PART I.

Produced by Donald Lainson

ROUNDABOUT PAPERS

By William Makepeace Thackeray

CONTENTS

ROUNDABOUT PAPERS

On a Lazy Idle Boy

On Two Children in Black

On Ribbons

On some late Great Victories

Thorns in the Cushion

On Screens in Dining-Rooms

Tunbridge Toys

De Juventute

On a Joke I once heard from the late Thomas Hood

Round about the Christmas Tree

On a Chalk-Mark on the Door

On being Found Out

On a Hundred Years Hence

Small-Beer Chronicle

Ogres

On Two Roundabout Papers which I intended to Write

A Mississippi Bubble

On Letts's Diary

Notes of a Week's Holiday

Nil Nisi Bonum

On Half a Loaf--A Letter to Messrs. Broadway, Battery and Co., of New

York, Bankers

The Notch on the Axe.--A Story a la Mode. Part I Part II Part III

De Finibus

On a Peal of Bells

On a Pear-Tree

Dessein's

On some Carp at Sans Souci

Autour de mon Chapeau

On Alexandrines--A Letter to some Country Cousins

On a Medal of George the Fourth

“Strange to say, on Club Paper”

The Last Sketch

ROUNDABOUT PAPERS.

ON A LAZY IDLE BOY.

I had occasion to pass a week in the autumn in the little old town

of Coire or Chur, in the Grisons, where lies buried that very ancient

British king, saint, and martyr, Lucius,* who founded the Church of St.

Peter, on Cornhill. Few people note the church now-a-days, and fewer

ever heard of the saint. In the cathedral at Chur, his statue appears

surrounded by other sainted persons of his family. With tight red

breeches, a Roman habit, a curly brown beard, and a neat little gilt

crown and sceptre, he stands, a very comely and cheerful image: and,

from what I may call his peculiar position with regard to Cornhill, I

beheld this figure of St. Lucius with more interest than I should have

bestowed upon personages who, hierarchically, are, I dare say, his

superiors.

* Stow quotes the inscription, still extant, from the table

fast chained in St. Peter's Church, Cornhill; and says, “he

was after some chronicle buried at London, and after some

chronicle buried at Glowcester”--but, oh! these incorrect

chroniclers! when Alban Butler, in the “Lives of the

Saints,” v. xii., and Murray's “Handbook,” and the Sacristan

at Chur, all say Lucius was killed there, and I saw his tomb

with my own eyes!

The pretty little city stands, so to speak, at the end of the world--of

the world of to-day, the world of rapid motion, and rushing railways,

and the commerce and intercourse of men. From the northern gate, the

iron road stretches away to Zurich, to Basle, to Paris, to home. From

the old southern barriers, before which a little river rushes, and

around which stretch the crumbling battlements of the ancient town, the

road bears the slow diligence or lagging vetturino by the shallow Rhine,

through the awful gorges of the Via Mala, and presently over the Splugen

to the shores of Como.

I have seldom seen a place more quaint, pretty, calm, and pastoral, than

this remote little Chur. What need have the inhabitants for walls

and ramparts, except to build summer-houses, to trail vines, and hang

clothes to dry on them? No enemies approach the great mouldering gates:

only at morn and even the cows come lowing past them, the village

maidens chatter merrily round the fountains, and babble like the

ever-voluble stream that flows under the old walls. The schoolboys,

with book and satchel, in smart uniforms, march up to the gymnasium,

and return thence at their stated time. There is one coffee-house in the

town, and I see one old gentleman goes to it. There are shops with no

customers seemingly, and the lazy tradesmen look out of their little

windows at the single stranger sauntering by. There is a stall with

baskets of queer little black grapes and apples, and a pretty brisk

trade with half a dozen urchins standing round. But, beyond this, there

is scarce any talk or movement in the street. There's nobody at the

book-shop. “If you will have the goodness to come again in an hour,”

says the banker, with his mouthful of dinner at one o'clock, “you can

have the money.” There is nobody at the hotel, save the good landlady,

the kind waiters, the brisk young cook who ministers to you. Nobody is

in the Protestant church--(oh! strange sight, the two confessions are

here at peace!)--nobody in the Catholic church: until the sacristan,

from his snug abode in the cathedral close, espies the traveller eying

the monsters and pillars before the old shark-toothed arch of his

cathedral, and comes out (with a view to remuneration possibly) and

opens the gate, and shows you the venerable church, and the queer old

relics in the sacristy, and the ancient vestments (a black velvet

cope, amongst other robes, as fresh as yesterday, and presented by that

notorious “pervert,” Henry of Navarre and France), and the statue of St.

Lucius who built St. Peter's Church, on Cornhill.

What a quiet, kind, quaint, pleasant, pretty old town! Has it been

asleep these hundreds and hundreds of years, and is the brisk young

Prince of the Sidereal Realms in his screaming car drawn by his snorting

steel elephant coming to waken it? Time was when there must have been

life and bustle and commerce here. Those vast, venerable walls were

not made to keep out cows, but men-at-arms, led by fierce captains, who

prowled about the gates, and robbed the traders as they passed in and

out with their bales, their goods, their pack-horses, and their wains.

Is the place so dead that even the clergy of the different denominations

can't quarrel? Why, seven or eight, or a dozen, or fifteen hundred years

ago (they haven't the register at St. Peter's up to that remote period.

I dare say it was burnt in the fire of London)--a dozen hundred years

ago, when there was some life in the town, St. Lucius was stoned here

on account of theological differences, after founding our church in

Cornhill.

There was a sweet pretty river walk we used to take in the evening

and mark the mountains round glooming with a deeper purple; the shades

creeping up the golden walls; the river brawling, the cattle calling,

the maids and chatter-boxes round the fountains babbling and bawling;

and several times in the course of our sober walks we overtook a lazy

slouching boy, or hobble-dehoy, with a rusty coat, and trousers not too

long, and big feet trailing lazily one after the other, and large lazy

hands dawdling from out the tight sleeves, and in the lazy hands a

little book, which my lad held up to his face, and which I dare say

so charmed and ravished him, that he was blind to the beautiful sights

around him; unmindful, I would venture to lay any wager, of the lessons

he had to learn for to-morrow; forgetful of mother, waiting supper, and

father preparing a scolding;--absorbed utterly and entirely in his book.

What was it that so fascinated the young student, as he stood by the

river shore? Not the Pons Asinorum. What book so delighted him, and

blinded him to all the rest of the world, so that he did not care to see

the apple-woman with her fruit, or (more tempting still to sons of Eve)

the pretty girls with their apple cheeks, who laughed and prattled round

the fountain! What was the book? Do you suppose it was Livy, or the

Greek grammar? No; it was a NOVEL that you were reading, you lazy, not

very clean, good-for-nothing, sensible boy! It was D'Artagnan locking

up General Monk in a box, or almost succeeding in keeping Charles the

First's head on. It was the prisoner of the Chateau d'If cutting himself

out of the sack fifty feet under water (I mention the novels I like best

myself--novels without love or talking, or any of that sort of

nonsense, but containing plenty of fighting, escaping, robbery, and

rescuing)--cutting himself out of the sack, and swimming to the island

of Monte Cristo. O Dumas! O thou brave, kind, gallant old Alexandre! I

hereby offer thee homage, and give thee thanks for many pleasant hours.

I have read thee (being sick in bed) for thirteen hours of a happy day,

and had the ladies of the house fighting for the volumes. Be assured

that lazy boy was reading Dumas (or I will go so far as to let the

reader here pronounce the eulogium, or insert the name of his favorite

author); and as for the anger, or it may be, the reverberations of

his schoolmaster, or the remonstrances of his father, or the tender

pleadings of his mother that he should not let the supper grow cold--I

don't believe the scapegrace cared one fig. No! Figs are sweet, but

fictions are sweeter.

Have you ever seen a score of white-bearded, white-robed warriors, or

grave seniors of the city, seated at the gate of Jaffa or Beyrout, and

listening to the story-teller reciting his marvels out of “Antar” or the

“Arabian Nights?” I was once present when a young gentleman at table put

a tart away from him, and said to his neighbor, the Younger Son (with

rather a fatuous air), “I never eat sweets.”

“Not eat sweets! and do you know why?” says T.

“Because I am past that kind of thing,” says the young gentleman.

“Because you are a glutton and a sot!” cries the Elder (and Juvenis

winces a little). “All people who have natural, healthy appetites, love

sweets; all children, all women, all Eastern people, whose tastes

are not corrupted by gluttony and strong drink.” And a plateful of

raspberries and cream disappeared before the philosopher.

You take the allegory? Novels are sweets. All people with healthy

literary appetites love them--almost all women;--a vast number of

clever, hard-headed men. Why, one of the most learned physicians in

England said to me only yesterday, “I have just read So-and-So for

the second time” (naming one of Jones's exquisite fictions). Judges,

bishops, chancellors, mathematicians, are notorious novel-readers; as

well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers. Who

has not read about Eldon, and how he cried over novels every night when

he was not at whist?

As for that lazy naughty boy at Chur, I doubt whether HE will like

novels when he is thirty years of age. He is taking too great a glut of

them now. He is eating jelly until he will be sick. He will know most

plots by the time he is twenty, so that HE will never be surprised when

the Stranger turns out to be the rightful earl,--when the old waterman,

throwing off his beggarly gabardine, shows his stars and the collars of

his various orders, and clasping Antonia to his bosom, proves himself

to be the prince, her long-lost father. He will recognize the

novelist's same characters, though they appear in red-heeled pumps and

ailes-de-pigeon, or the garb of the nineteenth century. He will get

weary of sweets, as boys of private schools grow (or used to grow, for

I have done growing some little time myself, and the practice may have

ended too)--as private school-boys used to grow tired of the pudding

before their mutton at dinner.

And pray what is the moral of this apologue? The moral I take to be

this: the appetite for novels extending to the end of the world; far

away in the frozen deep, the sailors reading them to one another during

the endless night;--far away under the Syrian stars, the solemn sheikhs

and elders hearkening to the poet as he recites his tales; far away in

the Indian camps, where the soldiers listen to ----'s tales, or ----'s,

after the hot day's march; far away in little Chur yonder, where the

lazy boy pores over the fond volume, and drinks it in with all his

eyes;--the demand being what we know it is, the merchant must supply it,

as he will supply saddles and pale ale for Bombay or Calcutta.

But as surely as the cadet drinks too much pale ale, it will disagree

with him; and so surely, dear youth, will too much novels cloy on thee.

I wonder, do novel-writers themselves read many novels? If you go into

Gunter's, you don't see those charming young ladies (to whom I present

my most respectful compliments) eating tarts and ices, but at the proper

eventide they have good plain wholesome tea and bread-and-butter. Can

anybody tell me does the author of the “Tale of Two Cities” read novels?

does the author of the “Tower of London” devour romances? does the

dashing “Harry Lorrequer” delight in “Plain or Ringlets” or “Sponge's

Sporting Tour?” Does the veteran, from whose flowing pen we had the

books which delighted our young days, “Darnley,” and “Richelieu,” and

“Delorme,” * relish the works of Alexandre the Great, and thrill over the

“Three Musqueteers?” Does the accomplished author of the “Caxtons” read

the other tales in Blackwood? (For example, that ghost-story printed

last August, and which for my part, though I read it in the public

reading-room at the “Pavilion Hotel” at Folkestone, I protest frightened

me so that I scarce dared look over my shoulder.) Does “Uncle Tom”

admire “Adam Bede;” and does the author of the “Vicar of Wrexhill” laugh

over the “Warden” and the “The Three Clerks?” Dear youth of ingenuous

countenance and ingenuous pudor! I make no doubt that the eminent

parties above named all partake of novels in moderation--eat

jellies--but mainly nourish themselves upon wholesome roast and boiled.

* By the way, what a strange fate is that which befell the

veteran novelist! He was appointed her Majesty's Consul-

General in Venice, the only city in Europe where the famous

“Two Cavaliers” cannot by any possibility be seen riding

together.

Here, dear youth aforesaid! our Cornhill Magazine owners strive to

provide thee with facts as well as fiction; and though it does not

become them to brag of their Ordinary, at least they invite thee to a

table where thou shalt sit in good company. That story of the “Fox” * was

written by one of the gallant seamen who sought for poor Franklin under

the awful Arctic Night: that account of China** is told by the man

of all the empire most likely to know of what he speaks: those pages

regarding Volunteers*** come from an honored hand that has borne the

sword in a hundred famous fields, and pointed the British guns in the

greatest siege in the world.

* “The Search for Sir John Franklin. (From the Private

Journal of an Officer of the 'Fox.')”

** “The Chinese and the Outer Barbarians.” By Sir John

Bowring.

*** “Our Volunteers.” By Sir John Burgoyne.

Shall we point out others? We are fellow-travellers, and shall make

acquaintance as the voyage proceeds. In the Atlantic steamers, on the

first day out (and on high-and holy-days subsequently), the jellies set

down on table are richly ornamented; medioque in fonte leporum rise the

American and British flags nobly emblazoned in tin. As the passengers

remark this pleasing phenomenon, the Captain no doubt improves the

occasion by expressing a hope, to his right and left, that the flag

of Mr. Bull and his younger Brother may always float side by side

in friendly emulation. Novels having been previously compared to

jellies--here are two (one perhaps not entirely saccharine, and flavored

with an amari aliquid very distasteful to some palates)--two novels*

under two flags, the one that ancient ensign which has hung before the

well-known booth of “Vanity Fair;” the other that fresh and handsome

standard which has lately been hoisted on “Barchester Towers.” Pray,

sir, or madam, to which dish will you be helped?

* “Lovel the Widower” and “Framley Parsonage.”

So have I seen my friends Captain Lang and Captain Comstock press their

guests to partake of the fare on that memorable “First day out,” when

there is no man, I think, who sits down but asks a blessing on his

voyage, and the good ship dips over the bar, and bounds away into the

blue water.

ON TWO CHILDREN IN BLACK.

Montaigne and “Howel's Letters” are my bedside books. If I wake at

night, I have one or other of them to prattle me to sleep again. They

talk about themselves for ever, and don't weary me. I like to hear them

tell their old stories over and over again. I read them in the dozy

hours, and only half remember them. I am informed that both of them tell

coarse stories. I don't heed them. It was the custom of their time, as

it is of Highlanders and Hottentots to dispense with a part of dress

which we all wear in cities. But people can't afford to be shocked

either at Cape Town or at Inverness every time they meet an individual

who wears his national airy raiment. I never knew the “Arabian Nights”

was an improper book until I happened once to read it in a “family

edition.” Well, qui s'excuse. . . . Who, pray, has accused me as yet?

Here am I smothering dear good old Mrs. Grundy's objections, before she

has opened her mouth. I love, I say, and scarcely ever tire of hearing,

the artless prattle of those two dear old friends, the Perigourdin

gentleman and the priggish little Clerk of King Charles's Council. Their

egotism in nowise disgusts me. I hope I shall always like to hear men,

in reason, talk about themselves. What subject does a man know better?

If I stamp on a friend's corn, his outcry is genuine--he confounds my

clumsiness in the accents of truth. He is speaking about himself and

expressing his emotion of grief or pain in a manner perfectly authentic

and veracious. I have a story of my own, of a wrong done to me by

somebody, as far back as the year 1838: whenever I think of it and have

had a couple of glasses of wine, I CANNOT help telling it. The toe is

stamped upon; the pain is just as keen as ever: I cry out, and perhaps

utter imprecatory language. I told the story only last Wednesday at

dinner:--

“Mr. Roundabout,” says a lady sitting by me, “how comes it that in your

books there is a certain class (it may be of men, or it may be of women,

but that is not the question in point)--how comes it, dear sir, there is

a certain class of persons whom you always attack in your writings, and

savagely rush at, goad, poke, toss up in the air, kick, and trample on?”

I couldn't help myself. I knew I ought not to do it. I told her the

whole story, between the entrees and the roast. The wound began to bleed

again. The horrid pang was there, as keen and as fresh as ever. If I

live half as long as Tithonus,* that crack across my heart can never be

cured. There are wrongs and griefs that CAN'T be mended. It is all very

well of you, my dear Mrs. G., to say that this spirit is unchristian,

and that we ought to forgive and forget, and so forth. How can I forget

at will? How forgive? I can forgive the occasional waiter who broke my

beautiful old decanter at that very dinner. I am not going to do him any

injury. But all the powers on earth can't make that claret-jug whole.

* “Tithonus,” by Tennyson, had appeared in the preceding

(the 2nd) number of the Cornhill Magazine.

So, you see, I told the lady the inevitable story. I was egotistical. I

was selfish, no doubt; but I was natural, and was telling the truth. You

say you are angry with a man for talking about himself. It is because

you yourself are selfish, that that other person's Self does not

interest you. Be interested by other people and with their affairs.

Let them prattle and talk to you, as I do my dear old egotists just

mentioned. When you have had enough of them, and sudden hazes come over

your eyes, lay down the volume; pop out the candle, and dormez bien.

I should like to write a nightcap book--a book that you can muse over,

that you can smile over, that you can yawn over--a book of which you can

say, “Well, this man is so and so and so and so; but he has a friendly

heart (although some wiseacres have painted him as black as bogey), and

you may trust what he says.” I should like to touch you sometimes with a

reminiscence that shall waken your sympathy, and make you say, Io anche

have so thought, felt, smiled, suffered. Now, how is this to be done

except by egotism? Linea recta brevissima. That right line “I” is the

very shortest, simplest, straightforwardest means of communication

between us, and stands for what it is worth and no more. Sometimes

authors say, “The present writer has often remarked;” or “The

undersigned has observed;” or “Mr. Roundabout presents his compliments

to the gentle reader, and begs to state,” &c.: but “I” is better and

straighter than all these grimaces of modesty: and although these are

Roundabout Papers, and may wander who knows whither, I shall ask leave

to maintain the upright and simple perpendicular. When this bundle of

egotisms is bound up together, as they may be one day, if no accident

prevents this tongue from wagging, or this ink from running, they will

bore you very likely; so it would to read through “Howel's Letters”

from beginning to end, or to eat up the whole of a ham; but a slice on

occasion may have a relish: a dip into the volume at random and so on

for a page or two: and now and then a smile; and presently a gape; and

the book drops out of your hand; and so, bon soir, and pleasant dreams

to you. I have frequently seen men at clubs asleep over their humble

servant's works, and am always pleased. Even at a lecture I don't mind,

if they don't snore. Only the other day when my friend A. said, “You've

left off that Roundabout business, I see; very glad you have,” I joined

in the general roar of laughter at the table. I don't care a fig

whether Archilochus likes the papers or no. You don't like partridge,

Archilochus, or porridge, or what not? Try some other dish. I am not

going to force mine down your throat, or quarrel with you if you refuse

it. Once in America a clever and candid woman said to me, at the

close of a dinner, during which I had been sitting beside her, “Mr.

Roundabout, I was told I should not like you; and I don't.” “Well,

ma'am,” says I, in a tone of the most unfeigned simplicity, “I don't

care.” And we became good friends immediately, and esteemed each other

ever after.

So, my dear Archilochus, if you come upon this paper, and say, “Fudge!”

and pass on to another, I for one shall not be in the least mortified.

If you say, “What does he mean by calling this paper On Two Children

in Black, when there's nothing about people in black at all, unless the

ladies he met (and evidently bored) at dinner, were black women? What

is all this egotistical pother? A plague on his I's!” My dear fellow,

if you read “Montaigne's Essays,” you must own that he might call almost

any one by the name of any other, and that an essay on the Moon or an

essay on Green Cheese would be as appropriate a title as one of his on

Coaches, on the Art of Discoursing, or Experience, or what you will.

Besides, if I HAVE a subject (and I have) I claim to approach it in a

roundabout manner.

You remember Balzac's tale of the Peau de Chagrin, and how every time

the possessor used it for the accomplishment of some wish the fairy Peau

shrank a little and the owner's life correspondingly shortened? I have

such a desire to be well with my public that I am actually giving up

my favorite story. I am killing my goose, I know I am. I can't tell

my story of the children in black after this; after printing it, and

sending it through the country. When they are gone to the printer's

these little things become public property. I take their hands. I bless

them. I say, “Good-by, my little dears.” I am quite sorry to part with

them: but the fact is, I have told all my friends about them already,

and don't dare to take them about with me any more.

Now every word is true of this little anecdote, and I submit that there

lies in it a most curious and exciting little mystery. I am like a man

who gives you the last bottle of his '25 claret. It is the pride of his

cellar; he knows it, and he has a right to praise it. He takes up the

bottle, fashioned so slenderly--takes it up tenderly, cants it with

care, places it before his friends, declares how good it is, with honest

pride, and wishes he had a hundred dozen bottles more of the same wine

in his cellar. Si quid novisti, &c., I shall be very glad to hear from

you. I protest and vow I am giving you the best I have.

Well, who those little boys in black were, I shall never probably know

to my dying day. They were very pretty little men, with pale faces, and

large, melancholy eyes; and they had beautiful little hands, and little

boots, and the finest little shirts, and black paletots lined with the

richest silk; and they had picture-books in several languages, English,

and French, and German, I remember. Two more aristocratic-looking little

men I never set eyes on. They were travelling with a very handsome, pale

lady in mourning, and a maid-servant dressed in black, too; and on the

lady's face there was the deepest grief. The little boys clambered

and played about the carriage, and she sat watching. It was a

railway-carriage from Frankfort to Heidelberg.

I saw at once that she was the mother of those children, and going to

part from them. Perhaps I have tried parting with my own, and not found

the business very pleasant. Perhaps I recollect driving down (with a

certain trunk and carpet-bag on the box) with my own mother to the end

of the avenue, where we waited--only a few minutes--until the whirring

wheels of that “Defiance” coach were heard rolling towards us as certain

as death. Twang goes the horn; up goes the trunk; down come the steps.

Bah! I see the autumn evening: I hear the wheels now: I smart the cruel

smart again: and, boy or man, have never been able to bear the sight of

people parting from their children.

I thought these little men might be going to school for the first time

in their lives; and mamma might be taking them to the doctor, and would

leave them with many fond charges, and little wistful secrets of love,

bidding the elder to protect his younger brother, and the younger to be

gentle, and to remember to pray to God always for his mother, who would

pray for her boy too. Our party made friends with these young ones

during the little journey; but the poor lady was too sad to talk except

to the boys now and again, and sat in her corner, pale, and silently

looking at them.

The next day, we saw the lady and her maid driving in the direction

of the railway-station, WITHOUT THE BOYS. The parting had taken place,

then. That night they would sleep among strangers. The little beds at

home were vacant, and poor mother might go and look at them. Well, tears

flow, and friends part, and mothers pray every night all over the

world. I dare say we went to see Heidelberg Castle, and admired the vast

shattered walls and quaint gables; and the Neckar running its bright

course through that charming scene of peace and beauty; and ate our

dinner, and drank our wine with relish. The poor mother would eat but

little Abendessen that night; and, as for the children--that first night

at school--hard bed, hard words, strange boys bullying, and laughing,

and jarring you with their hateful merriment--as for the first night at

a strange school, we most of us remember what THAT is. And the first is

not the WORST, my boys, there's the rub. But each man has his share of

troubles, and, I suppose, you must have yours.

From Heidelberg we went to Baden-Baden: and, I dare say, saw Madame de

Schlangenbad and Madame de la Cruchecassee, and Count Punter, and honest

Captain Blackball. And whom should we see in the evening, but our two

little boys, walking on each side of a fierce, yellow-faced, bearded

man! We wanted to renew our acquaintance with them, and they were coming

forward quite pleased to greet us. But the father pulled back one of the

little men by his paletot, gave a grim scowl, and walked away. I can see

the children now looking rather frightened away from us and up into the

father's face, or the cruel uncle's--which was he? I think he was the

father. So this was the end of them. Not school, as I at first had

imagined. The mother was gone, who had given them the heaps of pretty

books, and the pretty studs in the shirts, and the pretty silken

clothes, and the tender--tender cares; and they were handed to this

scowling practitioner of Trente et Quarante. Ah! this is worse than

school. Poor little men! poor mother sitting by the vacant little beds!

We saw the children once or twice after, always in Scowler's company;

but we did not dare to give each other any marks of recognition.

From Baden we went to Basle, and thence to Lucerne, and so over the

St. Gothard into Italy. From Milan we went to Venice; and now comes the

singular part of my story. In Venice there is a little court of which

I forget the name: but in it is an apothecary's shop, whither I went to

buy some remedy for the bites of certain animals which abound in Venice.

Crawling animals, skipping animals, and humming, flying animals; all

three will have at you at once; and one night nearly drove me into a

strait-waistcoat. Well, as I was coming out of the apothecary's with the

bottle of spirits of hartshorn in my hand (it really does do the bites

a great deal of good), whom should I light upon but one of my little

Heidelberg-Baden boys!

I have said how handsomely they were dressed as long as they were with

their mother. When I saw the boy at Venice, who perfectly recognized

me, his only garb was a wretched yellow cotton gown. His little feet,

on which I had admired the little shiny boots, were WITHOUT SHOE OR

STOCKING. He looked at me, ran to an old hag of a woman, who seized his

hand; and with her he disappeared down one of the thronged lanes of the

city.

From Venice we went to Trieste (the Vienna railway at that time was only

opened as far as Laybach, and the magnificent Semmering Pass was not

quite completed). At a station between Laybach and Graetz, one of my

companions alighted for refreshment, and came back to the carriage

saying:--

“There's that horrible man from Baden, with the two little boys.”

Of course, we had talked about the appearance of the little boy at

Venice, and his strange altered garb. My companion said they were pale,

wretched-looking and DRESSED QUITE SHABBILY.

I got out at several stations, and looked at all the carriages. I could

not see my little men. From that day to this I have never set eyes on

them. That is all my story. Who were they? What could they be? How can

you explain that mystery of the mother giving them up; of the remarkable

splendor and elegance of their appearance while under her care; of

their barefooted squalor in Venice, a month afterwards; of their shabby

habiliments at Laybach? Had the father gambled away his money, and

sold their clothes? How came they to have passed out of the hands of a

refined lady (as she evidently was, with whom I first saw them) into the

charge of quite a common woman like her with whom I saw one of the boys

at Venice? Here is but one chapter of the story. Can any man write the

next, or that preceding the strange one on which I happened to light?

Who knows? the mystery may have some quite simple solution. I saw two

children, attired like little princes, taken from their mother and

consigned to other care; and a fortnight afterwards, one of them

barefooted and like a beggar. Who will read this riddle of The Two

Children in Black?

ON RIBBONS.

The uncle of the present Sir Louis N. Bonaparte, K.G., &c., inaugurated

his reign as Emperor over the neighboring nation by establishing an

Order, to which all citizens of his country, military, naval, and

civil--all men most distinguished in science, letters, arts, and

commerce--were admitted. The emblem of the Order was but a piece of

ribbon, more or less long or broad, with a toy at the end of it.

The Bourbons had toys and ribbons of their own, blue, black, and

all-colored; and on their return to dominion such good old Tories would

naturally have preferred to restore their good old orders of Saint

Louis, Saint Esprit, and Saint Michel; but France had taken the ribbon

of the Legion of Honor so to her heart that no Bourbon sovereign dared

to pluck it thence.

In England, until very late days, we have been accustomed rather to

pooh-pooh national Orders, to vote ribbons and crosses tinsel gewgaws,

foolish foreign ornaments, and so forth. It is known how the Great

Duke (the breast of whose own coat was plastered with some half-hundred

decorations) was averse to the wearing of ribbons, medals, clasps,

and the like, by his army. We have all of us read how uncommonly

distinguished Lord Castlereagh looked at Vienna, where he was the only

gentleman present without any decoration whatever. And the Great Duke's

theory was, that clasps and ribbons, stars and garters, were good

and proper ornaments for himself, for the chief officers of his

distinguished army, and for gentlemen of high birth, who might naturally

claim to wear a band of garter blue across their waistcoats; but that

for common people your plain coat, without stars and ribbons, was the

most sensible wear.

And no doubt you and I are as happy, as free, as comfortable; we can

walk and dine as well; we can keep the winter's cold out as well,

without a star on our coats, as without a feather in our hats. How often

we have laughed at the absurd mania of the Americans for dubbing their

senators, members of Congress, and States' representatives, Honorable.

We have a right to call OUR Privy Councillors Right Honorable, our

Lords' sons Honorable, and so forth; but for a nation as numerous, well

educated, strong, rich, civilized, free as our own, to dare to give its

distinguished citizens titles of honor--monstrous assumption of low-bred

arrogance and parvenu vanity! Our titles are respectable, but theirs

absurd. Mr. Jones, of London, a Chancellor's son, and a tailor's

grandson, is justly Honorable, and entitled to be Lord Jones at his

noble father's decease: but Mr. Brown, the senator from New York, is a

silly upstart for tacking Honorable to his name, and our sturdy British

good sense laughs at him. Who has not laughed (I have myself) at

Honorable Nahum Dodge, Honorable Zeno Scudder, Honorable Hiram Boake,

and the rest? A score of such queer names and titles I have smiled at in

America. And, mutato nomine? I meet a born idiot, who is a peer and born

legislator. This drivelling noodle and his descendants through life are

your natural superiors and mine--your and my children's superiors. I

read of an alderman kneeling and knighted at court: I see a gold-stick

waddling backwards before Majesty in a procession, and if we laugh,

don't you suppose the Americans laugh too?

Yes, stars, garters, orders, knighthoods, and the like, are folly. Yes,

Bobus, citizen and soap-boiler, is a good man, and no one laughs at him

or good Mrs. Bobus, as they have their dinner at one o'clock. But

who will not jeer at Sir Thomas on a melting day, and Lady Bobus, at

Margate, eating shrimps in a donkey-chaise? Yes, knighthood is absurd:

and chivalry an idiotic superstition: and Sir Walter Manny was a zany:

and Nelson, with his flaming stars and cordons, splendent upon a day

of battle, was a madman: and Murat, with his crosses and orders, at the

head of his squadrons charging victorious, was only a crazy mountebank,

who had been a tavern-waiter, and was puffed up with absurd vanity about

his dress and legs. And the men of the French line at Fontenoy, who

told Messieurs de la Garde to fire first, were smirking French

dancing-masters; and the Black Prince, waiting upon his royal prisoner,

was acting an inane masquerade: and Chivalry is naught; and honor is

humbug; and Gentlemanhood is an extinct folly; and Ambition is madness;

and desire of distinction is criminal vanity; and glory is bosh; and

fair fame is idleness; and nothing is true but two and two; and the

color of all the world is drab; and all men are equal; and one man is

as tall as another; and one man is as good as another--and a great dale

betther, as the Irish philosopher said.

Is this so? Titles and badges of honor are vanity; and in the American

Revolution you have his Excellency General Washington sending back, and

with proper spirit sending back, a letter in which he is not addressed

as Excellency and General. Titles are abolished; and the American

Republic swarms with men claiming and bearing them. You have the French

soldier cheered and happy in his dying agony, and kissing with frantic

joy the chief's hand who lays the little cross on the bleeding bosom. At

home you have the Dukes and Earls jobbing and intriguing for the Garter;

the Military Knights grumbling at the Civil Knights of the bath; the

little ribbon eager for the collar; the soldiers and seamen from India

and the Crimea marching in procession before the Queen, and receiving

from her hands the cross bearing her royal name. And, remember, there

are not only the cross wearers, but all the fathers and friends; all the

women who have prayed for their absent heroes; Harry's wife, and Tom's

mother, and Jack's daughter, and Frank's sweetheart, each of whom wears

in her heart of hearts afterwards the badge which son, father, lover,

has won by his merit; each of whom is made happy and proud, and is bound

to the country by that little bit of ribbon.

I have heard, in a lecture about George the Third, that, at his

accession, the King had a mind to establish an order for literary men.

It was to have been called the Order of Minerva--I suppose with an Owl

for a badge. The knights were to have worn a star of sixteen points, and

a yellow ribbon; and good old Samuel Johnson was talked of as President,

or Grand Cross, or Grand Owl, of the society. Now about such an order

as this there certainly may be doubts. Consider the claimants, the

difficulty of settling their claims, the rows and squabbles amongst the

candidates, and the subsequent decision of posterity! Dr. Beattie would

have ranked as first poet, and twenty years after the sublime Mr. Hayley

would, no doubt, have claimed the Grand Cross. Mr. Gibbon would not have

been eligible, on account of his dangerous freethinking opinions; and

her sex, as well as her republican sentiments, might have interfered

with the knighthood of the immortal Mrs. Catharine Macaulay. How

Goldsmith would have paraded the ribbon at Madame Cornelys's, or the

Academy dinner! How Peter Pindar would have railed at it! Fifty years

later, the noble Scott would have worn the Grand Cross and deserved it;

but Gifford would have had it; and Byron, and Shelley, and Hazlitt, and

Hunt would have been without it; and had Keats been proposed as officer,

how the Tory prints would have yelled with rage and scorn! Had the star

of Minerva lasted to our present time--but I pause, not because the idea

is dazzling, but too awful. Fancy the claimants, and the row about their

precedence! Which philosopher shall have the grand cordon?--which the

collar?--which the little scrap no bigger than a buttercup? Of the

historians--A, say,--and C, and F, and G, and S, and T,--which shall be

Companion and which Grand Owl? Of the poets, who wears, or claims, the

largest and brightest star? Of the novelists, there is A, and B and C D;

and E (star of first magnitude, newly discovered), and F (a magazine of

wit), and fair G, and H, and I, and brave old J, and charming K, and

L, and M, and N, and O (fair twinklers), and I am puzzled between three

P's--Peacock, Miss Pardoe, and Paul Pry--and Queechy, and R, and S, and

T, mere et fils, and very likely U, O gentle reader, for who has not

written his novel now-a-days?--who has not a claim to the star and

straw-colored ribbon?--and who shall have the biggest and largest? Fancy

the struggle! Fancy the squabble! Fancy the distribution of prizes!

Who shall decide on them? Shall it be the sovereign? shall it be the

Minister for the time being? and has Lord Palmerston made a deep study

of novels? In this matter the late Ministry,* to be sure, was better

qualified; but even then, grumblers who had not got their canary

cordons, would have hinted at professional jealousies entering the

Cabinet; and, the ribbons being awarded, Jack would have scowled at his

because Dick had a broader one; Ned been indignant because Bob's was as

large: Tom would have thrust his into the drawer, and scorned to wear it

at all. No--no: the so-called literary world was well rid of Minerva

and her yellow ribbon. The great poets would have been indifferent, the

little poets jealous, the funny men furious, the philosophers satirical,

the historians supercilious, and, finally, the jobs without end.

Say, ingenuity and cleverness are to be rewarded by State tokens and

prizes--and take for granted the Order of Minerva is established--who

shall have it? A great philosopher? no doubt we cordially salute him

G.C.M. A great historian? G.C.M. of course. A great engineer? G.C.M.

A great poet? received with acclamation G.C.M. A great painter? oh!

certainly, G.C.M. If a great painter, why not a great novelist?

Well, pass, great novelist, G.C.M. But if a poetic, a pictorial, a

story-telling or music-composing artist, why not a singing artist?

Why not a basso-profondo? Why not a primo tenore? And if a singer, why

should not a ballet-dancer come bounding on the stage with his cordon,

and cut capers to the music of a row of decorated fiddlers? A chemist

puts in his claim for having invented a new color; an apothecary for

a new pill; the cook for a new sauce; the tailor for a new cut of

trousers. We have brought the star of Minerva down from the breast to

the pantaloons. Stars and garters! can we go any farther; or shall we

give the shoe maker the yellow ribbon of the order for his shoetie?

* That of Lord Derby, in 1859, which included Mr. Disraeli

and Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.

When I began this present Roundabout excursion, I think I had not quite

made up my mind whether we would have an Order of all the Talents or

not: perhaps I rather had a hankering for a rich ribbon and gorgeous

star, in which my family might like to see me at parties in my best

waistcoat. But then the door opens, and there come in, and by the same

right too, Sir Alexis Soyer! Sir Alessandro Tamburini! Sir Agostino

Velluti! Sir Antonio Paganini (violinist)! Sir Sandy McGuffog (piper to

the most noble the Marquis of Farintosh)! Sir Alcide Flicflac (premier

danseur of H. M. Theatre)! Sir Harley Quin and Sir Joseph Grimaldi (from

Covent Garden)! They have all the yellow ribbon. They are all honorable,

and clever, and distinguished artists. Let us elbow through the rooms,

make a bow to the lady of the house, give a nod to Sir George Thrum,

who is leading the orchestra, and go and get some champagne and

seltzer-water from Sir Richard Gunter, who is presiding at the buffet.

A national decoration might be well and good: a token awarded by the

country to all its benemerentibus: but most gentlemen with Minerva stars

would, I think, be inclined to wear very wide breast-collars to their

coats. Suppose yourself, brother penman, decorated with this ribbon, and

looking in the glass, would you not laugh? Would not wife and daughters

laugh at that canary-colored emblem?

But suppose a man, old or young, of figure ever so stout, thin, stumpy,

homely, indulging in looking-glass reflections with that hideous ribbon

and cross called V. C. on his coat, would he not be proud? and his

family, would they not be prouder? For your nobleman there is the famous

old blue garter and star, and welcome. If I were a marquis--if I had

thirty--forty thousand a year (settle the sum, my dear Alnaschar,

according to your liking), I should consider myself entitled to my seat

in Parliament and to my garter. The garter belongs to the Ornamental

Classes. Have you seen the new magnificent Pavo Spicifer at the

Zoological Gardens, and do you grudge him his jewelled coronet and the

azure splendor of his waistcoat? I like my Lord Mayor to have a gilt

coach; my magnificent monarch to be surrounded by magnificent nobles:

I huzzay respectfully when they pass in procession. It is good for Mr.

Briefless (50, Pump Court, fourth floor) that there should be a Lord

Chancellor, with a gold robe and fifteen thousand a year. It is good

for a poor curate that there should be splendid bishops at Fulham and

Lambeth: their lordships were poor curates once, and have won, so

to speak, their ribbon. Is a man who puts into a lottery to be sulky

because he does not win the twenty thousand pounds prize? Am I to fall

into a rage, and bully my family when I come home, after going to see

Chatsworth or Windsor, because we have only two little drawing-rooms?

Welcome to your garter, my lord, and shame upon him qui mal y pense!

So I arrive in my roundabout way near the point towards which I have

been trotting ever since we set out.

In a voyage to America, some nine years since, on the seventh or eighth

day out from Liverpool, Captain L---- came to dinner at eight bells as

usual, talked a little to the persons right and left of him, and helped

the soup with his accustomed politeness. Then he went on deck, and was

back in a minute, and operated on the fish, looking rather grave the

while.

Then he went on deck again; and this time was absent, it may be, three

or five minutes, during which the fish disappeared, and the entrees

arrived, and the roast beef. Say ten minutes passed--I can't tell after

nine years.

Then L---- came down with a pleased and happy countenance this time, and

began carving the sirloin: “We have seen the light,” he said. “Madam,

may I help you to a little gravy, or a little horse-radish?” or what

not?

I forget the name of the light; nor does it matter. It was a point

off Newfoundland for which he was on the look-out, and so well did the

“Canada” know where she was, that, between soup and beef, the captain

had sighted the headland by which his course was lying.

And so through storm and darkness, through fog and midnight, the ship

had pursued her steady way over the pathless ocean and roaring seas, so

surely that the officers who sailed her knew her place within a minute

or two, and guided us with a wonderful providence safe on our way. Since

the noble Cunard Company has run its ships, but one accident, and that

through the error of a pilot, has happened on the line.

By this little incident (hourly of course repeated, and trivial to all

sea-going people) I own I was immensely moved, and never can think of

it but with a heart full of thanks and awe. We trust our lives to these

seamen, and how nobly they fulfil their trust! They are, under heaven,

as a providence for us. Whilst we sleep, their untiring watchfulness

keeps guard over us. All night through that bell sounds at its season,

and tells how our sentinels defend us. It rang when the “Amazon” was

on fire, and chimed its heroic signal of duty, and courage, and honor.

Think of the dangers these seamen undergo for us: the hourly peril and

watch; the familiar storm; the dreadful iceberg; the long winter nights

when the decks are as glass, and the sailor has to climb through icicles

to bend the stiff sail on the yard! Think of their courage and their

kindnesses in cold, in tempest, in hunger, in wreck! “The women and

children to the boats,” says the captain of the “Birkenhead,” and, with

the troops formed on the deck, and the crew obedient to the word of

glorious command, the immortal ship goes down. Read the story of the

“Sarah Sands:”--

“SARAH SANDS.

“The screw steamship 'Sarah Sands,' 1,330 registered tons, was chartered

by the East India Company in the autumn of 1858, for the conveyance of

troops to India. She was commanded by John Squire Castle. She took out a

part of the 54th Regiment, upwards of 350 persons, besides the wives and

children of some of the men, and the families of some of the officers.

All went well till the 11th November, when the ship had reached lat. 14

S., long. 56 E., upwards of 400 miles from the Mauritius.

“Between three and four P. M. on that day a very strong smell of fire

was perceived arising from the after-deck, and upon going below into

the hold, Captain Castle found it to be on fire, and immense volumes

of smoke arising from it. Endeavors were made to reach the seat of the

fire, but in vain; the smoke and heat were too much for the men.

There was, however, no confusion. Every order was obeyed with the same

coolness and courage with which it was given. The engine was immediately

stopped. All sail was taken in, and the ship brought to the wind, so as

to drive the smoke and fire, which was in the after-part of the ship,

astern. Others were, at the same time, getting fire-hoses fitted

and passed to the scene of the fire. The fire, however, continued to

increase, and attention was directed to the ammunition contained in

the powder-magazines, which were situated one on each side the ship

immediately above the fire. The star-board magazine was soon cleared.

But by this time the whole of the after-part of the ship was so much

enveloped in smoke that it was scarcely possible to stand, and great

fears were entertained on account of the port magazine. Volunteers were

called for, and came immediately, and, under the guidance of Lieutenant

Hughes, attempted to clear the port magazine, which they succeeded in

doing, with the exception, as was supposed, of one or two barrels. It

was most dangerous work. The men became overpowered with the smoke and

heat, and fell; and several, while thus engaged, were dragged up by

ropes, senseless.

“The flames soon burst up through the deck, and running rapidly along

the various cabins, set the greater part on fire.

“In the meantime Captain Castle took steps for lowering the boats. There

was a heavy gale at the time, but they were launched without the least

accident. The soldiers were mustered on deck;--there was no rush to the

boats; and the men obeyed the word of command as if on parade. The men

were informed that Captain Castle did not despair of saving the ship,

but that they must be prepared to leave her if necessary. The women and

children were lowered into the port lifeboat, under the charge of Mr.

Very, third officer, who had orders to keep clear of the ship until

recalled.

“Captain Castle then commenced constructing rafts of spare spars. In a

short time, three were put together, which would have been capable of

saving a great number of those on board. Two were launched overboard,

and safely moored alongside, and then a third was left across the deck

forward, ready to be launched.

“In the meantime the fire had made great progress. The whole of the

cabins were one body of fire, and at about 8.30 P. M. flames burst

through the upper deck, and shortly after the mizzen rigging caught

fire. Fears were entertained of the ship paying off, in which case the

flames would have been swept forwards by the wind; but fortunately the

after-braces were burnt through, and the main-yard swung round, which

kept the ship's head to wind. About nine P. M., a fearful explosion

took place in the port magazine, arising, no doubt, from the one or two

barrels of powder which it had been impossible to remove. By this time

the ship was one body of flame, from the stern to the main rigging, and

thinking it scarcely possible to save her, Captain Castle called Major

Brett (then in command of the troops, for the Colonel was in one of

the boats) forward, and, telling him that he feared the ship was lost,

requested him to endeavor to keep order amongst the troops till the

last, but, at the same time, to use every exertion to check the

fire. Providentially, the iron bulkhead in the after-part of the

ship withstood the action of the flames, and here all efforts were

concentrated to keep it cool.

“'No person,' says the captain, 'can describe the manner in which the

men worked to keep the fire back; one party were below, keeping the

bulkhead cool, and when several were dragged up senseless, fresh

volunteers took their places, who were, however, soon in the same state.

At about ten P. M., the maintopsail-yard took fire. Mr. Welch, one

quartermaster, and four or five soldiers, went aloft with wet blankets,

and succeeded in extinguishing it, but not until the yard and mast were

nearly burnt through. The work of fighting the fire below continued for

hours, and about midnight it appeared that some impression was made; and

after that, the men drove it back, inch by inch, until daylight, when

they had completely got it under. The ship was now in a frightful

plight. The after-part was literally burnt out--merely the shell

remaining--the port quarter blown out by the explosion: fifteen feet of

water in the hold.'

“The gale still prevailed, and the ship was rolling and pitching in a

heavy sea, and taking in large quantities of water abaft: the tanks,

too, were rolling from side to side in the hold.

“As soon as the smoke was partially cleared away, Captain Castle got

spare sails and blankets aft to stop the leak, passing two hawsers round

the stern, and setting them up. The troops were employed baling and

pumping. This continued during the whole morning.

“In the course of the day the ladies joined the ship. The boats were

ordered alongside, but they found the sea too heavy to remain there. The

gig had been abandoned during the night, and the crew, under Mr. Wood,

fourth officer, had got into another of the boats. The troops were

employed the remainder of the day baling and pumping, and the crew

securing the stern. All hands were employed during the following

night baling and pumping, the boats being moored alongside, where they

received some damage. At daylight, on the 13th, the crew were employed

hoisting time boats, the troops were working manfully baling and

pumping. Latitude at noon, 13 deg. 12 min. south. At five P. M., the

foresail and foretopsail were set, the rafts were cut away, and the ship

bore for the Mauritius. On Thursday, the 19th, she sighted the Island of

Rodrigues, and arrived at Mauritius on Monday the 23rd.”

The Nile and Trafalgar are not more glorious to our country, are not

greater victories than these won by our merchant-seamen. And if you look

in the Captain's reports of any maritime register, you will see similar

acts recorded every day. I have such a volume for last year, now

lying before me. In the second number, as I open it at hazard, Captain

Roberts, master of the ship “Empire,” from Shields to London, reports

how on the 14th ult. (the 14th December, 1859), he, “being off Whitby,

discovered the ship to be on fire between the main hold and boilers: got

the hose from the engine laid on, and succeeded in subduing the fire;

but only apparently; for at seven the next morning, the 'Dudgeon'

bearing S.S.E. seven miles' distance, the fire again broke out, causing

the ship to be enveloped in flames on both sides of midships: got the

hose again into play and all hands to work with buckets to combat with

the fire. Did not succeed in stopping it till four P. M., to effect

which, were obliged to cut away the deck and top sides, and throw

overboard part of the cargo. The vessel was very much damaged and leaky:

determined to make for the Humber. Ship was run on shore, on the

mud, near Grimsby harbor, with five feet of water in her hold. The

donkey-engine broke down. The water increased so fast as to put out

the furnace fires and render the ship almost unmanageable. On the tide

flowing, a tug towed the ship off the mud, and got her into Grimsby to

repair.”

On the 2nd of November, Captain Strickland, of the “Purchase”

brigantine, from Liverpool to Yarmouth, U. S., “encountered heavy gales

from W.N.W. to W.S.W., in lat. 43 deg. N., long. 34 deg. W., in which

we lost jib, foretopmast, staysail, topsail, and carried away the

foretopmast stays, bobstays and bowsprit, headsails, cut-water and

stern, also started the wood ends, which caused the vessel to leak. Put

her before the wind and sea, and hove about twenty-five tons of cargo

overboard to lighten the ship forward. Slung myself in a bowline, and by

means of thrusting 2 1/2-inch rope in the opening, contrived to stop a

great portion of the leak.

“December 16th.--The crew continuing night and day at the pumps, could

not keep the ship free; deemed it prudent for the benefit of those

concerned to bear up for the nearest port. On arriving in lat. 48 deg.

45' N., long. 23 deg. W., observed a vessel with a signal of distress

flying. Made towards her, when she proved to be the barque 'Carleton,'

water-logged. The captain and crew asked to be taken off. Hove to, and

received them on board, consisting of thirteen men: and their ship was

abandoned. We then proceeded on our course, the crew of the abandoned

vessel assisting all they could to keep my ship afloat. We arrived at

Cork harbor on the 27th ult.”

Captain Coulson, master of the brig “Othello,” reports that his brig

foundered off Portland, December 27;--encountering a strong gale,

and shipping two heavy seas in succession, which hove the ship on her

beam-ends. “Observing no chance of saving the ship, took to the long

boat, and within ten minutes of leaving her saw the brig founder. We

were picked up the same morning by the French ship 'Commerce de Paris,'

Captain Tombarel.”

Here, in a single column of a newspaper, what strange, touching pictures

do we find of seamen's dangers, vicissitudes, gallantry, generosity! The

ship on fire--the captain in the gale slinging himself in a bowline to

stop the leak--the Frenchman in the hour of danger coming to his British

comrade's rescue--the brigantine almost a wreck, working up to the

barque with the signal of distress flying, and taking off her crew

of thirteen men. “We then proceeded on our course, THE CREW OF THE

ABANDONED VESSEL ASSISTING ALL THEY COULD TO KEEP MY SHIP AFLOAT.” What

noble, simple words! What courage, devotedness, brotherly love! Do they

not cause the heart to beat, and the eyes to fill?

This is what seamen do daily, and for one another. One lights

occasionally upon different stories. It happened, not very long since,

that the passengers by one of the great ocean steamers were wrecked,

and, after undergoing the most severe hardships, were left, destitute

and helpless, at a miserable coaling port. Amongst them were old men,

ladies, and children. When the next steamer arrived, the passengers by

that steamer took alarm at the haggard and miserable appearance of

their unfortunate predecessors, and actually REMONSTRATED WITH THEIR OWN

CAPTAIN, URGING HIM NOT TO TAKE THE POOR CREATURES ON BOARD. There

was every excuse, of course. The last-arrived steamer was already

dangerously full: the cabins were crowded; there were sick and delicate

people on board--sick and delicate people who had paid a large price

to the company for room, food, comfort, already not too sufficient.

If fourteen of us are in an omnibus, will we see three or four women

outside and say “Come in, because this is the last 'bus, and it rains?”

Of course not: but think of that remonstrance, and of that Samaritan

master of the “Purchase” brigantine!

In the winter of '53, I went from Marseilles to Civita Vecchia, in one

of the magnificent P. and O. ships, the “Valetta,” the master of which

subsequently did distinguished service in the Crimea. This was his first

Mediterranean voyage, and he sailed his ship by the charts alone, going

into each port as surely as any pilot. I remember walking the deck at

night with this most skilful, gallant, well-bred, and well-educated

gentleman, and the glow of eager enthusiasm with which he assented, when

I asked him whether he did not think a RIBBON or ORDER would be welcome

or useful in his service.

Why is there not an ORDER OF BRITANNIA for British seamen? In the

Merchant and the Royal Navy alike, occur almost daily instances and

occasions for the display of science, skill, bravery, fortitude in

trying circumstances, resource in danger. In the first number of the

Cornhill Magazine, a friend contributed a most touching story of the

M'Clintock expedition, in the dangers and dreadful glories of which he

shared; and the writer was a merchant captain. How many more are there

(and, for the honor of England, may there be many like him!)--gallant,

accomplished, high-spirited, enterprising masters of their noble

profession! Can our fountain of Honor not be brought to such men? It

plays upon captains and colonels in seemly profusion. It pours forth

not illiberal rewards upon doctors and judges. It sprinkles mayors and

aldermen. It bedews a painter now and again. It has spirited a baronetcy

upon two, and bestowed a coronet upon one noble man of letters.

Diplomatists take their Bath in it as of right; and it flings out a

profusion of glittering stars upon the nobility of the three kingdoms.

Cannot Britannia find a ribbon for her sailors? The Navy, royal or

mercantile, is a Service. The command of a ship, or the conduct of her,

implies danger, honor, science, skill, subordination, good faith. It may

be a victory, such as that of the “Sarah Sands;” it may be discovery,

such as that of the “Fox;” it may be heroic disaster, such as that of

the “Birkenhead;” and in such events merchant seamen, as well as royal

seamen, take their share.

Why is there not, then, an Order of Britannia? One day a young officer

of the “Euryalus” * may win it; and, having just read the memoirs of

LORD DUNDONALD, I know who ought to have the first Grand Cross.

* Prince Alfred was serving on board the frigate “Euryalus”

when this was written.

ON SOME LATE GREAT VICTORIES.

On the 18th day of April last I went to see a friend in a neighboring

Crescent, and on the steps of the next house beheld a group something

like that here depicted. A newsboy had stopped in his walk, and was

reading aloud the journal which it was his duty to deliver; a pretty

orange-girl, with a heap of blazing fruit, rendered more brilliant

by one of those great blue papers in which oranges are now artfully

wrapped, leant over the railing and listened; and opposite the nympham

discentem there was a capering and acute-eared young satirist of a

crossing-sweeper, who had left his neighboring professional avocation

and chance of profit, in order to listen to the tale of the little

newsboy.

That intelligent reader, with his hand following the line as he read

it out to his audience, was saying:--“And--now--Tom--coming up

smiling--after his fall--dee--delivered a rattling clinker upon

the Benicia Boy's--potato-trap--but was met by a--punisher on the

nose--which,” &c. &c.; or words to that effect. Betty at 52 let me

in, while the boy was reading his lecture and, having been some twenty

minutes or so in the house and paid my visit, I took leave.

The little lecturer was still at work on the 51 doorstep, and his

audience had scarcely changed their position. Having read every word of

the battle myself in the morning, I did not stay to listen further;

but if the gentleman who expected his paper at the usual hour that day

experienced delay and a little disappointment I shall not be surprised.

I am not going to expatiate on the battle. I have read in the

correspondent's letter of a Northern newspaper, that in the midst of the

company assembled the reader's humble servant was present, and in a very

polite society, too, of “poets, clergymen, men of letters, and members

of both Houses of Parliament.” If so, I must have walked to the station

in my sleep, paid three guineas in a profound fit of mental abstraction,

and returned to bed unconscious, for I certainly woke there about the

time when history relates that the fight was over. I do not know whose

colors I wore--the Benician's, or those of the Irish champion; nor

remember where the fight took place, which, indeed, no somnambulist is

bound to recollect. Ought Mr. Sayers to be honored for being brave, or

punished for being naughty? By the shade of Brutus the elder, I don't

know.

In George II.'s time, there was a turbulent navy lieutenant (Handsome

Smith he was called--his picture is at Greenwich now, in brown velvet,

and gold and scarlet; his coat handsome, his waistcoat exceedingly

handsome; but his face by no means the beauty)--there was, I say, a

turbulent young lieutenant who was broke on a complaint of the French

ambassador, for obliging a French ship of war to lower her topsails to

his ship at Spithead. But, by the King's orders, Tom was next day made

Captain Smith. Well, if I were absolute king, I would send Tom Sayers

to the mill for a month, and make him Sir Thomas on coming out of

Clerkenwell. You are a naughty boy, Tom! but then, you know, we ought

to love our brethren, though ever so naughty. We are moralists, and

reprimand you; and you are hereby reprimanded accordingly. But in case

England should ever have need of a few score thousand champions, who

laugh at danger; who cope with giants; who, stricken to the ground, jump

up and gayly rally, and fall, and rise again, and strike, and die rather

than yield--in case the country should need such men, and you should

know them, be pleased to send lists of the misguided persons to the

principal police stations, where means may some day be found to utilize

their wretched powers, and give their deplorable energies a right

direction. Suppose, Tom, that you and your friends are pitted against an

immense invader--suppose you are bent on holding the ground, and dying

there, if need be--suppose it is life, freedom, honor, home, you are

fighting for, and there is a death--dealing sword or rifle in your hand,

with which you are going to resist some tremendous enemy who challenges

your championship on your native shore? Then, Sir Thomas, resist him to

the death, and it is all right: kill him, and heaven bless you. Drive

him into the sea, and there destroy, smash, and drown him; and let

us sing Laudamus. In these national cases, you see, we override the

indisputable first laws of morals. Loving your neighbor is very well,

but suppose your neighbor comes over from Calais and Boulogne to rob you

of your laws, your liberties, your newspapers, your parliament (all of

which SOME dear neighbors of ours have given up in the most self-denying

manner): suppose any neighbor were to cross the water and propose this

kind of thing to us? Should we not be justified in humbly trying to

pitch him into the water? If it were the King of Belgium himself we must

do so. I mean that fighting, of course, is wrong; but that there are

occasions when, &c.--I suppose I mean that that one-handed fight of

Sayers is one of the most spirit-stirring little stories ever told and,

with every love and respect for Morality--my spirit says to her,

“Do, for goodness' sake, my dear madam, keep your true, and pure, and

womanly, and gentle remarks for another day. Have the great kindness to

stand a LEETLE aside, and just let us see one or two more rounds between

the men. That little man with the one hand powerless on his breast

facing yonder giant for hours, and felling him, too, every now and then!

It is the little 'Java' and the 'Constitution' over again.”

I think it is a most fortunate event for the brave Heenan, who has acted

and written since the battle with a true warrior's courtesy, and with

a great deal of good logic too, that the battle was a drawn one. The

advantage was all on Mr. Sayers's side. Say a young lad of sixteen

insults me in the street, and I try and thrash him, and do it. Well, I

have thrashed a young lad. You great, big tyrant, couldn't you hit one

of your own size? But say the lad thrashes me? In either case I walk

away discomfited: but in the latter, I am positively put to shame. Now,

when the ropes were cut from that death-grip, and Sir Thomas released,

the gentleman of Benicia was confessedly blind of one eye, and speedily

afterwards was blind of both. Could Mr. Savers have held out for three

minutes, for five minutes, for ten minutes more? He says he could. So

we say WE could have held out, and did, and had beaten off the enemy

at Waterloo, even if the Prussians hadn't come up. The opinions differ

pretty much according to the nature of the opinants. I say the Duke and

Tom could have held out, that they meant to hold out, that they did hold

out, and that there has been fistifying enough. That crowd which came

in and stopped the fight ought to be considered like one of those divine

clouds which the gods send in Homer:

“Apollo shrouds

The godlike Trojan in a veil of clouds.”

It is the best way of getting the godlike Trojan out of the scrape,

don't you see? The nodus is cut; Tom is out of chancery; the Benicia Boy

not a bit the worse, nay, better than if he had beaten the little man.

He has not the humiliation of conquest. He is greater, and will be loved

more hereafter by the gentle sex. Suppose he had overcome the godlike

Trojan? Suppose he had tied Tom's corpse to his cab-wheels, and driven

to Farnham, smoking the pipe of triumph? Faugh! the great hulking

conqueror! Why did you not hold your hand from yonder hero? Everybody,

I say, was relieved by that opportune appearance of the British gods,

protectors of native valor, who interfered, and “withdrew” their

champion.

Now, suppose six-feet-two conqueror, and five-feet-eight beaten; would

Sayers have been a whit the less gallant and meritorious? If Sancho had

been allowed REALLY to reign in Barataria, I make no doubt that, with

his good sense and kindness of heart, he would have devised some means

of rewarding the brave vanquished, as well as the brave victors in the

Baratarian army, and that a champion who had fought a good fight would

have been a knight of King Don Sancho's orders, whatever the upshot of

the combat had been. Suppose Wellington overwhelmed on the plateau

of Mont St. John; suppose Washington attacked and beaten at Valley

Forge--and either supposition is quite easy--and what becomes of the

heroes? They would have been as brave, honest, heroic, wise; but their

glory, where would it have been? Should we have had their portraits

hanging in our chambers? have been familiar with their histories? have

pondered over their letters, common lives, and daily sayings? There is

not only merit, but luck which goes to making a hero out of a gentleman.

Mind, please you, I am not saying that the hero is after all not so very

heroic; and have not the least desire to grudge him his merit because of

his good fortune.

Have you any idea whither this Roundabout Essay on some late great

victories is tending? Do you suppose that by those words I mean Trenton,

Brandywine, Salamanca, Vittoria, and so forth? By a great victory I

can't mean that affair at Farnham, for it was a drawn fight. Where,

then, are the victories, pray, and when are we coming to them?

My good sir, you will perceive that in this Nicaean discourse I have

only as yet advanced as far as this--that a hero, whether he wins

or loses, is a hero; and that if a fellow will but be honest and

courageous, and do his best, we are for paying all honor to him.

Furthermore, it has been asserted that Fortune has a good deal to do

with the making of heroes; and thus hinted for the consolation of those

who don't happen to be engaged in any stupendous victories, that, had

opportunity so served, they might have been heroes too. If you are not,

friend, it is not your fault, whilst I don't wish to detract from

any gentleman's reputation who is. There. My worst enemy can't take

objection to that. The point might have been put more briefly perhaps;

but, if you please, we will not argue that question.

Well, then. The victories which I wish especially to commemorate in

this paper, are the six great, complete, prodigious, and undeniable

victories, achieved by the corps which the editor of the Cornhill

Magazine has the honor to command. When I seemed to speak disparagingly

but now of generals, it was that chief I had in my I (if you will

permit me the expression). I wished him not to be elated by too much

prosperity; I warned him against assuming heroic imperatorial airs, and

cocking his laurels too jauntily over his ear. I was his conscience,

and stood on the splash-board of his triumph-car, whispering, “Hominem

memento te.” As we rolled along the way, and passed the weathercocks on

the temples, I saluted the symbol of the goddess Fortune with a reverent

awe. “We have done our little endeavor,” I said, bowing my head, “and

mortals can do no more. But we might have fought bravely and not won. We

might have cast the coin, calling, 'Head,' and lo! Tail might have come

uppermost.” O thou Ruler of Victories!--thou Awarder of Fame!--thou

Giver of Crowns (and shillings)--if thou hast smiled upon us, shall we

not be thankful? There is a Saturnine philosopher, standing at the

door of his book-shop, who, I fancy, has a pooh-pooh expression as the

triumph passes. (I can't see quite clearly for the laurels, which

have fallen down over my nose.) One hand is reining in the two white

elephants that draw the car; I raise the other hand up to--to the

laurels, and pass on, waving him a graceful recognition. Up the Hill

of Ludgate--around the Pauline Square--by the side of Chepe--until it

reaches our own Hill of Corn--the procession passes. The Imperator is

bowing to the people; the captains of the legions are riding round the

car, their gallant minds struck by the thought, “Have we not fought as

well as yonder fellow, swaggering in the chariot, and are we not as good

as he?” Granted, with all my heart, my dear lads. When your consulship

arrives, may you be as fortunate. When these hands, now growing old,

shall lay down sword and truncheon, may you mount the car, and ride

to the temple of Jupiter. Be yours the laurel then. Neque me myrtus

dedecet, looking cosily down from the arbor where I sit under the arched

vine.

I fancy the Imperator standing on the steps of the temple (erected

by Titus) on the Mons Frumentarius, and addressing the citizens:

“Quirites!” he says, “in our campaign of six months, we have been

engaged six times, and in each action have taken near upon a HUNDRED

THOUSAND PRISONERS. Go to! What are other magazines compared to

our magazine? (Sound, trumpeter!) What banner is there like that of

Cornhill? You, philosopher yonder!” (he shirks under his mantle.)

“Do you know what it is to have a hundred and ten thousand readers?

A hundred thousand readers? a hundred thousand BUYERS!” (Cries of

“No!”--“Pooh!” “Yes, upon my honor!” “Oh, come!” and murmurs of applause

and derision)--“I say more than a hundred thousand purchasers--and I

believe AS MUCH AS A MILLION readers!” (Immense sensation.) “To these

have we said an unkind word? We have enemies; have we hit them an unkind

blow? Have we sought to pursue party aims, to forward private jobs,

to advance selfish schemes? The only persons to whom wittingly we have

given pain are some who have volunteered for our corps--and of these

volunteers we have had THOUSANDS.” (Murmurs and grumbles.) “What

commander, citizens, could place all these men!--could make officers of

all these men?” (cries of “No--no!” and laughter)--“could say, 'I accept

this recruit, though he is too short for our standard, because he is

poor, and has a mother at home who wants bread?' could enroll this

other, who is too weak to bear arms, because he says, 'Look, sir, I

shall be stronger anon.' The leader of such an army as ours must select

his men, not because they are good and virtuous, but because they are

strong and capable. To these our ranks are ever open, and in addition to

the warriors who surround me”--(the generals look proudly conscious)--“I

tell you, citizens, that I am in treaty with other and most tremendous

champions, who will march by the side of our veterans to the achievement

of fresh victories. Now, blow, trumpets! Bang, ye gongs! and drummers,

drub the thundering skins! Generals and chiefs, we go to sacrifice to

the gods.”

Crowned with flowers, the captains enter the temple, the other Magazines

walking modestly behind them. The people huzza; and, in some instances,

kneel and kiss the fringes of the robes of the warriors. The Philosopher

puts up his shutters, and retires into his shop, deeply moved. In

ancient times, Pliny (apud Smith) relates it was the custom of the

Imperator “to paint his whole body a bright red;” and, also, on

ascending the Hill, to have some of the hostile chiefs led aside “to the

adjoining prison, and put to death.” We propose to dispense with both

these ceremonies.

THORNS IN THE CUSHION.

In the Essay with which this volume commences, the Cornhill Magazine was

likened to a ship sailing forth on her voyage, and the captain uttered

a very sincere prayer for her prosperity. The dangers of storm and

rock, the vast outlay upon ship and cargo, and the certain risk of the

venture, gave the chief officer a feeling of no small anxiety; for who

could say from what quarter danger might arise, and how his owner's

property might be imperilled? After a six months' voyage, we with very

thankful hearts could acknowledge our good fortune: and, taking up the

apologue in the Roundabout manner, we composed a triumphal procession

in honor of the Magazine, and imagined the Imperator thereof riding in

a sublime car to return thanks in the Temple of Victory. Cornhill is

accustomed to grandeur and greatness, and has witnessed, every ninth

of November, for I don't know how many centuries, a prodigious annual

pageant, chariot, progress, and flourish of trumpetry; and being so very

near the Mansion House, I am sure the reader will understand how

the idea of pageant and procession came naturally to my mind. The

imagination easily supplied a gold coach, eight cream-colored horses

of your true Pegasus breed, huzzaing multitudes, running footmen, and

clanking knights in armor, a chaplain and a sword-bearer with a muff

on his head, scowling out of the coach-window, and a Lord Mayor all

crimson, fur, gold chain, and white ribbons, solemnly occupying the

place of state. A playful fancy could have carried the matter farther,

could have depicted the feast in the Egyptian Hall, the Ministers, Chief

Justices, and right reverend prelates taking their seats round about his

lordship, the turtle and other delicious viands, and Mr. Toole behind

the central throne, bawling out to the assembled guests and dignitaries:

“My Lord So-and-so, my Lord What-d'ye-call-'im, my Lord Etcaetera, the

Lord Mayor pledges you all in a loving-cup.” Then the noble proceedings

come to an end; Lord Simper proposes the ladies; the company rises from

table, and adjourns to coffee and muffins. The carriages of the nobility

and guests roll back to the West. The Egyptian Hall, so bright just now,

appears in a twilight glimmer, in which waiters are seen ransacking the

dessert, and rescuing the spoons. His lordship and the Lady Mayoress

go into their private apartments. The robes are doffed, the collar and

white ribbons are removed. The Mayor becomes a man, and is pretty surely

in a fluster about the speeches which he has just uttered; remembering

too well now, wretched creature, the principal points which he DIDN'T

make when he rose to speak. He goes to bed to headache, to care,

to repentance, and, I dare say, to a dose of something which his

body-physician has prescribed for him. And there are ever so many men in

the city who fancy that man happy!

Now, suppose that all through that 9th of November his lordship has

had a racking rheumatism, or a toothache, let us say, during all

dinner-time--through which he has been obliged to grin and mumble his

poor old speeches. Is he enviable? Would you like to change with his

lordship? Suppose that bumper which his golden footman brings him,

instead i'fackins of ypocras or canary, contains some abomination of

senna? Away! Remove the golden goblet, insidious cupbearer! You now

begin to perceive the gloomy moral which I am about to draw.

Last month we sang the song of glorification, and rode in the chariot of

triumph. It was all very well. It was right to huzza, and be thankful,

and cry, Bravo, our side! and besides, you know, there was the enjoyment

of thinking how pleased Brown, and Jones, and Robinson (our dear

friends) would be at this announcement of success. But now that the

performance is over, my good sir, just step into my private room, and

see that it is not all pleasure--this winning of successes. Cast your

eye over those newspapers, over those letters. See what the critics say

of your harmless jokes, neat little trim sentences, and pet waggeries!

Why, you are no better than an idiot; you are drivelling; your powers

have left you; this always overrated writer is rapidly sinking to, &c.

This is not pleasant; but neither is this the point. It may be the

critic is right, and the author wrong. It may be that the archbishop's

sermon is not so fine as some of those discourses twenty years ago

which used to delight the faithful in Granada. Or it may be (pleasing

thought!) that the critic is a dullard, and does not understand what

he is writing about. Everybody who has been to an exhibition has heard

visitors discoursing about the pictures before their faces. One says,

“This is very well;” another says, “This is stuff and rubbish;” another

cries, “Bravo! this is a masterpiece:” and each has a right to his

opinion. For example, one of the pictures I admired most at the Royal

Academy is by a gentleman on whom I never, to my knowledge, set eyes.

This picture is No. 346, “Moses,” by Mr. S. Solomon. I thought it had

a great intention, I thought it finely drawn and composed. It nobly

represented, to my mind, the dark children of the Egyptian bondage, and

suggested the touching story. My newspaper says: “Two ludicrously ugly

women, looking at a dingy baby, do not form a pleasing object;” and so

good-by, Mr. Solomon. Are not most of our babies served so in life?

and doesn't Mr. Robinson consider Mr. Brown's cherub an ugly, squalling

little brat? So cheer up, Mr. S. S. It may be the critic who discoursed

on your baby is a bad judge of babies. When Pharaoh's kind daughter

found the child, and cherished and loved it, and took it home, and found

a nurse for it, too, I dare say there were grim, brick-dust colored

chamberlains, or some of the tough, old, meagre, yellow princesses at

court, who never had children themselves, who cried out, “Faugh! the

horrid little squalling wretch!” and knew he would never come to good;

and said, “Didn't I tell you so?” when he assaulted the Egyptian.

Never mind then, Mr. S. Solomon, I say, because a critic pooh-poohs

your work of art--your Moses--your child--your foundling. Why, did not

a wiseacre in Blackwood's Magazine lately fall foul of “Tom Jones?”

O hypercritic! So, to be sure, did good old Mr. Richardson, who could

write novels himself--but you, and I, and Mr. Gibbon, my dear sir, agree

in giving our respect, and wonder, and admiration, to the brave old

master.

In these last words I am supposing the respected reader to be endowed

with a sense of humor, which he may or may not possess; indeed, don't

we know many an honest man who can no more comprehend a joke than he can

turn a tune. But I take for granted, my dear sir, that you are brimming

over with fun--you mayn't make jokes, but you could if you would--you

know you could: and in your quiet way you enjoy them extremely. Now many

people neither make them, nor understand them when made, nor like them

when understood, and are suspicious, testy, and angry with jokers. Have

you ever watched an elderly male or female--an elderly “party,” so to

speak, who begins to find out that some young wag of the company is

“chaffing” him? Have you ever tried the sarcastic or Socratic method

with a child? Little simple he or she, in the innocence of the simple

heart, plays some silly freak, or makes some absurd remark, which you

turn to ridicule. The little creature dimly perceives that you

are making fun of him, writhes, blushes, grows uneasy, bursts into

tears,--upon my word it is not fair to try the weapon of ridicule

upon that innocent young victim. The awful objurgatory practice he is

accustomed to. Point out his fault, and lay bare the dire consequences

thereof: expose it roundly, and give him a proper, solemn, moral

whipping--but do not attempt to castigare ridendo. Do not laugh at him

writhing, and cause all the other boys in the school to laugh. Remember

your own young days at school, my friend--the tingling cheeks, burning

ears, bursting heart, and passion of desperate tears, with which you

looked up, after having performed some blunder, whilst the doctor held

you to public scorn before the class, and cracked his great clumsy jokes

upon you--helpless, and a prisoner! Better the block itself, and the

lictors, with their fasces of birch-twigs, than the maddening torture of

those jokes!

Now with respect to jokes--and the present company of course

excepted--many people, perhaps most people, are as infants. They have

little sense of humor. They don't like jokes. Raillery in writing annoys

and offends them. The coarseness apart, I think I have met very, very

few women who liked the banter of Swift and Fielding. Their simple,

tender natures revolt at laughter. Is the satyr always a wicked brute

at heart, and are they rightly shocked at his grin, his leer, his horns,

hoofs, and ears? Fi donc, le vilain monstre, with his shrieks, and his

capering crooked legs! Let him go and get a pair of well-wadded black

silk stockings, and pull them over those horrid shanks; put a large gown

and bands over beard and hide; and pour a dozen of lavender-water into

his lawn handkerchief, and cry, and never make a joke again. It shall

all be highly-distilled poesy, and perfumed sentiment, and gushing

eloquence; and the foot SHAN'T peep out, and a plague take it. Cover it

up with the surplice. Out with your cambric, dear ladies, and let us all

whimper together.

Now, then, hand on heart, we declare that it is not the fire of adverse

critics which afflicts or frightens the editorial bosom. They may

be right; they may be rogues who have a personal spite; they may be

dullards who kick and bray as their nature is to do, and prefer thistles

to pineapples; they may be conscientious, acute, deeply learned,

delightful judges, who see your joke in a moment, and the profound

wisdom lying underneath. Wise or dull, laudatory or otherwise, we put

their opinions aside. If they applaud, we are pleased: if they shake

their quick pens, and fly off with a hiss, we resign their favors and

put on all the fortitude we can muster. I would rather have the lowest

man's good word than his bad one, to be sure; but as for coaxing a

compliment, or wheedling him into good-humor, or stopping his angry

mouth with a good dinner, or accepting his contributions for a certain

Magazine, for fear of his barking or snapping elsewhere--allons donc!

These shall not be our acts. Bow-wow, Cerberus! Here shall be no sop for

thee, unless--unless Cerberus is an uncommonly good dog, when we shall

bear no malice because he flew at us from our neighbor's gate.

What, then, is the main grief you spoke of as annoying you--the

toothache in the Lord Mayor's jaw, the thorn in the cushion of the

editorial chair? It is there. Ah! it stings me now as I write. It comes

with almost every morning's post. At night I come home and take my

letters up to bed (not daring to open them), and in the morning I find

one, two, three thorns on my pillow. Three I extracted yesterday; two I

found this morning. They don't sting quite so sharply as they did; but a

skin is a skin, and they bite, after all, most wickedly. It is all very

fine to advertise on the Magazine, “Contributions are only to be sent

to Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co., and not to the Editor's private

residence.” My dear sir, how little you know man- or woman-kind, if you

fancy they will take that sort of warning! How am I to know, (though, to

be sure, I begin to know now,) as I take the letters off the tray, which

of those envelopes contains a real bona fide letter, and which a thorn?

One of the best invitations this year I mistook for a thorn-letter, and

kept it without opening. This is what I call a thorn-letter:--

“CAMBERWELL, June 4.

“SIR--May I hope, may I entreat, that you will favor me by perusing the

enclosed lines, and that they may be found worthy of insertion in the

Cornhill Magazine. We have known better days, sir. I have a sick and

widowed mother to maintain, and little brothers and sisters who look to

me. I do my utmost as a governess to support them. I toil at night when

they are at rest, and my own hand and brain are alike tired. If I could

add but a LITTLE to our means by my pen, many of my poor invalid's wants

might be supplied, and I could procure for her comforts to which she is

now a stranger. Heaven knows it is not for want of WILL or for want

of ENERGY on my part, that she is now in ill-health, and our little

household almost without bread. Do--do cast a kind glance over my poem,

and if you can help us, the widow, the orphans will bless you! I remain,

sir, in anxious expectancy,

“Your faithful servant,

“S. S. S.”

And enclosed is a little poem or two, and an envelope with its penny

stamp--heaven help us!--and the writer's name and address.

Now you see what I mean by a thorn. Here is the case put with true

female logic. “I am poor; I am good; I am ill; I work hard; I have a

sick mother and hungry brothers and sisters dependent on me. You can

help us if you will.” And then I look at the paper, with the thousandth

part of a faint hope that it may be suitable, and I find it won't do:

and I knew it wouldn't do: and why is this poor lady to appeal to my

pity and bring her poor little ones kneeling to my bedside, and calling

for bread which I can give them if I choose? No day passes but that

argument ad misericordiam is used. Day and night that sad voice is

crying out for help. Thrice it appealed to me yesterday. Twice this

morning it cried to me: and I have no doubt when I go to get my hat,

I shall find it with its piteous face and its pale family about it,

waiting for me in the hall. One of the immense advantages which women

have over our sex is, that they actually like to read these letters.

Like letters? O mercy on us! Before I was an editor I did not like the

postman much:--but now!

A very common way with these petitioners is to begin with a fine

flummery about the merits and eminent genius of the person whom they are

addressing. But this artifice, I state publicly, is of no avail. When

I see THAT kind of herb, I know the snake within it, and fling it away

before it has time to sting. Away, reptile, to the waste-paper basket,

and thence to the flames!

But of these disappointed people, some take their disappointment and

meekly bear it. Some hate and hold you their enemy because you could not

be their friend. Some, furious and envious, say: “Who is this man who

refuses what I offer, and how dares he, the conceited coxcomb, to deny

my merit?”

Sometimes my letters contain not mere thorns, but bludgeons. How are

two choice slips from that noble Irish oak, which has more than once

supplied alpeens for this meek and unoffending skull:--

“THEATRE ROYAL, DONNYBROOK.

“SIR,--I have just finished reading the first portion of your Tale,

Lovel the Widower, and am much surprised at the unwarrantable strictures

you pass therein on the corps de ballet.

“I have been for more than ten years connected with the theatrical

profession, and I beg to assure you that the majority of the corps de

ballet are virtuous, well-conducted girls, and, consequently, that snug

cottages are not taken for them in the Regent's Park.

“I also have to inform you that theatrical managers are in the habit of

speaking good English, possibly better English than authors.

“You either know nothing of the subject in question, or you assert a

wilful falsehood.

“I am happy to say that the characters of the corps de ballet, as

also those of actors and actresses, are superior to the snarlings

of dyspeptic libellers, or the spiteful attacks and brutum fulmen of

ephemeral authors.

“I am, sir, your obedient servant,

“A. B. C.”

The Editor of the Cornhill Magazine.

“THEATRE ROYAL, DONNYBROOK.

“SIR,--I have just read in the Cornhill Magazine for January, the first

portion of a Tale written by you, and entitled Lovel the Widower.

“In the production in question you employ all your malicious spite (and

you have great capabilities that way) in trying to degrade the character

of the corps de ballet. When you imply that the majority of ballet-girls

have villas taken for them in the Regent's Park, I SAY YOU TELL A

DELIBERATE FALSEHOOD.

“Haveing been brought up to the stage from infancy, and though now an

actress, haveing been seven years principal dancer at the opera, I am

competent to speak on the subject. I am only surprised that so vile a

libeller as yourself should be allowed to preside at the Dramatic Fund

dinner on the 22nd instant. I think it would be much better if you

were to reform your own life, instead of telling lies of those who are

immeasurably your superiors.

“Yours in supreme disgust,

“A. D.”

The signatures of the respected writers are altered, and for the site

of their Theatre Royal an adjacent place is named, which (as I may

have been falsely informed) used to be famous for quarrels, thumps, and

broken heads. But, I say, is this an easy chair to sit on, when you are

liable to have a pair of such shillelaghs flung at it? And, prithee,

what was all the quarrel about? In the little history of “Lovel the

Widower” I described, and brought to condign punishment, a certain

wretch of a ballet-dancer, who lived splendidly for a while on

ill-gotten gains, had an accident, and lost her beauty, and died poor,

deserted, ugly, and every way odious. In the same page, other little

ballet-dancers are described, wearing homely clothing, doing their duty,

and carrying their humble savings to the family at home. But nothing

will content my dear correspondents but to have me declare that the

majority of ballet-dancers have villas in the Regent's Park, and to

convict me of “deliberate falsehood.” Suppose, for instance, I had

chosen to introduce a red-haired washerwoman into a story? I might get

an expostulatory letter saying, “Sir, in stating that the majority of

washerwomen are red-haired, you are a liar! and you had best not

speak of ladies who are immeasurably your superiors.” Or suppose I had

ventured to describe an illiterate haberdasher? One of the craft might

write to me, “Sir, in describing haberdashers as illiterate, you utter a

wilful falsehood. Haberdashers use much better English than authors.” It

is a mistake, to be sure. I have never said what my correspondents say

I say. There is the text under their noses, but what if they choose to

read it their own way? “Hurroo, lads! here's for a fight. There's a

bald head peeping out of the hut. There's a bald head! It must be Tim

Malone's.” And whack! come down both the bludgeons at once.

Ah me! we wound where we never intended to strike; we create anger where

we never meant harm; and these thoughts are the thorns in our Cushion.

Out of mere malignity, I suppose, there is no man who would like to make

enemies. But here, in this editorial business, you can't do otherwise:

and a queer, sad, strange, bitter thought it is, that must cross the

mind of many a public man: “Do what I will, be innocent or spiteful, be

generous or cruel, there are A and B, and C and D, who will hate me

to the end of the chapter--to the chapter's end--to the Finis of the

page--when hate, and envy, and fortune, and disappointment shall be

over.”

ON SCREENS IN DINING-ROOMS.

A grandson of the late Rev. Dr. Primrose (of Wakefield, vicar) wrote me

a little note from his country living this morning, and the kind fellow

had the precaution to write “No thorn” upon the envelope, so that, ere I

broke the seal, my mind might be relieved of any anxiety lest the letter

should contain one of those lurking stabs which are so painful to the

present gentle writer. Your epigraph, my dear P., shows your kind and

artless nature; but don't you see it is of no use? People who are bent

upon assassinating you in the manner mentioned will write “No thorn”

upon their envelopes too; and you open the case, and presently out flies

a poisoned stiletto, which springs into a man's bosom, and makes the

wretch howl with anguish. When the bailiffs are after a man, they adopt

all sorts of disguises, pop out on him from all conceivable corners, and

tap his miserable shoulders. His wife is taken ill; his sweetheart,

who remarked his brilliant, too brilliant appearance at the Hyde Park

review, will meet him at Cremorne, or where you will. The old friend who

has owed him that money these five years will meet him at so-and-so and

pay. By one bait or other the victim is hooked, netted, landed, and down

goes the basket-lid. It is not your wife, your sweetheart, your friend

who is going to pay you. It is Mr. Nab the bailiff. YOU know--you are

caught. You are off in a cab to Chancery Lane.

You know, I say? WHY should you know? I make no manner of doubt you

never were taken by a bailiff in your life. I never was. I have been in

two or three debtors' prisons, but not on my own account. Goodness be

praised! I mean you can't escape your lot; and Nab only stands here

metaphorically as the watchful, certain, and untiring officer of Mr.

Sheriff Fate. Why, my dear Primrose, this morning along with your letter

comes another, bearing the well-known superscription of another old

friend, which I open without the least suspicion, and what do I find? A

few lines from my friend Johnson, it is true, but they are written on

a page covered with feminine handwriting. “Dear Mr. Johnson,” says the

writer, “I have just been perusing with delight a most charming tale

by the Archbishop of Cambray. It is called 'Telemachus;' and I think

it would be admirably suited to the Cornhill Magazine. As you know

the Editor, will you have the great kindness, dear Mr. Johnson, to

communicate with him PERSONALLY (as that is much better than writing in

a roundabout way to the Publishers, and waiting goodness knows how long

for an answer), and state my readiness to translate this excellent

and instructive story. I do not wish to breathe A WORD against 'Lovel

Parsonage,' 'Framley the Widower,' or any of the novels which have

appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, but I AM SURE 'Telemachus' is as good

as new to English readers, and in point of interest and morality far,”

&c. &c. &c.

There it is. I am stabbed through Johnson. He has lent himself to this

attack on me. He is weak about women. Other strong men are. He submits

to the common lot, poor fellow. In my reply I do not use a word of

unkindness. I write him back gently, that I fear “Telemachus” won't suit

us. He can send the letter on to his fair correspondent. But however

soft the answer, I question whether the wrath will be turned away. Will

there not be a coolness between him and the lady? and is it not possible

that henceforth her fine eyes will look with darkling glances upon the

pretty orange cover of our Magazine?

Certain writers, they say, have a bad opinion of women. Now am I very

whimsical in supposing that this disappointed candidate will be hurt at

her rejection, and angry or cast down according to her nature? “Angry,

indeed!” says Juno, gathering up her purple robes and royal raiment.

“Sorry, indeed!” cries Minerva, lacing on her corselet again, and

scowling under her helmet. (I imagine the well-known Apple case has just

been argued and decided.) “Hurt, forsooth! Do you suppose WE care for

the opinion of that hobnailed lout of a Paris? Do you suppose that I,

the Goddess of Wisdom, can't make allowances for mortal ignorance,

and am so base as to bear malice against a poor creature who knows no

better? You little know the goddess nature when you dare to insinuate

that our divine minds are actuated by motives so base. A love of justice

influences US. We are above mean revenge. We are too magnanimous to be

angry at the award of such a judge in favor of such a creature.” And

rustling out their skirts, the ladies walk away together. This is

all very well. You are bound to believe them. They are actuated by no

hostility: not they. They bear no malice--of course not. But when the

Trojan war occurs presently, which side will they take? Many brave

souls will be sent to Hades. Hector will perish. Poor old Priam's bald

numskull will be cracked, and Troy town will burn, because Paris prefers

golden-haired Venus to ox-eyed Juno and gray-eyed Minerva.

The last Essay of this Roundabout Series, describing the griefs and

miseries of the editorial chair, was written, as the kind reader will

acknowledge, in a mild and gentle, not in a warlike or satirical spirit.

I showed how cudgels were applied; but surely, the meek object of

persecution hit no blows in return. The beating did not hurt much, and

the person assaulted could afford to keep his good-humor; indeed, I

admired that brave though illogical little actress, of the T. R. D-bl-n,

for her fiery vindication of her profession's honor. I assure her I

had no intention to tell l--s--well, let us say monosyllables--about my

superiors: and I wish her nothing but well, and when Macmahon (or shall

it be Mulligan?) Roi d'Irlande ascends his throne, I hope she may be

appointed professor of English to the princesses of the royal house.

Nuper--in former days--I too have militated; sometimes, as I now think,

unjustly; but always, I vow, without personal rancor. Which of us has

not idle words to recall, flippant jokes to regret? Have you never

committed an imprudence? Have you never had a dispute, and found out

that you were wrong? So much the worse for you. Woe be to the man qui

croit toujours avoir raison. His anger is not a brief madness, but

a permanent mania. His rage is not a fever-fit, but a black poison

inflaming him, distorting his judgment, disturbing his rest, embittering

his cup, gnawing at his pleasures, causing him more cruel suffering than

ever he can inflict on his enemy. O la belle morale! As I write it,

I think about one or two little affairs of my own. There is old Dr.

Squaretoso (he certainly was very rude to me, and that's the fact);

there is Madame Pomposa (and certainly her ladyship's behavior was

about as cool as cool could be). Never mind, old Squaretoso: never mind,

Madame Pomposa! Here is a hand. Let us be friends as we once were, and

have no more of this rancor.

I had hardly sent that last Roundabout Paper to the printer (which, I

submit, was written in a pacable and not unchristian frame of mind),

when Saturday came, and with it, of course, my Saturday Review. I

remember at New York coming down to breakfast at the hotel one morning,

after a criticism had appeared in the New York Herald, in which an Irish

writer had given me a dressing for a certain lecture on Swift. Ah my

dear little enemy of the T. R, D., what were the cudgels in YOUR little

billet-doux compared to those noble New York shillelaghs? All through

the Union, the literary sons of Erin have marched alpeen-stock in hand,

and in every city of the States they call each other and everybody else

the finest names. Having come to breakfast, then, in the public room, I

sit down, and see--that the nine people opposite have all got New York

Heralds in their hands. One dear little lady, whom I knew, and who

sat opposite, gave a pretty blush, and popped her paper under the

tablecloth. I told her I had had my whipping already in my own private

room, and begged her to continue her reading. I may have undergone

agonies, you see, but every man who has been bred at an English public

school comes away from a private interview with Dr. Birch with a calm,

even a smiling face. And this is not impossible, when you are prepared.

You screw your courage up--you go through the business. You come

back and take your seat on the form, showing not the least symptom of

uneasiness or of previous unpleasantries. But to be caught suddenly up,

and whipped in the bosom of your family--to sit down to breakfast, and

cast your innocent eye on a paper, and find, before you are aware, that

the Saturday Monitor or Black Monday Instructor has hoisted you and is

laying on--that is indeed a trial. Or perhaps the family has looked at

the dreadful paper beforehand, and weakly tries to hide it. “Where is

the Instructor, or the Monitor?” say you. “Where is that paper?” says

mamma to one of the young ladies. Lucy hasn't it. Fanny hasn't seen it.

Emily thinks that the governess has it. At last, out it is brought,

that awful paper! Papa is amazingly tickled with the article on Thomson;

thinks that show up of Johnson is very lively; and now--heaven be good

to us!--he has come to the critique on himself:--“Of all the rubbish

which we have had from Mr. Tomkins, we do protest and vow that this

last cartload is” &c. Ah, poor Tomkins!--but most of all, ah! poor Mrs.

Tomkins, and poor Emily, and Fanny, and Lucy, who have to sit by and see

paterfamilias put to the torture!

Now, on this eventful Saturday, I did not cry, because it was not

so much the Editor as the Publisher of the Cornhill Magazine who was

brought out for a dressing; and it is wonderful how gallantly one bears

the misfortunes of one's friends. That a writer should be taken to task

about his books, is fair, and he must abide the praise or the censure.

But that a publisher should be criticised for his dinners, and for the

conversation which did NOT take place there,--is this tolerable press

practice, legitimate joking, or honorable warfare? I have not the honor

to know my next-door neighbor, but I make no doubt that he receives his

friends at dinner; I see his wife and children pass constantly; I even

know the carriages of some of the people who call upon him, and could

tell their names. Now, suppose his servants were to tell mine what the

doings are next door, who comes to dinner, what is eaten and said, and I

were to publish an account of these transactions in a newspaper, I could

assuredly get money for the report; but ought I to write it, and what

would you think of me for doing so?

And suppose, Mr. Saturday Reviewer--you censor morum, you who pique

yourself (and justly and honorably in the main) upon your character of

gentleman, as well as of writer, suppose, not that you yourself invent

and indite absurd twaddle about gentlemen's private meetings and

transactions, but pick this wretched garbage out of a New York street,

and hold it up for your readers' amusement--don't you think, my friend,

that you might have been better employed? Here, in my Saturday Review,

and in an American paper subsequently sent to me, I light, astonished,

on an account of the dinners of my friend and publisher, which are

described as “tremendously heavy,” of the conversation (which does not

take place), and of the guests assembled at the table. I am informed

that the proprietor of the Cornhill, and the host on these occasions, is

“a very good man, but totally unread;” and that on my asking him whether

Dr. Johnson was dining behind the screen, he said, “God bless my soul,

my dear sir, there's no person by the name of Johnson here, nor any

one behind the screen,” and that a roar of laughter cut him short. I

am informed by the same New York correspondent that I have touched up a

contributor's article; that I once said to a literary gentleman, who was

proudly pointing to an anonymous article as his writing, “Ah! I thought

I recognized YOUR HOOF in it.” I am told by the same authority that the

Cornhill Magazine “shows symptoms of being on the wane,” and having sold

nearly a hundred thousand copies, he (the correspondent) “should think

forty thousand was now about the mark.” Then the graceful writer passes

on to the dinners, at which it appears the Editor of the Magazine “is

the great gun, and comes out with all the geniality in his power.”

Now suppose this charming intelligence is untrue? Suppose the publisher

(to recall the words of my friend the Dublin actor of last month) is a

gentleman to the full as well informed as those whom he invites to his

table? Suppose he never made the remark, beginning--“God bless my soul,

my dear sir,” nor anything resembling it? Suppose nobody roared with

laughing? Suppose the Editor of the Cornhill Magazine never “touched

up” one single line of the contribution which bears “marks of his hand?”

Suppose he never said to any literary gentleman, “I recognized YOUR

HOOF” in any periodical whatever? Suppose the 40,000 subscribers, which

the writer to New York “considered to be about the mark,” should be

between 90,000 and 100,000 (and as he will have figures, there they

are)? Suppose this back-door gossip should be utterly blundering and

untrue, would any one wonder? Ah! if we had only enjoyed the happiness

to number this writer among the contributors to our Magazine, what

a cheerfulness and easy confidence his presence would impart to our

meetings! He would find that “poor Mr. Smith” had heard that recondite

anecdote of Dr. Johnson behind the screen; and as for “the great gun of

those banquets,” with what geniality should not I “come out” if I had an

amiable companion close by me, dotting down my conversation for the New

York Times!

Attack our books, Mr. Correspondent, and welcome. They are fair subjects

for just censure or praise. But woe be to you, if you allow private

rancors or animosities to influence you in the discharge of your public

duty. In the little court where you are paid to sit as judge, as critic,

you owe it to your employers, to your conscience, to the honor of your

calling, to deliver just sentences; and you shall have to answer to

heaven for your dealings, as surely as my Lord Chief Justice on the

Bench. The dignity of letters, the honor of the literary calling, the

slights put by haughty and unthinking people upon literary men,--don't

we hear outcries upon these subjects raised daily? As dear Sam Johnson

sits behind the screen, too proud to show his threadbare coat and

patches among the more prosperous brethren of his trade, there is no

want of dignity in HIM, in that homely image of labor ill-rewarded,

genius as yet unrecognized, independence sturdy and uncomplaining. But

Mr. Nameless, behind the publisher's screen uninvited, peering at the

company and the meal, catching up scraps of the jokes, and noting down

the guests' behavior and conversation,--what a figure his is! Allons,

Mr. Nameless! Put up your note-book; walk out of the hall; and leave

gentlemen alone who would be private, and wish you no harm.

TUNBRIDGE TOYS.

I wonder whether those little silver pencil-cases with a movable almanac

at the butt-end are still favorite implements with boys, and whether

pedlers still hawk them about the country? Are there pedlers and hawkers

still, or are rustics and children grown too sharp to deal with them?

Those pencil-cases, as far as my memory serves me, were not of much use.

The screw, upon which the movable almanac turned, was constantly getting

loose. The 1 of the table would work from its moorings, under Tuesday

or Wednesday, as the case might be, and you would find, on examination,

that Th. or W. was the 23 1/2 of the month (which was absurd on the

face of the thing), and in a word your cherished pencil-case an utterly

unreliable time-keeper. Nor was this a matter of wonder. Consider the

position of a pencil-case in a boy's pocket. You had hard-bake in it;

marbles, kept in your purse when the money was all gone; your mother's

purse, knitted so fondly and supplied with a little bit of gold, long

since--prodigal little son!--scattered amongst the swine--I mean

amongst brandy-balls, open tarts, three-cornered puffs, and similar

abominations. You had a top and string; a knife; a piece of cobbler's

wax; two or three bullets; a Little Warbler; and I, for my part,

remember, for a considerable period, a brass-barrelled pocket-pistol

(which would fire beautifully, for with it I shot off a button from Butt

Major's jacket);--with all these things, and ever so many more, clinking

and rattling in your pockets, and your hands, of course, keeping them in

perpetual movement, how could you expect your movable almanac not to

be twisted out of its place now and again--your pencil-case to be

bent--your liquorice water not to leak out of your bottle over the

cobbler's wax, your bull's-eyes not to ram up the lock and barrel of

your pistol, and so forth.

In the month of June, thirty-seven years ago, I bought one of those

pencil-cases from a boy whom I shall call Hawker, and who was in my

form. Is he dead? Is he a millionnaire? Is he a bankrupt now? He was an

immense screw at school, and I believe to this day that the value of the

thing for which I owed and eventually paid three-and-sixpence, was in

reality not one-and-nine.

I certainly enjoyed the case at first a good deal, and amused myself

with twiddling round the movable calendar. But this pleasure wore off.

The jewel, as I said, was not paid for, and Hawker, a large and violent

boy, was exceedingly unpleasant as a creditor. His constant remark was,

“When are you going to pay me that three-and-sixpence? What sneaks your

relations must be? They come to see you. You go out to them on Saturdays

and Sundays, and they never give you anything! Don't tell ME, you little

humbug!” and so forth. The truth is that my relations were respectable;

but my parents were making a tour in Scotland; and my friends in London,

whom I used to go and see, were most kind to me, certainly, but somehow

never tipped me. That term, of May to August, 1823, passed in agonies

then, in consequence of my debt to Hawker. What was the pleasure of a

calendar pencil-case in comparison with the doubt and torture of mind

occasioned by the sense of the debt, and the constant reproach of that

fellow's scowling eyes and gloomy, coarse reminders? How was I to pay

off such a debt out of sixpence a week? ludicrous! Why did not some

one come to see me, and tip me? Ah! my dear sir, if you have any little

friends at school, go and see them, and do the natural thing by them.

You won't miss the sovereign. You don't know what a blessing it will be

to them. Don't fancy they are too old--try 'em. And they will remember

you, and bless you in future days; and their gratitude shall accompany

your dreary after life; and they shall meet you kindly when thanks for

kindness are scant. O mercy! shall I ever forget that sovereign you gave

me, Captain Bob? or the agonies of being in debt to Hawker? In that very

term, a relation of mine was going to India. I actually was fetched from

school in order to take leave of him. I am afraid I told Hawker of this

circumstance. I own I speculated upon my friend's giving me a pound. A

pound? Pooh! A relation going to India, and deeply affected at parting

from his darling kinsman, might give five pounds to the dear fellow!

. . . There was Hawker when I came back--of course there he was. As

he looked in my scared face, his turned livid with rage. He muttered

curses, terrible from the lips of so young a boy. My relation, about

to cross the ocean to fill a lucrative appointment, asked me with much

interest about my progress at school, heard me construe a passage of

Eutropius, the pleasing Latin work on which I was then engaged; gave

me a God bless you, and sent me back to school; upon my word of honor,

without so much as a half-crown! It is all very well, my dear sir, to

say that boys contract habits of expecting tips from their parents'

friends, that they become avaricious, and so forth. Avaricious! fudge!

Boys contract habits of tart and toffee eating, which they do not carry

into after life. On the contrary, I wish I DID like 'em. What raptures

of pleasure one could have now for five shillings, if one could but pick

it off the pastry-cook's tray! No. If you have any little friends at

school, out with your half-crowns, my friend, and impart to those little

ones the little fleeting joys of their age.

Well, then. At the beginning of August, 1823, Bartlemy-tide holidays

came, and I was to go to my parents, who were at Tunbridge Wells. My

place in the coach was taken by my tutor's servants--“Bolt-in-Tun,”

Fleet Street, seven o'clock in the morning, was the word. My Tutor, the

Rev. Edward P----, to whom I hereby present my best compliments, had a

parting interview with me: gave me my little account for my governor:

the remaining part of the coach-hire; five shillings for my own

expenses; and some five-and-twenty shillings on an old account which had

been overpaid, and was to be restored to my family.

Away I ran and paid Hawker his three-and-six. Ouf! what a weight it

was off my mind! (He was a Norfolk boy, and used to go home from Mrs.

Nelson's “Bell Inn,” Aldgate--but that is not to the point.) The next

morning, of course, we were an hour before the time. I and another

boy shared a hackney-coach; two-and-six: porter for putting luggage on

coach, threepence. I had no more money of my own left. Rasherwell,

my companion, went into the “Bolt-in-Tun” coffee-room, and had a good

breakfast. I couldn't; because, though I had five-and-twenty shillings

of my parents' money, I had none of my own, you see.

I certainly intended to go without breakfast, and still remember how

strongly I had that resolution in my mind. But there was that hour to

wait. A beautiful August morning--I am very hungry. There is Rasherwell

“tucking” away in the coffee-room. I pace the street, as sadly almost as

if I had been coming to school, not going thence. I turn into a court by

mere chance--I vow it was by mere chance--and there I see a coffee-shop

with a placard in the window, Coffee, Twopence. Round of buttered

toast, Twopence. And here am I, hungry, penniless, with five-and-twenty

shillings of my parents' money in my pocket.

What would you have done? You see I had had my money, and spent it in

that pencil-case affair. The five-and-twenty shillings were a trust--by

me to be handed over.

But then would my parents wish their only child to be actually without

breakfast? Having this money, and being so hungry, so VERY hungry,

mightn't I take ever so little? Mightn't I at home eat as much as I

chose?

Well, I went into the coffee-shop, and spent fourpence. I remember

the taste of the coffee and toast to this day--a peculiar, muddy,

not-sweet-enough, most fragrant coffee--a rich, rancid, yet

not-buttered-enough delicious toast. The waiter had nothing. At any

rate, fourpence I know was the sum I spent. And the hunger appeased, I

got on the coach a guilty being.

At the last stage,--what is its name? I have forgotten in

seven-and-thirty years,--there is an inn with a little green and

trees before it; and by the trees there is an open carriage. It is our

carriage. Yes, there are Prince and Blucher, the horses; and my parents

in the carriage. Oh! how I had been counting the days until this one

came! Oh! how happy had I been to see them yesterday! But there was that

fourpence. All the journey down the toast had choked me, and the coffee

poisoned me.

I was in such a state of remorse about the fourpence, that I forgot the

maternal joy and caresses, the tender paternal voice. I pull out the

twenty-four shillings and eightpence with a trembling hand.

“Here's your money,” I gasp out, “which Mr. P---- owes you, all but

fourpence. I owed three-and-sixpence to Hawker out of my money for a

pencil-case, and I had none left, and I took fourpence of yours, and had

some coffee at a shop.”

I suppose I must have been choking whilst uttering this confession.

“My dear boy,” says the governor, “why didn't you go and breakfast at

the hotel?”

“He must be starved,” says my mother.

I had confessed; I had been a prodigal; I had been taken back to my

parents' arms again. It was not a very great crime as yet, or a very

long career of prodigality; but don't we know that a boy who takes a pin

which is not his own, will take a thousand pounds when occasion serves,

bring his parents' gray heads with sorrow to the grave, and carry his

own to the gallows? Witness the career of Dick Idle, upon whom our

friend Mr. Sala has been discoursing. Dick only began by playing

pitch-and-toss on a tombstone: playing fair, for what we know: and

even for that sin he was promptly caned by the beadle. The bamboo

was ineffectual to cane that reprobate's bad courses out of him. From

pitch-and-toss he proceeded to manslaughter if necessary: to highway

robbery; to Tyburn and the rope there. Ah! heaven be thanked, my

parents' heads are still above the grass, and mine still out of the

noose.

As I look up from my desk, I see Tunbridge Wells Common and the rocks,

the strange familiar place which I remember forty years ago. Boys

saunter over the green with stumps and cricket-bats. Other boys gallop

by on the riding-master's hacks. I protest it is Cramp, Riding master,

as it used to be in the reign of George IV., and that Centaur Cramp must

be at least a hundred years old. Yonder comes a footman with a bundle

of novels from the library. Are they as good as OUR novels? Oh! how

delightful they were! Shades of Valancour, awful ghost of Manfroni, how

I shudder at your appearance! Sweet image of Thaddeus of Warsaw, how

often has this almost infantile hand tried to depict you in a Polish cap

and richly embroidered tights! And as for Corinthian Tom in light blue

pantaloons and Hessians, and Jerry Hawthorn from the country, can all

the fashion, can all the splendor of real life which these eyes have

subsequently beheld, can all the wit I have heard or read in later

times, compare with your fashion, with your brilliancy, with your

delightful grace, and sparkling vivacious rattle?

Who knows? They MAY have kept those very books at the library still--at

the well-remembered library on the Pantiles, where they sell that

delightful, useful Tunbridge ware. I will go and see. I went my way

to the Pantiles, the queer little old-world Pantiles, where, a hundred

years since, so much good company came to take its pleasure. Is it

possible, that in the past century, gentlefolks of the first rank (as

I read lately in a lecture on George II. in the Cornhill Magazine)

assembled here and entertained each other with gaming, dancing,

fiddling, and tea? There are fiddlers, harpers, and trumpeters

performing at this moment in a weak little old balcony, but where is the

fine company? Where are the earls, duchesses, bishops, and magnificent

embroidered gamesters? A half-dozen of children and their nurses are

listening to the musicians; an old lady or two in a poke bonnet passes,

and for the rest, I see but an uninteresting population of native

tradesmen. As for the library, its window is full of pictures of burly

theologians, and their works, sermons, apologues, and so forth. Can I

go in and ask the young ladies at the counters for “Manfroni, or the

One-Handed Monk,” and “Life in London, or the Adventures of Corinthian

Tom, Jeremiah Hawthorn, Esq., and their friend Bob Logic?”--absurd.

I turn away abashed from the casement--from the Pantiles--no longer

Pantiles, but Parade. I stroll over the Common and survey the beautiful

purple hills around, twinkling with a thousand bright villas, which

have sprung up over this charming ground since first I saw it. What an

admirable scene of peace and plenty! What a delicious air breathes over

the heath, blows the cloud shadows across it, and murmurs through

the full-clad trees! Can the world show a land fairer, richer, more

cheerful? I see a portion of it when I look up from the window at

which I write. But fair scene, green woods, bright terraces gleaming

in sunshine, and purple clouds swollen with summer rain--nay, the very

pages over which my head bends--disappear from before my eyes. They are

looking backwards, back into forty years off, into a dark room, into a

little house hard by on the Common here, in the Bartlemy-tide holidays.

The parents have gone to town for two days: the house is all his own,

his own and a grim old maid-servant's, and a little boy is seated

at night in the lonely drawing-room, poring over “Manfroni, or the

One-Handed Monk,” so frightened that he scarcely dares to turn round.

DE JUVENTUTE.

Our last paper of this veracious and roundabout series related to a

period which can only be historical to a great number of readers of this

Magazine. Four I saw at the station to-day with orange-covered books in

their hands, who can but have known George IV. by books, and statues,

and pictures. Elderly gentlemen were in their prime, old men in their

middle age, when he reigned over us. His image remains on coins; on

a picture or two hanging here and there in a Club or old-fashioned

dining-room; on horseback, as at Trafalgar Square, for example, where

I defy any monarch to look more uncomfortable. He turns up in sundry

memoirs and histories which have been published of late days; in Mr.

Massey's “History;” in the “Buckingham and Grenville Correspondence;”

and gentlemen who have accused a certain writer of disloyalty are

referred to those volumes to see whether the picture drawn of George is

overcharged. Charon has paddled him off; he has mingled with the crowded

republic of the dead. His effigy smiles from a canvas or two. Breechless

he bestrides his steed in Trafalgar Square. I believe he still wears his

robes at Madame Tussaud's (Madame herself having quitted Baker Street

and life, and found him she modelled t'other side the Stygian stream).

On the head of a five-shilling piece we still occasionally come upon

him, with St. George, the dragon-slayer, on the other side of the

coin. Ah me! did this George slay many dragons? Was he a brave, heroic

champion, and rescuer of virgins? Well! well! have you and I overcome

all the dragons that assail US? come alive and victorious out of all the

caverns which we have entered in life, and succored, at risk of life

and limb, all poor distressed persons in whose naked limbs the dragon

Poverty is about to fasten his fangs, whom the dragon Crime is poisoning

with his horrible breath, and about to crunch up and devour? O my royal

liege! O my gracious prince and warrior! YOU a champion to fight that

monster? Your feeble spear ever pierce that slimy paunch or plated back?

See how the flames come gurgling out of his red-hot brazen throat! What

a roar! Nearer and nearer he trails, with eyes flaming like the lamps of

a railroad engine. How he squeals, rushing out through the darkness

of his tunnel! Now he is near. Now he is HERE. And now--what?--lance,

shield, knight, feathers, horse and all? O horror, horror! Next day,

round the monster's cave, there lie a few bones more. You, who wish to

keep yours in your skins, be thankful that you are not called upon to go

out and fight dragons. Be grateful that they don't sally out and swallow

you. Keep a wise distance from their caves, lest you pay too dearly for

approaching them. Remember that years passed, and whole districts were

ravaged, before the warrior came who was able to cope with the devouring

monster. When that knight DOES make his appearance, with all my heart

let us go out and welcome him with our best songs, huzzas, and laurel

wreaths, and eagerly recognize his valor and victory. But he comes only

seldom. Countless knights were slain before St. George won the battle.

In the battle of life are we all going to try for the honors of

championship? If we can do our duty, if we can keep our place pretty

honorably through the combat, let us say, Laus Deo! at the end of it, as

the firing ceases, and the night falls over the field.

The old were middle-aged, the elderly were in their prime, then, thirty

years since, when yon royal George was still fighting the dragon. As for

you, my pretty lass, with your saucy hat and golden tresses tumbled in

your net, and you, my spruce young gentleman in your mandarin's cap (the

young folks at the country-place where I am staying are so attired),

your parents were unknown to each other, and wore short frocks and short

jackets, at the date of this five-shilling piece. Only to-day I met a

dog-cart crammed with children--children with moustaches and mandarin

caps--children with saucy hats and hair-nets--children in short frocks

and knickerbockers (surely the prettiest boy's dress that has appeared

these hundred years)--children from twenty years of age to six; and

father, with mother by his side, driving in front--and on father's

countenance I saw that very laugh which I remember perfectly in the time

when this crown-piece was coined--in HIS time, in King George's time,

when we were school-boys seated on the same form. The smile was just as

broad, as bright, as jolly, as I remember it in the past--unforgotten,

though not seen or thought of, for how many decades of years, and quite

and instantly familiar, though so long out of sight.

Any contemporary of that coin who takes it up and reads the inscription

round the laurelled head, “Georgius IV. Britanniarum Rex. Fid. Def.

1823,” if he will but look steadily enough at the round, and utter the

proper incantation, I dare say may conjure back his life there. Look

well, my elderly friend, and tell me what you see? First, I see a

Sultan, with hair, beautiful hair, and a crown of laurels round his

head, and his name is Georgius Rex. Fid. Def., and so on. Now the Sultan

has disappeared; and what is that I see? A boy,--a boy in a jacket. He

is at a desk; he has great books before him, Latin and Greek books and

dictionaries. Yes, but behind the great books, which he pretends to

read, is a little one, with pictures, which he is really reading. It

is--yes, I can read now--it is the “Heart of Mid Lothian,” by the author

of “Waverley”--or, no, it is “Life in London, or the Adventures of

Corinthian Tom, Jeremiah Hawthorn, and their friend Bob Logic,” by

Pierce Egan; and it has pictures--oh! such funny pictures! As he reads,

there comes behind the boy, a man, a dervish, in a black gown, like a

woman, and a black square cap, and he has a book in each hand, and he

seizes the boy who is reading the picture-book, and lays his head upon

one of his books, and smacks it with the other. The boy makes faces, and

so that picture disappears.

Now the boy has grown bigger. HE has got on a black gown and cap,

something like the dervish. He is at a table, with ever so many bottles

on it, and fruit, and tobacco; and other young dervishes come in. They

seem as if they were singing. To them enters an old moollah, he takes

down their names, and orders them all to go to bed. What is this? a

carriage, with four beautiful horses all galloping--a man in red is

blowing a trumpet. Many young men are on the carriage--one of them is

driving the horses. Surely they won't drive into that?--ah! they have

all disappeared. And now I see one of the young men alone. He is walking

in a street--a dark street--presently a light comes to a window. There

is the shadow of a lady who passes. He stands there till the light goes

out. Now he is in a room scribbling on a piece of paper, and kissing a

miniature every now and then. They seem to be lines each pretty much

of a length. I can read heart, smart, dart; Mary, fairy; Cupid, stupid;

true, you; and never mind what more. Bah! it is bosh. Now see, he has

got a gown on again, and a wig of white hair on his head, and he is

sitting with other dervishes in a great room full of them, and on a

throne in the middle is an old Sultan in scarlet, sitting before a desk,

and he wears a wig too--and the young man gets up and speaks to him. And

now what is here? He is in a room with ever so many children, and the

miniature hanging up. Can it be a likeness of that woman who is sitting

before that copper urn, with a silver vase in her hand, from which she

is pouring hot liquor into cups? Was SHE ever a fairy? She is as fat as

a hippopotamus now. He is sitting on a divan by the fire. He has a paper

on his knees. Read the name of the paper. It is the Superfine Review.

It inclines to think that Mr. Dickens is not a true gentleman, that Mr.

Thackeray is not a true gentleman, and that when the one is pert and

the other is arch, we, the gentlemen of the Superfine Review, think, and

think rightly, that we have some cause to be indignant. The great cause

why modern humor and modern sentimentalism repel us, is that they are

unwarrantably familiar. Now, Mr. Sterne, the Superfine Reviewer thinks,

“was a true sentimentalist, because he was ABOVE ALL THINGS a true

gentleman.” The flattering inference is obvious: let us be thankful for

having an elegant moralist watching over us, and learn, if not too old,

to imitate his high-bred politeness and catch his unobtrusive grace.

If we are unwarrantably familiar, we know who is not. If we repel by

pertness, we know who never does. If our language offends, we know whose

is always modest. O pity! The vision has disappeared off the silver,

the images of youth and the past are vanishing away! We who have lived

before railways were made, belong to another world. In how many hours

could the Prince of Wales drive from Brighton to London, with a light

carriage built expressly, and relays of horses longing to gallop the

next stage? Do you remember Sir Somebody, the coachman of the Age, who

took our half-crown so affably? It was only yesterday; but what a gulf

between now and then! THEN was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or

less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armor,

Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue,

and so forth--all these belong to the old period. I will concede a halt

in the midst of it, and allow that gunpowder and printing tended to

modernize the world. But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a

certain age belong to the new time and the old one. We are of the time

of chivalry as well as the Black Prince or Sir Walter Manny. We are of

the age of steam. We have stepped out of the old world on to “Brunel's”

vast deck, and across the waters ingens patet tellus. Towards what new

continent are we wending? to what new laws, new manners, new politics,

vast new expanses of liberties unknown as yet, or only surmised? I used

to know a man who had invented a flying-machine. “Sir,” he would say,

“give me but five hundred pounds, and I will make it. It is so simple

of construction that I tremble daily lest some other person should light

upon and patent my discovery.” Perhaps faith was wanting; perhaps

the five hundred pounds. He is dead, and somebody else must make the

flying-machine. But that will only be a step forward on the journey

already begun since we quitted the old world. There it lies on the other

side of yonder embankments. You young folks have never seen it;

and Waterloo is to you no more than Agincourt, and George IV. than

Sardanapalus. We elderly people have lived in that praerailroad world,

which has passed into limbo and vanished from under us. I tell you it

was firm under our feet once, and not long ago. They have raised those

railroad embankments up, and shut off the old world that was behind

them. Climb up that bank on which the irons are laid, and look to the

other side--it is gone. There IS no other side. Try and catch yesterday.

Where is it? Here is a Times newspaper, dated Monday 26th, and this is

Tuesday 27th. Suppose you deny there was such a day as yesterday?

We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are

like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark. The children will gather

round and say to us patriarchs, “Tell us, grandpapa, about the old

world.” And we shall mumble our old stories; and we shall drop off one

by one; and there will be fewer and fewer of us, and these very old and

feeble. There will be but ten praerailroadites left: then three then

two--then one--then 0! If the hippopotamus had the least sensibility (of

which I cannot trace any signs either in his hide or his face), I think

he would go down to the bottom of his tank, and never come up again.

Does he not see that he belongs to bygone ages, and that his great

hulking barrel of a body is out of place in these times? What has he in

common with the brisk young life surrounding him? In the watches of the

night, when the keepers are asleep, when the birds are on one leg, when

even the little armadillo is quiet, and the monkeys have ceased their

chatter,--he, I mean the hippopotamus, and the elephant, and the

long-necked giraffe, perhaps may lay their heads together and have a

colloquy about the great silent antediluvian world which they remember,

where mighty monsters floundered through the ooze, crocodiles basked

on the banks, and dragons darted out of the caves and waters before

men were made to slay them. We who lived before railways are

antediluvians--we must pass away. We are growing scarcer every day; and

old--old--very old relicts of the times when George was still fighting

the Dragon.

Not long since, a company of horse-riders paid a visit to our

watering-place. We went to see them, and I bethought me that young

Walter Juvenis, who was in the place, might like also to witness the

performance. A pantomime is not always amusing to persons who have

attained a certain age; but a boy at a pantomime is always amused and

amusing, and to see his pleasure is good for most hypochondriacs.

We sent to Walter's mother, requesting that he might join us, and

the kind lady replied that the boy had already been at the morning

performance of the equestrians, but was most eager to go in the evening

likewise. And go he did; and laughed at all Mr. Merryman's remarks,

though he remembered them with remarkable accuracy, and insisted upon

waiting to the very end of the fun, and was only induced to retire just

before its conclusion by representations that the ladies of the party

would be incommoded if they were to wait and undergo the rush and

trample of the crowd round about. When this fact was pointed out to

him, he yielded at once, though with a heavy heart, his eyes looking

longingly towards the ring as we retreated out of the booth. We were

scarcely clear of the place, when we heard “God save the Queen,” played

by the equestrian band, the signal that all was over. Our companion

entertained us with scraps of the dialogue on our way home--precious

crumbs of wit which he had brought away from that feast. He laughed over

them again as we walked under the stars. He has them now, and takes them

out of the pocket of his memory, and crunches a bit, and relishes it

with a sentimental tenderness, too, for he is, no doubt, back at school

by this time; the holidays are over; and Doctor Birch's young friends

have reassembled.

Queer jokes, which caused a thousand simple mouths to grin! As the jaded

Merryman uttered them to the old gentleman with the whip, some of the

old folks in the audience, I dare say, indulged in reflections of their

own. There was one joke--I utterly forget it--but it began with Merryman

saying what he had for dinner. He had mutton for dinner, at one o'clock,

after which “he had to COME TO BUSINESS.” And then came the point.

Walter Juvenis, Esq., Rev. Doctor Birch's, Market Rodborough, if you

read this, will you please send me a line, and let me know what was

the joke Mr. Merryman made about having his dinner? YOU remember

well enough. But do I want to know? Suppose a boy takes a favorite,

long-cherished lump of cake out of his pocket, and offers you a bite?

Merci! The fact is, I DON'T care much about knowing that joke of Mr.

Merryman's.

But whilst he was talking about his dinner, and his mutton, and his

landlord, and his business, I felt a great interest about Mr. M. in

private life--about his wife, lodgings, earnings, and general history,

and I dare say was forming a picture of those in my mind--wife cooking

the mutton: children waiting for it; Merryman in his plain clothes, and

so forth; during which contemplation the joke was uttered and laughed

at, and Mr. M., resuming his professional duties, was tumbling over

head and heels. Do not suppose I am going, sicut est mos, to indulge in

moralities about buffoons, paint, motley, and mountebanking. Nay, Prime

Ministers rehearse their jokes; Opposition leaders prepare and polish

them; Tabernacle preachers must arrange them in their minds before they

utter them. All I mean is, that I would like to know any one of these

performers thoroughly, and out of his uniform: that preacher, and why

in his travels this and that point struck him; wherein lies his power of

pathos, humor, eloquence;--that Minister of State, and what moves him,

and how his private heart is working;--I would only say that, at a

certain time of life certain things cease to interest: but about SOME

things when we cease to care, what will be the use of life, sight,

hearing? Poems are written, and we cease to admire. Lady Jones invites

us, and we yawn; she ceases to invite us, and we are resigned. The

last time I saw a ballet at the opera--oh! it is many years ago--I

fell asleep in the stalls, wagging my head in insane dreams, and I

hope affording amusement to the company, while the feet of five hundred

nymphs were cutting flicflacs on the stage at a few paces' distance. Ah,

I remember a different state of things! Credite posteri. To see those

nymphs--gracious powers, how beautiful they were! That leering, painted,

shrivelled, thin-armed, thick-ankled old thing, cutting dreary capers,

coming thumping down on her board out of time--THAT an opera-dancer?

Pooh! My dear Walter, the great difference between MY time and yours,

who will enter life some two or three years hence, is that, now, the

dancing women and singing women are ludicrously old, out of time, and

out of tune; the paint is so visible, and the dinge and wrinkles of

their wretched old cotton stockings, that I am surprised how anybody can

like to look at them. And as for laughing at ME for falling asleep, I

can't understand a man of sense doing otherwise. In MY time, a la bonne

heure. In the reign of George IV., I give you my honor, all the dancers

at the opera were as beautiful as Houris. Even in William IV.'s time,

when I think of Duvernay prancing in as the Bayadere,--I say it was a

vision of loveliness such as mortal eyes can't see now-a-days. How well

I remember the tune to which she used to appear! Kaled used to say to

the Sultan, “My lord, a troop of those dancing and singing gurls called

Bayaderes approaches,” and, to the clash of cymbals, and the thumping

of my heart, in she used to dance! There has never been anything like

it--never. There never will be--I laugh to scorn old people who tell me

about your Noblet, your Montessu, your Vestris, your Parisot--pshaw, the

senile twaddlers! And the impudence of the young men, with their

music and their dancers of to-day! I tell you the women are dreary old

creatures. I tell you one air in an opera is just like another, and they

send all rational creatures to sleep. Ah, Ronzi de Begnis, thou lovely

one! Ah, Caradoni, thou smiling angel! Ah, Malibran! Nay, I will come

to modern times, and acknowledge that Lablache was a very good singer

thirty years ago (though Porto was the boy for me): and then we had

Ambrogetti, and Curioni, and Donzelli, a rising young singer.

But what is most certain and lamentable is the decay of stage beauty

since the days of George IV. Think of Sontag! I remember her in Otello

and the Donna del Lago in '28. I remember being behind the scenes at

the opera (where numbers of us young fellows of fashion used to go), and

seeing Sontag let her hair fall down over her shoulders previous to

her murder by Donzelli. Young fellows have never seen beauty like THAT,

heard such a voice, seen such hair, such eyes. Don't tell ME! A man who

has been about town since the reign of George IV., ought he not to know

better than you young lads who have seen nothing? The deterioration

of women is lamentable; and the conceit of the young fellows more

lamentable still, that they won't see this fact, but persist in thinking

their time as good as ours.

Bless me! when I was a lad, the stage was covered with angels, who sang,

acted, and danced. When I remember the Adelphi, and the actresses there:

when I think of Miss Chester, and Miss Love, and Mrs. Serle at Sadler's

Wells, and her forty glorious pupils--of the Opera and Noblet, and

the exquisite young Taglioni, and Pauline Leroux, and a host more! One

much-admired being of those days I confess I never cared for, and that

was the chief MALE dancer--a very important personage then, with a bare

neck, bare arms, a tunic, and a hat and feathers, who used to divide

the applause with the ladies, and who has now sunk down a trap-door for

ever. And this frank admission ought to show that I am not your mere

twaddling laudator temporis acti--your old fogy who can see no good

except in his own time.

They say that claret is better now-a-days, and cookery much improved

since the days of MY monarch--of George IV. Pastry Cookery is certainly

not so good. I have often eaten half a crown's worth (including, I

trust, ginger-beer) at our school pastry-cook's, and that is a proof

that the pastry must have been very good, for could I do as much now? I

passed by the pastry-cook's shop lately, having occasion to visit my old

school. It looked a very dingy old baker's; misfortunes may have come

over him--those penny tarts certainly did NOT look so nice as I remember

them: but he may have grown careless as he has grown old (I should judge

him to be now about ninety-six years of age), and his hand may have lost

its cunning.

Not that we were not great epicures. I remember how we constantly

grumbled at the quantity of the food in our master's house--which on my

conscience I believe was excellent and plentiful--and how we tried once

or twice to eat him out of house and home. At the pastry-cook's we may

have over-eaten ourselves (I have admitted half a crown's worth for

my own part, but I don't like to mention the REAL figure for fear

of perverting the present generation of boys by my monstrous

confession)--we may have eaten too much, I say. We did; but what then?

The school apothecary was sent for: a couple of small globules at night,

a trifling preparation of senna in the morning, and we had not to go to

school, so that the draught was an actual pleasure.

For our amusements, besides the games in vogue, which were pretty much

in old times as they are now (except cricket, par exemple--and I wish

the present youth joy of their bowling, and suppose Armstrong and

Whitworth will bowl at them with light field-pieces next), there were

novels--ah! I trouble you to find such novels in the present day! O

Scottish Chiefs, didn't we weep over you! O Mysteries of Udolpho, didn't

I and Briggs Minor draw pictures out of you, as I have said? Efforts,

feeble indeed, but still giving pleasure to us and our friends. “I say,

old boy, draw us Vivaldi tortured in the Inquisition,” or, “Draw us Don

Quixote and the windmills, you know,” amateurs would say, to boys who

had a love of drawing. “Peregrine Pickle” we liked, our fathers admiring

it, and telling us (the sly old boys) it was capital fun; but I think

I was rather bewildered by it, though “Roderick Random” was and remains

delightful. I don't remember having Sterne in the school library, no

doubt because the works of that divine were not considered decent for

young people. Ah! not against thy genius, O father of Uncle Toby and

Trim, would I say a word in disrespect. But I am thankful to live in

times when men no longer have the temptation to write so as to call

blushes on women's cheeks, and would shame to whisper wicked allusions

to honest boys. Then, above all, we had WALTER SCOTT, the kindly, the

generous, the pure--the companion of what countless delightful hours;

the purveyor of how much happiness; the friend whom we recall as the

constant benefactor of our youth! How well I remember the type and the

brownish paper of the old duodecimo “Tales of my Landlord!” I have

never dared to read the “Pirate,” and the “Bride of Lammermoor,” or

“Kenilworth,” from that day to this, because the finale is unhappy, and

people die, and are murdered at the end. But “Ivanhoe,” and “Quentin

Durward!” Oh! for a half-holiday, and a quiet corner, and one of those

books again! Those books, and perhaps those eyes with which we read

them; and, it may be, the brains behind the eyes! It may be the tart

was good; but how fresh the appetite was! If the gods would give me the

desire of my heart, I should be able to write a story which boys would

relish for the next few dozen of centuries. The boy-critic loves the

story: grown up, he loves the author who wrote the story. Hence the

kindly tie is established between writer and reader, and lasts pretty

nearly for life. I meet people now who don't care for Walter Scott, or

the “Arabian Nights;” I am sorry for them, unless they in their time

have found THEIR romancer--their charming Scheherazade. By the way,

Walter, when you are writing, tell me who is the favorite novelist in

the fourth form now? have you got anything so good and kindly as

dear Miss Edgeworth's Frank? It used to belong to a fellow's sisters

generally; but though he pretended to despise it, and said, “Oh, stuff

for girls!” he read it; and I think there were one or two passages which

would try my eyes now, were I to meet with the little book.

As for Thomas and Jeremiah (it is only my witty way of calling Tom and

Jerry), I went to the British Museum the other day on purpose to get it;

but somehow, if you will press the question so closely, on reperusal,

Tom and Jerry is not so brilliant as I had supposed it to be. The

pictures are just as fine as ever; and I shook hands with broad-backed

Jerry Hawthorn and Corinthian Tom with delight, after many years'

absence. But the style of the writing, I own, was not pleasing to me;

I even thought it a little vulgar--well! well! other writers have been

considered vulgar--and as a description of the sports and amusements of

London in the ancient times, more curious than amusing.

But the pictures!--oh! the pictures are noble still! First, there is

Jerry arriving from the country, in a green coat and leather gaiters,

and being measured for a fashionable suit at Corinthian House, by

Corinthian Tom's tailor. Then away for the career of pleasure and

fashion. The park! delicious excitement! The theatre! the saloon!! the

green-room!!! Rapturous bliss--the opera itself! and then perhaps to

Temple Bar, to KNOCK DOWN A CHARLEY there! There are Jerry and Tom, with

their tights and little cocked hats, coming from the opera--very much

as gentlemen in waiting on royalty are habited now. There they are at

Almack's itself, amidst a crowd of high-bred personages, with the Duke

of Clarence himself looking at them dancing. Now, strange change, they

are in Tom Cribb's parlor, where they don't seem to be a whit less at

home than in fashion's gilded halls: and now they are at Newgate, seeing

the irons knocked off the malefactors' legs previous to execution.

What hardened ferocity in the countenance of the desperado in yellow

breeches! What compunction in the face of the gentleman in black (who, I

suppose, has been forging), and who clasps his hands, and listens to

the chaplain! Now we haste away to merrier scenes: to Tattersall's (ah

gracious powers! what a funny fellow that actor was who performed Dicky

Green in that scene at the play!); and now we are at a private party, at

which Corinthian Tom is waltzing (and very gracefully, too, as you

must confess,) with Corinthian Kate, whilst Bob Logic, the Oxonian, is

playing on the piano!

“After,” the text says, “THE OXONIAN had played several pieces of

lively music, he requested as a favor that Kate and his friend Tom would

perform a waltz. Kate without any hesitation immediately stood up. Tom

offered his hand to his fascinating partner, and the dance took place.

The plate conveys a correct representation of the 'gay scene' at that

precise moment. The anxiety of THE OXONIAN to witness the attitudes of

the elegant pair had nearly put a stop to their movements. On turning

round from the pianoforte and presenting his comical MUG, Kate could

scarcely suppress a laugh.”

And no wonder; just look at it now (as I have copied it to the best of

my humble ability), and compare Master Logic's countenance and attitude

with the splendid elegance of Tom!* Now every London man is weary and

blase. There is an enjoyment of life in these young bucks of 1823 which

contrasts strangely with our feelings of 1860. Here, for instance, is

a specimen of their talk and walk. “'If,' says LOGIC--'if ENJOYMENT is

your MOTTO, you may make the most of an evening at Vauxhall, more than

at any other place in the metropolis. It is all free and easy. Stay as

long as you like, and depart when you think proper.'--'Your description

is so flattering,' replied JERRY, 'that I do not care how soon the time

arrives for us to start.' LOGIC proposed a 'BIT OF A STROLL' in order

to get rid of an hour or two, which was immediately accepted by Tom and

Jerry. A TURN or two in Bond Street, a STROLL through Piccadilly, a

LOOK IN at TATTERSALL'S, a RAMBLE through Pall Mall, and a STRUT on the

Corinthian path, fully occupied the time of our heroes until the hour

for dinner arrived, when a few glasses of TOM'S rich wines soon put

them on the qui vive. VAUXHALL was then the object in view, and the

TRIO started, bent upon enjoying the pleasures which this place so amply

affords.”

* This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.

How nobly those inverted commas, those italics, those capitals, bring

out the writer's wit and relieve the eye! They are as good as jokes,

though you mayn't quite perceive the point. Mark the varieties of lounge

in which the young men indulge--now A STROLL, then A LOOK IN, then A

RAMBLE, and presently A STRUT. When George, Prince of Wales, was twenty,

I have read in an old Magazine, “the Prince's lounge” was a peculiar

manner of walking which the young bucks imitated. At Windsor George III.

had A CAT'S PATH--a sly early walk which the good old king took in the

gray morning before his household was astir. What was the Corinthian

path here recorded? Does any antiquary know? And what were the rich

wines which our friends took, and which enabled them to enjoy Vauxhall?

Vauxhall is gone, but the wines which could occasion such a delightful

perversion of the intellect as to enable it to enjoy ample pleasures

there, what were they?

So the game of life proceeds, until Jerry Hawthorn, the rustic, is

fairly knocked up by all this excitement and is forced to go home, and

the last picture represents him getting into the coach at the “White

Horse Cellar,” he being one of six inside; whilst his friends shake him

by the hand; whilst the sailor mounts on the roof; whilst the Jews hang

round with oranges, knives, and sealing-wax: whilst the guard is closing

the door. Where are they now, those sealing-wax venders? where are the

guards? where are the jolly teams? where are the coaches? and where the

youth that climbed inside and out of them; that heard the merry horn

which sounds no more; that saw the sun rise over Stonehenge; that rubbed

away the bitter tears at night after parting as the coach sped on the

journey to school and London; that looked out with beating heart as

the milestones flew by, for the welcome corner where began home and

holidays?

It is night now: and here is home. Gathered under the quiet roof elders

and children lie alike at rest. In the midst of a great peace and calm,

the stars look out from the heavens. The silence is peopled with

the past; sorrowful remorses for sins and short-comings--memories of

passionate joys and griefs rise out of their graves, both now alike

calm and sad. Eyes, as I shut mine, look at me, that have long ceased

to shine. The town and the fair landscape sleep under the starlight,

wreathed in the autumn mists. Twinkling among the houses a light keeps

watch here and there, in what may be a sick chamber or two. The clock

tolls sweetly in the silent air. Here is night and rest. An awful sense

of thanks makes the heart swell, and the head bow, as I pass to my room

through the sleeping house, and feel as though a hushed blessing were

upon it.

ON A JOKE I ONCE HEARD FROM THE LATE THOMAS HOOD.

The good-natured reader who has perused some of these rambling papers

has long since seen (if to see has been worth his trouble) that the

writer belongs to the old-fashioned classes of this world, loves to

remember very much more than to prophesy, and though he can't help being

carried onward, and downward, perhaps, on the hill of life, the swift

milestones marking their forties, fifties--how many tens or lustres

shall we say?--he sits under Time, the white-wigged charioteer, with his

back to the horses, and his face to the past, looking at the receding

landscape and the hills fading into the gray distance. Ah me! those

gray, distant hills were green once, and HERE, and covered with smiling

people! As we came UP the hill there was difficulty, and here and there

a hard pull to be sure, but strength, and spirits, and all sorts of

cheery incident and companionship on the road; there were the tough

struggles (by heaven's merciful will) overcome, the pauses, the

faintings, the weakness, the lost way, perhaps, the bitter weather, the

dreadful partings, the lonely night, the passionate grief--towards these

I turn my thoughts as I sit and think in my hobby-coach under Time, the

silver-wigged charioteer. The young folks in the same carriage meanwhile

are looking forwards. Nothing escapes their keen eyes--not a flower at

the side of a cottage garden, nor a bunch of rosy-faced children at the

gate: the landscape is all bright, the air brisk and jolly, the town

yonder looks beautiful, and do you think they have learned to be

difficult about the dishes at the inn?

Now, suppose Paterfamilias on his journey with his wife and children in

the sociable, and he passes an ordinary brick house on the road with an

ordinary little garden in the front, we will say, and quite an ordinary

knocker to the door, and as many sashed windows as you please, quite

common and square, and tiles, windows, chimney-pots, quite like others;

or suppose, in driving over such and such a common, he sees an ordinary

tree, and an ordinary donkey browsing under it, if you like--wife

and daughter look at these objects without the slightest particle of

curiosity or interest. What is a brass knocker to them but a lion's

head, or what not? and a thorn-tree with pool beside it, but a pool in

which a thorn and a jackass are reflected?

But you remember how once upon a time your heart used to beat, as you

beat on that brass knocker, and whose eyes looked from the window above.

You remember how by that thorn-tree and pool, where the geese were

performing a prodigious evening concert, there might be seen, at a

certain hour, somebody in a certain cloak and bonnet, who happened to

be coming from a village yonder, and whose image has flickered in that

pool. In that pool, near the thorn? Yes, in that goose-pool, never mind

how long ago, when there were reflected the images of the geese--and

two geese more. Here, at least, an oldster may have the advantage of

his young fellow-travellers, and so Putney Heath or the New Road may be

invested with a halo of brightness invisible to them, because it only

beams out of his own soul.

I have been reading the “Memorials of Hood” by his children,* and wonder

whether the book will have the same interest for others and for younger

people, as for persons of my own age and calling. Books of travel to any

country become interesting to us who have been there. Men revisit the

old school, though hateful to them, with ever so much kindliness and

sentimental affection. There was the tree under which the bully licked

you: here the ground where you had to fag out on holidays, and so

forth. In a word, my dear sir, YOU are the most interesting subject

to yourself, of any that can occupy your worship's thoughts. I have no

doubt, a Crimean soldier, reading a history of that siege, and how Jones

and the gallant 99th were ordered to charge or what not, thinks, “Ah,

yes, we of the 100th were placed so and so, I perfectly remember.”

So with this memorial of poor Hood, it may have, no doubt, a greater

interest for me than for others, for I was fighting, so to speak, in

a different part of the field, and engaged, a young subaltern, in the

Battle of Life, in which Hood fell, young still, and covered with glory.

“The Bridge of Sighs” was his Corunna, his Heights of Abraham--sickly,

weak, wounded, he fell in the full blaze and fame of that great victory.

* Memorials of Thomas Hood. Moxon, 1860. 2 vols.

What manner of man was the genius who penned that famous song? What like

was Wolfe, who climbed and conquered on those famous Heights of Abraham?

We all want to know details regarding men who have achieved famous

feats, whether of war, or wit, or eloquence, or endurance, or knowledge.

His one or two happy and heroic actions take a man's name and memory out

of a crowd of names and memories. Henceforth he stands eminent. We scan

him: we want to know all about him; we walk round and examine him, are

curious, perhaps, and think are we not as strong and tall and capable as

yonder champion; were we not bred as well, and could we not endure

the winter's cold as well as he? Or we look up with all our eyes of

admiration; will find no fault in our hero: declare his beauty and

proportions perfect; his critics envious detractors, and so forth.

Yesterday, before he performed his feat, he was nobody. Who cared about

his birthplace, his parentage, or the color of his hair? To-day, by some

single achievement, or by a series of great actions to which his genius

accustoms us, he is famous, and antiquarians are busy finding out under

what schoolmaster's ferule he was educated, where his grandmother was

vaccinated, and so forth. If half a dozen washing-bills of Goldsmith's

were to be found to-morrow, would they not inspire a general interest,

and be printed in a hundred papers? I lighted upon Oliver, not very long

since, in an old Town and Country Magazine, at the Pantheon masquerade

“in an old English habit.” Straightway my imagination ran out to meet

him, to look at him, to follow him about. I forgot the names of scores

of fine gentlemen of the past age, who were mentioned besides. We want

to see this man who has amused and charmed us; who has been our friend,

and given us hours of pleasant companionship and kindly thought. I

protest when I came, in the midst of those names of people of fashion,

and beaux, and demireps, upon those names “Sir J. R-yn-lds, in a domino;

Mr. Cr-d-ck and Dr. G-ldsm-th, in two old English dresses,” I had, so

to speak, my heart in my mouth. What, YOU here, my dear Sir Joshua? Ah,

what an honor and privilege it is to see you! This is Mr. Goldsmith? And

very much, sir, the ruff and the slashed doublet become you! O Doctor!

what a pleasure I had and have in reading the Animated Nature. How DID

you learn the secret of writing the decasyllable line, and whence that

sweet wailing note of tenderness that accompanies your song? Was Beau

Tibbs a real man, and will you do me the honor of allowing me to sit at

your table at supper? Don't you think you know how he would have talked?

Would you not have liked to hear him prattle over the champagne?

Now, Hood is passed away--passed off the earth as much as Goldsmith or

Horace. The times in which he lived, and in which very many of us lived

and were young, are changing or changed. I saw Hood once as a young man,

at a dinner which seems almost as ghostly now as that masquerade at the

Pantheon (1772), of which we were speaking anon. It was at a dinner of

the Literary Fund, in that vast apartment which is hung round with the

portraits of very large Royal Freemasons, now unsubstantial ghosts.

There at the end of the room was Hood. Some publishers, I think, were

our companions. I quite remember his pale face; he was thin and deaf,

and very silent; he scarcely opened his lips during the dinner, and he

made one pun. Some gentleman missed his snuff-box, and Hood said,--(the

Freemasons' Tavern was kept, you must remember, by Mr. CUFF in those

days, not by its present proprietors). Well, the box being lost, and

asked for, and CUFF (remember that name) being the name of the landlord,

Hood opened his silent jaws and said * * * Shall I tell you what he

said? It was not a very good pun, which the great punster then made.

Choose your favorite pun out of “Whims and Oddities,” and fancy that was

the joke which he contributed to the hilarity of our little table.

Where those asterisks are drawn on the page, you must know, a pause

occurred, during which I was engaged with “Hood's Own,” having been

referred to the book by this life of the author which I have just been

reading. I am not going to dissert on Hood's humor; I am not a fair

judge. Have I not said elsewhere that there are one or two wonderfully

old gentlemen still alive who used to give me tips when I was a boy?

I can't be a fair critic about them. I always think of that sovereign,

that rapture of raspberry-tarts, which made my young days happy. Those

old sovereign-contributors may tell stories ever so old, and I shall

laugh; they may commit murder, and I shall believe it was justifiable

homicide. There is my friend Baggs, who goes about abusing me, and of

course our dear mutual friends tell me. Abuse away, mon bon! You were so

kind to me when I wanted kindness, that you may take the change out

of that gold now, and say I am a cannibal and negro, if you will. Ha,

Baggs! Dost thou wince as thou readest this line? Does guilty conscience

throbbing at thy breast tell thee of whom the fable is narrated? Puff

out thy wrath, and, when it has ceased to blow, my Baggs shall be to me

as the Baggs of old--the generous, the gentle, the friendly.

No, on second thoughts, I am determined I will not repeat that joke

which I heard Hood make. He says he wrote these jokes with such ease

that he sent manuscripts to the publishers faster than they could

acknowledge the receipt thereof. I won't say that they were all good

jokes, or that to read a great book full of them is a work at present

altogether jocular. Writing to a friend respecting some memoir of him

which had been published, Hood says, “You will judge how well the author

knows me, when he says my mind is rather serious than comic.” At the

time when he wrote these words, he evidently undervalued his own serious

power, and thought that in punning and broad-grinning lay his chief

strength. Is not there something touching in that simplicity and

humility of faith? “To make laugh is my calling,” says he; “I must jump,

I must grin, I must tumble, I must turn language head over heels, and

leap through grammar;” and he goes to his work humbly and courageously,

and what he has to do that does he with all his might, through sickness,

through sorrow, through exile, poverty, fever, depression--there he is,

always ready to his work, and with a jewel of genius in his pocket! Why,

when he laid down his puns and pranks, put the motley off, and spoke out

of his heart, all England and America listened with tears and wonder!

Other men have delusions of conceit, and fancy themselves greater than

they are, and that the world slights them. Have we not heard how Liston

always thought he ought to play Hamlet? Here is a man with a power

to touch the heart almost unequalled, and he passes days and years

in writing, “Young Ben he was a nice young man,” and so forth. To

say truth, I have been reading in a book of “Hood's Own” until I am

perfectly angry. “You great man, you good man, you true genius and

poet,” I cry out, as I turn page after page. “Do, do, make no more of

these jokes, but be yourself, and take your station.”

When Hood was on his death-bed, Sir Robert Peel, who only knew of his

illness, not of his imminent danger, wrote to him a noble and touching

letter, announcing that a pension was conferred on him:

“I am more than repaid,” writes Peel, “by the personal satisfaction

which I have had in doing that for which you return me warm and

characteristic acknowledgments.

“You perhaps think that you are known to one with such multifarious

occupations as myself, merely by general reputation as an author; but

I assure you that there can be little, which you have written and

acknowledged, which I have not read; and that there are few who can

appreciate and admire more than myself, the good sense and good feeling

which have taught you to infuse so much fun and merriment into writings

correcting folly and exposing absurdities, and yet never trespassing

beyond those limits within which wit and facetiousness are not very

often confined. You may write on with the consciousness of independence,

as free and unfettered, as if no communication had ever passed between

us. I am not conferring a private obligation upon you, but am fulfilling

the intentions of the legislature, which has placed at the disposal of

the Crown a certain sum (miserable, indeed, in amount) to be applied to

the recognition of public claims on the bounty of the Crown. If you will

review the names of those whose claims have been admitted on account

of their literary or scientific eminence, you will find an ample

confirmation of the truth of my statement.

“One return, indeed, I shall ask of you,--that you will give me the

opportunity of making your personal acquaintance.”

And Hood, writing to a friend, enclosing a copy of Peel's letter, says,

“Sir R. Peel came from Burleigh on Tuesday night, and went down to

Brighton on Saturday. If he had written by post, I should not have it

till to-day. So he sent his servant with the enclosed on SATURDAY NIGHT;

another mark of considerate attention.” He is frightfully unwell, he

continues: his wife says he looks QUITE GREEN; but ill as he is, poor

fellow, “his well is not dry. He has pumped out a sheet of Christmas

fun, is drawing some cuts, and shall write a sheet more of his novel.”

Oh, sad, marvellous picture of courage, of honesty, of patient

endurance, of duty struggling against pain! How noble Peel's figure is

standing by that sick-bed! how generous his words, how dignified and

sincere his compassion! And the poor dying man, with a heart full of

natural gratitude towards his noble benefactor, must turn to him and

say--“If it be well to be remembered by a Minister, it is better still

not to be forgotten by him in a 'hurly Burleigh!'” Can you laugh? Is not

the joke horribly pathetic from the poor dying lips? As dying Robin Hood

must fire a last shot with his bow--as one reads of Catholics on their

death-beds putting on a Capuchin dress to go out of the world--here is

poor Hood at his last hour putting on his ghastly motley, and uttering

one joke more.

He dies, however, in dearest love and peace with his children, wife,

friends; to the former especially his whole life had been devoted,

and every day showed his fidelity, simplicity, and affection. In going

through the record of his most pure, modest, honorable life, and living

along with him, you come to trust him thoroughly, and feel that here is

a most loyal, affectionate, and upright soul, with whom you have been

brought into communion. Can we say as much of the lives of all men of

letters? Here is one at least without guile, without pretension, without

scheming, of a pure life, to his family and little modest circle of

friends tenderly devoted.

And what a hard work, and what a slender reward! In the little domestic

details with which the book abounds, what a simple life is shown to us!

The most simple little pleasures and amusements delight and occupy him.

You have revels on shrimps; the good wife making the pie; details about

the maid, and criticisms on her conduct; wonderful tricks played with

the plum-pudding--all the pleasures centring round the little humble

home. One of the first men of his time, he is appointed editor of a

Magazine at a salary of 300L. per annum, signs himself exultingly “Ed.

N. M. M.,” and the family rejoice over the income as over a fortune. He

goes to a Greenwich dinner--what a feast and a rejoicing afterwards!--

“Well, we drank 'the Boz' with a delectable clatter, which drew from him

a good warm-hearted speech. . . . He looked very well, and had a younger

brother along with him. . . . Then we had songs. Barham chanted a Robin

Hood ballad, and Cruikshank sang a burlesque ballad of Lord H----; and

somebody, unknown to me, gave a capital imitation of a French

showman. Then we toasted Mrs. Boz, and the Chairman, and Vice, and the

Traditional Priest sang the 'Deep deep sea,' in his deep deep voice; and

then we drank to Procter, who wrote the said song; also Sir J. Wilson's

good health, and Cruikshank's, and Ainsworth's: and a Manchester friend

of the latter sang a Manchester ditty, so full of trading stuff, that

it really seemed to have been not composed, but manufactured. Jerdan, as

Jerdanish as usual on such occasions--you know how paradoxically he

is QUITE AT HOME in DINING OUT. As to myself, I had to make my SECOND

MAIDEN SPEECH, for Mr. Monckton Milnes proposed my health in terms my

modesty might allow me to repeat to YOU, but my memory won't. However,

I ascribed the toast to my notoriously bad health, and assured them

that their wishes had already improved it--that I felt a brisker

circulation--a more genial warmth about the heart, and explained that a

certain trembling of my hand was not from palsy, or my old ague, but an

inclination in my hand to shake itself with every one present. Whereupon

I had to go through the friendly ceremony with as many of the company

as were within reach, besides a few more who came express from the other

end of the table. VERY gratifying, wasn't it? Though I cannot go quite

so far as Jane, who wants me to have that hand chopped off, bottled,

and preserved in spirits. She was sitting up for me, very anxiously, as

usual when I go out, because I am so domestic and steady, and was down

at the door before I could ring at the gate, to which Boz kindly sent

me in his own carriage. Poor girl! what WOULD she do if she had a wild

husband instead of a tame one?”

And the poor anxious wife is sitting up, and fondles the hand which has

been shaken by so many illustrious men! The little feast dates back only

eighteen years, and yet somehow it seems as distant as a dinner at Mr.

Thrale's, or a meeting at Will's.

Poor little gleam of sunshine! very little good cheer enlivens that sad

simple life. We have the triumph of the Magazine: then a new Magazine

projected and produced: then illness and the last scene, and the kind

Peel by the dying man's bedside speaking noble words of respect and

sympathy, and soothing the last throbs of the tender honest heart.

I like, I say, Hood's life even better than his books, and I wish, with

all my heart, Monsieur et cher confrere, the same could be said for both

of us, when the inkstream of our life hath ceased to run. Yes: if I drop

first, dear Baggs, I trust you may find reason to modify some of the

unfavorable views of my character, which you are freely imparting to

our mutual friends. What ought to be the literary man's point of honor

now-a-days? Suppose, friendly reader, you are one of the craft, what

legacy would you like to leave to your children? First of all (and by

heaven's gracious help) you would pray and strive to give them such an

endowment of love, as should last certainly for all their lives, and

perhaps be transmitted to their children. You would (by the same aid and

blessing) keep your honor pure, and transmit a name unstained to those

who have a right to bear it. You would,--though this faculty of giving

is one of the easiest of the literary man's qualities--you would, out of

your earnings, small or great, be able to help a poor brother in need,

to dress his wounds, and, if it were but twopence, to give him succor.

Is the money which the noble Macaulay gave to the poor lost to his

family? God forbid. To the loving hearts of his kindred is it not rather

the most precious part of their inheritance? It was invested in love and

righteous doing, and it bears interest in heaven. You will, if letters

be your vocation, find saving harder than giving and spending. To save

be your endeavor, too, against the night's coming when no man may work;

when the arm is weary with the long day's labor; when the brain perhaps

grows dark; when the old, who can labor no more, want warmth and rest,

and the young ones call for supper.

I copied the little galley-slave who is made to figure in the initial

letter of this paper, from a quaint old silver spoon which we purchased

in a curiosity-shop at the Hague.* It is one of the gift spoons so

common in Holland, and which have multiplied so astonishingly of late

years at our dealers' in old silverware. Along the stem of the spoon are

written the words: “Anno 1609, Bin ick aldus ghekledt gheghaen”--“In

the year 1609 I went thus clad.” The good Dutchman was released from

his Algerine captivity (I imagine his figure looks like that of a slave

amongst the Moors), and in his thank-offering to some godchild at home,

he thus piously records his escape.

* This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.

Was not poor Cervantes also a captive amongst the Moors? Did not

Fielding, and Goldsmith, and Smollett, too, die at the chain as well

as poor Hood? Think of Fielding going on board his wretched ship in

the Thames, with scarce a hand to bid him farewell; of brave Tobias

Smollett, and his life, how hard, and how poorly rewarded; of Goldsmith,

and the physician whispering, “Have you something on your mind?” and

the wild dying eyes answering, “Yes.” Notice how Boswell speaks of

Goldsmith, and the splendid contempt with which he regards him. Read

Hawkins on Fielding, and the scorn with which Dandy Walpole and Bishop

Hurd speak of him. Galley-slaves doomed to tug the oar and wear the

chain, whilst my lords and dandies take their pleasure, and hear fine

music and disport with fine ladies in the cabin!

But stay. Was there any cause for this scorn? Had some of these great

men weaknesses which gave inferiors advantage over them? Men of letters

cannot lay their hands on their hearts, and say, “No, the fault was

fortune's, and the indifferent world's, not Goldsmith's nor Fielding's.”

There was no reason why Oliver should always be thriftless; why Fielding

and Steele should sponge upon their friends; why Sterne should make love

to his neighbors' wives. Swift, for a long time, was as poor as any wag

that ever laughed: but he owed no penny to his neighbors: Addison, when

he wore his most threadbare coat, could hold his head up, and maintain

his dignity: and, I dare vouch, neither of those gentlemen, when they

were ever so poor, asked any man alive to pity their condition, and

have a regard to the weaknesses incidental to the literary profession.

Galley-slave, forsooth! If you are sent to prison for some error for

which the law awards that sort of laborious seclusion, so much the more

shame for you. If you are chained to the oar a prisoner of war, like

Cervantes, you have the pain, but not the shame, and the friendly

compassion of mankind to reward you. Galley-slaves, indeed! What man

has not his oar to pull? There is that wonderful old stroke-oar in the

Queen's galley. How many years has he pulled? Day and night, in rough

water or smooth, with what invincible vigor and surprising gayety he

plies his arms. There is in the same Galere Capitaine, that well-known,

trim figure, the bow-oar; how he tugs, and with what a will! How both of

them have been abused in their time! Take the Lawyer's galley, and

that dauntless octogenarian in command; when has HE ever complained or

repined about his slavery? There is the Priest's galley--black and

lawn sails--do any mariners out of Thames work harder? When lawyer, and

statesman, and divine, and writer are snug in bed, there is a ring

at the poor Doctor's bell. Forth he must go, in rheumatism or snow; a

galley-slave bearing his galley-pots to quench the flames of fever, to

succor mothers and young children in their hour of peril, and, as gently

and soothingly as may be, to carry the hopeless patient over to the

silent shore. And have we not just read of the actions of the Queen's

galleys and their brave crews in the Chinese waters? Men not more worthy

of human renown and honor to-day in their victory, than last year in

their glorious hour of disaster. So with stout hearts may we ply the

oar, messmates all, till the voyage is over, and the Harbor of Rest is

found.

ROUND ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS TREE.

The kindly Christmas tree, from which I trust every gentle reader has

pulled a bonbon or two, is yet all aflame whilst I am writing, and

sparkles with the sweet fruits of its season. You young ladies, may you

have plucked pretty giftlings from it; and out of the cracker sugarplum

which you have split with the captain or the sweet young curate may

you have read one of those delicious conundrums which the confectioners

introduce into the sweetmeats, and which apply to the cunning passion of

love. Those riddles are to be read at YOUR age, when I dare say they are

amusing. As for Dolly, Merry, and Bell, who are standing at the

tree, they don't care about the love-riddle part, but understand the

sweet-almond portion very well. They are four, five, six years old.

Patience, little people! A dozen merry Christmases more, and you will be

reading those wonderful love-conundrums, too. As for us elderly folks,

we watch the babies at their sport, and the young people pulling at

the branches: and instead of finding bonbons or sweeties in the packets

which WE pluck off the boughs, we find enclosed Mr. Carnifex's review of

the quarter's meat; Mr. Sartor's compliments, and little statement for

self and the young gentlemen; and Madame de Sainte-Crinoline's respects

to the young ladies, who encloses her account, and will send on

Saturday, please; or we stretch our hand out to the educational branch

of the Christmas tree, and there find a lively and amusing article

from the Rev. Henry Holyshade, containing our dear Tommy's exceedingly

moderate account for the last term's school expenses.

The tree yet sparkles, I say. I am writing on the day before Twelfth

Day, if you must know; but already ever so many of the fruits have been

pulled, and the Christmas lights have gone out. Bobby Miseltow, who has

been staying with us for a week (and who has been sleeping mysteriously

in the bathroom), comes to say he is going away to spend the rest of the

holidays with his grandmother--and I brush away the manly tear of regret

as I part with the dear child. “Well, Bob, good-by, since you WILL go.

Compliments to grandmamma. Thank her for the turkey. Here's--” (A slight

pecuniary transaction takes place at this juncture, and Bob nods and

winks, and puts his hand in his waistcoat pocket.). “You have had a

pleasant week?”

BOB.--“Haven't I!” (And exit, anxious to know the amount of the coin

which has just changed hands.)

He is gone, and as the dear boy vanishes through the door (behind

which I see him perfectly), I too cast up a little account of our past

Christmas week. When Bob's holidays are over, and the printer has sent

me back this manuscript, I know Christmas will be an old story. All

the fruit will be off the Christmas tree then; the crackers will have

cracked off; the almonds will have been crunched; and the sweet-bitter

riddles will have been read; the lights will have perished off the

dark green boughs; the toys growing on them will have been distributed,

fought for, cherished, neglected, broken. Ferdinand and Fidelia will

each keep out of it (be still, my gushing heart!) the remembrance of

a riddle read together, of a double-almond munched together, and the

moiety of an exploded cracker. . . . The maids, I say, will have taken

down all that holly stuff and nonsense about the clocks, lamps, and

looking-glasses, the dear boys will be back at school, fondly thinking

of the pantomime-fairies whom they have seen; whose gaudy gossamer wings

are battered by this time; and whose pink cotton (or silk is it?) lower

extremities are all dingy and dusty. Yet but a few days, Bob, and

flakes of paint will have cracked off the fairy flower-bowers, and the

revolving temples of adamantine lustre will be as shabby as the city

of Pekin. When you read this, will Clown still be going on lolling his

tongue out of his month, and saying, “How are you to-morrow?” Tomorrow,

indeed! He must be almost ashamed of himself (if that cheek is

still capable of the blush of shame) for asking the absurd question.

To-morrow, indeed! To-morrow the diffugient snows will give place to

Spring; the snowdrops will lift their heads; Ladyday may be expected,

and the pecuniary duties peculiar to that feast; in place of bonbons,

trees will have an eruption of light green knobs; the whitebait season

will bloom . . . as if one need go on describing these vernal phenomena,

when Christmas is still here, though ending, and the subject of my

discourse!

We have all admired the illustrated papers, and noted how

boisterously jolly they become at Christmas time. What wassail-bowls,

robin-redbreasts, waits, snow landscapes, bursts of Christmas song! And

then to think that these festivities are prepared months before--that

these Christmas pieces are prophetic! How kind of artists and poets

to devise the festivities beforehand, and serve them pat at the proper

time! We ought to be grateful to them, as to the cook who gets up at

midnight and sets the pudding a-boiling, which is to feast us at six

o'clock. I often think with gratitude of the famous Mr. Nelson Lee--the

author of I don't know how many hundred glorious pantomimes--walking by

the summer wave at Margate, or Brighton perhaps, revolving in his mind

the idea of some new gorgeous spectacle of faery, which the winter shall

see complete. He is like cook at midnight (si parva licet). He watches

and thinks. He pounds the sparkling sugar of benevolence, the plums

of fancy, the sweetmeats of fun, the figs of--well, the figs of fairy

fiction, let us say, and pops the whole in the seething caldron of

imagination, and at due season serves up THE PANTOMIME.

Very few men in the course of nature can expect to see ALL the

pantomimes in one season, but I hope to the end of my life I shall never

forego reading about them in that delicious sheet of The Times which

appears on the morning after Boxing-day. Perhaps reading is even better

than seeing. The best way, I think, is to say you are ill, lie in bed,

and have the paper for two hours, reading all the way down from Drury

Lane to the Britannia at Hoxton. Bob and I went to two pantomimes. One

was at the Theatre of Fancy, and the other at the Fairy Opera, and I

don't know which we liked the best.

At the Fancy, we saw “Harlequin Hamlet, or Daddy's Ghost and Nunky's

Pison,” which is all very well--but, gentlemen, if you don't respect

Shakspeare, to whom will you be civil? The palace and ramparts of

Elsinore by moon and snowlight is one of Loutherbourg's finest efforts.

The banqueting hall of the palace is illuminated: the peaks and gables

glitter with the snow: the sentinels march blowing their fingers with

the cold--the freezing of the nose of one of them is very neatly and

dexterously arranged: the snow-storm rises: the winds howl awfully along

the battlements: the waves come curling, leaping, foaming to shore.

Hamlet's umbrella is whirled away in the storm. He and his two friends

stamp on each other's toes to keep them warm. The storm-spirits rise

in the air, and are whirled howling round the palace and the rocks. My

eyes! what tiles and chimney-pots fly hurtling through the air! As

the storm reaches its height (here the wind instruments come in with

prodigious effect, and I compliment Mr. Brumby and the violoncellos)--as

the snow-storm rises, (queek, queek, queek, go the fiddles, and then

thrumpty thrump comes a pizzicato movement in Bob Major, which sends

a shiver into your very boot-soles,) the thunder-clouds deepen (bong,

bong, bong, from the violoncellos). The forked lightning quivers through

the clouds in a zig-zag scream of violins--and look, look, look! as the

frothing, roaring waves come rushing up the battlements, and over

the reeling parapet, each hissing wave becomes a ghost, sends the

gun-carriages rolling over the platform, and plunges howling into the

water again.

Hamlet's mother comes on to the battlements to look for her son. The

storm whips her umbrella out of her hands, and she retires screaming in

pattens.

The cabs on the stand in the great market-place at Elsinore are seen

to drive off, and several people are drowned. The gas-lamps along

the street are wrenched from their foundations, and shoot through the

troubled air. Whist, rush, hish! how the rain roars and pours! The

darkness becomes awful, always deepened by the power of the music--and

see--in the midst of a rush, and whirl, and scream of spirits of air

and wave--what is that ghastly figure moving hither? It becomes bigger,

bigger, as it advances down the platform--more ghastly, more horrible,

enormous! It is as tall as the whole stage. It seems to be advancing

on the stalls and pit, and the whole house screams with terror, as the

GHOST OF THE LATE HAMLET comes in, and begins to speak. Several people

faint, and the light-fingered gentry pick pockets furiously in the

darkness.

In the pitchy darkness, this awful figure throwing his eyes about,

the gas in the boxes shuddering out of sight, and the wind-instruments

bugling the most horrible wails, the boldest spectator must have felt

frightened. But hark! what is that silver shimmer of the fiddles! Is

it--can it be--the gray dawn peeping in the stormy east? The ghost's

eyes look blankly towards it, and roll a ghastly agony. Quicker, quicker

ply the violins of Phoebus Apollo. Redder, redder grow the orient

clouds. Cockadoodledoo! crows that great cock which has just come out

on the roof of the palace. And now the round sun himself pops up from

behind the waves of night. Where is the ghost? He is gone! Purple

shadows of morn “slant o'er the snowy sward,” the city wakes up in

life and sunshine, and we confess we are very much relieved at

the disappearance of the ghost. We don't like those dark scenes in

pantomimes.

After the usual business, that Ophelia should be turned into Columbine

was to be expected; but I confess I was a little shocked when Hamlet's

mother became Pantaloon, and was instantly knocked down by Clown

Claudius. Grimaldi is getting a little old now, but for real humor there

are few clowns like him. Mr. Shuter, as the grave-digger, was chaste and

comic, as he always is, and the scene-painters surpassed themselves.

“Harlequin Conqueror and the Field of Hastings,” at the other house, is

very pleasant too. The irascible William is acted with great vigor by

Snoxall, and the battle of Hastings is a good piece of burlesque. Some

trifling liberties are taken with history, but what liberties will not

the merry genius of pantomime permit himself? At the battle of Hastings,

William is on the point of being defeated by the Sussex volunteers, very

elegantly led by the always pretty Miss Waddy (as Haco Sharpshooter),

when a shot from the Normans kills Harold. The fairy Edith hereupon

comes forward, and finds his body, which straightway leaps up a live

harlequin, whilst the Conqueror makes an excellent clown, and the

Archbishop of Bayeux a diverting pantaloon, &c. &c. &c.

Perhaps these are not the pantomimes we really saw; but one description

will do as well as another. The plots, you see, are a little intricate

and difficult to understand in pantomimes; and I may have mixed up one

with another. That I was at the theatre on Boxing-night is certain--but

the pit was so full that I could only see fairy legs glittering in the

distance, as I stood at the door. And if I was badly off, I think there

was a young gentleman behind me worse off still. I own that he has good

reason (though others have not) to speak ill of me behind my back, and

hereby beg his pardon.

Likewise to the gentleman who picked up a party in Piccadilly, who had

slipped and fallen in the snow, and was there on his back, uttering

energetic expressions; that party begs to offer thanks, and compliments

of the season.

Bob's behavior on New Year's day, I can assure Dr. Holyshade, was highly

creditable to the boy. He had expressed a determination to partake of

every dish which was put on the table; but after soup, fish, roast-beef,

and roast-goose, he retired from active business until the pudding and

mince-pies made their appearance, of which he partook liberally, but not

too freely. And he greatly advanced in my good opinion by praising the

punch, which was of my own manufacture, and which some gentlemen present

(Mr. O'M--g--n, amongst others) pronounced to be too weak. Too weak!

A bottle of rum, a bottle of Madeira, half a bottle of brandy, and two

bottles and a half of water--CAN this mixture be said to be too weak for

any mortal? Our young friend amused the company during the evening by

exhibiting a two-shilling magic-lantern, which he had purchased, and

likewise by singing “Sally, come up!” a quaint, but rather monotonous

melody, which I am told is sung by the poor negro on the banks of the

broad Mississippi.

What other enjoyments did we proffer for the child's amusement during

the Christmas week? A great philosopher was giving a lecture to young

folks at the British Institution. But when this diversion was proposed

to our young friend Bob, he said, “Lecture? No, thank you. Not as I

knows on,” and made sarcastic signals on his nose. Perhaps he is of Dr.

Johnson's opinion about lectures: “Lectures, sir! what man would go to

hear that imperfectly at a lecture, which he can read at leisure in a

book?” I never went, of my own choice, to a lecture; that I can vow. As

for sermons, they are different; I delight in them, and they cannot, of

course, be too long.

Well, we partook of yet other Christmas delights besides pantomime,

pudding, and pie. One glorious, one delightful, one most unlucky and

pleasant day, we drove in a brougham, with a famous horse, which carried

us more quickly and briskly than any of your vulgar railways, over

Battersea Bridge, on which the horse's hoofs rung as if it had been

iron; through suburban villages, plum-caked with snow; under a leaden

sky, in which the sun hung like a red-hot warming-pan; by pond after

pond, where not only men and boys, but scores after scores of women and

girls, were sliding, and roaring, and clapping their lean old sides with

laughter, as they tumbled down, and their hobnailed shoes flew up in

the air; the air frosty with a lilac haze, through which villas, and

commons, and churches, and plantations glimmered. We drive up the hill,

Bob and I; we make the last two miles in eleven minutes; we pass that

poor, armless man who sits there in the cold, following you with his

eyes. I don't give anything, and Bob looks disappointed. We are set down

neatly at the gate, and a horse-holder opens the brougham door. I don't

give anything; again disappointment on Bob's part. I pay a shilling

apiece, and we enter into the glorious building, which is decorated for

Christmas, and straight-way forgetfulness on Bob's part of everything

but that magnificent scene. The enormous edifice is all decorated for

Bob and Christmas. The stalls, the columns, the fountains, courts,

statues, splendors, are all crowned for Christmas. The delicious negro

is singing his Alabama choruses for Christmas and Bob. He has scarcely

done, when, Tootarootatoo! Mr. Punch is performing his surprising

actions, and hanging the beadle. The stalls are decorated. The

refreshment-tables are piled with good things; at many fountains “MULLED

CLARET” is written up in appetizing capitals. “Mulled Claret--oh, jolly!

How cold it is!” says Bob; I pass on. “It's only three o'clock,” says

Bob. “No, only three,” I say, meekly. “We dine at seven,” sighs Bob,

“and it's so-o-o coo-old.” I still would take no hints. No claret,

no refreshment, no sandwiches, no sausage-rolls for Bob. At last I am

obliged to tell him all. Just before we left home, a little Christmas

bill popped in at the door and emptied my purse at the threshold. I

forgot all about the transaction, and had to borrow half a crown from

John Coachman to pay for our entrance into the palace of delight. NOW

you see, Bob, why I could not treat you on that second of January when

we drove to the palace together; when the girls and boys were sliding on

the ponds at Dulwich; when the darkling river was full of floating ice,

and the sun was like a warming-pan in the leaden sky.

One more Christmas sight we had, of course; and that sight I think I

like as well as Bob himself at Christmas, and at all seasons. We went to

a certain garden of delight, where, whatever your cares are, I think you

can manage to forget some of them, and muse, and be not unhappy; to a

garden beginning with a Z, which is as lively as Noah's ark; where the

fox has brought his brush, and the cock has brought his comb, and the

elephant has brought his trunk, and the kangaroo has brought his bag,

and the condor his old white wig and black satin hood. On this day it

was so cold that the white bears winked their pink eyes, as they plapped

up and down by their pool, and seemed to say, “Aha, this weather reminds

us of our dear home!” “Cold! bah! I have got such a warm coat,” says

brother Bruin, “I don't mind;” and he laughs on his pole, and clucks

down a bun. The squealing hyaenas gnashed their teeth and laughed at us

quite refreshingly at their window; and, cold as it was, Tiger, Tiger,

burning bright, glared at us red-hot through his bars, and snorted

blasts of hell. The woolly camel leered at us quite kindly as he paced

round his ring on his silent pads. We went to our favorite places.

Our dear wambat came up, and had himself scratched very affably. Our

fellow-creatures in the monkey-room held out their little black hands,

and piteously asked us for Christmas alms. Those darling alligators on

their rock winked at us in the most friendly way. The solemn eagles

sat alone, and scowled at us from their peaks; whilst little Tom Ratel

tumbled over head and heels for us in his usual diverting manner. If I

have cares in my mind, I come to the Zoo, and fancy they don't pass

the gate. I recognize my friends, my enemies, in countless cages.

I entertained the eagle, the vulture, the old billy-goat, and the

black-pated, crimson-necked, blear-eyed, baggy, hook-beaked old marabou

stork yesterday at dinner; and when Bob's aunt came to tea in the

evening, and asked him what he had seen, he stepped up to her gravely,

and said--

“First I saw the white bear, then I saw the black,

Then I saw the camel with a hump upon his back.

Chorus of children:

Then I saw the camel with a HUMP upon his back!

Then I saw the gray wolf, with mutton in his maw;

Then I saw the wambat waddle in the straw;

Then I saw the elephant with his waving trunk,

Then I saw the monkeys--mercy, how unpleasantly they--smelt!”

There. No one can beat that piece of wit, can he, Bob? And so it is

all over; but we had a jolly time, whilst you were with us, hadn't we?

Present my respects to the doctor; and I hope, my boy, we may spend

another merry Christmas next year.

ON A CHALK-MARK ON THE DOOR

On the doorpost of the house of a friend of mine, a few inches above

the lock, is a little chalk-mark which some sportive boy in passing has

probably scratched on the pillar. The door-steps, the lock, handle, and

so forth, are kept decently enough; but this chalk-mark, I suppose some

three inches out of the housemaid's beat, has already been on the door

for more than a fortnight, and I wonder whether it will be there whilst

this paper is being written, whilst it is at the printer's, and, in

fine, until the month passes over? I wonder whether the servants in that

house will read these remarks about the chalkmark? That the Cornhill

Magazine is taken in in that house I know. In fact I have seen it there.

In fact I have read it there. In fact I have written it there. In

a word, the house to which I allude is mine--the “editor's private

residence,” to which, in spite of prayers, entreaties, commands, and

threats, authors, and ladies especially, WILL send their communications,

although they won't understand that they injure their own interests by

so doing; for how is a man who has his own work to do, his own exquisite

inventions to form and perfect--Maria to rescue from the unprincipled

Earl--the atrocious General to confound in his own machinations--the

angelic Dean to promote to a bishopric, and so forth--how is a man to do

all this, under a hundred interruptions, and keep his nerves and temper

in that just and equable state in which they ought to be when he comes

to assume the critical office? As you will send here, ladies, I must

tell you you have a much worse chance than if you forward your valuable

articles to Cornhill. Here your papers arrive, at dinner-time, we

will say. Do you suppose that is a pleasant period, and that we are

to criticise you between the ovum and malum, between the soup and the

dessert? I have touched, I think, on this subject before. I say again,

if you want real justice shown you, don't send your papers to the

private residence. At home, for instance, yesterday, having given

strict orders that I was to receive nobody, “except on business,” do you

suppose a smiling young Scottish gentleman, who forced himself into my

study, and there announced himself as agent of a Cattle-food Company,

was received with pleasure? There, as I sat in my arm-chair, suppose he

had proposed to draw a couple of my teeth, would I have been pleased? I

could have throttled that agent. I dare say the whole of that day's

work will be found tinged with a ferocious misanthropy, occasioned by my

clever young friend's intrusion. Cattle-food, indeed! As if beans, oats,

warm mashes, and a ball, are to be pushed down a man's throat just as

he is meditating on the great social problem, or (for I think it was my

epic I was going to touch up) just as he was about to soar to the height

of the empyrean!

Having got my cattle-agent out of the door, I resume my consideration of

that little mark on the doorpost, which is scored up as the text of the

present little sermon; and which I hope will relate, not to chalk, nor

to any of its special uses or abuses (such as milk, neck-powder, and the

like), but to servants. Surely ours might remove that unseemly little

mark. Suppose it were on my coat, might I not request its removal?

I remember, when I was at school, a little careless boy, upon whose

forehead an ink-mark remained, and was perfectly recognizable for

three weeks after its first appearance. May I take any notice of this

chalk-stain on the forehead of my house? Whose business is it to wash

that forehead? and ought I to fetch a brush and a little hot water, and

wash it off myself?

Yes. But that spot removed, why not come down at six, and wash the

doorsteps? I dare say the early rising and exercise would do me a great

deal of good. The housemaid, in that case, might lie in bed a little

later, and have her tea and the morning paper brought to her in bed:

then, of course, Thomas would expect to be helped about the boots and

knives; cook about the saucepans, dishes, and what not; the lady's-maid

would want somebody to take the curl-papers out of her hair, and get

her bath ready. You should have a set of servants for the servants,

and these under servants should have slaves to wait on them. The king

commands the first lord in waiting to desire the second lord to intimate

to the gentleman usher to request the page of the ante-chamber to

entreat the groom of the stairs to implore John to ask the captain of

the buttons to desire the maid of the still-room to beg the housekeeper

to give out a few more lumps of sugar, as his Majesty has none for his

coffee, which probably is getting cold during the negotiation. In our

little Brentfords we are all kings, more or less. There are orders,

gradations, hierarchies, everywhere. In your house and mine there are

mysteries unknown to us. I am not going in to the horrid old question

of “followers.” I don't mean cousins from the country, love-stricken

policemen, or gentlemen in mufti from Knightsbridge Barracks; but people

who have an occult right on the premises; the uncovenanted servants

of the house; gray women who are seen at evening with baskets flitting

about area-railings; dingy shawls which drop you furtive curtsies in

your neighborhood; demure little Jacks, who start up from behind boxes

in the pantry. Those outsiders wear Thomas's crest and livery, and call

him “Sir;” those silent women address the female servants as “Mum,” and

curtsy before them, squaring their arms over their wretched lean aprons.

Then, again, those servi servorum have dependants in the vast, silent,

poverty-stricken world outside your comfortable kitchen fire, in the

world of darkness, and hunger, and miserable cold, and dank, flagged

cellars, and huddled straw, and rags, in which pale children are

swarming. It may be your beer (which runs with great volubility) has a

pipe or two which communicates with those dark caverns where hopeless

anguish pours the groan, and would scarce see light but for a scrap or

two of candle which has been whipped away from your worship's kitchen.

Not many years ago--I don't know whether before or since that white

mark was drawn on the door--a lady occupied the confidential place of

housemaid in this “private residence,” who brought a good character,

who seemed to have a cheerful temper, whom I used to hear clattering and

bumping overhead or on the stairs long before daylight--there, I say,

was poor Camilla, scouring the plain, trundling and brushing, and

clattering with her pans and brooms, and humming at her work. Well,

she had established a smuggling communication of beer over the area

frontier. This neat-handed Phyllis used to pack up the nicest baskets

of my provender, and convey them to somebody outside--I believe, on my

conscience, to some poor friend in distress. Camilla was consigned to

her doom. She was sent back to her friends in the country; and when she

was gone we heard of many of her faults. She expressed herself, when

displeased, in language that I shall not repeat. As for the beer and

meat, there was no mistake about them. But apres? Can I have the heart

to be very angry with that poor jade for helping another poorer jade out

of my larder? On your honor and conscience, when you were a boy, and

the apples looked temptingly over Farmer Quarringdon's hedge, did you

never--? When there was a grand dinner at home, and you were sliding,

with Master Bacon, up and down the stairs, and the dishes came out, did

you ever do such a thing as just to--? Well, in many and many a respect

servants are like children. They are under domination. They are subject

to reproof, to ill temper, to petty exactions and stupid tyrannies not

seldom. They scheme, conspire, fawn, and are hypocrites. “Little boys

should not loll on chairs.” “Little girls should be seen, and not

heard;” and so forth. Have we not almost all learnt these expressions of

old foozles: and uttered them ourselves when in the square-toed state?

The Eton master, who was breaking a lance with our Paterfamilias of

late, turned on Paterfamilias, saying, He knows not the nature and

exquisite candor of well-bred English boys. Exquisite fiddlestick's

end, Mr. Master! Do you mean for to go for to tell us that the relations

between young gentlemen and their schoolmasters are entirely frank and

cordial; that the lad is familiar with the man who can have him flogged;

never shirks his exercise; never gets other boys to do his verses; never

does other boys' verses; never breaks bounds; never tells fibs--I

mean the fibs permitted by scholastic honor? Did I know of a boy who

pretended to such a character, I would forbid my scapegraces to keep

company with him. Did I know a schoolmaster who pretended to believe

in the existence of many hundred such boys in one school at one time,

I would set that man down as a baby in knowledge of the world. “Who was

making that noise?” “I don't know, sir.”--And he knows it was the boy

next him in school. “Who was climbing over that wall?” “I don't know,

sir.”--And it is in the speaker's own trousers, very likely, the glass

bottle-tops have left their cruel scars. And so with servants. “Who ate

up the three pigeons which went down in the pigeon-pie at breakfast this

morning?” “O dear me! sir, it was John, who went away last month!”--or,

“I think it was Miss Mary's canary-bird, which got out of the cage, and

is so fond of pigeons, it never can have enough of them.” Yes, it WAS

the canary-bird; and Eliza saw it; and Eliza is ready to vow she did.

These statements are not true; but please don't call them lies. This is

not lying; this is voting with your party. You MUST back your own side.

The servants'-hall stands by the servants'-hall against the dining-room.

The schoolboys don't tell tales of each other. They agree not to choose

to know who has made the noise, who has broken the window, who has eaten

up the pigeons, who has picked all the plovers'-eggs out of the aspic,

how it is that liqueur brandy of Gledstane's is in such porous glass

bottles---and so forth. Suppose Brutus had a footman, who came and told

him that the butler drank the Curacoa, which of these servants would you

dismiss?--the butler, perhaps, but the footman certainly.

No. If your plate and glass are beautifully bright, your bell quickly

answered, and Thomas ready, neat, and good-humored, you are not to

expect absolute truth from him. The very obsequiousness and perfection

of his service prevents truth. He may be ever so unwell in mind or body,

and he must go through his service--hand the shining plate, replenish

the spotless glass, lay the glittering fork--never laugh when you

yourself or your guests joke--be profoundly attentive, and yet look

utterly impassive--exchange a few hurried curses at the door with that

unseen slavey who ministers without, and with you be perfectly calm and

polite. If you are ill, he will come twenty times in an hour to your

bell; or leave the girl of his heart--his mother, who is going to

America--his dearest friend, who has come to say farewell--his lunch,

and his glass of beer just freshly poured out--any or all of these, if

the door-bell rings, or the master calls out “THOMAS” from the hall. Do

you suppose you can expect absolute candor from a man whom you may order

to powder his hair? As between the Rev. Henry Holyshade and his pupil,

the idea of entire unreserve is utter bosh; so the truth as between

you and Jeames or Thomas, or Mary the housemaid, or Betty the cook,

is relative, and not to be demanded on one side or the other. Why,

respectful civility is itself a lie, which poor Jeames often has to

utter or perform to many a swaggering vulgarian, who should black

Jeames's boots, did Jeames wear them and not shoes. There is your little

Tom, just ten, ordering the great, large, quiet, orderly young man

about--shrieking calls for hot water--bullying Jeames because the boots

are not varnished enough, or ordering him to go to the stables, and ask

Jenkins why the deuce Tomkins hasn't brought his pony round--or what you

will. There is mamma rapping the knuckles of Pincot the lady's-maid,

and little Miss scolding Martha, who waits up five pair of stairs in the

nursery. Little Miss, Tommy, papa, mamma, you all expect from Martha,

from Pincot, from Jenkins, from Jeames, obsequious civility and willing

service. My dear, good people, you can't have truth too. Suppose you ask

for your newspaper, and Jeames says, “I'm reading it, and jest beg not

to be disturbed;” or suppose you ask for a can of water, and he remarks,

“You great, big, 'ulking fellar, ain't you big enough to bring it

hup yoursulf?” what would your feelings be? Now, if you made similar

proposals or requests to Mr. Jones next door, this is the kind of answer

Jones would give you. You get truth habitually from equals only; so my

good Mr. Holyshade, don't talk to me about the habitual candor of the

young Etonian of high birth, or I have my own opinion of YOUR candor or

discernment when you do. No. Tom Bowling is the soul of honor and has

been true to Black-eyed Syousan since the last time they parted at

Wapping Old Stairs; but do you suppose Tom is perfectly frank, familiar,

and aboveboard in his conversation with Admiral Nelson, K.C.B.? There

are secrets, prevarications, fibs, if you will, between Tom and the

Admiral--between your crew and THEIR captain. I know I hire a worthy,

clean, agreeable, and conscientious male or female hypocrite, at so many

guineas a year, to do so and so for me. Were he other than hypocrite

I would send him about his business. Don't let my displeasure be too

fierce with him for a fib or two on his own account.

Some dozen years ago, my family being absent in a distant part of the

country, and my business detaining me in London, I remained in my own

house with three servants on board wages. I used only to breakfast at

home; and future ages will be interested to know that this meal used

to consist, at that period, of tea, a penny roll, a pat of butter,

and, perhaps, an egg. My weekly bill used invariably to be about

fifty shillings; so that, as I never dined in the house, you see, my

breakfast, consisting of the delicacies before mentioned, cost about

seven shillings and threepence per diem. I must, therefore, have

consumed daily--

s. d.

A quarter of a pound of tea (say) 1 3

A penny roll (say) 1 0

One pound of butter (say) 1 3

One pound of lump sugar 1 0

A new-laid egg 2 9

Which is the only possible way I have for making out the sum.

Well, I fell ill while under this regimen, and had an illness which, but

for a certain doctor, who was brought to me by a certain kind friend I

had in those days, would, I think, have prevented the possibility of

my telling this interesting anecdote now a dozen years after. Don't be

frightened, my dear madam; it is not a horrid, sentimental account of

a malady you are coming to--only a question of grocery. This illness,

I say, lasted some seventeen days, during which the servants were

admirably attentive and kind; and poor John, especially, was up at

all hours, watching night after night--amiable, cheerful, untiring,

respectful, the very best of Johns and nurses.

Twice or thrice in the seventeen days I may have had a glass of eau

sucree--say a dozen glasses of eau sucree--certainly not more. Well,

this admirable, watchful, cheerful, tender, affectionate John brought

me in a little bill for seventeen pounds of sugar consumed during the

illness--“Often 'ad sugar and water; always was a callin' for it,” says

John, wagging his head quite gravely. You are dead, years and years ago,

poor John--so patient, so friendly, so kind, so cheerful to the invalid

in the fever. But confess, now, wherever you are, that seventeen pounds

of sugar to make six glasses of eau sucree was a LITTLE too strong,

wasn't it, John? Ah, how frankly, how trustily, how bravely he lied,

poor John! One evening, being at Brighton, in the convalescence, I

remember John's step was unsteady, his voice thick, his laugh queer--and

having some quinine to give me, John brought the glass to me--not to my

mouth, but struck me with it pretty smartly in the eye, which was not

the way in which Dr. Elliotson had intended his prescription should be

taken. Turning that eye upon him, I ventured to hint that my attendant

had been drinking. Drinking! I never was more humiliated at the thought

of my own injustice than at John's reply. “Drinking! Sulp me! I have had

only one pint of beer with my dinner at one o'clock!”--and he retreats,

holding on by a chair. These are fibs, you see, appertaining to the

situation. John is drunk. “SULP him, he has only had an 'alf-pint of

beer with his dinner six hours ago;” and none of his fellow-servants

will say other wise. Polly is smuggled on board ship. Who tells the

lieutenant when he comes his rounds? Boys are playing cards in the

bedroom. The outlying fag announces master coming--out go candles--cards

popped into bed--boys sound asleep. Who had that light in the dormitory?

Law bless you! the poor dear innocents are every one snoring. Every one

snoring, and every snore is a lie told through the nose! Suppose one of

your boys or mine is engaged in that awful crime, are we going to break

our hearts about it? Come, come. We pull a long face, waggle a grave

head, and chuckle within our waistcoats.

Between me and those fellow-creatures of mine who are sitting in the

room below, how strange and wonderful is the partition! We meet at

every hour of the daylight, and are indebted to each other for a hundred

offices of duty and comfort of life; and we live together for years, and

don't know each other. John's voice to me is quite different from John's

voice when it addresses his mates below. If I met Hannah in the street

with a bonnet on, I doubt whether I should know her. And all these good

people with whom I may live for years and years, have cares, interests,

dear friends and relatives, mayhap schemes, passions, longing hopes,

tragedies of their own, from which a carpet and a few planks and beams

utterly separate me. When we were at the seaside, and poor Ellen used to

look so pale, and run after the postman's bell, and seize a letter in

a great scrawling hand, and read it, and cry in a corner, how should we

know that the poor little thing's heart was breaking? She fetched the

water, and she smoothed the ribbons, and she laid out the dresses, and

brought the early cup of tea in the morning, just as if she had had

no cares to keep her awake. Henry (who lived out of the house) was the

servant of a friend of mine who lived in chambers. There was a dinner

one day, and Harry waited all through the dinner. The champagne was

properly iced, the dinner was excellently served; every guest was

attended to; the dinner disappeared; the dessert was set; the claret

was in perfect order, carefully decanted, and more ready. And then Henry

said, “If you please, sir, may I go home?” He had received word that his

house was on fire; and, having seen through his dinner, he wished to go

and look after his children, and little sticks of furniture. Why, such

a man's livery is a uniform of honor. The crest on his button is a badge

of bravery.

Do you see--I imagine I do myself--in these little instances, a tinge of

humor? Ellen's heart is breaking for handsome Jeames of Buckley Square,

whose great legs are kneeling, and who has given a lock of his precious

powdered head, to some other than Ellen. Henry is preparing the sauce

for his master's wild-ducks while the engines are squirting over his

own little nest and brood. Lift these figures up but a story from the

basement to the ground-floor, and the fun is gone. We may be en pleine

tragedie. Ellen may breathe her last sigh in blank verse, calling down

blessings upon James the profligate who deserts her. Henry is a hero,

and epaulettes are on his shoulders. Atqui sciebat, &c., whatever

tortures are in store for him, he will be at his post of duty.

You concede, however, that there is a touch of humor in the two

tragedies here mentioned. Why? Is it that the idea of persons at service

is somehow ludicrous? Perhaps it is made more so in this country by the

splendid appearance of the liveried domestics of great people. When you

think that we dress in black ourselves, and put our fellow-creatures in

green, pink, or canary-colored breeches; that we order them to plaster

their hair with flour, having brushed that nonsense out of our own heads

fifty years ago; that some of the most genteel and stately among us

cause the men who drive their carriages to put on little Albino wigs,

and sit behind great nosegays--I say I suppose it is this heaping of

gold lace, gaudy colors, blooming plushes, on honest John Trot, which

makes the man absurd in our eyes, who need be nothing but a simple

reputable citizen and in-door laborer. Suppose, my dear sir, that you

yourself were suddenly desired to put on a full dress, or even undress,

domestic uniform with our friend Jones's crest repeated in varied

combinations of button on your front and back? Suppose, madam, your

son were told, that he could not get out except in lower garments of

carnation or amber-colored plush--would you let him? . . . But as you

justly say, this is not the question, and besides it is a question

fraught with danger, sir; and radicalism, sir; and subversion of the

very foundations of the social fabric, sir. . . . Well, John, we

won't enter on your great domestic question. Don't let us disport with

Jeames's dangerous strength, and the edge-tools about his knife-board:

but with Betty and Susan who wield the playful mop, and set on the

simmering kettle. Surely you have heard Mrs. Toddles talking to Mrs.

Doddles about their mutual maids. Miss Susan must have a silk gown, and

Miss Betty must wear flowers under her bonnet when she goes to church

if you please, and did you ever hear such impudence? The servant in many

small establishments is a constant and endless theme of talk. What small

wage, sleep, meal, what endless scouring, scolding, tramping on messages

fall to that poor Susan's lot; what indignation at the little kindly

passing word with the grocer's young man, the pot-boy, the chubby

butcher! Where such things will end, my dear Mrs. Toddles, I don't know.

What wages they will want next, my dear Mrs. Doddles, &c.

Here, dear ladies, is an advertisement which I cut out of The Times a

few days since, expressly for you:

“A lady is desirous of obtaining a SITUATION for a very respectable

young woman as HEAD KITCHEN-MAID under a man-cook. She has lived four

years under a very good cook and housekeeper. Can make ice, and is an

excellent baker. She will only take a place in a very good family, where

she can have the opportunity of improving herself, and, if possible,

staying for two years. Apply by letter to,” &c. &c.

There, Mrs. Toddles, what do you think of that, and did you ever? Well,

no, Mrs. Doddles. Upon my word now, Mrs. T., I don't think I ever did.

A respectable young woman--as head kitchen-maid--under a man-cook, will

only take a place in a very good family, where she can improve, and

stay two years. Just note up the conditions, Mrs. Toddles, mum, if you

please, mum, and THEN let us see:--

1. This young woman is to be HEAD kitchen-maid, that is to say there is

to be a chorus of kitchen-maids, of which Y. W. is to be chief.

2. She will only be situated under a man-cook. (A) Ought he to be

a French cook; and (B), if so, would the lady desire him to be a

Protestant?

3. She will only take a place in a VERY GOOD FAMILY. How old ought the

family to be, and what do you call good? that is the question. How

long after the Conquest will do? Would a banker's family do, or is

a baronet's good enough? Best say what rank in the peerage would be

sufficiently high. But the lady does not say whether she would like a

High Church or a Low Church family. Ought there to be unmarried sons,

and may they follow a profession? and please say how many daughters; and

would the lady like them to be musical? And how many company dinners a

week? Not too many, for fear of fatiguing the upper kitchen-maid; but

sufficient, so as to keep the upper kitchen-maid's hand in. [N.B.--I

think I can see a rather bewildered expression on the countenances of

Mesdames Doddles and Toddles as I am prattling on in this easy bantering

way.]

4. The head kitchen-maid wishes to stay for two years, and improve

herself under the man-cook, and having of course sucked the brains (as

the phrase is) from under the chefs nightcap, then the head kitchen-maid

wishes to go.

And upon my word, Mrs. Toddles, mum, I will go and fetch the cab for

her. The cab? Why not her ladyship's own carriage and pair, and the head

coachman to drive away the head kitchen-maid? You see she stipulates for

everything--the time to come; the time to stay; the family she will

be with; and as soon as she has improved herself enough, of course the

upper kitchen-maid will step into the carriage and drive off.

Well, upon my word and conscience, if things are coming to THIS pass,

Mrs. Toddles and Mrs. Doddles, mum, I think I will go up stairs and get

a basin and a sponge, and then down stairs and get some hot water; and

then I will go and scrub that chalk-mark off my own door with my own

hands.

It is wiped off, I declare! After ever so many weeks! Who has done it?

It was just a little round-about mark, you know, and it was there

for days and weeks, before I ever thought it would be the text of a

Roundabout Paper.

ON BEING FOUND OUT.

At the close (let us say) of Queen Anne's reign, when I was a boy at

a private and preparatory school for young gentlemen, I remember the

wiseacre of a master ordering us all, one night, to march into a little

garden at the back of the house, and thence to proceed one by one into a

tool or hen house, (I was but a tender little thing just put into short

clothes, and can't exactly say whether the house was for tools or hens,)

and in that house to put our hands into a sack which stood on a bench, a

candle burning beside it. I put my hand into the sack. My hand came out

quite black. I went and joined the other boys in the schoolroom; and all

their hands were black too.

By reason of my tender age (and there are some critics who, I hope, will

be satisfied by my acknowledging that I am a hundred and fifty-six next

birthday) I could not understand what was the meaning of this night

excursion--this candle, this tool-house, this bag of soot. I think we

little boys were taken out of our sleep to be brought to the ordeal. We

came, then, and showed our little hands to the master; washed them or

not--most probably, I should say, not--and so went bewildered back to

bed.

Something had been stolen in the school that day; and Mr. Wiseacre

having read in a book of an ingenious method of finding out a thief by

making him put his hand into a sack (which, if guilty, the rogue would

shirk from doing), all we boys were subjected to the trial. Goodness

knows what the lost object was, or who stole it. We all had black hands

to show the master. And the thief, whoever he was, was not Found Out

that time.

I wonder if the rascal is alive--an elderly scoundrel he must be by this

time; and a hoary old hypocrite, to whom an old schoolfellow presents

his kindest regards--parenthetically remarking what a dreadful place

that private school was; cold, chilblains, bad dinners, not enough

victuals, and caning awful!--Are you alive still, I say, you nameless

villain, who escaped discovery on that day of crime? I hope you have

escaped often since, old sinner. Ah, what a lucky thing it is, for you

and me, my man, that we are NOT found out in all our peccadilloes; and

that our backs can slip away from the master and the cane!

Just consider what life would be, if every rogue was found out, and

flogged coram populo! What a butchery, what an indecency, what an

endless swishing of the rod! Don't cry out about my misanthropy. My good

friend Mealymouth, I will trouble you to tell me, do you go to church?

When there, do you say, or do you not, that you are a miserable sinner?

and saying so do you believe or disbelieve it? If you are a M. S., don't

you deserve correction, and aren't you grateful if you are to be let

off? I say again, what a blessed thing it is that we are not all found

out!

Just picture to yourself everybody who does wrong being found out,

and punished accordingly. Fancy all the boys in all the school being

whipped; and then the assistants, and then the head master (Dr. Badford

let us call him). Fancy the provost-marshal being tied up, having

previously superintended the correction of the whole army. After the

young gentlemen have had their turn for the faulty exercises, fancy Dr.

Lincolnsinn being taken up for certain faults in HIS Essay and Review.

After the clergyman has cried his peccavi, suppose we hoist up a

bishop, and give him a couple of dozen! (I see my Lord Bishop of

Double-Gloucester sitting in a very uneasy posture on his right reverend

bench.) After we have cast off the bishop, what are we to say to the

Minister who appointed him? My Lord Cinqwarden, it is painful to have

to use personal correction to a boy of your age; but really . . .

Siste tandem, carnifex! The butchery is too horrible. The hand drops

powerless, appalled at the quantity of birch which it must cut and

brandish. I am glad we are not all found out, I say again; and protest,

my dear brethren, against our having our deserts.

To fancy all men found out and punished is bad enough; but imagine all

women found out in the distinguished social circle in which you and

I have the honor to move. Is it not a mercy that a many of these fair

criminals remain unpunished and undiscovered! There is Mrs. Longbow, who

is for ever practising, and who shoots poisoned arrows, too; when you

meet her you don't call her liar, and charge her with the wickedness

she has done and is doing. There is Mrs. Painter, who passes for a most

respectable woman, and a model in society. There is no use in saying

what you really know regarding her and her goings on. There is Diana

Hunter--what a little haughty prude it is; and yet WE know stories about

her which are not altogether edifying. I say it is best, for the sake of

the good, that the bad should not all be found out. You don't want your

children to know the history of that lady in the next box, who is so

handsome, and whom they admire so. Ah me, what would life be if we were

all found out, and punished for all our faults? Jack Ketch would be in

permanence; and then who would hang Jack Ketch?

They talk of murderers being pretty certainly found out. Psha! I have

heard an authority awfully competent vow and declare that scores

and hundreds of murders are committed, and nobody is the wiser. That

terrible man mentioned one or two ways of committing murder, which he

maintained were quite common, and were scarcely ever found out. A man,

for instance, comes home to his wife, and . . . but I pause--I know that

this Magazine has a very large circulation. Hundreds and hundreds

of thousands--why not say a million of people at once?--well, say

a million, read it. And amongst these countless readers, I might be

teaching some monster how to make away with his wife without being found

out, some fiend of a woman how to destroy her dear husband. I will NOT

then tell this easy and simple way of murder, as communicated to me by a

most respectable party in the confidence of private intercourse. Suppose

some gentle reader were to try this most simple and easy receipt--it

seems to me almost infallible--and come to grief in consequence, and be

found out and hanged? Should I ever pardon myself for having been the

means of doing injury to a single one of our esteemed subscribers?

The prescription whereof I speak--that is to say, whereof I DON'T

speak--shall be buried in this bosom. No, I am a humane man. I am not

one of your Bluebeards to go and say to my wife, “My dear! I am going

away for a few days to Brighton. Here are all the keys of the house.

You may open every door and closet, except the one at the end of the

oak-room opposite the fireplace, with the little bronze Shakespeare on

the mantel-piece (or what not).” I don't say this to a woman--unless, to

be sure, I want to get rid of her--because, after such a caution, I know

she'll peep into the closet. I say nothing about the closet at all. I

keep the key in my pocket, and a being whom I love, but who, as I know,

has many weaknesses, out of harm's way. You toss up your head, dear

angel, drub on the ground with your lovely little feet, on the table

with your sweet rosy fingers, and cry, “Oh, sneerer! You don't know

the depth of woman's feeling, the lofty scorn of all deceit, the entire

absence of mean curiosity in the sex, or never, never would you libel

us so!” Ah, Delia! dear, dear Delia! It is because I fancy I do know

something about you (not all, mind--no, no; no man knows that)--Ah, my

bride, my ringdove, my rose, my poppet--choose, in fact, whatever name

you like--bulbul of my grove, fountain of my desert, sunshine of my

darkling life, and joy of my dungeoned existence, it is because I DO

know a little about you that I conclude to say nothing of that private

closet, and keep my key in my pocket. You take away that closet-key

then, and the house-key. You lock Delia in. You keep her out of harm's

way and gadding, and so she never CAN be found out.

And yet by little strange accidents and coincidents how we are being

found out every day. You remember that old story of the Abbe Kakatoes,

who told the company at supper one night how the first confession he

ever received was--from a murderer let us say. Presently enters to

supper the Marquis de Croquemitaine. “Palsambleu, abbe!” says the

brilliant marquis, taking a pinch of snuff, “are you here? Gentlemen and

ladies! I was the abbe's first penitent, and I made him a confession,

which I promise you astonished him.”

To be sure how queerly things are found out! Here is an instance. Only

the other day I was writing in these Roundabout Papers about a certain

man, whom I facetiously called Baggs, and who had abused me to my

friends, who of course told me. Shortly after that paper was published

another friend--Sacks let us call him--scowls fiercely at me as I

am sitting in perfect good-humor at the club, and passes on without

speaking. A cut. A quarrel. Sacks thinks it is about him that I was

writing: whereas, upon my honor and conscience, I never had him once in

my mind, and was pointing my moral from quite another man. But don't

you see, by this wrath of the guilty-conscienced Sacks, that he had been

abusing me too? He has owned himself guilty, never having been accused.

He has winced when nobody thought of hitting him. I did but put the cap

out, and madly butting and chafing, behold my friend rushes out to put

his head into it! Never mind, Sacks, you are found out; but I bear you

no malice, my man.

And yet to be found out, I know from my own experience, must be painful

and odious, and cruelly mortifying to the inward vanity. Suppose I am a

poltroon, let us say. With fierce moustache, loud talk, plentiful oaths,

and an immense stick, I keep up nevertheless a character for courage. I

swear fearfully at cabmen and women; brandish my bludgeon, and perhaps

knock down a little man or two with it: brag of the images which I break

at the shooting-gallery, and pass amongst my friends for a whiskery

fire-eater, afraid of neither man nor dragon. Ah me! Suppose some brisk

little chap steps up and gives me a caning in St. James's Street, with

all the heads of my friends looking out of all the club windows.

My reputation is gone. I frighten no man more. My nose is pulled by

whipper-snappers, who jump up on a chair to reach it. I am found out.

And in the days of my triumphs, when people were yet afraid of me, and

were taken in by my swagger, I always knew that I was a lily-liver, and

expected that I should be found out some day.

That certainty of being found out must haunt and depress many a bold

braggadocio spirit. Let us say it is a clergyman, who can pump copious

floods of tears out of his own eyes and those of his audience. He thinks

to himself, “I am but a poor swindling, chattering rogue. My bills are

unpaid. I have jilted several women whom I have promised to marry. I

don't know whether I believe what I preach, and I know I have stolen the

very sermon over which I have been snivelling. Have they found me out?”

says he, as his head drops down on the cushion.

Then your writer, poet, historian, novelist, or what not? The Beacon

says that “Jones's work is one of the first order.” The Lamp declares

that “Jones's tragedy surpasses every work since the days of Him of

Avon.” The Comet asserts that “J's 'Life of Goody Twoshoes' is a

[Greek text omitted], a noble and enduring monument to the fame of that

admirable Englishwoman,” and so forth. But then Jones knows that he

has lent the critic of the Beacon five pounds; that his publisher has a

half-share in the Lamp; and that the Comet comes repeatedly to dine with

him. It is all very well. Jones is immortal until he is found out; and

then down comes the extinguisher, and the immortal is dead and buried.

The idea (dies irae!) of discovery must haunt many a man, and make him

uneasy, as the trumpets are puffing in his triumph. Brown, who has a

higher place than he deserves, cowers before Smith, who has found him

out. What is a chorus of critics shouting “Bravo?”--a public clapping

hands and flinging garlands? Brown knows that Smith has found him out.

Puff, trumpets! Wave, banners! Huzza, boys, for the immortal Brown!

“This is all very well,” B. thinks (bowing the while, smiling, laying

his hand to his heart); “but there stands Smith at the window: HE has

measured me; and some day the others will find me out too.” It is a very

curious sensation to sit by a man who has found you out, and who, as you

know, has found you out; or, vice versa, to sit with a man whom YOU have

found out. His talent? Bah! His virtue? We know a little story or two

about his virtue, and he knows we know it. We are thinking over friend

Robinson's antecedents, as we grin, bow and talk; and we are both

humbugs together. Robinson a good fellow, is he? You know how he behaved

to Hicks? A good-natured man, is he? Pray do you remember that little

story of Mrs. Robinson's black eye? How men have to work, to talk, to

smile, to go to bed, and try and sleep, with this dread of being found

out on their consciences! Bardolph, who has robbed a church, and Nym,

who has taken a purse, go to their usual haunts, and smoke their pipes

with their companions. Mr. Detective Bullseye appeal's, and says, “Oh,

Bardolph! I want you about that there pyx business!” Mr. Bardolph knocks

the ashes out of his pipe, puts out his hands to the little steel cuffs,

and walks away quite meekly. He is found out. He must go. “Good-by, Doll

Tearsheet! Good-by, Mrs. Quickly, ma'am!” The other gentlemen and

ladies de la societe look on and exchange mute adieux with the departing

friends. And an assured time will come when the other gentlemen and

ladies will be found out too.

What a wonderful and beautiful provision of nature it has been that, for

the most part, our womankind are not endowed with the faculty of finding

us out! THEY don't doubt, and probe, and weigh, and take your measure.

Lay down this paper, my benevolent friend and reader, go into your

drawing-room now, and utter a joke ever so old, and I wager sixpence the

ladies there will all begin to laugh. Go to Brown's house, and tell Mrs.

Brown and the young ladies what you think of him, and see what a welcome

you will get! In like manner, let him come to your house, and tell YOUR

good lady his candid opinion of you, and fancy how she will receive him!

Would you have your wife and children know you exactly for what you are,

and esteem you precisely at your worth? If so, my friend, you will

live in a dreary house, and you will have but a chilly fireside. Do

you suppose the people round it don't see your homely face as under a

glamour, and, as it were, with a halo of love round it? You don't fancy

you ARE, as you seem to them? No such thing, my man. Put away that

monstrous conceit, and be thankful that THEY have not found you out.

ON A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE.

Where have I just read of a game played at a country house? The party

assembles round a table with pens, ink, and paper. Some one narrates a

tale containing more or less incidents and personages. Each person of

the company then writes down, to the best of his memory and ability, the

anecdote just narrated, and finally the papers are to be read out. I do

not say I should like to play often at this game, which might possibly

be a tedious and lengthy pastime, not by any means so amusing as smoking

a cigar in the conservatory; or even listening to the young ladies

playing their piano-pieces; or to Hobbs and Nobbs lingering round the

bottle and talking over the morning's run with the hounds but surely it

is a moral and ingenious sport. They say the variety of narratives is

often very odd and amusing. The original story becomes so changed and

distorted that at the end of all the statements you are puzzled to

know where the truth is at all. As time is of small importance to the

cheerful persons engaged in this sport, perhaps a good way of playing it

would be to spread it over a couple of years. Let the people who played

the game in '60 all meet and play it once more in '61, and each write

his story over again. Then bring out your original and compare notes.

Not only will the stories differ from each other, but the writers will

probably differ from themselves. In the course of the year the incidents

will grow or will dwindle strangely. The least authentic of the

statements will be so lively or so malicious, or so neatly put, that

it will appear most like the truth. I like these tales and sportive

exercises. I had begun a little print collection once. I had Addison in

his nightgown in bed at Holland House, requesting young Lord Warwick to

remark how a Christian should die. I had Cambronne clutching his cocked

hat and uttering the immortal la Garde meurt et ne se rend pas. I had

the “Vengeur” going down, and all the crew hurraying like madmen. I had

Alfred toasting the muffin; Curtius (Haydon) jumping into the gulf; with

extracts from Napoleon's bulletins, and a fine authentic portrait of

Baron Munchausen.

What man who has been before the public at all has not heard similar

wonderful anecdotes regarding himself and his own history? In these

humble essaykins I have taken leave to egotize. I cry out about the

shoes which pinch me, and, as I fancy, more naturally and pathetically

than if my neighbor's corns were trodden under foot. I prattle about

the dish which I love, the wine which I like, the talk I heard

yesterday--about Brown's absurd airs--Jones's ridiculous elation when

he thinks he has caught me in a blunder (a part of the fun, you see, is

that Jones will read this, and will perfectly well know that I mean him,

and that we shall meet and grin at each other with entire politeness.)

This is not the highest kind of speculation, I confess, but it is a

gossip which amuses some folks. A brisk and honest small-beer will

refresh those who do not care for the frothy outpourings of heavier

taps. A two of clubs may be a good, handy little card sometimes,

and able to tackle a king of diamonds, if it is a little trump. Some

philosophers get their wisdom with deep thought and out of ponderous

libraries; I pick up my small crumbs of cogitation at a dinner-table;

or from Mrs. Mary and Miss Louisa, as they are prattling over their

five-o'clock tea.

Well, yesterday at dinner Jucundus was good enough to tell me a story

about myself, which he had heard from a lady of his acquaintance, to

whom I send my best compliments. The tale is this. At nine o'clock on

the evening of the 31st of November last, just before sunset, I was seen

leaving No. 96, Abbey Road, St. John's Wood, leading two little children

by the hand, one of them in a nankeen pelisse, and the other having a

mole on the third finger of his left hand (she thinks it was the third

finger, but is quite sure it was the left hand). Thence I walked with

them to Charles Boroughbridge's, pork and sausage man, No. 29, Upper

Theresa Road. Here, whilst I left the little girl innocently eating a

polony in the front shop, I and Boroughbridge retired with the boy into

the back parlor, where Mrs. Boroughbridge was playing cribbage. She put

up the cards and boxes, took out a chopper and a napkin, and we cut

the little boy's little throat (which he bore with great pluck and

resolution), and made him into sausage-meat by the aid of Purkis's

excellent sausage-machine. The little girl at first could not understand

her brother's absence, but, under the pretence of taking her to see Mr.

Fechter in Hamlet, I led her down to the New River at Sadler's Wells,

where a body of a child in a nankeen pelisse was subsequently found,

and has never been recognized to the present day. And this Mrs. Lynx can

aver, because she saw the whole transaction with her own eyes, as she

told Mr. Jucundus.

I have altered the little details of the anecdote somewhat. But this

story is, I vow and declare, as true as Mrs Lynx's. Gracious goodness!

how do lies begin? What are the averages of lying? Is the same amount

of lies told about every man, and do we pretty much all tell the same

amount of lies? Is the average greater in Ireland than in Scotland, or

vice versa--among women than among men? Is this a lie I am telling now?

If I am talking about you, the odds are, perhaps, that it is. I look

back at some which have been told about me, and speculate on them with

thanks and wonder. Dear friends have told them of me, have told them to

me of myself. Have they not to and of you, dear friend? A friend of mine

was dining at a large dinner of clergymen, and a story, as true as

the sausage story above given, was told regarding me, by one of those

reverend divines, in whose frock sits some anile chatter-boxes, as any

man who knows this world knows. They take the privilege of their gown.

They cabal, and tattle, and hiss, and cackle comminations under their

breath. I say the old women of the other sex are not more talkative or

more mischievous than some of these. “Such a man ought not to be spoken

to,” says Gobemouche, narrating the story--and such a story! “And I am

surprised he is admitted into society at all.” Yes, dear Gobemouche,

but the story wasn't true; and I had no more done the wicked deed in

question than I had run away with the Queen of Sheba.

I have always longed to know what that story was (or what collection

of histories), which a lady had in her mind to whom a servant of mine

applied for a place, when I was breaking up my establishment once and

going abroad. Brown went with a very good character from us, which,

indeed, she fully deserved after several years' faithful service. But

when Mrs. Jones read the name of the person out of whose employment

Brown came, “That is quite sufficient,” says Mrs. Jones. “You may go.

I will never take a servant out of THAT house.” Ah, Mrs. Jones, how

I should like to know what that crime was, or what that series of

villanies, which made you determine never to take a servant out of my

house. Do you believe in the story of the little boy and the sausages?

Have you swallowed that little minced infant? Have you devoured that

young Polonius? Upon my word you have maw enough. We somehow greedily

gobble down all stories in which the characters of our friends are

chopped up, and believe wrong of them without inquiry. In a late serial

work written by this hand, I remember making some pathetic remarks

about our propensity to believe ill of our neighbors--and I remember

the remarks, not because they were valuable, or novel, or ingenious,

but because, within three days after they had appeared in print, the

moralist who wrote them, walking home with a friend, heard a story about

another friend, which story he straightway believed, and which story was

scarcely more true than that sausage fable which is here set down. O mea

culpa, mea maxima culpa! But though the preacher trips, shall not the

doctrine be good? Yea, brethren! Here be the rods. Look you, here are

the scourges. Choose me a nice long, swishing, buddy one, light and

well-poised in the handle, thick and bushy at the tail. Pick me out a

whip-cord thong with some dainty knots in it--and now--we all deserve

it--whish, whish, whish! Let us cut into each other all round.

A favorite liar and servant of mine was a man I once had to drive a

brougham. He never came to my house, except for orders, and once when

he helped to wait at dinner so clumsily that it was agreed we would

dispense with his further efforts. The (job) brougham horse used to look

dreadfully lean and tired, and the livery-stable keeper complained that

we worked him too hard. Now, it turned out that there was a neighboring

butcher's lady who liked to ride in a brougham; and Tomkins lent her

ours, drove her cheerfully to Richmond and Putney, and, I suppose,

took out a payment in mutton-chops. We gave this good Tomkins wine and

medicine for his family when sick--we supplied him with little comforts

and extras which need not now be remembered--and the grateful creature

rewarded us by informing some of our tradesmen whom he honored with his

custom, “Mr. Roundabout? Lor' bless you! I carry him up to bed drunk

every night in the week.” He, Tomkins, being a man of seven stone

weight and five feet high; whereas his employer was--but here modesty

interferes, and I decline to enter into the avoirdupois question.

Now, what was Tomkins's motive for the utterance and dissemination of

these lies? They could further no conceivable end or interest of his

own. Had they been true stories, Tomkins's master would still, and

reasonably, have been more angry than at the fables. It was but suicidal

slander on the part of Tomkins--must come to a discovery--must end in a

punishment. The poor wretch had got his place under, as it turned out, a

fictitious character. He might have stayed in it, for of course Tomkins

had a wife and poor innocent children. He might have had bread, beer,

bed, character, coats, coals. He might have nestled in our little

island, comfortably sheltered from the storms of life; but we were

compelled to cast him out, and send him driving, lonely, perishing,

tossing, starving, to sea--to drown. To drown? There be other modes of

death whereby rogues die. Good-by, Tomkins. And so the nightcap is put

on, and the bolt is drawn for poor T.

Suppose we were to invite volunteers amongst our respected readers to

send in little statements of the lies which they know have been told

about themselves; what a heap of correspondence, what an exaggeration of

malignities, what a crackling bonfire of incendiary falsehoods, might we

not gather together! And a lie once set going, having the breath of

life breathed into it by the father of lying, and ordered to run its

diabolical little course, lives with a prodigious vitality. You say,

“Magna est veritas et praevalebit.” Psha! Great lies are as great

as great truths, and prevail constantly, and day after day. Take an

instance or two out of my own little budget. I sit near a gentleman at

dinner, and the conversation turns upon a certain anonymous literary

performance which at the time is amusing the town. “Oh,” says the

gentleman, “everybody knows who wrote that paper: it is Momus's.” I was

a young author at the time, perhaps proud of my bantling: “I beg your

pardon,” I say, “it was written by your humble servant.” “Indeed!” was

all that the man replied, and he shrugged his shoulders, turned

his back, and talked to his other neighbor. I never heard sarcastic

incredulity more finely conveyed than by that “indeed.” “Impudent liar,”

the gentleman's face said, as clear as face could speak. Where was Magna

Veritas, and how did she prevail then? She lifted up her voice, she

made her appeal, and she was kicked out of court. In New York I read a

newspaper criticism one day (by an exile from our shores who has taken

up his abode in the Western Republic), commenting upon a letter of mine

which had appeared in a contemporary volume, and wherein it was stated

that the writer was a lad in such and such a year, and, in point of

fact, I was, at the period spoken of, nineteen years of age. “Falsehood,

Mr. Roundabout,” says the noble critic: “You were then not a lad; you

were then six-and-twenty years of age.” You see he knew better than papa

and mamma and parish register. It was easier for him to think and say

I lied, on a twopenny matter connected with my own affairs, than to

imagine he was mistaken. Years ago, in a time when we were very mad

wags, Arcturus and myself met a gentleman from China who knew the

language. We began to speak Chinese against him. We said we were born

in China. We were two to one. We spoke the mandarin dialect with perfect

fluency. We had the company with us; as in the old, old days, the squeak

of the real pig was voted not to be so natural as the squeak of the sham

pig. O Arcturus, the sham pig squeaks in our streets now to the applause

of multitudes, and the real porker grunts unheeded in his sty!

I once talked for some little time with an amiable lady: it was for the

first time; and I saw an expression of surprise on her kind face, which

said as plainly as face could say, “Sir, do you know that up to this

moment I have had a certain opinion of you, and that I begin to think I

have been mistaken or misled?” I not only know that she had heard evil

reports of me, but I know who told her--one of those acute fellows, my

dear brethren, of whom we spoke in a previous sermon, who has found me

out--found out actions which I never did, found out thoughts and sayings

which I never spoke, and judged me accordingly. Ah, my lad! have I found

YOU out? O risum teneatis. Perhaps the person I am accusing is no more

guilty than I.

How comes it that the evil which men say spreads so widely and lasts so

long, whilst our good, kind words don't seem somehow to take root and

bear blossom? Is it that in the stony hearts of mankind these pretty

flowers can't find a place to grow? Certain it is that scandal is good,

brisk talk, whereas praise of one's neighbor is by no means lively

hearing. An acquaintance grilled, scored, devilled, and served with

mustard and cayenne pepper, excites the appetite; whereas a slice of

cold friend with currant jelly is but a sickly, unrelishing meat.

Now, such being the case, my dear worthy Mrs. Candor, in whom I know

there are a hundred good and generous qualities: it being perfectly

clear that the good things which we say of our neighbors don't fructify,

but somehow perish in the ground where they are dropped, whilst the evil

words are wafted by all the winds of scandal, take root in all sods, and

flourish amazingly--seeing, I say, that this conversation does not give

us a fair chance, suppose we give up censoriousness altogether, and

decline uttering our opinions about Brown, Jones, and Robinson (and

Mesdames B., J., and R.) at all. We may be mistaken about every one of

them, as, please goodness, those anecdote-mongers against whom I have

uttered my meek protest have been mistaken about me. We need not go to

the extent of saying that Mrs. Manning was an amiable creature, much

misunderstood; and Jack Thurtell a gallant, unfortunate fellow, not

near so black as he was painted; but we will try and avoid personalities

altogether in talk, won't we? We will range the fields of science,

dear madam, and communicate to each other the pleasing results of our

studies. We will, if you please, examine the infinitesimal wonders of

nature through the microscope. We will cultivate entomology. We will sit

with our arms round each other's waists on the pons asinorum, and see

the stream of mathematics flow beneath. We will take refuge in cards,

and play at “beggar my neighbor,” not abuse my neighbor. We will go

to the Zoological Gardens and talk freely about the gorilla and his

kindred, but not talk about people who can talk in their turn. Suppose

we praise the High Church? we offend the Low Church. The Broad Church?

High and Low are both offended. What do you think of Lord Derby as a

politician? And what is your opinion of Lord Palmerston? If you please,

will you play me those lovely variations of “In my cottage near a wood?”

It is a charming air (you know it in French, I suppose? Ah! te dirai-je,

maman!) and was a favorite with poor Marie Antoinette. I say “poor,”

because I have a right to speak with pity of a sovereign who was

renowned for so much beauty and so much misfortune. But as for giving

any opinion on her conduct, saying that she was good or bad, or

indifferent, goodness forbid! We have agreed we will not be censorious.

Let us have a game at cards--at ecarte, if you please. You deal. I ask

for cards. I lead the deuce of clubs. . . .

What? there is no deuce! Deuce take it! What? People WILL go on talking

about their neighbors, and won't have their mouths stopped by cards, or

ever so much microscopes and aquariums? Ah, my poor dear Mrs. Candor, I

agree with you. By the way, did you ever see anything like Lady Godiva

Trotter's dress last night? People WILL go on chattering, although we

hold our tongues; and, after all, my good soul, what will their scandal

matter a hundred years hence?

SMALL-BEER CHRONICLE.

Not long since, at a certain banquet, I had the good fortune to sit by

Doctor Polymathesis, who knows everything, and who, about the time

when the claret made its appearance, mentioned that old dictum of the

grumbling Oxford Don, that “ALL CLARET would be port if it could!”

Imbibing a bumper of one or the other not ungratefully, I thought to

myself, “Here surely, Mr. Roundabout, is a good text for one of your

reverence's sermons.” Let us apply to the human race, dear brethren,

what is here said of the vintages of Portugal and Gascony, and we shall

have no difficulty in perceiving how many clarets aspire to be ports in

their way; how most men and women of our acquaintance, how we ourselves,

are Aquitanians giving ourselves Lusitanian airs; how we wish to have

credit for being stronger, braver, more beautiful, more worthy than we

really are.

Nay, the beginning of this hypocrisy--a desire to excel, a desire to be

hearty, fruity, generous, strength-imparting--is a virtuous and noble

ambition; and it is most difficult for a man in his own case, or his

neighbor's, to say at what point this ambition transgresses the boundary

of virtue, and becomes vanity, pretence, and self-seeking. You are

a poor man, let us say, showing a bold face to adverse fortune, and

wearing a confident aspect. Your purse is very narrow, but you owe no

man a penny; your means are scanty, but your wife's gown is decent; your

old coat well brushed; your children at a good school; you grumble to no

one; ask favors of no one; truckle to no neighbors on account of their

superior rank, or (a worse, and a meaner, and a more common crime still)

envy none for their better fortune. To all outward appearances you are

as well to do as your neighbors, who have thrice your income. There

may be in this case some little mixture of pretension in your life

and behavior. You certainly DO put on a smiling face whilst fortune is

pinching you. Your wife and girls, so smart and neat at evening parties,

are cutting, patching, and cobbling all day to make both ends of life's

haberdashery meet. You give a friend a bottle of wine on occasion, but

are content yourself with a glass of whiskey-and-water. You avoid a cab,

saying that of all things you like to walk home after dinner (which you

know, my good friend, is a fib). I grant you that in this scheme of life

there does enter ever so little hypocrisy; that this claret is

loaded, as it were; but your desire to PORTIFY yourself is amiable, is

pardonable, is perhaps honorable: and were there no other hypocrisies

than yours in the world we should be a set of worthy fellows; and

sermonizers, moralizers, satirizers, would have to hold their tongues,

and go to some other trade to get a living.

But you know you WILL step over that boundary line of virtue and

modesty, into the district where humbug and vanity begin, and there the

moralizer catches you and makes an example of you. For instance, in

a certain novel in another place my friend Mr. Talbot Twysden is

mentioned--a man whom you and I know to be a wretched ordinaire, but who

persists in treating himself as if he was the finest '20 port. In our

Britain there are hundreds of men like him; for ever striving to swell

beyond their natural size, to strain beyond their natural strength,

to step beyond their natural stride. Search, search within your own

waistcoats, dear brethren--YOU know in your hearts, which of your

ordinaire qualities you would pass off, and fain consider as first-rate

port. And why not you yourself, Mr. Preacher? says the congregation.

Dearly beloved, neither in or out of this pulpit do I profess to be

bigger, or cleverer, or wiser, or better than any of you. A short while

since, a certain Reviewer announced that I gave myself great pretensions

as a philosopher. I a philosopher! I advance pretensions! My dear

Saturday friend. And you? Don't you teach everything to everybody? and

punish the naughty boys if they don't learn as you bid them? You teach

politics to Lord John and Mr. Gladstone. You teach poets how to write;

painters, how to paint; gentlemen, manners; and opera-dancers, how

to pirouette. I was not a little amused of late by an instance of the

modesty of our Saturday friend, who, more Athenian than the Athenians,

and apropos of a Greek book by a Greek author, sat down and gravely

showed the Greek gentleman how to write his own language.

No, I do not, as far as I know, try to be port at all; but offer in

these presents, a sound genuine ordinaire, at 18s. per doz. let us say,

grown on my own hillside, and offered de bon coeur to those who will sit

down under my tonnelle, and have a half-hour's drink and gossip. It

is none of your hot porto, my friend. I know there is much better and

stronger liquor elsewhere. Some pronounce it sour: some say it is thin;

some that it has wofully lost its flavor. This may or may not be true.

There are good and bad years; years that surprise everybody; years of

which the produce is small and bad, or rich and plentiful. But if my tap

is not genuine it is naught, and no man should give himself the trouble

to drink it. I do not even say that I would be port if I could; knowing

that port (by which I would imply much stronger, deeper, richer, and

more durable liquor than my vineyard can furnish) is not relished by all

palates, or suitable to all heads. We will assume then, dear brother,

that you and I are tolerably modest people; and, ourselves being thus

out of the question, proceed to show how pretentious our neighbors are,

and how very many of them would be port if they could.

Have you never seen a small man from college placed amongst great folk,

and giving himself the airs of a man of fashion? He goes back to his

common room with fond reminiscences of Ermine Castle or Strawberry

Hall. He writes to the dear countess, to say that dear Lord Lollypop is

getting on very well at St. Boniface, and that the accident which he met

with in a scuffle with an inebriated bargeman only showed his spirit and

honor, and will not permanently disfigure his lordship's nose. He gets

his clothes from dear Lollypop's London tailor, and wears a mauve or

magenta tie when he rides out to see the hounds. A love of fashionable

people is a weakness, I do not say of all, but of some tutors. Witness

that Eton tutor t'other day, who intimated that in Cornhill we could not

understand the perfect purity, delicacy, and refinement of those genteel

families who sent their sons to Eton. O usher, mon ami! Old Sam Johnson,

who, too, had been an usher in his early life, kept a little of that

weakness always. Suppose Goldsmith had knocked him up at three in the

morning and proposed a boat to Greenwich, as Topham Beauclerc and his

friend did, would he have said, “What, my boy, are you for a frolic? I'm

with you!” and gone and put on his clothes? Rather he would have pitched

poor Goldsmith down stairs. He would have liked to be port if he could.

Of course WE wouldn't. Our opinion of the Portugal grape is known. It

grows very high, and is very sour, and we don't go for that kind of

grape at all.

“I was walking with Mr. Fox”--and sure this anecdote comes very pat

after the grapes--“I was walking with Mr. Fox in the Louvre,” says

Benjamin West (apud some paper I have just been reading), “and I

remarked how many people turned round to look at ME. This shows the

respect of the French for the fine arts.” This is a curious instance

of a very small claret indeed, which imagined itself to be port of the

strongest body. There are not many instances of a faith so deep, so

simple, so satisfactory as this. I have met many who would like to be

port; but with few of the Gascon sort, who absolutely believed they

WERE port. George III. believed in West's port and thought Reynolds's

overrated stuff. When I saw West's pictures at Philadelphia, I looked

at them with astonishment and awe. Hide, blushing glory, hide your head

under your old nightcap. O immortality! is this the end of you? Did any

of you, my dear brethren, ever try and read “Blackmore's Poems,” or

the “Epics of Baour-Lormian,” or the “Henriade,” or--what shall we

say?--Pollok's “Course of Time?” They were thought to be more lasting

than brass by some people, and where are they now? And OUR masterpieces

of literature--OUR poets--that, if not immortal, at any rate, are to

last their fifty, their hundred years--oh, sirs, don't you think a very

small cellar will hold them?

Those poor people in brass, on pedestals, hectoring about Trafalgar

Square and that neighborhood, don't you think many of them--apart even

from the ridiculous execution--cut rather a ridiculous figure, and that

we are too eager to set up our ordinaire heroism and talent for port?

A Duke of Wellington or two I will grant, though even of these idols a

moderate supply will be sufficient. Some years ago a famous and witty

French critic was in London, with whom I walked the streets. I am

ashamed to say that I informed him (being in hopes that he was about

to write some papers regarding the manners and customs of this country)

that all the statues he saw represented the Duke of Wellington. That on

the arch opposite Apsley House? the Duke in a cloak, and cocked hat,

on horseback. That behind Apsley House in an airy fig-leaf costume? the

Duke again. That in Cockspur Street? the Duke with a pigtail--and so on.

I showed him an army of Dukes. There are many bronze heroes who after a

few years look already as foolish, awkward, and out of place as a

man, say at Shoolbred's or Swan and Edgar's. For example, those three

Grenadiers in Pall Mall, who have been up only a few months, don't you

pity those unhappy household troops, who have to stand frowning and

looking fierce there; and think they would like to step down and go to

barracks? That they fought very bravely there is no doubt; but so did

the Russians fight very bravely; and the French fight very bravely; and

so did Colonel Jones and the 99th, and Colonel Brown and the 100th; and

I say again that ordinaire should not give itself port airs, and that an

honest ordinaire would blush to be found swaggering so. I am sure if you

could consult the Duke of York, who is impaled on his column between the

two clubs, and ask his late Royal Highness whether he thought he ought

to remain there, he would say no. A brave, worthy man, not a braggart or

boaster, to be put upon that heroic perch must be painful to him. Lord

George Bentinck, I suppose, being in the midst of the family park in

Cavendish Square, may conceive that he has a right to remain in his

place. But look at William of Cumberland, with his hat cocked over his

eye, prancing behind Lord George on his Roman-nosed charger; he, depend

on it, would be for getting off his horse if he had the permission.

He did not hesitate about trifles, as we know; but he was a very

truth-telling and honorable soldier: and as for heroic rank and

statuesque dignity, I would wager a dozen of '20 port against a bottle

of pure and sound Bordeaux, at 18s. per dozen (bottles included), that

he never would think of claiming any such absurd distinction. They have

got a statue of Thomas Moore at Dublin, I hear. Is he on horseback? Some

men should have, say, a fifty years' lease of glory. After a while some

gentlemen now in brass should go to the melting furnace, and reappear in

some other gentleman's shape. Lately I saw that Melville column rising

over Edinburgh; come, good men and true, don't you feel a little awkward

and uneasy when you walk under it? Who was this to stand in heroic

places? and is yon the man whom Scotchmen most delight to honor? I

must own deferentially that there is a tendency in North Britain to

over-esteem its heroes. Scotch ale is very good and strong, but it is

not stronger than all the other beer in the world, as some Scottish

patriots would insist. When there has been a war, and stout old Sandy

Sansculotte returns home from India or Crimea, what a bagpiping,

shouting, hurraying, and self-glorification takes place round about

him! You would fancy, to hear McOrator after dinner, that the Scotch had

fought all the battles, killed all the Russians, Indian rebels, or

what not. In Cupar-Fife, there's a little inn called the “Battle of

Waterloo,” and what do you think the sign is? (I sketch from memory, to

be sure.)* “The Battle of Waterloo” is one broad Scotchman laying about

him with a broadsword. Yes, yes, my dear Mac, you are wise, you are

good, you are clever, you are handsome, you are brave, you are rich,

&c.; but so is Jones over the border. Scotch salmon is good, but there

are other good fish in the sea. I once heard a Scotchman lecture on

poetry in London. Of course the pieces he selected were chiefly by

Scottish authors, and Walter Scott was his favorite poet. I whispered to

my neighbor, who was a Scotchman (by the way, the audience were almost

all Scotch, and the room was All-Mac's--I beg your pardon, but I

couldn't help it, I really couldn't help it)--“The professor has said

the best poet was a Scotchman: I wager that he will say the worst poet

was a Scotchman, too.” And sure enough that worst poet, when he made his

appearance, was a Northern Briton.

* This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.

And as we are talking of bragging, and I am on my travels, can I

forget one mighty republic--one--two mighty republics, where people are

notoriously fond of passing off their claret for port? I am very glad,

for the sake of a kind friend, that there is a great and influential

party in the United, and, I trust, in the Confederate States,* who

believe that Catawba wine is better than the best Champagne. Opposite

that famous old White House at Washington, whereof I shall ever have

a grateful memory, they have set up an equestrian statue of General

Jackson, by a self-taught American artist of no inconsiderable genius

and skill. At an evening-party a member of Congress seized me in a

corner of the room, and asked me if I did not think this was THE FINEST

EQUESTRIAN STATUE IN THE WORLD? How was I to deal with this plain

question, put to me in a corner? I was bound to reply, and accordingly

said that I did NOT think it was the finest statue in the world. “Well,

sir,” says the Member of Congress, “but you must remember that Mr. M----

had never seen a statue when he made this!” I suggested that to see

other statues might do Mr. M---- no harm. Nor was any man more willing

to own his defects, or more modest regarding his merits, than the

sculptor himself, whom I met subsequently. But oh! what a charming

article there was in a Washington paper next day about the impertinence

of criticism and offensive tone of arrogance which Englishmen adopted

towards men and works of genius in America! “Who was this man, who” &c.

&c.? The Washington writer was angry because I would not accept this

American claret as the finest port-wine in the world. Ah me! It is about

blood and not wine that the quarrel now is, and who shall foretell its

end?

* Written in July, 1861.

How much claret that would be port if it could is handed about in every

society! In the House of Commons what small-beer orators try to pass for

strong? Stay: have I a spite against any one? It is a fact that the wife

of the Member for Bungay has left off asking me and Mrs. Roundabout to

her evening-parties. Now is the time to have a slap at him. I will say

that he was always overrated, and that now he is lamentably falling

off even from what he has been. I will back the Member for Stoke Poges

against him; and show that the dashing young Member for Islington is a

far sounder man than either. Have I any little literary animosities? Of

course not. Men of letters never have. Otherwise, how I could serve

out a competitor here, make a face over his works, and show that this

would-be port is very meagre ordinaire indeed! Nonsense, man! Why so

squeamish? Do they spare YOU! Now you have the whip in your hand, won't

you lay on? You used to be a pretty whip enough as a young man, and

liked it too. Is there no enemy who would be the better for a little

thonging? No. I have militated in former times, not without glory; but

I grow peaceable as I grow old. And if I have a literary enemy, why, he

will probably write a book ere long, and then it will be HIS turn, and

my favorite review will be down upon him.

My brethren, these sermons are professedly short; for I have that

opinion of my dear congregation, which leads me to think that were I to

preach at great length they would yawn, stamp, make noises, and perhaps

go straightway out of church; and yet with this text I protest I could

go on for hours. What multitudes of men, what multitudes of women, my

dears, pass off their ordinaire for port, their small beer for strong!

In literature, in politics, in the army, the navy, the church, at the

bar, in the world, what an immense quantity of cheap liquor is made to

do service for better sorts! Ask Serjeant Roland his opinion of Oliver

Q.C. “Ordinaire, my good fellow, ordinaire, with a port-wine label!” Ask

Oliver his opinion of Roland. “Never was a man so overrated by the world

and by himself.” Ask Tweedledumski his opinion of Tweedledeestein's

performance. “A quack, my tear sir! an ignoramus, I geef you my vort?

He gombose an opera! He is not fit to make dance a bear!” Ask Paddington

and Buckminster, those two “swells” of fashion, what they think of each

other? They are notorious ordinaire. You and I remember when they passed

for very small wine, and now how high and mighty they have become.

What do you say to Tomkins's sermons? Ordinaire, trying to go down as

orthodox port, and very meagre ordinaire too! To Hopkins's historical

works?--to Pumkins's poetry? Ordinaire, ordinaire again--thin, feeble,

overrated; and so down the whole list. And when we have done discussing

our men friends, have we not all the women? Do these not advance absurd

pretensions? Do these never give themselves airs? With feeble brains,

don't they often set up to be esprits forts? Don't they pretend to be

women of fashion, and cut their betters? Don't they try and pass off

their ordinary-looking girls as beauties of the first order? Every man

in his circle knows women who give themselves airs, and to whom we can

apply the port-wine simile.

Come, my friends. Here is enough of ordinaire and port for to-day. My

bottle has run out. Will anybody have any more? Let us go up stairs, and

get a cup of tea from the ladies.

OGRES.

I dare say the reader has remarked that the upright and independent

vowel, which stands in the vowel-list between E and O, has formed the

subject of the main part of these essays. How does that vowel feel this

morning?--fresh, good-humored, and lively? The Roundabout lines,

which fall from this pen, are correspondingly brisk and cheerful. Has

anything, on the contrary, disagreed with the vowel? Has its rest been

disturbed, or was yesterday's dinner too good, or yesterday's wine not

good enough? Under such circumstances, a darkling, misanthropic tinge,

no doubt, is cast upon the paper. The jokes, if attempted, are elaborate

and dreary. The bitter temper breaks out. That sneering manner is

adopted, which you know, and which exhibits itself so especially when

the writer is speaking about women. A moody carelessness comes over

him. He sees no good in anybody or thing: and treats gentlemen, ladies,

history, and things in general, with a like gloomy flippancy. Agreed.

When the vowel in question is in that mood, if you like airy gayety and

tender gushing benevolence--if you want to be satisfied with yourself

and the rest of your fellow-beings; I recommend you, my dear creature,

to go to some other shop in Cornhill, or turn to some other article.

There are moods in the mind of the vowel of which we are speaking, when

it is ill-conditioned and captious. Who always keeps good health, and

good humor? Do not philosophers grumble? Are not sages sometimes out

of temper? and do not angel-women go off in tantrums? To-day my mood is

dark. I scowl as I dip my pen in the inkstand.

Here is the day come round--for everything here is done with the utmost

regularity:--intellectual labor, sixteen hours; meals, thirty-two

minutes; exercise, a hundred and forty-eight minutes; conversation with

the family, chiefly literary, and about the housekeeping, one hour and

four minutes; sleep, three hours and fifteen minutes (at the end of the

month, when the Magazine is complete, I own I take eight minutes more);

and the rest for the toilette and the world. Well, I say, the Roundabout

Paper Day being come, and the subject long since settled in my mind, an

excellent subject--a most telling, lively, and popular subject--I go to

breakfast determined to finish that meal in 9 3/4 minutes, as usual, and

then retire to my desk and work, when--oh, provoking!--here in the paper

is the very subject treated, on which I was going to write! Yesterday

another paper which I saw treated it--and of course, as I need not tell

you, spoiled it. Last Saturday, another paper had an article on the

subject; perhaps you may guess what it was--but I won't tell you. Only

this is true, my favorite subject, which was about to make the best

paper we have had for a long time: my bird, my game that I was going to

shoot and serve up with such a delicate sauce, has been found by other

sportsmen; and pop, pop, pop, a half-dozen of guns have banged at it,

mangled it, and brought it down.

“And can't you take some other text?” say you. All this is mighty well.

But if you have set your heart on a certain dish for dinner, be it cold

boiled veal, or what you will, and they bring you turtle and venison,

don't you feel disappointed? During your walk you have been making up

your mind that that cold meat, with moderation and a pickle, will be

a very sufficient dinner: you have accustomed your thoughts to it; and

here, in place of it, is a turkey, surrounded by coarse sausages, or a

reeking pigeon-pie or a fulsome roast-pig. I have known many a good and

kind man made furiously angry by such a contretemps. I have known him

lose his temper, call his wife and servants names, and a whole household

made miserable. If, then, as is notoriously the case, it is too

dangerous to balk a man about his dinner, how much more about his

article? I came to my meal with an ogre-like appetite and gusto. Fee,

faw, fum! Wife, where is that tender little Princekin? Have you trussed

him, and did you stuff him nicely, and have you taken care to baste him

and do him, not too brown, as I told you? Quick! I am hungry! I begin

to whet my knife, to roll my eyes about, and roar and clap my huge chest

like a gorilla; and then my poor Ogrina has to tell me that the little

princes have all run away, whilst she was in the kitchen, making the

paste to bake them in! I pause in the description. I won't condescend to

report the bad language, which you know must ensue, when an ogre,

whose mind is ill regulated, and whose habits of self-indulgence

are notorious, finds himself disappointed of his greedy hopes. What

treatment of his wife, what abuse and brutal behavior to his children,

who, though ogrillons, are children! My dears, you may fancy, and need

not ask my delicate pen to describe, the language and behavior of a

vulgar, coarse, greedy, large man with an immense mouth and teeth, which

are too frequently employed in the gobbling and crunching of raw man's

meat.

And in this circuitous way you see I have reached my present

subject, which is, Ogres. You fancy they are dead or only fictitious

characters--mythical representatives of strength, cruelty, stupidity,

and lust for blood? Though they had seven-leagued boots, you remember

all sorts of little whipping-snapping Tom Thumbs used to elude and

outrun them. They were so stupid that they gave into the most shallow

ambuscades and artifices: witness that well-known ogre, who, because

Jack cut open the hasty-pudding, instantly ripped open his own stupid

waistcoat and interior. They were cruel, brutal, disgusting, with their

sharpened teeth, immense knives, and roaring voices! but they always

ended by being overcome by little Tom Thumbkins, or some other smart

little champion.

Yes; they were conquered in the end there is no doubt. They plunged

headlong (and uttering the most frightful bad language) into some pit

where Jack came with his smart couteau de chasse and whipped their

brutal heads off. They would be going to devour maidens,

“But ever when it seemed

Their need was at the sorest,

A knight, in armor bright,

Came riding through the forest.”

And down, after a combat, would go the brutal persecutor, with a lance

through his midriff. Yes, I say, this is very true and well. But you

remember that round the ogre's cave the ground was covered, for hundreds

and hundreds of yards, WITH THE BONES OF THE VICTIMS whom he had lured

into the castle. Many knights and maids came to him and perished under

his knife and teeth. Were dragons the same as ogres? monsters dwelling

in caverns, whence they rushed, attired in plate armor, wielding pikes

and torches, and destroying stray passengers who passed by their lair?

Monsters, brutes, rapacious tyrants, ruffians, as they were, doubtless

they ended by being overcome. But, before they were destroyed, they did

a deal of mischief. The bones round their caves were countless. They had

sent many brave souls to Hades, before their own fled, howling out of

their rascal carcasses, to the same place of gloom.

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that fairies, champions,

distressed damsels, and by consequence ogres, have ceased to exist. It

may not be OGREABLE to them (pardon the horrible pleasantry, but as I am

writing in the solitude of my chamber, I am grinding my teeth--yelling,

roaring, and cursing--brandishing my scissors and paper-cutter, and as

it were, have become an ogre). I say there is no greater mistake than

to suppose that ogres have ceased to exist. We all KNOW ogres. Their

caverns are round us, and about us. There are the castles of several

ogres within a mile of the spot where I write. I think some of them

suspect I am an ogre myself. I am not: but I know they are. I visit

them. I don't mean to say that they take a cold roast prince out of the

cupboard, and have a cannibal feast before ME. But I see the bones

lying about the roads to their houses, and in the areas and gardens.

Politeness, of course, prevents me from making any remarks; but I know

them well enough. One of the ways to know 'em is to watch the scared

looks of the ogres' wives and children. They lead an awful life. They

are present at dreadful cruelties. In their excesses those ogres will

stab about, and kill not only strangers who happen to call in and ask

a night's lodging, but they will outrage, murder, and chop up their own

kin. We all know ogres, I say, and have been in their dens often. It is

not necessary that ogres who ask you to dine should offer their guests

the PECULIAR DISH which they like. They cannot always get a Tom Thumb

family. They eat mutton and beef too; and I dare say even go out to tea,

and invite you to drink it. But I tell you there are numbers of them

going about in the world. And now you have my word for it, and this

little hint, it is quite curious what an interest society may be made to

have for you, by your determining to find out the ogres you meet there.

What does the man mean? says Mrs. Downright, to whom a joke is a very

grave thing. I mean, madam, that in the company assembled in your

genteel drawing-room, who bow here and there and smirk in white

neck-cloths, you receive men who elbow through life successfully enough,

but who are ogres in private: men wicked, false, rapacious, flattering;

cruel hectors at home, smiling courtiers abroad; causing wives,

children, servants, parents, to tremble before them, and smiling and

bowing as they bid strangers welcome into their castles. I say, there

are men who have crunched the bones of victim after victim; in whose

closets lie skeletons picked frightfully clean. When these ogres come

out into the world, you don't suppose they show their knives, and their

great teeth? A neat simple white neck-cloth, a merry rather obsequious

manner, a cadaverous look, perhaps, now and again, and a rather dreadful

grin; but I know ogres very considerably respected: and when you hint to

such and such a man, “My dear sir, Mr. Sharpus, whom you appear to like,

is, I assure you, a most dreadful cannibal;” the gentleman cries, “Oh,

psha, nonsense! Dare say not so black as he is painted. Dare say

not worse than his neighbors.” We condone everything in this

country--private treason, falsehood, flattery, cruelty at home, roguery,

and double dealing. What! Do you mean to say in your acquaintance you

don't know ogres guilty of countless crimes of fraud and force, and that

knowing them you don't shake hands with them; dine with them at your

table; and meet them at their own? Depend upon it, in the time when

there were real live ogres in real caverns or castles, gobbling up real

knights and virgins, when they went into the world--the neighboring

market-town, let us say, or earl's castle--though their nature and

reputation were pretty well known, their notorious foibles were never

alluded to. You would say, “What, Blunderbore, my boy! How do you do?

How well and fresh you look! What's the receipt you have for keeping so

young and rosy?” And your wife would softly ask after Mrs. Blunderbore

and the dear children. Or it would be, “My dear Humguffin! try that

pork. It is home-bred, homefed, and, I promise you, tender. Tell me if

you think it is as good as yours? John, a glass of Burgundy to Colonel

Humguffin!” You don't suppose there would be any unpleasant allusions to

disagreeable home-reports regarding Humguffin's manner of furnishing

his larder? I say we all of us know ogres. We shake hands and dine with

ogres. And if inconvenient moralists tell us we are cowards for our

pains, we turn round with a tu quoque, or say that we don't meddle with

other folk's affairs; that people are much less black than they are

painted, and so on. What! Won't half the county go to Ogreham Castle?

Won't some of the clergy say grace at dinner? Won't the mothers bring

their daughters to dance with the young Rawheads? And if Lady Ogreham

happens to die--I won't say to go the way of all flesh, that is

too revolting--I say if Ogreham is a widower, do you aver, on your

conscience and honor, that mothers will not be found to offer their

young girls to supply the lamented lady's place? How stale this

misanthropy is! Something must have disagreed with this cynic. Yes, my

good woman. I dare say you would like to call another subject. Yes,

my fine fellow; ogre at home, supple as a dancing-master abroad, and

shaking in thy pumps, and wearing a horrible grin of sham gayety to

conceal thy terror, lest I should point thee out:--thou art prosperous

and honored, art thou? I say thou hast been a tyrant and a robber. Thou

hast plundered the poor. Thou hast bullied the weak. Thou hast laid

violent hands on the goods of the innocent and confiding. Thou hast made

a prey of the meek and gentle who asked for thy protection. Thou hast

been hard to thy kinsfolk, and cruel to thy family. Go, monster! Ah,

when shall little Jack come and drill daylight through thy wicked

cannibal carcass? I see the ogre pass on, bowing right and left to the

company; and he gives a dreadful sidelong glance of suspicion as he is

talking to my lord bishop in the corner there.

Ogres in our days need not be giants at all. In former times, and in

children's books, where it is necessary to paint your moral in such

large letters that there can be no mistake about it, ogres are made with

that enormous mouth and ratelier which you know of, and with which they

can swallow down a baby, almost without using that great knife which

they always carry. They are too cunning now-a-days. They go about in

society, slim, small, quietly dressed, and showing no especially great

appetite. In my own young days there used to be play ogres--men who

would devour a young fellow in one sitting, and leave him without a bit

of flesh on his bones. They were quiet gentlemanlike-looking people.

They got the young fellow into their cave. Champagne, pate-de-foie-gras,

and numberless good things, were handed about; and then, having eaten,

the young man was devoured in his turn. I believe these card and dice

ogres have died away almost as entirely as the hasty-pudding giants whom

Tom Thumb overcame. Now, there are ogres in City courts who lure you

into their dens. About our Cornish mines I am told there are many most

plausible ogres, who tempt you into their caverns and pick your bones

there. In a certain newspaper there used to be lately a whole column

of advertisements from ogres who would put on the most plausible, nay,

piteous appearance, in order to inveigle their victims. You would read,

“A tradesman, established for seventy years in the City, and known,

and much respected by Messrs. N. M. Rothschild and Baring Brothers, has

pressing need for three pounds until next Saturday. He can give security

for half a million, and forty thousand pounds will be given for the use

of the loan,” and so on; or, “An influential body of capitalists are

about to establish a company, of which the business will be enormous and

the profits proportionately prodigious. They will require A SECRETARY,

of good address and appearance, at a salary of two thousand per annum.

He need not be able to write, but address and manners are absolutely

necessary. As a mark of confidence in the company, he will have to

deposit,” &c.; or, “A young widow (of pleasing manners and appearance)

who has a pressing necessity for four pounds ten for three weeks, offers

her Erard's grand piano, valued at three hundred guineas; a diamond

cross of eight hundred pounds; and board and lodging in her elegant

villa near Banbury Cross, with the best references and society, in

return for the loan.” I suspect these people are ogres. There are ogres

and ogres. Polyphemus was a great, tall, one-eyed, notorious ogre,

fetching his victims out of a hole, and gobbling them one after

another. There could be no mistake about him. But so were the Sirens

ogres--pretty blue-eyed things, peeping at you coaxingly from out of the

water, and singing their melodious wheedles. And the bones round their

caves were more numerous than the ribs, skulls, and thigh-bones round

the cavern of hulking Polypheme.

To the castle-gates of some of these monsters up rides the dapper

champion of the pen; puffs boldly upon the horn which hangs by the

chain; enters the hall resolutely, and challenges the big tyrant sulking

within. We defy him to combat, the enormous roaring ruffian! We give

him a meeting on the green plain before his castle. Green? No wonder it

should be green: it is manured with human bones. After a few graceful

wheels and curvets, we take our ground. We stoop over our saddle. 'Tis

but to kiss the locket of our lady-love's hair. And now the vizor is up:

the lance is in rest (Gillott's iron is the point for me). A touch of

the spur in the gallant sides of Pegasus, and we gallop at the great

brute.

“Cut off his ugly head, Flibbertygibbet, my squire!” And who are these

who pour out of the castle? the imprisoned maidens, the maltreated

widows, the poor old hoary grandfathers, who have been locked up in the

dungeons these scores and scores of years, writhing under the tyranny

of that ruffian! Ah ye knights of the pen! May honor be your shield,

and truth tip your lances! Be gentle to all gentle people. Be modest to

women. Be tender to children. And as for the Ogre Humbug, out sword, and

have at him.

ON TWO ROUNDABOUT PAPERS WHICH I INTENDED TO WRITE.*

* The following paper was written in 1861, after the

extraordinary affray between Major Murray and the money-

lender in a house in Northumberland Street, Strand, and

subsequent to the appearance of M. Du Chaillu's book on

Gorillas.

We have all heard of a place paved with good intentions--a place which I

take to be a very dismal, useless, and unsatisfactory terminus for many

pleasant thoughts, kindly fancies, gentle wishes, merry little quips and

pranks, harmless jokes which die as it were the moment of their birth.

Poor little children of the brain! He was a dreary theologian who

huddled you under such a melancholy cenotaph, and laid you in the vaults

under the flagstones of Hades! I trust that some of the best actions we

have all of us committed in our lives have been committed in fancy. It

is not all wickedness we are thinking, que diable! Some of our thoughts

are bad enough I grant you. Many a one you and I have had here below.

Ah mercy, what a monster! what crooked horns! what leering eyes! what a

flaming mouth! what cloven feet, and what a hideous writhing tail! Oh,

let us fall down on our knees, repeat our most potent exorcisms, and

overcome the brute. Spread your black pinions, fly--fly to the dusky

realms of Eblis, and bury thyself under the paving-stones of his hall,

dark genie! But ALL thoughts are not so. No--no. There are the pure:

there are the kind: there are the gentle. There are sweet unspoken

thanks before a fair scene of nature: at a sun-setting below a glorious

sea: or a moon and a host of stars shining over it: at a bunch of

children playing in the street, or a group of flowers by the hedge-side,

or a bird singing there. At a hundred moments or occurrences of the

day good thoughts pass through the mind, let us trust, which never

are spoken; prayers are made which never are said; and Te Deum is sung

without church, clerk, choristers, parson, or organ. Why, there's my

enemy: who got the place I wanted; who maligned me to the woman I wanted

to be well with; who supplanted me in the good graces of my patron.

I don't say anything about the matter: but, my poor old enemy, in my

secret mind I have movements of as tender charity towards you, you

old scoundrel, as ever I had when we were boys together at school. You

ruffian! do you fancy I forget that we were fond of each other? We are

still. We share our toffy; go halves at the tuck-shop; do each other's

exercises; prompt each other with the word in construing or repetition;

and tell the most frightful fibs to prevent each other from being found

out. We meet each other in public. Ware a fight! Get them into different

parts of the room! Our friends hustle round us. Capulet and Montague are

not more at odds than the houses of Roundabout and Wrightabout, let us

say. It is, “My dear Mrs. Buffer, do kindly put yourself in the chair

between those two men!” Or, “My dear Wrightabout, will you take that

charming Lady Blancmange down to supper? She adores your poems, and gave

five shillings for your autograph at the fancy fair.” In like manner

the peacemakers gather round Roundabout on his part; he is carried to a

distant corner, and coaxed out of the way of the enemy with whom he is

at feud.

When we meet in the Square at Verona, out flash rapiers, and we fall to.

But in his private mind Tybalt owns that Mercutio has a rare wit, and

Mercutio is sure that his adversary is a gallant gentleman. Look at the

amphitheatre yonder. You do not suppose those gladiators who fought

and perished, as hundreds of spectators in that grim Circus held thumbs

down, and cried, “Kill, kill!”--you do not suppose the combatants of

necessity hated each other? No more than the celebrated trained bands

of literary sword-and-buckler men hate the adversaries whom they meet

in the arena. They engage at the given signal; feint and parry; slash,

poke, rip each other open, dismember limbs, and hew off noses: but

in the way of business, and, I trust, with mutual private esteem. For

instance, I salute the warriors of the Superfine Company with the

honors due among warriors. Here's at you, Spartacus, my lad. A hit, I

acknowledge. A palpable hit! Ha! how do you like that poke in the eye

in return? When the trumpets sing truce, or the spectators are tired, we

bow to the noble company: withdraw; and get a cool glass of wine in our

rendezvous des braves gladiateurs.

By the way, I saw that amphitheatre of Verona under the strange light

of a lurid eclipse some years ago: and I have been there in spirit for

these twenty lines past, under a vast gusty awning, now with twenty

thousand fellow-citizens looking on from the benches, now in the circus

itself, a grim gladiator with sword and net, or a meek martyr--was

I?--brought out to be gobbled up by the lions? or a huge, shaggy,

tawny lion myself, on whom the dogs were going to be set? What a day of

excitement I have had to be sure! But I must get away from Verona, or

who knows how much farther the Roundabout Pegasus may carry me?

We were saying, my Muse, before we dropped and perched on earth for a

couple of sentences, that our unsaid words were in some limbo or other,

as real as those we have uttered; that the thoughts which have passed

through our brains are as actual as any to which our tongues and pens

have given currency. For instance, besides what is here hinted at, I

have thought ever so much more about Verona: about an early Christian

church I saw there; about a great dish of rice we had at the inn; about

the bugs there; about ever so many more details of that day's journey

from Milan to Venice; about Lake Garda, which lay on the way from Milan,

and so forth. I say what fine things we have thought of, haven't we, all

of us? Ah, what a fine tragedy that was I thought of, and never wrote!

On the day of the dinner of the Oystermongers' Company, what a noble

speech I thought of in the cab, and broke down--I don't mean the

cab, but the speech. Ah, if you could but read some of the unwritten

Roundabout Papers, how you would be amused! Aha! my friend, I catch you

saying, “Well, then, I wish THIS was unwritten with all my heart.” Very

good. I owe you one. I do confess a hit, a palpable hit.

One day in the past month, as I was reclining on the bench of thought,

with that ocean The Times newspaper spread before me, the ocean cast up

on the shore at my feet two famous subjects for Roundabout Papers, and I

picked up those waifs, and treasured them away until I could polish them

and bring them to market. That scheme is not to be carried out. I can't

write about those subjects. And though I cannot write about them, I may

surely tell what are the subjects I am going NOT to write about.

The first was that Northumberland Street encounter, which all the papers

have narrated. Have any novelists of our days a scene and catastrophe

more strange and terrible than this which occurs at noonday within a few

yards of the greatest thoroughfare in Europe? At the theatres they

have a new name for their melodramatic pieces, and call them “Sensation

Dramas.” What a sensation Drama this is! What have people been flocking

to see at the Adelphi Theatre for the last hundred and fifty nights?

A woman pitched overboard out of a boat, and a certain Miles taking a

tremendous “header,” and bringing her to shore? Bagatelle! What is this

compared to the real life-drama, of which a midday representation takes

place just opposite the Adelphi in Northumberland Street? The

brave Dumas, the intrepid Ainsworth, the terrible Eugene Sue, the

cold-shudder-inspiring “Woman in White,” the astounding author of

the “Mysteries of the Court of London,” never invented anything more

tremendous than this. It might have happened to you and me. We want

to borrow a little money. We are directed to an agent. We propose a

pecuniary transaction at a short date. He goes into the next room, as

we fancy, to get the bank-notes, and returns with “two very pretty,

delicate little ivory-handled pistols,” and blows a portion of our

heads off. After this, what is the use of being squeamish about the

probabilities and possibilities in the writing of fiction? Years ago I

remember making merry over a play of Dumas, called Kean, in which

the “Coal-Hole Tavern” was represented on the Thames, with a fleet of

pirate-ships moored alongside. Pirate-ships? Why not? What a cavern of

terror was this in Northumberland Street, with its splendid furniture

covered with dust, its empty bottles, in the midst of which sits a grim

“agent,” amusing himself by firing pistols, aiming at the unconscious

mantel-piece, or at the heads of his customers!

After this, what is not possible? It is possible Hungerford Market is

mined, and will explode some day. Mind how you go in for a penny ice

unawares. “Pray, step this way,” says a quiet person at the door. You

enter--into a back room:--a quiet room; rather a dark room. “Pray, take

your place in a chair.” And she goes to fetch the penny ice. Malheureux!

The chair sinks down with you--sinks, and sinks, and sinks--a large wet

flannel suddenly envelopes your face and throttles you. Need we say any

more? After Northumberland Street, what is improbable? Surely there

is no difficulty in crediting Bluebeard. I withdraw my last month's

opinions about ogres. Ogres? Why not? I protest I have seldom

contemplated anything more terribly ludicrous than this “agent” in the

dingy splendor of his den, surrounded by dusty ormolu and piles of empty

bottles, firing pistols for his diversion at the mantel-piece until his

clients come in! Is pistol-practice so common in Northumberland Street,

that it passes without notice in the lodging-houses there?

We spake anon of good thoughts. About bad thoughts? Is there some

Northumberland Street chamber in your heart and mine, friend: close to

the every-day street of life visited by daily friends: visited by people

on business; in which affairs are transacted; jokes are uttered; wine is

drunk; through which people come and go; wives and children pass; and in

which murder sits unseen until the terrible moment when he rises up and

kills? A farmer, say, has a gun over the mantel-piece in his room where

he sits at his daily meals and rest: caressing his children, joking with

his friends, smoking his pipe in his calm. One night the gun is taken

down: the farmer goes out: and it is a murderer who comes back and puts

the piece up and drinks by that fireside. Was he a murderer yesterday

when he was tossing the baby on his knee, and when his hands were

playing with his little girl's yellow hair? Yesterday there was no blood

on them at all: they were shaken by honest men: have done many a kind

act in their time very likely. He leans his head on one of them, the

wife comes in with her anxious looks of welcome, the children are

prattling as they did yesterday round the father's knee at the fire, and

Cain is sitting by the embers, and Abel lies dead on the moor. Think

of the gulf between now and yesterday. Oh, yesterday! Oh, the days when

those two loved each other and said their prayers side by side! He goes

to sleep, perhaps, and dreams that his brother is alive. Be true, O

dream! Let him live in dreams, and wake no more. Be undone, O crime,

O crime! But the sun rises: and the officers of conscience come: and

yonder lies the body on the moor. I happened to pass, and looked at the

Northumberland Street house the other day. A few loiterers were gazing

up at the dingy windows. A plain ordinary face of a house enough--and in

a chamber in it one man suddenly rose up, pistol in hand, to slaughter

another. Have you ever killed any one in your thoughts? Has your heart

compassed any man's death? In your mind, have you ever taken a brand

from the altar, and slain your brother? How many plain ordinary faces of

men do we look at, unknowing of murder behind those eyes? Lucky for you

and me, brother, that we have good thoughts unspoken. But the bad ones?

I tell you that the sight of those blank windows in Northumberland

Street--through which, as it were, my mind could picture the awful

tragedy glimmering behind--set me thinking, “Mr. Street-Preacher, here

is a text for one of your pavement sermons. But it is too glum and

serious. You eschew dark thoughts: and desire to be cheerful and

merry in the main.” And, such being the case, you see we must have no

Roundabout Essay on this subject.

Well, I had another arrow in my quiver. (So, you know, had William Tell

a bolt for his son, the apple of his eye; and a shaft for Gessler, in

case William came to any trouble with the first poor little target.)

And this, I must tell you, was to have been a rare Roundabout

performance--one of the very best that has ever appeared in this series.

It was to have contained all the deep pathos of Addison; the logical

precision of Rabelais; the childlike playfulness of Swift; the manly

stoicism of Sterne; the metaphysical depth of Goldsmith; the blushing

modesty of Fielding; the epigrammatic terseness of Walter Scott; the

uproarious humor of Sam Richardson; and the gay simplicity of Sam

Johnson;--it was to have combined all these qualities, with some

excellences of modern writers whom I could name:--but circumstances have

occurred which have rendered this Roundabout Essay also impossible.

I have not the least objection to tell you what was to have been the

subject of that other admirable Roundabout Paper. Gracious powers! the

Dean of St. Patrick's never had a better theme. The paper was to have

been on the Gorillas, to be sure. I was going to imagine myself to be

a young surgeon-apprentice from Charleston, in South Carolina, who ran

away to Cuba on account of unhappy family circumstances, with which

nobody has the least concern; who sailed thence to Africa in a large,

roomy schooner with an extraordinary vacant space between decks. I was

subject to dreadful ill treatment from the first mate of the ship, who,

when I found she was a slaver, altogether declined to put me on shore.

I was chased--we were chased--by three British frigates and a

seventy-four, which we engaged and captured; but were obliged to scuttle

and sink, as we could sell them in no African port: and I never shall

forget the look of manly resignation, combined with considerable

disgust, of the British Admiral as he walked the plank, after cutting

off his pigtail, which he handed to me, and which I still have in charge

for his family at Boston, Lincolnshire, England.

We made the port of Bpoopoo, at the confluence of the Bungo and Sgglolo

rivers (which you may see in Swammerdahl's map) on the 31st April

last year. Our passage had been so extraordinarily rapid, owing to the

continued drunkenness of the captain and chief officers, by which I

was obliged to work the ship and take her in command, that we reached

Bpoopoo six weeks before we were expected, and five before the coffres

from the interior and from the great slave depot at Zbabblo were

expected. Their delay caused us not a little discomfort, because, though

we had taken the four English ships, we knew that Sir Byam Martin's

iron-cased squadron, with the “Warrior,” the “Impregnable,” the

“Sanconiathon,” and the “Berosus,” were cruising in the neighborhood,

and might prove too much for us.

It not only became necessary to quit Bpoopoo before the arrival of the

British fleet or the rainy season, but to get our people on board as

soon as might be. While the chief mate, with a detachment of seamen,

hurried forward to the Pgogo lake, where we expected a considerable part

of our cargo, the second mate, with six men, four chiefs, King Fbumbo,

an Obi man, and myself, went N.W. by W., towards King Mtoby'stown, where

we knew many hundreds of our between-deck passengers were to be got

together. We went down the Pdodo river, shooting snipes, ostriches, and

rhinoceros in plenty, and I think a few elephants, until, by the advice

of a guide, who I now believe was treacherous, we were induced to leave

the Pdodo, and march N.E. by N.N. Here Lieutenant Larkins, who had

persisted in drinking rum from morning to night, and thrashing me in his

sober moments during the whole journey, died, and I have too good reason

to know was eaten with much relish by the natives. At Mgoo, where there

are barracoons and a depot for our cargo, we had no news of our

expected freight; accordingly, as time pressed exceedingly, parties

were despatched in advance towards the great Washaboo lake, by which the

caravans usually come towards the coast. Here we found no caravan, but

only four negroes down with the ague, whom I treated, I am bound to say,

unsuccessfully, whilst we waited for our friends. We used to take watch

and watch in front of the place, both to guard ourselves from attack,

and get early news of the approaching caravan.

At last, on the 23rd September, as I was in advance with Charles Rogers,

second mate, and two natives with bows and arrows, we were crossing a

great plain skirted by a forest, when we saw emerging from a ravine what

I took to be three negroes--a very tall one, one of a moderate size, and

one quite little.

Our native guide shrieked out some words in their language, of which

Charles Rogers knew something. I thought it was the advance of the

negroes whom we expected. “No!” said Rogers (who swore dreadfully in

conversation), “it is the Gorillas!” And he fired both barrels of his

gun, bringing down the little one first, and the female afterwards.

The male, who was untouched, gave a howl that you might have heard

a league off; advanced towards us as if he would attack us, and then

turned and ran away with inconceivable celerity towards the wood.

We went up towards the fallen brutes. The little one by the female

appeared to be about two years old. It lay bleating and moaning on the

ground, stretching out its little hands, with movements and looks

so strangely resembling human, that my heart sickened with pity. The

female, who had been shot through both legs, could not move. She howled

most hideously when I approached the little one.

“We must be off,” said Rogers, “or the whole Gorilla race may be down

upon us.” “The little one is only shot in the leg,” I said. “I'll bind

the limb up, and we will carry the beast with us on board.”

The poor little wretch held up its leg to show it was wounded, and

looked to me with appealing eyes. It lay quite still whilst I looked for

and found the bullet, and, tearing off a piece of my shirt, bandaged

up the wound. I was so occupied in this business, that I hardly heard

Rogers cry “Run! run!” and when I looked up--

When I looked up, with a roar the most horrible I ever heard--a roar?

ten thousand roars--a whirling army of dark beings rushed by me.

Rogers, who had bullied me so frightfully during the voyage, and who

had encouraged my fatal passion for play, so that I own I owed him 1,500

dollars, was overtaken, felled, brained, and torn into ten thousand

pieces; and I dare say the same fate would have fallen on me, but that

the little Gorilla, whose wound I had dressed, flung its arms round

my neck (their arms, you know, are much longer than ours). And when an

immense gray Gorilla, with hardly any teeth, brandishing the trunk of a

gollyboshtree about sixteen feet long, came up to me roaring, the little

one squeaked out something plaintive, which, of course, I could not

understand; on which suddenly the monster flung down his tree, squatted

down on his huge hams by the side of the little patient, and began to

bellow and weep.

And now, do you see whom I had rescued? I had rescued the young Prince

of the Gorillas, who was out walking with his nurse and footman. The

footman had run off to alarm his master, and certainly I never saw a

footman run quicker. The whole army of Gorillas rushed forward to rescue

their prince, and punish his enemies. If the King Gorilla's emotion

was great, fancy what the queen's must have been when SHE came up! She

arrived, on a litter, neatly enough made with wattled branches, on which

she lay, with her youngest child, a prince of three weeks old.

My little protege with the wounded leg, still persisted in hugging me

with its arms (I think I mentioned that they are longer than those of

men in general), and as the poor little brute was immensely heavy, and

the Gorillas go at a prodigious pace, a litter was made for us likewise;

and my thirst much refreshed by a footman (the same domestic who had

given the alarm) running hand over hand up a cocoanut-tree, tearing the

rinds off, breaking the shell on his head, and handing me the fresh milk

in its cup. My little patient partook of a little, stretching out its

dear little unwounded foot, with which, or with its hand, a Gorilla can

help itself indiscriminately. Relays of large Gorillas relieved each

other at the litters at intervals of twenty minutes, as I calculated by

my watch, one of Jones and Bates's, of Boston, Mass., though I have been

unable to this day to ascertain how these animals calculate time with

such surprising accuracy. We slept for that night under--

And now, you see, we arrive at really the most interesting part of my

travels in the country which I intended to visit, viz. the manners and

habits of the Gorillas chez eux. I give the heads of this narrative

only, the full account being suppressed for a reason which shall

presently be given. The heads, then, of the chapters, are briefly as

follows:--

The author's arrival in the Gorilla country. Its geographical position.

Lodgings assigned to him up a gum-tree. Constant attachment of the

little prince. His royal highness's gratitude. Anecdotes of his wit,

playfulness, and extraordinary precocity. Am offered a portion of poor

Larkins for my supper, but decline with horror. Footman brings me a

young crocodile: fishy but very palatable. Old crocodiles too tough:

ditto rhinoceros. Visit the queen mother--an enormous old Gorilla, quite

white. Prescribe for her majesty. Meeting of Gorillas at what appears a

parliament amongst them: presided over by old Gorilla in cocoanut-fibre

wig. Their sports. Their customs. A privileged class amongst them.

Extraordinary likeness of Gorillas to people at home, both at

Charleston, S. C., my native place; and London, England, which I have

visited. Flat-nosed Gorillas and blue-nosed Gorillas; their hatred, and

wars between them. In a part of the country (its geographical position

described) I see several negroes under Gorilla domination. Well treated

by their masters. Frog-eating Gorillas across the Salt Lake. Bull-headed

Gorillas--their mutual hostility. Green Island Gorillas. More

quarrelsome than the Bull-heads, and howl much louder. I am called to

attend one of the princesses. Evident partiality of H. R. H. for me.

Jealousy and rage of large red-headed Gorilla. How shall I escape?

Ay, how indeed? Do you wish to know? Is your curiosity excited? Well,

I DO know how I escaped. I could tell the most extraordinary adventures

that happened to me. I could show you resemblances to people at home,

that would make them blue with rage and you crack your sides with

laughter. . . . And what is the reason I cannot write this paper, having

all the facts before me? The reason is, that walking down St. James

Street yesterday, I met a friend who says to me, “Roundabout my boy,

have you seen your picture? Here it is!” And he pulls out a portrait,

executed in photography, of your humble servant, as an immense and most

unpleasant-featured baboon, with long hairy hands, and called by the

waggish artist “A Literary Gorilla.” O horror! And now you see why I

can't play off this joke myself, and moralize on the fable, as it has

been narrated already DE ME.

A MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE.

This group of dusky children of the captivity is copied out of a little

sketch-book which I carried in many a roundabout journey, and will point

a moral as well as any other sketch in the volume. Yonder drawing* was

made in a country where there was such hospitality, friendship, kindness

shown to the humble designer, that his eyes do not care to look out for

faults, or his pen to note them. How they sang; how they laughed and

grinned; how they scraped, bowed, and complimented you and each other,

those negroes of the cities of the Southern parts of the then

United States! My business kept me in the towns; I was but in one

negro-plantation village, and there were only women and little children,

the men being out a-field. But there was plenty of cheerfulness in the

huts, under the great trees--I speak of what I saw--and amidst the dusky

bondsmen of the cities. I witnessed a curious gayety; heard amongst the

black folk endless singing, shouting, and laughter; and saw on holidays

black gentlemen and ladies arrayed in such splendor and comfort as

freeborn workmen in our towns seldom exhibit. What a grin and bow that

dark gentleman performed, who was the porter at the colonel's, when he

said, “You write your name, mas'r, else I will forgot.” I am not going

into the slavery question, I am not an advocate for “the institution,”

as I know, madam, by that angry toss of your head, you are about to

declare me to be. For domestic purposes, my dear lady, it seemed to

me about the dearest institution that can be devised. In a house in a

Southern city you will find fifteen negroes doing the work which

John, the cook, the housemaid, and the help, do perfectly in your own

comfortable London house. And these fifteen negroes are the pick of a

family of some eighty or ninety. Twenty are too sick, or too old for

work, let us say: twenty too clumsy: twenty are too young, and have

to be nursed and watched by ten more.** And master has to maintain the

immense crew to do the work of half a dozen willing hands. No, no; let

Mitchell, the exile from poor dear enslaved Ireland, wish for a gang of

“fat niggers;” I would as soon you should make me a present of a score

of Bengal elephants, when I need but a single stout horse to pull my

brougham.

* This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.

** This was an account given by a gentleman at Richmond of

his establishment. Six European servants would have kept

his house and stables well. “His farm,” he said, “barely

sufficed to maintain the negroes residing on it.”

How hospitable they were, those Southern men! In the North itself the

welcome was not kinder, as I, who have eaten Northern and Southern salt,

can testify. As for New Orleans, in spring-time,--just when the orchards

were flushing over with peach-blossoms, and the sweet herbs came to

flavor the juleps--it seemed to me the city of the world where you can

eat and drink the most and suffer the least. At Bordeaux itself, claret

is not better to drink than at New Orleans. It was all good--believe an

expert Robert--from the half-dollar Medoc of the public hotel table, to

the private gentleman's choicest wine. Claret is, somehow, good in that

gifted place at dinner, at supper, and at breakfast in the morning.

It is good: it is superabundant--and there is nothing to pay. Find

me speaking ill of such a country! When I do, pone me pigris campis:

smother me in a desert, or let Mississippi or Garonne drown me! At that

comfortable tavern on Pontchartrain we had a bouillabaisse than which a

better was never eaten at Marseilles: and not the least headache in the

morning, I give you my word; on the contrary, you only wake with a sweet

refreshing thirst for claret and water. They say there is fever there

in the autumn: but not in the spring-time, when the peach-blossoms blush

over the orchards, and the sweet herbs come to flavor the juleps.

I was bound from New Orleans to Saint Louis; and our walk was constantly

on the Levee, whence we could see a hundred of those huge white

Mississippi steamers at their moorings in the river: “Look,” said my

friend Lochlomond to me, as we stood one day on the quay--“look at that

post! Look at that coffee-house behind it! Sir, last year a steamer blew

up in the river yonder, just where you see those men pulling off in the

boat. By that post where you are standing a mule was cut in two by a

fragment of the burst machinery, and a bit of the chimney-stove in that

first-floor window of the coffee-house, killed a negro who was cleaning

knives in the top-room!” I looked at the post, at the coffee-house

window, at the steamer in which I was going to embark, at my friend,

with a pleasing interest not divested of melancholy. Yesterday, it was

the mule, thinks I, who was cut in two: it may be cras mihi. Why, in the

same little sketch-book, there is a drawing of an Alabama river steamer

which blew up on the very next voyage after that in which your humble

servant was on board! Had I but waited another week, I might have. . . .

These incidents give a queer zest to the voyage down the life-stream

in America. When our huge, tall, white, pasteboard castle of a steamer

began to work up stream, every limb in her creaked, and groaned, and

quivered, so that you might fancy she would burst right off. Would she

hold together, or would she split into ten million of shivers? O my

home and children! Would your humble servant's body be cut in two across

yonder chain on the Levee, or be precipitated into yonder first-floor,

so as to damage the chest of a black man cleaning boots at the window?

The black man is safe for me, thank goodness. But you see the little

accident might have happened. It has happened; and if to a mule, why not

to a more docile animal? On our journey up the Mississippi, I give you

my honor we were on fire three times, and burned our cook-room down.

The deck at night was a great firework--the chimney spouted myriads of

stars, which fell blackening on our garments, sparkling on to the deck,

or gleaming into the mighty stream through which we labored--the mighty

yellow stream with all its snags.

How I kept up my courage through these dangers shall now be narrated.

The excellent landlord of the “Saint Charles Hotel,” when I was going

away, begged me to accept two bottles of the very finest Cognac, with

his compliments; and I found them in my state-room with my luggage.

Lochlomond came to see me off, and as he squeezed my hand at parting,

“Roundabout,” says he, “the wine mayn't be very good on board, so I

have brought a dozen-case of the Medoc which you liked;” and we grasped

together the hands of friendship and farewell. Whose boat is this

pulling up to the ship? It is our friend Glenlivat, who gave us the

dinner on Lake Pontchartrain. “Roundabout,” says he, “we have tried to

do what we could for you, my boy; and it has been done de bon coeur” (I

detect a kind tremulousness in the good fellow's voice as he speaks). “I

say--hem!--the a--the wine isn't too good on board, so I've brought you

a dozen of Medoc for your voyage, you know. And God bless you; and when

I come to London in May I shall come and see you. Hallo! here's Johnson

come to see you off, too!”

As I am a miserable sinner, when Johnson grasped my hand, he said, “Mr.

Roundabout, you can't be sure of the wine on board these steamers, so I

thought I would bring you a little case of that light claret which you

liked at my house.” Et de trois! No wonder I could face the Mississippi

with so much courage supplied to me! Where are you, honest friends, who

gave me of your kindness and your cheer? May I be considerably boiled,

blown up, and snagged, if I speak hard words of you. May claret turn

sour ere I do!

Mounting the stream it chanced that we had very few passengers. How

far is the famous city of Memphis from New Orleans? I do not mean the

Egyptian Memphis, but the American Memphis, from which to the American

Cairo we slowly toiled up the river--to the American Cairo at the

confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. And at Cairo we parted

company from the boat, and from some famous and gifted fellow-passengers

who joined us at Memphis, and whose pictures we had seen in many cities

of the South. I do not give the names of these remarkable people,

unless, by some wondrous chance, in inventing a name I should light upon

that real one which some of them bore; but if you please I will say that

our fellow-passengers whom we took in at Memphis were no less personages

than the Vermont Giant and the famous Bearded Lady of Kentucky and her

son. Their pictures I had seen in many cities through which I travelled

with my own little performance. I think the Vermont Giant was a trifle

taller in his pictures than he was in life (being represented in the

former as, at least, some two stories high): but the lady's prodigious

beard received no more than justice at the hands of the painter; that

portion of it which I saw being really most black, rich, and curly--I

say the portion of beard, for this modest or prudent woman kept I don't

know how much of the beard covered up with a red handkerchief, from

which I suppose it only emerged when she went to bed, or when she

exhibited it professionally.

The Giant, I must think, was an overrated giant. I have known gentlemen,

not in the profession, better made, and I should say taller, than the

Vermont gentleman. A strange feeling I used to have at meals; when, on

looking round our little society, I saw the Giant, the Bearded Lady of

Kentucky, the little Bearded Boy of three years old, the Captain, (this

I THINK; but at this distance of time I would not like to make the

statement on affidavit,) and the three other passengers, all with their

knives in their mouths making play at the dinner--a strange feeling I

say it was, and as though I was in a castle of ogres. But, after all,

why so squeamish? A few scores of years back, the finest gentlemen

and ladies of Europe did the like. Belinda ate with her knife; and

Saccharissa had only that weapon, or a two-pronged fork, or a spoon,

for her pease. Have you ever looked at Gilray's print of the Prince

of Wales, a languid voluptuary, retiring after his meal, and noted the

toothpick which he uses? . . . You are right, madam; I own that the

subject is revolting and terrible. I will not pursue it. Only--allow

that a gentleman, in a shaky steamboat, on a dangerous river, in a

far-off country, which caught fire three times during the voyage--(of

course I mean the steamboat, not the country,)--seeing a giant, a

voracious supercargo, a bearded lady, and a little boy, not three years

of age, with a chin already quite black and curly, all plying their

victuals down their throats with their knives--allow, madam, that in

such a company a man had a right to feel a little nervous. I don't know

whether you have ever remarked the Indian jugglers swallowing their

knives, or seen, as I have, a whole table of people performing the same

trick, but if you look at their eyes when they do it, I assure you there

is a roll in them which is dreadful.

Apart from this usage, which they practise in common with many thousand

most estimable citizens, the Vermont gentleman, and the Kentucky

whiskered lady--or did I say the reverse?--whichever you like my dear

sir--were quite quiet, modest, unassuming people. She sat working with

her needle, if I remember right. He, I suppose, slept in the great

cabin, which was seventy feet long at the least, nor, I am bound to say,

did I hear in the night any snores or roars, such as you would fancy

ought to accompany the sleep of ogres. Nay, this giant had quite a small

appetite, (unless, to be sure, he went forward and ate a sheep or two in

private with his horrid knife--oh, the dreadful thought!--but IN PUBLIC,

I say, he had quite a delicate appetite,) and was also a tea-totaler.

I don't remember to have heard the lady's voice, though I might, not

unnaturally, have been curious to hear it. Was her voice a deep, rich,

magnificent bass; or was it soft, fluty, and mild? I shall never know

now. Even if she comes to this country, I shall never go and see her. I

HAVE seen her, and for nothing.

You would have fancied that, as after all we were only some half-dozen

on board, she might have dispensed with her red handkerchief, and

talked, and eaten her dinner in comfort: but in covering her chin there

was a kind of modesty. That beard was her profession: that beard brought

the public to see her: out of her business she wished to put that beard

aside as it were: as a barrister would wish to put off his wig. I know

some who carry theirs into private life, and who mistake you and me

for jury-boxes when they address us: but these are not your modest

barristers, not your true gentlemen.

Well, I own I respected the lady for the modesty with which, her public

business over, she retired into private life. She respected her life,

and her beard. That beard having done its day's work, she puts it away

in her handkerchief; and becomes, as far as in her lies, a private

ordinary person. All public men and women of good sense, I should think,

have this modesty. When, for instance, in my small way, poor Mrs. Brown

comes simpering up to me, with her album in one hand, a pen in the

other, and says, “Ho, ho, dear Mr. Roundabout, write us one of your

amusing,” &c .&c., my beard drops behind my handkerchief instantly. Why

am I to wag my chin and grin for Mrs. Brown's good pleasure? My dear

madam, I have been making faces all day. It is my profession. I do my

comic business with the greatest pains, seriousness, and trouble: and

with it make, I hope, a not dishonest livelihood. If you ask Mons.

Blondin to tea, you don't have a rope stretched from your garret window

to the opposite side of the square, and request Monsieur to take his

tea out on the centre of the rope? I lay my hand on this waistcoat, and

declare that not once in the course of our voyage together did I allow

the Kentucky Giant to suppose I was speculating on his stature, or the

Bearded Lady to surmise that I wished to peep under the handkerchief

which muffled the lower part of her face. “And the more fool you,” says

some cynic. (Faugh, those cynics, I hate 'em!) Don't you know, sir, that

a man of genius is pleased to have his genius recognized; that a beauty

likes to be admired; that an actor likes to be applauded; that stout old

Wellington himself was pleased, and smiled when the people cheered him

as he passed? Suppose you had paid some respectful compliment to that

lady? Suppose you had asked that giant, if, for once, he would take

anything at the liquor-bar? you might have learned a great deal of

curious knowledge regarding giants and bearded ladies, about whom you

evidently now know very little. There was that little boy of three years

old, with a fine beard already, and his little legs and arms, as seen

out of his little frock, covered with a dark down. What a queer little

capering satyr! He was quite good-natured, childish, rather solemn. He

had a little Norval dress, I remember: the drollest little Norval.

I have said the B. L. had another child. Now this was a little girl of

some six years old, as fair and as smooth of skin, dear madam, as

your own darling cherubs. She wandered about the great cabin quite

melancholy. No one seemed to care for her. All the family affections

were centred on Master Esau yonder. His little beard was beginning to

be a little fortune already, whereas Miss Rosalba was of no good to the

family. No one would pay a cent to see HER little fair face. No wonder

the poor little maid was melancholy. As I looked at her, I seemed to

walk more and more in a fairy tale, and more and more in a cavern

of ogres. Was this a little fondling whom they had picked up in some

forest, where lie the picked bones of the queen, her tender mother, and

the tough old defunct monarch, her father? No. Doubtless they were quite

good-natured people, these. I don't believe they were unkind to the

little girl without the moustaches. It may have been only my fancy that

she repined because she had a cheek no more bearded than a rose's.

Would you wish your own daughter, madam, to have a smooth cheek, a

modest air, and a gentle feminine behavior, or to be--I won't say a

whiskered prodigy, like this Bearded Lady of Kentucky--but a masculine

wonder, a virago, a female personage of more than female strength,

courage, wisdom? Some authors, who shall be nameless, are, I know,

accused of depicting the most feeble, brainless, namby-pamby heroines,

for ever whimpering tears and prattling commonplaces. YOU would have the

heroine of your novel so beautiful that she should charm the captain (or

hero, whoever he may be) with her appearance; surprise and confound the

bishop with her learning; outride the squire and get the brush, and,

when he fell from his horse, whip out a lancet and bleed him; rescue

from fever and death the poor cottager's family whom the doctor had

given up; make 21 at the butts with the rifle, when the poor captain

only scored 18; give him twenty in fifty at billiards and beat him;

and draw tears from the professional Italian people by her exquisite

performance (of voice and violoncello) in the evening;--I say, if a

novelist would be popular with ladies--the great novel-readers of the

world--this is the sort of heroine who would carry him through half a

dozen editions. Suppose I had asked that Bearded Lady to sing? Confess,

now, miss, you would not have been displeased if I had told you that she

had a voice like Lablache, only ever so much lower.

My dear, you would like to be a heroine? You would like to travel in

triumphal caravans; to see your effigy placarded on city walls; to have

your levees attended by admiring crowds, all crying out, “Was there ever

such a wonder of a woman?” You would like admiration? Consider the

tax you pay for it. You would be alone were you eminent. Were you

so distinguished from your neighbors I will not say by a beard and

whiskers, that were odious--but by a great and remarkable intellectual

superiority--would you, do you think, be any the happier? Consider envy.

Consider solitude. Consider the jealousy and torture of mind which this

Kentucky lady must feel, suppose she should hear that there is, let us

say, a Missouri prodigy, with a beard larger than hers? Consider how she

is separated from her kind by the possession of that wonder of a beard?

When that beard grows gray, how lonely she will be, the poor old thing!

If it falls off, the public admiration falls off too; and how she will

miss it--the compliments of the trumpeters, the admiration of the crowd,

the gilded progress of the car. I see an old woman alone in a decrepit

old caravan, with cobwebs on the knocker, with a blistered ensign

flapping idly over the door. Would you like to be that deserted person?

Ah, Chloe! To be good, to be simple, to be modest, to be loved, be thy

lot. Be thankful thou art not taller, nor stronger, nor richer, nor

wiser than the rest of the world!

ON LETTS'S DIARY.

Mine is one of your No. 12 diaries, three shillings cloth boards;

silk limp, gilt edges, three-and-six; French morocco, tuck ditto,

four-and-six. It has two pages, ruled with faint lines for memoranda,

for every week, and a ruled account at the end, for the twelve months

from January to December, where you may set down your incomings and your

expenses. I hope yours, my respected reader, are large; that there are

many fine round sums of figures on each side of the page: liberal on the

expenditure side, greater still on the receipt. I hope, sir, you will

be “a better man,” as they say, in '62 than in this moribund '61, whose

career of life is just coming to its terminus. A better man in purse? in

body? in soul's health? Amen, good sir, in all. Who is there so good

in mind, body or estate, but bettering won't still be good for him?

O unknown Fate, presiding over next year, if you will give me better

health, a better appetite, a better digestion, a better income, a better

temper in '62 than you have bestowed in '61, I think your servant will

be the better for the changes. For instance, I should be the better for

a new coat. This one, I acknowledge, is very old. The family says so. My

good friend, who amongst us would not be the better if he would give

up some old habits? Yes, yes. You agree with me. You take the allegory?

Alas! at our time of life we don't like to give up those old habits,

do we? It is ill to change. There is the good old loose, easy, slovenly

bedgown, laziness, for example. What man of sense likes to fling it off

and put on a tight guinde prim dress-coat that pinches him? There is

the cozy wraprascal, self-indulgence--how easy it is! How warm! How it

always seems to fit! You can walk out in it; you can go down to dinner

in it. You can say of such what Tully says of his books: Pernoctat

nobiscum, peregrinatur, rusticatur. It is a little slatternly--it is

a good deal stained--it isn't becoming--it smells of cigar-smoke; but,

allons donc! let the world call me idle and sloven. I love my ease

better than my neighbor's opinion. I live to please myself; not you, Mr.

Dandy, with your supercilious airs. I am a philosopher. Perhaps I live

in my tub, and don't make any other use of it--. We won't pursue further

this unsavory metaphor; but, with regard to some of your old habits let

us say--

1. The habit of being censorious, and speaking ill of your neighbors.

2. The habit of getting into a passion with your man-servant, your

maid-servant, your daughter, wife, &c.

3. The habit of indulging too much at table.

4. The habit of smoking in the dining-room after dinner.

5. The habit of spending insane sums of money in bric-a-brac, tall

copies, binding, Elzevirs, &c.; '20 Port, outrageously fine horses,

ostentatious entertainments, and what not? or,

6. The habit of screwing meanly, when rich, and chuckling over the

saving of half a crown, whilst you are poisoning your friends and family

with bad wine.

7. The habit of going to sleep immediately after dinner, instead of

cheerfully entertaining Mrs. Jones and the family: or,

8. LADIES! The habit of running up bills with the milliners, and

swindling paterfamilias on the house bills.

9. The habit of keeping him waiting for breakfast.

10. The habit of sneering at Mrs. Brown and the Miss Browns, because

they are not quite du monde, or quite so genteel as Lady Smith.

11. The habit of keeping your wretched father up at balls till five

o'clock in the morning, when he has to be at his office at eleven.

12. The habit of fighting with each other, dear Louisa, Jane, Arabella,

Amelia.

13. The habit of ALWAYS ordering John Coachman, three-quarters of an

hour before you want him.

SUCH habits, I say, sir or madam, if you have had to note in your

diary of '61, I have not the slightest doubt you will enter in your

pocket-book of '62. There are habits Nos. 4 and 7, for example. I am

morally sure that some of us will not give up those bad customs, though

the women cry out and grumble, and scold ever so justly. There are

habits Nos. 9 and 13. I feel perfectly certain, my dear young ladies,

that you will continue to keep John Coachman waiting; that you will

continue to give the most satisfactory reasons for keeping him waiting:

and as for (9), you will show that you once (on the 1st of April last,

let us say,) came to breakfast first, and that you are ALWAYS first in

consequence.

Yes; in our '62 diaries, I fear we may all of us make some of the

'61 entries. There is my friend Freehand, for instance. (Aha! Master

Freehand, how you will laugh to find yourself here!) F. is in the habit

of spending a little, ever so little, more than his income. He shows you

how Mrs. Freehand works, and works (and indeed Jack Freehand, if you say

she is an angel, you don't say too much of her); how they toil, and how

they mend, and patch, and pinch; and how they CAN'T live on their means.

And I very much fear--nay, I will bet him half a bottle of Gladstone

14s. per dozen claret--that the account which is a little on the wrong

side this year, will be a little on the wrong side in the next ensuing

year of grace.

A diary. Dies. Hodie. How queer to read are some of the entries in the

journal! Here are the records of dinners eaten, and gone the way of

flesh. The lights burn blue somehow, and we sit before the ghosts of

victuals. Hark at the dead jokes resurging! Memory greets them with the

ghost of a smile. Here are the lists of the individuals who have dined

at your own humble table. The agonies endured before and during those

entertainments are renewed, and smart again. What a failure that special

grand dinner was! How those dreadful occasional waiters did break the

old china! What a dismal hash poor Mary, the cook, made of the French

dish which she WOULD try out of Francatelli! How angry Mrs. Pope was at

not going down to dinner before Mrs. Bishop! How Trimalchio sneered

at your absurd attempt to give a feast; and Harpagon cried out at your

extravagance and ostentation! How Lady Almack bullied the other ladies

in the drawing-room (when no gentlemen were present): never asked you

back to dinner again: left her card by her footman: and took not the

slightest notice of your wife and daughters at Lady Hustleby's assembly!

On the other hand, how easy, cozy, merry, comfortable, those little

dinners were; got up at one or two days' notice; when everybody was

contented; the soup as clear as amber; the wine as good as Trimalchio's

own; and the people kept their carriages waiting, and would not go away

until midnight!

Along with the catalogue of bygone pleasures, balls, banquets, and

the like, which the pages record, comes a list of much more important

occurrences, and remembrances of graver import. On two days of Dives's

diary are printed notices that “Dividends are due at the Bank.” Let us

hope, dear sir, that this announcement considerably interests you; in

which case, probably, you have no need of the almanac-maker's printed

reminder. If you look over poor Jack Reckless's note-book, amongst

his memoranda of racing odds given and taken, perhaps you may

read:--“Nabbam's bill, due 29th September, 142l. 15s. 6d.” Let us trust,

as the day has passed, that the little transaction here noted has been

satisfactorily terminated. If you are paterfamilias, and a worthy kind

gentleman, no doubt you have marked down on your register, 17th December

(say), “Boys come home.” Ah, how carefully that blessed day is marked

in THEIR little calendars! In my time it used to be, Wednesday, 13th

November, “5 WEEKS FROM THE HOLIDAYS;” Wednesday, 20th November, “4

WEEKS FROM THE HOLIDAYS;” until sluggish time sped on, and we came to

WEDNESDAY 18th DECEMBER. O rapture! Do you remember pea-shooters?

I think we only had them on going home for holidays from private

schools,--at public schools men are too dignified. And then came that

glorious announcement, Wednesday, 27th, “Papa took us to the Pantomime;”

or if not papa, perhaps you condescended to go to the pit, under charge

of the footman.

That was near the end of the year--and mamma gave you a new pocket-book,

perhaps, with a little coin, God bless her, in the pocket. And that

pocket-book was for next year, you know; and, in that pocket-book

you had to write down that sad day, Wednesday, January 24th, eighteen

hundred and never mind what,--when Dr. Birch's young friends were

expected to re-assemble.

Ah me! Every person who turns this page over has his own little diary,

in paper or ruled in his memory tablets, and in which are set down the

transactions of the now dying year. Boys and men, we have our calendar,

mothers and maidens. For example, in your calendar pocket-book, my

good Eliza, what a sad, sad day that is--how fondly and bitterly

remembered--when your boy went off to his regiment, to India, to danger,

to battle perhaps. What a day was that last day at home, when the tall

brother sat yet amongst the family, the little ones round about him

wondering at saddle-boxes, uniforms, sword-cases, gun-cases, and other

wondrous apparatus of war and travel which poured in and filled the

hall; the new dressing-case for the beard not yet grown; the great

sword-case at which little brother Tom looks so admiringly! What a

dinner that was, that last dinner, when little and grown children

assembled together, and all tried to be cheerful! What a night was that

last night, when the young ones were at roost for the last time together

under the same roof, and the mother lay alone in her chamber counting

the fatal hours as they tolled one after another, amidst her tears, her

watching, her fond prayers. What a night that was, and yet how quickly

the melancholy dawn came! Only too soon the sun rose over the houses.

And now in a moment more the city seemed to wake. The house began to

stir. The family gathers together for the last meal. For the last time

in the midst of them the widow kneels amongst her kneeling children, and

falters a prayer in which she commits her dearest, her eldest born,

to the care of the Father of all. O night, what tears you hide--what

prayers you hear! And so the nights pass and the days succeed, until

that one comes when tears and parting shall be no more.

In your diary, as in mine, there are days marked with sadness, not for

this year only, but for all. On a certain day--and the sun perhaps,

shining ever so brightly--the housemother comes down to her family with

a sad face, which scares the children round about in the midst of their

laughter and prattle. They may have forgotten--but she has not--a day

which came, twenty years ago it may be, and which she remembers only too

well: the long night-watch; the dreadful dawning and the rain beating

at the pane; the infant speechless, but moaning in its little crib; and

then the awful calm, the awful smile on the sweet cherub face, when the

cries have ceased, and the little suffering breast heaves no more. Then

the children, as they see their mother's face, remember this was the day

on which their little brother died. It was before they were born; but

she remembers it. And as they pray together, it seems almost as if the

spirit of the little lost one was hovering round the group. So they pass

away: friends, kindred, the dearest-loved, grown people, aged, infants.

As we go on the down-hill journey, the mile-stones are grave-stones, and

on each more and more names are written; unless haply you live beyond

man's common age, when friends have dropped off, and, tottering, and

feeble, and unpitied, you reach the terminus alone.

In this past year's diary is there any precious day noted on which you

have made a new friend? This is a piece of good fortune bestowed but

grudgingly on the old. After a certain age a new friend is a wonder,

like Sarah's child. Aged persons are seldom capable of bearing

friendships. Do you remember how warmly you loved Jack and Tom when you

were at school; what a passionate regard you had for Ned when you were

at college, and the immense letters you wrote to each other? How often

do you write, now that postage costs nothing? There is the age of

blossoms and sweet budding green: the age of generous summer; the

autumn when the leaves drop; and then winter, shivering and bare. Quick,

children, and sit at my feet: for they are cold, very cold: and it seems

as if neither wine nor worsted will warm 'em.

In this past year's diary is there any dismal day noted in which you

have lost a friend? In mine there is. I do not mean by death. Those who

are gone, you have. Those who departed loving you, love you still; and

you love them always. They are not really gone, those dear hearts and

true; they are only gone into the next room: and you will presently get

up and follow them, and yonder door will close upon YOU, and you will be

no more seen. As I am in this cheerful mood, I will tell you a fine and

touching story of a doctor which I heard lately. About two years since

there was, in our or some other city, a famous doctor, into whose

consulting-room crowds came daily, so that they might be healed. Now

this doctor had a suspicion that there was something vitally wrong with

himself, and he went to consult another famous physician at Dublin, or

it may be at Edinburgh. And he of Edinburgh punched his comrade's sides;

and listened at his heart and lungs; and felt his pulse, I suppose; and

looked at his tongue; and when he had done, Doctor London said to Doctor

Edinburgh, “Doctor, how long have I to live?” And Doctor Edinburgh said

to Doctor London, “Doctor, you may last a year.”

Then Doctor London came home, knowing that what Doctor Edinburgh said

was true. And he made up his accounts, with man and heaven, I trust.

And he visited his patients as usual. And he went about healing, and

cheering, and soothing and doctoring; and thousands of sick people were

benefited by him. And he said not a word to his family at home; but

lived amongst them cheerful and tender, and calm, and loving; though he

knew the night was at hand when he should see them and work no more.

And it was winter time, and they came and told him that some man at

a distance--very sick, but very rich--wanted him; and, though Doctor

London knew that he was himself at death's door, he went to the sick

man; for he knew the large fee would be good for his children after him.

And he died; and his family never knew until he was gone, that he had

been long aware of the inevitable doom.

This is a cheerful carol for Christmas, is it not? You see, in regard to

these Roundabout discourses, I never know whether they are to be merry

or dismal. My hobby has the bit in his mouth; goes his own way; and

sometimes trots through a park, and sometimes paces by a cemetery. Two

days since came the printer's little emissary, with a note saying, “We

are waiting for the Roundabout Paper!” A Roundabout Paper about what

or whom? How stale it has become, that printed jollity about Christmas!

Carols, and wassail-bowls, and holly, and mistletoe, and yule-logs de

commande--what heaps of these have we not had for years past! Well,

year after year the season comes. Come frost, come thaw, come snow, come

rain, year after year my neighbor the parson has to make his sermons.

They are getting together the bonbons, iced cakes, Christmas trees at

Fortnum and Mason's now. The genii of the theatres are composing the

Christmas pantomime, which our young folks will see and note anon in

their little diaries.

And now, brethren, may I conclude this discourse with an extract out

of that great diary, the newspaper? I read it but yesterday, and it has

mingled with all my thoughts since then. Here are the two paragraphs,

which appeared following each other:--

“Mr. R., the Advocate-General of Calcutta, has been appointed to the

post of Legislative Member of the Council of the Governor-General.”

“Sir R. S., Agent to the Governor-General for Central India, died on the

29th of October, of bronchitis.”

These two men, whose different fates are recorded in two paragraphs and

half a dozen lines of the same newspaper, were sisters' sons. In one of

the stories by the present writer, a man is described tottering “up

the steps of the ghaut,” having just parted with his child, whom he is

despatching to England from India. I wrote this, remembering in long,

long distant days, such a ghaut, or river-stair, at Calcutta; and a

day when, down those steps, to a boat which was in waiting, came two

children, whose mothers remained on the shore. One of those ladies

was never to see her boy more; and he, too, is just dead in India, “of

bronchitis, on the 29th October.” We were first-cousins; had been little

playmates and friends from the time of our birth; and the first house

in London to which I was taken, was that of our aunt, the mother of his

Honor the Member of Council. His Honor was even then a gentleman of

the long robe, being, in truth, a baby in arms. We Indian children were

consigned to a school of which our deluded parents had heard a favorable

report, but which was governed by a horrible little tyrant, who made our

young lives so miserable that I remember kneeling by my little bed of a

night, and saying, “Pray God, I may dream of my mother!” Thence we went

to a public school; and my cousin to Addiscombe and to India.

“For thirty-two years,” the paper says, “Sir Richmond Shakespear

faithfully and devotedly served the Government of India, and during that

period but once visited England, for a few months and on public duty. In

his military capacity he saw much service, was present in eight general

engagements, and was badly wounded in the last. In 1840, when a young

lieutenant, he had the rare good fortune to be the means of rescuing

from almost hopeless slavery in Khiva 416 subjects of the Emperor of

Russia; and, but two years later, greatly contributed to the happy

recovery of our own prisoners from a similar fate in Cabul. Throughout

his career this officer was ever ready and zealous for the public

service, and freely risked life and liberty in the discharge of

his duties. Lord Canning, to mark his high sense of Sir Richmond

Shakespear's public services, had lately offered him the Chief

Commissionership of Mysore, which he had accepted, and was about to

undertake, when death terminated his career.”

When he came to London the cousins and playfellows of early Indian days

met once again, and shook hands. “Can I do anything for you?” I remember

the kind fellow asking. He was always asking that question: of all

kinsmen; of all widows and orphans; of all the poor; of young men who

might need his purse or his service. I saw a young officer yesterday

to whom the first words Sir Richmond Shakespear wrote on his arrival in

India were, “Can I do anything for you?” His purse was at the command

of all. His kind hand was always open. It was a gracious fate which sent

him to rescue widows and captives. Where could they have had a champion

more chivalrous, a protector more loving and tender?

I write down his name in my little book, among those of others dearly

loved, who, too, have been summoned hence. And so we meet and part;

we struggle and succeed; or we fail and drop unknown on the way. As we

leave the fond mother's knee, the rough trials of childhood and boyhood

begin; and then manhood is upon us, and the battle of life, with its

chances, perils, wounds, defeats, distinctions. And Fort William guns

are saluting in one man's honor,* while the troops are firing the last

volleys over the other's grave--over the grave of the brave, the gentle,

the faithful Christian soldier.

* W. R. obiit March 22, 1862.

NOTES OF A WEEK'S HOLIDAY.

Most of us tell old stories in our families. The wife and children

laugh for the hundredth time at the joke. The old servants (though

old servants are fewer every day) nod and smile a recognition at the

well-known anecdote. “Don't tell that story of Grouse in the gun-room,”

says Diggory to Mr. Hardcastle in the play, “or I must laugh.” As we

twaddle, and grow old and forgetful, we may tell an old story; or, out

of mere benevolence, and a wish to amuse a friend when conversation is

flagging, disinter a Joe Miller now and then; but the practice is not

quite honest, and entails a certain necessity of hypocrisy on story

hearers and tellers. It is a sad thing, to think that a man with what

you call a fund of anecdote is a humbug, more or less amiable and

pleasant. What right have I to tell my “Grouse in the gun-room” over and

over in the presence of my wife, mother, mother-in-law, sons, daughters,

old footman or parlor-maid, confidential clerk, curate, or what not? I

smirk and go through the history, giving my admirable imitations of the

characters introduced: I mimic Jones's grin, Hobbs's squint, Brown's

stammer, Grady's brogue, Sandy's Scotch accent, to the best of my power:

and, the family part of my audience laughs good-humoredly. Perhaps the

stranger, for whose amusement the performance is given, is amused by

it and laughs too. But this practice continued is not moral. This

self-indulgence on your part, my dear Paterfamilias, is weak, vain--not

to say culpable. I can imagine many a worthy man, who begins unguardedly

to read this page, and comes to the present sentence, lying back in his

chair, thinking of that story which he has told innocently for fifty

years, and rather piteously owning to himself, “Well, well, it IS wrong;

I have no right to call on my poor wife to laugh, my daughters to affect

to be amused, by that old, old jest of mine. And they would have gone

on laughing, and they would have pretended to be amused, to their dying

day, if this man had not flung his damper over our hilarity.” . . . I

lay down the pen, and think, “Are there any old stories which I

still tell myself in the bosom of my family? Have I any 'Grouse in

my gun-room?'” If there are such, it is because my memory fails; not

because I want applause, and wantonly repeat myself. You see, men with

the so-called fund of anecdote will not repeat the same story to the

same individual; but they do think that, on a new party, the repetition

of a joke ever so old may be honorably tried. I meet men walking the

London street, bearing the best reputation, men of anecdotal powers:--I

know such, who very likely will read this, and say, “Hang the fellow, he

means ME!” And so I do. No--no man ought to tell an anecdote more

than thrice, let us say, unless he is sure he is speaking only to give

pleasure to his hearers--unless he feels that it is not a mere desire

for praise which makes him open his jaws.

And is it not with writers as with raconteurs? Ought they not to have

their ingenuous modesty? May authors tell old stories, and how many

times over? When I come to look at a place which I have visited any time

these twenty or thirty years, I recall not the place merely, but the

sensations I had at first seeing it, and which are quite different to

my feelings to-day. That first day at Calais; the voices of the women

crying out at night, as the vessel came alongside the pier; the supper

at Quillacq's and the flavor of the cutlets and wine; the red-calico

canopy under which I slept; the tiled floor, and the fresh smell of

the sheets; the wonderful postilion in his jack-boots and pigtail;--all

return with perfect clearness to my mind, and I am seeing them, and not

the objects which are actually under my eyes. Here is Calais. Yonder is

that commissioner I have known this score of years. Here are the

women screaming and hustling over the baggage; the people at the

passport-barrier who take your papers. My good people, I hardly see you.

You no more interest me than a dozen orange-women in Covent-Garden, or a

shop book-keeper in Oxford Street. But you make me think of a time when

you were indeed wonderful to behold--when the little French soldiers

wore white cockades in their shakos--when the diligence was forty hours

going to Paris; and the great-booted postilion, as surveyed by youthful

eyes from the coupe, with his jurons, his ends of rope for the harness,

and his clubbed pigtail, was a wonderful being, and productive of

endless amusement. You young folks don't remember the apple-girls

who used to follow the diligence up the hill beyond Boulogne, and the

delights of the jolly road? In making continental journeys with young

folks, an oldster may be very quiet, and, to outward appearance,

melancholy; but really he has gone back to the days of his youth, and

he is seventeen or eighteen years of age (as the case may be), and is

amusing himself with all his might. He is noting the horses as they come

squealing out of the post-house yard at midnight; he is enjoying the

delicious meals at Beauvais and Amiens, and quaffing ad libitum the rich

table-d'hote wine; he is hail-fellow with the conductor, and alive to

all the incidents of the road. A man can be alive in 1860 and 1830 at

the same time, don't you see? Bodily, I may be in 1860, inert, silent,

torpid; but in the spirit I am walking about in 1828, let us say;---in a

blue dress-coat and brass buttons, a sweet figured silk waistcoat (which

I button round a slim waist with perfect ease), looking at beautiful

beings with gigot sleeves and tea-tray hats under the golden chestnuts

of the Tuileries, or round the Place Vendome, where the drapeau blanc

is floating from the statueless column. Shall we go and dine

at “Bombarda's,” near the “Hotel Breteuil,” or at the “Cafe

Virginie?”--Away! “Bombarda's” and the “Hotel Breteuil” have been pulled

down ever so long. They knocked down the poor old Virginia Coffee-house

last year. My spirit goes and dines there. My body, perhaps, is seated

with ever so many people in a railway-carriage, and no wonder my

companions find me dull and silent. Have you read Mr. Dale Owen's

“Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World?”--(My dear sir, it will

make your hair stand quite refreshingly on end.) In that work you will

read that when gentlemen's or ladies' spirits travel off a few score or

thousand miles to visit a friend, their bodies lie quiet and in a torpid

state in their beds or in their arm-chairs at home. So in this way, I

am absent. My soul whisks away thirty years back into the past. I am

looking out anxiously for a beard. I am getting past the age of loving

Byron's poems, and pretend that I like Wordsworth and Shelley much

better. Nothing I eat or drink (in reason) disagrees with me; and I know

whom I think to be the most lovely creature in the world. Ah, dear maid

(of that remote but well-remembered period), are you a wife or widow

now?--are you dead?--are you thin and withered and old?--or are you

grown much stouter, with a false front? and so forth.

O Eliza, Eliza!--Stay, WAS she Eliza? Well, I protest I have forgotten

what your Christian name was. You know I only met you for two days, but

your sweet face is before me now, and the roses blooming on it are as

fresh as in that time of May. Ah, dear Miss X----, my timid youth

and ingenuous modesty would never have allowed me, even in my private

thoughts, to address you otherwise than by your paternal name, but THAT

(though I conceal it) I remember perfectly well, and that your dear and

respected father was a brewer.

CARILLON.--I was awakened this morning with the chime which Antwerp

cathedral clock plays at half-hours. The tune has been haunting me ever

since, as tunes will. You dress, eat, drink, walk and talk to yourself

to their tune: their inaudible jingle accompanies you all day: you read

the sentences of the paper to their rhythm. I tried uncouthly to imitate

the tune to the ladies of the family at breakfast, and they say it is

“the shadow dance of Dinorah.” It may be so. I dimly remember that my

body was once present during the performance of that opera, whilst my

eyes were closed, and my intellectual faculties dormant at the back

of the box; howbeit, I have learned that shadow dance from hearing it

pealing up ever so high in the air, at night, morn, noon.

How pleasant to lie awake and listen to the cheery peal! whilst the old

city is asleep at midnight, or waking up rosy at sunrise, or basking in

noon, or swept by the scudding rain which drives in gusts over the broad

places, and the great shining river; or sparkling in snow which dresses

up a hundred thousand masts, peaks, and towers; or wrapped round with

thunder-cloud canopies, before, which the white gables shine whiter;

day and night the kind little carillon plays its fantastic melodies

overhead. The bells go on ringing. Quot vivos vocant, mortuos plangunt,

fulgara frangunt; so on to the past and future tenses, and for how many

nights, days, and years! Whilst the French were pitching their fulgara

into Chasse's citadel, the bells went on ringing quite cheerfully.

Whilst the scaffolds were up and guarded by Alva's soldiery, and

regiments of penitents, blue, black, and gray, poured out of churches

and convents, droning their dirges, and marching to the place of the

Hotel de Ville, where heretics and rebels were to meet their doom,

the bells up yonder were chanting at their appointed half-hours and

quarters, and rang the mauvais quart d'heure for many a poor soul. This

bell can see as far away as the towers and dykes of Rotterdam. That one

can call a greeting to St. Ursula's at Brussels, and toss a recognition

to that one at the town-hall of Oudenarde, and remember how after a

great struggle there a hundred and fifty years ago the whole plain was

covered with the flying French cavalry--Burgundy, and Bern, and the

Chevalier of St. George flying like the rest. “What is your clamor about

Oudenarde?” says another bell (Bob Major THIS one must be). “Be still,

thou querulous old clapper! I can see over to Hougoumont and St. John.

And about forty-five years since, I rang all through one Sunday in June,

when there was such a battle going on in the corn-fields there, as none

of you others ever heard tolled of. Yes, from morning service until

after vespers, the French and English were all at it, ding-dong.” And

then calls of business intervening, the bells have to give up their

private jangle, resume their professional duty, and sing their hourly

chorus out of Dinorah.

What a prodigious distance those bells can be heard! I was awakened this

morning to their tune, I say. I have been hearing it constantly ever

since. And this house whence I write, Murray says, is two hundred and

ten miles from Antwerp. And it is a week off; and there is the bell

still jangling its shadow dance out of Dinorah. An audible shadow you

understand, and an invisible sound, but quite distinct; and a plague

take the tune!

UNDER THE BELLS.--Who has not seen the church under the bells? Those

lofty aisles, those twilight chapels, that cumbersome pulpit with its

huge carvings, that wide gray pavement flecked with various light from

the jewelled windows, those famous pictures between the voluminous

columns over the altars, which twinkle with their ornaments, their

votive little silver hearts, legs, limbs, their little guttering tapers,

cups of sham roses, and what not? I saw two regiments of little scholars

creeping in and forming square, each in its appointed place, under the

vast roof; and teachers presently coming to them. A stream of light

from the jewelled windows beams slanting down upon each little squad of

children, and the tall background of the church retires into a grayer

gloom. Pattering little feet of laggards arriving echo through the great

nave. They trot in and join their regiments, gathered under the slanting

sunbeams. What are they learning? Is it truth? Those two gray ladies

with their books in their hands in the midst of these little people have

no doubt of the truth of every word they have printed under their eyes.

Look, through the windows jewelled all over with saints, the light comes

streaming down from the sky, and heaven's own illuminations paint

the book! A sweet, touching picture indeed it is, that of the little

children assembled in this immense temple, which has endured for ages,

and grave teachers bending over them. Yes, the picture is very pretty of

the children and their teachers, and their book--but the text? Is it the

truth, the only truth, nothing but the truth? If I thought so, I would

go and sit down on the form cum parvulis, and learn the precious lesson

with all my heart.

BEADLE.--But I submit, an obstacle to conversions is the intrusion and

impertinence of that Swiss fellow with the baldric--the officer who

answers to the beadle of the British Islands, and is pacing about the

church with an eye on the congregation. Now the boast of Catholics is

that their churches are open to all; but in certain places and churches

there are exceptions. At Rome I have been into St. Peter's at all hours:

the doors are always open, the lamps are always burning, the faithful

are for ever kneeling at one shrine or the other. But at Antwerp not so.

In the afternoon you can go to the church, and be civilly treated; but

you must pay a franc at the side gate. In the forenoon the doors are

open, to be sure, and there is no one to levy an entrance fee. I was

standing ever so still, looking through the great gates of the choir at

the twinkling lights, and listening to the distant chants of the priests

performing the service, when a sweet chorus from the organ-loft broke

out behind me overhead, and I turned round. My friend the drum-major

ecclesiastic was down upon me in a moment. “Do not turn your back to the

altar during divine service,” says he, in very intelligible English. I

take the rebuke, and turn a soft right-about face, and listen awhile

as the service continues. See it I cannot, nor the altar and its

ministrants. We are separated from these by a great screen and closed

gates of iron, through which the lamps glitter and the chant comes by

gusts only. Seeing a score of children trotting down a side aisle,

I think I may follow them. I am tired of looking at that hideous old

pulpit with its grotesque monsters and decorations. I slip off to the

side aisle; but my friend the drum-major is instantly after me--almost

I thought he was going to lay hands on me. “You mustn't go there,” says

he; “you mustn't disturb the service.” I was moving as quietly as might

be, and ten paces off there were twenty children kicking and clattering

at their ease. I point them out to the Swiss. “They come to pray,” says

he. “YOU don't come to pray, you--” “When I come to pay,” says I, “I

am welcome,” and with this withering sarcasm, I walk out of church in

a huff. I don't envy the feelings of that beadle after receiving point

blank such a stroke of wit.

LEO BELGICUS.--Perhaps you will say after this I am a prejudiced critic.

I see the pictures in the cathedral fuming under the rudeness of that

beadle, or at the lawful hours and prices, pestered by a swarm of shabby

touters, who come behind me chattering in bad English, and who would

have me see the sights through their mean, greedy eyes. Better see

Rubens any where than in a church. At the Academy, for example, where

you may study him at your leisure. But at church?--I would as soon ask

Alexandre Dumas for a sermon. Either would paint you a martyrdom very

fiercely and picturesquely--writhing muscles, flaming coals, scowling

captains and executioners, swarming groups, and light, shade, color most

dexterously brilliant or dark; but in Rubens I am admiring the performer

rather than the piece. With what astonishing rapidity he travels over

his canvas; how tellingly the cool lights and warm shadows are made to

contrast and relieve each other; how that blazing, blowsy penitent in

yellow satin and glittering hair carries down the stream of light

across the picture! This is the way to work, my boys, and earn a hundred

florins a day. See! I am as sure of my line as a skater of making his

figure of eight! and down with a sweep goes a brawny arm or a flowing

curl of drapery. The figures arrange themselves as if by magic. The

paint-pots are exhausted in furnishing brown shadows. The pupils look

wondering on, as the master careers over the canvas. Isabel or Helena,

wife No. 1 or No. 2, are sitting by, buxom, exuberant, ready to be

painted; and the children are boxing in the corner, waiting till they

are wanted to figure as cherubs in the picture. Grave burghers and

gentlefolks come in on a visit. There are oysters and Rhenish always

ready on yonder table. Was there ever such a painter? He has been an

ambassador, an actual Excellency, and what better man could be

chosen? He speaks all the languages. He earns a hundred florins a day.

Prodigious! Thirty-six thousand five hundred florins a year. Enormous!

He rides out to his castle with a score of gentlemen after him, like

the Governor. That is his own portrait as St. George. You know he is an

English knight? Those are his two wives as the two Maries. He chooses

the handsomest wives. He rides the handsomest horses. He paints the

handsomest pictures. He gets the handsomest prices for them. That slim

young Van Dyck, who was his pupil, has genius too, and is painting all

the noble ladies in England, and turning the heads of some of them.

And Jordaens--what a droll dog and clever fellow! Have you seen his fat

Silenus? The master himself could not paint better. And his altar-piece

at St. Bavon's? He can paint you anything, that Jordaens can--a drunken

jollification of boors and doxies, or a martyr howling with half his

skin off. What a knowledge of anatomy! But there is nothing like the

master--nothing. He can paint you his thirty-six thousand five hundred

florins' worth a year. Have you heard of what he has done for the French

Court? Prodigious! I can't look at Rubens's pictures without fancying

I see that handsome figure swaggering before the canvas. And Hans

Hemmelinck at Bruges? Have you never seen that dear old hospital of St.

John, on passing the gate of which you enter into the fifteenth century?

I see the wounded soldier still lingering in the house, and tended by

the kind gray sisters. His little panel on its easel is placed at the

light. He covers his board with the most wondrous, beautiful little

figures, in robes as bright as rubies and amethysts. I think he must

have a magic glass, in which he catches the reflection of little cherubs

with many-colored wings, very little and bright. Angels, in long crisp

robes of white, surrounded with halos of gold, come and flutter across

the mirror, and he draws them. He hears mass every day. He fasts through

Lent. No monk is more austere and holy than Hans. Which do you love best

to behold, the lamb or the lion? the eagle rushing through the storm,

and pouncing mayhap on carrion; or the linnet warbling on the spray?

By much the most delightful of the Christopher set of Rubens to my mind

(and ego is introduced on these occasions, so that the opinion may

pass only for my own, at the reader's humble service to be received or

declined,) is the “Presentation in the Temple:” splendid in color, in

sentiment sweet and tender, finely conveying the story. To be sure,

all the others tell their tale unmistakably--witness that coarse

“Salutation,” that magnificent “Adoration of the Kings” (at the Museum),

by the same strong downright hands; that wonderful “Communion of St.

Francis,” which, I think, gives the key to the artist's faire better

than any of his performances. I have passed hours before that picture in

my time, trying and sometimes fancying I could understand by what masses

and contrasts the artist arrived at his effect. In many others of the

pictures parts of his method are painfully obvious, and you see how

grief and agony are produced by blue lips, and eyes rolling blood shot

with dabs of vermilion. There is something simple in the practice.

Contort the eyebrow sufficiently, and place the eyeball near it,--by a

few lines you have anger or fierceness depicted. Give me a mouth with

no special expression, and pop a dab of carmine at each extremity--and

there are the lips smiling. This is art if you will, but a very naive

kind of art: and now you know the trick, don't you see how easy it is?

TU QUOQUE.--Now you know the trick, suppose you take a canvas and see

whether YOU can do it? There are brushes, palettes, and gallipots full

of paint and varnish. Have you tried, my dear sir--you who set up to be

a connoisseur? Have you tried? I have--and many a day. And the end of

the day's labor? O dismal conclusion! Is this puerile niggling, this

feeble scrawl, this impotent rubbish, all you can produce--you, who

but now found Rubens commonplace and vulgar, and were pointing out the

tricks of his mystery? Pardon, O great chief, magnificent master and

poet! You can DO. We critics, who sneer and are wise, can but pry, and

measure, and doubt, and carp. Look at the lion. Did you ever see such

a gross, shaggy, mangy, roaring brute? Look at him eating lumps of raw

meat--positively bleeding, and raw and tough--till, faugh! it turns

one's stomach to see him--O the coarse wretch! Yes, but he is a lion.

Rubens has lifted his great hand, and the mark he has made has endured

for two centuries, and we still continue wondering at him, and admiring

him. What a strength in that arm! What splendor of will hidden behind

that tawny beard, and those honest eyes! Sharpen your pen, my good

critic, shoot a feather into him; hit him, and make him wince. Yes, you

may hit him fair, and make him bleed, too; but, for all that, he is a

lion--a mighty, conquering, generous, rampageous Leo Belgicus--monarch

of his wood. And he is not dead yet, and I will not kick at him.

SIR ANTONY.--In that “Pieta” of Van Dyck, in the Museum, have you ever

looked at the yellow-robed angel, with the black scarf thrown over

her wings and robe? What a charming figure of grief and beauty! What a

pretty compassion it inspires! It soothes and pleases me like a sweet

rhythmic chant. See how delicately the yellow robe contrasts with the

blue sky behind, and the scarf binds the two! If Rubens lacked grace,

Van Dyck abounded in it. What a consummate elegance! What a perfect

cavalier! No wonder the fine ladies in England admired Sir Antony. Look

at--

Here the clock strikes three, and the three gendarmes who keep the Musee

cry out, “Allons! Sortons! Il est trois heures! Allez! Sortez!” and they

skip out of the gallery as happy as boys running from school. And we

must go too, for though many stay behind--many Britons with Murray's

Handbooks in their handsome hands--they have paid a franc for

entrance-fee, you see; and we knew nothing about the franc for entrance

until those gendarmes with sheathed sabres had driven us out of this

Paradise.

But it was good to go and drive on the great quays, and see the ships

unlading, and by the citadel, and wonder howabouts and whereabouts

it was so strong. We expect a citadel to look like Gibraltar or

Ehrenbreitstein at least. But in this one there is nothing to see but a

flat plain and some ditches, and some trees, and mounds of uninteresting

green. And then I remember how there was a boy at school, a little dumpy

fellow of no personal appearance whatever, who couldn't be overcome

except by a much bigger champion, and the immensest quantity of

thrashing. A perfect citadel of a boy, with a General Chasse sitting

in that bomb-proof casemate, his heart, letting blow after blow come

thumping about his head, and never thinking of giving in.

And we go home, and we dine in the company of Britons, at the

comfortable Hotel du Parc, and we have bought a novel apiece for a

shilling, and every half-hour the sweet carillon plays the waltz from

Dinorah in the air. And we have been happy; and it seems about a month

since we left London yesterday; and nobody knows where we are, and we

defy care and the postman.

SPOORWEG.--Vast green flats, speckled by spotted cows, and bound by a

gray frontier of windmills; shining canals stretching through the green;

odors like those exhaled from the Thames in the dog-days, and a fine

pervading smell of cheese; little trim houses, with tall roofs, and

great windows of many panes; gazebos, or summer-houses, hanging over

pea-green canals; kind-looking, dumpling-faced farmers' women, with

laced caps and golden frontlets and earrings; about the houses and towns

which we pass a great air of comfort and neatness; a queer feeling of

wonder that you can't understand what your fellow-passengers are saying,

the tone of whose voices, and a certain comfortable dowdiness of dress,

are so like our own;--whilst we are remarking on these sights, sounds,

smells, the little railway journey from Rotterdam to the Hague comes to

an end. I speak to the railway porters and hackney coachmen in English,

and they reply in their own language, and it seems somehow as if we

understood each other perfectly. The carriage drives to the handsome,

comfortable, cheerful hotel. We sit down a score at the table; and there

is one foreigner and his wife,--I mean every other man and woman at

dinner are English. As we are close to the sea, and in the midst of

endless canals, we have no fish. We are reminded of dear England by

the noble prices which we pay for wines. I confess I lost my temper

yesterday at Rotterdam, where I had to pay a florin for a bottle of ale

(the water not being drinkable, and country or Bavarian beer not being

genteel enough for the hotel);--I confess, I say, that my fine temper

was ruffled, when the bottle of pale ale turned out to be a pint bottle;

and I meekly told the waiter that I had bought beer at Jerusalem at a

less price. But then Rotterdam is eighteen hours from London, and the

steamer with the passengers and beer comes up to the hotel windows;

whilst to Jerusalem they have to carry the ale on camels' backs from

Beyrout or Jaffa, and through hordes of marauding Arabs, who evidently

don't care for pale ale, though I am told it is not forbidden in the

Koran. Mine would have been very good, but I choked with rage whilst

drinking it. A florin for a bottle, and that bottle having the words

“imperial pint,” in bold relief, on the surface! It was too much. I

intended not to say anything about it; but I MUST speak. A florin a

bottle, and that bottle a pint! Oh, for shame! for shame! I can't cork

down my indignation; I froth up with fury; I am pale with wrath, and

bitter with scorn.

As we drove through the old city at night, how it swarmed and hummed

with life! What a special clatter, crowd, and outcry there was in the

Jewish quarter, where myriads of young ones were trotting about the

fishy street! Why don't they have lamps? We passed by canals seeming

so full that a pailful of water more would overflow the place. The

laquais-de-place calls out the names of the buildings: the town-hall,

the cathedral, the arsenal, the synagogue, the statue of Erasmus.

Get along! WE know the statue of Erasmus well enough. We pass over

drawbridges by canals where thousands of barges are at roost. At

roost--at rest! Shall WE have rest in those bedrooms, those ancient

lofty bedrooms, in that inn where we have to pay a florin for a pint

of pa--psha! at the “New Bath Hotel” on the Boompjes? If this dreary

edifice is the “New Bath,” what must the Old Bath be like? As I feared

to go to bed, I sat in the coffee-room as long as I might; but three

young men were imparting their private adventures to each other with

such freedom and liveliness that I felt I ought not to listen to their

artless prattle. As I put the light out, and felt the bedclothes and

darkness overwhelm me, it was with an awful sense of terror--that sort

of sensation which I should think going down in a diving-bell would

give. Suppose the apparatus goes wrong, and they don't understand your

signal to mount? Suppose your matches miss fire when you wake; when you

WANT them, when you will have to rise in half an hour, and do battle

with the horrid enemy who crawls on you in the darkness? I protest I

never was more surprised than when I woke and beheld the light of dawn.

Indian birds and strange trees were visible on the ancient gilt hangings

of the lofty chamber, and through the windows the Boompjes and the ships

along the quay. We have all read of deserters being brought out, and

made to kneel, with their eyes bandaged, and hearing the word to “Fire”

given I declare I underwent all the terrors of execution that night, and

wonder how I ever escaped unwounded.

But if ever I go to the “Bath Hotel,” Rotterdam, again, I am a Dutchman.

A guilder for a bottle of pale ale, and that bottle a pint! Ah! for

shame--for shame!

MINE EASE IN MINE INN.--Do you object to talk about inns? It always

seems to me to be very good talk. Walter Scott is full of inns. In “Don

Quixote” and “Gil Blas” there is plenty of inn-talk. Sterne, Fielding,

and Smollett constantly speak about them; and, in their travels, the

last two tot up the bill, and describe the dinner quite honestly; whilst

Mr. Sterne becomes sentimental over a cab, and weeps generous tears over

a donkey.

How I admire and wonder at the information in Murray's Handbooks--wonder

how it is got, and admire the travellers who get it. For instance, you

read: Amiens (please select your towns), 60,000 inhabitants. Hotels,

&c.--“Lion d'Or,” good and clean. “Le Lion d'Argent,” so so. “Le Lion

Noir,” bad, dirty, and dear. Now say, there are three travellers--three

inn-inspectors, who are sent forth by Mr. Murray on a great commission,

and who stop at every inn in the world. The eldest goes to the “Lion

d'Or”--capital house, good table-d'hote, excellent wine, moderate

charges. The second commissioner tries the “Silver Lion”--tolerable

house, bed, dinner, bill and so forth. But fancy Commissioner No. 3--the

poor fag, doubtless, and boots of the party. He has to go to the “Lion

Noir.” He knows he is to have a bad dinner--he eats it uncomplainingly.

He is to have bad wine. He swallows it, grinding his wretched teeth, and

aware that he will he unwell in consequence. He knows he is to have a

dirty bed, and what he is to expect there. He pops out the candle. He

sinks into those dingy sheets. He delivers over his body to the nightly

tormentors, he pays an exorbitant bill, and he writes down, “Lion Noir,

bad, dirty, dear.” Next day the commission sets out for Arras, we will

say, and they begin again: “Le Cochon d'Or,” “Le Cochon d'Argent,” “Le

Cochon Noir”--and that is poor Boots's inn, of course. What a life that

poor man must lead! What horrors of dinners he has to go through! What a

hide he must have! And yet not impervious; for unless he is bitten,

how is he to be able to warn others? No: on second thoughts, you will

perceive that he ought to have a very delicate skin. The monsters ought

to troop to him eagerly, and bite him instantaneously and freely, so

that he may be able to warn all future handbook buyers of their danger.

I fancy this man devoting himself to danger, to dirt, to bad dinners, to

sour wine, to damp beds, to midnight agonies, to extortionate bills. I

admire him, I thank him. Think of this champion, who devotes his

body for us--this dauntless gladiator going to do battle alone in the

darkness, with no other armor than a light helmet of cotton, and a

lorica of calico. I pity and honor him. Go, Spartacus! Go, devoted

man--to bleed, to groan, to suffer--and smile in silence as the wild

beasts assail thee!

How did I come into this talk? I protest it was the word inn set

me off--and here is one, the “Hotel de Belle Vue,” at the Hague, as

comfortable, as handsome, as cheerful as any I ever took mine ease in.

And the Bavarian beer, my dear friend, how good and brisk and light it

is! Take another glass--it refreshes and does not stupefy--and then we

will sally out, and see the town and the park and the pictures.

The prettiest little brick city, the pleasantest little park to ride in,

the neatest comfortable people walking about, the canals not unsweet,

and busy and picturesque with old-world life. Rows upon rows of houses,

built with the neatest little bricks, with windows fresh painted, and

tall doors polished, and carved to a nicety. What a pleasant spacious

garden our inn has, all sparkling with autumn flowers and bedizened

with statues! At the end is a row of trees, and a summer-house, over the

canal, where you might go and smoke a pipe with Mynheer Van Dunck, and

quite cheerfully catch the ague. Yesterday, as we passed, they were

making hay, and stacking it in a barge which was lying by the meadow,

handy. Round about Kensington Palace there are houses, roofs, chimneys,

and bricks like these. I feel that a Dutchman is a man and a brother. It

is very funny to read the newspaper, one can understand it somehow. Sure

it is the neatest, gayest little city--scores and hundreds of mansions

looking like Cheyne Walk, or the ladies' schools about Chiswick and

Hackney.

LE GROS LOT.--To a few lucky men the chance befalls of reaching fame at

once, and (if it is of any profit morituro) retaining the admiration

of the world. Did poor Oliver, when he was at Leyden yonder, ever

think that he should paint a little picture which should secure him the

applause and pity of all Europe for a century after? He and Sterne drew

the twenty thousand prize of fame. The latter had splendid instalments

during his lifetime. The ladies pressed round him; the wits admired him,

the fashion hailed the successor of Rabelais. Goldsmith's little gem was

hardly so valued until later days. Their works still form the wonder and

delight of the lovers of English art; and the pictures of the Vicar and

Uncle Toby are among the masterpieces of our English school. Here in

the Hague Gallery is Paul Potter's pale, eager face, and yonder is the

magnificent work by which the young fellow achieved his fame. How did

you, so young, come to paint so well? What hidden power lay in that

weakly lad that enabled him to achieve such a wonderful victory? Could

little Mozart, when he was five years old, tell you how he came to play

those wonderful sonatas? Potter was gone out of the world before he was

thirty, but left this prodigy (and I know not how many more specimens of

his genius and skill) behind him. The details of this admirable picture

are as curious as the effect is admirable and complete. The weather

being unsettled, and clouds and sunshine in the gusty sky, we saw in our

little tour numberless Paul Potters--the meadows streaked with sunshine

and spotted with the cattle, the city twinkling in the distance, the

thunderclouds glooming overhead. Napoleon carried off the picture (vide

Murray) amongst the spoils of his bow and spear to decorate his triumph

of the Louvre. If I were a conquering prince, I would have this picture

certainly, and the Raphael “Madonna” from Dresden, and the Titian

“Assumption” from Venice, and that matchless Rembrandt of the

“Dissection.” The prostrate nations would howl with rage as my gendarmes

took off the pictures, nicely packed, and addressed to “Mr. the Director

of my Imperial Palace of the Louvre, at Paris. This side uppermost.” The

Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Italians, &c., should be free to come and

visit my capital, and bleat with tears before the pictures torn from

their native cities. Their ambassadors would meekly remonstrate, and

with faded grins make allusions to the feeling of despair occasioned by

the absence of the beloved works of art. Bah! I would offer them a

pinch of snuff out of my box as I walked along my gallery, with their

Excellencies cringing after me. Zenobia was a fine woman and a queen,

but she had to walk in Aurelian's triumph. The procede was peu delicat?

En usez vous, mon cher monsieur! (The marquis says the “Macaba” is

delicious.) What a splendor of color there is in that cloud! What a

richness, what a freedom of handling, and what a marvellous precision!

I trod upon your Excellency's corn?--a thousand pardons. His Excellency

grins and declares that he rather likes to have his corns trodden on.

Were you ever very angry with Soult--about that Murillo which we have

bought? The veteran loved that picture because it saved the life of

a fellow-creature--the fellow-creature who hid it, and whom the Duke

intended to hang unless the picture was forthcoming.

We gave several thousand pounds for it--how many thousand? About its

merit is a question of taste which we will not here argue. If you choose

to place Murillo in the first class of painters, founding his claim upon

these Virgin altar-pieces, I am your humble servant. Tom Moore painted

altar-pieces as well as Milton, and warbled Sacred Songs and Loves of

the Angels after his fashion. I wonder did Watteau ever try historical

subjects? And as for Greuze, you know that his heads will fetch 1,000L.,

1,500L., 2,000L.--as much as a Sevres “cabaret” of Rose du Barri. If

cost price is to be your criterion of worth, what shall we say to that

little receipt for 10L. for the copyright of “Paradise Lost,” which used

to hang in old Mr. Rogers's room? When living painters, as frequently

happens in our days, see their pictures sold at auctions for four or

five times the sums which they originally received, are they enraged

or elated? A hundred years ago the state of the picture-market was

different: that dreary old Italian stock was much higher than

at present; Rembrandt himself, a close man, was known to be in

difficulties. If ghosts are fond of money still, what a wrath his must

be at the present value of his works!

The Hague Rembrandt is the greatest and grandest of all his pieces to

my mind. Some of the heads are as sweetly and lightly painted as

Gainsborough; the faces not ugly, but delicate and high-bred; the

exquisite gray tones are charming to mark and study; the heads not

plastered, but painted with a free, liquid brush: the result, one of the

great victories won by this consummate chief, and left for the wonder

and delight of succeeding ages.

The humblest volunteer in the ranks of art, who has served a campaign

or two ever so ingloriously, has at least this good fortune of

understanding, or fancying he is able to understand, how the battle

has been fought, and how the engaged general won it. This is the

Rhinelander's most brilliant achievement--victory along the whole line.

The “Night-watch” at Amsterdam is magnificent in parts, but on the

side to the spectator's right, smoky and dim. The “Five Masters of the

Drapers” is wonderful for depth, strength, brightness, massive power.

What words are these to express a picture! to describe a description!

I once saw a moon riding in the sky serenely, attended by her

sparkling maids of honor, and a little lady said, with an air of great

satisfaction, “I MUST SKETCH IT.” Ah, my dear lady, if with an H.B.,

a Bristol board, and a bit of india-rubber, you can sketch the starry

firmament on high, and the moon in her glory, I make you my compliment!

I can't sketch “The Five Drapers” with any ink or pen at present at

command--but can look with all my eyes, and be thankful to have seen

such a masterpiece.

They say he was a moody, ill-conditioned man, the old tenant of the

mill. What does he think of the “Vander Helst” which hangs opposite his

“Night-watch,” and which is one of the great pictures of the world? It

is not painted by so great a man as Rembrandt; but there it is--to see

it is an event of your life. Having beheld it you have lived in the year

1648, and celebrated the treaty of Munster. You have shaken the hands

of the Dutch Guardsmen, eaten from their platters, drunk their Rhenish,

heard their jokes, as they wagged their jolly beards. The Amsterdam

Catalogue discourses thus about it:--a model catalogue: it gives you the

prices paid, the signatures of the painters, a succinct description of

the work.

“This masterpiece represents a banquet of the civic guard, which took

place on the 18th June, 1648, in time great hall of the St. Joris Doele,

on the Singel at Amsterdam, to celebrate the conclusion of the Peace

at Munster. The thirty-five figures composing the picture are all

portraits.

“'The Captain WITSE' is placed at the head of the table, and attracts

our attention first. He is dressed in black velvet, his breast covered

with a cuirass, on his head a broad-brimmed black hat with white plumes.

He is comfortably seated on a chair of black oak, with a velvet cushion,

and holds in his left hand, supported on his knee, a magnificent

drinking-horn, surrounded by a St. George destroying the dragon, and

ornamented with olive-leaves. The captain's features express cordiality

and good-humor; he is grasping the hand of 'Lieutenant VAN WAVERN'

seated near him, in a habit of dark gray, with lace and buttons of

gold, lace-collar and wristbands, his feet crossed, with boots of yellow

leather, with large tops, and gold spurs, on his head a black hat and

dark-brown plumes. Behind him at the centre of the picture, is the

standard-bearer, 'JACOB BANNING,' in an easy martial attitude, hat in

hand, his right hand on his chair, his right leg on his left knee. He

holds the flag of blue silk, in which the Virgin is embroidered, (such a

silk! such a flag! such a piece of painting!) emblematic of the town

of Amsterdam. The banner covers his shoulder, and he looks towards the

spectator frankly and complacently.

“The man behind him is probably one of the sergeants. His head is bare.

He wears a cuirass, and yellow gloves, gray stockings, and boots with

large tops, and kneecaps of cloth. He has a napkin on his knees, and

in his hand a piece of ham, a slice of bread, and a knife. The old man

behind is probably 'WILLIAM THE DRUMMER.' He has his hat in his right

hand, and in his left a gold-footed wineglass, filled with white wine.

He wears a red scarf, and a black satin doublet, with little slashes of

yellow silk. Behind the drummer, two matchlock-men are seated at the

end of the table. One in a large black habit, a napkin on his knee, a

hausse-col of iron, and a linen scarf and collar. He is eating with his

knife. The other holds a long glass of white wine. Four musketeers, with

different shaped hats, are behind these, one holding a glass, the three

others with their guns on their shoulders. Other guests are placed

between the personage who is giving the toast and the standard-bearer.

One with his hat off, and his hand uplifted, is talking to another. The

second is carving a fowl. A third holds a silver plate; and another, in

the background, a silver flagon, from which he fills a cup. The corner

behind the captain is filled by two seated personages, one of whom is

peeling an orange. Two others are standing, armed with halberts, of whom

one holds a plumed hat. Behind him are other three individuals, one of

them holding a pewter pot, on which the name 'Poock,' the landlord of

the 'Hotel Doele,' is engraved. At the back, a maid-servant is coming in

with a pasty, crowned with a turkey. Most of the guests are listening

to the captain. From an open window in the distance, the facades of two

houses are seen, surmounted by stone figures of sheep.”

There, now you know all about it: now you can go home and paint just

such another. If you do, do pray remember to paint the hands of the

figures as they are here depicted; they are as wonderful portraits as

the faces. None of your slim Van Dyck elegancies, which have done duty

at the cuffs of so many doublets; but each man with a hand for himself,

as with a face for himself. I blushed for the coarseness of one of the

chiefs in this great company, that fellow behind “WILLIAM THE DRUMMER,”

splendidly attired, sitting full in the face of the public; and holding

a pork-bone in his hand. Suppose the Saturday Review critic were to

come suddenly on this picture? Ah! what a shock it would give that noble

nature! Why is that knuckle of pork not painted out? at any rate, why

is not a little fringe of lace painted round it? or a cut pink paper?

or couldn't a smelling-bottle be painted in instead, with a crest and a

gold top, or a cambric pocket-handkerchief, in lieu of the horrid pig,

with a pink coronet in the corner? or suppose you covered the man's hand

(which is very coarse and strong), and gave him the decency of a kid

glove? But a piece of pork in a naked hand? O nerves and eau de Cologne,

hide it, hide it!

In spite of this lamentable coarseness, my noble sergeant, give me thy

hand as nature made it! A great, and famous, and noble handiwork I have

seen here. Not the greatest picture in the world--not a work of the

highest genius--but a performance so great, various, and admirable,

so shrewd of humor, so wise of observation, so honest and complete of

expression, that to have seen it has been a delight, and to remember

it will be a pleasure for days to come. Well done, Bartholomeus Vander

Helst! Brave, meritorious, victorious, happy Bartholomew, to whom it has

been given to produce a masterpiece!

May I take off my hat and pay a respectful compliment to Jan Steen,

Esq.? He is a glorious composer. His humor is as frank as Fielding's.

Look at his own figure sitting in the window-sill yonder, and roaring

with laughter! What a twinkle in the eyes! what a mouth it is for a

song, or a joke, or a noggin! I think the composition in some of Jan's

pictures amounts to the sublime, and look at them with the same delight

and admiration which I have felt before works of the very highest style.

This gallery is admirable--and the city in which the gallery is, is

perhaps even more wonderful and curious to behold than the gallery.

The first landing at Calais (or, I suppose, on any foreign shore)--the

first sight of an Eastern city--the first view of Venice--and this

of Amsterdam, are among the delightful shocks which I have had as a

traveller. Amsterdam is as good as Venice, with a superadded humor and

grotesqueness, which gives the sight-seer the most singular zest and

pleasure. A run through Pekin I could hardly fancy to be more odd,

strange, and yet familiar. This rush, and crowd, and prodigious

vitality; this immense swarm of life; these busy waters, crowding

barges, swinging drawbridges, piled ancient gables, spacious markets

teeming with people; that ever-wonderful Jews' quarter; that dear

old world of painting and the past, yet alive, and throbbing, and

palpable--actual, and yet passing before you swiftly and strangely as a

dream! Of the many journeys of this Roundabout life, that drive through

Amsterdam is to be specially and gratefully remembered. You have never

seen the palace of Amsterdam, my dear sir? Why, there's a marble hall in

that palace that will frighten you as much as any hall in Vathek, or a

nightmare. At one end of that old, cold, glassy, glittering, ghostly,

marble hall there stands a throne, on which a white marble king ought to

sit with his white legs gleaming down into the white marble below, and

his white eyes looking at a great white marble Atlas, who bears on his

icy shoulders a blue globe as big as the full moon. If he were not a

genie, and enchanted, and with a strength altogether hyperatlantean, he

would drop the moon with a shriek on to the white marble floor, and it

would splitter into perdition. And the palace would rock, and heave,

and tumble; and the waters would rise, rise, rise; and the gables

sink, sink, sink; and the barges would rise up to the chimneys; and the

water-souchee fishes would flap over the Boompjes, where the pigeons and

storks used to perch; and the Amster, and the Rotter, and the Saar, and

the Op, and all the dams of Holland would burst, and the Zuyder Zee roll

over the dykes; and you would wake out of your dream, and find yourself

sitting in your arm-chair.

Was it a dream? it seems like one. Have we been to Holland? have we

heard the chimes at midnight at Antwerp? Were we really away for a week,

or have I been sitting up in the room dozing, before this stale old

desk? Here's the desk; yes. But, if it has been a dream, how could I

have learned to hum that tune out of Dinorah? Ah, is it that tune,

or myself that I am humming? If it was a dream, how comes this yellow

NOTICE DES TABLEAUX DU MUSEE D'AMSTERDAM AVEC FACSIMILE DES MONOGRAMMES

before me, and this signature of the gallant

BARTHOLOMEUS VANDER HELST, FECIT Ao, 1648.

Yes, indeed, it was a delightful little holiday; it lasted a whole week.

With the exception of that little pint of amari aliquid at Rotterdam, we

were all very happy. We might have gone on being happy for whoever knows

how many days more? a week more, ten days more: who knows how long that

dear teetotum happiness can be made to spin without toppling over?

But one of the party had desired letters to be sent poste restante,

Amsterdam. The post-office is hard by that awful palace where the Atlas

is, and which we really saw.

There was only one letter, you see. Only one chance of finding us.

There it was. “The post has only this moment come in,” says the

smirking commissioner. And he hands over the paper, thinking he has done

something clever.

Before the letter had been opened, I could read COME BACK, as clearly

as if it had been painted on the wall. It was all over. The spell

was broken. The sprightly little holiday fairy that had frisked and

gambolled so kindly beside us for eight days of sunshine--or rain which

was as cheerful as sunshine--gave a parting piteous look, and whisked

away and vanished. And yonder scuds the postman, and here is the old

desk.

NIL NISI BONUM.

Almost the last words which Sir Walter spoke to Lockhart, his

biographer, were, “Be a good man, my dear!” and with the last flicker of

breath on his dying lips, he sighed a farewell to his family, and passed

away blessing them.

Two men, famous, admired, beloved, have just left us, the Goldsmith and

the Gibbon of our time.* Ere a few weeks are over, many a critic's pen

will be at work, reviewing their lives, and passing judgment on their

works. This is no review, or history, or criticism: only a word in

testimony of respect and regard from a man of letters, who owes to his

own professional labor the honor of becoming acquainted with these two

eminent literary men. One was the first ambassador whom the New World of

Letters sent to the Old. He was born almost with the republic; the pater

patriae had laid his hand on the child's head. He bore Washington's

name: he came amongst us bringing the kindest sympathy, the most

artless, smiling goodwill. His new country (which some people here might

be disposed to regard rather superciliously) could send us, as he showed

in his own person, a gentleman, who, though himself born in no very high

sphere, was most finished, polished, easy, witty, quiet; and, socially,

the equal of the most refined Europeans. If Irving's welcome in England

was a kind one, was it not also gratefully remembered? If he ate our

salt, did he not pay us with a thankful heart? Who can calculate the

amount of friendliness and good feeling for our country which this

writer's generous and untiring regard for us disseminated in his own?

His books are read by millions** of his countrymen, whom he has taught

to love England, and why to love her. It would have been easy to speak

otherwise than he did: to inflame national rancors, which, at the time

when he first became known as a public writer, war had just renewed: to

cry down the old civilization at the expense of the new: to point out

our faults, arrogance, short-comings, and give the republic to infer how

much she was the parent state's superior. There are writers enough

in the United States, honest and otherwise, who preach that kind of

doctrine. But the good Irving, the peaceful, the friendly, had no place

for bitterness in his heart, and no scheme but kindness. Received in

England with extraordinary tenderness and friendship (Scott, Southey,

Byron, a hundred others have borne witness to their liking for him),

he was a messenger of good-will and peace between his country and ours.

“See, friends!” he seems to say, “these English are not so wicked,

rapacious, callous, proud, as you have been taught to believe them. I

went amongst them a humble man; won my way by my pen; and, when known,

found every hand held out to me with kindliness and welcome. Scott is a

great man, you acknowledge. Did not Scott's King of England give a gold

medal to him, and another to me, your countryman, and a stranger?”

* Washington Irving died, November 28, 1859; Lord Macaulay

died, December 28, 1859.

** See his Life in the most remarkable Dictionary of

Authors, published lately at Philadelphia, by Mr. Allibone.

Tradition in the United States still fondly retains the history of the

feasts and rejoicings which awaited Irving on his return to his native

country from Europe. He had a national welcome; he stammered in his

speeches, hid himself in confusion, and the people loved him all the

better. He had worthily represented America in Europe. In that young

community a man who brings home with him abundant European testimonials

is still treated with respect (I have found American writers, of

wide-world reputation, strangely solicitous about the opinions of quite

obscure British critics, and elated or depressed by their judgments);

and Irving went home medalled by the King, diplomatized by the

University, crowned and honored and admired. He had not in any way

intrigued for his honors, he had fairly won them; and, in Irving's

instance, as in others, the old country was glad and eager to pay them.

In America the love and regard for Irving was a national sentiment.

Party wars are perpetually raging there, and are carried on by the press

with a rancor and fierceness against individuals which exceed British,

almost Irish, virulence. It seemed to me, during a year's travel in the

country, as if no one ever aimed a blow at Irving. All men held their

hand from that harmless, friendly peacemaker. I had the good fortune

to see him at New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington,* and

remarked how in every place he was honored and welcome. Every large city

has its “Irving House.” The country takes pride in the fame of its men

of letters. The gate of his own charming little domain on the beautiful

Hudson River was for ever swinging before visitors who came to him.

He shut out no one.** I had seen many pictures of his house, and read

descriptions of it, in both of which it was treated with a not unusual

American exaggeration. It was but a pretty little cabin of a place; the

gentleman of the press who took notes of the place, whilst his kind old

host was sleeping, might have visited the whole house in a couple of

minutes.

* At Washington, Mr. Irving came to a lecture given by the

writer, which Mr. Filmore and General Pierce, the President

and President Elect, were also kind enough to attend

together. “Two Kings of Brentford smelling at one rose,”

says Irving, looking up with his good-humored smile.

** Mr. Irving described to me, with that humor and good-

humor which he always kept, how, amongst other visitors, a

member of the British press who had carried his

distinguished pen to America (where he employed it in

vilifying his own country) came to Sunnyside, introduced

himself to Irving, partook of his wine and luncheon, and in

two days described Mr. Irving, his house, his nieces, his

meal, and his manner of dozing afterwards, in a New York

paper. On another occasion, Irving said, laughing, “Two

persons came to me, and one held me in conversation whilst

the other miscreant took my portrait!”

And how came it that this house was so small, when Mr. Irving's books

were sold by hundreds of thousands, nay, millions, when his profits were

known to be large, and the habits of life of the good old bachelor were

notoriously modest and simple? He had loved once in his life. The lady

he loved died; and he, whom all the world loved, never sought to replace

her. I can't say how much the thought of that fidelity has touched me.

Does not the very cheerfulness of his after life add to the pathos of

that untold story? To grieve always was not in his nature; or, when he

had his sorrow, to bring all the world in to condole with him and bemoan

it. Deep and quiet he lays the love of his heart, and buries it; and

grass and flowers grow over the scarred ground in due time.

Irving had such a small house and such narrow rooms, because there was a

great number of people to occupy them. He could only afford to keep one

old horse (which, lazy and aged as it was, managed once or twice to

run away with that careless old horseman). He could only afford to give

plain sherry to that amiable British paragraph-monger from New York, who

saw the patriarch asleep over his modest, blameless cup, and fetched the

public into his private chamber to look at him. Irving could only live

very modestly, because the wifeless, childless man had a number of

children to whom he was as a father. He had as many as nine nieces, I am

told--I saw two of these ladies at his house--with all of whom the dear

old man had shared the produce of his labor and genius.

“Be a good man, my dear.” One can't but think of these last words of the

veteran Chief of Letters, who had tasted and tested the value of worldly

success, admiration, prosperity. Was Irving not good, and, of his

works, was not his life the best part? In his family, gentle, generous,

good-humored, affectionate, self-denying: in society, a delightful

example of complete gentlemanhood; quite unspoiled by prosperity; never

obsequious to the great (or, worse still, to the base and mean, as

some public men are forced to be in his and other countries) eager to

acknowledge every contemporary's merit; always kind and affable to

the young members of his calling; in his professional bargains and

mercantile dealings delicately honest and grateful; one of the most

charming masters of our lighter language; the constant friend to us and

our nation; to men of letters doubly dear, not for his wit and genius

merely, but as an exemplar of goodness, probity, and pure life:--I don't

know what sort of testimonial will be raised to him in his own country,

where generous and enthusiastic acknowledgment of American merit is

never wanting: but Irving was in our service as well as theirs; and as

they have placed a stone at Greenwich yonder in memory of that gallant

young Bellot, who shared the perils and fate of some of our Arctic

seamen, I would like to hear of some memorial raised by English writers

and friends of letters in affectionate remembrance of the dear and good

Washington Irving.

As for the other writer, whose departure many friends, some few most

dearly-loved relatives, and multitudes of admiring readers deplore, our

republic has already decreed his statue, and he must have known that he

had earned this posthumous honor. He is not a poet and man of letters

merely, but citizen, statesman, a great British worthy. Almost from the

first moment when he appears, amongst boys, amongst college students,

amongst men, he is marked, and takes rank as a great Englishman. All

sorts of successes are easy to him: as a lad he goes down into the arena

with others, and wins all the prizes to which he has a mind. A place in

the senate is straightway offered to the young man. He takes his seat

there; he speaks, when so minded, without party anger or intrigue, but

not without party faith and a sort of heroic enthusiasm for his cause.

Still he is poet and philosopher even more than orator. That he may have

leisure and means to pursue his darling studies, he absents himself for

a while, and accepts a richly-remunerative post in the East. As learned

a man may live in a cottage or a college common-room; but it always

seemed to me that ample means and recognized rank were Macaulay's as of

right. Years ago there was a wretched outcry raised because Mr. Macaulay

dated a letter from Windsor Castle, where he was staying. Immortal

gods! Was this man not a fit guest for any palace in the world? or a fit

companion for any man or woman in it? I dare say, after Austerlitz, the

old K. K. court officials and footmen sneered at Napoleon for dating

from Schonbrunn. But that miserable “Windsor Castle” outcry is an echo

out of fast-retreating old-world remembrances. The place of such a

natural chief was amongst the first of the land; and that country

is best, according to our British notion at least, where the man of

eminence has the best chance of investing his genius and intellect.

If a company of giants were got together, very likely one or two of the

mere six-feet-six people might be angry at the incontestable superiority

of the very tallest of the party; and so I have heard some London wits,

rather peevish at Macaulay's superiority, complain that he occupied too

much of the talk, and so forth. Now that wonderful tongue is to speak

no more, will not many a man grieve that he no longer has the chance

to listen? To remember the talk is to wonder: to think not only of the

treasures he had in his memory, but of the trifles he had stored there,

and could produce with equal readiness. Almost on the last day I had the

fortune to see him, a conversation happened suddenly to spring up about

senior wranglers, and what they had done in after life. To the almost

terror of the persons present, Macaulay began with the senior wrangler

of 1801-2- 3-4, and so on, giving the name of each, and relating his

subsequent career and rise. Every man who has known him has his story

regarding that astonishing memory. It may be that he was not ill pleased

that you should recognize it; but to those prodigious intellectual

feats, which were so easy to him, who would grudge his tribute of

homage? His talk was, in a word, admirable, and we admired it.

Of the notices which have appeared regarding Lord Macaulay, up to the

day when the present lines are written (the 9th of January), the reader

should not deny himself the pleasure of looking especially at two. It

is a good sign of the times when such articles as these (I mean the

articles in The times and Saturday Review) appear in our public prints

about our public men. They educate us, as it were, to admire rightly.

An uninstructed person in a museum or at a concert may pass by without

recognizing a picture or a passage of music, which the connoisseur

by his side may show him is a masterpiece of harmony, or a wonder of

artistic skill. After reading these papers you like and respect more

the person you have admired so much already. And so with regard to

Macaulay's style there may be faults of course--what critic can't point

them out? But for the nonce we are not talking about faults: we want to

say nil nisi bonum. Well--take at hazard any three pages of the “Essays”

or “History;”--and, glimmering below the stream of the narrative, as

it were, you, an average reader, see one, two, three, a half-score of

allusions to other historic facts, characters, literature, poetry,

with which you are acquainted. Why is this epithet used? Whence is that

simile drawn? How does he manage, in two or three words, to paint an

individual, or to indicate a landscape? Your neighbor, who has HIS

reading, and his little stock of literature stowed away in his mind,

shall detect more points, allusions, happy touches, indicating not

only the prodigious memory and vast learning of this master, but the

wonderful industry, the honest, humble previous toil of this great

scholar. He reads twenty books to write a sentence; he travels a hundred

miles to make a line of description.

Many Londoners--not all--have seen the British Museum Library. I speak

a coeur ouvert, and pray the kindly reader to bear with me. I have

seen all sorts of domes of Peters and Pauls, Sophia, Pantheon,--what

not?--and have been struck by none of them so much as by that catholic

dome in Bloomsbury, under which our million volumes are housed. What

peace, what love, what truth, what beauty, what happiness for all, what

generous kindness for you and me, are here spread out! It seems to

me one cannot sit down in that place without a heart full of grateful

reverence. I own to have said my grace at the table, and to have thanked

heaven for this my English birthright, freely to partake of these

bountiful books, and to speak the truth I find there. Under the dome

which held Macaulay's brain, and from which his solemn eyes looked

out on the world but a fortnight since, what a vast, brilliant, and

wonderful store of learning was ranged! what strange lore would he not

fetch for you at your bidding! A volume of law, or history, a book of

poetry familiar or forgotten (except by himself who forgot nothing),

a novel ever so old, and he had it at hand. I spoke to him once about

“Clarissa.” “Not read 'Clarissa!'” he cried out. “If you have once

thoroughly entered on 'Clarissa' and are infected by it, you can't leave

it. When I was in India I passed one hot season at the hills, and there

were the Governor-General, and the Secretary of Government, and the

Commander-in-Chief, and their wives. I had 'Clarissa' with me: and,

as soon as they began to read, the whole station was in a passion of

excitement about Miss Harlowe and her misfortunes, and her scoundrelly

Lovelace! The Governor's wife seized the book, and the Secretary waited

for it, and the Chief Justice could not read it for tears!” He acted the

whole scene: he paced up and down the “Athenaeum” library: I dare say he

could have spoken pages of the book--of that book, and of what countless

piles of others!

In this little paper let us keep to the text of nil nisi bonum. One

paper I have read regarding Lord Macaulay says “he had no heart.” Why,

a man's books may not always speak the truth, but they speak his mind in

spite of himself: and it seems to me this man's heart is beating through

every page he penned. He is always in a storm of revolt and indignation

against wrong, craft, tyranny. How he cheers heroic resistance; how

he backs and applauds freedom struggling for its own; how he hates

scoundrels, ever so victorious and successful; how he recognizes genius,

though selfish villains possess it! The critic who says Macaulay had no

heart, might say that Johnson had none: and two men more generous, and

more loving, and more hating, and more partial, and more noble, do not

live in our history. Those who knew Lord Macaulay knew how admirably

tender and generous,* and affectionate he was. It was not his business

to bring his family before the theatre footlights, and call for bouquets

from the gallery as he wept over them.

* Since the above was written, I have been informed that it

has been found, on examining Lord Macaulay's papers, that he

was in the habit of giving away MORE THAN A FOURTH PART of

his annual income.

If any young man of letters reads this little sermon--and to him,

indeed, it is addressed--I would say to him, “Bear Scott's words in your

mind, and 'be good, my dear.'” Here are two literary men gone to their

account, and, laus Deo, as far as we know, it is fair, and open, and

clean. Here is no need of apologies for shortcomings, or explanations of

vices which would have been virtues but for unavoidable &c. Here are two

examples of men most differently gifted: each pursuing his calling; each

speaking his truth as God bade him; each honest in his life; just and

irreproachable in his dealings; dear to his friends; honored by his

country; beloved at his fireside. It has been the fortunate lot of both

to give incalculable happiness and delight to the world, which thanks

them in return with an immense kindliness, respect, affection. It may

not be our chance, brother scribe, to be endowed with such merit, or

rewarded with such fame. But the rewards of these men are rewards paid

to OUR SERVICE. We may not win the baton or epaulettes; but God give us

strength to guard the honor of the flag!

ON HALF A LOAF.

A LETTER TO MESSRS. BROADWAY, BATTERY AND CO., OF NEW YORK, BANKERS.

Is it all over? May we lock up the case of instruments? Have we signed

our wills; settled up our affairs; pretended to talk and rattle quite

cheerfully to the women at dinner, so that they should not be alarmed;

sneaked away under some pretext, and looked at the children sleeping in

their beds with their little unconscious thumbs in their months, and a

flush on the soft-pillowed cheek; made every arrangement with Colonel

MacTurk, who acts as our second, and knows the other principal a great

deal too well to think he will ever give in; invented a monstrous

figment about going to shoot pheasants with Mac in the morning, so as to

soothe the anxious fears of the dear mistress of the house; early as the

hour appointed for the--the little affair--was, have we been awake hours

and hours sooner; risen before daylight, with a faint hope, perhaps,

that MacTurk might have come to some arrangement with the other side;

at seven o'clock (confound his punctuality!) heard his cab-wheel at

the door, and let him in looking perfectly trim, fresh, jolly, and

well shaved; driven off with him in the cold morning, after a very

unsatisfactory breakfast of coffee and stale bread-and-butter (which

choke, somehow, in the swallowing); driven off to Wormwood Scrubs in the

cold, muddy, misty, moonshiny morning; stepped out of the cab, where Mac

has bid the man to halt on a retired spot in the common; in one minute

more, seen another cab arrive, from which descend two gentlemen, one of

whom has a case like MacTurk's under his arm;--looked round and round

the solitude, and seen not one single sign of a policeman--no, no more

than in a row in London;--deprecated the horrible necessity which drives

civilized men to the use of powder and bullet;--taken ground as firmly

as may be, and looked on whilst Mac is neatly loading his weapons; and

when all ready, and one looked for the decisive One, Two, Three--have we

even heard Captain O'Toole (the second of the other principal) walk up,

and say: “Colonel MacTurk, I am desired by my principal to declare at

this eleventh--this twelfth hour, that he is willing to own that he sees

HE HAS BEEN WRONG in the dispute which has arisen between him and your

friend; that he apologizes for offensive expressions which he has used

in the heat of the quarrel; and regrets the course he has taken?” If

something like this has happened to you, however great your courage, you

have been glad not to fight;--however accurate your aim, you have been

pleased not to fire.

On the sixth day of January in this year sixty-two, what hundreds of

thousands--I may say, what millions of Englishmen, were in the position

of the personage here sketched--Christian men, I hope, shocked at the

dreadful necessity of battle: aware of the horrors which the conflict

must produce, and yet feeling that the moment was come, and that

there was no arbitrament left but that of steel and cannon! My reader,

perhaps, has been in America. If he has, he knows what good people

are to be found there; how polished, how generous, how gentle, how

courteous. But it is not the voices of these you hear in the roar of

hate, defiance, folly, falsehood, which comes to us across the Atlantic.

You can't hear gentle voices; very many who could speak are afraid.

Men must go forward, or be crushed by the maddened crowd behind them.

I suppose after the perpetration of that act of--what shall we call

it?--of sudden war, which Wilkes did, and Everett approved, most of

us believed that battle was inevitable. Who has not read the American

papers for six weeks past? Did you ever think the United States

Government would give up those Commissioners? I never did, for my

part. It seems to me the United States Government have done the most

courageous act of the war. Before that act was done, what an excitement

prevailed in London! In every Club there was a parliament sitting in

permanence: in every domestic gathering this subject was sure to form

a main part of the talk. Of course I have seen many people who have

travelled in America, and heard them on this matter--friends of the

South, friends of the North, friends of peace, and American stockholders

in plenty.--“They will never give up the men, sir,” that was the opinion

on all sides; and, if they would not, we knew what was to happen.

For weeks past this nightmare of war has been riding us. The City was

already gloomy enough. When a great domestic grief and misfortune visits

the chief person of the State, the heart of the people, too, is sad and

awe-stricken. It might be this sorrow and trial were but presages of

greater trials and sorrow to come. What if the sorrow of war is to be

added to the other calamity? Such forebodings have formed the theme of

many a man's talk, and darkened many a fireside. Then came the rapid

orders for ships to arm and troops to depart. How many of us have had to

say farewell to friends whom duty called away with their regiments; on

whom we strove to look cheerfully, as we shook their hands, it might be

for the last time; and whom our thoughts depicted, treading the snows

of the immense Canadian frontier, where their intrepid little band

might have to face the assaults of other enemies than winter and rough

weather! I went to a play one night, and protest I hardly know what was

the entertainment which passed before my eyes. In the next stall was an

American gentleman, who knew me. “Good heavens, sir,” I thought, “is it

decreed that you and I are to be authorized to murder each other next

week; that my people shall be bombarding your cities, destroying your

navies, making a hideous desolation of your coast; that our peaceful

frontier shall be subject to fire, rapine, and murder?” “They will never

give up the men,” said the Englishman. “They will never give up the

men,” said the American. And the Christmas piece which the actors were

playing proceeded like a piece in a dream. To make the grand comic

performance doubly comic, my neighbor presently informed me how one of

the best friends I had in America--the most hospitable, kindly, amiable

of men, from whom I had twice received the warmest welcome and the most

delightful hospitality--was a prisoner in Fort Warren, on charges by

which his life perhaps might be risked. I think that was the most dismal

Christmas fun which these eyes ever looked on.

Carry out that notion a little farther, and depict ten thousand, a

hundred thousand homes in England saddened by the thought of the coming

calamity, and oppressed by the pervading gloom. My next-door neighbor

perhaps has parted with her son. Now the ship in which he is, with a

thousand brave comrades, is ploughing through the stormy midnight ocean.

Presently (under the flag we know of) the thin red line in which her

boy forms a speck, is winding its way through the vast Canadian snows.

Another neighbor's boy is not gone, but is expecting orders to sail;

and some one else, besides the circle at home maybe, is in prayer and

terror, thinking of the summons which calls the young sailor away. By

firesides modest and splendid, all over the three kingdoms, that sorrow

is keeping watch, and myriads of hearts beating with that thought, “Will

they give up the men?”

I don't know how, on the first day after the capture of the Southern

Commissioners was announced, a rumor got abroad in London that the

taking of the men was an act according to law, of which our nation could

take no notice. It was said that the law authorities had so declared,

and a very noble testimony to the LOYALTY of Englishmen, I think, was

shown by the instant submission of high-spirited gentlemen, most keenly

feeling that the nation had been subject to a coarse outrage, who were

silent when told that the law was with the aggressor. The relief which

presently came, when, after a pause of a day, we found that law was on

our side, was indescribable. The nation MIGHT then take notice of this

insult to its honor. Never were people more eager than ours when they

found they had a right to reparation.

I have talked during the last week with many English holders of American

securities, who, of course, have been aware of the threat held over

them. “England,” says the New York Herald, “cannot afford to go to war

with us, for six hundred millions' worth of American stock is owned by

British subjects, which, in event of hostilities, would be confiscated;

and we now call upon the Companies not to take it off their hands on any

terms. Let its forfeiture be held over England as a weapon in terrorem.

British subjects have two or three hundred millions of dollars invested

in shipping and other property in the United States. All this property,

together with the stocks, would be seized, amounting to nine hundred

millions of dollars. Will England incur this tremendous loss for a mere

abstraction?”

Whether “a mere abstraction” here means the abstraction of the two

Southern Commissioners from under our flag or the abstract idea of

injured honor, which seems ridiculous to the Herald, is it needless to

ask. I have spoken with many men who have money invested in the States,

but I declare I have not met one English gentleman whom the publication

of this threat has influenced for a moment. Our people have nine hundred

millions of dollars invested in the United States, have they? And the

Herald “calls upon the Companies” not to take any of this debt off

our hands. Let us, on our side, entreat the English press to give this

announcement every publicity. Let us do everything in our power to make

this “call upon the Americans” well known in England. I hope English

newspaper editors will print it, and print it again and again. It is not

we who say this of American citizens, but American citizens who say

this of themselves. “Bull is odious. We can't bear Bull. He is haughty,

arrogant, a braggart, and a blusterer; and we can't bear brag and

bluster in our modest and decorous country. We hate Bull, and if he

quarrels with us on a point in which we are in the wrong, we have goods

of his in our custody, and we will rob him!” Suppose your London banker

saying to you, “Sir, I have always thought your manners disgusting, and

your arrogance insupportable. You dare to complain of my conduct

because I have wrongfully imprisoned Jones. My answer to your vulgar

interference is, that I confiscate your balance!”

What would be an English merchant's character after a few such

transactions? It is not improbable that the moralists of the Herald

would call him a rascal. Why have the United States been paying seven,

eight, ten per cent for money for years past, when the same commodity

can be got elsewhere at half that rate of interest? Why, because though

among the richest proprietors in the world, creditors were not sure of

them. So the States have had to pay eighty millions yearly for the use

of money which would cost other borrowers but thirty. Add up this item

of extra interest alone for a dozen years, and see what a prodigious

penalty the States have been paying for repudiation here and there, for

sharp practice, for doubtful credit. Suppose the peace is kept between

us, the remembrance of this last threat alone will cost the States

millions and millions more. If they must have money, we must have

a greater interest to insure our jeopardized capital. Do American

Companies want to borrow money--as want to borrow they will? Mr. Brown,

show the gentleman that extract from the New York Herald which declares

that the United States will confiscate private property in the event of

a war. As the country newspapers say, “Please, country papers, copy this

paragraph.” And, gentlemen in America, when the honor of YOUR nation

is called in question, please to remember that it is the American press

which glories in announcing that you are prepared to be rogues.

And when this war has drained uncounted hundreds of millions more out of

the United States exchequer, will they be richer or more inclined to

pay debts, or less willing to evade them, or more popular with their

creditors, or more likely to get money from men whom they deliberately

announce that they will cheat? I have not followed the Herald on the

“stone-ship” question--that great naval victory appears to me not less

horrible and wicked than suicidal. Block the harbors for ever; destroy

the inlets of the commerce of the world; perish cities,--so that we

may wreak an injury on them. It is the talk of madmen, but not the less

wicked. The act injures the whole Republic: but it is perpetrated. It is

to deal harm to ages hence; but it is done. The Indians of old used to

burn women and their unborn children. This stone-ship business is Indian

warfare. And it is performed by men who tell us every week that they

are at the head of civilization, and that the Old World is decrepit, and

cruel, and barbarous as compared to theirs.

The same politicians who throttle commerce at its neck, and threaten to

confiscate trust-money, say that when the war is over, and the South

is subdued, then the turn of the old country will come, and a direful

retribution shall be taken for our conduct. This has been the cry all

through the war. “We should have conquered the South,” says an American

paper which I read this very day, “but for England.” Was there ever such

puling heard from men who have an army of a million, and who turn and

revile a people who have stood as aloof from their contest as we have

from the war of Troy? Or is it an outcry made with malice prepense? And

is the song of the New York Times a variation of the Herald tune?--“The

conduct of the British in folding their arms and taking no part in the

fight, has been so base that it has caused the prolongation of the war,

and occasioned a prodigious expense on our part. Therefore, as we have

British property in our hands, we &c. &c.” The lamb troubled the water

dreadfully, and the wolf, in a righteous indignation, “confiscated” him.

Of course we have heard that at an undisturbed time Great Britain would

never have dared to press its claim for redress. Did the United States

wait until we were at peace with France before they went to war with

us last? Did Mr. Seward yield the claim which he confesses to be just,

until he himself was menaced with war? How long were the Southern

gentlemen kept in prison? What caused them to be set free? and did

the Cabinet of Washington see its error before or after the demand for

redress?* The captor was feasted at Boston, and the captives in prison

hard by. If the wrong-doer was to be punished, it was Captain Wilkes

who ought to have gone into limbo. At any rate, as “the Cabinet of

Washington could not give its approbation to the commander of the 'San

Jacinto,'” why were the men not sooner set free? To sit at the

Tremont House, and hear the captain after dinner give his opinion on

international law, would have been better sport for the prisoners than

the grim salle-a-manger at Fort Warren.

* “At the beginning of December the British fleet on the

West Indian station mounted 850 guns, and comprised five

liners, ten first-class frigates, and seventeen powerful

corvettes. . . . In little more than a month the fleet

available for operations on the American shore had been more

than doubled. The reinforcements prepared at the various

dockyards included two line-of-battle ships, twenty-nine

magnificent frigates--such as the 'Shannon,' the 'Sutlej,'

the 'Euryalus,' the 'Orlando,' the 'Galatea;' eight

corvettes armed like the frigates in part, with 100- and 40-

pounder Armstrong guns; and the two tremendous iron-cased

ships, the 'Warrior' and the 'Black Prince;' and their

smaller sisters the 'Resistance' and the 'Defence.' There

was work to be done which might have delayed the commission

of a few of these ships for some weeks longer; but if the

United States had chosen war instead of peace, the blockade

of their coasts would have been supported by a steam fleet

of more than sixty splendid ships, armed with 1,800 guns,

many of them of the heaviest and most effective kind.”--

Saturday Review: Jan. 11.

I read in the commercial news brought by the “Teutonia,” and published

in London on the present 13th January, that the pork market was

generally quiet on the 29th December last; that lard, though with more

activity, was heavy and decidedly lower; and at Philadelphia, whiskey

is steady and stocks firm. Stocks are firm: that is a comfort for the

English holders, and the confiscating process recommended by the Herald

is at least deferred. But presently comes an announcement which is not

quite so cheering:--“The Saginaw Central Railway Company (let us call

it) has postponed its January dividend on account of the disturbed

condition of public affairs.”

A la bonne heure. The bond- and share-holders of the Saginaw must look

for loss and depression in times of war. This is one of war's dreadful

taxes and necessities; and all sorts of innocent people must suffer by

the misfortune. The corn was high at Waterloo when a hundred and fifty

thousand men came and trampled it down on a Sabbath morning. There was

no help for that calamity, and the Belgian farmers lost their crops for

the year. Perhaps I am a farmer myself--an innocent colonus; and instead

of being able to get to church with my family, have to see squadrons

of French dragoons thundering upon my barley, and squares of English

infantry forming and trampling all over my oats. (By the way, in writing

of “Panics,” an ingenious writer in the Atlantic Magazine says that the

British panics at Waterloo were frequent and notorious.) Well, I am

a Belgian peasant, and I see the British running away and the French

cutting the fugitives down. What have I done that these men should be

kicking down my peaceful harvest for me, on which I counted to pay my

rent, to feed my horses, my household, my children? It is hard. But it

is the fortune of war. But suppose the battle over; the Frenchman says,

“You scoundrel! why did you not take a part with me? and why did you

stand like a double-faced traitor looking on? I should have won the

battle but for you. And I hereby confiscate the farm you stand on, and

you and your family may go to the workhouse.”

The New York press holds this argument over English people in terrorem.

“We Americans may be ever so wrong in the matter in dispute, but if you

push us to a war, we will confiscate your English property.” Very

good. It is peace now. Confidence of course is restored between us.

Our eighteen hundred peace commissioners have no occasion to open their

mouths; and the little question of confiscation is postponed. Messrs.

Battery, Broadway and Co., of New York, have the kindness to sell

my Saginaws for what they will fetch. I shall lose half my loaf very

likely; but for the sake of a quiet life, let us give up a certain

quantity of farinaceous food; and half a loaf, you know, is better than

no bread at all.

THE NOTCH ON THE AXE.--A STORY A LA MODE.

PART I.

“Every one remembers in the Fourth Book of the immortal poem of your

Blind Bard, (to whose sightless orbs no doubt Glorious Shapes were

apparent, and Visions Celestial,) how Adam discourses to Eve of the

Bright Visitors who hovered round their Eden--

'Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth,

Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.'

“'How often,' says Father Adam, 'from the steep of echoing hill or

thicket, have we heard celestial voices to the midnight air, sole,

or responsive to each other's notes, singing!' After the Act of

Disobedience, when the erring pair from Eden took their solitary way,

and went forth to toil and trouble on common earth--though the Glorious

Ones no longer were visible, you cannot say they were gone. It was not

that the Bright Ones were absent, but that the dim eyes of rebel man no

longer could see them. In your chamber hangs a picture of one whom you

never knew, but whom you have long held in tenderest regard, and who

was painted for you by a friend of mine, the Knight of Plympton. She

communes with you. She smiles on you. When your spirits are low, her

bright eyes shine on you and cheer you. Her innocent sweet smile is

a caress to you. She never fails to soothe you with her speechless

prattle. You love her. She is alive with you. As you extinguish your

candle and turn to sleep, though your eyes see her not, is she not

there still smiling? As you lie in the night awake, and thinking of your

duties, and the morrow's inevitable toil oppressing the busy, weary,

wakeful brain as with a remorse, the crackling fire flashes up for a

moment in the grate, and she is there, your little Beauteous Maiden,

smiling with her sweet eyes! When moon is down, when fire is out, when

curtains are drawn, when lids are closed, is she not there, the little

Beautiful One, though invisible, present and smiling still? Friend, the

Unseen Ones are round about us. Does it not seem as if the time were

drawing near when it shall be given to men to behold them?”

The print of which my friend spoke, and which, indeed, hangs in my room,

though he has never been there, is that charming little winter piece of

Sir Joshua, representing the little Lady Caroline Montague, afterwards

Duchess of Buccleuch. She is represented as standing in the midst of a

winter landscape, wrapped in muff and cloak; and she looks out of her

picture with a smile so exquisite that a Herod could not see her without

being charmed.

“I beg your pardon, MR. PINTO,” I said to the person with whom I was

conversing. (I wonder, by the way, that I was not surprised at his

knowing how fond I am of this print.) “You spoke of the Knight of

Plympton. Sir Joshua died, 1792: and you say he was your dear friend?”

As I spoke I chanced to look at Mr. Pinto; and then it suddenly struck

me: Gracious powers? Perhaps you ARE a hundred years old, now I think of

it. You look more than a hundred. Yes, you may be a thousand years old

for what I know. Your teeth are false. One eye is evidently false. Can I

say that the other is not? If a man's age may be calculated by the rings

round his eyes, this man may be as old as Methuselah. He has no beard.

He wears a large curly glossy brown wig, and his eyebrows are painted

a deep olive-green. It was odd to hear this man, this walking mummy,

talking sentiment, in these queer old chambers in Shepherd's Inn.

Pinto passed a yellow bandanna handkerchief over his awful white teeth,

and kept his glass eye steadily fixed on me. “Sir Joshua's friend?” said

he (you perceive, eluding my direct question). “Is not every one that

knows his pictures Reynolds's friend? Suppose I tell you that I have

been in his painting room scores of times, and that his sister The has

made me tea, and his sister Toffy has made coffee for me? You will only

say I am an old ombog.” (Mr. Pinto, I remarked, spoke all languages

with an accent equally foreign.) “Suppose I tell you that I knew Mr. Sam

Johnson, and did not like him? that I was at that very ball at Madame

Cornelis', which you have mentioned in one of your little--what do you

call them?--bah! my memory begins to fail me--in one of your little

Whirligig Papers? Suppose I tell you that Sir Joshua has been here, in

this very room?”

“Have you, then, had these apartments for--more--than--seventy years?” I

asked.

“They look as if they had not been swept for that time--don't they? Hey?

I did not say that I had them for seventy years, but that Sir Joshua has

visited me here.”

“When?” I asked, eying the man sternly, for I began to think he was an

impostor.

He answered me with a glance still more stern: “Sir Joshua Reynolds

was here this very morning, with Angelica Kaufmann and Mr. Oliver

Goldschmidt. He is still very much attached to Angelica, who still does

not care for him. Because he is dead (and I was in the fourth mourning

coach at his funeral) is that any reason why he should not come back to

earth again? My good sir, you are laughing at me. He has sat many a time

on that very chair which you are occupying. There are several spirits in

the room now, whom you cannot see. Excuse me.” Here he turned round as

if he was addressing somebody, and began rapidly speaking a language

unknown to me. “It is Arabic,” he said; “a bad patois I own. I learned

it in Barbary, when I was a prisoner amongst the Moors. In anno 1609,

bin ick aldus ghekledt gheghaen. Ha! you doubt me: look at me well. At

least I am like--”

Perhaps some of my readers remember a paper of which the figure of a man

carrying a barrel formed the initial letter,* and which I copied from an

old spoon now in my possession. As I looked at Mr. Pinto I do declare he

looked so like the figure on that old piece of plate that I started and

felt very uneasy. “Ha!” said he, laughing through his false teeth (I

declare they were false--I could see utterly toothless gums working

up and down behind the pink coral), “you see I wore a beard den; I am

shafed now; perhaps you tink I am A SPOON. Ha, ha!” And as he laughed he

gave a cough which I thought would have coughed his teeth out, his glass

eye out, his wig off, his very head off; but he stopped this convulsion

by stumping across the room and seizing a little bottle of bright pink

medicine, which, being opened, spread a singular acrid aromatic odor

through the apartment; and I thought I saw--but of this I cannot take an

affirmation--a light green and violet flame flickering round the neck of

the phial as he opened it. By the way, from the peculiar stumping noise

which he made in crossing the bare-boarded apartment, I knew at once

that my strange entertainer had a wooden leg. Over the dust which lay

quite thick on the boards, you could see the mark of one foot very neat

and pretty, and then a round O, which was naturally the impression made

by the wooden stump. I own I had a queer thrill as I saw that mark, and

felt a secret comfort that it was not CLOVEN.

* This refers to an illustrated edition of the work.

In this desolate apartment in which Mr. Pinto had invited me to see him,

there were three chairs, one bottomless, a little table on which you

might put a breakfast-tray, and not a single other article of furniture.

In the next room, the door of which was open, I could see a magnificent

gilt dressing-case, with some splendid diamond and ruby shirt-studs

lying by it, and a chest of drawers, and a cupboard apparently full of

clothes.

Remembering him in Baden-Baden in great magnificence, I wondered at his

present denuded state. “You have a house elsewhere, Mr. Pinto?” I said.

“Many,” says he. “I have apartments in many cities. I lock dem up, and

do not carry mosh logish.”

I then remembered that his apartment at Baden, where I first met him,

was bare, and had no bed in it.

“There is, then, a sleeping-room beyond?”

“This is the sleeping-room.” (He pronounces it DIS. Can this, by the

way, give any clue to the nationality of this singular man?)

“If you sleep on these two old chairs you have a rickety couch; if on

the floor, a dusty one.”

“Suppose I sleep up dere?” said this strange man, and he actually

pointed up to the ceiling. I thought him mad, or what he himself called

“an ombog.” “I know. You do not believe me; for why should I deceive

you? I came but to propose a matter of business to you. I told you I

could give you the clue to the mystery of the Two Children in Black,

whom you met at Baden, and you came to see me. If I told you you would

not believe, me. What for try and convinz you? Ha hey?” And he shook his

hand once, twice, thrice, at me, and glared at me out of his eye in a

peculiar way.

Of what happened now I protest I cannot give an accurate account. It

seemed to me that there shot a flame from his eye into my brain, whilst

behind his GLASS eye there was a green illumination as if a candle had

been lit in it. It seemed to me that from his long fingers two quivering

flames issued, sputtering, as it were, which penetrated me, and forced

me back into one of the chairs--the broken one--out of which I had much

difficulty in scrambling, when the strange glamour was ended. It seemed,

to me that, when I was so fixed, so transfixed in the broken chair, the

man floated up to the ceiling, crossed his legs, folded his arms as if

he was lying on a sofa, and grinned down at me. When I came to myself

he was down from the ceiling, and, taking me out of the broken

cane-bottomed chair, kindly enough--“Bah!” said he, “it is the smell of

my medicine. It often gives the vertigo. I thought you would have had

a little fit. Come into the open air.” And we went down the steps,

and into Shepherd's Inn, where the setting sun was just shining on the

statue of Shepherd; the laundresses were traipsing about; the porters

were leaning against the railings; and the clerks were playing at

marbles, to my inexpressible consolation.

“You said you were going to dine at the 'Gray's-inn Coffee-house,'”

he said. I was. I often dine there. There is excellent wine at the

“Gray's-inn Coffee-house;” but I declare I NEVER SAID SO. I was not

astonished at his remark; no more astonished than if I was in a dream.

Perhaps I WAS in a dream. Is life a dream? Are dreams facts? Is sleeping

being really awake? I don't know. I tell you I am puzzled. I have read

“The Woman in White,” “The Strange Story”--not to mention that story

“Stranger than Fiction” in the Cornhill Magazine--that story for which

THREE credible witnesses are ready to vouch. I have had messages from

the dead; and not only from the dead, but from people who never existed

at all. I own I am in a state of much bewilderment: but, if you please,

will proceed with my simple, my artless story.

Well, then. We passed from Shepherd's Inn into Holborn, and looked for

a while at Woodgate's bric-a-brac shop, which I never can pass without

delaying at the windows--indeed, if I were going to be hung, I would

beg the cart to stop, and let me have one look more at that delightful

omnium gatherum. And passing Woodgate's, we come to Gale's little shop,

“No. 47,” which is also a favorite haunt of mine.

Mr. Gale happened to be at his door, and as we exchanged salutations,

“Mr. Pinto,” I said, “will you like to see a real curiosity in this

curiosity shop? Step into Mr. Gale's little back room.”

In that little back parlor there are Chinese gongs; there are old

Saxe and Sevres plates; there is Furstenberg, Carl Theodor, Worcester,

Amstel, Nankin and other jimcrockery. And in the corner what do you

think there is? There is an actual GUILLOTINE. If you doubt me, go and

see--Gale, High Holborn, No. 47. It is a slim instrument, much slighter

than those which they make now;--some nine feet high, narrow, a pretty

piece of upholstery enough. There is the hook over which the rope used

to play which unloosened the dreadful axe above; and look! dropped into

the orifice where the head used to go--there is THE AXE itself, all

rusty, with A GREAT NOTCH IN THE BLADE.

As Pinto looked at it--Mr. Gale was not in the room, I recollect;

happening to have been just called out by a customer who offered

him three pound fourteen and sixpence for a blue Shepherd in pate

tendre,--Mr. Pinto gave a little start, and seemed crispe for a moment.

Then he looked steadily towards one of those great porcelain stools

which you see in gardens--and--it seemed to me--I tell you I won't take

my affidavit--I may have been maddened by the six glasses I took of that

pink elixir--I may have been sleep-walking: perhaps am as I write now--I

may have been under the influence of that astounding MEDIUM into whose

hands I had fallen--but I vow I heard Pinto say, with rather a ghastly

grin at the porcelain stool,

“Nay, nefer shague your gory locks at me,

Dou canst not say I did it.”

(He pronounced it, by the way, I DIT it, by which I KNOW that Pinto was

a German.)

I heard Pinto say those very words, and sitting on the porcelain stool

I saw, dimly at first, then with an awful distinctness--a ghost--an

eidolon--a form--A HEADLESS MAN seated, with his head in his lap, which

wore an expression of piteous surprise.

At this minute, Mr. Gale entered from the front shop to show a customer

some delf plates; and he did not see--but WE DID--the figure rise up

from the porcelain stool, shake its head, which it held in its hand,

and which kept its eyes fixed sadly on us, and disappear behind the

guillotine.

“Come to the 'Gray's-inn Coffee-house,'” Pinto said, “and I will tell

you how THE NOTCH CAME TO THE AXE.” And we walked down Holborn at about

thirty-seven minutes past six o'clock.

If there is anything in the above statement which astonishes the reader,

I promise him that in the next chapter of this little story he will be

astonished still more.