CHAPTER LVIII.

"I swear," cried my uncle, "that it _shall_ be so;" and with a big

frown, and a truculent air, he seized the fatal instrument.

"Indeed, brother, it must not," said my father, laying one pale,

scholar-like hand mildly on Captain Roland's brown, bellicose, and

bony fist; and with the other, outstretched, protecting the menaced,

palpitating victim.

Not a word had my uncle heard of our losses, until they had been

adjusted, and the sum paid; for we all knew that the old tower would

have been gone--sold to some neighbouring squire or jobbing

attorney--at the first impetuous impulse of Uncle Roland's

affectionate generosity. Austin endangered! Austin ruined!--he would

never have rested till he came, cash in hand, to his deliverance.

Therefore, I say, not till all was settled did I write to the Captain,

and tell him gaily what had chanced. And, however light I made of our

misfortunes, the letter brought the Captain to the red brick house the

same evening on which I myself reached it, and about an hour later. My

uncle had not sold the tower, but he came prepared to carry us off to

it _vi et armis_. We must live with him, and on him--let or sell the

brick house, and put out the remnant of my father's income to nurse

and accumulate. And it was on finding my father's resistance stubborn,

and that hitherto he had made no way,--that my uncle, stepping back

into the hall, in which he had left his carpet-bag, &c., returned with

an old oak case, and, touching a spring roller, out flew--the Caxton

pedigree.

Out it flew--covering all the table, and undulating, Nile-like, till

it had spread over books, papers, my mother's work-box, and the

tea-service, (for the table was large and compendious, emblematic of

its owner's mind)--and then, flowing on the carpet, dragged its slow

length along, till it was stopped by the fender.

"Now," said my uncle solemnly, "there never have been but two causes

of difference between you and me, Austin. One is over; why should the

other last? Aha! I know why you hang back; you think that we may

quarrel about it!"

"About what, Roland?"

"About it, I say--and I'll be d--d if we do!" cried my uncle,

reddening, (I never heard him swear before.) "And I have been thinking

a great deal upon the matter, and I have no doubt you are right. So I

brought the old parchment with me, and you shall see me fill up the

blank, just as you would have it. Now, then, you will come and live

with me, and we can never quarrel any more."

Thus saying, Uncle Roland looked round for pen and ink; and, having

found them--not without difficulty, for they had been submerged under

the overflow of the pedigree--he was about to fill up the _lacuna_, or

hiatus, which had given rise to such memorable controversy, with the

name of "William Caxton, printer in the Sanctuary," when my father,

slowly recovering his breath, and aware of his brother's purpose,

intervened. It would have done your heart good to hear them--so

completely, in the inconsistency of human nature, had they changed

sides upon the question--my father now all for Sir William de Caxton,

the hero of Bosworth; my uncle all for the immortal printer. And in

this discussion they grew animated: their eyes sparkled, their voices

rose--Roland's voice deep and thunderous, Austin's sharp and piercing.

Mr Squills stopped his ears. Thus it arrived at that point, when my

uncle doggedly came to the end of all argumentation--"I swear that it

shall be so;" and my father, trying the last resource of pathos,

looked pleadingly into Roland's eyes, and said, with a tone soft as

mercy, "Indeed, brother, it must not." Meanwhile the dry parchment

crisped, creaked, and trembled in every pore of its yellow skin.

"But," said I, coming in, opportunely, like the Horatian deity, "I

don't see that either of you gentlemen has a right so to dispose of my

ancestry. It is quite clear that a man has no possession in posterity.

Posterity may possess him; but deuce a bit will he ever be the better

for his great great-grandchildren!"

SQUILLS.--Hear, hear!

PISISTRATUS--(_warming_.)--But a man's ancestry is a positive property

to him. How much, not only of acres, but of his constitution, his

temper, his conduct, character, and nature, he may inherit from some

progenitor ten times removed! Nay, without that progenitor would he

ever have been born--would a Squills ever have introduced him into the

world, or a nurse ever have carried him _upo kolpo_?

SQUILLS.--Hear, hear!

PISISTRATUS--(_with dignified emotion_)--No man, therefore, has a

right to rob another of a forefather, with a stroke of his pen, from

any motives, howsoever amiable. In the present instance, you will say,

perhaps, that the ancestor in question is apocryphal--it may be the

printer, it may be the knight. Granted; but here, where history is in

fault, shall a mere sentiment decide? While both are doubtful, my

imagination appropriates both. At one time I can reverence industry

and learning in the printer; at another, valour and devotion in the

knight. This kindly doubt gives me two great forefathers; and, through

them, two trains of idea that influence my conduct under different

circumstances. I will not permit you, Captain Roland, to rob me of

either forefather--either train of idea. Leave, then, this sacred void

unfilled, unprofaned; and accept this compromise of chivalrous

courtesy--while my father lives with the Captain, we will believe in

the printer; when away from the Captain, we will stand firm to the

knight."

"Good!" cried Uncle Roland, as I paused, a little out of breath.

"And," said my mother softly, "I do think, Austin, there is a way of

settling the matter which will please all parties. It is quite sad to

think that poor Roland, and dear little Blanche, should be all alone

in the tower; and I am sure that we should be much happier

altogether."

"There!" cried Roland, triumphantly. "If you are not the most

obstinate, hardhearted, unfeeling brute in the world--which I don't

take you to be--brother Austin, after that really beautiful speech of

your wife's, there is not a word to be said farther."

"But we have not yet heard Kitty to the end, Roland."

"I beg your pardon, a thousand times, ma'am--sister," said the

Captain, bowing.

"Well, I was going to add," said my mother, "that we will go and live

with you, Roland, and club our little fortunes together. Blanche and I

will take care of the house, and we shall be just twice as rich

together as we are separately."

"Pretty sort of hospitality that!" grunted the Captain. "I did not

expect you to throw me over in that way. No, no; you must lay by for

the boy there,--what's to become of him?"

"But we shall _all_ lay by for him," said my mother simply; "you as

well as Austin. We shall have more to save, if we have both more to

spend."

"Ah, save!--that is easily said: there would be a pleasure in saving,

then!" said the Captain mournfully.

"And what's to become of me?" cried Squills, very petulantly. "Am I to

be left here, in my old age--not a rational soul to speak to, and no

other place in the village where there's a drop of decent punch to be

had! 'A plague on both your houses'! as the chap said at the theatre

the other night."

"There's room for a doctor in our neighbourhood, Mr Squills," said the

Captain. "The gentleman in your profession who _does for us_, wants, I

know, to sell the business."

"Humph!" said Squills--"a horrible healthy neighbourhood, I suspect!"

"Why, it has that misfortune, Mr Squills; but with your help," said my

uncle slily, "a great alteration for the better may be effected in

that respect."

Mr Squills was about to reply, when ring--a-ting--ring--ting! there

came such a brisk, impatient, make-one's-self-at-home kind of

tintanabular alarum at the great gate, that we all started up and

looked at each other in surprise. Who could it possibly be? We were

not kept long in suspense; for, in another moment, Uncle Jack's voice,

which was always very clear and distinct, pealed through the hall; and

we were still staring at each other when Mr Tibbets, with a bran-new

muffler round his neck, and a peculiarly comfortable, greatcoat--best

double Saxony, equally new--dashed into the room, bringing with him a

very considerable quantity of cold air, which he hastened to thaw,

first in my father's arms, next in my mother's. He then made a rush at

the Captain, who ensconced himself behind the dumb waiter with a "Hem!

Mr--sir--Jack--sir--hem, hem!" Failing there, Mr Tibbets rubbed off

the remaining frost upon his double Saxony against your humble

servant; patted Squills affectionately on the back, and then proceeded

to occupy his favourite position before the fire.

"Took you by surprise, eh?" said Uncle Jack, unpeeling himself by the

hearth-rug. "But no--not by surprise; you must have known Jack's

heart: you at least, Austin Caxton, who know everything--you must have

seen that it overflowed, with the tenderest and most brotherly

emotions; that, once delivered from that cursed Fleet, (you have no

idea what a place it is, sir,) I could not rest, night or day, till I

had flown here--here, to the dear family nest--poor wounded dove that

I am!" added Uncle Jack pathetically, and taking out his

pocket-handkerchief from the double Saxony, which he had now flung

over my father's arm-chair.

Not a word replied to this eloquent address, with its touching

peroration. My mother hung down her pretty head, and looked ashamed.

My uncle retreated quite into the corner, and drew the dumb waiter

after him, so as to establish a complete fortification. Mr Squills

seized the pen that Roland had thrown down, and began mending it

furiously--that is, cutting it into slivers--thereby denoting,

symbolically, how he would like to do with Uncle Jack, could he once

get him safe and snug under his manipular operations. I leant over the

pedigree, and my father rubbed his spectacles.

The silence would have been appalling to another man: nothing appalled

Uncle Jack.

Uncle Jack turned to the fire, and warmed first one foot, then the

other. This comfortable ceremony performed, he again faced the

company--and resumed musingly, and as if answering some imaginary

observations--

"Yes, yes--you are right there--and a deuced unlucky speculation it

proved too. But I was overruled by that fellow Peck. Says I to

him--says I--'_Capitalist!_ pshaw--no popular interest there--it don't

address the great public! Very confined class the capitalists; better

throw ourselves boldly on the people. Yes,' said I, 'call it the

_anti_-Capitalist.' By Jove, sir, we should have carried all before us!

but I was overruled. The _Anti-Capitalist_!--what an idea! Address the

whole reading world then, sir: everybody hates the capitalist--everybody

would have his neighbour's money. The _Anti-Capitalist_!--sir, we should

have gone off, in the manufacturing towns, like wildfire. But what could

I do?"--

"John Tibbets," said my father solemnly, "capitalist or

anti-capitalist, thou hadst a right to follow thine own bent, in

either--but always provided it had been with thine own money. Thou

see'st not the thing, John Tibbets, in the right point of view; and a

little repentance, in the face of those thou hast wronged, would not

have misbecome thy father's son, and thy sister's brother!"--

Never had so severe a rebuke issued from the mild lips of Austin

Caxton; and I raised my eyes with a compassionate thrill, expecting to

see John Tibbets gradually sink and disappear through the carpet.

"Repentance!" cried Uncle Jack, bounding up, as if he had been shot.

"And do you think I have a heart of stone, of pummy-stone!--do you

think I don't repent? I have done nothing but repent--I shall repent

to my dying day."

"Then there is no more to be said, Jack," cried my father, softening,

and holding out his hand.

"Yes!" cried Mr Tibbets, seizing the hand, and pressing it to the heart

he had thus defended from the suspicion of being pummy--"yes--that I

should have trusted that dunder-headed, rascally, curmudgeon Peck: that

I should have let him call it _The Capitalist_, despite all my

convictions, when the _Anti_----"

"Pshaw!" interrupted my father, drawing away his hand.

"John," said my mother gravely, and with tears in her voice, "you

forget who delivered you from prison,--you forget whom you have nearly

consigned to prison yourself,--you forg--"

"Hush, hush!" said my father, "this will never do; and it is you who

forget, my dear, the obligations I owe to Jack. He has reduced my

fortune one half, it is true; but I verily think he has made the three

hearts, in which lie my real treasures, twice as large as they were

before. Pisistratus, my boy, ring the bell."

"My dear Kitty," cried Jack, whimperingly, and stealing up to my

mother, "don't be so hard on me; I thought to make all your

fortunes--I did, indeed."

Here the servant entered.

"See that Mr Tibbets' things are taken up to his room, and that there

is a good fire," said my father.

"And," continued Jack, loftily, "I _will_ make all your fortunes yet.

I have it _here_!" and he struck his head.

"Stay a moment," said my father to the servant, who had got back to

the door. "Stay a moment," said my father, looking extremely

frightened; "perhaps Mr Tibbets may prefer the inn?"

"Austin," said Uncle Jack with emotion, "if I were a dog, with no home

but a dog-kennel, and you came to me for shelter, I would turn out--to

give you the best of the straw!"

My father was thoroughly melted this time.

"Primmins will be sure to see everything is made comfortable for Mr

Tibbets," said he, waving his hand to the servant. "Something nice for

supper, Kitty, my dear--and the largest punch-bowl. You like punch,

Jack?"

"Punch, Austin!" said Uncle Jack, putting his handkerchief to his

eyes.

The Captain pushed aside the dumb waiter, strode across the room, and

shook hands with Uncle Jack; my mother buried her face in her apron,

and fairly ran off; and Squills said in my ear, "It all comes of the

biliary secretions. Nobody could account for this, who did not know

the peculiarly fine organisation of your father's--liver!"

FOOTNOTE:

[4] Tibullus, iii. 4, 55.

M. PRUDHON.--CONTRADICTIONS ECONOMIQUES.[5]

If we wished to convert some inveterate democrat--some one of those

eternal agitators of political and social revolutions--whose

reasonings, though perhaps unconsciously to themselves, are all based

on a far too sanguine view of the probable destinies of human

society--there is no text-book we should more willingly select than

this mad and apparently destructive work of M. Prudhon's. The bold

development of those fundamental truths which have hitherto determined

the framework of society, and, still more, the display it presents of

the utter impotence of the wit of man, and all his speculative

ingenuity, to reshape and reorganise the social world, must have, on

every mind accustomed to reflection, a most sobering and

_conservative_ influence. What it was intended to teach is another

matter; but to a mind well constituted it would convey this grave

lesson--to recognise and submit to the inevitable; to be content to

labour for partial remedies and limited results; to be satisfied with

doing good, though it be something short of organic change; to think

it sufficient ambition to be of that "salt of the earth" which

preserves whatever is pure and excellent, without aspiring to be that

consuming flame which is to fuse and recast the world.

Such was the reflection with which we closed the perusal of the

_Contradictions Economiques_; and this reflection has led us to the

present notice of a work which was not originally taken up with the

intention of bringing it before our readers. We were referred to it as

the work in which a man who has obtained unenviable notoriety had most

systematically developed his ideas. Whether it is so, or not, we do

not pledge ourselves to decide: we have had enough of _Prudhonerie_.

But after a perusal, induced by mere curiosity, it occurred to us that

some brief account of the book, and of the train of thought which it

had suggested to us, and would probably suggest to most English

readers, would not be unacceptable.

It is worthy of remark, that it is not uniformly from the most perfect

works that we derive the greatest stimulant to thinking, or the

largest supply of food for reflection. Many an important step in

intellectual progress has been due to an author, not one of whose

views have been finally adopted, or would have borne perhaps a

searching examination. The startling effect of paradox--the conflict

with it--the perplexing entanglement of known truth with manifest

error,--all this has supplied a more bracing and vigorous exercise for

the mind, than lucid tenets lucidly set forth by writers of

unimpeachable good sense. God forbid that any one should accuse us of

saying, that it is better to read a bad book than a good one; this

would be the greatest of all absurdities; but there are eras in our

mental progress when much is gained by the contest with bold and

subtle fallacies. There is not a book in our own language more replete

with paradox and sophistry, with half truths and tortuous reasonings,

than Godwin's _Political Justice_; yet we doubt not there are those

living who would acknowledge that the perusal of that once, and for a

short time, celebrated treatise, did more, by the incessant combat it

provoked, to make evident to them the real constitution of human

society, than the smooth sagacity of a hundred Paleys could have done.

Indeed, when we compare the _Political Justice_ with the reveries of

Communism, so rife amongst our neighbours, we feel proud of our

English dreamer. Godwin's scheme was somewhat as if one of the ancient

stoics, not content with imposing upon his wise man rules of conduct

quite independent of all human passions and affections, had resolved

that the whole multitude of the species should demean themselves

according to the same impracticable rules, and should learn to live,

and labour, and enjoy, like reasoning automata. Under the light

diffused upon them by the author of the _Political Justice_, men were

to set aside all selfishness--all their natural, and even kindly

affections--and to act in unceasing conformity to certain abstractions

of the reasoning faculty; were, in short, neither to love nor to hate;

but, sitting in eternal judgment over themselves, were simply to

reason and to act. Like the iron figures that formerly stood elevated

above the living crowd of Fleet Street, on either side of the

venerable clock of St Dunstan's, they were to keep their eye fixed on

the dial-plate of a most well-regulated conscience; and ever, as the

hour came round, they were to rise and strike, and then subside into

their metallic repose. Still, however, the great sentiment of justice,

to which Godwin made his appeal, afforded him a far more noble and

manly topic than the affected philanthropy on which so many Frenchmen

have been descanting. Justice, though not understood after the manner

of Mr Godwin, is a sentiment which really lives and moves in the very

heart of society. Men respond to an appeal to their sense of justice;

they become ungovernable if that sense of justice is long outraged;

they work upon this sentiment; they can labour and endure according to

its dictates: but for this philanthropy, or fraternity, of which we

hear so much--what has it ever done? It never regulated the

transactions of a single day; never produced a grain of corn, or a

shred of apparel; produces nothing but theories. It is a vain,

importunate, idle, and clamorous sentiment: it is justice all on one

side; it demands incessantly, it gives never; it has hands to petition

with, to clutch with, to rob with, to murder with, but not to work

with; it has no hand that holds the plough, or strikes upon the anvil.

The _Système des Contradictions Economiques_ may lay claim to the same

sort of praise we have accorded to the _Political Justice_: it prompts

reflection; and a man of intellect sufficiently robust to profit by

such rude gymnastics, will not regret its perusal. It also avoids,

like the work of Godwin, the pernicious cant of universal

philanthropy--pernicious when brought forward as a general motive of

human actions--and looks for a renovation of society in a more

enlightened sentiment of justice--determining anew the value of each

man's labour, and securing to him that value--property being

legitimate only (so far as we can understand our author) when it

contains in it the labour of the proprietor. How Justice is to execute

the task which M. Prudhon, in very vague and mysterious terms, imposes

upon her, we have not the least idea; nor has an attentive perusal of

his book given us the remotest conception of any practical scheme that

he would even make experiment of. But, at all events, it is better to

descant on the energetic sentiment of justice, which desires to earn

and keep its own, than on the idle sublimities of a universal

fraternity--a sentiment which relaxes the springs of industry, by

teaching every man to expect everything from his neighbours, or from

an omnipotent abstraction he calls the state. It is a difference of

some importance, because all these schemes for the renovation of

society do, in fact, end in a sort of moral or immoral preachment.

When we have said thus much, and added that M. Prudhon attacks the

Communists, of all shades and descriptions, in a quite overwhelming

manner, utterly crushing and annihilating them,--we have said the

utmost that can be admitted, or devised, in praise of his work. It

would require a much longer paragraph to exhaust all that might be

justly said in its condemnation. It is strewed over, knee-deep, with

metaphysical trash. It is steeped in atheism, or something worse, and

infinitely more foolish; for there is a pretence of sustaining "the

hypothesis" of a God, for no other ostensible reason than to provide

an object for the blasphemy that follows. The rudest savages, in their

first conception of a God, regard him as an enemy, and offer

sacrifices to propitiate an unprovoked and wanton anger--the reflected

image of their own wild passions. M. Prudhon's philosophy has actually

brought him, in one respect, back to the creed of the savages. He

proves, by some insane process not worth following, that the Creator

of man is essentially opposed to the progress of human society, and is

to be utterly deserted, desecrated, defied. He does not, indeed,

sacrifice, like the savage; he rather talks rebellion, like Satan. No

one would believe, who had not read the book, with what a mixture of

outrage and levity he speaks of the most sacred of all beings: it is

the doctrine of the rebel-fiend taught with the gesticulation of a

satyr.

We shall not quote a single passage to justify this censure, for the

same reason that we should not extract the indecencies of a volume in

order to prove the charge of obscenity. Why should the ear be wounded,

or the mind soiled and disgusted, when no end is answered except the

conviction of an offender who, utterly dead to shame, rejoices to see

his impurities or impieties pitched abroad?

Notwithstanding that formidable appearance of metaphysics to which we

have alluded--his Kant and his Hegel, his thesis, antithesis, and

synthesis, and all his pretensions to extraordinary profundity--it so

happens that the very first elements of that science of political

economy, which he affects to look down upon as from a higher level,

are often miserably misapprehended; or--what is certainly not more to

his credit--they are thrown, for a season, into a wilful oblivion. If

he is discoursing upon the division of labour, and its effect upon the

remuneration of the workman, he ignores, for the time being, the

manifest relation between population and wages, and represents the

wages as decreasing only because the nature of the work required

becomes more and more simple and mechanical. If he is discoursing upon

population, and its pressure upon the means of subsistence, he can

venture to forget the very laws of nature. "You state," he says, "that

population increases in a geometrical ratio--1, 2, 4, 8, 16; well, I

will show that capital and wealth follow a law of progression more

rapid still, of which each term may be considered as the square of the

corresponding number of the geometrical series, as 1, 4, 16, 64,

256."[6] Since all our wealth is derived originally from the soil, man

must, therefore, have it in his power to increase the fertility of the

soil according to the above ratio. It will be something new to our

farmers to learn this.

In compensation, we presume, for this occasional oblivion of the

truisms of political economy--truisms, in fact, of common sense--we

have, here and there, strange and novel definitions and explanations,

ushered in with that pomp which an egotistical Frenchman can alone

display, and turning out to be as idle verbiage as was ever penned.

Take, as the first specimen we can call to mind, the following

definition of labour. We cannot attempt to translate it: the English

language does not easily mould itself to nonsense of this

sort:--"Qu'est-ce donc que le travail? Nul encore ne l'a défini. Le

travail est l'émission de l'esprit. Travailler, c'est dépenser sa

vie; travailler, en un mot, c'est se dévouer, c'est mourir. Que les

utopistes ne nous parlent plus de dévoûment: c'est le travail, exprimé

et mesuré par ses oeuvres."--(Vol. ii., p. 465.) Labour needed to be

defined, it seemed; and this is the definition, "L'émission de

l'esprit!" And in play, then, as well as in work, is there no emission

of the spirits, or mind, or life of the man? Did M. Prudhon never run

a race, or handle a bat at cricket, or ride with the hounds? or can he

not remember that such things _are_, though not in his philosophy? But

dear, inexpressibly dear to M. Prudhon, is every idea of his own that

savours of paradox; and the more it violates common sense, the more

tenderly he clings to it, cherishes, and vaunts it. This, doubtless, is

one of his favourite children. His celebrated aphorism, "La Propriété

c'est le vol,"--he contradicts it himself in every page of his

writings, yet boasts and cherishes it as his greatest possession, and

the most remarkable discovery of the age. "La définition de la

propriété," he says, in answer to a sarcasm of M. Michelet, "est

mienne, et toute mon ambition est de prouver que j'en ai compris le

sens et l'étendue. _La propriété c'est le vol!_ il ne se dit pas, en

mille ans, deux mots comme celui-là. Je n'ai d'autre bien sur la terre

que cette définition de la propriété: mais je la tiens plus précieuse

que les millions des Rothschild, et j'ose dire qu'elle sera l'évènement

le plus considérable du gouvernement de Louis-Philippe."--(Vol. ii., p.

328.)

Even in that tenebrous philosophy which he has imported from Germany,

and which he teaches with such caustic condescension to the political

economists, he is very much at fault. It is always, we know, an

adventurous matter to accuse any one who deals in the idealistic

metaphysics of modern Germany of obscurity, or of imperfect knowledge

of the theories taught in his own school. The man has but to dive into

deeper mud to escape from you. Follow him you assuredly cannot; he is

out of sight, and the thick sediment deters; and thus, in the eyes of

all who are not aware what the capture would cost to any hapless

pursuer, the fugitive is sure of his triumph. Nevertheless, we venture

to assert that M. Prudhon is but a young, and a not very promising

scholar in the philosophy of Kant and of Hegel. Two very manifest

blunders it will be enough to indicate: he assimilates his

_Contradictions Economiques_ to the _Antinomies of the Pure Reason_

developed by Kant; and he confounds Kant with Hegel in a matter where

they are widely opposed, and speaks as if the same law of

contradiction were common to both.

After alluding to some of his own "contradictions," he says, "Tel est

encore le problème de la divisibilité de la matière à l'infini, que

Kant a démontré pouvoir être nié et affirmé, tour-à-tour, par des

arguments également plausibles et irréfutables."--(Vol. i. p. 43.) It

is the object of Kant, in one of the most striking portions of the

_Critique of Pure Reason_, to show that, in certain problems, the mind

is capable of being led with equal force of conviction to directly

opposite conclusions. The pure reason, it seems, gets hold of the

forms of the understanding, and can extract nothing from them but a

series of antinomies, like that which M. Prudhon has alluded to, where

the infinite divisibility of matter is both proved and disproved with

equal success. Now what analogy is there between the contradictions

which M. Prudhon can develop, in any one of our social laws, and the

antinomies of Kant? In these last, two opposite conclusions of

speculative reason are arrived at, which destroy each other; in the

_Contradictions Economiques_, the good and evil flowing from the same

law may very easily co-exist. They affect different persons, or the

same persons at different times. Free competition, for instance, in

trade or manufacture, may be viewed on its bright side as the promoter

of industry and invention; on its dark side as the fomenter of strife,

and the inflicter of injury on those who lose in the game of wealth.

But the benefit and injury arising from this source do not destroy

each other, like the yes and no of an abstract proposition; they can

be balanced against each other; they co-exist, and, for aught we see,

will eternally co-exist. Let them be as strikingly opposed as you

will, they can have nothing in common with the antinomies of Kant. M.

Prudhon proves that there is darkness and brightness scattered over

the surface of society: he does not prove that the same spot, at the

same moment, is both black and white.

From Kant he slides to Hegel, as if their tenets on this subject at

all resembled each other. Kant saw in his contradictions an arrest of

the reason, Hegel the very principle and condition of all thought.

Thought involves contradictions. In the simplest idea, that of being,

is involved the idea of no-being; neither can we think of no-being

without having the idea of being. Now as _thought_ and _thing_ are

identical in the absolute, (this every one knows,) whatever may be

said of the thought may be said of the thing, and hence the celebrated

formula, Being = no being--_sein_ = _nicht sein_--something and

nothing are identical.

As thought and thing are identical in the absolute, logic is a

creation and creation is a logic; thus the metaphysics of Hegel became

a cosmogony in which all things proceed according to the laws of

thought, and are therefore developed in a series of contradictions.

Now let M. Prudhon be as thorough master of the Hegelian logic, or the

Hegelian cosmogony, as he desires to be esteemed, how, in the name of

common sense, can he hope to clear up the difficulties of political

economy by mixing them with a philosophy like this? How will his

thesis and his antithesis help us to adjust the claims between labour

and capital? If he has any adjustment to propose--if he has found what

he calls his synthesis--let us hear it. If the synthesis is only to be

developed in those future evolutions of time, which neither he nor we

can divine, of what use all this angry exposition of the inevitable

_Contradictions_ that mark and constitute the progress of humanity?

Enough of these metaphysics. It was necessary to say this much of the

peculiar form into which M. Prudhon has chosen to cast his thoughts;

but there will be no occasion to allude to it again. Whatever there is

of truth or significance in his work, may easily be transferred into a

language familiar and intelligible to all.

We have eaten, says one, of the forbidden fruit of the tree of the

knowledge of good and evil, and the taste of them has been thenceforth

invariably blended together. There is a law of compensation--thus

another expresses it--throughout the world, both moral and physical,

by which every evil is balanced by its good, and every good by its

besetting evil. Humanity, says a third, progresses without doubt, and

obtains at each stage a fuller and a higher life; but there is an

original proportion of misery in its lot, from which there is no

escape: this also swells and darkens as we rise. To use the language

of chemistry, you may increase the volume of this ambient life we

breathe, but still, to every one-hundred part of vital air there shall

be added twenty-five of mephitic vapour. All these are different modes

of expressing the homely truth, that a shadow of evil falls even from

the best of things; and it is this truth which is really developed in

the _Contradictions Economiques_.

It is a truth which, at times, it may be very needful fully to

recognise. When men of sincere convictions are found agitating society

for some organic change, their errors may be always traced to an

over-sanguine and one-sided view of the capabilities of man for

happiness. The conservative and the movement parties, philosophically

considered, may be described as branching out of different opinions on

the probable or possible progress of society. The philosophical

conservative has accepted humanity as it is--as, in its great

features, it is exhibited throughout all regions of the earth, and in

the page of history: he hails with welcome every addition to human

happiness; he believes in progress, he derides the notion of

perfectibility,--it is a word he cannot use; he recognises much

happiness coming in to mankind from many and various sources, but

still believes that man will never find himself so content on earth as

to cease looking forward for the complement and perfection of his

felicity to another world. The philosopher of the movement party has

made a sort of religion of his hopes of humanity: he conceives some

ideal state, and anticipates its development _here_; he dismantles

heaven and immortality to furnish out his masquerade on earth; or,

with still vaguer notions, he rushes forward upon reforms that imply,

for their justification, the existence of what never yet was seen--a

temperate and enlightened multitude.

It follows that the conservative has allotted to him the ungracious

and invidious task of discouraging the hopes of a too eager

philanthropy; he is compelled to show, of certain evils, that they are

constantly to be contended against, but never can be eradicated.

Society has been often compared to a pyramid; its broad basis on the

earth, and towering high or not, according as circumstances were

propitious to its formation; but always the broad basis lying on the

earth. He accepts the ancient simile; he recognises the unalterable

pyramid. Without aid of priest or legislator, society assumes this

form; it crystallises thus; higher and higher, broader and broader, it

rises, and extends, but still the lowest stratum is lying close upon

the earth. Will you disguise the fact? It is fruitless, and the

falsehood only recoils upon yourself, rendering what truth you utter

weak and suspicious. Will you strive to make the pyramid stand upon

its apex? It will _not_ stand; and what god or giant have you to hold

it there? Or will you join the madman, who, because the lowest stratum

cannot be made the highest, nor any other but the lowest, would level

the whole pyramid to the ground, and make every part touch the earth?

No; you will do all in your power for that lowest stratum, but you

will not consent that, because all cannot be cultivated and refined,

no one shall have a chance of becoming so. You accept the pyramid.

When M. Prudhon criticises the laws which preside over the production

and distribution of wealth, and shows their twofold and antagonistic

influence, he is but illustrating the inevitable formation of our

pyramid. Let us follow him in a few instances.

_The Division of Labour._--This is the first topic on which our author

descants--the first of our economic laws in which he finds his

contradictions--his two poles of good and evil. On the advantages of

the division of labour, we have but to call to mind the earlier

chapters of Adam Smith, wherein these are so truthfully and vividly

described. Indeed, the least reflection is sufficient to show that, if

each man undertook by his own labour to provide for all his wants, it

would be impossible for society to advance beyond the very rudest form

of existence. One man must be tailor, another shoemaker, another

agriculturist, another artist; and these trades or occupations, to be

brought to perfection, must again be subdivided into different

departments of industry--and one man makes the coat, and another

weaves the cloth, one man makes the shoe, and another dresses the

leather. It is needless to say that these departments are again

divided into an almost infinite number of separate occupations; till,

at length, we find that a man employs his whole day in turning one

thread over another, or in manufacturing the eighteenth part of a pin.

But now, no sooner does this division of employments obtain in

society, than our pyramid begins to form. The man of manual labour

rests still at the basis; he of superior skill, the artist, or the

intellectual workman, rises permanently above him. The more minute

this division of labour, the more simple and mechanical becomes the

labour of the artisan; the education he receives from his employment

becomes more and more limited; he is wanted for so little; he is

esteemed, and, if other circumstances permit, remunerated accordingly.

"Although," says the celebrated economist, J. B. Say, "a man who

performs one operation all his life comes to execute it better and

more rapidly than any other man, yet at the same time he grows less

capable of every other occupation, physical and moral; his other

faculties are extinguished, and there results a degradation to the

human being considered individually. It is a sad account to give of

one's-self to have accomplished nothing but the eighteenth part of a

pin.... In conclusion, it may be said that the separation of labours

is a skilful employment of the force of man--that it increases

prodigiously the products of society--but it destroys something of the

capacity of the individual man."

That this inevitable division and subdivision of labour gives rise to,

and renders permanent, the distinction of classes in a community, is

clear enough. But we do not agree with M. Say, and other economists,

in representing that minute subdivision of labour which accompanies a

very advanced state of civilisation, as peculiarly injurious to the

workman. That degradation of the artisan, which might ensue from the

monotony and triviality of his employment, is counteracted by that

variety of interests which spring up in a civilised community. This

eighteenth part of a pin is not all that educates or engages his mind.

He is not a solitary workman. His file and his wire are not his sole

companions. He has the gossip of his neighbourhood, the politics of

his parish, of his town, of his country--whatever fills the columns of

a newspaper, or gives topic of conversation to a populous city--he

has, at least, all this for intellectual food. The man of handicraft

is educated by the city he lives in, not by his handicraft; and the

humblest artisan feels the influence of that higher civilisation from

which he seems at first to be entirely shut out. Hodge the countryman,

who can sow, and plough, and reap; who understands hedging and

ditching, and the management of sheep; who is accomplished in all

agricultural labours, ought to be, if his daily avocations alone

decided the matter, infinitely superior to the village cobbler, who

travels only from the sole to the upper leather, and who squats

stitching all day long. But the cobbler is generally the more knowing,

and certainly the more talkative man. Hodge himself is the first to

recognise it; for he listens to him at the ale-house, which sometimes

brings them together, as to an oracle of wisdom.

_Machinery._--The benefit derived from machinery needs no explanation.

The more simple order of machines, or instruments--as the plough, the

axe, and the spindle--have never been otherwise considered than as

precious gifts to human industry; and the more complicated machines,

which have been invented in modern times, have no sooner established

themselves, so to speak, in society--have no sooner, at the expense of

some temporary evils, secured themselves a quiet recognised

position--than they, too, have been welcomed in the same character as

signal aids to human industry. But while the machine has added

immensely to the products of labour, it has done nothing to diminish

the class of manual labours. It has done nothing, nor does it seem

probable that it will ever effect anything, towards rendering that

class less requisite or less numerous. On the contrary, it has always,

hitherto, multiplied that class. The machine will not go of itself,

will not manufacture itself, nor keep itself in repair. The human

labourer becomes the slave of the machine. He created it for his

service, and it serves him, but on condition only that he binds

himself to a reciprocal bondage. You spin by a steam-engine, and some

complicated system of reels and pulleys, but the human finger is not

spared--the human volition is still wanted. To manufacture this

machine, to tend it, to govern it--in short, to use it--far more

manual labour is called into requisition than ever turned the simple

spinning-wheel, or teased the flax from the distaff. You have more

garments woven, but the better clad are not exactly those who weave

them. The machine has called into existence, for its own service, an

immense population, ill fed and ill clothed. Our pyramid is extending

at the basis: as it rises higher it is growing broader.

_Money--Capital._--We class these together because they are intimately

connected. Capital is not money, but there would have been little

accumulation of capital but for the use of money.

The youthful student of political economy meets with no chapter in his

books of science so amusing, and so thoroughly convincing, as that

which shows him the utility of money, and the reasons which have led

almost all nations to prefer the precious metals for their instruments

of exchange. Without some such instrument, what is to be done? A man

has made a hat, and wants a pound of butter. He cannot divide his hat:

what would be half a hat? Besides, the man who has the butter does not

want the hat. But the precious metals come in marvellously to his aid.

They are divisible into the smallest portions; they are durable, will

not spoil by keeping; they are of steady value, and will not much

depreciate: if the man of butter does not want them, he can always

find somebody that does; no fear but that they will easily pass from

hand to hand, as each one wishes to barter them for whatever he may

want.

It is generally said, that it is the steadiness of their value that

constituted one chief reason for the selection of gold and silver for

the purposes of money. This is undoubtedly true; but it is also true

(and we do not remember to have heard this previously remarked) that

the use of the precious metals for money has tended to preserve and

perpetuate that steadiness of value. Had gold and silver remained as

simple articles of merchandise, they would probably have suffered

considerable fluctuations in their value from the caprice of fashion

and the altered taste of society. In themselves, they were chiefly

articles of luxury; the employment of them for money made them objects

of indispensable utility.

Money there must be. Yet mark how its introduction tends to destroy

equality, to favour accumulation, to raise the hill and sink the

valley. If men bartered article against article, they would generally

barter in order to consume. But when one of them barters for gold, he

can lay it by; he can postpone at his pleasure the period of

consumption; he can postpone it for the benefit of his issue. The

piece of gold was bought originally with the sweat of his brow; who

shall say that a year, ten years, fifty years hence, he may not

traffic it again for the sweat of the brow? The pieces of gold

accumulate, his children possess them, and now a generation appears on

the face of the earth who have not toiled, who do not toil all their

lives, who are sustained in virtue of the labours of their ancestor.

Their fathers saved, and they enjoy; or they employ a part of the

accumulation in the purchase of the labour of others, by which means

their riches still further increase. The pyramid rises. But the

descendants of those fathers who had consumed the product of their

labour, they bring no postponed claim into the market. These are they

who must sell their labour. They must work for the children of those

who had saved. Our pyramid broadens at the base. This perpetual value

given to money has enabled the man of one generation to tax all

ensuing generations with the support of his offspring. Hence much

good; for hence the leisure that permits the cultivation of the mind,

that fosters art, and refinement, and reflection: we have to notice

here only how inevitably it builds the pyramid.

And now two classes are formed, distinct and far asunder--the

capitalist, and he who works for wages. Comes the social reformer, and

he would restore the equality between them. But how? We will fuse,

says one, the two classes together: they shall carry on their

manufacture in a joint partnership: all shall be partners--all shall

be workmen. But even M. Prudhon will tell us that, if the profits of

the great capitalist were divided equally amongst all the artisans he

employs, each one would find his gains increased by a very little; and

it is morally certain that profits equal to those he had obtained

would never accrue from a partnership of many hundreds of workmen. The

wealth of the country would, therefore, be put in jeopardy, and all

the course of its industry and property deranged, for no end whatever.

At all events, exclaims another, we will reduce the inequality which

we cannot expunge, and put down the enormous and tyrannical

capitalist: we will have a law limiting the fortune of each individual

to so many hundreds or thousands; or, if we allow a man to earn and

appropriate unlimited wealth, we will take care that it shall be

dispersed at his death,--not even to his son shall he be permitted to

bequeath more than a certain sum. But all schemes of this kind can

tend only to equalise the fortunes of the first class--those who

employ labour; they do not affect, in the least, the condition of the

second class--the employed. These will not obtain better wages from

smaller capitalists than from larger. A third--it is M. Prudhon

himself--will have a new law of value established, and a new law of

property. It is labour only that shall give title to property, and the

exchangeable value of every article shall be regulated according to

the labour it may be said to contain: propositions, however, which do

not help us in the least degree, for capital is itself the produce of

labour; its claims, therefore, are legitimate; and the very problem

given is to arbitrate between the claims of capital and labour.

_Rent and Property in Land._--This is the last topic we shall mention.

The absolute necessity of property in land, in order that the soil

should be cultivated, (that is, under any condition in which humanity

has hitherto presented itself,) is a palpable truism. Yet property in

land leads to the exaction of rent--leads to the same division which

we have seen marked out by so many laws between two classes of

society--those who may enjoy leisure, and those who must submit to

labour; classes which are generally distinguished as the rich and

poor, never, we may observe in passing, as the happy and unhappy, for

leisure may be as great a curse as labour.

It is true that large estates in land exist before corresponding

accumulations of capital have been made in commerce, for land is often

seized by the mere right of conquest; but still these large

possessions would certainly arise as a nation increased its wealth.

The man who has cultivated land successfully will add field to field;

and he who has gained a large sum of money by commerce, or

manufacture, will purchase land with it. The fact therefore, that, in

the early period of a nation's history, the soil has been usurped by

conquest, or by the sheer right of the strongest, interferes not at

all with the real nature of that property; as, independently of this

accident of conquest, land would have become portioned in the same

unequal manner by the operation of purely economical causes. Just in

the same way, the fact that warlike nations have subjected their

captives to slavery--imposed the labours of life on slaves--cannot be

said to have had any influence in originating the existence, at the

present time, of a class of working people.

Thus every law of political economy, having, as it were, its two

poles, upwards and downwards, helps to erect our pyramid. Religion,

education, charity, permeate the whole mass, and labour to rectify the

apparent injustice of fortune. Admirable is their influence: but yet

we cannot build on any other model than this.

"Nay, but we can!" exclaim the Communists; and forthwith they project

a complete demolition of the old pyramid, and the erection of a series

of parallelogram palaces, all level with the earth, and palace every

inch of them.

We have said that M. Prudhon is a formidable adversary of these

Communists--the more formidable from the having himself no great

attachment to "things as they are." His exposition of the manifold

absurdities and self-contradictions into which they fall, may possibly

render good service to his countrymen. Especially we were glad to see,

that on the subject of marriage he is quite sound. No one could more

distinctly perceive, or more forcibly state, the intimate connexion

that lies between property and marriage. "Mais, c'est surtout dans la

famille que se decouvre le sens profond de la propriété. La famille et

la propriété marchent de front, appuyées l'une sur l'autre, n'ayant

l'une et l'autre de signification, et de valeur, que par le rapport

qui les unit. Avec la propriété commence le rôle de la femme. Le

ménage--cette chose toute idéale, et que l'on s'efforce en vain de

rendre ridicule--le ménage est le royaume de la femme, le monument de

la famille. Otez le ménage, otez cette pierre du foyer, centre

d'attraction des époux, il reste des couples, il n'y a plus de

familles."--(Vol. ii. 253.)

In this country, happily, it would be superfluous--a mere slaying of

the slain--to expose the folly of these Utopias. Utopias indeed!--that

would deprive men of personal liberty, of domestic affection, of

everything that is most valued in life, to shut them up in a strange

building which is to be palace, prison, and workhouse, all in one;

which must have a good deal of the workhouse, if it has anything of

the palace, and will probably have more of the prison in it than

either.

Briefly, the case may be stated thus:--The _cost_ of such a community

would be liberty, marriage, enterprise, hope, and generosity--for,

under such an institution, what could any man have to give or receive?

The _gain_ would be task-work for all, board and lodging for all, and

a shameless sensuality; the working-bell, the dinner-bell, and the

curfew. It would be a sacrifice of all that is high, ennobling, and

spiritual, to all that is material, animal, and vile.

But if men think otherwise of the fraternal community--if they think

that, because philanthropy presides, or seems to preside, over its

formation, that therefore philanthropy will continue to animate all

its daily functions--why do they not voluntarily unite and form this

community? They are fond of quoting the example of the early

Christians; these were really under the influence of a fraternal

sentiment, and _acted_ on it: let them do likewise, there is nothing

to prevent them. But no: the French Socialist sees in imagination a

whole state working for him; he has no idea of commencing by

practising the stern virtues of industry, and abstinence, and

fortitude. His mode of thinking is this--a certain being called

Society is to do everything _for him_--at the cost, perhaps, of some

slight service rendered upon his part. If he is poor, it is society

that keeps him so; if he is vicious, it is society that makes him

so--upon society rest all our crimes, and devolve all our duties.

There lies the great mischief of promulgating these impracticable

theories of Communism. All is taught as being done for the individual.

The egregious error is committed of trusting all to a certain

organisation of society, which is to be a substitute for the moral

efforts of individual man. Patience, fortitude, self-sacrifice, a high

sense of imperative duty, are supposed to be rendered unnecessary in a

scheme of things which, if it were possible, would require these

virtues in a pre-eminent degree. The virtuous enthusiast would find

himself, indeed, utterly mistaken--the stage which he thought prepared

for the exhibition of the serenest virtues, would be a scene given up

to mere animal life: but still, if he limited himself to the teaching

of these virtues--of a godlike temperance, and a perpetual

self-negation--it is not probable, indeed, that he would find many

disciples; neither is it easy to see that any great mischief could

ensue. Every community, where possessions have been in common, which

has at all succeeded, has been sustained by religious zeal--the most

potent of all sentiments, and one extraneous to the framework of

society. French Communism is the product of idleness and sensuality,

provoked into ferocity by commercial distress; clamouring for means of

self-indulgence _from the state_, and prepared to extort its claim by

any amount of massacre.

Thus we have shown that the work of M. Prudhon, with its

_contradictions_, or laws of good and of evil, tends but to illustrate

the inevitable rise and unalterable nature of our social pyramid. This

was our object, and here must end our present labours on M. Prudhon.

If our readers are disappointed that they have not heard more of his

own schemes for the better construction of society--that they have not

learned more of the mystery concealed under the famous paradox that

has been blown about by all the winds of heaven--_la propriété c'est

le vol!_--we can only say that we have not learned more ourselves.

Moreover, we are fully persuaded he has nothing to teach. All his

strength lies in exposing evils he cannot remedy, and destroying the

schemes of greater quacks than himself. That property itself is not

the subject of his attack, but the mode in which that property is

determined, is all that we can gather. The value of every object of

exchange is to be determined by the labour bestowed upon it; and the

property in it, we presume, is to be decreed to him whose labour has

been bestowed. But capital has been justly defined as accumulated

labour; he who supplies capital supplies labour. We are brought back,

therefore, to the old difficulty of adjusting (by any other standard

than the relative proportion which capital and labour bear at any time

in the market) the claims of capital and labour. Any such equitable

adjustment, by a legislative interference, we may safely pronounce to

be impossible.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] _Système des Contradictions Economiques; ou Philosophie de la

Misère._ Par J. P. PRUDHON.

[6] Vol. ii., p. 461.

THE GREEN HAND.

A "SHORT" YARN.--PART II.

We left the forecastle group of the "Gloucester" disappointed by the

abrupt departure of their story-teller, Old Jack, at so critical a

thread of his yarn. As old Jacobs went aft on the quarter-deck, where

the binnacle-lamp before her wheel was newly lighted, he looked in

with a seaman's instinct upon the compass-boxes, to see how the ship

headed; ere ascending to the poop, he bestowed an approving nod upon

his friend the steersman, hitched up his trousers, wiped his mouth

with the back of his hand in a proper deference to female society, and

then proceeded to answer the captain's summons. The passengers, in a

body, had left the grand cabin to the bustling steward and his boys,

previously to assembling there again for tea--not even excepting the

little coterie of inveterate whist-players, and the pairs of

inseparable chess-men, to whom an Indian voyage is so appropriately

the school for future nice practice in etiquette, war, and commerce.

Everybody had at last got rid of sea-sickness, and mustered for a

promenade; so that the lofty poop of the Indiaman, dusky as it was,

and exposed to the breeze, fluttered with gay dresses like the midway

battlement of a castle by the waves, upon which its inmates have

stolen out from some hot festivity. But the long heave from below,

raising her stern-end slowly against the western space of

clear-obscure, in the manner characteristic of a sea abaft the beam,

and rolling her to either hand, exhibited to the eyes on the

forecastle a sort of _alto-relievo_ of figures, amongst whom the male,

in their blank attempts to appear nautical before the ladies, were

distinguished from every other object by their variety of ridiculous

postures. Under care of one or two bluff, good-humoured young

mates--officers polished by previous opportunities of a kind unknown

either to navy-men or mere "cargo-fenders," along with several roguish

little quasi-midshipmen--the ladies were supported against the

poop-rail, or seated on the after-gratings, where their contented

dependence not only saved them from the ludicrous failures of their

fellow-passengers, but gained them, especially the young ones, the

credit of being better sailors. An accompaniment was contributed to

this lively exercise on the part of the gentlemen promenaders, which

otherwise, in the glimmering sea-twilight, would have been striking in

a different sense; by the efforts, namely, of a little band of amateur

musicians under the break of the poop, who, with flute, clarionet,

bugles, trombone, and violin, after sundry practisings by stealth, had

for the first time assembled to play "Rule Britannia." What, indeed,

with the occasional abrupt checks, wild flourishes, and fantastic

variations caused by the ship's roll; and what with the attitudes

overhead, of holding on refractory hats and caps, of intensely

resisting and staggering legs, or of sudden pausing above the slope

which one moment before was an ascent, there was additional force in

the designation quaintly given to such an aspect of things by the

fore-mast Jacks--that of "a cuddy jig." As the still-increasing

motion, however, shook into side-places this central group of cadets,

civilians, and planters adrift, the grander features of the scene

predominated: the broad mass of the ship's hull--looming now across

and now athwart the streak of sinking light behind--drawn out by the

weltering outline of the waters; the entire length of her white decks,

ever and anon exposed to view, with their parallel lines, their

nautical appurtenances, the cluster of hardy men about the windlass,

the two or three "old salts" rolling to and fro along the gangway, and

the variety of forms blending into both railings of the poop. High out

of, and over all, rose the lofty upper outline of the noble ship,

statelier and statelier as the dusk closed in about her--the expanse

of canvass whitening with sharper edge upon the gloom; the hauled-up

clues of the main-course, with their huge blocks, swelling and lifting

to the fair wind--and the breasts of the topsails divided by their

tightened bunt-lines, like the shape of some full-bosomed maiden, on

which the reef-points heaved like silken fringes, as if three sisters,

shadowy and goddess-like, trod in each other's steps towards the

deeper solitude of the ocean; while the tall spars, the interlacing

complicated tracery, and the dark top-hamper showing between, gave

graceful unity to her figure; and her three white trucks, far

overhead, kept describing a small clear arc upon the deep blue zenith

as she rolled: the man at the wheel midway before the doors of the

poop-cabin, with the light of the binnacle upon his broad throat and

bearded chin, was looking aloft at a single star that had come out

beyond the clue of the main-topsail.

The last stroke of "six bells" or seven o'clock, which had begun to be

struck on the ship's bell when Old Jack broke off his story, still

lingered on the ear as he brought up close to the starboard

quarter-gallery, where a little green shed or pent-house afforded

support and shelter to the ladies with the captain. The erect figure

of the latter, as he lightly held one of his fair guests by the arm,

while pointing out to her some object astern, still retained the

attitude which had last caught the eyes of the forecastle group. The

musical cadets had just begun to pass from "Rule Britannia" to "Shades

of Evening;" and the old sailor, with his glazed hat in his hand,

stood waiting respectfully for the captain's notice. The ladies,

however, were gazing intently down upon the vessel's wake, where the

vast shapes of the waves now sank down into a hollow, now rose

seething up into the rudder-trunk, but all marked throughout with one

broad winding track, where the huge body of the ship had swiftly

passed. From foaming whiteness it melted into yesty green, that became

in the hollow a path of soft light, where the sparks mingled like

golden seed; the wave-tops glimmered beyond: star-like figures floated

up or sank in their long undulations; and the broad swell that heaped

itself on a sudden under the mounting stern bore its bells, and

bubbles, and flashes, upwards to the eye. When the ship rose high and

steady upon it, and one saw down her massy taffrail, it looked to a

terrestrial eye rather like some mystic current issuing from the

archway under a tall tower, whose foundations rocked and heaved: and

so said the romantic girl beside the captain, shuddering at the

vividness of an image which so incongruously brought together the

fathomless deep and the distant shores of solid old England. The eye

of the seaman, however, suggested to him an image more akin to the

profession, as he directed his fair companion's attention to the

trough of the ship's furrow, where, against the last low gleam of

twilight, and by the luminous wake, could be seen a little flock of

black petrels, apparently running along it to catch what the mighty

ploughshare had turned up; while a gray gull or two hovered aslant

over them in the blue haze. As he looked round, too, to aloft, he

exchanged glances with the old sailor who had listened--an expression

which even the ladies understood. "Ah! Jacobs,"--said the captain,

"get the lamp lighted in my cabin, and the tea-kettle aft. With the

roll she has on her, 'twill be more ship-shape there than in the

cuddy." "Ay, ay, sir," said the old seaman. "How does she head just

now, Jacobs?" "Sou'-west and by south, sir." "She'd lie easier for the

ladies though," said the captain, knowing his steward was a favourite

with them, "were the wind a point or two less fair. Our old

acquaintance Captain Williamson, of the Seringapatam now, Jacobs,

old-fashioned as he was, would have braced in his lee-yards only to

steady a lady's tea-cup." "Ay, your honour," replied Jacobs, and his

weather eye twinkled, "and washed the fok'sle under, too! But ye know,

sir, he'd got a reg'lar-built Nabob aboard, and a beauty besides!"

"Ah, Mr Jacobs!" exclaimed the romantic young lady, "what was that? Is

it one of your stories?" "Well, your ladyship, 'tis a bit of a yarn,

no doubt, and some'at of a cur'ous one." "Oh!" said another of the

captain's fair protégées, "I _do_ love these 'yarns,' as you call

them; they are so expressive, so--and all that sort of thing!"

"Nonsense, my love," said her mother; "you don't understand them, and

'tis better you should not,--they are low, and contain a great many

bad words, I fear." "But think of the imagination, aunt," rejoined

the other girl, "and the adventures! Oh, the ocean of all places for

that! Were it not for sea-sickness, I should dote upon it! As for the

_storm_ just now, look how safe we are,--and see how the dear old ship

rises up from the billows, with all her sails so delightfully

mysterious one over another!" "Bless your heart, ma'rm, yes,"

responded Old Jack, chuckling; "you talks just like a seaman, beggin'

your pardon. As consarns the tea, sir, I make bould to expect the'll

be a shift o' wind directly, and a slant deck, as soon as we get fair

into the stream, rid o' this bit of a bubble the tail of it kicks up

hereabouts." "Bear a hand, then, Jacobs," said the captain, "and see

all right below for the party in the cabin,--we shall be down in a few

minutes." The captain stood up on the quarter-gallery, to peer round

into the dusk and watch the lifting of the main-royal; but the next

minute he called to the ladies, and their next neighbours, to look

towards the larboard bow, and see the moon rise. A long edge of gray

haze lay around the eastern horizon, on which the dark rim of the sea

was defined beyond the roll of the waves, as with the sweep of a soft

brush dipped in indigo; while to westward it heaved up, weltering in

its own watery light against the gloom. From behind this low fringe of

vapour was silently diffusing, as it were, a pool of faint radiance,

like a brook babbling from under ice; a thread of silver ran along the

line of haze, growing keener at one point, until the arch of the moon

shot slowly up, broad and fair; the wave-heads rising between were

crested here and there with light; the bow of the ship, the bellies of

her fore-canvass, her bowsprit with the jibs hanging idly over it, and

the figure-head beneath, were tinged by a gentle lustre, while the

hollow shadows stole out behind. The distant horizon, meanwhile, still

lay in an obscure streak, which blended into the dark side of the low

fog-bank, so as to give sea and cloud united the momentary appearance

of one of those long rollers that turn over on a beach, with their

glittering crest: you would expect to see next instant what actually

seemed to take place--the whole outline plashing over in foam, and

spreading itself clearly forward, as soon as the moon was free. With

the airy space that flowed from her came out the whole eastern

sea-board, liquid and distinct, as if beyond either bow of the lifting

Indiaman one sharp finger of a pair of compasses had flashed round,

drawing a semicircle upon the dull background, still cloudy,

glimmering, and obscure. From the waves that undulated towards her

stern, the ship was apparently entering upon a smoother zone, where

the small surges leapt up and danced in moonshine, resembling more the

current of some estuary in a full tide. To north-westward, just on the

skirts of the dark, one wing of a large, soft-gray vapour was newly

smitten by the moon-gleam; and over against it on the south-east,

where the long fog-bank sank away, there stretched an expanse of ocean

which, on its farthest verge, gave out a tint of the most delicate

opal blue. The ship, to the south-westward of the Azores, and going

large before the trade-wind, was now passing into the great Gulf

Stream which there runs to the south-east; even the passengers on deck

were sensible of the rapid transition with which the lately cold

breeze became warmer and fitful, and the motion of the vessel easier.

They were surprised, on looking into the waves alongside, to perceive

them struggling, as it were, under a trailing net-work of sea-weed;

which, as far as one could distinctly see, appeared to keep down the

masses of water like so much oil--flattening their crests,

neutralising the force of the wind, and communicating a strangely

sombre green to the heaving element. In the winding track of the

ship's wake the eddies now absolutely blazed: the weeds she had

crushed down rose to the surface again in gurgling circles of flame,

and the showers of sparks came up seething on either side amongst the

stalks and leaves: but as the moonlight grew more equally diffused it

was evident she was only piercing an arm of that local weed-bed here

formed, like an island, in the _bight_ of the stream. Farther ahead

were scattered patches and bunches of the true Florida Gulf-weed,

white and moss-like; which, shining crisp in the level moonlight, and

tipping the surges as it floated past, gave them the aspect of

hoary-bearded waves, or the garlanded horses of Neptune. The sight

still detained the captain's party on deck, and some of the ladies

innocently thought these phenomena indicative of the proximity of

land.

"I have seldom seen the Stream so distinct hereabouts," said Captain

Collins to his first officer, who stood near, having charge of the

watch. "Nor I, sir," replied the chief mate; "but it no doubt narrows

with different seasons. There goes a flap of the fore-topsail, though!

The wind fails, sir." "'Tis only drawing ahead, I think," said the

captain; "the stream _sucks_ the wind with its heat, and we shall have

it pretty near from due nor'-west immediately." "Shall we round in on

the starboard hand, then, sir, and keep both wind and current _aft_?"

"I think not, Mr Wood," said the captain. "'Twould give us a good three

knots more every hour of the next twenty-four, sir," persisted the

first officer eagerly--and chief mates generally confine their theories

to mere immediate progress. "Yes," rejoined the captain, "but we should

lose hold of the 'trade' on getting out of the stream again. I intend

driving her across, with the nor'wester on her starboard beam, so as to

lie well up afterwards. Get the yards braced to larboard as you catch

the breeze, Mr Wood, and make her course south-west by west." "Very

well, sir." "Ladies," said the captain, "will you allow me to hand you

below, where I fear Jacobs will be impatient with the tea?" "What a

pity, Captain Collins," remarked the romantic Miss Alicia, looking up

as they descended the companion--"what a pity that you cannot have that

delicious moonlight to shine in at your cabin windows just now; the

sailors yonder have it all to themselves." "There is no favour in these

things at sea, Miss Alicia," said the captain, smiling. "Jack shares

the chance there, at least, with his betters; but I can promise those

who honour my poor suite this evening both fine moonshine and a

steadier floor." On reaching the snug little after-cabin, with its

swinging lamp and barometer, its side "state-room," seven feet long,

and its two stern-windows showing a dark glimpse of the rolling waters,

they found the tea-things set, nautical style, on the hard-a-weather,

boxed-up table--the surgeon and one or two elderly gentlemen waiting,

and old Jacobs still trimming up the sperm-oil light. Mrs St Clair,

presiding in virtue of relationship to their host, was still cautiously

pouring out the requisite half-cups, when, above all the bustle and

clatter in the cuddy, could be heard the sounds of ropes thrown down on

deck, of the trampling watch, and the stentorian voice of the first

officer. "Jacobs!" said the captain, a minute or two afterwards; and

that worthy factotum instantly appeared from his pantry alongside of

the door--from whence, by the way, the old seaman might be privy to the

whole conversation--"stand by to _dowse_ the lamp when she heels," an

order purposely mysterious to all else but the doctor. Every one soon

felt a change in the movement of their wave-borne habitation; the

rolling lift of her stern ceased; those who were looking into their

cups saw the tea apparently take a decided inclination to larboard--as

the facetious doctor observed, a "tendency to _port_." The floor

gradually sloped down to the same hand, and a long, wild, gurgling wash

was suddenly heard to run careering past the timbers of the starboard

side. "Dear me!" fervently exclaimed every lady at once; when the very

next moment the lamp went out, and all was darkness. Captain Collins

felt a little hand clutch his arm in nervous terror, but the fair owner

of it said nothing; until, with still more startling effect than

before, in a few seconds there shot through both stern-windows the full

rays of the moon, pouring their radiance into the cabin, shining on the

backs of the books in the hanging shelves by the bulkhead, on the faces

of the party, and the bald forehead of old Jacobs "standing by" the

lamp,--lastly, too, revealing the pretty little Alicia with her hand on

the captain's arm, and her pale terrified face. "Don't be alarmed,

ladies!" said the surgeon, "she's only hauled on the starboard tack!"

"And her counter to the east," said the captain.

"But who the dev--old gentleman, I mean--put out the lamp?" rejoined

the doctor. "Ah,--I see sir!--'But when the moon, refulgent lamp of

night.'" "Such a surprise!" exclaimed the ladies, laughing, although

as much frightened for a moment by the magical illumination as by the

previous circumstances. "You see," said the captain, "we are not like

a house,--we can bring round our scenery to any window we choose."

"Very prettily imagined it was, too, I declare!" observed a stout old

Bombay officer, "and a fine compliment to the ladies, by Jove, sir!"

"If we had any of your pompous Bengal '_Quy hies_' here though,

colonel," said the doctor, "they wouldn't stand being choused so

unceremoniously out of the weather-side, I suspect." "As to the

agreeable little surprise I meant for the ladies," said Captain

Collins, "I fear it was done awkwardly, never having commanded an

_Indiaman_ before, and laid up ashore this half-a-dozen years. But

one's old feelings get freshened up, and without knowing the old

Gloucester's points, I can't help reckoning her as a lady too,--a very

particular old 'Begum,' that won't let any one else be humoured before

herself,--especially as I took charge of her to oblige a friend." "How

easily she goes now!" said the doctor, "and a gallant sight at this

moment, I assure you, to any one who chooses to put his head up the

companion." "Ah, mamma!" said one of the girls, "couldn't you almost

think this was our own little parlour at home, with the moonlight

coming through the window on both sides of the old elm, where we were

sitting a month ago hearing about India and papa?"

"Ah!" responded her cousin, standing up, "but there was no track of

moonshine dancing beyond the track of the ship yonder! How blue the

water is, and how much warmer it has grown of a sudden!"

"We are crossing the great Gulf Stream!" said the captain,--"Jacobs!

open one of the stern-ports." "'Tis the very place and time, this is,"

remarked a good-humoured cotton-grower from the Deckan, "for one of

the colonel's tiger-hunts, now!" "Sir!" answered the old officer,

rather testily, "I am not accustomed to thrust my _tiger-hunts_, as

you choose to call my humble experiences, under people's noses!"

"Certainly not, my dear sir," said the planter,--"but what do you say,

ladies, to one of the captain's sea-yarns, then? Nothing better, I'm

sure, here and now, sir--eh?" Captain Collins smiled, and said he had

never spun a yarn in his life, except when a boy, out of

matter-of-fact old junk and tar. "Here is my steward, however,"

continued he, "who is the best hand at it I know,--and I daresay he'll

give you one." "Charming!" exclaimed the young ladies; and "What was

that adventure, Mr Jacobs," said Miss Alicia, "with a beauty and a

Nabob in it, that you alluded to a short time ago?" "I didn't to say

disactly include upon it, your ladyship," replied old Jacobs, with a

tug of his hair, and a bow not just _à la maître_; "but the captain

can give you it better nor I can, seeing as his honur were the Nero on

it, as one may say." "Oh!" said the surgeon, rubbing his hands "a lady

and a rupee-eater in the case!" "Curious stories, there _are_, too,"

remarked the colonel, "of those serpents of nautch-girls, and rich

fools they've managed to entangle. As for beauty, sir, they have the

devil's, and they'd melt the 'Honourable John's' own revenue! I know a

very sensible man,--shan't mention his name,--but made of rupees, and

a regular _beebee-hater_,--saw one of these--" "Hush, hush, my dear

sir!" interrupted the planter, winking and gesticulating; "very good

for the weather poop,--but presence of ladies!"--"For which I'm not

fit, you'd say, sir?" inquired the colonel, firing up again. "Oh! oh!

you know, colonel!" said the unlucky planter, deprecatingly. "But a

_godown_[7] of best 'Banda' to a cowrie now, the sailor makes his

beauty a complete Nourmahal, with rose-lips and moon-eyes,--and his

Nabob a _jehan punneh_,[8] with a _crore_, besides diamonds. 'Twould

be worth hearing, especially from a lascar. For, 'twixt you and I,

colonel, we know how rare it is to hear of a man who saves his _lac_,

now-a-days, with Yankees in the market, no Nawaubs to fight, and

reform in _cutcheries_[9]!" "There seems something curious about this

said adventure of yours, my dear captain," said Mrs St Clair,

archly,--"and a Beauty too! It makes me positively inquisitive, but I

hope your fair lady has heard the story?" "Why, not exactly, ma'am,"

replied Captain Collins, laughing as he caught the doctor looking

preternaturally solemn, after a sly lee-wink to the colonel; who,

having his back to the moonlight, stretched out his legs and indulged

in a grim, silent chuckle, until his royal-tiger countenance was

unhappily brought so far _flush_[10] in the rays as to betray a

singular daguerreotype, resembling one of those cut-paper

phantasmagoria thrown on a drawing-room wall, unmistakably black and

white, and in the character of Malicious Watchfulness. The rubicund,

fidgety little cotton-grower twiddled his thumbs, and looked modestly

down on the deck, with half-shut eyes, as if expecting some bold

revelation of nautical depravity; while the romantic Miss Alicia

coloured and was silent. "However," said the captain, coolly, "it is

no matrimonial secret, at any rate! We both think of it when we read

the Church Service of a Sunday night at home, with Jacobs for the

clerk." "Do, Mr Jacobs, oblige us!" requested the younger of the

girls. "Well, Miss," said he, smoothing down his hair in the doorway,

and hemming, "'Tan't neither for the likes o' me to refuse a lady, nor

accordin' to rules for to give such a yarn in presence of a supperior

officer, much less the captain,--with a midship helm, ye know marm, ye

carn't haul upon one tack nor the other. Not to say but next forenoon

watch----" "I see, Jacobs, my man," interrupted Captain Collins,

"there's nothing for it but to fore-reach upon you, or else you'll be

'Green-Handing' me aft as well as forward; so I must just make the

best of it, and take the _winch_ in my own fashion at once!" "Ay, ay,

sir--ay, ay, your honour!" said Old Jack demurely, and concealing his

gratification as he turned off into the pantry, with the idea of for

the first time hearing the captain relate the incidents in question.

"My old shipmate," said the latter, "is so fond of having trained his

future captain, that it is his utmost delight to spin out everything

we ever met with together into one endless yarn, which would go on

from our first acquaintance to the present day, although no ship's

company ever heard the last of it. Without falling knowingly to

leeward of the truth, he makes out every lucky coincidence, almost, to

have been a feat of mine, and puts in little fancies of his own, so as

to give the whole thing more and more of a marvellous air, the farther

it goes. The most amusing thing is, that he almost always begins each

time, I believe, at the very beginning, like a capstan without a

paul--sticking in one thing he had forgot before, and forgetting

another; sometimes dwelling longer on one part--a good deal like a

ship making the same voyages over again. I knew, now, this evening,

when I heard the men laughing, and saw Old Jack on the forecastle,

what must be in the wind. However, we have shared so many chances, and

I respect the old man so much, not to speak of his having dandled my

little girls on his knee, and being butler, steward, and

flower-gardener at home, that I can't really be angry at him, in spite

of the sort of every man's rope he makes of me!" "How very amusing a

character he is!" said one young lady. "A thought too tarry, perhaps?"

suggested the surgeon. "So very original and like a--seaman!" remarked

Miss Alicia, quietly, but as if some other word that crossed her mind

had been rejected, as descriptive of a different variety, probably

higher. "_Original_, by Jove!" exclaimed the colonel; "if my

_Khansa-man_, or my _Abdar_,[11] were to make such a dancing dervish

and _tumasha_[12] of me behind back, by the holy Vishnu, sir, I'd

rattan him myself within an inch of his life!" "Not an unlikely thing,

colonel," put in the planter; "I've caught the scoundrels at that

trick before now." "What did you do?" inquired the colonel,

speculatively. "Couldn't help laughing, for my soul, sir; the

_puckree bund_[13] rascals did it so well, and so funnily!" The

irascible East-Indian almost started up in his imaginative fury, to

call for his palkee, and chastise his whole verandah, when the doctor

reminded him it was a long way there. "Glorious East!" exclaimed the

medico, looking out astern, "where we may cane our footmen, and

whence, meanwhile, we can derive such Sanscrit-sounding adjurations,

with such fine moonlight!"

The presence of the first officer was now added to the party, who came

down for a cup of tea, fresh from duty, and flavouring strongly of a

pilot cheroot. "How does she head, Mr Wood?" asked the captain.

"Sou'-west by west, sir,--a splendid night, under everything that will

draw,--spray up to the starboard cat-head!"

"But as to this story, again, Captain Collins?" said Mrs St Clair, as

soon as she had poured out the chief mate's cup. "Well," said the

captain, "if you choose to listen till bedtime to a plain draught of

the affair, why I suppose I must tell it you; and what remains then

may stand over till next fine night. It _may_ look a little romantic,

being in the days when most people are such themselves; but at any

rate, we sailors--or else we should never have been at sea, you know:

and so you'll allow for that, and a spice to boot of what we used to

call at sea 'love-making;' happily there were no soft speeches in it,

like those in books, for then I shouldn't tell it at all.

By the time I was twenty-four, I had been nine years at sea, and, at

the end of the war, was third lieutenant of a crack twenty-eight, the

saucy Iris--as perfect a sloop-model, though over-sparred certainly, as

ever was cased off the ways at Chatham, or careened to a north-easter.

The Admiralty had learnt to build by that day, and a glorious ship she

was, _made_ for going after the small fry of privateers, pirates, and

slavers, that swarmed about the time. Though I had roughed it in all

sorts of craft, from a first-rate to a dirty French lugger prize, and

had been eastward, so as to see the sea in its pride at the Pacific,

yet the feeling you have depends on the kind of ship you are in. I

never knew so well what it was to be fond of a ship and the sea; and

when I heard of the poor Iris, that had never been used to anything but

blue water on three parts of the horizon at least, laying her bones not

long after near Wicklow Head, I couldn't help a gulp in the throat. I

once dreamt I had gone down in her, and risen again to the surface with

the _loss of something_ in my brain; while, at the same moment, there I

was, still sitting below on a locker in the wardroom, with the arms of

her beautiful figure-head round me, and her mermaid's tail like the

best-bower cable, with an anchor at the end of it far away out of

soundings, over which I bobbed and dipped for years and years, in all

weathers, like a buoy. We had no Mediterranean time of it, though, in

the Iris, off the Guinea coast, from Cape Palmas to Cape Negro: looking

out to windward for white squalls, and to leeward for black ones, and

inshore for Spanish cattle-dealers, as we called them, had made us all

as sharp as so many marlin-spikes; and our captain was a man that

taught us seamanship, with a trick or two beyond. The slavers had not

got to be so clever then, either, with their schooners and clippers;

they built for stowage, and took the chance, so that we sent in _bale_

after bale to the West India Admiral, made money, and enjoyed ourselves

now and then at the Cape de Verds. However, this kind of thing was so

popular at home, as pickings after the great haul was over, that the

Iris had to give up her station to a post-frigate, and be paid off. The

war was over, and nobody could expect to be promoted without a friend

near the blue table-cloth, although a quiet hint to a secretary's palm

would work wonders, if strong enough. But most of such lucky fellows as

ourselves dissipated their funds in blazing away at balls and parties,

where the gold band was everything, and the ladies wore blue ribbons

and anchor brooches in honour of the navy. The men spent everything in

a fortnight, even to their clothes, and had little more chance of

eating the king's biscuit with hopes of prize-money; I used to see

knots of them, in red shirts and dirty slops, amongst the fore-mast

Jacks in outwardbound ships, dropping past Greenwich, and waving their

hats to the Hospital. You knew them at once by one of them giving the

song for the topsail halliards, instead of the merchantmen's bull's

chorus: indeed, I could always pick off the dashing man-o'-war's men,

by face and eye alone, out from among the others, who looked as sober

and solitary, with their serious faces and way of going about a thing,

as if every one of them was the whole crew. I once read a bit of poetry

called the "Ancient Mariner," to old Jacobs, who by the bye is

something of a breed betwixt the two kinds, and his remark was--"That

old chap warn't used to hoisting all together with a run, your honour!

By his looks, I'd say he was bred where there was few in a watch, and

the watch-tackle laid out pretty often for an eke to drag down the

fore-tack."

As I was riding down to Croydon in Surrey, where my mother and sister

had gone to live, I fell in with a sample of the hard shifts the

men-o-war's-men were put to in getting across from harbour to some

merchant port, when all their earnings were chucked away. It was at a

little town called Bromley, where I brought to by the door of a tavern

and had a drink for the horse, with a bottle of cider for myself at

the open window, the afternoon being hot. There was a crowd of

townspeople at the other end of the street, country bumpkins and

boys--women looking out at the windows, dogs barking, and children

shouting--the whole concern bearing down upon us.

"What's all this?" said I to the ostler.

"Don't know, sir," said he, scratching his head; "'tis very hodd, sir!

That corner _is_ rather a sharp turn for the coach, sir, and she do

sometimes run over a child there, or somethink. But 'taint her time

yet! Nothink else hever 'appens 'ere, sir."

As soon as I could hear or see distinctly for the confusion, I observed

the magnet of it to be a party of five or six regular blue-jackets, a

good deal battered in their rig, who were roaring out sea-songs in

grand style as they came along, leading what I thought at first was a

bear. The chief words I heard were what I knew well. "We'll disregard

their tommy-hawks, likewise their scalping-knifes--and fight alongside

of our mates to save our precious lives--like British tars and

souldiers in the North Americay!"

On getting abreast of the inn-door, and finding an offing with good

holding-ground, I suppose, they hove to and struck up the "Buffalo,"

that finest of chaunts for the weather forecastle with a spanking

breeze, outward bound, and the pilot lately dropped--

"Come all you young men and maidens, that _wishes_ for to sail,

And I will let you hear of where you must a-roam!

We'll embark into a ship which her taups'ls is let fall,

And all unto an ileyand where we never will go home!

Especiallye you _ladies_ that's inclined for to rove--

There's _fishes_ in the sea, my love--likewise the buck an' doe,

We'll lie down--on the _banks_--of yon pleasant shadye gro-ove,

Through the wild woods we'll wander and we'll chase the

Buffalo--ho--ho--we'll

Chase the BuffalO!"

I really couldn't help laughing to see the slapping big-bearded

fellows, like so many foretopmen, showing off in this manner--one

mahogany-faced thorough-bred leading, the rest thundering in at the

chorus, with tremendous stress on the 'Lo-ho-ho,' that made the good

Bromley folks gape. As to singing for money, however, I knew no true

tar with his members whole would do it; and I supposed it to be merely

some 'spree ashore,' until the curious-looking object from behind was

lugged forward by a couple of ropes, proving to be a human figure

about six feet high, with a rough canvass cover as far as the knees.

What with three holes at the face, and the strange colour of the legs,

which were bare--with the pair of turned-up India shoes, and the whole

shape like a walking smoke-funnel over a ship's caboose--I was puzzled

what they would be at. The leading tar immediately took off his hat,

waved it round for a clear space, and gave a hem while he pointed to

the mysterious creature. "Now, my lads!" said he, "this here

wonderful bein' is a savitch we brought aboard of us from the Andyman

Isles, where he was caught one mornin' paddling round the ship in a

canoe made out of the bark of a sartain tree. Bein' the ownly spice of

the sort brought to this country as yet is, and we havin' run short of

the needful to take us to the next port, we expects every lady and

gemman as has the wherewithal, will give us a lift, by consideration

of this same cur'ous sight, and doesn't----" "Heave ahead, Tom, lad!"

said another encouragingly, as the sailor brought up fairly out of

breath--"Doesn't want no man's money for nou't d'ye see, but all fair

an' above board. We're not agoin' to show this here sight excep' you

makes up half-a-guinea amongst ye--arter that, all hands may see

shot-free--them's the articles!" "Ay, ay, Tom, well said, old ship!"

observed the rest; and, after a considerable clinking of coin amongst

the crowd, the required sum was poured, in pence and sixpences, into

Tom's hat. "All right!" said he, as soon as he had counted it,--"hoist

away the tarpaulin, mates!" For my part, I was rather surprised at the

rare appearance of this said savage, when his cover was off--his legs

and arms naked, his face streaked with yellow, and both parts the

colour of red boom-varnish; his red hair done up in a tuft, with

feathers all round it, and a bright feather-tippet over his shoulders,

as he stood, six feet in his yellow slippers, and looking sulkily

enough at the people. "Bobbery puckalow!" said the nautical

head-showman, and all at once up jumped the Andaman islander, dancing

furiously, holding a little Indian _punkah_ over his head, and

flourishing with the other hand what reminded me strongly of a ship's

top-maul--shouting "Goor--goor--gooree!" while two of the sailors held

on by the ropes. The crowd made plenty of room, and Tom proceeded to

explain to them very civilly, that "in them parts 'twas so hot the

natives wouldn't fight, save under a portable awning." Having

exhibited the points of their extraordinary savage, he was calmed

again by another uncouth word of command, when the man-o'-war's-man

attempted a further _traverse_ on the good Bromley folks, for which I

gave him great credit. "Now, my lads and lasses," said he, taking off

his hat again, "I s'pose you're all British subjects and Englishmen!"

at which there was a murmur of applause. "Very good, mates all!"

continued the foretopman approvingly.--"Then, in course, ye knows as

how whatsomever touches British ground is _free_!" "Britons never,

never shall be slaves!" sung out a boy, and the screaming and

hurrahing was universal. Tom stuck his tongue in his cheek to his

messmates, and went on,--"Though we was all pressed ourselves, and has

knocked about in sarvice of our king and country, an' bein' poor men,

we honours the flag, my lads!" "Hoorah! hoorah! hoorr-ray!" "So you

see, gemmen, my shipmates an' me has come to the resolve of lettin'

this here wild savidge go free into the woods,--though, bein' poor

men, d'ye see, we hopes ye'll make it up to us a bit first! What d'ye

say, all hands?--slump together for the other guinea, will ye, and off

he goes this minute,--and d---- the odds! Eh? what d'ye say,

shipmates?" "Ay, ay, Tom, sink the damage too!" said his comrades;

"we'll always get a berth at Blackwall, again!"

"Stand by to ease off his tow-lines, then," said Tom,--"now look sharp

with the shiners there, my lads--ownly a guinea!" "No! no!" murmured

the townspeople,--"send for the constable!--we'll all be scalped and

murdered in our beds!--no, no, for God's sake, mister sailors!" A

grocer ran out of his door to beg the tars wouldn't think of such a

thing, and the village constable came shoving himself in, with the

beadle. "Come, come," said the constable in a soothing style, while

the beadle tried to look big and blustering, "you musn't do it, my

good men,--not on no desideration, _here_,--in his majesty's name!

Take un on to the next parish!--I horder all good subjects to resist

me!" "_What!_" growled the foretopman, with an air of supreme disgust,

"han't ye no feelin's for liberty hereaway? Parish be blowed! Bill, my

lad, let go his moorings, and give the poor devil his nat'ral

freedom!" "I'm right down ashamed on my country," said Bill. "Hullo,

shipmates, cast off at once, an' never mind the loss,--I hasn't slept

easy myself sin' he wor cotched!" "Nor me either," said another, "but

I'm feared he'll play the devil when he's loose, mate."

I had been watching the affair all this time from inside, a good deal

amused, in those days, at the trick--especially so well carried out as

it was by the sailors. "Here, my fine fellows," said I at last, "bring

him in, if you please, and let me have a look at him." Next minute in

came the whole party, and, supposing from my dress that I was merely a

long-shore traveller, they put their savage through his dance with

great vigour. "Wonderful tame he's got, your honour!" said the

top-man; "it's nothing to what he does if you freshens his nip." "What

does he eat?" I asked, pretending not to understand the hint. "Why,

nought to speak on, sir," said he; "but we wonst lost a boy doorin'

the cruise, nobody know'd how--though 'twas thought he went o'board,

some on us had our doubts." "Curiously tatooed, too," I said; "I

should like to examine his arm." "A bit obstropolous he is, your

honour, if you handles him!" "Never mind," said I, getting up and

seizing the wrist of the Andaman islander, in spite of his grins; and

my suspicions were immediately fulfilled by seeing a whole range of

familiar devices marked in blue on the fellow's arm--amongst them an

anchor with a heart transfixed by a harpoon, on one side the word

"Sal," and on the other "R.O. 1811." "Where did you steal this

top-maul, you rascal?" said I, coolly looking in his face; while I

noticed one of the men overhauling me suspiciously out of his

weather-eye, and sidling to the door. "I didn't stale it at all!"

exclaimed the savage, giving his red head a scratch, "'twas Bill Green

there--by japers! whack, pillalew, mates, I'm done!" "Lord! oh Lord!"

said Bill himself, quite crestfallen, "if I didn't think 'twas him!

We're all pressed again, mates! It's _the_ leftenant!" "Pressed, bo'?"

said Tom; "more luck, I wish we was--but they wouldn't take ye now for

a bounty, ye know." Here I was fain to slack down and give a hearty

laugh, particularly at recognising Bill, who had been a shipmate of

Jacobs and myself in the old Pandora, and was nicknamed "Green"--I

believe from a little adventure of ours--so I gave the men a guinea

a-piece to carry them on. "Long life to your honour!" said they; and

said Tom, "If I might make so bould, sir, if your honour has got a

ship yet, we all knows ye, sir, and we'd enter, if 'twas for the North

Pole itself!" "No, my lad," said I, "I'm sorry to say I have not got

so far yet. Dykes, my man, can you tell me where your old messmate

Jacobs has got to?" "Why, sir," replied Bill, "I did hear he was

livin' at Wapping with his wife, where we means to give him a call,

too, sir." "Good day, your honour!" said all of them, as they put on

their hats to go, and covered their curiosity again with his

tarpaulin. "I'm blessed, Bill," said Tom, "but we'll knock off this

here carrivanning now, and put before the wind for Blackwall." "Won't

you give your savage his freedom, then," I asked. "Sartinly, your

honour," replied the roguish foretopman, his eye twinkling as he saw

that I enjoyed the joke. "Now, Mick, my lad, ye must run like the

devil so soon as we casts ye off!" "Oh, by the powers, thry me!" said

the Irishman; "I'm tired o' this cannible minnatchery! By the holy

mouse, though, I must have a dhrop o' dew in me, or I'll fall!" Mick

accordingly swigged off a noggin of gin, and declared himself ready to

start. "Head due nor'-east from the sun, Mick, and we'll pick you up

in the woods, and rig you out all square again," said the captain of

the gang, before presenting himself to the mob outside. "Now, gemmen

and ladies all," said the sailor coolly, "ye see we're bent on givin'

this here poor unfort'nate his liberty--an' bein' tould we've got the

law on our side, why, we means to do it. More by token, there's a

leftenant in the Roy'l Navy aboard there, as has made up the little

salvage-money, bein' poor men, orderin' us for to do it--so look out!

If ye only gives him a clear offing, he'll not do no harm. Steady,

Bill--slack off the starboard sheet, Jack--let go--all!" "Oh!

oh!--no! no!--for God's sake!" screamed the bystanders, as they

scuttled off to both hands--"shame! shame!--knock un down! catch

un!--tipstaff! beadle!" "Hurrah!" roared the boys, and off went Mick

O'Hooney in fine style, flourishing his top-maul, with a wild

"hullaloo," right away over a fence, into a garden, and across a field

towards the nearest wood. Everybody fell out of his way as he dashed

on; then some running after him, dogs barking, and the whole of the

seamen giving chase with their tarpaulins in their hands, as if to

drive him far enough into the country. The whole scene was extremely

rich, seen through the open air from the tavern window, where I sat

laughing, till the tears came into my eyes, at Jack-tars' roguishness

and the stupefied Kent rustics, as they looked to each other; then at

the sailors rolling away full speed along the edge of the plantation

where the outlandish creature had disappeared; and, lastly, at the

canvass cover which lay on the spot where he had stood. They were

actually consulting how to guard against possible inroads from the

savage at night, since he might be lurking near, when I mounted and

rode off; I daresay even their hearing that I was a live and real

lieutenant would cap the whole story.

Croydon is a pretty, retired little town, so quiet and old-fashioned

that I enjoyed the unusual rest in it, and the very look of the canal,

the marketplace, the old English trees and people--by comparison with

even the Iris's white decks, and her circumference of a prospect,

different as it was every morning or hour of the day. My mother and my

sister Jane were so kind--they petted me so, and were so happy to have

me down to breakfast and out walking, even to feel the smell of my

cigar,--that I hardly knew where I was. I gave them an account of the

places I had seen, with a few tremendous storms and a frigate-fight or

two, instead of the horse-marine stories about mermaids and flying

Dutchmen I used to pass upon them when a conceited youngster. Little

Jane would listen with her ear to a large shell, when we were upon sea

matters, and shut her eyes, saying she could fancy the thing so

perfectly in that way. Or was it about India, there was a painted

sandal-wood fan carved in open-work like the finest lace, which she

would spread over her face, because the seeing through it, and its

scent, made her feel as if she were in the tropics. As for my mother,

good simple woman, she was always between astonishment and horror,

never having believed that lieutenants would be so heartless as to

masthead a midshipman for the drunkenness of a boat's crew, nor being

able to understand why, with a gale brewing to seaward, a captain

tried to get his ship as far as he could from land. The idea of my

going to sea again never entered her head, the terrible war being

over, and the rank I had gained being invariably explained to visiters

as at least equal to that of a captain amongst soldiers. To the

present day, this is the point with respect to seafaring matters on

which my venerated and worthy parent is clearest: she will take off

her gold spectacles, smoothing down her silver hair with the other

hand, and lay down the law as to reform in naval titles, showing that

my captain's commission puts me on a level with a military colonel.

However, as usual, I got tired by little and little of this sort of

thing; I fancy there's some peculiar disease gets into a sailor's

brain that makes him uneasy with a firm floor and no offing beyond;

certainly the country about Croydon was to my mind, at that time, the

worst possible,--all shut in, narrow lanes, high hedges and orchards,

no sky except overhead, and no horizon. If I could only have got a

hill, there would have been some relief in having a look-out from it.

Money I didn't need; and as for fame or rank, I neither had the

ambition, nor did I ever fancy myself intended for an admiral or a

Nelson: all my wish was to be up and driving about, on account of

something that was _within_ me. I enjoyed a good breeze as some do

champagne; and the very perfection of glory, to my thinking, was to be

the soul of a gallant ship in a regular Atlantic howler; or to play at

long bowls with one's match to leeward, off the ridges of a sea, with

both weather and the enemy to think of. Accordingly, I wasn't at all

inclined to go jogging along in one of your easy merchantmen, where

you have nothing new to find out; and I only waited to hear from some

friends who were bestirring themselves with the Board, of a ship where

there might be something to do. These were my notions in those days,

before getting sobered down, which I tell you for the sake of not

seeming such a fool in this said adventure.

Well, one evening my sister Jane and I went to a race-ball at Epsom,

where, of course, we saw all the "beauty and fashion," as they say, of

the country round, with plenty of the army men, who were in all their

glory, with Waterloo and all that; we two or three poor nauticals being

quite looked down upon in comparison, since Nelson was dead, and we had

left nothing at the end to fight with. I even heard one belle ask a

dragoon "what uniform that was--was it the horse-artillery corps?"

"Haw!" said the dragoon, squinting at me through an eyeglass, and then

looking with one eye at his spurs and with the other at his partner,

"Not at all sure! I _do_ think, after all, Miss ----, 'tis the--the

marine body,--a sort of amphibious animals! They weren't with _us_,

though, you know,--_couldn't_ be, indeed, though it _was_ _Water_-loo!

Haw! haw! you'll excuse the joke, Miss ----?" "Ha! ha! how extremely

witty, Captain ----!" said the young lady, and they whirled away

towards the other end of the hall. But, had there been an opportunity,

by the honour of the flag, and nothing personal, I declare I should

have done--what the fool deserved,--had it been before all his brethren

and the Duke himself! It was not ten minutes after, that I saw what I

thought the loveliest young creature ever crossed my eyes, coming out

of the refreshment-room with two ladies, an old and an elderly one. The

first was richly dressed, and I set her down for an aunt, she was so

unlike; the other for a governess. The young lady was near sixteen to

appearance, dressed in white. There were many beauties in the ball-room

you would have called handsomer; but there was something about her

altogether I could compare to nothing else but the white figure-head of

the Iris, sliding gently along in the first curl of a breeze, with the

morning-sky far out on the bow,--curious as you may think it, ladies!

Her hair was brown, and her complexion remarkably pale notwithstanding;

while her eyes were as dark-blue, too, as--as the ocean near the line,

that sometimes, in a clear calm, gets to melt till you scarcely know it

from the sky. "Look, Edward!" whispered my sister, "what a pretty

creature! She can't be English, she looks so different from everybody

in the room! And such diamonds in her hair! such a beautifully large

pearl in her brooch! Who can she be, I wonder?" I was so taken up,

however, that I never recollected at all what Jane said till at night,

in thinking the matter over; and then a whole breeze of whisperings

seemingly came from every corner of the bedroom, of "Who is she!" "Who

can she be?" "Who's her father?" and so on, which I remembered to have

heard. I only noticed at the time that somebody said she was the

daughter of some rich East India Nabob or other, just come home. I had

actually forgot about the young dragoon I meant to find out again,

until a post-captain who was present--one of Collingwood's

flag-lieutenants--went up to the old _chaperone_, whom he seemed to

know, and got into talk with her; I found afterwards she was an

admiral's widow. In a little I saw him introduced to the young lady,

and ask her to dance; I fancied she hung back for a moment, but the

next she bowed, gave a slight smile to the captain's gallant

sea-fashion of deep respect to the sex, and they were soon gliding away

in the first set. Her dancing was more like walking with spread wings

upon air, than upon planks with one's arms out, as the captain did. I'd

have given my eyes, not to speak of my commission and chances to come,

to have gone through that figure with _her_. When the captain had

handed her to her seat again, two or three of the dragoons sauntered up

to Lady Somers's sofa: it was plain they were taken; and after

conversing with the old lady, one of them, Lord somebody I understood,

got introduced, in his turn, to the young beauty. As may be supposed, I

kept a look-out for his asking her to dance, seeing that, if she had

done so with one of the embroidered crew, and their clattering gear,

I'd have gone out that instant, found out the Waterloo fellow next day,

and, if not shot myself, shot him with an anchor button for a bullet,

and run off in the first craft I could get. The cool, easy, cursed

impertinent way this second man made his request, though--just as if he

couldn't be refused, and didn't care about it--it was as different from

the captain of the Diomede's as red from blue! My heart went like the

main-tack blocks, thrashing when you luff too much; so you may guess

what I felt to see the young lady, who was leaning back on the sofa,

give her head a pettish sort of turn to the old one, without a

word,--as much as to say she didn't want to. "My love!" I heard the old

lady say, "I fear you are tired! My lord, your lordship must excuse

Miss Hyde on this occasion, as she is delicate!" The dragoon was a

polite nobleman, according to his cloth; so he kept on talking and

smiling, till he could walk off without seeming as if he'd got his

sabre betwixt his feet; but I fancied him a little down by the head

when he did go. All the time, the young beauty was sitting with her

face as quiet and indifferent as may be, only there was a sparkle in

her blue eyes, and in nothing else but the diamonds in her hair, as she

looked on at the dancing; and, to my eye, there was a touch of the rose

came out on her cheek, clear pale though it was before the dragoon

spoke to her. Not long after, an oldish gentleman came out with a

gray-haired old general from the refreshment-room: a thin,

yellow-complexioned man he was, with no whiskers and a bald forehead,

and a bilious eye, but handsome, and his face as grand and solemn

looking as if he'd been First Lord, or had got a whole court-martial on

his shoulders for next day. I should have known him from a thousand for

a man that had lived in the East, were it nothing but the quick way he

looked over his shoulder for a servant or two, when he wanted his

carriage called--no doubt just as one feels when he forgets he's

ashore, like I did every now and then, looking up out to windward, and

getting a garden-wall or a wood slap into one's eyesight, as 'twere. I

laid down the old gentleman at once for this said Nabob; in fact, as

soon as a footman told him his carriage was waiting, he walked up to

the young lady and her companions, and went off with them, a steward

and a lady patroness convoying them to the break of the steps. The only

notion that ran in my head, on the way home that night with my sister,

was, "By heavens! I might just as well be in love with the bit of sky

at the end of the flying-jib-boom!" and all the while, the confounded

wheels kept droning it into me, till I was as dizzy as the first time I

looked over the fore-royal-yard. The whole night long I dreamt I was

mad after the figure-head of the Iris, and asked her to dance with me,

on which she turned round with a look as cold as water, or plain "No."

At last I caught firm hold of her and jumped overboard; and next moment

we were heaving on the blue swell in sight of the black old Guinea

coast--when round turned the figure, and changed into Miss Hyde; and

the old Nabob hauled us ashore upon a beautiful island, where I woke

and thought I was wanted on deck, although it was only my mother

calling me.

All I had found out about them was, that Sir Charles Hyde was the name

of the East Indian, and how he was a Bengal judge newly come home;

where they lived, nobody at the ball seemed to know. At home, of

course, it was so absurd to think of getting acquaintance with a rich

Indian judge and his daughter, that I said no more of the matter;

although I looked so foolish and care-about-nothing, I suppose, that

my mother said to Jane she was sure I wanted to go to sea again, and

even urged me to "take a trip to the Downs, perhaps." As for going to

sea, however, I felt I could no more stir _then_, from where I was,

than with a best-bower down, and all hands drunk but the captain.

There was a favourite lazy spot of mine near the house, where I used

to lie after dinner, and smoke amongst the grass, at the back of a

high garden-wall with two doors in it, and a plank across a little

brook running close under them. All round was a green paddock for

cows; there was a tall tree at hand, which I climbed now and then

half-mast high, to get a look down a long lane that ran level to the

sky, and gave you a sharp gush of blue from the far end. Being a

luxurious dog in those days, like the cloth in general when hung up

ashore, I used to call it "The Idler's Walk," and "The Lazy Watch,"

where I did duty somewhat like the famous bo'sun that told his boy to

call him every night and say the captain wanted him, when he turned

over with a polite message, and no good to the old tyrant's eyes.

Well, one afternoon I was stretched on the softest bit of this

retreat, feeling unhappy all over, and trying to think of nothing

particular, as I looked at the wall and smoked my cheroot. Excuse me

if I think that, so far as I remember, there is nothing so

consolatory, though it can't of course cure one, as a fine Manilla for

the "green sickness," as our fore-mast fellows would say. My main idea

was, that nothing on earth could turn up to get me out of this scrape,

but I should stick eternally, with my head-sails shivering aback, or

flapping in a sickening dead calm. It was a beautiful hot summer

afternoon, as quiet as possible, and I was weary to death of seeing

that shadow of the branch lying against the white wall, down to the

keyhole of the nearest door. All of a sudden I heard the sweetest

voice imaginable, coming down the garden as it were, singing a verse

of a Hindostanee song I had heard the Bengal girls chant with their

pitchers on their heads at the well, of an evening,--

"'La li ta la, ta perisi,

La na comalay ah sahm-rè,

Madna, ca--rahm

Ram li ta, co-ca-la lir jhi!

La li ta la, vanga-la ta perisi.'"

"Coc-coka-cokatoo!" screamed a harsh voice, which I certainly could

distinguish from the first. "Pretty cockatoo!" said the other

coaxingly; and next minute the large pink-flushed bird itself popped

his head over the top-stones above the door, floundering about with

his throat foul of the silver chain fast to his leg, till he hung by

his beak on my side of the wall, half choked, and trying to croak out

"Pretty--pretty cocky!" Before I had time to think, the door opened,

and, by heavens! there was my very charmer herself, with the shade of

the green leaves showered over her alarmed face. She had scarcely seen

me before I sprang up and caught the cockatoo, which bit me like an

imp incarnate, till the blood ran down my fingers as I handed it to

its mistress, my heart in my mouth, and more than a quarter-deck bow

in my cap. The young lady looked at me first in surprise, as may be

supposed, and then, with a smile of thanks that set my brain all

afloat, "Oh, dear me!" exclaimed she, "you are hurt!" "_Hurt!_" I

said, looking so bewildered, I suppose, that she couldn't help

laughing. "Tippoo is very stupid," continued she, smiling, "because he

is out of his own country, I think. You shall have no sugar to-night,

cockatoo, for biting your friends."

"Were you--ever in India--madam?" I stammered out. "Not since I was a

child," she answered; but just then I saw the figure of the Nabob

sauntering down the garden, and said I had particular business, and

must be off. "You are very busy here, sir?" said the charming young

creature archly. "You are longing till you go to sea, I daresay--like

Tippoo and me." "You!" said I, staring at the keyhole, whilst she

caught my eye, and blushed a little, as I thought. "Yes, we are

going--I long to see India again, and I remember the sea too, like a

dream."