BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCI. MARCH, 1849. VOL. LXV.
CONTENTS.
SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE, 255
THE SYCAMINE. BY [Delta], 274
AFTER A YEAR'S REPUBLICANISM, 275
THE CAXTONS. PART XI., 287
M. PRUDHON.--CONTRADICTIONS ECONOMIQUES, 304
THE GREEN HAND.--A "SHORT" YARN. PART II., 314
MÉRIMÉE'S HISTORY OF PETER THE CRUEL, 337
THE OPENING OF THE SESSION, 357
EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
_To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._
SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCI. MARCH, 1849. VOL. LXV.
SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE.[1]
There are three reasons why the second edition of a good book, upon an
advancing branch of knowledge, should be better than the first. The
author, however conversant he may have been with the subject when he
wrote his book, is always more thoroughly read in it--supposing him a
worthy instructor of the public--his opinions more carefully digested,
and more fully matured, when a second edition is called for. Then he
has had time to reconsider, and, if necessary, remodel his
plan--adding here, retrenching there--introducing new subject-matter
in one place, and leaving out, in another, topics which he had
previously treated of with more or less detail. And, lastly, the
knowledge itself has advanced. New ideas, which in the interval have
established themselves, find a necessary place in the new issue; facts
and hypotheses which have been proved unsound drop naturally out of
his pages; and, on the whole, the later work exhibits a nearer
approach to that truthful summit, on which the eyes of all the
advancers of knowledge are supposed evermore to rest.
For all these reasons, the second edition of the _Book of the Farm_ is
better than the first. The opinions of the author have been
reconsidered and materially improved--especially in reference to
scientific points; the arrangement has been simplified, and the whole
book condensed, by the exclusion of those descriptions of machinery
which properly belong to the department of agricultural mechanics, and
which we believe are about to be published as a separate work; and the
strides which practical agriculture has taken during the last ten
years, and the topics which have chiefly arrested attention, are
considered with the aid of the better lights we now possess.
Of all the arts of life, there is none which draws its knowledge from
so great a variety of fountains as practical agriculture. Every branch
of human knowledge is mutually connected--we may say interwoven
with--and throws light upon, or is enlightened by, every other. But
none of those which largely contribute to the maintenance of social
life, and conduce to the power and stability of states, is so varied
in its demands upon the results of intellectual inquiry, as
husbandry,--or rural economy in its largest sense.
Look at that magnificent ship, which cleaves the waters, now trusting
to her canvass and wafted by favouring breezes; now, despite the
fiercest gales, paddling her triumphant way over hill and valley,
precipice and ravine, which the raging sea, out of her fertile
materials, is every moment fashioning beneath her feet. Is there any
product of human art in which more intellect is embodied than in this
piece of living mechanism? The timber can tell of the axe of the
woodman on far-distant hills, and of the toils of many craftsmen in
fitting it for its present purpose. The iron of the researches of the
mineralogist, the laborious skill of the miner, the alchemy of the
smelter, the wonders of the tilt-hammer, the ingenuity of the
mechanist, and the almost inconceivable and mathematical nicety by
which its various portions are fitted to each other, and, like the
muscles and sinews of the human body, made to play together for a
purpose previously contemplated--an uninstructed man might almost say,
previously agreed upon among themselves. The steam, of what hidden
secrets of nature!--the mysteries of heat, which could not hide
themselves from the searching genius of Black,--the chemistry of
water, which the ever-pondering mind of Watt compelled from unwilling
nature,--the endless contrivances by which its fierce power was tamed
to most submissive obedience in the workshops of Soho. The compass may
for a moment carry us back to the fabled mountains of our infancy, in
which the hidden loadstone attracted the fated vessel to its ruin; but
it brings us forward again to the truer marvels of modern magnetism,
and to the intellect which has been expended in keeping the needle
true to the pole-star in the iron boat, where, surrounded by metallic
influences, countless attractions are incessantly soliciting it to
deviate. And when, as the mid-day sun mounts to the zenith, the
sextant and the quicksilver appear, how does it flash upon us that
modern navigation is the child of astronomy; and that the mind
embodied in the latest Rossian telescope is part and parcel of the
inappreciable mass of thought to which, "walking the waters as a thing
of life," that huge steam-frigate owes its being!
What a concentration of varied knowledge is seen in this single work
of art! From how many sources has this knowledge come!--how many
diverse pursuits or sciences have yielded their necessary quota to the
common stock!--how many varied talents have been put under
contribution to contrive its many parts, and put them fittingly
together!
But, to the pursuits of the humble farmer, more aids still contribute
than to those of the dauntless navigator. His patient and quiet life
on land is as dependent upon varied knowledge, draws its instruction
from as many sources, and is more bound up in visible union with all
the branches of human science, than even the active and stirring life
of the dweller on the sea.
Some of our journal writers are accustomed to ridicule the results of
agricultural skill; to undervalue our successful field improvements;
to laugh at Smithfield Christmas cattle, and at the exhibitions of our
great annual shows. In thoughtlessness, often in ignorance, they
write, and always for a temporary effect, which our progressing
agriculture can well afford to pass by.
But we ask our rural reader to turn up the first volume of the _Book
of the Farm_, and to cast his eye for a moment on the triad of
beautiful shorthorns represented in the sixth plate; or on the
magnificent stallion of the fourth plate, or on the graceful sheep of
the seventh. We pass over the _points_ in which, to the educated eye,
their beauty consists; we dismiss, for the present, all consideration
of their perfection as well-bred animals, and their fitness for the
special purposes for which they have been reared. We wish him to tell
us, if he can, how much mind has gone to the breeding, rearing, and
feeding of these animals--how many varied branches of knowledge have
lent their aid to this apparently simple and un-imposing result.
The food on which they have been brought up has been gathered from the
soil--the grass, the hay, the root crops, the linseed, the barley, the
oats. And how much intellect, from the earliest dawn of civilisation,
has been lavished upon the soil!--how many branches of knowledge are
at this moment uniting their strength to develop its latent
capabilities! Geology yields the raw materials upon which, in after
ages, the toils of the husbandman are expended. She explains what are
the variations in the natural quality of these materials; how such
variations have arisen; where they lead to increased, and where to
diminished fertility; how and where the still living rocks may
contribute to the improvement of the dead earth which has been formed
from them; and how, in some apparently insecure regions, the
unsleeping volcano showers over the land, at varying periods, the
elements of an endless fertility. Mineralogy lends her aid to unravel
the origin, and nature, and wants, and capabilities of the soil; and,
as the handmaid and willing follower of geology, dresses and classes
the fragments which geology has let fall from her magnificent
formations. But chemistry, especially, exhausts herself in the cause
of the husbandman. No branch of rural art, as we shall see, is beyond
her province and control. All that the soil originally derives from
geologic and mineral materials, chemistry investigates; all that these
substances naturally become, all that they ought to yield, how they
may be persuaded to yield it; by what changes this is to be brought
about; by means of what agencies, and how applied, such changes are to
be induced:--chemistry busies herself with all this, and labours in
some sense to complete, for the purposes of rural art, the information
which geology and mineralogy had begun.
Upon the soil the plant grows. What a wonder and a mystery is the
plant! A living, and growing, and breathing existence, that speaks
silently to the eye, and to the sense of touch, and to the sense of
smell--speaks kindly to man, and soothingly, and appeals to his
reasoning powers--but is mute to the most open and wakeful of all his
senses, and by no verbal speech reveals the secrets with which its
full vessels are bursting. How many wise heads have watched, and
tended, and studied it--the humble plant--interpreting its smallest
movements, the meaning of every change of hue upon its leaves and
flowers, and gathering profoundest wisdom from its fixed and voiceless
life! To what new sciences has this study led the way! Botany never
wearies in gathering and classifying; and of modern giants, Linnæus,
and Jussieu, and Decandolle, and Brown, and Lindley, and Hooker, and
Schleiden, have given their best years to unfold and perfect it.
Alongside of descriptive and systematic botany has sprung up the
allied branch of Structural Physiology, and the use of the microscope
has added to this the younger sister Histology; while these two
together, calling in the aid of chemistry, have built up the further
departments of Chemical Physiology and Chemical Histology--departments
too numerous, too profound in their research, and too special in their
several niceties of observation, for one head clearly to comprehend
and limit them.
And on the plant as it grows, and as a perfect whole, chemistry
expends entire and most gifted intellectual lives. Of what the plant
consists, whence it draws its subsistence, how it takes it in--in what
form, in what quantity, at what period of the day--how the air feeds
it, how the soil sustains it, why it grows well here and badly
there--what are the nature, composition, action, and special
influences of manures--where and when, and of what kind, they should
be applied to the plant--how this or that effect is to be produced by
them, and this or that defect remedied.
But the life of the plant is an unravelled thread. The steam-frigate
appears to live, and thunders as she moves, breathing fire and smoke.
But the still life of the plant awes and subdues more than all this.
Man may forcibly obstruct the path of the growing twig, but it turns
quietly aside and moves patiently on. The dead iron and wood, and the
forceful steam, all obey man's will--his intellect overmasters their
stubbornness, and tames them into crouching slaves--but the life of
the plant defies him. That life he can extinguish; but to use the
living plant he must obey it, and study its wants and tendencies. How
vastly easier to achieve a boastful triumph over the most stubborn
mineral matter, than to mould to man's will the humblest flower that
grows!
And each new plant brings with it new conditions of life, new wants,
new virtues, new uses, new whims, if we may so speak, to be humoured.
The iron, and the timber, and the brass are always one and the same to
the mechanist; but with the constitution of each new plant, and its
habits, a new series of difficulties opens up to the cultivator, which
only time and experience, and much study, can overcome.
But mechanics also exert much influence upon the culture of the soil,
and the rearing of useful plants. And though the greatest achievements
of mechanical skill were not first made on her behalf, yet even the
steam-engine may be said to have become auxiliary to agriculture; and
the thousand ingenious implements which Northampton and York exhibited
at their recent anniversaries, showed in how many quarters, and to how
large an extent, the purely mechanical and constructive arts are
expending their strength in promoting her cause.
On meteorology, which studies the aërial meteors--registers,
tabulates, and gives even a local habitation and a form to winds,
hurricanes, and typhoons--the progress of the navigator much depends.
They hinder or hasten his progress; but he overcomes them at last. But
atmospheric changes are vital things to the plant and to the soil.
Where no rain falls, the plant withers and dies. If too much falls, it
becomes sickly, and fails to yield a profitable crop. If it falls too
frequently, though not in too large quantity on the whole, one plant
luxuriates and rejoices in the genial season, while another with
difficulty produces a half return. If it falls at unseasonable times,
the seed is denied admission into the ground in spring, or the harvest
refuses to ripen in the autumn.
So the warmth and the sunshine, and the evening dews and the fogs, and
the electric condition of the air--its transparency and its varying
weight--and prevailing winds and hoar-frosts, and blights and
hail-storms, and the influence of the heavenly bodies on all these
conditions--with all these things the interests of the plant and the
soil demand that scientific agriculture should occupy herself. On
every single branch of knowledge to which we have alluded, the power
and skill profitably to influence the plant are dependent.
And for what purpose does the plant spring up, the soil feed and
nourish it, and the blessed sun mature its seeds? To adorn, no doubt,
the surface of the beautiful earth, and to keep alive and propagate
its species; but principally to nourish the animal races which supply
food and yield their service to man. And, upon the study of this
nurture and feeding of the animal races, how much intellect has been
expended! Has the stoker who heaps coals upon the engine fire, and
turns one tap occasionally to maintain the water-level in the boiler,
or another to give passage to the steam--and thus keeps the
pile-driver, or the coal-drawer, or the tin mine, or the locomotive,
or the steam-boat, or the colossal pumps of the Haarlem lake, in easy
and continuous operation--has he, or has the man who curiously watches
his operations--have either of them any idea of the long days of
intellectual toil--of the sleepless nights, during which invention was
on the rack--of the mental dejection and throes of suffering, under
which new thoughts were born--of the lives of martyred devotion which
have been sacrificed, while, or in order that the machine, which is so
obediently simple and easily managed, was or might be brought to its
present perfection? Yet all this has been, and has been suffered by
men now gone, though the ignorance of the humble workman, little more
thoughtful than the iron he works with, fails either to feel or to
understand it.
And so too often it is with you who feed, and with you who look at the
simple process of feeding stock. As the turnip and the barley, and the
oats and the linseed, and the beans, are placed before the almost
perfect short-horn, or the graceful Ayrshire, or the untamed West
Highlander, or the stately stallion, or the well-bred Leicester or
Cheviot ram, or the cushioned and padded Berkshire porker--how little
do you know or think of the science, and long skill, and intellectual
labour, which have been expended in preparing what is to you so
simple! It is not without and beyond the ranks of the agricultural
community only that we need look for those who lessen the intellectual
character of rural industry, and of the rural life. Too many of our
practical men, even of high pretensions, are themselves only the
stokers of the agricultural machine; and, like ungrateful and
degenerate children, in their ignorance deny the head of the mother
that bred and fed them.[2]
What are the functions of the animals you rear--what the composition
of their several parts--what the nature of the food they require--what
the purposes it serves--what the proportions in which this or that
kind of food ought to be given--what the changes, in the kind and
proportion, to adapt it to the special habits and constitution of the
animal, and the purposes for which it is fed? Are these questions
deep? Yet they have all been thought over and long considered, and
discussed and disputed about, and volumes have been written upon them;
and the chemist, and the physiologist, and the anatomist have, unknown
to you, all laboured zealously and without wearying, in your service.
And what you now find so simple only proves how much their sciences
have done for you. _They_ have fitted the machinery together, _you_
but throw in the fuel and keep up the steam.
With the rearing of stock, and the improving of breeds, practical men
are, or fancy themselves, all more or less conversant. How much warm
and persevering genius, guided by purely scientific principles, has
been expended upon our improved shorthorns and Leicesters! Are the
whole lives of a Collins, or a Bakewell, or a Bates, nothing to have
been devoted to pursuits like this? That these were practical men, and
not scientific, and that what they have done is not a debt due by
agriculture to science, is the saying of many. Men who have never read
a book can do, by imitation, what the patient services and skill of
other men discovered, and perfected, and simplified. But in this they
are only stokers. The improvers were sound and cautious experimental
physiologists, guided by the most fixed and certain principles of
animal physiology; and it is the results at which these men arrived
that have become the household words of the stokers of our day, who
call them _practice_ in opposition to _science_. If science could
forget her high duties to the Deity, and to the human race, she might
leave you and your art to your own devices.
Need we allude to the conditions of animal life--in a state of health,
and in a state of disease; to the varied constitutions of different
races and varieties; to the several adaptations of food, warmth, and
shelter which these demand; and to the extensive course of study which
is now required to furnish the necessary resources to the accomplished
veterinary surgeon? Yet would any breeder be safe for a moment to
invest his money in stock, in a country and climate like ours, had he
not, either in books, or in his own head, or in that of a neighbouring
veterinarian, the results at which the long study of these branches of
knowledge, in connexion with animal health, had discovered and
established?
We pursue this topic no further at present. We fearlessly assert--we
believe that we have shown--that as much intellect has been
scientifically expended in elucidating and perfecting the various
operations of rural life, by which those magnificent cattle have been
produced by art, as has gone to the elaboration of that wonderful
wave-subduing ship. The vulgar mind, awed by bulk and sound, and
visible emblems of thought, may dissent--may say that we have not so
much to show for it. But the laws of life are sought for and
studied--they are not made by science. The Deity has forbidden human
skill to develop a sheep into an elephant. Living materials, as we
have said, are not plastic like wood and iron; and to change the
constitution and character of a breed of animals may require as great
and as long-continued an exercise of inventive thought as to perfect
an imposing piece of machinery. The real worth of a scientific result
is the amount of mind expended in arriving at it, as the real height
of an animal in the scale of organisation is measured by the
proportionate size of its brain.
But we have our more palpable and sense-satisfying triumphs too. Look
at that wide valley, with its snow-clad summits at a distance on
either hand, and its glassy river flowing, cribbed and confined, in
the lowest bottom. Smiling fields, and well-trimmed hedge-rows, and
sheltering plantations, and comfortable dwellings, and a busy
population, and abundant cattle, cover its undulating slopes. For
miles industrious plenty spreads over a country which the river
formerly usurped, and the lake covered, and the rush tufted over, and
bog and mossy heath and perennial fogs and drizzling rains rendered
inhospitable and chill. But mechanics has chained the river, and
drained the lakes, and bogs, and clayey bottoms; and giving thus scope
to the application of all the varied practical rules to which science
has led, the natural climate has been subdued, disease extirpated, and
rich and fertile and happy homes scattered over the ancient waste.
Turn to another country, and a river flows deeply through an arid and
desolate plain. Mechanics lifts its waters from their depths, and from
a thousand artificial channels directs them over the parched surface.
It is as if an enchanter's wand had been stretched over it--the green
herbage and the waving corn, companied by all the industries of rural
life, spring up as they advance.
Another country, and a green oasis presents itself, busy with life, in
the midst of a desert and sandy plain. Do natural springs here gush
up, as in the ancient oasis of the Libyan wilderness? It is another of
the triumphs of human industry, guided by human thought. Geology, and
her sister sciences, are here the pioneers of rural life and fixed
habitations. The seat of hidden waters at vast depths was discovered
by her. Under her directions mechanics has bored to their sources, and
their gushing abundance now spreads fertility around.
Such are more sensible and larger triumphs of progressing rural
economy--such as man may well boast of, not only in themselves, but in
their consequences; and they may take their place with the gigantic
vessel of war, as magnificent results of intellectual effort.
But it is after these first ruder though more imposing conquests over
nature have been made, that the demand for mind, for applied science,
becomes more frequent, and the results of its application less
perceptible. And it is because, in ordinary husbandry, we have not
always before us the striking illustrations which arrest the vulgar
eye, that prevailing ignorance persists in denying its obligations to
scientific research.
The waters which descend from a chain of hills become a striking
feature in the geography of a country, when they happen to unite
together into a large and magnificent river: they escape unseen and
unnoticed if, keeping apart, they flow in countless tiny streamlets to
the sea. Yet, thus disunited, they may carry fertility over a whole
region, like the Nile when it overflows its banks, or as the river of
Damascus straying among its many gardens; while the waters of the
great river may only refresh and fertilise its own narrow margins, as
the Murray and the Darling do in South Australia, or the deep-bedded
rivers of Southern Africa.
Thus much we have devoted to the introductory portion of the _Book of
the Farm_. Those of our readers who wish to follow up farther these
scientific views may study _Johnston's Lectures, and Elements, of
Agricultural Chemistry and Geology_: and by the way we would commend,
for applied science, these works of Johnston's, and for practical
knowledge, the book of Stephens, to the special attention of our
emigrating fellow-countrymen, of whom so many in their foreign homes
are likely to regret the overflowing sources of information on every
conceivable topic with which their home literature and home neighbours
supplied them.
Let us now take a look at the body of Mr Stephens' work. These are the
days of pictorial embellishment--of speaking directly, and plainly,
and palpably to the eye. We have accidentally opened the book at the
217th page. What letterpress description could--so briefly we do not
say, for that is out of the question--but so graphically and fully,
explain the practice of eating off turnips with sheep, and all its
appliances of hurdles and nets, and turnip shears, and feeding
troughs, and hay racks, as the single woodcut which this page
exhibits? And so the practice of bratting and of stelling sheep is
illustrated, and all the forms and fashions of stells in high and low
countries (pp. 231 to 236;) the pulling, dressing, and storing of
turnips, (190 to 195;) the various modes of ploughing, with their ups
and downs, and turnings, and crossings, and gatherings, and feerings,
and gore furrows, and mould furrows, and broad furrows, and cross
furrows, and samcastings, and gaws, and ribs, and rafters, and slices,
and crowns, and centres, and a host of other operations and things
familiar to the farmer, but the very names and designations of which
are Greek to the common English reader. All these the woodcuts explain
beautifully and familiarly to the uninitiated readers, and most
usefully to the incipient farmer. How is the rural economy of Great
Britain and Ireland, in its best forms, stored up, not only for modern
and immediate use, but for the understanding of future ages, by these
illustrations! We would specify, in addition to those already referred
to, the steam-boiling apparatus in page 320; and the taking down of a
stack of corn in page 401; and the feeding of the threshing machine in
page 406; and the hand-sowing of corn in page 553; and the pickling of
wheat, (_chaulage_ of our Gallic neighbours,) page 536; and the
measuring of the grain in the barn, &c., page 419; and the full sacks,
_as they should be_, in the barn, in page 423. To the foreigner, how
do these pictures speak of English customs, costumes, and usages; to
our Trans-atlantic brethren, of the source of those modes and manners
which have at once placed them on an elevation in agricultural art, to
which 800 years of intellectual struggle had barely sufficed to lift
up their fathers and cousins at home; and to the still British
colonial emigrant the precise practices, and latest rural
improvements, which it will be his interest, at once, and his pride,
to introduce into his adopted land!
How would the _Scriptores Rei Rusticæ_ have gained in usefulness in
their own time, how immensely in interest in ours, had they been
accompanied by such illustrations as these! The clearness of Columella
would have been made more transparent, the obscurity of Palladius
lessened; and Cato and Varro would have preserved to us the actual
living forms, and costumes, and instruments of the ancient Etruscan
times, more clearly than the painted tombs are now revealing to the
antiquarian the fashions of their feasts, and games, and funereal
rites. We have before us the singularly, richly, and extravagantly,
yet graphically and most instructively illustrated book of Georgius
Agricola, _De Re Metallica_ (Basil, 1621.) The woodcuts of the _Book
of the Farm_ have induced us to turn it up, and it is with ever new
admiration that we turn over its old leaves. It has to us the interest
of a child's picture-book; and though, as a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of
illustrative art, the three hundred woodcuts of Stephens do not
approach the book of Agricola, yet what a treasure would the work of
Ausonius Popma on the rural implements of the ancients--their
_instrumenta_ in its widest sense--have been to us, could it have been
illustrated when he wrote (1690) in the style of Agricola, and with
the minuteness and fulness of Stephens!
The same desire to render minutely intelligible the whole subject
treated of, which these woodcuts show, is manifested in the more solid
letterpress of the book. It was said of Columella, by Matthew Gessner,
that he discoursed "non ut argumentum simplex quod discere amat,
dicendo obscuret, sed ut clarissimâ luce perfundat omnia." Such, the
reader feels, must have been the aim of the author of this book. In
his descriptions, nothing appears to be omitted; nothing is too minute
to be passed over. His book exposes not merely the every-day life, but
the very inmost life--the habits, and usages, and instruments of the
most humble as well as the most important of the operations of the
domestic, equally with the field economy of rural life. We do not
know if its effects upon our town population will ever be such as Beza
ascribes to that of Columella--
Tu vero, Juni, silvestria rura canendo,
Post te ipsas urbes in tua rura trahis;
but certainly, with a few more woodcuts, it would, in minute and
graphic illustration, by prints and letterpress be a most worthy
companion to the work of Agricola.
The plan of the book is to give a history of the agricultural year,
after the manner of the Roman Palladius and our own old Tucker; and
the present volume embraces the operations of the skilful farmer in
every kind of husbandry during the winter and spring. But, before we
come to the heart of the book, hear what Mr Stephens says about the
agricultural learning of our landed gentry:--
"Even though he devote himself to the profession of arms or
the law, and thereby confer distinction on himself, if he
prefer either to the neglect of agriculture he is rendering
himself unfit to undertake the duties of a landlord. To
become a soldier or a lawyer, he willingly undergoes
initiatory drillings and examinations; but to acquire the
duties of a landlord before he becomes one, he considers it
quite unnecessary to undergo initiatory tuition. These, he
conceives, can be learned at any time, and seems to forget
that the conducting of a landed estate is a profession, as
difficult of thorough attainment as ordinary soldiership or
legal lore. The army is an excellent school for confirming,
in the young, principles of honour and habits of discipline;
and the bar for giving a clear insight into the principles
upon which the rights of property are based, and of the
relation betwixt landlord and tenant; but a knowledge of
practical agriculture is a weightier matter than either for a
landlord, and should not be neglected.
"One evil arising from studying those exciting professions
before agriculture is, that, however short may have been the
time in acquiring them, it is sufficiently long to create a
distaste to learn agriculture afterwards practically--for
such a task can only be undertaken, after the turn of life,
by enthusiastic minds. But as farming is necessarily _the
profession_ of the landowner, it should be learned,
theoretically and practically, before his education is
finished. If he so incline, he can afterwards enter the army
or go to the bar, and the exercise of those professions will
not efface the knowledge of agriculture previously acquired.
This is the proper course, in my opinion, for every young man
destined to become a landowner to pursue, and who is desirous
of finding employment as long as he has not to exercise the
functions of a landlord. Were this course invariably pursued,
the numerous engaging ties of a country life would tend in
many to extinguish the kindling desire for any other
profession. Such a result would be most advantageous for the
country; for only consider the effects of the course pursued
at present by landowners. It strikes every one as an
incongruity for a country gentleman to be unacquainted with
country affairs. Is it not strange that he should require
inducements to learn his hereditary profession,--to become
familiar with the only business which can enable him to
enhance the value of his estate, and increase his income?
Does it not infer infatuation to neglect becoming well
acquainted with the condition of his tenants, by whose
exertions his income is raised, and by which knowledge he
might confer happiness on many families, and in ignorance of
which he may entail lasting misery on many more? It is in
this way too many country gentlemen neglect their moral
obligations.
"It is a manifest inconvenience to country gentlemen, when
taking a prominent part in county matters without a competent
knowledge of agriculture, to be obliged to apologise for not
having sufficiently attended to agricultural affairs. Such an
avowal is certainly candid, but is anything but creditable to
those who have to make it. When elected members of the
legislature, it is deplorable to find so many of them so
little acquainted with the questions which bear directly or
indirectly on agriculture. On these accounts, the tenantry
are left to fight their own battles on public questions. Were
landowners practically acquainted with agriculture, such
painful avowals would be unnecessary, and a familiar
acquaintance with agriculture would enable the man of
cultivated mind at once to perceive its practical bearing on
most public questions."
And what he says respectively of the ignorant and skilful factor or
agent is quite as deserving of attention. Not merely whole estates,
but in some parts of the island, whole counties lag in arrear through
the defective education and knowledge of the agents as a class:--
"A still greater evil, because less personal, arises on
consigning the management of valuable estates to the care of
men as little acquainted as the landowners themselves with
practical agriculture. A factor or agent, in that condition,
always affects much zeal for the interest of his employer.
Fired by it, and possessing no knowledge to form a sound
judgment, he soon discovers something he considers wrong
among the poorer tenants. Some rent perhaps is in arrear--the
strict terms of the lease have been deviated from--the
condition of the tenant seems declining. These are favourable
symptoms for a successful contention with him. Instead of
interpreting the terms of the lease in a generous spirit, the
factor hints that the rent would be better secured through
another tenant. Explanation of circumstances affecting the
actual condition of the farm, over which he has, perhaps, no
control,--the inapplicability, perhaps, of peculiar covenants
in the lease to the particular circumstances of the farm--the
lease having perhaps been drawn up by a person ignorant of
agriculture,--are excuses unavailingly offered to a factor
confessedly unacquainted with country affairs, and the result
ensues in disputes betwixt him and the tenant. To
explanations, the landlord is _unwilling_ to listen, in order
to preserve intact the authority of the factor; or, what is
still worse, is _unable_ to interfere, because of his own
inability to judge of the actual state of the case betwixt
himself and the tenant, and, of course, the disputes are left
to be settled by the originator of them. Thus commence
actions at law,--criminations and recriminations,--much
alienation of feeling; and at length a proposal for the
settlement of matters, at first perhaps unimportant, by the
arbitration of practical men. The tenant is glad to submit to
an arbitration to save his money; and in all such disputes,
being the weaker party, he suffers most in purse and
character. The landlord, who ought to have been the
protector, is thus converted into the unconscious oppressor
of his tenant.
"A factor acquainted with practical agriculture would conduct
himself very differently in the same circumstances. He would
endeavour to prevent legitimate differences of opinion on
points of management from terminating in disputes, by skilful
investigation and well-timed compromise. He would study to
uphold the honour of both landlord and tenant. He would at
once see whether the terms of the lease were strictly
applicable to the circumstances of the farm, and, judging
accordingly, would check improper deviations from proper
covenants, whilst he would make allowances for inappropriate
ones. He would soon discover whether the condition of the
tenant was caused more by his own mismanagement than by the
nature of the farm he occupies, and he would conform his
conduct towards him accordingly--encouraging industry and
skill, admonishing indolence, and amending the objectionable
circumstances of the farm. Such a factor is always highly
respected, and his opinion and judgment are entirely confided
in by the tenantry. Mutual kindliness of intercourse,
therefore, always subsists betwixt such factors and the
tenants. No landlord, whether acquainted or unacquainted with
farming, especially in the latter case, should confide the
management of his estate to any person less qualified."
These extracts are long, but we feel we are rendering the public a
service by placing them where they are likely to be widely read.
We have mentioned above that the _Book of the Farm_ is full of that
kind of clear home knowledge of rural life which the emigrant in
foreign climes at all resembling our own will delight to read and
profit by; but it will not supply the place of previous agricultural
training. There is much truth and sound practical advice in the
following observations:--
"Let _every_ intending settler, therefore, _learn agriculture
thoroughly_ before he emigrates; and, if it suits his taste,
time, and arrangements, let him study in the colony the
necessarily imperfect system pursued by the settlers, before
he embarks in it himself; and the fuller knowledge acquired
here will enable him, not only to understand the colonial
scheme in a short time, but to select the part of the country
best suited to his purpose. But, in truth, he has much higher
motives for learning agriculture here; for a thorough
acquaintance will enable him to make the best use of
inadequate means--to know to apply cheap animal instead of
dear manual labour,--to suit the crop to the soil, and the
labour to the weather;--to construct appropriate dwellings
for himself and family, live stock, and provisions; to
superintend every kind of work, and to show a familiar
acquaintance with them all. These are qualifications which
every emigrant may acquire here, but not in the colonies
without a large sacrifice of time--and time to a settler thus
spent is equal to a sacrifice of capital, whilst eminent
qualifications are equivalent to capital itself. This
statement may be stigmatised by agricultural settlers who may
have succeeded in amassing fortunes without more knowledge
of agriculture than what was picked up by degrees on the
spot; but such persons are incompetent judges of a statement
like this, never having become properly acquainted with
agriculture; and however successful their exertions may have
proved, they might have realised larger incomes in the time,
or as large in a shorter time, had they brought an intimate
acquaintance of the most perfect system of husbandry known,
to bear upon the favourable circumstances they occupied."
The early winter is spent in ploughing, which we pass over, and
mid-winter chiefly in feeding stock, in threshing out the corn, and in
attending to composts and dunghills. Preparing and sowing the seed is
the most important business of the spring months, to which succeeds
the tending of the lambs and ewes, and the preparation of the land for
the fallow or root crops. These several operations are treated of in
their most minute details, and the latest methods adopted in reference
to every point are fully explained.
In the husbandry of the most advanced portions of our island, the
turnip occupies a most important place in the estimation of the
skilful farmer, whether his dependence for the means of paying his
rent be placed upon the profits of his corn crops or of his cattle.
Of the turnip we have now many varieties--though it is only seventy or
eighty years since it was first introduced into field culture--at
least in those districts of the island in which its importance is most
fully recognised. The history of its introduction into Scotland is
thus given by Mr Stephens--
"The history of the turnip, like that of other cultivated
plants, is obscure. According to the name given to the swede
in this country, it is a native of Sweden; the Italian name
_Navoni di Laponia_ intimates an origin in Lapland, and the
French names _Chou de Lapone_, _Chou de Suède_, indicate an
uncertain origin. Sir John Sinclair says, 'I am informed that
the swedes were first introduced into Scotland _anno_ 1781-2,
on the recommendation of Mr Knox, a native of East Lothian,
who had settled at Gottenburg, whence he sent some of the
seeds to Dr Hamilton.' There is no doubt the plant was first
introduced into Scotland from Sweden, but I believe its
introduction was prior to the date mentioned by Sir John
Sinclair. The late Mr Airth, Mains of Dunn, Forfarshire,
informed me that his father was the first farmer who
cultivated swedes in Scotland, from seeds sent him by his
eldest son, settled in Gottenburg, when my informant, the
youngest son of a large family, was a boy of about ten years
of age. Whatever may be the date of its introduction, Mr
Airth cultivated them in 1777; and the date is corroborated
by the silence preserved by Mr Wight regarding its culture by
Mr Airth's father when he undertook the survey of the state
of husbandry in Scotland, in 1773, at the request of the
Commissioners of the Annexed Estates, and he would not have
failed to report so remarkable a circumstance as the culture
of so useful a plant, so that it was unknown prior to 1773.
Mr Airth sowed the first portion of seed he received in beds
in the garden, and transplanted the plants in rows in the
field, and succeeded in raising good crops for some years,
before sowing the seed directly in the fields."
The weight of a good turnip crop--not of an extraordinary crop, which
some persons can succeed in raising, and the accounts of which others
only refuse to credit--is a point of much importance; and it is so,
not merely to the farmer who possesses it, but to the rural community
at large. The conviction that a certain given weight is a fair average
crop in well-farmed land, where it does not exceed his own, will be
satisfactory to the industrious farmer; while it will serve as a
stimulus to those whose soil, or whose skill, have hitherto been
unable to raise so large a weight. According to our author--
"A good crop of swede turnips weighs from 30 to 35 tons per
imperial acre.
"A good crop of yellow turnips weighs from 30 to 32 tons per
imperial acre.
"A good crop of white globe turnips weighs from 30 to 40 tons
per imperial acre."
Of all kinds of turnips, therefore, from 30 to 40 tons per imperial
acre are a good crop.
The readers of agricultural journals must have observed that, of late
years, the results of numerous series of experiments have been
published. Among those that have been made upon turnips, he will have
noticed also that the crop, in about nine cases out of ten, is under
twenty tons; that these crops vary, for the most part, between nine
and sixteen tons; and that some farmers are not ashamed to publish to
the world, that they are content with crops of from seven to ten tons
of turnips an acre. Where is our skill in the management of turnip
soils, if, in the average of years, such culture and crops satisfy any
considerable number of our more intelligent tenantry? We know that
soil, and season, and locality, and numerous accidents, affect the
produce of this crop; but the margin between the _actual_ and the
_possible_ is far too wide to be accounted for in this way. More
skill, more energy, more expenditure in draining, liming, and
manuring--a wider diffusion of our practical and scientific
agricultural literature--these are the means by which the wide margin
is to be narrowed; by which what is in the land is to be brought _out_
of the land, and thereby the farmer made more comfortable, and the
landlord more rich.
The subject of sheep and cattle feeding is very important, and very
interesting, and our book is rich in materials which would provoke us
to discuss it at some length, did our limits admit of it. We must be
content, however, with a few desultory extracts.
The following, in regard to sheep feeding upon turnips, is curious,
and, in our opinion, requires repetition:--
"A curious and unexpected result was brought to light by Mr
Pawlett, and is thus related in his own words,--'Being aware
that it was the custom of some sheep-breeders to wash the
food,--such as turnips, carrots, and other roots,--for their
sheep, I was induced also to try the system; and as I usually
act cautiously in adopting any new scheme, generally bringing
it down to the true standard of experience, I selected for
the trial two lots of lambs. One lot was fed, in the usual
manner, on carrots and swedes _unwashed_; the other lot was
fed exactly on the same kinds of food, but the carrots and
swedes were _washed_ very clean every day: they were weighed
before trial, on the 2d December, and again on the 30th
December, 1835. The lambs fed with the unwashed food gained
each 7-1/2 lb., and those on the washed gained 4-3/4 lb.
each; which shows that those lambs which were fed in the
usual way, without having their food washed, gained the most
weight in a month by 2-3/4 lb. each lamb. There appears to me
no advantage in this method of management--indeed animals are
fond of licking the earth, particularly if fresh turned up;
and a little of it taken into the stomach with the food must
be conducive to their health, or nature would not lead them
to take it.'"
Another experiment on the fattening properties of different breeds of
sheep, under similar treatment, quoted from the _Journal of the Royal
Agricultural Society of England_, is also deserving the attention of
our readers:--
"Experiments were made in 1844-5 on the Earl of Radnor's farm
at Coleshill, on the comparative fattening properties of
different breeds of sheep under the same treatment. The sheep
consisted of Leicesters, South-downs, half-breds,--a cross
between the Cotswold and South-down--and Cotswolds. The
sheep, being then lambs, were divided into lots of three each
of each breed, and were grazed four months, from 29th August
1844 to 4th January 1845, when they were put on hay and
swedes for three months, from 4th January to the 31st of
March following. While on grass, the different breeds gained
in weight as follows:--
lb. lb.
The Leicesters being 46 each, gained 10-1/2 each.
South-downs 47 " 11
Half-breds 44-1/2 " 12
Cotswolds 56-1/2 " 10-1/2"
It is one of the most delicate qualifications connected with the
stock-feeder's art to be able to select that stock, and that variety
of it, which, under all the circumstances in which he is placed, will
give him the largest return in money--hence every experiment like the
above, if well conducted, is deserving of his close attention. At the
same time, in rural experiments, more almost than in any other, the
number of elements which interfere with the result, and may modify it,
is so great, that too much confidence ought not to be placed upon
single trials. Repeated results _of one kind_ must be obtained, before
a farmer can be justified in spending much money on the faith of them.
In turning to the winter feeding of cattle upon turnips and other
food--a subject important enough to justify Mr Stephens in devoting
forty of his closely printed pages to it--we are reminded of a
character of this book which we like very much, which squares
admirably with our own idea of neatness, order, and method, and which
we heartily commend to the attention of our farming friends: this is
the full and minute description he gives of the duties of every class
of servants upon the farm, of the necessity of having these duties
regularly and methodically performed, and of the way in which the
master may bring this about.
The cattle-man is an important person in the winter feeding of cattle;
he therefore commences this section with an account of the duties and
conduct of this man. Even his dress he describes; and the following
paragraph shows his reason for drawing the young farmer's attention to
it:--
"The _dress_ of a cattle-man is worth attending to, as
regards its appropriateness for his business. Having so much
straw to carry on his back, a bonnet or round-crowned hat is
the most convenient head-dress for him; but what is of more
importance when he has charge of a bull, is to have his
clothes of a sober hue, free of gaudy or strongly-contrasted
colours, especially _red_, as that colour is peculiarly
offensive to bulls. It is with red cloth and flags that the
bulls in Spain are irritated to action at their celebrated
bull-fights. Instances are in my remembrance of bulls turning
upon their keepers, not because they were habited in red, but
from some strongly contrasted bright colours. It was stated
that the keeper of the celebrated bull Sirius, belonging to
the late Mr Robertson of Ladykirk, wore a red nightcap on the
day the bull attacked and killed him. On walking with a lady
across a field, my own bull--the one represented in the plate
of the Short-horn Bull, than which a more gentle and generous
creature of his kind never existed--made towards us in an
excited state; and for his excitement I could ascribe no
other cause than the red shawl worn by the lady, for as soon
as we left the field he resumed his wonted quietness. I
observed him excited, on another occasion, in his hammel,
when the cattle-man--an aged man, who had taken charge of him
for years--attended him one Sunday forenoon in a new red
nightcap, instead of his usual black hat. Be the cause of the
disquietude in the animal what it may, it is prudential in a
_cattle_-man to be habited in a sober suit of clothes."
Then, after insisting upon _regularity of time_ in everything he does,
following the man through a whole day's work, describing all his
operations, and giving figures of all his tools,--his graip, his
shovel, his different turnip choppers, his turnip-slicer, his
wheel-barrow, his chaff-cutters, his linseed bruisers, and his
corn-crushers,--he gives us the following illustration of the
necessity of regularity and method, and of the way to secure them:--
"In thus minutely detailing the duties of the cattle-man, my
object has been to show you rather how the turnips and fodder
should be distributed relatively than absolutely; but
whatever hour and minute the cattle-man finds, from
experience, he can devote to each portion of his work, you
should see that he performs _the same operation at the same
time every day_. By paying strict attention to time, the
cattle will be ready for and expect their wonted meals at the
appointed times, and will not complain until they arrive.
Complaints from his stock should be distressing to every
farmer's ears, for he may be assured they will not complain
until they feel hunger; and if allowed to hunger they will
not only lose condition, but render themselves, by
discontent, less capable of acquiring it when the food
happens to be fully given. Wherever you hear lowings from
cattle, you may safely conclude that matters are conducted
there in an irregular manner. The cattle-man's rule is a
simple one, and easily remembered,--_Give food and fodder to
cattle at fixed times, and dispense them in a fixed routine_.
I had a striking instance of the bad effects of irregular
attention to cattle. An old staid labourer was appointed to
take charge of cattle, and was quite able and willing to
undertake the task. He got his own way at first, as I had
observed many labouring men display great ingenuity in
arranging their work. Lowings were soon heard from the stock
in all quarters, both in and out of doors, which intimated
the want of regularity in the cattle-man; whilst the poor
creature himself was constantly in a state of bustle and
uneasiness. To put an end to this disorderly state of things,
I apportioned his entire day's work by his own watch; and on
implicitly following the plan, he not only soon satisfied the
wants of every animal committed to his charge, but had
abundant leisure to lend a hand to anything that required his
temporary assistance. His old heart overflowed with gratitude
when he found the way of making all his creatures happy; and
his kindness to them was so undeviating, they would have done
whatever he liked."
And the money profit which this attention to regularity will give, in
addition to the satisfaction which attends it, is thus plainly set
down:--
"Let us reduce the results of bad management to figures.
Suppose you have three sets of beasts, of different ages,
each containing 20 beasts--that is, 60 in all--and they get
as many turnips as they can eat. Suppose that each of these
beasts acquires only half a pound less live weight every day
than they would under the most proper management, and this
would incur a loss of 30 lbs. a-day of live weight, which,
over 180 days of the fattening season, will make the loss
amount to 5400 lbs. of live weight; or, according to the
common rules of computation, 3240 lbs., or 231 stones, of
dead weight at 6s. the stone, £69, 6s.--a sum equal to more
than five times the wages received by the cattle-man. The
question, then, resolves itself into this--whether it is not
for your interest to save this sum annually, by making your
cattle-man attend your cattle according to a regular plan,
the form of which is in your own power to adopt and pursue?"
We must pass over the entire doctrine of prepared food, which has
lately occupied so much attention, and has been so ably advocated by
Mr Warner, Mr Marshall, Mr Thompson, and which, among others, has been
so successfully practised by our friend Mr Hutton of Sowber Hill in
Yorkshire. We only quote, by the way, a curious observation of Mr
Robert Stephenson of Whitelaw in East-Lothian:
"'We shall conclude,' he says, 'by relating a singular
fact'--and a remarkable one it is, and worth
remembering--'that _sheep_ on turnips will consume nearly in
proportion to _cattle_, weight for weight; that is, 10 sheep
of 14 lbs. a-quarter, or 40 stones in all, will eat nearly
the same quantity of turnips as an ox of 40 stones; but turn
the ox to grass, and 6 sheep will be found to consume an
equal quantity. This great difference may perhaps,' says Mr
Stephenson, and I think truly, 'be accounted for by the
practice of sheep cropping the grass much closer and oftener
than cattle, and which, of course, prevents its growing so
rapidly with them as with cattle.'"
The treatment of farm horses in winter is under the direction of the
ploughman, whose duties are first described, after which the system of
management and feeding of farm and saddle horses is discussed at a
length of thirty pages.
Among other pieces of curious information which our author gives us is
the nomenclature of the animals he treats of, at their various ages.
This forms a much larger vocabulary than most people imagine, and
comprises many words of which four-fifths of our population would be
unable to tell the meaning.
Thus, of the sheep he informs us--
"A new-born sheep is called a _lamb_, and retains the name
until weaned from its mother and able to support itself. The
generic name is altered according to the sex and state of the
animal; when a female it is a _ewe-lamb_, when a male
_tup-lamb_, and this last is changed to _hogg-lamb_ when it
undergoes emasculation.
"After a lamb has been weaned, until the first fleece is
shorn from its back, it receives the name of _hogg_, which is
also modified according to the sex and state of the animal, a
female being a _ewe-hogg_, a male a _tup-hogg_, and a
castrated male a _wether-hogg_. After the first fleece has
been shorn, another change is made in the nomenclature; the
ewe-hogg then becomes a _gimmer_, the tup-hogg a
_shearling-tup_, and the wether-hog a _dinmont_, and these
names are retained until the fleece is shorn a second time.
"After the second shearing another change is effected in all
these names; the gimmer is then a _ewe_ if she is _in lamb_,
but if not, a _barren gimmer_ and if never put to the ram a
_eild gimmer_. The shearling tup is then a _2-shear tup_, and
the dinmont is a _wether_, but more correctly a _2-shear
wether_.
"A ewe three times shorn is a _twinter ewe_, (_two-winter
ewe_;) a tup is a _3-shear tup_; and a wether still a
_wether_, or more correctly a _3-shear wether_--which is an
uncommon name among Leicester sheep, as the castrated sheep
of that breed are rarely kept to that age.
"A ewe four times shorn is a _three winter ewe_, or _aged
ewe_; a tup, an _aged tup_, a name he retains ever after,
whatever his age, but they are seldom kept beyond this age;
and the wether is now a _wether_ properly so called.
"A _tup_ and _ram_ are synonymous terms.
"A ewe that has borne a lamb, when it fails to be with lamb
again is a _tup-eill_ or _barren ewe_. After a ewe has ceased
to give milk she is a _yeld-ewe_.
"A ewe when removed from the breeding flock is a _draft ewe_,
whatever her age may be; gimmers put aside as unfit for
breeding are _draft gimmers_, and the lambs, dinmonts or
wethers, drafted out of the fat or young stock are
_sheddings_, _tails_, or _drafts_.
"In England a somewhat different nomenclature prevails. Sheep
bear the name of _lamb_ until eight months old, after which
they are _ewe_ and _wether teggs_ until once clipped. Gimmers
are _theares_ until they bear the first lamb, when they are
_ewes of 4-teeth_, next year _ewes of 6-teeth_, and the year
after _full-mouthed ewes_. Dinmonts are called _shear hoggs_
until shorn of the fleece, when they are _2-shear wethers_,
and ever after are _wethers_."
The names of cattle are a little less complicated.
"The _names_ given to cattle at their various ages are
these:--A new-born animal of the ox-tribe is called a _calf_,
a male being a _bull-calf_, a female a _quey-calf_,
_heifer-calf_, or _cow-calf_; and a castrated male calf is a
_stot-calf_, or simply a _calf_. Calf is applied to all young
cattle until they attain one year old, when they are
_year-olds_ or _yearlings_--_year-old bull_, _year-old quey_
or heifer, _year-old stot_. _Stot_, in some places, is a bull
of any age.
"In another year they are _2-year old bull_, _2-year-old
quey_ or _heifer_, _2-year-old-stot_ or _steer_. In England
females are _stirks_ from calves to 2-year-old, and males
_steers_; in Scotland both young male and females are
_stirks_. The next year they are _3-year-old bull_, in
England 3-year-old female a _heifer_, in Scotland a
_3-year-old quey_, and a male is a _3-year-old stot_ or
_steer_.
"When a quey bears a calf, it is a _cow_, both in Scotland
and England. Next year the _bulls_ are _aged_; the _cows_
retain the name ever after, and the _stots_ or _steers_ are
_oxen_, which they continue to be to any age. A cow or quey
that has received the bull is _served_ or _bulled_, and is
then _in calf_, and in that state these are in England
_in-calvers_. A cow that suffers abortion _slips_ its calf. A
cow that has either _missed_ being in calf, or has _slipped_
calf, is _eill_; and one that has gone dry of milk is a
_yeld-cow_. A cow giving milk is a _milk_ or _milch-cow_.
When two calves are born at one birth, they are _twins_; if
three, _trins_. A quey calf of twins of bull and quey calves,
is a _free martin_, and never produces young, but exhibits no
marks of a hybrid or mule.
"_Cattle_, _black cattle_, _horned cattle_, and _neat
cattle_, are all generic names for the ox tribe, and the term
_beast_ is a synonyme.
"An ox without horns is _dodded_ or _humbled_.
"A castrated bull is a _segg_. A quey-calf whose ovaries have
been obliterated, to prevent her breeding, is a _spayed
heifer_ or _quey_."
Those of the horse are fewer, and more generally known--
"The names commonly given to the different states of the
horse are these:--The new-born one is called a _foal_, the
male being a _colt foal_, and the female a _filly foal_.
After being weaned, the foals are called simply _colt_ or
_filly_, according to the sex, which the colt retains until
broken in for work, when he is a _horse_ or _gelding_ which
he retains all his life; and the filly is then changed into
_mare_. When the colt is not castrated he is an _entire
colt_; which name he retains until he serves mares, when he
is a _stallion_ or _entire horse_; when castrated he is a
_gelding_; and it is in this state that he is chiefly worked.
A mare, when served, is said to be _covered by_ or _stinted
to_ a particular stallion; and after she has borne a foal she
is a _brood mare_, until she ceases to bear, when she is a
_barren mare_ or _eill mare_; and when dry of milk, she is
_yeld_. A mare, while big with young, is _in foal_. Old
stallions are never castrated."
Those of the pig are as follows--
"When new-born, they are called _sucking pigs_, or simply
_pigs_; and the male is a _boar pig_, the female _sow pig_. A
castrated male, after it is weaned, is a _shot_ or _hog_. Hog
is the name mostly used by naturalists, and very frequently
by writers on agriculture; but, as it sounds so like the name
given to young sheep, (hogg,) I shall always use the terms
pig and swine for the sake of distinction. The term _hog_ is
said to be derived from a Hebrew noun, signifying 'to have
narrow eyes,' a feature quite characteristic of this species
of animal. A spayed female is a _cut sow pig_. As long as
both sorts of cut pigs are small and young, they are
_porkers_ or _porklings_. A female that has not been cut, and
before it bears young, is an _open sow_; and an entire male,
after being weaned, is always a _boar_ or _brawn_. A cut boar
is a _brawner_. A female that has taken the boar is said to
be _lined_; when bearing young she is a _brood sow_; and when
she has brought forth pigs she has _littered_ or _farrowed_,
and her family of pigs at one birth form a _litter_ or
_farrow_ of pigs."
The diseases of cattle, horses, pigs, and poultry, are treated
of--their management in disease, that is, as well as in health. And it
is one of the merits of Mr Stephens that he has taken such pains in
getting up his different subjects--that he seems as much at home in
one department of his art as in another; and we follow him with equal
confidence in his description of field operations, of servant-choosing
and managing, of cattle-buying, tending, breeding, feeding,
butchering, and even cooking and eating--for he is cunning in these
last points also.
His great predecessor Tucker prided himself, in his "_Five hundred
points_," in mixing up huswifry with husbandry:--
"In husbandry matters, where _Pilcrow_[3] ye find,
That verse appertaineth to Huswif'ry kind;
So have ye more lessons, if there ye look well,
Than huswif'ry book doth utter or tell."
Following Tucker's example, our author scatters here and there
throughout his book much useful information for the farmer's wife; and
for her especial use, no doubt, he has drawn up his curious and
interesting chapter on the treatment of fowls in winter. To show how
minute his knowledge is upon this point, and how implicitly therefore
he may be trusted in greater matters, we quote the following:--
"Every yellow-legged chicken should be used, whether male or
female--their flesh never being so fine as the others." "Young fowls
may either be roasted or boiled, the male making the best roasted, and
the female the neatest boiled dish." "The criterion of a fat hen, when
alive, is a plump breast, and the rump feeling thick, fat, and firm,
on being handled laterally between the finger and thumb."
"Of a fat goose the mark is, plumpness of muscle over the breast, and
thickness of rump when alive; and in addition, when dead and plucked,
of a uniform covering of _white_ fat under a fine skin on the breast."
"Geese are always roasted in Britain, though a boiled goose is not an
uncommon dish in Ireland; and their flesh is certainly much heightened
in flavour by a stuffing of onions, and an accompaniment of apple
sauce."
We suppose a boiled goose must be especially tasteless, as we once
knew an old schoolmaster on the North Tyne, whose very stupid pupils
were always christened _boiled geese_.
The threshing and winnowing of grain, which forms so important a part
of the winter operations of a farm, naturally lead our author to
describe and figure the different species of corn plants and their
varieties, and to discuss their several nutritive values, the
geographical range and distribution of each, and the special uses or
qualities of the different varieties.
Widely spread and known for so many ages, the home or native country
of our cereal plants is not only unknown, but some suppose the several
species, like the varieties of the human race, to have all sprung from
a common stock.
"It is a very remarkable circumstance, as observed by Dr
Lindley, that the native country of wheat, oats, barley, and
rye should be entirely unknown; for although oats and barley
were found by Colonel Chesney, apparently wild, on the banks
of the Euphrates, it is doubtful whether they were not the
remains of cultivation. This has led to an opinion, on the
part of some persons, that all our cereal plants are
artificial productions, obtained accidentally, but retaining
their habits, which have become fixed in the course of ages."
Whatever may be the original source of our known species of grain, and
of their numerous varieties, it cannot be doubted that their
existence, at the present time, is a great blessing to man. Of wheat
there are upwards of a hundred and fifty known varieties, of barley
upwards of thirty, and of oats about sixty. While the different
species--wheat, barley, and oats--are each specially confined to large
but limited regions of the earth's surface, the different varieties
adapt themselves to the varied conditions of soil and climate which
exist within the natural geographical region of each, and to the
different uses for which each species is intended to be employed.
Thus the influence of variety upon the adaptation of the oat to the
soil, climate, and wants of a given locality, is shown by the
following observations:--
"The Siberian oat is cultivated in the poorer soils and
higher districts, resists the force of the wind, and yields a
grain well adapted for the support of farm-horses. The straw
is fine and pliable, and makes an excellent dry fodder for
cattle and horses, the saccharine matter in the joints being
very sensible to the taste. It comes early to maturity, and
hence its name."
The Tartarian oat, from the peculiarity of its form, and from its
"possessing a beard, is of such a hardy nature as to thrive in soils
and climates where the other grains cannot be raised. It is much
cultivated in England, and not at all in Scotland. It is a coarse
grain, more fit for horse-food than to make into meal. The grain is
dark coloured and awny; the straw coarse, harsh, brittle, and rather
short."
The reader will see from this extract that the English "food for
horses" is, in reality, not the same thing as the "chief o' Scotia's
food;" and that a little agricultural knowledge would have prevented
Dr Johnson from exhibiting, in the same sentence, an example of both
his ignorance and his venom.
Variety affects appearance and quality; and how these are to be
consulted in reference to the market in which the grain is to be sold,
may be gathered from the following:--
"When wheat is quite opaque, indicating not the least
translucency, it is in the best state for yielding the finest
flour--such flour as confectioners use for pastry; and in
this state it will be eagerly purchased by them at a large
price. Wheat in this state contains the largest proportion of
fecula or starch, and is therefore best suited to the
starch-maker, as well as the confectioner. On the other hand,
when wheat is translucent, hard, and flinty, it is better
suited to the common baker than the confectioner and starch
manufacturer, as affording what is called _strong_ flour,
that rises boldly with yeast into a spongy dough. Bakers
will, therefore, give more for good wheat in this state than
in the opaque; but for bread of finest quality the flour
should be fine as well as strong, and therefore a mixture of
the two conditions of wheat is best suited for making the
best quality of bread. Bakers, when they purchase their own
wheat, are in the habit of mixing wheat which respectively
possesses those qualities; and millers who are in the habit
of supplying bakers with flour, mix different kinds of wheat,
and grind them together for their use. Some sorts of wheat
naturally possess _both_ these properties, and on that
account are great favourites with bakers, though not so with
confectioners; and, I presume, to this mixed property is to
be ascribed the great and lasting popularity which Hunter's
white wheat has so long enjoyed. We hear also of '_high
mixed_' Danzig wheat, which has been so mixed for the
purpose, and is in high repute amongst bakers. Generally
speaking, the purest coloured white wheat indicates most
opacity, and, of course, yields the finest flour; and red
wheat is most flinty, and therefore yields the strongest
flour: a translucent red wheat will yield stronger flour than
a translucent white wheat, and yet a red wheat never realises
so high a price in the market as white--partly because it
contains a larger proportion of refuse in the grinding, but
chiefly because it yields less fine flour, that is, starch."
In regard to wheat, it has been supposed, that the qualities referred
to in the above extract, as especially fitting certain varieties for
the use of the confectioner, &c., were owing to the existence of a
larger quantity of gluten in these kinds of grain. Chemical inquiry
has, however, nearly dissipated that idea, and with it certain
erroneous opinions, previously entertained, as to their superior
nutritive value. Climate and physiological constitution induce
differences in our vegetable productions, which chemical research may
detect and explain, but may never be able to remove or entirely
control.
The bran, or external covering of the grain of wheat, has recently
also been the subject of scientific and economical investigation. It
has been proved, by the researches of Johnston, confirmed by those of
Miller and others, that the bran of wheat, though less readily
digestible, contains more nutritive matter than the white interior of
the grain. Brown, or household bread, therefore, which contains a
portion of the bran, is to be preferred, both for economy and for
nutritive quality, to that made of the finest flour.
Upon the economy of mixing potato with wheaten flour, and of home-made
bread, Mr Stephens has the following:--
"It is assumed by some people, that a mixture of potatoes
amongst wheaten flour renders bread lighter and more
wholesome. That it will make bread whiter, I have no doubt;
but I have as little doubt that it will render it more
insipid, and it is demonstrable that it makes it dearer than
wheaten flour. Thus, take a bushel of 'seconds' flour,
weighing 56 lbs. at 5s. 6d. A batch of bread, to consist of
21 lbs., will absorb as much water, and require as much yeast
and salt, as will yield 7 loaves, of 4 lbs. each, for 2s.
4d., or 4d. per loaf. 'If, instead of 7 lbs. of the flour,
the same weight of raw potatoes be substituted, with the hope
of saving by the comparatively low price of the latter
article, the quantity of bread that will be yielded will be
_but a trifle more than would have been produced from 14 lbs.
of flour only_, without the addition of the 7 lbs. of
potatoes; for the starch of this root is the only nutritive
part, and we have proved that but one-seventh or one-eighth
of it is contained in every pound, the remainder being water
and innutritive matter. Only 20 lbs. of bread, therefore,
instead of 28 lbs., will be obtained; and this, though white,
will be comparatively flavourless, and liable to become dry
and sour in a few days; whereas, without the latter addition,
bread made in private families will keep _well_ for 3 weeks,
though, after a fortnight, it begins to deteriorate,
especially in the autumn.' The calculation of comparative
_cost_ is thus shown:--
Flour, 14 lbs., say at 1-1/4d. per lb., = 1s. 5-1/2d.
Potatoes, 7 lbs., say at 5s. per sack, = 0 2
Yeast and fuel, = 0 4-1/2
------
2s. 0d.
The yield, 20 lbs., or 5 loaves of 4 lbs. each, will be
nearly 5d. each, which is dearer than the wheaten loaves at
4d. each, and the bread, besides, of inferior quality.
"'There are persons who assert--for we have heard them--that
there is no economy in baking at home. An accurate and
constant attention to the matter, with a close calculation of
every week's results for several years--a calculation induced
by the sheer love of investigation and experiment--enables us
to assure our readers, that a gain is invariably made of from
1-1/2d. to 2d. on the 4 lb. loaf. If _all_ be intrusted to
servants, we do not pretend to deny that the waste may
neutralise the _profit_; but, with care and investigation, we
pledge our veracity that the saving will prove to be
considerable.' These are the observations of a lady well
known to me."
In the natural history of barley the most remarkable fact is, the high
northern latitudes in which it can be successfully cultivated. Not
only does it ripen in the Orkney and Shetland and Faroe Islands, but
on the shores of the White Sea; and near the North Cape, in north
latitude 70°, it thrives and yields nourishment to the inhabitants. In
Iceland, in latitude 63° to 66° north, it ceases to ripen, not because
the temperature is too low, but because rains fall at an unseasonable
time, and thus prevent the filling ear from arriving at maturity.
The oat is distinguished by its remarkable nutritive quality, compared
with our other cultivated grains. This has been long known in practice
in the northern parts of the island, where it has for ages formed the
staple food of the mass of the population, though it was doubted and
disputed in the south so much, as almost to render the Scotch ashamed
of their national food. Chemistry has recently, however, set the
matter at rest, and is gradually bringing oatmeal again into general
favour. We believe that the robust health of many fine families of
children now fed upon it, in preference to wheaten flour, is a debt
they owe, and we trust will not hereafter forget, to chemical science.
On oatmeal Mr Stephens gives us the following information:--
"The portion of the oat crop consumed by man is manufactured
into _meal_. It is never called flour, as the millstones are
not set so close in grinding it as when wheat is ground, nor
are the stones for grinding oats made of the same material,
but most frequently only of sandstone--the old red sandstone
or greywacke. Oats, unlike wheat, are always kiln-dried
before being ground; and they undergo this process for the
purpose of causing the thick husk, in which the substance of
the grain is enveloped, to be the more easily ground off,
which it is by the stones being set wide asunder; and the
husk is blown away, on being winnowed by the fanner, and the
grain retained, which is then called _groats_. The groats are
ground by the stones closer set, and yield the meal. The meal
is then passed through sieves, to separate the thin husk from
the meal. The meal is made in two states: one _fine_, which
is the state best adapted for making into bread, in the form
called oat-cake or bannocks; and the other is coarser or
_rounder_ ground, and is in the best state for making the
common food of the country people--porridge, _Scottice_,
parritch. A difference of custom prevails in respect to the
use of these two different states of oatmeal, in different
parts of the country, the fine meal being best liked for all
purposes in the northern, and the round or coarse meal in the
southern counties; but as oat-cake is chiefly eaten in the
north, the meal is there made to suit the purpose of bread
rather than of porridge; whereas, in the south, bread is made
from another grain, and oatmeal is there used only as
porridge. There is no doubt that the round meal makes the
best porridge, when properly made--that is, seasoned with
salt, and boiled as long as to allow the particles to swell
and burst, when the porridge becomes a pultaceous mass. So
made, with rich milk or cream, few more wholesome dishes can
be partaken by any man, or upon which a harder day's work can
be wrought. Children of all ranks in Scotland are brought up
on this diet, verifying the poet's assertion--
"The halesome parritch, chief o' Scotia's food."
BURNS.
Forfarshire has long been famed for the quality of its brose
and oat-cake, while the porridge of the Borders has as long
been equally famous. It is so everywhere, the sharp soil
producing the finest cake-meal, and clay land the best meal
for boiling. Of meal from the varieties of the oat
cultivated, that of the common Angus oat is the most thrifty
for a poor man, though its yield in meal is less in
proportion to the bulk of corn."
Much valuable information is given on the management of manure-heaps,
and the forming of composts in winter. We especially recommend to the
reader's attention section 2043, which is too long to extract.
Railways have done much to benefit the farmer: in speaking of
composts, our author gives us the following example of a local injury
produced by them:--
"In the vicinity of villages where fish are cured and smoked
for market, refuse of fish heads and guts make an excellent
compost with earth. Near Eyemouth and Burnmouth, on the
Berwickshire coast, 30 barrels of fish refuse, with as much
earth from the head-ridges as will completely cover the heap,
are sufficient for an imperial acre. The barrel contains 30
gallons, and 4 barrels make a cart-load, and the barrel sells
for 1s. 6d. From 400 to 600 barrels may be obtained for each
farm in the neighbourhood, in the course of the season. Since
the opening of the North British railway, the curing of the
fish is given up, much to the loss of the farmers in that
locality; and the fishermen now send, by the railway, the
fish in a fresh state to the larger towns at a distance.
Thus, railways produce advantage to some, whilst they cause
loss to others. In the northern counties of Scotland, fish
refuse is obtained in large quantities during the herring
fishing season. On the coast of Cornwall, the pilchard
fishing affords a large supply of refuse for composts."
In regard to the calving of cows, to milking, and to the rearing of
calves, we have information as full, as minute, and as easily
conveyed, as on any of the other subjects which have hitherto engaged
our attention. When treating of the diseases to which cows, on
calving, are subject, we have been interested with the following
case:--
"I may here mention an unaccountable fatality which overtook
a short-horn cow of mine, in Forfarshire, immediately after
calving. She was an extraordinary milker, giving not less
than thirty quarts a-day in summer on grass; but what was
more extraordinary, for two calvings the milk never dried up,
but continued to flow to the very day of calving, and after
that event returned in increased quantity. In the third year
she went naturally dry for about one month prior to the day
of reckoning; every precaution, however, was taken that the
milk should dry up without giving her any uneasiness. She
calved in high health, the milk returned as usual in a great
flush after calving, but it was impossible to draw it from
the udder; not a teat would pass milk, _all the four being
entirely corded_. Quills were first introduced into the
teats; and then tubes of larger size were pushed up into the
body of the udder. A little milk ran out of only one of
them--hope revived; but it soon stopped running, and all the
art that could be devised by a skilful shepherd proved
unavailing to draw milk from the udder; rubbing and softening
the udder with goose-fat, making it warmer with warm
water--all to no purpose. To render the case more
distressing, there was not a veterinary surgeon in the
district. At length the udder inflamed, mortified, and the
cow died in the most excruciating agony on the third day,
from being in the highest state of health, though not in high
condition, as her milking propensity usually kept her lean.
No loss of the kind ever affected my mind so much--that
nothing _could_ be done to relieve the distress of an animal
which could not help itself. I was told afterwards by a
shepherd, to whom I related the case, that I should have cut
off all the teats, and although the horrid operation would,
of course, have destroyed her for a milk cow, she might have
been saved for feeding. He had never seen a _cow_ so operated
on; but it suggested itself to him in consequence of having
been obliged at times to cut off the teats of ewes to save
their lives. The suggestion I think is good. The cow was bred
by Mr Currie, when at Brandon in Northumberland."
Is there really no remedy for so distressing a case as this but that
which his shepherd recommended? He might, for the benefit of his
readers, have consulted our friend Professor Dick, whose opinions he
so frequently and so deservedly quotes.
The following paragraph is very striking, as showing the cruel
absurdities which ignorance will sometimes not only perpetrate, but
actually establish, as a kind of custom in a country.
"_Tail-ill or Tail-slip._--A very prevalent notion exists in
Scotland amongst cattle-men, that when the tail of an ox or
of a cow feels soft and supple immediately above the tuft of
hair, there is disease in it; and it is called the tail-ill,
or tail-slip. The almost invariable remedy is to make large
incision with the knife along the under side of the soft
part, stuff the wound full of salt and butter, and sometimes
tar, and roll it up with a bandage for a few days, and when
the application is removed, the animal is declared quite
recovered. Now, this notion is an absurdity. There is no such
disease as that imputed; and as the poor animal subjected to
its cure is thus tormented, the sooner the absurd notion is
exposed the better. The notion will not soon be abandoned by
the cattle-men; but the farmer ought to forbid the
performance of such an operation on any of his cattle without
his special permission, and the absurd practice will fall
into desuetude."
We have not space for the remainder of this paragraph, which contains
Professor Dick's _demonstration_ that no such disease exists as the
so-called _Tail-ill_. Mr Stephens' narrations are more like a tale
from the times of witchcraft, when old women were supposed to have the
power of bringing disease upon cattle, than of those days of general
enlightenment.
In sections 2268 and 2269, there is a recipe for making a cow which
has once calved give a _full_ supply of milk all the rest of her life,
and which recipe is said to be infallible. This is a _bon-bouche_,
however, which we shall leave our readers to turn up for themselves;
and we hope the desire to learn it will induce many of our dairy
friends to buy the book.
The following is the mode adopted in fattening calves at Strathaven,
in Scotland, where the famous veal has been so long grown, chiefly for
the Glasgow market:--
"Strathaven in Scotland has long been famed for rearing good
_veal_ for the Glasgow and Edinburgh markets. The dairy
farmers there retain the quey calves for maintaining the
number of the cows, while they feed the male calves for veal.
Their plan is simple, and may be followed anywhere. Milk only
is given to the calves, and very seldom with any admixture,
and they are not allowed to suck the cows. Some give milk,
but sparingly at first, to whet the appetite, and prevent
surfeit. The youngest calves get the first drawn milk, or
_fore-broads_, as it is termed, and the older the
_afterings_, even of two or three cows, being the richest
portion of the milk. After being three or four weeks old,
they get abundance of milk twice a-day. They get plenty of
dry litter, fresh air, moderate warmth, and are kept nearly
in the dark to check sportiveness. They are not bled during
the time they are fed, and a lump of chalk is placed within
their reach. They are fed from 4 to 6 weeks, when they fetch
from £3 to £4 a-piece; and it is found more profitable to
fatten the larger number of calves for that time, to succeed
each other, of from 25 lb. to 30 lb. per quarter, than to
force a fewer number beyond the state of marketable veal."
The Caledonian Railway now puts this choice veal within the reach of
English mouths; and we hope it will, at the same time, add to the
prosperity and profits of the Strathaven breeders.
The lambing of ewes, the care of the mothers and offspring, the
diseases to which they are subject, as well as the other operations
which demand the farmer's care in the months of spring, we must pass
by. We could go on commenting and quoting from this book, as we have
already done, till an entire number of Maga was filled up. But as this
would be preposterous, we stop, earnestly pressing upon our readers to
place a copy of this storehouse of rural information in the hands of
every practical husbandman, in whose professional skill they are at
all interested.
Those who, like ourselves, take an interest in the diffusion of
improved agriculture, scientific, and practical--and especially of our
own agricultural literature in other countries--will be pleased to
learn, not only that the work of which the title is prefixed to the
present article, as well as the others upon agricultural chemistry to
which we have referred, have made their way into the common stock of
the book-stores of the United States, but that the editing of the
American reprint of the second edition of the _Book of the Farm_ has
been undertaken by our friend Professor Norton, of Yale College, (may
his shadow never be less!) so well known and esteemed in Scotland,
where he obtained the Highland Society's £50 prize for a chemical
examination of our native oat, which was published in their
Transactions. He is a worthy representative of the "country of steady
habits" to which he belongs; and we hope his countrymen will be
discriminating enough to appreciate his own character and scientific
labours, as well as the value of the books he undertakes to bring
before them.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Stephens' _Book of the Farm_, Second Edition, vol. I.
[2] In a recent number of the _North British Agriculturist_, it is
stated that an agricultural stoker, who thought himself qualified to
discourse on the uses of science to agriculture, had astonished a late
meeting of the Newcastle Farmers' Club by telling them that the only
thing science had yet done for agriculture was to show them how to
dissolve bones in sulphuric acid; and that chemistry might boast of
having really effected something if it could teach him to raise long
potatoes, as he used to do, or to grow potato instead of Tartary oats,
as his next-door neighbour could do. No wonder the shrewd Tyne-siders
were astonished.
[3] Where ¶ (_pilcrow_,) or paragraph, is placed at the side of the
verse.
THE SYCAMINE.
I.
The frail yellow leaves they are falling
As the wild winds sweep the grove;
Plashy and dank is the sward beneath,
And the sky it is gray above.
II.
Foaming adown the dark rocks,
Dirge-like, the waterfall
Mourns, as if mourning for something gone,
For ever beyond its call.
III.
Sing, redbreast! from the russet spray;
Thy song with the season blends:
For the bees have left us with the blooms,
And the swallows were summer friends.
IV.
The hawthorn bare, with berries sere,
And the bramble by the stream,
Matted, with clay on its yellow trails,
Decay's wan emblems seem.
V.
On this slope bank how oft we lay
In shadow of the sycamine tree;
Pause, hoary Eld, and listen now--
'Twas but the roaring of the sea!
VI.
Oh, the shouts and the laughter of yore--
How the tones wind round the heart!
Oh, the faces blent with youth's blue skies--
And could ye so depart!
VII.
The crow screams back to the wood,
And the sea-mew to the sea,
And earth seems to the foot of man
No resting-place to be.
VIII.
Search ye the corners of the world,
And the isles beyond the main,
And the main itself, for those who went
To come not back again!
IX.
The rest are a remnant scatter'd
Mid the living; and, for the dead,
Tread lightly o'er the churchyard mounds;
Ye know not where ye tread!
[Delta]
AFTER A YEAR'S REPUBLICANISM.
The revolutionary year has almost closed; the anniversary of the days
of February is at hand. A Year's Republicanism has run the course of
its unchecked experience in France: to believe its own boast, it has
ridden boldly forward, seated upon public and popular opinion, in the
form of the widest, and, upon republican principle, the honest basis
of universal suffrage; it has been left to its own full career,
unimpeded by enemies either at home or abroad. And what has been the
result of the race?--what has been the harvest which the republican
soil, so carefully turned over, tilled, and manured, has produced?
It would be a useless task to recapitulate all the different stages of
the growth of the so-called fair green tree of liberty, and enumerate
all the fruits that it has let drop from time to time, from the
earliest days of last spring, to the tempestuous summer month of June;
and then, through the duller, heavier, and gloomy months of autumn, to
those of winter, which brought a president as a Christmas-box, and
which have shown a few scattered gleams of fancied sunshine, cold at
the best, and quickly obscured again by thick-coming clouds of
dis-accord, misapprehension, and startling opposition of parties. All
the world has had these fruits dished up to it--has handled them,
examined them, tasted them; and, according to their opinions or
prejudices, men have judged their savour bitter or sweet. All that can
be said on the subject, for those who have digested them with
pleasure, is, that "there's no accounting for tastes." In calculating
the value of the year's republicanism which France has treasured up in
its history, it is as well, then, to make no further examination into
the items, but to look to the sum-total as far as it can be added up
and put together, in the present aspect of affairs. In spite of the
openly expressed detestation of the provinces to the capital--in spite
of the increasing spirit of decentralisation, and the efforts made by
the departments to insure a certain degree of importance to
themselves--it is still Paris that reigns paramount in its power, and
as the influential expression, however false in many respects it may
be, of the general spirit of the country. It is upon the aspect of
affairs in Paris, then, and all its numerous conflicting elements,
that observation must still be directed, in order to make a _résumé_,
as far as it is practicable, of this sum-total of a year's republican
rule. The account must necessarily be, more or less, a confused one,
for accounts are not strictly kept in Republican Paris--are
continually varying in their results, according as the political
arithmeticians set about their "casting up"--and are constantly
subject to dispute among the accountants: the main figures, composing
the sum-total, may, however, be enumerated without any great error,
and then they may be put together in their true amount, and according
to their real value, by those before whom they are thus laid.
One of the most striking figures in the row, inasmuch as the lateness
of the events has made it one of the most prominent, is to be derived
from the position and designs of those who declare themselves to be
the only true and pure republicans in the anomalous Republic of
France, as exemplified by that revolutionary movement which, although
it led to no better result than a _révolution avortée_, takes its date
in the history of the Republic beside the more troublous one of May,
and the more bloody one of June, as "the affair of the 29th of
January." Paris, after the removal of the state of siege, had done its
best to put on its physiognomy of past years, had smeared over its
wrinkles as best it might, and had made sundry attempts to smile
through all this hasty plastering of its poor distorted face. Its
shattered commerce still showed many rags and rents; but it had pulled
its disordered dress with decency about it, and set it forth in the
best lights; it had called foreigners once more around it, to admire
it; and they had come at the call, although slowly and with mistrust.
It had some hopes of mending its rags, then, and even furbishing up a
new fresh _toilette_, almost as smart as of yore; it danced and sang
again, although faintly and with effort. The National Assembly
clamoured and fought, it is true; but Paris was grown accustomed to
such discordant music, and at most only stopped its ears to it:
ministers held their portfolios with ticklish balance, as if about to
let them fall; but Paris was determined not to care who dropped
portfolios, or who caught them: there were clouds again upon the
political horizon, and distant rumblings of a crisis-thunderstorm; but
Paris seemed resolved to look out for fine weather. All on a sudden,
one bright morning, on the 29th of January, the smile vanished: the
troubled physiognomy was again there; the revolutionary air again
pervaded it; and foreigners once more, not liking the looks of the
convulsed face, began to start back in alarm. The _rappel_ was again
beaten, for the turning out of the national guards at the earliest
hour of the morning: that drumming, which for many months had filled
the air incessantly, again deafened sensitive ears and harassed
sensitive nerves. The streets were thronged with troops, marching
forwards in thick battalions; while before them retreated some
hundreds of those nameless beings, who come no one knows whence, and
go no one knows whither--those mysterious beings, peculiar to
revolutionary cities, who only appear like a cloud of stinging dust
when the wind of the revolution-tempest begins to blow, and who in
Paris are either brigands or heroes of barricades, according as the
language of the day may go--back, back, grumbling and threatening,
into the faubourgs, where they vanished until the gale may blow
stormier again, and meet with less resistance. The garden of the
Tuileries was closed to the public, and exhibited an armed array once
more among its leafless trees; the Champs Elysées had again become a
camp and a bivouac; cannon was again posted around the National
Assembly. Formidable military posts surrounded every public building;
the streets were crowded with the curious; thick knots of men again
stood at every corner; people asked once more, "What's on foot now?"
but no one at first could answer: they only repeated from mouth to
mouth the mysterious words of General Changarnier, that "he who should
venture to displace a paving-stone would never again replace it;" and
they knew what that meant. Paris was, all at once, its revolutionary
self again; and, in some degree, so it remained during the ensuing
weeks--with cannon displayed on hazardous points, and the great
railway stations of the capital filled with battalions of soldiers,
bivouacking upon straw in courts and _salles d' attente_; and huge
military posts at every turn, and thick patrols parading gloomily at
night, and palaces and public buildings closed and guarded, just as if
retrograde monarchy were about to suppress fervent liberalism, and a
"glorious republic" had not been established for a country's happiness
wellnigh a year already; just as if republicans, who had conspired
darkly a year before, had not obtained all they _then_ clamoured
for--a republic based upon institutions resulting from universal
suffrage--and were conspiring again. And so it was. A deep-laid
conspiracy--a conspiracy of republicans against a republic, which they
chose to call deceptive and illusory--was again on foot. They had
possessed, for nigh a year, the blessing for which they had conspired,
intrigued, and fought; and they conspired, intrigued, and would have
fought again. One of the figures, then, to form the total which has to
be summed up as the result of a year's republicanism, is--conspiracy;
conspiracy more formidable than ever, because more desperate, more
bloody-minded in its hopes, more destructive in its designs to all
society.
In spite of the denegations of the Red-republican party, and the
counter-accusations of their allies the _Montagnards_ in the Assembly,
the question of all Paris, "What's on foot now?" was soon answered; and
the answer, spite of these same denegations, and counter-accusations,
was speedily understood and believed by all France. A conspiracy of the
ultra-democrats, Red republicans and Socialists, (all now so shaken up
together in one common dark bag of underhand design, that it is
impossible to distinguish the shades of such parties,) was on the
point of breaking out in the capital: the 29th of January had been
fixed upon by the conspirators for their general insurrection. The Red
republicans (to include all the factions of the anarchist parties under
that title, in which they themselves rejoice, although the designation
be derived from "blood") had felt how strong and overpowering had
become the clamour raised throughout the land against that National
Assembly which had run its course, and was now placed in constant
opposition, not only to the president of the republic, as represented
by his ministers, but to the general spirit and feeling of the country
at large; they were aware, but too feelingly, that, should the Assembly
give way before this clamour, in spite of its evidences of resistance,
and decree its own dissolution, the elections of a new Legislative
Assembly by that universal suffrage which had once been their idol, and
was now to be scouted and despised, would inevitably produce what they
termed a reactionary, and what they suspected might prove, a
counter-revolutionary and monarchic majority; and they had determined,
in spite of their defeat in June, to attempt another revolution, in the
hope of again surprising the capital by a _coup-de-main_, and seizing
the reins of power into their own hands at once. This conspiracy was
affiliated together, in its various branches, by those formidable
_sociétés secrètes_, which, long organised, had been again called into
service by the persevering activity of the party, not only in Paris,
but in all the larger provincial towns, and for which fresh recruits
had been zealously drummed together. A general outbreak all over the
country was regulated to explode simultaneously on the 29th of January,
or during the following night: that monomania, which has never ceased
to possess the minds of the frantic chiefs of the Red-republican party,
and which still entertains the vain dream that, if they rise, all the
lower classes, or what they call "the people," must rise at their call,
to fight in their wild cause, gave them support in their designs.
Pretexts for discontent, at the same time, were not wanting. The
project of the government for a general suppression of the clubs--a
measure which they declared unconstitutional, gave a colour to
disaffection and revolt; and hopes that fresh allies would join the
insurrection gave the party a bold confidence, which it had not
possessed since the days of June. The _garde mobile_, in fact, had been
tampered with. The spirit of these young janissaries of the capital,
for the most part but a year ago the mere _gamins de Paris_, always
vacillating and little to be relied upon, spite of their deeds in June,
had already been adroitly worked upon by the fostering of that jealousy
which subsisted between them and the regular army into a more decided
hatred, when a decree of the government for the reorganisation of the
_corps_ was interpreted by the designing conspirators into an insult
offered to the whole institution, and a preparatory measure to its
total dissolution. Such insinuations, carefully fomented among these
young troops, led to tumultuous demonstrations of disaffection and
discontent. This ferment, so opportune for the designs of the Red
republicans, induced them to believe that their hour of struggle and of
approaching triumph was at hand: they counted on their new allies; all
was ready for the outbreak. But the government was alive to the tempest
rising around it; it was determined to do its duty to the country in
_preventing_ the storm, rather than in suppressing it when once it
should have broken forth. Hence the military preparations which, on the
morning of the 29th of January, had once more rendered all Paris a
fortress and a camp; hence the warning sound of the _rappel_, which at
an early hour had once more roused all the citizens from their beds,
and called alarmed faces forth at windows and upon balconies in the
gloom of the dawn; hence the stern commanding words of General
Changarnier, and the orders to the troops and the national guards, that
any man attempting to raise a stone from the streets should be shot
forthwith, and without mercy; hence the consternation with which the
outpost allies of the Red republicans hurried back growling to their
mysterious dens, wherever such may exist. Prevention was considered
better than cure, in spite of the misinterpretations and
misapprehensions to which it might be exposed, and by which it was
subsequently assailed by the disappointed faction. Arrest then followed
upon arrest; upwards of two hundred of the suspected chiefs of the
conspiracy were hurried off to prison. Among them were former delegates
to the once famous committee of the Luxembourg, whose conduct gave
evidence of the results produced by the dangerous utopian theories set
forth under the lectureship of M. Louis Blanc, and his noble friend the
_soi-disant ouvrier_ Albert. Chiefs of the clubs bore them company in
their incarceration; and the ex-Count D'Alton Shee, the _ex-élégant_ of
the fashionable _salons_ of Paris, but now the socialist-atheist and
anarchist, suffered the same penalty of his actions as leading member
of the club "_De la Solidarité Républicaine_." Turbulent officers of
the Garde Mobile underwent a similar fate. Even the national guard was
not spared in the person of one of its superior officers, whose
agitation and over-zealous movements excited suspicion; and, by the
way, in the general summing up, arrest, imprisonment, restriction of
liberty, may also take their place in the row as another little figure
in the total.
The conspiracy, however, was suppressed; the insurrection failed
entirely for the time; and Paris was told that it might be perfectly
reassured, and doze quietly again upon its pillow, without any fear
that Red-republicanism should again "murder sleep." But Paris, which
has not learned yet to recover its old quiet habit of sleeping calmly,
and has got too much fever in its system to close its eyes at will, is
not to be lulled by such mere sedatives of ministerial assurance. Once
roused in startled hurry from its bed again, and seeing the opiate of
confidence which was beginning to work its effect in very small doses
snatched from its grasp, it cannot calm its nerves at once. It will
not be persuaded that the crisis is over, and has passed away for
ever; like a child awakened by a nightmare, it looks into all sorts of
dark holes and corners, thinking to see the spectre lurking there. It
knows what it had to expect from the tender mercies of its pitiless
enemies, had they succeeded in their will; what was the _programme_ of
a new Red-republican rule--a _comité du salut public_, the _régime_ of
the _guillotine_, the _épuration_ of suspected aristocrats, the
confiscation of the property of emigrants, a tax of three _milliards_
upon the rich, a spoliation of all who "possess," the dissolution of
the national guard, the exclusive possession of all arms by the
_soi-disant_ people, and--but the list of such new-old measures of
ultra-republican government would be too long; it is an old tale often
told, and, after all, only a free translation from the measures of
other times. Paris, then, knows all this; it knows the fanatic and
inexpressible rage of its antagonist, to which the fever of madness
lends strength; it allows itself to be told all sorts of fearful
tales--how Socialists, in imitation of their London brethren, have
hired some thousand apartments in different quarters of the capital,
in order to light a thousand fires at once upon a given signal. It
goes about repeating the old vague cry--"_Nous allons avoir quelque
chose_;" and, however foolishly exaggerated its alarm, the results it
experiences are the same--again want of confidence arising from
anxiety, again suspension of trade, again a renewal of misery. The
fresh want of confidence, then, with all the attendant evils in its
train, may again, as the year of republicanism approaches to its
close, be taken as another figure in the sum-total that is sought.
In the midst of this sudden ferment, which has appeared towards the end
of the republican year like a _tableau final_ at the conclusion of an
act of a drama--hastily thrust forward when the interest of the piece
began to languish,--how stands the state of parties in that Assembly
which, although it is said--and very correctly, it would appear--no
longer to represent the spirit of the country at large, must still be
considered as the great axis of the republic, around which all else
moves? Always tumultuous, disorderly, and disdainful of those
parliamentary forms which could alone insure it the aspect of a
dignified deliberative body, the National Assembly, as it sees its
last days inevitably approaching--although it retards its dissolution
by every quack-doctoring means within its grasp--seems to have plunged,
in its throes, into a worse slough of triple confusion, disorder, and
uncertainty than ever. Jealous of its dignity, unwilling to quit its
power, unwilling--say malicious tongues--to quit its profit, and yet
pressed upon by that public opinion which it would vainly attempt to
deny, to misinterpret, or to despise, it has shown itself more
vacillating, capricious, and childish than ever. It wavers, votes
hither and thither, backwards and forwards--now almost inclined to fall
into the nets spread for it by the ultra-democratic party, that
supports its resistance against all attempts to dissolve it, and upon
the point of throwing itself into that party's arms; and now, again,
alarmed at the allies to whom it would unite itself, starting back from
their embrace, turning round in its majority, and declaring itself
against the sense of its former decisions. Now, it offers an active and
seemingly spiteful opposition to the government; and now, again, it
accepts the first outlet to enable it to turn back upon its course. Now
it is sulky, now alarmed at its own sulkiness; now angry, now begging
its own pardon for its hastiness. It is like a child that does not know
its own mind or temper, and gives way to all the first vagaries that
spring into its childish brain: it neglects the more real interests of
the country, and loses the country's time in its service, in its
eternal interpellations, accusations, recriminations, jealousies,
suspicions, and offended susceptibilities; it quarrels, scratches,
fights, and breaks its own toys--and all this in the midst of the most
inextricable confusion. To do it justice, the Assembly, as represented
by its wavering majority, is placed between two stools of apprehension,
between which it is continually coming to the ground, and making
wofully wry faces: and, between the two, it is not very easy to see how
it should preserve a decent equilibrium. On the one hand, it suspects
the reactionary, and perhaps counter-revolutionary designs of the
moderate party on the right, whose chiefs and leaders have chosen to
hold themselves back from any participation in the governmental posts,
which they have otherwise coveted and fatally intrigued for, as if they
had an _arrière-pensée_ of better and more congenial opportunities in
store, and whose reliance in this respect seems equivocal; and it looks
upon them as monarchists biding their time. On the other hand, it
dreads the _Montagnards_ on the extreme left, with their frantic
excesses and violent measures, however much it has looked for their
support in the momentous question of the dissolution of the Assembly.
It bears no good-will to the president, whose immense majority in the
elections has been mainly due to the hopes of the anti-republicans that
his advent might lead to a total change of government: it bears still
less good-will to the ministers of that president's choice. Between its
two fears, then, no wonder that it oscillates like a pendulum. The
approach of its final dissolution, which it has at last indefinitely
voted, and yet endeavours to retard by fresh obligations for remaining,
gives it that character of bitterness which an old coquette may feel
when she finds her last hope of conquest slipping indubitably away from
her. Without accusing the majority of that desperate clinging to place
from interested motives--which the country, however, is continually
casting in its teeth--it may be owned that it is not willing to see
power wrested from it, when it fears, upon its return to its
constituents, it may never find that power placed in its hands again,
and seeks every means of prolonging the fatal hour under the pretence
of serving the best interests of that country to which it fears to
appeal: and to this state of temper, its waspishness, uncertainty, and
increasing disorder, may be in some degree attributed.
Of the hopes and designs of the extreme moderate and supposed
reactionary party, little can be said, inasmuch as it has kept its
thoughts to itself, and not permitted itself to give any open
evidences whatever upon the point. But the ardent and impetuous
_Montagnards_ are by no means so cautious: their designs, and hopes,
and fears, have been clearly enough expressed; and they flash forth
continually, as lightnings in the midst of the thunder of their
incessant tumult. The allies and representatives, and, if all tales be
true, the chiefs of the Red-republican party out of the Assembly--they
still cherish the hope of establishing an ultra-democratic republican
government, by some means or other--"by foul if fair should fail"--a
government of despotic rule by violence--of propagandism by
constraint--of systematic anarchy. They still form visions of some
future Convention of which they may be the heroes--of a parliamentary
tyrannical oligarchy, by which they may enforce their extravagant
opinions. Driven to the most flagrant inconsistencies by their false
position, they declare themselves also the true and supreme organ--not
only of those they call "the people," but of the nation at large;
while, at the same time, they affect to despise, and they even
denounce as criminal, the general expression of public opinion, as
evidenced by universal suffrage. They assume the attitudes of
_sauveurs de la patrie_; and in the next breath they declare that
_patrie traitre_ to itself. They vaunt themselves to be the _élus de
la nation_; and they openly express their repugnance to meet again, as
candidates for the new legislative assembly, that majority of the
nation which they now would drag before the tribunal of republicanism
as counter-revolutionary and reactionary. In short, the only universal
suffrage to which they would appeal is that of the furious minority of
their perverted or hired bands among the dregs of the people. They
have thus in vain used every effort to prolong to an indefinite
period, or even to render permanent, if possible, the existence of
that Assembly which their own party attacked in May, and which they
themselves have so often denounced as reactionary. It is the rock of
salvation upon which they fix their frail anchor of power, in default
of that more solid and elevated foundation for their sway, which they
are well aware can now only be laid for them by the hands of
insurgents, and cemented by the blood of civil strife in the already
blood-flooded streets of Paris. With the same necessary inconsistency
which marks their whole conduct, they fix their hopes of advent to
power upon the overthrow of the Assembly of which they are not
masters, together with the whole present system of government; while
they support the principle of the inviolability and immovability of
that same Assembly, under such circumstances called by them "the holy
ark of the country," when a fresh appeal is to be made to the mass of
the nation at large. During the waverings and vacillations of the
majority--itself clinging to place and power--they more than once
expected a triumph for themselves in a declaration of the Assembly's
permanence, with the secret hope, _en arrière pensée_, of finding fair
cause for that insurrection by which alone they would fully profit, if
a _coup-de-main_ were to be attempted by the government, in obedience
to the loudly-expressed clamour of popular opinion, to wreck that
"holy ark" in which they had embarked their lesser hopes. When,
however, they found that the crew were disposed to desert it, on
feeling the storms of public manifestation blowing too hard against
it--when they found that they themselves must in a few weeks, or at
latest months, quit its tottering planks, their rage has known no
bounds. Every manoeuvre that can be used to prolong life, by
prolonging even the daily existence of the Assembly, is unscrupulously
put into practice. They clamour, they interrupt discussion--they
denounce--they produce those daily "_incidents_" of French
parliamentary tradition which prevent the progress of parliamentary
business--they invent fresh interpellations, to create further delays
by long-protracted angry quarrel and acrimony. Part of all this system
of denunciation, recrimination, and acrimonious accusation, belongs,
it is true, to their assumed character as the _dramatis personæ_ of an
imaginary Convention. They have their cherished models of old, to copy
which is their task, and their glory; the dramatic traditions of the
old Convention are ever in their winds, and are to be followed in
manner, and even costume, as far as possible. And thus Ledru Rollin,
another would-be Danton, tosses back his head, and raises his nose
aloft, and pulls up his burly form, to thunder forth his angry
Red-republican indignation; and Felix Pyat, the melodramatic
dramatist, of the _boulevard du crime_--fully in his place where
living dramas, almost as extravagant and ranting as those from his own
pen, are to be performed--rolls his large round dark eyes, and swells
his voice, and shouts, and throws about his arms, after the fashion of
those melodrama actors for whose noisy declamation he has afforded
such good stuff, and because of his picturesque appearance, fancies
himself, it would seem, a new St Just. And Sarrans, _soi-disant_ "the
young," acts after no less melodramatic a fashion, as if in rivalry
for the parts of _jeune premier_ in the drama, but cannot get beyond
the airs of a provincial groundling; and Lagrange, with his ferocious
and haggard countenance, and his grizzled long hair and beard, yells
from his seat, although in the tribune he affects a milder language
now, as if to contradict and deny his past deeds. And Proudhon shouts
too, although he puts on a benevolent _air patelin_, beneath the
spectacles on his round face, when he proposes his schemes for the
destruction of the whole fabric of society. And Pierre Leroux, the
frantic philosopher, shakes his wild greasy mane of hair about his
heavy greasy face, and raves, as ever, discordantly; and old
Lammenais, the renegade ex-priest, bends his gloomy head, and snarls
and growls, and utters low imprecations, instead of priestly
blessings, and looks like another Marat, even if he denies the moral
resemblance to its full extent. And Greppo shouts and struggles with
Felix Pyat for the much-desired part of St Just. And gray-bearded
Couthons, who have not even the ardour of youth to excuse their
extravagancies, rise from their curule chairs to toss up their arms,
and howl in chorus. And even Jules Favre, although he belongs not to
their party, barks, bites, accuses, and denounces too, all things and
all men, and spits forth venom, as if he was regardless where the
venom fell, or whom it blistered; and, with his pale, bilious face,
and scrupulously-attired spare form, seems to endeavour to preserve,
as far as he can, in a new republic, the agreeable tradition of
another Robespierre. And let it not be supposed, that malice or
prejudice attaches to the _Montagnards_ these names. The men of the
last republican era, whom history has execrated, calumniously and
unjustly they will say, are their heroes and their demi-gods; the sage
legislators, whose principles they vaunt as those of republican
civilisation and humanity; the models whom they avowedly, and with a
confessed air of ambition, aspire to copy in word and deed. Part,
however, of the systematic confusion, which it is their evident aim to
introduce into the deliberations of the Assembly, is, in latter days,
to be attributable to their desire to create delays, and lead to
episodical discussions of angry quarrel and recrimination, which may
prolong the convulsive existence of the Assembly to an indefinite
period, or by which they may profit to forward their own designs. Thus
the day is rare, as a ray of sunshine in a permanent equinoctial
storm, when the _Montagnards_ do not start from their seats, upon the
faintest pretext for discontent or accusation of reactionary
tendencies; and, either _en masse_ or individually, fulminate,
gesticulate, clamour, shout, denounce, and threaten. The thunder upon
the "Mountain's" brow is incessant: if it does not burst forth in
heavy peals, it never ceases to growl. Each _Montagnard_ is a Jupiter
in his own conceit, and hurls his thunderbolt with what force he may.
Not a word can be spoken by a supposed reactionary orator without a
murmur--not a phrase completed without a shout of denegation, a
torrent of interruptions, or peeling bursts of ironical laughter. The
"Mountain" is in perpetual labour; but its produce bears more
resemblance to a yelping pack of hungry blood-hounds, than to an
innocent mouse: it is in perpetual movement; and, like crushing
avalanches from its summit, rush down its most energetic members to
the tribune, to attempt to crush the Assembly by vehemence and
violence of language. These scenes of systematic tumult have
necessarily increased in force, since the boiling spite of
disappointment has flowed over in hot reality, in place of the
affected and acted indignation: the rage and agitation no longer know
the least control. The affair of the abolition of the clubs had
scarcely lent an excellent pretext for this violence, when the
suppression of the insurrection, and the arrests consequent upon the
discomfiture of the conspiracy on the 29th of January, gave a wide
field for the exercise of the system of denunciation commonly pursued.
To be beforehand with accusation by counter-accusation, has been
always the tactics of the party: when the party-chiefs find themselves
involved in the suspicion of subversive attempts, they begin the
attack. The _Montagnards_ have burst forth, then, to declare that the
military precautions were a systematic provocation on the part of the
ministry and General Changarnier, to incite the population of Paris to
civil discord; that the only conspiracy existed in the government
itself, to suppress liberty and overthrow the republic--at least to
cast a slur upon the only true republicans, and have an excuse for
tyrannical oppression towards them. They closed their eyes to the fact
that the insurrection, of the proposed reality of which no doubt can
remain, spite of these angry denegations, would have produced a crisis
to which the real reactionary anti-republicans looked as one that
_must_ produce a change in the detested government of the country,
should the moderate party triumph in the struggle, as was probable;
and that by the suppression of the insurrection the crisis was
averted, and the republic evidently consolidated for a time, not
weakened. With their usual inconsistency, and want of logical
deduction, at the same time that they accused the minister of a
useless and provocative display of the military force, they denounced
the conspiracy as real, but as proceeding from "infamous royalists,"
and not anarchist Red republicans. And then, to follow up this
pell-mell of self-contradictions--while, on the one hand, they denied
any insurrectionary movement at all, and, on the other, attributed it
to royalists--they called, in their language at the rostrum, the
commencement of the street demonstration on the morning of the 29th of
January--which could not be denied, and which had come down as usual
from the faubourgs, ever ripe for tumult--"the sublime manifestation
of the heroic people." Propositions couched in furious language, for
"_enquêtes parlementaires_," and for the "_mise en accusation des
ministres_"--every possible means of denunciation and intimidation
were employed, to increase the agitated hurly-burly of the Assembly,
and subvert, as far as was possible, the few frail elements of order
and of confidence that still subsisted in it. In marking thus, in
hasty traits, the position of parties in the Assembly, called together
to establish and consolidate the republic upon a basis of peace and
order, what are the figures which are so noted down as forming part of
the sum-total, as the approaching conclusion of the revolutionary year
is about to make up its accounts? As regards the Assembly, increased
confusion, disunion, bitter conflict of exasperated parties,
suspicion, mistrust, disaffection, violence.
How stands the government of the country after the year's
republicanism? At its head is the Republican President, elected by the
immense majority of the country, but elected upon a deceptive
basis--elected neither for his principles, which were doubtful; nor
for his qualities, which were unknown or supposed to be null; nor even
for his name, (although much error has been founded upon the subject,)
which, after all, dazzled only a comparatively small minority--but
because he was supposed to represent the principle opposed to
republicanism--opposed to the very _régime_ he was elected to
support--opposed to that spirit of which the man who had once saved
the country from anarchy, and had once received the country's
blessings, was considered to be the type--because hopes were founded
on his advent of a change in a system of government uncongenial, and
even hateful, to the mass of the nation; whether by the _prestige_ of
his name he attempted to re-establish an empire, or whether, as
another Monk, he formed only a stepping-stone for a new monarch.
Elected thus upon false principles, the head of the government stands
in an eminently false position. He may have shown himself moderate;
inclined to support the republic upon that "honest" basis which the
better-thinking republicans demand; firm in the support of a cabinet,
the measures of which he approves; and every way sincere and
straightforward, although not in all his actions wise: but his
position remains the same--placed between the ambitious hope of a
party which might almost be said to exist no longer, and which has
become that only of a family and a few old adherents and connexions,
but which attempts to dazzle a country vain and proud of the word
"glory," like France, by the somewhat tarnished glitter of a name, and
the prospect of another which calls itself legitimate;--the _point de
mire_ of the army, but, at the same time, the stalking-horse of a
nation miserably wearied with the present hobby, upon which it has
been forced unwillingly to ride, with about as much pleasure and
_aplomb_ as the famous tailor of Brentford--and, on the other hand,
suspected, accused, and denounced by those who claim to themselves the
only true and pure essence of veritable republicanism. It is a
position placed upon a "see-saw"--placed in the centre, it is true,
but liable, in any convulsive crisis, to be seriously compromised by
the violent and abrupt elevation of either of the ends of the plank,
as it tosses up and down: for the feet of the president, instead of
directing the movements of this perpetually agitated "see-saw," and
giving the necessary steadiness, without which the whole present
republican balance must be overturned, seem more destined to slip
hither and thither in the struggle, at the imminent risk of losing all
equilibrium, and slipping off the plank altogether. As yet, the
president, whenever he appears in public, is followed by shouting and
admiring crowds, who run by his horse, clap their hands, call upon his
name, greet him with noisy cries of "_vive_," grasp his hands, and of
course present some hundreds of petitions; but these demonstrations of
respect must be attributed far less to personal consideration, or
popular affection, or even to the _prestige_ of the name of Napoleon,
than to the eagerness of the Parisian public, even of the lowest
classes--spite of all that may be said of their sentiments by their
would-be leaders, the ultra-democrats--to salute with acclamation the
personage who represents a head, a chief, a _point d'appui
quelconque_--a leading staff, a guiding star, a unity, instead of a
disorderly body--in one word, a resemblance of royalty. It is the
_president_, and not the _man_, who is thus greeted. The usual
curiosity and love of show and parade of the Parisian _badauds_, at
least as "cockney" as the famed Londoner, may be much mixed up again
in all this, but the sentiment remains the same; nor do these
demonstrations alter the position of the man who stands at the head of
the government of France. The ministry, supported in _principle_ by
the country, although not from any personal respect or liking, stands
in opposition to an Assembly, elected by that country, but no longer
representing it. The army shows itself inclined to protect the
government, on the one hand, and is said to be ready, on the other, to
follow in the cry of "_vive l'Empereur!_" should that cry be raised.
The _garde mobile_, although modified by its late reorganisation, is
suspected of versatility and unsoundness, if not exactly of
disaffection: it stands in instant collision with the dislike and
jealousy of the army, and, spite of its courageous part in June, is
looked upon askance by the lovers of order. What aspect, then, have
the figures which may be supposed to represent all this in the
sum-total of the year's republicanism? They bear the forms of
instability, suspicion, doubt, collision, want of confidence in the
future, and all the evils attendant upon the uncertainty of a state of
things which, spite of assurances, and spite of efforts, the greater
part of France seems inclined to look upon merely as provisionary.
Under what form, then, does the public spirit exhibit itself in
circumstances of so much doubt and instability? The attitude of the
working classes in general, of the very great majority, in fact--for
those still swayed by the delusive arguments, and still more delusive
and destructive promises of the Socialists and Republicans are
comparatively few, although formidable in the ferocity of their
doctrines and their plans, and in the active restlessness of their
feverish and excited energies, which resemble the reckless,
sleepless, activity of the madman--the attitude of the working classes
in Paris is calm, and even expectant; but calm from utter
weariness--calm from the convictions, founded on the saddest
experience, in the wretched results of further revolutions--calm from
a sort of prostrate resignation, and almost despair, in the midst of
the miseries and privations which the last fatal year has increased
instead of diminishing, and written with a twofold scourge upon their
backs: an attitude reassuring, inasmuch as it implies hatred and
opposition to the subversive doctrines of the anarchists, but not
without its dangers, and, to say the least, heartrending and
afflicting--and expectant in the hope and conviction of change in the
cause of stability and order. The feeling which, after a few months of
the rule of a reckless provisionary government, was the prevailing one
among the _majority_ of the working classes--the feeling, which has
been already noted, that king Log, or even king Stork, or any other
concentrated power that would represent stability and order, would be
preferable to the uncertainties of a vacillating republican rule--has
ever gained ground among them since those hopes of re-established
confidence, and a consequent amelioration of their wretched position,
which they first founded upon the meeting of the National Assembly,
and then upon the election of a president, have twice deceived them,
and left them almost as wretched as ever in the stagnation of trade
and commercial affairs. The feeling thus prevalent among the working
classes in the capital, is, at the same time, the feeling of the
country at large, but to an even far wider extent, and more openly
expressed. The hatred of the departments to Paris, as the chief seat
of revolution and disorder, has also increased rather than diminished;
and everywhere the sentiments of utter weariness, disaffection to the
Republic, and impatience under a system of government of which they
are no longer inclined to await the promised blessings, are displayed
upon all possible occasions, and by every possible organ. The upper
classes among moneyed men, and landed proprietors, remain quiet and
hold their tongue. They may be expectant and desirous of change also,
but they show no open impatience, for _they can afford to wait_. It is
they, on the contrary, who more generally express their opinions in
the _possibility_ of the establishment of a prosperous republic--a
possibility which the working classes in their impatience deny. In
spite of all that ultra-democratic journals may say, in their raving
denunciations, borrowed of the language of another Republic, some of
the most eager and decided of those they term "reactionary," and
denounce as "aristocrats," are thus to be found among the lower
working classes. To do justice to the truth of the accusations brought
by the Red republican party, in another respect, it is in the
_bourgeois_ spirit that is to be found the strongest and most openly
avowed reactionary feeling. It is impossible to enter any shop of the
better order in Paris, and speak upon the position of affairs, without
hearing not only the hope, but the expectation openly expressed, of a
monarchic restoration, and that restoration in favour of the elder
branch of the Bourbons. The feeling is universal in this class: the
name of "Henri V.," scarce mentioned at all, and never under this
title, during the reign of Louis Philippe, except in the exclusive
circles of the Faubourg St Germain, is now in every shopkeeper's
mouth. Louis Philippe, the Regency, all the members of the Orleans
family, the Empire, a Bonapartist rule--all are set aside in the minds
of these classes for the now-desired idol of their fickle choice, the
Duke of Bordeaux. In these classes a restoration in favour of Henri V.
is no longer a question of possibility; it is a mere question of time:
it is not "_L'aurons-nous?_" that they ask; it is "_Quand
l'aurons-nous?_" In this respect the real and true republicans, in the
"honest" designation of the term, have certainly every reason to raise
an angry clamour; if sedition to the existing _régime_ of the country
is not openly practised, it is, at all events, openly and generally
expressed. Nor are their accusations brought against the government
entirely without justice; for while, on the one hand, a measure of a
nature altogether arbitrary, under the freedom of a republican rule,
is exercised against a well-known artist, by seizing in his _atelier_
the portraits of the Duke of Bordeaux, or, as he is called, the Count
of Chambord, and of the Countess, as seditiously exhibited,
lithographed likenesses of the Bourbon heir are to be seen on all
sides at print-shop windows, and in popular temporary print-stalls; in
galleries, arcades, and upon street walls; in _vignettes_, upon
ballads, with such titles, as "_Dieu le veut_," or "_La France le
veut_," or in busts of all dimensions. Again, the _Henri-quinquiste_
feeling, as it is called, is universal among the fickle _bourgeoisie_
of Paris--the rock upon which Louis Philippe founded his throne, and
which sank under him in his hour of need: and the _bourgeois_, eager
and confident in their hopes, wilfully shut their eyes to the fact
that, were their detested republic overthrown, there might arise
future convulsions, and future civil strife, between a Bonapartist
faction--which necessarily grows, and increases, and flourishes more
and more under the rule, however temporary, of a chief of the
name--and the legitimist party: for the Orleanists, whether fused by a
compromise of their hopes with the Legitimists, as has been said, or
fallen into the obscurity of forgetfulness or indifference in the
majority of the nation, hold forth no decided banner at the present
moment. In regarding, then, the public spirit among the majority of
all classes in Paris, without consulting the still more reactionary
feeling of the departments, the figures to be added to the sum-total
of the year's republican account will be again found similar to those
already enumerated, in the shape of disaffection, abhorrence of the
republican government, want of confidence in its stability,
expectation and hope of a change, however it may come, and although it
may be brought about by a convulsion.
Meanwhile the uncertainty and anxiety are increased by the continued
expectation of some approaching crisis, which the explosion of the
insurrection, destined for the 29th of January, would have hastened,
and which the precautions taken for the suppression of the outbreak
have evidently averted for the time. But what confidence can be
expressed in the stability of this temporary state of order in a
country so full of excitement and love of change, and in a state of
continual revolution, in which such conspiracy ceases not to work in
darkness, with the hope of attaining despotic power, and in which
disaffection to the state of things is openly expressed? Events have
run their course with such fearful rapidity, and the unexpected has
been so greatly the "order of the day," in the last year's history of
France, that who can answer for the future of the next months, or even
weeks? Political prophets have long since thrown up the trade of
oracle-giving in despair; and the tripod of the oracle has been left
to the occupation of the chances of the _imprévu_. In spite, then, of
the temporary reassurance of peace given by the last measures of the
government, which have been denounced by the ultra-democrats as
arbitrary, subversive, and unconstitutional, the underground agitation
still continues. Paris dances once more, repeating to itself, however,
the often-repeated words, "_Nous dansons sur un volcan_." The carnival
pursues its noisy pleasures, under the protection of the forests of
bayonets that are continually glittering along the gay sunlit streets,
and to the sound of the drum of the marching military, who still give
Paris the aspect of a garrison in time of war. Gay _salons_ are
opened, and carriages again rattle along the streets on moonlit
nights; but the spirit of Parisian gaiety reposes not upon confidence,
and is but the practical application of the epicurean philosophy that
takes for its maxim, "_Carpe diem_."
Whatever may be the reality of an approaching crisis, which, however
feeble the symptoms at present, the Parisians insist upon regarding as
near at hand,--whatever may be the hopes of some that the crisis,
however convulsive, must produce a desired change, and the fears of
others of the civil strife,--whatever thus the desires of the
sanguine, the expectations of the hopeful, the apprehensions of the
peaceful, and the terrors of the timorous, the result is still the
same--the uncertainty, the want of confidence, the evils attendant
upon this feeling of instability, so often already enumerated. The
violence and struggling rage of the ultra-democratic and socialist
journals, increasing in denunciation to the death, and positively
convulsive in their rage, as the anti-republican reactionary spirit
grows, and spreads wider, and every day takes firmer root, and even
dares to blossom openly in the expression of public opinion, are
looked upon as the throes of dying agony by the bold, but are regarded
with dread by the less courageous, who know the force of the party's
exaggerated violence, and have already felt the miseries of their
fanatic subversive attempts. Meanwhile, the moderate or honest
republic, which vainly attempts a _juste milieu_ of republicanism,
between extravagance and disaffection, limps sadly forwards; or, as
one of the late satirical pieces, which openly attack the republic on
the stage, expresses it--amidst the applause and shouts of deriding
laughter, which hail it nightly in crowded houses, not so much from
the boxes as from the galleries thronged with types of the
"people"--"_Elle boîte! elle boîte!_" Republicans may thus clamour
against the culpable laxity of a government, which permits these
much-applauded attacks upon the Republic, in accordance with the
principle of freedom of opinion, and in pursuance of the abolition of
a theatrical censorship which they themselves condemned: but so it is;
and therein may be sought and found one of the strongest popular
evidences of popular disaffection. And satires too, and caricatures,
abound, in which the unhappy Republic is still more soundly
scourged--demonstrations not less lively, although they call not forth
the evident approbation of a congregated multitude. Now, then, that
the revolutionary year has almost closed there--now that the
anniversary of the days of February is at hand--let people take the
figures enumerated, and justly enumerated, as they will, and place
them as they fancy in the sum-total, and cast them up as they please,
or deduce what value they may from the amount of the first year of new
republicanism in France. Another question. What _fêtes_ are to greet
the anniversaries of the "glorious" days of the "glorious" revolution
which established a "glorious" Republic? Assuredly the _fête_ will not
be in the people's hearts: no, not even in the hearts of those whom
their mis-named, self-appointed friends choose to call, _par
excellence_, "the people."
THE CAXTONS--PART XI.
CHAPTER LII.
The next day, on the outside of the Cambridge Telegraph, there was one
passenger who ought to have impressed his fellow-travellers with a
very respectful idea of his lore in the dead languages; for not a
single syllable, in a live one, did he vouchsafe to utter from the
moment he ascended that "bad eminence," to the moment in which he
regained his mother earth. "Sleep," says honest Sancho, "covers a man
better than a cloak." I am ashamed of thee, honest Sancho! thou art a
sad plagiarist; for Tibullus said pretty nearly the same thing before
thee,--
"Te somnus fusco velavit amictu."[4]
But is not silence as good a cloak as sleep?--does it not wrap a man
round with as offusc and impervious a fold? Silence--what a world it
covers!--what busy schemes--what bright hopes and dark fears--what
ambition, or what despair! Do you ever see a man in any society
sitting mute for hours, and not feel an uneasy curiosity to penetrate
the wall he thus builds up between others and himself? Does he not
interest you far more than the brilliant talker at your left--the airy
wit at your right, whose shafts fall in vain on the sullen barrier of
the silent man! Silence, dark sister of Nox and Erebus, how, layer
upon layer, shadow upon shadow, blackness upon blackness, thou
stretchest thyself from hell to heaven, over thy two chosen
haunts--man's heart and the grave!
So, then, wrapped in my greatcoat and my silence, I performed my
journey; and on the evening of the second day I reached the
old-fashioned brick house. How shrill on my ears sounded the bell! How
strange and ominous to my impatience seemed the light gleaming across
the windows of the hall! How my heart beat as I watched the face of
the servant who opened the gate to my summons!
"All well?" cried I.
"All well, sir," answered the servant, cheerfully. "Mr Squills,
indeed, is with master, but I don't think there is anything the
matter."
But now my mother appeared at the threshold, and I was in her arms.
"Sisty, Sisty!--my dear, dear son!--beggared, perhaps--and my
fault,--mine."
"Yours!--come into this room, out of hearing--your fault?"
"Yes, yes!--for if I had had no brother, or if I had not been led
away,--if I had, as I ought, entreated poor Austin not to--"
"My dear, dearest mother, _you_ accuse yourself for what, it seems,
was my uncle's misfortune--I am sure not even his fault! (I made a
gulp _there_.) No, lay the fault on the right shoulders--the defunct
shoulders of that horrible progenitor, William Caxton the printer;
for, though I don't yet know the particulars of what has happened, I
will lay a wager it is connected with that fatal invention of
printing. Come, come,--my father is well, is he not?"
"Yes, thank Heaven."
"And you too, and I, and Roland, and little Blanche! Why then, you are
right to thank Heaven, for your true treasures are untouched. But sit
down and explain, pray."
"I cannot explain. I do not understand anything more than that he, my
brother,--mine!--has involved Austin in--in--" (a fresh burst of
tears.)
I comforted, scolded, laughed, preached, and adjured in a breath; and
then, drawing my mother gently on, entered my father's study.
At the table was seated Mr Squills, pen in hand, and a glass of his
favourite punch by his side. My father was standing on the hearth, a
shade more pale; but with a resolute expression on his countenance,
which was new to its indolent thoughtful mildness! He lifted his eyes
as the door opened, and then, putting his finger to his lips, as he
glanced towards my mother, he said gaily, "No great harm done. Don't
believe her! Women always exaggerate, and make realities of their own
bugbears: it is the vice of their lively imaginations, as Wierus has
clearly shown in accounting for the marks, moles, and hare-lips which
they inflict upon their innocent infants before they are even born. My
dear boy," added my father, as I here kissed him and smiled in his
face, "I thank you for that smile! God bless you!" He wrung my hand,
and turned a little aside.
"It is a great comfort," renewed my father, after a short pause, "to
know, when a misfortune happens, that it could not be helped. Squills
has just discovered that I have no bump of cautiveness; so that,
craniologically speaking, if I had escaped one imprudence, I should
certainly have run my head against another."
"A man with your development is made to be taken in," said Mr Squills,
consolingly.
"Do you hear that, my own Kitty! and have you the heart to blame Jack
any longer--a poor creature cursed with a bump that would take in the
Stock Exchange? And can any one resist his bump, Squills?"
"Impossible!" said the surgeon authoritatively.
"Sooner or later it must involve him in its airy meshes--eh, Squills?
entrap him into its fatal cerebral cell. There his fate waits him,
like the ant-lion in its pit."
"Too true," quoth Squills. "What a phrenological lecturer you would
have made!"
"Go, then, my love," said my father, "and lay no blame but on this
melancholy cavity of mine, where cautiveness--is not! Go, and let
Sisty have some supper; for Squills says that he has a fine
development of the mathematical organs, and we want his help. We are
hard at work on figures, Pisistratus."
My mother looked broken-hearted, and, obeying submissively, stole to
the door without a word. But as she reached the threshold she turned
round, and beckoned to me to follow her.
I whispered to my father, and went out. My mother was standing in the
hall, and I saw by the lamp that she had dried her tears; and that her
face, though very sad, was more composed.
"Sisty," she said, in a low voice which struggled to be firm, "promise
me that you will tell me all,--the worst, Sisty. They keep it from me,
and that is my hardest punishment; for when I don't know all that
he--that Austin suffers, it seems to me as if I had lost his heart.
Oh, Sisty! My child, my child, don't fear me! I shall be happy
whatever befalls us, if I once get back my privilege--my privilege,
Sisty, to comfort, to share!--do you understand me?"
"Yes, indeed, my mother! And with your good sense, and clear woman's
wit, if you will but feel how much we want them, you will be the best
counsellor we could have. So never fear, you and I will have no
secrets."
My mother kissed me, and went away with a less heavy step.
As I re-entered, my father came across the room and embraced me.
"My son," he said in a faltering voice, "if your modest prospects in
life are ruined--"
"Father, father, can you think of me at such a moment! Me!--Is it
possible to ruin the young, and strong, and healthy! Ruin me, with
these thews and sinews!--ruin me, with the education you have given
me--thews and sinews of the mind! Oh no! there, Fortune is harmless!
And you forget, sir,--the saffron bag!"
Squills leapt up, and, wiping his eyes with one hand, gave me a
sounding slap on the shoulder with the other.
"I am proud of the care I took of your infancy, Master Caxton. That
comes of strengthening the digestive organs in early childhood. Such
sentiments are a proof of magnificent ganglions in a perfect state of
order. When a man's tongue is as smooth as I am sure yours is, he
slips through misfortune like an eel."
I laughed outright, my father smiled faintly; and seating myself, I
drew towards me a paper filled with Squills' memoranda, and said, "Now
to find the unknown quantity. What on earth is this? 'Supposed value
of books, £750.' Oh, father! this is impossible. I was prepared for
anything but that. Your books--they are your life!"
"Nay," said my father; "after all, they are the offending party in
this case, and so ought to be the principal victims. Besides, I
believe I know most of them by heart. But, in truth, we are only
entering all our effects, to be sure (added my father proudly) that,
come what may, we are not dishonoured."
"Humour him," whispered Squills; "we will save the Books." Then he
added aloud, as he laid finger and thumb on my pulse, "One, two,
three, about seventy--capital pulse--soft and full--he can bear the
whole: let us administer it."
My father nodded--"Certainly. But, Pisistratus, we must manage your
dear mother. Why she should think of blaming herself, because poor
Jack took wrong ways to enrich us, I cannot understand. But, as I have
had occasion before to remark, Sphinx and Enigma are nouns feminine."
My poor father! that was a vain struggle for thy wonted innocent
humour. The lips quivered.
Then the story came out. It seems that, when it was resolved to
undertake the publication of the _Literary Times_, a certain number of
shareholders had been got together by the indefatigable energies of
Uncle Jack; and, in the deed of association and partnership, my
father's name figured conspicuously as the holder of a fourth of this
joint property. If in this my father had committed some imprudence, he
had at least done nothing that, according to the ordinary calculations
of a secluded student, could become ruinous. But, just at the time
when we were in the hurry of leaving town, Jack had represented to my
father that it might be necessary to alter a little the plan of the
paper; and, in order to allure a larger circle of readers, touch
somewhat on the more vulgar news and interests of the day. A change of
plan might involve a change of title; and he suggested to my father
the expediency of leaving the smooth hands of Mr Tibbets altogether
unfettered, as to the technical name and precise form of the
publication. To this my father had unwittingly assented, on hearing
that the other shareholders would do the same. Mr Peck, a printer of
considerable opulence, and highly respectable name, had been found to
advance the sum necessary for the publication of the earlier numbers,
upon the guarantee of the said act of partnership, and the additional
security of my father's signature to a document, authorising Mr
Tibbets to make any change in the form or title of the periodical that
might be judged advisable, concurrent with the consent of the other
shareholders.
Now it seems that Mr Peck had, in his previous conferences with Mr
Tibbets, thrown much cold water on the idea of the _Literary Times_,
and had suggested something that should "catch the moneyed
public,"--the fact being, as was afterwards discovered, that the
printer, whose spirit of enterprise was congenial to Uncle Jack's, had
shares in three or four speculations, to which he was naturally glad
of an opportunity to invite the attention of the public. In a word, no
sooner was my poor father's back turned than the _Literary Times_ was
dropped incontinently, and Mr Peck and Mr Tibbets began to concentre
their luminous notions into that brilliant and comet-like apparition
which ultimately blazed forth under the title of _The Capitalist_.
From this change of enterprise the more prudent and responsible of the
original shareholders had altogether withdrawn. A majority, indeed,
were left; but the greater part of those were shareholders of that
kind most amenable to the influences of Uncle Jack, and willing to be
shareholders in anything, since as yet they were possessors of
nothing.
Assured of my father's responsibility, the adventurous Peck put plenty
of spirit into the first launch of _The Capitalist_. All the walls
were placarded with its announcements; circular advertisements ran
from one end of of the kingdom to the other. Agents were engaged,
correspondents levied _en masse_. The invasion of Xerxes on the Greeks
was not more munificently provided for than that of _The Capitalist_
upon the credulity and avarice of mankind.
But as Providence bestows upon fishes the instrument of fins, whereby
they balance and direct their movements, however rapid and erratic,
through the pathless deeps, so to the cold-blooded creatures of our
own species--that may be classed under the genus MONEY-MAKERS--the
same protective power accords the fin-like properties of prudence and
caution, wherewith your true money-getter buoys and guides himself
majestically through the great seas of speculation. In short, the
fishes the net was cast for were all scared from the surface at the
first splash. They came round and smelt at the mesh with their shark
bottle-noses, and then, plying those invaluable fins, made off as fast
as they could--plunging into the mud--hiding themselves under rocks
and coral banks. Metaphor apart, the capitalists buttoned up their
pockets, and would have nothing to say to their namesake.
Not a word of this change, so abhorrent to all the notions of poor
Augustine Caxton, had been breathed to him by Peck or Tibbets. He ate,
and slept, and worked at the great Book, occasionally wondering why he
had not heard of the advent of the _Literary Times_, unconscious of
all the awful responsibilities which _The Capitalist_ was entailing on
him;--knowing no more of _The Capitalist_ than he did of the last loan
of the Rothschilds.
Difficult was it for all other human nature, save my father's, not to
breathe an indignant anathema on the scheming head of the
brother-in-law who had thus violated the most sacred obligations of
trust and kindred, and so entangled an unsuspecting recluse. But, to
give even Jack Tibbets his due, he had firmly convinced himself that
_The Capitalist_ would make my father's fortune; and if he did not
announce to him the strange and anomalous development into which the
original sleeping chrysalis of the _Literary Times_ had taken
portentous wing, it was purely and wholly in the knowledge that my
father's "prejudices," as he termed them, would stand in the way of his
becoming a Croesus. And, in fact, Uncle Jack had believed so heartily
in his own project, that he had put himself thoroughly into Mr Peck's
power, signed bills in his own name to some fabulous amount, and was
actually now in the Fleet, whence his penitential and despairing
confession was dated, arriving simultaneously with a short letter from
Mr Peck, wherein that respectable printer apprised my father that he
had continued, at his own risk, the publication of _The Capitalist_, as
far as a prudent care for his family would permit; that he need not say
that a new daily journal was a very vast experiment; that the expense
of such a paper as _The Capitalist_ was immeasurably greater than that
of a mere literary periodical, as originally suggested; and that now,
being constrained to come upon the shareholders for the sums he had
advanced, amounting to several thousands, he requested my father to
settle with him immediately--delicately implying that he himself might
settle as he could with the other shareholders, most of whom, he
grieved to add, he had been misled by Mr Tibbets into believing to be
men of substance, when in reality they were men of straw!
Nor was this all the evil. The "Great Anti-Bookseller Publishing
Society,"--which had maintained a struggling existence--evinced by
advertisements of sundry forthcoming works of solid interest and
enduring nature, wherein, out of a long list, amidst a pompous array
of "Poems;" "Dramas not intended for the Stage;" "Essays by
Phileutheros, Philanthropos, Philopolis, Philodemus, and Philalethes,"
stood prominently forth "The History of Human Error, Vols. I. and II.,
quarto, with illustrations,"--the "Anti-Bookseller Society," I say,
that had hitherto evinced nascent and budding life by these
exfoliations from its slender stem, died of a sudden blight, the
moment its sun, in the shape of Uncle Jack, set in the Cimmerian
regions of the Fleet; and a polite letter from another printer (O
William Caxton, William Caxton!--fatal progenitor!) informing my
father of this event, stated complimentarily that it was to him, "as
the most respectable member of the Association," that the said printer
would be compelled to look for expenses incurred, not only in the very
costly edition of the History of Human Error, but for those incurred
in the print and paper devoted to "Poems," "Dramas, not intended for
the stage," "Essays by Phileutheros, Philanthropos, Philopolis,
Philodemus, and Philalethes," with sundry other works, no doubt of a
very valuable nature, but in which a considerable loss, in a pecuniary
point of view, must be necessarily expected.
I own that, as soon as I had mastered the above agreeable facts, and
ascertained from Mr Squills that my father really did seem to have
rendered himself legally liable to these demands, I leant back in my
chair, stunned and bewildered.
"So you see," said my father, "that as yet we are contending with
monsters in the dark--in the dark all monsters look larger and uglier.
Even Augustus Cæsar, though certainly he had never scrupled to make as
many ghosts as suited his convenience, did not like the chance of a
visit from them, and never sate alone _in tenebris_. What the amount
of the sums claimed from me may be, we know not; what may be gained
from the other shareholders is equally obscure and undefined. But the
first thing to do is to get poor Jack out of prison."
"Uncle Jack out of prison!" exclaimed I: "surely, sir, that is
carrying forgiveness too far."
"Why, he would not have been in prison if I had not been so blindly
forgetful of his weakness, poor man! I ought to have known better. But
my vanity misled me; I must needs publish a great book, as if (said Mr
Caxton, looking round the shelves,) there were not great books enough
in the world! I must needs, too, think of advancing and circulating
knowledge in the form of a journal--I, who had not knowledge enough of
the character of my own brother-in-law to keep myself from ruin! Come
what will, I should think myself the meanest of men to let that poor
creature, whom I ought to have considered as a monomaniac, rot in
prison, because I, Austin Caxton, wanted common sense. And (concluded
my father resolutely) he is your mother's brother, Pisistratus. I
should have gone to town at once; but, hearing that my wife had
written to you, I waited till I could leave her to the companionship
of hope and comfort--two blessings that smile upon every mother in the
face of a son like you. To-morrow I go."
"Not a bit of it," said Mr Squills firmly; "as your medical adviser, I
forbid you to leave the house for the next six days."