Chapter II.

Harper’s

New Monthly Magazine

No. V.—October, 1850.—Vol. I.

CONTENTS

Wordsworth—His Character And Genius.

Sidney Smith. By George Gilfillan.

Thomas Carlyle. By George Gilfillan.

The Gentleman Beggar. An Attorney’s Story. (From Dickens’s Household

Words.)

Singular Proceedings Of The Sand Wasp. (From Howitt’s Country Year-Book.)

What Horses Think Of Men. From The Raven In The Happy Family. (From

Dickens’s Household Words.)

The Quakers During The American War. (From Howitt’s Country Year-Book.)

A Shilling’s Worth Of Science. (From Dickens’s Household Words.)

A Tuscan Vintage.

How To Make Home Unhealthy. By Harriet Martineau.

Sorrows And Joys. (From Dickens’s Household Words.)

Maurice Tiernay, The Soldier Of Fortune. (From the Dublin University

Magazine)

The Enchanted Rock. (From Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal.)

The Force Of Fear. (From Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal.)

Lady Alice Daventry; Or, The Night Of Crime. (From the Dublin University

Magazine.)

Mirabeau. An Anecdote Of His Private Life. (From Chambers’s Edinburgh

Journal.)

Terrestrial Magnetism. (From Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal.)

Early History Of The Use Of Coal. (From Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal.)

Jenny Lind. By Fredrika Bremer.

My Novel; Or, Varieties In English Life. By Pisistratus Caxton. (From

Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.)

The Two Guides Of The Child. (From Dickens’s Household Words.)

The Laboratory In The Chest. (From Dickens’s Household Words.)

The Steel Pen. An Illustration Of Cheapness. (From Dickens’s Household

Words.)

Snakes And Serpent Charmers. (From Bentley’s Miscellany.)

The Magic Maze. (From Colburn’s Monthly Magazine.)

The Sun. (From Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal.)

The Household Jewels. (From Dickens’s Household Words.)

The Tea-Plant. (From Hogg’s Instructor.)

Anecdotes Of Dr. Chalmers.

The Pleasures Of Illness. (From the People’s Journal.)

Obstructions To The Use Of The Telescope.

Monthly Record Of Current Events.

Literary Notices.

Autumn Fashions.

Footnotes

WORDSWORTH—HIS CHARACTER AND GENIUS.

[Illustration: Wordsworth.]

In a late article on Southey, we alluded to the solitary position of

Wordsworth in that lake country where he once shone the brightest star in

a large galaxy. Since then, the star of Jove, so beautiful and large, has

gone out in darkness—the greatest laureate of England has expired—the

intensest, most unique, and most pure-minded of our poets, with the single

exceptions of Milton and Cowper, is departed. And it were lesemajesty

against his mighty shade not to pay it our tribute while yet his memory,

and the grass of his grave, are green.

It is singular, that only a few months have elapsed since the great

antagonist of his literary fame—Lord Jeffrey (who, we understand,

persisted to the last in his ungenerous and unjust estimate), left the

bench of human, to appear at the bar of Divine justice. Seldom has the

death of a celebrated man produced a more powerful impression in his own

city and circle, and a less powerful impression on the wide horizon of the

world. In truth, he had outlived himself. It had been very different had

he passed away thirty years ago, when the “Edinburgh Review” was in the

plenitude of its influence. As it was, he disappeared like a star at

midnight, whose descent is almost unnoticed while the whole heavens are

white with glory, not like a sun going down, that night may come over the

earth. One of the acutest, most accomplished, most warm-hearted, and

generous of men, Jeffrey wanted that stamp of universality, that highest

order of genius, that depth of insight, and that simple directness of

purpose, not to speak of that moral and religious consecration, which

“give the world assurance of a man.” He was the idol of Edinburgh, and the

pride of Scotland, because he condensed in himself those qualities which

the modern Athens has long been accustomed to covet and admire—taste and

talent rather than genius—subtlety of appreciation rather than power of

origination—the logical understanding rather than the inventive

insight—and because his name _had_ sounded out to the ends of the earth.

But nature and man, not Edinburgh Castle, or the Grampian Hills merely,

might be summoned to mourn in Wordsworth’s departure the loss of one of

their truest high-priests, who had gazed into some of the deepest secrets

of the one, and echoed some of the loftiest aspirations of the other.

To soften such grief, however, there comes in the reflection, that the

task of this great poet had been nobly discharged. He _had_ given the

world assurance, full, and heaped, and running over, of what he meant, and

of what was meant by him. While the premature departure of a Schiller, a

Byron, or a Keats, gives us emotions similar to those wherewith we would

behold the crescent moon, snatched away as by some “insatiate archer,” up

into the Infinite, ere it grew into its full glory—Wordsworth, like Scott,

Goethe, and Southey, was permitted to fill his full and broad sphere.

What Wordsworth’s mission was, may be, perhaps, understood through some

previous remarks upon his great mistress—Nature, as a poetical personage.

There are three methods of contemplating nature. These are the material,

the shadowy, and the mediatorial. The materialist looks upon it as the

great and only reality. It is a vast solid fact, for ever burning and

rolling around, below and above him. The idealist, on the contrary,

regards it as a shadow—a mode of mind—the infinite projection of his own

thought. The man who stands _between_ the two extremes, looks on nature as

a great, but not ultimate or everlasting scheme of mediation, or

compromise, between pure and absolute spirit and humanity—adumbrating God

to man, and bringing man near to God. To the materialist, there is an

altar, star-lighted heaven-high, but no God. To the idealist, there is a

God, but no altar. He who holds the theory of mediation, has the Great

Spirit as his God, and the universe as the altar on which he presents the

gift of his poetical (we do not speak at present so much of his

theological) adoration.

It must be obvious, at once, which of those three views of nature is the

most poetical. It is surely that which keeps the two principles of spirit

and matter distinct and unconfounded—preserves in their proper

relations—the soul and the body of things—God within, and without the

garment by which, in Goethe’s grand thought, “we see him by.” While one

party deify, and another destroy matter, the third impregnate, without

identifying it with the Divine presence.

The notions suggested by this view, which is that of Scripture, are

exceedingly comprehensive and magnificent. Nature becomes to the poet’s

eye “_a great sheet let down from God out of heaven_,” and in which there

is no object “common or unclean.” The purpose and the Being above cast

such a grandeur over the pettiest or barest objects, as did the fiery

pillar upon the sand, or the shrubs of the howling desert of its march.

Every thing becomes valuable when looked upon as a communication from God,

imperfect only from the nature of the material used. What otherwise might

have been concluded discords, now appear only stammerings or whisperings

in the Divine voice; thorns and thistles spring above the primeval curse,

the “meanest flower that blows” gives

“Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

The creation is neither unduly exalted nor contemptuously trampled

under-foot, but maintains its dignified position, as an embassador from

the Divine King. The glory of something far beyond association—that of a

divine and perpetual presence—is shed over the landscape, and its

golden-drops are spilled upon the stars. Objects the most diverse—the

cradle of the child, the wet hole of the centipede, the bed of the corpse,

and the lair of the earthquake, the nest of the lark, and the crag on

which sits, half asleep, the dark vulture, digesting blood—are all clothed

in a light the same in kind, though varying in degree—

“A light which never was on sea or shore.”

In the poetry of the Hebrews, accordingly, the locusts are God’s “great

army;”—the winds are his messengers, the thunder his voice, the lightning

a “fiery stream going before him,” the moon his witness in the heavens,

the sun a strong man rejoicing to run his race—all creation is roused and

startled into life through him—its every beautiful, or dire, or strange

shape in the earth or the sky, is God’s movable tent; the place where, for

a season, his honor, his beauty, his strength, and his justice dwell—the

tenant not degraded, and inconceivable dignity being added to the abode.

His mere “tent,” however—for while the great and the infinite are thus

connected with the little and the finite, the subordination of the latter

to the former is always maintained. The most magnificent objects in nature

are but the mirrors to God’s face—the scaffolding to his future purposes;

and, like mirrors, are to wax dim; and, like scaffolding, to be removed.

The great sheet is to be _received up_ again into heaven. The heavens and

the earth are to pass away, and to be succeeded, if not by a purely mental

economy, yet by one of a more spiritual materialism, compared to which the

former shall no more be remembered, neither come into mind. Those

frightful and fantastic forms of animated life, through which God’s glory

seems to shine with a struggle, and but faintly, shall disappear—nay, the

worlds which bore, and sheltered them in their rugged dens and eaves,

shall flee from the face of the regenerator. “A milder day” is to dawn on

the universe—the refinement of matter is to keep pace with the elevation

of mind. Evil and sin are to be eternally banished to some Siberia of

space. The word of the poet is to be fulfilled,

“And one eternal spring encircles all!”

The mediatorial purpose of creation, fully subserved, is to be abandoned,

that we may see “eye to eye,” and that God may be “all in all.”

That such views of matter—its present ministry—the source of its beauty

and glory—and its future destiny, transferred from the pages of both

Testaments to those of our great moral and religious poets, have deepened

some of their profoundest, and swelled some of their highest strains, is

unquestionable. Such prospects as were in Milton’s eye, when he sung,

“Thy Saviour and thy Lord

Last in the clouds from heaven to be revealed,

In glory of the Father to dissolve

Satan with his perverted world; then raise

From the conflagrant mass, purged and refined,

New heavens, new earth, ages of endless date,”

may be found in Thomson, in his closing Hymn to the Seasons, in

Coleridge’s “Religious Musings,” (in Shelley’s “Prometheus” even, but

perverted and disguised), in Bailey’s “Festus” (cumbered and entangled

with his religious theory); and more rootedly, although less

theologically, than in all the rest, in the poetry of Wordsworth.

The secret of Wordsworth’s profound and peculiar love for Nature, even in

her meaner and minuter forms, may lie, perhaps, here. De Quincey seeks for

it in a peculiar conformation of the eye, as if he actually did see more

in the object than other men—in the rose a richer red, in the sky a deeper

azure, in the broom a yellower gold, in the sun a more dazzling ray, in

the sea a finer foam, and in the star a more sparkling splendor, than even

Nature’s own “sweet and cunning” hand put on; but the critic has not

sought to explain the rationale of this peculiarity. Mere acuteness of

vision it can not have been, else the eagle might have _felt_, though not

written, “The Excursion”—else the fact is not accountable why many of weak

sight, such as Burke, have been rapturous admirers of Nature; and so, till

we learn that Mr. De Quincey has looked through Wordsworth’s eyes, we must

call this a mere fancy. Hazlitt again, and others since, have accounted

for the phenomenon by association—but this fails, we suspect, fully to

explain the deep, native, and brooding passion in question—a passion

which, instead of being swelled by the associations of after life, rose to

lull stature in youth, as “Tintern Abbey” testifies. One word of his own,

perhaps, better solves the mystery—it is the one word “consecration”—

“The _consecration_ and the poet’s dream.”

His eye had been anointed with eye-salve, and he saw, as his

poet-predecessors had done, the temple in which he was standing, heard in

every breeze and ocean billow the sound of a temple-service, and felt that

the grandeur of the ritual, and of its recipient, threw the shadow of

their greatness upon every stone in the corners of the edifice, and upon

every eft crawling along its floors. Reversing the miracle, he saw “trees

as men walking”—heard the speechless sins, and, in the beautiful thought

of “the Roman,” caught on his ear the fragments of a “divine soliloquy,”

filling up the pauses in a universal anthem. Hence the tumultuous, yet

awful joy of his youthful feelings to Nature. Hence his estimation of its

lowliest features; for does not every bush and tree appear to him a

“pillar in the temple of his God?” The leaping fish pleases him, because

its “cheer” in the lonely tarn is of praise. The dropping of the earth on

the coffin lid, is a slow and solemn psalm, mingling in austere sympathy

with the raven’s croak, and in his “Power of sound” he proceeds

elaborately to condense all those varied voices, high or low, soft or

harsh, united or discordant, into one crushing chorus, like the choruses

of Haydn, or of heaven. Nature undergoes no outward change to his _eye_,

but undergoes a far deeper transfiguration to his spirit—as she stands up

in the white robes, and with the sounding psalmodies of her mediatorial

office, between him and the Infinite I AM.

Never must this feeling be confounded with Pantheism. All does not seem to

him to be God, nor even (strictly speaking) divine; but all seems to be

immediately _from_ God—rushing out from him in being, to rush instantly

back to him in service and praise. Again the natal dew of the first

morning is seen lying on bud and blade, and the low voice of the first

evening’s song becomes audible again. Although Coleridge in his youth was

a Spinozist, Wordsworth seems at once, and forever, to have recoiled from

even his friend’s eloquent version of that creedless creed, that baseless

foundation, that system, through the _phenomenon_ of which look not the

bright eyes of Supreme Intelligence, but the blind face of irresponsible

and infinite necessity. Shelley himself—with all the power his critics

attribute to him of painting night, animating Atheism, and giving strange

loveliness to annihilation—has failed in redeeming Spinoza’s theory from

the reproach of being as hateful as it is false; and there is no axiom we

hold more strongly than this—that the theory which can not be rendered

poetical, can not be true. “Beauty is truth, and truth is beauty,” said

poor Keats, to whom time, however, was not granted to come down from the

first glowing generalization of his heart, to the particular creeds which

his ripened intellect would have, according to _it_, rejected or received.

Nor, although Wordsworth is a devoted lover of Nature, down to what many

consider the very blots—or, at least, dashes and commas in her page, is he

blind to the fact of her transient character. The power he worships has

his “dwelling in the light of setting suns,” but that dwelling is not his

everlasting abode. For earth, and the universe, a “_milder day_” (words

certifying their truth by their simple beauty) is in store when “the

monuments” of human weakness, folly, and evil, shall “all be over-grown.”

He sees afar off the great spectacle of Nature retiring before God; the

embassador giving place to the King; the bright toys of this nursery—sun,

moon, earth, and stars—put away, like childish things; the symbols of the

Infinite lost in the Infinite itself; and though he could, on the Saturday

evening, bow before the midnight mountains, and midnight heavens, he could

also, on the Sabbath morn, in Rydal church, bow as profoundly before the

apostolic word, “All these things shall be dissolved.”

With Wordsworth, as with all great poets, his poetical creed passes into

his religious. It is the same tune with variations. But we confess that,

in his case, we do not think the variations equal. The mediation of Nature

he understands, and has beautifully represented in his poetry; but that

higher mediation of the Divine Man between man and the Father, does not

lie fully or conspicuously on his page. A believer in the mystery of

godliness he unquestionably was; but he seldom preached it. Christopher

North, many years ago, in “Blackwood,” doubted if there were so much as a

Bible in poor Margaret’s cottage (Excursion). We doubt so, too, and have

not found much of the “true cross” among all his trees. The theologians

divide prayer into four parts—adoration, thanksgiving, confession, and

petition. Wordsworth stops at the second. No where do we find more solemn,

sustained, habitual, and worthy adoration, than in his writings. The tone,

too, of all his poems, is a calm thanksgiving, like that of a long blue,

cloudless sky, coloring, at evening, into the hues of more fiery praise.

But he does not weep like a penitent, nor supplicate like a child. Such

feelings seem suppressed and folded up as far-off storms, and the traces

of past tempests are succinctly inclosed in the algebra of the silent

evening air. And hence, like Milton’s, his poetry has rather tended to

foster the glow of devotion in the loftier spirits of the race—previously

taught to adore—than like that of Cowper and Montgomery, to send prodigals

back to their forsaken homes; Davids, to cry, “Against thee only have I

sinned;” and Peters, to shriek in agony, “Lord, save us, we perish.”

To pass from the essential poetic element in a writer of genius, to his

artistic skill, is a felt, yet necessary descent—like the painter

compelled, after sketching the man’s countenance, to draw his dress. And

yet, as of some men and women, the very dress, by its simplicity,

elegance, and unity, seems fitted rather to garb the soul than the

body—seems the soul made visible—so is it with the style and manner of

many great poets. Their speech and music without are as inevitable as

their genius, or as the song forever sounding within their souls. And why?

The whole ever tends to beget a whole—the large substance to cast its

deep, yet delicate shadow—the divine to be like itself in the human, on

which its seal is set. So it is with Wordsworth. That profound

simplicity—that clear obscurity—that night-like noon—that noon-like

night—that one atmosphere of overhanging Deity, seen weighing upon ocean

and pool, mountain and mole-hill, forest and flower—that pellucid

depth—that entireness of purpose and fullness of power, connected with

fragmentary, willful, or even weak execution—that humble, yet proud,

precipitation of himself, Antæus-like, upon the bosom of simple scenes and

simple sentiments, to regain primeval vigor—that obscure, yet lofty

isolation, like a tarn, little in size, but elevated in site, with few

visitors, but with many stars—that Tory-Radicalism, Popish-Protestantism,

philosophical Christianity, which have rendered him a glorious riddle, and

made Shelley, in despair of finding it out, exclaim,

“No Deist, and no Christian he,

No Whig, no Tory.

He got so subtle, that to be

_Nothing_ was all his glory,”—

all such apparent contradictions, but real unities, in his poetical and

moral creed and character, are fully expressed in his lowly but aspiring

language, and the simple, elaborate architecture of his verse—every stone

of which is lifted up by the strain of strong logic, and yet laid to

music; and, above all, in the choice of his subjects, which range, with a

free and easy motion, up from a garden spade and a village drum, to the

“celestial visages” which darkened at the tidings of man’s fall, and to

the “organ of eternity,” which sung pæans over his recovery.

We sum up what we have further to say of Wordsworth, under the items of

his works, his life and character, his death; and shall close by

inquiring, Who is worthy to be his successor?

His works, covering a large space, and abounding in every variety of

excellence and style, assume, after all, a fragmentary aspect. They are

true, simple, scattered, and strong, as blocks torn from the crags of

Helvellyn, and lying there “low, but mighty still.” Few even of his

ballads are wholes. They leave too much untold. They are far too

suggestive to satisfy. From each poem, however rounded, there streams off

a long train of thought: like the tail of a comet, which, while testifying

its power, mars its aspect of oneness. The “Excursion,” avowedly a

fragment, seems the splinter of a larger splinter; like a piece of Pallas,

itself a piece of some split planet. Of all his poems, perhaps, his

sonnets, his “Laodamia,” his “Intimations of Immortality,” and his verses

on the “Eclipse in Italy,” are the most complete in execution, as

certainly they are the most classical in design. Dramatic power he has

none, nor does he regret the want. “I hate,” he was wont to say to

Hazlitt, “those interlocutions between Caius and Lucius.” He sees, as

“from a tower, the end of all.” The waving lights and shadows, the varied

loopholes of view, the shiftings and fluctuations of feeling, the growing,

broadening interest of the drama, have no charm for him. His mind, from

its gigantic size, contracts a gigantic stiffness. It “moveth altogether,

if it move at all.” Hence, some of his smaller poems remind you of the

dancing of an elephant, or of the “hills leaping like lambs.” Many of the

little poems which he wrote upon a system, are exceedingly tame and

feeble. Yet often, even in his narrow bleak vales, we find one “meek

streamlet—only one”—beautifying the desolation; and feel how painful it is

for him to become poor, and that, when he sinks, it is with “compulsion

and laborious flight.” But, having subtracted such faults, how much

remains—of truth—of tenderness—of sober, eve-like grandeur—of purged

beauties, white and clean as the lilies of Eden—of calm, deep reflection,

contained in lines and sentences which have become proverbs—of mild

enthusiasm—of minute knowledge of nature—of strong, yet unostentatious

sympathy with man—and of devout and breathless communion with the Great

Author of all! Apart altogether from their intellectual pretensions

Wordsworth’s poems possess a moral clearness, beauty, transparency, and

harmony, which connect them immediately with those of Milton: and beside

the more popular poetry of the past age—such as Byron’s, and Moore’s—they

remind us of that unplanted garden, where the shadow of God united all

trees of fruitfulness, and all flowers of beauty, into one; where the

“large river,” which watered the whole, “ran south,” toward the sun of

heaven—when compared with the gardens of the Hesperides, where a dragon

was the presiding deity, or with those of Vauxhall or White Conduit-house,

where Comus and his rabble rout celebrate their undisguised orgies of

miscalled and miserable pleasure.

[Illustration.]

Wordsworth’s Home at Rydal Mount.

To write a great poem demands years—to write a great undying example,

demands a lifetime. Such a life, too, becomes a poem—higher far than pen

can inscribe, or metre make musical. Such a life it was granted to

Wordsworth to live in severe harmony with his verse—as it lowly, and as it

aspiring, to live, too, amid opposition, obloquy, and abuse—to live, too,

amid the glare of that watchful observation, which has become to public

men far more keen and far more capacious in its powers and opportunities,

than in Milton’s days. It was not, unquestionably, a perfect life, even as

a man’s, far less as a poet’s. He did feel and resent, more than beseemed

a great man, the pursuit and persecution of the hounds, whether “gray” and

swift-footed, or whether curs of low degree, who dogged his steps. His

voice from his woods sounded at times rather like the moan of wounded

weakness, than the bellow of masculine wrath. He should, simply, in reply

to his opponents, have written on at his poems, and let his prefaces

alone. “If they receive your first book ill,” wrote Thomas Carlyle to a

new author, “write the second better—so much better as to shame them.”

When will authors learn that to answer an unjust attack, is, merely to

give it a keener edge, and that all injustice carries the seed of oblivion

and exposure in itself? To use the language of the masculine spirit just

quoted, “it is really a truth, one never knows whether praise be really

good for one—or whether it be not, in very fact, the worst poison that

could be administered. Blame, or even vituperation, I have always found a

safer article. In the long run, a man _has_, and _is_, just what he _is_

and _has_—the world’s notion of him has not altered him at all, except,

indeed, if it have poisoned him with self-conceit, and made a _caput

mortuum_ of him.”

The sensitiveness of authors—were it not such a _sore_ subject—might admit

of some curious reflections. One would sometimes fancy that Apollo, in an

angry hour, had done to his sons, what fable records him to have done to

Marsyas—_flayed_ them alive. Nothing has brought more contempt upon

authors than this—implying, as it does, a lack of common courage and

manhood. The true son of genius ought to rush before the public as the

warrior into battle, resolved to hack and hew his way to eminence and

power, not to whimper like a schoolboy at every scratch—to acknowledge

only home thrusts—large, life-letting-out blows—determined either to

conquer or to die, and, feeling that battles should be lost in the same

spirit in which they are won. If Wordsworth did not fully answer this

ideal, others have sunk far more disgracefully and habitually below it.

In private, Wordsworth, we understand, was pure, mild, simple, and

majestic—perhaps somewhat austere in his judgments of the erring, and,

perhaps, somewhat narrow in his own economics. In accordance, we suppose,

with that part of his poetic system, which magnified mole-heaps to

mountains, _pennies_ assumed the importance of _pounds_. It is ludicrous,

yet characteristic, to think of the great author of the “Recluse,”

squabbling with a porter about the price of a parcel, or bidding down an

old book at a stall. He was one of the few poets who were ever guilty of

the crime of worldly prudence—that ever could have fulfilled the old

parodox, “A poet has built a house.” In his young days, according to

Hazlitt, he said little in society—sat generally lost in thought—threw out

a bold or an indifferent remark occasionally—and relapsed into reverie

again. In latter years, he became more talkative and oracular. His health

and habits were always regular, his temperament happy, and his heart sound

and pure.

We have said that his life, _as a poet_, was far from perfect. Our meaning

is, that he did not sufficiently, owing to temperament, or position, or

habits, sympathize with the on-goings of society, the fullness of modern

life, and the varied passions, unbeliefs, sins, and miseries of modern

human nature. His soul dwelt apart. He came, like the Baptist, “neither

eating nor drinking,” and men said, “he hath a demon.” He saw at morning,

from London bridge, “all its mighty heart” lying still; but he did not at

noon plunge artistically into the thick of its throbbing life; far less

sound the depths of its wild midnight heavings of revel and wretchedness,

of hopes and fears, of stifled fury and eloquent despair. Nor, although he

sung the “mighty stream of tendency” of this wondrous age, did he ever

launch his poetic craft upon it, nor seem to see the _witherward_ of its

swift and awful stress. He has, on the whole, stood aside from his

time—not on a peak of the past—not on an anticipated Alp of the future,

but on his own Cumberland highlands—hearing the tumult and remaining

still, lifting up his life as a far-seen beacon-fire, studying the manners

of the humble dwellers in the vales below—“piping a simple song to

thinking hearts,” and striving to waft to brother spirits, the fine

infection of his own enthusiasm, faith, hope, and devotion. Perhaps, had

he been less strict and consistent in creed and in character, he might

have attained greater breadth, blood-warmth, and wide-spread power, have

presented on his page a fuller reflection of our present state, and drawn

from his poetry a yet stronger moral, and become the Shakspeare, instead

of the Milton, of the age. For himself, he did undoubtedly choose the

“better part;” nor do we mean to insinuate that any man ought to

contaminate himself for the sake of his art, but that the poet of a period

will necessarily come so near to its peculiar sins, sufferings, follies,

and mistakes, as to understand them, and even to feel the force of their

temptations, and though he should never yield to, yet must have a

“fellow-feeling” of its prevailing infirmities.

The death of this eminent man took few by surprise. Many anxious eyes have

for a while been turned toward Rydal mount, where this hermit stream was

nearly sinking into the ocean of the Infinite. And now, to use his own

grand word, used at the death of Scott, a “trouble” hangs upon Helvellyn’s

brow, and over the waters of Windermere. The last of the Lakers has

departed. That glorious country has become a tomb for its more glorious

children. No more is Southey’s tall form seen at his library window,

confronting Skiddaw—with a port as stately as its own. No more does

Coleridge’s dim eye look down into the dim tarn, heavy laden, too, under

the advancing thunder-storm. And no more is Wordsworth’s pale and lofty

front shaded into divine twilight, as he plunges at noon-day amidst the

quiet woods. A stiller, sterner power than poetry has folded into its

strict, yet tender and yearning embrace, those

“Serene creators of immortal things.”

Alas! for the pride and the glory even of the purest products of this

strange world! Sin and science, pleasure and poetry, the lowest vices, and

the highest aspirations, are equally unable to rescue their votaries from

the swift ruin which is in chase of us all.

“Golden lads and girls all must

Like chimney-sweepers come to dust.”

But Wordsworth has left for himself an epitaph almost superfluously

rich—in the memory of his private virtues—of the impulse he gave to our

declining poetry—of the sympathies he discovered in all his strains with

the poor, the neglected, and the despised—of the version he furnished of

Nature, true and beautiful as if it were Nature _describing herself_—of

his lofty and enacted ideal of his art and the artist—of the “thoughts,

too deep for tears,” he has given to meditative and lonely hearts—and,

above all, of the support he has lent to the cause of the “primal duties”

and eldest instincts of man—to his hope of immortality, and his fear of

God. And now we bid him farewell, in his own words—

“Blessings be with him, and eternal praise,

The _poet_, who on earth has made us heirs

Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays.”

Although, as already remarked, not the poet of the age—it has, in our

view, been, on the whole, fortunate for poetry and society, that for seven

years William Wordsworth has been poet-laureate. We live in a transition

state in respect to both. The march and the music are both changing—nor

are they yet fully attuned to each other—and, meanwhile, it was desirable

that a poet should preside, whose strains formed a fine “musical

confusion,” like that of old in the “wood of Crete”—of the old and the

new—of the Conservative and the Democratic—of the golden age, supposed by

many to have existed in the past, and of the millennium, expected by more

in the future—a compromise of the two poetical styles besides—the one,

which clung to the hoary tradition of the elders, and the other, which

accepted innovation because it was new, and boldness because it was

daring, and mysticism because it was dark—not truth, _though_ new; beauty,

_though_ bold; and insight, _though_ shadowy and shy. Nay, we heartily

wish, had it been for nothing else than this, that his reign had lasted

for many years longer, till, perchance, the discordant elements in our

creeds and literature, had been somewhat harmonized. As it is, there must

now be great difficulty in choosing his successor to the laureateship; nor

is there, we think, a single name in our poetry whose elevation to the

office would give universal, or even general, satisfaction.

Milman is a fine poet, but not a great one. Croly is, or ought to have

been, a great poet; but is not sufficiently known, nor _en rapport_ with

the spirit of the time. Bowles is dead—Moore dying. Lockhart and Macaulay

have written clever ballads; but no shapely, continuous, and masterly

poem. John Wilson, _alias_ Christopher North, has more poetry in his eye,

brow, head, hair, figure, voice, talk, and the prose of his “Noetes,” than

any man living; but his verse, on the whole, is mawkish—and his being a

Scotchman will be a stumbling-block to many, though not to us; for, had

Campbell been alive, we should have said at once, let him be laureate—if

manly grace, classic power, and genuine popularity, form qualifications

for the office. Tennyson, considering all he has done, has received his

full meed already. Let him and Leigh Hunt repose under the shadow of their

pensions. Our gifted friends, Bailey, of “Festus,” and Yendys, of the

“Roman,” are yet in blossom—though it is a glorious blossom. Henry Taylor

is rather in the sere and yellow leaf—nor was his leaf ever, in our

judgment, very fresh or ample: a masterly builder he is, certainly, but

the materials he brings are not highly poetical. When Dickens is promoted

to Scott’s wizard throne, let Browning succeed Wordsworth on the forked

Helvellyn! Landor is a vast monumental name; but, while he has overawed

the higher intellects of the time, he has never touched the general heart,

nor _told_ the world much, except his great opinion of himself, the low

opinion he has of almost every body else, and the very learned reasons and

sufficient grounds he has for supporting those twin opinions. Never was

such power so wasted and thrown away. The proposition of a lady laureate

is simply absurd, without being witty. Why not as soon have proposed the

Infant Sappho? In short, if we ask again, _Where_ is the poet worthy to

wear the crown which has dropped from the solemn brow of “old Pan,” “sole

king of rocky Cumberland?”—Echo, from Glaramara, or the Langdale Pikes,

might well answer, “Where?”

We have, however, a notion of our own, which we mean, as a close to the

article, to indicate. The laureateship was too long a sop for parasites,

whose politics and poetry were equally tame. It seems now to have become

the late reward of veteran merit—the Popedom of poetry. Why not, rather,

hang it up as a crown, to be won by our rising bards—either as the reward

of some special poem on an appointed subject, or of general merit? Why not

delay for a season the bestowal of the laurel, and give thus a national

importance to its decision?

SIDNEY SMITH. BY GEORGE GILFILLAN.

[Illustration.]

Sidney Smith.

It is melancholy to observe how speedily, successively, nay, almost

simultaneously, our literary luminaries are disappearing from the sky.

Every year another and another member of the bright clusters which arose

about the close of the last, or at the beginning of this century, is

fading from our view. Within nineteen years, what havoc, by the “insatiate

archer,” among the ruling spirits of the time! Since 1831, Robert Hall,

Andrew Thomson, Goethe, Cuvier, Mackintosh, Crabbe, Foster, Coleridge,

Edward Irving, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, Southey, Thomas Campbell,

&c., have entered on the “silent land;” and latterly has dropped down one

of the wittiest and shrewdest of them all—the projector of the “Edinburgh

Review”—the author of “Peter Plymley’s Letters”—the preacher—the

politician—the brilliant converser—the “mad-wag”—Sidney Smith.

It was the praise of Dryden that he was the best reasoner in verse who

ever wrote; let it be the encomium of our departed Sidney that, he was one

of the best reasoners in wit of whom our country can boast. His

intellect—strong, sharp, clear, and decided—wrought and moved in a rich

medium of humor. Each thought, as it came forth from his brain, issued as

“in dance,” and amid a flood of inextinguishable laughter. The march of

his mind through his subject resembled the procession of Bacchus from the

conquest of India—joyous, splendid, straggling—to the sound of flutes and

hautboys—rather a victory than a march—rather a revel than a contest. His

logic seemed always hurrying into the arms of his wit. Some men argue in

mathematical formulæ; others, like Burke, in the figures and flights of

poetry; others in the fire and fury of passion; Sidney Smith in exuberant

and riotous fun. And yet the matter of his reasoning was solid, and its

inner spirit earnest and true. But though his steel was strong and sharp,

his hand steady, and his aim clear, the management of the motions of his

weapon was always fantastic. He piled, indeed, like a Titan, his Pelion on

Ossa, but at the oddest of angles; he lifted and carried his load bravely,

and like a man, but laughed as he did so; and so carried it that beholders

forgot the strength of the arm in the strangeness of the attitude. He thus

sometimes disarmed anger; for his adversaries could scarcely believe that

they had received a deadly wound while their foe was roaring in their

face. He thus did far greater execution; for the flourishes of his weapon

might distract his opponents, but never himself, from the direct and

terrible line of the blow. His laughter sometimes stunned, like the

cachination of the Cyclops, shaking the sides of his cave. In this

mood—and it was his common one—what scorn was he wont to pour upon the

opponents of Catholic emancipation—upon the enemies of all change in

legislation—upon any individual or party who sought to obstruct measures

which, in his judgment, were likely to benefit the country. Under such, he

could at any moment spring a mine of laughter; and what neither the fierce

invective of Brougham, nor the light and subtle raillery of Jeffrey could

do, his contemptuous explosion effected, and, himself crying with mirth,

saw them hoisted toward heaven in ten thousand comical splinters.

Comparing him with other humorists of a similar class, we might say, that

while Swift’s ridicule resembles something between a sneer and a spasm

(half a sneer of mirth, half a spasm of misery)—while Cobbett’s is a

grin—Fonblanque’s a light but deep and most significant smile—Jeffrey’s a

sneer, just perceptible on his fastidious lip—Wilson’s a strong, healthy,

hearty laugh—Carlyle’s a wild unearthly sound, like the neighing of a

homeless steed—Sidney Smith’s is a genuine guffaw, given forth with his

whole heart, and soul, and mind, and strength. Apart from his matchless

humor, strong, rough, instinctive, and knotty sense was the leading

feature of his mind. Every thing like mystification, sophistry, and

humbug, fled before the first glance of his piercing eye; every thing in

the shape of affectation excited in him a disgust “as implacable” as even

a Cowper could feel. If possible, with still deeper aversion did his manly

nature regard cant in its various forms and disguises; and his motto in

reference to it was, “spare no arrows.” But the mean, the low, the paltry,

the dishonorable, in nations or in individuals, moved all the fountains of

his bile, and awakened all the energy of his invective. Always lively,

generally witty, he is never eloquent, except when emptying out his vials

of indignation upon baseness in all its shapes. His is the ire of a

genuine “English gentleman, all of the olden time.” It was in this spirit

that he recently explained, in his own way, the old distinctions of Meum

and Tuum to Brother Jonathan, when the latter was lamentably inclined to

forget them. It was the same sting of generous indignation which, in the

midst of his character of Mackintosh, prompted the memorable picture of

that extraordinary being who, by his transcendent talents and his tortuous

movements—his head of gold, and his feet of miry clay—has become the

glory, the riddle, and the regret of his country, his age, and his

species.

As a writer, Smith is little more than a very clever, witty, and ingenious

pamphleteer. He has effected no permanent _chef d’oeuvre_; he has founded

no school; he has left little behind him that the “world will not

willingly let die;” he has never drawn a tear from a human eye, nor

excited a thrill of grandeur in a human bosom. His reviews are not

preserved by the salt of original genius, nor are they pregnant with

profound and comprehensive principle; they have no resemblance to the

sibylline leaves which Burke tore out from the vast volume of his mind,

and scattered with imperial indifference among the nations; they are not

the illuminated indices of universal history, like the papers of Macaulay;

they are not specimens of pure and perfect English, set with modest but

magnificent ornaments, like the criticism of Jeffrey or of Hall; nor are

they the excerpts, rugged and rent away by violence, from the dark and

iron tablet of an obscure and original mind, like the reviews of Foster;

but they are exquisite _jeux d’esprit_, admirable occasional pamphlets,

which, though now they look to us like spent arrows, yet assuredly have

done execution, and have not been spent in vain. And as, after the lapse

of a century and more, we can still read with pleasure Addison’s “Old Whig

and Freeholder,” for the sake of the exquisite humor and inimitable style

in which forgotten feuds and dead logomachies are embalmed, so may it be,

a century still, with the articles on Bentham’s Fallacies and on the Game

Laws, and with the letters of the witty and ingenious Peter Plymley. There

is much at least in those singular productions—in their clear and manly

sense—in their broad native fun—in their rapid, careless, energetic

style—and in their bold, honest, liberal, and thoroughly English spirit—to

interest several succeeding generations, if not to secure the “rare and

regal” palm of immortality.

Sidney Smith was a writer of sermons as well as of political squibs. Is

not their memory eternized in one of John Foster’s most ponderous pieces

of sarcasm? In an evil hour the dexterous and witty critic came forth from

behind the fastnesses of the Edinburgh Review, whence, in perfect security

he had shot his quick glancing shafts at Methodists and Missions, at

Christian Observers and Eclectic Reviews, at Owens and Styles, and (what

the more wary Jeffrey, in the day of his power, always avoided) became

himself an author, and, _mirabile dictu_, an author of sermons. It was as

if he wished to give his opponents their revenge, and no sooner did his

head peep forth from beneath the protection of its shell than the

elephantine foot of Foster was prepared to crush it in the dust. It was

the precise position of Saladin with the Knight of the Leopard, in their

memorable contest near the Diamond of the Desert. In the skirmish Smith

had it all his own way; but when it came to close quarters, and when the

heavy and mailed hand of the sturdy Baptist had confirmed its grasp on his

opponent, the disparity was prodigious, and the discomfiture of the light

horseman complete. But why recall the memory of an obsolete quarrel and a

forgotten field? The sermons—the _causa belli_—clever but dry, destitute

of earnestness and unction—are long since dead and buried; and their

review remains their only monument.

Even when, within his own stronghold, our author intermeddled with

theological topics, it was seldom with felicity or credit to himself. His

onset on missions was a sad mistake; and in attacking the Methodists, and

poor, pompous John Styles, he becomes as filthy and foul-mouthed as Swift

himself. His wit forsakes him, and a rabid invective ill supplies its

place; instead of laughing, he raves and foams at the mouth. Indeed,

although an eloquent and popular preacher, and in many respects an

ornament to his cloth, there was one radical evil about Smith; _he had

mistaken his profession_. He was intended for a barrister, or a literary

man, or a member of parliament, or some occupation into which he could

have flung his whole soul and strength. As it was, but half his heart was

in a profession which, of all others, would require the whole. He became

consequently a rather awkward medley of buffoon, politician, preacher,

literateur, divine, and diner-out. Let us grant, however, that the ordeal

was severe, and that, if a very few have weathered it better, many more

have ignominiously broken down. No one coincides more fully than we do

with Coleridge in thinking that every literary man should have a

profession; but in the name of common sense let it be one fitted for him,

and for which he is fitted—one suited to his tastes as well as to his

talents—to his habits as well as to his powers—to his heart as well as to

his head.

As a conversationist, Sidney Smith stood high among the highest—a Saul

among a tribe of Titans. His jokes were not rare and refined, like those

of Rogers and Jekyll; they wanted the slyness of Theodore Hook’s

inimitable equivoque; they were not poured forth with the prodigal

profusion of Hood’s breathless and bickering puns; they were rich, fat,

unctuous, always bordering on farce, but always avoiding it by a

hair’s-breadth. No finer cream, certes, ever mantled at the feasts of

Holland House than his fertile brain supplied; and, to quote himself, it

would require a “forty-parson power” of lungs and language to do justice

to his convivial merits. An acquaintance of ours sometimes met him in the

company of Jeffrey and Macaulay—a fine concord of first-rate performers,

content, generally, to keep each within his own part, except when, now and

then, the author of the “Lays” burst out irresistibly, and changed the

concert into a fine solo.

Altogether “we could have better spared a better man.” Did not his death

“eclipse the gayety of nations?” Did not a Fourth Estate of Fun expire

from the midst of us? Did not even Brother Jonathan drop a tear when he

thought that the scourge that so mercilessly lashed him was broken? And

shall not now all his admirers unite with us in inscribing upon his

grave—“Alas! poor Yorick!”

THOMAS CARLYLE. BY GEORGE GILFILLAN.

[Illustration.]

Thomas Carlyle.

Thomas Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan, Annandale. His parents were “good

farmer people,” his father an elder in the Secession church there, and a

man of strong native sense, whose words were said to “nail a subject to

the wall.” His excellent mother still lives, and we had the pleasure of

meeting her lately in the company of her illustrious son; and beautiful it

was to see his profound and tender regard, and her motherly and yearning

reverence—to hear her fine old covenanting accents, concerting with his

transcendental tones. He studied in Edinburgh. Previous to this, he had

become intimate with Edward Irving, an intimacy which continued unimpaired

to the close of the latter’s eccentric career. Like most Scottish

students, he had many struggles to encounter in the course of his

education; and had, we believe, to support himself by private tuition,

translations for the booksellers, &c. The day star of German literature

arose early in his soul, and has been his guide and genius ever since. He

entered into a correspondence with Goethe, which lasted, at intervals,

till the latter’s death. Yet he has never, we understand, visited Germany.

He was, originally, destined for the church. At one period he taught an

academy in Dysart, at the same time that Irving was teaching in Kirkaldy.

After his marriage, he resided partly at Comely Bank, Edinburgh; and, for

a year or two in Craigenputtock, a wild and solitary farm-house in the

upper part of Dumfriesshire. Here, however, far from society, save that,

of the “great dumb monsters of mountains,” he wearied out his very heart.

A ludicrous story is told of Lord Jeffrey visiting him in this

out-of-the-way region, when they were unapprized of his coming—had nothing

in the house fit for the palate of the critic, and had, in dire haste and

pother, to send off for the wherewithal to a market town about fifteen

miles off. Here, too, as we may see hereafter, Emerson, on his way home

from Italy, dropped in like a spirit, spent precisely twenty-four hours,

and then “forth uprose that lone, wayfaring man,” to return to his native

woods. He has, for several years of late, resided in Chelsea, London,

where he lives in a plain, simple fashion; occasionally, but seldom,

appearing at the splendid soirées of Lady Blessington, but listened to,

when he goes, as an oracle; receiving, at his tea-table, visitors from

every part of the world; forming an amicable centre for men of the most

opposite opinions and professions, Poets and Preachers, Pantheists and

Puritans, Tennysons and Scotts, Cavanaighs and Erskines, Sterlings and

Robertsons, smoking his perpetual pipe, and pouring out, in copious

stream, his rich and quaint philosophy. His appearance is fine, without

being ostentatiously singular—his hair dark—his brow marked, though

neither very broad nor very lofty—his cheek tinged with a healthy red—his

eye, the truest index of his genius, flashing out, at times, a wild and

mystic fire from its dark and quiet surface. He is above the middle size,

stoops slightly, dresses carefully, but without any approach to foppery.

His address, somewhat high and distant at first, softens into simplicity

and cordial kindness. His conversation is abundant, inartificial, flowing

on, and warbling as it flows, more practical than you would expect from

the cast of his writings—picturesque and graphic in a high measure—full of

the results of extensive and minute observation—often terribly direct and

strong, garnished with French and German phrase, rendered racy by the

accompaniment of the purest Annandale accent, and coming to its climaxes,

ever and anon, in long, deep, chest-shaking bursts of laughter.

Altogether, in an age of singularities, Thomas Carlyle stands peculiarly

alone. Generally known, and warmly appreciated, he has of late

become—popular, in the strict sense, he is not, and may never be. His

works may never climb the family library, nor his name become a household

word; but while the Thomsons and the Campbells shed their gentle genius,

like light, into the hall and the hovel—the shop of the artisan and the

sheiling of the shepherd, Carlyle, like the Landors and Lambs of this age,

and the Brownes and Burtons of a past, will exert a more limited but

profounder power—cast a dimmer but more gorgeous radiance—attract fewer

but more devoted admirers, and obtain an equal, and perhaps more enviable

immortality.

To the foregoing sketch of CARLYLE, which is from the eloquent critical

description of Gilfillan, we append the following, which is from a letter

recently published in the Dumfries and Galloway Courier. The writer, after

remarking at some length upon the “Latter Day Pamphlets,” which are

Carlyle’s latest productions, proceeds to give this graphic and

interesting sketch of his personal appearance and conversation:

“Passing from the political phase of these productions (the ‘Latter Day

Pamphlets’), which is not my vocation to discuss, I found for myself one

very peculiar charm in the perusal of them—they seemed such perfect

transcripts of the conversation of Thomas Carlyle. With something more of

set continuity—of composition—but essentially the same thing, the Latter

Day Pamphlets’ are in their own way a ‘Boswell’s Life’ of Carlyle. As I

read and read, I was gradually transported from my club-room, with its

newspaper-clad tables, and my dozing fellow-loungers, only kept half awake

by periodical titillations of snuff, and carried in spirit to the grave

and quiet sanctum in Chelsea, where Carlyle dispenses wisdom and

hospitality with equally unstinted hand. The long, tall, spare figure is

before me—wiry, though, and elastic, and quite capable of taking a long,

tough spell through the moors of Ecclefechan, or elsewhere—stretched at

careless, homely ease in his elbow-chair, yet ever with strong natural

motions and starts, as the inward spirit stirs. The face, too, is before

me—long and thin, with a certain tinge of paleness, but no sickness or

attenuation, form muscular and vigorously marked, and not wanting some

glow of former rustic color—pensive, almost solemn, yet open, and cordial,

and tender, very tender. The eye, as generally happens, is the chief

outward index of the soul—an eye is not easy to describe, but _felt_ ever

after one has looked thereon and therein. It is dark and full, shadowed

over by a compact, prominent forehead. But the depth, the expression, the

far inner play of it—who could transfer that even to the eloquent canvas,

far less to this very _in_-eloquent paper? It is not brightness, it is not

flash, it is not power even—something beyond all these. The expression is,

so to speak, heavy laden—as if be-tokening untold burdens of thought, and

long, long fiery struggles, resolutely endured—endured until they had been

in some practical manner overcome; to adopt his own fond epithet, and it

comes nearest to the thing, his is the heroic eye, but of a hero who has

done hard battle against Paynim hosts. This is no dream of mine—I have

often heard this peculiarity remarked. The whole form and expression of

the face remind me of Dante—it wants the classic element, and the mature

and matchless harmony which distinguish the countenance of the great

Florentine; but something in the cast and in the look, especially the

heavy laden, but dauntless eye, is very much alike. But he speaks to me.

The tongue has the _sough_ of Annandale—an echo of the Solway, with its

compliments to old Father Thames. A keen, sharp, ringing voice, in the

genuine Border key, but tranquil and sedate withal—neighborly and frank,

and always in unison with what is uttered. Thus does the presence of

Thomas Carlyle rise before me—a ‘true man’ in all his bearings and in all

his sayings. And in this same guise do I seem to hear from him all those

‘Latter Day Pamphlets.’ Even such in his conversation—he sees the very

thing he speaks of; it breathes and moves palpable to him, and hence his

words form a picture. When you come from him, the impression is like

having seen a great brilliant panorama; every thing had been made visible

and naked to your sight. But more and better far than that; you bear home

with you an indelible feeling of love for the man—deep at the heart, long

as life. No man has ever inspired more of this personal affection. Not to

love Carlyle when you know him is something unnatural, as if one should

say they did not love the breeze that fans their cheek, or the vine-tree

which has refreshed them both with its leafy shade and its exuberant

juices. He abounds, himself, in love and in good works. His life, not only

as a ‘writer of books,’ but as a man among his fellows, has been a

continued shower of benefits. The young men, more especially, to whom he

has been the good Samaritan, pouring oil upon their wounds, and binding up

their bruised limbs, and putting them on the way of recovery of health and

useful energy—the number of such can scarcely be told, and will never be

known till the great day of accounts. One of these, who in his orisons

will ever remember him, has just read to me, with tears of grateful

attachment in his eyes, portions of a letter of counsel and encouragement

which he received from him in the hour of darkness, and which was but the

prelude to a thousand acts of substantial kindness and of graceful

attention. As the letter contains no secret, and may fall as a fructifying

seed into some youthful bosom that may be entering upon its trials and

struggles, a quotation from it will form an appropriate _finale_ at this

time. He thus writes: ‘It will be good news, in all times coming, to learn

that such a life as yours unfolds itself according to its promise, and

_becomes_ in some tolerable degree what it is capable of being. The

problem is your own, to make or to mar—a great problem for you, as the

like is for every man born into this world. You have my entire sympathy in

your denunciation of the “explosive” character. It is frequent in these

times, and deplorable wherever met with. Explosions are ever wasteful,

woeful; central fire should not explode itself, but lie silent, far down

at the centre; and make all good fruits _grow_! We can not too often

repeat to ourselves, “Strength is seen, not in spasms, but in stout

bearing of burdens.” You can take comfort in the meanwhile, if you need

it, by the experience of all wise men, that a right heavy burden is

precisely the thing wanted for a young strong man. Grievous to be borne;

but bear it well, you will find it one day to have been verily blessed. “I

would not, for any money,” says the brave Jean Paul, in his quaint way. “I

would not, for any money, have had money in my youth!” He speaks a truth

there, singular as it may seem to many. These young obscure years ought to

be incessantly employed in gaining knowledge of things worth knowing,

especially of heroic human souls worth knowing. And you may believe me,

the obscurer such years are, it is apt to be the better. Books are

needful; but yet not many books; a few well read. An open, true, patient,

and valiant soul is needed; that is the one thing needful.’ ”

THE GENTLEMAN BEGGAR. AN ATTORNEY’S STORY. (FROM DICKENS’S HOUSEHOLD

WORDS.)

One morning, about five years ago, I called by appointment on Mr. John

Balance, the fashionable pawnbroker, to accompany him to Liverpool, in

pursuit for a Levanting customer—for Balance, in addition to pawning, does

a little business in the sixty per cent. line. It rained in torrents when

the cab stopped at the passage which leads past the pawning boxes to his

private door. The cabman rang twice, and at length Balance appeared,

looming through the mist and rain in the entry, illuminated by his

perpetual cigar. As I eyed him rather impatiently, remembering that trains

wait for no man, something like a hairy dog, or a bundle of rags, rose up

at his feet, and barred his passage for a moment. Then Balance cried out

with an exclamation, in answer apparently to a something I could not hear,

“What, man alive!—slept in the passage!—there, take that, and get some

breakfast, for Heaven’s sake!” So saying, he jumped into the “Hansom,” and

we bowled away at ten miles an hour, just catching the Express as the

doors of the station were closing. My curiosity was full set—for although

Balance can be free with his money, it is not exactly to beggars that his

generosity is usually displayed; so when comfortably ensconced in a

_coupé_, I finished with—

“You are liberal with your money this morning: pray, how often do you give

silver to street cadgers?—because I shall know now what walk to take when

flats and sharps leave off buying law.”

Balance, who would have made an excellent parson if he had not been bred

to a case-hardening trade, and has still a soft bit left in his heart that

is always fighting with his hard head, did not smile at all, but looked as

grim as if squeezing a lemon into his Saturday night’s punch. He answered

slowly, “A cadger—yes; a beggar—a miserable wretch, he is now; but let me

tell you, Master David, that that miserable bundle of rags was born and

bred a gentleman; the son of a nobleman, the husband of an heiress, and

has sat and dined at tables where you and I, Master David, are only

allowed to view the plate by favor of the butler. I have lent him

thousands, and been well paid. The last thing I had from him was his court

suit; and I hold now his bill for one hundred pounds that will be paid, I

expect, when he dies.”

“Why, what nonsense you are talking! you must be dreaming this morning.

However, we are alone, I’ll light a weed, in defiance of Railway law, you

shall spin that yarn; for, true or untrue, it will fill up the time to

Liverpool.”

“As for yarn,” replied Balance, “the whole story is short enough; and as

for truth, that you may easily find out if you like to take the trouble. I

thought the poor wretch was dead, and I own it put me out meeting him this

morning, for I had a curious dream last night.”

“Oh, hang your dreams! Tell us about this gentleman beggar that bleeds you

of half-crowns—that melts the heart even of a pawnbroker!”

“Well, then, that beggar is the illegitimate son of the late Marquis of

Hoopborough by a Spanish lady of rank. He received a first-rate education,

and was brought up in his father’s house. At a very early age he obtained

an appointment in a public office, was presented by the marquis at court,

and received into the first society, where his handsome person and

agreeable manners made him a great favorite. Soon after coming of age, he

married the daughter of Sir E. Bumper, who brought him a very handsome

fortune, which was strictly settled on herself. They lived in splendid

style, kept several carriages, a house in town, and a place in the

country. For some reason or other, idleness, or to please his lady’s

pride, he resigned his appointment. His father died and left him nothing;

indeed, he seemed at that time very handsomely provided for.

“Very soon Mr. and Mrs. Molinos Fitz-Roy began to disagree. She was cold,

correct—he was hot and random. He was quite dependent on her, and she made

him feel it. When he began to get into debt, he came to me. At length some

shocking quarrel occurred; some case of jealousy on the wife’s side, not

without reason, I believe; and the end of it was, Mr. Fitz-Roy was turned

out of doors. The house was his wife’s, the furniture was his wife’s, and

the fortune was his wife’s—he was, in fact, her pensioner. He left with a

few hundred pounds ready money, and some personal jewelry, and went to an

hotel. On these and credit he lived. Being illegitimate, he had no

relations; being a fool, when he spent his money he lost his friends. The

world took his wife’s part, when they found she had the fortune, and the

only parties who interfered were her relatives, who did their best to make

the quarrel incurable. To crown all, one night he was run over by a cab,

was carried to a hospital, and lay there for months, and was during

several weeks of the time unconscious. A message to the wife, by the hands

of one of his debauched companions, sent by a humane surgeon, obtained an

intimation that ‘if he died, Mr. Croak, the undertaker to the family, had

orders to see to the funeral,’ and that Mrs. Molinos was on the point of

starting for the Continent, not to return for some years. When Fitz-Roy

was discharged, he came to me limping on two sticks, to pawn his court

suit, and told me his story. I was really sorry for the fellow, such a

handsome, thoroughbred-looking man. He was going then into the west

somewhere, to try to hunt out a friend. ‘What to do, Balance,’ he said, ‘I

don’t know. I can’t dig, and unless somebody will make me their

gamekeeper, I must starve, or beg, as my Jezebel bade me when we parted!’

“I lost sight of Molinos for a long time, and when I next came upon him it

was in the Rookery of Westminster, in a low lodging-house, where I was

searching with an officer for stolen goods. He was pointed out to me as

the ‘gentleman cadger,’ because he was so free with his money when ‘in

luck.’ He recognized me, but turned away then. I have since seen him, and

relieved him more than once, although he never asks for any thing. How he

lives, Heaven knows. Without money, without friends, without useful

education of any kind, he tramps the country, as you saw him, perhaps

doing a little hop-picking or hay-making, in season, only happy when he

obtains the means to get drunk. I have heard through the kitchen whispers,

that you know come to me, that he is entitled to some property; and I

expect if he were to die his wife would pay the hundred pound bill I hold;

at any rate, what I have told you I know to be true, and the bundle of

rags I relieved just now is known in every thieves’ lodging in England as

the ‘gentleman cadger.’ ”

This story produced an impression on me—I am fond of speculation, and like

the excitement of a legal hunt as much as some do a fox-chase: A gentleman

a beggar, a wife rolling in wealth, rumors of unknown property due to the

husband: it seemed as if there were pickings for me amidst this carrion of

pauperism.

Before returning from Liverpool, I had purchased the gentleman beggar’s

acceptance from Balance. I then inserted in the “Times” the following

advertisement: “_Horatio Molinos Fitz-Roy_.—If this gentleman will apply

to David Discount, Esq., Solicitor, St. James’s, he will hear of something

to his advantage. Any person furnishing Mr. F.’s correct address, shall

receive 1£. 1_s._ reward. He was last seen,” &c. Within twenty-four hours

I had ample proof of the wide circulation of the “Times.” My office was

besieged with beggars of every degree, men and women, lame and blind,

Irish, Scotch, and English, some on crutches, some in bowls, some in

go-carts. They all knew him as the “gentleman,” and I must do the regular

fraternity of tramps the justice to say, that not one would answer a

question until he made certain that I meant the “gentleman” no harm.

One evening, about three weeks after the appearance of the advertisement,

my clerk announced “another beggar.” There came in an old man leaning upon

a staff, clad in a soldier’s great coat all patched and torn, with a

battered hat, from under which a mass of tangled hair fell over his

shoulders and half concealed his face. The beggar, in a weak, wheezy,

hesitating tone, said, “You have advertised for Molinos Fitz-Roy. I hope

you don’t mean him any harm; he is sunk, I think, too low for enmity now;

and surely no one would sport with such misery as his.” These last words

were uttered in a sort of piteous whisper.

I answered quickly, “Heaven forbid I should sport with misery: I mean and

hope to do him good, as well as myself.”

“Then, sir, I am Molinos Fitz-Roy!”

While we were conversing candles had been brought in. I have not very

tender nerves—my head would not agree with them—but I own I started and

shuddered when I saw and knew that the wretched creature before me was

under thirty years of age and once a gentleman. Sharp, aquiline features,

reduced to literal skin and bone, were begrimed and covered with dry fair

hair; the white teeth of the half-open mouth shattered with eagerness, and

made more hideous the foul pallor of the rest of the countenance. As he

stood leaning on a staff half bent, his long, yellow bony fingers clasped

over the crutch-head of his stick, he was indeed a picture of misery,

famine, squalor, and premature age, too horrible to dwell upon. I made him

sit down, and sent for some refreshment which he devoured like a ghoul,

and set to work to unravel his story. It was difficult to keep him to the

point; but with pains I learned what convinced me that he was entitled to

some property, whether great or small there was no evidence. On parting, I

said, “Now, Mr. F., you must stay in town while I make proper inquiries.

What allowance will be enough to keep you comfortably?”

He answered humbly, after much pressing, “Would you think ten shillings

too much?”

I don’t like, if I do those things at all, to do them shabbily, so I said,

“Come every Saturday and you shall have a pound.” He was profuse in

thanks, of course, as all such men are as long as distress lasts.

I had previously learned that my ragged client’s wife was in England,

living in a splendid house in Hyde Park Gardens, under her maiden name. On

the following day the Earl of Owing called upon me, wanting five thousand

pounds by five o’clock the same evening. It was a case of life or death

with him, so I made my terms, and took advantage of his pressure to

execute a _coup de main_. I proposed that he should drive me home to

receive the money, calling at Mrs. Molinos in Hyde Park Gardens, on our

way. I knew that the coronet and liveries of his father, the marquis,

would insure me an audience with Mrs. Molinos Fitz-Roy.

My scheme answered. I was introduced into the lady’s presence. She was,

and probably is, a very stately, handsome woman, with a pale complexion,

high solid forehead, regular features, thin, pinched, self-satisfied

mouth. My interview was very short, I plunged into the middle of the

affair, but had scarcely mentioned the word husband, when she interrupted

me with, “I presume you have lent this profligate person money, and want

me to pay you.” She paused, and then said, “He shall not have a farthing.”

As she spoke, her white face became scarlet.

“But, madam, the man is starving. I have strong reasons for believing he

is entitled to property, and if you refuse any assistance, I must take

other measures.” She rang the bell, wrote something rapidly on a card;

and, as the footman appeared, pushed it toward me across the table, with

the air of touching a toad, saying, “There, sir, is the address of my

solicitors; apply to them if you think you have any claim. Robert, show

the person out, and take care he is not admitted again.”

So far I had effected nothing; and, to tell the truth, felt rather

crest-fallen under the influence of that grand manner peculiar to certain

great ladies and to all great actresses.

My next visit was to the attorneys, Messrs. Leasem and Fashun, of

Lincoln’s Inn Square, and there I was at home. I had had dealings with the

firm before. They are agents for half the aristocracy, who always run in

crowds like sheep after the same wine-merchants, the same architects, the

same horse-dealers, and the same law-agents. It may be doubted whether the

quality of law and land management they get on this principle is quite

equal to their wine and horses. At any rate, my friends of Lincoln’s Inn,

like others of the same class, are distinguished by their courteous

manners, deliberate proceedings, innocence of legal technicalities, long

credit, and heavy charges. Leasem, the elder partner, wears powder and a

huge bunch of seals, lives in Queen-square, drives a brougham, gives the

dinners and does the cordial department. He is so strict in performing the

latter duty, that he once addressed a poacher who had shot a duke’s

keeper, as “my dear creature,” although he afterward hung him.

Fashun has chambers in St. James-street, drives a cab, wears a tip, and

does the grand haha style.

My business lay with Leasem. The interviews and letters passing were

numerous. However, it came at last to the following dialogue:

“Well, my dear Mr. Discount,” began Mr. Leasem, who hates me like poison.

“I’m really very sorry for that poor dear Molinos—knew his father well; a

great man, a perfect gentleman; but you know what women are, eh, Mr.

Discount? My client won’t advance a shilling; she knows it would only be

wasted in low dissipation. Now, don’t you think (this was said very

insinuatingly)—don’t you think he had better be sent to the workhouse;

very comfortable accommodations there, I can assure you—meat twice a week,

and excellent soup; and then, Mr. D., we might consider about allowing you

something for that bill.”

“Mr. Leasem, can you reconcile it to your conscience to make such an

arrangement? Here’s a wife rolling in luxury, and a husband starving!”

“No, Mr. Discount, not starving; there is the workhouse, as I observed

before; besides, allow me to suggest that these appeals to feeling are

quite unprofessional—quite unprofessional.”

“But, Mr. Leasem, touching this property which the poor man is entitled

to.”

“Why, there again, Mr. D., you must excuse me; you really must. I don’t

say he is; I don’t say he is not. If you know he is entitled to property,

I am sure you know how to proceed; the law is open to you, Mr.

Discount—the law is open; and a man of your talent will know how to use

it.”

“Then, Mr. Leasem, you mean that I must, in order to right this starving

man, file a bill of discovery, to extract from you the particulars of his

rights. You have the marriage settlement, and all the information, and you

decline to allow a pension, or afford any information; the man is to

starve, or go to the workhouse.”

“Why, Mr. D., you are so quick and violent, it really is not professional;

but you see (here a subdued smile of triumph), it has been decided that a

solicitor is not bound to afford such information as you ask, to the

injury of his client.”

“Then you mean that this poor Molinos may rot and starve, while you keep

secret from him, at his wife’s request, his title to an income, and that

the Court of Chancery will back you in this iniquity?”

I kept repeating the word “starve,” because I saw it made my respectable

opponent wince.

“Well, then, just listen to me. I know that in the happy state of your

equity law, chancery can’t help my client; but I have another plan: I

shall go hence to my office, issue a writ, and take your client’s husband

in execution—as soon as he is lodged in jail, I shall file his schedule in

the Insolvent Court, and when he comes up for his discharge, I shall put

you in the witness-box, and examine you on oath, ‘touching any property of

which you know the insolvent to be possessed,’ and where will be your

privileged communications then?”

The respectable Leasem’s face lengthened in a twinkling, his comfortable

confident air vanished, he ceased twiddling his gold chain, and, at

length, he muttered,

“Suppose we pay the debt?”

“Why, then, I’ll arrest him the day after for another.”

“But, my dear Mr. Discount, surely such conduct would not be quite

respectable.”

“That’s my business; my client has been wronged, I am determined to right

him, and when the aristocratic firm, of Leasem and Fashun takes refuge

according to the custom of respectable repudiators, in the cool arbors of

the Court of Chancery, why, a mere bill-discounting attorney like David

Discount need not hesitate about cutting a bludgeon out of the Insolvent

Court.”

“Well, well, Mr. D., you are so warm—so fiery; we must deliberate—we must

consult. You will give me until the day after to-morrow, and then we’ll

write you our final determination; in the meantime, send us a copy of your

authority to act for Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy.”

Of course, I lost no time in getting the gentleman beggar to sign a proper

letter.

On the appointed day came a communication with the L. and F. seal, which I

opened, not without unprofessional eagerness. It was as follows:

“_In re Molinos Fitz-Roy and Another._

“Sir—In answer to your application on behalf of Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy, we

beg to inform you that under the administration of a paternal aunt who

died intestate, your client is entitled to two thousand five hundred

pounds eight shillings and sixpence, Three per Cents.; one thousand five

hundred pounds nineteen shillings and fourpence, Three per Cents. Reduced;

one thousand pounds, Long Annuities; five hundred pounds, Bank Stock;

three thousand five hundred pounds, India Stock; besides other securities,

making up about ten thousand pounds, which we are prepared to transfer

over to Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy’s direction forthwith.”

Here was a windfall! It quite took away my breath.

At dusk came my gentleman beggar, and what puzzled me was, how to break

the news to him. Being very much overwhelmed with business that day, I had

not much time for consideration. He came in rather better dressed than

when I first saw him, with only a week’s beard on his chin; but, as usual,

not quite sober. Six weeks had elapsed since our first interview. He was

still the humble, trembling, low-voiced creature, I first knew him.

After a prelude, I said, “I find, Mr. F., you are entitled to something;

pray, what do you mean to give me in addition to my bill, for obtaining

it?” He answered rapidly, “Oh, take half; if there is one hundred pounds,

take half; if there is five hundred pounds, take half.”

“No, no; Mr. F., I don’t do business in that way, I shall be satisfied

with ten per cent.”

It was so settled. I then led him out into the street, impelled to tell

him the news, yet dreading the effect; not daring to make the revelation

in my office, for fear of a scene.

I began hesitatingly, “Mr. Fitz-Roy, I am happy to say, that I find you

are entitled to .....ten thousand pounds!”

“Ten thousand pounds!” he echoed. “Ten thousand pounds!” he shrieked. “Ten

thousand pounds!” he yelled, seizing my arm violently. “You are a brick.

Here, cab! cab!” Several drove up—the shout might have been heard a mile

off. He jumped in the first.

“Where to?” said the driver.

“To a tailor’s, you rascal!”

“Ten thousand pounds! ha, ha, ha!” he repeated hysterically, when in the

cab; and every moment grasping my arm. Presently he subsided, looked me

straight in the face, and muttered with agonizing fervor,

“What a jolly brick you are!”

The tailor, the hosier, the bootmaker, the hair-dresser, were in turn

visited by this poor pagan of externals. As, by degrees, under their

hands, he emerged from the beggar to the gentleman, his spirits rose; his

eyes brightened; he walked erect, but always nervously grasping my arm;

fearing, apparently, to lose sight of me for a moment, lest his fortune

should vanish with me. The impatient pride with which he gave his orders

to the astonished tradesmen for the finest and best of every thing, and

the amazed air of the fashionable hairdresser when he presented his matted

locks and stubble chin, to be “cut and shaved,” may be _acted_—it can not

be described.

By the time the external transformation was complete, and I sat down in a

_Café_ in the Haymarket, opposite a haggard but handsome,

thoroughbred-looking man, whose air, with the exception of the wild eyes

and deeply browned face, did not differ from the stereotyped men about

town sitting around us, Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy had already almost forgotten

the past; he bullied the waiter, and criticised the wine, as if he had

done nothing else but dine and drink and scold there all the days of his

life.

Once he wished to drink my health, and would have proclaimed his whole

story to the coffee-room assembly, in a raving style. When I left he

almost wept in terror at the idea of losing sight of me. But, allowing for

these ebullitions—the natural result of such a whirl of events—he was

wonderfully calm and self-possessed.

The next day, his first care was to distribute fifty pounds among his

friends the cadgers, at a house of call in Westminster, and formally to

dissolve his connection with them; those present undertaking for the

“fraternity,” that, for the future, he should never be noticed by them in

public or private.

I can not follow his career much further. Adversity had taught him

nothing. He was soon again surrounded by the well-bred vampires who had

forgotten him when penniless; but they amused him, and that was enough.

The ten thousand pounds were rapidly melting when he invited me to a grand

dinner at Richmond, which included a dozen of the most agreeable,

good-looking, well-dressed dandies of London, interspersed with a display

of pretty butterfly bonnets. We dined deliciously, and drank as men do of

iced wines in the dog-days—looking down from Richmond Hill.

One of the pink bonnets crowned Fitz-Roy with a wreath of flowers; he

looked—less the intellect—as handsome as Alcibiades. Intensely excited and

flushed, he rose with a champagne glass in his hand to propose my health.

The oratorical powers of his father had not descended on him. Jerking out

sentences by spasms, at length he said, “I was a beggar—I am a

gentleman—thanks to this—”

Here he leaned on my shoulder heavily a moment, and then fell back. We

raised him, loosened his neckcloth—

“Fainted!” said the ladies.

“Drunk!” said the gentlemen.

He was _dead!_

SINGULAR PROCEEDINGS OF THE SAND WASP. (FROM HOWITT’S COUNTRY YEAR-BOOK.)

In all my observations of the habits of living things, I have never seen

any thing more curious than the doings of one species of these

ammophilæ—lovers of sand. I have watched them day after day, and hour

after hour, in my garden, and also on the sandy banks on the wastes about

Esher, in Surrey, and always with unabated wonder. They are about an inch

long, with orange-colored bodies, and black heads and wings. They are

slender and most active. You see them on the warm borders of your garden,

or on warm, dry banks, in summer, when the sun shines hotly. They are

incessantly and most actively hunting about. They are in pursuit of a

particular gray spider with a large abdomen. For these they pursue their

chase with a fiery quickness and avidity. The spiders are on the watch to

seize flies; but here we have the tables turned, and these are flies on

the watch to discover and kill the spiders. These singular insects seem

all velocity and fire. They come flying at a most rapid rate, light down

on the dry soil, and commence an active search. The spiders lie under the

leaves of plants, and in little dens under the dry little clods. Into all

these places the sand-wasp pops his head. He bustles along here and there,

flirting his wings, and his whole body all life and fire. And now he moves

off to a distance, hunts about there, then back to his first place, beats

the old ground carefully over, as a pointer beats a field. He searches

carefully round every little knob of earth, and pops his head into every

crevice. Ever and anon, he crouches close among the little clods as a

tiger would crouch for his prey. He seems to be listening, or smelling

down into the earth, as if to discover his prey by every sense which he

possesses, He goes round every stalk, and descends into every hollow about

them. When he finds the spider, he dispatches him in a moment, and seizing

him by the centre of his chest, commences dragging him off backward.

He conveys his prey to a place of safety. Frequently he carries it up some

inches into a plant, and lodges it among the green leaves. Seeing him do

this, I poked his spider down with a stick after he had left it; but he

speedily returned, and finding it fallen down, he immediately carried it

up again to the same place.

Having thus secured his spider, he selects a particular spot of earth, the

most sunny and warm, and begins to dig a pit. He works with all his might,

digging up the earth with his formidable mandibles, and throwing it out

with his feet, as a dog throws out the earth when scratching after a

rabbit. Every few seconds he ascends, tail first, out of his hole, clears

away the earth about its mouth with his legs, and spreads it to a distance

on the surface. When he has dug the hole, perhaps two inches deep, he

comes forth eagerly, goes off for his spider, drags it down from its

lodgment, and brings it to the mouth of his hole. He now lets himself down

the hole, tail first, and then, putting forth his head, takes the spider,

and turns it into the most suitable position for dragging it in.

It must be observed that this hole is made carefully of only about the

width of his body, and therefore the spider can not be got into it except

lengthwise, and then by stout pulling. Well, he turns it lengthwise, and

seizing it, commences dragging it in. At first, you would imagine this

impossible; but the sand-wasp is strong, and the body of the spider is

pliable. You soon see it disappear. Down into the cylindrical hole it

goes, and anon you perceive the sand-wasp pushing up its black head beside

it; and having made his way out he again sets to work, and pushes the

spider with all his force to the bottom of the den.

And what is all this for? Is the spider laid up in his larder for himself?

No; it is food for his children? It is their birth-place, and their supply

of provision while they are in the larva state.

We have been all along calling this creature he, for it has a most

masculine look; but it is in reality a she; it is the female sand-wasp,

and all this preparation is for the purpose of laying her eggs. For this

she has sought and killed the spider, and buried it here. She has done it

all wittingly. She has chosen one particular spider, and that only, for

that is the one peculiarly adapted to nourish her young.

So here it is safely stored away in her den; and she now descends, tail

first, and piercing the pulpy abdomen of the spider, she deposits her egg

or eggs. That being done, she carefully begins filling in the hole with

earth. She rakes it up with her legs and mandibles, and fills in the hole,

every now and then turning round and going backward into the hole to stamp

down the earth with her feet, and to ram it down with her body as a

rammer. When the hole is filled, it is curious to observe with what care

she levels the surface, and removes the surrounding lumps of earth, laying

some first over the tomb of the spider, and others about, so as to make

that place look as much as possible like the surface all round. And before

she has done with it—and she works often for ten minutes at this leveling

and disguising before she is perfectly satisfied—she makes the place so

exactly like all the rest of the surface, that it will require good eyes

and close observation to recognize it.

She has now done her part, and Nature must do the rest. She has deposited

her eggs in the body of the spider, and laid that body in the earth in the

most sunny spot she can find. She has laid it so near the surface that the

sun will act on it powerfully, yet deep enough to conceal it from view.

She has, with great art and anxiety, destroyed all traces of the hole, and

the effect will soon commence. The heat of the sun will hatch the egg. The

larva, or young grub of the sand-wasp, will become alive, and begin to

feed on the pulpy body of the spider in which it is enveloped. This food

will suffice it till it is ready to emerge to daylight, and pass through

the different stages of its existence. Like the ostrich, the sand-wasp

thus leaves her egg in the sand till the sun hatches it, and having once

buried it, most probably never knows herself where it is deposited. It is

left to Nature and Providence

WHAT HORSES THINK OF MEN. FROM THE RAVEN IN THE HAPPY FAMILY. (FROM

DICKENS’S HOUSEHOLD WORDS.)

I suppose you thought I was dead? No such thing. Don’t flatter yourselves

that I haven’t got my eye upon you. I am wide awake, and you give me

plenty to look at.

I have begun my great work about you, I have been collecting materials

from the Horse, to begin with. You are glad to hear it, ain’t you? Very

likely. Oh, he gives you a nice character! He makes you out a charming set

of fellows.

He informs me by-the-by, that he is a distant relation of the pony that

was taken up in a balloon a few weeks ago; and that the pony’s account of

your going to see him at Vauxhall Gardens, is an amazing thing. The pony

says that when he looked round on the assembled crowd, come to see the

realization of the wood-cut in the bill, he found it impossible to

discover which was the real Mister Green—there were so many Mister

Greens—and they were all so very green!

But that’s the way with you. You know it is. Don’t tell me! You’d go to

see any thing that other people went to see. And don’t flatter yourselves

that I am referring to “the vulgar curiosity,” as you choose to call it,

when you mean some curiosity in which you don’t participate yourselves.

The polite curiosity in this country is as vulgar as any curiosity in the

world.

Of course you’ll tell me, no it isn’t; but I say, yes it is. What have you

got to say for yourselves about the Nepaulese princes, I should like to

know? Why, there has been more crowding, and pressing, and pushing, and

jostling, and struggling, and striving, in genteel houses this last

season, on account of those Nepaulese princes, than would have taken place

in vulgar Cremorne Gardens and Greenwich Park, at Easter time and

Whitsuntide! And what for? Do you know any thing about ’em? Have you any

idea why they came here? Can you put your finger on their country in the

map? Have you ever asked yourselves a dozen common questions about its

climate, natural history, government, productions, customs, religion,

manners? Not you! Here are a couple of swarthy princes very much out of

their element, walking about in wide muslin trowsers, and sprinkled all

over with gems (like the clockwork figure on the old round platform in the

street, grown-up), and they’re fashionable outlandish monsters, and it’s a

new excitement for you to get a stare at ’em. As to asking ’em to dinner,

and seeing ’em sit at table without eating in your company (unclean

animals as you are!), you fall into raptures at that. Quite delicious,

isn’t it? Ugh, you dunder-headed boobies!

I wonder what there is, new and strange, that you _wouldn’t_ lionize, as

you call it. Can you suggest any thing! It’s not a hippopotamus, I

suppose. I hear from my brother-in-law in the Zoological Gardens, that you

are always pelting away into the Regent’s Park, by thousands, to see the

hippopotamus. Oh, you’re very fond of hippopotami, ain’t you? You study

one attentively, when you _do_ see one, don’t you? You come away so much

wiser than when you went, reflecting so profoundly on the wonders of the

creation—eh?

Bah! You follow one another like wild geese; but you are not so good to

eat!

These, however, are not the observations of my friend the Horse. _He_

takes you, in another point of view. Would you like to read his

contribution to my Natural History of you? No? You shall then.

He is a cab-horse now. He wasn’t always, but he is now, and his usual

stand is close to our proprietor’s usual stand. That’s the way we have

come into communication, we “dumb animals.” Ha, ha! Dumb, too! Oh, the

conceit of you men, because you can bother the community out of their five

wits, by making speeches!

Well. I mentioned to this Horse that I should be glad to have his opinions

and experiences of you. Here they are:

“At the request of my honorable friend the Raven, I proceed to offer a few

remarks in reference to the animal called Man. I have had varied

experience of this strange creature for fifteen years, and am now driven

by a Man, in the hackney cabriolet, number twelve thousand four hundred

and fifty-two.

“The sense Man entertains of his own inferiority to the nobler animals—and

I am now more particularly referring to the Horse—has impressed me

forcibly, in the course of my career. If a man knows a horse well, he is

prouder of it than of any knowledge of himself, within the range of his

limited capacity. He regards it as the sum of all human acquisition. If he

is learned in a horse, he has nothing else to learn. And the same remark

applies, with some little abatement, to his acquaintance with dogs. I have

seen a good deal of man in my time, but I think I have never met a man who

didn’t feel it necessary to his reputation to pretend, on occasion, that

he knew something of horses and dogs, though he really knew nothing. As to

making us a subject of conversation, my opinion is that we are more talked

about than history, philosophy, literature, art, and science, all put

together. I have encountered innumerable gentlemen in the country, who

were totally incapable of interest in any thing but horses and dogs—except

cattle. And I have always been given to understand that they were the

flower of the civilized world.

“It is very doubtful to me, whether there is, upon the whole, any thing

man is so ambitious to imitate as an ostler, jockey, a stage coachman, a

horse-dealer, or dog-fancier. There may be some other character which I do

not immediately remember, that fires him with emulation; but if there be,

I am sure it is connected with horses or dogs, or both. This is an

unconscious compliment, on the part of the tyrant, to the nobler animals,

which I consider to be very remarkable. I have known lords and baronets,

and members of parliament, out of number, who have deserted every other

calling to become but indifferent stablemen or kennelmen, and be cheated

on all hands, by the real aristocracy of those pursuits who were regularly

born to the business.

“All this, I say, is a tribute to our superiority, which I consider to be

very remarkable. Yet, still I can’t quite understand it. Man can hardly

devote himself to us, in admiration of our virtues, because he never

imitates them. We horses are as honest, though I say it, as animals can

be. If, under the pressure of circumstances, we submit to act at a circus,

for instance, we always show that we are acting. We never deceive any

body. We would scorn to do it. If we are called upon to do any thing in

earnest, we do our best. If we are required to run a race falsely, and to

lose when we could win, we are not to be relied upon to commit a fraud;

man must come in at that point, and force us to it. And the extraordinary

circumstance to me is, that man (whom I take to be a powerful species of

monkey) is always making us nobler animals the instruments of his meanness

and cupidity. The very name of our kind has become a byword for all sorts

of trickery and cheating. We are as innocent as counters at a game—and yet

this creature WILL play falsely with us!

“Man’s opinion, good or bad, is not worth much, as any rational horse

knows. But justice is justice; and what I complain of is, that mankind

talks of us as if we had something to do with all this. They say that such

a man was ‘ruined by horses.’ Ruined by horses! They can’t be open, even

in that, and say he was ruined by men; but they lay it at _our_

stable-door! As if we ever ruined any body, or were ever doing any thing

but being ruined ourselves, in our generous desire to fulfill the useful

purposes of our existence!

“In the same way, we get a bad name, as if we were profligate company. ‘So

and so got among horses, and it was all up with him.’ Why, _we_ would have

reclaimed him—_we_ would have made him temperate, industrious, punctual,

steady, sensible—what harm would he ever have got from _us_, I should wish

to ask?

“Upon the whole, speaking of him as I have found him, I should describe

man as an unmeaning and conceited creature, very seldom to be trusted, and

not likely to make advances toward the honesty of the nobler animals. I

should say that his power of warping the nobler animals to bad purposes,

and damaging their reputation by his companionship, is, next to the art of

growing oats, hay, carrots, and clover, one of his principal attributes.

He is very unintelligible in his caprices; seldom expressing with

distinctness what he wants of us; and relying greatly on our better

judgment to find out. He is cruel, and fond of blood—particularly at a

steeple-chase—and is very ungrateful.

“And yet, so far as I can understand, he worships us, too. He sets up

images of us (not particularly like, but meant to be) in the streets and

calls upon his fellows to admire them, and believe in them. As well as I

can make out, it is not of the least importance what images of men are put

astride upon these images of horses, for I don’t find any famous personage

among them—except one, and _his_ image seems to have been contracted for

by the gross. The jockeys who ride our statues are very queer jockeys, it

appears to me, but it is something to find man even posthumously sensible

of what he owes to us. I believe that when he has done any great wrong to

any very distinguished horse, deceased, he gets up a subscription to have

an awkward likeness of him made, and erects it in a public place, to be

generally venerated. I can find no other reason for the statues of us that

abound.

“It must be regarded as a part of the inconsistency of man, that he erects

no statues to the donkeys—who, though far inferior animals to ourselves,

have great claims upon him. I should think a donkey opposite the horse at

Hyde Park, another in Trafalgar-square, and a group of donkeys, in brass,

outside the Guild-hall of the city of London (for I believe the

common-council chamber is inside that building) would be pleasant and

appropriate memorials.

“I am not aware that I can suggest any thing more to my honorable friend

the Raven, which will not already have occurred to his fine intellect.

Like myself, he is the victim of brute force, and must bear it until the

present state of things is changed—as it possibly may be in the good time

which I understand is coming, if I wait a little longer.”

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

There! How do you like that? That’s the Horse! You shall have another

animal’s sentiments, soon. I have communicated with plenty of ’em, and

they are all down upon you. It’s not I alone who have found you out. You

are generally detected, I am happy to say, and shall be covered with

confusion.

Talking about the horse, are you going to set up any more horses? Eh?

Think a bit. Come! You haven’t got horses enough yet, surely? Couldn’t you

put somebody else on horseback, and stick him up, at the cost of a few

thousands? You have already statues to most of the “benefactors of

mankind” (SEE ADVERTISEMENT) in your principal cities. You walk through

groves of great inventors, instructors, discoverers, assuagers of pain,

preventers of disease, suggesters of purifying thoughts, doers of noble

deeds. Finish the list. Come!

Whom will you hoist into the saddle? Let’s have a cardinal virtue! Shall

it be Faith? Hope? Charity? Ay, Charity’s the virtue to ride on horseback!

Let’s have Charity!

How shall we represent it? Eh? What do you think? Royal? Certainly. Duke?

Of course. Charity always was typified in that way, from the time of a

certain widow downward. And there’s nothing less left to put up; all the

commoners who were “benefactors of mankind” having had their statues in

the public places, long ago.

How shall we dress it? Rags? Low. Drapery? Commonplace. Field-Marshal’s

uniform? The very thing! Charity in a Field-Marshal’s uniform (none the

worse for wear) with thirty thousand pounds a year, public money, in its

pocket, and fifteen thousand more, public money, up behind, will be a

piece of plain, uncompromising truth in the highways, and an honor to the

country and the time.

Ha, ha, ha! You can’t leave the memory of an unassuming, honest,

good-natured, amiable old duke alone, without bespattering it with your

flunkeyism, can’t you? That’s right—and like you! Here are three brass

buttons in my crop. I’ll subscribe ’em all. One, to the statue of Charity;

one, to a statue of Hope; one, to a statue of Faith. For Faith, we’ll have

the Nepaulese Embassador on horseback—being a prince. And for Hope, we’ll

put the Hippopotamus on horseback, and so make a group.

Let’s have a meeting about it!

THE QUAKERS DURING THE AMERICAN WAR. (FROM HOWITT’S COUNTRY YEAR-BOOK.)

George Dilwyn was an American, a remarkable preacher among the Quakers.

About fifty years ago he came over to this country, on what we have

already said is termed a “Religious Visit,” and being in Cornwall, when I

was there, and at George Fox’s, in Falmouth—our aged relative still

narrates—soon became an object of great attraction, not only from his

powerful preaching, but from his extraordinary gift in conversation, which

he made singularly interesting from the introduction of curious passages

in his own life and experience.

His company was so much sought after, that a general invitation was given,

by his hospitable and wealthy entertainer, to all the Friends of the town

and neighborhood to come, and hear, and see him; and evening by evening,

their rooms were crowded by visitors, who sat on seats, side by side, as

in a public lecture-room.

Among other things, he related, that during the time of the revolutionary

war, one of the armies passing through a district in which a great number

of Friends resided, food was demanded from the inhabitants, which was

given to them. The following day the adverse army came up in pursuit, and

stripped them of every kind of provision that remained; and so great was

the strait to which they were reduced, that absolute famine was before

them. Their sufferings were extreme, as day after day went on, and no

prospect of relief was afforded them. Death seemed to stare them in the

face, and many a one was ready to despair. The forests around them were in

possession of the soldiers, and the game, which otherwise might have

yielded them subsistence, was killed or driven away.

After several days of great distress, they retired at night, still without

hope or prospect of succor. How great, then, was their surprise and cause

of thankfulness when, on the following morning, immense herds of wild deer

were seen standing around their inclosures, as if driven there for their

benefit! From whence they came none could tell, nor the cause of their

coming, but they suffered themselves to be taken without resistance; and

thus the whole people were saved, and had great store of provisions laid

up for many weeks.

Again, a similar circumstance occurred near the sea-shore, when the flying

and pursuing armies had stripped the inhabitants, and when, apparently to

add to their distress, the wind set in with such unusual violence, and the

sea drove the tide so far inland, that the people near the shore were

obliged to abandon their houses, and those in the town retreat to their

upper rooms. This also being during the night, greatly added to their

distress; and, like the others, they were ready to despair. Next morning,

however, they found that God had not been unmindful of them; for the tide

had brought up with it a most extraordinary shoal of mackerel, so that

every place was filled with them, where they remained ready taken, without

net or skill of man—a bountiful provision for the wants of the people,

till other relief could be obtained.

Another incident he related, which occurred in one of the back

settlements, when the Indians had been employed to burn the dwellings of

the settlers, and cruelly to murder the people. One of these solitary

habitations was in the possession of a Friend’s family. They lived in such

secure simplicity, that they had hitherto had no apprehension of danger,

and used neither bar nor bolt to their door, having no other means of

securing their dwelling from intrusion than by drawing in the leathern

thong by which the wooden latch inside was lifted from without.

The Indians had committed frightful ravages all around, burning and

murdering without mercy. Every evening brought forth tidings of horror,

and every night the unhappy settlers surrounded themselves with such

defenses as they could muster—even then, for dread, scarcely being able to

sleep. The Friend and his family, who had hitherto put no trust in the arm

of flesh, but had left all in the keeping of God, believing that man often

ran in his own strength to his own injury, had used so little precaution,

that they slept without even withdrawing the string, and were as yet

uninjured. Alarmed, however, at length, by the fears of others, and by the

dreadful rumors that surrounded them, they yielded to their fears on one

particular night, and, before retiring to rest, drew in the string, and

thus secured themselves as well as they were able.

In the dead of the night, the Friend, who had not been able to sleep,

asked his wife if she slept; and she replied that she could not, for her

mind was uneasy. Upon this, he confessed that the same was his case, and

that he believed it would be the safest for him to rise and put out the

string of the latch as usual. On her approving of this, it was done, and

the two lay down again, commending themselves to the keeping of God.

This had not occurred above ten minutes, when the dismal sound of the

war-whoop echoed through the forest, filling every heart with dread, and

almost immediately afterward, they counted the footsteps of seven men pass

the window of their chamber, which was on the ground-floor, and the next

moment the door-string was pulled, the latch lifted, and the door opened.

A debate of a few minutes took place, the purport of which, as it was

spoken in the Indian language, was unintelligible to the inhabitants; but

that it was favorable to them was proved by the door being again closed,

and the Indians retiring without having crossed the threshold.

The next morning they saw the smoke rising from burning habitations all

around them; parents were weeping for their children who were carried off,

and children lamenting over their parents who had been cruelly slain.

Some years afterward, when peace was restored, and the colonists had

occasion to hold conferences with the Indians, this Friend was appointed

as one for that purpose, and speaking in favor of the Indians, he related

the above incident; in reply to which, an Indian observed, that, by the

simple circumstance of putting out the latch-string, which proved

confidence rather than fear, their lives and their property had been

saved; for that he himself was one of that marauding party, and that, on

finding the door open, it was said—“These people shall live; they will do

us no harm, for they put their trust in the GREAT SPIRIT.”

During the whole American revolution, indeed, the Indians, though incited

by the whites to kill and scalp the enemy, never molested the Friends, as

the people of Father Onas, or William Penn, and as the avowed opponents of

all violence. Through the whole war, there were but two instances to the

contrary, and they were occasioned by the two Friends themselves. The one

was a young man, a tanner, who went to his tan-yard and back daily

unmolested, while devastation spread on all sides; but at length,

thoughtlessly carrying a gun to shoot some birds, the Indians, in ambush,

believed that he had deserted his principles, and shot him. The other was

a woman, who, when the dwellings of her neighbors were nightly fired, and

the people themselves murdered, was importuned by the officers of a

neighboring fort to take refuge there till the danger was over. For some

time she refused, and remained unharmed amid general destruction; but, at

length, letting in fear, she went for one night to the fort, but was so

uneasy, that the next morning she quitted it to return to her home. The

Indians, however, believed that she too had abandoned her principles, and

joined the fighting part of the community, and before she reached home she

was shot by them.

A SHILLING’S WORTH OF SCIENCE. (FROM DICKENS’S HOUSEHOLD WORDS.)

Dr. Paris has already shown, in a charming little book treating

scientifically of children’s toys, how easy even “philosophy in sport can

be made science in earnest.” An earlier genius cut out the whole alphabet

into the figures of uncouth animals, and inclosed them in a toy-box

representing Noah’s Ark, for the purpose of teaching children their

letters. Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, have been decimated; “yea, the

great globe itself,” has been parceled into little wooden sections, that

their readjustment into a continuous map might teach the infant conqueror

of the world the relative positions of distant countries. Archimedes might

have discovered the principle of the lever and the fundamental principles

of gravity upon a rocking-horse. In like manner he might have ascertained

the laws of hydrostatics, by observing the impetus of many natural and

artificial fountains, which must occasionally have come beneath his eye.

So also the principles of acoustics might even now be taught by the aid of

a penny whistle, and there is no knowing how much children’s nursery games

may yet be rendered subservient to the advancement of science. The famous

Dr. Cornelius Scriblerus had excellent notions on these subjects. He

determined that his son Martinus should be the most learned and

universally well-informed man of his age, and had recourse to all sorts of

devices in order to inspire him even unthinkingly with knowledge. He

determined that every thing should contribute to the improvement of his

mind—even his very dress. He therefore, his biographer informs us,

invented for him a geographical suit of clothes, which might give him some

hints of that science, and also of the commerce of different nations. His

son’s disposition to mathematics—for he was a remarkable child—was

discovered very early by his drawing parallel lines on his bread and

butter, and intersecting them at equal angles, so as to form the whole

superficies into squares. His father also wisely resolved that he should

acquire the learned languages, especially Greek—and remarking, curiously

enough, that young Martinus Scriblerus was remarkably fond of gingerbread,

the happy idea came into his parental head that his pieces of gingerbread

should be stamped with the letters of the Greek alphabet; and such was the

child’s avidity for knowledge, that the very first day he eat down to

_iota_.

When Sir Isaac Newton changed his residence and went to live in

Leicester-place, his next door neighbor was a widow lady, who was much

puzzled by the little she observed of the habits of the philosopher. One

of the Fellows of the Royal Society called upon her one day, when, among

other domestic news, she mentioned that some one had come to reside in the

adjoining house, who she felt certain was a poor mad gentleman. “And why

so?” asked her friend. “Because,” said she, “he diverts himself in the

oddest way imaginable. Every morning when the sun shines so brightly that

we are obliged to draw down the window-blinds, he takes his seat on a

little stool before a tub of soap-suds, and occupies himself for hours

blowing soap-bubbles through a common clay-pipe, which he intently watches

floating about until they burst. He is doubtless,” she added, “now at his

favorite diversion, for it is a fine day; do come and look at him.” The

gentleman smiled; and they went up-stairs, when after looking through the

stair-case window into the adjoining court-yard, he turned round and said,

“My dear lady, the person whom you suppose to be a poor lunatic, is no

other than the great Sir Isaac Newton studying the refraction of light

upon thin plates, a phenomenon which is beautifully exhibited upon the

surface of a common soap-bubble.”

The principle, illustrated by the examples we have given, has been

efficiently followed by the Directors of the Royal Polytechnic Institution

in Regent-street, London. Even the simplest models and objects they

exhibit in their extensive halls and galleries, expound—like Sir Isaac

Newton’s soap-bubble—some important principle of Science or Art.

On entering the Hall of Manufactures (as we did the other day) it was

impossible not to be impressed with the conviction that we are in an

utilitarian age in which the science of Mechanics advances with marvelous

rapidity. Here we observed steam-engines, hand-looms, and machines in

active operation, surrounding us with that peculiar din which makes the

air

“Murmur, as with the sound of summer-flies.”

Passing into the “Gallery in the Great Hall,” we did not fail to derive a

momentary amusement, from observing the very different objects which

seemed most to excite the attention, and interest of the different

sight-seers. Here, stood obviously a country farmer examining the model of

a steam-plow; there, a Manchester or Birmingham manufacturer looking into

a curious and complicated weaving machine; here, we noticed a group of

ladies admiring specimens of elaborate carving in ivory, and personal

ornaments esteemed highly fashionable at the antipodes; and there, the

smiling faces of youth watching with eager eyes the little boats and

steamers paddling along the Water Reservoir in the central counter. But we

had scarcely looked around us, when a bell rang to announce a lecture on

Voltaic Electricity by Dr. Bachhoffner; and moving with a stream of people

up a short stair-case, we soon found ourselves in a very commodious and

well-arranged theatre. There are many universities and public institutions

that have not better lecture rooms than this theatre in the Royal

Polytechnic Institution. The lecture was elementary and exceedingly

instructive, pointing out and showing by experiments, the identity between

Magnetism and Electricity—light and heat; but notwithstanding the extreme

perspicuity of the Professor, it was our fate to sit next two old ladies

who seemed to be very incredulous about the whole business.

“If heat and light are the same thing,” asked one, “why don’t a flame come

out at the spout of a boiling tea-kettle?”

“The steam,” answered the other, “may account for that.”

“Hush!” cried somebody behind them; and the ladies were silent: but it was

plain they thought Voltaic Electricity had something to do with conjuring,

and that the lecturer might be a professor of Magic. The lecture over, we

returned to the Gallery, where we found the Diving Bell just about to be

put in operation. It is made of cast iron, and weighs three tons; the

interior being provided with seats, and lighted by openings in the crown,

upon which a plate of thick glass is secured. The weighty instrument

suspended by a massive chain to a large swing crane, was soon in motion,

when we observed our skeptical lady-friends join a party and enter, in

order, we presume, to make themselves more sure of the truth of the

diving-bell than they could do of the identity between light and heat. The

bell was soon swung round and lowered into a tank, which holds nearly ten

thousand gallons of water; but we confess our fears for the safety of its

inmates were greatly appeased, when we learned that the whole of this

reservoir of water could be emptied in less than one minute. Slowly and

steadily was the bell drawn up again, and we had the satisfaction of

seeing the enterprising ladies and their companions alight on _terra

firma_, nothing injured excepting that they were greatly flushed in the

face. A man, clad in a water-tight dress and surmounted with a

diving-helmet, next performed a variety of sub-aqueous feats, much to the

amusement and astonishment of the younger part of the audience, one of

whom shouted as he came up above the surface of the water, “Oh! ma’a!

Don’t he look like an Ogre!” and certainly the shining brass helmet and

staring large plate-glass eyes fairly warranted such a suggestion. The

principles of the diving-bell and of the diving-helmet are too well known

to require explanation: but the practical utility of these machines is

daily proved. Even while we now write, it has been ascertained that the

foundations of Blackfriars Bridge are giving way. The bed of the river,

owing to the constant ebb and flow of its waters, has sunk some six or

seven feet below its level since the bridge was built, thus undermining

its foundation; and this effect, it is presumed, has been greatly

augmented by the removal of the old London Bridge, the works surrounding

which operated as a dam in checking the force of the current. These

machines, also, are constantly used in repairing the bottom of docks,

landing-piers, and in the construction of breakwater works, such as those

which are at present being raised at Dover Harbor.

Among other remarkable objects in the museum of natural history we

recognized, swimming upon his shingly bed under a glass case, our old

friend the Gymnotus Electricus, or Electrical Eel. Truly, he is a

marvelous fish. The power which animals of every description possess in

adapting themselves to external and adventitious circumstances, is here

marvelously illustrated, for, notwithstanding this creature is surrounded

by the greatest possible amount of artificial circumstances, inasmuch as

instead of sporting in his own pellucid and sparkling waters of the river

Amazon, he is here confined in a glass prison, in water artificially

heated; instead of his natural food, he is here supplied with fish not

indigenous to his native country, and denied access to fresh air, with

sunlight sparkling upon the surface of the waves—he is here surrounded by

an impure and obscure atmosphere, with crowds of people constantly moving

to and fro and gazing upon him; yet, notwithstanding all these

disadvantageous circumstances, he has continued to thrive; nay, since we

saw him ten years ago, he has increased in size and is apparently very

healthy, notwithstanding that he is obviously quite blind.

This specimen of the Gymnotus Electricus was caught in the river Amazon,

and was brought over to this country by Mr. Potter, where it arrived on

the 12th of August, 1838, when he displayed it to the proprietors of the

Adelaide Gallery. In the first instance, there was some difficulty in

keeping him alive, for, whether from sickness, or sulkiness, he refused

food of every description, and is said to have eaten nothing from the day

he was taken, in March, 1838, to the 19th of the following October. He was

confided upon his arrival to the care of Mr. Bradley, who placed him in an

apartment the temperature of which could be maintained at about

seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit, and acting upon the suggestions of Baron

Humboldt, he endeavored to feed him with bits of boiled meat, worms,

frogs, fish, and bread, which were all tried in succession. But the animal

would not touch these. The plan adopted by the London fishmongers for

fattening the common eel was then had recourse to; a quantity of bullock’s

blood was put into the water, care being taken that it should be changed

daily, and this was attended with some beneficial effects, as the animal

gradually improved in health. In the month of October it occurred to Mr.

Bradley to tempt him with some small fish, and the first gudgeon thrown

into the water he darted at and swallowed with avidity. From that period

the same diet has been continued, and he is now fed three times a day, and

upon each occasion is given two or three carp, or perch, or gudgeon, each

weighing from two to three ounces. In watching his movements we observed,

that in swimming about he seems to delight in rubbing himself against the

gravel which forms the bed above which he floats, and the water

immediately becomes clouded with the mucus from which he thus relieves the

surface of his body.

When this species of fish was first discovered, marvelous accounts

respecting them were transmitted to the Royal Society: it was even said

that in the river Surinam, in the western province of Guiana, some existed

twenty feet long. The present specimen is forty inches in length; and

measures eighteen inches round the body; and his physiognomy justifies the

description given by one of the early narrators, who remarked, that the

Gymnotus “resembles one of our common eels, except that its head is flat,

and its mouth wide, like that of a cat-fish, without teeth.” It is

certainly ugly enough. On its first arrival in England, the proprietors

offered Professor Faraday (to whom this country may possibly discover,

within the next five hundred years, that it owes something) the privilege

of experimenting upon him for scientific purposes, and the result of a

great number of experiments, ingeniously devised, and executed with great

nicety, clearly proved the identity between the electricity of the fish

and the common electricity. The shock, the circuit, the spark, were

distinctly obtained: the galvanometer was sensibly affected; chemical

decompositions were obtained; an annealed steel needle became magnetic,

and the direction of its polarity indicated a current from the anterior to

the posterior parts of the fish, through the conductors used. The force

with which the electric discharge is made is also very considerable, for

this philosopher tells us we may conclude that a single medium discharge

of the fish is at least equal to the electricity of a Leyden Battery of

fifteen jars, containing three thousand five hundred square inches of

glass, coated upon both sides, charged to its highest degree. But great as

is the force of a single discharge, the Gymnotus will sometimes give a

double, and even a triple shock, with scarcely any interval. Nor is this

all. The instinctive action it has recourse to in order to augment the

force of the shock, is very remarkable.

The professor one day dropped a live fish, five inches long, into the tub;

upon which the Gymnotus turned round in such a manner as to form a coil

inclosing the fish, the latter representing a diameter across it, and the

fish was struck motionless, as if lightning had passed through the water.

The Gymnotus then made a turn to look for his prey, which having found, he

bolted it, and then went about seeking for more. A second smaller fish was

then given him, which being hurt, showed little signs of life; and this he

swallowed apparently without “shocking it.” We are informed by Dr.

Williamson, in a paper he communicated some years ago to the Royal

Society, that a fish already struck motionless gave signs of returning

animation, which the Gymnotus observing, he instantly discharged another

shock, which killed it. Another curious circumstance was observed by

Professor Faraday—the Gymnotus appeared conscious of the difference of

giving a shock to an animate and an inanimate body, and would not be

provoked to discharge its powers upon the latter. When tormented by a

glass rod, the creature in the first instance threw out a shock, but as if

he perceived his mistake, he could not be stimulated afterward to repeat

it, although the moment the professor touched him with his hands, he

discharged shock after shock. He refused, in like manner, to gratify the

curiosity of the philosophers, when they touched him with metallic

conductors, which he permitted them to do with indifference. It is worthy

of observation, that this is the only specimen of the Gymnotus Electricus

ever brought over alive into this country. The great secret of preserving

his life would appear to consist in keeping the water at an even

temperature—summer and winter—of seventy-five degrees of Fahrenheit. After

having been subjected to a great variety of experiments, the creature is

now permitted to enjoy the remainder of its days in honorable peace, and

the only occasion upon which he is now disturbed, is when it is found

necessary to take him out of his shallow reservoir to have it cleaned,

when he discharges angrily enough shock after shock, which the attendants

describe to be very smart, even though he be held in several thick and

well wetted cloths, for they do not at all relish the job.

The Gymnotus Electricus is not the only animal endowed with this very

singular power; there are other fish, especially the Torpedo and Silurus,

which are equally remarkable, and equally well known. The peculiar

structure which enters into the formation of their electrical organs, was

first examined by the eminent anatomist John Hunter, in the Torpedo; and,

very recently, Rudolphi has described their structure with great exactness

in the Gymnotus Electricus.

Without entering into minute details, the peculiarity of the organic

apparatus of the Electrical Eel seems to consist in this, that it is

composed of numerous _laminæ_ or thin tendinous partitions, between which

exists an infinite number of small cells filled with a thickish gelatinous

fluid. These strata and cells are supplied with nerves of unusual size,

and the intensity of the electrical power is presumed to depend on the

amount of nervous energy accumulated in these cells, whence it can be

voluntarily discharged, just as a muscle may be voluntarily contracted.

Furthermore, there are, it would appear, good reasons to believe that

nervous power (in whatever it may consist) and electricity are identical.

The progress of science has already shown the identity between heat,

electricity, and magnetism; that heat may be concentrated into

electricity, and this electricity reconverted into heat; that electric

force may be converted into magnetic force, and Professor Faraday himself

discovered how, by reacting back again, the magnetic force can be

reconverted into the electric force, and _vice versâ_; and should the

identity between electricity and nervous power be as clearly established,

one of the most important and interesting problems in physiology will be

solved.

Every new discovery in science, and all improvements in industrial art,

the principles of which are capable of being rendered in the least degree

interesting, are in this Exhibition forthwith popularized, and become, as

it were, public property. Every individual of the great public can at the

very small cost of one shilling, claim his or her share in the property

thus attractively collected, and a small amount of previous knowledge or

natural intelligence will put the visitor in actual possession of

treasures which previously “he wot not of,” in so amusing a manner that

they will be beguiled rather than bored into his mind.

A TUSCAN VINTAGE.

All Tuscany had been busy with the vintage. The vintage! Is there a word

more rich to the untraveled Englishman in picturesque significance and

poetical associations? All that the bright south has of glowing coloring,

harmonious forms, teeming abundance, and Saturnian facility, mixed up in

the imagination with certain vague visions of bright black eyes and

bewitching ankles—all this, and more, goes to the making up of the

Englishman’s notion of the vintage. Alas! that it should be needful to

dissipate such charming illusions. And yet it is well to warn those who

cherish these _couleur-de-rose_ imaginings, and who would fain shun a

disagreeable _désenchantement_, that they will do wisely in continuing to

receive their impressions of Italian ruralities from the presentations of

our theatres, and the description of Mrs. Radcliffe. To those inquirers,

however, of sterner mould, who would find truth, be it ever so

disagreeable when found, it must be told that a Devonshire harvesting is

twice as pretty, and a Kentish hop-picking thrice as pretty a scene as any

“vindemia” that the vineyards of Italy can show. The vine, indeed, as

grown in Italy—especially when the fruit is ripe, and the leaves begin to

be tinted with crimson and yellow—is an exceedingly pretty object, rich in

coloring, and elegant in its forms. Nothing but the most obsolete and

backward agriculture, however, preserves these beauties. If good wine and

not pretty crops be the object in view, the vine should be grown as in

France—a low dwarf plant closely pruned, and raised only two or three feet

from the ground; and than such a vineyard nothing can be more ugly.

Classic Italy, however, still cultivates her vines as she did when the

Georgics were written; “marries” them most becomingly and picturesquely to

elms or mulberries, &c, and makes of them lovely festoons and very acrid

wine. Again, it must be admitted that a yoke of huge dove-colored oxen,

with their heavy unwieldy tumbril, is a more picturesque object than an

English wagon and a team of horses. Occasionally, too, may be seen bearing

not ungracefully a blushing burden of huge bunches, a figure, male or

female, who might have sat for a model to Leopold Robert. But despite all

this, the process of gathering the vintage is any thing but a pleasing

sight. In one of the heavy tumbrils I have mentioned, are placed some

twelve or fifteen large pails, some three feet deep, and a foot or so in

diameter. Into these are thrown pell-mell the bunches of fruit, ripe and

unripe, clean and dirty, stalks and all, white and red indiscriminately.

The cart thus laden, the fifteen pails of unsightly, dirty-looking slush,

are driven to the “fattoria,” there to be emptied into vats, which appear,

both to nose and eye, never to have been cleansed since they were made. In

performing this operation much is of course spilt over the men employed,

over the cart, over the ground; and nothing can look less agreeable than

the effect thus produced. Sometimes one large tub occupies the whole

tumbril, the contents of which, on reaching the “fattoria,” have to be

ladled out with buckets. Often the contents of the vat, trodden in one

place—a most unsightly process—have to be transported in huge barrels,

like water-carts, to another place to undergo fermentation. And then the

thick muddy stream, laden with filth and impurities of all sorts, which is

seen when these barrels discharge their cargo, is as little calculated to

give one a pleasing idea of the “ruby wine” which is to be the result of

all this filthy squash, as can well be imagined. Add to this an

exceedingly unpleasant smell in and about all the buildings in which any

part of the wine-making process takes place, and the constant recurrence

of rotting heaps of the refuse matter of the pressed grape under every

wall and hedge in the neighborhood of each “fattoria”—and the notions

connected with the so be-poetized vintage, will be easily understood to be

none of the pleasantest in the minds of those acquainted with its sights

and smells.—_Trollope’s Impressions of a Wanderer._

HOW TO MAKE HOME UNHEALTHY. BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.

Emperor Yao (very many years B.C.) established a certain custom, which was

followed, we are told, by his successors on the throne of China. The

custom was this. Outside the hall-door of his palace, he suspended a

tablet and a gong; and if one among his subjects felt himself able to

suggest a good idea to his ruler, or wished to admonish him of any error

in his ways, the critic paid a visit to the palace, wrote what he had to

say upon the tablet, battered at the gong, and ran away. The Emperor came

out; and then, unless it happened that some scapegrace of a schoolboy had

annoyed him by superadding a fly-away knock to a contemptuous

hieroglyphic, he gravely profited by any hint the tablets might convey.

Not unlike honest, patriarchal Yao is our British Public. It is summoned

out to read inscriptions at its door, left there by all who have advice to

give or faults to deprecate. The successors of Yao, finding upon their

score so many conflicting tales, soon substituted for the gong five

instruments of music. It was required, then, that the monitor should

distinguish, by the instrument upon which he performed his summons, what

particular department of imperial duties it might be to which he desired

to call attention. Now not five but fifty voices summon _our_ royal

public. One man courts attention with a dulcet strain, one brays, one

harps upon a string, another drums. And among those who have of late been

busiest in pointing errors out, and drumming at the public’s door to have

them rectified, are they who profess concern about the Public Health.

For the writer who now proposes to address to you, O excellent Public,

through these pages, a Series of Practical Hints as to How to make Home

Unhealthy, we would not have you think that he means to be in any respect

so troublesome as those Sanitary Instructors. The lion on your knocker

gives him confidence; he will leave no disconcerting messages; he will

seek to come into your parlor as a friend. A friend he is; for, with a

polite sincerity, he will maintain in all his arguments that what you do

is what ought always to be done. He knows well that you are not foolish,

and perceives, therefore, what end you have in view. He sees that you are

impressed deeply with a conviction of the vanity of life; that you desire,

accordingly, to prove your wisdom by exhibiting contempt for that which

philosopher after philosopher forbids a thoughtful man to cherish. You

would be proud to have Unhealthy Homes. Lusty carcases, they are for

coarse folk and for the heathen; civilization forbids us to promote animal

development. How can a man look spiritual, if he be not sickly? How can a

woman—Is not Paris the mode? Go, weigh an elegant Parisienne against a

peasant girl from Normandy. It is here proposed, therefore, to honor your

discretion by demonstrating publicly how right you are. Some of the many

methods by which one may succeed in making Home Unhealthy will be here

detailed to you, in order that, as we go on, you may congratulate yourself

on feeling how extremely clever you already are in your arrangements. Here

is a plain purpose. If any citizen, listening to such lessons, think

himself wise, and yet is one who, like good M. Jourdain in the comedy,

_n’applaudit qu’à contresens_—to such a citizen it is enough to say. May

much good come of his perversity!

I. Hints To Hang Up In The Nursery.

In laying a foundation of ill health, it is a great point to be able to

begin at the beginning. You have the future man at excellent advantage

when he is between your fingers as a baby. One of Hoffman’s heroines, a

clever housewife, discarded and abhorred her lover from the moment of his

cutting a yeast dumpling. There are some little enormities of that kind

which really can not be forgiven, and one such is, to miss the opportunity

of physicking a baby. Now I will tell you how to treat the future

pale-face at his first entrance into life.

A little while before the birth of any child, have a little something

ready in a spoon; and, after birth, be ready at the first opportunity, to

thrust this down his throat. Let his first gift from his fellow-creatures

be a dose of physic—honey and calomel, or something of that kind: but you

had better ask the nurse for a prescription. Have ready also, before

birth, an abundant stock of pins; for it is a great point, in putting the

first dress upon the little naked body, to contrive that it shall contain

as many pins as possible. The prick of a sly pin is excellent for making

children cry; and since it may lead nurses, mothers, now and then even

doctors, to administer physic for the cure of imaginary gripings in the

bowels, it may be twice blessed. Sanitary enthusiasts are apt to say that

strings, not pins, are the right fastening for infants’ clothes. Be not

misled. Is not the pincushion an ancient institution? What is to say,

“Welcome, little stranger,” if pins cease to do so? Resist this

innovation. It is the small end of the wedge. The next thing that a child

would do, if let alone, would be to sleep. I would not suffer that. The

poor thing must want feeding; therefore waken it and make it eat a sop,

for that will be a pleasant joke at the expense of nature. It will be like

wakening a gentleman after midnight to put into his mouth some pickled

herring; only the baby can not thank you for your kindness as the

gentleman might do.

This is a golden rule concerning babies: to procure sickly growth, let the

child always suckle. Attempt no regularity in nursing. It is true that if

an infant be fed at the breast every four hours, it will fall into the

habit of desiring food only so often, and will sleep very tranquilly

during the interval. This may save trouble, but it is a device for rearing

healthy children: we discard it. Our infants shall be nursed in no

new-fangled way. As for the child’s crying, quiet costs eighteen-pence a

bottle; so that argument is very soon disposed of.

Never be without a flask of Godfrey’s Cordial, or Daffy, in the nursery;

but the fact is, that you ought to keep a medicine-chest. A good deal of

curious information may be obtained by watching the effects of various

medicines upon your children.

Never be guided by the child’s teeth in weaning it. Wean it before the

first teeth are cut, or after they have learned to bite. Wean all at once,

with bitter aloes or some similar devices; and change the diet suddenly.

It is a foolish thing to ask a medical attendant how to regulate the food

of children; he is sure to be over-run with bookish prejudices; but nurses

are practical women, who understand thoroughly matters of this kind.

Do not use a cot for infants, or presume beyond the time-honored

institution of the cradle. Active rocking sends a child to sleep by

causing giddiness. Giddiness is a disturbance of the blood’s usual way of

circulation; obviously, therefore, it is a thing to aim at in our

nurseries. For elder children, swinging is an excellent amusement, if they

become giddy on the swing.

In your nursery, a maid and two or three children may conveniently be

quartered for the night, by all means carefully secured from draughts.

Never omit to use at night a chimney board. The nursery window ought not

to be much opened; and the door should be kept always shut, in order that

the clamor of the children may not annoy others in your house.

When the children walk out for an airing, of course they are to be little

ladies and gentlemen. They are not to scamper to and fro; a little gentle

amble with a hoop ought to be their severest exercise. In sending them to

walk abroad, it is a good thing to let their legs be bare. The gentleman

papa, probably, would find bare legs rather cold walking in the streets of

London; but the gentleman son, of course, has quite another constitution.

Besides, how can a boy, not predisposed that way, hope to grow up

consumptive, if some pains are not taken with him in his childhood?

It is said that of old time children in the Balearic Islands were not

allowed to eat their dinner, until, by adroitness in the shooting of

stones out of a sling, they had dislodged it from a rafter in the house.

Children in the British Islands should be better treated. Let them not

only have their meals unfailingly, but let them be at all other times

tempted and bribed to eat. Cakes and sweetmeats of alluring shape and

color, fruits, and palatable messes, should, without any regularity, be

added to the diet of a child. The stomach, we know, requires three or four

hours to digest a meal, expects a moderate routine of tasks, and between

each task looks for a little period of rest. Now, as we hope to create a

weak digestion, what is more obvious than that we must use artifice to

circumvent the stomach? In one hour we must come upon it unexpectedly with

a dose of fruit and sugar; then, if the regular dinner have been taken,

astonish the digestion, while at work upon it, with the appearance of an

extra lump of cake, and presently some gooseberries. In this way we soon

triumph over Nature, who, to speak truth, does not permit to us an easy

victory, and does try to accommodate her working to our whims. We triumph,

and obtain our reward in children pale and polite, children with appetites

already formed, that will become our good allies against their health in

after life.

_Principiis obsta._ Let us subdue mere nature at her first start, and make

her civilized in her beginnings. Let us wipe the rose-tint out of the

child’s cheek, in good hope that the man will not be able to recover it.

White, yellow, and purple—let us make them to be his future tricolor.

II. The Londoner’s Garden.

Brick walls do not secrete air. It comes in through your doors and

windows, from the streets and alleys in your neighborhood; it comes in

without scraping its feet, and goes down your throat, unwashed, with small

respect for your gentility. You must look abroad, therefore, for some

elements of an unwholesome home: and when, sitting at home, you do so, it

is a good thing if you can see a burial-ground—one of “God’s gardens,”

which our city cherishes.

Now, do not look up with a dolorous face, saying, “Alas! these gardens are

to be taken from us!” Let agitators write and let Commissioners report,

let Government nod its good-will, and although all the world may think

that our London burial-grounds are about to be incontinently jacketed in

asphalte, and that we ourselves, when dead, are to be steamed off to

Erith—we are content: at present this is only gossip.(1) On one of the

lowest terraces of hell, says Dante, he found a Cordelier, who had been

dragged thither by a logical demon, in defiance of the expostulations of

St. Francis. The sin of that monk was a sentence of advice for which

absolution had been received before he gave it: “Promise much, and perform

little.” In the hair of any Minister’s head, and of every Commissioner’s

head, we know not what “black cherubim” may have entwined their claws.

There is hope, while there is life, for the old cause. But if those who

have authority to do so really have determined to abolish intramural

burial, let us call upon them solemnly to reconsider their verdict. Let

them ponder what follows.

Two or three years ago, a book, promulgating notions upon spiritual life,

was published in London by the Chancellor of a certain place across the

Channel. It was a clever book; and, among other matter, broached a theory.

“_Our souls,_” the Rev. Chancellor informed us, “_consist of the essence,

extract, or gas contained in the human body_;” and, that he might not be

vague, he made special application to a chemist, who “added some important

observations of his own respecting the corpse after death.” But we must

decorate a great speculation with the ornamental words of its propounder.

“The gases into which the animal body is resolved by putrefaction are

ammonia, carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, cyanogen, and sulphureted,

phosphureted, and carbureted hydrogen. The first, and the two last-named

gases, are most abundant.” We omit here some details as to the time a body

takes in rotting. “From which it appears, that these noble elements and

rich essences of humanity are too subtle and volatile to continue long

with the corpse; but soon disengage themselves, and escape from it. After

which nothing remains but the foul refuse in the vat; the mere _caput

mortuum_ in the crucible; the vile dust and ashes of the tomb. Nor does

inhumation, however deep in the ground, nor drowning in the lowest depths

and darkest caverns of the fathomless abyss, prevent those subtle

essences, rare attenuate spirits, or gases, from escaping; or chain down

to dust those better, nobler elements of the human body. No bars can

imprison them; no vessels detain them from their kindred element, confine

them from their native home.”

We are all of us familiar with the more noticeable of these “essences,” by

smell, if not by name. Metaphysicians tell us that perceptions and ideas

_will_ follow in a train: perhaps that may account for the sudden

recollection of an old-fashioned story—may the moderns pardon it. A young

Cambridge student, airing his wisdom at a dinner-party, was ingenious upon

the Theory of Winds. He was most eloquent concerning heat and cold;

radiation, rarefaction; polar and equatorial currents; he had brought his

peroration to a close, when he turned round upon a grave Professor of his

College, saying, “And what, sir, do you believe to be the cause of wind?”

The learned man replied, “Pea-soup—pea-soup!” In the group of friends

around a social soup-tureen, must we in future recognize

“The feast of reason, and—the flow of soul!”

How gladly shall we fight the fight of life, hoping that, after death, we

shall meet in a world of sulphureted hydrogen and other gases! And where

do the Sanitary Reformers suppose that, after death, _their_ gases will

go—they who, in life, with asphalte and paving-stones, would have

restrained the souls of their own fathers from ascending into upper air?

Against us let there be no such reproach. Freely let us breathe into our

bosoms some portion of the spirit of the dead. If we live near no

church-yard, let us visit one—Mesmerically, if you please. Now we are on

the way. We see narrow streets and many people; most of the faces that we

meet are pale. Here is a walking funeral; we follow with it to the

church-yard. A corner is turned, and there is another funeral to be

perceived at no great distance in advance. Our walkers trot. The other

party, finding itself almost overtaken, sets off with a decent run. Our

party runs. There is a race for prior attention when they reach the

ground. We become interested. We perceive that one undertaker wears

gaiters, and the other straps. We trot behind them, betting with each

other, you on Gaiters, I on Straps. I win; a _Deus ex machinâ_ saves me,

or I should have lost. An over-goaded ox rushes bewildered round a corner,

charges and overthrows the foremost coffin; it is broken, and the body is

exposed—its white shroud flaps upon the mud. This has occurred once, I

know; and how much oftener, I know not. So Gaiters pioneers his party to

the nearest undertaker for repairs, and we follow the triumphant

procession to the church-yard. The minister there meets it, holding his

white handkerchief most closely to his nose: the mourners imitate him,

sick and sorrowful. Your toe sticks in a bit of carrion, as we pass near

the grave and seek the sexton. He is a pimpled man, who moralizes much;

but his morality is maudlin. He is drunk. He is accustomed to antagonize

the “spirits” of the dead with spirits from the “Pig and Whistle.” Here

let the _séance_ end.

At home again, let us remark upon a striking fact. Those poor creatures

whom we saw in sorrow by the grave, believed that they were sowing flesh

to immortality—and so they were. They did not know that they were also

sowing coffee. By a trustworthy informant, I am taught that of the old

coffin-wood dug up out of the crowded church-yards, a large quantity that

is not burned, is dried and ground; and that ground coffee is therewith

adulterated in a wholesale manner. It communicates to cheap coffee a good

color; and puts Body into it, there can be no doubt of that. It will be a

severe blow to the trade in British coffees if intramural interment be

forbidden. We shall be driven to depend upon distant planters for what now

can be produced in any quantity at home.

Remember the largeness of the interests involved. Within the last thirty

years, a million and a half of corpses have been hidden under ground, in

patches, here and there, among the streets of London. This pasturage we

have enjoyed from our youth up, and it is threatened now to put us off our

feed.

I say no more, for better arguments than these can not be urged on behalf

of the maintenance of City grave-yards. Possibly these may not prevail.

Yet never droop. Nevertheless, without despairing, take a house in the

vicinity of such a garden of the dead. If our lawgivers should fear the

becoming neighborly with Dante’s Cordelier, and therefore absolutely

interdict more burials in London, still you are safe. They shall not

trample on the graves that are. We can agitate, and we will agitate

successfully against their asphalte. Let the City be mindful of its old

renown; let Vestries rally round Sir Peter Laurie, and there may be yet

secured to you, for seven years to come, an atmosphere which shall assist

in making Home Unhealthy.

III. Spending A Very Pleasant Evening.

By the consent of antiquity, it is determined that Pain shall be

doorkeeper to the house of Pleasure. In Europe Purgatory led to Paradise;

and, had St. Symeon lived among us now, he would have earned heaven, if

the police permitted, by praying for it, during thirty years, upon the

summit of a lamp-post. In India the Fakir was beatified by standing on his

head, under a hot sun, beset with roasting bonfires. In Greenland the soul

expected to reach bliss by sliding for five days down a rugged rock,

wounding itself, and shivering with cold. The American Indians sought

happiness through castigation, and considered vomits the most expeditious

mode of enforcing self-denial on the stomach. Some tribes of Africans

believe, that on the way to heaven every man’s head is knocked against a

wall. By consent of mankind, therefore, it is granted that we must pass

Pain on the way to Pleasure.

What Pleasure is, when reached, none but the dogmatical can venture to

determine. To Greenlanders, a spacious fish-kettle, forever simmering, in

which boiled seals forever swim, is the delight of heaven. And remember

that, in the opinion of M. Bailly, Adam and Eve gardened in Nova Zembla.

You will not be surprised, therefore, if I call upon you to prepare for

your domestic pleasures with a little suffering; nor, when I tell you what

such pleasures are, must you exclaim against them as absurd. Having the

sanction of our forefathers, they are what is fashionable now, and

consequently they are what is fit.

I propose, then, that you should give, for the entertainment of your

friends, an Evening Party; and as this is a scene in which young ladies

prominently figure, I will, if you please, on this occasion, pay

particular attention to your daughter.

O mystery of preparation!—Pardon, sir. You err if you suppose me to

insinuate that ladies are more careful over personal adornment than the

gentlemen. When men made a display of manhood, wearing beards, it is

recorded that they packed them, when they went to bed, in pasteboard

cases, lest they might be tumbled in the night. Man at his grimmest is as

vain as woman, even when he stalks about bearded and battle-axed. This is

the mystery of preparation in your daughter’s case: How does she breathe?

You have prepared her from childhood for the part she is to play to-night,

by training her form into the only shape which can be looked at with

complacency in any ball-room. A machine, called stays, introduced long

since into England by the Normans, has had her in its grip from early

girlhood. She has become pale, and—only the least bit—liable to be blue

about the nose and fingers.

Stays are an excellent contrivance; they give a material support to the

old cause, Unhealthiness at Home. This is the secret of their excellence.

A woman’s ribs are narrow at the top, and as they approach the waist they

widen, to allow room for the lungs to play within them. If you can prevent

the ribs from widening, you can prevent the lungs from playing, which they

have no right to do, and make them work. This you accomplish by the agency

of stays. It fortunately happens that these lungs have work to do—the

putting of the breath of life into the blood—which they are unable to do

properly when cramped for space; it becomes about as difficult to them as

it would be to you to play the trombone in a china closet. By this

compression of the chest, ladies are made nervous, and become unfit for

much exertion; they do not, however, allow us to suppose that they have

lost flesh. There is a fiction of attire which would induce, in a

speculative critic, the belief that some internal flame had caused their

waists to gutter, and that the ribs had all run down into a lump which

protrudes behind under the waistband. This appearance is, I think, a

fiction; and for my opinion I have newspaper authority. In the papers it

was written, one day last year, that the hump alluded to was tested with a

pin, upon the person of a lady, coming from the Isle of Man, and it was

found not to be sensitive. Brandy exuded from the wound; for in that case

the projection was a bladder, in which the prudent housewife was smuggling

comfort in a quiet way. The touch of a pin changed all into discomfort,

when she found that she was converted into a peripatetic

watering-can—brandying-can, I should have said.

Your daughter comes down stairs dressed, with a bouquet, at a time when

the dull seeker of Health and Strength would have her to go up stairs with

a bed-candlestick. Your guests arrive. Young ladies, thinly clad and

packed in carriages, emerge, half-stifled; put a cold foot, protected by a

filmy shoe, upon the pavement, and run, shivering, into your house. Well,

sir, we’ll warm them presently. But suffer me to leave you now, while you

receive your guests.

I know a Phyllis, fresh from the country, who gets up at six and goes to

bed at ten; who knows no perfume but a flower-garden, and has worn no

bandage to her waist except a sash. She is now in London, and desires to

do as others do. She is invited to your party, but is not yet come; it may

be well for me to call upon her. Why, in the name of Newgate, what is

going on? She is shrieking “Murder!” on the second floor. Up to the

rescue! A judicious maid directs me to the drawing-room: “It’s only miss

a-trying on her stays.”

Here we are, sir; Phyllis and I. You find the room oppressive—’tis with

perfume, Phyllis. With foul air? ah, your nice country nose detects it;

yes, there is foul air: not nasty, of course, my dear, mixed, as it here

is, with eau-de-Cologne and patchouli. Pills are not nasty, sugared. A

grain or two of arsenic in each might be not quite exactly neutralized by

sugar, but there is nothing like faith in a good digestion. Why do the

gentlemen cuddle the ladies, and spin about the room with them, like

tee-totums? Oh, Phyllis! Phyllis! let me waltz with you. There, do you not

see how it is? Faint, are you—giddy—will you fall? An ice will refresh

you. Spasms next! Phyllis, let me take you home.

Now then, sir, Phyllis has been put to bed; allow me to dance a polka with

your daughter. Frail, elegant creature that she is! A glass of wine—a

macaroon: good. Sontag, yes; and that dear novel. That was a delightful

dance; now let us promenade. The room is close; a glass of wine, an ice,

and let us get to the delicious draught in the conservatory, or by that

door. Is it not beautiful? The next quadrille—I look slily at my watch,

and Auber’s grim chorus rumbles within me, “_Voici minuit! voici minuit_!”

Another dance. How fond she seems to be of macaroons! Supper. My dear sir,

I will take good care of your daughter. One sandwich. Champagne.

Blanc-mange. Tipsey-cake. Brandy cherries. Glass of wine. A macaroon.

Trifle. Jelly. Champagne. Custard. Macaroon. The ladies are being taken

care of—Yes, now in their absence we will drink their health, and wink at

each other: their and our Bad Healths. This is the happiest moment of our

lives; at two in the morning, with a dose of indigestion in the stomach,

and three hours more to come before we get to bed. You, my dear sir, hope

that on many occasions like the present you may see your friends around

you, looking as glassy-eyed as you have made them to look now. We will

rejoin the ladies.

Nothing but Champagne could have enabled us to keep up the evening so

well. We were getting weary before supper—but we have had some wine, have

dug the spur into our sides, and on we go again. At length, even the

bottle stimulates our worn-out company no more; and then we separate.

Good-night, dear sir; we have spent a Very Pleasant Evening under your

roof.

To-morrow, when you depart from a late breakfast, having seen your

daughter’s face, and her boiled-mackerel eye, knowing that your wife is

bilious, and that your son has just gone out for soda-water, you will feel

yourself to be a Briton who has done his duty, a man who has paid

something on account of his great debt to civilized society.

IV. The Light Nuisance.

Tieck tells us, in his “History of the Schildbürger,” that the town

council of that spirited community was very wise. It had been noticed that

many worthy aldermen and common-councilors were in the habit of looking

out of window when they ought to be attending to their duties. A vote was

therefore, on one occasion, passed by a large majority, to this effect,

namely—Whereas the windows of the Town-hall are a great impediment to the

dispatch of public business, it is ordered that before the next day of

meeting they be all bricked up. When the next day of meeting came, the

worthy representatives of Schildbürg were surprised to find themselves

assembling in the dark. Presently, accepting the unlooked-for fact, they

settled down into an edifying discussion of the question, whether darkness

was not more convenient for their purposes than daylight. Had you and I

been there, my friend, our votes in the division would have been, like the

vote in our own House of Commons a few days ago, for keeping out the Light

Nuisance as much as possible. Darkness is better than daylight, certainly.

Now this admits of proof. For, let me ask, where do you find the best part

of a lettuce?—not in the outside leaves. Which are the choice parts of

celery?—of course, the white shoots in the middle. Why, sir? Because light

has never come to them. They become white and luxurious by tying up, by

earthing up, by any contrivance which has kept the sun at bay. It is the

same with man: while we obstruct the light by putting brick and board

where glass suggests itself, and mock the light by picturing impracticable

windows on our outside walls—so that our houses stare about like blind men

with glass eyes—while this is done, we sit at home and blanch, we become

in our dim apartments pale and delicate, we grow to look refined, as

gentlemen and ladies ought to look. Let the sanitary doctor, at whose head

we have thrown lettuces, go to the botanist and ask him, How, is this? Let

him come back and tell us, Oh, gentlemen, in these vegetables the natural

juices are not formed when you exclude the light. The natural juices in

the lettuce or in celery are flavored much more strongly than our tastes

would relish, and therefore we induce in these plants an imperfect

development, in order to make them eatable. Very well. The natural juices

in a man are stronger than good taste can tolerate. Man requires

horticulture to be fit to come to table. To rear the finer sorts of human

kind, one great operation necessary is to banish light as much as

possible.

Ladies know that. To keep their faces pale, they pull the blinds down in

their drawing-rooms, they put a vail between their countenances and the

sun when they go out, and carry, like good soldiers, a great shield on

high, by name a Parasol, to ward his darts off. They know better than to

let the old god kiss them into color, as he does the peaches. They choose

to remain green fruit: and we all know that to be a delicacy.

Yet there are men among us daring to propose that there shall no longer be

protection against light; men who would tax a house by its capaciousness,

and let the sun shine into it unhindered. The so-called sanitary people

really seem to look upon their fellow-creatures as so many cucumbers. But

we have not yet fallen so far back in our development. Disease is a

privilege. Those only who know the tender touch of a wife’s hand, the

quiet kiss, the soothing whisper, can appreciate its worth. All who are

not dead to the tenderest emotions will lament the day when light is

turned on without limit in our houses. We have no wish to be blazed upon.

Frequently pestilence itself avoids the sunny side of any street, and

prefers walking in the shade. Nay, even in one building, as in the case of

a great barrack at St. Petersburg, there will be three calls made by

disease upon the shady side of the establishment for every one visit that

it pays to the side brightened by the sun; and this is known to happen

uniformly, for a series of years. Let us be warned, then. There must be no

increase of windows in our houses; let us curtain those we have, and keep

our blinds well down. Let morning sun or afternoon sun fire no volleys in

upon us. Faded curtains, faded carpets, all ye blinds forbid! But faded

faces are desirable. It is a cheering spectacle on summer afternoons to

see the bright rays beating on a row of windows, all the way down a

street, and failing to find entrance any where. Who wants more windows? Is

it not obvious that, when daylight really comes, every window we possess

is counted one too many? If we could send up a large balloon into the sky,

with Mr. Braidwood and a fire-engine, to get the flames of the sun under,

just a little bit, that would be something rational. More light, indeed!

More water next, no doubt! As if it were not perfectly notorious that in

the articles of light, water, and air, Nature outran the constable. We

have to keep out light with blinds and vails, and various machinery, as we

would keep out cockroaches with wafers; we keep out air with pads and

curtains; and still there are impertinent reformers clamoring to increase

our difficulty, by giving us more windows to protect against the inroads

of those household nuisances.

I call upon consistent Englishmen to make a stand against these

innovators. There is need of all our vigor. In 1848, the repeal of the

window-tax was scouted from the Commons by a sensible majority of

ninety-four. In 1850, the good cause has triumphed only by a precarious

majority of three. The exertions of right-thinking men will not be

wanting, when the value and importance of a little energetic labor is once

clearly perceived.

What is it that the sanitary agitators want? To tan and freckle all their

countrywomen, and to make Britons apple-faced? The Persian hero, Rustum,

when a baby, exhausted seven nurses, and was weaned upon seven sheep a

day, when he was of age for spoon-meat. Are English babies to be Rustums?

When Rustum’s mother, Roubadah, from a high tower first saw and admired

her future husband Zal, she let her ringlets fall, and they were long, and

reached unto the ground; and Zal climbed up by them, and knelt down at her

feet, and asked to marry her. Are British ladies to be strengthened into

Roubadahs, with hair like a ship’s cable, up which husbands may clamber?

In the present state of the mania for public health, it is quite time that

every patriotic man should put these questions seriously to his

conscience.

One topic more. Let it clearly be understood, that against artificial

light we can make no objection. Between sun and candle there are more

contrasts than the mere difference in brilliancy. The light which comes

down from the sky not only eats no air out of our mouths, but it comes

charged with mysterious and subtle principles which have a purifying,

vivifying power. It is a powerful ally of health, and we make war against

it. But artificial light contains no sanitary marvels. When the gas

streams through half a dozen jets into your room, and burns there and

gives light; when candles become shorter and shorter, until they are

“burnt out” and seen no more; you know what happens. Nothing in Nature

ceases to exist. Your camphine has left the lamp, but it has not vanished

out of being. Nor has it been converted into light. Light is a visible

action; and candles are no more converted into light when they are

burning, than breath is converted into speech when you are talking. The

breath, having produced speech, mixes with the atmosphere; gas, camphine,

candles, having produced light, do the same. If you saw fifty wax-lights

shrink to their sockets last week in an unventilated ball-room, yet,

though invisible, they had not left you; for their elements were in the

room, and you were breathing them. Their light had been a sign that they

were combining chemically with the air; in so combining they were changed,

but they became a poison. Every artificial light is, of necessity, a

little workshop for the conversion of gas, oil, spirit, or candle into

respirable poison. Let no sanitary tongue persuade you that the more we

have of such a process, the more need we have of ventilation. Ventilation

is a catchword for the use of agitators, in which it does not become any

person of refinement to exhibit interest.

The following hint will be received thankfully by gentlemen who would be

glad to merit spectacles. To make your eyes weak, use a fluctuating light;

nothing can be better adapted for your purpose than what are called

“mould” candles. The joke of them consists in this, they begin with giving

you sufficient light; but, as the wick grows, the radiance lessens, and

your eye gradually accommodates itself to the decrease: suddenly they are

snuffed, and your eye leaps back to its original adjustment, there begins

another slide, and then leaps back again. Much practice of this kind

serves very well as a familiar introduction to the use of glasses.

V. Passing The Bottle.

A brass button from the coat of Saint Peter, was at one time shown to

visitors among the treasures of a certain church in Nassau; possibly some

traveler of more experience may have met with a false collar from the

wardrobe of Saint Paul. The intellect displayed of old by holy saints and

martyrs, we may reasonably believe to have surpassed the measure of a

bishop’s understanding in the present day; for we have the authority of

eyesight and tradition in asserting that the meanest of those ancient

worthies possessed not less than three skulls, and that a great saint must

have had so very many heads, that it would have built the fortune of a man

to be his hatter. Perhaps some of these relics are fictitious;

nevertheless, they are the boast of their possessors; they are exhibited

as genuine, and thoroughly believed to be so. Sir, did your stomach never

suggest to you that doctored elder-berry of a recent brew had been

uncorked with veneration at some dinner-table as a bottle of old port?

Have you experience of any festive friend, who can commit himself to doubt

about the age and genuineness of his wine? The cellar is the social

relic-chamber; every bin rejoices in a most veracious legend; and, whether

it be over wine or over relics that we wonder, equal difficulties start up

to obstruct our faith.

Our prejudices, for example, run so much in favor of one-headed men, that

we can scarcely entertain the notion of a saint who had six night-caps to

put on when he went to bed, and when he got up in the morning had six

beards to shave. Knowing that the Russians, by themselves, drink more

Champagne than France exports, and that it must rain grapes at Hockheim

before that place can yield all the wine we English label Hock, and

haunted as we are by the same difficulty when we look to other kinds of

foreign wine, we feel a justified suspicion that the same glass of

“genuine old port” can not be indulged in simultaneously by ten people. If

only one man of the number drinks it, what is that eidolon which delights

the other nine?

When George the Fourth was Regent, he possessed a small store of the

choicest wine, and never called for it. There were some gentlemen in his

establishment acquainted with its merits; these took upon themselves to

rescue it from undeserved neglect. Then the prince talked about his

treasure—when little remained thereof except the bottles; and it was to be

produced at a forthcoming dinner-party. The gentlemen, who knew its

flavor, visited the vaults of an extensive wine-merchant, and there they

vainly sought to look upon its like again. “In those dim solitudes and

awful cells” they, groaning in spirit, made a confessor of the merchant,

who, for a fee, engaged to save them from the wrath to come. As an artist

in wine, having obtained a sample of the stuff required, this dealer

undertook to furnish a successful imitation. So he did; for, having filled

those bottles with a wondrous compound, he sent them to the palace just

before the fateful dinner-hour, exhorting the conspirators to take heed

how they suffered any to be left. The compound would become a tell-tale

after twelve hours’ keeping. The prince that evening enjoyed his wine.

The ordinary manufacture of choice wine for people who are not princes,

requires the following ingredients: for the original fluid, cider, or

Common cape, raisin, grape, parsnip, or elder wine; a wine made of rhubarb

(for Champagne); to these may be added water. A fit stock having been

chosen, strength, color, and flavor may be grafted on it. Use is made of

these materials: for color-burnt sugar, logwood, cochineal, red sanders

wood, or elder-berries. Plain spirit or brandy for strength. For nutty

flavor, bitter almonds. For fruitiness, Dantzic spruce. For fullness or

smoothness, honey. For port-wine flavor, tincture of the seeds of raisins.

For bouquet, orris root or ambergris. For roughness or dryness, alum, oak

sawdust, rhatany or kino. It is not necessary that an imitation should

contain one drop of the wine whose name it bears; but a skillful

combination of the true and false is desirable, if price permit. Every

pint of the pure wine thus added to a mixture is, of course, so much

abstracted from the stock of unadulterated juice.

You will perceive, therefore, that a free use of wine, not highly priced,

is likely to assist us very much in our endeavors to establish an

unhealthy home. Fill your cellar with bargains; be a genuine John Bull;

invite your friends, and pass the bottle.

There is hope for us also in the recollection, that if chance force upon

us a small stock of wine that has not been, in England, under the doctor’s

hands, we know not what may have been done to it abroad. The botanist,

Robert Fortune, was in China when the Americans deluged the Chinese market

with their orders for Young Hyson tea. The Chinese very promptly met the

whole demand; and Fortune in his “Wanderings” has told us how. He found

his way to a Young Hyson manufactory, where coarse old Congou leaves were

being chopped, and carefully manipulated by those ingenious merchants the

Chinese. But it is in human nature for other folks than the Chinese to be

ingenious in such matters. We may, therefore, make up our minds that,

since the demand for wine from certain celebrated vineyards, largely

exceeds all possibility of genuine supply, since, also, every man who asks

is satisfied, it is inevitable that the great majority of wine-drinkers

are satisfied with a factitious article. The chances are against our very

often meeting with a glass of port that has not taken physic. So, let us

never drink dear wine, nor ask a chemist what is in our bottles. Enough

that they contain for us delightful poison.

That name for wine, “delightful poison,” is not new. It is as old as the

foundation of Persepolis. Jemsheed was fond of grapes, Ferdusi tells, and

once, when grapes went out of season, stored up for himself some jars of

grape-juice. After a while he went to seek for a refreshing draught; then

fermentation was in progress; and he found his juice abominably nasty. A

severe stomach-ache induced him to believe that the liquor had acquired,

in some way, dangerous qualities, and, therefore, to avoid accidents, he

labeled each jar, “Poison.” More time elapsed, and then one of his wives,

in trouble of soul, weary of life, resolved to put an end to her

existence. Poison was handy: but a draught transformed her trouble into

joy; more of it stupefied, but did not kill her. That woman kept a secret:

she alone exhausted all the jars. Jemsheed then found them to be empty.

Explanations followed. The experiment was tried once more, and wine, being

so discovered, was thereafter entitled “the delightful poison.” What

Jemsheed would have said to a bottle of port out of our friend Hoggin’s

cellar—but I tread on sacred ground.

Of good wine health requires none, though it will tolerate a little. Our

prospect, therefore, when the bottle passes briskly, is encouraging. Is

the wine good, we may expect some indigestion; is it bad, who can tell

what disorders we may not expect? Hoggins, I know, drinks more than a

quart without disordering his stomach. He has long been a supporter of the

cause we are now advocating, and therein finds one of his rewards. It is

not safe to pinch a tiger’s tail; yet, when the animal is sick, perhaps he

will not bite although you tread upon it heavily. Healthy men and healthy

stomachs tolerate no oppression.

London is full now; elsewhere country folks come out of doors, invited by

fine weather. Walk where you will, in country or in town, and look at all

the faces that you meet. Traverse the Strand, and Regent-street, and

Holborn, and Cheapside; get into a boat at London bridge, steam to

Gravesend, and look at your fellow-passengers: examine where you will, the

stamp of our civilization, sickliness, is upon nine people in any ten.

There are good reasons why this should be so, and so let it continue. We

have excluded sanitary calculations from our social life; we have had

hitherto unhealthy homes, and we will keep them. Bede tells of a Mercian

noble on his death-bed, to whom a ghost exhibited a scrap of paper, upon

which were written his good deeds; then the door opened, and an

interminable file of ghosts brought in a mile or two of scroll, whereon

his misdeeds were all registered, and made him read them. Our wars against

brute health are glorious, and we rejoice to feel that of such sins we

have no scanty catalogue; we are content with our few items of mere

sanitary virtue. As for sanitary reformers, they are a company of Danaids;

they may get some of us into their sieve, but we shall soon slip out

again. When a traveler proposed, at Ghadames in the Sahara, to put up a

lantern here and there of nights among the pitch-dark streets, the people

said his notion might be good, but that, as such things never had been

tried before, it would be presumptuous to make the trial of them now. The

traveler, a Briton, must have felt quite at home when he heard that

objection. Amen, then; with the Ghadamese, we say, Let us have no New

Lights.

VI. Art Against Appetite.

The object of food is, to support the body in its natural development that

it may reach a reasonable age without becoming too robust. Civilization

can instruct us so to manage, that a gentle dissolution tread upon the

heels of growth, that, as Metastasio hath it,

—“dalle fasce,

Si comincia a morir quando si nasce.”(2)

An infant’s appetite is all for milk; but art suggests a few additions to

that lamentably simple diet. A lady not long since complacently informed

her medical attendant that, for the use of a baby, then about eight months

old she had spent nine pounds in “Infant’s Preservative.” Of this, or of

some like preparation, the advertisements tells us that it compels Nature

to be orderly, and that all infants take it with greediness. So we have

even justice to the child. Pet drinks Preservative; papa drinks Port.

Then there is “farinaceous food.” Here, for a purpose, we must interpolate

a bit of science. There is a division of food into two great classes,

nourishment and fuel. Nourishment is said to exist chiefly in animal flesh

and blood, and in vegetable compounds which exactly correspond thereto,

called vegetable fibrine, albumen, and caseine. Fuel exists in whatever

contains much carbon: fat and starchy vegetables, potatoes, gum, sugar,

alcoholic liquors. If a person take more nourishment than he wants, it is

said to be wasted; if he take more fuel than he wants, part of it is

wasted, and part of it the body stacks away as fat. These men of science

furthermore assert, that the correct diet of a healthy man must contain

eight parts of fuel food to one of nourishment. This preserves

equilibrium, they say—suits, therefore, an adult; the child which has to

become bigger as it lives has use for an excess of nourishment. And so one

of the doctors, Dr. R.D. Thomson, gives this table; it has been often

copied. The proportion of nourishment to fuel is in

Milk (food for a 1 to 2.

growing animal)

Beans 1 to

2-1/2.

Oatmeal 1 to 5.

Barley 1 to 7.

Wheat flour (food 1 to 8.

for an animal at

rest)

Potatoes 1 to 9.

Rice 1 to 10.

Turnips 1 to 11.

Arrow-root, tapioca, 1 to 26.

sago

Starch 1 to 40.

Very well, gentlemen, we take your facts. As ægritudinary men, we know

what use to make of them. We will give infants farinaceous food;

arrow-root, tapioca, and the like; quite ready to be taught by you that so

we give one particle of nourishment in twenty-six. Tell us, this diet is

like putting leeches on a child. We are content. Leeches give a delicate

whiteness that we are thankful to be able to obtain with out the biting or

the bloodshed.

Sanitary people will allow a child, up to its seventh year, nothing beyond

bread, milk, water, sugar, light meat broth, without fat, and fresh meat

for its dinner—when it is old enough to bite it—with a little well-cooked

vegetable. They confine a child, poor creature, to this miserable fare;

permitting, in due season, only a pittance of the ripest fruit.

They would give children, while they are growing, oatmeal and milk for

breakfast, made into a porridge. They would deny them beer. You know how

strengthening that is, and yet these people say that there is not an ounce

of meat in a whole bucketful. They would deny them comfits, cakes, wine,

pastry, and grudge them nuts; but our boys shall rebel against all this.

We will teach them to regard cake as bliss, and wine as glory; we will

educate them to a love of tarts. Once let our art secure over the stomach

its ascendency, and the civilized organ acquires new desires. Vitiated

cravings, let the sanitary doctors call them; let them say that children

will eat garbage, as young women will eat chalk and coals, not because it

is their nature so to do, but because it is a symptom of disordered

function. We know nothing about function. Art against Appetite has won the

day, and the pale face of civilization is established.

Plain sugar, it is a good thing to forbid our children; there is something

healthy in their love of it. Suppose we tell them that it spoils the

teeth. They know no better; we do. We know that the negroes, who in a

great measure live upon sugar, are quite famous for their sound white

teeth; and Mr. Richardson tells us of tribes among the Arabs of Sahara,

whose beautiful teeth he lauds, that they are in the habit of keeping

about them a stick of sugar in a leathern case, which they bring out from

time to time for a suck, as we bring out the snuff-box for a pinch. But we

will tell our children that plain sugar spoils the teeth; sugar mixed with

chalk or verdigris, or any other mess—that is to say, civilized sugar—they

are welcome to.

And for ourselves, we will eat any thing. The more our cooks, with spice,

with druggery and pastry, raise our wonder up, the more we will approve

their handicraft. We will excite the stomach with a peppered soup; we will

make fish indigestible with melted butter, and correct the butter with

cayenne. We will take sauces, we will drink wine, we will drink beer, we

will eat pie-crust, we will eat indescribable productions—we will take

celery, and cheese, and ale—we will take liqueur—we will take wine and

olives and more wine, and oranges and almonds, and any thing else that may

present itself, and we will call all that our dinner, and for such the

stomach shall accept it. We will eat more than we need, but will compel an

appetite. Art against Appetite forever.

Sanitary people bear ill-will to pie-crust; they teach that butter, after

being baked therein, becomes a compound hateful to the stomach. We will

eat pies, we will eat pastry, we will eat—we would eat M. Soyer himself in

a tart, if it were possible.

We will uphold London milk. Mr. Rugg says that it is apt to contain chalk,

the brains of sheep, oxen, and cows, flour, starch, treacle, whiting,

sugar of lead, arnotto, size, etc. Who cares for Mr. Rugg? London milk is

better than country milk, for London cows are town cows. They live in a

city, in close sheds, in our own dear alleys—are consumptive—they are

delightful cows; only their milk is too strong, it requires watering and

doctoring, and then it is delicious milk.

Tea we are not quite sure about. Some people say that because tea took so

sudden a hold upon the human appetite, because it spread so widely in so

short a time, that therefore it supplies a want: its use is natural.

Liebig suggests that it supplies a constituent of bile. I think rather

that its use has become general because it causes innocent intoxication.

Few men are not glad to be made cheerful harmlessly. For this reason I

think it is that the use of tea and coffee has become popular; and since

whatever sustains cheerfulness advances health—the body working with good

will under a pleasant master—tea does our service little good. In excess,

no doubt, it can be rendered hurtful (so can bread and butter); but the

best way of pressing it into employment, as an ægritudinary aid, is by the

practice of taking it extremely hot. A few observations upon the

temperature at which food is refused by all the lower animals, will soon

convince you that in man—not as regards tea only, but in a great many

respects—Art has established her own rule, and that the Appetite of Nature

has been conquered.

We have a great respect for alcoholic liquors. It has been seen that the

excess of these makes fat; they, therefore, who have least need of fat,

according to our rules, are those who have most need of wine and beer.

Of ordinary meats there is not much to say, We have read of Dr. Beaumont’s

servant, who had an open musket-hole leading into his stomach, through

which the doctor made experiments. Many experiments were made, and tables

drawn of no great value on the digestibility of divers kinds of meat.

Climate and habit are, on such points, paramount. Pig is pollution to the

children of the Sun, the Jew, and Mussulman; but children of winter, the

Scandinavians, could not imagine Paradise complete without it. Schrimner,

the sacred hog, cut up daily and eaten by the tenants of Walhalla,

collected his fragments in the night, and was in his sty again ready for

slaughter the next morning. These things concern us little, for it is not

with plain meat that we have here to do, but with the noble art of

Cookery. That art, which once obeyed and now commands our appetite, which

is become the teacher where it was the taught, we duly reverence. When

ægritudinary science shall obtain its college, and when each Unhealthy

Course shall have its eminent professor to teach Theory and Practice—then

we shall have a Court of Aldermen for Patrons, a Gravedigger for

Principal, and a Cook shall be Dean of Faculty.

VII. The Water Party.

Water rains from heaven, and leaps out of the earth; it rolls about the

land in rivers, it accumulates in lakes; three-fourths of the whole

surface of the globe is water; yet there are men unable to be clean. “God

loveth the clean,” said Mahomet. He was a sanitary reformer; he was a

notorious impostor; and it is our duty to resist any insidious attempt to

introduce his doctrines.

There are in London districts of filth which speak to us—through the

nose—in an emphatic manner. Their foul air is an atmosphere of charity;

for we pass through it pitying the poor. Burke said of a certain miser to

whom an estate was left, “that now, it was to be hoped, he would set up a

pocket-handkerchief.” We hope, of the miserable, that when they come into

their property they may be able to afford themselves a little lavender and

musk. We might be willing to subscribe for the correction now and then,

with aromatic cachou, of the town’s bad breath; but water is a vulgar sort

of thing, and of vulgarity the less we have the better.

In truth, we have not much of it. We are told that in a great city Water

is maid of all work; has to assist our manufactures, to supply daily our

saucepans and our tea-kettles; has to cleanse our clothes, our persons,

and our houses; to provide baths, to wash our streets, and to flood away

the daily refuse of the people, with their slaughter-houses, markets,

hospitals, &c. Our dozen reservoirs in London yield a supply daily

averaging thirty gallons to each head—which goes partly to make swamps,

partly to waste, partly to rot, as it is used in tubs or cisterns. Rome in

her pride used once to supply water at the rate of more than three hundred

gallons daily to each citizen. That was excess. In London half a million

of people get no water at all into their houses; but as those people live

in the back settlements, and keep out of our sight, their dirt is no great

matter of concern. We, for our own parts, have enough to cook with, have

whereof to drink, wherewith to wash our feet sometimes, to wet our fingers

and the corner of a towel—we inquire no further. Drainage and all such

topics involve details positively nasty, and we blush for any of our

fellow-citizens who take delight in chattering about them.

We are told to regard the habits of an infant world. London, the brain of

a vast empire, is advised now to forget her civilization, and to go back

some thousand years. We are to look at Persian aqueducts, attributed to

Noah’s great-grandson—at Carthaginians, Etruscans, Mexicans—at what Rome

did. It frets us when we are thus driven to an obvious reply. Man in an

unripe and half-civilized condition, has not found out the vulgarity of

water; for his brutish instinct is not overcome. All savages believe that

water is essential to their life and desire it in unlimited abundance.

Cultivation teaches us another life, in which our animal existence neither

gets nor merits much attention. As for the Romans, so perpetually quoted,

it was a freak of theirs to do things massively. While they were yet

almost barbarians, they built that Cloaca through which afterward Agrippa

sailed down to the Tiber in a boat. Who wishes to see His Worship the Lord

Mayor of London emerging in his state barge from a London sewer?

Now here is inconsistency. Thirty million gallons of corruption are added

daily by our London sewers to the Thames: that is one object of complaint,

good in itself, because we drink Thames water. But in the next breath it

is complained that a good many million gallons more should be poured out;

that there are three hundred thousand cesspools more to be washed up; that

as much filth as would make a lake six feet in depth, a mile long, and a

thousand feet across, lies under London stagnant; and they would wish this

also to be swept into the river. I heard lately of a gentleman who is

tormented with the constant fancy that he has a scorpion down his back. He

asks every neighbor to put in his hand and fetch it out, but no amount of

fetching out ever relieves him. That is a national delusion. Our

enlightened public is much troubled with such scorpions. Sanitary writers

are infested with them.

They also say, That in one-half of London people drink Thames water; and

in the other half, get water from the Chadwell spring and River Lea. That

the River Lea, for twenty miles, flows through a densely-peopled district.

and is, in its passage, drenched with refuse matter from the population on

its banks. That there is added to Thames water the waste of two hundred

and twenty cities, towns, and villages; and that between Richmond and

Waterloo-bridge more than two hundred sewers discharge into it their fetid

matter. That the washing to and fro of tide secures the arrival of a large

portion of filth from below Westminster, at Hammersmith; effects a perfect

mixture, which is still farther facilitated by the splashing of the

steamboats. Mr. Hassal has published engravings of the microscopic aspect

of water taken from companies which suck the river up at widely-separated

stages of its course through town—so tested, one drop differs little from

another in the degree of its impurity. They tell us that two companies—the

Lambeth and West Middlesex—supply Thames Mixture to subscribers as it

comes to them; but that others filter more or less. They say that

filtering can expurge nothing but mechanical impurities, while the

dissolved pollution which no filter can extract is that part which

communicates disease. We know this; well, and what then? There are

absurdities so lifted above ridicule, that Momus himself would spoil part

of the fun if he attempted to trangress beyond a naked statement of them.

What do the members of this Water Party want? I’ll tell you what I verily

believe they are insane enough to look for.

They would, if possible, forsake Thames water, calling it dirty, saying it

is hard. So hard they say it is, that it requires three spoonfuls of tea

instead of two in every man’s pot, two pounds of soap for one in every

man’s kitchen. So they would fetch soft water from a Gathering Ground in

Surrey, adopting an example set in Lancashire; from rain-fall on the

heaths between Bagshot and Farnham, and from tributaries of the River Wey,

they would collect water in covered reservoirs, and bring it by A COVERED

AQUEDUCT to London. In London, they would totally abolish cisterns, and

all intermittence of supply. Water in London they would have to be, as at

Nottingham, accessible in all rooms at all times. They would have water,

at high pressure, climbing about every house in every court and alley.

They would place water, so to speak, at the finger’s end, limiting no

household as to quantity. They would enable every man to bathe. They would

revolutionize the sewer-system, and have the town washed daily, like a

good Mahometan, clean to the finger-nails. They hint that all this might

not even be expensive; that the cost of disease and degradation is so much

greater than the cost of health and self-respect, as to pay back,

possibly, our outlay, and then yield a profit to the nation. They say

that, even if it were a money loss, it would be moral gain; and they ask

whether we have not spent millions, ere now, upon less harmless

commodities than water?

An ingenious fellow had a fiddle—all, he said, made out of his own head;

and wood enough was left to make another. He must have been a sanitary

man; his fiddle was a crotchet. Still farther to illustrate their own

capacity of fiddle-making, these good but misguided people have been

rooting up some horrible statistics of the filth and wretchedness which

our back-windows overlook, with strange facts anent fever, pestilence, and

the communication of disease. All this I purposely suppress; it is

peculiarly disagreeable. Delicate health we like, and will learn gladly

how to obtain it; but results we are content with, and can spare the

details, when those details bring us into contact, even upon paper, with

the squalid classes.

If these outcries of the Water Party move the public to a thirst for

change, it would be prudent for us ægritudinary men not rashly to swim

against the current. Let us adopt a middle course, a patronizing tone. It

is in our favor that a large number of the facts which these our foes have

to produce, are, by a great deal too startling to get easy credit. A

single Pooh! has in it more semblance of reason than a page of facts, when

revelations of neglected hygiene are on the carpet. If the case of the

Sanitary Reformers had been only half as well made out, it would be twice

as well supported.

VIII. Filling The Grave.

M. Boutigny has published an account of some experiments which go to prove

that we may dip our fingers into liquid metal with impunity. Professor

Plücker, of Bonn, has amply confirmed Boutigny’s results, and in his

report hints a conclusion that henceforth “certain minor operations in

surgery may be performed with least pain by placing the foot in a bath of

red-hot iron.” Would you not like to see Professor Plücker, with his

trowsers duly tucked up, washing his feet in a pailful of this very

soothing fluid? And would it not be a fit martyrdom for sanitary doctors,

if we could compel them also to sacrifice their legs in a cause, kin to

their own, of theory and innovation? As Alderman Lawrence shrewdly

remarked the other day, from his place in the Guildhall, the sanitary

reform cry is “got up.” That is the reason why, in his case, it does not

go down. He, for his own part, did not disapprove the flavor of a

church-yard, and appeared to see no reason why it should be cheated of its

due. The sanitary partisans, he said, were paid for making certain

statements. It would be well if we could cut off their supply of

halfpence, and so silence them. Liwang, an ancient Emperor of China,

fearing insurrection, forbade all conversation, even whispering, in his

dominions. It would be well for us if Liwang lived now as our Secretary

for the Home Department. There is too much talking—is there not, Mr.

Carlyle? We want Liwang among us. However, as matters stand, it is bad

enough for the sanitary reformers. “They drop their arms and tremble when

they hear,” they are despised by Alderman Lawrence.(3)

Let us uphold our city grave-yards; on that point we have already spoken

out. Let us not cheat them of their pasturage; if any man fall sick, when,

so to speak, his grave is dug, let us not lift him out of it by

misdirected care. That topic now engages our attention.

There is a report among the hear-say stories of Herodotus, touching some

tribe of Scythians, that when one of them gets out of health, or passes

forty years of age, his friends proceed to slaughter him, lest he become

diseased, tough, or unfit for table. These people took their ancestors

into their stomachs, we take ours into our lungs—and herein we adopt the

better plan, because it is the more unwholesome. We are content, also, now

and then to let our friends grow old, although we may repress the tendency

to age as much as possible. We do not absolutely kill our neighbors when

they sicken; yet by judicious nursing we may frequently keep down a too

great buoyancy of health, and check recovery. How to produce this last

effect I will now tell you. Gentle mourners, do not chide me as

irreverent—

“Auch ich war in Arkadien geboren,”

bear with me, then, and let me give my hints concerning ægritudinary

sick-room discipline.

Of the professional nurse I will say nothing. You, of course, have put

down Mrs. Gamp’s address.

A sick-room should, in the first place, be made dark. Light, I have said

before, is, in most cases, curative. It is a direct swindling of the

doctor when we allow blinds to be pulled up, and so admit into the

patient’s room medicine for which nobody (except the tax-gatherer) is

paid.

A sick-room should, in the next place, be made sad, obtrusively sad. A

smile upon the landing must become a sigh when it has passed the patient’s

door. Our hope is to depress, to dispirit invalids. Cheerful words and

gentle laughter, more especially where there is admitted sunshine also,

are a moral food much too nutritious for the sick.

The sick-room, in its furniture as well, must have an ominous appearance.

The drawers, or a table should be decked with physic bottles. Some have a

way of thrusting all the medicine into a cupboard, out of sight, leaving a

glass of gayly-colored flowers for the wearied eyes to rest upon: this has

arisen obviously from a sanitary crotchet, and is, on no account, to be

adopted.

Then we must have the sick-room to be hot, and keep it close. A scentless

air, at summer temperature, sanitary people want; a hot, close atmosphere

is better suited to our view. Slops and all messes are to be left standing

in the room—only put out of sight—and cleared away occasionally; they are

not to be removed at once. The chamber also is to be made tidy once a day,

and once a week well cleaned: it is not to be kept in order by incessant

care, by hourly tidiness, permitting no dirt to collect.

There is an absurd sanitary dictum, which I will but name. It is, that a

patient ought to have, if possible, two beds, one for the day, and one for

night use; or else two sets of sheets, that, each set being used one day

and aired the next, the bed may be kept fresh and wholesome. Suppose our

friend were to catch cold in consequence of all this freshness!

No, we do better to avoid fresh air; nor should we vex our patient with

much washing. We will not learn to feed the sick, but send their food away

when they are unable to understand our clumsiness.

Yet, while we follow our own humor in this code of chamber practice, we

will pay tithes of mint and cummin to the men of science. We will ask

Monsieur Purgon how many grains of salt go to an egg; and if our patient

require twelve turns up and down the room, we will inquire with Argan,

whether they are to be measured by its length or breadth.

When we have added to our course some doses of religious horror, we shall

have done as much as conscience can demand of us toward filling the grave.

I may append here the remark, that if ever we do resolve to eat our

ancestors, there is the plan of a distinguished horticulturist apt for our

purpose. Mr. Loudon, I believe it was, who proposed, some years ago, the

conversion of the dead into rotation crops—that our grandfathers and

grandmothers should be converted into corn and mangel-wurzel. His

suggestion was to combine burial with farming operations. A field was to

be, during forty years, a place of interment: then the field adjacent was

to be taken for that purpose; and so on with others in rotation. A due

time having been allowed for the manure in each field to rot, the dead

were to be well worked up and gradually disinterred in the form of wheat,

or carrots, or potatoes.

Nothing appears odd to which we are accustomed. We look abroad and wonder,

but we look at home and are content. The Esquimaux believe that men dying

in windy weather are unfortunate, because their souls, as they escape,

risk being blown away. Some Negroes do not bury in the rainy season, for

they believe that then the gods, being all busy up above, can not attend

to any ceremonies. Dr. Hooker writes home from the Himalaya mountains,

that about Lake Yarou the Lamas’ bodies are exposed, and kites are

summoned to devour them by the sound of a gong and of a trumpet made out

of a human thigh-bone. Such notions from abroad arrest our notice, but we

see nothing when we look at home. We might see how we fill our sick-rooms

with a fatal gloom, and keep our dead five or six days within our houses,

to bury them, side by side and one over another, thousands together, in

the middle of our cities. However, when we do succeed in getting at a view

of our own life _ab extra_, it is a pleasant thing to find that sanitary

heresies at any rate have not struck deep root in the British soil. In an

old book of emblems there is a picture of Cupid whipping a tortoise, to

the motto that Love hates delay. If lovers of reform in sanitary matters

hate delay, it is a pity; for our good old tortoise has a famous shell,

and is not stimulated easily.

IX. The Fire And The Dressing-Room.

Against the weather all men are Protectionists—all men account it matter

of offense. What say the people of the north? A Highland preacher, one

December Sunday, in the fourth hour of his sermon—For be it known to

Englishmen who nod at church, that in the Highlands, after four good hours

of prayer and psalm, there follow four good hours of sermon. And, _nota

bene_, may it not be that the shade of our King Henry I. does penance

among Highland chapels now, for having, in his lifetime, made one Roger a

bishop because he was expert in scrambling through the services?—A

Highland pastor saw his congregation shivering. “Ah!” he shouted, “maybe

ye think this a cauld place; but, let me tell ye, hell’s far caulder!” An

English hearer afterward reproached this minister for his perversion of

the current faith. “Hout, man,” said he, “ye dinna ken the Hielanders. If

I were to tell them hell was a hot place, they’d all be laboring to go

there.” And that was true philosophy. Mythologies invented in the north,

imagined their own climate into future torture. Above, in the northern

lights, they saw a chase of miserable souls, half starved, and hunted to

and fro by ravens; below, they imagined Nastrond with its frosts and

serpents. Warmth is delightful, certainly. No doubt but sunburnt nations

picture future punishment as fire. Yes, naturally, for it is in the middle

region only that we are not wearied with extremes. What region shall we

take? Our own? When is it not too hot, too cold, too dry, too wet, or too

uncertain? Italy? There the sun breeds idle maggots. As for the poet’s

paradise, Cashmere, botanists tell us that, although, no doubt, fruits

grow luxuriantly there, they are extremely flavourless. Then it is obvious

that to abuse, antagonise, defy the weather, is one of the established

rights of man. Upon our method of defying it, our health, in some measure,

depends. How is our right to be maintained unhealthily?

Not by blind obedience to nature. We are correcting her, and must not let

her guide us. Nature considers all men savages—and savages they would be,

if they followed her. What is barbarism? Man in a state of nature. Nature,

I say, treats us almost as if we were unable to light fires, or stich for

ourselves breeches. Nature places near the hand of man in each climate a

certain food, and tyrannizes over his stomach with a certain craving.

Whales and seals delight the Esquimaux; he eats his blubber and defies the

frost. So fed, the Esquimaux woman can stand out of doors, suckling her

infant at an open breast, with the thermometer 40° below zero. As we go

south, we pass the lands of bread and beef, to reach the sultry region

wherein nature provides dates, and so forth. Even in our own range of the

seasons, nature seeks to bind us to her own routine; in winter gives an

appetite for flesh and fat, in summer takes a part of it away. We are not

puppets, and we will not be dictated to; so we stimulate the stomach, and

allow no brute instinct to tamper with our social dietary. We do here, on

a small scale, what is done, on a large scale, by our friends in India,

who pepper themselves into appetite, that they may eat, and drink, and

die. We drink exciting beverage in summer, because we are hot; we drink it

in winter, because we are cold. The fact is, we are driven to such

practices; for if we did not interfere to take the guidance of our diet

out of nature’s hands, she would make food do a large portion of the

service which civilization asks of fire and clothing. We should walk about

warm in the winter, cool in the summer, having the warmth and coolness in

ourselves. Now, it is obvious that this would never do. We must be

civilized, or we must not. Is Mr. Sangster to sell tomahawks instead of

canes? Clearly, he is not. We must so manage our homes as to create

unhealthy bodies. If we do not, society is ruined; if we do—and in

proportion as we do so—we become more and more unfit to meet vicissitudes

of weather. Then we acquire a social craving after fires, and coats, and

cloaks, and wrappers, and umbrellas, and cork soles, and muffetees, and

patent hareskins, and all the blessings of this life, upon which our

preservation must depend. These prove that we have stepped beyond the

brute. You never saw a lion with cork soles and muffetees. The tiger never

comes out, of nights, in a great coat. The eagle never soars up from his

nest with an umbrella. Man alone comprehends these luxuries; and it is

when he is least healthy that he loves them best.

In winter, then, it is not diet, and it is not exercise, that shall excite

in us a vital warmth. We will depend on artificial means; we will be

warmed, not from within, but from without. We will set ourselves about a

fire, like pies, and bake; heating the outside first. Where the fire

fails, we will depend upon the dressing-room.

If we have healthy chests, we will encase ourselves in flannel; but if we

happen to have chest complaint, we will use nothing of the sort. When we

go out, we will empanoply our persons, so that we may warm ourselves by

shutting in all exhalation from our bodies, and by husbanding what little

heat we permit nature to provide for us.

In summer we will eat rich dinners and drink wine, will cast off

three-fourths of the thickness of our winter clothing, and still be

oppressed by heat. Iced drinks shall take the place of fire.

Civilized people can not endure being much wetted. Contact of water,

during exercise, will do no harm to healthy bodies, but will spoil good

clothes. We will get damp only when we walk out in bad weather; then, when

we come home, we need no change. Evaporation from damp clothes—the act of

drying—while the body cools down, resting, and perhaps fatigued, that is

what damages the health; against that we have no objection.

Hem! No doubt it is taking a great liberty with a Briton to look over his

wardrobe. I will not trespass so far, but, my dear sir, your Hat! If we

are to have a column on our heads, let it be one in which we can feel

pride; a miniature monument; and we might put a statue on the top. Hats,

as they are now worn, would not fitly support more than a bust. Is not

this mean? On ægritudinary grounds we will uphold a hat. To keep the

edifice from taking flight before a puff of wind, it must be fitted pretty

tightly round the head, must press over the forehead and the occiput. How

much it presses, a red ring upon our flesh will often testify. Heads are

not made of putty; pressure implies impediment to certain processes

within; one of these processes is called the circulation of the blood. The

brain lies underneath our hats. Well, that is as it should be. Ladies do

not wear hats, and never will, the bonnet is so artful a contrivance for

encompassing the face with ornament; roses and lilies and

daffidowndillies, which would have sent Flora into fits, and killed her

long ago, had such a goddess ever been.

I said that there was brain under the hat; this is not always obvious, but

there is generally hair. Once upon a time, not very long ago, hair was

constructed with great labor into a huge tower upon every lady’s head,

pomatum being used by way of mortar, and this tower was repaired every

three weeks. The British matron then looked like a “mop-headed Papuan.”

The two were much alike, except in this, that while our countrywoman

triumphed in her art, the Papuan was discontented with his nature. The

ladies here, whose hair was naturally made to fall around the shoulders,

reared it up on end; but in New Guinea, fashionables born with hair that

grew of its own will into an upright bush, preferred to cut it off, and

re-arrange it in a wig directed downwards. Sometimes they do no more than

crop it close; and then, since it is characteristic of the hair in this

race to grow, not in an expanse, but in tufts, the head is said by sailors

to remind them of a worn-out shoe-brush. So, at the Antipodes as well as

here, Art is an enemy to Nature. Hair upon the head was meant originally

to preserve in all seasons an equable temperature above the brain.

Emptying grease-pots into it, and matting it together, we convert it into

an unwholesome skull-cap.

The neck? Here sanitary people say, How satisfactory it is that Englishmen

keep their necks covered with a close cravat, and do not Byronize in

opposition to the climate. That is very good; but English women, who

account themselves more delicate, don’t cover their necks, indeed they do

not at all times cover their shoulders. So traveling from top to toe, if

Englishmen wear thick shoes to protect the feet, our English women scorn

the weakness, and go, except a little fancy covering, bare-footed.

From this point I digress, to note of other garments that the English

dress, as now established, does on the whole fair credit to society. To

the good gentlemen who poetize concerning grace and the antique, who sigh

for togas, stolas, and paludaments, I say, Go to. The drapery you sigh for

was the baby-linen of the human race. Now we are out of long-clothes. The

present European dress is that which offers least impediment to action. It

shows what a Man is like, and that is more than any stranger from another

world could have detected under the upholstery to which our sculptors

cling. The merest hint of a man—shaped as God shaped him—is better than

ten miles of folded blanket. Artists cry down our costume; forgetting that

if they have not folds of drapery to paint, that is because they have in

each man every limb to which they may assign its posture. If they can put

no mind into a statue by the mastery of attitude, all the sheets in Guy’s

Hospital will not twist into a fold that shall be worth their chiseling.

With women it is different. They have both moral and æsthetic right to

drapery; and for the fashion of it, we must leave that to themselves. They

are all licensed to deal in stuffs, colors, frippery, and flounce. And to

wear rings in their ears. If ladies have good taste they can not vex us;

and that any of them can have bad taste, who shall hint? Their stays they

will abide by, as they love hysterics; them I have mentioned. I have

before also gone out of my way to speak of certain humps carried by women

on their backs, which are not healthy or unhealthy—who shall say what they

are? Are these humps allegorical? Our wives and daughters perhaps wish to

hint that they resemble camels in their patience; camels who bear their

burden through a desert world, which we, poor folk, should find it quite

impossible to travel through without them.

X. Fresh Air.

Philosophers tell us that the breath of man is poisonous; that when

collected in a jar it will kill mice, but when accumulated in a room it

will kill men. Of this there are a thousand and one tales. I decline

alluding to the Black Hole of Calcutta, but will take a specimen dug up by

some sanitary gardener from Horace Walpole’s letters. In 1742 a set of

jolly Dogberries, virtuous in their cups, resolved that every woman out

after dark ought to be locked up in the round-house. They captured

twenty-six unfortunates, and shut them in with doors and windows fastened.

The prisoners exhausted breath in screaming. One poor girl said she was

worth eighteenpence, and cried that she would give it gladly for a cup of

water. Dogberry was deaf. In the morning four were brought out dead, two

dying, and twelve in a dangerous condition. This is an argument in favor

of the new police. I don’t believe in ventilation; and will undertake

here, in a few paragraphs, to prove it nonsense.

At the very outset, let us take the ventilation-mongers on their own

ground. People of this class are always referring us to nature. Very well,

we will be natural. Do you believe, sir, that the words of that dear lady,

when she said she loved you everlastingly, were poisonous air rendered

sonorous by the action of a larynx, tongue, teeth, palate, and lips? No,

indeed; ladies, at any rate, although they claim a double share of what

the cherubs want—and, possibly, these humps, now three times spoken of,

are the concealed and missing portions of the cherubim torn from them by

the fair sex in some ancient struggle. There, now, I am again shipwrecked

on the wondrous mountains. I was about to say, that ladies, who, in some

things, surpass the cherubs, equal them in others; like them, are vocal

with ethereal tones; their breath is “the sweet south, stealing across a

bed of violets,” and that’s not poisonous, I fancy. Well, I believe the

chemists have, as yet, not detected any difference between a man’s breath,

and a woman’s; therefore, neither of them can be hurtful. But let us grant

the whole position. Breath is poisonous, but nature made it so; nature

intended it to be so. Nature made man a social animal, and, therefore,

designed that many breaths should be commingled. Why do you, lovers of the

natural, object to that arrangement?

Now let us glance at the means adopted to get rid of this our breath, this

breath of which our words are made, libeled as poisonous. Ventilation is

of two kinds, mechanical and physical. I will say something about each.

Mechanical ventilation is that which machinery produces. One of the first

recorded ventilators of this kind, was not much more extravagant in its

charges upon house-room, than some of which we hear in 1850. In 1663, H.

Schmitz published the scheme of a great fanner, which, descending through

the ceiling, moved to and fro pendulum-wise, within a mighty slit. The

movement of the fanner was established by a piece of clockwork more simple

than compact: it occupied a complete chamber overhead, and was set in

noisy motion by a heavy weight. The weight ran slowly down, pulling its

rope until it reached the parlor floor; so that a gentleman incautiously

falling asleep under it after his dinner, might awake to find himself a

pancake. Since that time we have had no lack of ingenuity at work on

forcing pumps, and sucking-pumps, and screws. The screws are admirable, on

account of the unusually startling nature, now and then, of their results.

Not long ago, a couple of fine screws were adapted to a public building;

one was to take air out, the other was to turn air in. The first screw,

unexpectedly perverse, wheeled its air inward; so did the second, but

instead of directing its draught upward, it blew down with a great gust of

contempt upon the horrified experimentalist. There is something of a screw

principle in those queer little wheels fastened occasionally in our

windows, and on footmen’s hats—query, are those the ventilating hats?—the

rooms are as much ventilated by these little tins as they would be by an

air from “Don Giovanni.” I will say nothing about pumps; nor, indeed, need

we devote more space to mechanical contrivances, since it is from other

modes of ventilation that our cause has most to fear. Only one quaint

speculation may be mentioned. It is quite certain that in the heats of

India, air is not cooled by fanning, nor is it cooled judiciously by

damping it. Professor Piazzi Smyth last year suggested this idea: Compress

air by a forcing-pump into a close vessel, by so doing you increase its

heat, then suddenly allow it to escape into a room, it will expand so much

as to be cold, and, mixing with the other air in the apartment, cool the

whole mass. This is the last new theory, which has not yet, I think, been

tried in practice.

Now, physical ventilation—that which affects to imitate the processes of

nature—is a more dangerously specious business. Its chief agent is heat.

In nature, it is said, the sun is Lord High Ventilator. He rarefies the

air in one place by his heat, elsewhere permits cold, and lets the air be

dense; the thin air rises, and the dense air rushes to supply its place;

so we have endless winds and currents—nature’s ventilating works. It is

incredible that sane men should have thought this system fit for

imitation. It is a failure. Look at the hot department, where a traveler

sometimes has to record that he lay gasping for two hours upon his back,

until some one could find some water for him somewhere. Let us call that

Africa, and who can say that he enjoys the squalls of wind rushing toward

the desert? Let us think of the Persian and the Punic wars, when fleets

which had not learned to play bo-peep with ventilating processes, strewed

Mediterranean sands with wrecks and corpses. Some day we shall have these

mimics of Dame Nature content with nothing smaller than a drawing-room

typhoon to carry off the foul air of an evening party; dowagers’ caps,

young ladies’ scarfs, cards, pocket-handkerchiefs, will whirl upon their

blast, and then they will be happy. Now their demands are modest, but they

mean hurricanes rely upon it; we must not let ourselves be lulled into a

false security.

A fire, they say, is in English houses necessary during a large part of

the year, is constant during that season when we are most closely shut up

in our rooms. The fire, they say, is our most handy and most efficacious

ventilator. Oh, yes, we know something about that: we know too well that

the fire makes an ascending current, and that the cold air rushes from our

doors and windows to the chimney, as from surrounding countries to the

burning desert. We know that very well, because every such current is a

draught; one cuts into our legs, one gnaws about our necks, and all our

backs are cold. We are in the condition of a pious man in Fox’s “Martyrs,”

about whom I used to read with childish reverence: that after a great deal

of frying, during which he had not been turned by the Inquisition-Soyer,

he lifted up his voice in verse:

“This side enough is toasted;

Then turn me, tyrant, and eat,

And see whether raw or roasted

I make the better meat.”

We, all of us, over our Christmas fires, present this choice of raw or

roast, and we don’t thank your principles of ventilation for it. Then say

these pertinacious people, that they also disapprove of draughts; but they

don’t seem to mind boring holes in a gentleman’s floor, or knocking

through the sacred walls of home. This is their plan. They say, that you

should have, if possible, a pipe connected with the air without, passing

behind the cheeks of your stove, and opening under your fire, about, on,

or close before your hearth. They say, that from this source the fire will

be supplied so well, that it will no longer suck in draughts over your

shoulders, and between your legs, from remote corners of the room. They

say, moreover, that if this aperture be large enough, it will supply all

the fresh air needed in your room, to replace that which has ascended and

passed out, through a hole which you are to make in your chimney near the

ceiling. They say, that an up-draught will clear this air away so quietly

that you will not need even a valve; though you may have one fitted and

made ornamental at a trifling cost. They would recommend you to make

another hole in the wall opposite your chimney, near the ceiling also, to

establish a more effectual current in the upper air. Then, they say, you

will have a fresh air, and no draughts. Fresh air, yes, at the expense of

a hole in the floor, and two holes in the wall. We might get fresh air,

gentlemen, on a much larger scale by pulling the house down. They say, you

should not mind the holes. Windows are not architectural beauties, yet we

like them for admitting light; and some day it may strike us that the want

of ventilators is a neighbor folly to the want of windows.

This they suggest as the best method of adapting our old houses to their

new ideas. New houses they would have so built as to include this system

of ventilation in their first construction, and so include it as to make

it more effectual. But really, if people want to know how to build what

are called well-ventilated houses, they must not expect me to tell them;

let them buy Mr. Hosking’s book on “The proper Regulation of Buildings in

Towns.”

Up to this date, as I am glad to know, few architects have heard of

ventilation. Under church galleries we doze through the most lively

sermons, in public meetings we pant after air, but we have architecture;

perhaps an airy style sometimes attempts to comfort us. These

circumstances are, possibly, unpleasant at the time, but they assist the

cause of general unhealthiness. Long may our architects believe that human

lungs are instruments of brass; and let us hope that, when they get a

ventilating fit, they will prefer strange machines, pumping, screwing,

steaming apparatus. May they dispense then, doctored air, in draughts and

mixtures.(4)

Fresh air in certain favored places—as in Smithfield, for example—is

undoubtedly an object of desire. It is exceedingly to be regretted, if the

rumors be correct, that the result of a Commission of Inquiry threatens,

by removing Smithfield, to destroy the only sound lung this metropolis

possesses. The wholesome nature of the smell of cows is quite notorious.

Humboldt tells of a sailor who was dying of fever in the close hold of a

ship. His end being in sight, some comrades brought him out to die. What

Humboldt calls “the fresh air” fell upon him, and, instead of dying, he

revived, eventually getting well. I have no doubt that there was a cow on

board, and the man smelt her. Now, if so great an effect was produced by

the proximity of one cow, how great must be the advantage to the sick in

London of a central crowded cattle-market!

XI. Exercise.

There is a little tell-tale muscle in the inner corner of the eye, which,

if you question it, will deliver a report into your looking-glass touching

the state of the whole muscular system which lies elsewhere hidden in your

body. When it is pale, it praises you. Muscular development is, by all

means, to be kept down. Some means of holding it in check we have already

dwelt upon. Muscular power, like all other power, will increase with

exercise. We desire to hold the flesh in strict subjection to the spirit.

Bodily exercise, therefore, must be added to the number of those forces

which, by strengthening the animal, do damage to the spiritual man.

We must take great pains to choke the energy of children. Their active

little limbs must be tied down by a well-woven system of politeness. They

run, they jump, turn heels over head, they climb up trees, if they attempt

stillness they are ever on the move, because nature demands that while the

body grows, it shall be freely worked in all its parts, in order that it

may develop into a frame-work vigorous and well proportioned. Nature

really is more obstinate than usual on this point. So restless a delight

in bodily exertion is implanted in the child, that our patience is

considerably tried when we attempt to keep it still. Children, however,

can be tamed and civilized. By sending them unhealthy from the nursery, we

can deliver many of them spiritless at school, there to be properly

subdued. The most unwholesome plan is to send boys to one school, girls to

another; both physically and morally, this method gives good hope of

sickliness. Nature, who never is on our side, will allow children of each

sex to be born into one family, to play together, and be educated at one

mother’s knee. There ought to be—if nature had the slightest sense of

decency—girls only born in one house, boys only in another. However, we

can sort the children at an early age, and send them off to school—girls

east, boys west.

A girl should be allowed, on no account, to climb a tree, or be

unladylike. She shall regard a boy as a strange, curious monster; be

forced into flirtation; and prefer the solace of a darling friend to any

thing that verges on a scamper. She shall learn English grammar: that is

to mean, Lindley Murray’s notion of it; geography, or the names of capital

towns, rivers, and mountain ranges; French enough for a lady; music,

ornamental needlework, and the “use of the globes.” By-the-by, what a

marvel it is that every lady has learned in her girlhood the use of the

globes, and yet you never see a lady using them. All these subjects she

shall study from a female point of view. Her greatest bodily fatigue shall

be the learning of a polka, or the Indian sceptre exercise. Now and then,

she shall have an iron down her back, and put her feet in stocks. The

young lady shall return from school, able to cover ottomans with worsted

birds; and to stitch a purse for the expected lover about whom she has

been thinking for the last five years. She is quite aware that St.

Petersburg is the capital of Ireland, and that a noun is a

verb-substantive, which signifies to be, to do, to suffer.

The boy children shall be sent to school, where they may sit during three

hours consecutively, and during eight or nine hours in the day, forcing

their bodies to be tranquil. They shall entertain their minds by

stuttering the eloquence of Cicero, which would be dull work to them in

English, and is not enlivened by the Latin. They shall get much into their

mouths of what they can not comprehend, and little or nothing into their

hearts, out of the wide stores of information for which children really

thirst. They shall be taught little or nothing of the world they live in,

and shall know its Maker only as an answer to some question in a

catechism. They shall talk of girls as beings of another nature; and shall

come home from their school-life, pale, subdued, having unwholesome

thoughts, awkward in using limbs, which they have not been suffered freely

to develop; and shamefaced in the society from which, during their

schoolboy life, they have been banished.

The older girl shall ape the lady, and the older boy shall ape the

gentleman; so we may speak next of adults.

No lady ought to walk when she can ride. The carriages of many kinds which

throng our streets, all prove us civilized; prove us, and make us weak.

The lady should be tired after a four-mile walk; her walk ought to be, in

the utmost possible degree, weeded of energy. It should be slow; and when

her legs are moved, her arms must be restrained from that synchronous

movement which perverse Nature calls upon them to perform. Ladies do well

to walk out with their arms quite still, and with their hands folded

before them. Thus they prevent their delicacy from being preyed upon by a

too wholesome exercise, and, what is to us more pleasant, they betray

their great humility. They dare only to walk among us lords of the

creation with their arms folded before them, that by such humble guise

they may acknowledge the inferiority of their position. An Australian

native, visiting London, might almost be tempted, in sheer pride of heart,

to knock some of our ladies two or three times about the head with that

small instrument which he employs for such correction of his women, that

so he might derive the more enjoyment from their manifest submissiveness.

The well-bred gentleman ought to be weary after six miles of walking, and

haughtily stare down the man who talks about sixteen. The saddle, the gig,

the carriage, or the cab, and omnibus, must protect at once his delicacy

and his shoes. The student should confine himself to study, grudging time;

believing nobody who tells him that the time he gives to wholesome

exercise, he may receive back in the shape of increased value for his

hours of thought—that even his life of study may be lengthened by it. Let

the tradesman be well-rooted in his shop if he desire to flourish. Let the

mechanic sit at labor on the week-days, and on Sundays let him sit at

church, or else stop decently at home. Let us have no Sunday recreations.

It is quite shocking to hear sanitary people lecture on this topic.

Profanely they profess to wonder why the weary, toiling family of

Christians should not be carried from the town, and from that hum of

society which is not to them very refreshing on the day of rest. Why they

should not go out and wander in the woods, and ask their hearts who taught

the dragon-fly his dancing; who made the blue-bells cluster lovingly

together, looking so modest; and ask from whose Opera the birds are

singing their delicious music? Why should not the rugged man’s face

soften, and the care-worn woman’s face be melted into tenderness, and man

and wife and children cluster as closely as the blue-bells in the peaceful

wood? What if they there become so very conscious of their mutual love,

and of the love of God, as to feel glad that they are not in any other

“place of worship,” where they may hear Roman Catholics denounced, or

Churchmen scorned, or the Dissenters pounded? What if they then come home

refreshed in mind and body, and begin the week with larger, gentler

thoughts of God and man? By such means may they not easily be led, if they

were at any unwilling, to give praise to God, and learn to join—not as a

superstitious rite, but as a humble duty—in His public worship? So talk

the sanitary men—here, as in all their doctrines, showing themselves

little better than materialists. The negro notion of a Sabbath is, that

nobody may fish: our notion is, that nobody may stay away from church.

In these remarks on exercise among adults, I have confined myself to the

plain exercise of walking. It may be taken for granted that no grown-up

person will be so childish as to leap, to row, to swim. A few Young

Englanders may put on, now and then, their white kid gloves to patronize a

cricket-match; but we can laugh at them. In a gentleman it is undignified

to run; and even walking, at the best, is vulgar.

Indeed there is an obvious vulgarity in the whole doctrine which would

call upon us to assist our brute development by the mere exercising of

ourselves as animals. Such counsel offers to degrade us to the low

position of the race-horse who is trotted to and fro, the poodle who is

sent out for an airing. As spiritual people, we look down with much

contempt upon the man who would in any thing compare us with the lower

animals. His mind is mean, and must be quite beneath our indignation. I

will say no more. Why thrash a pickpocket with thunder?

XII. A Bedroom Paper.

If you wish to have a thoroughly unhealthy bedroom, these are the

precautions you should take.

Fasten a chimney-board against the fireplace, so as to prevent foul air

from escaping in the night. You will, of course, have no hole through the

wall into the chimney; and no sane man, in the night season, would have a

door or window open. Use no perforated zinc in paneling; especially avoid

it in small bedrooms. So you will get a room full of bad air. But in the

same room there is bad, worse, and worst: your object is to have the worst

air possible. Suffocating machines are made by every upholsterer; attach

one to your bed; it is an apparatus of poles, rings, and curtains. By

drawing your curtains around you before you sleep, you insure to yourself

a condensed body of foul air over your person. This poison vapor-bath you

will find to be most efficient when it is made of any thick material.

There being transpiration through the skin, it would not be a bad idea to

see whether this can not be in some way hindered. The popular method will

do very well: smother the flesh as much as possible in feathers. A

wandering princess, in some fairy tale, came to a king’s house. The king’s

wife, with the curiosity and acuteness proper to her sex, desired to know

whether their guest was truly born a princess, and discovered how to solve

the question. She put three peas on the young lady’s paillasse, and over

them a large feather-bed, and then another, then another—in fact, fifteen

feather-beds. Next morning the princess looked pale, and, in answer to

inquiries how she had passed the night, said that she had been unable to

sleep at all, because the bed had lumps in it. The king’s wife knew then

that their guest showed her good breeding. Take this high-born lady for a

model. The feathers retain all heat about your body, and stifle the skin

so far effectually, that you awake in the morning pervaded by a sense of

languor, which must be very agreeable to a person who has it in his mind

to be unhealthy. In order to keep a check upon exhalation about your head

(which otherwise might have too much the way of Nature), put on a stout,

closely-woven night-cap. People who are at the height of cleverness in

this respect sleep with their heads under the bed-clothes. Take no rest on

a hair-mattress; it is elastic and pleasant, certainly, but it does not

encase the body; and therefore you run a risk of not awaking languid.

Never wash when you go to bed; you are not going to see any body, and

therefore there can be no use in washing. In the morning, wet no more skin

than you absolutely must—that is to say, no more than your neighbors will

see during the day—the face and hands. So much you may do with a tolerably

good will, since it is the other part of the surface of the body, more

covered and more impeded in the full discharge of its functions, which has

rather the more need of ablution; it is therefore fortunate that you can

leave that other part unwashed. Five minutes of sponging and rubbing over

the whole body in the morning would tend to invigorate the system, and

would send you with a cheerful glow to the day’s business or pleasure.

Avoid it by all means, if you desire to be unhealthy. Let me note here,

that in speaking of the poor, we should abstain from ceding to them an

exclusive title, as “the Great Unwashed.” Will you, Mr. N. or M., retire

into your room and strip? Examine your body; is it clean—was it sponged

this morning—is there no dirt upon it any where? If it be not clean, if it

was not sponged, if water would look rather black after you had enjoyed a

thorough scrub in it, then is it not obvious that you yourself take rank

among the Great Unwashed? By way of preserving a distinction between them

and us, I even think it would be no bad thing were we to advocate the

washing of the poor.

Do not forget that, although you must unfortunately apply water to your

face you can find warrant in custom to excuse you from annoying it with

soap; and for the water again, you are at liberty to take vengeance by

obtaining compensation damages out of that part of your head which the

hair covers. Never wash it; soil it; clog it with oil or lard—either of

which will answer your purpose, as either will keep out air as well as

water, and promote the growth of a thick morion of scurf. Lard in the

bedroom is called bear’s grease. In connection with its virtues in

promoting growth of hair, there is a tale which I believe to be no

fiction; not the old and profane jest of the man who rubbed a deal box

with it over-night, and found a hair-trunk in the morning. It is said that

the first adventurer who advertised bear’s grease for sale, appended to

the laudation of its efficacy a Nota Bene, that gentlemen, after applying

it, should wash the palms of their hands, otherwise the hair would sprout

thence also. I admire that speculator, grimly satiric at the expense both

of himself and of his customers. He jested at his own pretensions; and

declared, by an oblique hint, that he did not look for friends among the

scrupulously clean.

Tooth-powder is necessary in the bedroom. Healthy stomachs will make

healthy teeth, and then a tooth-brush and a little water may suffice to

keep them clean. But healthy stomachs also make coarse constitutions. It

is vexatious that our teeth rot when we vitiate the fluid that surrounds

them. As gentlemen and ladies we desire good teeth; they must be scoured

and hearth-stoned.

Of course, as you do not cleanse your body daily, so you will not show

favor to your feet. Keep up a due distinction between the upper and lower

members. When a German prince was told confidentially that he had dirty

hands, he replied, with the liveliness of conscious triumph,

“Ach, do you call dat dirty? You should see my toes!”

Some people wash them once in every month; that will do very well; or once

a year, it matters little which. In what washing you find yourself unable

to omit, use only the finest towels, those which inflict least friction on

the skin.

Having made these arrangements for yourself, take care that they are

adhered to, as far is may be convenient, throughout your household.

Here and there, put numerous sleepers into a single room; this is a good

thing for children, if you require to blanch them. By a little

perseverance, also, in this way, when you have too large a family, you can

reduce it easily. By all means, let a baby have foul air, not only by the

use of suffocative apparatus, but by causing it to sleep where there are

four or five others in a well-closed room. So much is due to the

maintenance of our orthodox rate of infant mortality.

Let us admire, lastly, the economy of time in great men who have allowed

themselves only four, five, or six hours, for sleep. It may be true that

they would have lived longer had they always paid themselves a fair

night’s quiet for a fair day’s work; they would have lived longer, but

they would not have lived so fast. It is essential to live fast in this

busy world. Moreover, there is a superstitious reverence for early rising,

as a virtue by itself, which we shall do well to acquire. Let sanitary men

say, “Roost with the lark, if you propose to rise with her.” Nonsense. No

civilized man can go to bed much earlier than midnight; but every man of

business must be up betimes. Idle, happy people, on the other hand, they

to whom life is useless, prudently remain for nine, ten, or a dozen hours

in bed. Snug in their corner, they are in the way of nobody, except the

housemaid.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

“Now wotte we nat, ne can na see

What manir ende that there shall be.”

Birth, sickness, burial. Eating, drinking, clothing, sleeping. Exercise,

and social pleasure. Air, water, and light. These are the topics upon

which we have already touched. A finished painting of good ægritudinary

discipline was not designed upon the present canvas: no man who knows the

great extent and varied surface of the scene which such a picture should

embrace, will think that there is here even an outline finished.

We might have recommended early marriages; and marriage with first

cousins. We might have urged all men with heritable maladies to shun

celibacy. We might have praised tobacco, which, by acting on the mucous

membrane of the mouth, acts on the same membrane in the stomach also

(precisely as disorder of the stomach will communicate disorder to the

mouth), and so helps in establishing a civilized digestion and a pallid

face.

“But we woll stint of this matere

For it is wondir long to here.”

It is inherent in man to be perverse. A drawing-room critic, in one of

Gait’s novels, takes up a picture of a cow, holds it inverted, and enjoys

it as a castellated mansion with four corner towers. And so, since “all

that moveth doth mutation love,” after a like fashion, many people, it

appears, have looked upon these papers. There is a story to the point in

Lucian. Passus received commission from a connoisseur to draw a horse with

his legs upward. He drew it in the usual way. His customer came

unannounced, saw what had been done, and grumbled fearfully. Passus,

however, turned his picture up-side down, and then the connoisseur was

satisfied. These papers have been treated like the horse of Passus.

“Stimatissimo Signor Boswell” says, in his book on Corsica, that he rode

out one day on Paoli’s charger, gay with gold and scarlet, and surrounded

by the chieftain’s officers. For a while, he says, he thought he was a

hero. Thus, like a goose on horseback, has our present writer visited some

few of the chief ægritudinary outposts. Why not so? They say there is no

way impossible. Wherefore an old emblem-book has represented Cupid

crossing a stream which parts him from an altar, seated at ease upon his

quiver, for a boat, and rowing with a pair of arrows. So has the writer

floated over on a barrel of his folly, and possibly may touch, O reader,

at the Altar of your Household Gods.

SORROWS AND JOYS. (FROM DICKENS’S HOUSEHOLD WORDS.)

Bury thy sorrows, and they shall rise

As souls to the immortal skies,

And then look down like mothers’ eyes.

But let thy joys be fresh as flowers,

That suck the honey of the showers,

And bloom alike on huts and towers.

So shall thy days be sweet and bright—

Solemn and sweet thy starry night—

Conscious of love each change of light.

The stars will watch the flowers asleep,

The flowers will feel the soft stars weep,

And both will mix sensations deep.

With these below, with those above,

Sits evermore the brooding Dove,

Uniting both in bonds of love.

Children of Earth are these; and those

The spirits of intense repose—

Death radiant o’er all human woes.

For both by nature are akin;

Sorrow, the ashen fruit of sin,

And joy, the juice of life within.

O, make thy sorrows holy—wise—

So shall their buried memories rise,

Celestial, e’en in mortal skies.

O, think what then had been their doom,

If all unshriven—without a tomb—

They had been left to haunt the gloom!

O, think again what they will be

Beneath God’s bright serenity,

When thou art in eternity!

For they, in their salvation, know

No vestige of their former woe,

While thro’ them all the Heavens do flow.

Thus art thou wedded to the skies,

And watched by ever-loving eyes,

And warned by yearning sympathies.

MAURICE TIERNAY, THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. (FROM THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY

MAGAZINE)

(_Continued from Page_ 499.)

Chapter XII. “A Glance At Staff-Duty.”

Although the passage of the Rhine was but the prelude to the attack on the

fortress, that exploit being accomplished, Kehl was carried at the point

of the bayonet, the French troops entering the outworks pell-mell with the

retreating enemy, and in less than two hours after the landing of our

first detachments, the “tri-color” waved over the walls of the fortress.

Lost amid the greater and more important successes which since that time

have immortalized the glory of the French arms, it is almost impossible to

credit the celebrity attached at that time to this brilliant achievement,

whose highest merits probably were rapidity and resolution. Moreau had

long been jealous of the fame of his great rival, Bonaparte, whose

tactics, rejecting the colder dictates of prudent strategy, and the slow

progress of scientific manoeuvres, seemed to place all his confidence in

the sudden inspirations of his genius, and the indomitable bravery of his

troops. It was necessary, then, to raise the _morale_ of the army of the

Rhine, to accomplish some great feat similar in boldness and heroism to

the wonderful achievements of the Italian army. Such was the passage of

the Rhine at Strasbourg, effected in the face of a great enemy,

advantageously posted, and supported by one of the strongest of all the

frontier fortresses.

The morning broke upon us in all the exultation of our triumph, and as our

cheers rose high over the field of the late struggle, each heart beat

proudly with the thought of how that news would be received in Paris.

“You’ll see how the bulletin will spoil all,” said a young officer of the

army of Italy, as he was getting his wound dressed on the field. “There

will be such a long narrative of irrelevant matter—such details of this,

that, and t’other—that the public will scarce know whether the placard

announces a defeat or a victory.”

“Parbleu!” replied an old veteran of the Rhine army, “what would you have?

You’d not desire to omit the military facts of such an exploit?”

“To be sure I would,” rejoined the other. “Give me one of our young

general’s bulletins, short, stirring, and effective—‘Soldiers! you have

crossed the Rhine against an army double your own in numbers and munitions

of war. You have carried a fortress, believed impregnable, at the bayonet.

Already the great flag of our nation waves over the citadel you have won.

Forward, then, and cease not till it float over the cities of conquered

Germany, and let the name of France be that of Empire over the continent

of Europe.’ ”

“Ha! I like that,” cried I, enthusiastically; “that’s the bulletin to my

fancy. Repeat it once more, mon lieutenant, that I may write it in my

note-book.”

“What! hast thou a note-book?” cried an old staff-officer, who was

preparing to mount his horse; “let’s see it, lad.”

With a burning cheek and trembling hand, I drew my little journal from the

breast of my jacket, and gave it to him.

“Sacre bleu!” exclaimed he, in a burst of laughter, “what have we here?

Why, this is a portrait of old General Morieier, and, although a

caricature, a perfect likeness. And here comes a plan for ‘manoeuvring a

squadron by threes from the left.’ This is better—it is a receipt for an

‘Omelette à la Hussard;’ and here we have a love-song, and a

mustache-paste, with some hints about devotion, and diseased frog in

horses. Most versatile genius, certainly!” And so he went on, occasionally

laughing at my rude sketches, and ruder remarks, till he came to a page

headed “Equitation, as practiced by Officers of the Staff,” and followed

by a series of caricatures of bad riding, in all its moods and tenses. The

flush of anger which instantly colored his face, soon attracted the notice

of those about him, and one of the bystanders quickly snatched the book

from his fingers, and, in the midst of a group all convulsed with

laughter, proceeded to expatiate upon my illustrations. To be sure, they

were absurd enough. Some were represented sketching on horseback, under

shelter of an umbrella; others were “taking the depth of a stream” by a

“header” from their own saddles; some, again, were “exploring ground for

an attack in line,” by a measurement of the rider’s own length over the

head of his horse. Then there were ridiculous situations, such as “sitting

down before a fortress,” “taking an angle of incidence,” and so on. Sorry

jests, all of them, but sufficient to amuse those with whose daily

associations they chimed in, and to whom certain traits of portraiture

gave all the zest of a personality.

My shame at the exposure, and my terror for its consequences, gradually

yielded to a feeling of flattered vanity at the success of my

lucubrations; and I never remarked that the staff-officer had ridden away

from the group, till I saw him galloping back at the top of his speed.

“Is your name Tiernay, my good fellow?” cried he, riding close up to my

side, and with an expression on his features I did not half like.

“Yes, sir,” replied I.

“Hussar of the Ninth, I believe?” repeated he, reading from a paper in his

hand.

“The same, sir.”

“Well, your talents as a draughtsman have procured you promotion, my

friend; I have obtained your discharge from your regiment, and you are now

my orderly—orderly on the staff, do you mind? so mount, sir, and follow

me.”

I saluted him respectfully, and prepared to obey his orders. Already I

foresaw the downfall of all the hopes I had been cherishing, and

anticipated the life of tyranny and oppression that lay before me. It was

clear to me, that my discharge had been obtained solely as a means of

punishing me, and that Captain Discau, as the officer was called, had

destined me to a pleasant expiation of my note-book. The savage exultation

with which he watched me, as I made up my kit and saddled my horse—the

cool malice with which he handed me back the accursed journal, the cause

of all my disasters—gave me a dark foreboding of what was to follow; and

as I mounted my saddle, my woeful face, and miserable look, brought forth

a perfect shout of laughter from the bystanders.

Captain Discau’s duty was to visit the banks of the Rhine, and the Eslar

island, to take certain measurements of distances, and obtain accurate

information on various minute points respecting the late engagement, for,

while a brief announcement of the victory would suffice for the bulletin,

a detailed narrative of the event, in all its bearings, must be drawn up

for the minister of war, and for this latter purpose various

staff-officers were then employed in different parts of the field.

As we issued from the fortress, and took our way over the plain, we struck

out into a sharp gallop; but, as we drew near the river, our passage

became so obstructed by lines of baggage-wagons, tumbrils, and

ammunition-carts, that we were obliged to dismount and proceed on foot;

and now I was to see, for the first time, that dreadful picture, which, on

the day after a battle, forms the reverse of the great medal of glory.

Huge litters of wounded men on their way back to Strasbourg, were drawn by

six or eight horses, their jolting motion increasing the agony of

sufferings that found their vent in terrific cries and screams; oaths,

yells, and blasphemies, the ravings of madness, and the wild shouts of

infuriated suffering, filled the air on every side. As if to give the

force of contrast to this uproar of misery, two regiments of Swabian

infantry marched past as prisoners. Silent, crest-fallen, and

wretched-looking, they never raised their eyes from the ground, but moved,

or halted, wheeled, or stood at ease, as though by some impulse of

mechanism; a cord coupled the wrists of the outer files, one with another,

which struck me less as a measure of security against escape, than as a

mark of indignity.

Carts and charettes with wounded officers, in which often-times the

uniform of the enemy appeared side by side with our own, followed in long

procession; and thus were these two great currents—the one hurrying

forward, ardent, high-hearted, and enthusiastic; the other returning

maimed, shattered, and dying!

It was an affecting scene to see the hurried gestures, and hear the few

words of adieu, as they passed each other. Old comrades who were never to

meet again, parted with a little motion of the hand; sometimes a mere look

was all their leave-taking: save when, now and then, a halt would for a

few seconds bring the two lines together, and then many a bronzed and

rugged cheek was pressed upon the faces of the dying, and many a tear fell

from eyes bloodshot with the fury of the battle! Wending our way on foot

slowly along, we at last reached the river side, and having secured a

small skiff, made for the Eslar island; our first business being to

ascertain some details respecting the intrenchments there, and the depth

and strength of the stream between it and the left bank. Discau, who was a

distinguished officer, rapidly possessed himself of the principal facts he

wanted, and then, having given me his portfolio, he seated himself under

the shelter of a broken wagon, and opening a napkin, began his breakfast

off a portion of a chicken and some bread—viands which, I own, more than

once made my lips water as I watched him.

“You’ve eaten nothing to-day, Tiernay?” asked he, as he wiped his lips,

with the air of a man that feels satisfied.

“Nothing, mon capitaine,” replied I.

“That’s bad,” said he, shaking his head; “a soldier can not do his duty,

if his rations be neglected. I have always maintained the principle: Look

to the men’s necessaries—take care of their food and clothing. Is there

any thing on that bone there?”

“Nothing, mon capitaine.”

“I’m sorry for it; I meant it for you; put up that bread, and the

remainder of that flask of wine. Bourdeaux is not to be had every day. We

shall want it for supper, Tiernay.”

I did as I was bid, wondering not a little why he said “_we_,” seeing how

little a share I occupied in the co-partnery.

“Always be careful of the morrow on a campaign, Tiernay—no squandering, no

waste; that’s one of my principles,” said he, gravely, as he watched me

while I tied up the bread and wine in the napkin. “You’ll soon see the

advantage of serving under an old soldier.”

I confess the great benefit had not already struck me, but I held my peace

and waited; meanwhile he continued—

“I have studied my profession from my boyhood, and one thing I have

acquired, that all experience has confirmed, the knowledge, that men must

neither be taxed beyond their ability nor their endurance; a French

soldier, after all, is human; eh, is’t not so?”

“I feel it most profoundly, mon capitaine,” replied I, with my hand on my

empty stomach.

“Just so,” rejoined he; “every man of sense and discretion must confess

it. Happily for you, too, I know it; ay, Tiernay, I know it, and practice

it. When a young fellow has acquitted himself to my satisfaction during

the day—not that I mean to say that the performance has not its fair share

of activity and zeal—when evening comes and stable duty finished, arms

burnished, and accoutrements cleaned, what do you think I say to him?—eh,

Tiernay, just guess now?”

“Probably, sir, you tell him he is free to spend an hour at the canteen,

or take his sweetheart to the theatre.”

“What! more fatigue! more exhaustion to an already tired and worn-out

nature!”

“I ask pardon, sir, I see I was wrong; but I had forgotten how thoroughly

the poor fellow was done up. I now see that you told him to go to bed.”

“To bed! to bed! Is it that he might writhe in the nightmare, or suffer

agony from cramps? To bed after fatigue like this! No, no, Tiernay, that

was not the school in which _I_ was brought up; _we_ were taught to think

of the men under our command; to remember that they had wants, sympathies,

hopes, fears, and emotions like our own. I tell him to seat himself at the

table, and with pen, ink, and paper before him, to write up the blanks. I

see you don’t quite understand me, Tiernay, as to the meaning of the

phrase, but I’ll let you into the secret. You have been kind enough to

give me a peep at your note-book, and you shall in return have a look at

mine. Open that volume, and tell me what you find in it.”

I obeyed the direction, and read at the top of a page, the words

“Skeleton, 5th Prairial,” in large characters, followed by several

isolated words, denoting the strength of a brigade, the number of guns in

a battery, the depth of a fosse, the height of a parapet, and such like.

These were usually followed by a flourish of the pen, or sometimes by the

word “Bom.” which singular monosyllable always occurred at the foot of the

pages.

“Well, have you caught the key to the cipher?” said he, after a pause.

“Not quite, sir,” said I, pondering; “I can perceive that the chief facts

stand prominently forward, in a fair, round hand; I can also guess that

the flourishes may be spaces left for detail; but this word ‘Bom.’ puzzles

me completely.”

“Quite correct, as to the first part,” said he, approvingly; “and as to

the mysterious monosyllable, it is nothing more than an abbreviation for

‘Bombaste,’ which is always to be done to the taste of each particular

commanding officer.”

“I perceive, sir,” said I, quickly; “like the wadding of a gun, which may

increase the loudness, but never affect the strength of the shot.”

“Precisely, Tiernay; you have hit it exactly. Now I hope that, with a

little practice, you may be able to acquit yourself respectably in this

walk; and now to begin our skeleton. Turn over to a fresh page, and write

as I dictate to you.”

So saying, he filled his pipe and lighted it, and disposing his limbs in

an attitude of perfect ease, he began:

“8th Thermidor, midnight—twelve battalions, and two batteries of

field—boats and rafts—Eslar island—stockades—eight guns—Swabian

infantry—sharp firing, and a flourish—strong current—flourish—detachment

of the 28th carried down—‘Bom.’ Let me see it now—all right—nothing could

be better—proceed. The 10th, 45th, and 48th landing together—more

firing—flourish—first gun captured—Bom.—bayonet charges—Bom. Bom.—three

guns taken—Bom. Bom. Bom.—Swabs in retreat—flourish. The bridge eighty

toises in length—flanking fire—heavy loss—flourish.”

“You go a little too fast, mon capitaine,” said I, for a sudden bright

thought just flashed across me.

“Very well,” said he, shaking the ashes of his pipe out upon the rock,

“I’ll take my doze, and you may awaken me when you’ve filled in those

details—it will be a very fair exercise for you;” and with this he threw

his handkerchief over his face, and without any other preparation was soon

fast asleep.

I own that, if I had not been a spectator of the action, it would have

been very difficult, if not impossible, for me to draw up any thing like a

narrative of it, from the meagre details of the captain’s note-book. My

personal observations, however, assisted by an easy imagination, suggested

quite enough to make at least a plausible story, and I wrote away without

impediment and halt till I came to that part of the action in which the

retreat over the bridge commenced. There I stopped. Was I to remain

satisfied with such a crude and one-sided explanation as the note-book

afforded, and merely say that the retreating forces were harassed by a

strong flank fire from our batteries? Was I to omit the whole of the great

incident, the occupation of the “Fels Insel,” and the damaging discharges

of grape and round shot which plunged through the crowded ranks, and

ultimately destroyed the bridge? Could I—to use the phrase so

popular—could I, in the “interests of truth,” forget the brilliant

achievement of a gallant band of heroes who, led on by a young hussar of

the 9th, threw themselves into the “Fels Insel,” routed the garrison,

captured the artillery, and directing its fire upon the retiring enemy,

contributed most essentially to the victory. Ought I, in a word, to suffer

a name so associated with a glorious action to sink into oblivion? Should

Maurice Tiernay be lost to fame out of any neglect or false shame on my

part? Forbid it all truth and justice, cried I, as I set myself down to

relate the whole adventure most circumstantially. Looking up from time to

time at my officer, who slept soundly, I suffered myself to dilate upon a

theme in which somehow, I felt a more than ordinary degree of interest.

The more I dwelt upon the incident, the more brilliant and striking did it

seem. Like the appetite, which the proverb tells us comes by eating, my

enthusiasm grew under indulgence, so that, had a little more time been

granted me, I verily believe I should have forgotten Moreau altogether,

and coupled only Maurice Tiernay with the passage of the Rhine, and the

capture of the fortress of Kehl. Fortunately Captain Discau awoke, and cut

short my historic recollections, by asking me how much I had done, and

telling me to read it aloud to him.

I accordingly began to read my narrative slowly and deliberately, thereby

giving myself time to think what I should best do when I came to that part

which became purely personal. To omit it altogether would have been

dangerous, as the slightest glance at the mass of writing would have shown

the deception. There was, then, nothing left, but to invent at the moment

another version, in which Maurice Tiernay never occurred, and the incident

of the Fels Insel should figure as unobtrusively as possible. I was always

a better improvisatore than amanuensis; so that without a moment’s loss of

time I fashioned a new and very different narrative, and detailing the

battle tolerably accurately, _minus_ the share my own heroism had taken in

it. The captain made a few, a very few corrections of my style, in which

the “flourish” and “bom,” figured, perhaps, too conspicuously; and then

told me frankly, that once upon a time he had been fool enough to give

himself great trouble in framing these kind of reports, but that having

served for a short period in the “bureau” of the minister of war, he had

learned better. “In fact,” said he, “a district report is never read! Some

hundreds of them reach the office of the minister every day, and are

safely deposited in the ‘archives’ of the department. They have all,

besides, such a family resemblance, that with a few changes in the name of

the commanding officer, any battle in the Netherlands would do equally

well for one fought beyond the Alps! Since I became acquainted with this

fact, Tiernay, I have bestowed less pains upon the matter, and usually

deputed the task to some smart orderly of the staff.”

So thought I, I have been writing history for nothing; and Maurice

Tiernay, the real hero of the passage of the Rhine, will be unrecorded and

unremembered, just for want of one honest and impartial scribe to transmit

his name to posterity. The reflection was not a very encouraging one; nor

did it serve to lighten the toil in which I passed many weary hours,

copying out my own precious manuscript. Again and again during that night

did I wonder at my own diffuseness—again and again did I curse the prolix

accuracy of a description that cost such labor to reiterate. It was like a

species of poetical justice on me for my own amplifications; and when the

day broke, and I still sat at my table writing on, at the third copy of

this precious document, I vowed a vow of brevity, should I ever survive to

indite similar compositions.

Chapter XIII. A Farewell Letter.

It was in something less than a week after, that I entered upon my new

career as orderly in the staff, when I began to believe myself the most

miserable of all human beings. On the saddle at sunrise, I never

dismounted, except to carry a measuring-chain, “to step distances,” mark

out intrenchments, and then write away, for hours, long enormous reports,

that were to be models of calligraphy, neatness, and elegance—and never to

be read. Nothing could be less like soldiering than the life I led; and

were it not for the clanking sabre I wore at my side, and the jingling

spurs that decorated my heels, I might have fancied myself a notary’s

clerk. It was part of General Moreau’s plan to strengthen the defenses of

Kehl before he advanced further into Germany; and to this end repairs were

begun upon a line of earth-works, about two leagues to the northward of

the fortress, at a small village called “Ekheim.” In this miserable little

hole, one of the dreariest spots imaginable, we were quartered, with two

companies of “sapeurs” and some of the wagon-train, trenching, digging,

carting earth, sinking wells, and in fact engaged in every kind of labor

save that which seemed to be characteristic of a soldier.

I used to think that Nancy and the riding-school were the most dreary and

tiresome of all destinies, but they were enjoyments and delight compared

with this. Now it very often happens in life, that when a man grows

discontented and dissatisfied with mere monotony, when he chafes at the

sameness of a tiresome and unexciting existence, he is rapidly approaching

to some critical or eventful point, where actual peril and real danger

assail him, and from which he would willingly buy his escape by falling

back upon that wearisome and plodding life he had so often deplored

before. This case was my own. Just as I had convinced myself that I was

exceedingly wretched and miserable, I was to know there are worse things

in this world than a life of mere uniform stupidity. I was waiting outside

my captain’s door for orders one morning, when at the tinkle of his little

hand-bell I entered the room where he sat at breakfast, with an open

dispatch before him.

“Tiernay,” said he, in his usual quiet tone, “here is an order from the

adjutant-general to send you back under an escort to head-quarters. Are

you aware of any reason for it, or is there any charge against you which

warrants this?”

“Not to my knowledge, mon capitaine,” said I, trembling with fright, for I

well knew with what severity discipline was exercised in that army, and

how any, even the slightest, infractions met the heaviest penalties.

“I have never known you to pillage,” continued he; “have never seen you

drink, nor have you been disobedient while under my command; yet this

order could not be issued on light grounds; there must be some grave

accusation against you, and in any case you must go; therefore arrange all

my papers, put every thing in due order, and be ready to return with the

orderly.”

“You’ll give me a good character, mon capitaine,” said I, trembling more

than ever—“you’ll say what you can for me, I’m sure.”

“Willingly, if the general or chief were here,” replied he; “but that’s

not so. General Moreau is at Strasbourg. It is General Regnier is in

command of the army; and unless specially applied to, I could not venture

upon the liberty of obtruding my opinion upon him.”

“Is he so severe, sir?” asked I, timidly.

“The general is a good disciplinarian,” said he, cautiously, while he

motioned with his hand toward the door, and accepting the hint, I retired.

It was evening when I re-entered Kehl, under an escort of two of my own

regiment, and was conducted to the “Salle de Police.” At the door stood my

old corporal, whose malicious grin as I alighted revealed the whole story

of my arrest; and I now knew the charge that would be preferred against

me—a heavier there could not be made—was, “disobedience in the field.” I

slept very little that night, and when I did close my eyes, it was to

awake with a sudden start, and believe myself in presence of the

court-martial, or listening to my sentence, as read out by the president.

Toward day, however, I sunk into a heavy, deep slumber, from which I was

aroused by the reveillée of the barracks.

I had barely time to dress when I was summoned before the “Tribunale

Militaire”—a sort of permanent court-martial, whose sittings were held in

one of the churches of the town. Not even all the terror of my own

precarious position could overcome the effect of old prejudices in my

mind, as I saw myself led up the dim aisle of the church toward the altar

rails, within which, around a large table, were seated a number of

officers, whose manner and bearing evinced but little reverence for the

sacred character of the spot.

Stationed in a group of poor wretches whose wan looks and anxious glances

told that they were prisoners like myself, I had time to see what was

going forward around me. The president, who alone wore his hat, read from

a sort of list before him the name of a prisoner and that of the witnesses

in the cause. In an instant they were all drawn up and sworn. A few

questions followed, rapidly put, and almost as rapidly replied to. The

prisoner was called on then for his defense: if this occupied many

minutes, he was sure to be interrupted by an order to be brief. Then came

the command to “stand by;” and after a few seconds consultation together,

in which many times a burst of laughter might be heard, the court agreed

upon the sentence, recorded and signed it, and then proceeded with the

next case.

If nothing in the procedure imposed reverence or respect, there was that

in the dispatch which suggested terror, for it was plain to see that the

court thought more of the cost of their own precious minutes than of the

years of those on whose fate they were deciding. I was sufficiently near

to hear the charges of those who were arraigned, and, for the greater

number, they were all alike. Pillage, in one form or another, was the

universal offending; and from the burning of a peasant’s cottage, to the

theft of his dog or his “poulet,” all came under this head. At last came

number 82—“Maurice Tiernay, hussar of the Ninth.” I stepped forward to the

rails.

“Maurice Tiernay,” read the president, hurriedly, “accused by Louis

Gaussin, corporal of the same regiment, ‘of willfully deserting his post

while on duty in the field, and in the face of direct orders to the

contrary; inducing others to a similar breach of discipline.’ Make the

change, Gaussin.”

The corporal stepped forward, and began,

“We were stationed in detachment on the bank of the Rhine, on the evening

of the 23d—”

“The court has too many duties to lose its time for nothing,” interrupted

I. “It is all true. I did desert my post; I did disobey orders; and,

seeing a weak point in the enemy’s line, attacked and carried it with

success. The charge is, therefore, admitted by me, and it only remains for

the court to decide how far a soldier’s zeal for his country may be

deserving of punishment. Whatever the result, one thing is perfectly

clear, Corporal Gaussin will never be indicted for a similar misdemeanor.”

A murmur of voices and suppressed laughter followed this impertinent and

not over discreet sally of mine; and the president calling out, “Proven by

acknowledgment,” told me to “stand by.” I now fell back to my former

place, to be interrogated by my comrades on the result of my examination,

and hear their exclamations of surprise and terror at the rashness of my

conduct. A little reflection over the circumstances would probably have

brought me over to their opinion, and shown me that I had gratuitously

thrown away an opportunity of self-defense; but my temper could not brook

the indignity of listening to the tiresome accusation and the stupid

malevolence of the corporal, whose hatred was excited by the influence I

wielded over my comrades.

It was long past noon ere the proceedings terminated, for the list was a

full one, and at length the court rose, apparently not sorry to exchange

their tiresome duties for the pleasant offices of the dinner-table. No

sentences had been pronounced, but one very striking incident seemed to

shadow forth a gloomy future. Three, of whom I was one, were marched off,

doubly guarded, before the rest, and confined in separate cells of the

“Salle,” where every precaution against escape too plainly showed the

importance attached to our safe keeping.

At about eight o’clock, as I was sitting on my bed—if that inclined plane

of wood, worn by the form of many a former prisoner, could deserve the

name—a sergeant entered with the prison allowance of bread and water. He

placed it beside me without speaking, and stood for a few seconds gazing

at me.

“What age art thou, lad?” said he, in a voice of compassionate interest.

“Something over fifteen, I believe,” replied I.

“Hast father and mother?”

“Both are dead!”

“Uncles or aunts living?”

“Neither.”

“Hast any friends who could help thee?”

“That might depend upon what the occasion for help should prove, for I

have one friend in the world.”

“Who is he?”

“Colonel Mahon, of the Curaissiers.”

“I never heard of him—is he here?”

“No; I left him at Nancy; but I could write to him.”

“It would be too late, much too late.”

“How do you mean—too late?” asked I, tremblingly.

“Because it is fixed for to-morrow evening,” replied he, in a low,

hesitating voice.

“What? the—the—” I could not say the word, but merely imitated the motion

of presenting and firing. He nodded gravely in acquiescence.

“What hour is it to take place?” asked I.

“After evening parade. The sentence must be signed by General Berthier,

and he will not be here before that time.”

“It would be too late, then, sergeant,” said I, musing, “far too late.

Still I should like to write the letter; I would like to thank him for his

kindness in the past, and show him, too, that I have not been either

unworthy or ungrateful. Could you let me have paper and pen, sergeant?”

“I can venture so far, lad; but I can not let thee have a light; it is

against orders; and during the day thou’lt be too strictly watched.”

“No matter let me have the paper and I’ll try to scratch a few lines in

the dark; and thou’lt post it for me, sergeant? I ask thee as a last favor

to do this.”

“I promise it,” said he, laying his hand on my shoulder. After standing

for a few minutes thus in silence, he started suddenly and left the cell.

I now tried to eat my supper; but although resolved on behaving with a

stout and unflinching courage throughout the whole sad event, I could not

swallow a mouthful. A sense of choking stopped me at every attempt, and

even the water I could only get down by gulps. The efforts I made to bear

up seemed to have caused a species of hysterical excitement that actually

rose to the height of intoxication, for I talked away loudly to myself,

laughed, and sung. I even jested and mocked myself on this sudden

termination of a career that I used to anticipate as stored with future

fame and rewards. At intervals, I have no doubt that my mind wandered far

beyond the control of reason, but as constantly came back again to a full

consciousness of my melancholy position, and the fate that awaited me. The

noise of the key in the door silenced my ravings, and I sat still and

motionless as the sergeant entered with the pen, ink, and paper, which he

laid down upon the bed, and then as silently withdrew.

A long interval of stupor, a state of dreary half consciousness, now came

over me, from which I aroused myself with great difficulty to write the

few lines I destined for Colonel Mahon. I remember even now, long as has

been the space of years since that event, full as it has been of stirring

and strange incidents, I remember perfectly the thought which flashed

across me as I sat, pen in hand, before the paper. It was the notion of a

certain resemblance between our actions in this world with the characters

I was about to inscribe upon that paper. Written in darkness and in doubt,

thought I, how shall they appear when brought to the light! Perhaps those

I have deemed the best and fairest shall seem but to be the weakest or the

worst! What need of kindness to forgive the errors, and of patience to

endure the ignorance! At last I began: “Mon Colonel—Forgive, I pray you,

the errors of these lines, penned in the darkness of my cell, and the

night before my death. They are written to thank you ere I go hence, and

to tell you that the poor heart whose beating will soon be still throbbed

gratefully toward you to the last! I have been sentenced to death for a

breach of discipline of which I was guilty. Had I failed in the

achievement of my enterprise by the bullet of an enemy, they would have

named me with honor; but I have had the misfortune of success, and

tomorrow am I to pay its penalty. I have the satisfaction, however, of

knowing that my share in that great day can neither be denied nor evaded;

it is already on record, and the time may yet come when my memory will be

vindicated. I know not if these lines be legible, nor if I have crossed or

recrossed them. If they are blotted they are not my tears have done it,

for I have a firm heart and a good courage; and when the moment comes—”;

here my hand trembled so much, and my brain grew so dizzy, that I lost the

thread of my meaning, and merely jotted down at random a few words, vague,

unconnected, and unintelligible, after which, and by an effort that cost

all my strength, I wrote “MAURICE TIERNEY, late Hussar of the 9th

Regiment.”

A hearty burst of tears followed the conclusion of this letter; all the

pent-up emotion with which my heart was charged broke out at last, and I

cried bitterly. Intense passions are, happily, never of long duration, and

better still, they are always the precursors of calm. Thus, tranquil, the

dawn of morn broke upon me, when the sergeant came to take my letter, and

apprize me that the adjutant would appear in a few moments to read my

sentence, and inform me when it was to be executed.

“Thou’lt bear up well, lad; I know thou wilt,” said the poor fellow, with

tears in his eyes. “Thou hast no mother, and thou’lt not have to grieve

for _her_.”

“Don’t be afraid, sergeant; I’ll not disgrace the old 9th. Tell my

comrades I said so.”

“I will. I will tell them all! Is this thy jacket, lad?”

“Yes; what do you want it for?”

“I must take it away with me. Thou art not to wear it more!”

“Not wear it, nor die in it; and why not?”

“That is the sentence, lad; I can not help it. It’s very hard, very cruel;

but so it is.”

“Then I am to die dishonored, sergeant; is that the sentence?”

He dropped his head, and I could see that he moved his sleeve across his

eyes; and then, taking up my jacket, he came toward me.

“Remember, lad, a stout heart; no flinching. Adieu—God bless thee.” He

kissed me on either cheek, and went out.

He had not been gone many minutes, when the tramp of marching outside

apprized me of the coming of the adjutant, and the door of my cell being

thrown open, I was ordered to walk forth into the court of the prison. Two

squadrons of my own regiment, all who were not on duty, were drawn up,

dismounted, and without arms; beside them stood a company of grenadiers,

and a half battalion of the line, the corps to which the other two

prisoners belonged, and who now came forward, in shirt-sleeves like

myself, into the middle of the court.

One of my fellow-sufferers was a very old soldier, whose hair and beard

were white as snow; the other was a middle-aged man, of a dark and

forbidding aspect, who scowled at me angrily as I came up to his side, and

seemed as if he scorned the companionship. I returned a glance, haughty

and as full of defiance as his own, and never noticed him after.

The drum beat a roll, and the word was given for silence in the ranks—an

order so strictly obeyed, that even the clash of a weapon was unheard, and

stepping in front of the line, the Auditeur Militaire read out the

sentences. As for me, I heard but the words “Peine afflictive et

infamante;” all the rest became confusion, shame, and terror co-mingled;

nor did I know that the ceremonial was over, when the troops began to

defile, and we were marched back again to our prison quarters.

Chapter XIV. A Surprise And An Escape.

It is a very common subject of remark in newspapers, and as invariably

repeated with astonishment by the readers, how well and soundly such a

criminal slept on the night before his execution. It reads like a

wonderful evidence of composure, or some not less surprising proof of

apathy or indifference. I really believe it has as little relation to one

feeling as to the other, and is simply the natural consequence of

faculties over-strained, and a brain surcharged with blood; sleep being

induced by causes purely physical in their nature. For myself, I can say

that I was by no means indifferent to life, nor had I any contempt for the

form of death that awaited me. As localities, which have failed to inspire

a strong attachment, become endowed with a certain degree of interest when

we are about to part from them forever, I never held life so desirable as

now that I was going to leave it; and yet, with all this, I fell into a

sleep so heavy and profound, that I never awoke till late in the evening.

Twice was I shaken by the shoulder ere I could throw off the heavy weight

of slumber; and even when I looked up, and saw the armed figures around

me, I could have laid down once more, and composed myself to another

sleep.

The first thing which thoroughly aroused me, and at once brightened up my

slumbering senses, was missing my jacket, for which I searched every

corner of my cell, forgetting that it had been taken away, as the nature

of my sentence was declared “infamante.” The next shock was still greater,

when two sapeurs came forward to tie my wrists together behind my back; I

neither spoke nor resisted, but in silent submission complied with each

order given me.

All preliminaries being completed, I was led forward, preceded by a

pioneer, and guarded on either side by two sapeurs of “the guard;” a

muffled drum, ten paces in advance, keeping up a low monotonous rumble as

we went.

Our way led along the ramparts, beside which ran a row of little gardens,

in which the children of the officers were at play. They ceased their

childish gambols as we drew near, and came closer up to watch us. I could

mark the terror and pity in their little faces as they gazed at me; I

could see the traits of compassion with which they pointed me out to each

other, and my heart swelled with gratitude for even so slight a sympathy.

It was with difficulty I could restrain the emotion of that moment, but

with a great effort I did subdue it, and marched on, to all seeming,

unmoved. A little further on, as we turned the angle of the wall, I looked

back to catch one last look at them. Would that I had never done so! They

had quitted the railings, and were now standing in a group, in the act of

performing a mimic execution. One, without his jacket, was kneeling on the

grass. But I could not bear the sight, and in scornful anger I closed my

eyes, and saw no more.

A low whispering conversation was kept up by the soldiers around me. They

were grumbling at the long distance they had to march, as the “affair”

might just as well have taken place on the glacis as two miles away. How

different were _my_ feelings—how dear to me was now every minute, every

second of existence; how my heart leaped at each turn of the way, as I

still saw a space to traverse, and some little interval longer to live.

“And, mayhap, after all,” muttered one dark-faced fellow, “we shall have

come all this way for nothing. There can be no ‘fusillade’ without the

general’s signature, so I heard the adjutant say; and who’s to promise

that he’ll be at his quarters?”

“Very true,” said another; “he may be absent, or at table.”

“At table!” cried two or three together; “and what if he were?”

“If he be,” rejoined the former speaker, “we may go back again for our

pains! I ought to know him well; I was his orderly for eight months, when

I served in the ‘Legers,’ and can tell you, my lads, I wouldn’t be the

officer who would bring him a report, or a return to sign, once he had

opened out his napkin on his knee; and it’s not very far from his

dinner-hour now.”

What a sudden thrill of hope ran through me! Perhaps I should be spared

for another day.

“No, no, we’re all in time,” exclaimed the sergeant; “I can see the

general’s tent from this; and there he stands, with all his staff around

him.”

“Yes; and there go the other escorts—they will be up before us if we don’t

make haste; quick-time, lads. Come along, mon cher,” said he, addressing

me; “thou’rt not tired, I hope.”

“Not tired!” replied I; “but remember, sergeant, what a long journey I

have before me.”

“_Pardieu!_ I don’t believe all that rhodomontade about another world,”

said he gruffly; “the republic settled that question.”

I made no reply. For such words, at such a moment, were the most terrible

of tortures to me. And now we moved on at a brisker pace, and crossing a

little wooden bridge, entered a kind of esplanade of closely-shaven turf,

at one corner of which stood the capacious tent of the commander-in-chief,

for such, in Moreau’s absence, was General Berthier. Numbers of

staff-officers were riding about on duty, and a large traveling-carriage,

from which the horses seemed recently detached, stood before the tent.

We halted as we crossed the bridge, while the adjutant advanced to obtain

the signature to the sentence. My eyes followed him till they swam with

rising tears, and I could not wipe them away, as my hands were fettered.

How rapidly did my thoughts travel during those few moments. The good old

Père Michel came back to me in memory, and I tried to think of the

consolation his presence would have afforded me; but I could do no more

than think of them.

“Which is the prisoner Tiernay?” cried a young aid-de-camp, cantering up

to where I was standing.

“Here, sir,” replied the sergeant, pushing me forward.

“So,” rejoined the officer, angrily, “this fellow has been writing

letters, it would seem, reflecting upon the justice of his sentence, and

arraigning the conduct of his judges. Your epistolary tastes are like to

cost you dearly, my lad; it had been better for you if writing had been

omitted in your education. Reconduct the others, sergeant, they are

respited; this fellow alone is to undergo his sentence.”

The other two prisoners gave a short and simultaneous cry of joy as they

fell back, and I stood alone in front of the escort.

“Parbleu! he has forgotten the signature,” said the adjutant, casting his

eye over the paper: “he was chattering and laughing all the time, with the

pen in his hand, and I suppose fancied that he had signed it.”

“Nathalie was there, perhaps,” said the aid-de-camp, significantly.

“She was, and I never saw her looking better. It’s something like eight

years since I saw her last; and I vow she seems not only handsomer, but

fresher and more youthful to-day than then.”

“Where is she going; have you heard?”

“Who can tell? Her passport is like a firman; she may travel where she

pleases. The rumor of the day says Italy.”

“I thought she looked provoked at Moreau’s absence; it seemed like want of

attention on his part, a lack of courtesy she’s not used to.”

“Very true; and her reception of Berthier was any thing but gracious,

although he certainly displayed all his civilities in her behalf.”

“Strange days we live in!” sighed the other, “when a man’s promotion hangs

upon the favorable word of a—”

“Hush! take care! be cautious!” whispered the other. “Let us not forget

this poor fellow’s business. How are you to settle it? Is the signature of

any consequence? The whole sentence all is right and regular.”

“I shouldn’t like to omit the signature,” said the other, cautiously; “it

looks like carelessness, and might involve us in trouble hereafter.”

“Then we must wait some time, for I see they are gone to dinner.”

“So I perceive,” replied the former, as he lighted his cigar, and seated

himself on a bank. “You may let the prisoner sit down, sergeant, and leave

his hands free; he looks wearied and exhausted.”

I was too weak to speak, but I looked my gratitude; and sitting down upon

the grass, covered my face, and wept heartily.

Although quite close to where the officers sat together chatting and

jesting, I heard little or nothing of what they said. Already the things

of life had ceased to have any hold upon me; and I could have heard of the

greatest victory, or listened to a story of the most fatal defeat, without

the slightest interest or emotion. An occasional word or a name would

strike upon my ear, but leave no impression nor any memory behind it.

The military band was performing various marches and opera airs before the

tent where the general dined, and in the melody, softened by distance, I

felt a kind of calm and sleepy repose that lulled me into a species of

ecstasy.

At last the music ceased to play, and the adjutant, starting hurriedly up,

called on the sergeant to move forward.

“By Jove!” cried he, “they seem preparing for a promenade, and we shall

get into a scrape if Berthier sees us here. Keep your party yonder,

sergeant, out of sight, till I obtain the signature.”

And so saying, away he went toward the tent at a sharp gallop.

A few seconds, and I watched him crossing the esplanade; he dismounted and

disappeared. A terrible choking sensation was over me, and I scarcely was

conscious that they were again tying my hands. The adjutant came out

again, and made a sign with his sword.

“We are to move on!” said the sergeant, half in doubt.

“Not at all,” broke in the aid-de-camp; “he is making a sign for you to

bring up the prisoner! There, he is repeating the signal; lead him

forward.”

I knew very little of how—less still of why—but we moved on in the

direction of the tent, and in a few minutes stood before it. The sounds of

revelry and laughter, the crash of voices, and the clink of glasses,

together with the hoarse bray of the brass band, which again struck up,

all were co-mingled in my brain, as, taking me by the arm, I was led

forward within the tent, and found myself at the foot of a table covered

with all the gorgeousness of silver plate, and glowing with bouquets of

flowers and fruits. In the one hasty glance I gave, before my lids fell

over my swimming eyes, I could see the splendid uniforms of the guests as

they sat around the board, and the magnificent costume of a lady in the

place of honor next the head.

Several of those who sat at the lower end of the table drew back their

seats as I came forward, and seemed as if desirous to give the general a

better view of me.

Overwhelmed by the misery of my fate, as I stood awaiting my death, I felt

as though a mere word, a look, would have crushed me but one moment back;

but now, as I stood there, before that group of gazers, whose eyes scanned

me with looks of insolent disdain, or still more insulting curiosity, a

sense of proud defiance seized me, to confront and dare them with glances

haughty and scornful as their own. It seemed to me so base and unworthy a

part to summon a poor wretch before them, as if to whet their new appetite

for enjoyment by the aspect of his misery, that an indignant anger took

possession of me, and I drew myself up to my full height, and stared at

them calm and steadily.

“So, then!” cried a deep soldier-like voice from the far-end of the table,

which I at once recognized as the general-in-chief’s; “so, then,

gentlemen, we have now the honor of seeing among us the hero of the Rhine!

This is the distinguished individual by whose prowess the passage of the

river was effected, and the Swabian infantry cut off in their retreat! Is

it not true, sir?” said he, addressing me with a savage scowl.

“I have had my share in the achievement!” said I, with a cool air of

defiance.

“Parbleu! you are modest, sir. So had every drummer-boy that beat his

tattoo! But yours was the part of a great leader, if I err not?”

I made no answer, but stood firm and unmoved.

“How do you call the island which you have immortalized by your valor?”

“The Fels Insel, sir.”

“Gentlemen, let us drink to the hero of the Fels Insel,” said he, holding

up his glass for the servant to fill it. “A bumper—a full, a flowing

bumper! And let him also pledge a toast, in which his interest must be so

brief. Give him a glass, Contard.”

“His hands are tied, mon general.”

“Then free them at once.”

The order was obeyed in a second; and I, summoning up all my courage to

seem as easy and indifferent as they were, lifted the glass to my lips,

and drained it off.

“Another glass, now, to the health of this fair lady, through whose

intercession we owe the pleasure of your company,” said the general.

“Willingly,” said I; “and may one so beautiful seldom find herself in a

society so unworthy of her!”

A perfect roar of laughter succeeded the insolence of this speech; amid

which I was half pushed, half dragged, up to the end of the table, where

the general sat.

“How so, Coquin, do you dare to insult a French general, at the head of

his own staff!”

“If I did, sir, it were quite as brave as to mock a poor criminal on the

way to his execution!”

“That is the boy! I know him now! the very same lad!” cried the lady, as,

stooping behind Berthier’s chair, she stretched out her hand toward me.

“Come here; are you not Colonel Mahon’s godson?”

I looked her full in the face; and whether her own thoughts gave the

impulse, or that something in my stare suggested it, she blushed till her

cheek grew crimson.

“Poor Charles was so fond of him!” whispered she in Berthier’s ear; and,

as she spoke, the expression of her face at once recalled where I had seen

her, and I now perceived that she was the same person I had seen at table

with Colonel Mahon, and whom I believed to be his wife.

A low whispering conversation now ensued between the general and her, at

the close of which, he turned to me and said,

“Madame Merlancourt has deigned to take an interest in you—you are

pardoned. Remember, sir, to whom you owe your life, and be grateful to her

for it.”

I took the hand she extended toward me, and pressed it to my lips.

“Madame,” said I, “there is but one favor more I would ask in this world,

and with it I could think myself happy.”

“But can I grant it, mon cher,” said she, smiling.

“If I am to judge from the influence I have seen you wield, madame, here

and elsewhere, this petition will easily be accorded.”

A slight flush colored the lady’s cheek, while that of the general became

dyed red with anger. I saw that I had committed some terrible blunder, but

how, or in what, I knew not.

“Well, sir,” said Madame Merlancourt, addressing me with a stately

coldness of manner very different from her former tone, “Let us hear what

you ask, for we are already taking up a vast deal of time that our host

would prefer devoting to his friends, what is it you wish?”

“My discharge from a service, madame, where zeal and enthusiasm are

rewarded with infamy and disgrace; my freedom to be any thing but a French

soldier.”

“You are resolved, sir, that I am not to be proud of my protégé,” said

she, haughtily; “what words are these to speak in presence of a general

and his officers?”

“I am bold, madame, as you say, but I am wronged.”

“How so, sir—in what have you been injured?” cried the general, hastily,

“except in the excessive condescension which has stimulated your

presumption. But we are really too indulgent in this long parley. Madame,

permit me to offer you some coffee under the trees. Contardo, tell the

band to follow us. Gentlemen, we expect the pleasure of your society.”

And so saying, Berthier presented his arm to the lady, who swept proudly

past without deigning to notice me. In a few minutes the tent was cleared

of all, except the servants occupied in removing the remains of the

dessert, and I fell back unremarked and unobserved, to take my way

homeward to the barracks, more indifferent to life than ever I had been

afraid of death.

As I am not likely to recur at any length to the somewhat famous person to

whom I owed my life, I may as well state that her name has since occupied

no inconsiderable share of attention in France, and her history, under the

title of “Mémoires d’une Contemporaine,” excited a degree of interest and

anxiety in quarters which one might have fancied far above the reach of

her revelations. At the time I speak of, I little knew the character of

the age in which such influences were all powerful, nor how destinies very

different from mine hung upon the favoritism of “La belle Nathalie.” Had I

known these things, and still more, had I known the sad fate to which she

brought my poor friend, Colonel Mahon, I might have scrupled to accept my

life at such hands, or involved myself in a debt of gratitude to one for

whom I was subsequently to feel nothing but hatred and aversion. It was

indeed a terrible period, and in nothing more so than the fact, that acts

of benevolence and charity were blended up with features of falsehood,

treachery, and baseness, which made one despair of humanity, and think the

very worst of their species.

Chapter XV. Scraps Of History.

Nothing displays more powerfully the force of egotism than the simple

truth that, when any man sets himself down to write the events of his

life, the really momentous occurrences in which he may have borne a part

occupy a conspicuously small place, when each petty incident of a merely

personal nature, is dilated and extended beyond all bounds. In one sense,

the reader benefits by this, since there are few impertinences less

forgivable than the obtrusion of some insignificant name into the

narrative of facts that are meet for history. I have made these remarks in

a spirit of apology to my reader; not alone for the accuracy of my late

detail, but also, if I should seem in future to dwell but passingly on the

truly important facts of a great campaign, in which my own part was so

humble.

I was a soldier in that glorious army which Moreau led into the heart of

Germany, and whose victorious career would only have ceased when they

entered the capital of the Empire, had it not been for the unhappy

mistakes of Jourdan, who commanded the auxiliary forces in the north. For

nigh three months we advanced steadily and successfully, superior in every

engagement; we only waited for the moment of junction with Jourdan’s army,

to declare the empire our own; when at last came the terrible tidings that

he had been beaten, and that Latour was advancing from Ulm to turn our

left flank, and cut off our communications with France.

Two hundred miles from our own frontiers—separated from the Rhine by that

terrible Black Forest whose defiles are mere gorges between vast

mountains—with an army fifty thousand strong on one flank, and the

Archduke Charles commanding a force of nigh thirty thousand on the

other—such were the dreadful combinations which now threatened us with a

defeat not less signal than Jourdan’s own. Our strength, however, lay in a

superb army of seventy thousand unbeaten men, led on by one whose name

alone was victory.

On the 24th of September, the order for retreat was given; the army began

to retire by slow marches, prepared to contest every inch of ground, and

make every available spot a battle-field. The baggage and ammunition were

sent on in front, and two days’ march in advance. Behind, a formidable

rear-guard was ready to repulse every attack of the enemy. Before,

however, entering those close defiles by which his retreat lay, Moreau

determined to give one terrible lesson to his enemy. Like the hunted tiger

turning upon his pursuers, he suddenly halted at Biberach, and ere Latour,

who commanded the Austrians, was aware of his purpose, assailed the

imperial forces with an attack on right, centre, and left together. Four

thousand prisoners and eighteen pieces of cannon were trophies of the

victory.

The day after this decisive battle our march was resumed, and the

advanced-guard entered that narrow and dismal defile which goes by the

name of the “Valley of Hell,” when our left and right flanks, stationed at

the entrance of the pass, effectually secured the retreat against

molestation. The voltigeurs of St. Cyr crowning the heights as we went,

swept away the light troops which were scattered along the rocky

eminences, and in less than a fortnight our army debouched by Fribourg and

Oppenheim into the valley of the Rhine, not a gun having been lost, not a

caisson deserted, during that perilous movement.

The Archduke, however, having ascertained the direction of Moreau’s

retreat, advanced by a parallel pass through the Kinzigthal, and attacked

St. Cyr at Nauendorf, and defeated him. Our right flank, severely handled

at Emmendingen, the whole force was obliged to retreat on Huningen, and

once more we found ourselves upon the banks of the Rhine, no longer an

advancing army, high in hope, and flushed with victory, but beaten,

harassed, and retreating!

The last few days of that retreat presented a scene of disaster such as I

can never forget. To avoid the furious charges of the Austrian cavalry,

against which our own could no longer make resistance, we had fallen back

upon a line of country cut up into rocky cliffs and precipices, and

covered by a dense pine forest. Here, necessarily broken up into small

parties, we were assailed by the light troops of the enemy, led on through

the various passes by the peasantry, whose animosity our own severity had

excited. It was, therefore, a continual hand-to-hand struggle, in which,

opposed as we were to over numbers, well acquainted with every advantage

of the ground, our loss was terrific. It is said that nigh seven thousand

men fell—an immense number, when no general action had occurred. Whatever

the actual loss, such were the circumstances of our army, that Moreau

hastened to propose an armistice, on the condition of the Rhine being the

boundary between the two armies, while Kehl was still to be held by the

French.

The proposal was rejected by the Austrians, who at once commenced

preparations for a siege of the fortress with forty thousand troops, under

Latour’s command. The earlier months of winter now passed in the labors of

the siege, and on the morning of New Year’s Day the first attack was made;

the second line was carried a few days after, and, after a glorious

defense by Desaix, the garrison capitulated, and evacuated the fortress on

the 9th of the month. Thus, in the space of six short months, had we

advanced with a conquering army into the very heart of the Empire, and now

we were back again within our own frontier; not one single trophy of all

our victories remaining, two-thirds of our army dead or wounded, more than

all, the prestige of our superiority fatally injured, and that of the

enemy’s valor and prowess as signally elevated.

The short annals of a successful soldier are often comprised in the few

words which state how he was made lieutenant at such a date, promoted to

his company here, obtained his majority there, succeeded to the command of

his regiment at such a place, and so on. Now my exploits may even be more

briefly written as regards this campaign, for whether at Kehl at

Nauendorf, on the Etz, or at Huningen, I ended as I begun—a simple soldier

of the ranks. A few slight wounds, a few still more insignificant words of

praise, were all that I brought back with me; but if my trophies were

small, I had gained considerably both in habits of discipline and

obedience. I had learned to endure, ably and without complaining, the

inevitable hardships of a campaign, and better still, to see, that the

irrepressible impulses of the soldier, however prompted by zeal or

heroism, may oftener mar than promote the more mature plans of his

general. Scarcely had my feet once more touched French ground, than I was

seized with the ague, then raging as an epidemic among the troops, and

sent forward with a large detachment of sick to the Military Hospital of

Strasbourg.

Here I bethought me of my patron, Colonel Mahon, and determined to write

to him. For this purpose I addressed a question to the Adjutant-general’s

office to ascertain the colonel’s address. The reply was a brief and

stunning one—he had been dismissed the service. No personal calamity could

have thrown me into deeper affliction; nor had I even the sad consolation

of learning any of the circumstances of this misfortune. His death, even

though thereby I should have lost my only friend, would have been a

lighter evil than this disgrace; and coming as did the tidings when I was

already broken by sickness and defeat, more than ever disgusted me with a

soldier’s life. It was then with a feeling of total indifference that I

heard a rumor which at another moment would have filled me with

enthusiasm—the order for all invalids sufficiently well to be removed, to

be drafted into regiments serving in Italy. The fame of Bonaparte, who

commanded that army, had now surpassed that of all the other generals; his

victories paled the glory of their successes, and it was already a mark of

distinction to have served under his command.

The walls of the hospital were scrawled over with the names of his

victories; rude sketches of Alpine passes, terrible ravines, or snow-clad

peaks met the eye every where; and the one magical name, “Bonaparte,”

written beneath, seemed the key to all their meaning. With him war seemed

to assume all the charms of romance. Each action was illustrated by feats

of valor or heroism, and a halo of glory seemed to shine over all the

achievements of his genius.

It was a clear, bright morning of March, when a light frost sharpened the

air, and a fair, blue sky overhead showed a cloudless elastic atmosphere,

that the “Invalides,” as we were all called, were drawn up in the great

square of the hospital for inspection. Two superior officers of the staff,

attended by several surgeons and an adjutant, sat at a table in front of

us, on which lay the regimental books and conduct-rolls of the different

corps. Such of the sick as had received severe wounds, incapacitating them

for further service, were presented with some slight reward—a few francs

in money, a greatcoat, or a pair of shoes, and obtained their freedom.

Others, whose injuries were less important, received their promotion, or

some slight increase of pay, these favors being all measured by the

character the individual bore in his regiment, and the opinion certified

of him by his commanding officer. When my turn came and I stood forward, I

felt a kind of shame to think how little claim I could prefer either to

honor or advancement.

“Maurice Tiernay, slightly wounded by a sabre at Nauendorf—flesh-wound at

Biberach—enterprising and active, but presumptuous and overbearing with

his comrades,” read out the adjutant, while he added a few words I could

not hear, but at which the superior laughed heartily.

“What says the doctor?” asked he, after a pause.

“This has been a bad case of ague, and I doubt if the young fellow will

ever be fit for active service—certainly not at present.”

“Is there a vacancy at Saumur?” asked the general. “I see he has been

employed in the school at Nancy.”

“Yes, sir; for the third class there is one.”

“Let him have it, then. Tiernay, you are appointed as aspirant of the

third class at the College of Saumur. Take care that the report of your

conduct be more creditable than what is written here. Your opportunities

will now be considerable, and if well employed, may lead to further honor

and distinction; if neglected or abused, your chances are forfeited

forever.”

I bowed and retired, as little satisfied with the admonition as elated

with the prospect which converted me from a soldier into a scholar, and,

in the first verge of manhood, threw me back once more into the condition

of a mere boy.

Eighteen months of my life—not the least happy, perhaps, since in the

peaceful portion I can trace so little to be sorry for—glided over beside

the banks of the beautiful Loire, the intervals in the hours of study

being spent either in the riding-school, or the river, where, in addition

to swimming and diving, we were instructed in pontooning and rafting, the

modes of transporting ammunition and artillery, and the attacks of

infantry by cavalry pickets.

I also learned to speak and write English and German with great ease and

fluency, besides acquiring some skill in military drawing and engineering.

It is true that the imprisonment chafed sorely against us, as we read of

the great achievements of our armies in various parts of the world; of the

great battles of Cairo and the Pyramids, of Acre and Mount Thabor; and of

which a holiday and a fête were to be our only share.

The terrible storms which shook Europe from end to end, only reached us in

the bulletins of new victories; and we panted for the time when we, too,

should be actors in the glorious exploits of France.

It is already known to the reader that of the country from which my family

came I myself knew nothing. The very little I had ever learned of it from

my father was also a mere tradition; still was I known among my comrades

only as “the Irishman,” and by that name was I recognized, even in the

record of the school, where I was inscribed thus: “Maurice Tiernay, dit

l’Irlandais.” It was on this very simple and seemingly-unimportant fact my

whole fate in life was to turn; and in this wise—But the explanation

deserves a chapter of its own, and shall have it.

_(To be continued.)_

THE ENCHANTED ROCK. (FROM CHAMBERS’S EDINBURGH JOURNAL.)

About four miles west-northwest of Cape Clear Island and lighthouse, on

the south-west coast of Ireland, a singularly-shaped rock, called the

Fastnett, rises abruptly and perpendicularly a height of ninety feet above

the sea level in the Atlantic Ocean. It is about nine miles from the

mainland, and the country-people say it is _nine miles_ from _every part_

of the coast.

The Fastnett for ages has been in the undisturbed possession of the

cormorant, sea-gull, and various other tribes of sea-fowl, and was also a

noted place for large conger eels, bream, and pollock; but from a

superstitious dread of the place, the fishermen seldom fished near it.

During foggy weather, and when the rock is partially enveloped in mist, it

has very much the appearance of a large vessel under sail—hence no doubt

the origin of all the wonderful tales and traditions respecting the

Fastnett being enchanted, and its celebrated feats. The old people all

along the sea-coast are under the impression that the Fastnett hoists

sails before sunrise on the 1st of May in every year, and takes a cruise

toward the Dursey Islands, at the north entrance of Bantry Bay, a distance

of some forty miles; and that, after dancing several times round the rocks

known to mariners as the Bull, Cow, and Calf, it then shapes its homeward

course, drops anchor at the spot from whence it sailed, and remains

stationary during the remainder of the year.

The Fastnett, however, it appears, is not the only enchanted spot in that

locality; for at the head of Schull Harbor, about nine miles north of the

rock, on the top of Mount Gabriel—about 1400 feet above the sea-level—is a

celebrated lake, which the people say is so deep, that the longest line

ever made would not reach its bottom. It is also stoutly asserted that a

gentleman once dropped his walking-stick into the lake, and that it was

afterward found by a fisherman near the Fastnett. On another occasion, a

female wishing to get some water from the lake to perform a miraculous

cure on one of her friends, accidentally let fall the jug into the water,

and after several months, the identical jug—it could not be mistaken, part

of the lip being broken off—was also picked up near the Fastnett. For such

reasons the people imagine that there is some mysterious connection

between the rock and the lake, and that they have a subterranean passage

or means of communication. Captain Wolfe, indeed, during his survey of the

coast in 1848, sounded the mysterious pool, and found the bottom with a

line _seven feet long_; but the people shake their heads at the idea, and

say it was all _freemasonry_ on the part of the captain, and ask how he

accounts for the affair of the stick and jug? It will be some time, I

presume, before this puzzling question can be solved to the satisfaction

of all parties; and the traditions of the stick and jug, and many other

extraordinary occurrences, are likely to be handed down to succeeding

generations. The lake, or bog-hole, must therefore be left alone in its

glory; but, alas! not so with the Fastnett.

No more will it hoist sail for its Walpurgie trip, and cruise to the

Durseys, for it is now _firmly moored_; and in the hands of man the

wonderful Fastnett is reduced to a simple isolated rock in the Atlantic

Ocean. During the awful shipwrecks in the winters of 1846 and 1847, but

little assistance was derived from the Cape Clear light, which is too

elevated, and is often totally obscured by fog, and this drew attention to

the Fastnett Rock as a more eligible site for a pharos, being in the

immediate route of all outward and homeward-bound vessels: but the great

difficulty was to effect a landing, and make the necessary surveys; its

sides being almost perpendicular, and continually lashed by a heavy surge

or surf. After many attempts. Captain Wolfe did effect a landing; and

having made the necessary survey, and reported favorably as to its

advantages, it was determined by the Ballast Board to erect on it a

lighthouse forthwith. Operations were commenced in the summer of 1847, by

sinking or excavating a circular shaft about twelve feet deep in the solid

rock; holes were then drilled, in which were fixed strong iron shafts for

the framework of the house; and then the masons began to rear the edifice.

The workmen found it pleasant enough during the summer and autumn of 1847,

and lived in tents on the summit of the rock, and looked over the mainland

with the aid of a glass, like so many of their predecessors—the

cormorants.

In the spring of 1848, however, when operations were resumed, after a

cessation of the works for the winter, the scene changed. It began to blow

very hard from the northwest; and the men secured their building, which

was now several feet above the rocks, as well as they could, and covered

it over with strong and heavy beams of timber, leaving a small aperture

for ingress and egress, and then awaited in silence the result. During the

night the wind increased, and the sea broke with such fury over the whole

rock, that the men imagined every succeeding wave to be commissioned to

sweep them into the abyss. It only extinguished their fire, however, and

carried off most of their provisions, together with sundry heavy pieces of

cast-iron, a large blacksmith’s anvil, and the crane with which the

building materials were lifted on the rock. The storm lasted upward of a

week, during which time no vessel or boat could approach; and the crew of

this island-ship remained drenched with water, and nearly perished with

cold in a dark hole, with nothing to relieve their hunger but water-soaked

biscuit. But the wind at length suddenly shifted, the sea moderated, and

they were enabled eventually to crawl out of their hole more dead than

alive. In a few days a boat approached as near as possible, and by the aid

of ropes fastened round their waists, they were drawn one by one from the

rock through the boiling surf. The men speedily recovered, and have since

raised the building some twenty feet above the ground: the extreme height

is to be sixty feet. This is the last adventure of the Enchanted Rock; but

we trust a brilliant history is before it, in which, instead of expending

its energies in idle cruises, it will act the part of the beneficent

preserver of life and property.

THE FORCE OF FEAR. (FROM CHAMBERS’S EDINBURGH JOURNAL.)

At the close of the winter of 1825-6, about dusk in the afternoon, just as

the wealthy dealers in the Palais Royal at Paris were about lighting their

lamps and putting up their shutters (the practice of the major part of

them at nightfall), a well-known money-changer sat behind his counter

alone, surrounded by massive heaps of silver and gold, the glittering and

sterling currency of all the kingdoms of Europe. He had well-nigh closed

his operations for the day, and was enjoying in anticipation the prospect

of a good dinner. Between the easy-chair upon which he reclined in perfect

satisfaction, and the door which opened into the north side of the immense

quadrangle of which the splendid edifice above-mentioned is composed,

arose a stout wire partition, reaching nearly to the ceiling, and resting

upon the counter, which traversed the whole length of the room. Thus he

was effectually cut off from all possibility of unfriendly contact from

any of his occasional visitors; while a small sliding-board that ran in

and out under the wire partition served as the medium of his peculiar

commerce. Upon this he received every coin, note, or draft presented for

change; and having first carefully examined it, returned its value by the

same conveyance, in the coin of France, or indeed of any country required.

Behind him was a door communicating with his domestic chambers, and in the

middle of the counter was another, the upper part of which formed a

portion of the wire partition above described.

The denizen of this little chamber had already closed his outer shutters,

and was just on the point of locking up his doors, and retiring to his

repast, when two young men entered. They were evidently Italians, from

their costume and peculiar dialect. Had it been earlier in the day, when

there would have been sufficient light to have discerned their features

and expression, it is probable that our merchant would have defeated their

plans, for he was well skilled in detecting the tokens of fraud or design

in the human countenance. But they had chosen their time too

appropriately. One of them, advancing toward the counter, demanded change

in French coin for an English sovereign, which he laid upon the sliding

board, and passed through the wire partition. The moneychanger rose

immediately, and having ascertained that the coin was genuine, returned

its proper equivalent by the customary mode of transfer. The Italians

turned as if to leave the apartment, when he who had received the money

suddenly dropped the silver, as though accidentally, upon the floor. As it

was now nearly dark, it was scarcely to be expected that they could find

the whole of the pieces without the assistance of a light. This the

unconscious merchant hastened to supply; and unlocking, without suspicion,

the door of the partition between them, stooped with a candle over the

floor in search of the lost coin. In this position the unfortunate man was

immediately assailed with repeated stabs from a poniard, and he at length

fell, after a few feeble and ineffectual struggles, senseless, and

apparently lifeless, at the feet of his assassins.

A considerable time elapsed ere, by the fortuitous entrance of a stranger,

he was discovered in this dreadful situation; when it was found that the

assassins, having first helped themselves to an almost incredible amount

of money, had fled, without any thing being left by which a clew might

have been obtained to their retreat.

The unfortunate victim of their rapacity and cruelty was, however, not

dead. Strange as it may appear, although he had received upward of twenty

wounds, several of which plainly showed that the dagger had been driven to

the very hilt, he survived; and in a few months after the event, was again

to be seen in his long-accustomed place at the changer’s board. In vain

had the most diligent search been made by the military police of Paris for

the perpetrators of this detestable deed. The villains had eluded all

inquiry and investigation, and would in all probability have escaped

undiscovered with their booty but for a mutually-cherished distrust of

each other. Upon the first and complete success of their plan, the

question arose, how to dispose of their enormous plunder, amounting to

more than a hundred thousand pounds. Fearful of the researches of the

police, they dared not retain it at their lodgings. To trust a third party

with their secret was not to be thought of. At length, after long and

anxious deliberation, they agreed to conceal the money outside the

barriers of Paris until they should have concocted some safe plan for

transporting it to their own country. This they accordingly did, burying

the treasure under a tree about a mile from the Barrière d’Enfer. But they

were still as far as ever from a mutual understanding. When they

separated, on any pretense, each returned to the spot which contained the

stolen treasure, where of course he was sure to find the other. Suspicion

thus formed and fed soon grew into dislike and hatred, until at length,

each loathing the sight of the other, they agreed finally to divide the

booty, and then eternally to separate, each to the pursuit of his own

gratification. It then became necessary to carry the whole of the money

home to their lodgings in Paris, in order that it might, according to

their notions, be equitably divided.

The reader must here be reminded that there exists in Paris a law relative

to wines and spirituous liquors which allows them to be retailed at a much

lower price without the barriers than that at which they are sold within

the walls of the city. This law has given rise, among the lower orders of

people, to frequent attempts at smuggling liquors in bladders concealed

about their persons, often in their hats. The penalty for the offense was

so high, that it was very rarely enforced, and practically it was very

seldom, indeed, that the actual loss incurred by the offending party was

any thing more than the paltry venture, which he was generally permitted

to abandon, making the best use of his heels to escape any further

punishment. The gensdarmes planted at the different barriers generally

made a prey of the potables which they captured, and were consequently

interested in keeping a good look-out for offenders. It was this vigilance

that led to the discovery of the robbers; for, not being able to devise

any better plan for the removal of the money than that of secreting it

about their persons, they attempted thus to carry out their object. But as

one of them, heavily encumbered with the golden spoils, was passing

through the Barrière d’Enfer, one of the soldier-police who was on duty as

sentinel, suspecting, from his appearance and hesitating gait, that he

carried smuggled liquors in his hat, suddenly stepped behind him and

struck it from his head with his halberd. What was his astonishment to

behold, instead of the expected bladder of wine or spirits, several small

bags of gold and rolls of English bank-notes! The confusion and

prevarication of the wretch, who made vain and frantic attempts to recover

the property, betrayed his guilt, and he was immediately taken into

custody, together with his companion, who, following at a very short

distance, was unhesitatingly pointed out by his cowardly and bewildered

confederate as the owner of the money. No time was lost in conveying

intelligence of their capture to their unfortunate victim, who immediately

identified the notes as his own property, and at the first view of the

assassins swore distinctly to the persons of both—to the elder, as having

repeatedly stabbed him; and to the younger, as his companion and

coadjutor.

The criminals were in due course of time tried, fully convicted, and, as

was to be expected, sentenced to death by the guillotine; but, owing to

some technical informality in the proceedings, the doom of the law could

not be carried into execution until the sentence of the court had been

confirmed upon appeal. This delay afforded time and opportunity for some

meddling or interested individual—either moved by the desire of making a

cruel experiment, or else by the hope of obtaining a reversal of the

capital sentence against the prisoners—to work upon the feelings of the

unfortunate money-changer. A few days after the sentence of death had been

pronounced, the unhappy victim received a letter from an unknown hand,

mysteriously worded, and setting forth, in expressions that seemed to him

fearfully prophetic, that the thread of his own destiny was indissolubly

united with that of his condemned assassins. It was evidently out of their

power to take away _his_ life; and it was equally out of his power to

survive _them_, die by the sentence of the law, or how or when they might;

it became clear—so argued this intermeddler—that the same moment which saw

the termination of their lives, would inevitably be the last of his own.

To fortify his arguments, the letter-writer referred to certain mystic

symbols in the heavens. Now though the poor man could understand nothing

of the trumpery diagrams which were set forth as illustrating the truth of

the fatal warning thus conveyed to him, and though his friends universally

laughed at the trick as a barefaced attempt of some anonymous impostor to

rob justice of her due, it nevertheless made a deep impression upon his

mind. Ignorant of every thing but what related immediately to his own

money-getting profession, he had a blind and undefined awe of what he

termed the supernatural sciences, and he inwardly thanked the kind monitor

who had given him at least a chance of redeeming his days.

He immediately set about making application to the judges, in order to get

the decree of death changed into a sentence to the galleys for life. He

was equally surprised and distressed to find that they treated his

petition with contempt, and ridiculed his fears. So far from granting his

request, after repeated solicitations, they commanded him in a peremptory

manner to appear no more before them. Driven almost to despair, he

resolved upon petitioning the king; and after much expense and toil, he at

length succeeded in obtaining an audience of Charles X. All was in vain. A

crime so enormous, committed with such cool deliberation, left no opening

for the plea of mercy: every effort he made only served to strengthen the

resolution of the authorities to execute judgment. Finding all his efforts

in vain, he appeared to resign himself despairingly to his fate. Deprived

of all relish even for gain, he took to his bed, and languished in

hopeless misery, and as the time for the execution of the criminals

approached, lapsed more and more into terror and dismay.

It was on a sultry afternoon, in the beginning of June, 1826, that the

writer of this brief narrative—then a not too thoughtful lad, in search of

employment in Paris—hurried, together with a party of sight-seeing English

workmen, to the Place de Grève to witness the execution of the two

assassins of the money-changer. Under the rays of an almost insupportable

sun, an immense crowd had congregated around the guillotine; and it was

not without considerable exertion, and a bribe of some small amount, that

standing-places were at length obtained within a few paces of the deathful

instrument, upon the flat top of the low wall which divides the ample area

of the Place de Grève from the river Seine.

Precisely at four o’clock the sombre cavalcade approached. Seated upon a

bench in a long cart, between two priests, sat the wretched victims of

retributive justice. The crucifix was incessantly exhibited to their view,

and presented to their lips to be kissed, by their ghostly attendants.

After a few minutes of silent and horrible preparation, the elder advanced

upon the platform of the guillotine. With livid aspect and quivering lips,

he gazed around in unutterable agony upon the sea of human faces; then

lifting his haggard eyes to heaven, he demanded pardon of God and the

people for the violation of the great prerogative of the former and the

social rights of the latter, and besought most earnestly the mercy of the

Judge into whose presence he was about to enter. In less than two minutes

both he and his companion were headless corpses, and in a quarter of an

hour no vestige, save a few remains of sawdust, was left of the terrible

drama that had been enacted. Soon, however, a confused murmur pervaded the

crowd—a report that the victim of cruelty and avarice had realized the

dread presentiment of his own mind, and justified the prediction contained

in the anonymous letter he had received. On inquiry, this was found to be

true. As the signal rung out for execution, the unhappy man, whom

twenty-two stabs of the dagger had failed to kill, expired in a paroxysm

of terror—adding one more to the many examples already upon record of the

fatal force of fear upon an excited imagination.

LADY ALICE DAVENTRY; OR, THE NIGHT OF CRIME. (FROM THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY

MAGAZINE.)

Daventry Hall, near the little village of the same name in Cumberland, is

the almost regal residence of the Cliffords; yet it does not bear their

name, nor, till within the last quarter of a century, had it come into

their possession. The tragical event which consigned it to the hands of a

distant branch of the Daventry family is now almost forgotten by its

occupants, but still lingers in the memory of some of humbler rank, who,

in days gone by, were tenants under Sir John Daventry, the last of a long

line of baronets of that name. Few men have entered life under happier

auspices: one of the oldest baronets in the kingdom, in one sense, but

just of age, in the other, possessed of an unencumbered rent roll of

£20,000 per annum, he might probably have selected his bride from the

fairest of the English aristocracy; but when he was twenty-three he

married the beautiful and poor daughter of an officer residing in his

vicinity. It was a love-match on his side—one partly of love, parly of

ambition, on hers; their union was not very long, neither was it very

happy, and when Lady Daventry died, leaving an infant daughter to his

care, at the expiration of his year of mourning he chose as his second

wife the wealthy and high-born widow of the county member. This was a

_marriage de convenance_, and might have perhaps proved a fortunate one,

as it secured to Sir John a wife suited to uphold his dignity and the

style of his establishment, at the same time conferring on the little

Clara the care of a mother, and the society of a playmate in the person of

Charles Mardyn, Lady Daventry’s son by her first marriage. But the

marriage of convenience did not end more felicitously than the marriage of

love—at the end of six months Sir John found himself a second time a

widower. His position was now a somewhat unusual one—at twenty-seven he

had lost two wives, and was left the sole guardian of two children,

neither past the age of infancy; Clara Daventry was but two years old,

Charles Mardyn three years her senior. Of these circumstances Sir John

made what he conceived the best, provided attendants and governesses for

the children, consigned them to the seclusion of the Hall, while he

repaired to London, procured a superb establishment, was famed for the

skill of his cooks, and the goodness of his wines, and for the following

eighteen years was an _habitué_ of the clubs, and courted by the élite of

London society; and this, perhaps, being a perfectly blameless course, and

inflicting as little of any sort of trouble or annoyance as possible, it

must needs excite our surprise if we do not find it producing

corresponding fruits. Eighteen years make some changes every where. During

these, Clara Daventry had become a woman, and Charles Mardyn, having

passed through Eton and Cambridge, had for the last two years emulated his

stepfather’s style of London life. Mr. Mardyn had left his fortune at the

disposal of his widow, whom he had foolishly loved, and Lady Daventry, at

her death, divided the Mardyn estates between her husband and son—an

unfair distribution, and one Charles was not disposed to pardon. He was

that combination so often seen—the union of talent to depravity; of such

talent as the union admits—talent which is never first-rate, though to the

many it appears so; it is only unscrupulous, and consequently, has at its

command, engines which virtue dares not use. Selfish and profligate, he

was that mixture of strong passions and indomitable will, with a certain

strength of intellect, a winning manner, and noble appearance. Clara

possessed none of these external gifts. Low and insignificant looking, her

small, pale features, narrow forehead, and cunning gray eyes, harmonized

with a disposition singularly weak, paltry, and manoeuvring. Eighteen

years had altered Sir John Daventry’s appearance less than his mind; he

had grown more corpulent, and his features wore a look of sensual

indulgence, mingled with the air of authority of one whose will, even in

trifles, has never been disputed. But in the indolent voluptuary of

forty-five little remained of the good-humored, careless man of

twenty-seven. Selfishness is an ill-weed, that grows apace; Sir John

Daventry, handsome, gifted with _l’air distingué_ and thoroughly _répandu_

in society, was a singularly heartless and selfish sensualist. Such

changes eighteen years had wrought, when Clara was surprised by a visit

from her father. It was more than two years since he had been at the Hall,

and the news he brought was little welcome to her. He was about to marry a

third time—his destined bride was Lady Alice Mortimer, the daughter of a

poor though noble house, and of whose beauty, though now past the first

bloom of youth, report had reached even Clara’s ears. From Mardyn, too,

she had heard of Lady Alice, and had fancied that he was one of her many

suitors. Her congratulations on the event were coldly uttered; in truth,

Clara had long been accustomed to regard herself as the heiress, and

eventually, the mistress of that princely estate where she had passed her

childhood; this was the one imaginative dream in a cold, worldly mind. She

did not desire riches to gratify her vanity, or to indulge in pleasures.

Clara Daventry’s temperament was too passionless to covet it for these

purposes; but she had accustomed herself to look on these possessions as

her right, and to picture the day when, through their far extent, its

tenants should own her rule. Besides, Mardyn had awoke, if not a feeling

of affection, in Clara Daventry’s breast, at least a wish to possess him—a

wish in which all the sensuous part of her nature (and in that cold

character there was a good deal that was sensuous) joined. She had

perception to know her own want of attractions, and to see that her only

hope of winning this gay and brilliant man of fashion was the value her

wealth might be of in repairing a fortune his present mode of living was

likely to scatter—a hope which, should her father marry, and have a male

heir, would fall to the ground. In due time the papers announced the

marriage of Sir John Daventry to the Lady Alice Mortimer. They were to

spend their honeymoon at Daventry. The evening before the marriage,

Charles Mardyn arrived at the Hall; it was some time since he had last

been there; it was a singular day to select for leaving London, and Clara

noticed a strange alteration in his appearance, a negligence of dress, and

perturbation of manner unlike his ordinary self-possession, that made her

think that, perhaps, he had really loved her destined step-mother. Still,

if so, it was strange his coming to the Hall. The following evening

brought Sir John and Lady Alice Daventry to their bridal home. The Hall

had been newly decorated for the occasion, and, in the general confusion

and interest, Clara found herself degraded from the consideration she had

before received. Now the Hall was to receive a new mistress, one graced

with title, and the stamp of fashion. These are offenses little minds can

hardly be thought to overlook; and as Clara Daventry stood in the spacious

hall to welcome her stepmother to her home, and she who was hence-forward

to take the first place there, the Lady Alice, in her rich traveling

costume, stood before her, the contrast was striking—the unattractive,

ugly girl, beside the brilliant London beauty—the bitter feelings of envy

and resentment, that then passed through Clara’s mind cast their shade on

her after destiny. During the progress of dinner, Clara noticed the

extreme singularity of Mardyn’s manner; noticed also the sudden flush of

crimson that dyed Lady Alice’s cheek on first beholding him, which was

followed by an increased and continued paleness. There was at their

meeting, however, no embarrassment on his part—nothing but the well-bred

ease of the man of the world was observable in his congratulations; but

during dinner Charles Mardyn’s eyes were fixed on Lady Alice with the

quiet stealthiness of one calmly seeking to penetrate through a mystery;

and, despite her efforts to appear unconcerned, it was evident she felt

distressed by his scrutiny. The dinner was soon dispatched; Lady Alice

complained of fatigue, and Clara conducted her to the boudoir designed for

her private apartment. As she was returning she met Mardyn.

“Is Lady Alice in the boudoir?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied, “you do not want her?”

Without answering, he passed on, and, opening the door, Charles Mardyn

stood before the Lady Alice Daventry, his stepfather’s wife.

She was sitting on a low stool, and in a deep reverie, her cheek resting

on one of her fairy-like hands. She was indeed a beautiful woman. No

longer very young—she was about thirty, but still very lovely, and

something almost infantine in the arch innocence of expression that

lighted a countenance cast in the most delicate mould—she looked, in every

feature, the child of rank and fashion; so delicate, so fragile, with

those _petites_ features, and that soft pink flesh, and pouting coral

lips; and, in her very essence, she had all those qualities that belong to

a spoiled child of fashion—wayward, violent in temper, capricious, and

volatile. She started from her reverie: she had not expected to see

Mardyn, and betrayed much emotion at his abrupt entrance; for, as though

in an agony of shame, she buried her face in her hands, and turned away

her head, yet her attitude was very feminine and attractive, with the

glossy ringlets of rich brown hair falling in a shower over the fair soft

arms, and the whole so graceful in its defenselessness, and the

forbearance it seemed to ask. Yet, whatever Mardyn’s purpose might be, it

did not seem to turn him from it; the sternness on his countenance

increased as he drew a chair, and, sitting down close beside her, waited

in silence, gazing at his companion till she should uncover her face. At

length the hands were dropped, and, with an effort at calmness, Lady Alice

looked up, but again averted her gaze as she met his.

“When we last met, Lady Alice, it was under different circumstances,” he

said, sarcastically. She bowed her head, but made no answer.

“I fear,” he continued, in the same tone, “my congratulations may not have

seemed warm enough on the happy change in your prospects; they were

unfeigned, I assure you.” Lady Alice colored.

“These taunts are uncalled for, Mardyn,” she replied, faintly.

“No; that would be unfair, indeed,” he continued, in the same bitter tone,

“to Lady Alice Daventry, who has always displayed such consideration for

all my feelings.”

“You never seemed to care,” she rejoined, and the woman’s pique betrayed

itself in the tone—“You never tried to prevent it.”

“Prevent what?”

She hesitated, and did not reply.

“Fool!” he exclaimed, violently, “did you think that if one word of mine

could have stopped your marriage, that word would have been said? Listen,

Lady Alice: I loved you once, and the proof that I did is the hate I now

bear you. If I had not loved you, I should now feel only contempt. For a

time I believed that you had for me the love you professed. You chose

differently; but though that is over, do not think that all is. I have

sworn to make you feel some of the misery you caused me. Lady Alice

Daventry, do you doubt that that oath shall be kept?”

His violence had terrified her—she was deadly pale, and seemed ready to

faint; but a burst of tears relieved her.

“I do not deserve this,” she said; “I did love you—I swore it to you, and

you doubted me.”

“Had I no reason?” he asked.

“None that you did not cause yourself; your unfounded jealousy, your

determination to humble me, drove me to the step I took.”

The expression of his countenance somewhat changed; he had averted his

face so that she could not read its meaning, and over it passed no sign of

relenting, but a look more wholly triumphant than it had yet worn. When he

turned to Lady Alice it was changed to one of mildness and sorrow.

“You will drive me mad, Alice,” he uttered, in a low, deep voice. “May

heaven forgive me if I have mistaken you; you told me you loved me.”

“I told you the truth,” she rejoined, quickly.

“But how soon that love changed,” he said, in a half-doubting tone, as if

willing to be convinced.

“It never changed!” she replied, vehemently. “You doubted—you were

jealous, and left me. I never ceased to love you.”

“You do not love me now?” he asked.

She was silent; but a low sob sounded through the room, and Charles Mardyn

was again at her feet; and, while the marriage-vows had scarce died from

her lips, Lady Alice Daventry was exchanging forgiveness with, and

listening to protestations of love from the son of the man to whom, a few

hours before, she had sworn a wife’s fidelity.

It is a scene which needs some explanation; best heard, however, from

Mardyn’s lips. A step was heard along the passage, and Mardyn, passing

through a side-door, repaired to Clara’s apartment. He found her engaged

on a book. Laying it down, she bestowed on him a look of inquiry as he

entered.

“I want to speak to you, Clara,” he said.

Fixing her cold gray eyes on his face, she awaited his questions.

“Has not this sudden step of Sir John’s surprised you?”

“It has,” she said, quietly.

“Your prospects are not so sure as they were?”

“No, they are changed,” she said, in the same quiet tone, and impassive

countenance.

“And you feel no great love to your new stepmother?”

“I have only seen Lady Alice once,” she replied, fidgeting on her seat.

“Well, you will see her oftener now,” he observed. “I hope she will make

the Hall pleasant to you.”

“You have some motive in this conversation,” said Clara, calmly. “You may

trust me, I do not love Lady Alice sufficiently to betray you.”

And now her voice had a tone of bitterness surpassing Mardyn’s; he looked

steadily at her; she met and returned his gaze, and that interchange of

looks seemed to satisfy both, Mardyn at once began:

“Neither of us have much cause to like Sir John’s new bride; she may strip

you of a splendid inheritance, and I have still more reason to detest her.

Shortly after my arrival in London, I met Lady Alice Mortimer. I had heard

much of her beauty—it seemed to me to surpass all I had heard. I loved

her; she seemed all playful simplicity and innocence; but I discovered she

had come to the age of calculation, and that though many followed, and

praised her wit and beauty, I was almost the only one who was serious in

wishing to marry Lord Mortimer’s poor and somewhat _passée_ daughter. She

loved me, I believe, as well as she could love any one. That was not the

love I gave, or asked in return. In brief, I saw through her sheer

heartlessness, the first moment I saw her waver between the wealth of an

old sensualist, and my love. I left her, but with an oath of vengeance; in

the pursuit of that revenge it will be your interest to assist. Will you

aid me?”

“How can I?” she asked.

“It is not difficult,” he replied. “Lady Alice and I have met to-night;

she prefers me still. Let her gallant bridegroom only know this, and we

have not much to fear.”

Clara Daventry paused, and, with clenched hands, and knit brow, ruminated

on his words—familiar with the labyrinthine paths of the plotter, she was

not long silent.

“I think I see what you mean,” she said. “And I suppose you have provided

means to accomplish your scheme?”

“They are provided for us. Where could we find materials more made to our

hands?—a few insinuations, a conversation overheard, a note conveyed

opportunely—these are trifles, but trifles are the levers of human

action.”

There was no more said then; each saw partly through the insincerity and

falsehood of the other, yet each knew they agreed in a common object.

These were strange scenes to await a bride, on the first eve in her new

home.

Two or three months have passed since these conversations. Sir John

Daventry’s manner has changed to his bride: he is no longer the lover, but

the severe, exacting husband. It may be that he is annoyed at all his

long-confirmed bachelor habits being broken in upon, and that, in time, he

will become used to the change, and settle down contentedly in his new

capacity; but yet something more than this seems to be at the bottom of

his discontent. Since a confidential conversation, held over their wine

between him and Charles Mardyn, his manner had been unusually captious.

Mardyn had, after submitting some time, taken umbrage at a marked insult,

and set off for London. On Lady Alice, in especial, her husband spent his

fits of ill-humor. With Clara he was more than ever friendly; her position

was now the most enviable in that house. But she strove to alleviate her

stepmother’s discomforts by every attention a daughter could be supposed

to show, and these proofs of amiable feeling seemed to touch Sir John, and

as the alienation between him and his wife increased, to cement an

attachment between Clara and her father.

Lady Alice had lately imparted to her husband a secret that might be

supposed calculated to fill him with joyous expectations, and raise hopes

of an heir to his vast possessions; but the communication had been

received in sullen silence, and seemed almost to increase his savage

sternness—treatment which stung Lady Alice to the quick; and when she

retired to her room, and wept long and bitterly over this unkind reception

of news she had hoped would have restored his fondness, in those tears

mingled a feeling of hate and loathing to the author of her grief. Long

and dreary did the next four months appear to the beautiful Lady of

Daventry, who, accustomed to the flattery and adulation of the London

world, could ill-endure the seclusion and harsh treatment of the Hall.

At the end of that time, Charles Mardyn again made his appearance; the

welcome he received from Sir John was hardly courteous. Clara’s manner,

too, seemed constrained; but his presence appeared to remove a weight from

Lady Alice’s mind, and restore her a portion of her former spirits. From

the moment of Mardyn’s arrival, Sir John Daventry’s manner changed to his

wife: he abandoned the use of sarcastic language, and avoided all occasion

of dispute with her, but assumed an icy calmness of demeanor, the more

dangerous, because the more clear-sighted. He now confided his doubts to

Clara; he had heard from Mardyn that his wife had, before her marriage,

professed an attachment to him. In this, though jestingly alluded to,

there was much to work on a jealous and exacting husband. The contrast in

age, in manner, and appearance, was too marked, not to allow of the

suspicion that his superiority in wealth and position had turned the scale

in his favor—a suspicion which, cherished, had grown to be the demon that

allowed him no peace of mind, and built up a fabric fraught with

wretchedness on this slight foundation. All this period Lady Alice’s

demeanor to Mardyn was but too well calculated to deepen these suspicions.

Now, too, had come the time to strike a decisive blow. In this Clara was

thought a fitting instrument.

“You are indeed unjust,” she said, with a skillful assumption of

earnestness; “Lady Alice considers she should be a mother to Charles—they

meet often; it is that she may advise him, She thinks he is

extravagant—that he spends too much time in London, and wishes to make the

country more agreeable to him.”

“Yes, Clary, I know she does; she would be glad to keep the fellow always

near her.”

“You mistake, sir, I assure you; I have been with them when they were

together; their language has been affectionate, but as far as the

relationship authorizes.”

“Our opinions on that head differ, Clary; she deceived me, and by —— she

shall suffer for it. She never told me she had known him; the fellow

insulted me by informing me when it was too late. He did not wish to

interfere—it was over now—he told me with a sneer.”

“He was wounded by her treatment; so wounded, that, except as your wife,

and to show you respect, I know he would never have spoken to her. But if

your doubts can not be hushed, they may be satisfactorily dispelled.”

“How—tell me?”

“Lady Alice and Charles sit every morning in the library; there are

curtained recesses there, in any of which you may conceal yourself, and

hear what passes.”

“Good—good; but if you hint or breathe to them—”

“I merely point it out,” she interrupted, “as a proof of my perfect belief

in Charles’s principle and Lady Alice’s affection for you. If a word

passes that militates against that belief, I will renounce it.”

A sneer distorted Sir John’s features. When not blinded by passion, he saw

clearly through character and motives. He had by this discerned Clara’s

dislike to Lady Alice, and now felt convinced she suggested the scheme as

she guessed he would have his suspicions confirmed. He saw thus far, but

he did not see through a far darker plot—he did not see that, in the deep

game they played against him, Charles and Clara were confederates.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

That was a pleasant room; without, through bayed windows, lay a wide and

fertile prospect of sunny landscape; within, it was handsomely and

luxuriously furnished. There were books in gorgeous bindings; a range of

marble pillars swept its length; stands of flowers, vases of agate and

alabaster, were scattered on every side; and after breakfast Mardyn and

Lady Alice made it their sitting-room. The morning after the scheme

suggested by Clara, they were sitting in earnest converse, Lady Alice,

looking pale and care-worn, was weeping convulsively.

“You tell me you must go,” she said; “and were it a few months later, I

would forsake all and accompany you. But for the sake of my unborn infant,

you must leave me. At another time return, and you may claim me.”

“Dear Alice,” he whispered softly, “dear, dear Alice, why did you not know

me sooner? Why did you not love me more, and you would now have been my

own, my wife?”

“I was mad,” she replied, sadly; “but I have paid the penalty of my sin

against you. The last year has been one of utter misery to me. If there is

a being on earth I loathe, it is the man I must call my husband; my hatred

to him is alone inferior to my love for you. When I think what I

sacrificed for him,” she continued, passionately, “the bliss of being your

wife, resigned to unite myself to a vapid sensualist, a man who was a

spendthrift of his passions in youth, and yet asks to be loved, as if the

woman most lost to herself could feel love for him.”

It was what he wished. Lady Alice had spoken with all the extravagance of

woman’s exaggeration; her companion smiled; she understood its meaning.

“You despise, me,” she said, “that I could marry the man of whom I speak

thus.”

“No,” he replied; “but perhaps you judge Sir John harshly. We must own he

has some cause for jealousy.”

Despite his guarded accent, something smote on Lady Alice’s ear in that

last sentence. She turned deadly pale—was she deceived? But in a moment

the sense of her utter helplessness rushed upon her. If he were false,

nothing but destruction lay before her—she desperately closed her eyes on

her danger.

“You are too generous,” she replied. “If I had known what I sacrificed—”

Poor, wretched woman, what fear was in her heart as she strove to utter

words of confidence. He saw her apprehensions, and drawing her toward him,

whispered loving words, and showered burning kisses on her brow. She leant

her head on his breast, and her long hair fell over his arm as she lay

like a child in his embrace.

A few minutes later the library was empty, when the curtains that shrouded

a recess near where the lovers had sat were drawn back, and Sir John

Daventry emerged from his concealment. His countenance betrayed little of

what passed within; every other feeling was swallowed up in a thirst for

revenge—a thirst that would have risked life itself to accomplish its

object—for his suspicions had gone beyond the truth, black, dreadful as

was that truth to a husband’s ears, and he fancied that his unborn infant

owed its origin to Charles Mardyn; when, for that infant’s sake, where no

other consideration could have restrained her, Lady Alice had endured her

woman’s wrong, and while confessing her love for Mardyn, refused to listen

to his solicitations, or to fly with him; and the reference she had made

to this, and which he had overheard, appeared to him but a base design to

palm the offspring of her love to Mardyn as the heir to the wealth and

name of Daventry.

It wanted now but a month of Lady Alice’s confinement, and even Mardyn and

Clara were perplexed and indecisive as to the effect their stratagem had

upon Sir John. No word or sign escaped him to betray what passed within—he

seemed stricken with sudden age, so stern and hard had his countenance

become, so fixed his icy calmness. They knew not the volcanoes that burned

beneath their undisturbed surface. A sudden fear fell upon them; they were

but wicked—they were not great in wickedness. Much of what they had done

appeared to them clumsy and ill-contrived; yet their very fears lest they

might be seen through urged on another attempt, contrived to give

confirmation to Sir John’s suspicions, should his mind waver. So great at

this time was Mardyn’s dread of detection that he suddenly left the Hall.

He know Sir John’s vengeance, if once roused, would be desperate, and

feared some attempts on his life. In truth his position was a perilous

one, and this lull of fierce elements seemed to forerun some terrible

explosion—where the storm might spend its fury was as yet hid in darkness.

Happy was it for the Lady Alice Daventry that she knew none of these

things, or hers would have been a position of unparalleled wretchedness,

as over the plotters, the deceived, and the foredoomed ones, glided on the

rapid moments that brought them nearer and nearer, till they stood on the

threshold of crime and death.

And now, through the dark channels of fraud and jealousy, we have come to

the eve of that strange and wild page in our story, which long attached a

tragic interest to the hails of Daventry, and swept all but the name of

that ancient race into obscurity.

On the fifteenth of December, Lady Alice Daventry was confined of a son.

All the usual demonstrations of joy were forbidden by Sir John, on the

plea of Lady Alice’s precarious situation. Her health, weakened by the

events of the past year, had nearly proved unequal to this trial of her

married life, and the fifth morning after her illness was the first on

which the physician held out confident hopes of her having strength to

carry her through. Up to that time the survival of the infant had been a

matter of doubt; but on that morning, as though the one slender thread had

bound both to existence, fear was laid aside, and calmness reigned through

the mansion of Daventry. On that morning, too, arrived a letter directed

to “The Lady Alice Daventry.” A dark shade flitted over Sir John’s face as

he read the direction; then placing it among his other letters reserved

for private perusal, he left the room.

The day wore on, each hour giving increasing strength to the Lady Alice

and her boy-heir. During its progress, it was noticed, even by the

servants, that their master seemed unusually discomposed, and that his

countenance wore an expression of ghastly paleness. As he sat alone, after

dinner, he drank glass after glass of wine, but they brought no flush to

his cheek—wrought no change in his appearance; some mightier spirit seemed

to bid defiance to the effects of drink. At a late hour he retired to his

room. The physician had previously paid his last visit to the chamber of

his patient; she was in a calm sleep, and the last doubt as to her

condition faded from his mind, as, in a confident tone, he reiterated his

assurance to the nurse-tender “that she might lie down and take some

rest—that nothing more was to be feared.”

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

The gloom of a December’s night had closed, dark and dreary, around the

Hall, while, through the darkness, the wind drove the heavy rain against

the easements; but, undisturbed by the rain and winds, the Lady Alice and

her infant lay in a tranquil sleep; doubt and danger had passed from them;

the grave had seemed to yawn toward the mother and child, but the clear

color on the transparent cheek, the soft and regular breathing caught

through the stillness of the chamber, when the wind had died in the

distance, gave assurance to the nurse that all danger was past; and,

wearied with the watching of the last four nights, she retired to a closet

opening from Lady Alice’s apartment, and was soon buried in the heavy

slumber of exhaustion.

That profound sleep was rudely broken through by wild, loud cries,

reaching over the rage of the elements, which had now risen to a storm.

The terrified woman staggered to the bedroom, to witness there a fearful

change—sudden, not to be accounted for. A night-lamp shed its dim light

through the apartment on a scene of horror and mystery. All was silence

now—and the Lady Alice stood erect on the floor, half shrouded in the

heavy curtains of the bed, and clasping her infant in her arms. By this

time the attendants, roused from sleep, had reached the apartment, and

assisted in taking the child from its mother’s stiff embrace; it had

uttered no cry, and when they brought it to the light, the blaze fell on

features swollen and lifeless—it was dead in its helplessness—dead by

violence, for on its throat were the marks of strong and sudden pressure;

but how, by whom, was a horrid mystery. They laid the mother on the bed,

and as they did so, a letter fell from her grasp—a wild fit of delirium

succeeded, followed by a heavy swoon, from which the physician failed in

awaking her—before the night had passed, Lady Alice Daventry had been

summoned to her rest. The sole clew to the events of that night was the

letter which had fallen from Lady Alice; it the physician had picked up

and read, but positively refused to reveal its contents, more than to hint

that they betrayed guilt that rendered his wife and child’s removal more a

blessing than a misfortune to Sir John Daventry. Yet somehow rumors were

heard that the letter was in Charles Mardyn’s hand; that it had fallen in

Sir John’s way, and revealed to him a guilty attachment between Mardyn and

his wife; but how it came into her hands, or how productive of such a

catastrophe as the destruction of her infant, her frenzy, and death,

remained unknown: but one further gleam of light was ever thrown on that

dark tragedy. The nurse-tender, who had first come to her mistress’s

assistance, declared that, as she entered the room, she had heard steps in

quick retreat along the gallery leading from Lady Alice’s room, and a few

surmised that, in the dead of night, her husband had placed that letter in

her hand, and told her he knew her guilt. This was but conjecture—a wild

and improbable one, perhaps.

Charles Mardyn came not again to the Hall. What he and Clara Daventry

thought of what had passed, was known only to themselves. A year went on,

and Clara and her father lived alone—a year of terror to the former, for

from that terrible night her father had become subject to bursts of savage

passion that filled her with alarm for her own safety: these, followed by

long fits of moody silence, rendered her life, for a year, harassed and

wretched; but then settling into confirmed insanity, released her from his

violence. Sir John Daventry was removed to an asylum, and Clara was

mistress of the Hall. Another year passed, and she became the wife of

Charles Mardyn. It was now the harvest of their labors, and reaped as such

harvests must be. The pleasures and amusements of a London life had grown

distasteful to Mardyn—they palled on his senses, and he sought change in a

residence at the Hall; but here greater discontent awaited him. The force

of conscience allowed them not happiness in a place peopled with such

associations: they were childless, they lived in solitary state, unvisited

by those of their own rank, who were deterred from making overtures of

intimacy by the stories that were whispered affixing discredit to his

name; his pride and violent temper were ill fitted to brook this neglect;

in disgust, they left Daventry, and went to Mardyn Park, an old seat left

him by his mother, on the coast of Dorsetshire. It was wildly situated,

and had been long uninhabited; and in this lonely residence the cup of

Clara’s wretchedness was filled to overflowing. In Mardyn there was now no

trace left of the man who had once captivated her fancy; prematurely old,

soured in temper, he had become brutal and overbearing; for Clara he had

cast off every semblance of decency, and indifference was now usurped by

hate and violence; their childless condition was made a constant, source

of bitter reproach from her husband. Time brought no alleviation to this

state of wretchedness, but rather increased their evil passions and mutual

abhorrence. They had long and bitterly disputed one day, after dinner, and

each reminded the other of their sins with a vehemence of reproach that,

from the lips of any other, must have, overwhelmed the guilty pair with

shame and terror. Driven from the room by Mardyn’s unmanly violence and

coarse epithets, Clara reached the drawing-room, and spent some hours

struggling with the stings of conscience aroused by Mardyn’s taunts. They

had heard that morning of Sir John Daventry’s death, and the removal of

the only being who lived to suffer for their sin had seemed but to add a

deeper gloom to their miserable existence—the time was past when any thing

could bid them hope. Her past career passed through the guilty woman’s

mind, and filled her with dread, and a fearful looking out for judgment.

She had not noticed how time had fled, till she saw it was long past

Mardyn’s hour for retiring, and that he had not come up stairs yet.

Another hour passed, and then a vague fear seized upon her mind—she felt

frightened at being alone, and descended to the parlor. She had brought no

light with her, and when she reached the door she paused; all in the house

seemed so still she trembled, and turning the lock, entered the room. The

candles had burnt out, and the faint red glare of the fire alone shone

through the darkness; by the dim light she saw that Mardyn was sitting,

his arms folded on the table, and his head reclined as if in sleep. She

touched him, he stirred not, and her hand, slipping from his shoulder,

fell upon the table and was wet; she saw that a decanter had been

overturned, and fancied Mardyn had been drinking, and fallen asleep; she

hastened from the room for a candle. As she seized a light burning in the

passage, she saw that the hand she had extended was crimsoned with blood.

Almost delirious with terror, she regained the room. The light from her

hand fell on the table—it was covered with a pool of blood, that was

falling slowly to the floor. With a wild effort she raised her husband—his

head fell on her arm—the throat was severed from ear to ear—the

countenance set, and distorted in death.

In that moment the curse of an offended God worked its final vengeance on

guilt—Clara Mardyn was a lunatic.

MIRABEAU. AN ANECDOTE OF HIS PRIVATE LIFE. (FROM CHAMBERS’S EDINBURGH

JOURNAL.)

The public life as well as the private character of Mirabeau are

universally known, but the following anecdote has not, we believe, been

recorded in any of the biographies. The particulars were included in the

brief furnished to M. de Galitzane, advocate-general in the parliament of

Provence, when he was retained for the defense of Madame Mirabeau in her

husband’s process against her. M. de Galitzane afterward followed the

Bourbons into exile, and returned with them in 1814; and it is on his

authority that the story is given as fact.

Mirabeau had just been released from the dungeon of the castle of

Vincennes near Paris. He had been confined there for three years and a

half, by virtue of that most odious mandate, a _lettre-de-cachet_. His

imprisonment had been of a most painful nature; and it was prolonged at

the instance of his father, the Marquis de Mirabeau. On his being

reconciled to his father, the confinement terminated, in the year 1780,

when Mirabeau was thirty-one years of age.

One of his father’s conditions was, that Mirabeau should reside for some

time at a distance from Paris; and it was settled that he should go on a

visit to his brother-in-law, Count du Saillant, whose estate was situated

a few leagues from the city of Limoges, the capital of the Limousin.

Accordingly, the count went to Vincennes to receive Mirabeau on the day of

his liberation, and they pursued their journey at once with all speed.

The arrival of Mirabeau at the ancient manorial château created a great

sensation in that remote part of France. The country gentlemen residing in

the neighborhood had often heard him spoken of as a remarkable man, not

only on account of his brilliant talents, but also for his violent

passions; and they hastened to the château to contemplate a being who had

excited their curiosity to an extraordinary pitch. The greater portion of

these country squires were mere sportsmen, whose knowledge did not extend

much beyond the names and qualities of their dogs and horses, and in whose

houses it would have been almost in vain to seek for any other book than

the local almanac, containing the list of the fairs and markets, to which

they repaired with the utmost punctuality, to loiter away their time, talk

about their rural affairs, dine abundantly, and wash down their food with

strong Auvergne wine.

Count du Saillant was quite of a different stamp from his neighbors. He

had seen the world, he commanded a regiment, and at that period his

château was perhaps the most civilized country residence in the Limousin.

People came from a considerable distance to visit its hospitable owner;

and among the guests there was a curious mixture of provincial oddities,

clad in their quaint costumes. At that epoch, indeed, the young Lismousin

noblemen, when they joined their regiments, to don their sword and

epaulets for the first time, were very slightly to be distinguished,

either by their manners or appearance, from their rustic retainers.

It will easily be imagined, then, that Mirabeau, who was gifted with

brilliant natural qualities, cultivated and polished by education—a man,

moreover, who had seen much of the world, and had been engaged in several

strange and perilous adventures—occupied the most conspicuous post in this

society, many of the component members whereof seemed to have barely

reached the first degrees in the scale of civilization. His vigorous

frame; his enormous head, augmented in bulk by a lofty frizzled

_coiffure_; his huge face, indented with scars, and furrowed with seams,

from the effect of small-pox injudiciously treated in his childhood; his

piercing eyes, the reflection of the tumultuous passions at war within

him; his mouth, whose expression indicated in turn irony, disdain,

indignation, and benevolence; his dress, always carefully attended to, but

in an exaggerated style, giving him somewhat the air of a traveling

charlatan decked out with embroidery, large frill, and ruffles; in short,

this extraordinary-looking individual astonished the country-folks even

before he opened his mouth. But when his sonorous voice was heard, and his

imagination, heated by some interesting subject of conversation, imparted

a high degree of energy to his eloquence, some of the worthy rustic

hearers felt as though they were in the presence of a saint, others in

that of a devil; and according to their several impressions, they were

tempted either to fall down at his feet, or to exorcise him by making the

sign of the cross, and uttering a prayer.

Seated in a large antique arm-chair, with his feet stretched out on the

floor, Mirabeau often contemplated, with a smile playing on his lips,

those men who seemed to belong to the primitive ages; so simple, frank,

and at the same time clownish, were they in their manners. He listened to

their conversations, which generally turned upon the chase, the exploits

of their dogs, or the excellence of their horses, of whose breed and

qualifications they were very proud. Mirabeau entered freely into their

notions; took an interest in the success of their sporting projects;

talked, too, about crops; chestnuts, of which large quantities are

produced in the Limousin; live and dead stock; ameliorations in husbandry;

and so forth; and he quite won the hearts of the company by his

familiarity with the topics in which they felt the most interest, and by

his good nature.

This monotonous life was, however, frequently wearisome to Mirabeau; and

in order to vary it, and for the sake of exercise, after being occupied

for several hours in writing, he was in the habit of taking a

fowling-piece, according to the custom of the country, and putting a book

into his game-bag, he would frequently make long excursions on foot in

every direction. He admired the noble forests of chestnut-trees which

abound in the Limousin; the vast meadows, where numerous herds of cattle

of a superior breed are reared; and the running streams by which that

picturesque country is intersected. He generally returned to the château

long after sunset, saying that night scenery was peculiarly attractive to

him.

It was during and after supper that those conversations took place for

which Mirabeau supplied the principal and the most interesting materials.

He possessed the knack of provoking objections to what he might advance,

in order to combat them, as he did with great force of logic and in

energetic language; and thus he gave himself lessons in argument, caring

little about his auditory, his sole aim being to exercise his mental

ingenuity and to cultivate eloquence. Above all, he was fond of discussing

religious matters with the curé of the parish. Without displaying much

latitudinarianism, he disputed several points of doctrine and certain

pretensions of the church so acutely, that the pastor could say but little

in reply. This astonished the Limousin gentry, who, up to that time, had

listened to nothing but the drowsy discourses of their curés, or the

sermons of some obscure mendicant friars, and who placed implicit faith in

the dogmas of the church. The faith of a few was shaken, but the greater

number of his hearers were very much tempted to look upon the visitor as

an emissary of Satan sent to the château to destroy them. The curé,

however, did not despair of eventually converting Mirabeau.

At this period several robberies had taken place at no great distance from

the château: four or five farmers had been stopped shortly after nightfall

on their return from the market-towns, and robbed of their purses. Not one

of these persons had offered any resistance, for each preferred to make a

sacrifice rather than run the risk of a struggle in a country full of

ravines, and covered with a rank vegetation very favorable to the exploits

of brigands, who might be lying in wait to massacre any individual who

might resist the one detached from the band to demand the traveler’s money

or his life. These outrages ceased for a short time, but they soon

recommenced, and the robbers remained undiscovered.

One evening, about an hour after sunset, a guest arrived at the château.

He was one of Count du Saillant’s most intimate friends, and was on his

way home from a neighboring fair. This gentleman appeared to be very

thoughtful, and spoke but little, which surprised every body, inasmuch as

he was usually a merry companion. His gasconades had frequently roused

Mirabeau from his reveries, and of this he was not a little proud. He had

not the reputation of being particularly courageous, however, though he

often told glowing tales about his own exploits; and it must be admitted

that he took the roars of laughter with which they were usually received

very good-humoredly.

Count du Saillant being much surprised at this sudden change in his

friend’s manner, took him aside after supper, and begged that he would

accompany him to another room. When they were there alone, he tried in

vain for a long time to obtain a satisfactory answer to his anxious

inquiries as to the cause of his friend’s unwonted melancholy and

taciturnity. At length the visitor said—“Nay, nay; you would never believe

it. You would declare that I was telling you one of my fables, as you are

pleased to call them; and perhaps _this_ time we might fall out.”

“What do you mean?” cried Count de Saillant; “this seems to be a serious

affair. Am _I_, then, connected with your presentiments?”

“Not exactly _you_; but—”

“What does this _but_ mean? Has it any thing to do with my wife? Explain

yourself.”

“Not the least in the world. Madame du Saillant is in nowise concerned in

the matter: but—”

“_But!_—_but!_ you tire me out with your _buts_. Are you resolved still to

worry me with your mysteries? Tell me at once what has occurred—what has

happened to you?”

“Oh, nothing—nothing at all. No doubt I was frightened.”

“Frightened!—and at what? By whom? For God’s sake, my dear friend, do not

prolong this painful state of uncertainty.”

“Do you really wish me to speak out?”

“Not only so, but I demand this of you as an act of friendship.”

“Well, I was stopped to-night at about the distance of half a league from

your château.”

“Stopped! In what way? By whom?”

“Why, stopped as people are stopped by footpads. A gun was leveled at me;

I was peremptorily ordered to deliver up my purse; I threw it down on the

ground, and galloped off. Do not ask me any more questions.”

“Why not? I wish to know all. Should you know the robber again? Did you

notice his figure and general appearance?”

“It being dark, I could not exactly discover: I can not positively say.

However, it seems to me—”

“_What_ seems to you? What or whom do you think you saw?”

“I never can tell _you_.”

“Speak—speak; you can not surely wish to screen a malefactor from

justice?”

“No; but if the said malefactor should be—”

“If he were my own son, I should insist upon your telling me.”

“Well, then, it appeared to me that the robber was your brother-in-law,

MIRABEAU! But I might be mistaken; and, as I said before, fear—”

“Impossible: no, it can not be. Mirabeau a footpad! No, no. You _are_

mistaken, my good friend.”

“Certainly—certainly.”

“Let us not speak any more of this,” said Count du Saillant. “We will

return to the drawing-room, and I hope you will be as gay as usual; if

not, I shall set you down as a mad-man. I will so manage that our absence

shall not be thought any thing of.” And the gentlemen re-entered the

drawing room, one a short time before the other.

The visitor succeeded in resuming his accustomed manner; but the count

fell into a gloomy reverie, in spite of all his efforts. He could not

banish from his mind the extraordinary story he had heard: it haunted him;

and at last, worn out with the most painful conjectures, he again took his

friend aside, questioned him afresh, and the result was, that a plan was

agreed upon for solving the mystery. It was arranged that M. De —— should

in the course of the evening mention casually, as it were, that he was

engaged on a certain day to meet a party at a friend’s house to dinner,

and that he purposed coming afterward to take a bed at the château, where

he hoped to arrive at about nine in the evening. The announcement was

accordingly made in the course of conversation, when all the guests were

present—good care being taken that it should be heard by Mirabeau, who at

the time was playing a game of chess with the curé.

A week passed away, in the course of which a farmer was stopped and robbed

of his purse; and at length the critical night arrived.

Count du Saillant was upon the rack the whole evening; and his anxiety

became almost unbearable when the hour for his friend’s promised arrival

had passed without his having made his appearance. Neither had Mirabeau

returned from his nocturnal promenade. Presently a storm of lightning,

thunder, and heavy rain came on; in the midst of it the bell at the gate

of the court-yard rang loudly. The count rushed out of the room into the

court-yard, heedless of the contending elements; and before the groom

could arrive to take his friend’s horse, the anxious host was at his side.

His guest was in the act of dismounting.

“Well,” said M. De ——, “I have been stopped. It is really he. I recognized

him perfectly.”

Not a word more was spoken then; but as soon as the groom had led the

horse to the stables, M. De —— rapidly told the count that, during the

storm, and as he was riding along, a man, who was half-concealed behind a

very large tree, ordered him to throw down his purse. At that moment a

flash of lightning enabled him to discover a portion of the robber’s

person, and M. De —— rode at him; but the robber retreated a few paces,

and then leveling his gun at the horseman, cried with a powerful voice,

which it was impossible to mistake, “Pass on, or you are a dead man!”

Another flash of lightning showed the whole of the robber’s figure: it was

Mirabeau, whose voice had already betrayed him! The wayfarer, having no

inclination to be shot, put spurs to his horse, and soon reached the

château.

The count enjoined strict silence, and begged of his friend to avoid

displaying any change in his usual demeanor when in company with the other

guests; he then ordered his valet to come again to him as soon as Mirabeau

should return. Half an hour afterward Mirabeau arrived. He was wet to the

skin, and hastened to his own room; he told the servant to inform the

count that he could not join the company at the evening meal, and begged

that his supper might be brought to his room; and he went to bed as soon

as he had supped.

All went on as usual with the party assembled below, excepting that the

gentleman who had had so unpleasant an adventure on the road appeared more

gay than usual.

When his guests had all departed, the master of the house repaired alone

to his brother-in-law’s apartment. He found him fast asleep, and was

obliged to shake him rather violently before he could rouse him.

“What’s the matter? Who’s there? What do you want with me?” cried

Mirabeau, staring at his brother-in-law, whose eyes were flashing with

rage and disgust.

“What do I want? I want, to tell you that you are a wretch!”

“A fine compliment, truly!” replied Mirabeau, with the greatest coolness.

“It was scarcely worth while to awaken me only to abuse me: go away, and

let me sleep.”

“_Can_ you sleep after having committed so bad an action? Tell me—where

did you pass the evening? Why did you not join us at the supper-table?”

“I was wet through—tired—harassed: I had been overtaken by the storm. Are

you satisfied now? Go, and let me get some sleep: do you want to keep me

chattering all night?”

“I insist upon an explanation of your strange conduct. You stopped

Monsieur De —— on his way hither this evening: this is the second time you

have attacked that gentleman, for he recognized you as the same man who

robbed him a week ago. You have turned highwayman, then!”

“Would it not have been all in good time to tell me this to-morrow

morning?” said Mirabeau, with inimitable _sang-froid_. “Supposing that I

_did_ stop your friend, what of that?”

“That you are a wretch!”

“And that you are a fool, my dear Du Saillant. Do you imagine that it was

for the sake of his money that I stopped this poor country squire? I

wished to put him to the proof, and to put myself to the proof. I wished

to ascertain what degree of resolution was necessary in order to place

one’s self in formal opposition to the most sacred laws of society: the

trial was a dangerous one; but I have made it several times. I am

satisfied with myself—but your friend is a coward.” He then felt in the

pocket of his waistcoat, which lay on a chair by his bedside, and drawing

a key from it, said, “Take this key, open my _scrutoire_, and bring me the

second drawer on the left hand.”

The count, astounded at so much coolness, and carried away by an

irresistible impulse—for Mirabeau spoke with the greatest

firmness—unlocked the cabinet, and brought the drawer to Mirabeau. It

contained nine purses; some made of leather, others of silk; each purse

was encircled by a label on which was written a date—it was that of the

day on which the owner had been stopped and robbed; the sum contained in

the purse was also written down.

“You see,” said Mirabeau, “that I did not wish to reap any pecuniary

benefit from my proceedings. A timid person, my dear friend, could never

become a highwayman; a soldier who fights in the ranks does not require

half so much courage as a footpad. _You_ are not the kind of man to

understand me, therefore I will not attempt to make myself more

intelligible. You would talk to me about honor—about religion; but these

have never stood in the way of a well-considered and a firm resolve. Tell

me, Du Saillant, when you lead your regiment into the heat of battle, to

conquer a province to which he whom you call your master has no right

whatever, do you consider that you are performing a better action than

mine, in stopping your friend on the king’s highway, and demanding his

purse?”

“I obey without reasoning,” replied the count.

“And I reason without obeying, when obedience appears to me to be contrary

to reason,” rejoined Mirabeau. “I study all kinds of social positions, in

order to appreciate them justly. I do not neglect even those positions or

cases which are in decided opposition to the established order of things;

for established order is merely conventional, and may be changed when it

is generally admitted to be faulty. Such a study is a dangerous, but it is

a necessary one for him who wishes to gain a perfect knowledge of men and

things. You are living within the boundary of the law, whether it be for

good or evil. I study the law, and I endeavor to acquire strength enough

to combat it if it be bad when the proper time shall arrive.”

“You wish for a convulsion then?” cried the count.

“I neither wish to bring it about nor do I desire to witness it; but

should it come to pass through the force of public opinion, I would second

it to the full extent of my power. In such a case you will hear me spoken

of. Adieu. I shall depart to-morrow; but pray leave me now, and let me

have a little sleep.”

Count du Saillant left the room without saying another word. Very early on

the following morning Mirabeau was on his way to Paris.

TERRESTRIAL MAGNETISM. (FROM CHAMBERS’S EDINBURGH JOURNAL.)

It is proposed in the following article to give the reader some idea of

one of the greatest and most extensive scientific works going on at the

present time in this country—namely, the examination of the phenomenon of

the earth’s magnetism; but before doing so, it will be necessary to make a

few prefatory observations respecting magnetism generally.

The attractive power of the natural magnet or loadstone over fragments of

iron seems to have been known from the remotest antiquity. It is

distinctly referred to by ancient writers, and Pliny mentions a chain of

iron rings suspended from one another, the first being upheld by a

loadstone. It is singular that although the common properties of the

loadstone were known, and even studied, during the dark ages, its

directive power, or that of a needle touched or rubbed by it, seems to be

the discovery of modern times, notwithstanding the claims of the Chinese

and Arabians to an early acquaintance with this peculiarity.

There is no doubt that the mariner’s compass was known in the twelfth

century, for several authors of that period make special allusion to it;

but centuries elapsed before its variation from pointing precisely to the

poles became noticed. If a magnet be suspended by a thread, in such a

manner as to enable it to move freely, it will, when all other magnetic

bodies are entirely removed from it, settle in a fixed position, which, in

this country, is about 25° to the west of north; this deviation of the

needle from the north is called its variation. Again, if, in place of

suspending a magnetized needle, making it move horizontally on a pivot, we

balance it upon a horizontal axis, as the beam of a pair of scales, we

shall find that it no longer remains horizontal, but that one end will

incline downward, or, as it is called, _dip_, and this dip or inclination

from a horizontal line is about 70° in this country.

Thus we are presented with two distinct magnetical phenomena: 1. The

variation or declination of the needle; 2. Its dip or inclination; and to

these we may add the intensity or force which draws the needle from

pointing to the north, and which varies in different latitudes. These

phenomena constitute what has been called terrestrial magnetism.

Recent writers, and among them the great philosopher Humboldt, have shown

that in all probability the declination or variation of the magnet was

known as early as the twelfth century; but this important discovery has

been generally ascribed to Columbus. His son Ferdinand states that on the

14th September 1492, his father, when about 200 leagues from the island of

Ferro, noticed for the first time the variation of the needle. “A

phenomenon,” says Washington Irving, “that had never before been

remarked.” “He perceived,” adds this author, “about nightfall that the

needle, instead of pointing to the north star, varied half a point, or

between five and six degrees, to the northwest, and still more on the

following morning. Struck with this circumstance, he observed it

attentively for three days, and found that the variation increased as he

advanced. He at first made no mention of this phenomenon, knowing how

ready his people were to take alarm; but it soon attracted the attention

of the pilots, and filled them with consternation. It seemed as if the

laws of nature were changing as they advanced, and that they were entering

another world, subject to unknown influences. They apprehended that the

compass was about to lose its mysterious virtues; and without this guide,

what was to become of them in a vast and trackless ocean? Columbus tasked

his science and ingenuity for reasons with which to allay their terrors.

He told them that the direction of the needle was not the polar star, but

to some fixed and invisible point: the variation was not caused by any

failing in the compass, but because this point, like the heavenly bodies,

had its changes and revolutions, and every day described a circle round

the pole. The high opinion that the pilots entertained of Columbus as a

profound astronomer gave weight to his theory, and their alarm subsided.”

Thus, although it is possible that the variation of the needle had been

noticed before the time of Columbus, it is evident that he had discovered

the amount of the variation, and that it varied in different latitudes.

The great philosopher Humboldt observes on this point, that “Columbus has

not only the incontestible merit of having first discovered a line without

magnetic variation, but also of having, by his considerations on the

progressive increase of westerly declination in receding from that line,

given the first impulse to the study of terrestrial magnetism in Europe.”

With respect to the dip or inclination of the magnetic needle, which must

be regarded as the other element of magnetic direction, there is little

doubt that it was known long before the period usually assigned as the

date of its discovery—namely, in 1576; for it is difficult to conceive how

the variation of the needle should be observed and noted, and not its

deviation from a horizontal line. In the above year a person of the name

of Robert Norman, who styled himself “hydrographer,” published a book

containing an account of this phenomenon. The title of this work is

sufficiently curious to be quoted. It runs: “The New Attractive;

containing a short Discourse of the Magnes or Loadstone, and amongst

others his Virtues, of a neue discovered Secret and Subtill Propertie,

concerning the Declination of the Needle touched therewith under the

Plaine of the Horizon, now first found out by Robert Norman,

Hydrographer.” In the third chapter we are told “by what meanes the rare

and straunge declyning of the needle from the plaine of the horison was

first found.”

“Having made many and diuers compasses, and using always to finish and end

them before I touched the needle, I found continually that after I had

touched the yrons with the stone, that presently the north point thereof

would bend or declyne downwards under the horison in some quantity,

insomuch that I was constrained to putt some small piece of waxe in the

south parts thereof, to counterpoise this declyning, and to make it equal

againe. Which effecte hauing many times passed my hands without any greate

regarde thereunto, as ignorant of any such properties in the stone, and

not before hauing heard or read of any such matter, it chanced at length

that there came to my handes an instrument to be made with a needle of

sixe inches long, which needle, after I had polished, cutt off at full

length, and made it to stand leuel upon the pinn, so that nothing rested

but only the touching of it with the stone. When I hadde touched the same,

presently the north part thereof declyned down in such sort, that being

constrained to cut away some of that part to make it equall againe in the

end, I cut it too short, and so spoiled the needle wherein I had taken so

much paines.

“Hereby being straken into some cholar, I applyed myself to seek farther

into this effecte; and making certain learned and expert men, my friends,

acquainted in this matter, they advised me to frame some instrument to

make some exact triall how much the needle touched with the stone would

declyne, or what greatest angle it would make with the plaine of the

horison.”

The author then proceeds to give a number of experiments which he made

with his instrument, and which may be regarded as the dipping-needle in

its first and rudest form. By it he found the inclination or dip to be 71°

50’.

It is remarkable, that until within the last seventy years, it appears to

have been the received opinion that the intensity of terrestrial magnetism

was the same at all parts of the earth’s surface; or, in other words, that

in all countries the needle was similarly affected. And yet few things are

more inconstant; for, not only is the magnetic force widely different in

various parts of our globe, but the magnetic condition itself is one of

swift and ceaseless change.

The first person who attempted to collect and generalize observations on

the variation of the needle, was Robert Halley, who constructed a chart,

showing a series of lines drawn through the points or places where the

needle exhibited the same variation. This chart was published in 1700, and

was preceded by some exceedingly curious papers, communicated to the Royal

Society, in which he expresses his belief that he has put it past doubt

that the globe of the earth is one great magnet, having four magnetic

poles or points of attraction, two near each pole of the equator; and that

in those parts of the world which lie adjacent to any one of those

magnetical poles, the needle is chiefly governed thereby, the nearest pole

being always predominant over the more remote.

The great importance of collecting as much information as possible

respecting the laws of magnetism, with a view to the proper understanding

of its effects, was fully understood by Halley, as the following passage,

taken from one of his papers, read before the Royal Society in 1692,

singularly attests: “The nice determination of the variation, and several

other particulars in the magnetic system, is reserved for a remote

posterity. All that we can hope to do is, to leave behind us observations

that may be confided in, and to propose hypotheses which after-ages may

examine, amend, or refute; only here I must take leave to recommend to all

masters of ships, and all others, lovers of natural truths, that they use

their utmost diligence to make, or procure to be made, observations of

these variations in all parts of the world, as well in the north as south

latitude, after the laudable custom of our East India commanders; and that

they please to communicate them to the Royal Society, in order to leave as

complete a history as may be to those that are hereafter to compare all

together, and to complete and perfect this abstruse theory.”

Halley’s theory, or rather hypothesis, which regarded our globe as a great

piece of clockwork, by which the poles of an internal magnet were carried

round in a cycle of determinate but unknown period, was so far confirmed,

that his variation chart had been hardly forty years completed, when, by

the effect of these changes, it had already become obsolete; and to

satisfy the requirements of navigation, it became necessary to reconstruct

it. This was performed by the aid of various observations furnished by the

Commissioners of the Navy, and the East India, Africa, and Hudson’s Bay

Companies. But the chart was far from satisfactory, and, in consequence of

the discordant nature of the observations, no dependence could be placed

on it.

No further steps were taken to ascertain the magnetism of the earth until

the close of the last century, when the French government undertook the

first comprehensive experimental inquiry on the subject. When the

exploring expedition of La Pérouse was organized, the French Academy of

Sciences prepared instructions for the expedition, containing a

recommendation that observations with the dipping-needle should be made at

stations widely remote, as a test of the equality or difference of the

magnetic intensity; suggesting also, with a sagacity anticipating the

result, that such observations should particularly be made at those parts

of the earth where the dip was greatest, and where it was least. The

experiments, whatever their results may have been, which, in compliance

with this recommendation, were made in the expedition of La Pérouse,

perished in its general catastrophe, neither ships nor navigators having

ever been heard of; but the instructions survived.

Our knowledge of the laws of magnetism was not increased until 1811, when,

on the occasion of a prize proposed by the Royal Danish Academy, M.

Hansteen, whose attention had for many years been turned to magnetic

phenomena, undertook its re-examination. With indefatigable labor M.

Hansteen traced back the history of the subject, and filled up the

interval from Halley’s time, and even from an earlier epoch (1600). The

results appeared in his very remarkable and celebrated work, published in

1819, entitled, “Upon the Magnetism of the Earth;” in which he clearly

demonstrates, by a great number of facts, the fluctuation which the

magnetical element has undergone during the last two centuries, confirming

in great detail the position of Halley—that the whole magnetical system is

in motion; that the moving force is very great, extending its effects from

pole to pole; and its that motion is not sudden, but gradual and regular.

In the magnetic atlas which accompanies M. Hansteen’s work there is a

variation chart for 1787, showing the magnetic force at that period. In

this chart the western line of no variation, or that which passes through

all places on the globe when the needle points to the true north, begins

in latitude 60° to the west of Hudson’s Bay; proceeds in a southeast

direction through the North American Lakes, passes the Antilles and Cape

St. Roque, till it reaches the South Atlantic Ocean, when it cuts the

meridian of Greenwich in about 65° of south latitude. This line of no

variation is extremely regular, being almost straight, till it bends round

the eastern part of South America, a little south of the equator. The

eastern line of no variation is exceedingly irregular, being full of

curves and contortions of the most extraordinary kind, indicating plainly

the action of local magnetic forces. It begins in latitude 60° south,

below New Holland; crosses that island through its centre; extends through

the Indian Archipelago with a double sinuosity, so as to cross the equator

three times—first passing north of it to the east of Borneo, then

returning to it, and passing south between Sumatra and Borneo, and then

crossing it again south of Ceylon, from which it passes to the east

through the Yellow Sea. It then stretches along the coast of China, making

a semicircular sweep to the west, till it reaches the latitude of 71°,

when it descends again to the south, and returns northwards with a great

semicircular bend, which terminates in the White Sea. Thus it is

demonstrated that in the northern hemisphere the general motion of the

variation lines is from west to east, in the southern hemisphere from east

to west.

A great impetus was given to the study of terrestrial magnetism by the

publication of M. Hansteen’s labors; and the various arctic expeditions

sent out by the country did much toward making us acquainted with the laws

of magnetism in the northern regions. One of these expeditions led to the

discovery of the north magnetic pole, or that point where the

dipping-needle assumes a vertical position. The discovery was made by

Captain Sir James Ross, who sailed with his uncle Sir John Ross, in a

voyage undertaken in search of a northwest passage. He left his uncle’s

ship with a party for the sole purpose of reaching this interesting

magnetical point, which a series of observations assured him could not be

very far distant. The following extract from his journal communicating his

discovery will be read with interest. Under the date of the 31st of May

1831, he writes: “We were now within fourteen miles of the calculated

position of the magnetic pole, and my anxiety, therefore, did not permit

me to do or endure any thing which might delay my arrival at the long

wished-for spot. I resolved, therefore, to leave behind the greater part

of our baggage and provisions, and to take onward nothing more than was

strictly necessary, lest bad weather or other accidents should be added to

delay, or lest unforeseen circumstances, still more untoward, should

deprive me entirely of the high gratification which I could not but look

to in accomplishing this most-desired object. We commenced, therefore, a

most rapid march, comparatively disencumbered as we now were; and

persevering with all our might, we reached the calculated place at eight

in the morning of the 1st of June. The amount of the dip, as indicated by

my dipping-needle, was 89° 59’, being thus within one minute of the

vertical; while the proximity at least of this magnetic pole, if not its

actual existence where we stood, was further confirmed by the total

inaction of the several horizontal needles then in my possession. These

were suspended in the most delicate manner possible, but there was not one

which showed the slightest effort to move from the position in which it

was placed—a fact which even the most moderately-informed of readers must

know to be one which proves that the centre of attraction lies at a very

small horizontal distance, if at any. The land at this place is very low

near the coast, but it rises into ridges of fifty or sixty feet high about

a mile inland. We could have wished that a place so important had

possessed more of mark or note. But nature had here erected no monument to

denote the spot that she had chosen as the centre of one of her great and

dark powers. We had abundance of materials for building in the fragments

of limestone that covered the beach, and we therefore erected a cairn of

some magnitude, under which we buried a canister containing a record of

the interesting fact, only regretting that we had not the means of

constructing a pyramid of more importance, and of strength sufficient to

stand the assaults of time and of the Esquimaux.” The latitude of this

spot is 70° 5’ 17", and its longitude 96° 46’ 45" west. The reader may

remember that during his late arctic voyage in search of Sir John

Franklin, Sir James Ross was extremely anxious to revisit this interesting

locality, which he was at one time not very distant from; but which, as

the places of magnetic intensity are continually changing, he would no

longer have found representing the north magnetic pole. It is not a little

remarkable that during Sir John Ross’s voyage, Mr. Barlow, who had been

long engaged investigating the laws of magnetism, had constructed a

magnetical map, in which he laid down a point which he described as that

where, in all probability, the dipping-needle would be perpendicular, and

which is the very spot where Sir James Ross ascertained the north magnetic

pole to exist.

But valuable and interesting as were the observations made by navigators

in different parts if the globe, yet philosophers began to perceive that,

without some definite plan of proceeding, the mere multiplication of

random observations made here and there at irregular periods was not the

course most likely to lead to desired results, and to make us acquainted

with the mysterious laws of magnetism. The establishment of national

observatories for the registration of magnetical observations became

absolutely necessary; and the illustrious Humboldt, to whom every branch

of science owes so much, gave the first impulse to this great undertaking.

During the course of his memorable voyages and travels in various parts of

the globe, the observation of the magnetic phenomena in all their

particulars occupied a large portion of his attention; and as the

commencement of any great work is always an epoch of rare and lasting

interest, we shall give the philosopher’s own words on the subject: “When

the first proposal to establish a system of observatories forming a

network of stations, all provided with similar instruments, was made by

myself, I could hardly entertain the hope that I should actually live to

see the time when, thanks to the united activity of excellent physicists

and astronomers, and especially to the munificent and persevering support

of two governments—the Russian and the British, both hemispheres should be

covered with magnetic observatories. In 1806 and 1807 my friend M.

Altmanns and myself frequently observed the march of the declination

needle at Berlin for five or six days and nights consecutively, from hour

to hour, and often from half hour to half hour, particularly at the

equinoxes and solstices. I was persuaded that continuous uninterrupted

observations during several days and nights were preferable to detached

observations continued during an interval of many months.”

Political disturbances, always ruinous to the calm researches of the man

of science, for many years prevented Humboldt carrying his wishes into

effect; and it was not until 1828 that he was enabled to erect a small

observatory at Berlin, whose more immediate object was to institute a

series of simultaneous observations at concerted hours at Berlin, Paris,

and Freiburg. In 1829 magnetic stations were established throughout

Northern Asia, in connection with an expedition to that country which

emanated from the Russian government; and in 1832 M. Gauss, the

illustrious founder of a general theory of terrestrial magnetism,

established a magnetic observatory at Göttingen, which was completed in

1834, and furnished with his ingenious instruments.

In 1836 Baron Humboldt addressed a long and highly-interesting letter to

the Duke of Sussex, then president of the Royal Society, urging the

establishment of regular magnetical stations in the British possessions in

North America, Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, and between the tropics,

not only for the observation of the momentary perturbations of the needle,

but also for that of its periodical and secular movements. This appeal was

nobly responded to.

The Royal Society, in conjunction with the British Association, called on

government to advance the necessary funds to establish magnetical

observatories at Greenwich, and in various parts of the British

possessions; and in 1839-40 magnetical establishments were in activity at

St. Helena, the Cape of Good Hope, Canada, and Van Diemen’s Land. The

munificence of the directors of the East India Company founded and

furnished, at the request of the Royal Society, magnetic observatories at

Simla, Madras, Bombay, and Singapore, and the observations will be

published in a similar form to those of the British observatories. We will

now briefly describe the scheme of observations, and the manner of making

them in the different observatories.

Each observatory is supplied with three magnetometers, or bars of

magnetized steel, delicately suspended by threads of raw silk, which

measure the magnetical declination, horizontal intensity, and vertical

force—and such astronomical apparatus as is required for ascertaining the

time and the true meridian. To these have also been added in each case a

most complete and perfect set of meteorological instruments, carefully

compared with the standards in possession of the Royal Society, not only

for the purpose of affording the necessary corrections of the magnetic

observations, but also with a view to obtaining at each station, at very

little additional cost and trouble, a complete series of meteorological

observations. In order that the observations may be made at the same

periods of time, it was resolved that the mean time at Göttingen should be

employed at all the stations, without any regard to the apparent times of

day at the stations themselves. Each day is supposed to be divided into

twelve equal portions of two hours each, commencing at all the stations at

the same instants of absolute time, which are called the magnetic hours.

At the commencement of each period of two hours throughout the day and

night, with the exception of Sundays, the magnetometers are observed, and

the meteorological instruments read off. Independently of these

observations, others are made at stated periodical intervals every two

minutes and a half during twenty-four hours. These are known by the name

of “turn-day observations.” Printed forms for registering the observations

have been prepared with great care, in order that a complete form of

registry may be preserved—a point of great importance, when it is

remembered that all the observations made at the different stations must

eventually be reduced and analyzed. A singularly felicitous adaptation of

photography has been carried into effect with the magnetometers. By means

of mirrors attached to their arms, reflected light is cast on

highly-sensitive photographic paper wound round a cylinder moved by

clockwork, and the slightest variation of the magnets is registered with

the greatest accuracy.

The period has not yet arrived for reaping the fruits of all the labor

carried on in the magnetic observatories at home and abroad, but already

certain results have been deduced from the observations which are highly

interesting. It appears that if the globe be divided into an eastern and a

western hemisphere by a plane coinciding with the meridians of 100° and

280°, the western hemisphere, or that comprising the Americas and the

Pacific Ocean, has a much higher magnetic intensity distributed generally

over its surface than the eastern hemisphere, containing Europe and

Africa, and the adjacent part of the Atlantic Ocean. The distribution of

the magnetic intensity in the intertropical regions of the globe affords

evidence of two governing magnetic centres in each hemisphere. The highest

magnetic intensity which has been observed is more than twice as great as

the lowest. It had long been known that in Europe the north end of a

magnet suspended horizontally (meaning by the north end that which is

directed toward the north) moves to the east from the night until between

seven and eight o’clock in the morning, when an opposite movement

commences, and the north end of the magnet moves to the west. Recent

observations have shown that a similar movement takes place at the same

hours of local time in North America, and that it is general in the middle

latitudes of the northern hemisphere; but to show the capricious nature of

magnetism, it may be mentioned, that although in the southern portion of

the globe the movement of the magnet in the contrary direction is constant

throughout the year, yet at St. Helena the peculiar feature of the diurnal

is, that during one half of the year the movement of the north end of the

magnet corresponds in direction with the movement which is taking place in

the northern hemisphere, while in the other half of the year the direction

corresponds with that which is taking place in the southern hemisphere.

Another striking result of these investigations is the estimate of the

total magnetic power of the earth as compared with a steel bar magnetized

one pound in weight. This proportion is calculated as

8,464,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1, which, supposing the magnetic force

uniformly distributed, will be found to amount to about six such bars to

every cubic yard of the earth’s surface.

Thus measured, it will be seen how tremendously mysterious is the power of

magnetism, and how potent an influence it must possess over animate and

inanimate nature! And not one of its least wonderful mysteries is its

singular exception to the character of stability and permanence. The

configuration of our globe, the distribution of temperature in its

interior, the tides and currents of the ocean, the general course of

winds, and the affections of climate—all these are appreciably constant.

But magnetism, that subtle, undefinable fluid, is perpetually undergoing a

change, and of so rapid a nature, that it becomes necessary to assume

epochs, which ought not to be more than ten years apart, to which every

observation should be reduced. The extreme importance of knowing the exact

amount of magnetic variation can scarcely be overrated for maritime

purposes; and the establishment of a complete magnetical theory, based on

an extensive series of observations, must be regarded as a desideratum by

the first nautical country.

The numerous magnetical surveys that have been made by our government,

taken in conjunction with those in progress on the continent of Europe,

and particularly in the Austrian dominions, give a full promise of the

speedy realization of M. Humboldt’s wish, so earnestly expressed, that the

materials of the first general magnetic map of the globe should be

assembled; and even permit the anticipation, that the first normal epoch

of such a map will be but little removed from the present year.

EARLY HISTORY OF THE USE OF COAL. (FROM CHAMBERS’S EDINBURGH JOURNAL.)

Bituminous matter, if not the carboniferous system itself, exists

abundantly on the banks of the Euphrates. In the basin of the Nile coal

has been recently detected. It occurs sparingly in some of the states of

Greece; and Theophrastus, in his “History of Stones,” refers to mineral

coal (_lithanthrax_) being found in Liguria and in Elis, and used by the

smiths; the stones are earthy, he adds, but kindle and burn like wood

coals (the _anthrax_). But by none of the Oriental nations does it appear

that the vast latent powers and virtues of the mineral were thus early

discovered, so as to render it an object of commerce or of geological

research. What the Romans termed _lapis ampelites_, is generally

understood to mean our cannel coal, which they used not as fuel, but in

making toys, bracelets, and other ornaments; while their _carbo_, which

Pliny describes as _vehementer perlucet_, was simply the petroleum or

naphtha, which issues so abundantly from all the tertiary deposits. Coal

is found in Syria, and the term frequently occurs in the Sacred Writings.

But there is no reference any where in the inspired record as to digging

or boring for the mineral—no directions for its use—no instructions as to

its constituting a portion of the promised treasures of the land. In their

burnt-offerings, wood appears uniformly to have been employed; in

Leviticus, the term is used as synonymous with fire, where it is said that

“the priests shall lay the parts in order upon the wood”—that is, on the

fire which is upon the altar. And in the same manner for all domestic

purposes, wood and charcoal were invariably made use of. Doubtless the

ancient Hebrews would be acquainted with _natural_ coal, as in the

mountains of Lebanon, whither they continually resorted for their timber,

seams of coal near Beirout were seen to protrude through the

superincumbent strata in various directions. Still there are no traces of

pits or excavations into the rock to show that they duly appreciated the

extent and uses of the article.... For many reasons it would seem that,

among modern nations, the primitive Britons were the first to avail

themselves of the valuable combustible. The word by which it is designated

is not of Saxon, but of British extraction, and is still employed to this

day by the Irish, in their form of _o-gual_, and in that of _kolan_ by the

Cornish. In Yorkshire, stone hammers and hatchets have been found in old

mines, showing that the early Britons worked coals before the invasion of

the Romans. Manchester, which has risen upon the very ashes of the

mineral, and grown to all its wealth and greatness under the influence of

its heat and light, next claims the merit of the discovery. Portions of

coal have been found under, or imbedded in the sand of a Roman way,

excavated some years ago for the construction of a house, and which at the

time were ingeniously conjectured by the local antiquaries to have been

collected for the use of the garrison stationed on the route of these

warlike invaders at Mancenion, or the Place of Tents. Certain it is that

fragments of coal are being constantly, in the district, washed out and

brought down by the Medlock and other streams, which break from the

mountains through the coal strata. The attention of the inhabitants would

in this way be the more early and readily attracted by the glistening

substance. Nevertheless, for long after, coal was but little valued or

appreciated, turf and wood being the common articles of consumption

throughout the country. About the middle of the ninth century, a grant of

land was made by the Abbey of Peterborough, under the restriction of

certain payments in kind to the monastery, among which are specified sixty

carts of wood, and as showing their comparative worth, only twelve carts

of pit coal. Toward the end of the thirteenth century, Newcastle is said

to have traded in the article, and by a charter of Henry III., of date

1284, a license is granted to the burgesses to dig for the mineral. About

this period, coals for the first time began to be imported into London,

but were made use of only by smiths, brewers, dyers, and other artisans,

when, in consequence of the smoke being regarded as very injurious to the

public health, parliament petitioned the king, Edward I., to prohibit the

burning of coal, on the ground of being an intolerable nuisance. A

proclamation was granted, conformable to the prayer of the petition; and

the most severe inquisitorial measures were adopted to restrict or

altogether abolish the use of the combustible, by fine, imprisonment, and

destruction of the furnaces and workshops! They were again brought into

common use in the time of Charles I., and have continued to increase

steadily with the extension of the arts and manufactures, and the

advancing tide of population, till now, in the metropolis and suburbs,

coals are annually consumed to the amount of about three million of tons.

The use of coal in Scotland seems to be connected with the rise of the

monasteries.... Under the regime of domestic rule at Dunfermline, coals

were worked in the year 1291—at Dysart and other places along the Fife

coast, about half a century later—and generally in the fourteenth and

fifteenth centuries the inhabitants were assessed in coals to the churches

and chapels, which, after the Reformation, have still continued to be paid

in many parishes. Boethius records that in his time the inhabitants of

Fife and the Lothians dug “a black stone,” which, when kindled, gave out a

heat sufficient to melt iron.—_Rev. Dr. Anderson’s Course of Creation._

JENNY LIND. BY FREDRIKA BREMER.

There was once a poor and plain little girl dwelling in a little room in

Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. She was a poor little girl indeed, then;

she was lonely and neglected, and would have been very unhappy, deprived

of the kindness and care so necessary to a child, if it had not been for a

peculiar gift. The little girl had a fine voice, and in her loneliness, in

trouble or in sorrow, she consoled herself by singing. In fact she sang to

all she did; at her work, at her play, running or resting, she always

sang.

The woman who had her in care went out to work during the day, and used to

lock in the little girl, who had nothing to enliven her solitude but the

company of a cat. The little girl played with her cat and sang. Once she

sat by the open window and stroked her cat and sang, when a lady passed

by. She heard the voice and looked up and saw the little singer. She asked

the child several questions, went away, and came back several days later,

followed by an old music master, whose name was Crelius. He tried the

little girl’s musical ear and voice, and was astonished. He took her to

the director of the Royal Opera of Stockholm, then a Count Puhe, whose

truly generous and kind heart was concealed by rough speech and a morbid

temper. Crelius introduced his little pupil to the count, and asked him to

engage her as “_élève_ for the opera.” “You ask a foolish thing!” said the

count, gruffly, looking disdainfully down on the poor little girl. “What

shall we do with that ugly thing? see what feet she has? And then her

face? She will never be presentable. No, we can not take her. Away with

her!”

The music master insisted, almost indignantly. “Well,” exclaimed he at

last, “if you will not take her, poor as I am, I will take her myself, and

have her educated for the scene; such another ear as she has for music is

not to be found in the world!”

The count relented. The little girl was at last admitted into the school

for _élèves_, at the Opera, and with some difficulty a simple gown of

black bombazine was procured for her. The care of her musical education

was left to an able master, Mr. Albert Breg, director of the song school

of the Opera.

Some years later, at a comedy given by the _élèves_ of the theatre,

several persons were struck by the spirit and life with which a very young

_élève_ acted the part of a beggar-girl in the play. Lovers of genial

nature were charmed, pedants almost frightened. It was our poor little

girl, who had made her first appearance, now about fourteen years of age,

frolicksome and full of fun as a child.

A few years still later, a young debutante was to sing for the first time

before the public in Weber’s Freischutz. At the rehearsal preceding the

representation of the evening, she sang in a manner which made the members

of the orchestra at once lay down their instruments to clap their hands in

rapturous applause. It was our poor, plain little girl here again, who now

had grown up and was to appear before the public in the role of Agatha. I

saw her at the evening representation. She was then in the prime of youth,

fresh, bright, and serene as a morning in May—perfect in form—her hands

and her arms peculiarly graceful—and lovely in her whole appearance,

through the expression of her countenance, and the noble simplicity and

calmness of her manners. In fact she was charming. We saw not an actress,

but a young girl full of natural geniality and grace. She seemed to move,

speak, and sing without effort or art. All was nature and harmony. Her

song was distinguished especially by its purity, and the power of soul

which seemed to swell in her tones. Her “mezzo voice” was delightful. In

the night scene where Agatha, seeing her lover come, breathes out her joy

in rapturous song, our young singer on turning from the window, at the

back of the theatre, to the spectators again, was pale for joy. And in

that pale joyousness she sang with a burst of outflowing love and life

that called forth, not the mirth, but the tears of the auditors.

From this time she was the declared favorite of the Swedish public, whose

musical tastes and knowledge are said not to be surpassed. And, year after

year, she continued so, though, after a time, her voice, being

overstrained, lost somewhat of its freshness, and the public being

satiated, no more crowded the house when she was singing. Still, at that

time, she could be heard singing and playing more delightfully than ever

in Pamina (in Zauberflote) or in Anna Bolena, though the opera was almost

deserted. She evidently sang for the pleasure of the song.

By that time she went to take lessons of Garcia, in Paris, and so give the

finishing touch to her musical education. There she acquired that warble

in which she is said to have been equalled by no singer, and which could

be compared only to that of the soaring and warbling lark, if the lark had

a soul.

And then the young girl went abroad and sang on foreign shores and to

foreign people. She charmed Denmark, she charmed Germany, she charmed

England. She was caressed and courted every where, even to adulation. At

the courts of kings, the houses of the great and noble, she was feasted as

one of the grandees of nature and art. She was covered with laurels and

jewels. But friends wrote of her, “In the midst of these splendors she

only thinks of her Sweden, and yearns for her friends and her people.”

One dusky October night, crowds of people (the most part, by their dress,

seemed to belong to the upper classes of society) thronged on the shore of

the Baltic harbor at Stockholm. All looked toward the sea. There was a

rumor of expectance and pleasure. Hours passed away, and the crowds still

gathered, and waited and looked out eagerly toward the sea. At length a

brilliant rocket rose joyfully, far out at the entrance of the harbor, and

was greeted with a general buzz on the shore.

“There she comes! there she is!” A large steamer now came whelming on its

triumphant way through the flocks of ships and boats lying in the harbor,

toward the shore of the “Skeppsbero.” Flashing rockets marked its way in

the dark as it advanced. The crowds on the shore pressed forward as if to

meet it. Now the leviathan of the waters was heard thundering nearer and

nearer; now it relented, now again pushed on, foaming and splashing; now

it lay still. And, there on the front of the deck, was seen by the light

of lamps and rockets, a pale, graceful young woman, her eyes brilliant

with tears, and lips radiant with smiles, waving her handkerchief to her

friends and countrymen on shore.

It was she again—our poor, plain, neglected little girl of former days—who

now came back in triumph to her fatherland. But no more poor, no more

plain, no more neglected. She had become rich; she had in her slender

person the power to charm and inspire multitudes.

Some days later, we read in the papers of Stockholm, an address to the

public written by the beloved singer, stating, with noble simplicity, that

“as she once more had the happiness to be in her native land, she would be

glad to sing again to her countrymen, and that the income of the operas in

which she was this season to appear, would be devoted to raise a fund for

a school where _élèves_ for the theatre would be educated to virtue and

knowledge.” The intelligence was received as it deserved, and of course

the Opera was crowded every night the beloved singer sang there. The first

time she again appeared in Somnambula (one of her favorite roles), the

public, after the curtain was dropped, called her back with great

enthusiasm, and received her, when she appeared, with a roar of hurrahs.

In the midst of the burst of applause a clear and melodious warbling was

heard. The hurrahs were hushed instantly. And we saw the lovely singer

standing with her arms slightly extended, somewhat bowing forward,

graceful as a bird on its branch warbling, warbling as no bird ever did,

from note to note—and on every one a clear, strong, soaring warble—until

she fell into the retournelle of her last song, and again sang that joyful

and touching strain,

“No thought can conceive how I feel at my heart.”

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON. (FROM

BLACKWOOD’S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.)

Book I.—Initial Chapter: Showing How My Novel Came To Be Written.

SCENE, _the Hall in Uncle Roland’s Tower_; TIME, _night_; SEASON,

_winter_.

Mr. Caxton is seated before a great geographical globe, which he is

turning round leisurely, and “for his own recreation,” as, according to

Sir Thomas Browne, a philosopher should turn round the orb, of which that

globe professes to be the representation and effigies. My mother having

just adorned a very small frock with a very smart braid, is holding it out

at arm’s length, the more to admire the effect. Blanche, though leaning

both hands on my mother’s shoulder, is not regarding the frock, but

glances toward PISISTRATUS, who, seated near the fire leaning back in his

chair, and his head bent over his breast, seems in a very bad humor. Uncle

Roland, who has become a great novel reader, is deep in the mysteries of

some fascinating Third Volume. Mr. Squills has brought _The Times_ in his

pocket for his own special profit and delectation, and is now bending his

brows over “the state of the money market” in great doubt whether railway

shares can possibly fall lower. For Mr. Squills, happy man! has large

savings, and does not know what to do with his money; or, to use his own

phrase, “how to buy in at the cheapest, in order to sell out at the

dearest.”

Mr. Caxton, musingly.—“It must have been a monstrous long journey. It

would be somewhere hereabouts, I take it, that they would split off.”

My Mother, mechanically, and in order to show Austin that she paid him the

compliment of attending to his remarks.—“Who split off, my dear?”

“Bless me, Kitty,” said my father, in great admiration, “you ask just the

question which it is most difficult to answer. An ingenious speculator on

races contends that the Danes, whose descendants make the chief part of

our northern population (and, indeed, if his hypothesis could be correct,

we must suppose all the ancient worshipers of Odin), are of the same

origin as the Etrurians. And why, Kitty? I just ask you, why?”

My mother shook her head thoughtfully, and turned the frock to the other

side of the light.

“Because, forsooth,” cried my father, exploding—“because the Etrurians

called their gods ‘the Æsar,’ and the Scandinavians called theirs the

Æsir, or Aser! And where do you think he puts their cradle?”

“Cradle!” said my mother, dreamily; “it must be in the nursery.”

MR. CAXTON.—“Exactly—in the nursery of the human race—just here,” and my

father pointed to the globe; “bounded, you see, by the River Helys, and in

that region which, taking its name from Ees, or As (a word designating

light or fire), has been immemorially called _Asia_. Now, Kitty, from Ees

or As, our ethnological speculator would derive not only Asia, the land,

but Æser or Aser, its primitive inhabitants. Hence, he supposes the origin

of the Etrurians, and the Scandinavians. But, if we give him so much, we

must give him more, and deduce from the same origin the Es of the Celt,

and the Ized of the Persian, and—what will be of more use to him, I dare

say, poor man, than all the rest put together—the Æs of the Romans, that

is, the God of Copper-Money—a very powerful household god he is to this

day!”

My mother looked musingly at her frock, as if she were taking my father’s

proposition into serious consideration.

“So, perhaps,” resumed my father, “and not unconformably with sacred

records, from one great parent horde came all these various tribes,

carrying with them the name of their beloved Asia; and whether they

wandered north, south, or west, exalting their own emphatic designation of

‘Children of the Land of Light’ into the title of gods. And to think

(added Mr. Caxton pathetically, gazing upon that speck in the globe on

which his forefinger rested), to think how little they changed for the

better when they got to the Don, or entangled their rafts amidst the

icebergs of the Baltic—so comfortably off as they were here, if they could

but have staid quiet!”

“And why the deuce could not they?” asked Mr. Squills.

“Pressure of population, and not enough to live upon, I suppose,” said my

father.

PISISTRATUS, sulkily.—“More probably they did away with the Corn Laws,

sir.”

“Papæ!” quoth my father, “that throws a new light on the subject.”

PISISTRATUS, full of his grievances, and not caring three straws about the

origin of the Scandinavians—“I know that if we are to lose £500 every year

on a farm which we hold rent-free, and which the best judges allow to be a

perfect model for the whole country, we had better make haste, and turn

Æsar, or Aser, or whatever you call them, and fix a settlement on the

property of other nations, otherwise, I suspect, our probable settlement

will be on the parish.”

MR. SQUILLS, who, it must be remembered, is an enthusiastic

free-trader—“You have only got to put more capital on the land.”

PISISTRATUS.—“Well, Mr. Squills, as you think so well of that investment,

put _your_ capital on it. I promise that you shall have every shilling of

profit.”

MR. SQUILLS, hastily retreating behind _The Times_—“I don’t think the

Great Western can fall any lower: though it _is_ hazardous—I can but

venture a few hundreds—”

PISISTRATUS.—“On our land, Squills? Thank you.”

MR. SQUILLS.—“No, no—any thing but that—on the Great Western.”

Pisistratus relapses into gloom. Blanche steals up coaxingly, and gets

snubbed for her pains.

A pause.

MR. CAXTON.—“There are two golden rules of life: one relates to the mind,

and the other to the pockets. The first is—If our thoughts get into a low,

nervous, aguish condition, we should make them change the air; the second

is comprised in the proverb, ‘it is good to have two strings to one’s

bow.’ Therefore, Pisistratus, I tell you what you must do—write a book!”

PISISTRATUS.—“Write a book!—Against the abolition of the Corn Laws? Faith,

sir, the mischief’s done. It takes a much better pen than mine to write

down an act of Parliament.”

MR. CAXTON.—“I only said, ‘Write a book.’ All the rest is the addition of

your own headlong imagination.”

PISISTRATUS, with the recollection of the great book rising before

him—“Indeed, sir, I should think that that would just finish us!”

MR. CAXTON, not seeming to heed the interruption—“A book that will sell! A

book that will prop up the fall of prices! A book that will distract your

mind from its dismal apprehensions, and restore your affection to your

species, and your hopes in the ultimate triumph of sound principles—by the

sight of a favorable balance at the end of the yearly accounts. It is

astonishing what a difference that little circumstance makes in our views

of things in general. I remember when the bank, in which Squills had

incautiously left £1000, broke; one remarkably healthy year, that he

became a great alarmist, and said that the country was on the verge of

ruin; whereas, you see now, when, thanks to a long succession of sickly

seasons, he has a surplus capital to risk in the Great Western—he is

firmly persuaded that England was never in so prosperous a condition.”

MR. SQUILLS, rather sullenly.—“Pooh, pooh.”

MR. CAXTON.—“Write a book, my son—write a book. Need I tell you that Money

or Moneta, according to Hyginus, was the mother of the Muses? Write a

book.”

BLANCHE and my MOTHER, in full chorus.—“yes, Sisty—a book—a book! you must

write a book!”

“I am sure,” quoth my Uncle Roland, slamming down the volume he had just

concluded, “he could write a devilish deal better book than this; and how

I come to read such trash, night after night, is more than I could

possibly explain to the satisfaction of any intelligent jury, if I were

put into a witness-box, and examined in the mildest manner by my own

counsel.”

MR. CAXTON.—“You see that Roland tells us exactly what sort of a book it

shall be.”

PISISTRATUS.—“Trash, sir?”

MR. CAXTON.—“No—that is not necessarily trash—but a book of that class

which, whether trash or not, people can’t help reading. Novels have become

a necessity of the age. You must write a novel.”

PISISTRATUS, flattered, but dubious.—“A novel! But every subject on which

novels can be written is preoccupied. There are novels on low life, novels

of high life, military novels, naval novels, novels philosophical, novels

religious, novels historical, novels descriptive of India, the Colonies,

Ancient Rome, and the Egyptian Pyramids. From what bird, wild eagle, or

barn-door fowl, can I

‘Pluck one unwearied plume from Fancy’s wing?’ ”

MR. CAXTON, after a little thought.—“You remember the story which

Trevanion (I beg his pardon, Lord Ulswater) told us the other night. That

gives you something of the romance of real life for your plot—puts you

chiefly among scenes with which you are familiar, and furnishes you with

characters which have been very sparingly dealt with since the time of

Fielding. You can give us the country squire, as you remember him in your

youth: it is a specimen of a race worth preserving—the old idiosyncrasies

of which are rapidly dying off, as the railways bring Norfolk and

Yorkshire within easy reach of the manners of London. You can give us the

old-fashioned parson, as in all essentials he may yet be found—but before

you had to drag him out of the great Puseyite sectarian bog; and, for the

rest, I really think that while, as I am told, many popular writers are

doing their best, especially in France, and perhaps a little in England,

to set class against class, and pick up every stone in the kennel to shy

at a gentleman with a good coat on his back, something useful might be

done by a few good humored sketches of those innocent criminals a little

better off than their neighbors, whom, however we dislike them, I take it

for granted we shall have to endure, in one shape or another, as long as

civilization exists; and they seem, on the whole, as good in their present

shape, as we are likely to get, shake the dice-box of society how we

will.”

PISISTRATUS.—“Very well said, sir; but this rural country gentleman life

is not so new as you think. There’s Washington Irving—”

MR. CAXTON.—“Charming—but rather the manners of the last century than

this. You may as well cite Addison and Sir Roger de Coverley.”

PISISTRATUS.—“_Tremaine_ and _De Vere_.”

MR. CAXTON.—“Nothing can be more graceful, nor more unlike what I mean.

The Pales and Terminus I wish you to put up in the fields are familiar

images, that you may cut out of in oak tree—not beautiful marble statues,

on porphyry pedestals twenty feet high.”

PISISTRATUS.—“Miss Austin; Mrs. Gore in her masterpiece of _Mrs.

Armytage;_ Mrs. Marsh, too; and then (for Scottish manners) Miss Ferrier!”

MR. CAXTON, growing cross.—“Oh, if you can not treat on bucolics but what

you must hear some Virgil or other cry ‘Stop thief!’ you deserve to be

tossed by one of your own ‘short-horns.’ (Still more contemptuously)—I am

sure I don’t know why we spend so much money on sending our sons to school

to learn Latin, when that Anachronism of yours, Mrs. Caxton, can’t even

construe a line and a half of Phædrus. Phædrus, Mrs. Caxton—a book which

is in Latin what Goody Two Shoes is in the vernacular!”

MRS. CAXTON, alarmed and indignant.—“Fie, Austin! I am sure you can

construe Phædras, dear!”

Pisistratus prudently preserves silence.

MR. CAXTON.—“I’ll try him—

“Sua cuique quum sit animi cogitatio

Colorque proprius.”

What does that mean?”

PISISTRATUS, smiling.—“That every man has some coloring matter within him,

to give his own tinge to—”

“His own novel,” interrupted my father! “_Contentus peragis_.”

During the latter part of this dialogue, Blanche had sewn together three

quires of the best Bath paper, and she now placed them on a little table

before me, with her own inkstand and steel pen.

My mother put her finger to her lip, and said, “Hush!” my father returned

to the cradle of the Æsar; Captain Roland leant his cheek on his hand, and

gazed abstractedly on the fire; Mr. Squills fell into a placid doze; and,

after three sighs that would have melted a heart of stone, I rushed

into—MY NOVEL.

Chapter II.

“There has never been occasion to use them since I’ve been in the parish,”

said Parson Dale.

“What does that prove?” quoth the Squire, sharply, and looking the Parson

full in the face.

“Prove!” repeated Mr. Dale—with a smile of benign, yet too conscious

superiority—“What does experience prove?”

“That your forefathers were great blockheads, and that their descendant is

not a whit the wiser.”

“Squire,” replied the Parson, “although that is a melancholy conclusion,

yet if you mean it to apply universally, and not to the family of the

Dales in particular, it is not one which my candor as a reasoner, and my

humility as a mortal, will permit me to challenge.”

“I defy you.” said Mr. Hazeldean, triumphantly. “But to stick to the

subject, which it is monstrous hard to do when one talks with a parson, I

only just ask you to look yonder, and tell me on your conscience—I don’t

even say as a parson, but as a parishioner—whether you ever saw a more

disreputable spectacle?”

While he spoke, the Squire, leaning heavily on the Parson’s left shoulder,

extended his cane in a line parallel with the right eye of that

disputatious ecclesiastic, so that he might guide the organ of sight to

the object he had thus unflatteringly described.

“I confess,” said the Parson, “that, regarded by the eye of the senses, it

is a thing that in its best day had small pretensions to beauty, and is

not elevated into the picturesque even by neglect and decay. But, my

friend, regarded by the eye of the inner man—of the rural philosopher and

parochial legislator—I say it is by neglect and decay that it is rendered

a very pleasing feature in what I may call ‘the moral topography of a

parish.’ ”

The Squire looked at the Parson as if he could have beaten him; and

indeed, regarding the object in dispute not only with the eye of the outer

man, but the eye of law and order, the eye of a country gentleman and a

justice of the peace, the spectacle _was_ scandalously disreputable. It

was moss-grown; it was worm-eaten; it was broken right in the middle;

through its four socketless eyes, neighbored by the nettle, peered the

thistle:—the thistle!—a forest of thistles!—and, to complete the

degradation of the whole, those thistles had attracted the donkey of an

itinerant tinker; and the irreverent animal was in the very act of taking

his luncheon out of the eyes and jaws of—THE PARISH STOCKS.

The Squire looked as if he could have beaten the Parson; but as he was not

without some slight command of temper, and a substitute was luckily at

hand, he gulped down his resentment and made a rush—at the donkey!

Now the donkey was hampered by a rope to its forefeet, to the which was

attached a billet of wood called technically “a clog,” so that it had no

fair chance of escape from the assault its sacrilegious luncheon had

justly provoked. But, the ass turning round with unusual nimbleness at the

first stroke of the cane, the Squire caught his foot in the rope, and went

head over heels among the thistles. The donkey gravely bent down, and

thrice smelt or sniffed its prostrate foe; then, having convinced itself

that it had nothing farther to apprehend for the present, and very willing

to make the best of the reprieve, according to the poetical admonition,

“Gather your rosebuds while you may,” it cropped a thistle in full bloom,

close to the ear of the Squire; so close indeed, that the Parson thought

the ear was gone; and with the more probability, inasmuch as the Squire,

feeling the warm breath of the creature, bellowed out with all the force

of lungs accustomed to give a View-hallo!

“Bless me, is it gone?” said the Parson, thrusting his person between the

ass and the squire.

“Zounds and the devil!” cried the Squire, rubbing himself as he rose to

his feet.

“Hush,” said the parson gently “What a horrible oath!”

“Horrible oath! If you had my nankeens on,” said the Squire, still rubbing

himself, “and had fallen into a thicket of thistles with a donkey’s teeth

within an inch of your ear!”

“It is not gone—then?” interrupted the Parson.

“No—that is, I think not,” said the Squire dubiously; and he clapped his

hand to the organ in question. “No! it is not gone!”

“Thank Heaven!” said the good Clergyman kindly.

“Hum,” growled the Squire, who was now once more engaged in rubbing

himself. “Thank Heaven indeed, when I am as full of thorns as a porcupine!

I should just like to know what use thistles are in the world.”

“For donkeys to eat, if you will let them, Squire,” answered the Parson.

“Ugh, you beast!” cried Mr. Hazeldean, all his wrath reawakened, whether

by the reference to the donkey species, or his inability to reply to the

Parson, or perhaps by some sudden prick too sharp for humanity—especially

humanity in nankeens—to endure without kicking; “Ugh, you beast!” he

exclaimed, shaking his cane at the donkey, who, at the interposition of

the Parson, had respectfully recoiled a few paces, and now stood switching

its thin tail, and trying vainly to lift one of its fore legs—for the

flies teased it.

“Poor thing!” said the Parson pityingly. “See, it has a raw place on the

shoulder, and the flies have found out the sore.”

“I am devilish glad to hear it,” said the Squire vindictively.

“Fie, fie!”

“It is very well to say ‘Fie, fie.’ It was not you who fell among the

thistles. What’s the man about now, I wonder?”

The Parson had walked toward a chestnut tree that stood on the village

green—he broke off a bough—returned to the donkey—whisked away the flies,

and then tenderly placed the broad leaves over the sore, as a protection

from the swarms. The donkey turned round its head, and looked at him with

mild wonder.

“I would bet a shilling,” said the Parson, softly, “that this is the first

act of kindness thou hast met with this many a day. And slight enough it

is, Heaven knows.”

With that the Parson put his hand into his pocket, and drew out an apple.

It was a fine large rose-cheeked apple: one of the last winter’s store,

from the celebrated tree in the parsonage garden, and he was taking it as

a present to a little boy in the village who had notably distinguished

himself in the Sunday school. “Nay, in common justice, Lenny Fairfield

should have the preference,” muttered the Parson. The ass pricked up one

of its ears, and advanced its head timidly. “But Lenny Fairfield would be

as much pleased with twopence: and what could twopence do to thee?” The

ass’s nose now touched the apple. “Take it in the name of Charity,” quoth

the Parson, “Justice is accustomed to be served last.” And the ass took

the apple. “How had you the heart?” said the Parson, pointing to the

Squire’s cane.

The ass stopped munching, and looked askant at the Squire.

“Pooh! eat on; he’ll not beat thee now!”

“No,” said the Squire apologetically. “But, after all, he is not an Ass of

the Parish; he is a vagrant, and he ought to be pounded. But the pound is

in as bad a state as the stocks, thanks to your new-fashioned doctrines.”

“New-fashioned!” cried the Parson almost indignantly, for he had a great

disdain of new fashions. “They are as old as Christianity; nay, as old as

Paradise, which you will observe is derived from a Greek, or rather a

Persian word, and means something more than ‘garden,’ corresponding

(pursued the Parson rather pedantically) with the Latin _vivarium_—viz.

grove or park full of innocent dumb creatures. Depend on it, donkeys were

allowed to eat thistles there.”

“Very possibly,” said the Squire drily. “But Hazeldean, though a very

pretty village, is not Paradise. The stocks shall be mended to-morrow—ay,

and the pound too—and the next donkey found trespassing shall go into it,

as sure as my name’s Hazeldean.”

“Then,” said the Parson gravely, “I can only hope that the next parish may

not follow your example; or that you and I may never be caught straying!”