PART III.

“Are you of our fraternity? I see you are not. The secret which

Mademoiselle de Bechamel confided to me in her mad triumph and wild

hoyden spirits--she was but a child, poor thing, poor thing, scarce

fifteen--but I love them young--a folly not unusual with the old!” (Here

Mr. Pinto thrust his knuckles into his hollow eyes; and, I am sorry to

say, so little regardful was he of personal cleanliness, that his tears

made streaks of white over his gnarled dark hands.) “Ah, at fifteen,

poor child, thy fate was terrible! Go to! It is not good to love me,

friend. They prosper not who do. I divine you. You need not say what you

are thinking--”

In truth, I was thinking, if girls fall in love with this sallow

hook-nosed, glass-eyed, wooden-legged, dirty, hideous old man, with the

sham teeth, they have a queer taste. THAT is what I was thinking.

“Jack Wilkes said the handsomest man in London had but half an hour's

start of him. And without vanity, I am scarcely uglier than Jack Wilkes.

We were members of the same club at Medenham Abbey, Jack and I, and had

many a merry night together. Well, sir, I--Mary of Scotland knew me but

as a little hunchbacked music-master; and yet, and yet, I think SHE was

not indifferent to her David Riz--and SHE came to misfortune. They all

do--they all do!”

“Sir, you are wandering from your point!” I said, with some severity.

For, really, for this old humbug to hint that he had been the baboon who

frightened the club at Medenham, that he had been in the Inquisition at

Valladolid--that under the name of D. Riz, as he called it, he had known

the lovely Queen of Scots--was a LITTLE too much. “Sir,” then I said,

“you were speaking about a Miss de Bechamel. I really have not time to

hear all your biography.”

“Faith, the good wine gets into my head.” (I should think so, the old

toper! Four bottles all but two glasses.) “To return to poor Blanche.

As I sat laughing, joking with her, she let slip a word, a little

word, which filled me with dismay. Some one had told her a part of

the Secret--the secret which has been divulged scarce thrice in three

thousand years--the Secret of the Freemasons. Do you know what happens

to those uninitiate who learn that secret? to those wretched men, the

initiate who reveal it?”

As Pinto spoke to me, he looked through and through me with his horrible

piercing glance, so that I sat quite uneasily on my bench. He continued:

“Did I question her awake? I knew she would lie to me. Poor child! I

loved her no less because I did not believe a word she said. I loved her

blue eye, her golden hair, her delicious voice, that was true in song,

though when she spoke, false as Eblis! You are aware that I possess

in rather a remarkable degree what we have agreed to call the mesmeric

power. I set the unhappy girl to sleep. THEN she was obliged to tell me

all. It was as I had surmised. Goby de Mouchy, my wretched, besotted,

miserable secretary, in his visits to the chateau of the Marquis de

Bechamel, who was one of our society, had seen Blanche. I suppose it was

because she had been warned that he was worthless, and poor, artful

and a coward, she loved him. She wormed out of the besotted wretch the

secrets of our Order. 'Did he tell you the NUMBER ONE?' I asked.

“She said, 'Yes.'

“'Did he,' I further inquired, 'tell you the--'

“'Oh, don't ask me, don't ask me!' she said, writhing on the sofa, where

she lay in the presence of the Marquis de Bechamel, her most unhappy

father. Poor Bechamel, poor Bechamel! How pale he looked as I spoke!

'Did he tell you,' I repeated with a dreadful calm, 'the NUMBER TWO?'

She said, 'Yes.'

“The poor old marquis rose up, and clasping his hands, fell on his knees

before Count Cagl---- Bah! I went by a different name then. Vat's in

a name? Dat vich ve call a Rosicrucian by any other name vil smell as

sveet. 'Monsieur,' he said, 'I am old--I am rich. I have five hundred

thousand livres of rentes in Picardy. I have half as much in Artois. I

have two hundred and eighty thousand on the Grand Livre. I am promised

by my Sovereign a dukedom and his orders with a reversion to my heir. I

am a Grandee of Spain of the First Class, and Duke of Volovento. Take

my titles, my ready money, my life, my honor, everything I have in the

world, but don't ask the THIRD QUESTION.'

“'Godefroid de Bouillon, Comte de Bechamel, Grandee of Spain and Prince

of Volovento, in our Assembly what was the oath you swore?'” The old man

writhed as he remembered its terrific purport.

“Though my heart was racked with agony, and I would have died, ay,

cheerfully” (died, indeed, as if THAT were a penalty!) “to spare yonder

lovely child a pang, I said to her calmly, 'Blanche de Bechamel, did

Goby de Mouchy tell you secret NUMBER THREE?'

“She whispered a oui that was quite faint, faint and small. But her poor

father fell in convulsions at her feet.

“She died suddenly that night. Did I not tell you those I love come to

no good? When General Bonaparte crossed the Saint Bernard, he saw in the

convent an old monk with a white beard, wandering about the corridors,

cheerful and rather stout, but mad--mad as a March hare. 'General,' I

said to him, 'did you ever see that face before?' He had not. He had

not mingled much with the higher classes of our society before the

Revolution. I knew the poor old man well enough; he was the last of a

noble race, and I loved his child.”

“And did she die by--?”

“Man! did I say so? Do I whisper the secrets of the Vehmgericht? I

say she died that night: and he--he, the heartless, the villain, the

betrayer,--you saw him seated in yonder curiosity-shop, by yonder

guillotine, with his scoundrelly head in his lap.

“You saw how slight that instrument was? It was one of the first which

Guillotin made, and which he showed to private friends in a HANGAR

in the Rue Picpus, where he lived. The invention created some little

conversation amongst scientific men at the time, though I remember a

machine in Edinburgh of a very similar construction, two hundred--well,

many, many years ago--and at a breakfast which Guillotin gave he showed

us the instrument, and much talk arose amongst us as to whether people

suffered under it.

“And now I must tell you what befell the traitor who had caused all this

suffering. Did he know that the poor child's death was a SENTENCE? He

felt a cowardly satisfaction that with her was gone the secret of

his treason. Then he began to doubt. I had MEANS to penetrate all his

thoughts, as well as to know his acts. Then he became a slave to a

horrible fear. He fled in abject terror to a convent. They still existed

in Paris; and behind the walls of Jacobins the wretch thought himself

secure. Poor fool! I had but to set one of my somnambulists to sleep.

Her spirit went forth and spied the shuddering wretch in his cell. She

described the street, the gate, the convent, the very dress which he

wore, and which you saw to-day.

“And now THIS is what happened. In his chamber in the Rue St. Honore, at

Paris, sat a man ALONE--a man who has been maligned, a man who has been

called a knave and charlatan, a man who has been persecuted even to the

death, it is said, in Roman Inquisitions, forsooth, and elsewhere. Ha!

ha! A man who has a mighty will.

“And looking towards the Jacobins Convent (of which, from his chamber,

he could see the spires and trees), this man WILLED. And it was not yet

dawn. And he willed; and one who was lying in his cell in the convent

of Jacobins, awake and shuddering with terror for a crime which he had

committed, fell asleep.

“But though he was asleep his eyes were open.

“And after tossing and writhing, and clinging to the pallet, and saying,

'No, I will not go,' he rose up and donned his clothes--a gray coat, a

vest of white pique, black satin small-clothes, ribbed silk stockings,

and a white stock with a steel buckle; and he arranged his hair, and

he tied his queue, all the while being in that strange somnolence

which walks, which moves, which FLIES sometimes, which sees, which is

indifferent to pain, which OBEYS. And he put on his hat, and he went

forth from his cell; and though the dawn was not yet, he trod the

corridors as seeing them. And he passed into the cloister, and then into

the garden where lie the ancient dead. And he came to the wicket,

which Brother Jerome was opening just at the dawning. And the crowd was

already waiting with their cans and bowls to receive the alms of the

good brethren.

“And he passed through the crowd and went on his way, and the few people

then abroad who marked him, said, 'Tiens! how very odd he looks!

He looks like a man walking in his sleep!' This was said by various

persons:--

“By milk-women, with their cans and carts, coming into the town.

“By roysterers who had been drinking at the taverns of the Barrier, for

it was Mid-Lent.

“By the sergeants of the watch, who eyed him sternly as he passed near

their halberds.

“But he passed on unmoved by their halberds,

“Unmoved by the cries of the roysterers,

“By the market-women coming with their milk and eggs.

“He walked through the Rue St. Honore, I say:--

“By the Rue Rambuteau,

“By the Rue St. Antoine,

“By the King's Chateau of the Bastille,

“By the Faubourg St. Antoine.

“And he came to No. 29 in the Rue Picpus--a house which then stood

between a court and garden--

“That is, there was a building of one story, with a great coach-door.

“Then there was a court, around which were stables, coach-houses,

offices.

“Then there was a house--a two-storied house, with a perron in front.

“Behind the house was a garden--a garden of two hundred and fifty French

feet in length.

“And as one hundred feet of France equal one hundred and six feet of

England, this garden, my friends, equalled exactly two hundred and

sixty-five feet of British measure.

“In the centre of the garden was a fountain and a statue--or, to speak

more correctly, two statues. One was recumbent,--a man. Over him, sabre

in hand, stood a woman.

“The man was Olofernes. The woman was Judith. From the head, from the

trunk, the water gushed. It was the taste of the doctor:--was it not a

droll of taste?

“At the end of the garden was the doctor's cabinet of study. My faith, a

singular cabinet, and singular pictures!--

“Decapitation of Charles Premier at Vitehall.

“Decapitation of Montrose at Edimbourg.

“Decapitation of Cinq Mars. When I tell you that he was a man of a

taste, charming!

“Through this garden, by these statues, up these stairs, went the pale

figure of him who, the porter said, knew the way of the house. He did.

Turning neither right nor left, he seemed to walk THROUGH the statues,

the obstacles, the flower-beds, the stairs, the door, the tables, the

chairs.

“In the corner of the room was THAT INSTRUMENT, which Guillotin had just

invented and perfected. One day he was to lay his own head under his own

axe. Peace be to his name! With him I deal not!

“In a frame of mahogany, neatly worked, was a board with a half-circle

in it, over which another board fitted. Above was a heavy axe, which

fell--you know how. It was held up by a rope, and when this rope was

untied, or cut, the steel fell.

“To the story which I now have to relate, you may give credence, or not,

as you will. The sleeping man went up to that instrument.

“He laid his head in it, asleep.”

“Asleep?”

“He then took a little penknife out of the pocket of his white dimity

waistcoat.

“He cut the rope asleep.

“The axe descended on the head of the traitor and villain. The notch in

it was made by the steel buckle of his stock, which was cut through.

“A strange legend has got abroad that after the deed was done, the

figure rose, took the head from the basket, walked forth through the

garden, and by the screaming porters at the gate, and went and laid

itself down at the Morgue. But for this I will not vouch. Only of this

be sure. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are

dreamed of in your philosophy.' More and more the light peeps through

the chinks. Soon, amidst music ravishing, the curtain will rise, and the

glorious scene be displayed. Adieu! Remember me. Ha! 'tis dawn,” Pinto

said. And he was gone.

I am ashamed to say that my first movement was to clutch the cheque

which he had left with me, and which I was determined to present the

very moment the bank opened. I know the importance of these things, and

that men CHANGE THEIR MIND sometimes. I sprang through the streets to

the great banking house of Manasseh in Duke Street. It seemed to me as

if I actually flew as I walked. As the clock struck ten I was at the

counter and laid down my cheque.

The gentleman who received it, who was one of the Hebrew persuasion, as

were the other two hundred clerks of the establishment, having looked at

the draft with terror in his countenance, then looked at me, then called

to himself two of his fellow-clerks, and queer it was to see all their

aquiline beaks over the paper.

“Come, come!” said I, “don't keep me here all day. Hand me over the

money, short, if you please!” for I was, you see, a little alarmed, and

so determined to assume some extra bluster.

“Will you have the kindness to step into the parlor to the partners?”

the clerk said, and I followed him.

“What, AGAIN?” shrieked a bald-headed, red-whiskered gentleman, whom I

knew to be Mr. Manasseh. “Mr. Salathiel, this is too bad! Leave me with

this gentleman, S.” And the clerk disappeared.

“Sir,” he said, “I know how you came by this; the Count de Pinto gave it

you. It is too bad! I honor my parents; I honor THEIR parents; I honor

their bills! But this one of grandma's is too bad--it is, upon my word

now! She've been dead these five-and-thirty years. And this last four

months she has left her burial-place and took to drawing on our 'ouse!

It's too bad, grandma; it is too bad!” and he appealed to me, and tears

actually trickled down his nose.

“Is it the Countess Sidonia's cheque or not?” I asked, haughtily.

“But, I tell you, she's dead! It's a shame!--it's a shame!--it is,

grandmamma!” and he cried, and wiped his great nose in his yellow

pocket-handkerchief. “Look year--will you take pounds instead of

guineas? She's dead, I tell you! It's no go! Take the pounds--one

tausend pound!--ten nice, neat, crisp hundred-pound notes, and go away

vid you, do!”

“I will have my bond, sir, or nothing,” I said; and I put on an attitude

of resolution which I confess surprised even myself.

“Wery vell,” he shrieked, with many oaths, “then you shall have

noting--ha, ha, ha!--noting but a policeman! Mr. Abednego, call a

policeman! Take that, you humbug and impostor!” and here, with an

abundance of frightful language which I dare not repeat, the wealthy

banker abused and defied me.

Au bout du compte, what was I to do, if a banker did not choose to

honor a cheque drawn by his dead grandmother? I began to wish I had my

snuff-box back. I began to think I was a fool for changing that little

old-fashioned gold for this slip of strange paper.

Meanwhile the banker had passed from his fit of anger to a paroxysm of

despair. He seemed to be addressing some person invisible, but in the

room: “Look here, ma'am, you've really been coming it too strong. A

hundred thousand in six months, and now a thousand more! The 'ouse can't

stand it; it WON'T stand it, I say! What? Oh! mercy, mercy!”

As he uttered these words, A Hand fluttered over the table in the air!

It was a female hand: that which I had seen the night before. That

female hand took a pen from the green baize table, dipped it in a

silver inkstand, and wrote on a quarter of a sheet of foolscap on the

blotting-book, “How about the diamond robbery? If you do not pay, I will

tell him where they are.”

What diamonds? what robbery? what was this mystery? That will never

be ascertained, for the wretched man's demeanor instantly changed.

“Certainly, sir;--oh, certainly,” he said, forcing a grin. “How will you

have the money, sir? All right, Mr. Abednego. This way out.”

“I hope I shall often see you again,” I said; on which I own poor

Manasseh gave a dreadful grin, and shot back into his parlor.

I ran home, clutching the ten delicious, crisp hundred pounds, and the

dear little fifty which made up the account. I flew through the streets

again. I got to my chambers. I bolted the outer doors. I sank back in my

great chair, and slept. . . .

My first thing on waking was to feel for my money. Perdition! Where was

I? Ha!--on the table before me was my grandmother's snuff-box, and by

its side one of those awful--those admirable--sensation novels, which I

had been reading, and which are full of delicious wonder.

But that the guillotine is still to be seen at Mr. Gale's, No. 47, High

Holborn, I give you MY HONOR. I suppose I was dreaming about it. I

don't know. What is dreaming? What is life? Why shouldn't I sleep on the

ceiling?--and am I sitting on it now, or on the floor? I am puzzled. But

enough. If the fashion for sensation novels goes on, I tell you I

will write one in fifty volumes. For the present, DIXI. But between

ourselves, this Pinto, who fought at the Colosseum, who was nearly being

roasted by the Inquisition, and sang duets at Holyrood, I am rather

sorry to lose him after three little bits of Roundabout Papers. Et vous?

DE FINIBUS.

When Swift was in love with Stella, and despatching her a letter from

London thrice a month by the Irish packet, you may remember how he would

begin letter No. XXIII., we will say, on the very day when XXII. had

been sent away, stealing out of the coffee-house or the assembly so as

to be able to prattle with his dear; “never letting go her kind hand, as

it were,” as some commentator or other has said in speaking of the Dean

and his amour. When Mr. Johnson, walking to Dodsley's, and touching the

posts in Pall Mall as he walked, forgot to pat the head of one of them,

he went back and imposed his hands on it,--impelled I know not by what

superstition. I have this I hope not dangerous mania too. As soon as a

piece of work is out of hand, and before going to sleep, I like to

begin another: it may be to write only half a dozen lines: but that is

something towards Number the Next. The printer's boy has not yet reached

Green Arbor Court with the copy. Those people who were alive half an

hour since, Pendennis, Clive Newcome, and (what do you call him? what

was the name of the last hero? I remember now!) Philip Firmin, have

hardly drunk their glass of wine, and the mammas have only this

minute got the children's cloaks on, and have been bowed out of my

premises--and here I come back to the study again: tamen usque recurro.

How lonely it looks now all these people are gone! My dear good friends,

some folks are utterly tired of you, and say, “What a poverty of friends

the man has! He is always asking us to meet those Pendennises, Newcomes,

and so forth. Why does he not introduce us to some new characters? Why

is he not thrilling like Twostars, learned and profound like Threestars,

exquisitely humorous and human like Fourstars? Why, finally, is he not

somebody else?” My good people, it is not only impossible to please you

all, but it is absurd to try. The dish which one man devours, another

dislikes. Is the dinner of to-day not to your taste? Let us hope

to-morrow's entertainment will be more agreeable. . . . I resume my

original subject. What an odd, pleasant, humorous, melancholy feeling it

is to sit in the study, alone and quiet, now all these people are gone

who have been boarding and lodging with me for twenty months! They have

interrupted my rest: they have plagued me at all sorts of minutes: they

have thrust themselves upon me when I was ill, or wished to be idle, and

I have growled out a “Be hanged to you, can't you leave me alone now?”

Once or twice they have prevented my going out to dinner. Many and many

a time they have prevented my coming home, because I knew they were

there waiting in the study, and a plague take them! and I have left home

and family, and gone to dine at the Club, and told nobody where I went.

They have bored me, those people. They have plagued me at all sorts of

uncomfortable hours. They have made such a disturbance in my mind

and house, that sometimes I have hardly known what was going on in my

family, and scarcely have heard what my neighbor said to me. They are

gone at last; and you would expect me to be at ease? Far from it. I

should almost be glad if Woolcomb would walk in and talk to me; or

Twysden reappear, take his place in that chair opposite me, and begin

one of his tremendous stories.

Madmen, you know, see visions, hold conversations with, even draw the

likeness of, people invisible to you and me. Is this making of

people out of fancy madness? and are novel-writers at all entitled to

strait-waistcoats? I often forget people's names in life; and in my own

stories contritely own that I make dreadful blunders regarding them; but

I declare, my dear sir, with respect to the personages introduced into

your humble servant's fables, I know the people utterly--I know the

sound of their voices. A gentleman came in to see me the other day,

who was so like the picture of Philip Firmin in Mr. Walker's charming

drawings in the cornhill Magazine, that he was quite a curiosity to me.

The same eyes, beard, shoulders, just as you have seen them from month

to month. Well, he is not like the Philip Firmin in my mind. Asleep,

asleep in the grave, lies the bold, the generous, the reckless,

the tender-hearted creature whom I have made to pass through those

adventures which have just been brought to an end. It is years since I

heard the laughter ringing, or saw the bright blue eyes. When I knew him

both were young. I become young as I think of him. And this morning he

was alive again in this room, ready to laugh, to fight, to weep. As

I write, do you know, it is the gray of evening; the house is quiet;

everybody is out; the room is getting a little dark, and I look rather

wistfully up from the paper with perhaps ever so little fancy that HE

MAY COME IN.--No? No movement. No gray shade, growing more palpable, out

of which at last look the well-known eyes. No, the printer came and took

him away with the last page of the proofs. And with the printer's boy

did the whole cortege of ghosts flit away, invisible? Ha! stay! what

is this? Angels and ministers of grace! The door opens, and a dark

form--enters, bearing a black--a black suit of clothes. It is John. He

says it is time to dress for dinner.

*****

Every man who has had his German tutor, and has been coached through the

famous “Faust” of Goethe (thou wert my instructor, good old Weissenborn,

and these eyes beheld the great master himself in dear little Weimar

town!) has read those charming verses which are prefixed to the drama,

in which the poet reverts to the time when his work was first composed,

and recalls the friends now departed, who once listened to his song. The

dear shadows rise up around him, he says; he lives in the past again. It

is to-day which appears vague and visionary. We humbler writers cannot

create Fausts, or raise up monumental works that shall endure for all

ages; but our books are diaries, in which our own feelings must of

necessity be set down. As we look to the page written last month, or ten

years ago, we remember the day and its events; the child ill, mayhap, in

the adjoining room, and the doubts and fears which racked the brain as

it still pursued its work; the dear old friend who read the commencement

of the tale, and whose gentle hand shall be laid in ours no more. I own

for my part that, in reading pages which this hand penned formerly, I

often lose sight of the text under my eyes. It is not the words I see;

but that past day; that bygone page of life's history; that tragedy,

comedy it may be, which our little home company was enacting; that

merry-making which we shared; that funeral which we followed; that

bitter, bitter grief which we buried.

And, such being the state of my mind, I pray gentle readers to deal

kindly with their humble servant's manifold shortcomings, blunders, and

slips of memory. As sure as I read a page of my own composition, I find

a fault or two, half a dozen. Jones is called Brown. Brown, who is dead,

is brought to life. Aghast, and months after the number was printed, I

saw that I had called Philip Firmin, Clive Newcome. Now Clive Newcome is

the hero of another story by the reader's most obedient writer. The two

men are as different, in my mind's eye, as--as Lord Palmerston and Mr.

Disraeli let us say. But there is that blunder at page 990, line 76,

volume 84 of the Cornhill Magazine, and it is past mending; and I wish

in my life I had made no worse blunders or errors than that which is

hereby acknowledged.

Another Finis written. Another mile-stone passed on this journey from

birth to the next world! Sure it is a subject for solemn cogitation.

Shall we continue this story-telling business and be voluble to the

end of our age? Will it not be presently time, O prattler, to hold your

tongue, and let younger people speak? I have a friend, a painter, who,

like other persons who shall be nameless, is growing old. He has never

painted with such laborious finish as his works now show. This master is

still the most humble and diligent of scholars. Of Art, his mistress, he

is always an eager, reverent pupil. In his calling, in yours, in mine,

industry and humility will help and comfort us. A word with you. In

a pretty large experience I have not found the men who write books

superior in wit or learning to those who don't write at all. In regard

of mere information, non-writers must often be superior to writers. You

don't expect a lawyer in full practice to be conversant with all kinds

of literature; he is too busy with his law; and so a writer is commonly

too busy with his own books to be able to bestow attention on the works

of other people. After a day's work (in which I have been depicting,

let us say, the agonies of Louisa on parting with the Captain, or the

atrocious behavior of the wicked Marquis to Lady Emily) I march to the

Club, proposing to improve my mind and keep myself “posted up,” as the

Americans phrase it, with the literature of the day. And what happens?

Given, a walk after luncheon, a pleasing book, and a most comfortable

armchair by the fire, and you know the rest. A doze ensues. Pleasing

book drops suddenly, is picked up once with an air of some confusion,

is laid presently softly in lap: head falls on comfortable arm-chair

cushion: eyes close: soft nasal music is heard. Am I telling Club

secrets? Of afternoons, after lunch, I say, scores of sensible fogies

have a doze. Perhaps I have fallen asleep over that very book to which

“Finis” has just been written. “And if the writer sleeps, what happens

to the readers?” says Jones, coming down upon me with his lightning wit.

What? You DID sleep over it? And a very good thing too. These eyes

have more than once seen a friend dozing over pages which this hand has

written. There is a vignette somewhere in one of my books of a friend so

caught napping with “Pendennis,” or the “Newcomes,” in his lap and if

a writer can give you a sweet soothing, harmless sleep, has he not done

you a kindness? So is the author who excites and interests you worthy

of your thanks and benedictions. I am troubled with fever and ague, that

seizes me at odd intervals and prostrates me for a day. There is

cold fit, for which, I am thankful to say, hot brandy-and-water is

prescribed, and this induces hot fit, and so on. In one or two of these

fits I have read novels with the most fearful contentment of mind. Once,

on the Mississippi, it was my dearly beloved “Jacob Faithful:” once at

Frankfort O. M., the delightful “Vingt Ans Apres” of Monsieur Dumas:

once at Tunbridge wells, the thrilling “Woman in White:” and these books

gave me amusement from morning till sunset. I remember those ague fits

with a great deal of pleasure and gratitude. Think of a whole day

in bed, and a good novel for a companion! No cares: no remorse

about idleness: no visitors: and the Woman in White or the Chevalier

d'Artagnan to tell me stories from dawn to night! “Please, ma'am, my

master's compliments, and can he have the third volume?” (This message

was sent to an astonished friend and neighbor who lent me, volume by

volume, the W. in W.) How do you like your novels? I like mine strong,

“hot with,” and no mistake: no love-making: no observations about

society: little dialogue, except where the characters are bullying each

other: plenty of fighting: and a villain in the cupboard, who is to

suffer tortures just before Finis. I don't like your melancholy Finis. I

never read the history of a consumptive heroine twice. If I might give

a short hint to an impartial writer (as the Examiner used to say in old

days), it would be to act, NOT a la mode le pays de Pole (I think

that was the phraseology), but ALWAYS to give quarter. In the story

of Philip, just come to an end, I have the permission of the author

to state, that he was going to drown the two villains of the

piece--a certain Doctor F---- and a certain Mr. T. H---- on board

the “President,” or some other tragic ship--but you see I relented. I

pictured to myself Firmin's ghastly face amid the crowd of shuddering

people on that reeling deck in the lonely ocean, and thought, “Thou

ghastly lying wretch, thou shalt not be drowned: thou shalt have a

fever only; a knowledge of thy danger; and a chance--ever so small a

chance--of repentance.” I wonder whether he DID repent when he found

himself in the yellow-fever, in Virginia? The probability is, he

fancied that his son had injured him very much, and forgave him on his

death-bed. Do you imagine there is a great deal of genuine right-down

remorse in the world? Don't people rather find excuses which make

their minds easy; endeavor to prove to themselves that they have been

lamentably belied and misunderstood; and try and forgive the persecutors

who WILL present that bill when it is due; and not bear malice against

the cruel ruffian who takes them to the police-office for stealing the

spoons? Years ago I had a quarrel with a certain well-known person (I

believed a statement regarding him which his friends imparted to me, and

which turned out to be quite incorrect). To his dying day that quarrel

was never quite made up. I said to his brother, “Why is your brother's

soul still dark against me? It is I who ought to be angry and

unforgiving: for I was in the wrong.” In the region which they now

inhabit (for Finis has been set to the volumes of the lives of both

here below), if they take any cognizance of our squabbles, and

tittle-tattles, and gossips on earth here, I hope they admit that

my little error was not of a nature unpardonable. If you have never

committed a worse, my good sir, surely the score against you will not be

heavy. Ha, dilectissimi fratres! It is in regard of sins NOT found

out that we may say or sing (in an undertone, in a most penitent and

lugubrious minor key), Miserere nobis miseris peccatoribus.

Among the sins of commission which novel-writers not seldom perpetrate,

is the sin of grandiloquence, or tall-talking, against which, for

my part, I will offer up a special libera me. This is the sin of

schoolmasters, governesses, critics, sermoners, and instructors of young

or old people. Nay (for I am making a clean breast, and liberating my

soul), perhaps of all the novel-spinners now extant, the present speaker

is the most addicted to preaching. Does he not stop perpetually in

his story and begin to preach to you? When he ought to be engaged with

business, is he not for ever taking the Muse by the sleeve, and plaguing

her with some of his cynical sermons? I cry peccavi loudly and heartily.

I tell you I would like to be able to write a story which should show no

egotism whatever--in which there should be no reflections, no cynicism,

no vulgarity (and so forth), but an incident in every other page, a

villain, a battle, a mystery in every chapter. I should like to be able

to feed a reader so spicily as to leave him hungering and thirsting for

more at the end of every monthly meal.

Alexandre Dumas describes himself, when inventing the plan of a work, as

lying silent on his back for two whole days on the deck of a yacht in a

Mediterranean port. At the end of the two days he arose and called for

dinner. In those two days he had built his plot. He had moulded a

mighty clay, to be cast presently in perennial brass. The chapters, the

characters, the incidents, the combinations were all arranged in the

artist's brain ere he set a pen to paper. My Pegasus won't fly, so as

to let me survey the field below me. He has no wings, he is blind of

one eye certainly, he is restive, stubborn, slow; crops a hedge when he

ought to be galloping, or gallops when he ought to be quiet. He never

will show off when I want him. Sometimes he goes at a pace which

surprises me. Sometimes, when I most wish him to make the running, the

brute turns restive, and I am obliged to let him take his own time. I

wonder do other novel-writers experience this fatalism? They MUST go

a certain way, in spite of themselves. I have been surprised at the

observations made by some of my characters. It seems as if an occult

Power was moving the pen. The personage does or says something, and

I ask, how the dickens did he come to think of that? Every man has

remarked in dreams, the vast dramatic power which is sometimes evinced;

I won't say the surprising power, for nothing does surprise you in

dreams. But those strange characters you meet make instant observations

of which you never can have thought previously. In like manner, the

imagination foretells things. We spake anon of the inflated style of

some writers. What also if there is an AFFLATED style,--when a writer is

like a Pythoness on her oracle tripod, and mighty words, words which

he cannot help, come blowing, and bellowing, and whistling, and moaning

through the speaking pipes of his bodily organ? I have told you it was a

very queer shock to me the other day when, with a letter of introduction

in his hand, the artist's (not my) Philip Firmin walked into this room,

and sat down in the chair opposite. In the novel of “Pendennis,” written

ten years ago, there is an account of a certain Costigan, whom I had

invented (as I suppose authors invent their personages out of scraps,

heel-taps, odds and ends of characters). I was smoking in a tavern

parlor one night--and this Costigan came into the room alive--the very

man:--the most remarkable resemblance of the printed sketches of the

man, of the rude drawings in which I had depicted him. He had the same

little coat, the same battered hat, cocked on one eye, the same twinkle

in that eye. “Sir,” said I, knowing him to be an old friend whom I

had met in unknown regions, “sir,” I said, “may I offer you a glass of

brandy-and-water?” “Bedad, ye may,” says he, “and I'll sing ye a song

tu.” Of course he spoke with an Irish brogue. Of course he had been in

the army. In ten minutes he pulled out an Army Agent's account, whereon

his name was written. A few months after we read of him in a police

court. How had I come to know him, to divine him? Nothing shall convince

me that I have not seen that man in the world of spirits. In the world

of spirits and water I know I did: but that is a mere quibble of

words. I was not surprised when he spoke in an Irish brogue. I had had

cognizance of him before somehow. Who has not felt that little shock

which arises when a person, a place, some words in a book (there is

always a collocation) present themselves to you, and you know that you

have before met the same person, words, scene, and so forth?

They used to call the good Sir Walter the “Wizard of the North.” What if

some writer should appear who can write so ENCHANTINGLY that he shall

be able to call into actual life the people whom he invents? What if

Mignon, and Margaret, and Goetz von Berlichingen are alive now (though

I don't say they are visible), and Dugald Dalgetty and Ivanhoe were to

step in at that open window by the little garden yonder? Suppose Uncas

and our noble old Leather Stocking were to glide silent in? Suppose

Athos, Porthos, and Aramis should enter with a noiseless swagger,

curling their moustaches? And dearest Amelia Booth, on Uncle Toby's arm;

and Tittlebat Titmouse, with his hair dyed green; and all the Crummles

company of comedians, with the Gil Blas troop; and Sir Roger de

Coverley; and the greatest of all crazy gentlemen, the Knight of La

Mancha, with his blessed squire? I say to you, I look rather wistfully

towards the window, musing upon these people. Were any of them to enter,

I think I should not be very much frightened. Dear old friends, what

pleasant hours I have had with them! We do not see each other very

often, but when we do, we are ever happy to meet. I had a capital

half-hour with Jacob Faithful last night; when the last sheet was

corrected, when “Finis” had been written, and the printer's boy, with

the copy, was safe in Green Arbor Court.

So you are gone, little printer's boy, with the last scratches and

corrections on the proof, and a fine flourish by way of Finis at the

story's end. The last corrections? I say those last corrections seem

never to be finished. A plague upon the weeds! Every day, when I walk in

my own little literary garden-plot, I spy some, and should like to have

a spud, and root them out. Those idle words, neighbor, are past remedy.

That turning back to the old pages produces anything but elation of

mind. Would you not pay a pretty fine to be able to cancel some of them?

Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages! Oh, the cares, the ennui, the

squabbles, the repetitions, the old conversations over and over again!

But now and again a kind thought is recalled, and now and again a dear

memory. Yet a few chapters more, and then the last: after which, behold

Finis itself come to an end, and the Infinite begun.

ON A PEAL OF BELLS.

As some bells in a church hard by are making a great holiday clanging in

the summer afternoon, I am reminded somehow of a July day, a garden,

and a great clanging of bells years and years ago, on the very day when

George IV. was crowned. I remember a little boy lying in that garden

reading his first novel. It was called the “Scottish Chiefs.” The

little boy (who is now ancient and not little) read this book in the

summer-house of his great grandmamma. She was eighty years of age then.

A most lovely and picturesque old lady, with a long tortoise-shell cane,

with a little puff, or tour, of snow-white (or was it powdered?) hair

under her cap, with the prettiest little black-velvet slippers and high

heels you ever saw. She had a grandson, a lieutenant in the navy; son

of her son, a captain in the navy; grandson of her husband, a captain in

the navy. She lived for scores and scores of years in a dear little

old Hampshire town inhabited by the wives, widows, daughters of navy

captains, admirals, lieutenants. Dear me! Don't I remember Mrs. Duval,

widow of Admiral Duval; and the Miss Dennets, at the Great House at the

other end of the town, Admiral Dennet's daughters; and the Miss Barrys,

the late Captain Barry's daughters; and the good old Miss Maskews,

Admiral Maskew's daughter; and that dear little Miss Norval, and the

kind Miss Bookers, one of whom married Captain, now Admiral Sir Henry

Excellent, K.C.B.? Far, far away into the past I look and see the little

town with its friendly glimmer. That town was so like a novel of Miss

Austen's that I wonder was she born and bred there? No, we should have

known, and the good old ladies would have pronounced her to be a

little idle thing, occupied with her silly books and neglecting her

housekeeping. There were other towns in England, no doubt, where dwelt

the widows and wives of other navy captains; where they tattled, loved

each other, and quarrelled; talked about Betty the maid, and her fine

ribbons indeed! took their dish of tea at six, played at quadrille every

night till ten, when there was a little bit of supper, after which Betty

came with the lanthorn; and next day came, and next, and next, and so

forth, until a day arrived when the lanthorn was out, when Betty came

no more: all that little company sank to rest under the daisies, whither

some folks will presently follow them. How did they live to be so old,

those good people? Moi qui vous parle, I perfectly recollect old Mr.

Gilbert, who had been to sea with Captain Cook; and Captain Cook, as you

justly observe, dear Miss, quoting out of your “Mangnall's Questions,”

was murdered by the natives of Owhyhee, anno 1779. Ah! don't you

remember his picture, standing on the seashore, in tights and gaiters,

with a musket in his hand, pointing to his people not to fire from the

boats, whilst a great tattooed savage is going to stab him in the

back? Don't you remember those houris dancing before him and the other

officers at the great Otaheite ball? Don't you know that Cook was at the

siege of Quebec, with the glorious Wolfe, who fought under the Duke of

Cumberland, whose royal father was a distinguished officer at Ramillies,

before he commanded in chief at Dettingen? Huzza! Give it them, my lads!

My horse is down? Then I know I shall not run away. Do the French run?

then I die content. Stop. Wo! Quo me rapis? My Pegasus is galloping off,

goodness knows where, like his Majesty's charger at Dettingen.

How do these rich historical and personal reminiscences come out of the

subject at present in hand? What IS that subject, by the way? My dear

friend, if you look at the last essaykin (though you may leave it alone,

and I shall not be in the least surprised or offended), if you look at

the last paper, where the writer imagines Athos and Porthos, Dalgetty

and Ivanhoe, Amelia and Sir Charles Grandison, Don Quixote and Sir

Roger, walking in at the garden-window, you will at once perceive

that NOVELS and their heroes and heroines are our present subject of

discourse, into which we will presently plunge. Are you one of us, dear

sir, and do you love novel-reading? To be reminded of your first novel

will surely be a pleasure to you. Hush! I never read quite to the end

of my first, the “Scottish Chiefs.” I couldn't. I peeped in an alarmed

furtive manner at some of the closing pages. Miss Porter, like a kind

dear tender-hearted creature, would not have Wallace's head chopped off

at the end of Vol. V. She made him die in prison,* and if I remember

right (protesting I have not read the book for forty-two or three

years), Robert Bruce made a speech to his soldiers, in which he said,

“And Bannockburn shall equal Cambuskenneth.” ** But I repeat I could

not read the end of the fifth volume of that dear delightful book for

crying. Good heavens! It was as sad, as sad as going back to school.

* I find, on reference to the novel, that Sir William died

on the scaffold, not in prison. His last words were, “'My

prayer is heard. Life's cord is cut by heaven. Helen!

Helen! May heaven preserve my country, and--' He stopped.

He fell. And with that mighty shock the scaffold shook to

its foundations.”

** The remark of Bruce (which I protest I had not read for

forty-two years), I find to be as follows:--“When this was

uttered by the English heralds, Bruce turned to Ruthven,

with an heroic smile, 'Let him come, my brave barons! and he

shall find that Bannockburn shall page with Cambuskenneth!'”

In the same amiable author's famous novel of “Thaddeus of

Warsaw,” there is more crying than in any novel I ever

remember to have read. See, for example, the last page. . . .

“Incapable of speaking, Thaddeus led his wife back to her

carriage. . . . His tears gushed out in spite of himself,

and mingling with hers, poured those thanks, those

assurances, of animated approbation through her heart, which

made it even ache with excess of happiness.” . . . And a

sentence or two further. “Kosciusko did bless him, and

embalmed the benediction with a shower of tears.”

The glorious Scott cycle of romances came to me some four or five years

afterwards; and I think boys of our year were specially fortunate in

coming upon those delightful books at that special time when we

could best enjoy them. Oh, that sunshiny bench on half-holidays, with

Claverhouse or Ivanhoe for a companion! I have remarked of very late

days some little men in a great state of delectation over the romances

of Captain Mayne Reid, and Gustave Aimard's Prairie and Indian Stories,

and during occasional holiday visits, lurking off to bed with the volume

under their arms. But are those Indians and warriors so terrible as our

Indians and warriors were? (I say, are they? Young gentlemen, mind, I do

not say they are not.) But as an oldster I can be heartily thankful for

the novels of the 1-10 Geo. IV., let us say, and so downward to a period

not unremote. Let us see there is, first, our dear Scott. Whom do I love

in the works of that dear old master? Amo--

The Baron of Bradwardine and Fergus. (Captain Waverley is certainly very

mild.)

Amo Ivanhoe; LOCKSLEY; the Templar.

Amo Quentin Durward, and especially Quentin's uncle, who brought the

boar to bay. I forget the gentleman's name.

I have never cared for the Master of Ravenswood, or fetched his hat out

of the water since he dropped it there when I last met him (circa 1825).

Amo SALADIN and the Scotch knight in the “Talisman.” The Sultan best.

Amo CLAVERHOUSE.

Amo MAJOR DALGETTY. Delightful Major. To think of him is to desire to

jump up, run to the book, and get the volume down from the shelf. About

all those heroes of Scott, what a manly bloom there is, and honorable

modesty! They are not at all heroic. They seem to blush somehow in their

position of hero, and as it were to say, “Since it must be done, here

goes!” They are handsome, modest, upright, simple, courageous, not

too clever. If I were a mother (which is absurd), I should like to be

mother-in-law to several young men of the Walter-Scott-hero sort.

Much as I like those most unassuming, manly, unpretending gentlemen, I

have to own that I think the heroes of another writer, viz.--

LEATHER-STOCKING,

UNCAS,

HARDHEART,

TOM COFFIN,

are quite the equals of Scott's men; perhaps Leather-stocking is better

than any one in “Scott's lot.” La Longue Carabine is one of the great

prize-men of fiction. He ranks with your Uncle Toby, Sir Roger de

Coverley, Falstaff--heroic figures, all--American or British, and the

artist has deserved well of his country who devised them.

At school, in my time, there was a public day, when the boys' relatives,

an examining bigwig or two from the universities, old schoolfellows,

and so forth, came to the place. The boys were all paraded; prizes were

administered; each lad being in a new suit of clothes--and magnificent

dandies, I promise you, some of us were. Oh, the chubby cheeks, clean

collars, glossy new raiment, beaming faces, glorious in youth--fit tueri

coelum--bright with truth, and mirth, and honor! To see a hundred boys

marshalled in a chapel or old hall; to hear their sweet fresh voices

when they chant, and look in their brave calm faces; I say, does not

the sight and sound of them smite you, somehow, with a pang of exquisite

kindness? . . . Well. As about boys, so about Novelists. I fancy the

boys of Parnassus School all paraded. I am a lower boy myself in that

academy. I like our fellows to look well, upright, gentlemanlike. There

is Master Fielding--he with the black eye. What a magnificent build of a

boy! There is Master Scott, one of the heads of the school. Did you ever

see the fellow more hearty and manly? Yonder lean, shambling, cadaverous

lad, who is always borrowing money, telling lies, leering after the

house-maids, is Master Laurence Sterne--a bishop's grandson, and himself

intended for the Church; for shame, you little reprobate! But what a

genius the fellow has! Let him have a sound flogging, and as soon as

the young scamp is out of the whipping-room give him a gold medal. Such

would be my practice if I were Doctor Birch, and master of the school.

Let us drop this school metaphor, this birch and all pertaining thereto.

Our subject, I beg leave to remind the reader's humble servant, is novel

heroes and heroines. How do you like your heroes, ladies? Gentlemen,

what novel heroines do you prefer? When I set this essay going, I sent

the above question to two of the most inveterate novel-readers of my

acquaintance. The gentleman refers me to Miss Austen; the lady says

Athos, Guy Livingston, and (pardon my rosy blushes) Colonel Esmond, and

owns that in youth she was very much in love with Valancourt.

“Valancourt? and who was he?” cry the young people. Valancourt, my

dears, was the hero of one of the most famous romances which ever was

published in this country. The beauty and elegance of Valancourt made

your young grandmammas' gentle hearts to beat with respectful sympathy.

He and his glory have passed away. Ah, woe is me that the glory of

novels should ever decay; that dust should gather round them on the

shelves; that the annual cheques from Messieurs the publishers should

dwindle, dwindle! Inquire at Mudie's, or the London Library, who asks

for the “Mysteries of Udolpho” now? Have not even the “Mysteries of

Paris” ceased to frighten? Alas, our novels are but for a season; and I

know characters whom a painful modesty forbids me to mention, who shall

go to limbo along with “Valancourt” and “Doricourt” and “Thaddeus of

Warsaw.”

A dear old sentimental friend, with whom I discoursed on the subject

of novels yesterday, said that her favorite hero was Lord Orville, in

“Evelina,” that novel which Dr. Johnson loved so. I took down the

book from a dusty old crypt at a club, where Mrs. Barbauld's novelists

repose: and this is the kind of thing, ladies and gentlemen, in which

your ancestors found pleasure:--

“And here, whilst I was looking for the books, I was followed by Lord

Orville. He shut the door after he came in, and, approaching me with a

look of anxiety, said, 'Is this true, Miss Anville--are you going?'

“'I believe so, my lord,' said I, still looking for the books.

“'So suddenly, so unexpectedly: must I lose you?'

“'No great loss, my lord,' said I, endeavoring to speak cheerfully.

“'Is it possible,' said he, gravely, 'Miss Anville can doubt my

sincerity?'

“'I can't imagine,' cried I, 'what Mrs. Selwyn has done with those

books.'

“'Would to heaven,' continued he, 'I might flatter myself you would

allow me to prove it!'

“'I must run up stairs,' cried I, greatly confused, 'and ask what she

has done with them.'

“'You are going then,' cried he, taking my hand, 'and you give me not

the smallest hope of any return! Will you not, my too lovely friend,

will you not teach me, with fortitude like your own, to support your

absence?'

“'My lord,' cried I, endeavoring to disengage my hand, 'pray let me go!'

“'I will,' cried he, to my inexpressible confusion, dropping on one

knee, 'if you wish me to leave you.'

“'Oh, my lord,' exclaimed I, 'rise, I beseech you; rise. Surely your

lordship is not so cruel as to mock me.'

“'Mock you!' repeated he earnestly, 'no, I revere you. I esteem and

admire you above all human beings! You are the friend to whom my soul

is attached, as to its better half. You are the most amiable, the most

perfect of women; and you are dearer to me than language has the power

of telling.'

“I attempt not to describe my sensations at that moment; I scarce

breathed; I doubted if I existed; the blood forsook my cheeks, and my

feet refused to sustain me. Lord Orville hastily rising supported me to

a chair upon which I sank almost lifeless.

“I cannot write the scene that followed, though every word is engraven

on my heart; but his protestations, his expressions, were too flattering

for repetition; nor would he, in spite of my repeated efforts to leave

him, suffer me to escape; in short, my dear sir, I was not proof against

his solicitations, and he drew from me the most sacred secret of my

heart!”*

* Contrast this old perfumed, powdered D'Arblay conversation

with the present modern talk. If the two young people

wished to hide their emotions now-a-days, and express

themselves in modest language, the story would run:--

“Whilst I was looking for the books, Lord Orville came in.

He looked uncommonly down in the mouth, as he said: 'Is this

true, Miss Anville; are you going to cut?'

“'To absquatulate, Lord Orville,' said I, still pretending

that I was looking for the books.

“'You are very quick about it,' said he.

“'Guess it's no great loss,' I remarked, as cheerfully as I

could.

“'You don't think I'm chaffing?' said Orville, with much

emotion.

“'What has Mrs. Selwyn done with the books?' I went on.

“'What, going' said he, 'and going for good? I wish I was

such a good-plucked one as you, Miss Anville,'” &c.

The conversation, you perceive, might be easily written down

to this key; and if the hero and heroine were modern, they

would not be suffered to go through their dialogue on

stilts, but would converse in the natural graceful way at

present customary. By the way, what a strange custom that

is in modern lady novelists to make the men bully the women!

In the time of Miss Porter and Madame D'Arblay, we have

respect, profound bows and curtsies, graceful courtesy, from

men to women. In the time of Miss Bronte, absolute

rudeness. Is it true, mesdames, that you like rudeness, and

are pleased at being ill-used by men? I could point to more

than one lady novelist who so represents you.

Other people may not much like this extract, madam, from your favorite

novel, but when you come to read it, YOU will like it. I suspect that

when you read that book which you so love, you read it a deux. Did

you not yourself pass a winter at Bath, when you were the belle of the

assembly? Was there not a Lord Orville in your case too? As you think

of him eleven lustres pass away. You look at him with the bright eyes

of those days, and your hero stands before you, the brave, the

accomplished, the simple, the true gentleman; and he makes the most

elegant of bows to one of the most beautiful young women the world

ever saw; and he leads you out to the cotillon, to the dear unforgotten

music. Hark to the horns of Elfand, blowing, blowing! Bonne vieille, you

remember their melody, and your heart-strings thrill with it still.

Of your heroic heroes, I think our friend Monseigneur Athos, Count de la

Fere, is my favorite. I have read about him from sunrise to sunset with

the utmost contentment of mind. He has passed through how many volumes?

Forty? Fifty? I wish for my part there were a hundred more, and would

never tire of him reselling prisoners, punishing ruffians, and running

scoundrels through the midriff with his most graceful rapier. Ah,

Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, you are a magnificent trio. I think I like

d'Artagnan in his own memoirs best. I bought him years and years ago,

price fivepence, in a little parchment-covered Cologne-printed volume,

at a stall in Gray's Inn Lane. Dumas glorifies him and makes a Marshal

of him; if I remember rightly, the original d'Artagnan was a needy

adventurer, who died in exile very early in Louis XIV.'s reign. Did you

ever read the “Chevalier d'Harmenthal?” Did you ever read the “Tulipe

Noire,” as modest as a story by Miss Edgeworth? I think of the prodigal

banquets to which this Lucullus of a man has invited me, with thanks and

wonder. To what a series of splendid entertainments he has treated me!

Where does he find the money for these prodigious feasts? They say that

all the works bearing Dumas's name are not written by him. Well? Does

not the chief cook have aides under him? Did not Rubens's pupils paint

on his canvases? Had not Lawrence assistants for his backgrounds? For

myself, being also du metier, I confess I would often like to have a

competent, respectable, and rapid clerk for the business part of my

novels; and on his arrival, at eleven o'clock, would say, “Mr. Jones,

if you please, the archbishop must die this morning in about five pages.

Turn to article 'Dropsy' (or what you will) in Encyclopaedia. Take

care there are no medical blunders in his death. Group his daughters,

physicians, and chaplains round him. In Wales's 'London,' letter B,

third shelf, you will find an account of Lambeth, and some prints of the

place. Color in with local coloring. The daughter will come down, and

speak to her lover in his wherry at Lambeth Stairs,” &c., &c. Jones (an

intelligent young man) examines the medical, historical, topographical

books necessary; his chief points out to him in Jeremy Taylor (fol.,

London, M.DCLV.) a few remarks, such as might befit a dear old

archbishop departing this life. When I come back to dress for dinner,

the archbishop is dead on my table in five pages; medicine, topography,

theology, all right, and Jones has gone home to his family some hours.

Sir Christopher is the architect of St. Paul's. He has not laid the

stones or carried up the mortar. There is a great deal of carpenter's

and joiner's work in novels which surely a smart professional hand might

supply. A smart professional hand? I give you my word, there seem to me

parts of novels--let us say the love-making, the “business,” the villain

in the cupboard, and so forth, which I should like to order John Footman

to take in hand, as I desire him to bring the coals and polish the

boots. Ask ME indeed to pop a robber under a bed, to hide a will which

shall be forthcoming in due season, or at my time of life to write a

namby-pamby love conversation between Emily and Lord Arthur! I feel

ashamed of myself, and especially when my business obliges me to do

the love-passages, I blush so, though quite alone in my study, that

you would fancy I was going off in an apoplexy. Are authors affected

by their own works? I don't know about other gentlemen, but if I make a

joke myself I cry; if I write a pathetic scene I am laughing wildly all

the time--at least Tomkins thinks so. You know I am such a cynic!

The editor of the Cornhill Magazine (no soft and yielding character like

his predecessor, but a man of stern resolution) will only allow these

harmless papers to run to a certain length. But for this veto I should

gladly have prattled over half a sheet more, and have discoursed on many

heroes and heroines of novels whom fond memory brings back to me. Of

these books I have been a diligent student from those early days, which

are recorded at the commencement of this little essay. Oh, delightful

novels, well remembered! Oh, novels, sweet and delicious as the

raspberry open-tarts of budding boyhood! Do I forget one night after

prayers (when we under-boys were sent to bed) lingering at my cupboard

to read one little half-page more of my dear Walter Scott--and down came

the monitor's dictionary upon my head! Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of

York, I have loved thee faithfully for forty years! Thou wert twenty

years old (say) and I but twelve, when I knew thee. At sixty odd, love,

most of the ladies of thy Orient race have lost the bloom of youth,

and bulged beyond the line of beauty; but to me thou art ever young and

fair, and I will do battle with any felon Templar who assails thy fair

name.

ON A PEAR-TREE.

A gracious reader no doubt has remarked that these humble sermons have

for subjects some little event which happens at the preacher's own gate,

or which falls under his peculiar cognizance. Once, you may remember,

we discoursed about a chalk-mark on the door. This morning Betsy, the

housemaid, comes with a frightened look, and says, “Law, mum! there's

three bricks taken out of the garden wall, and the branches broke,

and all the pears taken off the pear-tree!” Poor peaceful suburban

pear-tree! Gaol-birds have hopped about thy branches, and robbed them

of their smoky fruit. But those bricks removed; that ladder evidently

prepared, by which unknown marauders may enter and depart from my little

Englishman's castle; is not this a subject of thrilling interest,

and may it not BE CONTINUED IN A FUTURE NUMBER?--that is the terrible

question. Suppose, having escaladed the outer wall, the miscreants take

a fancy to storm the castle? Well--well! we are armed; we are numerous;

we are men of tremendous courage, who will defend our spoons with our

lives; and there are barracks close by (thank goodness!) whence, at

the noise of our shouts and firing, at least a thousand bayonets will

bristle to our rescue.

What sound is yonder? A church bell. I might go myself, but how listen

to the sermon? I am thinking of those thieves who have made a ladder of

my wall, and a prey of my pear-tree. They may be walking to church

at this moment, neatly shaved, in clean linen, with every outward

appearance of virtue. If I went, I know I should be watching the

congregation, and thinking, “Is that one of the fellows who came over my

wall?” If, after the reading of the eighth Commandment, a man sang out

with particular energy, “Incline our hearts to keep this law,” I

should think, “Aha, Master Basso, did you have pears for breakfast

this morning?” Crime is walking round me, that is clear. Who is the

perpetrator? . . . What a changed aspect the world has, since these last

few lines were written! I have been walking round about my premises, and

in consultation with a gentleman in a single-breasted blue coat, with

pewter buttons, and a tape ornament on the collar. He has looked at the

holes in the wall, and the amputated tree. We have formed our plan of

defence--PERHAPS OF ATTACK. Perhaps some day you may read in the papers,

“DARING ATTEMPT AT BURGLARY--HEROIC VICTORY OVER THE VILLAINS,” &c. &c.

Rascals as yet unknown! perhaps you, too, may read these words, and

may be induced to pause in your fatal intention. Take the advice of a

sincere friend, and keep off. To find a man writhing in my man-trap,

another mayhap impaled in my ditch, to pick off another from my tree

(scoundrel! as though he were a pear) will give me no pleasure; but such

things may happen. Be warned in time, villains! Or, if you MUST pursue

your calling as cracksmen, have the goodness to try some other shutters.

Enough! subside into your darkness, children of night! Thieves! we seek

not to have YOU hanged--you are but as pegs whereon to hang others.

I may have said before, that if I were going to be hanged myself, I

think I should take an accurate note of my sensations, request to

stop at some Public-house on the road to Tyburn and be provided with a

private room and writing-materials, and give an account of my state

of mind. Then, gee up, carter! beg your reverence to continue your

apposite, though not novel, remarks on my situation;--and so we drive up

to Tyburn turnpike, where an expectant crowd, the obliging sheriffs, and

the dexterous and rapid Mr. Ketch are already in waiting.

A number of laboring people are sauntering about our streets and taking

their rest on this holiday--fellows who have no more stolen my pears

than they have robbed the crown jewels out of the Tower--and I say I

cannot help thinking in my own mind, “Are you the rascal who got over

my wall last night?” Is the suspicion haunting my mind written on my

countenance? I trust not. What if one man after another were to come up

to me and say, “How dare you, sir, suspect me in your mind of stealing

your fruit? Go be hanged, you and your jargonels!” You rascal thief! it

is not merely three-halfp'orth of sooty fruit you rob me of, it is my

peace of mind--my artless innocence and trust in my fellow-creatures,

my childlike belief that everything they say is true. How can I hold out

the hand of friendship in this condition, when my first impression is,

“My good sir, I strongly suspect that you were up my pear-tree

last night?” It is a dreadful state of mind. The core is black;

the death-stricken fruit drops on the bough, and a great worm is

within--fattening, and feasting, and wriggling! WHO stole the pears?

I say. Is it you, brother? Is it you, madam? Come! are you ready to

answer--respondere parati et cantare pares? (O shame! shame!)

Will the villains ever be discovered and punished who stole my fruit?

Some unlucky rascals who rob orchards are caught up the tree at once.

Some rob through life with impunity. If I, for my part, were to try

and get up the smallest tree, on the darkest night, in the most remote

orchard, I wager any money I should be found out--be caught by the leg

in a man-trap, or have Towler fastening on me. I always am found out;

have been; shall be. It's my luck. Other men will carry off bushels

of fruit, and get away undetected, unsuspected; whereas I know woe and

punishment would fall upon me were I to lay my hand on the smallest

pippin. So be it. A man who has this precious self-knowledge will surely

keep his hands from picking and stealing, and his feet upon the paths of

virtue.

I will assume, my benevolent friend and present reader, that you

yourself are virtuous, not from a fear of punishment, but from a sheer

love of good: but us you and I walk through life, consider what hundreds

of thousands of rascals we must have met, who have not been found out at

all. In high places and low, in Clubs and on 'Change, at church or

the balls and routs of the nobility and gentry, how dreadful it is for

benevolent beings like you and me to have to think these undiscovered

though not unsuspected scoundrels are swarming! What is the difference

between you and a galley-slave? Is yonder poor wretch at the hulks not a

man and a brother too? Have you ever forged, my dear sir? Have you ever

cheated your neighbor? Have you ever ridden to Hounslow Heath and robbed

the mail? Have you ever entered a first-class railway carriage, where an

old gentleman sat alone in a sweet sleep, daintily murdered him, taken

his pocket-book, and got out at the next station? You know that this

circumstance occurred in France a few months since. If we have travelled

in France this autumn we may have met the ingenious gentleman who

perpetrated this daring and successful coup. We may have found him a

well-informed and agreeable man. I have been acquainted with two or

three gentlemen who have been discovered after--after the performance

of illegal actions. What? That agreeable rattling fellow we met was

the celebrated Mr. John Sheppard? Was that amiable quiet gentleman in

spectacles the well-known Mr. Fauntleroy? In Hazlitt's admirable paper,

“Going to a Fight,” he describes a dashing sporting fellow who was in

the coach, and who was no less a man than the eminent destroyer of Mr.

William Weare. Don't tell me that you would not like to have met (out of

business) Captain Sheppard, the Reverend Doctor Dodd, or others rendered

famous by their actions and misfortunes, by their lives and their

deaths. They are the subjects of ballads, the heroes of romance. A

friend of mine had the house in May Fair, out of which poor Doctor Dodd

was taken handcuffed. There was the paved hall over which he stepped.

That little room at the side was, no doubt, the study where he composed

his elegant sermons. Two years since I had the good fortune to partake

of some admirable dinners in Tyburnia--magnificent dinners indeed;

but rendered doubly interesting from the fact that the house was that

occupied by the late Mr. Sadleir. One night the late Mr. Sadleir took

tea in that dining-room, and, to the surprise of his butler, went out,

having put into his pocket his own cream-jug. The next morning, you

know, he was found dead on Hampstead Heath, with the cream-jug lying by

him, into which he had poured the poison by which he died. The idea of

the ghost of the late gentleman flitting about the room gave a strange

interest to the banquet. Can you fancy him taking his tea alone in the

dining-room? He empties that cream-jug and puts it in his pocket; and

then he opens yonder door, through which he is never to pass again. Now

he crosses the hall: and hark! the hall-door shuts upon him, and his

steps die away. They are gone into the night. They traverse the sleeping

city. They lead him into the fields, where the gray morning is beginning

to glimmer. He pours something from a bottle into a little silver jug.

It touches his lips, the lying lips. Do they quiver a prayer ere that

awful draught is swallowed? When the sun rises they are dumb.

I neither knew this unhappy man, nor his countryman--Laertes let us

call him--who is at present in exile, having been compelled to fly from

remorseless creditors. Laertes fled to America, where he earned

his bread by his pen. I own to having a kindly feeling towards this

scapegrace, because, though an exile, he did not abuse the country

whence he fled. I have heard that he went away taking no spoil with him,

penniless almost; and on his voyage he made acquaintance with a certain

Jew; and when he fell sick, at New York, this Jew befriended him, and

gave him help and money out of his own store, which was but small. Now,

after they had been awhile in the strange city, it happened that the

poor Jew spent all his little money, and he too fell ill, and was in

great penury. And now it was Laertes who befriended that Ebrew Jew. He

fee'd doctors; he fed and tended the sick and hungry. Go to, Laertes! I

know thee not. It may be thou art justly exul patriae. But the Jew shall

intercede for thee, thou not, let us trust, hopeless Christian sinner.

Another exile to the same shore I knew: who did not? Julius Caesar

hardly owed more money than Cucedicus: and, gracious powers! Cucedicus,

how did you manage to spend and owe so much? All day he was at work for

his clients; at night he was occupied in the Public Council. He neither

had wife nor children. The rewards which he received for his orations

were enough to maintain twenty rhetoricians. Night after night I have

seen him eating his frugal meal, consisting but of a fish, a small

portion of mutton, and a small measure of Iberian or Trinacrian wine,

largely diluted with the sparkling waters of Rhenish Gaul. And this was

all he had; and this man earned and paid away talents upon talents; and

fled, owing who knows how many more! Does a man earn fifteen thousand

pounds a year, toiling by day, talking by night, having horrible unrest

in his bed, ghastly terrors at waking, seeing an officer lurking at

every corner, a sword of justice for ever hanging over his head--and

have for his sole diversion a newspaper, a lonely mutton-chop, and a

little sherry and seltzer-water? In the German stories we read how men

sell themselves to--a certain Personage, and that Personage cheats

them. He gives them wealth; yes, but the gold-pieces turn into worthless

leaves. He sets them before splendid banquets yes, but what an awful

grin that black footman has who lifts up the dish-cover; and don't you

smell a peculiar sulphurous odor in the dish? Faugh! take it away; I

can't eat. He promises them splendors and triumphs. The conqueror's ear

rolls glittering through the city, the multitude shout and huzza. Drive

on, coachman. Yes, but who is that hanging on behind the carriage? Is

this the reward of eloquence, talents, industry? Is this the end of a

life's labor? Don't you remember how, when the dragon was infesting

the neighborhood of Babylon, the citizens used to walk dismally out of

evenings, and look at the valleys round about strewed with the bones of

the victims whom the monster had devoured? O insatiate brute, and most

disgusting, brazen, and scaly reptile! Let us be thankful, children,

that it has not gobbled us up too. Quick. Let us turn away, and pray

that we may be kept out of the reach of his horrible maw, jaw, claw!

When I first came up to London, as innocent as Monsieur Gil Blas, I

also fell in with some pretty acquaintances, found my way into several

caverns, and delivered my purse to more than one gallant gentleman of

the road. One I remember especially--one who never eased me personally

of a single maravedi--one than whom I never met a bandit more gallant,

courteous, and amiable. Rob me? Rolando feasted me; treated me to his

dinner and his wine; kept a generous table for his friends, and I

know was most liberal to many of them. How well I remember one of

his speculations! It was a great plan for smuggling tobacco. Revenue

officers were to be bought off; silent ships were to ply on the Thames;

cunning depots were to be established, and hundreds of thousands of

pounds to be made by the coup. How his eyes kindled as he propounded the

scheme to me! How easy and certain it seemed! It might have succeeded, I

can't say: but the bold and merry, the hearty and kindly Rolando came

to grief--a little matter of imitated signatures occasioned a Bank

persecution of Rolando the Brave. He walked about armed, and vowed

he would never be taken alive: but taken he was; tried, condemned,

sentenced to perpetual banishment; and I heard that for some time he was

universally popular in the colony which had the honor to possess him.

What a song he could sing! 'Twas when the cup was sparkling before us,

and heaven gave a portion of its blue, boys, blue, that I remember the

song of Roland at the “Old Piazza Coffee-house.” And now where is the

“Old Piazza Coffee-house?” Where is Thebes? where is Troy? where is the

Colossus of Rhodes? Ah, Rolando, Rolando! thou wert a gallant captain,

a cheery, a handsome, a merry. At ME thou never presentedst pistol.

Thou badest the bumper of Burgundy fill, fill for me, giving those

who preferred it champagne. Caelum non animum, &c. Do you think he has

reformed now that he has crossed the sea, and changed the air? I have

my own opinion. Howbeit, Rolando, thou wert a most kind and hospitable

bandit. And I love not to think of thee with a chain at thy shin.

Do you know how all these memories of unfortunate men have come upon

me? When they came to frighten me this morning by speaking of my robbed

pears, my perforated garden wall, I was reading an article in the

Saturday Review about Rupilius. I have sat near that young man at a

public dinner, and beheld him in a gilded uniform. But yesterday he

lived in splendor, had long hair, a flowing beard, a jewel at his neck,

and a smart surtout. So attired, he stood but yesterday in court; and

to-day he sits over a bowl of prison cocoa, with a shaved head, and in a

felon's jerkin.

That beard and head shaved, that gaudy deputy-lieutenant's coat

exchanged for felon uniform, and your daily bottle of champagne for

prison cocoa, my poor Rupilius, what a comfort it must be to have the

business brought to an end! Champagne was the honorable gentleman's

drink in the House of Commons dining-room, as I am informed. What

uncommonly dry champagne that must have been! When we saw him outwardly

happy, how miserable he must have been! when we thought him prosperous,

how dismally poor! When the great Mr. Harker, at the public dinners,

called out--“Gentlemen, charge your glasses, and please silence for

the Honorable Member for Lambeth!” how that Honorable Member must have

writhed inwardly! One day, when there was a talk of a gentleman's honor

being questioned, Rupilius said, “If any man doubted mine, I would knock

him down.” But that speech was in the way of business. The Spartan boy,

who stole the fox, smiled while the beast was gnawing him under his

cloak: I promise you Rupilius had some sharp fangs gnashing under his.

We have sat at the same feast, I say: we have paid our contribution to

the same charity. Ah! when I ask this day for my daily bread, I pray not

to be led into temptation, and to be delivered from evil.

DESSEIN'S.

I arrived by the night-mail packet from Dover. The passage had been

rough, and the usual consequences had ensued. I was disinclined to

travel farther that night on my road to Paris, and knew the Calais

hotel of old as one of the cleanest, one of the dearest, one of the most

comfortable hotels on the continent of Europe. There is no town more

French than Calais. That charming old “Hotel Dessein,” with its court,

its gardens, its lordly kitchen, its princely waiter--a gentleman of

the old school, who has welcomed the finest company in Europe--have long

been known to me. I have read complaints in The Times, more than once, I

think, that the Dessein bills are dear. A bottle of soda-water certainly

costs--well, never mind how much. I remember as a boy, at the “Ship” at

Dover (imperante Carolo Decimo), when, my place to London being paid, I

had but 12s. left after a certain little Paris excursion (about which my

benighted parents never knew anything), ordering for dinner a whiting, a

beefsteak, and a glass of negus, and the bill was, dinner 7s., glass of

negus 2s., waiter 6d., and only half a crown left, as I was a sinner,

for the guard and coachman on the way to London! And I WAS a sinner. I

had gone without leave. What a long, dreary, guilty forty hours' journey

it was from Paris to Calais, I remember! How did I come to think of

this escapade, which occurred in the Easter vacation of the year 1830?

I always think of it when I am crossing to Calais. Guilt, sir, guilt

remains stamped on the memory, and I feel easier in my mind now that

it is liberated of this old peccadillo. I met my college tutor only

yesterday. We were travelling, and stopped at the same hotel. He had

the very next room to mine. After he had gone into his apartment, having

shaken me quite kindly by the hand, I felt inclined to knock at his door

and say, “Doctor Bentley, I beg your pardon, but do you remember, when I

was going down at the Easter vacation in 1830, you asked me where I

was going to spend my vacation? And I said, With my friend Slingsby, in

Huntingdonshire. Well, sir, I grieve to have to confess that I told you

a fib. I had got 20L. and was going for a lark to Paris, where my friend

Edwards was staying.” There, it is out. The Doctor will read it, for

I did not wake him up after all to make my confession, but protest he

shall have a copy of this Roundabout sent to him when he returns to his

lodge.

They gave me a bedroom there; a very neat room on the first floor,

looking into the pretty garden. The hotel must look pretty much as it

did a hundred years ago when HE visited it. I wonder whether he paid his

bill? Yes: his journey was just begun. He had borrowed or got the money

somehow. Such a man would spend it liberally enough when he had it, give

generously--nay, drop a tear over the fate of the poor fellow whom he

relieved. I don't believe a word he says, but I never accused him of

stinginess about money. That is a fault of much more virtuous people

than he. Mr. Laurence is ready enough with his purse when there are

anybody's guineas in it. Still when I went to bed in the room, in HIS

room; when I think how I admire, dislike, and have abused him, a certain

dim feeling of apprehension filled my mind at the midnight hour. What if

I should see his lean figure in the black-satin breeches, his sinister

smile, his long thin finger pointing to me in the moonlight (for I am

in bed, and have popped my candle out), and he should say, “You mistrust

me, you hate me, do you? And you, don't you know how Jack, Tom,

and Harry, your brother authors, hate YOU?” I grin and laugh in the

moonlight, in the midnight, in the silence. “O you ghost in black-satin

breeches and a wig! I like to be hated by some men,” I say. “I know men

whose lives are a scheme, whose laughter is a conspiracy, whose smile

means something else, whose hatred is a cloak, and I had rather these

men should hate me than not.”

“My good sir,” says he, with a ghastly grin on his lean face, “you have

your wish.”

“Apres?” I say. “Please let me go to sleep. I shan't sleep any the worse

because--”

“Because there are insects in the bed, and they sting you?” (This is

only by way of illustration, my good sir; the animals don't bite me now.

All the house at present seems to me excellently clean.) “'Tis absurd

to affect this indifference. If you are thin-skinned, and the reptiles

bite, they keep you from sleep.”

“There are some men who cry out at a flea-bite as loud as if they were

torn by a vulture,” I growl.

“Men of the genus irritabile, my worthy good gentleman!--and you are

one.”

“Yes, sir, I am of the profession, as you say; and I dare say make a

great shouting and crying at a small hurt.”

“You are ashamed of that quality by which you earn your subsistence,

and such reputation as you have? Your sensibility is your livelihood, my

worthy friend. You feel a pang of pleasure or pain? It is noted in your

memory, and some day or other makes its appearance in your manuscript.

Why, in your last Roundabout rubbish you mention reading your first

novel on the day when King George IV. was crowned. I remember him in his

cradle at St. James's, a lovely little babe; a gilt Chinese railing

was before him, and I dropped the tear of sensibility as I gazed on the

sleeping cherub.”

“A tear--a fiddlestick, MR. STERNE,” I growled out, for of course I

knew my friend in the wig and satin breeches to be no other than the

notorious, nay, celebrated Mr. Laurence Sterne.

“Does not the sight of a beautiful infant charm and melt you, mon ami?

If not, I pity you. Yes, he was beautiful. I was in London the year he

was born. I used to breakfast at the 'Mount Coffee-house.' I did not

become the fashion until two years later, when my 'Tristram' made his

appearance, who has held his own for a hundred years. By the way, mon

bon monsieur, how many authors of your present time will last till the

next century? Do you think Brown will?”

I laughed with scorn as I lay in my bed (and so did the ghost give a

ghastly snigger).

“Brown!” I roared. “One of the most over-rated men that ever put pen to

paper!”

“What do you think of Jones?”

I grew indignant with this old cynic. “As a reasonable ghost, come

out of the other world, you don't mean,” I said, “to ask me a

serious opinion of Mr. Jones? His books may be very good reading for

maid-servants and school-boys, but you don't ask ME to read them? As a

scholar yourself you must know that--”

“Well, then, Robinson?”

“Robinson, I am told, has merit. I dare say; I never have been able

to read his books, and can't, therefore, form any opinion about Mr.

Robinson. At least you will allow that I am not speaking in a prejudiced

manner about HIM.”

“Ah! I see you men of letters have your cabals and jealousies, as we

had in my time. There was an Irish fellow by the name of Gouldsmith,

who used to abuse me; but he went into no genteel company--and faith!

it mattered little, his praise or abuse. I never was more surprised

than when I heard that Mr. Irving, an American gentleman of parts and

elegance, had wrote the fellow's life. To make a hero of that man, my

dear sir, 'twas ridiculous! You followed in the fashion, I hear, and

chose to lay a wreath before this queer little idol. Preposterous!

A pretty writer, who has turned some neat couplets. Bah! I have no

patience with Master Posterity, that has chosen to take up this fellow,

and make a hero of him! And there was another gentleman of my time, Mr.

Thiefcatcher Fielding, forsooth! a fellow with the strength, and the

tastes, and the manners of a porter! What madness has possessed you all

to bow before that Calvert Butt of a man?--a creature without elegance

or sensibility! The dog had spirits, certainly. I remember my Lord

Bathurst praising them: but as for reading his books--ma foi, I would as

lief go and dive for tripe in a cellar. The man's vulgarity stifles me.

He wafts me whiffs of gin. Tobacco and onions are in his great coarse

laugh, which choke me, pardi; and I don't think much better of the

other fellow--the Scots' gallipot purveyor--Peregrine Clinker, Humphrey

Random--how did the fellow call his rubbish? Neither of these men had

the bel air, the bon ton, the je ne scais quoy. Pah! If I meet them in

my walks by our Stygian river, I give them a wide berth, as that

hybrid apothecary fellow would say. An ounce of civet, good apothecary;

horrible, horrible! The mere thought of the coarseness of those men

gives me the chair de poule. Mr. Fielding, especially, has no more

sensibility than a butcher in Fleet Market. He takes his heroes out of

ale-house kitchens, or worse places still. And this is the person

whom Posterity has chosen to honor along with me--ME! Faith, Monsieur

Posterity, you have put me in pretty company, and I see you are no wiser

than we were in our time. Mr. Fielding, forsooth! Mr. Tripe and Onions!

Mr. Cowheel and Gin! Thank you for nothing. Monsieur Posterity!”

“And so,” thought I, “even among these Stygians this envy and

quarrelsomeness (if you will permit me the word) survive? What a pitiful

meanness! To be sure, I can understand this feeling to a certain extent;

a sense of justice will prompt it. In my own case, I often feel myself

forced to protest against the absurd praises lavished on contemporaries.

Yesterday, for instance, Lady Jones was good enough to praise one of my

works. Tres bien. But in the very next minute she began, with quite

as great enthusiasm, to praise Miss Hobson's last romance. My good

creature, what is that woman's praise worth who absolutely admires the

writings of Miss Hobson? I offer a friend a bottle of '44 claret, fit

for a pontifical supper. 'This is capital wine,' says he; 'and now we

have finished the bottle, will you give me a bottle of that ordinaire we

drank the other day?' Very well, my good man. You are a good judge--of

ordinaire, I dare say. Nothing so provokes my anger, and rouses my sense

of justice, as to hear other men undeservedly praised. In a word, if you

wish to remain friends with me, don't praise anybody. You tell me that

the Venus de' Medici is beautiful, or Jacob Omnium is tall. Que diable!

Can't I judge for myself? Haven't I eyes and a foot-rule? I don't think

the Venus IS so handsome, since you press me. She is pretty, but she

has no expression. And as for Mr. Omnium, I can see much taller men in a

fair for twopence.”

“And so,” I said, turning round to Mr. Sterne, “you are actually jealous

of Mr. Fielding? O you men of letters, you men of letters! Is not the

world (your world, I mean) big enough for all of you?”

I often travel in my sleep. I often of a night find myself walking in my

night-gown about the gray streets. It is awkward at first, but somehow

nobody makes any remark. I glide along over the ground with my naked

feet. The mud does not wet them. The passers-by do not tread on them. I

am wafted over the ground, down the stairs, through the doors. This sort

of travelling, dear friends, I am sure you have all of you indulged.

Well, on the night in question (and, if you wish to know the precise

date, it was the 31st of September last), after having some little

conversation with Mr. Sterne in our bedroom, I must have got up, though

I protest I don't know how, and come down stairs with him into the

coffee-room of the “Hotel Dessein,” where the moon was shining, and a

cold supper was laid out. I forget what we had--“vol-au-vent d'oeufs de

Phenix--agneau aux pistaches a la Barmecide,”--what matters what we had?

“As regards supper this is certain, the less you have of it the better.”

That is what one of the guests remarked,--a shabby old man, in a wig,

and such a dirty, ragged, disreputable dressing-gown that I should have

been quite surprised at him, only one never IS surprised in dr---- under

certain circumstances.

“I can't eat 'em now,” said the greasy man (with his false old teeth, I

wonder he could eat anything). “I remember Alvanley eating three suppers

once at Carlton House--one night de petite comite.”

“Petit comite, sir,” said Mr. Sterne.

“Dammy, sir, let me tell my own story my own way. I say, one night at

Carlton house, playing at blind hookey with York, Wales, Tom Raikes,

Prince Boothby, and Dutch Sam the boxer, Alvanley ate three suppers, and

won three and twenty hundred pounds in ponies. Never saw a fellow with

such an appetite, except Wales in his GOOD time. But he destroyed the

finest digestion a man ever had with maraschino, by Jove--always at it.”

“Try mine,” said Mr. Sterne.

“What a doosid queer box,” says Mr. Brummell.

“I had it from a Capuchin friar in this town. The box is but a horn one;

but to the nose of sensibility Araby's perfume is not more delicate.”

“I call it doosid stale old rappee,” says Mr. Brummell--(as for me I

declare I could not smell anything at all in either of the boxes.) “Old

boy in smock-frock, take a pinch?”

The old boy in the smock-frock, as Mr. Brummell called him, was a very

old man, with long white beard, wearing, not a smock-frock, but a shirt;

and he had actually nothing else save a rope round his neck, which hung

behind his chair in the queerest way.

“Fair sir,” he said, turning to Mr. Brummell, “when the Prince of Wales

and his father laid siege to our town--”

“What nonsense are you talking, old cock?” says Mr. Brummell; “Wales

was never here. His late Majesty George IV. passed through on his way to

Hanover. My good man, you don't seem to know what's up at all. What is

he talkin' about the siege of Calais? I lived here fifteen years! Ought

to know. What's his old name?”

“I am Master Eustace of Saint Peter's,” said the old gentleman in the

shirt. “When my Lord King Edward laid siege to this city--”

“Laid siege to Jericho!” cries Mr. Brummell. “The old man is

cracked--cracked, sir!”

“--Laid siege to this city,” continued the old man, “I and five more

promised Messire Gautier de Mauny that we would give ourselves up as

ransom for the place. And we came before our Lord King Edward, attired

as you see, and the fair queen begged our lives out of her gramercy.”

“Queen, nonsense! you mean the Princess of Wales--pretty woman, petit

nez retrousse, grew monstrous stout!” suggested Mr. Brummell, whose

reading was evidently not extensive. “Sir Sidney Smith was a fine

fellow, great talker, hook nose, so has Lord Cochrane, so has Lord

Wellington. She was very sweet on Sir Sidney.”

“Your acquaintance with the history of Calais does not seem to be

considerable,” said Mr. Sterne to Mr. Brummell, with a shrug.

“Don't it, bishop?--for I conclude you are a bishop by your wig. I know

Calais as well as any man. I lived here for years before I took that

confounded consulate at Caen. Lived in this hotel, then at Leleux's.

People used to stop here. Good fellows used to ask for poor George

Brummell; Hertford did, so did the Duchess of Devonshire. Not know

Calais indeed! That is a good joke. Had many a good dinner here: sorry I

ever left it.”

“My Lord King Edward,” chirped the queer old gentleman in the shirt,

“colonized the place with his English, after we had yielded it up to

him. I have heard tell they kept it for nigh three hundred years, till

my Lord de Guise took it from a fair Queen, Mary of blessed memory, a

holy woman. Eh, but Sire Gautier of Mauny was a good knight, a valiant

captain, gentle and courteous withal! Do you remember his ransoming the

----?”

“What is the old fellow twaddlin' about?” cries Brummell. “He is talking

about some knight?--I never spoke to a knight, and very seldom to a

baronet. Firkins, my butterman, was a knight--a knight and alderman.

Wales knighted him once on going into the City.”

“I am not surprised that the gentleman should not understand Messire

Eustace of St. Peter's,” said the ghostly individual addressed as Mr.

Sterne. “Your reading doubtless has not been very extensive?”

“Dammy, sir, speak for yourself!” cries Mr. Brummell, testily. “I never

professed to be a reading man, but I was as good as my neighbors. Wales

wasn't a reading man; York wasn't a reading man; Clarence wasn't a

reading man; Sussex was, but he wasn't a man in society. I remember

reading your 'Sentimental Journey,' old boy: read it to the Duchess

at Beauvoir, I recollect, and she cried over it. Doosid clever amusing

book, and does you great credit. Birron wrote doosid clever books,

too; so did Monk Lewis. George Spencer was an elegant poet, and my dear

Duchess of Devonshire, if she had not been a grande dame, would have

beat 'em all, by George. Wales couldn't write: he could sing, but he

couldn't spell.”

“Ah, you know the great world? so did I in my time, Mr. Brummell. I have

had the visiting tickets of half the nobility at my lodgings in Bond

Street. But they left me there no more cared for than last year's

calendar,” sighed Mr. Sterne. “I wonder who is the mode in London now?

One of our late arrivals, my Lord Macaulay, has prodigious merit and

learning, and, faith, his histories are more amusing than any novels, my

own included.”

“Don't know, I'm sure not in my line. Pick this bone of chicken,” says

Mr. Brummell, trifling with a skeleton bird before him.

“I remember in this city of Calais worse fare than you bird,” said old

Mr. Eustace of Saint Peter's. “Marry, sirs, when my Lord King Edward

laid siege to us, lucky was he who could get a slice of horse for his

breakfast, and a rat was sold at the price of a hare.”

“Hare is coarse food, never tasted rat,” remarked the Beau.

“Table-d'hote poor fare enough for a man like me, who has been

accustomed to the best of cookery. But rat--stifle me! I couldn't

swallow that: never could bear hardship at all.”

“We had to bear enough when my Lord of England pressed us. 'Twas pitiful

to see the faces of our women as the siege went on, and hear the little

ones asking for dinner.”

“Always a bore, children. At dessert, they are bad enough, but at dinner

they're the deuce and all,” remarked Mr. Brummell.

Messire Eustace of St. Peter's did not seem to pay much attention to the

Beau's remarks, but continued his own train of thought as old men will

do.

“I hear,” said he, “that there has actually been no war between us of

France and you men of England for wellnigh fifty year. Ours has ever

been a nation of warriors. And besides her regular found men-at-arms,

'tis said the English of the present time have more than a hundred

thousand of archers with weapons that will carry for half a mile. And

a multitude have come amongst us of late from a great Western country,

never so much as heard of in my time--valiant men and great drawers of

the long bow, and they say they have ships in armor that no shot can

penetrate. Is it so? Wonderful; wonderful! The best armor, gossips, is a

stout heart.”

“And if ever manly heart beat under shirt-frill, thine is that heart,

Sir Eustace!” cried Mr. Sterne, enthusiastically.

“We, of France, were never accused of lack of courage, sir, in so far as

I know,” said Messire Eustace. “We have shown as much in a thousand

wars with you English by sea and land; and sometimes we conquered, and

sometimes, as is the fortune of war, we were discomfited. And notably

in a great sea-fight which befell off Ushant on the first of June --

Our Admiral, messire Villaret de Joyeuse, on board his galleon named the

'Vengeur,' being sore pressed by an English bombard, rather than yield

the crew of his ship to mercy, determined to go down with all on board

of her: and to the cry of Vive la Repub--or, I would say, of Notre Dame

a la Rescousse, he and his crew all sank to an immortal grave--”

“Sir,” said I, looking with amazement at the old gentleman, “surely,

surely, there is some mistake in your statement. Permit me to observe

that the action of the first of June took place five hundred years after

your time, and--”