Pale and horror-stricken, not with personal fear, but with grief at

his brother's fate, Martial Noell whispered his second, who proposed

postponing the second duel till another day. Dominique, who, whilst

all his companions had been busy with the wounded man, had remained

leaning against a tree, his discharged pistol in his hand, collected

and unsympathising, stepped forward on hearing this proposition.

"Another day?" said he with a cruel sneer. "Before another day arrives,

I shall doubtless be in prison for this morning's work. But no matter;

if the gentleman is less ready to fight than he was to insult me, let

him leave the field."

The scornful tone and insinuation brought a flush of shame and anger to

the brow of the younger Noell. He detested himself for the momentary

weakness he had shown, and a fierce flame of revenge kindled in his

heart.

"Murderer!" he exclaimed, "my brother's blood calls aloud for

vengeance. May Providence make me its instrument!"

Dominique replied not. Under the same conditions as before, the

two young men took their stations. But the chances were not equal.

Dominique retained all his coolness; his opponent's whole frame

quivered with passionate emotion. This time, neither was in haste to

fire. Advancing slowly, their eyes fixed on each other, they reached

at the same moment the limits of their walk. Then their pistols were

gradually raised, and, as if by word of command, simultaneously

discharged. This time both balls took effect. The one that struck

Dominique went through his arm, without breaking the bone, and lodged

in his back, inflicting a severe but not a dangerous wound. But Martial

Noell was shot through the head.

The news of this bloody business soon got wind, and the very same

day it was the talk of all Toulouse. Martial Noell had died upon the

spot; his brother expired within forty-eight hours. The seconds got

out of the way, till they should see how the thing was likely to go.

Dominique's wound prevented his following their example, if he were so

disposed; and when it no longer impeded his movements, he was already

in the hands of justice. Frantic with grief on learning the fate of his

beloved sons, Anthony Noell hurried to Toulouse, and vigorously pushed

a prosecution. He hoped for a very severe sentence, and was bitterly

disappointed when Dominique escaped, in consideration of his wounds and

of his having been the insulted party, with the lenient doom of five

years' imprisonment.

FIVE YEARS LATER.

Five years of absence from home may glide rapidly enough away, when

passed in pursuit of pleasure or profit; dragged out between prison

walls, they appear an eternity, a chasm between the captive and

the world. So thought Dominique as he re-entered Montauban, at the

expiration of his sentence. During the whole time, not a word of

intelligence had reached him from his home, no friendly voice had

greeted his ear, no line of familiar handwriting had gladdened his

tearless eyes. Arrived in his native town, his first inquiry was for

his father. Pascal Lafon was dead. The fate of his wife and son had

preyed upon his health; the prison air had poisoned the springs of life

in the strong, free-hearted man. The physician declared drugs useless

in his case, for that the atmosphere of liberty alone could save him;

and he recommended, if unconditional release were impossible, that

the prisoner should be guarded in his own house. The recommendation

was forwarded to Paris, but the same post took a letter from Anthony

Noell, and a few days brought the physician's dismissal and an order

for the close confinement of Lafon. Examinations followed each other

in rapid succession, but they served only to torment the prisoner,

without procuring his release; and after some months he died, his

innocence unrecognised. The cause of his death, and the circumstances

attending it, were loudly proclaimed by the indignant physician; and

Dominique, on his return to Montauban, had no difficulty in obtaining

all the details, aggravated probably by the unpopularity of the judge.

He heard them with unchanging countenance; none could detect a sign

of emotion on that cheek of marble paleness, or in that cold and

steadfast eye. He then made inquiries concerning Anthony Noell. That

magistrate, he learned, had been promoted, two years previously, and

now resided in his native town of Marseilles. At that moment, however,

he happened to be at an hotel in Montauban. He had never recovered the

loss of his sons, which had aged him twenty years in appearance, and

had greatly augmented the harshness and sour severity of his character.

He seemed to find his sole consolation in the society of his daughter,

now a beautiful girl of seventeen, and in intense application to his

professional duties. A tour of inspection, connected with his judicial

functions, had now brought him to Montauban. During his compulsory

absences from home, which were of annual occurrence and of some

duration, his daughter remained in the care of an old female relation,

her habitual companion, whose chief faults were her absurd vanity, and

her too great indulgence of the caprices of her darling niece.

Dominique showed singular anxiety to learn every particular concerning

Anthony Noell's household, informing himself of the minutest details,

and especially of the character of his daughter, who was represented to

him as warmhearted and naturally amiable, but frivolous and spoiled by

over-indulgence. On the death of his sons, Noell renounced his project

of sending her from home, and the consequence was, that her education

had been greatly neglected. Madame Verlé, the old aunt already

mentioned, was a well-meaning, but very weak widow, who, childless

herself, had no experience in bringing up young women. In her own youth

she had been a great coquette, and frivolity was still a conspicuous

feature in her character. As M. Noell, since his sons' death, had shown

a sort of aversion for society, the house was dull enough, and Madame

Verlé's chief resource was the circulating library, whence she obtained

a constant supply of novels. Far from prohibiting to her niece the

perusal of this trash, she made her the companion of her unwholesome

studies. The false ideas and highflown romance with which these books

teemed, might have made little impression on a character fortified by

sound principles and a good education, but they sank deep into the

ardent and uncultivated imagination of Florinda Noell, to whose father,

engrossed by his sorrows and by his professional labours, it never once

occurred to check the current of corruption thus permitted to flow into

his daughter's artless mind. He saw her gay, happy, and amused, and he

inquired no further; well pleased to find her support so cheerfully the

want of society to which his morose regrets and gloomy eccentricity

condemned her.

One of Dominique's first cares, on his return to Montauban, was to

visit his parents' grave. Although his father died in prison, and

his memory had never been cleared from the slur of accusation, his

friends had obtained permission, with some difficulty, to inter his

corpse beside that of his wife. The day was fading into twilight when

Dominique entered the cemetery, and it took him some time to find the

grave he sought. The sexton would have saved him the trouble, but the

idea seemed a profanation; in silence and in solitude he approached

the tomb of his affections and happiness. Long he sat upon the mound,

plunged in reverie, but with dry eyes, for the source of tears appeared

exhausted in his heart. Night came; the white tombstones looked ghastly

pale in the moonlight, and cast long black shadows upon the turf.

Dominique arose, plucked a wild-flower from his mother's grave, and

left the place. He had taken but three steps when he became aware he

was not alone in the churchyard. A tall figure rose suddenly from an

adjacent grave. Although separated but by one lofty tombstone, the two

mourners had been too absorbed and silent in their grief to notice

each other's presence. Now they gazed at one another. The moon, for

a moment obscured, emerged from behind a cloud, and shone upon their

features. The recognition was mutual and instantaneous. Both started

back. Between the graves of their respective victims, Anthony Noell and

Dominique Lafon confronted each other.

A dusky fire gleamed in the eyes of Dominique, and his features, worn

and emaciated from captivity, were distorted with the grimace of

intense hatred. His heart throbbed as though it would have burst from

his bosom.

"May your dying hour be desolate!" he shrieked. "May your end be in

misery and despair!"

The magistrate gazed at his inveterate foe with a fixed stare of

horror, as though a phantom had suddenly risen before him. Then, slowly

raising his hand, till it pointed to the grave of his sons, his eye

still fixed, as if by fascination, upon that of Dominique, a single

word, uttered in a hollow tone, burst from his quivering lips.

"Murderer!" he exclaimed.

Dominique laughed. It was a hideous sound, a laugh of unquenchable

hatred and savage exultation. He approached Noell till their faces were

but a few inches apart, and spoke in a voice of suppressed fierceness.

"My father and my mother," he said, "expired in grief, and shame, and

misery. By your causeless hate and relentless persecution, I was made

an orphan. The debt is but half paid. You have still a child. You still

find happiness on earth. But you yet shall lose all--all! Yet shall you

know despair and utter solitude, and your death shall be desolate, even

as my father's was. Remember! _We shall meet again._"

And passing swiftly before the magistrate, with a gesture of solemn

menace, Dominique left the cemetery. Noell sank, pale and trembling,

upon his children's grave. His enemy had found him, and security had

fled. Dominique's last words, "We shall meet again!" rang in his ears,

as if uttered by the threatening voice of hostile and irresistible

destiny. Slowly, and in great uneasiness, he returned into the town,

which he left early the next day for Marseilles. To his terrified

fancy, his daughter was safe only when he watched over her. So great

was his alarm, that he would have resigned his lucrative and honourable

office sooner than have remained longer absent from the tender flower

whom the ruthless spoiler threatened to trample and destroy.

THE HORSE-RIDERS.

Months passed away, and spring returned. On a bright morning of

May--in parched Provence the pleasantest season of the year--a motley

cavalcade approached Marseilles by the Nice road. It consisted of two

large waggons, a score of horses, and about the same number of men and

women. The horses were chiefly white, cream-coloured, or piebald, and

some of them bore saddles of peculiar make and fantastical colours,

velvet-covered and decorated with gilding. One was caparisoned with a

tiger-skin, and from his headstall floated streamers of divers-coloured

horsehair. The women wore riding-habits, some of gaudy tints, bodices

of purple or crimson velvet, with long flaunting robes of green or

blue. They were sunburned, boldfaced damsels, with marked features and

of dissipated aspect, and they sat firmly on their saddles, jesting

as they rode along. Their male companions were of corresponding

appearance; lithe vigorous fellows, from fifteen to forty, attired

in various hussar and jockey costumes, with beards and mustaches

fantastically trimmed, limbs well developed, and long curling hair.

Various nations went to the composition of the band. French, Germans,

Italians, and Gipsies made up the equestrian troop of Luigi Bartolo,

which, after passing the winter in southern Italy, had wandered north

on the approach of spring, and now was on its way to give a series of

representations at Marseilles.

A little behind his comrades, upon a fine gray horse, rode a young

Florentine named Vicenzo, the most skilful rider of the troop. Although

but five-and-twenty years old, he had gone through many vicissitudes

and occupations. Of respectable family, he had studied at Pisa,

had been expelled for misconduct, had then enlisted in an Austrian

regiment, whence his friends had procured his discharge, but only to

cast him off for his dissolute habits. Alternately a professional

gambler, a stage player, and a smuggler on the Italian frontier, he

had now followed, for upwards of a year, the vagabond life of a

horse-rider. Of handsome person and much natural intelligence, he

covered his profligacy and taste for low associations with a certain

varnish of good breeding. This had procured him in the troop the

nickname of the _Marchese_, and had made him a great favourite with

the female portion of the strollers, amongst whom more than one fierce

quarrel had arisen for the good graces of the fascinating Vicenzo.

The Florentine was accompanied by a stranger, who had fallen in with

the troop at Nice, and had won their hearts by his liberality. He had

given them a magnificent supper at their _albergo_, had made them

presents of wine and trinkets--all apparently out of pure generosity

and love of their society. He it was who had chiefly determined them to

visit Marseilles, instead of proceeding north, as they had originally

intended, by Avignon to Lyons. He marched with the troop, on horseback,

wrapped in a long loose coat, and with a broad hat slouched over his

brow, and bestowed his companionship chiefly on Vicenzo, to whom he

appeared to have taken a great affection. The strollers thought him

a strange eccentric fellow, half cracked, to say the least; but they

cared little whether he were sane or mad, so long as his society proved

profitable, his purse well filled, and ever in his hand.

The wanderers were within three miles of Marseilles when they came to

one of the _bastides_, or country-houses, so thickly scattered around

that city. It was of unusual elegance, almost concealed amongst a

thick plantation of trees, and having a terrace, in the Italian style,

overlooking the road. Upon this terrace, in the cool shade of an

arbour, two ladies were seated, enjoying the sweet breath of the lovely

spring morning. Books and embroidery were on a table before them, which

they left on the appearance of the horse-riders, and, leaning upon the

stone parapet, looked down on the unusual spectacle. The elder of the

two had nothing remarkable, except the gaudy ribbons that contrasted

with her antiquated physiognomy. The younger, in full flush of youth,

and seen amongst the bright blossoms of the plants that grew in pots

upon the parapet, might have passed for the goddess of spring in her

most sportive mood. Her hair hung in rich clusters over her alabaster

neck; her blue eyes danced in humid lustre; her coral lips, a little

parted, disclosed a range of sparkling pearls. The sole fault to be

found with her beauty was its character, which was sensual rather than

intellectual. One beheld the beautiful and frivolous child of clay, but

the ray of the spirit that elevates and purifies was wanting. It was

the beauty of a Bacchante rather than of a Vestal--Aurora disporting

herself on the flower banks, and awaiting, in frolic mood, the advent

of Cupid.

The motley cavalcade moved on, the men assuming their smartish seat in

the saddle as they passed under the inspection of the _bella biondina_.

When Vicenzo approached the park wall, his companion leaned towards

him and spoke something in his ear. At the same moment, as if stung

by a gadfly, the spirited gray upon which the Florentine was mounted,

sprang with all four feet from the ground, and commenced a series of

leaps and curvets that would have unseated a less expert rider. They

only served to display to the greatest advantage Vicenzo's excellent

horsemanship and slender graceful figure. Disdaining the gaudy

equipments of his comrades, the young man was tastefully attired in a

dark closely-fitting jacket. Hessian boots and pantaloons exhibited

the Antinöus-like proportions of his comely limbs. He rode like a

centaur, he and his steed seemingly forming but one body. As he

reached, gracefully caracoling, the terrace on whose summit the ladies

were stationed, he looked up with a winning smile, and removing his

cap, bowed to his horse's mane. The old lady bridled and smiled; the

young one blushed as the Florentine's ardent gaze met hers, and in her

confusion she let fall a branch of roses she held in her hand. With

magical suddenness Vicenzo's fiery horse stood still, as if carved of

marble. With one bound the rider was on foot, and had snatched up the

flowers; then placing a hand upon the shoulder of his steed, who at

once started in a canter, he lightly, and without apparent effort,

vaulted into the saddle. With another bow and smile he rode off with

his companion.

"'Twas well done, Vicenzo," said the latter.

"What an elegant cavalier!" exclaimed Florinda Noell pensively,

following with her eyes the accomplished equestrian.

"And so distinguished in his appearance!" chimed in her silly aunt.

"And how he looked up at us! One might fancy him a nobleman in

disguise, bent on adventures, or seeking intelligence of a lost

lady-love."

Florinda smiled, but the stale platitude, borrowed from the absurd

romances that crammed Madame Verlé's brain, abode in her memory. Whilst

the handsome horse-rider remained in sight, she continued upon the

parapet and gazed after him. On his part, Vicenzo several times looked

back, and more than once he pressed to his lips the fragrant flowers of

which accident had made him the possessor.

A small theatre, which happened then to be unoccupied, was hired by

the equestrians for their performances, the announcement of which was

soon placarded from one end to the other of Marseilles. At the first

representation, Florinda and her aunt were amongst the audience. They

had no one to cheek their inclinations, for Mr Noell, after passing

many months with his daughter without molestation from Dominique, who

had disappeared from Montauban the day after their meeting in the

churchyard, had forgotten his apprehensions, and had departed on his

annual tour of professional duty. At the circus, the honours of the

night were for Vicenzo. His graceful figure, handsome face, skilful

performance, and distinguished air, were the theme of universal

admiration. Florinda could not detach her gaze from him as he flew

round the circle, standing with easy negligence upon his horse's back;

and she could scarcely restrain a cry of horror and alarm at the

boldness of some of his feats. Vicenzo had early detected her presence

in the theatre; and the expression of his eyes, when he passed before

her box, made her conscious that he had done so.

Several days elapsed, during which Florinda and her aunt had more

than once again visited the theatre. Vicenzo had become a subject

of constant conversation between the superannuated coquette and her

niece, the old lady indulging the most extravagant conjectures as

to who he could be, for she had made up her mind he was now in an

assumed character. Florinda spoke of him less, but thought of him

more. Nor were her visits to the theatre her only opportunities of

seeing him. Vicenzo, soon after his arrival at Marseilles, had excited

his comrades' wonder and envy by appearing in the elegant costume of

a private gentleman, and by taking frequent rides out of the town,

at first accompanied by Fontaine, the stranger before mentioned, but

afterwards more frequently alone. These rides were taken early in the

morning, or by moonlight, on evenings when there was no performance.

The horse-riders laughed at the airs the _Marchese_ gave himself,

attributed his extravagance to the generosity of Fontaine, and twitted

him with some secret intrigue, which he, however, did not admit, and

they took little pains to penetrate. Had they followed his horse's

hoof-track, they would have found that it led, sometimes by one road,

sometimes by another, to the _bastide_ of Anthony Noell the magistrate.

And after a few days they would have seen Vicenzo, his bridle over his

arm, conversing earnestly, at a small postern-gate of the garden, with

the charming _biondina_, whose bright countenance had greeted, like a

good augury, their first approach to Marseilles.

At last a night came when this stolen conversation lasted longer

than usual. Vicenzo was pressing, Florinda irresolute. Fontaine had

accompanied his friend, and held his horse in an adjacent lane, whilst

the lovers (for such they now were to be considered) sauntered in a

shrubbery walk within the park.

"But why this secrecy?" said the young girl, leaning tenderly upon the

arm of the handsome stroller. "Why not at once inform your friends you

accede to their wishes, in renouncing your present derogatory pursuit?

Why not present yourself to my father under your real name and title?

He loves his daughter too tenderly to refuse his consent to a union on

which her happiness depends."

"Dearest Florinda!" replied Vicenzo, "how could my ardent love abide

the delays this course would entail? How can you so cruelly urge me

thus to postpone my happiness? See you not how many obstacles to our

union the step you advise would raise up? Your father, unwilling to

part with his only daughter, (and such a daughter!) would assuredly

object to our immediate marriage--would make your youth, my roving

disposition, fifty other circumstances, pretexts for putting it off.

And did we succeed in overruling these, there still would be a thousand

tedious formalities to encounter, correspondence between your father

and my family, who are proud as Lucifer of their ancient name and

title, and would be wearisomely punctilious. By my plan, we would

avoid all long-winded negotiations. Before daylight we are across the

frontier; and before that excellent Madame Verlé has adjusted her smart

cap, and buttered her first roll, my adored Florinda is Marchioness of

Monteleane. A letter to papa explains all; then away to Florence, and

in a month back to Marseilles, where you shall duly present me to my

respected father-in-law, and I, as in humility bound, will drop upon my

knees and crave pardon for running off with his treasure. Papa gives

his benediction, and curtain drops, leaving all parties happy."

How often, with the feeble and irresolute, does a sorry jest pass for a

good argument! As Vicenzo rattled on, his victim looked up in his face,

and smiled at his soft and insidious words. Fascinated by silvery tones

and gaudy scales, the woman, as of old, gave ear to the serpent.

"'Tis done," said the stroller, with a heartless smile, as he rode off

with Fontaine, half an hour later--"done. A post-chaise at midnight.

She brings her jewels--all the fortune she will ever bring me, I

suppose. No chance of drawing anything from the old gentleman?"

"Not much," replied Fontaine drily.

"Well, I must have another thousand from you, besides expenses. And

little enough too. Fifty yellow-boys for abandoning my place in the

troop. I was never in better cue for the ring. They are going to Paris,

and I should have joined Franconi."

"Oh!" said Fontaine, with a slight sneer, "a man of your abilities will

never lack employment. But we have no time to lose, if you are to be

back at midnight."

The two men spurred their horses, and galloped back to Marseilles.

A few minutes before twelve o'clock, a light posting-carriage was drawn

up, by the road-side, about a hundred yards beyond Anthony Noell's

garden. Vicenzo tapped thrice with his knuckles at the postern door,

which opened gently, and a trembling female form emerged from the gloom

of the shrubbery into the broad moonlight without. Through the veil

covering her head and face, a tear might be seen glistening upon her

cheek. She faltered, hesitated; her good genius whispered her to pause.

But an evil spirit was at hand, luring her to destruction. Taking in

one hand a casket, the real object of his base desires, and with the

other arm encircling her waist, the seducer, murmuring soft flatteries

in her ear, hurried Florinda down the slope leading to the road.

Confused and fascinated, the poor weak girl had no power to resist. She

reached the carriage, cast one look back at her father's house, whose

white walls shone amidst the dark masses of foliage; the Florentine

lifted her in, spoke a word to the postilion, and the vehicle dashed

away in the direction of the Italian frontier.

So long as the carriage was in sight, Fontaine, who had accompanied

Vicenzo, sat motionless upon his saddle, watching its career as it

sped, like a large black insect, along the moonlit road. Then, when

distance hid it from his view, he turned his horse's head and rode

rapidly into Marseilles.

FOES AND FRIENDS.

Upon the second day after Florinda's elopement with her worthless

suitor, the large coffee-room of the Hotel de France, at Montauban,

was deserted, save by two guests. One of these was a man of about

fifty-five, but older in appearance, whose thin gray hair and stooping

figure, as well as the deep, anxious wrinkles and mournful expression

of his countenance, told a tale of cares and troubles, borne with a

rebellious rather than with a resigned spirit. The other occupant of

the apartment, who sat at its opposite extremity, and was concealed,

except upon near approach, by a sort of high projecting counter, was

much younger, for his age could hardly exceed thirty years. A certain

sober reserved expression, (hardly amounting to austerity,) frequently

observable in Roman Catholic priests, and which sat becomingly enough

upon his open intelligent countenance, betrayed his profession as

surely as some slight clerical peculiarities of costume.

Suddenly a waiter entered the room, and approaching the old man with

an air of great respect, informed him that a gentleman, seemingly just

come off a journey, desired particularly to speak with him. The person

addressed raised his eyes, whose melancholy expression corresponded

with the furrows of his cheek, from the Paris newspaper he was reading,

and, in a voice at once harsh and feeble, desired the stranger should

be shown in. The order was obeyed; and a person entered, wrapped

in a cloak, whose collar was turned up, concealing great part of

his face. His countenance was further obscured by the vizard of a

travelling-cap, from beneath which his long hair hung in disorder.

Splashed and unshaven, he had all the appearance of having travelled

far and fast. The gentleman whom he had asked to see rose from his seat

on his approach, and looked at him keenly, even uneasily, but evidently

without recognition. The waiter left the room. The stranger advanced to

within three paces of him he sought, and stood still and silent, his

features still masked by his cloak collar.

"Your business with me, sir?" said the old man quickly. "Whom have I

the honour to address?"

"I am an old acquaintance, Mr Anthony Noell," said the traveller, in

a sharp ironical tone, as he turned down his collar and displayed a

pale countenance, distorted by a malignant smile. "An old debtor come

to discharge the balance due. My errand to-day is to tell you that you

are childless. Your daughter Florinda, your last remaining darling, has

fled to Italy with a nameless vagabond and stroller."

At the very first word uttered by that voice, Noell had started and

shuddered, as at the sudden pang of exquisite torture. Then his glassy

eyes were horribly distended, his mouth opened, his whole face was

convulsed, and with a yell like that of some savage denizen of the

forest suddenly despoiled of its young, he sprang upon his enemy and

seized him by the throat.

"Murderer!" he cried. "Help! help!"

The waiters rushed into the room, and with difficulty freed the

stranger from the vice-like grasp of the old man, to whose feeble hands

frenzy gave strength. When at last they were separated, Noell uttered

one shriek of impotent fury and despair, and fell back senseless in the

servants' arms. The stranger, who himself seemed weak and ailing, and

who had sunk upon a chair, looked curiously into his antagonist's face.

"He is mad," said he, with horrible composure and complacency; "quite

mad. Take him to his bed."

The waiters lifted up the insensible body, and carried it away. The

stranger leaned his elbows upon a table, and, covering his face with

his hands, remained for some minutes absorbed in thought. A slight

noise made him look up. The priest stood opposite to him, and uttered

his name.

"Dominique Lafon," he said, calmly but severely, "what is this

thing you have done? But you need not tell me. I know much, and can

conjecture the rest. Wretched man, know you not the word of God, to

whom is all vengeance, and who repayeth in his own good time?"

Dominique seemed surprised at hearing his name pronounced by a

stranger. He looked hard at the priest. And presently a name connected

with days of happiness and innocence broke from the lips of the

vindictive and pitiless man.

"Henry la Chapelle!"

It was indeed his former fellow-student, whom circumstances and

disposition had induced to abandon the study of the law and enter the

church. They had not met since Dominique departed from Paris to receive

the last sigh of his dying mother.

Who shall trace the secret springs whence flow the fountains of the

heart? For seven years Dominique Lafon had not wept. His captivity and

many sufferings, his father's death, all had been borne with a bitter

heart, but with dry eyes. But now, at sight of the comrade of his

youth, some hidden chord, long entombed, suddenly vibrated. A sob burst

from his bosom, and was succeeded by a gush of tears.

Henry la Chapelle looked sadly and kindly at his boyhood's friend.

"He who trusteth in himself," he said in low and gentle tones, "let

him take heed, lest his feet fall into the snares they despise. Alas!

Dominique, that you so soon forgot our last conversation! Alas! that

you have laid this sin to your soul! But those tears give me hope: they

are the early dew of penitence. Come, my friend, and seek comfort where

alone it may be found. Verily there is joy in heaven over one repentant

sinner, more than over many just men."

And the good priest drew his friend's arm through his, and led him from

the room.

Dominique's exclamation was prophetic. When Anthony Noell rose from

the bed of sickness to which grief consigned him, his intellects were

gone. He never recovered them, but passed the rest of his life in

helpless idiocy at his country-house, near Marseilles. There he was

sedulously and tenderly watched by the unhappy Florinda, who, after a

few miserable months passed with her reprobate seducer, was released

from farther ill-usage by the death of Vicenzo, stabbed in Italy in a

gambling brawl.

Not long after 1830, there died in a Sardinian convent, noted for its

ascetic observances and for the piety of its inmates, a French monk,

who went by the name of brother Ambrose. His death was considered to be

accelerated by the strictness with which he followed the rigid rules of

the order, from some of which his failing health would have justified

deviation, and by the frequency and severity of his self-imposed

penances. His body, feeble when first he entered the convent, was no

match for his courageous spirit. In accordance with his dying request,

his beads and breviary were sent to a vicar named la Chapelle, then

resident at Lyons. When that excellent priest opened the book, he found

the following words inscribed upon a blank page:--

"Blessed be the Lord, for in Him have I peace and hope!"

And Henry la Chapelle kneeled down, and breathed a prayer for the soul

of his departed friend, Dominique Lafon.

PESTALOZZIANA.

"Etiam illud adjungo, sæpius ad laudem atque virtutem _naturam

sine doctrinâ_, quam sine naturâ valuisse doctrinam."--CICERO,

_pro. Arch._, 7.

"Que vous ai-je donc fait, O mes jeunes années!

Pour m'avoir fui si vite, me croyant satisfait?"

VICTOR HUGO, _Odes_.

For the abnormal, and, we must think, somewhat faulty education

of our later boyhood--a few random recollections of which we here

purpose to lay before the reader--our obligations, _quantuloecunquoe

sint_, are certainly due to prejudices which, though they have now

become antiquated and obsolete, were in full force some thirty years

ago, against the existing mode of education in England. Not that

the public--_quâ_ public--were ever very far misled by the noisy

declamations of the Whigs on this their favourite theme: people for

the most part paid very little attention to the inuendoes of the

peripatetic schoolmaster, so carefully primed and sent "abroad" to

disabuse them; while not a few smiled to recognise under that imposing

misnomer a small self-opinionated _clique_--free traders in everything

else, but absolute monopolists here--who sought by its aid to palm

off on society the _jocosa imago_ of their own crotchets, as though

in sympathetic response to a sentiment wholly proceeding from itself.

When much inflammatory "stuff" had been discharged against the walls

of our venerable institutions, not only without setting Isis or Cam

on fire, but plainly with some discomfitures to the belligerents

engaged, from the opposite party, who returned the salute, John

Bull began to open his eyes a little, and, as he opened them, to

doubt whether, after all, the promises and _programmes_ he had been

reading of a spic-and-span new order of everything, particularly of

education, might not turn out a _flam_; and the authors of them, who

certainly showed off to most advantage on _Edinburgh Review_ days,

prove anything but the best qualified persons to make good their own

vaticinations, or to bring in the new golden age they had announced.

Still, the crusade against English public seminaries, though abortive

in its principal design--that of exciting a _general_ defection

from these institutions--was not quite barren of results. It was

so far successful, at least, as completely to unsettle for a time

the minds of not a few over-anxious parents, who, taught to regard

with suspicion the credentials of every schoolmaster "at home," were

beginning to make diligent inquiries for his successor among their

neighbours "abroad." To all who were in this frame of mind, the first

_couleur de rose_ announcements of Pestalozzi's establishment at

Yverdun were news indeed! offering as they did--or at least seeming to

offer--the complete solution of a problem which could scarcely have

been entertained without much painful solicitude and anxiety. "Here,

then," for so ran the accounts of several trustworthy eyewitnesses,

educational amateurs, who had devoted a _whole morning_ to a most

prying and probing dissection of the system within the walls of the

chateau itself, and putting down all the results of their carefully

conducted autopsy, "here was a school composed of boys gathered from

all parts of the habitable globe, where each, by simply carrying

over a little of his mother tongue, might, in a short time, become a

youthful Mezzofante, and take his choice of many in return; a school

which, wisely eschewing the routine service of books, suffered neither

dictionary, gradus, grammar, nor spelling-book to be even seen on

the premises; a school for morals, where, in educating the head,

the right training of the heart was never for a moment neglected; a

school for the progress of the mind, where much discernment, blending

itself with kindness, fostered the first dawnings of the intellect,

and carefully protected the feeble powers of memory from being

overtaxed--where delighted Alma, in the progress of her development,

might securely enjoy many privileges and immunities wholly denied to

her at home--where even philosophy, stooping to conquer, had become

_sportive_ the better to _persuade_; where the poet's vow was actually

realised--the bodily health being as diligently looked after as that

of the mind or the affections; lastly, where they found no fighting

nor bullying, as at home, but agriculture and gymnastics instituted

in their stead." To such encomiums on the school were added, and with

more justice and truth, a commendation on old Pestalozzi himself, the

real liberality of whose sentiments, and the overflowings of whose

paternal love, could not, it was argued, and did not, fail to prove

beneficial to all within the sphere of their influence. The weight of

such supposed advantages turned the scale for not a few just entering

into the pupillary state, and settled their future destination. Our own

training, hitherto auspiciously enough carried on under the birchen

discipline of Westminster, was _suddenly_ stopt; the last silver

prize-penny had crossed our palm; the last quarterly half-crown tax for

birch had been paid into the treasury of the school; we were called on

to say an abrupt good-by to our friends, and to take a formal leave

of Dr P----. That ceremony was not a pleasing one; and had the choice

of a visit to Polyphemus in his cave, or to Dr P---- in his study,

been offered to us, the first would certainly have had the preference;

but as the case admitted neither evasion nor compromise, necessity

gave us courage to bolt into the august presence of the formidable

head-master, after lessons; and finding presently that we had somehow

managed to emerge again safe from the dreaded interview, we invited

several class-fellows to celebrate so remarkable a day at a tuck-shop

in the vicinity of Dean's Yard. There, in unrestricted indulgence, did

the party get through, there was no telling how many "lady's-fingers,"

tarts, and cheese-cakes, and drank--there was no counting the corks

of empty ginger-beer bottles. When these delicacies had lost their

relish--~kai hex heron hento~--the time was come for making a

distribution of our personal effects. First went our bag of "taws"

and "alleys," _pro bono publico_, in a general scramble, and then a

Jew's-harp for whoever could twang it; and out or one pocket came a

cricket-ball for A, and out of another a peg-top for B; and then there

was a hockey-stick for M, and a red leathern satchel, with book-strap,

for N, and three books a-piece to two class-chums, who ended with a

toss-up for Virgil. And now, being fairly cleaned out, after reiterated

good-bys and shakes of the hand given and taken at the shop door, we

parted, (many of us never to meet again,) they to enjoy the remainder

of a half-holiday in the hockey-court, while we walked home through the

park, stopping in the midst of its ruminating cows, ourself to ruminate

a little upon the future, and to wonder, unheard, what sort of a place

Switzerland might be, and what sort of a man Pestalozzi!

These adieus to old Westminster took place on a Saturday; and the

following Monday found us already _en route_ with our excellent father

for the new settlement at Yverdun. The school to which we were then

travelling, and the venerable man who presided over it, have both

been long since defunct--_de mortuis nil nisi bonum_; and gratitude

itself forbids that we should speak either of one or of the other with

harshness or disrespect; of a place where we certainly spent some very

happy, if not the happiest, days of life; of him who--rightly named

the _father_ of the establishment--ever treated us, and all with whom

he had to do, with a uniform gentleness and impartiality. To tell

ill-natured tales out of school--of such a school, and after so long

a period too--would indeed argue ill for _any one's_ charity, and

accordingly _we_ do not intend to try it. But though the feeling of the

_alumnus_ may not permit us to think unfavourably of the _Pensionat_

Pestalozzi, we shall not, on that account, suppress the mention of some

occasional hardships and inconveniences experienced there, much less

allow a word of reproach to escape our pen. The reader, with no such

sympathies to restrain his curiosity, will no doubt expect, if not a

detailed account, some outline or general ground-plan of the system,

which, alas! we cannot give him; our endeavour to comprehend it as a

digested _whole_--proceeding on certain data, aiming at certain ends,

and pursuing them by certain means--has been entirely unsuccessful;

and therefore, if pressed for more than we can tell, our answer must

be, in the words of Cicero, _Deprecor ne me tanquam philosophum putet

scholam sibi istam, explicaturum_.[14] But though unable to make

out--if, indeed, there were any spirit of unity to be made out--in

Pestalozzi's scheme, there were certain manifest imperfections in

the composition of his plan of education--improprieties to which

the longest familiarity could scarcely reconcile, nor the warmest

partiality blind even the most determined partisan. In the first

place--to state them at once, and have done with the unpleasing office

of finding fault--it always struck us as a capital error, in a school

where books were not allowed, to suffer almost the whole teaching of

the classes to devolve upon some leading member of each; for what, in

fact, could self-taught lads be expected to teach, unless it were to

make a ring or a row--to fish, to whistle, or to skate? Of course, any

graver kind of information, conveyed by an infant prodigy to his gaping

pupils, must have lacked the necessary precision to make it available

to them: first, because he would very seldom be sufficiently possessed

of it himself; and secondly, because a boy's imperfect vocabulary and

inexperience render him at all times a decidedly bad interpreter even

of what he may really know. In place of proving real lights, these

little Jack-o'-Lanterns of ours tended rather to perplex the path of

the inquiring, and to impede their progress; and when an appeal was

made to the master, as was sometimes done, the master--brought up in

the same vague, bookless manner, and knowing nothing more _accurately_,

though he might know _more_ than his puzzle-pated pupils--was very

seldom able to give them a lift out of the quagmire, where they

accordingly would stick, and flounder away till the end of the lesson.

It was amusing to see how a boy, so soon as he got but a glimpse of a

subject before the class, and could give but the ghost of a reason for

what he was eager to prelect upon, became incontinent of the bright

discovery, till all his companions had had the full benefit of it,

with much that was irrelevant besides. The mischiefs which, it would

occur to any one's mind, were likely to result in after life from such

desultory habits of application in boyhood, actually did result to

many of us a few years later at college. It was at once painful and

difficult to indoctrinate indocile minds like ours into the accurate

and severe habits of university discipline. On entering the lists for

honours with other young aspirants, educated in the usual way at home,

we were as a herd of unbroken colts pitted against well-trained racers:

neither had yet run for the prize--in that single particular the cases

were the same; but when degree and race day came, on whose side lay

the odds? On theirs who had been left to try an untutored strength

in scampering over a wild common, at will, for years, or with those

who, by daily exercise in the _manège_ of a public school, had been

trained to bear harness, and were, besides, well acquainted with the

ground? _Another_ unquestionable error in the system was the absence of

emulation, which, from some strange misconception and worse application

of a text in St Paul, was proscribed as an unchristian principle; in

lieu of which, we were to be brought--though we never _were_ brought,

but that was the object aimed at--to love learning for its own sake,

and to prove ourselves anxious of excelling without a motive, or to be

_good for nothing_, as Hood has somewhere phrased it.

"Nunquam præponens se aliis, ITA facillime

Sine invidia invenias laudem,"

says Terence, and it will be so where envy and conceit have supplanted

emulation: yet are the feelings perfectly distinct; and we think it

behoves all those who contend that every striving for the mastery is

prohibited by the gospel, to show how _communism_ in inferiority, or

_socialism_ in dulness, are likely to improve morals or mend society.

Take from a schoolboy the motive of rewards and punishments, and you

deprive him of that incentive by which your own conduct through life

is regulated, and that by which God has thought fit, in the moral

government of his rational creatures, to promote the practice of good

works, and to discourage and dissuade from evil. Nor did that which

sounds thus ominously in theory succeed in its application better

than it sounded. In fact, nothing more unfortunate could have been

devised for all parties, but especially for such as were by nature

of a studious turn or of quicker parts than the rest; who, finding

the ordinary stimulus to exertion thus removed, and none other to

replace it, no longer cared to do well, (why should they, when they

knew that their feeblest efforts would transcend their slow-paced

comrades' best?) but, gradually abandoning themselves to the _vis

inertiæ_ of sloth, incompetence, and bad example, did no more than

they could help; repressing the spirit of rivalry and emulation,

which had no issue in the school, to show it in some of those feats

of agility or address, which the rigorous enactment of gymnastic

exercises imposed on all alike, and in the performance of which we

certainly _did_ pride ourselves, and eagerly sought to eclipse each

other in exhibiting any natural or acquired superiority we might

possess. The absence of all elementary books of instruction throughout

the school, presented another barrier in the way of improvement still

more formidable than even the _bétise_ of boy pedagogues, the want of

sufficient stimulus to exertion, or the absurd respect paid sometimes

to natural incapacity, and sometimes even to idleness. Those who

had no rules to learn had of course none to apply when they wanted

them; no masters could have adequately supplied this deficiency, and

those of the chateau were certainly not the men to remedy the evil.

As might therefore have been anticipated, the young Pestalozzian's

ideas, whether innate or acquired, and on every subject, became sadly

vague and confused, and his grammar of a piece with his knowledge.

We would have been conspicuous, even amongst other boys, for what

_seemed_ almost a studied impropriety of language; but it _was_, in

fact, nothing more than the unavoidable result of natural indolence and

inattention, uncoerced by proper discipline. The old man's slouching

gait and ungraceful attire afforded but too apt an illustration of the

intellectual _nonchalance_ of his pupils. As to the modern languages,

of which so much has been said by those who knew so little of the

matter, they were in parlance, to be sure--but how spoken? Alas!

besides an open violation of all the concords, and a general disregard

of syntax, they failed where one would have thought them least likely

to fail, in correctness of idiom and accent. The French--this was the

language of the school--abounded in conventional phrases, woven into

its texture from various foreign sources, German, English, or Italian,

and in scores of barbarous words--not to be found in the _Dictionnaire

de l'Academie_, certainly, but quite current in the many-tongued

vernacular of the chateau. Our pronunciation remained unequivocally

John Bullish to the end--not one of us ever caught or thought of

catching the right intonation; and, whether the fault originated

merely in want of ear, or that we could not make the right use of our

noses, it is quite certain that all of us had either no accent or a

wrong one. The German was as bad as the French: it was a Swiss, not a

German, abounding in _patois_ phrases and provincialisms--in short, a

most hybrid affair, to say nothing of its being as much over-guttural

as the last was sub-nasal. With regard to Spanish and Italian, as the

English did not consort with either of these nations, all they ever

acquired of their languages were such oaths and _mauvais mots_ as

parrots pick up from sailors aboard ship, which they repeated with all

the innocence of parrots. Thus, then, the opportunities offered for the

acquisition of modern languages were plainly defective; and when it is

further considered that the dead languages remained untaught--nay, were

literally unknown, except to a small section of the school, for whom

a kind Providence had sent a valued friend and preceptor in Dr M----,

(whose neat Greek characters were stared at as cabalistical by the

other masters of the _Pensionat_,)--and finally, that our very English

became at last defiled and corrupted, by the introduction of a variety

of foreign idioms, it will be seen that for any advantage likely

to accrue from the polyglot character of the institution, the Tower

of Babel would, in fact, have furnished every whit as good a school

for languages as did our turreted chateau. And now, if candour has

compelled this notice of some, it must be admitted, serious blemishes

in the system of old Pestalozzi, where is the academy without them?

"Whoever hopes a faultless school to see,

Hopes what ne'er was, nor is, nor is to be."

Meanwhile the Swiss Pension was not without solid advantages, and might

justly lay claim to some regard, if not as a school for learning, at

least as a _moral_ school; its inmates for the most part spoke truth,

respected property, eschewed mischief, were neither puppies, nor

bullies, nor talebearers. There were, of course, exceptions to all

this, but then they were _exceptions_; nor was the number at any time

sufficient to invalidate the general rule, or to corrupt the better

principle. Perhaps a ten hours' daily attendance in class, coarse

spare diet, hardy and somewhat severe training, may be considered by

the reader as offering some explanation of our general propriety of

behaviour. It may be so; but we are by no means willing to admit, that

the really high moral tone of the school depended either upon gymnastic

exercises or short commons, nor yet arose from the want of facilities

for getting into scrapes, for here, as elsewhere, where there is the

will, there is ever a way. We believe it to have originated from

another source--in a word, from the encouragement held out to the study

of natural history, and the eagerness with which that study was taken

up and pursued by the school in consequence. Though Pestalozzi might

not succeed in making his disciples scholars, he certainly succeeded

in making many among them _naturalists_; and of the two--let us ask

it without offence--whether is he the happier lad (to say nothing of

the future man) who can fabricate faultless pentameters and immaculate

iambics to order; or he who, already absorbed in scanning the wonders

of creation, seeks with unflagging diligence and zeal to know more

and more of the visible works of the great _Poet of Nature_? "Sæpius

sane ad laudem atque virtutem naturam sine doctrinâ, quam sine naturâ

valuisse doctrinam;" which words being Cicero's, deny them, sir, if you

please.

The Pension, during the period of our sojourn at Yverdun, contained

about a hundred and eighty élèves, natives of every European and

of some Oriental states, whose primitive mode of distribution into

classes, according to age and acquirements, during school hours, was

completely changed in playtime, when the boys, finding it easier to

speak their own tongue than to acquire a new one, divided themselves

into separate groups according to their respective nations. The English

would occasionally admit a German or a Prussian to their coterie;

but that was a favour seldom conferred upon any other foreigner: for

the Spaniards, who were certainly the least well-conducted of the

whole community, did not deserve it: among them were to be found the

litigious, the mischief-makers, the quarrellers, and--for, as has been

hinted, we were not all honest--the exceptional thieves. The Italians

we could never make out, nor they us: we had no sympathy with Pole or

Greek; the Swiss we positively did not like, and the French just as

positively did not like us; so how could it be otherwise? The ushers,

for the most part trained up in the school, were an obliging set of

men, with little refinement, less pretension, and wholly without

learning. A distich from Crabbe describes them perfectly--

"Men who, 'mid noise and dirt, and play and prate,

Could calmly mend the pen, and wash the slate."

Punishments were rare; indeed, flogging was absolutely prohibited; and

the setting an imposition would have been equally against the _genius

loci_, had lesson-books existed out of which to hear it afterwards.

A short imprisonment in an unfurnished room--a not very formidable

black-hole--with the loss of a _goutte_, now and then, and at very long

intervals, formed the mild summary of the penal "code Pestalozzi."

It was Saturday, and a half holiday, when we arrived at Yverdun, and

oh the confusion of tongues which there prevailed! All Bedlam and

Parnassus let loose to rave together, could not have come up to that

diapason of discords with which the high corridors were ringing,

as, passing through the throng, we were conducted to the venerable

head of the establishment in his private apartments beyond. In this

gallery of mixed portraits might be seen long-haired, highborn, and

high-cheek-boned Germans; a scantling of French _gamins_ much better

dressed; some dark-eyed Italians; Greeks in most foreign attire; here

and there a fair ingenuous Russian face; several swart sinister-looking

Spaniards, models only for their own Carravagio; some dirty specimens

of the universal Pole; one or two unmistakeable English, ready to shake

hands with a compatriot; and Swiss from every canton of the Helvetic

confederacy. To this promiscuous multitude we were shortly introduced,

the kind old man himself taking us by the hand, and acting as master

of the ceremonies. When the whole school had crowded round to stare at

the new importation, "Here," said he, "are four English boys come from

their distant home, to be naturalised in this establishment, and made

members of our family. Boys, receive them kindly, and remember they are

henceforth your brothers." A shout from the crowd proclaiming its ready

assent and cordial participation in the adoption, nothing remained but

to shake hands _à l'Anglaise_, and to fraternise without loss of time.

The next day being Sunday, our skulls were craniologically studied by

Herr Schmidt, the head usher; and whatever various bumps or depressions

phrenology might have discovered thereon were all duly registered in a

large book. After this examination was concluded, a week's furlough was

allowed, in order that Herr Schmidt might have an opportunity afforded

him of seeing how far our real character squared with phrenological

observation and measurement, entering this also into the same ledger

as a note. What a contrast were we unavoidably drawing all this time

between Yverdun and Westminster, and how enjoyable was the change to

us! The reader will please to imagine as well as he can, the sensations

of a lately pent up chrysalis, on first finding himself a butterfly, or

the not less agreeable surprise of some newly metamorphosed tadpole,

when, leaving his associates in the mud and green slime, he floats at

liberty on the surface of the pool, endowed with lungs and a voice,--if

he would at all enter into the exultation of our feelings on changing

the penitential air of Millbank for the fresh mountain breezes of the

Pays de Vaud. It seemed as if we had--nay, we had actually entered

upon a new existence, so thoroughly had all the elements of the old

been altered and improved. If we looked back, and compared past and

present experiences, there, at the wrong end of the mental telescope,

stood that small dingy house, in that little mis-yclept Great Smith

Street, with its tiny cocoon of a bedroom, whilom our close and

airless prison; here, at the other end, and in immediate contact with

the eye, a noble chateau, full of roomy rooms, enough and to spare.

Another retrospective peep, and _there_ was Tothill Fields, and its

seedy cricket ground; and _here_, again, a level equally perfect,

but carpeted with fine turf, and extending to the margin of a broad

living lake, instead of terminating in a nauseous duck-pond; while the

cold clammy cloisters adjoining Dean's Yard were not less favourably

replaced by a large open airy play-ground, intersected by two clear

trout-streams--and a sky as unlike that above Bird-Cage Walk as the

interposed atmosphere was different; whilst, in place of the startling,

discordant _Keleusmata_ of bargees, joined to the creaking, stunning

noise of commerce in a great city, few out-of-door sounds to meet our

ear, and these few, with the exception of our own, all quiet, pastoral,

and soothing, such as, later in life, make

"Silence in the heart

For thought to do her part,"

and which are not without their charm even to him "who whistles as

he goes for _want_ of thought." No wonder, then, if Yverdun seemed

Paradisaical in its landscapes. Nor was this all. If the views

outside were charming, our domestic and social relations within doors

were not less pleasing. At first, the unwelcome vision of the _late_

head-master would sometimes haunt us, clad in his flowing black D.D.

robes--"tristis severitas in vultu, atque in verbis fides," looking as

if he intended to flog, and his words never belying his looks. That

terrible Olympian arm, raised and ready to strike, was again shadowed

forth to view; while we could almost fancy ourselves once more at

that judicial table, one of twenty boys who were to draw lots for

a "hander." How soothingly, then, came the pleasing consciousness,

breaking our reverie, that a very different person was _now_ our

head-master--a most indulgent old man whom we should meet ere long,

with hands uplifted, indeed, but only for the purpose of clutching us

tight while he inflicted a salute on both cheeks, and pronounced his

affectionate _guten morgen, liebes kind_, as he hastened on to bestow

the like fatherly greeting upon every pupil in turn.

THE DORMITORY.

The sleeping apartments at the chateau occupied three of the four sides

of its inner quadrangle, and consisted of as many long rooms, each

with a double row of windows; whereof one looked into the aforesaid

quadrangle, while the opposite rows commanded, severally, views of the

garden, the open country, and the Grande Place of the town. They were

accommodated with sixty uncurtained stump bedsteads, fifty-nine of

which afforded _gîte_ to a like number of boys; and one, in no respect

superior to the rest, was destined to receive the athletic form of

Herr Gottlieb, son-in-law to Vater Pestalozzi, to whose particular

charge we were consigned during the hours of the night. These bedrooms,

being as lofty as they were long, broad, and over-furnished with

windows, were always ventilated; but the in-draught of air, which was

sufficient to keep them cool during the hottest day in summer, rendered

them cold, and sometimes _very_ cold, in the winter. In that season,

accordingly, especially when the _bise_ blew, and hail and sleet were

pattering against the casements, the compulsory rising to class by

candlelight was an ungenial and unwelcome process; for which, however,

there being no remedy, the next best thing was to take it as coolly,

we were going to say--_that of course_--but, as patiently as might be.

The disagreeable anticipation of the _réveil_ was frequently enough

to scare away sleep from our eyes a full hour before the command to

jump out of bed was actually issued. On such occasions we would lie

awake, and, as the time approached, begin to draw in our own breath,

furtively listening, not without trepidation, to the loud nose of a

distant comrade, lest its fitful stertor should startle another pair

of nostrils, on whose repose that of the whole dormitory depended.

Let Æolus and his crew make what tumult they liked inside or outside

the castle--_they_ disturbed nobody's dreams--_they_ never murdered

sleep. Let them pipe and whistle through every keyhole and crevice of

the vast _enceinte_ of the building--sigh and moan as they would in

their various imprisonments of attic or corridor; howl wildly round

the great tower, or even threaten a forcible entry at the windows,

nobody's ears were scared into unwelcome consciousness by sounds so

familiar to them all. It was the expectation of a blast louder even

than theirs that would keep our eyes open--a blast about to issue

from the bed of Herr Gottlieb, and thundering enough, when it issued,

to startle the very god of winds himself! Often, as the dreaded six

A.M. drew nigh, when the third quarter past five had, ten minutes

since, come with a sough and a rattle against the casements, and still

Gottlieb slept on, we would take courage, and begin to dream with our

eyes open, that his slumbers might be prolonged a little; his face,

turned upwards, looked so calm, the eyes so resolutely closed--every

feature so perfectly at rest. It could not be more than five minutes

to six--might not he who had slept _so long_, for once _over_sleep

himself? NEVER! However placid those slumbers might be, they invariably

forsook our "unwearied one" just as the clock was on the point of

striking six. To judge by the rapid twitchings--they almost seemed

galvanic--first of the muscles round the mouth, then of the nose and

eyes, it appeared as though some ill-omened dream, at that very nick

of time, was sent periodically, on purpose to awaken him; and, if so,

it certainly never returned ~apraktos~. Gottlieb would instantly set

to rubbing his eyes, and as the hour struck, spring up wide awake in

his shirt sleeves--thus destroying every lingering, and, as it always

turned out, ill-founded hope of a longer snooze. Presently we beheld

him jump into his small-clothes, and, when sufficiently attired to be

seen, unlimber his tongue, and pour forth a rattling broadside--_Auf,

kinder! schwind!_--with such precision of delivery, too, that few

sleepers could turn a deaf ear to it. But, lest any one should still

lurk under his warm coverlet out of earshot, at the further end of

the room, another and a shriller summons to the same effect once more

shakes the walls and windows of the dormitory. Then every boy knew

right well that the last moment for repose was past, and that he must

at once turn out shivering from his bed, and dress as fast as possible;

and it was really surprising to witness how rapidly all could huddle on

their clothes under certain conditions of the atmosphere!

In less than five minutes the whole school was dressed, and Gottlieb,

in his sounding shoes, having urged the dilatory with another

admonitory _schwind, schwind!_ has departed, key and candle in hand,

to arouse the remaining sleepers, by ringing the "Great Tom" of the

chateau. So cold and cheerless was this matutinal summons, that

occasional attempts were made to evade it by simulated headach, or,

without being quite so specific, on the plea of general indisposition,

though it was well known beforehand what the result would be. Herr

Gottlieb, in such a case, would presently appear at the bedside of the

delinquent patient, with very little compassion in his countenance,

and, in a business tone, proceed to inquire from him, Why not

up?--and on receiving for reply, in a melancholy voice, that the

would-be invalid was _sehr krank_, would instantly pass the word for

the doctor to be summoned. That doctor--we knew him well, and every

truant knew--was a quondam French army surgeon--a sworn disciple of

the Broussais school, whose heroic remedies at the chateau resolved

themselves into one of two--_i. e._, a starve or a vomit, alternately

administered, according as the idiosyncracy of the patient, or as

this or that symptom turned the scale, now in favour of storming the

stomach, now of starving it into capitulation. Just as the welcome hot

mess of bread and milk was about to be served to the rest, this dapper

little Sangrado would make his appearance, feel the pulse, inspect the

tongue, ask a few questions, and finding, generally, indications of

what he would term _une légère gastrite_, recommend _diète absolue_;

then prescribing a mawkish _tisane_, composed of any garden herbs at

hand, and pocketing lancets and stethoscope, would leave the patient to

recover _sans calomel_--a mode of treatment to which, he would tell us,

we should certainly have been subjected in our own country. Meanwhile,

the superiority of _his_ plan of treatment was unquestionable. On the

very next morning, when he called to visit his _cher petit malade_,

an empty bed said quite plainly, "Very well, I thank you, sir, and in

class." But these feignings were comparatively of rare occurrence;

in general, all rose, dressed, and descended together, just as the

alarum-bell had ceased to sound; and in less than two minutes more all

were assembled in their respective class-rooms. The rats and mice,

which had had the run of these during the night, would be still in

occupation when we entered; and such was the audacity of these vermin

that none cared _alone_ to be the first to plant a candle on his desk.

But, by entering _en masse_, we easily routed the _Rodentia_, whose

forces were driven to seek shelter behind the wainscot, where they

would scuffle, and gnaw, and scratch, before they finally withdrew,

and left us with blue fingers and chattering teeth to study to make

the best of it. Uncomfortable enough was the effort for the first ten

minutes of the session; but by degrees the hopes of a possible warming

of hands upon the surface of the Dutch stoves after class, if they

should have been lighted in time, and at any rate the certainty of a

hot breakfast, were entertained, and brought their consolation; besides

which, the being up in time to welcome in the dawn of the dullest day,

while health and liberty are ours, is a pleasure in itself. There was

no exception to it here; for when the darkness, becoming every moment

less and less dark, had at length given way, and melted into a gray

gloaming, we would rejoice, even before it appeared, at the approach

of a new day. That approach was soon further heralded by the fitful

notes of small day-birds chirping under the leaves, and anon by their

sudden dashings against the windows, in the direction of the lights

not yet extinguished in the class-rooms. Presently the pigs were heard

rejoicing and contending over their fresh wash; then the old horse and

the shaggy little donkey in the stable adjoining the styes, knowing

by this stir that their feed was coming, snorted and brayed at the

pleasant prospect. The cocks had by this time roused their sleepy

sultanas, who came creeping from under the barn-door to meet their

lords on the dunghill. Our peacock, to satisfy himself that he had not

taken cold during the night, would scream to the utmost pitch of a

most discordant voice; then the prescient goats would bleat from the

cabins, and plaintively remind us that, till their door is unpadlocked,

they can get no prog; then the punctual magpie, and his friend the

jay, having hopped all down the corridor, would be heard screaming

for broken victuals at the school-room door, till our dismissal bell,

finding so many other tongues loosened, at length wags its own, and

then for the next hour and a half all are free to follow their own

devices. Breakfast shortly follows; but, alas! another cold ceremony

must be undergone first. A preliminary visit to pump court, and a

thorough ablution of face and hands, is indispensable to those who

would become successful candidates for that long-anticipated meal.

This bleaching process, at an icy temperature, was never agreeable;

but when the pipes happened to be frozen--a contingency by no means

unfrequent--and the snow in the yard must be substituted for the

water which was not in the pump, it proved a difficult and sometimes

a painful business; especially as there was always some uncertainty

afterwards, whether the chilblained paws would pass muster before the

inspector-general commissioned to examine them--who, utterly reckless

as to how the boys might "be off for soap," and incredulous of what

they would fain attribute to the adust complexion of their skin, would

require to have that assertion tested by a further experiment at the

"pump head."

THE REFECTORY.

"Forbear to scoff at woes you cannot feel,

Nor mock the misery of a stinted meal."--CRABBE.

The dietary tables at the chateau, conspicuous alike for the paucity

and simplicity of the articles registered therein, are easily recalled

to mind. The fare they exhibited was certainly _coarse_--though, by a

euphemism, it might have been termed merely _plain_--and spare withal.

The breakfast would consist of milk and water--the first aqueous enough

without dilution, being the produce of certain ill-favoured, and,

as we afterwards tasted their flesh, we may add ill-flavoured kine,

whose impoverished lacteals could furnish out of their sorry fodder

no better supplies. It was London sky-blue, in short, but not of the

Alderney dairy, which was made to serve our turn at Yverdun. This milk,

at seven in summer, and at half-past seven in winter, was transferred

boiling, and as yet unadulterated, into earthenware mixers, which had

been previously half-filled with hot water from a neighbouring kettle.

In this half-and-half state it was baled out for the assembled school

into a series of pewter platters, ranged along the sides of three

bare deal boards, some thirty feet long by two wide, and mounted on

tressels, which served us for tables. The ministering damsels were

two great German Fraus, rejoicing severally in the pleasing names of

Gretchen and Bessie. When Frau Gretchen, standing behind each boy,

had dropt her allowance of milk over his right shoulder--during which

process there was generally a mighty clatter for full measure and

fair play--the other Frau was slicing off her slices of bread from a

brown loaf a yard long, which she carried under her arm, and slashed

clean through with wonderful precision and address. It was now for all

those who had saved pocket-money for _menus-plaisirs_ to produce their

_cornets_ of cinnamon or sugar, sprinkle a little into the milk, and

then fall to sipping and munching with increased zest and satisfaction.

So dry and chaffy was our _pain de ménage_ that none ventured to soak

it entire, or at once, but would cut it into _frustrums_, and retain

liquid enough to wash down the boluses separately. In a few minutes

every plate was completely cleaned out and polished; and the cats,

that generally entered the room as we left it, seldom found a drop

with which they might moisten their tongues, or remove from cheeks

and whiskers the red stains of murdered mice on which they had been

breaking their fast in the great tower. So much for the earliest

meal of the day, which was to carry us through five hours, if not of

laborious mental study, at least of the incarceration of our bodies in

class, which was equally irksome to them as if our minds had been hard

at work. These five hours terminated, slates were once more insalivated

and put by clean, and the hungry garrison began to look forward to the

pleasures of the noon-day repast. The same bell that had been calling

so often to class would now give premonitory notice of dinner, but

in a greatly changed tone. In place of the shrill snappish key in

which it had all the morning jerked out each short unwelcome summons

from lesson to lesson, as if fearful of ringing one note beyond the

prescribed minute, it now would take time, vibrate far and wide in

its cage, give full scope to its tongue, and appear, from the loud

increasing swell of its prolonged _oyez_, to announce the message

of good cheer like a herald conscious and proud of his commission.

Ding-dong!--come along! Dinner's dishing!--ding-dong! _Da capo_ and

_encore_! Then, starting up from every school-room form throughout

the chateau, the noisy boys rushed pell-mell, opened all the doors,

and, like emergent bees in quest of honey, began coursing up and down

right busily between the _salle-à-manger_ and the kitchen--snuffing

the various aromas as they escaped from the latter into the passage,

and inferring from the amount of exhaled fragrance the actual progress

of the preparations for eating. Occasionally some "sly Tom" would peep

into the kitchen, while the Fraus were too busy to notice him, and

watch the great cauldron that had been milked dry of its stores in the

morning, now discharging its aqueous contents of a much-attenuated

_bouillon_--the surface covered with lumps of swimming bread, thickened

throughout with a hydrate of potatoes, and coloured with coarse insipid

carrots, which certainly gave it a savoury appearance. It was not good

broth--far from it, for it was both _sub_-greasy and _super_-salted;

but then it was hot, it was thick, and there was an abundant supply.

It used to gush, as we have said, from the great stop-cock of the

cauldron, steaming and sputtering, into eight enormous tureens. The

shreds of beef, together with whatever other solids remained behind

after the fluid had been drawn off, were next fished up from the abyss

with long ladles, and plumped into the decanted liquor. The young

_gastronome_ who might have beheld these proceedings would wait till

the lid was taken off the _sauerkraut_; and then, the odour becoming

overpoweringly appetising, he would run, as by irresistible instinct,

into the dining-room, where most of the boys were already assembled,

each with a ration of brown bread in his hand, and ready for the

Fraus, who were speedily about to enter. The dinner was noisy and

_ungenteel_ in the extreme--how could it be otherwise? _ventre affamé

n'a point d'oreilles._ Hardly was the German grace concluded, and

the covers removed, when that bone of contention, the marrow bone,

was caught up by some big boy near the top of the table, and became

the signal for a general row. All in his neighbourhood would call out

second, third, fourth, fifth, &c., for said bone; and thus it would

travel from plate to plate, yielding its contents freely to the two or

three first applicants, but wholly inadequate--unless it could have

resolved itself altogether into marrow--to meet all the demands made

upon its stores. Then arose angry words of contention, which waxed hot

as the marrow waxed cold, every candidate being equally vociferous in

maintaining the priority of his particular claim. Earnest appeals in

German, French, Spanish, English, &c., were bandied from one to the

other in consequence, as to who had really said _après toi_ first! At

last the "dry bone" was found undeserving of further contention; and,

ceasing to drop any more fatness upon any boy's bread, the competition

for it was dropt too. When now we had half-filled our stomachs with a

soup which few physicians would have withheld from their fever patients

on the score of its strength, we threw in a sufficiency of bread and

_sauerkraut_ to absorb it; and, after the post-prandial German grace

had been pronounced, the boys left the table, generally with a saved

crust in their pockets, to repair to the garden and filch--if it was

filching--an alliaceous dessert from the beds, which they washed in

the clear stream, and added, without fear of indigestion, to the

meal just concluded within the chateau. Most of us throve upon this

Spartan diet; but some delicate boys, unendowed with the ostrich power

of assimilation usual at that period--for boys, like ostriches, can

digest almost anything--became deranged in their chylopoietics, and

continued to feel its ill effects in mesenteric and other chronic

ailments for years afterwards. An hour was given for stomachs to

do their work, before we reassembled to ours in the class-room. At

half-past four precisely, a _gouté_, was served out, which consisted

of a whacking slice of bread, and either a repetition of the morning's

milk and water, or _café au lait_, (without sugar "_bien entendu_,") or

twenty-five walnuts, or a couple of ounces of strong-tasted _gruyère_,

or a plateful of _schnitz_ (cuttings of dried apples, pears, and

plums). We might choose any one of these several dainties we liked,

but not more. Some dangerous characters--not to be imitated--would

occasionally, while young Frau Schmidt stood doling out the supplies

from her cupboard among the assembled throng, make the disingenuous

attempt to obtain cheese with one hand and _schnitz_ with the other.

But the artifice, we are happy to say, seldom succeeded; for that

vigilant lady, quick-eyed and active, and who, of all things, hated

to be imposed upon, would turn round upon the false claimant, and bid

him hold up both his hands at once--which he, ambidexter as he was,

durst not do, and thus he was exposed to the laughter and jeers of

the rest. At nine, the bell sounded a feeble call to a _soi-disant_

supper; but few of us cared for a basin of _tisane_ under the name of

lentil soup--or a pappy potato, salted in the boiling--and soon after

we all repaired to our bedrooms--made a noise for a short time, then

undressed, and were speedily asleep under our _duvets_, and as sound,

if not as musical, as tops.

Our common fare, as the reader has now seen, was sorry enough; but we

had our Carnival and gala days as well as our Lent. Vater Pestalozzi's

birthday, in summer, and the first day of the new year, were the most

conspicuous. On each of these occasions we enjoyed a whole week's

holiday; and as these were also the periods for slaughtering the pigs,

we fed (twice a-year for a whole week!) upon black puddings and pork _à

discretion_, qualified with a sauce of beetroot and vinegar, and washed

down with a fluid really like small-beer.

CLASSES.

The school-rooms, which lay immediately under the dormitories on the

ground-floor, consisted of a number of detached chambers, each of which

issued upon a corridor. They were airy--there was plenty of air at

Yverdun--and lofty as became so venerable a building; but they were

unswept, unscrubbed, peeled of their paint, and, owing to the little

light that could find its way through two very small windows punched

out of the fortress walls, presented, save at mid-day, or as the

declining sun illumined momentarily the dark recess, as comfortless

a set of interiors as you could well see. It required, indeed, all

the elasticity of youth to bear many hours' daily incarceration in

such black-holes, without participating in the pervading gloom. Such

dismal domiciles were only fit resorts for the myoptic bat, who would

occasionally visit them from the old tower; for the twilight horde of

cockroaches, which swarmed along the floor, or the eight-eyed spiders

who colonised the ceiling. The tender sight, too, of a patient just

recovering from ophthalmia would here have required no factitious or

deeper shade--but merits like these only rendered them as ungenial as

possible to the physiology and feelings of their youthful occupants. If

these apartments looked gloomy in their dilapidations and want of sun,

the sombre effect was much heightened by the absence of the ordinary

tables and chairs, and whatever else is necessary to give a room a

habitable appearance. Had an appraiser been commissioned to make out

a complete list of the furniture and the fixtures together, a mere

glance had sufficed for the inventory. In vain would his practised eye

have wandered in quest of themes for golden sentences, printed in such

uncial characters that all who run may read; in vain for the high-hung

well-backed chart, or for any pleasing pictorial souvenirs of Æsop or

the Ark--neither these nor the long "coloured Stream of Time," nor

formal but useful views in perspective, adorned our sorry walls. No

old mahogany case clicked in a corner, beating time for the class, and

the hour up-striking loud that it should not be defrauded of its dues.

No glazed globe, gliding round on easy axis, spun under its brassy

equator to the antipodes on its sides being touched. No bright zodiac

was there to exhibit its cabalistic figures in pleasing arabesques.

In place of these and other well-known objects, here stood a line

of dirty, much-inked desks, with an equally dirty row of attendant

forms subjacent alongside. There was a scantling--it seldom exceeded

a leash--of rickety rush-bottom chairs distributed at long intervals

along the walls; a coal-black slate, pegged high on its wooden horse;

a keyless cupboard, containing the various implements of learning, a

dirty duster, a pewter plate with cretaceous deposits, a slop-basin

and a ragged sponge;--and then, unless he had included the cobwebs of

the ceiling, (not usually reckoned up in the furniture of a room,) no

other movables remained. One conspicuous fixture, however, there was,

a gigantic Dutch stove. This lumbering parallelogram, faggot-fed from

the corridor behind, projected several feet into the room, and shone

bright in the glaze of earthenware emblazonments. Around it we would

sometimes congregate in the intervals of class: in winter to toast our

hands and hind quarters, as we pressed against the heated tiles, with

more or less vigour according to the fervency of the central fire; and

in summer either to tell stories, or to con over the pictorial History

of the Bible, which adorned its frontispiece and sides. We cannot say

that every square exactly squared with even our schoolboy notions of

propriety in its mode of teaching religious subjects; there was a Dutch

quaintness in the illustrations, which would sometimes force a smile

from its simplicity, at others shock, from its apparent want of decorum

and reverence. Preeminent of course among the gems from Genesis, Adam

and Eve, safe in innocency and "_naked_ truth," here walked unscathed

amidst a menagerie of wild beasts--_there_, dressed in the costume of

their fall, they quitted Eden, and left it in possession of tigers,

bears, and crocodiles. Hard by on a smaller tile, that brawny "knave

of clubs," Cain, battered down his brother at the altar; then followed

a long picture-gallery of the acts of the patriarchs, and another

equally long of the acts of the apostles. But, queer as many of these

misconceptions might seem, they were nothing to the strange attempts

made at dramatising the _parables_ of the New Testament--_e. g._ a

stout man, staggering under the weight of an enormous beam which grows

out of one eye, employs his fingers, assisted by the other, to pick

out a black speck from the cornea of his neighbour. Here, an unclean

spirit, as black as any sweep, issues from the mouth of his victim,

with wings and a tail! Here again, the good Samaritan, turbaned like a

Turk, is bent over the waylaid traveller, and pours wine and oil into

his wounds from the mouths of two Florence flasks; there, the grain of

mustard-seed, become a tree, sheltering already a large aviary in its

boughs; the woman, dancing a hornpipe with the Dutch broom, has swept

her house, and lo! the piece of silver that was lost in her hand; a

servant, who is digging a hole in order to hide his lord's talent under

a tree, is overlooked by a magpie and two crows, who are attentive

witnesses of the deposit:--and many others too numerous to mention. So

much for the empty school-room, but what's a hive without bees, or a

school-room without boys? The reader who has peeped into it untenanted,

shall now, if he pleases, be introduced, _dum fervet opus_ full and

alive. Should he not be able to trace out very clearly the system at

work, he will at least be no worse off than the bee-fancier, who hears

indeed the buzzing, and sees a flux and reflux current of his winged

confectioners entering in and passing out, but cannot investigate

the detail of their labours any farther. In the Yverdun, as in the

hymenopterus apiary, we swarmed, we buzzed, dispersed, reassembled at

the sound of the bell, flocked in and flocked out, all the day long;

exhibited much restlessness and activity, evincing that something was

going on, but _what_, it would have been hard to determine. Here the

comparison must drop. Bees buzz to some purpose; they know what they

are about; they help one another; they work orderly and to one end,--

"How skilfully they build the cell,

How neat they spread the wax,

And labour hard to store it well

With the sweet food," &c. &c.

In none of these particulars did we resemble the "busy bee." This

being admitted, our object in offering a few words upon the course

of study pursued at the chateau is not with any idea of enlightening

the reader as to anything really acquired during the long ten hours'

session of each day; but rather to show how ten hours' imprisonment may

be inflicted upon the body for the supposed advantage of the mind, and

yet be consumed in "profitless labour, and diligence which maketh not

rich;" to prove, by an exhibition of their opposites, that method and

discipline are indispensable in tuition, and (if he will accept our

"pathemata" for his "mathemata" and guides in the bringing up of his

sons) to convince him that education, like scripture, admits not of

private interpretation. Those who refuse to adopt the Catholic views

of the age, and the general sense of the society in which they live,

must blame themselves if they find the experiment of foreign schools a

failure, and that they have sent their children "farther to fare worse."

And now to proceed to the geography class, which was the first after

breakfast, and began at half-past eight. As the summons-bell sounded,

the boys came rushing and tumbling in, and ere a minute had elapsed

were swarming over, and settling upon, the high reading-desks: the

master, already at his work, was chalking out the business of the hour;

and as this took some little time to accomplish, the youngsters, not

to sit unemployed, would be assiduously engaged in impressing sundry

animal forms--among which the donkey was a favourite--cut out in

cloth, and well powdered, upon one another's backs. When Herr G----

had finished his chalkings, and was gone to the corner of the room

for his show-perch, a skeleton map of Europe might be seen, by those

who chose to look that way, covering the slate: this, however, was

what the majority of the assembly never dreamt of, or only dreamt

they were doing. The class generally--though ready when called upon

to give the efficient support of their tongues--kept their eyes to

gape elsewhere, and, like Solomon's fool, had them where they had

no business to be. The map, too often repeated to attract from its

novelty, had no claim to respect on other grounds. It was one of a

class accurately designated by that careful geographer, old Homer, as

"~maps ou Kata Kosmon~." Coarse and clumsy, however, as it necessarily

would be, it might still have proved of service had the boys been

the draughtsmen. As it was, the following mechanically Herr G----'s

wand to join in the general chorus of the last census of a city, the

perpendicular altitude of a mountain, or the length and breadth of a

lake, could obviously convey no useful instruction to any one. But,

useful or otherwise, such was our _regime_,--to set one of from fifty

to sixty lads, day after day, week after week, repeating facts and

figures notorious to every little reader of penny guides to science,

till all had the last statistical returns at their tongue's tip; and

knew, when all was done, as much of what geography really meant as

on the day of their first matriculation. Small wonder, then, if some

should later have foresworn this study, and been revolted at the

bare sight of a map! All our recollections of _map_, unlike those of

_personal_ travel, are sufficiently distasteful. Often have we yawned

wearily over them at Yverdun, when our eyes were demanded to follow the

titubations of Herr G----'s magic wand, which, in its uncertain route,

would skip from Europe to Africa and back again--_qui modo Thebas

modo me ponit Athenis_; and our dislike to them since has increased

amazingly. Does the reader care to be told the reason of this? Let

him--in order to obtain the pragmatic sanction of some stiff-necked

examiner--have to "get up" all the anastomosing routes of St Paul's

several journeyings; have to follow those rebellious Israelites in all

their wanderings through the desert; to draw the line round them when

in Palestine; going from Dan to Beersheba, and "meting out the valley

of Succoth;" or, finally, have to cover a large sheet of foolscap with

a progressive survey of the spread of Christianity during the three

first centuries--and he will easily enter into our feelings. To return

to the class-room: The geographical lesson, though of daily infliction,

was accurately circumscribed in its duration. Old Time kept a sharp

look-out over his blooming daughters, and never suffered one hour to

tread upon the heels or trench upon the province of a sister hour.

Sixty minutes to all, and not an extra minute to any, was the old

gentleman's impartial rule; and he took care to see it was strictly

adhered to. As the clock struck ten, geography was shoved aside by the

muse of mathematics. A sea of dirty water had washed out in a twinkling

all traces of the continent of Europe, and the palimpsest slate

presented a clean face for whatever figures might next be traced upon

it.

The hour for Euclidising was arrived, and anon the black parallelogram

was intersected with numerous triangles of the Isosceles and Scalene

pattern; but, notwithstanding this promising _début_, we did not make

much quicker progress here than in the previous lesson. How should

we, who had not only the difficulties inseparable from the subject to

cope with, but a much more formidable difficulty--viz. the obstruction

which we opposed to each other's advance, by the plan, so unwisely

adopted, of making all the class do the same thing, that they might

keep pace together. It is a polite piece of folly enough for a whole

party to be kept waiting dinner by a lounging guest, who chooses to

ride in the park when he ought to be at his toilet; but we were the

victims of a much greater absurdity, who lost what might have proved

an hour of profitable work, out of tenderness to some incorrigibly

idle or Boeotian boy, who could not get over the Pons Asinorum, (every

proposition was a _pons_ to some _asinus_ or other,) and so made those

who were over stand still, or come back to help him across. Neither

was this, though a very considerable drawback, our only hindrance--the

guides were not always safe. Sometimes he who acted in that capacity

would shout "Eureka" too soon; and having undertaken to lead the van,

lead it astray till just about, as he supposed, to come down upon

the proof itself, and to come down with a Q. E. D.: the master would

stop him short, and bid him--as Coleridge told the ingenious author

of _Guesses at Truth_--"to guess again." But suppose the "guess"

fortunate, or that a boy had even succeeded, by his own industry or

reflection, in mastering a proposition, did it follow that he would

be a clear expositor of what he knew? It was far otherwise. Our young

Archimedes--unacquainted with the terms of the science, and being

also (as we have hinted) lamentably defective in his knowledge of the

power of words--would mix up such a "farrago" of irrelevancies and

repetitions with the proof, as, in fact, to render it to the majority

no proof at all. Euclid should be taught in his own words,--just enough

and none to spare: the employment of less must engender obscurity; and

of more, a want of neatness and perspicacity. The best geometrician

amongst us would have cut but a bad figure by the side of a lad of very

average ability brought up to know Euclid by book.

Another twitch of the bell announced that the hour for playing at

triangles had expired. In five minutes the slate was covered with

bars of minims and crotchets, and the music lesson begun. This, in

the general tone of its delivery, bore a striking resemblance to the

geographical one of two hours before; the only difference being that

"ut, re, me" had succeeded to names of certain cities, and "fa, so, la"

to the number of their inhabitants. It would be as vain an attempt to

describe all the noise we made as to show its rationale or motive. It

was loud enough to have cowed a lion, stopped a donkey in mid-bray--to

have excited the envy of the vocal Lablache, or to have sent any _prima

donna_ into hysterics. When this third hour had been bellowed away, and

the bell had rung unheard the advent of a fourth--_presto_--in came

Mons. D----, to relieve the meek man who had acted as coryphæus to the

music class; and after a little tugging, had soon produced from his

pocket that without which you never catch a Frenchman--a _thème_. The

theme being announced, we proceeded (not quite _tant bien que mal_)

to scribble it down at his dictation, and to amend its orthography

afterwards from a corrected copy on the slate. Once more the

indefatigable bell obtruded its tinkle, to proclaim that Herr Roth was

coming with a Fable of Gellert, or a chapter from Vater Pestalozzi's

serious novel, _Gumal und Lina_, to read, and expound, and catechise

upon. This last lesson before dinner was always accompanied by frequent

yawns and other unrepressed symptoms of fatigue; and at its conclusion

we all rose with a shout, and rushed into the corridors.

On resuming work in the afternoon, there was even less attention and

method observed than before. The classes were then broken up, and

private lessons were given in accomplishments, or in some of the useful

arts. Drawing dogs and cows, with a master to look after the trees and

the hedges; whistling and spitting through a flute; playing on the

patience of a violin; turning at a lathe; or fencing with a powerful

_maître d'armes_;--such were the general occupations. It was then,

however, that we English withdrew to our Greek and Latin; and, under

a kind master, Dr M----, acquired (with the exception of a love for

natural history, and a very unambitious turn of mind) all that really

could deserve the name of education.

We have now described the sedentary life at the chateau. In the next

paper the reader shall be carried to the gymnasium; the drill ground

behind the lake; to our small menageries of kids, guinea pigs, and

rabbits; be present at our annual ball and skating bouts in winter, and

at our bathings, fishings, frog-spearings, and rambles over the Jura in

summer.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] CICERO, _De Fin._, ii. 1.

THE CROWNING OF THE COLUMN, AND CRUSHING OF THE PEDESTAL.

It was said in the debate on the Navigation Laws, in the best speech

made on the Liberal side, by one of the ablest of the Liberal party,

that the repeal of the Navigation Laws was the _crowning of the column

of free trade_. There is no doubt it was so; but it was something more.

It was not only the carrying out of a principle, but the overthrow of a

system; it was not merely the crowning of the column, but the _crushing

of the pedestal_.

And what was the system which was thus completely overthrown, for the

time at least, by this great triumph of Liberal doctrines? It was the

system under which England had become free, and great, and powerful;

under which, in her alone of all modern states, liberty had been found

to coexist with law, and progress with order; under which wealth had

increased without producing divisions, and power grown up without

inducing corruption; the system which had withstood the shocks of two

centuries, and created an empire unsurpassed since the beginning of

the world in extent and magnificence. It was a system which had been

followed out with persevering energy by the greatest men, and the most

commanding intellects, which modern Europe had ever produced; which was

begun by the republican patriotism of Cromwell, and consummated by the

conservative wisdom of Pitt; which had been embraced alike by Somers

and Bolingbroke, by Walpole and Chatham, by Fox and Castlereagh; which,

during two centuries, had produced an unbroken growth of national

strength, a ceaseless extension of national power, and at length reared

up a dominion which embraced the earth in its grasp, and exceeded

anything ever achieved by the legions of Cæsar, or the phalanx of

Alexander. No vicissitudes of time, no shock of adverse fortune, had

been able permanently to arrest its progress. It had risen superior

alike to the ambition of Louis XIV. and the genius of Napoleon; the

rude severance of the North American colonies had thrown only a passing

shade over its fortunes; the power of Hindostan had been subdued by

its force, the sceptre of the ocean won by its prowess. It had planted

its colonies in every quarter of the globe, and at once peopled with

its descendants a new hemisphere, and, for the first time since the

creation, rolled back to the old the tide of civilisation. Perish when

it may, the _old English system_ has achieved mighty things; it has

indelibly affixed its impress on the tablets of history. The children

of its creation, the Anglo-Saxon race, will fill alike the solitudes of

the Far West, and the isles of the East; they will be found equally on

the shores of the Missouri, and on the savannahs of Australia; and the

period can already be anticipated, even by the least imaginative, when

their descendants will people half the globe.

It was not only the column of free trade which has been crowned in

this memorable year. Another column, more firm in its structure,

more lasting in its duration, more conspicuous amidst the wonders of

creation, has, in the same season, been crowned by British hands.

While the sacrilegious efforts of those whom it had sheltered were

tearing down the temple of protection in the West, the last stone

was put to the august structure which it had reared in the East. The

victory of Goojerat on the Indus was contemporary with the repeal of

the Navigation Laws on the Thames. The completion of the conquest of

India occurred exactly at the moment when the system which had created

that empire was repudiated. Protection placed the sceptre of India

in our hands, when free trade was surrendering the trident of the

ocean in the heart of our power. With truth did Lord Gough say, in

his noble proclamation to the army of the Punjaub, on the termination

of hostilities, that "what Alexander had attempted they had done."

Supported by the energy of England, guided by the principles of

protection, restrained by the dictates of justice, backed by the navy

which the Navigation Laws had created, the British arms had achieved

the most wonderful triumph recorded in the annals of mankind. They

had subjugated a hundred and forty millions of men in the Continent

of Hindostan, at the distance of ten thousand miles from the parent

state; they had made themselves felt alike, and at the same moment, at

Nankin, the ancient capital of the Celestial Empire, and at Cabool, the

cradle of Mahommedan power. Conquering all who resisted, blessing all

who submitted, securing the allegiance of the subjects by the justice

and experienced advantages of their government, they had realised the

boasted maxim of Roman administration--

"Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos,"

and steadily advanced through a hundred years of effort and glory, not

unmixed with disaster, from the banks of the Hoogley to the shores of

the Indus--from the black hole of Calcutta to the throne of Aurengzebe.

"Nulla magna civitas," said Hannibal, "diu quiescere potest--si foris

hostem non habet, _domi invenit_: ut praevalida corpora ab externis

causis tuta videntur, suis ipsis viribus conficiuntur."[15] When the

Carthaginian hero made this mournful reflection on the infatuated

spirit which had seized his own countrymen, and threatened to destroy

their once powerful dominion, he little thought what a marvellous

confirmation of it a future empire of far greater extent and celebrity

was to afford. That the system of free trade--that is, the universal

preference of foreigners, for the sake of the smallest reduction

of price, to your own subjects--must, if persisted in, lead to the

dismemberment and overthrow of the British empire, cannot admit of a

moment's doubt, and will be amply proved to every unbiassed reader

in the sequel of this paper. Yet the moment chosen for carrying this

principle into effect was precisely that, when the good effects of the

opposite system had been most decisively demonstrated, and an empire

unprecedented in magnitude and magnificence had reached its acme under

its shadow. It would be impossible to explain so strange an anomaly,

if we did not recollect how wayward and irreconcilable are the changes

of the human mind: that action and reaction is the law not less of the

moral than of the material world; that nations become tired of hearing

a policy called wise, not less than an individual called the just;

and that if a magnanimous and truly national course of government has

been pursued by one party long in possession of power, this is quite

sufficient to make its opponents embrace the opposite set of tenets,

and exert all their influence to carry them into effect when they

succeed to the direction of affairs, without the slightest regard to

the ruin they may bring on the national fortunes.

The secret of the long duration and unexampled success of the British

national policy is to be found in the protection which it afforded to

_all_ the national interests. But for this, it must long since have

been overthrown, and with it the empire which was growing up under its

shadow. No institutions or frames of government can long exist which

are not held together by that firmest of bonds, _experienced benefits_.

What made the Roman power steadily advance during seven centuries, and

endure in all a thousand years? The protection which the arms of the

legions afforded to the industry of mankind, the international wars

which they prevented, the general peace they secured, the magnanimous

policy which admitted the conquered states to the privileges of Roman

citizens, and caused the Imperial government to be felt through the

wide circuit of its power, only by the vast market it opened to the

industry of its multifarious subjects, and the munificence with which

local undertakings were everywhere aided by the Imperial treasury. Free

trade in grain at length ruined it: the harvests of Libya and Egypt

came to supersede those of Greece and Italy,--and thence its fall. To

the same cause which occasioned the rise of Rome, is to be ascribed

the similar unbroken progress of the Russian territorial dominion,

and that of the British colonial empire in modern times. What, on the

other hand, caused the conquests of Timour and Charlemagne, Alexander

the Great and Napoleon, to be so speedily obliterated, and their vast

empires to fall to pieces the moment the powerful hand which had

created them was laid in the dust? The _want of protection_ to general

interests, the absence of the strong bond of experienced benefits; the

oppressive nature of the conquering government; the sacrifice of the

general interests to the selfish ambition or rapacious passions of a

section of the community, whether civil or military, which had got

possession of power. It is the selfishness of the ruling power which

invariably terminates its existence: men will bear anything but an

interference with their patrimonial interests. The burning of 50,000

Protestants by the Duke of Alva was quietly borne by the Flemish

provinces: but the imposition of a small _direct_ tax at once caused

a flame to burst forth, which carried the independence of the United

Provinces. Attend sedulously to the interests of men, give ear to

their complaints, anticipate their wishes, and you may calculate with

tolerable certainty on acquiring in the long run the mastery of their

passions. Thwart their interests, disregard their complaints, make game

of their sufferings, and you may already read the handwriting on the

wall which announces your doom.