Mr Stuart’s pamphlet has been extensively read by landed proprietors and

the better classes of our farmers. We wish it were universally so by

these parties; and we wish, too, it were read and inwardly digested by

the factors and agents to whom our large proprietors have committed the

conduct of their business, and the care of their properties, and the

welfare of those who cultivate them. It is impossible to read the

speeches of the most interesting meeting held here on the 10th January

last, and presided over by his Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, without

feeling that Mr Stuart’s pamphlet has literally proved “news from the

farm” to very many of the owners and occupiers of the soil—the very

parties who ought to know best the habits and discomforts of our

agricultural labourers. It is very remarkable, indeed, that the Duke of

Buccleuch seems accurately informed upon the subject; that he has

personally inspected the dwellings of the agricultural labourers on his

estate; and that he has personally issued instructions regarding the

improvement of their cottages. Considering the territorial extent of his

Grace’s estates, and the varied and momentous interests that claim and

receive his Grace’s attention, his conduct and example, as well as his

benevolent and patriotic words, will carry a severer reproof to those

landowners who shall hereafter continue indifferent to the comfort and

welfare of the labourers, than the most biting speech of the most

pungent pamphleteer. Why, it may be asked, has Mr Stuart been left to

make such a discovery? Why did the tenant-farmers, who are daily

witnessing with their own eyes the discomforts of the agricultural

labourers, who are most deeply interested in their physical and moral

condition, and to whom Providence has more immediately committed the

care of their interests—why did they not complain, and call for some

amelioration of an evil so discreditable? But the fact is, that such men

as Messrs Watson, Finnie, Cowie, and many others we might name, have

never ceased to avail themselves of every opportunity of directing

attention to the condition of our agricultural labourers, but they have

heretofore, for the most part, addressed themselves to unprepared and

reluctant audiences. Moreover, for many years our tenant-farmers have

been struggling with such difficulties of their own, as have left them

little time or inclination for devising expedients for improving the

condition of their labourers. And it is likewise to be remembered that

many of the farmers are themselves so little elevated above the

peasantry in point of education and habits and domestic tastes, that it

would be idle to expect that they should see any necessity for elevating

the condition of the agricultural labourers.

This class of tenants must consider the present movement as fantastic,

and absurd, and uncalled for, and they will prove, we fear, the greatest

obstructives in the way of its success. So that if the truth is to be

spoken, many proprietors would require first to improve the habits and

elevate the character of their tenantry, before they attempt to elevate

the social condition of their agricultural labourers. The nearer the

tenant approaches the labourer in point of education and social habits,

the more careless and indifferent is the former to the comforts of the

latter, and the less inclined to ameliorate his condition. We think it

by no means an impossible thing that there are not a few farmers

throughout Scotland who are looking upon the present movement in behalf

of our rural labourers not only as savouring of idle sentimentalism, but

who are contemplating it with a jealous eye, as an attempt of the

proprietors to place the condition of the servant upon the same platform

with that of the master. There is, indeed, a class of small farmers,

highly estimable and worthy, and quite fit, in respect of capital, for

their position, who cultivate their possessions by means of their own

families, aided by perhaps one or two servant-lads. In these cases the

servants live truly as members of the family, and are treated as such;

and this is the farm-service which, above all others, virtuous and

thoughtful parents desire for their children.

The tenant-farmers are, probably, likewise prepared to rebut any charge

of indifference brought against them, by stating that they have found so

great difficulty in getting proper house-accommodation for their own

families, and suitable and enlarged farm-buildings to enable them

satisfactorily to carry on the business of the farm, and to meet the

requirements of an improved husbandry, that the idea of asking a better

style of cottages for their labourers would have been Utopian. The

farmer, too, has but a temporary interest in the land, and but a

temporary connection with the agricultural labourers upon his farm; and

with more immediate wants and difficulties of his own to contend with,

to suppose that he should expostulate with a reluctant proprietor, and

set himself devotedly to improve and remodel the houses of his

labourers, is to expect from him an extent of philanthropic enthusiasm

quite uncommon, and, therefore, quite unreasonable. The landowner

occupies a very different position—but, however inexplicable it may

seem, he has not hitherto had his attention directed to the cottages of

the labouring poor upon his estate. This confession of previous

ignorance was ingenuously made by the speakers at the Edinburgh meeting,

and we believe that they did not misrepresent the information upon the

subject that had hitherto generally prevailed among the landed

proprietors of Scotland. Lord Kinnaird, at a meeting of the “Dundee

Model Lodging-House Association,” on 13th January, expressed himself as

follows: “Until he had read that pamphlet (Mr Stuart’s), he had had no

right idea of the bothies on his estate. Thinking such a matter was an

arrangement purely between the farmer and his labourers, he had not

visited them till lately; but having now done so, he felt they were a

reproach to him, and must be improved.” And yet Lord Kinnaird resides

for the most part upon his estate—he takes an anxious and most kindly

interest in the moral, educational, and physical wellbeing of the people

who live upon it,—and having such an acknowledgment from a nobleman so

benevolent and active, the irresistible inference is, that other

proprietors in his position are not only ignorant of the bothies, but of

the condition of the cottages upon their properties.

It appears from Mr Stuart, that the parochial clergy, the body to which

he belongs, have for many years had their attention anxiously directed

towards the case of the agricultural labourers. He tells us that the

synods of Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen, and Angus and Mearns have

instituted inquiries regarding their condition—these inquiries being

chiefly intended, as might have been expected, to ascertain the moral,

religious, and educational state of our labourers, although the effects

of the bothy system and of feeing-markets upon the social condition of

servants are likewise investigated. Through the courtesy of a clerical

correspondent, we have before us reports from twenty-seven parishes in

Morayshire, in answer to a series of questions circulated by the synod

of Moray in 1848, as well as a copy of the _Elgin Courant_, April 1848,

containing a very full discussion by that ecclesiastical court on the

moral and social condition of the agricultural labourers of that

province. The synod of Angus and Mearns instituted an investigation of

the same kind some fifteen years ago, and a most elaborate report, based

upon the information collected, was drawn up. Measures were suggested

for elevating the condition of the farm-servants; and in some counties

pastoral addresses were read from the pulpits of the Established Church

upon the subject. It appears, however, that this agitation of the

question by the Church met with no countenance or encouragement from the

laity. We know, indeed, that Sir John Stuart Forbes, and two or three

other proprietors, took _then_ an interest in the inquiry, and were

alive to its importance—but, generally speaking, the proprietors and

farmers seem to have been quite unprepared to take up the subject.

It is very curious, nevertheless, to observe that the very evils pointed

out by Mr Stuart in his pamphlet, and the very remedies suggested by

him, are all embraced and expounded in the reports of the ecclesiastical

courts now before us.[6] It is a remarkable instance, apparently, of the

well-known mental phenomenon, that the mind previously must have

undergone some preparation for the reception of the truth, before the

truth can suitably affect it. Mr Stuart has had the sagacity, or good

fortune, to fix upon the opportune moment for making his appeal, and to

find a benevolently disposed auditory. He has done what his brethren, in

synods assembled, could not do. He has effectually hit the nail upon the

head—and we hope he will reiterate the blow again and again, until he

sees the objects of his benevolent wishes in some good measure obtained.

It appears to us that on such a subject as the present every thing

approaching to exaggeration should be most anxiously avoided. There is a

danger, now that the attention and interest of the public have been so

awakened, that overdrawn pictures of the degraded condition of our

Scottish peasantry will be indulged in; and this is all the more likely,

as proving acceptable to the democratic classes, and as reflecting

disgrace on the character of landed proprietors. In point of fact, we

believe that it is unquestionable that our rural population, both in

respect of their sanitary and moral condition, occupy a position very

superior to that of the manufacturing classes of our towns. By the

census of 1841, for every two deaths in agricultural districts there

were more than three in our towns; and in towns exclusively

manufacturing, such as Leeds and Birmingham, there were seven deaths for

every two in agricultural localities. Glasgow is the only Scottish town

where the statistics of mortality are noted, and there ten would die out

of a population of three hundred, while out of the same number in

agricultural counties there would be only three deaths. In the matter of

moral statistics by the same census the commitments in manufacturing

districts, compared with agricultural, were as five to one. We believe

the statistics of drunkenness would report likewise in favour of the

superior sobriety of our rural population, so that our agricultural

labourers, it seems, are truly more healthy, more sober, more virtuous,

at least in the eye of the criminal law, than those of the labouring

classes in our towns. We believe that the agricultural labourers are

better fed and better clothed, and, in many aspects of the case, as well

housed as the labouring classes in our large towns and cities. In this

fashion, if he pleases, the landowner may evade all appeals to his

benevolence, and may scornfully reject all reproachful insinuations of

having neglected the condition of the labouring poor upon his estates.

He may well inquire how far he has contributed to raise the poor on his

estate to a higher social condition in respect of health and sobriety,

when contrasted with the poor of our towns; and if this has not been so

much the necessary result of their circumstances and manner of life,

that a very slender portion of the merit can be appropriated by him. The

opulent inhabitants of our cities are not bound by any especial tie of

social duty to the degraded and dissipated poor of the cities. They are

not their tenants, nor are they engaged in their employment. Though

living in close proximity with them, the rich are, for the most part,

profoundly ignorant of the condition of their poorer fellow-citizens,

who breathe the mephitic exhalations of unventilated lanes, and whose

homes are but dismal cellars, into which the meridian sun, struggling

through dense masses of hovering vapour, fails to transmit anything

stronger than a murky twilight.

If the country gentleman can persuade himself that he holds no nearer

relationship to the tenantry and labourers upon his estate, than the

wealthy citizen does to the industrious poor who live within the same

municipal bounds, but who otherwise are totally unconnected with them,

it would be unreasonable to expect from such a one those expressions of

regret which have fallen so gracefully from the lips of others, or that

he will find any difficulty in escaping all appeals addressed to him,

not only as he is not conscious of having overlooked any duty, but

because he is prepared to deny that he has any duty to discharge in the

matter. Or if the country gentleman can take up the very elevated

position which a certain school of economists have of late been

expounding and pressing upon his attention, then he will have reached a

region so pure, and so superterrestrial as to be infinitely raised above

all vulgar care about the comfort and welfare of those who till the

glebe and tend the herds of that “dim spot which men call earth.”

According to this high philosophy, the landowner is taught to look upon

his land as a mere article of commerce, and that the great question with

him ought to be to discover how, with the least possible outlay, he can

raise from it the greatest possible revenue. To examine into the

condition of the cottages upon the estate—to build new ones, and to

improve the old—to do this personally, or, as that may be impossible, to

order it to be done by some competent and responsible party—all this

seems out of his department as the owner of the land and the recipient

of the rent. If the farmer is content that his labourers should live in

miserable hovels, where their physical energies must be debilitated, and

where the decencies of their moral condition must suffer wrong, where

their fitness for their daily toil is being impaired by the discomforts

of their homes, and where, from the same cause, the period in the

ploughman’s life of complete capability for his work must infallibly be

abridged, what signifies all this to the landowner? His political

economy saves him from all compunction. If the thews and sinews of the

ploughman, by such treatment, become prematurely useless, it matters

not—the wheels and pinions can be replaced, and other thews and sinews

will be found to work the work. It is a devout hallucination upon the

part of Mr Stuart to fancy that he can persuade such a landowner as

this, that, on mere pecuniary grounds, it would prove a wise economy in

him to build new cottages and to remodel the old, and to improve and add

to the bothy accommodation. Mr Stuart’s argument on such a subject would

necessarily be largely leavened with moral considerations, which the

economics of the landlord did not embrace, and the mere money-profit

looms dubiously in the distance. Mr Stuart would have no chance with

such a stern philosopher as this, who could demonstrate by an

irrefragable arithmetic that he could do the thing cheaper! We are sorry

to think that any such party should be in the position of a landed

proprietor. ’Tis a pity such a man had not had his money invested in the

Three per Cents, or in a street of three-storeyed tenements suitable to

accommodate the middle classes of society, who would take care of

themselves, and, peradventure, of the laird likewise. We know no

situation in human life so enviable as that of a country gentleman. His

privileges are manifold, and his appropriate recreations and pleasures

exquisite. His peculiar duties are indeed very responsible, but they are

deeply interesting and delightful. Surely a country gentleman is knit by

dearer and more sacred ties to the people that live upon his estate, and

that cultivate his fields, than the rich man of the city to the poor

artisan, to whom he is united by the accident of his living in the

neighbouring street. Nay, we hope that no country gentleman would care

to be thought actuated by no warmer or kindlier feelings towards the

pendiclers and poor cottagers that dwell on his estate, than the potent

noblesse of the cotton-mills can reasonably be expected to be towards

the shadowy troops of sallow girls that, like so many animal automata,

ply their nimble fingers o’er the power-looms and spinning-jennies of

their tall-chimneyed temples. If the accursed commercial element is

henceforth to be the sole ruling motive in the management of landed

property, the country gentleman will speedily sink to the level of a

commercial gentleman. The charms of his position will die away—the

honours now so spontaneously rendered to him will be withheld—and the

ancestral influence of his house and name will become the poet’s dream.

We have contrasted the condition of the labouring poor in the country

with that of the labouring poor in the town, but there can be no just

comparison betwixt the position of a landed proprietor, and the duties

which it entails towards the agricultural labourers on his property, and

the position of a mill-spinner towards the people whom he employs; and

we should be sorry if any landowner should seek in this way to vindicate

his subsequent neglect of the duties which Providence has manifestly

laid upon him. If our landed proprietors are not imbued with some just

sense of the responsibilities of their station, and actuated by some

steadfast determination to practise self-denial in other matters, that

they may improve the condition of the industrious poor upon their

properties, we despair utterly of any permanent practical good resulting

from the present movement. If our farmers are, as a body, not prepared

at present heartily to enter upon the work of reformation, we have to

thank one class of politicians who have for years been industriously

indoctrinating the farmer with the dogma that his business, in its

highest phase, was just the manufacture of certain agricultural products

from the soil. The farmer long listened in wonder to the lecturer, not

knowing well what the high-sounding philosophy might mean. But he at

last embraced the doctrine, and he now, we fear, too often entertains

the feelings which the doctrine was so likely to engender. As a

manufacturer, the farmer cannot for his life see that he has any more

concernment than any other manufacturer with the condition, character,

and habits of his operatives. For a year he hires them, and they go, and

he sees them no more. The root of the evil Mr Stuart correctly traces up

to the altered feelings and conduct of proprietors and tenants towards

their dependants.

Mr Stuart, in speaking of our agricultural labourers, “as things were”

some sixty years ago, adverts to a period when the servants lived in

family with their masters—when the master sat patriarchally at the head

of his table, surrounded by his children and domestics, and when all

knelt at the same family altar to offer up the evening prayer. The

social characteristics of the people of that day were excellent; but

their creature comforts were few, and their agriculture wretched. It was

the era of run-rig, of outfield and infield—the former being scourged as

the common foe—while on the latter our agricultural sires practised high

farming. During the summer the men were half idle, and in the winter

they were wholly so, saving that occasionally in the forenoon that

venerable implement the flail, wielded by a lusty arm, might be heard

dropping its minute-guns on the barn-floor. The women wrought the work

in summer, and plied the wheel in winter. We are old enough to remember

the spinning-wheel, and are disposed to echo the sentiment of the poet—

“Grief, thou hast lost an ever-ready friend,

Now that the cottage spinning-wheel is mute;

And care a comforter that best could suit

Her froward mood, and softliest reprehend.”

Mr Stuart reverts to this bygone age in a strain of tenderness; but he

faithfully depicts its grievous physical disadvantages as they were

experienced by the poor. There is a dash of romance in Mr Stuart’s

genial nature, and he has interwoven his narrative with some quaint

old-world reminiscences; but his excellent sense conducts him always to

the sound conclusion. He does not idly sigh for that which has passed

away; and he sees that the habits of a former age, if they could be

recalled, would not suit the taste of the present generation, nor meet

the exigencies of the existing agriculture. In certain districts of

Aberdeenshire and elsewhere, the farm-servants may be said yet to live

in the family—that is, they get their food in the kitchen, and by the

kitchen-fire they sit in the winter evenings until they retire to their

beds, which are generally in the stable. But the master and his family

are meanwhile in the parlour. The master’s restraining presence is not

in the kitchen; and upon the testimony alike of farmers and of

clergymen, now lying upon our table, the results of the system are so

deplorable, that bothies are asked for and preferred as the least of two

evils.

In portraying the progress of agricultural improvement, Mr Stuart

discovers the origin of the bothy and bondager systems. The throwing two

or three farms into one, and the gradual decay of the cot-houses, and

the aversion of the proprietor to build new ones, from a mistaken

economy, originated both modes of accommodating farm-servants. But if

such were the causes of the evil, its cure is self-evident. We have only

to retrace our steps, and we will recover the position which we have

abandoned. It took, however, half a century to develop the evil, and not

in a day can we hope to see the remedy accomplished. In building more

cottages, then, you take the sure way of mitigating the evils of both

systems; and by proceeding in this work, if you do not ultimately

exterminate the evil, you will so circumscribe and diminish it that it

must become all but innocuous. The practice of enlarging farms has gone

far enough, but if the expense of their subdivision were not

intolerable, we would not in this item undo what we have done. There can

be no doubt that our large farmers have been the great improvers; not

only have they led the way in improving the cultivation of the soil and

the stock of the country, but they have been the parties who have

introduced to public notice the new manures, and the new and better

implements of husbandry, and to them we now look as indispensable and

powerful auxiliaries in elevating the social condition of the labourers.

On the large farm, all that is wanted is a proportionate increase of

cottages to accommodate the staff of agricultural servants, with a few

houses on the outskirts of the farm for jobbers and day-labourers, whose

assistance, with that of their families, may be got at a busy season on

the farm.

At all times, and in all places, and by all sorts of people, the bothy

is condemned. Mr Stuart condemns it, and laments the evils which it

originates, and the habits which it induces, and the immoralities which

it cherishes; but we are sorry to think that he writes so hopelessly

about the possibility of its extinction. We would have been better

pleased had he pronounced its doom, and had he proclaimed against it, in

unmistakable accents, a war of extermination, gradual but sure, and

inexorable. It merits nothing but hearty and unhesitating condemnation.

We are well acquainted with bothy economics, and we never knew but one

that was even decently conducted. Mr Stuart seems to think the evil

necessary and irremovable, and that the only thing left to the

philanthropist is to mitigate its horrors. But why so? The bothy system

is partial and local. There are large provinces of the kingdom where it

is totally unknown. We have the ocular demonstration, then, that it is

not indispensable. But Mr Stuart says, that in escaping Charybdis, you

sail the good ship Agriculture straight into the boiling quicksand of

Syrtis—that, the bothy abandoned, you irretrievably encounter the evils

of the bondager system. We are humbly of opinion, however, that our

excellent friend somewhat overstates the evils of this latter system.

There are inconveniences and disadvantages connected with it, but these

are not for a moment to be compared with the discomforts, and with the

temptations to nocturnal rambling and loose living, with which the bothy

system is so beset. The bondager system does not affect young ploughman

lads in the slightest degree; it is limited to young women, and to them

the system is the same as domestic service in the farmer’s house, when

field-work is associated with that service. But Mr Stuart seems to

confound the bondager with the cottage system, while in reality they

have no necessary connection. There are two bugbears in the way of

abolishing the bothy—the one the landlords, and the other the tenants.

The landlord is alarmed at the expense of building the necessary

cottages. This will be got over. The tenant is alarmed at the expense of

maintaining the ploughman in the cottage when built—a most remarkable

mistake. But so it is that, be-north the Forth, many farmers, from long

habit, and from ignorance of the cottage system as it exists in the

Border counties, have become so wedded to the bothy, that in

accomplishing its abolition we expect more resistance from them than

from landlords. The model bothy, in mere material accommodation, will

effect nothing unless it has separate apartments, furnished with fire

and light, and other necessary appliances; and if it be so, where will

be its superior economy to either landlord or tenant, when contrasted

with the expense of a separate cottage? Abrogate the bothy system

entirely, for otherwise moralists may lament in vain, and parents bewail

the ruined virtue of their children.

Considering apparently the system too firmly rooted to admit of

eradication, Mr Stuart strenuously inculcates the instant improvement of

the bothy accommodation. But if he succeeds, will he not have

stereotyped the bothy as a permanent part of the economy and

constitution of the farm; and what, then, has been achieved? The

physical discomforts of the bothy will have in a good measure

disappeared, but the place is not disinfected of the moral contagion

which the system communicates. Let half-a-dozen of ploughman lads be

associated in a bothy, and however tidy and snug and commodious the

apartments, yet when their age and circumstances are remembered—when it

is considered that they are without a head, to control, counsel, and

direct them, that each is his own master—we confess that to us it seems

chimerical to expect that any desirable measure of decency, or sobriety,

or order, will prevail within the walls of the bothy. It is in vain to

tell a well-disposed lad that he can escape the pollution of a wicked

associate in the bothy, by retiring to his own apartment. How can he sit

there on a winter evening (winter is the season when bothy wickedness

takes its swing), unaccommodated as it is either with fire or light? We

fear, therefore, that the “model bothy” even would not arrest or

extinguish the moral mischief that emanates from this system. It is

remarkable that the speakers at the Edinburgh meetings do not say that

they contemplate the improvement of the bothy system. Their resolution

to encourage the multiplication of suitable cottages for the labourers

on the farm, they saw, involved in due time the extinction of the bothy

system. Moreover, we fancy that neither the Duke of Buccleuch nor the

Marquis of Tweeddale has a single bothy upon their estates, unless one

for the journeymen gardeners in the vicinity of their residences. Once

erect a sufficiency of cottages, and the unmarried lads will find a

sister, or aunt, or some female relative to keep house for them. Having

such an object before them, they will be taught habits of economy, and

will save money, that they may be ready to furnish a cottage. Once in

it, they have a home and property, and will become attached to their

situation. The bothy turns ploughmen into _nomads_, and gives them

restless, undomestic, and migratory habits. Erect a sufficiency of

cottages, and the bothy will die a natural death. No proprietor or

tenant will erect or maintain a bothy for a solitary ploughman, who

happens to have no female friend who can cook his food and keep his

cottage. Infallibly he will find other accommodation. The boy, to whom

the bothy is a very school of corruption, ought to live in family with

the master, and it should be the master’s duty to watch over his morals,

and to aid in some manner in his education. If he is a parent, let him

say how he would like his own boy, when he leaves the paternal roof, to

be neglected, tempted, corrupted.

Mr Stuart quotes from Mr Laing’s book on Norway a description of the

Norwegian _borststue_ or bothy, which is commodious and comfortable, and

well supplied with all conveniences; and then he asks, “Now, I would

hold such to be a model bothy; and cannot the farming in Scotland afford

to give what it affords to give in Norway?” No doubt of it, provided you

demonstrate that the bothy is indispensable; but to that premise we

demur. Mr Laing communicates nothing to us of the moral effects of the

_borststue_, which would be modified by the social habits of the people,

and by the degree of kindly intercourse subsisting between master and

servant. But in fact the example of Norway, neither in the matter of

cottages nor bothies, is truly applicable to our country. In Norway the

cottage is a loghouse, and costs nothing but the nails and the

window-glass, while every Norwegian knows enough of loghouse-carpentry

to erect a cottage for himself. With regard to the _borststue_, there is

a necessity for it in Norway that does not exist here. The outdoor

farm-work, which meets with but partial interruptions in our climate, is

at an absolute standstill in Norway for six months of the year, from the

severity of a protracted winter. The result is, that the outdoor work

must be accomplished during a few weeks in spring, and of course a more

numerous staff of servants must be maintained than with us; for, from

the military and passport system prevailing in Norway, it is impossible

to summon in an additional supply of workers to suit the emergency. The

tenant-farmer is thus more dependent on the agricultural labourers; and

we believe that there prevails in Norway more of that friendly

interchange of sympathy and of kindness between master and servant than

now unhappily characterises our social condition, which, nevertheless,

sweetens all toil, and turns aside the poisoned arrow of temptation, and

plucks the sting from suffering, whether experienced in Scottish bothy

or Norwegian _borststue_. For ourselves, we have only one prescription

for the bothy system, and that is, raze it. The system is too pregnant

with all moral evil to be temporised with. We cannot consent to any

parley, to negotiate for delay, and to write protocols anent its

possible improvement. We are almost certain that the minister of Oathlaw

agrees with us, but that he has thought it prudent to soften his voice

when speaking of the bothy, in the fear that it would alarm his auditors

at the revolutionary extent of his demands. But now that he has caught

the ear of the noble and the good of the land, and awakened in generous

hearts so magnanimous a response, let the lute become a trumpet in his

hand, and let him blow a blast so loud and clear as shall scatter this

disgrace of Scottish agriculture to the winds of heaven.

Most earnestly do we press upon our readers that our Scottish peasantry,

and agricultural labourers, and common ploughmen, are highly deserving

of consideration and kindness, and of every attempt that can be made to

increase their comforts and to ameliorate their moral and social

condition. There is an incredible and most criminal ignorance not only

among the higher, but among the middle classes of society, regarding at

once the habits and hardships of this important class of the community.

The newspaper paragraphist, in his select vocabulary, describes the

ploughman as a clown, a clodpole, a lout. That smart draper, with the

exquisitely-tied cravat and his inimitably arranged hair, all redolent

of musk, smiles complacently when he sees John the hind rolling along

the pavement on his huge hobnailed boots, and considers him the very

impersonation of stolidity. John’s dress is appropriate, however, to his

calling, and to see the draper in pumps and silk stockings floundering

through a new-ploughed field, or picking his steps daintily through a

feeding-byre, where the musk must yield to the ammonia, would, we fancy,

be a phenomenon not less provocative of laughter. Nothing is so

ridiculous as the very prevalent idea that our Scottish agricultural

labourers are a stupid race. They are shrewd, sagacious, and intelligent

about _their own business_; and because they are so, they are

continually being drafted away to England and Ireland. The employments

of a common ploughman are various, and of a nature calculated to

cultivate his powers of observation and of thought. Mr Stephens, after

describing the extent of observation, of judgment, and of patience,

required in a good ploughman, adds—“To be so accomplished implies the

possession of talent of no mean order.”—_Book of the Farm_, vol. i. p.

163. Talent necessary for a ploughman! exclaims the incredulous and

amazed citizen, and fancies that the author must speak ironically. Nay;

he never wrote soberer truth in his lifetime, and in your ignorance you

wonder.

There is another reason why not only the comforts, but why the moral and

intellectual powers of the agricultural labourer should be cared for.

The common ploughman has committed to his trust property which, on a

very moderate computation, may be valued at £100. This property, of a

nature so likely to receive injury from carelessness and inattention, is

daily in his hands, and under his charge, and at his mercy. We need

scarcely add, too, how deeply he may in other respects injure his

employer, as, for instance, by the imperfect ploughing or careless

sowing of a field. To what common servant, in any sphere of life, is

property so valuable so exclusively intrusted? It is plain that a party

so confided in, as a ploughman must be, ought not to have his sense of

responsibility and of moral obligation blunted and impaired by barbarous

neglect. Hitherto our agricultural labourers have not occupied

themselves with discussing “the rights of labour and the duties of

capital.” But if landlords and tenants are resolved to consider the

whole management of land as a mere matter of commerce, we cannot see why

these operatives should not be led to philosophise as well as others.

The labourer may apply in all equity that principle to his own case

which the landlord and tenant are severally applying to theirs. The

severance between employer and employed has of late been developed to an

extent never before witnessed in any age, and it threatens, at this

moment, to throw a terrific chasm athwart the whole structure of

society. Not only among mill-masters and men, but among many other

classes very differently circumstanced, have we witnessed combination

and counter-combination, and their disastrous consequences. A slight

agrarian grumbling might possibly do good; and, from all that we can

learn, there is a sulky discontent slumbering in many an honest fellow’s

bosom, that could easily be fanned, by a skilful experimenter, into a

visible flame. It will be better, in every respect, to anticipate and

ward off the evil. Its causes and its cure have been well expounded by

Mr Stuart. But if our agricultural labourers are too patient sufferers

to complain, too sensible to imbibe the pestilent doctrines of Messrs

Newton and Cowel, and too wide apart to have it in their power to

combine, whether for good or for evil—and if, on these accounts, there

is no ground for alarm, is it wise, is it kind of you, to take advantage

of their peaceful dispositions, and of their powerlessness to unite in

proclaiming their wrongs, and in vindicating their rights? There is a

remedy within the reach of many of them, and of which they are silently

availing themselves. They can emigrate. They are doing so quietly,

determinedly. They are not absolutely _astricti glebæ_. The canker of

neglect is eating away the ties that bind them to their Fatherland.

Multitudes of the best of them have gone, and thousands would follow if

they had the means. Emigration, if it proceeds unchecked, will render

“strikes” unnecessary, even if we are inclined to consider such things

as visionary and impossible among an agricultural population.

They who have not read Mr Stuart’s appeal, may conclude, from the

professed object of that Association to which his appeal has conducted,

that he has inculcated nothing more than the improvement of existing

cottages, and the building of many new ones more commodious and

comfortable. His philanthropy, however, is more comprehensive. With an

excursive pen he reviews the whole moral, educational, and social

characteristics of the agricultural labourer’s condition, and sketches

the remedies for its various evils. When, therefore, Mr Stuart merely

proposed at the meeting of the 10th January, as the main feature of the

proposed Association, the establishment of an office in Edinburgh for

the reception of plans and models, and improved fittings and furnishings

for cottages, accessible to all inquirers, it seemed to us, retaining as

we did a delightful reminiscence of his pamphlet, a most impotent

conclusion. He appeared to have descended from the high moral arena into

the mortar-tub, and we were in terror lest some journalist, in a

slashing leader, should cover his scheme with inextinguishable

burlesque. It seemed likewise a mystery to us how there could be such

extreme difficulty in erecting a commodious and comfortable cottage, as

that an office in our metropolis should be required for the exhibition

of right models. It might have looked that, instead of a labourer’s

cottage, it was a medieval temple of most intricate composite that was

required, and for the conception of which the genius of Scottish

architecture was unequal without the aid of unusual patronage. We

feared, too, that the Association might be described by some malignant

pen as a company of Scottish proprietors resolving to raise the

marketable value of their estates by adding to the buildings thereupon.

Such silly caricatures might perhaps have been anticipated, and in fact

some small sneers were dropped by one or two of the Radical newspapers;

but the admirable tone of the speeches at the meeting, when the

Association was formed, seemed for the time to have stayed the old

hatred of the democratic press towards our landed proprietors. That our

readers may understand correctly the intentions and views of “The

Association for promoting improvement in the dwellings and domestic

condition of agricultural labourers in Scotland,” we recommend to their

perusal the report of the committee now published, and which we hope may

be widely circulated. The noblemen and country gentlemen composing the

Association have combined, _not_ for the purpose of raising their

rentals, but for the purpose of improving the domestic condition of the

agricultural labourers, by improving their dwellings. They have united

together for the purpose of directing attention to the subject, and of

encouraging and aiding others in removing an evil which they candidly

confess they have hitherto overlooked and neglected. The evil is of long

standing and of gigantic dimensions, and it has been felt that the

benevolent zeal and efforts of individuals required to be concentred

into the potent agency of one national association, to effect its

abatement and to work out its final extinction. In the matter of house

accommodation for our agricultural labourers, while on many estates a

very great deal has been done to improve it, yet very generally over the

kingdom it is a notorious fact that no improvement in their dwellings

has taken place for the last half-century. One article of furniture in

the cottages of our Scottish peasantry has excited the indignation of

all but those who repose their weary limbs on it—we refer to the

box-bed. The medical faculty time immemorial have denounced it as a very

“fever case.” Mr Stuart and his reverend brethren have lamented the

stifling insalubrity of the formidable structure. Fine ladies and

gentlemen have wondered at the stupid attachment of the Scottish peasant

to a dormitory so barbarous. The Duke of Buccleuch has solved the

riddle. He tells us, that when he ordered the box-bed to be taken out of

the cottage down came the roof! And thus that which has been the stay

and support of many a tottering tenement has been most ignorantly

condemned. Nor is this all. So very damp and cold are too many of the

cottages, that in order to exclude these evils in some measure by night,

the box-bed is indispensable during eight months of the year; and we

predict that unless comfortable cottages, rightly roofed, lathed, and

floored are erected, the box-bed will prove stronger than Mr Stuart, and

will retain its hold on the affections of the labourer, upholding at

once its own position and the roof of the dwelling that affects to

shelter it from the elements. That there is likewise a lack of cottages

in our agricultural districts is unquestionable. They have been allowed

to decay and disappear, from economical considerations entirely

delusive, to an extent extremely prejudicial. The diminished population

of our rural parishes proves the fact; and if any one will contrast the

census papers of 1841 with those of 1851, which exhibit the number of

the inhabited houses in the several counties of Scotland, they will find

a demonstration that may probably startle them. The Association takes it

for granted that an improved domestic condition will follow in the wake

of improved dwellings being given to the poor, and no thoughtful and

observing person will doubt this. It has been beautifully said, “Between

physical and moral delicacy a connection has been observed, which,

though founded by the imagination, is far from being imaginary. Howard

and others have remarked it. It is an antidote against sloth, and keeps

alive the idea of decent restraint and the habit of circumspection.

Moral purity and physical are spoken of in the same language; scarce can

you inculcate or command the one, but some share of approbation reflects

itself upon the other. In minds in which the least germ of Christianity

has been planted, this association can scarce fail of having taken root:

scarce a page of Scripture but recalls it.” It is of the very essence of

every good system to develop the virtues necessary to its success; and

to the humanising influence of a comfortable and commodious cottage, old

habits of filthiness and sloth would gradually yield, and would every

day become a lessening evil. Such cottages would secure at once the

services of the best class of workmen, and thus a mercenary

self-interest would find it to its advantage to follow where benevolence

had led the way. The influence of example upon the rich, and the

influence of superior house-accommodation upon the social condition of

the poor, must be gradual. This has been duly contemplated.

It is scarcely necessary, we fancy, to expound this part of the case. It

is now pretty generally understood. If, however, any of our readers have

not considered this subject, or continue to entertain some lingering

doubts regarding the effects of improved house-accommodation upon the

social, sanitary, and moral condition of the people, we most anxiously

recommend to their perusal Dr Southwood Smith’s “Results of Sanitary

Improvement, illustrated by the operation of the metropolitan societies

for improving the dwellings of the industrious classes, &c.” The

pamphlet costs twopence, and it may take a quarter of an hour to read

it; but never, we believe, were statistics ever given to the world so

surprising and so encouraging,—matter at once so suggestive of deep

thought, and so animating to the aspirations of practical philanthropy.

Lord Shaftesbury is at present circulating this most pregnant epitome of

the effects of sanitary improvement among the parochial boards of

Scotland. It is a most seasonable missive—vindicating the speculations

of Mr Stuart, and placing on the basis of demonstration the certainty of

the effect of the intended operations of the Duke of Buccleuch’s

association. The pecuniary element will be thought our main difficulty,

but we are quite satisfied that the tendency is to exaggerate it. Be it

remembered that we want no _cottages ornées_, and (with your leave, Mr

Stuart) no model bothies, but merely warm, dry, convenient houses for

honest ploughmen to live in. Let wealthy proprietors, if they please,

adorn their estates with picturesque villas, crowned with projecting

roofs and ornamental chimneys; but the Association over which the Duke

of Buccleuch presides does not desire a single sixpence to be spent

which will not contribute to the comfort of the cottage. The reformatory

change may proceed by degrees, and in no one year need the outlay be

serious; but on this part of the subject we refer our readers to the

views of Sir Ralph Anstruther, as contained in his speech on the 10th

January, and more fully explained in his letter (_Courant_, January

20th). While the Association professes, in the mean time (and we think

wisely and judiciously), to limit its attention to the improvement of

the dwellings of agricultural labourers, and thereby to raise their

domestic condition, it seems evident that the basis of its operations

may be easily extended, and that the benevolent object in view will

almost naturally widen that basis. That object is to ameliorate the

domestic condition of the labourer; but if other causes as well as that

of improved house-accommodation will contribute towards the wished-for

amelioration, these, it may be expected, in due time will come to be

embraced within the benevolent range of its fostering influence. To

prevent misapprehension and remove ignorance, we would respectfully

suggest the propriety of the Association instituting a statistical

inquiry into the physical, moral, and educational condition of the

agricultural labourers of the kingdom. Such statistics would form a

valuable supplement to the agricultural statistics collected under the

instruction of Mr Hall Maxwell. Information seems necessary to enable

the Association rightly to exercise its influence, even in improving the

dwellings of the poor. In some parts of the west of Scotland a sort of

mud cottage is raised at an expense of £3! and a fit model for one

county may be utterly unfit for another. All requisite information we

believe could be obtained, by addressing a schedule of inquiry to the

parochial clergy, who are manifestly ready to lend their aid. In any

event, our landed proprietors cannot well afford to have more “news from

the farm” thrust upon them by the spontaneous exertions of volunteer

philanthropists. The public, indeed, seem to have been infinitely

surprised that our landed proprietors should have been so ignorant of

the condition of the dwellings and of the circumstances of the people

upon their estates; and the inference is, that there must have been

something grievously wrong in the management of their affairs. No man,

of course, can expect that the proprietor of a large landed estate

should know minutely the condition of every cottage on it, and the

discomforts of its poor inhabitant. But the ignorance confessed goes

greatly beyond this. It was surely the more immediate duty of the

tenant-farmer to have protected his dependants, and to have represented

their disadvantages to the proprietor. And what has the factor been

doing in the mean time? General Lindsay, at the meeting of the 10th

January, in a speech overflowing with admirable feeling, said, that “the

factor was afraid of increasing his expenditure.” Quite right; but why

was he not afraid, too, of misrepresenting the kindly feelings of his

constituent towards the industrious poor upon his estate—of concealing

from him knowledge which, if he wished to do his duty, it was

indispensable for him to possess—of alienating from him and his house

the love and veneration of _his people_—of rendering his privileges

odious now, and of imperilling his position on any coming convulsion of

the commonwealth? We have not only now the evil of non-resident

proprietors, but, in many cases, the evil of non-resident factors. The

door of communication betwixt landlord and tenant is thus effectually

shut up; and the poor cottager, who was wont to have access even to “his

honour,” finds things so altered that an audience with the factor is

become impossible. The accountant is as ignorant as his constituent “of

the dwellings and domestic condition of the agricultural labourers,” and

thus there is a complete abnegation of all the peculiar duties and

responsibilities which Providence has manifestly laid on the owners of

land. It is impossible to deny, on the other hand, that very many of the

tenant-farmers, imitating the manners of their betters, have become

sadly neglectful of the duties which they owe their dependants. To give

as little and get as much as he can, is now, in too many cases, the

short and simple rubric of that code which guides the landlord in his

contract with the tenant. The tenant extends the principle, and looks

upon the labour of his ploughman as a mere purchaseable article, that

supplements the deficiency of machinery, and is necessary to guide the

muscular energies of the horse. With the ploughman, however, the sale of

his labour is the sale of himself—the devotion of his sentient nature,

with feelings, affections, sympathies, as lively as those of his master,

and with a pride and self-esteem as sensitive to unkindness and wrong.

It was in every respect seemly that the present movement should

originate with the proprietors, for the house-accommodation must plainly

be given by them; but now that they have intimated, in so kind words,

their good wishes and benevolent intentions, we hope the farmers will

consider whether expressions of “repentance” for the past are not due

from them as well as from others, and whether works “meet for

repentance” should not instantly be undertaken by them. Because the

landlord has made his “confession,” it is conceivable that the tenant

may now fancy that nothing remains but that he should make a clamorous

onset on the laird for more cottages. We hope he will not be

unreasonable, but will perceive that he must put his own shoulder to the

work, and be prepared to make some sacrifices, and to practice some

self-denial. We fear that some of the tenantry require to be instructed,

stimulated, and watched in discharging that part of the duty which falls

to them in promoting the desired reformation. We are quite of the

opinion of the Duke of Buccleuch, that more cottages should not be let

with the farm than the number necessary to accommodate the servants

requisite for the work of the farm. The other cottagers should rent

their holdings immediately from the landlord.

We know no class of workmen who have so few holidays, and so few

opportunities for rational recreation, as our ploughmen. They may have

the right to go to some annual feeing-market, and out of this solitary

feast the poor fellows try naturally to extract as much pleasure as they

can, turning the day into a carnival of many-coloured evil. All other

classes of workpeople have their occasional holiday—their trip by an

excursion-train—the Saturday afternoon, in a slack season, to see

friends and kindred; but no such pleasures fall to the ploughman’s lot.

In the winter, indeed, he is on “short time,” but what is done to make

his evening hours pleasant, profitable, instructive? In the agricultural

world we shall certainly have no “lock-out,” and perhaps no “strike,”

but it may be wise, at least, to anticipate possible contingencies by

acts of kindness and of well-considered indulgence. The yawning gulf

betwixt the high and the low of the land is the most ominous evil of

these times, and should be bridged over by sympathetic communication

whilst it can. The wintry neglect of his superiors is worse to be borne

by the labourer than the cold of his miserable cottage. Let us listen to

Mr Stuart on an evil which seems to have entered like iron into his

kindly soul. Addressing landlords, he says—

“Let their visits and their smile be frequently seen in the house of

the poorest cottar, although he be but a hired labourer; for not fifty

years ago, that same man would have been a crofter, or a small farmer,

waiting on ‘his honour,’ and welcomed by ‘his honour,’ with his rent

or his bondage. That he is not so now, is owing more to ‘his honour’s’

change of customs for his own profit, than to the cottar’s own fault,

or to the profit of the cottar’s own social position and feelings. Let

there be some upmaking, then, for this change, so far as such things

can be made up for, not in the shape of money, but in that which his

forefathers valued much more than money, and which he will value as

highly again, if ‘his honour’ will only but give him time and means

whereby he may recover his self-esteem and his proper training; and

one of the most powerful and most valued of all these means would, in

a little time, be ‘his honour’s’ friendly visits to his humble

dwelling.”

Now that the Scottish people know that the Duke of Buccleuch finds time

to inquire personally into the condition of the peasantry on his

estates, no proprietor, however ancient his lineage and proud his name,

will be excused who fails to go and do likewise, or who fails at least

to acquaint himself with the condition of the labourers who cultivate

his fields. Personal inquiry we would recommend, although it should not

lead to the rendering of one cottage more comfortable than it was

before. We recommend it for the proprietor’s own behoof. “The most

certain softeners of a man’s moral skin, and sweeteners of his blood,

are, I am sure, domestic intercourse in a happy marriage, and

_intercourse with the poor_,” writes Arnold; and, as if he had felt the

virtue flowing out of such intercourse, he repeats the thought thus in

another place, “Prayer, and kindly intercourse with the poor, are the

two great safeguards of spiritual life.” One-half the world does not

know how the other half lives, and one-half of the bitternesses of human

life arises from our not understanding one another. Little do the great

ones of the earth know how much they lose by avoiding kindly

acquaintance with poor and humble neighbours.

We know of no public meeting that has taken place in our time, where the

speeches delivered possessed a higher moral value than those that fell

from the speakers at the meeting of the 10th January last. The

turbulent, disrupted, and gloomy condition of the manufacturing classes,

rendered them admirably seasonable. They have shed a benignant influence

over the agricultural community. They have awakened hopes that were

growing faint, and fine old Scottish feelings that were dying out, and

have proved a healing anodyne to a wound that was rankling in many a

bosom. The opening speech of the noble chairman we have read more than

once, and ever with renewed delight. Many an honest labourer has read it

too, with glistening eye and joyful heart, and its perusal has prepared

him for fighting more heroically the battle of his life. Some of the

sentiments of the noble Duke we cannot withhold from our columns:—

“He thought it would not be disputed that, generally speaking,

throughout Scotland, the habitations of these labourers were very

defective, especially in those accommodations for comfort and

delicacy. In former days the farm-servant was accommodated in the

farmer’s house, where he took his meals, and so was under the moral

control of his employers. But now the farm-labourer was put into a

bothy, generally a most wretched place to live in, and often the worst

building on the farm. He could not blink the question involved in the

subject. They had not come there to bandy compliments to one another,

but to speak the truth. It might be said to him and those who came

there to find fault with the present system: You ought to come with

clean hands, and be able to say that all the bothies on your estate

were such as they ought to be. He confessed with shame that he could

show as bad specimens on his property as could be found in Scotland.

He would not conceal it that the condition of many of the cottages on

his estate was as bad as could be. How this state of things had arisen

it was not difficult to see.... He examined a number of their cottages

himself, and found many of them quite in a falling-down state. In one

of them, when he took a box-bed out of it, down came the roof. Such

things would be found not so very uncommon if these cottages were

looked into. Then what an evil effect such houses had upon the moral

feelings of those who occupied them! Many of the persons who lived in

them were highly educated, and it might well be conceived that a

person of refinement living in a place fit for a pig would be

discontented, as well as unhappy. How could they expect, when they saw

men, women, and children all living and sleeping in one apartment,

that they could be otherwise than demoralised? Could they wonder that

all their delicacy of feeling was destroyed? Mothers had said to him,

how could they bring up their daughters with respectability when there

was not that separation of rooms which there ought to be? Then there

was a great disinclination on the part of the tenantry to the landlord

taking these cottages into his hand. They said they must have every

single thing under their own control. It was all very well for them to

say that as regarded the lodgment of their domestic and special

farm-servants, but it did not follow that it was absolutely necessary

that all the cottages of the agricultural labourers should belong to

the farmer. He did not think that it was right that the farm-labourer

should be bound down to work for one man only. But the person who

really benefited by the landlord taking the cottage into his own hands

was the farm-labourer himself; and he had seen the moral effect

produced by providing better houses for this class of labourers, in a

quarter where thieving and poaching had formerly been the disgrace of

the people; but since their houses were improved, there was a great

and beneficial reformation in these respects. It was really gratifying

to see the change which took place in the feelings of these people

towards their landlord, when they knew he was taking an interest in

their welfare. Here, when he passed, they showed they regarded him as

their friend, and were not filled with unpleasant suspicions about

him.”

The gems in the ducal coronet never emitted a tenderer or more

fascinating ray than when its noble owner entered the lowly cottage on

his mission of kindness, and since the preceding sentiments were spoken,

we believe that from many a Scottish heart the fervent prayer has been

sent to heaven’s gate, that “the good Buccleuch” may long be spared to

his country.

ALEXANDER SMITH’S POEMS.[7]

Some time ago a volume of poems appeared, over which there arose a great

roar of critical battle, like the conflict over the dead Valerius, when

“Titus pulled him by the foot, and Aulus by the head.” Many hailed the

author as a true poet, and prophesied his coming greatness; others

fastened on obvious defects, and moused the book like Snug the joiner

tearing Thisbe’s mantle in his character of lion. Now that the hubbub

has subsided, our still small voice may be heard.

The poet in question has at once deprecated and defied criticism in a

sonnet, (p. 232).

“There have been vast displays of critic wit

O’er those who vainly flutter feeble wings,

Nor rise an inch ’bove ground,—weak poetlings!

And on them to the death men’s brows are knit.

Ye men! ye critics! seems’t so very fit

They on a storm of Laughter should be blown

O’er the world’s edge to Limbo? Be it known,

Ye men! ye critics! that beneath the sun

The chiefest woe is this,—when all alone,

And strong as life, a soul’s great currents run

Poesy-ward, like rivers to the sea,

But never reach’t. Critic, let that soul moan

In its own hell, without a kick from thee.

Kind Death, kiss gently, ease this weary one!”

Alexander Smith is partly right and partly wrong. It is true that,

throned in his judicial chair, the critic, more intent on displaying his

own powers than on doing justice to his subject, is apt to drop the mild

and equal scales, and brandish the trenchant glittering sword. He ought

to say in his heart, Peradventure there shall be found ten fine lines in

this book—I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.

But, on the other hand, there is a class to which forbearance would be

misapplied and criminal. It would too much resemble our prison

discipline, where Mr William Sykes, after a long course of outrages on

humanity, is shut up in a palace, treated like a prodigal son, and

presently converted to Christianity. An absurd monomaniac, who, like

Joanna Southcote, mistaking a dropsical disorder for the divine

afflatus, and demanding worship on no better grounds than the greatness

of his own blown conceit, may, by mere force of impudent pretension,

induce a host of ignorant followers to have faith in him, ought to be

exposed and ridiculed. Not savagely, perhaps, for the first offence; the

pantaloons should be loosed with a paternal hand, and the scourge mildly

applied. If he still persists in misdoing, it should be laid on till the

blood comes.

But Alexander Smith is far from coming under the latter denomination. A

writer, especially a young writer, should be judged by his best; and

there is enough excellence in the volume to cover many more sins than it

contains, though they are numerous. And while it is a mistake to suppose

that a fine poetic soul, however sensitive, will “let itself be snuffed

out by an article,” yet there have been instances where undue severity

has defrauded a writer of his just fame for many a long year; and though

the critic, in the end, has been compelled to render up the mesne

profits of applause, yet that is small consolation for the sense of

wrong, and the deprivation of merited influence and reputation.

While foreign writers sketch us as the most matter-of-fact and

pudding-eating of peoples—while we pique ourselves on sturdy John

Bullism, and cheerfully accept the portrait of an absurd old gentleman

in a black coat, and a broad-brimmed hat and gaiters, with his hands in

his well-filled breeches pockets, as a just impersonation of the genius

of the nation, it is an obvious fact that a poet never had such a

certainty of being appreciated in England as now. Fit audience is no

longer few. Let him sound as high a note as he can for the life of him,

he will yet find echoes enough to constitute fame. There are homes in

England almost as common as hothouses, where fine criticism is nightly

conversation—where appreciators, as true as any who review in

newspapers, hail a good and great writer as a personal friend. Here may

be found all the elements necessary for the recognition of merit and the

detection of imposture. Sturdy good sense refuses to believe in gaudy

pretension; keen logic exposes emptiness; enthusiastic youth glows at

the high thought, the splendid image; and the soft feminine nature

responds, with ready tears and unsuppressed sighings, to all legitimate

appeals to the heart.

With such tribunals more plentiful than county courts, a man is no

longer justified in decrying fame, or appealing for justice to

posterity. It must be an untoward accident, indeed, that cheats an

author of his due, when so many are eager to exchange praise for his

fine gold. The demand for excellence in authorship exceeds the supply;

and there are plenty of keen readers who, having traversed the realms of

English poesy, yet thirst for fresh fields and pastures new. Therefore,

if an ardent spirit finds the world deaf to his utterances, let him

search uncomplainingly for the fault in his own mind, and never rashly

conclude that for his fondly believed-in powers of thought and

expression there is, as yet, no sympathetic public. Especially in poetry

is the appetite of the time unsatisfied; mediocrity, which should be

inadmissible, is indulgently received, and the poets of established

reputation are on every shelf. Editions of Shakespeare appear in

perplexing numbers, and the rusty armour in which a champion for his

text appears, is contended for as if it were the heaven-forged panoply

of Achilles.

Mr Smith leaves his feelings on the subject of fame open to doubt. One

might almost fancy him a poet who, having desired fame too ardently in

his hot youth, had discovered its emptiness in riper age. A sonnet is

devoted to the depreciation of fame; whereas Walter, in the Life-drama,

is more than enthusiastic to achieve it. We have no doubt the ardent

wishes which Mr Smith expresses through his hero are genuine, and that

the philosophy of the sonnet is a philosophy he only fancies he has

acquired. Combativeness may inspire the soldier to achievement, rivalry

the statesman; both may be, in some measure, indifferent to other fame

than the applause of their contemporaries. But it is in vain for the

poet to express indifference to the opinion of the world and of

posterity. Why has he written, except that thoughts bearing his impress

may sound in the ears of the future, and that the echoes they arouse may

convey to him, in his silent resting-place, tidings of the cheerful day,

assuring him of a tenure in the earth he loved, and a lasting position

among the race who were his brothers? What would not man do to secure

remembrance after death? For this Erostratus burnt Diana’s temple; for

this the Pyramids were built, and built in vain; for this kings have

destroyed nations; for this the care-worn money-getter gives his life to

the founding of a wealthy name; and if a man may gain it more

effectually by the simple publishing of thoughts, whose conception was

to him a pleasure, let him be thankful that what all so ardently desire

was granted to him on such easy terms, and that he may continue to be a

real presence on this earth, when most of his contemporaries are as

though they had never been.

Taking it for granted, then, that when a young poet publishes a work

wherein the hero expresses an ardent desire for fame, the poet is

himself speaking through the character, it will be interesting to see

how he proposes to achieve it. Mr Smith tells us, through his hero, that

his plan for immortalising himself is “to set this age to music.” That,

he says, is the great work before the poet now.

To set this age to music!—’tis a phrase we have heard before of late

years. Never was an age so intent upon self-glorification as this. Like

the American nation, it spends half its time looking in the glass; and,

like it, always with the same loudly-expressed approbation of what the

mirror reveals. It has long been its habit to talk its own praises, and

now they must be sung. When polkas were first introduced, many familiar

sounds were parodied, to give character to tunes of the new measure.

Among these was the Railway-polka, in which the noise of the wheels and

the clatter of machinery were admirably imitated; while a startling

reality was given to the whole, by the occasional hoarse scream of the

engine. Now, we fear that the effort of a poet to set the age to music

would result in something resembling the railway polka—something more

creditable as a work of ingenuity than of art, and embodying more

appeals to the sense than to the heart or the imagination. To him who

stands apart from the rush and roar, the many voices of the age convey a

mingled sound that would scarcely seem musical even to the dreaming ear

of a poet.

We see the spirit of the middle ages—the spirit of religious intolerance

and superstitious faith—of deepest earnestness, and of bigotry springing

out of that earnestness—reflected in Dante’s page. Spenser shows us the

days of the plume and the spear, when the beams of chivalry yet gilded

the earth, when the motto of noble youth was—God and my lady. Another

phase of the same era—the era of romantic discovery and adventure, when

there were yet fairies on the green, and enchanted isles in the

ocean—reappears in the works of Shakespeare. Pope has fixed for ever the

time of courtliness, of external polish and artificial graces—the time

when woman was no more divine—when Una had degenerated into Chloe—when

love had given place to intrigue, devotion to foppery, faith to

reasoning; yet a pleasant and graceful time. And it is no wonder that

the poet, now, feeling that he too possesses “the vision and the faculty

divine,” should long to leave his name, not drifting over space, but

anchored firmly on the times he lived in.

But none of these old poets went to work with the deliberate intention

of setting his age to music. Where that, so far as we can see the

meaning of the phrase, has been done, it is because the poet lived so

much among the characteristic men and scenes of his age, that his mind,

more impressionable and more true in its impressions than others, was

imbued with its spirit, and moulded to its forms; so that, whatever his

mind transmitted was coloured by those hues, and swayed by those

outlines. The poet did not hunt about for the characteristics of his

age, and then deliberately embody them: he chose a congenial theme when

it offered itself, and it, unconsciously to him, became a picture of a

phase of the time. When our age, too, is set to music, if ever, it will

be in this way.

If ever—For ages of the world, as worthy of note perchance as this, and

more rich in materials for poetry, have passed away without being set to

music. Every great change of society, and of mankind’s opinions, does

not necessarily call for a poet to sing it. It may be more suitably

reproduced through some other medium than verse—in newspapers, for

instance, or in advertising vans. Of course, no man in his senses would

say a word against this age of ours; he could expect nothing less than

to be immediately bonneted, like an injudicious elector who has hissed

the popular candidate; yet we would have liked Alexander Smith to

indicate the direction in which he intends to seek his materials. Does

he see anything heroic in an ardent desire to secure ease and comfort at

the cost of many old and once respectable superstitions, such as honour

and duty? Can he throw over the cotton trade “the light that never was

on sea or shore?” Or, is popular oratory distinguished by “thoughts that

breathe and words that burn?” Will the railway station and the electric

telegraph figure picturesquely in the poet’s dream? Yet, when the age is

set to music, these chords will be not the most subdued in the

composition. Mr Macaulay said about as much as could be said for the

spirit of the age, when he drew a contrast in popular prose between the

present and the past. Had he tried the subject in poetry, he would have

found the task much less congenial than when he sung so manfully “how

well Horatius kept the bridge, in the brave days of old.”

Alexander Smith has one characteristic in common with Tennyson, the

author of _Festus_, and some other poets of the time. All seem to have

great power in the regions of the dreary. Their gaiety is spasmodic;

when they smile, ’tis like Patience on a monument, as if Grief were

sitting opposite. If this is their way of setting the age to music,

’tis, if most musical, yet most melancholy. Tennyson, who possesses the

power of conveying the sentiment of dreariness beyond most poets that

ever lived, generally selects some suitable subject for the exercise of

it, such as _Mariana in the Moated Grange_; but Mr Smith’s hero, and

Festus, are miserable from choice, and revel in their unaccountable woe,

like the character in Peacock’s novel, whose notion of making himself

agreeable consists in saying, “Let us all be unhappy together.” Not

thus, O Alexander! sounds the keynote of the genial soul of a great

poet.

Our author’s notion of what constitutes a crushing affliction is

altogether peculiar. A particular friend of his hero, after becoming

quite blasphemous because he wanted “to let loose some music on the

world,” and couldn’t (p. 137), commits suicide on a mountain, though

whether by rope, razor, or prussic acid, we are not informed. However,

being deranged, he no doubt received Christian burial. And Mr Smith,

speaking for himself in the sonnet already quoted, says that—

“Beneath the sun

The chiefest woe is this—When all alone,

And strong as life, a soul’s great currents run

Poesy-ward, like rivers to the sea,

But never reach it.”

The chiefest woe!—the chiefest, Alexander! Neither Job nor Jeremiah have

enrolled it among human afflictions. Is there no starvation, nor pain,

nor death in the world? Is the income-tax repealed? We appeal from

Alexander in travail of a sonnet, with small hope of safe delivery, to

Alexander in the toothache, and we are confident he will change his

opinion. Let him look at Hogarth’s “Distressed Poet,” and see what it is

that moves his sympathy there. Not the perplexity of the poor poet

himself—that raises only an irreverent smile—but the poor good pretty

wife raising her household eyes meekly and wonderingly to the loud

milkwoman, their inexorable creditor—the piece of meat that was to form

their scanty dinner, abstracted by the felonious starveling of a

cur,—these touch on deeper woes than the head-scratching distress of the

unproductive poet.

To return to Mr Smith’s idea of setting the age to music. The first

requisite clearly is, that the musician shall be pre-eminently a man of

the age. It is at once evident that oldfashioned people, with any

lingering remnants of the heroic or dark ages about their ideas, would

be quite out of place here. None but liberals and progressionists need

apply. These are so plentiful that there will be no difficulty in

finding a great number who embody the most prominent characteristics of

the time. Having got the man of the age, a tremendous difficulty occurs.

We are very much afraid there will not only be nothing poetical in the

cast of his ideas, but that he will be the embodiment of everything that

is prosaic. Call to mind, O Alexander! the qualities essential to a

poet—at the same time, picture to yourself a Man of the Age—and then

fancy what kind of music you will extract from him. Set the age to

music, quotha! Set the Stocks to music.

Having thus signally failed to point out how the thing is to be done, we

will tell Alexander how it will not be done. Not by uttering unmeaning

complaints against Fate and Heaven, and other names of similar purport

which we will not set down here, like a dog baying the moon. Not by

uttering profane rant, which, as it would not have been justified by the

mad despair of a Lear or an Othello, is horribly nonsensical in the

mouth of a young gentleman who ought to have taken a blue pill because

his liver was out of order. Not by pouring forth floods of images and

conceits which afford no perception of the idea their author would

convey. Not by making the moon and the sea appear in such a variety of

ridiculous characters that we shall never again stroll by moonlight on

the shore without seeing something comical in the aspect of the deep and

the heavenly bodies. Not by——But we have just lighted on a passage which

proves that Mr Smith knows what is right as well as anybody can tell

him:—

“Yet one word more—

Strive for the poet’s crown, but ne’er forget

How poor are fancy’s blooms to thoughtful fruits.”

And again—

“Poet he was not in the larger sense—

He could write pearls, but he could never write

A poem round and perfect as a star.”

That is the point. Not to dismiss images unprotected on the world, like

Mr Winkle’s shots—which, we are informed, were “unfortunate foundlings

cast loose upon society, and billeted nowhere”—but to mature a worthy

leading idea, waiting, watching, fostering it till it is full-grown and

symmetrical in its growth; and from which the lesser ideas and images

shall spring as naturally, necessarily, and with as excellent effect of

adornment, as leaves from the tree.

Whether Alexander can do this, yet remains to be proved. Some of the

requisites he possesses in a high degree. Force, picturesqueness of

conception, and musical expression, all of which he has displayed, will

do great things when giving utterance to a theme well chosen and well

designed; but at present they only tell us, like a harp swept by the

wind, of the melodies slumbering in the chords. Such is the Æolian

character of the Life-drama—fitful, wild, melancholy, often suggestive

of something exquisitely sweet and graceful, but faint, fugitive, and

incoherent. When our poet sounds a strain worthy of the instrument, our

pæans shall accompany and swell the chorus of applause.

The sonnets, as conveying tangible ideas, and such as excite interest

and sympathy, have greatly exalted our opinion of the poet’s powers.

They have not been much quoted as yet by any of his discerning admirers,

perhaps because there is little or nothing in them but what a plain man

may understand, and they contain few allusions to the ocean or any of

the planets. But here is one showing a fine picture—a picture that

appeals to the imagination and the heart. It is at once manly and

pathetic, representing a friendless, but independent and aspiring

genius:—

“Joy, like a stream, flows through the Christmas streets,

But I am sitting in my silent room—

Sitting all silent in congenial gloom.

To-night, while half the world the other greets

With smiles, and grasping hands, and drinks, and meats,

I sit and muse on my poetic doom.

Like the dim scent within a budded rose,

A joy is folded in my heart; and when

I think on poets nurtured ’mong the throes,

And by the lowly hearths of common men—

Think of their works, some song, some swelling ode

With gorgeous music glowing to a close,

Deep-muffled as the dead-march of a god—

My heart is burning to be one of those.”

As Mercutio says, “Is not this better, now, than groaning? Now art thou

sensible—now art thou Romeo.” We hope he will be “one of those,” and

think he may. Only he must believe that, however fine and rare the

poetic faculties he has evinced, they cannot produce anything for

posterity of themselves, but must build on a foundation of thought and

art.

We are afraid, though we have not descended to verbal criticism, but

have only indicated essential faults, that Alexander will think we have

treated his book in an irreverent spirit; but, nevertheless, it is a

truly paternal one. Even in such mood did we deal, of late, with our own

beloved first-born, heir of his mother’s charms and his father’s

virtues—a fine, clever fellow, in whom his parents take immense pride,

though we judiciously conceal it for fear of increasing the conceit

which is already somewhat conspicuous in his bearing. We rather think he

had been led astray by the example of that young scoundrel, Jones, who

threatened to hang himself if his mother didn’t give him five-and-twenty

shillings to pay his score at the pastry-cook’s, and so terrified the

poor lady into compliance. However that may be, our offspring, George,

being denied, of late, some unreasonable requests, straightway went into

sulky heroics—spoke of himself as an outcast—stalked about with a gloomy

air in dark corners of the shrubbery with his arms folded—smiled about

twice a-day, in a withering and savage manner, though his natural

disposition is cheerful and inclined to fun—and begged to decline to

hold any further intercourse with his relatives. He kept up the brooding

and injured character with great consistency (except that he always came

regularly to meals, and eat them with his customary appetite, which is a

very fine and healthy one), and was encouraged in it by his grandmother,

who, between ourselves, reader, is a rather silly old woman, much given

in her youth to maudlin sentimentalism, and Werterism, and bad forms of

Byronism. She would take him aside, pat his head, kiss his cheek, and

call him her poor dear boy, and slip money into his pocket, which he

neither thanked her for, nor offered to refuse; and he became more

firmly persuaded than ever, that he was one of the most ill-used young

heroes that ever existed. This we were sorry to see—like Mrs Quickly, we

cannot abide swaggerers—and we bethought ourselves of a remedy. Some

parents would have got in a rage and thrashed him—but he is a plucky

young fellow, and this would only have caused him to consider himself a

martyr; others would have mildly reasoned with him—but this would have

given his fault too important and serious an air, so we treated him to a

little irony and ridicule—caustic, not contemptuous, and more comical

than spiteful. Just before beginning this course of treatment, we

happened to overhear him making love, in the library, to Charlotte Jones

(sister of the before-mentioned admirer of confectionary), a great, fat,

lymphatic girl, who was spending a few days with his sisters, and who

has no more sentiment or passion in her than so much calipee. However,

he seemed to have quite enough for both, and poured forth his romantic

devotion with a fervid fluency which I suspect must be the result of

practice—for the young scamp is precocious, and conceived his first

passion, at the age of nine, for a fine young woman of four-and-twenty.

Charlotte, working away the while at a great cabbage-rose, not unlike

herself, which she is embroidering in worsted, listened to his raptures

with a lethargic calmness contrasting strongly with the impassioned air

of the youth, who was no doubt ready, like Walter, Mr Smith’s hero, for

the consideration of a kiss (if the placid object of his affections

would have consented to such an impropriety), to “take Death at a flying

leap”—which is undoubtedly the most astonishing instance of agility on

record since the cow jumped over the moon to the tune of “Hi, diddle,

diddle.” Our entrance, just as he had got on his knees, and was going to

take her hand, somewhat disconcerted him; and we turned the incident to

such advantage, that our very first jest at him in the presence of the

family caused him (the boy has a fine sense of humour) to retire

precipitately from the room, for fear he should compromise his dignity

by exploding in laughter. He strove to preserve his gloomy demeanour for

a day or two; but finding it of no effect to maintain a stern scowl on

his forehead, while his mouth expanded in an unwilling grin, he gave up

the attempt; and now greets any allusion to his former tragedy airs with

as hearty a laugh as anybody.

Our impression is very strong that Mr Smith is not himself satisfied

with his work, and that the undiscriminating applause he has met with in

some quarters will not deceive him. He must know that the ornaments of

the Life-drama are out of all proportion to the framework, and that the

latter is too loosely put together to float far down the crowded stream

of time. He has a strong leaning to mysticism, a common vice of the

times, and should therefore exclude carefully all ideas which he cannot

render clear to himself, and all expressions which fail to convey his

meaning clearly to others. He should remember that, though a fine image

may be welcomed for its own sake, yet, as a rule, similes and images are

only admissible as illustrations, and if they do not render the parent

thought more clear, they render it more cloudy. His great want is a

proper root-idea, and intelligible theme which shall command the

sympathies of other minds: these obtained, he will shake his faults like

dewdrops from his mane; and he will find that his tropes, thus

disciplined, will not only obtain double force from their fitness, but

will also be intrinsically finer than the random growths of accident. It

is true that Mr Smith, through his spokesman, Walter, mentions a plan

for a poem, his “loved and chosen theme,” (p. 38). He says,

“I will begin in the oldest—Far in God,

When all the ages, and all suns and worlds,

And souls of men and angels lay in Him,

Like unborn forests in an acorn cup.”

A prospect, the mere sketch of which fills us with concern. If we

thought he would listen, we would say—No, Mr Smith; don’t begin in the

oldest—leave the “dead eternities” alone, and don’t let your “first

chorus,” on any account, be “the shouting of the morning stars.” Rather

begin, as you propose to end, with “silence,” than in this melancholy

way. Let your thoughts be based on the unalterable emotions of the

heart, not on the wild driftings of the fancy. Observe all that strongly

appeals to the feelings of others and of yourself—let art assist you to

select and to combine—your warm imagination will give life to the

conception, and your powers of fancy and language will vividly express

it. Don’t set down any odd conceit that may strike you about the

relation of the sea and the stars, and the moon; but when you conceive

an image which, besides being fine in itself, shall bear essential, not

accidental, relation to some part of your theme, put it by till your

main subject, in its natural expansion, affords it a fitting place.

Following this course, we trust that Alexander will prove worthy of the

many illustrious scions of the house of Smith who have distinguished

themselves since Adam, and maintain its precedence over the houses of

Brown, Jones, and Robinson. Sydney the Reverend—Horace and James of the

Rejected Addresses—and William, of the modest and too obscure dramas

(noticed by us before), might well become prouder of the patronymic to

which they have already lent lustre, when Alexander, mellowed by time,

and taught by thought and experience, shall have produced his next and

riper work.

THE EPIDEMICS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.[8]

This extremely interesting work of Dr Hecker’s consists of three several

treatises, or historical sketches, published at different times, and

here collected in a single volume. They are translated and published

under the direction of the Sydenham Society—a society which has been the

means of introducing to the medical profession, and to the English

reader, some of the most eminent works of German physicians and

physiologists. It is seldom, indeed, that their publications are of the

popular and amusing description of the one we have selected for notice;

but, speaking of them as a series, they are of that high philosophic

character which must render them acceptable to every man of liberal

education. How far they are accessible to the public at large we have

not the means of knowing, nor whether the purchase of any single volume

is a practicable matter to a non-subscriber; but, at all events, means,

we think, ought to be taken to place the whole series on the shelves of

every public library.

The great plague of the fourteenth century, called in Germany _The Black

Death_, from the dark spots of fatal omen which appeared on the bodies

of its victims; the _Dancing Mania_, which afterwards broke out both in

Germany and Italy; and the _Sweating Sickness_, which had its origin in

England, but extended itself also widely upon the Continent—these form

the three subjects of Dr Hecker’s book. The dancing mania, known in

Germany as St John’s or St Vitus’s Dance, and in Italy as the poison of

the Tarantula or Tarantism, will be most likely to present us with novel

and curious facts, and we shall be tempted to linger longest upon this

topic. Readers of all kinds, whether of Thucydides, or Boccaccio, or

Defoe, are familiar with the phenomena and events which characterise a

plague, and which bear a great resemblance to each other in all periods

of history. We shall, therefore, refrain from dwelling at any length

upon the well-known terrors of the Great Mortality or the Black Death.

Yet the subject is one of undying interest. The Great Plague is, in this

respect, like the Great Revolution of France; you may read fifty

histories of it, and pronounce it to be a topic thoroughly worn out and

exhausted; and yet when the fifty-first history is put into your hands,

the chance is that you will be led on, and will read to the very last

page with almost undiminished interest. The charm is alike in both

cases. It is that our humanity is seen in its moments of great, if not

glorious excitement—of _plenary inspiration_ of some kind, though it be

of an evil spirit—seen in moments when all its passions, good and bad,

and the bad chiefly, stand out revealed in full unfettered strength. And

the history, in both cases, is of perpetual value and significance to

us. Plagues, as our own generation can testify, are no more eradicated

or banished from the cities of mankind than political revolutions. They

read a lesson to us which, terrible as it is, we are still slow in

learning.

We are often haunted with the dread of over-population. This fear may

perhaps be encountered by another of a quite opposite description, when

we read that in the fourteenth century one quarter at least of the

population of the Old World was swept away in the short space of four

years! Such is the calculation which Dr Hecker makes, on the best

sources of information within his reach. If such devastating plagues

arise, as our author thinks, from great physical causes over which man

has no control, from an atmospheric poison not traceable to his

ignorance or vice, and which no advancement in science can prevent or

expel, there is indeed room for an undefined dread of periodical

depopulations, putting to the rout all human calculations and all human

forethought. But on this point we have our doubts.

“An inquiry into the causes of the Black Death,” says our author, “will

not be without important results in the study of the plagues which have

visited the world, although it cannot advance beyond generalisation

without entering upon a field hitherto uncultivated, and, to this hour,

entirely unknown. Mighty revolutions in the organism of the earth, of

which we have credible information, had preceded it. From China to the

Atlantic the foundations of the earth were shaken—throughout Asia and

Europe the atmosphere was in commotion, and endangered, by its baneful

influence, both vegetable and animal life.” When, however, Dr Hecker

proceeds to specify the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and other

terrific events which shook the foundations of the earth from China to

the Atlantic, we do not find that the enumeration at all bears out this

general description. A large proportion of such disastrous phenomena as

he has been able to collect relate to China; and although the plague

should be proved to have travelled from the East, it is not traced, as

an identical disease, so far eastward as to China, and therefore is but

vaguely connected with the great droughts and violent rains which

afflicted that region of the earth. Nearer at home, in Europe, we have

mention made of “frequent thunderstorms,” and an eruption of Ætna, but

thunderstorms and a volcanic eruption have not, on other occasions,

given rise to a plague; not to add, that if the atmosphere of Europe was

tainted from causes of this kind, springing from its own soil and its

own climate, it would be quite superfluous to trace the disease to the

East at all. We should merely say that a similar disease broke out in

different countries at the same time, demonstrating some quite cosmical

or universal cause. The most important fact which is mentioned here, as

proving some wide atmospheric derangement, is the “thick stinking mist

seen to advance from the East and spread itself over Italy.” But Dr

Hecker himself adds, that at such a time natural occurrences would be

transformed or exaggerated into miracles; and we are quite sure that any

really extraordinary event, occurring simultaneously with the plague,

would, without further inquiry, be described as the cause of it. An

unusual mist, just as a comet or any unusual meteor, appearing at the

time, would be charged with the calamity.

On so obscure a subject we have no desire to advance any dogmatic

opinion. There are facts connected with this and other great epidemics

which, to men of cautious research, have seemed to point to some

widespreading poison, some subtle, deleterious matter diffused through

the air, or some abnormal condition of the atmosphere itself. Such there

may be, acting either as immediate or predisposing cause of the disease.

But to our apprehension, all plagues and pestilences have been bred from

two well-known and sufficient causes—famine and filth. Scanty and

unwholesome diet first disorders and debilitates the frame, fevers

ensue, the foul atmosphere of crowded unventilated dwellings becomes

impregnated by breathings that have passed through putrid lungs; and

thus the disease, especially in a hot climate, attains to that malignity

that the stricken wretch, move him where you will, becomes the centre of

infection to all around him, and from his pestiferous dwelling there

creeps a poison which invades even the most salubrious portion of the

town; which, stealing through the garden-gate and over the flower-beds,

enters even into the very palace itself. Doubtless other causes may

co-operate, as unusual rains and fogs; the fact that a murrain amongst

cattle sometimes accompanies or precedes a plague, indicates local

causes of this description; but the true source of the disease lies in

the city man has built, in his improvidence or injustice, his ignorance

or his sloth.

It is thus that Dr Hecker speaks of the manner in which the disease may

be propagated, so far as the agency of man is concerned:—we do not seem

to want any quite cosmical influence.

“Thus much from authentic sources of the nature of the Black Death.

The descriptions which have been communicated contain, with a few

unimportant exceptions, all the symptoms of the Oriental plague, which

have been observed in more modern times. No doubt can obtain on this

point. The facts are placed clearly before our eyes. We must, however,

bear in mind that this violent disease does not always appear in the

same form; and that, while the essence of the poison which it

produces, and which is separated so abundantly from the body of the

patient, remains unchanged, it is proteoform in its varieties, from

the almost imperceptible vesicle, unaccompanied by fever, which exists

for some time before it extends its poison inwardly, and then excites

fevers and buboes, to the fatal form in which carbuncular

inflammations fall upon the most important viscera.

“Such was the form which the plague assumed in the fourteenth century,

for the accompanying chest affection, which appeared in all the

countries whereof we have received any account, cannot, on a

comparison with similar and familiar symptoms, be considered as any

other than the inflammation in the lungs of modern medicine, a disease

which at present only appears sporadically, and owing to a putrid

decomposition of the fluids is probably combined with hemorrhages from

the vessels of the lungs. Now as every carbuncle, whether it be

cutaneous or internal, generates in abundance the matter of contagion

which has given rise to it, so therefore must the breaths of the

affected have been poisonous in this plague, and on this account its

power of contagion wonderfully increased; wherefore the opinion

appears incontrovertible that, owing to the accumulated numbers of the

diseased, not only individual chambers and houses, but whole cities,

were infected; which, moreover, in the middle ages, were, with few

exceptions, _narrowly built, kept in a filthy state, and surrounded

with stagnant ditches_. Flight was in consequence of no avail to the

timid; for some, though they had sedulously avoided all communication

with the diseased and the suspected, yet their clothes were saturated

with the pestifierous atmosphere, and every inspiration imparted to

them the seeds of the destructive malady which, in the greater number

of cases, germinated with but too much fertility. Add to which the

usual propagation of the plague through clothes, beds, and a thousand

other things to which the pestilential poison adheres,—a propagation

which, from want of caution, must have been infinitely multiplied; and

since articles of this kind, removed from the access of air, not only

retain the matter of contagion for an indefinite period, but also

increase its activity, and engender it like a living being, frightful

ill consequences followed for many years after the first fury of the

pestilence was passed.”

It may be worth noticing that Dr Hecker, or his translator, uses the

terms contagion and infection indiscriminately; nor is the question

entered into whether the disease is capable of being propagated by mere

contact, without inhaling the morbific matter, or becoming inoculated

with it through some puncture in the skin. Dr Hecker nowhere gives

countenance to such a supposition. The poison would hardly penetrate by

mere touch through a sound and healthy skin. Such a belief, however, was

likely enough to prevail at a time when we are told that “even the eyes

of the patient were considered as sources of contagion, which had the

power of acting at a distance, whether on account of their unwonted

lustre or the distortion which they always suffer in plague, or whether

in conformity with an ancient notion, according to which the sight was

considered as the bearer of a demoniacal enchantment.”

Avignon is here mentioned as the first city in which the plague broke

out in Europe. We have a report of it from a contemporary physician, Guy

de Chauliac, a courageous man, it seems, who “vindicated the honour of

medicine by bidding defiance to danger, boldly and constantly assisting

the affected, and disdaining the excuse of his colleagues, who held the

Arabian notion, that medical aid was unavailing, and that the contagion

justified flight.” The plague appeared twice in Avignon, first in the

year 1348, and twelve years later, in 1360, “when it returned from

Germany.” On the first occasion it raged chiefly amongst the poor; on

the second more amongst the higher classes, destroying a great many

children, whom it had formerly spared, and but few women. We presume

that on the second occasion the plague was re-introduced at once amongst

the merchant class of the city, and this would account for fewer women

falling victims to it, because men of this class could take precautions

for the safety of their wives and daughters. But why a greater number of

children should have died, when the women were comparatively spared, is

what we will make no attempt to explain.

How fatal it proved at Florence, Boccaccio has recorded. It is from him

we learn with certainty that other animals besides man were capable of

being infected by the disease—a fact of no little interest in the

history of the plague. He mentions that he himself saw two hogs, on the

rags of a person who had died of plague, after staggering about for a

short time, fall down dead as if they had taken poison. A multitude of

dogs, cats, fowls, and other domesticated animals, were, he tells us,

fellow-sufferers with man.

In Germany the mortality was not so great as in Italy, but the disease

assumed the same character. In France, it is said, many were struck as

if by lightning, and died on the spot—and this more frequently among the

young and strong than the old. Throughout England the disease spread

with great rapidity, men dying in some cases immediately, in others

within twelve hours, or at latest in two days. Here, as elsewhere, the

inflammatory boils and buboes were recognised at once as prognosticating

a fatal issue. It first broke out in the county of Dorset. Few places

seem to have escaped; and the mortality was so great that contemporary

annalists have reported (with what degree of accuracy we cannot say)

that throughout the whole land not more than a tenth part of the

inhabitants had survived.

The north of Europe did not escape, nor did all the snows of Russia

protect her from this invasion. In Norway the disease broke out in a

frightful manner. Nor was the sea a refuge; sailors found no safety in

their ships; vessels were seen driving about on the ocean and drifting

on the shore, whose crews had perished to the last man.

It is a terrible history, this of a plague. Nevertheless, if we were

capable of surveying such events from an elevated position, where past

and future were revealed to our view, and the whole scheme of creation

unfolded to our knowledge, we should doubtless discover that even

plagues and pestilences play their parts for the welfare and advancement

of the human race. Nor are we without some glimpses of their utility.

Viewing the matter, in the first place, in a quite physiological light,

let us suppose that disease has been generated in a great city, that

debilitated parents give birth to feeble offspring, that the fever, or

whatever it may be, is wasting the strength of whole classes of the

population, is it not better that such disease should attain a power and

virulence that will enable it to sweep off at once a whole infected

generation, men, women, and children, leaving the population to be

replaced by the healthier who would survive? would not this be better

than to allow the disease to perpetuate itself indefinitely, and thus to

continue to multiply from an infected stock? The poison passes on, and

searches out other neighbourhoods where the like terrible remedy is

needed. Ay, but it passes, you say, into cities and districts where no

such curative process, no such restoration of the _breed_, was called

for. But it is always thus with the great laws of nature, or of

Providence. Thus far, and no farther! is said to the pestilence as well

as to the ocean; but the line along the beach is not kept or measured

with that petty precision which a land-surveyor would assuredly have

suggested. Man’s greatness arises in part from this struggle with an

external nature, which threatens from time to time to overwhelm him.

There is, according to his measurement of things, a dreadful surplus of

power and activity, both in the organic and the inorganic world. Nowhere

are the forces of nature exactly graduated to suit his taste or

convenience. Happily not. Man would sink into the tameness and

insipidity of an Arcadian shepherd, or the sheep he feeds and fondles,

if every wind that blew were exactly tempered to his own susceptibility.

But the moral effects of plague and pestilence—what good thing can be

said of them? A general dissoluteness, an unblushing villany, for the

most part prevails: a few instances of heroic virtue brighten out above

the corrupted mass. Well, is it nothing, then, that from time to time

our nature should be fully revealed to us in its utmost strength for

good or for evil? A very hideous revelation it may sometimes be, but not

the less salutary on this account. The mask of hypocrisy is torn off a

whole city; in one moment is revealed to a whole people what its

morality, what its piety is worth. Of the island of Cyprus, we are told,

that an earthquake shook its foundations, and was accompanied by so

frightful a hurricane that the inhabitants, _who had slain their

Mahometan slaves_ in order that they might not themselves be subjected

by them, fled in dismay in all directions. Who had slain their Mahometan

slaves! Their Christianity had brought them thus far on the road of

moral culture! At Lübeck, the Venice of the North, the wealthy merchants

were not, in this extremity, unmindful of the safety of their souls;

they spent their last strength in carrying their treasures to

monasteries and churches. Useless for all other purposes, their gold

would now purchase heaven. To such intelligent views of Christianity had

they attained! But the treasure had no longer any charm for the monks;

it might be infected; and even with them the thirst for gold was in

abeyance. They shut their gates upon it; yet still it was cast to them

over the convent walls. “People would not brook an impediment to the

last pious work to which they were driven by despair.”

Did all desert their post, or belie their professions? No; far from it.

Amongst other instances, take that of the Sisters of Charity at the

_Hotel Dieu_. “Though they lost their lives evidently from contagion,

and their numbers were several times renewed, there was still no want of

fresh candidates, who, strangers to the unchristian fear of death,

piously devoted themselves to their holy calling.”

But how cruel had their fears made the base multitude of Christendom!

They rose against the Jews. They sought an enemy. The wells were

poisoned; the Jews had poisoned them. Sordid natures invariably strive

to lose the sense of their own calamity in a vindictive passion against

some supposed author of it. For this reason it is, that, whatever the

nature of the public distress may be, they always fasten it upon some

human antagonist, whom they can have the luxury of hating and reviling.

If they cannot cure, they can at least revenge themselves.

“The noble and the mean fearlessly bound themselves by an oath to

extirpate the Jews by fire and sword, and to snatch them from their

protectors, of whom the number was so small, that throughout all

Germany but few places can be mentioned where these unfortunate people

were not regarded as outlaws, and martyred and burnt. Solemn summonses

were issued from Berne, to the towns of Basle, Freyburg, and

Strasburg, to pursue the Jews as prisoners. The burgomasters and

senators, indeed, opposed this requisition; but in Basle the populace

obliged them to bind themselves by an oath to burn the Jews, and to

forbid persons of that community from entering their city for the

space of two hundred years. Upon this all the Jews in Basle, whose

number could not be inconsiderable, _were enclosed in a wooden

building, constructed for the purpose, and burnt together with it_,

upon the mere outcry of the people, without sentence or trial, which

indeed would have availed them nothing. _Soon after the same thing

took place at Freyburg._ A regular diet was held at Bennefeeld, in

Alsace, where the bishops, lords, and barons, as also deputies of the

counties and towns, consulted how they should proceed with regard to

the Jews: and when the deputies of Strasburg—not, indeed, the bishop

of this town, who proved himself a violent fanatic—spoke in favour of

the persecuted, as nothing criminal was substantiated against them, a

great outcry was raised, and it was vehemently asked why, if so, they

had covered their wells and removed their buckets?” [The wells were

not used in the mere suspicion that they were poisoned, and then the

covering of them up became a proof with these reasoners that they

_had_ been poisoned]. “A sanguinary decree was resolved upon, of which

the populace, who obeyed here the call of the nobles and superior

clergy, became but the too willing executioners. Wherever the Jews

were not burnt they were at least banished, and so being compelled to

wander about, they fell into the hands of the country people, who

without humanity, and regardless of all laws, persecuted them with

fire and sword. At Spires the Jews, driven to despair, assembled in

their own habitations, which they set on fire, and thus consumed

themselves with their families.”

The atrocities, in short, that were committed against this unhappy

people were innumerable. At Strasburg 2000 men were burnt in their own

burial-ground. At Mayence, 12,000 are said to have been put to a cruel

death. At Eslingen the whole Jewish community burned themselves in their

own synagogue. Those whom the Christians saved they insisted upon

baptising! And, as fanaticism begets fanaticism, Jewish mothers were

seen throwing their children on the pile, _to prevent their being

baptised_, and then precipitating themselves into the flames. From many

of the accused the rack extorted a confession of guilt; and as some

Christians also were sentenced to death for poisoning the wells, Dr

Hecker suggests that it is not improbable the very belief in the

prevalence of the crime had induced some men of morbid imagination

really to commit it. When a faith in witchcraft, he observes, was

prevalent, many an old woman was tempted to mutter spells against her

neighbour. The false accusation had ended in producing, if not the crime

itself, yet the criminal intention.