CHAPTER II.

BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCCXXXIX. MAY, 1852. VOL. LXXI.

CONTENTS.

GOLD: ITS NATURAL AND CIVIL HISTORY, 517

LIFE OF NIEBUHR, 542

THOMAS MOORE, 559

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. PART XXI., 569

OUR LONDON COMMISSIONER. NO. II., 596

THE GOLD-FINDER, 607

THE VINEYARDS OF BORDEAUX, 617

THE DEMOCRATIC CONFEDERACY, 626

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET;

AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

_To whom all communications (post paid) must be addressed._

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

NO. CCCCXXXIX. MAY, 1852. VOL. LXXI.

GOLD: ITS NATURAL AND CIVIL HISTORY.[1][2]

The progress of knowledge naturally leads to the discovery not only of

new arts, and of new uses for artificial productions, but of new stores

of natural wealth in the bowels of the earth itself, and of new methods

of extracting and rendering them useful. This last point is amply

illustrated by the history of the progressive discovery and development

of our own most valuable mineral treasures—the coal and ironstone

deposits—which add so much both to our natural resources and to our

national strength.

But, independent of the advance of knowledge, the exploration and

colonisation of new countries by a civilised race leads of necessity to

the discovery of regions rich in mineral wealth, which were unknown

before, and brings new metallic supplies into the markets of the world.

When Spain conquered Mexico first, and afterwards Peru and Chili, Europe

became flooded with the precious metals to a degree unknown before in

the history of modern nations. When Russia began to explore her

provinces on the slopes of the Ural, gold-washings were discovered,

which have, by their enormous yield, made up for the deficient supply

which commotion and misrule in Central and Southern America had caused

in European countries. The possession of California by an observant and

curious people, of Anglo-Saxon breed, was almost immediately followed by

those wonderful discoveries which have made the world ring, and have

attracted adventurers from every region. And, lastly, the turning of

keen eyes upon river beds in Australia—still less known and examined

than almost any district of America without the Arctic circle—has

brought to light those vast stores of gold which appear destined to lay

the basis of a new empire in the Australian archipelago.

Nor have such discoveries been confined to the so-called precious

metals. The advance of North American civilisation towards the head

waters of the Missouri has made known abundant mines of lead, which the

cost of transport chiefly prevents as yet from seriously competing with

European produce along the Atlantic border. The joint march of Canada

and the United States along the shores of Lake Superior, has laid open

veins of copper of inexhaustible magnitude—on a scale, we may say, in

size and richness commensurate with the other great natural features of

the American continent;—while, of coal and ironstone, the Central States

of the Union are so full, that imagination itself cannot conceive a time

when they shall cease to be sufficient for the wants of the whole

civilised world.

Men untrained themselves to observe, and ignorant that it is

intellectual knowledge which opens and guides the eye, affect to

wonder—often, indeed, do seriously wonder—that gold so plentifully

scattered over the surface of a country as it is said to be in

California and Australia, or sprinkling with its yellow sheen thick

veins of snowy quartz, should, for a time so comparatively long, have

escaped observation. “What surprises me,” says Captain Sutter, in whose

mill-race the gold was first discovered, “is, that this country should

have been visited by so many scientific men, and that not one of them

should have ever stumbled upon these treasures; that scores of keen-eyed

trappers should have crossed the valley in every direction, and tribes

of Indians have dwelt in it for centuries, and yet this gold should

never have been discovered. I myself have passed the very spot above a

hundred times during the last ten years, but was just as blind as the

rest of them, so I must not wonder at the discovery not having been made

earlier.”[3]

Such seeming blindness, indeed, is not really a matter of surprise. The

ability to observe is an intellectual gift no less than the ability to

reason; and, like the latter talent, the former also must be trained. It

must be taught where to look, and what to look for; what the signs are

of the presence of the thing we wish to find, and where they are likely

to be met with.

It is not, in truth, a just reproach to unsuspecting men, that they have

not seen what they never imagined the presence of. It would scarcely

have been so, had they failed to see in a given place what they were

told was likely to be found. Many of our readers are familiar with the

existence of black lines in the solar spectrum; many may have seen them,

and justly wondered. Some may even recollect, when, years ago,

Frauenhofer first announced their existence, how opticians everywhere

mounted their most homogeneous prisms, and gazed at the spectrum eager

to see them, and how many looked in vain. Of course, the failure was

ascribed to the imperfection of their prisms, and not to their own

defective skill. One philosopher we remember, then already

distinguished, and whom now all delight to honour, of whom it was told

that having obtained one of the beautifully perfect prisms of

Frauenhofer’s own manufacture, he was still unable to see the lines; but

that another who had seen them came to his aid, instructed him how to

look, and in an instant he not only clearly saw them, but exclaimed with

wonder at his own blindness. Such were our own sensations also when

first we saw them. Was it, then, a reproach to Sir Isaac Newton and his

successors that these lines escaped them? The same reproach might be

made to the predecessors of almost every discoverer in every walk of

modern science. Many before him probably had looked from the same spot,

with similar advantages for seeing, and had not seen. But they had gazed

without any special object or previous instruction, and they had failed

to discern what another coming after them, prepared to look for it, and

knowing what it was like, and where likely to be, would have at once

descried.

Hence the discovery of most of the rich mines in past times was the

result of some unlooked-for accident happening generally to

naturally-observant but ignorant men. Thus Jacob says of the mines in

the Hartz—

“There are various conflicting opinions among the learned in

antiquities respecting the discovery of the mineral wealth of the

Hartz. The most probable accounts fix it in the tenth century; and the

tradition is, that a hunter of the name of Ramm, when engaged in the

chase, had fastened his horse to a tree, who, by pawing with his feet,

had scraped away the soil, and thereby discovered some minerals; that

specimens of them were sent to the Emperor Otho, to whom all minerals,

as regalities of the Empire, belonged, and who sent expert miners to

examine the district, from Franconia.”—(JACOB, i. p. 254.)

And again of the mines of Saxony—

“The mines of Saxony were first discovered in the tenth century, when

the whole district in which they are situated was covered with wood

and without inhabitants. Some carriers from Halle, on their way to

Bohemia, whither they carried salt, observing metallic substances in

the tracks made by the wheels, some of these were taken up and sent to

Goslar to be examined, when they were found to consist of lead with a

considerable quantity of silver. This led to the establishments for

mining, which have continued, with some variations in their products,

from the year 1169 to the present day.”—(JACOB, i. p. 252.)

And of the mines of Potosi—

“In the latter end of the year 1545 the mines of the Cerro de Potosi

were accidentally discovered. According to the account of Herrera, the

discovery was owing to an Indian hunter, Diego Hualca, who, in pulling

up a shrub, observed filaments of pure silver about the roots. On

examination the mass was found to be enormous, and a very great part

of the population was thereby drawn to the spot and employed in

extracting the metal. A city soon sprang up, though in a district of

unusual sterility. The mountain was perforated on all sides, and the

produce, in a few of the first years, exceeded whatever has been

recorded of the richest mines in the world.”—(JACOB, ii. p. 57.)

And so with the discovery of the rich washings of California. As early

as the time of Queen Anne, Captain Sheldrake, in command of an English

privateer on the coast, discovered that the black sands of the

rivers—such as the washers now find at the bottom of their

_rockers_—yielded gold largely, and pronounced the whole country to be

rich in gold. But it remained in the hands of the Indians and the Jesuit

fathers till 1820, when California was made a territory of the Mexican

commonwealth, and a small party of adventurers came in. Captain

Sheldrake and his published opinions had then been long forgotten,[4]

and an accident made known again the golden sands in 1848, after the

territory had been ceded to, and was already attracting adventurers

from, the United States.

“The discoverer was Mr Marshall, who, in September 1847, had

contracted with Captain Sutter to build a saw-mill near some pine

woods on the American Fork, now a well-known feeder of the Sacramento

river. In the spring of 1848 the saw-mill was nearly ready, the dam

and race being constructed; but, when the water was set on to the

wheel, the tail-race was found too narrow to let the water through

quick enough. Mr Marshall, to save work, let the water right into the

race with a strong stream, so as to sweep the race wider and deeper.

This it did, and a great bank of gravel and mud was driven to the foot

of the race. One day, Mr Marshall, on walking down the race to this

bank, saw some glittering bits on the upper edge, and, having gathered

a few, examined them and conjectured their value. He went down to

Sutter’s Fort and told the captain, and they agreed to keep it a

secret until a certain grist mill of the captain’s was finished. The

news got about, however; a cunning Yankee carpenter having followed

them in their visit to the mill-race, and found out the gold scales.

Forthwith the news spread. The first workmen were lucky, and in a few

weeks some gold was sent to San Francisco, and speedily the town was

emptied of people. In three months there were four thousand men at the

diggings—Indians having been hired, eighty soldiers deserted from the

American posts, and runaways getting up from the ships in the harbour.

Such ships as got away carried news to Europe and the United States;

and, by the beginning of 1849, both sides of the Atlantic were in

agitation.”—(WYLD, pp. 34, 35.)

But when no accident has intervened to force the discovery upon the

unsuspecting or unobservant, it has sometimes happened that great

riches, unseen by others, have been discovered by persons who knew what

to look for, what were the signs of the presence of the thing sought,

and who had gone to particular places for the purpose of exploration.

Such was the case in Australia.

The preliminary history of the Australian discovery is peculiar. From

what he had seen of the Ural, and had learned of the composition of the

chief meridian mountain ridge of Australia, Sir Roderick Murchison

publicly announced, in 1845, his belief that Australia was a country in

which gold was likely to be found—recommended that it should be sought

for, and even memorialised the home government on the subject.[5] But

although this opinion and recommendation were inserted and commented

upon in the colonial newspapers—although the Rev. W. B. Clarke published

letters predicting, for reasons given, the discovery of gold deposits in

California and Australia—although

“Sir Francis Forbes of Sydney subsequently published and circulated in

New South Wales a paper, in which he affirmed in the strongest manner,

on scientific data, the existence of gold formations in New

Holland—although a colonial geologist had been sent out some years

before and was settled at Sydney—and lastly, although one part of the

prediction was soon so wonderfully fulfilled by the Californian

discoveries—yet oven the discoveries in California did not arouse the

New Hollanders to adequate researches, though reports were spread of

wonderful discoveries in Victoria and South Australia, which were

speedily discredited. It was reserved for a gentleman of New South

Wales, Mr Edward Hammond Hargraves, to make the definite discoveries.

He appears to have acted independently of all previous views on the

subject; but having acquired experience in California, and being

struck with the resemblance between the Californian formations and

those of New Holland, he determined on a systematic search for gold,

which he brought to a successful issue on the 12th of February of this

year 1850, by the discovery of gold diggings in the Bathurst and

Wellington districts, and which he prosecuted until he had ascertained

the existence of gold sands in no less than twelve places.”—(WYLD, p.

30.)

When this was made known by Mr Hargraves in a formal report to the

authorities at Sydney, in April 1850, they then (!) despatched the

provincial geologist to examine the localities, and confirm the

discoveries of Mr Hargraves! But the public did not wait for such

confirmation. On the 1st of May the discoveries became known in Sydney.

In thousands the people forsook the city, the villages, cattle stations,

and farms, in the interior, for the neighbourhood of Bathurst, where the

gold had been found. Summerhill Creek alone soon numbered its four

thousand diggers, who thence speedily spread themselves along the other

head waters of the Darling and Murrumbidgee—rivers flowing westward from

the inland slope of the mountain ridge, (Blue Mountains and Liverpool

range,) which runs nearly parallel to the south-eastern coast of

Australia, and at the distance from it of about one hundred miles. Near

Bathurst the summit of the ridge attains, in Mount Canobolus, a height

of 4461 feet. In numerous places among the feeders of these streams,

which themselves unite lower down to form the main channel of the

Murray, gold was speedily found. It was successfully extracted also from

the upper course of the Hunter River, and from the channel of Cox’s

River—both descending from the eastern slope of the same ridge, within

the province of New South Wales. In the province of Victoria, the

feeders of the Glenelg and other rivers, which descend from the southern

prolongation of the same chain—the Australian Pyrenees—have yielded

large quantities of gold; and recently, Geelong and Melbourne have

become the scene of an excitement scarcely inferior to that which has

longer prevailed in the country round Bathurst. South Australia also,

where the main river, Murray, passes through it to the sea at Adelaide,

has been reported to contain the precious metal. So suddenly does the

first spark of real fire spread into a great flame of discovery—so

clearly can all eyes see, when taught how to look, what to look for, and

in what circumstances.

But in New South Wales, and in the province of Victoria, the excitement,

and the zeal and success in digging, have up to the latest advices been

the greatest. In the beginning of June 1850, the Governor-General had

already bestowed a grant of £500 upon Mr Hargraves, and an appointment

of £350 a-year, as acknowledgments of his services—acknowledgments he

well deserved, but which might have been saved honourably to the colony,

and creditably to science, had the recommendation made five years before

by geologists at home, and by scientific colonists, been attended to. In

the same month the Sir Thomas Arbuthnot sailed from Sydney for England

with £4000 worth of gold already among her cargo. The success of the

explorers continues unchecked up to the latest arrivals from Australia.

“When I left, on the 10th of August 1851,” says the captain of one of

her Majesty’s ships of war, in a letter now before us, “there was then

weekly coming into Sydney £13,000 of gold. One lump has been found one

hundred and six pounds in weight.” He adds, and we believe many are of

this opinion, “that it appears to be one immense gold field, and that

California is already thrown into the shade.” The news of five months’

later date only give additional strength to all previous announcements,

anticipations, and predictions.

Now, in reflecting on these remarkable and generally unexpected

discoveries, an enlightened curiosity suggests such questions as

these:—What are the conditions geographical, physical, or geological, on

which the occurrence of gold deposits depends? Why has the ability to

predict, as in the Australian case, remained so long unexercised, or

been so lately acquired? What are the absolute extent, and probable

productive durability, of the gold regions newly brought to light? What

their extent and richness compared with those known at former periods,

or with those which influence the market for precious metals now? What

the influence they are likely to exercise on the social and financial

relations of European countries? What the effect they will have on the

growth and commerce of the States which border the Pacific, or which are

washed by the Indian and Australian seas? In the present article we

propose to answer a few of these questions.

And, first, as to the Geography of the question. There are no limits

either in latitude or longitude, as used to be supposed, within which

gold deposits are confined—none within which they are necessarily most

abundant. In old times, the opinion was entertained that the precious

metals favoured most the hot and equatorial regions of the earth. But

the mines of Siberia, as far north as 69° of latitude, and the deposits

of California, supposed to extend into Oregon, and even into Russian

America, alone show the absurdity of this opinion.

Nor does the physical character of a country determine in any degree

whether or not it shall be productive of gold. It may, like California,

border the sea, or be far inland, like the Ural slopes, or the Steppes

of the Kirghis; it may be flat, and of little elevation, or it may

abound in streams, in lakes, and in mountains;—none of these conditions

are necessarily connected with washings or veins of gold. It is true

that mountain chains are usually seen at no great distance from

localities rich in golden sands, and that metalliferous veins often cut

through the mountains themselves. But these circumstances are

independent of the mountains as mere physical features. It is not

because there are mountains in a country that it is rich in gold, else

gold mines would be far more frequent; and mountainous regions, like our

own northern counties, would abound in mineral wealth. It is the nature

of the rocks of which a country consists—its geological and chemical

characters, in other words, which determine the presence or absence of

the most coveted of metals. Humboldt, indeed, supposed, from his

observations, that, to be productive of gold, the chain of mountains

which skirt the country must have a meridional direction. But further

research has shown that this is by no means a necessary condition,

although hitherto, perhaps, more gold has been met with in the

neighbourhood of chains which have a prevailing north or south direction

than of any other. We may safely say, therefore, that there are no known

physical laws or conditions, by the application or presence of which the

existence of gold can with any degree of probability be predicted.

Let us study for a little, then, the geology of a region of gold.

_First_, Every general reader now-a-days is aware that the crust of our

globe consists of a series of beds of rock, laid one over the other,

like the leaves of a book; and that of these the lowest layers, like the

courses of stone in the wall of a building, are the oldest, or were the

first laid down. These rocky beds are divided into three groups, of

which the lowest, or oldest, is called the primary; the next in order,

the secondary; and the uppermost, or newest, the tertiary.

_Second_, That in certain parts of the world this outer crust of rocks

is broken through by living volcanoes, which, with intermissions more or

less frequent, belch forth flames and smoke, with occasional torrents of

burning lava. That where, or when, the cause of such eruptions is not

sufficiently powerful to produce living volcanoes, earthquakes are

occasioned; cracks or fissures, more or less wide, are produced in the

solid rocks; smoking fumeroles appear; and vapour-exhaling surfaces show

that fires, though languid and dormant for the time, still exist

beneath. That besides the rocks of lava they have poured out, these

volcanic agencies change the surface of a country more widely still by

the alterations they gradually effect upon the previously existing

slaty, calcareous, or sandstone rocks; converting limestone into marble,

and baking sandstone into more or less homogeneous quartz, and common

slates or hardened clays into mica slates, gneiss, and granite-like

rocks. That such volcanic agencies, producing similar phenomena, have

existed in every geological epoch; and though the evidences of these are

most extensive and distinct, perhaps, among the rocks of the oldest or

primary period, that they are numerous and manifest also among those of

the secondary and tertiary periods.

_Third_, That rocks of every age and kind, when exposed to the action of

the air, the vicissitudes of the seasons, the beating of the rains, the

force of flowing water, the dash of the inconstant sea, and other

natural agencies, crumble down, wear away, or are torn asunder into

fragments of every size. These either remain where they are formed, or

are carried by winds and moving waters to distances, sometimes very

great, but which are dependent on the force of the wind or water which

impel them, and on the size or density of the fragments themselves. Thus

are our shores daily worn away by the action of the sea, and the

fragments distributed along its bottom by the tides and currents; and

thus, from the far northern mountains of America, does the Missouri

bring down detached fragments thousands of miles into the Gulf of

Mexico, whence the Gulf Stream carries them even to the icy Spitzbergen.

_Fourth_, That over all the solid rocks, almost everywhere is spread a

covering of this loose, and, for the most part, drifted matter,

consisting of sands, gravels, and clays. These overspread not only

valleys and plains, but hill-sides and slopes, and sometimes even

mountain-tops, to a greater or less depth. There are comparatively few

spots where these loose materials do not cover and conceal the native

rocks; but in some localities, and especially in wide plains and deep

river valleys, they are sometimes met with in accumulations of enormous

depth. In our own island, a depth of two hundred feet of such

superficial sands, gravels, and clays, is by no means unusual. They are

often sorted into beds alternately coarse and fine, evidently by the

action of moving water; and while the great bulk of the fragments of

which our English gravels consist can generally be traced to native

rocks at no great distance from the spots on which they rest, yet among

them are to be found fragments also, which must have been brought from

Norway, and other places, many hundred miles distant.

On the surface of these drifted masses we generally live, and from the

soils they form we extract by tillage the means of life.

_Fifth_, That these, occasionally thick, beds of drifted matter—_drift_

we shall for brevity call it—are in some places cut through by existing

rivers, the beds of which run between high banks of clay, sand, or

gravel, which the action of the stream has gradually worn and washed

away. This is seen in many of our own river valleys; and it is

especially visible along the great rivers of North America. The effect

of this wearing action is to remove, mix up, and _re_distribute, towards

the river’s mouth, the materials which have been scooped out by the

cutting water, and thus to produce, on a small scale, along the river’s

bed, what had long before been done in the large, when the entire bed of

drift through which the river flows was itself spread over the plain or

valley by more mighty waters.

These things being understood, a very wide geological examination of

gold-bearing localities has shown—

_First_, That gold rarely occurs in available quantity in any of the

stratified rocks, except in those which belong to the primary or oldest

group, and in these only when or where they have been, more or less,

disturbed or altered by ancient volcanic or volcanic-_like_ action; by

the intrusion, for example into cracks and hollows, of veins and masses

of serpentine, granite, syenite, and other igneous rocks, in a melted or

semi-fluid state.

_Second_, That among these primary stratified rocks a subdivision, to

which the name of Silurian was given by Sir Roderick Murchison, has

hitherto, as a whole, proved by far the richest in this kind of mineral

wealth; though the slate-rocks below, and the sandstones and limestones

above, in favourable circumstances, maybe equally gold-bearing.

_Third_, That the drifted sands and gravels, in which gold-washing is

profitable, occur only in the proximity, more or less near, of such

ancient and altered (so called metamorphic) rocks. They are, in fact,

the fragments of such rocks broken up, pounded, and borne to their

present sites by natural causes, operating long ages ago, but similar in

kind to those which now degrade and carry away to lower levels the

crumbling particles still torn off from our hardest mountains by the

ceaseless tooth of time.

Numerous as have been the deposits of gold found in various ages and

countries, they all confirm the general geological conclusions above

stated. The main and most abundant sources of gold which were known to

the ancients, occurred among the sands of rivers, and amid the gravels

and shingles which formed their banks. Such were the gold-washings in

the beds of the Phasis, the Pactolus, the Po, the Douro, the Tagus, and

the mountain streams which descended from the alpine heights of Greece,

of Italy, of America, of Asia Minor, and of many other countries. These

rivers all descend from, or, early on their way, pass through or among,

ancient rocks, generally old and altered Silurian strata, such as those

we have spoken of, in which the gold originally existed, and from which

the existing rivers, since they assumed their present channels, have in

some few cases, and to a small amount, separated and brought it down.

And if in any region, as in Nubia, Hungary, Bohemia, and Macedonia,[6]

the ancient or mediæval nations followed up their search to the sources

of the rich rivers, and were successful in finding and extracting gold

from the native rocks, later explorations, wherever made, have shown

that these mines were situated among old and disturbed deposits of the

primary and Silurian age.

The more modern discoveries in America, Siberia, and elsewhere, prove

the same. So that, among geologists, it is at present received as an

established fact, that the primary, the so called azoic and palæozoic

rocks, are the only great repositories of native gold.

There are no known laws, either physical or chemical, by which the

almost exclusive presence of gold in these ancient rocks can be

accounted for or explained. A conjecture has been hazarded, however, to

which we shall for a moment advert.

From the fissures and openings which abound in volcanic neighbourhoods,

gases and vapours are now seen continually to arise. Whatever is capable

of being volatilised—driven off in vapour, that is—by the existing heat,

rises from beneath till it reaches the open air, or some comparatively

cool spot below the surface, where it condenses and remains. Such was

the case also in what we may call the primary days of geology.

Gold is one of the few metals which occur, for the most part, in the

native or metallic and malleable state. But in this state it is not

volatile, and could not have been driven up in vapour by ancient

subterranean heat. But, as in the case of many other metals, the

prevailing belief is, that it has been so volatilised—not in the

metallic state, however, but in some form of chemical combination in

which it is capable of being volatilised. No such combinations are yet

known, though their existence is not inconsistent with—may in fact be

inferred from—our actual knowledge.

It is further supposed that, at the period when the primary rocks were

disturbed by intrusions of granites, porphyries, serpentines,

greenstones, &c., which we have spoken of as volcanic-like phenomena,

the elementary bodies, which, by their union with the gold, are capable

of rendering it volatile, happened to exist more abundantly than at the

period of any of those other disturbances by which the secondary and

tertiary rocks were affected; and that this is the reason why signs of

gold-bearing exhalations, and consequently gold-bearing veins, are rare

in the rocks of the newer epochs.

According to this view of the introduction of gold into the fissures and

veins of the earliest rocks, its presence is due to what we may call the

fortuitous and concurrent presence in the under crust of other

elementary substances along with the gold, which by uniting with it

could make it volatile, rather than to the action or influence of any

widely-operating chemical or physical law. The explanation itself,

however, it will be remembered, is merely conjectural, and, we may add,

neither satisfactory nor free from grave objections.

But from the geological facts we have above stated, several very

interesting consequences follow, such as—

_First_, That wherever the rocks we have mentioned occur, and altered as

we have described, the existence and discovery of gold are rendered

probable. Physical conditions may not be equally propitious everywhere.

Broad valleys and favourable river channels may not always coexist with

primary rocks traversed by old volcanic disturbances; or the ancient

sands and shingles with which the particles of abraded gold were

originally mixed may, by equally ancient currents, have been scoured out

of existing valleys, and swept far away. But these are matters of only

secondary consideration, to be ascertained by that personal exploration

which a previous knowledge of the geological structure will justify and

encourage.

Whenever the geology of a new country becomes known, therefore, it

becomes possible to predict the presence or absence of native gold, in

available quantities, with such a degree of probability as to make

public research a national, if not an individual duty. This led Sir

Roderick Murchison to foretell the discovery of gold in Australia, as we

have already explained; and similar knowledge places similar predictions

within the power of other geologists.

We happen to have before us, at this present moment, a geological map of

Nova Scotia. Two such maps have been published, one by Messrs Alger and

Jackson, of Boston, and another by Dr Gesner, late colonial geologist

for the province of New Brunswick. In these maps the north-western part

of the province is skirted by a fringe of old primary rocks, partly

metamorphic, and sometimes fossiliferous, and resting on a back ground

of igneous rocks, which cover, according to Gesner, the largest portion

of this end of the province. Were we inclined to try our hand at a

geological prediction, we should counsel our friends in the vale of

Annapolis to look out for yellow particles along the course of the

Annapolis river, and especially at the mouths and up the beds of the

cross streams that descend into the valley from the southern highlands.

Nature, indeed, has given the Nova Scotians in this Annapolis valley a

miniature of the more famed valley of the Sacramento. Their north and

south mountains represent respectively the coast range and the Sierra

Nevada of the Sacramento Basin. The tributaries in both valleys descend

chiefly from the hills on the left of the main rivers. The Sacramento

and the Annapolis rivers both terminate in a lake or basin, and each

finally escapes through a narrow chasm in the coast ridge by which its

terminating basin communicates with the open sea. The Gut of Digby is,

in the small, what the opening into the harbour of San Francisco now

called the “Golden Gate” and the “Narrows” is in the large; and if the

Sacramento has its plains of drifted sand and gravel, barren and

unpropitious to the husbandman, the Annapolis river, besides its other

poor lands, on which only the sweet fern luxuriates, has its celebrated

Aylesford sand plain, or devil’s goose pasture—a broad flat “given up to

the geese, who are so wretched that the foxes won’t eat them, they hurt

their teeth so bad.” Then the south mountains, as we have said, consist

of old primary rocks, such as may carry gold—disturbed, traversed by

dykes, and changed or metamorphosed, as gold-bearing rocks usually are.

Whether quartz veins abound in them we cannot tell; but the idle boys of

Clare, Digby, Clements, Annapolis, Aylesford, and Horton, may as well

keep their eyes about them, and the woodmen, as they hew and float down

the pine logs for the supply of the Boston market. A few days spent with

a “long Californian Tom,” in rocking the Aylesford and other sands and

gravel-drifts of their beautiful valley, may not prove labour in vain.

What if the rich alluvials of Horton and Cornwallis should hide beneath

more glittering riches, and more suddenly enriching, than the famed

crops of which they so justly boast? Geological considerations also

suggest that the streams which descend from the northern slopes of the

Cobequid Mountains should not be overlooked. It may well be that the

name given to Cap d’Or by the early French settlers two hundred years

ago, may have had its origin in the real, and not in the imaginary

presence of glittering gold.

But to return from this digression. _Second_, The same facts which thus

enable us to predict or to suggest inquiry, serve also to test the truth

or falsehood of ancient traditions regarding the former fruitfulness in

gold of countries which now possess only the fading memory of such

natural but bygone wealth. Our geological maps direct us to European

countries, in which all the necessary geological conditions coexist, and

in which, were the world still young, a geologist would stake a fair

reputation on the hazard of discovering gold. But the art of extracting

gold from auriferous sands is simple, and easily practised. It is

followed as successfully by the black barbarians of Africa as by the

whitest savages of California. The longer a country has been inhabited,

therefore, by a people among whom gold is valued, the less abundant the

region is likely to be in profitable washings of gold. The more will it

approach to the condition of Bohemia, where gold prevailed to a great

extent, and was very productive in the middle ages, though it has been

long worked out, and the very localities of its mines forgotten.[7]

Were it to become, for example, a matter of doubtful tradition, which

the historian was inclined to pass by, that in the reign of Queen

Elizabeth three hundred men were employed near Elvan’s Foot—not far, we

believe, from Wanlockhead in Scotland—at a place called the Gold Scour,

in washing for the precious metal, who in a few summers collected as

much as was valued at £100,000; or that in 1796, ten thousand pounds’

worth of gold was collected in the alluvial soil of a small district in

Wicklow—the geologist would come to his aid and assure him that the

natural history of the neighbourhood rendered the occurrence of gold

probable, and the traditions, therefore, worthy of reliance.

_Third_, They explain, also, why it is that, where streams flowing from

one slope of a chain or ridge of mountains are found to yield rich

returns to the gold-seekers, those which descend from the opposite slope

often prove wholly unproductive. In the Ural, rich mines occur almost

solely on the eastern, or Siberian slope of the great chain. On the

western, or European slope, a few inconsiderable mines only are worked.

So, as yet, in the Sierra Nevada in California, the chief treasures

occur in the feeders of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, which

descend from its western side. The eastern slope, which falls towards

the broad arid valley of the Mormons, is as yet unfamed, and may

probably never prove rich in gold. These circumstances are accounted for

by the fact that, in the Ural, the older rocks, of which we have spoken

as being especially gold-bearing, form the eastern slope of the ridge

only, the western flank of the range being covered for the most part by

rocks of a more modern epoch. The same may be the case also with the

Sierra Nevada where it is still unexplored; and the Utah Lake, though

remote, by its saltness lends probability to this conjecture.

_Fourth_, and lastly, they make clear the distinction between the “dry

and wet diggins” we read of in our Californian news—why in so many

countries the beds of rivers have been deserted by the gold-finders, and

why the river banks, and even distant dry and elevated spots, have

proved more productive than the channel itself.[8]

Let us attempt to realise for a moment the condition of a country like

California, at the period, not geologically remote, when the

gold-bearing drift was spread over its magnificent valley. The whole

region was covered by the sea to an unknown depth. The snowy ridge,

(Nevada,) and probably the coast ridge, also formed lines of rocky

islands or peaks, which withstood the fury of the waves, and, if they

were covered with ice, the wearing and degrading action also of the

moving glaciers. The spoils of the crumbling rocks sank into the waters,

and were distributed by tides and currents along the bottom of the

valley. The narrow opening through the coast chain, by which the bay of

San Francisco now communicates with the Northern Pacific, would, at the

period we speak of, prevent the debris of the Nevada rocks from being

washed out into the main basin of the Pacific, and this would enable the

metallic, as well as the other spoils of these rocks, to accumulate in

the bottom, and along the slopes of what is now the valley of

California.

By a great physical change the country was lifted out of the sea, either

at once or by successive stages, and it presented then the appearance of

a valley long and wide, covered almost everywhere by a deep clothing of

sands, gravels, and shingles, with which were intermingled—not without

some degree of method, but at various depths, and in various

proportions—the lumps and grains of metallic gold which had formerly

existed in the rocks, of which the sands and shingles had formed a part.

And now the tiny streams, which had formerly terminated their short

courses in the sea itself, flowed down the mountain slopes, united their

waters in the bottom, and formed large rivers. These gradually cut their

way into the superficial sands, washed them as the modern gold-washer

does in his cradle, and collected, in certain parts of their beds, the

heavier particles of gold which they happened to meet with in their

descent. Hence the golden sands of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin,

and of so many of the rivers celebrated in ancient story. But the beds

of these rivers could never be the receptacle of all the gold of such a

district. _They_ derived nearly all their wealth from the sands and

clays or gravels they had scooped out in forming their channels; and as

these channels occupy only a small fraction of the surface of the

bottoms and slopes of most river valleys, they could, or were likely to

contain, only an equally small fraction of the mineral wealth of their

several regions. The more ancient waters had distributed the gold

throughout the whole drift of the country. The river, like a “long Tom,”

had cradled a small part of it, and proved its richness. The rest of the

drift, if rocked by art, would prove equally, it might be even more,

productive.

It is in this old virgin drift, usually untouched by the river, that the

so-called dry diggings are situated. The reader will readily understand

that, while no estimate can be formed of the quantity of gold which an

entire valley like that of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, or which wide

sandy plains like those of Australia, may ultimately yield, yet it will

require great sagacity to discover, it may even be that only accident

and long lapse of time will reveal, in what spots and at what depths the

gold is most abundantly accumulated, and where it will best pay the cost

of extraction.

We do not now advert to any of the other points connected with the

history of gold on which our geological facts throw light. These

illustrations are sufficient to show how rich in practical inferences

and suggestions geological and chemical science is, in this as in many

other special branches of mineral inquiry.

Nor need we say much in answer to our question,—“Why the ability to

predict, as in the Australian case,” or generally to draw such

conclusions and offer such suggestions and explanations, has remained so

long unanswered, or been so lately acquired? Geology and chemistry are

both young sciences, almost unknown till within a few years, rapidly

advancing, and every day applying themselves more widely and directly to

those subjects which effect the material prosperity and individual

comforts of mankind. Knowledge which was not possessed before our day,

could obviously neither be applied at all by ancient nations, nor

earlier by the moderns.

To the consideration of the absolute extent and probable productive

durability of the gold regions newly brought to light—of their extent

and richness compared with those known in former times—and of their

probable effects on the social and financial relations of mankind, we

shall now turn our attention.

In the preceding part we have explained the circumstances in which gold

occurs—the geological conditions which appear to be necessary to its

occurrence—and where, therefore, we may expect to find it. But no

conditions chemical or geological at present known are able to

indicate—_a priori_, and apart from personal examination and trial—in

what quantity the precious metal is likely to occur, either in the

living rocks of a gold-bearing district, or in the sands and gravels by

which it may be covered. Yet, next to the fact of the existence of gold

in a country, the quantity in which it is likely to occur, and the

length of time during which a profitable yield may be obtained, are the

questions which most interest, not only individuals on the spot, but all

other countries to which the produce of its mines is usually sent, or

from which adventurers are likely to proceed.

We have already remarked, that, in nearly all the gold regions which

have been celebrated in past times, their mineral riches have been for

the most part extracted from the drifted sands and gravels which

overspread the surface. We have also drawn attention to the small amount

of skill and intelligence which this extraction requires, and to the

brief time in which such washings may be exhausted even by ignorant

people. Most of our modern gold mines are situated in similar drifts. We

may instance, from among the less generally known, those of Africa, from

which are drawn the supplies that come to us yearly from the gold coast.

“Of all the African mines those of Bambouk are supposed to be the

richest. They are about thirty miles south of the Senegal river; and

the inhabitants are chiefly occupied in gold-washing during the eight

months of dry weather. About two miles from Natakou is a small

round-topped hill, about 300 feet high, the whole of which is an

alluvial formation of sand and pulverised emery, with grains of iron

ore and gold, in lumps, grains, and scales. This hill is worked

throughout; and it is said the richest lumps are found deepest. There

are 1200 pits or workings, some 40 feet deep—but mere holes unplanked.

This basin includes at least 500 square miles. Forty miles north, at

the foot of the Tabwara mountains, are the mines of Semayla, in a

hill. This is of quartz slate; and the gold is got by pounding the

rock in large mortars. In the river Semayla are alluvial deposits,

containing emery impregnated with gold. The earth is washed by the

women in calabashes. The mine of Nambia is in another part of the

Tabwara mountains, in a hillock worked in pits. The whole gold

district of Bambouk is supposed to extend over 10,000 square miles.

“Close to the Ashantee country is that of the Bunkatoos, who have rich

gold workings, in pits at Bukanti and Kentosoe.”—(WYLD, p. 44.)

From this description we see that all the mines in the Senegal country

are gold-washings, with the exception of those of Semayla, to which we

shall hereafter allude. No skill is required to work them; and should

European constitutions ever permit European nations to obtain an

ascendancy in this part of Africa, such mines may be effectually

exhausted before an opportunity is afforded for the application of

European skill. And so in California and Australia, should the gold

repositories be all of the same easily explored character, the metal may

be suddenly worked out by the hordes of all classes who have been

rushing in; and thus the influence of the mines may die away after a few

brief years of extraordinary excitement.

When California first became famous, the popular inquiry everywhere was

simply, what amount of immediate profit is likely to be realised by an

industrious adventurer? What individual temptation, in other words, is

there for me or my connections to join the crowd of eager emigrants?

Passing over the inflated and suspicious recitals which found their way

into American and European journals, such statements as the following,

from trustworthy sources, could not fail to have a most stimulating

effect—

“To give you an instance, however, of the amount of metal in the

soil—which I had from a miner on the spot, three Englishmen bought a

claim, 30 feet by 100 feet, for fourteen hundred dollars. It had been

twice before bought and sold for considerable sums, each party who

sold it supposing it to be nearly exhausted. In three weeks the

Englishmen paid their fourteen hundred dollars, and cleared thirteen

dollars a-day besides for their trouble. This claim, which is not an

unusually rich one, though it has perhaps been more successfully

worked, has produced in eighteen months over twenty thousand dollars,

or five thousand pounds’ worth of gold.”[9]

Mr Coke is here describing the riches of a spot on the immediate banks

of the river, where circumstances had caused a larger proportion than

usual of that gold to be collected, or thrown together—which the river,

in cutting out its gravelly channel, had separated or _rocked out_, as

we have described in the previous part of this article. This rich spot,

therefore, is by no means a fair sample of the country, though, from Mr

Coke’s matter-of-fact language, many might be led to think so. Few spots

so small in size could reasonably be expected to yield so rich a store

of gold, though its accumulation in this spot certainly does imply that

the quantity of gold diffused through the drift of the country may in

reality be very great. It may be so, however, and yet not pay for the

labour required to extract it.

That many rich prizes have been obtained by fortunate and steady men in

these diggings, there can be no doubt; and yet, if we ask what benefit

the emigrant diggers, as a whole, have obtained, the information we

possess shows it to be far from encouraging. On this subject we find, in

one of the books before us, the following information:—[10]

“The inaccessibility of the _placers_, the diseases, the hardships,

and the _very moderate remuneration resulting to the great mass of the

miners_, were quite forgotten or omitted—in the communications and

reports of a few only excepted.

“A few have made, and will hereafter make, fortunes there, and very

many of those who remain long enough will accumulate something; but

the great mass, all of whom expected to acquire large amounts of gold

in a short time, must be comparatively disappointed. I visited

California to dig gold, but chose to abandon that purpose rather than

expose life and health in the mines; and as numbers were already

seeking employment in San Francisco without success, and I had neither

the means nor the inclination to speculate, I resolved to return to my

family, and resume my business at home.”—(P. 207.)

Thousands, we believe, have followed Mr Johnson’s example; and thousands

more would have lived longer and happier, had they been courageous

enough, like him, to return home unsuccessful.

“The estimate in a former chapter of three or four dollars per day per

man, as the average yield during my late visit to the gold regions,

has been most extensively and generally confirmed since that period.

Innumerable letters, and persons lately returned from the diggings,

(including successful miners,) now fix the _average at from three to

four dollars per day_ for each digger during the season.”—(P. 243.)

“Thus far the number of successful men may have been one in every

hundred. In this estimate those only should be considered successful

who have _realized and safely invested their fortunes_. The thousands

who thus far have made their fortunes, but are still immersed in

speculations, do not belong as yet to the foregoing number.”—(P. 245.)

This is applying the just principle, “Nemo ante obitum beatus,” which is

too generally forgotten when the first sudden shower of riches falls

upon ourselves or our neighbours.

“Individual efforts, as a general rule, must prove abortive. So far as

my knowledge enables me to judge, they already have. _I do not know of

a single instance of great success at the mines_ on the part of a

single member of the passengers or ship’s company with whom I came

round Cape Horn: of the former there were a hundred, and of the latter

twenty. Many have returned home, who can tell the truth.”—(P. 249.)

This last extract does not contain Mr Johnson’s own experience, but that

of a physician settled at San Francisco, from whose communication he

quotes; and the same writer adds many distressing particulars, which we

pass by, of the fearful misery to which those free men, of their own

free will, from the thirst of gold, have cheerfully exposed themselves.

“Quid non mortalia pectora cogis

Auri sacra fames?”

The latest news from Australia contains a repetition of the Californian

experience. A recent _Australian and New Zealand Gazette_ speaks thus of

the gold-hunters—

“In all parts of the colony, labour is quitting its legitimate

employment for the lottery of gold-hunting; and, as a natural

consequence, industrial produce is suffering. Abundant as is the

metal, misery among its devotees is quite as abundant. The haggard

look of the unsuccessful, returning disheartened in search of ordinary

labour, is fully equalled by the squalor of the successful, who, the

more they get, appear to labour the harder, amidst filth and

deprivation of every kind, till their wasted frames vie with those of

their less lucky neighbours. With all its results, gold-finding is

both a body and soul debasing occupation; and even amongst so small a

body of men, the vices and degradation of California are being

enacted, in spite of all wholesome check imposed by the authorities.”

It is indeed a melancholy reflection that, wherever such mines of the

precious metals have occurred, there misery of the most extreme kind has

speedily been witnessed. The cruelties of the Spanish conquerors towards

the Indian nations of Mexico and Peru, are familiar to all. They are now

brought back fresh upon our memories by the new fortunes and prospects

of the western shores of America. Yet of such cruelties the Spaniards

were not the inventors. They only imitated in the New, what thousands of

years before the same thirst for gold had led other conquerers to do in

the Old World. Diodorus, after mentioning that, in the confines of Egypt

and the neighbouring countries, there are parts full of gold mines, from

which, by the labour of a vast multitude of people, much gold is dug,

adds—

“The kings of Egypt condemn to these mines, not only notorious

criminals, captives in war, persons falsely accused, and those with

whom the king is offended, but also all their kindred and relations.

These are sent to this work, either as a punishment, or that the

profit and gain of the king may be increased by their labours. There

are thus infinite numbers thrust into these mines, all bound in

fetters, kept at work night and day, and so strictly guarded that

there is no possibility of their effecting an escape. They are guarded

by mercenary soldiers of various barbarous nations, whose language is

foreign to them and to each other; so that there are no means either

of forming conspiracies, or of corrupting those who are set to watch

them. They are kept to incessant work by the overseer, who, besides,

lashes them severely. Not the least care is taken of the bodies of

these poor creatures; they have not a rag to cover their nakedness;

and whosoever sees them must compassionate their melancholy and

deplorable condition; for though they may be sick, or maimed, or lame,

no rest, nor any intermission of labour, is allowed them. Neither the

weakness of old age, nor the infirmity of females, excuses any from

that work to which all are driven by blows and cudgels, till at

length, borne down by the intolerable weight of their misery, many

fall dead in the midst of their insufferable labours. Thus these

miserable creatures, being destitute of all hope, expect their future

days to be worse than the present, and long for death as more

desirable than life.”[11]

How truly might we apply to gold the words of Horace—

“Te semper _anteit_ sæva necessitas,

Clavos trabaleis et cuneos manu,

Gestans ahena, nec severus

Uncus abest, liquidumque plumbum.”

There was both irony and wisdom in the counsel given by the Mormon

leaders to their followers after their settlement on the Salt Lake.

“_The true use of gold_ is for paving streets, covering houses, making

culinary dishes; and when the saints shall have preached the gospel,

raised grain, and built up cities enough, the Lord will open up the way

for a supply of gold to the perfect satisfaction of his people.” This

kept the mass of their followers from moving to the diggings of Western

California. They remained around the lake “to be healthy and happy, to

raise grain and build cities.”[12]

But the occurrence of individual disappointment, or misery in procuring

it, will not prevent the gold itself from afterwards exercising its

natural influence upon society when it has been brought into the markets

of the world. When the riches of California began to arrive, therefore,

graver minds, whose thoughts were turned to the future as much as to the

present, inquired, _first_, how much gold are these new diggings sending

into the markets?—and, _second_, how long is this yield likely to last?

_1st_, To the first of these questions—owing to the numerous channels

along which the gold of California finds its way into commerce—it seems

impossible to obtain more than an approximate answer. Mr Theodore

Johnson (p. 246) estimates the produce for

1848, at 8 million dollars.

1849, from 22 to 37 million dollars.

Or in the latter year, from four to seven millions sterling. It would,

of course, be more in 1850, as it is assumed to be by Mr Wyld, from

whose pamphlet (p. 22) we copy the following table of the estimated

total yield of gold and silver by all the known mines of the world, in

the five years named in the first column:—

Gold. Silver. Total.

1800 £10,250,000

1840 £5,000,000 £6,750,000 11,750,000

1848 7,000,000 6,750,000 13,750,000

1850 17,500,000 7,500,000 25,000,000

1851 22,500,000 7,500,000 30,000,000

Supposing the Russian mines, from which upwards of four millions’ worth

of the gold of 1848 was derived, to have remained equally productive in

1850 and 1851, this estimate assigns a yield of £10,000,000 worth of

gold to California in 1850, and £15,000,000 to California and Australia

together in 1851.

The _New York Herald_ (October 31st, 1851) estimates the produce of the

Californian mines alone, for the years 1850 and 1851, at

1850, 68,587,000 dollars, or £13,717,000

1851, 75,000,000 „ £15,000,000

These large returns may be exaggerations, but they profess to be based

on the custom-house books, and may be quite as near the truth as the

lower sums of Mr Wyld. But supposing either statement to contain only a

tolerable guess at the truth, it may well induce us anxiously to

inquire, in the second place, how long is such a supply to continue?

_2d_, Two different branches of scientific inquiry must be followed up

in order to arrive at anything like a satisfactory answer to this second

question. We must investigate both the probable durability of the

surface diggings, and the probable occurrence of gold in the native

rocks.

Now, the duration of profitable gold-washing in a region depends,

_first_, on the extent of country over which the gold is spread, and the

universality of its diffusion. _Second_, on the minimum proportion of

gold in the sands which will pay for washing; and this, again, on the

price of labour.

The valley of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, in California, is

500 miles long, by an average of 50 miles broad; comprehending an area,

therefore, of 25,000 square miles.

We do not know as yet over how much of this the gold is distributed; nor

whether, after the richest and most accessible spots have been hunted

out, and apparently exhausted, the surface of the country generally will

admit of being washed over with a profit. We cannot draw a conclusion in

reference to this point from any of the statements yet published as to

the productiveness of particular spots. But, at the same time, we ought

to bear in mind that deserted spots may often be returned to several

times, and may yield, to more careful treatment, and more skilful

methods in after years, returns of gold not less considerable than those

which were obtained by the first adventurers. Besides, if we are to

believe Mr Theodore Johnson,

“There is no reason to doubt that the whole range of mountains

extending from the cascades in Oregon to the Cordilleras in South

America, contain greater or less deposits of the precious metals; and

it is well known that _Sonora, the northern state of Mexico, is

equally rich in gold as the adjoining country of Alta California_. The

Mexicans have hitherto proved too feeble to resist the warlike Apaches

in that region, consequently its treasure remains comparatively

undisturbed.”—(P. 231.)

Passing by Mr Johnson’s opinion about the Oregon mountains, what he says

of Sénora has probably a foundation in truth, and justifies us in

expecting from that region a supply of gold which may make up for any

falling off in the produce of the diggings of California for many years

to come.

The question as to the minimum proportion of gold in the sands of

California, or in those of Australia—the state of society, the workmen

and the tools, in both countries being much the same—which can be

extracted with a profit, or the minimum daily yield which will make it

worth extracting, has scarcely as yet become a practical one.

As a matter of curiosity, however, connected with this subject, it is

interesting to know what is the experience of other gold regions in

these particulars.

In Bohemia, on the lower part of the river Iser, there were formerly

gold-washings. “The sand does not now yield more than _one grain of gold

in a hundredweight_; and it is supposed that so much is not regularly to

be obtained. There are at present no people searching for gold, and

there have been none for several centuries.”[13] This, therefore, may be

considered less than the minimum proportion which will enable washers to

live even in that cheap country. In the famed gold country of Minas

Geraes, in Brazil, where gangs of slaves are employed in washing, the

net annual amount of gold extracted seems to be little more than £4

a-head; and in Columbia, where provisions are dearer, “a mine, which

employs sixty slaves, and produces 20 lb. of gold of 18 carats annually,

is considered a good estate.”[14]

These also approach so near to the unprofitable point, that

gold-washing, where possible, has long been gradually giving way, in

that country, to the cultivation of sugar and other agricultural

productions.

In regard to Siberia, Rose, in his account of his visit to the mines of

the Ural and the Altai, gives the results of numerous determinations of

the proportion of gold in the sands which are considered worth washing

at the various places he visited. Thus on the Altai, at Katharinenburg,

near Beresowsk, and at Neiwinskoi, near Neujansk, and at Wiluyskoi, near

Nischni Tagilsk, the proportions of gold in 100 poods[15] of sand, were

respectively—

Katharinenburg, 1.1 to 2.5, or an average of 1.3 solotniks.

Neiwinskoi, ½ solotnik.

Wiluyskoi, 1½ solotnik.

These are respectively 72, 26, and 80 troy grains to the ton of sand;

and although the proportion of 26 grains to the ton is little more than

is found unworth the extraction from the sands of the Iser, and implies

that nearly 19 tons of sand must be washed to obtain one troy ounce of

gold, yet it is found that this washing can in Siberia be carried on

with a profit.

In the gold-washings of the Eastern slopes of the Ural, near Miask, the

average of fourteen mines in 1829 was about 1⅛ solotniks to the 100

poods, or 60 grains to the ton of sand. The productive layers varied in

thickness, from 2 to 10 feet, and were covered by an equally variable

thickness of sand and gravel, which was too poor in gold to pay for

washing.[16]

We have no data, as yet, from which to judge of the richness of the

Californian and Australian sands, compared with those of Siberia. And,

if we had, no safe conclusion could be drawn from them as to the

prolonged productiveness of the mines, in consequence of another

interesting circumstance, which the prosecution of the Uralian mines has

brought to light. It is in every country the case that the richest sands

are first washed out, and thus a gradual falling off in every locality

takes place, till spot by spot the whole country is deserted by the

washers. We give an example of this falling off in four of the Ural

mines in five successive years. The yield of gold is in solotniks from

the 100 poods of sand—

I. II. III. IV.

1825, 2.28 sol. 1.56 sol. 5.64 sol.

1826, 1.43 „ 0.83 „ 2.46 „ 7.28 sol.

1827, 0.64 „ 0.77 „ 1.43 „ 5.0 „

1828, 0.58 „ 0.29 „ 1.92 „ 3.52 „

As all the Ural diggings exhibit this kind of falling off, it has been

anticipated, from time to time, that the general and total yield of gold

by the Siberian mines would speedily diminish. But so far have these

expectations been disappointed, that the produce has constantly

increased from 1829 until now. On an average of the last five years, the

quantity of gold yielded by the Russian, and chiefly by the Siberian

mines, is now greater than that obtained from the South American gold

mines in their richest days.[17]

While, therefore, it is certain that the new American and Australian

diggings will individually, or on each spot, become poorer year by year,

yet, as in Siberia, the extension of the search, and the employment of

improved methods, may not only keep up the yield for a long period of

years, but may augment the yearly supply even beyond what it has yet

been.

But while so much uncertainty attends the consideration of the extent,

richness, and durability of mines situated in the gold-bearing sands and

gravels, something more precise and definite can be arrived at in regard

to the gold-bearing rocks. In nearly all the gold countries of past

times, the chief extraction of the precious metal, as we have said, has

been from the drifted sands. It is so also now in Siberia, and it was

naturally expected that the same would be the case in California. And as

other countries had for a time yielded largely, and then become

exhausted, so it was predicted of this new region, and it was too

hastily asserted that the increasing thousands of diggers who were

employed upon its sands must render pre-eminently shortlived its

gold-bearing capability. This opinion was based upon the two

considerations—_first_, that there is no source of reproduction for

these golden sands, inasmuch as it is only in very rare cases that

existing rivers have brought down from native rocks the metallic

particles which give their value to the sands and gravels through which

they flow—and _second_, that no available quantity of gold was likely to

be found in any living rocks.

But in respect of the living rocks, two circumstances have been found to

coexist in California, which have not been observed in any region of

gold-washings hitherto explored, and which are likely to have much

effect on the special question we are now considering. These two

circumstances are the occurrence of numerous and, it is said, extensive

deposits of the precious metals in the solid quartz veins among the

spurs of the Sierra Nevada, and of apparently inexhaustible beds of the

ores of quicksilver.

The discovery of gold in the native rock was by no means a novelty. The

ancient Egyptians possessed mines in the Sahara and other neighbouring

mountains. “This soil,” says Diodorus, “is naturally black; but in the

body of the earth there are many veins shining with white marble,

(quartz?) and glittering with all sorts of bright metals, out of which

those appointed to be overseers cause the gold to be dug by the

labourers—a vast multitude of people.”[18]

At Altenberg also, in Bohemia, in the middle ages, the mixed metals

(gold and silver) were found in beds of gneiss;[19] and, at present, in

the Ural and Altai, a small portion of the gold obtained is extracted

from quartz veins, which penetrate the granite and other rocks; but

these and other cases, ancient and modern, though not forgotten, were

not considered of consequence enough to justify the expectation of

finding gold-bearing rocks of any consequence in California. It is to

another circumstance that we owe the so early discovery of such rocks in

this new country, and, as in so many other instances, to a class of men

ignorant of what history relates in regard to other regions.

As early as 1824, the inner country of North Carolina was discovered to

be productive of gold. The amount extracted in that year was only 6000

dollars, but it had reached in 1829 to 128,000 dollars. The washings

were extended both east and west, and finally it was made out that a

gold region girdles the northern part of Virginia, the two Carolinas,

and Georgia. This region is situated towards the foot of the mountains,

and where the igneous rocks begin to disturb and penetrate the primary

stratified deposits. As the sands became poorer in this region, the

ardent miners had followed up their stream-washings to the parent rock,

and in veins of rusty quartz had discovered grains and scales of native

gold. To obtain these, like the Africans at Semayla, they blasted,

crushed, and washed the rock.

Now, among the first who, fired by fresher hopes, pushed to the new

treasure-house in California, came the experienced gold-seekers from the

Carolinian borders. Following the gold trail into the gulches and

ravines of the Snowy ridge, some of them were able to fix their trained

eyes on quartz veins such as they had seen at home, and, scattered

through the solid rock, to detect sparkling grains of gold which might

long have escaped less practised observers. And through the same men,

skilled in the fashion and use of the machinery found best and simplest

for crushing and separating the gold, the necessary apparatus was

speedily obtained and set to work to prove the richness of the new

deposits. This richness may be judged of by the following statements:—

“Some of the chief quartz workings are in Nevada and Mariposa

Counties, but the best known are on the rancho or large estate bought

by Colonel Fremont from Alvarado, the Mexican governor. They are those

of Mariposa, Agua Fria, Nouveau Monde, West Mariposa, and Ave

Maria—the first leased by an American company, the third by a French,

and the others by English companies. Some of the quartz has been

assayed for £7000 in the ton of rock. A Mariposa specimen was in the

Great Exhibition.

“The Agua Fria mine was surveyed and examined by Captain W. A.

Jackson, the well-known engineer of Virginia, U.S., in October 1850,

for which purpose openings were made by a cross-cut of sufficient

depth to test the size of the vein and the richness of the ore. The

vein appears to be of a nearly uniform thickness—of from three and a

half to four and a half feet—and its direction a few points to the

north of east; the inclination of the vein being 45°. Of the ore, some

specimens were transmitted to the United States Mint in January 1851;

and the report of the assays then made, showed that 277 lb. of ore

produced 173 oz. of gold—value 3222 dollars, or upwards of £650

sterling; being at the rate of £5256 a ton.

“The contents of the vein running through the property, which is about

600 feet in length, and crops out on a hill rising about 150 to 200

feet above the level of the Agua Fria Creek, is estimated at about

18,000 tons of ore to the water level only; and how far it may descend

below that, is not at present known.

“The West Mariposa mine, under Colonel Fremont’s lease, has a vein of

quartz which runs the whole length of the allotment, averages six feet

in thickness, and has been opened in several places. The assay of

Messrs Johnson and Mathey states that a poor specimen of 11 oz. 9 dwt.

18 grains, produced of gold 2 dwt. 17 grains, which would give £1347

per ton; and a rich specimen, weighing 17 oz. 12 dwt. gave 3 oz. 15

dwt. 9 grains, being at the rate of £24,482 per ton.”—(WYLD, pp.

36–39.)

The nature and durability of the influence which the discovery and

working of these rich veins is likely to have, depends upon their

requiring capital, and upon their being in the hands of a limited number

of adventurers. In consequence of this they cannot be suddenly

exhausted, but may continue to yield a constant supply for an indefinite

number of years.

In connection with the durability of this supply from the quartz

veins—besides the unsettled question as to the actual number and extent

of such veins which further exploration will make out—there is the

additional question as to how deep these veins will prove rich in gold.

Our readers are probably aware that what are called veins are walls,

more or less upright, which rise up from an unknown depth through the

beds of rock which we have described as overlying each other like the

leaves of a book. This wall generally consists of a different material

from that of which the rocks themselves consist, and, where a cliff

occurs, penetrated by such veins, can readily be distinguished by its

colour from the rocks through which it passes. Now, when these veins

contain metallic minerals, it has been long observed that, in descending

from the surface, the mineral value of the vein undergoes important

alterations. Some are rich immediately under the surface of the ground;

others do not become so till a considerable depth is reached; while in

others, again, the kind of mineral changes altogether as we descend. In

Hungary the richest minerals are met with at a depth of eighty or a

hundred fathoms. In Transylvania, veins of gold, in descending, become

degraded into veins of lead. In Cornwall, some of the copper veins

increase in richness the greater the depth to which the mine is carried;

while others, which have yielded copper near the surface, have gradually

become rich in tin as the depth increased.[20]

Now, in regard to the auriferous quartz veins, it is the result of past

experience that they are often rich in the upper part, but become poorer

as the explorations are deepened, and soon cease to pay the expense of

working. In this respect it is just possible that the Californian veins

may not agree with those of the Ural and of other regions, though this

is a point which the lapse of years only can settle. Two things,

however, are in favour of the greater yield of the Californian veins

than those of other countries in past times—that they will be explored

by a people who abound in capital, in engineering skill, and in energy,

and that it is now ascertained that veins may be profitably rich in

gold, though the particles are too small to be discerned by the naked

eye. Thus, while all the explorations will be made with skill and

economy, many veins will be mined into, which in other countries have

been passed over with neglect; and the extraction of gold from all—but

especially from the poorer sands and veins—will be aided by the second

circumstance to which we have adverted as peculiar to California, the

possession of vast stores of quicksilver.

“The most important, if not the most valuable, of the mineral products

of this wonderful country, is its quicksilver. The localities of

several mines of this metal are already known, but the richest yet

discovered is the one called Forbes’s mines, about sixty miles from

San Francisco, near San José. Originally discovered and _denounced_,

according to the Mexican laws then in force, it fell under the

commercial management of Forbes of Tepic, who also has some interest

in it. The original owner of the property on which it is situated,

endeavoured to set aside the validity of the denouncement; but whether

on tenable grounds or otherwise, I know not. At this mine, by the

employment of a small number of labourers, and two common iron kettles

for smelting, they have already sold quicksilver to the amount of

200,000 dollars, and have now some two hundred tons of ore awaiting

the smelting process. The cinnabar is said to yield from sixty to

eighty per cent of pure metal, and there is no doubt that its average

product reaches fifty per cent. The effect of these immensely rich

deposits of quicksilver, upon the wealth and commerce of the world,

can scarcely be too highly estimated, provided they are kept from the

clutches of the great monopolists. Not only will its present

usefulness in the arts be indefinitely extended and increased by new

discoveries of science, but the extensive mines of gold and silver in

Mexico, Chili, and Peru, hitherto unproductive, will now be made

available by its application.”—(JOHNSON’S _Sights in the Gold Region_,

p. 201.)

By mere washing with water, it is impossible to extract the finer

particles and scales of gold either from the natural sand or from the

pounded rock. But an admixture and agitation with quicksilver licks up

and dissolves every shining speck, and carries it, with the fluid metal,

to the bottom of the vessel. The amalgam, as it is called, of gold and

quicksilver thus obtained, when distilled in a close vessel, yields up

its quicksilver again with little loss, and leaves the pure gold behind.

For the perfect extraction of the gold, therefore, from its ores,

quicksilver is absolutely necessary, and it can be performed most

cheaply where the latter metal is cheapest and most abundant. Hence the

mineral conditions of California seem specially fitted to make it an

exception to all gold countries heretofore investigated, or of which we

have any detailed accounts. They promise it the ability to supply a

large export of gold, probably long after the remunerative freshness of

the diggings, properly so called, whether wet or dry, shall have been

worn off.

But both the actual yearly produce of gold, and the probable permanence

of the supply, have been greatly increased by the still more recent

discoveries in Australia. A wider field has been opened up here for

speculation and adventure than North-Western America in its best days

ever presented. We have already adverted to the circumstances which

preceded and attended the discovery of gold in this country, and new

research seems daily to add to the number of districts over which the

precious metal is spread. It is impossible, however, even to guess over

how much of this vast country the gold field may extend, and of richness

enough to make washing possible and profitable. The basin of the river

Murray, in the feeders of which gold has been found in very many places,

has a mean length from north to south of 1400 miles, and a breadth of

400—comprising an area of from 500,000 to 600,000 square miles. This is

four times the area of California, and five times that of the British

Islands; but whether the gold is generally diffused over this wide area,

or whether it is confined to particular and limited localities, there

has not as yet been time to ascertain.

It is chiefly in the head waters or feeders of the greater streams which

flow through this vast basin that the metal has hitherto been met with;

but the peculiar physical character of the creeks, and of the climate in

these regions, suggests the probability that the search will be

profitably extended downwards along the entire course of the larger

rivers. Every reader of Australian tours and travels is aware of the

deep and sudden floods to which the great rivers of the country are

subject, and of the disastrous inundations to which the banks of the

river Murray are liable. The lesser creeks or feeders of this river, in

which the washings are now prosecuted, are liable to similar

visitations. The Summerhill creek, for example, at its junction with the

Lewis river, is described as fifty or sixty yards wide, and the “water

as sometimes rising suddenly twenty feet.” Now, supposing the gold drift

to have been originally confined to the districts through which the

upper waters of these rivers flow, the effect of such floods, repeated

year by year, must have been to wash out from their banks and bottoms,

and to diffuse along the lower parts of their channels, or of the

valleys they flooded, the lighter portions, at least, of metallic riches

in which the upper country abounded. The larger particles or lumps may

have remained higher up: but all that the force of a deep stream in its

sudden flood could carry down, may be expected among the sands and

gravels, and in the wider river beds, and occasionally flooded tracts of

the lower country. In other words, there is reason to believe that from

its head waters on the western slopes of the Australian Alps, to its

mouth at Adelaide, the Murray will be found to some degree productive in

gold, and more or less remunerative to future diggers.

But there is in reality no reason to believe that the gold of the great

Australian basin was ever confined—at least since the region became

covered with drift—to the immediate neighbourhood of the mountains, or

to the valleys through which its mountain streams pursue their way. We

have already fully explained that it is not to the action of existing

rivers on the native gold-bearing rocks of the mountain, that the

presence of the precious metal in their sands is generally due, but to

that of numerous degrading causes, operating simultaneously and at a

more ancient period, when the whole valley was covered deep with water.

By these, the debris of the mountains here, as in California, must have

been spread more or less uniformly over the entire western plain. This

vast area, therefore, comprehending so many thousand square miles, may,

through all its drifted sands and gravels, be impregnated with metallic

particles. Dry diggings, consequently, may be hereafter opened at great

distances from the banks of existing streams. Time alone, in fact, can

tell over how much of this extensive region it will pay the adventurer

to dig and wash the wide-spread depths of drift.

Then there is the province of Victoria, south of the Australian Alps, in

which gold is described as most plentiful. The streams which descend

from the southern slope of these mountains are numerous, in consequence

of the peculiarly large quantity of rain which falls on this part of

Australia,[21] and over a breadth of 200 miles they are represented as

all rich in gold. And besides, the country east of the meridian chain,

between Bathurst and the sea, and all the still unknown portion of the

Australian continent, have yet to add their stores to those of Victoria

and of the basin of the Murray. And though we do not know to what extent

quartz veins prevail in the mountains of New South Wales, we have

authentic statements as to their existence not very remote from

Bathurst, and as to their being rich in gold. Here also, therefore, as

in California, there may be a permanent source of gold supply, which may

continue to yield, after the washings have ceased to be greatly

remunerative—which may even augment in productiveness as that of the

sands declines. On the whole, then, although it is impossible to form

any estimate of the actual amount of gold which year by year the great

new mining fields are destined to supply to the markets of the world,

yet we think two deductions may be assumed as perfectly certain from the

facts we have stated—_first_, that the average annual supply for the

next ten years is likely to be greater than it ever was since the

commencement of authentic history—and _second_, that the supply, though

the washings fall off, will be kept up for an indefinite period, by the

exploration of the gold-bearing quartz veins in Australia and America.

In the table we have copied from Mr Wyld, the produce of gold for 1851

is estimated—guessed is a better word—at £22,500,000. Advices from

Melbourne to the 22d of December state that the receipts of gold in that

place in a single day had amounted to 16,333 ounces—that the total

produce of the Ballarat and Mount Alexander diggings, from their

discovery on the 29th September to the 17th of December, two months and

a half, had been 243,414 ounces, valued at £730,242—that from twenty

thousand to thirty thousand persons were employed at the diggings—and

that the auriferous grounds, already known, which can be profitably

worked, cannot be dug for years to come “by any number of people that

can by possibility reach them.” Those from Sydney calculate the export

from that place to have been at the rate of three millions sterling

a-year; while the report of the Government Commissioners, “On the extent

and capability of the mines in New South Wales,” gives it as their

unanimous opinion, that they offer a “highly remunerative employment to

at least a hundred thousand persons—four times the number now employed.”

With these data, there appears no exaggeration in the estimate now made

in the colony, that the yearly export of gold will not be less than

seven or eight millions sterling. With this more accurate knowledge of

the capabilities of Australia than was possessed when Mr Wyld’s estimate

was made, and with the hopes and rumours that exist as to other new

sources of supply, are we wrong in guessing that the total produce of

gold alone, for the present and some succeeding years, cannot be less

than £25,000,000 to £30,000,000 sterling? What was the largest yield of

the most fruitful mines in ancient times compared with this? The annual

product of the ancient Egyptian mines of gold and silver is said by

Herodotus to have been inscribed on the walls of the palace of the

ancient kings at Thebes, and the sum, as he states it in Grecian money,

was equal to six millions sterling! This Jacob[22] considers to be a

gross exaggeration; but he believes, nevertheless, that “the produce of

the mines of that country, together with that of the other countries

whose gold and silver was deposited there, far exceeded the quantity

drawn from all the mines of the then known world in subsequent ages,

down to the discovery of America.”

And what did America yield after the discovery by Columbus, (1492,) and

the triumphs of Cortes and Pizarro? Humboldt estimates the annual yield

of gold, from the plunder of the people and from the mines united—

From 1492 to 1521 at £52,000

„ 1521 to 1546 at £630,000

And from the discovery of the silver mine of Potosi in 1545, to the end

of the century, the produce of silver and gold together was about

£2,100,000 from America; and from America and Europe together,

£2,250,000 a-year.

Again, during the eighteenth century, the yearly produce of the precious

metals—gold and silver together—obtained from the mines of Europe,

Africa, and America, is estimated by Mr Jacob (ii. p. 167) at

£8,000,000; and for the twenty years previous to 1830, at about

£5,000,000 sterling.[23] And although the greatly enlarged produce of

the Russian mines, in gold especially, has come in to make up for the

failure or stoppage of the American mines since 1800, yet what does the

largest of all past yields of gold amount to, compared with the

quadrupled or quintupled supply there seems now fair and reasonable

grounds for expecting?

And what are to be the consequences of the greatly augmented supply of

gold which these countries promise? Among the first will be to provoke

and stimulate the mining industry of other countries to new activity and

new researches; and thus, by a natural reaction, to add additional

intensity to the cause of change. Such was the effect of the discovery

of America upon mining in Europe, and especially in Germany. “In

fourteen years after 1516, not less than twenty-five noble veins were

discovered in Joachimsthal in Bohemia, and in sixty years they yielded

1,250,000 marcs of silver.”[24] And,

“The discovery of America, and of the mines it contained,” says Mr

Jacob, “seems to have kindled a most vehement passion for exploring

the bowels of the earth in search of gold in most of the countries of

Europe, but in no part of it to so great an extent as in the Bishopric

of Salzburg. The inhabitants of that country seemed to think

themselves within reach of the Apple of the Hesperides and of the

Golden Fleece, and about to find in their streams the Pactolus of

antiquity. Between the years 1538 and 1562,[25] more than a thousand

leases of mines were taken. The greatest activity prevailed, and one

or two large fortunes were made.”—(JACOB, i. p. 250.)

This impulse has already been felt as the consequence of recent

discovery. The New York papers have just announced the discovery of new

deposits of gold in Virginia, “equal to the richest in California;” in

Queen Charlotte’s Island gold is said to have been found in great

abundance; in New Caledonia and New Zealand it is spoken of; and the

research after the precious metal is at the present moment propagating

itself throughout the civilised world. And that the activity thus

awakened is likely to be rewarded by many new discoveries, and by larger

returns in old localities, will appear certain, when we consider,

_first_, that the geological position and history of gold-producing

regions is far better understood now than it ever was before; _second_,

that the value of quartz veins, previously under-estimated, has been

established by the Californian explorations, and must lead in other

countries to new researches and new trials; _thirdly_, that the

increased supply of quicksilver which California promises may call into

new life hosts of deserted mines in Southern America and elsewhere; and,

_lastly_, that improved methods of extraction, which the progress of

chemical science is daily supplying, are rendering profitable the poorer

mines which in past days it was found necessary to abandon.

About the end of the seventeenth century the reduction in the price of

quicksilver, consequent on the supplies drawn from the mines of Idria,

greatly aided the mines of Mexico, (Jacob, ii. p. 153;) and of the

effects of better methods Rose gives the following illustrations, in his

description of the celebrated Schlangenberg mine in Siberia:—

“At first, ores containing only four solotniks of silver were

considered unfit for smelting, and were employed in the mines for

filling up the waste. These have long already been taken out, and

replaced by poorer ores, which in their turn will probably by-and-by

be replaced by still poorer.”—“The ancient inhabitants washed out the

gold from the ochre of these mines, as is evident from the heaps of

refuse which remain on the banks of the river Smejewka. This refuse

has been found rich enough in gold to pay for washing and extracting

anew.”[26]

The history of all mining districts, and of all smelting and refining

processes,[27] present us with similar facts; and the aspects of applied

science, in our day, are rich in their promise of such improvements for

the future. If, therefore, to all the considerations we have presented

we add those from which writers like M’Culloch[28] had previously

anticipated an increased supply of the precious metals—such as the

pacification of Southern America, and the application of new energy to

the mines of that country, and probably under the direction of a new

race—the calmest and coolest of our readers will, we think, coincide

with us in anticipating from _old_ sources, as well as from _new_, an

increased and prolonged production of the precious metals.

Of the social and political consequences of these discoveries, the most

striking and attractive are those which are likely to be manifested in

the immediate neighbourhood—using the word in a large sense—of the

countries in which the new gold mines have been met with. The peopling

of California and Australia—the development of the boundless traffic

which Western America and the islands of the Australasian, Indian, and

Chinese seas are fitted to support—the annexation of the Sandwich

Islands(!)—the establishment of new and independent dominions on the

great islands to the south and west—the throng of great ships and

vessels of war we can in anticipation see dotting and over-awing the

broad Pacific—the influence, political and social, of these new nations

on the old dominions and civilisation of the fabled East, and of still

mysterious China and hidden Japan;—we may almost speak of this _forward_

vision, as Playfair has written of the effect upon his mind of Hutton’s

expositions of the _past_—“The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so

far back into the abyss of time; and while we listened with earnestness

and admiration to the philosopher, who was now unfolding to us the order

and series of these wonderful events, we became sensible _how much

further reason may sometimes go than imagination can venture to

follow_.”

But its influence, though less dazzling, will be as deep and perceptible

upon the social relations of the older monarchies of Europe. Our own

richly commercial and famed agricultural country, and its dependencies,

will be especially affected. Prices will nominally rise—commerce and

general industry will be stimulated—and a gilding of apparent prosperity

will overspread class interests, which would otherwise languish and

decline. How far this is likely to be favourable to the country, on the

whole—to interfere with, disguise, or modify the effect of party

measures—we have recently discussed in previous articles, and shall for

the present pass by.

Perhaps that portion of its influence which, in this country of great

money fortunes, and in some of the Continental states, is attracting

most attention, is the change likely to be produced by it in the bullion

market, especially in the relative values of gold and silver, and even

(should this not materially alter, in consequence of an enlarged produce

from the silver mines) in the real value of annuities, stock, and bonds

of every description. It has occasionally happened in ancient times,

that by a sudden large influx of gold the comparative value of that

metal has been lowered in an extraordinary degree. Thus Strabo, in his

_Geography_, (book iv. chap. vi. sect. 9,) has the following passage:—

“Polybius relates that, in his time, mines of gold were found among

the Taurisci Norici, in the neighbourhood of Aquilea, so rich that, in

digging to the depth of two feet only, gold was met with, and that the

ordinary sinkings did not exceed fifteen feet; that part of it was in

the form of native gold, in pieces as large as a bean or a lupin,

which lost only one-eighth in the fire; and that the rest, though

requiring more purification, gave a considerable product; that some

Italians, having associated themselves with the barbarians to work the

mines, _in the space of two months the price of gold fell one-third

throughout the whole of Italy_; and that the Taurisci, having seen

this, expelled their foreign partners, and sold the metal

themselves.”[29]

Were anything of this nature to happen—though very far less in degree—as

a consequence of the recent discoveries, it could not fail to produce a

serious monetary revolution, and much pecuniary distress, both

individual and general, which the wisest legislation could neither

wholly prevent nor remove. Such a sudden and extreme effect many have

actually anticipated from them, and measures have, in consequence, been

taken, even by Continental governments, such as are detailed in the

following passage from Mr Wyld’s pamphlet:—

“Among the many extraordinary incidents connected with the Californian

discoveries, was the alarm communicated to many classes, which was not

confined to individuals, but invaded governments. The first

announcement spread alarm; but, as the cargoes of gold rose from a

hundred thousand dollars to a million, bankers and financiers began

seriously to prepare for an expected crisis. In England and the United

States the panic was confined to a few; but, on the Continent of

Europe, every government, rich and poor, thought it needful to make

provision against the threatened evils. The governments of France,

Holland, and Russia, in particular, turned their attention to the

monetary question; and, in 1850, the government of Holland availed

itself of a law, which had not before been put in operation, to take

immediate steps for selling off the gold in the banks of Amsterdam, at

what they supposed to be the then highest prices, and to stock

themselves with silver. This operation was carried on concurrently

with a supply of bullion to Russia for a loan, a demand for silver in

Austria, and for shipment to India; and it did really produce an

effect on the silver market.

“The particular way in which the Netherlands operations were carried

out was especially calculated to produce the greatest disturbance of

prices. The ten-florin gold pieces were sent to Paris, coined there

into napoleons, and silver five-franc pieces drawn out in their place.

At Paris, the premium on gold, in a few months, fell from nearly two

per cent to a discount, and at Hamburg a like fall took place. In

London, the great silver market, silver rose between the autumn and

the New Year, from 5s. per oz. to 5s. 1⅝d. per oz., and Mexican

dollars from 4s. 10½d. to 4s. 11⅝d. per oz.; nor did prices recover

until towards the end of the year 1851, when the fall was as sudden as

the rise.”—(WYLD, pp. 20, 21.)

Now, without identifying ourselves with any unreasonable fears, or

partaking of the alarms occasionally expressed, either at home or

abroad, we cannot shut our eyes to the certainty of a serious amount of

influence being exercised upon monetary and financial affairs, by a long

continuance of the increased supplies of gold which are now pouring into

the European and American markets. We concede all that can fairly be

demanded, in the way of increased supply—to meet the wants of the new

commerce springing up in the Pacific and adjacent seas—to allow of the

increased coinage which the new States in North America, and the growing

population of our own colonies require—to make up for the extending use

of gold and silver in articles of luxury which increasing wealth and

improving arts must occasion—to restore the losses from hoarding, from

shipwreck, from wear and tear of coin, and the thousand other causes of

waste—and to admit of the large yearly storing of coin for the purposes

of emigration: all that can fairly be demanded to meet these and other

exigencies we admit; and yet there will still, at the present rate of

yield, be a large annual surplus, which must gradually cheapen gold in

the market. There are no data upon which we can base any calculations as

to the yearly consumption of gold alone for all these purposes; but

estimates have been made by Humboldt, Jacob, and M’Culloch, of the

probable consumption of gold and silver together, up to a very recent

period. The latter author disposes of the annual supply of the

metals—estimated at nine millions before the recent discoveries—in the

following manner:—

Consumption in the arts in Europe and America, £4,840,000

Exportation to Australia and India, 2,600,000

Waste of coin (at 1 per cent,) 1,600,000

——————————

Making together, £9,040,000

which was very nearly the supposed yield of all known mines, when Mr

M’Culloch’s estimate was made. If we add a half to all these items—as we

conceive a very liberal allowance—we shall have a round sum of thirteen

and a half millions sterling of gold and silver together, as sufficient

to supply all the wants of increasing use in the arts, waste in coinage,

extending commerce, colonial settlement, State extension, and Eastern

exportation. But the actual produce

for 1851 is estimated at £30,000,000

and if we deduct 13,500,000

———————————

there remains a balance of £16,500,000

—irrespective of all increase which is likely to be caused by the

extension of the Australian gold field, and by the operation of the

various other causes we have adverted to in the present article. This

surplus also will consist chiefly of gold; so that whatever interest may

otherwise attach to the curious fact stated by Mr Wyld, it is clear that

his conclusion is premature, that no alteration is to be looked for in

the relative market values of the two precious metals. Only a greatly

increased activity and produce in the silver mines can prevent it.

But, independent of the question as between the two metals, there

remains as certain the influence of the surplus gold supply upon the

general bullion and other markets. The immediate demands, or actual

outlets for increased coinage, may for a few years absorb even this

large surplus, but its final action in lowering the comparative value of

gold, and in altering nominal prices and values generally, cannot be

reasonably doubted.

LIFE OF NIEBUHR.[30]

The name of Niebuhr is so inveterately associated with certain profound

discussions in historical criticism, that we must beg our readers to

read twice over the notice at the foot of our page, in order to assure

themselves that it is not the History of Rome, but the Life of its

author, that we are about to bring before their attention. We shall

hardly, perhaps, be able to abstain from some glance at that method of

historical criticism so justly connected with the name of Niebuhr, but

it is the life and personal character of the man which will occupy us on

the present occasion.

One observation on that historical criticism we will at once permit

ourselves to make, because it has a distinct bearing upon the

intellectual character of Niebuhr, as well as on the peculiarities of

his historical work. The distinguishing character of that school of

historical criticism, of which he may be considered the founder, is not

its scepticism, for it was no new thing to doubt of the extraordinary

events related of the early periods of Roman, or of any other history.

There have been always people sceptically disposed. Our David Hume could

very calmly give it as his opinion that true history begins with the

first page of Thucydides. It was nothing new, therefore, to disturb our

faith in the earlier portions of the Roman history, or to pronounce them

to be fables. The novelty lay in the higher and more patient and more

philosophical manner in which those fables were investigated, and their

origin, and their true place and connection with history, determined.

The elder sceptic, having satisfied himself that a narrative was

fabulous, threw it aside: the modern critic follows the spirit, the life

of the nation, into the fable itself. He does not attempt, as the

half-doubting, half-believing historian has done, to shape it at once to

the measure of modern credence, by merely modifying a few of the

details, reducing an extravagance, or lopping off a miracle; but, taking

his stand on whatever facts remain indisputable, or whatever knowledge

may be obtained from collateral sources, he investigates thoroughly the

fabulous or poetic narrative. He endeavours to transport himself into

the times when men thought after a poetic fashion—or, at all events,

when pleasure and excitement, not accuracy and instruction, were the

objects they aimed at; he labours to form an estimate of the

circumstances that kindled their imagination, to show _how the fable

grew_, and thus to extract from it, in every sense of the word, its full

historical significance.

How difficult such a task, and how precarious, after all, the result of

such labours, we must leave at present to the reflection of our readers.

What we have here to observe is, that such a method of historical

criticism is not to be pursued by a mind stored only with dry erudition,

or gifted only with the faculty of withholding its belief. Such store of

erudition is indispensable, but it must be combined with that strong

power of imagination which can recall into one vivid picture the

scattered knowledge gained from many books, and which enables its

possessor to live in the scenes and in the minds of the bygone ages of

humanity. Accordingly, it is this combination of ardent imagination with

most multifarious erudition that we meet with in Niebuhr; and it is not

the life of a dry pedant, or of one of cold sceptical understanding, or

of a mere philologer, that we have here presented to us.

These two volumes are extremely entertaining. They are chiefly composed

of the letters of Niebuhr; nor do we remember to have ever encountered a

series of letters of more unflagging interest. This interest they owe in

great measure to the strongly-marked personal character of the writer.

They are not only good letters, containing always something that

suggests reflection, but they sustain their biographical or dramatic

character throughout. It ought to be added, too, that they are most

agreeably translated. The work has been altogether judiciously planned,

and ably executed. A candid and explicit preface at once informs us of

the sources from which it is derived; we are forewarned that many

materials requisite to a complete life of Niebuhr still remain

inaccessible; meanwhile, what is here presented to us bears an authentic

stamp, and appears, as matters stand, to be the best biography that

could be given to the English public. Of the merits of Niebuhr himself

the author has preferred that others should speak. He has chosen almost

entirely to restrict himself within the modest province of the

translator or the editor. Into the motives of this reticence we have no

business to pry: whatever is done, is done well; whatever is promised is

ably performed. A book professing to be the Life of Niebuhr will excite

some expectations which this publication will not satisfy; but when an

author limits himself to a distinct and serviceable task, and performs

that task well, he is entitled to our unreserved thanks, and to our

simple commendation, unmixed with any murmur of complaint.

Interesting as we have found this book, still the perusal of two compact

octavo volumes may deter some readers who might desire, at a rather less

cost of time, to obtain an insight into the life and character of

Niebuhr. To such readers the following abbreviated sketch may not be

unacceptable. We must premise that the present work is founded on a

memoir of Niebuhr published by his sister-in-law, Madame Hensler. This

consists of a series of his letters divided into sections, each section

being preceded by such biographical notice as was necessary to their

explanation. The English author has retained this arrangement, adding,

however, considerably to the narrative of Madame Hensler from other

authentic sources, and omitting such of the letters as he judged might

be devoid of interest. Nearly one-half of these, we are told, have been

omitted—chiefly on the ground that they were on learned subjects, and

might detract from the interest of the biography. We have no doubt that

a sound discretion has been exercised on this point; nevertheless we

trust that these two volumes will meet with sufficient encouragement to

induce the author to publish that third volume at which he hints, and

which is to contain “the letters referred to, together with the most

valuable portions of his smaller writings.” We sincerely hope that one

who has performed this task so well will continue to render the same

good services to the English public. The arrangement we have alluded

to—that of letters divided into sections, with a biographical notice at

the head of each, sufficient to carry us over the ensuing section—seems

to us very preferable to the ordinary plan of our memoir writers, who

attach the explanatory notice to each separate letter. Under this last

plan, one never settles down fairly to _letter-reading_. We cannot, of

course, in the following sketch, retain the advantages of this

arrangement, but must put together our facts and our quotations in the

best order we can.

Idle and cursory readers, who have only heard or thought of Niebuhr as

the provoking destroyer of some agreeable fictions—as the ruthless enemy

of poetic and traditionary lore—will be surprised to find what a deep

earnestness of conviction there was in this man, and how his enthusiasm

for truth and for all virtue rises into romance. Once for all, let no

man parade his love of poetry, with the least hope of being respected

for it, who has not a still greater love of truth. Nay, if we reflect

patiently and calmly upon this matter, we shall find that there is but

one way to keep this flower of poesy in perennial bloom—it is to see

that the waters of truth are flowing free and clear around it. We may be

quite sure that to whatever level this stream, by its own vital force,

shall rise or sink, the same fair lily will be seen floating just on the

surface of it. Just where these waters lie open to the light of heaven,

do we find this beautiful creation looking up from them into the sky.

The scene and circumstances amongst which the childhood of Niebuhr was

passed, appear to us to be singularly in accordance with the future

development and character of the man. They were favourable to

concentration of thought, and to an independent, self-relying spirit;

they were favourable to the exercise of an imagination which was fed

continually by objects remote from the senses, and by knowledge obtained

from books, or else from conversation with his father, who was both a

learned man and a great traveller. If nature, in one of her freaks—or,

let us say, if some German fairies, of an erudite species, had resolved

to breed a great scholar, who should be an independent thinker—who

should be devoted to books, yet retain a spirit of self-reliance—who

should have all the learning of colleges without their pedantry, and

read through whole libraries, and yet retain his free, unfettered right

of judgment—how would they have proceeded to execute their project?

Would they have thrown their little pupil at the feet of some learned

professor at Bonn or Göttingen? Not at all. They would have carried

their changeling into some wild tract of country, shut him up there with

his books, and given him for his father a linguist and a traveller. They

would have provided for him just those circumstances into which young

Niebuhr was thrown. His childish imagination was no sooner kindled than

he found himself wandering in all quarters of the globe, and listening

to the stories of the most remote ages.

This father of our historian—Carsten Niebuhr—was himself a remarkable

man; full of energy, of great perseverance, and of strong feelings. He

had been one of five travellers despatched by the Danish Government on

an expedition of discovery into the East. In crossing the deserts of

Arabia, his four companions sank under the hardships and calamities they

encountered. This was in the first year of their journey; nevertheless,

he pursued his way alone, and spent six years in exploring the East. He

had returned to Copenhagen, and “was on the point,” says our biography,

“of undertaking a journey into the interior of Africa, when he fell in

love with a young orphan lady, the daughter of the late physician to the

King of Denmark.” He gives up Africa, and all the world of travel and

discovery, for this “young orphan lady;” and a few years after his

marriage, we find him settled down at Meldorf, as _land-schreiber_ to

the province of South Dithmarsh—a civil post, whose duties seem chiefly

to have concerned the revenues of the province.

This Meldorf is a little, decayed, antiquated town, not without its

traditions of municipal privileges; and Dithmarsh is what its name

suggests to an English ear—an open marshy district, without hills or

trees, with nothing but the general sky, which we all happily share in,

to give it any beauty. One figures to one’s self the traveller, who had

been exploring the sunny regions of the East, or who had been living at

Copenhagen, in the society of scholars and of statesmen, retiring, with

his young orphan lady, to this dreary Dithmarsh, peopled only by

peasantry. Even the high-road runs miles off from his habitation, so

that no chance can favour him, and no passing or belated traveller rests

at his door. He occupies his spare hours in building himself a house; in

which operation there is one little fellow standing by who takes

infinite delight. This is our Barthold George Niebuhr, who had been born

in Copenhagen on the 27th of August 1776. He and an elder sister will be

principal inhabitants of the new house when it is built, and their

education be the chief care and occupation of the traveller.

Barthold is in his sixth or seventh year when his father writes thus of

him:—

“He studied the Greek alphabet only for a single day, and had no

further trouble with it: he did it with very little help from me. The

boy gets on wonderfully. Boje says he does not know his equal; but he

requires to be managed in a peculiar way. May God preserve our lives,

and give us grace to manage him aright! Oh if he could but learn to

control the warmth of his temper—I believe I might say his pride! He

is no longer so passionate with his sister: but if he stumbles in the

least in repeating his lessons, or if his scribblings are alluded to,

he fires up instantly. He cannot bear to be praised for them; because

he believes he does not deserve it. In short, I repeat it, he is

proud; he wants to know everything, and is angry if he does not know

it.... My wife complains that I find fault with Barthold

unnecessarily. I did not mean to do so. He is an extraordinarily good

little fellow; but he must be managed in an extraordinary way; and I

pray God to give me wisdom and patience to educate him properly.”

Here we have “his picture in little;” the wonderful quickness and

application, the extreme conscientiousness, and the warmth of temper

which distinguished the man Niebuhr through his career. But who is this

Boje, who says “he does not know his equal?” And how happens it that

there is any one in Meldorf—a place, we are told, quite destitute of

literary society—who is entitled to give an opinion on the subject? This

Boje was ex-editor of the _Deutsches Museum_, and translator, we

believe, of Walter Scott’s novels; and has been lately appointed prefect

of the province. His coming is a great event to the Niebuhrs, a valuable

acquisition to their society, and of especial importance to young

Barthold; for Boje has “an extensive library, particularly rich in

English and French, as well as German books,” to which library our

youthful and indefatigable student is allowed free access. French and

English he has, from a very early age, been learning from his father and

mother. Are we not right in saying, that no Teutonic fairies could have

done better for their pupil? By way of nursery tale, his father amuses

him with strange accounts of Eastern countries, of the Turks, of

sultans, of Mahomet and the caliphs. He is already a politician. “He had

an imaginary empire called Low-England, of which he drew maps, and he

promulgated laws, waged wars, and made treaties of peace there.” Then

comes Boje to give him his first lesson upon _myths_. The literary

prefect of Dithmarsh, writing to a friend, says:—

“This reminds me of little Niebuhr. His docility, his industry, his

devoted love for me, procure me many a pleasant hour. A short time

back, I was reading _Macbeth_ aloud to his parents, without taking any

notice of him, till I saw what an impression it made on him. Then I

tried to render it intelligible to him, and even explained to him how

the witches were only poetical beings. When I was gone, he sat down,

(he is not yet seven years old,) and wrote it all out on seven sheets

of paper, without omitting one important point, and certainly without

any expectation of receiving praise for it; for, when his father asked

to see what he had written, and showed it to me, he cried for fear he

had not done it well. Since then, he writes down everything of

importance that he hears from his father or me. We seldom praise him,

but just quietly tell him when he has made any mistake, and he avoids

the fault for the future.”

Very surprising accounts are given of the boy’s precocious sagacity in

picturing to himself a historic scene, with all its details, or

following out the probable course of events. These accounts are rather

_too_ surprising. When the war broke out in Turkey, it so excited his

imagination that he not only dreamt of it, but anticipated in his

dreams, and we suppose also in his waking hours, the current of events.

His notions were so just, and his knowledge of the country, and the

situations of the towns, so accurate, that, we are told, “the

realisation of his nightly anticipations generally appeared in the

journals a short time afterwards.” One would say that the fairies had

indeed been with him. Madame Hensler’s narrative partakes here, in some

measure, of that marvellous character which accompanies family

traditions of all kinds, whether of the Roman _gens_ or the Danish

household. But on other occasions, and from Niebuhr’s own words, we

learn that, owing to his minute knowledge, his most tenacious memory,

and his vivid imagination, he, at a very early time, manifested that

spirit of quite philosophical divination which led him to his

discoveries in Roman history. We say quite philosophical divination; for

we do not suppose that Niebuhr claimed for himself, or his friends for

him, any mysterious intuition into the course of events; but there is

occasionally, both in the memoir and in the letters, a vagueness of

expression on this subject which might lead to misapprehension, and

which one wishes had been avoided.

We must now follow this precocious pupil to the University at Kiel. A

lad of seventeen, we find him already a companion for professors.

Writing home to his parents, he says of Dr Hensler:—“My ideas about the

origin of the Greek tribes, the history of the colonisation of the Greek

cities, and my notions in general about the earliest migration from west

to east, are new to him; and he thinks it probable that they may be

correct. He exhorts me to work them out, and bring them into as clear a

form as I can.” Meanwhile, he is to be occupied, heart and soul, in

studying metaphysics under Reinhold, one of the most celebrated

disciples of Kant. To enumerate the studies in which he is alternately

engaged, would be to pass in review the whole series of subjects which

are taught in a university; just as, at a somewhat later period, to

enumerate all the languages which he had learnt, would be simply to name

in order every language which a European scholar, by the aid of grammar

and dictionary, could learn. His father, with a very excusable pride,

makes out, in one of his letters, a list of his son’s attainments of

this kind: he was, more or less, master of some twenty languages.

In this philologist, however, there was no want of poetic feeling or

vivid imagination. When reading the ancients, he completely lived in

their world and with them. He once told a friend who had called on him

and found him in great emotion, that he often could not bear to read

more than a few pages at a time in the old tragic poets; he realised so

vividly all that was said, and done, and suffered. “He could see

Antigone leading her blind father—the aged Œdipus entering the grove—he

could catch the music of their speech.” Neither in this youth, so

stored, so fed with books, was there any deadness of heart towards the

living friend. We have some letters full of a painful sensitiveness at

the apprehension that his correspondent had forgotten or grown cold

towards him. The gravest fault in his character was too quick a temper;

but if this led him to take offence unjustly, he was always sufficiently

just and generous to seek for reconciliation. Least of all had his

erudition or his erudite labours quenched the moral enthusiasm of his

nature. From childhood up to manhood, from manhood to his latest day,

the same high sense of moral rectitude pervaded all his judgments, and

influenced all his actions. The same boy who would not receive praise if

he did not think he deserved it, in after years would not draw a salary

if he did not think it was rigidly earned, nor accept a present even

from a municipality—from the city of Geneva—for rendering a service

which he had spontaneously performed. At the university of Kiel we find

him breaking with an intimate friend, and much to his own regret,

because he finds that friend holding philosophical tenets destructive,

as he thinks, of the sentiment of moral obligation. “He is a fatalist

and indifferentist. I subscribe to Kant’s principles with all my heart.

I have broken with M., not from any dispute we have had, but on account

of the detestable conclusions which necessarily follow from his

opinions, conclusions that absolutely annihilate morality. I really

loved him notwithstanding, but, with such principles, I could not be his

friend.” Considering the singular and precarious tenure by which a

Kantian holds his faith in the freedom of the will, this was rather

severe dealing, not a quite perfect example of philosophical toleration;

but it shows, at least, that the heart was in the right place.

Up to this moment have not the fairies done well? But now comes a new

element into the calculations, a new phase of the drama, with which no

fairies condescend to deal. Young Niebuhr like the rest of us _must

live_, must earn the wherewithal, must choose his career, his

profession. Here the fairies forsake him. Here, in more true and prosaic

style, he is unfaithful to himself. We cannot but regard it as the great

and continuous error of his life, that he did not devote himself to

learning as his profession. He could have done so. At the very same time

there came an offer of a professorship, and a proposal to be the private

secretary of Count Schimmelman, the Danish minister of finance. He chose

the latter. That the professorship offered to him was connected with but

slender emolument, can have had little to do with the determination,

because other and more eminent and more lucrative professorships would

have speedily been open to him, and because the mere love of money was

never a strong inducement in the mind of Niebuhr. Political ambition

seems to have been the motive that turned the scale. Looking now at his

life as an accomplished completed career, it is impossible not to regret

this choice. We see ten of the most precious years of his early manhood

wasted in financial and other public business, which a hundred others

could have transacted as well; it is, in fact, a mere fragment of his

life that is exclusively or uninterruptedly devoted to letters. He is

more frequently at the head of some national bank, or revenue

department, than in the professor’s chair; and the author of the Roman

history has to say of himself, that “calculations are my occupation;

merchants, Jews, and brokers, my society.”

Niebuhr had, whilst at the university, formed an acquaintance which led

afterwards to a matrimonial engagement. Amelia Behrens, younger sister

of Madame Hensler, who was the daughter-in-law of the Professor Hensler

previously mentioned, seems from the first to have thoroughly

appreciated the high character and great attainments of the young

student. She herself must have been a woman of very superior mind; she

had great sweetness of temper, and was in every way calculated for the

wife of the ardent, generous, hasty, but affectionate Niebuhr. The first

mention that is made of Miss Behrens is not very auspicious. In a letter

to his father, he has been lamenting his painful timidity and

bashfulness before ladies, and thus continues,—“However much I may

improve in other society, I am sure I must get worse and worse every day

in their eyes; and so, out of downright shyness, I scarcely dare speak

to a lady; and as I know, once for all, that I must be insupportable to

them, their presence becomes disagreeable to me. Yesterday, however, I

screwed up my courage, and began to talk to Miss Behrens and young Mrs

Hensler. Now, in gratitude and candour, I must confess that they were

sociable enough towards me to have set me at my ease, if my shyness were

not so deeply rooted. But it is of no use. I avoid them, and would

rather be guilty of impoliteness, by avoiding them, than by speaking to

them, which I should now feel to be the greatest impoliteness of all.”

Circumstances, however, after he had left the university of Kiel,

brought him into social and unreserved communication with the family of

the Behrens; and this lady whom he avoided, dreading her precisely

because she _did_ interest his youthful imagination, became his

betrothed.

Here the biography takes a very eccentric course. Niebuhr not only comes

to England on foreign travel, which is precisely what we should expect

of such a person, but he settles himself down at Edinburgh as a student.

_The life seems to go back._ After having entered on official duties,

engaged himself to be married, and thus pledged himself to the real

business of life, we see this erudite youth, with his tale of twenty

languages nearly complete, entering the classes at Edinburgh, and

writing about them as if he were recommencing his university career. If

this work of Madame Hensler were one of old date, and we felt authorised

to exercise upon it that conjectural criticism so fashionable in our

times, we should boldly say that the authoress, deceived by the

similarity of name, had intercalated into her series some letters of

_another Niebuhr_; we should dispute the identity of the Niebuhr who

writes from the university of Edinburgh, with him who passed through the

university of Kiel, and was afterwards, for a short time, secretary to

Count Schimmelman. Such conjectural emendations being, however,

altogether inadmissible, we must accept the facts and the letters as

they are here given us.

Niebuhr’s motives for this residence in Scotland were, according to

Madame Hensler’s account, of a very miscellaneous description. Besides

the advantages to be derived from visiting a foreign land, “he was to

brace up and strengthen both his mental and physical energies in

preparation for active life.” Why this should be better accomplished as

a student in Edinburgh than as a citizen in Copenhagen, we do not

apprehend; nor what there was in the air of Denmark that had enfeebled

the spirit of self-reliance or of enterprise. But we are told that “he

had become too dependent on the little details of life. He felt that he

stood, so to speak, outside the world of realities.” Therefore he sets

himself down for a year as a student at Edinburgh.

London, of course, is first visited. He speaks highly of the English.

Throughout his life he entertained a predilection for our countrymen,

and extols the integrity and honesty of the national character. We feel

a certain bashfulness, a modest confusion, when we hear such praises;

but, as national characters nowhere stand very high, we suppose we may

accept the compliment. Occasionally we sell our patriotic votes, as at

St Alban’s and elsewhere; occasionally we fill our canisters of

preserved meats with poisonous offal; and there is not a grocer’s shop

in all England where some adulterated article of food is not cheerfully

disposed of. Nevertheless, it seems we are a shade more honest than some

of our neighbours. The compliment does not greatly rejoice us.

However, it is not all praise that we receive. He finds “that true

warm-heartedness is extremely rare” amongst us. We shall be happy to

learn that it is commonly to be met with in any part of the world. He

laments, too, the superficiality and insipidity of general conversation.

“That narrative and commonplaces form the whole staple of conversation,

from which all philosophy is excluded—that enthusiasm and loftiness of

expression are entirely wanting, depresses me more than any personal

neglect of which, as a stranger, I might have to complain. I am,

besides, fully persuaded that I shall find things very different in

Scotland; of this I am assured by several Scotchmen whom I already

know.”

In this full persuasion he sets forth to Scotland. We have an account of

his journey, which, read in these railroad times, is amusing enough. The

translator of the letters has evidently been determined that we should

not miss the humour of the contrast. Niebuhr gives his absent Amelia as

minute a description of the mode of travelling as if he were writing

from China. After describing the post-chaises, “very pretty

half-coaches, holding two,” and the royal mail, rapid, “but inconvenient

from the smallness of its build, and particularly liable to be upset,”

he proceeds to the old-fashioned stage-coach—

“In travelling by this, you have no further trouble than to take your

place in the office for as far as you wish to go; for the proprietor

of the coach has, at each stage, which are from ten to fifteen English

miles at most from each other, relays of horses, which, unless an

unusual amount of travelling causes an exception, stand ready

harnessed to be put to the coach. Four horses, drawing a coach with

six persons inside, four on the roof, a sort of conductor beside the

coachman, and overladen with luggage, have to get over seven English

miles in the hour; and, as the coach goes on without ever stopping,

except at the principal stages, it is not surprising that you can

traverse the whole extent of the country in so few days. But, for any

length of time, this rapid motion is quite too unnatural. You can only

get a very piecemeal view of the country from the windows, and, with

the tremendous speed with which you go, can keep no object long in

sight; you are unable also to stop at any place.”

After three days’ travelling “at this tremendous speed,” he reached

Newcastle, from which the above letter was dated. The rest of the

journey was also performed with the same unnatural rapidity. By some

chance he made acquaintance with a young medical student, and the two

together commenced housekeeping in Edinburgh on a very frugal and

sensible plan.

The letters which Niebuhr wrote to his parents from Edinburgh, and which

contained his observations on the graver matters of politics and of

learning, were unfortunately burnt; those which were addressed to his

betrothed have been alone preserved, and these chiefly concern matters

of a domestic and personal nature. We hear, therefore, very little of

the more learned society into which, doubtless, Niebuhr occasionally

entered. With Professor Playfair he formed an intimacy which was

afterwards renewed at Rome. Other names are mentioned, but no

particulars are given. The subjects which he principally studied in

Edinburgh were mathematics and physical sciences. Philological and

historical studies he prosecuted by himself, and by way of recreation.

“In these departments he regarded the learned men there as incomparably

inferior to the Germans.” A Mr Scott, an old friend of his father’s, and

to whom he brought letters of introduction, was the most intimate

acquaintance he possessed. The quite patriarchal reception that he

received from Mr Scott and his family will be read with interest. As to

his impressions of the Scotch, as a people, these are extremely various:

he is at one time charmed with their unexampled piety; at another, he

finds it a dreary formalism; and then, again, from the height of his

Kantian philosophy, he detects a shallow French infidelity pervading the

land. Such inconsistencies are natural and excusable in a young man

writing down his first impressions in a most unreserved correspondence.

But there would be very little gained by quoting them here at length. We

pass on from this episode in the life, and now proceed with the main

current of events.

On his return to Copenhagen, Niebuhr was appointed assessor at the board

of trade for the East India department, with some other secretaryship or

clerkship of a similar description. Thereupon he married, (May 1800;)

and in some letters written soon after this event, he describes himself

as in a quite celestial state of happiness. “Amelia’s heavenly

disposition, and more than earthly love, raise me above this world, and

as it were separate me from this life.”

Then come official promotion and increased occupation. Nevertheless his

favourite studies are never altogether laid aside. The day might be

spent at his office or in the exchange, in drawing up reports, in

correspondence or in interviews with most uninteresting people, and when

the night came he was often exhausted both in body and in mind; yet, “if

he got engaged at once in an interesting book or conversation, he was

soon refreshed, and would then study till late at night.”

Towards the end of 1805 a distinguished Prussian statesman, whose name

is not here given, and who was then at Copenhagen on a mission from his

government, sounded Niebuhr on his willingness to enter the Prussian

service in the department of finance. After much hesitation and some

correspondence, Niebuhr finally accepted a proposal made to him of “the

joint-directorship of the first bank in Berlin, and of the

_Seehandlung_,” a privileged commercial company (as a note of the editor

informs us) for the promotion of foreign commerce. Such were the labours

to which Niebuhr was willing to devote the extraordinary powers of his

mind—such were the services which his contemporaries were willing to

accept from him. But we have only to glance at the date of these

transactions to call to mind that we are traversing no peaceful or

settled times. We are, in fact, in the thick of the war. Whilst Niebuhr

was working at his assessorship in Copenhagen, that city was bombarded

by the English; and now that he goes to take possession of his

directorship in Berlin, he has to fly with royalty itself before the

armies of Napoleon. The battle of Jena, and many other battles, have

been fought and lost, and the French are advancing on the capital.

Flight to Memel, ministerial changes, alternate rise and fall of Von

Stein and Count Hardenberg—in all these events poor Niebuhr was now

implicated. When peace is made with Napoleon, we find him despatched to

Holland to negotiate a Dutch loan, the Prussian government being in

great distress for money to pay the contributions imposed upon them by

the French. Then follows some misunderstanding with Count Hardenberg,

who has succeeded to power, which happily interrupts for a time the

official career of our great scholar. He is appointed Professor of

History in the university of Berlin. In Michaelmas 1810 the university

reopened, and Niebuhr delivered his first course of lectures on the

history of Rome.

For about three years we now see him in what every one will recognise as

his right and legitimate place in the world, and labouring at his true

vocation. His lectures excited the keenest interest—he was encouraged to

undertake his great work, _The History of Rome_: it is in this interval

that both the first and second volumes were published. An extract from

his letters will show the pleasant change in his career, and give us

some insight into the position he held in the university.

“Milly (his wife Amelia) has told you that the number of my hearers

was much greater than I had anticipated. But their character, no less

than their number, is such as encourages and animates me to pursue my

labours with zeal and perseverance. You will feel this when I tell you

that Savigny, Schleiermacher, Spalding, Ancillon, Nicolovius,

Schmedding, and Süvern were present. Besides the number and selectness

of my audience, the general interest evinced in the lecture exceeds my

utmost hopes. My introductory lecture produced as strong an impression

as an oration could have done; and all the dry erudition that followed

it, in the history of the old Italian tribes, which serves as an

introduction to that of Rome, has not driven away even my unlearned

hearers. The attention with which Savigny honours me, and his

declaration that I am opening a new era for Roman history, naturally

stimulates my ardent desire to carry out to the full extent the

researches which one is apt to leave half finished as soon as one

clearly perceives the result to which they tend, in order to turn to

something fresh....

“With a little more quiet, my position would be one more completely in

accordance with my wishes than I have long ventured even to hope for.

There is such a real mutual attachment between my acquaintances and

myself, and our respective studies give such an inexhaustible interest

to conversation, that I now really possess in this respect what I used

to feel the want of; for intercourse of this kind is quickening and

instructive. The lectures themselves, too, are inspiriting, because

they require persevering researches, which, I venture to say, cannot

remain unfruitful to me; and they are more exciting than mere literary

labours, because I deliver them with the warmth inspired by fresh

thoughts and discoveries, and afterwards converse with those who have

heard them, and to whom they are as new as to myself. This makes the

lectures a positive delight to me, and I feel quite averse to bring

them to a close. What I should like, would be to have whole days of

perfect solitude, and then an interval of intercourse with the persons

I really like, but not to remain so many hours together with them as

is customary here. It would be scarcely possible to have less

frivolity and dulness in a mixed society. Schleiermacher is the most

intellectual man amongst them. The complete absence of jealousy among

these scholars is particularly gratifying.”

It is not long we are allowed to pause upon this agreeable and fruitful

era of intellectual activity. Two volumes, however, are published of

that history of which it is not here our purpose to speak, of which we

would not wish to speak lightly or inconsiderately, which we admire and

would cordially applaud, but which, we feel, has not yet received its

exact place or value in the historical literature of Europe. We have not

the time, nor will we lay claim to the profound erudition requisite, to

do full justice to Niebuhr’s _History of Rome_. We do not regret,

therefore, that the present occasion calls for no decided verdict; and

that it does not devolve on us to draw the line, and show where just,

and bold, and discriminating criticism terminates, and where ingenious

and happy conjecture begins to assume the air and confidence of history.

On one point there can be no dispute—that his work exercised a great,

and, upon the whole, a most salutary influence on historical criticism.

It is not too much to say, that no history has been written since its

appearance in which this influence cannot be traced.

Both volumes were received in a most cordial and encouraging manner by

his friends and by the public, and materials for a third volume were

being collected, when suddenly we hear that our professor—is drilling

for the army! Napoleon’s disastrous campaign in Russia has given hope to

every patriotic German to throw off the degrading yoke of France.

Niebuhr, though by his father’s side of Danish extraction, was, in

heart, wholly a German. When the Landwehr was called out he refused to

avail himself of the privilege of his position to evade serving in it—he

sent in his name as a volunteer, and prepared himself by the requisite

exercises. Meanwhile, till he could do battle with the musket, he fought

with the pen, and edited a newspaper. “Niebuhr’s friends in Holstein,”

writes Madame Hensler, “could hardly trust their eyes when he wrote them

word that he was drilling for the army, and that his wife entered with

equal enthusiasm into his feelings. The greatness of the object had so

inspired Madame Niebuhr, who was usually anxious, even to a morbid

extent, at the slightest imaginable peril for the husband in whom she

might truly be said to live, that she was willing and ready to bring

even her most precious treasure as a sacrifice to her country.”

French troops were now constantly passing through Berlin, on their way

from the fatal plains of Russia. The dreadful sufferings which they had

manifestly endured did not fail to excite a general compassion; but

their appearance excited still more the patriotic hopes of the citizens

to liberate themselves from the degrading domination of France. Berlin

was evacuated by the French. Then came the Cossacks, following in the

route of the common enemy. “They bivouac,” says a letter of Niebuhr,

“with their horses in the city; about four in the morning they knock at

the doors, and ask for breakfast. This is a famous time for the

children, for they set them on their horses, and play with them.” Here

is an extract that will bring the times vividly before us. Niebuhr is

writing to Madame Hensler:—

“I come from an employment in which you will hardly be able to fancy

me engaged—namely, exercising. Even before the departure of the

French, I began to go through the exercise in private, but a man can

scarcely acquire it without a companion. Since the French left, a

party of about twenty of us have been exercising in a garden, and we

have already got over the most difficult part of the training. When my

lectures are concluded, which they will be at the beginning of next

week, I shall try to exercise with regular recruits during the

morning, and, as often as possible, practise shooting at a mark.... By

the end of a month, I hope to be as well drilled as any recruit who is

considered to have finished his training. The heavy musket gave me so

much trouble at first, that I almost despaired of being able to handle

it; but we are able to recover the powers again that we have only lost

for want of practice. I am happy to say that my hands are growing

horny; for as long as they had a delicate bookworm’s skin, the musket

cut into them terribly....

“I mentioned to you a short time since, my hopes of getting a

secretaryship on the general staff. With my small measure of physical

power, I should have been a thousand times more useful in that office

than as a private soldier. The friend I have referred to would like me

to enter the ministry. Perhaps something unexpected may yet turn up.

Idle, or busy about anything but our liberation, I cannot be now.”

It is impossible to read the account of these stirring times _just now_,

without asking ourselves whether it is probable that our own learned

professors of Oxford and Cambridge may ever have their patriotism put to

a similar trial. Perhaps, even under similar circumstances, they would

act the wiser part by limiting themselves to patriotic exhortations to

the youth under their control or influence. Of one thing we feel

persuaded, that there would be no lack of ardour, or of martial

enthusiasm, amongst the students of our venerable universities. After a

few months drilling and practising, there would be raised such a corps

of riflemen from Oxford and Cambridge as fields of battle have not often

seen. How intelligence _tells_, when you put a musket in its hands, is

as yet but faintly understood. We, for our own part, hope that the

_voluntary principle_ will here arouse itself in time, and do its

bidding nobly. For as to that ordinary militia, which is neither

voluntary service nor thorough discipline, where there is neither

intelligence, nor ardour, nor professional spirit, nor any one good

quality of a soldier, we have no confidence in it whatever: we would not

willingly trust our hen-coops to such a defence; there is neither body

nor soul in it. As a reserve force from which to recruit for the regular

army, it may be useful. But to drill and train a set of unwilling

servitors like these, with the intention of taking the field with them,

would be a fatal mistake; for it would lull the nation into a false

sense of security. But a regiment of volunteers of the spirited and

intelligent youth of England, we would match with entire confidence

against an equal number of any troops in the world. Why should not there

be permanent rifle-clubs established in every university, and in every

town? These, and our standing army, increased to its necessary

complement, would constitute a safe defence. Volunteers, it is said,

cannot be kept together except in moments of excitement. And this was

true while the volunteers had only to drill and to march; but practice

with the rifle is itself as great an amusement as archery, or boating,

or cricket, or any other that engages the active spirit of our youth.

There is a skill to be acquired which would prompt emulation. There is

an art to learn. These clubs would meet together, both for competition,

and for the purpose of practising military evolutions on a larger scale,

and thus the spirit of the institution would be maintained, and its

utility increased. Nor would it be difficult to suggest some honorary

privilege which might be attached to the volunteer rifleman. Such, we

are persuaded, is the kind of militia which England ought to have for

her defence; such, we are persuaded, is the only force, beside the

standing army, on which any reliance can safely be placed.

All honour to the historian who unravels for us the obscurities of the

past! Nevertheless, one simple truth will stare us in the face. We take

infinite pains to understand the Roman _comitia_; we read, not without

considerable labour, some pages of Thucydides; yet the daily English

newspaper has been bringing to our door accounts of a political

experiment now enacting before us, more curious and more instructive

than Roman and Grecian history can supply. The experiment, which has

been fairly performed on a neighbouring shore, gives a more profound

lesson, and a far more important one, than twenty Peloponnesian wars.

That experiment has demonstrated to us that, _by going low enough_, you

may obtain a public opinion that shall sanction a tyranny over the whole

intelligence of the country. A man who, whatever his abilities, had

acquired no celebrity in civil or military life, inherits a name; with

that name he appeals to the universal suffrage of France; and universal

France gives him permission to do what he will with her laws and

institutions—to destroy her parliament—to silence her press—to banish

philosophy from her colleges. It is a lesson of the utmost importance;

and moreover, a fact which, at the present moment, justifies some alarm.

It is not intelligent France we have for our neighbour, but a power

which represents its military and its populace, and which surely, if we

are to calculate on its duration, is of a very terrific character. But

we must pursue our biographical sketch of the life of Niebuhr.

Although our professor never actually shoulders that musket of which we

have seen him practising the use, and gets no nearer to the smoke of

powder than to survey the battle of Bautzen from the heights, he is

involved in all the civil turmoils of the time. He is summoned to

Dresden, where the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Russia are in

conference together. He follows the Sovereigns to Prague; he is again

despatched to Holland, to negotiate there for subsidies with the English

commissioners. Saddest event of all, his domestic happiness receives a

fatal blow in the death of his wife. She must have been a woman of

tender spirit and elevated character. She entered ardently into all the

pursuits, and shared all the fame, of her husband. A few days before her

death, Niebuhr, as he was holding her in his arms, asked her if there

was no pleasure that he could give her—nothing that he could do for her

sake. She replied, with a look of unutterable love, “You shall finish

your history, whether I live or die.”

The history, however, proceeded very slowly. When public tranquillity

was restored, Niebuhr did not return to his professor’s chair; he went,

as is very generally known, to Rome on a diplomatic mission. Here he

spent a considerable portion of his life; and although his residence in

that city might seem peculiarly favourable to his great undertaking, yet

it proved otherwise;—either his time was occupied in the business or the

ceremonial attached to his appointment, or his mind was unhinged.

Besides, we have seen, from his own confession, that he needed such

stimulants as those he found at Berlin, of friends, and conversation,

and a literary duty, to keep him to one train of inquiry or of labour.

It was very much the habit of his mind to propose to himself numerous

works or literary investigations. We have amongst his loose memoranda of

an earlier date one headed thus, “Works which I have to complete.” The

list comprises no less than seven works, every one of which would have

been a laborious undertaking. No scheme or outline of these several

projected books was to be found, but the writer of the Memoir before us

remarks that we are not to infer from this that such memoranda contain

mere projects, towards whose execution no step was ever taken.

“That Niebuhr proposed,” says Madame Hensler, “any such work to

himself, was a certain sign that he had read and thought deeply on the

subject; but he was able to trust so implicitly to his extraordinary

memory, that he never committed any portion of his essays to paper

till the whole was complete in his own mind. His memory was so

wonderfully retentive that he scarcely ever forgot anything which he

had once heard or read, and the facts he knew remained present to him

at all times, even in their minutest details.

“His wife and sister once playfully took up Gibbon, and asked him

questions from the table of contents about the most trivial things, by

way of testing his memory. They carried on the examination till they

were tired, and gave up all hope of even detecting him in a momentary

uncertainty, though he was at the same time engaged in writing on some

other subject.”

Niebuhr married a second time. Madame Hensler, accompanied by her niece,

had visited him in his affliction; their presence gradually cheered him;

and Margaret Hensler, the niece, “soothed him with her gentle

attentions, and gave him peculiar pleasure with her sweet singing. After

some time he engaged himself to her, and married her before he left

Berlin.”

We have now to follow him to Rome. The correspondence is here, as indeed

throughout these volumes, very entertaining; and it would be utterly

impossible to convey to our readers, in our brief survey, a fair

impression of the sort of interest this work possesses. The memoir may

be regarded as merely explanatory of the letters, and the letters

themselves are not distinguished so much by remarkable passages as by a

constantly sustained interest. They are not learned, for the erudite

portion of the correspondence has been omitted, but they are never

trivial; they perpetually suggest some topic of reflection, and are

thoroughly imbued with the character and personality of the writer. We

have lately had several biographies of eminent men written on the same

plan, the letters being set forth as the most faithful portraiture of

the man; but in none of these, so far as we can recall them to mind, are

the letters at once so valuable in themselves, and so curious for the

insight they give us into the character and feelings of the writer.

In reading Niebuhr’s letters from Italy, we must always bear in mind

that they are written by one of warm and somewhat irascible temper, and

who has a standard of moral excellence which would be thought of a most

inconvenient altitude by the people of any country in Europe. He is

honest as the day, but open to receive very sudden and much too strong

impressions. We must also look at the date of his letters, and ask

ourselves what changes may have taken place since Niebuhr wrote. With

these precautions, they will be found to convey many very instructive

hints. From his first entrance into Italy to the last hour of his

residence, he expresses the same opinion of the low standard of

intellectual culture amongst its educated classes. Whilst he is yet at

Florence, he writes thus:—

“My preconceived opinion of the scholars and higher classes in Italy

has proved perfectly correct, as I was convinced would be the case,

because I possessed sufficient data to form an accurate idea of them.

I have always allowed the existence of individual exceptions, as

regards erudition; but even in these cases, there is not that

cultivation of the whole man which we demand and deem indispensable. I

have become acquainted with two or three literary men of real ability;

but, in the first place, they are old men, who have only a few years

longer to live; and when they are gone, Italy will be, as they say

themselves, in a state of barbarism; and, in the second, they are like

statues wrought to be placed in a frieze on the wall—the side turned

towards you is of finished beauty, the other unhewn stone. They are

much what our scholars may have been sixty or eighty years ago. No one

feels himself a citizen....

“The three genuine and intellectual scholars of my acquaintance,

Morelli, Garatoni, and Fontana, are all ecclesiastics. They are,

however, only ecclesiastics by profession, for I have not found in

them the slightest trace either of a belief in the dogmas of

Catholicism, or of the pietism which you meet with in Germany. _When

an Italian has once ceased to be a slave of the Church, he never seems

to trouble his head about such matters at all. Metaphysical

speculations are utterly foreign to his nature, as they were to the

old Romans._ Hence the vacuity of mind which has become general since

the suppression of freedom, except in the case of those who find a

sphere of action in writing literary and historical memoirs. Their

public men are immeasurably behind the Germans in knowledge and

cultivation.”

What matter for reflection there is here, the reader will not need our

assistance to point out. Let those who censure Protestantism for the

spirit of speculation it is connected with, either as cause or effect,

consider how important a part that speculative tendency plays in

sustaining the intellectual activity of a people.

When Niebuhr arrives at Rome, the picture that he draws is still darker.

Even the antiquities of the city seem to have given him little pleasure;

he was more disturbed at what had been taken away than gratified by the

little that remained. Then, although he well knew that the life of an

ambassador at Rome could not be free from restraint and interruption,

yet the courtly formalities he was compelled to observe were far more

vexatious than he had anticipated. Housekeeping, too, perplexed him.

Things were dear, and men not too honest. “Without a written agreement

nothing can be done.” In a letter to Savigny, he writes thus:—

“Rome has no right to its name; at most, it should be called New Rome.

Not one single street here goes in the same direction as the old one;

it is an entirely foreign vegetation that has grown up on a part of

the old soil, as insignificant and thoroughly modern in its style as

possible, without nationality, without history. It is very

characteristic that the really ancient and the modern city lie almost

side by side.

“There are nowhere any remains of anything that it was possible to

remove. The ruins all date from the time of the emperors; and he who

can get up an enthusiasm about them, must at least rank Martial and

Sophocles together.... St Peter’s, the Sistine Chapel, and the Loggie,

are certainly splendid; but even St Peter’s is disfigured internally

by the wretched statues and decorations.... Science is utterly extinct

here. Of philologists, there is none worthy of the name except the

aged De Rossi, who is near his end. The people are apathetic.

“This, then, is the country and place in which my life is to be

passed! It is but a poor amends that I can get from libraries, and

yet my only hope is from the Vatican. That we may be crossed in

every way, this is closed till the 5th of November, and to have it

opened sooner is out of the question; in other respects, all

possible facilities have been promised me by the Pope himself,

Cardinal Gonsalvi, Monsignor Testi, and the Prefect of the library,

Monsignor Baldi. This last is now engaged in printing, at his own

cost, a work on which he has expended six hundred scudi, without

hope of receiving any compensation for it. It is on seventeen

passages in the Old Testament, in which he has found the cross

mentioned by name.... At Terni, I found the old art of

land-surveying still extant: I rode along what was probably an

ancient ‘limes,’ found the ‘rigor,’ and the ‘V. Pedes.’ I shall go

there again, if I live till next autumn. It is a charming place.

There are at least fifty houses in the town, among them one very

large, which date from the Roman times, and which have never yet

been observed or described by any traveller. Several of the churches

are Roman private houses. If one could but discover in Rome anything

like this! I long inexpressibly to have it for my burial-place.

Everything is ancient in Terni and its neighbourhood—even the mode

of preparing the wine. Oh to have been in Italy five hundred years

ago!”

One of the most agreeable topics mentioned in the period of his

biography, is the interest Niebuhr took in the new school of German art

then springing up at Rome. Every one, from prints and engravings, if

from no other source, is now acquainted with the works of Cornelius,

Overbeck, Veit, Schadow, and others. They were then struggling with all

the usual difficulties of unemployed and unrecognised genius. Niebuhr

neither possessed, nor affected to possess, any special knowledge of

art, but he was delighted with the genuine enthusiasm of his

fellow-countrymen; he kindled in their society; he was persuaded of

their great talent, and exerted whatever influence he possessed in

obtaining for them some high employment. He wished that the interior of

some church or other public building should be placed at their disposal,

to decorate it with suitable paintings. The scattered notices that we

find here of these artists we pass over very unwillingly, but we must

necessarily confine ourselves to the course of our narrative.

By his first wife, Niebuhr had no family. His second, _Gretchen_ as she

is affectionately called—and who, we may observe in passing, is

described as equally amiable, though not quite so intellectual or

cultivated as the first—brought him several children, one son and three

daughters. The birth of his son, April 1817, was an event which gave him

the keenest delight, and kindled in all their fervour his naturally

ardent affections. It was the first thing, we are told, that really

dispelled the melancholy that fell on him after the loss of his _Milly_.

It is curious and touching to note how he mingled up his reminiscences

of his first wife with this gift brought him by the second. Writing to

Madame Hensler, he says:—

“The trial is over, but it has been a terrible trial. How Gretchen

rejoices in the possession of her darling child after all her

suffering, you can well imagine. Her patience was indescribable. In my

terrible anxiety I prayed most earnestly, _and entreated my Milly,

too, for help. I comforted Gretchen with telling her that Milly would

send help._”

Then come plans for the education of the boy. How much does the

following brief extract suggest!—

“I am thinking a great deal about his education. I told you a little

while ago how I intended to teach him the ancient languages very

early, by practice. I wish the child to believe all that is told him;

and I now think you write in an assertion which I have formerly

disputed, that it is better to tell children no tales, but to keep to

the poets. But while I shall repeat and read the old poets to him in

such a way that he will undoubtedly take the gods and heroes for

historical beings, I shall tell him, at the same time, that the

ancients had only an imperfect knowledge of the true God, and that

these gods were overthrown when Christ came into the world. He shall

believe in the letter of the Old and New Testaments, and I shall

nurture in him from his infancy a firm faith in all that I have lost,

or feel uncertain about.”

On the opposite page we read the following letter to the same

correspondent, Madame Hensler:—

“I have spent yesterday and last night in thinking of my Milly, and

this day, too, is sacred to these recollections. I saw her a few days

ago in a dream. She seemed as if returning to me after a long

separation. I felt uncertain, as one so often does in dreams, whether

she was still living on this earth, or only appeared on it for a

transient visit. She greeted me as if after a long absence, _asked

hastily after the child, and took it in her arms_.

“Happy are those who can cherish such a hallowing remembrance as that

of the departure of my Milly with pious faith, trusting for a brighter

and eternal spring. Such a faith cannot be acquired by one’s own

efforts. Oh that it may one day be my portion!”

“My son shall have a firm faith in all that I have lost, or feel

uncertain about!” May the paternal hope, and the paternal confidence in

its own “plans of education,” be fully justified.

One thing appears evident, that a residence at Rome (at least at the

period when Niebuhr wrote) could not be very propitious to the

cultivation of faith in educated minds. What is brought before us very

vividly in these letters, and without any purposed design, is the

combination of cold, worldly formalism, not to say hypocrisy, with harsh

intolerant measures. The priesthood, with whom Niebuhr mingles, detest

fanaticism, yet act with systematic bigotry. What union can be more

repulsive than this—the cold heart and the heavy hand! A pious Chaldean,

a man of great ability, comes to Rome to get a Bible printed there in

his native language, under the censorship of the Propaganda. He applies

to Niebuhr to assist him with money; Niebuhr exerts himself in his

cause. The Chaldean is banished from Rome. His offence is not, as might

perhaps be apprehended, the wish to print the Bible; he has accepted

assistance from our Bible Society in carrying out his scheme. In sharp

contrast with bigoted conduct of this description, we have Niebuhr’s

general impression of the utter coldness of heart amongst the

ecclesiastics at Rome. They run as follows—(the R. in this extract

stands for Ringseis, a physician who had accompanied the Crown Prince of

Bavaria to Rome, and who was a zealous and pious Catholic):—

“About the Italians you will have heard R’s. testimony, and we

Protestants can leave it to him to paint the clergy, and the state of

religion in this country. In fact, we are all cold and dead compared

to his indignation. His society has been a great pleasure to us all,

even to our reserved friend Bekker, who in general turns pale at the

very thought of Popery, and finds me far too indulgent. With an

enthusiast so full of heart as R. you can get on; between such a

luxuriance of fancy and the unshackled reason, there is much such an

analogy as subsists between science and art; whilst, on the contrary,

the slavish subjection to the Church is ghastly death. The most

superficial prophet of so-called enlightenment cannot have a more

sincere aversion to enthusiasm than the Roman priesthood; and, in

fact, their superstition bears no trace of it. Little as the admirers

of Italy care for my words, I know that I am perfectly correct in

saying, that even among the laity you cannot discover a vestige of

piety.”

Meanwhile the years pass on, and the education of the little boy really

begins. Niebuhr says he succeeds in the task better than he could

venture to hope. Our readers cannot but be curious to know what was the

course of instruction the great historian pursued.

“Marcus already knows no inconsiderable number of Latin words, and he

understands grammar so well that I can now set him to learn parts of

the conjunctions without their teasing him like dead matter: he

derives many of the forms from his own feeling. I am reading with him

selected chapters from Hygin’s _Mythologicum_—a book which perhaps it

is not easy to use for this purpose, and which yet is more suited to

it than any other, from the absence of formal periods, and the

interest of the narrative. For German, I write fragments of the Greek

mythology for him. I began with the history of the Argonauts; I have

now got to the history of Hercules. I give everything in a very free

and picturesque style, so that it is as exciting as poetry to him:

and, in fact, he reads it with such delight that we are often

interrupted by his cries of joy. The child is quite devoted to me; but

this educating costs me a great deal of time. However, I have had my

share of life, and I shall consider it as a reward for my labours if

this young life be as fully and richly developed as lies within my

power.

“Unexpected thoughts often escape him. Two days ago he was sitting

beside me and began, ‘Father, the ancients believed in the old gods;

but they must have believed also in the true God. The old gods were

just like men.’”

All this time we have said nothing of the political embassy of Niebuhr.

He was appointed ambassador to Rome to negotiate a concordat with the

Pope. But it appears that several years elapsed before he received his

instructions from his own court. We hardly know, therefore, whether to

say that the negotiations were prolonged, or that their commencement had

been delayed. Niebuhr always speaks in high terms of the Pope, (Pius

VII.,) as a man every way estimable. Between them a very friendly

feeling seems to have subsisted. There does not appear, therefore, to

have been any peculiar or vexatious delay on the part of the Holy See.

After Niebuhr had been in Rome more than four years, Count Hardenberg,

the Prussian minister, who had been attending the conference at Laybach,

made his appearance on the scene. To him, as we gather from the very

brief account before us, was attributed with some unfairness the merit

of concluding the negotiations. However this might be, the terms of this

concordat were at length agreed upon, and Niebuhr had no longer any

peculiar mission to detain him at Rome. Shortly afterwards he petitioned

for leave of absence, and returned to Germany. He never went back again

to Rome, but happily resumed the professor’s chair—this time, however,

in the University of Bonn; or rather he delivered lectures at Bonn, for

it does not appear that he was an appointed professor.

But before we leave Rome for Bonn, or diplomacy for the professorial

duties, we must glance at a little essay given us in the appendix,

written by Chevalier Bunsen, and entitled _Niebuhr as a Diplomatist in

Rome_. Bunsen was, during part of this period, secretary to the embassy,

and of course in perpetual communication with Niebuhr. The few anecdotes

he relates present us with a very distinct picture of this German Cato

amongst the modern Romans. Judging by what are popularly understood to

be the qualifications of a diplomatist, we should certainly say that our

historian was by no means peculiarly fitted for this department of the

public service. He was an unbending man, had much of the stoic in his

principles, though very little of the stoic in his affections, and was

more disposed to check or crush the hollow frivolity about him than to

yield to it, or to play with it. He could throw a whole dinner-table

into consternation, by solemnly denouncing the tone of levity which the

conversation had assumed. At the house of some prince in Rome the events

then transpiring in Greece had led Niebuhr to speak with earnestness on

the future destiny of the Christian Hellenes. On the first pause that

occurred, a fashionable diner-out contrived to turn the conversation,

and in a few moments the whole table was alive with a discussion—on this

important point, whether a certain compound sold at the Roman

coffee-houses, under the slang name of “aurora,” was mostly coffee or

mostly chocolate! Niebuhr sat silent for some time; but he, too, took

advantage of the next pause to express his indignation and surprise,

that “in such times, and with such events occurring around us, we should

be entertained with such miserable trifles!” For a short time all were

mute. Not a very diplomatic style, we should say, of conversation.

It was very characteristic of such a man, that, on the occasion of

giving a grand entertainment in his character of ambassador, he should

have the music of the Sistine Chapel performed in his house. He detested

the modern Italian operatic music. He thought it becoming his

embassadorial position that something national should be selected. He

therefore chose that celebrated music which all foreigners make it a

point of duty to go and listen to at the Sistine Chapel during Passion

Week. When the gay assemblage, after an animated conversation, repaired

for the concert to the brilliantly lighted saloon, a choir of sixteen

singers from the chapel filled the air with their solemn strains. We do

not wonder, as Chevalier Bunsen says, that “the assembly was evidently

seized with a peculiar feeling,” or that many of them stole away to

something they thought more amusing.

Even his connection with the learned men of Rome was not of long

continuance. But this was owing to no want of sympathy in their studies

or pursuits on the part of Niebuhr, as the following anecdote will

testify—(those who know Leopardi as a poet will read it with peculiar

interest):—

“I still remember the day when he (Niebuhr) entered with unwonted

vivacity the office in which I was writing, and exclaimed, ‘I must

drive out directly to seek out the greatest philological genius of

Italy that I have as yet heard of, and make his acquaintance. Just

look at the man’s critical remarks upon the Chronicle of Eusebius.

What acuteness! What real erudition! I have never seen anything like

it before in this country—I must see the man.’

“In two hours he came back. ‘I found him at last with a great deal of

trouble, in a garret of the Palazzo Mattei. Instead of a man of mature

age, I found a youth of two or three and twenty, deformed, weakly, and

who has never had a good teacher, but has fed his intellect upon the

books of his grandfather, in his father’s house at Recanati; has read

the classics and the Fathers; is, at the same time, as I hear, one of

the first poets and writers of his nation, and is withal poor,

neglected, and evidently depressed. One sees in him what genius this

richly endowed nation possesses.’ Capei has given a pleasing and true

description of the astonishment experienced by both the great men at

their first meeting; of the tender affection with which Niebuhr

regarded Leopardi, and all that he did for him.”

Our diminishing space warns us that we must limit ourselves to the last

scene of the life and labours of Niebuhr. After some intervals spent at

Berlin, he took up his residence at Bonn, recommenced his lectures,

recommenced his History. Before proceeding further in his task, he found

it necessary to revise the two volumes already published. In this

revision he engaged so zealously that he almost re-wrote them. The third

volume, as is well known, was not published in his lifetime: the

manuscript was revised for the press by his friend and disciple,

Professor Classen.

This and other manuscripts ran the risk of being consumed by the flames;

for his new house, in the planning and arrangement of which he had taken

much pleasure, was burnt down on the night of the 6th February 1830. It

was indeed a misfortune, he said, but he did not feel as he felt “that

night when he was near headquarters at the battle of Bautzen, and

believed the cause of his country to be, if not lost, in the most

imminent peril.” But though much else was destroyed, the books and

papers were preserved; and there was great rejoicing when here and there

a precious treasure was found again, which had been looked on as lost;

and the reappearance of the longed-for manuscript of the second volume

of the history (then going through the press) was greeted with hearty

cheers.

The prospect of public affairs, now embroiled by the French Revolution

of 1830, seems to have disturbed him more than the loss of his house.

From the selfishness of the governing party, and the rashness of their

opponents, he was disposed to predict the saddest results—loss of

freedom, civil and religious. “In fifty years,” he says in one place,

“and probably much less, there will be no trace left of free

institutions, or the freedom of the press, throughout all Europe—at

least on the Continent.” In this enforced darkness, Protestantism would,

of course, have no chance against her great antagonist. Wherever the

spirit of mental freedom decays, the Roman Catholic must triumph. He

says, “Already, all the old evils have awakened to full activity; all

the priestcraft, all, even the most gigantic plans for conquest and

subjugation; and there is no doubt that they are secretly aiming at, and

working towards, a religious war, and all that tends to bring it on.”

The interest which Niebuhr took in the public events of Europe was

indirectly the cause of his last illness. One evening he spent a

considerable time waiting and reading in the hot news-room, without

taking off his thick fur cloak, and then returned home through the cold

frosty night air, heated in mind and body. He looked in, as he passed,

on his friend Classen, to unburden some portion of his fervid cares for

the universal commonwealth. “But,” said he, “I have taken a severe

chill, I must go to bed.” And from the couch he then sought he never

rose again.

“On the afternoon of the 1st of January 1830,” thus concludes the

account of his last days which we have from the pen of Professor

Classen, “he sank into a dreamy slumber: once, on awakening, he said

that pleasant images floated before him in sleep; now and then he

spoke French in his dreams; probably he felt himself in the presence

of his departed friend De Serre. As the night gathered, consciousness

gradually faded away; he woke up once more about midnight, when the

last remedy was administered; he recognised in it a medicine of

doubtful operation, never resorted to but in extreme cases, and said

in a faint voice, ‘What essential substance is this? Am I so far

gone?’ These were his last words; he sank back on his pillow, and

within an hour his noble heart had ceased to beat.”

Any attempt at the final estimate of Niebuhr as a historian, we have

already said we shall not make. The permanence of the structure that he

has reared must be tested by time and the labours of many scholars.

Indeed, where a reputation like this is concerned, old father Time will

be slow in his operations—he is a long while trimming the balance and

shuffling the weights—perhaps new weights are to be made. Niebuhr’s

great and salutary influence in historical literature, we repeat, is

undeniable; and this signal merit will always be accorded to him. For

his character as a man, this is better portrayed even by the few

extracts we have been able to make from his letters, than by any summary

or description we could give. But these extracts have necessarily been

brief, and are unavoidably taken, here and there, from letters which it

would have been much more desirable to quote _in extenso_, and therefore

we recommend every reader who can bestow the leisure, to read these

volumes for himself. He will find them, in the best sense of the word,

very amusing.

THOMAS MOORE.

The recent death of the Poet Moore has rendered it incumbent on us, as

taking an interest in the literary honour of the empire, to give a brief

sketch of his career. In this outline we scarcely need say that we shall

be guided by the most perfect impartiality. We have the due feeling for

the memory of genius, and the due respect for the sacredness of the

grave. Though differing from Moore in political opinions, we shall be

willing to give him the praise of sincerity; and, though declining

panegyric, we shall with equal willingness give our tribute to the

talents which adorned his country.

It is to be hoped that a Memoir will be supplied by some of those

friends to whose known ability such a work can be intrusted; and with as

much of his personal correspondence, and personal history, as may be

consistent with the feelings of his family and the regard for his fame.

Thomas Moore was born in Dublin on the 30th of May 1780. His parentage

was humble; but it is the glory of Britain to disregard pedigree, where

nature has given the ability which leads to distinction.

The period at which Moore first came before the public eye was one

singularly exciting to Ireland. The Civil War under James II. had left

bitterness in the Roman Catholic mind, and the Penal Laws gave ample

topics for the declaimers. But, from the commencement of the reign of

George III., those laws had undergone a course of extinction, and all

the harsher parts of their pressure were gradually abolished.

We are not the panegyrists of those laws; they erred, in making the

_religious belief_ of the Romanist an object of penalty. Faith, let it

be of whatever blindness, cannot be enlightened by force of law. But we

are to remember, that the Irish Roman Catholics had been in _arms_

against their sovereign; that they had shed English blood in the quarrel

of a religion notoriously persecuting; that they had brought foreign

troops into the country in aid of their rebellion; and that they had

formed an alliance with France, then at war with England. It was further

to be remembered, that in their Parliament under a returned rebel, who

had abdicated the throne of both islands—and whose success would have

made Ireland a vassal, as he himself was a pensioner, of France—they had

confiscated (against the most solemn promises) the property of two

hundred leading Protestants, and would have eventually confiscated the

whole property of Protestantism.

Ireland had made itself a field of battle, and the only relief for its

emergencies was to make it a _garrison_.

The wisdom of that measure was shown in its fruits—the true test of all

statesmanship: Ireland remained undisturbed for _seventy_ years. During

the party and popular irritations of the two first Brunswick reigns,

during the two Scottish invasions of 1715 and 1745, and during the

American war, Ireland was perfectly tranquil—certainly not through

loyalty, and as certainly through law. At that time there was no

favoured party of agitation—no faction suffered to clamour itself into

place, and the country into tumult. There was no relaxation of the laws

of the land for scandalous intrigue or insolent importunity. The rule

was strict, and strictly administered; no manufacture of grievance was

permitted to give a livelihood to a disturber, and no celebrity was in

the power of a demagogue, but the ascent to the pillory. Common sense,

public justice, and vigilant law, were the _triad_ which governed

Ireland, and their fruits were seen in the most rapid, vigorous, and

extensive improvement of the country. No kingdom of Europe had ever so

quickly obliterated the traces of civil war. Improvement was visible, in

every form of national progress. Ireland had previously been a country

of pasture, and, of course, of depopulation: it became a country of

tillage. It had formerly been totally destitute of commerce: it now

pushed its trade to the thriving States of America, and grew in wealth

by the hour. It was formerly compelled, by the want of native

manufactures, to purchase the clothing of its population from England:

it now established the northern province as an emporium of the linen

trade, which it still holds, and which is more than a gold mine to a

crowded population.

The increase of human life in Ireland was perhaps the most memorable in

the annals of statistics. In the beginning of the eighteenth century the

population was calculated at little more than 700,000. It now started

forth by _millions_. And the national increase of wealth, intelligence,

and public spirit, was shown in a manner equally significant and

singular. Ireland had the honour of _inventing_ (if we may use the word)

the Volunteers. The threat of a French invasion had alarmed the people,

and Parliament asked the important question of the Viceroy, What forces

were provided for the defence of the kingdom? His answer was, that he

had but 7000 men at his disposal. The nation instantly determined to

take the defence on themselves, and they raised an army such as the

world had never before seen—wholly spontaneous in its rise,

self-equipped, serving without pay, self-disciplined—80,000 men ready

for the field!

The armies of Greece and Rome, even when republican, were

_conscriptions_; the _levée en masse_ in France was compulsory, and the

guillotine was the recruiting officer; the gigantic columns of the

Imperial armies were chiefly raised under the absolute scourge. The

_land-sturm_ of the Germans was created under the rigidity of a system

which drove the whole population into the field—rightly and righteously

drove them; for what but the low selfishness of brawling and bustling

Radicalism, or the petty penury of superannuated avarice, would declare

it a hardship to defend one’s own country, or hesitate to pay the manly

and necessary expenditure which fitted them for that defence? But

Ireland, without hesitation, and without stipulation—without the pitiful

pusillanimity of a weaver’s soul and body, or the shrinking selfishness

of a pawnbroker in the shape of a legislator—rushed to arms, and scared

away invasion!

The expense of this illustrious effort was enormous, the occupation of

time incalculable—but the act was heroic. And let what will come,

whether Ireland is to have a career worthy of her natural powers, or to

perish under the ascendancy of her deadly superstition, that _act_ will

form the brightest jewel in her historic diadem, as it will the noblest

inscription on her tomb. But the whole effort implied the prosperity, as

well as the patriotism, of the kingdom. Paupers cannot equip themselves

for the field. The country must have had substantial resources to meet

the expenditure. The arming of the volunteers would have exhausted the

treasury of half the sovereigns of Europe, and yet the country bore it

freely, fearlessly, and without feeling the slightest embarrassment in

those efforts which were at the moment extending her interests through

the world.

We have alluded to this fragment of Irish history, because it

illustrates the system of fraud and falsehood under which pretended

patriotism in Ireland has libelled, and continues to libel, England—a

system which talks of peace, while it is perpetually provoking

hostility; which boasts of its zeal for the country, while it is cutting

up every root of national hope; and which is equally boastful in the

streets, and cowardly in the field.

But another crisis came, and the manliness of the national character was

to be tried in a still severer emergency. The Penal Laws were virtually

extinguished, on the presumption that Popery was reconcilable by

benefits, and that Irish patriotism was not always the language of

conspiracy. The mistake was soon discernible in a Popish League for the

subversion of the English Government. The “United Irishmen”—a name in

itself a falsehood, for the object was to crush one-half of the nation,

by establishing the tyranny of the other—were formed into a League. But

the League was broken up, not in the field, but in the dungeon, and the

insurrection was extinguished by the executioner. Wolfe Tone, the

Secretary of the United Irishmen, came over in a French ship of war, to

effect the _peaceful_ liberation of his “aggrieved country,” was

imprisoned, and cut his own throat. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the hero of

novels, and the martyr of poetry, lurked in the capital, in the

_soldierly_ disguise of a milkwoman, was taken in his bed, wounded in

the arrest, and died of the wound. Not one of the leading conspirators

died in the field; all who were not hanged begged their lives, delivered

up their secrets for their own contemptible safety, and were transported

to America, there to recover their courage, and wipe off their shame, by

libelling England.

But among the most cruel acts of those villains was the attempt to

involve the students of the University in their crime. Their converts

were few, and those among the most obscure; but those were effectually

ruined. A visitation was held under the Lord Chancellor Clare, and the

delinquents were chiefly expelled. On this occasion Moore was

questioned. His intimacy with the family of the Emmetts, who seem all to

have been implicated in the charge, and his peculiar intercourse with

the unfortunate and guilty Robert Emmett, who, a few years after, was

hanged for open insurrection, rendered him liable to suspicion. He was

accordingly examined at that formidable tribunal. But his stature was so

undersized, his appearance so boyish, and his answers were given with

such evident simplicity, that, to suppose _him_ intrusted with the

secrets of conspiracy, still less the sharer of a sanguinary revolt,

seemed next to impossible, and he was dismissed without animadversion.

Thus the future author of so many strains on the slavery of Ireland, and

the tyranny of England, the publisher of such stores—

“Of fluent verse, and furious prose,

Sweet songster of fictitious woes”—

was “quitte pour la peur,” and sent to receive the plaudits of his

friends for his firmness, and the cautions of his own common sense with

respect to his intimacies for the future.

Moore’s want of stature was an actual misfortune to him through life,

which, though not shown with the bitterness of Byron on his lameness,

must have been a source of perpetual vexation in society. He was one of

the smallest men, perhaps, in existence, above a dwarf. Yet he was

well-proportioned; and his lively countenance, which looked the very

mirror of good-nature, aided by his manners, which had by instinct the

grace of good society, made his figure, after the first introduction,

almost forgotten. When he had established his fame, of course, none

adverted to defects of any kind, and the “little Tom Moore” of Ireland

became the Mr Moore of England, by the consent of all circles. He

possessed, also, those gifts which create popularity. The people of

Ireland have a remarkable fondness for music, and Moore was a musician

by nature. Of music he knew nothing as a science, but he felt its soul.

The heavy harmonies of Germany—in which the chief object is to show the

toil of the performer and the patience of his auditory, to press

discords into the service, and to crush the very sense of pleasure—would

not have been endured by the Irish, who, like all lovers of the genuine

art, prefer songs to musical problems, and to be bewitched rather than

be bewildered. Moore, accordingly, cultivated the finer part—its

feeling. He has been heard to say, “that if he had an original turn for

anything, it was for music;” and he certainly produced, in his earliest

career, some of the most original, tender, and tasteful melodies in

existence for the Piano, which he touched with slight, but sufficient

skill; and, sung to his own soft and sweet lines, he realised more of

the _magic_ of music than any performer whom we ever heard.

This subject, however apparently trivial, is not trifling in a Memoir of

Moore; for, independently of its being his chief introduction into

society, it was a _characteristic_ of the man. He was the originator of

a style, in which he had many imitators, but no equal; and after he

abandoned it for other means of shining, almost no follower. It was

neither Italian, nor, as we have observed, German; it had neither the

frivolity of the French school nor the wildness of the Irish; it was

exclusively his own—a mixture of the playful and the pathetic; sweet,

and yet singular; light, and yet often drawing tears. This effect, the

finest in music—for what taste would compare a Sinfonia to a song?—he

accomplished by the admirable management of a sweet voice, though but of

small compass, accompanied by a few chords of the instrument, rather

filling up the intervals of the voice than leading them: the whole

rather an exquisite recitation than a song; the singer more the

_minstrel_ than the _musician_.

This description of his early powers, however extravagant it may seem to

strangers, will be recognised as literally true by those who heard him

in Ireland, and in the budding of his talent. He was an _inventor_; his

art required the united taste of the composer and the poet, and this

accounts for its having perished with him.

But a larger field was soon to open before Moore. The Rebellion of 1798

was a death-blow to the hopes of all those sanguine speculators who

longed to become Presidents of the new republic. It drained the national

resources—it disgusted the national understanding—it made Ireland

disunited, and England at once contemptuous of Irish feeling, and

suspicious of Irish loyalty. The safety of the empire obviously rendered

it impossible to leave in its rear a nation which might throw itself, at

a moment’s notice, into the arms of France, Spain, or America—which had

actually solicited a French army, and which still carried on

transactions amounting to treason at home, and alliance abroad. Thus,

the _regenerators_ of Ireland, instead of raising her to a republic,

sank her into a province. Even the dream of national independence was at

an end; her Parliament was extinguished, and the only reality was the

UNION.

Still, though the national pride was deeply hurt by the measure, the

graver judgment of the nation acquiesced in the extinction of the

Legislature. This was the fruit of those concessions which had been made

by the ignorance of Government, and demanded by the intrigues of the

Opposition. From the period of lowering the franchise to the Roman

Catholic forty-shilling freeholder, the votes of the Romish peasantry

became to the Government a terror, to the Opposition a snare, and to

both, the sources of a new policy. In a few sessions more, the

Parliament must have become almost totally _Papist_. Thus, after much

declamation in the clubs, and much murmuring in the streets—after

threats of declaring the mover of the measure “an enemy to his

country”—and after a duel between the celebrated Grattan, the head of

the Opposition, and Corry, the Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, the

diadem was taken off the head of Ireland, and quietly lodged in

Whitehall. England thenceforth became the field of Irish ambition, and

the mart of Irish ability.

Moore came to London apparently for the purpose of commencing his

studies as a barrister. Whether his volatile and fanciful spirit would

have relished the details of a profession demanding so much labour in

its rudiments, and so much perseverance in its pursuit, is now not worth

a question, for he probably never opened a book of law; but he had

brought with him a book of a more congenial kind; a translation of

_Anacreon_, to be published by subscription, and dedicated “by

permission” to the Prince of Wales, (George IV.,)—an honour obtained,

like all his early popularity, through his musical accomplishments.

Moore was not a scholar, in the sense of a Markland or a Bentley; but he

had the best part of scholarship, the spirit of his author. The elegance

of this versification of the old Greek lover of “smiles and wine” was

universally acknowledged. All former translations of _Anacreon_ were

poor and pedantic, to the richness and grace of the volume then offered

to the public eye.

Whether the original was the work of Ionia or Athens; whether one-half

of the Odes were not _imitations_ in later Greek, with Gregory Nazianzen

and a dozen others for their authors; whether Polycrates or Hipparchus

was their patron—in short, the questions which still perplex Oxford, and

break the rest of Cambridge—which drive both into the logomachies of

Teutonic criticism, and waste English pens and patience on the imported

drudgeries of the Leipsic press—were matters which gave the translator

but slight trouble. Nature had created him for the translation—the

praises of wine and beauty, of flowers and sunshine, were a language of

his own; they formed his style through the greater part of his life; and

Cupid and Bacchus never had a laureate more devoted, and more

successful.

After lingering for some years in London, fêted by the great and

followed by the little, Moore was appointed to an office in the West

Indies. Thus was harshly hazarded the life of a man of genius; and the

talent which was destined to distinguish his country was sent to take

its chance of the yellow fever. The guest of princes and the favourite

of fashion must have felt many a pang at finding himself consigned to

Bermuda. The poetic romance of the “still vext Bermoothes” was probably

insufficient to console him for the pavilion at Brighton, and the

soirees of Portman Square. But necessity must not deliberate—the _res

angusta domi_ was imperative—and the bard submitted to banishment with

the grace and gaiety that never forsook him. The appointment was

unfortunate. Connected with the public revenue, it had been transacted

by deputy; and Moore, on his arrival, found himself answerable for the

chasms in the official chest. No one charged _him_ with those chasms.

But, as the lawyers hold, “the Crown makes no bad debts,” the unlucky

poet was responsible in a sum which would have mortgaged all Parnassus,

and made the Nine insolvent. The appointment was finally resigned, and

Moore, _solutus negotiis_, shook off the dust of his feet against the

gates of the West Indies.

Taking advantage of his proximity to America, he now resolved to visit

the great Republic, Canada, and the wonder of the Transatlantic world,

Niagara!

America was made by Moore the subject of some spirited poetry; but it

had another effect, less expected, yet equally natural—it cured him of

Republicanism. The lofty superstitions which haunt the sepulchres of

Greece and Rome, the angry ambition which stimulated the Irish patriot

into revolt, or that fantasy of righting the wrongs of all mankind,

which put live coals into the hands of the Frenchman to heap on the

altar of imaginary freedom, were all extinguished by the hard reality

before his eyes. He found the Americans, as all have found them,

vigorous, active, and persevering in their own objects; men of canals,

corduroy roads, and gigantic warehouses; sturdy reclaimers of the swamp

and the forest; bold backwoodsmen, and shrewd citizens, as they ought to

be; but neither poets nor painters, nor touched with the tendernesses of

romance, nor penetrating the profound of philosophy. Even their

patriotism startled the mourner over the sufferings of the _Isle of

Saints_; and the _Ledger_, more honoured than the _Legend_, offended all

his reveries of a

“Paradise beyond the main,

Unknown to lucre, lash, and chain.”

Even the habits of Republicanism were found too primitive to be

pleasing. He had the honour of an interview with Jefferson, then

president; and this “four years’ monarch” received him in his nightgown

and slippers, and stretched at his length on a sofa. Moore recoiled at

this display of _nonchalance_, and would have been perfectly justified

in turning on his heel, and leaving this vulgarism to the indulgence of

“showing a Britisher” the manners of a “free and intelligent citizen.”

This rough specimen of freedom disgusted him, as well it might; and

though Republicanism in rhyme might still amuse his fancy, he evidently

shrank from the reality ever after.

Canada increased his poetical sketches. He wrote some spirited Odes on

its stern landscape, and some bitter lines on the United States, in

revenge for its extinction of his dreams. But, with America, he left all

revolution behind him, and never more cast a “longing, lingering look”

on the subversion of thrones.

On his return to Europe, he found it necessary to consider into what new

path he was to turn. He had long left the hope of shining on the bench;

office was now closed upon him; authorship was his only resource; and to

authorship he turned with all the quickness of his nature, sharpened by

the Roman’s

“MAGISTER ARTIS, VENTER.”

The exertion became more important to him, from his having made a

disinterested match; and, in the spirit of a poet, been contented to

take beauty as the marriage portion. He now retired into the country,

and prepared for a life of vigorous authorship. In this choice, he

evidently consulted his immediate circumstances more than the natural

direction of his mind. Such a man was made for cities; all his habits

were social, and he must have languished for society. The cooing of

doves and the songs of nightingales were not the music to accompany such

verses as these—

“Fly not yet, ’tis just the hour,

When pleasure, like the midnight flower,

That scorns the eye of vulgar light,

Begins to bloom for sons of night,

And maids who love the moon.”

We can imagine the look of melancholy with which, after having finished

his stanzas, Moore gave a moonlight glance to the woods and wilds, as he

stood at his cottage door, and thought of the lively scenes at that

moment glittering in London. Solitude may be the place of the

philosopher, and universities the stronghold of science; but, for the

knowledge of life, the play of character, the vigour of manly

competitorship, and even the variety of views, events, and character,

which make the true materials of the poetic faculty, association with

our kind is indispensable. The poet in retirement either becomes the

worship of a circle of women, who pamper him with panegyric, until he

degenerates into silliness; or, living alone, becomes the worse thing—a

worshipper of himself. Like a garrison cut off from its supplies, he

lives on short allowance of ideas; like a hermit, thinks his rags

sanctity, and his nonsense Oracles; or, like Robinson Crusoe, imagines

his geese conversible, and his island an empire.

It is true, that Moore suffered less from this famine of poetic food

than most of his race. His buoyancy of spirit never lost sight wholly of

London, and his annual visit to the concerts and conversations of

Berkeley Square, and other scenes of high life, refreshed his

recollections. But when he tells us that _Lalla Rookh_ was written “amid

the snows of two or three Derbyshire winters,” and, in a phraseology

which seems like apologising to himself for this exile, talks of his

“being enabled by that _concentration_ of thought, which _retirement

alone_ can give, to call up around him some of the sunniest of his

Eastern scenes,” the very toil and turgidity of the language show us

that he felt himself in the _wrong_ place. In fact, now that naked

necks, turned-down shirt-collars, and dishevelled hair, no longer make

poets _à la_ Byron—when even the white waistcoats of Young England are

no longer proof of chivalry—we wish to save the innocent hearts and

fantastic heads of the rising generation from the experiment which Don

Quixote performed so little to the satisfaction of Sancho Panza in the

desert. We never heard of a great poet living a hundred miles from a

metropolis. Contiguity to the world of men and women was essential. All

the leaders of the tribe lived as near London as they could. Cowley

lived within a walk, Pope within a drive, Milton within sight, of the

walls—Shakspeare saw London Bridge every day of his life—Dryden lived in

the Grecian Coffeehouse—Byron, with his own goodwill, never would have

stirred out of Bond Street; and when the newspapers and Doctors’ Commons

at length drove him abroad, he nestled down in Venice, instead of

singing among the slopes of the Apennines, or acting distraction among

the pinnacles of the Alps. It is even not improbable that the last few

and melancholy years of Moore’s life owed some of their depression to

the weariness of this unnatural solitude.

On his return from America in 1803, we lose sight of him for a while. He

was then probably harassed by government transactions connected with his

luckless appointment; but in 1805 he gave unhappy evidence of his

revival by the publication of _Poems by Mr Thomas Little_.

We have no desire to speak of this work. Perhaps “his poverty, but not

his will,” was in fault. He made some kind of apology at the time, by

attributing the performance “to an imagination which had become the

slave of the passions;” and subsequently he made the better apology of

excluding it from his collected volumes. Yet, in this work, he did less

harm to society than injustice to himself. The graver classes, of

course, repelled it at once; the fashionable world took but little

notice of a book which could not be laid in their drawing-rooms; and the

profligate could be but little excited by its babyisms, for Moore’s

amatory poems were always babyish. They wanted, in a remarkable degree,

the fervency of passion. They prattled rather than felt: they babbled of

lips and eyes like an impudent child; their Cupid was always an Urchin,

and the urchin was always in the nursery. His verses of this school were

flowing, but they never rose above prettiness; they never exhibited love

in its living reality—in its seriousness and power—its madness of the

brain, and absorption of the soul—its overwhelming raptures, and its

terrible despair. There is a deeper sense of the truth and nature of

_passion_ in a single ballad of Burns than in all the amatory poems that

Moore ever wrote.

The injustice to himself consisted in his thus leaving it in the hands

of every stranger, to connect the life of the man with the

licentiousness of the author. Yet we have never heard that his life was

other than decorous; his conversation certainly never offended general

society—his manners were polished—and we believe that his mind was at

all times innocent of evil intention. Still, these poems threw a long

shade on the gentle lustre of his fame.

He now fell under the lash of the _Edinburgh Review_, never more

sternly, and seldom so justly, exercised. Moore indignantly sent a

message to the editor. Jeffrey, refusing to give up the name of the

Zoilus in disguise, accepted the message, and the parties met.

Fortunately some friend, with more sense than either, sent also _his_

message, but it was to the Bow Street magistrates, and the belligerents

were captured on the field. In conveying the instruments of war to Bow

Street, the bullets had fallen out; and this circumstance was, of

course, too comic to be forgotten by the wits. The press shot forth its

epigrams, the point of which was the harmlessness of the hostilities. It

was observed—

“That the pistols were leadless

Is no sort of news,

For _blank_-cartridge should always

Be fired at _Reviews_.”

We transcribe but another squib.

“A Scotchman and Irishman went out to fight,

Both equal in fierceness, both equal in fright;

Not a pin, ’twixt the heroes, in valour to choose,

The son of the _Scissors_, and son of the Muse.”

The whole affair was an illustration of the barbaric absurdity of

duelling. Lord Brougham was subsequently supposed to be the layer on of

the critical lash. If Jeffrey had given him up, Moore would have shot

him if he could; and if Brougham had survived, he would have shot

Jeffrey. Thus, two of the cleverest men of their day might have been

victims to the bastard chivalry of the nineteenth century. How Moore

himself would have fared in the fray, no one can tell; but being as

honourably savage as any of his countrymen, and as untameable as a

tiger-cat, he would certainly have shot somebody, or got pistolled

himself.

His next work was an opera. This attempt did not encourage him in trial

of the stage. It had but a brief existence. Moore, though lively, was

not a wit; and though inventive, was not dramatic. The inimitable

“Duenna” of the inimitable Sheridan has expelled all Opera from the

English stage, by extinguishing all rivalry.

But a broader opportunity now spread before him. A musical collector in

Ireland had compiled a volume of the Native melodies, which, though

generally rude in science, and always accompanied by the most aboriginal

versification, attracted some publicity. Moore, in his happiest hour,

glanced over these songs, and closed with the proposal of a publisher in

Ireland to write the poetry, and bring the melodies themselves into a

_civilised_ form. The latter object he effected by the assistance of

Stevenson, an accomplished musician, and even a popular composer: the

former might be safely intrusted to himself.

It is to be remembered (though Ireland may be wroth to the bottom of its

sensibilities) that its most remote musical pedigree falls within the

last century; that all beyond is shared with Scotland; and that the

harmonies which Ossian shook from his harp, and which rang in the

palaces of Fingal, and the nursing of Romulus and Remus, have equal

claims to authenticity. Beyond the last century, the claims of Ireland

to music were disputed by Scotland; and there was a species of

partnership in their popular airs. But the true musician of Ireland was

Carolan, a blind man who wandered about the houses of the country

gentlemen, like Scott’s minstrel, except that his patriotism was less

prominent than his love of eating and drinking. He thought more of pay

than of Party, and limited his Muse to her proper subjects—Love and

Wine. But he was a musician by nature, and therefore worth ten thousand

by art; and the finest melodies in Moore’s portfolio were the product of

a mind which had no master, and no impulse but its genius.

Time had not weaned Moore from the absurdity of imagining that every

rebel must be a hero, or that men who universally begged their lives, or

died by the rope, were the true regenerators of the country. His early

connection with the Emmett family had been distressingly renewed by the

execution of Robert Emmett, justly punished for a combination of folly

and wickedness, perhaps without example in the narratives of impotent

convulsion. Emmett was a barrister, struggling through the first

difficulties of his difficult profession, when somebody left him a

luckless legacy of five hundred pounds. He laid it all out in powder and

placards, and resolved to “make a Rebellion.” Without any one man of

note to join him, without even any one patron or member of faction to

give the slightest assistance, without any one hope but in _miracle_, he

undertook to overthrow the Government, to crush the army, to extinguish

the Constitution, to remodel the Aristocracy, to scourge the Church, to

abolish the throne, and, having achieved these easy matters, to place Mr

Robert Emmett on the summit of Irish empire.

Accordingly, he purchased a green coat with a pair of gold epaulettes;

rushed from a hovel in a back street, at the head of about fifty

vagabonds with pikes; was met and beaten by a party of yeomanry going to

parade; ran away with his _army_; hid himself in the vicinity of Dublin

for a few days; was hunted out, and was tried and hanged. Those are the

actual features of the transaction, where poetry has done its utmost to

blazon the revolt, and partisanship has lavished its whole budget of

lies on the heroism of the revolter; those _are_ the facts, and the only

facts, of Mr Robert Emmett’s revolution.

Moore made his full advantage of the disturbances of the time; and it

must be allowed that they wonderfully improved his poetry. Their strong

reality gave it a strength which it never possessed before, and the

imaginary poutings of boys and girls were vividly exchanged for the

imaginary grievances of men. What can be more animated than these

lines:—

“Oh, for the swords of former time!

Oh, for the men who bore them!

When, armed for Right, they stood sublime,

And tyrants crouched before them.

When, pure yet, ere courts began

With honours to enslave him,

The best honours worn by man,

Were those which virtue gave him.

Oh, for the swords, &c.”

Or this—

LAMENT.

“Forget not the field where they perished,

The truest, the last of the brave!

All gone, and the bright hope we cherished

Gone with them, and quenched in their grave.

Oh, could we from Death but recover

Those hearts as they bounded before,

In the face of high heaven to fight over

This combat for freedom once more.”

The phrase used in the speeches of the late “Agitator,” till it grew

ridiculous by the repetition, will be found in the following fine

lines:—

“Remember thee! yes, while there’s life in this heart,

It shall never forget thee, all lorn as thou art,

More dear in thy sorrow, thy gloom and thy showers,

Than the rest of the world in their sunniest hours.

Wert thou all that I wish thee, great, glorious, and free,

_First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea_,

I might hail thee with prouder, with happier brow,

But, oh, could I love thee more deeply than now?

No! thy chains, as they rankle, thy blood, as it runs,

But make thee more painfully dear to thy sons,

Whose hearts, like the young of the desert-bird’s nest,

Drink love in each life-drop that flows from thy breast.”

It would be _cruel_ to ask for the evidence of all this tyranny—a link

of the chains that rankle on the limbs of Ireland, or a drop of the

blood that so perpetually oozes from her wounds. But poetry is

privileged to be as “unhappy” as it pleases—to weep over sorrows unfelt

by the world—and to fabricate wrongs, only to have the triumph of

sweeping them away. We would tolerate half the harangues of the Irish

disturbers for one poet like Moore.

Some of the most finished of those verses were devoted to the memory of

Emmett, and they could not have been devoted to a subject more unworthy

of his poetry. In Ireland, for the last five hundred years, every fault,

folly, and failure of the nation is laid to the charge of England. The

man who _invents_ a “grievance” is sure to be popular; but if he is to

achieve the supreme triumph of popularity, he must fasten his grievance

on the back of England; and if he pushes his charge into practice, and

is ultimately banished or hanged, he is canonised in the popular

calendar of patriotism. This absurdity, equally unaccountable and

incurable, actually places Emmett in the rank of the Wallaces and

Kosciuskos;—thus degrading men of conduct and courage, encountering

great hazards for great principles, with a selfish simpleton, a trifler

with conspiracy, and a runaway from the first sight of the danger which

he himself had created. Moore’s hero was a feeble romancer; his national

regenerator a street rioter; and his patriotic statesman merely a giddy

gambler, who staked his pittance on a silly and solitary throw for

supremacy, and saw his stake swept away by the policeman! Totally

foolish as Ireland has ever been in her politics, she ought to be most

ashamed of this display before the world—of inaugurating this

stripling-revolutionist, this fugitive champion, this milk-and-water

Jacobin, among her claims to the homage of posterity. Yet this was the

personage on whose death Moore wrote these touching lines:—

“O breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade,

Where cold and unhonoured his relics are laid;

Sad, silent, and dark, be the tears that we shed,

As the night-dew that falls on the grass o’er his head.

But the night-dew that falls, though in silence it weeps,

Still brightens with verdure the grave where he sleeps,

And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls,

Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.”

On the death of the celebrated Richard Brinsley Sheridan, some of his

Notes and Manuscripts were put into Moore’s hands, and the alliance

constituted by the Whiggism of both was presumed to insure a

satisfactory tribute to the remembrance of perhaps the most gifted man

of the age. But their Whiggism was different; Sheridan’s was party, and

Moore’s was prejudice. Sheridan had put on and off his Whiggism, with

the grave affectation, or the sarcastic ease, of one who knew its

worthlessness; Moore adopted it with the simplicity of ignorance, and

the blind passion of the native character. The result was, a biography

that pleased no one. Those whom Sheridan had lashed in the House of

Commons, thought that it was too laudatory; while his admirers charged

it with injustice. However, to those who cared nothing for the

partisanship of either, the volume was amusing, occasionally eloquent,

though less anecdotical than was to be expected from a career almost

_one anecdote_ from the beginning. On the whole, it sustained Moore’s

reputation.

His _Life of Byron_, at a later period, had an increased popularity. The

subject was singularly difficult; Byron had provoked a quarrel with the

world, and was proud of the provocation. He had led a career of private

petulance, which was deeply offensive to individuals, and he disclaimed

all respect for those higher decorums which society demands. The power

of his verse had thrown a shield over the living poet, but a severe

tribunal apparently awaited the dead. Moore accomplished his task with

dexterity, judicious selection, and still more judicious suppression,

were exercised; and he was enabled to produce a performance at once

faithful to the fame of the dead, and free from insult to the living.

A more reluctant glance must be given to Moore’s political writings. In

this unhappy digression from the natural pursuits of a poet, Moore

showed all the _monomania_ of the Irish Papist. England is now familiar

with the singular contradiction of fact to phrase, which exists in all

the partisanship of Ireland. The first principle of the modern orator in

Ireland is a reckless defiance of the common sense of mankind; facts fly

before him, and truths are trampled under his heel. In the most insolent

challenges to the law, he complains that he is tongue-tied; in the most

extravagant license of libel, he complains of oppression; and in the

most daring outrage against authority, he complains that he is a

_slave_! Summoning public meetings for the purpose of extinguishing the

Government, and summoning them with _impunity_, he pronounces the

Government to be a tyrant, and the land a dungeon. The reader who would

conceive the condition of Ireland from its Papist speakers must think

that he is listening to the annals of Norfolk Island, or the mysteries

of a French _oubliette_. Moore’s politics shared the _monomania_ of his

Popish countrymen.

But he suddenly turned to more congenial objects, and produced his

popular poem of _Lalla Rookh_. The scenery of India gave full

opportunity to the luxuriance of his style; the wildness of Indian

adventure, and the novelty of Indian romance, excited public curiosity,

and the volume found its way into every drawing-room, and finally rested

in every library. But there its course ended; the glitter which at first

dazzled, at length exhausted, the public eye. We might as well look with

unwearied delight on a piece of tissue, and be satisfied with vividness

of colour, in place of vividness of form. Moore’s future fame will

depend on his _National Melodies_.

He received large sums for some of his volumes; but what are occasional

successes, when their products must be expanded over a life! He always

expressed himself as in narrow circumstances, and his retired mode of

living seemed to justify the expression. Towards the close of his days,

his friend the Marquis of Lansdowne obtained for him a pension of £300

a-year. But he had not long enjoyed this important accession to his

income before his faculties began to fail. His memory was the first to

give way; he lingered, in increasing decay, for about two years, till on

the 26th of February he died, at the age of nearly 72.

His funeral took place in a neighbouring churchyard, where one of his

daughters was buried. It was so strictly and so unnecessarily private

that but two or three persons attended, of the many who, we believe,

would have willingly paid the last respect to his remains.

Thus has passed away a great poet from the world—a man whose manners

added grace to every circle in which he moved—animation to the gay, and

sentiment to the refined. If England holds his remains, Ireland is the

heir of his fame; and if she has a sense of gratitude, she will give

some public testimonial of her homage to the genius which has given

another ray to the lustre of her name.

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.

BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.

BOOK XI.—INITIAL CHAPTER.

It is not an uncommon crotchet amongst benevolent men to maintain that

wickedness is necessarily a sort of insanity, and that nobody would make

a violent start out of the straight path unless stung to such disorder

by a bee in his bonnet. Certainly, when some very clever, well-educated

person, like our friend, Randal Leslie, acts upon the fallacious

principle that “roguery is the best policy,” it is curious to see how

many points he has in common with the insane: what over-cunning—what

irritable restlessness—what suspicious belief that the rest of the world

are in a conspiracy against him, which it requires all his wit to baffle

and turn to his own proper aggrandisement and profit. Perhaps some of my

readers may have thought that I have represented Randal as unnaturally

far-fetched in his schemes, too wire-drawn and subtle in his

speculations; yet that is commonly the case with very refining

intellects, when they choose to play the knave;—it helps to disguise

from themselves the ugliness of their ambition, just as a philosopher

delights in the ingenuity of some metaphysical process, which ends in

what plain men call “atheism,” who would be infinitely shocked and

offended if he were entitled an atheist. As I have somewhere said or

implied before, it is difficult for us dull folks to conceive the glee

which a wily brain takes in the exercise of its own ingenuity.

Having premised thus much on behalf of the “Natural” in Randal Leslie’s

character, I must here fly off to say a word or two on the agency in

human life exercised by a passion rarely seen without a mask in our

debonnair and civilised age—I mean Hate.

In the good old days of our forefathers, when plain speaking and hard

blows were in fashion—when a man had his heart at the tip of his tongue,

and four feet of sharp iron dangling at his side, Hate played an honest,

open part in the theatre of the world. In fact, when we read history, it

seems to have “starred it” on the stage. But now, where is Hate?—who

ever sees its face? Is it that smiling, good-tempered creature, that

presses you by the hand so cordially? or that dignified figure of state

that calls you its “right honourable friend?” Is it that bowing,

grateful dependant?—is it that soft-eyed Amaryllis? Ask not, guess not;

you will only know it to be Hate when the poison is in your cup, or the

poniard in your breast. In the Gothic age, grim Humour painted “the

Dance of Death;” in our polished century, some sardonic wit should give

us “the Masquerade of Hate.”

Certainly, the counter-passion betrays itself with ease to our gaze.

Love is rarely a hypocrite. But Hate—how detect, and how guard against

it? It lurks where you least suspect it; it is created by causes that

you can the least foresee; and Civilisation multiplies its varieties,

whilst it favours its disguise: for Civilisation increases the number of

contending interests, and Refinement renders more susceptible to the

least irritation the cuticle of Self-Love. But Hate comes covertly forth

from some self-interest we have crossed, or some self-love we have

wounded; and, dullards that we are, how seldom we are aware of our

offence! You may be hated by a man you have never seen in your life; you

may be hated as often by one you have loaded with benefits;—you may so

walk as not to tread on a worm; but you must sit fast on your easy-chair

till you are carried out to your bier, if you would be sure not to tread

on some snake of a foe. But, then, what harm does the Hate do us? Very

often the harm is as unseen by the world as the hate is unrecognised by

us. It may come on us, unawares, in some solitary byway of our life;

strike us in our unsuspecting privacy; thwart us in some blessed hope we

have never told to another: for the moment the world sees that it is

Hate that strikes us, its worst power of mischief is gone.

We have a great many names for the same passion—Envy, Jealousy, Spite,

Prejudice, Rivalry; but they are so many synonyms for the one old

heathen demon. When the death-giving shaft of Apollo sent the plague to

some unhappy Achæan, it did not much matter to the victim whether the

god were called Helios or Smintheus.

No man you ever met in the world seemed more raised above the malice of

Hate than Audley Egerton: even in the hot war of politics he had

scarcely a personal foe; and in private life he kept himself so aloof

and apart from others that he was little known, save by the benefits the

waste of his wealth conferred. That the hate of any one could reach the

austere statesman on his high pinnacle of esteem,—you would have smiled

at the idea! But Hate is now, as it ever has been, an actual Power

amidst “the Varieties of Life;” and, in spite of bars to the door, and

policemen in the street, no one can be said to sleep in safety while

there wakes the eye of a single foe.

CHAPTER II.

The glory of Bond Street is no more. The title of Bond Street Lounger

has faded from our lips. In vain the crowd of equipages and the blaze of

shops: the renown of Bond Street was in its pavement—its pedestrians.

Art thou old enough, O reader! to remember the Bond Street Lounger and

his incomparable generation? For my part, I can just recall the decline

of the grand era. It was on its wane when, in the ambition of boyhood, I

first began to muse upon high neckcloths and Wellington boots. But the

ancient _habitués_—the _magni nominis umbræ_—contemporaries of Brummell

in his zenith—boon companions of George IV. in his regency—still haunted

the spot. From four to six in the hot month of June, they sauntered

stately to and fro, looking somewhat mournful even then—foreboding the

extinction of their race. The Bond Street Lounger was rarely seen alone:

he was a social animal, and walked arm in arm with his fellow-man. He

did not seem born for the cares of these ruder times; not made was he

for an age in which Finsbury returns members to Parliament. He loved his

small talk; and never since then has talk been so pleasingly small. Your

true Bond Street Lounger had a very dissipated look. His youth had been

spent with heroes who loved their bottle. He himself had perhaps supped

with Sheridan. He was by nature a spendthrift: you saw it in the roll of

his walk. Men who make money rarely saunter; men who save money rarely

swagger. But saunter and swagger both united to stamp PRODIGAL on the

Bond Street Lounger. And so familiar as he was with his own set, and so

amusingly supercilious with the vulgar residue of mortals whose faces

were strange to Bond Street. But He is gone. The world, though sadder

for his loss, still strives to do its best without him; and our young

men, now-a-days, attend to model cottages, and incline to

Tractarianism—I mean those young men who are quiet and harmless, as a

Bond Street Lounger was of old—_redeant Saturnia regna_. Still the

place, to an unreflecting eye, has its brilliancy and bustle. But it is

a thoroughfare, not a lounge. And adown the thoroughfare, somewhat

before the hour when the throng is thickest, passed two gentlemen of an

appearance exceedingly out of keeping with the place. Yet both had the

air of men pretending to aristocracy—an old-world air of respectability

and stake in the country, and Church-and-Stateism. The burlier of the

two was even rather a beau in his way. He had first learned to dress,

indeed, when Bond Street was at its acmé, and Brummell in his pride. He

still retained in his garb the fashion of his youth; only what then had

spoken of the town, now betrayed the life of the country. His neckcloth

ample and high, and of snowy whiteness, set off to comely advantage a

face smooth-shaven, and of clear, florid hues; his coat of royal blue,

with buttons in which you might have seen yourself _veluti in speculum_,

was, rather jauntily, buttoned across a waist that spoke of lusty middle

age, free from the ambition, the avarice, and the anxieties that fret

Londoners into thread-papers; his smallclothes of greyish drab, loose at

the thigh and tight at the knee, were made by Brummell’s own

breeches-maker, and the gaiters to match (thrust half-way down the calf)

had a manly dandyism that would have done honour to the beau-ideal of a

county member. The profession of this gentleman’s companion was

unmistakable—the shovel-hat, the clerical cut of the coat, the neckcloth

without collar, that seemed made for its accessory—the band, and

something very decorous, yet very mild, in the whole mien of this

personage, all spoke of one who was every inch the gentleman and the

parson.

“No,” said the portlier of these two persons—“no, I can’t say I like

Frank’s looks at all. There’s certainly something on his mind. However,

I suppose it will be all out this evening.”

“He dines with you at your hotel, Squire? Well, you must be kind to him.

We can’t put old heads upon young shoulders.”

“I don’t object to his head being young,” returned the Squire; “but I

wish he had a little of Randal Leslie’s good sense in it. I see how it

will end: I must take him back into the country; and if he wants

occupation, why, he shall keep the hounds, and I’ll put him into

Brooksby farm.”

“As for the hounds,” replied the Parson, “hounds necessitate horses; and

I think more mischief comes to a young man of spirit, from the stables,

than from any other place in the world. They ought to be exposed from

the pulpit, those stables!” added Mr Dale thoughtfully; “see what they

entailed upon Nimrod! But agriculture is a healthful and noble pursuit,

honoured by sacred nations, and cherished by the greatest men in

classical times. For instance, the Athenians were—”

“Bother the Athenians!” cried the Squire irreverently; “you need not go

so far back for an example. It is enough for a Hazeldean that his father

and his grandfather and his great-grandfather all farmed before him; and

a devilish deal better, I take it, than any of those musty old

Athenians—no offence to them. But I’ll tell you one thing, Parson—a man,

to farm well, and live in the country, should have a wife; it is half

the battle.”

“As to a battle, a man who is married is pretty sure of half, though not

always the better half, of it,” answered the Parson, who seemed

peculiarly facetious that day. “Ah, Squire, I wish I could think Mrs

Hazeldean right in her conjecture!—you would have the prettiest

daughter-in-law in the three kingdoms. And I think, if I could have a

good talk with the young lady apart from her father, we could remove the

only objection I know to the marriage. Those Popish errors—”

“Ah, very true!” cried the Squire; “that Pope sticks hard in my gizzard.

I could excuse her being a foreigner, and not having, I suppose, a

shilling in her pocket—bless her handsome face!—but to be worshipping

images in her room instead of going to the parish church, that will

never do. But you think you could talk her out of the Pope, and into the

family pew?”

“Why, I could have talked her father out of the Pope, only, when he had

not a word to say for himself, he bolted out of the window. Youth is

more ingenuous in confessing its errors.”

“I own,” said the Squire, “that both Harry and I had a favourite notion

of ours, till this Italian girl got into our heads. Do you know we both

took a great fancy to Randal’s little sister—pretty, blushing,

English-faced girl as ever you saw. And it went to Harry’s good heart to

see her so neglected by that silly, fidgetty mother of hers, her hair

hanging about her ears; and I thought it would be a fine way to bring

Randal and Frank more together, and enable me to do something for Randal

himself—a good boy, with Hazeldean blood in his veins. But Violante is

so handsome, that I don’t wonder at the boy’s choice; and then it is our

fault—we let them see so much of each other, as children. However, I

should be very angry if Rickeybockey had been playing sly, and running

away from the Casino in order to give Frank an opportunity to carry on a

clandestine intercourse with his daughter.”

“I don’t think that would be like Riccabocca; more like him to run away

in order to deprive Frank of the best of all occasions to court

Violante, if he so desired; for where could he see more of her than at

the Casino?”

SQUIRE.—“That’s well put. Considering he was only a foreign doctor, and,

for aught we know, went about in a caravan, he is a gentlemanlike

fellow, that Rickeybockey. I speak of people as I find them. But what is

your notion about Frank? I see you don’t think he is in love with

Violante, after all. Out with it, man; speak plain.”

PARSON.—“Since you so urge me, I own I do not think him in love with

her; neither does my Carry, who is uncommonly shrewd in such matters.”

SQUIRE.—“Your Carry, indeed!—as if she were half as shrewd as my Harry.

Carry—nonsense!”

PARSON, (reddening.)—“I don’t want to make invidious remarks; but, Mr

Hazeldean, when you sneer at my Carry, I should not be a man if I did

not say that—”

SQUIRE, (interrupting.)—“She was a good little woman enough; but to

compare her to my Harry!”

PARSON.—“I don’t compare her to your Harry; I don’t compare her to any

woman in England, sir. But you are losing your temper, Mr Hazeldean!”

SQUIRE.—“I!”

PARSON.—“And people are staring at you, Mr Hazeldean. For decency’s

sake, compose yourself, and change the subject. We are just at the

Albany. I hope that we shall not find poor Captain Higginbotham as ill

as he represents himself in his letter. Ah! is it possible? No, it

cannot be. Look—look!”

SQUIRE.—“Where—what—where? Don’t pinch so hard. Bless me, do you see a

ghost?”

PARSON.—“There—the gentleman in black!”

SQUIRE.—“Gentleman in black! What!—in broad daylight! Nonsense!”

Here the Parson made a spring forward, and, catching the arm of the

person in question, who himself had stopped, and was gazing intently on

the pair, exclaimed—

“Sir, pardon me; but is not your name Fairfield? Ah, it is Leonard—it

is—my dear, dear boy! What joy! So altered, so improved, but still the

same honest face. Squire, come here—your old friend, Leonard Fairfield.”

“And he wanted to persuade me,” said the Squire, shaking Leonard

heartily by the hand, “that you were the gentleman in black; but,

indeed, he has been in strange humours and tantrums all the morning.

Well, Master Lenny; why, you are grown quite a gentleman! The world

thrives with you—eh! I suppose you are head-gardener to some grandee.”

“Not that, sir,” said Leonard smiling. “But the world has thriven with

me at last, though not without some rough usage at starting. Ah, Mr

Dale, you can little guess how often I have thought of you and your

discourse on Knowledge; and, what is more, how I have lived to feel the

truth of your words, and to bless the lesson.”

PARSON, (much touched and flattered.)—“I expected nothing less of you,

Leonard; you were always a lad of great sense, and sound judgment. So

you have thought of my little discourse on Knowledge, have you?”

SQUIRE.—“Hang knowledge! I have reason to hate the word. It burned down

three ricks of mine; the finest ricks you ever set eyes on, Mr

Fairfield.”

PARSON.—“That was not knowledge, Squire; that was ignorance.”

SQUIRE.—“Ignorance! The deuce it was. I’ll just appeal to you, Mr

Fairfield. We have been having sad riots in the shire, and the

ringleader was just such another lad as you were!”

LEONARD.—“I am very much obliged to you, Mr Hazeldean. In what respect?”

SQUIRE.—“Why, he was a village genius, and always reading some cursed

little tract or other; and got mighty discontented with King, Lords, and

Commons, I suppose, and went about talking of the wrongs of the poor,

and the crimes of the rich, till, by Jove, sir, the whole mob rose one

day with pitchforks and sickles, and smash went Farmer Smart’s

thrashing-machines; and on the same night my ricks were on fire. We

caught the rogues, and they were all tried; but the poor deluded

labourers were let off with a short imprisonment. The village genius,

thank heaven, is sent packing to Botany Bay.”

LEONARD.—“But, did his books teach him to burn ricks, and smash

machines?”

PARSON.—“No; he said quite the contrary, and declared that he had no

hand in those misdoings.”

SQUIRE.—“But he was proved to have excited, with his wild talk, the

boobies who had! ’Gad, sir, there was a hypocritical Quaker once, who

said to his enemy, ‘I can’t shed thy blood, friend, but I will hold thy

head under water till thou art drowned.’ And so there is a set of

demagogical fellows, who keep calling out, ‘Farmer This is an oppressor,

and Squire That is a vampire! But no violence! Don’t smash their

machines, don’t burn their ricks! Moral force, and a curse on all

tyrants!’ Well, and if poor Hodge thinks moral force is all my eye, and

that the recommendation is to be read backwards, in the devil’s way of

reading the Lord’s Prayer, I should like to know which of the two ought

to go to Botany Bay—Hodge who comes out like a man, if he thinks he is

wronged, or ’tother sneaking chap, who makes use of his knowledge to

keep himself out of the scrape?”

PARSON.—“It may be very true; but when I saw that poor fellow at the

bar, with his intelligent face, and heard his bold clear defence, and

thought of all his hard straggles for knowledge, and how they had ended,

because he forgot that knowledge is like fire, and must not be thrown

amongst flax—why, I could have given my right hand to save him. And, oh

Squire, do you remember his poor mother’s shriek of despair when he was

sentenced to transportation for life—I hear it now! And what,

Leonard—what do you think had misled him? At the bottom of all the

mischief was a Tinker’s bag. You cannot forget Sprott?”

LEONARD.—“Tinker’s bag!—Sprott!”

SQUIRE.—“That rascal, sir, was the hardest fellow to nab you could

possibly conceive; as full of quips and quirks as an Old Bailey lawyer.

But we managed to bring it home to him. Lord! his bag was choke-full of

tracts against every man who had a good coat on his back; and as if that

was not enough, cheek by jowl with the tracts were lucifers, contrived

on a new principle, for teaching my ricks the theory of spontaneous

combustion. The labourers bought the lucifers—”

PARSON.—“And the poor village genius bought the tracts.”

SQUIRE.—“All headed with a motto—‘To teach the working-classes that

knowledge is power.’ So that I was right in saying that knowledge had

burnt my ricks; knowledge inflamed the village genius, the village

genius inflamed fellows more ignorant than himself, and they inflamed my

stackyard. However, lucifers, tracts, village genius, and Sprott, are

all off to Botany Bay; and the shire has gone on much the better for it.

So no more of your knowledge for me, begging your pardon, Mr Fairfield.

Such uncommonly fine ricks as mine were, too! I declare, Parson, you are

looking as if you felt pity for Sprott; and I saw you, indeed,

whispering to him as he was taken out of court.”

PARSON, (looking sheepish.)—“Indeed, Squire, I was only asking him what

had become of his donkey, an unoffending creature.”

SQUIRE.—“Unoffending! Upset me amidst a thistle-bed in my own village

green. I remember it. Well, what did he say _had_ become of the donkey?”

PARSON.—“He said but one word; but that showed all the vindictiveness of

his disposition. He said it with a horrid wink, that made my blood run

cold. ‘What’s become of your poor donkey?’ said I, and he answered—”

SQUIRE.—“Go on. He answered—”

PARSON.—“‘Sausages.’”

SQUIRE.—“Sausages! Like enough; and sold to the poor; and that’s what

the poor will come to if they listen to such revolutionising villains.

Sausages! Donkey sausages!—(spitting)—’Tis as bad as eating one another;

perfect cannibalism.”

Leonard, who had been thrown into grave thought by the history of

Sprott and the village genius, now pressing the Parson’s hand, asked

permission to wait on him before Mr Dale quitted London; and was about

to withdraw, when the Parson, gently detaining him, said—“No; don’t

leave me yet, Leonard—I have so much to ask you, and to talk about. I

shall be at leisure shortly. We are just now going to call on a

relation of the Squire’s, whom you must recollect, I am sure—Captain

Higginbotham—Barnabas Higginbotham. He is very poorly.”

“And I am sure he would take it kind in you to call too,” said the

Squire with great good-nature.

LEONARD.—“Nay, sir, would not that be a great liberty?”

SQUIRE.—“Liberty! To ask a poor sick gentleman how he is? Nonsense. And

I say, sir, perhaps, as no doubt you have been living in town, and know

more of newfangled notions than I do—perhaps you can tell us whether or

not it is all humbug, that new way of doctoring people?”

“What new way, sir? There are so many.”

“Are there? Folks in London do look uncommonly sickly. But my poor

cousin (he was never a Solomon) has got hold, he says, of a

homey—homely—What’s the word, Parson?”

PARSON.—“ Homœopathist.”

SQUIRE.—“That’s it! You see the Captain went to live with one Sharpe

Currie, a relation who had a great deal of money, and very little

liver;—made the one, and left much of the other in Ingee, you

understand. The Captain had _expectations_ of the money. Very natural, I

dare say; but Lord, sir! what do you think has happened? Sharpe Currie

has done him! Would not die, sir; got back his liver, and the Captain

has lost his own. Strangest thing you ever heard. And then the

ungrateful old Nabob has dismissed the Captain, saying, ‘He can’t bear

to have invalids about him;’ and is going to marry, and I have no doubt

will have children by the dozen!”

PARSON.—“It was in Germany, at one of the Spas, that Mr Currie

recovered; and as he had the selfish inhumanity to make the Captain go

through a course of waters simultaneously with himself, it has so

chanced that the same waters that cured Mr Currie’s liver have destroyed

Captain Higginbotham’s. An English homœopathic physician, then staying

at the Spa, has attended the Captain hither, and declares that he will

restore him by infinitesimal doses of the same chemical properties that

were found in the waters which diseased him. Can there be anything in

such a theory?”

LEONARD.—“I once knew a very able, though eccentric homœopathist, and I

am inclined to believe there may be something in the system. My friend

went to Germany: it may possibly be the same person who attends the

Captain. May I ask his name?”

SQUIRE.—“Cousin Barnabas does not mention it. You may ask it of himself,

for here we are at his chambers. I say, Parson, (whispering slily,) if a

small dose of what hurt the Captain is to cure him, don’t you think the

proper thing would be a—legacy? Ha! ha!”

PARSON, (trying not to laugh.)—“Hush, Squire. Poor human nature! We must

be merciful to its infirmities. Come in, Leonard.”

Leonard, interested in his doubt whether he might thus chance again upon

Dr Morgan, obeyed the invitation, and with his two companions followed

the woman—who “did for the Captain and his rooms”—across the small

lobby, into the presence of the sufferer.