CHAPTER IV.—_A Black Sheep._

COLOUR BLINDNESS 403

SPRING. By THOMAS HOOD 411

INSIDE CANTON 412

WILLIAM HOGARTH: PAINTER, ENGRAVER, AND PHILOSOPHER. Essays

on the Man, the Work, and the Time 417

_III.—A long Ladder, and Hard to Climb._

STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE 438

CHAPTER IV.—_An extinct animal recognized by its tooth: how

came this to be possible?—The task of classification—Artificial

and natural methods—Linnæus, and his baptism of the animal

kingdom: his scheme of classification—What is there underlying

all true classification?—The chief groups—What is a

species?—Re-statement of the question respecting the fixity or

variability of species—The two hypotheses—Illustration drawn

from the Romance languages—Caution to disputants._

STRANGERS YET! By R. MONCKTON MILNES 448

FRAMLEY PARSONAGE. (With an Illustration.) 449

CHAPTER X.—_Lucy Robarts._

” XI.—_Griselda Grantly._

” XII.—_The Little Bill._

IDEAL HOUSES 475

DANTE 483

THE LAST SKETCH—EMMA (a fragment of a Story by the late

Charlotte Brontë) 485

UNDER CHLOROFORM 499

THE HOW AND WHY OF LONG SHOTS AND STRAIGHT SHOTS 505

LONDON:

SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL.

_LEIPZIG: D. TAUCHNITZ. NEW YORK: WILLMER AND ROGERS.

MELBOURNE: G. ROBERTSON._

THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

CONTENTS of No. 1.

JANUARY, 1860.

FRAMLEY PARSONAGE. Chaps. 1, 2 and 3.

THE CHINESE AND THE “OUTER BARBARIANS.”

LOVEL THE WIDOWER. Chapter 1. (With an Illustration.)

STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE. Chapter 1.

FATHER PROUT’S INAUGURATIVE ODE TO THE AUTHOR OF “VANITY FAIR.”

OUR VOLUNTEERS.

A MAN OF LETTERS OF THE LAST GENERATION.

THE SEARCH FOR SIR JOHN FRANKLIN (from the Private Journal of an

Officer of the _Fox_). (With an Illustration and Map.)

THE FIRST MORNING OF 1860.

ROUNDABOUT PAPERS.—No. 1. _On a Lazy Idle Boy._

CONTENTS of No. 2.

FEBRUARY, 1860.

NIL NISI BONUM.

INVASION PANICS.

TO GOLDENHAIR (FROM HORACE). By THOMAS HOOD.

FRAMLEY PARSONAGE. Chaps. 4, 5 and 6.

TITHONUS. By ALFRED TENNYSON.

WILLIAM HOGARTH: PAINTER, ENGRAVER, AND PHILOSOPHER. Essays on the Man,

the Work, and the Time.—_I. Little Boy Hogarth._

UNSPOKEN DIALOGUE. By R. MONCKTON MILNES. (With an Illustration.)

STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE. Chapter 2.

CURIOUS IF TRUE. (Extract from a Letter from Richard Whittingham, Esq.)

LIFE AMONG THE LIGHTHOUSES.

LOVEL THE WIDOWER. Chapter 2. (With an Illustration.)

AN ESSAY WITHOUT END.

CONTENTS of No. 3.

MARCH, 1860.

A FEW WORDS ON JUNIUS AND MACAULAY.

WILLIAM HOGARTH: PAINTER, ENGRAVER, AND PHILOSOPHER. Essays on the Man,

the Work, and the Time.—II. _Mr. Gamble’s Apprentice._ (With an

Illustration.)

MABEL.

STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE. Chapter 3.

FRAMLEY PARSONAGE. Chapters 7, 8 and 9.

SIR JOSHUA AND HOLBEIN.

A CHANGELING.

LOVEL THE WIDOWER. Chapter 3. (With an Illustration.)

THE NATIONAL GALLERY DIFFICULTY SOLVED.

A WINTER WEDDING-PARTY IN THE WILDS.

STUDENT LIFE IN SCOTLAND.

ROUNDABOUT PAPERS.—No. 2. _On Two Children in Black._

NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS.

⁂ _Communications for the Editor should be addressed to the care of

Messrs._ SMITH, ELDER AND CO., _65, Cornhill, and not to the Editor’s

private residence. The Editor cannot be responsible for the return of

rejected contributions._

[Illustration: BESSY’S REFLECTIONS.]

THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

APRIL, 1860.

Lovel the Widower.

CHAPTER IV.

A BLACK SHEEP.

[Illustration]

The being for whom my friend Dick Bedford seemed to have a special

contempt and aversion, was Mr. Bulkeley, the tall footman in attendance

upon Lovel’s dear mother-in-law. One of the causes of Bedford’s wrath,

the worthy fellow explained to me. In the servants’ hall, Bulkeley was

in the habit of speaking in disrespectful and satirical terms of his

mistress, enlarging upon her many foibles, and describing her pecuniary

difficulties to the many _habitués_ of that second social circle at

Shrublands. The hold which Mr. Bulkeley had over his lady lay in a long

unsettled account of wages, which her ladyship was quite disinclined

to discharge. And, in spite of this insolvency, the footman must have

found his profit in the place, for he continued to hold it from year to

year, and to fatten on his earnings such as they were. My lady’s dignity

did not allow her to travel without this huge personage in her train;

and a great comfort it must have been to her, to reflect that in all the

country houses which she visited (and she would go wherever she could

force an invitation), her attendant freely explained himself regarding

her peculiarities, and made his brother servants aware of his mistress’s

embarrassed condition. And yet the woman, whom I suppose no soul alive

respected (unless, haply, she herself had a hankering delusion that she

was a respectable woman), thought that her position in life forbade her

to move abroad without a maid, and this hulking incumbrance in plush; and

never was seen anywhere in watering-place, country-house, hotel, unless

she was so attended.

Between Bedford and Bulkeley, then, there was feud and mutual hatred.

Bedford chafed the big man by constant sneers and sarcasms, which

penetrated the other’s dull hide, and caused him frequently to assert

that he would punch Dick’s ugly head off. The housekeeper had frequently

to interpose, and fling her matronly arms between these men of war; and

perhaps Bedford was forced to be still at times, for Bulkeley was nine

inches taller than himself, and was perpetually bragging of his skill

and feats as a bruiser. This sultan may also have wished to fling his

pocket-handkerchief to Miss Mary Pinhorn, who, though she loved Bedford’s

wit and cleverness, might also be not insensible to the magnificent

chest, calves, whiskers, of Mr. Bulkeley. On this delicate subject,

however, I can’t speak. The men hated each other. You have, no doubt,

remarked in your experience of life, that when men _do_ hate each other,

about a woman, or some other cause, the real reason is never assigned.

You say, “The conduct of such and such a man to his grandmother—his

behaviour in selling that horse to Benson—his manner of brushing his hair

down the middle”—or what you will, “makes him so offensive to me that

I can’t endure him.” His verses, therefore, are mediocre; his speeches

in parliament are utter failures; his practice at the bar is dwindling

every year; his powers (always small) are utterly leaving him, and he is

repeating his confounded jokes until they quite nauseate. Why, only about

myself, and within these three days, I read a nice little article—written

in sorrow, you know, not in anger—by our eminent _confrère_ Wiggins,[1]

deploring the decay of, &c. &c. And Wiggins’s little article which was

not found suitable for a certain Magazine?—_Allons donc!_ The drunkard

says the pickled salmon gave him the headache; the man who hates us

gives _a_ reason, but not _the_ reason. Bedford was angry with Bulkeley

for abusing his mistress at the servants’ table? Yes. But for what else

besides? I don’t care—nor possibly does your worship, the exalted reader,

for these low vulgar kitchen quarrels.

Out of that ground-floor room, then, I would not move in spite of the

utmost efforts of my Lady Baker’s broad shoulder to push me out; and

with many grins that evening, Bedford complimented me on my gallantry

in routing the enemy at luncheon. I think he may possibly have told his

master, for Lovel looked very much alarmed and uneasy when we greeted

each other on his return from the city, but became more composed when

Lady Baker appeared at the second dinner-bell, without a trace on her

fine countenance of that storm which had caused all her waves to heave

with such commotion at noon. How finely some people, by the way, can hang

up quarrels—or pop them into a drawer, as they do their work, when dinner

is announced, and take them out again at a convenient season! Baker was

mild, gentle, a thought sad and sentimental—tenderly interested about her

dear son and daughter, in Ireland, whom she _must_ go and see—quite easy

in hand, in a word, and to the immense relief of all of us. She kissed

Lovel on retiring, and prayed blessings on her Frederick. She pointed to

the picture: nothing could be more melancholy or more gracious.

“_She_ go!” says Mr. Bedford to me at night—“not she. She knows when

she’s well off; was obliged to turn out of Bakerstown before she came

here: that brute Bulkeley told me so. She’s always quarrelling with her

son and his wife. Angels don’t grow everywhere as they do at Putney, Mr.

B.! You gave it her well to-day at lunch, you did though!” During my stay

at Shrublands, Mr. Bedford paid me a regular evening visit in my room,

set the _carte du pays_ before me, and in his curt way acquainted me with

the characters of the inmates of the house, and the incidents occurring

therein.

Captain Clarence Baker did not come to Shrublands on the day when his

anxious mother wished to clear out my nest (and expel the amiable bird

in it) for her son’s benefit. I believe an important fight, which was to

come off in the Essex Marshes, and which was postponed in consequence

of the interposition of the county magistrates, was the occasion, or at

any rate, the pretext of the captain’s delay. “He likes seeing fights

better than going to ’em, the captain does,” my major-domo remarked.

“His regiment was ordered to India, and he sold out: climate don’t agree

with his precious health. The captain ain’t been here ever so long, not

since poor Mrs. L.’s time, before Miss P. came here: Captain Clarence and

his sister had a tremendous quarrel together. He was up to all sorts of

pranks, the captain was. Not a good lot, by any means, I should say, Mr.

Batchelor.” And here Bedford begins to laugh. “Did you ever read, sir, a

farce called _Raising the Wind_? There’s plenty of Jeremy Diddlers now,

Captain Jeremy Diddlers and Lady Jeremy Diddlers too. Have you such a

thing as half-a-crown about you? If you have, don’t invest it in some

folks’ pockets—that’s all. Beg your pardon, sir, if I am bothering you

with talking!”

As long as I was at Shrublands, and ready to partake of breakfast with

my kind host and his children and their governess, Lady Baker had her

own breakfast taken to her room. But when there were no visitors in

the house, she would come groaning out of her bedroom to be present

at the morning meal; and not uncommonly would give the little company

anecdotes of the departed saint, under whose invocation, as it were, we

were assembled, and whose simpering effigy looked down upon us, over her

harp, and from the wall. The eyes of the portrait followed you about,

as portraits’ eyes so painted will; and those glances, as it seemed to

me, still domineered over Lovel, and made him quail as they had done in

life. Yonder, in the corner, was Cecilia’s harp, with its leathern cover.

I likened the skin to that drum which the dying Zisca ordered should be

made out of his hide, to be beaten before the hosts of his people and

inspire terror. _Vous conçevez_, I did not say to Lovel at breakfast, as

I sat before the ghostly musical instrument, “My dear fellow, that skin

of Cordovan leather belonging to your defunct Cecilia’s harp, is like

the hide which,” &c.; but I confess, at first, I used to have a sort

of _crawly_ sensation, as of a sickly genteel ghost flitting about the

place, in an exceedingly peevish humour, trying to scold and command,

and finding her defunct voice couldn’t be heard—trying to re-illume

her extinguished leers and faded smiles and ogles, and finding no one

admired or took note. In the gray of the gloaming, in the twilight corner

where stands the shrouded companion of song—what is that white figure

flickering round the silent harp? Once, as we were assembled in the room

at afternoon tea, a bird, entering at the open window, perched on the

instrument. Popham dashed at it. Lovel was deep in conversation upon the

wine duties with a member of parliament he had brought down to dinner.

Lady Baker, who was, if I may use the expression, “jawing,” as usual,

and telling one of her tremendous stories about the Lord Lieutenant to

Mr. Bonnington, took no note of the incident. Elizabeth did not seem to

remark it: what was a bird on a harp to her, but a sparrow perched on a

bit of leather-casing! All the ghosts in Putney churchyard might rattle

all their bones, and would not frighten that stout spirit!

I was amused at a precaution which Bedford took, and somewhat alarmed at

the distrust towards Lady Baker which he exhibited, when, one day on my

return from town—whither I had made an excursion of four or five hours—I

found my bedroom door locked, and Dick arrived with the key. “He’s wrote

to say he’s coming this evening, and if he had come when you was away,

Lady B. was capable of turning your things out, and putting his in, and

taking her oath she believed you was going to leave. The long-bows Lady

B. do pull are perfectly awful, Mr. B.! So it was long-bow to long-bow,

Mr. Batchelor; and I said you had took the key in your pocket, not

wishing to have your papers disturbed. She tried the lawn window, but I

had bolted that, and the captain will have the pink room, after all, and

must smoke up the chimney. I should have liked to see him, or you, or any

one do it in poor Mrs. L.’s time—I just should!”

During my visit to London, I had chanced to meet my friend Captain

Fitzb—dle, who belongs to a dozen clubs, and knows something of every

man in London. “Know anything of Clarence Baker?” “Of course, I do,”

says Fitz; “and if you want any _renseignement_, my dear fellow, I have

the honour to inform you that a blacker little sheep does not trot the

London _pavé_. Wherever that ingenious officer’s name is spoken—at

Tattersall’s, at his clubs, in his late regiments, in men’s society,

in ladies’ society, in that expanding and most agreeable circle which

you may call no society at all—a chorus of maledictions rises up at the

mention of Baker. Know anything of Clarence Baker! My dear fellow, enough

to make your hair turn white, unless (as I sometimes fondly imagine)

nature has already performed that process, when of course I can’t pretend

to act upon more hair-dye.” (The whiskers of the individual who addressed

me, innocent, stared me in the face as he spoke, and were dyed of the

most unblushing purple.) “Clarence Baker, sir, is a young man who would

have been invaluable in Sparta as a warning against drunkenness and

an exemplar of it. He has helped the regimental surgeon to some most

interesting experiments in _delirium tremens_. He is known, and not in

the least trusted, in every billiard-room in Brighton, Canterbury, York,

Sheffield,—on every pavement which has rung with the clink of dragoon

boot-heels. By a wise system of revoking at whist he has lost games which

have caused not only his partners, but his opponents and the whole club

to admire him and to distrust him: long before and since he was of age,

he has written his eminent name to bills which have been dishonoured, and

has nobly pleaded his minority as a reason for declining to pay. From

the garrison towns where he has been quartered, he has carried away not

only the hearts of the milliners, but their gloves, haberdashery, and

perfumery. He has had controversies with Cornet Green, regarding horse

transactions; disputed turf-accounts with Lieutenant Brown; and betting

and backgammon differences with Captain Black. From all I have heard he

is the worthy son of his admirable mother. And I bet you even on the four

events, if you stay three days in a country house with him, which appears

to be your present happy idea,—that he will quarrel with you, insult you,

and apologize; that he will intoxicate himself more than once; that he

will offer to play cards with you, and not pay on losing (if he wins, I

perhaps need not state what his conduct will be); and that he will try to

borrow money from you, and most likely from your servant, before he goes

away.” So saying, the sententious Fitz strutted up the steps of one of

his many club-haunts in Pall Mall, and left me forewarned, and I trust

forearmed against Captain Clarence and all his works.

The adversary, when at length I came in sight of him, did not seem very

formidable. I beheld a weakly little man with Chinese eyes, and pretty

little feet and hands, whose pallid countenance told of Finishes and

Casinos. His little chest and fingers were decorated with many jewels. A

perfume of tobacco hung round him. His little moustache was twisted with

an elaborate gummy curl. I perceived that the little hand which twirled

the moustache shook woefully: and from the little chest there came a

cough surprisingly loud and dismal.

He was lying on a sofa as I entered, and the children of the house were

playing round him. “If you are our uncle, why didn’t you come to see us

oftener?” asks Popham.

“How should I know that you were such uncommonly nice children?” asks the

captain.

“We’re not nice to you,” says Popham. “Why do you cough so? Mamma used to

cough. And why does your hand shake so?”

“My hand shakes because I am ill: and I cough because I’m ill. Your

mother died of it, and I daresay I shall too.”

“I hope you’ll be good, and repent before you die, uncle, and I will lend

you some nice books,” says Cecilia.

“Oh, bother books!” cries Pop.

“And I hope _you’ll_ be good, Popham,” and “You hold _your_ tongue,

Miss,” and “I shall,” and “I shan’t,” and “You’re another,” and “I’ll

tell Miss Prior,”—“Go and tell, telltale,”—“Boo”—“Boo”—“Boo”—“Boo”—and

I don’t know what more exclamations came tumultuously and rapidly from

these dear children, as their uncle lay before them, a handkerchief to

his mouth, his little feet high raised on the sofa cushions.

Captain Baker turned a little eye towards me, as I entered the room, but

did not change his easy and elegant posture. When I came near to the sofa

where he reposed, he was good enough to call out:

“Glass of sherry!”

“It’s Mr. Batchelor; it isn’t Bedford, uncle,” says Cissy.

“Mr. Batchelor ain’t got any sherry in his pocket:—have you, Mr.

Batchelor? You ain’t like old Mrs. Prior, always pocketing things, are

you?” cries Pop, and falls a-laughing at the ludicrous idea of my being

mistaken for Bedford.

“Beg your pardon. How should I know, you know?” drawls the invalid on the

sofa. “Everybody’s the same now, you see.”

“Sir!” says I, and “sir” was all I could say. The fact is, I could have

replied with something remarkably neat and cutting, which would have

transfixed the languid little jackanapes who dared to mistake me for a

footman; but, you see, I only thought of my repartee some eight hours

afterwards when I was lying in bed, and I am sorry to own that a great

number of my best _bon mots_ have been made in that way. So, as I had not

the pungent remark ready when wanted, I can’t say I said it to Captain

Baker, but I daresay I turned very red, and said “Sir!” and—and in fact

that was all.

“You were goin’ to say somethin’?” asked the captain, affably.

“You know my friend, Mr. Fitzboodle, I believe?” said I; the fact is, I

really did not know what to say.

“Some mistake—think not.”

“He is a member of the Flag Club,” I remarked, looking my young fellow

hard in the face.

“I ain’t. There’s a set of cads in that club that will say anything.”

“You may not know him, sir, but he seemed to know you very well. Are we

to have any tea, children?” I say, flinging myself down on an easy chair,

taking up a magazine and adopting an easy attitude, though I daresay my

face was as red as a turkey-cock’s, and I was boiling over with rage.

As we had a very good breakfast and a profuse luncheon at Shrublands,

of course we could not support nature till dinner-time without a

five-o’clock tea; and this was the meal for which I pretended to ask.

Bedford, with his silver kettle, and his buttony satellite, presently

brought in this refection, and of course the children bawled out to him—

“Bedford—Bedford! uncle mistook Mr. Batchelor for you.”

“I could not be mistaken for a more honest man, Pop,” said I. And the

bearer of the tea-urn gave me a look of gratitude and kindness which, I

own, went far to restore my ruffled equanimity.

“Since you are the butler, will you get me a glass of sherry and a

biscuit?” says the captain. And Bedford retiring, returned presently with

the wine.

The young gentleman’s hand shook so, that, in order to drink his wine, he

had to surprise it, as it were, and seize it with his mouth, when a shake

brought the glass near his lips. He drained the wine, and held out his

hand for another glass. The hand was steadier now.

“You the man who was here before?” asks the captain.

“Six years ago, when you were here, sir,” says the butler.

“What! I ain’t changed, I suppose?”

“Yes, you are, sir.”

“Then, how the dooce do you remember me?”

“You forgot to pay me some money you borrowed of me, one pound five,

sir,” says Bedford, whose eyes slyly turned in my direction.

And here, according to her wont at this meal, the dark-robed Miss Prior

entered the room. She was coming forward with her ordinarily erect

attitude and firm step, but paused in her walk an instant, and when she

came to us, I thought, looked remarkably pale. She made a slight curtsey,

and it must be confessed that Captain Baker rose up from his sofa for a

moment when she appeared. She then sate down, with her back towards him,

turning towards herself the table and its tea apparatus.

At this board my Lady Baker found us assembled when she returned from her

afternoon drive. She flew to her darling reprobate of a son. She took

his hand, she smoothed back his hair from his damp forehead. “My darling

child,” cries this fond mother, “what a pulse you have got!”

“I suppose, because I’ve been drinking,” says the prodigal.

“Why didn’t you come out driving with me? The afternoon was lovely!”

“To pay visits at Richmond? Not as I knows on, ma’am,” says the invalid.

“Conversation with elderly ladies about poodles, bible-societies, that

kind of thing? It must be a doocid lovely afternoon that would make me

like that sort of game.” And here comes a fit of coughing, over which

mamma ejaculates her sympathy.

“Kick—kick—killin’ myself!” gasps out the captain, “know I am. No man

can lead my life, and stand it. Dyin’ by inches! Dyin’ by whole yards,

by Jo—ho—hove, I am!” Indeed, he was as bad in health as in morals, this

graceless captain.

“That man of Lovel’s seems a d—— insolent beggar,” he presently and

ingenuously remarks.

“O uncle, you mustn’t say those words!” cries niece Cissy.

“He’s a man, and may say what he likes, and so will I, when I’m a man.

Yes, and I’ll say it now, too, if I like,” cries Master Popham.

“Not to give me pain, Popham? Will you?” asks the governess.

On which the boy says,—“Well, who wants to hurt you, Miss Prior?”

And our colloquy ends by the arrival of the man of the house from the

city.

What I have admired in some dear women is their capacity for quarrelling

and for reconciliation. As I saw Lady Baker hanging round her son’s neck,

and fondling his scanty ringlets, I remembered the awful stories with

which in former days she used to entertain us regarding this reprobate.

Her heart was pincushioned with his filial crimes. Under her chesnut

front her ladyship’s real head of hair was grey, in consequence of his

iniquities. His precocious appetite had devoured the greater part of her

jointure. He had treated her many dangerous illnesses with indifference:

had been the worst son, the worst brother, the most ill-conducted

school-boy, the most immoral young man—the terror of households, the

Lovelace of garrison towns, the perverter of young officers; in fact,

Lady Baker did not know how she supported existence at all under the

agony occasioned by his crimes, and it was only from the possession of

a more than ordinarily strong sense of religion that she was enabled to

bear her burden.

The captain himself explained these alternating maternal caresses and

quarrels in his easy way.

“Saw how the old lady kissed and fondled me?” says he to his

brother-in-law. “Quite refreshin’, ain’t it? Hang me, I thought she was

goin’ to send me a bit of sweetbread off her own plate. Came up to my

room last night, wanted to tuck me up in bed, and abused my brother to me

for an hour. You see, when I’m in favour, she always abuses Baker; when

_he’s_ in favour she abuses me to him. And my sister-in-law, didn’t she

give it my sister-in-law! Oh! I’ll trouble you! And poor Cecilia—why hang

me, Mr. Batchelor, she used to go on—this bottle’s corked, I’m hanged if

it isn’t—to go on about Cecilia, and call her.... Hullo!”

Here he was interrupted by our host, who said sternly—

“Will you please to forget those quarrels, or not mention them here? Will

you have more wine, Batchelor?”

And Lovel rises, and haughtily stalks out of the room. To do

Lovel justice, he had a great contempt and dislike for his young

brother-in-law, which, with his best magnanimity, he could not at all

times conceal.

So our host stalks towards the drawing-room, leaving Captain Clarence

sipping wine.

“Don’t go, too,” says the captain. “He’s a confounded rum fellow, my

brother-in-law is. He’s a confounded ill-conditioned fellow, too. They

always are, you know, these tradesmen fellows, these half-bred ’uns. I

used to tell my sister so; but she _would_ have him, because he had such

lots of money, you know. And she threw over a fellar she was very fond

of; and I told her she’d regret it. I told Lady B. she’d regret it. It

was all Lady B.’s doing. She made Cissy throw the fellar over. He was

a bad match, certainly, Tom Mountain was; and not a clever fellow, you

know, or that sort of thing; but at any rate, he was a gentleman, and

better than a confounded sugar-baking beggar out Ratcliff Highway.”

“You seem to find that claret very good!” I remark, speaking, I may say,

Socratically, to my young friend, who had been swallowing bumper after

bumper.

“Claret good! Yes, doosid good!”

“Well, you see our confounded sugar-baker gives you his best.”

“And why shouldn’t he, hang him? Why, the fellow chokes with money. What

does it matter to him how much he spends? You’re a poor man, I dare say.

You don’t look as if you were over-flush of money. Well, if _you_ stood

a good dinner, it would be all right—I mean it would show—you understand

me, you know. But a sugar-baker with ten thousand a year, what does it

matter to him, bottle of claret more—less?”

“Let us go into the ladies,” I say.

“Go into mother! _I_ don’t want to go into my mother,” cried out the

artless youth. “And I don’t want to go into the sugar-baker, hang him!

and I don’t want to go into the children; and I’d rather have a glass of

brandy-and-water with you, old boy. Here, you! What’s your name? Bedford!

I owe you five-and-twenty shillings, do I, old Bedford? Give us a good

glass of Schnaps, and I’ll pay you! Look here, Batchelor. I hate that

sugar-baker. Two years ago I drew a bill on him, and he wouldn’t pay

it—perhaps he would have paid it, but my sister wouldn’t let him. And, I

say, shall we go and have a cigar in your room? My mother’s been abusing

you to me like fun this morning. She abuses everybody. She used to abuse

Cissy. Cissy used to abuse her—used to fight like two cats....”

And if I narrate this conversation, dear Spartan youth! if I show thee

this Helot maundering in his cups, it is that from his odious example

thou mayest learn to be moderate in the use of thine own. Has the enemy

who has entered thy mouth ever stolen away thy brains? Has wine ever

caused thee to blab secrets; to utter egotisms and follies? Beware of it.

Has it ever been thy friend at the end of the hard day’s work, the cheery

companion of thy companions, the promoter of harmony, kindness, harmless

social pleasure? be thankful for it. Two years since, when the comet was

blazing in the autumnal sky, I stood on the château-steps of a great

claret proprietor. “_Boirai-je de ton vin, O comète?_” I said, addressing

the luminary with the flaming tail. Shall those generous bunches which

you ripen yield their juices for me _morituro_? It was a solemn thought.

Ah! my dear brethren! who knows the Order of the Fates? When shall we

pass the Gloomy Gates? Which of us goes, which of us waits to drink those

famous Fifty-eights? A sermon, upon my word! And pray why not a little

homily on an autumn eve over a purple cluster?... If that rickety boy had

only drunk claret, I warrant you his tongue would not have blabbed, his

hand would not have shaken, his wretched little brain and body would not

have reeled with fever.

“’Gad,” said he next day to me, “cut again last night. Have an idea that

I abused Lovel. When I have a little wine on board, always speak my mind,

don’t you know. Last time I was here in my poor sister’s time, said

somethin’ to her, don’t quite know what it was, somethin’ confoundedly

true and unpleasant I daresay. I think it was about a fellow she used

to go on with before she married the sugar-baker. And I got orders to

quit, by Jove, sir—neck and crop, sir, and no mistake! And we gave it

one another over the stairs. O my! we did pitch in!—And that was the

last time I ever saw Cecilia—give you my word. A doosid unforgiving

woman, my poor sister was, and between you and me, Batchelor, as great

a flirt as ever threw a fellar over. You should have heard her and my

Lady B. go on, that’s all!—Well, mamma, are you going out for a drive

in the coachy-poachy?—Not as I knows on, thank you, as I before had the

honour to observe. Mr. Batchelor and me are going to play a little game

at billiards.” We did, and I won; and, from that day to this, have never

been paid my little winnings.

On the day after the doughty captain’s arrival, Miss Prior, in whose

face I had remarked a great expression of gloom and care, neither made

her appearance at breakfast nor at the children’s dinner. “Miss Prior

was a little unwell,” Lady Baker said, with an air of most perfect

satisfaction. “Mr. Drencher will come to see her this afternoon, and

prescribe for her, I daresay,” adds her ladyship, nodding and winking a

roguish eye at me. I was at a loss to understand what was the point of

humour which amused Lady B., until she herself explained it.

“My good sir,” she said, “I think Miss Prior is not at all _averse_ to

being ill.” And the nods recommenced.

“As how?” I ask.

“To being ill, or at least to calling in the medical man.”

“Attachment between governess and Sawbones I make bold for to presume?”

says the captain.

“Precisely, Clarence—a very fitting match. I saw the affair, even before

Miss Prior owned it—that is to say, she has not denied it. She says

she can’t afford to marry, that she has children enough at home in her

brothers and sisters. She is a well-principled young woman, and does

credit, Mr. Batchelor, to your recommendation, and the education she has

received from her uncle, the Master of St. Boniface.”

“Cissy to school; Pop to Eton; and Miss Whatdyoucall to grind the pestle

in Sawbones’ back-shop: I see!” says Captain Clarence. “He seems a low,

vulgar blackguard, that Sawbones.”

“Of course, my love; what can you expect from that sort of person?” asks

mamma, whose own father was a small attorney, in a small Irish town.

“I wish I had his confounded good health,” cries Clarence, coughing.

“My poor darling!” says mamma.

I said nothing. And so Elizabeth was engaged to that great,

broad-shouldered, red-whiskered, young surgeon with the huge appetite

and the dubious _h_’s! Well, why not? What was it to me? Why shouldn’t

she marry him? Was he not an honest man, and a fitting match for her?

Yes. Very good. Only if I _do_ love a bird or flower to glad me with its

dark blue eye, it is the first to fade away. If I _have_ a partiality for

a young gazelle it is the first to——paha! What have I to do with this

namby-pamby? Can the heart that has truly loved ever forget, and doesn’t

it as truly love on to the—stuff! I am past the age of such follies. I

might have made a woman happy: I think I should. But the fugacious years

have lapsed, my Posthumus! My waist is now a good bit wider than my

chest, and it is decreed that I shall be alone!

My tone, then, when next I saw Elizabeth, was sorrowful—not angry.

Drencher, the young doctor, came punctually enough, you may be sure, to

look after his patient. Little Pinhorn, the children’s maid, led the

young practitioner smiling towards the schoolroom regions. His creaking

highlows sprang swiftly up the stairs. I happened to be in the hall,

and surveyed him with a grim pleasure. “Now he is in the schoolroom,”

I thought. “Now he is taking her hand—it is very white—and feeling her

pulse. And so on, and so on. Surely, surely Pinhorn remains in the room?”

I am sitting on a hall-table as I muse plaintively on these things, and

gaze up the stairs by which the Hakeem (great, carroty-whiskered cad!)

has passed into the sacred precincts of the harem. As I gaze up the

stair, another door opens into the hall; a scowling face peeps through

that door, and looks up the stair, too. ’Tis Bedford, who has slid out of

his pantry, and watches the doctor. And thou, too, my poor Bedford! Oh!

the whole world throbs with vain heart-pangs, and tosses and heaves with

longing, unfulfilled desires! All night, and all over the world, bitter

tears are dropping as regular as the dew, and cruel memories are haunting

the pillow. Close my hot eyes, kind Sleep! Do not visit it, dear delusive

images out of the Past! Often your figure shimmers through my dreams,

Glorvina. Not as you are now, the stout mother of many children—you

always had an alarming likeness to your own mother, Glorvina—but as you

were—slim, black-haired, blue-eyed—when your carnation lips warbled the

_Vale of Avoca_, or the _Angels’ Whisper_. “What!” I say then, looking up

the stair, “am I absolutely growing jealous of yon apothecary?—O fool!”

And at this juncture, out peers Bedford’s face from the pantry, and I see

he is jealous too. I tie my shoe as I sit on the table; I don’t affect to

notice Bedford in the least (who, in fact, pops his own head back again

as soon as he sees mine). I take my wide-awake from the peg, set it on

one side my head, and strut whistling out of the hall door. I stretch

over Putney Heath, and my spirit resumes its tranquillity.

I sometimes keep a little journal of my proceedings, and on referring to

its pages, the scene rises before me pretty clearly to which the brief

notes allude. On this day I find noted: “_Friday, July, 14.—B. came down

to-day. Seems to require a great deal of attendance from Dr.—Row between

dowagers after dinner._” “B.,” I need not remark, is Bessy. “Dr.,” of

course, you know. “Row between dowagers,” means a battle royal between

Mrs. Bonnington and Lady Baker, such as not unfrequently raged under the

kindly Lovel’s roof.

Lady Baker’s gigantic menial Bulkeley condescended to wait at the

family dinner at Shrublands, when perforce he had to put himself under

Mr. Bedford’s orders. Bedford would gladly have dispensed with the

London footman, over whose calves, he said, he and his boy were always

tumbling; but Lady Baker’s dignity would not allow her to part from

her own man; and her good-natured son-in-law allowed her, and indeed

almost all other persons, to have their own way. I have reason to fear

Mr. Bulkeley’s morals were loose. Mrs. Bonnington had a special horror

of him; his behaviour in the village public-houses where his powder and

plush were for ever visible—his freedom of behaviour and conversation

before the good lady’s nurse and parlour-maids—provoked her anger and

suspicion. More than once, she whispered to me her loathing of this

flour-besprinkled monster; and, as much as such a gentle creature could,

she showed her dislike to him by her behaviour. The flunkey’s solemn

equanimity was not to be disturbed by any such feeble indications

of displeasure. From his powdered height, he looked down upon Mrs.

Bonnington, and her esteem or her dislike was beneath him.

Now on this Friday night the 14th, Captain Clarence had gone to pass

the day in town, and our Bessy made her appearance again, the doctor’s

prescriptions having, I suppose, agreed with her. Mr. Bulkeley, who was

handing coffee to the ladies, chose to offer none to Miss Prior, and I

was amused when I saw Bedford’s heel scrunch down on the flunkey’s right

foot, as he pointed towards the governess. The oaths which Bulkeley had

to devour in silence must have been frightful. To do the gallant fellow

justice, I think he would have died rather than speak before company in a

drawing-room. He limped up and offered the refreshment to the young lady,

who bowed and declined it.

“Frederick,” Mrs. Bonnington begins, when the coffee-ceremony is over,

“now the servants are gone, I must scold you about the waste at your

table, my dear. What was the need of opening that great bottle of

champagne? Lady Baker only takes two glasses. Mr. Batchelor doesn’t touch

it.” (No, thank you, my dear Mrs. Bonnington: too old a stager.) “Why not

have a little bottle instead of that great, large, immense one? Bedford

is a teetotaler. I suppose it is _that London footman who likes it_.”

“My dear mother, I haven’t really ascertained his tastes,” says Lovel.

“Then why not tell Bedford to open a pint, dear?” pursues mamma.

“Oh, Bedford—Bedford, we must not mention _him_, Mrs. Bonnington!” cries

Lady Baker. “Bedford is faultless. Bedford has the keys of everything.

Bedford is not to be controlled in anything. Bedford is to be at liberty

to be rude to my servant.”

“Bedford was admirably kind in his attendance on your daughter, Lady

Baker,” says Lovel, his brow darkening: “and as for your man, I should

think he was big enough to protect himself from any rudeness of poor

Dick!” The good fellow had been angry for one moment, at the next he was

all for peace and conciliation.

Lady Baker puts on her superfine air. With that air she had often

awe-stricken good, simple Mrs. Bonnington; and she loved to use it

whenever city folks or humble people were present. You see she thought

herself your superior and mine: as _de par le monde_ there are many

artless Lady Bakers who do. “My dear Frederick!” says Lady B. then,

putting on her best Mayfair manner, “excuse me for saying, but you don’t

know the—the class of servant to which Bulkeley belongs. I had him as

a great favour from Lord Toddleby’s. That—that class of servant is not

generally accustomed to go out single.”

“Unless they are two behind a carriage-perch they pine away, I suppose,”

remarks Mr. Lovel, “as one love-bird does without his mate.”

“No doubt—no doubt,” says Lady B., who does not in the least understand

him; “I only say you are not accustomed here—in this kind of

establishment, you understand—to that class of——”

But here Mrs. Bonnington could contain her wrath no more. “Lady Baker!”

cries that injured mother, “is my son’s establishment not good enough for

any powdered wretch in England? Is the house of a British merchant——”

“My dear creature—my dear creature!” interposes her ladyship, “it is the

house of a British merchant, and a most comfortable house too.”

“Yes, _as you find it_,” remarks mamma.

“Yes, as I find it, when I come to take care of that _departed angel’s

children_, Mrs. Bonnington!” (Lady B. here indicates the Cecilian

effigy)—“of that dear seraph’s orphans, Mrs. Bonnington! _You_ cannot.

You have other duties—other children—a husband, whom you have left at

home in delicate health, and who——”

“Lady Baker!” exclaims Mrs. Bonnington, “no one shall say I don’t take

care of my dear husband!”

“My dear Lady Baker!—my dear—dear mother!” cries Lovel, _éploré_, and

whimpers aside to me, “They spar in this way every night, when we’re

alone. It’s too bad, ain’t it, Batch?”

“I say you _do_ take care of Mr. Bonnington,” Baker blandly resumes (she

has hit Mrs. Bonnington on the raw place, and smilingly proceeds to thong

again): “I say you _do_ take care of your husband, my dear creature,

and that is why you can’t attend to Frederick! And as he is of a very

easy temper,—except sometimes with his poor Cecilia’s mother,—he allows

all his tradesmen to cheat him; all his servants to cheat him; Bedford

to be rude to everybody; and if to me, why not to my servant Bulkeley,

with whom Lord Toddleby’s groom of the chambers gave me the very highest

character?”

Mrs. Bonnington in a great flurry broke in by saying she was surprised to

hear that noblemen _had_ grooms in their chambers: and she thought they

were much better in the stables: and when they dined with Captain Huff,

you know, Frederick, _his_ man always brought such a dreadful smell of

the stable in with him, that——Here she paused. Baker’s eye was on her;

and that dowager was grinning a cruel triumph.

“He!—he! You mistake, my good Mrs. Bonnington!” says her ladyship. “Your

poor mother mistakes, my dear Frederick. You have lived in a quiet and

most respectable sphere, but not, you understand, not——”

“Not what, pray, Lady Baker? We have lived in this neighbourhood twenty

years: in my late husband’s time, when _we saw a great deal of company_,

and this dear Frederick was a boy at Westminster School. And we have

_paid_ for everything we have had for twenty years; and we have not owed

a penny to any _tradesman_. And we may not have had _powdered footmen_,

six feet high, impertinent beasts, who were rude to all the maids in the

place. Don’t—I _will_ speak, Frederick! But servants who loved us, and

who were _paid their wages_, and who—o—ho—ho—ho!”

Wipe your eyes, dear friends! out with all your pocket-handkerchiefs. I

protest I cannot bear to see a woman in distress. Of course Fred Lovel

runs to console his dear old mother, and vows Lady Baker meant no harm.

“Meant harm! My dear Frederick, what harm can I mean? I only said your

poor mother did not seem to know what a groom of the chambers was! How

should she?”

“Come—come,” says Frederick, “enough of this! Miss Prior, will you be so

kind as to give us a little music?”

Miss Prior was playing Beethoven at the piano, very solemnly and finely,

when our Black Sheep returned to this quiet fold, and, I am sorry to say,

in a very riotous condition. The brilliancy of his eye, the purple flush

on his nose, the unsteady gait, and uncertain tone of voice, told tales

of Captain Clarence, who stumbled over more than one chair before he

found a seat near me.

“Quite right, old boy,” says he, winking at me. “Cut again—dooshid good

fellosh. Better than being along with you shtoopid-old-fogish.” And he

began to warble wild “Fol-de-rol-lolls” in an insane accompaniment to the

music.

“By heavens, this is too bad!” growls Lovel. “Lady Baker, let your big

man carry your son to bed. Thank you, Miss Prior!”

At a final yell, which the unlucky young scapegrace gave, Elizabeth

stopped, and rose from the piano, looking very pale. She made her

curtsey, and was departing when the wretched young captain sprang up,

looked at her, and sank back on the sofa with another wild laugh. Bessy

fled away scared, and white as a sheet.

“TAKE THE BRUTE TO BED!” roars the master of the house, in great wrath.

And scapegrace was conducted to his apartment, whither he went laughing

wildly, and calling out, “Come on, old sh-sh-shugarbaker!”

The morning after this fine exhibition, Captain Clarence Baker’s mamma

announced to us that her poor dear suffering boy was too ill to come to

breakfast, and I believe he prescribed for himself devilled drum-stick

and soda-water, of which he partook in his bedroom. Lovel, seldom angry,

was violently wrath with his brother-in-law; and, almost always polite,

was at breakfast scarcely civil to Lady Baker. I am bound to say that

female abused her position. She appealed to Cecilia’s picture a great

deal too much during the course of breakfast. She hinted, she sighed,

she waggled her head at me, and spoke about “that angel” in the most

tragic manner. Angel is all very well: but your angel brought in _à

tout propos_; your departed blessing called out of her grave ever so

many times a day; when grandmamma wants to carry a point of her own;

when the children are naughty, or noisy; when papa betrays a flickering

inclination to dine at his club, or to bring home a bachelor friend or

two to Shrublands;—I say your angel always dragged in by the wings into

the conversation loses her effect. No man’s heart put on wider crape

than Lovel’s at Cecilia’s loss. Considering the circumstances, his grief

was most creditable to him: but at breakfast, at lunch, about Bulkeley

the footman, about the barouche or the phaeton, or any trumpery domestic

perplexity, to have a _Deus intersit_ was too much. And I observed, with

some inward satisfaction, that when Baker uttered her pompous funereal

phrases, rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, and appealed to that quarter,

the children ate their jam and quarrelled and kicked their little shins

under the table, Lovel read his paper and looked at his watch to see if

it was omnibus time; and Bessy made the tea, quite undisturbed by the old

lady’s tragical prattle.

When Baker described her son’s fearful cough and dreadfully feverish

state, I said, “Surely, Lady Baker, _Mr. Drencher_ had better be sent

for;” and I suppose I uttered the disgusting dissyllable Drencher with

a fine sarcastic accent; for once, just once, Bessy’s grey eyes rose

through the spectacles and met mine with a glance of unutterable sadness,

then calmly settled down on to the slop-basin again, or the urn in which

her pale features, of course, were odiously distorted.

“You will not bring anybody home to dinner, Frederick, in my poor boy’s

state?” asks Lady B.

“He may stay in his bedroom, I suppose?” replies Lovel.

“He is Cecilia’s brother, Frederick!” cries the lady.

“Conf——” Lovel was beginning. What was he about to say?

“If you are going to confound your angel in heaven, I have nothing to

say, sir!” cries the mother of Clarence.

“_Parbleu, madame!_” cried Lovel, in French; “if he were not my wife’s

brother, do you think I would let him stay here?”

“_Parly Français? Oui, oui, oui!_” cries Pop. “I know what Pa means!”

“And so do _I_ know. And I shall lend uncle Clarence some books which Mr.

Bonnington gave me, and——”

“Hold your tongue all!” shouts Lovel, with a stamp of his foot.

“You will, perhaps, have the great kindness to allow me the use of your

carriage—or, at least, to wait here until my poor suffering boy can be

moved, Mr. Lovel?” says Lady B., with the airs of a martyr.

Lovel rang the bell. “The carriage for Lady Baker—at her ladyship’s hour,

Bedford: and the cart for her luggage. Her ladyship and Captain Baker are

going away.”

“I have lost one child, Mr. Lovel, whom some people seem to forget. I am

not going to murder another! I will not leave this house, sir, _unless

you drive me from it by force_, until the medical man has seen my boy!”

And here she and sorrow sat down again. She was always giving warning.

She was always fitting the halter and traversing the cart, was Lady B.,

but she for ever declined to drop the handkerchief and have the business

over. I saw by a little shrug in Bessy’s shoulders, what the governess’s

views were of the matter: and, in a word, Lady B. no more went away on

this day, than she had done on forty previous days when she announced

her intention of going. She would accept benefits, you see, but then she

insulted her benefactors, and so squared accounts.

That great healthy, florid, scarlet-whiskered, medical wretch came at

about twelve, saw Mr. Baker and prescribed for him: and _of course_ he

must have a few words with Miss Prior, and inquire into the state of her

health. Just as on the previous occasion, I happened to be in the hall

when Drencher went upstairs; Bedford happened to be looking out of his

pantry-door: I burst into a yell of laughter when I saw Dick’s livid

face—the sight somehow suited my savage soul.

No sooner was Medicus gone, when Bessy, grave and pale, in bonnet and

spectacles, came sliding downstairs. I do not mean down the banister,

which was Pop’s favourite method of descent, but slim, tall, noiseless,

in a nunlike calm, she swept down the steps. Of course, I followed her.

And there was Master Bedford’s nose peeping through the pantry-door at

us, as we went out with the children. Pray, what business of _his_ was it

to be always watching anybody who walked with Miss Prior?

“So, Bessy,” I said, “what report does Mr.—hem!—Mr. Drencher—give of the

interesting invalid?”

“Oh, the most horrid! He says that Captain Baker has several times had a

dreadful disease brought on by drinking, and that he is mad when he has

it. He has delusions, sees demons, when he is in this state—wants to be

watched.”

“Drencher tells you everything.”

She says meekly: “He attends us when we are ill.”

I remark, with fine irony: “He attends the whole family: he is always

coming to Shrublands!”

“He comes very often,” Miss Prior says, gravely.

“And do you mean to say, Bessy,” I cry, madly cutting off two or three

heads of yellow broom with my stick—“do you mean to say a fellow like

that, who drops his _h_’s about the room, is a welcome visitor?”

“I should be very ungrateful if he were not welcome, Mr. Batchelor,” says

Miss Prior. “And call me by my surname, please—and he has taken care of

all my family—and——”

“And of course, of course, of course, Miss Prior!” say I, brutally; “and

this is the way the world wags; and this is the way we are ill, and are

cured; and we are grateful to the doctor that cures us!”

She nods her grave head. “You used to be kinder to me once, Mr.

Batchelor, in old days—in your—in my time of trouble! Yes, my dear, that

is a beautiful bit of broom! Oh, what a fine butterfly!” (Cecilia scours

the plain after the butterfly.) “You used to be kinder to me once—when we

were both unhappy.”

“I was unhappy,” I say, “but I survived. I was ill, but I am now pretty

well, thank you. I was jilted by a false, heartless woman. Do you suppose

there are no other heartless women in the world?” And I am confident, if

Bessy’s breast had not been steel, the daggers which darted out from my

eyes would have bored frightful stabs in it.

But she shook her head, and looked at me so sadly that my eye-daggers

tumbled down to the ground at once; for you see, though I am a jealous

Turk, I am a very easily appeased jealous Turk; and if I had been

Bluebeard, and my wife, just as I was going to decapitate her, had lifted

up her head from the block and cried a little, I should have dropped

my scimitar, and said, “Come, come, Fatima, never mind for the present

about that key and closet business, and I’ll chop your head off some

other morning.” I say, Bessy disarmed me. Pooh! I say. Women will make a

fool of me to the end. Ah! ye gracious Fates! Cut my thread of life ere

it grow too long. Suppose I were to live till seventy, and some little

wretch of a woman were to set her cap at me? She would catch me—I know

she would. All the males of our family have been spoony and soft, to a

degree perfectly ludicrous and despicable to contemplate——Well, Bessy

Prior, putting a hand out, looked at me, and said,—

“You are the oldest and best friend I have ever had, Mr. Batchelor—the

only friend.”

“Am I, Elizabeth?” I gasp, with a beating heart.

“Cissy is running back with a butterfly.” (Our hands unlock.) “Don’t you

see the difficulties of my position? Don’t you know that ladies are often

jealous of governesses; and that unless—unless they imagined I was—I

was favourable to Mr. Drencher, who is very good and kind—the ladies at

Shrublands might not like my remaining alone in the house with—with—you

understand?” A moment the eyes look over the spectacles: at the next, the

meek bonnet bows down towards the ground.

I wonder did she hear the bump—bumping of my heart? O heart!—O wounded

heart! did I ever think thou wouldst bump—bump again? “Egl—Egl—izabeth,”

I say, choking with emotion, “do, do, do you—te—tell me—you

don’t—don’t—don’t—lo—love that apothecary?”

She shrugs her shoulder—her charming shoulder.

“And if,” I hotly continue, “if a gentleman—if a man of mature age

certainly, but who has a kind heart and four hundred a-year of his

own—were to say to you, ‘Elizabeth! will you bid the flowers of a

blighted life to bloom again?—Elizabeth! will you soothe a wounded

heart?’”——

“Oh, Mr. Batchelor!” she sighed, and then added quickly, “Please, don’t

take my hand. Here’s Pop.”

And that dear child (bless him!) came up at the moment, saying, “Oh,

Miss Prior! look here! I’ve got such a jolly big toadstool!” And next

came Cissy, with a confounded butterfly. O Richard the Third! Haven’t

you been maligned because you smothered two little nuisances in a Tower?

What is to prove to me that you did not serve the little brutes right,

and that you weren’t a most humane man? Darling Cissy coming up, then, in

her dear, charming way, says, “You shan’t take Mr. Batchelor’s hand, you

shall take _my_ hand!” And she tosses up her little head, and walks with

the instructress of her youth.

“_Ces enfans ne comprennent guère le Français_,” says Miss Prior,

speaking very rapidly.

“_Après lonche?_” I whisper. The fact is, I was so agitated, I hardly

knew what the French for lunch was. And then our conversation dropped:

and the beating of my own heart was all the sound I heard.

Lunch came. I couldn’t eat a bit: I should have choked. Bessy ate

plenty, and drank a glass of beer. It was her dinner, to be sure. Young

_Blacksheep_ did not appear. We did not miss him. When Lady Baker began

to tell her story of George IV. at Slane Castle, I went into my own room.

I took a book. Books? Paha! I went into the garden. I took out a cigar.

But no, I would not smoke it. Perhaps she——many people don’t like smoking.

I went into the garden. “Come into the garden, Maud.” I sate by a large

lilac bush. I waited. Perhaps, she would come. The morning-room windows

were wide open on to the lawn. Will she never come? Ah! what is that tall

form advancing? gliding—gliding into the chamber like a beauteous ghost?

Who most does like an angel show, you may be sure ’tis she. She comes

up to the glass. She lays her spectacles down on the mantel-piece. She

puts a slim white hand over her auburn hair and looks into the mirror.

Elizabeth, Elizabeth! I come!

As I came up, I saw a horrid little grinning, debauched face surge over

the back of a great arm-chair and look towards Elizabeth. It was Captain

Blacksheep, of course. He laid his elbows over the chair. He looked

keenly and with a diabolical smile at the unconscious girl; and just as I

reached the window, he cried out, “_Betsy Bellenden, by Jove!_”

Elizabeth turned round, gave a little cry, and——but what happened I shall

tell in the ensuing chapter.

FOOTNOTES

[1] To another celebrated critic. Dear Sir—You think I mean you, but upon

my honour I don’t.

Colour Blindness.

If there is one infirmity or defect of those five senses with which we

are most of us blest, which more than any other attracts sympathy and

claims compassionate consideration, it is blindness—an inability to

know what is beautiful in form or in colour, to appreciate light, or

to recognize and comprehend the varying features of our fellow-men—a

perpetual darkness in the midst of a world of light—a total exclusion

from the readiest, pleasantest, and most available means of acquiring

ideas.

And yet who would suppose that there exists, and is tolerably common,

a partial blindness, which has hardly been described as a defect for

more than half a century, and of which it may be said even now that

most of those who suffer from it are not only themselves ignorant of

the fact, but that those about them can hardly be induced to believe

it. The unhappy victims of this partial blindness (which is real and

physical, not moral) are at great pains in learning what to them are

minute distinctions of tint, although to the rest of the world they are

differences of colour of the most marked kind, and, after all, they only

obtain the credit of unusual stupidity or careless inattention in reward

for their exertions and in sympathy for their visual defect. We allude

to a peculiarity of vision which first attracted notice in the case of

the celebrated propounder of the atomic theory in chemistry, the late Dr.

Dalton, of Manchester, who on endeavouring to find some object to compare

in colour with his scarlet robe of doctor of laws, when at Cambridge,

could hit on nothing which better agreed with it than the foliage of the

adjacent trees, and who to match his drab coat—for our learned doctor

was of the Society of Friends—might possibly have selected crimson

continuations as the quietest and nearest match the pattern-book of his

tailor exhibited.

An explanation of this curious defect will be worth listening to, the

more so as one of our most eminent philosophers, Sir John Herschel, has

recently made a few remarks on the subject, directing attention at the

same time to other little known but not unimportant phenomena of colour,

which bear upon and help to explain it.

It is known that white light consists of the admixture of coloured rays

in certain proportions, and that the beautiful prismatic colours seen in

the rainbow are produced by the different degree in which the various

rays of colour are bent when passing from one transparent substance into

another of different density. Thus, when a small group of colour-rays,

forming a single pencil or beam of white sunlight, passes into and

through the atmosphere during a partial shower, and falls on a drop of

rain, it is first bent aside on entering the drop, then reflected from

the inside surface at the back of the drop, and ultimately emerges in an

opposite direction to its original one. During these changes, however,

although all the colour-rays forming the white pencil have been bent,

each has been bent at a different angle—the red most, and the blue

least. When therefore they come out of the drop, the red rays are quite

separated from the blue, and when the beam reaches its destination, the

various colours enter the eye separately, forming a line of variously

coloured light, the upper part red and the lower part blue, instead of a

mere point of white light, as the ray would have appeared if seen before

it entered the drop. The eye naturally refers each part of the ray to the

place from whence it appears to come, and thus, with a number of drops

falling and the sun not obscured, a rainbow is seen, which represents

part of a number of concentric circular lines of colour, the outermost

of which is red, the innermost violet, and the intermediate ones we

respectively name orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo.

It has also been found by careful experiment, that these are not all

pure colours, most of them being mixtures of some few that are really

primitive and pure, and necessarily belong to solar light. It is these

mixed in due proportion which make up ordinary white light, which is

the only kind seen when the sun’s rays have not undergone this sort of

decomposition or separation into elements. The actual primitive colours

are generally supposed to be red, yellow, and blue, and much theoretical

as well as practical discussion has arisen as to how these require to

be mixed, what proportion they bear to each other in their power of

impressing the human eye, and many other matters for which we must refer

to Mr. Field, Mr. Owen Jones, and others, who have studied the subject

and applied it.

In a general way it is found convenient to remember, or rather to assume,

that three parts of red, five parts of yellow, and eight parts of blue

form together white, and, therefore, that the pencil of white light

contains three rays of red, five of yellow, and eight of blue. To produce

the other prismatic colours, we must mix red with a little yellow to form

orange; yellow with some blue to form green; much blue with a little

red to form indigo, and a little blue with some red to form violet. In

performing experiments on colour it is convenient, instead of a drop of

water, to substitute a prism of glass in decomposing the rays of light.

We may thus produce at will a convenient image, called a _prismatic

spectrum_, which, when thrown on a wall, is a broad band of coloured

lights, having all the tints of the rainbow in the same order. Looking

at this image, the red is at the top and the violet at the bottom, and

it may be asked, How does the red get amongst the blue to form violet,

if the red rays are bent up to the top of the spectrum? The answer is,

that a quantity of white light not decomposed, and a part of all the

colour rays, reach all parts of the spectrum, however carefully it is

sheltered, but that so many more red rays get to the top, so many more

of the yellow to the middle, and so many more blue to where that colour

appears most brilliant, that these are seen nearly pure, whilst where

the red and yellow or yellow and blue mix they produce distinct kinds of

colour, and where the blue at the bottom is faint, and some of those red

rays fall that do not reach the red part of the spectrum, the violet is

produced. In point of fact, therefore, all the colours of the spectrum,

as seen, are mixtures of pure colour with white light, while all but red

are mixtures of other pure colours with some red and some yellow as well

as white. Primitive and pure colours, therefore, are not obtained in the

spectrum, and a question has arisen as to which really deserve to be

called pure, Dr. Young upholding green against yellow, and even regarding

violet as primitive, and blue a mixed colour. A consideration of the

results of this theory would lead us farther than is necessary for the

purpose we have now in view.

We also find philosophers now-a-days calmly discussing a question which

most people considered settled very long ago, namely, whether blue and

yellow together really make green.

It is of no use for the artist to lift up his eyes with astonishment at

any one being so insane as to question so generally admitted a statement.

In vain does he point to his pictures, in which his greens have been

actually so produced. The strict photologist at once puts him down, by

informing him that he knows little or nothing of the real state of the

case: his (the artist’s) colours are _negative_, or hues of more or

less complete darkness; whereas in nature, the colour question is to be

decided by _positive_ colours, or hues in which all the light used is of

one kind. The meaning of this will be best understood by an example: When

a ray of white light falls on a green leaf, part of the ray is absorbed

and part reflected, and the object is therefore only seen with the part

that is reflected. That which is absorbed consists of some of each of

the colour rays, and the resulting reflected light is nothing more than

a mixture of what remains after this partial absorption. The green we

see consists of the original white light deprived of a portion of its

rays. It is not a pure and absolute green, but only a residual group of

coloured rays, and thus in so far the green colour is _negative_, or

consists of rays not absorbed. It is therefore _partial darkness_, and

not absolute light. If, however, on the other hand, a ray of white light

is passed through a transparent medium (_e. g._ some chemical salt)

which has the property of entirely absorbing all but one or more of the

colour rays, and no part of the remainder, then all the light that passes

through this medium is of the one colour, or a mixture of the several

colours that pass: and if such light is thrown on a _white_ ground, the

reflected colour will be _positive_, and not negative, and is far purer

as well as brighter than the colour obtained in the other way. It has

been found by actual experiment, that when positive blue, thus obtained,

is thrown on positive yellow, the resulting reflected colour bears no

resemblance to green. Sir John Herschel considers, that whether green is

a primitive colour—in other words, whether we really have three or four

primitive colours—remains yet an open question.

It was necessary to explain these matters about colour before directly

referring to the subject of this paper, namely, blindness to certain

colour rays. It should also be clearly understood that the persons

subject to this peculiar condition of vision have not necessarily any

mechanical or optical defect in the eye as an optical instrument, which

may be strong or weak, long-sighted or short-sighted, quite independently

of it. Colour blindness does not in any way interfere with the ordinary

requirements of vision, nor is there the smallest reason to imagine that

it can get worse by neglect, or admit of any improvement by education or

treatment.

Assuming that persons of ordinary vision see three simple colours, red,

yellow, and blue, and that all the rest of the colours are mixtures of

these with each other and with white light, let us try to picture to

ourselves what must be the visual condition of a person who is unable

to recognize certain rays; and as it appears that there is but one kind

of colour-blindness known, we will assume that the person is unable to

recognize those rays of white light which consist of pure red and nothing

else. In other words, let us investigate the sensations of a person blind

so far only as pure red is concerned.

All visible objects either reflect the same kind of light as that which

falls on them, absorbing part and reflecting the rest, or else they

absorb more of some colour rays than others, and reflect only a negative

tint, made up of a mixture of all the colour-rays not absorbed. To a

colour-blind person, the mixed light, as it proceeds from the sun, is

probably white, as seen by those having perfect vision; for, as we have

explained already, positive blue and yellow (the colour rays when red is

excluded) do not make green, and the absence of the red ray is likely

to produce only a slight darkening effect. So far, then, there is no

difference. But how must it be with regard to colour.

Bearing in mind what has been said above, it is evident that in

withdrawing the red rays from the spectrum, we affect all the colours.

The orange is no longer red and yellow, but darkened yellow; the yellow

is purer, the green is quite distinct, the blue purer, and the indigo

and violet no longer red and blue, but blue mingled with more or less

of darkness, the violet being the darkest, as containing least blue

in proportion to red, while the red part itself, though not seen as a

colour, is not absolutely black, inasmuch as its part of the spectrum is

faintly coloured with the few mixed rays of blue and yellow and white

that escape from their proper place. The red then ought to be seen as

a gray neutral tint, the orange a dingy yellow, the indigo a dirty

indigo, and the violet a sickly, disagreeable tint of pale blue, darkened

considerably with black and gray.

Next let us take the case of an intelligent person affected with colour

blindness, but who is not yet aware of the fact. He has been taught from

childhood that certain shades, some darker and some brighter, but all

of neutral tint, and not really presenting to him colour at all, are to

be called by various names—scarlet, crimson, pale red, dark red, bright

red, dark green, dark purple, brown, and others. With all these he can

only associate an idea of gray; nor can he possibly know that any one

else sees more than he does. Having been taught the names they are called

by, he remembers the names, with more or less accuracy, and thus passes

muster. There is a real difference of tint, because each of these colours

consists of more or less blue, yellow, and white, mixed with the red; and

our friend is enabled to recognize and name them, more or less correctly,

according to his acuteness of perception and accuracy of memory.

If we desire to experiment on such a person, we must ask no names

whatever, but simply place before him a number of similar objects

differently coloured. Taking, for example, skeins of coloured wools, let

us select a complete series of shades of tint, from red, through yellow,

green, and blue, to violet, and request him to arrange them as well as

he is able, placing the darkest shades first, and putting those tints

together that are most like each other. It is curious then to watch the

progress of the arrangement. In a case lately tried by the writer of this

article, the colour-blind person first threw aside at once a particular

shade of pale green as undoubted white, and then several dark blues, dark

reds, dark greens, and browns, were put together as black. The yellows

and pure blues were placed correctly, as far as name was concerned, by

arranging several shades in order of brightness—but the order was very

different from that which another person would have selected. The greens

were grouped, some with yellows, and some with blues.

The colours in this experiment were all negative and impure, but we

may also obtain something like the same result with positive colour,

transmitted by the aid of polarized light through plates of mica. In a

case of this kind described by Sir J. Herschel, the only colours seen

were blue and yellow, while pale pinks and greens were regarded as cloudy

white, fine pink as very pale blue, and crimson as blue; white red, ruddy

pink, and brick red were all yellows, and fine pink blue, with much

yellow. Dark shades of red, blue, or brown, were considered as merely

dark, no colour being recognized.

The account of Dr. Dalton’s own peculiarity of vision by himself, offers

considerable interest. He says, speaking of flowers: “With respect to

colours that were white, yellow, or green, I readily assented to the

appropriate term; blue, purple, pink, and crimson appeared rather less

distinguishable, being, according to my idea, all referable to blue. I

have often seriously asked a person whether a flower was blue or pink,

but was generally considered to be in jest.” He goes on further to say,

as the result of his experience: “1st. In the solar spectrum three

colours appear, yellow, blue, and purple. The two former make a contrast;

the two latter seem to differ more in degree than in kind. 2nd. Pink

appears by daylight to be sky-blue a little faded; by candlelight it

assumes an orange or yellowish appearance, which forms a strong contrast

to blue. 3rd. Crimson appears muddy blue by day, and crimson woollen yarn

is much the same as dark blue. 4th. Red and scarlet have a more vivid and

flaming appearance by candlelight than by daylight” (owing probably to

the quantity of yellow light thrown upon them).

As anecdotes concerning this curious defect of colour vision, we may

quote also the following: “All crimsons appeared to me (Dr. Dalton) to

be chiefly of dark blue, but many of them have a strong tinge of dark

brown. I have seen specimens of _crimson claret_ and _mud_ which were

very nearly alike. Crimson has a grave appearance, being the reverse

of every showy or splendid colour.” Again: “The colour of a florid

complexion appears to me that of a dull, opaque, blackish blue upon

a white ground. Dilute black ink upon white paper gives a colour much

resembling that of a florid complexion. It has no resemblance to the

colour of blood.” We have a detailed account of the case of a young

Swiss, who did not perceive any great difference between the colour of

the leaf and that of the ripe fruit of the cherry, and who confounded the

colour of a sea-green paper with the scarlet of a riband placed close

to it. The flower of the rose seemed to him greenish blue, and the ash

gray colour of quick-lime light green. On a very careful comparison of

polarized light by the same individual, the blue, white, and yellow were

seen correctly, but the purple, lilac, and brown were confounded with

red and blue. There was in this case a remarkable difference noticed

according to the nature and quantity of light employed; and as the lad

seemed a remarkably favourable example of the defect, the following

curious experiment was tried. A human head was painted, and shown to

the colour-blind person, the hair and eyebrows being white, the flesh

brownish, the lips and cheeks green. When asked what he thought of this

head? the reply was, that it appeared natural, but that the hair was

covered with a nearly white cap, and the carnation of the cheeks was that

of a person heated by a long walk.

There is an interesting account in the _Philosophical Transactions for

1859_ (p. 325), which well illustrates the ideas entertained by persons

in this condition with regard to their own state. The author, Mr. W.

Pole, a well-known civil engineer, thus describes his case:—“I was about

eight years old when the mistaking of a piece of red cloth for a green

leaf betrayed the existence of some peculiarity in my ideas of colour;

and as I grew older, continued errors of a similar kind led my friends to

suspect that my eyesight was defective; but I myself could not comprehend

this, insisting that I saw colours clearly enough, and only mistook their

names.

“I was articled to a civil engineer, and had to go through many years’

practice in making drawings of the kind connected with this profession.

These are frequently coloured, and I recollect often being obliged to ask

in copying a drawing what colours I ought to use; but these difficulties

left no permanent impression, and up to a mature age I had no suspicion

that my vision was different from that of other people. I frequently made

mistakes, and noticed many circumstances in regard to colours, which

temporarily perplexed me. I recollect, in particular, having wondered

why the beautiful rose light of sunset on the Alps, which threw my

friends into raptures, seemed all a delusion to me. I still, however,

adhered to my first opinion, that I was only at fault in regard to the

names of colours, and not as to the ideas of them; and this opinion was

strengthened by observing that the persons who were attempting to point

out my mistakes, often disputed among themselves as to what certain hues

of colour ought to be called.” Mr. Pole adds that he was nearly thirty

years of age when a glaring blunder obliged him to investigate his case

closely, and led to the conclusion that he was really colour-blind.

All colour-blind persons do not seem to make exactly the same mistakes,

or see colours in the same way; and there are, no doubt, many minor

defects in appreciating, remembering, or comparing colours which are

sufficiently common, and which may be superadded to the true defect—that

of the optic nerve being insensible to the stimulus of pure red light.

It has been asserted by Dr. Wilson, the author of an elaborate work

on the subject, that as large a proportion as one person in every

eighteen is colour-blind in some marked degree, and that one in every

fifty-five confounds red with green. Certainly the number is large,

for every inquiry brings out several cases; but, as Sir John Herschel

remarks, were the average anything like this, it seems inconceivable

that the existence of the defect should not be one of vulgar notoriety,

or that it should strike almost all uneducated persons, when told of

it, as something approaching to absurdity. He also remarks, that if one

soldier out of every fifty-five was unable to distinguish a scarlet coat

from green grass, the result would involve grave inconveniences that

must have attracted notice. Perhaps the fact that a difference of tint

is recognized, although the eye of the colour-blind person does not

appreciate any difference of colour, when red, green, and other colours

are compared together, and that every one is educated to call certain

things by certain names, whether he understands the true meaning of the

name or not, may help to explain both the slowness of the defective sight

to discover its own peculiarity, and the unwillingness of the person of

ordinary vision to admit that his neighbour really does not see as red

what he agrees to call red.

There is, however, another consideration that this curious subject leads

to. It is known that out of every 10,000 rays issuing from the sun, and

penetrating space at the calculated rate of 200,000 miles in each second

of time, about one-fifth part is altogether lost and absorbed in passing

through the atmosphere, and never reaches the outer envelope of the human

eye. It is also known that of the rays that proceed from the sun, some

produce light, some heat, and some a peculiar kind of chemical action to

which the marvels of photography are due. Of these only the light rays

are appreciated specially by the eye, although the others are certainly

quite as important in preserving life and carrying on the business of the

world. Who can tell whether, in addition to the rays of coloured light

that together form a beam of white light, four-fifths of which only pass

through the atmosphere, there may not have emanated from the sun other

rays altogether absorbed and lost? or whether in entering the human eye,

or being received on the retina at the back of the eye, or made sensitive

by the optic nerve, there may not have been losses and absorptions

sufficient to shut out from us, who enjoy what we call perfect vision,

some other sources of information. How, in a word, do we who see clearly

only three or four colours, and their various combinations, together

with their combined white light—how do we know that to beings otherwise

organized, the heat, or chemical rays, or others we are not aware of, may

not give distinct optical impressions? We may meet one person whose sense

of hearing is sufficiently acute to enable him to hear plainly the shrill

night-cry of the bat, often totally inaudible, while his friend and daily

companion cannot perhaps distinguish the noise of the grasshopper, or

the croaking of frogs, and yet neither of these differs sufficiently from

the generality of mankind to attract attention, and both may pass through

life without finding out their differences in organization, or knowing

that the sense of hearing of either is peculiar. So undoubtedly it is

with light. There may be some endowed with visual powers extraordinarily

acute, seeing clearly what is generally altogether invisible; and this

may have reference to light generally, or to any of the various parts of

which a complete sunbeam is composed. Such persons may habitually see

what few others ever see, and yet be altogether unaware of their powers,

as the rest of the world would be of their own deficiency.

The case of the colour-blind person is the converse. He sees, it is true,

no green in the fields, or on the trees, no shade of pink mantling in

the countenance, no brilliant scarlet in the geranium flower, but still

he talks of these things as if he saw them, _and he believes he does see

them_, until by a long process of investigation he finds out that the

idea he receives from them is very different from that received by his

fellows. He often, however, lives on for years, and many have certainly

lived out their lives without guessing at their deficiency.

These results of physical defects of certain kinds remaining totally

unknown, either to the subject of them or his friends, even when all

are educated and intelligent, are certainly very curious; but it will

readily be seen that they are inevitable in the present development of

our faculties. In almost everything, whether moral or intellectual, we

measure our fellows by our own standard. He whose faculties are powerful,

and whose intellect is clear, looks over the cloud that hovers over lower

natures, and wonders why they, too, will not see truth and right as he

sees them. Those, on the other hand, who dwell below among the mists

of error and the trammels of prejudice, will not believe that their

neighbour, intellectually loftier, sees clearly over the fog and malaria

of their daily atmosphere.

In taking leave of the question of colour blindness, it should be

mentioned that hitherto no case has been recorded in which this defect

extends to any other ray than the red.

There seems no reason for this, and possibly, if they were looked for,

cases might be found in which the insensibility of the optic nerve had

reference to the blue instead of the red ray—the least instead of the

most refrangible part of the beam of light. It would also be well worth

the trial if those who have any reason to suppose that they enjoy a

superiority of vision would determine by actual experiment the extent

of their unusual powers, and learn whether they refer to an optical

appreciation of the chemical or heat rays, or show any modification of

the solar spectrum by enlargement or otherwise.

Lastly, it would be well, when children show an unusual difficulty in

describing colours, to try by some such experiments as those here related

whether any defect of colour blindness exists or not. It would clearly be

undesirable that such children as have this defect should waste time in

learning accomplishments or professions which they must always be unable

to practise. They, their parents and teachers, may thus be saved some of

that disappointment which is always experienced when presumed tastes and

talents are cultivated or forced contrary to the natural powers of the

individual. It must clearly be hopeless to endeavour to obtain good taste

in colours, when most of the colours themselves are not seen at all, or

are so recognized as to present appearances altogether different from

those seen by the rest of the world.

Spring.

Here, where the tall plantation firs

Slope to the river, down the hill,

Strange impulses—like vernal stirs—

Have made me wander at their will.

I see, with half-attentive eyes,

The buds and flowers that mark the Spring,

And Nature’s myriad prophecies

Of what the Summer suns will bring.

For every sense I find delight—

The new-wed cushat’s murmurous tones,

Young blossoms bursting into light,

And the rich odour of the cones.

The larch, with tassels purple-pink,

Whispers like distant falling brooks;

And sun-forgotten dewdrops wink

Amid the grass, in shady nooks.

The breeze, that hangs round every bush,

Steals sweetness from the tender shoots,

With, here and there, a perfumed gush

From violets among the roots.

See—where behind the ivied rock

Grow drifts of white anemonies,

As if the Spring—in Winter’s mock—

Were mimicking his snows with these.

The single bloom yon furzes bear

Gleams like the fiery planet Mars:—

The creamy primroses appear

In galaxies of vernal stars;—

And, grouped in Pleiad clusters round,

Lent-lilies blow—some six or seven;—

With blossom-constellations crown’d,

This quiet nook resembles Heaven.

THOMAS HOOD.

Inside Canton.

The mere notion that I was in possession of a room _inside Canton_—with

freedom to wander through every quarter of that hitherto mysterious city,

of which former travellers had only conveyed a notion from glances taken

from the White Cloud Mountain, revealing nothing but an expanse of tiles

and trees, with a pagoda-top or two, and a few mandarin flag-poles—was

sufficient to banish anything like sleep. And apart from this constant

wondering at perpetually finding myself where I was—the sharp “_tung_” of

the mosquitoes before settling down for their gory banquet, the calls of

the French and English bugles answering each other from the five-storied

pagoda to the joss-house barracks, the terribly breathless atmosphere,

and the grim, gigantic Chinese gods, who sat in the moonlight like

pantomime ogres round my chamber, were quite enough to have kept one

awake, and would have done so even if a genius had descended to read a

paper on Art, which they might have discussed with him afterwards.

At last the quickly-rising tropical sun fired a ray like a shell into

my eyes through a broken pane in the mother-of-pearl window of my

joss-haunted room. This drove me out of bed, or, rather, off my matting,

as quickly as though a real shrapnell had hissed its intention of

immediately exploding beneath me. For this fearful sun of a Canton summer

falls in red-hot death upon the European whose brain it can reach. Our

soldiers were struck down before it in the White Cloud expedition as

though a crane had dropped a woolsack on their heads.

We have all of us, at some time or another, said, “I never felt so hot

in my life!” This has been less with relation to actual caloric than to

a sudden flush of awkwardness attendant upon having asked people after

their dead relations, or uncomfortable family affairs; or in expectation

of some accidental and unintentional revelation of a circumstance in our

own lives, of which we were not remarkably proud. Or, more especially,

on being introduced by a gushing man to an enemy you had long since cut,

with the assurance that you ought both to know each other. But I find

this morning that I feel hotter still. The wind blows against me as from

the door of a glasshouse; and the sun comes straight down like a red-hot

nail, even through my double umbrella (which I am careful to put up

before I venture out on the terrace), and my light but thick pith hat. At

such times your claret is self-mulled, and butter becomes thick oil. You

cannot find a cool place on your hard-stuffed pillow. The sun apparently

_twists_ its rays—sends them round corners, and through venetians,

and under porticos; the light being so vivid that its mere reflection

banishes shade. The swinging punkah—which A-wa, whose picture you have

seen on cheap grocers’ tea-papers, pulls night and day, awake and asleep,

as though he were a slightly vitalized lever-escapement—this flounced

and flirting terror of all bilious people gets up a delusive breeze, and

when it stops the heat comes rushing back with double force. Everything

you wear clings to you; or, if flannel, fetches out the “prickly heat”

until you are beside yourself. In every draught, one side is chilled

whilst the other is burned, as happens at the fireplace of an old country

house, where one side is roasted, whilst on the other you are nearly

blown up the chimney. And when you are actually out and about, you appear

to live and move in the focus of one large burning-glass. It is a dead

thick heat, that you fancy might be cut into blocks, and stored in Arctic

ships for gradual distribution.

The kindness of General Straubenzee had consigned me to a Buddhist temple

for my residence. It was the last costly work of Yeh, on Magazine Hill,

and was barely finished when we took the city. An elaborate bell, yet

unhung, stood sentinel at my door. I afterwards watched its departure

to be taken to England, by Captain Maguire, in the _Sanspareil_, and

it may now be seen in the Crystal Palace. Magazine Hill is to Canton

what Montmartre is to Paris, and is covered with joss-houses, now all

used as barracks for our men. It is to the extreme north of the city,

which it commands, as well as the country outside, and is the only

high ground within the walls, which here come close to it. Gazing from

this on the open country, one is reminded of the view from the walls

of our own Chester, near the jail, looking over the Roodee towards the

Welsh mountains. To continue the comparison with places which may be

familiar to my readers, the look-out towards the south, comprising the

entire city, is marvellously like the eye-stretch over Lyons from the

Fourvières, when the air is too hazy to see the Alps. There is, however,

one localized object—a tall pagoda, rising high above the expanse of red

roofs. One involuntary thought of Kew Gardens brings one back, for the

moment, to home; and as this pagoda is not considered safe to ascend—on

the authority of Major Luard, who gallantly tried it—and as it promises

at some future time, if not taken down, to form a gigantic accident (as

all columns and pagodas must do one of these days) the likeness is more

perfect.

I found a sturdy little unshod pony waiting for me at the foot of the

hill, with a tidy little pigtailed boy to guide him. The pony was for

sale for seven dollars—it sounded cheap, but the expense of keep was the

great question. My little friend made a speech:—“Chin-chin! my talkee

A No. 1 Inglis, all a plopper (proper).” But I found his vocabulary of

even the scanty “Canton English” very limited. I made out, however,

that he was going to London to learn “all sort pigeon;” and he was very

much delighted at pointing out to me some signboards over a few little

shops, edging a pond, and reading:—“Best Wash from Hong Kong,” “A No. 1,

Washsoap,” &c. And when we passed two culprits, tied together by their

pigtails, and lying full-length upon the ground, guarded by an Irishman

in front of a _baraque_, inscribed “Paddy-goose” (a favourite _sobriquet_

at the dram-shops), he roared with laughter, and said:—“Soger hab catchee

two piecey pilat, too muchee drunkee—wanchee chokee-pigeon: no loast

duck.” This interpreted expressing, with the Chinese substitution of the

_l_ for the _r_, that two pirates had been captured by the police in an

extreme state of intoxication, and that they would go to prison, where

roast duck would be a novelty.

After passing over a desert of brick rubbish—the remains of houses

destroyed because they formed ambuscades from which the lurking braves

captured or shot at stragglers on the walls, I was fairly inside Canton.

Here the streets are all so exactly alike, that in endeavouring to give

a notion of one, I may describe all. The majority appeared to vary

from seven to ten feet in breadth—the crowded Cranbourn Passage, which

runs from St. Martin’s Lane to Castle Street could be soon transformed

into one, by a handful of theatrical mechanics. The houses are two or

three stories high, and their signboards, in gaudy paint or gilding,

either hang in front of them, or are set up in stone sockets, and all at

right angles to the houses, so that, as the China character is written

perpendicularly, they can be read going up or down the street. The

manner in which they intrude on the thoroughfare braves all notices of

Commissioners and Boards. The streets are all paved with granite in large

flags, and this has acquired a peculiarly polished appearance from the

absence of all wheel and quadrupedal traffic, and the constant shuffling

along of the soft soles or naked feet of the natives. For the Cantonese

do not appear to understand the use of wheels, or beasts of burden;

everything is carried on bamboo poles by the intensely hard-working

coolie population. Where they can do it, the streets are shaded with

matting.

And now it was that all my childish associations connected with China

were on the point of realization. For in the “pigeon” of Lord Elgin and

Sir Michael Seymour—who must shake hands, and understand how much and how

honestly both are respected by all of us—in the _China Mail_ information

that Patna opium is at 770 dollars, Malwa dull, and for Turkey no demand;

and that Bank bills are 4_s._ 9_d._; Sycee silver, 5½ per cent. premium,

and Shanghai green-tea quotations are unchanged—in a whirl of treaties,

and Peiho forts, and conferences totally misunderstood on either side,

from the dismal ignorance of the practical Chinese language amongst our

professed Chinese students (who could translate the great metaphysical

work of Fo, but would be sadly bothered to decide a simple police

“row”);—in all this, there is nothing in common with _our_ old China.

But here these associations crowded on us. Men ran along with slung

tea-packages, as they did on the gaily-varnished canisters of the “Canton

T Company,” in the High Street of my boyhood. Women with their bismuthed

faces peered from windows, as they did on the fans and plates from which

I formed my earliest notions of what was then called “the Celestial

Empire.” And then came another memory, clinging to that delightful time

when a belief in the reality of everything was our principal mental

characteristic, extending even to “Bogey” in the cellar, and the dustman

who threw sand in the eyes of sleepy little boys on the staircase, and

the black dog in the passage; nay, even to that celebrated silver spade

with which the doctor dug up our little baby brother or sister from out

of the parsley-bed—when story-books had that astonishing hold on me that,

out of our town, I perfectly established the field along which Christian

ran with his fingers in his ears when his neighbours tried to call him

back. (And if ever there was a case for the parochial authorities of a

man deserting his wife and children, Christian’s was one.) In this happy

time I had associations with China, and they now come back from one

of the most charming of the attractive stories in the _Arabian Nights

Entertainments_. I was now looking—practically, with my own eyes—on a

Chinese town, and a group of idle boys playing. A grave stranger of

a foreign and travelled aspect was watching them. I should not have

been at all surprised if he had recognized, in one of the urchins,

the son of his dead brother—had clothed him at a ready-made tailor’s,

and then introduced him, by lifting up a stone with a ring in it, to

those wonderful nursery grounds of Hunt and Roskill, and Phillips, and

Garrard, where the dew was all diamonds, and the wall-fruit all stones.

And was it not likely that, in this very street, the stranger might have

subsequently passed when anxious to exchange his new moderator lamps for

any old argands, or solars, or camphines that might be dust-collecting

about the house? Here again was an open space of ground, on which that

palace might have stood, which went away one night in such a hurry. And

strange to say, there _was_ a palace here, and it did disappear one early

January morning. It belonged to that old miscreant Yeh, and its sudden

absence was owing rather to the sponging of practical guns than the

rubbing of wonderful lamps. And although I heard nothing, both here and

at Hong Kong, but of Hall of the _Calcutta_, and Mr. Oliphant; Telesio’s

pale ale “_chop_” (or boat store); John Dent’s French cook’s chow-chow;

the arrival of the Fei-man steamer; Colonel Stevenson’s bamboo balcony

on the hill: the 59th; Sir John Bowring and Mr. Chisholm Anstey: and

innumerable “shaves:” yet _my_ thoughts ran upon Confucius and pagodas,

nodding mandarins, chop-sticks, and the feast of lanterns, and above all,

on Aladdin.

I was to join Mr. Parkes at the yamun of the Allied Commissioners, and

go with him to pay a visit to Peh-kwei, the Governor of Canton. This

yamun had been the palace of the Tartar general, but was now filled with

English and French officials, soldiers, marines, compradors, coolies,

and Chinese rabble, attending the police cases. We here formed a small

procession, and our revolvers came into show; for Mr. Parkes was the

most unpopular man in the city with the Cantonese. They called him “the

red-bristled barbarian,” and had let fly various jingals at him, at

different times, in the streets. But he had the courage of the——anybody

you please; and the more they annoyed him, the more he would ride them

down, and bang them back into their ambuscades. We were all on ponies or

in chairs, with the exception of our guards; and we rode so fast along

the narrow streets, and through the bustling crowds of passengers, and

almost over the wares displayed out of doors, that a fire-engine going

through the Lowther Arcade in a hurry could not have created greater

confusion. On entering the first court of Peh-kwei’s yamun, we were

saluted with guns, and standards were hoisted on the mandarin poles.

These courts are large paved areas, with a very broad flag-path up the

middle, and fine trees at the sides; they are divided from each other by

vast wooden buildings, like barns, with Chinese roofs, and stone lions

guarding them. The patient ingenuity of the makers is shown in these

animals; they have a large ball in their mouths, which you can turn round

behind the teeth, but cannot take out; it has evidently been cut from

the solid. We rode through the centre of these barns, up the stairs, to

a higher court beyond, but our attendants filed off round the sides; and

then we dismounted, and were introduced to Peh-kwei. I had often seen

him wagging his head, and tongue, and hands, in old china-shops; but now

he stood upright, in a long, white silk _peignoir_: and then he and Mr.

Parkes began bowing to one another in such continuity, that they looked

wound up, and minutes elapsed before either of them would take a seat.

Then tea was brought in, and for a little time the talk was exactly like

the twaddle that passes at a morning call in England between people who

don’t care a straw about each other, never have, and are never likely to.

But Mr. Parkes began to pull some Chinese documents from his pocket; and

as I had been introduced as “a mandarin on his travels,” Peh-kwei made a

very lucky suggestion that I should see his grounds.

This was just what I wanted—liberty to invade what would have been deemed

a privacy even by the Cantonese; but the acres of unkept, overgrown

wilderness, with its rotting pavilions, tumble-down temples, dried-up

lakes, crumbling rockwork, and broken seats and tables, formed the

spring of all the impressions I afterwards received in and about Canton.

Nothing so dreary—not even Vauxhall on a wet Christmas Day—ever could be

imagined. It was not the breakdown of acute organic lesion, but the decay

of long, long-continued atrophy: and I formed a theory at the moment,

which the appearance of every other yamun, or temple, strengthened,

that the Chinese had for ages so jealously shut up their vaunted city,

not from any terror of the barbarians becoming acquainted with their

secrets of trade, government, or manufacture, but from a positive idea

of shame that any one should see the mouldering neglected “lions” of

their southern capital. True to the estimated value of their _curios_,

everything was in a state of “crackle.” Combine all you can call to mind

of dreary places—Miss Linwood’s old room in Leicester Square, and the

present aspect of the Square itself; the gaunt, cheerless show-rooms

of palaces generally: the “Moated Grange” and “Haunted House;” the old

pavilion on Monkey Island, and indeed “pavilions” generally, from that

in Hans Place to any damp ceiling-stained summer-house, dedicated to

friendship or nature, that you know of—mix them together, and extract

their essence, and then you will not have the least idea of the general

rot and ruin that is spreading, like an ulcer, throughout Canton.

William Hogarth:

PAINTER, ENGRAVER, AND PHILOSOPHER.

_Essays on the Man, the Work, and the Time._

III.—A LONG LADDER, AND HARD TO CLIMB.

When a cathedral chapter have received their _congé d’élire_—so runs

the popular and perfectly erroneous tradition—and have made choice of a

Bishop, the pastor elect simpers, blushes, and says that really he is

much obliged, but that he would rather not accept the proffered dignity.

“_Nolo episcopari_,” he urges in graceful deprecation. Nobody in or

out of the chapter believes in his reluctance, and nobody now-a-days

believes in the harmless legend. Thus, too, when the Commons elect a

Speaker, a tradition with little more foundation assumes that the right

honourable gentleman approaches the foot of the Throne, hints in the

most delicate manner that he, the chosen of the Commons, is a blockhead

and an impostor, declares that he shall make but an indifferent Speaker,

and seeks to be relieved from his onerous charge. At that same moment,

perhaps, Messrs. Adams and Ede are embroidering Mr. Speaker’s gold robe;

and experienced tonsors near Lincoln’s Inn are finishing the last row of

curls on the ambrosial horse-hair which to-morrow will be a wig. When you

ask a young lady to take a little more _Mayonnaise de homard_, or entreat

her to oblige the company with “_Entends tu les gondoles?_”—that charming

Venetian barcarole—does she not ordinarily, and up to a certain degree of

pressure, refuse—say that she would rather not, or that she has a cold?

Whose health is proposed and drunk amid repeated cheers, but he rises,

and assures the assembled guests that he is about the last person in the

world who should have been toasted; that he never felt so embarrassed

in his life—he leads at the common law bar, and on breaches of promise

is immense—and that he wants words to, &c. &c.? At the bar mess he is

known as “Talking Smith,” and at school his comrades used to call him

“Captain Jaw.” My friends, we do not place any faith in these denials;

and forthwith clap the mitre on the Prelate’s head, bow to the Speaker,

help the young lady to arrange the music stool, and intone nine times

nine with one cheer more.

It is strange—it is vexatious; but I cannot persuade the ladies and

gentlemen who peruse these papers to believe that I am not writing the

Life of William Hogarth, and that these are merely discursive Essays on

the Man, the Work, and the Time. People persist in thinking that it is

with him who is now writing a case of _nolo episcopari_. Indeed it is

no such thing. I should dearly wish to write myself Biographer. “Fain

would I climb, but that I fear to fall.” I told you in the outset that

this Endeavour was no Life. I disclaimed any possession of exclusive

information. I claimed a liberal benefit-of-clergy as to names and dates.

I have had no access to muniment rooms. I have explored the contents of

no charter chests. I have disentombed no dusty records, and rescued no

parish registers from the degrading fate of serving to singe a goose. I

am timorous, and seek not to be heard as one speaking with authority.

I am anonymous, and risk no fame. But the north country won’t believe

me, and the south and the midland shake their heads incredulously when

I say this is not Hogarth’s Life, but only so much gossip about him

and his pictures and times. I say so again; and if the public won’t be

enlightened—_si vult decipi_—all I can add is, _Decipiatur_.

Now as to the exact date of the expiration of Hogarth’s

apprenticeship—when was it? I have but an impression. I cannot speak

from any certain knowledge, and assume, therefore, that the expiry was

_circa_ 1720. Ireland opines that it was in 1718, William having then

attained his twenty-first year. The registers of the Goldsmiths’ Company

might be more explicit, or, better still, Mr. Scott, the chamberlain of

London, might enlighten us all, to a month, and to a day. For of old the

chamberlain was the official Nemesis to the ofttimes unruly ’prentices

of London. The idle, or rebellious, or truant novice, was arraigned

before this dread functionary. He had power to relegate the offender to

the _carcere duro_ of Bridewell, there to suffer the penance of stripes

and a bread-and-water diet. For aught I know, the ministrations of the

chamberlain may to this day be occasionally invoked; but it is in his

capacity of a recording official, and as having formerly drawn some fees

from the attestation and registration of indentures, that his assistance

would be useful to me. William Hogarth’s art-and-mystery-parchment

may be in the city archives. What other strange and curiously quaint

things those archives contain we had an inkling the other day, when the

_Liber Albus_ was published. But I have not the pleasure of Mr. Scott’s

acquaintance, and he might say me nay.

Hogarth, I presume, was released from silver servitude in 1718-20. April

29th, 1720, is, as I have elsewhere noted, the date affixed to the

shop-card he executed for himself, setting up in business, I hope in

friendly rivalry to Ellis Gamble in Little Cranbourn Alley, hard by the

“Golden Angel.” I stood and mused in Little Cranbourn Alley lately, and

tried to conjure up Hogarthian recollections from that well-nigh blind

passage. But no ghosts rose from a coffee-shop and a French barber’s, and

a murky little den full of tobacco-pipes and penny valentines; so, taking

nothing by my motion, I sped my slowest to the Sablonière in Leicester

Square. Here even my senses became troubled with the odours of French

soups, and I could make nothing Hogarthian out of the hostelry, a wing of

which was once Hogarth’s house.

It is my wish to tell as succinctly as is feasible the story of

seven years in Hogarth’s progress; seven years during which he was

slowly, painfully, but always steadily and courageously, climbing that

precipitous ladder which we have all in some sort or another striven

to climb. At the top sits Fame kicking her heels, carrying her trumpet

mincingly, making sometimes a feint to put it to her lips and sound it,

more frequently looking down superciliously with eyes half closed, and

pretending to be unaware of the panting wretch toiling up the weary rungs

beneath. Some swarm up this ladder as boys up a pole, hand over hand, a

good grip with the knees, a confident, saucy, upward look. Others stop

_in medio_, look round, sigh, or are satisfied, and gravely descend

to refresh themselves with bread and cheese for life. Some stagger

up, wildly, and tumbling off, are borne, mutilated, to the hospital

accident-ward to die. Others there are who indeed obtain the ladder’s

summit, but are doomed to crawl perpetually up and down the degrees.

These are the unfortunates who carry hods to those master bricklayers

who have bounded up the ladder with airy strides, or better still, _have

been born at the top of the ladder_. Poor hodmen! they make dictionaries,

draw acts of parliament, cram the boy-senator for his maiden speech,

form Phidias’ rough clay-sketch into a shapely, polished marble bust,

shade with Indian ink Archimedes’ rough draught for the new pump or the

tubular bridge, and fill in Sir Joshua’s backgrounds. Some there are who

go to sleep at the ladder’s foot, and some, the few, the felicitous, who

reach the summit, breathless but triumphant, boldly bidding Fame blow

her loudest blast. Forthwith the venal quean makes the clarion to sound,

and all the world is amazed. Lowliness, our Shakspeare says, is “young

ambition’s ladder:”

“Whereto the climber upward turns his face;

But when he once attains the upmost round,

He then unto the ladder turns his back,

Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees

By which he did ascend: so Cæsar may.

Then——”

But so did not William Hogarth. He was self-confident and self-conscious

enough,[2] when, after many years of toilsome struggling he turned up

the trump-card, and his name was bruited about with loud _fanfares_ to

the crowd. He attained the desired end: this Fame, this renown; and to

vulgarize the allegory, he managed to snatch that comfortable shoulder

of mutton which surmounts the greasy pole, and which, although we feign

to covet it not, we _must_ have. But he never attempted to conceal the

smallness of his beginnings, to assert that his ancestors came over

with the Conqueror, or to deny that his father came up to London by

the waggon. He sets down in his own black and white, how he fought the

battle for bread, how he engraved plates, and painted portraits and

conversations and assemblies, in order to obtain the necessary bite and

sup; how, with no money, he has often “gone moping into the city,” but

there receiving “ten guineas for a plate,” has come home, jubilant, “put

on his sword,” and swaggered, I doubt it not, with the most dashing bucks

in the coffee-house or on the Mall. I think they are happy traits in the

character of this good fellow and honest man, that he should have had

the courage to accomplish ten guineas’ worth of graver’s work, without

drawing money on account, and that he should have had a sword at home

for the red-letter days and sunshiny hours. You, brave young student and

fellow-labourer! draw on your corduroys, shoulder your pick and shovel,

be off to the diggings; do your work, get paid; and then come home, put

on your sword and be a gentleman. One sees Mr. Beverly or Mr. Telbin

slashing away with a large whitewasher’s brush in a scene-painting room,

fagging away in canvas jackets and over-alls, covered with parti-coloured

splashes. Then, the work done, they wash their hands and come forth

spruce and radiant, in peg-tops and kid-gloves. When our Prime Minister

is at Broadlands, I hear that he stands up writing at a high desk, not

seated like a clerk, working away bravely at the affairs of the _chose

publique_, as for a wage of five-and-twenty shillings a week, and

afterwards enjoys the relaxation of pruning his trees, or riding over his

estate. Keep then your swords at home, and don’t wear them in working

hours; but, the labour done, come out into the open and claim your rank.

I daresay that for a long time twenty-five shillings a week would have

been a very handsome income to William the engraver. He covered many

silver salvers and tankards with heraldic devices, but I don’t think he

had any “_argenterie, bagues et bijouxs_,” or other precious stock of

his own on sale. Most probable is it, that his old master gave him work

to do after he had left his service. I wonder if Mr. Gamble, in after

days, when his apprentice had become a great man, would ever hold forth

to tavern coteries on the share he had had in guiding the early efforts

of that facile hand! I hope and think so; and seem to hear him saying

over his tankard: “Yes, sir, I taught the lad. He was bound to me, sir,

by his worthy father, who was as full of book learning as the Cockpit

is of Hanover rats. He could not draw a stroke when he came to me, sir.

He was good at his graving work, but too quick, too quick, and somewhat

rough. Never could manage the delicate tintos or the proper reticulations

of scroll-foliage. But he was always drawing. He drew the dog. He drew

the cat. He drew Dick, his fellow ’prentice, and Molly the maid, and

Robin Barelegs the shoeblack at the corner of Cranbourn Street. He drew

a pretty configurement of Mistress Gamble, my wife deceased, in her

Oudenarde tire, and lapels of Mechlin point, and Sunday sack. But there

was ever a leaning towards the caricatura in him, sir. Sure never mortal

since Jacques Callot the Frenchman (whose ‘Habits and Beggars’ he was

much given to study) ever drew such hideous, leering satyrs. And he had

a way too, of making the griffins laugh and the lions dance gambadoes,

so to speak, on their hind legs in the escocheons he graved, which would

never have passed the College of Arms. Sir, the tankard out: what!

drawer, there.”

Thus Ellis Gamble mythically seen and heard. But to the realities. In

1720 or ’21, Hogarth’s father, the poor old dominie, was removed to a

land where no grammar disputations are heard, and where one dictionary

is as good as another. Hogarth’s sisters had previously kept a “frock

shop” in the city; they removed westward after the old man’s death, and

probably occupied their brother’s place of business in Little Cranbourn

Alley, when, giving up a perhaps momentary essay in the vocation of a

working tradesman, he elected to be, instead, a working artist. For Mary

and Ann Hogarth he engraved a shop-card, representing the interior of a

somewhat spacious warehouse with sellers and customers, and surmounted by

the king’s arms. The sisters could not have possessed much capital; and

there have not been wanting malevolent spirits—chiefly of the Wilkite way

of thinking—to hint that the Misses Hogarths’ “old frock-shop” was indeed

but a very old slop-, not to say rag-shop, and that the proper insignia

for their warehouse would have been not the royal arms, but a certain

image, sable, pendent, clad in a brief white garment: a black doll of the

genuine Aunt Sally proportions.

William Hogarth out of his apprenticeship is, I take it, a sturdy,

ruddy-complexioned, clear-eyed, rather round-shouldered young fellow, who

as yet wears his own hair, but has that sword at home—a silver-hilted or

a prince’s metal one—and is not averse to giving his hat a smart cock,

ay, and bordering it with a narrow rim of orrice when Fortune smiles on

him. Not yet was the ἨΘΟΣ developed in him. It was there, yet latent.

But, instead, that quality with which he was also so abundantly gifted,

and which combined so well with his sterner faculties—I mean the quality

of humorous observation—must have begun to assert itself. “Engraving on

copper was at twenty years of age my utmost ambition,” he writes himself.

Yes, William, and naturally so. The monsters and chimeras of heraldry

and Mr. Gamble’s back-shop had by that time probably thoroughly palled

on him. Fortunate if a landscape, or building, or portrait had sometimes

to be engraved on a silver snuff-box or a golden fan-mount. The rest was

a wilderness of apocryphal natural history, a bewildering phantasmagoria

of strange devices from St. Benet’s Hill, expressed in crambo, in jargon,

and in heraldic romany: compony, gobony, and chequy; lions erased and

tigers couped; bucks trippant and bucks vulnèd; eagles segreiant, and

dogs sciant; bezants, plates, torteaux, pomeis, golps, sanguiny-guzes,

tawny and saltire.[3] The revulsion was but to be expected—was indeed

inevitable, from the disgust caused by the seven years’ transcription of

these catalogues of lying wonders, to the contemplation of the real life

that surged about Cranbourn Alley, and its infinite variety of humours,

comic and tragic. “Engraving on copper” at twenty might be the utmost

ambition to a young man mortally sick of silver salvers; but how was it

at twenty-one and twenty-two?

“As a child,” writes William, “shows of all kind gave me pleasure.” To a

lad of his keen eye and swift perception, all London must have been full

of shows. Not only was there Bartlemy, opened by solemn procession and

proclamation of Lord Mayor—Bartlemy with its black-puddings, pantomimes,

motions of puppets, rope-dancers emulating the achievements of Jacob

Hall, sword-swallowing women, fire-eating salamanders, high Dutch

conjurors, Alsatian and Savoyard-Dulcamara quacks selling eye-waters,

worm-powders, love-philters, specifics against chincough, tympany,

tissick, chrisoms, head-mould-shot, horse-shoe-head, and other strange

ailments, of which the Registrar-general makes no mention in his Returns,

now-a-days;[4] not only did Southwark, Tottenham and Mayfair flourish,

but likewise Hornfair by Charlton, in Kent, easy of access by Gravesend

tilt-boat, which brought to at Deptford Yard, and Hospital Stairs at

Greenwich. There were two patent playhouses, Lincoln’s Inn and Drury

Lane; and there were Mr. Powell’s puppets at the old Tennis-court, in

James Street, Haymarket—mysterious edifice, it lingers yet! looking

older than ever, inexplicable, obsolete, elbowed by casinos, poses

plastiques, cafés, and American bowling-alleys, yet refusing to budge

an inch before the encroachments of Time, who destroys all things,

even tennis-courts. It was “old,” we hear, in 1720; I have been told

that tennis is still played there. Gramercy! by whom? Surely at night,

when the wicked neighbourhood is snatching a short feverish sleep, the

“old tennis-courts” must be haunted by sallow, periwigged phantoms of

Charles’s time, cadaverous beaux in laced bands, puffed sleeves, and

flapped, plumed hats. Bats of spectral wire strike the cobweb-balls; the

moonlight can make them cast no shadows on the old brick-wall. And in the

gallery sits the harsh-visaged, cynic king, Portsmouth at his side, his

little spaniels mumbling the rosettes in his royal shoes.

In a kind of copartnership with Mr. Powell’s puppets—formerly of

the Piazza, Covent Garden, was the famous Faux, the legerdemain, or

sleight-of-hand conjuror—the Wiljalba Frikell of his day, and whom

Hogarth mentions in one of his earliest pictorial satires. But Faux did

that which the Russian magician, to his credit, does not do: he puffed

himself perpetually, and was at immense pains to assure the public

through the newspapers that he was _not_ robbed returning from the

Duchess of Buckingham’s at Chelsea. From Faux’s show at the “Long-room,”

Hogarth might have stepped to Heidegger’s—hideous Heidegger’s masquerades

at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket, where also were held “_ridotti_,”

and “_veglioni_”—junketings of an ultra Italian character, and all

presented in 1722 by the Middlesex grand jury as intolerable nuisances.

Many times, also, did the stern Sir John Gonson (_the Harlot’s Progress_

Gonson), justice of peace, much feared by the Phrynes of the hundreds

of Drury, inveigh in his sessions-charges against the sinful _ridotti_

and the disorderly _veglioni_. Other performances took place at the

King’s Theatre. There was struggling for its first grasp on the English

taste and the English pocket—a grasp which it has never since lost—that

anomalous, inconsistent, delightful entertainment, the Italian Opera.

Hogarth, as a true-born Briton, hated the harmonious exotic; and from his

earliest plates to the grand series of the _Rake’s Progress_, indulges

in frequent flings at Handel (in his _Ptolomeo_, and before his immortal

Oratorio stage), Farinelli, Cuzzoni, Senesino, Faustina, Barrenstadt, and

other “soft simpering whiblins.” Yet the sturdiest hater of this “new

taste of the town” could not refrain from admiring and applauding to the

echo that which was called the “miraculously dignified exit of Senesino.”

This celebrated _sortita_ must have resembled in the almost electrical

effect it produced, the elder Kean’s “Villain, be sure thou prove,” &c.

in _Othello_; John Kemble’s “Mother of the world—” in _Coriolanus_;

Madame Pasta’s “Io,” in _Medea_; and Ristori’s world-known “_Tu_,” in

the Italian version of the same dread trilogy. One of the pleasantest

accusations brought against the Italian Opera was preferred some years

before 1720, in the _Spectator_, when it was pointed out that the

principal man or woman singer sang in Italian, while the responses were

given, and the choruses chanted by Britons. _Judices_, in these latter

days, I have “assisted” at the performance of the _Barber of Seville_

at one of our large theatres, when _Figaro_ warbled in Italian with a

strong Spanish accent, when Susanna was a Frenchwoman, Doctor Bartolo an

Irishman, and the chorus sang in English, and without any H’s.

More shows remain for Hogarth to take delight in. The quacks, out of

Bartlemy time, set up their standings in Moorfields by the madhouse

(illustrated by Hogarth in the _Rake’s Progress_), and in Covent Garden

Market (W. H. in the plate of _Morning_), by Inigo Jones’s rustic church,

which he built for the Earl of Bedford: “Build me a barn,” quoth the

earl. “You shall have the bravest barn in England,” returned Inigo, and

his lordship had it. There were quacks too, though the loud-voiced

beggars interfered with them, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and on Tower Hill,

where the sailors and river-side Bohemians were wont to indulge in their

favourite diversion of “whipping the snake.” There were grand shows when

a commoner was raised to the peerage or promoted in grade therein—a

common occurrence in the midst of all the corruption entailed by the

Scottish union and Walpole’s wholesale bribery. On these occasions,

deputations of the heralds came from their dusty old college in Doctors’

Commons, and in full costume, to congratulate the new peer, the viscount

made an earl, or the marquis elevated to a dukedom, and to claim by the

way a snug amount of fees from the newly-blown dignitary. Strange figures

they must have cut, those old kings-at-arms, heralds, and pursuivants!

Everybody remembers the anecdote, since twisted into an allusion to

Lord Thurlow’s grotesque appearance, of a servant on such an occasion

as I have alluded to, saying to his master, “Please, my lord, there’s a

gentleman in a coach at the door would speak with your lordship; and,

saving your presence, _I think he’s the knave of spades_.” I burst out in

unseemly cachinnation the other day at the opening of Parliament, when I

saw Rougecroix trotting along the royal gallery of the peers, with those

table-napkins stiff with gold embroidery pendent back and front of him

like heraldic advertisements. The astonishing equipment was terminated

by the black dress pantaloons and patent-leather boots of ordinary life.

_Je crevais de rire_: the Lord Chamberlain walking backwards was nothing

to it; yet I daresay Rougecroix looked not a whit more absurd than did

Bluemantle and Portcullis in 1720 with red heels and paste buckles to

their Cordovan shoon, and curly periwigs flowing from beneath their

cocked hats.

Shows, more shows, and William Hogarth walking London streets to take

stock of them all, to lay them up in his memory’s ample store-house. He

will turn all he has seen to good account some day. There is a show at

the museum of the Royal Society, then sitting at Gresham College. The

queer, almost silly things, exhibited there! queer and silly, at least

to us, with our magnificent museums in Great Russell Street, Lincoln’s

Inn Fields and Brompton. I am turning over the Royal Society catalogue

as I write: the rarities all set down with a ponderous, simple-minded

solemnity. “Dr. Grews” is the conscientious editor. Here shall you find

the “sceptre of an Indian king, a dog without a mouth; a Pegue hat and

organ; a bird of paradise; a Jewish phylactery; a model of the Temple

of Jerusalem; a burning-glass contrived by that excellent philosopher

and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton” (hats off); “three landskips and

a catcoptrick paint given by Bishop Wilkins; a gun which discharges

seven times one after the other presently” (was this a revolver?); “a

perspective instrument by the ingenious Sir Christopher Wren” (hats

off again); “a pair of Iceland gloves, a pot of Macassar poison” (oh!

Rowland); “the tail of an Indian cow worshipped on the banks of the

river Ganges; a tuft of coralline; the cramp fish which by some humour

or vapour benumbs the fisherman’s arms,” and so forth. Hogarth will

make use of all these “curios” in the fourth scene of the _Marriage à la

Mede_, and presently, for the studio of Sidrophel in his illustrations to

_Hudibras_.

And there are shows of a sterner and crueler order. Now a pick-pocket

yelling under a pump; now a half-naked wretch coming along Whitehall at

the tail of a slow-plodding cart, howling under the hangman’s lash (that

functionary has ceased to be called “Gregory,” from the great executioner

G. Brandon, and is now, but I have not been able to discover for what

reason, “Jack Ketch”).[5] Now it is a libeller or a perjurer in the

pillory at Charing in Eastcheap or at the Royal Exchange. According to

his political opinions do the mob—the mob are chiefly of the Jacobite

persuasion—pelt the sufferer with eggs and ordure, or cheer him, and fill

the hat which lies at his foot on the scaffold with halfpence and even

silver. And the sheriffs’ men, if duly fee’d, do not object to a mug of

purl or mum, or even punch, being held by kind hands to the sufferer’s

lips. So, in Hugo’s deathless romance does Esmeralda give Quasimodo on

the _carcan_ to drink from her flask. Mercy is as old as the hills,

and will never die. Sometimes in front of “England’s Burse,” or in Old

Palace Yard, an odd, futile, much-laughed-at ceremony takes place: and

after solemn proclamation, the common hangman makes a bonfire of such

proscribed books as _Pretenders no Pretence, A sober Reply to Mr. Higgs’s

Tri-theistical Doctrine_. Well would it be if the vindictiveness of the

government stopped here; but alas! king’s messengers are in hot pursuit

of the unhappy authors, trace them to the tripe-shop in Hanging Sword

Alley, or the cock-loft in Honey Lane Market, where they lie three in a

bed; and the poor scribbling wretches are cast into jail, and delivered

over to the tormentors, losing sometimes their unlucky ears. There is

the great sport and show every market morning, known as “bull banking,”

a sweet succursal to his Majesty’s bear-garden and Hockley in the hole.

The game is of the simplest; take your bull in a narrow thoroughfare,

say, Cock Hill, by Smithfield; have a crowd of _hommes de bonne volonté_;

overturn a couple of hackney coaches at one end of the street, a brewer’s

dray at the other: then harry your bull up and down, goad him, pelt him,

twist his tail, till he roar and is rabid. This is “bull-banking,” and

oh! for the sports of merry England! William Hogarth looks on sternly and

wrathfully. He will remember the brutal amusements of the populace when

he comes to engrave the _Four Stages of Cruelty_. But I lead him away now

to other scenes and shows. There are the wooden horses before Sadler’s

Hall; and westward there stands an uncomfortable “wooden horse” for the

punishment of soldiers who are picketed thereon for one and two hours.

This wooden horse is on St. James’s Mall, over against the gun-house. The

torture is one of Dutch William’s legacies to the subjects, and has been

retained and improved on by the slothfully cruel Hanoverian kings. Years

afterwards (1745-6), when Hogarth shall send his picture of the _March to

Finchley_ to St. James’s for the inspection of his sacred Majesty King

George the Second, that potentate will fly into a guard-room rage at

the truthful humour of the scene, and will express an opinion that the

audacious painter who has caricatured his Foot Guards, should properly

suffer the punishment of the picket on the “wooden horse” of the Mall.

Further afield. There are literally thousands of shop-signs to be read

or stared at. There are prize-fights—predecessors of Fig and Broughton

contests—gladiatorial exhibitions, in which decayed Life-guardsmen and

Irish captains trade-fallen, hack and hew one another with broadsword

and backsword on public platforms. Then the “French prophets,” whom

John Wesley knew, are working sham miracles in Soho, emulating—the

impostors!—the marvels done at the tomb of the Abbé, Diacre or Chanoine,

Paris, and positively holding exhibitions in which fanatics suffer

themselves to be trampled, jumped upon, and beaten with clubs, for the

greater glory of Molinism;[6] even holding academies, where the youth of

both sexes are instructed in the arts of foaming at the mouth, falling

into convulsions, discoursing in unknown tongues, revealing stigmata

produced by the aid of lunar caustic, and other moon-struck madnesses

and cheats. Such is revivalism in 1720. William Hogarth is there,

observant. He will not forget the French prophets when he executes

almost the last and noblest of his plates—albeit, it is directed against

English revivalists, _Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism_. He leaves

Soho, and wanders eastward and westward. He reads Madam Godfrey’s

six hundred challenges to the female sex in the newspapers; sitting,

perhaps, at the “Rose,” without Temple Bar; at the “Diapente,” whither

the beaux, feeble as Lord Fanny, who could not “eat beef, or horse, or

any of those things,” come to recruit their exhausted digestions with

jelly-broth. He may look in at mug-houses, where stum, ’quest ales,

Protestant masch-beer, and Derby stingo are sold. He may drop in at Owen

Swan’s, at the “Black Swan” Tavern in St. Martin’s Lane, and listen to

the hack-writers girding at Mr. Pope, and at the enormous amount of

eating and drinking in Harry Higden’s comedies. He may see the virtuosi

at Childs’s, and dozens of other auctions (Edward Mellington was the

George Robins of the preceding age; the famous Cobb was his successor

in auction-room eloquence and pomposity), buying china monsters. He may

refect himself with hot furmity at the “Rainbow” or at “Nando’s,” mingle

(keeping his surtout well buttoned) with the pickpockets in Paul’s,

avoid the Scotch walk on ’Change, watch the garish damsels alight from

their coaches at the chocolate-houses, mark the gamesters rushing in,

at as early an hour as eleven in the morning, to shake their elbows at

the “Young Man’s;” gaze at the barristers as they bargain for wherries

at the Temple Stairs to take water for Westminster—a pair of sculls

being much cheaper than a hackney coach—meet the half-pay officers at

Whitehall, garrulously discussing the King of Spain’s last treaty, as the

shoeblacks polish their footgear with oil and soot—Day and Martin are yet

in embryo: stand by, on Holborn Hill, about half-past eleven, as Jack

Hall, the chimney sweep, winds his sad way in Newgate cart, his coffin

before him, and the ordinary with his book and nosegay by his side,

towards St. Giles’s Pound, and the ultimate bourne, Tyburn. Jack Hall

has a nosegay, too, and wears a white ribbon in his hat to announce his

innocence. The fellow has committed a hundred robberies. And Jack Hall is

very far gone in burnt brandy. Hogarth marks—does not forget him. Jack

Hall—who seems to have been a kind of mediocre Jack Sheppard, although

his escape from Newgate was well-nigh as dexterous, and quite as bold as

the prison-breaking feat of the arch rascal, Blueskin’s friend—will soon

reappear in one of the first of the Hogarthian squibs; and the dismal

procession to Tyburn will form the _dénoûment_ to the lamentable career

of Tom Idle.

Hogarth must have become _poco a poco_ saturated with such impressions

of street life. From 1730 the tide of reproduction sets in without

cessation; but I strive to catch and to retain the fleeting image of this

dead London, and it baulks and mocks me:—the sham bail, “duffers” and

“mounters,” skulking with straws in their shoes about Westminster Hall;

the law offices in Chancery Lane and the “devil’s gap” between Great

Queen Street and Lincoln’s Inn Fields; the Templars, the moot-men, and

those who are keeping their terms in Lincoln’s and Gray’s Inn, dining in

their halls at noon, eating off wooden trenchers, drinking from green

earthenware jugs, and summoned to commons by horn-blow;—the furious

stockjobbers at Jonathan’s and Garraway’s, at the sign of the “Fifteen

Shillings,” and in Threadneedle Row; the fine ladies buying perfumery

at the “Civet Cat,” in Shire Lane, by Temple Bar—perfumery, now-a-days,

is much wanted in that unsavoury _locale_; the Jacobite ballad-singers

growling sedition in Seven Dials; the Hanoverian troubadours crooning,

on their side, worn-out scandal touching “Italian Molly” (James the

Second’s Mary of Modena) and “St. James’s warming-pan” in the most

frequented streets; riots and tumults, spy-hunting, foreigner mobbing, of

not unfrequent occurrence, all over the town;—gangs of riotous soldiers

crowding about Marlborough House, and casting shirts into the great

duke’s garden, that his grace may see of what rascally stuff—filthy

dowlas instead of good calico—the contractors have made them. Alas! a

wheezing, drivelling, almost idiotic dotard is all that remains of the

great duke, all that is left of John Churchill. He had just strength

enough at the Bath the season before to crawl home in the dark night,

in order to avoid the expense of a chair. There are fights in the

streets, and skirmishes on the river, where revenue cutters, custom-house

jerkers, and the “Tartar pink,” make retributive raids on the fresh-water

pirates: light and heavy horsemen, cope-men, scuffle-hunters, lumpers,

and game-watermen. There are salt-water as well as fresh-water thieves;

and a notable show of the period is the execution of a pirate, and his

hanging in chains at Execution dock. All which notwithstanding, it is a

consolation to learn that “Captain Hunt, of the _Delight_,” is tried at

Justice Hall for piracy, and “honourably acquitted.” I know not why, but

I rejoice at the captain’s escape. He seems a bold, dashing spirit; and,

when captured, was “drinking orvietan with a horse-officer.” But when I

come to reperuse the evidence adduced on the trial, I confess that the

weight of testimony bears strongly against Captain Hunt, and that in

reality it would seem that he _did_ scuttle the “_Protestant Betsey_,”

cause the boatswain and “one Skeggs, a chaplain, transporting himself to

the plantations”—at the request of a judge and jury, I wonder?—to walk

the plank, and did also carbonado the captain with lighted matches and

Burgundy pitch, prior to blowing his (the captain’s) brains out. Hunt

goes free, but pirates are cast, and sometimes swing. Hogarth notes,

comments on, remembers them. The gibbeted corsairs by the river’s side

shall find a place in the third chapter of the history of Thomas Idle.

So wags the world in 1720. Hogarth practising on copper in the intervals

of arms and crest engraving, and hearing of Thornhill and Laguerre’s

staircase-and-ceiling-painting renown, inwardly longing to be a Painter.

Sir George Thorold is lord mayor. Comet Halley is astronomer royal, vice

Flamsteed, deceased the preceding year. Clement XI. is dying, and the

Jews of Ferrara deny that they have sacrificed a child at Easter, _à la_

Hugh of Lincoln. The great King Louis is dead, and a child reigns in

his stead. The Regent and the Abbé Dubois are making history one long

scandal in Paris. Bernard Lens is miniature painter to the king, in lieu

of Benjamin Acland, dead. Mr. Colley Cibber’s works are printed on royal

paper. Sheffield, Duke of Bucks, erects a plain tablet to the memory of

John Dryden in Westminster Abbey: his own name in very large letters,

Dryden’s in more moderately-sized capitals. Madam Crisp sets a lieutenant

to kill a black man, who has stolen her lapdog. Captain Dawson bullies

half the world, and half the world bullies Captain Dawson: and bullies or

is so bullied still to this day.

In disjointed language, but with a very earnest purpose, I have

endeavoured to trace our painter’s Prelude,—the growth of his artistic

mind, the ripening of his perceptive faculties under the influence of

the life he saw. Now, for the operation of observation, distilled in

the retort of his quaint humour. I record the work he did; and first,

in 1720, mention “four drawings in Indian ink” of the characters at

Button’s coffee-house.[7] In these were sketches of Arbuthnot, Addison,

Pope (as it is conjectured), and a certain Count Viviani, identified

years afterwards by Horace Walpole, when the drawings came under his

notice. They subsequently came into Ireland’s possession. Next Hogarth

executed an etching, whose subject was of more national importance. In

1720-21, as all men know, England went mad, and was drawn, jumping for

joy, into the Maëlstrom of the South Sea bubble. France had been already

desperately insane, in 1719, and Philip, the Regent, with John Law of

Lauriston, the Edinburgh silversmith’s son, who had been rake, bully, and

soldier, and had stood his trial for killing Beau Wilson in a duel, had

between them gotten up a remarkable mammon-saturnalia in the Palais Royal

and the Rue Quincampoix. Law lived _en prince_ in the Place Vendôme.

They show the window now whence he used to look down upon his dupes. He

died, a few years after the bursting of his bubble, a miserable bankrupt

adventurer at Venice. And yet there really was something tangible in

his schemes, wild as they were. The credit of the Royal Bank averted

a national bankruptcy in France, and some substantial advantage might

have been derived from the Mississippi trade. At all events, there

actually was such a place as Louisiana. In this country, the geographical

actualities were very little consulted. The English South Sea scheme

was a swindle, _pur et simple_. Almost everybody in the country caught

this cholera-morbus of avarice. Pope dabbled in S. S. S. (South Sea

Stock): Lady Mary Wortley Montague was accused of cheating Ruremonde, the

French wit, out of 500_l._ worth of stock. Ladies laid aside ombre and

basset to haunt ’Change Alley. Gay “stood to win” enormous sums—at one

time imagined himself, as did Pope also, to be the “lord of thousands,”

but characteristically refused to follow a friend’s advice to realize

at least sufficient to secure himself a “clean shirt and a shoulder of

mutton every day for life.” He persisted in holding, and lost all. Mr.

Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was deeply implicated in S.

S. S. transactions, as were also many peers and members of parliament.

The amiable and accomplished Craggs, the postmaster-general, the friend

of all the wits, and for whose tomb Pope wrote so touching an epitaph,

tarnished his reputation indelibly by unscrupulous jobbery. He died of

the small-pox, just in time to avoid disgrace and ruin; but his poor

old father was sold up, and was borne to the grave shortly afterward,

broken-hearted. Lord Stanhope ruptured a blood-vessel in replying to a

furious speech of the Duke of Wharton (who lived a profligate and died

a monk) against S. S., and did not long survive. Samuel Chandler, the

eminent Nonconformist divine, was ruined, and had to keep a book-stall

for bread. Hudson, known as “Tom of Ten Thousand,” went stark mad, and

moved about ’Change just as the “Woman in Black” and the “Woman in

White” (the son of the one, and the brother of the other were hanged for

forgery), used to haunt the avenues of the Bank of England. The South

Sea Company bribed the Government, bribed the two Houses, and bribed

the Court ladies, both of fair and of light fame. Erengard Melusina

Schuylenberg, Princess von Eberstein, Duchess of Munster (1715), and

Duchess of Kendal (1729)—Hogarth engraved the High Dutch hussey’s

arms—the Countess of Platen, and her two nieces, and Lady Sunderland,

with Craggs and Aislabie, got the major part of the fictitious stock of

574,000_l._ created by the company. The stock rose to thirteen hundred

and fifty pounds premium! Beggars on horseback tore through the streets.

There were S. S. coaches with _Auri sacra fames_ painted on the panels.

Hundreds of companies were projected, and “took the town” immensely.

Steele’s (Sir Richard’s) Fishpool Company, for bringing the finny

denizens of the deep by sea to London—Puckle’s Defence Gun—the Bottomree,

the Coral-fishery, the Wreck-fishing companies, were highly spoken of.

Stogden’s remittances created great excitement in the market. There

were companies for insurance against bad servants, against thefts and

robberies, against fire and shipwreck. There were companies for importing

jack-asses from Spain (coals to Newcastle!); for trading in human hair

(started by a clergyman); for fattening pigs; for making pantiles,

Joppa and Castile soap; for manufacturing lutestring; “for the wheel of

a perpetual motion;” and for extracting stearine from sunflower-seed.

There were Dutch bubbles, and oil bubbles, and water bubbles—bubbles of

timber, and bubbles of glass. There were the “sail cloth,” or “Globe

permits”—mere cards with the seal of the “Globe” tavern impressed on

them, and “permitting” the fortunate holders to acquire shares at some

indefinite period in some misty sailcloth factory. These sold for sixty

guineas a piece. There was Jezreel Jones’s trade to Barbary, too, for

which the permits could not be sold fast enough. Welsh copper and York

Buildings’ shares rose to cent. per cent. premium. Sir John Blunt, the

scrivener, rose from a mean estate to prodigious wealth, prospered, and

“whale directors ate up all.” There was an S. S. literature—an S. S.

anthology.

“Meantime, secure on Garrway’s cliffs,

A savage race, by shipwreck fed,

Lie waiting for the founder’d skiffs,

And strip the bodies of the dead.”

Pshaw! have we not Mr. Ward’s capital picture in the Vernon collection,

and hundreds of pamphlets on S. S. in the British Museum? The end came,

and was, of course, irrevocable and immortal smash. Ithuriel’s spear,

in the shape of a _scire facias_ in the _London Gazette_, pierced this

foully iridescent bubble through and through, producing precisely the

same effect as the publication of Mr. Sparkman’s inexorable railway

statistics in a supplement to _The Times_ newspaper, A.D. 1845. The city

woke up one morning and found itself ruined. The Sword-blade company went

bankrupt. Knight, the S.S. cashier, fled, but was captured at Tirlemont

in Flanders, at the instance of the British resident in Brussels, and

thrown into the citadel of Antwerp, from which he presently managed

to escape. In an age when almost every one had committed more or less

heinous acts of roguery, great sympathy was evinced for rogues. At home,

however, there were some thoughts of vengeance. Honest men began, for

the first time these many months, to show their heads, and talked of

Nemesis and Newgate. Aislabie resigned. The end of the Craggses you have

heard. Parliament-men were impeached and expelled the House. Patriots

inveighed against the injuries which corrupt ministers may inflict

on the sovereigns they serve, and quoted the history of Claudian and

Sejanus. The directors—such as had not vanished—were examined by secret

committees, and what effects of theirs could be laid hold of were

confiscated for the benefit of the thousands of innocent sufferers. I

have waded through many hundred pages of the parliamentary reports of

the period, and have remarked, with a grim chuckle, the similarities of

swindling between this fraud and later ones. Cooked accounts, torn-out

leaves, erasures, _and a small green ledger with a brass lock_—these

are among the flowers of evidence strewn on the heads of the secret

committees. Knight took the key away with him, forgetting the ledger, I

presume. The lock was forced, and there came floating out a bubble of

fictitious stock. The old story, gentles and simples. “_Comme Charles

Dix, comme Charles Dix_,” muttered wretched, wigless, Smithified old

Louis Philippe, as he fled in a _fiacre_ from the Tuileries in ’48; and

this S.S. swindle of 1720 was only “_Comme Charles Dix_,”—the elder

brother of 1825 and 1845 manias, of Milk Companies, Washing Companies,

Poyais Loans, Ball’s Pond Railways, Great Diddlesex Junctions, Borough,

British, and Eastern Banks, and other thieveries which this age has seen.

Did William Hogarth hold any stock? Did he ever bid for a “Globe permit?”

Did he hanker after human hair? Did he cast covetous eyes towards the

gigantic jack-asses of Iberia? _Ignoramus_: but we know at least that

he made a dash at the bubble with his sharp pencil. In 1721 appeared an

etching of _The South Sea, an Allegory_. It was sold at the price of

one shilling by Mrs. Chilcot, in Westminster Hall, and B. Caldwell, in

Newgate Street. The allegory is laboured, but there is a humorous element

diffused throughout the work. The comparatively mechanical nature of the

pursuits from which Hogarth was but just emancipated shows itself in the

careful drawing of the architecture and the comparative insignificance

of the figures. The Enemy of mankind is cutting Fortune into collops

before a craving audience of rich and poor speculators. There is a huge

“roundabout,” with “who’ll ride?” as a legend, and a throng of people of

all degrees revolving on their wooden hobbies. In the foreground a wretch

is being broken on the wheel—perhaps a reminiscence of the terrible fate

of Count Horn, in Paris. L. H., a ruffian, is scourging a poor fellow who

is turning his great toes up in agony. These are to represent Honour and

Honesty punished by Interest and Villany. In the background widows and

spinsters are crowding up a staircase to a “raffle for husbands,” and

in the right-hand corner a Jewish high-priest, a Catholic priest, and

a Dissenting minister, are gambling with frenzied avidity. Near them a

poor, miserable starveling lies a-dying, and to the left there looms a

huge pillar, with this inscription on the base—“This monument was erected

in memory of the destruction of the city by South Sea, 1720.” It is to

be observed that the figure of the demon hacking at Fortune, and the

lame swash buckler, half baboon, half imp, that keeps guard over the

flagellated man, are copied, pretty literally, from Callot.

You know that I incline towards coincidences. It is surely a not

unremarkable one that Callot, a Hogarthian man in many aspects, but more

inclined towards the grotesque-terrible than to the humorous-observant,

should have been also in his youth a martyr to heraldry. His father was

a grave, dusty old king-at-arms, in the service of the Duke of Lorraine,

at Nancy. He believed heraldry, next to alchemy, to be the most glorious

science in the world, and would fain have had his son devote himself to

tabard and escocheon work; but the boy, after many unavailing efforts to

wrestle with these Ephesian wild beasts, with their impossible attitudes

and preposterous proportions, fairly ran away and turned gipsy, stroller,

beggar, picaroon—all kinds of wild Bohemian things. Had Hogarth been a

French boy, he, too, might have run away from Ellis Gamble’s griffins

and gargoyles. He must have been a great admirer of Callot, and have

studied his works attentively, as one can see, not only from this South

Sea plate, but from many of the earlier Hogarthian performances, in

which, not quite trusting himself yet to run alone, he has had recourse

to the Lorrain’s strong arm. Many other sympathetic traits are to be

found in the worthy pair. In both a little too much swagger and proneness

to denounce things that might have had some little sincerity in them.

The one a thorough foreigner, the other as thorough a foreigner. The

herald’s son of Nancy was always “the noble Jacques Callot;” the heraldic

engraver’s apprentice of Cranbourn Alley was, I wince to learn, sometimes

called “Bill Hogarth.”

One of Hogarth’s earliest employers was a Mr. Bowles, at the “Black

Horse in Cornhill,” who is stated to have bought his etched works by

weight—at the munificent rate of half-a-crown a pound. This is the same

Mr. Bowles who, when Major the engraver was going to France to study, and

wished to dispose of some landscapes he had engraved that he might raise

something in aid of his travelling expenses, offered him a bright, new,

burnished, untouched copper-plate for every engraved one he had by him.

This Black Horse Bowles, if the story be true, must have been ancestor

to the theatrical manager who asked the author _how much he would give

him_ if he produced his five-act tragedy; but I am inclined to think the

anecdote a bit of gossip _tant soit peu_ spiteful of the eldest Nicholls.

Moreover, the offer is stated to have been made “over a bottle.” ’Twas

under the same incentive to liberality that an early patron of the

present writer once pressed him to write “a good poem, in the Byron

style—you know,” and offered him a guinea for it, down. Copper, fit for

engraving purposes, was at least two shillings a pound in Bowles’s time.

The half-crown legend, then, may be apocryphal; although we have some odd

records of the mode of payment for art and letters in those days, and in

the preceding time:—Thornhill painting Greenwich Hall for forty shillings

the Flemish ell; Dryden contracting with Left-legged Jacob to write so

many thousand lines for so many unclipped pieces of money; and Milton

selling the manuscript of _Paradise Lost_ to Samuel Simmons for five

pounds.

Mr. Philip Overton at the Golden Buck, over against St. Dunstan’s Church,

in Fleet Street, also published Hogarth’s early plates. He was the

purchaser, too, but not yet, of the eighteen illustrations to _Hudibras_.

Ere these appeared, W. H. etched the _Taste of the Town_, the _Small

Masquerade Ticket_; the _Lottery_—a very confused and obscure allegory,

perhaps a sly parody on one of Laguerre or Thornhill’s floundering

pictorial parables. Fortune and Wantonness are drawing lucky numbers,

Fraud tempts Despair, Sloth hides his head behind a curtain; all very

interesting probably at the time, from the number of contemporary

portraits the plate may have contained, but almost inexplicable and

thoroughly uninteresting to us now. The _Taste of the Town_, which is

otherwise the _first_ Burlington Gate satire (not the Pope and Chandos

one) created a sensation, and its author paid the first per-centage on

notoriety, by seeing his work pirated by the varlets who did for art that

which Edmund Curll, bookseller and scoundrel, did for literature.

[Illustration]

_Burlington Gate_, No. 1, was published in 1723. Hogarth seems to have

admired Lord Burlington’s love for art, though he might have paid him

a better compliment than to have placarded the gate of his palace with

an orthographical blunder. There is in the engraving “accademy” for

academy. The execution is far superior to that of the _South Sea_, and

the figures are drawn with much _verve_ and decision. In the centre stand

three little figures, said to represent Lord Burlington, Campbell, the

architect, and his lordship’s “postilion.” This is evidently a blunder

on the part of the first commentator. The figure is in cocked hat,

wide cuffs, and buckled shoes, and is no more like a postilion than I

to Hercules. Is it the earl’s “poet,” and not his “postilion,” that is

meant? To the right (using showman’s language), sentinels in the peaked

shakoes of the time, and with oh! such clumsy, big-stocked brown-besses

in their hands, guard the entrance to the fane where the pantomime of

_Doctor Faustus_ is being performed. From the balcony above Harlequin

looks out. _Faustus_ was first brought out at the theatre, Lincoln’s Inn

Fields, in ’23. It had so prodigious a run, and came into such vogue,

that after much grumbling about the “legitimate” and invocations of

“Ben Jonson’s ghost” (Hogarth calls him Ben Johnson), the rival Covent

Garden managers were compelled to follow suit, and in ’25 came out with

their _Doctor Faustus_—a kind of saraband of infernal persons contrived

by Thurmond the dancing-master. He, too, was the deviser of “_Harleykin

Sheppard_” (or Shepherd), in which the dauntless thief who escaped from

the Middle Stone-room at Newgate in so remarkable a manner received a

pantomimic apotheosis. Quick-witted Hogarth satirized this felony-mania

in the caricature of Wilks, Booth, and Cibber, conjuring up “Scaramouch

Jack Hall.” To return to Burlington Gate. In the centre, Shakspeare and

Jonson’s works are being carted away for waste paper. To the left you see

a huge projecting sign or show-cloth, containing portraits of his sacred

Majesty George the Second in the act of presenting the management of the

Italian Opera with one thousand pounds; also of the famous Mordaunt Earl

of Peterborough and sometime general of the armies in Spain. He kneels,

and in the handsomest manner, to Signora Cuzzoni the singer, saying

(in a long apothecary’s label), “Please accept eight thousand pounds!”

but the Cuzzoni spurns at him. Beneath is the entrance to the Opera.

Infernal persons with very long tails are entering thereto with joyful

countenances. The infernal persons are unmistakeable reminiscences of

Callot’s demons in the _Tentation de St. Antoine_. There is likewise a

placard relating to “Faux’s Long-room,” and his “dexterity of hand.”

In 1724, Hogarth produced another allegory called the _Inhabitants of

the Moon_, in which there are some covert and not very complimentary

allusions to the “dummy” character of royalty, and a whimsical fancy of

inanimate objects, songs, hammers, pieces of money, and the like, being

built up into imitation of human beings, all very ingeniously worked out.

By this time, Hogarth, too, had begun to work, not only for the ephemeral

pictorial squib-vendors of Westminster Hall—those squibs came in with

him, culminated in Gillray, and went out with H. B.; or were rather

absorbed and amalgamated into the admirable _Punch_ cartoons of Mr.

Leech—but also for the regular booksellers. For Aubry de la Mottraye’s

_Travels_ (a dull, pretentious book) he executed some engravings, among

which I note _A woman of Smyrna in the habit of the country_—the woman’s

face very graceful, and the _Dance_, the Pyrrhic dance of the Greek

islands, and the oddest fandango that ever was seen. One commentator

says that the term “as merry as a grig” came from the fondness of the

inhabitants of those isles of eternal summer for dancing, and that it

should be properly “as merry as a Greek.” _Quien sabe?_ I know that

lately in the Sessions papers I stumbled over the examination of one

Levi Solomon, _alias_ Cockleput, who stated that he lived in Sweet Apple

Court, and that he “went a-grigging for his living.” I have no _Lexicon

Balatronicum_ at hand; but from early researches into the vocabulary

of the “High Mung” I have an indistinct impression that “griggers”

were agile vagabonds who danced, and went through elementary feats of

posture-mastery in taverns.

In ’24, Hogarth illustrated a translation of the _Golden Ass of

Apuleius_. The plates are coarse and clumsy; show no humour; were mere

pot-boilers, _gagne-pains_, thrusts with the burin at the wolf looking

in at the Hogarthian door, I imagine. Then came five frontispieces

for a translation of _Cassandra_. These I have not seen. Then fifteen

head-pieces for Beaver’s _Military Punishments of the Ancients_, narrow

little slips full of figures in chiaroscuro, many drawn from Callot’s

curious martyrology, _Les Saincts et Sainctes de l’Année_, about

three hundred graphic illustrations of human torture! There was also

a frontispiece to the _Happy Ascetic_, and one to the Oxford squib of

_Terræ Filius_, in 1724, but of the joyous recluse in question I have no

cognizance.

In 1722 (you see I am wandering up and down the years as well as the

streets), London saw a show—and Hogarth doubtless was there to see—which

merits some lines of mention. The drivelling, avaricious dotard, who,

crossing a room and looking at himself in a mirror, sighed and mumbled,

“That was once a man:”—this poor wreck of mortality died, and became

in an instant, and once more, John the great Duke of Marlborough. On

the 9th of August, 1722, he was buried with extraordinary pomp in

Westminster Abbey. The saloons of Marlborough House, where the corpse

lay in state, were hung with fine black cloth, and garnished with bays

and cypress. In the death-chamber was a chair of state surmounted by a

“majesty scutcheon.” The coffin was on a bed of state, covered with a

“fine holland sheet,” over that a complete suit of armour, gilt, _but

empty_. Twenty years before, there would have been a waxen image in

the dead man’s likeness within the armour, but this hideous fantasy of

Tussaud-tombstone effigies had in 1722 fallen into desuetude.[8] The

garter was buckled round the steel leg of this suit of war-harness; one

listless gauntlet held a general’s truncheon; above the vacuous helmet

with its unstirred plumes was the cap of a Prince of the Empire. The

procession, lengthy and splendid, passed from Marlborough House through

St. James’s Park to Hyde Park Corner, then through Piccadilly, down

St. James’s Street, along Pall Mall, and by King Street, Westminster,

to the Abbey. Fifteen pieces of cannon rambled in this show. Chelsea

pensioners, to the number of the years of the age of the deceased,

preceded the car. The colours were wreathed in crape and cypress. Guidon

was there, and the great standard, and many bannerols and achievements

of arms. “The mourning horse with trophies and plumades” was gorgeous.

There was a horse of state and a mourning horse, sadly led by the dead

duke’s equerries. And pray note: the minutest details of the procession

were copied from the programme of the Duke of Albemarle’s funeral

(Monk); which, again, was a copy of Oliver Cromwell’s—which, again,

was a reproduction, on a more splendid scale, of the obsequies of Sir

Philip Sidney, killed at Zutphen. Who among us saw not the great scarlet

and black show of 1852, the funeral of the Duke of Wellington? Don’t

you remember the eighty-four tottering old Pensioners, corresponding

in number with the years of our heroic brother departed? When gentle

Philip Sidney was borne to the tomb, _thirty-one_ poor men followed the

hearse. The brave soldier, the gallant gentleman, the ripe scholar, the

accomplished writer was so young. Arthur and Philip! And so century

shakes hand with century, and the new is ever old, and the last novelty

is the earliest fashion, and old Egypt leers from a glass-case, or a four

thousand year old fresco, and whispers to Sir Plume, “I, too, wore a

curled periwig, and used tweezers to remove superfluous hairs.”

In 1726, Hogarth executed a series of plates for _Blackwell’s Military

Figures_, representing the drill and manœuvres of the Honourable

Artillery Company. The pike and half-pike exercise are very carefully

and curiously illustrated; the figures evidently drawn from life;

the attitudes very easy. The young man was improving in his drawing;

for in 1724, Thornhill had started an academy for studying from

the round and from life at his own house, in Covent Garden Piazza;

and Hogarth—who himself tells us that his head was filled with the

paintings at Greenwich and St. Paul’s, and to whose utmost ambition of

scratching copper, there was now probably added the secret longing to

be a historico-allegorico-scriptural painter I have hinted at, and who

hoped some day to make Angels sprawl on coved ceilings, and Fames blast

their trumpets on grand staircases—was one of the earliest students at

the academy of the king’s sergeant painter, and member of parliament

for Weymouth. Already William had ventured an opinion, _bien tranchée_,

on high art. In those days there flourished—yes, flourished is the

word—a now forgotten celebrity, Kent the architect, gardener, painter,

decorator, upholsterer, friend of the great, and a hundred things

besides. This artistic jack-of-all-trades became so outrageously popular,

and gained such a reputation for taste—if a man have strong lungs,

and persists in crying out that he is a genius, the public are sure

to believe him at last—that he was consulted on almost every tasteful

topic, and was teased to furnish designs for the most incongruous

objects. He was consulted for picture-frames, drinking-glasses, barges,

dining-room tables, garden-chairs, cradles, and birth-day gowns. One lady

he dressed in a petticoat ornamented with columns of the five orders;

to another he prescribed a copper-coloured skirt, with gold ornaments.

The man was at best but a wretched sciolist; but he for a long period

directed the “taste of the town.” He had at last the presumption to

paint an altar-piece for the church of St. Clement Danes. The worthy

parishioners, men of no taste at all, burst into a yell of derision and

horror at this astounding _croûte_. Forthwith, irreverent young Mr.

Hogarth lunged full butt with his graver at the daub. He produced an

engraving of _Kent’s Masterpiece_, which was generally considered to be

an unmerciful caricature; but which he himself declared to be an accurate

representation of the picture. ’Twas the first declaration of his _guerra

al cuchillo_ against the connoisseurs. The caricature, or copy, whichever

it was, made a noise; the tasteless parishioners grew more vehement, and,

at last, Gibson, Bishop of London (whose brother, by the way, had paid

his first visit to London in the company of Dominie Hogarth), interfered,

and ordered the removal of the obnoxious canvas. “Kent’s masterpiece”

subsided into an ornament for a tavern-room. For many years it was to be

seen (together with the landlord’s portrait, I presume) at the “Crown

and Anchor,” in the Strand. Then it disappeared, and faded away from the

visible things extant.

With another bookseller’s commission, I arrive at another halting-place

in the career of William Hogarth. In 1726-7 appeared his eighteen

illustrations to Butler’s _Hudibras_. They are of considerable size,

broadly and vigorously executed, and display a liberal instalment of

the _vis comica_, of which William was subsequently to be so lavish.

Ralpho is smug and sanctified to a nicety. Hudibras is a marvellously

droll-looking figure, but he is not human, is generally execrably drawn,

and has a head preternaturally small, and so pressed down between

the clavicles, that you might imagine him to be of the family of the

anthropophagi, whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. There is a

rare constable, the perfection of Dogberryism-_cum_-Bumbledom, in the

tableau of Hudibras in the stocks. The widow is graceful and beautiful

to look at. Unlike Wilkie, Hogarth _could_ draw pretty women;[9] the

rogue who chucks the widow’s attendant under the chin is incomparable,

and Trulla is a most truculent brimstone. The “committee” is a character

full study of sour faces. The procession of the “Skimmington” is full of

life and animation; and the concluding tableau, “Burning rumps at Temple

Bar,” is a wondrous street-scene, worthy of the ripe Hogarthian epoch

of _The Progresses_, _The Election_, _Beer Street_ and _Gin Lane_. This

edition of Butler’s immortal satire had a great run; and the artist often

regretted that he had parted absolutely, and at once, with his property

in the plates.

So now then, William Hogarth, we part once more, but soon to meet again.

Next shall the moderns know thee—student at Thornhill’s Academy—as a

painter as well as an engraver. A philosopher—_quoique tu n’en doutais

guère_—thou hast been all along.

FOOTNOTES

[2] To me there is something candid, naïve, and often something

noble in this personal consciousness and confidence, this moderate

self-trumpeting. “_Questi sono miri!_” cried Napoleon, when, at the

sack of Milan, the MS. treatises of Leonardo da Vinci were discovered;

and he bore them in triumph to his hotel, suffering no meaner hand to

touch them. _He_ knew—the Conquering Thinker—that he alone was worthy

to possess those priceless papers. So too, Honoré de Balzac calmly

remarking that there were only three men in France who could speak French

correctly: himself, Victor Hugo, and “Théophile” (T. Gautier). So, too,

Elliston, when the little ballet-girl complained of having been hissed:

“They have hissed _me_,” said the awful manager, and the dancing girl

was dumb. Who can forget the words that Milton wrote concerning things

of his “that posteritie would not willingly let die?” and that Bacon

left, commending his fame to “foreign nations and to the next age?” And

Turner, simply directing in his will that he should be buried in St.

Paul’s Cathedral? That sepulchre, the painter knew, was his of right. And

innocent Gainsborough, dying: “We are all going to heaven, and Vandyke is

of the company.” And Fontenelle, calmly expiring at a hundred years of

age: “_Je n’ai jamais dit la moindre chose centre la plus petite vertu._”

’Tis true, that my specious little argument falls dolefully to the ground

when I remember that which the wisest man who ever lived said concerning

a child gathering shells and pebbles on the sea-shore, when the great

ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before him.

[3] The bezant (from Byzantium) was a round knob on the scutcheon,

blazoned yellow. “Golp” was purple, _the colour of an old black eye_, so

defined by the heralds. “Sanguine” or “guzes” were to be congested red,

like bloodshot eyes; “torteaux” were of another kind of red, like “Simnel

cakes.” “Pomeis” were to be green like apples. “Tawny” was orange. There

were also “hurts” to be blazoned blue, as bruises are.—_New View of

London_, 1712.

[4] I believe Pope’s sneer against poor Elkanah Settle (who died very

comfortably in the Charterhouse, 1724, ætat. 76: he was alive in 1720,

and succeeded Rowe as laureate), that he was reduced in his latter days

to compass a motion of St. George and the Dragon at Bartholomew fair, and

himself enacted the dragon in a peculiar suit of green leather, his own

invention, to have been a purely malicious and mendacious bit of spite.

Moreover, Settle died years after Pope assumed him to have expired.

[5] 1720. The horrible room in Newgate Prison where in cauldrons of

boiling pitch the hangman seethed the dissevered limbs of those executed

for high treason, and whose quarters were to be exposed, was called “Jack

Ketch’s kitchen.”

[6] Compare these voluntary torments with the description of the _Dosèh_,

or horse-trampling ceremonial of the Sheik El Bekree, over the bodies of

the faithful, in Lane’s _Modern Egyptians_.

[7] Daniel Button’s well-known coffee-house was on the south side of

Russell Street, Covent Garden, nearly opposite Tom’s. Button had been a

servant of the Countess of Warwick, and so was patronized by her spouse,

the Right Hon. Joseph Addison. Sir Robert Walpole’s creature, Giles

Earl, a trading justice of the peace (compare Fielding and “300_l._ a

year of the dirtiest money in the world”) used to examine criminals,

for the amusement of the company, in the public room at Button’s. Here,

too, was a lion’s head letter-box, into which communications for the

_Guardian_ were dropped. At Button’s, Pope is reported to have said of

Patrick, the lexicographer, who made pretensions to criticism, that “a

dictionary-maker might know the meaning of one word, but not of two put

together.”

[8] Not, however, to forget that another Duchess, Marlborough’s daughter,

who loved Congreve so, had after his death a waxen image made in his

effigy, and used to weep over it, and anoint the gouty feet.

[9] “They said he could not colour,” said old Mrs. Hogarth one day to

John Thomas Smith, showing him a sketch of a girl’s head. “It’s a lie;

look there: there’s flesh and blood for you, my man.”

Studies in Animal Life.

“Authentic tidings of invisible things;—

Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power,

And central peace subsisting at the heart

Of endless agitation.”—THE EXCURSION.

CHAPTER IV.

An extinct animal recognized by its tooth: how came this

to be possible?—The task of classification.—Artificial and

natural methods.—Linnæus, and his baptism of the animal

kingdom: his scheme of classification.—What is there underlying

all true classification?—The chief groups.—What is a

species?—Re-statement of the question respecting the fixity or

variability of species.—The two hypotheses.—Illustration drawn

from the Romance languages.—Caution to disputants.

I was one day talking with Professor Owen in the Hunterian Museum, when

a gentleman approached with a request to be informed respecting the

nature of a curious fossil, which had been dug up by one of his workmen.

As he drew the fossil from a small bag, and was about to hand it for

examination, Owen quietly remarked:—“That is the third molar of the

under-jaw of an extinct species of rhinoceros.” The astonishment of the

gentleman at this precise and confident description of the fossil, before

even it had quitted his hands, was doubtless very great. I know that mine

was; until the reflection occurred that if some one, little acquainted

with editions, had drawn a volume from his pocket, declaring he had found

it in an old chest, any bibliophile would have been able to say at a

glance: “That is an Elzevir;” or, “That is one of the Tauchnitz classics,

stereotyped at Leipzig.” Owen is as familiar with the aspect of the

teeth of animals, living and extinct, as a student is with the aspect of

editions. Yet before that knowledge could have been acquired, before he

could say thus confidently that the tooth belonged to an extinct species

of rhinoceros, the united labours of thousands of diligent inquirers must

have been directed to the classification of animals. How could he know

that the rhinoceros was of that particular species rather than another?

and what is meant by species? To trace the history of this confidence

would be to tell the long story of zoological investigation: a story

too long for narration here, though we may pause awhile to consider its

difficulties.

To make a classified catalogue of the books in the British Museum would

be a gigantic task; but imagine what that task would be if all the

title-pages and other external indications were destroyed! The first

attempts would necessarily be of a rough approximative kind, merely

endeavouring to make a sort of provisional order amid the chaos, after

which succeeding labours might introduce better and better arrangements.

The books might first be grouped according to size; but having got them

together, it would soon be discovered that size was no indication of

their contents: quarto poems and duodecimo histories, octavo grammars

and folio dictionaries, would immediately give warning that some other

arrangement was needed. Nor would it be better to separate the books

according to the languages in which they were written. The presence or

absence of “illustrations” would furnish no better guide; while the

bindings would soon be found to follow no rule. Indeed, one by one all

the external characters would prove unsatisfactory, and the labourers

would finally have to decide upon some internal characters. Having read

enough of each book to ascertain whether it was poetry or prose: and

if poetry, whether dramatic, epic, lyric, or satiric; and if prose,

whether history, philosophy, theology, philology, science, fiction, or

essay: a rough classification could be made; but even then there would

be many difficulties, such as where to place a work on the philosophy

of history—or the history of science,—or theology under the guise of

science—or essays on very different subjects; while some works would defy

classification.

Gigantic as this labour would be, it would be trifling compared with

the labour of classifying all the animals now living (not to mention

extinct species), so that the place of any one might be securely and

rapidly determined; yet the persistent zeal and sagacity of zoologists

have done for the animal kingdom what has not yet been done for the

library of the Museum, although the titles of the books are not absent.

It has been done by patient _reading_ of the contents—by anatomical

investigation of the internal structure of animals. Except on a basis of

comparative anatomy, there could have been no better a classification

of animals than a classification of books according to size, language,

binding, &c. An unscientific Pliny might group animals according to their

habitat; but when it was known that whales, though living in the water

and swimming like fishes, were in reality constructed like air-breathing

quadrupeds—when it was known that animals differing so widely as bees,

birds, bats, and flying squirrels, or as otters, seals, and cuttle-fish,

lived together in the same element, it became obvious that such a

principle of arrangement could lead to no practical result. Nor would

it suffice to class animals according to their modes of feeding; since

in all classes there are samples of each mode. Equally unsatisfactory

would be external form—the seal and the whale resembling fishes, the worm

resembling the eel, and the eel the serpent.

Two things were necessary: first, that the structure of various animals

should be minutely studied, and described—which is equivalent to reading

the books to be classified;—and secondly, that some artificial method

should be devised of so arranging the immense mass of details as to

enable them to be remembered, and also to enable fresh discoveries

readily to find a place in the system. We may be perfectly familiar

with the contents of a book, yet wholly at a loss where to place it. If

we have to catalogue Hegel’s _Philosophy of History_, for example, it

becomes a difficult question whether to place it under the rubric of

philosophy, or under that of history. To decide this point, we must have

some system of classification.

In the attempts to construct a system, naturalists are commonly said

to have followed two methods: the artificial and the natural. The

_artificial method_ seizes some one prominent characteristic, and groups

all the individuals together which agree in this one respect. In

Botany the artificial method classes plants according to the organs of

reproduction; but this has been found so very imperfect that it has been

abandoned, and the _natural method_ has been substituted, according to

which the whole structure of the plant determines its place. If flying

were taken as the artificial basis for the grouping of some animals,

we should find insects and birds, bats and flying squirrels, grouped

together; but the natural method, taking into consideration not one

character, but all the essential characters, finds that insects, birds,

and bats differ profoundly in their organization: the insect has wings,

but its wings are not formed like those of the bird, nor are those of the

bird formed like those of the bat. The insect does not breathe by lungs,

like the bird and the bat; it has no internal skeleton, like the bird and

the bat; and the bird, although it has many points in common with the

bat, does not, like it, suckle its young; and thus we may run over the

characters of each organization, and find that the three animals belong

to widely different groups.

It is to Linnæus that we are indebted for the most ingenious and

comprehensive of the many schemes invented for the cataloguing of animal

forms; and modern attempts at classification are only improvements on

the plan he laid down. First we may notice his admirable invention of

the double names. It had been the custom to designate plants and animals

according to some name common to a large group, to which was added a

description more or less characteristic. An idea may be formed of the

necessity of a reform, by conceiving what a laborious and uncertain

process it would be if our friends spoke to us of having seen a dog

in the garden, and on our asking what kind of dog, instead of their

saying “a terrier, a bull-terrier, or a skye-terrier,” they were to

attempt a description of the dog. Something of this kind was the labour

of understanding the nature of an animal from the vague description of

it given by naturalists. Linnæus rebaptized the whole animal kingdom

upon one intelligible principle. He continued to employ the name common

to each group, such as that of _Felis_ for the cats, which became the

_generic_ name; and in lieu of the _description_ which was given of each

different kind, to indicate that it was a lion, a tiger, a leopard, or a

domestic cat, he affixed a _specific_ name: thus the animal bearing the

description of a lion became _Felis leo_; the tiger, _Felis tigris_; the

leopard, _Felis leopardus_; and our domestic friend, _Felis catus_. These

double names, as Vogt remarks, are like the Christian- and sur-names by

which we distinguish the various members of one family; and instead of

speaking of Tomkinson with the flabby face, and Tomkinson with the square

forehead, we simply say John and William Tomkinson.

Linnæus did more than this. He not only fixed definite conceptions

of Species and Genera, but introduced those of Orders and Classes.

Cuvier added Families to Genera, and Sub-kingdoms (_embranchements_) to

Classes. Thus a scheme was elaborated by which the whole animal kingdom

was arranged in subordinate groups: the sub-kingdoms were divided into

classes, the classes into orders, the orders into families, the families

into genera, the genera into species, and the species into varieties.

The guiding principle of anatomical resemblance determined each of these

divisions. Those largest groups, which resemble each other only in having

what is called the typical character in common, are brought together

under the first head. Thus all the groups which agree in possessing a

backbone and internal skeleton, although they differ widely in form,

structure, and habitat, do nevertheless resemble each other more than

they resemble the groups which have no backbone. This great division

having been formed, it is seen to arrange itself in very obvious minor

divisions, or Classes—the mammalia, birds, reptiles, and fishes. All

mammals resemble each other more than they resemble birds; all reptiles

resemble each other more than they resemble fishes (in spite of the

superficial resemblance between serpents and eels or lampreys). Each

Class again falls into the minor groups of Orders; and on the same

principles: the monkeys being obviously distinguished from rodents, and

the carnivora from the ruminating animals; and so of the rest. In each

Order there are generally Families, and the Families fall into Genera,

which differ from each other only in fewer and less important characters.

The Genera include groups which have still fewer differences, and are

called Species; and these again include groups which have only minute and

unimportant differences of colour, size, and the like, and are called

Sub-species, or Varieties.

Whoever looks at the immensity of the animal kingdom, and observes

how intelligibly and systematically it is arranged in these various

divisions, will admit that, however imperfect, the scheme is a

magnificent product of human ingenuity and labour. It is not an

arbitrary arrangement, like the grouping of the stars in constellations;

it expresses, though obscurely, the real order of Nature. All true

Classification should be to forms what laws are to phenomena: the one

reducing varieties to systematic order, as the other reduces phenomena

to their relation of sequence. Now if it be true that the classification

expresses the real order of nature, and not simply the order which we

may find convenient, there will be something more than mere resemblance

indicated in the various groups; or, rather let me say, this resemblance

itself is the consequence of some community in the things compared, and

will therefore be the mark of some deeper cause. What is this cause?

Mr. Darwin holds that “propinquity of descent—the only known cause

of the similarity of organic beings—is the bond, hidden as it is by

various degrees of modification, which is partially revealed to us by

our classifications”[10]—“that the characters which naturalists consider

as showing true affinity between any two or more species are those

which have been inherited from a common parent, and in so far all true

classification is genealogical; that community of descent is the hidden

bond which naturalists have been unconsciously seeking, and not some

unknown plan of creation, or the enunciation of general propositions,

and the mere putting together and separating objects more or less

alike.”[11]

Before proceeding to open the philosophical discussion which inevitably

arises on the mention of Mr. Darwin’s book, I will here set down the

chief groups, according to Cuvier’s classification, for the benefit of

the tyro in natural history, who will easily remember them, and will find

the knowledge constantly invoked.

There are four Sub-kingdoms, or Branches:—1. Vertebrata. 2. Mollusca. 3.

Articulata. 4. Radiata.

The VERTEBRATA consist of four classes:—Mammalia, Birds, Reptiles, and

Fishes.

The MOLLUSCA consist of six classes:—Cephalopoda (cuttlefish), Pteropoda,

Gasteropoda (snails, &c.), Acephala (oysters, &c.), Brachiopoda, and

Cirrhopoda (barnacles).—N.B. This last class is now removed from the

Molluscs and placed among the Crustaceans.

The ARTICULATA are composed of four classes:—Annelids (worms), Crustacea

(lobsters, crabs, &c.), Arachnida (spiders), and Insecta.

The RADIATA embrace all the remaining forms; but this group has been so

altered since Cuvier’s time, that I will not burden your memory just now

with an enumeration of the details.

The reader is now in a condition to appreciate the general line of

argument adopted in the discussion of Mr. Darwin’s book, which is at

present exciting very great attention, and which will, at any rate, aid

in general culture by opening to many minds new tracts of thought. The

benefit in this direction is, however, considerably lessened by the

extreme vagueness which is commonly attached to the word “species,” as

well as by the great want of philosophic culture which impoverishes

the majority of our naturalists. I have heard, or read, few arguments

on this subject which have not impressed me with the sense that the

disputants really attached no distinct ideas to many of the phrases they

were uttering. Yet it is obvious that we must first settle what are the

facts grouped together and indicated by the word “species,” before we can

carry on any discussion as to the origin of species. To be battling about

the fixity or variability of species, without having rigorously settled

_what_ species is, can lead to no edifying result.

It is notorious that if you ask even a zoologist, _What_ is a species?

you will almost always find that he has only a very vague answer to give;

and if his answer be precise, it will be the precision of error, and will

vanish into contradictions directly it is examined. The consequence of

this is, that even the ablest zoologists are constantly at variance as to

specific characters, and often cannot agree whether an animal shall be

considered of a new species, or only a variety. There could be no such

disagreements if specific characters were definite: if we knew _what_

species meant, once and for all. Ask a chemist, What is a salt? What

an acid? and his reply will be definite, and uniformly the same: what

he says, all chemists will repeat. Not so the zoologist. Sometimes he

will class two animals as of different species, when they only differ in

colour, in size, or in the numbers of tentacles, &c.; at other times he

will class animals as belonging to the same species, although they differ

in size, colour, shape, instincts, habits, &c. The dog, for example, is

said to be one species with many varieties, or races. But contrast the

pug-dog with the greyhound, the spaniel with the mastiff, the bulldog

with the Newfoundland, the setter with the terrier, the sheepdog with

the pointer: note the striking differences in their structure and their

instincts: and you will find that they differ as widely as some genera,

and as most species. If these varieties inhabited different countries—if

the pug were peculiar to Australia, and the mastiff to Spain—there is

not a naturalist but would class them as of different species. The same

remark applies to pigeons and ducks, oxen and sheep.

The reason of this uncertainty is that the _thing_ Species does not

exist: the term expresses an _abstraction_, like Virtue, or Whiteness;

not a definite concrete reality, which can be separated from other

things, and always be found the same. Nature produces individuals; these

individuals resemble each other in varying degrees; according to their

resemblances we group them together as classes, orders, genera, and

species; but these terms only express the _relations of resemblance_,

they do not indicate the existence of such _things_ as classes, orders,

genera, or species.[12] There is a reality indicated by each term—that

is to say, a real relation; but there is no objective existence of

which we could say, This is variable, This is immutable. Precisely as

there is a real relation indicated by the term Goodness, but there is

no Goodness apart from the virtuous actions and feelings which we group

together under this term. It is true that metaphysicians in past ages

angrily debated respecting the Immutability of Virtue, and had no more

suspicion of their absurdity, than moderns have who debate respecting the

Fixity of Species. Yet no sooner do we understand that Species means a

relation of resemblance between animals, than the question of the Fixity,

or Variability, of Species resolves itself into this: Can there be any

_variation in the resemblances_ of closely allied animals? A question

which would never be asked.

No one has thought of raising the question of the fixity of varieties,

yet it is as legitimate as that of the fixity of species; and we might

also argue for the fixity of genera, orders, classes; the fixity of all

these being implied in the very terms; since no sooner does any departure

from the type present itself, than _by_ that it is excluded from the

category; no sooner does a white object become gray, or yellow, than it

is excluded from the class of white objects. Here, therefore, is a sense

in which the phrase “fixity of species” is indisputable; but in this

sense the phrase has never been disputed. When zoologists have maintained

that species are variable, they have meant that _animal forms are

variable_; and these variations, gradually accumulating, result at last

in such differences as are called specific. Although some zoologists, and

speculators who were not zoologists, have believed that the possibility

of variation is so great that one species may actually be _transmuted_

into another, _i.e._, that an ass may be developed into a horse,—yet most

thinkers are now agreed that such violent changes are impossible; and

that every new form becomes established only through the long and gradual

accumulation of minute differences in divergent directions.

It is clear, from what has just been said, that the many angry

discussions respecting the fixity of species, which, since the days

of Lamarck, have disturbed the amity of zoologists and speculative

philosophers, would have been considerably abbreviated, had men

distinctly appreciated the equivoque which rendered their arguments hazy.

I am far from implying that the battle was purely a verbal one. I believe

there was a real and important distinction in the doctrines of the two

camps; but it seems to me that had a clear understanding of the fact that

Species was an abstract term, been uniformly present to their minds, they

would have sooner come to an agreement. Instead of the confusing disputes

as to whether one Species could ever become another Species, the question

would have been, Are animal forms changeable? Can the descendants of

animals become so _unlike their ancestors_, in certain peculiarities of

structure or instinct, as to be classed by naturalists as a different

species?

No sooner is the question thus disengaged from equivoque, than its

discussion becomes narrowed within well-marked limits. That animal

forms _are_ variable, is disputed by no zoologist. The only question

which remains is this: _To what extent_ are animal forms variable? The

answers given have been two: one school declaring that the extent of

variability is limited to those trifling characteristics which mark the

different Varieties of each Species; the other school declaring that the

variability is indefinite, and that all animal forms may have arisen from

successive modifications of a very few types, or even of one type.

Now, I would call your attention to one point in this discussion, which

ought to be remembered when antagonists are growing angry and bitter

over the subject: it is, that both these opinions are necessarily

hypothetical—there can be nothing like positive proof adduced on either

side. The utmost that either hypothesis can claim is, that it is more

consistent with general analogies, and better serves to bring our

knowledge of various points into harmony. Neither of them can claim to be

a truth which warrants dogmatic decision.

Of these two hypotheses, the first has the weight and majority of

authoritative adherents. It declares that all the different kinds of

Cats, for example, were distinct and independent creations, each species

being originally what we see it to be now, and what it will continue

to be as long as it exists: lions, panthers, pumas, leopards, tigers,

jaguars, ocelots, and domestic cats, being so many _original stocks_,

and not so many _divergent forms of one original stock_. The second

hypothesis declares that all these kinds of cats represent divergencies

of the original stock, precisely as the Varieties of each kind represent

the divergencies of each Species. It is true that each species, when once

formed, only admits of limited variations; any cause which should push

the variation _beyond_ certain limits would destroy the species,—because

by species is meant the group of animals contained _within_ those limits.

Let us suppose the original stock from which all these kinds of cats have

sprung, to have become modified into lions, leopards, and tigers—in other

words, that the gradual accumulation of divergencies has resulted in the

whole family of cats existing under these three forms. The lions will

form a distinct species; this species varies, and in the course of long

variation a new species, the puma, rises by the side of it. The leopards

also vary, and let us suppose their variation at length assumes so marked

a form,—in the ocelot,—that we class it as a new species. There is

nothing in this hypothesis but what is strictly consonant with analogies;

it is only extending to Species what we know to be the fact with respect

to Varieties; and these Varieties which we know to have been produced

from one and the same Species are often more widely separated from each

other than the lion is from the puma, or the leopard from the ocelot. Mr.

Darwin remarks that “at least a score of pigeons might be chosen, which,

if shown to an ornithologist, and he were told that they were wild birds,

would certainly, I think, be ranked by him as well-defined species.

Moreover, I do not believe that any ornithologist would place the English

carrier, the short-faced tumbler, the runt, the barb, the pouter and

fantail in the same genus! more especially as in each of these breeds

several truly-inherited sub-breeds or species, as he might have called

them, could be shown him.”

The development of numerous specific forms, widely distinguished from

each other, out of one common stock, is not a whit more improbable than

the development of numerous distinct languages out of a common parent

language, which modern philologists have proved to be indubitably the

case. Indeed, there is a very remarkable analogy between philology and

zoology in this respect: just as the comparative anatomist traces the

existence of similar organs, and similar connections of these organs,

throughout the various animals classed under one type, so does the

comparative philologist detect the family likeness in the various

languages scattered from China to the Basque provinces, and from Cape

Comorin across the Caucasus to Lapland—a likeness which assures him

that the Teutonic, Celtic, Windic, Italic, Hellenic, Iranic, and Indic

languages are of common origin, and separated from the Arabian, Aramean,

and Hebrew languages, which have another origin. Let us bring together

a Frenchman, a Spaniard, an Italian, a Portuguese, a Wallachian, and

a Rhætian, and we shall hear six very different languages spoken,

the speakers severally unintelligible to each other, their languages

differing so widely that one cannot be regarded as the modification of

the other; yet we know most positively that all these languages are

offshoots from the Latin, which was once a living language, but which is

now, so to speak, a fossil. The various species of cats do not differ

more than these six languages differ: and yet the resemblances point

in each case to a common origin. Max Müller, in his brilliant essay on

_Comparative Mythology_,[13] has said:—

“If we knew nothing of the existence of Latin—if all historical documents

previous to the fifteenth century had been lost—if tradition, even, was

silent as to the former existence of a Roman empire, a mere comparison

of the six Roman dialects would enable us to say, that at some time

there must have been a language from which all these modern dialects

derived their origin in common; for without this supposition it would be

impossible to account for the facts exhibited by these dialects. Let us

look at the auxiliary verb. We find:—

_Italian._ _Rhætian._ _Portuguese._

_Wallachian._ _Spanish._ _French._

I am sono sum sunt sunt soy sou suis

Thou art sei es eis eres es es

He is e é (este) ei es he est

We are siamo súntemu essen somos somos sommes

You are siete súnteti esses sois sois êtes (estes)

They are sono súnt eân (sun) son são sont.

It is clear, even from a short consideration of these forms, first, that

all are but varieties of one common type; secondly, that it is impossible

to consider any one of these six paradigms as the original from which

the others had been borrowed. To this we may add, thirdly, that in none

of the languages to which these verbal forms belong, do we find the

elements of which they could have been composed. If we find such forms

as _j’ai aimé_, we can explain them by a mere reference to the radical

means which French has still at its command, and the same may be said

even of compounds like _j’aimerai_, i.e. _je-aimer-ai_, I have to love,

I shall love. But a change from _je suis_ to _tu es_ is inexplicable by

the light of French grammar. These forms could not have grown, so to

speak, on French soil, but must have been handed down as relics from a

former period—must have existed in some language antecedent to any of

the Roman dialects. Now, fortunately, in this case, we are not left to

a mere inference, but as we possess the Latin verb, we can prove how,

by phonetic corruption, and by mistaken analogies, every one of the six

paradigms is but a national metamorphosis of the Latin original.

“Let us now look at another set of paradigms:—

_Sanskrit._ _Zend._ _Old Slavonic._ _Gothic._

_Lithuanian._ _Doric._ _Latin._ _Armen._

I am ásmi esmi ahmi ἐμμι yesmě sum im em

Thou art ási essi ahi ἐσσὶ yesi es is es

He is ásti esti asti ἐστί yestǒ est ist ê

We (two) are ’svás esva yesva siju

You (two) are ’sthás esta stho? ἕστόν yesta sijuts

They (two) are ’stás (esti) sto? ἐστόν yesta

We are ’smás esmi hmahi ἐσμές yesmǒ sumus sijum emq

You are ’sthá este stha ἐστέ yeste estis sijup êq

They are sánti (esti) hěnti ἐντί somtě sunt sind en

“From a careful consideration of these forms, we ought to draw exactly

the same conclusions; firstly, that all are but varieties of one common

type; secondly, that it is impossible to consider any of them as the

original from which the others have been borrowed; and thirdly, that here

again, none of the languages in which these verbal forms occur possess

the elements of which they are composed.”

All these languages resemble each other so closely that they point to

some more ancient language which was to them what Latin was to the six

Romance languages; and in the same way we are justified in supposing that

all the classes of the vertebrate animals point to the existence of some

elder type, now extinct, from which they were all developed.

I have thus stated what are the two hypotheses on this question. There is

only one more preliminary which it is needful to notice here, and that

is, to caution the reader against the tendency, unhappily too common,

of supposing that an adversary holds opinions which are transparently

absurd. When we hear an hypothesis which is either novel, or unacceptable

to us, we are apt to draw some very ridiculous conclusion from it, and to

assume that this conclusion is seriously held by its upholders. Thus the

zoologists who maintain the variability of species are sometimes asked

if they believe a goose was developed out of an oyster, or a rhinoceros

from a mouse? the questioner apparently having no misgiving as to the

candour of his ridicule. There are three modes of combating a doctrine.

The first is to point out its strongest positions, and then show them to

be erroneous or incomplete; but this plan is generally difficult, and

sometimes impossible; it is not, therefore, much in vogue. The second is

to render the doctrine ridiculous, by pretending that it includes certain

extravagant propositions, of which it is entirely innocent. The third

is to render the doctrine odious, by forcing on it certain conclusions,

which it would repudiate, but which are declared to be “the inevitable

consequences” of such a doctrine. Now it is undoubtedly true that men

frequently maintain very absurd opinions; but it is neither candid, nor

wise, to assume that men who otherwise are certainly not fools, hold

opinions the absurdity of which is transparent.

Let us not, therefore, tax the followers of Lamarck, Geoffroy St.

Hilaire, or Mr. Darwin with absurdities they have not advocated; but

rather endeavour to see what solid argument they have for the basis of

their hypothesis.

FOOTNOTES

[10] DARWIN: _Origin of Species_, p. 414.

[11] DARWIN: _Origin of Species_, p. 420.

[12] CUVIER says, in so many words, that classes, orders, and genera, are

abstractions, _et rien de pareil n’existe dans la nature_; but species is

_not_ an abstraction!—See _Lettres à Pfaff_, p. 179.

[13] See _Oxford Essays_, 1856.

Strangers Yet!

Strangers yet!

After years of life together,

After fair and stormy weather,

After travel in far lands,

After touch of wedded hands,—

Why thus joined? why ever met?

If they must be strangers yet.

Strangers yet!

After childhood’s winning ways,

After care, and blame, and praise,

Counsel asked, and wisdom given,

After mutual prayers to Heaven,

Child and parent scarce regret

When they part—are strangers yet

Strangers yet!

After strife for common ends,

After title of old friends,

After passion fierce and tender,

After cheerful self-surrender,

Hearts may beat and eyes be wet,

And the souls be strangers yet.

Strangers yet!

Strange and bitter thought to scan

All the loneliness of man!

Nature by magnetic laws

Circle unto circle draws;

Circles only touch when met,

Never mingle—strangers yet.

Strangers yet!

Will it evermore be thus—

Spirits still impervious?

Shall we ever fairly stand

Soul to soul, as hand to hand?

Are the bounds eternal set

To retain us strangers yet?

Strangers yet!

Tell not love it must aspire

Unto something other—higher:

God himself were loved the best,

Were man’s sympathies at rest;

Rest above the strain and fret

Of the world of strangers yet!

Strangers yet!

R. MONCKTON MILNES.

Framley Parsonage.