons rarely enter the class of Gentlemen Commoners. They enter
either as "Commoners," or under some of those various designations
("scholars," "demies," "students," "junior fellows") which imply that
they stand upon the foundation of the college to which they belong, and
are aspirants for academic emoluments.

Upon the whole, I am disposed to regard this order of Gentlemen
Commoners as a standing temptation held out by authority to expensive
habits, and a very unbecoming proclamation of honor paid to the
aristocracy of wealth. And I know that many thoughtful men regard it in
the same light with myself, and regret deeply that any such distribution
of ranks should be authorized, as a stain upon the simplicity and
general manliness of the English academic laws. It is an open profession
of homage and indulgence to wealth, _as_ wealth--to wealth disconnected
from everything that might ally it to the ancestral honors and
heraldries of the land. It is also an invitation, or rather a challenge,
to profuse expenditure. Regularly, and by law, a Gentleman Commoner
is liable to little heavier burdens than a Commoner; but, to meet the
expectations of those around him, and to act up to the part he has
assumed, he must spend more, and he must be more careless in controlling
his expenditure, than a moderate and prudent Commoner. In every light,
therefore, I condemn the institution, and give it up to the censures of
the judicious. So much in candor I concede. But, to show equal candor on
the other side, it must be remembered that this institution descends
to us from ancient times, when wealth was not so often divided from
territorial or civic honors, conferring a real precedency.


III.

OXFORD.



There was one reason why I sought solitude at that early age, and sought
it in a morbid excess, which must naturally have conferred upon my
character some degree of that interest which belongs to all extremes.
My eye had been couched into a secondary power of vision, by misery,
by solitude, by sympathy with life in all its modes, by experience too
early won, and by the sense of danger critically escaped. Suppose
the case of a man suspended by some colossal arm over an unfathomed
abyss,--suspended, but finally and slowly withdrawn,--it is probable
that he would not smile for years. That was my case: for I have
not mentioned, in the "Opium Confessions," a thousandth part of the
sufferings I underwent in London and in Wales; partly because the misery
was too monotonous, and, in that respect, unfitted for description; but,
still more, because there is a mysterious sensibility connected
with real suffering which recoils from circumstantial rehearsal or
delincation, as from violation offered to something sacred, and which
is, or should be, dedicated to privacy. Grief does not parade its pangs,
nor the anguish of despairing hunger willingly count again its groans or
its humiliations. Hence it was that Ledyard, the traveller, speaking
of his Russian experiences, used to say that some of his miseries were
such, that he never _would_ reveal them. Besides all which, I really was
not at liberty to speak, without many reserves, on this chapter of
my life, at a period (1821) not twenty years removed from the actual
occurrences, unless I desired to court the risk of crossing at every
step the existing law of libel, so full of snares and man-traps, to the
careless equally with the conscientious writer. This is a consideration
which some of my critics have lost sight of in a degree which surprises
me. One, for example, puts it to his readers whether any house such as
I describe as the abode of my money-lending friend could exist "_in_
Oxford-street;" and, at the same time, he states, as circumstances drawn
from my description, but, in fact, pure coinages of his own, certain
romantic impossibilities, which, doubtless, could as little attach to a
house in Oxford-street as they could to a house in any other quarter of
London. Meantime, I had sufficiently indicated that, whatsoever street
_was_ concerned in that affair, Oxford-street was _not_; and it is
remarkable enough, as illustrating this amiable reviewer's veracity,
that no one street in London was absolutely excluded but one; and that
one, Oxford-street. For I happened to mention that, on such a day (my
birth-day), I had turned aside _from_ Oxford-street to look at the house
in question. I will now add that this house was in Greek-street: so
much it may be safe to say. But every candid reader will see that both
prudential restraints, and also disinterested regard to the feelings of
possibly amiable descendants from a vicious man, would operate with any
thoughtful writer, in such a case, to impose reserve upon his pen. Had
my guardians, had my money-lending friend of Jewry, and others concerned
in my memoirs, been so many shadows, bodiless abstractions, and without
earthly connections, I might readily have given my own names to my own
creations, and have treated them as unceremoniously as I pleased. Not
so under the real circumstances of the case. My chief guardian, for
instance, though obstinate to a degree which risked the happiness and
the life of his ward, was an upright man otherwise; and his children are
entitled to value his memory.

Again, my Greek-street _trapexitæs_, the "_foenerator Alpheus_," who
delighted to reap where he had not sown, and too often (I fear) allowed
himself in practices which not impossibly have long since been found to
qualify him for distant climates and "Botanic" regions,--even he, though
I might truly describe him as a mere highwayman, whenever he happened to
be aware that I had received a friendly loan, yet, like other highwaymen
of repute, and "gentle thieves," was not inexorable to the petitions
of his victim: he would sometimes toss back what was required for some
instant necessity of the road; and at _his_ breakfast-table it was,
after all, as elsewhere recorded, that I contrived to support life;
barely, indeed, and most slenderly, but still with the final result of
escaping absolute starvation. With that recollection before me, I could
not allow myself to probe his frailties too severely, had it even been
certainly safe to do so. But enough; the reader will understand that
a year spent either in the valleys of Wales, or upon the streets of
London, a wanderer, too often houseless in both situations, might
naturally have peopled the mind of one constitutionally disposed to
solemn contemplations with memorials of human sorrow and strife too
profound to pass away for years.

Thus, then, it was--past experience of a very peculiar kind, the
agitations of many lives crowded into the compass of a year or two, in
combination with a peculiar structure of mind--offered one explanation
of the very remarkable and unsocial habits which I adopted at college;
but there was another not less powerful, and not less unusual. In
stating this, I shall seem, to some persons, covertly designing an
affront to Oxford. But that is far from my intention. It is noways
peculiar to Oxford, but will, doubtless, be found in every university
throughout the world, that the younger part of the members--the
undergraduates, I mean, generally, whose chief business must have lain
amongst the great writers of Greece and Rome--cannot have found leisure
to cultivate extensively their own domestic literature. Not so much that
time will have been wanting; but that the whole energy of the mind, and
the main course of the subsidiary studies and researches, will naturally
have been directed to those difficult languages amongst which lie their
daily tasks. I make it no subject of complaint or scorn, therefore,
but simply state it as a fact, that few or none of the Oxford
undergraduates, with whom parity of standing threw me into collision
at my first outset, knew anything at all of English literature. The
_Spectator_ seemed to me the only English book of a classical rank which
they had read; and even this less for its inimitable delicacy, humor,
and refined pleasantry in dealing with manners and characters, than for
its insipid and meagre essays, ethical or critical. This was no fault
of theirs: they had been sent to the book chiefly as a subject for Latin
translations, or of other exercises; and, in such a view, the vague
generalities of superficial morality were more useful and more
manageable than sketches of manner or character, steeped in national
peculiarities. To translate the terms of whig politics into classical
Latin, would be as difficult as it might be for a whig himself to give
a consistent account of those politics from the year 1688. Natural,
however, and excusable, as this ignorance might be, to myself it was
intolerable and incomprehensible. Already, at fifteen, I had made myself
familiar with the great English poets. About sixteen, or not long after,
my interest in the story of Chatterton had carried me over the whole
ground of the Rowley controversy; and that controversy, by a necessary
consequence, had so familiarized me with the "Black Letter," that I had
begun to find an unaffected pleasure in the ancient English metrical
romances; and in Chaucer, though acquainted as yet only with part of his
works, I had perceived and had felt profoundly those divine qualities,
which, even at this day, are so languidly acknowledged by his unjust
countrymen. With this knowledge, and this enthusiastic knowledge of the
elder poets--of those most remote from easy access--I could not well be
a stranger in other walks of our literature, more on a level with
the general taste, and nearer to modern diction, and, therefore, more
extensively multiplied by the press.

Yet, after all--as one proof how much more commanding is that part of a
literature which speaks to the elementary affections of men, than that
which is founded on the mutable aspects of manners--it is a fact
that, even in our elaborate system of society, where an undue value
is unavoidably given to the whole science of social intercourse, and a
continual irritation applied to the sensibilities which point in that
direction; still, under all these advantages, Pope himself is less read,
less quoted, less thought of, than the elder and graver section of our
literature. It is a great calamity for an author such as Pope, that,
generally speaking, it requires so much experience of life to enjoy his
peculiar felicities as must argue an age likely to have impaired the
general capacity for enjoyment. For my part, I had myself a very slender
acquaintance with this chapter of our literature; and what little I
had was generally, at that period of my life, as, with most men, it
continues to be to the end of life, a reflex knowledge, acquired through
those pleasant miscellanies, half gossip, half criticism--such as
Warton's Essay on Pope, Boswell's Johnson, Mathias' Pursuits of
Literature, and many scores beside of the same indeterminate class; a
class, however, which do a real service to literature, by diffusing an
indirect knowledge of fine writers in their most effective passages,
where else, in a direct shape, it would often never extend.

In some parts, then, having even a profound knowledge of our literature,
in all parts having some, I felt it to be impossible that I should
familiarly associate with those who had none at all; not so much as a
mere historical knowledge of the literature in its capital names and
their chronological succession. Do I mention this in disparagement of
Oxford? By no means. Among the undergraduates of higher standing, and
occasionally, perhaps, of my own, I have since learned that many might
have been found eminently accomplished in this particular. But seniors
do not seek after juniors; they must be sought; and, with my previous
bias to solitude, a bias equally composed of impulses and motives, I had
no disposition to take trouble in seeking any man for any purpose.

But, on this subject, a fact still remains to be told, of which I am
justly proud; and it will serve, beyond anything else that I can say, to
measure the degree of my intellectual development. On coming to Oxford,
I had taken up one position in advance of my age by full thirty years:
that appreciation of Wordsworth, which it has taken full thirty years to
establish amongst the public, I had already made, and had made operative
to my own intellectual culture in the same year when I clandestinely
quitted school. Already, in 1802, I had addressed a letter of fervent
admiration to Mr. Wordsworth. I did not send it until the spring of
1803; and, from misdirection, it did not come into his hands for some
months. But I had an answer from Mr. Wordsworth before I was eighteen;
and that my letter was thought to express the homage of an enlightened
admirer, may be inferred from the fact that his answer was long and
full. On this anecdote I do not mean to dwell; but I cannot allow the
reader to overlook the circumstances of the case. At this day, it is
true, no journal can be taken up which does not habitually speak of Mr.
Wordsworth as of a great if not _the_ great poet of the age. Mr. Bulwer,
living in the intensest pressure of the world, and, though recoiling
continually from the judgments of the world, yet never in any violent
degree, ascribes to Mr. Wordsworth (in his _England and the English_,
p. 308) "an influence of a more noble and purely intellectual character,
than _any_ writer of our age or nation has exercised." Such is the
opinion held of this great poet in 1835; but what were those of
1805-15,--nay, of 1825? For twenty years after the date of that letter
to Mr. Wordsworth above referred to, language was exhausted, ingenuity
was put on the rack, in the search after images and expressions vile
enough--insolent enough--to convey the unutterable contempt avowed for
all that he had written, by the fashionable critics. One critic--who
still, I believe, edits a rather popular journal, and who belongs to
that class, feeble, fluttering, ingenious, who make it their highest
ambition not to lead, but, with a slave's adulation, to obey and to
follow all the caprices of the public mind--described Mr. Wordsworth
as resembling, in the quality of his mind, an old nurse babbling in her
paralytic dotage to sucking babies. If this insult was peculiarly felt
by Mr. Wordsworth, it was on a consideration of the unusual imbecility
of him who offered it, and not because in itself it was baser or more
insolent than the language held by the majority of journalists who then
echoed the public voice. _Blackwood's Magazine_ (1817) first accustomed
the public ear to the language of admiration coupled with the name of
Wordsworth. This began with Professor Wilson; and well I remember--nay,
the proofs are still easy to hunt up--that, for eight or ten years, this
singularity of opinion, having no countenance from other journals, was
treated as a whim, a paradox, a bold extravagance, of the _Blackwood_
critics. Mr. Wordsworth's neighbors in Westmoreland, who had (generally
speaking) a profound contempt for him, used to rebut the testimony of
_Blackwood_ by one constant reply--"Ay, _Blackwood_ praises Wordsworth,
but who else praises him?" In short, up to 1820, the name of Wordsworth
was trampled under foot; from 1820 to 1830, it was militant; from 1830
to 1835, it has been triumphant. In 1803, when I entered at Oxford, that
name was absolutely unknown; and the finger of scorn, pointed at it in
1802 by the first or second number of the _Edinburgh Review_, failed
to reach its mark from absolute defect of knowledge in the public
mind. Some fifty beside myself knew who was meant by "that poet who had
cautioned his friend against growing double," etc.; to all others it was
a profound secret.

These things must be known and understood properly to value the
prophetic eye and the intrepidity of two persons, like Professor Wilson
and myself, who, in 1802-3, attached themselves to a banner not yet
raised and planted; who outran, in fact, their contemporaries by one
entire generation; and did _that_ about 1802 which the rest of the world
are doing in chorus about 1832.

Professor Wilson's period at Oxford exactly coincided with my own; yet,
in that large world, we never met. I know, therefore, but little of his
policy in regard to such opinions or feelings as tended to dissociate
him from the mass of his coevals. This only I know, that he lived as it
were in public; and must, therefore, I presume, have practised a
studied reserve as to his deepest admirations; and, perhaps, at that day
(1803-8) the occasions would be rare in which much dissimulation would
be needed. Until Lord Byron had begun to pilfer from Wordsworth and to
abuse him, allusions to Wordsworth were not frequent in conversation;
and it was chiefly on occasion of some question arising about poetry
in general, or about the poets of the day, that it became difficult to
dissemble. For my part, hating the necessity for dissimulation as much
as the dissimulation itself, I drew from this peculiarity also of my own
mind a fresh reinforcement of my other motives for sequestering myself;
and, for the first two years of my residence in Oxford, I compute that I
did not utter one hundred words.

I remember distinctly the first (which happened also to be the last)
conversation that I ever held with my tutor. It consisted of three
sentences, two of which fell to his share, one to mine. On a fine
morning, he met me in the Quadrangle, and, having then no guess of
the nature of my pretensions, he determined (I suppose) to probe them.
Accordingly, he asked me, "What I had been lately reading?" Now, the
fact was, that I, at that time immersed in metaphysics, had really been
reading and studying very closely the _Parmenides_, of which obscure
work some Oxford men, early in the last century, published a separate
edition. Yet, so profound was the benignity of my nature, that, in those
days, I could not bear to witness, far less to cause, the least pain or
mortification to any human being. I recoiled, indeed, from the society
of most men, but not with any feelings of dislike. On the contrary, in
order that I _might_ like all men, I wished to associate with none. Now,
then, to have mentioned the _Parmenides_ to one who, fifty thousand to
one, was a perfect stranger to its whole drift and purpose, looked too
_méchant_, too like a trick of malice, in an age when such reading was
so very unusual. I felt that it would be taken for an express stratagem
for stopping my tutor's mouth. All this passing rapidly through my mind,
I replied, without hesitation, that I had been reading Paley. My tutor's
rejoinder I have never forgotten: "Ah! an excellent author; excellent
for his matter; only you must be on your guard as to his style; he is
very vicious _there_." Such was the colloquy; we bowed, parted, and
never more (I apprehend) exchanged one word. Now, trivial and trite as
this comment on Paley may appear to the reader, it struck me forcibly
that more falsehood, or more absolute falsehood, or more direct
inversion of the truth, could not, by any artifice of ingenuity, have
been crowded into one short sentence. Paley, as a philosopher, is a
jest, the disgrace of the age; and, as regards the two universities,
and the enormous responsibility they undertake for the books which they
sanction by their official examinations for degrees, the name of Paley
is their great opprobrium. But, on the other hand, for style, Paley is
a master. Homely, racy, vernacular English, the rustic vigor of a style
which intentionally foregoes the graces of polish on the one hand, and
of scholastic precision on the other--that quality of merit has never
been attained in a degree so eminent. This first interchange of
thought upon a topic of literature did not tend to slacken my previous
disposition to retreat into solitude; a solitude, however, which at no
time was tainted with either the moroseness or the pride of a cynic.

Neither must the reader suppose that, even in that day, I belonged to
the party who disparage the classical writers, or the classical training
of the great English schools. The Greek drama I loved and revered. But,
to deal frankly, because it is a subject which I shall hereafter
bring before the public, I made great distinctions. I was not that
indiscriminate admirer of Greek and Roman literature, which those too
generally are who admire it at all. This protesting spirit, against
a false and blind idolatry, was with me, at that time, a matter of
enthusiasm--almost of bigotry. I was a bigot against bigots. Let us take
the Greek oratory, for example:--What section of the Greek literature is
more fanatically exalted, and studiously in depreciation of our own? Let
us judge of the sincerity at the base of these hollow affectations, by
the downright facts and the producible records. To admire, in any sense
which can give weight and value to your admiration, presupposes, I
presume, some acquaintance with its object. As the earliest title to
an opinion, one way or other, of the Greek eloquence, we ought to have
studied some of its most distinguished artists; or, say _one_, at least;
and this one, we may be sure, will be, as it ought to be, Demosthenes.
Now, it is a fact, that all the copies of Demosthenes sold within the
last hundred years would not meet the demand of one considerable town,
were that orator a subject of study amongst even classical scholars. I
doubt whether, at this day, there exist twenty men in Europe who can be
said to have even once read Demosthenes; and, therefore, it was that,
when Mr. Mitford, in his "History of Greece," took a new view of this
orator's political administration--a view which lowered his character
for integrity--he found an unresisting acceder to his doctrines in a
public having no previous opinion upon the subject, and, therefore, open
to any casual impression of malice or rash judgment. Had there been
any acquaintance with the large remains which we still possess of this
famous orator, no such wrong could have been done. I, from my childhood,
had been a reader, nay, a student of Demosthenes; and, simply, for
this reason, that, having meditated profoundly on the true laws and
philosophy of diction, and of what is vaguely denominated style, and
finding nothing of any value in modern writers upon this subject, and
not much as regards the grounds and ultimate principles even in the
ancient rhetoricians, I have been reduced to collect my opinions from
the great artists and practitioners, rather than from the theorists;
and, among those artists, in the most plastic of languages, I hold
Demosthenes to have been the greatest.

The Greek is, beyond comparison, the most plastic of languages. It was
a material which bent to the purposes of him who used it beyond the
material of other languages; it was an instrument for a larger compass
of modulations; and it happens that the peculiar theme of an orator
imposes the very largest which is consistent with a prose diction. One
step further in passion, and the orator would become a poet. An orator
can exhaust the capacities of a language--an historian, never.
Moreover, the age of Demosthenes was, in my judgment, the age of highest
development for arts dependent upon social refinement. That generation
had fixed and ascertained the use of words; whereas, the previous
generation of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, &c., was a transitional
period: the language was still moving, and tending to a meridian not
yet attained; and the public eye had been directed consciously upon
language, as in and for itself an organ of intellectual delight, for too
short a time, to have mastered the whole art of managing its resources.
All these were reasons for studying Demosthenes, as the one great model
and standard of Attic prose; and, studied him I _had_, more than any
other prose writer whatever. _Paripassu_, I had become sensible that
others had _not_ studied him. One monotonous song of applause I found
raised on every side; something about being "like a torrent, that
carries everything before it." This original image is all we get in the
shape of criticism; and never any attempt even at illustrating what
is greatest in him, or characterizing what is most peculiar. The same
persons who discovered that Lord Brougham was the modern Bacon have also
complimented him with the title of the English Demosthenes. Upon this
hint, Lord Brougham, in his address to the Glasgow students, has deluged
the great Athenian with wordy admiration. There is an obvious prudence
in lodging your praise upon an object from which you count upon a
rebound to yourself. But here, as everywhere else, you look in vain for
any marks or indications of a personal and _direct_ acquaintance with
the original orations. The praise is built rather upon the popular idea
of Demosthenes, than upon the real Demosthenes. And not only so, but
even upon style itself, and upon the art of composition _in
abstracto_, Lord Brougham does not seem to have formed any clear
conceptions--principles he has none. Now, it is useless to judge of
an artist until you have some principles on the art. The two capital
secrets in the art of prose composition are these: 1st, The philosophy
of transition and connection, or the art by which one step in an
evolution of thought is made to arise out of another: all fluent and
effective composition depends on the _connections_; --2dly, The way in
which sentences are made to modify each other; for, the most powerful
effects in written eloquence arise out of this reverberation, as it
were, from each other in a rapid succession of sentences; and, because
some limitation is necessary to the length and complexity of sentences,
in order to make this interdependency felt, hence it is that the Germans
have no eloquence. The construction of German prose tends to such
immoderate length of sentences, that no effect of intermodification can
ever be apparent. Each sentence, stuffed with innumerable clauses of
restriction, and other parenthetical circumstances, becomes a separate
section--an independent whole. But, without insisting on Lord Brougham's
oversights, or errors of defect, I will digress a moment to one positive
caution of his, which will measure the value of his philosophy on this
subject. He lays it down for a rule of indefinite application, that the
Saxon part of our English idiom is to be favored at the expense of that
part which has so happily coalesced with the language from the Latin
or Greek. This fancy, often patronized by other writers, and even acted
upon, resembles that restraint which some metrical writers have imposed
upon themselves--of writing a long copy of verses, from which some
particular letter, or from each line of which some different letter,
should be carefully excluded. What followed? Was the reader sensible, in
the practical effect upon his ear, of any beauty attained? By no
means; all the difference, sensibly perceived, lay in the occasional
constraints and affectations to which the writer had been driven by his
self-imposed necessities. The same chimera exists in Germany; and so
much further is it carried, that one great puritan in this heresy (Wolf)
has published a vast dictionary, the rival of Adelung's, for the purpose
of expelling every word of foreign origin and composition out of the
language, by assigning some equivalent term spun out from pure native
Teutonic materials. _Bayonet_, for example, is patriotically rejected,
because a word may be readily compounded tantamount to _musket-dirk_;
and this sort of composition thrives showily in the German, as a
language running into composition with a fusibility only surpassed by
the Greek.

But what good purpose is attained by such caprices? In three sentences
the sum of the philosophy may be stated. It has been computed (see
_Duclos_) that the Italian opera has not above six hundred words in its
whole vocabulary: so narrow is the range of its emotions, and so little
are these emotions disposed to expand themselves into any variety of
thinking. The same remark applies to that class of simple, household,
homely passion, which belongs to the early ballad poetry. Their passion
is of a quality more venerable, it is true, and deeper than that of the
opera, because more permanent and coextensive with human life; but it
is not much wider in its sphere, nor more apt to coalesce with
contemplative or philosophic thinking. Pass from these narrow fields of
the intellect, where the relations of the objects are so few and simple,
and the whole prospect so bounded, to the immeasurable and sea-like
arena upon which Shakspeare careers--co-infinite with life itself--yes,
and with something more than life. Here is the other pole, the opposite
extreme. And what is the choice of diction? What is the _lexis_? Is it
Saxon exclusively, or is it Saxon by preference? So far from that, the
Latinity is intense--not, indeed, in his construction, but in his choice
of words; and so continually are these Latin words used, with a critical
respect to their earliest (and, where _that_ happens to have existed, to
their unfigurative) meaning, that, upon this one argument I would
rely for upsetting the else impregnable thesis of Dr. Farmer as to
Shakspeare's learning. Nay, I will affirm that, out of this regard to
the Latin acceptation of Latin words, may be absolutely explained the
Shakspearian meaning of certain words, which has hitherto baffled all
his critics. For instance, the word _modern_, of which Dr. Johnson
professes himself unable to explain the _rationale_ or principle
regulating its Shakspearian use, though he felt its value, it is to
be deduced thus: First of all, change the pronunciation a little, by
substituting for the short _o_, as we pronounce it in _modern_, the
long _o_, as heard in _modish_, and you will then, perhaps, perceive
the process of analogy by which it passed into the Shakspearian use.
The _matter_ or substance of a thing is, usually, so much more important
than its fashion or _manner_, that we have hence adopted, as one way
for expressing what is important as opposed to what is trivial, the word
_material_. Now, by parity of reason, we are entitled to invert this
order, and to express what is unimportant by some word indicating
the mere fashion or external manner of an object as opposed to its
substance. This is effected by the word _modal_ or _modern_, as
the adjective from _modus_, a fashion or manner; and in that sense
Shakspeare employs the word. Thus, Cleopatra, undervaluing to Caesar's
agent the bijouterie which she has kept back from inventory, and which
her treacherous steward had betrayed, describes them as mere trifles


  "Such gifts as we greet modern friends withal;"


where all commentators have _felt_ that modern must form the position,
mean, slight, and inconsiderable, though perplexed to say how it came
by such a meaning. A _modern_ friend is, in the Shakspearian sense, with
relation to a real and serviceable friend, that which the fashion of
a thing is, by comparison with its substance. But a still better
illustration may be taken from a common line, quoted every day, and
ludicrously misinterpreted. In the famous picture of life--"All the
world's a stage"--the justice of the piece is described as

  "Full of wise saws and modern instances;"

which (_horrendum dictu!_) has been explained, and, I verily believe,
is generally understood to mean, _full of wise sayings and modern
illustrations_. The true meaning is--full of proverbial maxims of
conduct and of trivial arguments; that is, of petty distinctions,
or verbal disputes, such as never touch the point at issue. The word
_modern_ I have already deduced; the word _instances_ is equally Latin,
and equally used by Shakspeare in its Latin sense. It is originally
the word _instantia_, which, by the monkish and scholastic writers,
is uniformly used in the sense of an argument, and originally of an
argument urged in objection to some previous argument. [Footnote: I
cannot for a moment believe that the original and most eloquent critic
in _Blackwood_ is himself the dupe of an argument, which he has alleged
against this passage, under too open a hatred of Shakspeare, as though
it involved a contradiction to common sense, by representing _all_
human beings of such an age as school-boys, all of such another age as
soldiers, of such another as magistrates, &c. Evidently the logic of
the famous passage is this that whereas every age has its peculiar and
appropriate temper, that profession or employment is selected for the
exemplification which seems best fitted, in each case, to embody the
characteristic or predominating quality. Thus, because impetuosity,
self-esteem, and animal or irreflective courage, are qualities most
intense in youth, next it is considered in what profession those
qualities find their most unlimited range; and because that is obviously
the military profession, therefore it is that the soldier is selected as
the representative of young men. For the same reason, as best embodying
the peculiar temper of garrulous old age, the magistrate comes forward
as supporting the part of that age. Not that old men are not also
soldiers; but that the military profession, so far from strengthening,
moderates and tempers the characteristic temper of old age.]

I affirm, therefore, that Lord Brougham's counsel to the Glasgow
students is not only bad counsel,--and bad counsel for the result, as
well as for the grounds, which are either capricious or nugatory,--but
also that, in the exact proportion in which the range of thought
expands, it is an impossible counsel, an impracticable counsel--a
counsel having for its purpose to embarrass and lay the mind in fetters,
where even its utmost freedom and its largest resources will be
found all too little for the growing necessities of the intellect.
"Long-tailed words in _osity_ and _ation_!" What does _that_ describe?
Exactly the Latin part of our language. Now, those very terminations
speak for themselves:--All high abstractions end in _ation_; that is,
they are Latin; and, just in proportion as the abstracting power extends
and widens, do the circles of thought widen, and the horizon or boundary
(contradicting its own Grecian name) melts into the infinite. On this
account it was that Coleridge (_Biographia Literaria_) remarks on
Wordsworth's philosophical poetry, that, in proportion as it goes into
the profound of passion and of thought, do the words increase which
are vulgarly called "_dictionary_ words." Now, these words, these
"dictionary" words, what are they? Simply words of Latin or Greek
origin: no other words, no Saxon words, are ever called by illiterate
persons dictionary words. And these dictionary words are indispensable
to a writer, not only in the proportion by which he transcends other
writers as to extent and as to subtility of thinking, but also as to
elevation and sublimity. Milton was not an extensive or discursive
thinker, as Shakspeare was; for the motions of his mind were
slow, solemn, sequacious, like those of the planets; not agile and
assimilative; not attracting all things within its own sphere; not
multiform: repulsion was the law of his intellect--he moved in solitary
grandeur. Yet, merely from this quality of grandeur, unapproachable
grandeur, his intellect demanded a larger infusion of Latinity into his
diction.

For the same reason (and, without such aids, he would have had no
proper element in which to move his wings) he enriched his diction with
Hellenisms and with Hebraisms; [Footnote: The diction of Milton is a
case absolutely unique in literature: of many writers it has been said,
but of him only with truth, that he created a peculiar language. The
value must be tried by the result, not by inferences from _a priori_
principles; such inferences might lead us to anticipate an unfortunate
result; whereas, in fact, the diction of Milton is such that no other
could have supported his majestic style of thinking. The final result is
a _transcendant_ answer to all adverse criticism; but still it is to be
lamented that no man properly qualified has undertaken the examination
of the Miltonic diction as a separate problem. Listen to a popular
author of this day (Mr. Bulwer). He, speaking on this subject, asserts
(_England and the English_, p. 329), that, "_There is scarcely an
English idiom which Milton has not violated, or a foreign one which he
has not borrowed._" Now, in answer to this extravagant assertion, I will
venture to say that the two following are the sole cases of questionable
idiom throughout Milton:--1st, "Yet virgin of Proserpine from Jove;"
and, in this case, the same thing might be urged in apology which
Aristotle urges in another argument, namely, that _anonymon to pathos_,
the case is unprovided with _any_ suitable expression. How would it
be possible to convey in good English the circumstances here
indicated--namely, that Ceres was yet in those days of maiden innocence,
when she had borne no daughter to Jove? Second, I will cite a case
which, so far as I remember, has been noticed by no commentator; and,
probably, because they have failed to understand it. The case occurs
in the "Paradise Regained;" but where I do not at this moment remember.
"Will they _transact_ with God?" This is the passage; and a most
flagrant instance it offers of pure Latinism. _Transigere_, in the
language of the civil law, means to make a compromise; and the word
_transact_ is here used in that sense--a sense utterly unknown to the
English language. This is the worst case in Milton; and I do not know
that it has been ever noticed. Yet even here it may be doubted whether
Milton is not defensible; asking if they proposed to terminate their
difference with God after the fashion in use amongst courts of law, he
points properly enough to these worldly settlements by the technical
term which designated them. Thus, might a divine say: Will he arrest the
judgments of God by a _demurrer_? Thus, again, Hamlet apostrophizes the
lawyer's skull by the technical terms used in actions for assault,
&c. Besides, what proper term is there in English for expressing a
compromise? Edmund Burke, and other much older authors, express the idea
by the word _temperament_; but that word, though a good one, was at one
time considered an exotic term--equally a Gallicism and a Latinism.]
but never, as could be easy to show, without a full justification in the
result. Two things may be asserted of all his exotic idioms--1st, That
they express what could not have been expressed by any native idiom; 2d,
That they harmonize with the English language, and give a coloring of
the antique, but not any sense of strangeness to the diction. Thus, in
the double negative, "Nor did they not perceive," &c., which is classed
as a Hebraism--if any man fancy that it expresses no more than the
simple affirmative, he shows that he does not understand its force; and,
at the same time, it is a form of thought so natural and universal,
that I have heard English people, under corresponding circumstances,
spontaneously fall into it. In short, whether a man differ from others
by greater profundity or by greater sublimity, and whether he write as
a poet or as a philosopher, in any case, he feels, in due proportion
to the necessities of his intellect, an increasing dependence upon the
Latin section of the English language; and the true reason why Lord
Brougham failed to perceive this, or found the Saxon equal to his wants,
is one which I shall not scruple to assign, inasmuch as it does not
reflect personally on Lord Brougham, or, at least, on him exclusively,
but on the whole body to which he belongs. That thing which he and
they call by the pompous name of statesmanship, but which is, in fact,
_statescraft_--the art of political intrigue--deals (like the opera)
with ideas so few in number, and so little adapted to associate
themselves with other ideas, that, possibly, in the one case equally
as in the other, six hundred words are sufficient to meet all their
demands.

I have used my privilege of discursiveness to step aside from
Demosthenes to another subject, no otherwise connected with the
Attic orator than, first, by the common reference of both subjects
to rhetoric; but, secondly, by the accident of having been jointly
discussed by Lord Brougham in a paper, which (though now forgotten)
obtained, at the moment, most undue celebrity. For it is one of the
infirmities of the public mind with us, that whatever is said or done by
a public man, any opinion given by a member of Parliament, however much
out of his own proper jurisdiction and range of inquiry, commands an
attention not conceded even to those who speak under the known privilege
of professional knowledge. Thus, Cowper was not discovered to be a poet
worthy of any general notice, until Charles Fox, a most slender critic,
had vouchsafed to quote a few lines, and that, not so much with a
view to the poetry, as to its party application. But now, returning
to Demosthenes, I affirm that his case is the case of nearly all the
classical writers,--at least, of all the prose writers. It is, I admit,
an extreme one; that is, it is the general case in a more intense
degree. Raised almost to divine honors, never mentioned but with
affected rapture, the classics of Greece and Rome are seldom read,
most of them never; are they, indeed, the closet companions of any man?
Surely it is time that these follies were at an end; that our practice
were made to square a little better with our professions; and that our
pleasures were sincerely drawn from those sources in which we pretend
that they lie.

The Greek language, mastered in any eminent degree, is the very rarest
of all accomplishments, and precisely because it is unspeakably the most
difficult. Let not the reader dupe himself by popular cant. To be an
accomplished Grecian, demands a very peculiar quality of talent; and
it is almost inevitable that one who is such should be vain of a
distinction which represents so much labor and difficulty overcome. For
myself, having, as a school-boy, attained to a very unusual mastery over
this language, and (though as yet little familiar with the elaborate
science of Greek metre) moving through all the obstacles and resistances
of a Greek book with the same celerity and ease as through those of
the French and Latin, I had, in vanquishing the difficulties of the
language, lost the main stimulus to its cultivation. Still, I read
Greek daily; but any slight vanity which I might connect with a power
so rarely attained, and which, under ordinary circumstances, so readily
transmutes itself into a disproportionate admiration of the author, in
me was absolutely swallowed up in the tremendous hold taken of my entire
sensibilities at this time by our own literature. With what fury would
I often exclaim: He who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how
shall he love God whom he hath not seen? You, Mr. A, L, M, O, you who
care not for Milton, and value not the dark sublimities which rest
ultimately (as we all feel) upon dread realities, how can you seriously
thrill in sympathy with the spurious and fanciful sublimities of the
classical poetry--with the nod of the Olympian Jove, or the seven-league
strides of Neptune? Flying Childers had the most prodigious stride of
any horse on record; and at Newmarket that is justly held to be a great
merit; but it is hardly a qualification for a Pantheon. The parting of
Hector and Andromache--that is tender, doubtless; but how many passages
of far deeper, far diviner tenderness, are to be found in Chaucer! Yet
in these cases we give our antagonist the benefit of an appeal to what
is really best and most effective in the ancient literature. For, if we
should go to Pindar, and some other great names, what a revelation of
hypocrisy as respects the _fade_ enthusiasts for the Greek poetry!

Still, in the Greek tragedy, however otherwise embittered against
ancient literature by the dismal affectations current in the scenical
poetry, at least I felt the presence of a great and original power. It
might be a power inferior, upon the whole, to that which presides in the
English tragedy; I believed that it was; but it was equally genuine,
and appealed equally to real and deep sensibilities in our nature. Yet,
also, I felt that the two powers at work in the two forms of the drama
were essentially different; and without having read a line of German at
that time, or knowing of any such controversy, I began to meditate on
the elementary grounds of difference between the Pagan and the Christian
forms of poetry. The dispute has since been carried on extensively in
France, not less than in Germany, as between the _classical_ and the
_romantic_. But I will venture to assert that not one step in advance
has been made, up to this day. The shape into which I threw the question
it may be well to state; because I am persuaded that out of that
one idea, properly pursued, might be evolved the whole separate
characteristics of the Christian and the antique: Why is it, I asked,
that the Christian idea of _sin_ is an idea utterly unknown to the Pagan
mind? The Greeks and Romans had a clear conception of a moral ideal, as
we have; but this they estimated by a reference to the will; and they
called it virtue, and the antithesis they called vice. The _lacheté_
or relaxed energy of the will, by which it yielded to the seductions
of sensual pleasure, that was vice; and the braced-up tone by which it
resisted these seductions was virtue. But the idea of holiness, and the
antithetic idea of sin, as a violation of this awful and unimaginable
sanctity, was so utterly undeveloped in the Pagan mind, that no word
exists in classical Greek or classical Latin which approaches either
pole of this synthesis; neither the idea of _holiness_, nor of its
correlate, _sin_, could be so expressed in Latin as at once to satisfy
Cicero and a scientific Christian. Again (but this was some years
after), I found Schiller and Goethe applauding the better taste of the
ancients, in symbolizing the idea of death by a beautiful youth, with a
torch inverted, &c., as compared with the Christian types of a skeleton
and hour-glasses, &c. And much surprised I was to hear Mr. Coleridge
approving of this German sentiment. Yet, here again I felt the peculiar
genius of Christianity was covertly at work moving upon a different
road, and under opposite ideas, to a just result, in which the harsh and
austere expression yet pointed to a dark reality, whilst the beautiful
Greek adumbration was, in fact, a veil and a disguise. The corruptions
and the other "dishonors" of the grave, and whatsoever composes the
sting of death in the Christian view, is traced up to sin as its
ultimate cause. Hence, besides the expression of Christian humility, in
thus nakedly exhibiting the wrecks and ruins made by sin, there is
also a latent profession indicated of Christian hope. For the Christian
contemplates steadfastly, though with trembling awe, the lowest point of
his descent; since, for him, that point, the last of his fall, is also
the first of his reäscent, and serves, besides, as an exponent of its
infinity; the infinite depth becoming, in the rebound, a measure of
the infinite reäscent. Whereas, on the contrary, with the gloomy
uncertainties of a Pagan on the question of his final restoration, and
also (which must not be overlooked) with his utter perplexity as to the
nature of his restoration, if any were by accident in reserve, whether
in a condition tending downwards or upwards, it was the natural resource
to consult the general feeling of anxiety and distrust, by throwing a
thick curtain and a veil of beauty over the whole too painful subject.
To place the horrors in high relief, could here have answered no purpose
but that of wanton cruelty; whereas, with the Christian hopes, the
very saddest memorials of the havocs made by death are antagonist
prefigurations of great victories in the rear.

These speculations, at that time, I pursued earnestly; and I then
believed myself, as I yet do, to have ascertained the two great and
opposite laws under which the Grecian and the English tragedy has each
separately developed itself. Whether wrong or right in that belief, sure
I am that those in Germany who have treated the case of classical
and romantic are not entitled to credit for any discovery at all. The
Schlegels, who were the hollowest of men, the windiest and wordiest (at
least, Frederic was so), pointed to the distinction; barely indicated
it; and that was already some service done, because a presumption
arose that the antique and the modern literatures, having clearly some
essential differences, might, perhaps, rest on foundations originally
distinct, and obey different laws. And hence it occurred that many
disputes, as about the unities, etc., might originate in a confusion of
these laws. This checks the presumption of the shallow criticism, and
points to deeper investigations. Beyond this, neither the German nor the
French disputers on the subject have talked to any profitable purpose.

I have mentioned Paley as accidentally connected with my _début_ in
literary conversation; and I have taken occasion to say how much I
admired his style and its unstudied graces, how profoundly I despised
his philosophy. I shall here say a word or two more on that subject. As
respects his style, though secretly despising the opinion avowed by my
tutor (which was, however, a natural opinion for a stiff lover of the
artificial and the pompous), I would just as unwillingly be supposed to
adopt the extravagant opinions, in the other extreme, of Dr. Parr and
Mr. Coleridge. These two gentlemen, who privately hated Paley, and,
perhaps, traduced him, have hung like bees over one particular paragraph
in his Evidences, as though it were a flower transplanted from Hymettus.
Dr. Parr pronounced it the finest sentence in the English language. It
is a period (that is, a cluster of sentences) moderately well, but not
_too_ well constructed, as the German nurses are accustomed to say. Its
felicity depends on a trick easily imitated--on a balance happily placed
(namely, "_in which the wisest of mankind would rejoice to find an
answer to their doubts, and rest to their inquiries_"). As a _bravura_,
or _tour de force_, in the dazzling fence of rhetoric, it is surpassed
by many hundreds of passages which might be produced from rhetoricians;
or, to confine myself to Paley's contemporaries, it is very far
surpassed by a particular passage in Burke's letter upon the Duke of
Bedford's base attack upon him in the House of Lords; which passage I
shall elsewhere produce, because I happen to know, on the authority of
Burke's executors, that Burke himself considered it the finest period
which he had ever written. At present, I will only make one remark,
namely, that it is always injudicious, in the highest degree, to cite
for admiration that which is not a _representative_ specimen of the
author's manner. In reading Lucian, I once stumbled on a passage of
German pathos, and of German effect. Would it have been wise, or would
it have been intellectually just, to quote this as the text of an
eulogium on Lucian? What false criticism it would have suggested to
every reader! what false anticipations! To quote a formal and periodic
pile of sentences, was to give the feeling that Paley was what the
regular rhetorical artists designate as a periodic writer, when, in
fact, no one conceivable character of style more pointedly contradicted
the true description of his merits.

But, leaving the style of Paley, I must confess that I agree with Mr.
Bulwer (_England and the English_) in thinking it shocking and almost
damnatory to an English university, the great well-heads of creeds,
moral and evangelical, that authors such in respect of doctrine as Paley
and Locke should hold that high and influential station as teachers, or
rather oracles of truth, which has been conceded to them. As to Locke,
I, when a boy, had made a discovery of one blunder full of laughter and
of fun, which, had it been published and explained in Locke's lifetime,
would have tainted his whole philosophy with suspicion. It relates
to the Aristotelian doctrine of syllogism, which Locke undertook to
ridicule. Now, a flaw, a hideous flaw, in the _soi-disant_ detecter of
flaws, a ridicule in the exposer of the ridiculous--_that_ is fatal;
and I am surprised that Lee, who wrote a folio against Locke in his
lifetime, and other examiners, should have failed in detecting this. I
shall expose it elsewhere; and, perhaps, one or two other exposures
of the same kind will give an impetus to the descent of this falling
philosophy. With respect to Paley, and the naked _prudentialism_ of
his system, it is true that in a longish note Paley disclaims that
consequence. But to this we may reply, with Cicero, _Non quoero quid
neget Epicurus, sed quid congruenter neget_. Meantime, waiving all this
as too notorious, and too frequently denounced, I wish to recur to
this trite subject, by way of stating an objection made to the Paleyan
morality in my seventeenth year, and which I have never since seen
reason to withdraw. It is this:--I affirm that the whole work, from
first to last, proceeds upon that sort of error which the logicians
call _ignoratio elenchi_, that is, ignorance of the very question
concerned--of the point at issue. For, mark, in the very vestibule of
ethics, two questions arise--two different and disconnected questions,
A and B; and Paley has answered the wrong one. Thinking that he was
answering A, and meaning to answer A, he has, in fact, answered B. One
question arises thus: Justice is a virtue; temperance is a virtue; and
so forth. Now, what is the common principle which ranks these several
species under the same genus? What, in the language of logicians, is the
common differential principle which determines these various aspects
of moral obligation to a common genius? Another question, and a more
interesting question to men in general, is this,--What is the motive to
virtue? By what impulse, law, or motive, am I impelled to be virtuous
rather than vicious? Whence is the motive derived which should impel
me to one line of conduct in preference to the other? This, which is
a practical question, and, therefore, more interesting than the other,
which is a pure question of speculation, was that which Paley believed
himself to be answering. And his answer was,--That utility, a perception
of the resulting benefit, was the true determining motive. Meantime, it
was objected that often the most obvious results from a virtuous action
were far otherwise than beneficial. Upon which, Paley, in the long note
referred to above, distinguished thus: That whereas actions have many
results, some proximate, some remote, just as a stone thrown into the
water produces many concentric circles, be it known that he, Dr. Paley,
in what he says of utility, contemplates only the final result, the very
outermost circle; inasmuch as he acknowledges a possibility that the
first, second, third, including the penultimate circle, may all happen
to clash with utility; but then, says he, the outermost circle of all
will never fail to coincide with the absolute maximum of utility.
Hence, in the first place, it appears that you cannot apply this test of
utility in a practical sense; you cannot say, This is useful, _ergo_, it
is virtuous; but, in the inverse order, you must say, This is virtuous,
_ergo_, it is useful. You do not rely on its usefulness to satisfy
yourself of its being virtuous; but, on the contrary, you rely on its
virtuousness, previously ascertained, in order to satisfy yourself
of its usefulness. And thus the whole practical value of this test
disappears, though in that view it was first introduced; and a vicious
circle arises in the argument; as you must have ascertained the
virtuousness of an act, in order to apply the test of its being
virtuous. But, _secondly_, it now comes out that Paley was answering a
very different question from that which he supposed himself answering.
Not any practical question as to the motive or impelling force in
being virtuous, rather than vicious,--that is, to the _sanctions_ of
virtue,--but a purely speculative question, as to the issue of virtue,
or the common _vinculum_ amongst the several modes or species of virtue
(justice, temperance, etc.)--this was the real question which he was
answering. I have often remarked that the largest and most subtle source
of error in philosophic speculations has been the confounding of the two
great principles so much insisted on by the Leibnitzians, namely, the
_ratio cognoscendi_ and the _ratio essendi_. Paley believed himself
to be assigning--it was his full purpose to assign--the _ratio
cognoscendi_; but, instead of that, unconsciously and surreptitiously,
he has actually assigned the _ratio essendi_; and, after all, a false
and imaginary _ratio essendi_.




THE PAGAN ORACLES



It is remarkable--and, without a previous explanation, it might seem
paradoxical to say it--that oftentimes under a continual accession of
light important subjects grow more and more enigmatical. In times when
nothing was explained, the student, torpid as his teacher, saw nothing
which called for explanation--all appeared one monotonous blank. But no
sooner had an early twilight begun to solicit the creative faculties
of the eye, than many dusky objects, with outlines imperfectly defined,
began to converge the eye, and to strengthen the nascent interest of the
spectator. It is true that light, in its final plenitude, is calculated
to disperse all darkness. But this effect belongs to its consummation.
In its earlier and _struggling_ states, light does but reveal darkness.
It makes the darkness palpable and "visible." Of which we may see a
sensible illustration in a gloomy glass-house, where the sullen lustre
from the furnace does but mass and accumulate the thick darkness in
the rear upon which the moving figures are relieved. Or we may see an
intellectual illustration in the mind of the savage, on whose blank
surface there exists no doubt or perplexity at all, none of the pains
connected with ignorance; he is conscious of no darkness, simply because
for _him_ there exists no visual ray of speculation--no vestige of
prelusive light.

Similar, and continually more similar, has been the condition of ancient
history. Once yielding a mere barren crop of facts and dates, slowly
it has been kindling of late years into life and deep interest under
superior treatment. And hitherto, as the light has advanced, _pari
passu_ have the masses of darkness strengthened. Every question solved
has been the parent of three new questions unmasked. And the power of
breathing life into dry bones has but seemed to multiply the skeletons
and lifeless remains; for the very natural reason--that these dry bones
formerly (whilst viewed as incapable of revivification) had seemed
less numerous, because everywhere confounded to the eye with stocks
and stones, so long as there was no motive of hope for marking the
distinction between them.

Amongst all the illustrations which might illuminate this truth, none
is so instructive as the large question of PAGAN ORACLES. Every
part, indeed, of the Pagan religion, the course, geographically
or ethnographically, of its traditions, the vast labyrinth of its
mythology, the deductions of its contradictory genealogies, the disputed
meaning of its many secret "mysteries" [_teletai_--symbolic rites
or initiations], all these have been submitted of late years to
the scrutiny of glasses more powerful, applied under more combined
arrangements, and directed according to new principles more
comprehensively framed. We cannot in sincerity affirm--always with
immediate advantage. But even where the individual effort may have
been a failure as regarded the immediate object, rarely, indeed, it
has happened but that much indirect illumination has resulted--which,
afterwards entering into combination with other scattered currents of
light, has issued in discoveries of value; although, perhaps, any one
contribution, taken separately, had been, and would have remained,
inoperative. Much has been accomplished, chiefly of late years; and,
confining our view to ancient history, almost exclusively amongst the
Germans--by the Savignys, the Niebuhrs, the Otfried Muellers. And, if
that _much_ has left still more to do, it has also brought the means of
working upon a scale of far accelerated speed.

The books now existing upon the ancient oracles, above all, upon the
Greek oracles, amount to a small library. The facts have been collected
from all quarters,--examined, sifted, winnowed. Theories have been
raised upon these facts under every angle of aspect; and yet, after all,
we profess ourselves to be dissatisfied. Amongst much that is sagacious,
we feel and we resent with disgust a taint of falsehood diffused over
these recent speculations from vulgar and even counterfeit incredulity;
the one gross vice of German philosophy, not less determinate or less
misleading than that vice which, heretofore, through many centuries,
had impoverished this subject, and had stopped its discussion under the
anile superstition of the ecclesiastical fathers.

These fathers, both Greek and Latin, had the ill fortune to be
extravagantly esteemed by the church of Rome; whence, under a natural
reaction, they were systematically depreciated by the great leaders of
the Protestant Reformation. And yet hardly in a corresponding degree.
For there was, after all, even among the reformers, a deep-seated
prejudice in behalf of all that was "primitive" in Christianity; under
which term, by some confusion of ideas, the fathers often benefited.
Primitive Christianity was reasonably venerated; and, on this argument,
that, for the first three centuries, it was necessarily more sincere.
We do not think so much of that sincerity which affronted the fear of
persecution; because, after all, the searching persecutions were rare
and intermitting, and not, perhaps, in any case, so fiery as they have
been represented. We think more of that gentle but insidious persecution
which lay in the solicitations of besieging friends, and more still of
the continual temptations which haunted the irresolute Christian in the
fascinations of the public amusements. The theatre, the circus, and, far
beyond both, the cruel amphitheatre, constituted, for the ancient world,
a passionate enjoyment, that by many authors, and especially through one
period of time, is described as going to the verge of frenzy. And we,
in modern times, are far too little aware in what degree these great
carnivals, together with another attraction of great cities, the pomps
and festivals of the Pagan worship, broke the monotony of domestic life,
which, for the old world, was even more oppressive than it is for us.
In all principal cities, so as to be within the reach of almost all
provincial inhabitants, there was a hippodrome, often uniting the
functions of the circus and the amphitheatre; and there was a theatre.
From all such pleasures the Christian was sternly excluded by his
very profession of faith. From the festivals of the Pagan religion his
exclusion was even more absolute; against them he was a sworn militant
protester from the hour of his baptism. And when these modes of
pleasurable relaxation had been subtracted from ancient life, what could
remain? Even less, perhaps, than most readers have been led to
consider. For the ancients had no such power of extensive locomotion, of
refreshment for their wearied minds, by travelling and change of scene,
as we children of modern civilization possess. No ships had then been
fitted up for passengers, nor public carriages established, nor roads
opened extensively, nor hotels so much as imagined hypothetically;
because the relation of _xenia_, or the obligation to reciprocal
hospitality, and latterly the Roman relation of patron and client, had
stifled the first motions of enterprise of the ancients; in fact, no
man travelled but the soldier, and the man of political authority.
Consequently, in sacrificing public amusements, the Christians
sacrificed _all_ pleasure whatsoever that was not rigorously domestic;
whilst in facing the contingencies of persecutions that might arise
under the rapid succession of changing emperors, they faced a perpetual
_anxiety_ more trying to the fortitude than any fixed and measurable
evil. Here, certainly, we have a guarantee for the deep faithfulness
of early Christians, such as never can exist for more mixed bodies of
professors, subject to no searching trials.

Better the primitive Christians were (by no means individually better,
but better on the total body), yet they were not in any intellectual
sense wiser. Unquestionably the elder Christians participated in the
local follies, prejudices, superstitions, of their several provinces and
cities, except where any of these happened to be too conspicuously at
war with the spirit of love or the spirit of purity which exhaled at
every point from the Christian faith; and, in all intellectual features,
as were the Christians generally, such were the fathers. Amongst the
Greek fathers, one might be unusually learned, as Clement of Alexandria;
and another might be reputed unusually eloquent, as Gregory Nazianzen,
or Basil. Amongst the Latin fathers, one might be a man of admirable
genius, as far beyond the poor, vaunted Rousseau in the impassioned
grandeur of his thoughts, as he was in truth and purity of heart; we
speak of St. Augustine (usually called St. Austin), and many might be
distinguished by various literary merits. But could these advantages
anticipate a higher civilization? Most unquestionably some of the
fathers were the _élite_ of their own age, but not in advance of their
age. They, like all their contemporaries, were besieged by errors,
ancient, inveterate, traditional; and accidentally, from one cause
special to themselves, they were not merely liable to error, but usually
prone to error. This cause lay in the _polemic_ form which so often they
found a necessity, or a convenience, or a temptation for assuming, as
teachers or defenders of the truth.

He who reveals a body of awful truth to a candid and willing auditory
is content with the grand simplicities of truth in the quality of his
proofs. And truth, where it happens to be of a high order, is generally
its own witness to all who approach it in the spirit of childlike
docility. But far different is the position of that teacher who
addresses an audience composed in various proportions of sceptical
inquirers, obstinate opponents, and malignant scoffers. Less than an
apostle is unequal to the suppression of all human reactions incident
to wounded sensibilities. Scorn is too naturally met by retorted scorn:
malignity in the Pagan, which characterized all the known cases of
signal opposition to Christianity, could not but hurry many good
men into a vindictive pursuit of victory. Generally, where truth is
communicated _polemically_ (this is, not as it exists in its own
inner simplicity, but as it exists in external relation to error), the
temptation is excessive to use those arguments which will tell at the
moment upon the crowd of bystanders, by preference to those which will
approve themselves ultimately to enlightened disciples. Hence it is,
that, like the professional rhetoricians of Athens, not seldom the
Christian fathers, when urgently pressed by an antagonist equally
mendacious and ignorant, could not resist the human instinct for
employing arguments such as would baffle and confound the unprincipled
opponent, rather than such as would satisfy the mature Christian. If
a man denied himself all specious arguments, and all artifices of
dialectic subtlety, he must renounce the hopes of a _present_ triumph;
for the light of absolute truth on moral or on spiritual themes is too
dazzling to be sustained by the diseased optics of those habituated to
darkness. And hence we explain not only the many gross delusions of
the fathers, their sophisms, their errors of fact and chronology, their
attempts to build great truths upon fantastic etymologies, or upon
popular conceits in science that have long since exploded, but also
their occasional unchristian tempers. To contend with an unprincipled
and malicious liar, such as Julian the Apostate, in its original sense
the first deliberate _miscreant_, offered a dreadful snare to any man's
charity. And he must be a furious bigot who will justify the rancorous
lampoons of Gregory Nazianzen. Are we, then, angry on behalf of Julian?
So far as _he_ was interested, not for a moment would we have suspended
the descending scourge. Cut him to the bone, we should have exclaimed at
the time! Lay the knout into every "raw" that can be found! For we are
of opinion that Julian's duplicity is not yet adequately understood. But
what was right as regarded the claims of the criminal, was _not_
right as regarded the duties of his opponent. Even in this mischievous
renegade, trampling with his orangoutang hoofs the holiest of truths,
a Christian bishop ought still to have respected his sovereign, through
the brief period that he _was_ such, and to have commiserated his
benighted brother, however wilfully astray, and however hatefully
seeking to quench that light for other men, which, for his own misgiving
heart, we could undertake to show that he never _did_ succeed in
quenching. We do not wish to enlarge upon a theme both copious and easy.
But here, and everywhere, speaking of the fathers as a body, we charge
them with anti-christian practices of a two-fold order: sometimes as
supporting their great cause in a spirit alien to its own, retorting in
a temper not less uncharitable than that of their opponents; sometimes,
again, as adopting arguments that are unchristian in their ultimate
grounds; resting upon errors the reputation of errors; upon
superstitions the overthrow of superstitions; and drawing upon the
armories of darkness for weapons that, to be durable, ought to have been
of celestial temper. Alternately, in short, the fathers trespass against
those affections which furnish to Christianity its moving powers, and
against those truths which furnish to Christianity its guiding lights.
Indeed, Milton's memorable attempt to characterize the fathers as a
body, contemptuous as it is, can hardly be challenged as overcharged.

Never in any instance were these aberrations of the fathers more vividly
exemplified than in their theories upon the Pagan Oracles. On behalf of
God, they were determined to be wiser than God; and, in demonstration of
scriptural power, to advance doctrines which the Scriptures had nowhere
warranted. At this point, however, we shall take a short course; and, to
use a vulgar phrase, shall endeavor to "kill two birds with one stone."
It happens that the earliest book in our modern European literature,
which has subsequently obtained a station of authority on the subject of
the ancient Oracles, applied itself entirely to the erroneous theory of
the fathers. This is the celebrated _Antonii Van Dale, "De Ethnicorum
Oraculis Dissertationes_," which was published at Amsterdam _at least_
as early as the year 1682; that is, one hundred and sixty years ago. And
upon the same subject there has been no subsequent book which maintains
an equal rank. Van Dale might have treated his theme simply with a
view to the investigation of the truth, as some recent inquirers have
preferred doing; and, in that case, the fathers would have been noticed
only as incidental occasions might bring forward their opinions--true
or false. But to this author the errors of the fathers seemed capital;
worthy, in fact, of forming his _principal_ object; and, knowing their
great authority in the Papal church, he anticipated, in the plan of
attaching his own views to the false views of the fathers, an opening
to a double patronage--that of the Protestants, in the first place,
as interested in all doctrines seeming to be anti-papal; that of the
sceptics, in the second place, as interested in the exposure of whatever
had once commanded, but subsequently lost, the superstitious reverence
of mankind. On this policy, he determined to treat the subject
polemically. He fastened, therefore, upon the fathers with a deadly
_acharnement_, that evidently meant to leave no arrears of work for
any succeeding assailant; and it must be acknowledged that, simply in
relation to this purpose of hostility, his work is triumphant. So much
was not difficult to accomplish; for barely to enunciate the leading
doctrine of the fathers is, in the ear of any chronologist, to overthrow
it. But, though successful enough in its functions of destruction,
on the other hand, as an affirmative or constructive work, the long
treatise of Van Dale is most unsatisfactory. It leaves us with a hollow
sound ringing in the ear, of malicious laughter from gnomes and
imps grinning over the weaknesses of man--his paralytic facility in
believing--his fraudulent villany in abusing this facility--but in no
point accounting for those real effects of diffusive social benefits
from the Oracle machinery, which must arrest the attention of candid
students, amidst some opposite monuments of incorrigible credulity, or
of elaborate imposture.

As a book, however, belonging to that small cycle (not numbering,
perhaps, on _all_ subjects, above three score), which may be said to
have moulded and controlled the public opinion of Europe through the
last five generations, already for itself the work of Van Dale merits a
special attention. It is confessedly the _classical_ book--the original
_fundus_ for the arguments and facts applicable to this question; and
an accident has greatly strengthened its authority. Fontenelle, the
most fashionable of European authors, at the opening of the eighteenth
century, writing in a language at that time even more predominant than
at present, did in effect employ all his advantages to propagate and
popularize the views of Van Dale. Scepticism naturally courts the
patronage of France; and in effect that same remark which a learned
Belgian (Van Brouwer) has found frequent occasion to make upon
single sections of Fontenelle's work, may be fairly extended into a
representative account of the whole--"_L'on trouve les mêmes arguments
chez Fontenelle, mais dégagés des longueurs du savant Van Dale, et
exprimés avec plus d'élégance._" This _rifaccimento_ did not injure the
original work in reputation: it caused Van Dale to be less read, but to
be more esteemed; since a man confessedly distinguished for his powers
of composition had not thought it beneath his ambition to adopt and
recompose Van Dale's theory. This important position of Van Dale with
regard to the effectual creed of Europe--so that, whether he were read
directly or were slighted for a more fashionable expounder, equally in
either case it was _his_ doctrines which prevailed--must always confer
a circumstantial value upon the original dissertations, "_De Ethnicorum
Oraculis_."

This original work of Van Dale is a book of considerable extent. But, in
spite of its length, it divides substantially into two great
chapters, and no more, which coincide, in fact, with the two separate
dissertations. The first of these dissertations, occupying one hundred
and eighty-one pages, inquires into the failure and extinction of the
Oracles; when they failed, and under what circumstances. The second of
these dissertations inquires into the machinery and resources of the
Oracles during the time of their prosperity. In the first dissertation,
the object is to expose the folly and gross ignorance of the fathers,
who insisted on representing the history of the case roundly in this
shape--as though all had prospered with the Oracles up to the nativity
of Christ; but that, after his crucifixion, and simultaneously with the
first promulgation of Christianity, all Oracles had suddenly drooped;
or, to tie up their language to the rigor of their theory, had suddenly
expired. All this Van Dale peremptorily denies; and, in these days, it
is scarcely requisite to add, triumphantly denies; the whole hypothesis
of the fathers having literally not a leg to stand upon; and being, in
fact, the most audacious defiance to historical records that, perhaps,
the annals of human folly present.

In the second dissertation, Van Dale combats the other notion of the
fathers--that, during their prosperous ages, the Oracles had moved by
an agency of evil spirits. He, on the contrary, contends that, from
the first hour to the last of their long domination over the minds and
practice of the Pagan world, they had moved by no agencies whatever, but
those of human fraud, intrigue, collusion, applied to human blindness,
credulity, and superstition.

We shall say a word or two upon each question. As to the first, namely,
_when_ it was that the Oracles fell into decay and silence, thanks
to the headlong rashness of the Fathers, Van Dale's assault cannot be
refused or evaded. In reality, the evidence against them is too flagrant
and hyperbolical. If we were to quote from Juvenal--"Delphis et Oracula
cessant," in that case, the fathers challenge it as an argument on
_their_ side, for that Juvenal described a state of things immediately
posterior to Christianity; yet even here the word _cessant_ points to a
distinction of cases which already in itself is fatal to their doctrine.
By _cessant_ Juvenal means evidently what we, in these days, should
mean in saying of a ship in action that her fire was slackening. This
powerful poet, therefore, wiser so far than the Christian fathers,
distinguishes two separate cases: first, the state of torpor and
languishing which might be (and in fact was) the predicament of many
famous Oracles through centuries not fewer than five, six, or even
eight; secondly, the state of absolute dismantling and utter extinction
which, even before his time, had confounded individual Oracles of the
inferior class, not from changes affecting religion, whether true or
false, but from political revolutions. Here, therefore, lies the first
blunder of the fathers, that they confound with total death the long
drooping which befell many great Oracles from languor in the popular
sympathies, under changes hereafter to be noticed; and, consequently,
from revenues and machinery continually decaying. That the Delphic
Oracle itself--of all oracles the most illustrious--had not expired, but
simply slumbered for centuries, the fathers might have been convinced
themselves by innumerable passages in authors contemporary with
themselves; and that it was continually throwing out fitful gleams of
its ancient power, when any very great man (suppose a Caesar) thought
fit to stimulate its latent vitality, is notorious from such cases as
that of Hadrian. He, in his earlier days, whilst yet only dreaming of
the purple, had not found the Oracle superannuated or palsied. On the
contrary, he found it but too clear-sighted; and it was no contempt in
him, but too ghastly a fear and jealousy, which labored to seal up the
grander ministrations of the Oracle for the future. What the Pythia had
foreshown to himself, she might foreshow to others; and, when tempted
by the same princely bribes, she might authorize and kindle the same
aspiring views in other great officers. Thus, in the new condition of
the Roman power, there was a perpetual peril, lest an oracle, so
potent as that of Delphi, should absolutely create rebellions, by
first suggesting hopes to men in high commands. Even as it was, all
treasonable assumptions of the purple, for many generations, commenced
in the hopes inspired by auguries, prophecies, or sortileges. And
had the great Delphic Oracle, consecrated to men's feelings by hoary
superstition, and _privileged by secrecy_, come forward to countersign
such hopes, many more would have been the wrecks of ambition, and
even bloodier would have been the blood-polluted line of the imperial
successions. Prudence, therefore, it was, and state policy, not the
power of Christianity, which gave the _final_ shock (of the _original_
shock we shall speak elsewhere) to the grander functions of the Delphic
Oracle. But, in the mean time, the humbler and more domestic offices of
this oracle, though naturally making no noise at a distance, seem
long to have survived its state relations. And, apart from the sort of
galvanism notoriously applied by Hadrian, surely the fathers could not
have seen Plutarch's account of its condition, already a century later
than our Saviour's nativity. The Pythian priestess, as we gather from
_him_, had by that time become a less select and dignified personage;
she was no longer a princess in the land--a change which was proximately
due to the impoverished income of the temple; but she was still in
existence; still held in respect; still trained, though at inferior
cost, to her difficult and showy ministrations. And the whole
establishment of the Delphic god, if necessarily contracted from that
scale which had been suitable when great kings and commonwealths were
constant suitors within the gates of Delphi, still clung (like the
Venice of modern centuries) to her old ancestral honors, and kept up
that decent household of ministers which corresponded to the altered
ministrations of her temple. In fact, the evidences on behalf of Delphi
as a princely house, that had indeed partaken in the decaying fortunes
of Greece, but naturally was all the prouder from the irritating
contrast of her great remembrances, are so plentifully dispersed through
books, that the fathers must have been willingly duped. That in some
way they _were_ duped is too notorious from the facts, and might
be suspected even from their own occasional language; take, as one
instance, amongst a whole _harmony_ of similar expressions, this short
passage from Eusebius--_hoi Hellenes homologentes ekleloipenai auton ta
chresteria_: the Greeks admitting that their Oracles have failed. (There
is, however, a disingenuous vagueness in the very word _ekleloipenai_),
_ed' allote pote ex aionos_--and when? why, at no other crisis through
the total range of their existence--_e kata tes chrones tes euangelikes
didaskalias_--than precisely at the epoch of the evangelical
dispensation, etc. Eusebius was a man of too extensive reading to be
entirely satisfied with the Christian representations upon this point.
And in such indeterminate phrases as _kata tes chrones_ (which might
mean indifferently the entire three centuries then accomplished from the
first promulgation of Christianity, or specifically that narrow punctual
limit of the earliest promulgation), it is easy to trace an ambidextrous
artifice of compromise between what would satisfy his own brethren,
on the one hand, and what, on the other hand, he could hope to defend
against the assaults of learned Pagans.

In particular instances it is but candid to acknowledge that the fathers
may have been misled by the remarkable tendencies to error amongst the
ancients, from their want of public journals, combined with territorial
grandeur of empire. The greatest possible defect of harmony arises
naturally in this way amongst ancient authors, locally remote from each
other; but more especially in the post-christian periods, when reporting
any aspects of change, or any results from a revolution variable and
advancing under the vast varieties of the Roman empire. Having no
newspapers to effect a level amongst the inequalities and anomalies
of their public experience in regard to the Christian revolution,
when collected from innumerable tribes so widely differing as to
civilization, knowledge, superstition, &c.; hence it happened that
one writer could report with truth a change as having occurred within
periods of ten to sixty years, which for some other province would
demand a circuit of six hundred. For example, in Asia Minor, all the way
from the sea coast to the Euphrates, towns were scattered having a dense
population of Jews. Sometimes these were the most malignant opponents of
Christianity; that is, wherever they happened to rest in the _letter_ of
their peculiar religion. But, on the other hand, where there happened to
be a majority (or, if not numerically a majority, yet influentially an
overbalance) in that section of the Jews who were docile children of
their own preparatory faith and discipline, no bigots, and looking
anxiously for the fulfilment of their prophecies (an expectation at that
time generally diffused),--under those circumstances, the Jews were such
ready converts as to account naturally for sudden local transitions,
which in other circumstances or places might not have been credible.

This single consideration may serve to explain the apparent
contradictions, the irreconcilable discrepancies, between the statements
of contemporary Christian bishops, locally at a vast distance from each
other, or (which is even more important) reporting from communities
occupying different stages of civilization. There was no harmonizing
organ of interpretation, in Christian or in Pagan newspapers, to bridge
over the chasms that divided different provinces. A devout Jew, already
possessed by the purest idea of the Supreme Being, stood on the very
threshold of conversion: he might, by one hour's conversation with an
apostle, be transfigured into an enlightened Christian; whereas a
Pagan could seldom in one generation pass beyond the infirmity of his
novitiate. His heart and affections, his will and the habits of his
understanding, were too deeply diseased to be suddenly transmuted. And
hence arises a phenomenon, which has too languidly arrested the notice
of historians; namely, that already, and for centuries before the time
of Constantine, wherever the Jews had been thickly sown as colonists,
the most potent body of Christian zeal stood ready to kindle under
the first impulse of encouragement from the state; whilst in the
great capitals of Rome and Alexandria, where the Jews were hated and
neutralized politically by Pagan forces, not for a hundred years later
than Constantine durst the whole power of the government lay hands on
the Pagan machinery, except with timid precautions, and by graduations
so remarkably adjusted to the circumstances, that sometimes they wear
the shape of compromises with idolatry. We must know the ground, the
quality of the population, concerned in any particular report of
the fathers, before we can judge of its probabilities. Under local
advantages, insulated cases of Oracles suddenly silenced, of temples and
their idol-worship overthrown, as by a rupture of new-born zeal, were
not less certain to arise as rare accidents from rare privileges, or
from rare coincidences of unanimity in the leaders of the place, than
on the other hand they were certain _not_ to arise in that unconditional
universality pretended by the fathers. Wheresoever Paganism was
interwoven with the whole moral being of a people, as it was in Egypt,
or with the political tenure and hopes of a people, as it was in Rome,
_there_ a long struggle was inevitable before the revolution could
be effected. Briefly, as against the fathers, we find a sufficient
refutation in what _followed_ Christianity. If, at a period five, or
even six hundred years after the birth of Christ, you find people still
consulting the local Oracles of Egypt, in places sheltered from the
point-blank range of the state artillery,--there is an end, once
and forever, to the delusive superstition that, merely by its silent
presence in the world, Christianity must instantaneously come into
fierce activity as a reägency of destruction to all forms of idolatrous
error. That argument is multiplied beyond all power of calculation; and
to have missed it is the most eminent instance of wilful blindness which
the records of human folly can furnish. But there is another refutation
lying in an opposite direction, which presses the fathers even more
urgently in the rear than this presses them in front; any author
posterior to Christianity, who should point to the decay of Oracles,
they would claim on their own side. But what would they have said
to Cicero,--by what resource of despair would they have parried his
authority, when insisting (as many times he does insist), forty and even
fifty years before the birth of Christ, on the languishing condition of
the Delphic Oracle? What evasion could they imagine here? How could that
languor be due to Christianity, which far anticipated the very birth of
Christianity? For, as to Cicero, who did not "far anticipate the
birth of Christianity." we allege _him_ rather because his work _De
Divinatione_ is so readily accessible, and because his testimony on
any subject is so full of weight, than because other and much older
authorities cannot be produced to the same effect. The Oracles of Greece
had lost their vigor and their palmy pride full two centuries before
the Christian era. Historical records show this _à posteriori_, whatever
were the cause; and the cause, which we will state hereafter, shows it
_à priori_, apart from the records.

Surely, therefore, Van Dale needed not to have pressed his victory over
the helpless fathers so unrelentingly, and after the first ten pages by
cases and proofs that are quite needless and _ex abundanti_; simply
the survival of any one distinguished Oracle upwards of four centuries
_after_ Christ--that is sufficient. But if with this fact we combine
the other fact, that all the principal Oracles had already begun to
languish, more than two centuries _before_ Christianity, there can be no
opening for a whisper of dissent upon any real question between Van Dale
and his opponents; namely, both as to the possibility of Christianity
coexisting with such forms of error, and the possibility that oracles
should be overthrown by merely Pagan, or internal changes. The less
plausible, however, that we find this error of the fathers, the more
curiosity we naturally feel about the source of that error; and the more
so, because Van Dale never turns his eyes in that direction.

This source lay (to speak the simple truth) in abject superstition. The
fathers conceived of the enmity between Christianity and Paganism,
as though it resembled that between certain chemical poisons and the
Venetian wine-glass, which (according to the belief [Footnote: Which
belief we can see no reason for rejecting so summarily as is usually
done in modern times. It would be absurd, indeed, to suppose a kind of
glass qualified to expose all poisons indifferently, considering the
vast range of their chemical differences. But, surely, as against
that one poison then familiarly used for domestic murders, a chemical
reagency might have been devised in the quality of the glass. At least,
there is no _prima facie_ absurdity in such a supposition.] of three
centuries back) no sooner received any poisonous fluid, than immediately
it shivered into crystal splinters. They thought to honor Christianity,
by imaging it as some exotic animal of more powerful breed, such as we
English have witnessed in a domestic case, coming into instant collision
with the native race, and exterminating it everywhere upon the first
conflict. In this conceit they substituted a foul fiction of their own,
fashioned on the very model of Pagan fictions, for the unvarying analogy
of the divine procedure. Christianity, as the last and consummate of
revelations, had the high destination of working out its victory
through what was greatest in a man--through his reason, his will,
his affections. But, to satisfy the fathers, it must operate like a
drug--like sympathetic powders--like an amulet--or like a conjurer's
charm. Precisely the monkish effect of a Bible when hurled at an evil
spirit--not the true rational effect of that profound oracle read,
studied, and laid to heart--was that which the fathers ascribed to the
mere proclamation of Christianity, when first piercing the atmosphere
circumjacent to any oracle; and, in fact, to their gross appreciations,
Christian truth was like the scavenger bird in Eastern climates, or the
stork in Holland, which signalizes its presence by devouring all
the native brood of vermin, or nuisances, as fast as they reproduce
themselves under local distemperatures of climate or soil.

It is interesting to pursue the same ignoble superstition, which, in
fact, under Romish hands, soon crept like a parasitical plant over
Christianity itself, until it had nearly strangled its natural vigor,
back into times far preceding that of the fathers. Spite of all that
could be wrought by Heaven, for the purpose of continually confounding
the local vestiges of popular reverence which might have gathered round
stocks and stones, so obstinate is the hankering after this mode of
superstition in man that his heart returns to it with an elastic recoil
as often as the openings are restored. Agreeably to this infatuation,
the temple of the true God--even its awful _adytum_--the holy of
holies--or the places where the ark of the covenant had rested in its
migrations--all were conceived to have an eternal and a self-vindicating
sanctity. So thought man: but God himself, though to man's folly pledged
to the vindication of his own sanctities, thought far otherwise; as we
know by numerous profanations of all holy places in Judea, triumphantly
carried through, and avenged by no plausible judgments. To speak only
of the latter temple, three men are memorable as having polluted its
holiest recesses: Antiochus Epiphanes, Pompey about a century later, and
Titus pretty nearly by the same exact interval later than Pompey. Upon
which of these three did any judgment descend? Attempts have been made
to impress that coloring of the sequel in two of these cases, indeed,
but without effect upon _any_ man's mind. Possibly in the case of
Antiochus, who seems to have moved under a burning hatred, not so
much of the insurgent Jews as of the true faith which prompted their
resistance, there is some colorable argument for viewing him in his
miserable death as a monument of divine wrath. But the two others had
no such malignant spirit; they were tolerant, and even merciful; were
authorized instruments for executing the purposes of Providence; and no
calamity in the life of either can be reasonably traced to his dealings
with Palestine. Yet, if Christianity could not brook for an instant
the mere coëxistence of a Pagan oracle, how came it that the Author of
Christianity had thus brooked (nay, by many signs of coöperation, had
promoted) that ultimate desecration, which planted "the abomination
of desolation" as a victorious crest of Paganism upon his own solitary
altar? The institution of the Sabbath, again--what part of the Mosaic
economy could it more plausibly have been expected that God should
vindicate by some memorable interference, since of all the Jewish
institutions it was that one which only and which frequently became the
occasion of wholesale butchery to the pious (however erring) Jews? The
scruple of the Jews to fight, or even to resist an assassin, on the
Sabbath, was not the less pious in its motive because erroneous in
principle; yet no miracle interfered to save them from the consequences
of their infatuation. And this seemed the more remarkable in the case
of their war with Antiochus, because _that_ (if any that history has
recorded) was a holy war. But, after one tragical experience, which cost
the lives of a thousand martyrs, the Maccabees--quite as much on a level
with their scrupulous brethren in piety as they were superior in good
sense--began to reflect that they had no shadow of a warrant from
Scripture for counting upon any miraculous aid; that the whole
expectation, from first to last, had been human and presumptuous; and
that the obligation of fighting valiantly against idolatrous compliances
was, at all events, paramount to the obligation of the Sabbath. In one
hour, after unyoking themselves from this monstrous millstone of their
own forging, about their own necks, the cause rose buoyantly aloft as
upon wings of victory; and, as their very earliest reward--as the first
fruits from thus disabusing their minds of windy presumptions--they
found the very case itself melting away which had furnished the scruple;
since their cowardly enemies, now finding that they would fight on all
days alike, had no longer any motive for attacking them on the Sabbath;
besides that their own astonishing victories henceforward secured to
them often the choice of the day not less than of the ground.

But, without lingering on these outworks of the true religion, namely,
1st, the Temple of Jerusalem; 2dly, the Sabbath,--both of which the
divine wisdom often saw fit to lay prostrate before the presumption
of idolatrous assaults, on principles utterly irreconcilable with the
Oracle doctrine of the fathers,--there is a still more flagrant argument
against the fathers, which it is perfectly confounding to find both them
and their confuter overlooking. It is this. Oracles, take them at the
very worst, were no otherwise hostile to Christianity than as a branch
of Paganism. If, for instance, the Delphic establishment were hateful
(as doubtless it was) to the holy spirit of truth which burned in the
mind of an apostle, _why_ was it hateful? Not primarily in its character
of Oracle, but in its universal character of Pagan temple; not as an
authentic distributor of counsels adapted to the infinite situations of
its clients--often very wise counsels; but as being ultimately engrafted
on the stem of idolatrous religion--as deriving, in the last resort,
their sanctions from Pagan deities, and, therefore, as sharing
_constructively_ in all the pollutions of that tainted source. Now,
therefore, if Christianity, according to the fancy of the fathers, could
not tolerate the co-presence of so much evil as resided in the Oracle
superstition,--that is, in the derivative, in the secondary, in the
not unfrequently neutralized or even redundantly compensated mode of
error,--then, _à fortiori_, Christianity could not have tolerated for an
hour the parent superstition, the larger evil, the fontal error, which
diseased the very organ of vision--which not merely distorted a few
objects on the road, but spread darkness over the road itself. Yet what
is the fact? So far from any mysterious repulsion _externally_ between
idolatrous errors and Christianity, as though the two schemes of belief
could no more coexist in the same society than two queen-bees in a
hive,--as though elementary nature herself recoiled from the abominable
_concursus_,--do but open a child's epitome of history, and you find it
to have required four entire centuries before the destroyer's hammer and
crowbar began to ring loudly against the temples of idolatrous worship;
and not before five, nay, locally six, or even seven centuries had
elapsed, could the better angel of mankind have sung gratulations
announcing that the great strife was over--that man was inoculated with
the truth; or have adopted the impressive language of a Latin father,
that "the owls were to be heard in _every_ village hooting from the
dismantled fanes of heathenism, or the gaunt wolf disturbing the sleep
of peasants as he yelled in winter from the cold, dilapidated altars."
Even this victorious consummation was true only for the southern world
of civilization. The forests of Germany, though pierced already to
the south in the third and fourth centuries by the torch of
missionaries,--though already at that time illuminated by the immortal
Gothic version of the New Testament preceding Ulppilas, and still
surviving,--sheltered through ages in the north and east vast tribes
of idolaters, some awaiting the baptism of Charlemagne in the eighth
century and the ninth, others actually resuming a fierce countenance of
heathenism for the martial zeal of crusading knights in the thirteenth
and fourteenth. The history of Constantine has grossly misled the world.
It was very early in the fourth century (313 A. D.) that Constantine
found himself strong enough to take his _earliest_ steps for raising
Christianity to a privileged station; which station was not merely an
effect and monument of its progress, but a further cause of progress.
In this latter light, as a power advancing and moving, but politically
still militant, Christianity required exactly one other century to carry
out and accomplish even its eastern triumph. Dating from the era of
the very inaugurating and merely local acts of Constantine, we shall
be sufficiently accurate in saying that the corresponding period in
the fifth century (namely, from about 404 to 420 A. D.) first witnessed
those uproars of ruin in Egypt and Alexandria--fire racing along the old
carious timbers, battering-rams thundering against the ancient walls
of the most horrid temples--which rang so searchingly in the ears of
Zosimus, extorting, at every blow, a howl of Pagan sympathy from that
ignorant calumniator of Christianity. So far from the fact being,
according to the general prejudice, as though Constantine had found
himself able to destroy Paganism, and to replace it by Christianity;
on the contrary, it was both because he happened to be far too weak,
in fact, for such a mighty revolution, and because he _knew_ his own
weakness, that he fixed his new capital, as a preliminary caution, upon
the Propontis.

There were other motives to this change, and particularly (as we have
attempted to show in a separate dissertation) motives of high political
economy, suggested by the relative conditions of land and agriculture
in Thrace and Asia Minor, by comparison with decaying Italy; but a
paramount motive, we are satisfied, and the earliest motive, was the
incurable Pagan bigotry of Rome. Paganism for Rome, it ought to have
been remembered by historians, was a mere necessity of her Pagan origin.
Paganism was the fatal dowry of Rome from her inauguration; not only
she had once received a retaining fee on behalf of Paganism, in the
mysterious _Ancile_, supposed to have fallen from heaven, but she
actually preserved this bribe amongst her rarest jewels. She possessed a
palladium, such a national amulet or talisman as many Grecian or Asiatic
cities had once possessed--a _fatal_ guarantee to the prosperity of the
state. Even the Sibylline books, whatever ravages they might be supposed
by the intelligent to have sustained in a lapse of centuries, were
popularly believed, in the latest period of the Western empire, to exist
as so many charters of supremacy. Jupiter himself in Rome had put on a
peculiar Roman physiognomy, which associated him with the destinies of
the gigantic state. Above all, the solemn augury of the twelve vultures,
so memorably passed downwards from the days of Romulus, through
generations as yet uncertain of the event, and, therefore,
chronologically incapable of participation in any fraud--an augury
_always_ explained as promising twelve centuries of supremacy to Rome,
from the year 748 or 750 B. C.--coöperated with the endless other Pagan
superstitions in anchoring the whole Pantheon to the Capitol and
Mount Palatine. So long as Rome had a worldly hope surviving, it was
impossible for her to forget the Vestal Virgins, the College of Augurs,
or the indispensable office and the _indefeasible_ privileges of the
_Pontifex Maximus_, which (though Cardinal Baronius, in his great work,
for many years sought to fight off the evidences for that fact,
yet afterwards partially he confessed his error) actually
availed--historically and _medallically_ can be demonstrated to
have availed--for the temptation of Christian Cæsars into collusive
adulteries with heathenism. Here, for instance, came an emperor that
timidly recorded his scruples--feebly protested, but gave way at once
as to an ugly necessity. There came another, more deeply religious, or
constitutionally more bold, who fought long and strenuously against
the compromise. "What! should he, the delegate of God, and the
standard-bearer of the true religion, proclaim himself officially head
of the false? No; that was too much for his conscience." But the fatal
meshes of prescription, of superstitions ancient and gloomy, gathered
around him; he heard that he was no perfect Cæsar without this office,
and eventually the very same reason which had obliged Augustus not to
suppress, but himself to assume, the tribunitian office, namely, that
it was a popular mode of leaving democratic organs untouched, whilst he
neutralized their democratic functions by absorbing them into his own,
availed to overthrow all Christian scruples of conscience, even in the
most Christian of the Cæsars, many years _after_ Constantine. The pious
Theodosius found himself literally compelled to become a Pagan pontiff.
A _bon mot_ [Footnote: "A _bon mot_."--This was built on the accident
that a certain _Maximus_ stood in notorious circumstances of rivalship
to the emperor [Theodosius]: and the bitterness of the jest took this
turn— that if the emperor should persist in declining the office of
_Pont. _Maximus_, in that case, "erit Pontifex Maximus;" that is,
Maximus (the secret aspirant) shall be our Pontifex. _So_ the words
sounded to those in the secret [_synetoisi_], whilst to others they
seemed to have no meaning at all.] circulating amongst the people warned
him that, if he left the cycle of imperial powers incomplete, if he
suffered the galvanic battery to remain imperfect in its circuit of
links, pretty soon he would tempt treason to show its head, and would
even for the present find but an imperfect obedience. Reluctantly
therefore the emperor gave way: and perhaps soothed his fretting
conscience, by offering to heaven, as a penitential litany, that same
petition which Naaman the Syrian offered to the prophet Elijah as a
reason for a personal dispensation. Hardly more possible it was that a
camel should go through the eye of a needle, than that a Roman senator
should forswear those inveterate superstitions with which his own system
of aristocracy had been riveted for better and worse. As soon would the
Venetian senator, the gloomy "magnifico" of St. Mark, have consented to
Renounce the annual wedding of his republic with the Adriatic, as
the Roman noble, whether senator, or senator elect, or of senatorial
descent, would have dissevered his own solitary stem from the great
forest of his ancestral order; and this he must have done by doubting
the legend of Jupiter Stator, or by withdrawing his allegiance from
Jupiter Capitolinus. The Roman people universally became agitated
towards the opening of the fifth century after Christ, when their own
twelfth century was drawing near to its completion. Rome had now reached
the very condition of Dr. Faustus--having originally received a known
term of prosperity from some dark power; but at length hearing the
hours, one after the other, tolling solemnly from the church-tower, as
they exhausted the waning minutes of the very final day marked down in
the contract. The more profound was the faith of Rome in the flight of
the twelve vultures, once so glorious, now so sad, an augury, the
deeper was the depression as the last hour drew near that had been
so mysteriously prefigured. The reckoning, indeed, of chronology was
slightly uncertain. The Varronian account varied from others. But these
trivial differences might tell as easily against them as for them, and
did but strengthen the universal agitation. Alaric, in the opening of
the fifth century [about 4l0]--Attila, near the middle [445]--already
seemed prelusive earthquakes running before the final earthquake. And
Christianity, during this era of public alarm, was so far from assuming
a more winning aspect to Roman eyes, as a religion promising to survive
their own, that already, under that character of reversionary triumph,
this gracious religion seemed a public insult, and this meek religion a
perpetual defiance; pretty much as a king sees with scowling eyes, when
revealed to him in some glass of Cornelius Agrippa, the portraits of
that mysterious house which is destined to supplant his own.

Now, from this condition of feeling at Rome, it is apparent not only as
a fact that Constantine did not overthrow Paganism, but as a possibility
that he could not have overthrown it. In the fierce conflict he would
probably have been overthrown himself; and, even for so much as he _did_
accomplish, it was well that he attempted it at a distance from Rome.
So profoundly, therefore, are the fathers in error, that instead of that
instant victory which they ascribe to Christianity, even Constantine's
revolution was merely local. Nearly five centuries, in fact, it cost,
and not three, to Christianize even the entire Mediterranean empire of
Rome; and the premature effort of Constantine ought to be regarded as
a mere _fluctus decumanus_ in the continuous advance of the new
religion,--one of those ambitious billows which sometimes run far ahead
of their fellows in a tide steadily gaining ground, but which inevitably
recede in the next moment, marking only the strength of that tendency
which sooner or later is destined to fill the whole capacity of the
shore.

To have proved, therefore, if it could have been proved, that
Christianity had been fatal in the way of a magical charm to the Oracles
of the world, would have proved nothing but a perplexing inconsistency,
so long as the fathers were obliged to confess that Paganism itself,
as a gross total, as the parent superstition (sure to reproduce Oracles
faster than they could be extinguished), had been suffered to exist
for many centuries concurrently with Christianity, and had finally been
overthrown by the simple majesty of truth that courts the light, as
matched against falsehood that shuns it.

As applied, therefore, to the first problem in the whole question upon
Oracles,--_When, and under what circumstances, did they cease?_--the
_Dissertatio_ of Van Dale, and the _Histoire des Oracles_ by Fontenelle,
are irresistible, though not written in a proper spirit of gravity,
nor making use of that indispensable argument which we have ourselves
derived from the analogy of all scriptural precedents.

But the case is far otherwise as concerns the second problem,--_How,
and by what machinery, did the Oracles, in the days of their prosperity,
conduct their elaborate ministrations?_ To this problem no justice at
all is done by the school of Van Dale. A spirit of mockery and banter is
ill applied to questions that at any time have been centres of fear, and
hope, and mysterious awe, to long trains of human generations. And
the coarse assumption of systematic fraud in the Oracles is neither
satisfactory to the understanding, as failing to meet many important
aspects of the case, nor is it at all countenanced by the kind of
evidences that have been hitherto alleged. The fathers had taken the
course--vulgar and superstitious--of explaining everything sagacious,
everything true, everything that by possibility could seem to argue
prophetic functions in the greater Oracles, as the product indeed of
inspiration, but of inspiration emanating from an evil spirit. This
hypothesis of a diabolic inspiration is rejected by the school of Van
Dale. Both the power of at all looking into the future, and the fancied
source of that power, are dismissed as contemptible chimeras. Upon
the first of these dark pretensions we shall have occasion to speak at
another point. Upon the other we agree with Van Dale. Yet, even here,
the spirit of triumphant ridicule, applied to questions not wholly
within the competence of human resources, is displeasing in grave
discussions: grave they are by necessity of their relations, howsoever
momentarily disfigured by levity and the unseasonable grimaces of
self-sufficient "philosophy." This temper of mind is already advertised
from the first to the observing reader of Van Dale by the character
of his engraved frontispiece. Men are there exhibited in the act of
juggling, and still more odiously as exulting over their juggleries
by gestures of the basest collusion, such as protruding the tongue,
inflating one cheek by means of the tongue, grinning, and winking
obliquely. These vilenesses are so ignoble, that for his own sake a man
of honor (whether as a writer or a reader) shrinks from dealing with any
case to which they do really adhere; such a case belongs to the province
of police courts, not of literature. But, in the ancient apparatus
of the Oracles although frauds and _espionage_ did certainly form an
occasional resource, the artifices employed were rarely illiberal in
their mode, and always ennobled by their motive. As to the mode, the
Oracles had fortunately no temptation to descend into any tricks that
could look like "thimble-rigging;" and as to the motive, it will be
seen that this could never be dissociated from some regard to public or
patriotic objects in the first place; to which if any secondary interest
were occasionally attached, this could rarely descend so low as even
to an ordinary purpose of gossiping curiosity, but never to a base,
mercenary purpose of fraud. Our views, however, on this phasis of the
question, will speedily speak for themselves.

Meantime, pausing for one moment to glance at the hypothesis of the
fathers, we confess ourselves to be scandalized by its unnecessary
plunge into the ignoble. Many sincere Christian believers have doubted
altogether of any evil spirits, as existences, warranted by Scripture,
that is, as beings whose principle was evil ["evil, be thou my good:" P.
L.]; others, again, believing in the possibility that spiritual beings
had been (in ways unintelligible to us) seduced from their state of
perfection by temptations analogous to those which had seduced man,
acquiesced in the notion of spirits tainted with evil, but not therefore
(any more than man himself) essentially or causelessly malignant. Now,
it is well known, and, amongst others, Eichhorn _(Einletung in das alte
Testament) has noticed the fact, which will be obvious, on a little
reflection, to any even unlearned student of the Scriptures who can
throw his memory back through a real familiarity with those records,
that the Jews derived their obstinate notions of fiends and demoniacal
possessions (as accounting even for bodily affections) entirely from
their Chaldean captivity. Not before that great event in Jewish history,
and, therefore, in consequence of that event, were the Jews inoculated
with this Babylonian, Persian, and Median superstition. Now, if Eichhorn
and others are right, it follows that the elder Scriptures, as they
ascend more and more into the purer atmosphere of untainted Hebrew
creeds, ought to exhibit an increasing freedom from all these modes of
demoniacal agency. And accordingly so we find it. Messengers of God are
often concerned in the early records of Moses; but it is not until we
come down to Post-Mosaical records, Job, for example (though that book
is doubtful as to its chronology), and the chronicles of the Jewish
kings (_Judaic or Israelitish)_, that we first find any allusion
to malignant spirits. As against Eichhorn, however, though readily
conceding that the agency is not often recognized, we would beg leave
to notice, that there is a three-fold agency of evil, relatively to
man, ascribed to certain spirits in the elder Scriptures, namely: 1,
of _misleading_ (as in the case of the Israelitish king seduced into a
fatal battle by a falsehood originating with a spiritual being); 2,
of _temptation_; 3, of calumnious _accusation_ directed against absent
parties. It is not absolutely an untenable hypothesis, that these
functions of malignity to man, as at first sight they appear, may be in
fact reconcilable with the general functions of a being not malignant,
and not evil in any sense, but simply obedient to superior commands:
for none of us supposes, of course, that a "destroying angel" must be
an evil spirit, though sometimes appearing in a dreadful relation of
hostility to _all_ parties (as in the case of David's punishment). But,
waiving all these speculations, one thing is apparent, that the negative
allowance, the toleration granted to these later Jewish modes of belief
by our Saviour, can no more be urged as arguing any positive sanction to
such existences (to _demons_ in the bad sense), than his toleration of
Jewish errors and conceits in questions of science. Once for all, it was
no purpose of his mission to expose errors in matters of pure curiosity,
and in speculations _not_ moral, but exclusively intellectual. And,
besides the ordinary argument for rejecting such topics of teaching,
as not necessarily belonging to any known purpose of the Christian
revelation (which argument is merely negative, and still leaves it
open to have regarded such communications as a possible _extra_
condescension, as a _lucro ponatur_, not absolutely to have been
expected, but if granted as all the more meritorious in Christianity),
we privately are aware of an argument, far more rigorous and coërcive,
which will place this question upon quite another basis. This argument,
which, in a proper situation, and with ampler disposable space, we
shall expose in its strength, will show that it was not that neutral
possibility which men have supposed, for the founder of our faith to
have granted light, casually or indirectly, upon questions of curiosity.
One sole revelation was made by Him, as to the nature of the intercourse
and the relations in another world; but _that_ was for the purpose of
forestalling a vile, unspiritual notion, already current amongst the
childish Jews, and sure to propagate itself even to our own days, unless
an utter _averruncatio_ were applied to it. This was its purpose, and
not any purpose of gratification to unhallowed curiosity; we speak
of the question about the reversionary rights of marriage in a future
state. This memorable case, by the way, sufficiently exposes the gross,
infantine sensualism of the Jewish mind at that period, and throws an
indirect light on their creed as to demons. With this one exception,
standing by itself and self-explained, there never was a gleam of
revelation granted by any authorized prophet to speculative curiosity,
whether pointing to science, or to the mysteries of the spiritual world.
And the true argument on this subject would show that this abstinence
was not accidental; was not merely on a motive of convenience, as
evading any needless extension of labors in teaching, which is the
furthest point attained by any existing argument; but, on the
contrary, that there was an obligation of consistency, stern, absolute,
insurmountable, which made it _essential_ to withhold such revelations;
and that had but one such condescension, even to a harmless curiosity,
been conceded, there would have arisen instantly a rent--a fracture--a
schism--in another vast and collateral purpose of Providence.

From all considerations of the Jewish condition at the era of
Christianity, the fathers might have seen the license for doubt as to
the notions of a diabolic inspiration. Why must the prompting spirits,
if really assumed to be the efficient agency behind the Oracles, be
figured as holding any relation at all to moral good or moral evil?
Why not allow of demoniac powers, excelling man in beauty, power,
prescience, but otherwise neutral as to all purposes of man's moral
nature? Or, if revolting angels were assumed, why degrade their agency
in so vulgar and unnecessary a way, by adopting the vilest relation to
man which can be imputed to a demon--his function of secret _calumnious
accusation_; from which idea, lowering the Miltonic "archangel ruined"
into the assessor of thieves, as a private slanderer (_diabolos_),
proceeds, through the intermediate Italian _diavolo_, our own grotesque
vulgarism of the _devil_; [Footnote: But, says an unlearned man, Christ
uses the word _devil_. Not so. The word used is _diabolos_. Translate v.
g. "The accuser and his angels."] an idea which must ever be injurious,
in common with all base conceptions, to a grand and spiritual religion.
If the Oracles _were_ supported by mysterious agencies of spiritual
beings, it was still open to have distinguished between mere modes of
power or of intelligence, and modes of illimitable evil. The _results_
of the Oracles were beneficent: that was all which the fathers had any
right to know: and their unwarranted introduction of wicked or rebel
angels was as much a surreptitious fraud upon their audiences, as their
neglect to distinguish between the conditions of an extinct superstition
and a superstition dormant or decaying.

To leave the fathers, and to state our own views on the final question
argued by Van Dale--"What was the essential machinery by which the
Oracles moved?"--we shall inquire,

1. What was the relation of the Oracles (and we would wish to be
understood as speaking particularly of the Delphic Oracle) to the
credulity of Greece?

2. What was the relation of that same Oracle to the absolute truth?

3. What was its relation to the public welfare of Greece?

Into this trisection we shall decompose the coarse unity of the question
presented by Van Dale and his Vandals, as though the one sole "issue,"
that could be sent down for trial before a jury, were the likelihoods of
fraud and gross swindling. It is not with the deceptions or collusions
of the Oracles, as mere matters of fact, that we in this age are
primarily concerned, but with those deceptions as they affected the
contemporary people of Greece. It is important to know whether the
general faith of Greece in the mysterious pretensions of Oracles were
unsettled or disturbed by the several agencies at work that naturally
tended to rouse suspicion; such, for instance, as these four which
follow:--1. Eminent instances of scepticism with regard to the oracular
powers, from time to time circulating through Greece in the shape
of _bon mots_; or, 2, which silently amounted to the same virtual
expression of distrust, Refusals (often more speciously wearing the name
of _neglects_) to consult the proper Oracle on some hazardous enterprize
of general notoriety and interest; 3. Cases of direct failure in
the event, as understood to have been predicted by the Oracle, not
unfrequently accompanied by tragical catastrophes to the parties misled
by this erroneous construction of the Oracle; 4. (which is, perhaps, the
climax of the exposures possible under the superstitions of Paganism),
A public detection of known oracular temples doing business on a
considerable scale, as accomplices with felons.

Modern appraisers of the oracular establishments are too commonly in
all moral senses anachronists. We hear it alleged with some plausibility
against Southey's portrait of Don Roderick, though otherwise conceived
in a spirit proper for bringing out the whole sentiment of his pathetic
situation, that the king is too Protestant, and too evangelical, after
the model of 1800, in his modes of penitential piety. The poet, in
short, reflected back upon one who was too certain in the eighth century
to have been the victim of dark popish superstitions, his own pure and
enlightened faith. But the anachronistic spirit in which modern sceptics
react upon the Pagan Oracles is not so elevating as the English poet's.
Southey reflected his own superiority upon the Gothic prince of Spain.
But the sceptics reflect their own vulgar habits of mechanic and
compendious office business upon the large institutions of the
ancient Oracles. To satisfy them, the Oracle should resemble a modern
coach-office--where undoubtedly you would suspect fraud, if the question
"How far to Derby?" were answered evasively, or if the grounds of choice
between two roads were expressed enigmatically. But the _to loxon_,
or mysterious indirectness of the Oracle, was calculated far more to
support the imaginative grandeur of the unseen God, and was designed to
do so, than to relieve the individual suitor in a perplexity seldom of
any capital importance. In this way every oracular answer operated upon
the local Grecian neighborhood in which it circulated as one of the
impulses which, from time to time, renewed the sense of a mysterious
involution in the invisible powers, as though they were incapable
of direct correspondence or parallelism with the monotony and slight
compass of human ideas. As the symbolic dancers of the ancients,
who narrated an elaborate story, _Saltando Hecubam_, or _Saltando
Loadamiam_, interwove the passion of the advancing incidents into the
intricacies of the figure--something in the same way, it was understood
by all men, that the Oracle did not so much evade the difficulty by
a dark form of words, as he revealed his own hieroglyphic nature. All
prophets, the true equally with the false, have felt the instinct for
surrounding themselves with the majesty of darkness. And in a religion
like the Pagan, so deplorably meagre and starved as to most of the
draperies connected with the mysterious and sublime, we must not seek to
diminish its already scanty wardrobe. But let us pass from speculation
to illustrative anecdotes. We have imagined several cases which might
seem fitted for giving a shock to the general Pagan confidence in
Oracles. Let us review them.

The first is the case of any memorable scepticism published in a pointed
or witty form; as Demosthenes avowed his suspicions "that the Oracle was
_Philippizing_." This was about 344 years B.C. Exactly one hundred years
earlier, in the 444th year B.C., or the _locus_ of Pericles, Herodotus
(then forty years old) is universally supposed to have read, which for
_him_ was publishing, his history. In this work two insinuations of the
same kind occur: during the invasion of Darius the Mede (about 490 B.C.)
the Oracle was charged with _Medizing_; and in the previous period of
Pisistratus (about 555 B.C.) the Oracle had been almost convicted
of _Alcmœonidizing_. The Oracle concerned was the same,--namely, the
Delphic,--in all three cases. In the case of Darius, fear was the ruling
passion; in the earlier case, a near self-interest, but not in a
base sense selfish. The Alemœonidae, an Athenian house hostile to
Pisistratus, being exceedingly rich, had engaged to rebuild the ruined
temple of the Oracle; and had fulfilled their promise with a munificence
outrunning the letter of their professions, particularly with regard to
the quality of marble used in facing or "veneering" the front elevation.
Now, these sententious and rather witty expressions gave wings and
buoyancy to the public suspicions, so as to make them fly from one end
of Greece to the other; and they continued in lively remembrance for
centuries. Our answer we reserve until we have illustrated the other
heads.

In the second case, namely, that of sceptical slights shown to the
Oracle, there are some memorable precedents on record. Everybody knows
the ridiculous stratagem of Crœsus, the Lydian king, for trying the
powers of the Oracle, by a monstrous culinary arrangement of pots and
pans, known (as he fancied) only to himself. Generally the course of
the Delphic Oracle under similar insults was--warmly to resent them. But
Crœsus, as a king, a foreigner, and a suitor of unexampled munificence,
was privileged, especially because the ministers of the Delphic temple
had doubtless found it easy to extract the secret by bribery from
some one of the royal mission. A case, however, much more interesting,
because arising between two leading states of Greece, and in the
century subsequent to the ruder age of Crœsus (who was about coeval with
Pisistratus, 555 B. C.), is reported by Xenophon of the Lacedæmonians
and Thebans. They concluded a treaty of peace without any communication,
not so much as a civil notification to the Oracle; _to men Teo ouden
ekoinosanto, hopis hæ eirpnp genoito_--to the god (the Delphic god) they
made no communication at all as to the terms of the peace; _outoi de
ebeleuonto_, but they personally pursued their negotiations in private.
That this was a very extraordinary reach of presumption, is evident from
the care of Xenophon in bringing it before his readers; it is probable,
indeed, that neither of the high contracting parties had really acted
in a spirit of religious indifference, though it is remarkable of
the Spartans, that of all Greek tribes they were the most facile and
numerous delinquents under all varieties of foreign temptations to
revolt from their hereditary allegiance--a fact which measures the
degree of unnatural constraint and tension which the Spartan usages
involved; but in this case we rather account for the public outrage to
religion and universal usage, by a strong political jealousy lest the
provisions of the treaty should transpire prematurely amongst states
adjacent to Bœotia.

Whatever, meantime, were the secret motive to this policy, it did not
fail to shock all Greece profoundly. And, in a slighter degree, the same
effect upon public feeling followed the act of Agesipolis, who, after
obtaining an answer from the Oracle of Delphi, carried forward his suit
to the more awfully ancient Oracle of Dodona; by way of trying, as
he alleged, "whether the child agreed with its papa." These open
expressions of distrust were generally condemned; and the irresistible
proof that they were, lies in the fact that they led to no imitations.
Even in a case mentioned by Herodotus, when a man had the audacity to
found a colony without seeking an oracular sanction, no precedent
was established; though the journey to Delphi must often have been
peculiarly inconvenient to the founders of colonies moving westwards
from Greece; and the expenses of such a journey, with the subsequent
offerings, could not but prove unseasonable at the moment when every
drachma was most urgently needed. Charity begins at home, was a
thought quite as likely to press upon a Pagan conscience, in those
circumstances, as upon our modern Christian consciences under heavy
taxation; yet, for all that, such was the regard to a pious inauguration
of all colonial enterprises, that no one provision or pledge of
prosperity was held equally indispensable by all parties to such
hazardous speculations. The merest worldly foresight, indeed, to the
most irreligious leader, would suggest this sanction as a necessity,
under the following reason:--colonies the most enviably prosperous
upon the whole, have yet had many hardships to contend with in their
noviciate of the first five years; were it only from the summer failure
of water under circumstances of local ignorance, or from the casual
failure of crops under imperfect arrangements of culture. Now, the
one great qualification for wrestling strenuously with such difficult
contingencies in solitary situations, is the spirit of cheerful hope;
but, when any room had been left for apprehending a supernatural curse
resting upon their efforts--equally in the most thoughtfully pious man
and the most crazily superstitious--all spirit of hope would be blighted
at once; and the religious neglect would, even in a common human way,
become its own certain executor, through mere depression of spirits and
misgiving of expectations. Well, therefore, might Cicero in a tone of
defiance demand, "Quam vero Græcia coloniam misit in Ætoliam, Ioniam,
Asiam, Siciliam, Italiam, sine Pythio (the Delphic), aut Dodonseo, aut
Hammonis oraculo?" An oracular sanction must be had, and from a leading
oracle--the three mentioned by Cicero were the greatest; [Footnote: To
which at one time must be added, as of equal rank, the Oracle of the
Branchides, in Asia Minor. But this had been destroyed by the Persians,
in retaliation of the Athenian outrages at Sardis.] and, if a minor
oracle could have satisfied the inaugurating necessities of a regular
colony, we may be sure that the Dorian states of the Peloponnesus, who
had twenty-five decent oracles at home (that is, within the peninsula),
would not so constantly have carried their money to Delphi. Nay, it is
certain that even where the colonial counsels of the greater
oracles seemed extravagant, though a large discretion was allowed to
remonstrance, and even to very homely expostulations, still, in the last
resort, no doubts were felt that the oracle must be right. Brouwer, the
Belgic scholar, who has so recently and so temperately treated these
subjects (Histoire de la Civilisation Morale et Religieuse chez les
Grecs: 6 tomes: Groningue--1840), alleges a case (which, however, we do
not remember to have met) where the client ventured to object:--"_Mon
roi Apollon, je crois que tu es fou._" But cases are obvious which look
this way, though not going so far as to charge lunacy upon the lord of
prophetic vision. Battus, who was destined to be the eldest father of
Cyrene, so memorable as the first ground of Greek intercourse with the
African shore of the Mediterranean, never consulted the Delphic Oracle
in reference to his eyes, which happened to be diseased, but that he was
admonished to prepare for colonizing Libya.--"Grant me patience," would
Battus reply; "here am I getting into years, and never do I consult the
Oracle about my precious sight, but you, King Phœbus, begin your old
yarn about Cyrene. Confound Cyrene! Nobody knows where it is. But, if
you are serious, speak to my son--he's a likely young man, and worth a
hundred of old rotten hulks, like myself." Battus was provoked in good
earnest; and it is well known that the whole scheme went to sleep for
several years, until King Phoebus sent in a gentle refresher to Battus
and his islanders, in the shape of failing crops, pestilence, and
his ordinary chastisements. The people were roused--the colony was
founded--and, after utter failure, was again re-founded, and the
results justified the Oracle. But, in all such cases, and where
the remonstrances were least respectful, or where the resistance of
_inertia_ was longest, we differ altogether from M. Brouwer in his
belief, that the suitors fancied Apollo to have gone distracted. If they
ever said so, this must have been merely by way of putting the Oracle
on its mettle, and calling forth some _plainer_--not any essentially
different--answer from the enigmatic god; for there it was that the
doubts of the clients settled, and on that it was the practical demurs
hinged. Not because even Battus, vexed as he was about his precious
eyesight, distrusted the Oracle, but because he felt sure that the
Oracle had not spoken out freely; therefore, had he and many others in
similar circumstances presumed to delay. A second edition was what they
waited for, corrected and _enlarged_. We have a memorable instance of
this policy in the Athenian envoys, who, upon receiving a most ominous
doom, but obscurely expressed, from the Delphic Oracle, which
politely concluded by saying, "And so get out, you vagabonds, from
my temple--don't cumber my decks any longer;" were advised to answer
sturdily--"No!--we shall _not_ get out--we mean to sit here forever,
until you think proper to give us a more reasonable reply." Upon which
spirited rejoinder, the Pythia saw the policy of revising her truly
brutal rescript as it had stood originally.

The necessity, indeed, was strong for not acquiescing in the Oracle,
until it had become clearer by revision or by casual illustrations, as
will be seen even under our next head. This head concerns the case
of those who found themselves deceived by the _event_ of any oracular
prediction. As usual, there is a Spartan case of this nature. Cleomenes
complained bitterly that the Oracle of Delphi had deluded him by holding
out as a possibility, and under given conditions as a certainty, that he
should possess himself of Argos. But the Oracle was justified: there was
an inconsiderable place outside the walls of Argos which bore the same
name. Most readers will remember the case of Cambyses, who had
been assured by a legion of oracles that he should die at Ecbatana.
Suffering, therefore, in Syria from a scratch inflicted upon his thigh
by his own sabre, whilst angrily sabring a ridiculous quadruped whom the
Egyptian priests had put forward as a god, he felt quite at his ease
so long as he remembered his vast distance from the mighty capital of
Media, to the eastward of the Tigris. The scratch, however, inflamed,
for his intemperance had saturated his system with combustible matter;
the inflammation spread; the pulse ran high: and he began to feel
twinges of alarm. At length mortification commenced: but still he
trusted to the old prophecy about Ecbatana, when suddenly a
horrid discovery was made--that the very Syrian village at his own
head-quarters was known by the pompous name of Ecbatana. Josephus tells
a similar story of some man contemporary with Herod the Great. And we
must all remember that case in Shakspeare, where the first king of the
_red_ rose, Henry IV., had long fancied his destiny to be that he should
meet his death in Jerusalem; which naturally did not quicken his zeal
for becoming a crusader. "All time enough," doubtless he used to say;
"no hurry at all, gentlemen!" But at length, finding himself pronounced
by the doctor ripe for dying, it became a question whether the prophet
were a false prophet, or the doctor a false doctor. However, in such a
case, it is something to have a collision of opinions--a prophet against
a doctor. But, behold, it soon transpired that there was no collision at
all. It was the Jerusalem chamber, occupied by the king as a bed-room,
to which the prophet had alluded. Upon which his majesty reconciled
himself at once to the ugly necessity at hand


  "In that Jerusalem shall Harry die."


The last case--that of oracular establishments turning out to be
accomplices of thieves--is one which occurred in Egypt on a scale of
some extent; and is noticed by Herodotus. This degradation argued great
poverty in the particular temples: and it is not at all improbable that,
amongst a hundred Grecian Oracles, some, under a similar temptation,
would fall into a similar disgrace. But now, as regards even this
lowest extremity of infamy, much more as regards the qualified sort of
disrepute attending the three minor cases, one single distinction puts
all to rights. The Greeks never confounded the temple, and household of
officers attached to the temple service, with the dark functions of the
presiding god. In Delphi, besides the Pythia and priests, with their
train of subordinate ministers directly billeted on the temple, there
were two orders of men outside, Delphic citizens, one styled _Arizeis_,
the other styled _Hosioi_,--a sort of honorary members, whose duty was
probably _inter alia_, to attach themselves to persons of corresponding
rank in the retinues of the envoys or consulting clients, and doubtless
to collect from them, in convivial moments, all the secrets or general
information which the temple required for satisfactory answers. If they
personally went too far in their intrigues or stratagems of decoy, the
disgrace no more recoiled on the god, than, in modern times, the vices
or crimes of a priest can affect the pure religion at whose altars he
officiates.

Meantime, through these outside ministers--though unaffected by their
follies or errors as trepanners--the Oracle of Delphi drew that vast and
comprehensive information, from every local nook or recess of Greece,
which made it in the end a blessing to the land. The great error is, to
suppose the majority of cases laid before the Delphic Oracle strictly
questions for _prophetic_ functions. Ninety-nine in a hundred respected
marriages, state-treaties, sales, purchases, founding of towns or
colonies, &c., which demanded no faculty whatever of divination, but the
nobler faculty (though unpresumptuous) of sagacity, that calculates
the natural consequences of human acts, cooperating with elaborate
investigation of the local circumstances. If, in any paper on the
general civilization of Greece (that great mother of civilization for
all the world), we should ever attempt to trace this element of Oracles,
it will not be difficult to prove that Delphi discharged the office of
a central _bureau d'administration_, a general depot of political
information, an organ of universal combination for the counsels of the
whole Grecian race. And that which caused the declension of the Oracles
was the loss of political independence and autonomy. After Alexander,
still more after the Roman conquest, each separate state, having no
powers and no motive for asking counsel on state measures, naturally
confined itself more and more to its humbler local interests of police,
or even at last to its family arrangements.




THE REVOLUTION OF GREECE.

[1833.]



It is falsely charged upon itself by this age, in its character of
_censor morum_, that effeminacy in a practical sense lies either amongst
its full-blown faults, or amongst its lurking tendencies. A rich,
a polished, a refined age, may, by mere necessity of inference, be
presumed to be a luxurious one; and the usual principle, by which moves
the whole trivial philosophy which speculates upon the character of a
particular age or a particular nation, is first of all to adopt some one
central idea of its characteristics, and then without further effort to
pursue its integration; that is, having assumed (or, suppose even having
demonstrated) the existence of some great influential quality in excess
sufficient to overthrow the apparent equilibrium demanded by the common
standards of a just national character, the speculator then proceeds, as
in a matter of acknowledged right, to push this predominant quality
into all its consequences, and all its closest affinities. To give one
illustration of such a case, now perhaps beginning to be forgotten:
Somewhere about the year 1755, the once celebrated Dr. Brown, after
other little attempts in literature and paradox, took up the conceit
that England was ruined at her heart's core by excess of luxury and
sensual self-indulgence. He had persuaded himself that the ancient
activities and energies of the country were sapped by long habits
of indolence, and by a morbid plethora of enjoyment in every class.
Courage, and the old fiery spirit of the people, had gone to wreck with
the physical qualities which had sustained them. Even the faults of
the public mind had given way under its new complexion of character;
ambition and civil dissension were extinct. It was questionable whether
a good hearty assault and battery, or a respectable knock-down blow, had
been dealt by any man in London for one or two generations. The doctor
carried his reveries so far, that he even satisfied himself and one or
two friends (probably by looking into the parks at hours propitious to
his hypothesis) that horses were seldom or ever used for riding; that,
in fact, this accomplishment was too boisterous or too perilous for the
gentle propensities of modern Britons; and that, by the best accounts,
few men of rank or fashion were now seen on horseback. This pleasant
collection of dreams did Doctor Brown solemnly propound to the English
public, in two octavo volumes, under the title of "An Estimate of the
Manners and Principles of the Times;" and the report of many who
lived in those days assures us that for a brief period the book had a
prodigious run. In some respects the doctor's conceits might seem too
startling and extravagant; but, to balance _that_, every nation has
some pleasure in being heartily abused by one of its own number; and the
English nation has always had a special delight in being alarmed, and in
being clearly convinced that it is and ought to be on the brink of ruin.
With such advantages in the worthy doctor's favor, he might have kept
the field until some newer extravaganza had made his own obsolete, had
not one ugly turn in political affairs given so smashing a refutation
to his practical conclusions, and called forth so sudden a rebound
of public feeling in the very opposite direction, that a bomb-shell
descending right through the whole impression of his book could not more
summarily have laid a chancery "injunction" upon its further sale. This
arose under the brilliant administration of the first Mr. Pitt: England
was suddenly victorious in three quarters of the globe; land and sea
echoed to the voice of her triumphs; and the poor Doctor Brown, in the
midst of all this hubbub, cut his own throat with his own razor. Whether
this dismal catastrophe were exactly due to his mortification as a
baffled visionary, whose favorite conceit had suddenly exploded like a
rocket into smoke and stench, is more than we know. But, at all events,
the sole memorial of his hypothesis which now reminds the English reader
that it ever existed is one solitary notice of good-humored satire
pointed at it by Cowper. [Footnote: "The Inestimable Estimate of
Brown."] And the possibility of such exceeding folly in a man otherwise
of good sense and judgment, not depraved by any brain-fever or
enthusiastic infatuation, is to be found in the vicious process of
reasoning applied to such estimates; the doctor, having taken up
one novel idea of the national character, proceeded afterwards by no
tentative inquiries, or comparison with actual facts and phenomena of
daily experience, but resolutely developed out of his one idea all that
it appeared analytically to involve; and postulated audaciously as a
solemn fact whatsoever could be exhibited in any possible connection
with his one central principle, whether in the way of consequence or of
affinity.

Pretty much upon this unhappy Brunonian mode of deducing our national
character, it is a very plausible speculation, which has been and will
again be chanted, that we, being a luxurious nation, must by force
of good logical dependency be liable to many derivative taints and
infirmities which ought of necessity to besiege the blood of nations in
that predicament. All enterprise and spirit of adventure, all heroism
and courting of danger for its own attractions, ought naturally
to languish in a generation enervated by early habits of personal
indulgence. Doubtless they _ought; a priori_, it seems strictly
demonstrable that such consequences should follow. Upon the purest forms
of inference in _Barbara_ or _Celarent_, it can be shown satisfactorily
that from all our tainted classes, _a fortiori_ then from our most
tainted classes--our men of fashion and of opulent fortunes--no
description of animal can possibly arise but poltroons and _fainéans_.
In fact, pretty generally, under the known circumstances of our modern
English education and of our social habits, we ought, in obedience to
all the _precognita_ of our position, to show ourselves rank cowards;
yet, in spite of so much excellent logic, the facts are otherwise. No
age has shown in its young patricians a more heroic disdain of sedentary
ease; none in a martial support of liberty or national independence has
so gayly volunteered upon services the most desperate, or shrunk less
from martyrdom on the field of battle, whenever there was hope to
invite their disinterested exertions, or grandeur enough in the cause to
sustain them. Which of us forgets the gallant Mellish, the frank and
the generous, who reconciled himself so gayly to the loss of a splendid
fortune, and from the very bosom of luxury suddenly precipitated himself
upon the hardships of Peninsular warfare? Which of us forgets the
adventurous Lee of Lime, whom a princely estate could not detain
in early youth from courting perils in Nubia and Abyssinia, nor
(immediately upon his return) from almost wooing death as a volunteer
aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo? So again of Colonel
Evans, who, after losing a fine estate long held out to his hopes, five
times over put himself at the head of _forlorn hopes_. Such cases are
memorable, and were conspicuous at the time, from the lustre of wealth
and high connections which surrounded the parties; but many thousand
others, in which the sacrifices of personal ease were less noticeable
from their narrower scale of splendor, had equal merit for the
cheerfulness with which those sacrifices were made. [Footnote: History
of the Greek Revolution, by Thomas Gordon.] Here, again, in the
person of the author before us, we have another instance of noble and
disinterested heroism, which, from the magnitude of the sacrifices that
it involved, must place him in the same class as the Mellishes and the
Lees. This gallant Scotsman, who was born in 1788, or 1789, lost
his father in early life. Inheriting from him a good estate in
Aberdeenshire, and one more considerable in Jamaica, he found himself,
at the close of a long minority, in the possession of a commanding
fortune. Under the vigilant care of a sagacious mother, Mr. Gordon
received the very amplest advantages of a finished education, studying
first at the University of Aberdeen, and afterwards for two years at
Oxford; whilst he had previously enjoyed as a boy the benefits of a
private tutor from Oxford. Whatever might be the immediate result from
this careful tuition, Mr. Gordon has since completed his own education
in the most comprehensive manner, and has carried his accomplishments as
a linguist to a point of rare excellence. Sweden and Portugal excepted,
we understand that he has personally visited every country in Europe.
He has travelled also in Asiatic Turkey, in Persia, and in Barbary. From
this personal residence in foreign countries, we understand that Mr.
Gordon has obtained an absolute mastery over certain modern languages,
especially the French, the Italian, the modern Greek, and the
Turkish.[Footnote: Mr. Gordon is privately known to be the translator of
the work written by a Turkish minister, "_Tchebi Effendi_" published in
the Appendix to Wilkinson's Wallachia, and frequently referred to by
the _Quarterly Review_ in its notices of Oriental affairs.] Not content,
however, with this extensive education in a literary sense, Mr. Gordon
thought proper to prepare himself for the part which he meditated
in public life, by a second, or military education, in two separate
services;--first, in the British, where he served in the Greys, and in
the forty-third regiment; and subsequently, during the campaign of 1813,
as a captain on the Russian staff.

Thus brilliantly accomplished for conferring lustre and benefit upon any
cause which he might adopt amongst the many revolutionary movements then
continually emerging in Southern Europe, he finally carried the whole
weight of his great talents, prudence, and energy, together with the
unlimited command of his purse, to the service of Greece in her heroic
struggle with the Sultan. At what point his services and his countenance
were appreciated by the ruling persons in Greece, will be best collected
from the accompanying letter, translated from the original, in modern
Greek, addressed to him by the provisional government of Greece, in
1822. It will be seen that this official document notices with great
sorrow Mr. Gordon's absence from Greece, and with some surprise, as a
fact at that time unexplained and mysterious; but the simple explanation
of this mystery was, that Mr. Gordon had been brought to the very brink
of the grave by a contagious fever, at Tripolizza, and that his native
air was found essential to his restoration. Subsequently, however, he
returned, and rendered the most powerful services to Greece, until the
war was brought to a close, as much almost by Turkish exhaustion, as by
the armed interference of the three great conquerors of Navarino.

"The government of Greece to the SIGNOR GORDON, a man worthy of all
admiration, and a friend of the Grecians, health and prosperity.

"It was not possible, most excellent sir, nor was it a thing endurable
to the descendants of the Grecians, that they should be deprived any
longer of those imprescriptible rights which belong to the inheritance
of their birth--rights which a barbarian of a foreign soil, an
anti-christian tyrant, issuing from the depths of Asia, seized upon with
a robber's hand, and, lawlessly trampling under foot, administered up to
this time the affairs of Greece, after his own lust and will. Needs it
was that we, sooner or later, shattering this iron and heavy sceptre,
should recover, at the price of life itself (if _that_ were found
necessary), our patrimonial heritage, that thus our people might again
be gathered to the family of free and self-legislating states. Moving,
then, under such impulses, the people of Greece advanced with one heart,
and perfect unanimity of council, against an oppressive despotism,
putting their hands to an enterprise beset with difficulties, and hard
indeed to be achieved, yet, in our present circumstances, if any one
thing in this life, most indispensable. This, then, is the second
year which we are passing since we have begun to move in this glorious
contest, once again struggling, to all appearance, upon unequal terms,
but grasping our enterprise with the right hand and the left, and with
all our might stretching forward to the objects before us.

"It was the hope of Greece that, in these seasons of emergency, she
would not fail of help and earnest resort of friends from the Christian
nations throughout Europe. For it was agreeable neither to humanity nor
to piety, that the rights of nations, liable to no grudges of malice
or scruples of jealousy, should be surreptitiously and wickedly filched
away, or mocked with outrage and insult; but that they should be settled
firmly on those foundations which Nature herself has furnished in
abundance to the condition of man in society. However, so it was, that
Greece, cherishing these most reasonable expectations, met with most
unmerited disappointments.

"But you, noble and generous Englishman, no sooner heard the trumpet of
popular rights echoing melodiously from the summits of Taygetus, of
Ida, of Pindus, and of Olympus, than, turning with listening ears to
the sound, and immediately renouncing the delights of country, of family
ties, and (what is above all) of domestic luxury and ease, and the
happiness of your own fireside, you hurried to our assistance. But
suddenly, and in contradiction to the universal hope of Greece, by
leaving us, you have thrown us all into great perplexity and amazement,
and that at a crisis when some were applying their minds to military
pursuits, some to the establishment of a civil administration, others
to other objects, but all alike were hurrying and exerting themselves
wherever circumstances seemed to invite them.

"Meantime, the government of Greece having heard many idle rumors
and unauthorized tales disseminated, but such as seemed neither in
correspondence with their opinion of your own native nobility from
rank and family, nor with what was due to the newly-instituted
administration, have slighted and turned a deaf ear to them all, coming
to this resolution--that, in absenting yourself from Greece, you are
doubtless obeying some strong necessity; for that it is not possible
nor credible of a man such as you displayed yourself to be whilst living
amongst us, that he should mean to insult the wretched--least of all,
to insult the unhappy and much-suffering people of Greece. Under these
circumstances, both the deliberative and the executive bodies of the
Grecian government, assembling separately, have come to a resolution,
without one dissentient voice, to invite you back to Greece, in order
that you may again take a share in the Grecian contest--a contest in
itself glorious, and not alien from your character and pursuits. For the
liberty of any one nation cannot be a matter altogether indifferent
to the rest, but naturally it is a common and diffusive interest; and
nothing can be more reasonable than that the Englishman and the Grecian,
in such a cause, should make themselves yoke-fellows, and should
participate as brothers in so holy a struggle. Therefore, the Grecian
government hastens, by this present distinguished expression of its
regard, to invite you to the soil of Greece, a soil united by such
tender memorials with yourself; confident that you, preferring glorious
poverty and the hard living of Greece to the luxury and indolence of an
obscure seclusion, will hasten your return to Greece, agreeably to
your native character, restoring to us our valued English connection.
Farewell!

"The Vice-president of the Executive,

"ATHANASIUS KANAKARES.

"The Chief-Secretary, Minister of Foreign Relations, NEGENZZ."

Since then, having in 1817 connected himself in marriage with a
beautiful young lady of Armenian Greek extraction, and having purchased
land and built a house in Argos, Mr. Gordon may be considered in some
sense as a Grecian citizen. Services in the field having now for some
years been no longer called for, he has exchanged his patriotic sword
for a patriotic pen--judging rightly that in no way so effectually
can Greece be served at this time with Western Europe, as by recording
faithfully the course of her revolution, tracing the difficulties which
lay or which arose in her path, the heroism with which she surmounted
them, and the multiplied errors by which she raised up others to
herself. Mr. Gordon, of forty authors who have partially treated
this theme, is the first who can be considered either impartial or
comprehensive; and upon his authority, not seldom using his words, we
shall now present to our readers the first continuous abstract of this
most interesting and romantic war:

GREECE, in the largest extent of that term, having once belonged to the
Byzantine empire, is included, by the misconception of hasty readers,
in the great wreck of 1453. They take it for granted that, concurrently
with Constantinople, and the districts adjacent, these provinces passed
at that disastrous era into the hands of the Turkish conqueror; but
this is an error. Parts of Greece, previously to that era, had been
dismembered from the Eastern empire;--other parts did not, until long
_after_ it, share a common fate with the metropolis. Venice had a
deep interest in the Morea; _in_ that, and _for_ that, she fought with
various success for generations; and it was not until the year 1717,
nearly three centuries from the establishment of the crescent in Europe,
that "the banner of St. Mark, driven finally from the Morea and the
Archipelago," was henceforth exiled (as respected Greece) to the Ionian
Islands.

In these contests, though Greece was the prize at issue, the children
of Greece had no natural interest, whether the cross prevailed or the
crescent; the same, for all substantial results, was the fate which
awaited themselves. The Moslem might be the more intolerant by his
maxims, and he might be harsher in his professions; but a slave is not
the less a slave, though his master should happen to hold the same creed
with himself; and towards a member of the Greek church one who looked
westward to Rome for his religion was likely to be little less of a
bigot than one who looked to Mecca. So that we are not surprised to find
a Venetian rule of policy recommending, for the daily allowance of these
Grecian slaves, "a _little_ bread, and a liberal application of the
cudgel"! Whichever yoke were established was sure to be hated; and,
therefore, it was fortunate for the honor of the Christian name, that
from the year 1717 the fears and the enmity of the Greeks were to be
henceforward pointed exclusively towards _Mahometan_ tyrants.

To be hated, however, sufficiently for resistance, a yoke must have been
long and continuously felt. Fifty years might be necessary to season
the Greeks with a knowledge of Turkish oppression; and less than two
generations could hardly be supposed to have manured the whole territory
with an adequate sense of the wrongs they were enduring, and the
withering effects of such wrongs on the sources of public prosperity.
Hatred, besides, without hope, is no root out of which an effective
resistance can be expected to grow; and fifty years almost had elapsed
before a great power had arisen in Europe, having in any capital
circumstance a joint interest with Greece, or specially authorized, by
visible right and power, to interfere as her protector. The semi-Asiatic
power of Russia, from the era of the Czar Peter the Great, had arisen
above the horizon with the sudden sweep and splendor of a meteor. The
arch described by her ascent was as vast in compass as it was rapid;
and, in all history, no political growth, not that of our own Indian
empire, had travelled by accelerations of speed so terrifically marked.
Not that even Russia could have really grown in strength according to
the _apparent_ scale of her progress. The strength was doubtless there,
or much of it, before Peter and Catherine; but it was latent: there
had been no such sudden growth as people fancied; but there had been a
sudden evolution. Infinite resources had been silently accumulating from
century to century; but, before the Czar Peter, no mind had come across
them of power sufficient to reveal their situation, or to organize them
for practical effects. In some nations, the manifestations of power are
coincident with its growth; in others, from vicious institutions, a vast
crystallization goes on for ages blindly and in silence, which the lamp
of some meteoric mind is required to light up into brilliant display.
Thus it had been in Russia; and hence, to the abused judgment of all
Christendom, she had seemed to leap like Pallas from the brain of
Jupiter--gorgeously endowed, and in panoply of civil array, for all
purposes of national grandeur, at the _fiat_ of one coarse barbarian.
As the metropolitan home of the Greek church, she could not disown a
maternal interest in the humblest of the Grecian tribes, holding the
same faith with herself, and celebrating their worship by the same
rites. This interest she could, at length, venture to express in a tone
of sufficient emphasis; and Greece became aware that she could, about
the very time when Turkish oppression had begun to unite its victims in
aspirations for redemption, and had turned their eyes abroad in search
of some great standard under whose shadow they could flock for momentary
protection, or for future hope. What cabals were reared upon this
condition of things by Russia, and what premature dreams of independence
were encouraged throughout Greece in the reign of Catherine II., may be
seen amply developed, in the once celebrated work of Mr. William Eton.

Another great circumstance of hope for Greece, coinciding with the dawn
of her own earliest impetus in this direction, and travelling _puri
passu_ almost with the growth of her mightiest friend, was the advancing
decay of her oppressor. The wane of the Turkish crescent had seemed to
be in some secret connection of fatal sympathy with the growth of the
Russian cross. Perhaps the reader will thank us for rehearsing the main
steps by which the Ottoman power had flowed and ebbed. The foundations
of this empire were laid in the thirteenth century, by Ortogrul, the
chief of a Turkoman tribe, residing in tents not far from Dorylæum, in
Phrygia (a name so memorable in the early crusades), about the time
when Jenghiz had overthrown the Seljukian dynasty. His son Osman first
assumed the title of Sultan; and, in 1300, having reduced the city of
Prusa, in Bithynia, he made it the capital of his dominions. The Sultans
who succeeded him for some generations, all men of vigor, and availing
themselves not less of the decrepitude which had by that time begun
to palsy the Byzantine sceptre, than of the martial and religious
fanaticism which distinguished their own followers, crossed the
Hellespont, conquering Thrace and the countries up to the Danube.
In 1453, the most eminent of these Sultans, Mahomet II., by storming
Constantinople, put an end to the Roman empire; and before his death he
placed the Ottoman power in Europe pretty nearly on that basis to which
it had again fallen back by 1821. The long interval of time between
these two dates involved a memorable flux and reflux of power, and an
oscillation between two extremes of panic-striking grandeur, in the
ascending scale (insomuch that the Turkish Sultan was supposed to
be charged in the Apocalypse with the dissolution of the Christian
thrones), and in the descending scale of paralytic dotage tempting its
own instant ruin. In speculating on the causes of the extraordinary
terror which the Turks once inspired, it is amusing, and illustrative of
the revolutions worked by time, to find it imputed, in the first place,
to superior discipline; for, if their discipline was imperfect, they
had, however, a _standing_ army of Janissaries, whilst the whole of
Christian Europe was accustomed to fight merely summer campaigns
with hasty and untrained levies; a second cause lay in their superior
finances, for the Porte had a regular revenue, when the other powers of
Europe relied upon the bounty of their vassals and clergy; and, thirdly,
which is the most surprising feature of the whole statement, the Turks
were so far ahead of others in the race of improvement, that to
them belongs the credit of having first adopted the extensive use
of gunpowder, and of having first brought battering-trains against
fortified places. To his artillery and his musketry it was that Selim
the Ferocious (grandson of that Sultan who took Constantinople) was
indebted for his victories in Syria and Egypt. Under Solyman the
Magnificent (the well-known contemporary of the Emperor Charles Y.) the
crescent is supposed to have attained its utmost altitude; and already
for fifty years the causes had been in silent progress which were to
throw the preponderance into the Christian scale. In the reign of his
son, Selim the Second, this crisis was already passed; and the battle
of Lepanto, in 1571, which crippled the Turkish navy in a degree never
wholly recovered, gave the first overt signal to Europe of a turn in the
course of their prosperity. Still, as this blow did not equally affect
the principal arm of their military service, and as the strength of
the German empire was too much distracted by Christian rivalship, the
_prestige_ of the Turkish name continued almost unbroken until their
bloody overthrow in 1664, at St. Gothard, by the imperial General
Montecuculi. In 1673 they received another memorable defeat from
Sobieski, on which occasion they lost twenty-five thousand men. In
what degree, however, the Turkish Samson had been shorn of his original
strength, was not yet made known to Europe by any adequate expression,
before the great catastrophe of 1683. In that year, at the instigation
of the haughty vizier, Kara Mustafa, the Turks had undertaken the siege
of Vienna; and great was the alarm of the Christian world. But, on the
12th of September, their army of one hundred and fifty thousand men
was totally dispersed by seventy thousand Poles and Germans, under John
Sobieski--"He conquering _through_ God, and God by him." [Footnote: See
the sublime Sonnet of Chiabrora on this subject, as translated by Mr.
Wordsworth.] Then followed the treaty of Carlovitz, which stripped the
Porte of Hungary, the Ukraine, and other places; and "henceforth" says
Mr. Gordon, "Europe ceased to dread the Turks; and began even to look
upon their existence as a necessary element of the balance of power
among its states." Spite of their losses, however, during the first
half of the eighteenth century, the Turks still maintained a respectable
attitude against Christendom. But the wars of the Empress Catherine II.,
and the French invasion of Egypt, demonstrated that either their
native vigor was exhausted and superannuated, or, at least, that the
institutions were superannuated by which their resources had been so
long administered. Accordingly, at the commencement of the present
century, the Sultan Selim II. endeavored to reform the military
discipline; but in the first collision with the prejudices of his
people, and the interest of the Janissaries, he perished by sedition.
Mustafa, who succeeded to the throne, in a few months met the same
fate. But then (1808) succeeded a prince formed by nature for such
struggles,--cool, vigorous, cruel, and intrepid. This was Mahmoud the
Second. He perfectly understood the crisis, and determined to pursue the
plans of his uncle Selim, even at the hazard of the same fate. Why was
it that Turkish soldiers had been made ridiculous in arms, as often as
they had met with French troops, who yet were so far from being the
best in Christendom, that Egypt herself, and the beaten Turks, had seen
_them_ in turn uniformly routed by the British? Physically, the
Turks were equal, at the very least, to the French. In what lay their
inferiority? Simply in discipline, and in their artillery. And so long
as their constitution and discipline continued what they had been,
suited (that is) to centuries long past and gone, and to a condition
of Christendom obsolete for ages, so long it seemed inevitable that the
same disasters should follow the Turkish banners. And to this point,
accordingly, the Sultan determined to address his earliest reforms.
But caution was necessary; he waited and watched. He seized all
opportunities of profiting by the calamities or the embarrassments
of his potent neighbors. He put down all open revolt. He sapped the
authority of all the great families in Asia Minor, whose hereditary
influence could be a counterpoise to his own. Mecca and Medina, the
holy cities of his religion, he brought again within the pale of his
dominions. He augmented and fostered, as a counterbalancing force to
the Janissaries, the corps of the Topjees or artillery-men. He amassed
preparatory treasures. And, up to the year 1820, "his government,"
says Mr. Gordon, "was highly unpopular; but it was strong, stern, and
uniform; and he had certainly removed many impediments to the execution
of his ulterior projects."

Such was the situation of Turkey at the moment when her Grecian vassal
prepared to trample on her yoke. In her European territories she
reckoned, at the utmost, eight millions of subjects. But these, besides
being more or less in a semi-barbarous condition, and scattered over
a very wide surface of country, were so much divided by origin, by
language, and religion, that, without the support of her Asiatic arm,
she could not, according to the general opinion, have stood at all. The
rapidity of her descent, it is true, had been arrested by the energy of
her Sultans during the first twenty years of the nineteenth century. But
for the last thirty of the eighteenth she had made a headlong progress
downwards. So utterly, also, were the tables turned, that, whereas in
the fifteenth century her chief superiority over Christendom had been in
the three points of artillery, discipline, and fixed revenue, precisely
in these three she had sunk into utter insignificance, whilst all
Christendom had been continually improving. Selim and Mahmoud indeed had
made effectual reforms in the corps of gunners, as we have said, and had
raised it to the amount of sixty thousand men; so that at present they
have respectable field-artillery, whereas previously they had only heavy
battering-trains. But the defects in discipline cannot be remedied, so
long as the want of a settled revenue obliges the Sultan to rely upon
hurried levies from the provincial militias of police. Turkey, however,
might be looked upon as still formidable for internal purposes, in the
haughty and fanatical character of her Moslem subjects. And we may add,
as a concluding circumstance of some interest, in this sketch of her
modern condition, that pretty nearly the same European territories as
were assigned to the eastern Roman empire at the time of its separation
from the western, [Footnote: "The vitals of the monarchy lay within
that vast triangle circumscribed by the Danube, the Save, the Adriatic,
Euxine, and Egean Seas, whose altitude may be computed at five
hundred, and the length of its base at seven hundred geographical
miles."--GORDON. ] were included within the frontier line of Turkey, on
the first of January, 1821.

Precisely in this year commenced the Grecian revolution. Concurrently
with the decay of her oppressor the Sultan, had been the prodigious
growth of her patron the Czar. In what degree she looked up to that
throne, and the intrigues which had been pursued with a view to that
connection, may be seen (as we have already noticed) in Eton's Turkey--a
book which attracted a great deal of notice about thirty years ago.
Meantime, besides this secret reliance on Russian countenance or aid,
Greece had since that era received great encouragement to revolt from
the successful experiment in that direction made by the Turkish province
of Servia. In 1800, Czerni George came forward as the asserter of
Servian independence, and drove the Ottomans out of that province.
_Personally_ he was not finally successful. But his example outlived
him; and, after fifteen years' struggle, Servia (says Mr. Gordon)
offered "the unwonted spectacle of a brave and armed Christian nation
living under its own laws in the heart of Turkey," and retaining no
memorial of its former servitude, but the payment of a slender and
precarious tribute to the Sultan, with a _verbal_ profession of
allegiance to his sceptre. Appearances were thus saved to the pride of
the haughty Moslem by barren concessions which cost no real sacrifice to
the substantially victorious Servian.

Examples, however, are thrown away upon a people utterly degraded by
long oppression. And the Greeks were pretty nearly in that condition.
"It would, no doubt," says Mr. Gordon, "be possible to cite a more
_cruel_ oppression than that of the Turks towards their Christian
subjects, but none _so fitted to break men's spirit_." The Greeks, in
fact (under which name are to be understood, not only those who speak
Greek, but the Christian Albanians of Roumelia and the Morea, speaking a
different language, but united with the Greeks in spiritual obedience
to the same church), were, in the emphatic phrase of Mr. Gordon, "the
slaves of slaves:" that is to say, not only were they liable to the
universal tyranny of the despotic Divan, but "throughout the empire
they were in the habitual intercourse of life subjected to vexations,
affronts, and exactions, from Mahometans of every rank. Spoiled of their
goods, insulted in their religion and domestic honor, they could rarely
obtain justice. The slightest flash of courageous resentment brought
down swift destruction on their heads; and cringing humility alone
enabled them to live in ease, or even in safety." Stooping under this
iron yoke of humiliation, we have reason to wonder that the Greeks
preserved sufficient nobility of mind to raise so much as their wishes
in the direction of independence. In a condition of abasement, from
which a simple act of apostasy was at once sufficient to raise them to
honor and wealth, "and from the meanest serfs gathered them to the caste
of oppressors," we ought not to wonder that some of the Greeks should
be mean, perfidious, and dissembling, but rather that any (as Mr. Gordon
says) "had courage to adhere to their religion, and to eat the bread
of affliction." But noble aspirations are fortunately indestructible in
human nature. And in Greece the lamp of independence of spirit had been
partially kept alive by the existence of a native militia, to whom
the Ottoman government, out of mere necessity, had committed the local
defence. These were called _Armatoles_ (or Gendarmerie); their available
strength was reckoned by Pouqueville (for the year 1814) at ten thousand
men; and, as they were a very effectual little host for maintaining,
from age to age, the "true faith militant" of Greece, namely, that a
temporary and a disturbed occupation of the best lands in the country
did not constitute an absolute conquest on the part of the Moslems,
most of whom flocked for security with their families into the stronger
towns; and, as their own martial appearance, with arms in their hands,
lent a very plausible countenance to their insinuations that they, the
Christian Armatoles, were the true _bona fide_ governors and possessors
of the land under a Moslem Suzerain; and, as the general spirit of
hatred to Turkish insolence was not merely maintained in their own local
stations, [Footnote: Originally, it seems, there were fourteen companies
(or _capitanerias_) settled by imperial diplomas in the mountains of
Olympus, Othryx, Pindus, and Œta; and distinct appropriations were made
by the Divan for their support. _Within_ the Morea, the institution of
the Armatoles was never tolerated; but there the same spirit was kept
alive by tribes, such as the Mainatts, whose insurmountable advantages
of natural position enabled them eternally to baffle the most powerful
enemy.] but also propagated thence with activity to every part of
Greece;--it may be interesting to hear Mr. Gordon's account of their
peculiar composition and habits.

"The Turks," says he, "from the epoch of Mahommed the Second, did not
(unless in Thessaly) generally settle there. Beyond Mount Œta, although
they seized the best lands, the Mussulman inhabitants were chiefly
composed of the garrisons of towns with their families. Finding it
impossible to keep in subjection with a small force so many rugged
cantons, peopled by a poor and hardy race, and to hold in check the
robbers of Albania, the Sultans embraced the same policy which has
induced them to court the Greek hierarchy, and respect ecclesiastical
property,--by enlisting in their service the armed bands that they could
not destroy. When wronged or insulted, these Armatoles threw off their
allegiance, infested the roads, and pillaged the country; while such
of the peasants as were driven to despair by acts of oppression joined
their standard; the term Armatole was then exchanged for that of
Klefthis [_Kleptæs_] or Thief, a profession esteemed highly honorable,
when it was exercised sword in hand at the expense of the Moslems.
[Footnote: And apparently, we may add, when exercised at the expense of
whomsoever at sea. The old Grecian instinct, which Thucydides states so
frankly, under which all seafarers were dedicated to spoil as people
who courted attack, seems never to have been fully rooted out from the
little creeks and naval fastnesses of the Morea, and of some of the
Egean islands. Not, perhaps, the mere spirit of wrong and aggression,
but some old traditionary conceits and maxims, brought on the great
crisis of piracy, which fell under no less terrors than of the triple
thunders of the great allies.] Even in their quietest mood, these
soldiers curbed Turkish tyranny; for, the captains and Christian
primates of districts understanding each other, the former, by giving
to some of their men a hint to desert and turn Klefts, could easily
circumvent Mahometans who came on a mission disagreeable to the latter.
The habits and manners of the Armatoles, living among forests and in
mountain passes, were necessarily rude and simple: their magnificence
consisted in adorning with silver their guns, pistols, and daggers;
their amusements, in shooting at a mark, dancing, and singing the
exploits of the most celebrated chiefs. Extraordinary activity, and
endurance of hardships and fatigue, made them formidable light troops
in their native fastnesses; wrapped in shaggy cloaks, they slept on the
ground, defying the elements; and the pure mountain air gave them robust
health. Such were the warriors that, in the very worst times, kept alive
a remnant of Grecian spirit."

But all these facts of history, or institutions of policy, nay, even
the more violent appeals to the national pride in such memorable
transactions as the expatriation of the illustrious Suliotes (as also of
some eminent predatory chieftains from the Morea), were, after all, no
more than indirect excitements of the insurrectionary spirit. If it
were possible that any adequate occasion should arise for combining the
Greeks in one great movement of resistance, such continued irritations
must have the highest value, as keeping alive the national spirit, which
must finally be relied on to improve it and to turn it to account; but
it was not to be expected that any such local irritations could ever
of themselves avail to create an occasion of sufficient magnitude for
imposing silence on petty dissensions, and for organizing into any unity
of effort a country so splintered and naturally cut into independent
chambers as that of Greece. That task, transcending the strength (as
might seem) of any real agencies or powers then existing in Greece, was
assumed by a mysterious, [Footnote: Epirus and Acarnania, etc., to
the north-west; Roumelia, Thebes, Attica, to the east; the Morea, or
Peloponnesus, to the south-west; and the islands so widely dispersed in
the Egean, had from position a separate interest over and above their
common interest as members of a Christian confederacy. And in the
absence of some great representative society, there was no voice
commanding enough to merge the local interest in the universal one of
Greece. The original (or _Philomuse_ society), which adopted literature
for its ostensible object, as a mask to its political designs, expired
at Munich in 1807; but not before it had founded a successor more
directly political. Hence arose a confusion, under which many of the
crowned heads in Europe were judged uncharitably as dissemblers or as
traitors to their engagements. They had subscribed to the first society;
but they reasonably held that this did not pledge them to another,
which, though inheriting the secret purposes of the first, no longer
masked or disavowed them.] and, in some sense, a fictitious society of
corresponding members, styling itself the _Hetæria_. A more astonishing
case of mighty effects prepared and carried on to their accomplishment
by small means, magnifying their own extent through great zeal and
infinite concealment, and artifices the most subtle, is not to be
found in history. The _secret tribunal_ of the middle ages is not to be
compared with it for the depth and expansion of its combinations, or for
the impenetrability of its masque. Nor is there in the whole annals of
man a manoeuvre so admirable as that, by which this society, silently
effecting its own transfiguration, and recasting as in a crucible its
own form, organs, and most essential functions, contrived, by mere force
of seasonable silence, or by the very pomp of mystery, to carry
over from the first or innoxious model of the Hetæria, to its new
organization, all those weighty names of kings or princes who would not
have given their sanction to any association having political objects,
however artfully veiled. The early history of the Hetæria is shrouded
in the same mystery as the whole course of its political movements. Some
suppose that Alexander Maurocordato, ex-Hospodar of Wallachia, during
his long exile in Russia, founded it for the promotion of education,
about the beginning of the present century. Others ascribe it originally
to Riga. At all events, its purposes were purely intellectual in its
earliest form. In 1815, in consequence chiefly of the disappointment
which the Greeks met with in their dearest hopes from the Congress of
Vienna, the Hetæria first assumed a political character under the
secret influence of Count Capodistria, of Corfu, who, having entered the
Russian service as mere private secretary to Admiral Tchitchagoff, in
1812, had, in a space of three years, insinuated himself into the favor
of the Czar, so far as to have become his private secretary, and a
cabinet minister of Russia. He, however, still masked his final objects
under plans of literature and scientific improvement. In deep shades
he organized a vast apparatus of agents and apostles; and then retired
behind the curtain to watch or to direct the working of his blind
machine. It is an evidence of some latent nobility in the Greek
character, in the midst of that levity with which all Europe taxes it,
that never, except once, were the secrets of the society betrayed; nor
was there the least ground for jealousy offered either to the stupid
Moslems, in the very centre of whom, and round about them, the
conspiracy was daily advancing, or even to the rigorous police of
Moscow, where the Hetæria had its head-quarters. In the single instance
of treachery which occurred, it happened that the Zantiote, who made the
discovery to Ali Pacha on a motion of revenge, was himself too slenderly
and too vaguely acquainted with the final purposes of the Hetæria for
effectual mischief, having been fortunately admitted only to its lowest
degree of initiation; so that all passed off without injury to the
cause, or even personally to any of its supporters. There were, in fact,
five degrees in the Hetæria. A candidate of the lowest class (styled
_Adelphoi_, or brothers), after a minute examination of his past life
and connections, and after taking a dreadful oath, under impressive
circumstances, to be faithful in all respects to the society and his
afflicted country, and even to assassinate his nearest and dearest
relation, if detected in treachery, was instructed only in the general
fact that a design was on foot to ameliorate the condition of Greece.
The next degree of _Systimenoi_, or bachelors, who were selected with
more anxious discrimination, were informed that this design was to move
towards its object _by means of a revolution_. The third class, called
_Priests of Eleusis_, were chosen from the aristocracy; and to them it
was made known that _this revolution was near at hand_; and, also, that
there were in the society higher ranks than their own. The fourth class
was that of the _prelates_; and to this order, which never exceeded the
number of one hundred and sixteen, and comprehended the leading men
of the nation, the most unreserved information was given upon all the
secrets of the Hetæria; after which they were severally appointed to a
particular district, as superintendent of its interests, and as manager
of the whole correspondence on its concerns with the Grand Arch.
This, the crowning order and key-stone of the society, was reputed to
comprehend sixteen "mysterious and illustrious names," amongst which
were obscurely whispered those of the Czar, the Crown Prince of Bavaria
and of Wurtemburg, of the Hospodar of Wallachia, of Count Capodistria,
and some others. The orders of the Grand Arch were written in cipher,
and bore a seal having in sixteen compartments the same number
of initial letters. The revenue which it commanded must have been
considerable; for the lowest member, on his noviciate, was expected to
give at least fifty piastres (at this time about two pounds sterling);
and those of the higher degrees gave from three hundred to one thousand
each. The members communicated with each other, in mixed society, by
masonic signs.

It cannot be denied that a secret society, with the grand and almost
awful purposes of the Hetæria, spite of some taint which it had received
in its early stages from the spirit of German mummery, is fitted to
fill the imagination, and to command homage from the coldest. Whispers
circulating from mouth to mouth of some vast conspiracy mining
subterraneously beneath the very feet of their accursed oppressors;
whispers of a great deliverer at hand, whose mysterious _Labarum_, or
mighty banner of the Cross, was already dimly descried through northern
mists, and whose eagles were already scenting the carnage and "savor of
death" from innumerable hosts of Moslems; whispers of a revolution which
was again to call, as with the trumpet of resurrection, from the grave,
the land of Timoleon and Epaminondas; such were the preludings, low and
deep, to the tempestuous overture of revolt and patriotic battle which
now ran through every nook of Greece, and caused every ear to tingle.

The knowledge that this mighty cause must be sowed in
dishonor,--propagated, that is, in respect to the knowledge of its
plans, by redoubled cringings to their brutal masters, in order to
shield it from suspicion,--but that it would probably be reaped in
honor; the belief that the poor Grecian, so abject and trampled under
foot, would soon reappear amongst the nations who had a name, in
something of his original beauty and power; these dim but elevating
perceptions, and these anticipations, gave to every man the sense of
an ennobling secret confided to his individual honor, and, at the same
time, thrilled his heart with sympathetic joy, from approaching glories
that were to prove a personal inheritance to his children. Over all
Greece a sense of power, dim and vast, brooded for years; and a mighty
phantom, under the mysterious name of _Arch_, in whose cloudy equipage
were descried, gleaming at intervals, the crowns and sceptres of great
potentates, sustained, whilst it agitated their hearts. _London_ was one
of the secret watchwords in their impenetrable cipher; _Moscow_ was a
countersign; Bavaria and Austria bore mysterious parts in the drama;
and, though no sound was heard, nor voice given to the powers that were
working, yet, as if by mere force of secret sympathy, all mankind who
were worthy to participate in the enterprise seemed to be linked
in brotherhood with Greece. These notions were, much of them, mere
phantasms and delusions; but they were delusions of mighty efficacy for
arming the hearts of this oppressed country against the terrors that
must be faced; and for the whole of them Greece was indebted to
the Hetæria, and to its organized agency of apostles (as they were
technically called), who compassed land and sea as pioneers for the
coming crusade. [Footnote: Considering how very much the contest did
finally assume a religious character (even Franks being attached, not as
friends of Greece, but simply as Christians), one cannot but wonder
that this romantic term has not been applied to the Greek war in Western
Europe.]

By 1820 Greece was thoroughly inoculated with the spirit of resistance;
all things were ready, so far, perhaps, as it was possible that they
should ever be made ready under the eyes and scimitars of the enemy.
Now came the question of time,--_when_ was the revolt to begin? Some
contend, says Mr. Gordon, that the Hetæria should have waited for a
century, by which time they suppose that the growth of means in favor of
Greece would have concurred with a more than corresponding decay in her
enemy. But, to say nothing of the extreme uncertainty which attends such
remote speculation, and the utter impossibility of training men with no
personal hopes to labor for the benefit of distant generations, there
was one political argument against that course, which Mr. Gordon justly
considers unanswerable. It is this: Turkey in Europe has been long
tottering on its basis. Now, were the attempt delayed until Russia had
displaced her and occupied her seat, Greece would then have received her
liberty as a boon from the conqueror; and the construction would have
been that she held it by sufferance, and under a Russian warrant. This
argument is conclusive. But others there were who fancied that 1825 was
the year at which all the preparations for a successful revolt could
have been matured. Probably some gain in such a case would have been
balanced against some loss. But it is not necessary to discuss that
question. Accident, it was clear, might bring on the first hostile
movement at any hour, when the _minds_ of all men were prepared, let the
means in other respects be as deficient as they might. Already, in 1820,
circumstances made it evident that the outbreak of the insurrection
could not long be delayed. And, accordingly, in the following year all
Greece was in flames.

This affair of 1820 has a separate interest of its own, connected with
the character of the very celebrated person to whom it chiefly relates;
but we notice it chiefly as the real occasion, the momentary spark,
which, alighting upon the combustibles, by this time accumulated
everywhere in Greece, caused a general explosion of the long-hoarded
insurrectionary fury. Ali Pacha, the far-famed vizier of Yannina, had
long been hated profoundly by the Sultan, who in the same proportion
loved and admired his treasures. However, he was persuaded to wait for
his death, which could not (as it seemed) be far distant, rather than
risk anything upon the chances of war. And in this prudent resolution he
would have persevered, but for an affront which he could not overlook.
An Albanian, named Ismael Pasho Bey, once a member of Ali's household,
had incurred his master's deadly hatred; and, flying from his wrath to
various places under various disguises, had at length taken refuge
in Constantinople, and there sharpened the malice of Ali by attaching
himself to his enemies. Ali was still further provoked by finding that
Ismael had won the Sultan's favor, and obtained an appointment in the
palace. Mastered by his fury, Ali hired assassins to shoot his enemy in
the very midst of Constantinople, and under the very eyes of imperial
protection. The assassins failed, having only wounded him; they were
arrested, and disclosed the name of their employer.

Here was an insult which could not be forgiven: Ali Pacha was declared
a rebel and a traitor; and solemnly excommunicated by the head of the
Mussulman law. The Pachas of Europe received orders to march against
him; and a squadron was fitted out to attack him by sea.

In March, 1820, Ali became acquainted with these strong measures; which
at first he endeavored to parry by artifice and bribery. But, finding
_that_ mode of proceeding absolutely without hope, he took the bold
resolution of throwing himself, in utter defiance, upon the native
energies of his own ferocious heart. Having, however, but small reliance
on his Mahometan troops in a crisis of this magnitude, he applied for
Christian succors, and set himself to _court_ the Christians generally.
As a first step, he restored the Armatoles--that very body whose
suppression had been so favorite a measure of his policy, and pursued
so long, so earnestly, and so injuriously to his credit amongst the
Christian part of the population. It happened, at the first opening of
the campaign, that the Christians were equally courted by the Sultan's
generalissimo, Solyman, the Pacha of Thessaly. For this, however, that
Pacha was removed and decapitated; and a new leader was now appointed in
the person of that very enemy, Ismael Pasho, whose attempted murder had
brought the present storm upon Ali. Ismael was raised to the rank of
Serasker (or generalissimo), and was also made Pacha of Yannina and
Del vino. Three other armies, besides a fleet under the Captain Bey,
advanced upon Ali's territories simultaneously from different quarters.
But at that time, in defiance of these formidable and overwhelming
preparations, bets were strongly in Ali's favor amongst all who were
acquainted with his resources: for he had vast treasures, fortresses of
great strength, inexhaustible supplies of artillery and ammunition, a
country almost inaccessible, and fifteen thousand light troops, whom Mr.
Gordon, upon personal knowledge, pronounces "excellent."

Scarcely had the war commenced, when Ali was abandoned by almost the
whole of his partisans, in mere hatred of his execrable cruelty and
tyrannical government. To Ali, however, this defection brought no
despondency; and with unabated courage he prepared to defend himself to
the last, in three castles, with a garrison of three thousand men.
That he might do so with entire effect, he began by destroying his own
capital of Yannina, lest it should afford shelter to the enemy. Still
his situation would have been most critical, but for the state of
affairs in the enemy's camp. The Serasker was attended by more than
twenty other Pashas. But they were all at enmity with each other. One
of them, and the bravest, was even poisoned by the Serasker. Provisions
were running short, in consequence of their own dissensions. Winter was
fast approaching; the cannonading had produced no conspicuous effect;
and the soldiers were disbanding. In this situation, the Sultan's
lieutenants again saw the necessity of courting aid from the Christian
population of the country. Ali, on his part, never scrupled to bid
against them at any price; and at length, irritated by the ill-usage
of the Turks on their first entrance, and disgusted with the obvious
insincerity of their reluctant and momentary kindness, some of the
bravest Christian tribes (especially the celebrated Suliotes) consented
to take Ali's bribes, forgot his past outrages and unnumbered perfidies,
and, reading his sincerity in the extremity of his peril, these bravest
of the brave ranged themselves amongst the Sultan's enemies. During the
winter they gained some splendid successes; other alienated friends came
back to Ali; and even some Mahometan Beys were persuaded to take up
arms in his behalf. Upon the whole, the Turkish Divan was very seriously
alarmed; and so much so, that it superseded the Serasker Ismael,
replacing him with the famous Kourshid Pacha, at that time viceroy of
the Morea. And so ended the year 1820.

This state of affairs could not escape the attention of the vigilant
Hetæria. Here was Ali Pacha, hitherto regarded as an insurmountable
obstacle in their path, absolutely compelled by circumstances to be
their warmest friend. The Turks again, whom no circumstances could
entirely disarm, were yet crippled for the time, and their whole
attention preoccupied by another enemy, most alarming to their policy,
and most tempting to their cupidity. Such an opportunity it seemed
unpardonable to neglect. Accordingly, it was resolved to begin the
insurrection. At its head was placed Prince Alexander Ypsilanti, a son
of that Hospodar of Wallachia whose deposition by the Porte had produced
the Russian war of 1806. This prince's qualifications consisted in his
high birth, in his connection with Russia (for he had risen to the rank
of major-general in that service), and, finally (if such things can
deserve a mention), in an agreeable person and manners. For all other
and higher qualifications he was wholly below the situation and the
urgency of the crisis. His first error was in the choice of his ground.
For some reasons, which are not sufficiently explained,--possibly on
account of his family connection with those provinces,--he chose to open
the war in Moldavia and Wallachia. This resolution he took in spite
of every warning, and the most intelligent expositions of the absolute
necessity that, to be at all effectual, the first stand should be made
in Greece. He thought otherwise; and, managing the campaign after his
own ideas, he speedily involved himself in quarrels, and his
army, through the perfidy of a considerable officer, in ruinous
embarrassments. This unhappy campaign is circumstantially narrated by
Mr. Gordon in his first book; but, as it never crossed the Danube, and
had no connection with Greece except by its purposes, we shall simply
rehearse the great outline of its course. The signal for insurrection
was given in January, 1821; and Prince Ypsilanti took the field, by
crossing the Pruth in March. Early in April he received a communication
from the Emperor of Russia, which at once prostrated his hopes before
an enemy was seen. He was formally disavowed by that prince, erased
from his army-list, and severely reproached for his "_folly and
ingratitude_," in letters from two members of the Russian cabinet;
and on the 9th of April this fact was publicly notified in Yassy, the
capital of Moldavia, by the Russian consul-general. His army at this
time consisted of three thousand men, which, however, was afterwards
reinforced, but with no gunpowder except what was casually intercepted,
and no lead except some that had been stripped from the roof of an
ancient cathedral. On the 12th of May the Pacha of Ibrail opened the
campaign. A few days after, the Turkish troops began to appear in
considerable force; and on the 8th of June an alarm was suddenly
given "that the white turbans were upon them." In the engagement which
followed, the insurgent army gave way; and, though their loss was much
smaller than that of the Turks, yet, from the many blunders committed,
the consequences were disastrous; and, had the Turks pursued, there
would on that day have been an end of the insurrection. But far worse
and more decisive was the subsequent disaster of the 17th. Ypsilanti had
been again reinforced; and his advanced guard had surprised a Turkish
detachment of cavalry in such a situation that their escape seemed
impossible. Yet all was ruined by one officer of rank, who got drunk,
and advanced with an air of bravado--followed, on a principle of honor,
by a sacred battalion [_hieros lochos_], composed of five hundred Greek
volunteers, of birth and education, the very _élite_ of the insurgent
infantry. The Turks gave themselves up for lost; but, happening to
observe that this drunkard seemed unsupported by other parts of the
army, they suddenly mounted, came down upon the noble young volunteers
before they could even form in square; and nearly the whole, disdaining
to fly, were cut to pieces on the ground. An officer of rank, and
a brave man, appalled by this hideous disaster, the affair of a few
moments, rode up to the spot, and did all he could to repair it. But
the cowardly drunkard had fled at the first onset, with all his Arnauts;
panic spread rapidly; and the whole force of five thousand men fled
before eight hundred Turks, leaving four hundred men dead on the field,
of whom three hundred and fifty belonged to the sacred battalion.

The Turks, occupied with gathering a trophy of heads, neglected to
pursue. But the work was done. The defeated advance fell back upon the
main body; and that same night the whole army, panic-struck, ashamed,
and bewildered, commenced a precipitate retreat. From this moment Prince
Ypsilanti thought only of saving himself. This purpose he effected in a
few days, by retreating into Austria, from which territory he issued
his final order of the day, taxing his army, in violent and unmeasured
terms, with cowardice and disobedience. This was in a limited sense
true; many distinctions, however, were called for in mere justice; and
the capital defects, after all, were in himself. His plan was originally
bad; and, had it been better, he was quite unequal to the execution
of it. The results were unfortunate to all concerned in it. Ypsilanti
himself was arrested by Austria, and thrown into the unwholesome
prison of Mongatz, where, after languishing for six years, he perished
miserably. Some of the subordinate officers prolonged the struggle in
a guerilla style for some little time; but all were finally suppressed.
Many were put to death; many escaped into neutral ground; and it is
gratifying to add, that of two traitors amongst the higher officers,
one was detected and despatched in a summary way of vengeance by his own
associates; the other, for some unexplained reason, was beheaded by his
Turkish friends at the very moment when he had put himself into their
power, in fearless obedience to their own summons to _come and receive
his well-merited reward_, and under an express assurance from the
Pacha of Silistria that he was impatiently waiting to invest him with a
pelisse of honor. Such faith is kept with traitors; such faith be ever
kept with the betrayers of nations and their holiest hopes! Though in
this instance the particular motives of the Porte are still buried in
mystery.

Thus terminated the first rash enterprise, which resulted from the too
tempting invitation held out in the rebellion then agitating Epirus,
locking up, as it did, and neutralizing, so large a part of the
disposable Turkish forces. To this we return. Kourshid Pacha quitted the
Morea with a large body of troops, in the first days of January, 1821,
and took the command of the army already before Yannina. But, with all
his great numerical superiority to the enemy with whom he contended, and
now enjoying undisturbed union in his own camp, he found it impossible
to make his advances rapidly. Though in hostility to the Porte, and
though now connected with Christian allies, Ali Pacha was yet nominally
a Mahometan. Hence it had been found impossible as yet to give any color
of an anti-Christian character to the war; and the native Mahometan
chieftains had therefore no scruple in coalescing with the Christians of
Epirus, and making joint cause with Ali. Gradually, from the inevitable
vexations incident to the march and residence of a large army, the whole
population became hostile to Kourshid; and their remembrance of Ali's
former oppressions, if not effaced, was yet suspended in the presence
of a nuisance so immediate and so generally diffused; and most of the
Epirots turned their arms against the Porte. The same feelings which
governed _them_ soon spread to the provinces of Etolia and Acarnania;
or rather, perhaps, being previously ripe for revolt, these provinces
resolved to avail themselves of the same occasion. Missolonghi now
became the centre of rebellion; and Kourshid's difficulties were daily
augmenting. In July of this year (1821) these various insurgents,
actively cooperating, defeated the Serasker in several actions, and
compelled a Pacha to lay down his arms on the road between Yannina and
Souli. It was even proposed by the gallant partisan, Mark Bozzaris,
that all should unite to hem in the Serasker; but a wound, received in a
skirmish, defeated this plan. In September following, however, the same
Mark intercepted and routed Hassan Pacha in a defile on his march to
Yannina; and in general the Turks were defeated everywhere except at
the headquarters of the Serasker, and with losses in men enormously
disproportioned to the occasions. This arose partly from the necessity
under which they lay of attacking expert musketeers under cover of
breastworks, and partly from their own precipitance and determination to
carry everything by summary force; "whereas," says Mr. Gordon, "a little
patience would surely have caused them to succeed, and at least
saved them much dishonor, and thousands of lives thrown away in mere
wantonness." But, in spite of all blunders, and every sort of failure
elsewhere, the Serasker was still advancing slowly towards his main
objects--the reduction of Ali Pacha. And by the end of October, on
getting possession of an important part of Ali's works, he announced to
the Sultan that he should soon be able to send him the traitor's head,
for that he was already reduced to six hundred men. A little before
this, however, the celebrated Maurocordato, with other persons of
influence, had arrived at Missolonghi with the view of cementing a
general union of Christian and Mahometan forces against the Turks. In
this he was so far successful, that in November a combined attack was
made upon Ismael, the old enemy of Ali, and three other Pachas, shut
up in the town of Arta. This attack succeeded partially; but it was
attempted at a moment dramatically critical, and with an effect ruinous
to the whole campaign, as well as that particular attack. The assailing
party, about thirty-four hundred men, were composed in the proportion of
two Christians to one Mahometan. They had captured one half of the town;
and, Mark Bozzaris having set this on fire to prevent plundering, the
four Pachas were on the point of retreating under cover of the smoke. At
that moment arrived a Mahometan of note, instigated by Kourshid, who
was able to persuade those of his own faith that the Christians were not
fighting with any sincere views of advantage to Ali, but with ulterior
purposes hostile to Mahometanism itself. On this, the Christian division
of the army found themselves obliged to retire without noise, in order
to escape their own allies, now suddenly united with the four Pachas.
Nor, perhaps, would even this have been effected, but for the precaution
of Mark Bozzaris in taking hostages from two leading Mahometans. Thus
failed the last diversion in favor of Ali Pacha, who was henceforward
left to his own immediate resources. All the Mahometan tribes now ranged
themselves on the side of Kourshid; and the winter of 1821-2 passed away
without further disturbance in Epirus.

Meantime, during the absence of Kourshid Pacha from the Morea, the
opportunity had not been lost for raising the insurrection in that
important part of Greece. Kourshid had marched early in January, 1821;
and already in February symptoms of the coming troubles appeared at
Patrass, "the most flourishing and populous city of the Peloponnesus,
the emporium of its trade, and residence of the foreign consuls and
merchants." Its population was about eighteen thousand, of which number
two thirds were Christian. In March, when rumors had arrived of
the insurrection beyond the Danube, under Alexander Ypsilanti, the
fermentation became universal; and the Turks of Patrass hastily prepared
for defence. By the twenty-fifth, the Greeks had purchased all the
powder and lead which could be had; and about the second of April they
raised the standard of the Cross. Two days after this, fighting began
at Patrass. The town having been set on fire, "the Turkish castle threw
shot and shells at random; the two parties fought amongst the ruins, and
massacred each other without mercy; the only prisoners that were spared
owed their lives to fanaticism; some Christian youths being circumcised
by the Mollahs, and some Turkish boys baptized by the priests."

"While the commencement of the war," says Mr. Gordon, "was thus
signalized by the ruin of a flourishing city, the insurrection gained
ground with wonderful rapidity; and from mountain to mountain, and
village to village, propagated itself to the furthest corner of the
Peloponnesus. Everywhere the peasants flew to arms; and those Turks
who resided in the open country or unfortified towns were either cut to
pieces, or forced to fly into strongholds." On the second of April,
the flag of independence was hoisted in Achaia. On the ninth, a
Grecian senate met at Calamata, in Messenia, having for its president
Mavromichalis, Prince or Bey of Maina, a rugged territory in the ancient
Sparta, famous for its hardy race of robbers and pirates. [Footnote:
These Mainates have been supposed to be of Sclavonian origin; but Mr.
Gordon, upon the authority of the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitos,
asserts that they are of pure Laconian blood, and became Christians in
the reign of that emperor's grandfather, Basil the Macedonian. They are,
and over have been, robbers by profession; robbers by land, pirates by
sea; for which last branch of their mixed occupation they enjoy singular
advantages in their position at the point of junction between the Ionian
and Egean seas. To illustrate their condition of perpetual warfare, Mr.
Gordon mentions that there were very lately individuals who had lived
for twenty years in towers, not daring to stir out lest their neighbors
should shoot them. They were supplied with bread and cartridges by their
wives; for the persons of women are sacred in Maina. Two other
good features in their character are their hospitality and their
indisposition to bloodshed. They are in fact _gentle thieves_--the Robin
Hoods of Greece.]

On the sixth of April, the insurrection had spread to the narrow
territory of Megaris, situated to the north of the isthmus. The Albanian
population of this country, amounting to about ten thousand, and
employed by the Porte to guard the defiles of the entrance into
Peloponnesus, raised the standard of revolt, and marched to invest the
Acrocorinthus. In the Messenian territory, the Bishop of Modon, having
made his guard of Janissaries drunk, cut the whole of them to pieces;
and then encamping on the heights of Navarin, his lordship blockaded
that fortress. The abruptness of these movements, and their almost
simultaneous origin at distances so considerable, sufficiently prove how
ripe the Greeks were for this revolt as respected temper; and in other
modes of preparation they never _could_ have been ripe whilst overlooked
by Turkish masters. That haughty race now retreated from all parts of
the Morea, within the ramparts of Tripolizza.

In the first action which occurred, the Arcadian Greeks did not behave
well; they fled at the very sound of the Moslem tread. Colocotroni
commanded; and he rallied them again; but again they deserted him at the
sight of their oppressors; "and I," said Colocotroni afterwards, when
relating the circumstances of this early affair, "having with me only
ten companions including my horse, sat down in a bush and wept."

Meantime, affairs went ill at Patrass. Yussuf Pacha, having been
detached from Epirus to Eubœa by the Scrasker, heard on his route of the
insurrection in Peloponnesus. Upon which, altering his course, he sailed
to Patrass, and reached it on the fifteenth of April. This was Palm
Sunday, and it dawned upon the Greeks with evil omens. First came a
smart shock of earthquake; next a cannonade announcing the approach of
the Pacha; and, lastly, an Ottoman brig of war, which saluted the fort
and cast anchor before the town.

The immediate consequences were disastrous. The Greeks retreated; and
the Pacha detached Kihaya-Bey, a Tartar officer of distinguished energy,
with near three thousand men, to the most important points of the
revolt. On the fifth of May, the Tartar reached Corinth, but found the
siege already raised. Thence he marched to Argos, sending before him a
requisition for bread. He was answered by the men of Argos that they had
no bread, but only powder and ball at his service. This threat, however,
proved a gasconade; the Kihaya advanced in three columns; cavalry
on each wing, and infantry in the centre; on which, after a single
discharge, the Argives fled. [Footnote: It has a sublime effect in the
record of this action to hear that the Argives were drawn up behind a
wall originally raised as a defence _against the deluge of Inachus_.]
Their general, fighting bravely, was killed, together with seven hundred
others, and fifteen hundred women captured. The Turks, having sacked
and burned Argos, then laid siege to a monastery, which surrendered upon
terms; and it is honorable to the memory of this Tartar general, that,
according to the testimony of Mr. Gordon, at a time when the war was
managed with merciless fury and continual perfidies on both sides, he
observed the terms with rigorous fidelity, treated all his captives with
the utmost humanity, and even liberated the women.

Thus far the tide had turned against the Greeks; but now came a decisive
reaction in their favor; and, as if forever to proclaim the folly
of despair, just at the very crisis when it was least to have
been expected, the Kihaya was at this point joined by the Turks of
Tripolizza, and was now reputed to be fourteen thousand strong. This
proved to be an exaggeration; but the subsequent battle is the more
honorable to those who believed it. At a council of war, in the Greek
camp, the prevailing opinion was that an action could not prudently be
risked. One man thought otherwise; this was Anagnostoras; he, by urging
the desolations which would follow a retreat, brought over the rest to
his opinion; and it was resolved to take up a position at Valtezza,
a village three hours' march from Tripolizza. Thither, on the
twenty-seventh of May, the Kihaya arrived with five thousand men, in
three columns, having left Tripolizza at dawn; and immediately raised
redoubts opposite to those of the Greeks, and placed three heavy pieces
of cannon in battery. He hoped to storm the position; but, if he should
fail, he had a reason for still anticipating a victory, and _that_ was
the situation of the fountains, which must soon have drawn the Greeks
out of their position, as they had water only for twenty-four hours'
consumption.

The battle commenced: and the first failure of the Kihaya was in the
cannonade; for his balls, passing over the Greeks, fell amongst a corps
of his own troops. These now made three assaults; but were repulsed in
all. Both sides kept up a fire till night; and each expected that his
enemy would retire in the darkness. The twenty-eighth, however, found
the two armies still in the same positions. The battle was renewed for
five hours; and then the Kihaya, finding his troops fatigued, and that
his retreat was likely to be intercepted by Nikitas (a brave partisan
officer bred to arms in the service of England), who was coming up by
forced marches from Argos with eight hundred men, gave the signal for
retreat. This soon became a total rout; the Kihaya lost his horse; and
the Greeks, besides taking two pieces of cannon, raised a trophy of four
hundred Moslem heads.

Such was the battle of Yaltezza, the inaugural performance of the
insurrection; and we have told it thus circumstantially, because
Mr. Gordon characterizes it as "remarkable for the moral effect it
produced;" and he does not scruple to add, that it "certainly decided
the campaign in Peloponnesus, _and perhaps even the fate of the
revolution_."

Three days after, that is, on the last day of May, 1821, followed the
victory of Doliana, in which the Kihaya, anxious to recover his lost
ground, was encountered by Nikitas. The circumstances were peculiarly
brilliant. For the Turkish general had between two and three thousand
men, besides artillery; whereas Nikitas at first sustained the attack in
thirteen barricaded houses, with no more than ninety-six soldiers,
and thirty armed peasants. After a resistance of eleven hours, he was
supported by seven hundred men; and in the end he defeated the Kihaya
with a very considerable loss.

These actions raised the enthusiasm of the Morea to a high point; and
in the mean time other parts of Greece had joined in the revolt. In the
first week of April an insurrection burst out in the eastern provinces
of Greece, Attica, Boeotia, and Phocis. The insurgents first appeared
near Livadia, one of the best cities in northern Greece. On the
thirteenth, they occupied Thebes without opposition. Immediately
after, Odysseus propagated the revolt in Phocis, where he had formerly
commanded as a lieutenant of Ali Pacha's. Next arose the Albanian
peasantry of Attica, gathering in armed bodies to the west of Athens.
Towards the end of April, the Turks, who composed one fifth of the
Athenian population (then rated at ten thousand), became greatly
agitated; and twice proposed a massacre of the Christians. This was
resisted by the humane Khadi; and the Turks, contenting themselves with
pillaging absent proprietors, began to lay up stores in the Acropolis.
With ultra Turkish stupidity, however, out of pure laziness, at this
critical moment, they confided the night duty on the ramparts of the
city to Greeks. The consequence may be supposed. On the eighth of May,
the Ottoman standard had been raised and blessed by an Tman. On the
following night, a rapid discharge of musketry, and the shouts of
_Christ has risen! Liberty! Liberty!_ proclaimed the capture of Athens.
Nearly two thousand peasants, generally armed with clubs, had scaled
the walls and forced the gates. The prisoners taken were treated with
humanity. But, unfortunately, this current of Christian sentiment was
immediately arrested by the conduct of the Turks in the Acropolis,
in killing nine hostages, and throwing over the walls some naked and
headless bodies.

The insurrection next spread to Thessaly; and at last even to Macedonia,
from the premature and atrocious violence of the Pacha of Salonika.
Apprehending a revolt, he himself drew it on, by cutting off the
heads of the Christian merchants and clergy (simply as a measure of
precaution), and enforcing his measures on the peasantry by military
execution. Unfortunately, from its extensive plains, this country is
peculiarly favorable to the evolutions of the Turkish cavalry; the
insurgents were, therefore, defeated in several actions; and ultimately
took refuge in great numbers amongst the convents on Mount Athos, which
also were driven into revolt by the severity of the Pacha. Here the
fugitives were safe from the sabres of their merciless pursuers; but,
unless succored by sea, ran a great risk of perishing by famine. But a
more important accession to the cause of independence, within one month
from its first outbreak in the Morea, occurred in the Islands of the
Archipelago. The three principal of these in modern times, are Hydra,
Spezzia, and Psarra. [Footnote: Their insignificance in ancient times is
proclaimed by the obscurity of their ancient names--Aperopia, Tiparenus,
and Psyra.] They had been colonized in the preceding century, by some
poor families from Peloponnesus and Ionia. At that time they had gained
a scanty subsistence as fishermen. Gradually they became merchants
and seamen. Being the best sailors in the Sultan's dominions, they had
obtained some valuable privileges, amongst which was that of exemption
from Turkish magistrates; so that, if they could not boast of
_autonomy_, they had at least the advantage of executing the bad laws
of Turkish imposition by chiefs of their own blood. And they had the
further advantage of paying but a moderate tribute to the Sultan.
So favored, their commerce had flourished beyond all precedent. And
latterly, when the vast extension of European warfare had created
first-rate markets for grain, selecting, of course, those which were
highest at the moment, they sometimes doubled their capitals in two
voyages; and seven or eight such trips in a year were not an unusual
instance of good fortune. What had been the result, may be collected
from the following description, which Mr. Gordon gives us, of Hydra:
"Built on a sterile rock, which does not offer, at any season, the least
trace of vegetation, it is one of the best cities in the Levant,
and _infinitely superior to any other in Greece_; the houses are all
constructed of white stone; and those of the aristocracy--erected at
an immense expense, floored with costly marbles, and splendidly
furnished--_might pass for palaces even in the capitals of Italy_.
Before the revolution, poverty was unknown; all classes being
comfortably lodged, clothed, and fed. Its inhabitants at this epoch
exceeded twenty thousand, of whom four thousand were able-bodied
seamen."

The other islands were, with few exceptions, arid rocks; and most of
them had the inestimable advantage of being unplagued with a Turkish
population. Enjoying that precious immunity, it may be wondered why they
should have entered into the revolt. But for this there were two
great reasons: they were ardent Christians in the first place, and
disinterested haters of Mahometanism on its own merits; secondly, as
the most powerful [Footnote: Mr. Gordon says that "they could, without
difficulty, fit out a hundred sail of ships, brigs, and schooners, armed
with from twelve to twenty-four guns each, and manned by seven thousand
stout and able sailors." Pouqueville ascribes to them, in 1813, a
force considerably greater. But the peace of Paris (one year after
Pouqueville's estimates) naturally reduced their power, as their
extraordinary gains were altogether dependent on war and naval
blockades.] nautical confederacy in the Levant, they anticipated a large
booty from captures at sea. In that expectation, at first, they were
not disappointed. But it was a source of wealth soon exhausted; for,
naturally, as soon as their ravages became known, the Mussulmans ceased
to navigate. Spezzia was the first to hoist the independent flag;
this was on the ninth of April, 1821. Psarra immediately followed her
example. Hydra hesitated, and at first even declined to do so; but,
at last, on the 28th of April, this island also issued a manifesto of
adherence to the patriotic cause. On the third of May, a squadron of
eleven Hydriot and seven Spezzia vessels sailed from Hydra, having on
the mainmast "an address to the people of the Egean sea, inviting them
to rally round the national standard: an address that was received with
enthusiasm in every quarter of the Archipelago where the Turks were not
numerous enough to restrain popular feeling."

"The success of the Greek marine in this first expedition," says
Mr. Gordon, "was not confined to merely spreading the insurrection
throughout the Archipelago: a swarm of swift armed ships swept the sea
from the Hellespont to the waters of Crete and Cyprus; captured every
Ottoman trader they met with, and put to the sword, or flung overboard,
the Mahometan crews and passengers; for the contest already assumed a
character of terrible ferocity. It would be vain to deny that they were
guilty of shocking barbarities; at the little island of Castel Rosso, on
the Karamanian shore, they butchered, in cold blood, several beautiful
Turkish females; and a great number of defenceless pilgrims (mostly old
men), who, returning from Mecca, fell into their power, off Cyprus, were
slain without mercy, because they would not renounce their faith." Many
such cases of hideous barbarity had already occurred, and did afterwards
occur, on the mainland. But this is the eternal law and providential
retribution of oppression. The tyrant teaches to his slave the crimes
and the cruelties which he inflicts; blood will have blood; and the
ferocious oppressor is involved in the natural reaction of his own
wickedness, by the frenzied retaliation of the oppressed. Now was indeed
beheld the realization of the sublime imprecation in Shakspeare: "one
spirit of the first-born Cain" did indeed reign in the hearts of men;
and now, if ever upon this earth, it seemed likely, from the dreadful
_acharnement_ which marked the war on both sides,--the _acharnement_
of long-hoarded vengeance and maddening remembrances in the Grecian, of
towering disdain in the alarmed oppressor,--that, in very simplicity of
truth, "_Darkness would be the burier of the dead._"

Such was the opening scene in the astonishing drama of the Greek
insurrection, which, through all its stages, was destined to move
by fire and blood, and beyond any war in human annals to command the
interest of mankind through their sterner affections. We have said that
it was eminently a romantic war; but not in the meaning with which we
apply that epithet to the semi-fabulous wars of Charlemagne and his
Paladins, or even to the Crusaders. Here are no memorable contests of
generosity; no triumphs glorified by mercy; no sacrifices of interest
the most basely selfish to martial honor; no ear on either side for the
pleadings of desolate affliction; no voice in any quarter of commanding
justice; no acknowledgment of a common nature between the belligerents;
nor sense of a participation in the same human infirmities, dangers, or
necessities. To the fugitive from the field of battle there was
scarcely a retreat; to the prisoner there was absolutely no hope. Stern
retribution, and the very rapture of vengeance, were the passions which
presided on the one side; on the other, fanaticism and the cruelty of
fear and hatred, maddened by old hereditary scorn. Wherever the war
raged there followed upon the face of the land one blank Aceldama. A
desert tracked the steps of the armies, and a desert in which was no
oasis; and the very atmosphere in which men lived and breathed was a
chaos of murderous passions. Still it is true that the war was a great
romance. For it was filled with change, and with elastic rebound from
what seemed final extinction; with the spirit of adventure carried to
the utmost limits of heroism; with self-devotion on the sublimest
scale, and the very frenzy of patriotic martyrdom; with resurrection
of everlasting hope upon ground seven times blasted by the blighting
presence of the enemy; and with flowers radiant in promise springing
forever from under the very tread of the accursed Moslem.


NOTE.--We have thought that we should do an acceptable service to the
reader by presenting him with a sketch of the Suliotes, and the most
memorable points in their history. We have derived it (as to the facts)
from a little work originally composed by an Albanian in modern Greek,
and printed at Venice in 1815. This work was immediately translated into
Italian, by Gherardini, an Italian officer of Milan; and, ten years ago,
with some few omissions, it was reproduced in an English version; but
in this country it seems never to have attracted public notice, and is
probably now forgotten.

With respect to the name of Suli, the Suliotes themselves trace it to
an accident:--"Some old men," says the Albanian author, reciting his
own personal investigations amongst the oldest of the Suliotes, "replied
that they did not remember having any information from their ancestors
concerning the first inhabitants of Suli, except this only: that some
goat and swine herds used to lead their flocks to graze on the mountains
where Suli and Ghiafa now stand; that these mountains were not only
steep and almost inaccessible, but clothed with thickets of wood, and
infested by wild boars; that these herdsmen, being oppressed by the
tyranny of the Turks of a village called to this day Gardichi, took the
resolution of flying for a distance of six hours' journey to this sylvan
and inaccessible position, of sharing in common the few animals which
they had, and of suffering voluntarily every physical privation, rather
than submit to the slightest wrong from their foreign tyrants. This
resolution, they added, must be presumed to have been executed with
success; because we find that, in the lapse of five or six years, these
original occupants of the fastness were joined by thirty other families.
Somewhere about that time it was that they began to awaken the jealousy
of the Turks; and a certain Turk, named Suli, went in high scorn and
defiance, with many other associates, to expel them from this strong
position; but our stout forefathers met them with arms in their hands.
Suli, the leader and inciter of the Turks, was killed outright upon
the ground; and, on the very spot where he fell, at this day stands the
centre of our modern Suli, which took its name, therefore, from that
same slaughtered Turk, who was the first insolent and malicious enemy
with whom our country in its days of infancy had to contend for its
existence."

Such is the most plausible account which can now be obtained of the
_incunabula_ of this most indomitable little community, and of the
circumstances under which it acquired its since illustrious name. It
was, perhaps, natural that a little town, in the centre of insolent and
bitter enemies, should assume a name which would long convey to their
whole neighborhood a stinging lesson of mortification, and of prudential
warning against similar molestations. As to the _chronology_ of this
little state, the Albanian author assures us, upon the testimony of the
same old Suliotes, that "seventy years before" there were barely one
hundred men fit for the active duties of war, which, in ordinary states
of society, would imply a total population of four hundred souls. That
may be taken, therefore, as the extreme limit of the Suliote
population at a period of seventy years antecedently to the date of
tke conversation on which he founds his information. But, as he has
unfortunately omitted to fix the exact era of these conversations, the
whole value of his accuracy is neutralized by his own carelessness.
However, it is probable, from the internal evidence of his book, which
brings down affairs below the year 1812, that his information was
collected somewhere about 1810. We must carry back the epoch, therefore,
at which Suli had risen to a population of four hundred, pretty nearly
to the year 1740; and since, by the same traditionary evidence, Suli
had then accomplished an independent existence through a space of eighty
years, we have reason to conclude that the very first gatherings of poor
Christian herdsmen to this sylvan sanctuary, when stung to madness by
Turkish insolence and persecution, would take place about the era of the
Restoration (of our Charles II.), that is, in 1660.

In more modern times, the Suliotes had expanded into four separate
little towns, peopled by five hundred and sixty families, from which
they were able to draw one thousand first-rate soldiers. But, by a very
politic arrangement, they had colonized with sixty-six other families
seven neighboring towns, over which, from situation, they had long
been able to exercise a military preponderance. The benefits were
incalculable which they obtained by this connection. At the first alarm
of war the fighting men retreated with no incumbrances but their arms,
ammunition, and a few days' provision, into the four towns of Suli
proper, which all lay within that ring fence of impregnable position
from which no armies could ever dislodge them; meantime, they secretly
drew supplies from the seven associate towns, which were better situated
than themselves for agriculture, and which (apparently taking no part
in the war) pursued their ordinary labors unmolested. Their tactics
were simple, but judicious; if they saw a body of five or six thousand
advancing against their position, knowing that it was idle for them
to meet such a force in the open field, they contented themselves with
detaching one hundred and fifty or two hundred men to skirmish on their
flanks, and to harass them according to the advantages of the ground;
but if they saw no more than five hundred or one thousand in the hostile
column, they then issued in equal or superior numbers, in the certainty
of beating them, striking an effectual panic into their hearts, and also
of profiting largely by plunder and by ransom.

In so small and select a community, where so much must continually
depend upon individual qualities and personal heroism, it may readily
be supposed that the women would play an important part; in fact, "the
women carry arms and fight bravely. When the men go to war, the women
bring them food and provisions; when they see their strength declining
in combat, they run to their assistance, and fight along with them; but,
if by any chance their husbands behave with cowardice, they snatch
their arms from them, and abuse them, calling them mean, and unworthy of
having a wife." Upon these feelings there has even been built a law in
Suli, which must deeply interest the pride of women in the martial honor
of their husbands; agreeably to this law, any woman whose husband has
distinguished himself in battle, upon going to a fountain to draw water,
has the liberty to drive away another woman whose husband is tainted
with the reproach of cowardice; and all who succeed her, "from dawn to
dewy eve," unless under the ban of the same withering stigma, have
the same privilege of taunting her with her husband's baseness, and
of stepping between her or her cattle until their own wants are fully
supplied.

This social consideration of the female sex, in right of their husbands'
military honors, is made available for no trifling purposes; on one
occasion it proved the absolute salvation of the tribe. In one of the
most desperate assaults made by Ali Pacha upon Suli, when that tyrant
was himself present at the head of eight thousand picked men, animated
with the promise of five hundred piastres a man, to as many as should
enter Suli, after ten hours' fighting under an enfeebling sun, and many
of the Suliote muskets being rendered useless by continual discharges,
a large body of the enemy had actually succeeded in occupying the sacred
interior of Suli itself. At that critical moment, when Ali was in the
very paroxysms of frantic exultation, the Suliote women, seeing that the
general fate hinged upon the next five minutes, turned upon the Turks
_en masse_, and with such a rapture of sudden fury, that the conquering
army was instantly broken--thrown into panic, pursued; and, in that
state of ruinous disorder, was met and flanked by the men, who were now
recovering from their defeat. The consequences, from the nature of the
ground, were fatal to the Turkish army and enterprise; the whole camp
equipage was captured; none saved their lives but by throwing away their
arms; one third of the Turks (one half by some accounts) perished on
the retreat; the rest returned at intervals as an unarmed mob; and the
bloody, perfidious Pacha himself saved his life only by killing
two horses in his haste. So total was the rout, and so bitter the
mortification of Ali, who had seen a small band of heroic women snatch
the long-sought prize out of his very grasp, that for some weeks he shut
himself up in his palace at Yannina, would receive no visits, and issued
a proclamation imposing instant death upon any man detected in looking
out at a window or other aperture--as being _presumably_ engaged in
noticing the various expressions of his defeat which were continually
returning to Yannina.

The wars, in which the adventurous courage of the Suliotes (together
with their menacing position) could not fail to involve them, were in
all eleven. The first eight of these occurred in times before the French
Revolution, and with Pachas who have left no memorials behind them of
the terrific energy or hellish perfidy which marked the character of Ali
Pacha. These Pachas, who brought armies at the lowest of five thousand,
and at the most of twelve thousand men, were uniformly beaten; and
apparently were content to be beaten. Sometimes a Pacha was even made
prisoner; but, as the simple [Footnote: On the same occasion the Pacha's
son, and sixty officers of the rank of _Aga_, were also made prisoners
by a truly rustic mode of assault. The Turks had shut themselves up in a
church; into this, by night, the Suliotes threw a number of hives, full
of bees, whose insufferable stings soon brought the haughty Moslems into
the proper surrendering mood. The whole body were afterwards ransomed
for so trifling a sum as one thousand sequins.] Suliotes little
understood the art of improving advantages, the ransom was sure to
be proportioned to the value of the said Pacha's sword-arm in battle,
rather than to his rank and ability to pay; so that the terms of
liberation were made ludicrously easy to the Turkish chiefs.

These eight wars naturally had no other ultimate effect than to extend
the military power, experience, and renown, of the Suliotes. But their
ninth war placed them in collision with a new and far more perilous
enemy than any they had yet tried; above all, he was so obstinate and
unrelenting an enemy, that, excepting the all-conquering mace of death,
it was certain that no obstacles born of man ever availed to turn him
aside from an object once resolved on. The reader will understand, of
course, that this enemy was Ali Pacha. Their ninth war was with him; and
he, like all before him, was beaten; but _not_ like all before him did
Ali sit down in resignation under his defeat. His hatred was now become
fiendish; no other prosperity or success had any grace in his eyes, so
long as Suli stood, by which he had been overthrown, trampled on, and
signally humbled. Life itself was odious to him, if he must continue to
witness the triumphant existence of the abhorred little mountain village
which had wrung laughter at his expense from every nook of Epirus.
_Delenda est Carthago! Suli must be exterminated!_ became, therefore,
from this time, the master watchword of his secret policy. And on the
1st of June, in the year 1792, he commenced his second war against the
Suliotes, at the head of twenty-two thousand men. This was the second
war of Suli with Ali Pacha; but it was the tenth war on their annals;
and, as far as their own exertions were concerned, it had the same
result as all the rest. But, about the sixth year of the war, in an
indirect way, Ali made one step towards his final purpose, which first
manifested its disastrous tendency in the new circumstances which
succeeding years brought forward. In 1797 the French made a lodgment in
Corfu; and, agreeably to their general spirit of intrigue, they had made
advances to Ali Pacha, and to all other independent powers in or about
Epirus. Amongst other states, in an evil hour for that ill-fated
city, they wormed themselves into an alliance with Prevesa; and in the
following year their own quarrel with Ali Pacha gave that crafty robber
a pretence, which he had long courted in vain, for attacking the place
with his overwhelming cavalry, before they could agree upon the mode of
defence, and long before _any_ mode could have been tolerably matured.
The result was one universal massacre, which raged for three days, and
involved every living Prevesan, excepting some few who had wisely
made their escape in time, and excepting those who were reserved to be
tortured for Ali's special gratification, or to be sold for slaves in
the shambles. This dreadful catastrophe, which in a few hours rooted
from the earth an old and flourishing community, was due in about equal
degrees to the fatal intriguing of the interloping French, and to the
rankest treachery in a quarter where it could least have been held
possible; namely, in a Suliote, and a very distinguished Suliote,
Captain George Botzari; but the miserable man yielded up his honor and
his patriotism to Ali's bribe of one hundred purses (perhaps at that
time equal to twenty-five hundred pounds sterling). The way in which
this catastrophe operated upon Ali's final views was obvious to
everybody in that neighborhood. Parga, on the sea-coast, was an
indispensable ally to Suli; now, Prevesa stood in the same relation
to Parga, as an almost indispensable ally, that Parga occupied towards
Suli.

This shocking tragedy had been perpetrated in the October of 1798; and,
in less than two years from that date, namely, on the 2d of June, 1800,
commenced the eleventh war of the Suliotes; being their third with Ali,
and the last which, from their own guileless simplicity, meeting
with the craft of the most perfidious amongst princes, they were ever
destined to wage. For two years, that is, until the middle of 1802, the
war, as managed by the Suliotes, rather resembles a romance, or some
legend of the acts of Paladins, than any grave chapter in modern
history. Amongst the earliest victims it is satisfactory to mention
the traitor, George Botzari, who, being in the power of the Pacha, was
absolutely compelled to march with about two hundred of his kinsmen,
whom he had seduced from Suli, against his own countrymen, under whose
avenging swords the majority of them fell, whilst the arch-traitor
himself soon died of grief and mortification. After this, Ali himself
led a great and well-appointed army in various lines of assault against
Suli. But so furious was the reception given to the Turks, so deadly
and so uniform their defeat, that panic seized on the whole army, who
declared unanimously to Ali that they would no more attempt to contend
with the Suliotes--"Who," said they, "neither sit nor sleep, but are
born only for the destruction of men." Ali was actually obliged
to submit to this strange resolution of his army; but, by way of
compromise, he built a chain of forts pretty nearly encircling Suli;
and simply exacted of his troops that, being forever released from the
dangers of the open field, they should henceforward shut themselves up
in these forts, and constitute themselves a permanent blockading force
for the purpose of bridling the marauding excursions of the Suliotes. It
was hoped that, from the close succession of these forts, the Suliotes
would find it impossible to slip between the cross fires of the Turkish
musketry; and that, being thus absolutely cut off from their common
resources of plunder, they must at length be reduced by mere starvation.
That termination of the contest was in fact repeatedly within a trifle
of being accomplished; the poor Suliotes were reduced to a diet of
acorns; and even of this food had so slender a quantity that many
died, and the rest wore the appearance of blackened skeletons. All this
misery, however, had no effect to abate one jot of their zeal and their
undying hatred to the perfidious enemy who was bending every sinew to
their destruction. It is melancholy to record that such perfect heroes,
from whom force the most disproportioned, nor misery the most absolute,
had ever wrung the slightest concession or advantage, were at length
entrapped by the craft of their enemy; and by their own foolish
confidence in the oaths of one who had never been known to keep any
engagement which he had a momentary interest in breaking. Ali contrived
first of all to trepan the matchless leader of the Suliotes, Captain
Foto Giavella, who was a hero after the most exquisite model of ancient
Greece, Epaminondas, or Timoleon, and whose counsels were uniformly wise
and honest. After that loss, all harmony of plan went to wreck amongst
the Suliotes; and at length, about the middle of December, 1803, this
immortal little independent state of Suli solemnly renounced by treaty
to Ali Pacha its sacred territory, its thrice famous little towns, and
those unconquerable positions among the crests of wooded inaccessible
mountains which had baffled all the armies of the crescent, led by the
most eminent of the Ottoman Pachas, and not seldom amounting to twenty,
twenty-five, and in one instance even to more than thirty thousand men.
The articles of a treaty, which on one side there never was an intention
of executing, are scarcely worth repeating; the amount was--that the
Suliotes had perfect liberty to go whither they chose, retaining the
whole of their arms and property, and with a title to payment in cash
for every sort of warlike store which could not be carried off. In
excuse for the poor Suliotes in trusting to treaties of any kind with
an enemy whom no oaths could bind for an hour, it is but fair to mention
that they were now absolutely without supplies either of ammunition or
provisions; and that, for seven days, they had suffered under a total
deprivation of water, the sources of which were now in the hands of the
enemy, and turned into new channels. The winding up of the memorable
tale is soon told:--the main body of the fighting Suliotes, agreeably to
the treaty, immediately took the route to Parga, where they were sure
of a hospitable reception, that city having all along made common cause
with Suli against their common enemy, Ali. The son of Ali, who had
concluded the treaty, and who inherited all his father's treachery, as
fast as possible despatched four thousand Turks in pursuit, with
orders to massacre the whole. But in this instance, through the gallant
assistance of the Parghiotes, and the energetic haste of the Suliotes,
the accursed wretch was disappointed of his prey. As to all the other
detachments of the Suliotes, who were scattered at different points,
and were necessarily thrown everywhere upon their own resources without
warning or preparation of any kind,--they, by the terms of the treaty,
had liberty to go away or to reside peaceably in any part of Ali's
dominions. But as these were mere windy words, it being well understood
that Ali's fixed intention was to cut every throat among the Suliotes,
whether of man, woman, or child,--nay, as he thought himself dismally
ill-used by every hour's delay which interfered with the execution
of that purpose,--what rational plan awaited the choice of the poor
Suliotes, finding themselves in the centre of a whole hostile nation,
and their own slender divisions cut off from communication with each
other? What could people so circumstanced propose to themselves as a
suitable resolution for their situation? Hope there was none; sublime
despair was all that their case allowed; and, considering the unrivalled
splendors of their past history for more than one hundred and sixty
years, perhaps most readers would reply, in the famous words of
Corneille--_Qu'ils mourussent_. That was their own reply to the question
now so imperatively forced upon them; and die they all did. It is an
argument of some great original nobility in the minds of these poor
people, that none disgraced themselves by useless submissions, and that
all alike, women as well as men, devoted themselves in the "high Roman
fashion" to the now expiring cause of their country. The first case
which occurred exhibits the very perfection of _nonchalance_ in
circumstances the most appalling. Samuel, a Suliote monk, of somewhat
mixed and capricious character, and at times even liable to
much suspicion amongst his countrymen, but of great name, and of
unquestionable merit in his military character, was in the act of
delivering over to authorized Turkish agents a small outpost, which had
greatly annoyed the forces of Ali, together with such military stores as
it still contained. By the treaty, Samuel was perfectly free, and
under the solemn protection of Ali; but the Turks, with the utter
shamelessness to which they had been brought by daily familiarity with
treachery the most barefaced, were openly descanting to Samuel upon the
unheard-of tortures which must be looked for at the hands of Ali, by a
soldier who had given so much trouble to that Pacha as himself. Samuel
listened coolly; he was then seated on a chest of gunpowder, and powder
was scattered about in all directions. He watched in a careless way
until he observed that all the Turks, exulting in their own damnable
perfidies, were assembled under the roof of the building. He then
coolly took the burning snuff of a candle, and threw it into a heap of
combustibles, still keeping his seat upon the chest of powder. It is
unnecessary to add that the little fort, and all whom it contained, were
blown to atoms. And with respect to Samuel in particular, no fragment of
his skeleton could ever be discovered. [Footnote: The deposition of two
Suliote sentinels at the door, and of a third person who escaped with
a dreadful scorching, sufficiently established the facts; otherwise
the whole would have been ascribed to the treachery of Ali or his son.]
After this followed as many separate tragedies as there were separate
parties of Suliotes; when all hope and all retreat were clearly cut off,
then the women led the great scene of self-immolation, by throwing their
children headlong from the summit of precipices; which done, they and
their husbands, their fathers and their sons, hand in hand, ran up
to the brink of the declivity, and followed those whom they had sent
before. In other situations, where there was a possibility of fighting
with effect, they made a long and bloody resistance, until the Turkish
cavalry, finding an opening for their operations, made all further union
impossible; upon which they all plunged into the nearest river, without
distinction of age or sex, and were swallowed up by the merciful waters.
Thus, in a few days, from the signing of that treaty, which nominally
secured to them peaceable possession of their property, and paternal
treatment from the perfidious Pacha, none remained to claim his promises
or to experience his abominable cruelties. In their native mountains of
Epirus, the name of Suliote was now blotted from the books of life, and
was heard no more in those wild sylvan haunts, where once it had filled
every echo with the breath of panic to the quailing hearts of the
Moslems. In the most "palmy" days of Suli, she never had counted more
than twenty-five hundred fighting men; and of these no considerable body
escaped, excepting the corps who hastily fought their way to Parga. From
that city they gradually transported themselves to Corfu, then occupied
by the Russians. Into the service of the Russian Czar, as the sole means
left to a perishing corps of soldiers for earning daily bread, they
naturally entered; and when Corfu afterwards passed from Russian to
English masters, it was equally inevitable that for the same urgent
purposes they should enter the military service of England. In that
service they received the usual honorable treatment, and such attention
as circumstances would allow to their national habits and prejudices.
They were placed also, we believe, under the popular command of Sir
R. Church, who, though unfortunate as a supreme leader, made himself
beloved in a lower station by all the foreigners under his authority.
These Suliotes have since then returned to Epirus and to Greece, the
peace of 1815 having, perhaps, dissolved their connection with England,
and they were even persuaded to enter the service of their arch-enemy,
Ali Pacha. Since his death, their diminished numbers, and the altered
circumstances of their situation, should naturally have led to the
extinction of their political importance. Yet we find them in 1832 still
attracting (or rather concentrating) the wrath of the Turkish Sultan,
made the object of a separate war, and valued (as in all former cases)
on the footing of a distinct and independent nation. On the winding
up of this war, we find part of them at least an object of indulgent
solicitude to the British government, and under their protection
transferred to Cephalonia. Yet again, others of their scanty clan meet
us at different points of the war in Greece; especially at the first
decisive action with Ibrahim, when, in the rescue of Costa Botzaris,
every Suliote of his blood perished on the spot; and again, in the fatal
battle of Athens (May 6, 1827), Mr. Gordon assures us that "almost
all the Suliotes were exterminated." We understand him to speak not
generally of the Suliotes, as of the total clan who bear that name,
but of those only who happened to be present at that dire catastrophe.
Still, even with this limitation, such a long succession of heavy losses
descending upon a people who never numbered above twenty-five hundred
fighting men, and who had passed through the furnace, seven times
heated, of Ali Pacha's wrath, and suffered those many and dismal
tragedies which we have just recorded, cannot but have brought them
latterly to the brink of utter extinction.






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